Now, having owned to so many shockingly low tastes, no one would, I presume, be surprised to hear me avow a penchant for sun-flowers and peonies, dear old-fashioned creatures that they are! Shall I plead in excuse for my weakness for the coarsest of the flowers yet another reason? They form to me, in their extent of surface and fullness of color, the nearest approach our chilly New-England can make to the blaze and vitality of the Southern flora. And I so long for the luxuriant vegetation of the tropics, the gorgeous magnificence I have never seen—even the magnolia has only been disclosed to my dreams.
I would not disparage delicate and fragile flowerets, though I am so infatuated by their brilliant sisters. They are lovely to examine, and, as individuals, very precious, but in my opinion useless for decorative purposes. In a body they confuse one another, and you can not mass their colors.
This remark is also very applicable to wild flowers, which, moreover, be they large or small, possess additional disqualifications for proper arrangement. They are not at ease in cultivated atmospheres. Violets and anemones—their sacredness, innocence, and peace—require the soothing airs of woodland solitudes. Drawn from secret nooks and haunts into the garish day, they droop and pine, they cry forlornly: 'We are weary, we are dying; take us home to rest again!' There is the blood-red cardinal-flower. Bold enough surely, you say. Wade, stretch, and leap, and seize at last in triumph the coveted prize. A new difficulty! The spikes are so rough, jagged, and stiff, there is no welding of them together. You wish them back in their burning bush. The fringed blue gentian, too, has very troublesome appendages. It is prettiest in its pasture-built place, opening to the welcome breezes its azure petals. Besides, there is where Bryant wishes it to remain, and certainly his desire should have some weight with us.
Some mortifications, therefore, it has been seen, attend on the pursuit of the art of flower-arranging. These are but the beginning of sorrows, nevertheless. Many others might be mentioned, vexations consequent on the constitution of the subjects themselves.
It is a melancholy fact that life and beauty can not be preserved in them without water. On grand, temporary occasions it may answer for the artist to disregard this natural law, but it would be an excess of barbarity to do thus often. There ought to be no more martyrs for the sake of effect than can be helped.
But now ensues the tug of war. How make stems of all lengths stand in the most desirable position and yet all touch the water? Sometimes a shorter one must stand above a longer one, when it is impossible to bathe its feet in the refreshing liquid. Sink the longer then; cut it off. Each experiment will bring annoyance, as the tyro may find as he plods on in his task. Short-stemmed flowers make 'chunky' bouquets, every one knows. Another trouble is occasioned by the froward behavior of flowers. Never a woman among the sex could be at times so fickle and perverse. I am not prepared to maintain the theory of a higher nature in plants than the merely physical. It is enough for me to cling to an enormous heresy with respect to animals. Against the fiat of Christendom I will persist in granting them the semblance of a soul. I will swallow the old creed about flowers. Still, wherever they get them, they do exhibit tantalizing qualities. Perverse? That verbena knows perfectly where she ought to go, where, in the goodness of your heart, you are striving to place her, but how obstinately she resists, slipping finally, in utter rebellion, from your fingers. Fickle? How docile was the same verbena yesterday. Nay, it was of her own accord she assumed the pretty position you want to see again. You did not think or care about it then.
With all one's minor trials, who would regret time spent in such delightful labors? I have tasted so many pleasures in my devotion hitherto, that perhaps I should be content. Yet to look upon grand floral decorations; to behold wreath-encircled pillar and arch in lordly halls, and baskets piled and pyramids raised from the wealth of fairy-land conservatories!—on spectacles like these I hope to feast my senses some future day.
Some one may ask: 'You who enjoy so fully flowers, who hang over them in such transport when gathered, have you no interest in their cultivation? no care to watch their growth? no love for gardening, in short?' No! I reply; very little. I am satisfied to take the results of others' exertions. I have no wish to plod i' the mold,' not the slightest objection to others doing that business for me. I am too indolent to like out-door work very well; much too fond of late rising to enjoy weeding, digging, etc., in the early morning air. I think likely I ought to feel differently, but I don't. Suffer me to inquire why people insist on peeping behind the scenes of nature's stage, when she seems to take such pains to conceal her 'modus operandi'? Let me not be too sweeping, however. There is one kind of floriculture I could fancy. Plants reared in winter in the house, snatched from the biting cold, must be so caressingly tended! Vines, too, how precious they become—every tiny tendril regarded with such tenderness, and as the clinging branches wind in light festoons round parent shell or basket, so do they grasp the cords of the affections and twine exultingly around them.
Hyacinths also are pleasant to sight and smell in warm, cheerful rooms when fast without fall drifting snows. It is the happiness of education, of association, of possession, that such plants afford. They are endeared inversely to their number, it may be—the solitary shrub being as the one ewe lamb. This joy in flowers differing thus materially from my pleasure in their artistic elements.
Ah! when shall I stop? The civil public will be wearied out ere long, and so much has been left unsaid on my inexhaustible theme! When was a lover ever known to tire—himself? A lover! Here conscience has a word of reproach, 'Thou a lover, so unjust in thy self-conceit? Bringing down thy goddesses to be in truth very idols, the work of thy own hands—prating presumptuously of thy power over their immortal glories!'