by Iolanda Olivieri
A 19th century fictionalized botany book
After a long winter, this is for our navigators the wish for a warm spring, as light as the work from which the images you observe are taken, delightful, bizarre, typically nineteenth-century.
Les fleures animées were purchased on the antiques market in 1996 to enrich the Casanatense heritage of herbals, engravings and watercolors with floral subjects. The work was published in Brussels in 1852 by A. Delavau with an introduction by Alphonse Karr and text by Taxile Delord. Its greatest value lies in the 54 watercolor lithographs by Grandville, pseudonym of Jean-Ignace-Isidore Gèrard (Nancy 1803 – Vanves 1847), an illustrator with a capricious and highly successful imagination. The content is a delicate fable that narrates the revolt of the flowers against their queen, the Flower Fairy, providing the pretext for many short stories, each of which aims to outline the character of the flower protagonist by humanizing it. Then follows a short treatise on botany, the indispensable “learned trap” that, as Karr jokingly warns, pretty female readers should not read, in order to free themselves from the boring, learned botanists who do not like women.
In fact, these do not like women, much less flowers, which they tear from their place to murder them, flatten them, crush them, dry them, deprive them of scent and color, to write, on those cemeteries they call herbals, ridiculous and pretentious Latin epitaphs. Thus even flowers become first ugly and finally boring.
Unfortunately in France, he adds, pleasure is loved, but boredom is respected, venerated and squares are named in honor of the authors of large boring tomes, imprisoned first in magnificent bindings and finally in libraries.
Les fleurs animées, antiporta
Certainly the nice Monsieur Karr has a score to settle with botanists, he who calls himself a gardener who loves all flowers and who has written many pages against those who puristically maintain that the centifolia rose is a monstrosity, because only the simple rose, the dog rose, exists. And he doesn’t appreciate much those he calls “amateurs” either, who admire only rare flowers and not to look at them and inhale their perfume, but to show them off, because their main joy is not that of owning a flower, but that of knowing that others do not own one, and therefore not caring in the least about the wonderful flowers that God has made common, as common as he made the sky and the sun. And so the poor centifolia rose is not even accepted in the collections of amateurs, because having become common, a little vulgar, it is no longer a flower, it is a bouquet. The enthusiast’s pride is instead that precious rose bush that he obtained five years ago but that he never wanted to bloom: despite all his friends having done anything to get a graft, he held on and remained its sole owner. However, not all flower growers are like this; there are those who derive a simple and calm joy from all the flowers that honor them by blooming in their little garden. Others still love them for the bond with those memories that are hidden in the corollas like dryads hide under the bark of oaks. And so they remember that the lilacs were in bloom the first time they met her; that they were sitting together under a honeysuckle, at sunset, when they exchanged those sweet promises that only one, alas, kept; that, wanting to pick a branch of hawthorn for her, they scratched their hand and she cleaned the wound with an English taffeta, held several times to her rosy lips. 
And so every spring memories are reborn and fade like flowers. But the moment comes when we begin to call these fresh youthful feelings illusions, the moment when we believe we are becoming wise and instead we begin to be dead, or, more simply, we are prey to other illusions. But this is the moment when we truly begin to love flowers; we love them only for themselves, for their splendor, for their perfume and also for the efforts they cost us. We discover then that all the riches of the rich are nothing but a more or less imperfect imitation of the riches of the poor: the diamonds we are so proud of would like to resemble the drops of dew at sunrise, the flowers resemble our precious stones, but in addition they have life and perfume. We discover that the fascinating flowers of life have also brought us sad fruits, promises that have become betrayals, vanished hopes. And then perhaps, closed within the walls of our garden, among our beloved flowers, we will think that we have nothing similar to fear from this latest passion of ours: never will the pink peach blossoms be followed by the poisonous fruits of the datura; when the burning heat causes the corollas to wither, we will know with certainty that the following year they will faithfully return to the same spot in the garden to give us once again the joy of their beauty and their perfume.
This is the long introduction by Monsieur Karr and here is the tale of Monsieur Delord.
If the wise men and scholars of ancient things have long debated and perhaps succeeded in establishing the location of the Garden of Eden, none of them has even minimally concerned themselves with locating the palace of the Flower Fairy, so we can only make simple conjectures: is it in the kingdom of Kashmir? South-southeast of Delhi? On a plateau in the Himalayas? In the center of the island of Java? Or is it in the middle of an immense and intricate forest, protected from the prying eyes and annoying searches of scholars? The narrator actually knows well where this happy land is, but he is careful not to tell us and leads us there by the hand, with our eyes blindfolded by a cambric handkerchief. 
And here we feel a lighter and softer air, we sense a more vivid luminescence and our journey is over: we are in the Fairy’s garden, a triumph of flowers and plants from everywhere and from all climates; the dazzling tropical flowers next to the violet, the aloe next to the periwinkle, palm trees and acacias, jasmines, roses, lilies, carnations, all next to each other living, breathing, chatting, confusing their scents. And around small streams with capricious meanders that capture and reflect the light like diamonds; and butterflies of all shapes and colors cross, avoid, chase, glide, alight or soar on their wings of amethyst, emerald, turquoise, sapphire and, as in a concert heard in a dream, over everything the breeze sighs, murmurs and sings its melody to every flower. The Fairy’s palace is worthy of this wonderful setting; a genie friend of hers has collected all those silver and gold threads that flutter from one plant to another in the early mornings of spring and has woven them into an enchanted filigree with which he has built the castle that he has covered with tiles of rose leaves. But the Fairy spends little time in the castle because she is a conscientious queen and loves to spend time among her subjects, attentive to their well-being. Can one be unhappy being a flower? It would seem impossible, but it is so and our Fairy is about to experience it. On a beautiful spring evening, lying softly in her hammock of woven lianas, she was lazily contemplating those mysterious flowers called stars, when she thought she heard a distant and confused buzz and, rising, she saw a long procession of flowers of all ages, all conditions, all species advance. Astonished, she saw the hellebore, a fine orator, emerge from the group and, having paid her respects, said that for thousands of years men had used flowers for metaphors and poems, that they lent them their own defects and qualities, and that now the flowers, bored with their own lives, were asking permission to take on human features to judge for themselves whether what was said there on earth about their character was true. The Fairy could not believe her own eyes and ears: did they want to exchange an existence similar to that of the gods for human miseries? They possessed happiness, they could adorn themselves with diamonds of dew, they could amuse themselves with the conversation of the zephyr, the kisses of butterflies could make them dream of love! But the Beauty of the Night yawned and replied that the dew gave her a cold, the Rose that the madrigals of Zephyr made her sleep – he had been repeating the same things to her for a thousand years and certainly academic poets must have been more entertaining – and the sentimental Periwinkle murmured that she did not know what to do with the caresses of the Butterfly, symbol of selfishness, that she did not know how to love, that she passed without memories, without past or future, while there are only men who know how to love!
The Fairy was astonished and felt a little betrayed, but she wisely thought about it for a while and said: “Let it be as you wish: go to the earth and live the life of men, but you will soon return to me”. The next morning her garden was deserted; only one flower remained, the solitary Erica always in bloom, symbol of eternal love, she knew well that there was no place for her on earth. But the Fairy had not granted her permission without a secret thought of revenge; even in her pain, even if she could not console herself for this abandonment, she sought a way to play some tricks on them and then she said to herself: “The flowers have become women and as such they need the attentions of men; if I find a way to take them away from them, they will soon become disgusted with the earth and will return to me”. Then she remembered a young genius, handsome and brilliant if ever there was one, who had suddenly renounced the company of the fairies to retire to his cave and devote himself entirely to the pleasure of smoking. He had the most beautiful collection of pipes that it was possible to see: sometimes he smoked from a pearl, sometimes from a faceted emerald, sometimes from a golden shell; he smoked with wise and measured aspirations! And the Fairy said to herself: “What is woman in the East, in the countries where they smoke opium? Nothing but a plaything! Men, lost in the infinite delights of intoxication, no longer think of women, or if they do, it is to make them the playthings of their bizarre whims. In China, for example, women no longer have feet, their complexion disappears under a layer of white lead, their eyebrows are shaved, they become a curious animal, a living screen image with which the master amuses himself between two ecstasies… but opium is not suited to the European climate… let’s replace it with tobacco and, by teaching men to smoke, they will do as the genie did and distance themselves from women. I have found my revenge! And tobacco was invented.
It is not known how she managed to wrest the virtues of this plant from the earth, perhaps she availed herself of the help of the inhabitants of Cuba and of Jean Nicot, but there is certainly no woman today who does not complain about the use of tobacco. The husband deserts the hearth to go to the club to smoke, the fiancé appreciates the gift of a beautiful cigar case more than the portrait of his beloved and when the moment of reproaches arrives between two lovers the unfortunate lady no longer has the resource of long recriminations and bitter accusations: she will be let speak, she will be listened to with patience and resignation … and a cigar will be lit. Tobacco is the god of humanity. If the dream of the utopians could ever come true, if the nations of Europe were finally to form a single family, the coat of arms adopted by this new society would certainly be a tobacco plant spreading its roots on a globe quartered with pipes, loaded with cigars on fields of tobacco pouches and lit hookahs.
For a moment the Fairy believed that her plan had succeeded: the women were completely abandoned, their empire had ceased to exist and some husbands were already talking about locking their wives in a menagerie. But they averted the disaster and their dejection did not last long because they soon found a way to win back the man: the women began to smoke. And the Fairy thought that if she wanted to achieve her goal she had to move other pawns. But this was not necessary: it was existence in human form that avenged her with its dangers, its bitterness and its disillusions. The vain centifolia rose, loved or despised according to fashion; the beautiful and fatal camellia, sorrowful widow of a husband who committed suicide because of her proud coldness; the poppy forcibly distorted from a serene bringer of sleep to a bringer of illusory visions; the snowdrop killed by the first warm breeze after having conquered the winter snows in the longing for spring; the sweet pea, left gasping for thirst only because it was pretty, but useless to the gardener; the cactus whose experience on earth could all be summed up in having suffered so much from the cold; the dahlia, disillusioned flower girl of lying loves; the hawthorn terrified by the shears that cut off its young branches; the arrowhead that had seen the young fishermen die among the aquatic plants seduced by the sly song of the undine; the diaphanous periwinkle dried up in a dusty herbarium. All the flowers, finally, decided that after so many odysseys the experience had been more than enough and the first ones began to return to the Fairy’s garden.
They were certainly a little fearful: what welcome would she give them? They had left against her will, without wanting to listen to her wise warnings. Perhaps, considering them punished enough, she would have agreed to receive them, but they did not dare ring to have the garden gate opened. But suddenly the doors opened and the Fairy appeared; the flowers fell to their knees weeping, but she gently raised them up, saying: “Come in, poor ones, come and take back with me the place you should never have left!” and she sent her kind messenger to earth, the bird with turquoise feathers, to guide home those who could no longer find their way.
Throughout the day the gate opened and closed continuously, and in the evening only two or three latecomers were missing. The queen, reading sincere remorse in their hearts, gave up reproaches and recriminations, and instead organized a great welcoming party, a sumptuous ball, lit by the circling of thousands of fireflies and enlivened by the orchestra of nightingales from the Conservatory of the Fairy of Music, and to which all the sylphs of the neighborhood were also invited.
The images are taken from Les fleurs animées by Taxile Delord and Alphonse Karr, with 54 lithographs painted with watercolours by Grandiville, published in Brussels in 1852 by A. Delavau.