A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [2]
The first western language of flowers dictionary, Le Langage des Fleurs, written in 1819 by Charlotte de Latour (a pseudonym), was so popular that it created a minor industry. Countless numbers of illustrated floral dictionaries sprouted up in France and across Europe, eventually making their way overseas to America. Often written by journalists and editors of popular magazines, flower dictionaries were targeted at genteel young ladies, for whom the association of flowers and romantic love was immensely appealing. Their contents were all very similar: an alphabetical list of flowers with their symbolic meanings, explanations as to how certain flowers obtained their meanings – usually from Classical mythology, folklore, medieval and Arthurian-type legends – flower poetry, examples of bouquet combinations and the messages they convey, and more often than not something called the Floral Oracle, a description of various fortune-telling games using flowers. Luxurious bindings, unusual sizes and beautiful illustrations made each floral dictionary unique.
There is little evidence that the Victorians actually used the language of flowers in a practical way; they didn’t send continuous streams of bouquets to each other, but rather the books were meant for the ‘centre’ (coffee) table and were to be studied, indulged in, and played as a game; every young lady wanted to be well-versed in the meanings of flowers. And though they didn’t spend hours coding secret bouquets, the Victorians did set great store by flowers and used them extensively in everyday life, much more so than today. Bouquets as love tokens were sent, carnation buttonholes were extremely popular and women wore flowers a great deal – in their hair, on their evening gowns, or tucked into a bodice. Flower symbolism was important and was applied to all the major occasions in life: roses, violets and forget-me-nots during courtship, orange blossoms at weddings and wreaths of cypress at funerals and as grave ornaments. From popular culture to high art, poets, painters, novelists, writers of children’s books, magazine journalists, composers and lyricists all played with the idea in their work. Some took the language of flowers seriously, others poked gentle fun at it, but there is no doubt that it was a major phenomenon. One of the great paintings of the age was John Everett Millais’s depiction of the drowned Ophelia, surrounded by flowers and drenched in symbolism: ‘There’s Rosemary, that’s for remembrance; … and there is Pansies, that’s for thoughts.’
As the Victorian era came to an end, the popularity of the language of flowers began to fade. Queen Victoria died in 1901; little more than a decade later, the world was at war. The two world wars changed the way we related to each other as human beings for ever; the emerging technological age changed the way we related to the world around us for ever. Victorian sentiment – allowing emotions to influence decisions – became referred to with some distaste as ‘sentimentality’ and became frowned upon. The era of the logical, scientific mind was ushered in. Huge developments in science and manufacturing prevailed, and in less than a century we had moved from horseback to high-speed trains to airplanes, from the pony express to the cellular phone, from Morse code to the Internet. But even as tastes and trends changed dramatically in the twentieth century, flowers themselves never went out of fashion. Flowers continued to be a way for humans to express complex emotions: World War I is inextricably linked to the poppy; the song ‘where have all the flowers gone’ stirs up emotion for anyone who lived through the Vietnam War.
Now, in the current information era, we know more than we’ve ever known. Science and technology have advanced to the point where not only do we understand more about the world, but all of our collective understanding is gathered in a single, if virtual,