The Voyage Out - Introducing Mr and Mrs Dalloway

Todays quotes might be a surprise you you. They certainly were to me!

While Captain Vinrace was thinking about passengers, 

Here he began searching in his pockets and eventually discovered a card, which he planked down on the table before Rachel. On it she read, “Mr. and Mrs. Richard Dalloway, 23 Browne Street, Mayfair.” p20

and 

The truth was that Mr. and Mrs. Dalloway had found themselves stranded in Lisbon. They had been travelling on the Continent for some weeks, chiefly with a view to broadening Mr. Dalloway’s mind. p20

There are several more paragraphs about The Dalloways.

Mrs Dalloway was the first Woolf book I studied in depth at university. I thoroughly enjoyed it but it never occurred to me that Clarissa and Richard had already been introduced in Woolf’s first novel.

It was a backward and welcome step to see the prequel in a sense of characters who would burst out of this book and get a book of their own.

 

 

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Virginia Woolf on Second hand bookshops

Books are everywhere; and always the same sense of adventure fills us. Second-hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack.

A quote from The Death of the Moth and other essays

I like most keen readers like to forage in second hand bookshops. They are great places full of surprises and often serendipitous discoveries.

My favourite second hand bookshop is in Alnwick. I found a pristine first edition of Flush by Woolf there.

Bird Watching - a Woolf Perspective

She was becoming more and more interested in birds. It was a sign of old age, she supposed, as she went into her bedroom.

The Years, Virginia Woolf.

I found this fascinating quote today in "The Years". It just popped up without warning.

I have no idea whether she actually became a birdwatcher in latter life. Does anyone know? Just drop a comment on this post.

I'm becoming older but bird watching holds no fascination to me.

I do remember the birds in the garden when I visited Monks House in Sussex. The property had a lovely vegetable garden and the rest of the grounds and orchard are preserved as they were when Virginia and Leonard lived there.

Strewn with Wreckage

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of those who have minded beyond reason the opinion of others.” ― Virginia Woolf, A Room of One's Own

Writing is a deeply personal occupation (or preoccupation) that represents an intense engagement with the topic being written about.

You can not write well if you are continually worrying about what others think. Although Woolf gives us this excellent quote she was known to go through periods of self doubt about what others were thinking of her works. The anxiety was most intense just after publication of a new work.

Her writing is genuine and while she worried about opinions after publication she discussed little during the actual writing process except with Leonard Woolf, her husband.

For myself I write what I want, when I want, and to hell with the consequences.

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Virginia Woolf - The Indescribable Thing

Woolf once said that her death would be the “one experience I shall never describe.”

Luckily for us she did of course describe her life. Her powers of observation were well honed and I constantly marvel at the way she crafts words in her descriptions.

In a way though she is speaking to us from beyond the grave, her words live on to inspire new generations.

Death is the last mystery and we all have to wait to see what it is all about - oblivion or a door beyond?

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Virginia Woolf on Illusions

“Growing up is losing some illusions, in order to acquire others.” ― Virginia Woolf

While we often think that we lose our illusions as we leave childhood, we inevitably replace them with other and often more pernicious illusions. Some physicists would argue that life itself and the reality we experience is just an illusion.

This thought is also echoed by many mystics.

Illusions however are not inherently good or bad but a staple component of human living. Woolf's ability to hold life's illusions to our gaze is valuable and I love the illusory quality of her writing.

DK

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Virginia Woolf on the Past

“I can only note that the past is beautiful because one never realises an emotion at the time. It expands later, and thus we don't have complete emotions about the present, only about the past.” ― Virginia Woolf

This is a very important thought. Retrospection adds the body to our experiences. Emotion is raw at the time we experience it so time must often pass before it is moderated and becomes a thing of beauty. Reflection is a key skill that excellent writers possess.

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Virginia Woolf: The Diary Volume 4, Monday 29 February 1932

"And this morning I opened a letter: & it was from 'yours very sincerely J.J.Thompson" - the Master of Trinity;& it was to say that the council had decided to ask me to deliver the Clark lectures next year. Six of them. This, I suppose, is the first time a woman has been asked; & so it is a great honour - think of me, the uneducated child reading books in my room at 22 H.P.G - now advanced to this glory. But I shall refuse: because how could I write 6 lectures, to be delivered in full term, without giving a year to criticism; without becoming a functionary; without sealing my lips when it comes to tilting at Universities; without putting off my Knock at the Door; without perhaps shelving another novel...Yes; all that reading, I say, has borne this odd fruit".

As an aside Virginia's father Leslie Stephen gave the first Clark lectures in 1883, taking 18th century literature as his subject.

I wonder whether a modern university education would have spoiled or bettered Virginias writing?

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Woolf - the Industrious Insect

The Diary, Volume 4, Wednesday 13 January 1932

Well we have hit 1932 now.

"I shall be 50 on 25th, Monday week that is; & sometimes feel that I have lived 250 years already,& sometimes that I am still the youngest person in the omnibus. (Nessa said that she still always thinks this, as she sits down.) And I want to write another 4 novels: Waves, I mean: & the Tap on the Door; & to go through English literature, like a string through cheese, or rather like some industrious insect, eating its way from book to book, from Chaucer to Lawrence".

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A Long Toil to Reach this Beginning

The Diary Volume 4, Monday 16 November, 1931

I have now got through to 1934 in the Diary so I have heaps to share with you all. So here goes...

"Oh yes, between 50 & 60 I think I shall write ouit some very singular books, if I live. I mean i think I am about to embody, at last, the exact shape my brain holds. What a long toil to reach this beginning - if The Waves is my first book in my own style!".

Of course I would argue that she always wrote in her own style, from The Voyage Out onwards. Literary critics are foul creatures who suck the life out of writers and cause so much self doubt. The sad things is that they can't write themselves. Here endeth the rave!!

I am really enjoying going back over these underlined portions myself as I was reading this part of the Diary in January.

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Times Review of The Waves 1931

The Diary Volume 4, Thursday 8 October, 1931

"Really, this unintelligible book is being better 'received' than any of them. A note in The Times proper - the first time this has been allowed me. And it sells - how unexpected, how odd that people can read that difficult grinding stuff!".

This is, of course, referring to the publication of The Waves. An excerpt from The Times, 9 October 1931 says: 'Like some old Venetian craftsman in glass, Mrs Woolf spins the coloured threads, and with exquisite, intuitive sensibility fashions ethereal frailties of enduring quality'.

The Waves stands as my favourite Woolf book alongside Mrs Dalloway.

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In Search of the Mythical Lanchester

I have been intrigued in reading Volume 4 of the Diaries to see the love the Woolf's had for cars. They purchased a new Lanchester car and toured Italy in it. This was a sign of their wealth. has anyone heard of the Lanchester make before? I will do some searching.

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Woolf on Elizabethan Prose

The Diary Volume 4 3 September 1931

"By the way, Elizabethan prose is magnificent: & all that I love most at the moment...I read Montaigne this morning & found a passage about the passions of women - their voracity - which I at once opposed to Squire's remarks & so made up a whole chapter of my Tap at the Door or whatever it is, just when I was hoping to let my mind slide off on to a second Common reader, & the Elizabethans...I open this book again to record the fact that this is the 3rd of September. The battle of Dunbar: the battle of Worcester, & the death of Cromwell."

I like the hooks that she puts into history here, another piece of evidence for her own, well tuned, sense of time and of history.

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Virginia Woolf on Biography

The Diary Vol 4 Sunday 16 August 1931

"It is a good idea I think to write biographies; to make them use my powers of representation reality accuracy; & to use my novels simply to express the general. the poetic. Flush is serving this purpose."

I am enjoying Virginia's biography of Roger Fry at the moment.

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Quiet and Control plus Eating Apples

The Diary Volume 4 Monday 10 August 1931

"No I will not let this day be a bad one, though it has every sign of so being...No, I say, I will not let this day be a bad one: but by what means? Quiet & control. Eating apples - sleeping this afternoon. Thats all. And now for Waves."

Well they say that an apple a day keeps the doctor away!! I'm not sure that I could live life at the pace that Virginia did.

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Virginia Woolf - the Weekly Black Hole

The Diary Volume 4 Sunday 3 May 1931

"But now, say I have a 3 months lap ahead of me: the 3 summer months. What shall I do? We are going to 'regulate' seeing people. There is to be a weekly black hole; a seething mass of people all eating tea together. We shall thus have more evenings free. In those evenings I intend to walk; to read, Elizabethans; to be mistress of my soul. Yes. And I intend to investigate Edinburgh & Stratford on Avon. Also to finish off The Waves in a dashing masterly manner. D H Lawrence has given me much to think about - about writing for writings sake."

Still the Woolf's are inundated with visitors. This must have been a hell to VW when she was unwell. It is clear from her diaries that Woolf was an avid reader. To write well one must read well. By the way does anyone know what the DH Lawrence article or book was the she is mentioning?

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Virginia Woolf - A Joan of Arc (Jeanne d'Arc) reference

Diary Volume 4 Monday 27 April 1931

"Saw the high unroofed room in wh. Jeanne stood before the King. The very chimney place perhaps. Walls cut through by thin windows. Suddenly one looks down, down on roofs. How did the Middle Ages get through the evenings? A stone crypt in wh. J. lived: people carve their names everywhere. River silken serpentine beneath. Liked the stone roofless rooms; & the angular cut windows. Sat on the steps to hear 2 struck by the clock wh. has rung since the 13th century: which J. heard. Rusty toned. What did she think? Was she mad? a visionary coinciding with the right moment".

Woolf has a very vivid connection with person, place and time which is seen in all of her writings. The sense of being where Jeanne d'Arc was seeing and hearing the same things forges a palpable connection. This makes her writing very rich and interesting.

(Note: It was in the grand salle of the Chateau du Milieu at Chinon on 9 March 1429 that Jeanne d'Arc recognised Charles VII concealed among his courtiers.)

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Virginia Woolf and the French Renaissance

The Diary Volume 4 Saturday 25 April, 1931

This excerpt from Virginia's diary describes a visit to the castle of Montaigne a French Renaissance philosopher and writer and an early essayist.

>"A woman came. Took us up narrow stone steps, worn; opened thick nail studded door. This is his bedroom; this is his dressing room. Here he died. Here he went down - he was very small - to chapel. Upstairs again is his library. The books & furniture are at Bordeaux. Here is his chair & table. He wrote those inscriptions on the beams. Sure enough it was his room; a piece of an old modern chair may be his."

It is interesting to see tghat Virginia could also be a literary tourist, so would understand the fixation many of her followers have for looking at where she, herself, lived and wrote.

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