Leslie Stephen's eminence as an editor, critic and biographer, and his connection to William Thackeray, meant his children were raised in an environment filled with the influences of a Victorian literary society. Henry James, George Henry Lewes, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Thomas Hardy, Edward Burne-Jones and Virginia's honorary godfather, James Russell Lowell, were among the visitors to the house. Julia Stephen was equally well connected. Her aunt was a pioneering early photographer, Julia Margaret Cameron, who was also a visitor to the Stephen household. The two Stephen sisters, Vanessa and Virginia, were almost three years apart in age. Virginia christened her older sister "the saint" and was far more inclined to exhibit her cleverness than her more reserved sister. Virginia resented the domesticity Victorian tradition forced on them far more than her sister. They also competed for Thoby's affections. Virginia would later confess her ambivalence over this rivalry to Duncan Grant in 1917: "indeed one of the concealed worms of my life has been a sister's jealousy – "of" a sister I mean; and to feed this I have invented such a myth about her that I scarce know one from t'other".