PAPAVER RHOEAS.
BRANTWOOD, _July 11th, 1875_.
1. Chancing to take up yesterday a favourite old book, Mavor's British
Tourists, (London, 1798,) I found in its fourth volume a delightful diary
of a journey made in 1782 through various parts of England, by Charles P.
Moritz of Berlin.
And in the fourteenth page of this diary I find the following passage,
pleasantly complimentary to England:--
"The slices of bread and butter which they give you with your tea are as
thin as poppy leaves. But there is another kind of bread and butter usually
eaten with tea, which is toasted by the fire, and is incomparably good.
This is called 'toast.'"
I wonder how many people, nowadays, whose bread and butter was cut too thin
for them, would think of comparing the slices to poppy leaves? But this was
in the old days of travelling, when people did not whirl themselves past
corn-fields, that they might have more time to walk on paving-stones; and
understood that {87} poppies did not mingle their scarlet among the gold,
without some purpose of the poppy-Maker that they should be looked at.
Nevertheless, with respect to the good and polite German's
poetically-contemplated, and finely æsthetic, tea, may it not be asked
whether poppy leaves themselves, like the bread and butter, are not, if we
may venture an opinion--_too_ thin,--im-_properly_ thin? In the last
chapter, my reader was, I hope, a little anxious to know what I meant by
saying that modern philosophers did not know the meaning of the word
'proper,' and may wish to know what I mean by it myself. And this I think
it needful to explain before going farther.
2. In our English prayer-book translation, the first verse of the
ninety-third Psalm runs thus: "The Lord is King; and hath put on glorious
apparel." And although, in the future republican world, there are to be no
lords, no kings, and no glorious apparel, it will be found convenient, for
botanical purposes, to remember what such things once were; for when I said
of the poppy, in last chapter, that it was "robed in the purple of the
Cæsars," the words gave, to any one who had a clear idea of a Cæsar, and of
his dress, a better, and even _stricter_, account of the flower than if I
had only said, with Mr. Sowerby, "petals bright scarlet;" which might just
as well have been said of a pimpernel, or scarlet geranium;--but of neither
of these latter should I have said "robed in purple of Cæsars." What I
meant was, first, that the poppy leaf {88} looks dyed through and through,
like glass, or Tyrian tissue; and not merely painted: secondly, that the
splendour of it is proud,--almost insolently so. Augustus, in his glory,
might have been clothed like one of these; and Saul; but not David, nor
Solomon; still less the teacher of Solomon, when He puts on 'glorious
apparel.'
3. Let us look, however, at the two translations of the same verse.
In the vulgate it is "Dominus regnavit; decorem indutus est;" He has put on
'becomingness,'--decent apparel, rather than glorious.
In the Septuagint it is [Greek: euprepeia]--_well_-becomingness; an
expression which, if the reader considers, must imply certainly the
existence of an opposite idea of possible '_ill_-becomingness,'--of an
apparel which should, in just as accurate a sense, belong appropriately to
the creature invested with it, and yet not be glorious, but inglorious, and
not well-becoming, but ill-becoming. The mandrill's blue nose, for
instance, already referred to,--can we rightly speak of this as '[Greek:
euprepeia]'? Or the stings, and minute, colourless blossoming of the
nettle? May we call these a glorious apparel, as we may the glowing of an
alpine rose?
You will find on reflection, and find more convincingly the more accurately
you reflect, that there is an absolute sense attached to such words as
'decent,' 'honourable,' 'glorious,' or '[Greek: kalos],' contrary to
another absolute sense in the words 'indecent,' 'shameful,' 'vile,' or
'[Greek: aischros].' {89}
And that there is every degree of these absolute qualities visible in
living creatures; and that the divinity of the Mind of man is in its
essential discernment of what is [Greek: kalon] from what is [Greek:
aischron], and in his preference of the kind of creatures which are decent,
to those which are indecent; and of the kinds of thoughts, in himself,
which are noble, to those which are vile.
4. When therefore I said that Mr. Darwin, and his school,[25] had no
conception of the real meaning of the word 'proper,' I meant that they
conceived the qualities of things only as their 'properties,' but not as
their becomingnesses;' and seeing that dirt is proper to a swine, malice to
a monkey, poison to a nettle, and folly to a fool, they called a nettle
_but_ a nettle, and the faults of fools but folly; and never saw the
difference between ugliness and beauty absolute, decency and indecency
absolute, glory or shame absolute, and folly or sense absolute.
[Illustration: FIG. 10.]
Whereas, the perception of beauty, and the power of defining physical
character, are based on moral instinct, and on the power of defining animal
or human character. Nor is it possible to say that one flower is more
highly developed, or one animal of a higher order, than another, without
the assumption of a divine law of perfection to which the one more conforms
than the other.
5. Thus, for instance. That it should ever have been an open question with
me whether a poppy had always {90} two of its petals less than the other
two, depended wholly on the hurry and imperfection with which the poppy
carries out its plan. It never would have occurred to me to {91} doubt
whether an iris had three of its leaves smaller than the other three,
because an iris always completes itself to its own ideal. Nevertheless, on
examining various poppies, as I have walked, this summer, up and down the
hills between Sheffield and Wakefield, I find the subordination of the
upper and lower petals entirely necessary and normal; and that the result
of it is to give two distinct profiles to the poppy cup, the difference
between which, however, we shall see better in the yellow Welsh poppy, at
present called Meconopsis Cambrica; but which, in the Oxford schools, will
be 'Papaver cruciforme'--'Crosslet Poppy,'--first, because all our
botanical names must be in Latin if possible; Greek only allowed when we
can do no better; secondly, because meconopsis is barbarous Greek; thirdly,
and chiefly, because it is little matter whether this poppy be Welsh or
English; but very needful that we should observe, wherever it grows, that
the petals are arranged in what used to be, in my young days, called a
diamond shape,[26] as at A, Fig. 10, the two narrow inner ones at right
angles to, and projecting farther than, the two outside broad ones; and
that the two broad ones, when the flower is seen in profile, as at B, show
their margins folded back, as indicated by the thicker lines, and have a
profile curve, which is only the softening, or melting away into each
other, of two straight lines. Indeed, when the flower is younger, and quite
strong, both its {92} profiles, A and B, Fig. 11, are nearly
straight-sided; and always, be it young or old, one broader than the other,
so as to give the flower, seen from above, the shape of a contracted cross,
or crosslet.
[Illustration: FIG. 11.]
6. Now I find no notice of this flower in Gerarde; and in Sowerby, out of
eighteen lines of closely printed descriptive text, no notice of its
crosslet form, while the petals are only stated to be "roundish-concave,"
terms equally applicable to at least one-half of all flower petals in the
{93} world. The leaves are _said_ to be very deeply pinnately partite; but
_drawn_--as neither pinnate nor partite!
[Illustration: FIG. 12.]
And this is your modern cheap science, in ten volumes. Now I haven't a
quiet moment to spare for drawing this morning; but I merely give the main
relations of the petals, A, and blot in the wrinkles of one of the lower
ones, B, Fig. 12; and yet in this rude sketch you will feel, I believe,
there is something specific which could not belong to any other flower. But
all proper description is {94} impossible without careful profiles of each
petal laterally and across it. Which I may not find time to draw for any
poppy whatever, because they none of them have well-becomingness enough to
make it worth my while, being all more or less weedy, and ungracious, and
mingled of good and evil. Whereupon rises before me, ghostly and untenable,
the general question, 'What is a weed?' and, impatient for answer, the
particular question, What is a poppy? I choose, for instance, to call this
yellow flower a poppy, instead of a "likeness to poppy," which the
botanists meant to call it, in their bad Greek. I choose also to call a
poppy, what the botanists have called "glaucous thing," (glaucium). But
where and when shall I stop calling things poppies? This is certainly a
question to be settled at once, with others appertaining to it.
7. In the first place, then, I mean to call every flower either one thing
or another, and not an 'aceous' thing, only half something or half another.
I mean to call this plant now in my hand, either a poppy or not a poppy;
but not poppaceous. And this other, either a thistle or not a thistle; but
not thistlaceous. And this other, either a nettle or not a nettle; but not
nettlaceous. I know it will be very difficult to carry out this principle
when tribes of plants are much extended and varied in type: I shall persist
in it, however, as far as possible; and when plants change so much that one
cannot with any conscience call them by their family name any more, I shall
put them aside somewhere among families of poor relations, not {95} to be
minded for the present, until we are well acquainted with the better bred
circles; I don't know, for instance, whether I shall call the Burnet
'Grass-rose,' or put it out of court for having no petals; but it certainly
shall not be called rosaceous; and my first point will be to make sure of
my pupils having a clear idea of the central and unquestionable forms of
thistle, grass, or rose, and assigning to them pure Latin, and pretty
English, names,--classical, if possible; and at least intelligible and
decorous.
8. I return to our present special question, then, What is a poppy? and
return also to a book I gave away long ago, and have just begged back
again, Dr. Lindley's 'Ladies' Botany.' For without at all looking upon
ladies as inferior beings, I dimly hope that what Dr. Lindley considers
likely to be intelligible to _them_, may be also clear to their very humble
servant.
The poppies, I find, (page 19, vol. i.) differ from crowfeet in being of a
stupifying instead of a burning nature, and in generally having two sepals
and twice two petals; "but as some poppies have three sepals, and twice
three petals, the number of these parts is not sufficiently constant to
form an essential mark." Yes, I know that, for I found a superb six-petaled
poppy, spotted like a cistus, the other day in a friend's garden. But then,
what makes it a poppy still? That it is of a stupifying nature, and itself
so stupid that it does not know how many petals it should have, is surely
not enough distinction?
9. Returning to Lindley, and working the matter {96} farther out with his
help, I think this definition might stand. "A poppy is a flower which has
either four or six petals, and two or more treasuries, united into one;
containing a milky, stupifying fluid in its stalks and leaves, and always
throwing away its calyx when it blossoms."
And indeed, every flower which unites all these characters, we shall, in
the Oxford schools, call 'poppy,' and 'Papaver;' but when I get fairly into
work, I hope to fix my definitions into more strict terms. For I wish all
my pupils to form the habit of asking, of every plant, these following four
questions, in order, corresponding to the subject of these opening
chapters, namely, "What root has it? what leaf? what flower? and what
stem?" And, in this definition of poppies, nothing whatever is said about
the root; and not only I don't know myself what a poppy root is like, but
in all Sowerby's poppy section, I find no word whatever about that matter.
10. Leaving, however, for the present, the root unthought of, and
contenting myself with Dr. Lindley's characteristics, I shall place, at the
head of the whole group, our common European wild poppy, Papaver Rhoeas,
and, with this, arrange the nine following other flowers thus,--opposite.
I must be content at present with determining the Latin names for the
Oxford schools; the English ones I shall give as they chance to occur to
me, in Gerarde and the classical poets who wrote before the English
revolution. When no satisfactory name is to be found, I must try to invent
one; as, for instance, just now, I don't like Gerarde's 'Corn-rose' for
Papaver Rhoeas, and must coin another; but this can't be done by thinking;
it will come into my head some day, by chance. I might try at it
straightforwardly for a week together, and not do it.
{97}
NAME IN OXFORD CATALOGUE. DIOSCORIDES. In present Botany.
1. Papaver Rhoeas [Greek: mêkôn rhoias] Papaver Rhoeas
2. P. Hortense [Greek: m. kêpeutê][27] P. Hortense
3. P. Elatum [Greek: m. thulakitis][28] P. Lamottei
4. P. Argemone P. Argemone
5. P. Echinosum P. Hybridum
6. P. Violaceum Roemeria Hybrida
7. P. Cruciforme Meconopsis Cambrica
8. P. Corniculatum [Greek: m. keratitis] Glaucium Corniculatum
9. P. Littorale [Greek: m. paralios] Glaucium Luteum
10. P. Chelidonium Chelidonium Majus
{98} The Latin names must be fixed at once, somehow; and therefore I do the
best I can, keeping as much respect for the old nomenclature as possible,
though this involves the illogical practice of giving the epithet sometimes
from the flower, (violaceum, cruciforme), and sometimes from the seed
vessel, (elatum, echinosum, corniculatum). Guarding this distinction,
however, we may perhaps be content to call the six last of the group, in
English, Urchin Poppy, Violet Poppy, Crosslet Poppy, Horned Poppy, Beach
Poppy, and Welcome Poppy. I don't think the last flower pretty enough to be
connected more directly with the swallow, in its English name.
11. I shall be well content if my pupils know these ten poppies rightly;
all of them at present wild in our own country, and, I believe, also
European in range: the head and type of all being the common wild poppy of
our cornfields for which the name 'Papaver Rhoeas,' given it by
Dioscorides, Gerarde, and Linnæus, is entirely authoritative, and we will
therefore at once examine the meaning, and reason, of that name.
12. Dioscorides says the name belongs to it "[Greek: dia to tacheôs to
anthos apoballein]," "because it casts off its bloom {99} quickly," from
[Greek: rheô,] (rheo) in the sense of shedding.[29] And this indeed it
does,--first calyx, then corolla;--you may translate it 'swiftly ruinous'
poppy, but notice, in connection with this idea, how it droops its head
_before_ blooming; an action which, I doubt not, mingled in Homer's thought
with the image of its depression when filled by rain, in the passage of the
Iliad, which, as I have relieved your memory of three unnecessary names of
poppy families, you have memory to spare for learning.
"[Greek: mêkôn d' hôs heterôse karê balen, hêt' eni kêpôi]
[Greek: karpôi brithomenê, notiêisi te eiarinêisin]
[Greek: hôs heterôs' êmuse karê pêlêki barunthen.]"
"And as a poppy lets its head fall aside, which in a garden is loaded with
its fruit, and with the soft rains of spring, so the youth drooped his head
on one side; burdened with the helmet."
And now you shall compare the translations of this passage, with its
context, by Chapman and Pope--(or the school of Pope), the one being by a
man of pure English temper, and able therefore to understand pure Greek
temper; the other infected with all the faults of the falsely classical
school of the Renaissance.
First I take Chapman:--
"His shaft smit fair Gorgythion of Priam's princely race
Who in Æpina was brought forth, a famous town in Thrace,
{100}
By Castianeira, that for form was like celestial breed.
And as a crimson poppy-flower, surcharged with his seed,
And vernal humours falling thick, declines his heavy brow,
So, a-oneside, his helmet's weight his fainting head did bow."
Next, Pope:--
"He missed the mark; but pierced Gorgythio's heart,
And drenched in royal blood the thirsty dart:
(Fair Castianeira, nymph of form divine,
This offspring added to King Priam's line).
As full-blown poppies, overcharged with rain,
Decline the head, and drooping kiss the plain,
So sinks the youth: his beauteous head, depressed
Beneath his helmet, drops upon his breast."
13. I give you the two passages in full, trusting that you may so feel the
becomingness of the one, and the gracelessness of the other. But note
farther, in the Homeric passage, one subtlety which cannot enough be marked
even in Chapman's English, that his second word, [Greek: êmuse], is
employed by him both of the stooping of ears of corn, under wind, and of
Troy stooping to its ruin;[30] and otherwise, in good Greek writers, the
word is marked as having such specific sense of men's drooping under
weight; or towards death, under the burden of fortune which they have no
more strength to sustain;[31] compare the passage {101} I quoted from
Plato, ('Crown of Wild Olive,' p. 95): "And bore lightly the burden of gold
and of possessions." {102} And thus you will begin to understand how the
poppy became in the heathen mind the type at once of power, or pride, and
of its loss; and therefore, both why Virgil represents the white nymph
Nais, "pallentes violas, et summa papavera carpens,"--gathering the pale
flags, and the highest poppies,--and the reason for the choice of this
rather than any other flower, in the story of Tarquin's message to his son.
14. But you are next to remember the word Rhoeas in another sense. Whether
originally intended or afterwards caught at, the resemblance of the word to
'Rhoea,' a pomegranate, mentally connects itself with the resemblance of
the poppy head to the pomegranate fruit.
And if I allow this flower to be the first we take up for careful study in
Proserpina, on account of its simplicity of form and splendour of colour, I
wish you also to remember, in connection with it, the cause of Proserpine's
eternal captivity--her having tasted a pomegranate seed,--the pomegranate
being in Greek mythology what the apple is in the Mosaic legend; and, in
the whole {103} worship of Demeter, associated with the poppy by a
multitude of ideas which are not definitely expressed, but can only be
gathered out of Greek art and literature, as we learn their symbolism. The
chief character on which these thoughts are founded is the fulness of seed
in the poppy and pomegranate, as an image of life: then the forms of both
became adopted for beads or bosses in ornamental art; the pomegranate
remains more distinctly a Jewish and Christian type, from its use in the
border of Aaron's robe, down to the fruit in the hand of Angelico's and
Botticelli's Infant Christs; while the poppy is gradually confused by the
Byzantine Greeks with grapes; and both of these with palm fruit. The palm,
in the shorthand of their art, gradually becomes a symmetrical branched
ornament with two pendent bosses; this is again confused with the Greek
iris, (Homer's blue iris, and Pindar's water-flag,)--and the Florentines,
in adopting Byzantine ornament, read it into their own Fleur-de-lys; but
insert two poppyheads on each side of the entire foil, in their finest
heraldry.
15. Meantime the definitely intended poppy, in late Christian Greek art of
the twelfth century, modifies the form of the Acanthus leaf with its own,
until the northern twelfth century workman takes the thistle-head for the
poppy, and the thistle-leaf for acanthus. The true poppy-head remains in
the south, but gets more and more confused with grapes, till the
Renaissance carvers are content with any kind of boss full of seed, but
insist on such boss {104} or bursting globe as some essential part of their
ornament;--the bean-pod for the same reason (not without Pythagorean
notions, and some of republican election) is used by Brunelleschi for main
decoration of the lantern of Florence duomo; and, finally, the
ornamentation gets so shapeless, that M. Violet-le-Duc, in his 'Dictionary
of Ornament,' loses trace of its origin altogether, and fancies the later
forms were derived from the spadix of the arum.
16. I have no time to enter into farther details; but through all this vast
range of art, note this singular fact, that the wheat-ear, the vine, the
fleur-de-lys, the poppy, and the jagged leaf of the acanthus-weed, or
thistle, occupy the entire thoughts of the decorative workmen trained in
classic schools, to the exclusion of the rose, true lily, and the other
flowers of luxury. And that the deeply underlying reason of this is in the
relation of weeds to corn, or of the adverse powers of nature to the
beneficent ones, expressed for us readers of the Jewish scriptures,
centrally in the verse, "thorns also, and thistles, shall it bring forth to
thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field" ([Greek: chortos], grass or
corn), and exquisitely symbolized throughout the fields of Europe by the
presence of the purple 'corn-flag,' or gladiolus, and 'corn-rose'
(Gerarde's name for Papaver Rhoeas), in the midst of carelessly tended
corn; and in the traditions of the art of Europe by the springing of the
acanthus round the basket of the canephora, strictly the basket _for
bread_, the idea of bread {105} including all sacred things carried at the
feasts of Demeter, Bacchus, and the Queen of the Air. And this springing of
the thorny weeds round the basket of reed, distinctly taken up by the
Byzantine Italians in the basketwork capital of the twelfth century, (which
I have already illustrated at length in the 'Stones of Venice,') becomes
the germ of all capitals whatsoever, in the great schools of Gothic, to the
end of Gothic time, and also of all the capitals of the pure and noble
Renaissance architecture of Angelico and Perugino, and all that was learned
from them in the north, while the introduction of the rose, as a primal
element of decoration, only takes place when the luxury of English
decorated Gothic, the result of that licentious spirit in the lords which
brought on the Wars of the Roses, indicates the approach of destruction to
the feudal, artistic, and moral power of the northern nations.
For which reason, and many others, I must yet delay the following out of
our main subject, till I have answered the other question, which brought me
to pause in the middle of this chapter, namely, 'What is a weed?'
* * * * *
{106}