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James Topham
posted 23 March 2007

Writers have shown a penchant, in the past few years, for the biography of the minor life: Shelley's aunt, Robert Browning cats, that sort of thing. The trend has risen along with the demand for the biographical form, and in inverse proportion to the number of great lives left to be written. It is, perhaps, not fair to think of Leonard Woolf's life as a minor life, nor Victoria Glendinning's biography of him as one of those biographies.

It is, at well over 500 pages of tightly researched material, a serious tome, a serious record of a serious life. Woolf, in his time, was a novelist, literary critic, publisher and social activist - not to mention husband and carer to one of the twentieth century's greatest writers. And yet Glendinning still seems beholden to prove to a readership that still considers him merely his wife's appendage that he is something of great significance in himself. She seems intent on showing, distinct from Virginia, Leonard Woolf the 'full man'.

In the early pages of her book she makes a convincing case. Woolf's life seems to invite the biographer's attention, not least because of its overt romanticism. The outsider, the Jew, Woolf rises above his petit-bourgeois upbringings and is accepted into the vivid and intellectual world of Cambridge University. On arriving, he quickly falls in with a group of men - Lytton Strachey, GE Moore, EM Forster, Maynard Keynes - who were to bestride the world stage in his lifetime. He joins the pseudo-secret debating societry, 'the Apostles', and whiles away his time discussing the ephemeral, moral questions of the day. All who know him are impressed by his clear thinking, and his insatiable desire for truth.

At this point in his life it was he who formed the intellectual and social centre towards which first Thoby Stephen (Virginia's brother), and later Virginia herself gravitated. He was one of the bright young men with all the hope and optimism of the pre-war years, who seemed to have the world at their feet. Unlike many of them, however, he did not have the inherited wealth to live a studied life of insouciance after university, and so rather than become a writer as he'd hoped, he accepted a place in the civil service. Voyaging across the seas, he became an administrator as part of the British imperial presence in Ceylon.

Glendinning's biography is also particularly good at describing this period in Woolf's life, during which he transformed from the dour thorough-going intellectual, into the competent colonial administrator. Glendinning pinpoints his years in the Ceylonese sun as particularly formatives ones, particularly to Leonard's sense of order and his ability to manage. It period was also formative of his strong sense of justice, and his experiences certainly went a long way in convincing him of the moral case against Empire. It no doubt also created the impression, despite his Jewishness, of an upright English man of the old school with a military bearing, which can still be sensed in the photos of him as an old man that have been included with the volume. At this stage too, Glendinning suggests, Woolf had the world stretched out before him; he could well have become a rising star in the British imperial machine.

However, it is also in Ceylon that we see a side of Woolf's character which reoccurs throughout Glendinning's narrative. She calls it a 'carapace'; an outer protective shell of ordinariness, a camouflage which allows him to blend in with his surroundings. He becomes very much the colonial gentleman: drinking cocktails at interminable parties; playing tennis in the afternoon; seeking out native prostitutes, secretly, in the night. The seeker of truth, the man with a sense of justice is submerged, and is only let out in letters to his old Cambridge chums. Woolf suffers a certain dissolution of self in Ceylon. This is not, in itself, a fatal flaw - certainly not on the classical scale. Woolf was a young man, wanting to please. But as his later life shows, perhaps this early ability to leave hold of himself is one of the reasons why we, as readers, never quite manage to get a crystal clear picture of him as a man.

Of course, Woolf's life - at least his public life, the life about which autobiographies could be written - did not begin until his return from Ceylon, and until he courted the young Virginia Stephen. Yet, it is at this point, his marriage and wedded life, that Glendinning's biography loses hold of Woolf's life. This can certainly not be because of a lack of goings-on - indeed, the two and a half decades of Woolf's prime were a flurry of activity. He wrote and edited for a number of literary and political periodicals, and was an important member of a number of leftist groups. He wrote a novel about his experiences in Ceylon, The Village in the Jungle. He was the prime mover in the founding and management of the Hogarth Press. He was asked to join various committees, did a great deal of work with the Fabians, and wrote a book on international relations which made some contribution to the formation of the League of Nations. And yet all these activities, however laudable, never quite hit their mark, and Glendinning can never convince of their long-lasting significance.

For example, Glendinning spends a number of pages discussing The Village in the Jungle. She extols its many merits, notes the warm reception that greeted its publication and points to its undiminished success in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). And yet, she quite rightly notes, the book has never really be considered a part of the literary canon, nor has Woolf joined Conrad and Forster in the pantheon of those who wrote brilliantly on the Empire. Equally, despite the fact that Woolf was active in League of Nations Society and the League of Nations Union, and his book International Government provided an outline for the formation of the League, Glendinning once again has to admit that his influence was less formative than tangential. He contributed to the circulation of significant ideas, but he never forged them.

What's more, although the work of Virginia Woolf is kept very much in the background in the biography, one cannot help get the impression that Leonard's work during the middle period of his life was very much overshadowed by the woman he loved and for whom he cared. Glendinning charts, in some detail, the relative earnings of the couple - Virginia Woolf's soon outstripping her husband's by a large margin. The same could be said for Virginia's influence; Leonard very soon became used to the fact that he was very much Mr Virginia Woolf. This is not to say that Virginia's success in any way diminishes the power or the worth of Leonard's life. Indeed, Glendinning makes a great case for the importance of Leonard to Virginia's creativity. He cared for her through very difficult times, and helped her through a series of near mental breakdowns that threatened both her work and her life. We are left in no doubt that an assessment of Leonard Woolf's life is, by necessity, somewhat based on his relationship with his more famous wife.

The way that Glendinning approaches this relationship is very interesting and, for a while, seems a little strange. Despite the fact that she is present throughout a large chunk of the book, she never quite seems to come fully into focus; she is never quite represented as a full person. To a certain extent, Glendinning's approach to her is quite understandable - this is Leonard's moment in the spotlight, and perhaps it is necessary, therefore, to relegate Virginia to the shadows. She could probably be excused too, for concentrating on the domestic side of the great novelist - despite the fact that this throws the focus on some of her less laudable traits. Her crippling self-consciousness is on show, as are her constant demands for approval. Glendinning also makes a number of references to Virginia's occasional and implicit anti-semitic comments. Innate anti-semitism and snobbishness (both of which Virginia undoubtedly possessed) are the reasons Glendinning's posits for Virginia's dislike of Leonard's family. Of course, the fact that Virginia withheld sex from Leonard is also discussed, as something Glendinning believes gave Leonard enormous dissatisfaction.

Virginia was, no doubt, excruciatingly difficult to live with, but by concentrating on these matters, Glendinning does not achieve her aim - to present Leonard as a full individual in his own right. The impression, rather, is that as he did in Ceylon, Leonard under went a certain dissolution of self - this time for the sake of his wife. Time and again, he rushed to Virginia's side, time and again he gave up work because of the harm it might cause to Virginia's perilous state (he decided against standing as an MP for precisely this reason). He submerged his own opinions constantly, for he knew that his undiluted praise might mean the difference between extreme happiness and a potentially dangerous depression. That Leonard sustained Virginia seems, from Glendinning's account, without doubt. That he nourished her creative talent, and was selfless throughout their marriage is a matter of record. In fact, even after her death, Leonard was selfless enough to avoid any natural recrimination - he accepted that she had a right to take her own life, if that is what she wanted. That by her ultimately selfish act she left him bereft, does not warrant consideration.

This is the story that Glendinning tells: Viriginia as demanding genius, Leonard as selfless husband. And though she convinces quite thoroughly that Leonard was undoubtedly an unselfish, kind, good person, one if left wondering whether this goodness meant that his own potential was unfulfilled. Perhaps there is a genetic bond between selfishness and genius, the former allowing the latter to thrive. Genius, perhaps, rolls on regardless of kindness and goodness, and only latches on to those who can channel its power. Virginia's writing did not wait; it rolled on; it did not hesitate on account of her health or for the man she loved. Glendinning tells us that Leonard believed that his wife's genius was in some way related to her madness, that a cure would mean the end of her creative powers. Perhaps this is a dangerous idea that glorifies mental illness and misunderstands creativity, but nevertheless it adhered to Woolf's life. It meant he was happy to give up something of his life for a woman he considered to be a greater spirit, who was also the woman he loved.

Albeit brilliantly conceived and executed, there is something that doesn't quite work in Glendinning's biography. Perhaps it is a problem that cannot be extricated from the life that she takes as the subject of her book. Although more often than not engaging, there are times when the procession of details drags - almost as though the frame of Leonard's life is not strong enough to hold the things that happened to him. The book is exemplary in its scholarship, yet there always seems to be a thin membrane between Glendinning's book and Leonard's life, through which the reader cannot pass. Perhaps Glendinning cannot quite bring Woolf to life - at least not in the way that a biography should - or perhaps Leonard is not someone who can fill out the form. All great biographers are great myth-weavers. But Leonard doesn't emerge from this book with the clarity and quality that all great lives seem to possess: his life doesn't resonate with the clearness that myths do.

Leonard emerges from this book as a good man, a kind man, but not a great one. Whether this is Glendinning's fault or, as is quite possible the case, the limitations that Leonard's life puts on her art, is perhaps neither here nor there. With a keen sense of time and place and a nice turn of phrase, Glendinning's biography nevertheless does not perform any alchemy. It will remain a resource in the study of this period and of these lives, a vital one, but it does not make Leonard Woolf's life soar.