Ah, London, Mr. Dalloway continued, now entering Bond Street (Bond Street shimmered and shone before him; a resplendent, glittering stretch). Back when he and Clarissa were courting he would pick her up at Bourton, and they would take the train in together, arriving at Waterloo, then walk across the great Hungerford footbridge. The arrival was splendid, always splendid. (The city was quieter then, he noticed.) It seemed to open up to them, to extend its huge arms and embrace them, to invite them, pull them in, like a favourite uncle does his niece (just as he himself did with his own nieces). And then once they had arrived at Trafalgar Square; well, it was—what ? Splendour. Glory. Rapture. It took his breath away!
But here Richard Dalloway paused at the curb: where was it Clarissa had said she went to buy flowers? She had told him (he rummaged through his mind)...J, K, L, M (for so his conscious mind worked), oh yes, that was it: M—Mulberry’s.
Mulberry’s, Mulberry’s, Mulberry’s, he mumbled to himself—a mouthful. But there was Hatchards’ book shop. He stopped and looked in the window: announcements from Duckworth, Faber (Robbie!), the Hogarth Press. What was new? Well now let’s see (Mr. Dalloway took out his spectacles): something by that Freud fellow, a Viennese doctor, a psychologist, whose theories everyone, or so he had heard, was discussing at the moment—perhaps it was Blitzer who had mentioned him; rather controversial he gathered. What else? A Mr. T. S. Eliot, a poet; he did not read poetry; leave poetry, Shakespeare and all that, to Clarissa, to the ladies (he thought reflexively); the latest novel by that Mrs. Woolf (who, he thought now, adjusting his hat in the window, despite her keenly perceptive mind and—he must admit—considerable descriptive powers, had not captured it all, not all of it, in her novel of two years past: for she did not know; could not have known—only Clarissa knew); and the new Keynes—The End of Laissez-Faire. Should he pop in, just for a moment? he wondered. Buy a novel for Clarissa? Something on animals for Elizabeth (for she was studying to be a veterinarian) ? Or some new history, or a biography, for himself? No, not this morning: he would continue on his way, fulfill his mission.
Mulberry’s, Mulberry’s, he munched the words. Pale colours at Mulberry’s. Ah, there it was. He pushed through the swing doors and was greeted by a myriad of scents wafting through the air. There were so many scents and colours, in fact, that he felt submerged into an altered reality, a thick, viscous, overly pungent fantasy world; it was daunting (his nerves were still raw).
Advancing through the shop like a lioness traverses the jungle terrain, a red-handed Miss Pym (Clarissa had said to ask for her, that she would assist him) approached, asking if she might help.
Indeed, she could, Richard Dalloway thanked her, introducing himself; for he knew nothing of flowers (he looked around again—rainbows. He took a deep breath—perfume). He told her what he wanted—pale colours—and she nodded and smiled (for that was her job). Inquiring after Mrs. Dalloway (a fine lady she is, Miss Pym thought; she had always liked her), she proceeded to name the flowers as she pulled them out of the water: delphiniums, carnations, sweet peas, dahlias, peonies, anemones, roses, irises, freesia, lilac, lilies of the valley, the list went on. But he knew nothing of flowers, he said (trees were more in his line). And so he would leave it to her. They were to be delivered.
But just when he said “delivered,” as if a judgement had been cast down upon him from out of the heavens, a loud noise—a pop, a boom—sounded from the street outside. Richard Dalloway and Miss Pym both rushed to the window. Had someone, someone important perhaps, been shot?
“Sounded like a cannon going off, it did,” Miss Pym said, scouring the street scene, laying one hand against the side of her face. “Or a rifle shot.”
A crowd gathered, descended (like crows to carrion, Richard Dalloway thought) in the direction of the offending noise.
Millicent Gordon, a healthy, middle-aged, heavily painted Bath matron in London for the day, said she was sure it was the Queen, that the Queen had been shot (and here she clutched her heart).
But wizened old Aaron Frye, who had seen it all in his seventy years, who had been a lamplighter in Chelsea in the mid-to-late seventies; who had lost a grandson in the War, Aaron Frye heard Millicent Gordon and laughed out loud. “The Queen!” he cried, amused. He was sure it couldn’t be the Queen—for the Queen was in the palace.
So they hoped, said the Hughes’s, a young couple from America on their honeymoon, upon hearing Aaron Frye. “I hope it’s not the Queen,” said Cindy Hughes. “That would ruin everything.” For like hundreds of thousands (millions, perhaps) of others who had made the pilgrimage before them, they were on their way to Buckingham Palace.
“A tyre,” Richard Dalloway surmised, deflating the moment as he took in view—amidst the crowd—one corner of an off-balance motor car standing in a small, black puddle of rubber directly across the street. It was nothing. And yet it was something in that it had completely exploded his composure; his sureness—both the noise and the ensuing, hungry crowd. Or perhaps it was the stimulation of the shop that was affecting him poorly, for now he felt not quite like himself Did she really think pale colours, he asked Miss Pym; did she really think pale colours best for Clarissa, or rather Mrs. Dalloway—his wife, for she knew her after all?
Indeed, she did, Miss Pym assured him; it was a fine choice, the best (impressed she was that a man would know these things. How she longed for such a man).
Big Ben struck the hour as Richard Dalloway exited the florist shop, though not, of course, until he had profusely thanked Miss Pym (who had become positively coquettish). As he listened to the bells—one, two, three—he imagined concentric golden rings floating through the air, then settling, melting into the earth. Time was passing. Four, five, six (the golden rings floated, fell); seven, eight, nine (the rings melted; the earth absorbed them); ten, eleven. The bells stopped, and the quiet brought with it now a sense of expectation. Of anticipation. Would something, would someone, answer?
SITTING ON A BENCH in Russell Square, the leaden bells of some clock beating in his brain (one, two, three), Robert Davies noticed the lamppost light glinting off the wedding ring he had now worn for several years (though he was not married). It was his father’s ring, and Davies had taken to wearing it, though it hung loose upon his finger, after his father’s death (for they had been close; in fact his father was the only man with whom he had ever really been close—until Richard). Time, he thought, hearing the bells—it was unavoidable, relentless, irrevocable, fmal—time, beating in his brain that very moment (four, five, six...). Time, indeed (for who would ever have thought that he would be sitting alone in Russell Square in 1927, his parents dead?). Yes, time—eleven A.M. on a Tuesday morning (the Times was folded across his lap), and how he would spend the balance of the day he did not know. There he was, on only the second day of what was supposed to be a week’s holiday: what a laugh. Well, at least he had made it out of the house, he reasoned (for the previous day he had stayed in; had been unable to go out). But now what? Paris? The library? (It was close-by.) He just could not go in to the office, for they would think him insane (nor did he particularly feel like working). Perhaps he was insane? He had been hospitalized—more than once; he had tried to kill himself Or perhaps he should (yet again) list his assets: what it was, exactly, that he did have.
He lifted a small notebook and a pen from his jacket pocket, then flipped through to a blank page. Now, what did he have? he asked himself Be sensible. He had taken his degree at Oxford (for surely that meant something). He owned a home in Fitzroy Square (he had moved there from Hyde Park after his parents’ untimely death); he recorded this in the notebook. He had Ł500 a year until 1949 from his father (he listened to the pen scratch across the paper); there was his job (an editorial position with Faber). It was summer-time (now he was reaching; stretching and straining). And here his mind took what was, for him, an inevitable turn (and the pen skidded flat across the page), a turn towards thinking more about what he did not have (now he looked up into the sky
as if...)—close family, love, meaning in life. His parents were dead; he had no siblings (though he’d almost had—his mother’s first-born, a boy, a potential brother, had died within days after birth). The man he loved—dare he say that ?—and here he thought of Oscar Wilde—the man he loved belonged to someone else. What else was there? he asked the universe—for he had read extensively in philosophy. But there was no reply.
SUCH A HANDSOME MAN, Clarissa Dalloway thought, walking through Russell Square and noticing a tall, thin, dark-haired man sitting on a bench (she patted her own hair under her hat, knowing she was not far now from Dolly Lansdown’s). But so pale (she continued); like me. Pale, yes, but elegant too (she passed him), one leg hanging over the other—the lines of his trousers just so (clothes hang so well on the very thin, she thought, as they did on herself). And wasn’t that a wedding ring she had noticed? But if it was a ring, and she was now certain that it was, then where was his wife? Had they quarrelled? Or perhaps he was a recent widower, the poor soul—sitting there on a bench, still in mourning? Oh, horrors! The very thought of it made her tremble—for what would she do without Richard? (Then, for a brief moment, as the tears welled in her eyes, the sidewalk, the trees, the buildings, and the sky were displaced, were fused into a jumbled, fractured, Cubist kaleidoscope.) She stumbled; she paused and collected herself; she wiped her eyes and then proceeded (now she was walking alongside the British Museum). There she had gone again (she thought), making up stories, stories about people, people she did not know (Richard had once warned her against it. But that was years ago). It was silly, but was it wrong? Perhaps he was waiting for his wife, she thought now. Perhaps his wife had ducked into a shop, and he was sitting on a park bench with the Times this June day, waiting for her. It was possible. So why (Clarissa wondered) did her mind always take that sad, that downward turn? She did not know. It always had. It just seemed to come naturally to her. Richard would say (she thought now, pulling herself together) that it was her compassion for the human condition, for he knew about such things—felt and did for the poor; the Indians (Peter Walsh was in India; in India with his Daisy). But there was Little Russell Street and Dolly Lansdown’s number.
ELIZABETH DALLOWAY checked the small watch she wore in a locket around her neck—11.15. She would be arriving at choked Victoria Station, the thought of which caused her, once again, to look out the train window at the lush, lovely landscape (that was how she thought of it); she mouthed the words to herself “lush, lovely landscape” (for, besides animals, she also loved words). The green, rolling hills (and such a keen, intense green it was, she mused, nursed along by what had seemed an endless rain that spring—an emerald green); the cottages and cows (“cottages and cows”); the fields of wild flowers. She liked it all so much more than London, where she had grown up (London, which was dingy and dreary and noisy and so terribly, so densely overcrowded). She would live there, too, in the country, in that lovely landscape that was rolling by (preferably somewhere in Sussex), once she had her degree and was practising—for, realising that she liked people who were ill, and that animals were often ill, and remembering that Miss Kilman had told her every profession was open to women of her generation, she had applied to veterinary school and been accepted. Yes, it was true, though she could scarcely believe it herself She could still remember her excitement when the acceptance had come in the morning post: “The Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, the diploma granting body governing the Veterinary Profession,” it said, had accepted her. But then came her boldest move to date: instead of going to the College there in London, right in Red Lion Square, she would go to their affiliate in Liverpool—the Liverpool University School of Veterinary Science. She would tell her parents that she had heard, from the veterinarian father of one of her fellow veterinarians-to-be she would say, that the affiliate in Liverpool was the best of the lot.
And so she had. And it was there that she would earn her degree and then, afterwards, set up her practice in Sussex. She would have a farm of sorts—her own horse (perhaps more than one), and a dog, a cat, too; a rabbit—maybe even a pig, Elizabeth laughed to herself. She would be a countrywoman (and plant her feet firmly in the earth), just as her father—to this very day—was, at heart, a country gentleman, even though he had lived in London for over a quarter of a century. (He would visit her there, on her farm in the country, and they would go for long walks across the downs.) That was her aim in life. She wanted to be solid, like Miss Kilman, not idle and frivolous like her mother. But she did so look forward to seeing them—father; mother; and her beloved dog Grizzle.
RICHARD DALLOWAY strolled down Bond Street towards, towards what? Towards whom? He had bought the flowers (and they were to be delivered); Clarissa had said she would be having lunch with Lady Hosford in Mayfair; Elizabeth wouldn’t be home until later. Of course there was the party to tend to but then, suddenly, doom struck him: he was alone in the world, alone with nowhere to go, no one to turn to. He would return home to an empty house (empty, empty—the words sounded out. He had had more than his share of these days in the recent past). And so his thoughts turned to Robbie. No, he couldn’t. He musn’t. He was trying not to. (“I understand,” Clarissa had said.) Or he was trying, at least, to limit himself—to keep it to no more than once a week. Now he struggled to look up, to look out of the cobwebs that covered him; there was Picadilly. He stopped, turned, and began walking in the opposite direction. I will just go into Hatchards’ (he told himself); I will go into Hatchards’ and buy that novel for Clarissa, that book on animals for Elizabeth, and perhaps a new history, or biography, or the new Keynes, for myself Yes, that is all (he reassured himself); that is all I am doing.
Inside Hatchards’, Mr. Dalloway collected himself They knew him after all; greeted him; “G’day, sir,” the clerk had said when he walked in the door. And he, what had he done? he asked himself as he looked around; he had tipped his hat in return, for he must keep up appearances.
Now (he thought, orienting himself), there was that Freud fellow; there Mrs. Woolf. To the Lighthouse: he muttered the words to himself as he picked up the book and examined its cover—a watery painting of a lighthouse and waves (yes, Clarissa would like it, he thought). He put Mrs. Woolf under his arm and proceeded to look around. There was Shakespeare. “No decent man ought to read Shakespeare’s sonnets,” he recalled having said once, “because it is like listening at keyholes....” But then it had dogged him—Clarissa herself had teased him about it from time to time; and worse, Lady Rosseter—whom he and Clarissa had known at Bourton as Sally Seton—Lady Rosseter, at their party just a few years back, had remembered it and said he had said it at Bourton, when he and Clarissa were courting. Then, there, in his very own house, at his party, she had dangled it in front of him; she had taunted him, teased him.
Shall Time’s best jewel from Time’s chest lie hid?
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot back?
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid?
O! None, unless this miracle have might,
That in black ink my love may still shine bright.
Richard Dalloway now read on an open page. Duncan! he thought. And then he remembered: Robbie read Shakespeare! “Like listening at keyholes,” he recalled his own words. And what were he and Robbie but listening at keyboles?
But here Mr. Dalloway tried to shake off the dusty, grey particles into which his mind had sunk. He would clear his head. He oriented himself: where was he? what was he doing? (He was breathing heavily. Relaxation was the key: breathe deeply.) The name “Hatchards”‘—the actual sign out in front of the store, on Bond Street—flashed through his mind. Oh, yes: Hatchards’. Books. Something for Elizabeth (Mrs. Woolf was under his arm for Clarissa; he felt the weight of it). He supposed he would have to ask the clerk for help as far as something for Elizabeth went, for he knew little of animals (in the biological sense), and even less of veterinary medicine.
The next few minutes (time passing) would be excruciating, he
knew: approaching the clerk; asking for help; listening to suggestions; and, finally, choosing Elizabeth’s book and then making the purchase—pure agony. But he also knew that he could do it; for time and time again he had marched or maneuvered, riding thoroughbred waves of sheer discipline, through difficult situations. And ride himself through this one Richard Dalloway did; for he had experience at doing such things. Surely that counted for something.
Out of Hatchards’ and onto Bond Street once again, greeted by the thick, heavy air, by relief, by the sounds of life itself, Mr. Dalloway stood in place on the pavement holding his parcel of books and collecting himself drawing himself up, only to notice—once again—the noise of the city. Motor cars, taxis, and vans rode past him. The roar, the hum, of so many running motors in unison. Omnibuses whirling down Picadilly. Boys on bicycles racing by. And the people; all of humanity, throngs walking to and fro, back and forth. The orchestration of it all; a city symphony—it was dazzling, daunting. Then a loud buzzing took over, a sort of sawing sound. He looked up: was it an aeroplane? The sky was overcast. He couldn’t see anything, but the buzzing continued. (He looked around to see if anyone else had heard it and was looking up. No.) Was it an aeroplane, or was it merely a fly, a fly near his ear? He swatted around both ears. The buzzing faded. Then, there, amidst the din and uproar and before he knew what he was doing, Mr. Dalloway turned and began walking away from the most direct route home (away! away!) and towards Oxford Street (what was he doing?). There was the intersection of Regent Street. He knew all too well what he was doing: he was throwing himself into it, he was nearing Bloomsbury; Fitzroy Square; Robbie!
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