Chapter 8
Part 8 of Contemporary Reviews of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. An Allegorical Novel by Francis Brown from The Daily Herald, 23rd May 1927 The editor sat in his chair with his usual cheerful smile. His voice was low, but his speech was fair, and apparently void of guile.
Right, right, right, a review of this book, said he, and plunged me deep in a woeful plight with my limited brain, ah me! Words, words, words, that jostle and gallop and rush, words, words, words, an intangible mystical mush, words till I sit and stare like one in a darksome dream, groping about in a region where verbosity reigns supreme.
A tale of an egotist, of his wife, with a mind to give, of their children eight and of guests a list. But none of them seemed to live, for nothing they seemed to yearn, save the husband and praise he sought, and little they did, but we read and learn the myriad things they thought. Thoughts, thoughts, thoughts, that off at a tangent fly, with life dragged in by the
scruff of its neck, with its how and what and why. Thoughts that wander about in a weird parenthetical style, with meanings enmeshed in a web of doubt, till their finding is scarce worth while. The story is told with vim, with a fevered, violent stress. Its moral, however, is more than dim, to me, as I must confess.
But if I, with a mild amaze, found the task of reading it hard, Mrs. Wolfe no doubt will account its praise, for I'm but a doggerel bard. End of part eight
