The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

 

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Contents

Title Page

Copyright Notice

Acknowledgements

Preface

1. Julia Stephen

2. Leslie Stephen

3. The Stephen Marriage

4. Virginia's Early Life and Temperament

5. Deaths – The First Major Breakdown, 1904

6. Vanessa's Marriage – Virginia's Instability

7. Gender and Sexuality

8. Leonard Woolf and Courtship

9. Marriage – The Second Major Breakdown, 1913

10. Inner and Outer Worlds

11. Creativity

12. Vita Sackville-West

13. Threat of War

14.
The Years
and
Three Guineas

15. War, Depression and Suicide

Appendix: Mania, Madness and Creativity

Family Tree

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Copyright

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to the Librarian, University of Sussex Library for permission to quote from the Leonard Woolf papers; the Society of Authors as the Literary Representative of the Estate of Virginia Woolf to quote from ‘On Being Ill',
Three Guineas, The Voyage Out, Mrs Dalloway, The Waves, To The Lighthouse,
‘Professions for Women' all published by the Hogarth Press; the Executors of the Estate of Virginia Woolf for extracts from
The Diary of Virginia Woolf,
edited by Anne Olivier Bell (the Hogarth Press),
The Letters of Virginia Woolf,
edited by Nigel Nicolson (the Hogarth Press),
Moments of Being,
edited and introduced by Jeanne Schulkind (the Hogarth Press),
A Passionate Apprentice: the Early Journals of Virginia Woolf,
edited by Mitchell A. Leaska (the Hogarth Press),
A Very Close Conspiracy
by Jane Dunn (Jonathan Cape); Quentin Bell's
Biography of Virginia Woolf,
vols 1 and 2 (the Hogarth Press),
The Autobiography of Leonard Woolf,
vols. 1 and 2 (the Hogarth Press),
The Letters of Vita Sackville-West to Virginia Woolf,
edited by Louise DeSalvo and Mitchell A. Leaska (Hutchinson),
Lytton Strachey: the New Biography,
by Michael Holroyd (Chatto & Windus);
Deceived with Kindness; A Bloomsbury Childhood,
by Angelica Garnett (Chatto & Windus); Oxford University Press for allowing extracts of
The Prose and Poetry Writings of William Cowper,
vol. 1, edited by James King and Charles Ryskamp, Leslie Stephen's
The Mausoleum Book,
introduced by Alan Bell (Clarendon Press);
Anny Thackeray Ritchie
by Winifred Gerin, and
Tennyson
by Robert Bernard Martin; John Lehmann's
Virginia Woolf and Her World
(Thames & Hudson); Orion Publishing for allowing extracts from
The Letters of Leonard Woolf,
edited by Frederic Spotts (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),
Vita and Harold: the Letters to Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicolson,
edited by Nigel Nicolson (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),
Leslie Stephen: the Godless Victorian,
by Noel Annan (Weidenfeld & Nicolson),
Vita: the Life of Vita Sackville-West
by Victoria Glendenning (Weidenfeld & Nicolson), and
Vanessa Bell,
by Frances Spalding (Weidenfeld & Nicolson); David Higham Associates for quotes from
Virginia Woolf,
by James King, Leonard Woolf's
The Wise Virgins
(Arnold),
Elders and Betters,
by Quentin Bell (John Murray) and
An Unquiet Mind,
by Kay R. Jamieson (Alfred A. Knopf): Professor Pat Jalland at Melbourne University for extracts from
Octavia Wilberforce
(Cassell) and the
Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell,
edited by Regina Marler (Bloomsbury).

Preface

Books on Virginia Woolf continue to flood the market, but an extraordinary gap exists regarding the illness from which she suffered: manic depression. Her diaries – surely the fullest year-by-year record ever of the effect of the disease on a creative life, work and relationships and, less reliably, her letters and her husband's autobiography, are wonderfully revealing to the trained eye. Yet each new book, even when written by the medically qualified, fails to reveal the effects of Virginia Woolf's mood swings, and the biological and environmental interactions responsible for them.

The four children of Leslie and Julia Stephen were all talented, and from her earliest years Virginia stood out as the story-teller, the writer, the one who would continue the Stephen literary tradition. For most of the year the family lived in London, but summers were spent in St Ives in Cornwall and were the happiest times of Virginia's childhood, their memory kept, squirrel-like, in her creative store. She was highly strung and imaginative, and often difficult, jealously demanding her ‘rights'. But in no way unusual; Virginia seemed a thoroughly normal child.

The death of her mother at puberty, followed by that of her half-sister, was devastating, yet she weathered the shock and eventually emerged more or less intact. But during the emotional upheaval, chemicals in the brain that had previously been quiescent stirred into activity and ‘switched on' the mental disease that was to influence Virginia's life so profoundly over the next forty years.

Manic depression exists in every known society. It was well described by early Greek physicians, but only during the last century has it been defined and separated from other mental illnesses.

The condition showed itself in a yearly cycle of mood changes: depression in late winter and early spring, and then again in September; elation in the summer, sometimes in November. By the time she was 19 Virginia had come to recognise the pattern and told her cousin, ‘My Spring Melancholia is developing into Summer Madness.'
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Virginia's fluctuations of mood between depression and high spirits are known as cyclothymia. At first the mood changes were comparatively mild but, when she was 22, after her father's death, she became mad and for almost a year was disabled by manic depression. She recovered but in 1913, following her marriage to Leonard Woolf, she had a second, more violent and prolonged attack of madness.

The distinction between cyclothymia and manic depression is one of degree. Any marked shift of mood results in changed feelings and perception. When Virginia was depressed she saw herself as a failure; a failed writer, a failed woman, dwarfed by her sister, Vanessa. She believed she was old and ugly and impotent. She felt people laughed at and ridiculed her. She became afraid of strangers and filled with anxiety. When ‘high' or hypomanic, Virginia felt ‘a great mastery over the world',
2
and she ‘scarcely wanted children'; she had ‘an insatiable desire to write', to show herself off, to socialise, gripped by the ‘Spirit of Delight'.
3

The deeper the mood swing, the more exaggerated the distortions, and eventually fantasy came to replace reality. In severe depression, when this occurs the cyclothyme becomes insane, or mad, and is diagnosed as having manic depression. The depression which Virginia developed without fail between January and March was potentially the most dangerous. Depression at other times was unpleasant, often incapacitating for many weeks, but never led on to hallucinations. All Virginia's breakdowns into insanity had their origin in the New Year period.

Patterns of illness vary individually, but Virginia Woolf had the classic form of the disease: alternating swings of mood occurring with the seasons. Treatment today has improved since her day, but for long-term stability there still remains the need for a trusted understanding partner who can assume temporary command of the patient's life at critical times; a need all too often misunderstood by Virginia Woolf's biographers.

Chapter One

Julia Stephen

Virginia's mother, Julia Stephen, came from a large family renowned for beauty rather than intellect, and although Julia was often gloomy, even melancholic, she was never seriously depressed, and none of her relatives was remotely insane. It is true that Julia's maternal grandfather was a drunk and extravagantly wicked,
1
and that her aunt Julia Margaret Cameron, the renowned Victorian photographer, was a notorious eccentric, but not a manic depressive. Virginia's genetic inheritance for cyclothymia came wholly through her father. Nonetheless, Julia contributed a great deal to Virginia's temperamental instability and indirectly therefore to her mood swings.

Julia was adored by her husband and children, friends, and the many lame dogs, sick and deprived, whom she nursed and supported. She appeared to one and all the essence of goodness and beauty, a true angel both in and outside the house, always prepared to give of her time to those in need.

She was the ‘darling of darlings' to her mother, who would have only Julia as attendant during her frequent illnesses. Leslie Stephen, her husband, wanted her continually at his beck and call, to mother and encourage him and lift his self-esteem. When the children fell ill Julia insisted on nursing them herself. Her presence filled the home with light and warmth. Virginia could never have enough of her mother, but she had to be ill or noticeably upset to receive Julia's full attention. No sooner was Virginia better than her mother was off on some other mission of mercy. Had she been challenged she would have responded with, ‘To serve is the highest expression of your nature'.
2

There was a disconcerting contradiction in Julia. She gave her time and attention wholly to those in need, yet she gave little of
herself
and withdrew once her task was done. She was intensely private and it seemed she could not come close to anyone when outside her caring role. Her husband sensed this absence of deep involvement and worried that she did not love him as she had loved her first husband. Julia would never openly admit to loving Leslie after their marriage. He called her a heartless woman and it was only half in jest. Virginia too, fretted: ‘I can never remember being alone with her for more than a few minutes.'
3

Julia never let herself go emotionally. She kept herself and her world under tight control. No one was allowed to take liberties: friends who stepped over the boundary were dropped, an awkward child was despatched to bed and ignored. Her difficult, autistic stepdaughter Laura was sent away to an institution. It was noticeable how much harder Julia was with daughters than with sons.

Beneath Julia's warm and caring exterior was a rigid anxious woman, fearful of exposing her deeper feelings. She never confided. She rarely expressed anger – icy disapproval was her usual reaction – but when it flared up the shock was the greater for being unexpected. It took Leslie by surprise and shook Virginia. ‘She would suddenly say something so unexpected, from that Madonna face, one thought it
vicious.
'
4

In company Julia could be gay, the life and soul of any party. When she was absent Hyde Park Gate became dark and dull for Virginia, despite the merriment of siblings. Leslie's gloomy mood and the resulting stultifying atmosphere were alleviated by her presence. Julia had a gift for drawing out people of all classes and listening to their troubles. She soothed unhappy children to sleep with her stories. She listened patiently to her husband and gave him the encouragement and assurance he wanted. She laughed and chatted in society. But when not engaged, sitting with a book or sewing, signs of melancholia emerged. Virginia used to watch her and came to recognise her sadness, the gloom and silence within. She did not enjoy her existence. She had no wish to end her life but she believed death would be the greatest boon. Her melancholia distressed Leslie; it was somehow deeper, all-embracing and different from Leslie's histrionic depressions. When he chided her for being ‘less happy than I could wish', she answered that her contact with ‘sufferers' and the ‘terrible havoc made by death' outweighed peace and happiness.
5