“A Sketch of the Past”: Gliederung
()= sections MS is broken
into by spacing in MOB, 2nd ed.
64 (1) Sunday April 16th, 1939
First Memories: flowers on dress, waves, blind (mother and balcony), ripe garden and bees
65 Meditation on memories
66 Passion flowers…paint these first impressions. Rooks cawing. Rapture of garden
67 Looking glass shame; Gerald’s abuse à70
70 Digression on moments of being vs. non-being (cotton wool)
71 Shocks: fighting wi Thoby; the flower is the whole; apple-tree and death
72 Philosophy of life: pattern behind cotton wool
73 Description of three characters she remembers from childhood (caricature) à 74
74 (2) May 2nd, 1939
Meditation on contrast btw past and present
75 Long description of Kensington Gardens in contrast to walks around St. Ives;
red and purple air balls; the Flower Walk
77 lost Cornish luggar
78 Two important moments of being: puddle in the path; idiot boy
79 (3) Bright memories of mother, always including a circle of the scene
79--Driven to growth like a plant
80 – moments wh bound her to other people; Mother and writing TTL. “invisible presences”
81 – review of memories of mo: touch, sight, hearing,
82 – move from minute detail to generalization abt her beauty--
85 (4) May 15, 1939. – turn to May 1895: death of mo
Platform of time
89 (5) comparison of two husbands
91 (6) death
91 (7) May 28th 1939.
How her mother’s death made her perceptions more intense:
92 Kiss, cold iron; smell of flowers
93 Paddington Station, reading poem
94 Shrouded life after mo’s death: all in black vs laburnum; cave of Virginia Creeper
95 (8) June 20, 1939: crossing the channel
Thinking abt Stella;
96 list of people who’ve died; mo and Stella: sun and moon
97 Old cow; cow parsley, white roses
98 (9) July 19th, 1939. – surface sliding over depths of past
99 Stella’s lovers: Jim, Jack Hills
100 (10) June 8th 1940; break of nearly a year. MS in garbage; battle at crisis
Memories of Stella and Jack Hills
103 Passage abt Jack Hills’ frankness abt sex
104 teaching them abt butterflies
105 red red rose of love
106 Nessa; the Greek slave years
107 Stella’s marriage and death
107 (11) Sept 22nd, 1940. Fall of France, turn to her father
108 Discussion of ambivalence
109 violent temper
110 frustrated desire to be a man of genius
115 (12) Mecklenburg Sq July, 1940
115 Father as a writer
116 The cage of 22 Hyde Park Gate in July 1897
124 (13) 18th August 1940. –German raiders over MH
125 Thoby
126 (14) 22nd September 1940
St. Ives. Description of town
129 Description of Talland House
131 Pilchards and Regatta
132 Sophie’s kitchen
133 walks around St. Ives
136 (15) October 11th 1940
Memories of Thoby
137 affects of early deaths on her
138 Thoby and Shakespeare;
139 how reserved they were with one another; how there was never any sense of how he felt sexually
140 Return to Stella’s death; the leafless tree
141 Garden scene at Fritham wi George Duckworth
George saying that Vanessa was in love wi Jack but couldn’t marry him
142 Scene making as a literary device
143 (16) November 15th 1940 ---Close conspiracy with Vanessa
144 Wednesday account books; father’s demands for sympathy
147 model day at HPG
148 social demands of the evening;
150 problems with dressing well
151 Long passage describing George Duckworth in great detail
153 great patriarchal machine
153 Lack of social success; George’s disappointment
157 Division btw convention (downstairs) and intellect (upstairs)
158 Memories of the world of intellectual visitors:
159 contrasts between different worlds
