Happy birthday, Virginia Woolf

by chuckofish

Virginia Woolf was born Adeline Virginia Stephen on this date in 1882. Fifty-nine years later she waded into the River Ouse, her pockets filled with stones, and drowned on March 28, 1941. The author of many essays and well-known novels, she also wrote one of the great suicide notes of all time:

Dearest, I feel certain that 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 ’til 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. V

Really, don’t you think so? I am not being glib. You have to hand it to Virginia–she really did not want Leonard to feel guilty about what she was doing. And she must have felt that she had no choice. This makes me want to watch The Hours with Nicole Kidman and Meryl Streep and Ed Harris wearing the rocket ship bathrobe from Garnet Hill.