[Vwoolf] (no subject)

Sun Sep 12 09:12:29 EDT 2021

I wonder if Ritchie meant A Writer’s Diary? Sometimes ‘unpublished’ seems to mean ‘hitherto unpublished’—for example, Moments of Being (ed. Schulkind) is subtitled ‘unpublished autobiographical writings’ even though that appears on the cover of the publication!

I was too busy doing laundry, cleaning the house, and grocery shopping to respond to the thread about class and housekeepers yesterday (😉) but a quick search of the MLA bibliography shows 177 articles about Woolf and class, but you’d never know that from the drivel published by unherd young men and (occasionally) old buffers in the Daily Torygraph.  I think Woolf can survive them.  But it is fascinating to realise there are such saints out there who have never had an unkind word to say about anyone (thank you Mark Scott for your common sense views!)

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+mhussey=verizon.net at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Mark Scott via Vwoolf
Sent: Sunday, September 12, 2021 3:20 AM
To: Pat Laurence <pat.laurence at gmail.com>
Cc: vwoolf at lists.osu.edu
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] (no subject)

I am curious as to how Mr. Ritchie obtained access to Woolf’s *unpublished* diaries?  She wrote to and about Elizabeth Bowen quite a bit during the 1930s and although she did not seem to regard Bowen as a very close friend I don’t recall that she expressed more than some ambivalence about her.  

From: Pat Laurence 

Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2021 9:34 PM

To: Mark Scott 

Cc: Ellen Moody ; Mary Ellen Foley ; Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>  

Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] (no subject)

Apropos the Oliver article on Woolf's "rudeness."

Elizabeth Bowen and Woolf were friends. Bowen and Charles Ritchie, her lover, discussed Woolf in 1956, and he ruefully noted in his journal that Woolf's unpublished diaries revealed that she “had no fondness for her friends including E." When he related this to Bowen, she did not take offense, coolly noting, “perhaps her affection was intermittent (as mine is for so many people).” Bowen, in kind, related to Ritchie and in letters to Rosamond Lehmann her dislike of Bloomsbury's "in-growingness" and "smugness," inspiring feelings of claustrophobia. But she was drawn to Woolf, her laughter and like-minded mischief—as well admiration for her writing, "like no other." She loved her comic exuberance, and their friendship she wrote, was “chiefly laughter and pleasure, and on entering, in her company, into the rapture caused her by the unexpected, the spectacular, the inordinate, the improbable, and the preposterous.” Bowen believed the “spring and principle of her art was joy.” In 1958, she wrote to William Plomer on the fringes of Bloomsbury, confiding that only he seemed “able to bring back Virginia’s laughter—I get so bored and irked by that tragic fiction which has been manufactured about her since 1941.”

Pat Laurence

from my biography, Elizabeth Bowen, A Literary Life

On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 5:58 PM Mark Scott via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> > wrote:

As a Common Reader, my thoughts on this article centered on a couple of things.  

I have been reading Woolf’s letters for some time now and I have finally reached the summer of 1939 when the Woolfs are about to move to Mecklenburg Square.  Around the time when the first concept for ‘The Waves’ began to emerge, I started to read the diary entries for the time periods that the correspondence covered.  (I had read the diaries some time before I had even acquired the six volumes of the letter.)  What struck me about the article with regard to Woolf’s alleged ‘nastiness’ was that the author was basing his judgments of Woolf’s character on written remarks that were made in journals that were not meant to be read by anybody but Woolf herself, my point being that she wasn’t verbally making these less than flattering comments directly to the people she was describing.  How many of us have had negative thoughts about people we encounter in our lives or acquaintances or even close friends or family?  Maybe we never verbalize these thoughts and they may be judgments or conclusions that flared up in a moment of annoyance or anger that we later dismissed or forgot.  It just so happens that Woolf recorded many of her rather pointed observations about people in her private diaries.  They were not meant to be made known to the people she described.  In other words, they were not malicious attacks made directly at human targets.  It is true that close replications of her remarks often ended up in her letters, especially letters written to her sister, Vanessa Bell.  But, again, that was private correspondence usually addressed to family or close friends that she knew she could trust not to pass those comments on to anyone who might repeat them to their objects.  

My other observation is that, as is usually the case, the tired, unfortunately repetitious description of Woolf as the mad, elitist, depressed writer who ultimately committed suicide leaves out what has been evident to me since I first read ‘Orlando’; Woolf’s incisive and often scintillating wit.  Maybe it says something about my own personality but I often find myself laughing at Woolf’s imaginative puncturing of what may or may not have been overly inflated egos.  It’s true that sometimes her jabs do feel like they were aimed at undeserving targets.  That being said, I would love to have been the proverbial fly on the wall during some of the conversations between Woolf and some of her close friends and family.  Great intellect on display flavored with the spice of brilliant wit.  That’s what I hear in my imagination.

Mark Scott
Common Reader  

From: Ellen Moody via Vwoolf 

Sent: Saturday, September 11, 2021 6:56 AM

To: Mary Ellen Foley 

Cc: Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:Vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>  

Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] (no subject)

I thought it was appalling too, and asked myself  when will people tire of using what is popularly supposed of Virginia Woolf as  matter for a whipping post.  Ellen

On Sat, Sep 11, 2021 at 9:42 AM Mary Ellen Foley via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> > wrote:

Beware!  To my eye, at least, the article may begin as a comment on troll-ery, but it became something else entirely, outlining Woolf's supposed five deaths, just in case we haven't harped enough on her suicide, dwelling on snobbery above all else, damning her work with faint praise, and getting enough tiny details wrong that could have been checked, that the effect was of contempt: the author  didn't bother to check.  (The worst example, possibly: No, it doesn't matter how many stories the Stephen family house had, unless you give the number of residents, undercount the number of stories by a factor of two, and make a point about overcrowding With 5 above ground level and one below, the enormous family and their servants did not occupy a 3-story house -- no big deal, except that it's easily checkable, and he makes a point of how packed in they were, linking that to her wish for a room of one's own, which of course is a mistaken understanding of what she meant by "a room of one's own."  Even if he was referring to the years before the top floor was added, this is very sloppy work.)

I made the mistake of reading some of the comments.  This is a civilized site, so the comments were courteous, but that only means that many simply used more polite language in dismissing Woolf in the same way she is generally dismissed by detractors.  (If you aren't a member, you can see only a selection of comments; I visited twice and was shown different comments, but the selection was possibly not representative.)

I totally agree that the Woolf who/that has been constructed in more recent times serves as a figure on whom we can hang whatever ideas we like; that is because this figure has been crafted by articles such as this one, doing the same. 

Unfortunately, I read this first thing this morning. I hadn't wanted to begin the day so irritated!

Mary Ellen

On Fri, Sep 10, 2021 at 7:27 PM Andre Gerard via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu <mailto:vwoolf at lists.osu.edu> > wrote:

Woolf as a guide to our troll tormented times: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/__;!!KGKeukY!gbrS13LyNY4dASysWOa1bkCvD4r4RovLqBQZwSNPnqr9DYpESJu-DjQ7w25_BsXMPoI$  <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/unherd.com/2021/08/why-was-virginia-woolf-so-rude/__;!!KGKeukY!nf304ToEUjNd-Nsi_srJ4SrBkBCO1jUg3xAZQI-lYN5-9Mo3_0r0qTsgpJKtDF_daT8$> 

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