Noel Olivier, Maitland Radford, Virginia Woolf and Rupert Brooke (1911)

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Before it I dined with Noel Olivier at the Club. She looked at me with those strange eyes in which a drop seems to have been spilt - a pale blue drop, with a large deep centre - romantic eyes, that seem to behold still Rupert bathing in the river at Christow: eyes pure & wide, & profound it seems. Or is there nothing behind them? I as good as asked her. Why didn’t you marry any of those romantic young men? Why? Why? She didn’t know, said she had moods; all Oliviers are mad she said. And Rupert had gone with Cathleen Nesbitt & she had been jealous, & he had spoken against women & gone among the Asquiths & changed. But when she read his love letters - beautiful beautiful love letters - real love letters, she said - she cries & cries.

V. Woolf, diary entry, 28 January 1923.