The Life of Violet, page 9
Instincticise: A word of Woolf’s invention.
Irish grandmother: Violet’s paternal grandmother, Sophia Smith (1784–1844), was English, not Irish; her grandfather, William Dickinson (1771–1837), was a member of Parliament, and not, as Woolf teasingly declares, “a North country spinner,” meaning someone employed to spin thread or yarn from fibers.
Loch Ness: A lake in the Scottish Highlands.
Elijah: Old Testament Hebrew prophet who parted the River Jordan by striking it with his mantle and who subsequently ascended to heaven in a chariot of fire drawn by horses of fire. See Kings 2.2.
“Och Och Ochone!”: An Irish or Scottish exclamation of sorrow or regret.
Throstle: A water- or steam-powered spinning machine for cotton or wool invented in the late eighteenth century, not by Violet’s grandfather but by the entrepreneurial Lancashire industrialist Richard Arkwright (1732–92).
Bans: Bans, or more commonly, banns, are the public announcement of an upcoming marriage made by a parish church.
Marriage settlements: A broad term encompassing diverse legal arrangements for the transfer and inheritance of property upon marriage.
Lancashire rods of steel: Lancashire, a major industrial center in northwest England, was the site of collieries, ironworks, and steelworks.
2
The Magic Garden
’bus: Short for omnibus, originally a horse-drawn London conveyance replaced by motorized buses by 1905.
Jumping Elephant: A Westminster locale of Woolf’s invention, not to be confused with Elephant and Castle in Southwark.
Royal Academicians: King George III (1738–1820) founded the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1768, and the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723–92) served as its first president. Royal Academicians are a highly select group of eighty practicing painters, printmakers, architects, and sculptors who teach at the Royal Academy Schools and hold their positions until the age of seventy-five.
No. 25: Violet Dickinson has annotated this as “Grove End Road,” which was Lady Nelly and Lord Robert Cecil’s address in London. Grove End Road in St. Johns Wood (see below) was home to numerous artists.
Chow dog: A medium-sized dog with a soft, dense coat, originally from Northern China.
Fritillaries: Woolf might refer here to a member of the lily family, Fritillaria, whose bell-shaped flowers have a checkered pattern, or to fritillary butterflies, Nymphalidae, which have orange and black checkered wings.
Freaked with jet: “Freaked” means streaked or spotted at random; “jet” means glossy black. The phrase “freak’d with jet” appears in Milton’s Lycidas:
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies,
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine,
The white pink, and the pansy freak’d with jet,
The glowing violet,
The musk-rose, and the well attir’d woodbine,
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive head,
And every flower that sad embroidery wears;
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed,
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears,
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid lies.
Violet has written in the margins “? Pansies only,” next to this paragraph, suggesting that she has Lycidas in mind.
Within the pages of Burke: Burke’s Peerage Limited, a publishing house founded by the genealogist John Burke (1786–1848) in 1826 and still in existence today, produced numerous ancestral and genealogical volumes about distinguished families. Their first publication was A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the United Kingdom for MDCCCXXVI. Exhibiting, under strict alphabetical arrangement, The Present State of those exalted Ranks, with their Armorial Bearings, Mottoes, etc., And deducing the Lineage of each House from the Founder of its Honors.
Free trader: One who supported reciprocal trade between Britain and its colonies and an opponent of protectionist gain, or the profits secured by imposing tariffs on foreign goods to protect domestic industries from foreign competition. Kitty Maxse’s husband, the Conservative writer and editor Leo Maxse, was a protectionist who supported the powerful statesman Joseph Chamberlain’s (1836–1914) proposals for tariff reform.
Darwin: Charles Darwin (1809–82), the British naturalist who revolutionized science with his theories of evolution and natural selection. The best-known of his many books are On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) and The Descent of Man (1871).
Valetudinarian: An invalid or person in poor health.
St. Johns Wood: A residential Westminster suburb northwest of Regent’s Park, St. Johns Wood is the site of Lord’s Cricket Ground and was home to several writers, painters, sculptors, and architects in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Lloyd’s Weekly: A Sunday paper established in London in 1842, Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper reported domestic and foreign news; its pages also featured fiction, poetry, and arts coverage generally. Lloyd’s readership of men and women in the UK and abroad (especially in Australia and New Zealand) crossed one million in 1896; circulation peaked at 1.5 million during World War I. The newspaper ceased publication in 1931.
Charwoman: A part-time housekeeper who earns daily wages by tidying and doing other household tasks.
Kippered herrings: An inexpensive staple of British breakfast and high tea from the Victorian era through most of the twentieth century, “kippers,” as they are informally known, are slices of whole herring that have been salted and smoked.
Cutlets: Also called chops, unbreaded slices of veal or mutton served fried or broiled.
Flunkeys: Condescending term for footmen or other male servants, traditionally dressed in livery, or uniforms, and assigned menial tasks.
Temperature tube: That is, a thermometer.
Dowager: A woman who has inherited property, title, or wealth from a deceased husband.
Green fly: Another name for Aphidoidea, or aphids.
Specialist: A doctor or other medical practitioner concentrating on one particular disease or system of the body.
Public house: An inn or tavern licensed to sell alcohol and generally referred to as a pub.
George Trevelyan: George Macaulay Trevelyan (1876–1962), prolific British historian, biographer, and memoirist whose British History in the Nineteenth Century, 1782–1901 was only published in 1922 (Woolf’s invented title here, “The Social Life of the Nineteenth Century,” notwithstanding). In A Room of One’s Own, Woolf alludes to Trevelyan’s 1926 History of England in her analysis of the contrast between women in history and women in literature.
George Meredith: The Victorian novelist and poet George Meredith (1828–1909) best known for The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), The Egoist (1879), and Diana of the Crossways (1885).
Purblind: Literally, nearly or partially blind; as a figure of speech, dimwitted or lacking discernment.
Porridge off earthenware: Oatmeal eaten from thick or rough dishes, typical of a working- or middle-class breakfast rather than a multicourse aristocratic breakfast served on bone china.
Stays: A two-pieced whalebone- or metal-stiffened underbodice worn by women to support the torso, similar to a corset.
H---d: Hatfield House, a grand Jacobean house in Hertfordshire, was built in 1611 by Robert Cecil, 1st Earl of Salisbury. Hatfield House adjoined the Old Palace of Hatfield, the residence of Henry VIII and his children Edward, Elizabeth, and Mary.
The slopes of Olympus and the Temples of Bacchus: In Greek mythology, Mount Olympus was the abode of the gods. The Temple of Bacchus, an enormous second-century Roman temple still standing in the Beqaa Valley in Lebanon, honors the god of wine.
Laurels: Laurus nobilis, commonly called a laurel or bay tree, is a flowering evergreen tree or shrub.
Fauns: Rural deities with the bodies of men and the horns, ears, tail, and sometimes the legs of goats.
Shillings: British coins worth twelve pence or 1/20th of a pound. Shillings stopped circulating in 1971, when they were replaced with five pence coins.
Bastille: The Paris fortress-turned-prison stormed on July 14, 1789, and a symbol of the people’s victory in the French Revolution.
Pyrus Japonica: Pieris japonica is a flowering quince, a fruit-bearing evergreen shrub with red, white, or pink flowers.
Cyrus Asiatica: A plant of Woolf’s invention, perhaps a version of Centella asiatica or pennywort.
Dyspepsia: Another word for indigestion.
Caustic: Sticks of silver nitrate used surgically to burn and destroy living tissue.
Phylloxera: A tiny yellow aphid-like insect that feeds on the roots of grapevines and creates significant damage to vineyards. Gardeners combat phylloxera infestation by using paraffin, a soft petroleum- or coal-derived wax, to graft a phylloxera-resistant grapevine with a wine grape plant.
“I dessay”: I daresay.
“Moth and rust”: A reference to Matthew 6:19–21 (KJV), where Jesus warns against the ephemerality and corruptibility of earthly possessions: “Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal: For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Pile: A stately building or home.
Glasshouses: Greenhouses or conservatory buildings for growing plants.
Hertfordshire: An English county northeast of London among whose ten districts was Welwyn (now called Welwyn Hatfield).
Copse: A thicket or grove of small trees.
Coptic scholars: Experts in the history and religious practices of Copts, Egyptian Christians whose writing, arts, and architecture bear Greco-Roman, Islamic, and Byzantine influences. Walter Crum was a Coptic scholar.
Pruning hook: A handheld gardening tool with a curved blade.
Acropolis: A citadel in Athens home to some of the most storied and architecturally influential structures of the ancient world, including the Parthenon, the temple of Nike Athena, and the Erechtheum.
British Museum: Founded in London 1753 by an Act of Parliament, the British Museum was the world’s first national public museum. The Museum’s Greek Revival architecture, enormous collections, and especially its famous circular Reading Room are important features in Woolf’s writings; see Jacob’s Room and A Room of One’s Own.
Fitzroy Square: A residential square in Bloomsbury where Woolf lived from 1907–11 with her younger brother Adrian Stephen. She drafted part of her first novel, The Voyage Out, from her rooms in 29 Fitzroy Square.
St. Pancras: A central London parish originally served by the St. Pancras Old Church and then by the New Church after 1822.
Burnt … as thin as the black films of paper: Perhaps a reference to the technique of developing a photograph by “burning” or overexposing film to darken an image. Woolf was an enthusiastic amateur photographer.
Bleating, chuckling, groaning: Perhaps sounds signaling the various animal nicknames Woolf gave herself in her letters to Violet and others: “Goat,” “Sparroy” (a combination of sparrow and monkey), and “Wallaby.”
Adonais: “Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats,” a fifty-five-stanza pastoral elegy in the tradition of Milton’s Lycidas written in 1821 by the English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822).
German spa: Any one of several towns in Germany with mineral springs thought to possess curative properties for a variety of ailments.
Peach Blossom moth: Thyatira batis, a brown moth marked with pale pink blotches resembling peach blossoms.
3
A Story to Make You Sleep
Oriental Grebe Podicipes Oristatus: Podiceps Cristatus, or great crested grebe, a black-and-white aquatic diving bird.
“Tsai gun”: Woolf takes the liberty of inventing and footnoting translations for an ersatz “Japanese” vocabulary in this and eight other instances in the story. None of her phrases belongs to spoken or written Japanese.
Dinted: Marked or indented with pressure or force.
Mandarin: Originally, an official in the imperial Chinese civil service; more informally, an official or authoritative figure in East Asia.
Laburnum: Sometimes called “golden rain,” Laburnum anagyroides is a small May- and June-blooming tree with bright yellow flowers that grow in hanging bunches.
Heathens: A typically derogatory or depreciative term for non-Christian people, or, more broadly, for people of any religion whose worship practices are considered unorthodox by other members of that religion.
Emulous: Desiring to obtain by imitating; animated by the spirit of rivalry.
TEXTUAL NOTES
Revisions to Chapter 1, “Friendships Gallery”
1907 TYPESCRIPT (NYPL)
1908 TYPESCRIPT (Longleat House)
crying
crying,
once
once,
historian
historian,
avoided
avoided,
machine
machine,
Its
It’s
Sir,
Sir,”
Nurse; if
Nurse, “if
the cleverest child the noisiest child and the child with the fine finest lungs [VW’s line breaks]
the cleverest child, the noisiest child, and the child with the finest lungs [typed as one standard continuous line]
Parish
Parish,
have not
have it not,
name;
name,
God mothers
god-mothers
God fathers
god-fathers
smiled
smiled,
now
now,
skin
skin,
then;
then,
mother;
mother.
“Violet.
Violet.
eight;
eight,
room
room,
thought
thought,
prejudiced;
prejudiced,
Godmother
godmother.
Dickinson,
Dickinson,”
Goodness
goodness
grow;
grow,
Godliness.” The
Godliness.
[new ¶] The
Dickinsons
Dickinson’s
you”
you,”
ME.” Then
ME.
[new ¶] Then
Nieces
niece’s
evening. Mary
evening.
[new ¶] Mary
society
society,
too
too,
in short it was agreed
it was agreed
opinions;
opinions
Crosses;
Crosses,
“G’s
“G’s”
them. And
them; and
growin
growing
attention,
attention --
title.; the
title; and
it. When
it.
[new ¶] When
Emblem
emblem
before. But
before; but
indivisible;
indivisible,
Fraülein Müller
Fraulein Muller
melodramatic
melodramatic,
particular
particular,
Drama;
drama.
Fraülein
Fraulein
Comedy Tragedy
Comedy-Tragedy
credit Mademoiselle
credit, Mademoiselle,
Bath!”
Bath.”
unbearable [Violet handwrites “intolerable”]
intolerable [Violet’s edit]
Violet,
Violet.
drama”
drama,”
credit. “But
credit.
[new ¶] “But
But.….… … “ Human
But.….… “ -- Human
saying
saying,
humanity.
humanity;
deal;
deal,
internally
internally,
fathers
father’s
schoolroom
schoolroom,
exclaimed;
exclaimed,
paper;
paper,
begin
Her first Season
[Violet handwrites “with” and marks for insertion before “Her”]
begin with her first season
[VW adds Violet’s “with”; she changes case and does not make this a stand-alone line]
birth parentage education
