My Virginia Woolf Pilgrimage

 

Last fall, Marilyn brought me a gift, a tall candle of the "Secular Saint Virginia, Patron Saint of Lighthouses, Thursday Evenings, and a Room of One's Own." I laughed out loud when I first saw it and especially when I read the words on the glass. Still, as the new year began and I created a kind of altar to inspire my creative work, I placed the candle in the center, and I light it first each time.

As the candle says, her Saint's Day is today, January 25, Virginia Woolf's birthday.

Back in 2009, I spent the spring semester in England, in Canterbury, Kent. I loved living in a city about which Woolf wrote in a letter, "There's no lovelier place in the world than Canterbury." It seemed just right that it was in that medieval city, in the window of the Chaucer Bookshop, that I found a complete set of Woolf's letters published by the Hogarth Press.

I am in awe of Woolf's writing, laugh out loud at some of her letters, and love to get lost in the long sentences of Mrs. Dalloway.

During that semester in Canterbury, I went on what I called a Virginia Woolf Pilgrimage, visiting as many sites related to her as I could. Because I didn't want to drive on the "wrong side" of the road, I got to the more remote sites by buying gas and lunch for a local friend who liked opportunities to take road trips in her Italian Fiat--but had no interest in Woolf and was merely amused by my infatuation.

Today, on Virginia Woolf's 136th birthday, I'm sharing with you some photos from my pilgrimage. Come along with me to the streets where Woolf lived.

The house where Virginia Stephen was born, 22 Hyde Park Gate, London.

The front door at 22 Hyde Park Gate.

Three of the blue historical markers seen around London mark this house. 

Woolf's father and sister were also significant presences.

A view of the street where Woolf spent her early years.

Across the street from the Stephens' home is the house where Winston Churchill lived and died.

I was on a field trip at the British Museum with my students when our tour guides discovered I love Woolf. They offered to take me to 46 Gordon Square, Bloomsbury, where the Stephens moved from Hyde Park Gate. We walked over quickly as it got dark, and went into an art school that was now occupying the space. 

Though I was looking out the window a century after Woolf did, I still thrilled at the thought that I was seeing a view she might have, too.

Two of Vanessa Bell's paintings hung in what appeared to be a conference room.  The guides suggested mimicking the action in the paintings, and the two of them posed with the first painting. 

I am seated here while one of the guides stands next to me.

In the village of Rodmell, in Sussex.

Woolf's desk in her writing lodge.

At Monk's House with my Hogarth Press copy of Mrs. Dalloway purchased there.

The grounds of Monk's House.

Vita Sackville West's home, Sissinghurst, which Virginia Woolf visited. 

The original Hogarth Press, now at Sissinghurst.

Virginia and Leonard Woolf signed the guest book at Sissinghurst in September 1932.

Always a surprise

Every year, spring arrives.  And every year, I am a little surprised.  

Intellectually, of course, I understand that spring will follow winter (though in 2011, for the first time, I began to doubt it, as winter persisted mercilessly).  I like the changing of the seasons here in the Midwest and have grown used to this cycle since moving to the northern United States.  I understand now why people talk about the weather.  In India and Kuwait, seasons changed, but except for the occasional monsoon flooding or red-tinted sandstorm, there wasn’t much to talk about.  In central Illinois, in contrast, change is the one constant.

So, why does spring surprise me?  I think it’s the boldness of the season, the audaciousness with which brilliant yellow daffodils and rich purple crocus pop up out of last year’s mulch, the glee with which the daffodils bob their heads in the central Illinois breeze.  Nature uses bright colors, colors that complement each other, almost as though to get our attention, to demand that we notice the earth is changing, that it is waking up and greeting the spring sunshine and the lengthening days. 

As a sixth grader in India, I memorized Wordsworth’s poem about daffodils—long before I had ever seen a daffodil in person.   I loved the image of flowers “Fluttering and dancing in the breeze” on the shores of a lake.  Years later, as a grad student at Penn State, I thought of the line “Continuous as the stars that shine/and twinkle on the Milky Way” after spending a late night lying in a field with friends, watching the Perseid meteor showers.  I had just come out as a lesbian and felt very alive.  My friends and I had not planned on our outing to the fields, so we were cold in our summer clothes, and the four of us were sharing one thermos of hot coffee.  We were all graduate students in English, so we tried to think of poems about stars as we watched the meteors; Wordsworth’s line came to me only after I was back in the warmth of my studio apartment.

I thought of Wordsworth again as I walked among the daffodils in Canterbury, on the grounds of St. Martin’s Church, the oldest church in England, established in 597 AD.   The church was just up the street from where I lived for the semester in 2009, and I often walked in the cemetery surrounding the building, admiring a spectacular view of the cathedral.  That morning, I was listening to music when a particularly catchy song came on, and I found myself dancing and singing among the daffodils and gravestones, and then ducking behind a bush and quieting down as some workers came to tend the grounds.  That spring in England, seeing yellow flowers adorn open, grassy spaces, I understood why daffodils moved Wordsworth to write poetry. 

Now another winter has come to an end, and daffodils offer themselves as gifts to our eyes, while their dancing forms inspire our bodies, inviting us to dance in the sunshine.