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Excerpts From The Diary Of Virginia Woolf, Volume V Author(s): VIRGINIA WOOLF, Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew

McNeillie Reviewed work(s): Source: The American Poetry Review, Vol. 13, No. 5 (SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984), pp. 8-12 Published by: American Poetry Review Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27777437 . Accessed: 27/08/2012 08:19
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In addition

to her novels, Brace

Virginia Woolf Inc.

was

the author

of A Room

of One's

Own

and

Three Guineas.

THE DIARY OF VIRGINIA WOOLF, VOLUME V. DIARY ? Excerpted from


Harcourt Jovanovich,

1984 byQuentin Bell and Angelica Garnett.To be published by

VIRGINIA Excerpts Virginia edited assisted by

WOOLF: From Woolf, Anne by Andrew The Volume Olivier Diary V Bell McNeillie
one rockets between private & comes.1 But privately?how are skin his bluer, eyes pinker, & he can walk without pain. public?his Lydia has devoted herself to the treatment. They think Nessa suppresses have things out. Never will have anything out. But the[n] Clive?wont is serf like spirit, natural in the cir side?a L[ydia]. always on husbands cumstances. My allegiance is to N. & D. as usual: but I like all my friends not the taste of Tilton. ?though hot: birds a chirp: butterflies. Roasting I am reading Dickens; by way of a refresher. How he lives; not writes: both a virtue & a fault. Like seeing something emerge; without con taining mind. Yet the accuracy & even sometimes the penetration?into for & Miss Price & the farmer [in Nicholas Miss Nickleby] Squeers even if I to. I cant Then critical mind, try dip my example?remarkable. of for that quick amalgamation I'm reading Sevign?, professionally books that I intend. In future, I'm to write quick, intense, short books, & never be tied down. This is the way to keep off the settling down & more theories?For refrigeration of old age. And to flout all preconceived & more I doubt if enough is known to sketch even probable lines, all too emphatic & conventional. lives the last of the LI. Davies brothers is dead; & Margaret Maurice, lives too carefully of life, I used to feel.Why drag on, always measuring & testing one's little bit of strength & setting it easy tasks so as to ac cumulate years?2 I'm reading Rochefoucauld. the real point of my little Thats Also a pen?following itmakes me read?with the scent: & Brown book?that read the good books; not the slither ofMSS & the stridency of the young word expresses callow bills agape & chattering?for chawking?the I take at need. So if I had any time?but perhaps sympathy. Chaucer next week will be more solitudinous?I should, if itweren't for the war glide my way up & up in to that exciting layer so rarely lived in: where like the aeroplane propellers. my mind works so quick it seems asleep; But I must retype the last Clifton passage; & so be quit for tomorrow & clear the decks for Cambridge. Rather good, I expect it is: condensed & moulded. war ifwar
*****

Of

entries, excerpted from the final volume of Virginia Woolf s diary, cover the period from April to September 1939. They chronicle rhese the events of a time important both for their author and for her country: amid the negotiations and false hopes forpeace which preceded England's 3, Virginia Woolf had set entry into war with Germany on September herself a strict regimen to complete her biography of art critic Roger Fry, while writing at intervals the first draft o/Pointz Hall, the work which would become Between the Acts, her last novel The characters who people the diary are many, some famous, others not: the author's sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Clive Bell, and their son Quentin; the artist Duncan Grant, with whom Vanessa worked from about 1914 until her death in 1961 and by whom she had a daughter, in 1918; John Lehmann Angelica, of theHogarth Press; Mabel Haskins, theWoolfs' domestic; artist and patron of the arts Helen Anrep, and her son Igor; composer, author and feminist Dame Ethel Smyth; and the economist John Maynard Keynes and his wife, Lydia Lopokova. Monks and Virginia Woolf s Sussex Leonard House, home, is the primary setting for the events described At the time of the first entry, the Woolf s are settling back there after tea-time visits the two previous days to Charleston, Vanessa's estate neigh house, and to Tilton, theKeynes' boring it. 11 April Tuesday How much identity, to use my own private slang, is needed to sur mount a little hillock: for instance, Lydia on Lappin & Lapinova yester day at Tilton; & Tilton's comfort, & quiet; all seem tomake it harder for me to get on with revising Roger. Revising Roger at the rate of 2 weeks to a chapter will take me 3 months. Then there's the war. The finest Easter possible has this purple background. We wait like obedient chil dren to hear what we shall be told when Parliament meets on Thursday. At Tilton we talked first medicine; Maynard's drastic cure by Plesch; then politics; five minutes left for Tom's play. Every day, save 2, some thing's turned up. Private peace is not accessible. Miss Robins tomorrow. even Maynard, Then Charleston. Then L.P. here. Maynard, cant find save that much that's hopeful now that Italy has nipped off Albania theres a unity of hatred. The men women children dogs &c. are solid for

Friday 28 April
Very much screwed in the brain by trying to get Roger's marriage chapter into shape; & also warmed by L. saying last night that he was as to which would mind the fonder of me than I of him. A discussion other's death most. He said he depended more upon our common life than I did. He gave the garden as an instance. He said I lived more in a world of my own. I go for long walks alone. So we argued. I was very happy to think I was so much needed. Its strange how seldom one feels this: yet 'life in common' is an immense reality. For instance, I cant go to 1. I have a little tem The Wreckers tonight with Ethel Smyth because: perature: 2: (& more serious) I'd rather stay at home with L. Its no use fighting against this. Its one of the facts.3 Oh such a dismal tea with Mrs W. yesterday. She is completely lifeless an old weed on a rock. And always recurring to the complaints. ?like That was how, by the way, we came to discuss our deaths. L. said he hoped he would predecease me. Her lonely old age is so intolerable. But its lonely, he said, because she has adopted an unreal attitude. Lived in a & sentim[ent]al make believe. Sees herself as the adored matriarch, the unreality of all forces the children to adopt her attitude. Hence of hers has also shut her off from all other relations. This obsession care for any impersonal interests: doesn't music, books. thing?art, Wont have a companion or reader; must depend on her sons. Constant inference innuendoes therefore about the goodness of Herbert & Harold; that L. neglects her; hints that I have taken him away from his family; absorbed him in mine. So in that crowded pink hot room we sat for 2 hours trying to beat up subjects for conversation. And there were awful silences, & our heads filled with wool; & all was dusty, dreary, old, & hopeless. Yet she followed us out on to the stair & made L. swear that she looks better? "Sure Len? Sure I look better?" as if she still clings hard to life & cant be removed. So to walk in the hail inKen. Gardens; & see the PAGE 8 THEAMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

cherry trees livid & spring.

lurid in the yellow

storm haze. Very

cold winter

THE GENERATION OF 2000 CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN POETS


EDITED BY

Friday

28 July

I'm The use of this book is to write things out, hence: the Greenhouse. so unhappy. A portmanteau word. Analysed: headache; guilt; remorse . . .The house, L.'s house, ... oh dear, his hobby?his peach tree?to be can so much. Oh me. of How I I mind down because sensible? get pulled v: L.'s wish. And dear?the conflict?the is it worth this ugliness: I to have said go ahead, when he came to me in the misery? ?oughtn't Bath this morning? The men had come?Shd. they put it up? I said you must decide. So he sent them away & its to be pulled down. How to live it . . . & cant read or write? over? Forget he says: but I shant... I have composed myself, momentarily, by reading through this years I think shows one a diary. Thats a use for it then. It composes. Why? in an inch. Head relieved anyhow by stretch, when one's grubbing reading. Odd that I can read here without repulsion. Why? My own mind I suppose claws me when others slip. I forget that we came down; & its been fine, rather; lovely on the marsh. Hay cutting. Figures spaced on the marsh. Old Bob thanks me for my letter. Much hurt by Stephen's review. A letter from Susie dull at Quebec. Gide's diaries, recom Tweedsmuir?deadly Reading mask Eddie An mended death [Sackville-West]. by poor interesting knotted book. Its queer that diaries now pullulate. No one can settle to a work of art. Comment only. That explains but scarcely excuses Peter Lucas; & his exhibition of Prudence.4 Shd. one judge people by what they write? Shd. people show their naked skins? Eddie shows his death mask son [omission]; nor can dissect I forgot my shudder at Helen's ?Dear, my mix up of the debt, the dislike of Igor's great fleshy mouth. (I'm Green whistling to keep up my spirits this very strained grey day?the house morning.) I must now carry off lunch. What annoys me is L.'s in fathering the guilt on me. His highhandedness. I see the adroitness temptation. "Oh you dont want it?so I submit." This spoilt bowls last night. We shied them at the Jack. Yet so happy in our reconciliation. "Do you ever think me beautiful now?" "The most beautiful of women"? 7August [Bank Holiday]

WILLIAM HEYEN
$14.95, paper "An impressive gathering of younger American poets, distinguished by the care with which they and their poems have been selected by their properly idiosyncratic editor who believes in the seriousness and relevancy of his generation's poetry and here Weiss proves it" ?Theodore . .a strong, vigorous anthology??Publishers Judith Minty Robert Morgan Joyce Carol Robert Marge Stanley William Robert Charles Dave Mark Michael Oates Weekly

Monday

I am now going to make the rash & bold experiment of breaking off, to write here for 10 minutes from condensing Vision & Design,5 instead of revising, as I ought, my mornings grind. Oh yes. I thought of several things to write about. Not exactly diary. Reflections. Thats the fashionable dodge. Peter Lucas & Gide both at it. Neither can settle to creative art (I think, sans Roger, I could). Its the comes handy in times like these. comment?the daily interj ection?that I too feel it. But what was I thinking? I have been thinking about Censors. How visionary figures admonish ' us. Thats clear in an MS I'm reading. If I say this So & So will think me . .will think me Bourgeois. All books now seem to If that. sentimental. me surrounded by a circle of invisible censors. Hence their selfconscious It wd. be worth while trying to discover what ness, their restlessness. have them? I doubt it. I read they are at the moment. Did Wordsworth its unconsciousness, its lack of Its stillness, Ruth before breakfast. struck me. As if its concentration & the resulting "beauty" distraction, over the object in order the mind must be allowed to settle undisturbed to secrete the pearl. Thats an idea for an article. The figurative expression is that all the surroundings of the mind have come much closer. A child crying in the field brings poverty: my comfort: tomind. Ought I to go to the village sports? Ought thus breaks in tomy contemplation. Oh & I thought, as I was dressing, how interesting it would be to describe the approach of age, & the gradual coming of death. As people describe love. To note every symptom of failure: but why failure? To treat age as an experience that is different from the others; & to detect every one of the gradual stages towards death which is a tremendous as birth is. at least in its approaches, experience, & not as unconscious I must now return tomy grind. I think rather refreshed. Clive at Cn yesterday, with an enormous white jersey which he patted & prodded from time to time. A little testy about his room. in [the] house. off with the worst I needn't say I've been palmed were put All books his Duncan & admiration. said, Desiring sympathy, in order by the others. Rather an elderly tea party. Q. away.6
*****

Ai Wendell Raymond Lucille Norman Berry Carver Clifton Dubie

Gregory Orr
Phillips Piercy Plumly Pitt Root Siegel Simic Strand Waters Wright Smith

Tess Gallagher

Louise Gl?ck
Albert Michael Robert William Paul Goldbarth S. Harper Hass Heyen

Faye Kjcknosway Mariani Matthews McHugh McPherson

William Heather Sandra

CK. Williams Charles

Photographs and introductory prose pieces by each poet


included. Discounts for course adoption.

Wednesday

30 August

THE OF

Order from:Persea Books 225 Lafayette St. New York,NY 10012

We are met: yesterday. Negotiations. Not at war yet. Par[liamen]t are up & down. Very black the Broadcast firm.A pause. L. & I discussing ?then less so. L. pessimistic more than I am this morning. He thinks that H[itier], ismaking up his mind to spring. Raging voices began again last night in German. Last years mad voice heard again, as if he were lashing himself up. At the same time, a reply of 8 pages has been sent last night to the Cabinet. The French are out of it this time.7 I'm dull headed. Spreading my mind out to synthesise the last chapter. its a good thing as a distraction. Also wrote a synopsis of a story Well, for Chabrun [Chambrun]. Will they really order 3,000 words on that SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 PAGE 9

2000
POETS AMERICAN

ONTARIO REVIEW PRESS


ismy of 2000. Enclosed Send me a copy of The Generation check (or money order) in the amount of $16.45 (includes $1.50 for postage and handling). NAME _

WILLIAM HEYEN.

ADDRESS_ CITY_STATE_ZIP _

Platonic

to "A poet tends as a matter of course some narcissism about his work. Why otherwise should those bundles he keep about of old worksheets him but

in thedwindling hope thatsome line


rejected from the old poem... for the new? Why, be rescued may indeed, an to set down

flimsy sketch for $200? Seems impossible. Nobody keeps engagements or answers letters. A kind of block & suspension. No furniture unpacked. We go up tomorrow. the light is very evanescent?shining?weather. Very Brilliant?yes, one wd say indif hot. To Lewes about shoes &c. All the tradespeople ferent. Question of buying bicycles. Lots of bicycles. But why? Oh d'you think there'll be a war? Now I must listen to the one 'clock. Red faced boys in khaki guarding Rodmell Hill. The soldiers in the . . . village. Otherwise quiet & usual eno'
* * * * *

Scripts DONALD JUSTICE by

tempted of the composition of one of that I sometimes his poems? suspect account all such nothing affection poem, accounts... more stem from innocent than a mere

should

he be

Sunday

3 September

for the first idea of the and as yet un which conception and becomes dis

that pure

compromised shrinks somehow

in the writing_I myself am figured not sure that Iwould take as much itpossible inwriting were pleasure idea with per to commit the original to paper, nor am I at fect spontaneity be as all sure that such poems would as one might like to be interesting labor. Even own so it is true, at least inmy that the conception seem more usually...

lieve in the midst of the longnightof

experience, of a poem does

than the finished impressive, grander, which almost always product, a series of compromises represents desire and necessity." between ? Donald Justice paper $7.95

Photo by Joseph Levy

Collected
Foreword by William Meredith Glaysher

This is I suppose certainly the last hour of peace. The time limit is out at 11. PM to broadcast at 11.15. L. & I "stood by" 10 minutes ago. Why repeat what'U be in all the papers? We argued. L. said Greenwood was last night.81 argued its "they" as the PM in the House right?forcing what? L. usual who do this. We as usual remain outside. Ifwe win,?then are what they the Germans, vanquished, said its better to win; because are. Mus[solini']s last try, a try on. All the formulae are now a mere I suppose the bombs are So we chopped words. surface for gangsters. A fine sunny morning here; apples Warsaw. falling on rooms like this in came tomy regret last night. Atmosphere at once stiff& shining. Mabel come. Nessa L. No & Angelica children Mustn't mind, says yet prickly. over as I took up the book yesterday. 14 in house: 3 children dumped. has given Q. a job as tractor driver.9 This is a relief. No one Maynard to fight. Rumours knows how we're beginning. A flurry of people in Lewes the yesterday: flight of cars with beds fairly thick. shopping rather empty. People buying stuff forwindows. Little girl says If Shops we have a chink they'll spy us out. Flint [grocer] cross. Many of them if half unhappy half resentful. No excitement visible. M[abel]. that?as said train very empty. I believe little exact notes are more interesting than reflections?the only reflection is that this is bosh & stuffing com pared with the reality of reading say Tawney; writing, & re-writing one sentence of Roger.10 So this experiment proves the reality of the mind. to do Two hours sewing [black-out] curtains. An anodyne, pleasant a so to too read & One's but tired, emotionally, tepid insipid. something: concentrate. Church bells ringing. last night?cdn't page. I tried Tawney from? Breaky Bottom. Mrs Ebbs carrying a sheaf of gladioli. Where now ever come to & then send lovely flowers for but church, They hardly ifwe had a church? The relief of having some the church.11 Question: common outside interest or belief. If it were a belief ... Q. & A. to eat John's grouse. now about 10.33. Its the unreality of force that muffles every thing. Itys to be entirely genuine & Not to attitudinise is one reflection. Nice a obscure. Then of course I shall have to work to make money. That's I suppose take on some writing for comfort. Write articles forAmerica. some society. Keep the Press going. Of course no beds or heat on at 37. in So far plenty of petrol. Sugar rationed. So I shall now go in. Nothing that strikes me out of the way?& the garden or meadows certainly I
cant write.12

Prose
HAYDEN ROBERT by

Edited

by Frederick

Wednesday Our

6 Sep tember

"The

destructive

forces

at work

in

the twentieth obsessions sition,

the crises and century, tran in violent of a world for much and that is nega arts to quest of the the other the frenetic

account

tive in poetry

day. Chauvinism, the subordination for novelty, aesthetic ? these

to the politically utilitarian are, clearly, manifestations of decadence. They are not, however, the only elements there is catabolism, abolism. despair' poetry discernible. there is also If an

If there exists

and rejection, that affirms the humane

a 'poetry of there is also a and

spiritual. Our attempts a new, time to achieve of God, Photo byBob Kalmbach stance man, civilization to the work ?

at the present a larger vision

give sub of many outstand Robert Hayden $7.95

ing poets."

paper

ofMichiganPress The University


Dept. CF P.O. Box 1104 Ann Arbor,Michigan 48106

first air raid warning at 8.30 this morning. A warbling that grad insinuates itself as I lay in bed. So dressed & walked on the terrace ually All clear. During the shut. Breakfast. with L. Sky clear. All cottages interval a raid on Southwark. No news. came on Monday.13 Rather like a sea voyage. Forced The Hepworths conversation. Boredom. All meaning has run out of everything. Scarcely worth reading papers. The BBC gives any news the day before. Empti ness. Inefficiency. I may as well record these things. My plan is to force my brain to work on Roger. But Lord this is the worst of all my life's I note that force is the dullest of experiences. It means experiences. one & cold Endless gets interrup only bodily feelings: feeling torpid. tions. We have done the curtains. We have carried coals &c into the women & children. The expectant mothers cottage for the 8 Battersea are all quarrelling. took the car to be Some went back yesterday. We hooded, met Nessa, were driven to tea at Charleston. Yes, its an empty I expect I am. Going world now. Am I a coward? Physically meaningless is tomorrow I expect frightens me. At a pinch eno' adrenalin to London secreted to keep one calm. But my brain stops. I took up my watch this morning & then put it down. Lost. That kind of thing annoys me. No doubt one can conquer this. But my mind seems to curl up & become undecided. To cure this one had better read a solid book like Tawney, an are travelling books inBrighton. exercise of the muscles. The Hepworths Its the gnats & flies that settle on noncombatants. Shall I walk? Yes. feels that the killing This war has begun in cold blood. One merely has to be set in action. So far, The Athena has been sunk.14 It machine seems entirely meaningless?a perfunctory slaughter, like taking a jar in one hand, a hammer in the other. Why must this be smashed? Nobody knows. This feeling is different from any before. And all the blood has been let out of common life. No movies or theatres allowed. No letters, "Reviewing" rejected by Atlantic.15 No except strays from America. friends write or ring up. Yes, a long sea voyage, with strangers making seems the closest I conversation, & lots of small bothers & arrangements can get. Of course all creative power is cut off. Perfect summer weather. [Later.] Its like an invalid who can look up & take a cup of tea?Sud PAGE 10 THE AMERICAN POETRY REVIEW

denly one can take to the pen with relish. Result of a walk in the heat, clearing the fug & setting the blood working. This book will serve to accumulate notes, the fruit of such quickenings. And for the 100th time I idea ismore real than any amount of war misery. And what repeat?any one's made for. And the only contribution one can make?This little I tell pitter patter of ideas ismy whiff of shot in the cause of freedom?so myself, thus bolstering up a figment?a phantom: recovering that sense of something pressing from outside which consolidates the mist, the
non-existent.

I see Priestley consolidating his idea of himself too. Begins his article, to receive refugees &c. . . . thus bringing before himself P. the Helping active, the helper in the cause of common life: & so doubtless releasing his rush of ideas. But I dont like P.'s figment, necessary as itmay be.161 in the sun baked marsh where I saw one conceived the idea, walking clouded yellow, ofmaking an article out of these 15 odd diaries. This will be an easy slope of work: not the steep grind of Roger. But shall I ever have a few hours to read in? I must. Tonight the Raid has diminished on Portsmouth; on Scarborough, from a raid on Southwark; to an on we E. the Tomorrow Coast without go up. attempt damage. 11 September Monday I have just read 3 or 4 Characters of Theophrastus, stumbling from Greek to English, & may as well make a note of it.17 Trying to anchor my mind on Greek. Rather successful. As usual, how Greek sticks, darts, eels in& out! No Latin wd have noted that a boor remembers his loans in the middle of the night. The Greek has his eye on the object. But its a & Plato. But long distance one has to roll away to get at Theophrastus worth the effort. shrill nagging woman; Mrs Nicholls a great frost. A painted metallic with a mind that pecks the same rotten apple again?this side, that side. full of her shoddy Her daughter: & her future: & Tigger the Dalmatian: for raids or trousers? At contacts; her cocktails: shall I buy a housecoat one for doesnt like coins to turn at 8 she left but us; am, last, depressed, over. Much tea: Charleston out false. Of course she ruined Sunday grumbling from Clive at their inmates. Nessa who is making a chicken house is philosophic. But she compares the Grants & Breretons.18 on Thursday. To London Pitiless fine weather. Over London a light ballons. Very empty streets. A curious strained silence. spotted veil?the At the Press, Miss P[erkins, clerk], listening for Sirens. So I listened. Sat in the sunny window. Cases all empty but piled up. Mabel & I laid carpets. came in. His great joints seemed to with John. Stephen Sandwiches settle to crack. Eyes stared. Is writing reams about himself. Can't after sunset a mediaevel city of darkness & brigandage. poetry. London

knocked over the head. The darkness they say is the worst of it. The air raid had been very trying?at 2.30. John had drunk a glass ofwater & sat in the cellar. No one can control their nerves. So I was glad to be on the road home. No raids yet. Poland being conquered, & then?we shall be attended to. I've offered to write for the NS. I dont know ifwisely: but it's best to have a job, & I dont think I can stand aloof with comfort at the moment. So my reasons are half in half. Intolerable tedium.?no papers: no letters; & all this made up talk with Nicholls. Cooler now. Saturday 23 September Meanwhile Poland has been gobbled up. Russia & Germany divide it. An aircraft carrier has been sunk. But there have been no raids.19 And said impulsively that I would write for the NS by way of using I?having written 2 & used up every morning to faculties my patriotically?have the margin. Also people have been staying here ... oh such a fritter & Miss weekends with Mrs Nicholls, Perkins, Miss agitation?solid Woodward?both very good samples: public house life & greengrocers. over the surface of the days. And now I've scudded So distracted us on so we is & shall be lip sore & addle headed. Then alone; Stephen theres John on Monday. are wilting. Theres no petrol Civilisation has shrunk. The Amenities so we are our with 1915. And back again today: bicycles at Asheham once more L. & I calculate our income. Can I give A. her allowance? How I've offered to much must we both earn? Once more we are journalists. do an article, required by The Times, on artists & the crisis; offered others. My old age of independence is thus in danger. But in fact its hard to keep aloof & do my books. Theres a pressure about an article?even White & Bewick?that keeps one absorbed. But how sick of 1500 words I shall get!20 by Wednesday Then one begins stinting paper, sugar, butter, buying little hoards of matches. The elm tree that fell has been cut up. This will see us through 2 from winters. They say the war will last 3 years. We had an SOS was it he cdn't say on the He came for the night. What Kingsley. telephone? Nothing. Should h? come out in favour of peace? Cha[mberlai]n has the terms in his pocket. All in the know say we are beaten. Troops to bomb the docks?will he means lead guard the East end. A bomb?& to revolution. He was happy?but chuckling, quick & low, like a delirious bird. Always seeing himself, & pleased to see himself a martyr. Nothing of the least importance is said though in his article. A sensationalist?his mind rotted with hot coterie talk?all pitted & soft as a hot dis[h]cloth? unreal. Yet I rather liked him?a Celt.21 steaming, unwholesome, I forget who else has been. Nessa painting L.22 Drove to Newhaven yes

Mrs

Connolly told by a taxi man he had just been robbed & [Cyril]

The

Diary

of

Virginia

Woolf

Paper,

$3.95

Paper,

$5.95

Paper,

$8.95

Paper,

$7.95

?>
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 1984 PAGE 11

HARCOURT

BRACE

JOVANOVICH

ships terday to buy plaster of Paris for Q. & we saw the 2 hospital painted green & white in the harbour. Many games of bowls. No reading. article reading. But this must be stopped, as I'm No Theophrastus?only now up to time with my little Hutterers; & thank God old Mabel who is London no like one of the clammy kitchen flies, goes back on Tuesday. worse, she says than anywhere. An opinion I encourage.

tuberculosis.

10. R.H. Tawney (1880-1962), economic historian and social critic; his most influential book was Religion and theRise of Capitalism (1926). 11. Breaky Bottom is an isolated farm in a fold of the downs west ofRodmell. 12. The Prime Minister broadcast to the nation at 11:15 a.m. on Sunday 3 Sep tember: as Germany had not replied to his Government's ultimatuum that their forces be withdrawn fromPoland by 11 a.m. that day, he announced that Great
Britain Monks was

Notes
1. Alive at last to the dangers ofHitler's military and territorial ambitions in Eastern Europe, a disillusioned Mr. Chamberlain announced on 31 March that Britain and France would guarantee support to Poland should her independence be threatened (which itwas); when Parliament reassembled on 13 April?after the invasion and annexation of Albania by Mussolini's troops on Good Friday born Dr. Janos Plesch (1879-1957) gave up his practice in Germany when the Nazis came to power, and settled inEngland; he had treated Keynes since 1937 and became a friend as well as his doctor. (1865-1939) was the third. 3. Ethel Smyth's opera The Wreckers was given its last performance of the
season at Sadler's Wells this 2. Margaret Llewelyn Davies, now seventy-eight, had six brothers; Maurice (7 April)?this guarantee was extended to Greece and Roumania. The Hungarian

13. Barbara
House

already from

at war 4-7

with

Hepworth

from the Hogarth


September.

Germany.

Press

and her sister stayed at

4. VW had written to R.C. Trevelyan to thank him for his Collected Works, Volume 1: Poems (1939) which had been disparagingly reviewed by Stephen [New Statesman and Nation] of 22 July 1939. Lady Spender in the NS&N Tweedsmuir's letter of 14 July fromThe Citadel, theGovernor-General's Quebec Monks House Papers, Sussex. Andr? Gide's Journal 1885-1939 residence, is in the (1939).With the titleJournal under theTerror, F.L. Lucas in 1938 published what he called "the unedited truth of . . .day-to-day impressions of a year [1937] in
modern Prudence's From November Europe." nervous breakdown. onwards it contains references to his wife

evening.

14. On 3 September the liner Athenia, bound forCanada with 1400 passengers and crew, was torpedoed by a German submarine and sunk 250 miles west of the Hebrides; 112 lives were lost. 15. VW finished writing her essay "Reviewing" in June 1939; it was pub lished, with a dissenting note by LW, as a Hogarth Sixpenny Pamphlet on 2 November 1939, but did not appear inAmerica. 16. See J.B. Priestly in the News Chronicle, 4 September 1939: "Two-ton Annie": "We had been asked to lend a hand at receiving and distributing the patients, who had been evacuated fromPortsmouth hospitals. So there I was, at the end of Ryde Pier, watching the sick folk arrive ..." 17. Theophrastus, a pupil of Plato and ofAristotle; his "Characters" consist of brief delineations ofmoral types. 18. Norah Nicholls of the Hogarth Press office staff stayed at Monks House
from

5. i.e.: VW's heading to Chapter 10 ofRoger Fry, which deals with his book of this title. 6. Clive in fact had three of the best rooms inCharleston, and a private bath
room.

7. Since the signing of the German-Soviet Pact there had been intense diplo matic activity in an attempt to avert Hitler's intended attack on Poland and, on his part, to prevent Britain and France fulfilling their obligations towards her. 8. The House of Commons met on Saturday 2 September; Chamberlain, still hoping to avoid a European war, reported that Mussolini had proposed an
immediate cessation of hostilities and a conference . . .Arthur Greenwood

(1880-1954), Deputy Leader of theLabour Party, urged to "speak for England," insisted that the time for compromise was past and that England's duty was to
honour

9. Quentin Bell had been rejected for military service because of his history of

her guarantee

of aid

to Poland.

household at Charleston Brereton and her daughter formed part of Vanessa's towards the end of the 1914-18 war; now it was a refuge from the expected dangers of war forDuncan Grant's mother and her sister Violet McNeil. 19. Invading German forces from the West and Russian from the East over ran Poland and met at Brest-Litovsk on 18 September; by the end of themonth the partition of the country secretly agreed in theGerman-Soviet Pact was effec tive and ratified. HMS Courageous was torpedoed and sunk in the Bristol Channel on 17 September with a loss of over 500 men. 20. Nothing came of the proposed Times article; that on "White's Selborne" on 30 September 1939; that on the artist William was published in theNS&N Bewick (1795-1866), based on his Life and Letters ... (1871) edited by Thomas Landseer, and J.G. Tait's 1939 edition of the first volume of SirWalter Scott's Journal (1825-26), appeared under the title "Gas at Abbotsford" in theM><?iV"on 27 January 1940. 21. Kingsley Martin came toMonks House for the night on 19 September; his NS&N of 23 September, "Brest-Litovsk Revenged," makes leading article in the no allusion to the alleged peace terms proposed to theAllies by Hitler following ' the "collapse' ofPoland?which were not made public until the end of themonth. 22. Vanessa Bell's finished portrait of LW hung at Monks House until his death, when itwas given to the National Portrait Gallery by Mrs. Ian Parsons; the preliminary study is in a private collection in Chicago.

Saturday

to Monday

morning.

Julian

and

Quentin's

governess

Mrs.

Once I gave a talk on Garcia Lorca, years after his death, and someone in the audience asked me: "In your 4Oda a Federico Garcia Lorca/ why do you say that theypaint hospitals blue for him?" "Look, my friend," I replied, "asking a poet that kind of question is like asking a woman her age. Poetry is not static matter but a flowing current that quite often escapes from the hands of the creator himself. His raw material consists of elements that are and at the same time are not, of things that exist and do not exist. Anyway, Fll try to give you an honest answer. For me, blue is themost beautiful color. It suggests space as man sees it, like the dome of the sky, rising toward liberty and joy. Federico's presence, his personal magic, instilled a mood of joy around him. My line probably means that even hospitals, even the sadness of hospitals, could be transformed by the magic spell of his influence and suddenly changed into beautiful blue buildings." from Pablo Neruda's Memoirs, translated by Hardie St.Martin
Neruda quotation reprinted with the permission of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc., fromMEMOIRS by Pablo Neruda, 1976, 1977, by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Translated from the Spanish CONF?ESO QUE HE VIVIDO. MEMORIAS, translated from the Spanish Copyright by Hardie St. Martin. Translation 1974 by theEstate of Pablo Neruda. copyright

BLUE
_AN

BUILDINGS
OF POETRY & TRANSLATIONS_
Iowa 50311

INTERNATIONAL MAGAZINE
Des Moines,

of English Department Drake University

BLUE BUILDINGS
presents a distinguished Chapbook Rainbow Notes on Continuing Rounds Peter Wild Light Michael Thomas Brian Simms Swiss Swann $4.00 $3.50 $4.00 ?Tables Series of theMeridian Book of Occult Roger Weingarten Albert Goldbarth $5.00 $3.50

Goldbarth's Phenomenon

Forthcoming Chapbooks William T. White Gary Finke

The editors are receptive to poems, prose poems, and translations. $2.00 for single copy $4.00 for 2 issues back issues at $1.50 each

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THE AMERICAN

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