Stephen Spender
THE LIFE OF LlTERATURE*
Now when I recall the face of Virginia Woolf it seems to
me that there was something about the tensions of the muscles over the
fine bones of the skull which was like an exquisite instrument finely
strung. And it was as though stretched over these strings there was the
very fine ivory skin. There in that beautiful taut face, the greyish eyes
had a sometimes limpid, sometimes wandering, sometimes laughing,
distractedness.
Long before I met Virginia Woolf, I had been told by Vita Sackville
West that she was the most wonderful person in the world to go with
on an excursion, to France, to Hampstead Heath, to the London
Zoo,
and that part of the privilege of knowing her was to receive letters writ–
ten in a hand which had something of the cursiveness of an early type
(1502) of Aldus, but which femininity gave a sensitivity lacking in the
hands of more deliberate penmen, such as Eric Gill and Edmund
Blunden.
Sometimes I dined with Leonard and Virginia Woolf at their house
in Tavistock Square. They lived in half of this house, the lower half
being occupied by the offices of their publishing firm, the Hogarth Press.
Their drawing room was a large tall square shaped pleasant room orna–
mented with decorations by Vanessa Bell, the sister of Virginia. This
room was a little austere, but what surprised more than this was its spa–
ciousness, easiness and sense of style.
When her guests arrived, Virginia would
be
perhaps a little nervous,
preoccupied with serving out the drinks. Her handshake and her smile
of welcome would be a little distraught. Then when we had gone upstairs
as we sat down to dinner, she would say to William Plomer and me (we
were neighbors in Maida Vale and were often invited out together) :
"If
you and Stephen insist on writing about Bloomsbury, I shall start an
attack on the Maida Vale Group." "Really," Plomer said, raising his
*
This is the fourth and closing part of a chapter from an autobiographical
work in progress.
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