A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [34]
Despite its fashionable status, the water lily as an emblem for purity and goodness was a theme returned to time and again. In Julia Goddard’s 1884 The Children and the Water-Lily, a young girl spies a water lily, goes to pick it, fails and gets wet and muddy in the process. She is too ashamed to explain how she came to be in such a condition, and this sets off a chain of events that causes a great deal of trouble. Finally, all is resolved, and the water lily has taught her a lesson – that from the smallest actions great consequences can arise, and the truth should always be told. An artistic neighbour sends her a white china cup painted with water lilies and forget-me-nots: the reward for the pure in heart.
The water nymphs in John William Waterhouse’s Hylas and the Nymphs certainly appear pure in heart – young, fresh-faced and surrounded by white water lilies – but appearances can be deceptive. Hylas, squire to Hercules, who has become separated from his Argonaut companions, comes across the nymphs in their lily pond, and they seduce him and lure him to his death. In this painting, Waterhouse subverts the flower’s meaning, perhaps in order to shock. Just like the femme fatale, he is saying, the water lily may hide a dark secret: pure and harmless on the surface, but can anything rising from the murky depths really be so spotless?
from THE CHERWELL WATER-LILY
To careless men thou seems’t to roam
Abroad upon the river,
In all thy movements chained to home,
Fast-rooted there for ever;
Linked by a holy, hidden tie,
Too subtle for a mortal eye,
Nor riveted by mortal art,
Deep down within thy father’s heart.
Emblem in truth thou art to me
Of all a woman ought to be!
REV. FREDERICK WILLIAM FABER
WEEPING WILLOW
Melancholy
Slow wind sighed through the willow leaves,
The ripple made a moan,
The world drooped murmuring like a thing that grieves;
And then I felt alone.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
This is a tree with a mournful disposition: it chooses to live by water, a tranquil, slow-running river its favoured spot; its branches are pendulous and low; and when the wind catches its leaves it seems to be whispering sad and sorrowful things. The weeping willow’s botanical name, Salix babylonica, is an allusion to the story in Psalms of the exiled Israelites, captive in Babylon, who sat by a river, hung their harps on a willow and observed that it appeared to weep as they did. To reinforce the tree’s sad associations, it is also claimed that the scourges used to chastise Jesus were made from its branches, and that the tree has never been able to hold its head up since, drooping as a token of mourning and affliction.
The weeping willow’s home is eastern Asia, and it was first brought to Britain in the eighteenth century. Thereafter it spread rapidly, planted in parklands and along the courses of rivers. The Victorians took to the melancholy sentiments surrounding it and absorbed it into their elaborate mourning practices. A classic mourning brooch would depict a despairing figure draped over a tomb, with an urn and a weeping willow providing the backdrop.
Perhaps an even more popular representation of the weeping willow was on ‘willow pattern’ china, at the time a stock design of almost every British pottery manufacturer. The origins of the Chinese tale on which the design is based are unclear, but its appeal lay in the fascination with all things oriental and anything to do with doomed lovers. Thomas Minton of the Minton pottery in Stoke-on-Trent designed and manufactured the pattern and made it popular. Other potteries copied the design and introduced slight variations, but the colours never changed – crisp white and cobalt