A social centrepiece
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (224) discusses how the Chrysanthemum Exhibition became an important annual fixture in the 1890s. Local newspapers followed the show as it expanded and improved each year, although its finances remained fragile. Analysis of the show, run by local people, suggests that it met more than one objective within the community’s social agenda.
Victorian Bournemouth (224): background
History
The chrysanthemum had had a long history of cultivation by Chinese and Japanese gardeners before reaching Europe after 1600. An article published by the Bournemouth Guardian in 1889, as local interest in the plant grew, marked that year as the century of its establishment in Europe. Robert Fortune, who had smuggled tea plants from China to India, in addition brought out a type of chrysanthemum, the ‘Chusan Daisy’. The British Newspaper Archive contains references to Chrysanthemum Shows occurring across the country during the 1830s. Local papers carried references to events held in Lewes (1833), Swansea (1834), Bath, Birmingham, and Portsmouth (1836). By the 1850s, this practice had spread to include Exeter, Norwich, Bury, Cheltenham, and Chichester. For a while, the Middle Temple’s gardener ran a show, until it grew too large for the site to contain it. In the late 1880s, interest in a chrysanthemum show at Bournemouth emerged.
Local beginnings
In 1886, ‘A Lover of the Chrysanthemum’ wrote to the Bournemouth Guardian. The writer noted how chrysanthemums enjoyed growing popularity, shows already present in neighbouring towns. The letter also referred to ‘a gentleman in the town having enthusiastically taken up the subject’. A committee soon assembled, attended by ‘most of the principal gardeners of Bournemouth’. By February 1887, the Bournemouth and District Chrysanthemum Society proceeded ‘under the most favourable auspices’. It had a road-map for the following November and had adopted appropriate social heraldry. The Marchioness of Waterford, based at Highcliffe, became lady president, while the Honourable Mrs Clementina Denison, widow of a Bishop of Salisbury, agreed to become lady vice-president. Energy would make the show ‘one of the first in the South of England’. Cottagers formed an important feature of the show. They ‘are busy putting in their cuttings, and they do not intend being far behind the professionals’.
Victorian Bournemouth (224): the shows
Structure
The first show (1887) enjoyed a ‘… a degree of success beyond the most sanguine expectations of its promoters …’. Emboldened, the society equipped itself with an appropriate structure to cover both social groups and horticultural interests. In due course, it acquired the touch of royalty in Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein as patron, a daughter of Queen Victoria. Reports about the upcoming second show breathed about the possibility of being ‘graced by royalty’, but Princess Christian restricted her interest to letters and telegrams of apology. Nevertheless, the committee secured the ‘co-operation of the nobility and gentry of the district’. For this show, its ‘ … patrons and patronesses include the bulk of the nobility and gentry of the neighbourhood …’. The society enjoyed an array of vice-presidents, drawn from the local great and good, not least the current mayor. Such people also became committee members.
Design
The competition consisted of several divisions. Division 1 signalled the society’s civic ambition, offering its prizes to All England. Its second division restricted entries to competitors living within a twelve-mile radius of the Pier. Subsequent divisions invited entries from those having gardeners, from ‘amateurs’ (‘jobbing gardeners allowed’), from ladies, and, at the end, cottagers. Although the society’s main interest consisted of chrysanthemums, competitors could enter fruit, vegetables, honey, and wax. A prize also went to the best-kept garden within three miles of The Square. The show lasted for two days. Judges, from outside the town, assembled before it opened to make their decisions. Top people assembled to watch the Honourable Mrs Denison, or someone of similar rank, open the show. Speeches praised the show, contestants, and appropriate committee members. The Bournemouth Guardian gave at least two columns, including prize-winners’ names, those of their gardeners in brackets.
Victorian Bournemouth (224): social aspects
Top people
Press reports maintained ruthless attention on listing the great and good staffing the society and attending its show. The society and the shows acted as an important hub whereby people occupying higher social positions might network and maintain personal currency. Clerics and senior army officers, as well as several spinster daughters, rubbed shoulders with the nobility and gentry. Thus, to some extent, the group excluded the town’s power block, which consisted of successful local commercial men. They gained entry, however, through the appearance of each year’s mayor, many of whom had local businesses. Indeed, on one occasion, the mayor, just elected by his peers, took the council from that meeting in force to attend the Chrysanthemum Show. Although they positioned the show as an instrument to promote Bournemouth, the society attempted to encourage participation from top people resident in nearby rural areas. Thus, they tried to create a ‘county show’.
Other people
From its beginning, the show encouraged the involvement of men who dug the soil in addition to those who owned it. One example of this inclination consisted of devoting a division of entrants and prizes to people described as ‘cottagers’. The committee expected such people to compete over types of vegetables and fruit, even honey and wax, but they could also enter chrysanthemums. Another aspect of a wider social involvement lay in recruiting several gardeners and even owners of nursery businesses to participate in the show’s administration. Thus, in addition to tapping networks connecting local gentry and nobility, the committee perhaps saw opportunities to promote the show through customers of the gardeners and nurserymen. Involving experienced horticulturists also underwrote the show’s quality, since such people would have had experience digging, pruning, and taking cuttings. Aims to win national fame for the show needed assurances of quality.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (224) examined the resort’s Horticultural and Chrysanthemum Society, tracing its development and social impact. An annual Chrysanthemum Show provided the society’s focus. The society served as a networking hub for the privileged but also helped working people, or ‘cottagers,’ improve their lives by growing vegetables.
References
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