Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  To all the careless hours that have been since

  In Burnham Wood.

  Towards the end of 1903, Leslie’s hold on life was weakening, Vanessa was already house hunting in Bloomsbury for the new family home, and Virginia was writing on an almost daily basis to Violet Dickinson. Violet was full of concern and love for the motherless Stephen girls, especially after reading Virginia’s gloomy reports of Leslie’s sickness, weakness and raging temperatures. On 22 February Leslie finally died, with the result that Virginia entered a two-month period of denial. Outwardly she seemed calm, writing maturely and cordially to her friends about her father’s life. In letters to Violet she mainly bemoaned her lack of kindness to the lonely Leslie after Julia’s death; occasionally there are references to ‘queer little expeditions’ that she was forced to take with George Duckworth, who was still exerting his power over her.

  Writing and reading about Leslie only served to distance Virginia from her bottled-up grief. In the meantime, a long holiday was quickly planned, to Pembrokeshire in Wales, then Venice and Florence (where Violet joined them) and on to Paris. The Welsh part of the holiday was tolerable, and parts of the Pembrokeshire countryside reminded Virginia of her beloved St Ives. George Duckworth had to return to London, and after he’d gone the atmosphere in the holiday house improved greatly and Virginia enjoyed being alone with Nessa and Thoby. The scenery at Manorbier inspired Virginia to write, and she devoured books of Greek tragedy as well, writing to Violet that she found the country ‘a good place to work in’. Years later, Virginia was to recall Manorbier as being an important landmark in her burgeoning career – for it was here where she realized what the theme of her first novel, The Voyage Out, would be.

  The Stephen family returned home for a few days in March 1904 and then left for Venice in the company of Gerald Duckworth. On arrival they found themselves with no accommodation, but managed to obtain three small, dirty rooms before eventually moving into the Grand Hotel, where they resented the extravagance. Virginia wrote excitedly of Venice to Violet, imploring her to come and witness the beauty of it for herself, but by 25 April the thrill of being abroad was starting to fade. Virginia begged her cousin, Emma Vaughan, to send her news of England and stated that ‘to live in a degenerate tho’ beautiful country is depressing’.

  The weeks were temporarily lightened by the arrival of Violet, but after she had departed, Virginia began to display signs of the temper that had been prominent during the period of Stella’s illness and death; ‘how cross I have been, how dull, how tempersome’. This time, with both parents now dead and the imminent sale of 22 Hyde Park Gate looming, her hold on stability and reality began to lessen, and by the time the family had returned to Paris in early May 1904, Virginia had lost her grip on sanity, too, and was descending, for the second time, into a lengthy and severe mental breakdown.

  During April 1903, Virginia had joked with Violet about the new cottage at Welwyn, warning her not to allow the house to become ‘tainted with Death and sorrows, such as always cling to you and make you a kind of walking hospital’. She added prophetically that ‘Poor Sparroy will ask for a bed there soon’. During the summer of 1904, according to Violet’s guest book, the entire Stephen/Duckworth family came down to Burnham Wood with the intention of leaving Virginia in the care of Violet and three nurses. Virginia began to deteriorate into a stranger, a person whom Violet had not seen before. She intensely mistrusted Vanessa, who was often in attendance; she hated her nurses, supposing them to be evil, becoming violent with them; she heard voices, imagining that the birds were singing in Greek outside her window; she could not eat; she was convinced that King Edward VII lurked in the azalea bushes; and she attempted, for the first time, to commit suicide by jumping out of a window, which luckily was too close to the ground to enable her to achieve her wish.

  Although Virginia was unable to read or write during this period and thus left no records, some idea of the horror that Violet Dickinson must have witnessed and of Virginia’s mental instability at this time, can be gained from reading the 1892 Victorian short story by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, The Yellow Wallpaper. The symptoms and the ‘rest cures’ that Gilman’s heroine endures illustrate a descent into paranoia and mental illness very similar to Virginia’s situation.

  As well as a horrific account of madness, the story is a telling indicator of the social and economic relationships between men and women at the time: the husband in the story controls, as did Violet and later Leonard with Virginia, an ailing woman, setting down strict rules in order that she might recover. The nameless heroine in The Yellow Wallpaper has been brought to a secluded countryside estate in summer, away from the stresses of city life. Her husband, John, is ‘practical in the extreme’, just as Violet Dickinson was. The invalid is a writer, forbidden to work until she is well again and in the meantime expected to take tonics, air and exercise, all remedies that were to be suggested over and over again to Virginia, from the 1890s up until her death in 1941.

  In The Yellow Wallpaper, the nightmarish descriptions of the foul smells that the invalid believes are pervading the house, and her visions of a woman crawling around underneath the wallpaper and trying to climb through the pattern, clearly echo the terrifying delusions and hallucinations that Virginia Stephen suffered in 1904 during the long, hot summer of her illness. The heroine’s sister-in-law, Jennie, at first described as a kind, helpful carer, is suddenly referred to as ‘sly’ and forevermore mistrusted, just as Virginia mistrusted Vanessa and Violet. During the daytime, the sick woman in The Yellow Wallpaper has visions of the phantom woman trapped behind the wallpaper getting into the garden, where she can be seen ‘creeping all round’ it and hiding ‘under the blackberry vines’. By the end of the story ‘there are so many of these creeping women’ that she cannot bear to look out. There are obvious parallels between Gilman’s creeping woman, and Virginia’s visions of King Edward VII lurking in the bushes. Throughout the story the woman believes herself to be sane, and her husband and carers to be plotting evilly against her. What Violet Dickinson had to see whilst nursing Virginia, and how she managed to cope, is not recorded – but John, the husband character from The Yellow Wallpaper, faints with horror as he encounters his wife crawling round the bedroom, the wallpaper ripped to shreds and, more horrifically, the bedstead ‘gnawed’.

  Virginia’s madness lasted the entire summer, during which time she stayed inside Violet’s house and was too unwell to write even the shortest letter. It was not until September, thin and shaken, that she joined the rest of the family in Nottinghamshire, where, for the first time in five months, she put pen to paper, writing once more to Violet to explain that she felt herself to be a ‘recovered bird’ and that she was trying to eat more food in order to regain her physical and mental health. Her joy in living began to seep back and letters to Violet during September are full of plans to begin writing serious articles.

  While Vanessa began to furnish and decorate the new family home at 46 Gordon Square, Virginia was sent to stay with her Aunt Caroline Emelia Stephen in Cambridge. Here she was resignedly, but frustratedly, cooped up with her Quaker aunt, who was given to loud monologues. Virginia resented the enforced absence from her family. Violet, as always, provided as much care as was possible from a distance, sending huge food parcels of biscuits and chocolate to Cambridge. Before moving on to stay with the Vaughans at Giggleswick in Yorkshire, Virginia was at last allowed home to London for a few days in November. One of the first things she saw on the desk in her new room at 46 Gordon Square was a china inkpot from Violet, characteristically huge and ‘deep enough to write a dozen articles’.

  The inkpot, an innocent gift, came to have greater significance. By the time Virginia had settled into Gordon Square at the beginning of 1905, she was aware that she had incurred considerable debts. The bills for doctors, medication and the constant attention of nurses, had drained away a significant part of the family inheritance from Leslie. She felt ready, and willing, to work hard and
make her mark in the world of journalism. Although she could easily have achieved acceptance as a writer because she was the daughter of Leslie Stephen, Virginia chose not to trade off his name. Instead, she let her love for her ‘beloved woman’, Violet, open the door to a professional writing life.

  Violet, well connected and a firm believer in Virginia’s literary talent, introduced her to Margaret Littleton, the editor of the women’s supplement of the Guardian. Unrelated to the newspaper of the same name that we know today, this was an Anglo-Catholic clerical paper. Perhaps it was an unlikely place for an agnostic’s daughter to commence her career, but Leslie was dead, and Virginia knew that the article she wrote for the Guardian might reward her with a cheque. The article, on the Brontës and Haworth Parsonage, was published on 21 December 1904. Violet’s other connections, Kitty Maxse (whose husband published the National Review) and Bruce Richmond, editor of the Times Literary Supplement, also proved invaluable to Virginia. By the end of 1905 she had published over thirty pieces and was established as a critic, reviewer and essayist. She had also started compiling ideas for her first novel.

  As ever, Violet had proved a loyal and steadfast friend to Virginia by playing such a crucial part in the development of her career. She did not approve of the Stephen family’s move to Bloomsbury, making no secret of the fact that she thought Julia Stephen would have heartily contested it, but she continued her unfailing support of Virginia, whose letters now began to boast happily of the details of various acceptances and submissions that she was making to newspapers and periodicals. In addition, the letters contained an inordinate amount of cheerful teasing as Virginia jokingly accused Violet of being a ‘dangerous’ woman who was ‘not at all the right kind of influence over young girls’.

  Unsurprisingly, Virginia was now reluctant to visit Violet at Burnham Wood – her first visit since the awful summer of 1904 – but she did, in order to bid goodbye to Violet who was off on a world tour with Nelly Cecil for the next four months. In the meantime, as if to compensate for Violet’s absence, Virginia revisited her beloved St Ives for the first time in eleven years, a trip she greatly enjoyed. She missed Violet painfully, complaining that nobody in her family took very much interest in her ‘scribblings’, as she sat in her room in the lodgings at Carbis Bay.

  On her return to London, Virginia noted that M.H. Spielman’s The Life and Work of Kate Greenaway had been published, and it included many flattering references to Violet, who had been a close friend to the children’s author since the early 1890s. Reading the introductory paragraph, which described the blossoming friendship between Violet and Kate (who was twenty years older than Violet), may well have caused Virginia some pangs of jealousy:

  From that time forward the two ladies, the old and the young, were much in each other’s company at ‘private views’ and other ceremonies, and the fact that her friend was tall and slim beyond the average and Kate was noticeably short and stout, not only drew attention to their companionship but served as a constant text for the exercise of Kate’s humorous invention. Their correspondence by letter was incessant and Miss Greenaway’s pencil was generally requisitioned to give an added note of piquancy and fancy to her written communications.

  Kate had died in 1901, before Violet and Virginia’s friendship had begun, and in any case, the biography goes on to explain how Kate was in ‘constant fear’ of losing her friends, a dread that Virginia herself would have closely identified with. However, it unsettled Virginia to realize that Violet had participated in another intimate correspondence for seven years, a correspondence which included many spirited literary discussions and the inclusion of clever, personal drawings and sketches. Following the publication of this book in 1905, Virginia’s letters to Violet became more emotional. They hint at feelings of insecurity and fear as Virginia wondered ‘what fragment of your body will be thrown to me among the howling crowd of your friends?’

  In December 1905, Violet returned home from her world trip. She felt refreshed and healthy, and had tales of new experiences and friendships. By the beginning of 1906, plans were being made for Vanessa, Virginia, Adrian and Thoby to go to Greece, with Violet in attendance as a self-styled ‘foster mother’. George Duckworth impressed some last-minute cautions upon his half-sisters, but they set forth with great optimism on 8 September.

  The women travelled to Greece together and met up with Thoby and Adrian at Olympia. The whole family visited Corinth, where Vanessa became increasingly unwell. Suddenly the family holiday, awaited with such excitement, had to be called to a halt. Vanessa, lying in bed in her hotel room, had suspected appendicitis, but she also seemed to be suffering from depression. The family ran up large bills for medicine, and also for bottles of champagne, which appeared to be the only thing that revived Vanessa. The strain on poor Violet Dickinson must again have been almost intolerable: Virginia sat writing miserably in the sickroom, and Thoby and Adrian quarrelled downstairs.

  The group eventually set off home via Constantinople, minus Thoby, who had returned to London a fortnight earlier. They arrived back at Bloomsbury on 1 November, after a slow, arduous journey, only to find Thoby seriously ill in bed. He had initially been diagnosed with malaria, but this was changed to a diagnosis of typhoid – and it was soon discovered that Violet was extremely ill with the same fever. Vanessa’s predicament was less clear – eventually Dr Savage pronounced her to be tired, weak and with a case of appendicitis, although no operation was ever performed. She recovered quickly, but Thoby worsened.

  Violet, at her house in Manchester Street, struggled with typhoid, whilst Virginia believed her to be less ill than she actually was (‘I am so sorry about the influenza’ she wrote on 9 November), but a week later, Virginia promised to provide hot water bottles and smooth pillows for Violet if necessary. On 17 November, her daily bulletin to Violet about Thoby’s health ominously describes the operation that was about to be performed on him, and then ends on an extraordinarily light-hearted note, with a description of herself rolling on a mat like a wallaby, inviting Violet to ‘look for fleas’.

  On the morning of 20 November 1906, Thoby Stephen died of typhoid fever. He was aged twenty-six. The remarkable letter that Virginia sent to Violet on that very day holds no hint of this latest, terrible Stephen family bereavement. Instead it is a gossipy letter, describing relationships between friends and reassuring Violet that the invalids are all progressing well! Over the next four weeks, Virginia continued to send Violet progress reports on the dead Thoby, complete with stories of his preference for mutton chops and his good-humoured baiting of the nurses. She does inform Violet that Vanessa had finally accepted Clive Bell’s proposal of marriage, two days after Thoby’s death.

  Virginia’s double loss – of her sister to Clive and the death of her elder brother – is not reflected in her letters. It is only possible to guess at the turmoil beneath the jovial, optimistic tone of her daily epistles to Violet, for Virginia’s talent for fiction was perhaps never more apparent than during the four weeks when she pretended that Thoby was still alive. On 29 November, a letter informs Violet that Thoby is ‘still on his back – but manages to be about as full of life in that position as most people are on their hind legs’. Stories of Thoby’s flirtations with nurses and his endeavours to draw in bed with a pencil continued to drop onto Violet’s doormat until 18 December when Violet, having just received the news from Virginia that Thoby was ‘decidedly better’, then read the news of his death in the National Review. Her reactions are (fortunately) not recorded, but a contrite Virginia wrote a letter of apology for all the lies, admitting that she had not had the courage to tell the truth and risk hampering Violet’s own recovery.

  Violet patiently continued to provide support and friendship to Virginia, sensitively perceiving that with Thoby’s death and Vanessa’s marriage to Clive, it would be needed more than ever. From 23–25 January 1907, Virginia returned to Burnham Wood where she celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday with Violet. At around this time, she may
have been having ideas for Friendship’s Gallery, a tribute to Violet, which was presented to her in August, typed in violet ink and bound in violet leather (the habit of writing in purple ink remained with Virginia for the rest of her life, a lasting reminder of Violet and her influence). Friendship’s Gallery was intended for Violet’s eyes only, as Virginia made clear in a letter at the beginning of August, or for those of Nelly Cecil, their mutual friend who also features prominently in the story. Virginia’s fear of showing this piece elsewhere was based predominantly on her conclusion that it was immature, unfinished and not an example of her best writing. Therefore she was perturbed to find that, during October, Violet had read excerpts from this very personal piece to members of the awful Crum family. Violet was immediately chastised for this, and Virginia demanded that the gift be returned to her, but it is a sign of its great value to Violet that Friendship’s Gallery remained in the Dickinson family until the death of Ozzie Dickinson in 1955.

  The text of Friendship’s Gallery can be seen as a forerunner to Orlando, Virginia’s later homage to Vita Sackville-West. It pays tribute, in a similarly jaunty but less complex way, to a beloved woman friend who is from an aristocratic background. It possesses a similar bawdy humour to that which pervades Orlando. On the surface it is a spoof biography that shows witty appreciation of Violet and her circle of well-connected lady friends. The piece is divided into three sections – in the first, Violet is portrayed as ‘a tall rod of a plant with queer little tassels always quivering’ and much is made of the comicality of her height, her love of books and her speedy dashes to the bedsides of those who are ill. The second section, ‘The Magic Garden’, describes the aristocratic ladies well known to both Virginia and Violet – Katie and Beatrice Thynne, Lady Bath, Nelly Cecil and Kitty Maxse. The third section takes the form of a fantastic story told to children to help them sleep, in which Violet features as a ‘Giantess’ who could ‘heal cripples … tame wild beasts’ and ‘make small children appear out of bags’.