"For having lived in Westminster - how many years now? Over twenty, - one feels even in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was postitive, a particular hush, or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense... before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air."(MDA 4)
The bells of St. Margaret, heard later on by Peter walsh, page 58.
Westminster Abbey, which Mrs. Dalloway must have seen on a regular basis.
Big Ben and St. Margaret's clock tower, side by side.
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| Whereever she looked, Mrs. Dalloway could not escape the clock towers and the clocks around her in London, and in her neighborhood. She could not escape the ticking of time. |
"Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh;" (MDA 4)
Richard Dalloway crossed Dean's Yard later on in order to arrive home. Mrs. Dalloway may have passed it on her way out as well, when heading towards Westminster.
Dean's Yard
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Mrs. Dalloway may have lived in any of these houses surrounding Dean's Yard, close to Victoria street.
David Dachis attributes the Dalloway residence to this street.
http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.walk.htm
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Might have been this one?
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Jean Moorcroft Wilson attributes to her this street: Barton Street, where
Virginia Woolf is known to have admired a house in 1915.
(http://www.virginiawoolfsociety.co.uk/vw_res.walk.htm) |
And the clocks followed her on her walk, clock towers everywhere!
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| Clock tower on Victoria Street |
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| "But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence' the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling;" (MDA, 6) |
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| "So she would still find herself arguing in St. James's Park, still making out that she had been right ... not to marry him." (MDA, 8) |
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| The slow swimming happy ducks |
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| Park Gates |
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| The mall; the King and Queen in their palace |
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| and Queen Victoria, billowing on her mound |
"A small crowd had gathered at the gates of Buckingham Palace. Listlessly, yet confidently, poor people, all of them, they waited; looked at the Palace itself with the flag flying; and Victoria, billowing on her mound,..." MDA, 22
Queen's Walk connecting St. James' Park to Piccadilly, through Green Park. Not actually mentioned in the book, but one of the routes Mrs. Dalloway could have taken, and the most direct one.
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| Arrival at Piccadilly through Green park |
One of the first sights that Mrs. Dalloway would have seen upon exiting Green Park would have been the Ritz Hotel (built in 1906), on her right;
As well as Devonshire House, straight ahead of her as she exited the park.
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| "Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once;" (MDA, 10) |
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| "She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly." (MDA, 8-9) |
"Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, ..." (MDA, 10)
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| "But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards' shop window?" (MDA, 10) |
Hatchard bookstore on Piccadilly Lane, has been in operation since 1797. Mrs. Dalloway was looking for a book there for poor dear Mrs. Whitbread, who was bed ridden and hospitalized. She did not seem to find a book suitable for amusing an invalid, and seems to have left without buying anything. Perhaps she found the books too intellectual?
"Ever so many books there were; but none that seemed exactly right to take to Evelyn Whitbread in her nursing home. Nothing that would serve to amuse her and make that indescribably dried-up little woman look, as Clarissa came in, just for a moment cordial;" (page 11).
Or perhaps she was looking not for a book, but for a miracle. She was looking for a book that would change Mrs. Whitbread's nature, as well as change her relationship with Mrs. Dalloway.
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| "Ever so many books there were;" (MDA, 11) |
"Clarissa thought and turned and walked back towards Bond Street (MDA, 11)
"Bond Street fascinated her; Bond Street early in the morning in the season; its flags flying; its shops; so splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed in the shop where her father had bought his suits for fifty years; a few pearls; salmon on an iceblock." (MDA, 12)
Mrs. Dalloway goes by a fishmonger, a glove shop, and finally gets to the swing doors of Mulberry's the florists.
"It is probably the Queen, thought Mrs. Dalloway, coming out of Mulberry's with her flowers; the Queen." 19
"Clarissa was suspended on one side of Brook Street;" 19
It is quite amusing that Mrs. Dalloway walks 1.4/1.6 miles from the vicinity of Victoria Street all the way to Bond Street (closer to Oxford Street), just to buy flowers. And upon her return, she carries the flowers with her, and walks back the same route. A journey that may have taken her anywhere from one hour to one hour and a half, depending on her pace, and given her musings and meanderings, one gets the impression that she was walking at a leisurely pace, stopped to talk to Hugh Whitbread, stopped at Hatchard's for quite a while, stopped to look at herself in the mirror at Bond Street, stopped to notice the possibly royal figure in the car.
This is done the day of her party, which tells us how much she actually depends on her help. No wonder she keeps thanking them all the time!
And this given that she lives close to Victoria street, a bustling street which probably had many flower shops to offer.
The buying of flowers feels like just a pretext, a pretext to feel alive, a pretext to be part of what "she loved; life; London; this moment of June." (MDA, 5)
This feeling is made much clearer and stated more explicitly in Virginia's Woolf's essay: Street Haunting: A London Adventure
"No one perhaps has ever felt passionately towards a lead pencil. But there are circumstances in which it can become supremely desirable to possess one; moments when we are set upon having an object, an excuse for walking half across London between tea and dinner. As the foxhunter hunts in order to preserve the breed of foxes, and the golfer plays in order that open spaces may be preserved from the builders, so when the desire comes upon us to go street rambling the pencil does for a pretext, and getting up we say: "Really I must buy a pencil," as if under cover of this excuse we could indulge safely in the greatest pleasure of town life in winter--rambling the streets of London." (Street Haunting, Opening paragraph)
Interesting that Virginia Woolf sets this parallel walk during a winter evening instead of a June early morning. Perhaps her purpose is to disassociate this walk from Mrs. Dalloway's walk. Or, alternatively, perhaps her purpose is to say that really, any season, any time of day is a good time to find a pretext to cross London, in order to feel vibrant and alive.
