Virginia Woolf’s Jacob's Room – four day study in St Ives

It is now a Salon tradition to spend some time each year in St Ives reading Virginia Woolf’s work and enjoying a place she loved and in which she spent significant parts of her childhood. In 2024 we will again offer two Woolf studies in St Ives: To the Lighthouse (29 September to 2 October) and Jacob’s Room (4 to 7 October).

As one of the key members of the celebrated Bloomsbury Group, Woolf is often seen as a London writer, but the Cornish coastal town of St Ives – where she spent many childhood summers – serves as a prism through which we can explore her perspectives on landscape, domesticity and identity.

In 1922, Jacob’s Room, Virginia Woolf’s third novel, was the first book to be published by the Woolfs’ own imprint, the Hogarth Press. This book is the linchpin between the more traditional novel form and Woolf’s leap forward into the modernist mode. She lets go of event and character development to make room for the intensity of living — that incredible burning that may look from one angle like inconsequence, but from another angle the very heart of being. 

This was also the form she chose to address the unimaginable moment of war — ripping into the heat of life and leaving only gaping space where a beloved son had been. Her decision not to narrate the war and the resultant deaths directly, but to use her art to demonstrate the gashed web of connection that is left behind, was controversial for her contemporary audience. How do we narrate the unliveable events that circumscribe our identity in the historical moment? This is in part what Woolf responds to – not philosophically, but aesthetically. 

Woolf is also engaging the question she will pursue through all of her literature: how do we know each other? How do the various planes of personality, the glimpses of each other’s interior, add up to an authentic being?

“. . . having this afternoon arrived at some idea of a new form for a new novel. Suppose one thing should open out of another . . . only not for 10 pages but 200 or so–doesn’t that give the looseness and lightness I want; doesn’t that get closer and yet keep form and speed, and enclose everything, everything? My doubt is how far it will enclose the human heart–Am I sufficiently mistress of my dialogue to net it there? For I figure that the approach will be entirely different this time: no scaffolding; scarcely a brick to be seen; all crepuscular, but the heart, the passion, humour, everything as bright as fire in the mist. Then I’ll find room for so much—a gaiety–an inconsequence – a light spirited stepping at my sweet will. Whether I’m sufficiently mistress of things – that’s the doubt; but conceive ‘Mark on the Wall ‘, ‘Kew Gardens’ and Unwritten Novel taking hands and dancing in unity. What the unity shall be I have yet to discover; the theme is a blank to me . . .”

Virginia Woolf, A Writer’s Diary, 26 January 1920

During our visit you will have the opportunity to visit the iconic Tate St Ives gallery overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, built between 1988 and 1993 on the site of an old gasworks. If weather allows, there will be an optional boat trip to Godrevy Lighthouse and we also hope to look at Talland House, Woolf’s childhood summer home (now privately owned). For several months of the year the elegant house overlooking St Ives Bay would be the Stephens’ family home until 1895 when Virginia’s mother, Julia Stephen, died. Although the complete family never returned to St Ives following their mother’s death, her children travelled back in 1905 following the death of their father in 1904.

“If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying in bed, half-asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one two, behind a yellow blind . . . If I were a painter I should paint these impressions in pale yellow, silver, and green. There was the pale yellow blind; the green sea; and the silver of the passion flowers.”

“Here is the past and all its inhabitants miraculously sealed as in a magic tank.”

“The past only comes back when the present runs so smoothly that it is like the sliding surface of a deep river. Then one sees through the surface to the depths. The past sometimes presses so close that you can feel nothing else.”

Virginia Woolf, “Sketch of the Past”, begun in June 1939

Feedback from participants in previous St Ives studies:

“The studio where the discussion took place is a beautiful, extraordinary place, the participants were imbued with the light and landscape, creating a friendly and committed atmosphere. The two facilitators were wonderful . . .”

“The collaboration between participants and facilitators was rich indeed, and I wonder how it was accomplished that everyone in the group was so insightful and intelligent and I might even say soul-searching . . . I also think it was just a superb group of people.”

Read Salonista Leah Jewett’s account of a Salon Study in St Ives here.

SALON DETAILS:

• Please use the form below to secure your place with an initial registration deposit of £20.00. Once you have registered we will then send you details for payment of the balance owing (£540.00) to complete your booking by bank transfer.
• Facilitated by Toby Brothers and Sarah Snoxall
• Our meetings will take place in the fabulous Porthmeor Studios
• 4 to 7 October 2024
• Recommended edition: Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf, Vintage Classics, ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1784877958
• Cost £560, includes notes and critical resources (N.B. travel, food and accommodation are NOT included and participants are responsible for arranging their own travel, accommodation and insurance).
• Recommended places to stay include No 4 St Ives, 3 Porthminster Terrace, Blue Sky, The Olive Branch, Rivendell and the Harbour View Hotel, but PLEASE check web details and review sites before booking to make sure they meet your needs.