MRS. C.
At last, at last the coffins have come.
MR. C.
The coffins have come.
MRS. C.
Let us pack our coffins and go.
MR. C.
To the land of perpetual moon shine —
MRS. C.
To the land where the sun never sets.
MR. C.
I shan’t want trousers in India —
MRS. C.
No that’s true. But I shall want wet plates —
[TENNYSON, who has been out of the room for a moment, returns with something between his fingers.]
TENN.
It’s all right, Julia. Look. I have bored a hole with my penknife. Solid oak. Hearts of oak are our ships. Hearts of oak are our men. We’ll fight ’em and beat ’em again and again! No ant can eat through that. You can take Maud with you. Well there’s still time; where did I leave off? [He sits down and begins to read Maud.] She is coming, my own, my sweet; Were it ever so airy a tread, My heart would hear her and beat, Were it earth in an earthy bed; My dust would hear her and beat, Had I lain for a century dead; Would start and tremble —
MR. C. [who is looking out of the window]
Ahem! I think that’s a fact in the raspberry canes.
TENN.
Facts? Damn facts. Facts are the death of poetry.
MR. C.
Damn facts. That is what I have always said. Plato has said it. Radakrishna has said it. Spinoza has said it.
Confucius has said it. And Charles Hay Cameron says it too. All the same, that was a fact in the raspberry canes. [Enter CRAIG.] Are you a fact, young man?
CRAIG
My name’s Craig. John Craig of the Royal Navy.
Sorry to interrupt. Afraid I’ve come at an inconvenient hour. I’ve called to fetch Ellen by appointment.
MRS. C.
Ellen?
CRAIG
Yes. Chastity, Patience, the Muse, what d’you call her.
Ah here she is.
ELLEN
John.
TENN.
Queen Rose of the rosebud garden of girls.
WATTS
Ellen, Ellen, painted, powdered. Miserable girl. I could have forgiven you much. I had forgiven you all. But now that I see you as you are — painted, powdered — unveiled —
TENN.
Remember, Watts; the ancient Egyptians said that the veil had something to do with —
WATTS
Don’t bother about the ancient Egyptians now, Alfred.
Now that I see you as you are, painted, powdered, I cannot do it. Vanish with your lover. Eat porpoises on desert islands.
CRAIG
Hang it all, Sir. I’ve a large house in Gordon Square.
WATTS
Have you indeed, Sir. And where pray is Gordon Square?
CRAIG
W.C. 1.
WATTS
Young man, have a care, have a care. Ladies are present.
CRAIG
I’m not responsible for the post office directory am I?
TENN.
Hallam lived there. Wimpole Street, West Central, we called it in those more euphonious days. The long unlovely street. See In Memoriam.
CRAIG
What’s Hallam? What’s In Memoriam?
TENN.
What’s Hallam? What’s In Memoriam? It is time I went back to Farringford. Emily will be anxious.
NELL
Take care Emily don’t jump, Mr. Tennyson!
[Enter MARY.]
MARY
The coffins are on the fly, Ma’am.
MRS. C.
The coffins are on the fly — It is time to say good-bye.
MARY
There’s no room for the turkey’s wings, Ma’am.
MRS. C.
Give them here. I will put them in my reticule.
MARY
Gorblime! What a set! What a set! Coffins in the kitchen. Wet plates on the mantelpiece. And when you go to pick up a duster, it’s a marmoset. I’m sick of parlour work. I’ll marry the earl and live like a respectable gurl in a Castle.
MR. AND MRS. C., JOHN AND ELLEN [all together]
The coffins are on the fly. It’s time to say good-bye.
MRS. C.
We are going to the land of the sun.
MR. C.
We are going to the land of the moon.
JOHN
We’re going to W.C. 1.
NELL
Thank God we’re going soon.
MRS. C.
Good-bye, good-bye, the coffins are on the fly.
MR. C.
Farewell to Dimbola; Freshwater, farewell.
JOHN
I say, Nell, I want a rhyme to fly.
NELL
Heavens, John, I can only think of fly.
MRS. C.
And my message to my age is When you want to take a picture Be careful to fix your Lens out of focus. But what’s a rhyme to focus?
MR. C.
Hocus pocus, hocus pocus, That’s the rhyme to focus.
And my message to my age is —
Watts — don’t keep marmosets in cages —
JOHN AND NELL
They’re all cracked — quite cracked — And our message to our age is, If you want to paint a veil, Never fail, To look in the raspberry canes for a fact.
NELL
To look in the raspberry canes for a fact!
[Exeunt all but WATTS and TENNYSON.]
TENN.
They have left us, Watts.
WATTS
Alone with our art.
TENN. [going to the window]
Low on the sand and loud on the stone the last wheel echoes away. God bless my soul, it don’t! It’s getting louder — louder — louder! They’re coming back!
WATTS
Don’t tell me, Alfred! Don’t tell me they’re coming back! I couldn’t face another — fact!
TENN.
She is coming, my dove, my dear; She is coming, my life, my fate. The red rose cries, “She is near, she is near” —
MARY
Her Majesty the Queen.
THE QUEEN
We have arrived. We are extremely pleased to see you both. We prefer to stand. It is the anniversary of our wedding day. Ah, Albert! And in token of that never to be forgotten, always to be remembered, ever to be lamented day —
TENN.
’Tis better to have loved and lost.
THE QUEEN
Ah but you are both so happily married. We have brought you these tokens of our regard. To you, Mr.
Tennyson, a peerage. To you, Mr. Watts, the Order of Merit. May the spirit of the blessed Albert look down and preserve us all.
CURTAIN
The Non-Fiction
Hogarth House, Richmond — Woolf’s home from 1915-1924 and where she founded Hogarth Press with her husband Leonard
THE COMMON READER: FIRST SERIES
CONTENTS
THE COMMON READER
THE PASTONS AND CHAUCER1
ON NOT KNOWING GREEK
THE ELIZABETHAN LUMBER ROOM
NOTES ON AN ELIZABETHAN PLAY
MONTAIGNE
THE DUCHESS OF NEWCASTLE1
RAMBLING ROUND EVELYN
DEFOE1
ADDISON1
THE LIVES OF THE OBSCURE
TAYLORS AND EDGEWORTHS
LAETITIA PILKINGTON
JANE AUSTEN
MODERN FICTION
JANE EYRE AND WUTHERING HEIGHTS1
GEORGE ELIOT
THE RUSSIAN POINT OF VIEW
OUTLINES
MISS MITFORD
DR. BENTLEY
LADY DOROTHY NEVILL
ARCHBISHOP THOMSON
THE PATRON AND THE CROCUS
THE MODERN ESSAY
JOSEPH CONRAD1
HOW IT STRIKES A CONTEMPORARY
Woolf, 1931
TO LYTTON STRACHEY
Some of these pape
rs appeared originally in the Times Literary Supplement, the Athenaeum, the Nation and Athanaeum, the New Statesman, the London Mercury, the Dial (New York); the New Republic (New York), and I have to thank the editors for allowing me to reprint them here. Some are based upon articles written for various newspapers, while others appear now for the first time.
THE COMMON READER
There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson’s Life of Gray which might well be written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private people. “. . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours.” It defines their qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing very substantial, the sanction of the great man’s approval.
The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can come by, some kind of whole — a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture, without caring where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a result.
THE PASTONS AND CHAUCER1
The tower of Caister Castle still rises ninety feet into the air, and the arch still stands from which Sir John Fastolf’s barges sailed out to fetch stone for the building of the great castle. But now jackdaws nest on the tower, and of the castle, which once covered six acres of ground, only ruined walls remain, pierced by loop-holes and surmounted by battlements, though there are neither archers within nor cannon without. As for the “seven religious men” and the “seven poor folk” who should, at this very moment, be praying for the souls of Sir John and his parents, there is no sign of them nor sound of their prayers. The place is a ruin. Antiquaries speculate and differ.
1 The Paston Letters, edited by Dr. James Gairdner (1904), 4 vols.
Not so very far off lie more ruins — the ruins of Bromholm Priory, where John Paston was buried, naturally enough, since his house was only a mile or so away, lying on low ground by the sea, twenty miles north of Norwich. The coast is dangerous, and the land, even in our time, inaccessible. Nevertheless, the little bit of wood at Bromholm, the fragment of the true Cross, brought pilgrims incessantly to the Priory, and sent them away with eyes opened and limbs straightened. But some of them with their newly-opened eyes saw a sight which shocked them — the grave of John Paston in Bromholm Priory without a tombstone. The news spread over the country-side. The Pastons had fallen; they that had been so powerful could no longer afford a stone to put above John Paston’s head. Margaret, his widow, could not pay her debts; the eldest son, Sir John, wasted his property upon women and tournaments, while the younger, John also, though a man of greater parts, thought more of his hawks than of his harvests.
The pilgrims of course were liars, as people whose eyes have just been opened by a piece of the true Cross have every right to be; but their news, none the less, was welcome. The Pastons had risen in the world. People said even that they had been bondmen not so very long ago. At any rate, men still living could remember John’s grandfather Clement tilling his own land, a hard-working peasant; and William, Clement’s son, becoming a judge and buying land; and John, William’s son, marrying well and buying more land and quite lately inheriting the vast new castle at Caister, and all Sir John’s lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. People said that he had forged the old knight’s will. What wonder, then, that he lacked a tombstone? But, if we consider the character of Sir John Paston, John’s eldest son, and his upbringing and his surroundings, and the relations between himself and his father as the family letters reveal them, we shall see how difficult it was, and how likely to be neglected — this business of making his father’s tombstone.
For let us imagine, in the most desolate part of England known to us at the present moment, a raw, new-built house, without telephone, bathroom or drains, arm-chairs or newspapers, and one shelf perhaps of books, unwieldy to hold, expensive to come by. The windows look out upon a few cultivated fields and a dozen hovels, and beyond them there is the sea on one side, on the other a vast fen. A single road crosses the fen, but there is a hole in it, which, one of the farm hands reports, is big enough to swallow a carriage. And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, threatening to kill any one who approaches him. That is what they talk about at dinner in the desolate house, while the chimney smokes horribly, and the draught lifts the carpets on the floor. Orders are given to lock all gates at sunset, and, when the long dismal evening has worn itself away, simply and solemnly, girt about with dangers as they are, these isolated men and women fall upon their knees in prayer.
In the fifteenth century, however, the wild landscape was broken suddenly and very strangely by vast piles of brand-new masonry. There rose out of the sandhills and heaths of the Norfolk coast a huge bulk of stone, like a modern hotel in a watering-place; but there was no parade, no lodging-houses, and no pier at Yarmouth then, and this gigantic building on the outskirts of the town was built to house one solitary old gentleman without any children — Sir John Fastolf, who had fought at Agincourt and acquired great wealth. He had fought at Agincourt and got but little reward. No one took his advice. Men spoke ill of him behind his back. He was well aware of it; his temper was none the sweeter for that. He was a hot-tempered old man, powerful, embittered by a sense of grievance. But whether on the battlefield or at court he thought perpetually of Caister, and how, when his duties allowed, he would settle down on his father’s land and live in a great house of his own building.
The gigantic structure of Caister Castle was in progress not so many miles away when the little Pastons were children. John Paston, the father, had charge of some part of the business, and the children listened, as soon as they could listen at all, to talk of stone and building, of barges gone to London and not yet returned, of the twenty-six private chambers, of the hall and chapel; of foundations, measurements, and rascally work-people. Later, in 1454, when the work was finished and Sir John had come to spend his last years at Caister, they may have seen for themselves the mass of treasure that was stored there; the tables laden with gold and silver plate; the wardrobes stuffed with gowns of velvet and satin and cloth of gold, with hoods and tippets and beaver hats and leather jackets and velvet doublets; and how the very pillow-cases on the beds were of green and purple silk. There were tapestries everywhere. The beds were laid and the bedrooms hung with tapestries representing sieges, hunting and hawking, men fishing, archers shooting, ladies playing on their harps, dallying with ducks, or a giant “bearing the leg of a bear in his hand “. Such were the fruits of a well-spent life. To buy land, to build great houses, to stuff these houses full of gold and silver plate (though the privy might well be in the bedroom), was the proper aim of mankind. Mr. and Mrs. Paston spent the greater part of their energies in the same exhausting occupation. For since the passion to acquire was universal, one could never rest secure in one’s possessions for long. The outlying parts of one’s property
were in perpetual jeopardy. The Duke of Norfolk might covet this manor, the Duke of Suffolk that. Some trumped-up excuse, as for instance that the Pastons were bondmen, gave them the right to seize the house and batter down the lodges in the owner’s absence. And how could the owner of Paston and Mauteby and Drayton and Gresham be in five or six places at once, especially now that Caister Castle was his, and he must be in London trying to get his rights recognised by the King? The King was mad too, they said; did not know his own child, they said; or the King was in flight; or there was civil war in the land. Norfolk was always the most distressed of counties and its country gentlemen the most quarrelsome of mankind. Indeed, had Mrs. Paston chosen, she could have told her children how when she was a young woman a thousand men with bows and arrows and pans of burning fire had marched upon Gresham and broken the gates and mined the walls of the room where she sat alone. But much worse things than that had happened to women. She neither bewailed her lot nor thought herself a heroine. The long, long letters which she wrote so laboriously in her clear cramped hand to her husband, who was (as usual) away, make no mention of herself. The sheep had wasted the hay. Heyden’s and Tuddenham’s men were out. A dyke had been broken and a bullock stolen. They needed treacle badly, and really she must have stuff for a dress.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 292