The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (19 page)

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Vita returned to Persia on 28 January 1927, having spent the morning with Virginia, infatuated. ‘What intelligence – what perception. Sensitiveness in the best sense, imagination, poetry, culture…'
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‘I really adore her. Not “in love” but just love – devotion.'
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Harold in Teheran was unusually jealous, although he termed it ‘self defence', and urged Vita to be careful; although ‘from your point of view, I know that the friendship can only be enriching'. He was ‘a little anxious about it from her [Virginia's] point of view as I can't help feeling that her stability and poise is based on a rather precarious foundation.'
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Vita assured him she would tell him of any ‘muddle with Virginia'.
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Despite Virginia missing Vita the spring melancholia was minimal; she felt sure of Vita and at ease with Leonard, and she was engaged in finishing
To the Lighthouse.
Leonard enthused when shown the manuscript; ‘much my best book, and it is a “masterpiece” … a psychological poem.'
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She worked on the proofs, but always at the back of her thoughts was Vita. In February she ‘came out', with ‘the most important event in my life since marriage – so Clive described it';
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her long hair was cut off and, she told Vita, shingled and bingled. It was a signal to all three of her protectors that she was leaving childhood behind. One night in March, she thought up ‘a whole fantasy … an escapade after these serious, poetic, experimental books whose form is always so closely considered'. It would be fun, written ‘at the top of my speed … Sapphism is to be suggested. Satire is to be the main note – satire and wildness.'
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By October the ideas had crystallised into
Orlando.

Vita returned in May with Harold, who had completed his tour of duty in Persia. The excitement proved too much and within a short time Virginia had ‘a very sharp headache' and an erratic jumping pulse. Leonard forced her to rest; ‘a good thing in some way', she admitted, ‘for I got control of society at an early stage, and circumvented my headache, without a complete smash'.
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It was gratifying to have Vita home but Virginia found Harold's presence at Long Barn irritating, despite his friendliness. More than a hint of resentment lies behind Virginia's diary entries: ‘a spontaneous childlike man',
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‘flimsy' compared to Leonard (who in turn thought him ‘too commonplace').
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Virginia was also sensing a sexual restlessness on Vita's part, which made her feel ‘elderly and valetudinarian'.
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In October Virginia began
Orlando,
a never-ageing Vita who changes from male to female, beginning with the year 1500. As she wrote, ‘it rushed off like a rocket',
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and she finished it by March. The book started as ‘a joke',
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but became what Nigel Nicolson has called ‘the longest and most charming love letter in literature'.
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Virginia told Vita, it is about ‘the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind … Shall you mind?'
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Vita was entranced: ‘what fun for you; what fun for me. You see, any vengeance that you ever want to take will be ready in your hand.'
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Orlando
was published that October, dedicated to Vita.

Leonard was not upset, and Virginia was surprised how seriously he took the book, his opinion being that it was ‘in some ways better than
The Lighthouse
'.
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Perhaps it was his way of avoiding any embarrassing discussion. The person most upset was Vita's mother, who called Virginia a ‘wicked madwoman' and tried ineffectually to prevent the book being reviewed.
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That July Virginia spent a weekend at Long Barn, where Vita confessed to having spent a night with Mary Hutchinson, Clive's ex-mistress. Virginia tried her best to see it as a passing peccadillo, but warned Vita to take care lest she find Virginia's ‘soft crevices lined with hooks'.
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When a more serious affair with Mary Campbell, wife of the poet Roy Campbell, threatened, Virginia became alarmed. She told Vita:

Never do I leave you without thinking it's for the last time since I am always certain you'll be off and on with the next … since all our intercourse is tinged with this melancholy on my part. Perhaps we gain in intensity what we lack in the sober comfortable virtues of a prolonged and safe and respectable and chaste and cold-blooded friendship.
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Vita's affair caused trouble. Roy Campbell found out and threatened murder and suicide, and an alarmed Vita confessed everything to Virginia, tempering the blow by swearing that Virginia remained ‘absolutely vital'. Virginia was only partly mollified, and for some years, until she began to come to terms with what was clearly the inevitable, depression was frequent and often prolonged.

At the end of September Vita and Virginia spent a week together in France. The holiday had been planned and discussed for months. Virginia very much wanted to go, but was worried by ‘7 days alone with Vita', in case they ‘found each other out'.
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She was also very anxious at separating from Leonard for so long. She dithered, and in the end Vita and Leonard both had to push her. Her ‘separation anxiety' was huge She wrote home every day and once, when Leonard's letters failed to arrive, she sent a telegram asking what was wrong. Her letters were full of endearments. She longed to be reunited with her ‘daddie'.
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‘I don't think I could stand more than week away from you, as there are so many things to say to you, which I can't say to Vita.'
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But she enjoyed the holiday, and so did Vita. Vita fussed over Virginia ‘like a perfect old hen'. They had separate bedrooms, and when a thunderstorm broke one night Vita went immediately to Virginia's room to comfort her. Vita found the combination of ‘that brilliant brain and that fragile body very lovable – so independent in all mental ways, so dependent in all practical ways'.
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Vita had by now lost sexual interest in Virginia. Initially she had been physically attracted, but it was Virginia's mind and character that really held Vita. She saw Virginia as ‘a mental thing, a spiritual thing if you like, an intellectual thing, and she inspires a feeling of tenderness … She makes me feel protective. Also she loves me, which flatters and pleases me.'
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Vita was incapable of maintaining a passionate relationship for long. She needed the ‘buzz' of intense involvement, and as the excitement fell away the relationship changed to one of friendship only. Most of Vita's lovers were dependent women looking for a mother-figure. She was ‘St Anne, her Demeter, lover, mother',
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to Mary Campbell. Margaret Voight, another lover, wrote in language Virginia would have recognised: ‘I wish I were three years old and that I could crawl into your arms and just stay there while you take on the
régie
of my life.'
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Virginia, as she learnt of each new affair, poured ‘rage hot as lava' on Vita and lectured her to change her ways.
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She scorned the ‘schoolgirl nonentities' Vita involved herself with, but eventually she was forced to recognise that Vita was not going to change. She tried rationalising their relationship:

the gnawing down of strata in friendship; how one passes unconsciously to different terms, takes things easier; don't mind at all hardly about dress or anything; scarcely feel it an exciting atmosphere, which too, has its drawbacks from the ‘fizzing' point of view: yet is saner, perhaps deeper.
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Harold Nicolson had been posted to the embassy in Berlin in 1927 and Vita stayed with him that winter. The Woolfs planned to visit them in the New Year, but Leonard was already regretting it. He knew of Vita's affairs, and was worried by Virginia's erratic moods and tension. When he could not persuade Virginia to postpone the trip he insisted she warn the Nicolsons that she
must
have a quiet time.

His instructions were ignored, or Virginia never passed on his message and in Berlin Leonard became increasingly angry with the Nicolsons. They in turn were irritated by Leonard's bad temper, and his boorish refusal to attend a lunch party Harold had arranged in their honour. Virginia was embarrassed and upset by Leonard: ‘I shiver at the thought of our behaviour,' she told Vita. ‘You and Harold were such angels.'
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She was also upset at never having Vita to herself. Only once did the two women dine alone together, and the occasion proved highly disturbing to Virginia; she questioned Vita repeatedly about her sexual involvements, and demanded proof that Vita still loved her. Vita was evasive and Virginia was not reassured.

Two days later, on the overnight ferry home from the Hook of Holland, Virginia swallowed a large quantity of Somnifen (containing the barbiturate Veronal) given her by Vanessa against seasickness. She sank into semi-coma and Leonard could barely rouse her:

it was with the greatest difficulty I got her into the train, as she could hardly walk and was in a kind of drugged state … The giddiness lasted off and on for about twenty-four hours.
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Virginia maintained she took no more than the prescribed dosage, but the evidence points to an overdose; either through carelessness or perhaps as a
gesture
to Vita, a warning and an appeal. Leonard blamed the incident, and Virginia's subsequent depression, on the Berlin ‘racketing', but ignored the effect his own behaviour may have had. Vita scoffed at Leonard's explanation; to hear him talk, she told Virginia, ‘you might have spent every night for a week till five in the morning indulging in orgies'. The real cause of the trouble, said Vita with tongue in cheek, was partly the 'flu but mainly Virginia's ‘suppressed randiness'.
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Virginia was laid up for six weeks, but depression was not severe and the time resting was not wasted, for it released a stream of creative thoughts; she composed
The Waves
‘hour after hour', and
A Room of One's Own
wrote itself as she lay in bed; ‘I was like a water bottle turned upside down.'
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Virginia tried distancing herself from Vita. She would

enter a nunnery these next months; let myself down into my mind … I am going to face certain things. It is going to be a time of adventure and attack, rather lonely and painful I think. But solitude will be good for a new book. Of course, I shall make friends. I shall be external outwardly. I shall buy some good clothes and go out into new houses.

She inspected her life and her marriage. Her miseries were really very small ones, ‘and fundamentally', she told herself,

I am the happiest woman in all WC1. The happiest wife, the happiest writer; the most liked inhabitant, so I say, in Tavistock Square. When I count up my blessings, they must surely amount to more than my sorrows.
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Virginia eventually accepted Vita's philandering, but she could not reconcile herself to the thought of sharing Vita's love with another woman. Of all Vita's lovers, it was Hilda Matheson, the Director of Talks at the BBC, she loathed most. Vita tried to play down the attachment, but Virginia remained ‘worried and angry and hurt and caustic about this affair'.
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These Hildas are a chronic case; and as this one won't disappear and is unattached, she may be permanent. And like the damned intellectual snob that I am, I hate to be linked, even by an arm, with Hilda … A queer trait in Vita – her passion for the earnest middle-class intellectual, however drab and dreary.
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Vita herself was withdrawing. In May 1930 she bought Sissinghurst Castle and set about restoring it and, with Harold, creating the renowned gardens. It became her permanent home after two years. Only once did Virginia stay there, when she slept in the absent Harold's room, but she and Leonard occasionally went there for the day. Jealousy and doubts obtruded from time to time, and brought on headaches and ‘galloping horses'.

In July 1931 Virginia pronounced ‘Potto' – a primitive monkey, Vita's nickname for her – to be dead. ‘You have not been for a month', she told Vita, ‘and I date his decline from your last visit. As he died his last words were, “Tell Mrs Nick that I love her … she has forgotten me. But I forgive her.”'
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Potto revived at the last moment. The friendship continued, and although they met at decreasing intervals they remained important to one another. Vita's words after Virginia's suicide, ‘I might have saved her if only I had been there',
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were not entirely an ignorant boast, although a mad Virginia, whom Vita had never known, would have been very different from the familiar Potto.

Between July 1929 and the summer of 1931 Virginia was writing
The Waves.
It was more difficult than anything she had attempted before; ‘the play-poem idea; the idea of some continuous stream, not solely of human thought, but of the ship, the night etc. all flowing together.'
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As she finished the book she knew, triumphantly, she had ‘netted that fin in the waste of waters', which she had seen ‘passing far out' on completing
To the Lighthouse.
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The fin, rising from her subconscious depths, symbolised ‘something in the universe that one's left with'.
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Writing the book was at times agonising but there were moments of ecstasy when she was carried outside herself. As she wrote the last ten pages she felt she was being taken over by huge universal forces; stumbling ‘after my own voice, or almost after some kind of speaker (as when I was mad). I was almost afraid, remembering the voices that used to fly ahead.'
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