Street Haunting: A London Adventure by Virginia Woolf, The Yale Review, October 1927., Essays

STREET HAUNTING: A LONDON& & & & ADVENTURE& By VIRGINIA WOOLFNO one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards& a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in& which it can become supremely desirable to& possess one; moments when we are set upon& having an object, a purpose, an excuse for walking half& across London between tea and dinner. As the foxhunter& hunts in order to preserve the breed of horses, and the& golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved& from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go& street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting& up we say, Really I must buy a pencil, as if under cover& of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest& pleasure of town life in winterrambling the streets of& London.The hour should be evening and the season winter, for& in winter the champagne brightness of the air and the& sociability of the streets are grateful. We are not then& taunted as in summer by the longing for shade and solitude& and sweet airs from the hayfields. The evening hour, too,& gives us the irresponsibility which darkness and lamplight& bestow. We are no longer quite ourselves. As we step out& of the house on a fine evening between four and six we shed& the self our friends know us by and become part of that vast& republican army of anonymous trampers, whose society is& so agreeable after the solitude of one's own room. For there& we sit surrounded by objects which perpetually express the& oddity of our own temperaments and enforce the memories& of our own experience. That bowl on the mantelpiece, for