The pressure of society was now very strong. It created that “manner” which we both still use. It is the manner in which when the front door bell rang we used to receive whoever it might be — say it was Ronny Norman. Suppose that Eisa Bell and Florence Bishop and Mr Gibbs arrived at ten minute intervals. We would have to be ready with small talk; ready to take father’s trumpet and convey whatever was likely to help; ready to take our part — in what? Not argument; nor gossip. I suppose a very exacting— ‘not gossip’ exactly. The older visitor would be sacrificed to father: given a chair beside him; entrusted with the end of the trumpet. Then Ronny Norman would be boyish, hearty: Eisa Bell would be worldly; Florence Bishop a little flighty. The conversation would be lighter than now; more mannered; jokes would be laughed at; Sir Leslie would give a groan; his health would be discussed; Ronny Norman would say (if Florence Bishop got going with father) something about an awfully jolly play or picture: I would plunge rather recklessly, say with Eveline Godley, into talk about the Navy: Eisa Bell would say that she expected her brothers to take off their hats if they met her in the street; father would be irritated: Florence Bishop would too and [would] withdraw her unlucky remark — that he looked well; Ronny Norman would ask him if he remembered Mill; he would unbend — for he liked Ronny Norman — and say how he had met Mill with his father in Chelsea. “Oh dear, these old stories...” he would say. Well, the talk had its little steeps and waterfalls — its dangers: but it went something like that; and the whole was enclosed in the Victorian manner. It may have been natural for Ronny Norman, for Eveline Godley, for Miss Bishop. It was not natural for Vanessa or myself. We learned it. We learned it partly from memory: and mother had that manner: it was imposed on us partly by the other side — if Ronny Norman said that, one had to reply in the same style. Nobody ever broke the convention. If you listened, as I did, it was like watching a game. One had to know the rules.
We both learned the rules of the Victorian game of manners so thoroughly that we have never forgotten them. We still play the game. It is useful; it has its beauty, for it is founded upon restraint, sympathy, unselfishness — all civilised qualities. It is helpful in making something seemly and human out of raw odds and ends. But the Victorian manner is perhaps — I am not sure — a disadvantage in writing. When I re-read my old Common Reader articles I detect it there. I lay the blame for their suavity, their politeness, their sidelong approach, to my tea-table training. I see myself handing plates of buns to shy young men and asking them, not directly and simply about their poems and their novels, but whether they like cream as well as sugar. On the other hand, this surface manner allows one to say a great many things which would be inaudible if one marched straight up and spoke out. It was when the lights went up in the evening that society came into force. During daylight one could wear overalls; work. There was the Academy for Nessa; my Liddell and Scott and the Greek choruses for me. But in the evening society had it all its own way. At 7.30 we went up. stairs to dress. However cold or foggy it might be, we slipped off our day clothes and stood shivering in front of washing basins. Neck and arms had to be scrubbed, for we had to come into the drawing room at 8 o’clock in evening dress: arms and neck bare. Dress and hair-doing became far more important than pictures and Greek. I would stand in front of George’s Chippendale glass trying to make myself not only tidy but presentable. On an allowance of fifty pounds it was difficult, even for the skilful, to be well dressed of an evening. For though a house dress could be made by Jane Bride, at a cost of a pound or two, a party dress cost perhaps fifteen guineas if made by Mrs Young. The house dress therefore might be, as on this particular night, made of a green stuff bought erratically at a furniture shop — Story’s — because it was cheaper than dress stuff; also more adventurous. Down I came: in my green evening dress; all the lights were up in the drawing room; and there was George, in his black tie and evening jacket, in the chair by the fire. He fixed on me that extraordinary observant [illegible] gaze with which he always inspected clothes. He looked me up and down as if [I] were a horse turned into the ring. Then the sullen look came over him; a look in which one traced not merely aesthetic disapproval; but something that went deeper; morally, socially, he scented some kind of insurrection; of defiance of social standards. I was condemned from many more points of view than I can analyse as I stood there, conscious of those criticisms; and conscious too of fear, of shame and of despair— “Go and tear it up”, he said at last, in that curiously rasping and peevish voice which expressed his serious displeasure at this infringement of a code that meant more to him than he would admit.
For he accepted Victorian society so implicitly that an archaeologist would find him of the greatest interest. Like a fossil he had taken every crease and wrinkle of the conventions of 1890-1900. He was made presumably of precisely the right material. He flowed into the mould without a doubt to mar the pattern. If father had graved on him certain large marks of the age — his belief that women must be pure and men strong — his hatred of impropriety— “Damn!” Gerald exclaimed once, and up flew his hands in protest — Rezia smoked a cigarette after tea— “I won’t have my drawing room turned into a bar parlour!” he exclaimed. He smoothed out the petty details of the Victorian code with his admirable intellect, his respect for reason — no one was less snobbish than he was — no one cared less for rank and luxury. George filled in the large marks with a criss-cross, a spider’s web, of the most minute details. No more perfect fossil of Victorian society could exist. And so, while father preserved the framework of 1860, George filled in the framework with all kinds of minutely teethed saws; and the machine into which we were inserted in 1900 therefore held us tight; and brought innumerable teeth into play.
What kind of material was George made of? What can he have been made of to take the pattern so completely? He had very little brain, in the first place, and he had an abundance of emotion. He was poured into a perfectly adapted body. He was extremely handsome, perfectly healthy; and as well set up as a young man could be. Thus whenever he appeared, society opened its arms. It welcomed him. It embraced him. He can never have met with any opposition, either at Eton, or at Cambridge, or in London, from society: if society is taken to mean the upper middle class world in a drawing room in the evening. He was so without brains that he never strayed beyond that circle. He was never rebuffed or criticized because he never put himself into a position where he encountered criticism. In addition he had something like a thousand a year. He could play his part so far as clothes, guns, horses were needed. And as the world accepted him, praised him and gave him all he wanted, he found it impossible to imagine any defiance: he found defiance silly, foolish, unwise, in fact, immoral. My green dress was no doubt obscurely a criticism of himself. Gerald, I remember with gratitude, said good-naturedly: “I don’t agree. I like it.” George was silent. Dinner was a torture. And, to my discredit, I never wore that dress if George was at home.
He was thirty-six when I was twenty. He had a thousand pounds a year and I had fifty. Those were reasons that made it difficult to defy George that night. But there was another element in our relationship which affected me as I stood there that winter’s night exposed to his criticism in my green dress. I was not wholly conscious of it then. But besides feeling his age and his power, I felt too another feeling which I later called the outsider’s feeling. When exposed to George’s scowling, I felt as a tramp or a gipsy must feel who stands at the flap of a tent and sees the circus going on inside. Victorian society was in full swing; George was the acrobat who jumped through hoops, and Vanessa and I beheld the spectacle. We had good seats at the show, but we were not allowed to take part in it. We applauded, we obeyed — that was all.
All our male relations were adepts at the game. They knew the rules and attached immense importance to them. Father laid enormous stress upon schoolmasters’ reports, upon scholarships, triposes and fellowships. The Fishers, the male Fishers, took every prize, honour, degree. What, I asked myself the other day
, would Herbert Fisher have been without Winchester, New College and the Cabinet? What would have been his shape had he not been stamped and moulded by the patriarchal machinery? Every one of our male relations was shot into that machine and came out at the other end, at the age of sixty or so, a Headmaster, an Admiral, a Cabinet Minister, a Judge. It is as impossible to think of them as natural human beings as it is to think of a plough horse galloping wild and unshod in the street.
George of course had failed to get admittance to that particular machine. He failed again and again to enter the diplomatic service. But there was another machine — society. He learned the rules of that game so well, he played it so cunningly, that he emerged at the age of sixty with a knighthood, with an aristocratic wife, with a sinecure, a country house and three sons. Somehow, in ways so indefinite that one cannot name them, I felt, at twenty, that George no less than Herbert Fisher was obeying the laws of patriarchal society. He was in the swim; going through hoops; doing the required act. I could feel his adherence; he accepted the convention; he believed. A belief which is commonly accepted, as his was by all his friends, has an atmosphere of authority: it impresses even the outsider. It seems right, natural, taken for granted. When on [Sunday night, the BBC plays] “God Save the King”, I feel a current [of] belief; but I criticise my own instinctive emotion. George never questioned his belief in the old tune that society played. He rose and took his hat off, not only without questioning; but with complete acceptance and approval.
These perceptions gave my attitude to George a queer twist. I must obey, because he had force, of age, of wealth, of tradition, behind him. But even while I obeyed I asked, “How could anyone believe what he believed?” There was a spectator in me who, while I squirmed at his criticism and deferred to it, yet remained cool, critical, observant. It fascinated me — the spectacle of George flying through those invisible hoops, so seriously, with such unquestioning belief. In a satirical moment I wrote a sketch of his career which his career followed almost to the letter.
But unfortunately though we could sit passive and watch the Victorian males go through their intellectual hoops, George’s hoops — his social triumphs — needed our help. Here of course his motives were — indeed they always were — mixed. We had to be brought out: to go into society. And he naturally played the part that mother would have played in taking us. But also we had to go where he wished us to go, to accept the invitations he thought desirable. Here the other motive came in — his desire to make us accept his views: his desire to make us pay our tribute to his own faith. And so, when the London season began, several times a week we would go upstairs after dinner, after the post had come, tea had been drunk and father had gone up to his study — and change into those long satin dresses for which Sally Young would charge fifteen guineas. We added white gloves, white slippers and a row of pearls or [an] amethyst round our necks. The cab would be called; and off we would drive along the silver paved streets, for wood pavement became silver in the dry summer nights, to the house where there was an awning, perhaps a strip of red carpet, and a little cluster of gaping passers by.
Now society exerted its full pressure, about 11 o’clock say, on a June night in 1900. I remember the dazed, elated, frozen feeling: as the lights beat on me, going upstairs; the unreality; the excitement; the paralysis. Can I recover anything further? At the Savoy I remember a dinner before the opera. It was The Ring and we were dining in full daylight. George had placed Mrs J. Chamberlain opposite the window, a failure in tact for which he reproached himself afterwards. For she had just passed her prime. I sat next a youth whom I now identify as Eddie Marsh. On that occasion I thought he was Richard Marsh; I vaguely connected him with novel writing. I recover only: “What is your father writing now?” he asked, and then I floundered, struck out wildly this way and that like a beginner on the ice.
At Mrs Chamberlain’s I sat next a chubby official youth. We discussed oratory. “Our host”, he said, “is generally supposed to be a good speaker.” And then I see myself floundering again — stressing a theory that the crime of merrymaking is worse than theft. Silence falls. I felt myself struggling like a fly in glue. I felt that if one said things one thought, anything beyond the usual patter, glue stuck to one’s feet. On the threshold of a ballroom, I remember Geoffrey Young primly telling me: “It is very good of you to come.” Had I asserted that I hated dancing? He left me. At Trinity Ball, I remember galloping round the room with — I have forgotten the name. At Lady Sligo’s I remember pressing some youth to tell me facts about the Garter. Meanwhile George was proposing to Flora Russell. At the Lyulph Stanleys I remember failing to secure a partner. Elena Rathbone introduced me to a girl. I remember the humiliation of standing, unasked, against a wall. I remember of these parties humiliation — I could not dance; frustration — I could not get young men to talk; and also, for happily that good friend has never deserted me — the scene as a spectacle to be described later. And some moments of elation: some moments of lyrical ecstasy. But the pressure of society in 1900 almost forbade any natural feeling. Perhaps I was too young. Perhaps I was wrongly adjusted. At any rate I never met a man or a woman with whom I struck up any real relationship. All the same there was the excitement of clothes, of lights, of society, in short; and the queerness, the strangeness of being alone, on my own, for a moment, with some complete stranger: he in white waistcoat and gloves, I in white satin and gloves. A more unreal relationship cannot be imagined; but there was a thrill in the unreality. For when I was once more in my own room I would see it small and untidy: I would ride the waves of the party still: I would lie in bed, tossing up and down on the things I had said, heard and done. And next morning I would still be thinking, as I read my Sophocles, of the party.
If that had been all, these parties would have slid off us easily enough. But there was George. To him a party was a very serious matter. We were not merely enjoying ourselves. We were made to feel that every party was an examination, a test: a matter of the greatest importance; it led to success; it led to failure. What did success lead to? The only success he valued — social success. Failure led to the only failure — dowdiness, eccentricity. He held these beliefs implicitly. But he held them confusedly. You could never challenge him directly. “But if I hate parties why should I go to them?” He would wrinkle all those lines piteously. “You’re too young to have an opinion. Besides, I love you. I hate going alone. I must have you with me.” Here he would snatch Vanessa in his arms. Duty and emotion were indistinguishably mixed. And the ghosts of Stella and Mother presided over these scenes.
Hence these parties became wrangles, became efforts, became often humiliations. Vaguely, he felt that we criticised the whole conception. This angered him. In his anger he upbraided us with selfishness, with narrowness. He complained to his circle of enamoured dowagers. He invoked their help. He lavished clothes, jewels. He acted, in public, the role of the good brother. He acted with success. How could we resist his wishes — how could we cherish other desires? Society in those days was a very competent machine. It was convinced that girls must be changed into married women. It had no doubts, no mercy; no understanding of any other wish; of any other gift. Nothing was taken seriously. Even Beatrice Thynne would say to me, when I told her I wished to write, “I’ll ask Alice to invite you to meet Andrew Lang.” I protested, I did not mean that. She snapped I was silly. That was the way to get on. How strange it was to think that somewhere, there was a world where people did not go to parties — where they perhaps discussed pictures — books — philosophy — But it was not our world. J
The division in our life was curious. Downstairs there was pure convention: upstairs pure intellect. But there was no connection between them. Father’s deafness had cut off any ties that he would have had, naturally, with the younger generation of writers. Yet he kept his own attitude perfectly distinct. No one cared less for convention. No one respected intellect more. Thus I would go from the drawing room and George’s gossip— “Mrs William Gren
fell asked me to stay... And I said, on the whole I thought I couldn’t. She was taken by surprise “ — to father’s study to fetch a [new book]. There I would find him, swinging in his rocking chair, pipe in mouth. Slowly he would realise my presence. Rising, he would go to the shelves, put the book back and very kindly ask me what had I made of it? Perhaps I was reading Johnson. For some time we would talk and then, feeling soothed, stimulated, full of love for this unworldly, very distinguished, lonely man, I would go down to the drawing room again and hear George’s patter. There was no connection.
Nor indeed was there any close connection between ourselves and the world of intellect. The great figures were of course on the horizon: Meredith, Henry James, Henry Sidgwick, Symonds, Haldane, Watts, Burne-Jones: they were figures in the background. But the kind of memory I have of them is of figures only, looming very large, but very far away.
I remember looking down at J. A. Symonds from the landing at Talland House; and noting his nerve-drawn white face; and the tie that was a cord with two yellow blobs of plush. I remember Watts, in his frilled shirt and grey dressing gown: and Meredith, invoking a damsel in a purple petticoat — a flower. I remember Meredith’s voice; and the irony with which he said “a book of mine”. I remember not what they said, but the atmosphere surrounding them. I remember the ceremony of being taken to see them and the way in which both father and mother conveyed that a visit to Meredith was something altogether out of the way. Both shared a reverence for genius. The reverence impressed me. And the eccentricity, the individuality: how Meredith dropped rounds of lemon into his tea. How Watts had bowls of whipped cream and minced meat; how Lowell had a long knitted purse, with rings round it, and sixpences always came from the slit. What I received was some general impress of strength, of oddity. What they said I have forgotten. But I remember the roll of Meredith’s voice. I remember the hesitation and qualification, the humming and hawing of Henry James’ voice. So that no doubt I was supplied very early with a vision of greatness and great men. Greatness still seems to me booming, eccentric, set apart; something that we are led up to by our parents and is now entirely extinct.
Complete Works of Virginia Woolf Page 551