Letter from the Dales

A young woman who visited Giggleswick early this century was unappreciative of the efforts of local campanologists.

"O Lord, those bells!" she reported in a letter home. "The vicar seems determined that those who don't go to church shall have their evening spoilt. It is deafening. I think the ringers are trying to keep themselves warm with hard arm-work."

The writer of this lively prose was Virginia Stephens, who would later achieve enduring fame in literature under her married name of Virginia Woolf. In 1904, her cousin, William Wyamar Vaughan, became headmaster of Giggleswick School. He was the first permanent head who was not in Holy Orders.

Virginia visited the village for two holidays, the first in mid-November, 1904, and the second in April, 1906. She enjoyed the company of her sister-in-law, Madge, but found cousin Will rather stuffy. "He loves all the small dignities and duties of his position."

Indeed, to an attractive 22-year-old woman, accustomed to a rich social life in London or Cambridge, Giggleswick was dull. "Here we go in the same way - endless tea parties of boys and masters, and now the old ladies...have taken to asking us out - so we are rather social."

On that first chilling visit, Virginia wrote to a friend between six-inch shivers. She reported that the letter was being written in a room where she kept warm with a fire and a fur rug. The view through the window was of moors, "all white with snow and frost." She might be in the heart of the Alps. "The snow stays sometimes on the Hills till June or July, they say."

On a second visit to Giggleswick in April, 1906, she stayed with a Mrs Turner, of Brookside, and wrote that there was a Greek austerity about her life.

"You can imagine that I never wash, or do my hair; but stride with gigantic strides over the wild moorside, shouting odes of Pindar, as I leap from crag to crag, and exulting in the air which buffets me, and caresses me, like a stern but affectionate parent."

Dales air suited Virginia, who, on her first visit, had been pale and drawn from her second nervous breakdown. Her doctor approved the trip. Virginia wrote of a doctor as being "worse than a husband" and looked forward to being in Yorkshire, where she would be her own mistress and would dump his "silly medicines" down "the slop-pail!!

The church bells clanged a welcome to worshippers but annoyed Virginia. Yet overall, her visit to Giggleswick, to Will, Madge and the children, was immensely enjoyable. There was a day out in Manchester. Then she and Madge went to Bronteland, by train, via Keighley.

Virginia's impressions of Haworth were the first of a host of literary efforts to appear in print. Her observations about a village sacred to the memory of the Brontes was used in The Guardian, a London weekly of special interest to parsons, on December 21, 1904.

In this vigorous piece of writing, she referred to houses built of yellow-brown stone that "climb the moor step by step in little detached strips, some distance apart, so that the town instead of making one compact blot on the landscape has contrived to get a whole stretch into its clutches."

The Bronte Museum, then up t' steps in a building at the head of the main street, contained "a pallid and inanimate collection of objects." She was fascinated by the thought that Charlotte's shoes and thin muslin dress had outlived her.

"The natural fate of such things is to die before the body that wore them, and because these, trifling and transient though they are, have survived, Charlotte Bronte the woman comes to life, and one forgets the chiefly memorable fact that she was a great writer."

Virginia did get access to the Parsonage when it was just that - the home of the parson. It was "a sparse little parsonage, much like others of its kind. It was due to the courtesy of the present incumbent that we were allowed to inspect it. In his place I should often feel inclined to exorcise the three famous ghosts."

Miss Stephens became Mrs Woolf, one of the best-known of modern writers of English. Cousin Will had a distinguished academic career that included the Mastership of Wellington College followed by a decade as headmaster of Rugby.

Giggleswick was an important stage in Will Vaughan's career. Virginia had reason to be grateful for the Giggleswick experience. Writing to Madge, from her home in Bloomsbury, she reflected on her days in the greystone Dales village.

"I often think of the children; and try to repeat their says and doings... I did enjoy myself immensely with you."

The Giggleswick bells still ring out joyously on Sundays and at weddings. They are usually muffled on practice night.

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