CHAPTER VII

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.

“We, having a secret to others unknown,

In the cool mountain-mosses,

May whisper together ...”

Henry Kendall,September in Australia.

Ourknowledge 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 humanmechanism, 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 theGardeners’ Chroniclefor 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 collectionof 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?

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 beenseeking. 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 ofRhododendron ferrugineum, for instance, or ofGentiana excisa, or ofSoldanella alpina, or ofViola calcarata, or ofAster 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 onlyrepeat 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 ofGentiana 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 ifthis 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 manymanifestations 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 assureus 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 Americansavant. 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 cancolour 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 Americansavantin 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, Whattale 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 thispoint 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.”

“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 iswhite, white is black, and black is no colour at all.”

ANEMONE SULPHUREAandGENTIANA 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 everyway 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 mainlycomposed 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 tous 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 aneccentric 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.

Back to Index Next