Dr. Elisa Kay Sparks

Clemson University

November 1999

Tom & Virginia:
A Personal Chronology

*Taken from Bishop's Chronology of Virginia Woolf , as well as research in VW's Letters and Diaries. Page numbers refer to Bishop.

1918: Nov. 15 -- TSE visits for 1st time ("VW is impressed with his intelligence but regrets that he admires Pound, Lewis and Joyce" 47) See Diary.

1919: Jan 22--VW Begins setting up TSE's Poems at Hogarth Press

Mar 19--VW Finishes printing TSE's Poems

Jun 20--Rev. of TSE's Poems by Leonard Woolf in Atheneum

1920: Feb 13--VW Attends evening party at Ottoline Morrell's with Eliots as well as Huxleys, E.M. Forster etc. (54)

Sep 18-9--TSE visits at Rodmell; 'discusses his proposed verse drama, W. Lewis, Pound, and Joyce. VW taxes him with 'wilfully concealing his transistions'. (58) See Diary

Sep 26 --VW Diary entry about how she is intimidated by TSE

Dec 1--TSE and G.L. Dickinson to dinner

Dec 5-- VW reads Coleridge, prompted by TSE's Sacred Wood which LW is reviewing (59)

Dec 12-- VW notes various books out including SW; hasn't read any yet.

1921: Mar 13--TSE to dinner with Woolves. VW wonders if he will "become Tom"; TSE doesn't admire her writing (D)

Mar 20--TSE to dinner at VW then to a performance of Congreve's Love for Love

May 2-- VW buys Chapbook for TSE essay "Prose and Verse"

May 3 --VW reading TSE: "shocked as usual. . . to find how wrong I am, and how right he is" D? or letter? (63)

Jun 5--TSE visits VW; praise for Monday or Tuesday; says Ulysses prodigious

Sep 24-5--TSE visits at Rodmel. VW no longer afraid of him see Diary

Oct 17--VW to Roger Fry: TSE says Ulysses 'greatest work of the age'

1922: mid-March--Visit from TSE who is starting mag, Criterion

Apr 14--TSE invites VW to submit to Criterion (?one chapter of Dostoyevsky translations in April Criterion? (68)

Jun 18 --TSE dines at VW; reads Waste Land aloud. D; Letter to D Garnett, Oct 20.

Jul 15-7--VW Weekend with Morrells at Garsington; discuss proposal for Eliot fund to free him to write

Aug 6--VW Letter to Morrell abt. TSE fund

Sep 25 --VW writes to TSE about Fellowship Fund

Dec 3--VW Sends printed proposal for Eliot FF to Lytton Strachey and John Maynard Keynes

1923:Jan 21--TSE visits VW to discuss the Fund

Feb 12--VW Writes to JMK asking him to hire TSE as literary editor of N&A

Feb 20 --VW Writes to LS abt supporting TSE for editor Nation & Atheneum

Mar 6--VW "Impatient wi TSE's cautiousness" over N&A job

Mar 13--VW writes JMK asking him to guarantee TSE minimum of two years on N&A

Mar 23--TSE declines editorship; LW accepts

Jun 4--VW Sends two stories to TSE at Criterion; he publishes neither

Jun 24--VW Sets type for Waste Land

Jul 15--TSE and Vivien to tea wi VW; Viv nervous See Diary

Sep--Hogarth Press publishes Waste Land

Dec 17--party at TSE's -- TSE drunk (79)

1924: Mar 30--VW Attends perf of King Lear with TSE (see Diary, May 26: TSE review solemn and stately-- not like conversation)

May 5--VW declines TSE offer to pub part of Mrs.Dalloway in Criterion; instead offers "Character in Ficiton" (early Mr B and Mrs. B)

May 20--TSE comes to VW's after dinner ("sinister and pedagogic")

Jun 28-9--VW Vists Garsington wi TSE et al

mid-Oct--VW Letter to R. Aldington abt disbanding TSE Fund

Oct--Hogarth Press publishes Homage to John Dryden: Three Essays

1925: Apr 28--TSE visits VW; announces he is leaving bank

Jul 9--TSE visits VW after dinner; still hedging abt leaving bank

Sep 30--VW annoyed at TSE for "poaching" b/c he asked Herbert Read to write for Faber

1926

1927 Oct 20--VW attends dinner party at Clive Bell's at which TSE tells literary anecdotes

1928: Feb 7--VW talks to TSE abt God for two hours (TSE recently converted) (D; Letter to VB 11 Feb)

Oct 17--VW visits TSE who reads her Ash Wednesday

1929

1930: Oct 18--TSE sends VW copy of limited edition rpt. of poems by Samuel Johnson with intro essay by TSE

Nov 7--VW meets Yeats again at Ott Mor. More impressed wi Yeats than TSE

1931: Apr 16--VW reads TSE's Thoughts after Lambeth while in France with Leonard; also reads DHL, Sons and Lovers; writes in D abt. DHL being man of genius, doing same thing on different railway line (to E. Smyth, 20 Apr. & D)

1932: Aug--VW records visit by TSE and wife

Sep 2--TSE visits VW wi wife Vivienne. VW comments "she wild as Ophelia"

1933: Sep 9--TSE spends the night at Monk's House?; VW comments he is looking much younger; records conversation in D abt poetry, marriage, Keats, "infamy" of teaching engl lit

Nov 14--VW reads UPUC

Nov 28--TSE to tea with VW; talks about The Rock

1934: Jan 30--TSE to dinner wi S. Tomlin at VW's

Apr 18--TSE to dine with JM Keynes; discuss After Strange Gods

Jul 23--VW to dinner at Hutchinson's; TSE reads poems by George Barker

Nov 11--VW attends performance of TSE's Sweeny Agonistes; likes performance better than reading but doubtful that "Tom has enough of a body & brain to bring off a whole play" (D)

1935: Feb 4-- TSE to tea at VW; they discuss his criticism of A.A. Milne's recent anti-war tract, Peace wi Honour

Mar 16--TSE and S. Spender to tea wi VW; TSE talks abt play he is working on (Murder in the C), how he wrote last verse of WL in a trance

Mar 30--VW to tea wi TSE in his depressing room in vicar's home

Jun 19--TSE visits VW; talks about plays -- his (Murder) and new by Auden and Isherwood

Jul 7--TSE sends copy of Murder to VW (NB VW working on Years while TSE on Murder; possible connection in chorus/pagent?)

Sep 21-3--TSE visits VW for weekend; VW comments she has grown quite fond of him

Nov 12--VW attends performance of TSE's Murder; comments that play "acts far less well than reads: can't manage the human body: only a soliloquy." (to E. Smythe, 16 Nov.)

1936: Apr 23--VW reading TSE's Collected Poems, 1905-35; comments, held off from understanding by enchantment, incantation (to TSE; to J. Bell, 2 May)

Jul 22--VW writes to VB abt TSE "Whom I love, or could have loved, had we both been in the prime and not in the sere" (to VB, 22 July)

1937: Sep 26--Visit from TSE and others keeps VW from writing end of 3G

Dec 25--TSE sends copy of Duke of Portland's memoirs to VW

1938: Mar 21--TSE to dinner wi VW and then to see Steven Spender's play, Trial of a Judge

May 29--TSE to tea wi VW; talks of visit to Portugal and lecture on George Herbert

Jun 9--TSE given an honorary degree at Cambridge by Lord Baldwin, subject of 3rd illustration in 3G

Dec 18--TSE dines at VW; discuss play Family Reunion; VW speculates flaws in play are in "department of humour"

1939: Jan 28--VW visits Freud and children; later attends fancy-dress party with TSE who is dressed as H.H. Crippen who was hanged for murder of wife. W.B. Yeats dies (D Jan 30)

Mar 22--VW reads TSE's Family Reunion; thinks it isn't successful b/c he is lyricist not dramatist (D)

Mar 28--TSE to dinner at VW with others; TSE talks of Idea of Xtain Soc; says war is inevitable

Jun 27--TSE to tea at VW with Frank Morley

Oct 7--TSE sends Old Possum to VW; VW plans dog story "Gipsy, the Mongrel"

1940: Feb 14--TSE and Saxon Sydney-Turner to dinner at VW; literary talk (D Feb 16)

May 15--VW writes to TSE abt reading Coleridge and Shelley

May 21--TSE visits; VW struck by his egotism (D may 25)

Sep 14 --VW reminded of TSE by reading -- "mannered and stale"

Oct 17--VW recieves copy of East Coker from TSE; writes him "according to our compact, I say nothing of the printed matter"

Nov 18--VW reading H Read's autobiography; thinks of Read, TSE, Santayana and H.G. Wells as "little boys making sand castles. . . . I am the sea which demolishes those castles" (D)

1941: Jan 13--Joyce dies; VW remembers TSE talking abt Ulysses

Mar 8--VW writes to thank TSE for sending Dry Salvages