Moments of Being. "Slater's Pins Have No Points"
Woolf, Virginia
Published: 1928
Type(s): Short Fiction
Source: http://gutenberg.net.au
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About Woolf:
Virginia Woolf (January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941) was an English
novelist and essayist regarded as one of the foremost modernist literary
figures of the twentieth century. During the interwar period, Woolf was
a significant figure in London literary society and a member of the
Bloomsbury Group. Her most famous works include the novels Mrs Dal-
loway (1925), To the Lighthouse (1927), and Orlando (1928), and the
book-length essay A Room of One's Own (1929) with its famous dictum,
"a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write
fiction".
Also available on Feedbooks for Woolf:
• To the Lighthouse (1927)
• Mrs. Dalloway (1925)
• A Haunted House (1921)
• The Waves (1931)
• Mrs Dalloway in Bond Street (1923)
• Between the Acts (1941)
• The Years (1937)
• The Duchess and the Jeweller (1938)
• The Mark on the Wall (1917)
• An Unwritten Novel (1920)
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Life+50.
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2
"Slater's pins have no points—don't you always find that?" said Miss
Craye, turning round as the rose fell out of Fanny Wilmot's dress, and
Fanny stooped, with her ears full of the music, to look for the pin on the
floor.
The words gave her an extraordinary shock, as Miss Craye struck the
last chord of the Bach fugue. Did Miss Craye actually go to Slater's and
buy pins then, Fanny Wilmot asked herself, transfixed for a moment. Did
she stand at the counter waiting like anybody else, and was she given a
bill with coppers wrapped in it, and did she slip them into her purse and
then, an hour later, stand by her dressing table and take out the pins?
What need had she of pins? For she was not so much dressed as cased,
like a beetle compactly in its sheath, blue in winter, green in summer.
What need had she of pins—Julia Craye—who lived, it seemed in the
cool glassy world of Bach fugues, playing to herself what she liked, to
take one or two pupils at the one and only consenting Archer Street Col-
lege of Music (so the Principal, Miss Kingston, said) as a special favour to
herself, who had "the greatest admiration for her in every way." Miss
Craye was left badly off, Miss Kingston was afraid, at her brother's
death. Oh, they used to have such lovely things, when they lived at Salis-
bury, and her brother Julius was, of course, a very well-known man: a
famous archaeologist. It was a great privilege to stay with them, Miss
Kingston said ("My family had always known them—they were regular
Canterbury people," Miss Kingston said), but a little frightening for a
child; one had to be careful not to slam the door or bounce into the room
unexpectedly. Miss Kingston, who gave little character sketches like this
on the first day of term while she received cheques and wrote out re-
ceipts for them, smiled here. Yes, she had been rather a tomboy; she had
bounced in and set all those green Roman glasses and things jumping in
their case. The Crayes were not used to children. The Crayes were none
of them married. They kept cats; the cats, one used to feel, knew as much
about the Roman urns and things as anybody.
"Far more than I did!" said Miss Kingston brightly, writing her name
across the stamp in her dashing, cheerful, full-bodied hand, for she had
always been practical. That was how she made her living, after all.
Perhaps then, Fanny Wilmot thought, looking for the pin, Miss Craye
said that about "Slater's pins having no points," at a venture. None of the
Crayes had ever married. She knew nothing about pins—nothing
whatever. But she wanted to break the spell that had fallen on the house;
to break the pane of glass which separated them from other people.
When Polly Kingston, that merry little girl, had slammed the door and
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made the Roman vases jump, Julius, seeing that no harm was done (that
would be his first instinct) looked, for the case was stood in the window,
at Polly skipping home across the fields; looked with the look his sister
often had, that lingering, driving look.
"Stars, sun, moon," it seemed to say, "the daisy in the grass, fires, frost
on the window pane, my heart goes out to you. But," it always seemed to
add, "you break, you pass, you go." And simultaneously it covered the
intensity of both these states of mind with "I can't reach you—I can't get
at you," spoken wistfully, frustratedly. And the stars faded, and the child
went. That was the kind of spell that was the glassy surface, that Miss
Craye wanted to break by showing, when she had played Bach beauti-
fully as a reward to a favourite pupil (Fanny Wilmot knew that she was
Miss Craye's favourite pupil), that she, too, knew, like other people,
about pins. Slater's pins had no points.
Yes, the "famous archaeologist" had looked like that too. "The famous
archaeologist"—as she said that, endorsing cheques, ascertaining the day
of the month, speaking so brightly and frankly, there was in Miss
Kingston's voice an indescribable tone which hinted at something odd;
something queer in Julius Craye; it was the very same thing that was odd
perhaps in Julia too. One could have sworn, thought Fanny Wilmot, as
she looked for the pin, that at parties, meetings (Miss Kingston's father
was a clergyman), she had picked up some piece of gossip, or it might
only have been a smile, or a tone when his name was mentioned, which
had given her "a feeling" about Julius Craye. Needless to say, she had
never spoken about it to anybody. Probably she scarcely knew what she
meant by it. But whenever she spoke of Julius, or heard him mentioned,
that was the first thing that came to mind; and it was a seductive
thought; there was something odd about Julius Craye.
It was so that Julia looked too, as she sat half turned on the music
stool, smiling. It's on the field, it's on the pane, it's in the sky—beauty;
and I can't get at it; I can't have it—I, she seemed to add, with that little
clutch of the hand which was so characteristic, who adore it so passion-
ately, would give the whole world to possess it! And she picked up the
carnation which had fallen on the floor, while Fanny searched for the
pin. She crushed it, Fanny felt, voluptuously in her smooth veined hands
stuck about with water-coloured rings set in pearls. The pressure of her
fingers seemed to increase all that was most brilliant in the flower; to set
it off; to make it more frilled, fresh, immaculate. What was odd in her,
and perhaps in her brother, too, was that this crush and grasp of the fin-
ger was combined with a perpetual frustration. So it was even now with
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the carnation. She had her hands on it; she pressed it; but she did not
possess it, enjoy it, not entirely and altogether.
None of the Crayes had married, Fanny Wilmot remembered. She had
in mind how one evening when the lesson had lasted longer than usual
and it was dark, Julia Craye had said "it's the use of men, surely, to pro-
tect us," smiling at her that same odd smile, as she stood fastening her
cloak, which made her, like the flower, conscious to her finger tips of
youth and brilliance, but, like the flower, too, Fanny suspected, made her
feel awkward.
"Oh, but I don't want protection," Fanny had laughed, and when Julia
Craye, fixing on her that extraordinary look, had said she was not so sure
of that, Fanny positively blushed under the admiration in her eyes.
It was the only use of men, she had said. Was it for that reason then,
Fanny wondered, with her eyes on the floor, that she had never married?
After all, she had not lived all her life in Salisbury. "Much the nicest part
of London," she had said once, "(but I'm speaking of fifteen or twenty
years ago) is Kensington. One was in the Gardens in ten minutes—it was
like the heart of the country. One could dine out in one's slippers
without catching cold. Kensington—it was like a village then, you
know," she had said.
Here she broke off, to denounce acridly the draughts in the Tubes.
"It was the use of men," she had said, with a queer wry acerbity. Did
that throw any light on the problem why she had not married? One
could imagine every sort of scene in her youth, when with her good blue
eyes, her straight firm nose, her air of cool distinction, her piano playing,
her rose flowering with chaste passion in the bosom of her muslin dress,
she had attracted first the young men to whom such things, the china tea
cups and the silver candlesticks and the inlaid table, for the Crayes had
such nice things, were wonderful; young men not sufficiently distin-
guished; young men of the cathedral town with ambitions. She had at-
tracted them first, and then her brother's friends from Oxford or Cam-
bridge. They would come down in the summer; row her on the river;
continue the argument about Browning by letter; and arrange perhaps,
on the rare occasions when she stayed in London, to show her Kensing-
ton Gardens?
"Much the nicest part of London—Kensington (I'm speaking of fifteen
or twenty years ago)," she had said once. One was in the gardens in ten
minutes—in the heart of the country. One could make that yield what
one liked, Fanny Wilmot thought, single out, for instance, Mr. Sherman,
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the painter, an old friend of hers; make him call for her, by appointment,
one sunny day in June; take her to have tea under the trees. (They had
met, too, at those parties to which one tripped in slippers without fear of
catching cold.) The aunt or other elderly relative was to wait there while
they looked at the Serpentine. They looked at the Serpentine. He may
have rowed her across. They compared it with the Avon. She would
have considered the comparison very furiously. Views of rivers were im-
portant to her. She sat hunched a little, a little angular, though she was
graceful then, steering. At the critical moment, for he had determined
that he must speak now—it was his only chance of getting her alone—he
was speaking with his head turned at an absurd angle, in his great
nervousness, over his shoulder—at that very moment she interrupted
fiercely. He would have them into the Bridge, she cried. It was a moment
of horror, of disillusionment, of revelation, for both of them. I can't have
it, I can't possess it, she thought. He could not see why she had come
then. With a great splash of his oar he pulled the boat round. Merely to
snub him? He rowed her back and said good-bye to her.
The setting of that scene could be varied as one chose, Fanny Wilmot
reflected. (Where had that pin fallen?) It might be Ravenna; or Edin-
burgh, where she had kept house for her brother. The scene could be
changed; and the young man and the exact manner of it all, but one
thing was constant—her refusal, and her frown, and her anger with her-
self afterwards, and her argument, and her relief—yes, certainly her im-
mense relief. The very next day, perhaps, she would get up at six, put on
her cloak, and walk all the way from Kensington to the river. She was so
thankful that she had not sacrificed her right to go and look at things
when they are at their best—before people are up, that is to say she could
have her breakfast in bed if she liked. She had not sacrificed her
independence.
Yes, Fanny Wilmot smiled, Julia had not endangered her habits. They
remained safe; and her habits would have suffered if she had married.
"They're ogres," she had said one evening, half laughing, when another
pupil, a girl lately married, suddenly bethinking her that she would miss
her husband, had rushed off in haste.
"They're ogres," she had said, laughing grimly. An ogre would have
interfered perhaps with breakfast in bed; with walks at dawn down to
the river. What would have happened (but one could hardly conceive
this) had she had children? She took astonishing precautions against
chills, fatigue, rich food, the wrong food, draughts, heated rooms, jour-
neys in the Tube. for she could never determine which of these it was
6
exactly that brought on those terrible headaches that gave her life the
semblance of a battlefield. She was always engaged in outwitting the en-
emy, until it seemed as if the pursuit had its interest; could she have
beaten the enemy finally she would have found life a little dull. As it
was, the tug-of-war was perpetual—on the one side the nightingale or
the view which she loved with passion—yes, for views and birds she felt
nothing less than passion; on the other the damp path or the horrid long
drag up a steep hill which would certainly make her good for nothing
next day and bring on one of her headaches. When, therefore, from time
to time, she managed her forces adroitly and brought off a visit to
Hampton Court the week the crocuses—those glossy bright flowers were
her favourite—were at their best, it was a victory. It was something that
lasted; something that mattered for ever. She strung the afternoon on the
necklace of memorable days, which was not too long for her to be able to
recall this one or that one; this view, that city; to finger it, to feel it, to sa-
vour, sighing, the quality that made it unique.
"It was so beautiful last Friday," she said, "that I determined I must go
there." So she had gone off to Waterloo on her great undertaking—to vis-
it Hampton Court—alone. Naturally, but perhaps foolishly, one pitied
her for the thing she never asked pity for (indeed she was reticent ha-
bitually, speaking of her health only as a warrior might speak of his
foe)—one pitied her for always doing everything alone. Her brother was
dead. Her sister was asthmatic. She found the climate of Edinburgh good
for her. It was too bleak for Julia. Perhaps, too, she found the associations
painful, for her brother, the famous archaeologist, had died there; and
she had loved her brother. She lived in a little house off the Brompton
Road entirely alone.
Fanny Wilmot saw the pin; she picked it up. She looked at Miss Craye.
Was Miss Craye so lonely? No, Miss Craye was steadily, blissfully, if
only for that moment, a happy woman. Fanny had surprised her in a
moment of ecstasy. She sat there, half turned away from the piano, with
her hands clasped in her lap holding the carnation upright, while behind
her was the sharp square of the window, uncurtained, purple in the
evening, intensely purple after the brilliant electric lights which burnt
unshaded in the bare music room. Julia Craye, sitting hunched and com-
pact holding her flower, seemed to emerge out of the London night,
seemed to fling it like a cloak behind her, it seemed, in its bareness and
intensity, the effluence of her spirit, something she had made which sur-
rounded her. Fanny stared.
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All seemed transparent, for a moment, to the gaze of Fanny Wilmot, as
if looking through Miss Craye, she saw the very fountain of her being
spurting its pure silver drops. She saw back and back into the past be-
hind her. She saw the green Roman vases stood in their case; heard the
choristers playing cricket; saw Julia quietly descend the curving steps on
to the lawn; then saw her pour out tea beneath the cedar tree; softly en-
closed the old man's hand in hers; saw her going round and about the
corridors of that ancient Cathedral dwelling place with towels in her
hand to mark them; lamenting, as she went, the pettiness of daily life;
and slowly ageing, and putting away clothes when summer came, be-
cause at her age they were too bright to wear; and tending her father's
sickness; and cleaving her way ever more definitely as her will stiffened
towards her solitary goal; travelling frugally; counting the cost and
measuring out of her tight shut purse the sum needed for this journey or
for that old mirror; obstinately adhering, whatever people might say, in
choosing her pleasures for herself. She saw Julia——
Julia blazed. Julia kindled. Out of the night she burnt like a dead white
star. Julia opened her arms. Julia kissed her on the lips. Julia possessed it.
"Slater's pins have no points," Miss Craye said, laughing queerly and
relaxing her arms, as Fanny Wilmot pinned the flower to her breast with
trembling fingers.
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