Virginia Woolf's Women

by Vanessa Curtis

  The extraordinary beauty of her face, it was very austere in a way, angular, odd, quite unlike most of the early photographs. The face itself is indescribable I think because it – it owed so much to its movements.

  In later life, Virginia began to resemble Julia Stephen more noticeably. David Cecil remembered Virginia’s face as being that of a ‘mocking Madonna’, a description eerily similar to Elizabeth Robins’s reminiscence of Julia Stephen, whom she said would say something ‘so unexpected, from that Madonna face, one thought it vicious’.

  As a writer, Virginia Woolf was rigidly self-disciplined, training her mind to produce tightly written copy by walking, reading, studying, and writing letters and diaries. Her nephew, Cecil Woolf, witnessed this astonishing dedication to the written word on a visit to Rodmell:

  I remember on one visit to Monk’s [House] taking my aunt’s breakfast tray up to her and seeing perhaps a dozen scraps of paper lying on the floor round the bed. When I remarked on this – probably offered to put them in the waste paper basket – she told me that she often made such notes – sometimes no more than a single word or name, or a phrase – for her current work during the night.

  But as a person, Virginia was not always so self-disciplined. Never overly concerned about her appearance, bits of her clothing would fall off in public, hairpins plopped into her soup, her skirts were held up by safety pins, and she could be scatty, forgetful and vague. To the local village children of Rodmell, she was a figure of fascination. The actor Dirk Bogarde, who grew up in the neighbouring village of Lullington, recalled his boyhood sightings of Virginia:

  Used to see her marching about the water-meadows quite often. Hair wispy and caught into a loose sort of knot, a big stick or sometimes a brightly coloured umbrella furled. A golf umbrella, I imagine, a droopy cardigan. She sometimes wore a big floppy straw hat and we all thought she was a witch. Or could put spells on you … there was a strange décontracté air about her which made us all uneasy … she never spoke to us, but sometimes sang to herself, a sure sign that she was ‘barmy’ as we said … and picked little bunches of wild flowers.

  Despite these rather endearing traits, she still possessed enough dignity and elegance of behaviour to provoke the following recollection from E.M. Forster, giving us a humorous insight into how Virginia viewed herself as a female:

  She felt herself to be not only a woman, but also a lady, and this gives a further twist to her social outlook. She made no bones about it. She was a lady, by birth and upbringing, and it was no use being cowardly about it, and pretending that her mother had turned a mangle, or that Sir Leslie had been a plasterer’s mate.

  Virginia’s marriage to Leonard, although seen by many as unconventional due to its emphasis on intellectual companionship rather than passion, brought out many of her best qualities, not least of which were loyalty, commitment, frankness and love. On occasion, Leonard’s treatment at the hands of his over-sensitive wife could be brutal, but he was patient, and Virginia was well aware of her deficiencies as a partner, chronicling them honestly (though it has to be said, without much shame):

  I hear poor L. driving the lawn mower up and down, for a wife like I am should have a label to her cage. She bites! And he spent all yesterday running round London for me.

  On the rare occasions when Leonard expressed displeasure with their relationship, Virginia had enough of a conscience, as well as a fear of gaining his disapproval, to show contrition:

  Also I can, by taking pains, be much more considerate of L’s feelings; and so keep more steadily at our ordinary level of intimacy & ease.

  After her death in 1941, and even to the present day, the legend of Virginia Woolf as an unsmiling, sickly, sexless depressive who was obsessed with suicide has continued to gain momentum, aided by a clutch of negative biographies and a tendency by biographers to publish pictures of Virginia that predominantly show her looking frail, or sad. Countless books have attempted to analyse her depressive moods, and television documentaries proclaim her ‘tragic’ story with dour, funereal music to accompany them. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Virginia, during the early part of her life, suffered far more tragedy and bereavements than most, it is forgotten that, as a friend, she brought happiness, stimulation and humour into the lives of all those who knew her intimately. Fortunately, some of their tributes, soon to be published, pay moving testimony to the lighter, more endearing side of Virginia Woolf. Disproving the image often associated with her of a fragile, dour and humourless woman, Nigel Nicolson remembers that ‘almost to the end Virginia was capable of much enjoyment and intensive work’. Elizabeth Bowen, the writer, remembered Virginia laughing ‘in this consuming, choking, delightful hooting way’ – that observation was made only a few weeks before Virginia’s death.

  After Virginia’s suicide in March 1941, shocked letters of condolence flooded on to the doormats of Leonard Woolf and Vanessa Bell. Very few people made reference to Virginia’s struggles with mental illness, or to her darker moods, but chose instead to celebrate the life of a woman who, despite the attempts of many to portray her otherwise, had enjoyed life to the full and tossed back, with considerable vigour, all the challenges that it had thrown at her. Amongst the hundred or so letters that Vanessa Bell received after her sister’s death, the following handful, are particularly revealing about Virginia:

  I think she had a rich enjoyment of much in life – her affections, her reading, her view of humanity, her own powers gave her a great deal of happiness – but the bodily fabric and the brain were not tough enough to withstand the volcano within. Marjorie Strachey

  She was, among other things, as beautiful to look at as her works were to read – I have never seen anyone of more perfect distinction. Osbert Sitwell

  I think that anybody who knew Virginia felt that the world was suddenly impoverished and darkened. Raymond Mortimer

  I expect it was all too much for her acutely sensitive spirit and that it is best she should be at rest. Violet Mannering

  I can see Virginia lying back in her chair, the lovely head and beautiful features, the smile and delicious laugh. Sybil Colefax

  So much has left the world with poor Virginia – distinction, a peculiar charm, a rare kind of beauty, a genius. Edward Sackville-West

  The old cook from 22 Hyde Park Gate, Sophie Farrell, was terribly distressed by Virginia’s death and died herself only a couple of weeks after writing her letter of condolence to Vanessa. She had watched ‘Miss Ginia’ grow from a talkative, mischievous little girl into a highly successful author, and she found it hard to believe that Virginia had really gone for good:

  I have known and loved her very much since she was 4 years old. I can’t bear to think that she has strayed away from you all.

  Photographs, letters and reminiscences aside, the only other way to gain a more personal glimpse of Virginia is to visit the houses that influenced and affected her development. Three, more than the rest, possess a haunting feel; these houses are places where, armed with an imagination and some knowledge of their history, it is possible to believe that Virginia Woolf has just passed out of a room, seconds before you entered it.

  To indulge in these literary pilgrimages is to understand something of the pleasure that Virginia herself used to enjoy, albeit rather guiltily, as she visited the homes of her favourite writers. Although she tried to justify her curiosity at Haworth Parsonage, the home of the Brontës, by proclaiming that ‘the curiosity is only legitimate when the house of a great writer or the country in which it is set adds something to our understanding of his books’, she also rhapsodized over Charlotte’s tiny shoes and admitted that she temporarily forgot ‘the chiefly memorable fact that she was a great writer’. To the many of us who peer around at Monk’s House hoping to find not only the clues to her life as a writer, but also some personal thrill by gazing guiltily at Virginia’s narrow bed and embroidered shawl, there is doubtless some comfort in reading her words.

  Talland House, Virginia’s childhood hol
iday home in Cornwall, still looks much as it did then, with an additional extension to the roof and the side. The vast lawns and orchards that once surrounded it have sadly been taken over by a car park and several ugly Victorian villas. However, with a knowledge of Virginia’s reminiscences about her childhood holidays, described in Moments of Being and fictionalized in To the Lighthouse, it is still possible to stand on one of the old wrought-iron balconies that Julia and Leslie, with their children, would have stood on in order to look out at Godrevy lighthouse.

  Talland was immensely important to Virginia, not just as a place of childhood idyll, but in retrospect, as a key aid to the development of her senses and observation skills, and thus to her development as a fine writer. As the only place where she was truly, consistently happy, St Ives remained in her imagination for the rest of her life, proving far more superior, as she was to recall, than holidays in the paltry Isle of Wight or Sussex. Whereas her permanent home at 22 Hyde Park Gate was suffocating, repressive and imposed great limits upon such an imaginative child, Virginia was allowed to roam relatively freely at Talland House, around the house, garden and beach. Here, amidst the vast, rugged landscape of the Cornish coast it was possible to have great adventures, and to feel, think, experience and listen in ways that were not possible at home.

  Talland House was the most important of Virginia’s childhood dwellings, and she realized this by writing about it and returning on several visits as an adult, to creep up the carriage drive and peer at the lighted house through a gap in the escallonia. Talland was a magical place for Virginia because it was one of the few places not directly associated with a family bereavement, although after Julia’s death in 1895, the children never returned to stay there. In the lush gardens there, Julia, Stella, Vanessa, Virginia and their friends and family had relaxed and entertained, and experienced some hope for the future.

  At the other end of the spectrum, and at the other end of Virginia’s life, was Monk’s House in Rodmell. Although a place of beauty, owing to its setting in a picturesque village nestled away in the South Downs, the house itself is ordered and sparse, seeming to represent the austere, mature and calm side of Virginia Woolf. The rooms at Monk’s House have been carefully arranged by the National Trust to have a similar atmosphere to the one that would have existed in Virginia’s day; slightly sober, basic, unsentimental. They represent the necessary clearing-out of a mind filled with the frivolities of the London social scene; they reflect the ability that Virginia possessed to attain and maintain a focused frame of mind. Monk’s House symbolizes the life of a worker, a prolific and serious writer. Although Rodmell provided a much-needed calm, when the church bells rang or schoolchildren chanted, Virginia often despaired.

  Monk’s House was a holiday home to the Woolfs, but also a house to work in; unpretentious, with a writer’s view and a writer’s lodge. Unconstrained beauty is not found in the rooms, with their low ceilings and simple Omega furniture, but in Leonard’s garden which, although much changed, still presents a pleasing excess of colour and shape to the visitor’s eager eye. Despite the many changes both in and outside Monk’s House, it remains surprisingly personal in atmosphere, with an old set of Virginia and Leonard’s bowling balls stashed away under the staircase as if they are still waiting for use.

  The one house that was never viewed as a place where much pleasure was experienced, the ‘house of all the deaths’, the ‘cage’ of Virginia’s youth, still stands rather forebodingly at Hyde Park Gate. Even now, some hundred or more years after the unhappy deaths of Julia Stephen and her daughter Stella, the external appearance of 22 Hyde Park Gate manages to convey something of the gloom, claustrophobia and stifling Victorian repression of Virginia’s childhood. Inside, on the narrow, winding stairs, the visitor can still smell her fear, her longing to escape the confines of existence in this house where privacy was rarely to be had. The basement hallway, now containing an attractive flat, still gives off a musty smell of damp. The attic stairs, leading to a luxury flat in what was once Leslie Stephen’s study, can seem bare and chill. All the negative aspects of Virginia’s childhood that caused her to be over-sensitive, nervous and tortured in later life are still impregnated into the walls and foundations of 22 Hyde Park Gate.

  The lease of this house remained with the Stephen family until 1928, when it was finally sold. Extraordinarily, the original mortgage deeds, drawn up shortly after Leslie’s death, recently turned up in a collectors’ shop in Bournemouth and have now been returned to the owner of one of the six private flats that make up No. 22. Elaborately written in black ink on yellow parchment, signed and sealed in wax by the four Stephen children and witnessed by Jack Hills, they are a poignant reminder of the many years that Virginia spent at Hyde Park Gate.

  Years of being run first as a hotel and then as ‘flatlets’ until 1958, resulted in the house becoming shabby and run down. At one point in 1966, it accommodated fourteen people, nearly as many as during Virginia’s childhood. Converting it into six larger flats, a businessman eventually rescued the house in the 1970s. Nowadays, sympathetic ownership has ensured that the house is pleasantly decorated inside and well maintained. A member of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain lives in one of the flats and runs the Residents’ Association. A smart coat of white paint on the front of the house hides what used to be a red-brick façade in the Stephens’ day. The back of the house, with smaller windows, looms up towards the sky largely unchanged, apart from the addition of an ugly lift shaft to the side. It is still possible to see the little glass room where Vanessa and Virginia once painted and wrote, planning their futures. Inside the house there are sections of the original staircase balustrade remaining, but the layout of the house has changed greatly.

  Apart from the chill in the basement, the house feels warm and welcoming where once it was foreboding, crowded and filled with tortuous grief. The original front door to the house is now filled in, but it is visible from the inside. There is no grand front hallway, where once there would have been a table, coat hooks, visiting cards and umbrellas. Leslie and Julia’s large bedroom, where so many dramatic moments of life and death occurred, is now divided into an attractive sitting-room and a smaller bedroom; the ancient and heavy mirror that stood near Leslie and Julia’s bed is still on show at Charleston, once the home of Vanessa Bell. The corridors at Hyde Park Gate, so dark and gloomy in the 1880s, are now white and airy. On the half-landings, where the water closets and tin bath would have stood, are the modern day lifts.

  Despite so many changes, it is still possible, when alone, to stand for a moment on the narrow staircase and hear the ghostly sounds of the tall, dark house as it might have been in the 1880s, when Julia Stephen was mistress of the house and eighteen people, including Virginia Stephen, lived out the dramas of daily life in stifling proximity.

  Two doors down, Stella’s house, 24 Hyde Park Gate, stands solid and silent.

  Afterword

  Only four of the women discussed in this book outlived Virginia herself. Violet Dickinson, on hearing of Virginia’s death, wrote at once to Vanessa, admitting that she was experiencing ‘a feeling of the deepest thankfulness that she’s no longer tired and depressed’ and praising Vanessa for the care and love that she had always provided for her sister.

  Vita Sackville-West also wrote to Vanessa immediately, offering the most comfort that she possibly could have, with the following words:

  I should like you to know that (at your request) I did tell her what you had said about the comfort she had been to you over Julian – and I have never seen her look more pleased and surprised.

  Vita lived on until 1962, dying peacefully at Sissinghurst. Harold, heartbroken, never recovered from her death, first giving up writing and then, eventually, reading. He died six years later, in the same cottage that his beloved ‘Mar’ (Vita) had died in.

  Ethel Smyth retreated, in her final few years, to her house at Woking. On hearing the news of Virginia’s death, she was not altogether surprised, hav
ing received, as mentioned earlier, that vague, uncharacteristic letter from Virginia a few days previously. She wrote to Vanessa Bell:

  I … you see, it is not only (I did not tell her this) that I loved her, it was that my life [was] literally based on her … it was the constant amazing contact with a mind of genius.

  Ethel, showing a great depth of understanding for her late, treasured friend, added: ‘I believe she chose her end wisely.’

  Vanessa Bell did not completely break down, as many feared she would, on hearing of her sister’s death. She began to age quickly; her once-robust body became thin and emaciated and her features grew in severity and began to take on a pronounced resemblance to the long-dead Julia Stephen. She withdrew still further into that world of her own making at Charleston, spending the next twenty years surrounded mainly by Duncan, Clive, her children and grandchildren, and dear old friends such as Maynard Keynes. She painted, no doubt remembering herself as the young woman who had bicycled, hair and cape flying, to Arthur Cope’s School of Art and, later, to the Slade; she observed the heavy-lidded eyes and graceful features of Julia Stephen starting to appear on the faces of her children and grandchildren; she kept in touch constantly with Leonard and Vita into their old age; and, with more difficulty, she buried, deep inside, her private memories of Virginia, the little sister who had joined her in the twilight world under the nursery table at 22 Hyde Park Gate whilst the ‘Angels in the House’, Maria, Julia and Stella, wrapped their dark, protective, heavy wings around the shoulders of the unsuspecting Stephen girls.