Virginia Woolf – Page 8 – My Own RE:public

More from Mecklenburgh Square

Certainly a most talked about publication in the UK at the moment! Further to my previous post, BBC Radio 3 has also given Francesca Wade’s Square Haunting (amongst other things woman, classical & academic) consideration on their Free Thinking program or the “Goddesses of Academia” episode of their Arts & Ideas podcast.

And, yes, the Jane Harrison, Hope Mirrlees relationship which I remarked upon does indeed come up, as does her modernist poem “Paris” printed by the Hogarth Press in 1919. The British Library has digitized a first edition for all to see, and what a delight it is. Literary wise – why has Mirrlees been forgot? (perhaps because she forsook poetry for “the novel” and other interests) – and in terms of handwork – the Woolfs had only been doing this stuff for a couple of years (they bought a printing press in 1917) for goodness sake!

Interesting, is that Mirrlees’ poem spans just one day in Paris, portraying the vast, ever-changing cityscape and the tempo of a new modernity, all set against the dark shadows still cast by war and an uneasy peace. The much better known “one dayers” are a few years away – Joyce’s “Ulysses” in 1922 and Virginia Woolf’s “Mrs. Dalloway” in 1925.

Five Women & Mecklenburgh Square

Just published and brought to my notice by The Guardian, this interesting podcast from The Spectator (and embedded below) informs further on Francesca Wade’s just published first book Square Haunting (Faber, January 2020).

For the curious, the five eminent women are Virginia Woolf (writer, 1882–1941) Hilda Doolittle (or H.D. writer, poet 1886–1961), Dorothy L Sayers (writer, 1893–1957), Eileen Power (economist, historian 1889–1940) and Jane Harrison (classicist, 1850–1928), and the place is Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury, London. Wade presumably explores the changing role of women at the beginning of the 20th century through these exemplary lives, and in doing so discovers shared aspects of their lives.

Jane Ellen Harrison, Newnham College (Augustus John)

Without referring to either book or podcast, off the top of my head I actually know of one obscure more than crossing of paths, being that between Woolf and Harrison. Virginia Woolf’s diaries (favourite often returned to reading of mine) reveal something of the relationship between her friend Hope Mirrlees and Mirrlees’ former tutor and then partner Harrison — their shared domestic and working lives and travels abroad. The Woolfs’ Hogarth Press in fact published Harrison’s memoirs in 1925.

Also, while Eileen Power may draw a blank with some (or many) I have actually come across Medieval English Nunneries in another context … but there must surely be more to tell, and I am looking forward to reading about it.

Clarissa’s other party

Doing some podcast catching up over Christmas, I particularly liked an episode of “The Essay” from BBC Radio 3 in which Bernardine Evarista imagines another ending to Mrs. Dalloway.

In fact, several things Evarista says in her (audio) essay interest me. Firstly, “To the Lighthouse” was her first encounter with Virginia Woolf, but that contrary to my immediate delight on reading this book many years ago, she as a girl of colour yearning to discover something of herself in the books she read, was left cold by the very white, very English world of the Ramsays, and so concluded Woolf had nothing to say to her. A lot later then came Mrs. Dalloway into the life of the the mature writer Evarista, comfortable now in her skin and in her person, she sees the fearless experimentalist writer that also does “skin”; differently, inhabiting the skin of her characters. Evarista it seems can at last appreciate the unique genius of Woolf. (And, in this audio, speak beautifully on it.)

Thinking of Mrs. Dalloway not so long ago, I too used the expression “a day in the life of” , but Evarista cleverly takes our shared expression one step further; turning it around and adding “…or a life in a day”, thereby getting to the very essence of the novel; unmasking the shallow exterior to reveal the history and complexity of an inner life, and not just that of Clarissa Dalloway, for all the characters carry the baggage that a life brings; strewn as it is with regrets, dissatisfactions, repressions, be they emotional, sexual or matters of practical predicament.

Bernadine Evarista’s ending is a reimagining of the character of Lady Rossiter – Sally – Clarissa’s intimate friend of youth, such that, instead of bowing to the restrictions of convention and society, Sally leads still the spirited, free life so promised in that rebellious girl long ago.

From page to stage

Virginia Woolf’s “orlando”

Should anyone be in doubt of the quiet subversive lurking in Virginia Woolf’s work, or of her relevancy almost eighty years after her death, should read, or return to, her 1928 novella Orlando. Something I intend doing, so that I can think and write about it from this particular place in time (and ‘place in time’ is at the essence of this work). One really just has to contemplate the language and concerns in our every day – gendered and fluid, and in accord with biology some would say – to recognise in the radical Woolf a version of ourselves.

Scene from *Olga Neuwirth*‘s ORLANDO *Auftragswerk der Wiener Staatsoper*Opera © Wiener Staatsoper

Certainly I am not alone in pondering again this extraordinary work; Tilda Swindon does it a lot and again recently, and just this year there has been a Katie Mitchell stage adaptation in Berlin and Paris (and in London next year). And now, at the Wiener Staatsoper, a production from the Austrian composer, Olga Neuwirth greeted with superlatives – here, a Guardian review.

The Hours MS

A favourite “day in the life of” if ever there was one, is brought to mind again with The New York Times reporting on the publication of a new reproduction of the full draft of what was tentatively titled “The Hours” and was to become Mrs. Dalloway. Absolutely beyond my modest budget, but an imagined treasure just the same!

*Cover design Vanessa Bell, Hogarth Press, 1925.*

Beyond the title, revealed (to me anyway!) is the metamorphose of Virginia Woolf’s initial idea of a grand post-war London narrative into a deceptively more modest work. The minutiose account of one woman on one day endures as one of the finest character studies in modern literature.

By the way, I’m collecting all things that come my way relating somehow to Mrs. Dalloway here, where links are also to be found to “The Hours” manuscripts held at the British Library.

Goblin Market

Reading recently by chance Christina Rossetti’s narrative poem “Goblin Market”, I could not help but think about Virginia Woolf; the reasons for which I explain in some detail here.

Christina Rossetti is deserving of more attention, and will be returned to (soon, I hope!). Amongst other things, given Rossetti’s intense religiosity, I would be interested in exploring the leap of faith necessary for Woolf to embrace her.

Also, whilst looking for a copy of the poem, I came across this very nicely put together page at The Victorian Web, with the full text and a lot of interesting contextual information about the poem and of course about Rossetti herself. More generally, The Victorian Web is one of the better and more accessible resources out there in the big, wide whatever …!