Woolf as a Moment of Vision

ELT 39:2 1996 trouble." Lewis makes no mention of the 1902-1903 episode or of Purser's sending his love" in 1910. The Yeats Sisters and the CuaL· contains some information not found in Family Secrets, such as the detailed account of Lily's brushwork technique, so scholars of the Yeats family will need to consult both. But for non-specialists, William M. Murphy has told us more, if anything, than we need to know to fully justify JBYs remark in a letter of 1920: "I think I myself mated well when I married with the Pollexfens. You yourself can see that in my daughters and sons." Richard J. Finneran ______________ University of Tennessee, Knoxville Woolf as a Moment of Vision Virginia Woolf: Interviews and Recollections. J. H. Stape, ed. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995. xvi + 195 pp. $19.95 MR STAPE'S BOOK offers a pocket library of Woolf sightings, Woolf as a moment of vision in the lives of others. Although much of the material has been previously published and hence is available, it is not readily available. Or rather, the non-specialist is not likely to know that it is available, and Stape thus provides a valuable service by giving us an intriguing field guide to this writer's habitat. The diverse collection widens the perspective somewhat beyond the only similar collection, Joan Rüssel Noble's Recollections of Virginm Woolf (1972). As Stape notes in his preface, only two of his selections (pieces by Clive Bell and William Plomer) were also included in Noble's book. Except for the material in the section "Pen Portraits," and some of the 1941 eulogies, the voices gathered here tend to be less reverent and less self-conscious than those in the Noble collection. There is occasionally an edged judgment or some very faint praise. Drawing mostly upon published autobiographical writings, Stape offers many brief sketches of Woolf, and some extended responses to daily encounters with her at the Hogarth Press, or reactions to her as she gave a speech, travelled, dined, or entertained. The perspective of the "implied editor" of the collection is remarkably similar to that of the implied narrator of Jacob's Room. In Woolf s first experimental novel the narrator describes in considerable detail the lives of characters quite peripheral to Jacob's story, and then suddenly in the midst of these lives the narrator notes, "oh, here is Jacob's room." Similarly, in this collection of memoirs, the reader is situated very much 236 BOOK REVIEWS in the lives of all those "other" people, and the useful, detailed notes about their lives and journals contribute to this effect. We hear the voice (and the personal issues and problems) of Ethel Smyth, Beatrice Webb, or John Houseman, and then suddenly we are in Virginia Woolf s room or we see her walk by. Indeed, one of the most diverse sections of the book is aptly titled "Moments of Being." Instead of "moments of being" in Woolf s own life, however, these are moments in the lives of other people, moments that became significant because Woolf stood on the lawn or entered the room or laughed. The book's organization and the titles of its seven "chapters" evoke (perhaps provoke) distinctive angles on the brief or lengthy descriptions of Woolf. Part III, "Among Friends," will probably lead most readers to expect portraits by close friends, and indeed Vita Sackville-West (included in this section) was such a friend. Also in this section, however, is Logan Pearsall Smith's hilarious, extended correspondence with Woolf about their fluctuating status as "friends." Again there is a Jacob's Room effect, as we perceive Woolf s devastating sarcasm but from the painful point of view of Pearsall Smith himself, the object of the sarcasm and irony as he flounders on, completely out of his depth. As in the section "Among Friends," the section on "Bloomsbury" offers a mingled yarn. The extended well-known tribute by Clive Bell (from his Old Friends: Personal Recollections, 1956, also included in Noble) gives a positive description and assessment of Woolf and the early Bloomsbury intimates. The pieces by Frances Partridge and Gerald...