Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf and Marie Bashkirtseff

In the summer of 2007, I was reading Virginia Woolf's Mrs Dalloway for the second time. It was during that summer, that I realized that Mrs Dalloway was a prose poem. I did not know at the time that others were well aware of this and I was discovering nothing new.  But for me, it was very, very exciting.

I decided to type the entire Mrs Dalloway out in verse form, blank verse to be exact, to see what the novel would look like. To my surprise, I found things in the novel I would not have discovered had I not read it or typed it out in verse.

On page 180 I came across the following passage which contained "nothing but red asters." Somehow that short phrase piqued my curiosity. I was surprised by what I found googling.

First, read the following from Mrs Dalloway as I transcribed it in verse form. The bold is mine, not Virginia Woolf's:

Through all ages --

When the pavement was grass,
When it was swamp,
Through the age of tusk and mammoth,
Through the age of silent sunrise --

The battered woman --

For she wore a skirt --
With her right hand exposed,
Her left clutching at her side,

Stood singing of love -
Love which has lasted a million years,

She sang,

Love which prevails,
And millions of years ago,
Her lover,
Who had been dead these centuries
Had walked,

She crooned,

With her in May;
But in the course of ages,
Long as summer days,
And flaming,

She remembered,

With nothing but red asters,
He had gone;
Death's enormous sickle had swept those tremendous hills,
And when at last she laid her hoary and immensely aged head
On the earth,
Now become a mere cinder of ice,
She implored the Gods to lay by her side
A bunch of purple heather,
There on her high burial place
Which the last rays of the lat sun caressed;
For then the pageant of the universe would be over.

As the ancient song bubbled up opposite
Regent's Park Tube Station,
Still the earth seemed green and flowery;
Still, though it issued from so rude a mouth,
A mere hole in the earth,

Muddy too,
Matted with root fibres and tangled grasses,
Still the old bubbling,
Burbling song,
Soaking through the knotted roots of infinite ages,
And skeletons and treasure,
Streamed away in rivulets over the pavements
And all along the Marylebone Road,
And down towards Euson,
Fertilizing, leaving a damp stain.

Still remembering how once in some primeval May
She had walked with her lover, this rusty pump,
This battered old woman,

With one hand exposed for coppers,
The other clutching her side,

Would still be there in ten million years,
Remembering how once she had walked in May,
Where the sea flows now, with whom it did not matter --
He was a man,

Oh yes,

A man who had loved her.
But the passage of ages had blurred
The clarity of that ancient May day;
The bright-petalled flowers were hoar and silver frosted;
And she no longer saw,

When she implored him
(as she did now quite clearly),

'Look in my eyes with thy sweet eyes intently,'
She no longer saw brown eyes, black whiskers or sunburnt face,
But only a looming shape, a shadow shape,
To which, with the bird-like freshness of the very aged,
She still twittered,
'Give me your hand and let me press it gently'

(Peter Walsh couldn't help giving the poor creature
a coin as he stepped into his taxi),

'And if someone should see, what matter they?'

The last phrase, "And if someone should see, what matter they?" is repeated several times later, as one might see in a choral refrain. 

Here's what I found by googling certain phrases in the above passage.

I found what appears to be a poem on a tombstone in Passy Cemetery in Paris. At that source, written by a Catholic nun, it appears, the poem is said to come from the song, Allerseelen (All Souls' Day) with the date 1922 next to it. Here is that poem.

Lay by my side your bunch of purple heather,
The last red asters of an Autumn day,
And let us sit and talk of Love together,
As once in May.

Give me your hand, that I may press it gently
And if the others see what matter they
Look in mine eyes with your sweet eyes intently
As once in May.

On every grave are flowers all red and golden,
In Death's dark valley this is Holy day,
Come to my heart and let my arms enfold you
As once in May.

It is hard to read what is written at the original source (a PDF of the British Journal of Nursing, 1922), but the source references a "talented young Russian artist, Marie Baslcirtseff, buried at Passy, and references also this song, Allerseelen.  "Baslcirtseff" is misspelled and is actually "Bashkirtseff."  Marie Bashkirtseff (1858 - 1884) was a Russian artist famous for her published journal; her tomb is a recreation of her studio and has been declared a historical monument by the government of France.

The question is: how did a poem on a tombstone in a cemetery in Paris end up in Mrs Dalloway? This is my theory. In the December 16, 1922, issue of the British Journal of Nursing, Volume 69, p. 393, there was a letter from an English nurse who was visiting Paris. In "Our Foreign Letter," the nurse reprints the epitaph on the tombstone.

In her diaries, Virginia Woolf says she was "now in the thick of the mad scene in Regents Park." This was written on October 15, 1923, and certainly referenced Mrs Dalloway which was published in 1925.

Virginia Woolf was in and out of physician offices throughout her life, and I am absolutely convinced that while waiting one day in such an office, she was flipping through the British Journal of Nursing and stumbled across "Our Foreign Letter" and the poem.

Virginia Woolf was very familiar with Bashkirtseff, the latter famous for her journals, perhaps one of the original "famous for being famous."

*****

Other trivia related to this subject:

Note how the Bashkirtseff epitaph differs slightly from the words of Allerseelen (Strauss) by Hermann von Gilm:

Place on the table the fragrant mignonettes,
Bring the last red asters inside,
And let us speak again of love,
As once in May.

Give me your hand, so that I may secretly press it;
And if someone sees, it's all the same to me.
Just give me one of your sweet glances,
As once in May.

Every grave blooms and is fragrant tonight,
One day in the year are the dead free,
Come to my heart, so that I may have you again,
As once in May.

Passy Cemetery is a famous cemetery in Paris. Under Napoleon I, all cemeteries in Paris were replaced by several large new ones outside the precincts of the capital -- there was one exception: Passy Cemetery is in the heart of the city.

One can view Bashkirtseff's journal here.