Set between 1900 and 1919 in picturesque Cornwall and war-blasted London, Maggie Humm’s Talland House takes Lily Briscoe from the pages of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse and tells her story outside the confines of Woolf’s novel—as a student in 1900, as a young woman becoming a professional artist, her loves and friendships, mourning her dead mother, and solving the mystery of her friend Mrs. Ramsay’s sudden death.

It’s evocative and engaging, sweeping landscapes simmering next to psychological interior exploration. Picturesque Cornwall and busy London are the backdrop for a young woman growing up, and an older woman reflecting back. We’re treated to details about the captivating Lily Briscoe and her relationship with herself, her art, and the women and men in her life. It’s a great read, from a clearly very knowledgeable writer.

I caught up with Maggie to find out more.

Why did you decide to write Talland House?

Everyone has a novel inside themselves somewhere. I wrote my first ‘novel’ aged eight, told from the point of view of an encyclopaedia who dropped on the head of a burglar to save a library. I didn’t get a gold star because the teacher said it was unrealistic ‘no-one burgles libraries Margaret.’ But libraries were my world and so I’ve always written books – before Talland House academic books. They say write about what you know and as an academic specialist in Woolf, I know about Woolf and about myself (all debut novels are autobiographical in some way).

Virginia Woolf has a very distinctive style – were you trying to echo this at all?

Initially, and almost subconsciously, I wrote with Woolf’s indirect discourse and use of multiple viewpoints. At my first reading in my Diploma of Creative Writing course the tutor Gillian Slovo quite rightly advised me to choose a less confusing style so that readers could identify with Lily. But Talland House is full of events, people and places Woolf knew and some vocabulary (‘granite and rainbow’ feature!).

Why are you interested in Virginia Woolf?

My first book Feminist Criticism: Women as Contemporary Critics has a chapter on Woolf and my interest grew from there. Like many people, I identify with Woolf’s politics: feminism, pacifism, socialism and her ideas about democratic education and living in touch with each other and with nature. In addition the Woolf societies around the world are very welcoming and sustaining with annual conferences which trigger further interest. This year even the fashion world loves Woolf with the 2020 Met Gala and Givenchy’s collection devoted to her novel Orlando.

Why did you take To the Lighthouse as your starting point, rather than another novel?

I first read To the Lighthouse as an adolescent after the death of my mother and fell in love with the mother-figure Mrs Ramsay. Later I discovered that Woolf’s mother Julia Stephen was 49 when she died and Virginia 13 – the exact ages of my mother and me when my mother died. There’s something so extraordinarily moving about mothering in To the Lighthouse, but Mrs. Ramsay dies suddenly and in parentheses (apologies to those who haven’t yet read the book!) and I knew I had to write a novel discovering how Mrs. Ramsay dies.

The book centres around Lily Briscoe’s painting – what interests you about this art form, as well as writing?

Although not trained as an art historian, I have long been a devotee of the arts in particular Bloomsbury’s dedication to different genres: murals, textiles, pottery, book design, as well as paintings, and to collaborative, decorative projects. Lily Briscoe paints Mrs. Ramsay’s portrait twice in the novel with the final version a more abstract painting, described by Woolf in terms of shapes, mass and colours, rather than only representational figures, much like her sister Vanessa Bell’s approach to art for example, Bell’s 1912 portrait of Woolf – Virginia Woolf. As Vanessa Bell said “artists, in the opinion of many are little better than lunatics [but] besides being rather mad, artists are apt to be revolutionaries”.

Did you have to do lots of historical research?

The research was huge but so enjoyable. As a Woolf scholar (my last three books focus on Woolf and the arts) I’d read all Woolf’s writings and writings by her family and friends. For Talland House I read Cornish newspapers for the times Lily is in St. Ives for weather, incidents, and atmosphere. I loved being in the airy map room at the top of the British Library looking at old photos of St. Ives for housing types and street scenes. I read artists’ memoirs, turn of the twentieth century art journals for a sense of artists’ lives and studios. I read everything on-line about World War I in London and how it felt to be there, for example, when the Germans suddenly switched from Zeppelins to Gotha bombers in 1917. Virginia Woolf herself experienced Gothas in Richmond December 1917. She wrote in her diary: “discussed the raid, which, according to the Star I bought, was the work of 25 Gothas, attacking in 5 squadrons & 2 were brought down”. I googled about music halls, other leisure pursuits, clothes, transport, and the accurate names of buildings. St. Ives and London became characters in my novel.

The most difficult task was keeping the research to a discreet underpinning not, as academics often do, glorifying it in long footnotes. Also difficult was that Lily gradually took over my life, my feelings, even my physical characteristics. She’s always early for appointments, she’s an only child herself with a dead mother, and her fingers are the shape of mine. Sometimes I wondered if I existed outside the novel.

But what the research did do was to bring me much closer than ever before, to a fuller sensation of Woolf’s worlds—the smell and feel of Talland House’s escallonia hedge, an almost bodily sense of the impact of bombs on London’s buildings, streets and inhabitants. This feeling for history and sensory experiences hopefully continues in my second novel, Rodin’s Mistress, about the tumultuous love affair of the sculptor Auguste Rodin and the painter Gwen John.

The five-strong cast (Clare Lawrence Moody, Emma D’arcy, Clare Perkins, Sean Jackson, and Guy Rhys) flit between their array of different characters. Overlapping and shared lines aren’t the characters interrupting one another, but an example of how the book shifts and shakes its way through the consciousness of the characters. The echoes of the mind are made manifest, and the shades of existence delicately shown. At times it gets a little bit confusing, but then so does Woolf’s prose. It’s a story made up of moments, and the amorphous structure that does without traditional scene and act changes beautifully represents this. 

As we’re told in the opening scene, which acts of something of an explainer, Mrs Dalloway is a ‘book about London, and lots of other things.’ This production very much focuses on the other things – relationships, identity, mental health, the self – and London is part of the back drop. The set is sparse – the scenery is a simple blue sky, and we do not once hear Big Ben chime. Instead the focus is on the entry, exit, and exposition of the actors on stage. The Arcola is a simple theatre, and the production would work well in a grander setting. No doubt it will end up doing a tour or run elsewhere. 

Mrs Dalloway is made up of the people and places which complete her. For this reason, the vast array of characters are given just as much presence as Clarissa Dalloway herself. It works, because it’s not just about one person, but ‘life, London, this moment of June.’ This moment is made up of many things, and the play conveys both the inner and outer worlds with elegance and inventiveness. Visually simple, but emotionally exploratory, this version of Mrs Dalloway is well worth getting tickets for.

Which Woolf novel is next?

But why, in a paperless postmodern world would not only someone decide to create something as archaic as a zine, but would so many people get involved?

I decided to find out, and Séan was gracious enough to indulge my curiosity and let me know…

Why did you decide to create the zine?

Simply? A real love of Woolf, that has continued from my teenage years.

There is so much admiration for Virginia in the air, she’s like an electric current that crackles through academic dialogue and cuts into the bedrooms of moody teenagers with equal fervour. She’s an impasse, a connection, an inspiration. I wanted to bridge that gap, to make scholarship more accessible for everyone and to platform those who don’t have access to journals or conferences, their words are just as important. I wanted a big, exciting, fresh discussion of Woolf, that helps us think about her in different shades, as well as reminds us of the original colours which stamped her so deeply in our memories.

What has the response been like? Is it varied and a large community?

The response has been heart-warming. In just over a month the zine is fast approaching 1,000 followers on Twitter, and has a healthy readership. The community is rich in texture, lots of Modernists; some of my own personal academic icons have spoken about it, which has left me a little struck for words. Apart from that, it has brought the Woolfians out of the woodwork from all over the globe. Younger critics, older story tellers. The discussion is really open, and I am particularly proud of some of the non-traditional responses: the art, the reviews, the poetry.

What is your personal fascination with Woolf?

Woolf writes beautifully, first and foremost. Her work makes the everyday a spiritual experience, and I find that taps into how I think somehow – the way she sees the world as fragmented, broken, up for revision and interpretation. I also find Woolf’s politics interesting, and drew a lot of strength from her words as a teenager. Being queer and young is strange, because adults don’t often talk about gay people to children. Reading about intimacy between her characters helped me touch a history that was hidden from me, made me feel like part of something bigger. If Chloe likes Olivia, that is one thing. If you are given the opportunity find out, it’s quite another.

When did it begin and why?

Around 15. I was a very awkward teenager, as you might be able to tell. My English teacher, Mr Simpson, encouraged my love of reading and brought my attention to Woolf (for which I am very grateful). From there I found Ezra Pound, Mina Loy and H.D. – I was hooked, and now I’m working on a PhD in Modernist studies.  

As you note in your introductory letter in the first issue, it’s been over a century since the first novel, The Voyage Out was published. Why do you think Virginia Woolf continues to resonate?

Perhaps people will discourage me from saying this, but I don’t think there has been an English language writer as important to our literary cultural heritage as Shakespeare apart from Woolf. She is an institution. Multiple, difficult, readable, slippery, gifted. She tore at the fabric of writing and put it together in this ridiculously beautiful tapestry. We work and rework her constantly. This is especially interesting, considering her relatively early death. She wrote scored and scores, it’s almost unfathomable. Apart from this weight, her command of words is incredible, she writes in a way people can engage with, it’s aesthetic and meaty, a stellar rendering of some of our hardest feelings, she sets the complex in amber.

Does she speak to wider society, or is her role more for creative people, or those feeling marginalised in someway, such as due to mental health or gender? 

Woolf is there to be read, if you like her. There is no point in making someone an untouchable idol, she has a lot of issues: tensions of classism, antisemitism, and so forth. But there is something compelling about her work, and we must take the golden nuggets of truth where they fall, to lean on a reference. I grew up working class and relished her books, so I don’t think she is posturing in an inaccessible way, only open to academics or creatives.

Gender-wise, we must remain pithy. There are some amazing truths in Woolf that still ring clear, but society has moved and many of her lessons need to be expanded to include women she herself could marginalise: working class women, black women, Jewish women. If we see her as part of a longer, developing discussion however, she remains vital and useful. Read her with contemporaries such as Sojourner Truth and Nella Larsen, as well as with more modern writers like Judith Butler and bell hooks. Feminism challenges itself to be better all the time, Woolf did that in the early 20th century as she is challenged now.

I usually avoid a discussion of Woolf’s mental health problems too much. I don’t like to romanticise the death of people who are mentally unwell, especially considering the allegations of sexual abuse. I do think people can gain strength from her writing though. Reading about Septimus Smith helped me think about my own mental health at a young age, and he is a character I draw on whenever I feel at a loss even now. And, it was inspiring that a woman who struggled and faltered could still produce this amazing work, she pushed through and persevered.

What’s your favourite novel?

Of all time, D.H. Lawrence’s The Rainbow. If you haven’t read it, do. People think it’s mawkish, but I think it’s brilliant. Of Woolf’s, To The Lighthouse. I have the parenthesis from the line about Mrs Ramsay’s passing tattooed on my hip, it’s haunting in some ways, but it really reminds me to focus on what is important, especially little things, which I tend to forget about. Everything passes, so we have to enjoy it while we can.

Read the zine here, and look out for the second issue, Woolf and Others, in February. And ponder your submissions for Issue 3, Woolf and Politics.

It’s pouring with rain and my feet are soaked—a far cry from the beautiful June day in which Mrs Dalloway is set. Yet Rob Smith of London Footprints takes me on a journey that immerses me in Woolf’s novel, and not only shows me London or the book, but combines the two in an immersive way that oozes everything it has to offer. It’s what Footprints of London Literary Festival is all about. By walking London novels you get to inhabit the space lived in by the characters. It’s a way to experience London from inside the book.

Mrs Dalloway could not have been set in any other city. It’s not a book that is just about the urban environment, but of specific places, and we stop at key points mentioned in the novel. Yet through Woolf’s prose it’s also universal, and she manages to weave time, character, space, and feeling in a reach tapestry where the threads are constantly flapping for you to hold onto.

And so the walk starts at Westminster Tube so we can hear chimes of Big Ben that feature strongly in the story, marking out the rhythm of the day, and so important in a book where time flows back and forth. Every character has their own perspective on time and the city, and despite their regular rhythm there’s also a sense of shifting and timelessness.

The sound of Big Ben never fails to stir me, just like Clarissa who ‘For having lived in Westminster—How many years now? Over twenty—one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air.’

Walking on past St Margaret’s—which reminds Peter Walsh of a perfect hostess—like Clarissa, Rob and I discuss the political and social context in which women lived in the interim war era: ‘Women’s rights, that antediluvian topic.’ Ambitious and politically minded women may have been dismissed as ‘just hostesses’ but this was their way of having influence, and in this manner Clarissa evokes the lives of Margaret Asquith and her cohort.

The hierarchy of politicians, the badges of honour that wealth showed and the importance of connections and social circles were well known to Woolf, and whilst Clarissa is her own character, it’s clear that the writer’s experiences will have infiltrated the story. But whilst both Clarissa and Woolf were of very particular social circles, they were drawn into the lives of people around them and the spaces they were part of… ‘to know her, or any one, one must seek out the people who completed them; even the places. Odd affinities she had with people she had never spoken to, some woman in the street, some man behind a counter—even trees, or barns.’ On the walk you can’t help but think what your own relationship with London means.

After Westminster Abbey and the tomb of the unknown soldier, which has clear parallels to how Septimus feels, it’s a few steps to Deans Yard where Richard contemplates telling Clarissa he loves her but can’t find the words. ‘It is a thousand pities never to say what one feels.’ She writes, but it’s not at all easy. Language, like London, is another thing that seems so solid and fixed but also changes, and Woolf spoke of the inadequacy of language to express her emotions in her diaries and essays. Even someone with such literary and linguistic talent struggles to find the prose that really reflects the tumultuous internal emotional landscape, even as her prose flows worth her consciousness, and it’s important to remember how both places and our memories of them are ever changing.

We then cross Victoria Street where the immediacy of the moment delights Clarissa. It’s a busy road and the lights of cars in rush hour flash repeatedly, and it’s easy to feel overwhelmed and irritated by London in these moments. So often today we move around London with heads down and legs focused on getting to the destination that it can be easy to forget the wonder of the capital, and this walk offers a reminder.

But Clarissa embraces it. ‘Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.’

Then it’s into the beautiful St James Park where a lit up Buckingham Palace awaits us, and in the book Hugh meets Clarissa. ‘I love walking in London,’ said Mrs. Dalloway. ‘Really it’s better than walking in the country.’ I have to agree. We stop near the statue of Queen Victoria, where there is the cinematic sequence panning from the thoughts of one person to another. ‘This’, says Rob, is ‘one of the reasons I think it’s such a London book, it captures the idea that we are all experiencing this same space, but it can mean many different things to us.’ It’s how Clarissa can identify with a drunk, and a soldier, and other individuals with whom her experience quantitatively has nothing in common with, but through their physical and emotional location deep connections resonate.

The way those differences thread through the past and the future and are constantly being made becomes even more striking as we walk through Green Park and up to Devonshire House and Piccadilly. We enter into Clarissa’s mind and learn that ‘what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.’ 

I shiver, and it’s not just because of the autumn rain. Both Rob and I love the idea that somehow we are all part of a London story ‘that will go on forever and in these streets we share space with people who lived long ago.’

That for me is the beauty of books, London, and exploring the two. Those connections that traverse space and time. The festival covers novels of completely different styles and focus but many share the idea of different Londoners sharing the same moment. Often participants go home and reread a book they thought they knew, but through their experience discover something else in. Whether it’s TS Eliot’s The Waste Land or Orwell’s dystopia, Jane Austen’s London or that of Bridget Jones, there’s something powerful in combining words, walking and the wonder of a city which we might live in but often forget to really be in.