X.NATURAL ORDER OF FLOWERS.May 21st.Hemust have an artist’s eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table, divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and grace which they first had.As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished! Squeezed, tied on sticks, formal and pedantic, the flowers lose their rare charms, their delicacy, their individuality, their exquisite variety of form, every element of floral beauty except color. They are used as mere pigments. They are poor studies in color. There are few who really know anything about flowers by their finer qualities. The elder Park—who committed the capital crime of leaving Brooklyn and going back to Scotland to live—loved flowers after the true sort. We remember one day going to his green-house in Amity Street, and after a world of talk about all sorts of things, and looking over all his azaleas, camellias, laurustinus, and what not, he drew us bashfully into a side apartment, and with the diffidence of a girl, said, pointing to anexquisite little fern hardly so large as our forefinger, growing in the border under some orange-plants, “There, I should not dare to tell anybody but you that I have taken more real pleasure in that one little thing than in all the whole establishment.” We perfectly understood him. The fern was of the most delicate sort. It seemed to hover between form and spirit,—if there be such a thing as soul in plant-life. All around it were large and vigorous plants growing lush and stalwart. This dainty little fairy fern appealed to the child-loving side of human nature, to the unworldly and uncommercial faculties. We always respected Park the better for this weakness. No man can have such a sentiment for flowers, who has not in him feelings as fresh and delicate as the flowers which he admires.But with what complacency can such a one look upon the merchandise of flowers which is exhibited at every party, every wedding, every vulgar jam of rich people, who torment themselves through untimely hours for the sake of tormenting their host?Look at the atrocious bridal bouquets! The bride, the bridesmaids, come forth bearing each a hugemelangeof orange-blossoms and rosebuds, wedged together into a pyramidal wart of flowers! If, instead, the bride were to issue forth bearing in her hand a sprig of orange-blossoms just as it grew, just as it was plucked from the branch, or two or three simple rosebuds on the one stem, loosely clustered, and with their own fresh green leaves, or a simple white lily, would not every one feel how superior flowers were for such an occasion, in their own simplicity and individuality, than when, as generally happens, they are smothered up in an artificial heap, in which all naturalness is utterly lost?A single blossom of carnation with a geranium leaf; an exquisite saffrano rosebud just beginning to open, with a fresh leaf from its own bush for company; a stem of mignonette, girt round with a dozen fragrant blue violets; a long sprig of mauvandia-vine, with its charming blue bells, hangingfrom a tall wineglass, or carelessly trailing round it,—these, and such little things, confer a pleasure on those who have a sensitive eye for grace and simplicity, which nothing else can.We would not be understood as objecting to allmassesof flowers, nor to large combinations. For coarser and more distant effects, they are permissible. But even then, the more they can be made to have a loose, airy, open habit, the finer will be their effect.But first, simplicity, naturalness, singleness, and individualism in flowers; afterward and inferior, though permissible, artificial structures and combinations.
May 21st.
Hemust have an artist’s eye for color and form who can arrange a hundred flowers as tastefully, in any other way, as by strolling through a garden, picking here one and there one, and adding them to the bouquet in the accidental order in which they chance to come. Thus we see every summer day the fair lady coming in from the breezy side-hill with gorgeous colors, and most witching effects. If only she could be changed to alabaster, was ever a finer show of flowers in so fine a vase? But instead, allowed to remain as they were gathered, the flowers are laid upon the table, divided and rearranged on some principle of taste, I know not what, but never regain that charming naturalness and grace which they first had.
As to the bouquets put up for market, the less said about them the better. They are mere pillories in which, like innocent children put into the stocks, flowers are punished! Squeezed, tied on sticks, formal and pedantic, the flowers lose their rare charms, their delicacy, their individuality, their exquisite variety of form, every element of floral beauty except color. They are used as mere pigments. They are poor studies in color. There are few who really know anything about flowers by their finer qualities. The elder Park—who committed the capital crime of leaving Brooklyn and going back to Scotland to live—loved flowers after the true sort. We remember one day going to his green-house in Amity Street, and after a world of talk about all sorts of things, and looking over all his azaleas, camellias, laurustinus, and what not, he drew us bashfully into a side apartment, and with the diffidence of a girl, said, pointing to anexquisite little fern hardly so large as our forefinger, growing in the border under some orange-plants, “There, I should not dare to tell anybody but you that I have taken more real pleasure in that one little thing than in all the whole establishment.” We perfectly understood him. The fern was of the most delicate sort. It seemed to hover between form and spirit,—if there be such a thing as soul in plant-life. All around it were large and vigorous plants growing lush and stalwart. This dainty little fairy fern appealed to the child-loving side of human nature, to the unworldly and uncommercial faculties. We always respected Park the better for this weakness. No man can have such a sentiment for flowers, who has not in him feelings as fresh and delicate as the flowers which he admires.
But with what complacency can such a one look upon the merchandise of flowers which is exhibited at every party, every wedding, every vulgar jam of rich people, who torment themselves through untimely hours for the sake of tormenting their host?
Look at the atrocious bridal bouquets! The bride, the bridesmaids, come forth bearing each a hugemelangeof orange-blossoms and rosebuds, wedged together into a pyramidal wart of flowers! If, instead, the bride were to issue forth bearing in her hand a sprig of orange-blossoms just as it grew, just as it was plucked from the branch, or two or three simple rosebuds on the one stem, loosely clustered, and with their own fresh green leaves, or a simple white lily, would not every one feel how superior flowers were for such an occasion, in their own simplicity and individuality, than when, as generally happens, they are smothered up in an artificial heap, in which all naturalness is utterly lost?
A single blossom of carnation with a geranium leaf; an exquisite saffrano rosebud just beginning to open, with a fresh leaf from its own bush for company; a stem of mignonette, girt round with a dozen fragrant blue violets; a long sprig of mauvandia-vine, with its charming blue bells, hangingfrom a tall wineglass, or carelessly trailing round it,—these, and such little things, confer a pleasure on those who have a sensitive eye for grace and simplicity, which nothing else can.
We would not be understood as objecting to allmassesof flowers, nor to large combinations. For coarser and more distant effects, they are permissible. But even then, the more they can be made to have a loose, airy, open habit, the finer will be their effect.
But first, simplicity, naturalness, singleness, and individualism in flowers; afterward and inferior, though permissible, artificial structures and combinations.