WITHER ON THE VIRGIN STEM?

Evening Star, Issue 22454, 26 September 1936, Page 2

WITHER ON THE VIRGIN STEM?

f Written by Panaciie for tho ‘ Evening Star.’]

Although tho bulbs and seeds were bought with my money and fertilised with manure for which I paid; and though tho gardener collected from mo bis wages for digging the borders, and was fortified with my tea and buns while ho hoed, he holds to it that 1 should not pick the (lowers. The (lowers themselves seem to agree with him, for’ roses stab when they caii, and bo who would carry off unscratched a spray of japonica must twist dexterously and wear gloves. But in the house the rooms call out for (lowers. Osbert Sitwell declares that the practice of decorating houses with flowers came in with the Victorians. It is strange to think thht Shakespeare had no flowers inside his cottage, and that whatever the household duties of Milton’s wives and daughters, arranging llowors was not one of them. It is stranger that no courtier on bended knee ever held up to Elizabeth a bouncing bunch of tiger lilies, and that none of Mary Stuart’s three inadequate lovers over put violets in a goblet on her writing table.

One of the stories illustrative of the wisdom of Solomon shows that he had flowers in his palace, for he opened the windows to let the bees decide which were natural and which artificial; but the decorative value of those flowers is overshadowed by the anecdotal. Before the Victorian era mistletoe was hung up in houses, but its value was not Aesthetic so much as sociological; it was brought in not to beautify the hall but to give a fillip to the birth rate. Long before the nineteenth century boughs of hawthorn were broken off on May Day, but when the blanching flowers spilled over the floor and had to be swept up, housewives decided that hawthorn was unlucky in the home and relegated the flowers to the decoration of carts. Though our ancestors did not commonly decorate their houses with flowers, they did not refrain from any excess of sensibility. They were not specially considerate of flowers. Lovers lay on soft primrose beds, played with cowslip balls, and hung themselves with daisy chains. Titania stuck musk roses in the fair, sleek ears of Bottom. Knights rode into the lists with golden gilly-flowers in their helmets. Heifers without blemish were garlanded with flowers before being led to the saci'ifice, It rvas not until modern times that flowers were valued highly as gifts; it was not until the Tennysonian lady that withered violets were prized. Witness the celebrated instance of Ben Jonsoh’s rosy wreath. He sent it to his Celia; she breathed on it and sent it back. Those were the days when gifts were still on the ivory, apes, and peacock plane. Queen Elizabeth gave a ring to Essex, but Queen Victoria sent to Disraeli a basket of primroses from her own wood. It must have been the Industrial Revolutions that made it possible for the middle classes’ to have nice, refined feelings and send one another gifts of flowers. But the flowers suffered, wired and tortured, pinned in greasy buttonholes, laid to rest on hot bosoms where no head would lie in peace. Flowers may have been introduced into houses as part of the general Victorian junk, but they are now as essential to a room as horses and dogs to a typical English squire. It is done to have flowers, as it is done to have books. They have the social sanction. Whether they like it is another question. There has been talk of gas masks for dogs, but no device has been patented to protect flowers from the thick cigarette smoke that must torture them, though we have advanced so far as to offer them aspirin after a long journey through the post. Delicate flowers shrink from meal times, and when the blue candlebra of the grape hyacinths burns low on the dinner table, it is necessary for one’s self-respect to remember the manure that fed them. But when fading flowers are thrown out, it is useless to tell them it hurts us more than it hurts them. They look their reproach, and if put on the fire for a quick end they sizzle distressfully. The sole indoor advantage that can be offered to flowers is the background of a mirror, a privilege appreciated by those that have not grown beside a pool. One of tho many insults that flowers have to suffer in houses is being shaken up promiscuously with gypsophila. Carnations have often told me how they hate this fuzzy upstart, and how they prefer the distinction of their own grey-green blades. Sweet peas, too, have whispered how they resent these borrowed plumes. Wild flowers and ferns are at the mercy of vandals who tear them up and use them wantonly. Wordsworth saw ten thousand daffodils and did not pick one. He carried them in his inward eye where they never faded, as flowers will fade in even the coolest rooms with daily change of water. The duller-eyed require flowers for their tables, and have such short memories for spring that they are depressed by varnished berries and pussy willow refusing to grow up. An American woman suggests for a centrepiece “ shades of green, with cabbages, savoy cabbages, squash, peppers, okra, and English ivy surrounding a row of iron candlesticks graduated in height.” This is merely a slaughter of the less innocent, and no solution. it may have been reasonable not to pick flowers when people were more articulate than they are now. Flowers have never been denied to the dead, though tho scrupulous Milton apologised to tho laurels and myrtles ho disturbed. Dumb as we are, wc must pick flowers for the sick and the bereaved, and oven for the happiest when gardens overflow in spring.