Mrs Dalloway (32 page)

28.
William Morris
: i.e. Morris's radical and socialist writings such as
A Dream of John Ball
(1886–7),
Signs of Change
(1888),
News from Nowhere
(1890) or
Socialism, its Growth and Outcome
(1893).

29.
hollyhocks, dahlias
. . .
in bowls
: Vanessa Bell arranged flowers in this way. On a visit to Charleston in August 1923, Woolf noted ‘Hollyhocks, decapitated, swam in a bowl' (
Diary
, II, p. 260).

30.
‘She is beneath this roof!'
: Quentin Bell describes Woolf in the nineties: ‘gripping the handle of the water-jug in the top room at Hyde Park Gate, she exclaimed to herself: “Madge is here; at this moment she is actually under this roof,'” and a footnote gives Vita Sackville-West's confirmation that ‘Madge Symonds . . . is Sally in Mrs. Dalloway' (Bell:
VW
I, pp. 60–61). See also Introduction,
p. xxxiv
.

31.
‘if it were now to die, t'were now to be most happy'
:
Othello
, II. i. 189–90 (spoken by Othello as he lands at Cyprus and is
restored to Desdemona). Clarissa recalls this moment again at the end of the book,
p. 202
.

32.
Leith Hill
: four miles south west of Dorking, Leith Hill is the highest point in south-east England; the Gothic tower (built in 1766) brings its total height to a thousand feet. It was a favourite spot for outings. See also Introduction,
p. xix
.

33.
St. Margaret's
: Peter Walsh passing St. Margaret's, the parish church of the House of Commons, associates it with Clarissa in her role as hostess.

34.
the Duke of Cambridge
: his equestrian statue (put up in 1907) is outside the War Office, half-way down Whitehall.

35.
the empty tomb
: i.e. the Cenotaph (literally ‘empty tomb' in Greek), the memorial in Whitehall commemorating the dead of the First World War. The cadets have marched with their wreath from Finsbury Pavement at Moorgate, in the City of London.

36.
Nelson, Gordon, Havelock
: all military heroes with memorial statues in Trafalgar Square at this time: Horatio Nelson died fighting against the French and Spanish fleets at the battle of Trafalgar in 1805 and is commemorated by Nelson's column. Charles George Gordon was killed at Khartoum during a revolt in the Sudan in 1885. Henry Havelock was a hero of the Indian Mutiny who died at Lucknow in 1857.

37.
air-balls
: i.e. balloons.

38.
an old nurse
. . .: in fact Clarissa's old nurse is called Ellen Barnet, and she later turns up to help with the party – see
pp. 182
–
3
. Peter Walsh later recalls Clarissa's Aunt Helena as having died (
p. 178
), though she too comes to the party (
p. 195
).

39.
Wickham
: the name of the officer who elopes with Lydia Bennet but is reluctant to marry her, in Jane Austen's
Pride and Prejudice
(1813).

40.
women's rights . . . topic
: ‘antediluvian' since the suffragettes' immediate aim was satisfied when women over thirty
gained the vote in January 1918. Women's political oppression is connected with their economic oppression through the issue of prostitution, a connection also made by Evelyn M. in Chapter 19 of
The Voyage Out
(1915, Penguin Books 1992, p. 235). Hugh's kiss (see
pp. 80
,
199
, ‘to punish her for saying that women should have votes') recalls Richard Dalloway's kissing of Rachel, which prompts her to ask Helen ‘What are those women in Piccadilly?' (Chapter 6,
The Voyage Out
, p. 72).

41.
tariff-reform
: the policy of those conservatives who were opposed to free trade and supported differential charges on imports (especially of agricultural produce) in order to protect home and British empire goods from open competition on a free market.

42.
Morning Post
: owned by Lady Bathurst, this was a publication of the extreme right which had published violent anti-Semitic propaganda in 1920. Peter Walsh is greatly exaggerating Richard Dalloway's political conservatism; Dalloway actually reads
The Times
.

43.
Huxley and Tyndall
: Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95) was a biologist who defended Darwin's theory of evolution against orthodox religious positions. John Tyndall (1820–93) was a natural philosopher.

44.
A sound interrupted him
: this episode seems to have had its origin in an incident of 8 June 1920: ‘An old beggar woman, blind, sat against a stone wall in Kingsway holding a brown mongrel in her arms and sang aloud . . . Perhaps it was the song at night that seemed strange; she was singing shrilly, but for her own amusement, not begging . . . It was gay, & yet terrible & fearfully vivid. Nowadays I'm often overcome by London; even think of the dead who have walked in the city.' (
Diary
, II, p. 47) Woolf used the incident more directly in
Jacob's Room
(1922, Penguin Books 1992, p. 56), but in this version the singer is at once archetypal, singing in an unknown, perhaps archaic language yet the words
are also identifiable as those of a particular
lied
by Richard Strauss.

45.
singing of love
: this song was identified by J. Hillis Miller as ‘Allerseelen', set by Richard Strauss to words by Hermann von Gilm. It evokes All Souls' Day, when dead lovers return. Miller could not find a translation that corresponded to Woolf's version (the middle stanza of which rhymes), so provided the following version:

Place on the table the perfuming heather,
Bring here the last red aster,
And let us speak of love,
As once in May.

Give me your hand, that I may secretly press it,
And if someone sees, it's all the same to me;
Give me but one of your sweet glances,
As once in May.

It is blooming and breathing perfume today on
    every grave,
One day in the year is free to the dead,
Come to my heart that I may have you again,
As once in May.

Miller writes, ‘Like Strauss's song,
Mrs. Dalloway
has the form of an All Souls' Day in which Peter Walsh, Sally Seton, and the rest rise from the dead to come to Clarissa's party.' (
Fiction and Repetition: Seven English Novels
, Basil Blackwell, 1982, p. 190).

46.
lecturing in the Waterloo Road
: the site of Morley College where Virginia Woolf taught adult evening courses to working men and women from 1905 to 1907. Isabel Pole might have thought Smith resembled Keats in having little education and wanting to be a poet.

47.
The History of Civilisation, and Bernard Shaw
: The first and more important volume of Thomas Henry Buckle's
History of Civilisation in England
(1857) argued for the influence of
environment on the intellectual progress of mankind. Shaw was read for his socialist opinions as well as for his plays.

48.
Sir William Bradshaw's house
: Woolf's portrait exposes Bradshaw's complacency, and may include elements of Sir George Savage, who as an old family friend of the Stephens had treated her when she was ill, but later came to be distrusted by both Leonard and Virginia (Bell,
VW
I, p. 90; II, pp. 8, 14). Bradshaw seems to arouse an instinctive dislike in people as different as Rezia (
p. 112
) and the Dalloways (
p. 201
). See Introduction,
p. xlii
.

49.
Lovelace or Herrick
: Richard Lovelace (1618–58) and Robert Herrick (1591–1674) were cavalier poets.

50.
that project . . . Canada
: Lady Bruton's adopted cause is ‘a way of handling the massive unemployment of the period', as Alex Zwerdling explains (
Virginia Woolf and the Real World
, University of California Press, 1986, p. 129).

51.
the Labour Government, she meant
: it came within seven months – see Introduction,
p. xv
.

52.
the descendant of Horsa
: with his brother Hengist, the leader of a group of Anglo-Saxon invaders of England in the fifth century.

53.
as Mrs. Hilbery said
: Mrs. Hilbery is a major figure in Woolf's second novel
Night and Day
(1919), mother of the heroine and daughter of a great poet, she is a somewhat eccentric figure. Later she appears as a guest at the party (
pp. 187
,
192
), making a gnomic little speech as she leaves (
p. 209
).

54.
the Stores
: i.e. the Army and Navy department stores in Victoria Street.

55.
the old lady . . . upstairs
: this mysterious yet close and familiar figure, who reappears at the end (p. 203) at once focuses Clarissa's sense of solitude, or perhaps of her own futurity, while also being associated with the unknown, like the singer in Regent's Park (
pp. 88
–
9
) or Mrs. Brown in the railway carriage in the essay ‘Mr. Bennett and Mrs.
Brown', on which see Introduction,
p. xvi
–
xvii
. (‘Mr Bennett and Mrs Brown', retitled ‘Character in Fiction',
Essays
, III, pp. 423–5).

56.
oil and colour shop
: i.e. a shop selling oil paints.

57.
Westminster Cathedral . . . Abbey
: the Cathedral is Roman Catholic, built at the end of the nineteenth century in Byzantine style; the Abbey Anglican and much of it is Early English in style. A stone slab in the nave marks the tomb of the Unknown Warrior, brought from Flanders and interred in the Abbey in November 1920, as a representative of the nameless British servicemen killed in the War. While Miss Kilman visits the Abbey, Elizabeth is drawn towards London's other great cathedral, St Paul's, but turns back, deciding ‘it was later than she thought' (
p. 152
).

58.
Somerset House
: a long mainly eighteenth-century mansion standing between the Strand and Waterloo Bridge; at this time it housed various government activities, but particularly the principal tax and public record offices.

59.
Surrey was all out
: i.e. the county cricket team. Shortly afterwards (
p. 178
) Peter Walsh buys a newspaper for the cricket scores and reads the same item: ‘Surrey was all out once more . . . But cricket was no mere game. Cricket was important' (
p. 178
).

60.
come up to the scratch
: to do what is expected of one (the scratch is the line from which a race begins).

61.
Mr. Willet's summer time
: after the war, the British retained the daylight saving time advocated by the English builder William Willett, and moved the clocks forward an hour during summer months.

62.
Littrés dictionary
: Emile Littrés monumental French dictionary was published 1863–72.

63.
dampers
: used to control the heat of the oven.

64.
the rascals who get hanged . . . train
: earlier (
p. 178
) Peter Walsh had read ‘about a murder case' in the evening paper.

65.
Sir Joshua
: i.e. Reynolds (1723–92), English portraitist.

66.
this isle of men . . . land
: this passage suggests John of Gaunt's apostrophe to England in Shakespeare's
Richard II
:

‘This happy breed of men, this little world,
This precious stone set in a silver sea' (II. i. 45–6)

Lady Bruton ‘never read a word of poetry herself (
p. 115
).

67.
an enchanted garden
. . .
in the back garden!
: at Lady Sybil Colefax's summer parties at Argyll House, ‘The doors which led from the large room into the garden were open, and the guests strolled about the garden, which was lit by garlands of fairy lamps.' Leonard Woolf,
An Autobiography
II (1964–9, O.U.P., 1980, p. 263). Although Woolf drew on parties at Argyll House in describing Clarissa's, Lady Sybil Colefax is probably the model for Lady Bruton rather than for Clarissa, who was partly based on the Stephens' old friend Kitty Maxse.

Substantive emendations adopted or conjectured in this edition.

The first reading is the one printed in this edition. The italic entry immediately following the square bracket indicates whether this reading is that of the first British edition (
1925
), its revised second impression (
1925 ii
), later British editions (
1929
,
1942
,
1947
), the first American edition (
A 1925
), G. Patton Wright's edition in The Definitive Collected Edition of the Novels of Virginia Woolf, 1990 (
Wright
), or the present edition (
this edn
). When an emendation has been adopted in this edition, the original reading of
1925
is also given for purposes of comparison. When the present editor has allowed the reading of
1925
to stand but conjectures an emendation, the formula
conj. this edn
is used. The readings of Virginia Woolf's corrected proofs for
A 1925
, of her corrected proofs for Jacques Raverat, and of any part of her unpublished holograph material are indicated by
AP
R,
J
R, and
Holograph
respectively.