Moments of Being
The text is based on thirty-two variously sized leaves dry-welded to form a booklet. The Library reference number is MH/A.17. The typing is by Virginia Woolf, with corrections in pen and pencil. The letters from Margot Oxford and Sibyl Colefax which are incorporated into the present text appear in the booklet on separate sheets preceding the pages for which they were intended. The typing is, however, clearly Virginia Woolf’s and it is unlikely that the letters included are other than rather freely interpreted recollections of the originals.
The quality of the typing is poor even by Virginia Woolf’s none too stringent standards; punctuation and spelling errors abound. Yet the thought flows smoothly and there are few corrections or additions involving more than a sentence; there are some pages with no corrections at all.
It is probable that this typescript was the text read to the Memoir Club although, according to Quentin Bell, it is unlikely that Virginia Woolf would have kept very closely to the text.
Sketch of the Past
EDITOR’S NOTE
“SKETCH OF THE Past” covers some of the same ground as “Reminiscences” but from such a different angle of vision that there is not, in a significant sense, any repetition. Virginia Woolf is near sixty when she begins this memoir. The present moment – 1939—40 – is the platform on which she stands to explore the meaning behind certain indelibly printed experiences of her childhood and the figures who dominated that world. The first memories lead her, through the central figure of her mother, to St Ives, Cornwall, and Talland House where the Stephens spent their summer holidays from 1882 to 1894. This idyllic ‘country’ world is countered by descriptions of life in London, of the young Stephens growing up at 22 Hyde Park Gate enmeshed in a large network of relations and friends at the very nub of which is always Julia Stephen. Once again the shattering effect of her death is described and the reordering of family life around the eldest daughter, Stella, begins. Virginia’s first mental illness occurs at this time but it is mentioned only in an earlier, rejected version, MH/A.5C. The new arrangement of family life is first disturbed by Stella’s marriage to Jack Hills and then destroyed by her death a bare three months later. The tensions within the household which hardly seemed to exist in Julia’s lifetime and which were glossed over during Stella’s reign become more pronounced: the serious, open-minded Stephen girls are forced to submit to George Duckworth’s plans for their advancement, to enter ‘Society’ with its glitter, emptiness and rigid conventions; the young Stephens are silently antagonistic to the ageing Leslie Stephen who is increasingly deaf, increasingly isolated from reality and, at times, rudely tyrannical to his daughters. The outside world begins to exert a greater influence on the lives of the Stephens and the memoir closes on a typical day, around 1900, in this Victorian upper middle class family.
“Sketch of the Past” was begun by Virginia Woolf on 18 April 1939, as relief from the exacting labours imposed by the writing of the biography of Roger Fry. The last entry is dated 17 November 1940, some four months before her death. The text that follows is based on two separate typescripts, one in the University of Sussex Library (MH/A.5d) and the other in the British Library (BL 61973). They were clearly intended to run consecutively. Had this memoir been completed, it would undoubtedly have been considerably revised and extended.
A.5a consists of seventy pages typed by Virginia Woolf with corrections by her in black ink and soft lead pencil and by Leonard Woolf in blue ink. Leonard Woolf’s corrections involve punctuation, spelling, clarification of Virginia’s manuscript additions and the sorting out of the more obscure typing errors. These corrections have been retained when they conform to the principles set forth in the ‘Editor’s Note’.
BL 61973 is a seventy-seven-page typescript contained in a multi-grip folder (from which it has been removed) labelled by Virginia Woolf “Sketch of the Past I” and numbered 70—147. Page 132 is missing. It is corrected in both pen and pencil by Virginia Woolf and further emended and elucidated by Leonard Woolf in pen and pencil. The first ten pages which are dated ‘June 19th 1940’ are typed on a different machine to the main body of the work. The Woolfs, who lived during the war at Monks House, were, according to Olivier Bell, in London at Mecklenburgh Square for three days, 17—20 June 1940. The British Library typescript is a much reworked and improved revision of MH/A.5d manuscript which was transcribed in the original edition of Moments of Being (on pages 107—37). The first twenty-seven pages (numbered 70—96), however, represent entirely new material for which there is no known manuscript version, apart from an eight-page manuscript fragment in the Berg Collection, “The tea table was the centre of Victorian life . . .”. Two of the entries have dates prior to those of the related manuscript entries yet there is no doubt that the typescript is the later version as it incorporates many marginal notes in the manuscript and is far more polished in every respect. In most cases, Virginia Woolf did not trouble to delete material which she proceeded directly to rework. Such passages have been omitted in the present edition except when they clarify her thought or are themselves of interest. In such cases the reworked material has been included in a footnote. The relevant section of MH/A.5d has been inserted within brackets for the missing page in BL 61973, as has the last paragraph from MH/A.5d which contains material not reworked in the typescript.
Apart from A.5d, other items in the Monks House Papers are connected with the present text: A.5b; A.5c; A.5e; and A. 13a. Their value lies chiefly in the insight they afford into Virginia Woolf’s working methods. The most interesting of them is A. 5c, a twenty-one-page manuscript, a part of which is an earlier version of a section of A.5a. On occasion it has proved useful in resolving obscurities in the latter. The remainder of the material of A.5c consists of lists of names, events and ideas to be developed later or brief sketches of other figures related to the Stephens which were not included in the ‘a’ revision. These items taken together with the more carefully revised ‘a’ typescript, the less revised ‘d’ manuscript, and the British Library typescript, represent a cross-section of various stages through which a work of Virginia Woolf’s might characteristically pass – from the rough notes and first tentative sketches to a draft approaching the final stage of preparation – with, of course, the important exception of the complete typed revisions of which there might be many.
fn1 The Hogarth Press; London, 1942.
fn2 The Hogarth Press; London, 1972.
fn3 QB, I, p. 122.
fn4 In the Berg Collection, the New York Public Library.
fn5 Letters, I, No. 406.
fn6 At this period of her life she wrote, for example, ‘lives’ of her intimate friend Violet Dickinson, her Quaker Aunt Caroline Emelia Stephen and her Aunt Mary Fisher. The ‘Life’ of Violet is in the Berg Collection (‘Friendship’s Gallery’) but the comic lives of the two aunts have not come to light. See Letters, I, No. 199.
fn7 The Memoirs of James Stephen. Written by Himself for the Use of His Children, ed. M. M. Bevington (The Hogarth Press; London, 1954).
fn8 See note, p. 8.
fn9 The finer, hard lead pencil marks were made by Clive Bell in 1908.
fn10 Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the Years 1911 to 1918 (The Hogarth Press; Fondon, 1964), p. 22.
fn11 Bloomsbury (Weidenfeld & Nicolson; Fondon, 1968), pp. 14–15.
fn12 Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919 to 1939 (The Hogarth Press; Fondon, 1967), p. 114.
fn13 (The Hogarth Press; London, 1959), p. 35.
fn14 Anne Olivier Bell suggests 17 November 1920 as the date on which VW read “22 Hyde Park Gate” to the Memoir Club (Diary of Virginia Woolf, II, p. 77n). No minutes of the meetings of the Memoir Club are known to have survived.
fn15 VW wrote to Ethel Smyth on 2 February 1932: “I’ll copy out an old memoir that tumbled out of a box when I was looking for something else, that I wrote ten years ago about our doings with George Duckworth when we were so to speak virgins. It might amuse you: but it needs copying such a mess
it’s in.” (The Letters of Virginia Woolf, ed. N. Nicolson & J. Trautmann, The Hogarth Press, Vol. V, p. 13.)
fn16 Quentin Bell writes “that it was read to the Memoir Club (in about 1922).” (QB, I, pp. 124—5 and Fee, pp. 18, 155.)
fn17 Old Friends (Chatto & Windus; Fondon, 1956), p. 129.
fn18 Beginning Again, pp. 21—22.
fn19 Diary of Virginia Woolf, V, p. 26n. The entry for 30 October 1936 describes VW’s visit to Argyll House which is used as the basis for the concluding pages of “Am I a Snob?”
Index
The page references in this index correspond to the printed edition from which this ebook was created. To find a specific word or phrase from the index, please use the search feature of your ebook reader.
Adams, Mrs 137
additions 164
“Am I a Snob?” xiii: Editor’s Note 175
Ancaster, Lady 63
Anrep, Helen 132n
Apostles (Cambridge Conversazione Society) 92, 173
Arnold-Foster, Ka (née Katherine Cox) 136
Ashton, Mary Grace 3on
Asquith, Lady Margot 66
Asquith, Raymond 59
Austen, Jane 84
Baldwin, Stanley 64
Balestier, Wolcott 76
Balfour, Lord 67, 75
Barker, Granville 67
Barrington, Mrs Russell 43
Bateman, Lord 44n
Bath, Lady 65
Beadle, General 7, 31, 41, 94
Beaufort, Duke of 67
Bedford, Duchess of (Cousin Adeline) 31
Bedford, Duke of 99
Bedford Square 59
Beerbohm, Max 75, 76
Beethoven, Ludwig van 85
Bell, Clive xi, 39, 48, 49, 50, 52, 53, 56, 62, 112n, 143,144
Bell, Elsa 151
Bell, Julian xi, In 167
Bell, Olivier 166, 177
Bell, Quentin 163, 166, 167, 168, 170
Bell, Vanessa (née Stephen) ix, xi, xiv, 1–4, 5, 16, 19, 21, 25–6, 28, 30, 36–8, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 61, 78, 81, 82, 88, 90, 91, 103, 110, 112n, 145, 146, 148, 150–1, 158, 168
Bennett, Arnold 67, 68, 69, 75, 76, 92
Bentinck, General Arthur 55n
Bentinck, Lord Henry 59
Berg Collection 174
Bessborough, Lady 63, 67
Between the Acts ix, xii, xv, 132n
Birrell, Mr 75
Bishop, Florence 151,152
Bloomsbury ix, xiv, 43
Bloomsbury Group ix, 59 see also Old Bloomsbury
Blunt, Judith 34
Bolsover, Lady 55n
Booth, Charles 113n, 121
Booth, George 114
Booth, Meg 47
Booth, Mrs 121
Booths, the 55, 141
Boswell, James 158
Bride, Jane 153
British Library 162, 163, 177, 178
Brooke, Rupert 54n, 59
Brunswick Square 60
Bryce, Mr 147
buggers 54–5, 56, 57 see also sodomy
Burne-Jones, Sir Edward 97n, 159
Burne-Joneses 41
Burney, Fanny 114
buses 127—8
Butler, Dr 54
Cambridge Conversazione Society (Apostles) 92,173
Cambridge University 131, 173
Cameron, Julia 98n
Cannan, Gilbert 59
capitalization 164—5
Carlisle, Lady 111
Carlyle, Thomas 13n, 14, 117, 118
Carnarvon, Lady 35, 39, 40, 41, 43
Case, Janet 38, 150,157
Cecils, the 47, 55
Chamberlain, Austen 35, 36, 52
Chamberlain, Mrs Joseph 156
Charleston 151
Chavasse, Mrs 152
Chippendale, George 152
Cholmondeley, Lady 70, 75
Churchill, Winston 59
Clapham Sect 81
Clarke, C. B. 7, 31, 87, 92, 94
Clay, Sir Arthur 45
Clifford, Edward 43
Clifford, Mrs 36
Clifton 131, 132
Colefax, Sir Arthur 69, 71, 73, 75
Colefax, Lady Sibyl xii, xiii-xiv, 68–77
Coltman, E. 47
Common Reader, The 130
contraception 132
Corby 22, 30, 111
Cornish, Mrs 118
corrections 164
Corsini, Filippo 153n
Corsini, Lucrezia (née Rasponi) 153
Coward, Noel 68, 73
Croft, Augusta 35
Cromer, Lord 147n
Crosby Hall 60
Cunard, Lady 70
Curnow, Alice 137
Dacre, Isabel (Aunt Susie) 59
Dalloway, Mrs ix, 4
Dawson, Geoffrey 66
de la Mare, Walter 112
De Quincey, Thomas vii: Opium Eater 97
Death of the Moth, The 165
deletions 164
Diary of Virginia Woolf 166
Dickens, Charles 84, 86
Dickinson, Goldie 117
Dickinson, Ozzie 45, 47
Dickinson, Violet 44n, 45, 47, 60
Dilke family 91
Dilke, Ethel 112
Dilke, Mrs Ashton 126—7
Dodd, Francis 59
Dolmetsch, Arnold 107
Dolmetsch, Mrs 31
Duckworth, George ix, x, xi, 2, 17, 22, 26, 28–9, 33–42, 43, 45, 46, 52, 60—1, 64—5, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 113, 115, 129, 144–5, 146, 149, 150, 153–8, 157, 158, 176
Duckworth, Gerald x, 17, 22, 26, 33, 38, 45, 46, 47, 82, 104, 105, 106, 112,115, 129, 131, 137, 140, 143, 146, 149, 150, 153, 154
Duckworth, Herbert 33, 44, 99, 100, 106,168
Duckworth, Lady Margaret 29, 46, 47, 155
Duckworth, Sarah Emily (Aunt Minna) 127
Dutton, Mr 152
editorial introduction vii-xv
Editor’s Notes 163—78
English Utilitarians, The (Leslie Stephen) Ion
Euphrosyne 53
Euripides 150
Evelyns 131
Farrell, Sophie 106
Fayette, Madame de la 83
Fisher, Aunt Mary (née Jackson) 10, 37, 52, 110, 114, 146, 148
Fisher, Herbert 110n, 119, 148, 155
Fisher, Willy 134
Fishers, the 146,155
Fitzroy Square 54, 112
Flower, Mrs 47
Forster, E. M. 58
Freshfield, Mrs 43
Freshwater 18—19
Freud, Sigmund x, xii, 116, 162
Fritham 144
Fronde, J. A. 13n
Fry, Roger 57, 132n, 149: biography of xii, 78n, 83, 87, 96, 108, 109, 122n, 176
Galsworthy, John 92
Gardner, Major 152
Garsington 82
German 160
Gertler, Mark 96
Gibbs, Frederick 32, 41, 86—7, 92, 94
Gillott, Joseph 126
Godley, Evelyn 151,152
Gordon Square, 44, 46—7, 141
Gosse, Sir Edmund 122
Gosse, Mrs 121
Grafton, Duchess of 126
grammar 165
Grant, Duncan 58, 6on
Grant, Trevor 58
Graves, Robert 112
Greek 160
Greeks 131
Green, Mrs 151
Grenell, Mrs 35
Grenfell, Mrs Willie 158
Grey, Mrs 122
Haldane, R. B. 31,159
Halestown Bog 88,138,139
Hardy, Thomas vii
Hawtrey, Ralph 38—9,51, 52
Hayle Harbour 134
Headlam, Walter 31, 113, 119
Hewet, Terence ix
Hills, Anna 110—11
Hills, John (Jack) Waller 4, 7, 19–24, 25, 27–8, 30, 32n, 36, 45, 105, 109–11 111–14, 144, 145, 146
Hills, Judge ‘Buzzy’ 110
Hills, Stella (née Duckworth) ix, xiv, 2, 13–16, 17, 18, 19–24, 28, 32n, 102, 103, 105—
10, 108, 113–15, 130, 144, 150
Hindhead 21, 22, 110
Hobbs 127
Hobhouses, the 47
Hogarth Press viii
Hours in a Library (Leslie Stephen) 122
Howard, Christopher 111
Howard, Esmé 32, 39
Howards, the 111
Huer, the 135
Hunt, Mrs Holman 41
Hunt, William Holman xii, 41—2, 97n, 99
Hunts, the Holman 43
Hyde Park Gate 7, 22, 31—42, 43, 46, 52, 94, 98, 103, 114, 123–30, 140, 146, 150, 158, 173, 176
“22 Hyde Park Gate” ix, 31—42: Editor’s Note 171—2
“Hyde Park Gate News” 105, 137
Hylton, Lady 47
Irwin, Sidney 48
Jackson, Dr 97, 98,168
Jackson, Maria 168
James, Henry 52, 58, 76, 158
Jeune, Lady 35
Jim Joe and Harry Hoe story 89
John, Augustus 56,59
John, Dorelia 59
journals viii
Julia Prinsep Stephen Nursing Association 136
Kensington ix, xiv, 1, 87—91, 103, 104
Keynes, Maynard xi, xii, 58, 60n, 61, 62, 64, 148
Kipling, Rudyard 76
Knills Monument 136—7
Lamb, Henry 142n
Lamb, Nina 59
Lamb, Walter 53n, 58, 142
Lang, Andrew 65, 111,158
Langtry, Mrs 121
Lanham, Mr 135
Lanham, Mrs 135
Lee, Sidney 7
Lehman, John 116
Leitrim, Lady 35—6
Little Holland House 97—9, 122,159
London Library 121
Lowell, James Russell 89, 93, 118, 124,159
Lushington, Susan 110
Lushingtons, the 32, 41, 87, 109, 134
Lyall, Sir Alfred 129
Lynn, Olga 75, 76
Lyttleton, Lady 121
MacCarthy, Desmond 43n, 48, 52, 62, 63–4, 114
MacCarthy, Molly xi, 43, 62
McNeillie, Andrew 166
Maitland, Frederick William 98, 117, 118, 148