Monk's House, facing the garden. VW's room is far right.

“Come to have a look at Monk’s House, have you?” asked the cheerful old man who had overtaken us in the churchyard. “I knew her, Virginia Woolf,” he said. “Me and some other lads were out playing in the fields when she drowned herself, in the river.” He waved vaguely at the surrounding countryside. “Over there, somewhere.”

We smiled and nodded. E. went gamely on with the conversation. Was his story true? I did the math: he could have been the right age. But it seemed like something you’d say to please the tourists.

E. has already written about our trip to Rodmell, to see Monk’s House, once the home of Virginia and Leonard Woolf. The trip was a kind of English-major pilgrimage, as the groups of English and American visitors among us that day will testify.

We’d come to the old churchyard to kill time. A black cat ran around underfoot; some kids played in the schoolyard next door. Not too far away, the old man’s wife, equally cheery, tended a grave that was head-to-toe flowers. “My brother died at 76,” the man said to us. We were sorry, but they didn't seem sad. The wife came over and nodded pleasantly at us. “We were married here years ago,” they told us proudly. We were impressed.

MetaWoolf: I wasn’t there because of “The Hours.” Nor was I there because of the way VW is lionized by certain parts of the feminist academic establishment. I was there because as a graduate student, I used to go to the stacks of my university library when I had to write a paper, and sit there until I had a draft scratched out. To take a break, I’d grab something off the shelf and read at random. One day I grabbed a volume of Woolf’s letters, and I couldn’t stop reading.

The letters, and to some extent her diaries, are delightful. She was funny, affectionate, occasionally needy, and often hilariously gossipy to her friends. She also was insightful about literature and art as well as the process of being a writer. She wrote books and book reviews, ran a publishing operation successfully with her husband, and was close to her family and friends.

In an age when we’re often told that women’s lives are an equation that will never come out even (The sandwich generation! The second shift! You can have it all, but you can't have it all, but you can have it all!) the letters and diaries never fail to remind me what is still possible, in terms of enjoying life and work.

It’s hard to make VW relevant to the blogworld, I fear. I gather that most people who aren’t aficionados remember her as a depressed writer of abstruse books who wore her hair in a bun, maybe, and killed herself. These preconceptions probably weren’t dispelled by the Hollywoodized depiction in "The Hours," despite Nicole Kidman’s fake nose. The closest I can get to an explanation is that Woolf’s fascination with “moments of being” is echoed today by some of the blog writers I admire most.

Most of VW’s London homes no longer exist—many were destroyed in WWII. Monk’s House, now a part of the National Trust, has been restored to reflect the way it looked when she lived there, between 1919 and 1941. The rooms are staffed with friendly people who answer questions (“So, does he still live here?” was one we overheard; answer: no, he died in 1969) and the garden, which is vast and contains an orchard and a couple of ponds, is looked after by some residential caretakers.

Eric contemplates the orchard.

We may never live in such a place, but it was fun to place ourselves there for a minute, planning picnics under the apple trees and wondering what it would be like to have such a garden. I’d love to have my own “writing lodge” in the back, although there may be some difficulty with the condo association about this. (Hmm, but there is a toolshed in the yard at E.’s house in Indiana…)

The writing lodge. A laptop and wi-fi would be an added bonus.

I took a moment to look at VW's tombstone before we left (although it doesn’t mark a grave, since the tree under which her ashes were buried no longer stands).

“Death is the enemy. Against you I will fling myself unvanquished and unyielding—O Death!” The waves broke on the shore.

"Death is the enemy" is mentioned frequently, but I hadn't realized that "The waves broke on the shore" was the last line. It's flat, but definite; it gives a sense of continuation, like the apples in the trees, like the yearly renewal of the garden, like me picking up a book in a library in 1988.

Finally, we left. Outside in the village, we passed a woman riding a white horse. We stopped at the pub for tea and cake, and after a while caught the bus, and the train, back to London.