The Language of Flowers
Victorian Floriography and the Messages of Plants
In a more sentimental era than this one, the Victorians invested flowers with their own language. It was hardly an original idea because flowers have always conjured up associations in every age: think of the personification of flowers to be found in Greek mythology. The story of Narcissus, for example, the youth who was turned into a flower when he admired his reflection in a pool. Or there is the symbolic adoption of flowers, notable in the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York.
Secret Messages Communicated by Gifts of Flowers
Under the reign of Queen Victoria the art of floriography imbued almost all plants with particular meanings so that the gift of a bouquet became a coded message allowing the restrained Victorians to communicate their ardent feelings in a veiled way. This vogue gave rise to the publication of an extensive number of floriography dictionaries to record the definitions and subtle nuances of all plants. The floriographies were descendants of the literary almanac. They initially included a calendar and were published as New Year's gift books. Without the inclusion of a calendar, the book was suitable for other occasions and it evolved into the gift flower book.
Complexity of Floral Etiquette
John Ingram's Flora Symbolica (1869) dealt with the gravity of floral etiquette, an indication of the complexity implicit in unravelling such an enigmatic code. The red rose seems always to have been a symbol of love but if it were too dark a shade of red it could signify shame; too light, almost pink, then the message could imply a desire to keep the love secret. Handing over flowers with the right hand meant "yes", while with the left meant "no", so if a beau gave red roses the young lady might reciprocate by extracting one and handing it back with her right, or send him packing with a bud from her left. Inverted flowers represented the opposite of the usual meaning. If this reliance upon the conventions of floriography is to be believed, then young lovers must have been involved in a fair amount of academic study to understand each other!
America too was gripped with a similar floral passion at this time, and Elizabeth Gamble Wirt's Flora's Dictionary (1829) interpreted spiderwort as saying "I esteem, but do not love you", the Persian buttercup meant "I am dazzled by your charms", while ivy geranium's message was "your hand for the next quadrille".
Confusing Messages where Floriography Dictionaries inconsistent
Some flowers acquired multiple and contradictory meanings. The amaryllis could signify pride or timidity. Delphiniums indicated either a flight of fancy or an ardent attachment and lavender could impart distrust or loyalty. In order to make sense of what your flowers were saying the giver and the recipient would really need to be in possession of the same dictionary. Beverly Seaton has pointed out in The Language of Flowers: A History (1995) that the contemporary notion of a socially agreed upon symbolic language used by men and women to pass messages of love to each other is probably a misconception.
Flowers certainly occupied a notable position in Victorian times, when gardens became widely popular due to an increase in leisure time, new technologies and more diverse plant stock. Floral decoration was everywhere on stationery, fabric, ceiling roses, wallpaper and needlepoint. Whether or not historians have exaggerated the Victorians' reliance upon floriography as a means of communication the language of flowers continues to intrigue and entertain.
what's the message?
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Newby Hall
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