Mrs. Dalloway (Annotated) Page 25

“Old Mrs. Hilbery,” said Peter; but who was that? that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? He knew her face; connected her with Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?

  “Oh, that is Ellie Henderson,” said Sally. Clarissa was really very hard on her. She was a cousin, very poor. Clarissa was hard on people.

  She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become—how generous to her friends Clarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first. They were young; that was it. Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it. Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying—what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

  “But I do not know,” said Peter Walsh, “what I feel.”

  Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them? That was what he was longing for. She knew it. All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.

  He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations with Clarissa had not been simple. It had spoilt his life, he said. (They had been so intimate—he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) One could not be in love twice, he said. And what could she say? Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental—he used to be so sharp). He must come and stay with them in Manchester. That is all very true, he said. All very true. He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.

  And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. Sally was positive of that.

  “No, no, no!” said Peter (Sally should not have said that—she went too far). That good fellow—there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard. Who was he talking to? Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man? Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. But Peter did not know. He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister. Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said—the most disinterested.

  “But what has he done?” Sally asked. Public work, she supposed. And were they happy together? Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life—one scratched on the wall. Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her. But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said. Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age! Could he make anything of her? She would not open her lips. Not much, not yet, Peter admitted. She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. We know everything, he said; at least he did.

  But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard—what could one know about people like that?

  “That they’re damnable humbugs,” said Peter, looking at them casually. He made Sally laugh.

  But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. He looked in the corner for the engraver’s name. His wife looked too. Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.

  When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl’s of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it—it went on increasing in his experience. There was some one in India. He would like to tell Sally about her. He would like Sally to know her. She was married, he said. She had two small children. They must all come to Manchester, said Sally—he must promise before they left.

  There’s Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other. She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.

  For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.

  “Richard has improved. You are right,” said Sally. “I shall go and talk to him. I shall say good-night. What does the brain matter,” said Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”

  “I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this, terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?

  It is Clarissa, he said.

  For there she was.

  NOTES TO Mrs. Dalloway

  The walks and rides taken through London by various characters may be followed on the map that appears at the beginning of the book, through references in the notes. Locations are numbered chronologically followed by an initial (C=Clarissa; E=Elizabeth; H=Hugh; K=Miss Kilman; M=motorcar; P=Peter; R=Richard; S=Septimus). (DB) indicates a note that is indebted to David Bradshaw, “Explanatory Notes,” in Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 166–85. Bradshaw makes extensive use of The London Encyclopaedia (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), which he recommends.

  [>] Rumpelmayer’s men: Caterers for Clarissa’s party. There was an actual local firm by this name in 1923.

  [>] Clarissa: Noteworthy examples of literary predecessors with this name are the heroine of Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa Harlowe (1747–48), and the Clarissa who provides the scissors to cut the heroine’s hair in Alexander Pope’s The Rape of the Lock (1712).

  [>] Bourton: The imaginary home of Clarissa’s family, the Parrys, where she grew up. There are two villages with Bourton in their name in the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire. This scenic limestone range drains from one side into the Severn River, which is visible from Woolf’s fictional Bourton (see 150).

  [>] Durtnall’s van: Vehicle belonging to an actual transport and warehouse firm.

  [>] Westminster: Borough of London, on the north bank of the Thames River, housing many of Britain’s principal government buildings, palaces, and the famous Anglican church Westminster Abbey.

  [>] influenza: A worldwide pandemic of influenza killed more than 20 million people in 1918 and 1919. Woolf’s recurrent bouts with more standard forms of flu interrupted her writing.

  [>] Big Ben: Mrs. Dalloway refers first to the “warning, musical” of the famous Westminster Chimes, rung on four bells at the quarter hour. This is followed on the hour by the tolling
of the central, thirteen-ton bell, first sounded in 1859. It may have taken its name from the rotund first commissioner of works, Benjamin Hall. The clock tower rises above Westminster Palace, which contains the British Houses of Parliament. At midnight on December 31, 1923, Woolf could have heard Big Ben over the radio for the first time. Big Ben and the bells of other clocks are heard by various characters, interrupting their actions and marking the passage of time, “the leaden circles dissolv[ing] in the air” throughout the novel (e.g., see Peter, 47; the Smiths, the clocks of Harley Street, 100).

  [>] Victoria Street: Street connecting Belgravia with Westminster. Residential apartment buildings dating to the 1880s have gradually yielded to modern concrete and glass office buildings and commercial establishments [map 1C].

  [>] The King and Queen were at the Palace: Buckingham Palace, the royal residence since Victoria’s ascent to the throne [map 2C]. The current occupants were King George V (1865–1936, his reign began in 1910) and Queen Mary (1867–1953).

  [>] Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh: Important locations for British sports and the social events that surround them: Lord’s, or the Marylebone Cricket Club, in North London (founded by Thomas Lord); the racetrack at Ascot, near Windsor Castle in Berkshire; and the Hurlingham Club in Ranelagh Gardens, where polo was played, in the Southwest London district of Fulham.

  [>] in the time of the Georges: Era encompassing the British Kings George I—IV (1714–1830).

  [>] the Park: St. James’s Park [map 3CH]. The oldest of eight Royal Parks, dating to Henry VIII’s deer park (circa 1530). It is dominated by a long central lake featuring varieties of waterfowl. A favorite strolling place for politicians. Hugh Whitbread, who prides himself on government connections, turns up here.

  [>] despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms: Boxes marked with heraldic emblems used to carry papers to and from the royal family.

  [>] Bath: Celebrated spa town in southwest England, known for the eighteenth-century architecture of public buildings and town house crescents. The Romans enjoyed its hot mineral waters, and left archaeological remains of baths.

  [>] Pimlico: Borough of London southwest of Westminster, on the north bank of the Thames. Home to persons of more modest income than the Dalloways.

  [>] Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty: The Admiralty Building, situated in Whitehall, was equipped with an antenna and wireless telegraphy by the Marconi Company (1909). This permitted an exchange of messages with ships at sea (DB).

  [>] Wagner: Richard Wilhelm Wagner (1813–1883), German composer noted for his operas.

  [>] Pope’s poetry: Alexander Pope (1688–1744), English poet and satirist. He makes an appearance in Woolf’s novel Orlando.

  [>] those Indian women: Women, presumably of British descent, sent to India as part of the imperial enterprise.

  [>] Park gates . . . Piccadilly: Clarissa has walked north through Green Park and reached the Ritz gate to the park on Piccadilly Lane [map 4C], which borders the stylish borough of Mayfair, to the north. Woolf’s proper young women first encounter prostitutes in Piccadilly, farther east, nearer Piccadilly Circus (see 71). Green is another Royal Park, created in 1668.

  [>] Fräulein Daniels: Clarissa’s governess, who, along with occasional visiting instructors, provided what education she and her sister, Sylvia, received. “Fräulein” suggests she was German.

  [>] Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo: Grand private houses, the settings for high-society parties (DB). All on or near Clarissa’s route east on Piccadilly.

  [>] the Park . . . the Serpentine: Hyde Park, another of the major Royal Parks, appropriated by Henry VIII (1536), and site for carriage drives by the wealthy. It has as its lake the Serpentine. Hyde Park lies to the west of Clarissa’s route.

  [>] Bond Street: Major shopping street in Mayfair, which Clarissa accesses via Piccadilly Lane [map 5C].

  [>] Hatchards’: In 1923 the actual Hatchard’s (preferred spelling) bookshop was at 187 Piccadilly Lane (DB), past where Clarissa turns onto Bond Street.

  [>] Fear no more the heat o’ the sun /. . . winter’s rages: Beginning of the song sung by Shakespeare’s characters Arviragus and Guiderius in his Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene ii. They presume that the heroine, Imogen, has died. A new edition of Cymbeline edited by Harley Granville Barker came out in August 1923, and this could have been in the window at Hatchard’s (DB). Clarissa later repeats the lines several times (29, 182) and Septimus Smith thinks of them as well (136).

  [>] Jorrocks’ Jaunts and Jollities . . . Soapy Sponge and Mrs. Asquith’s Memoirs and Big Game Shooting in Nigeria: Of these books on display, three are factual. Jorrock was a comic Cockney grocer, the creation of Robert Smith Surtees (1803–1864). Soapy Sponge is a character in another Surtees work, Mr Sponge’s Sporting Tour (1853). Margot Asquith was the wife of the former prime minister; her two-volume autobiography appeared in 1920. Woolf invented the Shooting book, which is representative of a popular genre (DB). Though several male members of her family were hunters, Woolf’s objections to the sport appear in several of her essays, including “The Plumage Bill” (1920).

  [>] glove shop: In Woolf’s story “Mrs. Dalloway in Bond Street” (1923), which in many ways resembles this morning walk, Clarissa’s goal is to purchase a pair of gloves. There would have been shops to correspond to those mentioned in this section.

  [>] Grizzle: The actual name of the Woolfs’ dog at this time. In “The Hours,” an earlier draft of Mrs. Dalloway (see Wussow transcription), the dog is named Shag, after the Irish terrier the Stephen family acquired in 1892.

  [>] Miss Kilman . . . Russians . . . Austrians: Both countries were experiencing economic hardship following, respectively, the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire after the defeat of Germany in World War I. Mrs. Dalloway’s daughter, Elizabeth, has as a tutor Miss Kilman, whose German ancestry contributed to her being “badly treated” while Britain was at war with Germany.

  [>] Mulberry’s the florists: Imaginary shop on Bond Street near its intersection with Brook Street [map 6C].

  [>] cherry pie: Popular name for the herb valerian, which has white or pink flowers and roots used medicinally. Woolf “botanized” early with her father, but in her diary usually cited flowers she encountered by their common names.

  [>] Prince of Wales: One of the many possibilities for who might be in the car that has backfired on Bond Street [map 6M]. The future Edward VIII (1894–1972), whose coronation took place in 1936. That same year he abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, an American whose two divorces made her unacceptable as queen to the Church of England, of which the king was head.

  [>] Septimus: Our first sighting of the second major character of the novel, Septimus Smith, out on a walk of his own with his wife, Rezia [map 6S].

  [>] the Embankment: Reclaimed north bank of the Thames between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars Bridge.

  [>] Brook Street: Street intersecting Bond Street, the last position on Clarissa’s walk [map 6C].

  [>] breasts stiff with oak leaves: A token dating back to the restoration of King Charles II in 1660. On his birthday (May 29), people wore sprigs of oak in thanks for the return of royalty after the Civil War.

  [>] a Colonial: A person from one of the colonies or former colonies of the British Empire, for example, Australia.

  [>] House of Windsor: British-affiliated name of the royal family assumed in 1917 by King George V, whose lineage was German. This was a diplomatic decision, as Britain was battling Germany in World War I.

  [>] St. James’s Street: Location of many gentlemen’s clubs. Among these is Brooks’s [map 7M].

  [>] Brooks’s: Men’s club at 60 St. James’s Street. In the second English edition (actually a new impression of the first edition printed by Hogarth Press in September 1925), this was changed to White’s, another club at 37–38 St. James’s Street, which was preferable because it had the requisite bow window.

  [>] the Tatler:
Journal founded by Richard Steele, first published in 1709 and revived as a society paper, reporting on clubs and gaming, in 1901.

  [>] whispering gallery: An acoustical effect, usually achieved with a curved wall that collects and magnifies a sound carried to another site. The cathedral Woolf had in mind was probably St. Paul’s, which has a remarkable whispering gallery. Much of this section is resonant of Englishness—a nostalgic affection for landscapes and customs associated with the nation.

  [>] old Irishwoman’s loyalty: This was a restive period in Anglo-Irish relations, following the bloody Easter Rising against British rule (1916) and a bitter Civil War (1919–21). Through a Treaty negotiated by Sinn Fein leader Michael Collins (1921), the Irish Free State (founded January 1922) had dominion status in the British Commonwealth, while Northern Ireland remained part of Britain. This compromise outraged many Irish revolutionaries, and led to Collins’s assassination (also 1922). The constable who discourages Moll Pratt’s floral tribute to British royalty could be an Irishman with more radical politics than Moll’s. The incident reminds us of conflicted national loyalties.