Comfort and Convenience
Hilary Macaskill, Virginia Woolf at Home
Pimpernel Press, 208pp, £25.00, ISBN 9781910258699
reviewed by Karina Jakubowicz
When Virginia Woolf visited the home of the celebrated author, Thomas Carlyle, she mused on how writers appear to imprint themselves onto their surroundings. ‘It would seem,’ she considered, ‘that writers stamp themselves upon their possessions more indelibly than other people,’ having ‘a faculty for housing themselves appropriately, for making the table, the chair, the curtain, the carpet into their own image.’ Carlyle had been dead for several years when Woolf first visited his house, and the rooms had been rendered into the type of time-capsules now made popular by the National Trust. Every item had been carefully preserved, and scenes were arranged to suggest an activity that had suddenly been abandoned at a crucial moment. Despite the austere artificiality of the house, Woolf couldn’t help but feel it retained the presence of the people who lived there, and imagined that it had a certain ‘heroic equanimity.’
Since this time there has been an expanding interest in the homes of literary figures. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Keats are now joined by countless other authors whose homes have been mummified, and yet nonetheless retain a fascination for the millions of people that visit them. In tandem — and in a bid to stock gift shops — there has been a growth in the number of books about this subject. Hilary Macaskill is something of an expert, having written works on the homes of Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, and Daphne du Maurier. Virginia Woolf at Home is her latest addition to this series. The book uses every house that Woolf ever lived in (including many of her short stays at hotels and the homes of friends) in order to chart the course of her life. It is a method that works particularly well in Woolf’s case, since her writing is so often concerned with the question of how homes affect their inhabitants. In A Room of One’s Own, she famously argued that unless a woman had her own space — one made completely free from social expectations — then she would not be able to write well. As Macaskill shows, Woolf’s early homes represent her search for a conducive environment in which to think and express herself. She begins (slightly out of order) with Woolf’s childhood holiday home in Cornwall, before contrasting the beauty of this location with the more stultifying atmosphere of the house where she was born. As many critics have done before her, Macaskill emphasises the importance of Woolf’s move to Bloomsbury after her father’s death. The dark, Victorian décor of her father’s West London house was rejected outright when Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell, painted the walls of their house white, and insisted on simple, undemanding domestic arrangements. From this moment onwards, the business of homemaking became a political act for Woolf, a way of creating spaces that supported her as a writer and a woman.
For Woolf, the concept of home equated to uneasy territory. On the one hand, it consumed the lives of charwomen, maids, and mistresses in the name of comfort, and yet, as Macaskill demonstrates, Woolf liked certain domestic tasks. She explains that ‘for Virginia, the pleasure [of a new house] was in buying new items of furniture,’ and that ‘her favourite project was painting’ the walls. She notes how the money from Woolf’s books was often channeled into home improvements, whether extending the house, or installing an indoor toilet. She provides the most detail on Woolf’s last home, Monk’s House in Sussex, which can be said to best represent Woolf’s notion of comfort and convenience. Notably, her own search for a room of one’s own was still ongoing when she bought Monk’s, and she initially had to make do with working in a garden shed that she shared with her husband’s apple store. Woolf finally had her own writing lodge built in the garden in 1934, and as Macaskill points out, she was ‘so taken with it that she even planned to sleep there on summer nights.’
Macaskill is not the first to write about Woolf’s homes, but she covers the subject in a new and refreshing way. She succeeds in portraying Woolf as someone who ‘observed people’s homes minutely’ and ‘always had an appreciation of décor,’ and in this sense, she touches on a lesser known aspect of Woolf’s character. The fact that the work is short and heavily illustrated makes it a good option for those wishing to learn about Woolf’s life, but would prefer not to read a longer biography. It may also prove useful for those fans of Woolf who are in search of obscure pilgrimage options. They could visit Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet St, a favourite of the Woolfs, or have dinner at the Pelham Arms in Lewes where Virginia and her brothers spent Christmas in 1910. The work may lack an introduction, but it greatly benefits from a preface by Woolf’s nephew, Cecil Woolf, the last relative of Virginia’s to have known her personally. He provides a short but first-hand account of Woolf’s relationship with her homes, one made all the more valuable by the fact that he died shortly after this book was published. All that now remains of Woolf’s domestic life is preserved at Monk’s House in Sussex. For a small entry fee you can wander her hallowed corridors and decide for yourself whether, as Woolf said, writers ‘stamp themselves upon their possessions’ more than other people.
Since this time there has been an expanding interest in the homes of literary figures. Shakespeare, Dickens, and Keats are now joined by countless other authors whose homes have been mummified, and yet nonetheless retain a fascination for the millions of people that visit them. In tandem — and in a bid to stock gift shops — there has been a growth in the number of books about this subject. Hilary Macaskill is something of an expert, having written works on the homes of Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens, and Daphne du Maurier. Virginia Woolf at Home is her latest addition to this series. The book uses every house that Woolf ever lived in (including many of her short stays at hotels and the homes of friends) in order to chart the course of her life. It is a method that works particularly well in Woolf’s case, since her writing is so often concerned with the question of how homes affect their inhabitants. In A Room of One’s Own, she famously argued that unless a woman had her own space — one made completely free from social expectations — then she would not be able to write well. As Macaskill shows, Woolf’s early homes represent her search for a conducive environment in which to think and express herself. She begins (slightly out of order) with Woolf’s childhood holiday home in Cornwall, before contrasting the beauty of this location with the more stultifying atmosphere of the house where she was born. As many critics have done before her, Macaskill emphasises the importance of Woolf’s move to Bloomsbury after her father’s death. The dark, Victorian décor of her father’s West London house was rejected outright when Woolf and her sister, Vanessa Bell, painted the walls of their house white, and insisted on simple, undemanding domestic arrangements. From this moment onwards, the business of homemaking became a political act for Woolf, a way of creating spaces that supported her as a writer and a woman.
For Woolf, the concept of home equated to uneasy territory. On the one hand, it consumed the lives of charwomen, maids, and mistresses in the name of comfort, and yet, as Macaskill demonstrates, Woolf liked certain domestic tasks. She explains that ‘for Virginia, the pleasure [of a new house] was in buying new items of furniture,’ and that ‘her favourite project was painting’ the walls. She notes how the money from Woolf’s books was often channeled into home improvements, whether extending the house, or installing an indoor toilet. She provides the most detail on Woolf’s last home, Monk’s House in Sussex, which can be said to best represent Woolf’s notion of comfort and convenience. Notably, her own search for a room of one’s own was still ongoing when she bought Monk’s, and she initially had to make do with working in a garden shed that she shared with her husband’s apple store. Woolf finally had her own writing lodge built in the garden in 1934, and as Macaskill points out, she was ‘so taken with it that she even planned to sleep there on summer nights.’
Macaskill is not the first to write about Woolf’s homes, but she covers the subject in a new and refreshing way. She succeeds in portraying Woolf as someone who ‘observed people’s homes minutely’ and ‘always had an appreciation of décor,’ and in this sense, she touches on a lesser known aspect of Woolf’s character. The fact that the work is short and heavily illustrated makes it a good option for those wishing to learn about Woolf’s life, but would prefer not to read a longer biography. It may also prove useful for those fans of Woolf who are in search of obscure pilgrimage options. They could visit Ye Olde Cock Tavern on Fleet St, a favourite of the Woolfs, or have dinner at the Pelham Arms in Lewes where Virginia and her brothers spent Christmas in 1910. The work may lack an introduction, but it greatly benefits from a preface by Woolf’s nephew, Cecil Woolf, the last relative of Virginia’s to have known her personally. He provides a short but first-hand account of Woolf’s relationship with her homes, one made all the more valuable by the fact that he died shortly after this book was published. All that now remains of Woolf’s domestic life is preserved at Monk’s House in Sussex. For a small entry fee you can wander her hallowed corridors and decide for yourself whether, as Woolf said, writers ‘stamp themselves upon their possessions’ more than other people.