Varndell has proved to be vulnerable to dips in confidence but with such an impressive start to the season, his self-belief is soaring.
Edwards has made it a priority to get the player back in the England squad and although regaining his place in his national team is at the back of Varndell's mind, performing for Wasps is his primary objective.
"I'm definitely a more mature player now," said Varndell, who grabbed both of his tries on Saturday in the first half.
"When you experience a lot of downs, on top of the highs, you do learn as a player and a person. I'm getting there and I'm confident.
"When you've got players like Steve Kefu, Ben Jacobs, Joe Simpson and Danny Cipriani inside you, life is a lot easier. I'm already looking forward to next week when we play Bath on Saturday."
A man down for the majority of the match, it is hard to make an early judgement on Quins.
The party line in the run-up to the season is that Bloodgate has brought the squad closer together and there is an argument they were too fired up when they ran out against Wasps.
That would certainly explain Robson's rash decision to plant one on the nose of the diminutive Simpson, who branded the Quins player's butt "not in the spirit of the game". Despite the early setback, the south-west London side went 12-5 ahead through tries by Ugo Monye and Gonzalo Camacho and their resistance was only broken late on in the clash.
"It was the first game of the season, we'd had three weeks of no rugby - I'm sure Wasps were equally as pumped up," said Quins skipper Will Skinner.
"Pressure plays a part in the first 30 seconds as well. Obviously we were psyched up and I'm sure we'll be equally as psyched up against Leicester next week.
"I thought we put together some great pieces of play, you can see that from the tries we scored. Unfortunately, we couldn't play at the tempo we wanted to in the second half."
