3-057-386 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Draft notes of Virginia Woolf for her novel "Mrs Dalloway", 1925. 'There was an age when the pavement was green; another when it was swamp; an age of tusk & mammoth, an age of silent sunrise; and through them all the battered woman-for she wore a skirt-with her right hand exposed, her left clutching at her knees stood singing of love; [crossed out] love [crossed out] which [crossed out] had lasted a million years [crossed out] which she sang was immortal, & millions of years ago [crossed out] in May, her lover, who had been dead these centuries had walked, she crooned with her in May; but in the course of ages, long as summer days, and [crossed out] flaming, so she remembered, with nothing but red asters, he had gone; death's enormous sickle had swept over those tremendous hills; and when [crossed out] she laid her hoary & immensely aged head on the earth, now become a mere cinder of ice, for it would have outlived everything - her memory of happiness even - then she implored [crossed out] "lay by my side a bunch of purple-heather", there in that high burial place which the last rays of the last sun caressed; for then the pageant of the universe would be over'.