Scholar Elisa Kay Sparks is known for her interest in flowers. Specifically, Virginia Woolf and flowers. She can usually be counted on to present a paper on that topic at annual Woolf conferences. And she has an amazing blog dedicated to the topic.
A Virginia Woolf Herbarium by Elisa Kay Sparks
Flowers from one to 99
A Virginia Woolf Herbarium describes itself as “a collection of essays on flowers in the work of Virginia Woolf: fiction, essays, and life-writing.” Each of the site’s 99 essays includes photos of the flower it discusses.
Each flower discussed on the site is referred to at least once in Woolf’s fiction and/or essays. They range from the almond blossom, mentioned only twice in Woolf’s fiction, to red-hot pokers, which appear 13 times.
Counting, researching, and accounting for the flowers
Pale pink roses in the garden of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Similar roses frame the doorway of Virginia’s bedroom at Monk’s House.
In fact, Sparks, always meticulous in her research, includes a Flower Count that lists the flowers alphabetically and names the number of times Woolf included it in her writing. For example, Woolf mentions roses more often than any other flower — 250 times, with 162 of those occurring in her fiction.
Sparks breaks the count down into four categories: fiction, essays, diaries and letters, and digital hits.
The chart also includes flower purchases Leonard Woolf mentions in his garden account book. From 1919 to 1950, he kept an exact account of all monies spent on and earned by the garden. From 1920 to 1927, he also kept a separate garden diary. These two small green cloth books with red bindings can be found in the Leonard Woolf Papers in the University of Sussex Library.
In the process of researching Woolf’s use of flowers in her writing, Sparks collected:
information on the literary, medicinal, and mythological meanings of flowers;
research on the history of gardens and gardening; and
research on the social assumptions and practices involving flowers and gardening.
Eventually, she plans to distill all of the information she has collected into a book.
More about Woolf and gardens
Virginia Woolf’s Garden: The Story of the Garden at Monk’s House by Caroline Zoob (2013)
The site also includes pages for Works Cited and an annotated list of the reference works Sparks consulted while doing her work on Woolf and flowers, work I would describe as both comprehensive and ground-breaking.
If you are in the UK, you can travel to the world-renowned Sissinghurst Castle Garden via episode 20 of BBC Two’s “Gardeners’ World.”
Rooftop view of Sissinghurst Gardens
On Aug. 6, British garden designer Adam Frost traveled to Sissinghurst Castle Garden, designed by Vita Sackville-West. He was there to view a new area of the garden inspired by a visit to the Greek island of Delos. You can watch the broadcast online.
But if you are not in the UK, you can still get a look at Sissinghurst through this National Trust video posted on YouTube.
In each episode, Literature Cambridge interviews an artist, writer, or academic who has been influenced by Virginia Woolf.
Questions asked include:
Why is Woolf such an important figure to you?
How has Woolf affected your career?
So far, two podcasts are available online. In the first, “Woolf and Shakespeare: Varsha Panjwani,” Dr. Karina Jakubowicz talks with Dr. Varsha Panjwani about Woolf’s complicated relationship with William Shakespeare. The podcast attracted more than 800 listeners in the first few months alone.
In the second, “Caroline Zoob: Virginia Woolf’s Garden,” Jakubowicz talks with Caroline and Jonathon Zoob about the 10 years they spent looking after Monk’s House and restoring the garden in the spirit of the Woolfs.
The temperature was 34 degrees and a light dusting of snow covered the ground when my copy ofLondon in Bloom by Georgianna Lane arrived in my Ohio mailbox several weeks ago.
With its cover photo depicting pale pink roses draping a doorway, arching over a window, and filling the basket of a matching pink bicycle parked out front, the book introduced a welcome breath of spring into my life that day. We need that even more now.
Turning from fear to beauty
The coronavirus has infected our globe, and many of us are sheltering at home, attempting to stave off the ugliness of anxiety. So there is no better time to open a book full of the floral beauty of London, Virginia Woolf’s favorite city.
London in Bloom is the third and final book in Lane’s Cities in Bloom series, published by Abrams. To capture the images that fill it, she spent many early morning hours photographing the floral beauty and architectural detail of England’s capitol before residents and tourists clogged the streets, sidewalks, and parks. I daresay she would find that task easier now.
On “Tea and Tattle”
I first heard of the book on episode 27 of Francesca Wade’s “Tea and Tattle” podcast. Wade describes it as “most beautiful guide to the city’s parks, gardens, florists and hotels and should be on any London-lover’s shelf!”
Much like Woolf, a lover of gardens who incorporated them into her life and into her work, the author shares her affection for London’s gardens in her Introduction to the book:
Perhaps not surprisingly, my most memorable London experiences have been inextricably interwoven with gardens… the open spaces of London have seeped into my consciousness, awakened my imagination, and become part of me” (7).
From parks and gardens to floral displays
London in Bloom is divided into four sections:
parks and gardens
floral boutiques
market flowers and
floral displays.
Each is introduced by a page or two of text that shares Lane’s thoughts and experiences, then filled with gorgeous photos of flowers and architectural details — brickwork, tile-work, doorways — that enhance them.
Whimsical touches are also introduced in the form of light cotton floral print dresses in a shop window, teacups and cake on a tea table, and London’s trademark red phone booth and double decker buses.
Beauty and practicality
Despite some touches of red, the theme throughout is pastel — from flowers to buildings to cover pages. But the book includes the practical, as well as the beautiful.
The back section gives us instructions on creating our own London-style bouquet, a field guide to London’s spring blooming trees and shrubs, and an introductory guide to springtime blooms throughout the city.
London in Bloom provides delectable refreshment for the eye and the soul in our troubled times, whether you are a lover of flowers, a fan of London, or just in need of a bit of balm.
Since I am currently studying in Canterbury, it would be unthinkable for me, Virginia Woolf’s admirer and scholar, not to visit St. Ives, the mythic place that inspired the most of Virginia Woolf’s novels, but particularly Jacob’s Room, To the Lighthouse and The Waves.
However, as I and my husband chose to visit St. Ives at the very beginning of November, the weather conditions did not permit us to see all the places we had longed to see.
From London to St. Erth
We started our journey to St. Ives early on Friday morning and after we had arrived in London, we boarded the Great Western Service from London to St. Erth.
Surprisingly, the five-hour journey turned out to be quite tolerable, thanks to the comfortable service and a good read (Woolf’s Orlando). How different, longer and more uncomfortable the Stephens’ journey must have been at the turn of the 20th century, with all the luggage and servants packed for their summer stay in Talland House!
In St. Erth we had to change for a local service running to St. Ives, a beautiful scenic ride alongside the Cornish coast.
In St. Ives
We arrived in St. Ives around 6 p.m. and made our way up the hill to our B&B that I had chosen due to its location with a view of The Island with St. Nicholas Chapel and Godrevy Lighthouse – the lighthouse!
Although we found a lot of useful information about tourist attractions in St. Ives and its surroundings in a folder in our room, the official guide booklet did not mention Virginia Woolf and the Stephens as famous residents of the town.
The view from our window – Godrevy Lighthouse in the distanceThe view of the Island and St. Nicholas Chapel
Exploring the town
The following day, which was extremely windy, we started our exploration of the town. In spite of the construction of modern buildings, numerous hotels and other vacation accommodation, the spirit of the old town from the Stephens’ days was still noticeable – crooked hilly streets in the centre, several churches and the incessant sound of breaking waves.
After hiking up to St. Nicholas Chapel, we visited Talland House, which is located right above the local railway station and which is nowadays, unfortunately, encircled by quite ugly blocks of summer apartments. Luckily, the house is now in the hands of Chris and Angela Roberts who try to renovate the house and re-create the garden in its original spirit. You can read about their praiseworthy effort on a sign attached to the wall of the house.
Woolf talks about her father’s discovery of the house in “A Sketch of the Past” as follows:
Father on one of his walking tours, it must have been in 1881, I think – discovered St. Ives. He must have stayed there, and seen Talland House to let. He must have seen the town almost as it had been in the sixteenth century, without hotels, or villas; and the Bay as it had been since time began. It was the first year, I think, that the line was made from St Erth to St Ives – before that, St Ives was eight miles from a railway. Munching his sandwiches up at Trengenna perhaps, he must have been impressed, in his silent way, by the beauty of the Bay; and thought: this might do for your summer holiday, and worked out with his usual caution ways and means.
Main shopping street in the town centreTalland House – the steps below the left French window are those where the Stephens used to take their family photoSign about the current owners’ aim for Talland House gardenTalland House garden
View from the garden
Even though the house is not opened to the public to admire its Victorian beauties, we were still able to appreciate the view from the garden – Godrevy Lighthouse in the distance, which made Leslie Stephen move his London household to St. Ives every summer until 1894. We visited the garden in an inappropriate season so we could not see its blooming flowers.
However, we were able to see the steps below the left French window of the house where the family used to sit and have their family pictures taken. Moreover, the window directly makes you think of the window from the novel To the Lighthouse which symbolised the distance and seemingly impassable boundary between the house and the lighthouse, or the private life of the family and the outside.
Quite surprisingly, despite the distance from the ocean, the breaking of waves was still audible from the garden of Talland House, as well as from our hotel room, with the same intensity as Woolf describes in the following quotation from “A Sketch of the Past”:
If life has a base that it stands upon, if it is a bowl that one fills and fills and fills – then my bowl without a doubt stands upon this memory. It is of lying asleep, half awake, in bed in the nursery at St Ives. It is of hearing the waves breaking, one, two, one, two, and sending a splash of water over the beach; and then breaking, one, two, one, two, behind a yellow blind.
The view of the Lighthouse from Talland House garden
The fact that Woolf places this memory of St Ives and at the base of her life-experience bowl reveals how much she was influenced by the place. As she mentions later in the same memoir, “In retrospect nothing that we had as children made as much difference, was quite so important to us, as our summers in Cornwall”, by which she admits the formative effect of the Stephens’ holidays on the Cornish coast. It was so overwhelming to stand in front of the house to which Woolf pays tribute in To the Lighthouse, but sadly, without being able to talk to the Stephens.
To the lighthouse . . . sort of
The following day we decided to pursue James’s childish wish to visit the lighthouse. Owing to windy weather conditions and rough sea we were forced to abandon the idea of making a boat trip and we went by bus to Upton Towans (line T2 for those who would like to do the same) and from there we followed the Coastal Path to Godrevy Beach and the headland providing the best view of Godrevy Lighthouse.
The scenery along the path was astonishing and it was exciting to approach closer and closer the lighthouse which is the main source of the novel’s symbolism. The inner voice in my head was repeating Mr. Ramsay’s excuse “It won’t be fine” and Nancy’s and Lily’s concern about “What does one send to the Lighthouse?”
When we got to the closest viewpoint on the mainland, we sat on a bench and observed waves breaking on the little island’s shore. It is a pity that today you cannot see the lighthouse’s rotating “yellow eye” because it has been replaced by LED light mounted on a platform nearby the original lighthouse.
I must frankly admit that after two days of harsh wind and rain, after getting soaked while watching seals in a cove, I started to be more sympathetic to Mr. Ramsay’s scathing sentence “It won’t be fine” – was he just the more rational one? Did my own journey to the lighthouse reconcile me with the man?
Coastal path to Godrevy LighthouseGodrevy Lighthouse
I would recommend visiting St. Ives to all those who are deeply in love with Virginia Woolf and her writing because it is great to get a sense of the place that I had been imagining in my head for at least a decade.
More Cornish coast magic to explore
Unfortunately, we did not have time to visit surrounding villages such as Zennor where Woolf lived when she returned to the town as an adult woman. I am convinced that this visit to St. Ives is not our last one and that we will continue exploring the magic of the Cornish coast and landscape. We definitely need to make a boat trip from St. Ives to the lighthouse, which must be really enjoyable in the summer.
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