Capital Odyssey: A Flâneur’s Bloomsbury Wanderings
Editor Eddie Saint-Jean turns the clock back a century to trace the flâneur footsteps of novelist Virginia Woolf. The article’s diary style pays homage to her diaries and works written as streams of consciousness.
In our busy, buzzing capital city, destination and purpose lie at the heart of every short trip. The butterfly-like flâneur might turn that on its head and float through the beating heart of our metropolis, wandering aimlessly just for the hell of it. What’s a flâneur? An urban wanderer, basically.
“A good traveller has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu
The writings of 20th-century modernist author Virginia Woolf have made the flâneur topical and fashionable again. In Woolf’s acclaimed essay, “Street Haunting: A London Adventure,” the narrator leaves her house with one vague purpose – to buy a pencil – this is soon forgotten as she wanders the streets engaging in the off-the-cuff and happenstance; going with the flow, at one with the stream of urban consciousness and London’s chaotic energy. Every mundane chance encounter, every overlooked second-hand book shop, every cul-de-sac mews draped in ivy or conversation with a stranger, now a mindful (not necessarily meaningful) experience.
The Pencil
Inspired, I put away my digital notebook and magazine editor’s hat and went looking for my own flâneur pencil to, similarly, find meaning in non-purpose and engage the sublime magic of London in summertime. So, let’s get the whole pencil buying thing out the way early and head off.
Well, actually, no. That’s much too much purpose, way too early. Purposeful pencil-buying might get in the way of my little urban experiment. So, I will leave that to the end….like Virginia Woolf did.
OK, why not begin our capital odyssey in Bloomsbury, at Virginia Woolf’s former address at 46 Gordon Square? Woolf was a founder member of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals and creatives who put the area on the cultural map – and quite emphatically so, because here am I about to embark on a flâneur’s wanderings around Bloomsbury, 105 years later!
Virginia Woolf’s former home on Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
She moved to 46 Gordon Square (now number 50) in 1904. A brown heritage plaque marks the address. The Bloomsbury Circle of artists and intellectuals would meet here every Thursday to drink coffee, down a few whiskies, and talk culture. In one of her essays, she makes it clear that the movement began and was based here. The area is a leafy and verdant density of garden squares. Why so many garden squares in Bloomsbury? Very pretty. There’s certainly a noticeable concentration, giving the neighbourhood a tranquil air. Just the tonic for deep-thinking intellectuals or creative spirits. Gordon Square, Tavistock Square, Woburn Square, Torrington Square, all cheek-by-jowl.
Momo Kiosk, Gordon Square, Bloomsbury
I take a slow wander through the pleasant greenery of Gordon Square, and just by the entrance closest to her former home, I stumble upon a coffee kiosk with the look of a magical, creaky cottage from centuries past. Not sure about a coffee or cappuccino in this hot weather but the spread of homemade pastries, cakes, sweets, snacks and sandwiches are pretty tempting. Even at this time of the morning, the benches dotted around this tranquil green space are already taken up by book reading, leisurely types somewhat suffused with the Woolfian vibe, as if by osmosis.
“In short trips, in life, in all things, most people go exactly where they are told they should go and for that reason never discover the terrorities they might have inhabited.” – Anon
Today, I am consciously avoiding the big attractions, galleries, museums – the British Museum and the like – because it’s my Flâneur Day, so I do as they do. Today, only the overlooked and unsung will be getting my attention. SOAS University is just down the road from Gordon Square on Thornhaugh Street and I stumble upon the Embroidery Traditions of Afghanistan exhibition in the SOAS Gallery. This doesn’t count as a biggie, so it’s OK to visit. There, I discover another hidden secret – a tranquil Japanese rock garden on the gallery’s top floor. A welcome sanctuary from the austere architecture of the wider cityscape Yet a nice fit within the peaceful cadence of the garden squares of Bloomsbury.
Embroidery Traditions of Afghanistan Exhibition
Japanese rock garden on the top floor of SOAS Gallery
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“Live slowly. Take walks with no destination.” – Vex King
I find myself being drawn in the direction of the British Museum on Great Russell Street. Not sure why. I just can’t help myself, I guess, That’s where all the crowds and tourists are heading and you find yourself ebbing and flowing with the wave. Not the wave I want today, on my stream of urban consciousness. I won’t go in. I won’t spoil my flâneur experiment.
And across the road from the British Museum, (I didn’t go in!) the Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers is all Dickensian and Victorian, like a perfectly preserved 19th-century time capsule (I did go in). There’s no walking past it. Inside, you’ll find original Dickensian books, tomes, texts and historic pamphlets. Rich in so many other ways and priced for collectors with cultured tastes and big bank balances, so in that way too.
Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers
Jarndyce Antiquarian Booksellers
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I know of the Horse Hospital (built in 1797) tucked away on a cobbled mews behind Russell Square Underground Station, but the magnificent cobbled colonnade leading up to it was what first caught my eye. Never seen it before, Well, perhaps, I had, but today I am, of course, more mindful of nuance in the cityscape. This colonnade, laid out by architect James Burton in the 1790s, has echoes of centuries past, when the Horse Hospital was in service. It now serves as an arts centre but the original facade and structural features, including the historic horse ramps, survive today.
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Sometimes the focus involved in staying true to one’s flâneurial spirit makes you look at the city through a lopsided critical lens. You see, I just passed the Charles Dickens Museum…but I can’t go in there. No, it’s not anything that he’s done, said or written, it’s just that the Charles Dickens Museum (although small) is a little too big. So, I wander on.
Percy and Mary Shelley’s former home on 87 Marchmont Street is an interesting find. The house is no longer there, demolished in 1904, but there’s a blue plaque, barely visible and high up the wall, commemorating their stay. I don’t get it! You’ll have a problem reading that from down here without a telescope or binoculars. The Shelleys lived there with Mary Shelley’s stepsister Claire Claremont, who was pregnant with poet Lord Byron’s child. The landlady, Mrs Harbottle may well have been a little uneasy about the fact the three of them were on the run from a debt collector. Still, she put up with them for a year, until 1816 when they left to join Lord Byron in Lake Geneva, Switzerland.
The Shelley’s former address on Marchmont Street, London, WCIN UAL
Opened in 1715, Saint George’s Gardens is a historic cemetery-turned-public garden and like many others it somehow holds echoes of its former solemn, mournful bearing and you can really feel it in the hallowed ground. Look around the gardens’ central area and you’ll find the humble, nondescript grave of Oliver Cromwell’s granddaughter Anna Gibson.
The grave of Oliver Cromwell’s granddaughter Anna Gibson
The often overlooked Foundling Museum is just round the corner, and is located on the site of the former Foundling Hospital, a residential home and school for vulnerable children. Established in 1739 as the first children’s charity and recognised as England’s earliest art gallery, the cultural heavyweights of the period rallied to its cause. Artist William Hogarth lent his considerable wealth and influence and his paintings hung in the hospital, attracting well-heeled patrons who dug deeply to support the charity. The composer George Frideric Handel was another benefactor and the nearby Handel Street is named after him. You’ll find another of Virginia Woolf’s former addresses right next to the museum. She lived here at 38 Brunswick Square (those Bloomsbury Squares again!) and rented out floors and rooms to her Bloomsbury Group circle, including esteemed economist John Maynard Keynes.
The building on the left sits on the site of Virginia Woolf’s former home (notice the blue plaque). The building on the right is the Foundling Museum.
Quick glance at my watch. The time’s a little too close to 5pm for my liking. I need to get to that stationery shop on Great Russell Street to buy my pencil before the shop closes.
Well, I promised myself no distractions on the way to the stationery shop, but is WC Wine & Charcuterie Toilet Bar on Guilford Place a wine bar or a public lavatory? It’s all in the name, and I can see it’s a converted, repurposed former public toilet. It doesn’t look like much from street level; the bar details chalked out on a smiley blackboard. There are stairs leading down and the jazz music wafting up to street level has got me more than a little curious. Tentative steps down. A dimly lit joint, oozing class despite the bog history – reminds me of those 1920s speakeasies and underground jazz bars. A cultured selection of fine wines – no beer, draught or bottled – and the tables and seating are worked along the original tiled walls of the lavatory as private booths. No smell of disinfectant though.
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And finally, I arrive at the magical, mysterious Victorian artist’s materials shop L. Cornelissen & Son, ‘serving artists since 1855’. Like one or two other 19th-century shops on Great Russell Street, it’s like a time machine has whisked you off to another century. This is the shop where Virginia Woolf might have bought a pencil.
