I did not know Virginia Woolf well. We were not close personal friends, but I met her many times. She was so much part of the Bloomsbury scene when I was living in Bloomsbury – indeed, one felt she was the centre of it – that hardly a day went by in which I did not meet her, or hear her talked about by my friends and by almost everyone I met.
I saw her first of all at one of Ka Cox’s parties. At this time, 1916, I was sharing a flat with my brother, Philip, near Mecklenburgh Square in Bloomsbury. We had both just come down from Cambridge. Ka had rooms in one of the Inns, I think it was Lincoln’s Inn, and Philip took me to one of her evenings. Ka was a great hostess; she had many friends and by mixing them all together at her parties she helped to bridge the gap between the extremely highbrow Bloomsbury Group and the other perhaps more friendly people whom I knew.
I enjoyed myself enormously on this particular evening. It was the first time since moving to London that I had come across liberal conversation on all sorts of subjects. I met James Strachey, whom I came to know well and whom, a few years later, I married. I also met Carrington again, then an ex-Slade School student and an old friend of mine. James and Carrington already knew Virginia well and it was through them, at Ka’s party, that I first met and talked to her.
Virginia had then just recovered from a serious mental breakdown. I had been told that she had put on a lot of weight owing to the effects of her illness and to the medical treatment she had received afterwards. I was surprised to hear this, as I found it difficult to picture her as anything other than thin. When I saw her at Ka’s she was still a little plump but had already begun to lose weight. Perhaps the plumpness became her, because she was what I can only call absolutely exquisite.
She was like somebody belonging to another world and I was entranced by her. She had huge eyes which at the same time seemed hollow, almost as though set deep in a cavern. Her nose was aquiline, her eyebrows delicate and arched. They gave the impression that she was surprised at what she saw going on around her – in fact, at being there at all. She had a lovely musical voice, but even this did not alter the effect of not quite belonging to the world.
Some of her friends say that she moved rather clumsily, but I never had this impression. I would say that she was particularly graceful. Not in a worldly sense, because she did not have the manner of someone used to worldly society, but she moved easily and quickly. She seemed tall, probably taller than she was, because her clothes were long and elegant. They had the appearance of draperies and especially suited her; they made her seem to float as she walked. This floating, ethereal effect, however, did not apply to Virginia’s nature. She was not angelic in any way, in fact quite the opposite. I thought that she had a rather mocking spirit.
Her laugh could be a little malicious too, but unlike other members of the Bloomsbury Group she was malicious not behind one’s back but to one’s face. She made fun of people in public and used to weave ideas about them. They were fantasies which she knew to be fantasies. For instance, she would say to me, ‘Now Alix, I wonder what you are really like. I think you must be rather like a bat because I am sure you have a night life.’
There was another fantasy which she enjoyed elaborating, it made me feel rather uncomfortable but it was amusing and, I suppose, true in a way. She thought that I was not only a bat but a badger as well. Her reason for this, she said, was that when I got hold of an argument I never let go. I am not sure what the habits of badgers are, but I think she meant that if I made a point during a conversation and it was not answered in the way I expected it to be, then I became a badger. Her remark was true in that I found an argument interesting and did not like people wandering from the point.
Sometimes she said things that made people very angry, but nobody contradicted her vehemently. We felt that somehow she was too vulnerable, too easily injured mentally to lose one’s temper with. For my part, I felt that anything I might say in reply would be clumsy compared to her choice of words and, in any case, she never made me angry enough to want to try. It always seemed strange to me that the sensibility which was evident in all her writing was not really present in her daily life. People were not quite real to her and if her fancy ran away with her she might say almost anything.
Lytton Strachey could be rather malicious too, but there was a difference in that he was always aware of the person he was talking to. His rudeness was deliberate and his choice of words was calculated to annoy. With Virginia it was not so. To her, people were rather like cardboard figures; she did not expect them to mind at all. I know that Virginia showed great interest and curiosity about the character and doings of other people, but it seemed to me that her wish to know all about them sprang ultimately from a feeling of alienation from reality – an alienation which she was trying to overcome.
But this was only one aspect of Virginia’s character. She really had a great sense of humour and there was usually an air of immense gaiety about her. Lytton, in particular, could bring out these qualities in her. They had a great deal of badinage together and it was always amusing to hear them. I think it was prompted by the fact that they were a little frightened of each other. It was not quite the same as being jealous, because they respected each other’s work, but Lytton may have felt that Virginia’s art was in a sense more spiritual, more elevated in some ways than his.
Lytton is to me so readable that I find it hard to realize he is now classified as being a first-class writer. If ever I have nothing to do I pick up a book by him and become entertained at once. He had the sort of imagination that I can follow easily. He may have felt, because he was so readable, that he was a little more ordinary compared to Virginia and that she was more sublimated. It was something like that. I cannot be certain about Virginia’s point of view either, I did not know her well enough, but Lytton’s books were a great success and she may have felt put out to some extent by this. In any case, whatever the cause, the badinage between them was always amusing and one knew that underlying it all there was a deep mutual affection.
Whenever I saw Leonard and Virginia together I noticed how marvellous he was with her. He completely arranged his life and hers so that she would have the minimum of mental strain. I think she needed someone as firmly anchored mentally as he was and I am sure that he was the only person who could have kept her going. At a party or among a group of friends he would provide the backbone of the conversation and then be happy to let her ornament it if she wanted to.
Leonard was much more straightforward to talk to, but I think that he could be rather severe at times. Not with Virginia, of course, but in his manner with other people. One felt that he never liked being contradicted very much, and if one tried to put a personal view to him other than his own then he would look rather grim and not answer. Virginia used to tease him a little on these occasions, but he always let her do or say anything she liked as long as he thought it would not damage her peace of mind.
I had the impression that Virginia’s sister, Vanessa, was very important to her too. I saw them both from time to time in London and at Asheham or Charleston. I noticed that she always looked to Vanessa for a feeling of security, even during her married life. Vanessa was very different from Virginia, she was much more placid. She was beautiful too, but not in so ethereal a way; her nose was shorter and her face more oval. These differences made her good looks more classical.
Leonard and Virginia loved the peace of the Sussex countryside. They very often took their friends to stay with them at Asheham, the small country house they had rented near Lewes. When they were there Leonard encouraged her to do a certain amount of domestic work, such as cooking. He thought it was good for her to relax from the strain of writing. He rather laid out, wherever they were, what her working hours should be and her hours of recreation. Asheham was a particularly lovely house in which to relax at week-ends. It had a dreamy quality about it, almost haunting. It was much more enchanting, I thought, than Monks House which they eventually moved to in Rodmell.
Near the end of the war, I think it was in 1917, Leonard and Virginia asked me if I would like to work at the Hogarth Press. It was to set up type for their second publication, Prelude. I had just finished reading French and English literature at Newnham and did not know exactly what type of work I wanted to take up. I had no intention of writing literary books at all, but I accepted their offer because I thought it would be an introduction to literary work of some sort.
On my first day at the Hogarth Press I sat on a high chair in a top room and was shown, by Leonard and Virginia, how to do the setting up. I had to pick out tiny pieces of type with forceps and place them face up into a metal frame. After I had slowly and painstakingly grasped the idea they said, ‘Well, we’ll leave you to it now’, and then, to my surprise, they went out for a walk. I did the setting up for some hours until an awful boredom came over me. I began to think that it was no introduction to literary work, it was more like a dead end to any career. I knew that I would never be interested enough to do the type-setting quickly or well. When they came back I told them, to their astonishment, that I could not possibly carry on, it was much too boring. As far as I can remember, my introduction to a literary life lasted no longer than one day.
This incident did not make any difference to our friendship. I saw them again many times, particularly when James and I moved into Gordon Square. We had taken a large house so that we could share it with many of our friends. None of us had much money in those days and we tended to herd together. Lytton, Carrington and Ralph Partridge had rooms there at various times; Lydia Lopokova, before her marriage to Maynard Keynes, was living in a flat on the ground floor. Leonard and Virginia came to see our friends as well as to see us.
In 1920 James and I went to live in Vienna. This meant that all the interests we shared with the people we knew in Bloomsbury changed in a way that affected us considerably. James was studying psychology in Vienna as one of Freud’s pupils. I studied with him and afterwards we stayed on to translate some of Freud’s clinical papers. Our new friends and acquaintances were nearly all analysts. They were not essentially interested in art or literature and I began to feel cut off from our Bloomsbury associations.
When we finally returned to England, the situation was still the same. James deplored the change, too. He was sure that Lytton felt we had entered a world so different from his own that he would never be able to share it with us. Our new world, governed as it was by a knowledge of the unconscious mind, was alien not only to Lytton; it frightened a lot of people and some of them were a little contemptuous of it.
Even Leonard seemed to be on the defensive. I remember one instance which occurred quite recently. He had made a speech to a number of analysts at an anniversary the Hogarth Press was celebrating and, afterwards, was talking to me about emotions – or, more precisely, the lack of them. He said there was one emotion which he never felt – I forget which particular one it was now – and I said to him casually, ‘How do you know you don’t in your unconscious mind?’ I thought we would have an interesting discussion about it, but instead he looked rather hurt and moved away.
James often wondered why Leonard did not persuade Virginia to see a psychoanalyst about her mental breakdowns. There were analysts with sufficient knowledge to understand her illness in those days. Although this knowledge was available, I did not agree with James that it would be of help to Virginia. Leonard, I think, might well have considered the proposition and decided not to let her be psychoanalysed. Her form of illness was probably what is called manic-depressive; analysis can improve some people suffering from this, but it is not always a certain method. It is possible that something in her mind might have become too strongly stirred up and she would have been made worse. Certain types of patient – for instance, common or garden hysterics – often become wrought up to a considerable degree at some stage in their analysis, and I think that with Virginia’s very parlous mental balance it might have been too much for her. Today, of course, now that so much is known about drugs, she would receive very different treatment. At that time, sedatives were mainly used, and I think that if you give enough sedatives to be effective then there comes a point at which the patient ceases to exist as an individual.
Virginia’s imagination, apart from her artistic creativeness, was so interwoven with her fantasies – and indeed with her madness – that if you had stopped the madness you might have stopped the creativeness too. It seemed to me quite a reasonable judgment for Leonard to have made then, if he did so. It may be preferable to be mad and be creative than to be treated by analysis and become ordinary.
Virginia’s breakdowns were brought on partly by exhaustion after finishing a novel, but very largely by the fact that she had intensified her fantasies while writing it, to such an extent that they had probably become uncontrollable. It is likely that this tendency was born in her and, the more she concentrated on her work, the more exaggerated it became.
Virginia was absolutely devoted to Leonard and realized that he had given up – a lot for her – perhaps not given up, but he had always arranged his life for her benefit. In 1941, after finishing her last novel, Virginia felt that she was ‘going mad again’. These were her own words. She did not want to go on living because she was sure that she was ruining Leonard’s life and so broke away, as it were, from his devoted protection and killed herself.
Virginia did not talk about her breakdowns to us; we only knew through Leonard’s continuous care of her that from time to time she needed rest. Also, she very seldom mentioned her work. But there is one discussion I had with her which I particularly remember. We were comparing poetry to prose. She said that the goodness in prose was a higher goodness than that in poetry. She maintained that prose had its own rhythm, much more subtle, much less evident and quite different from poetic rhythm. She meant, of course, the poetry of her day in which the rhythm was more obvious. I was very much impressed by this. Whether she was only playing with an idea, I am not sure, because she loved starting such ideas.
I have always found Virginia’s flights of imagination in her work difficult to follow. Mine do not go along the same lines as hers, but this does not stop me from admiring them. I can see her imagination ‘leave the ground’, as Leonard has said, and I can marvel at it, but I cannot really enjoy it. I think that what she wrote was very beautiful – to use an old-fashioned word – but it is as though I am too earthbound to be able to appreciate it fully. In spite of this, it is not possible to think of Virginia as an ordinary writer whom one might or might not like. She was always obviously something very special.