On a bed of roses.

“If she does not speak too much, write too much, feel too much; if she does not travel impetuously to London and walk trhough its streets; and yet she is dying this way, she is gently dying on a bed of roses.”  (Cunningham 169).

London, for Virginia Woolf, was excitement, it was life, it was time and youth and growing old.  However, it also brought back her illness; was slowly killing her.  By moving to the country, she revived her physical health but could not live the way she wanted; she wanted more excitement, more stimulation.  In the country, she had all the comforts necessary to her health, a “bed of roses,” but her youth and her mind were dying, just as roses wilt and lose their beauty.