Virginia Woolf's Mrs. Dalloway: "a well of tears"

Modern Age, Summer, 2004 by George A. Panichas

Sir William has provided his family with material satisfaction; "no longer young," "with his grey hair," he had been knighted and has acquired a look of distinction, "a heavy look, a weary look," "the responsibilities and privileges of his profession [being] so onerous." Almost predictably, following consulation with Sir William, who informs Mrs. Warren Smith that her husband must go into one "of my homes," where he will be taught to rest, Septimus's condition is precarious. We see him next, having returned to his lodgings, "lying on the sofa of the sitting-room," as he has become suddenly more "excited." "That man, his friend who was killed, Evans, had come, he said. He was singing behind the screen." With tears now running down his cheeks, Septimus is radically incoherent: "he would cry that he was falling down, down into the flames."

At this pivotal juncture, Dr. Holmes again appears on the scene; he is, for Septimus, "the brute with the blood-red nostrils," as on an earlier occasion Septimus pictured him in his mind: "Once you stumble, Septimus wrote on the back of a card, human nature is on you." Indeed, Septimus never gets over the morbid feeling that both Holmes and Bradshaw are pursuing him as agents of "human cruelty." They were his judges who "saw nothing clear, yet ruled, yet inflicted." The scene here has an electrical intensity, and marks the moment when Rezia and Septimus are to be separated. As she prepares to pack Septimus's things to take with him to one of Bradshaw's "homes," she hears voices from below and then goes downstairs, thinking perhaps that it was Dr. Holmes who had come. "Septimus could hear her talking to Holmes on the staircase. 'My dear lady, I have come as a friend,' Holmes was saying." Rezia, who intuits danger to her husband in the bedroom, tries to bar his way, but "a powerfully built" Holmes puts her aside.

Septimus is in a state of frenzy, fearing as he does that Holmes is about to burst open the door and to deliver a fearsome "verdict." Thoughts of how to bring an end to his life surge up in him:--with Mrs. Filmer's "nice clean bread knife"? or by gas fire? or with a razor? "But it was too late now. Holmes was coming." For Septimus there "remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window .... Holmes was at the door. 'I'll give it to you!' he cried, and flung himself vigorously, violently down on to Mrs. Filmer's area railings." Agitation, shock, "thumping and whispering," "running up and down stairs" fill this grim scene, concluding with Dr. Holmes sedating Rezia so that she will not have to see her husband's "horribly mangled body." The "sweet" potion lulls Rezia into a strange, uneasy slumber, as she finally beholds the shadow of Holmes's "body standing dark against the window. So that was Dr. Holmes."

At Clarissa Dalloway's party that same evening, Sir William and Lady Bradshaw, who are among the invited guests, pass along, rather perfunctorily, to Clarissa the news of Septimus's suicide, which she now envisions in harrowing detail: "He had thrown himself from a window. Up had flashed the ground; through him, blundering, bruising, went the rusty spikes. There he lay with a thud, thud, thud in his brain, and then a suffocation of blackness. So she saw it.'" For Clarissa "her party," for which she has been meticulously preparing, is of major personal importance, to be attended by great personages, "old friends," dignitaries, Ladies and Gentlemen, and, yes, the Prime Minister himself,--"this majesty passing; this symbol of what they all stood for, English society." His presence, obviously, incarnates not only the success of the party, but of Clarissa as the paragon hostess.