4

Virginia and After

Leonard arrived back in England in June 1911 for a year’s leave, traveling home with his sister Bella. Two of his brothers, Herbert and Edgar, met them at the dock, and he went directly to Putney to be with his family. Almost immediately he visited Cambridge to stay with Lytton for some days and to plunge back into the life of the Apostles. At the end of June he attended the annual Apostles dinner in London, sitting between Strachey and Keynes. He went to see old friends in Cambridge and elsewhere, visited relatives in Denmark and Sweden, and enjoyed the cultural excitement of London, most notably the Russian ballet. On July 3 he dined with Vanessa and Clive Bell and would become a regular in their company, which included Virginia. But he felt uncertain about his future. He had no doubt that he had been and could continue to be a very successful civil servant and would rise in the ranks. He had had particular satisfaction from his last posting and would prefer, if he remained in the service, to be engaged in work that brought him into direct contact with the indigenous population rather than seeking a higher administrative post. But he realized it was unlikely that he could avoid advancement to more prominent positions. Yet he was now captivated by Virginia Stephen, whom he barely knew. While they had met only three times before he went to Ceylon, they were very soon on familiar terms. He was invited to the house she had rented in Firle in Sussex. He would also see the Bells and Virginia in Gordon Square and come to the gatherings there. In his diary he referred to Virginia as Aspasia, the lover of Pericles, no doubt casting himself as his hero Pericles. And within a few months, in December 1911, he had taken two rooms with some meals at the rent of 35 shillings a week in the house in Brunswick Square that she shared with her brother Adrian, Keynes, and Duncan Grant. At this point Virginia was in charge, running it as a boarding house with rules and regulations. More significantly, almost at once he fell seriously in love with her.

The idea that Virginia should get married was certainly in the air, and she did not lack for suitors. Born in 1882, she was now approaching 30. One problem was that the men in her immediate circle, Strachey, Keynes, and Grant, were not that way inclined, although she and Lytton had been engaged for moments, an overnight excitement. She was certainly a beautiful woman, but she was also a formidable lady. It was rumored that Hilton Young, a Cambridge figure, had proposed to her. Walter Lamb was also interested. Another possibility was Sydney Waterlow, who also proposed to her. In a sense her most romantic and entirely unsuitable involvement before Leonard was with Clive Bell, her brother-in-law. Vanessa and Clive had had an extremely happy marriage in its early years. But after their first child, Julian, was born in 1908, they began to drift apart; Clive resented the time and devotion Vanessa lavished on Julian, as Virginia did as well. (It could be said that in many ways Julian was the greatest love of Vanessa’s life as she was to him, a further reason that his death in the Spanish Civil War proved such a devastating blow.) The relationship between Virginia and Vanessa was extremely close. It was the very core of the Bloomsbury Group, but its period of greatest strain and even a degree of estrangement between the sisters was the mischievous flirtation of Virginia and Clive, who might not have been reluctant to have it go further. The flirtation probably lasted for two years. There is no doubt that the relationship caused Vanessa much pain. Afterwards she and Clive continued to drift apart, he taking mistresses and she having an intense affair with Roger Fry and then settling into a long-term relationship with the homosexual Duncan Grant, living together almost completely non-sexually (although they did have a daughter, Angelica). There was the paradox of Vanessa and Virginia, committed to sexual freedom in theory and conversation but eventually leading comparatively chaste lives. Vanessa was the more passionate of the two, with Virginia apparently not much interested in making love, perhaps the effect of her sexual molestation by her Duckworth half-brothers.

Undoubtedly Leonard’s most important activities in the first two years that he was back in England were his courtship of and marriage to Virginia and the writing of his two novels. Other than E. M. Forster, who was older and had a somewhat tangential relationship with the Group, Leonard was perhaps unexpectedly its first novelist. Virginia had not yet published The Voyage Out, on which she had been working for some time. Leonard’s deepest desire was to be a creative writer, but he would abandon that pursuit after the publication of his slim Stories of the East in 1921. And it seems likely that he had written those stories some years earlier. It may be that the last work of fiction he actually wrote was the story “Three Jews,” published in 1917. The Village in the Jungle had been a critical success and had sold well. His second novel, The Wise Virgins, appearing at the outbreak of the First World War, had earned him a grand total of £20. Perhaps he also came to feel that he should not rival his wife as a fiction writer. He was hardly present, except as the English magistrate, in The Village in the Jungle, but his second novel, The Wise Virgins, was decidedly autobiographical. Although it ends with the marriage of the central character to someone other than Virginia, he started writing it in Spain while actually on his honeymoon. There is a nice irony there, as the novel tells the story of the unsuccessful courtship by the Leonard character of the Virginia character, when of course he had actually married her. At the same time he was also embarking upon what would come to dominate his writing and professional life: national and international political questions.

The very first paragraph of The Wise Virgins suggests a transition from The Village in the Jungle. It points out that human beings lived first in caves, then in primitive villages, and then in houses in cities, where his second novel takes place. Yet the individuals who live there may not be all that different. But certainly it is a world of England rather than Ceylon, based on the immediate experiences he had on his return to London. It is a dramatic contrast to his first novel and is written very much from the inside. The central character, Harry Davis, who is studying to be an artist, is a quite negative version of himself. He lives in the suburban world of Putney but is also becoming involved with Leonard’s Cambridge world, notably with two sisters who are versions of Virginia and Vanessa. Harry, depicted as active and aggressive, sees this as part of his Jewish character. In the novel he portrays his own family in an unflattering way. There are virgins in the novel but who are the wise ones and who the foolish? Next door in the suburb where Harry is living with his family there are the four Garland sisters, including Gwen, the one who will interest him. In dramatic contrast are the artist Camilla Lawrence and her sister Katharine. They are clearly modeled on Vanessa and Virginia, the only difference being that Harry falls in love with Camilla, the artist sister. There is the power of Harry’s sexual drive, inhibited by social conventions, in contrast to life in the Ceylon village. In fact, the novel has its denouement in an act of sexual aggression not by Harry, but by Gwen. In many ways the novel is about Leonard falling in love, yet he presents himself with characteristic and unsympathetic severity. When he was writing it, Clive Bell was Vanessa’s husband, as Leonard had become Virginia’s. There was tension between them, as Leonard was deeply concerned that Clive’s attentions would unsettle Virginia, as he told him in no uncertain terms. Clive was jealous of Leonard’s devotion to Virginia, going so far some years later as to refer to him in a letter to Lytton as a “pestilent Jew.”1 Virginia was uneasy about Leonard being Jewish, and he was concerned with that aspect of their relationship as well. This is reflected in words he puts into the mouth of Arthur Woodhouse, the Clive character in The Wise Virgins: “It’s a characteristic of your race—they’re intellect and not emotion; they don’t feel things.…You were all right when you lived in Palestine before the dispersal. You were farmers and agriculturists; you produced Job and Ecclesiastes. Since then you’ve been wandering from city to city, and you’ve produced Mendelssohn and Barney Barnato.”2 Yet in the novel the remark does not cause an estrangement between the two. To a degree, Harry even agrees with Arthur. Indeed, Arthur is depicted as being sympathetic to Harry, unlike the rather Lytton-like character, Lion Wilton, who says that no Jew could be a good painter. Harry becomes increasingly involved with Gwen, particularly after an excursion the two families take on the Thames, vividly described, to Maidenhead. (It is intriguing that in fact it was with Virginia that Leonard made an expedition on the river to Maidenhead.) Harry becomes increasingly fond of Camilla, particularly after he visits her and her family at their country cottage in Kent. But it is a failed courtship, despite its similarity to Leonard’s ultimately successful courtship of Virginia. In the novel, Harry declares his love to Camilla, who responds that she does not reciprocate his love. Harry enunciates the credo that Leonard adhered to until the end of his life, that “nothing matters.” At this point Leonard was not yet committed to political action, although he was beginning to move in that direction. From the beginning he lived his life as if it mattered despite his nihilistic statement. The novel ends with Harry marrying the suburban Gwen after she has seduced him, and he feels obliged to do the right thing.

His friends had mixed feelings about the novel when they read it in manuscript; his mother was very upset and hurt about how she was depicted. His sister Bella advised against publication, sending him nine pages of criticism. But The Wise Virgins is well written and worth reading and is ultimately more sympathetic to most of those in it than one might have expected. Harry being a Jew is a dominant factor in the book, but it does not preclude him and his family from being part of the suburban scene. Even though he is married in a church, he and his mother think of it as having synagogue-like associations. Harry clings to his creed that nothing matters, yet the world that he has chosen does not seem to be a tragic one. Perhaps Gwen and Camilla are the wise virgins who have made the right choices. It might be said that Leonard had a spiritual life that appeared to be empty yet was somehow full of possibilities for the many years that lay before him. The failure of the novel was one reason he turned to journalism and political activism rather than what he really wanted, to write fiction. Nevertheless he would be deeply involved in the literary world through the Hogarth Press, his numerous reviews and articles on literary themes, and his editorial work, and by becoming crucially such a supportive and facilitating force for Virginia’s writing.

When Leonard returned to England, he now felt, as he recalled in Beginning Again, that at the age of 31 his youth had ended. In August he started to write The Village in the Jungle. And by the end of 1911 he had fallen in love with Virginia. This raised the question of his future with the civil service. He requested an extension of leave but declined to state the reason. In January he had proposed to Virginia, who was not yet prepared to commit herself. Since the Colonial Office was unwilling to grant an extension officially, he took the bold step of resigning without knowing whether Virginia would accept him. (The Under-Secretary had offered on his own authority to grant the extension, but Leonard decided to stand by his decision to resign, which he did on April 25.) In any case he was having growing doubts about whether he wanted to continue in the Colonial Service. But he was taking a great economic risk; he would be without income after May 1912. He did have a nest egg of £600, derived from a horse-racing sweepstake he had won in 1908, enough to sustain him for two years. Virginia had an unearned income of £400 a year. Although their first novels were critical successes, they did not in fact earn them very much money.

Leonard’s devotion to Virginia is perhaps very well summed up in the dedication to her of The Village in the Jungle, published the following February.

I’ve given you all the little, that I’ve to give;

You’ve given me all, that for me is all there is;

So now I just give back what you have given—

If there is anything to give in this.

He was a paradoxical figure. He would appear on the surface to be cold and austere. Yet his letters to Virginia, full of passion, make clear how much in love he was with her. As he wrote to her on January 11, 1912, after he had proposed to her that very day. “I never realised how much I loved you until we talked about my going back to Ceylon. After that I could think about nothing else but you.”3 Virginia was clearly uneasy about Leonard. She was not convinced that she wanted to marry at all, even though the possibility had been on her mind for some time. Yet at the same time, now 29, she felt it was time to be married. His proposal had unsettled her. And truth to tell, she was somewhat disconcerted by his being Jewish, so clearly somewhat “other” no matter how much he was part of her brothers’ and closest friends’ Cambridge world and even how many interests they shared. She wrote to him coolly on January 13 that she would like to go on as before and that she thought his proposal should be kept entirely secret, except from Vanessa. (Vanessa wrote him an encouraging letter on January 13 “to say how glad I shall be if you can have what you want.”4) For some months, by her wish, they had little contact. But then in the spring they began to see each other constantly. In the letters she wrote to friends about the engagement, once it became public, Virginia identified him as a “penniless Jew.”

This raises the persistent question about whether or not Virginia was anti-Semitic and to what degree. Certainly over the years both before and after her marriage she would make very nasty remarks about Jews and her wish to avoid them. Mean as her remarks might be, it is still quite difficult to determine how deeply ingrained they were and to what extent they reflected the superficial anti-Semitism of her time and her class. In a way she was no more negative about Jewish characteristics than Leonard himself was about his fellow Jews. Yet being a Jew himself somewhat legitimized his critical remarks. He had described the character based on his mother in The Wise Virgins in rather anti-Semitic terms, as he did the characteristics of the anti-hero based on himself. Virginia would put up with her mother-in-law ungraciously and described her in unflattering ways. Anti-Semitism in England was certainly pervasive at the time, and derogatory remarks were very common. Nasty as they were, they rarely translated into actions, and Jews figured prominently in the English world. There was no problem for Leonard to attend St Paul’s and Cambridge. Nor is there any indication that being Jewish created obstacles in his career or his personal life. Yet certainly he and others were very conscious that he was Jewish. His Jewish heritage, despite his being totally irreligious, was important in shaping his ideas and his rather austere style. It certainly could be a disadvantage to be Jewish in certain areas of English life. For instance, Leonard’s brother Philip, despite superior qualifications, was rejected by the Foreign Service, which ranked higher on the social scale than the colonial service, no doubt because he was Jewish. His being a Jew by birth and tradition was more important to Leonard than it was to Virginia. Was it as Jews or as anti-Fascist writers or both that they were on the Nazi list to be rounded up after the invasion of Britain? They felt sufficiently threatened that they planned to commit suicide should the Germans land.

Virginia and Leonard had lived in the same house, although at this point it was more a boarding house than a shared residence. They went frequently to Asheham, the country house in Sussex that Virginia and Vanessa had leased after the semi-detached one Virginia had occupied in Firle. They went about together a lot in London to the opera and the ballet, although he did not share her and Saxon’s devotion to Wagner. Vanessa was very much in favor of the match, no matter what Clive might think. On May 1 Virginia wrote to Leonard dispassionately about the possibility of marrying:

The obvious advantages of marriage stand in my way, I say to myself. Anyhow, you’ll be quite happy with him; and he will give you companionship, children, and a busy life—and then I say By God, I will not look on marriage as a profession.…I feel angry sometimes at the strength of your desire. Possibly, your being a Jew comes in also at this point. You seem so foreign.…I want everything—love, children, adventure, intimacy, work.…As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction in you.5

Yet on May 29 she told him that she loved him. By June, Virginia consented, and quite soon thereafter, on August 10, 1912, they were married at the St Pancras Registry Office. It was a quiet, small wedding; Leonard deeply offended his family, particularly his mother, by not inviting any of them to the ceremony. She wrote him a rather touching letter on August 7 expressing her regret at not having been asked.

To be quite frank, yes, it has hurt me extremely that you did not make it a point of having me to your marriage.…You are the first of my sons who marries, it is one of the if not the most important day of your life. It would have compensated me for the very great hardships I have endured in bringing you all up by myself, if you had expressed the desire that you wished me before anyone else, to be witness to your happiness.6

The only guests at the event were Vanessa, the sisters’ half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth, Duncan Grant, Roger Fry, Saxon Sydney-Turner, her aunt Mary Fisher, and the painter Frederick Etchells, a rather improbable guest who was not a close friend, although he was part of the Omega Workshops. Perhaps Fry had brought him along. Virginia had mixed feelings about her Duckworth half-brothers, yet they were her adored mother’s sons. The next year she would spend two months in George’s country house (although the Duckworths were not there at the same time) after her suicide attempt. Gerald’s firm, Duckworth, would publish Virginia’s first two novels. Vanessa and George acted as the official witnesses. Oddly, Clive appears to have been absent. In May he had written a rather ambivalent letter about the match to Molly MacCarthy:

It is really very satisfactory, I suppose, but it would be rather horrible to think that, most probably, people would feel for one’s children what none of us can help feeling for Jews—“Oh, he’s quite a good fellow—he’s a Jew, you know—.” Don’t you think it would be rather painful to get oneself into that plight? And Woolf’s family are chosen beyond anything.7

Yet he wrote to Virginia immediately after her marriage: “You must believe that, in spite of all my craziness, I love you very much, and that I love your lover too.”8

On their honeymoon they went first to Asheham, then to an inn in Somerset, and then spent several months travelling in France, Italy, and Spain. Although apparently consummated, the marriage would never be sexually fulfilling. On return, they took rooms in Clifford’s Inn, spent time in the country, and devoted themselves to writing, she her first novel, and he his second, as well as his story “The Three Jews,” published in 1917. He also began his prolific output on policy, politics, and literature. There were difficulties as Virginia had serious breakdowns. Leonard’s crucial role as a caregiver began to emerge, becoming almost a calling, a commitment to a genius. As a married couple, these crises began with her suicide attempt in September 1913, followed by temporary recovery, and then an attack of madness in February 1915. There were recurrent bouts of depression and madness, especially after she completed books, until her suicide in 1941. Although Leonard knew that she had problems, he did not realize how deep they were until after their marriage. A major concern was whether they should have children. Virginia had expected that marriage would bring children, and some of her doctors thought maternity would help her. Leonard came to the conclusion that she would be unable to cope, a conviction that Vanessa shared. This was not a decision that he had come to easily, knowing how much Virginia wished to have a child. There is no question that over the years she expressed regrets that she was childless, and her happy relations with Vanessa’s children demonstrated that she was good with them. But it seems probable that full-time responsibility for children would have been too much for her. There was a great deal of physical affection in their relationship, so their marriage was not necessarily without erotic satisfactions. As she wrote to him, when they were apart briefly some years later: “There’s no doubt I’m terribly in love with you. I keep thinking what you’re doing, and have to stop—it makes me want to kiss you so.”9 Leonard’s decision about children has been the subject of much controversy since, and he has been attacked for taking it. Despite his detractors, it seems improbable that Virginia would have accomplished as much if it had not been for the constant care that Leonard provided.

Certainly the need for his care was most intensely felt in the months after her suicide attempt in September 1913. Presumably to celebrate a year of marriage, they had gone to the Somerset inn where they had spent their second married night, but Virginia was in a deteriorating mental state, having great difficulty eating and sleeping. It is impossible to determine the extent to which her mental fragility was affected by her marriage, as Leonard took such good care of her, choosing what he considered the best course of action. There is a minority view, strongly held by some critics, that his decisions were wrong and made her situation worse. Leonard was so concerned while they were at the inn that he had asked her friend Ka Cox to join them to help him look after her. They had then returned to London for a medical consultation. Left alone for a while, she deliberately overdosed on sleeping pills found in Leonard’s case, inadvertently left unlocked. Of course he deeply regretted this, but, as he pointed out in his autobiography, he lacked a sense of sin and therefore did not brood about mistakes that were made and could not be undone. There was some consideration of placing her in an asylum, which would have been legally possible after a suicide attempt, since she could have been certified. Leonard went so far as to visit some asylums but found them quite unacceptable. He was under terrible strain and had hardly any time to launch his career as a political commentator and activist. Yet they were as deeply in love with one another as ever, Virginia in her own way. She would continue to have nursing care to some degree until February 1914. And even after that, should Leonard need to be away from her, he would ensure that there was someone to look after her. In March 1915 she had a relapse. By then they were living in Richmond, as Leonard felt it would be much better for her mental health not to be in the center of London. It was at this time that they began to think casually about acquiring a printing press. He informed Lytton, on February 10, 1915, of their intention to move into Hogarth House in Richmond: “We think of setting up a printing press in the cellarage. Now Ray [Lytton’s sister-in-law] tells us you know all about printing presses. Is this true & can you tell how & where one gets them & what they cost?”10

The years 1914–18 were dominated by the counterpoint of the First World War itself and Virginia’s illness, as well as moving to Hogarth House in March 1915 and the founding of the Hogarth Press. Moving into the house coincided with Virginia’s second serious breakdown and the renewed need for nursing care at home. They still had the country cottage in Sussex. When they were apart they wrote to each other frequently, short letters full of affection, his signed M. standing for his pet name, Mongoose; she in return used her pet name, Mandrill.

Leonard and Virginia had been thinking about the possibility of becoming printers for some time, but her health prevented them from moving forward until 1917. There were personal reasons for wanting to become publishers. They loved books and wished to produce them. They came to three decisions at a birthday tea Virginia and Leonard had on January 25, 1915, at Buzzard’s on Oxford Street in the center of London. They would lease Hogarth House, an eighteenth-century building close to where they were then living in Richmond. Hogarth was buried comparatively nearby in Chiswick, but there does not seem to be a particular connection with Richmond. The building did not acquire the name until 1876, when the original house was divided into two, Suffield House and Hogarth House. It was, rather nicely, on Paradise Road, although the area, close to the high street, was by this time already built up and somewhat noisy. They would live there for nine years. In 1920 the owner refused to renew the lease but offered the total house for sale, which they bought for £2,000. Then, in 1924, they moved back to central London, to 52 Tavistock Square in Bloomsbury. Leonard actually felt that this was a mistake, fearing that being in central London would lead to Virginia undertaking too much social activity and overstraining herself. Eventually Virginia wore down Leonard’s opposition, and they returned to Bloomsbury. (There is a wonderful scene in the movie The Hours, presumably invented, in which Virginia says that, if she had to choose between Richmond and death, she would prefer death.)

They also decided at their 1915 tea that they would purchase a printing press. The third decision was to buy a bull dog, probably to be called John. That did not happen, although Leonard had been devoted to the dog Charles that he had in Ceylon. In any case, they did have a dog called Max and in 1926 they were given a cocker spaniel, Pinka, by Vita Sackville-West; Pinka adorns the dust jacket of the Hogarth Press first edition of Flush (1935), the autobiography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s dog. Hogarth House was acquired on lease in 1915, but because of Virginia’s mental health the press itself had to wait two more years.

A major precursor and influence upon the creation of the Hogarth Press were the Omega Workshops, founded by Roger Fry in 1913. They mostly made decorative objects, ceramics, some furniture, although they did publish a few books. The look of their work was distinctly modern. Although it tended to down play this aspect, Omega was in the tradition of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement. It shared with Morris the feeling that anyone could do anything if they just put their mind to it. Both enterprises had that particularly English combination of professionalism and amateurism, implying that they were appropriated by members of the “gentle” classes. They were not averse to making money, yet at the same time wished to avoid the stigma of “trade.”

When they applied for instruction in printing at the St Bride Foundation near Fleet Street, they were not admitted, as they were unwilling to join the union, despite Leonard’s radical leanings. And the printing trade was notoriously misogynistic. In any case, the Woolfs had no choice but to learn by doing. Each of them regarded the printing enterprise as therapy for the other. As Virginia gradually recovered from her breakdown, the work of printing might be of great assistance. Writing her novels was a great strain upon her; she was particularly vulnerable when she had just finished one. Leonard felt it would be very useful for her to have a manual occupation that would be totally different from the effort of writing and worrying about what she had written. The plan was that they would both write in the morning and print in the afternoon. On Virginia’s part, she felt that the press, as very time consuming, would distract Leonard from being too politically active and being exploited, so she thought, by that other powerful couple, Beatrice and Sidney Webb. She felt that they claimed too much of Leonard’s time in their projects to improve the world. But, since Virginia had had a serious mental relapse, needed much attention and nursing, the project of having a press had to be put on hold.

Finally, on March 12, 1917, they acquired a small hand press for £20 from the Excelsior Printing Company in London as well as some Caslon Old Face type and a sixteen-page booklet to teach them how to begin printing. They had seen various printing tools in the company’s window, staring “through the window at them rather like two hungry children gazing at buns and cakes in a baker shop window” (Beginning, 234). Inspired by William Morris’s Kelmscott Press in the last decade of the nineteenth century, there had been a considerable private press movement in Britain for some years. Staffed by designers and craftsmen, those presses began at a far higher level of professionalism than the Woolfs possessed. They were rank beginners, although Virginia had an interest and some experience in book binding. They seemed to be able to master the techniques on the basis of the booklet, as they were assured by the man who had sold the equipment to them. “By following the directions in the pamphlet we found that we could pretty soon set the type, lock it up in the chase, ink the rollers, and machine a fairly legible printed page” (Beginning, 234). The Hogarth Press was in the modernist style in the tradition and look of Omega and carried on in its spirit after Omega went bankrupt in 1919. The press was even a simpler operation, requiring very little capital. It was situated in their house, and in its early years they did all the work themselves in the afternoons. Virginia did most of the typesetting because Leonard’s hand tremor limited his dexterity; he did most of the machine work. Their first press was very simple and could fit on their kitchen table. The Woolfs also loved being in absolute control; they could print whomever and whatever they wished.

Two months after starting work in May, they produced their first book, Two Stories, one by her, “The Mark on the Wall,” significant in marking her move to more experimental ways of writing, the other Leonard’s “Three Jews.” Together the stories marked a striking contrast in terms of style and content. It was issued in an edition of 150, of which they sold 134. It had four woodcuts by Dora Carrington, the most charming being of the snail that had caused the mark on the wall. His story dealt with Jewishness, its heritage being so much a part of shaping his personality, as the character of Harry in The Wise Virgins revealed. Its narrator visits Kew Gardens, comparatively close to where the Woolfs were then living. There at a café a fellow non-believing Jew sits down at his table, and they begin to talk about not really belonging to the English world but rather being still part of Palestine. He tells the narrator a story about visiting his wife’s grave. The third Jew is the cemetery’s keeper, with whom he has a further conversation when he visits again with his new wife. Then there is a third visit on the next anniversary of the first wife’s death in which the cemetery keeper tells him that he has disowned one of the two sons for marrying their Christian serving girl. He found the class difference even more unacceptable than the religious one. What is one to make of the story? Leonard had married a Christian, but hardly a servant, as did all of his married siblings. Leonard would always feel something of an outsider in English society, despite his “establishment” education, being a colonial civil servant, and part of an elite English circle. Though the narrators of the story are unbelieving Jews, an atavistic feeling of being part of a separate group persisted.

This first publication was also deeply significant in terms of Leonard’s and Virginia’s writing careers. It probably marked Leonard’s last venture in pursuit of his ambition to become a writer of fiction. In his remaining years, although he would write a prodigious amount in a wide variety of forms—books, articles, reviews, journalism—he did not return to fiction. But more significantly it also marked the beginning of the transformation of Virginia from the writer of conventional novels into one of the greatest novelists of the twentieth century. This was the Hogarth Press’s only book in 1917. The next year they published only two. As they did all the work in producing their books themselves, it was very slow going. Leonard also decided to sell the books through subscription rather than offering each on its own or through the usual channels of bookstores and advertising. The A list would receive all the publications and the B list would have the option to purchase. This scheme continued until 1923, when the press began to act more like a regular commercial publisher.

Although these were hand-crafted, short books, they were not really in the Kelmscott tradition. Since the Woolfs were so new to printing, their main object was not to produce works of art. Unlike most private presses, they were exclusively interested in publishing new texts. Leonard, strong-minded, felt that private presses were too preoccupied with display rather than content. The Hogarth Press was in a way a hybrid. In its early years it was a private press issuing limited edition, hand-printed books that they typeset themselves and that reflected the choice of the proprietors. But, unlike the owners of many private presses, the Woolfs had comparatively little interest in the aesthetics of printing in the sense of producing the book beautiful. They did wish, however, that their books should have some artistic content in their jackets and illustrations. They were learning on the job, and most of their books were not aesthetic triumphs, although they were pioneers in introducing a modernist look, particularly in their cover designs. Leonard condemned what he regarded as the style of private presses. He wrote that most private press books

are meant not to be read, but to be looked at. We were interested primarily in the immaterial inside of a book, what the author had to say and how he said it; we had drifted into the business with the idea of publishing things which the commercial publisher could not or would not publish. We wanted our books to “look nice” and we had our own views of what nice looks in a book would be, but neither of us was interested in fine printing and fine binding. We also disliked the refinement and preciosity which are too often a kind of fungoid growth which culture breeds upon art and literature.  (Downhill, 80)

Although he admired some private presses more than this statement might imply, he definitely did not want the Hogarth Press to follow that tradition.

It was only a real private press in its early years. By 1932 they had entirely stopped typesetting and printing themselves, probably because of other demands upon their time, including running the business of the press, and their interest in actually doing the machine work was waning. But both of them, Leonard more than Virginia, continued to be closely involved with the press, sharing its premises with their home, first in Richmond and later in London. Of the 315 titles that Hogarth had published up until 1932, only 34 were physically produced by the Woolfs themselves. In a letter of May 2, 1917, when they were setting up the notice for subscriptions to their first book, Virginia wrote:

After 2 hours work at the press, Leonard heaved a terrific sigh and said “I wish to God we’d never bought the cursed thing!” To my relief, though not surprise, he added “Because I shall never do anything else!” You can’t think how exciting, soothing, ennobling and satisfying it is. And so far we’ve only done the dullest and most difficult part—setting up a notice, which you will recieve [sic] one day.11

At the end of the month she was at work on her story “The Mark on the Wall.” “I haven’t produced mine yet, but there’s nothing in writing compared with printing.”12 They were also looking for subscribers: “We find we have only 50 friends in the world—and most of them stingy.”13 The first book was finished in July, taking a month to complete. Their next, Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude, twice as long at 68 pages and 300 copies, took nine months. One reason it took so long was that its preparation was interrupted by the death of Leonard’s brother Cecil, killed at the battle of Cambrai. Assisted by his brother Philip, Leonard and Virginia printed a very short memorial volume of poems by Cecil. This is the rarest of Hogarth titles, with only four surviving copies now known. After printing eighteen pages of Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude, they decided that the job was too much for them to complete on their press at home. They continued to set the type and then printed it themselves at a nearby commercial printer, the Prompt Press, using a press that could do four pages at a time rather than just two.

Virginia had a rather love/hate relationship with Katherine Mansfield, who was in her early thirties and did not yet have much of a reputation, having published only one book previously. Prelude was a short story about a family moving, in which not very much happened. It too, like Cecil’s poems, was a memorial dedicated to her brother, who was killed in the war, as well as to her lover and later husband, John Middleton Murry. Virginia commented on the book: “The title page was finally done on Sunday. Now I’m in the fury of folding & stapling, so as to have all ready for gluing & sending out tomorrow & Thursday. By rights these processes should be dull; but its always possible to devise some little skill or economy, & the pleasure of profiting by them keeps one content.”14 Leonard later remarked: “When I look at my copy of Prelude today, I am astonished at our courage and energy in attempting it and producing it only a year after we had started to teach ourselves to print” (Beginning, 237).

The other significant press choice that year was a negative one: Harriet Weaver had published James Joyce’s work in the journal, the Egoist. She showed the Woolfs the first four chapters of his unfinished novel, Ulysses, with the idea that they should publish the entire work, but they turned it down. It is too easily assumed that Virginia did not like Joyce’s work. Although recognizing his literary genius, she was, however, less than a total admirer. In any event, it was much too long for them to print themselves, and they knew they would not be able to find a printer who would take it on, as undoubtedly the state would have prosecuted for obscenity any publisher and printer who produced the work. In the end they told Harriet Weaver that it was much too large a job for the press. The entire work was published in Paris in 1922.

It might be appropriate here to venture a bit further into the history of the press, so much a joint enterprise by Leonard and Virginia. They published five books in 1919, three of which they printed themselves, including a short book of poems by T. S. Eliot and their first notable success, Virginia’s story Kew Gardens, which, thanks to a favorable review in the Times Literary Supplement, sold very well. Its initial printing of 150 was supplemented by 500 more by a commercial press. It had a cover and illustrations by Vanessa Bell. Its success meant the press was transforming itself into a growing business venture. There were three publications in 1920, and that year they also bought a bigger press, which was installed in their basement. They were thinking of expanding, hiring an assistant, and opening a bookshop in the house. As Virginia wrote to Roger Fry on August 13, 1920: “We are in rather a turmoil about the press—The bookshop idea seems to be too difficult, and we now think of setting up a proper printing plant and doing all the production ourselves—that is with a manager.” Later in the letter she remarked that “Eliot is coming here, a little to our alarm, and wants us to publish something of his, so what with you, Clive, and him we should start well.”15 Roger’s proposed translations of Mallarmé in fact were not issued until 1936, after his death. But in 1921 they did publish twelve of his woodcuts. In that year they produced six books—quite short ones, four of which they printed themselves. That same year they bought their third press, a Minerva platen press, worked by a treadle.

The year 1921 was also notable for the publication of Leonard’s Stories of the East, although it is likely that they were written earlier. They received a favorable review from Hamilton Fyfe in the Daily Mail, which provoked a moment of jealousy on Virginia’s part, suggesting another reason why Leonard abandoned fiction. He might well have thought that there should be only one creative writer in the marriage. Fyfe had written: “Among the famous short stories of the world I think ‘Pearls and Swine’ will certainly find a place.” In reaction, Virginia commented: “Am I jealous? Only momentarily. But the odd thing is—the idiotic thing—is that I immediately think myself a failure—imagine myself peculiarly lacking in the qualities L. has.”16

In 1922 they published nine books, just two printed by them. This year also marked the publication of three books by Russians: Ivan Bunin, Dostoevsky, and Countess Tolstoy. They had already published works by Gorky in 1920 and 1921. Their Russian books over the years (eleven in total) were translated by S. S. Koteliansky, who did a literal translation that was then gone over, as a co-translator, by either Virginia or Leonard, both of whom also learned some Russian themselves. They had a great success with Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Leo Nicolayevitch Tolstoi, and, of the nine short books they published in the first four years of the press, it was very much the one that sold the best. Leonard came to consider his commitment to the work of the press half of his professional life. Given his extensive political involvement and writing and the obligation to look after Virginia’s health, he was fully occupied. In 1924 they took over the publication of the works of Sigmund Freud in English, for which the principal translator was Lytton Strachey’s brother James. They became good friends with Eliot and also his initial publisher, most famously of the first English edition in book form of The Waste Land. Considering how comparatively few books they issued, their importance and variety were outstanding. That same year they published Jacob’s Room, Virginia’s third novel and the first written in her new manner, which became an essential part of her contribution to literature. Her first two novels The Voyage Out and Night and Day had been written in a conventional style, but Jacob’s Room was written from within the characters, who viewed Jacob in a stream-of-consciousness way. This was also not only the first full-length book emanating from the press, but also the first produced by R. & R. Clark, printers in Edinburgh, who subsequently did much of their work. There were 1,200 copies published, and it has remained in print ever since. In his autobiography Leonard proudly points out that over the years Virginia’s books made much more money than now-forgotten bestsellers. For the press’s first three years it was almost more a hobby than a more serious pursuit, but by 1920 it was launched as an increasingly active, though still small, trade publisher. When Koteliansky had brought them the proposal that they publish a translation of Maxim Gorky’s Reminiscences of Tolstoy, they decided to print 1,000 copies, which obviously they could not do themselves.

It was our first commercial venture.…The success of Gorky’s book was really the turning point for the future of the Press and for our future. Neither of us wanted to be professional, full-time publishers; what we wanted to do primarily was to write books, not print and publish them. On the other hand, our three years’ experience of printing and publishing had given us great pleasure and whetted our appetite for more.  (Downhill, 67)

Virginia, hypersensitive to criticism, was also very pleased that it would not be up to the judgment of others, even her supportive half-brother, to decide whether or not her material was worthy of being published. No doubt it was Leonard’s managerial skills and financial shrewdness that made the press a successful enterprise.

Together, but more Leonard than Virginia, they made the Hogarth Press an important publishing house. It was a very unusual venture, as there must be few commercial publishers that began as a private press and with thirty-four of its books physically produced by two of the most distinguished writers of twentieth-century Britain. As from 1920, it is true that they acquired their first part-time assistant, Ralph Partridge. Over the next years there would be others employed at the press, most notably George “Dadie” Rylands, and John Lehmann, who, after withdrawing for some years because of the difficulty of working with Leonard, returned to become a partner in the firm. These relations were rarely placid, and Leonard recognized that he was not an easy person to work with, being punctilious and obsessed by detail. (This is evident in his frequently noting, in his autobiographies, to the penny, how much various books, especially those by Virginia, earned.) Lehmann underscored the difficulty by entitling his memoir of the time Thrown to the Woolfs. Leonard, always very argumentative, had that deeply irritating quality of generally being right. Day-to-day managing of every aspect of a publishing enterprise, while doing so much else besides, could prove daunting. Yet it would be difficult to overestimate how important the Hogarth Press was as a contribution to cultural life in Britain. Characteristically, Leonard was a stern taskmaster to those few who worked with him. One suspects that he enjoyed the variety that it provided in his life and the satisfaction of keeping meticulous records. Through the initiative of Lehmann, who had come to them as a friend of Julian Bell, they became the publishers of the most iconic writings of the 1930s, not only of Christopher Isherwood and Edward Upward, but notably in their poetry series. New Signatures in 1932 was instrumental in introducing the public to the poetry of William Empson, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and Cecil Day Lewis. The Hogarth Press became a major publisher of Bloomsbury writings, including works by Virginia and Leonard themselves, but also of the next dominant literary wave, the Auden generation. In 1938 Lehmann became a partner, replacing Virginia, although she still played a role in deciding what should be published up until the last week of her life. Through 1937 the 423 books and shorter works issued by the press were, it was noted, produced by Leonard and Virginia Woolf at the Hogarth Press. From 1938 on, the publisher was simply the Hogarth Press. In 1946 Chatto & Windus bought Lehmann’s share, and the press became a joint venture of that firm and Leonard. The Hogarth Press continues to function, like Chatto & Windus, as part of the Random House group. While Leonard was still alive, he was the most important figure in deciding what the press should publish.

One of their most successful authors was Vita Sackville-West in her novels and other writings. She and her husband, Harold Nicolson, the diplomat and later prolific writer, lived not far from the Woolfs’ house in Sussex, first at Long Barn and then at Sissinghurst, where Vita created one of the most famous of English gardens. Although the Nicolsons had two sons, they were both homosexual and had numerous lovers. Her affair with Virginia lasted for about three years in the 1920s, a result of which was Virginia’s wonderful Orlando, a love letter to Vita, published in 1928. In the course of her life Virginia would become emotionally attached to several women, both before and after her marriage, but this was probably the only relationship that was physical as well. Even in this case it is not clear how intense it was on Virginia’s part. Or, to put it another way, it was probably emotionally intense and briefly physically as well. Vita and Virginia did take a trip on their own to France, and Virginia spent time with her alone at Sissinghurst. At the same time she retained her sense of judgment about Vita’s writings, admiring them only up to a point, while appreciating how well they did commercially as Hogarth Press publications. Leonard seemed to take the affair in his stride; as far as one knows, it was the only one that Virginia had. He was more concerned that with her fragile psyche it might overly excite her and cause mental problems, rather than fearing that it would damage their long-lasting and solid relationship.

The press was a mixture of literature and business, and it might be said that this sort of combination dominated the rest of Leonard’s life. From now on, except for the translations from the Russian and his 1939 political play, The Hotel, virtually all of his writing was non-fiction, mostly political, on both specific topics and broader questions until the great achievement of the five volumes of autobiography in the 1960s, the last decade of his life. According to one of his bibliographies, he made 1,566 contributions to periodicals, beginning with a poem in the Cambridge Review in 1901 and ending with an obituary of Kingsley Martin, the former editor of the New Statesman, for the Political Quarterly in 1969. In fact the number is probably higher, as this does not include all the unsigned pieces he wrote. Quite a few of his signed and unsigned writings would be reviews of a wide range of books, particularly as literary editor of the Nation. He also reviewed many recordings of classical music, which no doubt provided much of what Virginia and he frequently listened to after dinner.

A central part of his life until her suicide in 1941 was the support of Virginia’s literary activity (and he continued to support her literary works in the years after her death). At the same time, they led an active social life in London, but also at Monks House, the country cottage they acquired in Rodmell in Sussex after having to give up Asheham.17 There was the constant back and forth between that house and nearby Charleston, where Vanessa, Duncan, and her three children spent much of their time. The members of the Bloomsbury Group saw each other both in London and in the country, although they were sadly diminished by the early deaths of Lytton in 1932 and of Roger in 1934. The group had mixed feelings about Keynes’s marriage to the Russian ballerina, Lydia Lopokova, in 1925, yet he remained a close friend, a friendship reinforced by his generosity and his neighboring country house, Tilton. The coherence of the group was also helped by the establishment in 1920 of the Memoir Club. At its meetings the Bloomsbury figures read to one another pieces about their shared past, quite a few of which were subsequently published. Many of Leonard’s contributions were incorporated into his autobiography.

In many ways the 1920s and 1930s were the time of greatest accomplishment for the Bloomsbury Group, when some of them became very well known, although they had actually met together more frequently before the war. Forster was recognized as a major English novelist. With his Economic Consequences of the Peace of 1918 and his later theoretical work, Keynes became the most influential economist in England. Strachey, despite his early death, was perhaps its most famous biographer. And Virginia’s writings of those two decades established her as a significant writer. Leonard did not achieve at quite the same level, but he was having a very successful career. No longer a creative writer, he was making a considerable mark as a publisher, the literary editor of the Nation, and the author of a considerable number of columns and reviews, of books on domestic, international, and imperial questions, as well as being politically active on many committees. Virginia was more interested in society than he was, enjoying such gatherings as those at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s house in nearby Bedford Square or at her country house at Garsington, outside Oxford. She also attended Lady Cunard’s lunches for literary lions and others. They loved their country cottage, where Leonard in particular developed into an avid gardener. When in the country they would write in their separate rooms in the morning, and then in the afternoon Leonard would generally garden and Virginia go for walks, thinking all the while about her work. They competed fiercely with one another at bowls, Leonard, to Virginia’s irritation, usually winning. At Monks House they entertained frequently and also spent much time at nearby Charleston. As a result of the success of Virginia’s novels, they were much better off financially and could now afford to install various improvements to modernize their property. He carefully monitored her mental state, tried to prevent her from doing too much and becoming overexcited, and reassured her about her writings, thereby performing a major service to English literature. After finishing the manuscript of one of her novels, she was particularly vulnerable to severe depression, and Leonard needed to keep a close watch on her state of mind. Yet, despite the travails of these two decades, the Depression starting in 1929, and the rise of Fascism and Nazism, these years were a time of success and fulfillment for Leonard as well as for Virginia. Though they never were extravagant, their income was such that they could easily afford to make Monks House much more comfortable. Even when less well-off, they were never without servants. From 1928 on they owned a car and regularly went to the Continent. Virginia in particular much enjoyed the exhilaration of travel, especially going to Cassis on the French coast, where Vanessa, Duncan, and family had rented a house.

The years between the wars were highly productive ones for both Virginia and Leonard, but by the late 1930s they had to face the prospect of another world war. The war became very immediate when German bombers flew over Rodmell on their way to and from London, and there was always the possibility that they would drop unused bombs in the vicinity on the return trip or deliberately target the area. When the planes flew overhead, they laid themselves prone on the grass. German planes were shot down nearby, occasionally flying sufficiently low over the house that they could see their swastika markings. Their London house in Mecklenburgh Square was partially destroyed in the bombing. In any case, they were primarily living in Monks House, going up to London only about once a week. Their former house in Tavistock Square was also bombed, creating a surrealistic view of decorations by Duncan visible from the street. The Hogarth Press continued, moving to a printing office in Letchworth Garden City, where many of its books had been produced. In anticipation of a German invasion in the fall of 1940 and their probable arrest if in German captured territory, they secured from Adrian a prescription for morphine to kill themselves, and acquired enough gasoline so that, as an alternative, they could do so through carbon monoxide. Though they went up to London on very slow trains from time to time, they now had become primarily country dwellers. They were seemingly content, even though the possibility of death from bombing or invasion was ever present in their minds. The war itself was not a major factor in causing Virginia’s depression. The idea of death had always been present in her mind, as the two previous suicide attempts revealed.

Leonard became increasingly concerned about Virginia’s mental health in early 1941, and there were consultations in nearby Brighton with Dr. Octavia Wilberforce, a descendant of William Wilberforce of the Evangelical Clapham Sect and Virginia’s third cousin. She had finished her draft of Between the Acts, which she had enjoyed writing. It was difficult for Leonard to decide how to cope and whether increased supervision might only heighten Virginia’s anxiety. He did feel that she had not been as badly off since her suicide attempt in August 1913. On March 28, 1941, she drowned herself in the river Ouse, which flowed past the house, putting a large stone into her coat and walking into the river. Her body was not found until April 18.

The letters she wrote in the last days of her life were quite extraordinary. Under great mental strain, she wrote several matter-of-fact letters to Lady Cecil, Lady Tweedsmuir, Vita Sackville-West, and John Lehmann on March 21, 22, and 23, although she had written her first undelivered suicide note to Leonard probably on March 18. It is a powerful statement of their relationship and deserves quotation here:

Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again: I feel we cant go through another of these terrible times. And I shant recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and cant 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 dont think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I cant fight it any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I cant even write this properly. I cant read. What I want to say is that 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—everyone 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 cant go on spoiling your life any longer. I dont think two people could have been happier than we have been. V.18

Probably on March 23 she wrote to Vanessa in response to her sister’s letter urging her to be sensible. But she didn’t send it; had she done so, Vanessa would undoubtedly have made sure that she was never alone, since it was also a suicide note. As she wrote in it: “All I want to say is that Leonard has been so astonishingly good, every day, always; I cant imagine that anyone could have done more for me than he has. Will you assure him of this? I feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him.”19

And then on March 28 she wrote a further letter that Leonard found in her study along with the earlier one. It sent him frantically looking for her. In conclusion she wrote: “All I want to say is that until this disease came on we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good as you have been, from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that.”20 Unable to find her, he surmised that she had drowned herself.

Now his life was dominated by grief and the complications of death, letters he received about her death, the inquest after her body was found, and her cremation on April 21. In many ways it had been a very happy and fulfilling marriage, and he had done so much in enabling her to write. As he had before, for the rest of his life he would be her literary custodian, editing or supervising posthumous publications of her work, such as a selection from her diary as well as essays and short stories, appointing her nephew Quentin as her biographer, giving some and selling others of her papers, despite her request that her papers be destroyed. Increasingly, both in correspondence and in person, he was very helpful to the growing number of scholars and others writing about Virginia. Despite his belief that one should not feel guilty about what could not be changed, he still felt intensely that if he had acted otherwise she might well have recovered, as she had before. Outwardly most of the time he remained calm and business-like (though he did break down in tears as well) and kept various appointments in London. He believed that his fatalism as a Jew, a people who experienced centuries of oppression, helped sustain him during his grief. His addiction to work, which he also felt was a Jewish trait, also helped him. But underneath that carapace, there was a passionate man. As he wrote on a scrap of paper:

They said “Come to tea and let us comfort you.” But it’s no good. One must be crucified on one’s own private cross.

 It is a strange fact that a terrible pain in the heart can be interrupted by a little pain in the fourth toe of the right foot.

 I know that V. will not come across the garden from the Lodge, and yet I look in that direction for her. I know that she is drowned and yet I listen for her to come in at the door. I know that it is the last page and yet I turn it over. There is no limit to one’s stupidity and selfishness.21

Shortly after Virginia’s death, in April, Alice Ritchie, who had published two novels with the Hogarth Press, was dying of cancer, and Leonard visited her and lent her some money. In the past, she had worked for the Hogarth Press, selling its publications to bookstores. He also slightly knew her sister Marjorie, known as Trekkie, who had done art work for the press, designing a pair of book jackets in 1930, one of them for her sister’s book, one for Vita Sackville-West’s All Passion Spent in 1931, another in 1932, and then three jackets for Hogarth books in the 1940s. (Somewhat ironically, she would, ten years after Leonard’s death, design a book jacket for the English reissue of The Wise Virgins, the novel whose major theme was Leonard’s fictionalized courtship of Virginia.) She had an extensive career illustrating various books and other publications. Trekkie was also known to him as the wife of Ian Parsons, the editor who would become most involved with the Hogarth Press when it was absorbed by Chatto & Windus in 1946. But he had not actually seen her for ten years until they renewed contact because of his involvement in her sister’s illness. Despite being twenty-two years younger than he, she would become his closest friend for the rest of his life, and indeed he fell deeply in love with her. The relationship undoubtedly greatly enriched his remaining years. As he wrote to her on September 3, 1943: “I think you do know that it is because you & your work—which means too your happiness—are to me now infinitely the most important things in life.” Or on April 13, 1944: “I’ve never known a human being so perfect as a work of art.…You’ve never said anything or made a movement which did not seem to me beautiful & give me the feeling of ecstasy or satisfaction mental & physical which one gets from a work of art.”22 His letters were much more passionate than hers to him. Hers, although affectionate, were mostly devoted to what she had been doing. In many of his letters there was a touching focus on his love for her. It is not clear whether they physically became lovers, probably not, but psychologically they certainly were. Leonard probably wished that they were sexually intimate, but Trekkie, although apparently no longer sleeping with Ian, resisted the idea. Leonard’s love letters were interspersed with news of daily events, their mutual passion for gardening, and reports on his pets. She never left her husband Ian (who had a long affair, much resented by Trekkie, with Norah Smallwood, an editor at Chatto & Windus).

The Parsons acquired a country cottage in the village next to Rodmell and also eventually a flat on Victoria Square in London next door to Leonard. Later they occupied rooms in his housse, although the three were generally only there together one day a week. But Monks House, particularly given Leonard’s passion for gardening and his love for his numerous pets, became the physical center of his life. He continued the pattern he had had there with Virginia: reading Greek and Latin texts before breakfast, writing and dealing with correspondence in the morning, gardening in the afternoon, frequently ending, if he had visitors, with a game of bowls, listening to classical music in the evening and reading books, mostly those he needed to consult for his writing or those he might be reviewing. With weekly visits to London, quite a bit of travel abroad with Trekkie, this became the pattern for the rest of his life, almost thirty years after Virginia’s death. He would often invite people in for a meal and continued to have the help of his housekeeper, Louie Everest. The Parsons would generally spend the weekend at their cottage; they would all go up to London on Monday, Tuesdays Leonard would spend in the office of Chatto & Windus, and then he and Trekkie would return to Monks House for the rest of the week. Trekkie seemed adept in balancing the two relationships and would write Leonard letters about her fairly frequent travels abroad with her husband. On at least one of her trips Ian’s mistress accompanied them! She would also take trips with Leonard, short ones around Britain and to the Continent, but also longer ones to Israel and Sri Lanka. They also traveled to the United States, which he enjoyed but felt was not a place where he would wish to live. Leonard did not seem troubled in sharing the relationship with Trekkie with Ian or, to put it another way, he was so in love with Trekkie that he was willing to accept the situation. There are, however, some indications that her marriage caused her some distress, as an enigmatic entry in her diary in 1958 reveals: “I cry when I think of Ian and but for the tears feel like a dry river bed.…I wish I could force myself not to think and think of what I hate to think of.”23 But there is no indication that there was a problem having Ian as a fellow occupant of his London house or as his publishing colleague. She would eventually become Leonard’s heir and executor.

His literary career had begun with fiction, two novels and several short stories. Much of his writing over the years was distinguished, but it might be argued that his finest writing was in the last decade of his life in his five short volumes, cited frequently in this text, of memoir/autobiography, the first, Sowing in 1960, written when he was 80, the last The Journey not the Arrival Matters in 1969, shortly before his death at nearly 89. Some found the volumes quite discursive, but that is intrinsic to their charm and power. They do tell us what he accomplished, but they are primarily a meditative and wise commentary on his own life. In many ways they were his last testament, his statement of his beliefs. He was a relentless empiricist with little interest in philosophy and theories. But he would never have supported taking steps against whatever people happened to choose to believe unless it caused harm. He firmly believed in toleration and liberty, yet that did not prevent him from being judgmental. Each volume reveals his characteristic charm and the power of his prose and personality, a rigorous discursiveness that gives the work its special quality of free association, or better yet, of free conversation, combined with an extraordinary tough-mindedness. But the “wandering effect” is deceptive, for almost every word, every incident, is made to count. The last volume, The Journey not the Arrival Matters, is in many ways a Stoic’s ruminations about death. In 1967 he published a commonplace book, a collection of aphorisms for each day of the year, entitled A Calendar of Consolation: A Comforting Thought for Every Day in the Year. The title is deeply ironic, as most of the quotations are extremely bleak, the first being E. M. Forster’s “Life never gives us what we want at the moment that we consider appropriate” and the second from Jonathan Swift: “A nice man is a man of nasty ideas.” The last day of the year is represented by a stanza of Shelley’s “written in dejection near Naples.”

Yet there were many pleasures in life, which he enumerated in his last volume: “Eating and drinking, reading, walking and riding, cultivating a garden, games of every kind, animals of every kind, conversation, pictures, music, friendship, love, people” (Journey, 182–3). The pleasures are contrasted with his having spent so many hours trying to improve the world with so little positive result. Yet he had a strong commitment to life, to which he alludes in the sentimental recollection of having to drown a puppy when he was a child and its desperate attempt to stay alive. Though tough-minded himself, he had an intense sympathy and concern for all creatures, human and animal. Haunted as he undoubtedly was by Virginia’s suicide, he managed to spend the remaining decades productively and happily. Much of it was involved with dealing with the ever-growing interest in Virginia, her burgeoning popularity and influence after her death, but also continuing his own life of considerable accomplishment, enriched by his relationship with Trekkie.

Notes

1. Clive Bell to Lytton Strachey, 29 April 1914 (private collection).
2. LW, The Wise Virgins (1979 edn), 93.
3. Spotts, 168.
4. Ibid. 170.
5. VW, Letters, i. 496.
6. Spotts, 178.
7. 14 May 1912, quoted Lee, Virginia Woolf, 321.
8. VW, Letters, ii. 1n.
9. 17 April 1916, VW, Letters, ii. 90.
10. Spotts, 210.
11. VW to Margaret Llewelyn Davies, VW, Letters, ii. 151.
12. VW to Vanessa Bell, 22 May 1917, VW, Letters, ii. 155–6.
13. VW to Lady Ottoline Morrell, May 1917, VW, Letters, ii. 154.
14. Diary of Virginia Woolf (1977–84), i. 164.
15. VW, Letters, ii. 439–40.
16. VW, Diary, 3 May 1921, ii. 116. Fyfe quoted in footnote.
17. Monks House is alternately spelled Monk’s House. We have followed the spelling that Leonard employs in his autobiography. According to Glendinning, who also spells it without an apostrophe, the name was given by the previous owner, Jacob Verrall. It does not appear ever to have been occupied by monks.
18. VW, Letters, vi. 481.
19. Ibid. vi. 485.
20. Ibid. vi. 487.
21. Quoted in Glendinning, 332 (no source given).
22. Love Letters: Leonard Woolf and Trekkie Ritchie Parsons (1941–1968 (2001)), 69, 124.
23. Ibid. 233.

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Figure 1. Leonard Woolf by Barbara Strachey, 1938 (National Portrait Gallery)

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Figure 2. Leonard and Virginia, 1939 (Photo Gisèle Freund/IMEC/Fonds MCC)

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Figure 3. Leonard Woolf with pipe, c.1945 (Mary Evans Picture Library/SIGMUND FREUD COPYRIGHTS)

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Figure 4. Leonard with dogs, c.1965 (Jewish Chronicle/Heritage Image/age footstock)