Passage from Flush

Robert Browning: dog butler

Virginia Woolf, Flush #FlushVW2024

#FlushVW2024 "The young dogs would come about him. To them he would tell his stories of Whitechapel and Wimple Street; he would describe the smell of clover and the smell of Oxford Street;...the spotted spaniel down the alley on the left- she goes on for ever, he would say."

#FlushVW2024 Day 11, 3/11- Ch. 6 The End p.93 to p102 (fin) * Happy to have read another #VirginiaWoolf book with #WoolfPack and everyone!! Hope you'll join us for #VWStories2024 on April 1st.

#FlushVW2024 (6)

„Broken asunder, yet made in the same mould - each, perhaps, completed what was dormant in the other.“
- End -

A loving and poetic story about dogs and people. Merci Christina!

#FlushVW2024 Day 10, 3/10- "But Flush had not long to wait before his newly won philosophy was put to the test." p.87 to p.92 (end of ch.) * Penultimate Day!

#FlushVW2024 (5)
#VirginiaWoolf

„All countries were equal to him now; all men were his brothers.“

#FlushVW2024 Day 9, 3/9- "Then one day early in March Mrs Browning did not appear in the sitting-room at all." p.80 to p.87 "The true philosopher is he who has lost his coat but is free from fleas." (end of par.)

#FlushVW2024 (5)
#VirginiaWoolf

„Where two or three thousand words are insufficient for what we see“

#FlushVW2024 Mrs Browning and the Grand Duke Leopold II who restored civil liberties to the citizens in 1847; Flush and the spotted spaniel! 79 www.theguardian.com/books/booksb... #BarrettBrowning

#FlushVW2024 Day 8, 3/8- Ch. 5 ITALY, p.70 to p.80 "Day after day Mrs Browning sat there in her armchair quietly stitching." (end of par.)

Elizabeth Barrett Browning, detail of an oil painting by Michele Gordigiani, 1858; in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

#FlushVW2024 (5)
#VirginiaWoolf

O bella libertà, O bella!

[CASA GUIDI WINDOWS I by Elizabeth Barrett Browning,
"I heard last night a little child go singing“ …]

"...cold water was the only thing that seemed to have any substance, any reality."
"This room was no longer the whole world; it was only a shelter."
"She alone had not deserted him. He still kept some faith in her....Exhausted, trembling, dirty & very thin, he lay on the sofa...." #FlushVW2024

"Whatever Mr Browning might say, she was going to rescue Flush, even if she went down into the jaws of Whitechapel to fetch him..."
"All Flush's past life & its many scenes- Reading, the greenhouse, Miss Mitford,...the bookcases...had faded like snowflakes dissolved in a caldron." #FlushVW2024

#FlushVW2024 Day 7, 3/7- "Lying on her sofa, Miss Barrett read the letters." p.60 to p.69 (end of ch.)

#FlushVW2024 [4]
#VirginiaWoolf

„But why write all this string of truisms about the plainest thing in the world?“

#FlushVW2024 Day 6, 3/6- Ch.4 Whitechapel p.50 to p.60 "So Mr Browning stormed and vociferated from New Cross twice daily." (end of par.)

Whitechapel takes its name from the whitewashed St Mary Matfelon church; nearby White Tower of the Tower of London was also whitewashed.

#FlushVW2024 [4]
#VirginiaWoolf

„Flush had never mastered the principles of human society.“

#FlushVW2024 [3]
#VirginiaWoolf

„Flush always makes the most of his misfortunes - he is of the Byronic school - il se pose en victime." [Miss Barrett]

#FlushVW2024 Day 5, 3/5- "But inspire of their astonishing blindness, ...a change in Miss Barrett." p.39 to p.49 (end of ch.)

Line drawing of a lady in 1840's dress with a spaniel.

Line drawing of Elizabeth Barrett Browning sitting up in bed.

I love illustrations in books. These drawings are by Vanessa Bell for Woolf's Flush.
#FlushVW2024

#FlushVW2024 "Now Flush paid the full price of long years of accumulated sensibility lying couched on cushions at Miss Barrett's feet. He could read signs that nobody else could even see." 35 The closest of friends confronted with a new personality.

#FlushVW2024 "Now she she still sat upright; her eyes still burnt; her cheeks still glowed; she seemed still to feel that Mr Browning was with her." First love - endorphins - obsession -

#FlushVW2024 Day 4, 3/4- Ch. 3 The Hooded Man p.32 to p.39 "Aghast at his obtuseness, Flush slipped past him out of the room." (end of par.) #Flush #VirginiaWoolf #Woolf

#FlushVW2024 [3]
#VirginiaWoolf

But what is ‚oneself’? Is it the thing people see? Or is it the thing one is?“

Title page of Flush, by Virginia Woolf, 1933

Copyright page of Flush, 1933

Sketch of EBB with Flush & EBB in bed by Vanessa Bell

Sketch of EBB reclining & in garden (Italy) by Vanessa Bell

#FlushVW2024
I've had this book all my life (another one from my mother's bookshelf) but had never read it until now. Sketches by Vanessa Bell.

A single copy of the same US 1st edition is on Abe, for $8. Another, with dust jacket & SIGNED by VW herself, is offered by a rare book dealer for $2,800.

#FlushVW2024 "...what Wilson's wet umbrella meant to Flush; what memories it recalled, of forests and parrots and wild trumpeting elephants; nor did she know, when Mr Kenyon stumbled over the bell-pull, that Flush heard dark men cursing in the mountains..." 27

#FlushVW2024 "But none of these sounds meant freedom, or action, or exercise. The wind & the rain, the wild days of autumn & the cold days of mid-winter, all alike meant nothing to Flush except warmth & stillness; the lighting of lamps, the drawing of curtains & the poking of the fire." 25 #Citydog

#FlushVW2024 "His only airings, and these were brief & perfunctory, were taken in the company of Wilson, Miss Barrett's maid....All his natural instincts were thwarted & contradicted. When the autumn winds had blown last year in Berkshire he had run while scampering across the stubble..." 25

#FlushVW2024 Day 3, 3/3- Ch. 2 The Back Bedroom p.21 to p.31 (end of ch.)
"The summer of 1842 was, historians tell us, not much different from other summers, yet to Flush it was so different that he must have doubted if the world itself were the same."

#FlushVW2024 [2]
#VirginiaWoolf

How can we (humans and dogs) adapt more easily to a new environment? Flush shows the way.

„Thus, before many of these walks were over, a new conception had entered his brain. Setting one thing beside another, he had arrived at a conclusion.“