30 May 1938 – 5 June 1938

A letter from Pippa. She is enthusiastic. So this is the last load off my mind— which weighed it rather heavy, for I felt if I had written all that, if it was not to her liking I should have to brace myself pretty severely in my own private esteem. But she says it’s the very thing for which they have panted: and the poison is now drawn. Now I can face the music, or donkeys bray or geeses cackle of the Reviews so indifferently that (truthfully) I find myself forgetting that they’ll all be out this weekend. Never have I faced review day so composedly. Also I don’t much mind my Cambridge friends either. Maynard may have a gibe; but what care I?

This is the coming out day of Three Guineas. And the Lit. Sup. has two columns and a leader; and the Referee a great black bar Woman declares sex war, or some such caption. And it makes so much less difference than any other cackle on coming out day that I’ve written quietly at Poyntz Hall: haven’t even troubled to read R. Lynd, nor look at the Ref. nor read through The Times article. It’s true I have a sense of quiet and relief. But no wish to read reviews, or hear opinions. I wonder why this is? Because it’s a fact I want to communicate rather than a poem? I daresay something of the kind. Mercifully we have 50 miles of felt between ourselves and the din. It is sunny, warm, dry and like a June day but will rain later. Oh it pleased me that the Lit. Sup. says I’m the most brilliant pamphleteer in England. Also that this book may mark an epoch if taken seriously. Also that the Listener says I am scrupulously fair, and puritanically deny myself flights. But that’s about all. Anyhow that’s the end of six years floundering, striving, much agony, some ecstasy: lumping the Years and Three Guineas together as one book—as indeed they are. And now I can be off again, as indeed I long to be. Oh to be private, alone, submerged.

This is the mildest childbirth I have ever had. Compare it with The Years! I wake knowing the yap will begin and never bother my head. Yesterday I had Time and Tide, and various London obscurities: today Observer: Selincourt. A terrible indictment. Sunday Times, New Statesman and Spectator, reserved for next week presumably. So the temperature remains steady. I foretell a great many letters on Tuesday night: some anonymous and abusive. But I have already gained my point: I’m taken seriously, not dismissed as a charming prattler as I feared. The Times yesterday had a paragraph headed “Mrs. Woolf’s call to women” a serious challenge that must be answered by all thinkers—or something like that: prefacing the Lit. Sup. advt: unknown before I think; and must be some serious intention behind it.