There is a sheltered nook in a certain garden, where, on a sunny spring
morning, the passer-by inhales with startled pleasure the very soul of
the 'sweet south,' and, stooping down, far in among brown and crackling
leaves, lo the blue hoods of English violets! The fragrance of the
violet! What flower scent is like it? Does not the subtle
sweetness--half caught, half lost upon the wind--at times sweep over one
a vague and thrilling tenderness, an exquisite emotion, partly grief and
partly mild delight?
The violet is the poet's darling, perhaps because its frail breath seems
to waft from out the delicate blue petals the rare imaginings native to
a poet's soul.
May it not be that thus, in the eloquence of perfume, it is but
rendering to him who can best respond thereto, a revelation of its inner
essences?--showing, to him who can comprehend the sign, a reason why it
grows.
Is this too fanciful? Certainly the violet was not made in vain--and in
the Eternal Correspondence known to higher intelligences than our own,
there surely must exist a grand and beautiful Flower lore, wherein each
blossom has an individual word to speak, a lesson to unfold, by form and
coloring, and, more than all, by exhaled fragrance.
Doubtless there is a mystery here too deep for us in this gross world to
wholly understand; but can we not search after knowledge? Would we not
like to grasp an enjoyment less merely of the senses from the geranium's
balm and the mayflower's spice?
And notice here how strongly association binds us by the sense of
smell--the sense so closely connected with the brain that, through its
instrumentality, the mind, it is said, is quickest reached, is soonest
moved. So that when perfumes quiver through us, are we oftenest
constrained to blush and smile, or shrink and shiver. Perhaps through
perfumes also memory knocks the loudest on our heart-doors; until it has
come to pass that unto scented handkerchief or withering leaf has been
given full power to fire the eye or blanch the cheek; while from secret
drawers one starts appalled at flower breaths, stifling, shut up long
ago. The sprays themselves might drop unheeded down--dead with the young
hopes that laid them there--but the old-time emotion wraps one yet in
that undying--ah, how sickening! fragrance.
So in the very nature of the task proposed is couched assistance, since
thus to the breath of the flowers does association lend its own
interpretation, driving deep the sharpest stings or dropping down the
richest consolation through the most humble plants. But is this the end
of the matter? Is there not, apart from all that our personal interest
may discover, in each flower an unchanging address all its own--an
unvaried salutation proffered ever to the world at large? Why is a
passion wafted through a nosegay? What purifies the air around a lily?
And why are bridal robes rich with orange blooms?
Surely poetry and tradition have but here divined certain truths,
omnipotent behind a veil, and recognized their symbols in these chosen
blossoms?
But if the flowers are truly types, how should they be interpreted?
There are hints laid in their very structure and outer semblance, hints
afforded also by art and romance from time immemorial; and all these,
suggestions of the hidden wisdom, must be gathered patiently and wrought
out to a fuller clearness, through careful attention to the intuitions
of one's own awakened imagination.
But what expression can be found for the _soul_ of a flower--for the
evanescent odor that floats upon us only with the dimmest mists of
meaning?
In a novel of a few years since, a people dwelling in Mid Africa are
described as skilled in the acts of a singular civilization, and
especial mention is made of an instrument analogous to an organ, but
which evoked perfumes instead of musical sounds. A curious idea, but
possibly giving the nearest representation to be made of the effect of
odor: by its help, then, by regarding flowers as instruments whose
fragrant utterances might be as well conveyed in music, we may be able
to translate aright the effluence that stirs beyond the reach of speech.
Let us now try to distinguish, if only for a pleasant pastime, some few
favorite strains in those wonderful, _unheard_ melodies with which our
gardens ring.
Hear first the roses. The beautiful blush rose, opening fresh and rosy
on a dewy June morning, echoes gleefully the birds' 'secret jargoning.'
The saffron tea-rose is an exotic of exotics, and the daintiest of fine
ladies bears it in her jewelled fingers to the opera, and there imbues
it with the languid ecstasy of an Italian melody. The aroma, floating
round those creamy buds, vibrates to the impassioned agony of artistic
luxury--to the pleasurable pain that dies away in rippling undulations
of the tones.
But the red rose is dyed deep with simpler passion. War notes are hers,
but not trumpet tongued, as they pour from out the fiery cactus. No; it
is as if a woman's heart thrilled through the red rose to sadden the
reveille for country and for God!--an irrepressible undertone of
mourning surging over the anguish that must surely come.
Love songs belong, too, to the damask rose, but love still set to
martial chords, wrung, as it were, from heroes' wives, in a rapture of
patriotic sacrifice.
The white roses are St. Cecilia's, and swell to organ strains; all but
that whitest rose, so wan and fragile, which haunts old shady gardens,
and never seems to have been there when all things were in their prime,
but to have blossomed out of the surrounding decay and fading
loveliness. From its bowed head falls drearily upon the ear a low lament
over the departed life it would commemorate.
With roses comes the honeysuckle--the real New England one--brimful of
nutmeg; and the sweetbriar, piquant with a _L'Allegro_ strain left by
Milton. Then the laburnum, which, dripping gold, drips honey likewise,
and the locust clusters, and the wistaria, dropping lusciousness.
These are all joy-bells evidently, outbursts of the bliss of nature, but
the garb of the wistaria is more sober than her brilliant sisters, whose
attire is bright and shining.
There are flowers that seem set to sacred music. Lilies, white and
sweet, which, from the Lily of the Annunciation to the lily of the
valley, are hallowed by every reverent fancy; for
'In the beauty of the lilies
Christ was born across the sea.'
And the little white verbena, which recalls, in some mystic way, the old
Puritan tune, 'Naomi,' whose words of calm submission are so closely
interwoven with one's earliest religious faith.
But in contrast to this meek northern saint of a flower, there is a
southern flush of oleander bloom, that pours out hymns of mystical
devotion, overflowing with the exuberant vitality, glowing with the
intense fervor, of the Tropics.
There are flowers, also, the burden of whose odorous airs is sensibly of
this world only, earthy, sensuous. Such are the cape jessamine and the
narcissus, alike glistening in satin raiment, and alike distilling
aromatic essence. Something akin to the waltzes of Strauss, one might
fancy, is the music suited to their mood.
And the night-blooming cercus--that uncanny white witch of a creature,
with its petals moulded in wax or ivory, its golden-brown
leaf-sheathings, and its unequalled emerald (is it a tint, or is it but
a shadow?) far down within the lovely cup, with that overpowering
voluptuous odor, burdening the atmosphere, permeating the innermost
fibres of sensation, steeping the soul in lethargy! What more fit
exponent can there be for this weird plant's expression than the song of
the serpent-charmer, the singing which can root the feet unto the ground
and stay the flowing of the impetuous blood?
But carnations have a wide-awake aspect, which brings one back to
every-day life again. Their pleasant pungency is like a bugle note. They
seem glad to start the nerves of human beings.
The tulips have taken the sun home to them. Deep down in their hearts
you smell it, while you listen to a cheery carol welling up from the
comfort warm within.
The pond lilies likewise breathe forth the inspiration of the sun. And
they chant in their pure home thanksgivings therefore, happy songs of
chaste praise.
These are flowers which _look_ their fragrance; but there are those that
startle by the contrast between their outer being and their inner
spirit.
What an intoxicating draught the obscure heliotrope offers! One thinks
of Heloise in the garments of a nun. The arbutus, also, and the dear
daphne-cups, plain, unnoticeable little things, remind one of the
nightingales, so insignificant in their appearance, so peerless in their
gushes of delicious breath.
The demure Quaker is like the peculiar fragrance of the mignonette. It
is hard to believe so many people really like mignonette as profess to
do so, it has such a caviare-to-the-general odor. The popular taste here
would seem really guided by a fashion of fastidiousness. But the lemon
verbena--which, if not a flower, is so high-bred an herb that it
deserves to be considered one--one can easily see why that is valued.
What a refined, _spirituelle_ smell it has? Hypatia might have worn it,
or Lady Jane Grey--or better still, Mrs. Browning's Lady Geraldine might
have plucked it in the pauses of the 'woodland singing' the poet tells
of.
Nature is very liberal in all things; and we have coarse and
disagreeable flower odors, supplied by peonies, marigolds, the gay
bouvardia, and a still more odious greenhouse flower--a yellowish,
toadlike thing, which those who have once known will never forget, and
for which perhaps they can supply a name. If odor be the flower's
expression of its soul, what rude and evil tenants must dwell within
those luckless mansions!
But if a flower's soul speaks through odor, what of scentless blossoms?
Are they dumb or dead? Some may be too young to speak--as the infantile
anemones, daisies, and innocents.
Perhaps some are thus most meet for symbols of the dead; the stately,
frozen calla, which seems a fit trophy, bound with laurel leaves, to lay
upon a soldier's bier; and the snow-cold camelia, whose stony
sculpturing is the very emblem for those white features whence God has
drained away the life.
But, camelias warmed with color, fuchsias, abutilons, the cultivated
azalia (the wild one has a scent), asters, and a host of other loved and
lovely flowers--why are they deprived of language?
Perhaps they _have_ a fragrance, felt by subtler senses than we mortals
own. But, at least, if they must now appear as mute, we may yet hope
that in a more spiritual existence we shall behold their very doubles,
gifted with a novel charm, a captivating perfume, we cannot conceive of
here. For in the vast harmony of the universe one cannot believe there
can be any floral instruments whose strings are never to be awakened.
It _has_ been but the pastime of a half hour that we have given to the
flower odors, when an ever-widening field for speculation lies before
us. But imagination droops exhausted, baffled by the innumerable
enchanting riddles still to solve. And this must now suffice.
If it serve to excite any dormant thought in the more ingenious mind of
another--if it be able to call out the learned conceits of some scholar,
or the delicate symbolisms of some dreamer, it has done its work.
The hand that has thus far guided the pen, to dally with a subject all
the dearer because so generally disregarded, will now gladly yield it to
the control of a fresher fancy, a truer observation.