The primrose path
Eric Christiansen
THE CULTURE OF FLOWERS by Jack Goody Cambridge University Press, £40, £13.95, pp. 462 It was towards the end of the seventh century AD when the Anglo-Saxon scholar Aldhelm wrote this about bees to some Essex girls of the period: At one moment, settling on the honey- bearing petals of marsh-marigolds or the purple flowers of mallows, they gather honeyed moisture drop by drop in their mouths and . . . struggle eagerly to fill the greedy receptacles of their stomachs; at another moment, swarming round golden- yellow willows and the saffron tips of broom, they transport their fertile booty in numerous loadings of their thighs and hips, out of which they build waxen castles; later still, pressing together the smooth flower-clusters of ivy and the tender buds of the blossoming lime-tree, they construct the multi- dimensional edifice of the honey-comb with angular and hidden cells.
This passage (translated by Messrs Lapidge and Herren) is worth reading for many reasons, but three will suffice: Firstly, because it seems to reveal an appreciation of six different types of flow- er, both for colour and for food-value, at a time when, according to Professor Goody's programmatic view, flowers were scarcely appreciated at all in Western Europe. Their cultivation unknown and their cul- ture disapproved of, botany, horticulture and bouquets had withered.
Secondly, because the words might equally well reveal nothing except Ald- helm's own mental botany, a delight in phrases left over from the riotously floral culture of Roman paganism, and quite unrelated to anything his correspondents would have enjoyed in their rambles along Barking Creek, keenly scanning the flats for mussels and conger-eels while tram- pling the marsh-marigolds under their big boots and blindly slashing the mallows with switches of blossoming willow. Who can say?
Thirdly, because Aldhelm's bees and flowers are reminiscent, up to a point, of Professor Goody's own approach to the flower-research problem, at least the flit- ting, gathering and stomaching part. After that, less so. The end-product is not exactly a waxen castle or anything as regular as a honeycomb; more of a disburdening of the loaded thighs and hips, in the shape of intriguing essays on an ethno-botanical- sociological-historical theme, with an emphasis on East-West differences and similarities.
He begins with an explanation of why the book is like this, and with acknowledg- ments to about 120 people who have helped to make it so. I have always found 100 research assistants quite sufficient for these purposes, but let that pass. It is sad that he could not persuade any of these people to run him up a proper index, but that may be the fault of the press.
Then he examines the curious case of the non-Islamic Africans: why are they so uninterested in flowers? Because they have been unfamiliar with luxury; because the fruit has always been more interesting than what merely signals its coming? This con- nection would fit in with the exuberant flower-cultures of the early Eurasian civilisations, which were based on more abundant food-supplies and more conspic- uous consumption. Egypt, Babylon and Rome carried flower production to indus- trial heights, with 4,000 narcissuses and a 1,000 roses on order for a single children's party, according to one surviving letter. Even Mme Swann might have thought this Roman-Egyptian example a bit overdone. And the corollary of this garlanded age is the ensuing `decline of flower-culture' in the less luxurious Dark Ages, examined in Christendom and Islam with a rather laboured digression on the aesthetic conse- quences of the Iconoclastic controversy.
At this point, doubts creep in. What flowers meant to the Anglo-Saxons and the Franks surely cannot be deduced from the study of Christian theology or book-illumi- nation. We can only be sure that there are no florists in Beowulf. Nevertheless, there are some 400-odd flower names in the tenth-century Anglo-Saxon medical books (Cockayne's Leechdoms, Wortcunning and Starcraft), and the abundant evidence of floral decoration in churches and cere- monies summarised long ago by H. Leclercq in the Dictionnaire d'Archeolo- gie Chretienne under Fleurs. The connection between paganism and flowers may have `I'll have the Small Businessman Whose Hanging On By The Skin Of His Teeth' lunch, please waiter.' given rise to some antifloralism among the very devout, but the evidence for this is not overwhelming.
However, with the 12th century came the revival of gardening and the cultivation of roses and lilies in particular; from there, the luxury-flower-culture link can be traced more comfortably down to modern times. Of the many bizarre proliferations of this culture, the 19th-century `secret language of flowers' is most amusingly discussed: the determination of genteel pedants, mostly French, to impose meaning, grammar and spelling on floral displays through refer- ence books. If taken seriously, these manu- als would have imperilled rather than aided relationships: acacia blossom could mean `disquiet' or `platonic love' or 'desire to please' according to which book you were using. The most famous flower-speaker of them all (not mentioned here) liked to keep it simple: for La Dame aux Camelias red ones meant 'not tonight, boys'. Some Americans called this the science of `phyllanthography', and were able to accuse each other of mental vulgarity by handing out marigolds. Goody seems to accuse them of allowing puritan attitudes to stunt or distort the growth of flower-culture in general; he takes no account of what the magnolia and the dogwood and the corsage mean or meant to the South — a grave omission, as it allows him to write of the modern US-international flower-culture, with its inhibitions and inanities, as if it were an irresistible force about to over- whelm the much more civilised, elaborate and ancient systems of the Indians and Chinese. I don't think it has quite con- quered Dixie yet.
However, the cream of this book lies in the oriental part. For the Chinese have been intimately involved with flower- growing and marketing from c. BC 1000 onwards, and improving on the natural profusion of plant-species in their region: one seventh of the world total. By 1300 AD they were familiar with all the main garden flowers we know of, and in 1708 an encyclopaedia listed 300 types of chrysanthemum alone. Under Mongol rule, flower-painting was a patriotic act, affirm- ing civilisation against barbarism. We can imagine what they felt when the Maoists declared war on flowers, as an aspect of `feudal-bourgeois culture', in the 1960s. Even as the revolutionaries hunted down the sprays of plum-blossom and ruined the growers, the leader was making speeches in which flowers and floral metaphors symbol- ised all that was good and lovely. This crazy episode ended in a revival of mass-produc- tion by market gardeners in the last decade; but both in the People's Republic and in Hong Kong the 'culture' is now more an aspect of consumerism than a for- mal and elaborate system. Flowers have been 'purged of elitism' in the narrow sense, and have become an essential export from poor countries to richer ones.
Up till now, all 'anti-floral' systems of belief, in so far as there have been any and I remain unconvinced by Goody's examples — have failed. Christians, Mus- lims, Shintoists, Maoists have all in the end trodden the primrose path. Is this just the effect of affluence? The underlying human involvement with these plants remains rather obscure. This book never refers to the `archeo-botanical' evidence of seeds preserved on prehistoric human sites, which now yields so much about the plant- cultivation and use of neolithic and Bronze Age communities: perhaps the answer lies there.
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