Begonias | |
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Begonia_display.jpg |
Originating from Mexico and arriving at Kew in the mid
nineteenth century, begonias, with their waxy, brilliantly colored flowers, are
typically not hardy in England and so were often grown in greenhouses; their
tolerance of low light levels also made them useful as houseplants. Perhaps
because they were such a recent import, they are not included in Kate
Greenaway’s Language of Flowers, but
other sources identify them with “dark
thoughts” (perhaps because of their shady habitat). Their motto is said to be
“Beware I am fanciful”; one scholar suggesting the fancifulness is “an allusion
to the showy, feathery, hybrid forms” (Ward 58). A website on Flower Meaning
adds that begonias are “useful
as a food item since you can toss the leaves and flowers in a salad for a burst
of color.” www.flowermeaning.com/begonia-flower/;
accessed 1/11/18
There
are no mentions of begonias in Woolf’s life-writing, though in her biography of
Leonard Woolf, Victoria Glendinning notes his fondness for scarlet and yellow begonias, grown in his new
greenhouse in 1938 (333). The only time
begonias appear in Woolf’s fiction is many years earlier, in Jacob’s Room (1922), where they show up
at the Durrant’s house in Cornwall, first as part of a silly wager at dinner
about eating begonias with fish (58) and then a few pages later as part of the
set dressing in the greenhouse: “geraniums and begonias stood in pots along
planks; tomatoes climbed the walls” (JR 62).
Although both of these references were added after the holograph, I
cannot make much of their significance.
Clearly Woolf knew that begonias were edible, but it feels like a bit
much to take these two casual cameos as evidence that Jacob (or Clara) needs to
be warned about the other’s fancifulness.
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