Camellia
Photo by Sue Watts |
CAMELLIAS are
flowering shrubs or trees in the tea family with shiny, serrated, oval evergreen
leaves and impressive, brightly colored single flowers characterized by layers
of cupped petals surrounding a dense calyx of stamens, usually yellow in color. The most popular species is C. japonica, with over 2000 cultivars
and some 20,000 named varieties (Hogan 294). Originating in China and Japan, camellias
were introduced into England as part of the tea trade. According to American
Camilla’s Society, “Officials tried to bring tea plants
to England for propagation, but either by mistake or on purpose, plants of
Camellia japonica were sent by the Chinese instead. The first japonica was
growing in England some time before 1739 in the greenhouse of Lord Petre.” <https://www.americancamellias.com/care-culture-resources/history-of-camellias;
accessed 1/15/18>
The height of
the fashion for camellias was the middle to the end of the 19th
century, following the sensational popularity of Alexandre Dumas’ novel La Dame aux camellias (1848), adapted by
Verdi into the opera La Traviata
(1852). Heilmeyer goes so far as to
declare that Camellias were “the
fashionable flower” of the nineteen century”(42). Many women and men wore them
as fashion accessories, as boutonnieres, tucked into the
necklines of their dresses, in the hair, or as corsages on the wrist.
In the Victorian
language of flowers, the meanings of camellias relate to perfection, loveliness
and excellence (Greenaway 11), but the flower has some flaws as a decoration. For one thing, it is largely without scent,
and it is also delicate and short-lived.
According to Ward, “The single, wild form of the camellia drops its
flower heads abruptly, suggesting sudden death” (78). At any rate, camellias
were replaced at the beginning of the twentieth century by CARNATIONS, which
had longer, sturdier stems, a pleasant odor, and lasted longer in markets as
well as on the palpitating breasts of society damsels.
Camellias in
Woolf’s writing carry this aura of somewhat outdated nineteenth century
fashion. Woolf’s only mention of a camellia in an essay
occurs the year that she was completing Mrs
Dalloway. In a review of Molly’s
McCarthy’s 1924 autobiography, The
Schoolroom Floor, Woolf juxtaposes McCarthy’s depiction of Tennyson -- “ ‘living a deliciously sheltered life at
Farringford, perplexed about immortality on the windy downs’” -- with McCarthy’s
account of “her mother and aunts ‘flitting up and down the wide staircase in
white muslins, with camellias in their hair and Beethoven scores under their
arms’”
(E3 443). This gently rueful sarcasm also seems to be the tone in Mrs. Dalloway, when the only thing that Peter Walsh can remember about Sally Seaton’s husband Rossister was that “he wore two camellias on his wedding day” (MD 183), a signal both of the old-fashioned conventionality of the marriage and of its capitalistic excess: “They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories” (MD 183).
(E3 443). This gently rueful sarcasm also seems to be the tone in Mrs. Dalloway, when the only thing that Peter Walsh can remember about Sally Seaton’s husband Rossister was that “he wore two camellias on his wedding day” (MD 183), a signal both of the old-fashioned conventionality of the marriage and of its capitalistic excess: “They have myriads of servants, miles of conservatories” (MD 183).
Occurring in the
1891 section of the The Years,
Woolf’s most sustained use of camellias is as a slightly flirtatious link
between Colonel Able Pargiter and his sister-in-law Eugenie. When he comes to visit, the colonel always brings
Eugenie a camellia, wrapped in tissue paper for protection (TY 109,111,
112). Lady Pargiter’s treatment of the
flower is rather girlish; first she puts it between her lips (112), then she
picks it up and twirls it absent-mindedly (113), and finally she fixes the
camellia in her dress on her breast (114, 115). The gift of the camellia,
however, is rather a failed gesture for the Colonel. It is October and Eugenie and the children
are having a bonfire. The Colonel leaves
the house “depressed and disappointed” because he never had any time alone with
Eugenie to talk: “Perhaps he would never tell anybody anything” (120). The gift of the old-fashioned flower cannot
forestall the inevitable arrival of autumn, and as with Mrs. Coville’s hat, the
camellia is lost to a bonfire of vanity.
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