The flamingo

I have received from the hands of the generous author, my colleague Anne Gray, a copy of the catalogue of her new exhibition in Canberra, Sydney Long: The Spirit of the Land. The postman has delivered it at an especially helpful moment, because I have been contemplating the meaning of flamingoes—not dancing brolgas (above)—in the context of British painting in the Edwardian moment, because that strange but winsome bird makes regular and disproportionately frequent appearances there, never more spectacularly than in Edwin Austin Abbey’s slightly batty Columbus in the New World here at Yale:

I gather Sid Long first saw flamingoes at the Moore Park zoo in Sydney, and was certainly therefore not laboring under the misapprehension that they were in Australia anything other than exotica, but I do wonder if—like the marvelous dancing brolga—he nevertheless felt that the topsy-turvy flamingo had something particular to say to the fledgling Commonwealth. More probably, I suppose, the flamingo (to which he returned frequently) was for him a purely aesthetic motif, the beau ideal of sinuous line, and of chromatic flamboyance. As “Lady Kathleen” pointed out in her regular fashion column for the English Illustrated Magazine in November 1909 (quite a different but telling context): “Pale pink and a curious oriental red shade of flamingo brilliancy are daring colour blendings cleverly handled by certain creators of evening modes.” In a sense the haughty flamingo could not have been engineered by natural selection better to suit the art-nouveau aesthetic to which Sid Long devoted himself.

Violet

Future scholars of the better florists of Edwardian London may well be indebted to Violet W. Stevenson, whose Successful Flower Marketing and The Encyclopaedia of Floristry, though published respectively in 1952 and 1954 by W. H. Collingridge Limited and Transatlantic Arts Incorporated, appear to codify many practices that must have been firmly established fifty years earlier. Miss Stevenson’s style is brisk, sensible, and businesslike. Aesthetic judgments are cautious but firm, her emphases generally technical: for instance, one is struck by the elaborateness and sheer number of fiddly processes of wiring, indeed the enormous quantity of wire that went into every arrangement and bouquet—nine different gauges in various lengths, on reels, and in coils used for many different purposes such as strengthening stems, straightening leaves, and preventing blooms from disintegrating prematurely. All of this is reminiscent of the ostrich-feather industry, which was similarly wire dependent. Miss Stevenson’s business was obviously geared towards furnishing “shower bouquets” for weddings as opposed to presentations at Court, though the finished articles themselves must have been pretty much identical, a froth of blooms and wispy ferns that could easily descend as far as the hem, if not farther. By the 1950s tuberoses had gone out of fashion, presumably absorbed by the booming postwar fragrance industry, though wartime austerities must surely have played their part. The article on gladioli is somewhat surprising, commending as it does their usefulness in creating enormous corsage ornaments, as well as structuring bouquets and sheaves around them. Imagine the size of a corsage ornament consisting of a couple of thrusting glads. No doubt this fashion was the target of Barry Humphries’s 1955 creation of Mrs. Everage. “It should not be assumed,” writes Miss Stevenson, “that grasses are only permissible in Victorian floristry. Modern designs lend themselves quite well to certain varieties of grass, not the quaking grass of our grandmothers but the bolder, water-grass, eryanthus, wheat and barley. Most of these are obtainable from the [horticultural] sundriesman in their natural colours, bleached or dyed.” According to the OED, quaking grass, n., is “any of various grasses of the genus Briza, having broad, flattened spikelets dangling on slender stalks which tremble in the breeze; esp. (more fully common quaking grass) B. media, which is widely distributed in Eurasia,” and was therefore, of course, ideal for the sort of tremulous shower bouquets that we have seen in considerable abundance at the glittering evening Courts of King Edward and Queen Alexandra at Buckingham Palace.

As one might expect, Miss Stevenson’s mini-dissertation on color rewards close inspection. “The development of colour consciousness,” she writes, “and the true appreciation of colour harmony is an essential qualification for the would-be successful florist,” and their under-development, by implication, almost a guarantee of failure. “There is often so little regard to the suitability of certain colour combinations that far too many floral designs appear to have been assembled with little or no thought of colour harmony...It is not enough to say that the hue of one flower never clashes with another unless you embrace the whole subject and go on to add, when sufficient green is present in stem and foliage to act as a buffer between each colour and the next. No florist can afford to disregard the value of green. It is an important ingredient in floral colour harmonies.” Miss Stevenson does tend to state identical points twice in neighboring sentences, for emphasis. She goes on to recite the standard line on primaries, secondaries, and complimentaries in the color spectrum; the distinctions between hue and tone, shade and tint, pure and “broken” colors, and between contrasting and analogous two- and three-color harmonies. She warns against unfortunate stridency or the jarring effect of ill-conceived adjacencies, and suggests ingenious methods of re-introducing softness and/or pallor. Here, I think, we may identify the point at which Miss Stevenson diverges from her Edwardian predecessors, for not long ago we observed that for them no color combination was too riotous, no effect of texture too assertive or forceful, and no shape or assemblage disproportionate in scale, on the contrary. Wisely, however, Miss Stevenson advises against coronet and veil ornaments composed of lilies, daisies, or daffodils (!), recommending instead “waxy, white flowers, such as stephanotis, gardenias, or camellias, that have about them a slight air of luxury.” And it is back to luxury that this curiously neglected branch of London commerce invariably leads us.

The Evening Courts

Following King Edward and Queen Alexandra’s famously glittering evening courts at Buckingham Palace it was customary for The Times newspaper to append to the following day’s “Court circular” a descriptive list of the most notable gowns and dresses. This rewards close scrutiny, as much for what is usually omitted as for what is revealed. On the whole couturiers must have been sorely disappointed; they were never mentioned. Only bouquets created by Edward Goodyear, florist by appointment to the Court of St. James’s, were noted, though everybody carried them, and they were enormous. Within the established rules of Court dress dictated by the Lord Chamberlain’s department—white veil and ostrich-feather headdresses (three plumes if you were married, and two if not), long kid gloves, trains of a certain length and of specified fabrics, a shower bouquet, etc.—ladies managed to produce a surprisingly varied range of effects that also served to conform to a finely calibrated pecking order of magnificence according mostly to rank but also to disposable income. These two were not by any means the same thing. On Friday evening, May 13, 1904, for example, the Duchess of Buccleuch headed the list:

Train of cloth of silver, flounced with white Chantilly lace, and worn over a gown of black net embroidered with chenille over silver gauze. The duchess wore diamond ornaments, Queen Alexandra’s Coronation badge, their Majesties’ Coronation medal, the Order of Victoria and Albert, and the Jubilee medal and clasp.

The Marchioness of Lansdowne.—Train of heliotrope velvet, lined with white brocade and trimmed with old lace and passementerie [sumptuous trimming]. Her ornaments were pearls and diamonds, and Lady Lansdowne wore the Imperial Order of the Crown of India, the Orders of Victoria and Albert and St. John of Jerusalem, and the Jubilee and Coronation medals…

The Countess of Pembroke.—Train of cream satin and green crêpe de chine (of Bradford manufacture) draped with Carrickmacross [Co. Monaghan] lace, over a gown of green brocade, trimmed with Brussels lace. Pearl and diamond ornaments…

Lady Herbert.—Train of white satin, lined with tulle and silver gauze, over a gown of white crêpe de chine, embroidered with silver lilies. Her jewels were sapphires and diamonds.

Lady Margaret Bickersteth.—Train of mauve brocade, draped with chiffon and old lace, over a gown of pale grey satin, trimmed with antique Brussels point [thread lace made wholly with a needle]…

Lady Muriel Digby.—Train of white satin with lilies embroidered in pink and the stems jeweled, over a gown of white satin; the skirt trimmed with bows and feathers in silver and chenille work and draped with Brussels lace…

Lady Peacock.—Train of black satin mousseline [muslin], lined with ivory satin, veiled with black tulle and trimmed with Brussels lace, over a gown of black chiffon embroidered in jet, diamond ornaments, and a[n Edward] Goodyear [est. 1879] bouquet of mauve orchids and foliage.

The Hon. Mrs. G. Lawson Johnston.—Train of pink mousseline [wool] velour, lined with chiffon, over a gown of pink pleated chiffon trimmed with seventeenth-century English lace.

Mousseline velour? Oh! Ladies who were elderly, infirm, or for the time being in mourning were permitted to wear black, dove grey, and/or mauve ensembles, which generally had a higher than normal bodice, plus sleeves for warmth, but only if they obtained the Lord Chamberlain’s written permission beforehand. Readers attuned to the economics of Edwardian dressmaking were quite aware of the fine distinctions to be made, here, between grades of silk, from the twin peaks of brocade and plush velvet, down through satin, crêpe de chine, and chiffon to the foothills of tulle and net, then onwards to the comparatively impoverished flood plain of velour and wool substitutions. They were also alert to the differences between various types of “old” lace, Brussels lace and Brussels point, Valenciennes, Irish, and English lace (versus point d’Angleterre). The cost differentials could be enormous, and in any case heirloom lace of spectacular quality was virtually unobtainable. Only the most senior peeresses of the realm, usually courtiers, were in a position to wear orders and other “decorations” at all, and there also appears to have been a distinction in rank between ladies who wore diamond “ornaments” (mostly duchesses, marchionesses, and countesses), and lower castes whose diamonds The Times described as “jewels” instead (in other words viscountesses, baronesses, their daughters, and lower rungs of the ladder). All of this served to shuffle the ladies who made it onto the list into a sort of sequence, and innumerable breakfasts in Belgrave Square (the fashionable side) must have been ruined by the discovery that Lady X gained one notch of precedence over Lady Y, when Lady Y knew perfectly well that Lady X’s gown, though slightly more expensive than her own, was not nearly so attractive.

                                                                                             

The opal

The opal exerted considerable fascination over consumers in Victorian and Edwardian Britain, yet it was also encumbered by a superstition as stupid as it was evidently recent. Perhaps this dual preoccupation was no accident. The idea of cursed gemstones pried from the forehead or eye socket of potent heathen idols and temple deities of the mysterious East was powerfully reinforced by the publication of Wilkie Collins’s 1868 novel The Moonstone, and curses in general were rich fodder for the press. Certainly a sinister evil was presumed to hover over the Orloff diamond, which belonged to Catherine the Great, and also Queen Victoria’s Koh-i-noor, though conveniently the curse of that diamond was said to apply only to male wearers. There is also the strange case of the Hope diamond, whose putatively malevolent power was exploited without shame by late-Victorian and Edwardian jewelers actually to hook successive owners, culminating with the limping Ohio mining heiress Evalyn Walsh McLean. Such superstitions were plainly bogus, and dealers, con-men, and journalists, at least the brighter ones, certainly knew it. Revolting statements about gemstones in general such as the following passage from The Great Diamonds of the World (1882), by the London jeweler Edwin W. Streeter, were nakedly self-serving in the sense that they aroused a measure of excitement—causing the general public to recoil, the better to make space for the hard-nosed but strangely pliable rich, as yet unencumbered by income or inheritance tax: “A symbol of power, the diamond has been a talisman of not less influence in the East than the very gods whose temples it has adorned. It has been the factor in tragedies innumerable, supplying the motives of war and rapine, setting father against son, blurring the fair image of virtue, making life a curse where it had been a blessing, and adding new terrors to death...” But what about the opal? As H. Kershaw Walker put it in 1904, “Whence has originated the superstition, now so widely spread, that the opal is unlucky and the cause of misfortune to the wearer?”

By the ancients it was held to exercise the combined virtues of the amethyst, ruby, and emerald, becoming moreover the type of Hope, Innocence, and Purity. Certainly its impaired reputation is not of long standing. [John] Brand, in his [Observations on the popular] Antiquities [of Great Britain, 1777], having collected together a large number of popular superstitions and beliefs, makes no reference to the opal. Even the gems alluded to are credited with good and benevolent characters. Of the turquoise an early English compiler says, “The Turkeys doth move when there is any peril prepared to him that weareth it” [Edward Fenton, Secrete Wonders of Nature, 1569, p. 51]. And again, “Corall bound to the neck takes off turbulent dreams and allays the nightly fears of children” [Levinus Lemnius, The Secret Miracles of Nature, 1658, p. 391]. Apparently the only reason for the disparagement which the beautiful opal has suffered in modern times is found in chapter xi. of Anne of Geierstein [or, The Maiden of the Mist (1829) by Sir Walter Scott], and it must be said that it is wholly insufficient and quite ridiculous. (“A Chapter on Opals,” The Nineteenth Century, 56:311, September 1904, pp. 497–8.)

The author of an unsigned article in Chambers’s Journal (7:346, August 16, 1890, p. 524)  already pointed to Anne of Geierstein as the fons et origo of the opal superstition:

Sir Walter Scott must to a certain extent be made responsible for the bad odour in which the opal has found itself of late years. In Anne of Geierstein he alludes to the belief that the Mexican opal loses its beauty when exposed to the action of water, and puts this down to supernatural agency. Hence arose the idea that to wear an opal is the royal road to all manner of ill-luck, and that as a love-token the stone shows the continuance or decline of the giver’s affections in proportion as its colours are bright or clouded. Whenever its hues suddenly changed, misfortune of some kind or another was believed to be close at hand.

According to The London Journal (“A Foolish Superstition,” 22:560, September 8, 1894, p. 189):

The superstition about opals—that they bring ill-luck—dies hard. In fact, although Queen Victoria has taken a firm stand against it, and proves her position by making presents of opal jewelry to her friends and relatives, there are many who think that it is increasing.

I am not quite sure that by making gifts of opals to other people, and not necessarily wearing them so much herself, the Queen’s stand was necessarily proven—but let us assume that in this respect Her Majesty acted with the usual mixture of common sense and determination. Queen Alexandra and Queen Mary certainly also managed to suppress any such misgivings about wearing large, often huge diamonds. In any event, Chambers’s point about the discernible change in hue is interesting because we have long known that opals do indeed respond to extreme and sometimes relatively slight fluctuations in temperature, but more recently they have also been found to be sensitive to light in much the same way that watercolors fade as a consequence of over-exposure. This was proven lately when an opal was removed from its setting, and the edge of the stone, long covered up by the silver setting, was found to be markedly more vivid in hue than the rest of the stone. Museums therefore now display opals as if they were works on paper. So if you wear one, be sure to stay out of the sun.