But I am going too far, and perhaps making an enemy of a reader when I would much prefer to have him (or her) for a friend.
I have named few flowers, and those all the most familiar kinds, because it seemed to me that many examples would have had a confusing effect on readers who do not intimately know many species, or do not remember the exact colour in each case, and are therefore unable to reproduce in their minds the exact expression—the feeling which every flower conveys. On the other hand, the reader who knows and loves flowers, who has in his mind the distinct images of many scores, perhaps of two or three hundreds of species, can add to my example many more from his own memory.
There is one objection to the explanation given here of the cause of the charm of certain flowers, which will instantly occur to some readers, and may as well be answered in advance. This view, or theory, must be wrong, a reader will perhaps say, because my own preference is for a yellow flower (the primrose or daffodil, let us say), which to me has a beauty and charm exceeding all other flowers.
The obvious explanation of such a preference would be that the particular flower preferred is intimately associated with recollections of a happy childhood, or of early life. The associations will have made it a flower among flowers, charged with a subtle magic, so that the mere sight or smell of it calls up beautiful visions before the mind's eye. Every person bred in a country place is affected in this way by certain natural objects and odours; and I recall the case of Cuvier, who was always affected to tears by the sight of some common yellow flower, the name of which I have forgotten.
The way to test the theory is to take, or think of, two or three or half-a-dozen flowers that have no personal associations with one's own early life—that are not, like the primrose and daffodil in the foregoing instance, sacred flowers, unlike all others; some with and some without human colouring, and consider the feeling produced in each case on the mind. If any one will look at, say, a Gloire de Dîjon rose (in some persons its mental image will serve as well as the object itself) and then at a perfect white chrysanthemum, or lily, or other beautiful white flower; then at a perfect yellow chrysanthemum, or an allamanda, and at any exquisitely beautiful orchid, that has no human colour in it, which he may be acquainted with, he will probably say: I admire these chrysanthemums and other flowers more than the rose; they are most perfect in their beauty—I cannot imagine anything more beautiful; but though the rose is less beautiful and splendid, the admiration I have for it appears to differ somewhat in character—to be mixed with some new element which makes this flower actually more to me than the others.
That something different, and something more, is the human association which this flower has for us in virtue of its colour; and the new element—the feeling it inspires, which has something of tenderness and affection in it—is one and the same with the feeling which we have for human beauty.
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The foregoing has been given here with a few alterations, mainly verbal, as it appeared originally: something now remains to be added.
When writing about the wild flowers of West Cornwall in a work on The Land's End (1908), I returned to the subject of the charm of flowers due to their human colouring, and will repeat here much of what was there said.
Some of the readers of my flower chapter were not convinced that I had made out my case: it came as a surprise to them, and in some instances they cherished views of their own which they did not want to give up. Thus, two of my critics, writing independently, expressed their belief that flowers are precious to us and seem more beautiful than they are, because they are absolutely unrelated to our human life with its passions, sorrows, and tragedies—because, looking at flowers, we are taken into, or have glimpses of, another and brighter world such as a disembodied spirit might find itself in. It was nothing more than a pretty fancy; but I had other more thoughtful critics, and during my correspondence with them I became convinced of a serious omission in my account of the blue flower, when I said that its expression was due to association with the blue eye in man. The strongest of my friendly adversaries informed me that any man can revel at will among his own personal feelings and associations; that these were a "kind of bloom on the intrinsic beauty of things"—a happy phrase! He then asks: "What does blue suggest to a sailor? Sometimes the sea, sometimes the sky, sometimes the Blue Peter; but if you ask him what does blue paint suggest he would say mourning, that being the colour of a ship's mourning. Dr Sutton always called blue no colour, because it was the colour of death, the sign of the withdrawal of life."