The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (14 page)

However, a manic depressive breakdown after childbirth is not entirely due to genetic influence, and emotional factors play an important part. Studies of puerperal illness often overlook their importance, because it is difficult to measure subtle emotional stress. Such ‘life events' as death and divorce, or a husband's alcoholism, are easily recorded, but how accurately can a researcher measure reluctance to become a father, the aggressive fantasies of a pregnant mother-to-be, or ambivalent feelings towards a husband?

The cyclothymic Sylvia Plath, for instance, was depressed after each of her two children. Her marriage appeared outwardly stable but below the surface she was angry, envious of her husband Ted Hughes's success as a poet and gloomy about her own work. A probing search will show that most manic depressives who develop post-natal illness harbour resentment towards the partner. Those who remain well, or suffer no more than short-lived minor depression, are generally at peace with themselves and their partner at the time of delivery.

Many manic depressives are cheerful during pregnancy; cyclothymic swings stop or lessen, probably because of changing hormone levels. After birth the cyclothymic rhythm resumes, and if delivery coincides with the time of an expected swing, the postnatal reaction is potentiated.

Every post-natal manic depressive illness involves the interaction of cyclothymic, hormonal and emotional factors, and it is always difficult to predict the outcome of a pregnancy. It is impossible to know how Virginia would have reacted to childbirth. She could have been well during the pregnancy, and with a supportive Leonard in attendance at delivery might have had no serious aftereffects, particularly had the baby been born in summer. But Leonard's ban on motherhood may have had causes other than concern about Virginia. Perhaps he wanted to avoid the spoiling effect children might have had on his own as well as Virginia's life and work. He enjoyed training his pets, but what he termed ‘the much less attractive and savage human baby' was a different matter.
13
Accommodation in the early years of marriage was cramped, and finances were not good enough to cover a full-time nanny, so essential for Virginia. Leonard would have needed a more substantial income, and that would have entailed doing less congenial work.

Virginia's mental state continued to deteriorate. Writing with ‘a kind of tortured intensity', she finished revising
The Voyage Out,
and Leonard delivered the manuscript to Gerald Duckworth's publishing firm at the beginning of March.
14
It was accepted, and at once Virginia's anxieties came to centre round the novel, its possible reception of scorn and derision. She lay awake at night worrying over the book. She ate little, headaches were severe and she became more and more indecisive. She clung to Leonard, reluctant to let him out of her sight.

Leonard believed
The Voyage Out
to be the root cause of Virginia's distress. Vanessa thought the same. She told Roger Fry that Virginia's ‘worrying over what people will think of her novel … seems really to be the entire cause of her breakdown'.
15
But the novel, although some cause of anxiety, was not the chief reason for Virginia's turmoil, but rather a focal point for the gathering storm.

In a sense, every manic depressive breakdown reflects battle with a close companion, suppressed anger, fear of rejection, resentment struggling against love. As the cyclothyme's mental defences crumble, perplexity grows and behaviour becomes increasingly inconsistent. In 1904 Virginia had struggled with Vanessa, driven her away, clung to her, pleaded for affection, abused her. In 1913 the pathological process was slower, but the pattern was the same. All Virginia's major breakdowns had their beginnings in the cyclothymic depression of late winter/spring, and with each one went powerful emotional conflicts.

Leonard, in 1913, ruled his marriage as he had the natives in Ceylon. He tolerated no disagreement; on important issues he was sure he knew best for Virginia. Virginia was at first angry. Leonard's highhanded action in stamping her unfit for motherhood, his bullying manner, enraged her. Yet she had to keep her feelings under control, for Leonard was her vital protection, and the more depressed she was the greater her dependence. She clung to Leonard, unable to work, convinced she was a burden, was ruining his life, that he should leave her. She ate almost nothing, slept for no more than an hour or two at a time, and was so ‘terribly depressed' that Leonard feared suicide. He made her see Savage and on 25 July she reluctantly agreed to go back to the Twickenham nursing home.

Anger against Leonard surfaced after a few days in the nursing home; she did not trust him, did not love him, doubted his love, wanted separation. Leonard was extremely upset and tried to discover the cause:

If I
have
done anything wrong to you and which has displeased you, you would tell me, wouldn't you? I do adore you so, Mandy, that I would do anything to change any beastliness in myself, if I knew how it had shown itself.
16

He stayed away from the nursing home for several days, probably on medical advice, and his absence, in conjunction with rest and isolation, halted the paranoid outbursts. Contritely, she assured him,

nothing you have done, since I knew you, has been in any way beastly – how could it? You've been absolutely perfect to me. It's all my fault … I do believe in you absolutely, and never for a second do I think you've told me a lie. Goodbye, darling Mongoose – I do want you and I believe in spite of my vile imaginings the other day that I love you and that you love me.
17

Virginia left the nursing home on 11 August, seeming to be a good deal better, and she and Leonard went to Asham for a fortnight. But no real improvement was possible in so short a time, and she quickly returned to agitation and depressive thinking. Leonard was completely out of his depth, helpless to counter Virginia's delusional ideas, only with difficulty able to persuade her to eat and rest.

Dr Savage had made the fatal mistake of bargaining with a seriously depressed patient, an extraordinary error for someone of his experience, and another sign that his judgement was distorted by his friendship. To persuade Virginia to have treatment he had promised she could go away for a holiday with Leonard in August, although he must have known she would not be well enough.

Leonard was understandably reluctant to take Virginia away, but Savage said his promise must be kept; to break it would bring on a crisis and risk suicide. He was wrong, clinically inept and weak. He should have insisted on Virginia going back to the home for further treatment, and if she had refused – unlikely had he been firm – he should have threatened to send her to a mental hospital; as a suicide risk, he had the power to do so. Ill as she was, part of her was probably still in touch with reality and would have been relieved by firm direction.

Leonard took Virginia to the village inn where they had stayed on their honeymoon, an unwise choice, perhaps. Virginia rapidly became worse. She believed people were watching and organising plots against her. Everywhere was threatening and alarming. Every shadow and creak had meaning. Sleep was impossible without a drug, and Leonard doled out a sleeping pill, Veronal, each night, keeping the supply locked in his case. Mealtimes were battles which Virginia increasingly won; Leonard, she protested, was forcing her to eat unnecessarily. Leonard, in desperation, appealed to Vanessa, who wrote telling Virginia to ‘be sensible and don't make things difficult for Leonard … he is far more sensible than you are, and trust him to know how to get things right'.
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It did not help.

Leonard cut short the holiday and returned to London. Once there, to Leonard's surprise and relief, Virginia agreed to see Dr Henry Head. Head was more a neurophysiologist than a clinical psychiatrist. His chief work before the war had been concerned with sensation, but later he became interested in shell shock and co-operated with W. H. R. Rivers, the psychotherapist. The Woolfs had heard of him through Roger Fry, whose schizophrenic wife he had seen, and Virginia's resistance may have been overcome by learning that Head was also a poet.

Head at once recognised the seriousness of the situation and advised Virginia's immediate admission to a nursing home. She would ‘get perfectly well again if she followed advice', rested in bed and ate well for a few weeks. It was no different from the rest cure that Savage would have prescribed, but there was no realistic alternative treatment. Virginia appeared to acquiesce, and when Leonard brought her back to Gordon Square he was relieved to observe how calm she was. He left her in the bedroom with a friend, and with Vanessa went to see Savage to explain why they had bypassed him and gone to Dr Head. Left alone for a moment, Virginia opened Leonard's unlocked case, found the Veronal and swallowed a large dose. She became deeply unconscious, and thirty-six hours elapsed before she awoke.

It would be unfair to criticise Head, who was not consulted again, for he could have done little more. A sudden calm in someone deeply depressed is a danger sign, a signal that suicide is a strong possibility; once the decision to die has been decisively taken, agitation disappears. Virginia had decided to kill herself, and she planned her action deliberately. Leonard normally made sure his case was locked and it was a curious oversight for so careful a man; but given the strain he was under, not extraordinary.

A suicide attempt often lifts depression, sometimes for good if the time is ripe, but usually any improvement is transient. When Virginia recovered she seemed tranquil for a few days, but then agitation and depression began to reappear Her attitude to Leonard, however, changed, and anger and paranoia gave way to a childlike need for him. She wanted Leonard to be continually with her, and would only eat if he fed her, encouraging her with each mouthful.

George Duckworth lent the Woolfs his country house for the emergency. Nurses were in attendance day and night. At times Virginia objected violently to them and demanded Leonard alone look after her. At other times she was silent and withdrawn, lying motionless on her bed, expressionless, passively resistant, taking up to two hours to eat a small meal. Leonard was exhausted but he never lost patience or rebuked her, and always encouraged her with soothing words and touches. He recognised that ‘if left to herself she … would have gradually starved to death'. Over the years Leonard came to believe Virginia had ‘a taboo against eating'. It was, he wrote, ‘extraordinarily difficult ever to get her to eat enough to keep her strong and well'.
19
Leonard perhaps over-emphasised the problem, partly because he believed her mental stability depended on maintaining a ‘good' weight, but also because Virginia became noticeably more anorexic when there was tension between them.

Virginia slowly improved. In mid-November she moved from Dalingridge Place to Asham with two nurses in attendance, and in February she was well enough to give up the last one. Depressive thoughts, verging on the delusional, came and went and she continued to cling to Leonard and ask his forgiveness, repeatedly telling him, ‘how much I am grateful and repentant. You have made me so happy.'
20

Leonard, understandably, had almost reached the end of his tether. For months he had had to remain in the sickroom, listening, pleading, encouraging, supervising eating and toilet, urging her to be calm and take her medicines (bromides, chloral, Veronal), watching for danger signals. By March he was suffering from painful tension headaches and had lost a considerable amount of weight. Reluctantly, he was persuaded to leave Virginia in the care of Vanessa and two friends, and go away to recuperate with Lytton Strachey. Virginia immediately felt lost and anxious:

If you could have seen my sorrow after you went you would have no doubts about my affection [she wrote]. Old Mandril does want her Master so badly and last night his empty bed was so dismal, and she went and kissed the pillow.
21

Leonard responded reassuringly,

Don't think, dear one, that I'm ill. I'm not … But I'm lonely without you. You can't realise how utterly you would end my life for me if you had taken that sleeping mixture successfully or if you ever dismissed me.'
22

By June Virginia was well enough for Leonard to leave her alone at Asham for a day or two, having promised to be in bed by 10.25 each night, drink a whole glass of milk in the morning, have breakfast in bed and ‘to be wise and to be happy'.
23
She and Leonard went for a holiday to Northumbria in August, just after the declaration of war – which had no obvious effect on Virginia – and on her return her recovery
seemed
complete. It was not.

Leonard had given up their rooms in Cliffords Inn in early 1914. Virginia was now keen to resume life in London, but Leonard was convinced that all excitement had to be avoided and he refused to consider living in central London. At first Virginia stood her ground, but she admitted she was liable to become intoxicated ‘by the delights of chatter',
24
and eventually accepted Leonard's choice of Richmond, close enough to London for work, but too far out for hectic social life. They took lodgings there and began house-hunting, and at the beginning of 1915 began negotiations for the lease on Hogarth House, a large Georgian country house built in 1720, and now divided in two.

On 23 February, breakfasting in bed and talking to Leonard, Virginia suddenly became violently excited and distressed. She believed her mother was in the room and began talking wildly to her. It was the beginning of mania. Leonard was caught unawares although, in fact, there had been small but cumulative warning signs of mental trouble from the beginning of January. Headaches had returned and Virginia was sleeping badly. More ominously, she had bouts of irritability, disinhibition, and fleeting paranoia.