THE VICTORIAN LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS

"Florigraphy" flourished in England in the 19th century and many flower dictionaries were published. As far as we know, the lists of meanings began in Turkey, were brought to France, and then to England and America. In France, a Mme Charlotte de la Tour, a nom de plume for Louise Corlambert, published one in Paris in 1818. There were eighteen editions in France and they were pirated in America and Spain.

These dictionaries were first mentioned and then popularized in England by Lady Mary Wortley Montague. She lived in Constantinople and wrote letters home which were published in 1763, after her death. Unlike the prudish Victorians, Lady Mary adopted the Middle Eastern language of flowers to express decidedly carnal desires. She wrote a friend at home in 1717 a Turkish love letter—the English of which is expressed by a pearl, a jonquil and a rose. The meaning is, "Fairest of the young/Have pity on my passion!…May you be pleased, and your sorrows mine." Lady Mary inspired the publication of many such dictionaries in England. The heyday of these books in England began in the days of George IV (the late 1700s and early 1800s) and ran through the 1840s, just after Victoria came to the throne. Americans lagged behind a bit, which is why I called the language "Victorian."

While the English nouveaux riche had the money to express themselves, they hadn’t the education. Hypocrisy could cloak some of the earthier sentiments. Flower language filled a need for them—one could say anything to a lover in the hopes that one’s spouse was ignorant of the language. There is a tale of a Frenchwoman whose husband understood the meaning of the flowers which his wife sent to her lover, and who then tried to drown her in the Seine. We don’t know which flowers she sent, but in the springtime they could have been fleur-de-lis, jonquil, and bay leaf—meaning, "Flame, I burn, I deserve a return of affection and I change but in death." Rescued by the lover, the two escaped and ran away to live happily ever after. One can imagine the influence of such stories in a more reticent age before sexual openness and radio and television.

One problem with the dictionaries is that no two books agreed on the meanings! There exist a handful of flowers whose meanings have remained the same from at least Shakespeare’s time. And there is evidence that flowers had meaning in Tutankhamen’s time in Egypt. A few that we all know are red rose for love, rosemary for remembrance, narcissus for egotism, and orange flower for chastity (which, of course, explains its use by brides). But for the vast majority of flowers, plants, and herbs, the meanings varied according to the author, probably relying on local usage. The language was a code and both sender and receiver needed the same code book in order for the meaning to be interpretable. Heaven help the sweethearts working from different codes!

The Victorians, unlike Lade Mary Wortley Montague and her contemporaries, cultivated gentility. So the majority of the messages sent and received by bouquet, tussy mussy, or wreath were the sweet vaporings of the young and inexperienced or the romantic, as in white clover for "Think of me", coreopsis for "Always cheerful", and garden ranunculus for "You are rich in attractions."
In reading through the meanings, I was reminded that death and disease were ever present in Victorian life, before modern medicine. And so we find such meanings as anemone for sickness/expectations, asphodel for "My regrets follow you to the grave", deep red carnation for "Alas for my poor heart", harebell for submission/grief, weeping willow for mourning, and thrift for sympathy.

Fade, Flow’rs! Fade, Nature will have it so;
‘Tis but what we must in our autumn do!
And as your leaves lie quiet on the ground,
The loss alone by those that lov’d them found,
So in the grave shall we as quiet lie,
Miss’d by some few that lov’d our company;
But some so like to thorns and nettles live,
That none for them can, when they perish grieve.

Edmund Waller

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