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Archive for the ‘in memoriam’ Category

Leonard Woolf’s thoughts on Virginia’s death 82 years ago

Posted in in memoriam, Virginia Woolf, tagged , on Tuesday 28 March 2023| Leave a Comment »

Eighty-two years ago today, Virginia Woolf walked into the River Ouse with a stone in her pocket and drowned. The act was deliberate. The effect on her friends, her family, and the literary world was profound.

Many somber thoughts have been shared on the anniversary of her death. But none are as poignant as those expressed by her husband, Leonard Woolf, in The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1929 to 1969, the final volume in his five-volume set.

Virginia’s attitude to death was very different. It was always present to her. The fact that she had twice tried to commit suicide — and had almost succeeded — and the knowledge that that terrible desperation of depression might at any moment overwhelm her mind again meant that death was never far from her thoughts. She feared it and yet, as I said, she was ‘half in love with easeful Death’ (74).

Leonard went on to write that on Friday, March 28, he “was in the garden” and “thought she [Virginia] was in the house. But when at one o’clock I went in to lunch, she was not there. I found the following letter on the sitting-room mantelpiece”:

Dearest,

I feel certain I am going mad again. I feel we can’t go through another of those terrible times. And I shan’t recover this time. I begin to hear voices, and I can’t concentrate. So I am doing what seems the best thing to do. You have given me the greatest possible happiness. You have been in every way all that anyone could be. I don’t think two people could have been happier till this terrible disease came. I can’t fight any longer. I know that I am spoiling your life, that without me you could work. And you will I know. You see I can’t even write this properly. I can’t read. What I want to say is I owe all the happiness of my life to you. You have been entirely patient with me and incredibly good. I want to say that – everybody knows it. If anybody could have saved me it would have been you. Everything has gone from me but the certainty of your goodness. I can’t go on spoiling your life any longer.

I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have been (93).

He went in search of her.

When I could not find her anywhere in the house or garden, I felt sure that she had gone down to the river. I ran across the fields down to the river and almost immediately found her walking-stick lying upon the bank. I searched for some time and then went back to the house and informed the police. It was three weeks before her body was found when some children saw it floating in the river (94-95).

The “long-drawn-out horror” of those three weeks produced in him “a kind of inert anaesthesia. It was as if I had been so battered and beaten that I was like some hunted animal which exhausted can only instinctively drag itself into its hole or lair” (95-96).

Past posts on Virginia Woolf’s death

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In memoriam to Suzanne Bellamy: artist, writer, scholar, feminist pioneer

Posted in 18th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, art, in memoriam, tagged , , on Thursday 23 June 2022| Leave a Comment »

A print from Suzanne Bellamy’s “Virginia Woolf Series”

Tributes to Suzanne Bellamy, artist, writer, scholar, Australian feminist pioneer, and quintessential free spirit, are flooding social media and email inboxes since she passed away early on June 20 in her native Australia.

Conferences and art

I didn’t know Suzanne well, though many Virginia Woolf scholars did. I met her in 2007 at the 17th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf at Miami University of Ohio. I was a newbie to Woolf studies, and it was my first conference.

Suzanne had a table of her artwork at that event, as she often did, and that year she was right across the aisle from Cecil Woolf, whom I had just met for the first time. I must have said something that indicated I was a Woolf novice, because in her own inimitable fashion, Suzanne made sure that I knew exactly to whom I was speaking — THE Cecil Woolf!

Suzanne had a generous spirit. In 2011, she wrote a post for this blog that explained her painting “Woolf and the Chaucer Horse,” which she created for the 21st Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf. Over the years, she gave me many prints of her art that featured Woolf. One of them, that I framed and hung in my home, is pictured above. I plan to frame more.

Scholar, artist, feminist, and more

Suzanne was a published scholar of both Woolf and Gertrude Stein. But she was much more than that. She was an essayist. She worked in visual music and abstraction and lesbian modernism. Her work also included word jazz and ecology and water, according to her website.

Her first large solo U.S. show was at the Northampton Center for the Arts in Massachusetts in May/June 2003, and she was artist in residence at Smith College during the 2003 International Virginia Woolf Conference.

In London at the 2004 conference, she was a featured presenter with a jazz visual text improvisation called “Am I Blue?.” This was her scat word and visual painting interpretation of three Woolf experimental short fictions about war with large canvas paintings as set.

In 1969, Suzanne was also part of the first group of Women’s Liberation in Sydney. She taught Women’s Studies and Politics at Macquarie University from 1974 to 1980, a period she called “the great feminist years.” She was National Convenor of the First Women and Labour Conference in 1978 and she worked on all three Australian Women’s Commissions.

Below is just one of the many tributes to Suzanne that has been shared. This one was sent by Benjamin Hagen, president of the International Virginia Woolf Society. It is based on information shared by Suzanne’s dear friend, collaborator, and fellow Woolf scholar Elisa Kay Sparks.

Tribute from Ben Hagen, president of IVWS

I write now, however, with the sad news that Suzanne Bellamy, a friend and spiritual traveling companion to so many in the international Woolf community, passed away peacefully a little after midnight, this past Monday morning, Australian time.

Suzanne was particularly delighted that she had been able to participate in a panel at this year’s Woolf conference with Elisa Kay Sparks, Davi Pinho, and Maria Oliveira. Those of us who attended that virtual panel were struck by the power of the work she shared with us that day.

Though very ill, she was able to stay at home until last Wednesday. She was “completely present,” a friend reports, until Saturday, discussing lists of people to notify and what to do about artwork, etc. before she slipped into a quiet coma from which she did not wake up.

Suzanne was born 22 September 1948. Her friends in Australia are making sure that her property is secured and her artwork taken care of, fulfilling the requests in her will. They will gather together for a major celebration of Suzanne’s life in September, around her birthday and the solstice. As some of you know, much of Suzanne’s work—journals, artworks, and films about the Australian women’s movement—have already been sorted and placed in the Australian National Archives.

On behalf of the IVWS, I send condolences to all members who knew Suzanne, treasured her friendship and guidance, and benefited from the light she brought with her wherever she traveled. To those who did not know Suzanne, I hope you will have a chance in the coming weeks and months and years to learn about her artwork, her Woolf scholarship, her political activism, her goodness, her power, and her love.

Tribute from Claire Nicholson, chair, Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain

On behalf of all members of the Virginia Woolf Society of Great Britain, I’d like to extend our deep condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Suzanne Bellamy. An inspiring artist and scholar, Suzanne was an unforgettable presence at  International Virginia Woolf Conferences. Her artistic vision, wide-ranging knowledge and warm sense of humour livened up many conference proceedings and she was held in real affection by Woolfians from all over the world. She will be much missed indeed, but leaves a wonderful legacy of her work which will be enjoyed for many years to come. Rest in peace, Suzanne.

“Woolf and the Chaucer Horse” by Suzanne Bellamy

 

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Remembering Virginia Woolf 81 years after her death

Posted in in memoriam, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , on Monday 28 March 2022| 1 Comment »

Bridge over the River Ouse in Sussex

Every year on this day I post something to commemorate the death of Virginia Woolf, the sad event that took place 81 years ago, on March 28, 1941, when she walked across the Sussex Downs into the River Ouse.

Past tributes have ranged from the detailed to the simple.

Today, I share New York Times coverage of her disappearance, as well as the discovery of her body. Both are from the archives.

  • “OBITUARY: Virginia Woolf Believed Dead, Special Cable to The New York Times, April 3, 1941
  • “Mrs. Woolf’s Body Found: Verdict of Suicide Is Returned in Drowning of Novelist,” The Associated Press, April 19, 1941

You can also read more NYT articles about Woolf — ranging from her influence on fashion to her times in Cornwall.

Virginia Woolf’s walking stick in the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library

 

 

 

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In memoriam to Woolf and modernism scholar Laura Marcus

Posted in in memoriam, tagged , , , on Monday 27 September 2021| Leave a Comment »

Editor’s Note:  I did not know Laura Marcus personally, but her passing on Sept. 22 has prompted tributes from scholars and institutions around the world. Here is one of them, posted on the English faculty web page of the University of Oxford, where she was a Fellow of New College. Tributes to her scholarship, as well as her teaching and friendship, were also posted on social media.

Laura Marcus

Professor Laura Marcus

We are devastated to report the death on Wednesday 22 September 2021 after a short illness of Professor Laura Marcus FBA, Goldsmiths Professor of English Literature in the Faculty of English and Fellow of New College. In her influential work on modernism and Virginia Woolf, on life-writing and fiction and film, Professor Marcus was admired for her immense scholarly range, her mastery of theory and narrative and genres, her deep knowledge of literary and cultural connections and influences, and her illuminating, serious interest in, and practice of, feminist thought. Her book publications include Auto/biographical Discourses: Theory, Criticism, Practice (1994), Virginia Woolf: Writers and their Work (1997/2004), The Tenth Muse: Writing about Cinema in the Modernist Period (2007). She was bringing to completion a new monograph built on her project ‘Rhythmical Subjects: the measures of the modern’ which the Faculty of English and Oxford University Press hope to see through to publication.

Her service to her profession and her subject was unstinting and inspiring. She was elected as a Fellow of the British Academy in 2011 and was a much-loved, passionately engaged supervisor and mentor of other scholars at all stages of their careers. As a Delegate at Oxford University Press for approaching ten years, Laura read and evaluated hundreds of proposals across the span of literary studies and music and had a shaping influence on the Literature list, working closely with its editors. Colleagues at all levels of the Press found her to be a wonderful and supportive adviser, full of warmth and of interest in their work.

Miles Young, Warden of New College says, “New College grieves for Laura Marcus: she loved this college which had been her Oxford home for over ten years, and we loved her. Continuing a distinguished succession of Goldsmiths’ Professors, she added a particular lustre to the title through the creative breadth of her research and writing. She will be missed as a colleague who represented the epitome of academic courtesy, conscience and companionship.”

Professor Isobel Armstrong remembers: “Laura was a friend for almost forty years. These are my memories of her when she taught at Southampton. She seemed born with a formidable archival knowledge, worn so lightly. Unique was her intellectual charm and generosity as interlocutor: she would listen intently to someone’s ideas and then give them back creatively transformed, expanded and deepened, a wonderful gift even at her most stringent. She was innately witty – ‘you have to love a book enough to begin writing it and hate it enough to finish it.’”

Dame Hermione Lee FBA, FRSL speaks for so many of us who had the privilege of knowing Laura Marcus: “Writing on autobiography, Laura quoted Katherine Mansfield’s idea of the self as a plant which comes to the light: ‘and – we are alive – we are flowering for our moment upon the earth’. That flowering self of hers was grand, vital and lavish, and gave colour and brightness to all who encountered it. ”

Laura Marcus will be sorely missed.

 

 

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A video that pays tribute to the beloved Cecil Woolf

Posted in 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf, Cecil Woolf, in memoriam, Virginia Woolf, tagged , , , on Wednesday 16 June 2021| Leave a Comment »

Cecil Woolf stops at 46 Gordon Square, London, while giving Blogging Woolf a personal tour of Bloomsbury in June 2016.

The call came a few weeks ago. Woolf scholars and friends were asked to provide video clips of five minutes or less that would share our memories of Cecil Woolf, who passed away June 10, 2019, just over two years ago

The project was the brainchild of Drew Shannon, associate professor in the Department of Liberal Arts at Mount St. Joseph University and organizer of the 2019 Virginia Woolf Conference, and Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Cecil’s widow.

The 44-minute video here, first shared at the 30th Annual International Conference on Virginia Woolf that wrapped up last Sunday, is the result.

It is not the final product, however, as this is is an ongoing project. Plans are in the works for continuing to celebrate and remember this beloved man, who was a friend, colleague, and publisher to so many people around the globe. The nephew of Leonard and Virginia is greatly missed by all who knew him.

Meanwhile, we hope this tribute video gives those who never had the opportunity to meet Cecil a glimpse into the charming and endearing man he was.

a series

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