St. Margaret's

“Ah, said St. Margaret’s, like a hostess who comes to her drawing-room on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already.  I am not late.  No, it is precisely half-past eleven, she says.”  (Woolf 74).

St. Margaret’s is a church in London, located also in Westminster, between Westminster Abbey and the House of Parliament.  It also strikes the hour with a boom.  This passage is another reference to the theme of time and its passing.  As “St. Margaret” “comes to her drawing-room on the very stroke of the hour and finds her guests there already,” the clock strikes exactly on the hour, and finds the citizens of London waiting to hear it, anticipating it, needing it to control their daily lives and to show them that they are growing, and that time is passing.

http://www.westminster-abbey.org/st-margarets/

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