Virginia Woolf's servant thing

Poor V really needs her servants but on the other hand she can't stand them. So from time to time the whole servant questions pops up in her diary and gives her a great deal of stress because it is not in VW's nature to make her own cups of tea - or anything. The two in question are called Lottie and Nelly.

September 1918 : By rights Lottie should have a whole chapter to herself at this point; but to live through those things is unpleasant enough without reviving them here. At this moment owing to what she overheard L. say to me before breakfast [oh do tell what Leonard said!], I am uncertain whether we have 2 servants or not, & to tell the truth, completely indifferent, such is the relief of being without them for a fortnight. Considering their unimportance [She is so arrogant about them! this is the real problem: they are important to her but she can't bear that fact] they must be compared to flies in the eye for the discomfort they produce in spite of being so small. [I hope that piece of spite made her feel better.] But let us change the subject.

Sunday 28th September 1919 The Strike
Cut off as we are from all human intercourse [they were at Rodmell] I cannot even be sure of the date. It is said that the entire railways of England are on strike; the miners, & perhaps the transport workers, are with them. This happened yesterday morning, or rather late the night before; & though we got our papers through late in the evening, we are without posts. The signalman gave us some information yesterday & believes himself to be striking against a reduction of 14/- a week in his wages. His strike pay comes to 16/- a week.

Tuesday 30th Sept
The papers are just in, shrunk to single sheets, & untrustworthy in their extreme - Daily Mail and Herald; truthful in the middle perhaps, Daily News. So far nothing but persistent hostility on both sides; no overtures.

Weds 1 October
The strike remains, so far as we can judge, the same. On the other hand, rumours of the strike change from hour to hour. A post came this morning. The post man is reported to say that all trains are running as usual. The signal man appears. situation unchanged, much depressed.

We went down to the signal man with books & offers of help.

Tues 7th October
[Hogarth House] The 'docile herds' whom I describe on Peace Day are not so deluded after all. they have held the country up for eleven days I think. We did a little to support them too, & kept one man on strike who would have gone back without our pound. [Probs the signalman.] There's a private strike to record too. [Judging by the next bit, she meant the servants went on strike.] I should like to write philosophically & analyse what is no doubt a sign of the times. ... Dear old Nelly came in shyly like a schoolgirl & asked to apologise last night; & I see us settled for life, with Hogarth, Monk's House, & two domestics.

[I can't help but feel that Nelly just wanted to take the piss at this point - she was probably thinking that if the Woolfs supported the strikers she and Lottie would go on strike and see if they supported that. I mean, it is funny!!! And poor VW just can't see it at all.]

Friday 28 November
It was the dinner parties that led Nelly to give notice last Monday. She did it in a tentative boastful way, as if to show off to someone behind the scenes which makes me think she would be glad now to change her mind. She would at this moment if I asked her. But on the whole I'm not going to ask her. ... we both [V and Leonard] incline to try a new system of dailies, which never ceases to attract us & what with Rodmell & a lower income... No one could be nicer than Nelly, for long stretches; at this moment she gives Angelica her bath, & is perfectly friendly & considerate to me...But the fault is more in the system of keeping two young women chained in a kitchen to laze & work & suck their life from two in the drawing room than in her character or in mine.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf: Monk's House, Rodmell, Sussex

The garden near the house.

This is a terrific place for stalkers of VW! It's very tucked away and hard to find. When the Woolfs bought it they had already bought somewhere else, but this property was to be auctioned and VW fell in love with the garden. When they bought it they had to sell the other house they had bought. The house was very small and ramshackle, and the kitchen was always prone to flooding - it's two steps down from ground level. All the floors are tiled with terracotta slabs and the walls are very thin; like a hut, and to go there when there was no heating can't have been enjoyable. The Woolfs added hot water and a toilet to the facilities. I can't imagine their servants can have been exactly thrilled with the kitchen.

The Woolfs did well here - Virginia found it a good place to write, and loved the view and the walks and Leonard took over the garden, and as their income improved, he employed a full-time gardener.

The green walls give the house a freshwater feel - and there are many artistic presents from Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell

Like other notable authors, such as Roald Dahl, Virginia wrote in a wooden “writing lodge” tucked into the orchard garden, where she was surrounded by views conducive to creative thought, in an undisturbed sanctuary. She kept a diary and there are very few entries which do not mention the garden. While Virginia was not a passionate horticulturist, her husband, Leonard, became one.

The story of the garden at Monk’s House, which was the garden of her writing life, is fascinating. It was started in 1919 and its creation illustrates the satisfaction, love and challenges that a garden provides as well as the friction occasionally generated. “The garden was sometimes 'the third person in the marriage’,” according to biographer Victoria Glendinning. Virginia would have to tear Leonard away and she would make him book “walk” time.

For Leonard, who started off as an amateur but became an expert, developing and tending the garden was totally absorbing. He would graft his own fruit trees, tend to and add to his massive collection of cacti and train his sweet peas in the way his sister-in-law, Vanessa Bell, did at Charleston, 10 miles down the road. He grew copious fruit and vegetables with the help of Percy Bartholomew, his gardener, keeping immaculate records (including detailed costings) and selling the surplus at the Women’s Institute market. When Virginia and Leonard were in London, a hamper of produce was sent up each week. Leonard was keen to learn and founded the Rodmell Horticultural Society in 1941.

The garden is lush and has delicious smells - a mini lilac tree, mint and rosemary. ~wildflowers grow among the planting. The orchard has long grasses with buttercups and bee hives, which Leonard started. There is a smooth bowls lawn facing a view of a chalk escarpment. It is lovely on a dull day, so on a sunny day it must be a veritable paradise.

it didn't occur to me to wonder why we decided to go. We had to meet A's dad somewhere - this was roughly midway - and I thought it would be interesting, to me, anyway. Here Virginia enjoyed her creative work and also had fun entertaining her many friends. Virginia and Leonard's ashes were scattered in the garden and it seems like the happy ending to a story. The National Trust can't over-prettify it because it was already very pretty. It feels like something from my grandparents' time - that time which is just out of reach, out of memory - and that's the time I find most fascinating, and I also think it was one of the best times for England, when talented people led relatively simple lives and did not strive to be extraordinarily rich.