Spring by the Sea
Last week I was in Devon with my children, their cousins, my three siblings, and my parents, staying in a coastguard’s cottage out of which you could tumble straight down to a pebbly cove. For the adults the time was good but also . . . hard work, as holidays with small children and several generations can be. The children flourished. Soaking up the waves and wildflowers and salty air (and endless raindrops), revelling in feeling safe and secure and surrounded by a natural world of great adventurous possibility.
They reminded me of how Virginia Woolf, who lived in London for nine months of the year as a child, escaped with her family every summer to Talland House in Cornwall. A house with views of the sea, a garden in whose trees ‘fishing boats seemed caught and suspended’, a sheltered cove like ours lying just below it, and Godrevy lighthouse in the distance. Talland House was the scene of Woolf’s ‘most important memory’, the memory, she felt, on which all her others were founded.
It is of lying half asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind. It is of hearing the blind draw its little acorn across the floor as the wind blew the blind out. It is of lying and hearing this splash and seeing this light, and feeling, it is almost impossible that I should be here; of feeling the purest ecstasy I can conceive.
Woolf's most Cornish book.
Cover design by her sister Vanessa Bell,
based on Godrevy lighthouse.
Throughout Woolf’s life, long after her family stopped going to Talland House when she was thirteen, the memory of the place would come back to her. ‘Went for a walk in Regent’s Park yesterday morning and it suddenly struck me how absurd it was to stay in London with Cornwall going on all the time . . .' That often happens to me in London, except my portal to the past is my childhood in Devon. Nostalgia is painful, but also such a source of joy and solace and inspiration. It's a gift that I want, if I can, to pass on to my children, and so I take them to Devon for as many holidays as I can, braving the M4/M5 traffic in the hope that one day they will remember lying in bed and hearing the ‘one, two, one two’ of the waves breaking.
To the Lighthouse, at the top, is inspired by imagining Woolf and her sister walking by the sea, but it is set in Devon, with Start Point lighthouse in the distance. The original painting, and cards and prints are in my shop.
Thank you so much for reading. Please do pass this on to anyone you think might like it.
With very best wishes for June,
Anna x