Gertrude Himmelfarb aptly describes the sexual atmosphere of the Bloomsbury Group as 'not only homosexual but androgynous, near-incestuous, and polymorphously promiscuous'. If their exploits had been known at the time, or even in the decades following, perhaps historians and commentators would not have been so quick to characterise Blooms-bury as embodying 'a life of rational and pacific freedom' or of 'reason, charity and good sense'.