The Searchlight

"The Searchlight" was first published in a collection of Virginia Woolf's (1882-1941-UK) A Haunted House and Other Stories in 1944. It was not published elsewhere prior to her death."The Searchlight" is a bit of a strange story. As it opens a group of friends are enjoying a drink at an outdoor cafe in London one night.. The time is just before the start of WWII. Weknow this because of air raid search lights are plying the sky, testing their capability in a soon to come war.


The lead figure in the conversation is a rather elderly financially comfortable lady.She obviously likes to tell stories and is a bit disconnected from reality. Tonight's story is about her great-great-great-grandfather. The story is set around 1820. He seems the source ofher wealth. She tells her friends (family?) that her grandfather began to "let himself go" when his wife died. He moved a country girl in with him and people were offended by this and stoppedcoming to call on him. Her account of the activities of her ancestor does not fully make sense. Either there is something wrong with him or her. I suspect she is in the opening stage of mentalproblems brought on by old age.


I really liked this passage, especially the part about the books!


"She paused. "There they lived," she went on, "the old man, the woman and the boy. Shewasn't his wife, or the boy's mother. She was just a farm hand, a girl the old man had taken to live with him when his wife died. Another reason perhaps why nobody visited them-why the whole place wasgone to rack and ruin. But I remember a coat of arms over the door; and books, old books, gone mouldy. He taught himself all he knew from books. He read and read, he told me, old books, books with mapshanging out from the pages. He dragged them up to the top of the tower-the rope's still there and the broken steps. There's a chair still in the window with the bottom fallen out; and the window...