by Gillian Gill
“I was so surprised at”: H. Garnett, Anny, pp. 167–68.
“It is true that my baby”: Ibid., p. 156.
a natural mimic: Ibid., p. 167.
forty-one hundred pounds: Aplin, A Thackeray Family Biography, vol. 2, p. 10.
removed from the bench: Fitzjames was removed from the bench when he told the jury, in the famous trial of Florence Maybrick, accused of murdering her husband, that “an adulteress by nature was likely to commit murder”—a step too far even at that time.
“the receptacle of Leslie”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 93.
“explore [her] body”: Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 69.
Bell is discounting: Quentin Bell, Bloomsbury Recalled (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), p. 46. Bell says Gerald’s inspecting of Virginia was “horrid,” but a “schoolboy’s misdemeanor” of which many are probably guilty. “There was nothing else at all against Gerald.”
lifelong consequences: In The Years, one of her last and less admired novels, Woolf breaks important ground in the history of sexual abuse by showing how one small girl is affected by one apparently trivial incident. Rose Pargiter is the youngest child in a family of seven, her whole family is nervously awaiting the death of Mrs. Pargiter, and Rose is bored and neglected. She lives largely in an imaginary world, in which she is an intrepid soldier engaged on a special mission.
One evening, Rose is eager to have a real adventure—to go to a local shop on her own to buy a toy. This is strictly forbidden, but she steals her nurse’s key and slips out of the house unnoticed in the growing dusk. A man on a street corner sees her go by, and his appearance frightens her. Upon her return with her purchase, he exposes himself to her. Rose gets home safely but she is no longer a brave soldier, and she has nightmares. When her older sister begs to know what Rose has seen that has so upset her, Rose will not say. She is never able to tell anyone about this incident, but as Rose Pargiter grows up into a warrior for social justice, her whole life will become an attempt to deal with her fears.
She had her own room: In her reconstruction of the complex six-story house at 22 Hyde Park Gate in “A Sketch of the Past,” collected in Moments of Being, Virginia Woolf places the kitchen and the servants’ “lounge” in the sub-basement; the dining room in the basement; the hallway leading to the street, the two drawing rooms, and the conservatory where she and Vanessa worked on what is known in the United States as the first floor; her parents’ rooms on the second floor; the Duckworths, on the third floor; the nurseries, later bedrooms for herself and her three full siblings, on the fourth floor; and finally Leslie’s big study and, presumably, the servants’ bedrooms on the fifth floor. In her final years, Grandmother Jackson had rooms on the second floor, near her daughter’s bedroom. There was one full bathroom plus three flush toilets in the house. It is not clear from this plan where Laura was accommodated—on the Duckworths’ floor, on her father’s floor, or in one of the nurseries.
DeSalvo, who bothered: Louise DeSalvo, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Abuse on Her Life and Work (New York: Ballantine Books, 1989). DeSalvo has a long section (pp. 45–51) on the sexual attitudes of both J. K. “Jem” Stephen and his father, Fitzjames Stephen. Jem excelled both socially and academically at Eton and then at Cambridge and was famous in his set for his clever, licentious verse. DeSalvo offers quotes to illustrate how deeply Jem hated women and imagined committing violence against them. After coming down from the university, Jem became tutor to the Duke of Clarence, then third in line to the English throne, but was dismissed by the Prince of Wales when rumors circulated that he was introducing the young prince to a “dissipated and unstable life”—that is, open homosexuality. It has been suggested that Jem Stephen or the Duke of Clarence could have been Jack the Ripper.
“an idiot asylum”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 101.
“She was perfectly all right”: H. Garnett, Anny, note on p. 256.
Laura’s “dowry”: Aplin’s second volume on the Thackeray family is full of new information about Laura. There is no doubt that Leslie Stephen knew about the arrangements that William Makepeace Thackeray had made for his wife, Isabella, which his daughter Anne continued. After Minny’s death, Leslie used part of the money he inherited from her to buy a small house for her mother that was nearer to London and thus easier for his sister-in-law, Anne, to visit. Stephen’s biographers cite this as an example of his affectionate generosity, but according to John Aplin, Isabella did not live in that house for very long since her caretakers preferred to be near the sea. The house then reverted to Leslie to sell or rent, so his generosity cost him little.
“Leonard says Laura is”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 103.
“there was Thackeray’s”: Woolf, “Old Bloomsbury,” in Moments of Being, p. 182.
8. Julia Prinsep Jackson Duckworth Stephen
“Can I remember ever”: Woolf, “A Sketch from the Past, in Moments of Being, p. 83.
“What a jumble of things”: Ibid., pp. 83 and 84.
the Mausoleum Book: In 1977, the Clarendon Press published Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, edited and with an excellent introduction by Alan Bell.
“drape and arrange”: Virginia Woolf’s introduction to Cameron, Victorian Photographs, p. 12.
“Somehow Jackson did not”: Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, p. 26.
“dropped like a stone into”: H. Garnett, Anny, p. 82. Garnett is summarizing a section from the Thackeray family’s correspondence.
perfection in spats: Virginia Woolf seems to have questioned her aunt Mary Fisher about Herbert Duckworth, and the response may have surprised her. “Oh darling,” Aunt Mary replied, “a beam of light, like no one I have ever met . . . when Herbert Duckworth came into the room . . . when Herbert Duckworth smiled . . .” Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 89. Julia Stephen’s sister, it would seem, was also a little in love with Herbert.
never talked about Herbert: Julia’s close friend Kitty Maxse told Virginia Woolf that on only one occasion did Julia Stephen refer to Herbert, remarking that her first marriage had been the time she “was as unhappy and as happy as it is possible for a human being.” Ibid.
“the perfect type”: Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, p. 35.
write letters of farewell: The character Christina Pontifex pens such a letter in the novel The Way of all Flesh (1903) as she approaches her fourth confinement. Mrs. Pontifex in fact survives, though the baby dies. The book’s author, Samuel Butler, says writing such letters was a custom among women of his parents’ generation.
the chubby little blond: I am not simply being mean about George Duckworth. In one of the Cameron group pictures, the widowed Julia Duckworth is shown with her son George on her knee, a rather sullen and quite chunky three- or four-year-old. Cameron, Victorian Photographs, plate 30.
heavily veiled in black: H. Garnett, Anny, p. 223.
“I was only 24 when”: Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, p. 40.
a man of means: A good measure of the affluence of the Duckworths is to be found in “Aunt Minna,” that is, Sarah Duckworth, Herbert’s sister, who inhabited a house in Hyde Park Gate near the Stephens. She lived a life of considerable luxury and no labor, traveling abroad regularly, with some grateful young woman relation in tow.
“clothed in drab”: Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, p. 41. Stephen is quoting from one of Julia’s letters to him.
“I have so long felt that”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 193.
“My hope is for Leslie and Julia’s”: Aplin, A Thackeray Family Biography, vol. 2, p. 28. It is this phrase from Thackeray Ritchie, a close friend writing at the time of the wedding about Julia’s situation—“to give up her liberty and her prestige and her money”—that leads me to conclude that, when she married, Julia may have lost her dower rights from Herbert Duckworth or her allowance from his family.
what her parents’ marriage: The Oxford World Classics edition of The V
oyage Out details the several versions of the novel and presents the 1915 version. This volume, first issued in 1992 and updated in 2000, has an insightful biographical preface by Frank Kermode plus a good critical bibliography, and it is superbly edited and introduced by Lorna Sage.
Notes from Sickrooms: This pamphlet was reproduced, along with and under the title of Virginia Woolf’s essay “On Being Ill,” in a new edition, introduced by Hermione Lee and published by Paris Press, Ashfield, Massachusetts, in 2012.
self-involved phony: One of the things Leslie Stephen achieved in the Mausoleum Book was to settle the score with his despised brother-in-law Vaughan. See Sir Leslie Stephen’s Mausoleum Book, pp. 68–70.
“I do not think that either”: Ibid., pp. 74–75.
a little house at Chenies: Ibid., p. 75.
“Professions for Women”: “Professions for Women” was published in The Death of the Moth and Other Essays in June 1942, a year or so after Woolf’s death. The essay is included in Michèle Barrett’s Virginia Woolf: Women and Writing.
Patient Griselda Redux: Chaucer’s Griselda, my readers may remember, was “tested” by her husband, who first rescued her out of extreme poverty, then systematically took away everything he had given her—her children, her home, her clothes, her status. Griselda was “patient”—that is, she endured suffering—and in the end got her husband and children and position back. Moral?
Nightingale’s marvelous aunt: For more on Florence Nightingale’s remarkable feminist aunts Patty Smith and Julia Smith, and her first cousin Barbara Leigh Smith Bodichon, see my book Nightingales.
“It was like meeting her”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 81.
“I ceased to be obsessed”: Ibid., p. 80.
9. Stella Duckworth Hills
the autobiographical pieces: Both these essays, along with other shorter autobiographical essays, are collected in the invaluable small volume Virginia Woolf: Moments of Being, beautifully edited with an introduction and notes by Jeanne Schulkind.
“in the shade of”: Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 96.
“was not clever, she seldom read”: Ibid., pp. 41–42.
“How proud, priggishly, I was”: Ibid., p. 112.
“Stella’s coming out”: Ibid., p. 43.
“It was very natural”: Ibid., p. 102.
even he never thought: After Stella’s death, Jack separated off part at least of the fortune that Stella had brought into the marriage and divided the income from it between his wife’s sisters Vanessa and Virginia. Hills became a successful and affluent lawyer, and despite his speech defect was for a short time a member of Parliament.
“What her mother felt”: Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 44.
he already treated Julia: Kitty Maxse, talking with Virginia Woolf about Jack and how mean his mother had been to him, once remarked that Mrs. Hills probably resented the way her son treated Julia Stephen as a mother.
“Next to the war memorial”: L. Woolf, Beginning Again, p. 66.
“The marriage would have”: Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 105.
“My darling Thoby, I want”: King’s College Library Collection, CHA/1/79.
“Stella went to Laura”: Virginia Woolf, a Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals, 1897–1909, edited by Mitchell A. Leaska (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1990), pp. 11–12 and 13.
“a pendant gold watch”: Spalding, Vanessa Bell, p. 21. Spalding notes that Vanessa made the pendant into a wristwatch and wore it all her life.
a very dark reading: DeSalvo, Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Sexual Abuse, p. 60.
10. A Close Conspiracy
“I do not want to go”: Woolf, “A Sketch of the Past,” in Moments of Being, p. 107. The quotations in this chapter, unless otherwise indicated, are from this unfinished essay written between 1939 and 1940. I give some page numbers in the text to help my readers make their way around this extraordinary document.
“Sometimes,” remarks Nigel: Nigel Nicolson’s introduction to The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, p. xvii.
“Eros came with a commotion”: Bell, Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, p. 44.
“There is no way of knowing”: Lee, Virginia Woolf, p. 156.
“My dear old Bar . . .”: Woolf to George Duckworth, April 22, 1900, The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, p. 31.
“recording a love that had”: Ibid., p. xviii. Nicolson is surely accurate in saying that “in her early letters, Virginia barely conceals the passion she had conceived” for Violet, and that their relationship may “have gone further than childish endearments.”
some stray little postcard: Random letters from famous people have a tendency to turn up when someone starts looking for them. For example, after the death of “Sido,” Colette’s mother, all of Colette’s hundreds of letters to Sido vanished, probably destroyed by Colette’s older brother. Even so, odd postcards from Colette to Sido were eventually found by a zealous collector. See my novel-biography Becoming Colette (Amazon, 2015).
“I am glad that I shall”: Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell, edited by Regina Marler (Mt. Kisco, NY: Moyer Bell, 1998), p. 23.
if she picked up the phone: In Bloomsbury Recalled, Quentin Bell uses this incident of Sir George calling his sister Vanessa as the introduction to his essay on his mother, titled “Ludendorff Bell.”
11. From Cambridge to Bloomsbury
“Oh how thankful I shall”: Woolf to Violet Dickinson, [October 1904], The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, p. 147.
B.A. M.A. (Cantab): One of the perks of going up to Cambridge, as I recall, was that a few years after graduating you got mysteriously promoted from B.A. to M.A. without your needing to take a single course.
Cambridge Conversazione Society: The Cambridge Conversazione Society around the turn of the twentieth century had a strong showing of philosophers, including Alfred North Whitehead, Bertrand Russell, G. E. Moore, and, briefly, Ludwig Wittgenstein. As one looks at the various men who figure in the biography of Virginia Woolf, it is interesting to note which of them were Apostles—and which were not. Sir Leslie Stephen was not an Apostle, but his more successful and affluent elder brother, James Fitzjames Stephen, was. The loyal disciple and discreet biographer of Leslie Stephen, Frederic Maitland, was an Apostle. Leslie Stephen’s eldest grandson, Julian Bell, was an Apostle, but by his time the prestige of the group was in decline. See Paul Levy’s brilliant book G. E. Moore and the Cambridge Apostles (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1981). This is the same Paul Levy to whom we owe the erudite and enlightening 2003 edition of the letters of Lytton Strachey.
“By far the most valuable”: G. E. Moore, Principia Ethica, pp. 188–89. Quoted as preface to Part I of Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, 1883–1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (New York: Penguin Books, 2003).
“Old Bloomsbury” was obsessed: See Woolf, “Old Bloomsbury,” in Moments of Being, pp. 179–201.
group of elite young men: The generation at Trinity College, circa 1810, of Tennyson and Hallam, Thackeray and Monckton Milnes, was already “Cambridge.” Byron, whose statue in stone graces the Wren Library at Trinity College, was a little too early and over the top to be “Cambridge.” There was also, of course, an “Oxford,” which to outside observers looked remarkably like “Cambridge” but to insiders was as different as chalk from cheese. A “Cambridge” visitor to “Oxford” might be compared to Marco Polo, journeying far to encounter an ancient but alien civilization crumbling into picturesque decline. That was certainly the reaction of Virginia Woolf, who wrote to Violet Dickinson in December 1907: “I have been staying in Oxford, and stretching my brains with trained Arabs, with not an ounce of flesh on them. The atmosphere at Oxford is quite the chilliest and least human known to me; you see brains floating like so many sea anemones.” The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, pp. 319–320.
Downing and Selwyn: When considering the hostile attacks launched at the Bloomsbury gr
oup by the critic F. R. Leavis, it is not irrelevant to note that Leavis was a fellow of Downing.
when the Newnhamites: These Newnhamites had affairs with and/or married men on the fringes of Bloomsbury, such as Adrian Stephen, Rupert Brooke, James Strachey, Ralph Partridge, Harry Norton, and Gerald Shove. Virginia Woolf knew these women, liked them, criticized them, and feared them. They made her feel old-fashioned and fuddy-duddy, and she nicknamed them, along with students of the Slade School of Art such as Carrington and Barbara Hiles, the “Cropheads” because they had dared to cut their hair to cheek length. Quentin Bell says that his mother, Vanessa Bell, came up with the name “neo-pagans” for this group of young women and men who loved to camp out and go swimming in the nude together. Once, staying with Rupert Brooke at Grantchester, Virginia shocked herself, more than the world, by going skinny-dipping with her host.
it was not until 1947: Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes, p. 12.
“We were anarchical”: A draft of this paper is now held in the Wren Library at Trinity College.
their supervision essays: “Supervisions” is what Cambridge calls tutorials. Oddly, from our point of view today, both Vanessa and Virginia Stephen learned to type as teenagers not because it might be useful to them personally but because it might be useful to a male writer to have a sister or daughter willing to type for free. Lytton Strachey’s brilliant and highly educated sisters—one of them became Mistress of Newnham College—typed his work for him until he could afford to employ young male secretaries.
his gyp would have cleaned: Both Cambridge and Oxford Universities had a specific lexicon. In Cambridgese, the college servant who looked after your room or suite as an undergraduate was the “gyp.” A student at Trinity or King’s who hosted a party for his friends could expect his gyp to clear up, wash and put away the plates, and clean the floor of ash, crumbs, spit, and vomit. The gyps also cleaned the shared bathrooms. College service offered regular and not badly paid employment for local men in Cambridge, and many treasured the opportunity to be a gyp for a noble, affluent, or handsome undergraduate.
