Thoby went to open the door; in came Sydney-Turner; in came Bell; in came Strachey.

They came in hesitatingly, self-effacingly, and folded themselves up quietly in the corners of sofas. For a long time they said nothing. None of our old conversational openings seemed to do. Vanessa and Thoby and Clive, if Clive were there - for Clive was always ready to sacrifice himself  in the cause of talk - would start different subjects. But they were almost always answered in the negative. “No”, was the most frequent reply. “No, I haven’t seen it”; “No, I haven’t been there.” Or simply, “I don’t know.” […] Then at last Vanessa, having said perhaps that she had been to some picture show, incautiously used the word “beauty”. At that, one of the young men would lift his head slowly and say, “It depends what you mean by beauty.” At once all our ears were pricked.

[…] From such discussions Vanessa and I got probably much the same pleasure that undergraduates get when they meet friends of their own for the first time. In the world of the Booths and the Maxses we were not asked to use our brains much. Here we used nothing else. And part of the charm of those Thursday evenings was that they were astonishingly abstract. […] The young men I have named had no ‘manners’ in the Hyde Park Gate sense. They criticised our arguments as severely as their own. They never seemed to notice how we were dressed or if we were nice looking or not. All that tremendous encumbrance of appearance and behaviour which George had piled upon our first years vanished completely. One had no longer to endure that terrible inquisition after a party - and be told, “You looked lovely.” Or, “You did look plain.” Or, “You must really learn to do your hair.” Or, “Do try not to look so bored when you dance.” Or, “You did make a conquest”, or, “You were a failure.” All this seemed to have no meaning or existence in the world of Bell, Strachey, Hawtrey and Sydney-Turner. In that world the only comment as we stretched ourselves after our guests had gone, was, “I must say you made your point rather well”; “I think you were talking rather through your hat.” It was an immense simplification.

V. Woolf / Old Bloomsbury.