Exclusive interview with author Tatiana Holway and a review of her new book on the history of Queen Victoria and the Victoria water lily
by Gabrielle Pantera
Rating: Three Stars
“Doe Coover, who subsequently became my agent, asked about what kinds of things intrigued me about the Victorian era,” says The Flower of Empire author Tatiana Holway. “She knew I’ve been immersed in its literature and history since graduate school. A newspaper illustration of a little girl posed on a leaf of a giant tropical water lily floating in pool in an English conservatory came to mind right away. The rest of the book crystallized around that image.”
Author Tatiana Holway uses letters and periodicals to bring to life the story of a flower that caused rivalry in the botanical and political world. The book is a bit scholarly, not a novel. It reveals Victorian society from the perspective of horticulture as well as politics and the challenges of scientific discovery. If you love gardening and Victorian England, it’s a must read.
In Victorian times, flowers and gardening were a passion with the British. German naturalist Robert Schomburgk, working for Great Britain, was charting the Amazon in 1837 when he discovered an astounding water lily in British Guyana. This dazzling white water lily had leaves that were five or six feet across.
Sir Joseph Banks, Kew Royal Botanic Gardens director Sir William Jackson Hooker, and the Duke of Devonshire (with Joseph Paxton) competed to transplant to England the flower, named Victoria Regia in honor of their new queen. Paxton, who rose from under gardener to knight, would later design of a series of glass-houses, culminating with the architectural wonder of the age, the Crystal Palace.
“It was clear from the beginning that the history of the Victoria water lily had all the elements of a good story,” says Holway. “Ambitious characters, simmering rivalries, stunning achievements, tempests in teapots, but I didn’t realize how much story there really was until I got into the thick of it. Dickens, Darwin, Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, imperial adventurers, scientific explorers, aristocrats, commoners, inventors, entrepreneurs, they’re all in the mix. Railways, stock markets, gritty factories, teeming cities, the press. Those are all connected with the history of Victoria Regia. It’s a big flower.”
A significant portion of the book takes place at Chatsworth, one of the grandest of English manors. Holway did significant research there. “A vast cache of documents related to it are housed there, and the house and gardens are sights to see. It was March when I went, so the grounds were pretty bare, but that made the sheer scale of the landscaping all the more dramatic.”
“The house is part opulent mansion, part sumptuous museum,” says Holway. “What really tickled me, though, was being escorted through back entries and corridors and passageways to the private library where I was working.”
Holway reviewed many documents and traveled to many private archives. “Once, in a botany library at Harvard, I asked to see a rare art book on orchids from the 1830s. Two librarians had to fetch the huge folio from the stacks and staggered into the reading room under the weight. When it was laid out, and propped up on risers so the spine wouldn’t crack, and I’d been given white gloves for touching the volume. Browsing was out of the question. There was definitely no flipping pages, but not because they’re particularly fragile. They’re as big as maps. The paper is thick. The plates are brilliant. The whole thing is hypnotic. The orchid lover’s obsession with these flowers comes across crazier than ever. And, it’s also palpable in a way that an online version of the book can never convey.”
www.amazon.com/author/tatianaholway
The Flower of Empire: An Amazonian Water Lily, The Quest to Make it Bloom, and the World it Created by Tatiana Holway. Hardcover: 328 pages, Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (April 9, 2013). Language: English, ISBN: 9780195373899 $29.95
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