Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  The only other unofficial comment I recall is that of Archbishop Benson, who overhearing bits of it at Addington, remarked afterwards that in this Mass, God was not implored but commanded to have mercy.

  Ethel was forced to wait a staggering thirty-one years before her Mass was performed again in public. The wait was not due, despite what Ethel liked to believe, to her being a woman, but because her music was vigorous, personal and unique, in a way that frightened the majority of critics.

  The public did not welcome new English music, a prejudice that continues to some extent today, but listening to the Mass now, it is almost impossible to understand the neglect of this outstanding piece of music. Devoid of the militant tendencies that overshadowed and dated much of Ethel’s later work, her Mass remains timeless, one hundred years after its composition. The fiery, passionate score owes much to the influence of Ethel’s much-maligned Brahms, and its lyrical beauty is Victorian in flavour, but not overly so. The Agnus Dei is particularly beautiful, with spine-tingling passages of exquisite suspense before the full chorus explodes into a dramatic conclusion that leaves the listener shaken and unsettled. But this work, with its great, dark, dramatic overtones, benefits the listener further if he or she knows something about the character of the composer who created it; Ethel Smyth, at thirty-four, was passionate, emotional, determined and highly individual. During her thirties she was also fervently religious; all in all, she possessed a myriad of qualities that produced music both disturbing and profoundly moving.

  In 1910, Ethel began The Wreckers, her opera inspired by the Cornish coast, for which she, like Virginia Woolf, had a great passion. As with her Mass, Ethel’s opera demonstrates her deeper, more profound side. She sent the score to Delius, who told her that he appreciated the vigour apparent in this composition, a vigour rarely to be found in British music. Ethel travelled around Europe in her role as a travelling sales-composer, trying to find someone who would put on a performance of The Wreckers. Eventually she returned to England where, to her delight, Thomas Beecham finally agreed to conduct it at Covent Garden. Her joy was short-lived – Beecham did not give the performance the attention that she thought it deserved, saving his energies instead for compositions by Strauss and Delius. Edward VII turned up at this concert and attempted to kiss Ethel, which she did not take kindly to. The disappointment and her struggle for recognition were to continue.

  The year 1911 was an important turning point in Ethel’s life. She met Emmeline Pankhurst and fell in love with her, joining the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU). After some initial qualms as to how her composing would be affected by this commitment, she threw herself with Ethel-style determination into the cause, giving two years of her life to the militant Suffrage movement. Sylvia Pankhurst gives us a glimpse of Ethel as she appeared to others at that time:

  Individualised to the last point, she had in middle age little about her that was feminine. Her features were clean cut and well marked, neither manly nor womanly; her thin hair drawn plainly aside, her speech clear in articulation and incisive rather than melodious, with a racy wit. Wearing a small mannish hat, battered and old, plain-cut country clothes … she would don a tie of the brightest purple, white and green [these were the official colours of the WSPU] colours she was so proud of, which shone out from her incongruously, like a new gate to old palings.

  Ethel also composed a special piece for the WSPU, still available as a recording today. In marked contrast to her earlier work, this March of the Women is militant, patriotic, rousing and regimental. It is controlled, rigid and rather forceful in a way that the passionate, rambling Mass is not. But the March recalls an important and nostalgic period in women’s history and can instantly summon up the image of Suffragette rallies, although to the contemporary listener there is something dated and a little ridiculous about the pomposity of the music. At the time, though, Ethel’s March brought her fame and notoriety as a composer, and it became the official accompaniment to all Suffragette marches. On being imprisoned for throwing a stone at the window of a Cabinet Minister, Ethel, as Thomas Beecham was fond of recounting, conducted her two hundred fellow prisoners with a toothbrush as they paraded around the courtyard, leaning from an upper window whilst beating time.

  Ethel was unrepentant for her stone throwing, but her time as a Suffragette ran its course, and the two years spent away from music resulted in her longing to get back to life as a full-time composer. She took a trip to Egypt, hiding away in a pavilion to work on her new opera, The Boatswain’s Mate, with only a piano for company. In 1914 she once more took the role of a travelling saleswoman, peddling her scores around Vienna for the new opera and for The Wreckers; she returned to England triumphantly clutching contracts for the performances of both works at two leading continental opera houses. But, as so often in Ethel’s eventful life, things did not go according to plan, and the First World War inconveniently put a stop to the concerts going ahead.

  Never deterred for long, Ethel put on her own performance of The Wreckers, at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, conducting the opening night herself and then handing over to Thomas Beecham for a further six performances. Finally, in 1924, Ethel’s Mass in D was resurrected at the Queen’s Hall, and conducted by Adrian Boult. George Bernard Shaw, somewhat hypocritically given his criticism thirty years earlier, wrote to congratulate Ethel, giving his opinion that ‘the originality and beauty of the voice parts are as striking today as they were thirty years ago’. Other parts of his letter meant more to Ethel, as they dwelled flatteringly on her new reputation as a successful female composer who could hold her own against any male contemporary.

  After The Wreckers, Ethel produced several more works, including some chamber music, organ preludes and songs with piano or orchestral accompaniments. Her last great work was The Prison (1930), based on her published memoir of Henry Brewster. In 1931, in Edinburgh, Ethel conducted the first performance at one of Donald Tovey’s symphony concerts. It was unanimously declared to be a triumph by the critics and the audience. A less successful performance in London shortly afterwards had a negative effect on both the audience and Ethel; the work, which finishes with the Last Post, was scheduled for the same programme as another funereal work called The Last Things of Man. The audience came out gloomy, depressed and annoyed (those who lasted the entire performance, that is – many walked out halfway through).

  Adrian Boult, who had produced this performance, found his friendship with Ethel severely tested as a result; Ethel had the usual trouble finding further venues for the work to be performed in, and The Prison was eventually performed for her seventy-fifth birthday tribute at the Royal Albert Hall. Some thought this concert the best performance to date of Ethel’s work, with Thomas Beecham conducting magnificently. The sad irony was that Ethel, stone deaf by then, was unable to hear her own compositions.

  Although Virginia Woolf and Ethel Smyth did not meet formally for the first time until 1930, Virginia had made her first appraisal of Ethel far earlier, in November 1919 when they were both in the audience for a concert at the Wigmore Hall. Ethel’s striking appearance did not escape Virginia’s critical eye:

  Near at hand one sees that she’s all wrinkled and fallen in, and eyes running blue on to the cheeks; but she keeps up the figure of the nineties to perfection.

  With this description, included in a letter to Lytton, Virginia included her witty opinion of Ethel’s first volume of autobiography, just published, concluding that ‘Ethel’s passion for the W.C. (it occurs in every chapter) is of the highest merit’. ‘Friendships with women’ she added prophetically, ‘interest me’. In 1921, Virginia published a glowing review of the second volume of Ethel’s autobiography, Streaks of Life, in the New Statesman, paying particular tribute to the writer’s enthusiasm, originality and wholehearted dedication to the pursuit of female friendship.

  The first serious attempts to schedule a meeting between Virginia and Ethel ran similarly to Ethel’s attempts to get her music performed; delay
s, last-minute cancellations and letters of apology abounded, mainly from Virginia who was suffering from influenza during the first few weeks of February 1930. She was also under considerable stress whilst writing The Waves. Ethel had written to Virginia saying how much she had enjoyed A Room of One’s Own, and had included a special edition of her own autobiography as a gift. Virginia was pleased with both letter and gift, and wrote a warm reply. As in Ethel’s operas, this introduction had already given a flavour of the performance yet to come; the scene appeared to be set favourably for the development of an interesting friendship.

  On 20 February 1930, Ethel quite literally burst into the room where Virginia was lying quietly, recovering from a morning visit made by Marjorie Snowden, who had been maudlin and full of complaints about her life. Ethel could not have presented more of a contrast. She wore her trademark three-cornered hat and grey tailored suit, and was clutching a notebook in which to write the answers to the many questions she had lined up for Virginia. Ethel demanded to know Virginia’s family history, wanting details of all the Pattle relatives and the names of their various daughters, until tea interrupted the flow, after which the two women continued to talk until seven, when Leonard entered. His early impressions of Ethel were far from favourable; he detested her vulgarity and saw her as a threat to Virginia’s health and peace of mind.

  The general topic for discussion during this first meeting had been – Ethel herself! She waxed lyrical about her musical career (in particular the struggles she was currently undergoing whilst orchestrating The Prison), about golf, cycling and her life in Woking. She also complimented A Room of One’s Own again. Virginia, despite herself, was enchanted, and concluded in her diary that Ethel was ‘a fine old creature’. Act One, Scene One had thereby contained the highest entertainment value possible; the rest of the performance, during which the friendship between Ethel and Virginia would develop further, seemed destined to pass successfully.

  Ethel instantly developed a great partiality to Virginia, although she did not admit this until June, confiding in a letter to Vanessa Bell that ‘it will be hard not to get attached to V’. But attached she immediately became, musing on her feelings in one of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of letters that she dashed off to her new love-object, Virginia, in a way that demonstrated her intelligence, insight and sincerity. It would have been difficult for the following letter not to appeal to both the vain side of Virginia, that which craved success, flattery and approval, and her insecure side, the one that doubted her own beauty and genius:

  Odd as it may seem to you I did love you before I saw you, wholly and solely because of A Room of One’s Own. There is that in it – most of it far away in the background, the inmost core of your book, that (as I once found out) is your essence. Then I saw you and was glad – as I think I told you – that I had felt all that before I had seen you – because your beauty is an unescapable [sic] factor unless (as in the case of Mrs Ramsey [sic] it was remarked) you were born stone blind.

  In the same letter, Ethel’s poignant reminiscences of her own mother, who died not long before Virginia’s, must have struck a powerful chord with Woolf, who had spent most of her adult life reflecting on the enigma that was Julia Stephen:

  I can never think about her without a stab of real passion and amusement, tenderness, pity, admiration are in it and pain that I can’t tell her how I love her.

  As well as yearning for Virginia’s friendship, Ethel also fell passionately in love with her, making no secret of it. She analysed her feelings in some depth in a series of short, written pieces describing Virginia in intimate and unflinchingly honest terms; she often refers to Virginia’s vanity, not about her writing, but her looks, thus instantly shattering the belief held by many that Virginia Woolf did not much care for clothes or about how she appeared to others. Whilst Vanessa Bell rarely wore anything other than artists’ overalls at Charleston, living in the general chaos of children, lovers and paintbrushes that fulfilled her needs, her insecure younger sister obviously still keenly felt the need for reassurance about her looks:

  She is very vain, and tries not to be, but can’t help it. If she heard that someone thought her books very overrated, she wouldn’t care at all. But if she heard these snooks [sic] had said her eyes were too close together (which they are perhaps) she would be thoroughly annoyed.

  It was not long after they had first met before Ethel, however entertaining she was, suffered the sharper side of Virginia’s tongue, and noted the experience, without resentment, in her diary:

  Only her passion of fury – the slightly insane streak in her on which I am convinced her terrific gift depends – has to expend itself. She can be cruel then, and may say something that lashes one across the face, but she has to give that flick … fortunately in the new epoch the flick no longer hurts.

  As with Violet Dickinson and Vita Sackville-West beforehand, Virginia initially believed Ethel to be a new source of that much-needed motherly love. This was not due solely to the significant age gap between the two women; in fact, Ethel’s old age and elderly appearance came to repel Virginia, unhealthily feeding her own obsession with age, dying and death, and Ethel did not at first seem to be the most maternal of people, never having had children of her own and being abrupt, rather than tender, in her manner. But Smyth’s very real, honest personality held many attractions for Virginia, and it was her loyalty and genuine care for the younger woman that provoked, yet again, the occasional demand for this matermal love:

  You are, I believe, one of the kindest women, one of the best balanced, with that maternal quality which of all others I need and adore.

  After the first year of their friendship, Virginia came to admire Ethel for other reasons; she was an excellent confidante, a successful female artiste, witty, big-hearted and inspirational. Virginia summarized a diary entry analysis of Ethel in August 1903 with reference to her ‘certain smile, very wide and benignant’. She enjoyed Ethel’s infectious enthusiasm and boundless ambition. This first year of friendship with Ethel, whilst it contained a few fiery sparks, proved intriguing and refreshing to Virginia.

  Unfortunately, given Ethel’s monstrous egotism and Virginia’s sensitivity, an argument seemed inevitable. At the end of February 1931, Virginia had just completed The Waves and was severely depressed, remembering Thoby’s death and suffering from her usual post-book ‘back wash’. On 24 February, the Countess of Rosebery gave a party at Berkeley Square in order to celebrate Ethel’s first performance of The Prison. Ethel took Virginia along, but the party, full of aristocrats and well-to-do society ladies, no doubt reminded the vulnerable Virginia of being dragged by George Duckworth to similar events as an unwilling teenager. She had a violent over-reaction to this party, proclaiming it to be ‘that awful Exhibition of insincerity and insanity’. She wrote about the evening in her diary and also in letters to Ottoline, admitting to not having been able to sleep a wink afterwards, and to Ethel herself in an angry letter, describing the ‘indignity’ of having to make polite small talk and suffer the attentions of butlers and peers, and, oddly, of having to drink champagne. Virginia reported that she had resorted to taking a sleeping draught afterwards and complained of being made an exhibit of. This letter is indicative of her severely stressed state of mind at the time rather than revealing any blame on the part of poor Ethel; after all, Ethel had merely invited her friend to a party, presuming that she might enjoy it. Virginia, to punish Ethel further, retreated back into her safe relationship with Vita Sackville-West, writing to her as ‘honey’, requesting a visit to help soothe her damaged nerves.

  In May 1931, Ethel fell out badly with Adrian Boult over the production of The Prison for the BBC. He then refused point blank to conduct it, so Ethel stomped round to Virginia for comfort, regaling her with the long story of her life with all its various persecutions, swamping Virginia with demands for sympathy. Her weary friend, suffering a bad headache and longing to get down to Rodmell for some peace and quiet, lost her temper and sh
outed at Ethel, protesting that unless she shut up, one or other of them would probably burst into flames and spontaneously combust.

  Ethel then sent Virginia a copy of an article she had written for the New Statesman in which she had complained about her own bad treatment as a woman composer. With her patience already wearing terribly thin, Virginia immodestly replied that if she had had the originality and drive to set up her own publishing press, why couldn’t Ethel create and manage her own orchestra? Woolf’s reply becomes even more insensitive, comparing Ethel to a large, hairy Cornish pig that was using Virginia as its scratching-post. Not surprisingly, Ethel exploded with rage and Virginia suffered more visits during which Ethel, ranting and bombastic, insulted Virginia, who now was beginning to refer to these occasions as an insult to the ‘celebrated sensibility’ of her nervous system.

  Their friendship did actually survive the storminess of 1931, but Virginia’s tone in her letters to Ethel changed, taking on an ironic wisdom and a faintly mocking tone. She remained fond of Ethel, and confided in her more openly than with any other woman, discussing sex, masturbation and other topics that she had never before been able to mention. However, she also referred more frequently in her diary to ‘old Ethel’s’ advancing years, her unattractiveness, her unpleasant way of chomping through food, her red-facedness and her ability to wind Virginia up into a frenzy. Ethel was by now almost completely deaf, which meant that she did not compose any more major works after The Prison, but she was pleased about a revival of The Wreckers in 1931, and invited Virginia to attend the performance – which she did, even managing to enjoy it.

  Virginia Woolf was not the only woman who simultaneously adored and was frustrated by Ethel Smyth. Vita Sackville-West, who still loved Virginia and often resented Ethel for stealing her away so often, did not enjoy Ethel’s visits all that much, and reacted to her egotism with weary resignation. In August 1931, in the throes of her new love affair with Evelyn Irons, Vita complained to Evelyn that: