Word: virginia
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Virginia's correspondence eased her loneliness. Much of it seems to have been written only to get letters in return. Desperate for affection, often in the most childish way, she created pet names for all her correspondents. Her cousin Emma Vaughan was variously "Toad", "Todkins", and "Toadlebinks"; her sister Vanessa was "Dolphin", "Sheepdog" or just "Nessa"; her brother Thoby was "Gribbs", "Grim", "Herbert", or "Thobs"; and she signed herself just about anything: "Billy Goat", "Goat", "Goatus Esq.", "Wallaby", "Kangaroo", "Apes", and so forth. Over half the letters in this volume are addressed to Violet Dickinson, a six foot two spinster...
Although generally affectionate, Virginia could also be quite harsh. The blind observance of formality, which she considered the definition of idiocy, particularly tried her patience. For example, when relatives came to visit her dying father and offer her their sympathy she fumed to Violet Dickinson, "Relatives swarm. I liken them to all kinds of parasitic animals really I think they deserve no better. Three mornings have I spent having my hand held and my emotions pumped...
...never mentions the things that really bother her. Her mother died when Virginia was 13. The woman who came to take Mrs. Stephen's place in the household, Virginia's half-sister Stella, died two years later. When she was 22, her father passed away; two years after that, her brother Thoby died of typhoid fever. Virginia only spoke of the last death, and even her reference to that was fortuitous. Violet was very ill with the same disease and in order to conceal Thoby's death from her, Virginia made up cheerful prognostications and a few stories about...
...examine these letters for evidence of Woolf's fits of insanity will be disappointed. There are only the slightest variations in style and tone. Generally the onset of her breakdowns (she had two during the years this volume of her letters covers) was marked by a particular bitchiness in Virginia. As she recovers, her letters are extraordinary for their clarity and maturity. She emerges from each breakdown refreshed, with a new power of vision. After one summer-long madness she writes to Violet...
...will be glad to learn that your Sparroy [Virginia herself] feels herself a recovered bird. I think the blood has really been getting into my brain at last. Its [sic] the oddest feeling, as though a dead part of me were coming to life...