Virginia Woolf: A Portrait

by Viviane Forrester

  For many readers, that will be the case. But what if her rampart, her readership, if … suddenly the rampart collapsed? What if her literary circle, her Bloomsbury friends, and above all, the critics undermined her readers’ intuition and each group undermined the others’ intuition, if they suddenly (or gradually) came to destroy Virginia precisely through the protective work?

  That fear makes her tremble. She will always tremble before judgments pronounced on her work, which she will take as official verdicts, validating or invalidating her sanity. Her work defends her from any sentence imposed by her private circle, but if that work itself threatened her? Those pages that exposed her utterly, to the point beyond which she could not go, too far, along paths alarming to those terrified by audacity, especially not displayed. Those who would then be in a position to terrify her, Virginia.

  And here, once again, Leonard poses no threat; passionately he enters those territories where, as a young man, he had hoped to go and that remain open. No vague impulse of envy or jealousy; his editorial passion, his political life, his own works provide an expansive field of existence that fulfills him. As a couple, they share a profound understanding with regard to Virginia’s books. But she also sees how an outside judgment could support and reinforce her husband’s power, the symbolic threat he represents in her eyes. And above all, she sees herself under suspended sentence from a higher court, a sentence that threatens those who can declare, like Antonin Artaud: “I am a body that suffers the world and disgorges reality.”7

  Quentin Bell was right when he said to me: “An unfavorable review was, for her, a condemnation to madness. She is seen as too sensitive to criticism, but the circumstances were difficult.”8

  Yes. Thus Virginia’s terror: “They will say it’s a tired book; a last effort …” “the long drawn twaddle of a prim prudish bourgeois mind,” “A physical feeling as if I were drumming slightly in the veins: very cold: impotent: & terrified. As if I were exposed on a high ledge in full light. Very lonely. L. out to lunch. Nessa has Quentin & dont want me…. Very apprehensive. As if something cold & horrible—a roar of laughter at my expense were about to happen. And I am powerless to ward it off: I have no protection…. I looked at my eyes in the glass once & saw them positively terrified.” “I’m going to be beaten, I’m going to be laughed at, I’m going to be held up to scorn & ridicule.”9

  She is the primary source of that exploding laughter. Without malevolence toward her dear targets, without compromising her fidelity, her actual tenderness toward them … but not without spitefulness, she knows the art of inflicting wounds—as she herself has long been a wounded target.

  But for now Virginia knows how to combine life’s pleasures with those wounds. She and Leonard have established a place for themselves, where they can live together, act, exist jointly within a maze of activities, harmonious surroundings, abundant friends, without renouncing their respective paths.

  Leonard is that companion Virginia Stephen so painfully lacked—that husband she anxiously awaited. If he creates other frustrations, anxieties, shackles, his constant presence, his fidelity frees her from much angst … even at the price of becoming the obsession of this obsessive man who imposes a maniacal hold on her, and who, deep down, does not want any more from her than she wants from him.

  Relying upon their balanced imbalance, upon a real attraction both limited and powerful, bound by professional solidarity and the seductive ease of habit, both will be able to exploit their prodigious dynamism, well served by an ambient peace, notwithstanding “the horrors,” the distress Virginia often experiences, although it now becomes propitious, absorbed into the work.

  Happiness and the throes of writing encompass Virginia’s life. A kind of euphoria sets in, since she has written what she’d hoped for. Fortified by the preceding books, their important triumphs, she sets off each time for new territory.

  Around her, the Bloomsbury circle, this already old family in which she navigates with ease, in which the destiny of each member continually unfolds before the others’ eyes, all of them implicated and ever barraged with opinions and gossip, never spared sarcasm or support.

  The others. They are indispensable to her, circumscribing her space, as reference points, providing desired warmth. But she is the one who adapts to them, needing to be recognized as part of them, to be accepted. She is not really on their wavelength, nor anything or anyone else’s, but from them she draws the strength to forbear, to bear up. The strength to stay grounded at the surface of things, always vibrant, sometimes desolate. Here she finds the strength not to hide and never to flee into the sublime: even while aiming for the real, never to leave the ground of “reality.”

  Bloomsbury, friendship, the well-being of friendship, quarrels, presences! As for her excursions into the purely aristocratic, elegant, worldly spheres, what an escape, what a respite! For a time, they keep the pathos away and let the fibers of her work rest, even as they nurture it, despite the pathos she perceives in these excursions’ futility.

  Whirlwinds. Anchorage.

  In truth, no one in the Bloomsbury group is tied to her. There are affections, long intimacies, endless conflicts, shared hardships, as well as Thoby’s memory, that bind them. And it is Virginia, for the most part, who weaves and maintains the bonds of what has become her natural environment, where she can seek comfort.

  A circle no more clearly circumscribed than the list of those who compose it. Intellectual art lovers; avant-garde scholars; writers; painters; critics; one major economist, Maynard Keynes. Above all, friends. No writer there is a match for Virginia Woolf. Only one other work is at all groundbreaking, that of Keynes.

  They are all gifted, often no more than that, and clever, curious within a range of disciplines. Many will be forgotten; for some, their fame will be limited to England. But the group has a major influence, introducing painting, ballet, music to England, a breath of fresh air from Europe. They swept aside, swept past the Victorian era. Above all, Bloomsbury set an example of incomparable personal freedom, undoubtedly unmatched since.

  For all of them, their genius lay in their freedom, their independence, their influence over their time and their style of living; their natural suppleness of mind and morals. Their mutual, unfailing attachment and their overwhelming constancy, despite snubs, despite sarcasm and wounds.

  So many passionate rivalries among them; so many sometime lovers brought to their knees by one another; affairs, painful breakups that never for a moment call into question the tenderness that binds them to those they’ve betrayed, supplanted, left, made suffer, and who constitute part of the circle. It is their affection, their long, indomitable intimacy, their trials, and a rare elegance that bind them to one another, forever.

  Often they all gathered at Charleston for a peaceful weekend, or in London at one person’s house or another, in restaurants, at parties organized by Karin Stephen, Lydia Keynes, Vanessa, and others; some were to be found at the home of the elegant Ottoline Morrell. They would cause or experience great pain and suffering because of each other, without ever weakening their bonds.

  They will grow old together.

  Only death will be able to separate them.

  Here are Clive and Vanessa, never divorced. Duncan Grant and Clive Bell and Roger Fry remain fast friends. Clive long accompanied by Mary Hutchinson—and Virginia laughing: “No, says Mary; and I dont want to hear any more. If Virginia’s going on like this about her house, as well as—I mean if we’ve got to admire 52 Tavistock Square [Virginia’s address at the time] and the WC [bathroom] and the basement, as well as the dress, the genius, the face, the charm, the shoes, the stockings, the wit, the letters, the character, the temper, the manners, the shoe laces, the finger nails, the way she comes in, and the way she goes out—then, my dear Mr Bell, says Mary, I say your sister in law’s high at the price.”10

  Here, part of the swarm we have already witnessed around the singular Duncan: Maynard Keynes, who struggled so hard to win and keep him,
only to lose him. Maynard, later married to Lydia Lopokova, the tall and very slender star of the Ballets Russes. A union Virginia and Vanessa eagerly predict will be a disaster; later they have to acknowledge, disappointedly, the durability of their idyllic romance. Keynes, indispensable, assiduous, whom they all love to detest and whom they have been ready to exclude, Virginia remarks, for twenty-five years.

  Lytton—long in love with Duncan, whom he has also courted and lost—lives a condensed version of all of Bloomsbury’s romantic entanglements, by Dora Carrington’s side.

  Carrington, captivating, unique, as daring as she is shy. Considered a primitive painter by those more educated. A moving intelligence and imagination; a passionate, timid young woman who, in photographs, appears to be the most modern of our group. Lacking the erudition and culture of the Stracheys and Bloomsbury (or so she claims), she soaks in the knowledge, emotions, experiences that Lytton transmits to her. They first met at the home of Ottoline Morrell (with whom Carrington had had an affair).

  Dora (she didn’t like her first name) … Carrington, with her many lovers, among them Gerald Brenan, with whom she sporadically maintains passionate, overtly sexual relations, or the painter Mark Gertler, suffering artist, who later commits suicide and of whom Virginia, overwhelmed, wrote: “We have been talking about Gertler to Gertler for some 30 hours.”11

  Carrington, who passionately adores Lytton, and Lytton, who gently protects and is greatly attracted to her. But, most importantly, when Ralph Partridge (one of the Woolfs’ always temporary slaves at Hogarth Press) falls in love with her, Carrington marries him; Strachey is very much in love with him. A guarantee, a bond. The three of them live together in Lytton’s house, Ham Spray, each free to have other partners. And Frances Marshall, who then works in Bunny Garnett’s bookstore, falls in love with Ralph. At first conflicted, he settles on living with her in London and spending weekends at Ham Spray, often accompanied by Frances.

  Carrington to Duncan, declaring that she loves Frances very much but disapproves of her conduct: “But you dont understand, Duncan. She was passionately in love—is still—with R [Ralph Partridge]. So when it came to the point—I mustn’t come this week end—one shade of pressure from him—how could she resist it?”12

  Virginia, less generous, jokes about her jealousy with regard to Carrington, so exquisite, but whom she compares to a cook who does not take Sundays off. The conversations with Lytton recorded by Virginia in her diary recall those earlier ones with Clive: “‘I believe I’m sometimes jealous—’ ‘Of her? That’s inconceivable—’ ‘You like me better, dont you?’ He said he did; we laughed; remarked on our wish for an intimate correspondent [sic]; but how to overcome the difficulties? Should we attempt it? Perhaps.”13

  Carrington is captivated by Virginia: “I have a queer love for Virginia with fills me with emotion when I see her,” but she is sure she likes “the Woolves far more than they like me.”14

  And they are constantly found in London, at the country houses, at the Memoir Club; they are forever running into one another, crossing paths. And endlessly commenting on those encounters, watching one another captivated, laughing together, dramatizing, plotting, maligning, encouraging, irritating, blaming, suffering, and all sobbing at Lytton’s death, Nessa in Duncan’s arms, the Woolfs beside a fire, then all four together, Clive weeping with them.

  Lytton held them in suspense for weeks, ill with undetected cancer. One day out of danger, the next day worse than before, the following day close to recovery, then lost, then stronger, then…. The countless Stracheys, in despair, reading detective novels or doing crossword puzzles in the adjoining inn. Carrington, of whom they vaguely disapprove, wandering about distraught, and they are afraid that she will kill herself if Lytton dies.

  Which does happen—the day after a visit from the Woolfs, during which she appears as welcoming as she is overcome with grief, and Virginia is overwhelmed, powerless: “I held her hands. Her wrists seemed very small. She seemed helpless, deserted, like some small animal left.” In Lytton’s room, which the Stracheys refuse (it would be morbid) to preserve as his, Carrington collapses and sobs in Virginia’s arms: “There is nothing left for me to do. I did everything for Lytton. But I’ve failed in everything else.” Virginia doesn’t contradict her: “I did not want to lie to her—I could not pretend that there was not truth in what she said.” But she hadn’t failed, dear Virginia! Virginia concurs with Carrington: “I said life seemed to me sometimes hopeless, useless, when I woke in the night & thought of Lytton’s death.”15

  Carrington serves them lunch, laughs a bit, kisses Virginia, and talks about Lytton Strachey for the last time: these are her last exchanges. “People say he was very selfish to me. But he gave me everything…. He taught me everything I know. He read poetry & French to me.” Virginia continues: “She said he had been silly with young men. But that was only on the top. She had been angry that they had not understood how great he was.” (Virginia agrees, “I said I had always known that.”) “She said I made too much of his young friends … Roger [Senhouse] was very high spirited & liked going to Rome, & rather liked Lytton reading aloud to him—but they couldn’t talk. And this last year Lytton made up his mind to be middle aged. He was a realist. He faced the fact that Roger could not be his love….” “And we were going to Malaga & then he was going to write about Shakespeare…. He said things like Lear when he was ill.”16

  As the Woolfs are leaving, she offers them a small box, a souvenir from Paris, with the Arc de Triomphe engraved on the lid. The Stracheys have forbidden her to give away anything that belonged to their brother: “But this is all right. I gave it him.”17

  Very affected by Lytton’s death, Leonard would consider the young woman’s suicide to be “histrionic: the real thing is that we shall never see Lytton again.”18

  Carrington shoots herself with a rifle without killing herself immediately. Before dying three hours later, she tries to convince her husband, Ralph, who rushes there from London, that she slipped while shooting rabbits.

  “Lord how I suffer!” Virginia would write in the weeks that follow. “Cant make things dance; … wonder how a year or 20 perhaps to be endured. Think, yet people do live; cant imagine what goes on behind faces. All is surface hard; myself only an organ that takes blows, one after another … Lytton’s death; Carrington’s; a longing to speak to him; all that cut away, gone … Nessa’s children; society; … buying clothes; how I hate Bond Street…. And my eyes hurt; & my hand trembles.”19

  Something Leonard said comes back to her; as they were strolling along a “silent blue street” in London one evening, he stopped suddenly: “‘Things have gone wrong somehow.’ It was the night Carrington killed herself.”20

  But life picks up again at Rodmell, around the Woolfs; at Charleston, around Nessa and Duncan, around Duncan Grant, so good at letting himself adore, share, and who, until then, has been particularly in love with Adrian, it seems.

  Duncan, whom Nessa seems to have stolen from them all; the only one among them who now lives in terror of seeing him leave; and Duncan, in the end, established, happy at Charleston, where he will die a very old man. He lives there, surrounded by their former lovers, always available to him, cherishing his regrets with regard to Nessa and watching his daughter grow up as if she were not his.

  Trials and tribulations, new works follow one after another, and festivities as well: how to forget Leonard returning from a costume ball with Virginia one night and solemnly taking sides with a street prostitute against the police, whom he confronts under the dumbfounded gaze of everyone, including the police and the prostitute: he is still dressed up as a gardener from Alice in Wonderland, wearing a wig and overalls, equipped with enormous scissors.21

  How to forget Freshwater, the play written on a whim, to be performed by family and friends before family and friends, which will enchant them all, even after arduous rehearsals?22

  A digression here, a leap in time to demonstrate the freshness, the impa
ct of Virginia Woolf at her centenary in 1982. Asked by the British Council and the Pompidou Center to organize her commemoration, I had the idea to perform Freshwater with other writers as an homage to Virginia Woolf.

  Eugene Ionesco (and his wife Rodica), Michel Deguy, Florence Delay, Guy Dumure, Alain Jouffroy, Jean-Paul Aron, and myself (and later, Nathalie Sarraute, Alain Robbe-Grillet, Joyce Mansour) took the roles formerly played by Vanessa, Adrian, Leonard, Duncan, Julian, and Angelica. I had Simone Benmussa direct the production, which had been Virginia’s responsibility.

  In the Pompidou Center’s large theater hall, a roaring success. The audience was laughing to the point of tears, won over by Virginia Woolf’s humor and charm. Angelica Garnett and Quentin Bell attended; she had played the role of the leading lady, he had been part of the audience. This was the first performance of the play since its creation in 1935.

  Another performance followed in the Rond-Point Theater in Paris, then in New York (where Tom Bishop played a … penguin), in London, and in Italy at the Spoleto Festival.

  I engaged writers from all countries to pay the same homage to Virginia. And thus to bring Bloomsbury back to life.

  Having digressed, let us return to the true Bloomsbury of its time. The Bloomsbury that does not formally exist.

  Was T. S. Eliot part of it? He is a regular visitor especially at Rodmell, first with his wife, the lovely Vivien (or Vivienne, depending), who would eventually go insane and spend the last nine years of her life in an asylum, without one visit from her husband. Widowed, he would marry his secretary.

  The Woolfs discovered the poet early on. He had published only one poem in the review the Egoist, when the Woolfs themselves printed his Poems in 1919, and then The Waste Land in 1923. “I have just finished setting up the whole of Mr Eliots poem [The Waste Land] with my own hands. You see how my hand trembles. Don’t blame your eyes. It is my writing,” Virginia writes to a friend.23 The Woolfs and other of Eliot’s friends try to help him escape his clerk’s position. He would eventually win the Nobel Prize, already reeling under all his awards.