Becoming Virginia Woolf: Her Early Diaries and the Diaries She Read

2. THE EXPERIMENTER

2 The Experimenter Virginia Woolf’s 1899 Warboys Diary “This book has now got to be a kind of testing ground . . .” (PA 416) F ifteen-year-old Virginia appears to have followed her inclination to “fling diaries & diarising into the corner.” At least no diary for 1898 survives. Her imagination stirs again, however, in late summer 1899. Now seventeen, she embarks with her family in August on a seven-week holiday in the fen country of Huntingdonshire (now Cambridgeshire). Warboys Rectory, where they stayed, was a five-mile bicycle ride from a different St. Ives, but a reminder of their happy Cornwall summers before her mother’s death. Another’s diary may have renewed Virginia’s diary pulse. On August 7, the fourth day of the sojourn, she describes herself adrift “in the punt, which has been padded with rugs & cushions & read[ing] a sleepy preaching [?]1 book; the diary of some ancient Bishop written in flowing ancient English that harmonized with this melancholy melodious monotony (what an awful sentence!) of bank & stream” (PA 138). The ancient Bishop and his diary in ancient English remain, alas, unidentified . Virginia’s sentence describing them, however, conveys the character of the 1899diary,whichdiffersgreatlyfromher1897diary.The1897 diary isa life diary; the 1899 diary a travel diary. While the 1897 diary offers 309 entries—the most entries of any of Woolf’s diary books—the 1899 diary contains only 19 entries across 47 Warboys days. To compensate, however, its sentences are less breathless and more elaborate than those of 1897—as are the entries themselves. The journalbeginsasadailydiaryonAugust4,1899;however,afterfiveconsecutive entries—or perhaps eleven, if one includes two undated entries—a gap then 46 Becoming Virginia Woolf occurs and, beginning August 18, the diary becomes a periodic diary. In fact, it becomes a different diary altogether, for four of the final eight entries are titled, as if they are diary essays or simply set pieces unto themselves. With the 1899 diary, the seventeen-year-old becomes self-consciously literary ; in fact, she uses her Warboys diary for writerly exercises of all kinds. On the most practical level, the diary serves as a “testing ground” for new pens and inks. Quentin Bell calls the 1899 diary “an exasperating document”—exasperating to read, that is, for its pages contain diary entries but also pen practice, Virginia writing the same phrases over and over in different nibs and inks (VW l: 65). As Mitchell Leaska, who edited the early journals, notes, this gives the journal “its appearance of immense chaos.”2 However, what may first appear to be fussy adolescent pen and penmanship play also marks the young writer’s growing sense of audience and concern for writing standards. “I have made the most heroic resolution to change my ideas of calligraphy in conformance with those of my family, which are more generally accepted by the world as the correct ones,” she grandly explains (PA 416). No more, then, is the diary quite “scornful of stated rules!” (PA 134). On August 13, she pauses in her description of tree sugaring to reveal again her sensitivity to readers’ needs: “(I suppose a reader sometimes for the sake of variety when I write; it makes me put on my dress clothes such as they are)” (PA 144). This parenthetical confession suggests that she considers a public writing style something adopted, put on to impress readers, like formal clothes. She tries on this formal style often in this diary. Her “such as they are,” however, forms part of the motif of deficiency, hesitancy ,yetqualifiedassertionthatpervadesthe1899diary.Theseventeen-year-old follows conventional diary practice by launching her diary with an explanation for her act; however, the end of her sentence shows her tentative state. “This being our first night, & such a night not occurring again, I must make some markonpapertorepresentsoauspiciousanoccasion,”shebeginsstrongly,with Fanny Burney–like mock seriousness (PA 135). However, she then adds, “tho’ my mark must be frail & somewhat disjointed,” as though she distrusts the new “very fine pen” she uses, or distrusts this strong stance and wishes to qualify it, to declare her voice different (Bell VW 1: 65). Across her stay she struggles with “details,” their necessity and ratio to other material in her entries. She tries to becomeanaturewriterbutrepeatedlystressesher trials.HerAugust 6entry begins with a reference to “My Garden Acquaintance,” an essay by her godfather, the American poet James Russell Lowell, and it seems itself more an essay than adiaryentry.Afterconsideringwhethershemightsimplify into acountry natu- [18.118.9.7] Project MUSE (2024-04-26 15...