Quilting, Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, and the Language of Flowers

Among the many ways Victorians drove themselves crazy was by assigning sentiments to flowers.

The unjustly maligned Cardinal flower 

Imagine filling a vase when your choices include the cardinal flower (Malevolence), oleander (Beware!), columbine (Desertion) or foxglove (Insincerity).  Not even roses were safe: the "York and Lancaster" variety meant War.

Imagine planning a flower garden that includes only positive sentiments.  Imagine a bachelor consulting a book when he picked out flowers to give to a girl.  And how fast he'd would forget what the flowers meant when he got married.  He might even pick up some York and Lancasters for your anniversary.

You'd think that nobody would pay attention to such goofy ideas. But remember, these were people who made a big deal out of grape scissors.  

Sarah Josepha Buell Hale,
arbiter of taste

The Grande Dame of the fashion was Mrs. Sarah Josepha Buell Hale, editress of Godey's Lady's Book.  Her Flora's Interpreter was published in 1835. It's thanks to her that we send white roses to funeral homes.  Hale may not have invented the idea, but she put it on paper and sold it.

Hale was the Grande Dame of all fashions involving female behavior for a good chunk of the 19th century. She was three decades ahead of Queen Victoria in wearing black for the rest of her life after her husband died.  Hale may be the single person most responsible for the close-order drill that was Victorian social manners.

This Sarah Hale for the 21st century will
set you back $80 at bobblesgalore.com  

Even now, when elegant women ignore a gauche remark in a conversation, they're echoing Sarah Hale. Her Godey's Lady's Book also ignored unpleasantries, including the entire Civil War.

That was partly because Hale thought that politics was not a woman's sphere. Still, it was a bit much even for Godey's readers.  In the years after the war, Petersen's Magazine, Harper's, and The Atlantic were all founded and flourished.

Hale, Godey's' owner, and the magazine itself all shriveled up and died around 1878. More accurately, the magazine was on life support until 1898, when it was absorbed into a magazine called The Puritan.  The choice was fitting, because in Hale's view, New England values were the source of all good things.

Flora's Interpreter included 146 flowers and plants, and it was indexed both by flower and by sentiment.  Each is memorialized with yompity-yomp poetry.

Grapes meant Mirth, but it wasn't funny if you didn't
know how to use grape scissors 

In Flora Fortuna, Hale laid out plant sentiments for each day of every month, along with a monthly reminder of the Four Humors that still guided medicine back then. The gloss of science was part of Flora's Interpreter too:  The book included the plants' Latin names, class, and genus, not to mention the names for all the parts of a flower.  

Paying attention to these books is like crawling into a tiny cage and closing the door behind you.
Victorian women wore corsets, which is much the same thing.

We quilters don't.  No, not even Baltimore Album fans.  That's why, when people bring up the Language of Flowers as if it's a new and wonderful discovery, those in the know say No.   

The language of the flowers isn't cute, people. We should forget Flora's Interpreter, and fast.

To quote Dorothy Parker, "This book should not be cast aside lightly, but hurled with great force."  

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For Hale's books, click here:  

http://ia700301.us.archive.org/14/items/florasinterprete00haleiala/florasinterprete00haleiala.pdf

The flower interpretations aren't precisely the same as Hale's, but  The Flower Vase; Containing the Language of Flowers and Their Poetic Sentiments (1844) is mercifully short.  Its author was "Miss S. C. Edgarton." It's here:  http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/pub/PDF/Edgarton-Flower_Vase-1.pdf and http://www.antiquepatternlibrary.org/pub/PDF/Edgarton-Flower_Vase-2.pdf


Our sources include:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Josepha_Hale; http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/252304/Sarah-Josepha-Hale; http://books.google.com/books?id=Sld1Jj0jM7cC&pg=PA117&lpg=PA117&dq=godey's+Hale+%22The+puritan%22&source=bl&ots=SV8-607afY&sig=uKaxA3CeQKV1uv9De1nkIrWvDCg&hl=en&sa=X&ei=iBs3Ur6zBoaA2wWon4D4DA&ved=0CD8Q6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=godey's%20Hale%20%22The%20puritan%22&f=false; http://www.womenwriters.net/domesticgoddess/hale1.html; Hale's and Edgarton's books; and The Sheffield Directory and Guide (1828).  Photos:  cardinal flower by R. W. Smith from http://www.wildflower.org/gallery/result.php?id_image=30936. Grapes:  Photographer uncredited, from  http://www.extension.org/pages/31133/vinifera-or-european-wine-grapes Hale bobblehead:  http://historiccookery.com/tag/sarah-josepha-buell-hale-1788-1879/