Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf (best novels to read for students .TXT) 📖

then are buried at Highgate.

 

Stone lies solid over the British Museum, as bone lies cool over the

visions and heat of the brain. Only here the brain is Plato’s brain and

Shakespeare’s; the brain has made pots and statues, great bulls and

little jewels, and crossed the river of death this way and that

incessantly, seeking some landing, now wrapping the body well for its

long sleep; now laying a penny piece on the eyes; now turning the toes

scrupulously to the East. Meanwhile, Plato continues his dialogue; in

spite of the rain; in spite of the cab whistles; in spite of the woman

in the mews behind Great Ormond Street who has come home drunk and cries

all night long, “Let me in! Let me in!”

 

In the street below Jacob’s room voices were raised.

 

But he read on. For after all Plato continues imperturbably. And Hamlet

utters his soliloquy. And there the Elgin Marbles lie, all night long,

old Jones’s lantern sometimes recalling Ulysses, or a horse’s head; or

sometimes a flash of gold, or a mummy’s sunk yellow cheek. Plato and

Shakespeare continue; and Jacob, who was reading the Phaedrus, heard

people vociferating round the lamp-post, and the woman battering at the

door and crying, “Let me in!” as if a coal had dropped from the fire, or

a fly, falling from the ceiling, had lain on its back, too weak to turn

over.

 

The Phaedrus is very difficult. And so, when at length one reads

straight ahead, falling into step, marching on, becoming (so it seems)

momentarily part of this rolling, imperturbable energy, which has driven

darkness before it since Plato walked the Acropolis, it is impossible to

see to the fire.

 

The dialogue draws to its close. Plato’s argument is done. Plato’s

argument is stowed away in Jacob’s mind, and for five minutes Jacob’s

mind continues alone, onwards, into the darkness. Then, getting up, he

parted the curtains, and saw, with astonishing clearness, how the

Springetts opposite had gone to bed; how it rained; how the Jews and the

foreign woman, at the end of the street, stood by the pillar-box,

arguing.

 

Every time the door opened and fresh people came in, those already in

the room shifted slightly; those who were standing looked over their

shoulders; those who were sitting stopped in the middle of sentences.

What with the light, the wine, the strumming of a guitar, something

exciting happened each time the door opened. Who was coming in?

 

“That’s Gibson.”

 

“The painter?”

 

“But go on with what you were saying.”

 

They were saying something that was far, far too intimate to be said

outright. But the noise of the voices served like a clapper in little

Mrs. Withers’s mind, scaring into the air blocks of small birds, and

then they’d settle, and then she’d feel afraid, put one hand to her

hair, bind both round her knees, and look up at Oliver Skelton

nervously, and say:

 

“Promise, PROMISE, you’ll tell no one.” … so considerate he was, so

tender. It was her husband’s character that she discussed. He was cold,

she said.

 

Down upon them came the splendid Magdalen, brown, warm, voluminous,

scarcely brushing the grass with her sandalled feet. Her hair flew; pins

seemed scarcely to attach the flying silks. An actress of course, a line

of light perpetually beneath her. It was only “My dear” that she said,

but her voice went jodelling between Alpine passes. And down she tumbled

on the floor, and sang, since there was nothing to be said, round ah’s

and oh’s. Mangin, the poet, coming up to her, stood looking down at her,

drawing at his pipe. The dancing began.

 

Grey-haired Mrs. Keymer asked Dick Graves to tell her who Mangin was,

and said that she had seen too much of this sort of thing in Paris

(Magdalen had got upon his knees; now his pipe was in her mouth) to be

shocked. “Who is that?” she said, staying her glasses when they came to

Jacob, for indeed he looked quiet, not indifferent, but like some one on

a beach, watching.

 

“Oh, my dear, let me lean on you,” gasped Helen Askew, hopping on one

foot, for the silver cord round her ankle had worked loose. Mrs. Keymer

turned and looked at the picture on the wall.

 

“Look at Jacob,” said Helen (they were binding his eyes for some game).

 

And Dick Graves, being a little drunk, very faithful, and very simple-minded, told her that he thought Jacob the greatest man he had ever

known. And down they sat cross-legged upon cushions and talked about

Jacob, and Helen’s voice trembled, for they both seemed heroes to her,

and the friendship between them so much more beautiful than women’s

friendships. Anthony Pollett now asked her to dance, and as she danced

she looked at them, over her shoulder, standing at the table, drinking

together.

 

The magnificent world—the live, sane, vigorous world …. These words

refer to the stretch of wood pavement between Hammersmith and Holborn in

January between two and three in the morning. That was the ground

beneath Jacob’s feet. It was healthy and magnificent because one room,

above a mews, somewhere near the river, contained fifty excited,

talkative, friendly people. And then to stride over the pavement (there

was scarcely a cab or policeman in sight) is of itself exhilarating. The

long loop of Piccadilly, diamond-stitched, shows to best advantage when

it is empty. A young man has nothing to fear. On the contrary, though he

may not have said anything brilliant, he feels pretty confident he can

hold his own. He was pleased to have met Mangin; he admired the young

woman on the floor; he liked them all; he liked that sort of thing. In

short, all the drums and trumpets were sounding. The street scavengers

were the only people about at the moment. It is scarcely necessary to

say how well-disposed Jacob felt towards them; how it pleased him to let

himself in with his latch-key at his own door; how he seemed to bring

back with him into the empty room ten or eleven people whom he had not

known when he set out; how he looked about for something to read, and

found it, and never read it, and fell asleep.

 

Indeed, drums and trumpets is no phrase. Indeed, Piccadilly and Holborn,

and the empty sitting-room and the sitting-room with fifty people in it

are liable at any moment to blow music into the air. Women perhaps are

more excitable than men. It is seldom that any one says anything about

it, and to see the hordes crossing Waterloo Bridge to catch the non-stop

to Surbiton one might think that reason impelled them. No, no. It is the

drums and trumpets. Only, should you turn aside into one of those little

bays on Waterloo Bridge to think the matter over, it will probably seem

to you all a muddle—all a mystery.

 

They cross the Bridge incessantly. Sometimes in the midst of carts and

omnibuses a lorry will appear with great forest trees chained to it.

Then, perhaps, a mason’s van with newly lettered tombstones recording

how some one loved some one who is buried at Putney. Then the motor car

in front jerks forward, and the tombstones pass too quick for you to

read more. All the time the stream of people never ceases passing from

the Surrey side to the Strand; from the Strand to the Surrey side. It

seems as if the poor had gone raiding the town, and now trapesed back to

their own quarters, like beetles scurrying to their holes, for that old

woman fairly hobbles towards Waterloo, grasping a shiny bag, as if she

had been out into the light and now made off with some scraped chicken

bones to her hovel underground. On the other hand, though the wind is

rough and blowing in their faces, those girls there, striding hand in

hand, shouting out a song, seem to feel neither cold nor shame. They are

hatless. They triumph.

 

The wind has blown up the waves. The river races beneath us, and the men

standing on the barges have to lean all their weight on the tiller. A

black tarpaulin is tied down over a swelling load of gold. Avalanches of

coal glitter blackly. As usual, painters are slung on planks across the

great riverside hotels, and the hotel windows have already points of

light in them. On the other side the city is white as if with age; St.

Paul’s swells white above the fretted, pointed, or oblong buildings

beside it. The cross alone shines rosy-gilt. But what century have we

reached? Has this procession from the Surrey side to the Strand gone on

for ever? That old man has been crossing the Bridge these six hundred

years, with the rabble of little boys at his heels, for he is drunk, or

blind with misery, and tied round with old clouts of clothing such as

pilgrims might have worn. He shuffles on. No one stands still. It seems

as if we marched to the sound of music; perhaps the wind and the river;

perhaps these same drums and trumpets—the ecstasy and hubbub of the

soul. Why, even the unhappy laugh, and the policeman, far from judging

the drunk man, surveys him humorously, and the little boys scamper back

again, and the clerk from Somerset House has nothing but tolerance for

him, and the man who is reading half a page of Lothair at the bookstall

muses charitably, with his eyes off the print, and the girl hesitates at

the crossing and turns on him the bright yet vague glance of the young.

 

Bright yet vague. She is perhaps twenty-two. She is shabby. She crosses

the road and looks at the daffodils and the red tulips in the florist’s

window. She hesitates, and makes off in the direction of Temple Bar. She

walks fast, and yet anything distracts her. Now she seems to see, and

now to notice nothing.