NONFICTION - Sept. 20, 1992

A CEZANNE IN THE HEDGE AND OTHER MEMORIES OF CHARLESTON AND BLOOMSBURY edited by Hugh Lee (University of Chicago Press: $24.95; 191 pp.). It’s unfortunate but true that the most interesting aspect of this essay collection is its title. According to Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew, the incident really did happen: British cabinet member and economist John Maynard Keynes, for many years the best-known member of the Bloomsbury group, persuaded his government to support the French economy during World War I by purchasing postimpressionist paintings at auction, and decided to buy Cezanne’s “Pommes” for himself . . . which ended up, for temporary safekeeping, planted in the hedge outside Charleston, the “Bloomsberries’ ” country retreat. Few of the other Bloomsbury reminiscences included here are memorable--Leon Edel’s excepted--but avid fans will be interested in the essays on the painters in the group, mainly Vanessa Bell, Duncan Grant and Roger Fry.