Rose colours and the growth of perception

Miss Jekyll had a highly developed aesthetic sense and in a world in which ugliness abounds (and is even celebrated) it is of interest to examine this. Do people behave differently when they are continuously exposed to a background environment of great beauty, compared to one of great ugliness? One would like to think so, and this will have great relevance in our present society.

No-one doubts that Florence is a beautiful city. So beautiful indeed that Stendhal fell ill as the first victim of Stendhal syndrome: dizzyness and heart palpitations caused by exposure to an overwhelming amount of beauty. Many modern cities constitute the largest concentrations of sheer ugliness ever placed on the surface of the earth: what is the opposite of Stendhal syndrome? Do we all suffer?

We have little control over the ugliness that others force on us but we can control that which we make ourselves. Miss Jekyll suggests a start can be made in a "growth of perception" by choosing roses for an arrangement in a vase. [Ch. 15].

"It is always well to have two or three of the same range of colouring, with perhaps one harmonious departure… The same suggestion will be found of use in arranging them in beds, for a jarring mixture, such as one of the orange-copper Hybrid Teas, with kinds of cool pink and white, will have an unsatisfactory effect. Both may be lovely things, but they should not be placed together."

Miss Jekyll notes that appreciating the harmonious in colour contrasts is a developed skill, requiring a "growth of perception". She puts it thus;

"But to learn to observe this—first of all to see that it makes a difference, then to become aware that it might be better, and finally to be distinctly vexed with an inharmonious combination, these are all stages in growth of perception that should be gone through in the training of the Rose enthusiast's mind and eye."

The process of the growth of perception can begin with sorting cut roses on a lawn:

"It is best and easiest to learn to do this with the cut flowers, and a pleasant task it is to have a quantity of mixed cut Roses and to lay them together in beautiful harmonies—best, perhaps, in some cool, shady place upon the grass—and then to observe what two or three, or three or four kinds, go best together, and to note it for further planting or indoor arrangement. Then, as an example of what is unsuitable, try a Captain Christy and a Madame Eugene Resal together, and see how two beautiful Roses can hurt each other by incompatibility of kind and colour."