A video tour of Monk’s House

This video tour of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s Monk’s House in Rodmell, Sussex was produced by the BBC and is hosted by Paul Martin.

If you haven’t walked in her steps through England — or even if you have — this is a great way to get an up-close look at the Woolfs’ longtime home.

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A new year and Virginia Woolf’s star shines brightly

I was in San Francisco for a few days between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I thought about posting a year-end or new year’s message here but wasn’t sure what I might say that would be timely and relevant. But I didn’t have far to look.

My husband and I have our San Francisco rituals and routines–we frequent the same restaurants and take the same walks on every trip, adding new adventures as well. On our first night, as always, we stopped for a drink before dinner at Vesuvio’s in North Beach, the renowned Beat Generation haunt. Sipping my Bloody Mary, surrounded by the trappings of Kerouac and company, realized that I was sitting right under Virginia Woolf, immortalized here in a framed copy of the 1937 Time magazine cover.

City Lights, across the alley from Vesuvio’s, is one of my favorite San Francisco bookstores; the other is Book Passage at the Ferry Landing. There, on our second day, I finally acquired a copy of To the River, Olivia Laing’s beautiful tribute to the River Ouse and to Virginia Woolf. I started it right away and, having walked stretches of the Ouse, found myself right there with her.

An early passage about Woolf is evoked by observing some bees. She recalls Leonard’s bee-keeping at Monk’s House and an entry from Virginia’s diary about them, “the whole air full of vibration: of beauty, of the burning arrowy desire…” Laing sees Woolf “as attuned to nature as she is to artifice,” and the diaries “more shaggy, more luxuriant than the novels … a stronger sense of the writer at play, practising her craft.”

So now I have two sightings, enough for a respectable post, but things happen in threes, right?

Our third day took us to Bernal Heights, a neighborhood near the Mission District where I lived for two years as a child. There, at the charming Red Hill Books, I picked up a used copy of Amy Bloom’s latest story collection, Where the God of Love Hangs Out. In the first story, “Your Borders, Your Rivers, Your Tiny Villages” (Bloom has a way with titles), there it was. Claire and William share popcorn and beer after their respective spouses have gone to bed (separately) and watch “Mrs. Dalloway.”

My list of Woolf sightings in fiction is now at 71, and I’m sure I’ll have more opportunities to add to it in 2013. Happy reading and best wishes for the new year to Woolfians everywhere.

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Virginia Woolf’s messy desk, according to Leibovitz

Annie Leibovitz says Virginia Woolf was sloppy. Her evidence? Woolf’s desk in her writing lodge at Monk’s House.

This screenshot from The Guardian website shows Woolf’s desk in her writing lodge at Monk’s House.

Leibovitz photographed the desk, along with other objects, rooms and landscapes that had special meaning for her to include in her book Pilgrimage, which was published last fall.

The photo of Woolf’s desk shows scratches and stains that mar nearly the entire desk surface. After snapping it, Leibovitz wondered what the scratches and stains were all about, and she discovered “that Woolf was a very sloppy person who often spilled drinks all over her work space,” according to an interview published in the Evening Sun.

Now an eponymous photography exhibit of Leibovitz’s work is on display at the Gettysburg National Military Park Museum through Jan. 20. It features more than 70 photographs chronicling the photographer’s journey to landmarks — some literary — throughout the United States and England.

Related articles

• From the desk of Virginia Woolf (bloggingwoolf)
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• Freund photos of Woolf’s desk

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Literary heritage in a Sussex Village: Woolf and Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand

You may be way ahead of me—I know I’m not the first on my block to read Helen Simonson’s Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand, newly released in paperback and in the top ratings on IndieBound.org and the New York Times Book Review.

A bit of a book snob, I suppose, I tend to shy away from the bestsellers, but a novel about a Sussex village—how could I resist? I put it on reserve at the public library some months ago and forgot about it until last week when I was notified that it was being held for me at my local branch.

I read it in a couple of sittings, charmed from beginning to end. Delightful and well written, it’s a contemporary novel of manners, an adult romance founded on a love of literature, a morality tale against racism and greed, all set in the East Sussex countryside, Virginia Woolf’s beloved landscape.

And of course, as I read it I couldn’t help thinking about Woolf and her life in Rodmell, about my own times there, brief tastes of village life, walks on the downs and to the coast, lunches at charming country pubs.

Like Woolf, Major Pettigrew is a walker who observes the colors and the smells around him, even on frequently traveled terrain. He loves the stroll down the hill from his house to the village center of Edgecombe St. Mary: “Behind him, the hills swelled upward into the rabbit-cropped grass of the chalk downs. Below him the Weald of Sussex cradled fields full of late rye and the acid yellow of mustard.”

While Edgecombe St. Mary and its neighboring villages are fictional, a reference to the Romney Marsh was a clue that it was set in the area around Rye (known as Tilling to all of us Mapp and Lucia fans). Simonson indeed grew up in that region, which she describes, on her website, as “literary country.” She credits the heritage of Henry James at Lamb House in Rye, Kipling’s Bateman’s at Burwash, and Virginia Woolf at Monk’s House in Rodmell as a great inspiration.

Woolf doesn’t make an appearance in the novel by name, but she’s there in spirit. While the Major and Mrs. Ali bond over Kipling, I can imagine them reading and exchanging impressions about To the Lighthouse.

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Walking across the Downs from Rodmell to Firle

Flo, the blogger at “Thoughts of the Common Reader,” has posted a fascinating entry, complete with beautiful photos, about her eight-mile walk from Monk’s House in Rodmell to Charleston Farmhouse in Firle.

The jaunt was a guided walk called ”In The Footsteps of Virginia Woolf” and organised by the Charleston Trust.

Read about Flo’s experience on the walk here, and learn about other Charleston Trust events here.

Get more Woolf travel tips on this page of Blogging Woolf.

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Virginia’s Round House in Lewes up for sale

In 1919, Virginia Woolf purchased the Round House in Pipe Passage, Lewes for £300. This year it is for sale again, but the price is £800,000.

The Round House, which is said to look much as it did when Woolf bought it, is being sold by the same estate agents that originally sold it to her as a weekend and holiday home.

Charles Wycherley, who runs a family estate agent in Lewes, will auction the house June 9. Woolf bought the house from his great-grandfather, Alfred.

The current owner of the cottage, which was built in 1801 and was once the town windmill, is retired teacher Annie Crowther, who is moving to a home nearby. The Round House was also owned by John Every, ironmaster of Lewes Phoenix works.

The same year Woolf purchased the Round House, she discovered Monk’s House in nearby Rodmell, which both she and Leonard favored because of its orchard and garden. She then bought Monk’s House and sold the Round House.

Get more details about the Round House and view interior photos. Read about other Woolf places here and here.

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Notable Woolf places in the news

Places connected to Virginia Woolf are regularly in the news. Check out these two recent articles:

• “I’m not afraid of Virginia Woolf: How living in the author’s former home has proved extraordinary inspiration“
  This Nov. 19 article in the Daily Mail tells the story of current Monk’s House tenants,  Caroline and Jonathan Zoob, who have been living in Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s former Sussex home since November 2000. The article includes color photos of the exterior of the home, the couple’s second floor living quarters and the garden.

 

• Green Spaces: Godrevy Point, Cornwall, England
  This is a Dec. 2 Times review of a carefully conserved patch of North Cornish coastline that offers views of Godrevy Island, its lighthouse and St. Ives. The lighthouse is said to be the inspiration for Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. St. Ives is the place where Woolf spent her summers up until the age of 12. Godrevy Point, which is protected by the National Trust, is popular with nature lovers, surfers, climbers and families.

The Cornwall Beach Guide provides more information about visiting the site. And wonderful 360-degree panoramic views of Godrevy Point and St. Ives can be found here.

You can also visit other Woolf places by clicking here.

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From the desk of Virginia Woolf

Anyone who has visited Monk’s House in Rodmell, Sussex knows that much of Virginia and Leonard Woolf’s summer home is off limits to visitors.

When I was there in June of 2004, I was particularly interested in Virginia’s writing lodge. However, I couldn’t get close enough to truly satisfy my curiosity about the small room where she wrote many of her most famous works from 1919 to 1941. All I could do was peer through the window into the space, as it was off limits to everyday visitors like me.

So imagine my excitement when a post to the VW Listserv linked us to an excellent interior photo of the writing lodge and a description of the space written by Woolf biographer Hermione Lee. The article, “Writers’ Rooms: Virginia Woolf,” appears in The Guardian with the wonderful photo.

You can read more about Woolf’s writing habitats — and the queries they generate — here.

 

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Woolf writing on foot

Did Virginia Woolf really do all of her writing standing up?

A student asked me that question recently, and I had to think for a moment before I could give her an answer.

We had just finished reading Three Guineas for a class I teach on gender roles in war and peace. The students were not familiar with Woolf. Some of them admitted being afraid to read her novels, as they had heard she was “difficult.” Most had not read more than a snippet or two of A Room of One’s Own.

The student raised the question of Woolf’s writing posture when we took a break in our discussion of Three Guineas. She had read that Woolf did all of her writing standing up, she said, and found it unbelievable that Woolf — or anyone — would be able to do so much writing on foot. It sounded exhausting.

I was excited by her question. It meant that despite the rumored or real “difficulty” of Woolf’s writing, this student had appreciated her enough to find out more about her.

I told my student that I thought Woolf had used a stand-up desk as a young woman living in her parents’ home in Kensington. I mentioned, too, that I recalled seeing a regular desk and chair in Woolf’s writing lodge at Monk’s House in Sussex.

Later, I found a photo posted on Flikr by Renaud Camus that pictures the desk. The Smith College Libraries Woolf in the World online exhibit also links an image of Robert Browning’s portable desk to a quote from one of Woolf’s letters in which she asks for “a desk that shuts up… something that would hold all my letters, papers, ink pots, & shut up & lock, & have drawers, & harmonise with my sister’s decorations.”

And, of course, one can order one’s own Woolf-alike stand-up desk, as long as one has the necessary stamina for writing on foot, as well as the requisite funds.

Read more about where writers write and the routines they follow — including a mention of Woolf’s — on the BBC Web site.

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