TO: LEONARD WOOLF
Rodmell,
Sussex
Tuesday (18? March 1941)
Dearest, I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.
I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been.
V.
March 28, 1941. After writing that note to her husband, Virginia Woolf put rocks in her pockets and drowned herself in the River Ouse.
Please go read my friend Ted’s beautiful post on To the Lighthouse.
When this day comes around each year, I visit this blog
http://ww2today.com/category/1941/march-1941
and look at the entries for the months of March and April 1941. I also look at these months in the Diary and Letters. See also this site map
http://www.bombsight.org/#10/51.4835/-0.1257
Thank you so much for these links, Gina!
I am only an amateur scholar and fan of Virginia Woolf and her work, but I look at what was going on in that time and have to say, even the finest, strongest, stainless steel has its breaking point. Rodmell was in the flight path of the German bombers from the airfields in France and most every night for over a year the Woolfs heard them going into and out of the London area, knowing all too well what the results would be. And Virginia Woolf loved her London so much! The houses where they had lived, gone, shattered. The much-beloved street-haunting past-haunted City. Knowing that as a couple even before the war they were on Hitler’s round up and exterminate list should invasion come. And victory was nothing so sure at the time as it might seem to us now, 72 years on. I have to think that this had some impact on her.
Gina – I so appreciate your perspective on this, and the context – which is well known but certainly excellent to keep in mind. Thank you!
So hard to face the future in those dark days, even without a history of mental illness.
That letter breaks my heart each time you remind me of it. That woman’s ability to externalize thought as a voice – so remarkable.
I just love (and am amazed by the fact) that she is comforting him at a time that she is feeling just so … horrible? unable to connect and go on? but she is connecting with him.
That is love, I feel.
Yes – she seems mostly concerned for him. She doesn’t want to put HIM through any more pain. Such a loving letter.