10.01.2007 - 125th birthday of authoress Virginia Woolf

The authoress Virginia Woolf was born as Adeline Virginia Stephen in London on 25 January 1882.
For us today she stands for “reflection about women.” She achieved fame with her books A Room of One’s Own from 1929 and Three Guineas from 1938. Composer Ethel Smyth was friends with Virginia Woolf from around the time that A Room of One’s Own appeared. In 1933 she noted in her diary: “Virginia is arrogant intellectually beyond words—yet absolutely humble about her own great talent. Her integrity chiefly fascinates me, I think. To save your life, or her own, she could not doctor what she thinks to be the truth.”

On 21 January 1931, Virginia Woolf gave a talk in London at the National Society for Women’s Service in which she also spoke about her friend Ethel Smyth ...

“When your Secretary invited me to come here, and I so rashly agreed, she told me that your Society is concerned with the employment of women, and she suggested that I might perhaps tell you something about my own professional experiences. Well of course I am a woman; and I am employed but I wonder what professional experiences I have had?
None at any rate to compare with those of Dame Ethel Smyth. After what she has told us – after what she has not told us but we can guess for ourselves – I feel rather like an idle and frivolous pleasure boat lolloping along in the wake of an ironclad.

She is of the race of pioneers, of pathmakers. She has gone before and felled trees and blasted rocks and built bridges and thus made a way for those who come after her. Thus we honour her not only as a musician and as a writer – and when I read her books I always feel inclined to burn my own pen and take to music – for if she can toss off a masterpiece in my art without any training why should not I toss off a symphony or two without knowing a crotchet from a quaver? – we honour her not merely as a musician and writer, but also as a blaster of rocks and the maker of bridges. It seems sometimes a pity that a woman who only wished to write music should have been forced also to make bridges, but that was part of her job and she did it.

But in my own profession – literature – the way was cut long ago. I have no doubt that I owe a great deal to some mute and inglorious Ethel Smyth. I have no doubt that there were women two hundred years ago who drew upon themselves hostility and ridicule in order that it might not be ridiculous for women to write books. But when I came to hold a pen there were very few obstacles of that sort in my way. Writing was a reputable, a harmless accomplishment. The family peace was not broken by the scratching of a pen. No great demand was made upon the family purse. And pens and paper are cheap. For ten and sixpence one can buy enough paper to write – if one has a mind – all the tragedies of Shakespeare. Pianos, models, studios, north lights, masters and mistresses are not needed. One has only got to sit down and write. The cheapness of writing materials is of course the reason why women have succeeded as writers before they succeeded as painters or musicians.

Thus you see my story is compared with Dame Ethel’s very tame one…”


The Pagiters, Hogarth Press 1978, S. XXXVII - XLIV