And the Rest Is History (10 page)

In 1910 a secret terrorist organization, the Black Hand, whose motto was “Unification or Death,” formed with the intent to rid the Balkan states of the yoke of Austria. When they discovered that the archduke was on his way to their country, they planned their vengeance on the hated House of Habsburg.

The military exercises went off well and were followed by an official visit to the capital city of Sarajevo on Sunday, June 28, to round off the trip. Franz and Sophie traveled the short distance from their hotel to the capital by a special train. There they joined a convoy of six cars to drive through the streets to an official welcome at the town hall. Franz was dressed in full military regalia; Sophie beamed with joy at riding alongside her beloved husband for a state event, in a street lined with spectators. The car had its roof down so the crowds could have a better view of the waving royal couple. At the same time, seven young members of the Black Hand, assassins who had been trained in neighboring Serbia, were waiting to move into action, thereby altering world history.

When the royal procession passed the central police station, Nedjelko Cabrinovic hurtled a hand grenade at the archduke's car. The driver accelerated when he saw the object flying toward them, and the grenade exploded under the wheel of the car behind the royal one. Two of its occupants were seriously wounded, and a dozen spectators were hit by bomb splinters. In anger Franz shouted, “So you welcome your guests with bombs!” Although badly shaken, they attended the official reception at City Hall. Afterward the archduke inquired about the members of his party who had been wounded. Upon learning that they had sustained serious injuries, he insisted on visiting them in the hospital. Baron Morsey suggested that this step might be dangerous; Oskar Potiorek retorted, “Do you think Sarajevo is full of assassins?” Nevertheless, Potiorek did concede that it would be better if Sophie remained behind at City Hall. However, she refused to do so, with the words, “As long as the archduke shows himself in public today I will not leave him.”

In order to avoid the densely packed center of the capital, General Potiorek decided that the royal car should travel straight through the Appel Quay en route to the hospital. However, through an oversight, no one informed the driver of the change of plans. On the way, at the Latin Bridge, the driver took a right turn into Franz Joseph Street. At this point Potiorek told the driver he was going the wrong way, so the chauffeur put the car in reverse. In doing this, he slowly moved past one of the conspirators, nineteen-year-old Gavrilo Princip, who, having heard of the botched assassination, had gone into the Moritz Schiller Café for a sandwich. He was shocked that his targets had appeared directly in front of him.

Princip rushed to the car, drew his pistol, and at a distance of five feet, fired several times—shots that were to ultimately claim seven million lives. A bullet hit Franz Ferdinand in the neck, and another lodged in Sophie's abdomen, whereby she collapsed on her husband's legs. He then said his last words to his first love:
“Sopherl, Sopherl, stirb nicht ... Bleib am Leben für unsere Kinder!”
(“Little Sophie, little Sophie, don't die! ... Stay alive for our children!”)

Princip's actions ignited World War I, which would turn Europe into a graveyard. Viscount Edward Grey wrote of the catastrophe triggered by a fateful shot, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

When historians analyze the causes of World War I, they point the finger of blame at a blood-soaked street in Sarajevo. However, when romantics recall the fateful last ride, they view it as an immortal Balkan love story.

12

1903

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

T
he adjective
uxorious
is defined as “slavishly devoted to one's wife.” Leonard Woolf could definitely be thus described, as he was Virginia's lighthouse throughout all her emotional storms and provided her with the light she needed to navigate through her darkness.

Adeline Virginia Stephen was born into a family that would never remotely have qualified as typical. Her father, Sir Leslie, was an eminent man of letters (the widower of William Makepeace Thackeray's daughter), and her mother, Julia (the widow of Herbert Duckworth), was a renowned beauty, a descendant of one of Marie Antoinette's attendants. The Stephen household consisted of offspring from three marriages: Laura Makepeace Stephen; George, Gerald, and Stella Duckworth; and the four children Sir Stephen and Julia had together: Vanessa, Thoby, Virginia, and Adrian. Their home was also filled with guests whose names graced the most literary books of the times: Henry James and George Henry Lewes. Adeline (who preferred the name Virginia) described it as a place of “books, writers and literary gossip.” The Stephens summered in Cornwall, where their dwelling overlooked the Godrevy Lighthouse.

Virginia's happy and literate childhood did not presage the tragedies that were to shadow her life. Her mother passed away in 1895, followed by her sister, who died two years later. Always psychologically fragile, she was shattered at the specter of death. Before she could recover, her father succumbed to his illness and she lost him in 1904. Her grief culminated with her first mental breakdown at age twenty-two. She was briefly institutionalized and would struggle for the rest of her years to maintain mental and emotional equilibrium. A further contributing influence to her psychological instability was the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her half-brothers George and Gerald Duckworth. Upon the passing of her parents, the siblings moved to a new home in Bloomsbury, close to the British Museum. It was to become the meeting place of London's intellectuals, and where Virginia fell in love.

Virginia's destiny, Leonard Sidney Woolf, was born in London, the third of ten children of a barrister, Solomon Rees Sydney and Marie (de Jongh) Woolf. As a Jew in anti-Semitic England he developed what he called his “carapace,” a hard shell, to shield himself from the “outside and usually hostile world.” A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to Cambridge, where he met some of the great thinkers of the era: Lytton Strachey, Rupert Brook, Clive Bell, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, and E. M. Forster. He also became friendly with Virginia's brother Thoby, whose nickname was “the Goth.” Upon graduation Woolf took a position in the Ceylon Civil Service; accompanying him were seventy volumes of Voltaire and a fox terrier, Charles.

The first time Virginia met Leonard was when she and her sister Vanessa went to Cambridge to visit Thoby. Leonard later recalled, “She was a vision in white—resplendent in a summery dress, large hat and parasol. Her beauty literally took one's breath away.”

After graduation he would see them again every Thursday evening when he attended their literary salon. Enraptured with her beauty and intellect, Leonard proposed twice; however, she rejected him with the comment that he was a “penniless Jew.” Undeterred, he wrote her, “If I try to say what I feel, I become stupid & stammering: it's like a wall of words rising up in front of me & there on the other side you're sitting so clear & beautiful & your dear face that I'd give everything in the world to see now.” Upon his third proposal, she accepted, and Virginia and Leonard were married on August 10, 1912, at a registry office in London. The newlyweds honeymooned in France, Spain, and Italy.

Leonard greatly encouraged his wife to write, as both a form of therapy and something to engage her interest. She had already penned a piece on Hayworth, the Brontës' parsonage, and had contributed to the Sunday
Literary Supplement
. She said of her passion, “I am ashamed, or perhaps proud, to say how much of my time is spent in thinking thinking, thinking about literature.” Cognizant of his wife's ever-fragile psyche, Leonard suggested starting their own printing press. He felt this would not only give his wife a project; it would also promote controversial literary works that otherwise would not have made it into print.

In 1917 the Woolfs founded the Hogarth Press, named after their London home. The original machine, small enough to fit on their kitchen table, published Virginia's novels as well as Katherine Mansfield's short stories and T. S. Eliot's
Waste Land
. They also printed nonfiction, such as the complete twenty-four-volume translation of the works of Sigmund Freud. When Virginia met the psychoanalyst in 1939 when he had fled Nazi Germany, she wrote in her diary, “A screwed up shrunk very old man: with a monkey's light eyes, paralyzed spasmodic movements, inarticulate: but alert.”

During the 1920s Virginia became the high priestess of the Bloomsbury Group, and the Hogarth Press also published her soon-to-be classic novels:
Mrs Dalloway
,
To the Lighthouse
, and
Orlando
. Leonard, an aspiring writer, never envied the success that eluded him; his entry into literary immortality was as Mr. Virginia Woolf.