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And now, in our third series of discussions
entitled Modern Marriage
Mr. Harold Nicolson and his wife
the distinguished novelist Vita Sackville-West
share with us their thoughts
on the foundation of a modern marriage.
I didn't sign a marriage contract.
I negotiated one.
And I found a great deal more flexibility
than I was brought up to expect.
- Would you agree? - I would.
Marriage is less a piece of furniture
and more like a plant.
A living organism in need of constant nurture.
It is not something we own but something we grow.
And in so doing, we are offered the opportunity
to nurture it in our own image.
Yes, but it does seem
that men tend to regard themselves the plant
and women, the soil.
This is a poor state of affairs for both sexes.
I enjoy the qualities in myself
that may be said to be masculine.
And so do I, darling.
Nevertheless, I would argue the most virile woman
is infinitely more feminine than the most feminine man.
That kind of thinking implies damaging absolutes.
That there is something necessarily passive about the feminine
and therefore that it should always be the woman
who surrenders her opportunities.
But you do agree that the joys of motherhood
are sufficient compensation for any such sacrifice?
Emphatically not.
Are you saying that your success as a bestselling writer
thrills you more than your duties as a mother?
My professional success satisfies a different stomach.
Independence has no sex.
Do you think we scandalized the nation?
With any luck, we did.
Are you coming to Bloomsbury?
I'm not sure I could bear an evening of sullen handshakes
and breathless philosophy.
I think you'd find you've got them quite wrong.
Good luck with your mother.
Aren't you sweet?
I want some cake, mama.
Boys, what do you say to bonne maman?
Oh, it's alright. Tuck in.
I've been invited to a party in Bloomsbury tonight.
All the most exciting artists will be there
and all the writers from the Hogarth Press.
Oh, isn't it run by those Woolfs?
Yes. That's why I'm so flattered.
But they're socialists. They are bohemians.
This is a chance for me to be accepted by serious minds.
I hear she's mad.
I wouldn't want people to believe everything they hear about me.
Well, of course, in your case, everything they hear is true.
Virginia is a wickedly brilliant mind
and I must know her.
I hope you're not thinking of running off with her as well?
- No, maman. Of course not. - If you do that again...
You've scolded me enough.
I've said again and again how much I regret what happened
and that I only pretended to be a man when I went to France
with Violet to get copy for my book.
I'm sorry if the gossip gave you pain.
I thought I could try to forget your behavior
but you decided now to tell the whole world.
- S... so you've read it then? - It's not a novel.
It's a thinly disguised account of your ludicrous affair.
- It's already been printed. - But not published.
You will stop the publishing
or I will stop all money to you and Harold.
And I shall take steps to protect the boys
from your influence.
I'll ask my publisher not to go ahead with the binding.
What I want very much
is to have a daughter that I can be proud of
and not a promiscuous exhibitionist
who brings only shame on me
after all I have done to be accepted by society.
You really must promise not to go.
Ah!
There you are, Vita.
Um, I'm not sure Nessa would be thrilled
to find you poking around in here.
I couldn't resist.
Ah, that's my wife's new portrait of her sister.
Oh, it's Virginia?
Well, come back to the party
and I'll introduce you to the real thing if you like.
She's not so tranquil off the canvas
I can promise you.
Duncan, I found Vita in Nessa's studio.
- What shall we do with her? - Forty lashes immediately.
Much more taken with Nessa's work
than Duncan's, weren't you, Vita?
I didn't know you worked with Mrs. Bell, Mr. Grant.
Constantly. About half the work in there is mine.
They have the same way of seeing the world, you see, Vita.
Theirs is what Virginia calls a left-handed marriage.
And what would that make your marriage to Nessa then?
A crowded one.
Nessa and I try to catch the truth of a thing
by... by stripping it back...
- Vanessa? - ...capturing its essence.
Radical simplification.
Mm, no, no, no, you're boring poor Vita, Duncan.
I heard you on the radio this morning.
I just read your latest novel.
Why do you think your books sell more than mine?
Popularity was never a sign of genius.
Are you going to smoke that?
Bodies, bodies, bodies.
- How does it feel? - What are you getting at?
The present moment.
What is it composed of?
It is composed of bodily sensations.
The air wafts cold on the skin under one's clothes.
The touch of a hand gives the sense
that one is sinking through the center of the earth.
The moment becomes harder..
...stained by the desire to be loved..
...to be held close by another shape.
Can you feel it running molten up your spine
and down your limbs?
Can you see what's inside this moment?
Can you feel it?
Yes, it is hardened.
Stained by the desire to be loved.
There.
Snap.
The body takes us there and brings us back.
It's entirely necessary and a constant distraction.
If we don't live quietly inside the moment..
...what would be one's gain in dying?
No.
Stay this moment. No one ever says that enough.
Good morning, neighbor.
Morning, neighbor.
And a very good morning... it is, neighbor.
How was Clive's?
A revelation.
Well, did you meet her?
Yes.
I adore her.
And so will you.
She was utterly silent
until she wanted to say something
and then she said it supremely well.
I still don't know why you wanna go slumming about in Bloomsbury.
Don't be such a dreadful snob, Harold.
The lot of them feel so downtrodden and earnest.
I thought I might invite her to join my little writers' club
unless you disagree?
- Strongly, darling. - Marvelous.
That will make it all the more enjoyable to invite her.
No, I hear nothing but reports of her madness.
Madness.
What a convenient way to explain away her genius.
Genius.
I'm not set against her, darling.
I just think she sounds like rather hard work.
That young man is a congenital idiot.
What little brain he had
has been commandeered by Dora Carrington.
He forgot to grease the rollers on the press.
He can't remember where he put
the woodcuts for your new easels.
I just hope they sell better than the last round.
Are you sure that headache is from blocked sinuses?
- Quite sure. - You were up too late last night at Vanessa's.
- You should get back to bed. - Stop fussing, Leonard.
There are your wretched woodcuts.
- I suppose he's told you? - About the rollers?
No. Damn the rollers!
How can I think about rollers when I've been... betrayed?
- Dora's betrayed me. - In what way?
Well, she lied to me.
She said she wasn't seeing Lytton
and she was seeing Lytton.
She was honest.
She told you she wanted to see Lytton.
And I told her she wasn't to see Lytton.
I see. You told her.
I... I love her. She's mine.
- Do you think that is love? - Absolutely.
And I'm in... in agony!
Next time we advertise for staff
we'll stipulate only eunuchs need apply.
I often think romance is just
not altogether knowing the other person.
It's the not knowing that drives one mad.
Dear Mrs. Woolf
I admit that when Clive invited me
to your sister's party, I came with every intention
of meeting you.
And what a curious creature I found.
You operate with such strength and clarity.
It is as if you were moving above us somehow.
How do you walk along that raised ridge without falling?
Now, if you'd allow me to ask
Pen Committee are very anxious for you to join our club.
Will you be nice and let them make you a member?
For my sake, if for no other reason.
Bunch of landed aristocracy
congratulating each other on their mediocre scribblings.
You can't tell me it would be anything but pure torture for you.
I might like to discuss their mediocre scribblings.
Huh!
Vita seemed to sell
more than mine in any case.
Her last book outsold D.H. Lawrence by a mile.
I can't believe you care about that.
I don't. I just resent your forbidding it.
I'm not forbidding anything.
But it would drain and enrage you
to have your brilliant mind ogled by those leering toffs.
Didn't she dress up as a man
and run off with Violet Trefusis?
That must have been difficult for Nicolson
to live down at the Foreign Office.
You know I hate this sort of gossip, Ginia.
You know I don't take these
aristocratic aberrations seriously, Leonard.
Then we are in agreement.
"I see from the club papers that it is a dining club
"and my experience is that I can't belong to dining clubs.
I'm so sorry."
Are you frustrated because you wanted Mrs. Woolf
to become a member of your writers' club
or are you just not used to being refused?
What did Violet have to say?
She's going abroad. She wants me to come with her.
You're coming to Lausanne on the 20th though, aren't you
to play diplomat's wife for five minutes?
I shall be angry if you don't come.
Yes, of course.
She's absolutely unscrupulous.
If you see her at all, I know your will becomes like
a jellyfish addicted to cocaine.
You know how grateful I am that you came to rescue me.
I'd have killed Violet
if I'd stayed with her an instant longer.
It would have ruined us both, but you would have been
utterly cast out of society.
You'd have lost the boys.
I could have done nothing... nothing to help you.
I'll have nothing more to do with her. Word of honor.
I really am exhausted with this sapphic pageant.
I don't think I could bear to be drawn
into that vortex of unhappiness again.
- It nearly overwhelmed me. - Hadji, I do love you.
And I love you.
But you do like to have your cake and eat it, Vitti.
And so many cakes.
So many.
Nothing would tempt me to see her again.
But if you do go off to France with Violet again
I shan't get into an aeroplane, bring you back as I did before.
I shall shock the nation and elope to Kathmandu
with Lord Curzon.
I rely on your discretion, Vitti.
My own life depends on it.
You won't join my little writers' club
so I shall have to enclose my latest manuscript here.
I would so love to know what you think.
If you like it, my next is yours.
A gift, if the Hogarth Press would like it.
Oh, dear. We'll have to read it now.
You admitted she does sell.
You're not suggesting we ask her to write for us?
We could do with a bestseller.
Don't forget we've got Tom Eliot and Sigmund Freud to sell too.
B... but maybe we should think about it.
But not her poetry, I beg you. I won't print a word of that.
Ha!
I haven't lost the appetite to know you better.
So you must be very kind
because I'm going to be very brave and ask
would you ever come traveling with me?
Does the proposal seem attractive to you?
I'm very flattered.
I presume Mrs. Woolf knows you've asked me?
Of course, we always make joint decisions
about the writers we publish.
I would ask her to join us
but when there's a cross on that door
she's writing
and everyone is forbidden to disturb her.
Even her husband?
Even her husband.
So she writes down here amidst all this?
Oh, Julian.
A short, maybe a travel book, will suit us very well.
But we leave it to you.
- Aunt Ginia, I bought us... - Julian!
Mrs. Nicolson is here, Virginia.
- Is she? - How are you feeling?
My head's a little better now I've let some words out.
Julian darling, they look wonderful.
Have you got something for me to read?
Well, if it's terribly written
at least the paper will be delicious.
Mr. Woolf said you weren't to be disturbed.
I was battling to read Mr. Joyce.
Are you going to write for us?
No one has ever yet thrown down a glove
I was not ready to pick up.
I'm meeting Harold in Italy.
On the peaks of mountains and beside green lakes
I shall write my story.
I'll shut my ears to the brawling rivers.
I'll shut my nose to the scent of the pines.
I'll concentrate on my story... for you.
I must be going.
Would you ever play a truant to Bloomsbury
and come traveling with me?
You could look on it as copy.
I believe you look on everything
on everyone, as copy.
Uh..
Goodbye, Mrs. Woolf.
I feel as though I should like to write you a long letter.
An endless letter.
Pages and pages.
Ever since I left England, I've been like a person
in an advanced stage of intoxication.
Cocktails made not of gin and vermouth
but of thrill and misery
adventure and homesickness.
Tell me who you've been seeing..
...even if I've never heard of them.
I can get the sensation of seeing you now and then..
...but then I find you going off.
How little we know anyone.
Only movements.
Gestures.
Nothing connected..
...continuous..
...profound.
Don't you find all this intimate philosophizing a bit vulgar?
Tsk.
I don't know why you care what she thinks.
They're lucky to get you. Your books sell, hers don't.
I want her to admire me.
Oh, dear.
I hope you're not about to become a Gloomsbury.
Ooh!
I can't believe you! This is unacceptable.
- Please try to calm down. - Try to calm down?
How do you expect me to calm down when you're on his bed?
I can't. I can't bear it, Vita, and I won't!
Try to calm down?
I don't think there's any use in either of us
playing wounded party, Geoffrey.
Well, you can't treat love the way you treated mine.
Truly, you can't.
Nothing that's happened here
hasn't been perfectly lovely.
- We're both adults. - Morning, Geoffrey.
Well, there you have it.
I don't know how I'm going to summon the courage
to see the Woolfs without having heard
a single word about my book.
Do you think they hated it very much?
Perhaps they both want to tell you
how marvelous it was in person.
You know what I think?
It's self-conscious and artificial.
You've tried to write like Mrs. Woolf, but you can't.
And why you should want to, I can't imagine.
Dottie and Geoffrey.
Trespassing on two marriages at once.
It isn't serious.
Virginia and I will have to console each other.
I'd like to dedicate it to you, if you don't mind.
When we last met, you said you thought
I looked on everything, everyone as copy.
Did I?
You couldn't have accused poor Virginia
of being that mercenary, could you, Vita?
She did.
It gave me a great deal of pain.
Do you ever mean what you say or say what you mean?
Or do you just enjoy baffling the people
who try to creep a little nearer?
You know very well that I like you.
A fabulous lot.
Do I?
Damn it.
You must remember that Virginia is vulnerable
under all of that brilliance.
I can't bear the thought
of having caused you any pain at all.
Why have you such an art of keeping so much of yourself
up your sleeve?
I suspect even after 20 years
there'd still be something to be unfolded.
Some last layer not uncoiled.
These snatched moments with you are exasperating.
Meet me so we may have another.
I tried to find you at home, but Leonard said you were here.
I don't think I could ever care for one single solitary thing
with as much focus as Leonard cares for you.
I like things wild and vast and complicated.
- So I hear. - I have something for you.
A peace offering, and don't try to resist
because I've gone to a lot of trouble.
They're from Cairo.
The blue-tinted spectacles that inspired me
to write "Seducers" about you.
"Arthur Lomax found that he no longer dared
"to remove his spectacles.
Realism was no longer for him."
A fearless adventurer who trades in passion
pain and fantasy?
Arthur Lomax is you, Vita.
You just dedicated "Seducers" to me, don't you see?
- How unsettling. - What?
That you seem to understand my work better than I do.
When I read your work, I don't know
whether to be dejected or encouraged.
What do you mean?
Dejected because I shall never be able to write like that
or encouraged because somebody else can.
- Do keep it up. - What?
The belief that I achieve things.
I have need of it.
I am bewitched by your writing.
It makes me afraid of you.
It's all rhythm.
Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words.
A sight, an emotion, creates a wave in the mind
long before you have the words to describe it.
When writing, that is what you must recapture.
That wave as it breaks and tumbles in the mind.
If you listen, it will make the words to fit it.
I must get back.
I only stayed out this long
because Leonard's reading "Mrs. Dalloway"
and I couldn't bear to be there.
Goodness, Ginia. Are you alright?
Yes.
Just tell me what you think.
It's your best yet.
Absolutely the best.
You shouldn't be so fearful, specially of what I think.
"The state in which you live at Charleston
"is not modern but immoral.
"And making a nonsense of your marriage
"by knitting your life together with a man
"who is not your husband.
You know, of course, Mr. Grant is a homosexual."
What reason is there to think I don't tell Clive everything?
If anything, you share too much.
I am completely indifferent to anything
the world may have to say about me and my husband or my children.
You seem indifferent.
And I don't know why you're laughing!
I'm laughing at your rage, Nessa.
I knew you wouldn't like "Mrs. Dalloway."
- But I did like it. - No, you didn't.
- Just say you didn't like it. - I won't.
...on the house if we don't disband...
It's not half as debauched down there
as she seems to think.
It might be fun if it were.
You live exactly as you wish at our house.
The house we have made yours too.
How do you say such a thing?
I live exactly as I wish, do I?
Mm, positively angelic, aren't you, Duncan?
No one's forcing you to live here.
I thought it dazzling, evasive and infuriating.
Exactly like you.
Well, there you are then.
Nessa, I've always admired your handling of life
as if it were a thing one can throw out.
But I cannot think of any book
I will read more often than "The Common Reader."
There are passages I should like to know by heart.
Of course, you prefer "The Common Reader."
- It's easy meat. - Clive!
- Well, it is. - "Dalloway" is the thing.
It is an organism. It is alive.
I wish you could understand that.
Why do you think that I don't?
Because in your work, you cling to technique.
You don't understand that once you've mastered it
you should throw it up in the air
and let it smash on the pavement.
Right. Enough of all this.
I need to show you something in the studio.
I need my harshest critics throwing fire at the canvas.
Oh, now come on.
I'm staying at Knole this weekend.
Come with me and stay the night.
No, no, impossible.
I've only got torn clothes. I'd have to eat behind a screen.
You'd be ashamed of me. You'd say things you'll regret.
I don't think I've ever wanted anything
so much in my whole life.
Would you be very kind to me?
I'll pick you up on Saturday at midday.
- Virginia. - Vita.
- Hello, Leonard. - Hello, Vita.
- Drive safely. - Don't worry, Leonard.
We have the sandwiches and the champagne ready, do we?
- Yes. - Very good.
- I think she... - What an exquisite hat.
Very brave.
Hello. You are very welcome.
- Hello! - Hello, darling.
Hello, darling.
This is Geoffrey Scott and Dorothy Wellesley.
I thought they'd round out our little party.
And this is Virginia Woolf.
Lovely.
How lovely of you all to allow me to join you.
Don't be silly.
It's so sweet that you were free.
Well, don't just stand there. Do come up.
I'll take this to be ironed, Mrs. Woolf.
- Behave. - It's very good.
Really.
What do you think of this place, Mrs. Woolf?
Vita tells me you're damn hard to impress.
I do so hope we all pass muster.
The past is expressive here, not dumb and forgotten.
All the centuries seem lit up.
All about the place
a crowd of people stand behind you
not dead at all.
How obscure you are.
I think you've listened a little too intently
to what you've heard about me.
Forgive me my faults, Virginia.
They are silly surface things.
I want to show you a place
that really means something to me.
This is where I got married.
It must feel very sacred.
Marriage..
...a ritual performed on this spot
permanently tore me apart from this place.
A play..
...in which my part was to be powerless
to be passed from one line of men to another.
But you do love Harold?
Of course, I do. Very much.
But this house, it made me.
Our separation has been my greatest pain.
It is where my soul is, where my family are.
I've been cheated out of my home.
I cannot have her simply because I am a woman.
It's as though for years I've had an affair with a lover
who never belonged to me entirely.
We've been forced apart by stupid, ancient laws
and I can only visit her.
Are you alright, Virginia?
Yes, I'm fine.
Where is she?
With the Mad Hatter, I suppose.
Are you sure you're feeling better, Virginia?
I'm sure.
Leonard will be furious with me.
Why did you bring Dottie and Geoffrey?
I..
I can't.
I've tried..
...with Leonard..
...but I... I... I..
...manner had grown upon him
and he took little parts in the games.
The children wearing the spoils of their crackers
danced and romped noisily.
I wonder if I could render one of your paintings
into prose.
You're hardly wanting for inspiration.
"Mrs. Dalloway" has been so much admired.
Are you pleased?
Yes.
I do write damned well sometimes.
Almost as well as your sister paints, do you think?
Never.
But almost consistently better than you do.
What does Vita think?
It doesn't matter. It's not her mind I admire.
What exactly happened at Knole?
She lavishes a kind of maternal protection on me
but her friendship is never untinged with desire.
I wonder what exactly they do with one another
these sapphists.
I really can't imagine.
Nessa, of course, you can. It must be marvelous.
All those velvet curves colliding.
It does seem a shame to forfeit actual penetration though.
And what makes you think they forfeit that?
But do you like her, Virginia?
I like her... maturity..
...and her voluptuousness.
Do you think there's something wrong with me?
Something disconnected?
You are capable of so much love.
And one has room for many different shades of it.
The truth is I worry I'm not quite allowed
to desire in the same way as you.
Sex isn't the most important thing, you know.
That's what people say when it's easy for them.
I was not intended to be just a diplomat's wife.
Well, that is what you are
amongst a great many other things
which I've never objected to.
But in Tehran, I will have
more responsibilities than ever before
and I cannot be there without a wife.
Wife? You needn't administer the word with such venom.
- I deliver the word as fact. - So I'm to play the role?
What is a wife if not a role?
And I'm to be thrown together with people
with whom I have nothing in common
except the place we happen to find ourselves in?
Yes, Tehran will be much the same
as any of my other postings.
I can't bear it this time.
Oh, I'm sorry that diplomats and their wives
don't talk about copulation
with the same readiness as your friends.
And I'd feel a great deal happier
if you didn't see your friends for a while.
They make nothing but muddles.
I'm not in any muddle at the moment.
- Geoffrey? - That was never anything much.
And he's quite happily gone back to his tiresome wife.
- Dorothy? - I haven't seen her.
Your maid. The French one. Wh... what was she called?
- Genoux. No. - Violet?
I don't even know where she is.
And Virginia?
That is not a muddle and never can be.
She's utterly unattainable.
Which makes her even more desirable.
You know, I can't help but think that this furious display
has more to do with the timing than the duties
you've more than happily performed for years.
God forbid I should wrench you away
from your precious genius invalid.
Harold, please stop this.
I don't question your indulgences.
I never play with fire, Vita, because I don't have the luxury
of flirting with scandal as you do
and I always, always choose to be with you in the end.
You never take risks? Lord Curzon, Raymond...
This arrangement works because I allow it!
Don't you dare believe that!
I want you with me, Vita.
We've been together for only ten weeks this year.
I find it all so meaningless without you.
It hurts me, Vita.
- Well, for how long? - Only four or five months.
- Only? - Think of seeing Persia.
Yes.
Do you think you might write another travelogue for us, Vita?
"Seducers in Ecuador" was such a success for the press.
I thought you'd never ask.
It might breathe some life into the stale domestic duties
I'll have to perform for Harold.
Of course, I'll never see you again.
Of course, you'll see me again.
Do you think I'm going to get kidnapped by brigands?
No.
I know it doesn't make you envious.
You prefer your misty old Bloomsbury.
But I do wish Leonard would let me steal you away.
Take you with me, put you in the sun...
And I wish you would stop saying things like that.
You know it would never be possible.
I shall miss you..
...more than you'll ever believe.
She'd never say anything as simple as that
would she, Leonard?
She clothes everything she says
in such exquisite phrases, things lose their meaning.
Maybe you don't understand the nature of the truth
that Virginia unearths.
She has the clearest mind I've ever known.
Always, always, always, I try to say how I feel.
I shall miss you dreadfully.
Everything here will seem dull and damp
and if you don't believe that, you're an ass.
There. Is that simple enough for you?
I think we'd better be saying goodbye, Vita.
I shan't make you want me anymore
by giving myself away like this.
You can't think me that ruthless, can you?
Ginia.
Close the door. It's bitter out there.
The only way I can deal with Egypt is alphabetically.
Alabaster, Americans, Arabs
bromides, buffaloes, beggars
camels, crocodiles, colossi
dust, dervishes, desert
Egyptians, elation, fellaheen, flies
goats, granite, hotels, hieroglyphics
imshi, ignorance, jibbahs, Kodaks
Levantines, mummies, mud, millionaires
Nubia, obsidian
pyramids, quarries, ruins, sarcophagi
Tutankhamun, utopia, vultures, Virginia.
I feel dissipated..
...and aimless.
Insipid.
Restless.
Virginia.
I feel as if a dark pool of sticky water
were closing over me.
It's that you're not here.
Does anything ever actually happen to Mrs. Dalloway?
Not really. She just gives the party.
Golly, I'm hooked.
More poetry from your Pharisee?
He's in love with you, of course.
Is he still teaching you Arabic?
No, this is from Virginia.
You've finally caught your prey?
- I suppose I have. - Are you happy now?
"'Mrs. Ramsay, ' Lily cried..
"...but nothing happened.
"'The anguish could reduce one
to such a pitch of imbecility, ' she thought."
It's good, Ginia. It's always good.
How very rude. I'd like to see you give it a go.
She just finished "To The Lighthouse."
It's remarkable.
So confused in her letters.
It's what I read.
What is in Vita's past is all in my future
but in reading it, in consuming it..
...suddenly it's all over.
She's no longer coasting in Baluchistan.
She's riding in a cab in Baghdad.
She's just asleep. She's dead.
The present tense has become meaningless.
I heard she traveled all the way from Luxor
to Cairo with the train on fire.
Yes! Flames licking out from under the carriage.
All those smoldering diplomats.
And all that chaos, all that violence.
- Do you know what she said? - What?
Simply that it gave her a lingering regret
for the Southeastern.
Yeah.
And what else does she write of?
She's crawled through ramparts of snow
been attacked by bandits
seen hills stained with copper sulfate
mud towns at nightfall
dead camels pecked by vultures, dying men.
And does she make you want to write or to live?
Both.
But how to make sense of her, Duncan?
- What do you mean? - All her fragments.
She makes me feel as if language is miserably insufficient.
Broken.
You must let the eye lick it all up.
All that deliciousness
and then the brain will settle itself down
and watch things happening
without troubling itself to think.
Yes, the eye licks it up, but the brain can't.
- The... the brain can't.. - What?
What?
- What? - Live.
- Virginia, are you alright? - I'm so sorry.
The eye and the brain..
I'm so sorry.
The... the eye and the brain..
I can't..
The eye and..
Ginia?
I'm so sorry.
Virginia. Wait!
Just give her a moment.
Virginia.
I feel as though my mind were driven
to some remote corner of my body.
Don't worry, my darling.
I'll bring you back to the surface.
Give her all the usual sedatives.
Absolute rest and quiet.
We might just avoid a crisis.
Is she writing?
She's just finished a novel.
I fear the writing is what brings on the breakdowns.
If you stop her writing, she'll die.
I sometimes feel that women can't cope
with too much gray matter.
Well, I'm not a doctor, of course
but I do know a few men who've had bouts of instability
though I couldn't say whether it was because of their genius.
I do think the world is rather short of brilliant minds
and I'm happy to see it in either sex.
What fools would we be to deny women a voice
lest they laugh at us?
The doctor has sent me to bed.
Tried to forbid all writing.
So this is my swansong.
One thing has remained a beacon..
...these past six weeks of lying in bed.
You believe in my strength..
...that I am no invalid.
I wish that you were well
and that you could come and see me
so we may live in the present moment together.
You must promise to get better.
You are a very, very remarkable person.
You are one perpetual achievement.
I've settled down to wanting you..
...doggedly..
...dismally..
...faithfully.
I hope at last this pleases you.
It's damned unpleasant for me.
I need to go home.
It's Virginia, isn't it?
- Salaam alaikum. - Walaikum salaam.
A full-blown affair with her
would be like smoking over a petrol tank.
Alhamdulillah.
God, the next person who kisses my hand
will get his face slapped.
- Good evening. - Good evening.
Hypocrisy, Harold. Brazen hypocrisy.
It's clear to me that you believe yourself
to be in love with Virginia.
So let me say what I couldn't
during that dreadful confusion with Violet.
There are several kinds of love, Vita.
Yours for Virginia lives here.
It constricts.
It panics. It consumes.
It is selfish and corrosive.
The other..
...is an outpouring of everything good in you..
...and it lives here.
It is what I feel for you.
I'm going back.
I'm sorry, but she really mustn't see anyone.
I'm sure you understand.
You're sure even I couldn't help cheer her up?
It isn't quite so simple as just cheering her up, Vita.
- Well.. - I'm having trouble convincing her to take a glass of milk.
This may be a little ambitious.
Of course.
How silly of me.
I... I... I don't think you'd be quite so cross with me
if you knew how very much I approve
of your care of Virginia.
I just thought I could help ease things a little for you all
if she came to stay with me.
I brought this for you from Harold's library.
I thought it might distract you.
I am good for her, you know, Leonard.
I don't doubt there's some truth in that.
You will let me know if she's in any... danger?
I promise.
Now she's been able to sleep for a few hours..
...and stopped talking incoherently.
But she still won't eat.
I'll do what I can to persuade her.
What do you think of Ginia going to stay with Vita?
- Does Virginia want to see her? - Yes.
Maybe it would be good for her.
Then there's Vita's reputation.
Well, Vita can try to seduce her
but she wouldn't get very far, will she?
She's not entirely devoid of physical desire, Nessa!
Oh, my goodness, Leonard, of course not.
Well, if you think going to stay with Vita will do her good..
...I shan't stop her.
I know it's very hard on you, Leonard.
I simply don't believe in jealousy, Nessa.
One must screw it up
and throw it out like a useless manuscript.
What a relief it is to finally be alone with you again.
I promised Leonard I'd have you in bed by 11:00
and I always try to keep my promises.
I can't even think of sleeping.
I have a million things
not so much to say, as to sink into you.
I wonder if death feels anything like that.
It's as if all of a sudden..
...time gets stuck..
...and you feel empty.
Are you happy?
Yes.
But do I know you better than before?
I do think she is very beautiful, Ginia.
She's an aristocrat of an ancient race.
Well, all that ancestry
certainly has bred a perfect body.
And I thought you admired her writing.
Only to rile you, Ginia.
She's hardly breaking boundaries.
Oh, don't be acidic, Clive.
It isn't easy for a woman to work.
No, don't worry, Nessa.
I'm sure Vita can console herself
with her vast wealth and privilege.
Come on, Julian. Let's play your new record.
I'm relying on your generation
to get rid of the class system altogether.
- Come on, Virginia. - Mm?
Let us hear about your romance.
Have you been to bed with Vita yet?
- Yes, Duncan. I have. - You have?
- Vanessa, Leonard will hear. - I think he probably knows.
And how does it feel?
I've never experienced anything so perfectly..
...indescribably physical.
The garden is all dug over, hedges planted
masses of orange lilies in the borders
and new roses in the oil jars.
So really all we have to do now is get rid of the poplars
and remove the lilac from the bed under the window.
And remove Mrs. Woolf from the bed in your room.
Apart from the fact that I like the Woolfs
you must know, Vitti, that it's dangerous.
Hadji darling, please don't be anxious.
I'm devoted to her as a friend, but I'm not in love with her.
It's a spiritual thing. She grounds me, I think.
She forces me to think seriously.
I've been so wretched and lonely without you.
There's absolutely nothing for you to be jealous about.
This is not how we live, Vitti.
I do.
I do love you.
All those sparkling minds you surround yourself with..
...none of them love you as much as I love you.
Leonard's going to be strict with me.
He says I've been doing too much.
Would you ever leave Leonard and come away with me?
I'm serious.
Will you?
- Leave Leonard? - Yes.
I can't.
I'd lose my footing. I..
I can live in perfect freedom with him without any fear.
You know you've broken down more barriers than anyone
but I can't.
I simply can't.
If you leave me stranded, I will hurt you.
I know I will.
Why must you always grasp for more?
Mmm.
Even when I'm in bed with you
you insist on conjuring fantasies.
You with your fears, me with my fantasies.
Maybe our perversions simply aren't compatible.
I don't see why you couldn't stay with me
for a few days longer.
You could write perfectly well at Knole.
I can't bear delivering you back to Bloomsbury.
You know I need to be there to write clearly...
I don't like to think of you all cooped up down there
with Leonard fussing over you.
I need Leonard.
And I love him.
How he makes sure that I'm settled..
...that I'm well.
But you are.
You are well.
It's taken me such a long time to find..
...balance.
Do you know what I would do if you weren't a person
to be so strict with?
I'd steal my motor out of the garage tonight
be in Bloomsbury by 11:00
and throw stones at your window.
You'd come down and let me in
and I'd stay with you all night.
But you being you, I can't.
For a different Virginia, I'd fly to London in the night.
You have as much of me as I have to give.
Vita, if your promise was a challenge..
...come then.
Come tonight.
Chance missed.
I am so sorry.
Will you and Leonard meet Harold and I together?
I was going to suggest the weekend of the eclipse.
Harold does so much want you both to come.
I neglected to thank you for your kind review
of my book, Virginia.
It was quite an achievement, Harold.
You wrote your characters as if they were at once
real and imaginary.
Biographies can enlarge our understanding of who people really are
by hanging up mirrors in odd corners.
I can't help but think how essential it is to do so
when we live in an age where a thousand cameras
are pointed at every person from every angle.
Newspapers, politics..
...gossip.
Gossip.
How do you suppose Vita will be rendered by her biographer?
As a diplomat's wife and a celebrated novelist?
Or an insatiable lover
notorious for her trysts
for the torment to which she subjected her poor husband?
I suppose that depends on how your own chapter
with Vita will end.
If we were talking at Charleston
we'd be surprised to hear about love.
Clive says he's worked it out.
And one spends three hours a day on food,
six on sleep, four on work and two on love.
Vanessa says ten on love.
I say a whole day on love.
I say it's seeing things through a purple shade.
But you've never been in love, they say.
How many hours do you suppose one spends on sex..
...and thinking about it
turning the sensation of it over in your mind
the ghost of it?
Everyone's body is haunted by it
long after its reverberations are over.
Dearest creature.
And when I see you again..
...I want you more and more.
You like to think of me unhappy, I know.
How nice it is of me to be writing to you
when you're not writing to me at all.
Is she here?
Vita?
I haven't seen her anywhere, but I know Duncan asked her.
Perhaps she can't get up to town this week.
Have you seen Vita, Duncan?
No, but she answered to me affirmative
so I expect we will very soon.
Leonard, have you seen Vita?
Please try to keep calm.
You're extremely late!
I brought Ben and Nigel to see mother this afternoon.
And when I mentioned I was coming here
she became hysterical and started screaming
about all those homosexual conscientious objectors.
Vita.
- Clive, this is Mary Campbell. - Pleasure.
- A pleasure to meet you. - Nice to meet you.
What a fool I've been to be so open with someone
who kept strands of themselves hidden from me.
Oh, darling.
I can't stand myself like this.
Enough now, Ginia.
This must be enough.
Did she say where she was going?
She didn't.
What did you say to her?
That Vita had betrayed her.
Why on earth would you say that?
Because it is the truth, Leonard.
There's no use in telling poisonous truths, Vanessa.
None at all. Least of all to Virginia.
You know that.
Virginia?
Leonard..
...I've had the most wonderful idea.
You know how I haven't been able to screw a word out for weeks.
No ideas, nothing, then suddenly..
it came to me like a fin rising out of the water.
I rushed back here, I dipped my pen in ink
and I wrote almost automatically.
"Orlando, A Biography."
Who is Orlando?
A 16th century man who's also a woman.
I'll need to get her to talk about all those ancestors.
Who?
I'll need to get her to talk about everything.
- Who? - Vita!
Orlando stood stark naked.
No human being since the world began
has ever looked more ravishing.
His form combined in one
the strength of a man and a woman's grace.
We may take advantage of this pause in the narrative
to make certain statements.
Orlando had become a woman, there is no denying it.
At the age of 30, this young nobleman
had not only had every experience
that life has to offer
but had seen the worthlessness of them all.
Love and ambition
women and poets were all equally vain.
Literature was a farce.
Two things alone remained to him in which he now put any trust
dogs and nature
an elkhound and a rosebush.
The world in all its variety
life in all its complexity
had shrunk to that.
You're going to project me into the shape of this Orlando?
Yes, it's all about you.
Lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind.
You'll shoot through time like an arrow.
You'll be a man, a woman, an ancient, a modern.
- What do you think? - What fun for you?
It is to be a sort of imaginative biography.
There will be portraits of your ancestors
photographs, illustrations.
And you must dedicate it to your victim.
And I'll need to see you frequently.
To sit and look at you, get you to talk
correct any doubtful points.
I should like to untwine and twist again
the very odd, incongruous strands in you.
Roy and Mary say they've no hot water.
Shall I send Parsons over to them?
- Yes, Hadji darling. - Hello, Virginia.
Roy and Mary Campbell are staying in our boys' cottage.
And why not?
Virginia, I would like to explain about Mary.
To... apologize.
No, please don't. It would bore me.
If you've given yourself to Mary
I'll have no more to do with you.
So it shall be written plainly
for all the world to read in "Orlando."
I'm incapable of creating one perfect relationship.
I've tried and failed at doing so my whole life.
It is a terrible muddle, isn't it?
Yes.
But any vengeance you want to take
will lie ready to your hand.
Now..
...when was the moment of your greatest disillusionment?
The first time I saw a penis.
Nessa darling, it's supposed to look like Knole.
It does look like Knole.
Don't you think it looks like Knole, Duncan?
I'm not getting in the middle of this.
That's unlike you.
I didn't think you were serious about putting
real photographs of me in the book, Virginia.
I want "Orlando" to feel as if it could be true.
Lower.
I do feel rather exposed.
And that's exactly how we want you.
Sit still, Vita. We've just got you looking perfect.
Doesn't she look perfect, Nessa, hm?
Hmm. It's looking marvelous, I think.
Well, Vita, if you'd try to relax a little
it would look even better.
I'm trying jolly hard, I assure you, Vanessa.
Do you think you have to feel more powerful than someone
to be sexually attracted to them?
My goodness, what a question.
You do have the air of the conqueror about you.
I suppose it does give me immense pleasure...
To give pain?
Do you think yourself good or bad?
It was miserable, Hadji.
Draped in an inadequate piece of pink satin
with all my clothes slipping off
whilst they took endless photographs.
Virginia was thrilled, but I couldn't help feeling
an overwhelming urge to escape.
- Have you read it? - No.
She absolutely won't let me see a draft.
- How's Berlin? - Miserable without you, Vita.
Yes, I'm desperate to get to you.
I feel as if I'm itching all over.
- When can you come? - In a few days, I think.
Are you sure all this time with Vita
isn't too much of a strain on you?
Do you not think I look full of life?
You do.
But are you happy?
I'm rapturously, ecstatically happy.
I can revolutionize biography overnight
with the story of a hero who turns into a heroine
and she turns out to be fiction.
Which is, of course, what all biographies are.
...now are ended.
These our actors, as I foretold you
were all spirits and are melted..
...into thin air.
Must you go? We have so much work to do.
I must visit Harold in Berlin.
I can't leave a diplomat without a dutiful wife for too long.
This is important work, Vita.
You're part of something like a revolution.
There's never been a woman's biography, not like this.
Chastity, modesty, have always prevented it.
And, of course, I have neither of those.
I wish you would take something seriously, Vita.
I'm trying to capture your essence.
Biographies have always described the things
that happened to the person
not the person to whom those things happened.
I'm trying to tunnel into you.
Do you not understand how important this is?
How special this is?
And how lucky I am, I suppose
to be the great Mrs. Woolf's muse.
And what if
after all that tunneling you find nothing there?
Once you've pinned me down with your pen..
...what will you do with me?
Or will you be finished with me?
I don't know.
Lady Sackville.
I didn't know I was to expect you.
I didn't know I was to expect this.
I don't think you realize how explosive this is
from inside your debauched bohemian bubble.
But out there in proper society
you're putting Vita in great danger.
Vita and her boys.
I gather the only person who has ever threatened
to remove Ben and Nigel from their mother is you.
You're a mad woman
whose successful mad desire
is to separate people that care for each other.
Your work has a kind of violence to it
that either you're unaware of
or too reckless to control.
Thank God you don't have children of your own.
- I thought you were in Berlin. - I was, but now I'm here.
I have fallen in love with your vision of me.
Were you not hurt or angry?
It struck me that you might be.
I feel like a mannequin in a shop window
on which you've hung a robe stitched with fine jewels.
How could you have hung so splendid a garment
on such a poor peg?
Oh, Virginia, it's the wisest
richest book I've ever read.
My darling, what are you doing?
I'm baking a cake.
Nelly's given notice. I have guests for tea.
You'll poison them.
I've lived in you so long that now I see you.
I wonder do you exist or have I made you up?
I feel terribly real right now.
You have found me again.
I won't be loved only in a fictitious world.
Let's go away together now before the gossip starts.
Please, Virginia.
Yes. Absolutely.
I don't know why you can't say when exactly you'll be back.
I need to know how long we'll be apart.
Now you're being sentimental. We don't do that.
No, I'm being truthful. It's entirely rational.
I shall worry about you all the time.
Leonard, stop.
You just finished a book.
You know you'll be fraught with nerves
until the reviews come in. That's the time you go under...
Well, this time feels different.
Yes, it does. This feels different.
That's why I don't want you to go.
Writing "Orlando" gave me the greatest rapture I've ever known.
Which is why now is a very dangerous time for you.
- I'll be with Vita. - That's what worries me.
Oh, your protection of me
sometimes verges on the unwholesome.
I shan't stop you going..
...but I will ask you to think very carefully
about what it is you think is possible with Vita.
Virginia, are you alright?
What are you doing out here?
I've been wondering if lightning struck the house, collapsed
what it would be like to be crushed to death.
Oh, my dearest.
I've got it fairly vivid.
Would it be painful?
Yes.
Terrifying? I suppose so.
A swoon, a drum, gulps attempting consciousness
and then dot, dot, dot.
I can't bear to think of your dying.
I don't think it's gonna happen today.
I was just imagining it.
- Don't you do that? - No.
I do.
I do think with intense curiosity about death.
It could be a great excitement like going over Niagara.
But it is the one experience
I will never be able to describe.
Do you ever feel that you record things rather than feel them?
Oh, you're tearing open that old wound.
You've always thought I had look on everything
on everyone, as something for my pen to exploit.
No.
I was thinking about myself.
There is something about you that doesn't connect.
What do you mean?
You demand utter devotion.
But it is as if you are surrounded
by a cloud of obscure fog.
And when..
...when I loved you..
...it felt as if you could not reach through
to take my hand as I held it out to you.
It's in your writing.
Something evasive but sparkling.
A lack of fidelity, I suppose.
When you loved me?
Yes.
I did.
Very much.
And I still do, but not in the same way.
So after all that tunneling into me with "Orlando"
you found me an empty shell?
No.
I listened.
"If you leave me stranded, I will hurt you."
I recorded those words every way I know how.
I wrote them down, I scored them into my heart
and in "Orlando," I set you free.
I created many versions of you to live unconstrained.
I captured Knole.
I gave you what you'll never inherit.
Sometimes I do feel as though
I observe things from the outside..
...rather than feel them.
Perhaps you care more for things than for people.
This place still twists your heart
more than any person ever has.
So you think I'm very cold?
Quite the opposite.
A million candles burn in you, Vita.
You're an exploding star
refracting light across the universe.
But it means you are incapable of shining your light
on one thing, on one person alone.
And not..
...in the end..
...on me.
So what happens now?
The end is already written.
"Orlando naturally loved
"solitary places, vast views..
"...and to feel himself
forever and ever alone."
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