of the Spanish Armada in 1588.
16.
Richmond
: Queen Eli2abeth lived at Richmond Palace, to the south-west of London, dying there in 1603. She was succeeded by James I.
17.
Doris, Chloris, Delia, or Diana
: these might be typical names of mistresses in love poems: the Elizabethan poet Samuel Daniel wrote a sonnet sequence to Delia; while the Restoration poet Charles Sackville, sixth Earl (1638–1706), ‘left us gay and artificial stanzas to Chloris and Dorinda’ (
Knole,
p. 115).
18.
Wapping Old Stairs
: in east London, near the Tower and running down to the docks. Woolf’s fascination with Elizabethan voyages is evident in what follows: the Spanish main was the north-east coast of South America, from Panama to the Orinoco River; the Azores are islands off the coast of Portugal, where in 1591, theexplorer Sir Richard Grenville’s ship
Revenge
was sunk as he fought against the Spanish. (Her essay on Hakluyt’s Voyages, ‘Trafficks and Discoveries’, is reprinted in
Essays,
II, pp. 329–36.)
19.
Earl of Cumberland
: ‘a picturesque figure. He was Elizabeth’s official champion at all jousts and tilting, a nobleman of great splendour… [he had] the love of adventure which carried him eleven times to sea, to the Indies and elsewhere’ (
Knole,
pp. 48–9). He was the father-in-law of Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset, and there was a portrait of him in the Brown Gallery (
Phillips,
p. 423). The reference to Cumberland building almshouses in the Sheen Road later in this paragraph looks like a private joke. On 27 August 1932, Woolf dictated the following response to an inquiry on this topic:
[Mrs Woolf] cannot recollect that she had any authority for saying that Lord Cumberland founded almshouses; she thinks it probable that having some recollection of old almshouses in that neighbourhood, she fathered them upon Lord Cumberland on the spur of the moment.
These early nineteenth century almshouses stood just around the corner from Hogarth House, Richmond, where the Woolfs lived from 1915–24. There is a further reference to them near the end of the novel (p. 208).
20.
Clorinda, Favilla, Euphrosyne
: Nigel Nicolson identifies Clorinda with Rosamund Grosvenor, Vita’s first, and at one time best-loved, friend (
Vita,
pp. 23–4, 48). Euphrosyne (‘joy’) was one of the three classical Graces (Woolf had used the name for the boat in her first novel,
The Voyage Out,
1915). As ‘one of the Irish Desmonds’, she may recall the portrait in the Leicester Gallery of Catherine Fitzger ald, Countess of Desmond (
Knole,
p. 14).
21.
The Great Frost
: occurred in January 1608. Woolf knew of it from Thomas Dekker’s pamphlet ‘The Great Frost/Cold Doings in London, except it be at the Lottery’, reprinted anonymously in Edward Arber’s
An English Garner
(I, 1877, pp. 77–99). Some details are taken from his pamphlet, e.g. ‘the high mortality among sheep and cattle’, but Woolfs account is more fantastic, so that the rocks of the Peak District (‘some parts of Derbyshire’) are attributed to ‘a kind of petrification’. Dekker described how the Thames became ‘a very pavement of glass’, and the citizens played games and soldfood and drink on the frozen river; he also described the plight of a man trapped on an ice floe as the result of the sudden thaw with which the frost ended. Woolf had a letter from Vita of 31 January 1927 describing Moscow and ‘all the traffic passing to and fro across the frozen river as though it were a road; and sleighs every where…’(
Letters of Vita,
p. 183.)
22.
the north-west passage…Armada
: Elizabethan explorers had hoped to find a sea route to the Far East by sailing around the north coast of America. The Spanish Armada was the fleet sent by Philip II against Elizabeth in 1588 (see Note 15, above).
23.
London Bridge
: built at the narrowest point of the river, the old bridge carried shops and houses on it, and the ice would have been deepest here. The
16.
Richmond
: Queen Eli2abeth lived at Richmond Palace, to the south-west of London, dying there in 1603. She was succeeded by James I.
17.
Doris, Chloris, Delia, or Diana
: these might be typical names of mistresses in love poems: the Elizabethan poet Samuel Daniel wrote a sonnet sequence to Delia; while the Restoration poet Charles Sackville, sixth Earl (1638–1706), ‘left us gay and artificial stanzas to Chloris and Dorinda’ (
Knole,
p. 115).
18.
Wapping Old Stairs
: in east London, near the Tower and running down to the docks. Woolf’s fascination with Elizabethan voyages is evident in what follows: the Spanish main was the north-east coast of South America, from Panama to the Orinoco River; the Azores are islands off the coast of Portugal, where in 1591, theexplorer Sir Richard Grenville’s ship
Revenge
was sunk as he fought against the Spanish. (Her essay on Hakluyt’s Voyages, ‘Trafficks and Discoveries’, is reprinted in
Essays,
II, pp. 329–36.)
19.
Earl of Cumberland
: ‘a picturesque figure. He was Elizabeth’s official champion at all jousts and tilting, a nobleman of great splendour… [he had] the love of adventure which carried him eleven times to sea, to the Indies and elsewhere’ (
Knole,
pp. 48–9). He was the father-in-law of Richard Sackville, third Earl of Dorset, and there was a portrait of him in the Brown Gallery (
Phillips,
p. 423). The reference to Cumberland building almshouses in the Sheen Road later in this paragraph looks like a private joke. On 27 August 1932, Woolf dictated the following response to an inquiry on this topic:
[Mrs Woolf] cannot recollect that she had any authority for saying that Lord Cumberland founded almshouses; she thinks it probable that having some recollection of old almshouses in that neighbourhood, she fathered them upon Lord Cumberland on the spur of the moment.
These early nineteenth century almshouses stood just around the corner from Hogarth House, Richmond, where the Woolfs lived from 1915–24. There is a further reference to them near the end of the novel (p. 208).
20.
Clorinda, Favilla, Euphrosyne
: Nigel Nicolson identifies Clorinda with Rosamund Grosvenor, Vita’s first, and at one time best-loved, friend (
Vita,
pp. 23–4, 48). Euphrosyne (‘joy’) was one of the three classical Graces (Woolf had used the name for the boat in her first novel,
The Voyage Out,
1915). As ‘one of the Irish Desmonds’, she may recall the portrait in the Leicester Gallery of Catherine Fitzger ald, Countess of Desmond (
Knole,
p. 14).
21.
The Great Frost
: occurred in January 1608. Woolf knew of it from Thomas Dekker’s pamphlet ‘The Great Frost/Cold Doings in London, except it be at the Lottery’, reprinted anonymously in Edward Arber’s
An English Garner
(I, 1877, pp. 77–99). Some details are taken from his pamphlet, e.g. ‘the high mortality among sheep and cattle’, but Woolfs account is more fantastic, so that the rocks of the Peak District (‘some parts of Derbyshire’) are attributed to ‘a kind of petrification’. Dekker described how the Thames became ‘a very pavement of glass’, and the citizens played games and soldfood and drink on the frozen river; he also described the plight of a man trapped on an ice floe as the result of the sudden thaw with which the frost ended. Woolf had a letter from Vita of 31 January 1927 describing Moscow and ‘all the traffic passing to and fro across the frozen river as though it were a road; and sleighs every where…’(
Letters of Vita,
p. 183.)
22.
the north-west passage…Armada
: Elizabethan explorers had hoped to find a sea route to the Far East by sailing around the north coast of America. The Spanish Armada was the fleet sent by Philip II against Elizabeth in 1588 (see Note 15, above).
23.
London Bridge
: built at the narrowest point of the river, the old bridge carried shops and houses on it, and the ice would have been deepest here. The
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