WOOLF, VIRGINIA. Typed letter signed ("Yr loving Virginia") to her nephew Quentin Bell ("Dearest Quentin-Claudian") in Paris; 52 Tavistock Square, London, 20 March 1929. 2 pages, 4to, both sides of the same sheet, double-spaced, slight brown stain, a few minor marginal tears , with an autograph closing and corrections. A fine letter, ripe with Bloomsbury gossip. "...I must implore you to write at length. You know my appetite for facts. Nothing is too small, remote, large, or obscene. I am so bothered by writing about the obscene. At this moment I ought to correct an article in a symposium of pundits upon that subject [most probably her article "The 'Censorship' of Books" in Nineteenth Century and After , April 1929]. If modern books are made pure, we shall read the classics I said; and then what happens? But all this is trivial worthless waste of time...The buds are not visible but all the air is like a thin elastic veil, gently pressing on one's face. A blue veil it should be. Through this I see everything a little distorted. Beauty shines on two dogs doing what two women must not do. That's a fact--Pinker [her dog--not the literary agent] got enmeshed with a fox terrier this very afternoon. Can you blame them? Beuty (spelt right) is everywhere. As for Clive [Bell], the canary with the shade off sings not more lustily. I hear his voice a mile off...Julian [Bell] is already caught in the Apostles web. Ever since I have known them, they have spent their spare time thinking & intriguing. Lytton [Strachey] loves it. They think they can turn [John Maynard] Keynes out; but they have thought of this for twenty five years; what's more, talked of it. But Julian still thinks 'This is the most tremendous thing that has ever happened!' Nessa [Vanessa Bell] is settling her life with a decision and ruthless rapidity that take the breath away..." She mentions her husband Leonard Woolf, and ends: "...However what's delightful [going to Paris to visit Quentin] is always wrong. I want to write a serious book. I am all awash with too many words. I write nothing but criticism. Now if one writes imaginative works one has to stop talking...I am going wandering through the elastic veil now to the London Library. That is an excuse for thinking about a book which I shall call the Moths I think--an entirely new kind of book [eventually The Waves , 1931?]. But it will never be so good as it is now in my mind unwritten..."
WOOLF, VIRGINIA. Typed letter signed ("Yr loving Virginia") to her nephew Quentin Bell ("Dearest Quentin-Claudian") in Paris; 52 Tavistock Square, London, 20 March 1929. 2 pages, 4to, both sides of the same sheet, double-spaced, slight brown stain, a few minor marginal tears , with an autograph closing and corrections. A fine letter, ripe with Bloomsbury gossip. "...I must implore you to write at length. You know my appetite for facts. Nothing is too small, remote, large, or obscene. I am so bothered by writing about the obscene. At this moment I ought to correct an article in a symposium of pundits upon that subject [most probably her article "The 'Censorship' of Books" in Nineteenth Century and After , April 1929]. If modern books are made pure, we shall read the classics I said; and then what happens? But all this is trivial worthless waste of time...The buds are not visible but all the air is like a thin elastic veil, gently pressing on one's face. A blue veil it should be. Through this I see everything a little distorted. Beauty shines on two dogs doing what two women must not do. That's a fact--Pinker [her dog--not the literary agent] got enmeshed with a fox terrier this very afternoon. Can you blame them? Beuty (spelt right) is everywhere. As for Clive [Bell], the canary with the shade off sings not more lustily. I hear his voice a mile off...Julian [Bell] is already caught in the Apostles web. Ever since I have known them, they have spent their spare time thinking & intriguing. Lytton [Strachey] loves it. They think they can turn [John Maynard] Keynes out; but they have thought of this for twenty five years; what's more, talked of it. But Julian still thinks 'This is the most tremendous thing that has ever happened!' Nessa [Vanessa Bell] is settling her life with a decision and ruthless rapidity that take the breath away..." She mentions her husband Leonard Woolf, and ends: "...However what's delightful [going to Paris to visit Quentin] is always wrong. I want to write a serious book. I am all awash with too many words. I write nothing but criticism. Now if one writes imaginative works one has to stop talking...I am going wandering through the elastic veil now to the London Library. That is an excuse for thinking about a book which I shall call the Moths I think--an entirely new kind of book [eventually The Waves , 1931?]. But it will never be so good as it is now in my mind unwritten..."
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.jpg "Source: Christie's")
.jpg "Source: Christie's")
