Virginia's Last Letter

Today marks the 70th anniversary of the death of Virginia Woolf. On March 28th, 1941, at the age of 59, the writer took her own life by filling her pockets with rocks and wading into the fast-flowing River Ouse near her home in Rodwell, East Sussex. Her body was found three weeks later by children playing near the banks of the river, a long way downstream from where she died …

Virginia had struggled with bouts of severe mental illness for most of her life, and had attempted suicide on more than one occasion. She relied heavily on the support of the husband Leonard, and many believe that his love and devotion was the reason Virginia managed to survive so long against the relenting onslaught of the demons that plagued her.

In his autobiography, The Journey Not the Arrival Matters, Leonard described how the final bout of Virginia’s illness caught everyone by surprise, leaving her family and friends powerless to prevent its destructive and ultimately fatal consequences.

"For years I had been accustomed to watch for signs of danger in V's mind; and the warning symptoms had come on slowly and unmistakably; the headache, the sleeplessness, the inability to concentrate. We had learnt that a breakdown could always be avoided, if she immediately retired into a cocoon of quiescence when the symptoms showed themselves. But this time there were no warning symptoms."

Virginia, for her part, seemed to be painfully aware of the effect her illness had on the lives of those around her. Before her death, she wrote three letters: one to her sister, the painter Vanessa Bell, and two to Leonard. In the last of these letters, she acknowledges the debt of gratitude she owes her husband, and expresses her desire to no longer be a burden to him. It is tender, poignant and unutterably heartbreaking … a final love letter to the one man who brought her happiness …

"Dearest,

I feel certain that I am going mad again. I feel we can't go through another of those terrible times. And I shan't recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can't concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don't think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can't fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can't even write this properly. I can't read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that - everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can't go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don't think two people could have been happier than we have been.


V."

Virginia by Vanessa Bell

And so it was: on this day in 1941, the dim lights of Virginia Woolf’s troubled life were finally extinguished. Leonard lost a wife, Vanessa lost a sister … and the world lost an irreplaceable literary talent.

To read the New York Times obituary of Virginia Woolf, click here:

http://tinyurl.com/5vlaz52

A Notable Anniversary

On this day (January 13th) 1941, James Joyce, the Irish novelist and poet, died in Zurich, Switzerland. He was three weeks shy of his 59th birthday.

In what can only be described as breathtaking short-sightedness, the Irish Government reportedly declined an offer by his wife Nora to have his body repatriated to his homeland. Consequently, he is buried in Fluntern Cemetery in Zurich.

Despite being an inveterate dipsomaniac, Joyce produced a considerable body of work in his lifetime, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Finnegan's Wake and the collection of short stories Dubliners. Joyce's fondness of the odd drink did nothing to stem the flow of creativity nor did it adversely affect his work ethic - he once said that he spent 20,000 hours working on Ulysses, the stream of consciousness masterpiece for which he is best remembered.

Interestingly, Joyce and fellow modernist writer Virginia Woolf, the two writers most associated with stream of consciousness narrative, share more than a talent for experimental prose - they were also born and died in the same year (1882 and 1941 respectively). Unfortunately, Woolf, who read Ulysses while writing Mrs Dalloway, did not hold Joyce's offering in very high esteem. She wrote in her diary:

"I have read 200 pages [of Ulysses] so far - not a third; & have been amused, stimulated, charmed, interested by the first 2 or 3 chapters [...] & then puzzled, bored, irritated, & disillusioned as by a queasy undergraduate scratching his pimples. And Tom, great Tom [TS Eliot], thinks this is on a par with War & Peace!"

A harsh critic, indeed!

Sex, Lies & Virginia - Escaping Bloomsbury

The renowned group of artists, writers and intellectuals, who collectively became known as "The Bloomsbury Group", have been the subject of innumerable books and biographies in recent years. This may be due to the fact that Bloomsbury (whose members included Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the painter Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive, the artists Duncan Grant and Roger Fry and the economist John Maynard Keynes) were highly influential in the fields of art, literature and economics during the first part of the 20th century. The Group (which incidentally derived its name from the fact that most members lived in close proximity to each other in the Bloomsbury Square area of London) advocated intellectual and sexual freedom. Indeed, the latter is probably the reason why Bloomsbury has held our fascination for so long – the complicated friendships, family ties and romantic entanglements prove irresistible to our curiosity, as we strive to discover what makes this group of extraordinary people tick, both individually and collectively.

Angelica Garnett’s "Deceived with Kindness - A Bloomsbury Childhood" is not simply another revisitation of a now-familiar subject. Her book gives us rare and fascinating insight into Bloomsbury, not as an outsider looking in, but as a witness to the intimate workings of this exceptional group. The illegitimate daughter of Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, and Virginia Woolf’s niece, Angelica Garnett was raised in the company of, and under the influence of, some of the most respected intellectuals and artists of their day. Hers is a fascinating story.

Born on Christmas Day, 1918, Angelica grew up at Charleston in Sussex (now a museum) with her mother, her much-older brothers Quentin and Julian, and her mother’s close friend and confidante, Duncan. She believed her father to be Clive Bell (Vanessa’s estranged husband), a lie perpetrated by Clive himself, in a bid to prevent his family from disinheriting the child. Despite being surrounded by artistic and intellectual heavyweights, hers was a closeted up-bringing. Spoilt and doted upon, Angelica was, by her own volition, a much –loved child. Her relationship with her mother, however, was strained – mainly due to Vanessa’s inwardness, secretiveness and possessiveness. It was not until Angelica was seventeen, when her mother disclosed the truth about her father, that she began to understand the reason for her mother’s cautious and reserved demeanour.

Angelica was the product of an ill-fated love affair between Duncan and Vanessa. Duncan was predominately homosexual and very promiscuous, whereas Vanessa, it seems, remained in love and devoted to him all her life. Vanessa’s liberal acceptance of Duncan’s lifestyle appears to be a desperate attempt to hang onto him, no matter what – a desperation disguised as intellectual detachment. The lie about Angelica’s paternity is a central theme in the book, as it becomes obvious that her life has been irrevocably shaped by the repercussions of this insidious untruth.

Being a child of Bloomsbury, Angelica also had the unenviable task of trying to forge a life for herself outside the tight-knit group. Marked out as different from an early age, she struggled to establish an identity for herself. She did not have the intellectual aptitude of her aunt Virginia Woolf, nor did she excel at painting like her parents. She even admits Virginia was “disappointed” with her, having not lived up to expectations. In a bid to assert her independence, to loosen herself from her mother’s possessive hold and her aunt’s disapproving eye, she married David “Bunny” Garnett at the age of 24. Bunny, an author and publisher, was 26 years her senior and a friend of her parents. He pursued her intently for 6 years, despite being married with children. (His wife subsequently died, leaving him free to marry Angelica). It was only after her marriage that she discovered that Bunny had been Duncan’s gay lover years earlier. Bunny was also present at her birth, when he declared he would eventually marry her. He wrote to a friend: “I think of marrying it. When she is 20, I shall be 46 -- will it be scandalous?” And so, it seems, in marrying Bunny, far from escaping her mother and Bloomsbury in general, she found herself entangled even more, trapped in an unhappy marriage with the shadow of her parents constantly looming over her. Bloomsbury defined her, and she could never escape its grasp.

This book feels like one long exercise in self-analysis – the incestuous and Freudian undertones are unmistakable. Although the author at times comes across as self-obsessed and ego-centric, one imagines that she is as surprised as the reader about what she discovers during this process of self-discovery. "Deceived with Kindness" is an intriguing book, which not only gives us unique insight into the legend that is Bloomsbury, but which charts one woman’s extraordinary journey trying to cast off the familial and social ties that bind her. A captivating read.

Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

A recent competition by the Writers Bureau invited students to submit a review, consisting of 140 characters or less (i.e. a review which could be “tweeted” … or should that be “twittered”?). The subject of this review could be anything to do with writing, be it a book, website or magazine – you get the picture. Thinking about this, I decided to re-read Virginia Woolf’s “A Room of One’s Own”, a book which has inspired me to write like no other.

“A Room of One’s Own” is a rambling yet insightful reflection on the subject of Women and Fiction, exploring the difficulties faced by females in what was predominately a man’s world – the world of authorship. The essay, written in 1929, was borne out of a series of lectures given by the author to two women’s colleges at Cambridge University. It is now regarded as one of the central pieces of feminist polemic, on a par with Germaine Greer’s “The Female Eunuch”.

Woolf’s basic premise is that a woman needs freedom to write - that is, freedom from money worries and freedom from dependence on men. She considers why fiction, or art in any form, by women was in short supply prior to the nineteenth century. She asks why the literary world, punctuated with male luminaries like Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare et al, was almost totally devoid of female writers and artists. One obvious reason was the lack of education and other opportunities available to women of this period. Woolf conjures up Judith Shakespeare (the playwrights imagined sister), and cleverly uses her to illustrate how society would conspire against a talented female with ambitions to write. The story did not end happily for the unfortunate Judith.

She then moves on to the prominent female authors of the nineteenth century, such as Jane Austin, the Brontë sisters and Mary Ann Evans (aka George Eliot). Despite the fact that conditions had improved considerably for women during this period, female writers still faced enormous difficulties. Many were forced to publish under male pseudonyms, and others had such a protected and cloistered up-bringing that they had little experience to draw on for their writing. Because of this lack of worldliness, Woolf questions whether Jane Austen or Charlotte Brontë could ever have written novels like “War and Peace”.

Woolf concludes that to be a successful writer or artist, a woman needs a room of her own (with a lock on the door), and an income of at least £500 a year. This, she argues, is all that is needed to unlock inspiration (one supposes that talent is an assumed pre-requisite!). In today’s world, this seems to be a rather simplistic view. But if we put it in the context of how much things have changed and improved for women, it is sad to think that luxuries such as a room and some private income was beyond hope for many of our predecessors. How lucky we are to live in these more enlightened times!

In the past, when I have recommended this essay to a number of friends, I have come across a peculiar reticence. It seems to me a lot of people are wary of Virginia Woolf’s work, put off by her experimental style and cerebral reputation. It is true Ms Woolf’s unique “stream of consciousness” style of writing sometimes makes for a difficult read. Nonetheless, with a little dedication and concentration, the reader will most certainly be rewarded. Woolf’s writing can transport the reader inside the author’s mind, where we are privileged witnesses to her tumbling, muddled yet highly intuitive thought processes – we are given access to a fascinating mind at work.

Another reason for some people’s disinclination towards her work is the fact that, having famously committed suicide after struggling with mental illness for much of her adult life, Woolf is viewed as a tragic figure. This perception of her as a melancholic and elegiac character (perpetuated in no small part by the film “The Hours”), means we expect her work to be the same. Nothing could be further from the truth! It is true her work has some dark elements, but her writing can also be delightful, inspiring, uplifting, and indeed very humorous. What better reason to pick up one of her books, and try it on for size?

And as for the twitter review, I made a few half-hearted attempts, before deciding it impossible to do justice to such an accomplished work in a mere 140 characters.