To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

wash a beggar's dirty foot, when she admonished them so very severely

  about that wretched atheist who had chased them--or, speaking accurately,

  been invited to stay with them--in the Isle of Skye.

  "There'll be no landing at the Lighthouse tomorrow," said Charles Tansley,

  clapping his hands together as he stood at the window with her husband.

  Surely, he had said enough. She wished they would both leave her and

  James alone and go on talking. She looked at him. He was such a

  miserable specimen, the children said, all humps and hollows. He couldn't

  play cricket; he poked; he shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew

  said. They knew what he liked best--to be for ever walking up and down,

  up and down, with Mr Ramsay, and saying who had won this, who had won

  that, who was a "first rate man" at Latin verses, who was "brilliant but I

  think fundamentally unsound," who was undoubtedly the "ablest fellow in

  Balliol," who had buried his light temporarily at Bristol or Bedford, but

  was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which Mr Tansley

  had the first pages in proof with him if Mr Ramsay would like to see

  them, to some branch of mathematics or philosophy saw the light of day.

  That was what they talked about.

  She could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the other day,

  something about "waves mountains high." Yes, said Charles Tansley, it

  was a little rough. "Aren't you drenched to the skin?" she had said.

  "Damp, not wet through," said Mr Tansley, pinching his sleeve, feeling

  his socks.

  But it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his face;

  it was not his manners. It was him--his point of view. When they talked

  about something interesting, people, music, history, anything, even said

  it was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors, then what they

  complained of about Charles Tansley was that until he had turned the whole

  thing round and made it somehow reflect himself and disparage them--he was

  not satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries they said, and he

  would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did not.

  Disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly the

  meal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr and Mrs Ramsay sought

  their bedrooms, their fastness in a house where there was no other privacy

  to debate anything, everything; Tansley's tie; the passing of the Reform

  Bill; sea birds and butterflies; people; while the sun poured into those

  attics, which a plank alone separated from each other so that every

  footstep could be plainly heard and the Swiss girl sobbing for her father

  who was dying of cancer in a valley of the Grisons, and lit up bats,

  flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paint-pots, beetles, and the skulls of

  small birds, while it drew from the long frilled strips of seaweed pinned

  to the wall a smell of salt and weeds, which was in the towels too,

  gritty with sand from bathing.

  Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the very

  fibre of being, oh, that they should begin so early, Mrs Ramsay deplored.

  They were so critical, her children. They talked such nonsense. She went

  from the dining-room, holding James by the hand, since he would not go

  with the others. It seemed to her such nonsense--inventing differences,

  when people, heaven knows, were different enough without that. The real

  differences, she thought, standing by the drawing-room window, are enough,

  quite enough. She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor, high and low;

  the great in birth receiving from her, half grudging, some respect, for

  had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly

  mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English

  drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly, had

  stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her temper came

  from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the cold Scotch; but more

  profoundly, she ruminated the other problem, of rich and poor, and the

  things she saw with her own eyes, weekly, daily, here or in London, when

  she visited this widow, or that struggling wife in person with a bag on

  her arm, and a note-book and pencil with which she wrote down in columns

  carefully ruled for the purpose wages and spendings, employment and

  unemployment, in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman

  whose charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her

  own curiosity, and become what with her untrained mind she greatly

  admired, an investigator, elucidating the social problem.

  Insoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there, holding

  James by the hand. He had followed her into the drawing-room, that young

  man they laughed at; he was standing by the table, fidgeting with

  something, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things, as she knew without

  looking round. They had all gone--the children; Minta Doyle and Paul

  Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her husband--they had all gone. So she

  turned with a sigh and said, "Would it bore you to come with me,

  Mr Tansley?"

  She had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write; she

  would be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And, with her

  basket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes later, giving out

  a sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt, which, however, she

  must interrupt for a moment, as they passed the tennis lawn, to ask

  Mr Carmichael, who was basking with his yellow cat's eyes ajar, so that

  like a cat's they seemed to reflect the branches moving or the clouds

  passing, but to give no inkling of any inner thoughts or emotion

  whatsoever, if he wanted anything.

  For they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing. They were

  going to the town. "Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?" she suggested,

  stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His hands clasped

  themselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes blinked, as if he would

  have liked to reply kindly to these blandishments (she was seductive but a

  little nervous) but could not, sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolence

  which embraced them all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolent

  lethargy of well-wishing; all the house; all the world; all the people in

  it, for he had slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops of something,

  which accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak of

  canary-yellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk white. No,

  nothing, he murmured.

  He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs Ramsay, as they went

  down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an unfortunate

  marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and moving with an

  indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going to meet some one

  round the corner, she told the story; an affair at Oxford with some girl;

  an early marriage; poverty; going to India; translating a little poetry

  "very beautifully, I believe," being willing to teach the boys Persian or

  Hindustanee, but what really was the use of that?--and then lying, as they

  sa
w him, on the lawn.

  It flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs Ramsay

  should tell him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuating, too, as she

  did the greatness of man's intellect, even in its decay, the subjection of

  all wives--not that she blamed the girl, and the marriage had been happy

  enough, she believed--to their husband's labours, she made him feel better

  pleased with himself than he had done yet, and he would have liked, had

  they taken a cab, for example, to have paid the fare. As for her little

  bag, might he not carry that? No, no, she said, she always carried THAT

  herself. She did too. Yes, he felt that in her. He felt many things,

  something in particular that excited him and disturbed him for reasons

  which he could not give. He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded,

  walking in a procession. A fellowship, a professorship, he felt capable

  of anything and saw himself--but what was she looking at? At a man

  pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each

  shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds and

  blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with the

  advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty performing seals,

  lions, tigers ... Craning forwards, for she was short-sighted, she read it

  out ... "will visit this town," she read. It was terribly dangerous work

  for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to stand on top of a ladder like

  that--his left arm had been cut off in a reaping machine two years ago.

  "Let us all go!" she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and horses

  had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget her pity.

  "Let's go," he said, repeating her words, clicking them out, however, with

  a self-consciousness that made her wince. "Let us all go to the circus."

  No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it right. But why not?

  she wondered. What was wrong with him then? She liked him warmly, at the

  moment. Had they not been taken, she asked, to circuses when they were

  children? Never, he answered, as if she asked the very thing he wanted;

  had been longing all these days to say, how they did not go to circuses.

  It was a large family, nine brothers and sisters, and his father was a

  working man. "My father is a chemist, Mrs Ramsay. He keeps a shop." He

  himself had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he went without

  a greatcoat in winter. He could never "return hospitality" (those were

  his parched stiff words) at college. He had to make things last twice the

  time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag; the same the

  old men did in the quays. He worked hard--seven hours a day; his subject

  was now the influence of something upon somebody--they were walking on and

  Mrs Ramsay did not quite catch the meaning, only the words, here and

  there ... dissertation ... fellowship ... readership ... lectureship. She

  could not follow the ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so

  glibly, but said to herself that she saw now why going to the circus had

  knocked him off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out,

  instantly, with all that about his father and mother and brothers and

  sisters, and she would see to it that they didn't laugh at him any more;

  she would tell Prue about it. What he would have liked, she supposed,

  would have been to say how he had gone not to the circus but to Ibsen with

  the Ramsays. He was an awful prig--oh yes, an insufferable bore. For,

  though they had reached the town now and were in the main street, with

  carts grinding past on the cobbles, still he went on talking, about

  settlements, and teaching, and working men, and helping our own class,

  and lectures, till she gathered that he had got back entire

  self-confidence, had recovered from the circus, and was about (and now

  again she liked him away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the

  whole bay spread before them and Mrs Ramsay could not help exclaiming,

  "Oh, how beautiful!" For the great plateful of blue water was before her;

  the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the right,

  as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats,

  the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which always

  seemed to be running away into some moon country, uninhabited of men.

  That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that her

  husband loved.

  She paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here. There

  indeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama hat and yellow

  boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was watched by ten

  little boys, with an air of profound contentment on his round red face

  gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping; imbuing the tip of his

  brush in some soft mound of green or pink. Since Mr Paunceforte had been

  there, three years before, all the pictures were like that, she said,

  green and grey, with lemon-coloured sailing-boats, and pink women on the

  beach.

  But her grandmother's friends, she said, glancing discreetly as they

  passed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own colours, and

  then they ground them, and then they put damp cloths to keep them moist.

  So Mr Tansley supposed she meant him to see that that man's picture was

  skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren't solid? Was that what

  one said? Under the influence of that extraordinary emotion which had been

  growing all the walk, had begun in the garden when he had wanted to take

  her bag, had increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her

  everything about himself, he was coming to see himself, and everything he

  had ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.

  There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she had taken

  him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment to see a woman. He

  heard her quick step above; heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at

  the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked

  forward eagerly to the walk home; determined to carry her bag; then heard

  her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the

  doors shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking

  to a child) when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if

  she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now),

  stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria

  wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; when all at once he realised that

  it was this: it was this:--she was the most beautiful person he had ever

  seen.

  With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and wild

  violets--what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least; she had

  eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking to her

  breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with the stars in

  her eyes and the wind in her hair--He had hold of her bag.

  "Good-bye, Elsie," she said, and they walked up the street, she holding

  her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet some one round

&n
bsp; the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles Tansley felt an

  extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped digging and looked

  at her, let his arm fall down and looked at her; for the first time in his

  life Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the

  cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman. He

  had hold of her bag.

  2

  "No going to the Lighthouse, James," he said, as trying in deference to

  Mrs Ramsay to soften his voice into some semblance of geniality at least.

  Odious little man, thought Mrs Ramsay, why go on saying that?

  3

  "Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing,"

  she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy's hair, for her

  husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine, had dashed his

  spirits she could see. This going to the Lighthouse was a passion of his,

  she saw, and then, as if her husband had not said enough, with his caustic

  saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this odious little man went and

  rubbed it in all over again.

  "Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow," she said, smoothing his hair.

  All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the pages of

  the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon something like a

  rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs and its handles, would

  need the greatest skill and care in cutting out. All these young men

  parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it would rain; they said it

  would be a positive tornado.

  But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the picture of a

  rake or a mowing-machine was interrupted. The gruff murmur, irregularly

  broken by the taking out of pipes and the putting in of pipes which had

  kept on assuring her, though she could not hear what was said (as she sat

  in the window which opened on the terrace), that the men were happily

  talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and had taken its

  place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top of her, such as

  the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now and then,

  "How's that? How's that?" of the children playing cricket, had ceased;

  so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach, which for the most

  part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her thoughts and seemed

  consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat with the children

  the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature, "I am guarding

  you--I am your support," but at other times suddenly and unexpectedly,

  especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task actually in

  hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of drums

  remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the destruction

  of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her whose day had

  slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all ephermal as

  a rainbow--this sound which had been obscured and concealed under the

  other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears and made her look up

  with an impulse of terror.

  They had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in one second

  from the tension which had gripped her to the other extreme which, as if

  to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, was cool, amused,

  and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poor Charles Tansley had

  been shed. That was of little account to her. If her husband required

  sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Charles

  Tansley, who had snubbed her little boy.

  One moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waited for

  some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then, hearing

  something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in the garden, as