To the Lighthouse (1927)

Virginia Woolf (1882 – 1941)

 

    

TO THE LIGHTHOUSE
VIRGINIA WOOLF
PUBLISHED BY LEONARD & VIRGINIA
WOOLF AT THE HOGARTH PRESS,
TAVISTOCK SQUARE, LONDON. 


First published May 
Second impression June 
Third impression May 
New Edition 
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH 




I
THE WINDOW 


“YES, of course, if it’s fine to-morrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “But
you’ll have to be up with the lark,” she added.
To her son these words conveyed an extraordinary joy, as if it were
settled the expedition were bound to take place, and the wonder to
which he had looked forward, for years and years it seemed, was,
after a night’s darkness and a day’s sail, within touch. Since he
belonged, even at the age of six, to that great clan which cannot keep
this feeling separate from that, but must let future prospects, with
their joys and sorrows, cloud what is actually at hand, since to such
people even in earliest childhood any turn in the wheel of sensation
has the power to crystallise and transfix the moment upon which its
gloom or radiance rests, James Ramsay, sitting on the floor cutting
out pictures from the illustrated catalogue of the Army and Navy
Stores, endowed the picture of a refrigerator as his mother spoke
with heavenly bliss. It was fringed with joy. The wheelbarrow, the
lawn-mower, the sound of poplar trees, leaves whitening before rain,
rooks cawing, brooms knocking, dresses rustling—all these were so
coloured and distinguished in his mind that he had already his
private code, his secret language, though he appeared the image of 
8
stark and uncompromising severity, with his high forehead and his
fierce blue eyes, impeccably candid and pure, frowning slightly at
the sight of human frailty, so that his mother, watching him guide
his scissors neatly round the refrigerator, imagined him all red and
ermine on the Bench or directing a stern and momentous enterprise
in some crisis of public affairs.
“But,” said his father, stopping in front of the drawing-room
window, “it won’t be fine.”
Had there been an axe handy, a poker, or any weapon that would
have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and
then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion
that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere
presence; standing, as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of
one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of
disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was
ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought),
but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement.
What he said was true. It was always true. He was incapable of untruth;
never tampered with a fact; never altered a disagreeable word to suit the
pleasure or convenience of any mortal being, least of all of his own
children, who, sprung from his loins, should be aware from childhood that 
9
life is difficult; facts uncompromising; and the passage to that fabled land
where our brightest hopes are extinguished, our frail barks founder in
darkness (here Mr. Ramsay would straighten his back and narrow his little
blue eyes upon the horizon), one that needs, above all, courage, truth, and
the power to endure.
“But it may be fine—I expect it will be fine,” said Mrs. Ramsay, making
some little twist of the reddish-brown stocking she was knitting,
impatiently. If she finished it to-night, if they did go to the Lighthouse
after all, it was to be given to the Lighthouse keeper for his little boy, who
was threatened with a tuberculous hip; together with a pile of old
magazines, and some tobacco, indeed whatever she could find lying about,
not really wanted, but only littering the room, to give those poor fellows
who must be bored to death sitting all day with nothing to do but polish
the lamp and trim the wick and rake about on their scrap of garden,
something to amuse them. For how would you like to be shut up for
a whole month at a time, and possibly more in stormy weather, upon
a rock the size of a tennis lawn? she would ask; and to have no letters
or newspapers, and to see nobody; if you were married, not to see
your wife, not to know how your children were,—if they were ill, if
they had fallen down and broken their legs or arms; to see the same
dreary waves breaking week after week, and then a dreadful storm
coming, and the windows covered with spray, and birds dashed 
10
against the lamp, and the whole place rocking, and not be able to
put your nose out of doors for fear of being swept into the sea? How
would you like that? she asked, addressing herself particularly to her
daughters. So she added, rather differently, one must take them
whatever comforts one can.
“It’s due west,” said the atheist Tansley, holding his bony fingers
spread so that the wind blew through them, for he was sharing Mr.
Ramsay’s evening walk up and down, up and down the terrace. That
is to say, the wind blew from the worst possible direction for landing
at the Lighthouse. Yes, he did say disagreeable things, Mrs. Ramsay
admitted; it was odious of him to rub this in, and make James still
more disappointed; but at the same time, she would not let them
laugh at him. “The atheist”, they called him; “the little atheist”. Rose
mocked him; Prue mocked him; Andrew, Jasper, Roger mocked
him; even old Badger without a tooth in his head had bit him, for
being (as Nancy put it) the hundred and tenth young man to chase
them all the way up to the Hebrides when it was ever so much nicer
to be alone.
“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Ramsay, with great severity. Apart from
the habit of exaggeration which they had from her, and from the
implication (which was true) that she asked too many people to stay, 
11
and had to lodge some in the town, she could not bear incivility to
her guests, to young men in particular, who were poor as church
mice, “exceptionally able”, her husband said, his great admirers, and
come there for a holiday. Indeed, she had the whole of the other sex
under her protection; for reasons she could not explain, for their
chivalry and valour, for the fact that they negotiated treaties, ruled
India, controlled finance; finally for an attitude towards herself
which no woman could fail to feel or to find agreeable, something
trustful, childlike, reverential; which an old woman could take from
a young man without loss of dignity, and woe betide the girl—pray
Heaven it was none of her daughters!—who did not feel the worth
of it, and all that it implied, to the marrow of her bones.
She turned with severity upon Nancy. He had not chased them,
she said. He had been asked.
They must find a way out of it all. There might be some simpler
way, some less laborious way, she sighed. When she looked in the
glass and saw her hair grey, her cheek sunk, at fifty, she thought,
possibly she might have managed things better—her husband;
money; his books. But for her own part she would never for a single
second regret her decision, evade difficulties, or slur over duties. She
was now formidable to behold, and it was only in silence, looking up 
12
from their plates, after she had spoken so severely about Charles
Tansley, that her daughters—Prue, Nancy, Rose—could sport with
infidel ideas which they had brewed for themselves of a life different
from hers; in Paris, perhaps; a wilder life; not always taking care of
some man or other; for there was in all their minds a mute
questioning of deference and chivalry, of the Bank of England and
the Indian Empire, of ringed fingers and lace, though to them all
there was something in this of the essence of beauty, which called
out the manliness in their girlish hearts, and made them, as they sat
at table beneath their mother’s eyes, honour her strange severity, her
extreme courtesy, like a Queen’s raising from the mud a beggar’s
dirty foot and washing it, when she thus admonished them so very
severely about that wretched atheist who had chased them to—or,
speaking accurately, been invited to stay with them in—the Isle of
Skye.
“There’ll be no landing at the Lighthouse to-morrow,” said
Charles Tansley, clapping his hands together as he stood at the
window with her husband. Surely, he had said enough. She wished
they would both leave her and James alone and go on talking. She
looked at him. He was such a miserable specimen, the children said,
all humps and hollows. He couldn’t play cricket; he poked; he 
13
shuffled. He was a sarcastic brute, Andrew said. They knew what he
liked best—to be for ever walking up and down, up and down, with
Mr. Ramsay, and saying who had won this, who had won that, who
was a “first-rate man” at Latin verses, who was “brilliant but I think
fundamentally unsound”, who was undoubtedly the “ablest fellow in
Balliol”, who had buried his light temporarily at Bristol or Bedford,
but was bound to be heard of later when his Prolegomena, of which
Mr. Tansley had the first pages in proof with him if Mr. Ramsay
would like to see them, to some branch of mathematics or
philosophy saw the light of day. That was what they talked about.
She could not help laughing herself sometimes. She said, the
other day, something about “waves mountains high”. Yes, said
Charles Tansley, it was a little rough. “Aren’t you drenched to the
skin?” she had said. “Damp, not wet through,” said Mr. Tansley,
pinching his sleeve, feeling his socks.
But it was not that they minded, the children said. It was not his
face; it was not his manners. It was him—his point of view. When
they talked about something interesting, people, music, history,
anything, even said it was a fine evening so why not sit out of doors,
then what they complained of about Charles Tansley was that until
he had turned the whole thing round and made it somehow reflect 
14
himself and disparage them, put them all on edge somehow with his
acid way of peeling the flesh and blood off everything, he was not
satisfied. And he would go to picture galleries, they said, and he
would ask one, did one like his tie? God knows, said Rose, one did
not.
Disappearing as stealthily as stags from the dinner-table directly
the meal was over, the eight sons and daughters of Mr. and Mrs.
Ramsay sought their bedrooms, their fastnesses in a house where
there was no other privacy to debate anything, everything; Tansley’s
tie; the passing of the Reform Bill; sea-birds and butterflies; people;
while the sun poured into those attics, which a plank alone separated
from each other so that every footstep could be plainly heard and the
Swiss girl sobbing for her father who was dying of cancer in a valley
of the Grisons, and lit up bats, flannels, straw hats, ink-pots, paintpots, beetles, and the skulls of small birds, while it drew from the
long frilled strips of seaweed pinned to the wall a smell of salt and
weeds, which was in the towels too, gritty with sand from bathing.
Strife, divisions, difference of opinion, prejudices twisted into the
very fibre of being, oh that they should begin so early, Mrs. Ramsay
deplored. They were so critical, her children. They talked such
nonsense. She went from the dining-room, holding James by the 
15
hand, since he would not go with the others. It seemed to her such
nonsense—inventing differences, when people, heaven knows, were
different enough without that. The real differences, she thought,
standing by the drawing-room window, are enough, quite enough.
She had in mind at the moment, rich and poor, high and low; the
great in birth receiving from her, half grudging, some respect, for
had she not in her veins the blood of that very noble, if slightly
mythical, Italian house, whose daughters, scattered about English
drawing-rooms in the nineteenth century, had lisped so charmingly,
had stormed so wildly, and all her wit and her bearing and her
temper came from them, and not from the sluggish English, or the
cold Scotch; but more profoundly she ruminated the other problem,
of rich and poor, and the things she saw with her own eyes, weekly,
daily, here or in London, when she visited this widow, or that
struggling wife in person with a bag on her arm, and a note-book
and pencil with which she wrote down in columns carefully ruled for
the purpose wages and spendings, employment and unemployment,
in the hope that thus she would cease to be a private woman whose
charity was half a sop to her own indignation, half a relief to her own
curiosity, and become, what with her untrained mind she greatly
admired, an investigator, elucidating the social problem. 
16
Insoluble questions they were, it seemed to her, standing there,
holding James by the hand. He had followed her into the drawingroom, that young man they laughed at; he was standing by the table,
fidgeting with something, awkwardly, feeling himself out of things,
as she knew without looking round. They had all gone—the
children; Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley; Augustus Carmichael; her
husband—they had all gone. So she turned with a sigh and said,
“Would it bore you to come with me, Mr. Tansley?”
She had a dull errand in the town; she had a letter or two to write;
she would be ten minutes perhaps; she would put on her hat. And,
with her basket and her parasol, there she was again, ten minutes
later, giving out a sense of being ready, of being equipped for a jaunt,
which, however, she must interrupt for a moment, as they passed
the tennis lawn, to ask Mr. Carmichael, who was basking with his
yellow cat’s eyes ajar, so that like a cat’s they seemed to reflect the
branches moving or the clouds passing, but to give no inkling of any
inner thoughts or emotion whatsoever, if he wanted anything.
For they were making the great expedition, she said, laughing.
They were going to the town. “Stamps, writing-paper, tobacco?” she
suggested, stopping by his side. But no, he wanted nothing. His
hands clasped themselves over his capacious paunch, his eyes 
17
blinked, as if he would have liked to reply kindly to these
blandishments (she was seductive but a little nervous) but could not,
sunk as he was in a grey-green somnolence which embraced them
all, without need of words, in a vast and benevolent lethargy of wellwishing; all the house; all the world; all the people in it, for he had
slipped into his glass at lunch a few drops of something, which
accounted, the children thought, for the vivid streak of canaryyellow in moustache and beard that were otherwise milk-white. He
wanted nothing, he murmured.
He should have been a great philosopher, said Mrs. Ramsay, as
they went down the road to the fishing village, but he had made an
unfortunate marriage. Holding her black parasol very erect, and
moving with an indescribable air of expectation, as if she were going
to meet someone round the corner, she told the story; an affair at
Oxford with some girl; an early marriage; poverty; going to India;
translating a little poetry “very beautifully, I believe”, being willing
to teach the boys Persian or Hindustanee, but what really was the
use of that?—and then lying, as they saw him, on the lawn.
It flattered him; snubbed as he had been, it soothed him that Mrs.
Ramsay should tell him this. Charles Tansley revived. Insinuating,
too, as she did the greatness of man’s intellect, even in its decay, the 
18
subjection of all wives—not that she blamed the girl, and the
marriage had been happy enough, she believed—to their husband’s
labours, she made him feel better pleased with himself than he had
done yet, and he would have liked, had they taken a cab, for example,
to have paid the fare. As for her little bag, might he not carry that?
No, no, she said, she always carried that herself. She did too. Yes,
he felt that in her. He felt many things, something in particular that
excited him and disturbed him for reasons which he could not give.
He would like her to see him, gowned and hooded, walking in a
procession. A fellowship, a professorship,—he felt capable of
anything and saw himself—but what was she looking at? At a man
pasting a bill. The vast flapping sheet flattened itself out, and each
shove of the brush revealed fresh legs, hoops, horses, glistening reds
and blues, beautifully smooth, until half the wall was covered with
the advertisement of a circus; a hundred horsemen, twenty
performing seals, lions, tigers. . . Craning forwards, for she was
short-sighted, she read out how it. . . “will visit this town.” It was
terribly dangerous work for a one-armed man, she exclaimed, to
stand on top of a ladder like that—his left arm had been cut off in a
reaping machine two years ago. 
19
“Let us all go!” she cried, moving on, as if all those riders and
horses had filled her with childlike exultation and made her forget
her pity.
“Let’s go,” he said, repeating her words, clicking them out,
however, with a self-consciousness that made her wince. “Let us go
to the Circus.” No. He could not say it right. He could not feel it
right. But why not? she wondered. What was wrong with him then?
She liked him warmly, at the moment. Had they not been taken, she
asked, to circuses when they were children? Never, he answered, as
if she asked the very thing he wanted to reply to; had been longing
all these days to say, how they did not go to circuses. It was a large
family, nine brothers and sisters, and his father was a working man;
“My father is a chemist, Mrs. Ramsay. He keeps a shop.” He himself
had paid his own way since he was thirteen. Often he went without
a greatcoat in winter. He could never “return hospitality” (those were
his parched stiff words) at college. He had to make things last twice
the time other people did; he smoked the cheapest tobacco; shag;
the same the old men smoked on the quays. He worked hard—seven
hours a day; his subject was now the influence of something upon
somebody—they were walking on and Mrs. Ramsay did not quite
catch the meaning, only the words, here and there. . . dissertation. . . 
20
fellowship. . . readership. . . lectureship. She could not follow the
ugly academic jargon, that rattled itself off so glibly, but said to
herself that she saw now why going to the circus had knocked him
off his perch, poor little man, and why he came out, instantly, with
all that about his father and mother and brothers and sisters, and she
would see to it that they didn’t laugh at him any more; she would
tell Prue about it. What he would have liked, she supposed, would
have been to say how he had been to Ibsen with the Ramsays. He
was an awful prig—oh yes, an insufferable bore. For, though they
had reached the town now and were in the main street, with carts
grinding past on the cobbles, still he went on talking, about
settlements, and teaching, and working men, and helping our own
class, and lectures, till she gathered that he had got back entire selfconfidence, had recovered from the circus, and was about (and now
again she liked him warmly) to tell her—but here, the houses falling
away on both sides, they came out on the quay, and the whole bay
spread before them and Mrs. Ramsay could not help exclaiming,
“Oh, how beautiful!” For the great plateful of blue water was before
her; the hoary Lighthouse, distant, austere, in the midst; and on the
right, as far as the eye could see, fading and falling, in soft low pleats,
the green sand dunes with the wild flowing grasses on them, which 
21
always seemed to be running away into some moon country,
uninhabited of men.
That was the view, she said, stopping, growing greyer-eyed, that
her husband loved.
She paused a moment. But now, she said, artists had come here.
There indeed, only a few paces off, stood one of them, in Panama
hat and yellow boots, seriously, softly, absorbedly, for all that he was
watched by ten little boys, with an air of profound contentment on
his round red face, gazing, and then, when he had gazed, dipping;
imbuing the tip of his brush in some soft mound of green or pink.
Since Mr. Paunceforte had been there, three years before, all the
pictures were like that she said, green and grey, with lemon-coloured
sailing-boats, and pink women on the beach.
But her grandmother’s friends, she said, glancing discreetly as
they passed, took the greatest pains; first they mixed their own
colours, and then they ground them, and then they put damp cloths
on them to keep them moist.
So Mr. Tansley supposed she meant him to see that that man’s
picture was skimpy, was that what one said? The colours weren’t
solid? Was that what one said? Under the influence of that
extraordinary emotion which had been growing all the walk, had 
22
begun in the garden when he had wanted to take her bag, had
increased in the town when he had wanted to tell her everything
about himself, he was coming to see himself and everything he had
ever known gone crooked a little. It was awfully strange.
There he stood in the parlour of the poky little house where she
had taken him, waiting for her, while she went upstairs a moment
to see a woman. He heard her quick step above; heard her voice
cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea-caddies, glass shades;
waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home,
determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door;
say they must keep the windows open and the doors shut, ask at the
house for anything they wanted (she must be talking to a child),
when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she
had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now),
stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen
Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of the Garter; and all at once he
realised that it was this: it was this:—she was the most beautiful
person he had ever seen.
With stars in her eyes and veils in her hair, with cyclamen and
wild violets—what nonsense was he thinking? She was fifty at least;
she had eight children. Stepping through fields of flowers and taking 
23
to her breast buds that had broken and lambs that had fallen; with
the stars in her eyes and the wind in her hair—He took her bag.
“Good-bye, Elsie,” she said, and they walked up the street, she
holding her parasol erect and walking as if she expected to meet
someone round the corner, while for the first time in his life Charles
Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; a man digging in a drain stopped
digging and looked at her; let his arm fall down and looked at her;
Charles Tansley felt an extraordinary pride; felt the wind and the
cyclamen and the violets for he was walking with a beautiful woman
for the first time in his life. He had hold of her bag.

“No going to the Lighthouse, James,” he said, as he stood by the
window, speaking awkwardly, but trying in deference to Mrs.
Ramsay to soften his voice into some semblance of geniality at least.
Odious little man, thought Mrs. Ramsay, why go on saying that?

“Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds
singing,” she said compassionately, smoothing the little boy’s hair, 
24
for her husband, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine,
had dashed his spirits she could see. This going to the Lighthouse
was a passion of his, she saw, and then, as if her husband had not
said enough, with his caustic saying that it would not be fine tomorrow, this odious little man went and rubbed it in all over again.
“Perhaps it will be fine to-morrow,” she said, smoothing his hair.
All she could do now was to admire the refrigerator, and turn the
pages of the Stores list in the hope that she might come upon
something like a rake, or a mowing-machine, which, with its prongs
and its handles, would need the greatest skill and care in cutting out.
All these young men parodied her husband, she reflected; he said it
would rain; they said it would be a positive tornado.
But here, as she turned the page, suddenly her search for the
picture of a rake or a mowing- machine was interrupted. The gruff
murmur, irregularly broken by the taking out of pipes and the
putting in of pipes which had kept on assuring her, though she could
not hear what was said (as she sat in the window), that the men were
happily talking; this sound, which had lasted now half an hour and
had taken its place soothingly in the scale of sounds pressing on top
of her, such as the tap of balls upon bats, the sharp, sudden bark now
and then, “How’s that? How’s that?” of the children playing cricket, 
25
had ceased; so that the monotonous fall of the waves on the beach,
which for the most part beat a measured and soothing tattoo to her
thoughts and seemed consolingly to repeat over and over again as she sat
with the children the words of some old cradle song, murmured by nature,
“I am guarding you—I am your support”, but at other times suddenly and
unexpectedly, especially when her mind raised itself slightly from the task
actually in hand, had no such kindly meaning, but like a ghostly roll of
drums remorselessly beat the measure of life, made one think of the
destruction of the island and its engulfment in the sea, and warned her
whose day had slipped past in one quick doing after another that it was all
ephemeral as a rainbow—this sound which had been obscured and
concealed under the other sounds suddenly thundered hollow in her ears
and made her look up with an impulse of terror.
They had ceased to talk; that was the explanation. Falling in one second
from the tension which had gripped her to the other extreme which, as if
to recoup her for her unnecessary expense of emotion, was cool, amused,
and even faintly malicious, she concluded that poor Charles Tansley had
been shed. That was of little account to her. If her husband required
sacrifices (and indeed he did) she cheerfully offered up to him Charles
Tansley, who had snubbed her little boy.
One moment more, with her head raised, she listened, as if she waited
for some habitual sound, some regular mechanical sound; and then hearing something rhythmical, half said, half chanted, beginning in
the garden, as her husband beat up and down the terrace, something
between a croak and a song, she was soothed once more, assured
again that all was well, and looking down at the book on her knee
found the picture of a pocket knife with six blades which could only
be cut out if James was very careful.
Suddenly a loud cry, as of a sleep-walker, half roused, something
about Stormed at with shot and shell
sung out with the utmost intensity in her ear, made her turn
apprehensively to see if any one heard him. Only Lily Briscoe, she
was glad to find; and that did not matter. But the sight of the girl
standing on the edge of the lawn painting reminded her; she was
supposed to be keeping her head as much in the same position as
possible for Lily’s picture. Lily’s picture! Mrs. Ramsay smiled. With
her little Chinese eyes and her puckered-up face she would never
marry; one could not take her painting very seriously; but she was an
independent little creature, Mrs. Ramsay liked her for it, and so
remembering her promise, she bent her head. 
27

Indeed, he almost knocked her easel over, coming down upon her
with his hands waving, shouting out “Boldly we rode and well”, but,
mercifully, he turned sharp, and rode off, to die gloriously she
supposed upon the heights of Balaclava. Never was anybody at once
so ridiculous and so alarming. But so long as he kept like that,
waving, shouting, she was safe; he would not stand still and look at
her picture. And that was what Lily Briscoe could not have endured.
Even while she looked at the mass, at the line, at the colour, at Mrs.
Ramsay sitting in the window with James, she kept a feeler on her
surroundings lest someone should creep up, and suddenly she should
find her picture looked at. But now, with all her senses quickened as
they were, looking, straining, till the colour of the wall and the
jacmanna beyond burnt into her eyes, she was aware of someone
coming out of the house, coming towards her; but somehow divined,
from the footfall, William Bankes, so that though her brush
quivered, she did not, as she would have done had it been Mr.
Tansley, Paul Rayley, Minta Doyle, or practically anybody else, turn
her canvas upon the grass, but let it stand. William Bankes stood
beside her. 
28
They had rooms in the village, and so, walking in, walking out,
parting late on door-mats, had said little things about the soup,
about the children, about one thing and another which made them
allies; so that when he stood beside her now in his judicial way (he
was old enough to be her father too, a botanist, a widower, smelling
of soap, very scrupulous and clean) she just stood there. He just
stood there. Her shoes were excellent, he observed. They allowed
the toes their natural expansion. Lodging in the same house with
her, he had noticed too, how orderly she was, up before breakfast
and off to paint, he believed, alone: poor, presumably, and without
the complexion or the allurement of Miss Doyle certainly, but with
a good sense which made her in his eyes superior to that young lady.
Now, for instance, when Ramsay bore down on them, shouting,
gesticulating, Miss Briscoe, he felt certain, understood.
Someone had blundered.
Mr. Ramsay glared at them. He glared at them without seeming
to see them. That did make them both vaguely uncomfortable.
Together they had seen a thing they had not been meant to see.
They had encroached upon a privacy. So, Lily thought, it was
probably an excuse of his for moving, for getting out of earshot, that
made Mr. Bankes almost immediately say something about its being 
29
chilly and suggest taking a stroll. She would come, yes. But it was
with difficulty that she took her eyes off her picture.
The jacmanna was bright violet; the wall staring white. She would
not have considered it honest to tamper with the bright violet and
the staring white, since she saw them like that, fashionable though
it was, since Mr. Paunceforte’s visit, to see everything pale, elegant,
semitransparent. Then beneath the colour there was the shape. She
could see it all so clearly, so commandingly, when she looked: it was
when she took her brush in hand that the whole thing changed. It
was in that moment’s flight between the picture and her canvas that
the demons set on her who often brought her to the verge of tears
and made this passage from conception to work as dreadful as any
down a dark passage for a child. Such she often felt herself—
struggling against terrific odds to maintain her courage; to say: “But
this is what I see; this is what I see”, and so to clasp some miserable
remnant of her vision to her breast, which a thousand forces did their
best to pluck from her. And it was then too, in that chill and windy
way, as she began to paint, that there forced themselves upon her
other things, her own inadequacy, her insignificance, keeping house
for her father off the Brompton Road, and had much ado to control
her impulse to fling herself (thank Heaven she had always resisted 
30
so far) at Mrs. Ramsay’s knee and say to her—but what could one
say to her? “I’m in love with you?” No, that was not true. “I’m in love
with this all”, waving her hand at the hedge, at the house, at the
children? It was absurd, it was impossible. One could not say what
one meant. So now she laid her brushes neatly in the box, side by
side, and said to William Bankes:
“It suddenly gets cold. The sun seems to give less heat,” she said,
looking about her, for it was bright enough, the grass still a soft deep
green, the house starred in its greenery with purple passion flowers,
and rooks dropping cool cries from the high blue. But something
moved, flashed, turned a silver wing in the air. It was September
after all, the middle of September, and past six in the evening. So
off they strolled down the garden in the usual direction, past the
tennis lawn, past the pampas grass, to that break in the thick hedge,
guarded by red-hot pokers like brasiers of clear burning coal,
between which the blue waters of the bay looked bluer than ever.
They came there regularly every evening drawn by some need. It
was as if the water floated off and set sailing thoughts which had
grown stagnant on dry land, and gave to their bodies even some sort
of physical relief. First, the pulse of colour flooded the bay with blue,
and the heart expanded with it and the body swam, only the next 
31
instant to be checked and chilled by the prickly blackness on the
ruffled waves. Then, up behind the great black rock, almost every
evening spurted irregularly, so that one had to watch for it and it was
a delight when it came, a fountain of white water; and then, while
one waited for that, one watched, on the pale semicircular beach,
wave after wave shedding again and again smoothly a film of
mother-of- pearl.
They both smiled, standing there. They both felt a common
hilarity, excited by the moving waves; and then by the swift cutting
race of a sailing boat, which, having sliced a curve in the bay,
stopped; shivered; let its sail drop down; and then, with a natural
instinct to complete the picture, after this swift movement, both of
them looked at the dunes far away, and instead of merriment felt
come over them some sadness—because the thing was completed
partly, and partly because distant views seem to outlast by a million
years (Lily thought) the gazer and to be communing already with a
sky which beholds an earth entirely at rest.
Looking at the far sand hills, William Bankes thought of Ramsay:
thought of a road in Westmorland, thought of Ramsay striding
along a road by himself hung round with that solitude which seemed
to be his natural air. But this was suddenly interrupted, William 
32
Bankes remembered (and this must refer to some actual incident),
by a hen, straddling her wings out in protection of a covey of little
chicks, upon which Ramsay, stopping, pointed his stick and said
“Pretty—pretty,” an odd illumination into his heart, Bankes had
thought it, which showed his simplicity, his sympathy with humble
things; but it seemed to him as if their friendship had ceased, there,
on that stretch of road. After that, Ramsay had married. After that,
what with one thing and another, the pulp had gone out of their
friendship. Whose fault it was he could not say, only, after a time,
repetition had taken the place of newness. It was to repeat that they
met. But in this dumb colloquy with the sand dunes he maintained
that his affection for Ramsay had in no way diminished; but there,
like the body of a young man laid up in peat for a century, with the
red fresh on his lips, was his friendship, in its acuteness and reality
laid up across the bay among the sandhills.
He was anxious for the sake of this friendship and perhaps too in
order to clear himself in his own mind from the imputation of
having dried and shrunk—for Ramsay lived in a welter of children,
whereas Bankes was childless and a widower—he was anxious that
Lily Briscoe should not disparage Ramsay (a great man in his own
way) yet should understand how things stood between them. Begun 
33
long years ago, their friendship had petered out on a Westmorland
road, where the hen spread her wings before her chicks; after which
Ramsay had married, and their paths lying different ways, there had
been, certainly for no one’s fault, some tendency, when they met, to
repeat.
Yes. That was it. He finished. He turned from the view. And,
turning to walk back the other way, up the drive, Mr. Bankes was
alive to things which would not have struck him had not those
sandhills revealed to him the body of his friendship lying with the
red on its lips laid up in peat—for instance, Cam, the little girl,
Ramsay’s youngest daughter. She was picking Sweet Alice on the
bank. She was wild and fierce. She would not “give a flower to the
gentleman” as the nursemaid told her. No! no! no! she would not!
She clenched her fist. She stamped. And Mr. Bankes felt aged
and saddened and somehow put into the wrong by her about his
friendship. He must have dried and shrunk.
The Ramsays were not rich, and it was a wonder how they
managed to contrive it all. Eight children! To feed eight children on
philosophy! Here was another of them, Jasper this time, strolling
past, to have a shot at a bird, he said, nonchalantly, swinging Lily’s
hand like a pump-handle as he passed, which caused Mr. Bankes to 
34
say, bitterly, how she was a favourite. There was education now to
be considered (true, Mrs. Ramsay had something of her own
perhaps) let alone the daily wear and tear of shoes and stockings
which those “great fellows”, all well grown, angular, ruthless
youngsters, must require. As for being sure which was which, or in
what order they came, that was beyond him. He called them
privately after the Kings and Queens of England; Cam the Wicked,
James the Ruthless, Andrew the Just, Prue the Fair—for Prue would
have beauty, he thought, how could she help it?—and Andrew
brains. While he walked up the drive and Lily Briscoe said yes and
no and capped his comments (for she was in love with them all, in
love with this world) he weighed Ramsay’s case, commiserated him,
envied him, as if he had seen him divest himself of all those glories
of isolation and austerity which crowned him in youth to cumber
himself definitely with fluttering wings and clucking domesticities.
They gave him something—William Bankes acknowledged that; it
would have been pleasant if Cam had stuck a flower in his coat or
clambered over his shoulder, as over her father’s, to look at a picture
of Vesuvius in eruption; but they had also, his old friends could not
but feel, destroyed something. What would a stranger think now?
What did this Lily Briscoe think? Could one help noticing that 
35
habits grew on him? eccentricities, weaknesses perhaps? It was
astonishing that a man of his intellect could stoop so low as he did—
but that was too harsh a phrase—could depend so much as he did
upon people’s praise.
“Oh but,” said Lily, “think of his work!”
Whenever she “thought of his work” she always saw clearly before
her a large kitchen table. It was Andrew’s doing. She asked him what
his father’s books were about. “Subject and object and the nature of
reality”, Andrew had said. And when she said Heavens, she had no
notion what that meant. “Think of a kitchen table then”, he told her,
“when you’re not there”.
So she always saw, when she thought of Mr. Ramsay’s work, a
scrubbed kitchen table. It lodged now in the fork of a pear tree, for
they had reached the orchard. And with a painful effort of
concentration, she focused her mind, not upon the silver-bossed
bark of the tree, or upon its fish-shaped leaves, but upon a phantom
kitchen table, one of those scrubbed board tables, grained and
knotted, whose virtue seems to have been laid bare by years of
muscular integrity, which stuck there, its four legs in air. Naturally,
if one’s days were passed in this seeing of angular essences, this
reducing of lovely evenings, with all their flamingo clouds and blue 
36
and silver to a white deal four-legged table (and it was a mark of the
finest minds so to do), naturally one could not be judged like an
ordinary person.
Mr. Bankes liked her for bidding him “think of his work”. He had
thought of it, often and often. Times without number, he had said,
“Ramsay is one of those men who do their best work before they are
forty”. He had made a definite contribution to philosophy in one
little book when he was only five and twenty; what came after was
more or less amplification, repetition. But the number of men who
make a definite contribution to anything whatsoever is very small,
he said, pausing by the pear tree, well brushed, scrupulously exact,
exquisitely judicial. Suddenly, as if the movement of his hand had
released it, the load of her accumulated impressions of him tilted up,
and down poured in a ponderous avalanche all she felt about him.
That was one sensation. Then up rose in a fume the essence of his
being. That was another. She felt herself transfixed by the intensity
of her perception; it was his severity; his goodness. I respect you (she
addressed him silently) in every atom; you are not vain; you are
entirely impersonal; you are finer than Mr. Ramsay; you are the
finest human being that I know; you have neither wife nor child
(without any sexual feeling, she longed to cherish that loneliness), 
37
you live for science (involuntarily, sections of potatoes rose before
her eyes); praise would be an insult to you; generous, pure-hearted,
heroic man! But simultaneously, she remembered how he had
brought a valet all the way up here; objected to dogs on chairs; would
prose for hours (until Mr. Ramsay slammed out of the room) about
salt in vegetables and the iniquity of English cooks.
How then did it work out, all this? How did one judge people,
think of them? How did one add up this and that and conclude that
it was liking one felt, or disliking? And to those words, what
meaning attached, after all? Standing now, apparently transfixed, by
the pear tree, impressions poured in upon her of those two men, and
to follow her thought was like following a voice which speaks too
quickly to be taken down by one’s pencil, and the voice was her own
voice saying without prompting undeniable, everlasting,
contradictory things, so that even the fissures and humps on the bark
of the pear tree were irrevocably fixed there for eternity. You have
greatness, she continued, but Mr. Ramsay has none of it. He is petty,
selfish, vain, egotistical; he is spoilt; he is a tyrant; he wears Mrs.
Ramsay to death; but he has what you (she addressed Mr. Bankes)
have not; a fiery unworldliness; he knows nothing about trifles; he
loves dogs and his children. He has eight. You have none. Did he 
38
not come down in two coats the other night and let Mrs. Ramsay
trim his hair into a pudding basin? All of this danced up and down,
like a company of gnats, each separate, but all marvellously
controlled in an invisible elastic net—danced up and down in Lily’s
mind, in and about the branches of the pear tree, where still hung in
effigy the scrubbed kitchen table, symbol of her profound respect for
Mr. Ramsay’s mind, until her thought which had spun quicker and
quicker exploded of its own intensity; she felt released; a shot went
off close at hand, and there came, flying from its fragments,
frightened, effusive, tumultuous, a flock of starlings.
“Jasper!” said Mr. Bankes. They turned the way the starlings flew,
over the terrace. Following the scatter of swift-flying birds in the sky
they stepped through the gap in the high hedge straight into Mr.
Ramsay, who boomed tragically at them, “Someone had blundered!”
His eyes, glazed with emotion, defiant with tragic intensity, met
theirs for a second, and trembled on the verge of recognition; but
then, raising his hand half-way to his face as if to avert, to brush off,
in an agony of peevish shame, their normal gaze, as if he begged
them to withhold for a moment what he knew to be inevitable, as if
he impressed upon them his own child-like resentment of
interruption, yet even in the moment of discovery was not to be 
39
routed utterly, but was determined to hold fast to something of this
delicious emotion, this impure rhapsody of which he was ashamed,
but in which he revelled—he turned abruptly, slammed his private
door on them; and, Lily Briscoe and Mr. Bankes, looking uneasily
up into the sky, observed that the flock of starlings which Jasper had
routed with his gun had settled on the tops of the elm trees.

“And even if it isn’t fine to-morrow,” said Mrs. Ramsay, raising
her eyes to glance at William Bankes and Lily Briscoe as they passed,
“it will be another day. And now,” she said, thinking that Lily’s
charm was her Chinese eyes, aslant in her white, puckered little face,
but it would take a clever man to see it, “and now stand up, and let
me measure your leg,” for they might go to the Lighthouse after all,
and she must see if the stocking did not need to be an inch or two
longer in the leg.
Smiling, for an admirable idea had flashed upon her this very
second—William and Lily should marry—she took the heather
mixture stocking, with its criss-cross of steel needles at the mouth
of it, and measured it against James’s leg. 
40
“My dear, stand still,” she said, for in his jealousy, not liking to
serve as measuring-block for the Lighthouse keeper’s little boy,
James fidgeted purposely; and if he did that, how could she see, was
it too long, was it too short? she asked.
She looked up—what demon possessed him, her youngest, her
cherished?—and saw the room, saw the chairs, thought them fearfully
shabby. Their entrails, as Andrew said the other day, were all over the
floor; but then what was the point, she asked herself, of buying good chairs
to let them spoil up here all through the winter when the house, with only
one old woman to see to it, positively dripped with wet? Never mind: the
rent was precisely twopence halfpenny; the children loved it; it did her
husband good to be three thousand, or if she must be accurate, three
hundred miles from his library and his lectures and his disciples; and there
was room for visitors. Mats, camp beds, crazy ghosts of chairs and tables
whose London life of service was done—they did well enough here; and a
photograph or two, and books. Books, she thought, grew of themselves.
She never had time to read them. Alas! even the books that had been given
her, and inscribed by the hand of the poet himself: “For her whose wishes
must be obeyed” . . . “The happier Helen of our days” . . . disgraceful to
say, she had never read them. And Croom on the Mind and Bates on the
Savage Customs of Polynesia (“My dear, stand still,” she said)—neither of
those could one send to the Lighthouse. At a certain moment, she 
41
supposed, the house would become so shabby that something must be
done. If they could be taught to wipe their feet and not bring the
beach in with them—that would be something. Crabs, she had to
allow, if Andrew really wished to dissect them, or if Jasper believed
that one could make soup from seaweed, one could not prevent it;
or Rose’s objects—shells, reeds, stones; for they were gifted, her
children, but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she
sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held
the stocking against James’s leg, that things got shabbier and got
shabbier summer after summer. The mat was fading; the wall-paper
was flapping. You couldn’t tell any more that those were roses on it.
Still, if every door in a house is left perpetually open, and no
lockmaker in the whole of Scotland can mend a bolt, things must
spoil. What was the use of flinging a green Cashmere shawl over the
edge of a picture frame? In two weeks it would be the colour of pea
soup. But it was the doors that annoyed her; every door was left
open. She listened. The drawing-room door was open; the hall door
was open; it sounded as if the bedroom doors were open; and
certainly the window on the landing was open, for that she had
opened herself. That windows should be open, and doors shut—
simple as it was, could none of them remember it? She would gointo the maids’ bedrooms at night and find them sealed like ovens,
except for Marie’s, the Swiss girl, who would rather go without a
bath than without fresh air, but then at home, she had said, “the
mountains are so beautiful.” She had said that last night looking out
of the window with tears in her eyes. “The mountains are so
beautiful.” Her father was dying there, Mrs. Ramsay knew. He was
leaving them fatherless. Scolding and demonstrating (how to make
a bed, how to open a window, with hands that shut and spread like
a Frenchwoman’s) all had folded itself quietly about her, when the
girl spoke, as, after a flight through the sunshine the wings of a bird
fold themselves quietly and the blue of its plumage changes from
bright steel to soft purple. She had stood there silent for there was
nothing to be said. He had cancer of the throat. At the
recollection—how she had stood there, how the girl had said “At
home the mountains are so beautiful”, and there was no hope, no
hope whatever, she had a spasm of irritation, and speaking sharply,
said to James:
“Stand still. Don’t be tiresome,” so that he knew instantly that her
severity was real, and straightened his leg and she measured it. 
43
The stocking was too short by half an inch at least, making
allowance for the fact that Sorley’s little boy would be less well grown
than James.
“It’s too short,” she said, “ever so much too short.”
Never did anybody look so sad. Bitter and black, half-way down,
in the darkness, in the shaft which ran from the sunlight to the
depths, perhaps a tear formed; a tear fell; the waters swayed this way
and that, received it, and were at rest. Never did anybody look so
sad.
But was it nothing but looks? people said. What was there behind
it—her beauty, her splendour? Had he blown his brains out, they
asked, had he died the week before they were married—some other,
earlier lover, of whom rumours reached one? Or was there nothing?
nothing but an incomparable beauty which she lived behind, and
could do nothing to disturb? For easily though she might have said
at some moment of intimacy when stories of great passion, of love
foiled, of ambition thwarted came her way how she too had known
or felt or been through it herself, she never spoke. She was silent
always. She knew then—she knew without having learnt. Her
simplicity fathomed what clever people falsified. Her singleness of
mind made her drop plumb like a stone, alight exact as a bird, gave 
44
her, naturally, this swoop and fall of the spirit upon truth which
delighted, eased, sustained—falsely perhaps.
(“Nature has but little clay”, said Mr. Bankes once, hearing her voice on
the telephone, and much moved by it though she was only telling him a
fact about a train, “like that of which she moulded you.” He saw her at the
end of the line, Greek, blue-eyed, straight-nosed. How incongruous it
seemed to be telephoning to a woman like that. The Graces assembling
seemed to have joined hands in meadows of asphodel to compose that face.
Yes, he would catch the . at Euston.
“But she’s no more aware of her beauty than a child,” said Mr. Bankes,
replacing the receiver and crossing the room to see what progress the
workmen were making with an hotel which they were building at the back
of his house. And he thought of Mrs. Ramsay as he looked at that stir
among the unfinished walls. For always, he thought, there was something
incongruous to be worked into the harmony of her face. She clapped a
deer-stalker’s hat on her head; she ran across the lawn in goloshes to snatch
a child from mischief. So that if it was her beauty merely that one thought
of, one must remember the quivering thing, the living thing (they were
carrying bricks up a little plank as he watched them), and work it into
the picture; or if one thought of her simply as a woman, one must
endow her with some freak of idiosyncrasy; or suppose some latent
desire to doff her royalty of form as if her beauty bored her and all 
45
that men say of beauty, and she wanted only to be like other people,
insignificant. He did not know. He did not know. He must go to
his work.)
Knitting her reddish-brown hairy stocking, with her head
outlined absurdly by the gilt frame, the green shawl which she had
tossed over the edge of the frame, and the authenticated masterpiece
by Michael Angelo, Mrs. Ramsay smoothed out what had been
harsh in her manner a moment before, raised his head, and kissed
her little boy on the forehead. “Let’s find another picture to cut out,”
she said.

But what had happened?
Someone had blundered.
Starting from her musing she gave meaning to words which she
had held meaningless in her mind for a long stretch of time.
“Someone had blundered”—Fixing her short-sighted eyes upon her
husband, who was now bearing down upon her, she gazed steadily
until his closeness revealed to her (the jingle mated itself in her head) 
46
that something had happened, someone had blundered. But she
could not for the life of her think what.
He shivered; he quivered. All his vanity, all his satisfaction in his
own splendour, riding fell as a thunderbolt, fierce as a hawk at the
head of his men through the valley of death, had been shattered,
destroyed. Stormed at by shot and shell, boldly we rode and well,
flashed through the valley of death, volleyed and thundered—
straight into Lily Briscoe and William Bankes. He quivered; he
shivered.
Not for the world would she have spoken to him, realising, from
the familiar signs, his eyes averted, and some curious gathering
together of his person, as if he wrapped himself about and needed
privacy into which to regain his equilibrium, that he was outraged
and anguished. She stroked James’s head; she transferred to him
what she felt for her husband, and, as she watched him chalk yellow
the white dress shirt of a gentleman in the Army and Navy Stores
catalogue, thought what a delight it would be to her should he turn
out a great artist; and why should he not? He had a splendid
forehead. Then, looking up, as her husband passed her once more,
she was relieved to find that the ruin was veiled; domesticity
triumphed; custom crooned its soothing rhythm, so that when 
47
stopping deliberately, as his turn came round again, at the window
he bent quizzically and whimsically to tickle James’s bare calf with a
sprig of something, she twitted him for having dispatched “that poor
young man”, Charles Tansley. Tansley had had to go in and write
his dissertation, he said.
“James will have to write his dissertation one of these days,” he
added ironically, flicking his sprig.
Hating his father, James brushed away the tickling spray with
which in a manner peculiar to him, compound of severity and
humour, he teased his youngest son’s bare leg.
She was trying to get these tiresome stockings finished to send to
Sorley’s little boy to-morrow, said Mrs. Ramsay.
There wasn’t the slightest possible chance that they could go to
the Lighthouse to-morrow, Mr. Ramsay snapped out irascibly.
How did he know? she asked. The wind often changed.
The extraordinary irrationality of her remark, the folly of women’s
minds enraged him. He had ridden through the valley of death, been
shattered and shivered; and now she flew in the face of facts, made
his children hope what was utterly out of the question, in effect, told
lies. He stamped his foot on the stone step. “Damn you,” he said. 
48
But what had she said? Simply that it might be fine to-morrow. So
it might.
Not with the barometer falling and the wind due west.
To pursue truth with such astonishing lack of consideration for
other people’s feelings, to rend the thin veils of civilisation so
wantonly, so brutally, was to her so horrible an outrage of human
decency that, without replying, dazed and blinded, she bent her head
as if to let the pelt of jagged hail, the drench of dirty water, bespatter
her unrebuked. There was nothing to be said.
He stood by her in silence. Very humbly, at length, he said that
he would step over and ask the Coastguards if she liked.
There was nobody whom she reverenced as she reverenced him.
She was quite ready to take his word for it, she said. Only then
they need not cut sandwiches—that was all. They came to her,
naturally, since she was a woman, all day long with this and that;
one wanting this, another that; the children were growing up; she
often felt she was nothing but a sponge sopped full of human
emotions. Then he said, Damn you. He said, It must rain.
He said, It won’t rain; and instantly a Heaven of security opened
before her. There was nobody she reverenced more. She was not
good enough to tie his shoe strings, she felt. 
49
Already ashamed of that petulance, of that gesticulation of the
hands when charging at the head of his troops, Mr. Ramsay rather
sheepishly prodded his son’s bare legs once more, and then, as if he
had her leave for it, with a movement which oddly reminded his wife
of the great sea lion at the Zoo tumbling backwards after swallowing
his fish and walloping off so that the water in the tank washes from
side to side, he dived into the evening air which, already thinner,
was taking the substance from leaves and hedges but, as if in return,
restoring to roses and pinks a lustre which they had not had by day.
“Someone had blundered,” he said again, striding off, up and
down the terrace.
But how extraordinarily his note had changed!It was like the
cuckoo; “in June he gets out of tune”; as if he were trying over,
tentatively seeking, some phrase for a new mood, and having only
this at hand, used it, cracked though it was. But it sounded
ridiculous—“Someone had blundered”—said like that, almost as a
question, without any conviction, melodiously. Mrs. Ramsay could
not help smiling, and soon, sure enough, walking up and down, he
hummed it, dropped it, fell silent.
He was safe, he was restored to his privacy. He stopped to light
his pipe, looked once at his wife and son in the window, and as one 
50
raises one’s eyes from a page in an express train and sees a farm, a
tree, a cluster of cottages as an illustration, a confirmation of
something on the printed page to which one returns, fortified, and
satisfied, so without his distinguishing either his son or his wife, the
sight of them fortified him and satisfied him and consecrated his
effort to arrive at a perfectly clear understanding of the problem
which now engaged the energies of his splendid mind.
It was a splendid mind. For if thought is like the keyboard of a
piano, divided into so many notes, or like the alphabet is ranged in
twenty-six letters all in order, then his splendid mind had no sort of
difficulty in running over those letters one by one, firmly and
accurately, until it had reached, say, the letter Q. He reached Q.
Very few people in the whole of England ever reach Q. Here,
stopping for one moment by the stone urn which held the
geraniums, he saw, but now far far away, like children picking up
shells, divinely innocent and occupied with little trifles at their feet
and somehow entirely defenceless against a doom which he
perceived, his wife and son, together, in the window. They needed
his protection; he gave it them. But after Q? What comes next?
After Q there are a number of letters the last of which is scarcely
visible to mortal eyes, but glimmers red in the distance. Z is only 
51
reached once by one man in a generation. Still, if he could reach R
it would be something. Here at least was Q. He dug his heels in at
Q. Q he was sure of. Q he could demonstrate. If Q then is Q—R—
Here he knocked his pipe out, with two or three resonant taps on
the ram’s horn which made the handle of the urn, and proceeded.
“Then R. . .” He braced himself. He clenched himself.
Qualities that would have saved a ship’s company exposed on a
broiling sea with six biscuits and a flask of water—endurance and
justice, foresight, devotion, skill, came to his help. R is then—what
is R?
A shutter, like the leathern eyelid of a lizard, flickered over the
intensity of his gaze and obscured the letter R. In that flash of
darkness he heard people saying—he was a failure—that R was
beyond him. He would never reach R. On to R, once more. R——
Qualities that in a desolate expedition across the icy solitudes of
the Polar region would have made him the leader, the guide, the
counsellor, whose temper, neither sanguine nor despondent, surveys
with equanimity what is to be and faces it, came to his help again.
R——
The lizard’s eye flickered once more. The veins on his forehead
bulged. The geranium in the urn became startlingly visible and, 
52
displayed among its leaves, he could see, without wishing it, that
old, that obvious distinction between the two classes of men; on the
one hand the steady goers of superhuman strength who, plodding
and persevering, repeat the whole alphabet in order, twenty-six
letters in all, from start to finish; on the other the gifted, the inspired
who, miraculously, lump all the letters together in one flash—the
way of genius. He had not genius; he laid no claim to that: but he
had, or might have had, the power to repeat every letter of the
alphabet from A to Z accurately in order. Meanwhile, he stuck at
Q. On, then, on to R.
Feelings that would not have disgraced a leader who, now that
the snow has begun to fall and the mountain-top is covered in mist,
knows that he must lay himself down and die before morning comes,
stole upon him, paling the colour of his eyes, giving him, even in the
two minutes of his turn on the terrace, the bleached look of withered
old age. Yet he would not die lying down; he would find some crag
of rock, and there, his eyes fixed on the storm, trying to the end to
pierce the darkness, he would die standing. He would never reach
R.
He stood stock still, by the urn, with the geranium flowing over
it. How many men in a thousand million, he asked himself, reach Z 
53
after all? Surely the leader of a forlorn hope may ask himself that,
and answer, without treachery to the expedition behind him, “One
perhaps”. One in a generation. Is he to be blamed then if he is not
that one? provided he has toiled honestly, given to the best of his
power, till he has no more left to give? And his fame lasts how long?
It is permissible even for a dying hero to think before he dies how
men will speak of him hereafter. His fame lasts perhaps two
thousand years. And what are two thousand years? (asked Mr.
Ramsay ironically, staring at the hedge). What, indeed, if you look
from a mountain-top down the long wastes of the ages? The very
stone one kicks with one’s boot will outlast Shakespeare. His own
little light would shine, not very brightly, for a year or two, and
would then be merged in some bigger light, and that in a bigger still.
(He looked into the darkness, into the intricacy of the twigs.) Who
then could blame the leader of that forlorn party which after all has
climbed high enough to see the waste of the years and the perishing
of stars, if before death stiffens his limbs beyond the power of
movement he does a little consciously raise his numbed fingers to
his brow, and square his shoulders, so that when the search party
comes they will find him dead at his post, the fine figure of a soldier? 
54
Mr. Ramsay squared his shoulders and stood very upright by the
urn.
Who shall blame him, if, so standing for a moment, he dwells
upon fame, upon search parties, upon cairns raised by grateful
followers over his bones? Finally, who shall blame the leader of the
doomed expedition, if, having adventured to the uttermost, and used
his strength wholly to the last ounce and fallen asleep not much
caring if he wakes or not, he now perceives by some pricking in his
toes that he lives, and does not on the whole object to live, but
requires sympathy, and whisky, and someone to tell the story of his
suffering to at once? Who shall blame him? Who will not secretly
rejoice when the hero puts his armour off, and halts by the window
and gazes at his wife and son, who very distant at first, gradually
come closer and closer, till lips and book and head are clearly before
him, though still lovely and unfamiliar from the intensity of his
isolation and the waste of ages and the perishing of the stars, and
finally putting his pipe in his pocket and bending his magnificent
head before her—who will blame him if he does homage to the
beauty of the world? 
55

But his son hated him. He hated him for coming up to them, for
stopping and looking down on them; he hated him for interrupting
them; he hated him for the exaltation and sublimity of his gestures;
for the magnificence of his head; for his exactingness and egotism
(for there he stood, commanding them to attend to him); but most
of all he hated the twang and twitter of his father’s emotion which,
vibrating round them, disturbed the perfect simplicity and good
sense of his relations with his mother. By looking fixedly at the page,
he hoped to make him move on; by pointing his finger at a word, he
hoped to recall his mother’s attention, which, he knew angrily,
wavered instantly his father stopped. But no. Nothing would make
Mr. Ramsay move on. There he stood, demanding sympathy.
Mrs. Ramsay, who had been sitting loosely, folding her son in her
arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with
an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a
column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if
all her energies were being fused into force, burning and
illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again),
and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the 
56
fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren
and bare. He wanted sympathy. He was a failure, he said. Mrs.
Ramsay flashed her needles. Mr. Ramsay repeated, never taking his
eyes from her face, that he was a failure. She blew the words back at
him. “Charles Tansley. . .” she said. But he must have more than
that. It was sympathy he wanted, to be assured of his genius, first of
all, and then to be taken within the circle of life, warmed and
soothed, to have his senses restored to him, his barrenness made
fertile, and all the rooms of the house made full of life—the
drawing-room; behind the drawing-room the kitchen; above the
kitchen the bedrooms; and beyond them the nurseries; they must be
furnished, they must be filled with life.
Charles Tansley thought him the greatest metaphysician of the
time, she said. But he must have more than that. He must have
sympathy. He must be assured that he too lived in the heart of life;
was needed; not here only, but all over the world. Flashing her
needles, confident, upright, she created drawing-room and kitchen,
set them all aglow; bade him take his ease there, go in and out, enjoy
himself. She laughed, she knitted. Standing between her knees, very
stiff, James felt all her strength flaring up to be drunk and quenched 
57
by the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of the male, which smote
mercilessly, again and again, demanding sympathy.
He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing
her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the
room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a
doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying
a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real;
the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in
her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or
climbed high, not for a second should he find himself without her.
So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was
scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so
lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees,
felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing
boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father,
the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.
Filled with her words, like a child who drops off satisfied, he said,
at last, looking at her with humble gratitude, restored, renewed, that
he would take a turn; he would watch the children playing cricket.
He went. 
58
Immediately, Mrs. Ramsay seemed to fold herself together, one
petal closed in another, and the whole fabric fell in exhaustion upon
itself, so that she had only strength enough to move her finger, in
exquisite abandonment to exhaustion, across the page of Grimm’s
fairy story, while there throbbed through her, like the pulse in a
spring which has expanded to its full width and now gently ceases
to beat, the rapture of successful creation.
Every throb of this pulse seemed, as he walked away, to enclose
her and her husband, and to give to each that solace which two
different notes, one high, one low, struck together, seem to give each
other as they combine. Yet, as the resonance died, and she turned to
the Fairy Tale again, Mrs. Ramsay felt not only exhausted in body
(afterwards, not at the time, she always felt this) but also there tinged
her physical fatigue some faintly disagreeable sensation with another
origin. Not that, as she read aloud the story of the Fisherman’s Wife,
she knew precisely what it came from; nor did she let herself put into
words her dissatisfaction when she realised, at the turn of the page
when she stopped and heard dully, ominously, a wave fall, how it
came from this: she did not like, even for a second, to feel finer than
her husband; and further, could not bear not being entirely sure,
when she spoke to him, of the truth of what she said. Universities 
59
and people wanting him, lectures and books and their being of the
highest importance—all that she did not doubt for a moment; but it
was their relation, and his coming to her like that, openly, so that
anyone could see, that discomposed her; for then people said he
depended on her, when they must know that of the two he was
infinitely the more important, and what she gave the world, in
comparison with what he gave, negligible. But then again, it was the
other thing too—not being able to tell him the truth, being afraid,
for instance, about the greenhouse roof and the expense it would be,
fifty pounds perhaps, to mend it; and then about his books, to be
afraid that he might guess, what she a little suspected, that his last
book was not quite his best book (she gathered that from William
Bankes); and then to hide small daily things, and the children seeing
it, and the burden it laid on them—all this diminished the entire
joy, the pure joy, of the two notes sounding together, and let the
sound die on her ear now with a dismal flatness.
A shadow was on the page; she looked up. It was Augustus
Carmichael shuffling past, precisely now, at the very moment when
it was painful to be reminded of the inadequacy of human
relationships, that the most perfect was flawed, and could not bear
the examination which, loving her husband, with her instinct for 
60
truth, she turned upon it; when it was painful to feel herself
convicted of unworthiness, and impeded in her proper function by
these lies, these exaggerations,—it was at this moment when she was
fretted thus ignobly in the wake of her exaltation, that Mr.
Carmichael shuffled past, in his yellow slippers, and some demon in
her made it necessary for her to call out, as he passed,
“Going indoors, Mr. Carmichael?”

He said nothing. He took opium. The children said he had
stained his beard yellow with it. Perhaps. What was obvious to her
was that the poor man was unhappy, came to them every year as an
escape; and yet every year, she felt the same thing; he did not trust
her. She said, “I am going to the town. Shall I get you stamps, paper,
tobacco?” and she felt him wince. He did not trust her. It was his
wife’s doing. She remembered that iniquity of his wife’s towards
him, which had made her turn to steel and adamant there, in the
horrid little room in St. John’s Wood, when with her own eyes she
had seen that odious woman turn him out of the house. He was
unkempt; he dropped things on his coat; he had the tiresomeness of 
61
an old man with nothing in the world to do; and she turned him out
of the room. She said, in her odious way, “Now, Mrs. Ramsay and I
want to have a little talk together,” and Mrs. Ramsay could see, as if
before her eyes, the innumerable miseries of his life. Had he money
enough to buy tobacco? Did he have to ask her for it? half a crown?
eighteenpence? Oh, she could not bear to think of the little
indignities she made him suffer. And always now (why, she could
not guess, except that it came probably from that woman somehow)
he shrank from her. He never told her anything. But what more
could she have done? There was a sunny room given up to him. The
children were good to him. Never did she show a sign of not wanting
him. She went out of her way indeed to be friendly. Do you want
stamps, do you want tobacco? Here’s a book you might like and so
on. And after all—after all (here insensibly she drew herself
together, physically, the sense of her own beauty becoming, as it did
so seldom, present to her)—after all, she had not generally any difficulty
in making people like her; for instance, George Manning; Mr. Wallace;
famous as they were, they would come to her of an evening, quietly, and
talk alone over her fire. She bore about with her, she could not help
knowing it, the torch of her beauty; she carried it erect into any room that
she entered; and after all, veil it as she might, and shrink from the 
62
monotony of bearing that it imposed on her, her beauty was apparent. She
had been admired. She had been loved. She had entered rooms where
mourners sat. Tears had flown in her presence. Men, and women too,
letting go the multiplicity of things, had allowed themselves with her the
relief of simplicity. It injured her that he should shrink. It hurt her. And
yet not cleanly, not rightly. That was what she minded, coming as it did
on top of her discontent with her husband; the sense she had now when
Mr. Carmichael shuffled past, just nodding to her question, with a book
beneath his arm, in his yellow slippers, that she was suspected; and that all
this desire of hers to give, to help, was vanity. For her own self-satisfaction
was it that she wished so instinctively to help, to give, that people might
say of her, “O Mrs. Ramsay! dear Mrs. Ramsay. . . Mrs. Ramsay, of
course!” and need her and send for her and admire her? Was it not
secretly this that she wanted, and therefore when Mr. Carmichael
shrank away from her, as he did at this moment, making off to some
corner where he did acrostics endlessly, she did not feel merely
snubbed back in her instinct, but made aware of the pettiness of
some part of her, and of human relations, how flawed they are, how
despicable, how self-seeking, at their best. Shabby and worn out,
and not presumably (her cheeks were hollow, her hair was white)
any longer a sight that filled the eyes with joy, she had better devote
her mind to the story of the Fisherman and his Wife and so pacify 
63
that bundle of sensitiveness (none of her children was as sensitive as
he was) her son James.
“The man’s heart grew heavy,” she read aloud, “and he would not
go. He said to himself, ‘It is not right,’ and yet he went. And when
he came to the sea the water was quite purple and dark blue, and
grey and thick, and no longer so green and yellow, but it was still
quiet. And he stood there and said——”
Mrs. Ramsay could have wished that her husband had not chosen
that moment to stop. Why had he not gone as he said to watch the
children playing cricket? But he did not speak; he looked; he
nodded; he approved; he went on. He slipped seeing before him that
hedge which had over and over again rounded some pause, signified
some conclusion, seeing his wife and child, seeing again the urns
with the trailing red geraniums which had so often decorated
processes of thought, and bore, written up among their leaves, as if
they were scraps of paper on which one scribbles notes in the rush
of reading—he slipped, seeing all this, smoothly into speculation
suggested by an article in The Times about the number of Americans
who visit Shakespeare’s house every year. If Shakespeare had never
existed, he asked, would the world have differed much from what it
is to-day? Does the progress of civilisation depend upon great men? 
64
Is the lot of the average human being better now than in the time of
the Pharaohs? Is the lot of the average human being, however, he
asked himself, the criterion by which we judge the measure of
civilisation? Possibly not. Possibly the greatest good requires the
existence of a slave class. The liftman in the Tube is an eternal
necessity. The thought was distasteful to him. He tossed his head.
To avoid it, he would find some way of snubbing the predominance
of the arts. He would argue that the world exists for the average
human being; that the arts are merely a decoration imposed on the
top of human life; they do not express it. Nor is Shakespeare
necessary to it.
Not knowing precisely why it was that he wanted to disparage
Shakespeare and come to the rescue of the man who stands eternally
in the door of the lift, he picked a leaf sharply from the hedge. All
this would have to be dished up for the young men at Cardiff next
month, he thought; here, on his terrace, he was merely foraging and
picnicking (he threw away the leaf that he had picked so peevishly)
like a man who reaches from his horse to pick a bunch of roses, or
stuffs his pockets with nuts as he ambles at his ease through the lanes
and fields of a country known to him from boyhood. It was all
familiar; this turning, that stile, that cut across the fields. Hours he 
65
would spend thus, with his pipe, of an evening, thinking up and
down and in and out of the old familiar lanes and commons, which
were all stuck about with the history of that campaign there, the life
of this statesman here, with poems and with anecdotes, with figures
too, this thinker, that soldier; all very brisk and clear; but at length
the lane, the field, the common, the fruitful nut-tree and the
flowering hedge led him on to that further turn of the road where
he dismounted always, tied his horse to a tree, and proceeded on
foot alone. He reached the edge of the lawn and looked out on the
bay beneath.
It was his fate, his peculiarity, whether he wished it or not, to
come out thus on a spit of land which the sea is slowly eating away,
and there to stand, like a desolate sea-bird, alone. It was his power,
his gift, suddenly to shed all superfluities, to shrink and diminish so
that he looked barer and felt sparer, even physically, yet lost none of
his intensity of mind, and so to stand on his little ledge facing the
dark of human ignorance, how we know nothing and the sea eats
away the ground we stand on—that was his fate, his gift. But having
thrown away, when he dismounted, all gestures and fripperies, all
trophies of nuts and roses, and shrunk so that not only fame but even
his own name was forgotten by him, he kept even in that desolation 
66
a vigilance which spared no phantom and luxuriated in no vision,
and it was in this guise that he inspired in William Bankes
(intermittently) and in Charles Tansley (obsequiously) and in his
wife now, when she looked up and saw him standing at the edge of
the lawn, profound reverence, and pity, and gratitude too, as a stake
driven into the bed of a channel upon which the gulls perch and the
waves beat inspires in merry boat-loads a feeling of gratitude for the
duty it has taken upon itself of marking the channel out there in the
floods alone.
“But the father of eight children has no choice. . . .” Muttering
half aloud, so he broke off, turned, sighed, raised his eyes, sought
the figure of his wife reading stories to the little boy; filled his pipe.
He turned from the sight of human ignorance and human fate and
the sea eating the ground we stand on, which, had he been able to
contemplate it fixedly might have led to something; and found
consolation in trifles so slight compared with the august theme just
now before him that he was disposed to slur that comfort over, to
deprecate it, as if to be caught happy in a world of misery was for an
honest man the most despicable of crimes. It was true; he was for
the most part happy; he had his wife; he had his children; he had
promised in six weeks’ time to talk “some nonsense” to the young 
67
men of Cardiff about Locke, Hume, Berkeley, and the causes of the
French Revolution. But this and his pleasure in it, in the phrases he
made, in the ardour of youth, in his wife’s beauty, in the tributes that
reached him from Swansea, Cardiff, Exeter, Southampton,
Kidderminster, Oxford, Cambridge—all had to be deprecated and
concealed under the phrase “talking nonsense,” because, in effect, he
had not done the thing he might have done. It was a disguise; it was
the refuge of a man afraid to own his own feelings, who could not
say, This is what I like—this is what I am; and rather pitiable and
distasteful to William Bankes and Lily Briscoe, who wondered why
such concealments should be necessary; why he needed always
praise; why so brave a man in thought should be so timid in life; how
strangely he was venerable and laughable at one and the same time.
Teaching and preaching is beyond human power, Lily suspected.
(She was putting away her things). If you are exalted you must
somehow come a cropper. Mrs. Ramsay gave him what he asked too
easily. Then the change must be so upsetting, Lily said. He comes
in from his books and finds us all playing games and talking
nonsense. Imagine what a change from the things he thinks about,
she said. 
68
He was bearing down upon them. Now he stopped dead and
stood looking in silence at the sea. Now he had turned away again.

Yes, Mr. Bankes said, watching him go. It was a thousand pities.
(Lily had said something about his frightening her—he changed
from one mood to another so suddenly.) Yes, said Mr. Bankes, it
was a thousand pities that Ramsay could not behave a little more
like other people. (For he liked Lily Briscoe; he could discuss
Ramsay with her quite openly.) It was for that reason, he said, that
the young don’t read Carlyle. A crusty old grumbler who lost his
temper if the porridge was cold, why should he preach to us? was
what Mr. Bankes understood that young people said nowadays. It
was a thousand pities if you thought, as he did, that Carlyle was one
of the great teachers of mankind. Lily was ashamed to say that she
had not read Carlyle since she was at school. But in her opinion one
liked Mr. Ramsay all the better for thinking that if his little finger
ached the whole world must come to an end. It was not that she
minded. For who could be deceived by him? He asked you quite
openly to flatter him, to admire him, his little dodges deceived 
69
nobody. What she disliked was his narrowness, his blindness, she
said, looking after him.
“A bit of a hypocrite?” Mr. Bankes suggested, looking, too, at Mr.
Ramsay’s back, for was he not thinking of his friendship, and of
Cam refusing to give him a flower, and of all those boys and girls,
and his own house, full of comfort, but, since his wife’s death, quiet
rather? Of course, he had his work. . . . All the same, he rather
wished Lily to agree that Ramsay was, as he said, “a bit of a
hypocrite”.
Lily Briscoe went on putting away her brushes, looking up,
looking down. Looking up, there he was—Mr. Ramsay—advancing
towards them, swinging, careless, oblivious, remote. A bit of a
hypocrite? she repeated. Oh no—the most sincere of men, the truest
(here he was), the best; but, looking down, she thought, he is
absorbed in himself, he is tyrannical, he is unjust; and kept looking
down, purposely, for only so could she keep steady, staying with the
Ramsays. Directly one looked up and saw them, what she called
“being in love” flooded them. They became part of that unreal but
penetrating and exciting universe which is the world seen through
the eyes of love. The sky stuck to them; the birds sang through them.
And, what was even more exciting, she felt, too, as she saw Mr. 
70
Ramsay bearing down and retreating, and Mrs. Ramsay sitting with
James in the window and the cloud moving and the tree bending,
how life, from being made up of little separate incidents which one
lived one by one, became curled and whole like a wave which bore
one up with it and threw one down with it, there, with a dash on the
beach.
Mr. Bankes expected her to answer. And she was about to say
something criticising Mrs. Ramsay, how she was alarming, too, in
her way, high-handed, or words to that effect, when Mr. Bankes
made it entirely unnecessary for her to speak by his rapture. For such
it was considering his age, turned sixty, and his cleanliness and his
impersonality, and the white scientific coat which seemed to clothe
him. For him to gaze as Lily saw him gazing at Mrs. Ramsay was a
rapture, equivalent, Lily felt, to the loves of dozens of young men
(and perhaps Mrs. Ramsay had never excited the loves of dozens of
young men). It was love, she thought, pretending to move her
canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its
object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols,
or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and
become part of the human gain. So it was indeed. The world by all
means should have shared it, could Mr. Bankes have said why that 
71
woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to
her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a
scientific problem, so that he rested in contemplation of it, and felt,
as he felt when he had proved something absolute about the
digestive system of plants, that barbarity was tamed, the reign of
chaos subdued.
Such a rapture—for by what other name could one call it?—made
Lily Briscoe forget entirely what she had been about to say. It was
nothing of importance; something about Mrs. Ramsay. It paled
beside this “rapture”, this silent stare, for which she felt intense
gratitude; for nothing so solaced her, eased her of the perplexity of
life, and miraculously raised its burdens, as this sublime power, this
heavenly gift, and one would no more disturb it, while it lasted, than
break up the shaft of sunlight lying level across the floor.
That people should love like this, that Mr. Bankes should feel this
for Mrs. Ramsay (she glanced at him musing) was helpful, was
exalting. She wiped one brush after another upon a piece of old rag,
menially, on purpose. She took shelter from the reverence which
covered all women; she felt herself praised. Let him gaze; she would steal a look at her picture. 
She could have wept. It was bad, it was bad, it was infinitely bad!
She could have done it differently of course; the colour could have
been thinned and faded; the shapes etherealised; that was how
Paunceforte would have seen it. But then she did not see it like that.
She saw the colour burning on a framework of steel; the light of a
butterfly’s wing lying upon the arches of a cathedral. Of all that only
a few random marks scrawled upon the canvas remained. And it
would never be seen; never be hung even, and there was Mr. Tansley
whispering in her ear, “Women can’t paint, women can’t write. . .”
She now remembered what she had been going to say about Mrs.
Ramsay. She did not know how she would have put it; but it would
have been something critical. She had been annoyed the other night
by some highhandedness. Looking along the level of Mr. Bankes’
glance at her, she thought that no woman could worship another
woman in the way he worshipped; they could only seek shelter under
the shade which Mr. Bankes extended over them both. Looking
along his beam she added to it her different ray, thinking that she
was unquestionably the loveliest of people (bowed over her book);
the best perhaps; but also, different too from the perfect shape which
one saw there. But why different, and how different? she asked
herself, scraping her palette of all those mounds of blue and green 
73
which seemed to her like clods with no life in them now, yet she
vowed, she would inspire them, force them to move, flow, do her
bidding to-morrow. How did she differ? What was the spirit in her,
the essential thing, by which, had you found a glove in the corner of
a sofa, you would have known it, from its twisted finger, hers
indisputably? She was like a bird for speed, an arrow for directness.
She was wilful; she was commanding (of course, Lily reminded
herself, I am thinking of her relations with women, and I am much
younger, an insignificant person, living off the Brompton Road).
She opened bedroom windows. She shut doors. (So she tried to start
the tune of Mrs. Ramsay in her head.) Arriving late at night, with a
light tap on one’s bedroom door, wrapped in an old fur coat (for the
setting of her beauty was always that—hasty, but apt), she would
enact again whatever it might be—Charles Tansley losing his
umbrella; Mr. Carmichael snuffling and sniffing; Mr. Bankes
saying, “the vegetable salts are lost”. All this she would adroitly
shape; even maliciously twist; and, moving over to the window, in
pretence that she must go,—it was dawn, she could see the sun
rising,—half turn back, more intimately, but still always laughing,
insist that she must, Minta must, they all must marry, since in the
whole world, whatever laurels might be tossed to her (but Mrs. 
74
Ramsay cared not a fig for her painting), or triumphs won by her
(probably Mrs. Ramsay had had her share of those), and here she
saddened, darkened, and came back to her chair, there could be no
disputing this: an unmarried woman (she lightly took her hand for
a moment), an unmarried woman has missed the best of life. The
house seemed full of children sleeping and Mrs. Ramsay listening;
of shaded lights and regular breathing.
Oh but, Lily would say, there was her father; her home; even, had
she dared to say it, her painting. But all this seemed so little, so
virginal, against the other. Yet, as the night wore on, and white
lights parted the curtains, and even now and then some bird chirped
in the garden, gathering a desperate courage she would urge her own
exemption from the universal law; plead for it; she liked to be alone;
she liked to be herself; she was not made for that; and so have to
meet a serious stare from eyes of unparalleled depth, and confront
Mrs. Ramsay’s simple certainty (and she was childlike now) that her
dear Lily, her little Brisk, was a fool. Then, she remembered, she
had laid her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s lap and laughed and laughed
and laughed, laughed almost hysterically at the thought of Mrs.
Ramsay presiding with immutable calm over destinies which she
completely failed to understand. There she sat, simple, serious. She 
75
had recovered her sense of her now—this was the glove’s twisted
finger. But into what sanctuary had one penetrated? Lily Briscoe had
looked up at last, and there was Mrs. Ramsay, unwitting entirely
what had caused her laughter, still presiding, but now with every
trace of wilfulness abolished, and in its stead, something clear as the
space which the clouds at last uncover—the little space of sky which
sleeps beside the moon.
Was it wisdom? Was it knowledge? Was it, once more, the
deceptiveness of beauty, so that all one’s perceptions, half-way to
truth, were tangled in a golden mesh? or did she lock up within her
some secret which certainly Lily Briscoe believed people must have
for the world to go on at all? Every one could not be as helter skelter,
hand to mouth as she was. But if they knew, could they tell one what
they knew? Sitting on the floor with her arms round Mrs. Ramsay’s
knees, close as she could get, smiling to think that Mrs. Ramsay
would never know the reason of that pressure, she imagined how in
the chambers of the mind and heart of the woman who was,
physically, touching her, were stood, like the treasures in the tombs
of kings, tablets bearing sacred inscriptions, which if one could spell
them out would teach one everything, but they would never be
offered openly, never made public. What art was there, known to 
76
love or cunning, by which one pressed through into those secret
chambers? What device for becoming, like waters poured into one
jar, inextricably the same, one with the object one adored? Could
the body achieve it, or the mind, subtly mingling in the intricate
passages of the brain? or the heart?
Could loving, as people called it, make her and Mrs. Ramsay one?
for it was not knowledge but unity that she desired, not inscriptions
on tablets, nothing that could be written in any language known to
men, but intimacy itself, which is knowledge, she had thought,
leaning her head on Mrs. Ramsay’s knee.
Nothing happened. Nothing! Nothing! as she leant her head
against Mrs. Ramsay’s knee. And yet, she knew knowledge and
wisdom were stored in Mrs. Ramsay’s heart. How then, she had
asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about
people, sealed as they were? Only like a bee, drawn by some
sweetness or sharpness in the air intangible to touch or taste, one
haunted the dome-shaped hive, ranged the wastes of the air over the
countries of the world alone, and then haunted the hives with their
murmurs and their stirrings; the hives which were people. Mrs.
Ramsay rose. Lily rose. Mrs. Ramsay went. For days there hung
about her, as after a dream some subtle change is felt in the person 
77
one has dreamt of, more vividly than anything she said, the sound
of murmuring and, as she sat in the wicker arm-chair in the
drawing-room window she wore, to Lily’s eyes, an august shape; the
shape of a dome.
This ray passed level with Mr. Bankes’s ray straight to Mrs.
Ramsay sitting reading there with James at her knee. But now while
she still looked, Mr. Bankes had done. He had put on his spectacles.
He had stepped back. He had raised his hand. He had slightly
narrowed his clear blue eyes, when Lily, rousing herself, saw what
he was at, and winced like a dog who sees a hand raised to strike it.
She would have snatched her picture off the easel, but she said to
herself, One must. She braced herself to stand the awful trial of
someone looking at her picture. One must, she said, one must. And
if it must be seen, Mr. Bankes was less alarming than another. But
that any other eyes should see the residue of her thirty-three years,
the deposit of each day’s living, mixed with something more secret
than she had ever spoken or shown in the course of all those days
was an agony. At the same time it was immensely exciting.
Nothing could be cooler and quieter. Taking out a penknife, Mr.
Bankes tapped the canvas with the bone handle. What did she wish
to indicate by the triangular purple shape, “just there?” he asked. 
78
It was Mrs. Ramsay reading to James, she said. She knew his
objection—that no one could tell it for a human shape. But she had
made no attempt at likeness, she said. For what reason had she
introduced them then? he asked. Why indeed?—except that if there,
in that corner, it was bright, here, in this, she felt the need of
darkness. Simple, obvious, commonplace, as it was, Mr. Bankes was
interested. Mother and child then—objects of universal veneration,
and in this case the mother was famous for her beauty—might be
reduced, he pondered, to a purple shadow without irreverence.
But the picture was not of them, she said. Or, not in his sense.
There were other senses, too, in which one might reverence them.
By a shadow here and a light there, for instance. Her tribute took
that form, if, as she vaguely supposed, a picture must be a tribute. A
mother and child might be reduced to a shadow without irreverence.
A light here required a shadow there. He considered. He was
interested. He took it scientifically in complete good faith. The truth
was that all his prejudices were on the other side, he explained. The
largest picture in his drawing-room, which painters had praised, and
valued at a higher price than he had given for it, was of the cherry
trees in blossom on the banks of the Kennet. He had spent his
honeymoon on the banks of the Kennet, he said. Lily must come 
79
and see that picture, he said. But now—he turned, with his glasses
raised to the scientific examination of her canvas. The question
being one of the relations of masses, of lights and shadows, which,
to be honest, he had never considered before, he would like to have
it explained—what then did she wish to make of it? And he
indicated the scene before them. She looked. She could not show
him what she wished to make of it, could not see it even herself,
without a brush in her hand. She took up once more her old painting
position with the dim eyes and the absent-minded manner,
subduing all her impressions as a woman to something much more
general; becoming once more under the power of that vision which
she had seen clearly once and must now grope for among hedges and
houses and mothers and children—her picture. It was a question,
she remembered, how to connect this mass on the right hand with
that on the left. She might do it by bringing the line of the branch
across so; or break the vacancy in the foreground by an object (James
perhaps) so. But the danger was that by doing that the unity of the
whole might be broken. She stopped; she did not want to bore him;
she took the canvas lightly off the easel.
But it had been seen; it had been taken from her. This man had
shared with her something profoundly intimate. And, thanking Mr. 
80
Ramsay for it and Mrs. Ramsay for it and the hour and the place,
crediting the world with a power which she had not suspected, that
one could walk away down that long gallery not alone any more but
arm in arm with somebody—the strangest feeling in the world, and
the most exhilarating—she nicked the catch of her paint-box to,
more firmly than was necessary, and the nick seemed to surround in
a circle for ever the paint-box, the lawn, Mr. Bankes, and that wild
villain, Cam, dashing past.

For Cam grazed the easel by an inch; she would not stop for Mr.
Bankes and Lily Briscoe; though Mr. Bankes, who would have liked
a daughter of his own, held out his hand; she would not stop for her
father, whom she grazed also by an inch; nor for her mother, who
called “Cam! I want you a moment!” as she dashed past. She was off
like a bird, bullet, or arrow, impelled by what desire, shot by whom,
at what directed, who could say? What, what? Mrs. Ramsay
pondered, watching her. It might be a vision—of a shell, of a
wheelbarrow, of a fairy kingdom on the far side of the hedge; or it
might be the glory of speed; no one knew. But when Mrs. Ramsay 
81
called “Cam!” a second time, the projectile dropped in mid career,
and Cam came lagging back, pulling a leaf by the way, to her
mother.
What was she dreaming about, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, seeing
her engrossed, as she stood there, with some thought of her own, so
that she had to repeat the message twice—ask Mildred if Andrew,
Miss Doyle, and Mr. Rayley have come back?—The words seemed
to be dropped into a well, where, if the waters were clear, they were
also so extraordinarily distorting that, even as they descended, one
saw them twisting about to make Heaven knows what pattern on
the floor of the child’s mind. What message would Cam give the
cook? Mrs. Ramsay wondered. And indeed it was only by waiting
patiently, and hearing that there was an old woman in the kitchen
with very red cheeks, drinking soup out of a basin, that Mrs. Ramsay
at last prompted that parrot-like instinct which had picked up
Mildred’s words quite accurately and could now produce them, if
one waited, in a colourless singsong. Shifting from foot to foot, Cam
repeated the words, “No, they haven’t, and I’ve told Ellen to clear
away tea.”
Minta Doyle and Paul Rayley had not come back then. That
could only mean, Mrs. Ramsay thought, one thing. She must accept 
82
him, or she must refuse him. This going off after luncheon for a
walk, even though Andrew was with them—what could it mean?
except that she had decided, rightly, Mrs. Ramsay thought (and she
was very, very fond of Minta), to accept that good fellow, who might
not be brilliant, but then, thought Mrs. Ramsay, realising that James
was tugging at her to make her go on reading aloud the Fisherman
and his Wife, she did in her own heart infinitely prefer boobies to
clever men who wrote dissertations; Charles Tansley for instance.
Anyhow it must have happened, one way or the other, by now.
But she read, “Next morning the wife awoke first, and it was just
daybreak, and from her bed she saw the beautiful country lying
before her. Her husband was still stretching himself. . . .”
But how could Minta say now that she would not have him? Not
if she agreed to spend whole afternoons trapesing about the country
alone—for Andrew would be off after his crabs—but possibly Nancy
was with them. She tried to recall the sight of them standing at the
hall door after lunch. There they stood, looking at the sky,
wondering about the weather, and she had said, thinking partly to
cover their shyness, partly to encourage them to be off (for her
sympathies were with Paul), 
83
“There isn’t a cloud anywhere within miles,” at which she could
feel little Charles Tansley, who had followed them out, snigger. But
she did it on purpose. Whether Nancy was there or not, she could
not be certain, looking from one to the other in her mind’s eye.
She read on: “Ah, wife,” said the man, “why should we be king? I
do not want to be King.” “Well,” said the wife, “if you won’t be King,
I will; go to the Flounder, for I will be King.”
“Come in or go out, Cam,” she said, knowing that Cam was
attracted only by the word “Flounder” and that in a moment she
would fidget and fight with James as usual. Cam shot off. Mrs.
Ramsay went on reading, relieved, for she and James shared the
same tastes and were comfortable together.
“And when he came to the sea, it was quite dark grey, and the
water heaved up from below, and smelt putrid. Then he went and
stood by it and said,
‘Flounder, flounder, in the sea,
Come, I pray thee, here to me;
For my wife, good Ilsabil,
Wills not as I’d have her will.’ ‘Well, what does she want then?’ said the Flounder.” And where
were they now? Mrs. Ramsay wondered, reading and thinking, quite
easily, both at the same time; for the story of the Fisherman and his
Wife was like the bass gently accompanying a tune, which now and
then ran up unexpectedly into the melody. And when should she be
told? If nothing happened, she would have to speak seriously to
Minta. For she could not go trapesing about all over the country,
even if Nancy were with them (she tried again, unsuccessfully, to
visualise their backs going down the path, and to count them). She
was responsible to Minta’s parents—the Owl and the Poker. Her
nicknames for them shot into her mind as she read. The Owl and
the Poker—yes, they would be annoyed if they heard—and they
were certain to hear—that Minta, staying with the Ramsays, had
been seen etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. “He wore a wig in the House
of Commons and she ably assisted him at the head of the stairs,” she
repeated, fishing them up out of her mind by a phrase which,
coming back from some party, she had made to amuse her husband.
Dear, dear, Mrs. Ramsay said to herself, how did they produce this
incongruous daughter? this tomboy Minta, with a hole in her
stocking? How did she exist in that portentous atmosphere where
the maid was always removing in a dust-pan the sand that the parrot 
85
had scattered, and conversation was almost entirely reduced to the
exploits—interesting perhaps, but limited after all—of that bird?
Naturally, one had asked her to lunch, tea, dinner, finally to stay
with them up at Finlay, which had resulted in some friction with the
Owl, her mother, and more calling, and more conversation, and
more sand, and really at the end of it, she had told enough lies about
parrots to last her a lifetime (so she had said to her husband that
night, coming back from the party). However, Minta came. . . . Yes,
she came, Mrs. Ramsay thought, suspecting some thorn in the
tangle of this thought; and disengaging it found it to be this: a
woman had once accused her of “robbing her of her daughter’s
affections”; something Mrs. Doyle had said made her remember that
charge again. Wishing to dominate, wishing to interfere, making
people do what she wished—that was the charge against her, and
she thought it most unjust. How could she help being “like that” to
look at? No one could accuse her of taking pains to impress. She was
often ashamed of her own shabbiness. Nor was she domineering,
nor was she tyrannical. It was more true about hospitals and drains
and the dairy. About things like that she did feel passionately, and
would, if she had had the chance, have liked to take people by the
scruff of their necks and make them see. No hospital on the whole 
86
island. It was a disgrace. Milk delivered at your door in London
positively brown with dirt. It should be made illegal. A model dairy
and a hospital up here—those two things she would have liked to
do, herself. But how? With all these children? When they were
older, then perhaps she would have time; when they were all at
school.
Oh, but she never wanted James to grow a day older or Cam
either. These two she would have liked to keep for ever just as they
were, demons of wickedness, angels of delight, never to see them
grow up into long-legged monsters. Nothing made up for the loss.
When she read just now to James, “and there were numbers of
soldiers with kettle-drums and trumpets”, and his eyes darkened, she
thought, why should they grow up, and lose all that? He was the
most gifted, the most sensitive of her children. But all, she thought,
were full of promise. Prue, a perfect angel with the others, and
sometimes now, at night especially, she took one’s breath away with
her beauty. Andrew—even her husband admitted that his gift for
mathematics was extraordinary. And Nancy and Roger, they were
both wild creatures now, scampering about over the country all day
long. As for Rose, her mouth was too big, but she had a wonderful
gift with her hands. If they had charades, Rose made the dresses; 
87
made everything; liked best arranging tables, flowers, anything. She
did not like it that Jasper should shoot birds; but it was only a stage;
they all went through stages. Why, she asked, pressing her chin on
James’s head, should they grow up so fast? Why should they go to
school? She would have liked always to have had a baby. She was
happiest carrying one in her arms. Then people might say she was
tyrannical, domineering, masterful, if they chose; she did not mind.
And, touching his hair with her lips, she thought, he will never be
so happy again, but stopped herself, remembering how it angered
her husband that she should say that. Still, it was true. They were
happier now than they would ever be again. A tenpenny tea set made
Cam happy for days. She heard them stamping and crowing on the
floor above her head the moment they woke. They came bustling
along the passage. Then the door sprang open and in they came,
fresh as roses, staring, wide awake, as if this coming into the diningroom after breakfast, which they did every day of their lives was a
positive event to them; and so on, with one thing after another, all
day long, until she went up to say good-night to them, and found
them netted in their cots like birds among cherries and raspberries
still making up stories about some little bit of rubbish—something
they had heard, something they had picked up in the garden. They 
88
had all their little treasures. . . And so she went down and said to
her husband, Why must they grow up and lose it all? Never will they
be so happy again. And he was angry. Why take such a gloomy view
of life? he said. It is not sensible. For it was odd; and she believed it
to be true; that with all his gloom and desperation he was happier,
more hopeful on the whole, than she was. Less exposed to human
worries—perhaps that was it. He had always his work to fall back
on. Not that she herself was “pessimistic”, as he accused her of being.
Only she thought life—and a little strip of time presented itself to
her eyes, her fifty years. There it was before her—life. Life: she
thought but she did not finish her thought. She took a look at life,
for she had a clear sense of it there, something real, something
private, which she shared neither with her children nor with her
husband. A sort of transaction went on between them, in which she
was on one side, and life was on another, and she was always trying
to get the better of it, as it was of her; and sometimes they parleyed
(when she sat alone); there were, she remembered, great
reconciliation scenes; but for the most part, oddly enough, she must
admit that she felt this thing that she called life terrible, hostile, and
quick to pounce on you if you gave it a chance. There were the
eternal problems: suffering; death; the poor. There was always a 
89
woman dying of cancer even here. And yet she had said to all these
children, You shall go through with it. To eight people she had said
relentlessly that (and the bill for the greenhouse would be fifty
pounds). For that reason, knowing what was before them—love and
ambition and being wretched alone in dreary places—she had often
the feeling, Why must they grow up and lose it all? And then she
said to herself, brandishing her sword at life, nonsense. They will be
perfectly happy. And here she was, she reflected, feeling life rather
sinister again, making Minta marry Paul Rayley; because whatever
she might feel about her own transaction and she had had
experiences which need not happen to everyone (she did not name
them to herself); she was driven on, too quickly she knew, almost as
if it were an escape for her too, to say that people must marry; people
must have children.
Was she wrong in this, she asked herself, reviewing her conduct
for the past week or two, and wondering if she had indeed put any
pressure upon Minta, who was only twenty-four, to make up her
mind. She was uneasy. Had she not laughed about it? Was she not
forgetting again how strongly she influenced people? Marriage
needed—oh all sorts of qualities (the bill for the greenhouse would 
90
be fifty pounds); one—she need not name it—that was essential; the
thing she had with her husband. Had they that?
“Then he put on his trousers and ran away like a madman,” she
read. “But outside a great storm was raging and blowing so hard that
he could scarcely keep his feet; houses and trees toppled over, the
mountains trembled, rocks rolled into the sea, the sky was pitch
black, and it thundered and lightened, and the sea came in with
black waves as high as church towers and mountains, and all with
white foam at the top.”
She turned the page; there were only a few lines more, so that she
would finish the story, though it was past bed-time. It was getting
late. The light in the garden told her that; and the whitening of the
flowers and something grey in the leaves conspired together to rouse
in her a feeling of anxiety. What it was about she could not think at
first. Then she remembered; Paul and Minta and Andrew had not
come back. She summoned before her again the little group on the
terrace in front of the hall door, standing looking up into the sky.
Andrew had his net and basket. That meant he was going to catch
crabs and things. That meant he would climb out on to a rock; he
would be cut off. Or coming back single file on one of those little 
91
paths above the cliff one of them might slip. He would roll and then
crash. It was growing quite dark.
But she did not let her voice change in the least as she finished
the story, and added, shutting the book, and speaking the last words
as if she had made them up herself, looking into James’s eyes: “And
there they are living still at this very time.”
“And that’s the end,” she said, and she saw in his eyes, as the
interest of the story died away in them, something else take its place;
something wondering, pale, like the reflection of a light, which at
once made him gaze and marvel. Turning, she looked across the bay,
and there, sure enough, coming regularly across the waves first two
quick strokes and then one long steady stroke, was the light of the
Lighthouse. It had been lit.
In a moment he would ask her, “Are we going to the Lighthouse?”
And she would have to say, “No: not to-morrow; your father says
not.” Happily, Mildred came in to fetch them, and the bustle
distracted them. But he kept looking back over his shoulder as
Mildred carried him out, and she was certain that he was thinking,
we are not going to the Lighthouse to-morrow; and she thought, he
will remember that all his life. 
92

No, she thought, putting together some of the pictures he had cut
out—a refrigerator, a mowing machine, a gentleman in evening
dress—children never forget. For this reason, it was so important
what one said, and what one did, and it was a relief when they went
to bed. For now she need not think about anybody. She could be
herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need
of—to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All
the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and
one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedgeshaped core of darkness, something invisible to others. Although she
continued to knit, and sat upright, it was thus that she felt herself;
and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest
adventures. When life sank down for a moment, the range of
experience seemed limitless. And to everybody there was always this
sense of unlimited resources, she supposed; one after another, she,
Lily, Augustus Carmichael, must feel, our apparitions, the things
you know us by, are simply childish. Beneath it is all dark, it is all
spreading, it is unfathomably deep; but now and again we rise to the
surface and that is what you see us by. Her horizon seemed to her 
93
limitless. There were all the places she had not seen; the Indian
plains; she felt herself pushing aside the thick leather curtain of a
church in Rome. This core of darkness could go anywhere, for no
one saw it. They could not stop it, she thought, exulting. There was
freedom, there was peace, there was, most welcome of all, a
summoning together, a resting on a platform of stability. Not as
oneself did one find rest ever, in her experience (she accomplished
here something dexterous with her needles), but as a wedge of
darkness. Losing personality, one lost the fret, the hurry, the stir;
and there rose to her lips always some exclamation of triumph over
life when things came together in this peace, this rest, this eternity;
and pausing there she looked out to meet that stroke of the
Lighthouse, the long steady stroke, the last of the three, which was
her stroke, for watching them in this mood always at this hour one
could not help attaching oneself to one thing especially of the things
one saw; and this thing, the long steady stroke, was her stroke. Often
she found herself sitting and looking, sitting and looking, with her
work in her hands until she became the thing she looked at—that
light for example. And it would lift up on it some little phrase or
other which had been lying in her mind like that—“Children don’t
forget, children don’t forget”—which she would repeat and begin 
94
adding to it, It will end, It will end, she said. It will come, it will
come, when suddenly she added, We are in the hands of the Lord.
But instantly she was annoyed with herself for saying that. Who
had said it? not she; she had been trapped into saying something she
did not mean. She looked up over her knitting and met the third
stroke and it seemed to her like her own eyes meeting her own eyes,
searching as she alone could search into her mind and her heart,
purifying out of existence that lie, any lie. She praised herself in
praising the light, without vanity, for she was stern, she was
searching, she was beautiful like that light. It was odd, she thought,
how if one was alone, one leant to things, inanimate things; trees,
streams, flowers; felt they expressed one; felt they became one; felt
they knew one, in a sense were one; felt an irrational tenderness thus
(she looked at that long steady light) as for oneself. There rose, and
she looked and looked with her needles suspended, there curled up
off the floor of the mind, rose from the lake of one’s being, a mist, a
bride to meet her lover.
What brought her to say that: “We are in the hands of the Lord?”
she wondered. The insincerity slipping in among the truths roused
her, annoyed her. She returned to her knitting again. How could any
Lord have made this world? she asked. With her mind she had 
95
always seized the fact that there is no reason, order, justice: but
suffering, death, the poor. There was no treachery too base for the
world to commit; she knew that. No happiness lasted; she knew that.
She knitted with firm composure, slightly pursing her lips and,
without being aware of it, so stiffened and composed the lines of her
face in a habit of sternness that when her husband passed, though
he was chuckling at the thought that Hume, the philosopher, grown
enormously fat, had stuck in a bog, he could not help noting, as he
passed, the sternness at the heart of her beauty. It saddened him,
and her remoteness pained him, and he felt, as he passed, that he
could not protect her, and, when he reached the hedge, he was sad.
He could do nothing to help her. He must stand by and watch her.
Indeed, the infernal truth was, he made things worse for her. He
was irritable—he was touchy. He had lost his temper over the
Lighthouse. He looked into the hedge, into its intricacy, its
darkness.
Always, Mrs. Ramsay felt, one helped oneself out of solitude
reluctantly by laying hold of some little odd or end, some sound,
some sight. She listened, but it was all very still; cricket was over; the
children were in their baths; there was only the sound of the sea. She
stopped knitting; she held the long reddish-brown stocking 
96
dangling in her hands a moment. She saw the light again. With
some irony in her interrogation, for when one woke at all, one’s
relations changed, she looked at the steady light, the pitiless, the
remorseless, which was so much her, yet so little her, which had her
at its beck and call (she woke in the night and saw it bent across their
bed, stroking the floor), but for all that she thought, watching it with
fascination, hypnotised, as if it were stroking with its silver fingers
some sealed vessel in her brain whose bursting would flood her with
delight, she had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense
happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as
daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves
of pure lemon which curved and swelled and broke upon the beach
and the ecstasy burst in her eyes and waves of pure delight raced over
the floor of her mind and she felt, It is enough! It is enough!
He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever
he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt
her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that James was gone
and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt
her. She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He
would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt
him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he 
97
could do nothing to help her. And again he would have passed her
without a word had she not, at that very moment, given him of her
own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him
and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him.
For he wished, she knew, to protect her.

She folded the green shawl about her shoulders. She took his arm.
His beauty was so great, she said, beginning to speak of Kennedy
the gardener at once; he was so awfully handsome, that she couldn’t
dismiss him. There was a ladder against the greenhouse, and little
lumps of putty stuck about, for they were beginning to mend the
greenhouse roof. Yes, but as she strolled along with her husband,
she felt that that particular source of worry had been placed. She had
it on the tip of her tongue to say, as they strolled, “It’ll cost fifty
pounds”, but instead, for her heart failed her about money, she
talked about Jasper shooting birds, and he said, at once, soothing
her instantly, that it was natural in a boy, and he trusted he would
find better ways of amusing himself before long. Her husband was
so sensible, so just. And so she said, “Yes; all children go through 
98
stages,” and began considering the dahlias in the big bed, and
wondering what about next year’s flowers, and had he heard the
children’s nickname for Charles Tansley, she asked. The atheist,
they called him, the little atheist. “He’s not a polished specimen,”
said Mr. Ramsay. “Far from it,” said Mrs. Ramsay.
She supposed it was all right leaving him to his own devices, Mrs.
Ramsay said, wondering whether it was any use sending down bulbs;
did they plant them? “Oh, he has his dissertation to write,” said Mr.
Ramsay. She knew all about that, said Mrs. Ramsay. He talked of
nothing else. It was about the influence of somebody upon
something. “Well, it’s all he has to count on,” said Mr. Ramsay.
“Pray Heaven he won’t fall in love with Prue,” said Mrs. Ramsay.
He’d disinherit her if she married him, said Mr. Ramsay. He did not
look at the flowers, which his wife was considering, but at a spot
about a foot or so above them. There was no harm in him, he added,
and was just about to say that anyhow he was the only young man
in England who admired his——when he choked it back. He would
not bother her again about his books. These flowers seemed
creditable, Mr. Ramsay said, lowering his gaze and noticing
something red, something brown. Yes, but then these she had put
in with her own hands, said Mrs. Ramsay. The question was, what 
99
happened if she sent bulbs down; did Kennedy plant them? It was
his incurable laziness; she added, moving on. If she stood over him
all day long with a spade in her hand, he did sometimes do a stroke
of work. So they strolled along, towards the red-hot pokers. “You’re
teaching your daughters to exaggerate,” said Mr. Ramsay, reproving
her. Her Aunt Camilla was far worse than she was, Mrs. Ramsay
remarked. “Nobody ever held up your Aunt Camilla as a model of
virtue that I’m aware of,” said Mr. Ramsay. “She was the most
beautiful woman I ever saw,” said Mrs. Ramsay. “Somebody else was
that,” said Mr. Ramsay. Prue was going to be far more beautiful than
she was, said Mrs. Ramsay. He saw no trace of it, said Mr. Ramsay.
“Well, then, look to-night,” said Mrs. Ramsay. They paused. He
wished Andrew could be induced to work harder. He would lose
every chance of a scholarship if he didn’t. “Oh scholarships!” she
said. Mr. Ramsay thought her foolish for saying that, about a serious
thing, like a scholarship. He should be very proud of Andrew if he
got a scholarship, he said. She would be just as proud of him if he
didn’t, she answered. They disagreed always about this, but it did
not matter. She liked him to believe in scholarships, and he liked
her to be proud of Andrew whatever he did. Suddenly she
remembered those little paths on the edge of the cliffs. 
100
Wasn’t it late? she asked. They hadn’t come home yet. He flicked
his watch carelessly open. But it was only just past seven. He held
his watch open for a moment, deciding that he would tell her what
he had felt on the terrace. To begin with, it was not reasonable to be
so nervous. Andrew could look after himself. Then, he wanted to
tell her that when he was walking on the terrace just now—here he
became uncomfortable, as if he were breaking into that solitude, that
aloofness, that remoteness of hers. . . . But she pressed him. What
had he wanted to tell her, she asked, thinking it was about going to
the Lighthouse; and that he was sorry he had said “Damn you”. But
no. He did not like to see her look so sad, he said. Only wool
gathering, she protested, flushing a little. They both felt
uncomfortable, as if they did not know whether to go on or go back.
She had been reading fairy tales to James, she said. No, they could
not share that; they could not say that.
They had reached the gap between the two clumps of red-hot
pokers, and there was the Lighthouse again, but she would not let
herself look at it. Had she known that he was looking at her, she
thought, she would not have let herself sit there, thinking. She
disliked anything that reminded her that she had been seen sitting
thinking. So she looked over her shoulder, at the town. The lights 
101
were rippling and running as if they were drops of silver water held
firm in a wind. And all the poverty, all the suffering had turned to
that, Mrs. Ramsay thought. The lights of the town and of the
harbour and of the boats seemed like a phantom net floating there
to mark something which had sunk. Well, if he could not share her
thoughts, Mr. Ramsay said to himself, he would be off, then, on his
own. He wanted to go on thinking, telling himself the story how
Hume was stuck in a bog; he wanted to laugh. But first it was
nonsense to be anxious about Andrew. When he was Andrew’s age
he used to walk about the country all day long, with nothing but a
biscuit in his pocket and nobody bothered about him, or thought
that he had fallen over a cliff. He said aloud he thought he would be
off for a day’s walk if the weather held. He had had about enough of
Bankes and of Carmichael. He would like a little solitude. Yes, she
said. It annoyed him that she did not protest. She knew that he
would never do it. He was too old now to walk all day long with a
biscuit in his pocket. She worried about the boys, but not about him.
Years ago, before he had married, he thought, looking across the
bay, as they stood between the clumps of red-hot pokers, he had
walked all day. He had made a meal off bread and cheese in a public
house. He had worked ten hours at a stretch; an old woman just 
102
popped her head in now and again and saw to the fire. That was the
country he liked best, over there; those sandhills dwindling away
into darkness. One could walk all day without meeting a soul. There
was not a house scarcely, not a single village for miles on end. One
could worry things out alone. There were little sandy beaches where
no one had been since the beginning of time. The seals sat up and
looked at you. It sometimes seemed to him that in a little house out
there, alone—he broke off, sighing. He had no right. The father of
eight children—he reminded himself. And he would have been a
beast and a cur to wish a single thing altered. Andrew would be a
better man than he had been. Prue would be a beauty, her mother
said. They would stem the flood a bit. That was a good bit of work
on the whole—his eight children. They showed he did not damn
the poor little universe entirely, for on an evening like this, he
thought, looking at the land dwindling away, the little island seemed
pathetically small, half swallowed up in the sea.
“Poor little place,” he murmured with a sigh.
She heard him. He said the most melancholy things, but she
noticed that directly he had said them he always seemed more
cheerful than usual. All this phrase-making was a game, she 
103
thought, for if she had said half what he said, she would have blown
her brains out by now.
It annoyed her, this phrase-making, and she said to him, in a
matter-of-fact way, that it was a perfectly lovely evening. And what
was he groaning about, she asked, half laughing, half complaining,
for she guessed what he was thinking—he would have written better
books if he had not married.
He was not complaining, he said. She knew that he did not
complain. She knew that he had nothing whatever to complain of.
And he seized her hand and raised it to his lips and kissed it with an
intensity that brought the tears to her eyes, and quickly he dropped
it.
They turned away from the view and began to walk up the path
where the silver-green spear-like plants grew, arm in arm. His arm
was almost like a young man’s arm, Mrs. Ramsay thought, thin and
hard, and she thought with delight how strong he still was, though
he was over sixty, and how untamed and optimistic, and how strange
it was that being convinced, as he was, of all sorts of horrors, seemed
not to depress him, but to cheer him. Was it not odd, she reflected?
Indeed he seemed to her sometimes made differently from other
people, born blind, deaf, and dumb, to the ordinary things, but to 
suddenly extremely unpleasant. ,sent all up
the extraordinary things, with an eye like an eagle’s.
His
understanding often astonished her. But did he notice the flowers?
No. Did he notice the view? No. Did he even notice his own
daughter’s beauty, or whether there was pudding on his plate or roast
beef? He would sit at table with them like a person in a dream. And
his habit of talking aloud, or saying poetry aloud, was growing on
him, she was afraid; for sometimes it was awkward—
Best and brightest, come away!
poor Miss Giddings, when he shouted that at her, almost jumped
out of her skin. But then, Mrs. Ramsay, though instantly taking his
side against all the silly Giddingses in the world, then, she thought,
intimating by a little pressure on his arm that he walked up hill too
fast for her, and she must stop for a moment to see whether those
were fresh mole-hills on the bank, then, she thought, stooping down
to look, a great mind like his must be different in every way from
ours. All the great men she had ever known, she thought, deciding
that a rabbit must have got in, were like that, and it was good for
young men (though the atmosphere of lecture-rooms was stuffy and
depressing to her beyond endurance almost) simply to hear him,
simply to look at him. But without shooting rabbits, how was one
to keep them down? she wondered. It might be a rabbit; it might be 
105
a mole. Some creature anyhow was ruining her Evening Primroses.
And looking up, she saw above the thin trees the first pulse of the
full-throbbing star, and wanted to make her husband look at it; for
the sight gave her such keen pleasure. But she stopped herself. He
never looked at things. If he did, all he would say would be, Poor
little world, with one of his sighs.
At that moment, he said, “Very fine,” to please her, and pretended
to admire the flowers.
But she knew quite well that he did not admire them, or even
realise that they were there. It was only to please her. . . Ah, but was
that not Lily Briscoe strolling along with William Bankes? She
focussed her short-sighted eyes upon the backs of a retreating
couple. Yes, indeed it was. Did that not mean that they would
marry? Yes, it must! What an admirable idea! They must marry!

He had been to Amsterdam, Mr. Bankes was saying as he strolled
across the lawn with Lily Briscoe. He had seen the Rembrandts. He
had been to Madrid. Unfortunately, it was Good Friday and the
Prado was shut. He had been to Rome. Had Miss Briscoe never 
106
been to Rome? Oh, she should—— It would be a wonderful
experience for her—the Sistine Chapel; Michael Angelo; and
Padua, with its Giottos. His wife had been in bad health for many
years, so that their sight-seeing had been on a modest scale.
She had been to Brussels; she had been to Paris, but only for a
flying visit to see an aunt who was ill. She had been to Dresden;
there were masses of pictures she had not seen; however, Lily
Briscoe reflected, perhaps it was better not to see pictures: they only
made one hopelessly discontented with one’s own work. Mr. Bankes
thought one could carry that point of view too far. We can’t all be
Titians and we can’t all be Darwins, he said; at the same time he
doubted whether you could have your Darwin and your Titian if it
weren’t for humble people like ourselves. Lily would have liked to
pay him a compliment; you’re not humble, Mr. Bankes, she would
have liked to have said. But he did not want compliments (most men
do, she thought), and she was a little ashamed of her impulse and
said nothing while he remarked that perhaps what he was saying did
not apply to pictures. Anyhow, said Lily, tossing off her little
insincerity, she would always go on painting, because it interested
her. Yes, said Mr. Bankes, he was sure she would, and as they
reached the end of the lawn he was asking her whether she had 
107
difficulty in finding subjects in London when they turned and saw
the Ramsays. So that is marriage, Lily thought, a man and a woman
looking at a girl throwing a ball. That is what Mrs. Ramsay tried to
tell me the other night, she thought. For she was wearing a green
shawl, and they were standing close together watching Prue and
Jasper throwing catches. And suddenly the meaning which, for no
reason at all, as perhaps they are stepping out of the Tube or ringing
a doorbell, descends on people, making them symbolical, making
them representative, came upon them, and made them in the dusk
standing, looking, the symbols of marriage, husband and wife.
Then, after an instant, the symbolical outline which transcended the
real figures sank down again, and they became, as they met them,
Mr. and Mrs. Ramsay watching the children throwing catches. But
still for a moment, though Mrs. Ramsay greeted them with her usual
smile (oh, she’s thinking we’re going to get married, Lily thought)
and said, “I have triumphed to-night,” meaning that for once Mr.
Bankes had agreed to dine with them and not run off to his own
lodging where his man cooked vegetables properly; still, for one
moment, there was a sense of things having been blown apart, of
space, of irresponsibility as the ball soared high, and they followed
it and lost it and saw the one star and the draped branches. In the 
108
failing light they all looked sharp-edged and ethereal and divided by
great distances. Then, darting backwards over the vast space (for it
seemed as if solidity had vanished altogether), Prue ran full tilt into
them and caught the ball brilliantly high up in her left hand, and her
mother said, “Haven’t they come back yet?” whereupon the spell was
broken. Mr. Ramsay felt free now to laugh out loud at Hume, who
had stuck in a bog and an old woman rescued him on condition he
said the Lord’s Prayer, and chuckling to himself he strolled off to his
study. Mrs. Ramsay, bringing Prue back into the alliance of family
life again, from which she had escaped, throwing catches, asked,
“Did Nancy go with them?”

(Certainly, Nancy had gone with them, since Minta Doyle had
asked it with her dumb look, holding out her hand, as Nancy made
off, after lunch, to her attic, to escape the horror of family life. She
supposed she must go then. She did not want to go. She did not
want to be drawn into it all. For as they walked along the road to
the cliff Minta kept on taking her hand. Then she would let it go.
Then she would take it again. What was it she wanted? Nancy asked 
109
herself. There was something, of course, that people wanted; for
when Minta took her hand and held it, Nancy, reluctantly, saw the
whole world spread out beneath her, as if it were Constantinople
seen through a mist, and then, however heavy-eyed one might be,
one must needs ask, “Is that Santa Sofia?” “Is that the Golden
Horn?” So Nancy asked, when Minta took her hand, “What is it
that she wants? Is it that?” And what was that? Here and there
emerged from the mist (as Nancy looked down upon life spread
beneath her) a pinnacle, a dome; prominent things, without names.
But when Minta dropped her hand, as she did when they ran down
the hillside, all that, the dome, the pinnacle, whatever it was that
had protruded through the mist, sank down into it and disappeared.
Minta, Andrew observed, was rather a good walker. She wore
more sensible clothes than most women. She wore very short skirts
and black knickerbockers. She would jump straight into a stream
and flounder across. He liked her rashness, but he saw that it would
not do—she would kill herself in some idiotic way one of these days.
She seemed to be afraid of nothing—except bulls. At the mere sight
of a bull in a field she would throw up her arms and fly screaming,
which was the very thing to enrage a bull of course. But she did not
mind owning up to it in the least; one must admit that. She knew 
110
she was an awful coward about bulls, she said. She thought she must
have been tossed in her perambulator when she was a baby. She
didn’t seem to mind what she said or did. Suddenly now she pitched
down on the edge of the cliff and began to sing some song about


Damn your eyes, damn your eyes.

They all had to join in and sing the chorus, and shout out
together:
Damn your eyes, damn your eyes, 





but it would be fatal to let the tide come in and cover up all the good
hunting-grounds before they got on to the beach.
“Fatal,” Paul agreed, springing up, and as they went slithering
down, he kept quoting the guide-book about “these islands being
justly celebrated for their park-like prospects and the extent and
variety of their marine curiosities”. But it would not do altogether,
this shouting and damning your eyes, Andrew felt, picking his way
down the cliff, this clapping him on the back, and calling him “old
fellow” and all that; it would not altogether do. It was the worst of
taking women on walks. Once on the beach they separated, he going 
111
out on to the Pope’s Nose, taking his shoes off, and rolling his socks
in them and letting that couple look after themselves; Nancy waded
out to her own rocks and searched her own pools and let that couple
look after themselves. She crouched low down and touched the
smooth rubber-like sea anemones, who were stuck like lumps of jelly
to the side of the rock. Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea,
and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds
over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so
brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of
ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away
suddenly and let the sun stream down. Out on the pale criss-crossed
sand, high-stepping, fringed, gauntletted, stalked some fantastic
leviathan (she was still enlarging the pool), and slipped into the vast
fissures of the mountain side. And then, letting her eyes slide
imperceptibly above the pool and rest on that wavering line of sea
and sky, on the tree trunks which the smoke of steamers made waver
upon the horizon, she became with all that dower sweeping savagely
in and inevitably withdrawing, hypnotised, and the two senses of
that vastness and this tininess (the pool had diminished again)
flowering within it made her feel that she was bound hand and foot
and unable to move by the intensity of feelings which reduced her 
112
own body, her own life, and the lives of all the people in the world,
for ever, to nothingness. So listening to the waves, crouched over the
pool, she brooded.
And Andrew shouted that the sea was coming in, so she leapt
splashing through the shallow waves on to the shore and ran up the
beach and was carried by her own impetuosity and her desire for
rapid movement right behind a rock and there oh heavens! in each
others arms were Paul and Minta! kissing probably. She was
outraged, indignant. She and Andrew put on their shoes and
stockings in dead silence without saying a thing about it. Indeed they
were rather sharp with each other. She might have called him when
she saw the crayfish or whatever it was, Andrew grumbled.
However, they both felt, it’s not our fault. They had not wanted this
horrid nuisance to happen. All the same it irritated Andrew that
Nancy should be a woman, and Nancy that Andrew should be a man
and they tied their shoes very neatly and drew the bows rather tight.
It was not until they had climbed right up on to the top of the
cliff again that Minta cried out that she had lost her grandmother’s
brooch—her grandmother’s brooch, the sole ornament she
possessed—a weeping willow, it was (they must remember it) set in
pearls. They must have seen it, she said, with the tears running down 
113
her cheeks, the brooch which her grandmother had fastened her cap
with till the last day of her life. Now she had lost it. She would rather
have lost anything than that! She would go back and look for it.
They all went back. They poked and peered and looked. They kept
their heads very low, and said things shortly and gruffly. Paul Rayley
searched like a madman all about the rock where they had been
sitting. All this pother about a brooch really didn’t do at all, Andrew
thought, as Paul told him to make a “thorough search between this
point and that”. The tide was coming in fast. The sea would cover
the place where they had sat in a minute. There was not a ghost of
a chance of their finding it now. “We shall be cut off!” Minta
shrieked, suddenly terrified. As if there were any danger of that! It
was the same as the bulls all over again—she had no control over her
emotions, Andrew thought. Women hadn’t. The wretched Paul had
to pacify her. The men (Andrew and Paul at once became manly,
and different from usual) took counsel briefly and decided that they
would plant Rayley’s stick where they had sat and come back at low
tide again. There was nothing more that could be done now. If the
brooch was there, it would still be there in the morning, they assured
her, but Minta still sobbed, all the way up to the top of the cliff. It
was her grandmother’s brooch; she would rather have lost anything 
114
but that, and yet Nancy felt, though it might be true that she minded
losing her brooch, she wasn’t crying only for that. She was crying for
something else.
We might all sit down and cry, she felt. But she did not know
what for.
They drew ahead together, Paul and Minta, and he comforted
her, and said how famous he was for finding things. Once when he
was a little boy he had found a gold watch. He would get up at
daybreak and he was positive he would find it. It seemed to him that
it would be almost dark, and he would be alone on the beach, and
somehow it would be rather dangerous. He began telling her,
however, that he would certainly find it, and she said that she would
not hear of his getting up at dawn: it was lost: she knew that: she
had had a presentiment when she put it on that afternoon. And
secretly he resolved that he would not tell her, but he would slip out
of the house at dawn when they were all asleep and if he could not
find it he would go to Edinburgh and buy her another, just like it
but more beautiful. He would prove what he could do. And as they
came out on the hill and saw the lights of the town beneath them,
the lights coming out suddenly one by one seemed like things that
were going to happen to him—his marriage, his children, his house; 
115
and again he thought, as they came out on to the high road, which
was shaded with high bushes, how they would retreat into solitude
together, and walk on and on, he always leading her, and she
pressing close to his side (as she did now). As they turned by the
cross roads he thought what an appalling experience he had been
through, and he must tell some one—Mrs. Ramsay of course, for it
took his breath away to think what he had been and done. It had
been far and away the worst moment of his life when he asked Minta
to marry him. He would go straight to Mrs. Ramsay, because he felt
somehow that she was the person who had made him do it. She had
made him think he could do any thing. Nobody else took him
seriously. But she made him believe that he could do whatever he
wanted. He had felt her eyes on him all day to-day, following him
about (though she never said a word) as if she were saying, “Yes, you
can do it. I believe in you. I expect it of you.” She had made him feel
all that, and directly they got back (he looked for the lights of the
house above the bay) he would go to her and say, “I’ve done it, Mrs.
Ramsay; thanks to you”. And so turning into the lane that led to the
house he could see lights moving about in the upper windows. They
must be awfully late then. People were getting ready for dinner. The
house was all lit up, and the lights after the darkness made his eyes 
116
feel full, and he said to himself, childishly, as he walked up the drive,
Lights, lights, lights, and repeated in a dazed way, Lights, lights,
lights, as they came into the house, staring about him with his face
quite stiff. But, good heavens, he said to himself, putting his hand
to his tie, I must not make a fool of myself.)

“Yes,” said Prue, in her considering way, answering her mother’s
question, “I think Nancy did go with them.”

Well then, Nancy had gone with them, Mrs. Ramsay supposed,
wondering, as she put down a brush, took up a comb, and said
“Come in” to a tap at the door (Jasper and Rose came in), whether
the fact that Nancy was with them made it less likely or more likely
that anything would happen; it made it less likely, somehow, Mrs.
Ramsay felt, very irrationally, except that after all holocaust on such
a scale was not probable. They could not all be drowned. And again
she felt alone in the presence of her old antagonist, life. 
117
Jasper and Rose said that Mildred wanted to know whether she
should wait dinner.
“Not for the Queen of England,” said Mrs. Ramsay emphatically.
“Not for the Empress of Mexico,” she added, laughing at Jasper;
for he shared his mother’s vice: he, too, exaggerated.
And if Rose liked, she said, while Jasper took the message, she
might choose which jewels she was to wear. When there are fifteen
people sitting down to dinner, one cannot keep things waiting for
ever. She was now beginning to feel annoyed with them for being so
late; it was inconsiderate of them, and it annoyed her on top of her
anxiety about them, that they should choose this very night to be out
late, when, in fact, she wished the dinner to be particularly nice,
since William Bankes had at last consented to dine with them; and
they were having Mildred’s masterpiece—Bœuf en Daube.
Everything depended upon things being served up the precise
moment they were ready. The beef, the bayleaf, and the wine—all
must be done to a turn. To keep it waiting was out of the question.
Yet of course to-night, of all nights, out they went, and they came
in late, and things had to be sent out, things had to be kept hot; the
Bœuf en Daube would be entirely spoilt. 
118
Jasper offered her an opal necklace; Rose a gold necklace. Which
looked best against her black dress? Which did indeed? said Mrs.
Ramsay absent-mindedly, looking at her neck and shoulders (but
avoiding her face), in the glass. And then, while the children
rummaged among her things, she looked out of the window at a
sight which always amused her—the rooks trying to decide which
tree to settle on. Every time, they seemed to change their minds and
rose up into the air again, because, she thought, the old rook, the
father rook, old Joseph was her name for him, was a bird of a very
trying and difficult disposition. He was a disreputable old bird, with
half his wing feathers missing. He was like some seedy old
gentleman in a top hat she had seen playing the horn in front of a
public house.
“Look!” she said, laughing. They were actually fighting. Joseph
and Mary were fighting. Anyhow they all went up again, and the air
was shoved aside by their black wings and cut into exquisite scimitar
shapes. The movement of the wings beating out, out, out—she
could never describe it accurately enough to please herself—was one
of the loveliest of all to her. Look at that, she said to Rose, hoping
that Rose would see it more clearly than she could. For one’s
children so often gave one’s own perceptions a little thrust forwards. 
119
But which was it to be? They had all the trays of her jewel-case
open. The gold necklace, which was Italian, or the opal necklace,
which Uncle James had brought her from India; or should she wear
her amethysts?
“Choose, dearests, choose,” she said, hoping that they would
make haste.
But she let them take their time to choose: she let Rose,
particularly, take up this and then that, and hold her jewels against
the black dress, for this little ceremony of choosing jewels, which
was gone through every night, was what Rose liked best, she knew.
She had some hidden reason of her own for attaching great
importance to this choosing what her mother was to wear. What
was the reason, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, standing still to let her clasp
the necklace she had chosen, divining, through her own past, some
deep, some buried, some quite speechless feeling that one had for
one’s mother at Rose’s age. Like all feelings felt for oneself, Mrs.
Ramsay thought, it made one sad. It was so inadequate, what one
could give in return; and what Rose felt was quite out of proportion
to anything she actually was. And Rose would grow up; and Rose
would suffer, she supposed, with these deep feelings, and she said
she was ready now, and they would go down, and Jasper, because he 
120
was the gentleman, should give her his arm, and Rose, as she was
the lady, should carry her handkerchief (she gave her the
handkerchief), and what else? oh, yes, it might be cold: a shawl.
Choose me a shawl, she said, for that would please Rose, who was
bound to suffer so. “There,” she said, stopping by the window on
the landing, “there they are again.” Joseph had settled on another
tree-top. “Don’t you think they mind,” she said to Jasper, “having
their wings broken?” Why did he want to shoot poor old Joseph and
Mary? He shuffled a little on the stairs, and felt rebuked, but not
seriously, for she did not understand the fun of shooting birds; that
they did not feel; and being his mother she lived away in another
division of the world, but he rather liked her stories about Mary and
Joseph. She made him laugh. But how did she know that those were
Mary and Joseph? Did she think the same birds came to the same
trees every night? he asked. But here, suddenly, like all grown-up
people, she ceased to pay him the least attention. She was listening
to a clatter in the hall.
“They’ve come back!” she exclaimed, and at once she felt much
more annoyed with them than relieved. Then she wondered, had it
happened? She would go down and they would tell her—but no.
They could not tell her anything, with all these people about. So she 
121
must go down and begin dinner and wait. And, like some queen
who, finding her people gathered in the hall, looks down upon them,
and descends among them, and acknowledges their tributes silently,
and accepts their devotion and their prostration before her (Paul did
not move a muscle but looked straight before him as she passed), she
went down, and crossed the hall and bowed her head very slightly,
as if she accepted what they could not say: their tribute to her beauty.
But she stopped. There was a smell of burning. Could they have
let the Bœuf en Daube overboil, she wondered? pray heaven not!
when the great clangour of the gong announced solemnly,
authoritatively, that all those scattered about, in attics, in bedrooms,
on little perches of their own, reading, writing, putting the last
smooth to their hair, or fastening dresses, must leave all that, and
the little odds and ends on their washing-tables and dressing-tables,
and the novels on the bed-tables, and the diaries which were so
private, and assemble in the dining-room for dinner. 
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
But what have I done with my life? thought Mrs. Ramsay, taking
her place at the head of the table, and looking at all the plates
making white circles on it. “William, sit by me,” she said.
“Lily,” she said, wearily, “over there.” They had that—Paul Rayley
and Minta Doyle—she, only this—an infinitely long table and plates
and knives. At the far end, was her husband, sitting down, all in a
heap, frowning. What at? She did not know. She did not mind. She
could not understand how she had ever felt any emotion or any
affection for him. She had a sense of being past everything, through
everything, out of everything, as she helped the soup, as if there was
an eddy—there—and one could be in it, or one could be out of it,
and she was out of it. It’s all come to an end, she thought, while they
came in one after another, Charles Tansley—“Sit there, please,” she
said—Augustus Carmichael—and sat down. And meanwhile she
waited, passively, for someone to answer her, for something to
happen. But this is not a thing, she thought, ladling out soup, that
one says.
Raising her eyebrows at the discrepancy—that was what she was
thinking, this was what she was doing—ladling out soup—she felt, 
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more and more strongly, outside that eddy; or as if a shade had
fallen, and, robbed of colour, she saw things truly. The room (she
looked round it) was very shabby. There was no beauty anywhere.
She forebore to look at Mr. Tansley. Nothing seemed to have
merged. They all sat separate.
And the whole of the effort of merging and flowing and creating
rested on her. Again she felt, as a fact without hostility, the sterility
of men, for if she did not do it nobody would do it, and so, giving
herself the little shake that one gives a watch that has stopped, the
old familiar pulse began beating, as the watch begins ticking—one,
two, three, one, two, three. And so on and so on, she repeated,
listening to it, sheltering and fostering the still feeble pulse as one
might guard a weak flame with a newspaper. And so then, she
concluded, addressing herself by bending silently in his direction to
William Bankes—poor man! who had no wife and no children, and
dined alone in lodgings except for to-night; and in pity for him, life
being now strong enough to bear her on again, she began all this
business, as a sailor not without weariness sees the wind fill his sail
and yet hardly wants to be off again and thinks how, had the ship
sunk, he would have whirled round and round and found rest on the
floor of the sea. 
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“Did you find your letters? I told them to put them in the hall for
you,” she said to William Bankes.
Lily Briscoe watched her drifting into that strange no-man’s land
where to follow people is impossible and yet their going inflicts such
a chill on those who watch them that they always try at least to
follow them with their eyes as one follows a fading ship until the
sails have sunk beneath the horizon.
How old she looks, how worn she looks, Lily thought, and how
remote. Then when she turned to William Bankes, smiling, it was
as if the ship had turned and the sun had struck its sails again, and
Lily thought with some amusement because she was relieved, Why
does she pity him? For that was the impression she gave, when she
told him that his letters were in the hall. Poor William Bankes, she
seemed to be saying, as if her own weariness had been partly pitying
people, and the life in her, her resolve to live again, had been stirred
by pity. And it was not true, Lily thought; it was one of those
misjudgments of hers that seemed to be instinctive and to arise from
some need of her own rather than of other people’s. He is not in the
least pitiable. He has his work, Lily said to herself. She remembered,
all of a sudden as if she had found a treasure, that she too had her
work. In a flash she saw her picture, and thought, Yes, I shall put 
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the tree further in the middle; then I shall avoid that awkward space.
That’s what I shall do. That’s what has been puzzling me. She took
up the salt cellar and put it down again on a flower in the pattern in
the table-cloth, so as to remind herself to move the tree.
“It’s odd that one scarcely gets anything worth having by post, yet
one always wants one’s letters,” said Mr. Bankes.
What damned rot they talk, thought Charles Tansley, laying
down his spoon precisely in the middle of his plate, which he had
swept clean, as if, Lily thought (he sat opposite to her with his back
to the window precisely in the middle of view), he were determined
to make sure of his meals. Everything about him had that meagre
fixity, that bare unloveliness. But nevertheless, the fact remained, it
was almost impossible to dislike anyone if one looked at them. She
liked his eyes; they were blue, deep set, frightening.
“Do you write many letters, Mr. Tansley?” asked Mrs. Ramsay,
pitying him too, Lily supposed; for that was true of Mrs. Ramsay—
she pitied men always as if they lacked something—women never,
as if they had something. He wrote to his mother; otherwise he did
not suppose he wrote one letter a month, said Mr. Tansley, shortly.
For he was not going to talk the sort of rot these people wanted
him to talk. He was not going to be condescended to by these silly 
126
women. He had been reading in his room, and now he came down
and it all seemed to him silly, superficial, flimsy. Why did they dress?
He had come down in his ordinary clothes. He had not got any dress
clothes. “One never gets anything worth having by post”—that was
the sort of thing they were always saying. They made men say that
sort of thing. Yes, it was pretty well true, he thought. They never
got anything worth having from one year’s end to another. They did
nothing but talk, talk, talk, eat, eat, eat. It was the women’s fault.
Women made civilisation impossible with all their “charm,” all their
silliness.
“No going to the Lighthouse to-morrow, Mrs. Ramsay,” he said
asserting himself. He liked her; he admired her; he still thought of
the man in the drain-pipe looking up at her; but he felt it necessary
to assert himself.
He was really, Lily Briscoe thought, in spite of his eyes, but then
look at his nose, look at his hands, the most uncharming human
being she had ever met. Then why did she mind what he said?
Women can’t write, women can’t paint—what did that matter
coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for some
reason helpful to him, and that was why he said it? Why did her
whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from 
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this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort? She must
make it once more. There’s the sprig on the table-cloth; there’s my
painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters—nothing
else. Could she not hold fast to that, she asked herself, and not lose
her temper, and not argue; and if she wanted a little revenge take it
by laughing at him?
“Oh, Mr. Tansley,” she said, “do take me to the Lighthouse with
you. I should so love it.”
She was telling lies he could see. She was saying what she did not
mean to annoy him, for some reason. She was laughing at him. He
was in his old flannel trousers. He had no others. He felt very rough
and isolated and lonely. He knew that she was trying to tease him
for some reason; she didn’t want to go to the Lighthouse with him;
she despised him: so did Prue Ramsay; so did they all. But he was
not going to be made a fool of by women, so he turned deliberately
in his chair and looked out of the window and said, all in a jerk, very
rudely, it would be too rough for her to-morrow. She would be sick.
It annoyed him that she should have made him speak like that,
with Mrs. Ramsay listening. If only he could be alone in his room
working, he thought, among his books. That was where he felt at
his ease. And he had never run a penny into debt; he had never cost 
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his father a penny since he was fifteen; he had helped them at home
out of his savings; he was educating his sister. Still, he wished he
had known how to answer Miss Briscoe properly; he wished it had
not come out all in a jerk like that. “You’d be sick.” He wished he
could think of something to say to Mrs. Ramsay, something which
would show her that he was not just a dry prig. That was what they
all thought him. He turned to her. But Mrs. Ramsay was talking
about people he had never heard of to William Bankes.
“Yes, take it away,” she said briefly, interrupting what she was
saying to Mr. Bankes to speak to the maid. “It must have been
fifteen—no, twenty years ago—that I last saw her,” she was saying,
turning back to him again as if she could not lose a moment of their
talk, for she was absorbed by what they were saying. So he had
actually heard from her this evening! And was Carrie still living at
Marlow, and was everything still the same? Oh she could remember
it as if it were yesterday—going on the river, feeling very cold. But
if the Mannings made a plan they stuck to it. Never should she
forget Herbert killing a wasp with a teaspoon on the bank! And it
was still going on, Mrs. Ramsay mused, gliding like a ghost among
the chairs and tables of that drawing-room on the banks of the
Thames where she had been so very, very cold twenty years ago; but 
129
now she went among them like a ghost; and it fascinated her, as if,
while she had changed, that particular day, now become very still
and beautiful, had remained there, all these years. Had Carrie
written to him herself? she asked.
“Yes. She says they’re building a new billiard room,” he said. No!
No! That was out of the question! Building a billiard room! It
seemed to her impossible.
Mr. Bankes could not see that there was anything very odd about
it. They were very well off now. Should he give her love to Carrie?
“Oh,” said Mrs. Ramsay with a little start, “No,” she added,
reflecting that she did not know this Carrie who built a new billiard
room. But how strange, she repeated, to Mr. Bankes’s amusement,
that they should be going on there still. For it was extraordinary to
think that they had been capable of going on living all these years
when she had not thought of them more than once all that time.
How eventful her own life had been, during those same years. Yet
perhaps Carrie Manning had not thought about her either. The
thought was strange and distasteful.
“People soon drift apart,” said Mr. Bankes, feeling, however,
some satisfaction when he thought that after all he knew both the
Mannings and the Ramsays. He had not drifted apart, he thought, 
130
laying down his spoon and wiping his clean shaven lips
punctiliously. But perhaps he was rather unusual, he thought, in
this; he never let himself get into a groove. He had friends in all
circles. . . . Mrs. Ramsay had to break off here to tell the maid
something about keeping food hot. That was why he preferred
dining alone. All these interruptions annoyed him. Well, thought
William Bankes, preserving a demeanour of exquisite courtesy and
merely spreading the fingers of his left hand on the table-cloth as a
mechanic examines a tool beautifully polished and ready for use in
an interval of leisure, such are the sacrifices one’s friends ask of one.
It would have hurt her if he had refused to come. But it was not
worth it for him. Looking at his hand he thought that if he had been
alone dinner would have been almost over now; he would have been
free to work. Yes, he thought, it is a terrible waste of time. The
children were dropping in still. “I wish one of you would run up to
Roger’s room,” Mrs. Ramsay was saying. How trifling it all is, how
boring it all is, he thought, compared with the other thing—work.
Here he sat drumming his fingers on the table-cloth when he might
have been—he took a flashing bird’s-eye view of his work. What a
waste of time it all was to be sure! Yet, he thought, she is one of my oldest
friends. I am by way of being devoted to her. Yet now, at this moment her 
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presence meant absolutely nothing to him: her beauty meant nothing to
him; her sitting with her little boy at the window—nothing, nothing. He
wished only to be alone and to take up that book. He felt uncomfortable;
he felt treacherous, that he could sit by her side and feel nothing for her.
The truth was that he did not enjoy family life. It was in this sort of state
that one asked oneself, What does one live for? Why, one asked oneself,
does one take all these pains for the human race to go on? Is it so very
desirable? Are we attractive as a species? Not so very, he thought, looking
at those rather untidy boys. His favourite, Cam, was in bed, he supposed.
Foolish questions, vain questions, questions one never asked if one was
occupied. Is human life this? Is human life that? One never had time to
think about it. But here he was asking himself that sort of question,
because Mrs. Ramsay was giving orders to servants, and also because it had
struck him, thinking how surprised Mrs. Ramsay was that Carrie Manning
should still exist, that friendships, even the best of them, are frail things.
One drifts apart. He reproached himself again. He was sitting beside
Mrs. Ramsay and he had nothing in the world to say to her.
“I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Ramsay, turning to him at last. He felt
rigid and barren, like a pair of boots that has been soaked and gone
dry so that you can hardly force your feet into them. Yet he must
force his feet into them. He must make himself talk. Unless he were
very careful, she would find out this treachery of his; that he did not 
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care a straw for her, and that would not be at all pleasant, he thought.
So he bent his head courteously in her direction.
“How you must detest dining in this bear garden,” she said,
making use, as she did when she was distracted, of her social
manner. So, when there is a strife of tongues at some meeting, the
chairman, to obtain unity, suggests that every one shall speak in
French. Perhaps it is bad French; French may not contain the words
that express the speaker’s thoughts; nevertheless speaking French
imposes some order, some uniformity. Replying to her in the same
language, Mr. Bankes said, “No, not at all,” and Mr. Tansley, who
had no knowledge of this language, even spoken thus in words of
one syllable, at once suspected its insincerity. They did talk
nonsense, he thought, the Ramsays; and he pounced on this fresh
instance with joy, making a note which, one of these days, he would
read aloud, to one or two friends. There, in a society where one could
say what one liked he would sarcastically describe “staying with the
Ramsays” and what nonsense they talked. It was worth while doing
it once, he would say; but not again. The women bored one so, he
would say. Of course Ramsay had dished himself by marrying a
beautiful woman and having eight children. It would shape itself
something like that, but now, at this moment, sitting stuck there 
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with an empty seat beside him nothing had shaped itself at all. It
was all in scraps and fragments. He felt extremely, even physically,
uncomfortable. He wanted somebody to give him a chance of
asserting himself. He wanted it so urgently that he fidgeted in his
chair, looked at this person, then at that person, tried to break into
their talk, opened his mouth and shut it again. They were talking
about the fishing industry. Why did no one ask him his opinion?
What did they know about the fishing industry?
Lily Briscoe knew all that. Sitting opposite him could she not see,
as in an X-ray photograph, the ribs and thigh bones of the young
man’s desire to impress himself lying dark in the mist of his flesh—
that thin mist which convention had laid over his burning desire to
break into the conversation? But, she thought, screwing up her
Chinese eyes, and remembering how he sneered at women, “can’t
paint, can’t write”, why should I help him to relieve himself?
There is a code of behaviour she knew, whose seventh article (it
may be) says that on occasions of this sort it behoves the woman,
whatever her own occupation may be, to go to the help of the young
man opposite so that he may expose and relieve the thigh bones, the
ribs, of his vanity, of his urgent desire to assert himself; as indeed it
is their duty, she reflected, in her old maidenly fairness, to help us, 
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suppose the Tube were to burst into flames. Then, she thought, I
should certainly expect Mr. Tansley to get me out. But how would
it be, she thought, if neither of us did either of these things? So she
sat there smiling.
“You’re not planning to go to the Lighthouse, are you, Lily?” said
Mrs. Ramsay. “Remember poor Mr. Langley; he had been round
the world dozens of times, but he told me he never suffered as he
did when my husband took him there. Are you a good sailor, Mr.
Tansley?” she asked.
Mr. Tansley raised a hammer: swung it high in air; but realising,
as it descended, that he could not smite that butterfly with such an
instrument as this, said only that he had never been sick in his life.
But in that one sentence lay compact, like gunpowder, that his
grandfather was a fisherman; his father a chemist; that he had
worked his way up entirely himself; that he was proud of it; that he
was Charles Tansley—a fact that nobody there seemed to realise;
but one of these days every single person would know it. He scowled
ahead of him. He could almost pity these mild cultivated people,
who would be blown sky high, like bales of wool and barrels of
apples, one of these days by the gunpowder that was in him. 
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“Will you take me, Mr. Tansley?” said Lily, quickly, kindly, for,
of course, if Mrs. Ramsay said to her, as in effect she did, “I am
drowning, my dear, in seas of fire. Unless you apply some balm to
the anguish of this hour and say something nice to that young man
there, life will run upon the rocks—indeed I hear the grating and
the growling at this minute. My nerves are taut as fiddle strings.
Another touch and they will snap”—when Mrs. Ramsay said all this,
as the glance in her eyes said it, of course for the hundred and fiftieth
time Lily Briscoe had to renounce the experiment—what happens if
one is not nice to that young man there—and be nice.
Judging the turn in her mood correctly—that she was friendly to
him now—he was relieved of his egotism, and told her how he had
been thrown out of a boat when he was a baby; how his father used
to fish him out with a boat-hook; that was how he had learnt to
swim. One of his uncles kept the light on some rock or other off the
Scottish coast, he said. He had been there with him in a storm. This
was said loudly in a pause. They had to listen to him when he said
that he had been with his uncle in a lighthouse in a storm. Ah,
thought Lily Briscoe, as the conversation took this auspicious turn,
and she felt Mrs. Ramsay’s gratitude (for Mrs. Ramsay was free now 
136
to talk for a moment herself), ah, she thought, but what haven’t I
paid to get it for you? She had not been sincere.
She had done the usual trick—been nice. She would never know
him. He would never know her. Human relations were all like that,
she thought, and the worst (if it had not been for Mr. Bankes) were
between men and women. Inevitably these were extremely insincere.
Then her eye caught the salt cellar, which she had placed there to
remind her, and she remembered that next morning she would move
the tree further towards the middle, and her spirits rose so high at
the thought of painting to-morrow that she laughed out loud at
what Mr. Tansley was saying. Let him talk all night if he liked it.
“But how long do they leave men on a Lighthouse?” she asked.
He told her. He was amazingly well informed. And as he was
grateful, and as he liked her, and as he was beginning to enjoy
himself, so now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, she could return to that
dream land, that unreal but fascinating place, the Mannings’
drawing-room at Marlow twenty years ago; where one moved about
without haste or anxiety, for there was no future to worry about. She
knew what had happened to them, what to her. It was like reading
a good book again, for she knew the end of that story, since it had
happened twenty years ago, and life, which shot down even from 
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this dining-room table in cascades, heaven knows where, was sealed
up there, and lay, like a lake, placidly between its banks. He said
they had built a billiard room—was it possible? Would William go
on talking about the Mannings? She wanted him to. But no—for
some reason he was no longer in the mood. She tried. He did not
respond. She could not force him. She was disappointed.
“The children are disgraceful,” she said, sighing. He said
something about punctuality being one of the minor virtues which
we do not acquire until later in life.
“If at all,” said Mrs. Ramsay merely to fill up space, thinking what
an old maid William was becoming. Conscious of his treachery,
conscious of her wish to talk about something more intimate, yet
out of mood for it at present, he felt come over him the
disagreeableness of life, sitting there, waiting. Perhaps the others
were saying something interesting? What were they saying?
That the fishing season was bad; that the men were emigrating.
They were talking about wages and unemployment. The young man
was abusing the government. William Bankes, thinking what a relief
it was to catch on to something of this sort when private life was
disagreeable, heard him say something about “one of the most
scandalous acts of the present government.” Lily was listening; Mrs. 
138
Ramsay was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Lily
felt that something was lacking; Mr. Bankes felt that something was
lacking. Pulling her shawl round her, Mrs. Ramsay felt that
something was lacking. All of them bending themselves to listen
thought, “Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be
exposed,” for each thought, “The others are feeling this. They are
outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen.
Whereas, I feel nothing at all.” But perhaps, thought Mr. Bankes,
as he looked at Mr. Tansley, here is the man. One was always
waiting for the man. There was always a chance. At any moment the
leader might arise; the man of genius, in politics as in anything else.
Probably he will be extremely disagreeable to us old fogies, thought
Mr. Bankes, doing his best to make allowances, for he knew by some
curious physical sensation, as of nerves erect in his spine, that he was
jealous, for himself partly, partly more probably for his work, for his
point of view, for his science; and therefore he was not entirely openminded or altogether fair, for Mr. Tansley seemed to be saying, You
have wasted your lives. You are all of you wrong. Poor old fogies,
you’re hopelessly behind the times. He seemed to be rather cocksure,
this young man; and his manners were bad. But Mr. Bankes bade
himself observe, he had courage; he had ability; he was extremely 
139
well up in the facts. Probably, Mr. Bankes thought, as Tansley
abused the government, there is a good deal in what he says.
“Tell me now. . .” he said. So they argued about politics, and Lily
looked at the leaf on the table-cloth; and Mrs. Ramsay, leaving the
argument entirely in the hands of the two men, wondered why she
was so bored by this talk, and wished, looking at her husband at the
other end of the table, that he would say something. One word, she
said to herself. For if he said a thing, it would make all the difference.
He went to the heart of things. He cared about fishermen and their
wages. He could not sleep for thinking of them. It was altogether
different when he spoke; one did not feel then, pray heaven you
don’t see how little I care, because one did care. Then, realising that
it was because she admired him so much that she was waiting for
him to speak, she felt as if somebody had been praising her husband
to her and their marriage, and she glowed all over without realising
that it was she herself who had praised him. She looked at him
thinking to find this shown in his face; he would be looking
magnificent. . . . But not in the least! He was screwing his face up,
he was scowling and frowning, and flushing with anger. What on
earth was it about? she wondered. What could be the matter? Only
that poor old Augustus had asked for another plate of soup—that 
140
was all. It was unthinkable, it was detestable (so he signalled to her
across the table) that Augustus should be beginning his soup over
again. He loathed people eating when he had finished. She saw his
anger fly like a pack of hounds into his eyes, his brow, and she knew
that in a moment something violent would explode, and then—but
thank goodness! she saw him clutch himself and clap a brake on the
wheel, and the whole of his body seemed to emit sparks but not
words. He sat there scowling. He had said nothing, he would have
her observe. Let her give him the credit for that! But why after all
should poor Augustus not ask for another plate of soup? He had
merely touched Ellen’s arm and said:
“Ellen, please, another plate of soup,” and then Mr. Ramsay
scowled like that.
And why not? Mrs. Ramsay demanded. Surely they could let
Augustus have his soup if he wanted it. He hated people wallowing
in food, Mr. Ramsay frowned at her. He hated everything dragging
on for hours like this. But he had controlled himself, Mr. Ramsay
would have her observe, disgusting though the sight was. But why
show it so plainly, Mrs. Ramsay demanded (they looked at each
other down the long table sending these questions and answers
across, each knowing exactly what the other felt). Everybody could 
141
see, Mrs. Ramsay thought. There was Rose gazing at her father,
there was Roger gazing at his father; both would be off in spasms of
laughter in another second, she knew, and so she said promptly
(indeed it was time):
“Light the candles,” and they jumped up instantly and went and
fumbled at the sideboard.
Why could he never conceal his feelings? Mrs. Ramsay wondered,
and she wondered if Augustus Carmichael had noticed. Perhaps he
had; perhaps he had not. She could not help respecting the
composure with which he sat there, drinking his soup. If he wanted
soup, he asked for soup. Whether people laughed at him or were
angry with him he was the same. He did not like her, she knew that;
but partly for that very reason she respected him, and looking at him,
drinking soup, very large and calm in the failing light, and
monumental, and contemplative, she wondered what he did feel
then, and why he was always content and dignified; and she thought
how devoted he was to Andrew, and would call him into his room,
and, Andrew said, “show him things”. And there he would lie all day
long on the lawn brooding presumably over his poetry, till he
reminded one of a cat watching birds, and then he clapped his paws
together when he had found the word, and her husband said, “Poor 
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old Augustus—he’s a true poet,” which was high praise from her
husband.
Now eight candles were stood down the table, and after the first
stoop the flames stood upright and drew with them into visibility
the long table entire, and in the middle a yellow and purple dish of
fruit. What had she done with it, Mrs. Ramsay wondered, for Rose’s
arrangement of the grapes and pears, of the horny pink-lined shell,
of the bananas, made her think of a trophy fetched from the bottom
of the sea, of Neptune’s banquet, of the bunch that hangs with vine
leaves over the shoulder of Bacchus (in some picture), among the
leopard skins and the torches lolloping red and gold. . . . Thus
brought up suddenly into the light it seemed possessed of great size
and depth, was like a world in which one could take one’s staff and
climb up hills, she thought, and go down into valleys, and to her
pleasure (for it brought them into sympathy momentarily) she saw
that Augustus too feasted his eyes on the same plate of fruit, plunged
in, broke off a bloom there, a tassel here, and returned, after feasting,
to his hive. That was his way of looking, different from hers. But
looking together united them.
Now all the candles were lit, and the faces on both sides of the
table were brought nearer by the candle light, and composed, as they 
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had not been in the twilight, into a party round a table, for the night
was now shut off by panes of glass, which, far from giving any
accurate view of the outside world, rippled it so strangely that here,
inside the room, seemed to be order and dry land; there, outside, a
reflection in which things wavered and vanished, waterily.
Some change at once went through them all, as if this had really
happened, and they were all conscious of making a party together in
a hollow, on an island; had their common cause against that fluidity
out there. Mrs. Ramsay, who had been uneasy, waiting for Paul and
Minta to come in, and unable, she felt, to settle to things, now felt
her uneasiness changed to expectation. For now they must come,
and Lily Briscoe, trying to analyse the cause of the sudden
exhilaration, compared it with that moment on the tennis lawn,
when solidity suddenly vanished, and such vast spaces lay between
them; and now the same effect was got by the many candles in the
sparely furnished room, and the uncurtained windows, and the
bright mask-like look of faces seen by candlelight. Some weight was
taken off them; anything might happen, she felt. They must come
now, Mrs. Ramsay thought, looking at the door, and at that instant,
Minta Doyle, Paul Rayley, and a maid carrying a great dish in her
hands came in together. They were awfully late; they were horribly 
144
late, Minta said, as they found their way to different ends of the
table.
“I lost my brooch—my grandmother’s brooch,” said Minta with
a sound of lamentation in her voice, and a suffusion in her large
brown eyes, looking down, looking up, as she sat by Mr. Ramsay,
which roused his chivalry so that he bantered her, How could she be
such a goose, he asked, as to scramble about the rocks in jewels?
She was by way of being terrified of him—he was so fearfully
clever, and the first night when she had sat by him, and he talked
about George Eliot, she had been really frightened, for she had left
the third volume of Middlemarch in the train and she never knew
what happened in the end; but afterwards she got on perfectly, and
made herself out even more ignorant than she was, because he liked
telling her she was a fool. And so to-night, directly he laughed at
her, she was not frightened. Besides, she knew, directly she came
into the room, that the miracle had happened; she wore her golden
haze. Sometimes she had it; sometimes not. She never knew why it
came or why it went, or if she had it until she came into the room
and then she knew instantly by the way some man looked at her.
Yes, to-night she had it, tremendously; she knew that by the way
Mr. Ramsay told her not to be a fool. She sat beside him, smiling. 
145
It must have happened then, thought Mrs. Ramsay; they are
engaged. And for a moment she felt what she had never expected to
feel again—jealousy. For he, her husband, felt it too—Minta’s glow;
he liked these girls, these golden- reddish girls, with something
flying, something a little wild and harum-scarum about them, who
didn’t “scrape their hair off”, weren’t, as he said about poor Lily
Briscoe, “skimpy”. There was some quality which she herself had
not, some lustre, some richness, which attracted him, amused him,
led him to make favourites of girls like Minta. They might cut his
hair for him, plait him watch-chains, or interrupt him at his work,
hailing him (she heard them), “Come along, Mr. Ramsay; it’s our
turn to beat them now,” and out he came to play tennis.
But indeed she was not jealous, only, now and then, when she
made herself look in her glass a little resentful that she had grown
old, perhaps, by her own fault. (The bill for the greenhouse and all
the rest of it.) She was grateful to them for laughing at him. (“How
many pipes have you smoked to-day, Mr. Ramsay?” and so on), till
he seemed a young man; a man very attractive to women, not
burdened, not weighed down with the greatness of his labours and
the sorrows of the world and his fame or his failure, but again as she
had first known him, gaunt but gallant; helping her out of a boat, 
146
she remembered; with delightful ways, like that (she looked at him,
and he looked astonishingly young, teasing Minta). For herself—
“Put it down there,” she said, helping the Swiss girl to place gently
before her the huge brown pot in which was the Bœuf en Daube—
for her own part she liked her boobies. Paul must sit by her. She had
kept a place for him. Really, she sometimes thought she liked the
boobies best. They did not bother one with their dissertations. How
much they missed, after all, these very clever men! How dried up
they did become, to be sure. There was something, she thought as
he sat down, very charming about Paul. His manners were delightful
to her, and his sharp cut nose and his bright blue eyes. He was so
considerate. Would he tell her—now that they were all talking
again—what had happened?
“We went back to look for Minta’s brooch,” he said, sitting down
by her. “We”—that was enough. She knew from the effort, the rise
in his voice to surmount a difficult word that it was the first time he
had said “we”. “We” did this, “we” did that. They’ll say that all their
lives, she thought, and an exquisite scent of olives and oil and juice
rose from the great brown dish as Marthe, with a little flourish, took
the cover off. The cook had spent three days over that dish. And she
must take great care, Mrs. Ramsay thought, diving into the soft 
147
mass, to choose a specially tender piece for William Bankes. And
she peered into the dish, with its shiny walls and its confusion of
savoury brown and yellow meats, and its bay leaves and its wine, and
thought, This will celebrate the occasion—a curious sense rising in
her, at once freakish and tender, of celebrating a festival, as if two
emotions were called up in her, one profound—for what could be
more serious than the love of man for woman, what more
commanding, more impressive, bearing in its bosom the seeds of
death; at the same time these lovers, these people entering into
illusion glittering eyed, must be danced round with mockery,
decorated with garlands.
“It is a triumph,” said Mr. Bankes, laying his knife down for a
moment. He had eaten attentively. It was rich; it was tender. It was
perfectly cooked. How did she manage these things in the depths of
the country? he asked her. She was a wonderful woman. All his love,
all his reverence had returned; and she knew it.
“It is a French recipe of my grandmother’s,” said Mrs. Ramsay,
speaking with a ring of great pleasure in her voice. Of course it was
French. What passes for cookery in England is an abomination (they
agreed). It is putting cabbages in water. It is roasting meat till it is
like leather. It is cutting off the delicious skins of vegetables. “In 
148
which,” said Mr. Bankes, “all the virtue of the vegetable is
contained.” And the waste, said Mrs. Ramsay. A whole French
family could live on what an English cook throws away. Spurred on
by her sense that William’s affection had come back to her, and that
everything was all right again, and that her suspense was over, and
that now she was free both to triumph and to mock, she laughed,
she gesticulated, till Lily thought, How childlike, how absurd she
was, sitting up there with all her beauty opened again in her, talking
about the skins of vegetables. There was something frightening
about her. She was irresistible. Always she got her own way in the
end, Lily thought. Now she had brought this off—Paul and Minta,
one might suppose, were engaged. Mr. Bankes was dining here. She
put a spell on them all, by wishing, so simply, so directly; and Lily
contrasted that abundance with her own poverty of spirit, and
supposed that it was partly that belief (for her face was all lit up—
without looking young, she looked radiant) in this strange, this
terrifying thing, which made Paul Rayley, the centre of it, all of a
tremor, yet abstract, absorbed, silent. Mrs. Ramsay, Lily felt, as she
talked about the skins of vegetables, exalted that, worshipped that;
held her hands over it to warm them, to protect it, and yet, having
brought it all about, somehow laughed, led her victims, Lily felt, to 
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the altar. It came over her too now—the emotion, the vibration of
love. How inconspicuous she felt herself by Paul’s side! He, glowing,
burning; she, aloof, satirical; he, bound for adventure; she, moored
to the shore; he, launched, incautious; she solitary, left out—and,
ready to implore a share, if it were disaster, in his disaster, she said
shyly:
“When did Minta lose her brooch?”
He smiled the most exquisite smile, veiled by memory, tinged by
dreams. He shook his head. “On the beach,” he said.
“I’m going to find it,” he said, “I’m getting up early.” This being
kept secret from Minta, he lowered his voice, and turned his eyes to
where she sat, laughing, beside Mr. Ramsay.
Lily wanted to protest violently and outrageously her desire to
help him, envisaging how in the dawn on the beach she would be
the one to pounce on the brooch half-hidden by some stone, and
thus herself be included among the sailors and adventurers. But what
did he reply to her offer? She actually said with an emotion that she
seldom let appear, “Let me come with you”; and he laughed. He
meant yes or no—either perhaps. But it was not his meaning—it
was the odd chuckle he gave, as if he had said, Throw yourself over
the cliff if you like, I don’t care. He turned on her cheek the heat of 
150
love, its horror, its cruelty, its unscrupulosity. It scorched her, and
Lily, looking at Minta being charming to Mr. Ramsay at the other
end of the table, flinched for her exposed to those fangs, and was
thankful. For at any rate, she said to herself, catching sight of the
salt cellar on the pattern, she need not marry, thank Heaven: she
need not undergo that degradation. She was saved from that
dilution. She would move the tree rather more to the middle.
Such was the complexity of things. For what happened to her,
especially staying with the Ramsays, was to be made to feel violently
two opposite things at the same time; that’s what you feel, was one;
that’s what I feel was the other, and then they fought together in her
mind, as now. It is so beautiful, so exciting, this love, that I tremble
on the verge of it, and offer, quite out of my own habit, to look for
a brooch on a beach; also it is the stupidest, the most barbaric of
human passions, and turns a nice young man with a profile like a
gem (Paul’s was exquisite) into a bully with a crowbar (he was
swaggering, he was insolent) in the Mile End Road. Yet she said to
herself, from the dawn of time odes have been sung to love; wreaths
heaped and roses; and if you asked nine people out of ten they would
say they wanted nothing but this; while the women, judging from
her own experience, would all the time be feeling, This is not what
we want; there is nothing more tedious, puerile, and inhumane than
love; yet it is also beautiful and necessary. Well then, well then? she
asked, somehow expecting the others to go on with the argument,
as if in an argument like this one threw one’s own little bolt which
fell short obviously and left the others to carry it on. So she listened
again to what they were saying in case they should throw any light
upon the question of love.
“Then,” said Mr. Bankes, “there is that liquid the English call
coffee.”
“Oh coffee!” said Mrs. Ramsay. But it was much rather a question
(she was thoroughly roused, Lily could see, and talked very
emphatically) of real butter and clean milk. Speaking with warmth
and eloquence she described the iniquity of the English dairy
system, and in what state milk was delivered at the door, and was
about to prove her charges, for she had gone into the matter, when
all round the table, beginning with Andrew in the middle, like a fire
leaping from tuft to tuft of furze, her children laughed; her husband
laughed; she was laughed at, fire- encircled, and forced to vail her
crest, dismount her batteries, and only retaliate by displaying the
raillery and ridicule of the table to Mr. Bankes as an example of what
one suffered if one attacked the prejudices of the British Public. 
152
Purposely, however, for she had it on her mind that Lily, who had
helped her with Mr. Tansley, was out of things, she exempted her
from the rest; said “Lily anyhow agrees with me,” and so drew her
in, a little fluttered, a little startled. (For she was thinking about
love.) They were both out of things, Mrs. Ramsay had been
thinking, both Lily and Charles Tansley. Both suffered from the
glow of the other two. He, it was clear, felt himself utterly in the
cold; no woman would look at him with Paul Rayley in the room.
Poor fellow! Still, he had his dissertation, the influence of somebody
upon something: he could take care of himself. With Lily it was
different. She faded, under Minta’s glow; became more
inconspicuous than ever, in her little grey dress with her little
puckered face and her little Chinese eyes. Everything about her was
so small. Yet, thought Mrs. Ramsay, comparing her with Minta, as
she claimed her help (for Lily should bear her out she talked no more
about her dairies than her husband did about his boots—he would
talk by the hour about his boots), of the two Lily at forty will be the
better. There was in Lily a thread of something; a flare of something;
something of her own which Mrs. Ramsay liked very much indeed,
but no man would, she feared. Obviously, not, unless it were a much
older man, like William Bankes. But then he cared, well, Mrs. 
153
Ramsay sometimes thought that he cared, since his wife’s death,
perhaps for her. He was not “in love” of course; it was one of those
unclassified affections of which there are so many. Oh but nonsense,
she thought; William must marry Lily. They have so many things
in common. Lily is so fond of flowers. They are both cold and aloof
and rather self-sufficing. She must arrange for them to take a long
walk together.
Foolishly, she had set them opposite each other. That could be
remedied to-morrow. If it were fine, they should go for a picnic.
Everything seemed possible. Everything seemed right. Just now (but
this cannot last, she thought, dissociating herself from the moment
while they were all talking about boots) just now she had reached
security; she hovered like a hawk suspended; like a flag floated in an
element of joy which filled every nerve of her body fully and sweetly,
not noisily, solemnly rather, for it arose, she thought, looking at
them all eating there, from husband and children and friends; all of
which rising in this profound stillness (she was helping William
Bankes to one very small piece more and peered into the depths of
the earthenware pot) seemed now for no special reason to stay there
like a smoke, like a fume rising upwards, holding them safe together.
Nothing need be said; nothing could be said. There it was, all round 
154
them. It partook, she felt, carefully helping Mr. Bankes to a specially
tender piece, of eternity; as she had already felt about something
different once before that afternoon; there is a coherence in things,
a stability; something, she meant, is immune from change, and
shines out (she glanced at the window with its ripple of reflected
lights) in the face of the flowing, the fleeting, the spectral, like a
ruby; so that again to-night she had the feeling she had had once today already, of peace, of rest. Of such moments, she thought, the
thing is made that remains for ever after. This would remain.
“Yes,” she assured William Bankes, “there is plenty for
everybody.”
“Andrew,” she said, “hold your plate lower, or I shall spill it.” (The
Bœuf en Daube was a perfect triumph.) Here, she felt, putting the
spoon down, was the still space that lies about the heart of things,
where one could move or rest; could wait now (they were all helped)
listening; could then, like a hawk which lapses suddenly from its
high station, flaunt and sink on laughter easily, resting her whole
weight upon what at the other end of the table her husband was
saying about the square root of one thousand two hundred and fiftythree, which happened to be the number on his railway ticket. 
155
What did it all mean? To this day she had no notion. A square
root? What was that? Her sons knew. She leant on them; on cubes
and square roots; that was what they were talking about now; on
Voltaire and Madame de Staël; on the character of Napoleon; on
the French system of land tenure; on Lord Rosebery; on Creevey’s
Memoirs: she let it uphold her and sustain her, this admirable fabric
of the masculine intelligence, which ran up and down, crossed this
way and that, like iron girders spanning the swaying fabric,
upholding the world, so that she could trust herself to it utterly, even
shut her eyes, or flicker them for a moment, as a child staring up
from its pillow winks at the myriad layers of the leaves of a tree.
Then she woke up. It was still being fabricated. William Bankes was
praising the Waverley novels.
He read one of them every six months, he said. And why should
that make Charles Tansley angry? He rushed in (all, thought Mrs.
Ramsay, because Prue will not be nice to him) and denounced the
Waverley novels when he knew nothing about it, nothing about it
whatsoever, Mrs. Ramsay thought, observing him rather than
listening to what he said. She could see how it was from his
manner—he wanted to assert himself, and so it would always be
with him till he got his Professorship or married his wife, and so 
156
need not be always saying, “I—I—I.” For that was what his criticism
of poor Sir Walter, or perhaps it was Jane Austen, amounted to. “I—
I—I.” He was thinking of himself and the impression he was
making, as she could tell by the sound of his voice, and his emphasis
and his uneasiness. Success would be good for him. At anyrate they
were off again. Now she need not listen. It could not last she knew,
but at the moment her eyes were so clear that they seemed to go
round the table unveiling each of these people, and their thoughts
and their feelings, without effort like a light stealing under water so
that its ripples and the reeds in it and the minnows balancing
themselves, and the sudden silent trout are all lit up hanging,
trembling. So she saw them; she heard them; but whatever they said
had also this quality, as if what they said was like the movement of
a trout when, at the same time, one can see the ripple and the gravel,
something to the right, something to the left; and the whole is held
together; for whereas in active life she would be netting and
separating one thing from another; she would be saying she liked
the Waverley Novels or had not read them; she would be urging
herself forward; now she said nothing. For the moment she hung
suspended. 
157
“Ah, but how long do you think it’ll last?” said somebody. It was
as if she had antennae trembling out from her, which, intercepting
certain sentences, forced them upon her attention. This was one of
them. She scented danger for her husband. A question like that
would lead, almost certainly, to something being said which
reminded him of his own failure. How long would he be read—he
would think at once. William Bankes (who was entirely free from all
such vanity) laughed, and said he attached no importance to changes
in fashion. Who could tell what was going to last—in literature or
indeed in anything else?
“Let us enjoy what we do enjoy,” he said. His integrity seemed to
Mrs. Ramsay quite admirable. He never seemed for a moment to
think, But how does this affect me? But then if you had the other
temperament, which must have praise, which must have
encouragement, naturally you began (and she knew that Mr.
Ramsay was beginning) to be uneasy; to want somebody to say, Oh,
but your work will last, Mr. Ramsay, or something like that. He
showed his uneasiness quite clearly now by saying, with some
irritation, that, anyhow, Scott (or was it Shakespeare?) would last
him his lifetime. He said it irritably. Everybody, she thought, felt a
little uncomfortable, without knowing why. Then Minta Doyle, 
158
whose instinct was fine, said bluffly, absurdly, that she did not
believe that any one really enjoyed reading Shakespeare. Mr.
Ramsay said grimly (but his mind was turned away again) that very
few people liked it as much as they said they did. But, he added,
there is considerable merit in some of the plays nevertheless, and
Mrs. Ramsay saw that it would be all right for the moment anyhow;
he would laugh at Minta, and she, Mrs. Ramsay saw, realising his
extreme anxiety about himself, would, in her own way, see that he
was taken care of, and praise him, somehow or other. But she wished
it was not necessary: perhaps it was her fault that it was necessary.
Anyhow, she was free now to listen to what Paul Rayley was trying
to say about books one had read as a boy. They lasted, he said. He
had read some of Tolstoi at school. There was one he always
remembered, but he had forgotten the name. Russian names were
impossible, said Mrs. Ramsay. “Vronsky,” said Paul. He
remembered that because he always thought it such a good name for
a villain. “Vronsky,” said Mrs. Ramsay; “O, Anna Karenina,” but that
did not take them very far; books were not in their line. No, Charles
Tansley would put them both right in a second about books, but it
was all so mixed up with, Am I saying the right thing? Am I making
a good impression? that, after all, one knew more about him than 
159
about Tolstoi, whereas what Paul said was about the thing simply,
not himself. Like all stupid people, he had a kind of modesty too, a
consideration for what you were feeling, which, once in a way at
least, she found attractive. Now he was thinking, not about himself
or about Tolstoi, but whether she was cold, whether she felt a
draught, whether she would like a pear.
No, she said, she did not want a pear. Indeed she had been
keeping guard over the dish of fruit (without realising it) jealously,
hoping that nobody would touch it. Her eyes had been going in and
out among the curves and shadows of the fruit, among the rich
purples of the lowland grapes, then over the horny ridge of the shell,
putting a yellow against a purple, a curved shape against a round
shape, without knowing why she did it, or why, every time she did
it, she felt more and more serene; until, oh, what a pity that they
should do it—a hand reached out, took a pear, and spoilt the whole
thing. In sympathy she looked at Rose. She looked at Rose sitting
between Jasper and Prue. How odd that one’s child should do that!
How odd to see them sitting there, in a row, her children, Jasper,
Rose, Prue, Andrew, almost silent, but with some joke of their own
going on, she guessed, from the twitching at their lips. It was
something quite apart from everything else, something they were 
160
hoarding up to laugh over in their own room. It was not about their
father, she hoped. No, she thought not. What was it, she wondered,
sadly rather, for it seemed to her that they would laugh when she
was not there. There was all that hoarded behind those rather set,
still, mask-like faces, for they did not join in easily; they were like
watchers, surveyors, a little raised or set apart from the grown-up
people. But when she looked at Prue to-night, she saw that this was
not now quite true of her. She was just beginning, just moving, just
descending. The faintest light was on her face, as if the glow of
Minta opposite, some excitement, some anticipation of happiness
was reflected in her, as if the sun of the love of men and women rose
over the rim of the table-cloth, and without knowing what it was
she bent towards it and greeted it. She kept looking at Minta, shyly,
yet curiously, so that Mrs. Ramsay looked from one to the other and
said, speaking to Prue in her own mind, You will be as happy as she
is one of these days. You will be much happier, she added, because
you are my daughter, she meant; her own daughter must be happier
than other people’s daughters. But dinner was over. It was time to
go. They were only playing with things on their plates. She would
wait until they had done laughing at some story her husband was 
161
telling. He was having a joke with Minta about a bet. Then she
would get up.
She liked Charles Tansley, she thought, suddenly; she liked his
laugh. She liked him for being so angry with Paul and Minta. She
liked his awkwardness. There was a lot in that young man after all.
And Lily, she thought, putting her napkin beside her plate, she
always has some joke of her own. One need never bother about Lily.
She waited. She tucked her napkin under the edge of her plate. Well,
were they done now? No. That story had led to another story. Her
husband was in great spirits to-night, and wishing, she supposed, to
make it all right with old Augustus after that scene about the soup,
had drawn him in—they were telling stories about some one they
had both known at college. She looked at the window in which the
candle flames burnt brighter now that the panes were black, and
looking at that outside the voices came to her very strangely, as if
they were voices at a service in a cathedral, for she did not listen to
the words. The sudden bursts of laughter and then one voice
(Minta’s) speaking alone, reminded her of men and boys crying out
the Latin words of a service in some Roman Catholic cathedral. She
waited. Her husband spoke. He was repeating something, and she 
162
knew it was poetry from the rhythm and the ring of exaltation and
melancholy in his voice:
Come out and climb the garden path,
Luriana Lurilee.
The China rose is all abloom and buzzing with the yellow bee.
The words (she was looking at the window) sounded as if they
were floating like flowers on water out there, cut off from them all,
as if no one had said them, but they had come into existence of
themselves.
And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be
Are full of trees and changing leaves.
She did not know what they meant, but, like music, the words
seemed to be spoken by her own voice, outside her self, saying quite
easily and naturally what had been in her mind the whole evening
while she said different things. She knew, without looking round,
that every one at the table was listening to the voice saying:
I wonder if it seems to you
Luriana, Lurilee 
163
with the same sort of relief and pleasure that she had, as if this
were, at last, the natural thing to say, this were their own voice
speaking.
But the voice stopped. She looked round. She made herself get
up. Augustus Carmichael had risen and, holding his table napkin so
that it looked like a long white robe he stood chanting:
To see the Kings go riding by
Over lawn and daisy lea
With their palm leaves and cedar sheaves,
Luriana, Lurilee,
and as she passed him he turned slightly towards her repeating
the last words:
Luriana, Lurilee,
and bowed to her as if he did her homage. Without knowing why,
she felt that he liked her better than he had ever done before; and
with a feeling of relief and gratitude she returned his bow and passed
through the door which he held open for her.
It was necessary now to carry everything a step further. With her
foot on the threshold she waited a moment longer in a scene which
was vanishing even as she looked, and then, as she moved and took
Minta’s arm and left the room, it changed, it shaped itself 
164
differently; it had become, she knew, giving one last look at it over
her shoulder, already the past.

As usual, Lily thought. There was always something that had to
be done at that precise moment, something that Mrs. Ramsay had
decided for reasons of her own to do instantly, it might be with every
one standing about making jokes, as now, not being able to decide
whether they were going into the smoking-room, into the drawingroom, up to the attics. Then one saw Mrs. Ramsay in the midst of
this hubbub standing there with Minta’s arm in hers, bethink her
“Yes, it is time for that now,” and so make off at once with an air of
secrecy to do something alone. And directly she went a sort of
disintegration set in; they wavered about, went different ways, Mr.
Bankes took Charles Tansley by the arm and went off to finish on
the terrace the discussion they had begun at dinner about politics,
thus giving a turn to the whole poise of the evening, making the
weight fall in a different direction, as if, Lily thought, seeing them
go, and hearing a word or two about the policy of the Labour Party,
they had gone up on to the bridge of the ship and were taking their 
165
bearings; the change from poetry to politics struck her like that; so
Mr. Bankes and Charles Tansley went off, while the others stood
looking at Mrs. Ramsay going upstairs in the lamplight alone.
Where, Lily wondered, was she going so quickly?
Not that she did in fact run or hurry; she went indeed rather
slowly. She felt rather inclined just for a moment to stand still after
all that chatter, and pick out one particular thing; the thing that
mattered; to detach it; separate it off; clean it of all the emotions and
odds and ends of things, and so hold it before her, and bring it to
the tribunal where, ranged about in conclave, sat the judges she had
set up to decide these things. Is it good, is it bad, is it right or wrong?
Where are we going to? and so on. So she righted herself after the
shock of the event, and quite unconsciously and incongruously, used
the branches of the elm trees outside to help her to stabilise her
position. Her world was changing: they were still. The event had
given her a sense of movement. All must be in order. She must get
that right and that right, she thought, insensibly approving of the
dignity of the trees’ stillness, and now again of the superb upward
rise (like the beak of a ship up a wave) of the elm branches as the
wind raised them. For it was windy (she stood a moment to look
out). It was windy, so that the leaves now and then brushed open a 
166
star, and the stars themselves seemed to be shaking and darting light
and trying to flash out between the edges of the leaves. Yes, that was
done then, accomplished; and as with all things done, become
solemn. Now one thought of it, cleared of chatter and emotion, it
seemed always to have been, only was shown now, and so being
shown struck everything into stability. They would, she thought,
going on again, however long they lived, come back to this night;
this moon; this wind; this house: and to her too. It flattered her,
where she was most susceptible of flattery, to think how, wound
about in their hearts, however long they lived she would be woven;
and this, and this, and this, she thought, going upstairs, laughing,
but affectionately, at the sofa on the landing (her mother’s) at the
rocking-chair (her father’s); at the map of the Hebrides. All that
would be revived again in the lives of Paul and Minta; “the
Rayleys”—she tried the new name over; and she felt, with her hand
on the nursery door, that community of feeling with other people
which emotion gives as if the walls of partition had become so thin
that practically (the feeling was one of relief and happiness) it was
all one stream, and chairs, tables, maps, were hers, were theirs, it did
not matter whose, and Paul and Minta would carry it on when she
was dead. 
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She turned the handle, firmly, lest it should squeak, and went in,
pursing her lips slightly, as if to remind herself that she must not
speak aloud. But directly she came in she saw, with annoyance, that
the precaution was not needed. The children were not asleep. It was
most annoying. Mildred should be more careful. There was James
wide awake and Cam sitting bolt upright, and Mildred out of bed
in her bare feet, and it was almost eleven and they were all talking.
What was the matter? It was that horrid skull again. She had told
Mildred to move it, but Mildred, of course, had forgotten, and now
there was Cam wide awake and James wide awake quarrelling when
they ought to have been asleep hours ago. What had possessed
Edward to send them this horrid skull? She had been so foolish as
to let them nail it up there. It was nailed fast, Mildred said, and Cam
couldn’t go to sleep with it in the room, and James screamed if she
touched it.
Then Cam must go to sleep (it had great horns said Cam—) must
go to sleep and dream of lovely palaces, said Mrs. Ramsay, sitting
down on the bed by her side. She could see the horns, Cam said, all
over the room. It was true. Wherever they put the light (and James
could not sleep without a light) there was always a shadow
somewhere. 
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“But think, Cam, it’s only an old pig,” said Mrs. Ramsay, “a nice
black pig like the pigs at the farm.” But Cam thought it was a horrid
thing, branching at her all over the room.
“Well then,” said Mrs. Ramsay, “we will cover it up,” and they all
watched her go to the chest of drawers, and open the little drawers
quickly one after another, and not seeing anything that would do,
she quickly took her own shawl off and wound it round the skull,
round and round and round, and then she came back to Cam and
laid her head almost flat on the pillow beside Cam’s and said how
lovely it looked now; how the fairies would love it; it was like a bird’s
nest; it was like a beautiful mountain such as she had seen abroad,
with valleys and flowers and bells ringing and birds singing and little
goats and antelopes. . . She could see the words echoing as she spoke
them rhythmically in Cam’s mind, and Cam was repeating after her
how it was like a mountain, a bird’s nest, a garden, and there were
little antelopes, and her eyes were opening and shutting, and Mrs.
Ramsay went on saying still more monotonously, and more
rhythmically and more nonsensically, how she must shut her eyes
and go to sleep and dream of mountains and valleys and stars falling
and parrots and antelopes and gardens, and everything lovely, she 
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said, raising her head very slowly and speaking more and more
mechanically, until she sat upright and saw that Cam was asleep.
Now, she whispered, crossing over to his bed, James must go to
sleep too, for see, she said, the boar’s skull was still there; they had
not touched it; they had done just what he wanted; it was there quite
unhurt. He made sure that the skull was still there under the shawl.
But he wanted to ask her something more. Would they go to the
Lighthouse to-morrow?
No, not to-morrow, she said, but soon, she promised him; the
next fine day. He was very good. He lay down. She covered him up.
But he would never forget, she knew, and she felt angry with Charles
Tansley, with her husband, and with herself, for she had raised his
hopes. Then feeling for her shawl and remembering that she had
wrapped it round the boar’s skull, she got up, and pulled the window
down another inch or two, and heard the wind, and got a breath of
the perfectly indifferent chill night air and murmured good-night to
Mildred and left the room and let the tongue of the door slowly
lengthen in the lock and went out. She hoped he would not bang
his books on the floor above their heads, she thought, still thinking
how annoying Charles Tansley was. For neither of them slept well;
they were excitable children, and since he said things like that about 
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the Lighthouse, it seemed to her likely that he would knock a pile
of books over, just as they were going to sleep, clumsily sweeping
them off the table with his elbow. For she supposed that he had gone
upstairs to work. Yet he looked so desolate; yet she would feel
relieved when he went; yet she would see that he was better treated
to-morrow; yet he was admirable with her husband; yet his manners
certainly wanted improving; yet she liked his laugh—thinking this,
as she came downstairs, she noticed that she could now see the moon
itself through the staircase window—the yellow harvest moon—and
turned, and they saw her, standing above them on the stairs.
“That’s my mother,” thought Prue. Yes; Minta should look at her;
Paul Rayley should look at her. That is the thing itself, she felt, as if
there were only one person like that in the world; her mother. And,
from having been quite grown up, a moment before, talking with
the others, she became a child again, and what they had been doing
was a game, and would her mother sanction their game, or condemn
it, shewondered. And thinking what a chance it was for Minta and
Paul and Lily to see her, and feeling what an extraordinary stroke of
fortune it was for her to have her, and how she would never grow up
and never leave home, she said, like a child, “We thought of going
down to the beach to watch the waves.” 
171
Instantly, for no reason at all, Mrs. Ramsay became like a girl of
twenty, full of gaiety. A mood of revelry suddenly took possession
of her. Of course they must go; of course they must go, she cried,
laughing; and running down the last three or four steps quickly, she
began turning from one to the other and laughing and drawing
Minta’s wrap round her and saying she only wished she could come
too, and would they be very late, and had any of them got a watch?
“Yes, Paul has,” said Minta. Paul slipped a beautiful gold watch
out of a little wash-leather case to show her. And as he held it in the
palm of his hand before her, he felt “She knows all about it. I need
not say anything.” He was saying to her as he showed her the watch,
“I’ve done it, Mrs. Ramsay. I owe it all to you.” And seeing the gold
watch lying in his hand, Mrs. Ramsay felt, How extraordinarily
lucky Minta is! She is marrying a man who has a gold watch in a
wash-leather bag! “How I wish I could come with you!” she cried.
But she was withheld by something so strong that she never even
thought of asking herself what it was. Of course it was impossible
for her to go with them. But she would have liked to go, had it not
been for the other thing, and tickled by the absurdity of her thought
(how lucky to marry a man with a wash-leather bag for his watch) 
172
she went with a smile on her lips into the other room, where her
husband sat reading.

Of course, she said to herself, coming into the room, she had to
come here to get something she wanted. First she wanted to sit
down in a particular chair under a particular lamp. But she wanted
something more, though she did not know, could not think what it
was that she wanted. She looked at her husband (taking up her
stocking and beginning to knit), and saw that he did not want to be
interrupted—that was clear. He was reading something that moved
him very much. He was half smiling and then she knew he was
controlling his emotion. He was tossing the pages over. He was
acting it—perhaps he was thinking himself the person in the book.
She wondered what book it was. Oh, it was one of old Sir Walter’s,
she saw, adjusting the shade of her lamp so that the light fell on her
knitting. For Charles Tansley had been saying (she looked up as if
she expected to hear the crash of books on the floor above) had been
saying that people don’t read Scott any more. Then her husband
thought, “That’s what they’ll say of me”; so he went and got one of 
173
those books. And if he came to the conclusion “That’s true” what
Charles Tansley said, he would accept it about Scott. (She could see
that he was weighing, considering, putting this with that as he read.)
But not about himself. He was always uneasy about himself. That
troubled her. He would always be worrying about his own books—
will they be read, are they good, why aren’t they better, what do
people think of me? Not liking to think of him so, and wondering if
they had guessed at dinner why he suddenly became irritable when
they talked about fame and books lasting, wondering if the children
were laughing at that, she twitched the stocking out, and all the fine
gravings came drawn with steel instruments about her lips and
forehead, and she grew still like a tree which has been tossing and
quivering and now, when the breeze falls, settles, leaf by leaf, into
quiet.
It didn’t matter, any of it, she thought. A great man, a great book,
fame—who could tell? She knew nothing about it. But it was his
way with him, his truthfulness—for instance at dinner she had been
thinking quite instinctively, If only he would speak! She had
complete trust in him. And dismissing all this, as one passes in
diving now a weed, now a straw, now a bubble, she felt again,
sinking deeper, as she had felt in the hall when the others were 
174
talking, There is something I want—something I have come to get,
and she fell deeper and deeper without knowing quite what it was,
with her eyes closed. And she waited a little, knitting, wondering,
and slowly those words they had said at dinner, “the China rose is
all abloom and buzzing with the honey bee,” began washing from
side to side of her mind rhythmically, and as they washed, words,
like little shaded lights, one red, one blue, one yellow, lit up in the
dark of her mind, and seemed leaving their perches up there to fly
across and across, or to cry out and to be echoed; so she turned and
felt on the table beside her for a book.
And all the lives we ever lived And all the lives to be, Are full of
trees and changing leaves, she murmured, sticking her needles into
the stocking. And she opened the book and began reading here and
there at random, and as she did so she felt that she was climbing
backwards, upwards, shoving her way up under petals that curved
over her, so that she only knew this is white, or this is red. She did
not know at first what the words meant at all.
Steer, hither steer your winged pines, all beaten Mariners she read and turned the
page, swinging herself, zigzagging this way and that, from one line
to another as from one branch to another, from one red and white
flower to another, until a little sound roused her—her husband 
175
slapping his thighs. Their eyes met for a second; but they did not
want to speak to each other. They had nothing to say, but something
seemed, nevertheless, to go from him to her. It was the life, it was
the power of it, it was the tremendous humour, she knew, that made
him slap his thighs. Don’t interrupt me, he seemed to be saying,
don’t say anything; just sit there. And he went on reading. His lips
twitched. It filled him. It fortified him. He clean forgot all the little
rubs and digs of the evening, and how it bored him unutterably to
sit still while people ate and drank interminably, and his being so
irritable with his wife and so touchy and minding when they passed
his books over as if they didn’t exist at all. But now, he felt, it didn’t
matter a damn who reached Z (if thought ran like an alphabet from
A to Z). Somebody would reach it—if not he, then another. This
man’s strength and sanity, his feeling for straightforward simple
things, these fishermen, the poor old crazed creature in
Mucklebackit’s cottage made him feel so vigorous, so relieved of
something that he felt roused and triumphant and could not choke
back his tears. Raising the book a little to hide his face he let them
fall and shook his head from side to side and forgot himself
completely (but not one or two reflections about morality and
French novels and English novels and Scott’s hands being tied but 
176
his view perhaps being as true as the other view) forgot his own
bothers and failures completely in poor Steenie’s drowning and
Mucklebackit’s sorrow (that was Scott at his best) and the
astonishing delight and feeling of vigour that it gave him.
Well, let them improve upon that, he thought as he finished the
chapter. He felt that he had been arguing with somebody, and had
got the better of him. They could not improve upon that, whatever
they might say; and his own position became more secure. The
lovers were fiddlesticks, he thought, collecting it all in his mind
again. That’s fiddlesticks, that’s first-rate, he thought, putting one
thing beside another. But he must read it again. He could not
remember the whole shape of the thing. He had to keep his judgement in
suspense. So he returned to the other thought—if young men did not care
for this, naturally they did not care for him either. One ought not to
complain, thought Mr. Ramsay, trying to stifle his desire to complain to
his wife that young men did not admire him. But he was determined; he
would not bother her again. Here he looked at her reading. She looked
very peaceful, reading. He liked to think that every one had taken
themselves off and that he and she were alone. The whole of life did not
consist in going to bed with a woman, he thought, returning to Scott and
Balzac, to the English novel and the French novel.Mrs. Ramsay raised her head and like a person in a light sleep seemed
to say that if he wanted her to wake she would, she really would, but
otherwise, might she go on sleeping, just a little longer, just a little longer?
She was climbing up those branches, this way and that, laying hands on
one flower and then another.
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose,
she read, and so reading she was ascending, she felt, on to the top, on to
the summit. How satisfying! How restful! All the odds and ends of the day
stuck to this magnet; her mind felt swept, felt clean. And then there it was,
suddenly entire shaped in her hands, beautiful and reasonable, clear and
complete, the essence sucked out of life and held rounded here—the
sonnet.
But she was becoming conscious of her husband looking at her. He was
smiling at her, quizzically, as if he were ridiculing her gently for being
asleep in broad daylight, but at the same time he was thinking, Go on
reading. You don’t look sad now, he thought. And he wondered what she
was reading, and exaggerated her ignorance, her simplicity, for he liked to
think that she was not clever, not book-learned at all. He wondered if she
understood what she was reading. Probably not, he thought. She was
astonishingly beautiful. Her beauty seemed to him, if that were possible,
to increase. 
178
Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she finished.
“Well?” she said, echoing his smile dreamily, looking up from her book.
As with your shadow I with these did play,
she murmured putting the book on the table.
What had happened she wondered, as she took up her knitting, since
she had last seen him alone? She remembered dressing, and seeing the
moon; Andrew holding his plate too high at dinner; being depressed by
something William had said; the birds in the trees; the sofa on the
landing; the children being awake; Charles Tansley waking them
with his books falling—oh no, that she had invented; and Paul
having a wash-leather case for his watch. Which should she tell him
about?
“They’re engaged,” she said, beginning to knit, “Paul and Minta.”
“So I guessed,” he said. There was nothing very much to be said
about it. Her mind was still going up and down, up and down with
the poetry; he was still feeling very vigorous, very forthright, after
reading about Steenie’s funeral. So they sat silent. Then she became
aware that she wanted him to say something. 
179
Anything, anything, she thought, going on with her knitting.
Anything will do.
“How nice it would be to marry a man with a wash-leather bag
for his watch,” she said, for that was the sort of joke they had
together.
He snorted. He felt about this engagement as he always felt about
any engagement; the girl is much too good for that young man.
Slowly it came into her head, why is it then that one wants people
to marry? What was the value, the meaning of things? (Every word
they said now would be true.) Do say something, she thought,
wishing only to hear his voice. For the shadow, the thing folding
them in was beginning, she felt, to close round her again. Say
anything, she begged, looking at him, as if for help.
He was silent, swinging the compass on his watch-chain to and
fro, and thinking of Scott’s novels and Balzac’s novels. But through
the crepuscular walls of their intimacy, for they were drawing
together, involuntarily, coming side by side, quite close, she could
feel his mind like a raised hand shadowing her mind; and he was
beginning now that her thoughts took a turn he disliked—towards
this “pessimism” as he called it—to fidget, though he said nothing, 
180
raising his hand to his forehead, twisting a lock of hair, letting it fall
again.
“You won’t finish that stocking to-night,” he said, pointing to her
stocking. That was what she wanted—the asperity in his voice
reproving her. If he says it’s wrong to be pessimistic probably it is
wrong, she thought; the marriage will turn out all right.
“No,” she said, flattening the stocking out upon her knee, “I shan’t
finish it.”
And what then? For she felt that he was still looking at her, but
that his look had changed. He wanted something—wanted the
thing she always found it so difficult to give him; wanted her to tell
him that she loved him. And that, no, she could not do. He found
talking so much easier than she did. He could say things—she never
could. So naturally it was always he that said the things, and then
for some reason he would mind this suddenly, and would reproach
her. A heartless woman he called her; she never told him that she
loved him. But it was not so—it was not so. It was only that she
never could say what she felt. Was there no crumb on his coat?
Nothing she could do for him? Getting up she stood at the window
with the reddish-brown stocking in her hands, partly to turn away
from him, partly because she did not mind looking now, with him 
181
watching, at the Lighthouse. For she knew that he had turned his
head as she turned; he was watching her. She knew that he was
thinking, You are more beautiful than ever. And she felt herself very
beautiful. Will you not tell me just for once that you love me? He
was thinking that, for he was roused, what with Minta and his book,
and its being the end of the day and their having quarrelled about
going to the Lighthouse. But she could not do it; she could not say
it. Then, knowing that he was watching her, instead of saying any
thing she turned, holding her stocking, and looked at him. And as
she looked at him she began to smile, for though she had not said a
word, he knew, of course he knew, that she loved him. He could not
deny it. And smiling she looked out of the window and said (thinking to
herself, Nothing on earth can equal this happiness)—
“Yes, you were right. It’s going to be wet to-morrow.” She had not said
it, but he knew it. And she looked at him smiling. For she had triumphed
again. 



II
TIME PASSES