from Nigel Nicolson's introduction to The Letters of Virginia Woolf, vol. 2, 1912-1922

Between 1912 and 1922 Virginia Woolf married, published her first three novels, twice went mad, and co-founded the Hogarth Press. The same years contained the First World War. It was a massive experience for someone so mentally frail. But the impression left by her letters is that she was stronger at the end of this decade than at the beginning, stronger in creative power, in social energy, in audacity. If this is true, it was due primarily to the happiness of her marriage.

When two people of independent minds marry, they must be able to rely upon each other's tolerance, affection and support. Each must encourage, without jealousy, the full development of the other's gifts, each allow the other privacy, different interests, different friends. But they must share an intellectual and moral base. One of them cannot be philistine if the other is constantly breasting new ideas. They cannot disagree wildly on what is right and wrong. Above all, their love must grow as passion fades--and Virginia never experienced much passion--particularly if they have no children. And if they face, as Virginia and Leonard faced, the ultimate calamity that she might at any moment go raving mad and turn upon him with vitriolic abuse, then he must draw upon all the reserves their marriage has accumulated, and expend them freely, knowing they will be renewed by his very effort of sustaining both of them through her long ordeal.

* * *

In a few weeks I will turn 53. I've spent half of those years married to one man--more than half, if I count the years we spent together beforehand. I met him when I was 19; he moved in with me when I was 21; we got around to getting married when we were 26. It's been a long road.

Neither of us suffers from an illness of the Virginia Woolf magnitude. But neither of us has been entirely easy to live with. In that, we are normal human beings, bumbling along, sometimes grouchily or worse, but sometimes also with sudden awareness of the pleasure of being together.

Yesterday was one of those days. We met late in the day at the new house. I was in my ugliest clothes and a terrible straw hat, painting ceilings and listening to a Burning Spear album. Tom was in his ugliest clothes, exhausted from a workday spent house building in the sun. So we hung out quietly, puttering around at our tasks, having pedestrian conversations about where to install outlets and light switches, considering potential paint colors for various rooms. There was nothing scintillating about this conversation, and we were the only two people in the world who cared about it.

And then, eventually, I put away my paint things and went back to the doll-house to get dinner started. And a few hours later he finished up his tasks and came back to meet me. And I poured him a glass of wine, and I made rice and pan-fried two fresh scup and made a salad with ripe pears and fresh arugula from my new garden. And we were both delighted: a delight that was palpable in the air. A plain meal, a plain evening. We did not talk about art or books. We shared nothing that was particularly intellectual or creative. So what was it that made us so glad?

Such moments are the mystery of a long partnership, and I want to bottle them up and preserve them for the winter of our discontent, which is surely coming. They are the light, these gifts.