Virginia Woolf's diary, part 1, 2nd post

Virginia Woolf didn't "do" introspection and whether this is right or wrong I don't know. Perhaps she feared that looking inward would damage her confidence. She preferred merely to record events and describe them with her own bias, which again, she didn't analyse. She used her diary in the following ways:

1. to loosen up her writing style - for example, to practice making unusual similes. She wrote it as quickly as possible "before tea". Could be any time - before tea! But she was involved in writing novels and reviews at the same time, so this writing, a record her life, allowed far more freedom.

5th Jan 1915 After lunch we took the air in the Old Deer Park, & marked by a line of straw how high the  river had been; & how a great tree had fallen across the towing path, crushing the railing beneath it. Three bodies were seen yesterday swiftly coursing downstream at Teddington.

26th Jan 1915 I wrote, as usual, over the fire, with an occasional interruption by Lizzy [an inept maid] who is like a rough coated young carthorse, with muddy hooves.

 e.g. 8 Sept 1918  Yesterday poor Bunny came for the night, bringing 8 combs of honey, for which he charges 2/6 each. .. Poor old Bunny! He is as if caked with earth, stiff as a clod; you can almost see the docks and nettles sprouting from his mind; his sentences creak with rust. He can now only lay hands on the simplest words.

 2. to keep her hold on reality because she has had a history of  psychosis; here she writes soon after a bout of illness only about the simplest facts.

e.g. 7 Aug 1917 Queer misty day. Sun not strong enough to come through. Went to Brighton after lunch. German prisoners working in the field by Dod's Hill laughing with the soldier, and woman passing. Went to Pier; tea at Booth's horrible men at our table; staged at Lewes on way back. Bicycled back from Glynde. 

3. to record her life's events with her own personal slant and interpretation

e.g.  Last Friday (14th June 1918) we went to a League of Nations meeting. The jingoes were defeated by the cranks. It was a splendid sight to see. The chief jingo was H.G. Wells, a slab of a man formidable for his mass, but otherwise the pattern of a professional cricketer. He has the cockney accent in words like "day". He was opposed by Oliver, Mrs Swanwick and Adrian. There were also present such gnomes as always creep out on such occasions - old women in coats & skirts with voluminous red ties, & little buttons and badges attached to them - crippled, stammering men, & old patriarchs with beards, & labour men, & ourselves.

e.g. 10 Jul 1918 Rain for the first time for weeks today & a funeral next door; dead of influenza. 

e.g. 12 Jul 1918 Great storms have been beating over England the last 3 days, the result of the Bishop's importunity, God being, as usual, spiteful in his concessions, & now threatening to ruin the harvest. 

4. to air her prejudices  

e.g.  4th January 1915. I do not like the Jewish voice; I do not like the Jewish laugh: otherwise I think there is something to be said for Flora Woolf.

e.g. I bought my fish and meat in the High Street - a degrading but rather amusing business. I dislike the sight of women shopping. They take it so seriously.

 e.g.  On the towpath we met and had to pass a long line of imbeciles. ...and then one realised that every one in that long line was a miserable ineffective shuffling idiotic creature, with no forehead, or no chin, & an imbecile grin, or a wild suspicious stare. It was perfectly horrible. They should certainly be killed.

e.g. The odd thing about the Woolf family, to me, is the extreme laxness of it. In my family, the discussions and agitations that went on about the slightest change in one's way of life were endless; but with the W's it doesn't much seem to matter whether they turn farmer, run away with another man's wife, or marry a Polish Jew Tailor's daughter.

 5. to remark the small things that give her friends and acquaintances personality

e.g. 27th Jan 1915 She seems to like everyone equally, as if they were all the same. She told us how she used to go to bed with a basket of socks by her side, so as to start darning first thing in the morning.

e.g. I talked mainly to Ermengard - a rare visitor, but somehow familiar. As L. remarked these country women get a slow bovine manner, rather refreshing to my taste. She breeds prize bulls, plays a double bass in the evening & writes improper stories for children. She seems to have settled into a corner absolutely fitted for her, where she exists pleasantly, having a Quaker faith now to round her off. I got the impression of some large garden flower comfortably shoving its roots about & well planted in the soil - say a Stock, or a holly-hock. 

e.g. Adrian looks immensely long, & his little bow tie somehow gives him a frivolous rather than distinguished air, as if a butterfly had settled on him by mistake. He has some job in an office.

e.g. 23rd Jul 1918  Lytton & Carrington were alone. No servant was visible & most of the waiting seemed to be done by Carrington. She is silent, a little subdued, makes one conscious of her admiring & solicitous youth. If one were concerned for her, one might be anxious about her position - so dependent on L & having so openly burnt the conventional boats.  

6.  and as a store of material to use in stories and novels (can't separate this and the previous very well.)

e.g. 1st Feb 1915 In St James's street there was a terrific explosion; people came running out of clubs; stopped still and gazed about them. But there was no Zeppelin or aeroplane - only, I suppose, a very large burst tyre. But it is really an instinct with me, & most people I suppose, to turn any sudden noise, or dark object int he sky into an explosions, or a German aeroplane. And it always seems utterly impossible that one should be hurt.[used in Mrs Dalloway].

e.g.  28th May 1918 Harry Stephen told his old stories, wrinkled his nose, & alluded several times to his great age. He is 58. An undoubted failure: but that has a freshening effect upon people; they are more irresponsible than the successes; but yet one can't call Harry exactly irresponsible either. He is modest; humorous; all his pride for his father and ancestors. He still takes out an enormous pocket knife, & slowly half opens the blade & shuts it. [VW used this for Peter Walsh in Mrs Dalloway.]

e.g. 1 May 1918 We [Leonard and V] had a  tremendous talk about the Equator. In the middle of a demonstration with two pebbles ... this diverted my attention. A serious reprimand had to be administered.. It was discovered that I took the Equator to be a circular mark, coloured dull red, upon the end of a football. The ignorance and inattention combined displayed in this remark seemed so crass that for about 20 minutes we could not speak. [VW used this too in Mrs Dalloway, see previous entry.]

7. and of course, for enjoyment.

e.g.  28th May 1918  The heat was such that it was intolerable to walk before tea; we sat in the garden, I indolently reading, L. not sitting but gardening. We had the best display of flowers yet seen - wall flowers in profusion, columbines, phlox, & as we went huge scarlet poppies with purple stains inside them. The peonies even about to burst. There was a nest of blackbirds against the wall. Last night at Charleston I lay with my window open listening to a nightingale, which beginning in the distance come very near the garden. Fishes splashed in the pond. May in England is all they say - so teeming, amorous & creative.