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THE WAVES
“You meanwhile – for I want to diminish your hostility,
your green eyes fi xed on mine, and your shabby dress, your
rough hands, and all the other emblems of your maternal splendour – have stuck like a limpet to the same rock. Yet it is true,
I do not want to hurt you; only to refresh and furbish up my
own belief in myself that failed at your entry. Change is no longer possible. We are committed. Before, when we met in a restaurant in London with Percival, all simmered and shook; we
could have been anything. We have chosen now, or sometimes
it seems the choice was made for us – a pair of tongs pinched
us between the shoulders. I chose. I took the print of life not
outwardly, but inwardly upon the raw, the white, the unprotected fi bre. I am clouded and bruised with the print of minds
and faces and things so subtle that they have smell, colour,
texture, substance, but no name. I am merely “Neville” to you,
who see the narrow limits of my life and the line it cannot pass.
But to myself I am immeasurable; a net whose fi bres pass imperceptibly beneath the world. My net is almost indistinguishable from that which it surrounds. It lifts whales – huge leviathans and white jellies, what is amorphous and wandering;
I detect, I perceive. Beneath my eyes opens – a book; I see to
the bottom; the heart – I see to the depths. I know what loves
are trembling into fi re; how jealousy shoots its green fl ashes
hither and thither; how intricately love crosses love; love
makes knots; love brutally tears them apart. I have been knotted; I have been torn apart.
“But there was another glory once, when we watched for
the door to open, and Percival came; when we fl ung ourselves
unattached on the edge of a hard bench in a public room.”
181
VIRGINIA WOOLF
“There was the beech wood,” said Susan, “Elvedon, and
the gilt hands of the clock sparkling among the trees. The pigeons broke the leaves. The changing travelling lights wandered over me. They escaped me. Yet look, Neville, whom I discredit in order to be myself, at my hand on the table. Look at
the gradations of healthy colour here on the knuckles, here on
the palm. My body has been used daily, rightly, like a tool
by a good workman, all over. The blade is clean, sharp, worn in
the centre. (We battle together like beasts fi ghting in a fi eld,
like stags making their horns clash.) Seen through your pale
and yielding fl esh, even apples and bunches of fruit must have
a fi lmed look as if they stood under glass. Lying deep in a chair
with one person, one person only, but one person who changes, you see one inch of fl esh only; its nerves, fi bres, the sullen
or quick fl ow of blood on it; but nothing entire. You do not
see a house in a garden; a horse in a fi eld; a town laid out,
as you bend like an old woman straining her eyes over her
darning. But I have seen life in blocks, substantial, huge; its
battlements and towers, factories and gasometers; a dwellingplace made from time immemorial after an hereditary pattern. These things remain square, prominent, undissolved in
my mind. I am not sinuous or suave; I sit among you abrading your softness with my hardness, quenching the silver-grey
fl ickering moth-wing quiver of words with the green spurt of
my clear eyes.
“Now we have clashed our antlers. This is the necessary
prelude; the salute of old friends.”
“The gold has faded between the trees,” said Rhoda, “and
a slice of green lies behind them, elongated like the blade of
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THE WAVES
a knife seen in dreams, or some tapering island on which nobody sets foot. Now the cars begin to wink and fl icker, coming down the avenue. Lovers can draw into the darkness now;
the boles of the trees are swollen, are obscene with lovers.”
“It was different once,” said Bernard. “Once we could break
the current as we chose. How many telephone calls, how many
post cards, are now needed to cut this hole through which we
come together, united, at Hampton Court? How swift life runs
from January to December! We are all swept on by the torrent of things grown so familiar that they cast no shade; we
make no comparisons; think scarcely ever of I or of you; and in
this unconsciousness attain the utmost freedom from friction and part the weeds that grow over the mouths of sunken
channels. We have to leap like fi sh, high in the air, in order to
catch the train from Waterloo. And however high we leap we
fall back again into the stream. I shall never now take ship for
the South Sea Islands. A journey to Rome is the limit of my
travelling. I have sons and daughters. I am wedged into my
place in the puzzle.
“But it is only my body – this elderly man here whom you
call Bernard – that is fi xed irrevocably – so I desire to believe.
I think more disinterestedly than I could when I was young
and must dig furiously like a child rummaging in a bran-pie to
discover my self. “Look, what is this? And this? Is this going to
be a fi ne present? Is that all?” and so on. Now I know what
the parcels hold; and do not care much. I throw my mind
out in the air as a man throws seeds in great fan-fl ights, falling
through the purple sunset, falling on the pressed and shining
ploughland which is bare.
183
VIRGINIA WOOLF
“A phrase. An imperfect phrase. And what are phrases?
They have left me very little to lay on the table, beside Susan’s
hand; to take from my pocket, with Neville’s credentials. I am
not an authority on law, or medicine, or fi nance. I am wrapped
round with phrases, like damp straw; I glow, phosphorescent.
And each of you feels when I speak, “I am lit up. I am glowing.”
The little boys used to feel “That’s a good one, that’s a good
one”, as the phrases bubbled up from my lips under the elm
trees in the playing-fi elds. They too bubbled up; they also escaped with my phrases. But I pine in solitude. Solitude is my
undoing.
“I pass from house to house like the friars in the Middle Ages
who cozened the wives and girls with beads and ballads. I am
a traveller, a pedlar, paying for my lodging with a ballad; I am
an indiscriminate, an easily pleased guest; often putting up in
the best room in a four-poster; then lying in a barn on a haystack. I don’t mind the fl eas and fi nd no fault with silk either.
I am very tolerant. I am not a moralist. I have too great a sense of
the shortness of life and its temptations to rule red lines. Yet
I am not so indiscriminate as you think, judging me – as you
judge me – from my fl uency. I have a little dagger of contempt
and severity hidden up my sleeve. But I am apt to be defl ected.
I make stories. I twist up toys out of anything. A girl sits at a cottage door; she is waiting; for whom? Seduced, or not seduced?
The headmaster sees the hole in the carpet. He sighs. His wife,
drawing her fi ngers through the waves of her still abundant
hair, refl ects – et cetera. Waves of hands, hesitations at street
corners, someone dropping a cigarette into the gutter – all are
stories. But which is the true story? That I do not know. Hence
184
THE WAVES
I keep my phrases hung like clothes in a cupboard, waiting for
someone to wear them. Thus waiting, thus speculating, making this note and then another, I do not cling to life. I shall be
brushed like a bee from a sunfl ower. My philosophy, always accumulating, welling up moment by moment, runs like quicksilver a dozen ways at once. But Louis, wild-eyed but severe, in
his attic, in his offi ce, has formed unalterable conclusions
upon the true nature of what is to be known.”
“It breaks,” said Louis, “the thread I try to spin; your
laughter breaks it, your indifference, also your beauty. Jinny
broke the thread when she kissed me in the garden years ago.
The boasting boys mocked me at school for my Australian accent and broke it. “This is the meaning,” I say; and then start
with a pang – vanity. “Listen,” I say, “to the nightingale, who
sings among the trampling feet; the conquests and migrations.
Believe – ” and then am twitched asunder. Over broken tiles
and splinters of glass I pick my way. Different lights fall, making the ordinary leopard spotted and strange. This moment of
reconciliation, when we meet together united, this evening
moment, with its wine and shaking leaves, and youth coming up from the river in white fl annels, carrying cushions,
is to me black with the shadows of dungeons and the tortures
and infamies practised by man upon man. So imperfect are my
senses that they never blot out with one purple the serious
charge that my reason adds and adds against us, even as we sit
here. What is the solution, I ask myself, and the bridge? How
can I reduce these dazzling, these dancing apparitions to one
line capable of linking all in one? So I ponder; and you mean-
185
VIRGINIA WOOLF
while observe maliciously my pursed lips, my sallow cheeks
and my invariable frown.
“But I beg you also to notice my cane and my waistcoat.
I have inherited a desk of solid mahogany in a room hung with
maps. Our steamers have won an enviable reputation for their
cabins replete with luxury. We supply swimming-baths and
gymnasiums. I wear a white waistcoat now and consult a little
book before I make an engagement.
“This is the arch and ironical manner in which I hope to
distract you from my shivering, my tender, and infi nitely young
and unprotected soul. For I am always the youngest; the most
naïvely surprised; the one who runs in advance in apprehension and sympathy with discomfort or ridicule – should there
be a smut on a nose, or a button undone. I suffer for all humiliations. Yet I am also ruthless, marmoreal. I do not see how you
can say that it is fortunate to have lived. Your little excitements,
your childish transports, when a kettle boils, when the soft air
lifts Jinny’s spotted scarf and it fl oats web-like, are to me like
silk streamers thrown in the eyes of the charging bull. I condemn you. Yet my heart yearns towards you. I would go with
you through the fi res of death. Yet am happiest alone. I luxuriate in gold and purple vestments. Yet I prefer a view over
chimneypots; cats scraping their mangy sides upon blistered
chimney-stacks; broken windows; and the hoarse clangour of
bells from the steeple of some brick chapel.”
“I see what is before me,” said Jinny. “This scarf, these
wine- coloured spots. This glass. This mustard pot. This fl ower.
I like what one touches, what one tastes. I like rain when it
has turned to snow and become palatable. And being rash,
186
THE WAVES
and much more courageous than you are, I do not temper my
beauty with meanness lest it should scorch me. I gulp it down
entire. It is made of fl esh; it is made of stuff. My imagination
is the body’s. Its visions are not fi ne-spun and white with purity like Louis”. I do not like your lean cats and your blistered
chimney-pots. The scrannel beauties of your roof-tops repel
me. Men and women, in uniforms, wigs and gowns, bowler
hats and tennis shirts beautifully open at the neck, the infi nite
variety of women’s dresses (I note all clothes always) delight
me. I eddy with them, in and out, in and out, into rooms, into
halls, here, there, everywhere, wherever they go. This man lifts
the hoof of a horse. This man shoves in and out the drawers of
his private collection. I am never alone. I am attended by a regiment of my fellows. My mother must have followed the drum,
my father the sea. I am like a little dog that trots down the road
after the regimental band, but stops to snuff a tree-trunk, to
sniff some brown stain, and suddenly careers across the street
after some mongrel cur and then holds one paw up while it
sniffs an entrancing whiff of meat from the butcher’s shop. My
traffi cs have led me into strange places. Men, how many, have
broken from the wall and come to me. I have only to hold my
hand up. Straight as a dart they have come to the place of assignation – perhaps a chair on a balcony, perhaps a shop at
a street corner. The torments, the divisions of your lives have
been solved for me night after night, sometimes only by
the touch of a fi nger under the table-cloth as we sat dining – so
fl uid has my body become, forming even at the touch of a fi nger into one full drop, which fi lls itself, which quivers, which
fl ashes, which falls in ecstasy.
187
VIRGINIA WOOLF
“I have sat before a looking-glass as you sit writing, adding up fi gures at desks. So, before the looking-glass in the temple of my bedroom, I have judged my nose and my chin; my
lips that open too wide and show too much gum. I have looked.
I have noted. I have chosen what yellow or white, what shine or
dullness, what loop or straightness suits. I am volatile for one,
rigid for another, angular as an icicle in silver, or voluptuous
as a candle fl ame in gold. I have run violently like a whip fl ung
out to the extreme end of my tether. His shirt front, there in
the corner, has been white; then purple; smoke and fl ame have
wrapped us about; after a furious confl agration – yet we scarcely raised our voices, sitting on the hearth-rug, as we murmured
all the secrets of our hearts as into shells so that nobody might
hear in the sleeping-house, but I heard the cook stir once, and
once we thought the ticking of the clock was a footfall – we
have sunk to ashes, leaving no relics, no unburnt bones, no
wisps of hair to be kept in lockets such as your intimacies leave
behind them. Now I turn grey; now I turn gaunt; but I look at
my face at midday sitting in front of the looking- glass in broad
daylight, and note precisely my nose, my chin, my lips that
open too wide and show too much gum. But I am not afraid.”
“There were lamp-posts,” said Rhoda, “and trees that had
not yet shed their leaves on the way from the station. The leaves
might have hidden me still. But I did not hide behind them.
I walked straight up to you instead of circling round to avoid
the shock of sensation as I used. But it is only that I have taught
my body to do a certain trick. Inwardly I am not taught; I fear,
I hate, I love, I envy and despise you, but I never join you happily. Coming up from the station, refusing to accept the shad-
188
THE WAVES
ow of the trees and the pillar-boxes, I perceived, from your coats
and umbrellas, even at a distance, how you stand embedded in
a substance made of repeated moments run together; are committed, have an attitude, with children, authority, fame, love,
society; where I have nothing. I have no face.
“Here in this dining-room you see the antlers and the tumblers; the salt-cellars; the yellow stains on the tablecloth.
“Waiter!” says Bernard. “Bread!” says Susan. And the waiter
comes; he brings bread. But I see the side of a cup like a mountain and only parts of antlers, and the brightness on the side of
that jug like a crack in darkness with wonder and terror. Your
voices sound like trees creaking in a forest. So with your faces
and their prominences and hollows. How beautiful, standing at a distance immobile at midnight against the railings of
some square! Behind you is a white crescent of foam, and
fi shermen on the verge of the world are drawing in nets and
casting them. A wind ruffl es the topmost leaves of primeval
trees. (Yet here we sit at Hampton Court.) Parrots shrieking
break the intense stillness of the jungle. (Here the trams start.)
The swallow dips her wings in midnight pools. (Here we talk.)
That is the circumference that I try to grasp as we sit together.
Thus I must undergo the penance of Hampton Court at seven
thirty precisely.
“But since these rolls of bread and wine bottles are needed
by me, and your faces with their hollows and prominences are
beautiful, and the table-cloth and its yellow stain, far from
being allowed to spread in wider and wider circles of understanding that may at last (so I dream, falling off the edge of
the earth at night when my bed fl oats suspended) embrace
189
VIRGINIA WOOLF
the entire world, I must go through the antics of the individual. I must start when you pluck at me with your children, your
poems, your chilblains or whatever it is that you do and suffer.
But I am not deluded. After all these callings hither and thither,
these pluckings and searchings, I shall fall alone through this
thin sheet into gulfs of fi re. And you will not help me. More
cruel than the old torturers, you will let me fall, and will tear
me to pieces when I am fallen. Yet there are moments when
the walls of the mind grow thin; when nothing is unabsorbed,
and I could fancy that we might blow so vast a bubble that
the sun might set and rise in it and we might take the blue of
midday and the black of midnight and be cast off and escape
from here and now.”
“Drop upon drop,” said Bernard, “silence falls. It forms on
the roof of the mind and falls into pools beneath. For ever
alone, alone, alone – hear silence fall and sweep its rings to
the farthest edges. Gorged and replete, solid with middle-aged
content, I, whom loneliness destroys, let silence fall, drop
by drop.
“But now silence falling pits my face, wastes my nose like
a snowman stood out in a yard in the rain. As silence falls
I am dissolved utterly and become featureless and scarcely to
be distinguished from another. It does not matter. What matters? We have dined well. The fi sh, the veal cutlets, the wine
have blunted the sharp tooth of egotism. Anxiety is at rest.
The vainest of us, Louis perhaps, does not care what people
think. Neville’s tortures are at rest. Let others prosper – that is
what he thinks. Susan hears the breathing of all her children
safe asleep. Sleep, sleep, she murmurs. Rhoda has rocked her
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