The year Woolf was born, her father, Leslie, had purchased
a house in a town called St. Ives. He christened it Talland House.
The entire family congregated there at the beginning of each summer,
and Woolf especially loved it. There was a lighthouse there, and
she could hear the roar of the crashing waves from her bedroom
window. Cornwall later provided imagery for Woolf's novels To
the Lighthouse and The Waves.
All the Stephen children, her half-brothers Gerald and
George (who were by this time on break from Eton and Cambridge
respectively) and her half-sister Stella spent long hours outside.
One sibling, however, was either kept out of the fun or sent to
sanatoriums for stretches of time–Laura. From the beginning of
her life, Woolf was susceptible to bouts of extreme nervousness,
high anxiety and madness. Having Laura, who was considered by family
doctors to be insane, in close proximity made Woolf question her
own sanity even more.
In 1894, after a hotel was built directly in front of
Talland House, blocking their lovely view of the bay, Leslie decided
to sell St. Ives and find another spot for the Stephens' holidays.
Back in London, Leslie continued work on the massive Dictionary
of National Biography. It was an exhausting, seemingly
endless project. In 1888, Leslie collapsed and took to his bed
for a number of weeks. But he was back at the project in 1890,
when he collapsed again. After a number of attempts, Julia persuaded
her husband to take a break from the book, and he did. However,
Julia was exhausting herself simply from running a household of
eight children. It was in this weakened condition that she contracted
rheumatic fever and died on May 5th, 1895. Woolf was only thirteen
years old.
Woolf would later call her mother's death "the greatest
disaster that could happen." It was a crushing blow to the children,
but it nearly killed Leslie. His grieving was so intense, so demonstrative-and
so hyperbolic-that it affected his children deeply. He wept openly
in front of the children, and began to depend on his children to
the extent that it seemed now that they were parenting him. He especially
relied on Stella, who had to fall into the role of mother since
both Vanessa and Woolf were still young girls, and since Leslie was
completely helpless. To make matters, worse, Woolf had her first
mental breakdown soon after her mother died. Stella looked after
her young stepsiblings as best she could, turning away a number
of suitors who asked for her hand in marriage.
George Duckworth, Woolf and Vanessa's handsome half-brother,
was now twenty-seven years old. He had matured into a kind, overtly
affectionate man who seemed deeply saddened not just by his mother's
death, but also by his half-sisters' grief. He comforted them,
was generous to them and made sure they were taken care of. However,
something more sinister was taking place during these comfort sessions.
Woolf's biographer and nephew Quentin Bell writes that George's
visits to console Woolf and Vanessa turned into a "nasty erotic
skirmish" and that he sexually abused the sisters. Both girls were
extremely shy and naïve, and were horrified by what was taking
place. However, they told no one. Later, when they were adults,
Woolf and Vanessa's friends would be confused by both sisters'
intense dislike for their half-brother. He seemed, to everyone
else, to be a somewhat dull, inoffensive, nice man. But George had
violated both girls, and this experience changed the way Woolf
dealt with her own sexuality for the rest of her life.
In January 1897, Woolf began keeping a diary. She would
keep a diary off and on for the rest of her life. After she died
in 1941, her husband published them. Later they would be a place
where Woolf would try to spontaneously compose, to be free from
the strictures of formal composition and to record the events of
her daily life. But when she was still just a young girl, she used
her diary to record each book she read. Meanwhile, her brothers
Thoby and Adrian were off at school. Thoby was at Clifton, were
he was doing very well. Adrian was at Westminster and, although
he was doing passably, wasn't doing quite as well academically
as Thoby. After having a break from her home studies after her
breakdown, Woolf returned to her subjects and continued to read
at a pace that even astonished her father.
Stella became ill during 1897, and remained so off and
on all year. Woolf, too, was battling bouts of sickness, though
hers were mental. Stella had married and in 1897, became pregnant.
However, after an operation designed to alleviate some of her symptoms, Stella
died in 1897. It was a shock and yet another debilitating blow to
the family structure.
