Complete Works of Virginia Woolf

by Virginia Woolf

  Bank Holiday Very fat woman, girl and man spend Bank Holiday - a day of complete sun and satisfaction - looking up family graves in the churchyard. 23 youngish men and women spend it tramping along with ugly black boxes on shoulders and arms, taking photographs. Man says to woman, ‘Some of these quiet villages don’t seem to know it’s Bank Holiday at all’ in a tone of superiority and slight contempt.

  The Married Relation Arnold Bennett says that the horror of marriage lies in its ‘dailiness’. All acuteness of relationship is rubbed away by this. The truth is more like this: life - say 4 days out of 7 - becomes automatic; but on the 5th day a bead of sensation (between husband and wife) forms which is all the fuller and more sensitive because of the automatic customary unconscious days on either side. That is to say the year is marked by moments of great intensity. Hardy’s ‘moments of vision’. How can a relationship endure for any length of time except under these conditions?

  Friday, September 3rd.

  Women in tea garden at Bramber - a sweltering hot day: rose trellises; white-washed tables; lower middle classes; motor omnibuses constantly passing; bits of grey stone scattered on a paper-strewn greensward, all that’s left of the Castle.

  Woman leaning over the table, taking command of the treat, attended by two elder women, whom she pays for to girl waitress (or marmalade coloured fat girl, with a body like the softest lard, destined soon to marry, but as yet only 16 or so).

  WOMAN: What can we have for tea?

  GIRL (very bored, arms akimbo): Cake, bread and butter, tea. Jam?

  WOMAN: Have the wasps been troublesome? They get into the jam - (as if she suspected the jam would not be worth having).

  Girl agrees.

  WOMAN: Ah, wasps have been very prominent this year.

  GIRL: That’s right.

  So she doesn’t have jam.

  This amused me, I suppose.

  For the rest, Charleston, Tilton,” To the Lighthouse, Vita, expeditions: the summer dominated by a feeling of washing in boundless warm fresh air - such an August not come my way for years; bicycling; no settled work done, but advantage taken of air for going to the river or over the downs. The novel is now easily within sight of the end, but this, mysteriously, comes no nearer. I am doing Lily on the lawn; but whether it’s her last lap, I don’t know. Nor am I sure of the quality; the only certainty seems to be that after tapping my antennae in the air vaguely for an hour every morning I generally write with heat and ease till 12.30; and thus do my two pages. So it will be done, written over that is, in 3 weeks, I forecast, from today. What emerges? At this moment I’m casting about for an end.

  5th Sept

  The problem is how to bring Lily and Mr R. together and make a combination of interest at the end. I am feathering about with various ideas. The last chapter which I begin tomorrow is In the Boat; I had meant to end with R. climbing on to the rock. If so, what becomes of Lily and her picture? Should there be a final page about her and Carmichael looking at the picture and summing up R.’s character? In that case I lose the intensity of the moment. If this intervenes between R. and the lighthouse, there’s too much chop and change, I think. Could I do it in a parenthesis? So that one had the sense of reading the two things at the same time?

  I shall solve it somehow, I suppose. Then I must go on to the question of quality. I think it may run too fast and free and so be rather thin. On the other hand, I think it is subtler and more human than Jacob’s Room and Mrs Dalloway. And I am encouraged by my own abundance as I write. It is proved, I think, that what I have to say is to be said in this manner. As usual, side stories are sprouting in great variety as I wind this up: a book of characters; the whole string being pulled out from some simple sentence, like Clara Pater’s ‘Don’t you find that Barker’s pins have no points to them?’ I think I can spin out all their entrails this way; but it is hopelessly undramatic. It is all in oratio obliqua. Not quite all; for I have a few direct sentences. The lyric portions of To the Lighthouse are collected in the 10-year lapse and don’t interfere with the text so much as usual. I feel as if it fetched its circle pretty completely this time; and I don’t feel sure what the stock criticism will be. Sentimental? Victorian?

  Then I must begin to plan out my book on literature for the Press. Six chapters. Why not groups of ideas, under some rough heading - for example: Symbolism. God. Nature. Plot Dialogue. Take a novel and see what the component parts are. Separate this and bring under them instances of all the books which display them biggest. Probably this would pan out historically. One could spin a theory which would bring the chapters together. I don’t feel that I can read seriously and exactly for it. Rather I want to sort out all the ideas that have accumulated in me.

  Then I want to write a bunch of ‘Outlines’ to make money (for under a new arrangement, we’re to share any money over £200 that I make); this I must leave rather to chance, according to what books come my way. I am frightfully contented these last few days, by the way. I don’t quite understand it. Perhaps reason has something to do with it.

  Monday, September 13th.

  The blessed thing is coming to an end I say to myself with a groan. It’s like some prolonged rather painful and yet exciting process of nature, which one desires inexpressibly to have over. Oh the relief of waking and thinking it’s done - the relief and the disappointment, I suppose. I am talking of To the Lighthouse. I am exacerbated by the fact that I spent four days last week hammering out de Quincey, which has been lying about since June; so refused £30 to write on Willa Cather; and now shall be quit in a week I hope of this unprofitable fiction and could have wedged in Willa before going back. So I should have had £70 of my year’s £200 ready made by October. (My greed is immense; I want to have £50 of my own in the Bank to buy Persian carpets, pots, chairs etc.) Curse Richmond, Curse the Times, Curse my own procrastinations and nerves. I shall do Cobden Sanderson and Mrs Hemans and make something by them however. As for the book - Morgan said he felt ‘This is a failure,’ as he finished the Passage to India. I feel - what? A little stale this last week or two from steady writing. But also a little triumphant. If my feeling is correct, this is the greatest stretch I’ve put my method to, and I think it holds. By this I mean that I have been dredging up more feelings and characters, I imagine. But Lord knows, until I look at my haul. This is only my own feeling in process. Odd how I’m haunted by that damned criticism of Janet Case’s ‘it’s all dressing... technique. (Mrs Dalloway). The Common Reader has substance.’ But then in one’s strained state any fly has liberty to settle and it’s always the gadflies. Muir praising me intelligently has comparatively little power to encourage - when I’m working, that is - when the ideas halt. And this last lap, in the boat, is hard, because the material is not so rich as it was with Lily on the lawn. I am forced to be more direct and more intense. I am making more use of symbolism, I observe; and I go in dread of ‘sentimentality’. Is the whole theme open to that charge? But I doubt that any theme is in itself good or bad. It gives a chance to one’s peculiar qualities - that’s all.

  Thursday, September 30th.

  I wished to add some remarks to this, on the mystical side of this solicitude; how it is not oneself but something in the universe that one’s left with. It is this that is frightening and exciting in the midst of my profound gloom, depression, boredom, whatever it is. One sees a fin passing far out. What image can I reach to convey what I mean? Really there is none, I think. The interesting thing is that in all my feeling and thinking I have never come up against this before. Life is, soberly and accurately, the oddest affair; has in it the essence of reality. I used to feel this as a child - couldn’t step across a puddle once, I remember, for thinking how strange - what am I? etc. But by writing I don’t reach anything. All I mean to make is a note of a curious state of mind. I hazard the guess that it may be the impulse behind another book. At present my mind is totally blank and virgin of books. I want to watch and see how the idea at first occurs. I want to trace my own process.r />
  Tuesday, November 23rd.

  I am re-doing six pages of Lighthouse daily. This is not, I think, so quick as Mrs D: but then I find much of it very sketchy and have to improvise on the typewriter. This I find much easier than re-writing in pen and ink. My present opinion is that it is easily the best of my books: fuller than J.’s R. and less spasmodic, occupied with more interesting things than Mrs D., and not complicated with all that desperate accompaniment of madness. It is freer and subtler, I think. Yet I have no idea yet of any other to follow it: which may mean that I have made my method perfect and it will now stay like this and serve whatever use I wish to put it to. Before, some development of method brought fresh subjects in view, because I saw the chance of being able to say them. Yet I am now and then haunted by some semi-mystic very profound life of a woman, which shall all be told on one occasion; and time shall be utterly obliterated; future shall somehow blossom out of the past. One incident - say the fall of a flower - might contain it. My theory being that the actual event practically does not exist - nor time either. But I don’t want to force this. I must make up my series book.

  1927.

  Friday, January 14th.

  This is out of order, but I have no new book and so must record here (and it was here I recorded the beginning of the Lighthouse) must record here the end. This moment I have finished the final drudgery. It is now complete for Leonard to read on Monday. Thus I have done it some days under the year and feel thankful to be out of it again. Since October 25th I have been revising and retyping (some parts three times over) and no doubt I should work at it again; but I cannot. What I feel is that it is a hard muscular book, which at this age proves that I have something in me. It has not run out and gone flabby: at least such is my feeling before reading it over.

  Sunday, January 23rd.

  Well Leonard has read To the Lighthouse and says it is much my best book and it is a ‘masterpiece’. He said this without my asking. I came back from Knole and sat without asking him. He calls it entirely new, ‘a psychological poem’ is his name for it. An improvement upon Dalloway; more interesting. Having won this great relief, my mind dismisses the whole thing, as usual, and I forget it and shall only wake up and be worried again over proofs and then when it appears.

  Saturday, February 12th.

  X’s prose is too fluent. I’ve been reading it and it makes my pen run. When I’ve read a classic I am curbed and - not castrated; no, the opposite; I can’t think of the word at the moment. Had I been writing ‘Y ‘ I should have run off whole pools of this coloured water; and then (I think) found my own method of attack. It is my distinction as a writer to get this clear and my expression exact. Were I writing travels I should wait till some angle emerged and go for that. The method of writing smooth narration can’t be right; things don’t happen in one’s mind like that. But she is very skilful and golden voiced. This makes me think that I have to read To the Lighthouse tomorrow and Monday, straight through in print; straight through owing to my curious methods, for the first time. I want to read largely and freely once; then to niggle over details. I may note that the first symptoms of Lighthouse are unfavourable. Roger it is clear did not like ‘Time Passes’; Harpers and the Forum have refused serial rights; Brace writes, I think, a good deal less enthusiastically than of Mrs D. But these opinions refer to the rough copy, unrevised. And anyhow I feel callous: L.’s opinion keeps me steady; I’m neither one thing nor the other.

  Monday, February 2 1st.

  Why not invent a new kind of play; as for instance:

  Woman thinks...

  He does.

  Organ plays.

  She writes.

  They say:

  She sings.

  Night speaks They miss

  I think it must be something on this line - though I can’t now see what. Anyway from facts; free; yet concentrated; prose yet poetry; a novel and a play.

  Monday, February 2 8th.

  But I intend to work harder and harder. If they - the respectables, my friends, advise me against the Lighthouse, I shall write memoirs; have a plan already to get historical manuscripts and write Lives of the Obscure; but why do I pretend I should take advice? After a holiday the old ideas will come to me as usual; seeming fresher, more important than ever; and I shall be off again, feeling that extraordinary exhilaration, that ardour and lust of creation - which is odd, if what I create is, as it well may be, wholly bad.

  Monday, March 14th.

  Faith Henderson came to tea; and, valiantly beating the waters of conversation, I sketched the possibilities which an unattractive woman, penniless, alone, might yet bring into being, i began imagining the position - how she would stop a motor on the Dover road and so get to Dover; cross the channel etc. It struck me, vaguely, that I might write a Defoe narrative for fun. Suddenly between twelve and one I conceived a whole fantasy to be called ‘The Jessamy Brides’ - why, I wonder? I have rayed round it several scenes. Two women, poor, solitary at the top of a house. One can see anything (for this is all fantasy) the Tower Bridge, clouds, aeroplanes. Also old men listening in the room over the way. Everything is to be tumbled in pell mell. It is to be written as I write letters at the top of my speed; on the ladies of Llangollen; on Mrs Fladtgate; on people passing. No attempt is to be made to realize the character. Sapphism is to be suggested. Satire is to be the main note - satire and wildness. The ladies are to have Constantinople in view. Dreams of golden domes. My own lyric vein is to be satirized. Everything mocked. And it is to end with three dots... so. For the truth is I feel the need of an escapade after these serious poetic experimental books whose form is always so closely considered. I want to kick up my heels and be off. Orlando leading tot he waves. (8 July 1933). Want to embody all those innumerable little ideas and tiny stories which flash into my mind at all seasons. I think this will be great fun to write; and it will rest my head before starting the very serious, mystical poetical work which I want to come next. Meanwhile, before I can touch the Jessamy Brides, I have to write my book on fiction and that won’t be done till January, I suppose. I might dash off a page or two now and then by way of experiment. And it is possible that the idea will evaporate. Anyhow this records the odd horrid unexpected way in which these things suddenly create themselves - one thing on top of another in about an hour. So I made up Jacob’s Room looking at the fire at Hogarth House; so I made up the Lighthouse one afternoon in the Square here.

  Monday, March 21st.

  My brain is ferociously active. I want to have at my books as if I were conscious of the lapse of time; age and death. Dear me, how lovely some parts of the Lighthouse are! Soft and pliable, and I think deep, and never a word wrong for a page at a time. This I feel about the dinner party and the children in the boat; but not of Lily on the lawn. That I do not much like. But I like the end.

  Sunday, May 1st.

  And then I remember how my book is coming out. People will say I am irreverent - people will say a thousand things. But I think, honestly, I care very little this time - even for the opinion of my friends. I am not sure if it is good; I was disappointed when I read it through the first time. Later I liked it Anyhow it is the best I can do. But would it be a good thing to read my things when they are printed, critically? It is encouraging that in spite of obscurity, affectation and so on my sales rise steadily. We have sold, already, 1220 before publication, and I think it will be about 1500, which for a writer like I am is not bad. Yet, to show I am genuine, I find myself thinking of other things with absorption and forgetting that it will be out on Thursday.

  Thursday, May 5th.

  Book out. We have sold (I think) 1690 before publication - twice Dalloway. I write however in the shadow of the damp cloud of The Times Lit. Sup. review, which is an exact copy of the ].’s R., Mrs Dalloway review, gentlemanly, kindly, timid. Praising beauty, doubting character, and leaving me moderately depressed. I am anxious about Time Passes.’ Think the whole thing may be pronounced soft, shallow, insipid, sentimental. Yet, ho
nestly, I don’t much care; want to be let alone to ruminnate.

  Wednesday, May 11th.

  My book. What is the use of saying one is indifferent to reviews when positive praise, though mingled with blame, gives one such a start on, that instead of feeling dried up, one feels, on the contrary, flooded with ideas? I gather from vague hints, through Margery Joad, through Clive, that some people say it is my best book. So far Vita praises; Dotty enthuses; an unknown donkey writes. No one has yet read it to the end, I daresay; and I shall hover about, not anxious but worried for two more weeks, when it will be over.

  Monday, May 16th.

  The book. Now on its feet so far as praise is concerned. It has been out 10 days: Thursday a week ago. Nessa enthusiastic - a sublime, almost upsetting spectacle. She says it is an amazing portrait of mother; a supreme portrait painter; has lived in it; found the rising of the dead almost painful. Then Ottoline, then Vita, then Charlie, then Lord Olivier, then Tommie, then Clive.

  Saturday, June 18th.

  This is a terribly thin diary for some reason. Half the year has been spent and left only these few sheets. Perhaps I have been writing too hard in the morning to write here also. Three weeks wiped out by headache. We had a week at Rodmell, of which I remember various sights, suddenly unfolding before me spontaneously (for example, the village standing out to sea in the June night, houses seeming ships; the marsh a fiery foam) and the immense comfort of lying there lapped in peace. I lay out all day in the new garden, with the terrace. It is already being made. There were blue tits nested in the hollow neck of my Venus. Vita came over one very hot afternoon and we walked to the river with her. Pinker now swims after Leonard’s stick. I read - any trash; Maurice Baring; sporting memoirs. Slowly ideas began trickling in; and then suddenly I rhapsodized (the night L. dined with the Apostles) and told over the story of the Moths, which I think I will write very quickly, perhaps in between chapters of that long impending book on fiction. Now the Moths will I think fill out the skeleton which I dashed in here; the play-poem idea; the idea of some continuous stream, not solely of human thought, but of the ship, the night etc, all flowing together: intersected by the arrival of the bright moths. A man and a woman are to be sitting at table talking. Or shall they remain silent? It is to be a love story; she is finally to let the last great moth in. The contrasts might be something of this sort; she might talk, or think, about the age of the earth; the death of humanity; then the moths keep on coming. Perhaps the man could be left absolutely dim. France: hear the sea; at night; a garden under the window. But it needs ripening. I do a little work on it in the evening when the gramophone is playing late Beethoven sonatas. (The windows fidget at their fastenings as if we were at sea.)