Virginia Woolf's walking stick

In early 1941, wartime rationing and isolation exacerbated Virginia Woolf’s (1882–1941) depression, and she began to feel she had “lost all power over words.” On the morning of March 28, Woolf wrote to her husband, Leonard, “I want to tell you that you have given me complete happiness. … But I know that I shall never get over this: & I am wasting your life. It is this madness.” She put on her fur coat, took her walking stick, and walked to the nearby River Ouse, where she placed a large stone in her pocket and drowned herself. Leonard found her stick that afternoon; her body was not recovered until three weeks later.