A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [11]
FORGET-ME-NOT
Forget Me Not
That blue and bright-eyed flow’ret of the brook,
Hope’s gentle gem, the sweet forget-me-not.
SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
The name of this pretty and delicate flower, which enamels riverbanks and garden borders with its miniature sky-blue petals, speaks of the human longing for loyalty and lastingness. Its name comes from a German folk tale about a couple who, on the eve of their marriage, take a walk by the banks of the Danube. The young bride admires a cluster of the flowers, and her fiancé goes forward to pick them for her, but falls into the river. Before he is carried away by the turbulent waters, he throws the flowers at the feet of his betrothed, crying, ‘Vergiss mein nicht!’
The forget-me-not is native to Britain but its name was not used until the nineteenth century. It caught on very quickly, almost certainly popularized by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who had travelled in Germany and would have been familiar with that country’s folklore.
The flower was used as a simple and uncomplicated expression of love, and its sentiment appealed to everyone. Combined with roses, violets and pansies and a delicate slip of lace as a backing, it made a perfect Valentine bouquet. A Valentine card of Cupid framed by a forget-me-not heart might be sent by return. If a beloved was a soldier away on service, a locket engraved with a forget-me-not flower and containing a lock of hair would serve as love’s reminder. The little flowers appeared on china and on writing paper, were embroidered on slippers and reproduced in velvet to pin on ladies’ bonnets and children’s caps. A forget-me-not silver brooch with the initials of a loved one would make a poignant memento mori.
A Victorian lady, wishing to be in the thoughts of a valued and distant friend, might send her the popular Forget-Me-Not Annual. These modest little books, whose typical contents might include poems by Lord Byron and John Clare, stories by Walter Scott and Mary Shelley, articles on flowers, birds and country churchyards, were considered indispensable in middle-class drawing rooms.
The very name is Love’s own poetry,
Born of the heart, and of the eye begot,
Nursed amid sighs and smiles of constancy,
And ever breathing – ‘Love! forget me not.’
The Reverend Francis Kilvert wrote in his diary on 4 September 1874 of finding a bookmark on which was embroidered in silk the words ‘Forget-me-not’. It was a gift from a childhood sweetheart, but he couldn’t remember which one. ‘I gazed at the words, conscience-stricken, “Forget-me-not”. And I had forgotten.’
GERANIUM
Oak-leaf – True Friendship Pencil-leaf – Ingenuity
Wild – Steadfast Piety Scarlet – Stupidity
The geranium is a heart-warming plant, a spot of cheer on a kitchen windowsill; in its wild, true form, a gentle presence on a windswept hillside. When its flowers drop, the exposed fruit is revealed to be pointed in shape, like a crane’s bill. The Greeks noticed this resemblance to the bird and called the flower geranion, from geranos, meaning ‘crane’.
‘True friendship’ was the emblem assigned to the oak-leaf geranium, perhaps in reference to the strength and duration of the oak tree; the exquisite and skilful patterning of veins on the pencil-leaf flower brought the notion of ingenuity to mind; and the wild geranium, sometimes called herb Robert, a hardy little plant which often grows in the most difficult terrain, was also given a noble meaning; but the scarlet geranium was not so fortunate.
It acquired its emblem from a story of Madame de Staël, the eighteenth-century author and intellectual, and her encounter with a handsome Swiss army officer in full scarlet regimentals. After spending an hour with him, in which time he hardly said a word, she asked him questions he