April in Review

‘April is the cruellest month,’ as T.S. Eliot stated in The Waste Land. He wasn’t thinking about the stack of marking that sprouts on my desk each spring, or the punishing exam schedule that comes with it, but if he had, it would have added new depths of existential angst to his already bleak vision of humanity.

Last week I said goodbye to three courses worth of undergraduates, but as with every year, it felt anticlimactic. Rounds of papers and presentations meant my 20yr old students wore the kind of haunted expressions made for middle-aged stockbrokers. I clung to their last strands of attention by summarising what they had learned in each course but got the sense they had mentally moved on. What’s literary modernism or the gothic novel to the immediate pressure of packing up a life and trudging overseas? All my students have been studying in London on student visas, and most of them are flying back to the States to wrap up their degrees and enter an increasingly uncertain job market. I don’t envy them one bit.

April may have been cruel, but in many ways it’s also been sweet. I spent two glorious weekends teaching Woolf with the London Literary Salon in the village of Alfriston, Sussex. If you’ve never been to Alfriston then I would highly recommend it, not least of all because it’s the home of one of the best independent bookshops in England, Much Ado Books. The owners, Cate and Nash, were hospitable as always and let us use their craft barn for two ‘book art’ projects where we cut up patterned paper and reflected on scenes from the works we studied.

Much Ado Books in Alfriston

The first weekend in Alfriston was spent on Flush and Freshwater and the second was on Between the Acts, so as you can imagine there was a lot of talk about dogs, theatre, and the legacies of the 19^th century. We acted out scenes where possible, read out loud when not, and generally enjoyed one another’s company. It was especially nice to work alongside our own resident ‘Flush,’ a cocker spaniel named Scout who was brought along by my co-facilitator, Toby Brothers.

Scout, our honorary stand-in for Flush.

Unsurprisingly, it took me a while to get around to Substack writing, but inspiration struck at the Hogarth Press exhibition at Charleston Farmhouse. It made me revisit the old mystery of a Press employee who was so obscure that nobody bothered to record her first name. Known as ‘Ma’ Cartwright, she was the longest serving manager at the Press and spent several years working on some of its most successful publications.

Lots of great comments came rushing in once I published the article. Beth Daugherty was able to offer help by pointing to the recently published Uncollected Letters of Virginia Woolf, which features letters to a Mrs H. Cartwright and contains references by Richard Kennedy to a ‘May’ Cartwright. So now we know she’s either a May or something beginning with H – one day I’ll crack it!

Having finished my marking, I was ready to take my first proper holiday of the year – my only requirement was that it involved a beach. Perhaps it was the thought of rock pools that inspired me to write my second paid article about Jacob’s Room while on the plane to Gran Canaria. It’s a truly wonderful novel, and I’m looking forward to running a seminar series on it this August. Next month involves lots of podcast recordings, including with the director and writer of the new Night and Day film, and with the excellent Alexandra Harris on her latest research on Woolf and reading. I’m also going to have the surreal experience of being an interviewee myself, since Maggie Humm suggested she ask me questions about my recent book on Woolf and gardens. But for now, I plan to make like Jacob and take off to a beach for a few days. I look forward to connecting with you all when I get back!

If you’d like to attend my seminar series on Jacob’s Room, then click on the following link and scroll down: https://www.litsalon.co.uk/literature-studies/

Me running a seminar at Alfriston