Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  It must have been about twelve years ago, for we were still living in Richmond,| that I received one of those flyaway missives with which we are now all so familiar — a yellow sheet upon which a hand bowls like an intoxicated hoop; and finally curls itself into a scrawl which reads Sibyl Colefax. “It would give me so much pleasure”, it read, “if you would come to tea” — here followed a variety of dates— “to meet Paul Valéry.” Now as I have always met Paul Valéry or his equivalent since I can remember, to be asked out to tea to meet him by a Sibyl Colefax whom I did not know — I had never met her — was no lure to me. If it had been, it was counteracted by another fact about myself to which I have some shyness in alluding; my dress complex; my suspenders complex in particular. I hate being badly dressed; but I hate buying clothes. In particular I hate buying suspenders. It is partly, I think, that in order to buy suspenders you must visit the most private room in the heart of a shop; you must stand in your chemise. Shiny black satin women pry and snigger. Whatever the confession reveals, and I suspect it is something discreditable, I am very shy under the eyes of my own sex when in my chemise. But in those days twelve years ago skirts were short; stockings had to be neat; my suspenders were old; and I could not face buying another pair — let alone hat and coat. So I said, “No, I will not come to tea to meet Paul Valéry.” Invitations then showered; how many tea parties I was asked to I cannot remember; at last the situation became desperate; I was forced to buy suspenders; and I accepted — shall I say the fiftieth — invitation to Argyll House. This time it was to meet Arnold Bennett.

  The very night before the party a review of one of my books by Arnold Bennett appeared in the Evening Standard. It was Orlando, I think. He attacked it violently. He said it was a worthless book, which had dashed every hope he might have had of me as a writer. His whole column was devoted to trouncing me. Now though very vain — unlike Lady Oxford — my vanity as a writer is purely snobbish. I expose a large surface of skin to the reviewer but very little flesh and blood. That is, I mind good reviews and bad reviews only because I think my friends think I mind them. But as I know that my friends almost instantly forget reviews, whether good or bad, I too forget them in a few hours. My flesh and blood feelings are not touched. The only criticisms of my books that draw blood are those that are unprinted; those that are private.

  Thus as twenty four hours had passed since I read the review, I went into the drawing room at Argyll House far more concerned with my appearance as a woman than with my reputation as a writer. Now I saw Sibyl for the first time and I likened her to a bunch of red cherries on a hard black straw hat. She came forward and led me up to Arnold Bennett as a lamb is led to the butcher.

  “Here is Mrs Woolf!” she said with a smile. As a hostess she was gloating. She was thinking, now there will be a scene which will redound to the credit of Argyll House. Other people were there — they too seemed expectant; they all smiled. But Arnold Bennett, I felt, was uncomfortable. He was a kind man; he took his own reviews seriously; here he was shaking hands with a woman whom he had ‘slanged’, as he called it, only the evening before.

  “I am sorry, Mrs Woolf,” he began, “that I slanged your book last night...”

  He stammered. And I blurted out, quite sincerely, “If I choose to publish books, that’s my own look out. I must take the consequences.”

  “Right — right”, he stammered. I think he approved. “I didn’t like your book”, he went on. “I thought it a very bad book...” He stammered again.

  “You can’t hate my books more than I hate yours, Mr Bennett”, I said. I don’t know if he altogether approved of that; but we sat down together and talked and got on very well indeed. I was pleased to find in some letters of his that have been published that he commended me for bearing him no grudge; he said that we got on finely.

  But that is not my point. My point is that this little scene pleased Sibyl, and was the foundation of what I suppose I must call, subject to qualifications, my intimacy with her. I was instantly promoted from tea to meat. It was lunch to begin with; then when I refused lunch, it was dinner. I went — I went several times. But I found by degrees that I was always asked to meet writers; and I did not want to meet writers; and then that if I had Noel Coward on my left, I always had Sir Arthur on my right. Sir Arthur was very kind; he did his best to entertain me; but why he thought that I was primarily interested in the Dye-stuffs Bill I have never found out. So it was, however. Our talk always drifted that way. At one time I was the second leading authority in England on that measure. But at last, what with Noel Coward on my left and Sir Arthur on my right, I felt I could no longer bring myself to dine with Sibyl. I excused myself. The more I excused myself the more she persisted. Then she suggested that she should come and see me. She came. Again my snobbery asserted itself. I bought iced cakes; tidied up the room; threw away Pinker’s bones, and pulled covers over the holes in the chairs. Soon I realised that her snobbery demanded nothing but a burnt bun; as untidy a room as possible; and if my fingers were covered with ink stains it was all to the good. We struck up an intimacy on those lines. She would exclaim, “Oh how I long to be a writer!” And I would reply, “Oh Sibyl, if only I could be [a] great hostess like you!” Her anecdotes of the great world amused me very much; and I drew lurid if fanciful pictures of my own struggles with English prose. As we became more — shall I call it intimate? — can snobs be intimate? — she would sit on the floor, pull up her skirts, adjust her knickers — she only wears one undergarment, I may tell you; it is of silk — and pour out her grievances. She would complain almost with tears in her eyes — how Osbert Sitwell had laughed at her; how people called her a climber, a lion hunter. How vilely untrue this was... how all she wanted was that Argyll House should be a centre where interesting people could meet interesting people. And yet she was laughed at... abused. Once in the middle of one of these confidences — and they flattered me very much — the telephone rang; and Lady Cunard’s butler asked me to dine with her ladyship — whom I had never met. Sibyl, when I explained the situation, was furious. “I’ve never heard of such insolence!” she exclaimed. Her face was contorted with a look that reminded me of the look on a tigress’s face when someone snatches a bone from its paws. She abused Lady Cunard. Nothing she could say was bad enough for her. She was [a] mere lion hunter; a snob. Again, there was Lady Cholmondeley. She asked me to go and see her. “And who is Lady Cholmondeley?” I asked. Never shall I forget the careful and vindictive way in which she pulled that lady’s character to pieces. She couldn’t understand, I remember she said, anybody being so insolent as to ask another person to dine when they did not know them. She strongly advised me to have nothing to do either with Lady Cunard or Lady Cholmondeley. Yet she had done the very same thing herself. What was the difference between them?

  In short there was much to interest me in our intimacy; such as it was. It developed. Soon she suggested a plan which I have never had the courage to make public. It was that there should be fortnightly parties — now at Tavistock Square, now at Argyll House; we were to ask four of our friends; she was to ask four of hers; Bloomsbury and the great world were to mix; she, I rather think, delicately intimated that she would stand the cost. But even I, even at my most intoxicated, saw that this would never do. Once we provided Lytton for her; the party was a deadly failure. Lytton was very good and very patient; but he said to me at leaving, “Please don’t ask me to meet Colefax again.”

  We reached a kind of frankness. Time after time she threw me over shamelessly; time after time I found out that her excuse only meant that she had a better engagement elsewhere. For example — here is one of those excuses — she had invited herself for a particular day: it was inconvenient; but I had kept it free.

  Dearest Virginia, I had an unpleasant week of going to my business at 10 instead of 9 and coming back to bed at 6. I thought this would have mended me by Tuesday instead of which I was summoned by a difficult lady to see bedroom curtains in Piccadilly at 5:30 and the in
terview, prolonged till 6:15, sent me to bed altogether! Now I’ve mended and now you are engaged. Could I come on the 18th or would you come here on the 16th at 6? If not the 18th then the 23rd, if you’ll have me.

  Ever your devoted Sibyl

  The day after I met someone who had been at a cocktail party at Madame d’Erlanger’s and had met Sibyl. “Was there any talk of bedroom curtains?” I asked. Apparently there was none.

  I used to tax her with it; she scarcely prevaricated. But once when I played the same trick on her — throwing over an engagement, but giving her three weeks’ notice — I got a series of letters which in the violence of their abuse, in the sincerity of their rage — for she imputed to me the vilest motives — I had been seduced by a better engagement — I had been dining, she was sure, with Lady Cunard or Lady Cholmondeley — reached a pitch of eloquence that was really impressive. The light all this threw on her psychology, on my psychology — on the snob psychology generally, was very interesting. Why did we go on seeing each other? I wondered. What was in fact the nature of our relation? Light was to be thrown on it in a startling way.

  One morning last February the telephone rang soon after breakfast, and Leonard answered it. I saw his face change as he listened.

  “Good God!” he exclaimed. “You don’t say so!” Then he turned to me and said, “Arthur Colefax is dead!” Harold Nicolson was on the telephone; he had rung up to say that Arthur Colefax had died suddenly the afternoon before; he had only been ill one day; Sibyl, he said, was distracted. Sir Arthur was dead!

  A clap struck me full in the face. A clap of genuine surprise and sympathy. It was not for Sir Arthur. For him I felt what one feels for an old cabinet that has always stood in the middle of a drawing room. The cabinet had gone — it was surprising — it was sad. But I had never been intimate with the cabinet. For Sibyl my feeling was different — with her I had been — I was intimate. And for her I felt, as I say, a clap of genuine, unadulterated sympathy. No sooner had I felt it than it split into several pieces. I was very sorry; but I was also very curious. What did she feel — what did she really feel about Arthur?

  Now when a feeling is thus mixed it is very difficult to put it into words. In proof of this, when it came to writing a letter of sympathy, I boggled. No words that I could find seemed right. I wrote and rewrote; finally I tore up what I had written. We were going down to Monks House for the week-end; I picked three flowers; tied them up with a card on which I wrote ‘For Sibyl. With love from Leonard and Virginia.’ As we passed Argyll House Leonard rang the bell of that now shrouded mansion and gave the flowers into the hand of the weeping Fielding. She at least seemed genuinely heart-broken. That was my solution of the problem.

  And it seemed to be amazingly successful. That is, I received a four page letter a few days later, a heart-broken letter — a letter about Arthur and their happiness; about the old days when they had sat on Greek islands in the sun; about the perfection of their marriage; and her present solitude. It read sincerely; it read as if she were telling the truth; and I was a little flattered that she should tell it so openly, so intimately, even so gushingly, to me.

  When I heard later that she had written letters very like the one she sent me to people whom she scarcely knew at all, I was not so well pleased. When I heard that she had dined out every night since his death, and read in the papers that Lady Colefax had been at this great party and at that first night, I was baffled. Did she feel less than she made out? Or was she being very brave? Was she so tanned and leathered by society that the only thing she could not face was solitude? It was an interesting problem in the psychology of snobbery.

  She wrote to me several times. She told me she was leaving Argyll House. She asked me to come and see the May in flower for the last time; I did not go; then she asked me to come and see the tulips in flower for the last time. We were away, and I did not go. Then when I came back in October, she wrote and said that unless I came on Tuesday the 27th of October I should never see Argyll House again. On the 30th she was leaving for ever. She particularly wanted, she said, to see me alone. I was flattered. I said I would come; and on the morning of Tuesday Fielding rang up to remind me; and to say that her ladyship wanted me to come at 4:45 punctually.

  It was a wet and windy evening; leaves swirled along the pavement of the King’s Road; and I had a feeling of chaos and desolation. At 4:45 precisely I rang the bell of Argyll House for the last time. The door was opened not by Fielding but by a seedy man in a brown suit who looked like a bailiff. He was surly.

  “You’re too late”, he said, shaking his head and holding the door only half open, as if to stop me.

  “But Lady Colefax told me to come at a quarter to five”, I said.

  That rather stumped him.

  “I don’t know anything about that”, he said. “But you’d better come this way.”

  And he led me not into the drawing room but into the pantry. It was odd to find oneself in the pantry of Argyll House — that pantry from which so many succulent dishes had issued. The pantry was full of kitchen tables; and on them were ranged dinner services, bunches of knives and forks, stacks of tumblers and wine glasses — all with tickets on them. Then I realised that the whole place was up for sale; the surly man was the auctioneer’s agent. I stood there looking about me when Fielding hurried in from the kitchen, still in her grey dress and muslin apron, but so flustered and so distracted that I felt she was dressed in sack cloth and ashes. She waved her hands in despair.

  “I don’t know where Lady Colefax is”, she moaned. “And I don’t know where to put you. The people are still here. They ought to have gone at four — but still all over the place...”

  “I’m so sorry, Fielding”, I said. “This is very sad—”

  Tears ran down her cheeks; were in her eyes; she moaned, as she waved her hands and led me in a fluttering, undecided way, first [into] a scullery, then into the dining room. I sat down on one of the brown chairs in that rich festive room. Last time I had sat there Sir Arthur was on my right; Noel Coward was on my left. Now the chairs were ticketed; there were tickets on the glass trees on the mantelpiece; on the chandelier; on the candlesticks. A man in a black overcoat was strolling about the room, picking up now a candlestick, now a cigarette box, as if calculating what they were worth. Then two furtive fashionable ladies came in. One of them held out her hand to me.

  “Have you come to see the furniture?” she said to me, in a low tone, as if she were at a funeral. I recognised Ava Bodley — Mrs Ralph Wigram.

  “No. I’ve come to see Sibyl”, I said.

  I thought I detected a shade of envy in her face; I was a friend; she was a mere sightseer. She strolled off, and began looking at the furniture. Then, as I sat there, trying to fix my mind on Sir Arthur and the kindness which he had always shown me — the door half opened; round the edge peered Sibyl who beckoned, silently, as if she were afraid to show herself in her own dining room. I followed her, and she took me into the drawing room and shut the door.

  “Who was that?” she said to me anxiously.

  “Mrs Wigram”, I replied. She wrung her hands.

  “Oh I hope she didn’t see me”, she murmured. “They ought to have gone at four. But they’re still all over the place.”

  The drawing room however was empty; though there were tickets on the chairs and tables. We sank down side by side on the sofa. I used to liken her to a bunch of glossy red cherries on a hard straw hat. But now the cherries were pale. The dye had run. The black brim was soppy with water. She looked old and ill and haggard lines were grooved as if with a chisel on either side of her nose. I felt extremely sorry for her. We were like two survivors clinging to a raft. This was the end of all her parties; we were sitting in the ruins of that magnificent structure which had borne so lately the royal crown on top. I put my bare hand on her bare hand and felt, ‘This is genuine. There can be no mistake about this.’

  Then Fielding brought in tea — the kind of tea people have when they
are starting on a journey; a few slices of thin bread and butter and three parliament biscuits. Sybil apologized for the tea. “What a horrid tea!” Then she began to talk rather distractedly; she told me about her operation; how the doctors said she ought to take a six months’ holiday. “Am I Greta Garbo?” she said. Then how she had bought a house in North Street; how she was going to stay with the Clarkes... She was always breaking off and saying, “Oh but don’t let’s go into that.” It was as if she wanted to say something, but could not. After all, she had asked me to come to see her alone.

  At last I said, “I’m so sorry, Sibyl...”

  The tears came to her eyes. “Oh it’s been awful! You can’t think what it’s like”, she began. Then she stopped. The tears did not fall. “You see I’m not a person who can say what they feel”, she said. “I can’t talk. I’ve not talked to anybody. If I did, I couldn’t go on. And I’ve got to go on... “ and again she began telling me how she had bought a house in North Street, from a madman; the house was very dirty... Then the door opened and Fielding beckoned.

  “Mrs Wigram wants to speak to you, milady”, she said. Sibyl sighed; but she got up and went.

  On the whole I admired her very much. I thought, as I sat there, how brave she was. Was she not giving a supper party that very night, here, in the midst of the ruins, in the midst of the chairs and tables that were all up for sale? But here she came back.

  “How I loathe that woman!” she exclaimed.

  And she told me as she began to eat her bread and butter how Mrs Wigram was a mere climber; the sort of woman who pushed and shoved and she had just played, too, a dirty trick on her. When she heard that Sibyl wanted the house in North Street, she had told the Lyttons, who had bid against her. But she had got the house in spite of them; and very cheap too; for seven hundred pounds less than she expected— “Oh but don’t let’s talk about that”, she broke off. And again I tried to be intimate. I said something rather commonplace and awkward about leaving houses — how much one minded it and so on. Then again tears came into her eyes. “Yes”, she said, looking round her. “I’ve always had a passion for this house. I’ve felt about it as a lover feels...”