Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University
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Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

clemson.edu
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130 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES leap from the shoal and join the free sport of dolphins as a single individual ascend those steps and enter those doors” (163). Although it sounds as though Woolf is talking about both galleries here, only the NG is fronted by an impressive fl ight of rather steep steps (see Figure 4), and so it is within this building that the second paragraph of the essay seems to take place. Here, Woolf considers the diffi culties of ekphrasis, of translating intense visual experiences into adequate language, and pursues these thoughts in relationship to the genre of landscape. Th e heights of art, and perhaps the stiff est challenges to the would-be art writer, are thus associated with the canonical works found in the NG. But since Kapp combines “the gifts of the artist with those of the caricaturist,” and since the latter focuses on the individual human subject, Woolf strides off in the direction of the NPG, so that she might also “approach him from that point of view” (164). She moves, that is, from pictures Figure 4: Entrances to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery to portraits, the essay’s title hinting at the sequence of Woolf’s essayistic peregrinations. Woolf predicts that she will be less intimidated by the prospect of entering the NPG, presumably not merely because of its lower threshold but also because of its less stringent aesthetic standards and because of portraiture’s focus on the human face (it’s more a matter of a pilchard looking, not at dolphins, so much as other, perhaps superior, ancestral pilchards). “It needs an eff ort,” she writes, “but scarcely a great one, to enter the National Portrait Gallery” (164). Her hope is soon dashed. In a scene that anticipates the swooping beadles of A Room of One’s Own (1929), Woolf fi nds her approach to the gallery rebuff ed by a gate-keeper: Sometimes…an urgent desire to identify one among the dead sends us post haste to its portals. Th e case we have in mind is that of Mrs John Stuart Mill. Never was

Borderline Personalities: Woolf Reviews Kapp there such a paragon among women. Noble, magnanimous, inspired, thinker, reformer, saint, she possessed every gift and every virtue. One thing alone she lacked, and that, no doubt, the National Portrait Gallery could supply. She had no face. But the National Portrait Gallery, interrogated, wished to be satisfi ed that the inquirer was dependent upon a soldier; pensions they provided, not portraits. (164) 131 Woolf, it turns out, was approaching the NPG with more than just Kapp in mind. Hoping to fi nd Harriet Taylor Mill, she was instead met by one of Bell’s “Jacks and Jills in offi ce” or, to be more exact, an employee of the Separation Allowance Department of the War Offi ce, which had been occupying the entire building since the early years of the Great War. 3 “Pensions they provided, not portraits.” At the time Woolf’s essay was published in early 1920, the Army Pay Clerks had in fact recently left the building—“Art Galleries Freed,” Th e Times had announced on 1 November 1919 (“Art”) 4 —but the gallery was not to reopen to the public until April 1920. “Pictures and Portraits” appeared during a curious interregnum in the NPG’s history, a time when it was neither “occupied” nor entirely “free” for business as usual. Woolf’s description seems to be based largely on an earlier visit she had made, in July 1918, when, as a letter to Vanessa Bell records, she had found the NPG “shut save to the widows of offi cers” (L2 259). In the essay, having failed in her search, Woolf is “set adrift in Trafalgar Square once more,” where she refl ects “upon the paramount importance of faces”: Without a face Mrs John Stuart Mill was without a soul. Had her husband spared three lines of eulogy to describe her personal appearance we should hold her in memory. Without eyes or hair, cheeks or lips, her stupendous genius, her consummate virtue, availed her nothing. She is a mist, a wraith, a miasma of anonymous merit. Th e face is the thing. (164) Th ere is a certain resonance between the humorously blank facial schema on the cover of Kapp’s book (again, see Figure 1) and the idea of anonymity Woolf extracts from her frustrating experience at the NPG. Kapp’s cover introduces us to the general idea of a face but, in contrast to those contained inside the book, it is a face devoid of any specifi c information, any sense of personality; Woolf, on the other hand, has a strong sense of Harriet Taylor Mill’s personality, but no idea of what her face looks like and, further, no immediate way of prizing open the NPG’s doors to fi nd out. Curiously, even had Woolf stormed past the army clerk blocking her way, even had she searched the NPG’s collections high and low, she still would have been disappointed. Th ere was, at least at this time, no portrait of Harriet Taylor Mill in the collection—a fact Woolf might have known from previous visits to the collection or could have discovered simply by consulting a catalog of the collection (see, for example, Holmes). I consider it likely that she did know this, for her failure at the door strongly seems to imply this more fundamental curatorial and institutional shortcoming. 5 Of all the absent portrait subjects Woolf could have chosen to make her point, why did she opt for the friend, companion, and eventual wife of John Stuart Mill, who, as Woolf notes, devoted much ink to the cause of singing her praises? 6 Perhaps it was to underline an obvious asymmetry in the “fi eld of representation,” in both the political and aesthetic senses of this phrase. “Aesthetic” because John’s portrait was already in the NPG, and because the gallery repeats John’s mistake when it, too, fails to provide a record

130 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES<br />

leap from the shoal and join the free sport of dolphins as a single individual ascend those<br />

steps and enter those doors” (163). Although it sounds as though Woolf is talking about<br />

both galleries here, only the NG is fronted by an impressive fl ight of rather steep steps (see<br />

Figure 4), and so it is within this building that the second paragraph of the essay seems<br />

to take place. Here, Woolf considers the diffi culties of ekphrasis, of translating intense visual<br />

experiences into adequate language, and pursues these thoughts in relationship to the<br />

genre of landscape. Th e heights of art, and perhaps the stiff est challenges to the would-be<br />

art writer, are thus associated with the canonical works found in the NG. But since Kapp<br />

combines “the gifts of the artist with those of the caricaturist,” and since the latter focuses<br />

on the individual human subject, Woolf strides off in the direction of the NPG, so that she<br />

might also “approach him from that point of view” (164). She moves, that is, from pictures<br />

Figure 4: Entrances to the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery<br />

to portraits, the essay’s title hinting at the sequence of Woolf’s essayistic peregrinations.<br />

Woolf predicts that she will be less intimidated by the prospect of entering the NPG, presumably<br />

not merely because of its lower threshold but also because of its less stringent aesthetic<br />

standards and because of portraiture’s focus on the human face (it’s more a matter of a pilchard<br />

looking, not at dolphins, so much as other, perhaps superior, ancestral pilchards). “It needs an<br />

eff ort,” she writes, “but scarcely a great one, to enter the National Portrait Gallery” (164). Her<br />

hope is soon dashed. In a scene that anticipates the swooping beadles of A Room of One’s Own<br />

(1929), Woolf fi nds her approach to the gallery rebuff ed by a gate-keeper:<br />

Sometimes…an urgent desire to identify one among the dead sends us post haste<br />

to its portals. Th e case we have in mind is that of Mrs John Stuart Mill. Never was

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