In 1995, the artist Trekkie Ritchie died in Lewes, East Sussex, aged 93. Her career had never been exceptional - she had exhibited at a few group shows, illustrated many children's books. Her real fame was known only to friends; she had, for 27 years, been the companion, perhaps lover, of Leonard Woolf. Judith Adamson believes that Trekkie wanted this relationship to be private and that she kept the letters solely because, nearly a quarter of a century before, one of Leonard's nephews had suggested that they had had an "improper" relationship. If so, it was a peculiar kind of precaution. It seems to make more sense to consider that, on the contrary, Trekkie kept the letters precisely because they proved the relationship. The letters were bequeathed to a university archive; if she had wanted privacy, she would have destroyed them.
Leonard Woolf had looked after Virginia, protecting and cherishing her, enabling her to produce her novels, until in March 1941 she drowned herself in the River Ouse. Among Leonard's effects on his death was a note: "They say: 'Come to tea and let us comfort you.' But it's no good. One must be crucified on one's own private cross. I know that V. will not come across the garden from the lodge, & yet I look in that direction for her. I know that she is drowned & yet I listen for her to come in at the door. I know that it is the last page & yet I turn it over. There is no limit to one's stupidity & selfishness." When he met Trekkie a few months later, her briskness, her brightness, gave him hope for the future.
She was married to Ian Parsons, her second husband. Nevertheless, Leonard was soon writing: "I have tried to keep this letter severely practical. I began it nervously lest I should seem to you absurd & romantic. It is not romantic, though it may be dangerous, to love anyone like you as much as I love you. If ever anyone was worth a passion, dearest, it's you. Sometimes when I leave you, a - I daresay unreasonable - terror comes over me, that I shall weary, bore, annoy you & that the next time I see you I shall find that you can't tolerate me. (There is) some horrible fire in my entrails; only once before in my life has it made a person obsess me. And it's because you are in every way so worthy an obsession & passion, that my terrors are not unreasonable."
Her response? "You need not fear that I will have ceased to tolerate you next time I see you as you must know I have a quite major affection for you." This treatment was clearly the right one for him, and, while Ian was posted in France, they spent most of the week living in Leonard's Sussex home, coming to a similar arrangement on Ian's return after the war.
Love Letters is presented by its publisher as a great love story, but given Trekkie's brisk responses to Leonard's frequent declarations, and the longueurs of the later letters - catalogues of holiday views, travel itineraries, which hotels have adequate supplies of hot water - it seems more likely that Chatto & Windus (the descendant of Woolf's Hogarth Press, and publisher of Virginia Woolf) has published this book as a pendant to the Virginia Woolf industry. After the novels came the essays, the diaries, the letters. Soon after, however, came the bookmarks, the coffee mugs, the notepads and the tea-cosies.
One would like to think that Love Letters fell into the first group, but it is barren ground for the scholar. There is one mention of Virginia in the 27 years of the correspondence (and it has been omitted from the index). It is more likely to appeal to those who are interested in the image rather than the substance of Virginia Woolf; they will buy it ("love" in the title is a good gambit) and put it on their shelves unread. Sadly, it doesn't deserve any more.
Judith Flanders is a writer and arts journalist. A Circle of Sisters: Alice Kipling, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Agnes Poynter and Louisa Baldwin will be published in the UK in August.