Philip’s Garden Blog

The garden retreat prior to the 19th century had been for the most part the province of the priviledged nobility. Solitary intellectual pursuits were not excluded, but the forms were generally of convivial pleasure.

The industrial revolution of the 19th century led not only to an evolution of the social order, but coincided with the Arcadian ideal; the appreciation of the natural world, for rusticity, and for the cult of the individual.  For writers of the period, especially of the late 19th and early 20th century, these forces came together in “the writer’s hut”.  A new kind of hermitage, the writer ’s hut ,was by definition a small structure, perhaps big enough only for one person, where the writer could work undisturbed surrounded by nature.

 So much has been written over the years about Virginia Woolf and her milieu, that I shall not attempt that here.  Instead, when looking at the interior of her room, I imagine Virginia sitting at the desk, taking off her eyeglasses.  Does she gaze through the doorway to the garden beyond? Tucked in the corner, a folding garden chair with its striped canvas speaks of summers past.  It was here that Virginia wrote her last note to Leonard, at once a poignant plea for help and a testament to love.

Dickens had a tunnel constucted beneath the road which separated the estate from his chalet. The cool mossy tunnel became an atmospheric and psychological transition between his troubled household and private retreat.  Charles Dickens died on a summer’s day in 1870 whilst at his desk in the chalet writing his unfinished novel, The Mystery of Edwin Drood.
 
Dylan Thomas wrote of his writing hut in Laugharne, Wales “My study, atelier, or bard’s bothy, roasts on a cliff-top.”  The hut or “Boathouse” commanded views of the tidal flats and surrounding estuaries.

The interior of the boathouse was decorated with an assemblage of magazine cuttings and paintings by artists such as William Blake and Modigliani.  Lists of word alliterations, beer bottles, dictionaries and numerous drafts littered the space in a creative ferment.

By peering into the private garden sanctuaries of these authors, I feel I have come to know them in a way that they never completely shared with the public. Like his charming children’s stories, Roald Dahl looks as “snug as a bug in a rug” in his private sanctuary. Dylan Thomas’ boathouse says to me that living life itself can be messy, and yet in the process, inspiring. I cannot help but think of Dickens in a kind of child’s playhouse, enjoying what must have been lost in his own childhood. Shaw’s hut shows me that he, although brilliant, treasured simplicity. And Virginia Woolf… I thought her hut was quite direct and contemporary. I keep thinking of that garden chair in the corner. It seems to me a talisman of hope.

It is the respective author’s true qualities of character and private nature which are revealed in the writer’s hut:  in a room of their own.