To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

There was something, of course, that people wanted; for when Minta took

  her hand and held it, Nancy, reluctantly, saw the whole world spread

  out beneath her, as if it were Constantinople seen through a mist, and

  then, however heavy-eyed one might be, one must needs ask, "Is that

  Santa Sofia?" "Is that the Golden Horn?" So Nancy asked, when Minta

  took her hand. "What is it that she wants? Is it that?" And what was

  that? Here and there emerged from the mist (as Nancy looked down upon

  life spread beneath her) a pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without

  names. But when Minta dropped her hand, as she did when they ran down

  the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle, whatever it was that

  had protruded through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared.

  Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker. She wore more

  sensible clothes that most women. She wore very short skirts and black

  knickerbockers. She would jump straight into a stream and flounder

  across. He liked her rashness, but he saw that it would not do--she

  would kill herself in some idiotic way one of these days. She seemed

  to be afraid of nothing--except bulls. At the mere sight of a bull in

  a field she would throw up her arms and fly screaming, which was the

  very thing to enrage a bull of course. But she did not mind owning up

  to it in the least; one must admit that. She knew she was an awful

  coward about bulls, she said. She thought she must have been tossed in

  her perambulator when she was a baby. She didn't seem to mind what she

  said or did. Suddenly now she pitched down on the edge of the cliff

  and began to sing some song about

  Damn your eyes, damn your eyes.

  They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out together:

  Damn your eyes, damn your eyes,

  but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the good

  hunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.

  "Fatal," Paul agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering down,

  he kept quoting the guide-book about "these islands being justly

  celebrated for their park-like prospects and the extent and variety of

  their marine curiosities." But it would not do altogether, this

  shouting and damning your eyes, Andrew felt, picking his way down the

  cliff, this clapping him on the back, and calling him "old fellow" and

  all that; it would not altogether do. It was the worst of taking women

  on walks. Once on the beach they separated, he going out on to the

  Pope's Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks in them and

  letting that couple look after themselves; Nancy waded out to her own

  rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple look after

  themselves. She crouched low down and touched the smooth rubber-like

  sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly to the side of the

  rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows

  into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by

  holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and

  desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent

  creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream

  down. Out on the pale criss-crossed sand, high-stepping, fringed,

  gauntleted, stalked some fantastic leviathan (she was still enlarging

  the pool), and slipped into the vast fissures of the mountain side.

  And then, letting her eyes slide imperceptibly above the pool and rest

  on that wavering line of sea and sky, on the tree trunks which the

  smoke of steamers made waver on the horizon, she became with all that

  power sweeping savagely in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and

  the two senses of that vastness and this tininess (the pool had

  diminished again) flowering within it made her feel that she was bound

  hand and foot and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which

  reduced her own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in

  the world, for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves,

  crouching over the pool, she brooded.

  And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt splashing

  through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the beach and was

  carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for rapid movement right

  behind a rock and there--oh, heavens! in each other's arms, were Paul

  and Minta kissing probably. She was outraged, indignant. She and

  Andrew put on their shoes and stockings in dead silence without saying

  a thing about it. Indeed they were rather sharp with each other. She

  might have called him when she saw the crayfish or whatever it was,

  Andrew grumbled. However, they both felt, it's not our fault. They

  had not wanted this horrid nuisance to happen. All the same it

  irritated Andrew that Nancy should be a woman, and Nancy that Andrew

  should be a man, and they tied their shoes very neatly and drew the

  bows rather tight.

  It was not until they had climbed right up on to the top of the cliff

  again that Minta cried out that she had lost her grandmother's brooch--

  her grandmother's brooch, the sole ornament she possessed--a weeping

  willow, it was (they must remember it) the tears running down her

  cheeks, the brooch which her grandmother had fastened her cap with till

  the last day of her life. Now she had lost it. She would rather have

  lost anything than that! She would go back and look for it. They all

  went back. They poked and peered and looked. They kept their heads

  very low, and said things shortly and gruffly. Paul Rayley searched

  like a madman all about the rock where they had been sitting. All this

  pother about a brooch really didn't do at all, Andrew thought, as Paul

  told him to make a "thorough search between this point and that." The

  tide was coming in fast. The sea would cover the place where they had

  sat in a minute. There was not a ghost of a chance of their finding it

  now. "We shall be cut off!" Minta shrieked, suddenly terrified. As if

  there were any danger of that! It was the same as the bulls all over

  again--she had no control over her emotions, Andrew thought. Women

  hadn't. The wretched Paul had to pacify her. The men (Andrew and Paul

  at once became manly, and different from usual) took counsel briefly

  and decided that they would plant Rayley's stick where they had sat and

  come back at low tide again. There was nothing more that could be done

  now. If the brooch was there, it would still be there in the morning,

  they assured her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up to the top of

  the cliff. It was her grandmother's brooch; she would rather have lost

  anything but that, and yet Nancy felt, it might be true that she minded

  losing her brooch, but she wasn't crying only for that. She was crying

  for something else. We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she

  did not know what for.

  They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and he comforted her, and

  said how famous he was for finding things. Once when he was a little

  boy he had found a gold watch. He would get up at daybreak and he was

  positive he would find it. It seemed to him that it would be

  almost dark, an
d he would be alone on the beach, and somehow it would

  be rather dangerous. He began telling her, however, that he would

  certainly find it, and she said that she would not hear of his getting

  up at dawn: it was lost: she knew that: she had had a presentiment when

  she put it on that afternoon. And secretly he resolved that he would

  not tell her, but he would slip out of the house at dawn when they were

  all asleep and if he could not find it he would go to Edinburgh and buy

  her another, just like it but more beautiful. He would prove what he

  could do. And as they came out on the hill and saw the lights of the

  town beneath them, the lights coming out suddenly one by one seemed

  like things that were going to happen to him--his marriage, his

  children, his house; and again he thought, as they came out on to the

  high road, which was shaded with high bushes, how they would retreat

  into solitude together, and walk on and on, he always leading her, and

  she pressing close to his side (as she did now). As they turned by the

  cross roads he thought what an appalling experience he had been

  through, and he must tell some one--Mrs Ramsay of course, for it took

  his breath away to think what he had been and done. It had been far

  and away the worst moment of his life when he asked Minta to marry him.

  He would go straight to Mrs Ramsay, because he felt somehow that she

  was the person who had made him do it. She had made him think he could

  do anything. Nobody else took him seriously. But she made him believe

  that he could do whatever he wanted. He had felt her eyes on him all

  day today, following him about (though she never said a word) as if she

  were saying, "Yes, you can do it. I believe in you. I expect it of

  you." She had made him feel all that, and directly they got back (he

  looked for the lights of the house above the bay) he would go to her

  and say, "I've done it, Mrs Ramsay; thanks to you." And so turning into

  the lane that led to the house he could see lights moving about in the

  upper windows. They must be awfully late then. People were getting

  ready for dinner. The house was all lit up, and the lights after the

  darkness made his eyes feel full, and he said to himself, childishly,

  as he walked up the drive, Lights, lights, lights, and repeated in a

  dazed way, Lights, lights, lights, as they came into the house staring

  about him with his face quite stiff. But, good heavens, he said to

  himself, putting his hand to his tie, I must not make a fool of

  myself.)

  15

  "Yes," said Prue, in her considering way, answering her mother's

  question, "I think Nancy did go with them."

  16

  Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs Ramsay supposed, wondering, as

  she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said "Come in" to a tap at

  the door (Jasper and Rose came in), whether the fact that Nancy was

  with them made it less likely or more likely that anything would

  happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs Ramsay felt, very

  irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such a scale was not

  probable. They could not all be drowned. And again she felt alone in

  the presence of her old antagonist, life.

  Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to know whether she should

  wait dinner.

  "Not for the Queen of England," said Mrs Ramsay emphatically.

  "Not for the Empress of Mexico," she added, laughing at Jasper; for he

  shared his mother's vice: he, too, exaggerated.

  And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the message, she might

  choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen people

  sitting down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for ever. She

  was now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so late; it was

  inconsiderate of them, and it annoyed her on top of her anxiety about

  them, that they should choose this very night to be out late, when, in

  fact, she wished the dinner to be particularly nice, since William

  Bankes had at last consented to dine with them; and they were having

  Mildred's masterpiece--BOEUF EN DAUBE. Everything depended upon things

  being served up to the precise moment they were ready. The beef, the

  bayleaf, and the wine--all must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting

  was out of the question. Yet of course tonight, of all nights, out

  they went, and they came in late, and things had to be sent out,

  things had to be kept hot; the BOEUF EN DAUBE would be entirely spoilt.

  Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which

  looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed, said Mrs Ramsay

  absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but avoiding her

  face) in the glass. And then, while the children rummaged among her

  things, she looked out of the window at a sight which always amused

  her--the rooks trying to decide which tree to settle on. Every time,

  they seemed to change their minds and rose up into the air again,

  because, she thought, the old rook, the father rook, old Joseph was her

  name for him, was a bird of a very trying and difficult disposition.

  He was a disreputable old bird, with half his wing feathers missing.

  He was like some seedy old gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing

  the horn in front of a public house.

  "Look!" she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph and

  Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air was

  shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite out, out,

  out--she could never describe it accurately enough to please herself--

  was one of the loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to

  Rose, hoping that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For

  one's children so often gave one's own perceptions a little thrust

  forwards.

  But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case

  open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace,

  which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear her

  amethysts?

  "Choose, dearests, choose," she said, hoping that they would make

  haste.

  But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose, particularly,

  take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against the black

  dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which was gone

  through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew. She had some

  hidden reason of her own for attaching great importance to this

  choosing what her mother was to wear. What was the reason, Mrs Ramsay

  wondered, standing still to let her clasp the necklace she had chosen,

  divining, through her own past, some deep, some buried, some quite

  speechless feeling that one had for one's mother at Rose's age. Like

  all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It

  was so inadequate, what one could give in return; and what Rose felt

  was quite out of proportion to anything she actually was. And Rose

  would grow up; and Rose would suffer, she supposed, with these deep

  feelings, and she said she was ready now, and they would go down, and

  Jasper, because he was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and
r />   Rose, as she was the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her

  the handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl.

  Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was bound

  to suffer so. "There," she said, stopping by the window on the

  landing, "there they are again." Joseph had settled on another tree-

  top. "Don't you think they mind," she said to Jasper, "having their

  wings broken?" Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and Mary? He

  shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not seriously,

  for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; and they did not

  feel; and being his mother she lived away in another division of the

  world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary and Joseph. She made

  him laugh. But how did she know that those were Mary and Joseph? Did

  she think the same birds came to the same trees every night? he asked.

  But here, suddenly, like all grown-up people, she ceased to pay him the

  least attention. She was listening to a clatter in the hall.

  "They've come back!" she exclaimed, and at once she felt much more

  annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it happened?

  She would go down and they would tell her--but no. They could not tell

  her anything, with all these people about. So she must go down and

  begin dinner and wait. And, like some queen who, finding her people

  gathered in the hall, looks down upon them, and descends among them,

  and acknowledges their tributes silently, and accepts their devotion

  and their prostration before her (Paul did not move a muscle but looked

  straight before him as she passed) she went down, and crossed the hall

  and bowed her head very slightly, as if she accepted what they could

  not say: their tribute to her beauty.

  But she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have let the

  BOEUF EN DAUBE overboil? she wondered, pray heaven not! when the

  great clangour of the gong announced solemnly, authoritatively, that

  all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms, on little perches of

  their own, reading, writing, putting the last smooth to their hair, or

  fastening dresses, must leave all that, and the little odds and ends on

  their washing-tables and dressing tables, and the novels on the bed-

  tables, and the diaries which were so private, and assemble in the

  dining-room for dinner.

  17

  But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs Ramsay, taking her

  place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates making

  white circles on it. "William, sit by me," she said. "Lily," she

  said, wearily, "over there." They had that--Paul Rayley and Minta

  Doyle--she, only this--an infinitely long table and plates and knives.

  At the far end was her husband, sitting down, all in a heap, frowning.

  What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She could not

  understand how she had ever felt any emotion or affection for him. She

  had a sense of being past everything, through everything, out of

  everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was an eddy--there--

  and one could be in it, or one could be out of it, and she was out of

  it. It's all come to an end, she thought, while they came in one after

  another, Charles Tansley--"Sit there, please," she said--Augustus

  Carmichael--and sat down. And meanwhile she waited, passively, for

  some one to answer her, for something to happen. But this is not a

  thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that one says.

  Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy--that was what she was

  thinking, this was what she was doing--ladling out soup--she felt, more

  and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had fallen, and,

  robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she looked round it)

  was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere. She forebore to look at

  Mr Tansley. Nothing seemed to have merged. They all sat separate.

  And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating rested