ON FLORAL ATTRACTIVENESS AND COLOUR
“We, having a secret to others unknown,
In the cool mountain-mosses,
May whisper together ...”
HENRY KENDALL, _September in Australia_.
Our knowledge of life behind the balder manifestations of life is
as yet so deficient that it would be pure conceit to pretend more
than lightly to suggest certain thoughts that may possibly commence
to explain something of the affinity existing between ourselves and
the flowers. That such an affinity does actually exist there appears
sufficient evidence to warrant our believing, and no one, I imagine,
with an interested eye for these matters, would care to pronounce
against this evidence without making careful reservations. And if this
affinity exists for one it exists for all, though in some, because of
the variable nature of the human mechanism, it is less demonstrable
than in others. Nor does it show itself merely in our admiration and
care for the flowers; there are many instances of its appearing in a
form which borders upon the “uncanny”—a form of that universal and
universally sympathetic subconsciousness which Psychology is doing its
best to investigate.
Thoreau in one of his Essays mentions how that one day he wished to
find a certain rare orchid, but had no idea in which direction to
seek it; and, setting out in this blind state of mind, his steps took
him straight to the very object of his quest. Of course those in whom
prejudice is a more real possession than open-mindedness will dismiss
such evidence as pointing to mere coincidence or to an unmistakable
case of chance. They will say the same, too, of the instance mentioned
by Mr. H. Stuart Thompson in an article, “Ten Days in Co. Kerry,”
which appeared in the _Gardeners’ Chronicle_ for October 22, 1910.
“My companion,” says Mr. Thompson, “makes no claim to be a botanist,
but he has an innate faculty for finding good plants if they are to
be found; and let it be said here that during a ski-ing holiday in
Switzerland last winter he managed to grub up through the snow quite
a wonderful collection of interesting Alpines which are succeeding
capitally on his rockery.” This will also be called coincidence; but
there is, I believe, far less justification for doing so than for
calling it sympathy. Personally, I have more liking for design in
these matters than I have for luck. Surely it were a poor world—nay,
an impossible world—that were governed by chance in whatsoever degree.
Evolution may know no “categorical imperative” and yet be a stranger
to aimless drifting. The law of cause and effect seems to guarantee
this. And is it not also guarantee of a universal sympathy, since the
prime essential of this law is that all things are linked up in one
continuous chain?
[Illustration: The AUTUMN CROCUS in the fields near the village of
Trient, with the Aiguille du Tour in the background, September. ]
My own experience among the flowers biases me in favour of this
sympathetic rule and causes me to believe there is some means by
which our several beings can communicate. On many occasions I have
been led, with seeming intention, to some rare white form that I was
wishing to find. Apparent purposelessness and lack of decision have
filled my mind, and yet, time after time, have I taken the very path,
or have scrambled up the precise trackless slope which has brought me
to the whereabouts of the rarity I have been seeking. On other
occasions I have been arrested in my walk and in the midst of quite
other thoughts of my own or of some conversation with a companion
by an impelling impression that a floral rarity was in my immediate
neighbourhood. I have noticed, too, that this seeming guidance has
invariably happened in connection with white flowers—the white form
of _Rhododendron ferrugineum_, for instance, or of _Gentiana excisa_,
or of _Soldanella alpina_, or of _Viola calcarata_, or of _Aster
alpinus_. It may sound preposterously mystical, but I do really
suspect that I have found these uncommon or rare flowers—perhaps there
was only one specimen within the district for miles round—by something
in their nature being in tune with something in mine. I do not imagine
success would attend upon conscious effort, my own experience being
that the promptings have come without any striving on my part. I have
had most mixed and unconvincing results and many total failures when
experiment has been conducted upon such lines as one might follow
with a water-finder. I am aware that however much in earnest one may
be in speaking of this class of phenomena, it is difficult to appear
reasonable; for the matter is so wrapped in haze. I can only repeat
that the thing has happened to me when I have been least expecting it.
I remember one case in particular, when I was rambling with a friend
upon the rapid slopes of Dent de Bonnavaux, near Champéry. I was
longing to find the white form of _Gentiana asclepiadea_, the Willow
Gentian, about which I had been reading. We had arrived where this
Gentian was growing in profusion in a semi-shade afforded by giant
cliffs, and had proceeded nearly to the foot of the Pas d’Encel,
when, feeling suddenly persuaded that the plant I wanted was near by,
I called a halt. My friend said, “Oh, let’s get on; there’s nothing
here!” But I begged for indulgence. “I feel,” said I, “that the white
form of the blue Gentian is growing hereabouts, and I’m going to hunt
it up.” For some time I scrambled about without the required result,
and I was beginning to suspect that I was being prompted more by a
fussy imagination than an intuitive sympathy; and yet I felt unable
to abandon the search, and determined not to do so until I had gone
all over the ground twice. And then, at last—Eureka! there amongst
the grasses behind a big boulder were two lovely sprays of purest
white! Now, it was not as if this were the first time that I had been
amongst this Gentian; many times before, and in many districts, had I
passed through quantities of it; but never had I seen any variation
except in the depth and brightness of the blue, and never before had
I experienced the sensation of the near presence of its white form.
Nor can I recall any occasion when this sensation has played me false.
Over and over again have I felt it, and with whatever plant it has
been associated it has invariably proved truthfully prophetic. Will
coincidence or luck satisfactorily account for this? I am unable to
think so, though I confess I must exclaim as Faust does:
“Lo! here I sit no wiser than before”!
But now that we are thus far, let us grope a little further within
the dim-lit domain of subconsciousness; I would fain touch upon a
matter closely allied to the foregoing—that of the significance of
the colour of flowers, and the part played by colour in the sympathy
existing between the flowers and ourselves. Let us first of all
speculate briefly upon the significance of floral colouring. Speaking
vaguely—and who can speak with any very great distinctness?—colour is
one of many manifestations of one and the same fundamental condition.
Sound is another; odour another. Our five senses, in fact, appear to
deal with the self-same set of fundamental truths and to translate
them differently: possibly upon the principle that variety is charming
and is much more likely to arouse our complete inquisitiveness,
ending ultimately in our thorough appreciation, than would these
vital truths if brought to our notice in just a single form. There
are people to whom odours represent colours; there are others to whom
Wagnerian music is largely coloured by scarlet and all other reds,
and to whom the note of the blackbird is magenta and purple, and that
of the greenfinch yellow. There is, too, a case recorded by the late
Professor Lombroso, where a girl could see things with the tip of her
nose; Miss Helen Keller, blind, deaf, and dumb, can feel if a person
is dark or fair; and it is said that recently in Germany there was
a man who, having undergone an operation upon his head, was, after
recovery, obliged to seek the peace and comfort of a dark cellar on
fine days, because he could hear the sun shining. Without staking the
soundness of my argument upon this last quotation, there would seem
enough evidence in the world to assure us that our senses deal with
one and the same set of realities, and that colour, sound, and odour
have birth in a self-same cause. What, then, are these realities;
what, then, is this cause in relation with ourselves and the flowers;
and what part does colour play therein?
Of course, I am supposing that colour is really in the flowers and
not in us or in the bee, as was suggested a few years ago by an
American _savant_. I am unable to think that either myself or a bee
can determine the white form of some blue Gentian, some rose-pink
Ononis (Rest-Harrow), or some yellow Primrose. If colour is not in
the flower, then neither is it in a lady’s dress, nor in a nation’s
flag, nor in a picture. What reason should the world and his wife
have for unanimously declaring a dress to be brown and purple if, in
reality, it is no colour at all—if, that is to say, it is black, or
the highest refinement of black, which is white? How comes it that
a whole nation with one accord looks upon its flag as a combination
of red, white, and blue when, in reality, it is simply a design in
black and white? What are we doing by painting our hives a variety of
bright colours in order to lead the bees safely home, if paint is no
colour and bees can colour the hives as they will? It is beyond me; I
imagine it is beyond my readers; and I suspect that if the truth were
known it was even beyond the American _savant_ in his less imaginative
moments. Maybe things are not what they seem, but can this be possible
to the extent implied by our Western cousin? I know, of course,
that we do largely befool ourselves; I know that in part measure we
are “All valiant dust that builds on dust”; but I cannot believe we
befool ourselves to the extent of painting pictures every imaginable
tint when, really and truly, all this colour is in ourselves. I,
personally, am old-fashioned enough to think that when I squeeze
gamboge out upon my palette I undoubtedly have there a yellow, not a
colourless pigment. And I imagine that a bee thinks the same when he
flies, as frequently he will, head-foremost into it, believing it to
be a buttercup or a marigold.
Yes, I am presuming that we human beings, endowed though we are with
abundant powers of which we are greatly unconscious, have little
enough to do with a flower’s being mauve or orange; and it is upon
this possibly antiquated and false understanding that I ask myself,
What tale has the colour of flowers to tell us? In the first place,
I am not sure that I am content to see white appearing solely between
yellow and pink in Dr. Percy Groom’s scale of floral colour; the scale
does not look quite true, running in the following order: yellow,
white, pink, red, crimson, violet, blue. I should be more content if
the order ran like this: white, blue, green, yellow, orange, red,
violet, blue, white; for scales such as these, if continued, form a
circle, a complete and continuous whole. They cannot rightly be cut
up into abrupt sections of straight lines if they are to tell the
whole truth. The green flowers appear to stand as proof of this, for
they draw their tint from both extremities of the scale—from blue,
the highest of primal colours, and from yellow, the lowest; they link
up the extremities and complete the circle; they have no definite
qualities, but are at once high and lowly.
If we start with the lowliest of flowers of clean-cut individuality,
it must be with the yellow ones; and yellow stands for the dawn of
definite life. After that, for flowers of distinct position, we must
go to the red ones, those of orange tints being intermediary; and
with red we reach the fulfilment of animal or worldly vigour. From
this point onwards, through magenta, lilac, mauve, violet, purple,
refinement is increasingly marked until blue is reached. Then blue,
starting darkly, advances to “Cambridge” tints, and so into white.
Now white is the “colour” of which we know the least—and talk the
most. Really, it indicates nothing—that which is as “a bunghole
without a barrel round it”—and of this, naturally, we can have but a
very inaccurate appreciation. We speak glibly about white, and we soar
with it to giddy, dreamy heights, but we speak and mostly dream of
colour not of white. For—
“Life, like a dome of many-coloured glass,
Stains the white radiance of eternity.”
We talk of snow as if it were of no colour; but we are able to talk
about it only because it is so colour-full. We talk arrogantly of
ourselves as “white people,” and we are able to do so because we are
not white people, but people with a rude amount of red in us—“animals
with red cheeks,” as Nietzsche calls us; indeed, it is possible that
the negro has more right to call himself a white man, for he is nearer
to black than we are to white, and, according to the well-known
formula, “Black is white, white is black, and black is no colour
at all.”
[Illustration: _ANEMONE SULPHUREA_ and _GENTIANA EXCISA_, painted
directly in the fields at the end of May. ]
But what part does white play amongst the flowers? To begin with,
I believe we have no right to restrict it to one particular
place—between yellow and red. It would seem to have no precise
position in the scale, for it is found appearing here, there, and
everywhere along the line. It occurs amongst all colours, but if it
has one more permanent place than another, that place is outside
the line of colour altogether; and white, as a permanency, is an
extreme. The appearance of a white form is often hailed as a case
of anæmia in the coloured type; and no doubt this is so frequently,
though it cannot be so always. Where a white form is the issue of
a blue type-flower, such as a Gentian or a Campanula, it is most
probable that it is a case of natural evolution, and that such a white
plant is no more anæmic than is anything which arrives naturally,
progressively, upon the higher plane of being. We of a lower plane
are not a little apt to regard as weaklings things which emerge upon
the higher plane. Certainly a white flower is not necessarily “too
good to live.” If it be issue of a blue type-flower, it is more likely
than not to be in every way well bred. Where, however, it is issue
of a yellow or a red type-flower, then I think we are justified in
suspecting anæmia, for yellow or red must pass through blue before it
can healthily and with all warrant emerge as white. There are no leaps
in progressive evolution; soundness is sequence.
Now in no instance, I think, have I been influenced by the unknown
presence of yellow or of red as I have by that of white and sometimes
of blue flowers. Why should this be: why should the influence of white
be more remarkable than that of yellow? Is it not probable that in
special cases the human organism is in pronouncedly sympathetic accord
with the organism of flowers, in some such way as there is sympathetic
attunement between transmitter and receiver in wireless telegraphy?
Is it not possible that some natures are attuned to blue and white
flowers, and will ignore yellow or red ones, while other natures are
in accord with yellow or red flowers and are unresponsive to blue and
white ones? I know of a judge at local flower shows who invariably,
and without much demur, gave first prize to the table decoration
containing scarlet; and if such a decoration was mainly composed
of the Oriental Poppy it secured the top award without a moment’s
hesitation. Is it not possible that this judge was in sympathetic
attune with scarlet; is it not possible that, were he to have been
blindfolded, and set down in a field of blue Cornflowers with one red
Poppy hidden away amongst them, he would at once have been persuaded
of the Poppy’s presence?
Thus we end upon a question mark. But let us not feel abashed. “A
man is wise,” says Oliver Goldsmith, “while he continues in pursuit
of wisdom, but when he once fancies that he has found the object of
his inquiry he then becomes a fool.” Let us find comfort in this
dictum, and confess that we have discovered scarcely a trace of that
for which we have been inquiring. Cardinal Newman once observed that
men know less of animals than they do of angels, and I think we may
safely put the flowers by the side of the animals—especially when our
knowledge deals, as it has here been dealing, with that mysterious
subconsciousness which is the domain of angels. Familiarity is the
much-travelled road to ignorance. We often deny to familiar things
qualities that we stoutly insist belong to things of which we know
really nothing. The flowers are too obvious, too near to us to share
the intimacy in which we live with things hidden and secret. Even we
ourselves suffer in this manner, and we deny to ourselves qualities we
“see” and “know” in what we cannot see and do not know. What a very
curious blend of contradictions we are! In one and the same breath we
will unduly belaud and unduly belittle ourselves; but we are no more
the restricted creatures of our fancy than we are the centre and hub
of the universe. Although, manifestly short-sighted, we stumble about
in most awkward fashion, still we are delicately receptive of subtle,
moving influences. We are instruments of far-reaching powers, but we
look upon ourselves as freer agents than the case warrants. We imagine
we go here and go there entirely of our own volition, yet if we were
really such lonely automatons as this we should be immeasurably more
stupid than we are.
It must not surprise us, then, if Science some day convinces us that
both in thought and in action we are moved by many things with which
we now say we have no connection, and that amongst these things will
be found the flowers; it must not astonish us if such a phrase as “The
Call of the Wild” is possessed of an intrinsic meaning, the fulness
and scope of which we now consider it an eccentric folly to admit.
There is a wondrous education in store for us. We are, actually, in
our right place, but we know little of how or why. When some day our
eyes are opened more widely to the forces that direct our lives, we
shall be humbler than at present. But we shall be happier. And I
venture to predict that few things will help more materially towards
this greater happiness than will a real and knowing intimacy with the
flowers.