Fun and revealing read at Lit Hub
Somehow, it’s still wedding season, which now appears to last from March to November! Not that I’m complaining. I find weddings fascinating, for a number of reasons, but the one relevant at the moment is that a wedding can tell you a lot about a couple—both as a couple and individually. And who would I like to know more about? The people who wrote some of the best books in modern history, of course. So, just for fun, because it’s August and a Friday, I looked into what the weddings of some of my favorite writers were actually like. And some of said weddings are pretty illuminating. For instance, now I know that if I really stan for Sylvia Plath, I need to get married in my mother’s pink dress on Bloomsday, and if I want to channel Joan Didion, I need to turn my wedding into an elaborate Hitchcock reference. To which I say: noted.
Virginia Woolf & Leonard Woolf
Virginia Stephen and Leonard Woolf had a long and odd road to the altar. For one thing, it was Leonard’s friend Lytton Strachey who proposed to Virginia first, in 1909—but then instantly regretted it. He wrote to his friend Leonard Woolf a few days after, with a bizarre solution:
The day before yesterday I proposed to Virginia. As I did it, I saw that it would be death if she accepted me, and I managed, of course, to get out of it before the end of the conversation. The worst of it was that as the conversations went on, it became more and more obvious that the whole thing was impossible. The lack of understanding was so terrific! And how can a virgin be expected to understand? You see she is her name. If I were either greater or less I could have done it and I could either have dominated and soared and at last made her completely mine, or I could have been contented to go without everything that makes life important. Voilà! It was, as you may imagine, an amazing conversation. Her sense was absolute, and at times her supremacy was so great that I quavered.
Your destiny is clearly marked out for you, but will you allow it to work? You must marry Virginia. She’s sitting waiting for you, is there any objection? She’s the only woman in the world with sufficient brains, it’s a miracle that she should exist; but if you’re not careful you’ll lose the opportunity . . . She’s young, wild, inquisitive, discontended, and longing to be in love.
Leonard wrote back: “Do you think Virginia would have me? Wire to me if she accepts. I’ll take the next boat home.” Virginia thought it was a joke and ignored the whole thing. It was years later, when Leonard came back to England, that they met again. The two were married on Saturday, August 10 in 1912 at St. Pancras Registry Office. In her biography of Leonard Woolf, Victoria Glendinning describes the wedding this way:
It was a small wedding. The only other people there were Roger Fry, Gerald Duckworth, Virginia’s aunt Mary Fisher, Duncan Grant, Saxon Sydney-Turner and the young artist Frederick Etchells, a friend of Duncan and Roger’s. . . . Vanessa, deep in her own concerns, interrupted the proceedings by enquiring how one went about changing the name of a child. She did not like “Clement,” the name she had given her second son. (She was to add the name “Quentin.”) “One thing at a time, please, Madam,” said the registrar. They all went back to 46 Gordon Square. After lunch, “Clive sat down and wrote a short, painful letter to Virginia, declaring his love for both her and her husband.”
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