Virginia Woolf - Virginia Woolf - A Writer's Diary

Monday, December 19th.

I will add a postscript, as I wait for my parcels to be wrapped up, on the nature of reviewing.

‘Mrs Woolf? I want to ask you one or two questions about your Henry James article.

‘First (only about the right name of one of the stories).

‘And now you use the word “lewd”. Of course, I don’t wish you to change it, but surely that is rather a strong expression to apply to anything by Henry James. I haven’t read the story lately of course—but still, my impression is ‘

‘Well, I thought that when I read it: one has to go by one’s impressions at the time.’

‘But you know the usual meaning of the word? It is—ah—

dirty. Now poor dear old Henry James At any rate, think it over and ring me up in 20 minutes.’ So I thought it over and came to the required conclusion in twelve minutes and a half. But what is one to do about it? He made it sufficiently clear not only that he wouldn’t stand ‘lewd’ but that he didn’t much like anything else. I feel that this becomes more often the case, and I wonder whether to break off, with an explanation, or to pander, or to go on writing against the current. This last is probably right, but somehow the consciousness of doing that cramps one. One writes stiffly, without spontaneity. Anyhow, for the present I shall let it be, and meet my castigation with resignation. People will complain I’m sure, and poor Bruce fondling his paper like an only child dreads public criticism, is stern with me, not so much for disrespect to poor old Henry, but for bringing blame on the Supplement. And how much time I have wasted!

Table of Contents

Wednesday, February 15th.

Of my reading I will now try to make some note. First Peacock: Nightmare Abbey, and Crotchet Castle. Both are so much better than I remember. Doubtless, Peacock is a taste acquired in maturity. When I was young, reading him in a railway carriage in Greece, sitting opposite Thoby I remember, who pleased me immensely by approving my remark that Meredith had got his women from Peacock, and that they were very charming women, then, I say, I rather had to prod my enthusiasm. Thoby liked it straight off. I wanted mystery, romance, psychology I suppose. And now more than anything I want beautiful prose. I relish it more and more exquisitely. And I enjoy satire more. I like the scepticism of his mind more. I enjoy intellectuality. Moreover, fantasticality does a good deal better than sham psychology. One touch of red in the cheek is all he gives, but I can do the rest. And then they’re so short; and I read them in little yellowish perfectly appropriate first editions.

The masterly Scott has me by the hair once more. Old Mortality. I’m in the middle; and have to put up with some dull sermons; but I doubt that he can be dull, because everything is so much in keeping—even his odd monochromatic landscape painting, done in smooth washes of sepia and burnt sienna. Edith and Henry too might be typical figures by an old master, put in exactly in the right place. And Cuddie and Mause are as usual marching straight away for all time, as lusty as life. But I daresay the lighting and the story telling business prevent him from going quite ahead with his fun as in the Antiquary.

Thursday, February 16th.

To continue—certainly the later chapters are bare and grey, ground out too palpably; authorities, I daresay, interfering with the original flow. And Morton is a prig; and Edith a stick; and Evandale a brick; and the preacher’s dulness I could take for granted. Still—still—I want to know what the next chapter brings, and these gallant old fellows can be excused practically anything.

How far can our historical portrait painters be trusted, seeing the difficulty I have in putting down the face of Violet Dickinson, whom I saw, for two hours, yesterday afternoon? One hears her talking in a swinging random way to Lottie in the hall, as she comes in. ‘Where’s my marmalade? How’s Mrs Woolf? Better eh? Where is she?’ meanwhile putting down coat and umbrella and not listening to a word. Then she seemed to me as she came in gigantically tall; tailor made; with a pearl dolphin with red tongue swinging from a black ribbon; rather stouter; with her white face, prominent blue eyes; nose with a chip off the end; and small beautifully aristocratic hands. Very well; but her talk? Since nature herself could give no account of it—since nature has wilfully left out some screw, what chance is there for me? Such nonsense putting old Ribblesdale and Horner on Boards—Ly. R. was an Astor—refused to let a penny of hers be invested. Your friend Miss Schreiner has gone to Bangkok. Don’t you remember all her boots and shoes in Eaton Square? To tell the truth I remembered neither Schreiner, her boots, or Eaton Square. Then Herman Norman is back and says things are in an awful mess at Teheran.

‘He’s my cousin,’ I said.

‘How’s that?’ Off we went on to Normans. Leonard and Ralph were having tea meanwhile and sometimes intercepted a whiff of grapeshot. Now all this, properly strung together, would make a very amusing sketch in the style of Jane Austen. But old Jane, if she had been in the mood, would have given all the other things—no, I don’t think she would; for Jane was not given to general reflections; one can’t put in the shadows that appear curving round her, and giving her a sort of beauty. She quiets down—though believing the old doctrine that talk must be incessant—and becomes humane, generous; shows that humorous sympathy which brings everything into her scope—naturally; with a touch of salt and reality; she has the range of a good novelist, bathing things in their own atmosphere too, only all so fragmentary and jerky. She told me she had no wish to live. ‘I’m very happy,’ she said. ‘Oh yes, very happy—But why should I want to go on living? What is there to live for?”Your friends?”My friends are all dead.”Ozzie?”Oh, he’d do just as well without me. I should like to tidy things up and disappear.”But you believe in immortality?”No. I don’t know that I do. Dust, ashes, I say.’ She laughed of course; and yet, as I say, has somehow the all round imaginative view which makes one believe her. Certainty I like—is love the word for these strange deep ancient affections, which began in youth and have got mixed up with so many important things? I kept looking at her large pleasant blue eyes, so candid and generous and hearty and going back to Fritham and Hyde Park Gate. But this doesn’t make a picture, all the same. I feel her somehow to be the sketch for a woman of genius. All the fluid gifts have gone in; but not the bony ones.

Friday, February 17th.

I’ve just had my dose of phenacetin—that is to say a mildly unfavourable review of Monday or Tuesday reported by Leonard from the Dial, the more depressing as I had vaguely hoped for approval in that august quarter. It seems as if I succeed nowhere. Yet, I’m glad to find, I have acquired a little philosophy. It amounts to a sense of freedom. I write what I like writing and there’s an end on it. Moreover, heaven knows I get consideration enough.

Saturday, February 18th.

Once more my mind is distracted from the thought of death. There was something about fame I had it in mind to say yesterday. Oh, I think it was that I have made up my mind that I’m not going to be popular, and so genuinely that I look upon disregard or abuse as part of my bargain. I’m to write what I like; and they’re to say what they like. My only interest as a writer lies, I begin to see, in some queer individuality; not in strength, or passion, or anything startling, but then I say to myself, is not ‘some queer individuality’ precisely the quality I respect? Peacock for example: Borrow; Donne; Douglas, in Alone, has a touch of it Who else comes to mind immediately? Fitzgerald’s Letters. People with this gift go on sounding long after the melodious vigorous music is banal. In proof of this, I read that a small boy, given a book by Marie Corelli for a Sunday school prize, at once killed himself; and the coroner remarked that one of her books was not what he himself would call ‘at all a nice book’. So perhaps the Mighty Atom is dwindling away and Night and Day arising; though The Voyage Out seems at the moment most in esteem. That encourages me. After 7 years next April the Dial speaks of its superb artistry. If they say the same of N. and D. in 7 years I shall be content; but I must wait 14 for anyone to take Monday or Tuesday to heart. I want to read Byron’s Letters, but I must go on with La Princesse de Clèves. This masterpiece has long been on my conscience. Me to talk of fiction and not to have read this classic! But reading classics is generally hard going. Especially classics like this one, which are classics because of their perfect taste, shapeliness, composure, artistry. Not a hair of its head is dishevelled. I think the beauty very great, but hard to appreciate. All the characters are noble. The movement is stately. The machinery a little cumbrous. Stories have to be told. Letters dropped. It is the action of the human heart and not of muscle or fate that we watch. But stories of noble human hearts have their movements unapproachable in other circumstances. There is a queer understated profundity in the relations between Madame de Clèves and her mother, for example. If I were reviewing it, I think I should take for my text beauty in character. Thank God though I am not reviewing it. Within the last few minutes I have skimmed the reviews in the New Statesman; between coffee and cigarette I read the Nation; now the best brains in England (metaphorically speaking) sweated themselves for I don’t know how many hours to give me this brief condescending sort of amusement. When I read reviews I crush the column together to get at one or two sentences; is it a good book or a bad? And then I discount those two sentences according to what I know of the book and of the reviewer. But when I write a review I write every sentence as if it were going to be tried before three Chief Justices. I can’t believe that I am crushed together and discounted. Reviews seem to me more and more frivolous. Criticism on the other hand absorbs me more and more. But after 6 weeks influenza my mind throws up no matutinal fountains. My note book lies by my bed unopened. At first I could hardly read for the swarm of ideas that rose involuntarily. I had to write them out at once. And this is great fun. A little air, seeing the buses go by, lounging by the river, will, please God, send the sparks flying again. I am suspended between life and death in an unfamiliar way. Where is my paper knife? I must cut Lord Byron.