Autobiographical VW

What large eyes you have Virginia Woolf! And how surprising you are! You inspire and stump my creativity; you play to me – the sole member of the audience – and I am captive. Held by the humorous and dark notes of your autobiographical writings, which were not prepared by you for publication (would they have been?); by your statement that: 'I knew theoretically, from books, much more than I knew practically from life.' You however spread your wings; I clipped mine, happier with books than practical knowledge, and anyhow, I'm too old now to gain by it; too disillusioned and too set in my ways. I would not have been made for Old Bloomsbury, the inner or the outer circle. Miss Stephen dared to open her mouth, to attend parties, to append herself to other artists and writers, and become one; and then as Mrs Woolf to break further rules. The writer emerged and confirmed in her art. A writer who when she writes of her past – in fiction or memoir – evokes in this reader at least her own.

Written December 2021.

See Moments of Being by Virginia Woolf (edited by Jeanne Schulkind).

Picture credit: The Memoir Club, 1943, Vanessa Bell (source: WikiArt).

The Second, Third & Fourth Notebooks of Grasmere

A spacious freedom – no rules and structures. Times for noticing, times for doing; times for recollecting and recording – for diary writing, in length or hurriedly. A dash here, a dash there, a deletion, an insertion. An observation – an encounter with a Miss or Mr. A study of nature – the natural and the human; a journal to amuse, possibly inspire, William. A journal of Home.

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II. 10 October 1801 – 14 February 1802
A small book bound in blue marbled board. A book in part already used to record a journey made to Hamburg (1798) – its tour, its sums and expenses; to test a freshly made nib as one might do now an old or new Bic on a scrap of paper; to draft a few poetic words; to jot some notes which are only of import to the jotter, but which others after try to make sense of. A book that ends with a full stop and not, unlike the first, mid-sentence.

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III. 14 February 1802 – 2 May 1802
Its boards much worn and covered in dull brown-black paper. Its pages again used by both Dorothy and William in Germany; marked with German grammar and Lessing's Fables, followed by an unfinished prose attack on moralists; with the earliest passages of The Prelude – W's childhood. Some pages cut out and the rest muddled as always with dates and crossing-throughs and No letters! Closing on Sunday 2^nd May with a letter from Coleridge; and leaving, as an interlude, one blank page.

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IV. 4 May 1802 – 16 January 1803
A small fat notebook bound in leather, fastened by a clasp, containing with the Journal W's draft of Michael, new stanzas for Ruth, and his extracts from Descartes. D's writing however fills the major part, interleaved with pink blotting paper.

Written December 2021.

See Pamela Woof's notes to The Grasmere and Alfoxden Journals by Dorothy Wordsworth (Oxford World's Classics).

Picture credit: Dove Cottage, Grasmere, April 2021 (source: Wikipedia).

Page or Scenes of Darwin

OPENING: A cocoa-nut grove – a brightly coloured kingfisher, though less beautiful than the European species – an ancient church, with its tombstones of governors and captain-generals – the cathedral and its organ, sending forth inharmonious cries.

Darwin, Charles (1809-1882). The naturalist on board the Beagle. His voyage on land will turn the page of his mind; his Journal of Researches the page of his life.

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SCENE ONE: An evening concert – theatre scenery – a famous tree, revered as a God – a night under the open sky – an immense troop of mares swimming.

The landscape, a brilliant tint like that of great theatres, lit only by fireflies. Crickets, in a shrill pitch, ceaselessly cry; small frogs pleasingly chirp, to the sound of rain dripping on leaves, countless leaves. A humble concert.
A tree, without any neighbour, has offerings made to it, tied to its branches by threads: cigars, bread; has horses sacrificed to it, their bones, bleached by the sun, scattered round its trunk.
An open-air camp: pasture, a muddy puddle, meat and firewood. The high life of horseback travel, where one might reflect on marked pictures of the day: the canoe delayed by hundreds of heads, all directed one way; their pointed ears and distended nostrils just above the water. Mares swimming, on the order of soldiers.

SCENE TWO: The ostrich – wild dogs and common cats – peach and orange-trees – attacks on and of Indians – slaughter.

A deep-toned hissing the note of the ostrich running against the wind, wings expanded , a vessel making sail. A speciman of the second type, smaller than the Common, its plumage a different colour, called after Darwin: Rhea darwinii.
Wild dogs heard to howl on wooded banks; the common cat, now a large and fierce animal, is known to inhabit rocky hills.
Springing from seeds, peach and orange-trees – the olive too, clothe islands with their fruit and fresh green leaves.
Indians roams about the plains, without a home or fixed occupation. A war of extermination.
The beef-eating population champion the unfair struggle: the bullock dragged to the spot, its hamstrings cut, gives the death bellow: Agony! Agony!
All countries, Darwin tells us, have darker interior pictures.

SCENE THREE: Bands of butterflies – little aeronaut – a most beautiful spectacle – Port Desire.

One evening at sea butterflies came, extended as far as the eye could range. A seaman cried, 'It was snowing butterflies.'
Then one day a little aeronaut arrived, letting itself on board repeatedly fall and reascend the same thread; its stock of web inexhaustible.
One very dark night, the sea glowed with a pale light, every crest of every wave bright, and sky reflected.
At Port Desire, on the coast of Patagonia, the naturalist steps ashore, bearing himself, one imagines, with dignity; those that later came had more notorious fame: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid.

From journal, December 2021.

Picture credit: HMS Beagle by the ship's artist Conrad Martens, (source: Wikipedia).

See Voyage of the Beagle by Charles Darwin.

Herzog's Annapurna: The Ascent

A forest of icicles, a rainbow of colour. A burning impatience - which direction?
A plan of attack – Attack Annapurna! Beasts of burden and hard words as the ascent, in earnest, begins.
On we go...

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From a Lilliputian camp (Camp II): in the distance, a mountain of crystal; Annapurna, far above, one's head tilted back to see her, dominated all.

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To Camp III: feet numbed by the cold; air warm. On left, ridge of bare ice, an intense transparent blue; on right, Cauliflower Ridge, immaculately white; above, a huge roof of ice, a livid green. A rickety snow-bridge to a snowy platform; Camp II seen below. Then, a snow-covered ledge and axe blows; steam-engine pants and serpent-like wiggles. Heart thumps and sweat. Up!

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Back to Base. Back to creature comforts: chicken in aspic and a bottle of rum; a wash and a shave. Calculations made and letters written: a final note from the leader to the President of the Expedition, with the details of the camps already and yet to be established. Then a loading up with equipment, clothing and provisions, and a plodding of feet, in extremely hot or terribly cold conditions. Forwards, backwards between camps. Deteriorate and recuperate.

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Tent: Warm in sleeping-bags, while outside snow fell thick and fast. Smoke curled up from cigarettes; faces hid in shadow. Rest from exertions; from ills due to altitude: the headaches, the stomach cramps etc.; and from the sun: burnt lips.
A new day: bedding extricated from; an eiderdown jacket, cap and glasses put on.
Will the weather hold? Or will the monsoon come?

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'On to Camp V!' Zigzagging upward tracks; a jagged ice ridge which a snow-laden wind blew through. Above, a towering rock, rose-red, the shape of a bird's beak; and a thin rib, a spear-head. The going exhausting, but 'On to Camp V!'

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Camp V a wretched place! A relief to climb, each in his own closed and private world; though every step a stuggle of mind over matter. In terror of frost-bitten feet. The sun blinding, beating straight on the ice: a world of crystal. Sounds indistinct; atmosphere, cotton wool. A band of rocks the final obstacle.
Yes! On top of Annapurna! 8,075 metres, 26,493 feet. Victory!

Written December 2021.

Picture credit: Maurice Herzog at the summit, 1950.

For the subsequent harrowing, long and painful descent see Annapurna by Maurice Herzog.