Woolfian Boundaries - Clemson University

136 WOOLFIAN BOUNDARIES
Alternatively, it might involve drawing attention to the very obscurity of this visual record. 11
For the process of retrieval could obviously not be satisfi ed merely by returning the NPG to
some kind of pristine, pre-war state. Th e gallery’s traditional shortcomings and lacunae were
obvious enough. More to the point, it was an institution in a state of fl ux. Immediately after
the end of the war, its trustees were calling for more than just their museum’s reopening; they
were also pressing for its physical expansion, so that it could adequately house its existing
collection and so that it had room for future acquisitions, including portraits “of persons
distinguished for their services to the Empire during the war” (“Gift”). Th is last reason, one
imagines, would have particularly vexed Woolf and her Bloomsbury friends.
Many of the Athenaeum’s readers would have been attuned to these issues and would
have understood that identifying an obvious weakness in a collection, as Woolf does, is
tantamount to pointing out an alternative or additional direction for it to take. So although
Woolf is frustrated by her inability to fi nd Harriet Taylor Mill in the NPG, this
frustration could also carry the hope that their rendezvous might eventually take place
there. Alas, this would never happen—at least, not in the way Woolf seems to have hoped.
When, in 1982, a portrait of Harriet Taylor Mill fi nally entered the NPG, it entered a
collection that already contained several likenesses of the writer who had once come looking
for it. 12
Notes
1. Although this article is not included in Donald Laing’s checklist of Clive Bell’s publications, Bell became a regular
contributor to the Athenaeum around this time and the piece is consistent with his opinions and prose style.
2. Th e relationship between the NG and NPG became even closer in January 1919, when the NG became
the temporary home of “some 40 of the choicest historical portraits from its still secluded neighbour, the
National Portrait Gallery” (“Famous”).
3. Th is is the explanation that eluded Andrew McNeillie who, in editing the essay, was left perplexed by “the
matter of soldiers and pensions” (E3 166 n.3).
4. Th e other art gallery “freed” at this time was the Wallace Collection.
5. Notably, Woolf’s letter to Vanessa Bell, where she describes her failure to enter the NPG, gives a diff erent
motive for the visit and makes no mention of this search for Harriet Taylor Mill (L2 258-61). Of course,
just such a search may have motivated her then; it is also conceivable that it occurred on a separate occasion
or, indeed, that Woolf invented it solely for the purpose of reviewing Kapp’s book.
6. Most notably, see John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography (1873) and the dedication from On Liberty (1859). Th e
question of the exact nature and extent of Harriet’s infl uence on John is famously controversial and Woolf
was familiar with the debate about “whether it was Mill or his friends who was mistaken about Mrs. Mill”
(D2 341). Later in 1920, she brought the topic up in her exchange of letters with Desmond MacCarthy on
“Th e Intellectual Status of Women,” which appeared in Th e New Statesman. Elsewhere, in her essay “Th e
Modern Essay,” Woolf quotes Richard Hutton’s dismissive assessment of Harriet Taylor Mill’s infl uence on
her husband, and acidly notes that a “book could take that blow, but it sinks an essay” (E4 217).
7. In the statement she issued after slashing the Rokeby Venus, Mary Richardson justifi ed her act by arguing
for a notion of beauty that went beyond the merely aesthetic: “I have tried to destroy the picture of the most
beautiful woman in mythological history as a protest against the government for destroying Mrs. Pankhurst,
who is the most beautiful character in modern history. Justice is an element of beauty as much as colour and
outline on canvas” (“National”). Of relevance to my argument is Richardson’s allusion to the Cat-and-Mouse
Act, which at the time was implicated in the public spectacle of Mrs. Pankhurst’s physical deterioration.
8. Th is, and related phrases (“What will Mrs Grundy say? What will Mrs Grundy think”), are sprinkled
throughout Morton’s play.
9. McKenna’s name appears in Woolf’s correspondence a couple of times. Most notably in a letter to Lytton
Strachey, dated 12 October 1918, she describes attending a speech by Lord Grey on the subject of the
League of Nations. Woolf’s distaste for McKenna is apparent: “I had the pleasure of sitting exactly behind
Mrs. Asquith and Elizabeth. I felt, at that distance, fairly secure against their fascination, and when McK-