Monday, July 13, 2009

Today’s Dalloway discovery

“I feel much better –though attacked with heart disease, you’ll be sorry to hear, the day before we left. I thought I was probably dying, but Fergusson says its only the nerves of the heart go wrong after influenza” (Woolf, Letters, 2.411; January 2, 1920, to Vanessa)

That’s a lovely footnote for this sentence: “For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty,--one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said, by influenza) before Big Ben strikes.” (Mrs. Dalloway, [1925]).

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