'...unfortunate for truth's sake, that I never write here except when jangled with talk. I only record the dumps and the dismals.' Diary, 28/2/29.
After 1915 Mrs Woolf had no further major illnesses until the depression culminating in her suicide in 1941. But in that quarter century, covering her thirties, forties and fifties, she had much minor illness. She was ill for periods of about four months in 1920, 1929 and 1936, and for up to a month in six other years. During these periods her diaries cease, and it is often difficult to establish the exact nature of these illnesses.The longer ones were undoubtedly psychiatric, but the others cover a range of symptoms. They comprised headaches, regarded by her and her family as precursors of mood illnesses; flu-like illnesses; palpitations and fainting attacks; and days in bed at the onset of menstruation. Summarising the minor illnesses of anyone's life over many years risks making the person seem invalid or hypochondriacal, especially if they keep a regular journal. It is as well to stress that for nearly all of this time she led an extremely active social, and an exceptionally productive professional life. She is not unusual among diarists in confiding to her journal complaints about her health, physical and mental, which she would not reveal to friends or even family, thus giving the reader a false impression of ill-health and morbid self-scrutiny.
Another source of error may be her husband's attitude to her health. After the catastrophic illnesses of 1913 and 1915, with her near death by suicide, and fears of chronic insanity, Leonard spent the rest of their marriage observing his wife for the first sign of relapse. Guided by the best medical advice available at the time, he took action at the least hint of instability. If Virginia became excited or over-stimulated, or complained of headache (which they had both come to regard as the cardinal warning signal of approaching psychological disturbance), or showed signs of fatigue or self criticism, he insisted she withdraw from social engagements, rest in bed, and, if her sleep was broken, take sedatives. If this was not effective in a short time, doctors were consulted, and invariably prescribed more of the same. At times she kicked against the pricks, as in a diary entry of July 1923:
'I am alive; rather energetic.' Her diary entries are copious at this time and she writes that she wants to go 'full steam ahead'. 'But half the horror is that L. instead of being , as I gathered, sympathetic has the old rigid obstacle - my health. And I can't sacrifice his peace of mind, yet the obstacle is surely now a dead hand, which one should no longer let dominate our short years of life.'
On 10 June 1921 she was at a concert, and that night could not sleep; next day she had a headache and stayed in bed, the beginning of two months of what Leonard called 'a severe bout' of ill health, whose fluctuations he noted in his own pocket diary. It was not until after their return from Rodmell on 18 July that she was able to sleep without a sleeping draught. Her diary entry after these two months, describes her symptoms, but illustrates the diagnostic difficulties.
8 8 21
'What a gap! How it would have astounded me to be told when I wrote the last word here, on June 7th, that within a week I shd be in bed, and not entirely out of it till the 6th of August - two whole months rubbed out - these this morning, the first words I have written - to call writing - for sixty days; and those days spent in wearisome headache, jumping pulse, aching back, frets, fidgets, lying awake, sleeping draughts, sedatives, digitalis, going for a little walk, and plunging back into bed again - all the horrors of the dark cupboard of illness once more displayed for my diversion. Let me make a vow that this shall never, never, happen again; and then confess that there are some compensations. To be tired and authorised to lie in bed is pleasant; then, scribbling 365 days of the year as I do, merely to receive, without agitation of my right hand in giving out, is salutary. I feel that I can take stock of things in a leisurely way. Then the dark underworld has its fascinations as well as its terrors; and then sometimes I compare the fundamental security of my life in all...storms...with its old fearfully random condition.'
When she was completing The Years, in 1936, depression returned. Despite a holiday in Cornwall she lost half a stone in weight and her diary entries stop for two months. A letter to Ethel Smyth in June 1936 shows her state of mind:
'.....never trust a letter of mine not to exaggerate that's written after a night lying awake looking at a bottle of chloral and saying, No, no no, you shall not take it. It's odd how sleeplessness, even of a modified kind , has the power to frighten me. It's connected I think with these awful times when I couldn't control myself.' When she completed the proofs of The Years in November her husband felt compelled to give a more favourable opinion than he wanted to, convinced that she would kill herself if he was over-critical.
These were clearly depressive episodes, but not of the severity of past years. Headaches that did not progress to mood disturbance were much more the rule. They had a migrainous quality. She describes seeing rays of flashing light, and having to lie in a darkened room, and they often followed stress and being much in company. They were accompanied at times by palpitations, but not linked with menstruation. A few scattered letter and diary entries from hundreds relating to headache will illustrate their variety:
L 26 6 30 ...been out too much at night L says - and have the usual headache - a pain that is in the back of the neck. So I've had to take to dressing gown and sofa and can't work.
L 15 8 29 'These headaches leave one like sand which a wave has uncovered - I believe they have a mystic purpose. Indeed, I'm not sure that there isn't some religious cause at the back of them - I see my own worthlessness and failure so clearly; and lie gazing into the depths of the misery of human life; and then one gets up and everything begins again and is all covered up......I am obsessed at nights with the idea of my own worthlessness, and if it were only to turn a light on to save my life I think I would not do it. These are the last footprints of a headache I suppose. Do you ever feel that? - like an old weed in a stream.'
L 2 9 31 'No, the headache isnt the period - how you (Ethel Smyth) love periods excrement wc's.'
L4 1 7 30 ..I must have misled you about this particular headache. There are 3 stages: pain, numb, visionary.'
31 12 30 'incessant headaches' L 7 2 29 '...all the usual symptoms - pain, and heart jumpy, and my back achy, and so on. What I call a first class headache.'
The headaches occur throughout these years but are more frequent in the early nineteen thirties, perhaps in relation to the menopause. In the diary of 28 5 31: 'Soon after this I started a headache - flashes of light raying round my eyes and sharp pain.......And then to Rodmell where the same thing happened - the light round my eyes, but as I could lie still in bed in my big airy room, the pain was much less. If it were not for the divine goodness of L how many times I should be thinking of death; always knocked over as I am; but now the recoveries are full of infinite relief.
D 15 8 29 'These tumults over, then I had a headache.'
The most dramatic of the faints and palpitations took place in 1930. She describes it in the diary entry of 2nd September: 'I was walking down the path with Lydia. If this don't stop, I said, referring to the bitter taste in my mouth and the pressure like a wire cage of sound over my head, then I am ill: yes, very likely I am destroyed, diseased, dead. Damn it! Here I fell down -saying "How strange - flowers." In scraps I felt and knew myself carried into the sitting room by Maynard, saw L look v frightened; said I will go upstairs, the drumming of my heart, the pain, the effort got violent at the doorstep; overcame me, like gas; I was unconscious; then the wall and the picture returned to my eyes; I saw life again. Strange I said, and so lay, gradually recovering ...But this brush with death was instructive and odd.' It is impossible to say what this episode means - possibly some cardiac irregularity, or paroxysmal tachycardia, which can occur as a prodrome to migraine, or a simple faint, complexly described. The odd taste even suggests a temporal lobe seizure, but there is nothing else in her life to support a diagnosis of epilepsy.
Some diary entries from 1936 clarify the relationship between the headaches and mood disturbance:
3 1 36: 'I began the year with 3 entirely submerged days, headache, head bursting, head so full, racing with ideas.....'
4 1 36: '...and then to relax. For, to tell the truth, my head is still all nerves; and one false move means racing despair, exaltation, and all the rest of that familiar misery: that long scale of unhappiness.'
25 2 36: 'Then I've had headaches. Vanquish them by lying still and binding books and reading D Copperfield.'
D 29 3 36: '...One bad head this week, lying prostrate....(put off a party and a visit).'
24 11 36: 'Today the old symptoms - t. of l., can't get rid of it - the swollen veins - the tingling....' 't of l' is her term for the menopause - time of life. She was now fifty-four years of age.
She had little faith in medical treatment, and when Ethel Smyth suggested it she wrote:(1 5 31) 'As to seeing a doctor who will cure my headaches, no, Ethel. No. And what's more you will seriously upset L. if you suggest it. We spent I daresay a hundred pounds when it meant selling my few rings and necklaces to pay them, without any more result than that if I get a pain, go to bed, and eat meat, it goes. No other cure has ever been found - and the disease - well, all the nerves meet in the spine: its simple enough. No complicated mysteries about my headaches.' She adds a footnote to 'them' in this extract: 'Sir G Savage, Sir M Craig, Sir M Wright, T Hyslop, etc etc'
From all these descriptions we can conclude that in these years of her greatest achievements, when she was extremely hardworking, she reacted to excessive stress and strain, especially excessive socialising, by developing migraine, with or without mild swings of mood, both up and down. Leonard and her doctors managed these episodes by insisting on early bed rest and sedation, and Virginia herself agreed with this policy most of the time, and recognised the need for it.
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