Beschreibung:

WOOLF, VIRGINIA. Typed letter signed ("Virginia") to her nephew Quentin Bell "Monks House," [Rodmell], 3 December [1933]. 2 pages, small 4to, about 750 words on both sides of the same blue sheet, single-spaced, with a number of autograph corrections (four words in her hand, plus typographical changes). "WE HAD OLD TOM ELIOT TO TEA" "...we had old Tom [T.S.] Eliot to tea [at their country place at Rodmell], and sat over the fire and gossiped. He was primed with Clive's brandy, for he had been lunching till tea time on old brandy with Clive [Bell], Rebecca West and Lady [Sybil] Colefax. So he was bemused and mellow; and only wanted the W.C. For as he said, he had been drinking since one thirty. What a phantasma one's friends' lives are! Tom is writing a pageant [ The Rock ] to be acted at Sadlers Wells in the spring on London ; in order to collect one quarter of a million to build forty six churches in the suburbs. 'Why?' asked Leonard [Woolf]. And Tom merely chuckled. I rather think his God is dwindling. But he likes clerical society...Roger [Fry] and Helen [Anrep] also dined with us. Looked at in a half light Helen reminds me of a red rose just falling on a June night...Roger never stops lecturing. So very tactfully we said What is the use of criticism? And he said I think -- but it's all in his Cambridge lecture -- criticism is useless, save as it -- but here I lost count, being very sleepy that night...'Well,' he said to me, 'you wouldn't find any literature in my paintings' -- this referred to my essay on [Walter] Sickert. 'What should I find?' I asked. Happily he was stumping down the stairs. So you see old Bloomsbury still crackles under the pot. We have a memoir meeting next week; and I have Ethel Smyth [the composer] and Rebecca West to tea to discuss the life of Mrs. [Emmeline] Pankhurst. In strict confidence, Ethel used to love Emmeline -- they shared a bed. It's a howling gale here." Letters , ed. N. Nicolson and J. Trautmann, vol. 5, no. 2828.