[Vwoolf] Rent or own?

Thu Jul 2 18:02:53 EDT 2020

Dear fellow Woolfians,

As long as we're on the topic of Woolf and real estate, I wanted to share with the list a flyer offering a 30% discount for my newly-released book Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life (Oxford UP, 2020).  The book discusses Woolf throughout and has an entire chapter on Woolf's numerous experiments in architecture and design carried out at Monks House.  Woolfians might be interested to see Woolf's own sketches for renovation plans and builder blueprints for modifications to the house over a 20 year period.

If the book passes muster with this learned group, I will be well content!

all best,

Victoria

Victoria Rosner

Dean of Academic Affairs, Columbia University School of General Studies

Adj. Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University

Co-editor, Gender and Culture<https://cup.columbia.edu/series/gender-and-culture-series>, Columbia University Press series

Machines for Living: Modernism and Domestic Life, Oxford University Press, 2020

[https://global.oup.com/academic/covers/pop-up/9780198845195]<https://global.oup.com/academic/product/machines-for-living-9780198845195?cc=us&lang=en&>

https://bookshop.org/books/machines-for-living-modernism-and-domestic-life/9780198845195

________________________________
From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+vpr4=columbia.edu at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Stuart N. Clarke via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 5:20:35 PM
To: 'Woolf Listserv'
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?

First of all, can anywhere be more obsessed with buying property than the UK?  (In a more familial way, Greece is unpretentiously enthusiastic.)  But this is a phenomenon that only started between the wars (esp. in the 1930s), and really took off after the war.

Of course, we obsessives, when it is pointed out that European countries have large numbers of people renting, say: “Well, *someone* must own the properties”.  (Why not us?)

But even the well-to-do often rented rather than bought.  At the end of 1924, the Hutchinsons had given up River House in Hammersmith ‘(in the manner of the period it was rented) in favour of a larger residence in Albert Road, Regent’s Park’.

Mortgages – and there were mortgages – were not readily available for buying property.  You are more likely (in Trollope, say) to have bought a property, and now you have mortgaged it up to the hilt, owing to your gambling or poor returns on land (agricultural depression, as in “The Importance of Being Ernest”).

What is the difference between renting a property and taking out a lease on a property?  Really, it’s just the legal implications of each – which differ as the years go on, and the govt deals with the tussle between landlords and tenants, one govt favouring one and another the other.  I think that someone with a lease might easily have said that “the rent was precisely twopence half-penny” (i.e. a peppercord rent), even tho’ they actually have a lease.

In England and Wales, Land Law was radically overhauled in 1925.  VW wrote: ‘I’m so glad about Gavelkind’ (L3 554) - ‘A law of inheritance, peculiar to Kent, which divided an intestate’s property among all his sons’ (L3 554 n. 2).  Out went gavelkind, scot and lot, and lots of other obscure ways of “holding” land.  We now have only freehold and leasehold.  I have a leasehold of 999 years, which feels like freehold – ah, but you can’t have freehold of a flat because it doesn’t rest upon the ground.  For Land Law is about Land.

I expect you’re no further forward, but I just had to “share”.

Stuart

From: Mark Hussey via Vwoolf
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 9:02 PM
To: 'Woolf Listserv'
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?

But the Ramsays are fictional characters, so I’d stick with renting the house in the Hebrides…

From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces at lists.osu.edu> On Behalf Of Neverow, Vara S. via Vwoolf
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 2:22 PM
To: Woolf Listserv <vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>; Michael Schrimper <Michael.Schrimper at colorado.edu>
Subject: Re: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?

The Stephen family had a lease...https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm
[https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/images/stephen/small37c.jpg1zB]<https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm>

Talland House, plate 37c | Smith College Libraries<https://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/rarebook/exhibitions/stephen/37c.htm>
Talland House, c.1882-1894 Anonymous. Click on this image to open it at full size in a new window. This is the front view of Talland House at St. Ives in Cornwall, England, where the Stephen family spent their summers.
www.smith.edu<http://www.smith.edu>

Cheers,

Vara

Vara Neverow
Department of English
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT 06515
203-392-6717
neverowv1 at southernct.edu

________________________________
From: Vwoolf <vwoolf-bounces+neverowv1=southernct.edu at lists.osu.edu> on behalf of Michael Schrimper via Vwoolf <vwoolf at lists.osu.edu>
Sent: Thursday, July 2, 2020 2:13 PM
To: Woolf Listserv <vwoolf at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: [Vwoolf] Rent or own?

Do we know if the Ramsays were renting the house in the Hebrides, or if they owned it? I had always assumed their ownership of the place, for a number of reasons. Yet the text says “Never mind, the rent was precisely twopence half-penny; the children loved it; it did her husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three hundred miles from his libraries and his lectures and his disciples” (29)…so they were renting the property?

I'm not finding any evidence that "rent" is another word for, say, mortgage payment....

Edition I’m using: Harcourt 1990.

Michael R. Schrimper
Ph.D. Student, Department of English
University of Colorado Boulder
Traditional Territories of the Cheyenne, Arapaho and Ute Nations
https://www.colorado.edu/english/michael-schrimper<https://nam02.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.colorado.edu%2Fenglish%2Fmichael-schrimper&data=02%7C01%7Cneverowv1%40southernct.edu%7C25252351e017464c448008d81eb39c0b%7C58736863d60e40ce95c60723c7eaaf67%7C0%7C1%7C637293104057153644&sdata=dK9Wm0BAfsAaP0wE39kK5TpBsIdEHVx%2FB2rxDyVkF9I%3D&reserved=0>

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