rain window against death

She went upstairs, step by step, very slowly. When she came to the
bedroom door with the jugs and glasses on the table outside, she paused.
The sour-sweet smell of illness slightly sickened her. She could not force
herself to go in. Through the little window at the end of the passage she
could see flamingo-coloured curls of cloud lying on a pale-blue sky.
After the dusk of the drawing-room, her eyes dazzled. She seemed fixed
there for a moment by the light. Then on the floor above she heard
children's voices—Martin and Rose quarrelling.
"Don't then!" she heard Rose say. A door slammed. She paused. Then
she drew in a deep breath of air, looked once more at the fiery sky, and
tapped on the bedroom door.
The nurse rose quietly; put her finger to her lips, and left the room.


There were so many of them in the room that she could get no further than the
doorway. She could see two nurses standing with their backs to the wall
opposite. One of them was crying—the one, she observed, who had only
come that afternoon. She could not see the bed from where she stood.
But she could see that Morris had fallen on his knees. Ought I to kneel
too? she wondered. Not in the passage, she decided. She looked away;
she saw the little window at the end of the passage. Rain was falling;
there was a light somewhere that made the raindrops shine. One drop
after another slid down the pane; they slid and they paused; one drop
joined another drop and then they slid again. There was complete silence
in the bedroom.

Is this death? Delia asked herself. For a moment there seemed to be
something there. A wall of water seemed to gape apart; the two walls
held themselves apart. She listened. There was complete silence. Then
there was a stir, a shuffle of feet in the bedroom and out came her father,
stumbling.
"Rose!" he cried. "Rose! Rose!" He held his arms with the fists clenched
out in front of him.
You did that very well, Delia told him as he passed her. It was like a
scene in a play. She observed quite dispassionately that the raindrops
were still falling. One sliding met another and together in one drop they
rolled to the bottom of the window-pane.


from The Years, by V. Woolf


.

the silence was complete

She set one in the front room, one in the back room. Then she went, creaking in her cheap
shoes, to the window and drew the curtains. They slid with a familiar
click along the brass rod, and soon the windows were obscured by thick
sculptured folds of claret-coloured plush. When she had drawn the curtains
in both rooms, a profound silence seemed to fall upon the drawingroom.
The world outside seemed thickly and entirely cut off. Far away
down the next street they heard the voice of a street hawker droning; the
heavy hooves of van horses clopped slowly down the road. For a moment
wheels ground on the road; then they died out and the silence was
complete.

from V. Woolf, The Years

.

don't be caught looking

She got up as if she were going somewhere. But she stopped. Then she
strolled over to the window that looked out onto the street. The houses
opposite all had the same little front gardens; the same steps; the same
pillars; the same bow windows. But now dusk was falling and they
looked spectral and insubstantial in the dim light. Lamps were being lit;
a light glowed in the drawing-room opposite; then the curtains were
drawn, and the room was blotted out. Delia stood looking down at the
street. A woman of the lower classes was wheeling a perambulator; an
old man tottered along with his hands behind his back. Then the street
was empty; there was a pause. Here came a hansom jingling down the
road. Delia was momentarily interested. Was it going to stop at their
door or not? She gazed more intently. But then, to her regret, the cabman
jerked his reins, the horse stumbled on; the cab stopped two doors lower
down.
"Someone's calling on the Stapletons," she called back, holding apart
the muslin blind. Milly came and stood beside her sister, and together,
through the slit, they watched a young man in a top-hat get out of the
cab. He stretched his hand up to pay the driver.
"Don't be caught looking," said Eleanor warningly. The young man ran
up the steps into the house; the door shut upon him and the cab drove
away.
But for the moment the two girls stood at the window looking into the
street. The crocuses were yellow and purple in the front gardens. The almond
trees and privets were tipped with green. A sudden gust of wind
tore down the street, blowing a piece of paper along the pavement; and a
little swirl of dry dust followed after. Above the roofs was one of those
red and fitful London sunsets that make window after window burn
gold. There was a wildness in the spring evening; even here, in Abercorn
Terrace the light was changing from gold to black, from black to gold.
Dropping the blind, Delia turned, and coming back into the drawingroom,
said suddenly:
"Oh my God!"


from V. Woolf, The Years



.

the voice of the beauty of the world

Then indeed peace had come. Messages of peace breathed from the sea to the shore. Never to break its sleep any more, to lull it rather more deeply to rest, and whatever the dreamers dreamt holily, dreamt wisely, to confirm—what else was it murmuring—as Lily Briscoe laid her head on the pillow in the clean still room and heard the sea. Through the open window the voice of the beauty of the world came murmuring, too softly to hear exactly what it said—but what mattered if the meaning were plain? entreating the sleepers (the house was full again; Mrs Beckwith was staying there, also Mr Carmichael), if they would not actually come down to the beach itself at least to lift the blind and look out.

To the Lighthouse, V. Woolf 

.

life, in the room opposite

Nothing could be slow enough; nothing last too long. No pleasure could equal, she thought, straightening the chairs, pushing in one book on the shelf, this having done with the triumphs of youth, lost herself in the process of living, to find it, with a shock of delight, as the sun rose, as the day sank. Many a time had she gone, at Bourton when they were all talking, to look at the sky; or seen it between people's shoulders at dinner; seen it in London when she could not sleep. She walked to the window. 

It held, foolish as the idea was, something of her own in it, this country sky, this sky above Westminster. She parted the curtains; she looked. Oh, but how surprising!—in the room opposite the old lady stared straight at her! She was going to bed. And the sky. It will be a solemn sky, she had thought, it will be a dusky sky, turning away its cheek in beauty. But there it was—ashen pale, raced over quickly by tapering vast clouds. It was new to her. The wind must have risen. She was going to bed, in the room opposite. It was fascinating to watch her, moving about, that old lady, crossing the room, coming to the window. Could she see her? It was fascinating, with people still laughing and shouting in the drawing-room, to watch that old woman, quite quietly, going to bed. She pulled the blind now. The clock began striking. The young man had killed himself; but she did not pity him; with the clock striking the hour, one, two, three, she did not pity him, with all this going on. There! the old lady had put out her light! the whole house was dark now with this going on, she repeated, and the words came to her, Fear no more the heat of the sun. She must go back to them. But what an extraordinary night! She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it; thrown it away. The clock was striking. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. He made her feel the beauty; made her feel the fun. But she must go back. She must assemble. She must find Sally and Peter. And she came in from the little room.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

.

of infinite richness, this life

Beauty anyhow. Not the crude beauty of the eye. It was not beauty pure and simple—Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stockings drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants. Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life.

V. Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway

.

the climax--when she opens the window & the moth comes in

Now about this book, The Moths. How am I to begin it? And what is it to be? I feel no great impulse; no fever; only a great pressure of difficulty. Why write it then? Why write at all? Every morning I write a little sketch to amuse myself. I am not trying to tell a story. Yet perhaps it might be done in that way. A mind thinking. They might be islands of light---islands in the stream that I am trying to convey: life itself going on. The current of the moths flying strongly this way. A lamp & a flower pot in the centre. The flower can always be changing. But there must be more unity between each scene than I can find at present. Autobiography it might be called. How am I to make one lap, or act, between the coming of the moths, more intense than another; if there are only scenes? One must get the sense that this is the beginning; this the middle; that the climax--when she opens the window & the moth comes in. I shall have the two different currents--the moths flying along; the flower upright in the centre; a perpetual crumbling & renewing of the plant. In its leaves she might see things happen. But who is she? I am very anxious that she should have no name. I don't want a Lavinia or a Penelope: I want 'She'. But that becomes arty, Liberty, greenery yallery somehow: symbolic in loose robes. Of course I can make her think backwards & forwards; I can tell stories. But that's not it. Also I shall do away with exact place & time. Anything may be out of the window--a ship--a desert--London.

Virginia Woolf about the novel The Waves, initially called The Moths (diary entry, 9 April 1930)
(my italics)
.

reveries and memories at the open window

Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.

For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach.

What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?"—was that it?—"I prefer men to cauliflowers"—was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on to the terrace—Peter Walsh. He would be back from India one of these days, June or July, she forgot which, for his letters were awfully dull; it was his sayings one remembered; his eyes, his pocket-knife, his smile, his grumpiness and, when millions of things had utterly vanished—how strange it was!—a few sayings like this about cabbages.

Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway 

.

past lighted windows

What with the silence, and the possibility of walking out, at any moment over long wonderfully coloured roads to cliffs with the sea beneath, and coming back past lighted windows to one’s tea and fire and book - and then one has thoughts and a conception of the world and moments like a dragon fly in air - with all this I am kept very lively in my head.

Virginia Woolf, from a letter to Clive Bell dated 26 December 1909. 


.