unreturned, came together in their ghostly way and wore the semblance of the complete and the satisfactory. The future emerged more splendid than ever from this construction of the present. Books were to be written, and since books must be written in rooms, and rooms must have hangings, and outside the windows there must be land, and an horizon to that land, and trees perhaps, and a hill, they sketched a habitation for themselves upon the outline of great offices in the Strand and continued to make an account of the future upon the omnibus which took them towards Chelsea; and still, for both of them, it swam miraculously in the golden light of a large steady lamp.1
As the night was far advanced they had the whole of the seats on the top of the omnibus to choose from, and the roads, save for an occasional couple, wearing, even at midnight, an air of sheltering their words from the public, were deserted. No longer did the shadow of a man sing to the shadow of a piano. A few lights in bedroom windows burnt but were extinguished one by one as the omnibus passed them.
They dismounted and walked down to the river. She felt his arm stiffen beneath her hand, and knew by this token that they had entered the enchanted region. She might speak to him, but with that strange tremor in his voice, those eyes blindly adoring, whom did he answer? What woman did he see? And where was she walking, and who was her companion? Moments, fragments, a second of vision, and then the flying waters, the winds dissipating and dissolving; then, too, the recollection from chaos, the return of security, the earth firm, superb and brilliant in the sun. From the heart of his darkness he spoke his thanksgiving; from a region as far, as hidden, she answered him. On a June night the nightingales sing, they answer each other across the plain; they are heard under the window among the trees in the garden. Pausing, they looked down into the river which bore its dark tide of waters, endlessly moving, beneath them. They turned and found themselves opposite the house. Quietly they surveyed the friendly place, burning its lamps either in expectation of them or because Rodney was still there talking to Cassandra. Katharine pushed the door half open and stood upon the threshold. The light lay in soft golden grains upon the deep obscurity of the hushed and sleeping household. For a moment they waited, and then loosed their hands. ‘Good night,’ he breathed. ‘Good night,’ she murmured back to him.
ENDNOTES
Chapter I
1 (p. 6) Mr Fortescue, the eminent novelist: The verbose Mr. Fortescue may be based on American novelist Henry James (1843-1916), whom Woolf had known since childhood.
2 (p. 9) “Would it be the Battle of Trafalgar or the Spanish Armada”: Mrs. Hilbery is referring to two British naval victories. In the Battle of Trafalgar, fought on October 21, 1805, the British defeated the allied French and Spanish fleets and ended the threat of a French invasion of England. The Spanish Armada, sent in 1588 by King Philip II of Spain to invade England and dethrone Queen Elizabeth I, was defeated by British ships off the coast of Calais.
3 (p. 11) “rode with Havelock to the Relief of Lucknow”: The British garrison in Lucknow, a major city in northern India, was besieged during the Indian Mutiny of 1857-1858, in which Indian soldiers revolted against British rule. British general Henry Havelock recaptured Lucknow in March 1858.
4 (p. 13) “We’re a respectable middle-class family, living at Highgate”: Formerly a hilltop village to the north of London, Highgate had become a middle-class suburb by the end of the nineteenth century, though unlike fashionable Chelsea it lacked social prestige.
5 (p. 16) “the very chair that Mary Queen of Scots sat in when she heard of Darnley’s murder”: The Earl of Darnley (Henry Stuart, 1545-1567) was the second husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. He became involved in a royal conspiracy that resulted in the assassination of David Rizzio, a favorite of Mary’s and secretary for French affairs in her court, and was mysteriously murdered shortly thereafter, possibly with Mary’s knowledge.
Chapter II
1 (p. 26) “What is happiness?”: Ralph’s question was of much concern at the gatherings of writers and artists known as the Bloomsbury group, of whom Woolf was a prominent member. She writes in a journal entry dated May 7, 1919, “Happiness—what, I wonder, constitutes happiness? I daresay the most important element is work” (The Diary of Virginia Woolf, vol. 1, p. 269; see “For Further Reading”). Consider the many moments in the novel when the characters ask similar questions.
Chapter III
1 (p. 29) Mr. Galton’s “Hereditary Genius”: Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into Its Laws and Consequences (1869) was the first major work of English scientist Sir Francis Galton (1822-1911), founder of eugenics, the science of improving genetic qualities of a race or breed through selective breeding.
2 (p. 29) sailed with Sir John Franklin to the North Pole: English explorer Sir John Franklin (1786-1847) led several expeditions to the Arctic; his last expedition (1845-1847) proved the existence of the Northwest Passage but resulted in the deaths of himself and his crew.
3 (p. 37) she slipped her paper between the leaves of a great Greek dictionary: This gesture, connoting secrecy, recalls Jane Austen’s account in a letter of how she would hide pages of her novels under a basket when visitors appeared; it also foreshadows Mary Datchet’s action in chapter XXI (see p. 233).
Chapter IV
1 (p. 42) Septimus: Woolf also uses this name in her novel Mrs. Dalloway (1925) for the character of Septimus Warren Smith, a shell-shocked veteran of World War I.
2 (p. 48) “the passage just before the death of the Duchess?”: Rodney is referring to the tragedy The Duchess of Malfi (c.1613), by Elizabethan dramatist and poet John Webster.
3 (p. 48) “Didn’t you hear them say ‘Insurance Bill’?” “I wonder why men always talk about politics?” Mary speculated. “I suppose, if we had votes, we should too”: The National Insurance Bill, which was passed in 1911, proposed benefits during illness and unemployment, to be financed by charitable contributions. In Great Britain, although women over the age of thirty were given the vote in 1918, women did not have voting rights equal to those of men until 1928.
