We saw Vita given the Hawthornden. A horrid show up, I thought: not of the gentry on the platform - Squire, Drinkwater, Binyon only - of us all; all of us chattering writers. My word! how insignificant we all looked! How can we pretend that we are interesting, that our works matter? The whole business of writing became infinitely distasteful. There was no one I could care whether he read, liked, or disliked ‘my writing’. And no one could care for my criticism either; the mildness, the conventionality of them all struck me. But there may be a stream of ink in them that matters more than the look of them - so tightly clothed, mild and decorous - showed. I felt there was no one full grown mind among us. In truth, it was the thick dull middle class of letters that met, not the aristocracy.
Wednesday, June 22nd.
Women haters depress me and both Tolstoi and Mrs Asquith hate women. I suppose my depression is a form of vanity. But then so are all strong opinions on both sides. I hate Mrs A’s hard, dogmatic empty style. But enough: I shall write about her tomorrow. I write every day about something and have deliberately set apart a few weeks to money-making, so that I may put £50 in each of our pockets by September. This will be the first money of my own since I married. I never felt the need of it till lately. And I can get it, if I want it, but shirk writing for money.
Thursday, June 23rd.
This diary shall batten on the leanness of my social life. Never have I spent so quiet a London summer. It is perfectly easy to slip out of the crush unobserved. I have set up my standard as an invalid and no one bothers me. No one asks me to do anything. Vainly, I have the feeling that this is of my choice, not theirs; and there is a luxury in being quiet in the heart of chaos. Directly I talk and exert my wits in talk I get a dull damp rather headachy day. Quiet brings me cool clear quick mornings, in which I dispose of a good deal of work and toss my brain into the air when I take a walk. I shall feel some triumph if I skirt a headache this summer.
Thursday, June 30th.
Now I must sketch out the Eclipse.
About 10 on Tuesday night several very long trains, accurately filled (ours with civil servants) left Kings Cross. In our carriage were Vita, Harold, Quentin, L. and I. This is Hatfield I daresay, I said. I was smoking a cigar. Then again, This is Peterborough, L. said. Before it got dark we kept looking at the sky; soft fleecy; but there was one star, over Alexandra Park. Look, Vita, that’s Alexandra Park, said Harold. The Nicolsons got sleepy; H. curled up with his head on V.’s knee. She looked like Sappho by Leighton, asleep; so we plunged through the midlands; made a very long stay at York. Then at 3 we got out our sandwiches and I came in from the W.C. to find Harold being rubbed clean of cream. Then he broke the china sandwich box. Here L. laughed without restraint. Then we had another doze, or the N.’s did; then here was a level crossing, at which were drawn up a long line of motor omnibuses and motors, all burning pale yellow lights. It was getting grey - still a fleecy mottled sky. We got to Richmond about 3.30; it was cold and the N.’s had a quarrel, Eddie said, about V.’s luggage. We went off in the omnibus, saw a vast castle (who does that belong to, said Vita, who is interested in castles). It had a front window added and a light I think burning. All the fields were aburn with June grasses and red tasselled plants none coloured as yet, all pale. Pale and grey too were the little uncompromising Yorkshire farms. As we passed one, the farmer and his wife and sister came out, all tightly and tidily dressed in black, as if they were going to church. At another ugly square farm, two women were looking out of the upper windows. These had white blinds drawn down half across them. We were a train of 3 vast cars, one stopping to let the others go on; all very low and powerful; taking immensely steep hills. The driver once got out and put a small stone behind our wheel - inadequate. An accident would have been natural; there were also many motor cars. These suddenly increased as we crept up to the top of Bardon Fell. Here were people camping beside their cars. We got out and found ourselves very high, on a moor, boggy, heathery, with butts for grouse shooting. There were grass tracks here and there and people had already taken up positions. So we joined them, walking out to what seemed the highest point looking over Richmond. One light burned down there. Vales and moors stretched, slope after slope, round us. It was like the Haworth country. But over Richmond, where the sun was rising, was a soft grey cloud. We could see by a gold spot where the sun was. But it was early yet. We had to wait, stamping to keep warm. Ray had wrapped herself in the blue striped blanket off a double bed. She looked incredibly vast and bedroomish. Saxon looked very old. Leonard kept looking at his watch. Four great red setters came leaping over the moor. There were sheep feeding behind us. Vita had tried to buy a guinea pig - Quentin advised a savage - so she observed the animals from time to time. There were thin places in the clouds and some complete holes. The question was whether the sun would show through a cloud or through one of these hollow places when the time came. We began to get anxious. We saw rays coming through the bottom of the clouds. Then, for a moment, we saw the sun sweeping - it seemed to be sailing at a great pace and clear in a gap; we had out our smoked glasses; we saw it Crescent, burning red; next moment it had sailed fast into the cloud again; only the red streamers came from it; then only a golden haze, such as one has often seen. The moments were passing. We thought we were cheated; we looked at the sheep; they showed no fear; the setters were racing round; everyone was standing in long lines, rather dignified, looking out. I thought how we were like very old people, in the birth of the world - druids on Stonehenge; (this idea came more vividly in the first pale light though). At the back of us were great blue spaces in the cloud. These were still blue. But now the colour was going out. The clouds were turning pale; a reddish black colour. Down in the valley it was an extraordinary scrumble of red and black; there was the one light burning; all was cloud down there, and very beautiful, so delicately tinted. Nothing could be seen through the cloud. The 24 seconds were passing. Then one looked back again at the blue; and rapidly, very very quickly, all the colours faded; it became darker and darker as at the beginning of a violent storm; the light sank and sank; we kept saying this is the shadow; and we thought now it is over - this is the shadow; when suddenly the light went out. We had fallen. It was extinct. There was no colour. The earth was dead. That was the astonishing moment; and the next when as if a ball had rebounded the cloud took colour on itself again, only a sparky ethereal colour and so the light came back. I had very strongly the feeling as the light went out of some vast obeisance; something kneeling down and suddenly raised up when the colours came. The colour for some moments was of the most lovely kind - fresh, various; here blue and there brown; all new colours, as if washed over and repainted. They came back astonishingly lightly and quickly and beautifully in the valley and over the hills - at first with a miraculous glittering and ethereality, later normally almost, but with a great sense of relief. It was like recovery. We had been much worse than we had expected. We had seen the world dead. This was within the power of nature. Our greatness had been apparent too. Now we became Ray in a blanket, Saxon in a cap etc. We were bitterly cold. I should say that the cold had increased as the light went down. One felt very livid. Then - it was over till 1999. What remained was the sense of the comfort which we get used to, of plenty of light, and colour. This for some time seemed a definitely welcome thing. Yet when it became established all over the country, one rather missed the sense of its being a relief and a respite, which one had had when it came back after the darkness. How can I express the darkness? It was a sudden plunge, when one did not expect it; being at the mercy of the sky; our own nobility; the druids; Stonehenge; and the racing red dogs; all that was in one’s mind. Also, to be picked out of one’s London drawing room and set down on the wildest moors in England, was impressive. For the rest, I remember trying to keep awake in the gardens at York while Eddy talked and falling asleep. Asleep again in the train. It was hot and we were messy. The carriage was full of things. Harold was very kind and attentive. Eddy was peevish. Roast beef a
nd pineapple chunks, he said. We got home at 8.30 perhaps.
Tuesday, September 18th.
A thousand things to be written had I time: had I power. A very little writing uses up my capacity for writing.
Laughton Place and Philip Ritchie’s death.
These as it happened synchronized. When Vita was here 10 days ago we drove over to Laughton and I broke in and explored the house. It seemed, that sunny morning, so beautiful, so peaceful; and as if it had endless old rooms. So I come home boiling with the idea of buying it; and so fired L. that we wrote to the farmer, Mr Russell, and waited, all on wires, edgy, excited for an answer. He came himself, after some days; and we were to go and see it. This arranged, and our hopes very high, I opened the Morning Post and read the death of Philip Ritchie. ‘He can’t take houses, poor Philip’ I thought. And then the usual procession of images went through my mind. Also, I think for the first time, I felt this death leaves me an elderly luggard; makes me feel I have no right to go on; as if my life were at the expense of his. And I had not been kind; not asked him to dinner and so on. So the two feelings - about buying the house and his death - fought each other; and sometimes the house won and sometimes death won; and we went to see the house and it turned out unspeakably dreary; all patched and spoilt; with grained oak and grey paper; a sodden garden and a glaring red cottage at the back. I note the strength and vividness of feelings which suddenly break and foam away. Now I forget to think about Philip Ritchie.
One of these days, though, I shall sketch here, like a grand historical picture, the outlines of all my friends. I was thinking of this in bed last night and for some reason I thought I would begin with a sketch of Gerald Brenan. There may be something in this idea. It might be a way of writing the memoirs of one’s own times during people’s lifetimes. It might be a most amusing book. The question is how to do it. Vita should be Orlando, a young nobleman. There should be Lytton; and it should be truthful but fantastic. Roger. Duncan. Clive. Adrian. Their lives should be related. But I can think of more books than I shall ever be able to write. How many little stories come into my head! For instance: Ethel Sands not looking at her letters. What this implies. One might write a book of short significant separate scenes. She did not open her letters.
Tuesday, September 25th.
On the opposite page I wrote notes for Shelley, I think, by mistake for my writing book.
Now let me become the annalist of Rodmell.
Thirty five years ago, there were 160 families living here where there are now no more than 80. It is a decaying village, which loses its boys to the towns. Not a boy of them, said the Rev. Mr Hawkesford, is being taught to plough. Rich people wanting weekend cottages buy up the old peasants’ houses for fabulous sums. Monk’s House was offered to Mr H. for £400; we gave £700. He refused it, saying he didn’t wish to own country cottages. Now Mr Allison will pay £1,200 for a couple and we he said might get £2,000 for this. He (Hawkesford) is an old decaying man, run to seed. His cynicism and the pleasant turn it gives his simple worn out sayings amuses me. He is sinking into old age, very shabby, loose limbed, wearing black woollen mittens. His life is receding like a tide, slowly; or one figures him as a dying candle, whose wick will soon sink into the warm grease and be extinct. To look at, he is like some aged bird; a little, small featured face, with heavily lidded smoky bright eyes; his complexion is still ruddy; but his beard is like an unweeded garden. Little hairs grow weakly all over his cheeks and two strands are drawn, like pencil marks, across his bald head. He tumbles into an armchair and tells over his stock of old village stories which always have this slightly mocking flavour as though, completely unambitious and by no means successful himself, he recouped himself by laughing slyly at the humours of the more energetic. The outlay these flashy newcomers make on their field and farms makes him sardonic. But he won’t raise a finger either way; likes his cup of Indian tea, which he prefers to China, and doesn’t much mind what anybody thinks. He smokes endless cigarettes and his fingers are not very clean. Talking of his well, he said ‘It would be a different thing if one wanted baths’ - which for some 70 years, presumably, he has done without. Then he likes a little practical talk about Aladdin lamps, for instance, and how the Rector at Iford has a device by which he makes the globe of the Veritas lamp, which is cheaper, serve. It appears that the Aladdin costs 10d. and 2/-. But it blackens suddenly and is useless. Leaning over stiles, it is of lamp mantles that the two rectors talk. Or he will advise about making a garage; how Percy should cut a trench and then old Fears should line the walls with cement. That is what he advises; and I fancy many many hours of his life have passed hobnobbing with Percies and Fears about cement and trenches. Of his clerical character there is little visible. He would not buy Bowen a riding school he said; her sister did that. He didn’t believe in it. She has a school at Rottingdean, keeps 12 horses, employs grooms and has to be at it all day, Sunday included. But having expressed his opinion in the family conclave he would leave it at that. Mrs H. would back Bowen. She would get her way. The Rector would slouch off to his study, where he does heaven knows what. I asked him if he had work to do: a question which amused him a little. Not work, he said; but a young woman to see. And then he settled into the armchair again and so sat out a visit of over an hour and a half.
Wednesday, October 5th.
I write in the sordid doss house atmosphere of approaching departure. Pinker is asleep in one chair; Leonard is signing cheques at the little deal table under the glare of the lamp. The fire is covered with ashes, since we have been burning it all day and Mrs B. never cleans. Envelopes lie in the grate. I am writing with a pen which is feeble and wispy; and it is a sharp fine evening with a sunset, I daresay.
We went to Amberley yesterday and think of buying a house there. For it is an astonishing forgotten lovely place, between water meadows and downs. So impulsive we both are, in spite of our years.
But we are not as old as Mrs Gray, who came to thank us for our apples. She won’t send to buy, as it looks like begging, since we never take money. Her face is cut into by wrinkles; they make weals across her. She is 86 and can never remember such a summer. In her youth it was so hot in April often that they couldn’t bear a sheet on them. Her youth must have been almost the same time as my father’s. She is 9 years younger, I make out; born in 1841. And what did she see of Victorian England I wonder.
I can make up situations, but I cannot make up plots. That is: if I pass a lame girl I can, without knowing I do it, instantly make up a scene: (now I can’t think of one). This is the germ of such fictitious gift as I have. And by the way I get letter after letter about my books and they scarcely please me.
If my pen allowed, I should now try to make out a work table, having done my last article for the Tribune, and now being free again. And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 and continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita; only with a change about from one sex to another. I think, for a treat, I shall let myself dash this in for a week, while...
Saturday, October 22nd.
This is a book, I think I have said before, which I write after tea. And my brain was full of ideas, but I have spent them on Mr Ashcroft and Miss Findlater, fervent admirers.
‘I shall let myself dash this in for a week’ - I have done nothing, nothing, nothing else for a fortnight; and am launched somewhat furtively but with all the more passion upon Orlando: a Biography. It is to be a small book and written by Christmas. I thought I could combine it with Fiction, but once the mind gets hot it can’t stop: I walk making up phrases; sit, contriving scenes; am in short in the thick of the greatest rapture known to me; from which I have kept myself since last February, or earlier. Talk of planning a book, or waiting for an idea! Then one came in a rush; I said to pacify myself, being bored and stale with criticism and faced with that intolerable dull Fiction, ‘You shall write a page of a story for a treat; you shall stop sharp at 11.30 and then go on with the Romantics
.’ I had very little idea what the story was to be about. But the relief of turning my mind that way was such that I felt happier than for months; as if put in the sun, or laid on a cushion; and after two days entirely gave up my time chart and abandoned myself to the pure delight of this farce; which I enjoy as much as I’ve ever enjoyed anything; and have written myself into half a headache and had to come to a halt, like a tired horse, and take a little sleeping draught last night; which made our breakfast fiery. I did not finish my egg. I am writing Orlando half in a mock style very clear and plain, so that people will understand every word. But the balance between truth and fantasy must be careful. It is based on Vita, Violet Trefusis, Lord Lascelles, Knole, etc.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 569
