A Writer's Diary: Being Extracts From the Diary of Virginia Woolf

  Duffers the biographers not to make more hum and melody out of New Place. I could, so I think. For the man told us that after the great grand-daughter's death there was a sale, and why shouldn't some of his things, he said, be lost, put away and come to light? Also, Queen H. Maria, Charles I's queen, stayed there at New Place with the grand-daughter(?) which shows how substantial it must have been. That he told us, and I had never heard. And he said Gaskell, the clergyman, had the original house, which stretched across the garden almost to the chapel, pulled down because people bothered him, asking to see Shakespeare's house. And there (between the window and the wall) was the room he died in. A mulberry reputes to be the scion of the tree that grew outside Shakespeare's window. Great cushions of blue, yellow, white flowers in the garden, which is open, so that the living go on walking and sitting there.

  Friday, May 18th

  I broke off, after sticking my Irish papers into the old book, and felt I suppose a little shiver. Can't be anything I said to myself after all that holiday; but it was—the flu. So I had to resign all ideas—all flood of Pargiters and the glorious and difficult end of that book: all was blotted by the damp sponge; and now it is precisely a week since I went to bed, and here we are for Whitsun at Monks. What's more amazing is that I write this with a gold Waterman, and have some thoughts of supplanting steel Woolworth. It is a sunny voluptuous day, the birds all rasping on their nests, I suppose, and cawing on the trees and early in the morning giving loud and continued bursts of songs to which I lie listening. I hear L. going about the garden with Percy. All is calm and profoundly comfortable, owing to the absence for ever even in the background of grumbling Nelly and her replacement by the steady silent unselfish Mabel. Yes, we do without a char; we are free, serene, matter of fact, oh what a relief! So if I can pull my head out of the bog, I may go back on Tuesday to the three months immersion. But I take a day or two more to rest myself. How infinitely modest and disillusioned and without ambition of any sort I became, all because of influenza. Couldn't believe that anyone would come and see me, let alone that I could ever again string a dozen words. Now self confidence, conceit, the blessed illusion by which we live begin to return; very gently. Smooth serenity is the first stage which I will not interrupt by writing.

  Tuesday, May 22nd

  At last today, which is Tuesday, after striking the match on the box despairingly, sterilely—oh I was so overcome with rigidity and nothingness—a little flame has come. Perhaps I'm off. This refers to the devilish difficulty of starting Part 7 again after the 'flu. Elvira and George, or John, talking in her room. I'm still miles outside them, but I think I got into the right tone of voice this morning. I make this note by way of warning. What is important now is to go very slowly; to stop in the middle of the flood; never to press on; to lie back and let the soft subconscious world become populous; not to be urging foam from my lips. There's no hurry. I've enough money to last a year. If this book comes out next June year it's time enough. The last chapters must be so rich, so resuming, so weaving together that I can only go on by letting my mind brood every morning on the whole book. There's no longer any need to forge ahead, as the narrative part is over. What I want is to enrich and stabilise. This last chapter must equal in length and importance and volume the first book: and must in fact give the other side, the submerged side of that. I shan't, I think, re-read; I shall summon it back—the tea-party, the death, Oxford and so on, from my memory. And as the whole book depends on bringing this off, I must be very leisurely and patient and nurse my rather creaking head and dandle it with French and so on as cunningly as possible.

  Monday, June 11th

  That hopeful page reads rather too credulous now, since I went back and again on Friday following shivered, and ached, was stiff as a rod, talking to Elizabeth Bowen: 101: bed: influenza: and so lay all that week, till last Sunday to be accurate: and then went to Rodmell; and there began the chapter again and had a sudden fuse of ideas and then there was the opera, the nightingale singing in the ilex tree, Christabel * and Mr. Olaf Hambro telling stories about the Queen and Prince: and a very hot concert yesterday, so I cannot, no I cannot, write today. Patience, as Carlyle would say (in Italian). But consider—the whole system is so strained over this end, that one tiny grit, one late night, one too tiring day—takes away all rush, all fusing. And just as I saw it clear before me: the very intricate scenes: all contrasting; building up: so wait till tomorrow.

  Monday, June 18th

  Very very hot: day altered so as to go out after tea. A drought over the world. In flood with Here and Now, praise be. Yet very wary: only just now I made up the scene with Ray and Maggie: a sign I am fertilising, for I should be doing French for Janie, who comes at 5.

  Friday, July 27th

  Ah hah—but now, having despatched that entirely disagreeable day, Worthing and Mr. Fears, representing Rodmell Labour Party for an hour after dinner, I'm free to begin the last chapter; and by a merciful Providence the well is full, ideas are rising and if I can keep at it widely, freely, powerfully, I shall have two months of complete immersion. Odd how the creative power at once brings the whole universe to order. I can see the day whole, proportioned—even after a long flutter of the brain such as I've had this morning it must be a physical, moral, mental necessity, like setting the engine off. A wild windy hot day—a tearing wind in the garden; all the July apples on the grass. I'm going to indulge in a series of quick sharp contrasts: breaking my moulds as much as ever I like. Trying every kind of experiment. Now of course I can't write diary or letters or read because I am making up all the time. Perhaps Bob T. was right in his poem when he called me fortunate above all—I mean in having a mind that can express—no, I mean in having mobilised my being—learnt to give it complete outcome—I mean, that I have to some extent forced myself to break every mould and find a fresh form of being, that is of expression, for everything I feel or think. So that when it is working I get the sense of being fully energised—nothing stunted. But this needs constant effort, anxiety and rush. Here in Here and Now I am breaking the mould made by The Waves.

  Thursday, August 2nd

  I'm worried too with my last chapters. Is it all too shrill and voluble? And then the immense length, and the perpetual ebbs and flows of invention. So divinely happy one day; so jaded the next.

  Monday, August 7th

  A rather wet Bank Holiday. Tea with Keynes. Maynard had had teeth out but was very fertile. For instance: Yes, I've been 3 weeks in America. An impossible climate. In fact it has collected all the faults of all the climates. This carries out my theory about climate. Nobody could produce a great work in America. One sweats all day and the dirt sticks to one's face. The nights are as hot as the days. Nobody sleeps. Everyone is kept on the go all day long by the climate. I used to dictate articles straight off. I felt perfectly well until I left. "So to German politics." They're doing something very queer with their money. I can't make out what. It may be the Jews are taking away their capital. Let me see, if 2,000 Jews were each to take away £2,000—Anyhow, they can't pay their Lancashire bill. Always the Germans have bought cotton from Egypt, had it spun in Lancashire; it's a small bill, only ½ a million, but they can't pay. Yet they're buying copper all the time. What's it for? Armaments no doubt. That's one of the classic examples of international trade. 20,000 people out of work. But of course there's something behind it. What is the cause of the financial crisis? They're doing something foolish. No Treasury control of the soldiers.

  (But I am thinking all the time of what is to end Here and Now. I want a chorus, a general statement, a song for four voices. How am I to get it? I am now almost within sight of the end, racing along: becoming more and more dramatic. And how to make the transition from the colloquial to the lyrical, from the particular to the general?)

  Friday, August 17th

  Yes, I think owing to the sudden rush of two wakeful nights, making up early mornings rather, I think I see the end of Here and Now (or Music or Dawn or whatever I s
hall call it): it's to end with Elvira going out of the house and saying What did I make this knot in my handkerchief for? and all the coppers rolling about—

  It's to be all in speeches—no play. I have now made a sketch of what everyone is to say; and it ends with a supper party in the downstairs room. I think the back is broken. It will run to something like 850 of my rough pages I imagine: which is at 200, 170,000 and I shall sweat it down to 130,000.

  Tuesday, August 21st

  The lesson of Here and Now is that one can use all kinds of "forms" in one book. Therefore the next might be poem, reality, comedy, play; narrative, psychology all in one. Very short. This needs thinking over also, a play about the Parnells, or a biography of Mrs. P.

  Thursday, August 30th

  If I can't even write here, owing to making up the last scenes, how can I possibly read Dante? Impossible. After three days' grind, getting back, I am I think floated again. Robson comes to tea today; and the Wolves tomorrow; and ... another lapse making up Elvira's speech... "D'you know what I've been clasping in my hand all the evening? Coppers."

  Well anyhow, I've enough in stock to last out this chapter; I daresay another two or three weeks. Yesterday I found a new walk, and a new farm, in the fold between Asheham and Tarring Neville. Very lovely, all alone, with the down rising behind. Then I walked back by a rough broad overflowing grey river. The porpoise came up and gulped. It rained. All ugliness was dissolved. An incredibly eighteenth century landscape, happily making me think less of Wilmington.

  A tremendous hailstorm after tea; like white ice; broken up: lanced, lashing; like the earth being whipped. This happened several times; black clouds while we played Brahms. No letters at all this summer. But there will be many next year, I predict. And I don't mind; the day, yesterday to be exact, being so triumphant: writing; the walk; reading, Leeson, a * Saint Simon, Henry James's preface to P. of a Lady—very clever, * but one or two things I recognise; then Gide's Journal, again full of startling recollection—things I could have said myself.

  Sunday, September 2nd

  I don't think I have ever been more excited over a book than I am writing the end of—shall it be Dawn? Or is that too emphatic, sentimental. I wrote like a—forget the word—yesterday; my cheeks burn; my hands tremble. I am doing the scene where Peggy listens to their talking and bursts out. It was this outburst that excited me so. Too much perhaps. I can't make the transition to E.'s speech easily.

  Wednesday, September 12th

  Roger died on Sunday. Tomorrow we go up, following some instinct, to the funeral. I feel dazed; very wooden. Women cry, L. says: but I don't know why I cry—mostly with Nessa. And I'm too stupid to write anything. My head all stiff. I think the poverty of life now is what comes to me; and this blackish veil over everything. Hot weather; a wind blowing. The substance gone out of everything. I don't think this is exaggerated. It'll come back I suppose. Indeed I feel a great wish, now and then, to live more all over the place, to see people, to create, only for the time one can't make the effort. And I can't write to Helen, but I must now shut this and try.

  Maupassant, on writers (true I think). "En lui aucun sentiment simple n'existe plus. Tout ce qu'il voit, ses joies, ses plaisirs, ses souffrances, ses désespoirs, deviennent instantanément des sujets d'observation. Il analyse malgré tout, malgré lui, sans fin, les coeurs, les visages, les gestes, les intonations."

  Remember turning aside at mother's bed, when she had died, and Stella * took us in, to laugh, secretly, at the nurse crying. She's pretending, I said, aged 13, and was afraid I was not feeling enough. So now.

  The writer's temperament.

  "Ne jamais souffrir, penser, aimer, sentir, comme tout le monde, bonnement, franchement, simplement, sans s'analyser soi-même après chaque joie et après chaque sanglot."

  Sur l'eau 116

  Saturday, September 15th

  I was glad we went to the service on Thursday. It was a very hot summer's day. And all very simple and dignified. Music. Not a word spoken. We sat there, before the open doors that lead into the garden. Flowers and strollers which Roger would have liked. He lay under an old red brocade with two branches of very bright many coloured flowers. It is a strong instinct to be with one's friends. I thought of him too, at intervals. Dignified and honest and large—"large sweet soul"—something ripe and musical about him—and then the fun and the fact that he had lived with such variety and generosity and curiosity. I thought of this.

  Tuesday, September 18th

  I like writing this morning because it takes off the strain on the lips. A cold dull day after all this blaze. Now we have Graham, and Mrs. W., but then, perhaps, peace: and an end to the book? O if that could be! But I feel 10 miles distant—far away—detached, very jaded now.

  I had a notion that I could describe the tremendous feeling at R.'s funeral: but of course I can't. I mean the universal feeling; how we all fought with our brains, loves and so on; and must be vanquished. Then the vanquisher, this outer force became so clear; the indifferent, and we so small, fine, delicate. A fear then came to me, of death. Of course I shall lie there too before that gate and slide in; and it frightened me. But why? I mean, I felt the vainness of this perpetual fight, with our brains and loving each other against the other thing; if Roger could die.

  But then, next day, today, which is Thursday, one week later, the other thing begins to work—the exalted sense of being above time and death which comes from being again in a writing mood. And this is not an illusion, so far as I can tell. Certainly I have a strong sense that Roger would be all on one's side in this excitement, and that whatever the invisible force does, we thus get outside it. A nice letter from Helen. And today we go to Worthing—

  Sunday, September 30th

  The last words of the nameless book were written 10 minutes ago, quite calmly too. 900 pages: L. says 200,000 words. Lord God what an amount of re-writing that means! But also, how heavenly to have brought the pen to a stop at the last line, even if most of the lines have now to be rubbed out. Anyhow the design is there. And it has taken a little less than 2 years: some months less indeed, as Flush intervened; therefore it has been written at a greater gallop than any of my books. The representational part accounts for the fluency. And I should say—but do I always say this?—with greater excitement: not, I think, of the same kind quite. For I have been more general, less personal. No "beautiful writing"; much easier dialogue; but a great strain, because so many more faculties had to keep going at once, though none so pressed upon. No tears and exaltation at the end; but peace and breadth, I hope. Anyhow, if I die tomorrow, the line is there. And I am fresh; and shall re-write the end tomorrow. I don't think I'm fresh enough, though, to go on "making up." That was the strain—the invention: and I suspect that the last 20 pages have slightly flagged. Too many odds and ends to sweep up. But I have no idea of the whole—

  Tuesday, October 2nd

  Yes, but my head will never let me glory sweepingly; always a tumble. Yesterday morning the old rays of light set in; and then the sharp, the very sharp pain over my eyes; so that I sat and lay about till tea; had no walk, had not a single idea of triumph or relief. L. bought me a little travelling ink pot, by way of congratulation. I wish I could think of a name. Sons and Daughters? Probably used already. There's a mass to be done to the last chapter, which I shall, I hope, d.v., as they say in some circles, I suppose, still, begin tomorrow; while the putty is still soft.

  So the summer is ended. Until 9th of September, when Nessa came across the terrace—how I hear that cry He's dead—a very vigorous, happy summer. Oh the joy of walking! I've never felt it so strong in me. Cowper Powys, oddly enough, expresses the same thing: the trance like, swimming, flying through the air; the current of sensations and ideas; and the slow, but fresh change of down, of road, of colour; all this churned up into a fine thin sheet of perfect calm happiness. It's true I often painted the brightest pictures on the sheet and often talked aloud. Lord how many pages of Sons and Daughters—perhap
s Daughters and Sons would give a rhythm more unlike Sons and Lovers, or Wives and Daughters—1 made up, chattering them in my excitement on the top of the down, in the folds. Too many buildings, alas; and gossip to the effect that Christie and the Ringmer Building Co. are buying Botten's Farm to build on. Sunday I was worried, walking to Lewes, by the cars and the villas. But again, I've discovered the ghostly farm walk; and the Piddinghoe walk; and such variety and loveliness—the river lead and silver; the ship—Servic of London—going down: the bridge opened. Mushrooms and the garden at night: the moon, like a dying dolphin's eye; or red orange, the harvest moon; or polished like a steel knife; or lambent; sometimes rushing across the sky; sometimes hanging among the branches. Now in October the thick wet mist has come, thickening and blotting. On Sunday we had Bunny and Julian.