The Memoir Club Contributions, Part 2 Summary and Analysis

Virginia begins this memoir by commenting that its perspective on "Old Bloomsbury" must begin by examining the perspective on life taken at Hyde Park Gate. She then picks up the narrative where she left off the last memoir, on the night after her social failure with George. She further defines the relationship hinted at in the previous memoir's final lines by suggesting that George, at least in his own mind, was "cuddling and kissing and otherwise embracing [her] in order . . . to comfort [her] for the fatal illness of [her] father, who was dying three or four storeys lower down of cancer". She then describes at length the physically and emotionally crowded life at Hyde Park Gate, with its multitude of family members making their home there, its constant stream of visitors, and decorating...