To The Lighthouse

by Virginia Woolf

on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility of

  men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving

  herself a little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the old

  familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking--one, two,

  three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated, listening

  to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one might

  guard a weak flame with a news-paper. And so then, she concluded,

  addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to William

  Bankes--poor man! who had no wife, and no children and dined alone in

  lodgings except for tonight; and in pity for him, life being now strong

  enough to bear her on again, she began all this business, as a sailor

  not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail and yet hardly wants

  to be off again and thinks how, had the ship sunk, he would have

  whirled round and round and found rest on the floor of the sea.

  "Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for

  you," she said to William Bankes.

  Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that strange no-man's land where

  to follow people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such a

  chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to follow

  them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the sails have

  sunk beneath the horizon.

  How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily thought, and how remote.

  Then when she turned to William Bankes, smiling, it was as if the ship

  had turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and Lily thought

  with some amusement because she was relieved, Why does she pity him?

  For that was the impression she gave, when she told him that his

  letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she seemed to be

  saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying people, and the

  life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred by pity. And

  it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those misjudgments of hers

  that seemed to be instinctive and to arise from some need of her own

  rather than of other people's. He is not in the least pitiable. He has

  his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered, all of a sudden as if

  she had found a treasure, that she had her work. In a flash she saw

  her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put the tree further in the

  middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space. That's what I shall do.

  That's what has been puzzling me. She took up the salt cellar and put

  it down again on a flower pattern in the table-cloth, so as to remind

  herself to move the tree.

  "It's odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet one

  always wants one's letters," said Mr Bankes.

  What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying down his

  spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had swept clean,

  as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back to the window

  precisely in the middle of view), he were determined to make sure of

  his meals. Everything about him had that meagre fixity, that bare

  unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it was impossible

  to dislike any one if one looked at them. She liked his eyes; they

  were blue, deep set, frightening.

  "Do you write many letters, Mr Tansley?" asked Mrs Ramsay, pitying him

  too, Lily supposed; for that was true of Mrs Ramsay--she pitied men

  always as if they lacked something--women never, as if they had

  something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did not suppose he

  wrote one letter a month, said Mr Tansley, shortly.

  For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these condescended to by

  these silly women. He had been reading in his room, and now he came

  down and it all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they

  dress? He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any

  dress clothes. "One never gets anything worth having by post"--that

  was the sort of thing they were always saying. They made men say that

  sort of thing. Yes, it was pretty well true, he thought. They never

  got anything worth having from one year's end to another. They did

  nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women's fault.

  Women made civilisation impossible with all their "charm," all their

  silliness.

  "No going to the Lighthouse tomorrow, Mrs Ramsay," he said, asserting

  himself. He liked her; he admired her; he still thought of the man in

  the drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary to assert

  himself.

  He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then

  look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human being

  she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said? Women can't

  write, women can't paint--what did that matter coming from him, since

  clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and

  that was why he said it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under

  a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great

  and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There's the

  sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to

  the middle; that matters--nothing else. Could she not hold fast to

  that, she asked herself, and not lose her temper, and not argue; and if

  she wanted revenge take it by laughing at him?

  "Oh, Mr Tansley," she said, "do take me to the Lighthouse with you. I

  should so love it."

  She was telling lies he could see. She was saying what she did not

  mean to annoy him, for some reason. She was laughing at him. He was in

  his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He felt very rough and

  isolated and lonely. He knew that she was trying to tease him for some

  reason; she didn't want to go to the Lighthouse with him; she despised

  him: so did Prue Ramsay; so did they all. But he was not going to be

  made a fool of by women, so he turned deliberately in his chair and

  looked out of the window and said, all in a jerk, very rudely, it would

  be too rough for her tomorrow. She would be sick.

  It annoyed him that she should have made him speak like that, with Mrs

  Ramsay listening. If only he could be alone in his room working, he

  thought, among his books. That was where he felt at his ease. And he

  had never run a penny into debt; he had never cost his father a penny

  since he was fifteen; he had helped them at home out of his savings; he

  was educating his sister. Still, he wished he had known how to answer

  Miss Briscoe properly; he wished it had not come out all in a jerk like

  that. "You'd be sick." He wished he could think of something to say to

  Mrs Ramsay, something which would show her that he was not just a dry

  prig. That was what they all thought him. He turned to her. But Mrs

  Ramsay was talking about people he had never heard of to William

  Bankes.

  "Yes, take it away," she said briefly, interrupting what she was saying

  to William Bankes to speak to the maid. "It must have been fifteen--

  no, twenty years ago--that I last saw her," she was saying, turning

  back to him again as if she could not l
ose a moment of their talk, for

  she was absorbed by what they were saying. So he had actually heard

  from her this evening! And was Carrie still living at Marlow, and was

  everything still the same? Oh, she could remember it as if it were

  yesterday--on the river, feeling it as if it were yesterday--going on

  the river, feeling very cold. But if the Mannings made a plan they

  stuck to it. Never should she forget Herbert killing a wasp with a

  teaspoon on the bank! And it was still going on, Mrs Ramsay mused,

  gliding like a ghost among the chairs and tables of that drawing-room

  on the banks of the Thames where she had been so very, very cold twenty

  years ago; but now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated

  her, as if, while she had changed, that particular day, now become very

  still and beautiful, had remained there, all these years. Had Carrie

  written to him herself? she asked.

  "Yes. She says they're building a new billiard room," he said. No!

  No! That was out of the question! Building a new billiard room!

  It seemed to her impossible.

  Mr Bankes could not see that there was anything very odd about it.

  They were very well off now. Should he give her love to Carrie?

  "Oh," said Mrs Ramsay with a little start, "No," she added, reflecting

  that she did not know this Carrie who built a new billiard room. But

  how strange, she repeated, to Mr Bankes's amusement, that they should

  be going on there still. For it was extraordinary to think that they

  had been capable of going on living all these years when she had not

  thought of them more than once all that time. How eventful her own

  life had been, during those same years. Yet perhaps Carrie had not

  thought about her, either. The thought was strange and distasteful.

  "People soon drift apart," said Mr Bankes, feeling, however, some

  satisfaction when he thought that after all he knew both the Mannings

  and the Ramsays. He had not drifted apart he thought, laying down his

  spoon and wiping his clean-shaven lips punctiliously. But perhaps he

  was rather unusual, he thought, in this; he never let himself get into

  a groove. He had friends in all circles ... Mrs Ramsay had to break

  off here to tell the maid something about keeping food hot. That was

  why he preferred dining alone. All those interruptions annoyed him.

  Well, thought William Bankes, preserving a demeanour of exquisite

  courtesy and merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on the

  table-cloth as a mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and

  ready for use in an interval of leisure, such are the sacrifices one's

  friends ask of one. It would have hurt her if he had refused to come.

  But it was not worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that

  if he had been alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would

  have been free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of

  time. The children were dropping in still. "I wish one of you would

  run up to Roger's room," Mrs Ramsay was saying. How trifling it all

  is, how boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing--

  work. Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he

  might have been--he took a flashing bird's-eye view of his work. What

  a waste of time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of

  my oldest friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at

  this moment her presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty

  meant nothing to him; her sitting with her little boy at the window--

  nothing, nothing. He wished only to be alone and to take up that book.

  He felt uncomfortable; he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her

  side and feel nothing for her. The truth was that he did not enjoy

  family life. It was in this sort of state that one asked oneself, What

  does one live for? Why, one asked oneself, does one take all these

  pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very desirable? Are we

  attractive as a species? Not so very, he thought, looking at those he

  supposed. Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one never asked

  if one was occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One

  never had time to think about it. But here he was asking himself that

  sort of question, because Mrs Ramsay was giving orders to servants, and

  also because it had struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs Ramsay was

  that Carrie Manning should still exist, that friendships, even the best

  of them, are frail things. One drifts apart. He reproached himself

  again. He was sitting beside Mrs Ramsay and he had nothing in the

  world to say to her.

  "I'm so sorry," said Mrs Ramsy, turning to him at last. He felt rigid

  and barren, like a pair of boots that have been soaked and gone dry so

  that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must force his

  feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were very

  careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not care

  a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought. So

  he bent his head courteously in her direction.

  "How you must detest dining in this bear garden," she said, making use,

  as she did when she was distracted, of her social manner. So, when

  there is a strife of tongues, at some meeting, the chairman, to obtain

  unity, suggests that every one shall speak in French. Perhaps it is

  bad French; French may not contain the words that express the speaker's

  thoughts; nevertheless speaking French imposes some order, some

  uniformity. Replying to her in the same language, Mr Bankes said, "No,

  not at all," and Mr Tansley, who had no knowledge of this language,

  even spoke thus in words of one syllable, at once suspected its

  insincerity. They did talk nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and he

  pounced on this fresh instance with joy, making a note which, one of

  these days, he would read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a

  society where one could say what one liked he would sarcastically

  describe "staying with the Ramsays" and what nonsense they talked. It

  was worth while doing it once, he would say; but not again. The women

  bored one so, he would say. Of course Ramsay had dished himself by

  marrying a beautiful woman and having eight children. It would shape

  itself something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck

  there with an empty seat beside him, nothing had shaped itself at all.

  It was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely, even

  physically, uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of

  asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his

  chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into

  their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking

  about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion? What

  did they know about the fishing industry?

  Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him, could she not see,

  as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young man's

  desire to impress himself, lying dark in the mist of his flesh--that

  thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to break

  i
nto the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her Chinese

  eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, "can't paint, can't

  write," why should I help him to relieve himself?

  There is a code of behaviour, she knew, whose seventh article (it may

  be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman, whatever

  her own occupation might be, to go to the help of the young man

  opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the ribs,

  of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it is

  their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us,

  suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I should

  certainly expect Mr Tansley to get me out. But how would it be, she

  thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she sat there

  smiling.

  "You're not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily," said Mrs

  Ramsay. "Remember poor Mr Langley; he had been round the world dozens

  of times, but he told me he never suffered as he did when my husband

  took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr Tansley?" she asked.

  Mr Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising, as it

  descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an

  instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life.

  But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his

  grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had worked

  his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he was

  Charles Tansley--a fact that nobody there seemed to realise; but one of

  these days every single person would know it. He scowled ahead of him.

  He could almost pity these mild cultivated people, who would be blown

  sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of apples, one of these days

  by the gunpowder that was in him.

  "Will you take me, Mr Tansley?" said Lily, quickly, kindly, for, of

  course, if Mrs Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, "I am

  drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to the

  anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man there,

  life will run upon the rocks--indeed I hear the grating and the

  growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings.

  Another touch and they will snap"--when Mrs Ramsay said all this, as

  the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth

  time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment--what happens if one

  is not nice to that young man there--and be nice.

  Judging the turn in her mood correctly--that she was friendly to him

  now--he was relieved of his egotism, and told her how he had been

  thrown out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used to fish

  him out with a boat-hook; that was how he had learnt to swim. One of

  his uncles kept the light on some rock or other off the Scottish coast,

  he said. He had been there with him in a storm. This was said loudly

  in a pause. They had to listen to him when he said that he had been

  with his uncle in a lighthouse in a storm. Ah, thought Lily Briscoe,

  as the conversation took this auspicious turn, and she felt Mrs

  Ramsay's gratitude (for Mrs Ramsay was free now to talk for a moment

  herself), ah, she thought, but what haven't I paid to get it for you?

  She had not been sincere.

  She had done the usual trick--been nice. She would never know him. He

  would never know her. Human relations were all like that, she thought,

  and the worst (if it had not been for Mr Bankes) were between men and

  women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere she thought. Then

  her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to remind

  her, and she remembered that next morning she would move the tree

  further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at the thought

  of painting tomorrow that she laughed out loud at what Mr Tansley was

  saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.

  "But how long do they leave men on a Lighthouse?" she asked. He told