Tell-Tale Tussie Mussies: The Victorian Language of Flowers
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Imagine you lived in Victorian era Concord and you heard a knock on the door. Grasping the door’s handle, you open it and see a hopeful suitor standing on the granite doorstep, handing you a small bouquet with a red rose in the center and tied with a piece of lace. If you reached out with your right hand, took the bouquet, and pressed it to your heart, it meant you were saying “Yes, I accept your affections!” If you took the nosegay and held it upside down by your side it meant, “I’ll keep the flowers, but it’s a hard ‘no’ from me and you can move along.” And if you took the nosegay, admired it, and both the flower and you instantly started shriveling and disintegrating into dust, it meant you were likely a character in a Nathaniel Hawthorne story. Coming on the heels of the Georgian era (1714-1837), when Jane Austen’s characters took hundreds of turns around the room, long brooding walks in miserable weather, and spent over 300 pages staring out the window before they got around to sharing their hearts’ desires, people in the Victorian age found a way to cut to the chase and express themselves in ways that societal norms prohibited them from saying aloud. They did this by using floriography, the ancient 48
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| Summer 2021
language of flowers in which meanings were assigned to each flower and plant, their colors, and state of bloom. Dating back to 14th century China, flower symbolism bloomed through the centuries, spreading through the world and taking root in different cultures. In his poem “The Language of Flowers”, Victorian poet James Percival wrote, “In Eastern lands they talk in flow’rs, And they tell in a garland their loves and cares; Each blossom that blooms in their garden bowr’s, On its leaves a mystic language bears…. Tell the wish of thy heart in flowers.” Victorians could send their heartfelt, coded messages in “Tussie Mussies”, small, fragrant nosegays of carefully chosen flowers and herbs, tied with lace, ribbon, or wrapped in doilies. As described in Tussie-Mussies: The Language of Flowers (Laufer, 2000), the name likely originated from the Middle English words “tuse” (a knot of flowers), and “mose” (damp moss that was wrapped around cut flower stems to keep them fresh). The tussiemussie could speak for itself, although the sender might also tie a letter or a poem to it. Upon receiving your tussie-mussie, you might retreat— forthwith— to your bookshelf to consult a floriography dictionary and interpret the flowers’ message. By the
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BY JAIMEE LEIGH JOROFF
late 1800s, nearly one hundred different floriography dictionaries had been published and, after the Bible, it was the second most common book found in middle and upper-class households in England and America. Some floriography dictionaries contained basic sketches and descriptions of flowers and their meaning; others, such as Kate Greenaway’s 1884 The Language of Flowers, were elaborately illustrated and complemented by floral-related poetry from notables such as Shakespeare, Plato, and other Greek and Indian philosophers. But, in the moment, the only words that really
