[There they were, on the verge of the drawing room, these great men: while, round the tea table, George and Gerald and Jack talked of the Post Office, the publishing office, and the Law Courts. And I, sitting by the table, was quite unable to make any connection. There were so many different worlds: but they were distant from me. I could not make them cohere; nor feel myself in touch with them. And I spent many hours of my youth restlessly comparing them. No doubt the distraction and the differences were of use; as a means of education; as a way of showing one the contraries. For no sooner had I settled down to my Greek than I would be called off to hear George’s case; then from that I would be told to come up to the study to read German; and then the gay world of Kitty Maxse would impinge.]
fn1 Lady Strachey, mother of Lytton, died at the age of eighty-nine, in 1928. In old age she wrote “Some Recollections of a Long Life” which were very short – less than a dozen pages in Nation and Athenaeum. This may indicate, as Michael Holroyd has suggested, that by the early 1920s she had forgotten more than she remembered.
fn2 VW was at work on Roger Fry: A Biography (The Hogarth Press; London, 1949).
fn3 VW has written ‘made it seem to fall from a great height’ above ‘prevents . . . distinct.’
fn4 The gardener and daily help, respectively, at Monks House, the country home of the Woolfs in Rodmell, Sussex, from 1919.
fn5 Julian Morrell was the daughter of Ottoline and Philip Morrell; Garsington Manor was their house in Oxfordshire.
fn6 In marrying Jane Catherine Venn, James Stephen had allied himself with the very heart of the Clapham Sect.
fn7 Mrs Swanwick was the only daughter of Oswald and Eleanor Sickert. In her autobiography, I Have Been Young (London, 1935), she recalls having known Leslie Stephen at St Ives: “We watched with delight his naked babies running about the beach or being towed into the sea between his legs, and their beautiful mother.”
fn8 Two cottages on the down between Southease and Piddinghoe known locally as Mount Misery.
fn9 Friedrich Retzsch (1779—1857), a German engraver widely known in Germany and England. The ts has ‘Ketsch’ which is obviously a typing error.
fn10 Halse Town Bog which the Stephens always called ‘Halestown Bog’.
fn11 The red granite obelisk in Kensington Gardens dedicated to the memory of the explorer John Hanning Speke.
fn12 James Russell Fowell, the poet and critic, American Ambassador to the Court of St James 1880–5, and friend of Leslie Stephen, was Virginia’s godfather.
fn13 In a paper written by Vanessa Bell for the Memoir Club (“Notes on Virginia’s Childhood, a Memoir”, ed. Richard Schaubeck, Jr: Frank Hallman; New York, 1974) ‘Clémont’ is spelled ‘Clémenté’.
fn14 Next-door neighbours.
fn15 To the Lighthouse was begun in 1925 and published in 1927 when VW was forty-five.
fn16 The popular name for the semi-secret ‘Cambridge Conversazione Society’ which was founded in the 1820s. All the young men who formed the nucleus of ‘old Bloomsbury’ belonged to it, except Clive Bell and Thoby Stephen.
fn17 52 Tavistock Square was the London home of the Woolfs from 1924 to 1939.
fn18 John Addington Symonds, man of letters, was the father of Katherine who married the artist Charles Furse and Margaret (Madge) who married William Wyamar Vaughan.
fn19 The artist who committed suicide in this same year, 23 June 1939.
fn20 VW mistakenly typed ’43 years ago’.
fn21 Julia was born in 1846, not in 1848.
fn22 Julia’s Aunt Sara, one of the seven Pattle sisters, married Thoby Prinsep. They settled in Little Holland House, Kensington, where they entertained an aristocracy of intellect in which the painters – Holman Hunt, Burne-Jones and, above all, G. F. Watts who was long a resident – played a dominant role.
fn23 Although there were seven Pattle sisters, no one ever spoke of Julia (Cameron) as beautiful. However, F. W. Maitland in The Life and Letters of Leslie Stephen (London, 1906) makes the same error when referring to Maria Pattle as “one of six sisters” (p. 317n).
fn24 Strachey.
fn25 The studio of G. F. Watts.
fn26 Hunt and Thomas Woolner were founder members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
fn27 Anne Thackeray was the elder daughter of the novelist W. M. Thackeray and sister of Leslie Stephen’s first wife. She married her cousin, Richmond Ritchie.
fn28 She was twenty-one when she married Herbert Duckworth.
fn29 Julia’s sister, Adeline, married Henry Halford Vaughan. Upton Castle, in Pembrokeshire, was rented by the Vaughans.
fn30 Elizabeth Robins, the actress, had been a friend of Julia’s.
fn31 Minny died in 1875; Leslie Stephen married Julia in 1878.
fn32 After her marriage to Leslie Stephen, Julia lived seventeen years.
fn33 The ‘Hyde Park Gate News’ appeared weekly, as far as is known, from 9 February 1891 until April 1895. The paper was at first the joint venture of Vanessa, Virginia and Thoby but gradually it became almost entirely Virginia’s responsibility. See QB, I, pp. 28–32, and Lee, pp. 108–13.
fn34 Sophie Farrell was the Stephens’ cook at 22 Hyde Park Gate and at 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury. After Vanessa’s marriage she went with Virginia and Adrian to 29 Fitzroy Square and later to George Duckworth.
fn35 James Kenneth Stephen, second son of James Fitzjames Stephen, brother of Leslie.
fn36 Dr George Savage, later Sir George, was an old friend of the Stephen family. He was also one of Virginia’s doctors.
fn37 The source of the ambiguity of this passage can be traced to an earlier ms version (A.5c, p. 4,1.22-p. 5,1.3) which reads: “Thus when my mother died, Stella was left without any negotiator in this affair of marriage; & Jack Hills came to the house on a very queer footing. He must have come the night my mother died. For I remember the doctors had gone; it was desperate but not hopeless; it was after dinner; & Aunt Mary poured out coffee. (Stella being in the bedroom.)”
fn38 Aunt Mary (née Jackson), Julia’s elder sister who married Herbert Fisher and had seven sons and four daughters.
fn39 Margaret, one of the Vaughan cousins whom the young Stephens saw frequently.
fn40 29 Fitzroy Square, Bloomsbury, where Virginia and Adrian moved after Vanessa’s marriage to Clive Bell in 1907.
fn41 Francis Orpen Morris (1810–93) wrote popular books on natural history. He published A History of British Butterflies (London, 1853) and A History of British Moths in four volumes (1859—70) but no book with the title Butterflies and Moths.
fn42 These are the vernacular names of common British moths. VW’s ts has ‘harts and darts and sequacious Hebrew characters’.
fn43 Walter Headlam, Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge, distinguished Hellenist and minor poet, was an old friend of the Stephen family with whom Virginia carried on a flirtation after the marriage of Vanessa. He died in 1908.
fn44 Desmond MacCarthy, who belonged to the inner circle of Bloomsbury from its earliest days.
fn45 George Booth was the son of Charles Booth, author of Life and Labour of the People in London. The Booths were ‘Hyde Park Gaters’, as Adrian was later to call them.
fn46 The A.5a typescript ends here. The text now follows the BL 61973 typescript. See here.
fn47 John Fehmann, who eventually became a partner of The Hogarth Press.
fn48 The Woolfs’ Fondon residence from July 1939.
fn49 Diary entry for 2 December 1939, “Began reading Freud last night; to enlarge the circumference, to give my brain wider scope, to make it objective; to get outside. Thus defeat the shrinkage of age.” Diary of Virginia Woolf, V, p. 248.
fn50 Frederick William Maitland wrote the authorized ‘Life’ of Leslie Stephen. He married Florence Fisher, one of Aunt Mary’s daughters.
fn51 Anne Ritchie (née Thackeray).
fn52 Dermod O’Brien (1865–1945), a well-known amateur painter who was later active in Irish affairs.
fn53 VW has
written in the margin, “built in is accurate – at least of some of the cabinets; when we left H.P.G. part of the wall had to be cut down before this Italian cabinet was extricated.”
fn54 James Payn, novelist and editor of the Comhill Magaiine.
fn55 VW has drawn a line through, “It is I suppose that I see only a fragment of him”.
fn56 VW has drawn a line through, “a man of distinction”.
fn57 Roger Fry: A Biography was published on 25 July.
fn58 Sir James Stephen.
fn59 Harriet Marian Thackeray, the first Mrs Leslie Stephen.
fn60 Sarah Emily Duckworth, the sister-in-law of Julia Stephen.
fn61 Margaret Vaughan (née Symonds).
fn62 The material that follows is a revision of the manuscript MH/A. 5d which was transcribed on pp. 107–37 in the original edition of Moments of Being. See here.
fn63 She was now at work on Between the Acts which at this period is referred to as ‘PH’ in A Writer’s Diary, for ‘Poyntzet Hall’ or ‘Poyntz Hall’.
fn64 VW was upset because she feared – mistakenly as it turned out – that Helen Anrep, the companion of Roger Fry until his death, was planning to move permanently to Rodmell with her son and daughter.
fn65 “We would often stop and talk to him” is lightly pencilled through.
fn66 George Meredith, the novelist and poet.
fn67 Ka Arnold-Forster, née Katherine Cox, a ‘Neo-Pagan’, Fabian and Newnhamite, who lived in Zennor, near St Ives.
fn68 This ceremony takes place every five, not every twelve, years.
fn69 A line has been drawn through ‘chatters’ and an indecipherable word has been pencilled in.
fn70 When Leslie Stephen died in 1904 the four Stephens moved from 22 Hyde Park Gate to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury.
fn71 The typescript leaves a blank space for the title.
fn72 From the final speech of Fortinbras in Hamlet, “Let four captains/Bear Hamlet like a soldier to the stage,/For he was likely, had he been put on,/To have proved most royal. . ..” Walter Lamb, elder brother of the painter Henry Lamb and close friend of Thoby, was at Trinity College, Cambridge.
fn73 Clive Bell, Lytton Strachey and Saxon Sydney-Turner, Thoby’s Trinity College friends who were to form part of the nucleus of ‘old Bloomsbury’.
fn74 Lady Katherine Thynne who married Lord Cromer.
fn75 A passage of eight sentences is crossed through and reworked, with minor changes, in the lines that follow.
fn76 Caroline Emilia Stephen.
fn77 Doubtful reading.
fn78 ‘violent’ is crossed through and ‘illicit’ is added above, followed by a comma and an illegible word.
fn79 John Maynard Keynes.
fn80 “He never used his hands” is a marginal note, the rest of which is illegible because of the deterioration of the paper.
fn81 “a self-centred narrow nature” is crossed through.
fn82 Clara Pater, the sister of Walter Pater, who taught Virginia Greek and Fatin before Miss Case. Janet Case, in addition to being a severe and thorough teacher, became a lifelong friend of Virginia’s.
fn83 Julia Stephen’s cousin, son of Sarah and Thoby Prinsep.
fn84 Walter William Ouless R.A. (1848–1933).
fn85 Ronald Norman, distant relative of the Camerons; later Chairman of the B.B.C.
fn86 The next page of the BL typescript is missing. As mentioned here, the relevant passage from the earlier version, MH/A. 5a, has been inserted within brackets.
fn87 In the ms, VW refers to the guests around the tea-table by their initials, but not consistently which would suggest that convenience rather than a stylistic effect was her motive. Thus, the full names have been restored in the text. P. 49 of the ms booklet which does not appear to belong to the version of the text used here provides a fuller context for Miss Bishop’s remark. The first half-dozen lines read: “Florence Bishop had said that she thought him looking remarkably well. This was an insult – a breach of the code: it was essential that he should receive sympathy. And so we must brush up our talk with that.”
fn88 Lucrezia Rasponi who had married Filippo Corsini in 1901.
fn89 The following lines are crossed through and reworked in the next paragraph, “In my defence I must say that he was fifteen years older; and he made it difficult not to comply because whereas I had £50 a year he had a thousand a year. And he gave us presents.
fn90 There follows a deleted paragraph which is reworked, with minor changes in the passage that follows.
fn91 Elena Rathbone who later married Bruce Richmond, editor of the Times Literary Supplement.
fn92 A line is drawn through: “He paid for clothes; he bought enamel brooches; to the public he represented the good brother; doing his duty by motherless girls”.
fn93 Lady Beatrice Thynne, daughter of the Marchioness of Bath and sister of Katherine and Alice.
fn94 Andrew Lang (1844–1912) was a journalist and a man of letters who wrote on an immense variety of subjects.
fn95 Sir William Rothenstein describes this alarming incident in his autobiography, Men and Memoirs: 18J2–1938 (abridged ed., Chatto & Windus, London, 1978), p. 61.
fn96 The British Fibrary typescript ends here, omitting the last paragraph of MH/A. 5d. This has been included within brackets as it is unusual for VW to omit entire paragraphs from the manuscript version in the typescript. See here.
Appendix A
The following alterations have been made to the text with the aim of correcting what appear to be oversights on Virginia Woolf’s part.
Page Line Ts or Ms (VW) Reading Adopted
3 28 tonight that night
15 38 and sharpness (after ‘silence’) deleted
18 21 depended doubtless doubtless depended
20 3 atmosphere merely merely as the atmosphere
21 14 on at
21 32 Once your uncle Your uncle
27 8 they it
31 17 sobbed cried
36 16 hostesses peers
50 J3 Turner him
50 15 who he
54 21 We true True, we
55 7 because that
74 7 and who
96 21–2 of the painting of painting
96 24 I one
97 5 of course omitted
98 17 had and
99 13 are is
110 27 intimacy formally to begin again formally
Appendix B
Preface to the Second Edition
THE SECOND EDITION incorporates a seventy-seven-page typescript version of “Sketch of the Past” acquired by the British Library in the early 1980s. Written in 1940, this hitherto unknown material provides the missing link between the typescript and the manuscript which were brought together as “Sketch of the Past”, the most substantial and significant of the autobiographical writings in Moments of Being.
The British Library typescript contains twenty-seven pages of entirely new material in which Virginia Woolf describes her father, Leslie Stephen, and the ambivalence of her relationship to him which her recent readings of Freud had caused her to reassess. Her mature, analytic account illuminates one of the most important influences on her development both as an individual and as a writer, and provides a valuable corrective to the earlier version which, because it is partial, is also misleading.
The typescript, a reworked and more polished version of the manuscript transcribed in the first edition, gives this new version greater stylistic coherence than the earlier one. Furthermore, a number of passages of particular interest, such as Virginia Woolf’s reflections on her methods of writing and on the nature of consciousness, are expanded and clarified.
Editor’s Note
THIS COLLECTION OF autobiographical writings by Virginia Woolf brings together unpublished material selected from the Woolf archives at the British Library and the University of Sussex Library. The latter archive, known as the ‘Monks House Papers’, belonged to Leonard Woolf. When he persuaded Quentin Bell to wr
ite the authorized biography of Virginia Woolf he placed the papers at the disposal of Professor Bell who quoted brief passages from them in the biography. After the death of Leonard Woolf the papers passed, through the generosity of the executrix of the estate, Mrs Trekkie Parsons, to the University of Sussex.
The decision to publish material which would have been extensively revised by Virginia Woolf and most of which – unlike the essays published posthumously by Leonard Woolf – was never intended for publication, was not taken without the most careful consideration. The undeniable interest and value of these memoirs, however, left those involved in the decision with no doubts. Publication which would make readily available to a wide audience material that so richly illuminates the vision and sensibility of a writer whose contribution to the history of English literature was so profoundly individual could not but be worthwhile. These memoirs have a unique place in the documentation of her life and art.
It was Virginia Woolf’s practice to write out one or more rough drafts of a work and then to type out complete revisions, sometimes as many as eight or nine. The material in this collection is in various stages of revision but with the exception of the first memoir the scripts bear signs of ‘work in progress’, notwithstanding that the Memoir Club Contributions were in fact read by Virginia Woolf to the audiences for whom they were intended. Corrections, additions, deletions, sometimes hastily made and incomplete, are scattered throughout the work and in some cases whole passages are revised within the text. No attempt has been made in this edition to present a record of these textual revisions and variations. To have done so would have greatly impaired the enjoyment of most readers. For anyone seriously interested in studying this aspect of Virginia Woolf’s memoirs, the material is available at the University of Sussex Library and the British Library. However, the desire to present a readable text has at no point been allowed to take precedence over what must be the commitment of primary importance, that of following faithfully Virginia Woolf’s last intentions regarding the material as far as they are known or can be reasonably surmised, or to state the reason for not doing so and to indicate doubt where it exists. It is hoped that the ‘editorial machinery’ will not be unpleasantly obtrusive to the general reader – and Editor’s Notes to the individual texts have been provided to minimize this danger – but that it is in evidence has at least the advantage of keeping before the reader the fact that these texts were not prepared for publication by Virginia Woolf, and hence they should not be judged by the same criteria as would be applied to texts published during her lifetime.