Of Mad Lords and Archaeologists' Wives

Mrs. Marie Beazley, Harry Bloomfield, 1923

Collection of the Classical Arts Research Centre, 

Faculty of Classics, Oxford University.

I seem to be on something of a portrait jag this summer; I do hope you'll forgive me.

The Certainty of Goodness

A melancholy anniversary today: 72 years ago, appalled by the prospect of war and afraid that she was, in the language of the day, going mad again, Virginia Woolf left her Sussex country cottage, filled the pockets of her overcoat with stones, and walked into the nearby river Ouse.  She wasn't found for three weeks.

She left behind her husband, the writer and publisher Leonard Woolf, to whom she wrote a final note that is almost impossibly touching, painful, and beautiful.  "What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you," she wrote. "You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that—everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness."

Today, we think of Woolf, not as mad, but rather bipolar - what used to be called "manic-depressive."  Whatever the words, if one has known depression, Woolf's thinking rings true.  One of the hardest, cruelest things about depression is the way it fills one with a total, bottomless feeling of sheer unworthiness.  If one of the greatest writers of the English language felt unworthy of love, where does that leave the rest of us?  But there is no reason in madness, at least madness of this kind. "If anybody could have saved me it would have been you."  No; she had to save herself.  Even a love as all-encompassing as Leonard's - one that was willing to brook madness and infidelity of various kinds and the inevitable self-absorption of genius - can't do it all.

I've always liked this picture of Virginia Woolf, one of the rare ones (almost as rare as comparable ones of Queen Victoria) that catches her with the hint of a smile.  When people kill themselves, we lose sight of the rest of them - of the woman who loved a stiff drink, was mad for gossip about her friends and enemies, who could turn a crush on a dashing poetess into the fantasy that is Orlando or some disconnected memories of childhood into threnody of To the Lighthouse.  Everything in Woolf's life until just a few minutes before she started to write her final note - even the weeks and months she lay in bed believing the birds were singing in Greek and that Edward VII was lurking in the bushes outside her window, shouting profanities - is a direct rebuke to the few minutes that followed.

"I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been," her note ends.  That is the Woolf I choose to remember.  Even at her nadir, she was able to recognize, as removed from it by her illness as she was, what it was to be connected, in way she had been to Leonard and by extension to the great circle of friends and relatives in which they lived.  It wasn't enough to save her, but I hope she took that shred of consolation with her on her long journey.  It's one we'll all make, sooner or later, one way or another, that trip, and we should all have at least that little piece of baggage to warm our way.

Birthday Genius: The Big Bad Woolf

I'll be wishing many happy returns today, on her 128th, to the amazing woman seen above in a portrait by her almost equally remarkable sister. The picture is a 1912 portrait of Virginia Woolf by Vanessa Bell; once upon a time they were the daring Stephen sisters who took a house in Bloomsbury without a chaperone, and many, many things have been different ever since.

The work of Virginia Woolf too often these days is overshadowed by her life and career, by the people she knew and, most recently, by the often byzantine biographical and literary reinterpretations dreamed up by the people who study her and them. I can't recommend too strongly just going back to her books, which while they can be a challenge, reward it. If nothing else, she's a great deal more interesting than Nicole Kidman's wan, swanning impression, or even Michael Cunningham's rather sharper take.

Were I teaching Woolf 101, the introductory course to Bloomsbury for the Quizzical, I would start with Orlando, followed by The Voyage Out and some of the essays, only after which would students be permitted to read Quentin Bell's engrossing biography of his aunt and then embark on Mrs. Dalloway and To the Lighthouse. After that, one would be ready for anything, even the novels of V. Sackville-West and the acid pen of Mr. Lytton Strachey.

It's one course, however, that one cannot slide by on by seeing the films. Vanessa Redgrave is lovely in Mrs. Dalloway, but it's not really very Woolfy; The Hours can't really count; Orlando ought to be burnt; and anyone who goes into Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? seeking biographical insight is only going to come out very, very confused.

Today actually offers an authorial two-for-one - sharing the day is Mr. Somerset Maugham, in his day a far more commercial author and sometime acquaintance of the Woolfs. Neither he nor his work has aged as well, however, although one would still be better of being afraid of him than the languid lady painted by her sister...

Holy Trinity I

Or is it The Unholy Three? You decide.

Edith Sitwell giving readings, 14 Moscow road;
Osbert giving champagne parties -
Sachie's got a cold...

Street Scene: Two for Tea

While out strolling yesterday, Mr. Muscato and I spotted Edith Sitwell having tea with Virginia Woolf.

Why, yes - we may have been a little high. Why do you ask?

Portrait Gallery: "Only Connect"

Here we have E.M. Forster - author, traveler, and genteel Confirmed Bachelor - by Sir William Rothenstein.

Actually, he had a rather tumultuous life for someone so congenitally mild-looking, including an affair with an Egyptian tram conductor that became his Great Love, as well as a happy and longstanding ménage in later life with a London policeman.

I cherish Forster not just for his novels - who can resist the von Schegel sisters? - but for his travel writing and especially for his deep and abiding fascination with the city of Alexandria. He helped give the world Cavafy, and in its turn that helped give us Durrell's Alexandria Quartet.

Have you been to Alexandria lately? When you go, you must have coffee at the Trianon at the Hotel Metropole and then walk past Ramla Station toward the Royal Jewelry Museum. When a tram passes, you might see a tweedy Englishman making discreet eyes at the conductor...

La Vraie Orlando

Lady in a Red Hat, by William Strang

The Hon. Lady Nicolson, better known as Vita Sackville-West, but best known today as inspiration for a masterpiece: Virginia Woolf's Orlando. If you've only seen the lamentable film, please, please, please - read the book.