'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.
V.'
After writing this note she left Monk's House, Rodmell - her
home - at 11.30 am, taking her walking stick, and crossed the
water meadows to the river, where she put a large stone in the
pocket of her coat.
Her body was not recovered until the 18th April when it was
discovered by children a short way downstream. Her husband
identified the body, and an inquest was held the following day
at Newhaven. The verdict, in the standard phrase of the time,
was 'suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed.' She
was cremated privately at Brighton on 21st April, and her ashes
scattered under one of the pair of elms at Monk's House.
What symptoms and events preceded her death? For how long had
she been depressed? Some forty years later, her husband, Leonard
Woolf, described her last year and suicide in one of the volumes
of his autobiography. Feminist critics have been suspicious of
his motives, but he was a pedantically accurate man who kept
brief but detailed daily records of his activities throughout
the marriage. His account is, at the very least, chronologically
accurate, as he had access to these diaries, and to his
wife's lengthier journals, both made at the time of the events.
He describes - the accurate timing is typical - '319 days of
headlong and yet slow-moving catastrophe' between sending off
the proofs of her biography of Roger Fry to the printers on 13th
May, 1940, and her suicide on 28th March, 1941. Yet he writes
that she was only ill latterly - 'loss of control of her mind
began only a month or two before her suicide.' While conceding
that the period between April 1940 and January 1941 was
stressful for everyone, especially in Southern England, with
air-raids and the mounting threat of invasion, Leonard thought
'she was happier for the most part, and her mind more tranquil
than usual.'
In May and June, 1940, they had discussed between themselves and
with friends what action they would take in the event of a
German invasion. They had no illusions about the way in which a
politically active, intellectual Jew and his wife would be
treated by the Nazis. 'We agreed that if the time came we would
shut the garage door and commit suicide,' Leonard wrote. In
June, 1940, Adrian Stephen, her psychoanalyst brother, provided
the Woolfs with lethal doses of morphine to use in the event of
a German invasion. This was a joint decision by the couple, and
not an indication of depression or morbid suicidal thoughts on
her part. Nor did she use the morphine when she decided to end
her life.
In February 1940 Virginia contracted 'influenza', and spent the
first three weeks of March in bed. Such attacks were not
uncommon over the last twenty years of her life. It is difficult
to know if they were common colds, aggravated by bronchitis, and
whether they elicited minor mood swings, which were then
cautiously managed by her husband and her doctors. As in this
case, the time spent in bed was often disproportionate to the
diagnosis of 'influenza'. At other times these symptoms
coexisted with lengthy headaches which incapacitated her, and
which, unless treated with bed rest, could lead to overt mood
swings.
For the rest of the year she was energetic and productive; in
November, 1940, she was writing three works simultaneously. By
December she had finished the draft of her last novel, Between
the Acts. Her letters in that month often mention shaking hands,
and by the end of the year there is a hint of depression and
self-criticism when she writes to her friend and general
practitioner Octavia Wilberforce: 'I've lost all power over
words, can't do a thing with them.' The effects of war were
being brought home to them; their London house and business in
Mecklenburg Square had been bombed, and all its furniture, their
papers, and their printing press arrived at the cottage, and had
to be sorted and accommodated. But by early 1941 she was
planning to re-read the whole of English literature and embarked
on the project. In February Elizabeth Bowen visited her fellow
writer, found no sign of illness and years afterwards chiefly
recalled her loud laughter.
Leonard Woolf had noted the first symptoms of 'serious mental
disturbance' on 25th January,1940, her birthday, while she was
revising the draft of Between the Acts. She had enjoyed writing
the book, finishing the first draft at the end of the previous
November, and writing then: 'I am a little triumphant about the
book...I've enjoyed writing almost every page.' When her final
depression became entrenched, the idea that the book was a
failure became a firm conviction, but during this revision the
fear arose, only to pass off after ten or twelve days.
Leonard always took immediate action. 'For years I had been
accustomed to watch for signs of danger in V's mind; and the
warning symptoms had come on slowly and unmistakeably; the
headache, the sleeplessness, the inability to concentrate. We
had learnt that a breakdown could always be avoided, if she
immediately retired into a cocoon of quiescence when the
symptoms showed themselves. But this time there were no warning
symptoms.' The only other breakdown to have a sudden onset had
been in 1915 - her most severe and lengthy illness.
The writer John Lehmann, at that time working for the Woolfs at
the Hogarth Press, saw her in the weeks before her death, and
received one of Virginia's last letters. He had been asked to
read the final draft of Between the Acts, and by this time she
was convinced that the book was worthless. In his Recollections
Lehmann describes her state of mind in March, 1941. 'I became
more and more conscious of the fact that Virginia seemed
unusually tense and nervous, her hand shaking now and then,
though she talked absolutely clearly and collectedly.' She had
brought the draft of Between the Acts, and 'Virginia immediately
began, now rather confusedly, to say that it was no good at all,
couldn't be published, must be scrapped. Very gently, but with
great determination, Leonard rebuked and contradicted her...'
In the next few days Lehmann read the draft of the novel: 'The
first thing thing I noticed was that the typing - her own typing -
and the spelling were more eccentric, more irregular than in any
typescript of hers I had seen before. Each page was splashed
with corrections, in a way that suggested that the hand that had
made them had been governed by a high voltage electric current.'
Lehmann then received a letter from her saying the book was
silly and trivial, and couldn't be published, with a covering
letter from Leonard saying that she was on the verge of a
breakdown. Both were probably written the day before her death.
'By the time they reached me it was all over.....I was aware
...of an undertow of sadness, melancholy, of great fear, but the
main impression was of a creature of laughter and movement.'
Another witness was her general practitioner, Octavia
Wilberforce, a descendant of William Wilberforce. At that time
she was also running a dairy farm near at hand, and for some
months had kept the Woolfs supplied with extra butter and cream
in that time of shortages. She had visited Monks House
frequently from January 1941 on, but a formal consultation did
not take place until 17th March. Three days earlier Virginia had
discussed one of her last short stories with Dr Wilberforce and
told her that it had left her 'desperate - depressed to the
lowest depths.'
Dr Wilberforce when newly qualified worked as a locum physician
in Graylingwell Asylum for a month or two, but her psychiatric
knowledge, like that of most doctors at the time, was
rudimentary, although she had read some Freud. At Leonard's
request she examined Virginia on the 26th March, the day before
her death. The doctor was ill with influenza and rose from her
sick-bed for the consultation. Virginia told her that it was
'quite unnecessary to have come' and did not answer her
questions frankly. She was generally 'resistive', and demanded a
promise that she would not be ordered to have a 'rest cure' -
that is, an admission to a psychiatric nursing home - before
she would submit to a physical examination.
Octavia Wilberforce, in letters written over the next few days
is obviously taken aback by the suicide. She phoned a physician
friend for reassurance. On the 28th she wrote: 'I am haunted by
V and my own failure to help'. She visited Leonard who told her
that when he married he knew nothing of her 'affliction'. He
told her of its recurring nature, the many opinions they had
had, and of her happy nature. On the 29th she visited him again,
when he told her that after their visit on the 26th Virginia
seemed cheerful and quite different.
But she had been depressed earlier. and not only for the ten or
twelve days noted by her husband. Her diary for the 8th March
reads: 'I mark Henry James's sentence: Observe perpetually.
Observe the oncome of age. Observe greed. Observe my own
despondency. By that means it becomes serviceable.'
Whatever the duration, Leonard was seriously concerned about her
by the 17th of March. She was able to dissemble. Even after that
date she wrote coherent and cheerful letters to a number of
friends. She probably tried to conceal her depression and her
suicidal ideas from her doctor and her husband. Dr Wilberforce
saw her earlier on the 22nd March. Virginia had wanted to
interview her about one of her relatives - a cousin Octavia -
planning to write a portrait of her. At that time Virginia was
preoccupied with her own forebears, especially her father. Dr.
Octavia tried to jolt her by telling her she was her own worst
enemy. She wrote later: 'I thought this family business was all
nonsense, blood thicker than water balderdash. Surprised her
anyway.' It is clear that the doctor had no inkling of the
imminent suicide. At this point Leonard cannot have informed her
in detail about his wife's previous history, especially her past
suicidal attempts, or their serious nature.
Some critics have made much of the war and the threat of
invasion as 'causes' of her suicide. Immediately after her death
Leonard and Octavia Wilberforce felt that the war had reminded
her of her illness in the first world war. Current events turned
her mind to death, but not to suicide, until near the end. Only
six months before her death, on 2nd October 1940, she made an
entry in her journal, during a time of air-raids, imagining what
it would be like to die in one. 'I shall think - oh I wanted
another ten years - not this.....'
She recorded her views on suicide, while in good health, in the
thirties, in correspondence with the composer Ethel Smyth, one
of the few friends in whom she confided about her past
illnesses. On 30 10 30 she wrote: 'By the way, what are the
arguments against suicide? You know what a flibberti-gibbet I
am: well there suddenly comes in a thunder clap a sense of the
complete uselessness of my life. It's like suddenly running
one's head against a wall at the end of a blind alley. Now what
are the arguments against that sense - "Oh it would be better to
end it"? I need not say that I have no sort of intention of
taking any steps: I simply want to know.....what are the
arguments against it?'
Six months later, on 29 3 31, she returns to the subject: 'Why
did I feel violent after the party? It would be amusing to see
how far you can make out, with your insight, the various states
of mind which led me, on coming home, to say to L:- "If you
weren't here, I should kill myself - so much do I suffer."'
A few days later she heard Beatrice Webb discussing suicide, and
on 8th April wrote to her: 'I wanted to tell you but was too
shy, how much I was pleased by your views upon the possible
justification of suicide. Having made the attempt myself, from
the best of motives as I thought - not to be a burden on my
husband - the conventional accusation of cowardice and sin has
always rather rankled.
Suicide was an ever-interesting topic, and she could regard it
with cool detachment when she was well, although she allows
herself here to believe that her past attempt was reasonable and
altruistic.. As for death, her adolescence was so replete with
deaths of parents and siblings that for the rest of her life she
felt the presence of the dead, and their memory, as strongly as
that of the living, to the extent that her sense of reality was
sometimes disturbed by the vividness of the past.
From these accounts an accurate diagnosis of her final illness can be made. From the suicide note alone, most
psychiatrists would make a confident diagnosis of severe
depression. She says that she is not only depressed, but going
'mad' again; she is beginning to hear voices. She can't
concentrate, can't read or write. She shows self-blame,
believing that she is spoiling her husband's life. She feels
hopeless, can't go on any longer. She believes suicide is the
best course. Lehmann's memoir shows that her self-criticism was
quite unjustified, exemplified by her low opinion of her novel
which she had thought well off a few months earlier.
Reassurances about the book and about her recovery had been
frequent and unavailing. When examined by Dr Wilberforce the day
before her death, she had at first refused to discuss her
symptoms or to admit that there was anything wrong. Each of
these symptoms is typical of severe depression. The only
atypical item in the letter is her clear admission that she is
ill - that she is going mad and has a 'terrible disease'.
With this well-documented, and ultimately fatal episode in mind,
it will be easier to trace the long and complicated history of
her past attacks, both serious and mild.
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