News from Bloomsbury
Richard Shone
CONGENIAL SPIRITS: THE SELECTED LETTERS OF VIRGINIA WOOLF edited by Joanne Troutmann Banks
Hogarth, f18.50, pp.400
Dearest Nessa, God knows it's a torture to write and every ounce of gratitude you may possess should be thrown at my door. The heat is immense and Leonard has a deputation of Indians upstairs which nothing will induce me to join. So I fill in this scrap of time after tea to send you any crumbs of gossip from Old Bloomsbury. Not that you're starved, dear Dolphin, with Roger in the offing from Aix, a packet of my letters in among the paints, all unanswered. How greedy you painters are for the written word when it abuses all your friends; yet you leave my books about unread, as so many untouched plates at a feast. Doubtless Roger will skim the cream for you after dinner as you sit among the vines, shabby as a moth and tipsy from the Colonel's bottle. I can hear you gloat: 'How the poor Wolves stick London I cannot imagine, what with the Cunards and Coleboxes and every New Statesman bore trooping through the house, and a party at Raymond's last week said to be in the poorest taste.' But you don't care a straw, having always preferred D and the Brats and your burgeoning vine to the company of a sister eaten with envy. (If D can find a pen, you might ask him to write; I should then reply with a full account, not entirely to D's credit, of why Mrs M's coffin passed down the Mews not an hour ago.) Well, to begin. Old Hugh came puffing here yesterday in such a state I thought the policeman must have fled with the spoils of Herries 1. But no. He thrust a proof into my hands, gasping, 'Look at this', before collapsing onto the sofa where he remained a full hour, purple at the gills and begging for brandy. It seems all my friends — I 52 Tavistock Sqre.
W. C.1 hadn't guessed they were so legion— have banded together to bring out a book of my letters. 'We're all undone', shouts Hugh, who certainly was by then. He left the parcel with me and between tea and dinner I rapidly saw what a hornet's nest has been disturbed. I see we shall have to abandon England and buy a croft in the Hebrides; for not a dash or a dot remains and all our doings are set out in cold print, as blatant as a circus poster on a rectory wall.
But dipping here and there — I've only read a sixth of the book — I feel as light as a trout, for it seems so much better than The Waves; but could feel lighter were it not for the fact that we'll all be blushing. There's not a stitch of clothing to cover our backs. Poor Gumbo's 2 period turns up like a bad penny; and Ott3. is loved and crushed (but nothing to Lawrence's vile Portrait); and you remember all the fuss over Will Arnold-Forster's private parts — and their deficiency? But it's Clive I'll have to face and rather think he'll give me up for good. Your own slate isn't entirely clean, but through some vestige of a sister's love You escape the fiercest jibes. These I award elsewhere. Old Rose Macaulay, rattling her virgin's cup, but Ethel will take her whipping like a man. And what was meant for pleasure only or, on occasion, gain your still life in return for those letters glows on the wall even now, with no lamps lit and the Indians still disputing — will be taken as tablets of the law; and all the hacks of Grub Street will toss their bones into the ring and say Bloomsbury has done nothing but copulate these 30 years, as though no one else dreamt of such a thing. And the dull dogs who teach English Lit will throw the book down the w., clogged though it should be with their own vile droppings.
But attend, dear Dolphin — what a change these letters mark, what freedoms! How Hyde Park Gate and all that world rise like a ghost from the sea, but done with, tamed. Do you think, if we'd taken our opportunity & gone to Devonshire House, we should have married better? That's a question I've often asked you, sitting so dowdy as we are, with not a set of furs between us, and the family jewels up the spout. No, one couldn't go on with people like that. Far better I suppose to have Saxon silent and Maynard guzzling his food than listen to all the mellow tinkerings of Kensington and done nothing with our lives.
But call it vanity, call it parade, I can't help thinking the book's one of the best things I've done. What pace, what vigour, how each scene dashes itself against the shore of truth. L. agrees and came into my room this morning to say 'It's a master- piece', and only wished the Press were publishing it. He's going to see Gollancz tomorrow to find if we can buy the rights — an odd state of affairs considering I wrote the book without knowing it.5 But the Indians are leaving and I've not changed yet, for we have a party tonight and hope to discover Tom's6 present relations with Vivien, but I daresay all we'll get is the state of his bowel, for anything else is like drawing water from a Rock. Be a good Dolphin and burn this. V.
1 Hugh Walpole (1884-1941), Chief Constable of Cumberland; week-end writer of popular romances, Rogue Herries, etc; appointed DBE 1937.
2 Marjorie Strachey (1882-1964), teacher, novelist and the most brilliant of the ten or so children of Sir Richard and Lady Strachey.
3 Lady Ottoline Morrell (1873-1938), hostess and butt; indefatigable in placing herself in the 20th-century English novel.
4 Ethel Smythe (1858-1944), egomaniac, wri- ter, composer; mistress of Sir Thomas Beecham; knighted 1920.
5 The book was eventually published by the Hogarth Press, brilliantly edited by Joanne Troutmann Banks; several new letters were included, previously thought to have been writ- ten by Victoria Glendenning.
6 T. S. Eliot (1888-1965), American banker, churchwarden and Director of Faber & Faber; author of Hawksmoor, Chatterton, First Light and other best-selling novels.
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