Book review: ‘The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 4 • 1931-35’

Volume four of Virginia Woolf’s diary takes us through the years 1931 to 1935.

During this period, Woolf completed and published her novel The Waves, and worked extensively on what was to become The Years. She and her husband, Leonard Woolf, also made motoring trips abroad to mainland Europe and Ireland. The period also saw the deaths of a number of friends, including Lytton Strachey, Dora Carrington, and Roger Fry.

I have to confess, I struggled in places with this particular volume of the diary. At times, Woolf’s writing is so compressed as to border on incomprehensible. This is not to say she wasn’t succinct in the earlier volumes, but she is more so in this one. Here’s an example:

On Tuesday we went to Sissinghurst; lost L’s spectacles, & the meat on the top of the car. Saw the great new room. Vita in trousers. Rather woke my affection & regret. Harold gave me Mrs Lindbergh’s book. Woke my insensate obsession—to write P & P—by telling me how a room of ones own is regarded & my American fame. The big Alsatian hunting; the pink tower & the rain on the leaves, L. said, falling as he had not heard it since Ceylon. To dine at Charleston. Julian a little depressed. Duncan laughing about Lady Blanche—his name for G. St Aubyn. Grouse. Nessa composed. Quentin in bed with throat. I very sleepy. Kissed J. in the dark garden. We think of going to China, at any rate think so, to mitigate the parting. Yesterday very drowsy. Walked the Tristram Grove & river walk. L. came to meet me & missed me. Louie’s child attacked by dog. Took it to Lewes. Mr Hancock brought in with injured leg. Very bad. Bach at night. Man playing oboe fainted in the middle. War seems inevitable. I won one game of bowls out of 3. Reading Miss Mole, Abbé Dimnet (good), an occasional bite at Hind & Panther, but brain too expanded? Oh to be done with the book & my own mistress again. Piles of Roger’s papers sent by Margery—a whole box. I have now 3 large boxes, but dare not look in, & am terribly obsessed by P. & P.

Misgivings about brevity aside, there is still much to enjoy in this volume. I particularly enjoyed Woolf’s accounts of journeys abroad, including a trip to visit Montaigne’s chateau and tower in France, and a brief foray through Nazi Germany involving a near-encounter with Hermann Göring. Among many other events, Woolf also records an encounter with George Bernard Shaw in a local park; fashioning a writing board complete with pen-tray; feeling anxiety over her official author photograph; and, after eighteen years, finally plucking up the courage to fire her troublesome, strong-willed domestic servant, Nellie Boxall.

I very much look forward to reading the final volume of this diary.