Wednesday 27 March [1935]

Yesterday we went to the Tower, which is an impressive murderous bloody grey raven haunted military barrack prison dungeon place; like the prison of English splendour; the reformatory at the back of history; where we shot & tortured & imprisoned. Prisoners scratched their names, very beautifully, on the walls. [...]

And we watched the Scots Guards drill; & an officer doing a kind of tiger pace up & down—a wax faced barbers block officer trained to a certain impassive balancing. The sergeant major barked & swore. All in a hoarse bark: the men stamped & wheeled like—machines: then the officer also barked: all precise inhuman, showing off—a degrading, a stupifying sight, but in keeping with the grey wall the cobbles the executioner's block.

virginia woolf, diary

Thuraday 4 October [1934]

Scene with M.'s cook & the policeman. Is there no law to defend me from omelettes like that?

A violent rain storm on the pond. The pond is covered with little white thorns; springing up & down: the pond is bristling with leaping white thorns: like the thorns on a small porcupine; bristles; then black waves: cross it: black shudders; & the little water thorns are white: a helter skelter rain, & the elms tossing it up & down: the pond overflowing on one side. Lily leaves tugging: the red flower swimming about; one leaf flapping. Then completely smooth for a moment. Then prickled: thorns like glass; but leaping up & down incessantly. A rapid smirch of shadow. Now light from the sun: green & red: shining: the pond a sage green: the grass brilliant green: red berries on the hedges: the cows very white: purple over Asheham.

virginia woolf, diary

Tuesday 17 April [1934]

An idea about Sh[akespea]re

That the play demands coming to the surface—hence insists upon a reality wh. the novel need not have, but perhaps should have. Contact with the surface. Coming to the top. This is working out my theory of the different levels in writing, & how to combine them: for I begin to think the combination necessary. This particular relation with the surface is imposed on the dramatist of necessity: how far did it influence Shre? Idea that one cd work out a theory of fiction &c on these lines: how many levels attempted. whether kept to or not.

virginia woolf, diary

Sunday 22 November [1933]

I ought to have made a note on Nessa & the aeroplane last Friday—no Friday week at Croydon. We took them there at 7. Had to be up by moonlight at 6.30. Drove across an empty delicately tinted London; lines all much marked; Croydon a great space like a green race course. We stood on the top of the roof; saw the aeroplane whirl, till the propellors were lost to sight—simply evaporated: then the aeroplane takes a slow run, circles & rises. This is death I said, feeling how the human contact was completely severed. Up they went with a sublime air & disappeared like a person dying, the soul going. And we remained. I saw the plan become a little mark on the sky. And I did not at all enjoy waiting for Nessa to come back across the Alps: sat making conversation with Lady Simon. So thats over.

virginia woolf, diary

The copyright holders in Virginia Woolf's work, her niece and nephew Angelica Garnett and Quentin Bell, are unique witnesses of many of the circumstances and characters touched on in these diaries and, living as I happily do in close proximity (especially to the latter, my husband), I have greatly benefited from their experience and help.

In conclusion, I think it proper to acknowledge the fact that the publication of Virginia Woolf's diaries in this extended form is only possible because royalties from her copyrights inherited by my husband have been used to defray the costs of preparation and research. Whether she would have been more appalled or amused that her earnings from beyond the grave should be put to such use is a question I often ask myself; but for better or for worse, the freedom and independence of judgement this allows me is something I think she would approve.

ANNE OLIVIER BELL

Sussex, May 1981

Wed 20 August 1930

I am reading Dante, & I say, yes, this makes all writing unnecessary. This surpasses 'writing' as I say about Shakespeare. I read the Inferno for half an hour at the end of my own page: & that is the place of honour; that is to put the page into the furnace—if I have a furnace. Now to mash the potatoes.

virginia woolf, diary

Sun 23 June 1929

I now begin to see the Moths rather too clearly, or at least strenuously, for my comfort. I think it will begin like this: dawn; the shells on a beach; I dont know—voices of cock & nightingale; & then all the children at a long table-lessons. The beginning. Well, all sorts of characters are to be there. Then the person who is at the table can call out any one of them at any moment; & build up by that person the mood, tell a story; for instance about dogs or nurses; or some adventure of a childs kind; all to be very Arabian nights; & so on: this shall be Childhood; but it must not be my childhood; & boats on the pond; the sense of children; unreality; things oddly proportioned. Then another person or figure must be selected. The unreal world must be round all this—the phantom waves. The Moth must come in: the beautiful single moth. There must be a flower growing.

Could one not get the waves to be heard all through? Or the farmyard noises? Some odd irrelevant noises. She might have a book—one book to read in-another to write in—old letters.

Early morning light—but this need not be insisted on; because there must be great freedom from 'reality'. Yet everything must have relevance.

virginia woolf, diary

Mon 3 September 1928

… to be attached to her as daughter would be so cruel a fate that I can think of nothing worse; & thousands of women might be dying of it in England today: this tyranny of mother over daughter, or father; their right to the due being as powerful as anything in the world. And then, they ask, why women dont write poetry. Short of killing Mrs W. nothing could be done.

Day after day one's life would be crumpled up like a bill for 10 pen[ce] 3 farthings.

Nothing has ever been said of this.

virginia woolf, diary

October 1927

[...] having done my last article for the Tribune, & now being free again.
And instantly the usual exciting devices enter my mind: a biography beginning in the year 1500 & continuing to the present day, called Orlando: Vita [sackville-west]; only with a change about from one sex to another.

This is a book, I think I have said before, which I write after tea. [...] It is to be a small book, & written by Christmas.

I thought I could combine it with Fiction, but once the mind gets hot it cant stop; I walk making up phrases; sit, contriving scenes; am in short in the thick of the greatest rapture known to me; from which I have kept myself since last February, or earlier.
Talk of planning a book, or waiting for an idea! This one came in a rush; I said to pacify myself, being bored & stale with criticism, [...]

virginia woolf, diary