Complete works of virgin.., p.588
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf, page 588
Saturday, September 10th.
I don’t feel that the crisis is real - not so real as Roger in 1910 at Gordon Square, about which I’ve just been writing; and now switch off with some difficulty to use the last 20 minutes that are over before lunch. Of course we may be at war this time next week. The papers each in turn warn Hitler in the same set, grim but composed words, dictated by the Government presumably, that if he forces us we shall fight. They are all equally calm and good tempered. Nothing is to be said to provoke. Every allowance is to be made. In fact we are simply marking time as calmly as possible until Monday or Tuesday, when the oracle will speak. And we mean him to know what we think. The only doubt is whether what we say reaches his own much cumbered long ears. (I’m thinking of Roger not of Hitler - how I bless Roger and wish I could tell him so, for giving me himself to think of - what a help he remains in this welter of unreality.) All these grim men appear to me like grown ups staring incredulously at a child’s sand castle which for some inexplicable reason has become a real vast castle, needing gunpowder and dynamite to destroy it. Nobody in their senses can believe in it. Yet nobody must tell the truth. So one forgets. Meanwhile the aeroplanes are on the prowl, crossing the downs. Every preparation is made. Sirens will hoot in a particular way when there’s the first hint of a raid. L. and I no longer talk about it. Much better to play bowls and pick dahlias. They’re blazing in the sitting room, orange against the black last night. Our balcony is now up.
Tuesday, September 20th.
Since I’m too stale to work - rather headachy - I may as well write a sketch roughly of the next chapter. (I’ve been rather absorbed in P.H., hence headache. Note: fiction is far more a strain than biography - that’s the excitement.)
Suppose I make a break after H’s death (madness). A separate paragraph quoting what R. himself said. Then a break. Then begin definitely with the first meeting. That is the first impression: a man of the world, not professor or Bohemian. Then give facts in his letters to his mother. Then back to the second meeting. Pictures: talk about art: I look out of window. His persuasiveness - a certain density - wished to persuade you to like what he liked. Eagerness, absorption, stir - a kind of vibration like a hawkmoth round him. Or shall I make a scene here - at Ott.’s? Then Cple. Driving out: getting things in: his deftness in combining. Then quote the letters to R.
The first 1910 show.
The ridicule. Quote W. Blunt.
Effect on R. Another close-up.
The letter to MacColl. His own personal liberation.
Excitement. Found his method (but this wasn’t lasting. His letters to V. show that he was swayed too much by her.)
Love. How to say that he never was in love?
Give the pre-war atmosphere. Ott. Duncan. France.
Letter to Bridges about beauty and sensuality. His exactingness. Logic.
Thursday, September 22nd.
By mistake I wrote some pages of Roger here; a proof, if proof is needed, as I’m in the habit of saying, that my books are in a muddle. Yes, at this moment, there are packets of letters to V. B. 1910-1916 - packets of testimonials for the Oxford Slade - endless folders, each containing different letters, press cuttings and extracts from books. In between come my own, now numerous, semi-official Three Guineas letters (now sold 7.017...) No sober silent weeks of work alone all day as we’d planned, when the Bells went. I suppose one enjoys it. Yet I was just getting into the old, very old, rhythm of regular reading, first this book then that: Roger all the morning; walk from 2 to 4; bowls 5 to 6.30; then Madame de Sévigné; get dinner 7.30; read Roger; listen to music; bind Eddie’s Candide; read Siegfried Sassoon; and so bed at 11.30 or so. A very good rhythm; but I can only manage it for a few days it seems. Next week all broken.
Thursday, October 6th.
Another 10 minutes. I’m taking a frisk at P.H. at which I can only write for one hour. Like the Waves. I enjoy it intensely: head screwed up over Roger. A violent storm two days ago. No walking. Apples down. Electric light cut off. We used the four 6d. candlesticks bought at Woolworths. Dinner cooked, and smoked, on dining room fire. Men now staining boards. The room will be done actually this week. Politics now a mere ‘I told you so... You did. I didn’t.’ I shall cease to read the papers. Sink at last into contemplation. Peace for our lifetime: why not try to believe it? Can’t make a push and go to S. Remy. Want to: don’t want to. Long for change: love reading Sévigné even by candlelight. Long for London and lights; long for vintage; long for complete solitude. All this discussed with L. walking to Piddinghoe yesterday.
Friday, October 14th.
Two things I mean to do when the long dark evenings come: to write, on the spur of the moment, as now, lots of little poems to go into P.H.: as they may come in handy: to collect, even bind together, my innumerable TX.S. notes: to consider them as material for some kind of critical book: quotations? comments? ranging all through English literature as I’ve read it and noted it during the past 20 years.
Tuesday, November 1st.
Max1 like a Cheshire cat. Orbicular. Jowled. Blue eyed. Eyes grow vague. Something like Bruce Richmond - all curves. What he said was, I’ve never been in a group. No, not even as a young man. It was a serious fault. When you’re a young man you ought to think There’s only one right way. And I thought This is very profound, but you mayn’t realize it. ‘It takes all sorts to make a world.’ I was outside all the groups. Now dear Roger Fry who liked me, was a born leader. No one so ‘illuminated’. He looked it. Never saw anyone look it so much. I heard him lecture, on the Aesthetics of Art. I was disappointed. He kept on turning the page - turning the page... Hampstead hasn’t yet been spoilt. I stayed at Jack Straw’s Castle some years ago. My wife had been having influenza. And the barmaid, looking over her shoulder, said - my wife had had influenza twice - ‘Quite a greedy one aren’t you?’ Now that’s immortal. There’s all the race of barmaids in that. I suppose I’ve been ten times into public houses. George Moore never used his eyes. He never knew what men and women think. He got it all out of books. Ah I was afraid you would remind me of Ave atque Vale. Yes; that’s beautiful. Yes, it’s true he used his eyes then. Otherwise it’s like a lovely lake, with no fish in it. The Brook Kerith... Coulson Kernahan? (I told how C. K. stopped me in Hastings. Are you Edith Sitwell? No, Mrs W. And you? Coulson Kernahan.) At this Max gobbled. Instantly said he had known him in Yellow Book days. He wrote God and the Ant. Sold 12 million copies. And a book of reminiscences. How I visited Lord Roberts... The great man rose from his chair. His eyes - were they hazel? were they blue? were they brown - no they were just soldier’s eyes. And he wrote, Celebrities I have not met, Max Beerbohm.
About his own writing: dear Lytton Strachey said to me: first I write one sentence: then I write another. That’s how I write. And so I go on. But I have a feeling writing ought to be like running through a field. That’s your way. Now how do you go down to your room, after breakfast - what do you feel? I used to look at the clock and say oh dear me, it’s time I began my article... No, I’ll read the paper first. I never wanted to write. But I used to come home from a dinner party and take my brush and draw caricature after caricature. They seemed to bubble up from here... ne pressed his stomach. That was a kind of inspiration, I suppose. What you said in your beautiful essay about me and Charles Lamb was quite true. He was crazy: he had the gift: genius. I’m too like Jack Horner. I pull out my plum. It’s too rounded, too perfect... I have a public of about 1,500. Oh I’m famous, largely thanks to you, and people of importance at the top like you. I often read over my own work. And I have a habit of reading it through the eyes of people I respect. I often read it as Virginia Woolf would read it - picking out the kind of things you would like. You never do that? Oh you should try it.
Isherwood and I met on the doorstep. He is a slip of a wild boy: with quicksilver eyes: nipped: jockeylike. That young man, said W. Maugham ‘holds the future of the English novel in his hands’. Very enthusiastic. In spite of Max’s brilliance, and idiosyncrasy, which he completely realizes, and does not overstep, this was a surface evening; as I proved, because I found I could not smoke the cigar which I had brought. That was on the deeper level. All kept to the same surface level by Sybil’s hostess-craft. Stories, compliments. The house: its shell like whites and silvers and greens: its panelling: its old furniture.
Wednesday, November 16th.
There are very few mountain summit moments. I mean looking out at peace from a height. I made this reflection going upstairs. That is symbolical. I’m ‘going upstairs’ now, when I write Biography. Shall I have a moment on top? Or when I’ve done Roger? Or tonight, in bed, between 2 and 3? They come spasmodically. Often when I was so miserable about The Years.
Viola Tree died last night, of pleurisy: two years younger than I am.
I remember the quality of her skin: like an apricot; a few amber coloured hairs. Eyes blistered with paint underneath. A huge Goddess woman, who was also an old drudge; a big boned striding figure; much got up, of late. Last time I saw her at the Gargoyle Cocktail; when she was in her abundant expansive mood. I never reached any other; yet always liked her. Met her perhaps once a year, about her books. She dined here the night her Castles in Spain came out. And I went to tea in Woburn Square, and the butter was wrapped in a newspaper. And there was an Italian double bed in the drawing room. She was instinctive; and had the charm of good actress manners; and their Bohemianism and sentimentality. But I think was a sterling spontaneous mother and daughter; not ambitious; a great hand at life; I suppose harassed for money; and extravagant; and very bold; and courageous - a maker of picturesque surroundings. So strong and large that she should have lived to be 80; yet no doubt undermined that castle, with late hours: I don’t know. She could transmit something into words. Her daughter Virginia to be married this week. And think of Viola lying dead. How out of place - unnecessary.
Tuesday, November 22nd.
I meant to write Reflections on my position as a writer. I don’t want to read Dante; have ten minutes over from rehashing ‘Lappin and Lapinova,’ a story written I think at Asheham 20 years ago or more; when I was writing Night and Day perhaps.
That’s a long stretch. And apparently I’ve been exalted to a very high position, say about 10 years ago: then was decapitated by W. Lewis, and Miss Stein; am now I think - let me see - out of date, of course; not a patch, with the young, on Morgan. Yet wrote The Waves-, yet am unlikely to write anything good again; am a secondrate and likely, I think, to be discarded altogether. I think that’s my public reputation at the moment. It is based largely on C. Connolly’s cocktail criticism: a sheaf of feathers in the wind. How much do I mind? Less than I expected. But then of course; it’s all less than I realized. I mean, I never thought I was so famous; so don’t feel the decapitation. Yet it’s true that after The Waves, or Flush, Scrutiny I think found me out. W. L. attacked me. I was aware of an active opposition. Yes I used to be praised by the young and attacked by the elderly. Three Guineas has queered the pitch. For the G. M. Youngs and the Scrutineers both attack that. And my own friends have sent me to Coventry over it. So my position is ambiguous. Undoubtedly Morgan’s reputation is much higher than my own. So is Tom’s. Well? In a way it is a relief. I’m fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It’s an odd feeling though, writing against the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall. And it remains to be seen if there’s anything in P.H. In any case I have my critical brain to fall back on.
Monday, December 19th.
I will spend the last morning - for tomorrow will be an odious scramble - in summing up the year. True, there are 10 days or so to run: but the liberty of this book allows these - I was going to say liberties, but my meticulous conscience bids me look for another word. That raises some questions: but I leave them: questions about my concern with the art of writing. On the whole the art becomes absorbing - more? no, I think it’s been absorbing ever since I was a little creature, scribbling a story in the manner of Hawthorne on the green plush sofa in the drawing room at St Ives while the grown ups dined. The last dinner of the year was to Tom.
This year I have worked at Three Guineas: and begun, about April 1st, Roger: whom I have brought to the year 1919. I have also written Walpole; Lappin Lapinova; and The Art of Biography. The reception of Three Guineas has been interesting, unexpected - only I’m not sure what I expected. 8,000 sold. Not one of my friends has mentioned it. My wide circle has widened - but I’m altogether in the dark as to the true merits of the book. Is it...? No, I won’t even formulate qualities; for, it’s true, no one has yet summed it up. Much less unanimity than about Room of One’s Own. A suspended judgement upon that work then seems fittest. I’ve written too 120 pages of Toyntz Hall. I think of making it a 220 page book. A medley. I rush to it for relief after a long pressure of Fry facts. But I think I see a whole somewhere - it was simply seized, one day, about April, as a dangling thread: no notion what page came next. And then they came. To be written for pleasure.
1939.
Friday, January 5th.
So I take a new nib, after bringing Roger to the verge of Josette with the old one, and spend my last five minutes, this very fine January morning, in writing the first page of the New Year. Last five minutes before lunch - how inaugurate this important volume in that time, with this brain? A brain still running in the rut of the last sentence. Which last sentence will be re-written a dozen times, too. So the dominant theme is work: Roger: the others the usual Rodmell themes. That is, I’ve let the frost go too far away. We came down 14 or 15 days ago and found all pipes frozen. There was snow for five days - bitter cold: wind. We staggered for one hour through the blizzard. Chains were on our wheels. We ground over to Charleston and Tilton on Christmas day. Then, two days later, woke to find green grass everywhere. The long spikes of ice that hung down the kitchen window had drops on their noses. They melted. The pipes thawed. Now it’s a June morning with an east wind. And time’s up. But the book’s begun anyhow. And perhaps I shall get a clearer head and say 10 minutes tomorrow.
Monday, January 8th.
Now that I have brought my brain to the state of an old washerwoman’s flannel over Roger - Lord the Josette chapter - and it’s all too detailed, too tied down - I must expand, first on this irresponsible page and then, for four days I swear, before we go back on Sunday, in fiction. Though I’ve ground out most wish to write, even fiction. Rodmell is a grind on the brain: in winter especially. I write three solid hours: walk two: then we read, with intervals for cooking dinner, music, news, till 11.30. I’ve thus read ever so many packets of R.’s letters; and some Sévigné; Chaucer - and some nonsense books.
Thursday, January 18th.
It is undoubtedly a great freshener to have my story taken by Harpers. I heard this morning. A beautiful story, enchanted to have it. 600 dollars made then. But the encouragement, I must note, by way of suppling my theories that one should do without encouragement, is a warmer, a reviver. I can’t deny it. I was, perhaps partly on that account, in full flood this morning with P.H. I think I have got at a more direct method of summarizing relations; and then the poems (in metre) ran off the prose lyric vein, which, as I agree with Roger, I overdo. That was, by the way, the best criticism I’ve had for a long time: that I poetize my inanimate scenes, stress my personality; don’t let the meaning emerge from the matière.
Tuesday, February 28th.
It is unfortunate for truth’s sake that I never write here except when jangled with talk. I only record the dumps and the dismals and them very barely. A holiday from Roger. And one day’s happiness with P.H. Then too many parcels; books coming out; and a head numb at the back. As usual, when I’m prone, all the gnats settle. The usual ones. I needn’t specify. I have to ‘speak’ to polytechnics; and engagements multiply. Innumerable refugees to add to the tangle. There - I’ve recorded them when I said I wouldn’t.
Saturday, March 11th.
Yesterday, that is Friday 10th, I set the last word to the first sketch of Roger. And now I have to begin - well not even to begin, but to revise and revise. A terrible grind to come: and innumerable doubts of myself as biographer: of the possibility of doing it at all: all the same I’ve carried through to the end; and may allow myself one moment’s mild gratification. There are the facts more or less extracted. And I’ve no time to go into all the innumerable horrors. There may be a flick of life in it - or is it all dust and ashes?
Tuesday, April 11th.
I am reading Dickens; by way of a refresher. How he lives: not writes: both a virtue and a fault. Like seeing something emerge; without containing mind. Yet the accuracy and even sometimes the penetration - into Miss Squeers and Miss Price and the farmer for example - remarkable. I can’t dip my critical mind, even if I try to. Then I’m reading Sévigné, professionally, for that quick amalgamation of books that I intend. In future, I’m to write quick, intense, short books, and never be tied down. This is the way to keep off the settling down and refrigeration of old age. And to flout all preconceived theories. For more and more I doubt if enough is known to sketch even probable lines, all too emphatic and conventional. Maurice, the last of the LI. Davies brothers, is dead; and Margaret lives - lives too carefully of life, I used to feel Why drag on, always measuring and testing one’s little bit of strength and setting it easy tasks so as to accumulate years? Also I’m reading Rochefoucauld. That’s the real point of my little brown book - that it makes me read - with a pen - following the scent; and read the good books: not the slither of MSS and the stridency of the young chawking - the word expresses callow bills agape and chattering - for sympathy. Chaucer I take at need. So if I had any time - but perhaps next week will be more solitudinous - I should, if it weren’t for the war - glide my way up and up into that exciting layer so rarely lived in: where my mind works so quick it seems asleep; like the aeroplane propellers. But I must re-type the last Clifton passage; and so be quit for tomorrow and clear the decks for Cambridge. Rather good, I expect it is: condensed and moulded.
