{"id":2651,"date":"2020-08-24T13:18:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-24T11:18:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/localhost:8888\/wordpress_test\/?page_id=2651"},"modified":"2025-05-16T10:38:28","modified_gmt":"2025-05-16T08:38:28","slug":"volume-two-1920-1924","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?page_id=2651","title":{"rendered":"Volume Two: 1920-1924"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My copy of The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Two 1920-1924, Harcourt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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This second volume of Virginia Woolf’s diary begins in 1920. The war years are over but the ‘peace’ came at a high human and economic cost for all, and it is a ‘peace’ that Woolf does not quite believe in. Personally and professionally though her star is in the ascendancy – her second novel, Night & Day<\/em>, was published towards the end of 1919 and will soon to be also in America along with The Voyage Out<\/em>, reviews are commissioned aplenty, Leonard is secure in his work and the Hogarth Press evolving into a joint venture of impressive stature. Irritations with brilliant friends and equally brilliant rivals, often one in the same, are no more than that – even when she suggests they are! In October 1919 the Woolfs had bought Monks House in Rodmell; instinctively recognizing its potential to become their home -for ever and ever – and working hard at making it just that. The Woolf social and professional life, then, continues in its familiar cycle: between Richmond and Sussex, and London always in-between. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Christmas festivities were forsaken in December 1919 as first Leonard, and then Virginia, became ill (with influenza), therefore delaying their planned retreat to Monks House until 29th December. The first diary entry for the year, on 7th January 1920, was in fact written in her 1919 book and later pasted in the new book – Diary IX<\/em> – my reflections on which follow. On 8th January the Woolfs returned to Richmond.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DIARY IX : 7 January 1920 – 2 January 1921<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
MONKS HOUSE, RODMELL.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 7 January<\/strong><\/em>: Written on their last evening at Monk’s House, Virginia Woolf shares a little of the domestic life in their new abode – meals being ordered in; hearty, simple fare cooked by by a Mrs. Dedman (as they are yet to install a cooker in the kitchen), and there is a village girl, Elsie, who comes in daily to clean. And a beautiful description is given of their garden and the surrounding landscape – down and meadow – its flora and fine feathered inhabitants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HOGARTH HOUSE, RICHMOND.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 10 January<\/strong><\/em>, and back in Richmond, Virginia writes her first entry for the new year, and she has apparently dived immediately back into the familiar lifestyle; there is some servant-baiting, going into London is again the norm – to dine, to shop, to visit: the 17 Club or see Vanessa in Regent Street. On Wednesday 14 January<\/em><\/strong> she records an exchange at the Club with Marjorie “Gumbo” Strachey (Lytton’s youngest sister) so:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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My intimacy with Gumbo came on the flood tide of her appreciation of N. & D. … [her expressed] sentiments warm one to people. Apart from them…I have warmed to her these past years…[referring to MS’s novel] whether I too, deal thus openly in autobiography & call it fiction?<\/p>\nVol. 2 p.7<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This is enlightening in two respects. Firstly, how susceptible Woolf is to words of flattery, even craves them, and secondly, the consideration of Strachey’s novel prods her to consider the relationship between autobiography and fiction in her own work, and ponder just how far one can go in this respect. The background of Strachey’s doomed affair with Josiah Wedgwood is picturesquely detailed on 17 January 1915<\/em><\/a> (Vol 1. pp.20-22). Refer to this blog post<\/a> for an interesting additive to the Jos. Wedgwood story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is Monday 26 January<\/em><\/strong>, and the day after her 38th birthday, and Woolf records proudly that her ideas for a new form of fiction have begun to take form. (If I may so formulate.) The literary significance is obvious; at least in her diary she had previously not so explicitly stated her intent of charting a new course in her writing. Though it was clear in the short time since the publication of Night & Day<\/em> that she was had become aware of its shortcomings; that it was not quite the “modern” novel she would have liked to have written. I can do nothing but quote and paraphrase the passage in question, which I see as an excellent insight into Woolf’s creative process and development; coming at the end of what she considers her apprenticeship and at the beginning of a new phase in her writing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…happier today than [I was] yesterday having […] arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel. Suppose one thing should open out of another – as in An Unwritten Novel – only not for 10 pages but 200 or so – doesn’t that give the looseness & lightness I want: doesnt that get closer & yet keep form & speed, & enclose everything, everything? [And] the human heart…? [The approach] will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, humour, everything a bright as fire in the mist. […]Whether I’m sufficiently mistress of things – thats the doubt; but conceive mark on the wall, K[ew].G[ardens] & unwritten novel taking hands and dancing in unity. […] My hope is that I’ve learnt my business sufficiently now to provide all sorts of entertainments. […] I must still grope & experiment but this afternoon I had a gleam of light […]<\/p>\nVolume 2 [pp.13-14]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The footnotes to these pages provide information on the three short stories VW refers to, the first two of which I have mentioned in passing. The Mark on the Wall<\/em> was published in Hogarth’s first publication (Two Stories<\/em>) in 1917 and Kew Gardens<\/em> in 1919. An Unwritten Novel<\/em> was published in the London Mercury<\/em> in July, 1920. All were reprinted by Hogarth in the collection Monday or Tuesday<\/em> (1921).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Eileen Harriett (n\u00e9e Anstruther Wilkinson), Lady Squire; Sir John Collings Squire; Lady Ottoline Morrell<\/a>
by Philip Edward Morrell, vintage snapshot print, 1930 NPG Ax143170<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Saturday 31 January<\/strong><\/em>: And, given (as noted above) it is in the London Mercury<\/em> that An Unwritten Novel<\/em> is first published, Woolf’s entry on this day is particularly interesting as it includes a vivid rendition of the Squires coming to dinner on the previous Tuesday. The Squires being John Collings Squire<\/a>, editor of the aforesaid from 1919-1934 and his wife Eileen. VW makes much of Squire’s attempt to win her over to his publication in favour of Middleton Murry’s Athenaeum<\/em>, and uses the opportunity for a (delightfully!) brutal portrait of Mrs. Squire: ” …spread more widely…settled into kind of whitish sediment…a sort of indecency to me in her passive gloating contentment …like some natural function, performing automatically – a jelly fish – without volition, yet with terrifying potentiality…” [p.15] The Wiki entry paints an equally unfavourable picture of Mr. Squire whose shifting political persuasions (read: to the right, Mosley)seems to have approximately tracked that of the Nicolsons<\/a> (the latter’s flirt though was shortlived).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is enough of the same; of dinners and lunches with Morrells, Eliots, Webbs and the like – often written after the fact and colorfully – but especially to be noted is the March 6<\/strong><\/em> entry; recording as it does a dinner at the MacCarthys and the first Memoir Club<\/a> meeting. Virginia did not read anything of her own on that evening, but appears to have enjoyed reading a lot into the readings of others – contributions from Vanessa and Duncan for instance. Two weeks later on March 18<\/strong><\/em> she was to make her debut, leaving her in retrospect aghast at her candor; admonishing herself for saying out loud such “…egotistic sentimental trash!” and “laying bare her soul!” [p.26], at the same time hinting that it had been wildly enjoyed by those present. The editor’s footnote [p.27] informs that no records were kept of the Memoir Club meetings, to which I can only say: Damn!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On April 10<\/em><\/strong> the Woolfs return from an Easter sojourn at Rodmell – the quiet and the delights of nature appear to have trumped the inconveniences of a house still in a state of disrepair. And stating this to be “the first time I’ve written [this]” [p.28] VW confides her intention to begin Jacob’s Room<\/em> the next week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, in fact, doesn’t come to be, instead, into the month of May<\/strong><\/em>, Virginia grumbles at all the tedious reviewing she has to do; a long, long weekend is spent at Rodmell again; Leonard is collaborating with Kot.<\/a> on a Maxim Gorky translation, and it is from Kot that she learns that Katherine Mansfield is back in London. Her reaction: the typical mixture where KM is concerned of anticipation and consternation. Woolf finds writing difficult during these days; wanting but unable to concentrate her attentions on Jacob’s Room<\/em>, amongst other things she busies herself setting a Forster story – The Story of the Siren<\/a><\/em> – for Hogarth. The May 11 <\/strong><\/em>entry ends with the aforementioned ‘consternation’ – “No mention of K’s wishing to see me.” [p.36] On Tuesday, May 18<\/strong><\/em> she bemoans the lack of success of the Hogarth publication of Hope Mirrlee’s Paris, a poem<\/a><\/em> (which I wrote about and linked to in this blog entry<\/a> and which seems to have had a literary life beyond its time, and certainly not one predicted by Woolf at the time of publication) and Stories from the Old Testament<\/em> by Logan Pearsall Smith<\/a>. By the end of May<\/strong><\/em>, correspondence had been exchanged with the elusive Mansfield, including VW’s (sincere she says [p.42]) praise of her story “The Man without Temperament” (Arts & Letters<\/em>, Spring 1920, then reprinted in Bliss and Other Stories<\/a><\/em>), and I note that in the previous entry on 24th May<\/strong><\/em> a visit by Leonard’s Swedish cousin leads Woolf to ponder “…lack of temperament in the enlightened races” [p42] Now, “temperament” is just a word, but so responsive is Woolf to her environment and those that inhabit it, and so important is KM to her intellectual stimulation, that I think it is an interesting observation. Two days later (on 28th May<\/em><\/strong>) they met and Virginia writes of the vibrant conversation between like-minded (in VW’s opinion anyway and in terms of their literary passions), and notes too that some of Mansfield’s effusiveness (in respect to Night & Day<\/em>) didn’t exactly correspond to what she wrote in her Athenaeum <\/em>review.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entries are sparse during June and July; there are “field days” as she calls them into London, meeting Clive or Vanessa, dining with the Murrys or Roger, and hosting the Memoir Club on 16th Jun<\/strong><\/em>e. I could mention also the 17th June<\/strong><\/em> Apostles<\/a> annual dinner, that VW did not attend, but resulted in the subsequent visit by G.E. Moore<\/a> who had a profound effect upon Leonard et.al. at Cambridge.[pp47-49]. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mentioned on 23rd June<\/strong><\/em> is a tea with the aged (so insinuated, though she is in fact not yet 60!) and ill (which she was, but would live for many years to come!) Janet Case<\/a>, and which gives me an opportunity to mention another extraordinary woman of her time; one who befriended the young Woolf, encouraging her intellectual curiosities and enthusiasm for the classics, especially all things Greek, that, though academically speaking lackadaisically pursued, were to be an abiding influence upon her. (See this blog entry<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rodmell…<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

… so heads VW her entry on Monday 2 August, and then rises (like her well baked cake) the domestic, playful voice from within that often characterizes her inner dialogue when she is away from all the hectic and demands of London (or more precisely Richmond):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bank Holiday. I’m [in] the middle of baking a cake, & fly to this page for refuge, to fill in moments of baking & putting in my bread. Poor wretched book! Thats the way I treat you! – Thats the drudge you are! Still, take comfort from the thought that I brought you all the way from London, to save scribbling on half sheets which get lost…<\/p>\nVol 2 [p.53]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

All that is lost upon Life’s Way…for just one moment, the curious mind wonders at what may have gone astray…then pauses and considers all that is there and whether one has a right to<\/em> say: “more!”<\/em> …<\/p>\n\n\n\n

& Sussex is her home as the summer days pass, visitors and local funerals, reviews that she have trouble getting written, a Jacob’s Room<\/em> that barely stutters. An end August<\/em><\/strong> visit to London [pp61-62] and a goodbye to Katherine – her last? Does she wonder this or do I? On 31st August<\/em><\/strong> they secure the future of the press through a partnership with Ralph Partridge<\/a>. Strachey comes and goes and Eliot comes to stay on 18th September<\/em><\/strong> and annoys and interests her in equal measure. A last day at Rodmell on Friday 1st October<\/strong><\/em>, and VW reflects on how the weeks have flown, how “enchanting”<\/em> they leave their summer abode, how she feels a headache looming and concedes “It was this, not Eliot I suppose, that broke off Jacob.” <\/em>[p70]. She speculates on her work and that of Leonard, on finances, on the possibilities of travel, and pens a charming au revoir<\/em> to a summer in the countryside:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of the charms of Rodmell is the human life: […] the same thing at the same hour: when the old vicar performs erratically on the bells, after churching the women, everybody hears him, & knows what he’s up to. Everyone [is in] their garden; lamps are lit, but people like the last daylight, which was brown purple last night, heavy with all this rain. What I mean is that we are a community.<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p71]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Had Virginia Woolf finally found her home? Of course we know she had.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, back in Richmond …<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

the diary is not returned to until Monday 18th October<\/strong><\/em> – VW does not elaborate on the circumstances that accorded her silence, and does not mention the headache or Jacob<\/em>, one can only say that a breakdown in her health often coincided with a change of place. She does though bemoan that plans for travel must be forsaken because Leonard is to contribute to a Contemporary Review<\/em> supplement after all (and for a lesser fee!), and they quarrel. She goes on to report that “the usual people” are seen en masse – Nessa, Duncan, Clive, Stracheys, etc. – interesting is Koteliansky and his Tchekhov project for Hogarth Press that was to be published the next year as The Note-Books of Anton Tchekhov Together with Reminiscences of Tchekhov<\/em> by Maxim Gorky, trans. by Koteliansky and Leonard. [pp.71-72]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A week later, on Monday 25th October<\/em><\/strong>, Woolf seems overcome by a melancholic mood swing, or is it more than that? She grants that by writing down how she feels, her gloomy state diminishes, but quickly admits that she doesn’t do so enough and offers her reasoning for this (that even she must know has nought to do with “vanity”), which is so telling that I repeat it here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I want to appear a success even to myself. Yet I don’t get to the bottom of it. Its having no children, living away from friends, failing to write well, spending too much on food, growing old – I think too much of why’s and wherefores: too much of myself. I don’t like time to flap around me. Out here no one comes in to waste time pleasantly. If they do, I’m cross. The labour of going to London is too great Nessa’s children grow up, & I can’t have them in to tea or go to the Zoo. […] Yet I’m persuaded that these are trivial things: its life itself, I think sometimes, for us in our generation so tragic – no newspaper placard without its shriek of agony from some one. […] Unhappiness is everywhere; just beyond the door; or stupidity which is worse. […] To write Jacob’s Room again will revive my fibres […] but I don’t like what I write now. And with it all how happy I am – if it weren’t for my feeling that its a strip of pavement over an abyss.<\/mark><\/strong><\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp72-73]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 10 November:<\/em><\/strong> “I have walked some way further along the strip of pavement<\/mark>without falling in.” So sees Woolf then the precariousness of each step she takes. She intimates she makes herself busy – because she must. On Tuesday 23 November<\/em><\/strong>: She sees too many people – because she must. She has a routine – printing, scheduling, days off – because she must. Woolf is formulating her own strategy for survival. And “…so my strip of pavement<\/mark> (I bag that phrase for Jacob) widens.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hasty scan does not confirm that she uses that phrase in Jacob’s Room<\/em>, but the voice accompanying Jacob and the pretty, brainless Florinda on an evening’s walk (Chapter 6) ponders:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Stop a man; ask him the way; he’ll tell it you; but one’s afraid to ask him the way. What does one fear?\u2014the human eye. At once the pavement<\/mark>narrows, the chasm deepens. There! They’ve melted into it\u2014both man and woman.<\/p>\nVirginia Woolf. Jacob’s Room (Kindle Locations 965-967).<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

It seems to me an interpretation is very often a matter of perspective – here, in more ways than one. The “human eye” reference may alert one to what is being suggested. Perhaps Virginia spent some time looking over Vanessa’s shoulder as she practiced drawing as a girl, though she herself may well have come across the idea of a “vanishing point” in a most basic drawing class. Imagine, then, a man and woman disappearing into the far, their path sinking into nothingness, their persons melting into each other. Not exactly the same as the perilous path VW had to maneuver through life, but certainly a powerful metaphor for: out of sight is not necessarily out of mind, and just how far there is to fall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 5 December<\/strong><\/em>: “The Memoir Club was fearfully brilliant – I mean I was…” <\/em>so begins the entry! The footnote on the same page [p77] states the referenced meeting had been held on 17 November<\/em><\/strong> at the MacCarthy’s, and that Woolf’s contribution had probably been “22 Hyde Park Gate”. From Hermione Lee’s biography (Chapter 8: Abuses<\/em>) we are told (Lee seems to have mistakenly dated these papers at 1921-22 because a page later she in fact refers to this 1920 diary entry) that it was on this evening that VW famously suggests the incestuous overtures of George Duckworth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…These are provided in the two papers she writes for the Memoir Club in 1921 and 1922. In the first of these, \u201822 Hyde Park Gate\u2019, she describes George coming into her room in the dark at night, after their outings: \u201cDon\u2019t be frightened\u201d, George whispered. \u201cAnd don\u2019t turn on the light, oh beloved. Beloved \u2013 \u201d and he flung himself on my bed, and took me in his arms.\u2019 The old ladies of Kensington and Belgravia, she adds in her peroration, never knew that George Duckworth was \u2018lover\u2019 as well as \u2018father and mother, brother and sister to those poor Stephen girls\u2019…<\/p>\nLee, Hermione. Virginia Woolf . Random House. Kindle Edition.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Lee notes, I too am struck by the difference in her attitude and approach at this Memoir Club evening as compared to that at the first meetings at the beginning of the year.<\/a> The obvious discomfort she felt at exposing too much of herself has seemingly been replaced by an almost no holds barred attitude – perhaps tickled by the applause. One can wonder whether she had by accident or design come up with a strategy of combining the factual with fictive elements, such that the essence is true; and that then is what “memoir” really is – not bland facts but the essence of a moment. Certainly, conspicuous is her thrill at the reception her work was granted by the Club, and minds one to be alert to what happens next. Chapter 8 of Lee’s book is a must read in this very murky, never totally resolved, matter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As 1920 draws to an end<\/em><\/strong>, there are visits with the old and true, Lytton and the Cases, but also new acquaintances like Molly Hamilton<\/a>, everyone seems to have a book out (except me, she may well be thinking!) of which she says she has not read any (though I thought she did read Mansfield’s “Bliss”) – worth mentioning (especially as I can link to them) is Roger Fry’s Vision and Design<\/a><\/em> and Eliot’s essay collection The Sacred Wood<\/a><\/em>. [pp78-82]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday 22 December 1920<\/em><\/strong> the Woolfs went to Rodmell for Christmas, returning on Sunday 2 January 1921<\/strong><\/em>. On that date VW writes one final entry to conclude Diary IX, and in which she enjoys herself immensely at the the expense of a Mrs Hawkesford, the wife of the Rector of Rodmell. A parody of village clerical life to be filed away for future reference perhaps.[pp85-86]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DIARY X: 25 january 1921-19 december 1921<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

HOGARTH HOUSE, RICHMOND.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 25 January 1921<\/em><\/strong>: Twenty-five days in before she begins her new year’s diary, and fittingly it is her birthday – “…not unfortunately my 25th, but my 39th…” [pp. 86]- how more and more irksome the passing years are becoming to her. Flowery and not so flowery words on Clive’s new and old loves, on Murry and Sydney, and Mansfield’s triumphs. [p87] Strachey asks Woolf’s permission to dedicate Queen Victoria<\/a><\/em> to her which she grants in her inimitable style:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. II, Hogarth Press, 1976.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And to “Virginia Woolf” it was made! (See the above linked to original edition at the Internet Archive.)<\/p>\n\n\n

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A painting by Dora Carrington<\/a> of the “Mill House”, Tidmarsh<\/a>, where much of Lytton Strachey’s “Queen Victoria<\/em>” was written.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

This all neatly spills over into her 31 January<\/strong><\/em> entry that looks back on their visit to the farm at which Leonard’s youngest brother Philip was training as a manager, and to the nearby Tidmarsh, and the complicated Strachey, Carrington, Partridge arrangement, and Lytton’s depression and her middle-age. On their return to London the Woolf’s have a first Russian lesson with Kot, VW can finally see an end to Jacob’s Room<\/em> in sight, and books to review are turning up at a do-able rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Memoir Club meeting in early February<\/strong><\/em> offers a pair of highlights. Firstly, Clive’s reminiscences of his affair with a Mrs. Raven-Hill; & VW’s wonderment that this should have coincided with his overtures towards her (& only two years after his marriage to Vanessa), and noting further that Raven-Hill is now “imbecile”, whether the implication is that Clive drove her in that direction I couldn’t say! Maynard Keynes offered up a piece covering some of the difficult negotiations surrounding the Paris Peace Conference entitled “Dr Melchior<\/a>” – beyond the politics of it, VW was impressed by Keynes’ character portraits of not just the subject but many of the players. (Note: this memoir along with a portrait of G.E. Moore was published in Two Memoirs<\/em>, pub. Hart-Davis, 1949, and I have come upon its relevance into much more recent times with a Niall Ferguson kerfuffle<\/a> (!) arising from his insinuation that Keynes’ diplomatic work at the Conference was effected by his attraction to Carl Melchior.) [pp.87-90] <\/p>\n\n\n

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Hogarth Press, 1st Edition cover<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Through February and March<\/strong> <\/em>VW juggles her social agenda (for instance, a farewell dinner for Murry before he leaves to join Katherine in France) with that of work, and now also her sometimes enthusiastic and sometimes not pursuit of Russian (with Leonard & Kot). She is alternately rejuvenated by visits to Rodmell and dissatisfied with the “look” of Monday or Tuesday<\/a><\/em>, she opines out loud that Forster is lost forever to India [pp. 95-96], and she ponders the sometimes evolving and sometimes stagnating friendship with Eliot [pp.103-104]. At the end of March the Woolfs spend a week near Zennor in Cornwall and a loose entry with a description of the landscape is attached to her main diary [p.105].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 8 April<\/strong><\/em> finds VW unable to concentrate and get back to Jacob’s Room because of a “scrappy” and clumsily placed review of Monday or Tuesday<\/em> in the TLS<\/em> as opposed to the fulsome one, both in scope and word, given to Lytton’s Queen Victoria<\/em>; leaving her career, to her mind, in ruins! In the days after her emotions follow a roller coaster course, that she herself identifies, determined on the reviews she receives and the rather absurd competition she construes with Strachey – I mean what they do is just not the same thing! (And she did get the dedication that she sought!) Friday 15 April<\/strong><\/em> finds her “lying recumbent all day reading Carlyle” [p.110] presumably with the sole intention of affirming (for her self) that he wrote better than Lytton Strachey. On Friday 29 April<\/strong><\/em> Woolf relates a conversation with Lytton on his work and hers, their respective places in literary life, on history and biography – how precise or imagined this is I am not sure; perhaps things said that she would like to have said and to have heard from him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 23 May<\/em>:<\/strong> Begins with the news that Carrington<\/a> has become a Partridge<\/a>; which amuses, or rather bemuses, and then returns to her own person. Woolf describes her restlessness, dissatisfaction; wonders whether others have these unsettling feelings that define her existence. She goes into London, she reviews. She thinks too much. She thinks about reading:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I’ve a notion of reading masterpieces only; for I’ve read literature in bulk so long. Now I think’s the time to read like an expert. Then I’m wondering how to shape my Reading book<\/mark> […] how I enjoy the exercise of wits upon literature- reading it as<\/strong> literature […I] can do this better for having read […] such a lot of lives, criticisms, every sort of thing<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.120]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And the footnote on this page says that the Reading book<\/mark> spoken of is in fact the first reference Woolf makes in her diary to what is to become the Common Reader<\/em>!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 7 June<\/strong>:<\/em> A revealing dialogue with Eliot, suggesting he shares with the Woolves many of their misgivings towards Murry (who had just slammed Leonard & Kot’s Tchekhov translation). Virginia is delighted that Eliot found some nice words to say about Monday and Tuesday<\/em> – thumbs up to “String Quartet” and “Haunted House”, not so to “The Unwritten Novel”- and that she could discuss writing openly with him. He also tells her that he considers Ulysses<\/em> “prodigious”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An editorial insertion reveals that VW had a sleepless night after going to a concert on 10 June<\/strong>, and on the following day remained in bed with a headache; this was to be the beginning of two months of what Leonard referred to as “a severe bout” of ill-health. They went to Rodmell from 17 June to 1 July<\/strong> and returned there again on 18 July<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monks House, Rodmell…<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Monday 8 August<\/strong><\/em>, and in Virginia Woolf’s own words:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What a gap! How it would have astounded me to be told [on June 7th] that within a week I should be in bed, & not entirely out of it till the 6th of August – two whole months rubbed out – These, this morning, the first words I have written [since]…days spent in wearisome headache, jumping pulse, aching back, frets, fidgets, lying awake, sleeping draughts, sedatives, digitalis, going for a little walk, & plunging back into bed again – all the horrors of the dark cupboard of illness once more displayed for my diversion. Let me make a vow that this shall never, never, happen again…<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.125]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Of course we know that it does, and I quote this passage in full because I think it is really important to at least try to imagine how very, very sick Virginia Woolf must have been at times, and seen through that light how heroic her life and accomplishments then are. I must pull myself up sometimes when I find myself wondering about just how much more a healthy Virginia could have achieved, because I do suspect that her illness was a part of her (in contemporary parlance it may be said that she came to “own” her illness), and her wonderful literary voice a sum of all those parts, and while she didn’t live to old age she did produce an extraordinary amount of work over four decades. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The fidgets of the 18 August are done with by 10 September, though bemoaned is the state of her handwriting. Important, she says, is “…my recovery of the pen; & thus the hidden stream was given exit, & I felt reborn.” [p.134] It is my own emphasis here; for I note Woolf’s recognition almost in passing of a stream of consciousness that was to soon become a hallmark of her prose. On 12 September not very favorable judgement is passed upon Henry James’ The Wings of the Dove<\/em> (1902) – she doesn’t exactly call it pretentious, but that’s what she seems to imply – and one is somewhat surprised that she is reading this, apparently for the first time, almost twenty years after its publication. Not so surprising however is her verdict on the work of her father’s contemporary and friend when one considers her 22 October, 1915, letter to Lytton Strachey:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…Please tell me what merit you find in Henry James…and I read, and can’t find anything but faintly tinged rose water, urbane and sleek, but vulgar, and pale as Walter Lamb. Is there really any sense in it? I admit I can’t be bothered to snuff out his meaning when it’s very obscure…<\/p>\nThe Letters of Virginia Woolf, Vol. 2, p.67<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday 28 September <\/em><\/strong>VW gives short shift to a visit from Eliot – of whom she is no longer afraid! The Woolves return to Richmond on Thursday 6 October<\/strong><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hogarth House, Richmond…<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 15 November<\/em><\/strong>: Virginia Woolf explains away her laxity towards her diary with assurances of her hard work and routine. And then she writes with pride:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The day before this I wrote the last words of Jacob – on Friday Nov. 4th to be precise, having begun it on April 16 1920: allowing for 6 months interval due to Monday or Tuesday & illness, this makes about a year.<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp.141-142]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She follows this with two comments relating to matters on her mind. Firstly, her struggles with a review of Henry James’ ghost stories for the TLS<\/em> (I wonder whether her September reading of him was done so as a preparation for this), and secondly, a return to her thoughts about her “Readings” project (see May 23, 1921). In this case VW expresses her wish to tackle the Paston letters<\/a>, and I’ll say here that from this eventuated the essay “The Pastons and Chaucer”<\/a> which does in fact open the The Common Reader<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 25 November<\/em><\/strong> is Leonard’s 41st birthday; if Virginia has noted his birthday before, I have missed it. So I do so herewith. On Friday 2 December<\/em><\/strong> VW dined with Bertie Russell<\/a> from whom “she got as much out of […] as [she] could carry”<\/em> [p.147] including this exchange:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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-If you had my brain you would find the world a very thin, colourless place. – But my colours are so foolish I replied. – You want them for your writing, he said.[…] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

– God does mathematics. That’s my feeling. It is the most exalted form of art. – Art? I said.- Well theres style in mathematics as there is in writing, he said.[…]<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.147]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

An annoying spat develops with Bruce Richmond over her TLS<\/em> Henry James article and the use – her use – of the word “lewd”<\/em>, but as another year wraps up, Virginia strikes a positive chord with new writing and editing commissions for Leonard and good Hogarth sales. Last words: “All very good.”<\/em> [p.152]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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DIARY XI: 3 january 1922-2 January 1923<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

HOGARTH HOUSE, RICHMOND<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 3 January 1922:<\/em><\/strong> An early entry in the New Year upon the Woolves return from Rodmell. The wild winter weather is described with glee, and of Leonard’s heroic gardening under all and every condition. Virginia fumes still at Richmond’s editing, and vows not to write any more reviews. Just how long that particular resolution will last one may well ask! This night she will begin to read the Pastons (see 15 November 1921 above<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Weeks of January and into February<\/em><\/strong> fall away through illness – influenza or something more, is not clear. Barely does Woolf give time to bemoan the passing of months since she has last seen Desmond, before extending the thought to a contemplation of how many (months) there may be in a life – and all this as she approaches her 40th birthday [p.157]. A milestone of sorts that I can’t see touched upon again – presumably not celebrated but instead passed in the bed to which she is confined (ordered?) And again on February 14<\/em><\/strong> she reports: “[the doctor] pronounced that my eccentric pulse had passed the limits of reason & was in fact insane [s0] laid in bed again…<\/em>“[pp.160-161]. Whereby it is reasonable to suspect the dramatic pronouncement being more that of Virginia herself rather than of said doctor!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, on the same day, she goes on to list what she is presently reading – and those of us with a tendency to more (a lot more!) than one lekture<\/em> at any given time will be solaced – and I shall just mention “La Princesse de Cl\u00e8ves”<\/a>. Firstly, whilst I have recently read the last of Hilary Mantel’s Th. Cromwell trilogy and so the name Clev\u00e8s still reverberates, as in Anne who saved her neck – literally as well as figuratively – and who through no fault of her own contributed to Cromwell’s downfall (and also because I did for some time live around about the Berg bit in Julich-Cleves-Berg), and secondly because on 18 February 1922<\/strong><\/em> Woolf expands, and quite vividly, upon her interest in Madame de La Fayette’s<\/a> book:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…I must get on with La Princesse de Cl\u00e8ves. This masterpiece has long been on my conscience. Me to talk of fiction & not to have read this classic! But reading classics is generally hard going. Especially classics like this one, which are classics because of their perfect taste, shapeliness, composure, artistry. Not a hair of its head is dishevelled. I think the beauty very great, but hard to appreciate. All the characters are noble. The movement is stately. The machinery a little cumbrous. Stories have to be told. Letters dropped. It is the action of the human heart & not of muscle or fate that we watch. But stories of noble human hearts have their moments unapproachable in other circumstances. There is a quiet understated profundity in the relations between Madame de Cl\u00e8ves & her mother for example. If I were reviewing it, I think I should take for my text beauty in character. Thank God though I am not reviewing it. <\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.169]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Woolf then goes on to voice her displeasure at the frivolous nature of reviewing, as opposed to, what she calls, criticism – an interesting topic in and of itself. Not up for review then, so I do wonder why this book should have become an important read for her. Surely suggested by something or someone. I would be interested in finding out whether it comes up again in her diary or in correspondence. And was she reading it in French<\/a> or translation<\/a>? (There are enough versions around on the internet, and these links are to wikisource.org – audio in French is available here<\/a>. An unusual reading project – for a rainy day, another lockdown- to be sure!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During March<\/strong><\/em>, “doctor’s orders” alternate with visits – Eliot, Forster (back from India), Clive and more, wondering over Lottie’s on-again, off-again operation, theater. An editorial note explains that there was a Memoir Club meeting on 4th April<\/strong><\/em>, and the Woolfs went to Monks House on 7th April<\/strong><\/em>, not returning to Richmond until 27th April<\/em><\/strong>, when they visit Lottie in hospital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolf makes one entry on the day of her return; she is cold and bemoans the weather – “worse spring on record…days of bitter wind, blinding rain, gusts, snowstorms, storms every day…” and the difficulties at Rodmell without Nelly and Lottie (she doesn’t mention having just visited Lottie!) They seem to have met Lydia Lopokova at Gordon Square (with or without Keynes) en route back to Richmond, and an amusing description of a visit a few days earlier with Lord and Lady Robert Cecil. Again, an editorial interruption: VW is again ill and is bed-ridden during early May<\/strong><\/em>, and on 26th May<\/em><\/strong> has three teeth extracted (no, I for one am not counting!), but goes to Tidmarsh (Lytton) the next day anyway. On 31st May<\/em><\/strong> the Woolf’s go to Rodmell for Whitsun, and return to Richmond on 10th June 1922.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Disgraceful!…” <\/em>she says. Three times she says it on Sunday 11 June<\/em><\/strong>; summing up how she feels at not writing for so long, and that this now written is just an excuse not to return to Jacob, and an attempt to temper the expected depression at returning from the idylls of Rodmell – its (now!) perfect weather and the recuperative wonders of the countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

23 June 1922<\/strong><\/em>: Woolf reports on Eliot coming to dine the previous Sunday and reading his poem: “…great beauty & force of phrase; symmetry: & tensity. What connects it together, I’m not sure. […] One was left, however, with some strong emotion. The Waste Land<\/a>, it is called.”<\/em> [p.178] VW could not have known that they were that evening audience to the reading of a poem still considered, a hundred years on, one of the most important to be written in the 20th century. That same week there was also a Memoir Club meeting at which Mary Hutchinson confides that she is of the opinion Tom’s poem (that she too has heard) is autobiographical, and further we hear that “Mary purred in my ear”<\/em> and “Mary kissed me on the stairs”<\/em> – to which Woolf seemingly had little objection! Reading between the lines, one could note a change in their relationship – the early mistrust has been gradually replaced by a growing familiarity, even intimacy.[p.178] Also, on 15 June<\/em><\/strong>, an Apostles’ dinner had led to Morgan (Forster) staying the night and stimulating book talk had ensued. Typically, Virginia is growing more and more anxious as the publication of Jacob’s Room<\/em> approaches and diverts herself with the ongoing Reading project, the stories “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” (the very title says enough!) and “Miss Ormerod”, which would be published in The<\/em> (New York) Dial<\/em> in July 1923<\/a> and December 1924<\/a> respectively (both facsimiles available at the Hathi Trust), and the essay “On Re-reading Novels”<\/a> in the TLS on 20 July 1922 (and which I wrote about at the end of this blog entry<\/a>).[footnote p.179] <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An all round remarkably inspired week, I would say! For Virginia Woolf, I dare say, just another week in the life of.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many interesting observations in the next weeks of July<\/em><\/strong> – gossip and irritations surrounding the inhabitants of Gordon Square [p. 183] and Tidmarsh [p.185] – and the new month of August<\/em><\/strong> brings the resolution “to work methodically” [p.187] and an awareness of the Woolf’s growing celebrity. Amongst other things this characterised by having heard (from Clive B. a footnote suggests) that a certain <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Mrs Nicholson thinks me the best woman writer – & I have almost got used to Mrs Nicholsons’s having heard of me. But it gives me some pleasure.<\/p>\nVol. 2 3 August 1922 [p.187]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Nicholson is of course the Hon Victoria (Vita) Nicholson, nee Sackville-West.<\/a> Should we read Virginia Woolf’s life as a book, a legendary chapter is about to begin.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be noted here by me, that this again is an example of one of these extraordinary moments that one reads from a place of privilege; knowing to where it is that a passing thought, a comment, an acquaintanceship – in the moment a triviality – will lead, and in the knowledge that Virginia Woolf, as she wrote, does not.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Joyce’s Ulysses<\/em> remains a struggle for Woolf, and on Wednesday 16 August<\/em><\/strong>, says that she<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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should be reading Ulysses, & fabricating my case for & against. I have read 200 pages so far – not a third; & have been amused, stimulated, charmed […] by the first [chapters] then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples […] An illiterate, underbred book it seems to me: the book of a self taught working man, & we all know how distressing they are, how egotistic, insistent, raw, striking, & ultimately nauseating […]<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp. 188-189]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These scribbled words have found their way into some infamy for providing a definition of an “illiterate, underbred book”. One is tempted to beckon the writer and reader, Mrs. Woolf, from her resting place to explain! Woolf recalls Eliot’s opinion<\/a>, and tut tuts at his temerity to compare Ulysses<\/em> with the work of Tolstoy, and whilst insisting on maintaining an open mind and her integrity as a critic, it is clear she is irritated and perplexed by this strange, difficult book. But she returns quickly to her own work – thoughts on Mrs. Dalloway and “Reading” – Pastons, Chaucer, “Greek”. (This will all come together in The Common Reader<\/em> as the first essay “The Pastons and Chaucer” (see 15 November 1921<\/a>) and the second, entitled “On Not Knowing Greek”<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 22 August<\/em><\/strong> Virginia is distracted by a visit from Sydney Waterlow and “writing off the fidgets” – her attacks of the fidgets I have learnt to be an alarm signal as to her state of mind, and sure enough the next day she has a headache. But before this I like her description of “rocking” herself into writing:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“First gentle exercise in the air. Second the reading of good literature […] One must get out of life […] become externalised; very, very concentrated […] Sydney comes and I’m Virginia; when I write I’m merely a sensibility.<\/p>\nVol.2 [pp. 191-193]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

6 September 1922<\/em><\/strong>: Lots of “chatter” with Nessa and Duncan and Maynard, etc. Jacob’s Room<\/em> proofs flutter in and demand attention. And, “I finished Ulysses …” <\/em>she said, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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& think it a mis-fire. Genius it has I think; but of the inferior water. The book is diffuse. It is brackish. It is pretentious. It is underbred, not only in the obvious sense, but in the literary sense. A first rate writer […] respects writing too much to be tricky […] absurd to compare him with Tolstoy<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp 199-200]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

A harsh opinion one would have to say, even “genius” is a relative state, and one notes again this “underbred” expression – perhaps common amongst her class, but still grating to the contemporary ear – and it seems clear Eliot’s effusive praise still grates (and will remain a heated topic of discussion in the future). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The next day Leonard brings to Virginia’s attention “a very intelligent review” from across the Atlantic which impresses, and at least encourages her to look again. (Here is a – rather difficult to read, but worth the effort – facsimile of the review by Gilbert Seldes in The Nation<\/em> on 30 August 1922<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 8 October<\/em><\/strong> is tainted by news of Kitty Maxse’s death on 4 October after falling (“mysteriously”) from the banisters at her home. Whilst they had not spoken since 1908, one knows that Kitty (n\u00e9e Lushington) and her sisters were amongst the Stephen sisters earliest friends, and regulars at Hyde Park Gate, for not only had the Lushington girls’ father, Vernon<\/a>, been a contemporary and friend of Sir Leslie Stephen but also acquainted with their mother through her Duckworth marriage, and so after his wife’s death it fell upon Julia Stephen to fill a maternal role. A role that Kitty tried to return in kind after the death Stella. Some would have it, and there is indeed some evidence to the effect, that Kitty Maxse was the inspiration for Clarissa Dalloway<\/a> . (This TLS<\/em> essay supports this theory and offers some other interesting Lushington\/Stephen insights; my blog entry is here<\/a>.) I do know from Woolf’s letters that the friendship with both Virginia and Vanessa became strained during the early years of Bloomsbury when the young Stephen siblings broke with familial and societal norms; a lifestyle not approved of by the very socially aware and conservative Kitty, and as early as 1907 while thinking about writing a novel she called Melymbrosia<\/em> (that would be published in 1915 as The Voyage Out<\/em>, and in which the Clarissa Dalloway character would make her first appearance), she is begging Vanessa for another name for the character she has tentatively called Cynthia, presumably to become Rachel, and wonders whether Lettice (to be Clarissa) is just a little too like Kitty. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Virginia Woolf’s Letters Volume 1 (1888-1912) No. 432: Vanessa Bell, 10 August 1908.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Through October<\/em><\/strong> reviews for Jacob’s Room are mixed, but the reactions of her friends are enthusiastic – though she finds Lytton’s perhaps too much so. [pp.207-210]. At Logan Pearsell Smith’s in early November VW meets Percy Lubbock for the first time in twelve years, and remembers the last time to have be on the occasion of Lytton’s quickly withdrawn marriage proposal! What she doesn’t mention is whether Lubbock responds to, or counters, her “Re-reading” essay in the TLS<\/em> (see 15 June 1922).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Disputes and irritations continue with Partridge – both personally (the Tidmarsh menagerie) and professionally (wanting to sell out to first Constables and then Heinemanns) – culminating with the final parting of the ways. On Friday 15 December <\/em><\/strong>Woolf doesn’t hold back on what she thinks of Ralph’s behaviour and character. Also, the previous evening she dined at Clive’s and met “the lovely gifted aristocratic Sackville West”<\/em> – underwhelmed one could say;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Not much to my severer taste – florid, moustached, parakeet coloured, with all the supple ease of the aristocracy, but not the wit of the artist. She writeds 15 pages a day – has finished another book – publishes with Heinemanns – knows everyone – But could I ever know her? I am to dine there on Tuesday.<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp. 216-217]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Again, we know where this meeting is to lead, so it is fair to say the year ended with a bang!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the editors’ note, Virginia did indeed dine with Vita Sackville-West on Tuesday 19 December 1922.<\/strong><\/em> The Woolfs spent Christmas at Monk’s House but there is no record of the stay, and they returned to London on 1 January 1923<\/strong><\/em> whereupon she visited Vanessa and family at Gordon Square. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

VW wrote an entry on Tuesday 2 January 1923<\/em><\/strong> (mis-dated by her as 3 January) in the 1922 diary, DIARY XI. And a rather sad entry it is – “I am in one of my moods today…”<\/em> -and she asks herself why and admits it is this desire for a life like Nessa’s – children, family life. Virginia remembers saying to herself years before: “…never pretend that the things you haven’t got are not worth having…it often comes back to me. Never pretend that children, for instance, can be replaced by other things…one must […] like things for themselves.” <\/em> She struggles to find the right words for this loss and discontent that she feels, she worries that she is becoming more and more self-indulgent. She doesn’t want to cause Leonard displeasure, but his controlling nature (even should it be in the interest of her well-being) irritates. “Middle Age then.”<\/em> she says; she fears that are slinking into elderly years where time is of utmost importance. Time has become regimented, their work and pleasures dominated by the clock. She returns to Vanessa – for her, everything is done so freely – she can just take off and travel without the commitments that she and Leonard have; work, houses, servants. The entry ends thus:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I will leave it here, unfinished, a note of interrogation – signifying some mood that recurs, but is not often expressed. One’s life is made up, superficially, of such moods; but they cross a solid substance, which too I am not going to hack my way into now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this is the end of 1922<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.222]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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DIARY XIi: 7 january 1923-19 December 1923<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 7 January 1923:<\/em><\/strong> Virginia Woolf opens with a colorful portrayal of a Gordon Square soiree from the previous evening – the modernity, the intimacy; perhaps even the frivolity. But behind the brilliant facade she recalls little said of any consequence. Nevertheless she enjoys Walter Sickert – his plain talk, his attachment to the real; not anchored in the mysticism she observes in those around Vanessa, and of which she is so skeptical. She barely hides her annoyance at more (of the same) ingratiating chat from Lytton on Ralph and the looming competition for Hogarth (from the so-called Tidmarsh Press). And over breakfast in a “house full of Stracheys, Grants, Stephens & Bells & Partridges – a wet grey morning, in the heart of London, where I am so seldom at that hour.”<\/em>[p.225] one can hear a note of nostalgia for the city life and the good old days of “Bloomsbury”. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Laetitia Pilkington (n\u00e9e Van Lewen)<\/a> \u00a9 National Portrait Gallery, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Woolf plans her schedule for the days to come – Mrs. Dalloway takes priority, there is an essay “upon memoirs”<\/em><\/a> for The Mercury<\/em>, the Greek chapter<\/a> for her reading project, and her own reading and research to this end: Laetitia Pilkington,<\/a> Greeks and especially the Agamemnon, more Proust “& […] I must write to the new apparition Vita, who gives mea a book every other day.”<\/em>[p.225] Only in retrospect can we readers of her diary, recognise in Woolf’s casually remarked upon plans some of the preoccupations that were going to define her life during the next years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 16 January<\/em><\/strong>: Katherine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Katherine has been dead a week, & how far am I obeying her “do not quite forget Katherine” which I read in one of her old letters? Am I already forgetting her?…<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp. 225-227]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You never forgot Katherine! I want to rejoin. But as she wrote this, days after hearing the news delivered sensationally over breakfast on the previous Friday by Nelly: “Mrs Murry’s dead! It says so in the paper!”<\/em> [p226], she struggles with her way of grief as she did with that of her mother, and with Stella (her father, her brother – that came each from a different place) – confusion, guilt, relief. Is there a special grief for women near? (I ask.) Demanding of herself, the clarity and demonstrativeness that she observes in others. What must she feel and for how long? Many “what ifs” and regrets about a relationship that could have been so much more; hampered by petty jealousies (“…the only writing I have ever been jealous of” [p.227]) and the interference of others (Murry?) Katherine’s ghost is at her shoulder, I swear, as she writes her thoughts, and the sadness is almost tangible. It ends with VW in bed with a high temperature, and there she will stay for some days.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday 7 February<\/strong><\/em>, Virginia describes the last weekend spent in Cambridge in illustrious “Apostle” company – Moore, Keynes – and sounds somewhat bedazzled by the gathered brilliance, I would say (or just out of her depth when it comes to the maths!). Almost as impressive is the decor – courtesy of Vanessa and Duncan – of Maynard’s sitting room, and the presence of an unknown, and very young, Trinity student, Frank Ramsey<\/a> – who was to be the first translator into English of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus<\/a><\/em>, and who, at the behest of Keynes and Russell, played an important role in encouraging that particular genius back to Cambridge from the Austrian provinces. (And, it should be said, died tragically young – here an excellent essay<\/a> about Ramsey at The New Yorker<\/em>.) Back in Richmond the next weekend<\/strong><\/em> the Woolfs ponder their financial and professional outlook, plan their days, and Virginia sets a book (of poetry I think – Mutations of the Phoenix<\/em>) by Herbert Read<\/a> and Forster’s Pharos and Pharillon<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Through March<\/em><\/strong>, irritations abound. The saga of control at the newly organised weekly, The Nation<\/a><\/em>, now in the hands of Keynes and friends (and to which Leonard was finally appointed literary editor [p.240]); Eliot is “…peevish, plaintive, egotistical…” <\/em>[p.238]; Brett seemingly must tell her of “contacts” with (the spirit of) Katherine ( …did K.M. do something to deserve this cheap posthumous life?<\/em> [p.238] she asks); there is Ralph’s final departure from Hogarth Press on 14 March. But mostly she is clearly frustrated at having to make money, to do journalism, when all she really wants, is to return to fiction and to be able concentrate on her own projects (“Reading”, for instance).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From editors’ note and footnote [p.240], we know that on 27 March 1923<\/strong><\/em> Virginia and Leonard travelled to the Continent for the first time since 1912 – to Granada via Paris and Madrid, and from there to Yegen in the Alpujarras, where they stayed from 5-13 April<\/strong><\/em> with Gerald Brenan<\/a>, another of the complications in the life of Carrington, and whom they had met at Tidmarsh in May 1922 . Travelling through Spain, they returned to Paris on 22 April<\/em><\/strong>. Leonard returned to London on 24 April<\/strong><\/em> and Virginia on 27 April<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Alpujarras region of Spain – my own photo<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On Friday 11 May<\/strong><\/em>, Woolf apologizes for making no apologies about writing again of her recent Continental adventures! It was enough she should labour under writing “To Spain” for the first number of The Nation<\/em>! (Here is the reprint<\/a> in the posthumous collection The Moment and Other Essays<\/em>, 1947.) She is still reckoning the money earned from the unwelcome labour of journalism, now more relevant and with more possibilities given Leonard’s new editorship, against the time required for labours of love like the forever worked on, then to be neglected, “Reading<\/a>” <\/em>– for the umpteenth time a plan that includes the Greeks, the Pastons, Chaucer and Shakespeare. An exchange with Morgan about what lies ahead, leads her on 12 May<\/em><\/strong> to mention ” …my next book, which I think of calling ‘The Hours’ …”<\/em> [p.242]. The working title of what was to become Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> (1925).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The weekend of the 4th June <\/em><\/strong>is spent at Garsington, the pain of the gathered toffs: Ottoline, Cecils, Asquiths – irritable, if not despicable, all – made bearable only by the company of Lytton. Such is her frame of mind. The day ends with her to work on an essay on Sir Thomas Browne<\/a> for the TLS<\/em> (an excerpt here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 19 June 1923<\/strong>: Prompted by Middleton Murry’s introduction to Katherine Mansfield’s posthumously published collection The Doves’ Nest and Other Stories<\/em><\/a> which contain several extracts from Katherine’s journal [p.248 footnote], VW reflects on her own fiction writing, especially in respect to present preoccupation with “The Hours”, and the depth of feeling she feels deeply that she brings to the page; that some are too keen to suggest to be not much more than much-too-clever word play in the interest of being original at all costs. Earlier that year, Arnold Bennett had published a much talked about article (originally in Cassell’s Weekly 28 March 1923), with Jacob’s Room and Woolf being exemplary of his opinion of the new generation of writers, and about which she seethes still!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 …[young novelists]are so busy with states of society as to half forget that any society consists of individuals, and they attach too much weight to cleverness, which is perhaps the lowest of all artistic qualities. I have seldom read a cleverer book than Virginia Woolf’s ‘Jacob’s Room,’ a novel which has made a great stir in a small world. It is packed and bursting with originality, and it is exquisitely written. But the characters do not vitally survive in the mind because the author has been obsessed by details of originality and cleverness…<\/p>\nIs the Novel Decaying? The Register, Adelaide, 25th August 1923<\/a><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

8th, 17th, 22nd July<\/em><\/strong> are wonderful personally-tailored writing exercises in memory, observation and conversation – and how they perhaps don’t add to the truth, or maybe even the essence of! – but irrespective, they do amount to vivid group portraits! And to the professional writer, Woolf, always working at perfecting her craft, honing her skills.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Friday 28th July<\/em><\/strong> and VW is, with the summer sojourn to Rodmell imminent, full of industry: “…working variously & with intention” [p.259] on her essays, on “The Hours”, printing. “Serious” reading – with pen and notebook in hand. She ponders fame: “Is not Clive writing […] on me<\/a>? Has not Bunny praised me<\/a> in the Dial?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Rodmell]<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Monday 6 August<\/em><\/strong>: Woolf’s working morning ruined by the making of “bread & buns” – to be hoped her doughy delights did rise to the occasion! She writes of the previous day at Charleston with “the painters”, and an atmosphere other than that of domestic bliss. [p.260]. On 17th August<\/strong><\/em> she ponders how to present her essays – an introductory essay perhaps? an imaginary conversation? and, the order? Following from this, on Wednesday 5th Septembe<\/strong><\/em>r, she returned to her “Reading” essay project, and says it is now to be called The Common Reader –<\/em> the first mention I have noted of that, now legendary, title.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday 11 September<\/em><\/strong>, the diary records that the Woolfs had just returned to Rodmell from a stay at “The Knoll” in Studland, Dorset, which Maynard had rented for the summer. Virginia gives some vivid portraits of their host, of guests (Raymond Mortimer and Dadie Rylands), and most especially Lydia Lopokova, who she has already decided to be the “type” she envisages for Rezia (that is, Lucrezia Warren Smith, wife of Septimus) in Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>. And, in a visit to Bindon Abbey she pays attention to Lopokova’s channeling of Thomas Hardy’s Tess<\/a>, and wonders at her thoughts as she lay there emoting in all her finery upon a grassy mound. Interesting also, is Maynard’s talk upon paleolithic man and the age of man and the beginnings of history, and that on this she had talked with Mortimer while walking around Asheham Hill and Hollow the previous week – the complexities of evolution obviously still a topic of debate amongst the intelligentsia [p.264]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 18 September<\/em><\/strong>: VW records that it is “Leonard’s day in London…”<\/em> [p.268] and writes of visitors that have come and gone at Rodmell, a conversation with Nessa and Duncan about painting also reveals something about the differences (as Virginia sees it) between the sisters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…he [Duncan] wants I think, to express something very abstract simply…”Nessa is a happy artist” he said …I am a stupid artist she said…She does not think things out. Sometimes I am quite ready not to paint for a long time…I suppose he is is intellectual, as I [VW] suppose I am: & she more instinctive.<\/p>\nVol. 2 [p.269]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And Lytton, with his newly found fame, irritates. He tells of a conference of writers and professors at the Cistercian Abbaye de Pontigny, and how well received his views on Racine were. [A study of whom opens Books & Characters, French & English<\/a><\/em> (1922)] Even a visit with Forster, usually so well favoured, was disappointing; he seems to think himself not a novelist at all – and Virginia, undiplomatically, agreed, to which he seemed (to her, but not to Leonard) not at all taken aback. The entry ends: “…I shall walk off to meet L.” <\/em>[p. 270]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Hogarth]<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

And, then, a good month later, on Monday 15 October<\/strong><\/em>, Woolf feels the necessity to return to where she left off:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…last entry seems long ago…meant to record for psychological purposes that strange night when I went to meet Leonard & did not meet him […]<\/p>\nVol 2. [pp. 270-271]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And, she goes on to describe that wretched wet and windy night crossing the fields to get a bus to Lewes to meet Leonard at the train station, and being overcome by the darkness, and the “old devil”, and her body becoming rigid, and a feeling of being alone in the world. How, irrationally, she bought a ticket to London, and then Leonard did arrive (on the last train), and during the walk home feeling as if she has escaped something horrible, and how despite the relief she was overwhelmed by the nagging pain for several days. Perhaps what Virginia is describing here is something like the nearest thing to a mental breakdown without actually having one – a close escape. An incredibly powerful passage, that reminds one once again of how courageous this woman was in the face of the dreadful illness that plagued her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolf has been looking at houses in London, and this is very much on her mind, as is the future of the press. With this, the Woolfs have reason to be optimistic as Dadie Rylands has put himself forward as a partner, and been duly accepted; with his youth and enthusiasm there is every reason to think the Hogarth Press is secure. And she reiterates her commitment to Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> before all else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 19 December 1923<\/strong><\/em>: Virginia writes her last entry for the year. She doesn’t “respect events any more …” <\/em>[p.278] we are told, only then to be told of a drunken Tom Eliot affair. She ends by rattling off her concerns of the moment; including houses, publishing, writing and being “very happy, very much on the go – that’s my state, at the moment of writing 6.14 P.M. on Wednesday aforesaid.”<\/em> [p. 278]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Woolfs go to Monks House, Rodmell, for Christmas on Friday 21 December 1923<\/strong><\/em>. On 28 December<\/strong><\/em> they dine and spend the night with Vanessa and Clive and the three children at Charleston.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Returning to Hogarth on New Year’s Day 1924<\/strong><\/em>, a new book was duly begun on 3 January 1924<\/strong><\/em>, and which includes “an improvement” in the form of a calendar for the first three months of the year (explained on 12th January.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DIARY XIiI: 3 january 1924-6 january 1925<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
Hogarth House, Richmond.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

From this day forward I will always look forward to a new year that “is almost certainly bound to be the most eventful…”<\/em>, which it will almost certainly bound to be NOT! But so starts Virginia Woolf her diary on Thursday 3 January, 1924<\/strong><\/em>. And she does almost immediately question her own sense of optimism! There still is the matter of finding a house, sorting out (again!) the servant problems, writing, publishing, making money. “All is possibility and doubt”<\/em> she says, and just that may any one of us conclude should we dare a look into the future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Woolf’s optimism does not seem to have been misplaced when on Wednesday 9 January<\/em><\/strong> she proudly reports:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At this very moment, or fifteen minutes ago, to be precise, I bought the ten years lease of 52 Tavistock Squre London W.C.1-I like writing Tavistock…the house is ours: & the basement, & the billiard room, with the rock garden on top, & the view of the square in front & the desolated buildings behind, & Southhampton Row, & the whole of London…<\/p>\nVol. 2 [pp. 282-283]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The joys of which she then waxes lyrical! Finally, back to the city she loves, after these years of exile forced upon her by the guardians of her constitution. But she doesn’t forget words of gratitude for Richmond and Hogarth – that offered sanctuary from her own madness, and that of the war. And only there, perhaps, could she and Leonard have dared their precarious venture into the press and publishing. Memories from the last decade flood her – of the living: all the people who have come and gone, conversations had, plans made; and of the dead: visions had and voices heard. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After major and minor glitches and contractual shenanigans during January, Virginia visited the solicitors on Wednesday, 23rd January<\/em><\/strong>, and handed over a cheque and signature, and 52 Tavistock Squre was now well on its way to becoming the Woolf’s new London home, and on Sunday, 3rd February<\/em><\/strong> she says “the house presumably ours tomorrow. So I shall have a room of my own to sit down in, after almost 10 years, in London.”<\/em> [p. 291] I note, that on matters pertaining to property it is Mrs. Woolf who takes the initiative, and Mr. Woolf conspicuous by his absence, but I am certain not disinterest. On this day, too, she mentions (what a footnote says to be) her first meeting with Arnold Bennett – whilst their respective theories of fictional writing may differ, VW describes him personally not unfavourably (19 June 1923, above<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n

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Bertrand Russell<\/a> by Lady Ottoline Morrell, late 1924\u00a9 National Portrait Gallery, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Meanwhile, essays are being accepted in various publications – on Austen, Montaigne, for instance (that both also find their way into The Common Reader<\/em>), and she returns always to “The Hours” as it is still titled. Morgan reveals that he has completed his novel (A Passage to India<\/em>) and they (the Woolfs) are the first to know. On 23 February<\/strong><\/em> she “quotes” in length “the celebrated Mr. Russell” (Bertrand Russell) encountered a few evenings previously at Karin’s<\/a> (Russell had been married to her aunt, Alys Pearsall Smith<\/a>) – on his cancer (not known to the interlocutors: Russell would live for another forty odd years!), his new found optimism and love of life, on philosophers, poets and family. Whether VW got this all right, who knows, but a very entertaining interlude anyway. [pp. 293-295] I swear, those guys unloaded to her, they really did!<\/em> And she? What thinks she of this towering intellect of the 20th century? True to form, she doesn’t allow her undoubted awe of Russell’s cerebral qualities to get in the way of her incisive, personal appraisal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One does not like him. Yet he is brilliant of course […] outspoken; familiar; likes people; & yet & yet – He disapproves of me perhaps? He has not much body of character […his mind seems] attached to a flimsy little car […] His adventures with his wives diminish his importance […] no chin & he is dapper. Nevertheless, I should like the run of of his headpiece.<\/p>\nVol 2. [p 295]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday 12 March 1924<\/strong>: “And I am now going to write the very last pages ever to be written at Hogarth House…”<\/em> [p.295] First the weather, then her “stuffy and heavy” head, then the night before (dinner for Edmund Blunden<\/a> at the Florence Restaurant in Rupert Street) and an altercation of sorts with Murry that started with her “exquisite sensibilities”; alas, the specifics neglected in her retelling, and transgressed to George Moore’s recent criticism of Hardy which Murry finds more than lamentable and Leonard considers hardly surprising. They part, and not well, and the Woolfs make the “long cold exhausting journey [back to Richmond] for the last time”<\/em> [p.297].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editor’s note on p. 297, tells us that on 13-14 March 1924<\/em><\/strong> the Woolfs moved from Richmond to 52 Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury. They stayed overnight on the 14th at Clive’s in Gordon Square, and first slept in their new home on Saturday 15 March<\/em><\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further, their new living situation is more clearly described. The Woolfs occupied the two top floors of the large four-story house on the south side of the square. The Hogarth Press was in the basement, and a large billiard room built in the back garden was converted into a study for VW and storage space for Hogarth books. A firm of solicitors occupied the ground and first floors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

52 Tavistock Square, Bloomsbury, London.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Few pictures of the Woolf’s home and premier place of work during this period remain; 52 Tavistock was destroyed during the Blitz on Wednesday 16th October, 1941, only a year after the Woolfs had relocated to larger premises in Mecklenburgh Square (and had been unable to unload their lease on Tavistock). But here are two excerpts from Hermione Lee’s biography of Woolf, which may conjure a sense of the look and feel of a place very many people wanted to visit – and it be known that they did so. Such had their celebrity grown. In respect to the second extract, with its interior description, the three panels by Vanessa and Duncan referred to, were in fact retrieved from the remains by Virginia a couple of weeks after it was bombed. At the end of 1924, they had been featured in this article<\/a> about modern design for Vogue<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People went, in great numbers, to the house in Tavistock Square in various states of eagerness and apprehension […] People coming or working there took a vivid impression from it, particularly because of its double and divided nature, the basement for work, the upstairs flat for entertaining. The basement life […was] a curious mixture of the ramshackle and the orderly. The Press office at the front of the basement (with the printing room \u2013 the treadle machine, the compositor\u2019s stone and all the type \u2013 in a disused scullery behind it) was divided by a door and a long stone corridor from the huge, sparsely furnished, windowless room at the back, once a billiards room, with a skylight and a rather dim underwater feeling to it.<\/p>\nHermione Lee ” Virginia Woolf “<\/em> Ch. 31. Random House. Kindle Edition.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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The rooms of the Woolfs\u2019 two floors, looking out on to the high trees of Tavistock Square and the churches and buildings beyond, were light and colourful and pretty and Mediterranean-looking, full of books and papers; they looked like the covers of her books. Everyone was struck by the three huge panels which Vanessa and Duncan had painted when the Woolfs first moved in, in reds and browns and blues, each presenting a domestic tableau in a roundel, within a frame of crosshatching: the table and jug and scroll of paper on the left, the piano and guitar in the centre, the bowl of flowers, fan, open book and mandolin on the right. […] It was not a grand or glossy setting, but it had a strong, idiosyncratic, seductive atmosphere. Everyone who sat in the dining-room for tea (honey from Monk\u2019s House) or for supper under soft lamp-light, and then in the large drawing-room over the fire, with the dogs, the cigarette smoke, the talk, took away an image of Virginia Woolf.<\/p>\nHermione Lee ” Virginia Woolf “<\/em> Ch. 31. Random House. Kindle Edition.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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Tavistock Square, London, today. Number 52 was bombed during the blitz in 1940, and a hotel now stands on the site.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Saturday 5 April:<\/em><\/strong> With the exception of the noise from the streets, the return to London has lived up to Virginia’s expectations – the wonderful convenience, the life and bustle, and she wonders why it is she finds it so very lovely when it is, after all, “stony hearted, & callous”. This entry runs then mid-line into Tuesday, April 15th<\/em><\/strong>, and Leonard grumbling that he has not done any work since they moved to London. Then there is the bizarre accident that seems absolutely not, even nearly, to have killed Angelica. [p. 299] And, “the habit of living” in their new home is beginning to form, and the city noises becoming less irritating. She is settling in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday 5th May<\/em><\/strong>, after returning from an Easter sojourn in Rodmell, VW remembers her mother’s death twenty-nine years previously. One believes her when she says she absolutely remembers that day and that thirteen-year-old self, rather, more precisely, she suggests them to be “impressions” that are etched deeply and indelibly in her memory. Returning again from Rodmell on Monday 26th May<\/strong> [footnote p. 301], she contemplates the different effects city and country have upon her, and does some professional planning through to the next year to bring to an end “The Hours” and her essays. [The footnote p. 301 confirms her adherence – The Common Reader<\/em> published in April, 1925, and Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> in May.] At the end of the entry, Woolf confesses to not having indulged in, nor dissected, the society fun and games of the last month or so – at Rodmell, Cambridge, Tidmarsh. She does though have time to observe, and not for the first time, how very off-putting Eliot has become – “sinister & pedagogic”, “a queer figure”. [p.302]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning after Whitsun<\/strong><\/em> again from a stay in Rodmell, the rest of June and July<\/em><\/strong> is spent in states variously drowsy and industrious. Dadie joins them now at the Press, and Marjorie becomes ill, so there are a multitude of adjustments to be made. Visits locally – with Clive, the Stracheys – and further afield – to Garsington. To the famous (and sprawling) “Knole”<\/a>, and the Sackvilles – for the first time? And motoring through Kent with Vita and Harold, with Geoffrey Scott and Dorothy Wellesley in tow. And feeling very class-conscious indeed. [pp.306-307]. The 30th July<\/strong><\/em> sees the Woolfs return again to Monks House, where they were to mostly remain for the rest of the summer.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Cover artwork \u00a9 Estate of Vanessa Bell. Essay pub. Hogarth Press, 1924 \u00a9 The Society of Authors<\/a> <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Following the death of Joseph Conrad<\/a>, the TLS <\/em>makes a hasty request on 15th August<\/strong><\/em> for an essay; to which she obliged, but then can’t help but mention a certain TLS <\/em>columnist, A.B. Walkley<\/a>, whose contribution to the ongoing ‘character vs. plot’, ‘when emotion must be, then how much is too much or just enough…’ etcetera, started by Bennett, and to which Woolf has responded in a piece first read at the Cambridge Heretics<\/a> in May, then published in the Criterion in July and to be published by Hogarth as a pamphlet<\/a> in October. Renowned, of course, to this day as Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown<\/a><\/em> – Woolf’s brilliant and idiosyncratic defense of modernity (with her much quoted assertion that “…on or about December 1910 human character changed”<\/em>) and caustic put-down of the traditionalists. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> is so much on her mind (on the 2nd August<\/strong><\/em> she was dealing with the death of Septimus Smith), that when the Keynes came to tea at Monk House on 9th August<\/em><\/strong>, she confesses to calling Lydia “Rezia by mistake”<\/em> [p.310]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in Tavistock Square at the beginning of October<\/em><\/strong>, the last words of Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> have been written: “For there she was.” (I double check, and these final words remained unaltered.) This, VW says, was on 8th October<\/em><\/strong>, and is self-congratulatory of her feat in bringing it to an end in only a year or so and, more importantly, without the interruption of illness. She knows this novel is good. She says her house is now perfect. All is well. But then her mind wanders to the ghost of Katherine Mansfield. Why? (I imagine she wants to dangle “Mrs. Dalloway” before K., and demand of her : what she thinks, whether she could have done as well<\/em>.) What Woolf does say, and wants to believe, is that even if Mansfield was alive and writing, it would be she (Woolf) considered “the more gifted”<\/em>. And, then again that pervading regret that haunts her: “…K. & I had our relationship; & never again shall I have one like it.”<\/em>[p.317].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saturday 13 December:<\/em><\/strong> Just when Woolf was becoming comfortable with his presence, Dadie Rylands decides he must leave Hogarth (his Cambridge dissertation must take precedent), and his friend, Angus Davidson, suggested as his successor. Away from the Press, she is conscientiously retyping Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> and remains delighted with her accomplishment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 21 December:<\/em><\/strong> Virginia Woolf refers back to January 3rd<\/a>, and sees the year to be every bit as eventful as she had prophesied, and expectations fulfilled. They are in London, with Nelly only, the household complete. Granted, Dadie has come and gone at the Press, but in Angus they have a replacement. Mrs. D. & the Common Reader are almost ready to be sent out into the world. On matters of fame & money – Clive’s long article is out in The Dial<\/em><\/a>, with \u00a350 from Harper’s, the days of begging were gone, for she and Leonard both. Friendships flourish, and the Press a reprieve from the emotional labor of writing, and a magnet for all sorts who come and go – to see, to be seen with the Woolves at work. Last words of the year: “This afternoon they cut down the tree at the back: the tree I used to see from my basement skylight”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Editor’s note [p.327]: On Christmas Eve<\/em><\/strong>, taking Angus Davidson with them, the Woolfs went to Monks House. The Woolf and Bell households did not meet; the weather was appalling, and the River Ouse overflowed its banks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here ends Volume Two (1920 -1924) of The Diary of Virginia Woolf<\/em>, and is continued in Volume Three covering the years 1925-1930<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Last updated:<\/strong> December 29th, 2020. [II VW Diary, 21 December 1924 p.327]<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This second volume of Virginia Woolf’s diary begins in 1920. The war years are over but the ‘peace’ came at a high human and economic cost for all, and it is a ‘peace’ that Woolf does not quite believe in. Personally and professionally though her star is in the ascendancy – her second novel, Night … Continue reading “Volume Two: 1920-1924”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":204,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2651","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2651"}],"version-history":[{"count":264,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18494,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2651\/revisions\/18494"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}