Perhaps PERHAPS Perhaps PERHAPS PERHAPS Perhaps it was the middle of January in the present year that I first looked up and saw the mark on the wall. In order to fix a date it is necessary to remember what one saw. So now I think of the fire; the steady film of yellow light upon the page of my book; the three chrysanthemums in the round glass bowl on the mantelpiece. Yes, it must have been the winter time, and we had just finished our tea, for I remember that I was smoking a cigarette when I looked up and saw the mark on the wall for the first time. I looked up through the smoke of my cigarette and my eye lodged for a moment upon the burning coals, and that old fancy of the crimson flag flapping from the castle tower came into my mind, and I thought of the cavalcade of red knights riding up the side of the black rock. Rather to my relief the sight of the mark interrupted the fancy, for it is an old fancy, an automatic fancy, made as a child perhaps. The mark was a small round mark, black upon the white wall, about six or seven inches above the mantelpiece.

How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it. . . . . it. . . . it. . . . it. . . . it. . . . it. . . . If that mark was made by a nail, it can't have been for a picture, it must have been for a miniature—the miniature of a lady with white powdered curls, powder-dusted cheeks, and lips like red carnations. A fraud of course, for the people who had this house before us would have chosen pictures in that way—an old picture for an old room. That is the sort of people they were—very interesting people, and I think of them so often, in such queer places, because one will never see them again, never know what happened next. She wore a flannel dog collar round her throat, and he drew posters for an oatmeal company, and they next. She wore a flannel collar round her throat, and he drew posters for an oatmeal company, and they next. They next. They next. They next. They

These two sentences were excised from the versions after 1919 and replaced simply with the word “they.” This description could refer to the previous owners of Asheham or Hogarth House, the Woolfs’ primary residences in this period. However, Woolf may have elected to remove these lines because they referred specifically to people in her life, especially since this story was originally released to a small, private audience. They may have been recognizable to others in Woolf’s circle and the comments are not particularly flattering. The tone is one of mild condescension: Woolf describes the man as a commercial artist, presumably middle class, while the woman is marked as either middle class or at least unfashionable with her flannel collar. Celia Marshik notes the importance of clothing as a social signifier in Woolf’s era in her analysis of the Mackintosh coat in modernist literature as “more and more people came to appreciate the power of clothing (whether fashionable or practical) to shape self-presentation and thus to assert a particular social significance and role.”Celia Marshik, “The Modern(ist) Mackintosh,” Modernism/modernity 19 no. 1 (January 2012): 44. In To the Lighthouse, this awareness is evident in Charles Tansley’s reaction to Lily Briscoe’s judgmental eye. According to Emily Blair, Lily’s insincerity “causes Charles Tansley to feel his class: ‘his old flannel trousers,’ his roughness, and his isolation from the social manner at the dinner.”Emily Blair, Virginia Woolf and the Nineteenth-Century Domestic Novel (Albany: State University of New York, 2007), 206. His clothing is intertwined with his class and marks him as separate from the group. In a similar manner, the specific reference to the flannel collar marks this woman as apart from the dominant, fashionable, social group.

The excision also comes at a time when the Hogarth Press was becoming a more professional and at the same time more public project. Leonard claims that it was only in 1920 that he and Virginia conceptualized the Hogarth Press as a professional enterprise. Before that, the “Hogarth Press was a hobby, and the hobby consisted in the printing which we did in our spare time in the afternoons.”Leonard Woolf, Downhill All the Way (New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1967), 66. Clive Bell recalls that Virginia’s diary and letter writing could often be (sometimes inaccurately) critical of people she knew or encountered. Bell remembers that when Hogarth published extracts from Virginia’s diary, “The editor, himself, very properly cut out a number of passages which were much too personal, not to say libelous, to be published while the victims were alive.”Clive Bell, “A Genius Who Worked Magic,” in Virginia Woolf: Interviews and Recollections, edited by J. H. Stape (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1995), 96. This excision may reflect a similar anxiety over libel or simply a remark that might hit too close to home.

But as But as But as But as But But for that mark, I'm not sure about it; I don't believe it was made by a nail after all; its it's it's it's it's it's too big, too round round, round, round, round, round, for that. I might get up, but if I got up and looked at it, ten to one I shouldn't be able to say for certain; because once a thing's done, no one ever knows how it happened. O O O Oh! Oh! Oh! dear me, the mystery of life! life! life! life; life; life; The The The The the the inaccuracy of thought! The ignorance of humanity! To show how very little control of our possessions we have—what an accidental affair this living is after all our civilisation—let civilisation—let civilization—let civilization—let civilization—let civilization—let me just count over a few of the things lost in one lifetime, beginning, for that seems always the most mysterious of all of of of of of losses—what cat would gnaw, what rat would nibble—three nibble three nibble—three nibble—three nibble—three nibble—three pale blue canisters of book-binding tools? Then there were the bird cages, the iron hoops, the steel skates, the Queen Anne coal-scuttle, the bagatelle board, the hand organ—all gone, and jewels jewels jewels jewels, jewels, jewels, too. Opals and emeralds, they lie about the roots of turnips. What a scraping paring affair it is to be sure! The wonder is that I've any clothes on my back, that I sit surrounded by solid furniture at this moment. Why, if one wants to compare life to anything, one must liken it to being blown through the Tube at fifty miles an hour—landing at the other end without a single hair pin hairpin hairpin hairpin hairpin hairpin in one's hair! Shot out at the feet of God entirely naked! Tumbling head over heels in the asphodel meadows like brown paper parcels pitched down a shoot in the post office! With one's hair flying back like the tail of a race horse. race-horse. race-horse. race-horse. race-horse. race-horse. Yes, that seems to express the rapidity of life, the perpetual waste and repair; all so casual, all so haphazard. . . .

But after life. The slow pulling down of thick green stalks so that the cup of the flower flower, flower, flower, flower, flower, as it turns over over, over, over, over, over, deluges one with purple and red light. Why, after all, should one not be born there as one is born here, helpless, speechless, unable to focus one's eyesight, groping at the roots of the grass, at the toes of the Giants? As for saying which are trees, and which are men and women, or whether there are such things, that one won't be in a condition to do for fifty years or so. There will be nothing but spaces of light and dark, intersected by thick stalks, and rather higher up perhaps, rose-shaped blots of an indistinct colour—dim pinks and blues—which will, as time goes on, become more definite, become—I don't know what. what. . . . what. . . . what. . . . what. . . . what. . . .

And yet that mark on the wall is not a hole at all. It may even be caused by some round black substance, such as a small rose leaf, left over from the summer, and I, not being a very vigilant house-keeper—look housekeeper—look housekeeper—look housekeeper—look housekeeper—look housekeeper—look at the dust on the mantelpiece, for example, the dust which, so they say, buried Troy three times over, only fragments of pots utterly refusing annihilation, as one can believe. But I know a house-keeper, a woman with the profile of a police-man, those little round buttons marked even upon the edge of her shadow, a woman with a broom in her hand, a thumb on picture frames, an eye under beds and she talks always of art. She is coining nearer and nearer; and now, pointing to certain spots of yellow rust on the fender, she becomes so menacing that to oust her, I shall have to end her by taking action: I shall have to get up and see for myself what that mark—But no. I refuse to be beaten. I will not move. I will not recognise her. See, she fades already. I am very nearly rid of her and her insinuations, which I can hear quite distinctly. Yet she has about her the pathos of all people who wish to compromise. And why should I resent the fact that she has a few books in her house, a picture or two? But what I really resent is that she resents me—life being an affair of attack and defence after all. Another time I will have it out with her, not now. She must go now. The believe. ... I know a housekeeper, a woman with the profile of a policeman, those little round buttons marked even upon the edge of her shadow, a woman with a broom in her hand, a thumb on picture frames, an eye under beds, and she talks always of art. She is coming nearer and nearer; and now, pointing to certain spots of yellow rust on the fender, she becomes so menacing that to oust her, I shall have to end her by taking action: I shall have to get up and see for myself what that mark— But no. I refuse to be beaten. I will not move. I will not recognise her. See, she fades already. I am very nearly rid of her and her insinuations, which I can hear quite distinctly. Yet she has about her the pathos of all people who wish to compromise. And why should I resent the fact that she has a few books in her house, a picture or two? But what I really resent is that she resents me—life being an affair of attack and defence after all. Another time I will have it out with her,—not now. She must go now. . . .The believe. The believe. The believe. The believe. The

E. M. Forster in his review [July 1919] of “The Mark on the Wall” claims that “there is, as Mrs. Woolf sadly points out, a moral of a sort; she is a poor housekeeper, or the mark would not be there.”E. M. Forster, “Visions,” in Virginia Woolf: The Critical Heritage, edited by Robin Majumdar and Allen McLaurin (London and Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975), 69. This passage, excised from the 1921 and 1944 editions of “The Mark on the Wall,” suggests a number of intriguing possibilities regarding Virginia Woolf’s relationship to servants. Heather Levy argues that the elision of these fourteen sentences reveals that “the narrator eagerly participates in constructing an hermetically sealed space in the final version of the short story which silences the voices of working class women and those defined as racial outsiders by history.”Heather Levy, The Servants of Desire in Virginia Woolf’s Shorter Fiction, vol. 8 of Studies in Twentieth-Century British Literature, edited by Karen Radell (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), 78. For Levy, Woolf trades in the “upper middle class habit of constructing working class women as shadows.”Levy, Servants, 79. Levy also theorizes that the passage was excised because of Leonard’s growing commitment to British socialism, repeating a trope in Woolf criticism that Virginia operated in the sphere of ivory-tower aestheticism while Leonard worked in the practical, political sphere. Scholars such as Helen Southworth have begun to complicate and question this narrative. Attending to the quotidian functions of the Hogarth Press, Southworth argues that this Virginia/Leonard binary is reductive, illustrating that “the Hogarth Press provided Leonard and Virginia Woolf an opportunity to bridge ‘the gulf’ separating an old world ‘divided by hedges’ from a new ‘world without classes and towers.’”Helen Southworth, “‘Going Over’: The Woolfs, the Hogarth Press, and Working-Class Voices,” in Leonard and Virginia Woolf, the Hogarth Press, and the Networks of Modernism, edited by Helen Southworth (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2010), 206.

Reading Virginia’s diaries and letters reveals a complex relationship to servants, a topic dealt with at length by Allison Light in her Mrs. Woolf and the Servants. Woolf records a variety of interactions between herself and the servants, and these interactions reveal that she was certainly aware of and interested in the daily lives of servants. There are some major interactions mentioned in the diaries with Lily, Lizzie, Maud, and Lottie. Lily was a parlormaid who had worked for the Woolfs at Asheham in 1914 when she had had a baby out of wedlock. Virginia gave her a reference to work with Mrs. Hallett, and her first diary entries display a mixture of empathy and pity toward Lily as she faces new accusations from Mrs. Hallett. Woolf writes on January 1, “Mrs H. is an old angry woman, meticulous, indeed as we knew tyrannical, about her servants; & Lily honestly meant no wrong.”Virginia Woolf, The Diary of Virginia Woolf, edited by Anne Bell (London: Hogarth Press, 1977), 1:3. Later, when Lily is dismissed by Mrs. Hallett for hiding soldiers in the pantry, Woolf, somewhat condescendingly, empathizes with her erstwhile servant and continues to assist her: Lily’s letter continues the story of the hidden soldier. It brings her very clearly before me, with her charming, stupid, doglike eyes, quite incapable of hurting a fly or thinking a coarse thought, & yet bound eternally to suffer for the sins of stronger characters. In this case, she was at the mercy of a parlourmaid, who invited the soldiers, & Lily had neither the strength of mind to be rude to them when they came, nor to ‘tell tales of a fellow servant’. ‘I would rather do anything than that’—& that, I imagine, was how she had her baby too. Anyhow, I have ‘spoken’ for her again, & she has promised to have no more to do with soldiers.V. Woolf, Diary, 1:8. When the Woolfs lived at Mrs. Le Grys’s in Richmond, Woolf records that the maid Lizzie was dangerously incompetent. On two occasions, Woolf writes that Lizzie started fires and once “smashed two very nice bits of china for us.”V. Woolf, Diary, 1:15. Lizzie’s replacement, Maud, is described as mentally unstable: But the fact of the day for me has been a vague kind of discomfort, caused by the eccentric character of the new servant Maud. When one speaks to her, she stops dead & looks at the ceiling. She bursts into the room ‘just to see if you are there’. She is an angular woman of about 40, who never stays long in any place. I believe she lives in dread of something. She puts down plates with a start. Mrs Le Grys says that she herself is going mad, with Maud’s peculiarities. She has just announced that she is the daughter of a Colonel. I am sure her brain is full of illusions, poor creature; & I shouldn’t be surprised at anything. The only question is, how she contrives to exist.V. Woolf, Diary, 1:31. Woolf’s description of Lottie reveals a bit more haughtiness toward her servants. Virginia consistently exhibited some concern and regard for her servants, but she seems to have run out of patience with Lottie, a housemaid she had hired in 1916 on the recommendation of Roger Fry: By rights Lottie should have a whole chapter to herself at this point; but to live through those things is unpleasant enough without reviving them here. At this moment owing to what she overheard L. say to me before breakfast, I am uncertain whether we have 2 servants or not, & to tell the truth, completely indifferent, such is the relief of being without them for a fortnight. Considering their unimportance they must be compared to flies in the eye for the discomfort they can produce in spite of being so small. But let us change the subject. V. Woolf, Diary, 1:197. Certainly, this letter regarding Lottie betrays a certain aristocratic disdain for the servant, but it remains unclear whether this was directed at Lottie herself or her servants more generally. The passage excised from Monday or Tuesday and A Haunted House suggests an ominous quality to the housekeeper, an authoritative accusatory profile with bourgeois pretensions. However, in his autobiography, Downhill All the Way, Leonard remembers that although Virginia was “the least political animal that has lived since Aristotle invented the definition,” she was “intensely interested in things, peoples, and events, and, as her new books show, highly sensitive to the atmosphere which surrounded her.”L. Woolf, Downhill, 27. Perhaps Virginia’s reactions to her servants were predicated on a case-by-case basis.

An alternative theory for the excision, which Levy does not consider, is that the housekeeper, “with a profile like a police-man,” was an actual person the Woolfs knew and that the passage was excised from the 1921 version of “The Mark on the Wall” because the press was becoming “professional.” Leonard claims that it was only in 1920 that he and Virginia conceptualized the Hogarth Press as a professional enterprise. Before that, the “Hogarth Press was a hobby, and the hobby consisted in the printing which we did in our spare time in the afternoons.”L. Woolf, Downhill, 66. Clive Bell recalls that Virginia’s diary and letter writing could often be (sometimes inaccurately) critical of people she knew or encountered. Bell remembers that, when Hogarth published extracts from Virginia’s diary, “The editor, himself, very properly cut out a number of passages which were much too personal, not to say libelous, to be published while the victims were alive.”Bell, “Genius,” 96. Perhaps the housekeeper cut from Monday or Tuesday represented a real person who had worked for the Woolfs, and after 1920 the image was deemed inappropriate. What is clear is that Woolf’s relationship to her servants is complex and ambiguous, and scholars who accuse Woolf of elitism perhaps miss the point.

"And then I came into the room. They were discussing botany. I said how I'd seen a flower growing on a dust heap on the site of an old house in Kingsway. The seed, I said, must have been sown in the reign of Charles the First. What flowers grew in the reign of Charles the First ? ? ?" ?" ?" ?" I asked—( but but but but But but I don't remember the answer ). ). ). ). .) ). Tall flowers with purple tassels to them perhaps. And so it goes on. All the time I'm dressing up the figure of myself in my own mind, lovingly, stealthily, not openly adoring it, for if I did that, I should catch myself out, and stretch my hand at once for a book in self protection self-protection self-protection self-protection self-protection self-protection . Indeed, it is curious how instinctively one protects the image of oneself from idolatry or any other handling that could make it ridiculous, or too unlike the original to be believed in any longer. Or is it not so very curious after all? It is a matter of great importance. Suppose the looking glass looking glass looking glass looking glass looking-glass looking-glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people—what an airless airless, airless, airless, airless, airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror; that accounts for the the expression of the the the the expression vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our vague and almost glassy our our our our our eyes. And the novelists in future will realise realise realize realize realize realize more and more the importance of these reflections, for of course there is not one reflection but an almost infinite number; those are the depths they will explore, those the phantoms they will pursue, leaving the description of reality more and more out of their stories, taking a knowledge of it for granted, as the Greeks did and Shakespeare perhaps; but perhaps—but perhaps—but perhaps—but perhaps—but perhaps—but these generalisations generalisations generalizations generalizations generalizations generalizations are very worthless. The military sound of the word is enough. It recalls leading articles, cabinet ministers—a whole class of things indeed which which which which which, which, as a child child child child child, child, one thought the thing itself, the standard thing, the real thing, from which one could not depart save at the risk of nameless damnation. Generalisations Generalisations Generalizations Generalizations Generalizations Generalizations bring back somehow Sunday in London, Sunday afternoon walks, Sunday luncheons, and also ways of speaking of the dead, clothes clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, clothes, and habits—like the habit of sitting all together in one room until a certain hour, although nobody liked it. There was a rule for everything. The rule for tablecloths at that particular period was that they should be made of tapestry with little yellow compartments marked upon them, such as you may see in photographs of the carpets in the corridors of the royal palaces. Tablecloths of a different kind were not real tablecloths. How shocking shocking, shocking, shocking, shocking, shocking, and yet how wonderful it was to discover that these real things, Sunday luncheons, Sunday walks, country housse houses houses houses houses houses , and tablecloths were not entirely real, were indeed half phantoms, and the damnation which visited the disbeliever in them was only a sense of illegitimate freedom. What now takes the place of those things, things, things things things things I wonder, those real standard things? Men perhaps, should you be a woman; the masculine point of view which governs our lives, which sets the standard, which establishes establishes establishes establishes establishes established Whitaker's Table of Precedency, which has become, I suppose, since the war war war war war, war, half a phantom to many men and women, which soon soon, soon, soon, soon, soon, one may hope hope, hope, hope, hope, hope, will be laughed into the dustbin where the phantoms go, the mahogany sideboards and and and the and the and the and the Landseer prints, Gods and Devils, Hell and so forth, leaving us all with an intoxicating sense of illegitimate freedom—if freedom exists. exists. . . . exists. . . . exists. . . . exists. . . . exists. . . .

In certain lights, lights, lights lights lights lights that mark on the wall seems actually to project from the wall. Nor is it entirely circular. I cannot be sure, but it seems to cast a perceptible shadow, suggesting that if I ran my finger down that strip of the wall it would would, would, would, would, would, at a certain point point, point, point, point, point, mount and descend a small tumulus, a smooth tumulus like those barrows on the South Downs which are, they say, either tombs or camps camps. camps. camps. camps. camps. Of the two I should prefer them to be tombs, desiring melancholy like most English people people people, people, people, people, and finding it natural at the end of a walk to think of the bones stretched beneath the turf. turf. . . . turf. . . . turf. . . . turf. . . . turf. . . . There must be some book about it. Some antiquary must have dug up those bones and given them a name. name. . . . name. . . . name. . . . name. . . . name. . . . What sort of of of a of a of a of a man is an antiquary, I wonder? Retired colonels colonels Colonels Colonels Colonels Colonels for the most part, I daresay, leading parties of aged labourers to the top here, examining clods of earth and stone, and getting into correspondence with the neighbouring clergy, which which, which, which, which, which, being opened at breakfast time time, time, time, time, time, gives them a feeling of importance, and the comparison of arrowheads arrowheads arrow-heads arrow-heads arrow-heads arrow-heads necessitates cross country cross-country cross-country cross-country cross-country cross-country journeys to the county towns, an agreeable necessity both to them and to their elderly wives, who wish to make plum jam, jam, jam jam jam jam or to clean out the study, and have every reason for keeping that great question of the camp or the tomb in perpetual suspension, while the Colonel himself feels agreeably philosophic in accumulating evidence on both sides of the question. It is true that he does finally incline to believe in the camp; and, opposed, casts all his arrowheads into one scale, and being still further opposed, indites opposed, casts all his arrowheads into one scale, and being still further opposed, indites opposed,indites opposed,indites opposed,indites opposed,indites a pamphlet which he is about to read at the quarterly meeting of the local society when a stroke lays him low, and his last conscious thoughts are not of wife or child, but of the camp and that arrow-head arrowhead arrowhead arrowhead arrow-head arrow-head there there, there, there, there, there, which is now in the case at the local museum, together with the hand foot foot foot foot foot

On this list of items on display at the local museum is the foot of a Chinese murderess. Heather Levy connects this severed body part to the history of British Expansion as “the violence of synecdoche,” calling to mind the violent history of colonialism through these representative items.Levy, Servants, 85. She also links the foot, a reference to motion, to the narrator’s inability, or unwillingness, to move from her spot to examine the mark. However, in the 1917 version of this story, the word “foot” originally read “hand.” The change to “foot” was likely to avoid the repetition of the word “hand” further on in the sentence with the reference to a “handful of Elizabethan nails” rather than an explicit connection to the narrator’s immobility.

No, no, nothing is proved, nothing is known. And if I were to get up at this very moment and ascertain that the mark on the wall is really—what shall we say?—the head of a gigantic old nail, driven in two hundred years ago ago, ago, ago, ago, ago, which has now, owing to the patient attrition of many generations of housemaids, revealed its head above the coat of paint, and is taking its first view of modern life in the sight of a white-walled fire-lit room, what should I gain? Knowledge —Knowledge —Knowledge —Knowledge —Knowledge — Knowledge ? Matter for further speculation? I can think sitting still as well as standing up. And what is knowledge? What are our learned men save the descendants of witches and hermits who crouched in caves and in woods brewing herbs, interrogating shrew-mice, shrew-mice, shrew-mice shrew-mice shrew-mice shrew-mice and writing down the language of the stars? And the less we honour them as our superstitions dwindle and our respect for beauty and health of mind increases. . . . . increases. . . . increases. . . . increases. . . . increases. . . . increases. . . . Yes, one could imagine a very pleasant world. world. world world. world. world. A quiet quiet quiet quiet, quiet, quiet, spacious world, with the flowers so red and blue in the open fields. A world without professors or specialists or house-keepers with the profiles of policemen, a world which one could slice with ones ones ones one's one's one's thought as a fish slices the water with his fin, grazing the stems of the water-lilies, and water-lilies, water-lilies, water-lilies, water-lilies, water-lilies, hanging suspended over nests of white sea eggs. . . . . . eggs. . . . eggs. . . . eggs. . . . eggs. . . . eggs. . . . How peaceful it is down here, rooted into into in in in in the centre of the world and gazing up through the gray gray gray grey grey grey waters, with their sudden gleams of light, and their reflections—If reflections—If reflections—If reflections—if reflections—if reflections—if it were not for Whitakers Whitaker's Whitaker's Whitaker's Whitaker's Whitaker's Almanack—if it were not for the Table of Precedency!

I must jump up and see for myself what that mark on the wall really is—a nail, a rose-leaf, a crack in the wood?

Here is Nature Nature Nature nature nature nature

“Nature" is capitalized in the earlier British versions of the story. The lowercase letters in the 1945 Hogarth edition and both Harcourt versions deemphasize the personification of nature. The emphasis on nature in the earlier versions is consistent with Woolf’s preoccupation with nature during that time. She had begun experiencing headaches in March 1915 and quickly slipped into mental illness during which she was placed under constant supervision for months. Her diaries were interrupted by this sustained illness and were not resumed until 1917. During this period, Virginia spent much of her recovery visiting Asheham House in Sussex. Hogarth Press published Publication No. 1 Two Stories in July 1917. When the diary resumes at Asheham in August after a two-year hiatus, her journal entries had changed from the expansive descriptions of everyday life common to the previous diaries to taciturn discussions of weather and nature. The early entries in the Asheham diary, written during summer 1917, focus almost exclusively on natural phenomena (with some war details), suggesting that Woolf’s engagement with nature was salutary for her convalescence. However, even her descriptions of nature seem shadowed by her recent illness. For example, on Sunday, August 19, 1917, Woolf discovered a caterpillar she had noticed a week earlier. Virginia seems haunted by its transformation: “Sat in the hollow; & found the caterpillar, now becoming a Chrysalis, wh. I saw the other day. A horrid sight: head turning from side to side, tail paralysed; brown colour, purple spots just visible; like a snake in movement. No mushrooms.”V. Woolf, Diary, 1:43. Other letters reveal striking juxtapositions of impressions: “Trees an ugly leaden colour outside, as if shriveled, flowers beaten down & brown; butterflies scarcely flying . . . Lovely night again. A great white owl, looking like a sea gull, sat on the rail, & flew about. Mushrooms started on my patch. L. took wasps.”V. Woolf, Diary, 1:47. Some of her encounters with nature are described in beautiful detail: “Another fine morning. I walked, & L. did the garden. I saw a clouded yellow [Colias edusa] on the top—a very deep yellow the first for a long time. Clouds brewed over the sea, & it began to rain at tea; then great thunder claps, & lightning.”V. Woolf, Diary, 1:48. In October, Virginia describes the purchase of paper and pens as “the happiest day that exists for me.”V. Woolf, Diary, 1:55. Whether or not her use of the capital letter “N” in the early versions of “The Mark on the Wall” reflects her exploration of nature as a salve for mental turmoil, comparing the different versions raises interesting questions regarding her experience of (N)ature.

I understand Nature's game—her prompting to take action as a way of ending any thought that threatens to excite or to pain. Hence, I suppose, comes our slight contempt for men of action men action—men action—men action—men action—men action—men ,we assume, who don't think. Still, there's no harm in putting a full stop to one's disagreeable thoughts by looking at a mark on the wall.

Indeed, now that I have fixed my eyes upon it, I feel feel feel that feel that feel that feel that I have grasped a plank in the sea; I feel a satisfying sense of reality which at once turns the two Archbishops and the Lord High Chancellor to the shadows of shades. Here is something definite, something real. Thus, waking from a midnight dream of horror horror horror, horror, horror, horror, one hastily turns on the light and lies quiescent, worshipping the chest of drawers, worshipping solidity, worshipping reality, worshipping the impersonal world which is a proof of some existence other than ours. That is what one wants to be sure of .... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Wood is a pleasant thing to think about. It comes from a tree; and trees grow grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, and we don't know how they grow. For years and years they grow grow, grow, grow, grow, grow, without paying any attention to us, in meadows, in forests forests forests, forests, forests, forests, and by the side of rivers—all things one likes to think about. The cows swish their tails beneath them on hot afternoons; they paint rivers so green that when a moor-hen moor-hen moorhen moorhen moorhen moorhen dives one expects to see its feathers all green when it comes up again. I like to think of the fish balanced against the stream like flags blown out; and of water-beetles slowly raising domes of mud upon the bed of the river. I like to think of the tree itself; itself; itself: itself: itself: itself: first first first first first of first the close dry sensation of being wood; then there is then there is then then then then the grinding of the storm; then the slow, delicious ooze of sap . . . . ; . I like to think of it it, it, it, it, it, too too, too, too, too, too, on winter's nights standing in the empty field with all leaves close-furled, nothing tender exposed to the iron bullets of the moon, a naked mast upon an earth that goes tumbling, tumbling, all night long. The song of birds must sound very loud and strange in June; and how cold the feet of insects must feel upon it, as they make laborious progresses up the creases of the bark, or sun themselves upon the thin green awning of the leaves, and look straight in front of them with huge with huge with with with with diamond-cut red eyes. eyes. . . . eyes. . . . eyes. . . . eyes. . . . eyes. . . . One by one the fibres snap beneath the immense cold pressure of the earth ; ; , , , , then the last storm comes and, falling, the highest branches drive deep into the ground again. Even so, life isn't done with; there are a million patient, watchful watchful, watchful watchful watchful watchful lives still for a tree, all over the world, in bed-rooms bedrooms bedrooms bedrooms bedrooms bedrooms , in ships, on the pavement, lining rooms rooms rooms rooms, rooms, rooms, where men and women sit after tea tea, tea, tea, tea, tea, smoking their smoking their smoking smoking smoking smoking cigarettes. It is full of peaceful thoughts, happy thoughts, this tree. I should like to take each one separately—but something is getting in the way ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Where was I? What has it all been about? A tree? A river? The Downs , , ? ? ? ? Whitaker's Almanack , the , the ? The ? The ? The ? The fields of asphodel? I can't remember a thing. Everything's moving, falling, slipping, vanishing ... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . There is a vast upheaval of matter. Someone is standing over me and saying— saying— saying— saying— saying: saying :

"I'm going out to buy a newspaper."

"Yes?" "Yes?" " Yes? " "Yes?" "Yes ?" "Yes?"

Though Though Though Though Though "Though it's no good, good, good good good good buying newspapers ...... . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

The earliest publication of the story—from the Hogarth edition of Two Storiesin 1917—represents the least standardized version in terms of punctuation, but it also allows us to better understand the pacing of the dialogue in the passage. For instance, after the second person in the story announces: “Though it’s no good, buying newspapers,” Woolf uses not a standard ellipsis but six consecutive and unspaced periods before the character continues with “Nothing ever happens.”Virginia Woolf, “The Mark on the Wall,” in Two Stories (Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1917), 31. This unusual punctuation suggests a longer pause than the other, more conventional, ellipses that she utilizes in the passages. Further, in its nonstandard use, the extended ellipsis also hints at the kind of repression in which the entire story participates. Here, the oddly long string of periods draws attention to all that is deliberately avoided in the statement. That is, in 1917, at the height of World War I, much more than “nothing” is happening. In her next revision of the story for the 1919 edition of The Mark on the Wall by Hogarth following the close of the war, Woolf revises the punctuation into the more standard form of a period followed by an ellipsis—all evenly spaced apart. Woolf would not change the punctuation again.

Ah, the mark on the wall! For it It It It It It

The final paragraph, comprised of two brief sentences, returns to the narrator’s point of view. In the 1917 publication, the passage reads: “Ah, the mark on the wall! For it was a snail.”V. Woolf, Two Stories, 31. The sentences are concise and lack the anger and intensity present in the previous lines cursing the war. These final two sentences refuse to acknowledge the mention of the war and are far milder in their tone. Woolf made only one change to the final paragraph by removing “for” at the beginning of the final sentence so that every version from 1919 on reads: “Ah, the mark on the wall! It was a snail.”Virginia Woolf, The Mark on the Wall (Richmond: Hogarth Press, 1919), 10. It is a significant omission, particularly given that it is the only change to the wording of the passage. First, the removal of the preposition makes the last sentence simpler and more succinct. It also disconnects the sentence from the previous, since, if the second sentence begins with such a preposition, it is, in a sense, a dependent clause. Here the sentence stands alone. Indeed, when one reaches the final passage, the sentence is so simple and direct, an assertion of what this story has been about, that the reader could easily miss the brief mention of the calamitous war that surrounds the quiet household. That is, the grammatical simplification of the final two sentences in the later version, and their disconnection from the previous sentences, might be read as mirroring the tactic of avoiding and repressing knowledge of the war that the narrator relies on throughout the text.