The Journey Not the Arrival Matters: An Autobiography of the Years 1939-1969

117 Pages·1969·6.89 MB·English

by  Leonard Woolf

I_
THE JOURNEY NOT THE
ARRIVAL MATTERS
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
OF THE YEARS
1939 to 1969
THE JOURNEY
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
NOT THE ARRIVAL
History and Politics
INTERNATIONAL GOVERNMENT
MATTERS
EMPIRE AND COMMERCE IN AFRICA
CO-OPERATION AND THE FUTURE OF INDUSTRY
SOCIALISM AND CO-OPERATION
FEAR AND POLITICS
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY
IMPERIALISM AND CIVILIZATION
AFTER THE DELUGE VOL. I
AFTER THE DELUGE VOL. II OF THE YEARS 1939-1969
QUACK, QUACK I
PRINCIPIA POLITICA
BARBARIANS AT THE GATE
THE WAR FOR PEACE By
LEONARD WOOLF
Criticism
HUNTING THE HIGHBROW
ESSAYS ON LITERATURE, HISTORY AND POLITICS
Ficffim
THE VILLAGE IN THE JUNGLE
STORIES OF THE EAST
THE WISE VIRGINS
Drama
THE HOTEL
Autobiography
SOWING, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARS 1880 TO 1904
GROWING •AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARS1904T01911
BEGINNING AGAIN' AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE YEARS
1911 TO 1918
DOWNHILL ALL THE WAY, AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF THE
YEARS 1919 TO 1939
A CALENDAR OF CONSOLATION, A COMFORTING
THOUGHT FOR EVERY DAY IN THE YEAR
I973
THE HOGARTH PRESS
LONDON
Published by
The Hogarth Press Ltd
42 William IV Street
London W.C.2 CONTENTS
•
Clarke, Irwin & Co. Ltd Chapter I Virginia's Death 9
Toronto
Chapter II The Hogarth Press 97
First published October r969 Chapter III 1941-1945 127
Second impression October 1969
Third impression May 1970 Chapter IV All our Yesterdays 173
Fourth impression No'Vemher 1973
Index 211
ISBN 0 7012. 0326 9
©
M. T. Parsons, 1969
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form, or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording
or otherwise, without the prior permission of
The Hogarth Press Ltd.
Printed in Great Britain by
Redwood Press Limited
Trowbridge, Wiltshire
ILLUSTRATIONS
I Monks House, Rodmell, entrance Facing page 2 8
Monks House, sitting-room
2 Monks House in Summer
Monks House in Winter
Garden-View to Mt Caburn
3 Louie 44
Trekkie
4 Monks House: Garden in evening 45
Monks House
5 In Israel: Trekkie by the Sea of Galilee 76
In Israel: The Author by the Sea of Galilee
6 In Israel: View from the Kibbutz 77
Mr and Mrs Fernando, the Author,
and Trekkie
7 In Ceylon: Meeting the elephant
In Ceylon: Hamhantota
8 In Ceylon: Katamaran 93
In Ceylon: Anuradhapura
9 Receiving Honorary Degree at Sussex 24
I
University
Malcolm Muggeridge interviewing the
Author
IO Thanking for the £rooo. John Betjeman, I25
the Hon. David Smith, and the Author
I I After-Dinner Speech to Psycho-Analysts I40
The New Statesman Board of Directors
I2 The Pleasures of Old Age: Animals Chapter One
Father and Son
VIRGINIA'S DEATH
Grandmother, Mother and Daughter
Family of Cats
I3 Dogs J72 T HE second of the great world wars through which I
have lived began on September 3, I939· Twenty-five
I4 The Pleasures of Old Age I73 years before, the great war of I 9 r 4 on a summer day in
Bowls August had come upon us, upon our generation and in
People deed upon all the generations of Europe, historically and
psychologically, a bolt from the blue. It was as if one had
IS The Pleasures of Old Age I88
been violently hit on tire head, and dimly realized that one
Writing
was involved in a dreamlike catastrophe. For a hundred
Typewriting years a kind of civilization seemed to have been spreading
I6 The Pleasures of Old Age over and out of Europe so that an Armageddon had be
come an anachronistic impossibility or at least improba
Gardening
bility. There had been wars and we still prayed automati
cally on Sundays to a very anachronistic God to deliver us
from "battle" as from murder and sudden death, from the
"crafts and assaults of the devil" and from "fornication,
and all other deadly sins"; but the wars were local or
parochial wars and millions of people had lived and died
witlrout hearing the drums and tramplings of any con
quest, or had had the remotest chance of standing "on the
perilous edge of battle".
The psychology of September I939 was terribly differ
ent from that of August I 9 I 4· People of my generation
knew now exactly what war is-its positive horrors of
death and destruction, wounds and pain and bereavement
and brutality, but also its negative emptiness and desola
tion of personal and cosmic boredom, the feeling that one
9
THE JOURNEY NOT THE ARRIVAL MATTERS VIRGINIA'S DEATH
is endlessly waiting in a dirty, grey railway station waiting Europeans had slipped into the hands of a sadistic mad
room, a cosmic railway station waiting-room, with nothing man. When one listened on the air to the foaming hysteria
to do but wait endlessly for the next catastrophe. We of a speech by the Fuhrer at some rally, whipping up the
knew that war and civilization in the modern world are savage hysteria of thousands of his Nazi supporters, one
incompatible, that the war of I 9 I4 had destroyed the hope felt that Germany and the Germans were now infected
that human beings were becoming civilized-a hope not with his insanity. As the years went by, it became clear
unreasonable at the beginning of the twentieth century. that those in power in Britain and France would offer no
The Europe of I933 was infinitely more barbarous and real resistance to Hitler. Life became like one of those
degraded than that of I9I4 or I9I9. In Russia for more terrible nightmares in which one tries to flee from some
than a decade there had ruled with absolute power a malignant, nameless and formless horror, and one's legs
government, a political party, and a dictator who, on the refuse to work, so that one waits helpless and frozen with
basis of a superhuman doctrinal imbecility, had murdered fear for inevitable annihilation. After the Nazi invasion of
millions of their fellow-Russians because they were Austria one waited helpless for the inevitable war.
peasants who were not quite so poor as the poorest pea It was this feeling of hopelessness and helplessness, the
sants; the communists, being communists, were continu foreknowledge of catastrophe with the forces of history
ally torturing and murdering their fellow-communists on completely out of control, which made the road downhill
such grounds as that they were either right deviationists to war and the outbreak of war so different in 1939 from
or left deviationists. In Italy there was established a what they had been twenty-five years before. A few facts
government and dictator who, with a political doctrine connected with this foreknowledge and despair are worth
purporting to be the exact opposite of Russian com recollecting. In the year before the outbreak of the war I
munism, produced, much less efficiently, exactly the same was asked by Victor Gollancz, Harold Laski, and John
results of savage stupidity. In Germany the same pheno Strachey to write a book for the Left Book Club. I wrote a
mena had appeared as in Russia and Italy, but the bar book to which I gave the title Barbarians at the Gate. I
barism of Hitler and the Nazis showed itself, in the years began by quoting "words written about twenty-five
from I933 to I939, to be much nastier, more menacing, centuries ago" by Jeremiah, "the father of communal
more insane than even the barbarism of Stalin and the lamentation", lamenting the destruction of a civilization
communists. by barbarians, who have burnt incense to strange gods,
In many ways, therefore, the last years of peace before filled Jerusalem with the blood of innocents, and burnt
war broke upon us in I 9 3 9 were the most horrible period their sons with fire for burnt offerings unto Baal-"there
of my life. After I933 as one crisis followed upon another, fore, behold, the days come that this place shall no more
engineered by Adolf Hitler, one gradually realized that be called Tophet, nor The valley of the son of Hinnom,
power to determine history and the fate of Europe and all but The valley of slaughter". I went on to point out
IO I I
r
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VIRGINIA'S DEATH
THE JOURNEY NOT THE ARRIVAL MATTERS
about authoritarianism in the Russia of Stalin. The bar
(nearly thirty years ago) the difference between I?38 and
barians were already within the gates both in Moscow and
I 9 I 4, for "when you opened your newspaper m those
Berlin; to conceal or gloss over the truth in the com
days, you did not read of the wholesal~ to~tur.e, persecu
munist half of Europe would make disingenuous nonsense
tion, expropriation, imprisonment or hqmdat!On of te~s
of my book. I refused to budge, and the discussion went
of thousands or hundreds of thousands of persons, classi
on for two or three hours, becoming more and more diffi
fied or labelled for destruction as social-democrats, com
cult, as warmth increased on their side of the room and
munists, Jews, Lutheran pastors, Roman. Catholics,
frigidity on mine. The book was published unaltered and
capitalists, or kulaks". I insisted. that .the ultt~ate threat
unmodified, and I can console or even congratulate myself
to civilization was not so much m thts barbartsm of the
that today, if they were alive-alas, all three are dead
barbarians as in the disunity among the civilized, and I
my three editors would agree with everything which I
made the correct and sad prophecy:
wrote.
"It is practically certa.in t?at economics,. a w~r, or That evening when I got up to go, I felt that I had not
both will destroy the Fasctst dtctators and thetr regtmes.
ingratiated myself with my three friends, all of whom I
But that does not mean that civilization will automati
liked very much, both in private and public life. There
cally triumph over barbarism." was a slight cloud, slight tension in the room, but I am
glad to remember that, before I went out, an absurd little
I have one amused recollection connected with that
incident entirely dispersed them. On the wall opposite to
book. When I sent in the MS, I received a troubled letter
where I had been sitting was a picture which through the
from Victor· the three editors liked the book very much,
long, rather boring and exasperating, argumentative dis
he said, but 'they were worried ab?ut my criticism of. the
cussion I had frequently looked at with pleasure and relief.
Soviet Government and commumsm, would I constder
In gratitude to the painter, when I said good-night to
toning it down? I replied that I was willing ~o consider any
Victor, I asked him who had painted it and added that I
precise and particular criticisms or suggestiOns for altera
had got a great deal of pleasure by looking at it. I could
tions but I was not prepared to modify my views on the
not have said anything to give Victor more pleasure or
grou~ds of expediency. In the end it was ~ecide~ that we
more effectively relieve the tension, for the painter was his
should all four meet and discuss the MS m detatl face to
wife. I left the room, not under a cloud, but in a glow of
face. I met the editors in Victor's office after dinner on
good-will and friendship.
July 1-4, I 939· They were much upset by my criticism of
To return to the psychology of the years before the war,
the Russian communists and their government and pressed
one only gradually became aware of the savage barbarism
me to modify it. The modifications whic~ they a~ked for
of the Nazis in Germany and of the inevitability of war,
would I felt, be dishonest, from my pomt of vtew, for
but I still remember moments of horrified enlightenment.
they ~ould obscure what, in my opinion, was the truth
I3
I2
THE JOURNEY NOT THE ARRIVAL MATTERS VIRGINIA'S DEATH
When a Jew shot a German diplomatist in Paris, _the face. There was in fact something much more savage and
Government instigated an indiscriminate pogrom agamst sinister beneath the surface, and in the next few years one
Jews throughout Germany. Jews were hun_ted ~own, occasionally caught a glimpse of it. For instance, just
beaten up and humiliated everywhere publicly m the before the war Adrian Stephen learnt that a German
streets oft~wns. I saw a photograph of a Jew being dragged friend of his was in grave danger from the Nazis, and,
by storm troopers out of a shop in one of the main with influential support behind him, he went to Berlin to
streets in Berlin; the fly-buttons of the man's trousers had try to get his friend out of Germany. He conducted some
been torn open to show that he was circumcise~ and there very strange and complicated negotiations in the course of
fore a Jew. On the man's face was the hombl~ l~ok of which he saw something of what the Nazis were doing and
blank suffering and despair which from the begmnmg of meant to do, and also of the desperate plight of their
human history men have seen under the c~~wn of ~h?rns victims. The account of his experiences still further
on the faces of their persecuted and humthated vtcttms. opened one's eyes·-<me looked into the abyss. As a result
In this photograph what was even more horrible was ~he of that vision of the German brutality, when war had actu
look on the faces of respectable men and women, standmg ally come and one had to face the possibility, if not proba
on the pavement, laughing at the victim.* bility, of invasion, Adrian told us that he would commit
As I recorded in Downhill.dll The Way,t when I,drove suicide rather than fall into German hands, and that he
through Germany in I935> "we di_d n~t enjoy this; there had provided himself with means of doing so; he offered
was something sinister and menacmg m the Germany of to Virginia and me, who would certainly have been among
I 9 3 5. There is a crude and savage silliness in the Ger~an the proscribed, a portion of this protective poison. I gather
tradition which, as one drove through the sunny Bavanan from Harold Nicolson's memoirs that he and Vita pro
countryside, one felt beneath the surface an~ saw, _above vided themselves with a similar "bare bodkin", so that
it, in the gigantic notices outside the villages mformm? us they might make their quietus in order to avoid the fate
that Jews were not wanted." In 1935, however, Httler which would be theirs if they fell into German hands.
had been in power only two years, and one felt only Here again is terrible evidence of the difference in
vaguely "this crude and savage silliness" beneath the sur- savagery between the Europe of 1939 and I9 14. For here
in 1939 were five ordinary intelligent people in England,
• I feel something peculiarly terribl~ i';l ~e stati~ horror of that
coolly and prudently supplying themselves with means
photograph, the frozen record of the. v1ct1m s despa~r an_d the spec
tators' enjt yment. Even more hornble ~nd hauntmg ts a photo for committing suicide in order to avoid the tortures
graph, published after the war, of a long !me ofJews, men, women which almost certainly awaited them if the Germans ever
and children, being driven naked down a path m~o a gas chamber.
got hold_ of them. It is inconceivable that anyone in
Here again one sees visually bef?re one the barbansm of the human
Englandm I 914 would have dreamt of committing suicide
race in the middle of the twentieth century.
if the Kaiser's armies had invaded England.
t Page 192.
IS
THE JOURNEY NOT THE ARRIVAL MATTERS VIRGINIA'S DEATH
In writing an autobiography covering the years I939 forget the sight; it haunted him; it made him hate all
to 94 5 one should, I think, try somehow or other Germans.
I
objectively to face the facts about the horrible savagery of "It made him hate all Germans"-the sentence haunts
Hitler and the Germans. There was something insane in me, just as the face of the well-dressed woman in the
Hitler's genocide; in his writings, recorded conversation, p~otograph laughing at the tortured face of the Jew with
and acts; in the conception and the execution of his colos his fly buttons torn open and the bewildered faces of the
sal plan for killing in cold blood millions of human beings na~ed women and children in the other photograph being
merely because they belonged to a race or religion which dnven down the narrow valley by the German uniformed
he did not like-Jews, Poles, or gipsies. But this sadistic guards into the death chamber haunt me. The callous
nightmare of an insane megalomaniac was and could be cruelty, the pitilessness, the dreadful senselessness of
executed only by hundreds, by thousands of ordinary sane those persecutors and murderers, and the hatred of all
Germans. They killed in various ways, but mainly by Germans which they generated in the Dutchman are the
driving into lethal gas chambers six or seven million stigmata of the world in which I have lived since I9I . I
4
human beings with the greatest efficiency and the most feel the hatred welling up in myself, and yet I hate the
appalling cruelty. The doctors who performed their dis hatred,_ knowing it to be neither rational nor objective.
gusting experiments and operations on their victims, the There IS an old well-worn tag which says that one cannot
commandants and guards who year after year starved and condemn a nation, and there is some truth in it. Yet the
tortured millions of their fellow-citizens in the German scale of German cruelty and barbarism under Hitler in
concentration camps, seemed to be infected with Hitler's the years from I 9 3 3 to I 945 is so colossal that it seems to
sadistic insanity. One hears occasionally quite casually of be different in quality or kind from the barbarism of other
facts which show how widespread among the Germans European peoples.
was this inhuman cruelty. A Dutchman, a manual worker, These horrible events and their effect upon personal
told me that, when the Germans occupied Holland, he and communal psychology in the world in which I have
had to work for them on an airfield. On a railway line had to spend my life s:em to me of profound importance;
near by they loaded Jews into cattle trucks to be taken to understand them IS also profoundly important. To
off to Germany, where they were destroyed. One day he u~derstand. them, at least to some extent, one must, I
saw a small child, frightened and crying, pull away from th_mk, ~onsider t~e nature and history of cruelty. Mon
his mother so that she could not get up into the truck. taigne m one of his essays writes:
A German guard caught hold of the child by one leg
and flung him, as if he were a sack of corn, up into the Amongst all other vices there is none I hate more
air and over the side so that he fell onto the floor of than cruelty, both by nature and judgement, as the ex
the truck. The Dutchman told me that he could never tremest of all vices. But it is with such an yearning and
I6 I7
THE JOURNEY NOT THE ARRIVAL MATTERS VIRGINIA'S DEATH
fainthartednesse, that if I see but a chickins neck pulled of and passionate interest in the individuality of himself
off, or a pigge stickt, I cannot chuse but grieve, and I and of all other human beings.
cannot well endure a seelie, dew bedabled hare to The combination in Montaigne of intense hatred of
groane, when she is seized upon by houndes. cruelty and intense awareness of individuality is not
fortuitous. There is no place for pity or humanity in a
I agree with Montaigne, there is nothing more horrible society in which human beings are not regarded as in
in human beings than human cruelty. But it is not just a dividual human beings, but as impersonal classified pegs in
question of liking or disliking or tolerating a vice or a a rigidly organized society. It is only if you feel that every
virtue. I am writing these words in September I 967; it is he or she has an "I" like your own "I", only if everyone
four hundred years ago that Montaigne wrote the sentence is to you an individual, that you can feel as Montaigne did
quoted above-he may well have been sitting in the tower about cruelty. It is the acute consciousness of my own
on the wall of his chateau in Montaigne on a September individuality which makes me realize that I am I, and
morning of I 567 when he wrote it. He was, I think, the what pain, persecution, death means for this "I". For me
first person in the world to express this intense, personal "death is the enemy", the ultimate enemy, for it is death
horror of cruelty. He was, too, the first completely which will destroy, wipe out, annihilate me, my individu
modern man; he was pre-eminently a man of the Renais ality, my "I". What is so difficult to understand and feel
sance, that movement in the minds of men and therefore is that all other human beings, that even the chicken, the
in history which created a new civilization, modern civili pig, and the dew bedabled hare, each and all have a pre
zation which began in the Renaissance of the fourteenth cisely similar "I" with the same feelings of personal plea
century and was destroyed in I 9 I 4· An integral part in sure and pain, the same fearful consciousness of death,
that new civilization was the revolution in man's attitude that destroyer of this unique "I". In the civilization which
to man. Before the Renaissance in aJI previous civiliza developed from the Renaissance the ultimate communal
tions the individuality of the individual human being was ideal was defined in the famous liberty, equality, fraternity
only dimly realized and counted for little or nothing in of the French Revolution. But those words only translate
the ethics and organization of society; men, women, and into social and political terms the consciousness of univer
children were not individuals, were in no sense "l's", they sal individuality and the right of everyone to be treated as
were anonymous, impersonal members of classes or castes. an individual, a free fellow-human being. The develop
In the middle of the fourteenth century this medieval atti ment of a civilization-its beliefs, ideals, and institutions
tude towards human beings, which was the basis of -is a long and oscillating process. In the years between
medieval society, began to give way to an uneasy aware the life of Montaigne and the 9 4 war there was a con
I I
ness of the individuality of the individual. Montaigne was tinual ebb and flow in the struggle for the emergence of
the first completely modern man in his intense awareness the individual, for the right of everyone to be treated
IS 19