"Clive [Bell] took his fiancée--the word seemed ludicrous to them, but there was no other--to meet his parents in their house in Wiltshire, and foolishly invited Virginia to join them. While Vanessa was obliged to express some pleasure in the visit, Virginia was under no such obligation, and all her contempt for middle-class respectability spilled into her letter to Violet Dickinson: 'The thickness of this nib and the luxury of this paper will show you that I am in a rich and illiterate house, set in its own grounds, gothic, barbaric. I dip my pen into the hoof of an old hunter.' Clive's mother was a 'little rabbit-faced woman, with wisps of white hair,' his father 'an obvious country gentleman,' and their daughters 'exactly what one would have guessed. They play hockey and beagle, and laugh at Adrian's jokes and come down to dinner in pale blue satin with satin bows in their hair.'" (28)
Nicolson, Nigel. Virginia Woolf. London: Penguin Books Ltd., Lives Series: 2000.
British middle class c.1906-7 = pale blue satin. Please, Virginia, draw us a picture?
Nicolson, Nigel. Virginia Woolf. London: Penguin Books Ltd., Lives Series: 2000.
British middle class c.1906-7 = pale blue satin. Please, Virginia, draw us a picture?