It was on this day in 1912 that the novelist Virginia Stephen (books by this author) married Leonard Woolf, a quiet wedding at the St. Pancras Registry Office.
Leonard Woolf was friends with Virginia's beloved brother, Thoby, who had recently died of typhoid; and also with one of her closest friends, Lytton Strachey. Strachey had proposed marriage to Virginia in 1909, and she had accepted. Strachey was gay at a time when it was illegal to be gay in England, Virginia was hesitant about her sexuality, and they liked and respected each other as intellectual equals. But Lytton quickly changed his mind — he wrote to Leonard: "I was in terror lest she should kiss me" — and Virginia admitted that she didn't love Lytton.
Instead, Lytton campaigned for his old friend Leonard to marry Virginia. Leonard Woolf was stationed in what is now Sri Lanka as a civil servant in the Colonial Service, but when he came home after seven years of service, he reacquainted himself with Virginia and fell in love. He was smart, and a writer, and he knew enough to be cautious with her — they went on walks and talked. He proposed to her in January of 1912, and she didn't accept. But she continued to see him and agonized over why she did not want to get married.
She wrote to Leonard in May of 1912: "All I can see is that in spite of these feelings which go chasing each other all day long when I am with you, there is some feeling which is permanent, and growing. You want to know of course whether it will ever make me want to marry you. How can I say? I think it will, because there seems to be no reason why it shouldn't — But I don't know what the future will bring. I'm half afraid of myself. I sometimes feel that no one ever has or ever shall feel something — It's the thing that makes you call me like a hill, or a rock. Again, I want everything — love, children, adventure, intimacy, work. (Can you make any sense out of this ramble? I am putting down one thing after another.) So I go from being half in love with you, and wanting you to be with me always, and know everything about me, to the extremes of wildness and aloofness.
I sometimes think that if I married you, I could have everything — and then — is it the sexual side of it that comes between us? As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction in you. There are moments — when you kissed me the other day was one — when I feel no more than a rock. And yet your caring for me as you do almost overwhelms me. It is so real, and so strange. Why should you? What am I really except a pleasant attractive creature? But its just because you care so much that I feel I've got to care before I marry you. I feel I must give you everything; and that if I can't, well, marriage would only be second-best for you as well as for me. If you can still go on, as before, letting me feel my own way, as that is what would please me best; and then we must both take the risks. But you have made me very happy too. We both of us want a marriage that is a tremendous living thing, always hot, not dead and easy in parts as most marriages are. We ask a great deal of life, don't we? Perhaps we shall get it; then, how splendid!"
At the end of May, Virginia had made up her mind; she told Leonard that she loved him and wanted to marry him. She sent a letter to her friend in which she misspelled her future husband's name and said, "I am going to marry Leonard Wolf — he is a penniless Jew." But her sister Vanessa thought they seemed happy.
Virginia was overwhelmed by Leonard's large Jewish family, who lived in Putney, a suburb of London. She wrote: "Work and love and Jews in Putney take it out of me." When she and Leonard did get married, his family was not invited — it was a small and simple wedding, but of course they were still offended.
The wedding had been originally planned for August 12th but it was moved to August 10th to suit the schedule of Virginia's sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Clive Bell. The ceremony was at the registry office, and several things went wrong. There was a bad thunderstorm. The registrar couldn't see very well and kept stumbling over parts of the service, especially over the names Virginia and Vanessa. Then, in the middle of the service, Vanessa interrupted to say that she had a question: She remembered that she would like to change her son's name, and she wondered how to legally do so. They made it through the ceremony eventually, and Virginia Stephen became Virginia Woolf.
After the ceremony, the Bells hosted a midday wedding breakfast. Virginia's half-brothers were there, George and Gerald Duckworth, dressed in their finest; as well as Roger Fry, Vanessa's lover; and Duncan Grant, soon to become Vanessa's lover. Virginia's aunt Mary attended, as did a couple of other members of the Bloomsbury group — Saxon Sydney-Turner and Frederick Etchells.
Leonard Woolf was friends with Virginia's beloved brother, Thoby, who had recently died of typhoid; and also with one of her closest friends, Lytton Strachey. Strachey had proposed marriage to Virginia in 1909, and she had accepted. Strachey was gay at a time when it was illegal to be gay in England, Virginia was hesitant about her sexuality, and they liked and respected each other as intellectual equals. But Lytton quickly changed his mind — he wrote to Leonard: "I was in terror lest she should kiss me" — and Virginia admitted that she didn't love Lytton.
Instead, Lytton campaigned for his old friend Leonard to marry Virginia. Leonard Woolf was stationed in what is now Sri Lanka as a civil servant in the Colonial Service, but when he came home after seven years of service, he reacquainted himself with Virginia and fell in love. He was smart, and a writer, and he knew enough to be cautious with her — they went on walks and talked. He proposed to her in January of 1912, and she didn't accept. But she continued to see him and agonized over why she did not want to get married.
She wrote to Leonard in May of 1912: "All I can see is that in spite of these feelings which go chasing each other all day long when I am with you, there is some feeling which is permanent, and growing. You want to know of course whether it will ever make me want to marry you. How can I say? I think it will, because there seems to be no reason why it shouldn't — But I don't know what the future will bring. I'm half afraid of myself. I sometimes feel that no one ever has or ever shall feel something — It's the thing that makes you call me like a hill, or a rock. Again, I want everything — love, children, adventure, intimacy, work. (Can you make any sense out of this ramble? I am putting down one thing after another.) So I go from being half in love with you, and wanting you to be with me always, and know everything about me, to the extremes of wildness and aloofness.
I sometimes think that if I married you, I could have everything — and then — is it the sexual side of it that comes between us? As I told you brutally the other day, I feel no physical attraction in you. There are moments — when you kissed me the other day was one — when I feel no more than a rock. And yet your caring for me as you do almost overwhelms me. It is so real, and so strange. Why should you? What am I really except a pleasant attractive creature? But its just because you care so much that I feel I've got to care before I marry you. I feel I must give you everything; and that if I can't, well, marriage would only be second-best for you as well as for me. If you can still go on, as before, letting me feel my own way, as that is what would please me best; and then we must both take the risks. But you have made me very happy too. We both of us want a marriage that is a tremendous living thing, always hot, not dead and easy in parts as most marriages are. We ask a great deal of life, don't we? Perhaps we shall get it; then, how splendid!"
At the end of May, Virginia had made up her mind; she told Leonard that she loved him and wanted to marry him. She sent a letter to her friend in which she misspelled her future husband's name and said, "I am going to marry Leonard Wolf — he is a penniless Jew." But her sister Vanessa thought they seemed happy.
Virginia was overwhelmed by Leonard's large Jewish family, who lived in Putney, a suburb of London. She wrote: "Work and love and Jews in Putney take it out of me." When she and Leonard did get married, his family was not invited — it was a small and simple wedding, but of course they were still offended.
The wedding had been originally planned for August 12th but it was moved to August 10th to suit the schedule of Virginia's sister and brother-in-law, Vanessa and Clive Bell. The ceremony was at the registry office, and several things went wrong. There was a bad thunderstorm. The registrar couldn't see very well and kept stumbling over parts of the service, especially over the names Virginia and Vanessa. Then, in the middle of the service, Vanessa interrupted to say that she had a question: She remembered that she would like to change her son's name, and she wondered how to legally do so. They made it through the ceremony eventually, and Virginia Stephen became Virginia Woolf.
After the ceremony, the Bells hosted a midday wedding breakfast. Virginia's half-brothers were there, George and Gerald Duckworth, dressed in their finest; as well as Roger Fry, Vanessa's lover; and Duncan Grant, soon to become Vanessa's lover. Virginia's aunt Mary attended, as did a couple of other members of the Bloomsbury group — Saxon Sydney-Turner and Frederick Etchells.
That evening the Woolfs set off on a two-month honeymoon through France, Spain, and Italy. They had a wonderful time as companions, and Virginia wrote to a friend: "We've talked incessantly for seven weeks, and become chronically nomadic and monogamic." But she wrote to another friend: "Why do you think people make such a fuss about marriage and copulation? Why do some of our friends change upon losing chastity? Possibly my great age makes it less of a catastrophe; but certainly I find the climax immensely exaggerated. Except for a sustained good humor (Leonard shan't see this) due to the fact that every twinge of anger is at once visited upon my husband, I might still be Miss S."
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