London, St. Valentine's Day, 1915

VirginiaWoolf




February 14, 1915



    We both went up toLondon this afternoon; L[eonard] to the Library, and I to ramble around theWest End, picking up clothes.  I am really in rags.  It is veryamusing.  With age too one’s less afraid of the superb shop women. These great shops are like fairies’ palaces now.  I swept about inDebenham’s and Marshall’s and so on, buying as I thought, with great discretion. The shop women are often very charming in spite of their serpentine coils ofblack hair.  Then I had tea, and rambled down to Charing Cross in thedark, making up phrases and incidents to write about.  Which is, I expect,the way one gets killed.  I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress, inwhich I sit at the moment.


             -- Virginia Woolf

FlightSub-lieutenant Reginald Warneford, RNAS, at Hendon in February 1915. 




   
     Reginald Warneford was the first pilot to destroy a Zeppelin inthe air when he brought down LZ.37 on 7 June 1915, during the second month ofthe Zeppelin bombardment of London. He was awarded the Victoria Cross.Warneford died in France on June 17, 1915 when his aircraft crashed.

Piccadilly Circus, 1915 

First Zeppelin to bomb London, May 1915

Theinterior of a restaurant at 76-77 Aldgate High Street showing the effects ofthe major Zeppelin raid on the night of 13 -14 October 1915.

Embankment Gardens, June 1915

London's"Theatreland" in the West End -- 1915 -- published during Zeppelinbombardments. Designed by MacDonald Gill (brother of celebrated Arts &Crafts movement artist and paraphiliac Eric Gill), the map is a lightheartedand colorful effort interspersed with topical jokes and anecdotes.



NOTE: This post began as a simple St. Valentine's Dayblog.  I thought it would be interesting to reprint Virginia Woolf's itinerary and some of her thoughts from ninety-sevenyears ago today.  

But my photo researchquickly took me somewhere else -- to other London 1915 venues (the war, which killed so many mothers' sons, poor and rich, was half-a-year old bymid-February) -- and it seemed appropriate to give a slightly broaderpicture given the mess we're still in today.  (Meet The New Boss, Same AsThe Old Boss, etc., etc.)  

It's so difficult asan American to imagine what it must havebeen like to anticipate and endure serial aerialbombardment.  New Yorkers (I am one)experienced 9-11, but even that corurscating, choking horror quickly became a "one-day event" for many people.  

HappySt. Valentine's Day!  I mean it.



MusicLinks:


ThePretty Things -- This Balloon Burning (from S.F. Sorrow)

 
TheKinks: Some Mother's Son (from Arthur)

A Soldier Dresses (Julian Maclaren-Ross)

      

World War I British Junior Officer (subaltern) with Sam Browne belt.

            My brotherused an open razor, leaning his head with its black widow’s peak of hairsideways and close to the mirror, for he was short-sighted; his cheeks shoneblue as the blade scraped the ladder away, with that glabrous bloom I havesince observed on the faces of certain priests, Monsieur L’Abbe among them: andmore than a trace of Jesuitical severity was stamped even now upon his featuresin repose, though this vanished when he smiled. 

Razor

           I had never seen anyone shave before – my father of course was bearded,nor would I have been admitted while he was performing his toilet – and thewhole process fascinated me:  the flickand sweep of the cut-throat steel which never drew blood, the stropping of theblade in readiness for the morrow, the astringent lotion dabbed on after. 

Strop

     There was a moment equally absorbing, when hedrew on the brown supple boots which came up below the knee and were worn withknife-creased khaki breeches.  The boots,the Sam Browne belt, and also the buttons and brasses of his tunic andgreatcoat were polished personally by my brother (for he had brought no batman)until they shone, in the case of the leather, almost purple and you could seeyour reflection in miniature in the crested brass. 

Boots

Insignia of 1st Battalion, Warwickshire

          The only regret I had (one not shared by mybrother) was that, as a subaltern, he no longer had to wear puttees; during hisfirst leaves, when he was a private, I’d enjoyed seeing him winding theseexpertly, without creases, round his legs, though I was to be thankful laterthat this practice had died out before my own enlistment.  The boots, however, more than made up for theputtees absence; then, when he’d adjusted his belt, the rimless monocle – a relicfrom the days of his roistering with which he used sometimes to give hisstartling impersonation of a Prussian officer – would be screwed into itssocket, where it remained immovable, without a cord; his cigarette lighter wasflourished at an Abdulla Egyptian in a short amber holder, and he was ready tocome down to another day.

Prussian With A Monocle

A group of World War I subalterns (Future Prime Minister Harold Macmillan second from right, top row)

Winston Churchill as a subaltern, UK 4th Hussars, February 1895

From Julian Maclaren-Ross, The Weeping And TheLaughter.  London, Rupert Hart-Davis,1953.

Post dedicated to James Reed Roberts (b. 2-22-54, d. 8-13-70)

Mr Standfast (John Buchan, 1919)

I took the train three days later from King’s Cross toEdinburgh. I went to the Pentland Hotel in Princes Street and left there asuit-case containing some clean linen and a change of clothes.  I had been thinking the thing out, and hadcome to the conclusion that I must have a base somewhere and a fresh outfit.  Then, in well-worn tweeds and with no moreluggage than a small trench kit-bag, I descended upon the city of Glasgow.

 

        I walked tothe station which Blenkiron had given me. It was a hot summer evening, and the streets were filled with bareheadedwomen and weary-looking artisans.  As Imade my way down the Dumbarton Road I was amazed at the number of able-bodiedfellows about, considering that you couldn’t stir a mile on any British frontwithout bumping up against a Glasgow battalion. Then I realized that there were such things as munitions and ships, andI wondered no more.

John Buchan:  Chapter 36 ("Andrew Amos").  
Excerpt from Mr Standfast.  London, Hodder & Stoughton, 1919

June Differences (John Clare; Charlotte Mew)

I.  John Clare

From Summer Images*

I love at early morn from the new mown swath

To see the startled frog his rout pursue

And mark while leaping oer the dripping path

         His bright sides scatter dew

And early Lark that from its bustle flyes --

          To hail his mattin new

          And watch him to the skyes

II.  Charlotte Mew

June 1915**

Who thinks of June's first rose to-day?

Only some child, perhaps, with shining eyes and rough bright hair will

               reach it down

In a green sunny lane, to us almost as far away

       As are the fearless stars from these veiled lamps of town.

       What's little June to a great broken world with eyes gone dim

       From too much looking on the face of grief, the face of dread?

               Or what's the broken world to June and him

Of the small eager hand, the shining eyes, the rough bright head?

      

*Composed 1824-32; First published 1835

** From The Rambling Sailor, 1929

Lower photograph taken near Hooge, Belgium, 6 a.m., June 16, 1915.  First attack on Bellewaarde Farm by the Liverpool Scottish, 6 am, 16 June 1915.  Photo by Private F.A. Fyfe, 'Z' Company, 1/10th King's (Liverpool) Regiment (Liverpool Scottish). Imperial War Museum catalogue number Q 49751.