As a sort of understory to my other reading, for about the past year and a half I’ve been working through the five volumes of Virginia Woolf’s diaries, and then yesterday morning I got to the end and it feels quite weird. I could see, physically, that it was about to end, page-wise, and I knew what happened after the last entry, but because she is really so much herself in the previous entries it was still surprising. You never know, we tell each other after a suicide or even an attempt, what is happening in another person’s head. But I felt as though I’d been in her head for years, and that I did know.
A few weeks ago a customer at the bookstore, who was buying Vol. 5 of the very nice, original Hogarth Press edition, told me that when I ran out of diary I should try her letters, so maybe I will start the new year with that. Still, diaries are unto themselves, and some of my favourite reading. The groceries next to the visits from friends next to the money worries next to the writing progress next to the apartment search next to last night’s dreams.
I have written before about my own on and off diary writing, and about a long spell of off, which I managed to break last summer. And since then whenever I’ve questioned it, a little dip into VW’s diary would get me started again. Partly because of this I wound up jotting out in my diary a bunch of sentences from hers that struck me at the time. And really I think the pairing of diaries is something else again and I might keep it as a habit. I won’t bore with examples but when I was going back through to type the VW snippets out, I found this: Seems as though VW has been getting her watch fixed for the better part of two years. Is it the same watch? (Really, though, you wouldn’t believe the number of times she visited that watch guy.)
As someone forever telling myself that if I clear some room by no longer doing X then I will make time to write, I especially liked her little determinations to free up the day from reviewing, entertaining, preparing lectures. Also the constant battle to keep visitors at bay. And coming up with new systems to get the domestic side of life in order. (The number of notes to myself I’ve made over the years to keep more staples on hand in the kitchen is sad. How hard can it be really? But it’s there again and again.) She also has many takes on what her diary is to her, what purpose it might be serving. Maybe we are all diaring with a certain amount of ambivalence.
Anyway. Here is my best of, with a little from all of these categories:
“I caused some slight argument (with L.) this morning by trying to cook my breakfast in bed. I believe, however, that the good sense of the proceeding will make it prevail; that is, if I can dispose of the eggshells.” (13 January 1915)
“I must again register my complaint that people won’t write to me. I don’t write to them, but how can one?” (13 November 1917)
“Visitors do tend to chafe one.” (5 April 1918)
“L. makes Tuesday a kind of receptacle for shooting meetings into.” (16 July 1918)
“It’s strange how whole groups of people suddenly swim complete into one’s life.” (12 October 1918)
“But this dressing up of the future is one of the chief sources of our happiness, I believe.” (12 July 1919)
“To upset everything every 3 or 4 years is my notion of a happy life.” (24 March 1926)
“And I must tear up all that manuscript, & write a great many notes & adventure out into the world – as I shall do tomorrow, when I go to have my ears pierced with Vita.” (31 May 1928)
“But why I ask ‘see’ people? What’s the point? These isolated occasions which come so often. May I come & see you? And what they get, or I get, save the sense of a slide passing on a screen, I can’t say.” (9 December 1928)
“I shall spend my day at the British Museum. (This is one of those visual images, without meaning when written down, that conveys a whole state of mind to me)” (29 September 1930)
“M. tells stories of falling off a horse in Canada; of Julian’s life; of Mrs. Masefield – unintimate stories for she has no foothold among us; and will slip off this rock into her obscure waters when we go back – not that she needs us. She is punctilious about trains, and has a passion for cheese —” (24 April 1932)
“It was a real party – that is, I wore my velvet dress.” (23 November 1933)
“Then Lyons came, & subtly pervaded the house with a smell of stale cabbage.” (27 August 1934)
“Always shave off the expected, dictated attitude; and find whats under it.” (9 February 1939)
“I am trying to kid myself into believing that a penholder is a cigarette. So far I’m taken in.” (2 August 1939)
“A curious sub-life has set in, rather spacious, rather leisured, & secluded & content.” (24 March 1940)
“I must make this record, for in fact it gives the old odd stretch to the back curtain of the mind.” (13 April 1940)
“The great advantage of this page is that it gives me a fidget ground.” (14 September 1940)
“And now with some pleasure I find that its seven; & must cook dinner. Haddock & sausage meat. I think it is true that one gains a certain hold on sausage & haddock by writing them down.” (8 March 1941)
