Note 8 — LETTER XXXIII.
Reading edition
It is impossible to concentrate the vulgar modern vices of art and literature more densely than has been done in this—in such kind, documental—book. Here is a description of the ‘Queen of the Flowers’ out of it, which is so accurately characteristic of the ‘imagination’ of an age of demand and supply, that I must find space for it in small print. She appears in a wood in which “here and there was a mulberry tree disporting itself among the rest.” (Has Mr. Huguessen, M.P., ever seen a mulberry tree, or read as much of Pyramus and Thisbe as Bottom?)
“The face was the face of a lady, and of a pretty, exceedingly good-humoured lady too; but the hair which hung down around her head”—(the author had better have written hung up)—“was nothing more or less than festoons of roses,—red, lovely, sweet-scented” (who would have thought it!) “roses; the arms were apparently entirely composed of cloves and” (allspice? no) “carnations; the body was formed of a multitude of various flowers—the most beautiful you can imagine, and a cloak of honeysuckle and sweetbriar was thrown carefully over the shoulders.” (Italics mine—care being as characteristic of the growth of the honeysuckle as disport is that of the mulberry.) ↑