Magasins Casino Supermarché - Le 4 Casino Vence - 06140

Throughout the month of May in 1933, Woolf took a trip through the continent, visiting several different cities in France and Italy. As in my previous transcription of a day in Woolf’s trip to Greece, this month of Woolf’s diary-keeping contains some of her best entries. The following are entries Woolf made on loose-leaf paper later inserted into her diary.
Tuesday 9 May

Juan les Pins
Yes, I thought: I will make a note of that face—the face of the woman stitching a very thin, lustrous green silk a a table in the restaurant where we launched at Vienne. She was like fate—a consummate mistress of all the arts of self preservation: hair rolled & lustrous; eyes so nonchalant; nothing could startle her; there she sat stitching her green silk with people going & coming all the time; she not looking, yet knowing, fearing nothing, expecting nothing—a perfectly equipped middle class French woman.
At Carpentras last night there was the little servant girl with honest eyes, hair brushed in a flop, & one rather black tooth. I felt that life would crush her out inevitable. Perhaps 18. not more; yet on the wheel, without hope; poor, not weak but mastered—yet not enough mastered but to desire furiously travel, for a moment, a car. Ah but I am not rich she said to me—which her cheap little stockings & shoes showed anyhow. Oh how I envy you—able to travel. You like Carpentras? But the wind blows ever so hard. You’ll come again? Thats the bell ringing. Never mind. Come over here & look at this. No, I’ve never seen anything like it. Ah yes, she always like the English (‘She’ was the other maid, with hair like some cactus erection). Yes I always like the English she said. The odd little honest face, with the black tooth, will stay on at Carpentras I supposed: will marry? Will become one of those stout black women who sit in the door knitting? No: I foretell for her some tragedy; because she had enough mind to envy us the Lanchester.

Thursday 11 May

Rapallo
Yesterday there was Miss Cotton. She is one of the army of spinsters, on half or quarter par. She finds she can live at Diano Marina for 8/- a day. Her friends say But what is there to do? She says, of there are the beauties of nature. She burst out, directly she came in to dinner, dressed in greenish dressing gown: by her side the dour Miss Thread. How was France? Was it cheap? Oh it was Liberty Hall here. Then she described the wife, the husband, of the inn: & the servants; & how there had once been an Earthquake. Meanwhile came in the 2 guests [?] in evening dress, the deaf lady & the voluble; also the powdered white lady with the read scarf: & after dinner—they often give us asparagus, she said—& they had their own bottles of wine—the two parties settled in at their own tables—where they are now & played bridge. Now this half pay spinster will dwindle on, beside the sea under the mountain, chatting, till she dies.
No we dont like the French Riviera, or the Italian much; but if it has to be, Rapallo does it best: its bay stretched with gold silk this evening, humming scented villas; all orange blossom. Quiet women reading to children, little boats, high cliffs; a sauntering indolent luxurious evening place, where once might spend ones last penny; grown old.
But we don’t like these villas—like the Bussys’—laid like eggs on ledges, so that you cant go up or down but must merely sit, & for ever behold the sea & the roof of the Casino. Dorothy & Janie taking their coffee like ladies in a perfectly neat, spaced, yellow room with a large leaved tree outside;—the tree Dorothy & Simon planted 30 years ago. But we dont wish to live here, shredding out our days, in these scented villas, sauntering round the harbour.

Friday 12 May

Pisa
Yes Shelley chose better than Max Beerbohm. He chose a harbour; a bay; & his home, with a balcony, on which Mary stood, looks out across the sea. Sloping sailed boats were coming in this morning—a windy little town, of high pink & yellow Southern houses, not much changed I supposed; very full of the breaking waves, very much open to the sea; & the rather desolate house standing with the sea just in front. Shelley, I suppose, bathed, walked sat on the beach there; & Mary & Mrs Williams had their coffee on the balcony. I daresay the clothes & the people were much the same. At any rate, a very good great man’s house in its way. What is the word for full of the sea? Cant think tonight, sky high in a bedroom at the Nettuno in Pisa, much occupied by French tourists. The Arno swimming past with the usual coffee coloured foam. Walked in the Cloisters; that this true Italy, with the old dusty smell; people swarming in the streets; under the—what is the word for—I think the word for a street that has pillars is Arcade. Shelley’s house waiting by the sea, & Shelley not coming, & Mary & Mrs Williams watching from the balcony & then Trelawney coming from Pisa, & burning the body on the shore—thats in my mind. All the colours here are white bluish marble against a very light saturated sky. The tower leaning prodigiously. Clerical beggar at the door in a mock fantastic leather had. The clergy walking.
It was in these cloisters—Campo Santo—that L. & I walked 21 years ago & met the Palgraves & I tried to hide behind the pillars. And now we come in our car; & the Palgraves—are they dead, or very old? Now at any rate we have left the black country, the bald necked vulture country with its sprinkling of redroofed villas. This is the Italy one used to visit in a railway train with Violet Dickinson—taking the hotel bus.

Saturday 13 May

Siena
Today we saw the most beautiful of views & the melancholy man. The view was like a line of poetry that makes itself; the shaped hill, all flushed with reds & greens; the elongated lines, cultivated every inch; old, wild, perfectly said, once & for all: & I walked up to a group & said What is that village? It called itself [blank in ms]; & the woman with the blue eyes said wont you come to my house & drink? She was famished for talk. Four or five of them buzzed round us, & I made a Circeronian speech, about the beauty of the country. But I have no money to travel with, she said, wringing her hands. We would not go to her house—or cottage on the side of the hill, & shook hands; hers were dusty; she wanted to keep them from me; but we all shook hands, & I wished we had gone to her house, in the loveliest of all landscapes. Then, lunching by the river among the ants, we met the melancholy man. He had five or six little fish in his hands, which he had caught in his hands. We said it was very beautiful country; & he said no, he preferred the town. He had been to Florence; no, he did not like the country. He wanted to travel, but had no money: worked at some village; no he did not like the country, he repeated, with his gentle cultivated voice; no theatres, no pictures, only perfect beauty. I gave him 2 cigarettes; at first he refused, then offered us his 6 or 7 little fish. But we could not cook them at Siena, we said. No, he agreed; & so we parted.
It is all very well, saying one will write notes but writing is a very difficult art. That is one had always to select; & I am too sleepy, & hence merely run sand through my fingers. Writing is not in the least an easy art. Thing what to write, it seems easy; but the thought evaporates, runs hither & thither. Here we are in the noise of Siena—the vast tunneled arched stone town, swarmed over by chattering shrieking children.

Monday 15 May

This should be all description—I mean of the little pointed green hills; & the white oxen, & the poplars, & the cypresses, & the sculptured shaped infinitely musical, flushed green land from here to Abbazia—that is where we went today; & couldn’t find it, & asked one after another of the charming tired peasants, but none had been 4 miles beyond their range, until we came to the stone breaking, & he knew. He could not stop work to come with us, because the inspector was coming tomorrow. And he was alone, alone, all day with no one to talk to. So was the aged Maria at the Abbazio. And she mumbled & mumbled, about the English—how beautiful the were. Are you a Contessa? she asked me. But she didnt like Italian country either. They seem stinted, dried up; like grasshoppers, & with the manners of impoverished gentle people, sad, wise tolerant, humorous. There was the man with the mule. He let the mule gallop away down the road. We are welcome, because we might talk; they draw round & discus us after we’re gone. Crowds of gentle kindly boys & girls always come about us, & wave & touch their hats. And nobody looks at the view—except us—at the Euganean, bone white, this evening: then there’s a ruddy re far or two; & light islands swimming here & there in the sea of shadow—for it was very showery—then there are the black stripes of cypresses round the farms; like fur ridges; & the poplars, & the streams & the nightingales singing & sudden gusts of orange blossom; & white alabaster oxen, with swinging chins—great flaps of white leather hanging under their noses—& infinite emptiness, loneliness, silence: never a new house, or a village; but only the vineyards & the olive trees, where they have always been. The hills go pale blue, washed very sharp & soft on the sky; hill after hill;

Friday 19 May

Piacenza Its a queer thing that I write a date. Perhaps in this disoriented life one thinks, if I can say what day it is, then . . . Three dots to signify I dont know what I mean. But we have been driving all day from Lerici over the Apennines, & it is now cold, cloistral, highly uncomfortable in a vast galleried Italian inn [Croce Bianca], so ill provided with chairs that now at this presen moment we are squatted, L. in a hard chair by his bed, I on the bed, in order to take advantage of the single light which burns between us. L. is writing directions to the Press. I am about to read Goldoni.
Lerici is hot & blue & we had a room with a balcony. There were Misses [?] & Mothers—misses [?] who had lost all chance of life long ago, & could with a gentle frown, a frown of mild sadness, confront a whole meal—arranged for the English—in entire silence, dressed as if for cold Sunday supper in Wimbledon. Then there’s the retired Anglo-Indian, who takes shall we say Miss Touchet for a walk, a breezy red faced man, very fond of evensong at the Abbey. She goes to the Temple; where ‘my brother’ has rooms. Et cetera Et cetera.
Of the Apennines I have nothing to say—save that up on the top theyre like the inside of a green umbrella: spine after spin: & clouds caught on the point of the stick. And so down to Parma; hot, stony, noisy; with shops that dont keep makes & so on along a racing road to Piancenza, at which we find ourselves now at 6 minutes to 9 P.M. This of course is the rub of travelling—this is the price paid for the sweep & the freedom—the dusting of our shoes & careering off tomorrow—& eating out lunch on a green plot beside a deep cold stream. It will all be over this day week—comfort & discomfort; & the zest & rush that no engagements, hours, habits give. Then we shall take them up again with more than the zest of travelling.

[Sunday 21 May]

To write to keep off sleep—that is the exalted mission of tonight—tonight sitting at the open window of a secondrate inn in Draguignan—with plane trees outside, the usual single noted bird, the usual loudspeaker. Everyone in France motors on Sunday; then sleeps it off at night. The hotel keepers are gorged, & scarcely stop playing cards. But Grasse was too plethoric—we came on here late. We leave here early. I dip into Creevey; L. into Golden Bough. We long for bed. This is the tax for travelling—these sticky uncomfortable hotel nights—sitting on hard chairs under the lamp. But the seduction works as we start—to Aix tomorrow—so home— And ‘home’ becomes a magnet, for I cant stop making up The P.s: cant live without that intoxicant—though this is the work—ungrateful that I am!—& yet I want the hills near Fabbria too, & the hills near Siena—but no other hills—not these black & green violent monotonous Southern hills— We saw poor Lawrence’s Phoenix picked out in coloured pebbles at Vence today, among all the fretted lace tombs.

Tuesday 23 May

I have just said to myself if it were possible to write, those white sheets would be the very thing, not too large or too small. But I do not wish to write, except as an irritant. This is the position. I sit on L.’s bed; he in the only armchair. People tap up & down on the pavement. This is Vienne. it is roasting hot—hotter & hotter it gets—& we are driving through France; & its Tuesday & we cross on Friday & this strange interval of travel of sweeping away from habitations & habits will be over. On & on we go—through Aix, through Avignon, on & on, under castles, beside vines: & I’m thinking of The Pargiters; & L. is driving; & when we come to poplars, we get out & lunch by the river; & then on; & take a cup of tea by the river, fetch our letters, learn that Lady Cynthia Mosley is dead; picture the scene; wonder at death; & drowse & doze in the heat, & decide to sleep here—hotel de la Poste; & read another letter, & learn that the Book Society will probably take Flush, & speculate what we shall do if we have £1,000 or £2,000 to spend. And what would these little burghers of Vienne, who are drinking coffee do, with that sum, I ask? The girl is a typist; the young men clerks. For some reason they start discussing hotels at Lyons, I think; & they havent a penny piece between them; & all men go into the urinal, one sees their legs; & the Morocco soldiers go in their great cloaks; & the children play ball, & people stand lounging, & everything becomes highly pictorial, composed, legs in particular—the odd angles they make, & the people dining in the hotel; & the queer air it all has, since we shall leave early tomorrow, of something designing [?] Vienne on my mind, significantly. Now the draw of home, & freedom, & no packing tells on us—oh to sit in an arm chair, & read & not have to ask for Eau Minerale with which to brush our teeth!

Throughout the month of May in 1933, Woolf took a trip through the continent, visiting several different cities in France and Italy. As in my previous transcription of a day in Woolf’s trip to Greece, this month of Woolf’s diary-keeping contains some of her best entries. The following are entries Woolf made on loose-leaf paper later inserted into her diary:
Tuesday 9 May

Juan les Pins
Yes, I thought: I will make a note of that face—the face of the woman stitching a very thin, lustrous green silk a a table in the restaurant where we launched at Vienne. She was like fate—a consummate mistress of all the arts of self preservation: hair rolled & lustrous; eyes so nonchalant; nothing could startle her; there she sat stitching her green silk with people going & coming all the time; she not looking, yet knowing, fearing nothing, expecting nothing—a perfectly equipped middle class French woman.
At Carpentras last night there was the little servant girl with honest eyes, hair brushed in a flop, & one rather black tooth. I felt that life would crush her out inevitable. Perhaps 18. not more; yet on the wheel, without hope; poor, not weak but mastered—yet not enough mastered but to desire furiously travel, for a moment, a car. Ah but I am not rich she said to me—which her cheap little stockings & shoes showed anyhow. Oh how I envy you—able to travel. You like Carpentras? But the wind blows ever so hard. You’ll come again? Thats the bell ringing. Never mind. Come over here & look at this. No, I’ve never seen anything like it. Ah yes, she always like the English (‘She’ was the other maid, with hair like some cactus erection). Yes I always like the English she said. The odd little honest face, with the black tooth, will stay on at Carpentras I supposed: will marry? Will become one of those stout black women who sit in the door knitting? No: I foretell for her some tragedy; because she had enough mind to envy us the Lanchester.

Thursday 11 May

Rapallo
Yesterday there was Miss Cotton. She is one of the army of spinsters, on half or quarter par. She finds she can live at Diano Marina for 8/- a day. Her friends say But what is there to do? She says, of there are the beauties of nature. She burst out, directly she came in to dinner, dressed in greenish dressing gown: by her side the dour Miss Thread. How was France? Was it cheap? Oh it was Liberty Hall here. Then she described the wife, the husband, of the inn: & the servants; & how there had once been an Earthquake. Meanwhile came in the 2 guests [?] in evening dress, the deaf lady & the voluble; also the powdered white lady with the read scarf: & after dinner—they often give us asparagus, she said—& they had their own bottles of wine—the two parties settled in at their own tables—where they are now & played bridge. Now this half pay spinster will dwindle on, beside the sea under the mountain, chatting, till she dies.
No we dont like the French Riviera, or the Italian much; but if it has to be, Rapallo does it best: its bay stretched with gold silk this evening, humming scented villas; all orange blossom. Quiet women reading to children, little boats, high cliffs; a sauntering indolent luxurious evening place, where once might spend ones last penny; grown old.
But we don’t like these villas—like the Bussys’—laid like eggs on ledges, so that you cant go up or down but must merely sit, & for ever behold the sea & the roof of the Casino. Dorothy & Janie taking their coffee like ladies in a perfectly neat, spaced, yellow room with a large leaved tree outside;—the tree Dorothy & Simon planted 30 years ago. But we dont wish to live here, shredding out our days, in these scented villas, sauntering round the harbour.

Friday 12 May

Pisa
Yes Shelley chose better than Max Beerbohm. He chose a harbour; a bay; & his home, with a balcony, on which Mary stood, looks out across the sea. Sloping sailed boats were coming in this morning—a windy little town, of high pink & yellow Southern houses, not much changed I supposed; very full of the breaking waves, very much open to the sea; & the rather desolate house standing with the sea just in front. Shelley, I suppose, bathed, walked sat on the beach there; & Mary & Mrs Williams had their coffee on the balcony. I daresay the clothes & the people were much the same. At any rate, a very good great man’s house in its way. What is the word for full of the sea? Cant think tonight, sky high in a bedroom at the Nettuno in Pisa, much occupied by French tourists. The Arno swimming past with the usual coffee coloured foam. Walked in the Cloisters; that this true Italy, with the old dusty smell; people swarming in the streets; under the—what is the word for—I think the word for a street that has pillars is Arcade. Shelley’s house waiting by the sea, & Shelley not coming, & Mary & Mrs Williams watching from the balcony & then Trelawney coming from Pisa, & burning the body on the shore—thats in my mind. All the colours here are white bluish marble against a very light saturated sky. The tower leaning prodigiously. Clerical beggar at the door in a mock fantastic leather had. The clergy walking.
It was in these cloisters—Campo Santo—that L. & I walked 21 years ago & met the Palgraves & I tried to hide behind the pillars. And now we come in our car; & the Palgraves—are they dead, or very old? Now at any rate we have left the black country, the bald necked vulture country with its sprinkling of redroofed villas. This is the Italy one used to visit in a railway train with Violet Dickinson—taking the hotel bus.

Saturday 13 May

Siena
Today we saw the most beautiful of views & the melancholy man. The view was like a line of poetry that makes itself; the shaped hill, all flushed with reds & greens; the elongated lines, cultivated every inch; old, wild, perfectly said, once & for all: & I walked up to a group & said What is that village? It called itself [blank in ms]; & the woman with the blue eyes said wont you come to my house & drink? She was famished for talk. Four or five of them buzzed round us, & I made a Circeronian speech, about the beauty of the country. But I have no money to travel with, she said, wringing her hands. We would not go to her house—or cottage on the side of the hill, & shook hands; hers were dusty; she wanted to keep them from me; but we all shook hands, & I wished we had gone to her house, in the loveliest of all landscapes. Then, lunching by the river among the ants, we met the melancholy man. He had five or six little fish in his hands, which he had caught in his hands. We said it was very beautiful country; & he said no, he preferred the town. He had been to Florence; no, he did not like the country. He wanted to travel, but had no money: worked at some village; no he did not like the country, he repeated, with his gentle cultivated voice; no theatres, no pictures, only perfect beauty. I gave him 2 cigarettes; at first he refused, then offered us his 6 or 7 little fish. But we could not cook them at Siena, we said. No, he agreed; & so we parted.
It is all very well, saying one will write notes but writing is a very difficult art. That is one had always to select; & I am too sleepy, & hence merely run sand through my fingers. Writing is not in the least an easy art. Thing what to write, it seems easy; but the thought evaporates, runs hither & thither. Here we are in the noise of Siena—the vast tunneled arched stone town, swarmed over by chattering shrieking children.

Monday 15 May

This should be all description—I mean of the little pointed green hills; & the white oxen, & the poplars, & the cypresses, & the sculptured shaped infinitely musical, flushed green land from here to Abbazia—that is where we went today; & couldn’t find it, & asked one after another of the charming tired peasants, but none had been 4 miles beyond their range, until we came to the stone breaking, & he knew. He could not stop work to come with us, because the inspector was coming tomorrow. And he was alone, alone, all day with no one to talk to. So was the aged Maria at the Abbazio. And she mumbled & mumbled, about the English—how beautiful the were. Are you a Contessa? she asked me. But she didnt like Italian country either. They seem stinted, dried up; like grasshoppers, & with the manners of impoverished gentle people, sad, wise tolerant, humorous. There was the man with the mule. He let the mule gallop away down the road. We are welcome, because we might talk; they draw round & discus us after we’re gone. Crowds of gentle kindly boys & girls always come about us, & wave & touch their hats. And nobody looks at the view—except us—at the Euganean, bone white, this evening: then there’s a ruddy re far or two; & light islands swimming here & there in the sea of shadow—for it was very showery—then there are the black stripes of cypresses round the farms; like fur ridges; & the poplars, & the streams & the nightingales singing & sudden gusts of orange blossom; & white alabaster oxen, with swinging chins—great flaps of white leather hanging under their noses—& infinite emptiness, loneliness, silence: never a new house, or a village; but only the vineyards & the olive trees, where they have always been. The hills go pale blue, washed very sharp & soft on the sky; hill after hill;

Friday 19 May

Piacenza Its a queer thing that I write a date. Perhaps in this disoriented life one thinks, if I can say what day it is, then . . . Three dots to signify I dont know what I mean. But we have been driving all day from Lerici over the Apennines, & it is now cold, cloistral, highly uncomfortable in a vast galleried Italian inn [Croce Bianca], so ill provided with chairs that now at this presen moment we are squatted, L. in a hard chair by his bed, I on the bed, in order to take advantage of the single light which burns between us. L. is writing directions to the Press. I am about to read Goldoni.
Lerici is hot & blue & we had a room with a balcony. There were Misses [?] & Mothers—misses [?] who had lost all chance of life long ago, & could with a gentle frown, a frown of mild sadness, confront a whole meal—arranged for the English—in entire silence, dressed as if for cold Sunday supper in Wimbledon. Then there’s the retired Anglo-Indian, who takes shall we say Miss Touchet for a walk, a breezy red faced man, very fond of evensong at the Abbey. She goes to the Temple; where ‘my brother’ has rooms. Et cetera Et cetera.
Of the Apennines I have nothing to say—save that up on the top theyre like the inside of a green umbrella: spine after spin: & clouds caught on the point of the stick. And so down to Parma; hot, stony, noisy; with shops that dont keep makes & so on along a racing road to Piancenza, at which we find ourselves now at 6 minutes to 9 P.M. This of course is the rub of travelling—this is the price paid for the sweep & the freedom—the dusting of our shoes & careering off tomorrow—& eating out lunch on a green plot beside a deep cold stream. It will all be over this day week—comfort & discomfort; & the zest & rush that no engagements, hours, habits give. Then we shall take them up again with more than the zest of travelling.

[Sunday 21 May]

To write to keep off sleep—that is the exalted mission of tonight—tonight sitting at the open window of a secondrate inn in Draguignan—with plane trees outside, the usual single noted bird, the usual loudspeaker. Everyone in France motors on Sunday; then sleeps it off at night. The hotel keepers are gorged, & scarcely stop playing cards. But Grasse was too plethoric—we came on here late. We leave here early. I dip into Creevey; L. into Golden Bough. We long for bed. This is the tax for travelling—these sticky uncomfortable hotel nights—sitting on hard chairs under the lamp. But the seduction works as we start—to Aix tomorrow—so home— And ‘home’ becomes a magnet, for I cant stop making up The P.s: cant live without that intoxicant—though this is the work—ungrateful that I am!—& yet I want the hills near Fabbria too, & the hills near Siena—but no other hills—not these black & green violent monotonous Southern hills— We saw poor Lawrence’s Phoenix picked out in coloured pebbles at Vence today, among all the fretted lace tombs.

Tuesday 23 May

I have just said to myself if it were possible to write, those white sheets would be the very thing, not too large or too small. But I do not wish to write, except as an irritant. This is the position. I sit on L.’s bed; he in the only armchair. People tap up & down on the pavement. This is Vienne. it is roasting hot—hotter & hotter it gets—& we are driving through France; & its Tuesday & we cross on Friday & this strange interval of travel of sweeping away from habitations & habits will be over. On & on we go—through Aix, through Avignon, on & on, under castles, beside vines: & I’m thinking of The Pargiters; & L. is driving; & when we come to poplars, we get out & lunch by the river; & then on; & take a cup of tea by the river, fetch our letters, learn that Lady Cynthia Mosley is dead; picture the scene; wonder at death; & drowse & doze in the heat, & decide to sleep here—hotel de la Poste; & read another letter, & learn that the Book Society will probably take Flush, & speculate what we shall do if we have £1,000 or £2,000 to spend. And what would these little burghers of Vienne, who are drinking coffee do, with that sum, I ask? The girl is a typist; the young men clerks. For some reason they start discussing hotels at Lyons, I think; & they havent a penny piece between them; & all men go into the urinal, one sees their legs; & the Morocco soldiers go in their great cloaks; & the children play ball, & people stand lounging, & everything becomes highly pictorial, composed, legs in particular—the odd angles they make, & the people dining in the hotel; & the queer air it all has, since we shall leave early tomorrow, of something designing [?] Vienne on my mind, significantly. Now the draw of home, & freedom, & no packing tells on us—oh to sit in an arm chair, & read & not have to ask for Eau Minerale with which to brush our teeth!