A Victorian Flower Dictionary - Mandy Kirkby [8]
The season’s shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.
THOMAS HARDY
CYPRESS
Mourning
Henceforth, when mourners grieve, their grief to share,
Emblem of woe, the cypress shall be there.
ANON.
The cypress is a sad and melancholy tree, tall and tapering, reaching up into a dark sky. Its dense evergreen foliage permits no light, and as the sun sets the tree casts long shadows upon the ground like strange phantoms. Its name derives from the ancient Greek tale of Cyparissus, a young boy whose favourite companion was a tame stag. When Cyparissus accidentally kills his beloved stag with a hunting javelin, he prays to Apollo that his mourning might be perpetual, and in answer to his prayers the god turns him into a cypress.
The tree’s association with grief and mortality is an old one, and comes from the East, where burial grounds are thickly planted with them, and in Biblical times its sweet-smelling wood was used to make coffins and its branches to line graves. It is also said that the cypress, once cut, will never flourish or grow again.
The Victorians embraced the symbolic meaning of the cypress tree and wove it into their rituals of death and mourning. The tree was planted in cemeteries, forming cypress avenues; it was cut in swathes and would line a coffin, or be strewn across it, its fragrance sweetening the room. To announce a death, branches of cypress and other evergreens, emblems of immortality together, would be wound in a wreath with a black crape ribbon and hung on the door. The cypress combined with marigold (grief) would speak of great despair.
Once the funeral had taken place, the cypress would make its final appearance, as a small embossed image on a memorial card, serving as a reminder to the mourners to pray for the soul of the departed. Other symbols – an inverted torch (the extinguishing of life), a broken column, a serpent with its tail in its mouth (immortality) – would reinforce its meaning.
WHEN I AM DEAD, MY DEAREST
When I am dead, my dearest,
Sing no sad songs for me;
Plant thou no roses at my head,
Nor shady cypress tree:
Be the green grass above me
With showers and dewdrops wet;
And if thou wilt, remember,
And if thou wilt, forget.
I shall not see the shadows,
I shall not feel the rain;
I shall not hear the nightingale
Sing on, as if in pain:
And dreaming through the twilight
That doth not rise nor set,
Haply I may remember,
And haply may forget.
CHRISTINA ROSSETTI
DAFFODIL
New Beginnings
TO DAFFODILS
Fair Daffodils, we weep to see
You haste away so soon;
As yet the early-rising sun
Has not attain’d his noon.
Stay, stay,
Until the hasting day
Has run
But to the even-song;
And, having pray’d together, we
Will go with you along.
ROBERT HERRICK
The lovely golden daffodil is a welcome, heart-lifting sight, as it marks the end of winter and the beginning of a new season. It comes into full flower around Easter time, when thoughts turn towards the renewal of life and the Resurrection. It is also known as the Lent lily or the Easter lily.
The daffodil has grown in Britain in the wild since the sixteenth century, once colouring fields and meadows in great drifts and gradually creeping into cottage gardens. To the Victorians, the daffodil was a flower of the countryside, simple and natural, and had a great deal of folklore associated with it, as well as a host of jolly country names such as ‘Butter and Eggs’, a reference to the flower’s two-tone bright yellow colouring. Children welcomed the daffodil and the new season it proclaimed by singing:
‘Daffadowndilly has come to town
In a yellow petticoat and a red gown.’
An Easter postcard depicting a fresh-faced young country girl holding an armful of daffodils might be sent to a valued friend; or a bunch of the flowers purchased from one of the many florists’ shops around Covent Garden flower market would brighten up a cold spring day.
The daffodil appears in a very charming series of tiles designed by the artist Walter Crane entitled ‘Flora’s Train