{"id":7630,"date":"2021-01-04T13:19:07","date_gmt":"2021-01-04T12:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?page_id=7630"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:05:46","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T13:05:46","slug":"volume-three-1925-1930","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/stolb01web.ddns.net\/wordpress\/?page_id=7630","title":{"rendered":"Volume Three: 1925-1930"},"content":{"rendered":"
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My copy of The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three 1925-1930, Harcourt<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
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At the end of the previous volume, 1924 was drawing to a close and the Woolfs about to leave for Rodmell for the festive season. And, as Virginia had predicted, it had been an eventful and fulfilling year – a new London home at 52 Tavistock Square, and all the delights a return to city living had to offer. She was mostly spared afflictions of body and mind, and signs of stress, and distress, had been relatively fleeting. The Hogarth Press is gaining in renown, and consequently demanding more of the Woolfs’ time – but it remains a labor of love and a respite from the long, solitary hours of reading and writing. Virginia had adhered to her stringent writing schedule for the last year; most of the writing of both Mrs. Dalloway <\/em>and The Common Reader<\/em> are done, and their publication pending in this year ahead. As a critic and an intellectual voice, her reputation is growing, and she is confident enough to stand her ground, in fact, relishes not just the discourse but the argument. New friendships are being tentatively tested, while many of the old still flourish – and some, not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Virginia and Leonard returned to London on 2nd January, 1925<\/strong><\/em>. There are only two entries in what is still Diary XIII<\/em> from the previous year, and which resumes on Tuesday 6th January, 1925<\/strong><\/em>, with strife with Nelly, and Virginia stating that servant questions no longer much worry her – when they clearly do! She writes “a note on an Elizabethan play” that will find published form in the TLS<\/em> (5 March 1925) and The Common Reader<\/em>, and that irrespective of the horrendous Christmas weather whilst at Rodmell, she got Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> in order, and that it is now at the printers and she awaits the proofs. The next entry, on Wednesday 18 March<\/em><\/strong>, informs of having been in bed with influenza, and that she wrote the last page was there – final work for The Common Reader<\/em> (from the footnote: the final paragraphs of “The Elizabethan Lumber Room”). Further, that she has made a new diary, and with “ominous forebodings at the sight of all the blank pages”<\/em>, will now begin that. [pp. 3-5]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

diary xiv: 18 march 1925-19 january 1926<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

And, an emotional start it indeed is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the moment […] I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, & thus we don’t have complete emotions about the present, only about the past…<\/p>\nThe Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Three<\/strong><\/em>, [p.5]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This suggested to her, during a visit with Vanessa to her children’s school in Reading, and an exchanged emotional greeting between Vanessa and Quentin on the railway platform:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This I shall remember; & make more of, when separated from all the business of crossing the platform, finding our bus &c. That is why we dwell on the past, I think.<\/p>\n[p.5]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I especially note the above, because I think it has become increasingly clear in her diary entries of the previous year or so how radically Woolf is now approaching her own emotional core, and its relationship to her physical person. And, how intent she is on finding a literary form to adequately describe the inner emotions, and her growing impatience at the hastily applied label of “sentimentality” by those too lazy to contemplate the difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An editor’s note [p.6] explains that the Woolf’s travelled to Cassis in the south of France via Newhaven-Dieppe and Paris on 26 March 1925<\/em><\/strong>, where they stayed at the Hotel Cendrillon; returning to London on 6\/7 April<\/em><\/strong>. Virginia tells on Wednesday 8 April<\/em><\/strong> with sadness of Jacques Raverat’s<\/a> death, and then, with reference to Montaigne, hauls herself back amongst the living and writes a pastiche of their stay in Cassis – of landscape, seascape, people, and feelings of contentment that border on a bliss that she does not quite trust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday 27 April<\/em><\/strong>, Woolf bemoans having heard not a word about The Common Reader <\/em>(which was only published on the 23rd!) and is adamant this does not bother her! She is sitting for Vogue<\/em> and contemplating Robert Graves<\/a>. And, then, that which doesn’t bother her, bothers her again, for she writes crankily on 1 May<\/em><\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…came out 8 days ago, […] not a single review […] no body has written to me or spoken to me about it or in any way acknowledged the fact of its existence […] all signs which point to a dull chill depressing reception; & complete failure […] if the same thing happens to Dalloway one need not be surprised …<\/p>\nVol. 3 [pp.15-16]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Cover illustrations by Vanessa Bell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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But, throughout the next week, there is an increasing amount of attention – even when not exactly that which she would have hoped for: Vanessa’s bad cover (which of the above pictured versions is being referred to I don’t know but the green vase does seem to be much more common – excuse the pun!)<\/em>, a debate about who and what exactly a “common reader is” – all of which increasingly irritates; making her feel “head achey”, she says.<\/p>\n\n\n

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First edition (pub. Hogarth Press 1925); cover art by Vanessa Bell<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

But though not selling well, Woolf grudgingly accepts the increasing and generally good reviews CR<\/em> is now receiving; and when Mrs. Dalloway<\/em> is published on 14 May<\/em><\/strong> she expects no greater public enthusiasm than this for her novel. (Little did VW know that those legs that took Clarissa Dalloway through Westminster one hot June day would gain metaphorical meaning in respect to longevity and good favor. For it is this particular book, more than any other, that was to defy the constraints of time and fashion and become beloved by generations of readers.) <\/em>She has in fact moved on in her own mind and is focusing on To the Lighthouse<\/em> – and all that very inner-self and familial stuff:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…This is going to be fairly short: to have father’s character done complete in it; & mothers; & St Ives; & childhood; & all the usual things I try to put in-life, death &c. …<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p18]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n

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John Maynard Keynes & Lydia Lopokova, 1920s \u00a9 National Portrait Gallery, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

19th July 1925<\/em><\/strong>: Woolf rattles off the “whole tribe of people & parties [that have] gone down the sink to oblivion”[p.34]<\/em> in the last weeks – Tom, Clive & Mary, the ladies Colfax, Asquith, Oxford amongst others, and Maynard brought around a pamphlet – “The Economic Consequences of Mr. Churchill”<\/a> – (10,000 copies at 1\/- she says, and the footnote says 7,000 were actually printed [p.35]). Through to the end of July <\/em><\/strong>work is brisk, and brisker Woolf’s planning for the impending retreat to Rodmell and what to do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Thursday 30th July<\/em><\/strong>, To the Lighthouse<\/em>, and the coming to terms with excavating all the memories, especially those of her father, are still very much preoccupying her – the scope of her intentions seems to be expanding, and there is an idea “to split up emotions more completely”<\/em>. [p.38] Maynard will be married on Tuesday, she says, and the footnote confirms that Maynard Keynes and Lydia Lopokova were married at St. Pancras Registry Office on 4th August, 1925.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Woolfs travel to Rodmell on Wednesday 5th August<\/strong><\/em>. On Sunday 16th August<\/em><\/strong> they lunch with the newly-wed Maynard and Lydia at Ilford, and on Wednesday 19th August<\/strong><\/em> bicycle to Charleston for Quentin’s fifteenth birthday – where the Keyneses are again in attendance. During dinner,Virginia fainted… <\/p>\n\n\n\n

…and her next entry if on Saturday, 5th September<\/strong><\/em>. Again, illness has interrupted her best lain plans, but the stoic Virginia reemerges and takes command:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This has rammed a big hole in my 8 weeks which were to be stuffed so full. Never mind. Arrange whatever pieces come your way. Never be unseated by the shying of that undependable brute, life, hag ridden as she is by my own queer, difficult nervous system.<\/p>\nVol. 3 [pp.38-39]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Irrespective, VW has got back to work on To the Lighthouse<\/em>, and is trying to will her body to cooperate, but on 14th September<\/em><\/strong> she writes mid-morning from bed (which she has been in and out of) and the “bunch of nerves at the back of [her] neck”<\/em> [p.40] do as they will. Some consideration is given to selling Monks House and spending summers in the South of France, but is only fleeting. Virginia is disillusioned again with Tom Eliot; finding out – and not from him – that “Waste Land” is to be re-published – and not by Hogarth! Through the rest of September<\/em><\/strong> she remains unwell, and even visits from those near and dear – Maynard, Lytton – seemingly leave her in a state of distress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to London on Friday 2nd October<\/strong><\/em>, VW is so unwell that the doctor is soon called upon. Through October and most of November<\/strong><\/em> she remains in a poor state; intermittently bedridden and only occasionally going for a walk or drive with Leonard, and having very few visitors. During this time, she writes an essay (“On Being Ill”) for Eliot’s New Criterion<\/em> and a few reviews.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Woolf does not write in her diary again until 27 November<\/em><\/strong>; and then of the death of Madge Vaughan. How the years have changed the tone of that relationship.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Rustling among my emotions, I found nothing [but] dead leaves. Her letters had eaten away the reality […] Oh detestable time, that thus eats out the heart and lets the body go on. They buried a faggot of twigs at Highgate […] <\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.46]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Brilliant as that passage may be, kind is it not. (Remembering well the extent and warmth of their early correspondence [see “The Letters of Virginia Woolf Volume I”], I am unclear as to why that friendship turned so very sour. Do I recall a mounting generational tension not unlike that which arose in her relationship with Kitty Maxse?)<\/em> Vita has visited twice, she says, and the very thought of her traipsing off to Persia is most unwelcome; an indication perhaps of their deepening intimacy. And, she goes on to ponder her friendships;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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People die; Madge dies […& not a solitary tear] But then, if 6 people died, it is true that my life would cease […] Imagine Leonard, Nessa, Duncan, Lytton, Clive, Morgan all dead.<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.48]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Contemplating this entry in respect to an earlier ordering of affections only a half dozen years previously (see Vol. 1, 20 January 1919<\/a>), it is clear that there are people that come and go in Virginia’s world, looser friendships perhaps or to the nth degree, but there is also this hard inner-core that remains constant, and one of whom is her husband and another her sister (who one notes with interest is the only woman).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 7th December<\/em><\/strong> Virginia’s return to the world of the living (she’s reading, writing, walking) is mitigated by Vita having been in London and neither visited nor issued an invitation to “Long Barn”. And further so, by Tom Eliot’s dissatisfaction with “On Being Ill”, which both Woolfs liked very much. (Though there is no other evidence substantiating this – the said postcard having gone missing – and the essay was indeed published in The New Criterion<\/em> in January 1926.<\/a>) And history has confirmed that judgement, for it is an essay that has proved to have legs; and which is, today, one of her most admired and cited. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 21st December<\/em><\/strong>: This entry reveals that Vita did in fact come through – Virginia stayed at “Long Barn” from the 17-20 December. The footnote further reveals this to have been “the beginning of their love affair”. [p.51] Woolf makes her admiration for Vita clear, and recognises her shortcomings:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I like her & being with her, & the splendour […] her maturity […] her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters […] her motherhood […] her being in short (what I have never been) a real woman.[…] In brain & insight she is not as highly organised as I am. But then she is aware of this …<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.52]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The editor reports: Because of alterations being done at Monks House, the Woolfs went to Charleston on 22nd December<\/strong><\/em> and spent Christmas there with Vanessa and Clive and the three children. Roger Fry was there until the 24th December<\/strong><\/em>. Vanessa later tells Duncan Grant (who was not present) that they spent an evening reading VW’s diary recalling early days at 46 Gordon Square. Vita comes for lunch on Boxing Day, Leonard returned to London on the 27th<\/em><\/strong> and Virginia on 28th December.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And further: Almost immediately upon her return to Tavistock Square, VW was again very unwell and on 8th January<\/strong><\/em> German Measles was diagnosed. She was able, though, to attend a dinner with Leonard and Vita hosted by Clive at the “Ivy” on 18th January. VW did not write in her diary again until 19th January 1926<\/strong><\/em>, and this was to be the last entry made in Diary XIV. Interesting, is that the last two pages include a preliminary version of a lecture that VW was to give at a private girls’ school on 30th January<\/strong><\/em>, and which would later be published as “How Should one Read a Book”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final entry of this diary was made on Tuesday 19th January 1926<\/strong><\/em>, just after Clive’s dinner, and should be mentioned. More than anything, it is illustrative of Woolf’s present state of mind; and it being full of Vita Sackville-West!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Vita having this moment…left me, what are my feelings? […] I shall want her, clearly & distinctly. Then not & so on. This is the normal human feeling, I think. […] One wants that atmosphere – to me so rosy & calm. She is not clever; but abundant & fruitful; truthful too. […] I feel a lack of stimulus […] now Vita is gone; & some pathos, common to all these partings…<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.57]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

diary xv: 8 February 1926-23 january 1927<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

52 TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON.<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Either the German measles or influenza, or so Woolf muses on Monday 8th February 1926<\/em><\/strong> in her new diary, as the reason for not writing sooner. Or, further; Vita? Or, just not having been inclined to make a new book in which to write? And this leads to a wondering as to the fate of her scribblings – and sixty as the age in which she would write her memoirs. How close she came we know<\/em>. That eleven years after its first publication, Harcourt Brace is to republish the Voyage Out<\/em> to her mind trumps Middleton Murry’s assertion that her work has a ten year shelf life. (In the Adelphi<\/em>, Murry writes an article called “The Classical Revival” [9 February 1926] in which he pairs Jacob’s Room<\/em> and Eliot’s The Waste Land<\/em> as failures that will not be read in years to come. Ouch!) On 24th February<\/em><\/strong> when a conversation with Rose Macaulay<\/a> and Gwen Raverat<\/a> turns to her parents, Woolf thinks to herself about how recognisable Leslie and Julia Stephen will be in To the Lighthouse<\/em>. Just a reflection, or is she perturbed at the repercussions of exposing the familial foibles? And on 27th February<\/em><\/strong> reading Beatrice Webb\u2019s<\/a> memoir My Apprenticeship<\/em> (extraordinarily still in print or may be borrowed from the Internet Archive here<\/a>; her complete diaries<\/a> are accessible at the LSE Digital Library<\/em>) encourages her to reread some of her own diary and reflect upon her person, her life – and even her “soul” – and bemoan (unlike the formidable Mrs. Webb) not having a “cause”. Contentment, yes, but purpose?<\/p>\n\n\n

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Lord Ivor Charles Spencer-Churchill<\/a> by Bassano Ltd, whole-plate glass negative, 28 April 1920
NPG x120542\u00a9 National Portrait Gallery, London<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Through March<\/em><\/strong>, teas and dinners and parties, provide an opportunity for the working writer to practice putting to word her observations – razor sharp descriptions of George Augustus Moore<\/a> (on 9th March<\/strong><\/em>): “…pink foolish face; blue eyes like hard marbles; a crest of snowhite hair; little unmuscular hands; sloping shoulders; a high stomach…speaks without fear or dominance…in spite of age uncowed, unbeaten, lively, shrewd…”<\/em>[pp.66-67] and Lord Ivor Spencer Churchill<\/a> (on 20th March<\/em><\/strong>): “…an elegant attenuated gnat like youth; very smooth, very supple, with the semi-transparent face of a flower, & the legs of a gazelle, & the white waistcoat & diamond buttons of a dandy, & an all American desire to understand psycho-analysis…”<\/em>[pp.67-68] On the latter, you can make up your own mind; suffice to say, not much more need be said of the dangers attached to falling under the ever alert writer’s gaze of Mrs. Woolf.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Sunday 11 April<\/em><\/strong>, VW is still reading “Mrs. Webb” and still comparing their respective lives:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The difference is that she is trying to relate all her experiences to history. She is very rational & coherent. She has always thought about her life & the meaning of the world. She has studied herself as a phenomenon. Thus her autobiography is part of the history of the 19th Century. She is the product of science, & the lack of faith in God; she was secreted by the Time Spirit<\/span>. Anyhow she believes this to be so; & makes herself fit in very persuasively & to my mind very interestingly. She taps a great stream of thought<\/span><\/strong>. […] she is much more interested in facts & truth than in what will shock [& what should not be said]<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.74]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When reading Woolf, one cannot help but be alerted to a “stream”<\/span><\/em> of anything, and it is interesting I think that VW recognizes in Beatrice Webb’s reminiscences a vibrant flow of ideas and fragmentary thoughts, more associated with literary writing and not unlike her own writing experiments, as one way of telling of a life. If I understand correctly, she suggests that Webb not only portrays herself as a product of her time, but that in essence she is<\/em> that ‘time’ – as an entity in and of itself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fun facts (I think!) and association: The expression “Time Spirit”<\/em> <\/span> was used for the first time in the English language by Thomas Carlyle in the mid-19th cent. as the very literal translation from the German of “Zeitgeist”<\/em>, and whether VW is quoting Webb directly, or it is her own interpretation and formulation I don’t know. Carlyle died the year before VW was born, but he was somewhat a contemporary (acquaintance? friend?) of Leslie Stephen and famous even in death, and she read him and was immensely interested in his wife Jane – see her essay “Geraldine and Jane”<\/a> , first published in the TLS<\/em> on 28 February, 1929, and later in The Common Reader Second Series<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 18 April<\/em><\/strong>: So headed, Woolf explains it to be very well Friday 30th April – “the last of a wet, windy month”, and goes on to describe their bus and train journey back from a stay in Dorset on the 18th. And the continuing “servant question”, that is, the ongoing dispute with Nelly. The completion of the first part of To the Lighthouse<\/em> is reported, and remarks upon her “dashing fluency” in contrast to the “excruciating hard wrung battles” she had with Mrs. Dalloway<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first days of May<\/em><\/strong> are clouded by the General Strike called on 2nd May in support of the mine-workers – for VW a rare occasion in which political matters dominate her days, even distract her. She observes the streets without buses, workers on bicycles, sold out shops, grocery shortages, lights turned off early, no newspapers; days becoming indistinguishable from one another. Maynard agitates for Hogarth to print a special edition of the Nation<\/em>. On Wednesday 12 May <\/em><\/strong>the Strike is settled, only to be not entirely settled on 13 May<\/em><\/strong> – the TUC having agreed to terms rejected still by the miners. Things gradually return to normal and by 20 May<\/em><\/strong> Woolf has begun to lose interest: “…nothing need to be said about the Strike […] one’s mind slips […] what the settlement is, or will be, I know not.”<\/em> [p.86]. She ponders instead her feelings for Vita (who has returned from Persia and is coming to lunch the next day) – just who is it that is in love with whom, and what is love anyway. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Tuesday, 25th May<\/em><\/strong>, Virginia’s mind is on Vanessa whose 47th birthday approaches, but who is off gallivanting in Italy. Titillating; the news from there of Duncan having been fined for “committing a nuisance”. The mind boggles. The second part of To the Lighthouse<\/em> has already been “sketchily” completed, and Woolf sees a writing speed record on the horizon. And she reflects on Vita’s return the week before, and how oddly disillusioned she feels by her appearance and manner, but imagines that she probably affects Vita likewise and sees in this mutuality a solidifying of their relationship beyond the first throngs of romance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wednesday, 9th June, 1926:<\/strong><\/em> Virginia informs us she caught the ‘flue’ at Lords watching the cricket with Leonard, or ‘nerve exhaustion headache’ as she referred to it in her letters (Vol. 3 no. 1646) [p.90]; the latter suggesting her state to be attributable more to her work and the excitement of Vita’s return. For the Yale Review<\/em> she is writing up “How Should One Read a Book” (remarkably, to be found here<\/a>) from her January 30th lecture at Hayes Court, and still fretting over the essence of To the Lighthouse<\/em>. And by the bye mentions that the Strike continues! On 11th June<\/em><\/strong>, Virginia is sufficiently recovered and she and Leonard go to Rodmell, and on the Sunday are joined by Vita. Leonard returned to London on Sunday afternoon; leaving Virginia and Vita alone until Tuesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the last day of June<\/strong><\/em>, much ado about a hat and merciless teasing (“humiliation” she says) by Clive and Duncan, and on the first day of July<\/em><\/strong> she is still carrying the burden of her shaming, but more interesting is (probably) her first meeting with H.G. Wells<\/a> and his wife Jane (at Maynard Keynes’s). She is not impressed. More interested she was in her Garsington meeting with Robert Bridges<\/a>, and then visit with at Boar’s Hill near Oxford, on 26-27 June – she liked his poems well enough but more importantly found him to be “so obliging & easy & interested” – qualities she liked in others and at least tried to aspire to in herself; with varying degrees of success. (I note here, that recently I was reading about Gerard Manley Hopkins<\/a>, and learned how it was Bridges that was solely responsible for his friend’s posthumous fame. At the aforesaid meeting, VW asks to see the Hopkins manuscripts, and the footnote 4 [p.93] says that the Woolfs indeed ended up owning one of the only 750 copies originally published by Bridges – and which sold at Sotheby’s in 1970.)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 4th July<\/strong><\/em>: Irrespective, and probably out of courtesy and more at Leonard’s behest, Wells lunched with them the next day (2nd July), gratefully with Desmond MacCarthy also present. Full of himself; disparaging of former lovers – Rebecca West<\/a>, Dorothy Richardson<\/a>; compares a reading of Proust to a visit to the British Museum; dismissive of James, Hardy; ponders doing away with Sundays. <\/p>\n\n\n

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A portrait of Thomas Hardy in 1923 by Reginald Eves<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Sunday 25th July:<\/em><\/strong> Long, descriptive entry of the Woolf’s 23rd July visit with Thomas Hardy<\/a> in Dorchester. (Arranged by Forster.) Just a couple of years before his death, the tea chatter rambled and spluttered along, and though he spoke of others – Forster, de la Mare, Huxley – and warmly of Leslie, on his own writing Virginia was unable to draw much out of him. Not what the writer Woolf was hoping for anyway. And besides, it was clear, it was Mrs. Hardy who controlled the direction and extent of conversation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

An editor’s note explains that VW spent the night of Monday 26th July 1926<\/strong><\/em> at Long Barn with Vita, who the next day drove her to Rodmell. Leonard joined Virginia there; having driven from London with Clive and Julian. During her summer hiatus Virginia concentrated it seems on “To the Lighthouse”, and socialized only infrequently – Raymond Mortimer stayed for a weekend, and they visited Maynard and Lydia at the Tilton farm that they had recently leased, followed by a party and fireworks for Quentin’s birthday at nearby Charleston. Until the beginning of September<\/strong><\/em>, Virginia’s diary is a series of occasional headed notes. An experiment in form – an attempt to catch the immediacy and sensations attached to a particular moment. (Perhaps she means that fleeting moment before a thought, an observation, is rationalized and given worldly contour and in doing so loses something of its essence.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first week of September<\/strong><\/em> Virginia returns to a dated format. On 5th September<\/em><\/strong> she is pondering how to conclude To the Lighthouse <\/em>– the last chapter will begin tomorrow and in three weeks her revisions (so she plans anyway!). Also, she is thinking about her theory of literature book for Hogarth, and it is worth a quote here of her intentions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Six chapters. Why not groups of ideas, under some single heading …Symbolism. God. Nature. Plot. Dialogue. Take a novel & see what the component parts are…[examples] of books which display them biggest. Probably […] pan out historically. One could spin a theory which wd bring the chapters together.<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p. 107]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And ‘Outlines’ she must do – “a bunch of” – and, as commissions for reviews come her way. And the money from these are important! She mentions as an aside that “under a new arrangement, we’re to share any money over \u00a3200 that I make”<\/em> [p.107] – an interesting glimpse into the “professional” Woolfs. (Whether the same divvying up applies to Leonard’s earnings she doesn’t say …!) On one hand, she says she is “frightfully contented”, on the other she admits that Maynard and Nessa make her person and her gifts seem rather mediocre, and Nessa’s children remind her of what she has been denied, but having aired her grievance, she puts her envy aside (I love how she is able to do that, how short lived her moments of regret)<\/em> and recognizes the freedom and possibilities in her life, and says: “Hence, I come to my moral, which is simply to enjoy what one does enjoy, without teasing oneself …”<\/em> [p.107] On the previous day, a most successful visit from Clive and Mary, that left her with the thrill of “being liked by Mary” a “sense of great happiness”. [p.108] (I can’t help but be curious about one of the topics of conversation; a questionnaire on religious beliefs in the August and September 1926 issues of The Nation and Athenaeum<\/em> [footnote p.108] extending from the energetic reaction to Leonard’s provocative contention in his column; that in religious matters, skepticism, atheism, agnosticism were the default of the educated modern “man”. I can’t find either LW’s original piece nor the questionnaire issues, but Virginia Woolf and the Literary Marketplace <\/em>an anthology by J. Dubino has an interesting chapter<\/a> [at Google Books – maybe!] by Elizabeth Dickens that explains the controversy and at least includes the latter.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

On Monday 13 September 1927<\/em> <\/strong>VW says of To the Lighthouse<\/em>: “The blessed thing is coming to an end …” <\/em>[p.109], but all has not gone well with her reviewing – too much procrastination, spending the money before it was earned – “my greed is immense”<\/em> [p.109] but who can begrudge her Persian carpets, etc., before Leonard’s cut becomes due! That she didn’t end up writing on Willa Cather<\/a> is a loss to us all. (And, more generally, the Americans! Edith Wharton: perhaps I recall something, somewhere …? But, for instance, on William Faulkner who I am reading at the moment I could sorely do with her insight! I try valiantly to find any trace of her having read him during the 1930s but as yet cannot. Surely, she can not have not<\/em> read Faulkner?) Then on Wednesday 15 September<\/em><\/strong>, she returns to the note form with which she had begun to experiment with. Under “A State of Mind” she documents her changing moods, of being tossed (like a wave) into depression. (One must think of The Waves<\/em>, to be published five years later, as an almost poetic rendering of this shifting state of mind.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are only two more entries in September. On 28 September<\/strong><\/em> VW explores what she identifies as her depressed state, but (so far) without illness. The last weeks of Summer have been less than satisfactory; visitors have not turned up or, when Vita in fact did, that lead to an argument with Leonard that lead to further more general irritations; she has fallen behind in her reading; she is idle and bored. Much gloom and much introspection. She ponders existence and that in the end one is alone. She resolves to “be much more considerate of L.’s feelings”<\/em> [p.112] Then, on 30 September<\/strong><\/em>, she must expound on what she refers to as “the mystical side of this solitude” <\/em>[p.113] and searches for an adequate description for this state of being with which she has been overcome and comes up with “a fin passing far out”<\/em> [p.113], and ponders the impulse for another book, and how an idea can develop. A margin note referring to Oct. 1929 really does seem to suggest (as I mooted above) that here lay the roots to The Waves<\/em>. As I recall, “fin”; for that of a porpoise, as the tip of waves before they break, is used descriptively numerous times in that novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editor notes that the Woolfs returned to London on 4 October<\/strong><\/em>, and that VW makes no entries until the end of the month (nor did Leonard in his records for that matter). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

London<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

On 30 October<\/em><\/strong> Virginia appears to be pleased to be back in London and seeing people again, but at the same time is still musing on the possibility of a book coming out of ideas, and driven by the voice of a woman in solitude. There is a weekend in Cambridge, dining with Maynard Keynes and LW delivering a paper at the Heretics’ Club; theater going with Vita and attending her lecture at the Royal Society of Literature presided over by Edmund Gosse. The two women comfortable in their found intimacy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

A further editorial note tells us that no new diary entries were made through much of November; Virginia’s days were full with To the Lighthouse<\/em>, visiting with Vita from 6-8 November<\/strong><\/em>, and innumerable social gatherings. The Woolfs attended H.G. Wells’ dinner party on 4 November <\/em><\/strong>where they met the Shaws and Arnold Bennett. The latter said in his journal: “Both gloomy, these two … But I liked both of them in spite of their naughty treatment of me in the press.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 23 November<\/em><\/strong>, trashes on Sibyl Colefax (as she has done before). Wonders at “death” as an “experience”. Reflects upon her relationship with Vita: “…a spirited, creditable affair…all gain, I think; rather a bore for Leonard, but not enough to worry him. The truth is one has room for a good many relationships.”<\/em>[p.117] An open, generous and very modern way of living a life. Virginia is “re-doing six pages of Lighthouse daily” and she thinks it to be her best and does not know what is to follow it. But, then she returns to her most recent musings, to quote:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[…I am] haunted by some semi mystic very profound life of a woman, which shall all be told on one occasion; & time shall be utterly obliterated; future shall somehow blossom out of the the past. One incident – say the fall of a flower – might contain it. My theory being that the actual event practically does not exist – nor time either[…]<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.118]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Here, I feel encouraged to divert to my own personal (and literary) reflection upon The Waves<\/em> and the extended metaphor within its title that binds the shifting narrative, and coming out of a coincidental and concurrent “flicking through” of William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom!<\/em> – a famously complex novel, in which it is even more difficult (than in Woolf’s novel) to keep tack of the multitude of voices. At one point during Quentin Compson’s epic telling of the Supten saga (as he knows it) to his college room-mate, Shreve, he pauses to wonder at how generations somehow inhabit the same space – he is thinking here firstly about he and his father, but then families and people begin to merge, and he submerges himself in this extraordinary, also water-inspired, inner-dialogue: “Maybe we are both Father. Maybe nothing ever happens once and is finished. Maybe happen is never once but like ripples maybe on water after the pebble sinks, the ripples moving on, spreading, the pool attached by a narrow umbilical water-cord to the next pool which the first pool feeds, has fed, did feed, let his second pool contain a different temperature of water, a different molecularity of having seen, felt, remembered, reflect in a different tone the infinite unchanging sky, it doesn’t matter: that pebble’s watery echo whose fall it did not even see moves across its surface too at the original ripple-space, to the old ineradicable rhythm <\/em>thinking Yes, we are both Father. Or maybe Father and I are both Shreve, maybe it took Father and me both to make Shreve or Shreve and me both to make Father or maybe Thomas Sutpen to make all of us”<\/em> [pp. 261-262 in my Vintage 2015 edition]. I wondered previously (see 13 September 1926) whether Woolf had read Faulkner, and I wonder now whether Faulkner read Woolf! Two writers separated by more than a wide expanse of ocean – by gender, by socialization – they seem to me to have traveled along the same wave length [sic!<\/em>] And, a little research on my part (Understanding Bergson, Understanding Modernism<\/em> Chapter 7 p.115 at Google Books<\/a> offers some hints that require following up on) suggests Faulkner read Henri-Louis Bergson, and it is probable Woolf was also at least acquainted with his ideas. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was one final entry for the year on Saturday 11 December<\/em><\/strong>. On 22 December<\/em>,<\/strong> the Woolfs went to Zennor in Cornwall and spent Christmas with Ka and Will Arnold-Foster, returning to London on 28 December<\/em><\/strong>. The Woolfs were at Rodmell from 4-8 January, and on 17 January Virginia went with Vita for a couple of nights stay at Knole, Vita’s father’s home. VW continues to write in Diary XV<\/em>,<\/strong> as she explains…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[1927]<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Friday 14 January 1927: <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[…] I have no new book, & so must record here (& it was here I recorded the beginning of The Lighthouse) the end. […I have] finished the final drudgery [the cleaning up of “To the Lighthouse”] […] complete for Leonard to read […] What I feel is that it is a hard muscular book […] it has not run out and gone flabby […]<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.123]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 23 January 1927:<\/em><\/strong> Leonard calls Virginia’s book a masterpiece; she revisits the not too enthralling and cut-short Christmas in Cornwall; mulls over an invitation to New York from the Herald & Tribune<\/em> – concedes it to be tempting, but financially questionable (well, we know she was never to cross the Atlantic – what a shame!)<\/em>; Vanessa is off to France to a Duncan presumable stricken by typhoid (by the time she go there, he was on the mend).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Vita? To be dined with on the next day, before she leaves for Persia on 28th January. Virginia writes of the stay at Knole the previous week; on the “decayed, dignified, smoothed, effete; respectable I think in his modest way” 3rd. Baron<\/a> (it’s complicated!); on her tour of the buildings and grounds – quite obviously loved by Vita but not necessarily to her taste. What “remained” from her visit (and this is interesting!):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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…Vita stalking in her Turkish dress, attended by small boys […] wafting them on like some tall sailing ship – a sort of covey of noble English life: dogs walloping, children crowding, all very free & stately […]How do you see that? I asked Vita. She said she saw it as something that had gone on for hundreds of years. They had brought wood in from the Park to replenish the great fires like this for centuries: & her ancestresses had walked so on the snow with their great dogs bounding by them. All the centuries seemed lit up, the past expressive, articulate; not dumb & forgotten; but a crowd of people stood behind not dead at all; not remarkable; fair faced, long limbed, affable; & so we reach the days of Elizabeth quite easily. After tea, after looking for letters of Dryden’s to show me, she tumbled out a love letter of Ld Dorset’s (17th century) with a lock of his soft gold tinted hair which I held in my hand a moment. One has a sense of links fished up …which are usually submerged [but there is] no particular awe or any great sense of difference or distinction…<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.125]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

She, then, concludes them to be “not a brilliant race”, and on coming home to the company of Marjorie Strachey, Tom Eliot, Nessa & Roger, noted that their little social set may seem constricted and there was “no talk of the clergy or the country; but how lovely & agile compared with the [text ends]”<\/em> [p.125] Her entry abruptly ends, but presumably she meant to say: the Sackville-Wests.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think it clear that the ideas behind what will become “Orlando” have begun to cohere in her literary imagination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

diary xvi: 3 February 1927-22 December 1927<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

“Fate always contrives that I begin the new year in February.”<\/em> [p.125] So Virginia Woolf begins this book on Thursday 3 February<\/strong><\/em>, and goes on to bemoan that the book is a block, aghast that she may die first and Leonard would read these words of hers, and are they of any interest anyway, and that her handwriting deteriorates. But perks up to say “[…] I shall write my memoirs out of them, one of these days.”<\/em> [p.125]. She reports of an overnight visit with the Webbs on 28th January<\/em><\/strong>; one which she found “strenuous”, but (from the footnote) Beatrice Webb’s diary note to the occasion is positive in tone; referring to the Woolfs as an “exceptionally gifted pair”. On the 12 February<\/em><\/strong> she wonders at the demise of the relationship between Clive and Mary, and his intent to join Vanessa and Duncan in France, and is delighted with a haircut – “I am short haired for life”<\/em> she says! With everybody it seems away, she is immersed in her work – reading copiously, writing about Forster (to be incorporated in her essay “The Novels of E.M. Forster”<\/a>) and fiction; fantasizing about making money – for Greece, a new car; some revising of proofs of To the Lighthouse<\/em> for the US and a French translation. Monday 28th February<\/strong><\/em> brings a “stream of thought” that runs the gamut: from Clive to Mrs. Woolf to Vita; to contemplation of trips abroad, of the rain and London and a respite from the constraints of “society”; to sorely missing Vanessa and the coming of Spring; to wanting to write more “lives”; then, ending:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Today I bought a watch. Last night I crept into L.’s bed to make up a sham quarrel about paying our fares to Rodmell. Now to finish Passage to India.<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.130]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

During March<\/em><\/strong>, Virginia is excited about going to Cassis and then on to Sicily and Rome at the end of the month. On 14th March<\/em><\/strong> she is annoyed at not hearing from Vita, and in the wake of being done with To the Lighthouse<\/em> is “blank of ideas” <\/em>and I am particularly struck by her comment;<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I toyed vaguely with some thoughts of a flower whose petals fall; of time all telescoped into one lucid channel through wh. my heroine was to pass at will. The petals falling. But nothing came of it.<\/p>\nVol. 3 [p.131]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

I surely could not be alone in recalling immediately Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro”; the quintessential Imagist poem they say of it, and a star in the annals of literary modernism. (Is Woolf thinking this too – either consciously or subconsciously?)<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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As published, with original spacing in the April, 1913, issue of Poetry<\/em>.<\/mark><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Pound says<\/a>: “In a poem of this sort one is trying to record the precise instant when a thing outward and objective transforms itself, or darts into a thing inward and subjective”<\/em>. Woolf says, and I repeat: “…of time all telescoped into one lucid channel through wh. my heroine was to pass at will.” <\/em> A not dissimilar description of how to encapsulate a moment with words. A focus on time as much more than a mechanical measure is, I know, a hallmark of the modernist movement but this parallel remains of interest to me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[By recollection, I can only say Pound is mentioned by VW mostly only in the midst of an Eliot discourse, and usually in the same breath as Wyndham Lewis who she clearly disdains. In respect to Lewis, I think in her letters there is mention of his falling out with the Omega Workshop, but I don’t recall that she met either Lewis or Pound. But on Monday 10 December 1917<\/em><\/strong> she notes in her diary that she was “… reading a life of Gaudier Brzeska”<\/em> [Vol. 1 p.90] and a footnote reveals this to be “Gaudier-Brzeska. A Memoir”<\/em> by Ezra Pound (pub. John Lane, London, 1917), and from where the above linked quote comes (available to download<\/a> at the Internet Archive.) Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French painter and sculptor; his Wikipedia entry<\/a> informs of his short, tragic life (killed in the First World War at only twenty-three years of age) and his involvement with the Vorticism<\/a> movement founded by Lewis and with which Pound also became very involved. I remain alert for further mention on Pound and Lewis !]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Less earnestly, VW contemplates wanting to “kick up [her] heels”<\/em>, and sketches out some ideas which will find there way in some form or other into Orlando<\/em> and The Waves<\/em> [p.131]. The rest of the month is spent preparing for their holiday – she remembers going to Italy with Clive and Vanessa in 1908 and 1909 but never with Leonard. Edith Sitwell<\/a> came to tea prompting a wonderful portrait.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[…] transparent like some white bone one picks up on a moor, with sea water stones on her long frail hands which slide into yours much narrower than one expects like a folded fan. She has pale gemlike eyes; & is dressed, on a windy March day, in three decker skirt of red spotted cotton. She half shuts her eyes; coos an odd little laugh […] very tapering & pointed, the nose running on like a mole. […]She is a curious product, likable to me: sensitive, etiolated, affectionate, lonely […] In other ages she would have been a cloistered nus; or an eccentric secluded country old maid. It is the oddity of our time that has set her on the music hall stage. She trips out into the Limelight with all the timidity & hauteur of the aristocratic spinster.<\/p>\nVol. 3 (pp.132-133)<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to Woolf, Sitwell flattered her as “a great writer”, spoke on her famously not very stable mother, and the footnote informs of her “miserable childhood and youth”. When the words of Woolf do not suffice more painterly versions (from Wikipedia) below.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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John Singer Sargent<\/a>: Edith, Sir George, Lady Ida, Sacheverell and Osbert 1900<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Portrait by Roger Fry (1915)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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by Roger Fry (1918)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Edith Sitwell (1887-1964)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

From the editor’s note on page 133: The Woolfs left for Cassis via Paris on 30th March<\/em><\/strong>, where they stayed at the Hotel Cendrillon; though most of their time was spent with Vanessa and Duncan and Clive. They went by train from Toulon to Rome on 6th April<\/strong><\/em>, and then to Palermo for five days before going to Syracuse. Returning, they spent three nights in Naples and a week in Rome. They were back at Tavistock Square late on 28th April<\/em><\/strong>. [Interesting suggested cross reference are letters from her travels (especially those to Vanessa): VW Letters Volume 3 (nos. 1741-7)<\/a>]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sunday 1 May 1927:<\/em><\/strong> Virginia reflects on the joys of the anonymity afforded them in Italy, which is a measure of how her celebrity had grown in recent years. Her joy in the time just past is barely tarnished by a sick Nelly or the flutter of nerves at the impending publication of To the Lighthouse<\/em>. Published on 5 May<\/em><\/strong>, she notes on the same day a tepid, unsigned review in the TLS<\/em> but also impressive orders. Over the next days, Clive returns from Cassis – depressed and disillusioned – and Vita from Persia and, for one who stated she no longer cares about reviews or even her friends’ opinion, is extraordinarily eager to know all and everybody’s opinion! Vanessa sees their mother resurrected. Any wonder, then, that by Monday 6 June<\/strong><\/em> Woolf has been in bed a week with headache, etc. It is Whit Monday and a Bank Holiday, it is a “horrid dull damp” day, but her book is already heading towards a reprint. She reports on an undergraduate talk she delivered at Oxford on 18 May (with Vita in tow) – titled by her as “Poetry, Fiction and the Future” it was to be published by Leonard under the title “The Narrow Bridge of Art” as the opening essay of the posthumous collection Granite and Rainbow<\/em> (here<\/a> at the Internet Archive) and footnoted by LW as originally published in the New York Herald Tribune<\/em> on August 14 1927. And, we hear Lytton Strachey is in love again (the footnote says it to be with Roger Senhouse<\/a>, and to be Strachey’s last) [p.138] and together they talked about a recently published biography of Oscar Browning<\/a>, an Apostle and house master at Eton, from which (citing the story about “the rescue of a stable boy”<\/a> ) she would later draw in her fierce dissection of the patriarchy – better known as a A Room of One’s Own<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This June month begins<\/strong><\/em> with “headaches” and then convalescence at Rodmell. The calm and warmth there invigorates Virginia’s imagination and, beginning with thoughts of moths flickering of an evening and disturbing streams of thought, matter, experience, all the ideas are beginning to take form that will find voice eventually in The Waves<\/em>. She sees Vita and Vanessa, and Clive’s father dies. But mostly it is an unusually quiet beginning to the summer season in London, and she is glad of it. And Adrian comes to tea, and she believes he is improving with age! Like them all. “So we Stephens mature late […] Think of my books, Nessa’s pictures – it takes us an age to bring our faculties into play.” [p.141]<\/em>. The month ends<\/em><\/strong> with a wonderful account [pp.142-144] of a train trip from King’s Cross to North Yorkshire which lay within the band of a total eclipse of the sun. [The footnote on p. 142 says this event on 29 June 1927 was the first visible in Britain for over 200 years and special trains were organized for the occasion.]<\/em> Virginia and Leonard were in a carriage with the Nicholsons, that is Vita and Harold, Quentin is with them, Saxon Sydney-Turner – who I can’t remember her mentioning for some time, and Ray Strachey. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Monday 4 July:<\/strong><\/em> The weekend was spent amongst the opulence of the Nicholson’s “Long Barn” home. Conversation was lively and snobbish – Empire, Leonard’s unjust criticism of the aristocracy. Virginia enjoys observing Vita on her home territory – instinctively gracious, glowing but without “novelty or adventure” (as, too, her poetry), and she is not convinced of her intelligence. Also ‘waves’ seem to now dominate her metaphorical bag of tricks; for, Vita is <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“a ship breasting a sea.[…] with all sails spread. […]She never breaks fresh ground. She picks up what the tide rolls at her feet […]<\/p>\n[p146]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Again, she remarks that Vita’s world does not have what they (I guess she means she and Leonard, but also her friends, I suppose) enjoy – “some cutting-edge; some invaluable idiosyncrasy, intensity”<\/em> [p.146]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Entries for <\/strong><\/em>July 1927<\/em><\/strong> <\/strong><\/em>and Virginia’s preoccupations are marked by the motoring fad embraced by them all; there are new cars – a Renault for Nessa and a Singer for the Woolfs. For the moment at least, Virginia is enthusiastic in her driving endeavors. She is irritated by Clive’s mercurial moods – at once depressive and egotistical. To date, though, the summer has pleased her – her work and its financial rewards, her stable health, Vita. She looks forward with a positive demeanor to Rodmell; completing her book on fiction, getting stuck into that “moths” idea that has so rooted itself in her literary mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Rodmell<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n
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Ethel Sands, 1922.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

On Monday 8 August 1927<\/em><\/strong> VW writes an interesting paragraph or so on three days just spent in Dieppe at Ethel Sands’ <\/a>and Nan Hudson’s chateau – Vanessa and Duncan had been commissioned to decorate the loggia and, as an impending visit was not previously mentioned, the trip (and without Leonard, who saw her off on the boat train from Victoria on 27th July) may have been a spontaneous decision perhaps at the insistence of her sister. Sands, I should say, is a fairly constant presence in Woolf’s social sphere at that time, and is another one of those uncommon, very moneyed American women of the time who more than just ‘dabbled’ in their own art and were more than generous in their patronage of other artists. It is rather ironic that Sands and Hudson<\/a> could only satisfy their own personal freedoms in the ‘old world’ beyond the shores of the ‘new’ – that self-styled ‘land of the free’. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 10 August<\/em><\/strong>, Woolf reveals a pair of odd irritations. Firstly, Forster’s unhappiness (based upon a draft) of an article she was doing on him. She seems to find his concerns unreasonable and out of character, and asks of herself the rhetorical question whether she would be so easily offended. And thinks not. [p.152] (Personally, I am not so sure of that: her respect for Forster was such that she had in the past actively sought his approval of her work, and which as I remember she seemed always to have got – and I imagine she would have been mortified if she discerned anything other!)<\/em> And, then, there is this peculiar reference back to an incident whilst visiting the Morrell’s just before leaving London, and the “amorous” advances of Philip that she mischievously ponders indulging to Vita [p.152 & footnote pp152-153].<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday, 20 September<\/em><\/strong>: Exploring what remained of a 16th century moated house <\/a>with Vita and the death of Lytton’s twenty-eight year old latest romance, Philip Ritchie, makes Woolf feel like an “elderly haggard”, and leads her to thinking again of one day passing review of her friends in literary form. She says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[…] how to do it. Vita should be Orlando, a young nobleman. There should be Lytton, & it should be truthful but fantastic. Roger. Duncan. Clive. Adrian. Their lives should be related. […] How many little stories come into my head! For instance: Ethel Sands not looking at her letters. What this implies. […] She did not open her letters.<\/p>\n[p.157]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

In just this one paragraph: Vita is already Orlando! Years later she will indeed write a biography of Roger (Roger Fry – A Biography<\/em>, Hogarth, 1940 – here at the Internet Archive<\/a>), but nothing ‘fantastical’ rather formal – being perhaps the reason that the writing of it in the last years of her life so tormented her, and that it was, in her mind, a failure. One can imagine it is not the biography that she would have been contemplating in this summer of 1927<\/em>. And, then, there is this observation of Ethel Sands not opening her letters<\/a> which will form the basis of the short story “The Lady in the Looking Glass – A Reflection”<\/a>. Another wonderful example of Woolf’s creative processes working in real time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the first days of October<\/strong><\/em>, Virginia passes review on the work and pleasures of the summer in Rodmell, and on Wednesday 5 October<\/em><\/strong> tentatively makes a schedule for the work that lay before her, and one in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to another. I think, for a treat, I shall let myself dash this in for a week, while [text ends]<\/mark><\/p>\n[p.161]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

We know of course this radical idea was to to be realized! And the abrupt end leaves us wondering: “while”<\/em> <\/mark>what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The editor notes that the Woolfs returned to London on Thursday 6 October 1927<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

London<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday 22 October<\/em><\/strong>, Virginia probably herself no longer remembers her interrupted train of thought, but is indeed prompted to quote herself as she admonishes herself (for her obsession):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I shall let myself dash this in for a week” – I have done nothing, nothing, nothing else for a fortnight […launched with] passion upon Orlando: A Biography. It is to be a small book and written by Christmas<\/p>\n[p.161]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

But she is delighted with where she is going, and admits that she quickly gave up on her schedule and abandoned herself “to the pure delight of this farce: which I enjoy as much as I’ve ever enjoyed anything”<\/em> [p.162] But at the same time is very well aware of the balance she must maintain between “truth and fantasy”, after all, she says: “It is based on Vita, Violet Trefusis<\/a>, Lord Lascelles,<\/a> Knole &c.” <\/em>[p.162] Do follow the links and get some of the dish that fed Virginia’s rapacious literary appetite!<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Diary entries through November and most of December<\/strong><\/em> are few. ‘Old Bloomsbury’ has formed after a fashion and meet informally on Sunday evenings at Vanessa’s. Visits from Vita and Harold are always ripe with gossip. Harold is made First Secretary at the British embassy in Berlin. Vita has a new love installed in their garden house (Mary Campbell<\/a>). Clive’s house is decked with every comfort and convenience. Mrs. H.G. Wells dies, and Lady Beaverbrook – neither invoking too much sympathy, rather meanderings that end in parody.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 20 December<\/em><\/strong>: As Christmas approaches, frosty cold weather has set in. Some festive evenings with Vanessa and her children; prompting Virginia to state that she no longer bemoans not having children: “I don’t like the physicalness of having children of one’s own.”<\/em> And further: “…perhaps I have killed the feeling instinctively; as perhaps nature does.”<\/em> [p.167]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VW is in the midst of the third chapter of Orlando, and says she has given up on finishing it by February – wasn’t it to be by Christmas ? (see above 22 October) She contemplates Orlando revealing herself and women’s love, meeting Dr. Johnson and quoteing from Vita’s ancestor Charles Sackville, Earl of Dorset, poem “To all you Ladies”. (Which she in the end doesn’t, but out of interest here it is in all its glory at Bartleby<\/a>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thursday 22 December<\/em><\/strong>: After a party at the Keyneses Woolf is reflective of her propensity of late to tend towards the superficial, the cliche ridden – with middle age she must shield herself from impending traits of egotistical behavior, of arrogance, of fishing for compliments. She compares herself (unfavorably) with Vanessa. As the year draws to an end, she offers advice unto herself (and one hundred years later relevant to us all!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The dream is too often about myself. To correct this, & to forget one’s own sharp absurd little personality, reputation & the rest of it, one should read; see outsiders; think more; write more logically; above all be full of work; & practise anonymity. Silence in company; or the quietest statement, not the showiest […]<\/p>\n[pp. 168-169]<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On Christmas Eve, the Woolfs travelled by train to Lewes and from there to Charleston for three nights, before going to Monks House for the rest of the festive season. (The Bells spent Christmas with Clive’s mother in Wiltshire.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Returning to London on Monday 2 January, for the next two weeks the Woolfs saw only their most intimate, including Vita (with whom VW stayed with at Long Barn the night of 14 January), and VW remained immersed in writing “Orlando”. Like the previous, Diary XVII <\/strong>is also written on loose-leaf paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

diary xvii: 17 January 1928-18 December 1928<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
52 Tavistock Square, London.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Tuesday 17 January 1928:<\/em><\/strong> All about Hardy; even when it’s not, and rather her meandering thoughts during archaic proceedings – a letter from Max Beerbohm, lectures to be written for Newnham<\/a> (more about that later – enough to say these would evolve into legend and A Room of One’s Own<\/em>). The Woolf’s had attended Thomas Hardy’s funeral on the previous day – or at least the interment of his ashes in Poet’s Corner at Westminster Abbey. All very ‘humbug’ in her opinion, and death – as it always does – has her thinking of the futility of life. Virginia’s essay on Hardy, long commissioned and in preparation – awaiting its moment – would be published as the lead article in the the TLS<\/em> on 19th January 1928, and would find its way into The Common Reader Second Series<\/em> as “The Novels of Thomas Hardy”<\/a>. At the same time she was writing on George Meredith, and this essay would be published in the TLS <\/em>on 9th February (reprinted also in the CR 2<\/em><\/a>) On 11 February<\/strong><\/em> she explains how Hardy and Meredith and the “futility of it all”<\/em> had led her to her bed. The description is painful to read but I think essential to the contemplation of the debilitating nature of her ailment(s):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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[…] I know the feeling now, when I can’t spin a sentence, & sit mumbling & turning; & nothing flits by my brain which is as a blank window. [So I…] go to bed, stuffing my ears with rubber; and there I lie […] what leagues I travel in the time! Such ‘sensations’ spread over my spine & head […] such an exaggerated tiredness; such anguishes & despairs; & heavenly relief & rest; & then misery again. Never was anyone so tossed up & down by the body as I am, I think[…]<\/p>\np.174<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

And, then, “it is over” and reality takes over. Vita’s father had died on the 28th January, and she passes by Knole with Vita – but this time death inspires thoughts of history and of “Orlando” and the final chapter with which she is struggling, and wondering generally whether the story is not just too long and fantastical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

On 18th February<\/em><\/strong>, VW visits the aged and ailing Jane Harrison at Mecklenburgh Square<\/a>, but does not further exacerbate – only the footnote reminds me that in the last years Hope Mirrlees has been absent from Woolf’s circle – or at least not, or rarely, mentioned by her – but then there was never really one Woolf circle rather concentric circles with her at their center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

18th March 1928<\/em><\/strong>: One calendar month on – a duration explained by the suggestion of head ache and a misplaced writing board – “Orlando” done, “The End” a reality! But not yet taken seriously: “…it is all a joke […] a writer’s holiday”<\/em> [p.177]. And, perhaps never to be by her. Somewhat darkly, Virginia is reluctant to plan into the next year, after all “…I may be dead by then, I think”<\/em> [p.177]. But, nevertheless, is looking forward to an imminent trip to Cassis to visit with Vanessa and her extended (!) family, and to the summer months that they will return to.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Monday 26th March<\/strong><\/em> the Woolfs cross the channel to Dieppe, and then make the long drive southward through France, arriving in Cassis on Sunday 1st Apri<\/strong><\/em>l. They take rooms at the Ch\u00e2teau de Fontcreuse<\/a> owned by the British officer, Colonel Teed, but dine and spend most of their time with Vanessa et.al. nearby at La Berg\u00e8re.<\/p>\n\n\n\n