by Peter Dally
That summer of 1932 she saw too many people and wore herself out during the cyclothymic high months. In August another close friend, Goldie Dickinson, died: ‘it is thus we die, when they die’, she thought.22 A few days later she fainted in the garden and felt that she too was dying.
One night in November she awoke with her heart pounding, fearing death. She did not want to die, and went to Leonard’s bed for reassurance. The turmoil ceased as she lay in his arms; tranquillity returned. Later, she thought:
I don’t think we’ve ever been so happy … And so intimate and so completely entire … If it could only last like this for another fifty years – life like this is wholly satisfactory, to me anyhow.23
Chapter Fourteen
The Years and Three Guineas
Leonard’s prolonged frustrations at work brought on psychosomatic symptoms. In January 1933 he began to itch, and was convinced that insects were crawling under his skin. He spent hours picking what he thought were black insects on his neck. Virginia was concerned: ‘I can imagine nothing more terrible than to have insects under one’s skin – I should see them parading in squads.’1 She assumed the insects were lice, although in truth she was unable to see any. Their doctor failed to help and eventually sent Leonard to a Harley Street dermatologist, who diagnosed a simple dermatitis and dismissed the idea of bugs out of hand. Within a few days the itch and the imagined insects disappeared.
These symptoms are quite common in old age but in Leonard’s case, a mere fifty-year-old, it was a sign of tension. Symbolically, no doubt, they could have been seen as evil forces invading his civilised world.
Hitler became Chancellor of the German Reich at the end of January 1933 and established a one-party system. Leonard was quick to warn of the danger: ‘it is one of the most savage and senseless dictatorships that has been tolerated by a civilised European population for at least two centuries’, he wrote in the Political Quarterly.2 He watched with rising alarm as Hitler had himself proclaimed ‘Führer of the German Reich’, withdrew Germany from the League of Nations, and introduced conscription.
As early as November Winston Churchill was warning of the dangers of Nazi aggression and German rearmament, and the next year the National Government, now under Baldwin, proposed a small increase in the military estimates. They were immediately accused of warmongering by the Labour Party, who bitterly attacked the measure and called for total disarmament.
Although Leonard agreed with the Labour Party policy at that time, he was already beginning to have doubts. He was also concerned by the divisions in the Party, the woolly thinking of some of its members. The extreme left rejected the League as a tool of capitalist countries; the right wing supported the League but objected to sanctions on the grounds they increased the risk of war; die-hard pacifists opposed anything other than passive resistance.
The turning point for Leonard came at the beginning of 1935 when Mussolini’s aggressive intentions against Abyssinia became apparent. He saw Mussolini as less of a danger than Hitler, but a bully who would take what he wanted unless faced down. If he violated the Covenant of the League, Italy must face full economic sanctions and if sanctions brought war, so be it. Force had to be met with force, for the sake of peace. The alternative was worldwide barbarism. Leonard’s decision did not come easily or quickly for, once accepted, he had to abandon his long-held convictions.
It was perhaps in order to make up his mind that he and Virginia travelled through Germany in 1935. That spring the Woolfs had planned to go to Rome, and their route would normally have taken them through France. Instead, Leonard arranged to travel on the car ferry to Holland and motor across Germany, going through the Brenner Pass. Their friends were alarmed at the risk. Virginia joked that Leonard’s nose was ‘so long and hooked, we rather suspect we shall be flayed alive’.3 Quentin Bell thought Leonard ‘took an unjustifiable risk with Virginia’s nerves’,4 but physical danger never bothered her. As they crossed the German frontier Leonard felt, ‘with some disquiet’, that he had ‘passed in a few yards from civilisation into savagery’. ‘Jews [were] not wanted … there was something sinister and menacing … a crude and savage silliness beneath the surface’.5
The journey seems to have resolved Leonard’s doubts. He now believed that Britain and France must re-arm and prepare to defend themselves and others against Nazi aggression. He applauded the trade unionist Ernest Bevin for telling the Labour Party Conference – in the course of which he ‘battered’ the aged pacifist leader George Lansbury to political death – ‘if you are going to fight against Hitler, or any other aggressor, you must have arms with which to fight’.6
The failure of the League to stop Mussolini in Abyssinia reinforced his new belief; for clearly the League could not deter aggression and prevent war. When Hitler’s troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland that March, Leonard thought not of the League but of alliances and rearmament. He urged the Parliamentary Labour Party to change its line. The increasingly dangerous situation required a new policy: ‘mere negative opposition to a policy of rearmament would be sterile and ineffective’.7 He provoked strong antagonism from many of the members.
Virginia was distressed by Leonard’s turn-about, his call to rearm, preparations for war. She was an out-and-out pacifist. Wars were destructive games invented by men. She simply could not understand ‘the fever in the blood’ of most males.8 Women should adopt an ‘attitude of complete indifference’ to male war-cries.9 ‘Has war ever won any cause?’, she challenged Leonard.10
Virginia loathed the Nazis as much as Leonard; they stood for brutality, violence, the domestication of women.
Brutal bullies go about in hoods and masks, like little boys dressed up, acting this idiotic, meaningless, brutal, bloody pandemonium … And for the first time I read articles with rage, to find him [Hitler] called a real leader. Worse far than Napoleon.’11
She signed anti-fascist petitions and joined committees, while remaining firmly a pacifist, convinced that force should not be used against force. The pen was mightier than the sword, and with that weapon she would fight ‘to the death for votes, wages, peace and so on’.12
Many of Virginia’s friends were pacifists. Aldous Huxley opposed sanctions against Italy because he feared they would result in war. Clive Bell wrote a letter to the New Statesman declaring, ‘War’s so awful it can’t be right anyhow’, which impressed Virginia; a sign, she said, of Clive’s ‘genuine humanity’.13
Another reason for Leonard’s decision to travel across Germany may have been to make Virginia recognise Nazi anti-Semitism. It was not something Virginia really felt or understood. She had the conventional disdain of her class for Jews in general but she could not be accused of being truly anti-Semitic. Only gradually did she come to appreciate the basis for Leonard’s hatred of Nazi anti-Semitism. She met refugee German Jews like Bruno Walter:
‘You must not think of the Jews,’ he kept on saying, ‘You must think of the whole state of the world. It is terrible – terrible. That this meanness, that this pettiness, should be possible!’14
Virginia looked forward to seeing Germany. She told a friend there was little danger, ‘and it will be the greatest fun’,15 but after three days, angered by the banners stretched across the streets of every town, ‘The Jew Is Our enemy’, she was thankful to leave behind ‘the hysterical crowd’ and cross the border into Austria. Both their nerves were rather frayed, and she was upset by Leonard’s tension and gloom.16 When they got to Rome he was still keyed up and irritable, and Virginia reacted by being ‘so difficult to feed that meals became rather an uneasy problem’.17
It was always so when Virginia was angry with Leonard. She was upset over his reaction to their experiences, his near-certainty that war with Germany had to be faced. She too hated what they had seen, and she now understood Leonard’s fear of the Nazis and his fate under German domination, but she wanted a peaceful outcome, not war. Usually a healthy row would settle their differences, but on this occasion the probl
em was too complex.
Leonard grew worried by Virginia’s anorexic behaviour and gave her all his attention. His introspectiveness and irritability were replaced by concern and persuasion, and Virginia gradually relaxed. Her anger faded, although the problem remained. Once home, she recorded that ‘holidays are very upsetting’,18 the constant motoring was ‘intolerable’ and she was left with ‘a grim wooden feeling’.19
She continued to be bothered by talk of war. ‘When even I can’t sleep at night for thinking of politics, things must be in a fine mess. All our friends talk politics, politics, politics’, she told Ottoline Morell. ‘All politics be damned.’20 She got ‘into a stew’ thinking of war and patriotism, and, seeing the signs chalked up on London walls – ‘Don’t Fight For Foreigners’; ‘Britain Should Mind Her Own Business’ – Leonard told her sharply they were ‘Fascist propaganda. Mosley again active’.21
During 1935 Virginia was revising The Years. She had begun the novel in 1932, as an ‘Essay-Novel’:
to take in everything; sex, education, life, etc; and come, with the most powerful and agile leaps, like a chamois across precipices, from 1880 to here and now.22
Her plan had been to alternate fiction with essay, but she found the method too unwieldy and left out the essays – which were later expanded into Three Guineas.
While Virginia was writing The Years, ideas for Three Guineas, her anti-war book as she called it, kept breaking into her mind and putting her into ‘wild excitement’.23 It was
like being harnessed to a shark; and I dash off scene after scene. I think I must do it directly The Years is done. Suppose I finish The Years in January, then dash off ‘The War’ (or whatever I call it) in six weeks.24
Depression built up early in the New Year, Virginia had promised to have The Years ready for the printer by 1 February, and despite sleepless nights she forced herself to begin the final revision. Pressure mounted, and was not lessened by Leonard telling her she had not made enough money to pay her share of the household expenses. She concentrated everything on the book, cut out social activities and saw no one apart from Vanessa, but agitation kept breaking through. The novel seemed ‘feeble twaddle’, and one morning she could no longer face ‘such a show up of my own decrepitude’, and rushed to Leonard ‘with burning cheeks’. He told her, ‘“This always happens.” But I felt, no, it has never been so bad as this.’25
On 7 March German troops marched unopposed into the Rhineland. Leonard saw war one step nearer. Virginia watched him being ‘rushed and pumped and milked by every ninny on the European situation’,26 and thought:
how near the guns have got to our private life again. I can quite distinctly see them and hear a roar, even though I go on, like a doomed mouse, nibbling at my daily page. What else is there to do – except answer the incessant telephones, and listen to what L says.27
Depression went on building up. Headache forced her to lie prostrate and work for very limited times; at night she woke worrying, sweating, seeing failure, ‘the end of civilisation just about to come’.28 There were moments when she feared for her sanity, when she found herself ‘walking along the Strand talking aloud’ (although this was not altogether unusual).29 Remarkably, Virginia managed to complete The Years, and sent the last pages to the printers on 8 April. Suddenly she was overcome with agitation. The sight of the proofs sickened her. She stuffed them into a cupboard, unable to face them. Racked by headache, unable to sleep, worrying to no end, she broke down.
Leonard, fearing a serious breakdown, immediately took her to Rodmell and she spent four weeks resting, much of the time in bed. Once she improved Leonard took her to the West Country for a change of scene. She came back to London on 10 June.
The improvement was momentary. Virginia started work on the proofs, but after three days was forced to return to Rodmell. She had ‘mornings of torture – pain in my head – a feeling of complete despair and failure’. She attempted to work half an hour at a time. ‘Few people can be so tortured by writing as I am. Only Flaubert, I think.’30 She had lost seven pounds in weight. Leonard, suspecting a return of madness, made Virginia give up all work and rest at Rodmell for the remainder of the summer. She was allowed few friends but she wrote letters, read, admired Leonard’s garden flowers, went for gentle walks with Leonard, and lay in bed visiting ‘such remote strange places’,31 her head full of ‘so many books I want to write’.32
Leonard went up to London once a week, otherwise he was with Virginia continuously, attending to her wants, constantly reassuring. By autumn Virginia seemed well enough to resume reading proofs, but at once she was seized with ‘stony but convinced despair’.33 Picking up the proofs she went to Leonard and told him to burn them unread. He was calm and comforting and said that he must first read them. She waited impatiently until ‘he put down the last sheet … He was in tears … it is “a most remarkable book” – he likes it better than The Waves, and has not a spark of doubt that it must be published.’ The effect, like an electric shock (electric shock treatment given towards the natural end of a depression can have a dramatic effect), shook Virginia free of depression. It was a ‘miracle … the moment of relief was divine’. She hardly knew ‘if I’m on my heels or head – so amazing is the reversal … I have never had such an experience.’34
Leonard was not being entirely honest – he thought the book too long, not as good as her other novels – but he was convinced that unless he gave ‘a completely favourable verdict she would be in despair and have a very serious breakdown’.35 He attributed ‘the terrifying time with The Years to the crisis of exhaustion and black despair when she had finished a book’; and this time she was ‘much nearer a complete breakdown than she had ever been since 1913.’36 Leonard was wrong on both counts. New Year mood swings were always potentially dangerous when reinforced by strong conflicting emotions, but although Virginia’s depression was severe she gave little sign of madness. Perhaps a letter written to Vanessa in July, disinhibited and loaded with references to sex, hinted at hypomania, but her sister would not have thought that too unusual.37 Suicide never threatened. There were no delusions or hallucinatory voices, no abnormal irritability, no paranoia, and certainly no hostility towards Leonard. She did not cling, as in 1913, and their relationship was unchanged. She missed Leonard when away; ‘It’s damned dull without you, dearest M … Oh how we adore you! How angelic you are to us.’38 To Ethel Smyth she confessed she was an ‘appalling nuisance … to L’,39 but she was being realistic, not delusional.
Suppressed anger was a significant factor in the breakdowns of 1904 and 1913–15, but played little importance in 1936. The real strains came from Leonard abandoning his pacifist ideals and advocating war, something she could not accept and yet could not reject outright. The widening divide with Leonard, the seeming irreconcilability of their two positions, made her increasingly anxious. Throughout 1935 Virginia had been building up her ‘antiwar’ ideas for Three Guineas, and this had allowed her to avoid directly confronting Leonard with the problem. As depression gripped and anxiety flooded into the open, her defences collapsed.
It is a truism in psychiatry that the real cause of a mental illness is not always the obvious one. Leonard and Virginia, and their friends, blamed the book for the breakdown, but the novel was a side issue. The main source of her worry concerned Leonard and the threat of war, but most of her anxiety became displaced onto The Years.
Frequently the real problem behind mental illness is never exposed and remains a constant source of trouble, but Virginia – and it is an example of the remarkable constructive linkage she had with her subconscious – found a unique solution. In some undirected way most of the emotional charge bound to her conflict with Leonard became transferred to The Years – facilitated perhaps by Three Guineas having initially been part of the book. When Leonard gave his unreserved approval the effect on Virginia was electrifying; psychologically, it was as though he accepted her antiwar ideals. There was no longer a divide in Virginia’s mind. It
was ‘a miracle’. She felt ‘vigorous and cheerful since the wonderful revelation of L’s last night. How I woke from death – or non-being – to life! What an incredible night – what a weight rolled off!’40
* * *
The weight had not rolled off Leonard. Despite looking after Virginia he had contrived to keep in touch with the political and international events. At heart he found them ‘very distressing. The Labour Party drives me mad’, he confessed.41 Collective security was ‘dead and rotten’, and war seemed inevitable.
The best one can hope … is that the guns will not go off or the bombs begin to fall for a year or two, and that something meanwhile ‘may turn up’.42
In February 1937 he became ill, the chief symptom being pain in the back. A trace of sugar was found in his urine, and various possibilities were discussed; diabetes, prostate trouble, a kidney infection. Virginia was ‘devilishly anxious’ until a Harley Street specialist found Leonard perfectly healthy, when she experienced a surge of ‘extraordinary physical relief’.43
The illness was again psychosomatic and disappeared after reassurance, but was replaced by an intensely itching eczema. A holiday in France with Virginia cured him, but over the years eczema returned whenever Leonard was stressed.
Virginia was also worried by Leonard’s trembling hands. It was a familial tremor, inherited from his father, and the shaking waxed and waned according to his tension. In 1937 his hands shook so much that he had great difficulty cutting up food, and he was unable to lift a cup without spilling most of it. When she heard from Bernard Shaw, who also suffered from a nervous tremor, of Dr Alexander’s treatment, Virginia persuaded Leonard to go to him.
The Alexander Method is based on learning to relax body and mind. Leonard responded well at first and Virginia was excited that Dr Alexander ‘was certain of a cure’.44 She hoped Leonard’s prickly moods might also be ‘smoothed’.45 But changing a man like Leonard is almost impossible, and the improvement was temporary.