Blogging Woolf

In my little corner of Ohio, it is unseasonably warm today. And while I haven’t walked around my garden to see what spring blossoms might be coming up early, I did peruse Virginia Woolf’s diary entry made one hundred years ago today. In it, she does something like that.

On Feb. 10, 1923, while living in Richmond, Woolf wrote a long diary entry. On that day, she included her observations of the first signs of spring and the weather as she walked to the local cemetery, along with details of her recently developed daily schedule:

The spring the spring, I sing in imitation of Wagner, & saw a gorze bush set with soft yellow buds. Then we got into the Park, where the rain drove dogs & humans home, & so back on the stroke of three. It is now our plan (a day old) to walk from 2 to 3; print from 3 to 5; delay our tea; & so make headway. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 233.

She also relates an earlier conversation with Mary* in which she discussed her mood that winter, which she thought had been affected by the genre of writing in which she had been involved:

But I suppose I talked most, & about myself. How I’d been depressed since Jan. 3rd. We ran it to earth, I think, by discovering that I began journalism on that day. Last Thursday, I think, I returned to fiction, to the instant nourishment & well being of my entire day. – Diary: Volume 2, pg. 234.

*Mary is not identified in this entry in Volume 2 of the diary, although she is likely Mary Hutchinson, as Alice Lowe mentions in the comments below.

Early spring blooms picked and arranged by my granddaughter when she was just 10.