From Letcomb the reader will perhaps note with some painful interest that Swift wrote to Miss Esther Vanhomrigh, whom all generations will know as vanessa, a letter, in which he describes his somewhat melancholy mode of life just then, tells her "this is the first syllable I have wrote to anybody since you saw me," and adds that "if this place were ten times worse, nothing shall make me return to town while things are in the situation I left them."
"A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4)"
Justin McCarthy
The situation, as Goethe himself tells us, was suggested by the relations of Swift to Stella and vanessa, but he did not need to go so far afield for a motive.
"The Youth of Goethe"
Peter Hume Brown
Through the salon d'automne Roger Fry is becoming known; and there is a good deal of curiosity about the work of Duncan Grant, and some about that of Mark Gertler and vanessa Bell.
"Since Cézanne"
Clive Bell