by Peter Dally
Leonard was understandably reluctant to take Virginia away, but Savage said his promise must be kept; to break it would bring on a crisis and risk suicide. He was wrong, clinically inept and weak. He should have insisted on Virginia going back to the home for further treatment, and if she had refused – unlikely had he been firm – he should have threatened to send her to a mental hospital; as a suicide risk, he had the power to do so. Ill as she was, part of her was probably still in touch with reality and would have been relieved by firm direction.
Leonard took Virginia to the village inn where they had stayed on their honeymoon, an unwise choice, perhaps. Virginia rapidly became worse. She believed people were watching and organising plots against her. Everywhere was threatening and alarming. Every shadow and creak had meaning. Sleep was impossible without a drug, and Leonard doled out a sleeping pill, Veronal, each night, keeping the supply locked in his case. Mealtimes were battles which Virginia increasingly won; Leonard, she protested, was forcing her to eat unnecessarily. Leonard, in desperation, appealed to Vanessa, who wrote telling Virginia to ‘be sensible and don’t make things difficult for Leonard … he is far more sensible than you are, and trust him to know how to get things right’.18 It did not help.
Leonard cut short the holiday and returned to London. Once there, to Leonard’s surprise and relief, Virginia agreed to see Dr Henry Head. Head was more a neurophysiologist than a clinical psychiatrist. His chief work before the war had been concerned with sensation, but later he became interested in shell shock and co-operated with W. H. R. Rivers, the psychotherapist. The Woolfs had heard of him through Roger Fry, whose schizophrenic wife he had seen, and Virginia’s resistance may have been overcome by learning that Head was also a poet.
Head at once recognised the seriousness of the situation and advised Virginia’s immediate admission to a nursing home. She would ‘get perfectly well again if she followed advice’, rested in bed and ate well for a few weeks. It was no different from the rest cure that Savage would have prescribed, but there was no realistic alternative treatment. Virginia appeared to acquiesce, and when Leonard brought her back to Gordon Square he was relieved to observe how calm she was. He left her in the bedroom with a friend, and with Vanessa went to see Savage to explain why they had bypassed him and gone to Dr Head. Left alone for a moment, Virginia opened Leonard’s unlocked case, found the Veronal and swallowed a large dose. She became deeply unconscious, and thirty-six hours elapsed before she awoke.
It would be unfair to criticise Head, who was not consulted again, for he could have done little more. A sudden calm in someone deeply depressed is a danger sign, a signal that suicide is a strong possibility; once the decision to die has been decisively taken, agitation disappears. Virginia had decided to kill herself, and she planned her action deliberately. Leonard normally made sure his case was locked and it was a curious oversight for so careful a man; but given the strain he was under, not extraordinary.
A suicide attempt often lifts depression, sometimes for good if the time is ripe, but usually any improvement is transient. When Virginia recovered she seemed tranquil for a few days, but then agitation and depression began to reappear Her attitude to Leonard, however, changed, and anger and paranoia gave way to a childlike need for him. She wanted Leonard to be continually with her, and would only eat if he fed her, encouraging her with each mouthful.
George Duckworth lent the Woolfs his country house for the emergency. Nurses were in attendance day and night. At times Virginia objected violently to them and demanded Leonard alone look after her. At other times she was silent and withdrawn, lying motionless on her bed, expressionless, passively resistant, taking up to two hours to eat a small meal. Leonard was exhausted but he never lost patience or rebuked her, and always encouraged her with soothing words and touches. He recognised that ‘if left to herself she … would have gradually starved to death’. Over the years Leonard came to believe Virginia had ‘a taboo against eating’. It was, he wrote, ‘extraordinarily difficult ever to get her to eat enough to keep her strong and well’.19 Leonard perhaps over-emphasised the problem, partly because he believed her mental stability depended on maintaining a ‘good’ weight, but also because Virginia became noticeably more anorexic when there was tension between them.
Virginia slowly improved. In mid-November she moved from Dalingridge Place to Asham with two nurses in attendance, and in February she was well enough to give up the last one. Depressive thoughts, verging on the delusional, came and went and she continued to cling to Leonard and ask his forgiveness, repeatedly telling him, ‘how much I am grateful and repentant. You have made me so happy.’20
Leonard, understandably, had almost reached the end of his tether. For months he had had to remain in the sickroom, listening, pleading, encouraging, supervising eating and toilet, urging her to be calm and take her medicines (bromides, chloral, Veronal), watching for danger signals. By March he was suffering from painful tension headaches and had lost a considerable amount of weight. Reluctantly, he was persuaded to leave Virginia in the care of Vanessa and two friends, and go away to recuperate with Lytton Strachey. Virginia immediately felt lost and anxious:
If you could have seen my sorrow after you went you would have no doubts about my affection [she wrote]. Old Mandril does want her Master so badly and last night his empty bed was so dismal, and she went and kissed the pillow.21
Leonard responded reassuringly,
Don’t think, dear one, that I’m ill. I’m not … But I’m lonely without you. You can’t realise how utterly you would end my life for me if you had taken that sleeping mixture successfully or if you ever dismissed me.’22
By June Virginia was well enough for Leonard to leave her alone at Asham for a day or two, having promised to be in bed by 10.25 each night, drink a whole glass of milk in the morning, have breakfast in bed and ‘to be wise and to be happy’.23 She and Leonard went for a holiday to Northumbria in August, just after the declaration of war – which had no obvious effect on Virginia – and on her return her recovery seemed complete. It was not.
Leonard had given up their rooms in Cliffords Inn in early 1914. Virginia was now keen to resume life in London, but Leonard was convinced that all excitement had to be avoided and he refused to consider living in central London. At first Virginia stood her ground, but she admitted she was liable to become intoxicated ‘by the delights of chatter’,24 and eventually accepted Leonard’s choice of Richmond, close enough to London for work, but too far out for hectic social life. They took lodgings there and began house-hunting, and at the beginning of 1915 began negotiations for the lease on Hogarth House, a large Georgian country house built in 1720, and now divided in two.
On 23 February, breakfasting in bed and talking to Leonard, Virginia suddenly became violently excited and distressed. She believed her mother was in the room and began talking wildly to her. It was the beginning of mania. Leonard was caught unawares although, in fact, there had been small but cumulative warning signs of mental trouble from the beginning of January. Headaches had returned and Virginia was sleeping badly. More ominously, she had bouts of irritability, disinhibition, and fleeting paranoia.
Her diary, which she had resumed that January and which ended on 15 February, records, ‘I begin to loathe my kind’ (3 January); ‘I do not like the Jewish voice’ of Flora Woolf (4 January); and on 9 January, after passing a line of imbeciles, ‘They should certainly be killed.’ A noisy quarrel with Leonard broke out at the end of January, which lasted all morning.
What were the emotions that pushed Virginia into madness? Why did she develop mania rather than depression? And why was it ushered in by an hallucinatory encounter with her mother?
Leonard believed the imminent publication (in March) of The Voyage Out caused the outburst but there is nothing to suggest she was unduly anxious about the book. She mentions the novel only once in the diary, at the end of January, when she wrote, ‘Everyone, so I predict, will assure me [it] is the most brilliant thi
ng they’ve ever read, and privately condemn, as indeed it deserves to be condemned,’ not an attitude anticipatory of mania.25
More interesting is why the spectre of Virginia’s mother materialised. Hallucinatory figures do not usually appear without cause, in the absence of intoxicants. However mad someone may be, the spectre has to be summoned or provoked into appearing by word or deed which, by association, releases powerful emotions.
There is no record of what the Woolfs were discussing that morning at breakfast; perhaps the move to Hogarth House, talking about her family. Sex was often in Virginia’s thoughts at that time. She was fascinated by Lytton Strachey’s sister’s infatuation with an older married man, ‘the great affair of her life’.26 She was taking an undue interest in a tumultuous affair Clive had been having with Molly MacCarthy: ‘as I could have foretold, after violent scenes … they have parted’.27 Three days after the hallucinatory scene, by now calmer but still clearly hypomanic, she told Lytton Strachey:
Let us all subscribe to buy a parrot for Clive. It must be a bold primitive bird, trained of course to talk nothing but filth, and to indulge in obscene gestures … The fowl could be called Molly or Polly.28
It may be significant that Virginia read The Wise Virgins for the first time on 31 January. She records she ‘was made very happy by it’, although there is little in the book, other than Leonard’s rudeness to his mother, that might have pleased her. She made no reference to Leonard’s portrayal of her (Camilla’s) sexual inadequacy, although it must surely have disturbed her.
The spectre of her mother created violent distress in Virginia. Julia stood for Victorian standards, female domesticity, a home run by the woman and ruled by the man, a concept long rejected by her daughter. Did Julia’s ghost tell her she was a failure as a woman? Did Julia’s words merge with Leonard’s, that she was frigid and unfit for motherhood? Virginia was angry, yet over the following three days she idealised her marriage: ‘our happiness is wonderful’.29 It was followed by furious rage against Leonard.
A week after her mother’s appearance Virginia erupted into full-blown mania and nurses had to be summoned. She went into a nursing home while Leonard moved into Hogarth House, and joined him there, in the care of four nurses, on 1 April. She was difficult to restrain and talked incessantly, hardly making sense, her voice trailing off into incoherent mumbling. She barely slept, scarcely ate or drank, and resisted violently all attempts to feed and clean her until, growing exhausted, she gradually subsided into stupor. She lay ‘like a stone statue’, her lips occasionally moving soundlessly, withdrawn into a world of her own.30 Three or four days later she slowly began to return to life. She now responded to questions and co-operated with the nurses, but she remained wary of Leonard and bristled whenever he came near.
Over the following two months, Virginia’s mood was a mixture of depression and euphoria. Often she was reasonable, but she was also unpredictable, liable to sudden outbursts of violence. Her hostility to Leonard continued and for a time she was so vicious towards him that he dared not enter her room. She said ‘the most malicious and cutting things’, which distressed him to breaking point.31
Very gradually Virginia’s anger faded and the symptoms of the illness, although not its memory, ceased. In September she was able to stay at Asham with Leonard and one nurse, and in the New Year she began leading a normal if sheltered life at Hogarth House.
Chapter Ten
Inner and Outer Worlds
After three years of mental illness, Virginia struggled to make sense of the experience. It had been an horrific time yet she had known moments of ‘exquisite happiness’,1 and glimpsed truths about herself and ideas for her writing. It taught her ‘a good deal about what is called oneself’,2 and it gave rise to the ‘poems, stories, profound and to me inspired phrases’ which she would develop in the future.3 She had come to recognise the creative power in her mental depths and that, as a novelist, she needed both inner and outer worlds. As an essayist and reviewer she was placed firmly in reality. As a novelist she had to let herself down, as she put it, into the depths, and return to reality with whatever she found.
Genius needs the subconscious, but whatever comes up is valueless without intellectual discipline. An artist with schizophrenia, never fully in touch with reality or in control of his mind, cannot create in any meaningful sense. Leonard was wrong in his belief that Virginia was never sane. Had she not been sane for most of her marriage she could never have written what she did.
At first she ‘was so tremblingly afraid of my own insanity’,4 that she drew back from exploring her mind, but the desire for ‘goblin fruits’ was often strong and she longed for their refreshing taste.5 In 1917 she began to write Night and Day. It was what Leonard called a factual novel, without disturbing material; she deliberately kept off ‘that dangerous ground’. Writing the novel gave her self-confidence and even before she finished, new ideas came bursting into her mind, ‘all in a flash, as if flying, after being kept stone-breaking for months’. There followed ‘The Mark on the Wall’, ‘Kew Gardens’, ‘The Unwritten Novel’, short stories that showed her how she might embody all her ‘deposit of experience in a shape that fitted it’. By January 1920 she had arrived ‘at some idea of a new form for a novel’.6
She was now secure enough to welcome subconscious sources of inspiration. Many of her works were made up as she lay in bed with depression; ideas effortlessly presented themselves, to be stored for later use. Music, especially the late quartets of Beethoven, could also have this effect, as could walking alone, through the old parts of London, or across the Sussex Downs.
Virginia’s need to write was, among other things, to make sense of mental chaos and gain control of madness. Through her novels she made her inner world less frightening. Writing was often agony but it provided ‘the strongest pleasure’ she knew.7
Leonard believed his wife’s sensitivity to criticism was liable to make her ill; every time she finished a novel, depression followed. It is true she was sometimes depressed during the proof-reading stage and while waiting for publication, but this was as much due to what was going on in her life as to the novel. Leonard invariably overlooked such stresses; perhaps because he was often involved.
When Virginia started a novel, she was excited but relaxed and usually stable. In the final stages, when she repeatedly revised, she often did become exhausted and depressed. Yet she was never in danger of serious depression from the writing itself. No author becomes mad writing a book, although he may write the book because he is on the brink of madness and subsequently goes mad. Virginia was apprehensive when she completed a novel, but once Leonard praised the work Virginia was able to relax.
After 1916 Virginia saw Leonard in a new light, had ‘a child’s trust in Leonard’.8 He was the strong linchpin, able to control her gyrations, the adored father and maternal protector in one. She gave way to him on anything touching her health, but he was also a trusted friend to whom she could tell everything. No longer had she to hold back her feelings; when she was angry she said so. She was sure of their love. ‘Darling love, I kiss thee’, she wrote when he went away for a night to lecture, and promised to eat ‘exactly as if you were here’, despite weighing 40 pounds above her normal weight, and being ‘hardly able to toil uphill’.9 She and Leonard cuddled and kissed but there was no attempt at sexual intercourse. Virginia had chosen her ‘narrow, virginal bed’,10 and Leonard, after being so battered emotionally by Virginia, was unlikely to have wanted to share it.
Leonard loved Virginia, but looked on her as a child, ‘never completely sane’,11 needing to be closely watched and protected. He ensured she maintained her weight, and at the first sign of headache or insomnia made her rest and stop imaginative writing. A sudden flight of fancy in conversation was a warning sign of hypomania, a need for rest and quiet, although often it was no more than Virginia enjoying herself in company. He strove to keep Virginia within the bounds of reality. At his instigation she joined the Richmond Bra
nch of the Women’s Co-operative Guild, and for four years she organised guest speakers and presided over monthly meetings at Hogarth House.
It was largely to provide Virginia with a practical occupation as far removed from the imagination as possible that in March 1917 Leonard bought a small hand-printing press and installed it at home – the beginning of the Hogarth Press. The Woolfs taught themselves to print and, by July, were proficient enough to publish the first Hogarth booklet containing a short story by each.
It proved to be a brilliant move. The Press gave Virginia valuable occupational therapy for many years. She came to look on printing and bookbinding and despatching orders as ‘the sanest way of life. If I were always writing I should be like an inbreeding rabbit – my progeny becoming weakly albino’.12 The Press also had the great advantage, once big enough to publish her books, of removing the need of submitting her work to other publishers. In time it became a lucrative source of income, although as the volume of work increased, so did the demands on the Woolfs’ time. As early as 1920 they brought in a part-time manager, the first of several, and a later source of considerable contention.
* * *
Leonard’s life was intensely busy. He thrived on hard work. At the outbreak of war he was commissioned by the Fabian Society to research the causes of war and its prevention and, working ‘like a dedicated mole’, his report as published in 1916. Almost overnight he became an authority on the subject and related issues. That work was followed by another detailed study on Empire and Commerce in Africa, which came out in 1920 and led to him becoming the Labour Party’s expert on Imperial Affairs and, in 1924, Secretary of the party’s Advisory Committee on Imperial questions. Virginia respected his work, although she took little real interest in the politics, and she regretted that Leonard’s ‘poetic side’ was ‘a little smothered in Blue-book, and organisations’.13
