The Humility of Leonard Woolf

Leonard Woolf was a great writer for many reasons but the one attribute that makes him particularly engaging is his humility. Woolf is a very highly respected writer but one wouldn’t get this from what he has written in his memoir entitled, “Coming to London.” In this piece, Woolf portrays himself quite humbly to say the least. He illustrates himself as an embarrassment at Rose Macauly’s dinner party, having mistaken the hem of a woman’s petticoat for her handkerchief. In the memoir, he tries to help the woman by picking up her “handkerchief” and handing it to her. This act alone would have been considered most taboo and untactful at a function such as this or any other for that matter. Woolf then claims he and wife “…slunk off home, feeling that we had both disgraced ourselves in literary London.” It must have been refreshing to read the works of a man with this type of attitude in the self-aggrandizing society of Victorian England.
I found Mr. Woolf’s depiction of his younger self surprising to say the least. The Bloomsbury group was very prestigious and consisted of the most elite writers of the Victorian literary world. Membership alone was highly regarded. Leonard Woolf was also a very highly educated man, studying at prominent universities like, St Paul’s School and Trinity College, Cambridge. However, it is understandable that he be humble considering the fact that he always had to work to support himself unlike some of the other members.