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Certain Personal Matters - The Language of Flowers · The H. G. Wells Library

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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine of Certain Personal Matters. This is a LibriVox recording.
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  Speaker 1: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
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  Speaker 1: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
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  Speaker 1: by Graham Scott, Cheltenham, England. Certain Personal Matters by H. G. Wells.
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  Speaker 1: The Language of Flowers. During the early Victorian Revival of chivalry,
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  Speaker 1: the language of flowers had some considerable vogue. The Romeo
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  Speaker 1: of the mutton chop whiskers was expected to keep this
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  Speaker 1: delicate symbolism in view, and even to display his wit
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  Speaker 1: by some dainty conceits in it. An ignorance of the
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  Speaker 1: code was fraught with innumerable dangers. A sprig of lilac
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  Speaker 1: was a suggestion, a moss rose bud pushed the matter
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  Speaker 1: was indeed evidence to go to courtpon and unless Charlotte
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  Speaker 1: parried with white poplar, are by no means accessible flower
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  Speaker 1: or apricot blossom, or failing these dabbed cooling dock leaf
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  Speaker 1: at the fellow. He was at her with culip heliotrope,
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  Speaker 1: and honeysuckle, peach blossom, white jonquill and pink and a
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  Speaker 1: really overpowering and suffocating host of attentions. I suppose he
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  Speaker 1: got at last to three cornered notes in the vernacular.
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  Speaker 1: And meanwhile, what could a poor girl do? There was
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  Speaker 1: no downright no in the language of flowers, nothing equivalent
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  Speaker 1: to go away, please, no flower for idiot. The only
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  Speaker 1: possible defense was something in this way, your cruelty causes
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  Speaker 1: me sorrow, your absence is a pleasure. For this, according
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  Speaker 1: to the code of mister Thomas Miller, third edition, eighteen
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  Speaker 1: forty one, with elegantly colored plates, you would have to
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  Speaker 1: get a sweet pea blossom for pleasure, wormwood for absence,
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  Speaker 1: and indicate sorrow by the you, and cruelty by the
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  Speaker 1: stinging nettle. There is always a little risk of mixing
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  Speaker 1: your predicates in this kind of communication, and he might,
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  Speaker 1: for instance, read that his absence caused you sorrow, but
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  Speaker 1: he could scarcely miss the point of the stinging nettle.
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  Speaker 1: That and the gorse carefully concealed were about the only
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  Speaker 1: gleams of humor possible in the language. But then it
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  Speaker 1: was the appointed tongue of lovers. And while their sickness
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  Speaker 1: is upon them, they have neither humor nor wit. This
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  Speaker 1: mister Thomas Miller wrote, abundant flowers of language in his book,
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  Speaker 1: and the plates were colored by hand, by the bye,
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  Speaker 1: what a blessed thing color printing is. These hand tinted plates,
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  Speaker 1: to an imaginative person are about as distressing as any
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  Speaker 1: plates can very well be. Whenever I look at these
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  Speaker 1: triumphs of art over the beauties of nature, with all
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  Speaker 1: their weary dabs of crimson, green, blue and yellow, I
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  Speaker 1: think of wretched, anemic girls fading their youth away in
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  Speaker 1: some dismal attic over a publisher's toiling through the whole edition,
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  Speaker 1: tint by tint, and being mocked the while by mister
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  Speaker 1: Miller's alliterative erotics. And they are erotics. In one place,
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  Speaker 1: he writes beautiful art, thou, oh broom on the breezy
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  Speaker 1: bosom of the bee haunted heath, and throughout he buds
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  Speaker 1: and blossoms into similar delights. He wallows in doves and
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  Speaker 1: coy toyings and modest blushes and bowers and meads. He
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  Speaker 1: always adds wonderful boy to Chatterton's name, as if it
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  Speaker 1: were a university degree w B. And he invariably refers
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  Speaker 1: to Moore as the Bard of Erin, and to Milton
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  Speaker 1: as the Bard of Paradise, though Bard of the Bottomless
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  Speaker 1: Pit would be more appropriate. However, we are not concerned
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  Speaker 1: with mister Miller's language so much as with a very
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  Speaker 1: fruitful suggestion. He throws out that it is surely worthwhile
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  Speaker 1: to trace a re embleance between the flower and the emblem.
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  Speaker 1: It represents. A turn like that is nothing to mister Miller,
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  Speaker 1: which shall at least have some show of reason in it.
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  Speaker 1: Come to think of it, there is something singularly unreasonable
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  Speaker 1: about almost all floral symbolism. There as you'll forget me
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  Speaker 1: not pink in the bud, and sapphire in the flower,
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  Speaker 1: with a fruit that breaks up into four the very
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  Speaker 1: picture of inconstancy and discursiveness. Yet your lover, with a
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  Speaker 1: singular blindness, presents this to his lady when they part. Then,
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  Speaker 1: the white water lily is supposed to represent purity of
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  Speaker 1: heart and mark you. It is white without and its
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  Speaker 1: center is all set about with innumerable golden stamens, while
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  Speaker 1: in the middle lies, to quote the words of that
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  Speaker 1: distinguished botanist mister Oliver, a fleshy disk. Could there be
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  Speaker 1: a better type of sordid and mercenary deliberation maintaining a
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  Speaker 1: fair appearance the tender apple blossom. Rather than pretense, he
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  Speaker 1: is surely a reminder of Eden and the fall of
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  Speaker 1: love's devotion into inflated worldliness. The poppy, which flaunts its
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  Speaker 1: violent colours athwart the bearded corn, and which frets and
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  Speaker 1: withers like the second Missus Tankerey, so soon as you
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  Speaker 1: bring it to the shelter of a decent home, is
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  Speaker 1: made the symbol of repose. One might almost think Amy
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  Speaker 1: Martin and the other great authorities on this subject wrote,
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  Speaker 1: in a mood of irony, the daisy too presents you innocence,
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  Speaker 1: companion of the milk white lamb. Mister Miller calls it.
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  Speaker 1: I am sorry for the milk white lamb. It was
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  Speaker 1: one of the earliest discoveries of systematic botany that the
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  Speaker 1: daisy is a fraud, a complicated imposta. The daisy is
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  Speaker 1: not a flower at all. It is a favorite trap
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  Speaker 1: in botanical examinations, a snare for artless young men entering
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  Speaker 1: the medical profession. Each of the little yellow things in
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  Speaker 1: the center of the daisy is a flower in itself.
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  Speaker 1: If you look at one with a lene and you
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  Speaker 1: will find it not unlike a cowslip flower, and the
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  Speaker 1: white rays outside are a great deal more than the
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  Speaker 1: petals they ought to be. If the innocence theory is
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  Speaker 1: to hold good, there is no such thing as an
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  Speaker 1: innocent flower. There are all so many deliberate advertisements to
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  Speaker 1: catch the eye of the undecided bee. But any flower
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  Speaker 1: almost is simpler than this one. We would make it
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  Speaker 1: the emblem of artistic deception, and the confidence trick expert
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  Speaker 1: should wear it as his crest. The violet again, is
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  Speaker 1: a greatly overrated exemplar. It stimulates a certain bashfulness, hangs
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  Speaker 1: its head, and past as modest among our simple grandparents.
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  Speaker 1: Its special merit is its perfume, and it pretends to
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  Speaker 1: wish to hide that from every eye. But with all
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  Speaker 1: the fragrance is as far reaching as any I know.
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  Speaker 1: It droops ingenuously. How could you come to me, it
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  Speaker 1: seems to say, when all these really brilliant flowers in
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  Speaker 1: vine Mere, fishing for compliments, all the while it is
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  Speaker 1: being sweet to the very best of its undeniable ability.
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  Speaker 1: Then it comes to in early spring without a chaperone,
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  Speaker 1: and catches our hearts fresh before they are jaded with
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  Speaker 1: the crowded beauties of may. A really modest flower would
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  Speaker 1: wait for the other flowers to come first. A subtle
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  Speaker 1: affectation is surely a different thing from modesty. The violet
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  Speaker 1: is simply artful the young widow among flowers, And to
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  Speaker 1: hold up such a flower as an example is not
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  Speaker 1: doing one's duty by the young For true modesty, commend
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  Speaker 1: me to the agave, which flowers only once in half
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  Speaker 1: a hundred years, as one may see for oneself of
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  Speaker 1: the raw botanical gardens. Enough has been said to show
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  Speaker 1: what scope there is for revision of this sentimental volapook.
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  Speaker 1: Mister Martin himself scarcely goes so far as I have done,
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  Speaker 1: though I have merely worked out his suggestion. His only
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  Speaker 1: revolutionary proposal is to displace the wind star by the
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  Speaker 1: raief Primrose for forsaken, on the strength of a quotation
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  Speaker 1: familiar to every reader of Mason's Little text Book on
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  Speaker 1: the English Language. For the rest. He followed his authorities,
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  Speaker 1: and has followed them now to the remote recesses of
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  Speaker 1: the literary lumber room and into the Tutney book box.
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  Speaker 1: From that receptacle, one copy of him was disinterred only
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  Speaker 1: a day or so ago, A hundred and seventy pages
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  Speaker 1: of prose chiefly illiterative, several colored plates, enthusiastic pencil markings
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  Speaker 1: of a vanished somebody, and besides an early Victorian flavor
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  Speaker 1: of dust, and a dim vision of a silent conversation
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  Speaker 1: in a sunlit flower garden. Altogether, I think very cheap.
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  Speaker 1: At Tutton's the fashion has changed altogether now. In these
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  Speaker 1: days we season our love making with talk about heredity, philanthropy,
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  Speaker 1: and sanitation, and present one another with fabian publications instead
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  Speaker 1: of wild flower. But in the end, I fancy the
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  Speaker 1: business comes to very much the same thing. End of
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  Speaker 1: Chapter nine