To the New World

A very cold winter's night, so silent that the air seemed frozen, and, since there was no moon, congealed to the stillness of glass spread over England. Ponds and ditches were frozen; the puddles made glazed eyes in the roads, and on the pavement the frost had raised slippery knobs. Darkness pressed on the windows; towns had merged themselves in open country. No light shone, save when a searchlight rayed round the sky, and stopped, here and there, as if to ponder some fleecy patch.


In the chapter “1917” of Virginia Woolf’s novel The Years, Eleanor Pargiter has gone to the home of Renny and Maggie in Westminster. London is darkened because of the war and Germany’s strategic bombing raids. When Eleanor arrives she finds that Maggie’s sister, Sara, is also there accompanied by a mysterious guest whom she calls Nicholas. With the children upstairs in bed, the party is dining in the cellar when, in the midst of the dinner, sirens sound in the street outside. Then a distant boom sounds. Anti-aircraft batteries ring the city, and as the party guests listen anxiously, at intervals the booming guns sound closer until one fires quite near the house. They wait for the bomb to fall.

"On top of us," said Nicholas, looking up. They all looked up. At any moment a bomb might fall. There was dead silence. One, two, three, four, Eleanor counted. The spider's web was swaying. That stone may fall, she thought, fixing a certain stone with her eyes. Then a gun boomed again. It was fainter – further away. "That's over," said Nicholas. He shut his watch with a click. And they all turned and shifted on their hard chairs as if they had been cramped.

"Now we will have some wine," said Renny. He examined one bottle; then another; finally he took a third and wiped it carefully with the tail of his dressing-gown. He placed the bottle on a wooden case and they sat round in a circle.

"It didn't come to much, did it?" said Sara. She was tilting back her chair as she held out her glass.

"Ah, but we were frightened," said Nicholas. "Look--how pale we all are." They looked at each other. Draped in their quilts and dressing-gowns, against the grey-green walls, they all looked whitish, greenish.

"It's partly the light," said Maggie. "Eleanor," she said, looking at her, "looks like an abbess." The deep-blue dressing-gown which hid the foolish little ornaments, the tabs of velvet and lace on her dress, had improved her appearance. Her middle-aged face was crinkled like an old glove that has been creased into a multitude of fine lines by the gestures of a hand.

"Untidy, am I?" she said, putting her hand to her hair.

"No. Don't touch it," said Maggie. "And what were we talking about before the raid?" Eleanor asked. Again she felt that they had been in the middle of saying something very interesting when they were interrupted.

But there had been a complete break; none of them could remember what they had been saying.

"Well, it's over now," said Sara. "So let's drink a health - Here's to the New World!" she exclaimed. She raised her glass with a flourish. They all felt a sudden desire to talk and laugh.

"Here's to the New World!" they all cried, raising their glasses, and clinking them together. The five glasses filled with yellow liquid came together in a bunch.

"To the New World!" they cried and drank. The yellow liquid swayed up and down in their glasses.

"What are you thinking, Eleanor?" Nicholas interrupted her. He calls me Eleanor, she thought; that's right.

"About the new world . . ." she said aloud. "D'you think we're going to improve?" she asked.

"Yes, yes," he said, nodding his head. He spoke quietly as if he did not wish to rouse Renny who was reading, or Maggie who was darning, or Sara who was lying back in her chair half asleep. They seemed to be talking, privately, together.

"But how. . ." she began, "--how can we improve ourselves . . . live more. . ."--she dropped her voice as if she were afraid of waking sleepers--". . . live more naturally . . . better . . . How can we?"

"It is only a question," he said--he stopped. He drew himself close to her--"of learning. The soul . . ." Again he stopped.

"Yes--the soul?" she prompted him.

"The soul--the whole being," he explained. He hollowed his hands as if to enclose a circle. "It wishes to expand; to adventure; to form-new combinations?"

"Yes, yes," she said, as if to assure him that his words were right.

"Whereas now,"--he drew himself together; put his feet together; he looked like an old lady who is afraid of mice--"this is how we live, screwed up into one hard little, tight little--knot?"

"Knot, knot--yes, that's right," she nodded.

"Each is his own little cubicle; each with his own cross or holy book; each with his fire, his wife .
. ."

"Darning socks," Maggie interrupted.

Eleanor started. She had seemed to be looking into the future. But they had been overheard. Their privacy was ended. Renny threw down his paper.

"It's all damned rot!" he said. Whether he referred to the paper, or to what they were saying, Eleanor did not know. But talk in private was impossible.

"Why d'you buy them then?" she said, pointing to the papers.

"To light fires with," said Renny. Maggie laughed and threw down the sock she was mending.

"There!" she exclaimed. "Mended. . . ." Again they sat silent, looking at the fire. Eleanor wished that he would go on talking--the man she called Nicholas. When, she wanted to ask him, when will this new world come? When shall we be free? When shall we live adventurously, wholly, not like cripples in a cave? He seemed to have released something in her; she felt not only a new space of time, but new powers, something unknown within her. She watched his cigarette moving up and down. Then Maggie took the poker and struck the wood and again a shower of red-eyed sparks went volleying up the chimney. We shall be free, we shall be free, Eleanor thought.


It has been barely two weeks now since the Coronavirus stay-at-home quarantine began and already people are anxious to know what the outcome will be, what the other side will look like. There are predictions, some roseate, some belligerent, that people who come through it will be dissatisfied with their old way of life that made them so complacent and vulnerable and that they will demand changes. A new world or at least a new world order.

In his play Plenty, David Hare wrote about the “postwar disillusion” of a woman named Susan Traherne, who was one of the few women to serve in the SOE, the precursor of MI5, during the Second World War. Her story is told by Hare out of chronological order beginning with a scene from 1962 and then jumping back in time to 1943 when Susan is just 17 and working with the French Resistance during the German occupation. Susan’s story then proceeds through eleven scenes until we're back in 1962. In the play’s last scene, Hare takes us back to August 1944. France has been liberated and Susan is in the French countryside. She is so struck by the beauty of the summer day and by her intense optimism that, from this moment, she resolves that everything will be different. “There will be days and days and days like this,” she exclaims. It is, of course, an ironic, bittersweet ending for the audience who has witnessed the gradual decline of Susan’s – and, by inference, England’s – optimism and faith in the future. It was naive, of course, of Susan to have expected the exhilaration of the war’s end to last for very long. It was a beautiful illusion. But, I think, one would have to have a heart of stone not to afford her such faith in the future when the world had accomplished so much.

There is a long way for us to go in this pandemic, the greatest challenge of humanity in our time. Plenty of time for us to reflect on what has got us here and to decide what we need (not what we want) to get us out. When our day of liberation comes (with a vaccine) there will be time for all of us to savor the moment. It's - at most - only a few months away. But what a long way we will all have come when that sweet days artives! 

To the New World!