THE MARK ON THE WALL
By Virginia Woolf
Perhaps it was the middle of January in the
present that I first looked
up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to
fix a date it is necessary
to remember what one saw. So now I think of
the fire; the steady film of
yellow light upon the page of my book; the
three chrysanthemums in the
round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it
must have been the winter
time, and we had just finished our tea, for I
remember that I was smoking
a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark
on the wall for the first
time. I looked up through the smoke of my
cigarette and my eye lodged for
a moment upon the burning coals, and that old
fancy of the crimson flag
flapping from the castle tower came into my
mind, and I thought of the
cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of
the black rock. Rather to
my relief the sight of the mark interrupted
the fancy, for it is an old
fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child
perhaps. The mark was a small
round mark, black upon the white wall, about
six or seven inches above
the mantelpiece.
How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new
object, lifting it a little
way, as ants carry a blade of straw so
feverishly, and then leave it. . .
If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have
been for a picture, it
must have been for a miniature--the miniature
of a lady with white
powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips
like red carnations. A
fraud of course, for the people who had this
house before us would have
chosen pictures in that way--an old picture
for an old room. That is the
sort of people they were--very interesting
people, and I think of them so
often, in such queer places, because one will
never see them again, never
know what happened next. They wanted to leave
this house because they
wanted to change their style of furniture, so
he said, and he was in
process of saying that in his opinion art
should have ideas behind it
when we were torn asunder, as one is torn from
the old lady about to pour
out tea and the young man about to hit the
tennis ball in the back garden
of the suburban villa as one rushes past in
the train.
But as for that mark, I'm not sure about it; I
don't believe it was made
by a nail after all; it's too big, too round,
for that. I might get up,
but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I
shouldn't be able to say
for certain; because once a thing's done, no
one ever knows how it
happened. Oh! dear me, the mystery of life;
The inaccuracy of thought!
The ignorance of humanity! To show how very
little control of our
possessions we have--what an accidental affair
this living is after all
our civilization--let me just count over a few
of the things lost in one
lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the
most mysterious of
losses--what cat would gnaw, what rat would
nibble--three pale blue
canisters of book-binding tools? Then there
were the bird cages, the iron
hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne
coal-scuttle, the bagatelle
board, the hand organ--all gone, and jewels,
too. Opals and emeralds,
they lie about the roots of turnips. What a
scraping paring affair it is
to be sure! The wonder is that I've any
clothes on my back, that I sit
surrounded by solid furniture at this moment.
Why, if one wants to
compare life to anything, one must liken it to
being blown through the
Tube at fifty miles an hour--landing at the
other end without a single
hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of
God entirely naked!
Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel
meadows like brown paper parcels
pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's
hair flying back like
the tail of a race-horse. Yes, that seems to
express the rapidity of
life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so
casual, all so haphazard. . .
But after life. The slow pulling down of thick
green stalks so that the
cup of the flower, as it turns over, deluges
one with purple and red
light. Why, after all, should one not be born
there as one is born here,
helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's
eyesight, groping at the
roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants?
As for saying which are
trees, and which are men and women, or whether
there are such things,
that one won't be in a condition to do for
fifty years or so. There will
be nothing but spaces of light and dark,
intersected by thick stalks, and
rather higher up perhaps, rose-shaped blots of
an indistinct colour--dim
pinks and blues--which will, as time goes on,
become more definite,
become--I don't know what. . .
And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at
all. It may even be caused
by some round black substance, such as a small
rose leaf, left over from
the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant
housekeeper--look at the
dust on the mantelpiece, for example, the dust
which, so they say, buried
Troy three times over, only fragments of pots
utterly refusing
annihilation, as one can believe.
The tree outside the window taps very gently
on the pane. . . I want to
think quietly, calmly, spaciously, never to be
interrupted, never to have
to rise from my chair, to slip easily from one
thing to another, without
any sense of hostility, or obstacle. I want to
sink deeper and deeper,
away from the surface, with its hard separate
facts. To steady myself,
let me catch hold of the first idea that
passes. . . Shakespeare. . .
Well, he will do as well as another. A man who
sat himself solidly in an
arm-chair, and looked into the fire, so--A
shower of ideas fell
perpetually from some very high Heaven down
through his mind. He leant
his forehead on his hand, and people, looking
in through the open
door,--for this scene is supposed to take
place on a summer's
evening--But how dull this is, this historical
fiction! It doesn't
interest me at all. I wish I could hit upon a
pleasant track of thought,
a track indirectly reflecting credit upon
myself, for those are the
pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even
in the minds of modest
mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely
that they dislike to hear
their own praises. They are not thoughts
directly praising oneself; that
is the beauty of them; they are thoughts like
this:
"And then I came into the room. They were
discussing botany. I said how
I'd seen a flower growing on a dust heap on
the site of an old house in
Kingsway. The seed, I said, must have been
sown in the reign of Charles
the First. What flowers grew in the reign of Charles
the First?" I
asked--(but, I don't remember the answer).
Tall flowers with purple
tassels to them perhaps. And so it goes on.
All the time I'm dressing up
the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly,
stealthily, not openly
adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch
myself out, and stretch my
hand at once for a book in self-protection.
Indeed, it is curious how
instinctively one protects the image of
oneself from idolatry or any
other handling that could make it ridiculous,
or too unlike the original
to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so
very curious after all? It
is a matter of great importance. Suppose the
looking glass smashes, the
image disappears, and the romantic figure with
the green of forest depths
all about it is there no longer, but only that
shell of a person which is
seen by other people--what an airless,
shallow, bald, prominent world it
becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we
face each other in omnibuses
and underground railways we are looking into
the mirror that accounts for
the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our
eyes. And the novelists in
future will realize more and more the
importance of these reflections,
for of course there is not one reflection but
an almost infinite number;
those are the depths they will explore, those
the phantoms they will
pursue, leaving the description of reality
more and more out of their
stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted,
as the Greeks did and
Shakespeare perhaps--but these generalizations
are very worthless. The
military sound of the word is enough. It
recalls leading articles,
cabinet ministers--a whole class of things
indeed which as a child one
thought the thing itself, the standard thing,
the real thing, from which
one could not depart save at the risk of
nameless damnation.
Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in
London, Sunday afternoon
walks, Sunday luncheons, and also ways of
speaking of the dead, clothes,
and habits--like the habit of sitting all
together in one room until a
certain hour, although nobody liked it. There
was a rule for everything.
The rule for tablecloths at that particular
period was that they should
be made of tapestry with little yellow
compartments marked upon them,
such as you may see in photographs of the
carpets in the corridors of the
royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind
were not real tablecloths.
How shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to
discover that these real
things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks,
country houses, and tablecloths
were not entirely real, were indeed half
phantoms, and the damnation
which visited the disbeliever in them was only
a sense of illegitimate
freedom. What now takes the place of those
things I wonder, those real
standard things? Men perhaps, should you be a
woman; the masculine point
of view which governs our lives, which sets
the standard, which
establishes Whitaker's Table of Precedency,
which has become, I suppose,
since the war half a phantom to many men and
women, which soon--one may
hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where
the phantoms go, the
mahogany sideboards and the Landseer prints,
Gods and Devils, Hell and so
forth, leaving us all with an intoxicating
sense of illegitimate
freedom--if freedom exists. . .
In certain lights that mark on the wall seems
actually to project from
the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I
cannot be sure, but it seems to
cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if
I ran my finger down that
strip of the wall it would, at a certain
point, mount and descend a small
tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those barrows
on the South Downs which
are, they say, either tombs or camps. Of the
two I should prefer them to
be tombs, desiring melancholy like most
English people, and finding it
natural at the end of a walk to think of the
bones stretched beneath the
turf. . . There must be some book about it.
Some antiquary must have dug
up those bones and given them a name. . . What
sort of a man is an
antiquary, I wonder? Retired Colonels for the
most part, I daresay,
leading parties of aged labourers to the top
here, examining clods of
earth and stone, and getting into
correspondence with the neighbouring
clergy, which, being opened at breakfast time,
gives them a feeling of
importance, and the comparison of arrow-heads
necessitates cross-country
journeys to the county towns, an agreeable
necessity both to them and to
their elderly wives, who wish to make plum jam
or to clean out the study,
and have every reason for keeping that great
question of the camp or the
tomb in perpetual suspension, while the
Colonel himself feels agreeably
philosophic in accumulating evidence on both
sides of the question. It is
true that he does finally incline to believe
in the camp; and, being
opposed, indites a pamphlet which he is about
to read at the quarterly
meeting of the local society when a stroke
lays him low, and his last
conscious thoughts are not of wife or child,
but of the camp and that
arrowhead there, which is now in the case at
the local museum, together
with the foot of a Chinese murderess, a
handful of Elizabethan nails, a
great many Tudor clay pipes, a piece of Roman
pottery, and the wine-glass
that Nelson drank out of--proving I really
don't know what.
No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known.
And if I were to get up at
this very moment and ascertain that the mark
on the wall is really--what
shall we say?--the head of a gigantic old
nail, driven in two hundred
years ago, which has now, owing to the patient
attrition of many
generations of housemaids, revealed its head
above the coat of paint, and
is taking its first view of modern life in the
sight of a white-walled
fire-lit room, what should I gain?--Knowledge?
Matter for further
speculation? I can think sitting still as well
as standing up. And what
is knowledge? What are our learned men save
the descendants of witches
and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods
brewing herbs,
interrogating shrew-mice and writing down the
language of the stars? And
the less we honour them as our superstitions
dwindle and our respect for
beauty and health of mind increases. . . Yes,
one could imagine a very
pleasant world. A quiet, spacious world, with
the flowers so red and blue
in the open fields. A world without professors
or specialists or
house-keepers with the profiles of policemen,
a world which one could
slice with one's thought as a fish slices the
water with his fin, grazing
the stems of the water-lilies, hanging
suspended over nests of white sea
eggs. . . How peaceful it is drown here,
rooted in the centre of the world
and gazing up through the grey waters, with
their sudden gleams of light,
and their reflections--if it were not for
Whitaker's Almanack--if it were
not for the Table of Precedency!
I must jump up and see for myself what that
mark on the wall really is--a
nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood?
Here is nature once more at her old game of
self-preservation. This train
of thought, she perceives, is threatening mere
waste of energy, even some
collision with reality, for who will ever be
able to lift a finger
against Whitaker's Table of Precedency? The
Archbishop of Canterbury is
followed by the Lord High Chancellor; the Lord
High Chancellor is
followed by the Archbishop of York. Everybody
follows somebody, such is
the philosophy of Whitaker; and the great
thing is to know who follows
whom. Whitaker knows, and let that, so Nature
counsels, comfort you,
instead of enraging you; and if you can't be
comforted, if you must
shatter this hour of peace, think of the mark
on the wall.
I understand Nature's game--her prompting to
take action as a way of
ending any thought that threatens to excite or
to pain. Hence, I suppose,
comes our slight contempt for men of
action--men, we assume, who don't
think. Still, there's no harm in putting a
full stop to one's
disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on
the wall.
Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it,
I feel that I have grasped
a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense
of reality which at once
turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High
Chancellor to the shadows of
shades. Here is something definite, something
real. Thus, waking from a
midnight dream of horror, one hastily turns on
the light and lies
quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers,
worshipping solidity,
worshipping reality, worshipping the
impersonal world which is a proof of
some existence other than ours. That is what
one wants to be sure of. . .
Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It
comes from a tree; and trees
grow, and we don't know how they grow. For
years and years they grow,
without paying any attention to us, in
meadows, in forests, and by the
side of rivers--all things one likes to think
about. The cows swish their
tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they
paint rivers so green that
when a moorhen dives one expects to see its
feathers all green when it
comes up again. I like to think of the fish
balanced against the stream
like flags blown out; and of water-beetles
slowly raiding domes of mud
upon the bed of the river. I like to think of
the tree itself:--first the
close dry sensation of being wood; then the
grinding of the storm; then
the slow, delicious ooze of sap. I like to
think of it, too, on winter's
nights standing in the empty field with all
leaves close-furled, nothing
tender exposed to the iron bullets of the
moon, a naked mast upon an
earth that goes tumbling, tumbling, all night long.
The song of birds
must sound very loud and strange in June; and
how cold the feet of
insects must feel upon it, as they make
laborious progresses up the
creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon
the thin green awning of the
leaves, and look straight in front of them
with diamond-cut red eyes. . .
One by one the fibres snap beneath the immense
cold pressure of the
earth, then the last storm comes and, falling,
the highest branches drive
deep into the ground again. Even so, life
isn't done with; there are a
million patient, watchful lives still for a
tree, all over the world, in
bedrooms, in ships, on the pavement, lining
rooms, where men and women
sit after tea, smoking cigarettes. It is full
of peaceful thoughts, happy
thoughts, this tree. I should like to take
each one separately--but
something is getting in the way. . . Where was
I? What has it all been
about? A tree? A river? The Downs? Whitaker's
Almanack? The fields of
asphodel? I can't remember a thing.
Everything's moving, falling,
slipping, vanishing. . . There is a vast
upheaval of matter. Someone is
standing over me and saying--
"I'm going out to buy a newspaper."
"Yes?"
"Though it's no good buying newspapers. .
. Nothing ever happens. Curse
this war; God damn this war! . . . All the
same, I don't see why we should
have a snail on our wall."
Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.
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Grateful thanks to Project Gutenberg
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