Throughout
her life, Woolf was troubled by bouts of mental illness. She was
institutionalized several times and attempted suicide at least twice. Her
illness is considered to have been bipolar disorder, for which there was no
effective intervention during her lifetime. At age 59, Woolf committed suicide
in 1941 by putting rocks in her coat pockets and drowning herself in the River
Ouse.
Suicide note and newspaper report surrounding the suicide by drowning of novelist Virginia Woolf on March 28th, 1941.
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.
A Haunted
House
A Short
Story by Virginia Woolf
Whatever hour you woke there was
a door shutting. From room to room they went, hand in hand, lifting here,
opening there, making sure—a ghostly couple.
“Here we left it,” she said. And
he added, “Oh, but here too!” “It’s upstairs,” she murmured. “And in the
garden,” he whispered “Quietly,” they said, “or we shall wake them.”
But it wasn’t that you woke us.
Oh, no. “They’re looking for it; they’re drawing the curtain,” one might say,
and so read on a page or two. “Now they’ve found it,” one would be certain,
stopping the pencil on the margin. And then, tired of reading, one might rise
and see for oneself, the house all empty, the doors standing open, only the
wood pigeons bubbling with content and the hum of the threshing machine
sounding from the farm. “What did I come in here for? What did I want to find?”
My hands were empty. “Perhaps it’s upstairs then?” The apples were in the loft.
And so down again, the garden still as ever, only the book had slipped into the
grass.
But they had found it in the
drawing room. Not that one could ever see them. The window panes reflected
apples, reflected roses; all the leaves were green in the glass. If they moved
in the drawing room, the apple only turned its yellow side. Yet, the moment
after, if the door was opened, spread about the floor, hung upon the walls,
pendant from the ceiling—what? My hands were empty. The shadow of a thrush
crossed the carpet; from the deepest wells of silence the wood pigeon drew its
bubble of sound. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat softly. “The
treasure buried; the room . . . ” the pulse stopped short. Oh, was that the
buried treasure?
A moment later the light had
faded. Out in the garden then? But the trees spun darkness for a wandering beam
of sun. So fine, so rare, coolly sunk beneath the surface the beam I sought
always burnt behind the glass. Death was the glass; death was between us;
coming to the woman first, hundreds of years ago, leaving the house, sealing
all the windows; the rooms were darkened. He left it, left her, went North,
went East, saw the stars turned in the Southern sky; sought the house, found it
dropped beneath the Downs. “Safe, safe, safe,” the pulse of the house beat
gladly. “The Treasure yours.”
The wind roars up the avenue.
Trees stoop and bend this way and that. Moonbeams splash and spill wildly in
the rain. But the beam of the lamp falls straight from the window. The candle
burns stiff and still. Wandering through the house, opening the windows,
whispering not to wake us, the ghostly couple seek their joy.
“Here we slept,” she says. And he
adds, “Kisses without number.” “Waking in the morning—” “Silver between the
trees—” “Upstairs—” “In the garden—” “When summer came—” “In winter snowtime—”
The doors go shutting far in the distance, gently knocking like the pulse of a
heart.
Nearer they come; cease at the
doorway. The wind falls, the rain slides silver down the glass. Our eyes
darken; we hear no steps beside us; we see no lady spread her ghostly cloak.
His hands shield the lantern. “Look,” he breathes. “Sound asleep. Love upon
their lips.”
Stooping, holding their silver
lamp above us, long they look and deeply. Long they pause. The wind drives straightly;
the flame stoops slightly. Wild beams of moonlight cross both floor and wall,
and, meeting, stain the faces bent; the faces pondering; the faces that search
the sleepers and seek their hidden joy.
“Safe, safe, safe,” the heart of
the house beats proudly. “Long years—” he sighs. “Again you found me.” “Here,”
she murmurs, “sleeping; in the garden reading; laughing, rolling apples in the
loft. Here we left our treasure—” Stooping, their light lifts the lids upon my
eyes. “Safe! safe! safe!” the pulse of the house beats wildly. Waking, I cry
“Oh, is this your buried treasure? The light in the heart.”