Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  Dr Murray has just gone. He thinks that there is decided improvement in Stella, that she walks better and that her countenance looks so much stronger.

  In her controversial study of Virginia Woolf’s work and the alleged sexual abuse that the Stephen girls suffered at the hands of their half-brothers, Louise De Salvo boldly – and mistakenly – declares that ‘Julia, in fact, did not love Stella’. It is certainly true, however, that Julia’s abrupt treatment of the young Stella was of some concern to Leslie Stephen, who recollected that his wife was ‘rather stern to Stella’. On bravely broaching the subject, he was told that she ‘did not love the boys better than Stella: but that Stella seemed to her more a part of herself’. Julia’s retort presumably meant that Stella served as a permanent visual reminder of the late and loved Herbert, and consequently reminded Julia at every turn of the grief, suffering and loss that she had endured.

  Julia was strict on herself, putting others’ needs ahead of her own, and this same attitude of self-deprivation was therefore expected from Stella, the little daughter who was her mirror-image. Virginia Woolf recalled that her mother ‘was severe’ to Stella and that ‘all her devotion was given to George’. It was perhaps easier to love the boys, who did not remind Julia of herself so much, but Julia did love Stella and it is interesting to note that, in contrast to De Salvo’s claim that the family nickname for Stella, ‘The Old Cow’, was because she was a ‘mindless, slow-witted supplier of the family’s needs for nurture’, Virginia herself referred to the tag as ‘my mother’s laughing nickname’, suggesting it was an affectionate nickname inspired by Stella’s resemblance to a large, beautiful white flower – cow parsley. Affectionate or not, it remains the case that, at least in the surviving photographs of Stella and Julia together, there is little in the way of affection being shown between mother and daughter; Julia is usually to be seen staring stiffly past Stella’s shoulder, while the latter gazes sadly, with ill-disguised devotion, at her beloved mother.

  Stella’s diary for 1893, kept in a dark green leather-bound book and often indecipherable, illustrates clearly the difference between her life in Kensington and her holidays at St Ives. In London, from February until August, the pages are full of references to Southwark, where Stella was helping Octavia Hill build cottages for the poor. On 23 March, Stella mentions her nursing exam and attendance at a nursing lecture. The diary is littered with references to helping the Stephen children with various tasks, supervising their music lessons, taking them into town for clothes, or having teas at the ABC teashop. Already Stella was proving to be more of a mother to Virginia and her siblings than Julia.

  The diary has the occasional moment of humour amidst the soulless descriptions of Victorian daily domestic life. Stella, at the age of twenty-four, was able to enjoy (although there is not much evidence to suggest that she actually did) a great number of concerts and plays, including an outing to see Ibsen’s A Doll’s House on 11 March. This performance provoked a rare spurt of vigour from Stella and is dismissed in the diary as being ‘raving mad’. The most musical of all the Duckworth/Stephen children, Stella also attended orchestra practice and played the piano, although all her attempts to convey the joy of music to Virginia and Vanessa failed dismally.

  From 5 August, Stella’s 1893 diary continues from Talland House in St Ives, where she shows an unusually strong emotion with her opening comment about the garden being ‘rather too full of recollections’. It is unclear as to what or whom Stella was referring, but she was not short of suitors during 1893, all eager to spend time with this gentle and beautiful woman. Jack Hills, whom Stella was eventually to marry, was already a firm friend of the family and took the children moth catching in St Ives. Walter Headlam had also been pursuing Stella, and on being rejected, transferred his attentions to Julia – ‘Mother came home from dinner looking tired and unhappy. Drat Mr Headlam! What has happened?’ muses an angry Stella in her entry for 21 September 1893. Dick Norton, staying as a house guest during this holiday, also professed love for Stella, but as she noted acerbically in the diary, ‘I’m afraid he likes me better than I like him and that’s a great deal’. It is possible that Stella’s unhappy recollections of scenes in the garden at Talland House were connected with the unwanted and frightening advances made on her by yet another man – J.K. Stephen, Julia’s favourite nephew, who was ‘violently pursuing’ Stella and continued his pursuit until 1892, when he died in an asylum.

  The majority of Stella’s St Ives diary concerns the very typical pastimes of a Victorian family who had leisure and servants enough to fill their days to the maximum with a variety of entertainments and hobbies. Little mention is made of ‘Ginia’ in this diary, but as Stella was twenty-four and Virginia only eleven, the age gap was large enough to prohibit any particular intimacy growing up between the two. Virginia is first mentioned in the diary on 16 August, where she is reported to have gone fishing with Thoby and Adrian, and again the following week, when Stella took her down to the town to buy muslin. There is no further mention of this little sister until 19 September, where there is an ominous precursor of the ensuing years. Stella was already stepping into her role as Virginia’s primary caregiver, a role she would maintain over the next four years as the nervous, highly agitated teenager recovered from an early nervous breakdown:

  Ginia took bad in the night. I went to her and have consequently been horribly sleepy and cross all day.

  At this point in her life, Stella was forming a closer bond with Vanessa, who at thirteen was already spending much of her time painting; the diary sometimes describes a morning spent sketching together in the rose garden at Talland House, whilst Julia sat on the front door step and read. In addition to her painting, Stella possessed a wide range of skills and hobbies, and she was surprisingly good at them, given that she must have had little time most of the year in which to indulge them. There are daily mentions of photography – Stella was a keen amateur photographer, as the album now housed in the Berg Collection at the New York Public Library testifies. Many portraits of the Stephen family on holiday (including one of a very young, chubby, robust Virginia on the cricket pitch at St Ives) survive today due to Stella’s prolific output. Stella also played billiards, tennis, croquet and the piano – when visitors such as Margaret Lushington arrived, she would accompany them as they sang the popular parlour songs of the day.

  Julia’s early death in 1895 threatened to strip Stella of her tenuous hold on life, a life that had been lived in the adoring shadow of her loved, revered mother. Virginia, already a sensitive and highly strung 13-year-old, was plunged into black waters for the first time, a breakdown that was not documented at the time and about which very little is known other than that she did not start to recover fully until 1897. For Stella, Julia’s death marked the end of any time snatched for herself. She became, with immediate effect, a 26-six-year-old surrogate mother to seven shocked and grieving children, and was moved uncomfortably but without complaint into the role of surrogate wife for Leslie, whose mourning was loud, protracted and frightening. He sucked anyone who came near into his morbid outpourings of grief. The house was dark and claustrophobic; the family, clad in suffocating black during the spring weather, must have offered a mournful spectacle as they straggled around Kensington Gardens in silence and then returned home to the black-draped windows and flower-scented corridors of 22 Hyde Park Gate.

  Virginia Woolf recollected that for some time after her mother’s death she was, of course, unhappy but often felt more as though she were drifting along in some ‘sultry’ or ‘opaque’ life. Her memories of the effect of Julia’s death on Stella are recounted with clarity and pathos. They are vivid, and often refer to the colour white, to illustrate the terrible paleness that was heightened in Stella and which never really left her for the rest of her life: ‘Stella grew whiter and whiter in her unbroken black dress’; ‘Stella herself looked like the white flower of some teeming hot-house … never did anyone look so pale’. Virginia remembers Stella’s �
�snowy numbness’, from which no one could awaken her for nearly two years, and notes her sudden and total loss of interest in her own fate as she tended to the needs of her family, in particular those of Virginia and Leslie. Virginia recalled what appears to have been Leslie’s unhealthy dependence on Stella matter-of-factly in 1939: ‘emotionally then he fell upon Stella. It was the way of the time’.

  Virginia suffered from excruciating guilt when she looked back at her behaviour towards her patient half-sister during the difficult years of 1895–1896:

  I have many regrets; not then, but now I have them; chiefly with regard to Stella. For I must have added another burden. Given her anxiety. And bored and worried her; and could never make it up.

  Virginia goes on to bemoan the ‘hours of irritation – and care … taken out of her life – that was so short’.

  Stella immediately took over the running of the busy household at Hyde Park Gate and also all of her mother’s philanthropic duties, in addition to her own. Leslie was too submerged in grief to spare time for Virginia, Vanessa, Thoby and Adrian, so the children looked to Stella for all their physical and emotional needs. During this time she bonded well with Virginia, who remembered the ‘chivalrous devotion’ that she and her siblings felt towards Stella.

  Aside from remarking on daily events, Stella’s 1896 diary served another purpose. In a code that marked each name with an ‘x’, Stella kept a record of her own, Virginia’s and Vanessa’s menstrual cycles, all three usually coming within a day or two of each other. It is interesting to see that, despite Stella’s bottled-up grief and Virginia’s bouts of nervy, irritable illness, their cycles remained remarkably regular. During Virginia’s breakdown in 1913, Leonard Woolf noted that his wife did not menstruate for the entire duration of ninety-eight days.

  In April 1896, Stella’s diary reveals that she had visited a Dr Fairbank three times in one week; once for Adrian and twice for herself, but she fails, perhaps deliberately, to note down why. In October, the diary states that Ginia was taken to the trusted family doctor, Seton, who had been Julia’s doctor. Dr Seton recommended that Virginia, who was suffering from a high pulse, should take fewer lessons and be ‘careful not to excite herself’. Leslie, adds Stella, was also in a ‘great state’, which must have done little to reassure the young invalid. A week later, Virginia was taken yet again to Dr Seton, who this time insisted that she ‘must give up lessons entirely till January, and must be out four hours a day’. This worrying piece of medical advice marked the beginning of a long battle between Virginia and Stella. In addition, there was another event towards the end of 1896 that not only dramatically affected Stella, but also had a significant impact on the young Virginia, changing and shaping her views of love, trust, relationships and marriage. In August 1896, during a holiday to Hindhead House, Haslemere, Stella became engaged to John Waller Hills.

  At the time of his courtship with Stella, John Hills (known as ‘Jack’) was remembered by Virginia as ‘a lean threadbare young man who seemed to force his way by sheer determination and solid integrity’. Chillingly, she describes his pursuit of, and eventual engagement to, Stella in the terms of a ‘system’, which he had ‘no doubt arranged on paper … and was simply following it out in detail’.

  Virginia’s honest recollections of Jack present a complex picture, not always flattering and often sobering. She deemed him to be a shrewd businessman in love, who considered his future wife’s health and wishes very important, but saw her lacking in intellectual depth and yet was relieved by this, as it did not threaten his ‘irrational desires’. Whether Jack’s desires stretched to include other women is not clear, but Woolf recalls a conversation with Jack during which he told her that ‘sexual relations had nothing to do with honour. Having women was a mere trifle in a man’s life’. Curiously, despite this less than respectful comment, the 15-year-old Virginia continued to respect and admire him. The change in Stella, who had been pale and drawn and was now glowing with colour and happiness, provided Virginia with her ‘first vision of love between man and woman’, a vision that, although it was to be cut cruelly short, initially filled the house at Hyde Park Gate with mystery and romance. The Stephen sisters spied excitedly on Stella and Jack, witnessing their declarations of love and snatched embraces. Although Woolf recalls the months of Stella’s engagement as a happy time for the couple, she also throws doubt upon the strength of Stella’s feelings for Jack, asking herself years later whether Stella might have ‘found something in her left cold and meditative, reflecting when all should have been consenting?’ Perhaps Woolf was subconsciously remembering her own engagement of 1912 to Leonard in this sentence, for she had admitted to him in a letter that ‘there are moments – when you kissed me the other day was one – when I feel no more than a rock’.

  Leslie Stephen’s emotions on hearing of Stella and Jack’s engagement were, understandably, mixed: he didn’t want to lose Stella and, at first, viewed her marriage as a great inconvenience and act of selfishness on her part. Stella finally had one of her rare surges of tempestuous anger and stormed up to Leslie’s study where, according to Virginia, she complained ‘how the family system tortures and exacerbates – especially the Vicn [Victorian] where one can’t be open; when one is ignorant of motives and always conceals them under complete lies’.

  Leslie began to insult Jack in front of the children and even took an aversion to his name, complaining that it sounded similar to the crack of a whip. Eventually, in a letter to his friend Charles Norton, sent just after the engagement had been announced, he expressed his feelings with less venom and enough emotion almost to encourage pity:

  Stella is so much to me, that I have something of a struggle in seeing this young gentleman appropriate her … Stella is a quiet and gentle young woman with very strong affections which do not easily show themselves; but which I have learned to appreciate better in the last 15 months.

  After her initial excitement at Stella’s engagement, Virginia’s enthusiasm for the subject began to wane during the early months of 1897. A disastrous holiday took place to Bognor, in the company of Leslie, Vanessa and the engaged couple. Virginia was expected to chaperone Jack and Stella, as they took freezing cold walks on the bleak sands.

  Finally, on Saturday 10 April 1897, Jack Hills and Stella Duckworth were married at St Mary Abbots, Kensington. Oddly, given how keen the family were on amateur photography, no photographs survive from this event. Perhaps none were taken because most of the family, in particular Leslie and Virginia, were far from happy with events. ‘I will not put down even here the thoughts that have agitated me’ wrote Leslie in his Mausoleum Book on the day of the wedding itself. Virginia allows us a little more detail in her diary, but confesses ‘goodness knows how we got through it all – certainly it was half a dream, or a nightmare’. In the absence of photographic evidence, we are left with only this vivid picture of Stella in her bridal outfit: Virginia’s description of her ‘walking in her sleep – her eyes fixed straight in front of her – very white and beautiful’. It was probably the only time Stella had been out of black clothes since Julia died two years previously, but her wedding, supposed to be a time of happiness and optimism, seemed funereal in atmosphere.

  The following day, prolonging the grim mood, the Stephen family went on the long trek to Highgate Cemetery and placed the wedding flowers on Julia’s grave. Stella and Jack had departed the evening before – ‘Mr and Mrs Hills!’ as Virginia noted with rather forced happiness in her diary. She had said goodbye with relief to Stella, little knowing that she would never see her half-sister smiling and well again. By 28 April, Stella was home early from honeymoon and in bed at her new house, 24 Hyde Park Gate. On the following day, a visit from Dr Seton resulted in the diagnosis of ‘peritonitis’, which Virginia found ‘rather frightening’. By 4 May, she notes with apparent relief that Stella was putting on weight and looked a lot better, but adds, in a way that hints at her fragile state of mind, that ‘this is most satisfactory – but I am unrea
sonable enough to be irritated’. By 9 May, when Stella had improved sufficiently to be allowed up, the 15-year-old Virginia displayed a confusing mixture of emotions in this extraordinary sentence:

  Now that old cow is most ridiculously well & cheerful – hopping about out of bed etc. Thank goodness, nevertheless.

  The ‘nevertheless’ appears to have been added in as a last-minute concession to good manners and clearly illustrates the curious blend of love and resentment that Woolf felt for Stella, particularly since the engagement. It is also probable that Virginia had enjoyed the sudden freedom from being virtually chained to Stella’s side as she went about her daily business, hence her irritation at what appeared to be a speedy recovery; but underneath the lightweight comments about Stella and her illness, it is easy to detect an enormous, churning mass of fear in Virginia, who was still wholly reliant on Stella for the maternal protection that was whisked away from her by Julia’s death.

  On 18 May 1897, Stella wrote an affectionate letter to Thoby, mentioning that her second nurse had been sent away. She appeared to be out of danger, and attention was now switched to Virginia, who was becoming ill and nervous, worrying Stella greatly. On 12 July she forbade Virginia from going out, due to all her ‘aches’. The following day, ‘Ginia’ developed a fever and was carried into Stella’s house three doors down, so that she could keep an eye on her. Dr Seton visited and put Virginia to bed, while Stella, in her usual selfless way, sat up all night next to her. On 14 July, Stella sat with her until 11.30 p.m., soothing away the ‘fidgets’.

  The last day that Virginia saw her half-sister alive was 15 July. Stella came into her bedroom in a dressing-gown and appeared to be ‘quite well’. ‘She left me’, continues the diary entry for this day, ‘and I never saw her again’. On 17 July Stella refused to see the doctor, but authorized him to take Virginia back to No. 22. As George carried Ginia down the corridor, wrapped in Stella’s fur cape, Stella called out ‘goodbye’. By 7 p.m. the next evening, a Dr Broadbent and his colleague, Williams, had performed an emergency operation on Stella, informing the family that ‘everything was successful’. But at 3 a.m. the following morning, on 19 July, George and Vanessa crept into Virginia’s bedroom and broke the terrible news – Stella was dead. ‘That is all we have thought of since; and it is impossible to write of’ concludes the diary entry for that awful day.