Battle of Britain: July 11, 2015

Bunker below the terrace at Monk's House

I don't like any of the feelings war breeds: patriotism; communal &c, all sentimental and emotional parodies of our real feelings.  But then, we're in for it.  Every day we have our raids: at night the bloodhounds are out.  I open my windows when I hear the Germans, & and the broad stalks of light rise all over the meadow feeling for them -- a strange early morning spectacle.  One sees nothing but the feelers of lights.  Then the drone buzz booms away, rather like a dentists drill.  No invasion so far.

July12, 1940
(D5 302)
The Battle of Britain began over Sussex July 10, 1940

Stamping Misery: July 10, 2015

And then I was in 'one of my states' -- how violent how acute & walked in Regent's Park in black misery & had to summon my cohorts in the old way to see me through, which they have done more or less. A note made to testify to my own ups & downs; many of which go unrecorded as they are less violent I think than they used to be.  But how familiar it was -- stamping along the road, with gloom and pain constricting my heart; & and the desire for death in the old way all for two, I daresay careless words.

July 10, 1933
(D4 167)

Coloured Dust: July 8, 2015

"Corn Dance for Brett" Color-reduction woodcut and monotype (2015)

My dear Brettt [sic],
  (forgive the typewriter which has already converted your name into another -- but my hand is grown cursed and crabbed)  I am a wretch to have delayed writing -- but if you live so far away a month or more cant make any difference.  I was delighted to get your letter and to breathe for a moment the very brilliant queer air in which you live [New Mexico].  . . . I looked into your book [Lawrence and Brett: A Friendship] and shut it; I can't get hold of Lawrence; I like and I dislike; and always feel it is a puzzle that I must sit down to one of these days, honestly; to read him through.  But at present when there's so much coloured dust about his horizon I leave him there."

Letter to Dorothy Brett, July 8, 1933
(L5 201-2)

Lost in Thought: July 7, 2015

On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders.  The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning

tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been.  There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought--to  call it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down into

the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how

insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.

A Room of One's Own 

Green Glass: July 6, 2015

Glass paperweight at Monk's House

It was a lump of glass, so thick as to be almost opaque; the smoothing of the sea had completely worn off any edge or shape, so that it was impossible to say whether it had been a bottle, tumbler, or window-pane; it was nothing but glass; it was almost a precious stone.. You had only to enclose it in a rim of gold, or pierce it with a wire, and it became a jewel; part of a necklace, or a dull, green light upon a finger.  Perhaps after all it was really a gem; something worn by a dark Princess trailing her finger in the water as she sat in the stern of the boat and listened to the slaves singing as they rowed her across the Bay.  Or the oak sides of a sunk Elizabethan treasure-chest had split apart, and, rolled over and over, over and over, its emeralds had come at last to shore.


"Solid Objects"
(CSF 103)

Tea at Knole: July 5, 2015

View from hill top on grounds of Knole

He sighed profoundly, and flung himsefl -- there was a passion in his movements which deserves the word -- on the earth at the foot of the oak tree.  He loved, beneath all this summer transiency, to feel the earth's spine beneath him; for such he took the hard root of the oak tree to be; or, for image followed image, it was the back of a great horse that he was riding; or the deck of a tumbling ship -- it was anything indeed, so long as it was hard, for he felt the need of something which he could attach his floating heart to; the heart that tugged at his side; the heart that seemed filled with spice and amorous gales every evening about this time when he walked out.  To the oak tree he tied it and as he lay there, gradually the flutter in and about him stilled itself; the little leaves hung; the deer stopped; the pale summer clouds stayed; his limbs grew heavy on the ground; and he lay so still that by degrees the deer stepped nearer and the rooks wheeled round him and the swallows dipped and circled and the dragon-flies shot past, as if all the fertility and amorous activity of a summer's evening were woven web-like about his body.

Orlando (19)

July 5, 1924: Virginia lunches at Knole with Vita and Lord Sackville.

Independence Day: July 4, 2015

Cannas at Bryn Mawr College

Now that we have given one guinea towards rebuilding a college we must consider whether there is not more that we can do to help you to prevent war. And it is at once obvious, if what we have said about influence is true, that we must turn to the professions, because if we could persuade those who can earn their livings, and thus actually hold in their hands this new weapon, our only weapon, the weapon of independent opinion based upon independent income, to use that weapon against war, we should do more to help you than by appealing to those who must teach the young to earn their livings; or by lingering, however long, round the forbidden places and sacred gates of the universities where they are thus taught.

Three Guineas (50)

In Memorium--Mary Warner Mack: July 3, 2015

Mark Warner Mack (d. July 3, 2014) among the bluebells in Monk's House Garden, May 2012. 

All of this made a kind of happy jumble in my brain, together with the store of old fashioned chairs and tables, glass & furniture with which every inch of room space is crowded; I came back and told my story as quietly as I could, & next day L. & I went together and made a thorough inspection.  He was pleased beyond his expectation.  The truth is he has the making of a fanatical lover of that garden.  It suits me very well, too, to ramble off among the Telscombe downs, when fine; or tread out my paces up the path & across the lawn when dark or wind blown.

July 3, 1919
(D1 287)

Beginning The Waves: July 2, 2015

The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another.  One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down.  The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue fingerprint of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window,  The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial.  The birds sang their bleak melody outside.

"The leaves are gathered round the window like pointed ears," said Susan

The Waves (3, 4)

View out of Woolf's bedroom window, Monk's House

According to the holograph MS, Woolf begin the first draft of The Waves on July 2, 1929.

Monk's House: July 1, 2015

We own Monk's House (this is almost the first time I've written a name which I hope to write many thousands of time before I'm done with it) for ever.  . . .
(D1 286)

On July 1, 1919, Leonard and Virginia Woolf  bought Monk's House in the tiny downland village of Rodmell, East Sussex.