Reading Mrs. Dalloway (June 13, 2020) [an excerpt]

by Craig Saper (aka dj Readies)

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flours herself.

            For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be locked; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning––fresh with orders to keep your distance as if issued to children on a beach told not to go too far in.

            What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which we silent now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air and crowded streets. No more. How calm, stiller than this no one could imagine, the crowds were missing; like the flap of a wave, the activity had crested and crashed, chill and sharp (and yet for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the closed window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"—was that it?—"I prefer men to cauliflowers"—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from quarantine one of these days, June or July perhaps, or never, she forgot which, for his texts were awfully cryptic; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of people had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages.

            She stiffened a little on the curb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass, which it never would now. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one used to know people who lived next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty back then, and grown very white and disappeared since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright.

            For having lived in Westminster—how many years now? over twenty,—one feels even in the midst of the traffic before, or waking at night alone, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause in everything; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by the influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing an empty Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (cough their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life in the crowded city. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some airplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; now gone in this moment of June.

            For it was the middle of June. Foolhardy declared the war on the virus over, except for some like Mrs. Foxcroft at the Embassy eating her heart out because that nice boy was killed by it, and now the old Manor House must go to a cousin; or Lady Bexborough who opened a bazaar, they said, with the phone in her hand, John, her favorite, killed by it; but some said it was almost over; thank Heaven—over. It was June. The King and Queen were at the Palace. And everywhere, though it was still so early, there was no beating, no stirring of galloping ponies, no tapping of cricket bats; Lords, Ascot, Ranelagh and all the rest of it were gone; wrapped in the soft mesh of the grey-blue morning air, which, as the day wore on, would have unwound them, and set down on their lawns and pitches the bouncing ponies, no more, and whose forefeet would have just struck the ground and up they would have sprung, the whirling young men, and laughing girls in their transparent muslins who, even now, after dancing all night, would have been taking their absurd woolly dogs for a run; and even now, at this hour, but no more, discreet old dowagers would have been shooting out in their motor cars on errands of mystery; and the shopkeepers would have been fidgeting in their windows with their paste and diamonds, their lovely old sea green brooches in eighteenth-century settings to tempt Americans (but one must now economize, not buy things rashly for Elizabeth, anymore), and she, too, loving it as she did with an absurd and faithful passion, being part of it no more, since her people were courtiers once in the time of the Georges, she, too, was going that very night to kindle and illuminate no more; to give her party alone. But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along, but of course with mask on, with his back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carrying a dispatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh—the admirable Hugh!

            "Good-morning to you, Clarissa!" said Hugh rather extravagantly if muffled through a mask, for they had known each other as children when face masks were playthings. "Where are you off to?"

            "I love walking in London," said Mrs. Dalloway said sadly and nostalgically, or "Really it's better than walking in the country," she said trying to muster enthusiasm.

            They had just come up—unfortunately—to see doctors. Other people used to come to see pictures; go to the opera; take their daughters out; the Whitbreads, like everyone else, only came "to see doctors." Times without number Clarissa had visited Evelyn Whitbread in a nursing home, then only through a window. Was Evelyn ill? Evelyn was a good deal out of sorts, said Hugh, intimating by a kind of pout or swell of his very well-covered, manly, extremely handsome, perfectly upholstered body (he was almost too well dressed always, but presumably had to be, with his little job at Court) that his wife had the ailment, feigning a false sense it was nothing serious, which, as an old friend, Clarissa Dalloway would quite understand without requiring him to specify. Ah yes, she did of course; "what a nuisance," she said, and kept the foreboding wrapped tight; and felt very sisterly and oddly conscious at the same time of her hat. Not the right hat for the early morning, was that it? For Hugh always made her feel, as he bustled on, raising his hat rather extravagantly and assuring her that she might be a girl of eighteen, and of course, they wished that they could be coming to her party to-night, Evelyn absolutely would have insisted, even if only a little late so he might be after the party at the Palace to which he had to take one of Jim's boys,—she always felt a little skimpy beside Hugh; schoolgirlish; but attached to him, partly from having known him always, but she did think him a good sort in his own way, though Richard was nearly driven mad by him, and as for Peter Walsh, he had never to this day, she imagined, forgiven her for liking him.

            She could remember scene after scene at Bourton—Peter furious; Hugh not, of course, his match in any way, but still not a positive imbecile as Peter made out; not a mere barber's block. When his old mother wanted him to give up shooting or to take her to Bath he did it, without a word; he was really unselfish, and as for saying, as Peter did, that he had no heart, no brain, nothing but the manners and breeding of an English gentleman, that was only her dear Peter at his worst; and he could be intolerable; he could be impossible; but adorable to walk with on a morning like this. (June had drawn out every leaf on the trees. The mothers of Pimlico gave suck to their young. Messages were passing from the Fleet to the Admiralty. Arlington Street and Piccadilly seemed to chafe the very air in the Park and lift its leaves hotly, brilliantly, on waves of that divine vitality which Clarissa loved and now missed. To dance, to ride, she had adored all that before.)

            For they might be parted for hundreds of years, she and Peter; she never wrote an email and his were dry sticks of description; but suddenly it would come over her, "If he were with me now what would he say?" —some days, some sights bring him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James's Park on a fine morning as ghosts—indeed they did. But Peter—however beautiful the day might be, and the trees and the grass, and the little girl in pink—Peter never saw a thing of all that. He would put on his spectacles, if she told him to; he would look. It was the state of the world that interested him; people's characters eternally, and the defects of her own soul. How he scolded her! How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said.

            So, she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him. For in marriage a little license, a little independence there must be between people living together day in day out, quarantined in the same house; which Richard gave her, and she him. (Where was he this morning for instance? Some committee, she never asked what.) But with Peter everything had to be shared; everything gone into. And it was intolerable, and when it came to that scene in the little garden by the fountain, she had to break with him or they would have been destroyed, both of them ruined, she was convinced; though she had borne about with her for years like an arrow sticking in her heart the grief, the anguish; and then the horror of the moment when someone told her at a concert that he had married a woman met on the boat going to India! Never should she forget all that! Cold, heartless, a prude, he called her. Never could she understand how he cared. But those Indian women did presumably—silly, pretty, flimsy nincompoops. And she wasted her pity. For he was quite happy, he assured her—perfectly happy, though he had never done a thing that they talked of; his whole life had been a failure. It made her angry still.

            She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the still empty omnibuses in Piccadilly as if frozen at an earlier time.

            She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs sitting there like memorials, of time being out, out, now far-out to sea, alone, empty; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day. Not that she thought herself clever, or much out of the ordinary. How she had got through life on the few twigs of knowledge Fräulein Daniels gave them she could not think. She knew nothing; no language, no history; she scarcely read a book now, except memoirs from an earlier time while in bed; and yet to her it was absolutely absorbing; all this; the cabs waiting interminably empty; and she would not say of Peter, she would not say of herself, I am this, I am that.

            Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with someone, up went her back like a cat's; keep your distance; back away; or she purred nostalgically for a time when she might have brushed up against a stranger. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once filled with revelers; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton—such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the wagons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady sitting in the cab as if waiting to go somewhere. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she had survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; before, alive, she was part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

                        Fear no more the heat o' the sun

                            Nor the furious winter's rages.

This late age of the world's experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing. Think, for example, of the woman she admired most, Lady Bexborough, opening the bazaar.

            There were Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities; there were Soapy Sponge and Mrs. Asquith's Memoirs and Big Game Shooting in Nigeria, all spread open. Ever so many books there were; but none that seemed exactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothing that would serve to amuse her and make that indescribably dried-up little woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial; before they settled down for the usual interminable talk of women's ailments. How much she wanted it—that people should look pleased as she came in, Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street, annoyed, because it was silly to have other reasons for doing things. Much rather would she have been one of those people like Richard who did things for themselves, whereas, she thought, waiting to cross as if there was still traffic or crowds, half the time she did things not simply, not for themselves; but to make people think this or that; perfect idiocy she knew (and now the imaginary policeman held up his hand) for no one was ever for a second taken in. Oh! if she could have had her life over again! she thought, stepping on to the pavement, could have looked even differently!

            She would have been, in the first place, dark like Lady Bexborough, with a skin of crumpled leather and beautiful eyes. She would have been, like Lady Bexborough, slow and stately; rather large; interested in politics like a man; with a country house; very dignified, very sincere. Instead of which she had a narrow pea-stick figure; a ridiculous little face, beaked like a bird's. That she held herself well was true; and had nice hands and feet; and dressed well, considering that she spent little. But often now this body she wore (she stopped to look at a Dutch picture), this body, with all its capacities, seemed nothing—nothing at all. She had the oddest sense of being herself invisible; unseen; unknown; already ghost-like; there being no more marrying, no more having of children now, but only this astonishing and rather solemn progress with the rest of them few and far between, up Bond Street, this being Mrs. Dalloway; not even Clarissa anymore; this being Mrs. Richard Dalloway.

            Bond Street had always fascinated her; Bond Street empty, shuddered, even in the season; its flags not flying; its shops closed; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls waiting; no salmon on an ice-block.

            "That is all," she said, looking at the fishmonger's empty stall. "That is all," she repeated, pausing for a moment at the window of a glove shop where, before the pandemic, you could buy almost perfect gloves. And her old Uncle William used to say a lady is known by her shoes and her gloves. He had turned on his bed one morning in the middle of the pandemic. He had said, "I have had enough." Gloves and shoes; she had a passion for gloves; but her own daughter, her Elizabeth, cared not a straw for either of them.

            Not a straw, she thought, going on up Bond Street to a shop where they had kept flowers for her when she gave a party. Elizabeth really cared for her dog most of all. The whole house this morning smelt of tar. Still, better poor Grizzle than Miss Kilman; better distemper and tar and all the rest of it than sitting mewed in a stuffy bedroom with a prayer book!  Better anything, she was inclined to say. But it might be only a phase, as Richard said, such as all girls go through. It might be falling in love or wishing for a time when that was possible; like a cat to brush up against someone. But why with Miss Kilman? who had been badly treated of course; one must make allowances for that, and Richard said she was very able, had a really historical mind. Anyhow they were earlier inseparable, and Elizabeth, her own daughter, had wanted to go to Communion; and how she dressed, how she treated people she did not care a bit, it being her experience that the religious ecstasy made people callous (so did causes); dulled their feelings, for Miss Kilman would do anything for the Russians, starved herself for the Austrians, but in private inflicted positive torture, so insensitive was she, dressed in a green mackintosh coat. Year in year out she wore that coat; she perspired; she was never in the room five minutes without making you feel her superiority, your inferiority; how poor she was; how rich you were; how she lived in a slum without a cushion or a bed or a rug or whatever it might be, all her soul rusted with that grievance sticking in it, her dismissal from school during the War—poor embittered unfortunate creature! For it was not her one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman; had become one of those spectres with which one battles in the night; one of those spectres who stand astride us and suck up half our life-blood, dominators and tyrants; for no doubt with another throw of the dice, had the black been uppermost and not the white, she would have loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world. No.

            It rasped her, though, to have stirring about in her this brutal monster! to hear twigs cracking and feel hooves planted down in the depths of that leaf-encumbered forest, the soul; never to be content quite, or quite secure, for at any moment the brute would be stirring, this hatred, which, especially since her illness, had power to make her feel scraped, hurt in her spine; gave her physical pain, and made all pleasure in beauty, in friendship, in being well, in being loved and making her home delightful rock, quiver, and bend as if indeed there were a monster grubbing at the roots, as if the whole panoply of content were nothing but self love! this hatred!

            Nonsense, nonsense! she cried to herself, pushing through the swing doors of Mulberry's.

            She advanced, light, tall, very upright, to be greeted at once by the button-faced masked Miss Pym, whose hands were always bright red, as if they had been stood in cold water from repeated washing.

            There were flours: Amaranth, Barley, Buckwheat, Corn, Pumpernickel, and every imaginable type of wheat. There were masses of Semolina, Durum and Whole Grain; there were bags of couscous. Ah yes—so she breathed in the earthy sweet smell as she stood talking to Miss Pym who owed her help, and thought her kind, for kind she had been years ago; very kind, but she looked older, this year, turning her head from side to side among the sacks and bins and sifters with her eyes half closed, snuffing in, after the street uproar, the delicious scent, the exquisite coolness. And then, opening her eyes, how fresh like baked bread from the oven laid in wicker trays, the baguettes for sampling.