Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  “Lady Ottoline”, I wrote in my diary, “is a great lady who has become discontented with her own class and is trying to find what she wants among artists and writers. For this reason, as if they were inspired with something divine, she approaches them in a definite way and they see her as a disembodied spirit escaping from her world into one where she can never take root. She is remarkable to look at if not beautiful. Like most passive people she is very careful and elaborate in her surroundings. She takes the utmost pains to set off her beauty as though it were some rare object picked up in a dusky Florentine back street. It always seems possible that the rich American women who finger her Persian cloak and call it ‘very good’ may go on to finger her face and call it a fine work in the late renaissance style; the brow and eyes magnificent, the chin perhaps restored. The pallor of her cheeks, the way she has of drawing back her head and looking at you blankly gives her the appearance of a marble Medusa. She is curiously passive.” And then I go on to exclaim rather rhapsodically that the whole place was full of “lustre and illusion”.

  When indeed one remembers that drawing room full of people, the pale yellows and pinks of the brocades, the Italian chairs, the Persian rugs, the embroideries, the tassels, the scent, the pomegranates, the pugs, the pot-pourri and Ottoline bearing down upon one from afar in her white shawl with the great scarlet flowers on it and sweeping one away out of the large room and the crowd into a little room with her alone, where she plied one with questions that were so intimate and so intense, about life and one’s friends, and made one sign one’s name in a little scented book — it was only last week that I signed my name in another little scented book in Gower Street — I think my excitement may be excused.

  Indeed lustre and illusion tinged Bloomsbury during those last years before the war. We were not so austere; we were not so exalted. There were quarrels and intrigues. Ottoline may have been a Medusa; but she was not a passive Medusa. She had a great gift for drawing people under. Even Middleton Murry, it is said, was pulled down by her among the vegetables at Garsington. And by this time we were far from drab. Thursday evenings with their silences and their arguments were a thing of the past. Their place was taken by parties of a very different sort. The Post-Impressionist movement had cast — not its shadow — but its bunch of variegated lights upon us. We bought poinsettias made of scarlet plush; we made dresses of the printed cotton that is specially loved by negroes; we dressed ourselves up as Gauguin pictures and careered round Crosby Hall. Mrs Whitehead was scandalized. She said that Vanessa and I were practically naked. My mother’s ghost was invoked once more — by Violet Dickinson — to deplore the fact that I had taken a house in Brunswick Square and had asked young men to share it. George Duckworth came all the way from Charles Street to beg Vanessa to make me give up the idea and was not comforted perhaps when she replied that after all the Foundling Hospital was handy. Stories began to circulate about parties at which we all undressed in public. Logan Pearsall Smith told Ethel Sands that he knew for a fact that Maynard had copulated with Vanessa on a sofa in the middle of the drawing room. It was a heartless, immoral, cynical society it was said; we were abandoned women and our friends were the most worthless of young men.

  Yet in spite of Logan, in spite of Mrs Whitehead, in spite of Vanessa and Maynard and what they did on the sofa at Brunswick Square, Old Bloomsbury still survives. If you seek a proof — look around.

  AM I A SNOB?

  Molly has very unfairly, I think, laid upon me the burden of providing a memoir tonight. We all forgive Molly everything of course because of her insidious, her devastating charm. But it is unfair. It is not my turn; I am not the oldest of you. I am not the most widely lived or the most richly memoried. Maynard, Desmond, Clive and Leonard all live stirring and active lives; all constantly brush up against the great; all constantly affect the course of history one way or another. It is for them to unlock the doors of their treasure-houses and to set before us those gilt and gleaming objects which repose within. Who am I that I should be asked to read a memoir? A mere scribbler; what’s worse, a mere dabbler in dreams; one who is not fish, flesh, fowl or good red herring. My memoirs, which are always private, and at their best only about proposals of marriage, seductions by half-brothers, encounters with Ottoline and so on, must soon run dry. Nobody now asks me to marry them; for many years nobody has attempted to seduce me. Prime Ministers never consult me. Twice I have been to Hendon, but each time the aeroplane refused to mount into the air. I have visited most of the capitals of Europe, it is true; I can speak a kind of dog French and mongrel Italian; but so ignorant am I, so badly educated, that if you ask me the simplest question — for instance, where is Guatemala? — I am forced to turn the conversation.

  Yet Molly has asked me to write a paper. What can it be about? That is the question I asked myself, and it seemed to me, as I sat brooding, that the time has come when we old fogies — we ignorant and private living old fogies — must face this question — what are our memoirs to be about, if the Memoir Club is to go on meeting, and if half the members are people like myself to whom nothing ever happens? Dare I suggest that the time has come when we must interpret Molly’s commands rather liberally, and instead of sweeping the lamp of memory over the adventures and excitement of real life, must turn that beam inwards and describe ourselves?

  Am I speaking for myself only when I say that though nothing worth calling an adventure has befallen me since I last occupied this thorny and prominent chair I still seem to myself a subject of inexhaustible and fascinating anxiety? — a volcano in perpetual eruption? Am I alone in my egotism when I say that never does the pale light of dawn filter through the blinds of 52 Tavistock Square but I open my eyes and exclaim, “Good God! Here I am again!” — not always with pleasure, often with pain; sometimes with a spasm of acute disgust — but always, always with interest?

  Myself then might be the subject of this paper; but there are drawbacks. It would run to so many volumes — that single subject — that those of us who have hair; those whose hair is still capable of growth — would find it tickling their toes before I had done. I must break off one tiny fragment of this vast subject; I must give one brief glance at one small corner of this universe — which still to me seems as trackless and tiger-haunted as that other upon which is written — where I know not — the word Guatemala; I must, I say, choose one aspect only; and ask one question only; and this is it — Am I a snob?

  As I try to answer it, I may perhaps turn up a memory or two; I may perhaps revive certain of your own memories; at any rate, I will try to give you facts; and though of course I shall not tell the whole truth, perhaps I shall tell enough to set you guessing. But in order to answer that question, I must begin by asking — what is a snob? And since I have no skill in analysis — since my education was neglected — I shall take the obvious course of trying to find some object against which I can measure myself: with which to compare myself. Desmond, for instance. Naturally I take Desmond first. Is he a snob?

  He ought to be. He was educated at Eton, then went to Cambridge. We all know the old tag about grateful science adoring the aristocracy. But whatever Eton and Cambridge did to encourage snobbery in him, nature did far more. She gave him all the gifts that a grateful aristocracy adores in science; a golden tongue; perfect manners; complete self-possession; boundless curiosity, mixed with sympathy; he can also sit a horse and shoot a pheasant at a pinch. As for poverty, since Desmond has never minded how he dresses, no one else has ever given the matter a thought. So here then, undoubtedly, is my pattern; let me compare my case with his.

  We were standing, when I thought this, at a window in the drawing room at Tavistock Square. Desmond had lunched with us; we had spent the afternoon talking; suddenly he remembered that he was dining somewhere. But where? “Now where am I dining?” he said and took out his pocket book. Something distracted his attention for a moment, and I looked over his shoulder. Hastily, furtively, I ran my eye over his engagements. Monday Lady Bess
borough 8:30. Tuesday Lady Ancaster 8:30. Wednesday Dora Sanger seven sharp. Thursday Lady Salisbury ten o’clock. Friday lunch Wolves and dine Lord Revelstoke. White waistcoat. White waistcoat was twice underlined. Years later I discovered the reason — he was to meet our king, our late lamented George. Well, he glanced at his engagements; shut the book and made off. Not a word did he say about the peerage. He never brought the conversation round to Revelstoke; white waistcoats were unmentioned. “No,” I said to myself with a keen pang of disappointment as he shut the door, “Desmond, alas, is not a snob.”

  I must seek another pattern. Take Maynard now. He too was at Eton and at Cambridge. Since then he has been concerned in so many great affairs that were he to rattle his engagements under our noses we should be fairly deafened with the clink of coronets and dazed with the glitter of diamonds. But are we deafened? Are we dazed? Alas, no. Dominated, I suspect by the iron rod of old Cambridge, dominated too by that moral sense which grows stronger in Maynard the older he gets, that stern desire to preserve our generation in its integrity, and to protect the younger generation from its folly, Maynard never boasts. It is for me to inform you that he lunched today with the Prime Minister. Poor old Baldwin with the tears running down his cheeks marched him up and down — up and down beneath the celebrated pictures of Pitt and Peel. “If only”, he kept on saying, “you would take a seat in the Cabinet, Keynes; or a peerage, Keynes...” It is for me to tell you that story. Maynard never mentioned it. Pigs, plays, pictures — he will talk of them all. But never of Prime Ministers and peerages. Alas and alas — Maynard is not a snob. I am foiled again.

  All the same, I have made one discovery. The essence of snobbery is that you wish to impress other people. The snob is a flutter-brained, hare-brained creature so little satisfied with his or her own standing that in order to consolidate it he or she is always flourishing a title or an honour in other people’s faces so that they may believe, and help him to believe what he does not really believe — that he or she is somehow a person of importance.

  This is a symptom that I recognise in my own case. Witness this letter. Why is it always on top of all my letters? Because it has a coronet — if I get a letter stamped with a coronet that letter miraculously floats on top. I often ask — why? I know perfectly well that none of my friends will ever be, or ever has been impressed by anything I do to impress them. Yet I do it — here is the letter — on top. This shows, like a rash or a spot, that I have the disease. And I go on to ask when and how did I catch it?

  When I was a girl I had certain opportunities for snobbery, because though outwardly an intellectual family, very nobly born in a bookish sense, we had floating fringes in the world of fashion. We had George Duckworth to begin with. But George Duckworth’s snobbery was of so gross and palpable a texture that I could smell it and taste it from afar. I did not like that smell and taste. My temptation reached me in subtler ways — through Kitty Maxse originally, I think — a lady of the most delicate charm, of the most ethereal grace so that the great, whom she introduced, were sprayed and disinfected and robbed of their grossness. Who could call the Marchioness of Bath gross, or her daughters, the Ladies Katherine and Beatrice Thynne? It was unthinkable. Beautiful they were and stately; they dressed disgracefully, but they held themselves superbly. When we dined or lunched with old Lady Bath I sat there shivering with ecstasy — an ecstasy that was wholly snobbish perhaps but made up of different parts — of pleasure, terror, laughter and amazement. There Lady Bath sat at the end of the table on a chair stamped with the coronet and arms of the Thynnes; and on the table beside her on two cushions lay two Waterbury watches. These she consulted from time to time. But why? I do not know. Had time any special significance for her? She seemed to have endless leisure. Often she would nod off to sleep. Then she would wake and look at her watches. She looked at them because she liked looking at them. Her indifference to public opinion intrigued and delighted me. So too did her conversation with her butler Middleton.

  A carriage would pass the window.

  “Who’s that driving by?” she would say suddenly.

  “Lady Suffield, my lady”, Middleton would reply. And Lady Bath would look at her watches. Once I remember the word ‘marl’ cropped up in conversation.

  “What’s marl, Middleton?” Lady Bath asked.

  “A mixture of earth and carbonate of lime, my lady”, Middleton informed her. Meanwhile Katie had seized a bloody bone from the plate and was feeding the dogs. As I sat there I felt these people don’t care a snap what anyone thinks. Here is human nature in its uncropped, unpruned, natural state. They have a quality which we in Kensington lack. Perhaps I am only finding excuses for myself, but that was the origin of the snobbery which now leads me to put this letter on top of the pack — the aristocrat is freer, more natural, more eccentric than we are. Here I note that my snobbery is not of the intellectual kind. Lady Bath was simple in the extreme. Neither Kade nor Beatrice could spell. Will Rothenstein and Andrew Lang were the brightest lights in their intellectual world. Neither Rothenstein or Andrew Lang impressed me. If you ask me would I rather meet Einstein or the Prince of Wales, I plump for the Prince without hesitation.

  I want coronets; but they must be old coronets; coronets that carry land with them and country houses; coronets that breed simplicity, eccentricity, ease; and such confidence in your own state that you can surround your plate with Waterbury watches and feed dogs with bloody bones with your own hands. No sooner have I said this than I am forced to qualify this statement. This letter rises up in witness against me. It has a coronet on top but it is not an old coronet; it is from a lady whose birth is no better — perhaps worse — than my own. Yet when I received this letter I was all in a flutter. I will read it to you.

  Dear Virginia, I am not very young and since ALL my friends are either dead or dying I would much like to see you and ask you a great favour. You will laugh when I tell you what it is but in case you would lunch here alone with me on [the] 12th or 13th, 17th or 18th, I will tell you what it is. No, I won’t. I will wait to know if on any one of these dates you can see your admirer Margot Oxford

  I wrote at once — though I seldom write at once — to say that I was entirely at Lady Oxford’s service. Whatever she asked, I would do. I was not left in doubt very long. Soon came this second letter.

  Dear Virginia, I think I should warn you of the favour which I want you to do for me. All my friends are either dying or dead and I am aware that my own time is closing round me. The greatest compliment ever paid me — among few — was when you said I was a good writer. This, coming from you, might have turned my head as you are far the greatest female writer living. When I die, I would like you to write a short notice in The Times to say you admired my writing, and thought that journalists should have made more use of me. I am not at all vain, but I have been hurt by being first employed and then turned down by editors of newspapers. This may seem trivial to you — as indeed it is — but I would like you to give me to the Press. Do not give another thought to this if it bothers you, but praise from you would delight my family when I am dead.

  Your ever admiring Margot Oxford You could send it to Editor of The Times as Dawson keeps and values all contributions upon those who are dead.

  Now I was not, I think, flattered to be the greatest female writer in Lady Oxford’s eyes; but I was flattered to be asked to lunch with her alone. “Of course,” I replied, “I will come and lunch with you alone.” And I was pleased when on the day in question Mabel, our dour cook, came to me, and said, “Lady Oxford has sent her car for you, ma’am.” Obviously she was impressed by me; I was impressed by myself. I rose in my own esteem because I rose in Mabel’s.

  When I reached Bedford Square there was a large lunch party; Margot was rigged up in her finery; a ruby cross set with diamonds blazed on her breast; she was curled and crisp like a little Greek horse; tart and darting like an asp or an adder. Philip Morrell was the first to feel her sting. He was foolish and she snubbed him. B
ut then she recovered her temper. She was very brilliant. She rattled off a string of anecdotes about the Duke of Beaufort and the Badminton hunt; how she had got her blue; how she had [heard]- about Lady Warwick and the [Prince of Wales?,] about Lady Ripon, Lady Bessborough; L[ord] Balfour and ‘the Souls’. As for age, death and obituary articles, The Times, nothing was said of them. I am sure she had forgotten that such things existed. So had I. I was enthralled. I embraced her warmly in the hall; and the next thing I remember is that I found myself pacing along the Farringdon Road talking aloud to myself, and seeing the butchers’ shops and the trays of penny toys through an air that seemed made of gold dust and champagne.

  Now no party of intellectuals has ever sent me flying down the Farringdon Road. I have dined with H. G. Wells to meet Bernard Shaw, Arnold Bennett and Granville Barker and I have only felt like an old washerwoman toiling step by step up a steep and endless staircase.

  Thus I seem to have arrived at the conclusion that I am not only a coronet snob; but also a lit up drawing room snob; a social festivity snob. Any group of people if they are well dressed, and socially sparkling and unfamiliar will do the trick; sends up that fountain of gold and diamond dust which I suppose obscures the solid truth. Here is another letter which perhaps will throw more light upon other angles of the problem.