The Marriage of Heaven and Hell (25 page)

Virginia was in control of herself on 11 February when she and Leonard travelled to Cambridge to inspect the Press's new home in Letchworth and visit old friends. Leonard was satisfied by her apparent enjoyment, but she told Ethel Smyth,

Ever since we came back from Cambridge – 30 hours in train journeys; £6 on hotel bills; all for Leonard to spend 2 hours in Letchworth – I've been in a fret.
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Virginia's reluctance to eat now became more pronounced and Leonard at last became concerned. He tried to cajole and persuade but she ‘was very hard to deal with. She lost weight terribly.'
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Leonard knew the serious consequences of Virginia's losing weight, and he eventually sought advice from Dr Octavia Wilberforce, whom both Woolfs liked.

Octavia lived in Brighton where she practised as a doctor, and lived with the actress and novelist Elizabeth Robins. She was a sensible, attractive, outdoor type, rather dogmatic and prudish, and she detested Freud for ‘allowing hugely for sex'. Virginia and she had met in 1937 and discovered they were related through the marriage of Virginia's great-grandfather to William Wilberforce's sister, but not until the end of 1940, when Elizabeth Robins left for America, did they become more closely acquainted.

Octavia had tea at Monks House and fell under Virginia's spell. She was worried by her ‘extreme thinness' and ‘hands worse than icicles', and arranged to send regular supplies of cream and milk (she owned a herd of Jersey cows) ‘in exchange for apples and a copy of Virginia's next book'.
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Virginia was moved by the ‘generosity … trouble and the really miraculous gift', but, she confessed, the novel was a ‘completely worthless book. I've lost all power over words – can't do a thing with them'.
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Octavia, as she admitted, was ‘very unobservant', and failed to notice the underlying depression, attributing Virginia's words to ‘exaggeration'. She diagnosed ‘a thoroughly frail creature'.
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By the New Year Octavia had become a light in the gathering gloom, a possible maternal figure capable of stirring Virginia's fantasies: ‘I've a new love, a doctor, a Wilberforce, a cousin … does that make you twitch?!' she told Vita on 19 January.
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She sought to see more of Octavia and suggested doing a living portrait. ‘I think you're very paintable, as the painters say. Now I wonder why? Something that composes well – perhaps reticence and power combined.'
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She began to gather details of Octavia's life but, more often than not, Virginia did the talking, mostly about her own family life. By mid-March she was revealing how desperate she felt, ‘depressed to the lowest depths'. Octavia still did not recognise the danger signals. She adopted a ‘pull yourself together and stop brooding' approach, which did more harm than good. Finally, she upset Virginia very much by admonishing her for spending far too much time thinking about her family; it was ‘all nonsense, blood thicker than water – balderdash … better to harrow a field or play a game.'
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Virginia turned away.

Despite trembling hands and ‘mornings of torture', Virginia completed
Between the Acts
on 26 February and gave it to Leonard to read. She felt better as the day wore on and by evening managed to read or write a little, but it was increasingly difficult to concentrate. She tried working on simple manual tasks like scrubbing floors and beating carpets, but by March even these activities were becoming too much for her.

On 14 March she lunched at Westminster with Leonard and John Lehmann. When Lehmann congratulated her on the completion of her new novel she became intensely agitated and told him it was no good at all, and obviously couldn't be published.
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Leonard intervened to say how good he thought the book, whereupon Virginia rounded on him, saying he was wrong. For Virginia to throw out Leonard's praise, normally so vital to her peace of mind, was an ominous sign, on a par with her refusal to eat with him. Leonard was no longer the good parental figure.

By now Virginia was ‘as thin as a razor' and had paranoid delusions; her thoughts were racing outside her control, and hallucinatory voices were probably already tormenting and pushing her towards suicide. Even when she came back from a walk ‘soaking wet, looking ill and shaken', saying ‘she had slipped and fallen into one of the dykes', Leonard ‘did not definitely suspect anything'.
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Not until 26 March could he believe Virginia was ‘on the verge of danger'. Then he tried vainly to persuade her to go to bed for a ‘rest cure for at least a week'.
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The next day, desperately anxious, he insisted on driving Virginia to see Octavia at Brighton. She was angry and hostile to the doctor, reiterating how unnecessary it was to have come. ‘All you have to do is to reassure Leonard,' she kept repeating, but eventually she agreed to an examination on condition Octavia promised not to prescribe a rest cure.
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Octavia was not a psychiatrist and was out of her depth. Her friendly greeting, ‘If you'll collaborate, I know I can help you,' only served to increase Virginia's resistance, for collaboration was
impossible.
No real contact between the women occurred. Octavia was too polite to ask about suicide. Had she done so she might have understood the danger. Many suicide patients freely confess their intention to a doctor who asks, often with some relief, and will even promise to postpone suicide until after their next meeting. Such seemingly bizarre behaviour stems from what persists of the wish to live, and guilt for causing pain to relatives. A promise in such circumstances is usually kept and the doctor may find he has gained his patient's trust and co-operation. He must then act decisively.

Virginia had been contemplating suicide for at least ten days before she drowned herself and had probably already made one abortive attempt. It was too late for Leonard alone to save her. The only way disaster could have been prevented at that stage was for Dr Wilberforce, backed by Leonard, to have insisted on continuous surveillance by trained nurses, if necessary under certification. Neither would have accepted so drastic a move. Virginia and Leonard returned home.

At some point during what must have been a dreadful night of agitation, Virginia came to a firm decision to kill herself. Such a decision always resolves conflict and brings peace of mind. She calmly wrote farewell letters to Leonard and Vanessa, which she left on her writing block. In both letters her deep love for Leonard shines through the depression. To Vanessa, she wrote:

I feel that I have gone too far this time to come back again. I am certain now that I am going mad again. It is just as it was the first time, I am always hearing voices, and I know I shan't get over it now.

All I want to say is that Leonard has been so astonishingly good, every day, always; I can't imagine that anyone could have done more for me than he has. We have been perfectly happy until the last few weeks, when this horror began. Will you assure him of this? I feel he has so much to do that he will go on, better without me, and you will help him.
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To Leonard she wrote:

I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. No one could have done more than you have done. Please believe that. But I know that I shall never get over this; and I am wasting your life. Nothing anyone says can persuade me. You can work, and you will be much better without me. You see I can't write this even, which shows I am right. All I wish to say is that until this disease came on me we were perfectly happy. It was all due to you. No one could have been so good from the very first day till now. Everyone knows that.
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Virginia was not entirely sane at this time; much of her thinking was delusional and her feelings were no longer comprehensible. But she could still appear outwardly ‘normal'. Leonard found her to be calm and collected on the morning of 28 March before she went out, and anyone meeting Virginia on her way to the river bank would have seen nothing out of the ordinary. Reaching the river, she filled her pockets with stones, left her walking stick on the ground, and walked into the icy waters.

When she failed to return for lunch, Leonard ran across the fields to the river and found her stick lying upon the bank. After searching fruitlessly he rang the police. The body was found three weeks later by children, close to where she had drowned.

She was cremated in Brighton on 21 April and Leonard buried her ashes at the foot of one of the two great intertwining elms at Rodmell which the Woolfs called Leonard and Virginia.

Leonard's pain was too great to express. Outwardly he was self-controlled and calm, and insisted on being left alone. Quentin Bell, who saw him some days later, was horrified at his despair, ‘stoic though he was'.
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Only twice did he break down momentarily with Octavia Wilberforce while discussing Virginia's illness, and in front of Vanessa after returning from the cremation.

Leonard went on living at Rodmell, going to London to committee meetings, desperately filling his days with work to blot out the memory of his inability to save Virginia. Vanessa offered comfort but felt ‘very useless'.
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Vita predicted his suicide.

In April 1942, seeking change and in order to work more intensively, he moved back into London, living in three patched-up rooms in the bombed Mecklenburgh Square house. By October 1943 he could no longer bear the gloom and discomfort and took a lease on 24 Victoria Square. There he became friendly with his neighbour, Trekkie Parsons, whom he and Virginia had known and liked before the war. The friendship developed and, to quote Quentin Bell, Trekkie ‘saved [him] from the depths of despair'.
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She became his ‘Dearest Tiger', and by 1944 had transformed his life from one of misery into happiness. She was much younger, a painter, married to the publisher Ian Parsons, who in turn became a close friend of Leonard. When John Lehmann ended his partnership with Leonard at the Hogarth Press in 1945, Parsons and his co-directors at Chatto & Windus, at Leonard's instigation, took Lehmann's place. It was an ideal arrangement for everyone.

Leonard led a busy life for the next twenty-five years, working, gardening, travelling abroad with Trekkie, his idealism and vitality undiminished until in April 1969 he suffered a stroke. He died on 14 August, aged 88.

Appendix

Mania, Madness and Creativity

Mental normality depends on a balance between the workings of our internal mental world and the real outside world; our fantastic ideas are constantly being modified and discarded in the light of reality. Madness develops when an individual becomes cut off from reality, isolated within himself, and loses touch with everyday feedback from the outside world. Ideas that to other people are absurd or dangerous, now come to seem ‘true'. Self-control – a reflection of society's standards – disappears, and the madman, impulsive and unreasonable, lives and acts out his fantasies.

Virginia's episodes of manic depression were all preceded by weeks of increasing depression and fleeting signs of mania. Delusions and hallucinations appeared and warped her judgement. For a time she could conceal this but eventually she became obviously insane. During madness birds spoke to her in Greek, her dead mother materialised and harangued her, voices called her to ‘do wild things'. She refused nourishment. Trusted companions like her husband Leonard and her sister Vanessa became enemies and were abused and assaulted; it seemed to her sister that Virginia had ‘changed into a most unpleasant character'. A manic depressive always recovers from an attack, although it may last two or more years. As Virginia returned to sanity, delusions faded and she became her old self.

The onset of Virginia's depressions was invariably heralded by three symptoms: headache at the back of the head and neck, which was extremely painful, ‘like enraged rats gnawing the nape of my neck',
1
and sometimes accompanied by ‘flashes of light raying round my eyes';
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sleeplessness; and racing thoughts; ‘racing despair and exaltation – that long scale of unhappiness'.
3
Provided she went to bed, rested, stopped work and cancelled all engagements depression lasted only a few weeks; but if she attempted to keep going, symptoms rapidly worsened. The pain of headache then gave way to ‘numbness'
4
and then, as breakdown neared, to visions and voices.

Depression is a universal reaction to loss and major reverses, but cyclothymic depression appears more often than not for no apparently discernible or justifiable reason. Its source is
biological.
A distressing event or physical illness that precedes or accompanies the cyclothymic depression is often blamed. It is not the
cause
although it may be responsible for potentiating the depression and may prolong and worsen the mental state to a dangerous degree.

Stressful and over-exciting occasions, in the absence of cyclothymic depression, could always upset and exhaust Virginia and send her to bed for several days. These moods were never serious and Virginia welcomed them at times: they had ‘their advantages – one visits such remote strange places lying in bed'.
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When she ran into difficulties writing
The Waves
she longed for a week in bed; ‘My mind works in idleness. To do nothing in a profitable way'.
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Most people have no conception of the agony of pathological depression. The poet William Cowper was afflicted by ‘such a dejection of spirits – day and night I was upon the rack, lying down in horrors and rising in despair', that he was convinced that ‘none but they who have felt the same can have the least conception of it'.
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Virginia Woolf, although she valued the experience of madness in providing self-knowledge and a source of creativity, was terrified by it, ‘tremblingly afraid of my own insanity' and ‘almost crippled when I came back to the world, unable to move a foot in terror'.
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