ARRANGING FLOWERS.
IF there is one thing the ordinary Englishwoman of the richer classes believes herself to be specially capable of doing, it is arranging flowers. There are thousands of ladies, young and old, whose chief pride is in filling their vases artistically. Tell them they are bad needlewomen, not very well educated, ignorant of the laws of health, indifferent housekeepers, and they will mind the harsh impeachment very little. Declare, however, to any one of them that she does- not know how to arrange flowers, and you have made an enemy for life. That is a defect which no true woman will ever- allow herself to possess. You might as well expect her to admit- that she did not know how to dress, or was ignorant of what became her. For a woman to say she cannot do just what she will with flowers, is like a man saying that he cannot shoot straight even "on his day." Under these circumstances, he must be a bold man who would, as it were, calmly look the whole world of Englishwomen in the face, and tell them severally and collectively that they know nothing about the matter whatever, that they arrange their flowers without taste or knowledge, and that of the true art of flower-arrangement they do not even know the A B C. Yet this is, in fact, what is said by implication in a delightful book just published in Tokio by the Hakabunsha, Ganza, and in London by Messrs. Sampson
Low and Co.,—a book written by Mr. Josiah Cornier, and entitled "The Flowers of Japan, and the Art of Floral Arrangement."
In this fascinating work, Mr. Conder unfolds in de- tail the wonderful art of arranging flowers which the Japanese have possessed for a very large number of years, and which they have carried, on its own lines, to quite as high a state of perfection as their other decorative arts. Japanese floral arrangements, when contrasted with English, are what a finished musical composition executed on a violin is to the song of the nightingale. While our Englishwomen are trilling their native wood-notes wild, the Japanese ex-Generals of Division and ex-Cabinet Ministers—these are the sort of people who excel in flower-arranging in Japan—are playing the Moonlight Sonata on an instrument in which the notes are sprays of plum and cherry blossom and maple, or the leaves and flowers of iris and chrysanthemum. That at least is what the advocate of the Japanese system *odd allege, with no little show of reason. For ourselves, however, and in all sincerity— our anonymity would protect us from being lynched by a mob of ladies, and therefore our faith is not based on fear—we do not believe that the statement is correct, or that the English system is so inferior after all. No doubt it is wild and un- taught, but then the Japanese system has unhappily fallen a prey to that formalistic and conventional dry-rot which affects all the arts of Japan,—that soulless and abhorred dexterity which, even while refreshing and delighting the eye, sends a cold shudder to the heart. When we look at a beautiful Japanese picture, or at a piece of decorated porcelain, we feel that the heart of the man who produced it was of stone.
There is art, triumphant art, but never a touch of the finger of God,—of the all-informing, all-creating imagination. Con- ventionality we can delight in, when it is the quaint con- ventionality of the childhood of art. A conventionality that is due to artistic decadence and decrepitude inspires a sense of loathing. The arts of Japan were rotten before they were ripe. Thus, for wholesome-minded persons no form of Japanese art can ever be wholly satisfac- tory, since into almost every branch this shameful conven- tionality enters and abides. The rose is beautiful, but there are tiny specks of mildew upon it which rob it of half its charm. Hence, when we compare English flower-arrangements to those of Japan, we are not corn paring artlessness to a. noble and perfect art, but to an imperfect one. We admit that the moment man touches Nature and " converts " her to his uses, art is necessary, and that good art must always triumph over artless- ness. But to say that is not to say that bad art is better than art- lessness. Before, however, making any attempt to show that
-the art of floral arrangement in Japan has been to no small extent ruined by the canker of a decadent conventionality,
we must give some account of the art itself. Nothing could be better than its base thought. It is that flowers and blossom—blossom plays the major part in all flower- arrangements in Japan—when cut and arranged in a house, should still obey their law of being, and should look as if they were growing,—or rather, for that is too crude a way of putting it, should assume positions not inconsistent or in conflict with the laws of growth. For this reason, flowers are always set up in their vases in such a way that the vase represents the earth. Sometimes they grow sideways out of the vase, no doubt; but then, so do flowers which grow from the side of a cliff. The first result of the adoption of this principle is, that the bunch has no existence in Japan.
Flowers are never massed together in brilliant bundles, one supporting the other,—beautiful masses of scent and colour, maybe, but masses from which the idea of plant life has been banished. In Japan, each flower-arrangement represents, as it were, a separate artificial plant. Hence it is necessary that the blossoms or flowers should -stand up alone in their vases. This obliges the use of mechanical contrivances for keeping the flowers upright,— something, as it were, to represent the roots. As might be imagined in the case of a people so ingenious, the Japanese have hit upon exactly the right thing to serve this purpose. They either wedge pieces of wood, with slits in them, in the vases, and set the stem or branch in the slit, or else place rounds of perforated metal in the mouth of the jars. In the ease of wide, shallow vessels, however, these devices would not be suitable, and they then place what are, in fact, metal weights, though made in the shape of crabs or horses' bits, on the bottom of the vases, and insert the stems or branches into them. But the Japanese arranger is not content with merely cutting a pretty branch of plum- blossom and sticking it upright by itself in a vase. To do this is only to prepare his canvas and set his palette. It is only after this that the art comes in. A European full of the notion that the sole business of the figurative arts is to please, might presume that he would merely twist the twigs up and down till he had got them to look nice. Not so the Japanese. He wants his branch of plum-blossom to look nice, but only within the limits of a certain prescribed form. He wants, in fact, to make a sonnet of it. No two sonnets are alike, but yet the form is identical. So Japanese flower-arrangements differ, but at the same time they conform to one model. The Japanese model is this. There is, to begin with, an upright branch—we assume that blossom is being dealt with—and this upright branch is bent like a bow, and in such a way that its highest point, or tip, stands vertically over the point whence it springs,—i.e., the neck of the vase. On one side of this branch, called the "principal," comes another branch, called the " secondary ;" on the other side yet another, called the "tertiary." The secondary and tertiary, to give them proper subordination, are, however, shorter than the principal,—the secondary being one-half its
length, the tertiary a third. The side on which the secondary is placed is that of the outside of the arch of the bow. The tertiary makes a counterpoise on the -hollow side. Both secondary and tertiary are arranged in graceful double curves. Between the secondary and the principal, and between the principal and the tertiary, there come on the secondary side a branch called a "support," and on the tertiary side one called a "sub-principal." Lastly, between the support and
the secondary comes the side-piece, and between the sub- principal and the tertiary the trunk-piece. All these branches combine, as it were, at the place in the vase from which they spring. We have, however, described the art of flower- arrangement as if the arrangements were projected upon a flat surface, and could only go upwards and sideways as to direction. The arranger, however, takes advantage of being able to make his branches lean out and in at a great variety of angles. But his directions are strictly limited by convention. Here are the prescribed direc- tions :—Principal points north-east; support points cen- trally; side-piece, west; secondary, south-west ; tertiary, south-east; trunk-piece, north-east ; sub-principal, east. After the Japanese artist has conformed to these rules—got his flower-sonnet, that is, into fourteen lines of two quatrains and two triplets—he may introduce any variety he likes, or, to speak more correctly, he might, if he were not bound by all sorts of superstitions, religious, ceremonial, and meta- physical, to use or not to use this or that flower on this or that particular day. As it is, he finds the "sonnet's narrow plot of ground" very narrow indeed, and has to keep in his head a hundred tiresome rules. Hence he cannot do what the artist ought to do—think only of what will look beautiful— but has instead to keep half his attention fixed upon not com- mitting breaches of floral etiquette.
The result is, that though there is a great deal that is very beautiful in the Japanese floral arrangements shown in Mr.
Conder's exquisitely illustrated book, they are apt to be formal and wearisome. One example of the archaic school—an arrangement of maple—is, we admit, perfect; but, as a rule, one feels that one would like to give the flowers a good shake. A flower Wagner is badly wanted to send all the rules to the right-about, and create an artful and iridescent chaos among the flowers and blossoms. And if he will not come in Japan, why should he, or, rather, she, not come here? If we took what was best in the Japanese art, kept the feeling for the flower's growth, and discarded the formalism, and imposed upon the whole art the freer Western sense of beauty, why should not flower-arranging become an art in England? Some Englishwoman is wanted who will join their sense of fitness with our scorn of pedantry, and so produce the true Art of Flowers. Were she once to appear, the English and American peoples, who love flowers hardly less than the Japanese, would be ready to bestow on her honours innumerable. She might, besides, endow her sex with a new profession. Young ladies in search of some- thing to do, might become professional flower-arrangers, and might go from house to house setting out flowers for dinner- parties and balls. That would be distinctly better than type- writing, or composing paragraphs for society papers.
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