The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (22 page)

While Virginia was writing
The Years,
ideas for
Three Guineas,
her anti-war book as she called it, kept breaking into her mind and putting her into ‘wild excitement'.
23
It was

like being harnessed to a shark; and I dash off scene after scene. I think I must do it directly
The Years
is done. Suppose I finish
The Years
in January, then dash off ‘The War' (or whatever I call it) in six weeks.
24

Depression built up early in the New Year, Virginia had promised to have
The Years
ready for the printer by 1 February, and despite sleepless nights she forced herself to begin the final revision. Pressure mounted, and was not lessened by Leonard telling her she had not made enough money to pay her share of the household expenses. She concentrated everything on the book, cut out social activities and saw no one apart from Vanessa, but agitation kept breaking through. The novel seemed ‘feeble twaddle', and one morning she could no longer face ‘such a show up of my own decrepitude', and rushed to Leonard ‘with burning cheeks'. He told her, ‘“This always happens.” But I felt, no, it has never been so bad as this.'
25

On 7 March German troops marched unopposed into the Rhineland. Leonard saw war one step nearer. Virginia watched him being ‘rushed and pumped and milked by every ninny on the European situation',
26
and thought:

how near the guns have got to our private life again. I can quite distinctly see them and hear a roar, even though I go on, like a doomed mouse, nibbling at my daily page. What else is there to do – except answer the incessant telephones, and listen to what L says.
27

Depression went on building up. Headache forced her to lie prostrate and work for very limited times; at night she woke worrying, sweating, seeing failure, ‘the end of civilisation just about to come'.
28
There were moments when she feared for her sanity, when she found herself ‘walking along the Strand talking aloud' (although this was not altogether unusual).
29
Remarkably, Virginia managed to complete
The Years,
and sent the last pages to the printers on 8 April. Suddenly she was overcome with agitation. The sight of the proofs sickened her. She stuffed them into a cupboard, unable to face them. Racked by headache, unable to sleep, worrying to no end, she broke down.

Leonard, fearing a serious breakdown, immediately took her to Rodmell and she spent four weeks resting, much of the time in bed. Once she improved Leonard took her to the West Country for a change of scene. She came back to London on 10 June.

The improvement was momentary. Virginia started work on the proofs, but after three days was forced to return to Rodmell. She had ‘mornings of torture – pain in my head – a feeling of complete despair and failure'. She attempted to work half an hour at a time. ‘Few people can be so tortured by writing as I am. Only Flaubert, I think.'
30
She had lost seven pounds in weight. Leonard, suspecting a return of madness, made Virginia give up all work and rest at Rodmell for the remainder of the summer. She was allowed few friends but she wrote letters, read, admired Leonard's garden flowers, went for gentle walks with Leonard, and lay in bed visiting ‘such remote strange places',
31
her head full of ‘so many books I want to write'.
32

Leonard went up to London once a week, otherwise he was with Virginia continuously, attending to her wants, constantly reassuring. By autumn Virginia seemed well enough to resume reading proofs, but at once she was seized with ‘stony but convinced despair'.
33
Picking up the proofs she went to Leonard and told him to burn them unread. He was calm and comforting and said that he must first read them. She waited impatiently until ‘he put down the last sheet … He was in tears … it is “a most remarkable book” – he
likes
it better than
The Waves,
and has not a spark of doubt that it must be published.' The effect, like an electric shock (electric shock treatment given towards the natural end of a depression can have a dramatic effect), shook Virginia free of depression. It was a ‘miracle … the moment of relief was divine'. She hardly knew ‘if I'm on my heels or head – so amazing is the reversal … I have never had such an experience.'
34

Leonard was not being entirely honest – he thought the book too long, not as good as her other novels – but he was convinced that unless he gave ‘a completely favourable verdict she would be in despair and have a very serious breakdown'.
35
He attributed ‘the terrifying time with
The Years
to the crisis of exhaustion and black despair when she had finished a book'; and this time she was ‘much nearer a complete breakdown than she had ever been since 1913.'
36
Leonard was wrong on both counts. New Year mood swings were always potentially dangerous when reinforced by strong conflicting emotions, but although Virginia's depression was severe she gave little sign of madness. Perhaps a letter written to Vanessa in July, disinhibited and loaded with references to sex, hinted at hypomania, but her sister would not have thought that too unusual.
37
Suicide never threatened. There were no delusions or hallucinatory voices, no abnormal irritability, no paranoia, and certainly no hostility towards Leonard. She did not cling, as in 1913, and their relationship was unchanged. She missed Leonard when away; ‘It's damned dull without you, dearest M … Oh how we adore you! How angelic you are to us.'
38
To Ethel Smyth she confessed she was an ‘appalling nuisance … to L',
39
but she was being realistic, not delusional.

Suppressed anger was a significant factor in the breakdowns of 1904 and 1913–15, but played little importance in 1936. The real strains came from Leonard abandoning his pacifist ideals and advocating war, something she could not accept and yet could not reject outright. The widening divide with Leonard, the seeming irreconcilability of their two positions, made her increasingly anxious. Throughout 1935 Virginia had been building up her ‘antiwar' ideas for
Three Guineas,
and this had allowed her to avoid directly confronting Leonard with the problem. As depression gripped and anxiety flooded into the open, her defences collapsed.

It is a truism in psychiatry that the real cause of a mental illness is not always the obvious one. Leonard and Virginia, and their friends, blamed the book for the breakdown, but the novel was a side issue. The main source of her worry concerned Leonard and the threat of war, but most of her anxiety became displaced onto
The Years.

Frequently the real problem behind mental illness is never exposed and remains a constant source of trouble, but Virginia – and it is an example of the remarkable constructive linkage she had with her subconscious – found a unique solution. In some undirected way most of the emotional charge bound to her conflict with Leonard became transferred to
The Years
– facilitated perhaps by
Three Guineas
having initially been part of the book. When Leonard gave his unreserved approval the effect on Virginia was electrifying; psychologically, it was as though he accepted her antiwar ideals. There was no longer a divide in Virginia's mind. It was ‘a miracle'. She felt ‘vigorous and cheerful since the wonderful revelation of L's last night. How I woke from death – or non-being – to life! What an incredible night – what a weight rolled off!'
40

*   *   *

The weight had not rolled off Leonard. Despite looking after Virginia he had contrived to keep in touch with the political and international events. At heart he found them ‘very distressing. The Labour Party drives me mad', he confessed.
41
Collective security was ‘dead and rotten', and war seemed inevitable.

The best one can hope … is that the guns will not go off or the bombs begin to fall for a year or two, and that something meanwhile ‘may turn up'.
42

In February 1937 he became ill, the chief symptom being pain in the back. A trace of sugar was found in his urine, and various possibilities were discussed; diabetes, prostate trouble, a kidney infection. Virginia was ‘devilishly anxious' until a Harley Street specialist found Leonard perfectly healthy, when she experienced a surge of ‘extraordinary physical relief'.
43

The illness was again psychosomatic and disappeared after reassurance, but was replaced by an intensely itching eczema. A holiday in France with Virginia cured him, but over the years eczema returned whenever Leonard was stressed.

Virginia was also worried by Leonard's trembling hands. It was a familial tremor, inherited from his father, and the shaking waxed and waned according to his tension. In 1937 his hands shook so much that he had great difficulty cutting up food, and he was unable to lift a cup without spilling most of it. When she heard from Bernard Shaw, who also suffered from a nervous tremor, of Dr Alexander's treatment, Virginia persuaded Leonard to go to him.

The Alexander Method is based on learning to relax body and mind. Leonard responded well at first and Virginia was excited that Dr Alexander ‘was certain of a cure'.
44
She hoped Leonard's prickly moods might also be ‘smoothed'.
45
But changing a man like Leonard is almost impossible, and the improvement was temporary.

As 1937 ended Leonard was again crippled by back pains. Kidney disease was suggested and he was put on a strict diet. There was talk of an operation on the prostate, and Virginia was on tenterhooks while doctors argued amongst themselves and ‘threatened nursing homes, and all the horrors'.
46
She would rather her own death than Leonard's. Her relief in mid-January when all tests proved normal was immense.

The enforced rest improved Leonard, but his doctor's continuing suspicion of ‘the prostate gland' – that ‘perennial horror' – and Leonard's obsession about dying, created a hypochondriacal atmosphere.
47
When a rash developed on his back in November he immediately decided it must come from the prostate, and all the old tests were repeated. As the international situation worsened, his eczema returned, and he was often ‘lacerated with his rash'.
48
His gloom was intense. When Beatrice Webb met Leonard at the outbreak of war he ‘looked terribly ill' and his tremor was very noticeable.
49
Virginia enjoyed fussing over Leonard, being the ‘good wife', acting the ‘mother to a hurt and miserable little boy'.
50
It was a relief to worry about his indigestion and low weight instead of herself, and she made him obey doctor's orders, much as Leonard did when she was ill.

Virginia remained well after 1936, disturbed only by brief cyclothymic depressions in the New Year, until 1941. In October she had a sudden impulse to spend a weekend in Paris, but Leonard was too busy and said he would miss her if she went alone:

then I was overcome with happiness. Then we walked round the square lovemaking – after 25 years can't bear to be separate … it is an enormous pleasure, being wanted: a wife. And our marriage so complete.
51

In July 1937 Virginia's nephew Julian Bell was killed while driving an ambulance in the Spanish Civil War. Vanessa was overcome with grief. She had been particularly close to her eldest son, so much so that Virginia had remarked her nephew seemed more his mother's lover than a son.

Vanessa lay for weeks in bed, unable to face the loss. Virginia immediately went to her aid and for the rest of the summer gave herself up to caring for her sister, visiting her at Charleston almost every day. Only Virginia was able to comfort Vanessa and understand and break through her grief, and Vanessa came to depend on her:

I remember all those days after I heard about Julian lying in an unreal state and hearing her voice going on and on keeping life going as it seemed when otherwise it would have stopped, and late every day she came to see me here [at Charleston], the only point in the day one could want to come.
52

The letters Virginia sent Vanessa at this time are like the love letters of old:

If you notice a dancing light on the water, that's me. The light kisses your nose, then your eyes, and you can't rub it off; my darling honey, how I adore you.
53

The strain of caring for Vanessa did not upset Virginia's balance – by taking attention off herself it may even have been beneficial – but made her irritable with Leonard and ‘rather quarrelsome'. Perhaps Leonard, too, was a little put out by all the attention Virginia gave her sister, and she worried; ‘Have I the right to leave Leonard alone and sit with Nessa?'
54

Vanessa slowly returned to life. She was immensely grateful to Virginia for giving so much of herself and making no demands, so unlike her behaviour in the past. On the anniversary of Julian's birthday, Virginia wrote, ‘You know I'd do anything I could to help you, and it's so awful not to be able to; except to adore you as I do.'
55
Vanessa replied, ‘I can't show it and I feel so stupid and such a wet blanket often but I couldn't get on at all if it weren't for you.'
56

As soon as Virginia finished
The Years
she began on
Three Guineas.
It absorbed her, ‘pressed and spurted out of me … like a “physical volcano”'.
57
All her feelings against male aggression and war went into the work, which was enlivened by satire and comical pictures of bemedalled men in peacock-like military uniforms. Men are natural warmongers, she declared; there is for them ‘some glory, some necessity, some satisfaction in fighting which we [women] have never felt or enjoyed'.
58
Only when women obtained power and responsibility – provided they were not corrupted into becoming like men – could society hope to change and war be avoided.