Four-minute notes by Virginia Woolf

Press, 28 August 1982, Page 16

Four-minute notes by Virginia Woolf

The Diary of Virginia Woolf: Vol IV 19311935. Edited by Anne Olivier Bell and Andrew McNeillie. Hogarth Press, 1982. 361 pp. appendix, index, $50.75. (Reviewed by Joan Curry) A reader would need to know a great deal about Virginia Woolf, and her world to make sense of this volume of her diaries. In spite of meticulous and thoughtful editing it is still quite difficult to pick a way through the riot of references to people, places and events recorded here. - By the beginning of the thirties Virginia Woolf had become very well known indeed and she was busy with visitors, work, travelling, engagements of all kinds. Members of her circle were also becoming notable in their various careers and there was much to read, to see and do, many calls on her attention. Her diaries reflect this activity, this lack of serenity; she snatched at odd moments in order to scribble her thoughts — "I have

precisely 4 minutes before luncheon in which to record Rebecca West a dinner . . .” — and the result is a collection of jerky, fragmented notes written at speed. “The Waves” was published in 1931 and Virginia Woolf then turned enthusiastically to new projects. For light relief she wrote “Flush,” the biography of Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s spaniel. Her thoughts on feminism and the status of women were becoming crystallised and she began collecting ideas and material for what was eventually published as “Three Guineas.” The death of her friend Roger Fry led to the task of writing his biography. And then, for most of the time covered ’ by this volume of diaries, Virginia Woolf fretted over “The Years.” Roger Fry was not the only friend she lost during this time. Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington and Francis Birrell all died, leaving Bloomsbury forlorn and shaken. The world outside was scarcely reassuring either. The light-hearted

hopefulness of the twenties, after the horrors of the First World War, had subsided into the sombre thirties. There was unemployment in England and an ominous rumbling from abroad. Fascism advanced. For all the these disturbances, however, Virginia Woolf was happy during these years. With a more secure income she was able to spend more time on fiction and less on bread and butter journalism. As always, she was sensitive to criticism about her work, but by this time felt secure enough to shrug it off. The Woolfs lived simply, but they had everything they needed and were able to travel overseas for holidays. They had settled into comfortable married life: “If it could only last like this another 50 years — life like this is wholly satisfactory, to me anyhow.” One more volume of diaries will complete the set, taking the story of Virginia Woolf to March, 1941, when she drowned herself in the river near her home.