Mary Hutchinson

Mary Barnes Hutchinson (29 March 1889 – 17 April 1977) was a British short-story writer, socialite, model and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Early life Hutchinson was born in Simla, Bengal, British India, to Sir Hugh Barnes and Winifred (Strachey) Barnes. After spending her early childhood in India, she was raised in Florence, Italy by her maternal grandparents, and later attended boarding school in England. Hutchinson moved to London in 1909 and in 1910 married barrister St John Hutchinson. Their marriage lasted until his death in 1942. They had two children, Jeremy Hutchinson, Baron Hutchinson of Lullington and Barbara Judith, who later married Victor Rothschild, 3rd Baron Rothschild. Bloomsbury Group In 1910, her cousin Lytton Strachey and Duncan Grant introduced her to the Bloomsbury Group. Hutchinson eventually became a hostess and patroness, hosting lavish soirees at her two homes, Eleanor House and River House. In 1927, influenced by the Group's writers, Hutchinson published a single volume of thirteen articles and six short stories entitled Fugitive Pieces. Throughout her life, she attracted a group of writers and painters to her house, where she and her husband entertained, among others, Mark Gertler, Edward Kauffer, T. S. Eliot, Aldous Huxley, and Virginia Woolf. Hermione Lee asserts in her biography of Virginia Woolf that Hutchinson was the "main inspiration for the febrile socialite Jinny in The Waves." Art model Hutchinson often posed as a model for painters. In 1915, Vanessa Bell painted an unflattering portrait of her called Mrs. St. John Hutchinson, describing it as "perfectly hideous... and yet quite recognizable."