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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Virginia Woolf on Civilisation

The Diary Volume 4, Saturday 30 January, 1932

"Civilisation is the thickness of a postage stamp on the top of Cleopatra's needle; & time to come is the thickness of postage stamps as high as Mount Blanc".

Or civilisation is a very thin veneer to say the least.

A great metaphorical expression.

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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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Woolf at Ease

The Diary Volume 4, Sat 19 September 1931

"But O - again - how happy I am: how calm, for the moment how sweet life is with L. here, in its regularity & order, & the garden & the room at night & music & my walks & writing easily & interestedly at Donne of a morning, & poems all about me. I've come to read poetry with intensity - bought Skelton at Tunbridge Wells".

It is nice when Virginia is happy. I noticed for the first time here her use (erratic) of the Oxford comma. She uses it twice in the excerpt above.

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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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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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A New Vision of Death - Indescribable

The Diary Volume 3, Tuesday 23 November 1926

"Life is as I've said since I was 10, awfully interesting - if anything, quicker, keener at 44 than 24 - more desperate I suppose, as the river shoots to Niagara - my new vision of death; active, positive, like all the rest, exciting; & of great importance - as an experience. 'The one experience I shall never describe', I said to Vita yesterday."

Of course that last statement is a truth. You can not describe your own death.

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Virginia Woolf a Breakdown quote

The Diary Volume 3 - Saturday 31 July 1926

"Thought of my own power of writing with veneration, as of something incredible, belonging to someone else; never again to be enjoyed by me."

This was written during a nervous breakdown in miniature as she describes it. There is a level of psychological dissociation contained in this passage.

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Virginia Woolf on H.G. Wells - Drowsy at 60

The Diary Volume 3 - Sunday 4 July 1926

Then Wells came again; & stayed till 4, when he had to meet an American. He is getting to the drowsy stage: the 60s. Seems well wishing but not so spry as he used to be. He talked about his new book, the thoughts one has at 60."

This is an interesting observation and one that today seems out of place. Today's 60 year olds are a more vibrant breed. Woolf in her late 40s was already considering herself to be getting old. As a fit and active 57 year old myself I do not anticipate being drowsy at 60, though I do remember that my grandparents appeared to be very old at that age.

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An exile from natural happiness

The Diary Volume 3 - Friday 9 April 1926

"Only I am exiled from this profound natural happiness. That is what I always feel; or often feel now - natural happiness is what I lack, in profusion. I have intense happiness - not that. It is therefore what I most envy; geniality & family love & being on the rails of human life."

It must have been disconcerting for Virginia to have periods of her life where she was off the rails and starved of natural happiness. Obviously she had times of intense happiness but that enduring feeling of happiness eluded her. Would she have been so driven to write if she had enjoyed profound natural happiness? I suspect not, but we will never know.

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Virginia Woolf - a Sailing Allusion

The Diary Volume 3 - Wednesday 24 March 1926

"To upset everything every 3 or 4 years is my notion of a happy life. Always to be tacking to get into the eye of the wind." I like the yatching allusion here, reminds me of To the Lighthouse. She had obviously messed about in boats at some time, probably at St Ives. Tacking into the wind gives the picture of someone who will take things as they come and not flinch from change. This was a radical position for a young Victorian lady to take.

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A Prescient Question

"But what is to become of all these diaries, I asked myself yesterday. If I died, what would Leo make of them? He would be disinclined to burn them; he could not publish them. Well, he should make up a book from them, I think; & then burn the body. I daresay there is a little book in them: if the scraps and scratches were straightened out a little. God knows".

Luckily for us Leonard did not burn the diaries, but I do wonder how Virginia would feel having all her thoughts out on public display. I suspect that she knew that Leonard recognised her genius and would not let a large part of her writing disappear.

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The Writers Character - Virginia Woolf

The Diary Volume 3 - Sunday 27 February 1926

"I was thinking about my own character; not about the universe. Oh & about society again; dining with Lord Berners at Clive's made me think that. How, at a certain moment, I see through what I'm saying; detest myself & wish for the other side of the moon; reading alone, that is. How many phases one goes through between the soup & the sweet! I want, partly as a writer, to found my impressions on something firmer."

Some more writers inside thoughts here. Even while she is eating dinner she is considering about her character as a writer. I really enjoy this introspection.

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Virginia Woolf Battened Down in the Holds

The Diary Volume 3 - Tuesday 20 September 1925

"Haven't I just written to Herbert Fisher refusing to do a book for the Home University Series on Post Victorian? - knowing that I can write a book, a better book, a book off my own bat, for the Press if I wish. To think of being battened down in the hold of those University dons fairly makes my blood run cold. yet I'm the only woman in England free to write what I like".

This freedom to write as her own person is one of the powerful things in Woolf's writings. We are not getting a creed here but a slice of original thought. And it is the original thought that makes Woolf such a radical. She was probably right in her assumption about being the only woman in Britain of that time who could write exactly what she wanted.

The Diary Volume 3 - Mon 20 July 1925

"What shall I read at Rodmell? I have so many books at the back of my mind. I want to read voraciously & gather material for The Lives of the Obscure - which is to tell the histoty of England in one obsure life after another. Proust I would like to finish. Stendahl, and then to skirmish about hither & thither".

It is always a dilemna when going on holiday, as to what books to take. While this is not intertextuality in a strict sense it gives me an idea as to what was driving VW's thoughts at that time.

If in doubt I take about 30 books and then buy more if I can't get the book I want.

Virginia Woolf Diary Volume 3 Monday 20 July, 1925

A bit more here on the genesis of To the Lighthouse:

"But this theme may be sentimental; father & mother & child in the garden: the death; the sail to the lighthouse. I think, though, that when I begin it I shall enrich it in all sorts of ways; thicken it; give it branches & roots which I do not perceive now. It might contain all characters boiled down; & my childhood; & then this impersonal thing, which I'm dared to do by my friends, the flight of time, 7 the consequent break of unity in my design".

This reads like a recipe, with its references to thickening and boiling down. The result is certainly a very satisfactory repast.

Virginia Woolfs Diary Volume 3 - Sunday 17 May, 1925

Here is another glimpse of the multi-faceted Woolf:

"A little girl on the bus asked her mother how many inches are there in a mile. Her mother repeated this to me...the little girl (see my egotism) with her bright excitable eyes, & eagerness to grasp the whole universe reminded me of myself, asking questions of my mother".

I think Woolf retained this ability to wonder and see things as a child throughout her life.