In the following excerpt from her memoirs, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) reflects upon her childhood summers spent in a seaside village in Cornwall, England. Better than these walks, a treat announced perhaps once a fortnight, was an afternoon sailing. We would hire a lugger;1 the fisherman went with us. But once Thoby was allowed to Line steer us home. them you can bring her in, my boy,” “Show 5 father said, with his usual trust and pride in Thoby. And Thoby took the fisherman’s place; and steered; flushed and with his blue eyes very blue, and his mouth set, he sat there, bringing us round the point, into harbor, without letting the sail flag. One day the sea was full of pale jelly fish, like lamps, with streaming 10 hair; but they stung you if you touched them. Sometimes lines would be handed us: baited by gobbets cut from fish; and the line thrilled in one’s fingers as the boat tossed and shot through the water, and then how can I convey the excitement? – – there was a little leaping tug; then another; up one hauled; up 15 through the water at length came the white twisting fish; and was slapped on the floor. There it lay flapping this way and that in an inch or two of water. Once, after we had hung about tacking, and hauling in gurnard after gurnard, bad after dab,2 father said to me: “Next 20 time if you are going to fish I shan’t come; I don’t like to see fish caught but you can go if you like.” It was a perfect lesson. It was not a rebuke; not a forbidding; simply a statement of his own feeling, about which I could think and decide for myself. Though my passion for the thrill and the tug had been perhaps
In the following excerpt from her memoirs, Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) reflects upon her childhood summers spent in a seaside village in Cornwall, England. Line 5 10 15 20 Better than these walks, a treat announced perhaps once a fortnight, was an afternoon sailing. We would hire a lugger;1 the fisherman went with us. But once Thoby was allowed to steer us home. “Show them you can bring her in, my boy,” father said, with his usual trust and pride in Thoby. And Thoby took the fisherman’s place; and steered; flushed and with his blue eyes very blue, and his mouth set, he sat there, bringing us round the point, into harbor, without letting the sail flag. One day the sea was full of pale jelly fish, like lamps, with streaming hair; but they stung you if you touched them. Sometimes lines would be handed us: baited by gobbets cut from fish; and the line thrilled in one’s fingers as the boat tossed and shot through the water, and then – how can I convey the excitement? – there was a little leaping tug; then another; up one hauled; up through the water at length came the white twisting fish; and was slapped on the floor. There it lay flapping this way and that in an inch or two of water. Once, after we had hung about tacking, and hauling in gurnard after gurnard, bad after dab,2 father said to me: “Next time if you are going to fish I shan’t come; I don’t like to see fish caught but you can go if you like.” It was a perfect lesson. It was not a rebuke; not a forbidding; simply a statement of his own feeling, about which I could think and decide for myself. Though my passion for the thrill and the tug had been perhaps
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