London in the 19th century was a city of contrasts there were the leisured rich with their secure income and elegant lifestyle and there were the desperately poor in between with a mass of professional people office workers tradesmen people of all sorts who form the lower and middle classes somewhere towards the upper end of the scale living in the respectable area of Kensington with a Steven family Virginia Steven was born at 22 Hyde Park Gate on January 25th 1882 the tall house with its dark and narrow interior was to be her home until her father's death
some 22 years later both of her parents had been married before and had been widowed Leslie Steven her father had been married to a daughter of William Thackeray Julia Virginia's mother already had three children from her marriage to Herbert Duckworth the Duchess of Bedford was her first cousin and she came from an artistic background her family was closely connected with the pre-raphaelites Holman hunt and Edward burne-jones and her sister who took this picture of her was a famous photographer whose work is now much sought after Leslie Stephen was a man of many and varied talents
like his father and grandfather before him he was a writer he also edited the Cornhill magazine for a number of years and was the first editor of The Dictionary of National Biography a monumental work which includes biographies of all men of note in English history Virginia was their third child following Vanessa and Toby and to be followed by Adrian this meant a household of eight children the older four separated from the younger by about ten years there were seven servants all women which was not an excessive number for a family of the size and status
of the Stephens in those days before any of the modern conveniences which have so changed the way in which people through her earliest years Virginia became familiar with London's streets and played often in Kensington Gardens which were only a hundred yards from her home as she grew older there would be skating on the long water in the park the Stevens knew many of the literary and intellectual figures of the day throughout her childhood Virginia would have encountered such people as Tennyson George Eliot and Henry James as he talked Henry James would tilt back his chair
further and further as he became more and more involved in what he was saying to the children's delight he fell over backwards on one occasion but still finished what he had to say lying on his back on the floor the highlight of Virginia's year was the family holiday it's and Ives in Cornwall where they spent several weeks every summer from her earliest childhood until she was 14 the whole family stayed at alland house which overlooks cobby's Bay and the Godrevy lighthouse and surrounded themselves with friends and relations it is difficult to underestimate the importance of
these annual pilgrimages to Virginia since they undoubtedly gave her her happiest moments in this the happiest part of her childhood memories of this time permeate her novels the waves Jacob's room and most especially to the lighthouse draw upon her holidays here Virginia's sister Vanessa recognized in to the lighthouse an almost perfect recreation of their parents the father dominant but insecure the mother extraordinarily good but almost too accepting of him in the garden they played croquet and cricket this is the four-year-old Virginia and the batsman is her brother Adrian by the time she was 10 her
family were calling her the demon bola and her elder brother Toby thought her a better player than many of his contemporaries at prep school they had many visitors from the famous like Henry James and George Meredith to the very young like the future poet Rupert Brooke who is an enthusiastic participant in the daily games of cricket the children mixed little with everyday life incentives preferring their own company but Virginia derived great joy from the physical surroundings at home in London Virginia spent much of her time in the tall narrow house to which her father had
added an extra two stories to accommodate his large household for although Toby and Adrian was sent to school the two girls were not in those days boys went to school and university but even in such an intellectually active and enlightened family as this girls were expected merely to acquire the necessary accomplishments and marry Vanessa and Virginia were educated at home by their parents by all accounts they were poor teachers seemingly unable to understand how children could find difficult things which to them were obvious both lost their tempers easily so it fell to the girls to
educate themselves Virginia always felt the lack of a formal education but the rigorous course of reading she said herself must have been almost more appropriate to her eventual career as a writer she was a sensitive child but although she was late in learning to speak she was very soon using words with extraordinary facility she was accident-prone and excitable sometimes wild and prey to what her family called purple rages she was always the family storyteller and indeed she and Vanessa decided very early that they would be respectively writer and painter and so it turned out in
1891 they started a handwritten magazine the weekly Hyde Park Gaytan News which reported incidents in the household Julia Stephen died in 1895 aged only 49 as if her mother's death was not enough for the naturally oversensitive Virginia her father was so overcome with grief and self-pity that he made no attempt to come to terms with his loss Virginia had her first nervous breakdown the lot of looking after her fell to her half-sister Stella who took over the running of the household soon she became engaged her stepfather was not prepared actually to stop the marriage but
the prospect of losing his new props so soon after losing Julia filled him with such despondency that he insisted that Stella should continue to live in his house after the marriage a compromise was reached Stella married and she was gloriously happy for three short months before she died in two years the settled happiness of Virginia's childhood had been irrevocably destroyed by now she was lonely her half-brothers went to work her brothers were away at school and Vanessa was out much at the time her father became increasingly gloomy and withdrawn and Virginia's excursions into the social
world were failures since she had no small talk something which probably affected the rest of her life with the sexual attentions of George Duckworth her half-brother it seems that his sympathetic embraces developed into something rather less brotherly it is impossible to say whether these incidents contributed to her mental instability but they must have been at least in part responsible for her inability to sustain a sexual relationship when she married Virginia was also the main recipient of the emotional demands made by her father her resentment was tempered by her appreciation of his intellectual integrity for support
she turned to an older woman violet Dickinson to whom she remained emotionally closed for some years in 1904 sir Leslie Stephen before he had been knighted in 1902 died Virginia was filled with guilt forgetting his faults and convincing herself that she had failed fully to appreciate his good qualities her grief and morbidity became such that those around her realized that she was approaching madness she heard birds singing in Greek and tried to commit suicide by jumping out of a window Vanessa Toby and Adrienne were eager to leave 22 Hyde Park Gate which Henry James had
called that house of all the deaths they moved northeast to Bloomsbury which is made up of a series of leafy squares surrounded by solid early 19th century houses extraordinarily enough all their relatives disapproved of the move Bloomsbury was not a good address this meant however that they were escaping from the eyes which had watched so eagerly and closely over their upbringing suddenly they were freed from the strict conventions of their class and age in 1899 Toby went to Cambridge University where he soon became friendly with some people who were members of a group called the
apostles it had been founded in 1820 and only new undergraduates of exceptional promise were invited to join usually no more than one or two each year members remained active for life and at this time included such notable figures as e/m Forster Bertrand Russell and the philosopher GE Moore their weekly discussions were supposed to be held in a spirit of complete intellectual honesty Leonard Woolf was invited to join in 1902 other undergraduate members at this time included Lytton Strachey Saxon Sidney Turner and Maynard Keynes all four would become part of what is now called the Bloomsbury
group Toby was not himself an apostle and nor was his friend Clive Bell but the Steven household at 46 Gordon Square must have seemed an ideal meeting place for them once they had left Cambridge for London they all came to the Thursday evening gatherings strachey was odd to look at but witty and cultured and later to be a famous biographer Clive Bell whose intellect tended to be underestimated by his friends was admired for being a mixture of English country squire and avid lover of literature and art he was soon to become an influential writer about
art Saxon Sidney Turner was thought by all to be brilliant but he never in fact achieved anything at all the man whose ideas they all admired most was the philosopher and fellow apostle GE Moore his Principia Ithaca was almost a Bible to them with its extreme rationalism and its rejection of received truths unless the truth in question could actually be proved Virginia first listened to and then participated enthusiastically in the discussions and this must largely have made up for the university education she had missed the beautiful miss Stevens as Vanessa and Virginia were known would
have been an added attraction of the Gordon square house had not most of the men in the group been homosexual this didn't however stop Lytton Strachey from proposing to Virginia and she seriously considering his proposal before he himself realized that he could not go through with it in 1904 she published her first article in a weekly newspaper and was soon writing reviews and other short pieces she also taught at Morley College an evening Institute for working men and women here she had her main experience of the kind of people who read books rather than write
them she appreciated their intelligence and saw how they suffered because of their relative lack of education that she worked here for three years when her income meant that she did not need to work at all must be some measure of her interest and concern in 1906 Toby died of typhoid which he caught on holiday in Greece only two days later Vanessa became engaged to Clive Bell they kept the Gordon Square house after their marriage and Adrienne and Virginia moved a few hundred yards to Fitzroy square they still spent much time together and as little as
a year after the wedding Clive and Virginia began a flirtation which was to continue for some years she was certainly not in love with Clive indeed it seems that her main motivation was her loneliness in the face of her sisters married happiness of course this behavior didn't bring Vanessa any closer to her Virginia was a sparkling talker not least because of her almost uncontrolled imagination she would introduce newcomers with entirely invented descriptions of their lives and characters in her conversation and her letters she tended to describe in her brilliant and imaginative way things as she
felt they ought to be rather than as they were in 1910 there were two distinct parts to the Bloomsbury group centered around Vanessa and Clive were an art set who included Roger Fry who was responsible for the first post-impressionists exhibition in London literary Bloomsbury included Lytton Strachey and Virginia who were still writing reviews and was working hard at her first novel eeehm Forster was also a part of the circle 1910 was also the year of the dreadnought hoax as it became known Adrian and a friend managed to convince the Navy that their newest and most
secret ship HMS dreadnought was to be visited by the Emperor of Abyssinia and his entourage this is Virginia the successful hoax made the national front pages soon afterwards Virginia suffered another nervous breakdown perhaps because of the excitement of this incident or perhaps because she thought she was close to finishing her first novel since 1904 Leonard Woolf who was one of Toby's original friends at Cambridge and an apostle had been a civil servant in salon in June 1911 he returned on leave and before the year was out he proposed to Virginia Leonard Wolf's father had been
a successful barrister but had died aged 48 leaving a widow and nine young children Leonard did well at school and was expected to do equally well at Cambridge he was perhaps overconfident that did not do particularly well in his degree and did even worse in the civil service examination he ended up in salon where he was a remarkably successful administrator Virginia with her 9,000 pounds capital and 400 pounds a year income was not considered particularly well-off by members of her class but the fact that Leonard as a successful civil servant had been earning only 260
pounds a year puts this figure rather more in perspective nevertheless Virginia was largely accurate when she wrote to violet Dickinson telling her that she was going to marry a penniless Jew for Leonard had given up his job in the hope that she would marry him and intended to earn his living as a writer they married in August 1912 Virginia aged 30 and Leonard 31 and after their honeymoon they moved into rooms at Clifford's in Leonard published his first novel based on his experiences in salon but it was a critical rather than a financial success Virginia
was continuing to work on the voyage out as she had been for many years as it neared completion her health declined throughout her life her major nervous crises and periods of mental illness coincided with the periods between the completion and the publication of her novels she began to suffer delusions and would not eat and was sent to a nursing home when she moved back to London she tried to commit suicide throughout this period Leonard who hadn't been properly warned of the extent of Virginia's mental instability was suffering too but he did eventually discover that by
keeping her away from excitement not allowing her to get tired and making sure that she ate properly he could keep her healthy both mentally and physically to this end they left central London moving to Richmond hogarth house was to be their home until 1924 even before her marriage Virginia had been spending some time outside London on the South Downs close to Brighton this house in the village of furl still bears the name she gave it little talent in memory of her happy childhood holidays in Cornwall on a walk with Leonard along the downs she discovered
a sham house it was to remain her favorite home beautiful and melancholy Duncan grant painted this group a dashing the voyage out was published in 1915 to critical acclaim no praise was more welcome to Virginia than that of e/m Forster who was by now the most successfully established writer of the Bloomsbury group for the 20 years after its publication she experienced no major breakdowns and settled down to married life and to writing many of her friends from this time onwards were completely unaware of her history of mental illness to them she appeared lively and balanced
she was indeed happy for much of the time thanks to the stability which Leonard had brought to her life theirs was a successful marriage and it is quite likely that without Leonard's love and support Virginia would never have been able to write as she did in 1917 the wolfes bought a printing press and published a small book the work was time-consuming but they did it all themselves and made a small profit the Hogarth press expanded into a major publishing company over the next few years and was the first publisher of TS Eliot and Katherine Mansfield
both Friends of Leonard and Virginia Katherine Mansfield was important to Virginia as the first other woman she knew who was entirely committed to writing as their books became more successful they did less actual printing but for many years Virginia spent her afternoons setting type sewing bindings and packaging up orders to her dismay they had to leave a sham in 1919 and they moved the mile or so to monk's house rod mill monks house was their country home until Virginia died there was no mains water gas or electricity but as her novels became more and more
successful they were able to improve the house and employ a gardener in Jacobs room which is in part a memorial to her brother Toby she broke with the traditional form of the English novel the real turning point came in 1926 with the success of to the lighthouse after which money was never a worry Virginia was well enough now for them to take a London house something which she had greatly missed in 1923 Virginia met Vita sackville-west a gifted and attractive novelist whose family home was the 16th century Knoll in Kent by 1925 they were close
friends whether or not their love affair was physical is something that will probably never be known but they were certainly very much attracted to each other in Orlando Virginia describes Vitas life as if she aged from 16 to 36 between the years 1586 and 1928 starting life as a boy and changing into a woman this is Vita dressed up as Orlando at Charleston a few miles from monk's house Vanessa lived with her children Virginia was bitterly unhappy at having none of her own her doctors had decided that her mental equilibrium was too precarious to take
such a risk Quentin bailed her nephew and the author of the fullest biography of her remembers her affinity with children the way that she was able to join in their games without condescending to them effortlessly accepting their fantasies and delighting them with her company with older people who saw her as a celebrity she seemed to enjoy her power to terrify perhaps she was getting her own back for her misery on social occasions when she was younger the publication of a Room of One's Own in 1928 assured her of a place of the forefront of the
feminist movement with its a witty and polished comparison of the lots of men and women she became more and more famous and more and more people wanted to know her one such was a composer called Ethel Smith Virginia likened her friendship to being caught by a giant crab 19:39 brought the start of the Second World War the Wolf's house in London was bombed so they had to live all the time at monk's house this dramatic woodcut gives us some idea of the scene as German planes flew over the house on their way to bomb London
there were many pressures on Virginia for stability relied on rest a calm environment and nourishing food and these were not now possible the war depressed her and also reminded her that she had last gone mad during the first world war and finally she was finishing between the acts as always writing excited and then depressed her on March 28th 1941 she wrote this note for Leonard explaining that she was hearing voices and was certain that she was going mad and would not recover she left the house and walked down to the river who's where she drowned
herself
