In 1925, Virginia Woolf invited readers into the world of London in the 1920s with the publication of Mrs Dalloway. Now, a hundred years later, it’s time to celebrate this wonderful book! Our way of marking the centenary is to follow in the footsteps of Clarissa Dalloway, seeking out the very places that she passed that June day.
We first met at a Literature Cambridge course on Virginia Woolf in 2023. To celebrate our friendship, we decided to meet again before returning to this year’s summer course. Without Virginia Woolf — and the course — we would never have met, as we come from different countries. So our community, formed through a shared love of Woolf’s writing, is something truly worth cherishing.
Clarissa’s walk is traceable on the map, but how much of the streets, parks, and buildings will we still recognise? Can we sense the atmosphere and the rhythm of the novel in the city today? And will this walk, in turn, change our experience of the book?
If you’re planning your own Mrs Dalloway Walk and want to follow in Clarissa’s footsteps, here’s some inspiration for celebrating your love of the novel!
A Single Day in June
So on a June morning 1923, the society hostess Mrs Clarissa Dalloway sets out to buy the flowers herself for her evening party. Over the next twelve hours, Big Ben marks the passing of time as Clarissa, her husband Richard, the old friend and love Peter Walsh, her daughter Elisabeth together with the tutor Miss Kilman, will experience this single day, this moment of June interwoven with their memories, fears, hopes and reflections over life choices. Meanwhile the First World War veteran, Septimus Warren Smith, and his wife Rezia are seeking help for his wartime traumas.
These characters, together with several minor ones, blend into a microcosm of London, each playing his or her part, seeing, interpreting, but not fully understanding one another. There is a love of life, but also a sense of fragility to existence. Mrs Dalloway expresses this in her thoughts, as she “always had the feeling that it was very dangerous to live even one day”.
Bloomsbury – 52 Tavistock Square
Our tribute to Virginia Woolf and Mrs Dalloway begins here, in Bloomsbury, at 52 Tavistock Square. This was the home address of Virginia and Leonard Woolf as she finished, published and even printed Mrs Dalloway on their Hogarth Press located in the basement. The house, with the wall panels designed by Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant, was destroyed in the 1940 Blitz. Today, on this site stands the Tavistock Hotel— a very nice place to stay.
In the square gardens a bronze bust of Virginia Woolf by Stephen Tomlin watches over the Bloomsbury, where the characters Septimus and Rezia rented rooms, and Peter stayed in a hotel. In the 1920s Bloomsbury attracted intellectuals, bohemians and people on small incomes. For contemporary readers probably underlined that these characters compared to Mrs Dalloway had less material wealth and financial means to form their lives. Perhaps they had more of a critical eye toward “the social system” that Virginia Woolf wanted to criticise through her novel.
Today it must be expensive to live here, but the intellectual touch is still there with the British Museum at its heart.
Whitehall and the Cenotaph
To reach the geographical epicentre of the novel, we must catch a red double decker bus to land on Trafalgar Square. After a glimpse of Lord Nelson high on his column, we walk down Whitehall still lined with government buildings and statues of generals and statesmen from Britain’s imperial past. The dark backdrop of the novel is manifested here in the street —war, empire, and their immense cost in human sufferings. It is here that Peter Walsh, the civil servant just home from India, watches with mixed feelings of respect and uneasy scepticism an odd ceremony with boys marching with wreaths towards the Cenotaph, the war memorial dedicated to “The Glorious Dead” of the First World War.
Boys in uniforms, carrying guns, marched with their eyes ahead of them, marched, their arms stiff, and on their faces an expression like the letters of a legend written round the base of a statue praising duty, gratitude, fidelity, love of England … life … had been laid under a pavement of monuments and wreaths and drugged into a stiff yet staring corpse by discipline.
Big Ben
Big Ben is the timekeeper of the novel, its deep chimes marking the passing of hours, retracting the characters to their thoughts, unbound by time, back into the present day. Now Big Ben calls us towards our common meeting point and the exciting moment when we will finally follow Mrs Dalloway through streets, parks and shops — and explore the very map upon, Virginia Woolf placed her characters – all dealing with their individual and social circumstances, manifested in the city.
For the first time, we now see the booklet that Diana has designed and edited. We have all contributed to it by sharing some thoughts on our favourite Virginia Woolf novel and also recommended other city novels. As we see the cover illustration by Diana’s friend Anna, we feel as if we are ourselves the characters dressed in fashions from the 1920s!
Westminster
We now leave the busy area around Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey behind us, aiming for the calmness of the quiet lawns in Dean’s Yard in search of a place to read. Because the entrances are blocked by scaffolding and a stern guard, we walk further into the narrow streets of Westminster, where an old country village charm and tranquility prevail between the houses, as if time had stood still since the 18th century. Today a few walkers and a family on bikes, saying hello, are our sole company.
Virginia Woolf does not give us an exact address, but the traces lead us to search for Mrs Dalloway’s house among several beautiful Georgian brick townhouses in Barton and Cowley streets. Several blue plaques mark the houses where famous people once lived. Being an inhabitant here, at the political centre, must have throughout centuries endowed a sense of importance, security, and confidence. It is here that Mrs Dalloway will host her party for the influential and powerful later that evening. We easily find a suitable house, in front of which we can read out loud the opening passage among us.
Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer’s men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning—fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air.
Immediately we are sensing Clarissa Dalloway’s feeling of freedom and adventure as she prepares to enjoy an exciting city walk by herself. Intertwined with the present are her thoughts of her youth and her first somewhat unromantic lover Peter.
How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp and yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said.’Musing among the vegetables’ – was that it?
With an audience of friends equally familiar and devoted to these words, reading becomes an unparalleled pleasure. We discover more and more favourite lines to read, because shared reading is so special. We see other beautiful houses, any of which could have been the home for Mrs Clarissa Dalloway and her party.
Victoria Street
When we reach Victoria Street, we notice that many of the old houses have been replaced by modern ones, but the hustle and bustle of the street remains, with buses, taxis, cars, and a mix of people. Even an equivalent of what Clarissa once called a “frump” or a “misery” circles around us, making eye contact with a smile on his lips. Clarissa’s love for life and fascination with London resounds in Virginia Woolf’s description of the very moment when Big Ben chimes.
There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. 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; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can’t be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people’s eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June.
St James’s Park
Into St James’ Park, we follow Clarissa Dalloway’s promenade, watching the pelicans and ducks still swimming in the lake. There, she meets her old friend Hugh, who seems to embody the royal dominance of the area.
But how strange, on entering the Park, the silence; the mist; the hum; the slow-swimming happy ducks; the pouched birds waddling; and who should be coming along with his back against the Government buildings, most appropriately, carrying a despatch box stamped with the Royal Arms, who but Hugh Whitbread; her old friend Hugh—the admirable Hugh!
“I love walking in London,” said Mrs. Dalloway. “Really it’s better than walking in the country.”
The modern city moves around us, but for a moment we are in our own orbit, reading beneath the trees. Gradually, the world around us returns: birds singing, people talking, and suddenly, women in sweeping long skirts, white blouses, and straw hats pass us, accompanied by men in black coats, vests, and high cylinder hats.
The unexpected passage of people in Edwardian dresses, is an example of a London still full of intermingling worlds and times. We are not alone in enacting a passionate day. Mrs Dalloway would surely have thought them a little old-fashioned, but she is still lingering in the past — thinking of both her love for Peter and of how much he annoyed her.
If he were with me now what would he say?—some days, some sights bringing him back to her calmly, without the old bitterness; which perhaps was the reward of having cared for people; they came back in the middle of St. James’s Park on a fine morning—indeed they did.
How they argued! She would marry a Prime Minister and stand at the top of a staircase; the perfect hostess he called her (she had cried over it in her bedroom), she had the makings of the perfect hostess, he said. So she would still find herself arguing in St. James’s Park, still making out that she had been right—and she had too—not to marry him.
Buckingham Palace and Green Park
Moving on through the flood of tourists, we see the Victoria memorial in front of Buckingham Palace. It is here that a crowd of people gathers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the royals while simultaneously trying to decipher the message from the skywriting plane.
After entering Green Park through gilded gates we follow Clarissa on a broad foot path at the same time remembering that somewhat later Richard will pass here both evading a female prostitute and showing his progressive views appreciating seeing poor families playing and relaxing there on the lawns. With a bouquet of red and white roses for Clarissa in his hands he marvels over the happiness in his life.
But he would tell Clarissa that he loved her, in so many words. He had, once upon a time, been jealous of Peter Walsh; jealous of him and Clarissa. But she had often said to him that she had been right not to marry Peter Walsh; which, knowing Clarissa, was obviously true; she wanted support. Not that she was weak; but she wanted support.
It was a great age in which to have lived. Indeed, his own life was a miracle; let him make no mistake about it; here he was, in the prime of life, walking to his house in Westminster to tell Clarissa that he loved her. Happiness is this he thought.
Piccadilly Street
We then slip back into Clarissa´’s thoughts as she reaches the far side of Green Park, which faces the busy Piccadilly street. She notices Bath House, where a baroness once signalled her presence to visitors with a china cockatoo in the window. Clarissa continues to mix her observations with existential thoughts on the precariousness of life, as well with joyful memories of her youth. She remembers throwing a shilling into the Serpentine, and how she used to ride and dance with Peter, her sister Sylvia and the much beloved Sally.
She had reached the Park gates. She stood for a moment, looking at the omnibuses in Piccadilly.She would not say of any one in the world now that they were this or were that. She felt very young; at the same time unspeakably aged. She sliced like a knife through everything; at the same time was outside, looking on. She had a perpetual sense, as she watched the taxi cabs, of being out, out, far out to sea and alone; she always had the feeling that it was very, very dangerous to live even one day.
Hatchards
Most buildings here have been replaced since the 1920s, so we must rely on Virginia Woolf’s method of imaginative layering. But further down Piccadilly, we still find some of the fabulous shops Clarissa must have seen during her walk. There is a thread of fascination with shopping throughout the story.
As we pass through the varnished dark wooden doors and enter the beautifully ornate facade of Fortnum & Mason we step back in time. Even though Fortnum & Mason isn’t mentioned in the novel, we can’t resist the lure of exclusive shopping. The chandeliers still illuminate the expensive teas and biscuits, but the shop assistants in striped trousers and morning coats dusting the rails are now gone.
Next door in front of the windows of Hatchards we follow Mrs Dalloway’s example and examine the books on display. We find among them the eminent book Mrs Dalloway: a biography of a novel by Mark Hussey. His book encompasses the background, writing, reception and adaptation of our novel. We feel a part of the afterlife of Mrs Dalloway by our walk. Clarissa fails to find a suitable book to cheer up Hugh’s sick wife, but instead her eyes fall on some words in an open book. These words by Shakespeare bring her to think of the painful times just after the First World War.
´’Fear no more the heat o’ the sun. Nor the furious winter’s rages’.
This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears. Tears and sorrows; courage and endurance; a perfectly upright and stoical bearing.
Bond Street
Opposite Hatchard’s, we enter Bond Street with its flags still flutter outside the expensive stores, Clarissa reflects on how elegant the street looked before the war: “flags flying; its shops; no splash; no glitter; one roll of tweed … a few pearls; a salmon on an iceblock, … almost perfect gloves”.
To the reader it may come as a surprise when Clarissa suddenly feels like a monster inside, as she begins to think of Miss Kilman and her influence on Elizabeth. It is, of course, deeply threatening that Miss Kilman makes Clarissa question the pleasures of her comfortable, respectable life.
For it was not her (miss Kilman) one hated but the idea of her, which undoubtedly had gathered in to itself a great deal that was not Miss Kilman; had become one of those spectres with which one battles in the night; one of those spectres who stand astride us and suck up half our life-blood, dominators and tyrants; for no doubt with another throw of the dice, had the black been uppermost and not the white, she would have loved Miss Kilman! But not in this world. No.
Today, we find that in Bond Street the flags still flutter over the expensive shops, now of international brands, and even now, you need enough money to shop here. At the junction of Bond Street and Brook Street, there was probably once a florist, where Clarissa Dalloway can relieve her anger among the sights and smells of roses, carnations, sweet peas, irises, lilacs, and violets.
And as she began to go with Miss Pym from jar to jar, choosing, nonsense, nonsense, she said to herself, more and more gently, as if this beauty, this scent, this colour, and Miss Pym liking her, trusting her, were a wave which she let flow over her and surmount that hatred, that monster, surmount it all; and it lifted her up and up when—oh! a pistol shot in the street outside!
The violent sound from a grey motor car brings the separate worlds of Clarissa and Septimus to touch each other even if they do not actually meet.
And there the motor car stood, with drawn blinds, and upon them a curious pattern like a tree, Septimus thought, and this gradual drawing together of everything to one centre before his eyes, as if some horror had come almost to the surface and was about to burst into flames, terrified him. The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames
Time passes so quickly …
Now we have covered Clarissa’s walk, but as so much is happening on every line of the book, and we have had so much to experience and discuss — and since we do not have an aeroplane to zigzag across the skies like the one that, in Mrs Dalloway, passed over the heads of the characters — we can now only send our thoughts up to Regent’s Park. There, Peter will sleep and dream on a bench before meeting Septimus, who will mistake him for Evans, his fallen soldier comrade. At Regent’s Park tube station, a woman will sing an eternal love song for all who pass by, and later Septimus and Rezia will go down Harley Street to meet the frightening Dr. Bradshaw.
As the afternoon drifts into the evening, while we are having high tea at the Montague Gardens Hotel, the walk and the characters linger in our thoughts, discussions and shared memories. Another Woolfian friend, Julie has now joined us as we remember the young Clarissa’s love for Sally and the tender kiss they shared, and how Peter visits Clarissa, stirring old emotions. We think of Richard returning home to Clarissa with flowers, unable to tell her that he loves her, and of Elisabeth abandoning Miss Kilman for an adventurous bus ride down Victoria Street. Finally, in the evening, figures representing politics, art, medicine, and imperial power gather at the party in Westminster. The news of Septimus’s death reaches Clarissa and stirs something profound within her. Before nightfall, Sally, Peter and Clarissa meet — perhaps at the very house we found at Barton Street.
To walk with Mrs Dalloway
By walking, you slow down the experience of the book and come to understand the significance of different places and events — both in the city and in the novel. We followed the same paths as Clarissa, experiencing firsthand how Woolf used the city as a canvas to shape her characters’ lives —all with their individual defining conditions. Through her text, Woolf creates a map of London that reveals the different conditions under which each character lives. The walk took us from intellectual Bloomsbury to the powerful and privileged Westminster, from the royal aura of St James’s and Buckingham Palace to the elegant fashion and society of Mayfair. Woolf wove together a multitude of characters — from drunkards to royalty — into a single web, forming the fascinating world of London.
Walking the city brings the novel to life, allowing you to feel its rhythm — the alternation of calm reflection and hectic rush, happiness and existential anguish, impressions and memories — often in the very same places Woolf described. Streets, buildings, and parks remain largely recognisable, and even where changes have occurred, the city retains the atmosphere and the rhythm of Mrs Dalloway. Next time I read the novel, I will do so with a richer sense of place, many impressions, and memories from the walk to enhance the experience.
If you’re planning your own Mrs Dalloway Walk, my advice is to give yourself a full day. Slow down, let yourself be inspired by Virginia Woolf’s love for people-watching, and notice the passing crowds and the unexpected scenes that unfold around you. Experiencing these fleeting moments, together with reading passages from the book will bring both London and the novel alive — even make them melt together!
Thank you, Virginia Woolf!
Walking together with friends — sharing impressions, laughter, and quiet moments of reflection as the city and the novel unfolded around us — made us feel as though we were moving through both an imagined and a very real world. This day will stay with us, as will the memory of Mrs Dalloway, just as Clarissa Dalloway hopes she herself will live on:
…somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself.
Thanks to Diana, Julie, Cristina, Nicky, Carme, Daniela and Graham for planning and sharing this very special day – and an extra thank you to Graham, who took some of the photos!
your thoughts?