The pansy was beloved of Elizabethans: the great number of popular names it had proves this. In addition to Pansy and Johnny-Jump-Up, it was called Herb Trinity, because of the three distinct petals, which made it a flower of peculiar religious significance. Another name was Three-Faces-under-a-Hood because it had such a coquettish air. Another name was Fancy Flamey, because its amethystine colors are like those seen in the flames of burning wood; and because lovers gave it to one another it had the pet names of Meet-me-at-the-Garden-Gate, Kiss-me-at-the-Garden-Gate, Kiss-me-quick, Kiss-me, Call-me-to-you, Cuddle-me-to you, Kiss-me-ere-I-rise, Pink-of-my-John, Cupid's-flower, Love-in-Idleness, and Heartsease.
There were no "wine dark pansies" in Shakespeare's time to charm the lover of flowers and none of the splendid deep purple velvets and mauves and pale amethysts and burnt orange and lemon and claret and sherry and canary hues that delight us to-day, and which are, to use the quaint old expression, "nourished up in our gardens." The modern beauties began to be developed about 1875, chiefly by the French specialists, and, as a modern writer remarks:
"Such sizes, such combinations, such weirdness of expression in quaint faces painted upon the petals were never known before. The colors now run a marvellous range; pure-white, pure yellow, deepening to orange, and darkening to brown, as well as a bewildering variety of blues and purples and violets. The lowest note is a rich and velvety shade that we speak of as black; but there is no black in flowers.
"The pansy is the flower for all. It is cheap; it is hardy; it is beautiful; and its beauty is of an unusual and personal kind. The bright, cheerful, wistful or roguish faces look up to you with so much apparent intelligence that it is hard to believe it is all a pathetic fallacy and there is nothing there."
Whether the modern pansies should be included in a Shakespeare garden is a question for each owner of a garden to decide; but there should certainly be a goodly number of the little "Johnny-Jump-Ups."
POPPY (Papaver somniferum). Shakespeare introduces the poppy only indirectly when he speaks of the "drowsy syrup" in "Othello." The white poppy is the flower from which the sleeping potion was made. "Of Poppies," says Parkinson, "there are a great many sorts, both wild and tame; but our garden doth entertain none but those of beauty and respect. The general known name to all is Papaver, Poppie. Yet our English gentlewomen in some places call it by name Joan's Silver Pin. It is not unknown, I suppose, to any that Poppies procureth sleep." Other old names for the poppy were Corn Rose and Cheese Bowl.
Scarlet poppies in the wreath of Ceres among the wheat-ears, scarlet poppies mingled with large white-petaled daisies, and Ragged Robins belong to everybody's mental picture of midsummer days.
"We usually think of the Poppy as a coarse flower," says Ruskin, "but it is the most transparent and delicate of all the blossoms of the field. The rest, nearly all of them, depend on the texture of their surface for color. But the Poppy is painted glass; it never glows so brightly as when the sun shines through it. Whenever it is seen against the light, or with the light, always it is a flame and warms in the wind like a blown ruby."
"Gather a green Poppy bud, just when it shows the scarlet line at its side, break it open and unpack the Poppy. The whole flower is there compact in size and color, its stamens full grown, but all packed so closely that the fine silk of the petals is crushed into a million of wrinkles. When the flower opens, it seems a relief from torture; the two imprisoning green leaves are shaken to the ground, the aggrieved corolla smooths itself in the sun and comforts itself as best it can, but remains crushed and hurt to the end of its days."
Delicate and fine as is the above description, the sympathetic tribute to the poppy by Celia Thaxter does not suffer in proximity. She says: