Reading private letters

Here are some beginning transcriptions of two letters written by Virginia Woolf and sent to her close friend, Mary MacCarthy.  As I read them and transcribe them, I can't stop thinking about the subject we have approached in class, but have not yet really discussed, the subject of the ethics of reading and writing about very private matters. 

In the first letter, Woolf (Stephens at the time she wrote) contemplates what marriage means to her.  Indirectly, she addresses two proposals she has received, one from Leonard Woolf (W in the letter) and one from Lytton Strachey.  Her poignant observations about marriage and what she expects from it are almost heartbreakingly intimate.  And yet, many decades later, students in a class are reading this very personal letter.  She could not have imagined that we would read her candid observation that Lytton is a female kind of friend, as just one example.  Even if she knew on some level that she would be a well-known and well-studied writer who would interest many people over a long period of time, she might easily leave such thoughts behind when processing her complex, personal experiences with a close intimate.

In the second letter, Woolf betrays her complicated feelings about her sexual life in a rambling and even rather incoherent letter.  Again, it is just the kind of letter that anyone might write when wrestling with confusing and intense emotion.  She sounds bitter at times, even slipping into sarcasm occasionally, as in these lines: "Everyone was so clever, too.  They sang.  Marjorie Strachey acted, and her obscenity was really sublime."  You'll need to read the whole letter to get the scope of her contrast between the younger generation who are "like crude hard green apples" and more mature people, such as herself, who are "merely a bag of potpourri." 

Holding these letters in my hands and transcribing them sends chills all over me.  I feel at once deeply honored to get so close to a writer who means so much to me and a little ashamed as if I am reading someone's letters without their permission, which is, of course, exactly what I am doing.

Printed at the top of the letter, in the corner at a slant:          TELEPHONE

                                                                                                7267 CITY

 

Printed at the top and centered:                                            

38,

Brunswick Square,

W.C.

 

Handwritten in Virginia Woolf’s hand:

 

My dear Molly,

            I began a letter to you, +then went off to bed + never sent it.  All I had to say was thank you for writing—advice and all!

            I didn’t mean to make you think that I was against marriage.  Of course, I’m not, though the extreme safeness + sobriety of young couples does apall (sic) me, but then so do the random melancholy old maids.  I began life with a tremendous, absurd, ideal of marriage; then my birds eye view of many marriages disgusted me, + I thought I must be asking what was not to be had.  But that has passed, too.  Now I only ask for someone to make vehement, + then I’ll marry them!  The fault of our society always seems to me to be timidity + self-consciousness: + I feel oddly vehement, +very exacting, + so difficult to live with, +so very intemperate + changeable, now thinking one thing or another.  But in my heart, I always expect to be floated over all crises, when the moment comes, + landed heaven knows where!  I don’t really worry about W: though I think out that I did.  He is going to stay longer anyhow, + perhaps he will stay in England anyhow, so the responsibility is lifted off me.

            No—I shant float into a bloodless alliance with Lytton—though he is in some ways perfect as a friend, only he’s a female friend.

            I saw Desmond the other day, who said that you had gone off to Devon.  I think that shows great determination.  I wish you would write, if you don’t hate writing and say what you are doing.

            I spent a strange fortnight in bed, among faded old ladies, who might have been weeds at the bottom of a river, they were so placid + remote from everything + yet alive.  I am now leading a semi-invalid life, + it is very nice when the days are fine, doesn’t that sound old!  I wish you would come for a day’s outing with me to Richmond or somewhere where after sitting by a flower bed for some hours, we could have an enormous meal.

            Please go on being a friend whatever I take it into my head to do.

 

 

                                                            Yours always,                                                                                                                                     V. S.

 

Printed at the top centered:                           

HOGARTH HOUSE

PARADISE ROAD

RICHMOND

SURREY

Telephone: Richmond 496

 

Written in Woolf’s hand:

 

Friday

 

Dearest Molly,

            I was just taking up my pen when struck down by the usual old temperature, which sinks my head fathoms deep in the mud.  Ought one not to find one’s father’s eyes when one sinks fathoms deep?  But no such luck.

            This is, primarily, in answer to your letter to Hog. Press.  Of course we will bully the old wretch.  Perpetual letter? Telegrams?  Telephones? What do you advise?  He must be coerced.  I hate to think that all his words vanish into the cesspool (a horrid figure of speech—but then, I sometimes think that we ladies of the old guard, you + I that is, the solitary survivors ought to invigorate our language a little—I’ve been talking to the younger generation all the afternoon.  They are like crude, hard green apples: no hole, mildew, or blight.  Seduced at 15, life has no holes or corners for them.  I admire, but deplore.  Such an old maid, they make me feel.  “And how do you manage not—not—not—to have children?” I ask   “Oh, you read Mary Stopes, of course.”  Figure to yourself my dear Molly—before taking their virginity, the young men of our time produce marked copies of Stopes’  (crossed out word)  Astonishing!  Think of Aunt Gussie!

            This is an incoherent divide: but then I’m above normal.  You want news of that old bubble now flown over St Paul’s + for Nessa’s party.  Well, we were all awfully nice; I kept thinking of Shakespeare we were so mellowly and good fellowly; not any intensity or bitterness, but all serene + melodious.  Miss Sands; Sickert; Roger; then dancing, acting; it’s a great thing to be done with copulation + to be merely a bag of potpourri.  Do you recognize any of your friends in that?  Bunny Garnett went away and had a son the very next morning.  Everyone was so clever, too.  They sang.   Marjorie Strachey acted, and her obscenity was really sublime.  I want very much to come down.  I figure, as two, old friends, ladies, straying hand in hand down the glades of Savernake—talking.  Harry Norton was at the party: very very old; no teeth; no flesh; no lusts.  I felt that he was nothing but a pouch, a sort of puff ball, gone dry—but so amiable it made one weep.  How is Mona Wilson?  Please write me a diary letter; beginning “I was woken by a sunbeam at 8.A.M.” going on through every detail until the schoolmaster calls in the evening.

But I must stop.                                                                                             
Ever            V.W.