The end of the Great War, recorded by Virginia Woolf

Before I go on to "To the Lighthouse" I want to write about this. This is where Virginia W, in her diary, starts to write for posterity, because she knew she was living in Interesting Times. It's also rather sickening, because the troops were fighting right to the very end, even though the war had been won -   they had to carry on killing and being killed. This should NEVER happen. Surely a ceasefire could have been called?

Sat 12th October
Whatever we have done this week has this extraordinary background of hope; a tremendously enlarged version of the feeling I can remember as a child as Christmas approached. the Northcliffe papers do all they can to insist upon the indispensability and delight of war. They magnify our victories to make our mouths water for more; they shout with joy when the Germans sink the Irish mail; but they do also show some signs of apprehension that Wilson's terms may be accepted. L. has just come in from Staines with a paper which says, with obvious gloom, that the rumour is that Germany agrees to evacuation. She is not, of course, they add, to be allowed to make any sort of terms.

Tuesday 15th October
I did not think I should so soon have to describe a meeting with a cabinet minister ... Herbert Fisher's visit... was very obviously due to old family affection.  ... Was I nervous or proud, or anything but interested & anxious to pick his brains for news? I don't think I felt a moment's agitation. ... he has lost his lean intellectual look; his hollow cheeks are filled; ... the number of deaths in his house caused this perhaps; but I can't help thinking that London life has rid him of his desire to say clever things to undergraduates all the time.

"We've won the war today" he said at once. " I saw Milner this morning, & he says we shall have peace by Christmas. The Germans have made up their minds they can't fight a retreat...Of course we can't accept their present terms. Why, that would leave them still the greatest military power in Europe. they could begin again in ten years time. But it rests with the French. Lloyd George is going to Paris on Monday; but they are holding out for the evacuation of Alsace Lorraine as a guarantee. We shall probably demand the disarmament of certain regiments too. But we've won the war."

There is now a good prospect of a complete defeat of the German army; Foch says "I have not yet had my battle". Despite the extreme vindictiveness of our press and the French press, Herbert believed that we are going to baulk Foch of his battle, partly because the Germans will accept any terms to avoid it. "Lloyd George has told me again and again that he means to be generous to the Germans. "We want a strong Germany" he says. the Kaiser will probably go.... they've been taught to be brutal. But it hasn't paid. Each one of their crimes has turned out badly. ... it cost us £1,000 to kill a German at the battle of the Somme [1916]; now it costs £3,000. "

... in a little room in Downing Street, where, as he said, the wireless messages are racing in from all over the world, ... where you have to settle off hand questions of enormous difficulty and importance - where the fate of armies does more or less hang upon what two or three elderly gentlemen decide. Herbert thinks there are 2 or 3 geniuses in the cabinet (L. George, Balfour, & possibly Winston Churchill - his definition being that they make everything appear different) & a number of mediocrities.

Friday 18th October

... Wilson's second note came out on Tuesday, in which he used the word 'peradventure'; so far the Germans have not answered. But their Retreat goes on, & last night, beautiful, cloudless, still & moonlit, was to my thinking he first of peace, since one went to bed fairly positive that never again in all our lives need we dread the moonlight. [the irony could break your heart.]

24th October
We took tram to Kingston & there heard the paper boys shouting out about the President's message, which we bought & devoured in the train. The main points are that he is keeping negotiations going, though the Times came out with a great headline "No parley" this morning. He discriminates too, between the German people & the Kaiser; he will consider an armistice with the one but only complete surrender with the other.

...avoiding London, because of the influenza - (we are, by the way, in the midst of a plague unmatched since the Black Death, according to the Times, who seem to tremble lest it may seize upon Lord Northcliffe, & thus precipitate us into peace).

Saturday 9th November
Lord Mayor's day among other things, & one of the two last of war, I suppose. It's just possible that Lottie may bring us news that the armistice is signed within an hour. People buy papers at a great rate; but except for an occasional buzz round a newspaper boy & a number of shop girls provided with the Evening News in the train one feels nothing different in the atmosphere.. the general state perhaps is one of dazed surfeit; here we've had one great relief after another; you hear the paper boys calling out that Turkey has surrendered, or Austria given up, ..

but apparently Katherine Murry had heard someone say "we're giving them everything and getting nothing". Since then it is difficult to see how the most bloodthirsty citizens can squeeze anything more out of Germany.

Monday 11 November
Twenty five minutes ago the guns went off, announcing peace. A siren hooted on the river, They are hooting still. A few people ran to look out of windows. ...so far neither bells nor flags, but the wailing of sirens & intermittent guns.

Tuesday 12 November
...we were both conscious of a restlessness which made it seem natural to be going up to London. Disillusionment began after 10 minutes in the train. A fat slovenly woman in black velvet and feathers with the bad teeth of the poor insisted upon shaking hands with two soldiers ... she was half drunk already, & soon produced a large bottle of beer which she made them drink of; & then she kissed them ...but she and her like possessed London, & alone celebrated peace in their sordid way, staggering up the muddy pavements in the rain, decked with flags themselves, & voluble at sight of other people's flags. The Heavens disapproved and did their utmost to extinguish, but only succeeded in making feathers flop & flags languish. Taxicabs were crowded with whole families, grandmothers and babies, showing off; & yet there was no centre, no form for all this wandering emotion to take. The crowds had nowhere to go, nothing to do; they were in the state of children with too long a holiday. ..there seemed to be no mean between tipsy ribaldry & rather sour disapproval. Besides the discomfort tried every one's temper. it took us from 4 to 6 to get home; standing in queues, every one wet, many shops shut...

Friday 15 November
You can go to London without meeting more than two drunk soldiers; only an occasional crowd blocks the street. In a day or two it will be impossible for a private to threaten to knock out the brains of an officer, as I saw done the other day in Shaftesbury Avenue.

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.