A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [18]
Cowen was known for his light orchestral compositions and for his many songs, with their graceful melodies and lovely lyrics, often about flowers and poetic fairy legends. His ‘Language of the Flowers’ duets included daisy, fern, columbine, yellow jasmine and lily of the valley, represented in harmony on the first page in an exquisite colour drawing.
LILY
Majesty
The lily is a flower of great beauty and of imperial stature; bending down from its tall and slender stem, it seems to demand and to obtain the homage of nature. An emblem of excellence, it is a glorious flower and without equal.
Of all the varieties, it is the white Madonna lily that is perhaps the most revered. One of the oldest lilies in cultivation, it is thought to have been dispersed throughout Europe by Roman soldiers, who carried it in their kitbags for its medicinal properties. But in the Middle Ages it took on a more illustrious role, through its association with the Virgin Mary, a link to the old story of the Apostles opening her tomb three days after her burial to find it empty save for roses and lilies. There is hardly an image of the Virgin to be found where the lily does not appear; it represents perfection and majesty of the very highest order.
To many Victorians the Madonna represented ideal woman-hood, and to compare a woman to a lily, or to adorn her with lilies, was to pay the highest of compliments: like Mary, she is supreme amongst women.
The lily is the emblem rare
Of many virtues good and rare.
FROM A NINETEENTH-CENTURY VALENTINE CARD
Lilies were worn in the hair and pinned to evening gowns, either at the waist or at the bosom. An inhalation of the white lily in a vapour bath was said to improve the complexion, and maids who used Sunlight soap were assured that clothes would come up spotless and ‘lily white’. A lady might pose for an engagement photograph with a lily tucked into her dress, and young girls under a more modish influence could have themselves photographed in diaphanous white gowns, holding the flower. The Ladies’ Horticulture magazine warned, however, against the dangers of keeping lilies indoors in closed rooms, its scent being very potent: ‘it is sometimes sufficiently powerful to produce asphyxia. Here is another point of resemblance to the powerful of the earth, whose contact with the humble is so often fatal.’
When the actress Lillie Langtry was still relatively unknown, society portrait painter Frank Miles captured her lovely face in three different poses and in the background is a series of pencilled lilies. The presence of the flowers reinforced the message of her excellent beauty, and she became known as ‘the Jersey Lily’ (Jersey was her birthplace). Cecil Beaton photographed her in 1928, the year before she died, and there, for the very last time, she was posed with white lilies.
Highly coloured oriental lilies had been cultivated in Europe since the sixteenth century – the Martagon or Turk’s cap lily was one of the earliest varieties – and, as trade and travel grew ever wider, more and more arrived from China and Japan. When the golden-rayed lily, its white flowers spotted with pink and barred with gold, went on show in London in 1862, it was proclaimed ‘the grandest lily that has ever been seen’. The majesty of these lilies was in the splendour of their appearance and touch of the exotic. In the scene in Through the Looking-Glass where Alice is in the garden of talking flowers, Lewis Carroll gives the tiger lily an imperious character. This lily is rude to the daisy, larkspur and violet; only the rose is her equal.
LILY OF THE VALLEY
Return of Happiness
Where scatter’d wild the lily of the vale
Its balmy essence breathes.
JAMES THOMSON
The lily of the valley delights in cool, damp places and dappled woodland, where its bell flowers, like scented pearls, are modestly concealed amidst a cluster of bright green leaves. Shady spots can sometimes seem brightly illuminated by this sweet little plant. In the floral language it represents the ‘return of happiness