The Hours (23 page)

It is, in fact, great good fortune.

Julia says, ‘‘Do you think I should make a plate for Richard’s mother?’’ ‘‘No,’’ Clarissa says. ‘‘I’ll go get her.’’ She returns to the living room, to Laura Brown. Laura smiles

wanly at Clarissa—who could possibly know what she thinks or feels? Here she is, then; the woman of wrath and sorrow, of pathos, of dazzling charm; the woman in love with death; the victim and torturer who haunted Richard’s work. Here, right here in this room, is the beloved; the traitor. Here is an old woman, a retired librarian from Toronto, wearing old woman’s shoes.

And here she is, herself, Clarissa, not Mrs. Dalloway anymore; there is no one now to call her that. Here she is with another hour before her.

‘‘Come in, Mrs. Brown,’’ she says. ‘‘Everything’s ready.’’

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Ac
k nowl edg ment s

I
wa
s helped enormously in the revising of this book by Jill Ciment, Judy Clain, Joel Conarroe, Stacey D’Erasmo, Bonnie Friedman, Marie Howe, and Adam Moss. Research, technical advice, and other forms of aid were generously provided by Dennis Dermody, Paul Elie, Carmen Gomezplata, Bill Hamilton, Ladd Spiegel, John Waters, and Wendy Welker. My agent, Gail Hochman, and my editor, Jonathan Galassi, are secular saints. Tracy O’Dwyer and Patrick Giles have provided more in the way of general inspiration than they may know, by reading as widely, discerningly, and voluptuously as they do. My parents and sister are great readers too, though that does not begin to account for their contributions. Donna Lee and Cristina Thorson remain essential in more ways than I can enumerate here.

Three Lives and Company, a bookstore owned and operated

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b
y Jill Dunbar and Jenny Feder, is a sanctuary and, to me, the center of the civilized universe. It has for some time been the most reliable place to go when I need to remember why novels are still worth the trouble they take to write.

I received a residency from the Engelhard Foundation and a grant from the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation, both of which mattered considerably.

I am deeply grateful to all.

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A
Note on So ur ces

W
hil
e Virginia Woolf, Leonard Woolf, Vanessa Bell, Nelly Boxall, and other people who actually lived appear in this book as fictional characters, I have tried to render as accurately as possible the outward particulars of their lives as they would have been on a day I’ve invented for them in 1923. I depended for information on a number of sources, most prominently two magnificently balanced and insightful biographies: Virginia Woolf: A Biography by Quentin Bell, and Virginia Woolf by Hermione Lee. Also essential were Virginia Woolf: The Impact of Childhood Sexual Abuse on Her Life and Work by Louise de Salvo, Virginia Woolf by James King, Selected Letters of Vanessa Bell edited by Regina Marler, Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf by Phyllis Rose, A Marriage of True Minds: An Intimate Portrait of Leonard and Virginia Woolf by George Spater and Ian Parsons, and Beginning Again: An Autobiography of the

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Year
s 1911 to 1918 and Downhill All the Way: An Autobiography of the Years 1919 to 1939, by Leonard Woolf. A chapter on Mrs. Dalloway in Joseph Boone’s book Libidinal Currents: Sexuality and the Shaping of Modernism was illuminating, as was an article by Janet Malcolm, ‘‘A House of One’s Own,’’ which appeared in The New Yorker in 1995. I also learned a great deal from the introductions to various editions of Mrs. Dalloway: Maureen Howard’s in the Harcourt Brace & Co. edition, Elaine Showalter’s in the Penguin, and Claire Tomalin’s in the Oxford. I am indebted to Anne Olivier Bell for collecting and editing Woolf ’s diaries, to Andrew McNeillie for assisting her, and to Nigel Nicolson and Joanne Trautmann for collecting and editing Woolf ’s letters. When I visited Monk’s House in Rodmell, Joan Jones was gracious and informative. To all these people, I offer my thanks.