Virginia Woolf Quarterly, Vol. II, Nos 3 & 4 (Summer & Fall 1976), pp. 204-5

[Letter to the ed.]                          
                                                      20 October 1974

Dear Professor Henig,

... There has been a play called "Bloomsbury" running in London in which Virginia Woolf is one of the characters.  I found it quite moving seeing people I had known as a young man depicted on the stage.  The concept however of Virginia Woolf as exceptionally bitchy which seems to have grown up and is not really dispelled by her nephew's biography is I think quite false.  There was a very gentle side to her nature, and she was always ready to go to the defence of someone she was fond of. as when her nephew Julian was criticized at a picnic for his long hair by some literary visitor.  She was certainly devoted to Leonard.  Really a very typical middle class English gentlewoman whom one associates with gardening gloves (illeg. word) and a rather astringent turn of phrase if not her brilliant flights of phantasy.  
She had an open-ended imagination which let in some very terrible images as well as some very beautiful ones.
On rereading Between the Acts the other day I realized how deeply she was affected by what was happening in the world around her.
At the time she must have been thinking about this book a case of rape took place which was featured in the newspapers.  Two girls were enticed into the Guards’ Barracks by some guardsmen on the pretext they would show the girls a horse with a blue tail.  As consequence these simple girls were raped.
In Between the Acts, Virginia Woolf refers to this incident several times and builds it up with a terrifying sequence of phantasies.
Jung describes the horrifying phantasies he had at the time proceeding the first World War.  I believe like him Virginia had access to a collective unconscious.
Leonard with his profound Jewishness could get under her when she was distressed by what her mind revealed.  Unfortunately at the beginning of the war he had joined the home guard and became very absorbed with fighting the war, and perhaps he was less able to drag her back from the torrents of her ideas.

                                                                  Richard Kennedy
                                                                  Berkshire England


The rape scene which Mr. Kennedy has alluded to was further elucidated by Dr. Anthony du Vivier, a British doctor attached to Guy's Hospital, London who subsequently did research at Scripps Clinic and Research Foundation in La Jolla, California.  He supplied VWQ with an obituary of Mr. Aleck Bourne, an eminent gynaecologist, from the London Times dated 30/12/74.  ...