This is not A Hat
and A Stick
It was as usual a
dull afternoon of April 1941. Under a bridge in Southease children were playing
Hide and Seek discovered a washed up dead body of a woman. It could not be
identified immediately due to putrefaction. There was no missing complaint in
the record of Police. Rodmell is a small village and civil parish in the Lewes
District of East Sussex in England. Virginia Woolf and her husband Leonard
Woolf bought a weather boarded cottage in 1919. Her sister Vanessa also lived
in a nearby farmhouse.
The Monk House,
which was once lively with spirited intellectuals like T. S. Eliot and E. M. Forster
was now wrapped up in dead silence. Bloomsbury Group deeply mourned the sudden
demise of their beloved member.
Associated Press
made an official announcement “Mrs. Woolf’s body found” on 19 April confirming
that she was drowned in the river Ouse three weeks earlier. The body was
decomposed and flesh was eaten by fishes. A hat and cane were discovered at
some distance above, upstream on the bank of the river. They were identified to
belong to Virginia Woolf. Her house was also in proximity to the place where
hat and stick were discovered. It was not an accident, she had committed
suicide.
“April is the
cruellest month” said T. S. Eliot in the opening line of his much admired poem
"The Wasteland". No doubt it took away one of the most admired
scholars of the twentieth century.
Virginia Woolf: An Evening walk with Hat and Stick
A letter addressed
to her husband was recovered which proved her intention to commit suicide, but
no investigation was held. Her husband was a powerful politician in the Village
Rodmell and played an important role in the society of the village.
What happens in the
four walls of “a room of one’s own” is nobodies guess.
"A woman makes
her house a work of art in which the very walls are permeated by her creative
force."
The backyard of her
house had two Elm trees. They were intertwined like a romantic couple in
embrace. One tree was strong and dominating than other. Virginia called them "Leonard
and Virginia" in satire perhaps. Her remains were buried under the tree and
the epitaph reads
Against you I fling
myself
O Death ! the waves
broke on the shore
These lines are
taken from her novel "The Waves".
Who can read her
suicide note without a turmoil and pang in the heart.
One cannot believe
it is written by the same woman who advocated equality of men and women working
together for a common cause. Men and women must make willing emotional
acknowledgement of each other as individuals. Mrs. Dalloway and Mrs.
Ramsay of Three Guineas created on the bank of Ouse in the wooden
cottage were reflections of ‘those terrible times’ she mentioned in her suicide
note.
“Dearest, I feel certain that I am going mad again. I
feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover
this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what
seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness.
You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people
could have been happier ’til this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any
longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work.
And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read.
What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been
entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that — everybody
knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has
gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your
life any longer. I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have
been. V.”
There is excessive gratitude in the suicide note. Does a wife need to be
so much grateful to her husband for spending happy time together. Is it only
she who has a happy time or it is a happy time together.
Every happiness has a subtle streak of melancholy, but here it is so
obvious. Many members of the Bloomsbury Group discard the theory that Virginia
suffered from nervous breakdown . They found her ‘enormous fun’.
Her lesbian friend Vita said “I am reduced to a thing that wants
Virginia.” In a letter Virginia once wrote to Vita “I am in bed making up
stories about you.” Such loveable creatures do not pass away or just melt into
thin air, the truth and reality pop on surface as chaotic impressions in
triviality and ordinary day event of life, as she was discovered by playing
children.
Some of her relatives believed and even confessed that it was better if
her body was never recovered.
We look before and after,
And pine for what is not:
Our sincerest laughter
With some pain is fraught:
Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.
(To a Skylark ~P. B. Shelley)
A ‘luminous halo’ was extinguished. No ashes, No embers, No wailing.
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© Vipin Behari Goyal
Advocate, Rajasthan
High Court, Jodhpur, India
Well written sir
ReplyDeleteThank You
ReplyDelete