Virginia Woolf: A Writer's Diary. Вирджиния Вулф
fourth month? Doesn’t it portend a bathroom and a w.c., either here or Southease? I am writing in the watery blue sunset, the repentance of an ill tempered morose day, which vanished, the clouds, I have no doubt, showing gold over the downs, and leaving a soft gold fringe on the top there.
Tuesday, December 7th.
I am reading the Passage to India, but will not expatiate here, as I must elsewhere. This book for the H.P. I think I will find some theory about fiction; I shall read six novels and start some hares. The one I have in view is about perspective. But I do not know. My brain may not last me out. I cannot think closely enough. But I can—if the C.R. is a test—beat up ideas and express them now without too much confusion. (By the way, Robert Bridges likes Mrs Dalloway; says no one will read it; but it is beautifully written, and some more, which L„ who was told by Morgan, cannot remember.)
I don’t think it is a matter of ‘development’ but something to do with prose and poetry, in novels; for instance Defoe at one end; E. Brontë at the other. Reality something they put at different distances. One would have to go into conventions; real life; and so on. It might last me—this theory—but I should have to support it with other things. And death—as I always feel—hurrying near. 43: how many more books? Katie came here; a sort of framework of discarded beauty hung on a battered shape now. With the firmness of the flesh and the blue; of the eye, the formidable manner has gone. I can see her as she was at 22 H.P.G. 25 years ago; in a little coat and skirt; very splendid; eyes half shut; lovely mocking voice; upright; tremendous; shy. Now she babbles along.
‘But no duke ever asked me, my dear Virginia. They called me the Ice Queen. And why did I marry Cromer? I loathed Egypt; I loathed invalids. I’ve had two very happy times in my life—childhood—not when I grew up, but later, with my boys’ club, my cottage and my chow—and now. Now I have all I want. My garden—my dog.’
I don’t think her son enters in very largely. She is one of these cold eccentric great Englishwomen, enormously enjoying her rank and the eminence it lends her in St John’s Wood, and now free to poke into all the dusty holes and corners, dressed like a charwoman, with hands like apes’ and fingernails clotted with dirt. She never stops talking. She lacks much body to her. She has almost effused in mist. But I enjoyed it, though I think she has few affections and no very passionate interests. Now, having cried my cry, and the sun coming out, to write a list of Christmas presents.
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