Orlando (39 page)

29.
deserts of vast eternity
: from Andrew Marvell’s ‘To his Coy Mistress’, itself a meditation on the nature of time:

But at my back I always hear
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.
And Yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.

30.
fleets
: glides away, vanishes.

31.
budget
: the contents of a bag or bundle.

32.
scrolloping
: a word invented by Woolf to denote a rambling, looped and decorated movement (see also p. 159).

33.
There it lay… spring
: Vita loved this paragraph and quoted the final sentence from it in an appendix to the fourth edition of
Knole
(1958, p. 215). Writing immediately to Virginia to thank her for the novel, she added a postscript: ‘You made me cry with your passages about Knole, you wretch’ (11 October 1928,
Letters of Vita,
p. 306).

34.
King Jamie, my Lord
: the King’s Bedroom at Knole was said to have been furnished for the reception of James I. During the Restoration, Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset, had it provided with ‘a set of furniture made entirely in silver: table, hanging mirror, and tripods’. Like Orlando, he ‘cannot have known when he had had enough of a good thing’ (
Knole,
p. 15). James I’s son, Charles I, had
been executed in 1649, and Oliver Cromwell, on behalf of Parlia ment, ruled England during the interregnum. Charles II came to the throne in 1660. The Sackville family had been committed royal ists (see
Knole,
pp. 97, 106, 107, 110). 35.
Three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms
: according to
Knole
(p. 4) there were 7 courts, 52 staircases and 365 rooms (not bedrooms) in the house, to correspond to the divisions of days and weeks in the year. The inventory that follows, though much exaggerated, is inspired by one of 1624 (
Knole,
pp. 95–6).

35.
Three hundred and sixty-five bedrooms
: according to
Knole
(p. 4) there were 7 courts, 52 staircases and 365 rooms (not bedrooms) in the house, to correspond to the divisions of days and weeks in the year. The inventory that follows, though much exaggerated, is inspired by one of 1624 (
Knole
, pp. 95—6).

36.
great trees… flooring
: the floor of the Cartoon Gallery at Knole is formed of ‘solid tree trunks, split in half, with the rounded half downwards’ (
Knole,
p. 10).

37.
galleries… mermaids on their backs
: in classical legend Daphne fled from Apollo and was transformed into a laurel. There was a blue and green tapestry that constantly stirred in the breeze in the Venetian Ambassador’s bedroom, a room lovingly described by Vita in
Knole;
the carved chairs in the Brown Gallery were ‘for ever holding out their arms, for ever disappointed’, and in the ballroom there was a frieze of mermaids and dolphins that Vita had loved as a child (
Knole,
pp. 15–16, 13, 11). Early editions of
Knole
and Charles Phillips’s history describe the tapestries in the Venetian Ambassa dor’s bedroom variously as medieval or classical in theme – Apollo and Diana or Ulysses and Circe perhaps – but a guidebook to Knole written by Vita for the National Trust in 1948 says that they depict scenes from
Orlando Furioso
(see Chapter I, Note I).

38.
round schoolboy hand
: like Vita’s (Nicolson); for ‘The Oak Tree’, see Chapter I, Note 9.

39.
the Archduchess Harriet
: based on Lord Henry (Harry) Lascelles, who pursued and proposed to Vita in 1912 (
Vita,
pp. 48–51); later, in 1922, he married the Princess Royal. Virginia asked Vita, ‘What used you and Lord Lascelles to talk about’ (23 October 1927). Vita replied, ‘He was always very tongue-tied, so we didn’t get very far. He had nice hands’ (25 October 1927,
Letters of Vita,
pp. 255–6). Scand-op-Boom may have been suggested by Bergen-op-Zoom, where Edward Sackville, fourth Earl of Dorset, had fought a duel (
Knole,
p. 184).

40.
Jacobi or of Topp
: ‘This suit [of tilting armour], which is one of the gems of the Wallace Collection, had been made in 1575 by Jacob Topp or Jacobi for Sir Thomas Sackville’ (
Knole,
p. 99).

41.
King Charles… Nell Guyn was on his arm
: Nell Gwyn (1650–87) was an actress, the mistress of Charles II and also of Charles Sackville, sixth Earl of Dorset; a portrait in the Spangle dressing-room was supposed to be of Nell (
Knole,
pp. 122, 124–6;
Phillips,
II, p. 428). Sackvilles traditionally served as ambassadors, though mainly in France or the Netherlands. Vita’s husband Harold Nicolson served in the British Embassy at Constantinople from 1911–14, and she began married life there in November 1913 (Nicolson; and
Vita,
p. 69).

1.
his Bath… Dukedom
: Orlando is now made a Knight of the Order of the Bath, and promoted from Earl to Duke, apparently as a reward for his services as ambassador in Constantinople. His hon ours parallel those of Lionel Sackville, seventh Earl, who was made Knight of the Garter in 1714 (Orlando already held this honour – see p. 18) and Duke of Dorset in 1720.

2.
the revolution… the fire
: these occur in Constantinople during Or lando’s service there, although they also recapitulate the revolution of 1652 and the Great Fire of 1666, perhaps half a century earlier, in England.

3.
cheroot
: a cigar cut at both ends. Nicolson observes that Virginia smoked them, and often tried unsuccessfully to persuade Vita to do so too.

4.
the domes of Santa Sofia
: Constantinople had been an element in the novel from its first conception (see above, Chapter I, Note 10). In addition to its significance for Vita, Woolf had visited it in October 1906 with her brother Adrian, her sister and Violet Dick inson, recording, ‘the morning veil of mist, & the stately domes that shine through’ and the great cathedral of Santa Sofia ‘like a treble globe of bubbles frozen solid’ (
A Passionate Apprentice,
PP. 357, 347). The hills of Pera lie on the further (Turkish) side of the Golden Horn, and the Galata Tower stands on its heights.

5.
journeys there alone on foot
: Nicolson points out that this passage suggests Vita’s journey over the Persian mountains. Early in 1927 Vita went out to Tehran to join Harold, and they made a walking expedition into the Bakhtiari mountains, described in letters to
Virginia, and later in her travel book
Twelve Days
(1927). The gypsies (whom Orlando joins later in this chapter) in some respects resemble the Bakhtiari tribe that Vita met there.

6.
Circassian
: ‘from the region of the Caucasus mountains between the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea.

7.
Janissaries
: the soldiers belonging to the Sultan’s Guard.

8.
hookah
: a water pipe. Orlando’s boredom with diplomatic cere monial reflects Vita’s as described in letters to Virginia from Tehran early in 1927: ‘Correctness is the order of the day, so we never get any further’ (19 February); ‘We’ve had a series of dinner parties, thank you, one of them indistinguishable from the other’ (4 March,
Letters of Vita,
pp. 192, 202).

9.
Ramadan
: ninth month of the Islamic year, observed by fasting during daylight hours.

10.
the diary of John Fenner Brigge
: Woolf uses this occasion to parody eighteenth-century diaries and letters. In the MS, some of the gaps in Brigge’s letter are filled in slightly differently so that the ‘tableau vivant’ (p. 91) ‘represented the masque of Comus by our… English poet Milton’. Among those performing are ‘the bearers of some of our greatest names in England, such as Howard, Stanley, Herbert, Sackville, Talbot…’ (at which point the branch breaks). The masque anticipates that attendant on Orlando’s sex change, while the names of great English families occur to Orlando later in the chapter (see below, Note 22).

11.
blue-jackets
: sailors of the Royal Navy.

12.
Rosina Pepita
: Vita’s maternal grandmother was Josefa de Oliva, a famous Spanish dancer better known as ‘Pepita’. She lived with Lionel Sackville-West, second Lord Sackville, and bore him five children of whom the youngest, Victoria, was Vita’s mother. In 1910, Victoria’s older brother Henry brought a lawsuit against Vita’s father (who was also his cousin, and the legitimate son of Lionel’s younger brother) on the grounds that Lionel and Pepita had in fact been married, and he was thus heir to Knole (see Chapter V, Note 27; and
Vita,
pp. 2, 30).

13.
bastinado
: punishment by caning, especially on the soles of the feet.

14.
red boxes
: used for official documents.

15.
three figures enter
: Orlando’s second seven-day sleep recalls the earlier one, at the outset of Chapter II; a masque of three sisters now intervenes, attempting to prevent her ‘indecent’ discovery of the
change in her body. They are dismissed by Truth to the ‘still unravished heights of [suburban] Surrey’, protected by concealing ivy and curtains.

16.
let other pens… sexuality
: Chapter XLVIII of Jane Austen’s
Mans field Park
begins, ‘Let other pens dwell on guilt and misery. I quit such odious subjects as soon as I can, impatient to restore everybody … to tolerable comfort.’

17.
her Seleuchi hound
: when Vita was staying with Gertrude Bell in Baghdad in February 1926 she bought a Seleuchi puppy, to take to Tehran, as a present for Harold (
Vita,
p. 156).

18.
Broussa
: modern Bursa, old capital of the Ottoman empire, is on the hills above the sea of Marmara in north-west Turkey. Virginia had travelled out there in 1911 when her sister Vanessa, on holiday there with her husband Clive Bell and Roger Fry, was suddenly taken ill. Orlando’s gypsy guide from Constantinople, Rustum, is named after one of the heroes in Firdawsi’s great Persian epic, the
Shâh-nâma
(or Book of the Kings).

19.
Thessalian
: hills in northern Greece, west of Bursa and across the sea.

20.
Marmara… Parthenon
: from the mountains behind Bursa it may be possible to glimpse Greece across the sea of Marmara, but it would not be possible to see Athens, crowned with the Acropolis on which stands the Parthenon, the temple of the maidens. Woolf had visited Athens in 1906, on her travels to Constantinople. On the sense of the panoramic, see Chapter I, Note 10.

21.
withys
: thin branches, usually of willow, used in basket-making.

22.
Howards and Plantagenets
: old English families, the Plantagenets were royal, the Howards merely aristocratic, as were the Talbots (see above, Note 10, and p. 105).

23.
Mount Athos
: a monastery in north-east Greece, from the vicinity of which women and female animals are strictly forbidden.

24.
burnous
: hooded cloak worn by Arabs.

25.
heavy carts… tree trunks
: Orlando’s vision of her home under snow recalls Virginia’s first visit to Knole in January 1927:

… cart bringing wood in to be sawn by the great circular saw. How do you see that? I asked Vita. She said she saw it as something that had gone on for hundreds of years. They had brought wood in from the Park to replenish the great fires like
this for centuries: & her ancestresses had walked so on the snow with their great dogs bounding by them. All the centuries seemed lit up, the past expressive, articulate; not dumb & forgotten…

                                                 (23 January 1927,
Diary,
III, p. 125.)

1.
paduasoy
: strong corded silk, much worn in the eighteenth century.

2.
shiver
: a tiny piece, a shaving (echoing Orlando’s ‘delicious tremor’).

3.
pkasaunce
: a pleasure ground.

4.
like a Guy Fawkes
: the effigy of Guy Fawkes (who conspired against James I) is burnt on 5 November, i.e. ‘grotesquely or absurdly dressed’.

5.
samphire gatherers
: samphire is a kind of edible seaweed. This sen tence echoes Edgar’s account of Dover cliffs in
King Lear
(IV. vi. 14–15):

Half way down
Hangs one that gathers samphire, dreadful trade!

The phrase ‘mopping and mowing’ (i.e. making faces) is also used by Edgar who, disguised as mad Tom, refers to the demon ‘Flibbertigibbit, of mopping and mowing’ (IV. i. 61–2). Lionel, first Duke of Dorset, appears in a view of Dover Castle by John Wootton (1727), which was hanging on the great staircase at Knole (
Phillips,
II, p. 417).

6.
So good-bye… half Yorkshire
: ‘Ladies of Spain’ is a sea shanty. Half Yorkshire is an indirect allusion to the extensive estates of Henry Lascelles, figured in the story as the Archduchess Harriet (Nicolson; see below, Note 20).

7.
a dome… poet’s forehead
: the dome of St Paul’s (rebuilt by Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of 1666) reminds Orlando of the forehead of Shakespeare (glimpsed on p. 16). For Woolf, ‘Shakespeare was androgynous’ (
A Room of One’s Own,
1928; Penguin Books, 1945, p. 97), and this seems to calm Orlando’s anxieties about her female-ness. Thoughts of Shakespeare’s ‘great lines’ lead on to those of the seventeenth-century poet John Milton, whose style suggests a cathed ral bell, ringing inside Orlando’s mind – and perhaps outside too.

8.
orgulous, undulant, superb
: these Latinate words suggest the neoclassical style, just then coming into fashion. Both ‘orgulous’ and ‘superb’ mean proud or exalted; ‘undulant’ means rising and falling like (or on) waves.