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The Voyage Out

Virginia Woolf

A Penn State Electronic Classics Series Publication

The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf is a publication of the Pennsylvania State University. This

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The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf , the Pennsylvania State University, Electronic Classics Series ,

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Virginia Woolf

The Voyage Out

edge of the pavement with a lady on his arm. Angry glances

struck upon their backs. The small, agitated figures—for

in comparison with this couple most people looked small—

decorated with fountain pens, and burdened with des-

patch-boxes, had appointments to keep, and drew a weekly

salary, so that there was some reason for the unfriendly

stare which was bestowed upon Mr. Ambrose’s height and

upon Mrs. Ambrose’s cloak. But some enchantment had

put both man and woman beyond the reach of malice and

unpopularity. In his guess one might guess from the

moving lips that it was thought; and in hers from the

eyes fixed stonily straight in front of her at a level above

the eyes of most that it was sorrow. It was only by scorn-

ing all she met that she kept herself from tears, and the

friction of people brushing past her was evidently pain-

ful. After watching the traffic on the Embankment for a

minute or two with a stoical gaze she twitched her

husband’s sleeve, and they crossed between the swift dis-

charge of motor cars. When they were safe on the further

side, she gently withdrew her arm from his, allowing her

mouth at the same time to relax, to tremble; then tears

Virginia Woolf

Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to

walk down them arm-in-arm. If you persist, law-

yers’ clerks will have to make flying leaps into the mud;

young lady typists will have to fidget behind you. In the

streets of London where beauty goes unregarded, eccen-

tricity must pay the penalty, and it is better not to be

very tall, to wear a long blue cloak, or to beat the air

with your left hand.

One afternoon in the beginning of October when the

traffic was becoming brisk a tall man strode along the

Chapter I

A s the streets that lead from the Strand to the

The Voyage Out

rolled down, and leaning her elbows on the balustrade,

she shielded her face from the curious. Mr. Ambrose at-

tempted consolation; he patted her shoulder; but she

showed no signs of admitting him, and feeling it awk-

ward to stand beside a grief that was greater than his, he

crossed his arms behind him, and took a turn along the

pavement.

The embankment juts out in angles here and there, like

pulpits; instead of preachers, however, small boys oc-

cupy them, dangling string, dropping pebbles, or launch-

ing wads of paper for a cruise. With their sharp eye for

eccentricity, they were inclined to think Mr. Ambrose awful;

but the quickest witted cried “Bluebeard!” as he passed.

In case they should proceed to tease his wife, Mr. Ambrose

flourished his stick at them, upon which they decided

that he was grotesque merely, and four instead of one

cried “Bluebeard!” in chorus.

Although Mrs. Ambrose stood quite still, much longer

than is natural, the little boys let her be. Some one is

always looking into the river near Waterloo Bridge; a

couple will stand there talking for half an hour on a fine

afternoon; most people, walking for pleasure, contem-

plate for three minutes; when, having compared the oc-

casion with other occasions, or made some sentence, they

pass on. Sometimes the flats and churches and hotels of

Westminster are like the outlines of Constantinople in a

mist; sometimes the river is an opulent purple, some-

times mud-coloured, sometimes sparkling blue like the

sea. It is always worth while to look down and see what

is happening. But this lady looked neither up nor down;

the only thing she had seen, since she stood there, was a

circular iridescent patch slowly floating past with a straw

in the middle of it. The straw and the patch swam again

and again behind the tremulous medium of a great well-

ing tear, and the tear rose and fell and dropped into the

river. Then there struck close upon her ears—

Lars Porsena of Clusium

By the nine Gods he swore—

and then more faintly, as if the speaker had passed her

on his walk—

Virginia Woolf

That the Great House of Tarquin

Should suffer wrong no more.

weeping and begin to walk.

“I would rather walk,” she said, her husband having

hailed a cab already occupied by two city men.

The fixity of her mood was broken by the action of

walking. The shooting motor cars, more like spiders in

the moon than terrestrial objects, the thundering drays,

the jingling hansoms, and little black broughams, made

her think of the world she lived in. Somewhere up there

above the pinnacles where the smoke rose in a pointed

hill, her children were now asking for her, and getting a

soothing reply. As for the mass of streets, squares, and

public buildings which parted them, she only felt at this

moment how little London had done to make her love it,

although thirty of her forty years had been spent in a

street. She knew how to read the people who were pass-

ing her; there were the rich who were running to and

from each others’ houses at this hour; there were the

bigoted workers driving in a straight line to their offices;

there were the poor who were unhappy and rightly malig-

nant. Already, though there was sunlight in the haze,

tattered old men and women were nodding off to sleep

Yes, she knew she must go back to all that, but at present

she must weep. Screening her face she sobbed more

steadily than she had yet done, her shoulders rising and

falling with great regularity. It was this figure that her

husband saw when, having reached the polished Sphinx,

having entangled himself with a man selling picture post-

cards, he turned; the stanza instantly stopped. He came

up to her, laid his hand on her shoulder, and said, “Dear-

est.” His voice was supplicating. But she shut her face

away from him, as much as to say, “You can’t possibly

understand.”

As he did not leave her, however, she had to wipe her

eyes, and to raise them to the level of the factory chim-

neys on the other bank. She saw also the arches of Wa-

terloo Bridge and the carts moving across them, like the

line of animals in a shooting gallery. They were seen

blankly, but to see anything was of course to end her

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