Books: Jacob\'s Room
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Virginia Woolf >> Jacob\'s Room
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She was not beautiful, as she sat stiffly; her underlip too prominent;
her nose too large; her eyes too near together. She was a thin girl,
with brilliant cheeks and dark hair, sulky just now, or stiff with
sitting. When Bramham snapped his stick of charcoal she started. Bramham
was out of temper. He squatted before the gas fire warming his hands.
Meanwhile she looked at his drawing. He grunted. Fanny threw on a
dressing-gown and boiled a kettle.
"By God, it's bad," said Bramham.
Fanny dropped on to the floor, clasped her hands round her knees, and
looked at him, her beautiful eyes--yes, beauty, flying through the room,
shone there for a second. Fanny's eyes seemed to question, to
commiserate, to be, for a second, love itself. But she exaggerated.
Bramham noticed nothing. And when the kettle boiled, up she scrambled,
more like a colt or a puppy than a loving woman.
Now Jacob walked over to the window and stood with his hands in his
pockets. Mr. Springett opposite came out, looked at his shop window, and
went in again. The children drifted past, eyeing the pink sticks of
sweetstuff. Pickford's van swung down the street. A small boy twirled
from a rope. Jacob turned away. Two minutes later he opened the front
door, and walked off in the direction of Holborn.
Fanny Elmer took down her cloak from the hook. Nick Bramham unpinned his
drawing and rolled it under his arm. They turned out the lights and set
off down the street, holding on their way through all the people, motor
cars, omnibuses, carts, until they reached Leicester Square, five
minutes before Jacob reached it, for his way was slightly longer, and he
had been stopped by a block in Holborn waiting to see the King drive by,
so that Nick and Fanny were already leaning over the barrier in the
promenade at the Empire when Jacob pushed through the swing doors and
took his place beside them.
"Hullo, never noticed you," said Nick, five minutes later.
"Bloody rot," said Jacob.
"Miss Elmer," said Nick.
Jacob took his pipe out of his mouth very awkwardly.
Very awkward he was. And when they sat upon a plush sofa and let the
smoke go up between them and the stage, and heard far off the high-
pitched voices and the jolly orchestra breaking in opportunely he was
still awkward, only Fanny thought: "What a beautiful voice!" She thought
how little he said yet how firm it was. She thought how young men are
dignified and aloof, and how unconscious they are, and how quietly one
might sit beside Jacob and look at him. And how childlike he would be,
come in tired of an evening, she thought, and how majestic; a little
overbearing perhaps; "But I wouldn't give way," she thought. He got up
and leant over the barrier. The smoke hung about him.
And for ever the beauty of young men seems to be set in smoke, however
lustily they chase footballs, or drive cricket balls, dance, run, or
stride along roads. Possibly they are soon to lose it. Possibly they
look into the eyes of faraway heroes, and take their station among us
half contemptuously, she thought (vibrating like a fiddle-string, to be
played on and snapped). Anyhow, they love silence, and speak
beautifully, each word falling like a disc new cut, not a hubble-bubble
of small smooth coins such as girls use; and they move decidedly, as if
they knew how long to stay and when to go--oh, but Mr. Flanders was only
gone to get a programme.
"The dancers come right at the end," he said, coming back to them.
And isn't it pleasant, Fanny went on thinking, how young men bring out
lots of silver coins from their trouser pockets, and look at them,
instead of having just so many in a purse?
Then there she was herself, whirling across the stage in white flounces,
and the music was the dance and fling of her own soul, and the whole
machinery, rock and gear of the world was spun smoothly into those swift
eddies and falls, she felt, as she stood rigid leaning over the barrier
two feet from Jacob Flanders.
Her screwed-up black glove dropped to the floor. When Jacob gave it her,
she started angrily. For never was there a more irrational passion. And
Jacob was afraid of her for a moment--so violent, so dangerous is it
when young women stand rigid; grasp the barrier; fall in love.
It was the middle of February. The roofs of Hampstead Garden Suburb lay
in a tremulous haze. It was too hot to walk. A dog barked, barked,
barked down in the hollow. The liquid shadows went over the plain.
The body after long illness is languid, passive, receptive of sweetness,
but too weak to contain it. The tears well and fall as the dog barks in
the hollow, the children skim after hoops, the country darkens and
brightens. Beyond a veil it seems. Ah, but draw the veil thicker lest I
faint with sweetness, Fanny Elmer sighed, as she sat on a bench in
Judges Walk looking at Hampstead Garden Suburb. But the dog went on
barking. The motor cars hooted on the road. She heard a far-away rush
and humming. Agitation was at her heart. Up she got and walked. The
grass was freshly green; the sun hot. All round the pond children were
stooping to launch little boats; or were drawn back screaming by their
nurses.
At mid-day young women walk out into the air. All the men are busy in
the town. They stand by the edge of the blue pond. The fresh wind
scatters the children's voices all about. My children, thought Fanny
Elmer. The women stand round the pond, beating off great prancing shaggy
dogs. Gently the baby is rocked in the perambulator. The eyes of all the
nurses, mothers, and wandering women are a little glazed, absorbed. They
gently nod instead of answering when the little boys tug at their
skirts, begging them to move on.
And Fanny moved, hearing some cry--a workman's whistle perhaps--high in
mid-air. Now, among the trees, it was the thrush trilling out into the
warm air a flutter of jubilation, but fear seemed to spur him, Fanny
thought; as if he too were anxious with such joy at his heart--as if he
were watched as he sang, and pressed by tumult to sing. There! Restless,
he flew to the next tree. She heard his song more faintly. Beyond it was
the humming of the wheels and the wind rushing.
She spent tenpence on lunch.
"Dear, miss, she's left her umbrella," grumbled the mottled woman in the
glass box near the door at the Express Dairy Company's shop.
"Perhaps I'll catch her," answered Milly Edwards, the waitress with the
pale plaits of hair; and she dashed through the door.
"No good," she said, coming back a moment later with Fanny's cheap
umbrella. She put her hand to her plaits.
"Oh, that door!" grumbled the cashier.
Her hands were cased in black mittens, and the finger-tips that drew in
the paper slips were swollen as sausages.
"Pie and greens for one. Large coffee and crumpets. Eggs on toast. Two
fruit cakes."
Thus the sharp voices of the waitresses snapped. The lunchers heard
their orders repeated with approval; saw the next table served with
anticipation. Their own eggs on toast were at last delivered. Their eyes
strayed no more.
Damp cubes of pastry fell into mouths opened like triangular bags.
Nelly Jenkinson, the typist, crumbled her cake indifferently enough.
Every time the door opened she looked up. What did she expect to see?
The coal merchant read the Telegraph without stopping, missed the
saucer, and, feeling abstractedly, put the cup down on the table-cloth.
"Did you ever hear the like of that for impertinence?" Mrs. Parsons
wound up, brushing the crumbs from her furs.
"Hot milk and scone for one. Pot of tea. Roll and butter," cried the
waitresses.
The door opened and shut.
Such is the life of the elderly.
It is curious, lying in a boat, to watch the waves. Here are three
coming regularly one after another, all much of a size. Then, hurrying
after them comes a fourth, very large and menacing; it lifts the boat;
on it goes; somehow merges without accomplishing anything; flattens
itself out with the rest.
What can be more violent than the fling of boughs in a gale, the tree
yielding itself all up the trunk, to the very tip of the branch,
streaming and shuddering the way the wind blows, yet never flying in
dishevelment away? The corn squirms and abases itself as if preparing to
tug itself free from the roots, and yet is tied down.
Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run
through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes
desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the
exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars
would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops--as
sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this
cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any
making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much
like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin.
"People are so nice, once you know them."
"I couldn't think ill of her. One must remember--" But Nick perhaps, or
Fanny Elmer, believing implicitly in the truth of the moment, fling off,
sting the cheek, are gone like sharp hail.
"Oh," said Fanny, bursting into the studio three-quarters of an hour
late because she had been hanging about the neighbourhood of the
Foundling Hospital merely for the chance of seeing Jacob walk down the
street, take out his latch-key, and open the door, "I'm afraid I'm
late"; upon which Nick said nothing and Fanny grew defiant.
"I'll never come again!" she cried at length.
"Don't, then," Nick replied, and off she ran without so much as good-
night.
How exquisite it was--that dress in Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury
Avenue! It was four o'clock on a fine day early in April, and was Fanny
the one to spend four o'clock on a fine day indoors? Other girls in that
very street sat over ledgers, or drew long threads wearily between silk
and gauze; or, festooned with ribbons in Swan and Edgars, rapidly added
up pence and farthings on the back of the bill and twisted the yard and
three-quarters in tissue paper and asked "Your pleasure?" of the next
comer.
In Evelina's shop off Shaftesbury Avenue the parts of a woman were shown
separate. In the left hand was her skirt. Twining round a pole in the
middle was a feather boa. Ranged like the heads of malefactors on Temple
Bar were hats--emerald and white, lightly wreathed or drooping beneath
deep-dyed feathers. And on the carpet were her feet--pointed gold, or
patent leather slashed with scarlet.
Feasted upon by the eyes of women, the clothes by four o'clock were
flyblown like sugar cakes in a baker's window. Fanny eyed them too. But
coming along Gerrard Street was a tall man in a shabby coat. A shadow
fell across Evelina's window--Jacob's shadow, though it was not Jacob.
And Fanny turned and walked along Gerrard Street and wished that she had
read books. Nick never read books, never talked of Ireland, or the House
of Lords; and as for his finger-nails! She would learn Latin and read
Virgil. She had been a great reader. She had read Scott; she had read
Dumas. At the Slade no one read. But no one knew Fanny at the Slade, or
guessed how empty it seemed to her; the passion for ear-rings, for
dances, for Tonks and Steer--when it was only the French who could
paint, Jacob said. For the moderns were futile; painting the least
respectable of the arts; and why read anything but Marlowe and
Shakespeare, Jacob said, and Fielding if you must read novels?
"Fielding," said Fanny, when the man in Charing Cross Road asked her
what book she wanted.
She bought Tom Jones.
At ten o'clock in the morning, in a room which she shared with a school
teacher, Fanny Elmer read Tom Jones--that mystic book. For this dull
stuff (Fanny thought) about people with odd names is what Jacob likes.
Good people like it. Dowdy women who don't mind how they cross their
legs read Tom Jones--a mystic book; for there is something, Fanny
thought, about books which if I had been educated I could have liked--
much better than ear-rings and flowers, she sighed, thinking of the
corridors at the Slade and the fancy-dress dance next week. She had
nothing to wear.
They are real, thought Fanny Elmer, setting her feet on the mantelpiece.
Some people are. Nick perhaps, only he was so stupid. And women never--
except Miss Sargent, but she went off at lunch-time and gave herself
airs. There they sat quietly of a night reading, she thought. Not going
to music-halls; not looking in at shop windows; not wearing each other's
clothes, like Robertson who had worn her shawl, and she had worn his
waistcoat, which Jacob could only do very awkwardly; for he liked Tom
Jones.
There it lay on her lap, in double columns, price three and sixpence;
the mystic book in which Henry Fielding ever so many years ago rebuked
Fanny Elmer for feasting on scarlet, in perfect prose, Jacob said. For
he never read modern novels. He liked Tom Jones.
"I do like Tom Jones," said Fanny, at five-thirty that same day early in
April when Jacob took out his pipe in the arm-chair opposite.
Alas, women lie! But not Clara Durrant. A flawless mind; a candid
nature; a virgin chained to a rock (somewhere off Lowndes Square)
eternally pouring out tea for old men in white waistcoats, blue-eyed,
looking you straight in the face, playing Bach. Of all women, Jacob
honoured her most. But to sit at a table with bread and butter, with
dowagers in velvet, and never say more to Clara Durrant than Benson said
to the parrot when old Miss Perry poured out tea, was an insufferable
outrage upon the liberties and decencies of human nature--or words to
that effect. For Jacob said nothing. Only he glared at the fire. Fanny
laid down Tom Jones.
She stitched or knitted.
"What's that?" asked Jacob.
"For the dance at the Slade."
And she fetched her head-dress; her trousers; her shoes with red
tassels. What should she wear?
"I shall be in Paris," said Jacob.
And what is the point of fancy-dress dances? thought Fanny. You meet the
same people; you wear the same clothes; Mangin gets drunk; Florinda sits
on his knee. She flirts outrageously--with Nick Bramham just now.
"In Paris?" said Fanny.
"On my way to Greece," he replied.
For, he said, there is nothing so detestable as London in May.
He would forget her.
A sparrow flew past the window trailing a straw--a straw from a stack
stood by a barn in a farmyard. The old brown spaniel snuffs at the base
for a rat. Already the upper branches of the elm trees are blotted with
nests. The chestnuts have flirted their fans. And the butterflies are
flaunting across the rides in the Forest. Perhaps the Purple Emperor is
feasting, as Morris says, upon a mass of putrid carrion at the base of
an oak tree.
Fanny thought it all came from Tom Jones. He could go alone with a book
in his pocket and watch the badgers. He would take a train at eight-
thirty and walk all night. He saw fire-flies, and brought back glow-
worms in pill-boxes. He would hunt with the New Forest Staghounds. It
all came from Tom Jones; and he would go to Greece with a book in his
pocket and forget her.
She fetched her hand-glass. There was her face. And suppose one wreathed
Jacob in a turban? There was his face. She lit the lamp. But as the
daylight came through the window only half was lit up by the lamp. And
though he looked terrible and magnificent and would chuck the Forest, he
said, and come to the Slade, and be a Turkish knight or a Roman emperor
(and he let her blacken his lips and clenched his teeth and scowled in
the glass), still--there lay Tom Jones.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
"Archer," said Mrs. Flanders with that tenderness which mothers so often
display towards their eldest sons, "will be at Gibraltar to-morrow."
The post for which she was waiting (strolling up Dods Hill while the
random church bells swung a hymn tune about her head, the clock striking
four straight through the circling notes; the glass purpling under a
storm-cloud; and the two dozen houses of the village cowering,
infinitely humble, in company under a leaf of shadow), the post, with
all its variety of messages, envelopes addressed in bold hands, in
slanting hands, stamped now with English stamps, again with Colonial
stamps, or sometimes hastily dabbed with a yellow bar, the post was
about to scatter a myriad messages over the world. Whether we gain or
not by this habit of profuse communication it is not for us to say. But
that letter-writing is practised mendaciously nowadays, particularly by
young men travelling in foreign parts, seems likely enough.
For example, take this scene.
Here was Jacob Flanders gone abroad and staying to break his journey in
Paris. (Old Miss Birkbeck, his mother's cousin, had died last June and
left him a hundred pounds.)
"You needn't repeat the whole damned thing over again, Cruttendon," said
Mallinson, the little bald painter who was sitting at a marble table,
splashed with coffee and ringed with wine, talking very fast, and
undoubtedly more than a little drunk.
"Well, Flanders, finished writing to your lady?" said Cruttendon, as
Jacob came and took his seat beside them, holding in his hand an
envelope addressed to Mrs. Flanders, near Scarborough, England.
"Do you uphold Velasquez?" said Cruttendon.
"By God, he does," said Mallinson.
"He always gets like this," said Cruttendon irritably.
Jacob looked at Mallinson with excessive composure.
"I'll tell you the three greatest things that were ever written in the
whole of literature," Cruttendon burst out. "'Hang there like fruit my
soul.'" he began. ...
"Don't listen to a man who don't like Velasquez," said Mallinson.
"Adolphe, don't give Mr. Mallinson any more wine," said Cruttendon.
"Fair play, fair play," said Jacob judicially. "Let a man get drunk if
he likes. That's Shakespeare, Cruttendon. I'm with you there.
Shakespeare had more guts than all these damned frogs put together.
'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" he began quoting, in a musical
rhetorical voice, flourishing his wine-glass. "The devil damn you black,
you cream-faced loon!" he exclaimed as the wine washed over the rim.
"'Hang there like fruit my soul,'" Cruttendon and Jacob both began again
at the same moment, and both burst out laughing.
"Curse these flies," said Mallinson, flicking at his bald head. "What do
they take me for?"
"Something sweet-smelling," said Cruttendon.
"Shut up, Cruttendon," said Jacob. "The fellow has no manners," he
explained to Mallinson very politely. "Wants to cut people off their
drink. Look here. I want grilled bone. What's the French for grilled
bone? Grilled bone, Adolphe. Now you juggins, don't you understand?"
"And I'll tell you, Flanders, the second most beautiful thing in the
whole of literature," said Cruttendon, bringing his feet down on to the
floor, and leaning right across the table, so that his face almost
touched Jacob's face.
"'Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,'" Mallinson interrupted,
strumming his fingers on the table. "The most ex-qui-sitely beautiful
thing in the whole of literature. ... Cruttendon is a very good fellow,"
he remarked confidentially. "But he's a bit of a fool." And he jerked
his head forward.
Well, not a word of this was ever told to Mrs. Flanders; nor what
happened when they paid the bill and left the restaurant, and walked
along the Boulevard Raspaille.
Then here is another scrap of conversation; the time about eleven in the
morning; the scene a studio; and the day Sunday.
"I tell you, Flanders," said Cruttendon, "I'd as soon have one of
Mallinson's little pictures as a Chardin. And when I say that ..." he
squeezed the tail of an emaciated tube ... "Chardin was a great swell.
... He sells 'em to pay his dinner now. But wait till the dealers get
hold of him. A great swell--oh, a very great swell."
"It's an awfully pleasant life," said Jacob, "messing away up here.
Still, it's a stupid art, Cruttendon." He wandered off across the room.
"There's this man, Pierre Louys now." He took up a book.
"Now my good sir, are you going to settle down?" said Cruttendon.
"That's a solid piece of work," said Jacob, standing a canvas on a
chair.
"Oh, that I did ages ago," said Cruttendon, looking over his shoulder.
"You're a pretty competent painter in my opinion," said Jacob after a
time.
"Now if you'd like to see what I'm after at the present moment," said
Cruttendon, putting a canvas before Jacob. "There. That's it. That's
more like it. That's ..." he squirmed his thumb in a circle round a lamp
globe painted white.
"A pretty solid piece of work," said Jacob, straddling his legs in front
of it. "But what I wish you'd explain ..."
Miss Jinny Carslake, pale, freckled, morbid, came into the room.
"Oh Jinny, here's a friend. Flanders. An Englishman. Wealthy. Highly
connected. Go on, Flanders. ..."
Jacob said nothing.
"It's THAT--that's not right," said Jinny Carslake.
"No," said Cruttendon decidedly. "Can't be done."
He took the canvas off the chair and stood it on the floor with its back
to them.
"Sit down, ladies and gentlemen. Miss Carslake comes from your part of
the world, Flanders. From Devonshire. Oh, I thought you said Devonshire.
Very well. She's a daughter of the church too. The black sheep of the
family. Her mother writes her such letters. I say--have you one about
you? It's generally Sundays they come. Sort of church-bell effect, you
know."
"Have you met all the painter men?" said Jinny. "Was Mallinson drunk? If
you go to his studio he'll give you one of his pictures. I say, Teddy
..."
"Half a jiff," said Cruttendon. "What's the season of the year?" He
looked out of the window.
"We take a day off on Sundays, Flanders."
"Will he ..." said Jinny, looking at Jacob. "You ..."
"Yes, he'll come with us," said Cruttendon.
And then, here is Versailles. Jinny stood on the stone rim and leant
over the pond, clasped by Cruttendon's arms or she would have fallen in.
"There! There!" she cried. "Right up to the top!" Some sluggish,
sloping-shouldered fish had floated up from the depths to nip her
crumbs. "You look," she said, jumping down. And then the dazzling white
water, rough and throttled, shot up into the air. The fountain spread
itself. Through it came the sound of military music far away. All the
water was puckered with drops. A blue air-ball gently bumped the
surface. How all the nurses and children and old men and young crowded
to the edge, leant over and waved their sticks! The little girl ran
stretching her arms towards her air-ball, but it sank beneath the
fountain.
Edward Cruttendon, Jinny Carslake, and Jacob Flanders walked in a row
along the yellow gravel path; got on to the grass; so passed under the
trees; and came out at the summer-house where Marie Antoinette used to
drink chocolate. In went Edward and Jinny, but Jacob waited outside,
sitting on the handle of his walking-stick. Out they came again.
"Well?" said Cruttendon, smiling at Jacob.
Jinny waited; Edward waited; and both looked at Jacob.
"Well?" said Jacob, smiling and pressing both hands on his stick.
"Come along," he decided; and started off. The others followed him,
smiling.
And then they went to the little cafe in the by-street where people sit
drinking coffee, watching the soldiers, meditatively knocking ashes into
trays.
"But he's quite different," said Jinny, folding her hands over the top
of her glass. "I don't suppose you know what Ted means when he says a
thing like that," she said, looking at Jacob. "But I do. Sometimes I
could kill myself. Sometimes he lies in bed all day long--just lies
there. ... I don't want you right on the table"; she waved her hands.
Swollen iridescent pigeons were waddling round their feet.
"Look at that woman's hat," said Cruttendon. "How do they come to think
of it? ... No, Flanders, I don't think I could live like you. When one
walks down that street opposite the British Museum--what's it called?--
that's what I mean. It's all like that. Those fat women--and the man
standing in the middle of the road as if he were going to have a fit
..."
"Everybody feeds them," said Jinny, waving the pigeons away. "They're
stupid old things."
"Well, I don't know," said Jacob, smoking his cigarette. "There's St.
Paul's."
"I mean going to an office," said Cruttendon.
"Hang it all," Jacob expostulated.
"But you don't count," said Jinny, looking at Cruttendon. "You're mad. I
mean, you just think of painting."
"Yes, I know. I can't help it. I say, will King George give way about
the peers?"
"He'll jolly well have to," said Jacob.
"There!" said Jinny. "He really knows."
"You see, I would if I could," said Cruttendon, "but I simply can't."
"I THINK I could," said Jinny. "Only, it's all the people one dislikes
who do it. At home, I mean. They talk of nothing else. Even people like
my mother."
"Now if I came and lived here---" said Jacob. "What's my share,
Cruttendon? Oh, very well. Have it your own way. Those silly birds,
directly one wants them--they've flown away."
And finally under the arc lamps in the Gare des Invalides, with one of
those queer movements which are so slight yet so definite, which may
wound or pass unnoticed but generally inflict a good deal of discomfort,
Jinny and Cruttendon drew together; Jacob stood apart. They had to
separate. Something must be said. Nothing was said. A man wheeled a
trolley past Jacob's legs so near that he almost grazed them. When Jacob
recovered his balance the other two were turning away, though Jinny
looked over her shoulder, and Cruttendon, waving his hand, disappeared
like the very great genius that he was.
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