8 BOOK OF OLD-FASHIONED FLOWERS 



The cut flower is no longer part of a manifestation of 

 the will of nature ; rather it is a slave — beautiful, it may 

 be, but branded and soul-destroyed. 



Regarded as decoration, I consider cut flowers in a 

 house much as fashion now looks on shell ornaments, or 

 picture-frames made of acorns, as things inappropriate 

 and childish. Of course, in a town there is some excuse 

 for them, for even cut flowers carry the mind to beautiful 

 associated conditions ; but cut flowers in the country 

 seem ludicrously like lumber, just as bedsteads and 

 toilet-services and cruet-stands placed in a garden would 

 be lumber too. 



The love of cut flowers is really but another mani- 

 festation of the spirit which hankers after "yews carved 

 into dragons, pagodas, marmosets," and the other tree- 

 monsters scoffed at by Rousseau, who added that he 

 was convinced that " the time is at hand, when we shall 

 no longer have in gardens anything that is found in the 

 country ; we shall tolerate neither plants nor shrubs ; 

 we shall only like porcelain flowers, baboons, arbour- 

 work, sand of all colours, and fine vases full of 

 nothing." 



Indeed, there is in many quarters even now a grow- 

 ing desire for the kind of " new garden," which old 

 William Lawson advocated : " Your Gardiner can frame 

 your lesser wood to the shape of men armed in the field, 

 ready to give battell : or swift running Greyhounds : or 

 of well sented and true running Hounds, to chase the 

 Deere, or hunt the Hare. This kinde of hunting shall 

 not waste your corne, nor much your coyne. Mazes 

 well framed a man's height, may perhaps make your 

 friend wander in gathering of berries, till he cannot 

 recover himselfe without your helpe." 



Of course, the cutting of flowers is a long way from 

 this ; still it is difficult to see where a line can be drawn 

 once the worship of " gardeners' gardens " has begun. 



