The essays of virginia w.., p.85
The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5, page 85
fn26 – Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book, p. 193 (1873), ll. 339–40 (1978):
Boards, actors, prompters, gaslight, and costume,
And take for a worthier stage the soul itself,
fn27 – Ibid., p. 189 (1873), ll. 223–4, 235–6 (1978).
fn28 – Coventry Patmore (1823–96), The Angel in the House (the first part published anonymously in 1854; subsequent parts in 1856, 1860 and 1862); Arthur Hugh Clough (1819–61), The Bothie of Toper-na-Fuosich (1848; changed in later editions to The Bothie of Tober-na-Vuolich).
fn29 – Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), Jane Eyre (1847); William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–63), Vanity Fair (1847–8); Charles Dickens (1812–70), David Copperfield (1849–50); Elizabeth Gaskell (1810–65), Cranford (1851–3); Anthony Trollope (1815–82), The Warden (1855); George Eliot, Scenes of Clerical Life (1857); George Meredith, The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859).
fn30 – Aurora Leigh, Fifth Book, p. 188 (1873), l. 192 (1978).
fn31 – The Angel in the House (4th ed., Macmillan, 1866), Canto V, ‘The Violets’, pt 2, ll. 1–4, p. 33.
fn32 – Aurora Leigh, Ninth Book, p. 376 (1873), ll. 209–14 (1978).
fn33 – Charles Fourier (1772–1837), French social utopist.
fn34 – Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1803–49), poet and dramatist, notably of Death’s Jest-Book, or, The Fool’s Tragedy; Sir Henry Taylor (1800–86), author of many verse plays, the best-known being Philip Van Artevelde (1834); Robert Bridges (1844–1930), Poet Laureate from 1913.
fn35 – George V reigned 1910–36.
The Love of Reading
fn1 – An adaptation by VW of her essay ‘How Should One Read a Book?’, used as a preface (pp. 3–5) to booklists entitled Company of Books, published November 1931, (Kp4 B13), by the Hampshire Bookshop, Northampton, Massachusetts, and by the Walden Bookshop, Chicago. Nothing is known about the genesis of this version, except the statement at the end of the preface: ‘Mrs. Woolf has prepared the above preface especially for Company of Books. It is abridged from a longer article from The Yale Review. (Copyright Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.)’. On p. 2 is a full-page cropped photograph of VW in her mother’s dress taken for Vogue in 1924. On p. 26 of the booklists, VW’s books are advertised, with a description of The Waves, which had been published by Harcourt, Brace on 22 October: ‘A book of great beauty, subtlety, and originality, in which the emotional responses to life, the innermost processes of thought, are Mrs. Woolf’s chief concern as she traces the development from childhood to maturity of a group of six persons.’ See ‘How Should One Read a Book?’, IV VW Essays, and CR2. See also ‘Reading’, ‘On Re-reading Novels’ and ‘Byron and Mr Briggs’, III VW Essays. Reprinted: The Love of Reading (Northampton, MA: Smith College Library, 1985).
fn2 – Daniel Defoe (1660?–1731); Jane Austen (1775–1817).
fn3 – Thomas Hardy (1840–1928); Thomas Love Peacock (1785–1866); Anthony Trollope (1815–82); George Meredith (1828–1909); Samuel Richardson (1689–1761); Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).
fn4 – Samuel Johnson (1709–84); John Dryden (1631–1700); Matthew Arnold (1822–88).
fn5 – Samuel Richardson, Clarissa (1747–8); Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910), Anna Karenina (1875–7).
The Docks of London
fna – Typescript draft and Good Housekeeping: ‘cast’.
fnb – Typescript draft and Good Housekeeping: ‘shrive’.
fn1 – A signed essay in Good Housekeeping, December 1931, (Kp4 C332.1); the first of six essays in ‘The London Scene’ (VW initially called the series ‘Six Articles on London Life’). The essay was accompanied by pen-and-ink sketches by Robin Tanner and was introduced: ‘To all who know or dream of the glamour of London we commend this finely etched word picture of London [sic] River, first in a gallery of scenes made vividly alive by the brilliant pen of Virginia Woolf’. When VW was negotiating through her agent, Curtis Brown, about writing for Good Housekeeping, she was conscious of the Huxleys visiting England to gather material for articles on industrial Britain: ‘I feel us, compared with Aldous & Maria, unsuccessful. They’re off today to do mines, factories … black country; did the docks when they were here; must see England … And I am to write 6 articles straight off about what? And a story. About what?’ (IV VW Diary, 17 February 1931). She wrote to Clive Bell on 21 February: ‘Aldous astounds me – his energy, his modernity. Is it that he can’t see anything that he has to see so much? Not content with touring Europe with Sullivan to ask all great men of all countries what they think of God, science, the soul, the future and so on, he spends his week in London visiting docks, where with Maria’s help he can just distinguish a tusk from frozen bullock: and now is off on a tour of the Black Country, to visit works, to go down mines’ (IV VW Letters, no. 2330). A month later she wrote: ‘I am writing little articles of a morning, & should have been sketching the Houses of the Great this morning, but that I have not the material’ (IV VW Diary, 16 March 1931). On 20 March she ‘visited the docks in a Port of London Authority launch with a party which included LW, Vita Sackville-West and the Persian Ambassador; she returned with Harold Nicolson’ (ibid., p. 15, fn. 8); the ‘launch went as far as Tilbury, and the party lunched with the P.L.A.’ (IV VW Letters, p. 301, fn. 2). For Nicolson’s broadcast on 27 March on ‘The Port of London’, see his People and Things: Wireless Talks (Constable, 1931), pp. 156–63. On 22 March VW wrote to Ethel Smyth: ‘I’m being bored to death by my London articles – pure brilliant description – six of them – and not a thought for fear of clouding the brilliancy: and I have had to go all over the Thames, port of London, in a launch, with the Persian Ambassador – but that I liked – I dont like facts, though’ (ibid., no. 2339). On 11 April she wrote: ‘Oh I am so tired of correcting my own writing … I have however learnt I think to dash: & not to finick. I mean the writing is free enough: its the repulsiveness of correcting that nauseates me. And the cramming in & the cutting out. And articles & more articles are asked for. For ever I could write articles’ (IV VW Diary). The same issue of Good Housekeeping also contained: the concluding chapters of John Galsworthy’s Maid-in-Waiting. See Appendix VIII and also the other essays in the series: ‘Oxford Street Tide’, ‘Great Men’s Houses’, ‘Abbeys and Cathedrals’, ‘“This is the House of Commons”’ and ‘Portrait of a Londoner’. A holograph draft, entitled ‘The Port of London’ (dated 13 March 1931), and a final typescript draft, entitled ‘The Docks’, together with the original layout and proofs (Berg, M 13, M 130). Reprinted: LSc, CDML.
fn2 – ‘Whither, O splendid ship, thy white sails crowding / Leaning across the bosom of the urgent West, / That fearest nor sea rising, nor sky clouding, / Whither away, fair rover, and what thy quest?’, from ‘A Passer-by’ by Robert Bridges (1844–1930), Poet Laureate, in OBEV, p. 1013, no. 835.
fn3 – CDML, pp. 203–4, n. 2: ‘Woolf names the places passed by a ship sailing into the Port of London: North Foreland is the [east]ernmost point of Kent; Reculver is in north Kent; thereafter the ship sails into the mouth of the Thames, passing Tilbury on the north bank and Gravesend and Northfleet on the south. Stretches of the Thames as it passes Erith are known as Erith Reach, then Barking Reach (where the sewage works and power station are) and finally Gallion’s Reach’, where the entrance to the Royal Docks is located.
fn4 – Greenwich Hospital was founded in 1694 and begun by Christopher Wren; in 1931 it was occupied by the Royal Naval College. The vocabulary of VW’s description is reminiscent of the opening of Coleridge’s poem ‘Kubla Khan’ (1797): ‘In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree: / Where Alph, the sacred river, ran …’ (OBEV, p. 650, no. 550).
fn5 – See The Times, 2 October 1928, ‘Port of London Number’: ‘For the purposes of this article London Docks and St. Katharine Dock may be taken together. They lie side by side, just below Tower Bridge, at the eastern end of the Pool. The name “London Docks” is not altogether a happy one; for the inference to be drawn from it is that it is the collective designation of all the docks on the Thames; whereas it denotes, in fact, a comparatively small part of these docks … Warehousing is here done on a scale more extensive than anywhere else in the Port of London … The variety of the goods handled is astonishing. Some of the more important of them are wine, ivory, wool, rubber, spices, canned fruits, seeds and skins. The floor space devoted to wool alone is nearly 30 acres; while about 27,000 pipes of wine can be stored in the vaults’ (‘The Docks of the Port of London’, p. xi, cols b–c).
fn6 – See The Times, 2 October 1928: ‘London is the ivory market of the world … the product is becoming scarce. Imports have shown a considerable decline in the past sixty years … As to the mammoth ivory of Siberia, few tusks of much commercial value reach London in these days … After the cargo has been unloaded at the Port it is weighed and classified and displayed ready for inspection on the ivory floor of warehouse no. 6 in the London Docks, where prospective buyers may investigate its density and whiteness previous to the quarterly auctions. Tusks 9ft. in length and 140lb. in weight are often to be seen on this floor … The small tusks are known as “scrivelloes” … the manufacturers of billiard balls buy the larger-sized scrivelloes’ (‘Ivory’, p. xviii, col. g); see also ‘Treasure Houses of London’, p. xvii, photograph, p. xix, and advertisement, p. xxix.
fn7 – See ibid.: ‘The storage of wines and spirits at the London Docks requires an area of more than 650,000 feet, as the bulk of imports into London are received by the Port Authority. The vaults here have been famous for more than 120 years, and some of the present stocks have been held since 1870. After having been unloaded from the ships … the wines and spirits are sampled and tested for strength at the Customs laboratory and the casks are gauged or measured … The rails in the gangways are 28 miles in length’ (‘Treasure Houses of London’, p. xvii, cols e–f); see also ‘Wines and Spirits’, p. xix.
fn8 – See CDML, p. 204, n. 10: ‘these are technical terms used in the storing of liquor. The “valinch” is a sampling tube, used for drawing wine from a cask through a bunghole; a ‘shive’ is a specially thin bung for sealing a cask; a “shirt” seems to be the term for an inner casing or lining, and a “flogger” is the instrument used to strike the cask in order to open the bung – as in the following sentence.’
fn9 – In a radio programme Lottie Hope, who worked for the Woolfs from 1916 to 1924 and then for other members of the Bloomsbury Group, described VW rolling her own cigarettes and using a brand of tobacco called ‘Virginia’; see ‘Portrait of Virginia Woolf’, Virginia Woolf: Critical Assessments, ed. Eleanor McNees (4 vols, Helm Information, 1994), vol. i, p. 98.
Oxford Street Tide
fn1 – A signed essay in Good Housekeeping, January 1932, (Kp4 C332.2); the second of six essays in ‘The London Scene’. The essay was accompanied by black-and-white modernist illustrations by S. G. Hulme Beaman and was introduced: ‘All the colour and fascination of London’s most garish, rolling ribbon of a street are in this brilliant word picture: and in the beautiful precision of its language and thought it reveals the name of its distinguished author – Virginia Woolf.’ On 28 March 1930 VW wrote: ‘A fine spring day. I walked along Oxford St. The buses are strung on a chain. People fight & struggle. Knocking each other off the pavement. Old bareheaded men; a motor car accident; &c. To walk alone in London is the greatest rest’ (III VW Diary). See also ‘The Docks of London’ above, and Appendix VIII. The same issue of Good Housekeeping also contained: St John Ervine’s ‘A Great Editor’, on J. L. Garvin of the Observer. A holograph draft, entitled ‘Streets and Shops’, and a final typescript draft, entitled ‘Oxford Street’, together with the original layout and proofs (Berg, M 13, M 131). Reprinted: LSc, CDML.
fn2 – The phrase ‘city change’ adapts Shakespeare’s ‘a sea-change’ from Ariel’s song in The Tempest, I, ii, 400, but also suggests the Royal Exchange in the City, abbreviated to ’Change.
fn3 – I.e. goods costing ‘two and six’ (2s. 6d. or half a crown, one-eighth of £1, in pre-decimal currency) are marked down to 1s. 11 3/4d.
fn4 – See ‘To ——’ (‘One word is too often profaned …’), by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822), in OBEV, p. 714, no. 615; the desire is defined as: ‘The devotion to something afar / From the sphere of our sorrow’.
fn5 – The mid-sixteenth-century Somerset House was demolished in the late eighteenth century, and replaced by the present building. The early-seventeenth-century Northumberland House was demolished in 1874, and the Percy lion on the arch above the main gateway was removed to Syon House, the Duke’s country house opposite Kew Gardens, where it is observed by Katherine Hilbery with ‘incredulous laughter’: see Night and Day (1919; Hogarth Press, 1930), ch. xxv, p. 348. The medieval Salisbury House (named after the Bishops of Salisbury) in Fleet Street was bought by Sir Richard Sackville in 1564; the Sackvilles were created Earls of Dorset in 1603; and the house was destroyed in the Great Fire of 1666. Robert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, built Salisbury House on the south side of the Strand in the early seventeenth century.
fn6 – The family names of the Dukes of Northumberland and Devonshire.
fn7 – VW related in her diary: ‘I will make this hasty note about being robbed. I put my bag under my coat at Marshall & Snelgrove’s. I turned; & felt, before I looked “It is gone”. So it was. Then began questions & futile messages. Then the detective came. He stopped a respectable elderly woman apparently shopping. They exchanged remarks about “the usual one – no she’s not here today. Its a young woman in brown fur.” Meanwhile I was ravaged, of course, with my own futile wishes – how I had thought, as I put down my bag, this is foolish. I was admitted to the underwor[l]d. I imagined the brown young woman peeping, pouncing. And it was gone my 6 pounds – my two brooches – all because of that moment. They throw the bags away, said the detective. These dreadful women come here – but not so much as to some of the Oxford St. shops. Fluster, regret, humiliation, curiosity, something frustrated, foolish, something jarred, by this underwor[l]d – a foggy evening – going home, penniless – thinking of my green bag – imagining the woman rifling it – her home – her husband …’ (III VW Diary, 23 December 1930). VW wrote to Vanessa Bell on Christmas Day: ‘I had a queer adventure by the way, the day I got your coat at Marshall and Snelgroves. I was given £6 to buy Xmas presents; I put my bag under my moleskin, and turned, for one moment, to try on your coat. Then I thought I ought not to leave the bag, so turned to get it – and behold – in that second a thief had snatched it! There was then a great hue and cry, and a detective appeared, and they said a woman in brown fur had been seen; but of course they could not catch her; so there I was, penniless, without key, spectacles, cigarette case or handkerchief. Marshall’s refused to lend me a penny as they said I was not on their books; but the detective gave me 10/- of his own. Later that night the bag was found, thrown in a drain; and marvellously, though the £6 were gone, the thief had left my spectacles, keys, and one old earring. I had just bought two for a present. So didn’t do as badly as I might’ (IV VW Letters, no. 2291).
The Rev. William Cole: A Letter
fn1 – A signed review in the NS&N, 6 February 1932, (Kp4 C333), of The Blecheley Diary of the Rev. William Cole, M.A. F.S.A., 1765–67, ed. Francis Griffin Stokes, with Introduction, ‘A Description of the Principal Personages Mentioned in the Diary …’ and Index by Helen Waddell (Constable, 1931). VW adopts the modern spelling of Bletchley. The issue of NS&N also contained: ‘The Rev. William Cole: A Review’ by Lord Ponsonby; letters from Julian Bell on animal cruelty and from Henry W. Nevinson on LW’s article, ‘Lytton Strachey’, of 30 January; Desmond MacCarthy’s review of Helen!, A. P. Herbert’s adaptation of Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène; and Augustine Birrell’s review of Sir Alfred Pease’s Elections and Recollections. See ‘All About Books’ above, and ‘Two Antiquaries: Walpole and Cole’, VI VW Essays. Reading notes (Berg, RN 1.8) (VWRN VIII). Reprinted: DoM, CE.
fn2 – See ‘All About Books’. Opposite the title page of The Blecheley Diary, in an advertisement for Cole’s Paris Journal ‘uniform with this volume’, and in between quotations from J. C. Squire in the Observer and Harold Nicolson in the Daily Express, the following quotation is taken from ‘All About Books’: ‘When [ . . ] the rumour spread that the diary of an old clergyman called Cole, who had gone to Paris in the autumn of 1765, was about to be published, and that Miss Waddell had put her brilliance and her erudition at our service, a purr of content and anticipation rose from half the armchairs of England … How excellent [VW: admirable] Mr. Cole would be at home in his own parish! How gladly we will read sixteen volumes about life in Blecheley if Miss Waddell will print them!’
fn3 – See Blecheley Diary, ‘A Description of the Principal Personages’, p. lix.
fn4 – Ibid., pp. 8–9.
fn5 – Horace Walpole (1717–97).
fn6 – See Blecheley Diary, ‘A Description’, pp. xlix–lx.
fn7 – See ibid., p. 129.
fn8 – Ibid., p. 68; see also p. 181.
fn9 – See ibid., p. 58: ‘Tom went … to Master Watt’s at Tatenhall in Quest of an Hare: but after all the Times he has been there & elsewhere in Persuit of one, he never brought me one in his Life.’
fn10 – For VW on James Woodforde (1740–1803), see CR2; Thomas Turner (1729–93), diarist and schoolmaster turned shopkeeper; for VW on John Skinner (1772–1839), see CR2; Thomas Gray (1716–71); Henry Fielding (1707–54); Jane Austen (1775–1817).
fn11 – Blecheley Diary, p. 164.
fn12 – See ibid., p. 144.
fn13 – See ibid., p. 141.
fn14 – See ibid., pp. 96–7.
