Quote From Virgina Woolf Biography

Quentin Bell, pag 449

"In that 'phoney war' period of the war there were no air raids, but raids were expected and when, in October [1939], the Woolfs drove to London were confronted by large posters at Wimbledon declaring "The War Beings. Hitler Says: Now Its On," Virginia remarked to Leonard that it seemed foolish to have chosen that particular day for their visit. The appeared to be driving into a trap and she was frightened; but not for very long; later she felt there was sufficient community of sentiment in the capital to allow her to merge her private emotions with those of others. London seemed sober and business-like. At night it was dark and so unsocial she wondered whether she might not be seeing the end of urban life and the beginning of a time when badgers and foxes, owls and nightingles would populate the darkened city."

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A movie lies in the IMAGES described in the biography for her last few years: -- the death of the 1930s ... the death of a way of life (servants, the peculiarly singularly English class of people who were not in business but who lived on some capital) - and the coming of war - the death of the nephew Julian in Spain in 1937 ... driving through Nazi Germany on the way to Italy ... diminishment of the empire, etc. .... the wonderful sunny and false autumn of the phone war ... the madness of Virginia ... meeting with Freud in Mansfield Gardens (where I was myself, alone because Sh refused to accompany me) and how he wanted to talk of Hitler ... how Leonard and Virginia were strafed in the country side .... their (last) London home being bombed and Virginia salvaging first her diaries out of the rubble ... the sharp winter ... the shortages of food. The two suicide notes - one not being enough, there being, thereby, too much chance of being misunderstood with only one -- and that is what it was all about: being understood. And death.