“The months leading up to World War II were some of the most terrible months in the life of Leonard and Virginia Woolf, as they “helplessly and hopelessly” watched events unfold. Leonard said one of the most horrible things was listening to Hitler’s rants on the radio—“the savage and insane ravings of a vindictive underdog who suddenly saw himself to be all-powerful.”
One afternoon, he was planting purple irises in the orchard under an apple tree. “Suddenly I heard Virginia’s voice calling to me from the sitting room window.”
Hitler was making another speech.
But Leonard had had enough.
“I shan’t come!” he shouted back to Virginia. “I’m planting iris and they will be flowering long after he is dead.’”
He was right. In his memoir, Downhill All the Way, Leonard Woolf noted that twenty-one years after Hitler committed suicide in the bunker, a few of those purple flowers still bloomed in the orchard under the apple tree.”
Keep Going, by Austin Kleon
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