On the Train with Mrs. Brown

Abstract

Virginia Woolf observes, somewhat controversially, in Mr. Bennett and Mrs. Brown that “all novels begin with an old lady in the corner” (1924: 2). For me all writing begins with an “old lady in the corner.” The train Woolf jumps into to encounter Mr. Smith and Mrs. Brown, who are held together-apart in a conversation, speaks in three voices to me: a carriage in motion as three points of view engage and negotiate, a strong and straight voice that is more interested in counting pebbles and accounting for it, and a voice whose volume and vibration are difficult to measure and easily drawn to imagination. Woolf ’s moving into the train seems to plant an observer-arbiter in the midst of a conversation between Mrs. Brown and Mr. Smith, throwing up speculations of interference and some visible modes and movements of unease between the two conversants. Mrs. Brown has something “pinched about her”—something that inspires speculation about her life, background, and emotions. If Mr. Smith makes Woolf connect with certain thoughts, Mrs. Brown awakens thoughts in her. There is “something” that existed between them, flickering up in conversation, silences, and overlaps—a “secret” that Woolf cannot fathom and that in its unfathomability keeps all the participating voices in motion. The apparent exchanges are not difficult to follow: acts, thoughts, and gestures speak with meaning and less confusion to Woolf. Mr. Smith manifests through a power over Mrs. Brown—assertive and wellgroomed in judgment and meaning. Mrs. Brown, less emphatic and business-like, can suddenly ask—“Can you tell me if an oak-tree dies when the leaves have been eaten for two years in succession by caterpillars?” (Woolf 1924: 8)—with brightness, precision, and a cultivated curiosity. If Mrs. Brown does not mean to talk like a lepidopterist and can leave this question at the level of aesthetic and philosophy, Mr. Smith settles into the subject about insects and plagues and, with critical precision, unravels a description about his brother who “kept a fruit farm in Kent” and described to her what “fruit farmers do every year in Kent, and so on, and so on” (8). When Mr. Smith is firm and fixed in what he does and speaks, Mrs. Brown, much to the surprise of Woolf, takes “out her little white handkerchief” and begins “to dab her eyes” (8). Smith speaks; Mrs. Brown cries. And yet both seem to give Woolf