Virginia Woolf - Virginia Woolf - A Writer's Diary

Wednesday, February 4th.

The mornings from 12 to 11 spent reading The Voyage Out. I’ve not read it since July 1913. And if you ask me what I think I must reply that I don’t know—such a harlequinade as it is—such an assortment of patches—here simple and severe—here frivolous and shallow—here like God’s truth—here strong and free flowing as I could wish. What to make of it, Heaven knows. The failures are ghastly enough to make my cheeks burn—and then a turn of the sentence, a direct look ahead of me, makes them burn in a different way. On the whole I like the young woman’s mind considerably. How gallantly she takes her fences—and my word, what a gift for pen and ink! I can do little to amend, and must go down to posterity the author of cheap witticisms, smart satires and even, I find, vulgarisms—crudities rather—that will never cease to rankle in the grave. Yet I see how people prefer it to N. and D. I don’t say admire it more, but find it a more gallant and inspiring spectacle.

Tuesday, March 9th.

In spite of some tremors I think I shall go on with this diary for the present. I sometimes think that I have worked through the layer of style which suited it—suited the comfortable bright hour after tea; and the thing I’ve reached now is less pliable. Never mind; I fancy old Virginia, putting on her spectacles to read of March 1920 will decidedly wish me to continue. Greetings! my dear ghost; and take heed that I don’t think 50 a very great age. Several good books can be written still; and here’s the bricks for a fine one. To return to the present owner of the name, on Sunday I went up to Campden Hill to hear the Schubert quintet—to see George Booth’s house—to take notes for my story—to rub shoulders with respectability—all these reasons took me there and were cheaply gratified at 7/6.

Whether people see their own rooms with the devastating clearness that I see them, thus admitted once for one hour, I doubt. Chill superficial seemliness; but thin as a March glaze of ice on a pool. A sort of mercantile smugness. Horsehair and mahogany is the truth of it; and the white panels, Vermeer reproductions, Omega table and variegated curtains rather a snobbish disguise. The least interesting of rooms; the compromise; though of course that’s interesting too. I took against the family system. Old Mrs Booth enthroned on a sort of commode in widow’s dress; flanked by devoted daughters; with grandchildren somehow symbolical cherubs. Such neat dull little boys and girls. There we all sat in our furs and white gloves.

Saturday, April10th.

I’m planning to begin Jacob’s Room next week with luck. (That’s the first time I’ve written that.) It’s the spring I have in my mind to describe; just to make this note—that one scarcely notices the leaves out on the trees this year, since they seem never entirely to have gone—never any of that iron blackness of the chestnut trunks—always something soft and tinted; such as I can’t remember in my life before. In fact, we’ve skipped a winter; had a season like the midnight sun; a new return to full daylight. So I hardly notice that chestnuts are out—the little parasols spread on our window tree; and the churchyard grass running over the old tombstones like green water.

Thursday, April 15th.

My handwriting seems to be going to the dogs. Perhaps I confuse it with my writing. I said that Richmond was enthusiastic over my James article? Well, two days ago, little elderly Walkley attacked it in The Times, said I’d fallen into H.J.’s worst mannerisms—hardbeaten ‘figures’—and hinted that I was a sentimental lady friend. Percy Lubbock was included too; but, rightly or wrongly, I delete the article from my mind with blushes, and see all my writing in the least becoming light. I suppose it’s the old matter of ‘florid gush’—no doubt a true criticism, though the disease is my own, not caught from H.J., if that’s any comfort. I must see to it though. The Times atmosphere brings it out; for one thing I have to be formal there, especially in the case of H.J., and so contrive an article rather like an elaborate design, which encourages ornament. Desmond, however, volunteered admiration. I wish one could make out some rule about praise and blame. I predict that I’m destined to have blame in any quantity. I strike the eye; and elderly gentlemen in particular get annoyed. An Unwritten Novel will certainly be abused; I can’t foretell what line they’ll take this time. Partly, it’s the ‘writing well’ that sets people off—and always has done, I suppose, ‘Pretentious’ they say; and then a woman writing well, and writing in The Times —that’s the line of it. This slightly checks me from beginning Jacob’s Room. But I value blame. It spurs one, even from Walkley; who is (I’ve looked him out) 65, and a cheap little gossip, I’m glad to think, laughed at, even by Desmond. But don’t go forgetting that there’s truth in it; more than a grain in the criticism that I’m damnably refined in The Times; refined and cordial; I don’t think it’s easy to help it; since, before beginning the H.J. article, I took a vow I’d say what I thought, and say it in my own way. Well, I’ve written all this page and not made out how to steady myself when the Unwritten Novel appears.

Tuesday, May 11th.

It is worth mentioning, for future reference, that the creative power which bubbles so pleasantly in beginning a new book quiets down after a time, and one goes on more steadily. Doubts creep in. Then one becomes resigned. Determination not to give in, and the sense of an impending shape keep one at it more than anything. I’m a little anxious. How am I to bring off this conception? Directly one gets to work one is like a person walking, who has seen the country stretching out before. I want to write nothing in this book that I don’t enjoy writing. Yet writing is always difficult.

Wednesday, June 23rd.

I was struggling, at this time, to say honestly that I don’t think Conrad’s last book a good one. I have said it. It is painful (a little) to find fault there, where almost solely, one respects. I can’t help suspecting the truth to be that he never sees anyone who knows good writing from bad, and then being a foreigner, talking broken English, married to a lump of a wife, he withdraws more and more into what he once did well, only piles it on higher and higher, until what can one call it but stiff melodrama. I would not like to find The Rescue signed Virginia Woolf. But will anyone agree with this? Anyhow nothing shakes my opinion of a book. Nothing—nothing. Only perhaps if it’s the book of a young person—or of a friend—no, even so, I think myself infallible. Haven’t I lately dismissed Murry’s play, and exactly appraised K.’s story, and summed up Aldous Huxley; and doesn’t it somehow wound my sense of fitness to hear Roger mangling these exact values?

Thursday, August 5th.

Let me try to say what I think as I read Don Quixote after dinner—Principally that writing was then story telling to amuse people sitting round the fire without any of our devices for pleasure. There they sit, women spinning, men contemplative, and the jolly, fanciful, delightful tale is told to them, as to grown up children. This impresses me as the motive of D.Q.: to keep us entertained at all costs. So far as I can judge, the beauty and thought come in unawares: Cervantes scarcely conscious of serious meaning, and scarcely seeing D.Q. as we see him. Indeed that’s my difficulty—the sadness, the satire, how far are they ours, not intended—or do these great characters have it in them to change according to the generation that looks at them? Much, I admit, of the tale-telling is dull—not much, only a little at the end of the first volume, which is obviously told as a story to keep one contented. So little said out, so much kept back, as if he had not wished to develop that side of the matter—the scene of the galley slaves marching is an instance of what I mean. Did C. feel the whole of the beauty and sadness of that as I feel it? Twice I’ve spoken of ‘sadness’.