Concealing Leonard’s Nose: Virginia Woolf, Antisemitism, and “The Duchess and the Jeweller”

Abstract

On May 1, 1935, Virginia and Leonard Woolf set out by car from Harwich, England for a month-long tour of Europe, a trip that took them through Holland, Germany, and Italy, and into France. Prior to their departure, Harold Nicolson, Labour MP for West Leicester, a member of the British diplomatic services and a long-time friend of the Woolfs, had conveyed to Leonard his apprehension about the couple’s plan to visit Germany. The Foreign Office, Nicolson explained, believed that Germany was no longer safe for Jews. Prompted by Nicolson’s concerns, Leonard talked to Ralph Wigram, a top Foreign Office official, about his and Virginia’s impending trip. In his memoir, Downhill All the Way, Leonard recounts the exchange:

[Wigram] said that it was quite true that the F. O. advised Jews not to go to Germany, and officially he had to give me that advice. But privately and as a friend, he could say that he thought it nonsense, and that I should not hesitate to go to Germany. The only thing which I ought to be careful about was not to get mixed up in any Nazi procession or public ceremony. (186)

Although I loathe anti-semitism, I do dislike Jews.

—Harold Nicolson (Diaries and Letters 469)

All books now seem to me to be surrounded by a circle of invincible censors. Hence their selfconsciousness, their restlessness.

—Virginia Woolf (Diary 5:229)

“Now who wants a spoon and who doesn’t?” she said ….

Her sort of people, she thought, did not want spoons; the others—the English— did. She had been making that distinction between people all her life.

—Virginia Woolf (The Years 378)