Becoming Virginia Woolf University Press of Florida Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee New College of Florida, Sarasota University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola This page intentionally left blank BECOMING Virginia Woolf Her Early Diaries & the Diaries She Read Barbara Lounsberry University Press of Florida Gainesville/Tallahassee/Tampa/Boca Raton Pensacola/Orlando/Miami/Jacksonville/Ft. Myers/Sarasota Permission information can be found on page 258. Copyright 2014 by Barbara Lounsberry All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on recycled, acid-free paper This book may be available in an electronic edition. 19 18 17 16 15 14 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lounsberry, Barbara, author. Becoming Virginia Woolf : her early diaries and the diaries she read / Barbara Lounsberry. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8130-4991-5 (alk. paper) 1. Woolf, Virginia, 1882–1941—Diaries. 2. Novelists, English—20th century—Diaries. I. Title. PR6045.O72Z8117 2014 828'.91203—dc23 [B] 2014003521 The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, New College of Florida, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://www.upf.com For diarists everywhere: past, present, and future This page intentionally left blank Contents Acknowledgments ix List of Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 1. Early Diary Influences 11 Virginia Woolf’s 1897 Diary 12 Sir Walter Scott’s “Gurnal” 14 Fanny Burney’s Diary 19 Samuel Pepys’s Diary 31 William Johnson Cory’s Journals 37 Virginia Woolf’s 1897 Diary Concluded 40 2. The Experimenter 45 Virginia Woolf’s 1899 Warboys Diary 45 3. Choosing the Outsider Role 54 Virginia Woolf’s 1903 Diary 55 James Boswell’s Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D. 67 4. Professional Writer 75 Virginia Woolf’s 1904–1905 Diary 75 5. Embracing the Unconscious 81 Virginia’s Woolf’s Ghostly 1905 Cornwall Diary 82 Virginia Woolf’s 1906–1908 Great Britain Travel Diary 87 William Allingham’s Diary 102 Lady Dorothy Nevill’s Note-books 107 Lady Charlotte Bury’sDiary of a Lady-in-Waiting 109 Virginia Woolf’s Great Britain Travel Diary Concluded 114 6. The Problem of Description 121 Virginia Woolf’s 1906–1909 Continental Travel Diary 122 The Journal of Elizabeth Lady Holland 129 Virginia Woolf’s Continental Travel Diary Concluded 132 Virginia Woolf’s 1909 Life Diary 135 Dr. Charles Meryon’s Diaries Celebrating Lady Hester Stanhope 147 Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Early Journals 152 Mary Coleridge’s Diary 158 7. The Diary Coalesces 163 Virginia Woolf’s 1915 Diary 163 Mary Berry’s Journals 173 Virginia Woolf’s Asheham House Natural History Diary: 1917–1918 183 Virginia Woolf’s 1917–1918 Collaborative Hogarth House Diary 188 TheJournals of Edmond and Jules de Goncourt 198 Stopford Brooke’s Diary 206 Virginia Woolf’s 1918 Coalescing Hogarth House Diary: January 4–July 23 213 Epilogue 225 Notes 227 Works Consulted 241 Index 247 Acknowledgments irst thanks go to my brother, Christopher Severin, who gave me as a Christ- mas gift thesecond volume of Virginia Woolf’s Diary. Thus began a journey F of great fascination and reward. Anne Olivier Bell, whose wise and witty editing of Woolf’s 1915 to 1941 diaries sets the standard for such work, has been generosity itself through my labors. In 2001, she allowed me to interview her re- garding her work in the very room it was done. She then kindly drove me to see Charleston. Quentin Bell, before his death, also promptly and fully answered all my letter queries regarding his aunt Virginia and her diaries. My thanks go, too, to Andrew McNeillie, who took time during the 2001 Woolf confer- ence in Wales to tell me about his own “heady” days as assistant editor of the 1920 to 1941 diaries in that “visually stunning Sussex country.” In 2003 scholar Sybil Oldfield continued their largesse. She drove me through Lewes, Sussex; took me to the bridge overlooking the River Ouse near the Woolf’s Rodmell home on what was a cold, overcast April day; and even boosted me up onto the Monk’s House wall so I could see into the garden. Stateside, many others have also aided this work. My great thanks go to Gay Talese, the pioneer in artful nonfiction, who has been my strongest supporter since 1983—and particularly supportive of this book. Nancy Price, the novelist and poet, endured reading the (much) longer version of this book; she even ironed pages that had become bent in the mail. Poet Kathleen Kelly also leant her wise counsel throughout the process—particularly in finding the work’s shape. Woolf biographer Panthea Reid read two drafts of this volume, which has profited greatly from her thorough and helpful advice. In the 1990s, I also had the honor of giving programs in Iowa and Colorado with pianist Gary Arvin and mezzo-soprano Julie Simpson. I introduced Woolf and her diary, and they then performed with great artistry Dominick Argento’s Pulitzer Prize- winning song cycle “From the Diary of Virginia Woolf.” I also am indebted to the Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Collection of English and American Literature in the New York Public Library and to its curators for many hours of congenial work with Woolf’s manuscripts. My gratitude goes as well to Dorothy Sheridan, Head of Special Collections at the University of Sus- sex Library, for allowing me to work with the Monk’s House papers. I also wish to express gratitude to the International Virginia Woolf Society, whose mem- bers are so welcoming of papers and essays, and especially to Woolf scholar Mark Hussey, who shared his thoughts regarding several chapters of this book. Shannon McCarthy, assistant editor at the University Press of Florida, for the past months has been a model of efficiency—and of grace. My work with Woolf’s diaries and the (many) diaries she read has received support from several arms of the University of Northern Iowa. I thank the Graduate College and the College of Humanities and Fine Arts for grants and leaves in support of the work. My special thanks to Rosemary Meany, Linda Berneking, and others in the Rod Library, who helped me locate and retrieve many obscure diaries. A final persistent thank you to John Lounsberry, who anchors all my days. x Acknowledgments Abbreviations AML A Moment’s Liberty: The Shorter Diary. Abr. and ed. Anne Olivier Bell. CH Carlyle’s House and Other Sketches [Woolf’s 1909 Diary]. Ed. David Bradshaw. CM Charleston Magazine CR The Common Reader. 2 vols. D The Diary of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Anne Olivier Bell. 5 vols. E The Essays of Virginia Woolf. Eds. Andrew McNeillie and Stuart N. Clarke. 6 vols. G&R Granite and Rainbow L The Letters of Virginia Woolf. Eds. Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann. 6 vols. MOB Moments of Being. Ed. Jeanne Schulkind. PA A Passionate Apprentice: The Early Journals 1897–1909. Ed. Mitchell A. Leaska. RN Virginia Woolf’s Reading Notebooks. Ed. Brenda Silver. SF The Complete Shorter Fiction of Virginia Woolf. Ed. Susan Dick. TG Three Guineas This page intentionally left blank Introduction masterpiece. One of the great diaries of the world. So declared Quentin Bell, Virginia Woolf’s nephew, of her heart-stopping, Aboundary-stretching diary that serves as a doorway to her fiction and non- fiction. Woolf’s diary is her longest, her longest sustained, and her last work to reach the public. Diary scholar Harriet Blodgett calls it “a high point in English diary-keeping” and “a remarkable social document.”1 Woolf begins her first extant diary at age fourteen in 1897, and her final entry comes at the age of fifty-nine, four days before her suicide in March 1941. Thirty- eight handwritten diary volumes are safeguarded today in the United States and England. Together they offer some 2,312 entries and 770,000 words—more words than any one of her novels. Like a hidden gold mine, this diary reached readers in tantalizing segments across a half-century: from 1953 to 2003. As each vein of the mother lode ap- peared, it has been carefully scoured for Woolf’s references to her works or to the talented friends and family members who made up her storied Bloomsbury Group; scoured, too, for the wider circle of notables, including George Bernard Shaw, Vita Sackville-West, T. S. Eliot, and Ethel Smyth, who came to want to know her. The diaries have been sifted, too, for Woolf’s views on a range of subjects—from art to war. What remains now is to understand the diary as a diary: Woolf’s development as a diarist and her place among, and legacy to, the worldwide community of diarists she so greatly valued and admired. However, challenges abound. Diaries are still “terra incognita,” French di- ary theorist Philippe Lejeune reminded us in 2004 (76). I will argue in this book that this fact made the diary particularly attractive to Woolf. Furthermore, as Lejeune also points out, “There is no such thing as a typical diarist” (154). Woolf’s diary itself shifts form radically—particularly across her first two -de cades as a diarist explored in this book.