Virginia Woolf
February 14, 1915
We both went up to London this afternoon; L[eonard] to the Library, and I to ramble around the West End, picking up clothes. I am really in rags. It is very amusing. With age too one’s less afraid of the superb shop women. These great shops are like fairies’ palaces now. I swept about in Debenham’s and Marshall’s and so on, buying as I thought, with great discretion. The shop women are often very charming in spite of their serpentine coils of black hair. Then I had tea, and rambled down to Charing Cross in the dark, making up phrases and incidents to write about. Which is, I expect, the way one gets killed. I bought a ten and elevenpenny blue dress, in which I sit at the moment.
-- Virginia Woolf
Flight Sub-lieutenant Reginald Warneford, RNAS, at Hendon in February 1915.
Reginald Warneford was the first pilot to destroy a Zeppelin in the air when he brought down LZ.37 on 7 June 1915, during the second month of the Zeppelin bombardment of London. He was awarded the Victoria Cross. Warneford died in France on June 17, 1915 when his aircraft crashed.
Piccadilly Circus, 1915
First Zeppelin to bomb London, May 1915
The interior of a restaurant at 76-77 Aldgate High Street showing the effects of the major Zeppelin raid on the night of 13 -14 October 1915.
Embankment Gardens, June 1915
London's
"Theatreland" in the West End -- 1915 -- published during Zeppelin
bombardments. Designed by MacDonald Gill (brother of celebrated Arts &
Crafts movement artist and paraphiliac Eric Gill), the map is a lighthearted
and colorful effort interspersed with topical jokes and anecdotes.
NOTE: This post began as a simple St. Valentine's Day blog. I thought it would be interesting to reprint Virginia Woolf's itinerary and some of her thoughts from ninety-seven years ago today.
But my photo research quickly took me somewhere else -- to other London 1915 venues (the war, which killed so many mothers' sons, poor and rich, was half-a-year old by mid-February) -- and it seemed appropriate to give a slightly broader picture given the mess we're still in today. (Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss, etc., etc.)
It's so difficult as an American to imagine what it must have been like to anticipate and endure serial aerial bombardment. New Yorkers (I am one) experienced 9-11, but even that corurscating, choking horror quickly became a "one-day event" for many people.
Happy St. Valentine's Day! I mean it.
Music Links:
The Pretty Things -- This Balloon Burning (from S.F. Sorrow)
The Kinks: Some Mother's Son (from Arthur)
NOTE: This post began as a simple St. Valentine's Day blog. I thought it would be interesting to reprint Virginia Woolf's itinerary and some of her thoughts from ninety-seven years ago today.
But my photo research quickly took me somewhere else -- to other London 1915 venues (the war, which killed so many mothers' sons, poor and rich, was half-a-year old by mid-February) -- and it seemed appropriate to give a slightly broader picture given the mess we're still in today. (Meet The New Boss, Same As The Old Boss, etc., etc.)
It's so difficult as an American to imagine what it must have been like to anticipate and endure serial aerial bombardment. New Yorkers (I am one) experienced 9-11, but even that corurscating, choking horror quickly became a "one-day event" for many people.
Happy St. Valentine's Day! I mean it.
Music Links:
The Pretty Things -- This Balloon Burning (from S.F. Sorrow)
The Kinks: Some Mother's Son (from Arthur)
