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| Hornet with Wild Roses by Tirzah Garwood, 1955. On display at Dulwich Picture Gallery April 2025. |
Kew Gardens was written in 1917, and then published in various forms by the Hogarth Press between 1919 and 1927, all with slightly different texts, the one I read was from the Complete Shorter Fiction and taken from the third edition.
This short story, just 6 pages in my book but 22 pages in the third edition published by the Hogarth Press with illustrations by Vanessa Bell, is a moment in time at Kew Gardens on a hot summer day. There are two scenes, the minutia of an oval flower bed with flowers of red, blue or yellow and the people who walk by. The people passing by are observed by a snail who is making its way across the soil.
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| Kew Gardens seen at New York Public Library Virginia Woolf exhibition, February 2023 |
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| Kew Gardens on display at Sissinghurst Castles Gardens, Kent, August 2024 |
Kew Gardens is more of a literary sketch than a short story. There is no real narrative, nothing much happens by way of a plot, but we get a glimpse into the lives of the people who wander past the flower bed with the focus passing from group to group. The only constant is the flower bed itself. Despite very little actually happening, your interest in these characters is peaked. The first man to come along. Simon is thinking back to 15 years ago when he was in Kew Gardens proposing to a woman, who is not the wife who follows behind with their children now.
The old man and his younger companion make an odd couple, is the old man “merely eccentric or genuinely mad” we never find out as the focus moves to the two women following behind them. As the story draws to a close, Woolf causes us to reflect on all the people in the park and wonder who they are and what they might be thinking. We can’t make out what they are saying but “Voices, yes, voices, wordless voices, breaking the silence suddenly with such depth of contentment, such passion of desire.”
The observations of the oval flower bed and all the tiny details of its inhabitants, and the way that the drama is observed from the snail’s point of view, places you right there in the soil with the red, blue or yellow flowers towering over you. I love the way that Woolf observes the changes of light and colour caused by the reflections of the petals, and how much detail goes into the experience of the snail. The way it moves across the soil, displacing “the crumbs of loose earth” and how it contemplates whether to go over or under “the arched tent of a dead leaf”. In the end “he was doubtful whether the thin texture which vibrated with such an alarming crackle when touched even by the tip of his horns would bear his weight.”
This is the second time a snail has been a focal point of a Virginia Woolf short story, following the delightful revelation in The Mark on the Wall. What surprised me about both stories is how much can be written about the small goings on in our lives that we barely notice. How often do you stop and pay attention to the light on a flower bed in a garden, or watch a snail make its way across your garden and wonder what the world looks like from his perspective?
I’m sure I will revisit Kew Garden at some point. The whole purpose of reading Virginia Woolf in the order she wrote her work is to gain a greater understanding of her process and I’m sure the more I read, the more I will reflect on how her earlier writing influences and underpins her later work.
The image I have used for this piece is by Tirzah Garwood, called Hornet with Wild Roses. Painted in 1955 at the end of her life. I saw it at the Tirzah Garwood exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery in April 2025 and it reminded me of Kew Gardens, with the perspective of the flower bed.
