Virginia Woolf writes here to “Miss Janet Case: Classical Scholar and Teacher,” as she titled Case’s obituary a month after writing this letter. Case was a quiet but sustained and supportive presence in Woolf’s life; the two women were close from the time Case began tutoring Woolf in the classics in 1902. Woolf’s cheerful, worldly “gossip” belies the depth of Case’s effect on her and the poignancy with which she felt her teacher’s illness and death.
52 Tavistock Square, W .C.I.
June 12th [1937]
Dear Janet,
I heard from Emphie about your operation. I wont bore you by saying how sorry I was: but I hope you’re back again in that nice room now, with flowers outside; and feeling better.
A little worldly gossip is all I can supply. Would you like to hear about the beautiful Lady Diana—whom I rather think you once taught—Duff Cooper she is now—married to a little puffed up robin redbreast of a man. Why? I can’t think, and didn’t like to ask though she was very free and easy and told me all about you at Belvoir. They had tin baths and large cans painted black with red spots. I said that in middle class households the cans were yellow. She said the nuisance was that her grandfather the old duke was such a democrat that people came into the house at all hours. But her brother [9th Duke] has changed all that. She is more beautiful I think than she was; less painted; more bone and hollow; and wearing a ravishing veil over her hair and a bunch of yellow flowers.
This is my only grand party since we came back from France. We had a time entirely without parties there; only looking at farms and churches and sitting on the banks of the Dorogne eating pate de foie gras—a lovely holiday.
Now in London there’s a lot of telephone ringing: L. has all his politicians at him, and I have old Ethel Smyth who stumps in for what she calls ten minutes. Its really 2 hours; all one long harangue, to which I listen, because she’s stone deaf, and her trumpet doesn’t work, but that does not matter, since she has a supreme belief in her own divine genius, and if you get her off on that, and love, and music, and her sheep dog, there’s no need to answer. I’m looking at boxes of Roger Fry’s letters and wondering how anyone writes a real life. An imaginary one wouldn’t so much bother me. But oh, the dates, the quotations!
The gossip is only by way of passing half an hour in your and Emphies company, which I always think preferable to other peoples. So let us come and see you again; and get better. Love to Emphie. The marmoset joins, and Sally.
V.
Sussex
FURTHER READING
Find out more about Virginia Woolf’s relationship with Janet Case in Henry M. Alley’s discussion of the eulogy Woolf wrote for her former teacher, here.