The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (18 page)

Leonard had a theory that women developed ‘little bursts of passion for one another' which might last ‘for a day or two up to, sometimes, twelve months' before becoming close friends or drifting apart,
13
and he seems to have seen Virginia's interest in Vita at first in that light, along the lines of her friendships with Ottoline Morell and Katherine Mansfield.

Throughout 1924 and 1925 Vita flirted with Virginia and raised her expectations. ‘Will you ever play truant to Bloomsbury and culture, I wonder, and come travelling with me?… I would rather go to Spain with you than with anyone,' Vita wrote early in the friendship, adding provocatively, ‘You like people through the brain better than through the heart – forgive me if I am wrong.'
14
Virginia at once took up the challenge: ‘It [your letter] gave me a great deal of pain – which is, I've no doubt, the first stage of intimacy – no friends, no heart, only an indifferent head. Never mind: I enjoyed your abuse very much.'
15
She visited Vita's home, Long Barn, and Vita came to stay the night at Monks House. By the end of 1924 Vita was constantly in her thoughts. In a last-ditch attempt to hold back her infatuation, she told herself Vita was ‘like an over-ripe grape in features, moustached, pouting, will be a little heavy', but it was too late. ‘I like her; could tack her on to my equipage for all time … if life allowed, this might be a friendship of a sort.'
16

1924 was a mentally stable year and Virginia wrote
Mrs Dalloway
‘without a break from illness'
17
but 1925 was very different, and Virginia was frequently ill. Cyclothymic depression continued from mid-January until early March and was deep enough to keep her in bed and limit her activities. She recovered in time to go on holiday with Leonard to Cassis in the South of France. It was a great success, she noted, a sure sign that her marriage was secure.

L and I were too too happy, as they say [she wrote in her diary on 8 April]. Nobody shall say of me that I have not known perfect happiness, but few could put their finger on the moment, or say what made it. Even I myself, stirring occasionally in the pool of content, could only say, but this is all I want; could not think of anything better, and had only my half superstitious feeling as the Gods who must, when they have created happiness, grudge it.

She crossed her fingers to add, ‘Not if you get it in unexpected ways though.'
18

The lift of mood was prolonged, and even the death of her friend Jacques Raverat, with whom she had corresponded with unusual intimacy during his slow death from multiple sclerosis, failed to dampen her spirits:

I no longer feel inclined to doff the cap to death [she wrote]. I like to go out of the room talking, with an unfinished casual sentence on my lips. This is the effect it [his death] had on me – no leave taking, no submission – but someone stepping out into the darkness – more and more do I repeat my own version of Montaigne: ‘It's life that matters.'
19

She saw little of Vita during the first half of 1925. Both women were busy writing, and Vita was finally disposing of Geoffrey Scott.
The Common Reader
and
Mrs Dalloway
had been published and acclaimed. Virginia was pleased by Morgan Foster's praise, and puzzled by Vita's comment on the novel, unsure how to take ‘will-of-the-wisp, a dazzling and lovely acquaintance'.
20
Ideas for
To the Lighthouse
had been forming for some time and she was impatient to begin, but there were too many diversions. During that summer she seemed in perpetual motion; she did not ‘get any idle hours … heaven knows we have had enough visitors.'
22

The Woolfs went to Monks House in August. It was an exeptionally hot summer. On 19 August the traditional birthday party for Virginia's nephew Quentin, on this occasion combined with Maynard Keynes's marriage to Lydia Lopokova, was held at Charleston, where Virginia was the life and soul of the party. The heat and noise and exhaustion proved too much and she suddenly fainted. Afterwards, lying in bed with headache and aching limbs and frightening bursts of racing pulse, she blamed herself: ‘Why couldn't I see or feel that all this time I was getting a little used up and riding on a flat tyre?'
23
Depression followed the hypomania and, because of her exhaustion, was prolonged; she was in and out of bed for much of the next six months, and was not fully well until the following March. Depression was not severe and the headache and insomnia were often little more than a nuisance, and did not suggest danger, but Leonard was worried and insisted on rest and quiet. Virginia, however, was unable to relax. She desperately wanted to see Vita; ‘I try to invent you for myself,' she wrote from her sick bed.
24

Vita was gratifyingly concerned over Virginia's illness, wanted to visit at once, but Leonard would allow no visitors until
he
thought she was better. He attributed the relapse, as he saw it, to the strain of
Mrs Dalloway,
and he gave no hint of suspecting Vita. When Vita was finally allowed, Virginia's satisfaction was enormous, and she incautiously revealed the depth of her feelings, ‘blurted out “truths” which the cautious respectability of health conceals'.
25

Virginia was improving when, on 13 October, she heard that Harold Nicolson was going to Teheran as Counsellor at the Embassy and Vita would be joining him. She was ‘filled with envy and despair',
26
and at once fell back into bed, panicky, ‘a good deal of rat-gnawing at the back of my head'.
27
Leonard and the doctor forbade all activity, including writing letters, but she was allowed to receive them, and was hugely relieved to learn that Vita would not be leaving until January. But for the next two months she was a semi-invalid, her activities severely curtailed by Leonard.

Leonard finally came to acknowledge the force of Virginia's feelings for Vita. To his credit he at once did everything in his power to help his wife. He wrote to Vita – it was not unusual for Leonard to write for Virginia when she was ill – emphasising how much her visits meant and how much she would be missed.

Vita came at once in response to Leonard's letter. The two women had tea together, and when Virginia mentioned that her doctor had advised her to go away, Vita immediately invited her to convalesce at Long Barn, adding, ‘I shall be alone after Harold has gone' (he left for Persia on 4 November).
28
Virginia was put into a state of dithering excitement, unable to make up her mind. She wanted to accept but feared she might disappoint Vita, and the thought of leaving Leonard frightened her. She waited nervously for Vita to confirm the invitation although, as Leonard pointed out, Vita had made it clear she wanted her to come; Virginia had only to choose a date.

When no letter arrived, and Vita failed to make an expected visit – impossible because of thick fog and illness – Virginia sank back into bed ‘like a tired child', wanting to ‘weep away this life of care … If I do not see her now, I shall not – ever; for the moment of intimacy will be gone next summer.'
29
She felt neglected, unwanted, unloved. Leonard told her she was behaving like a silly child, and that she should make arrangements to go to Long Barn. ‘By God – how satisfactory after, I think, twelve years, to have any human being to whom one can speak so directly as I to L!' she wrote in her diary.
30

The next day Vita's letter explaining her absence arrived and at once, spurred on by Leonard, Virginia wrote, ‘Would you like me to come to you for a day or two, if you are alone, before the 20th?'
31
Vita was delighted, and on 17 December Virginia travelled down to Long Barn and spent three days alone with Vita. Leonard joined them on the 19th and Vita drove them back to London next day.

*   *   *

Virginia was in love. She revelled in the ‘glow and the flattery and the festival'.
32
Above all, she basked in Vita's love. ‘These Sapphists
love
women; friendship is untinged by amorousity,' she noted approvingly.
33
But passionate as she felt, she remained in control of herself. Part of her stood back and observed:

What is the effect of all this on me? Very mixed. There is [Vita's] maturity and full-breastedness; her being so much in full sail on the high tides, where I am coasting down backwaters; her capacity, I mean, to represent her country, to visit Chatsworth, to control silver, servants, Chow dogs; her motherhood (but she is a little cold and offhand with her boys), her being, in short (what I have never been), a real woman. Then there is some voluptuousness about her; the grapes are ripe, and not reflective. No. In brain and insight she is not as highly organised as I am. But then she is aware of this, and so lavishes on me the maternal protection which, for some reason, is what I have always most wished from everyone. What L gives me, and Nessa gives me, and Vita, in her more clumsy, external way, tries to give me.
34

Leonard, who had sent Vita instructions to ensure Virginia went to bed early, was pleased by the all-round improvement. 'Flu came in January, but it was a mild dip and Virginia was well enough to dine with Clive and Vita and Leonard shortly before Vita left for Persia. Her departure left Virginia lost in ‘a dim November fog; the lights dulled and damped'. Vita might not be clever but she was ‘abundant and fruitful; truthful too. She taps so many sources of life; repose and variety … I feel a lack of stimulus, of marked days, now Vita is gone.'
35
She conjured up the ‘candlelight radiance', Vita ‘walking on legs like beech trees, pink glowing, grape-clustered, pearl hung' that was ‘the secret of her glamour'.
36
But every now and again she reassured herself she loved Leonard deeply, that Leonard remained the linchpin of her life; ‘one has room for a good many relationships'.
37

Leonard made no difficulties. Had he done so the affair would probably have finished, leaving Virginia resentful and unstable, and Vita would have retreated, afraid of Leonard's wrath. Whatever his deepest feelings Leonard tolerated the affair; he would return uncomplainingly to London after a weekend at Rodmell, leaving Virginia to stay on and spend a night or two alone with Vita, and he would raise no objections to her visiting Vita at Long Barn. If he suspected the sexual nature of the friendship, he wisely never discussed the matter, despite gossip at Bloomsbury gatherings. Clive had the bad taste – not unusual in Bloomsbury – to ask Vita at a New Year's Eve party if she had slept with Virginia; to which she returned a virtuous ‘No!'
38

Vanessa learnt of the affair early on, for not only did Virginia have a need to share the secret but she wanted to boast of her conquest:

Vita is now arriving to spend two nights alone with me – L is going back. I say no more, as you are bored by Vita, bored by love, bored by me … Still, the June nights are long and warm, the roses flowering, and the garden full of lust and bees.
39

Leonard would have been inhuman not to have felt an occasional spark of jealousy. He accepted Vita, and if she irritated him, he kept it hidden, hiding resentment behind boredom. Vita was half-afraid of him, such a ‘funny, grim, solitary creature',
40
she told Harold, and she sometimes hesitated to telephone Virginia in case Leonard answered. But she made huge efforts to be friendly. She gave the Woolfs a spaniel bitch puppy to which Leonard became devoted. Her books sold well and made money for the Woolfs, and she remained loyal to the Hogarth Press despite Leonard's penny-pinching ways, and higher offers from other publishers.

Virginia was quick to notice Leonard's resentment, real or otherwise. Although she told herself that, ‘whatever I think, I can rap out, suddenly to L',
41
she tried to hide the depth of her feelings, unlike Vita who held back few secrets from Harold. Occasionally, if she thought Leonard had been boorish with Vita, she criticised him for spoiling the visit by ‘glooming'. After one such occasion he reacted by telling her their ‘relations had not been so good lately', and she was left feeling ‘an elderly, fussy, ugly, incompetent woman, vain, chattering and futile'.
42

Their quarrels never lasted long, but Virginia determined to be ‘more considerate of Leonard's feelings, and so keep more steadily at our ordinary level of intimacy and ease: a level, I think, no other couple so long married reaches and keeps so constantly.'
43
She took the precaution of arranging for Vita's more revealing letters to be sent under cover of uncompromising ones which could safely be shown to Leonard.

After Vita's departure for Persia, Virginia's depression lingered on for another six weeks. Then, in March, as though a dam had been opened, depression gave way to hypomania; energy returned twofold and she resumed writing
To the Lighthouse,
‘never have I written so easily, imagined so profusely'.
44
By mid-April she had finished the first part and begun the second; ‘Why am I so flown with words and, apparently, free to do what I like?' she asked herself.
45

Vita returned home on 16 May. Virginia was apprehensive: ‘The shock of meeting after absence; how shy one is'.
46
But once they met, shyness gave way to joy, not due to ‘egotism but your seduction', she told Vita. So excited and wakeful was she that another ‘dribbling little temperature' and ‘nerve exhaustion headache' forced her to return to bed. It was short-lived but she continued to do too much and exhaust herself. Leonard was censorious and tried to restrain her, but she felt at one with the ‘Spirit of Delight',
47
free, capable of anything. She turned her attention to home comforts. She had already spent some of her profits from writing on modernising Monks House, putting in two lavatories and a bath and a hot water system. She wanted to be comfortable, and Vita to be impressed, and now with this in mind she bought new armchairs and rugs. A row blew up with Leonard who wanted to spend available money on the garden, but Virginia stuck to her guns and won the day.