☙ Carnation

While this premier is often alleged to be the start of this trend among young aesthetic men, Beckson disputes that it was the premier of ◼︎ Théodore de Banville's play The Kiss two weeks later, on 5 March 1892, that Wilde and his entourage all sported 'the vivid dyed carnation which has superseded the lily and the sunflower', as reported in the London Star.

A fictional piece entitled 'The Green Carnation' by ◆︎ Violet Hunt in Black and White eight days later associated the Aesthetes' green carnations with homoerotic undertones, as per Beckson, however I myself do not see precisely his angle. To wit:

Hunt's story opens at a house party in a London suburb, during which a rather trivial conversation is in progress between a young woman, Isabel, in her early twenties, and Billy Danvers, several years her junior, both of whom are observing an older man, Mr. Dacre, who is dancing with a young lady. At one point, Isabel asks Billy about "that green thing" in his buttonhole. "Oh," he says, "haven't you seen them? A green carnation. Newest thing out. They water them with arsenic, you know, and it turns them green." "How horrid!" Isabel gasps. Later, she asks Billy to let her hold the flower, but annoyed, he responds: "Hands off, Bell! ... I am not going to give it you. It's a gage d'amour between Dacre and me." Offended, she remarks: "You very cheeky boy! Mr. Dacre is ten years older than you at least, and I don't want your horrid pâté de foie gras flower!"

 What is one to make of this dialogue that suddenly intrudes itself into a dull story with suggestions of homoeroticism, indeed echoing the relationship in The Picture of Dorian Gray between Dorian and Lord Henry Wotton, who, like Mr. Dacre, is some ten years older? Billy's remark that the green carnation is a gage d'amour )that is, a "pledge of love"( rather than a gage d'amitié )a "pledge of friendship"( with Dacre may account for Isabel's distress, for she herself is attracted to the older man. Her curious allusion to the "pâté de foie gras flower" suggests a succulent dish, one of the many meanings of "gras"—curiously enough—being "indecent." (389)

However, Isabel makes it clear what she means by pâté de foie gras:

 Isabel: You look very nice. What's that green thing in your button-hole?
 Billy: Oh, haven't you seen them? A green carnation. Newest thing out. They water them with arsenic, you know, and it turns them green.
 Isabel: How horrid! Quite morbid, like the way they treat the poor geese at Strasburg.

Strasbourg was simply a major producer of foie gras, a delicacy of fattened goose liver made by force-feeding the birds. A popular preparation of foie gras in pastry was called a 'Strasburg pie'. Further to this, regarding Dacre's intent to the flower, Billy says:

 Billy: Oh, yes, I know all that rot, but green carnations cost a good deal, you know. This was Dacre's, but he seemed to agree with you. He didn't "take stock" in it and gave it to me. I like Dacre.
 Isabel (impulsively): Let me have it in my hand a minute!
 Billy: Hands off, Bell! You may smell it on the tree. I am not going to give it you. It's a gage d'amour between Dacre and me.
 Isabel (nervously): You very cheeky boy! Mr. Dacre is ten years older than you at least, and I don't want your horrid pâté de foie gras flower! (A pause.) Well, why do you want soothing? Who has been trampling on your tender years? Whom have you been dancing with? Flossie?
 Billy: No, thank you, I don't care to halve dances with Dacre.

Billy himself is young and chasing skirts, with an evident interest in Isabel herself, who turns him down for his youth. Meanwhile Isabel, far from interested in a cursory way in Dacre, appears to have previously been courting him, spending the whole story pining over a relationship lost as Dacre pursues her rival, 'Flossie'. When Billy mentions the flower is a gift, Isabel wishes for it because she is in love with Dacre. When Billy proposes to bet a trifle on Dacre and Flossie eventuating as a couple, Isabel suggests the flower, in despair, but in the final scene we see the feeling is mutual and Flossie's affection is all simply a confusion:

 Dacre (shortly): Our dance. Come and see the Night-flowering Cereus, in the hot house at the bottom of the garden. They say there is one.
 Isabel (rather stiffly): I am not Flossie, Mr. Dacre.
 Dacre: No, thank God, you are not. (Tenderly) This is your little fluffy white shawl that I have fetched out of the cloak room for you, is it not? I noticed it particularly as you came in. Let us go and look at this fabulous flower. Everybody has been but me, and I waited till I could go with you. I am glad to say that I have done all my duty dances.
 Isabel (really surprised): But you were dancing with Flossie?
 Dacre: Yes, she is going to marry my brother Arthur after all. I have pulled it straight. He was so miserable about her. You have no idea how it has worried me all these months. Come.
(He puts the shawl carefully round her and they go out into the garden. They pass Billy, who is disconsolately seeking his partner for "Cut and Run.")
 Billy (involuntarily): Hullo! (whispers) That is not fair. You are trying to get the straight tip.
 Isabel (shyly, over her shoulder): You may as well pay me that green carnation, Billy!

This I wished to include in full, to also draw attention to Dacre's reference to another Glossa Hortensia favourite, the Night-flowering cereus. Within this genre of sentimental women's fiction, I find it credible that Hunt herself was aware of what the 'secret language of flowers' conveyed upon this beautiful bloom - that is, transcendent, but ultimately temporary, beauty, and perhaps the implication that for all Isabel's adoration of Dacre, their romance was to be as short-lived as this flower.

I will also credit the playful competition over Dacre's affection - and the green carnation - between Billy and Isobel embodied in the final line, even though the real 'sport' is between Isobel and Flossie for Dacre's affection, and Dacre and Billy for Isobel's.

Either way, I have taken the liberty of transcribing the entire story from a scan for the online reader, given the work is now far outside copyright restrictions and it took me a considerable amount of trouble to track down. You may read it in full here on Glossa Hortensia.

To illustrate the mood of the period, I have below gathered a selection of references to green carnations from periodicals in the immediate aftermath of Wilde's coining the symbol. I note that prior to March 1892, I was unable to find any references to 'green carnations' (outside of lists of colours/tints, i.e. 'green, carnation, red', &c., and references to foliage, 'green, carnation-like'). Dyed flowers are mentioned sparingly before this juncture, but interest in them only arises with their introduction to society.

I commence with this extract from Garden and Forest, an American periodical, although it is late in the piece being published on 30 March, for it explains well how the dyeing is achieved (not by dipping them in arsenic, as Billy suggested!), and contains interesting reference to the carnation's political messaging in France, which will be explored elsewhere:

Flower Dyeing.—A few weeks ago a green Carnation made its appearance in the button-holes of the members of a political party in Paris, which consequently became known as the party of the Green Carnation. The badge of the boulangists was the red Carnation, while the anti-Boulangists wore the same flower, but with its stalk uppermost.
 The green Carnation attracted some attention on account of its exceptional color, an English daily paper stating that this "new color in Carnations had been raised by a Parisian florist, who was in the way of making a fortune out of it!" The color was really the result of placing the flowers in a dye which soon permeated the petals and gave them an artificial color.
 In the Gardeners' Chronicle this week is an interesting account of some experiments of this kind which were made by Mr. W. Dornington and Mr. Brockbank. They procured some aniline dyes, which were dissolved in water to about the transparency of claret. In these solutions flowers of various kinds were placed, or rather their stalks, for the dyes did not change the colors of the flowers when simply immersed in them.
 — W. Watson, 'London Letter.' in Garden and Forest 30 March 1892, New York: Garden and Forest Publishing Co., (1892) p.150 (paragraphing added).

Compare this, for example, with the following extract of London's The Gardening World from Saturday 5 March 1892, the very day Wilde and his entourage would descend upon The Kiss with their green carnations - evidently, they are already a booming fad, but the writer of this piece does not know how the flowers are created:

 The latest fashionable craze.—The Pall Mall Gazette says, it is quite safe to prophesy that the reign of the new "button-hole"—the fashionable green flower—will be neither a long nor glorious one. To begin with, it is by no means a thing of beaty. On the contrary, it is produced by over-culture out of the creamy-white Carnation that was indeed one of the loveliest of midsummer garden flowers. The white background, as it were, is visible still, but all the dainty petals are thickly flecked and outlined by a hideous tint of verdigris. This is not even well distributed, but leaves here and there a patch of white. The contrast between the startling green of the flower and the beautiful, characteristic bluish-green of the Carnation foliage is the very opposite of harmonious.
 Then, the new flower is as expensive as the choicest Orchid. The ugliest and most stunted specimen is sold at two shillings, and twice that price is put on a fully-developed flower accompanied by an unhappy-looking bud. Hitherto the English grower has steered clear of the green Carnation, simply and solely because of its extreme lack of beauty. The specimens which are just beginning to attract crowds round the windows of the leading London florists have come over from France, where, like a great quanity of other flowers, they are grown in the environs of Paris.
 — ed. Brian Wynne, The Gardening World 5 March 1892, Vol.8, No.392, London: 1 Clement's Inn, Strand, W.C. (1892) p.418.

The following extract from London magazine The Artist is interesting for its sympathies to the 'decadent school', and snipes at other critics for their use of immasculating language to criticise the accoutrements of contemporary life - spotlighting that by April, the green carnation was indeed being attacked as 'unmanly':

 TWELVE HUNDRED POUNDS paid for the collected etchings of Mr. Whistler, some 250 in number; a hundred and twenty county councillors elected, ninety of whom are in favour of "Parkinson" and "the God he took from a printed book;" eighty thousand pounds and sixty big pictures refused by the Government because the Prime Minister's sympathies are more with science than with art; seven hundred new watercolours hurried by the Institute on an unwilling market and three dozen well attended performances of a play [Lady Windemere's Fan] still running, which the chief dramatic critics of the daily and weekly press said could not possibly live a fortnight; these with the discovery of the green carnation, constitute some of the leading events which March has added to the anuals[sic] of Art.
 Of the list we are inclined to assign the most importance to the final item. A flower added to our garden is a lasting gladness and the sunflower has remained with us though Postlethwaite has passed. The decadent school have not been able to add a flower, but they have given us a colour. The green of the new carnation is of an exquisitely pure tone and taste is not limited to one exact shade as the depth of hue depends on the time the stem of the flower is allowed to remain in the blue green liquid which, is the secret of the change from the flowers[sic] normal white hue. Art has long needed a flower of a really good green and the effect of the green carnation worn by a youth or girl of bright complexion is exceedingly pleasant.
 It only suits the healthy-looking, so that the "wild woman" of the Lady's Pictorial is slightly mistaken in her strange judgment that to wear a green carnation is "unmanly." This amusing adjective and its synonym "effeminate" are venerable servants of the great goddess Grundy, worshipped in "Troy Town," under the mystic title of Cummeel Fo. A few generations back it was hurled at those who ventured to take a daily bath, and when Premiers were held to have "weathered the storm," mainly through their devotion to port, it was cast with much bitterness in the face of all drinkers of claret. It is not fifty years since it was applied to riders in an omnibus, while wearers of all round collars have enjoyed the same attack wiothin the memory of the Eighty Club.
 — 'From Month to Month. A Summary.', The Artist and Journal of Home Culture 1 April 1892, Vol.13, No.149, London: Wells Gardner, Darton and Co., Paternoster Buildings (1892) p.113 (some paragraphing added). Via Hathi Trust.

While I am aware Grundy is a Victorian stock character exemplifying priggishness, and 'Troy Town' is a traditional name for a hedge maze or labyrinth, I cannot say much to what 'Cummeel Fo' is all about.

They go on later, here specifying the method of dying and colours used. I note, should the reader wish to try this at home, these antique pigments are not at all required - the same effects may be produced, and often are in floristry, by use of a white flower and food dye.

 The green carnation to which we have referred, is a white carnation, dyed by plunging the stem in an aqueous solution of the aniline dye called malachite green. The dye ascends to the petals by capillary attraction, and at the end of 12 hours they are well tinged with green. A longer immersion deepens the tint. White lilac becomes green in the same way. Narcissus, lilies, and other white flowers are coloured by the process, which is facilitated by slitting the outside of the stem with a knife, to allow the liquid to enter. M. Gaston Tissandier finds that white lilacs become red after their stems have been steeped for 12 hours in a solution of cosine. Methyline blue gives blue lilacs, and coloured flowers such as jonquils or violets are changed in colour by a solution of malachite green.
 — ibid., pp.114-115. Via Hathi Trust.

There is a trend in recent depictions to show the 'green carnations' as a pale yellow-green found naturally in some flowers, although not carnations. The actual pigment used to achieve these flowers was malachite green, also known as aniline green, used to achieve the 'green carnations', in particular is widely banned due to its toxicity. The Encycolorpedia gives the hex code #3c7a6e for an '1829 Malachite Green Tile', and this colour matches my perception of images of malachite green. The Artist goes on to mention lilacs dyed red using cosine, and lilacs turned blue with 'methyline blue'. In textiles, methylthionium chloride, otherwise known as methelene blue, takes a blue-magenta colour similar to the hex code #360ccc in varying shades. It is of note that while this compound has some medical applications, it should not be used without professional medical advice, as it can be toxic and may interact with other medications. Cosine is an extract of coal tar, as all these pigments are, and produces reds such as alizarine red #db2d43, toluidine red #ec012c, vermillionette #ff1713 and geranium lake #e12c2c.

If these colours seem particularly garish to contemporary eyes, this was rather the point. They were outside of nature, futuristic and bizarre. There is a certain line to be drawn between such accessories and, for example, the punk 'liberty spikes' hairstyle, dyed brilliant fluro colours and pointed with sugar spray into a wild, shocking cluster of radiating spikes, or to goths shaving off their eyebrows and implanting metal balls under their skin as body modifications. The out-of-this-world appearance is the point.

In April of 1892, the flowers had crossed the Atlantic to the eastern coast of the United States, although they are identified by Amateur Gardening of Springfield, Massachusetts, as Parisian, not British:

CHATS ABOUT FLOWERS.
 It has been ascertained that flowers, by having the freshly-cut stems dipped in green coloring matter, may have their color changed to green. This experiment has been tried and was so successful (if successful it may be called) that a new industry has sprung up in Paris, and green carnation pinks are quite the thing. The lilac and narcissus have also been changed. But why have a green flower? Nature has provided green foliage for all blossoms, and we have seen that "it was good."
 — Amateur Gardening April 1892, Vol.1, No.4, Springfield, Mass.: Amateur Gardening, 39, 41 and 43 Lyman Street (1892) p.57.

By June, the real excitement of the fad had passed for Springfield and moved on to new novelties:

CHATS ABOUT FLOWERS.
 Now that the green carnation has ceased to be a wonder, seekers after fads are turning their attention to emerald green forget-me-nots. This effect is produced by tobacco smoke.
 — Amateur Gardening June 1892, Vol.1, No.6, Springfield, Mass.: Amateur Gardening, 39, 41 and 43 Lyman Street (1892) p.92.

But this was far from the end of it. As we are to see in the following excerpts, green carnations had not even hit their stride in the United States until the close of that year, and were still all the rage well into 1893.

In July, we see the fashion has passed, as British Gardening remarks on the novelty of green carnations in 'buttonholes' or 'bouquetières', now better known by the French 'bouutonniere' - and indeed, that dyed flowers of any variety have failed to catch on. Here, they comment on what qualifies for the highest class of fashion in this accessory:

Mere novelty of réclame is not sufficient, or the green Carnation which sent all the dramatic critics a few months ago into fits of despair would have sufficed to bring about a perfect epidemic of chemically-dyed blooms. Nor is it solely high price, or the very few types of Orchid available for the purpose would be more frequently seen in the Gaiety stalls and other places where the gorgeous young man doth collect.
 — 'Buttonholes.', ed. C.H. Betts, British Gardening 21 July 1892, Vol.8, No.208, London: John Haddon & Co. (1892) p.50. Via Hathi Trust.

For the sake of curiosity, I have assembled a quick table of the buttonholes they do observe for each class:

By October of that year, the green carnation had fully passed in London fashion in the Musical News - they write, regarding the third act of Incognita, a version of Lecocq's comic opera Le Cœur et la Main by F.C. Burnard and H. Greenbank at the Lyric Theatre:

The most important [numbers] are a florid vocal waltz by Mr. [Herbert] Bunning and a clever patter song set to "Yvolde" in which occur the lines:——
 "Here's a faded green carnation that has seen its palmy days,
 And the whole of Mr. Ibsen's muddy moralising plays!
 — 'Incognita.', Musical News 14 October 1892, Vol.3, No.85, London: Publishing Office, 130, Fleet Street (1892) p.372. Via Hathi Trust.

But the fad had gained a strangle-hold on New York that November:

 Oscar Wilde startled London last summer by sporting in his buttonhole a green carnation. But London's jeunesse dorée soon followed suit, and now the fad has reached this country. If you want to be especially pschutt, you must wear a green carnation. A green aniline dye is sprinkled on a white flower, and the result is more peculiar than pretty. Oscar was not the original dyer of flowers, for some years ago the Princess of Wales introduced bouquets of dyed lilies—this was painting the lily with a vengeance—but we do not know that this bit of British Philistinism ever reached the United States.
 — 'Fads, Facts and Fancies. Commentary upon Events, Episodes and Incidents of Current Interest.', The Illustrated American 19 November 1892, Vol.12, No.144, New York: The Illustrated American Publishing Company (1892) p.496.

In December, Philadelphia reported that it had at last caught on there:

The Evergreen Business.
  Holly, laurel and mistletoe, the latter both domestic and imported, are fully supplied at our wharves, and prices are very low at present writing.
 Hugh Graham makes quite a feature of a green carnation. I need not say that it is doctored, but among our Chestnut st. swells it is considered the proper thing to have one in their button-holes. We had always supposed these kind of things only went in Gotham. We are progressing.
 — 'Seed Trade Report. Philadelphia.', W.F. Fancourt as 'W.F.F.', The Florist's Exchange 17 December 1892, Vol.5, No.3, New York: A.T. De La Mare Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd (1892) p.43. Via Hathi Trust.

And the fad retained its grip on New York into the following year:

The State of Trade.
[...]
 The green carnation continues a fad among some people in this city. One retail florist had an order this week for 300 of them. It is hard to account for the taste of some.
 — 'Seed Trade Report. New York.', The Florist's Exchange 21 January 1893, Vol.5, No.8, New York: A.T. De La Mare Printing and Publishing Co. Ltd (1893) p.128. Via Hathi Trust.

We return in January to Amateur Gardening, who have further to report regarding new novel varieties, much to their disgust - yet again, they are associated with Paris, and not London:

COLORED TO ORDER.
Not a Bit of Nature In It.
 Green carnations, and the means of producing them, have been mentioned in Amateur Gardening, the fad having originated among the chemical florists of Paris. Green carnations have been worn for boutonnières by the Parisian nabob for some time, and New York florists have learned the value of a chemist, the swells of that city affecting the unnatural flower partly for the reason of its oddity, and, be it known, the green carnation is expensive.
 On the day of the Yale-Princeton football game at New York, last fall, street flower venders were selling blue carnations—all for Yale—the secret of dyeing having been discovered while experimenting with the green dye. The blue is a better shade than the green, but florists say there is no reason why black carnations may not be produced, if there should be a call for these doleful flowers, for which, let us hope, there will never be a demand. Blue or green or black carnations suggest an incongruity; let them go with the blue chrysanthemum. It is not a flower lover who finds pleasure in these monstrosities, they simply gratify the desire for something extravagant, something out of Nature's catalogue. The pink, yellow, crimson or white carnation suits the American taste better than those with painted petals.
 — Amateur Gardening January 1893, Vol.2, No.1, Springfield, Mass.: Amateur Gardening, 39, 41 and 43 Lyman Street (1893) p.5.

Finally, an extract from Amateur Gardening once more, illustrating that the fad continued among the ball-throwing classes into 1895, despite their recognised toxicity. I include this to note that although Wilde's obsenity case was now well over, and indeed he had been imprisoned as a result since May 1895, apparently this had cast no shadow upon the humbled green carnation:

THE GREEN CARNATION.
 A leading man among florists is reported to have told a lady recently, who applied for an entire decoration of green and white carnations for a debutante dinner, that he had banished them from his greenhouses, as the dye that was used to give them their brilliant green hue was too poisonous to be inhaled by human beings.
 — Amateur Gardening September 1895, Vol.4, No.9, Springfield, Mass.: Amateur Gardening, 39, 41 and 43 Lyman Street (1895) p.137.

O.