Putney Origins: Leonard Woolf

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The married Woolfs are associated with Richmond, Bloomsbury and Rodmell near Lewes, Sussex. But between 1894-1914, while he was at school and university, Leonard Woolf’s family home was in Colinette Road, Putney. A large eight bedroomed mansion worth today £5m – but for the Woolfs, there was an element of shame. Previously, the nine-child family had lived even more grandly in Lexham Gardens, Kensington. But when father Sidney, an extremely successful barrister died in 1892, aged 47 the family had to cut down from 13 servants to three. Leonard was 12. The Woolfs were part of the increasingly successful integrated Jewish professional class which was entering mainstream British life. There are many stories of the anti-Semitism Leonard suffered, but he always maintained that he hadn’t noticed.

Leonard received a scholarship to St Pauls, where he cycled every day. From St Pauls he earned a scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge where his life really started. On day one he met in adjoining rooms Lytton Strachey, Clive Bell and Toby Stephens. Later he linked up with E M Forster and JM Keynes. These undergraduates would morph into the Apostles and then into the Bloomsbury Group. Intellectual pursuits, knowledge, arguments and friendships were their purpose.

On leaving Cambridge, he didn’t do too well at the Civil Service exams and was posted in 1904 to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). With him he took his pet Jack Russell and the complete works of Shakespeare, Milton and Voltaire.

Leonard did well in Ceylon. Hard working, bright and honest: a rare combination. He learnt both Tamil and Sinhalese. He lost his virginity to a local prostitute who at one point he considered keeping full time. He has described Ceylon as being inhabited by ‘whores and bores.’ He was a success there and was promoted several times. In 1911 he returned to London.

Living in Putney with his mother was out of the question. He took a room at the top of the house the Stephens clan had taken in Brunswick Square.  Now the story really starts. It was here that he got to know Virginia very well. They would often talk late into the night. They would go for walks, read together, and talk some more. Virginia stated she felt like a rock but was bowled over by his love and affection; something that the manic depressive Virginia always needed.

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Virginia experienced two suicide attempts before her fatal attempt in 1941. Sex and how her books were received were two areas which create crisis. Leonard avoided the first and although it was a happy and intimate marriage it was not sexual. He also created the Hogarth Press which published all Virginia’s works, thereby taking a lot tension out of her life. He was her editor, business partner and legacy builder. The Press became a major commercial success.

But he also had his own career. His Ceylon experience made him anti-colonist and very much in demand in left-wing circles, not least with Beatrice and Sidney Webb. He wrote a definitive book on international government which became a blue print for the League of Nations. He wrote 18 books; his book inspired by Ceylon, Village in the Jungle, and his five-volume autobiography are still in print. He served on and chaired countless committees, not least for the Labour Party. He wrote and edited The Nation, Political Quarterly the New Statesman.

The Woolfs became a very successful couple. They bought Monks House near Lewes. Leonard became a fanatical gardener and was involved in every aspect of local Sussex life. All the time Virginia teetered between genius, hard work and despair and it was Leonard who nursed her back. But in 1941 with the war going badly, their house in London bombed, her book Between the Acts just finished, Virginia stepped into the river Ouse with rocks in her pocket.

In her suicide note she wrote: “You gave me the greatest pleasure and happiness. I owe all the happiness in my life to you…I don’t think two people could have been happier than we have till this terrible disease came.”

Leonard was distraught but typically carried on working. One of his favourite Hogarth authors Alice Richie was dying of cancer. He became friendly with her illustrator sister Trekkie, married to Ian Parsons the publisher who was serving abroad with the RAF. She was 22 years younger than the 62 year old Leonard. She moved into Virginia’s old room. Ian returned from the war, and his firm Chatto and Windus bought the Hogarth Press. He and Trekkie bought a house near Rodmell; Trekkie spent weekends with her husband and weekdays with Leonard. It was a ménage which lasted 27 years, longer than his marriage to Virginia.

Vanessa Bell, Virginia’s sister, reported that Leonard looked more relaxed and at ease. Trekkie got him into clothes that fit and into social drinking. He published Virginia’s letters and diaries and managed her estate. Trekkie and he travelled to Sri Lanka together in 1960 and he was treated as anti-colonial royalty, but some village headmen reminded him of his hard but fair judgements 50 years before. Age 80 he started his award-winning autobiography, and when he won the WH Smith prize he compares it unfavourably with the prize he won for his onions at the Rodmell show.

And so it goes. He turned down Harold Wilson’s offer Companion of Honour. In April 1969 he suffered a stroke, recovered – and in August suffered another. The night nurse woke Trekkie, who phoned Peggy Ashcroft, saying: “He has left us.” He saw his life as a failure, he said, instead of writing and spending 200000 hours in committees he would have been better spent playing table tennis. But as novelist EM Forster more objectively said, “What a life he has led and how he has led it.”