AT MONK’S HOUSE
- 4 days ago
- 2 min read
By Anne Whitehouse
PROMPT—The story I told myself ...
In her solitary bedroom at Monk’s House,
Virginia Woolf would often wake up
at three o’clock in the morning
and look out her window into darkness,
hearing the rustle of the apple orchard,
the wind rippling the meadows.
In the morning, little heaps of paper
would be piled about her bed,
sometimes the same sentence
written over and over in bottle-green ink
in her swift, slanting handwriting,
recording images and thoughts and impressions
that had come to her in the night.
She would read them aloud in her bath,
listening for rhythms and sounds.
After breakfast, in her writing room
at the end of the garden next to the church wall,
she would weave what she had written
into her work-in-progress.
In the afternoon, she would type it out
on her manual portable typewriter
and read it over after tea, making edits
that blossomed on the typescript.
After her death, her friends and family
disagreed which of her books was best.
Each had its praisers and detractors.
I have her words. I know them well.
I have come to Monk’s House
in search of the writer in the midst of her life,
riding a pony-and-trap from Lewes station,
striding across the downs to see her sister,
playing bowls on the lawn with her husband,
teaching her cook how to bake bread,
putting up gooseberry preserves,
gathering apples and deadheading flowers,
pinning a torn blouse she couldn’t be bothered
to mend, smoking a hand-rolled cheroot
in a long slender holder, sitting by the fire
in the long quiet evenings, reading.
Anne Whitehouse is the author of poetry collections: The Surveyor’s Hand, Blessings and Curses, The Refrain, Meteor Shower, Outside from the Inside, and Steady, as well as the art chapbooks, Surrealist Muse (about Leonora Carrington), Escaping Lee Miller, Frida, Being Ruth Asawa, and Adrienne Fidelin Restored. She is the author of a novel, Fall Love. Anne writes from New York, NY.
