"Notes on Virginia's Childhood"

I must say, I love to learn about people, so Vanessa Bell's portrait of her sister was right up my alley - and that is exactly what her description of Virginia Woolf felt like - a portrait.

Vanessa Bell writes in a very visual way, like the painter that she is. Her description of her sister sitting at the breakfast table (on page 331), "a very rosy chubby baby, with bright green eyes, sitting in a high chair at the nursery table, drumming impatiently for her breakfast" immediately painted a picture in my mind. Reading the description was like looking at a photograph.

The rest of Bell's biography moves on, presenting itself like a series of snapshots. Bell describes the nurseries of her childhood - "There was a lovely bright fire to go to bed by, coal, food, hot water and babies being carried up many times a day" (pg. 333), and I can see the nurse carrying the children up the stairs and feel the warmth of the "lovely bright fire."

When Bell describes her siblings and herself after a bout of whooping cough, she chooses to portray them as coming out of their illness as "four little skeletons" (333). How very vivid! While "emaciated" or even "very skinny" would have gotten the point across, Bell chooses to paint a picture of sorts - you can see the children shuffling out of their rooms, their ribs clearly visible - they are "four little skeletons."

Bell also mentions one of her classmates in a singing class as "a serious creature, with a hooked nose and a fringe," and a "fiery little Irish boy" who "burst into floods of tears because he wasn't top of the class" (335). Floods of tears!

Rather than simply present an idea, Bell chooses to paint a picture, and that is what I love about her writing!