Notes

Journal 4
All summer, it’s clear that Clarissa is in love, sending and receiving letters, acting all emotional.
Peter decides to talk to her. He can’t sleep; he knows he is losing her. He begs her to tell him the truth and she does: whatever they had is over.
He’s devastated and leaves Bourton, never to return.
End of flashback. Peter returns to present day, sitting on a bench in Regent’s Park, watching a little girl play.
Nearby sits Lucrezia, suffering, resenting Septimus’ talk of suicide. The child runs into her and begins to cry. Lucrezia watches the girl run over to her nurse, who’s sitting next to Peter.
Lucrezia wonders why she suffers so much. What did she do to deserve it?
It’s almost time to leave the park. Septimus has an appointment with Sir William Bradshaw. Meanwhile, Septimus sits under a tree talking to himself, or perhaps to Evans, his friend who was killed in the war.
Lucrezia met Evans once. He seemed like a nice man.
But Septimus had changed since the war. He imagines people talking behind the walls and has visions of a woman’s head in a fern. He talks about killing himself. He reads peoples’ thoughts as they go down the street. He fears falling into flames. (All of this can probably be attributed to post-traumatic stress disorder, often suffered by war veterans.)
Septimus speaks of death and of Miss Isabel Pole.
Lucrezia wants to go home to Italy. She’s getting so thin that her wedding ring no longer fits.
Septimus feels like their marriage is over; it turns out this is a great relief to him.
He’s burdened by the truths he knows about love and crime, civilization and great men. He is eager to pass these truths on to everyone, including the British government.
In a moment of terror, he sees a dog turn into a man. His body is melting; flowers are growing through his flesh; he hears the sound of a penny whistle. He imagines himself a drowned sailor on a rock. The birds and the sun oppress him. He feels deep fear, but beauty surrounds him. The trees wave at him.
This is all very scary to think about, even as readers. We can't even begin to imagine what Septimus is going through.
Lucrezia urges him to leave the park, but Septimus is frozen: he sees Evans singing behind a tree. Evans comes toward him. Okay, never mind: it’s really just Peter Walsh.
Peter is watching Septimus and Lucrezia. He sees them as a young couple just having a lover’s quarrel.
Peter has been off in India for five years and a lot has changed: these days, newspapers discuss unseemly subjects and women apply make-up in public. (The horror!) It’s definitely not the same place it used to be.
Peter remembers Sally Seton (the same one Mrs Dalloway was thinking about before). He can’t believe that liberated, free-spirited Sally has gotten married.
She was always Peter’s favorite among Clarissa’s friends. She shared Peter’s dislike of Hugh Whitbread, for one thing.
Hugh always worshiped the aristocracy; he was a stiff, a do-gooder, and Sally saw through that. This guys was also judgmental, condescending, and a conservative about women’s rights. One time, he actually kissed Sally. She saw it as as punishment for her different views on women.
But now, Peter thinks, Hugh is successful and married to the "Honorable Evelyn" (4.64). Now that Peter needs a job, he has to humble himself to the likes of Hugh and Richard – ugh. Richard isn't such a bad guy, but Clarissa’s admiration for him is a little nauseating.
In their days at Bourton, Sally begged Peter to rescue Clarissa from men like Hugh and Richard. There was something special about Clarissa – not her looks or her mind, just something.
He insists to himself that he’s not still in love with her. He thinks about all the things he dislikes about her: she’s worldly, cares too much for society matters, and dislikes failure. Not to mention, Richard’s patriotism influences her.
Together, Richard and Clarissa concern themselves with political parties, tradition, and society gatherings; they’re very middle class.
But Clarissa had read Huxley and Tyndall (two scientists who wanted to separate religion from science back in the day), so Peter wonders if the ideas in their books affected her at all. Did she have a profound philosophy?
Clarissa had seen her sister Sylvia killed by a falling tree at Bourton. Somehow, Clarissa handled it well and didn’t become bitter.
It seemed that she always enjoyed life no matter what. And she liked what Peter believed were silly, inconsequential things: flowers in the park, a lunch conversation, endless social events. She enjoyed with no discrimination whatsoever. Still, she made Peter suffer.
Daisy, on the other hand, doesn’t make Peter suffer at all. Is he really in love with her then? Is she in love with him? He went long periods without even thinking about her. Maybe he just didn’t want her to marry anyone else.
Clarissa is so cold, he thinks.
Peter walks down the street, observing a vagrant woman singing some meaningless sounds outside the Regent’s Park tube station. (The tube is what they call the Subway in London.) Her voice is like the sounds of the earth and the past. She seems to be singing about a lost lover, memory and death, loss and the universe. She seems to be part of earth itself. Deep.
Lucrezia and Septimus walk past the old woman and Lucrezia pities her. In any case, she must get Septimus to Sir William Bradshaw.
From the outside, Septimus looks like a normal man; perhaps a clerk, a self-educated man with an apartment and a motor car.
Before the war, he left home leaving only a note behind. He came to London, anxious to better himself. He attended lectures on Shakespeare by Miss Isabel Pole. He read Darwin, George Bernard Shaw, and Keats, and loved Miss Isabel Pole more than all of them.
Septimus had worked for Mr Brewer at Sibleys and Arrowsmiths, auctioneers, valuers, land and estate agents in London. Mr Brewer thought Septimus needed some manning up, and he encouraged him to try playing football.
Septimus volunteered at the very start of the war. He got very close to his senior officer, Evans.
But when Evans was killed right before the Armistice, Septimus felt nothing. The war taught him to be a man, to be brave and stoic, to be reasonable about violence and death.