Jacob's Room

by Virginia Woolf

  She spent tenpence on lunch.

  "Dear, miss, she's left her umbrella," grumbled the mottled woman in the glass box near the door at the Express Dairy Company's shop.

  "Perhaps I'll catch her," answered Milly Edwards, the waitress with the pale plaits of hair; and she dashed through the door.

  "No good," she said, coming back a moment later with Fanny's cheap umbrella. She put her hand to her plaits.

  "Oh, that door!" grumbled the cashier.

  Her hands were cased in black mittens, and the finger-tips that drew in the paper slips were swollen as sausages.

  "Pie and greens for one. Large coffee and crumpets. Eggs on toast. Two fruit cakes."

  Thus the sharp voices of the waitresses snapped. The lunchers heard their orders repeated with approval; saw the next table served with anticipation. Their own eggs on toast were at last delivered. Their eyes strayed no more.

  Damp cubes of pastry fell into mouths opened like triangular bags.

  Nelly Jenkinson, the typist, crumbled her cake indifferently enough.

  Every time the door opened she looked up. What did she expect to see?

  The coal merchant read the Telegraph without stopping, missed the saucer, and, feeling abstractedly, put the cup down on the table-cloth.

  "Did you ever hear the like of that for impertinence?" Mrs. Parsons wound up, brushing the crumbs from her furs.

  "Hot milk and scone for one. Pot of tea. Roll and butter," cried the waitresses.

  The door opened and shut.

  Such is the life of the elderly.

  It is curious, lying in a boat, to watch the waves. Here are three coming regularly one after another, all much of a size. Then, hurrying after them comes a fourth, very large and menacing; it lifts the boat; on it goes; somehow merges without accomplishing anything; flattens itself out with the rest.

  What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch, streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in dishevelment away? The corn squirms and abases itself as if preparing to tug itself free from the roots, and yet is tied down.

  Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops-as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.

  "People are so nice, once you know them."

  "I couldn't think ill of her. One must remember-" But Nick perhaps, or Fanny Elmer, believing implicitly in the truth of the moment, fling off, sting the cheek, are gone like sharp hail.

  "Oh," said Fanny, bursting into the studio three-quarters of an hour late because she had been hanging about the neighbourhood of the Foundling Hospital merely for the chance of seeing Jacob walk down the street, take out his latch-key, and open the door, "I'm afraid I'm late"; upon which Nick said nothing and Fanny grew defiant.

  "I'll never come again!" she cried at length.

  "Don't, then," Nick replied, and off she ran without so much as good-night.

  How exquisite it was-that dress in Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury Avenue! It was four o'clock on a fine day early in April, and was Fanny the one to spend four o'clock on a fine day indoors? Other girls in that very street sat over ledgers, or drew long threads wearily between silk and gauze; or, festooned with ribbons in Swan and Edgars, rapidly added up pence and farthings on the back of the bill and twisted the yard and three-quarters in tissue paper and asked "Your pleasure?" of the next comer.

  In Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury Avenue the parts of a woman were shown separate. In the left hand was her skirt. Twining round a pole in the middle was a feather boa. Ranged like the heads of malefactors on Temple Bar were hats-emerald and white, lightly wreathed or drooping beneath deep-dyed feathers. And on the carpet were her feet-pointed gold, or patent leather slashed with scarlet.

  Feasted upon by the eyes of women, the clothes by four o'clock were flyblown like sugar cakes in a baker's window. Fanny eyed them too. But coming along Gerrard Street was a tall man in a shabby coat. A shadow fell across Evelina's window-Jacob's shadow, though it was not Jacob. And Fanny turned and walked along Gerrard Street and wished that she had read books. Nick never read books, never talked of Ireland, or the House of Lords; and as for his finger-nails! She would learn Latin and read Virgil. She had been a great reader. She had read Scott; she had read Dumas. At the Slade no one read. But no one knew Fanny at the Slade, or guessed how empty it seemed to her; the passion for ear-rings, for dances, for Tonks and Steer-when it was only the French who could paint, Jacob said. For the moderns were futile; painting the least respectable of the arts; and why read anything but Marlowe and Shakespeare, Jacob said, and Fielding if you must read novels?

  "Fielding," said Fanny, when the man in Charing Cross Road asked her what book she wanted.

  She bought Tom Jones.

  At ten o'clock in the morning, in a room which she shared with a school teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones-that mystic book. For this dull stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes. Good people like it. Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their legs read Tom Jones-a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have liked-much better than ear-rings and flowers, she sighed, thinking of the corridors at the Slade and the fancy-dress dance next week. She had nothing to wear.

  They are real, thought Fanny Elmer, setting her feet on the mantelpiece. Some people are. Nick perhaps, only he was so stupid. And women never-except Miss Sargent, but she went off at lunch-time and gave herself airs. There they sat quietly of a night reading, she thought. Not going to music-halls; not looking in at shop windows; not wearing each other's clothes, like Robertson who had worn her shawl, and she had worn his waistcoat, which Jacob could only do very awkwardly; for he liked Tom Jones.

  There it lay on her lap, in double columns, price three and sixpence; the mystic book in which Henry Fielding ever so many years ago rebuked Fanny Elmer for feasting on scarlet, in perfect prose, Jacob said. For he never read modern novels. He liked Tom Jones.

  "I do like Tom Jones," said Fanny, at five-thirty that same day early in

  April when Jacob took out his pipe in the arm-chair opposite.

  Alas, women lie! But not Clara Durrant. A flawless mind; a candid nature; a virgin chained to a rock (somewhere off Lowndes Square) eternally pouring out tea for old men in white waistcoats, blue-eyed, looking you straight in the face, playing Bach. Of all women, Jacob honoured her most. But to sit at a table with bread and butter, with dowagers in velvet, and never say more to Clara Durrant than Benson said to the parrot when old Miss Perry poured out tea, was an insufferable outrage upon the liberties and decencies of human nature-or words to that effect. For Jacob said nothing. Only he glared at the fire. Fanny laid down Tom Jones.

  She stitched or knitted.

  "What's that?" asked Jacob.

  "For the dance at the Slade."

  And she fetched her head-dress; her trousers; her shoes with red tassels. What should she wear?

  "I shall be in Paris," said Jacob.

  And what is the point of fancy-dress dances? thought Fanny. You meet the same people; you wear the same clothes; Mangin gets drunk; Florinda sits on his knee. She flirts outrageously-with Nick Bramham just now.

  "In Paris?" said Fanny.

  "On my way to Greece," he replied.

  For, he said, there is nothing so detestable as London in May.

  He would forget her.

  A sparrow flew past the window trailing a straw-a straw from a stack stood by a barn in a
farmyard. The old brown spaniel snuffs at the base for a rat. Already the upper branches of the elm trees are blotted with nests. The chestnuts have flirted their fans. And the butterflies are flaunting across the rides in the Forest. Perhaps the Purple Emperor is feasting, as Morris says, upon a mass of putrid carrion at the base of an oak tree.

  Fanny thought it all came from Tom Jones. He could go alone with a book in his pocket and watch the badgers. He would take a train at eight-thirty and walk all night. He saw fire-flies, and brought back glow-worms in pill-boxes. He would hunt with the New Forest Staghounds. It all came from Tom Jones; and he would go to Greece with a book in his pocket and forget her.

  She fetched her hand-glass. There was her face. And suppose one wreathed Jacob in a turban? There was his face. She lit the lamp. But as the daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor (and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in the glass), still-there lay Tom Jones.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  "Archer," said Mrs. Flanders with that tenderness which mothers so often display towards their eldest sons, "will be at Gibraltar to-morrow."

  The post for which she was waiting (strolling up Dods Hill while the random church bells swung a hymn tune about her head, the clock striking four straight through the circling notes; the glass purpling under a storm-cloud; and the two dozen houses of the village cowering, infinitely humble, in company under a leaf of shadow), the post, with all its variety of messages, envelopes addressed in bold hands, in slanting hands, stamped now with English stamps, again with Colonial stamps, or sometimes hastily dabbed with a yellow bar, the post was about to scatter a myriad messages over the world. Whether we gain or not by this habit of profuse communication it is not for us to say. But that letter-writing is practised mendaciously nowadays, particularly by young men travelling in foreign parts, seems likely enough.

  For example, take this scene.

  Here was Jacob Flanders gone abroad and staying to break his journey in Paris. (Old Miss Birkbeck, his mother's cousin, had died last June and left him a hundred pounds.)

  "You needn't repeat the whole damned thing over again, Cruttendon," said Mallinson, the little bald painter who was sitting at a marble table, splashed with coffee and ringed with wine, talking very fast, and undoubtedly more than a little drunk.

  "Well, Flanders, finished writing to your lady?" said Cruttendon, as Jacob came and took his seat beside them, holding in his hand an envelope addressed to Mrs. Flanders, near Scarborough, England.

  "Do you uphold Velasquez?" said Cruttendon.

  "By God, he does," said Mallinson.

  "He always gets like this," said Cruttendon irritably.

  Jacob looked at Mallinson with excessive composure.

  "I'll tell you the three greatest things that were ever written in the whole of literature," Cruttendon burst out. "'Hang there like fruit my soul.'" he began...

  "Don't listen to a man who don't like Velasquez," said Mallinson.

  "Adolphe, don't give Mr. Mallinson any more wine," said Cruttendon.

  "Fair play, fair play," said Jacob judicially. "Let a man get drunk if he likes. That's Shakespeare, Cruttendon. I'm with you there. Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together. 'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" he began quoting, in a musical rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black, you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine washed over the rim.

  "'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" Cruttendon and Jacob both began again at the same moment, and both burst out laughing.

  "Curse these flies," said Mallinson, flicking at his bald head. "What do they take me for?"

  "Something sweet-smelling," said Cruttendon.

  "Shut up, Cruttendon," said Jacob. "The fellow has no manners," he explained to Mallinson very politely. "Wants to cut people off their drink. Look here. I want grilled bone. What's the French for grilled bone? Grilled bone, Adolphe. Now you juggins, don't you understand?"

  "And I'll tell you, Flanders, the second most beautiful thing in the whole of literature," said Cruttendon, bringing his feet down on to the floor, and leaning right across the table, so that his face almost touched Jacob's face.

  "'Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,'" Mallinson interrupted, strumming his fingers on the table. "The most ex-qui-sitely beautiful thing in the whole of literature... Cruttendon is a very good fellow," he remarked confidentially. "But he's a bit of a fool." And he jerked his head forward.

  Well, not a word of this was ever told to Mrs. Flanders; nor what happened when they paid the bill and left the restaurant, and walked along the Boulevard Raspaille.

  Then here is another scrap of conversation; the time about eleven in the morning; the scene a studio; and the day Sunday.

  "I tell you, Flanders," said Cruttendon, "I'd as soon have one of Mallinson's little pictures as a Chardin. And when I say that..." he squeezed the tail of an emaciated tube... "Chardin was a great swell... He sells 'em to pay his dinner now. But wait till the dealers get hold of him. A great swell-oh, a very great swell."

  "It's an awfully pleasant life," said Jacob, "messing away up here.

  Still, it's a stupid art, Cruttendon." He wandered off across the room.

  "There's this man, Pierre Louys now." He took up a book.

  "Now my good sir, are you going to settle down?" said Cruttendon.

  "That's a solid piece of work," said Jacob, standing a canvas on a chair.

  "Oh, that I did ages ago," said Cruttendon, looking over his shoulder.

  "You're a pretty competent painter in my opinion," said Jacob after a time.

  "Now if you'd like to see what I'm after at the present moment," said Cruttendon, putting a canvas before Jacob. "There. That's it. That's more like it. That's..." he squirmed his thumb in a circle round a lamp globe painted white.

  "A pretty solid piece of work," said Jacob, straddling his legs in front of it. "But what I wish you'd explain..."

  Miss Jinny Carslake, pale, freckled, morbid, came into the room.

  "Oh Jinny, here's a friend. Flanders. An Englishman. Wealthy. Highly connected. Go on, Flanders..."

  Jacob said nothing.

  "It's THAT-that's not right," said Jinny Carslake.

  "No," said Cruttendon decidedly. "Can't be done."

  He took the canvas off the chair and stood it on the floor with its back to them.

  "Sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Carslake comes from your part of the world, Flanders. From Devonshire. Oh, I thought you said Devonshire. Very well. She's a daughter of the church too. The black sheep of the family. Her mother writes her such letters. I say-have you one about you? It's generally Sundays they come. Sort of church-bell effect, you know."

  "Have you met all the painter men?" said Jinny. "Was Mallinson drunk? If you go to his studio he'll give you one of his pictures. I say, Teddy..."

  "Half a jiff," said Cruttendon. "What's the season of the year?" He looked out of the window.

  "We take a day off on Sundays, Flanders."

  "Will he..." said Jinny, looking at Jacob. "You..."

  "Yes, he'll come with us," said Cruttendon.

  And then, here is Versailles. Jinny stood on the stone rim and leant over the pond, clasped by Cruttendon's arms or she would have fallen in. "There! There!" she cried. "Right up to the top!" Some sluggish, sloping-shouldered fish had floated up from the depths to nip her crumbs. "You look," she said, jumping down. And then the dazzling white water, rough and throttled, shot up into the air. The fountain spread itself. Through it came the sound of military music far away. All the water was puckered with drops. A blue air-ball gently bumped the surface. How all the nurses and children and old men and young crowded to the edge, leant over and waved their sticks! The little girl ran stretching her arms towards her air-ball, but it sank beneath the fountain.
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br />   Edward Cruttendon, Jinny Carslake, and Jacob Flanders walked in a row along the yellow gravel path; got on to the grass; so passed under the trees; and came out at the summer-house where Marie Antoinette used to drink chocolate. In went Edward and Jinny, but Jacob waited outside, sitting on the handle of his walking-stick. Out they came again.

  "Well?" said Cruttendon, smiling at Jacob.

  Jinny waited; Edward waited; and both looked at Jacob.

  "Well?" said Jacob, smiling and pressing both hands on his stick.

  "Come along," he decided; and started off. The others followed him, smiling.

  And then they went to the little cafe in the by-street where people sit drinking coffee, watching the soldiers, meditatively knocking ashes into trays.

  "But he's quite different," said Jinny, folding her hands over the top of her glass. "I don't suppose you know what Ted means when he says a thing like that," she said, looking at Jacob. "But I do. Sometimes I could kill myself. Sometimes he lies in bed all day long-just lies there... I don't want you right on the table"; she waved her hands. Swollen iridescent pigeons were waddling round their feet.

  "Look at that woman's hat," said Cruttendon. "How do they come to think of it?... No, Flanders, I don't think I could live like you. When one walks down that street opposite the British Museum-what's it called?-that's what I mean. It's all like that. Those fat women-and the man standing in the middle of the road as if he were going to have a fit..."

  "Everybody feeds them," said Jinny, waving the pigeons away. "They're stupid old things."

  "Well, I don't know," said Jacob, smoking his cigarette. "There's St.

  Paul's."

  "I mean going to an office," said Cruttendon.

  "Hang it all," Jacob expostulated.

  "But you don't count," said Jinny, looking at Cruttendon. "You're mad. I mean, you just think of painting."

  "Yes, I know. I can't help it. I say, will King George give way about the peers?"

  "He'll jolly well have to," said Jacob.

  "There!" said Jinny. "He really knows."