Mrs. Dalloway (Annotated) (32 page)

But it had been a silly thing to do, in many ways, Peter said, to marry like that; “a perfect goose she was,” he said, but, he said, “we had a splendid time of it,” but how could that be? Sally wondered; what did he mean? and how odd it was to know him and yet not know a single thing that had happened to him. And did he say it out of pride? Very likely, for after all it must be galling for him (though he was an oddity, a sort of sprite, not at all an ordinary man), it must be lonely at his age to have no home, nowhere to go to. But he must stay with them for weeks and weeks. Of course he would; he would love to stay with them, and that was how it came out. All these years the Dalloways had never been once. Time after time they had asked them. Clarissa (for it was Clarissa of course) would not come. For, said Sally, Clarissa was at heart a snob—one had to admit it, a snob. And it was that that was between them, she was convinced. Clarissa thought she had married beneath her, her husband being—she was proud of it—a miner's son. Every penny
they had he had earned. As a little boy (her voice trembled) he had carried great sacks.

(And so she would go on, Peter felt, hour after hour; the miner's son; people thought she had married beneath her; her five sons; and what was the other thing—plants, hydrangeas, syringas, very, very rare hibiscus lilies that never grow north of the Suez Canal, but she, with one gardener in a suburb near Manchester, had beds of them, positively beds! Now all that Clarissa had escaped, unmaternal as she was.)

A snob was she? Yes, in many ways. Where was she, all this time? It was getting late.

“Yet,” said Sally, “when I heard Clarissa was giving a party, I felt I couldn't
not
come—must see her again (and I'm staying in Victoria Street, practically next door). So I just came without an invitation. But,” she whispered, “tell me, do. Who is this?”

It was Mrs. Hilbery, looking for the door. For how late it was getting! And, she murmured, as the night grew later, as people went, one found old friends; quiet nooks and corners; and the loveliest views. Did they know, she asked, that they were surrounded by an enchanted garden? Lights and trees and wonderful gleaming lakes and the sky. Just a few fairy lamps, Clarissa Dalloway had said, in the back garden! But she was a magician! It was a park. . . . And she didn't know their names, but friends she knew they were, friends without names, songs without words, always the best. But there were so many doors, such unexpected places, she could not find her way.

“Old Mrs. Hilbery,” said Peter; but who was that? that lady standing by the curtain all the evening, without speaking? He knew her face; connected her with Bourton. Surely she used to cut up underclothes at the large table in the window? Davidson, was that her name?

“Oh, that is Ellie Henderson,” said Sally. Clarissa was really
very hard on her. She was a cousin, very poor. Clarissa
was
hard on people.

She was rather, said Peter. Yet, said Sally, in her emotional way, with a rush of that enthusiasm which Peter used to love her for, yet dreaded a little now, so effusive she might become—how generous to her friends Clarissa was! and what a rare quality one found it, and how sometimes at night or on Christmas Day, when she counted up her blessings, she put that friendship first. They were young; that was it. Clarissa was pure-hearted; that was it. Peter would think her sentimental. So she was. For she had come to feel that it was the only thing worth saying—what one felt. Cleverness was silly. One must say simply what one felt.

“But I do not know,” said Peter Walsh, “what I feel.”

Poor Peter, thought Sally. Why did not Clarissa come and talk to them? That was what he was longing for. She knew it. All the time he was thinking only of Clarissa, and was fidgeting with his knife.

He had not found life simple, Peter said. His relations with Clarissa had not been simple. It had spoilt his life, he said. (They had been so intimate—he and Sally Seton, it was absurd not to say it.) One could not be in love twice, he said. And what could she say? Still, it is better to have loved (but he would think her sentimental—he used to be so sharp). He must come and stay with them in Manchester. That is all very true, he said. All very true. He would love to come and stay with them, directly he had done what he had to do in London.

And Clarissa had cared for him more than she had ever cared for Richard. Sally was positive of that.

“No, no, no!” said Peter (Sally should not have said that—she went too far). That good fellow—there he was at the end of the room, holding forth, the same as ever, dear old Richard.
Who was he talking to? Sally asked, that very distinguished-looking man? Living in the wilds as she did, she had an insatiable curiosity to know who people were. But Peter did not know. He did not like his looks, he said, probably a Cabinet Minister. Of them all, Richard seemed to him the best, he said—the most disinterested.

“But what has he done?” Sally asked. Public work, she supposed. And were they happy together? Sally asked (she herself was extremely happy); for, she admitted, she knew nothing about them, only jumped to conclusions, as one does, for what can one know even of the people one lives with every day? she asked. Are we not all prisoners? She had read a wonderful play about a man who scratched on the wall of his cell, and she had felt that was true of life—one scratched on the wall. Despairing of human relationships (people were so difficult), she often went into her garden and got from her flowers a peace which men and women never gave her. But no; he did not like cabbages; he preferred human beings, Peter said. Indeed, the young are beautiful, Sally said, watching Elizabeth cross the room. How unlike Clarissa at her age! Could he make anything of her? She would not open her lips. Not much, not yet, Peter admitted. She was like a lily, Sally said, a lily by the side of a pool. But Peter did not agree that we know nothing. We know everything, he said; at least he did.

But these two, Sally whispered, these two coming now (and really she must go, if Clarissa did not come soon), this distinguished-looking man and his rather common-looking wife who had been talking to Richard—what could one know about people like that?

“That they're damnable humbugs,” said Peter, looking at them casually. He made Sally laugh.

But Sir William Bradshaw stopped at the door to look at a picture. He looked in the corner for the engraver's name. His wife looked too. Sir William Bradshaw was so interested in art.

When one was young, said Peter, one was too much excited to know people. Now that one was old, fifty-two to be precise (Sally was fifty-five, in body, she said, but her heart was like a girl's of twenty); now that one was mature then, said Peter, one could watch, one could understand, and one did not lose the power of feeling, he said. No, that is true, said Sally. She felt more deeply, more passionately, every year. It increased, he said, alas, perhaps, but one should be glad of it—it went on increasing in his experience. There was some one in India. He would like to tell Sally about her. He would like Sally to know her. She was married, he said. She had two small children. They must all come to Manchester, said Sally—he must promise before they left.

There's Elizabeth, he said, she feels not half what we feel, not yet. But, said Sally, watching Elizabeth go to her father, one can see they are devoted to each other. She could feel it by the way Elizabeth went to her father.

For her father had been looking at her, as he stood talking to the Bradshaws, and he had thought to himself, Who is that lovely girl? And suddenly he realised that it was his Elizabeth, and he had not recognised her, she looked so lovely in her pink frock! Elizabeth had felt him looking at her as she talked to Willie Titcomb. So she went to him and they stood together, now that the party was almost over, looking at the people going, and the rooms getting emptier and emptier, with things scattered on the floor. Even Ellie Henderson was going, nearly last of all, though no one had spoken to her, but she had wanted to see everything, to tell Edith. And Richard and Elizabeth were rather glad it was over, but Richard was proud of his daughter. And he had not meant to tell her, but he could not help telling her. He had looked at her, he said, and he had wondered, Who is that lovely girl? and it was his daughter! That did make her happy. But her poor dog was howling.

“Richard has improved. You are right,” said Sally. “I shall go and talk to him. I shall say good-night. What does the brain matter,” said Lady Rosseter, getting up, “compared with the heart?”

“I will come,” said Peter, but he sat on for a moment. What is this, terror? what is this ecstasy? he thought to himself. What is it that fills me with extraordinary excitement?

It is Clarissa, he said.

For there she was.

The walks and rides taken through London by various characters may be followed on the map that appears at the beginning of the book, through references in the notes. Locations are numbered chronologically followed by an initial (C=Clarissa; E=Elizabeth; H=Hugh; K=Miss Kilman; M=motorcar; P=Peter; R=Richard; S=Septimus). (DB) indicates a note that is indebted to David Bradshaw, “Explanatory Notes,” in
Mrs. Dalloway
, by Virginia Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 166–85. Bradshaw makes extensive use of
The London Encyclopaedia
(London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993), which he recommends.

 

[>]
Rumpelmayer's men
: Caterers for Clarissa's party. There was an actual local firm by this name in 1923.

 

[>]
Clarissa
: Noteworthy examples of literary predecessors with this name are the heroine of Samuel Richardson's
Clarissa Harlowe
(1747–48), and the Clarissa who provides the scissors to cut the heroine's hair in Alexander Pope's
The Rape of the Lock
(1712).

 

[>]
Bourton
: The imaginary home of Clarissa's family, the Parrys, where she grew up. There are two villages with Bourton in their name in the Cotswold Hills of Gloucestershire. This scenic limestone range drains from one side into the Severn River, which is visible from Woolf's fictional Bourton (see 150).

 

[>]
Durtnall's van
: Vehicle belonging to an actual transport and warehouse firm.

 

[>]
Westminster
: Borough of London, on the north bank of the Thames River, housing many of Britain's principal government buildings, palaces, and the famous Anglican church Westminster Abbey.

 

[>]
influenza
: A worldwide pandemic of influenza killed more than 20 million people in 1918 and 1919. Woolf's recurrent bouts with more standard forms of flu interrupted her writing.

 

[>]
Big Ben
: Mrs. Dalloway refers first to the “warning, musical” of the famous Westminster Chimes, rung on four bells at the quarter hour. This is followed on the hour by the tolling of the central, thirteen-ton bell, first sounded in 1859. It may have taken its name from the rotund first commissioner of works, Benjamin Hall. The clock tower rises above Westminster Palace, which contains the British Houses of Parliament. At midnight on December 31, 1923, Woolf could have heard Big Ben over the radio for the first time. Big Ben and the bells of other clocks are heard by various characters, interrupting their actions and marking the passage of time, “the leaden circles dissolv[ing] in the air” throughout the novel (e.g., see Peter, 47; the Smiths, the clocks of Harley Street, 100).

 

[>]
Victoria Street
: Street connecting Belgravia with Westminster. Residential apartment buildings dating to the 1880s have gradually yielded to modern concrete and glass office buildings and commercial establishments [map 1C].

 

[>]
The King and Queen were at the Palace
: Buckingham Palace, the royal residence since Victoria's ascent to the throne [map 2C]. The current occupants were King George V (1865–1936, his reign began in 1910) and Queen Mary (1867–1953).

 

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Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh
: Important locations for British sports and the social events that surround them: Lord's, or the Marylebone Cricket Club, in North London (founded by Thomas Lord); the racetrack at Ascot, near Windsor Castle in Berkshire; and the Hurlingham Club in Ranelagh Gardens, where polo was played, in the Southwest London district of Fulham.

 

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in the time of the Georges
: Era encompassing the British Kings George I—IV (1714–1830).

 

[>]
the Park
: St. James's Park [map 3CH]. The oldest of eight Royal Parks, dating to Henry VIII's deer park (circa 1530). It is dominated by a long central lake featuring varieties of waterfowl. A favorite strolling place for politicians. Hugh Whitbread, who prides himself on government connections, turns up here.

 

[>]
despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms
: Boxes marked with heraldic emblems used to carry papers to and from the royal family.

 

[>]
Bath
: Celebrated spa town in southwest England, known for the eighteenth-century architecture of public buildings and town house crescents. The Romans enjoyed its hot mineral waters, and left archaeological remains of baths.

 

[>]
Pimlico
: Borough of London southwest of Westminster, on the north bank of the Thames. Home to persons of more modest income than the Dalloways.

 

[>]
Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty
: The Admiralty Building, situated in Whitehall, was equipped with an antenna and wireless telegraphy by the Marconi Company (1909). This permitted an exchange of messages with ships at sea (DB).

 

[>]
Wagner
: Richard Wilhelm Wagner (1813–1883), German composer noted for his operas.