A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [7]
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.
Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.
And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A. E. HOUSMAN
The wild cherry has grown in Britain and Europe for hundreds of years, introduced by the Romans from Asia. But it was the Japanese cherry tree, the pink-blossomed sakura, brought over to Europe in the 1860s, that captured the imagination of the Victorians, and from Japan’s own language of flowers they borrowed its meaning, ‘impermanence’.
The late nineteenth century saw a fashion for all things Japanese, and on many of the imported exotic goods – prints, screens, kimonos and porcelain – cherry blossom was a common motif. Cherry trees were planted in Japanese-style gardens, often complete with tea-house and wooden bridge. Hopeful wishes to a friend for the coming year could be conveyed with a greetings card depicting a spray of blossom alongside a Japanese fan.
In James Tissot’s 1864 La Japonaise au Bain, a young geisha languishes against the side of a verandah, her exquisite kimono draped open to reveal that she is naked underneath. Cherry blossom winds round the wooden verandah and is tucked into her hair, and the tree in full bloom can be seen through the window. Like the blossom, both her beauty and the pleasure she is offering are transient.
CHRYSANTHEMUM
Truth
The chrysanthemum is an ancient and elegant flower, cultivated for over two thousand years in its native East. The Japanese, who have made it the emblem of their emperor, consider the orderly unfolding of its petals to be symbolic of perfection. In August the blooms appear in great numbers, reflecting the ripeness of the season, the summer’s work brought to fruition. The essence of the flower is unravelled just as truth is so often revealed: at first hidden, then brought into the light.
Despite its long and illustrious pedigree, the chrysanthemum did not arrive in Britain until the end of the eighteenth century, when seeds and plants were brought back from China by the ships of the East India Company. By the mid-nineteenth century, at least twenty-four varieties were being grown, and its range of forms – pompom, streaked, ragged, flamboyant or prim – and immense palette of colours, from crisp white to burnt umber, made it a favourite Victorian flower.
The chrysanthemum was often shown at winter parties during the shooting season, when pots of colour in a country-house porch would welcome the guests. In its less flamboyant form it was a popular buttonhole flower: a splash of brightness sitting neatly on a jacket. The white chrysanthemum in a wedding bouquet speaks of the bride’s honest and true character.
The flower made grand bedding displays in parks and public places, and a gardening correspondent reported landing at St Paul’s wharf one November morning when the fog was ‘of true London character’. Here he caught sight of a glorious bed of chrysanthemums in Temple Gardens, shining through the gloom.
In the 1880s, the French had a craze for these flowers, and a bestselling novel of the time was Madame Chrysanthème by Pierre Loti, who drew upon a lifetime of travel for the plots of his exotic romances. The book takes the form of the diary of a French naval officer whose ship docks at Nagasaki to undergo repairs. While waiting to sail again he enters into a temporary ‘marriage’ with a geisha called Chrysanthème.
from THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.
Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?
It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.
Too late its beauty,