Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  “Give me an ice.”

  Long before she had eaten it, Prickett Ellis, standing beside her without taking anything, told her that he had not been to a party for fifteen years; told her that his dress suit was lent him by his brother-in-law; told her that he did not like this sort of thing, and it would have eased him greatly to go on to say that he was a plain man, who happened to have a liking for ordinary people, and then would have told her (and been ashamed of it afterwards) about the Brunners and the clock, but she said:

  “Have you seen the Tempest?”

  then (for he had not seen the Tempest), had he read some book? Again no, and then, putting her ice down, did he never read poetry?

  And Prickett Ellis feeling something rise within him which would decapitate this young woman, make a victim of her, massacre her, made her sit down there, where they would not be interrupted, on two chairs, in the empty garden, for everyone was upstairs, only you could hear a buzz and a hum and a chatter and a jingle, like the mad accompaniment of some phantom orchestra to a cat or two slinking across the grass, and the wavering of leaves, and the yellow and red fruit like Chinese lanterns wobbling this way and that — the talk seemed like a frantic skeleton dance music set to something very real, and full of suffering.

  “How beautiful!” said Miss O’Keefe.

  Oh, it was beautiful, this little patch of grass, with the towers of Westminster massed round it black, high in the air, after the drawing-room; it was silent, after that noise. After all, they had that — the tired woman, the children.

  Prickett Ellis lit a pipe. That would shock her; he filled it with shag tobacco — fivepence halfpenny an ounce. He thought how he would lie in his boat smoking, he could see himself, alone, at night, smoking under the stars. For always to-night he kept thinking how he would look if these people here were to see him. He said to Miss O’Keefe, striking a match on the sole of his boot, that he couldn’t see anything particularly beautiful out here.

  “Perhaps,” said Miss O’Keefe, “you don’t care for beauty.” (He had told her that he had not seen the Tempest; that he had not read a book; he looked ill-kempt, all moustache, chin, and silver watch chain.) She thought nobody need pay a penny for this; the Museums are free and the National Gallery; and the country. Of course she knew the objections — the washing, cooking, children; but the root of things, what they were all afraid of saying, was that happiness is dirt cheap. You can have it for nothing. Beauty.

  Then Prickett Ellis let her have it — this pale, abrupt, arrogant woman. He told her, puffing his shag tobacco, what he had done that day. Up at six; interviews; smelling a drain in a filthy slum; then to court.

  Here he hesitated, wishing to tell her something of his own doings. Suppressing that, he was all the more caustic. He said it made him sick to hear well fed, well dressed women (she twitched her lips, for she was thin, and her dress not up to standard) talk of beauty.

  “Beauty!” he said. He was afraid he did not understand beauty apart from human beings.

  So they glared into the empty garden where the lights were swaying, and one cat hesitating in the middle, its paw lifted.

  Beauty apart from human beings? What did he mean by that? she demanded suddenly.

  Well this: getting more and more wrought up, he told her the story of the Brunners and the clock, not concealing his pride in it. That was beautiful, he said.

  She had no words to specify the horror his story roused in her. First his conceit; then his indecency in talking about human feelings; it was a blasphemy; no one in the whole world ought to tell a story to prove that they had loved their kind. Yet as he told it — how the old man had stood up and made his speech — tears came into her eyes; ah, if any one had ever said that to her! but then again, she felt how it was just this that condemned humanity for ever; never would they reach beyond affecting scenes with clocks; Brunners making speeches to Prickett Ellises, and the Prickett Ellises would always say how they had loved their kind; they would always be lazy, compromising, and afraid of beauty. Hence sprang revolutions; from laziness and fear and this love of affecting scenes. Still this man got pleasure from his Brunners; and she was condemned to suffer for ever and ever from her poor poor women shut out from squares. So they sat silent. Both were very unhappy. For Prickett Ellis was not in the least solaced by what he had said; instead of picking her thorn out he had rubbed it in; his happiness of the morning had been ruined. Miss O’Keefe was muddled and annoyed; she was muddy instead of clear.

  “I am afraid I am one of those very ordinary people,” he said, getting up, “who love their kind.”

  Upon which Miss O’Keefe almost shouted: “So do I”

  Hating each other, hating the whole houseful of people who had given them this painful, this disillusioning evening, these two lovers of their kind got up, and without a word, parted for ever.

  A SIMPLE MELODY

  As for the picture itself it was one of those landscapes which the unlearned suppose to have been painted when Queen Victoria was very young, and it was the fashion for young ladies to wear straw hats shaped like coal scuttles. Time had smoothed away all the joins and irregularities of the paint and the canvas seemed spread with a fine layer, here the palest blue, here the brownest shadow, of smooth lacquer-like glaze. It was a picture of a heath; and a very beautiful picture.

  Mr Carslake, at least, thought it very beautiful because, as he stood in the corner where he could see it, it had the power to compose and tranquillize his mind. It seemed to him to bring the rest of his emotions - and how scattered and jumbled they were at a party like this! - into proportion. It was as if a fiddler were playing a perfectly quiet old English song while people gambled and tumbled and swore, picked pockets, rescued the drowning, and did astonishing - but quite unnecessary — feats of skill. He was unable to perform himself. All he could do was say that Wembley was very tiring; and that he believed it was not being a success; and things like that. Miss Merewether did not listen; after all, why should she? She played her part; she did one or two rather clumsy somersaults; skipping that is to say from Wembley to the character of Queen Mary, which she thought sublime. Of course, she thought nothing of the sort really. Mr Carslake assured himself of this by looking at the picture of the heath. All human beings were very simple underneath, he felt. Put Queen Mary, Miss Merewether and himself on that heath; it was late in the evening; after sunset; and they had to find their way back to Norwich. Soon they would all be talking quite naturally. He made not a doubt of it.

  As for nature herself, few people loved her better than he did. If he had been walking with Queen Mary and Miss Merewether he would have been often silent; and they too, he was sure; calmly floating off; and he looked at the picture again; into that happy and far more severe and exalted world, which, was also so much simpler than this.

  Just as he was thinking this, he saw Mabel Waring3 going away, in her pretty yellow dress. She looked agitated, with a strained expression and fixed unhappy eyes for all she tried to look animated.

  What was the cause of her unhappiness? He looked again at the picture. The sun had set, but every colour was still bright, so that it was not long set, only just gone beyond the brown mound of the heath. The light was very becoming: and he supposed that Mabel Waring was with him and the Queen and Miss Merewether, walking back to Norwich. They would be talking about the way; how far it was; and whether this was the sort of country they liked; also, if they were hungry; and what they would have for dinner. That was natural talk. Stuart Elton himself - Mr Carslake saw him standing alone lifting a paper knife up in his hands and looking at it in a very strange way — Stuart himself, if he were on the heath, would just drop it, just toss it away. For underneath, though people seeing him casually would never believe it, Stuart was the gentlest, simplest of creatures, content to ramble all day with quite undistinguished people, like himself, and this oddity — it looked like affectation to stand in the middle of a drawing- room holding a tortoise-shell paper knife in his hand �
� was only manner. When they once got out on the heath and started to walk to Norwich this was what they would say: I find rubber soles make all the difference. But don’t they draw the feet? Yes — no. On grass like this they’re perfect. But on the pavement? And then socks and sock suspenders; men’s clothes, women’s clothes. Why, very likely they would talk about their own habits for a whole hour; and all in the freest, easiest way, so that suppose he, or Mabel Waring, or Stuart, or that angry looking chap with the tooth brush moustache who seemed to know nobody — wanted to explain Einstein, or make a statement — something quite private perhaps - (he had known it happen) — it would come quite natural.

  It was a very beautiful picture. Like all landscapes it made one sad, because that heath would so long outlast all people; but the sadness was so elevated - turning away from Miss Merewether, George Carslake gazed at the picture - arose so plainly from the thought that it was calm, it was beautiful, that it should endure. But I cannot quite explain it, he thought. He did not like churches at all; indeed, if he said what he felt about the heath remaining and them all perishing and yet that this was right and there was nothing sad about it- he would laugh; he would dispose of that silly sentimental twaddle in a moment. For such it would be, spoken: but not, he felt, thought. No, he would not give up his belief that to walk over a heath in the evening was perhaps the best way of passing one’s time.

  One did come across tramps and queer people of course. Now a little deserted farm; now a man and a cart; sometimes - but this was perhaps a little too romantic — a man on a horse. There would be shepherds very likely: a windmill: or if these failed, some bush against the sky, or cart track which had this power — again he trembled on the silly words, - ‘to reconcile differences — to make one believe in God’. It almost stung him that last! To believe in God indeed! When every rational power protested against the crazy and craven idiocy of such a saying! It seemed to him as if he had been trapped into the words. ‘To believe in God’. What he believed in was a little simple talk with people like Mabel Waring, Stuart Elton, the Queen of England for the matter of that - on a heath. At least he had found great comfort in their having much in common — boots, hunger, fatigue. But then he could figure Stuart Elton, for example stopping, or falling silent. If you asked him What are you thinking about? perhaps he would say nothing at all, or something not true. Perhaps he would not be able to speak the truth.

  Mr Carslake again looked at the picture. He was troubled by the sense of something remote. Indeed people did think about things, did paint things. Indeed, these parties on the heath do not annihilate differences, he thought; but he maintained, he did believe this-that the only differences remaining (out there, with that line of heath in the distance, and never a house to break the view) are fundamental differences — like this, what the man thought who painted the picture, what Stuart Elton thought about - about what? It was probably a belief of some kind.

  Anyhow, on they went; for the great point of walking is that nobody can stand still very long; they have to rouse themselves up, and on a long walk fatigue, and the desire to end the fatigue, give the most philosophic, or those even distracted by love and its torments, an overpowering reason for setting their minds upon getting home.

  Every phrase he used, alas, tinkled in his ears with a sham religious flavour. ‘Getting home’ - the religious had appropriated that. It meant going to Heaven. His thoughts could not find any pure new words which had never been ruffled and creased and had the starch taken out of them by others’ use.

  Only when he was walking, with Mabel Waring[,] Stuart Elton[,] the Queen of England and that fierce bolteyed looking uncompromising man there, this old melodious singsong stopped. Perhaps one was a little brutalised by the open air. Thirst brutalised; a blister on the heel. When he was walking there was a hardness and a freshness about things: no confusion; no wobbling; the division at least between the known and the unknown was as distinct as the rim of a pond — here was dry land, here water. Now a curious thought struck him — that the waters possessed an attraction for the people on earth. When Stuart Elton took his paper knife or Mabel Waring looked about to burst into tears, and that man with the tooth brush moustache glared, it was because they all wished to take to the water. But what was the water? Understanding perhaps. There must be someone who was so miraculously endowed, so fitted with all the parts of human nature, that these silences and unhappinesses, which were the result of being unable to fit one’s mind to other people’s, were all rightly understood. Stuart Elton dived in: Mabel dived. Some went under and were satisfied; others came gasping to the top. He was relieved to find himself thinking of death as a plunge into a pond; for he was alarmed at his mind’s instinct, when unguarded, to rise into clouds and Heaven, and rig up the old comfortable figure, the old flowing garments and mild eyes and cloudlike mantle.

  In the pond, on the other hand, were newts, and fish and mud. The point about the pond was that one had to create it for oneself; new, brand new. No longer did one want to be rapt off to Heaven, there to sing and meet the dead. One wanted something here and now. Understanding meant an increase of life; a power to say what one could not say; to make such vain attempts as Mabel Waring’s — he knew her way of doing something suddenly quite out of her character, rather startling and dashing, [would] succeed - instead of failing and plunging her deeper into gloom.

  So the old fiddler played his tune, as George Carslake looked from the picture at the people, and back again. His round face, his rather squarely built body expressed a philosophic calm which gave him, even among all these people, a look of detachment, of calm, of restfulness, which was not sluggish, but alert. He had sat down, and Miss Merewether who might easily have drifted off sat beside him. People said that he made very brilliant after-dinner speeches. They said he never married because his mother needed him. No one thought of him, however, as an heroic character - there was nothing tragic about him. He was a barrister. Hobbies, [tastes?], gifts over and above his able mind, he had none in particular - except that he walked. People tolerated him, liked him, sneered at him slightly, for he had done nothing that you could lay your hands on, and he had a butler who was like an elder brother.

  But Mr Carslake did not bother his head. People were very simple - men and women much alike; it was a great pity to quarrel with anyone; and indeed he never did. That is not to say that his feelings were not sometimes hurt; unexpectedly. Living near Gloucester, he had an absurd touchiness about the Cathedral; he fought its battles, he resented its criticism as if the Cathedral were his blood relation. But he would let anyone say what they liked about his own brother. Also, anybody might laugh at him for walking. His was a nature smooth all over but not soft; and suddenly little spikes jutted out — about the Cathedral, or some glaring injustice.

  The old fiddler fiddled his simple melody to this effect: We are not here, but on a heath, walking back to Norwich. Sharp, self-assertive Miss Merewether who said that the Queen was ‘sublime’ had joined the party on condition that she talked no more silly nonsense that she did not believe. ‘The school of Crome?’ she said, looking at the picture.’

  Very well. This being settled, they went on, it might be a matter of six or seven miles. It often happened to George Carslake; there was nothing strange about it - this sense of being in two places at once, with one body here in a London drawing-room, but so severed, that the peace of the country, its uncompromising bareness and hardness and [spirit?], affected that body. He stretched his legs. He felt the breeze on his cheek. Above all he felt, we are all of us, very different superficially, but now united; we may stray; we may seek the water; but it is perfectly true that we are all cool, friendly, physically easy.

  Rip off all those clothes my dear, he thought looking at Mabel Waring. Make a bundle of them. Then he thought, don’t worry, my dear Stuart, about your soul, its extreme unlikeness to anyone else’s. The glaring man seemed to him positively amazing.

  It was impossible to put this into words, and it w
as unnecessary. Beneath the fidgety flicker of these little creatures was always a deep reservoir: and the simple melody without expressing it, did something queer to it — rippled it, liquefied it, made it start and turn and quiver in the depths of one’s being, so that all the time ideas were rising from this pool and bubbling up into one’s brain. Ideas that were half feelings. They had that kind of emotional quality. It was impossible to analyse them - to say whether they were on the whole happy or unhappy, gay or sad.

  His desire was to be sure that all people were the same. He felt that if he could prove it, he would have solved a great problem. But was it true? He kept looking at the picture. Was he not trying to impose on human beings who are by their very nature opposed, different, at war, a claim which is perhaps incongruous - a simplicity that does not belong to their natures? Art has it; a picture has it; but men do not feel it. These states of mind when one is walking, in company, on a heath, produce a sense of similarity. On the other hand, social converse, when everyone wants to shine, and to enforce his own point of view, produces dissimilarity; and which is the more profound?

  He tried to analyse this favourite theme of his — walking, different people walking to Norwich. He thought at once of the lark, of the sky, of the view. The walker’s thoughts and emotions were largely made up of these outside influences. Walking thoughts were half sky; if you could submit them to chemical analysis you would find that they had some grains of colour in them, some gallons or quarts or pints of air attached to them. This at once made them airier, more impersonal. But in this room, thoughts were jostled together like fish in a net, struggling, scraping each other’s scales off, and becoming, in the effort to escape, — for all thinking was an effort to make thought escape from the thinker’s mind past all obstacles as completely as possible: all society is an attempt to seize and influence and coerce each thought as it appears and force it to yield to another.