because, during the evening class, I had written ~"defence" on the board and I was suddenly sure it was the wrong spelling! Shouldn't it be "defense"? But the latter, it turns out, is the US spelling, which I occasionally mention but I don't teach.
that is typical of a night after teaching. I go to sleep but I wake up with random teaching-related thoughts and then I have a mental review of the lesson.
In the night I continued reading a book I bought when I was at University "The Diary of Virginia Woolf 1915-9". Although I read it all those years ago I can't really remember it so it's a terrific surprise. Mrs W is living in Richmond with her husband Leonard, and walks to the butcher and the grocer when she needs to, and they walk to Twickenham or to Kingston most days, which must have been the thing in those days as all the Bloomsbury group walked every day.
She likes going to London for the Library and to the 1917 Club, which seems to have been founded as a place for Bloomsburies to meet their young followers. The original Bloomsburies are already minor legends! even though VW has written only one novel at this time. She is making her living (and so is LW) by writing reviews in the TLS and other notable publications. They buy a manual printing press and begin by publishing Katherine Mansfield stories. Meanwhile, Nessa is seeing out the war at Charleston because Duncan and Bunny are conchies and so have to work as farm labourers. Leonard is simply in poor health and after attending many army medical boards, it is established that he does not have to fight. Maynard is working for the government and I am not sure how Lytton avoids the war, but like the others he takes a house in the country (with Carrington). and there are loads more people in the book because VW has an incredible social circle. To start with, she is related to a vast array of people, some rather grand and titled, and some ordinary folk, and then a great number of literary grandees are somehow blood relatives, and then all her friendships seem to be long-lasting and involve more and more people. Yet often she and Leonard sit by the fire and read in the evenings, or play cards, and that's what she likes as much as anything. People make social visits without warning and she has to give them (whoever it is) lunch or tea or dinner, and it must be very difficult because as the war goes on food is in very short supply, and so is coal.
VW doesn't cook anything - she has a couple of servants called Nelly and Lottie to do the cleaning and the cooking, but because of the air raids she and Leonard frequently spend the nights in the kitchen with the servants, chatting away for hours and hours to keep their spirits up. VW doesn't really like the servants but can't manage without them. That's an aspect of her life that is really strange. When she and L go down to the house they rent in the country, Asheham, they have to take the servants too, in the train, and it's weirdly like taking your pets with you. Supposedly she is a revolutionary who wants everyone to have the same: £300 a year is the figure mentioned; so where are the servants going to come from in that scheme of things?
She is incredibly nasty about the lower classes and how limited their thinking is; and even though her husband works hard for the cause of Ceylonese luminaries, and she has them round for tea and so forth, she refers to them as "darkies". Then she also tells that Katherine Mansfield smells like a civet cat and it's really unpleasant to be in the same room as her! There are many of these astonishing bits and that's why it's so entertaining.
The war starts distantly from London but by the end there are bombing raids by planes whenever the moon is out, and London suffers, but most of all, can't sleep at night.
Her brother-in-law (Cecil) was killed in the war and she writes nothing at all about how L feels about this, or anything about how she feels, but she and L are now planning to print a small book of Cecil's poems, so I think they do have feelings which she chooses not to share.
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