Constant improvement
Introduction
Victorian Bournemouth (225) explores another aspect of the annual Chrysanthemum Exhibitions held at the resort during the 1890s. This article examines how encouraging participation amongst working people met a wider social imperative.
Victorian Bournemouth (225): social concepts
Better people
Since the sixteenth century, at its higher levels, some saw English society’s structure falling into three sections: best (gentry and nobility), better (respectable people), and beasts (labourers). Some respectable people camped on the best frontier. These included professional men (physicians, clergymen, lawyers), successful retailers and manufacturers. Skilled artisans, however, dwelt on the border beyond which lay the beasts. The latter consisted of working people, for the most part unskilled. A key social dynamic resided in the concept of improvement. This may have flowed from the idea of agricultural treatment, which raised the commercial value of lands. In turn, this delivered higher rents. Much of rural improvement derived from land enclosure. The idea of greater worth extended to social position. As a person’s wealth grew, so did his place (and role) within society. During the Early Modern Period, successful farmers began to congregate under the shared status of ‘better people’.
Sturdy beggars
The barrier separating the labourers from those deemed respectable stood lower than the one keeping them from the best people. Hence, they feared the beasts. Respectable people earned their position rather than inheriting it. Commercial success earned their wealth, powered by hard work and independence. The concept of ‘sturdy beggars’ had a timeless currency amongst respectable people. They applied this to people who, while capable of earning a living through work, relied on others’ charity. The term referred to unskilled men occupying this situation. The banner tended to ignore economic malaise, which might deprive people of working opportunities. Their command of literacy enabled the gentry and respectable people to define the problem and shape the agenda for solutions. Their control of the legislature provided the workhouse as one mechanism of restraint. The basis for another lay in the common view that working people became, with ease, feckless alcoholics.
Victorian Bournemouth (225): human horticulture
Temperance
During the resort’s early development, Bournemouth inclined towards Temperance. Newspaper reports showed repeated attempts to inculcate this practice within the culture, not least that comprising working people. Brewster Courts, held to award or renew licences to serve alcohol, almost always featured an objection from the Temperance quarter. Working men’s clubs, serving tea and coffee rather than alcohol, moved through various incarnations. Attempts to create a Mechanics’ Institute, designed to increase literacy and vocational training, provided another strategy to keep drunken, unskilled workers at a controllable distance from respectability. Not until the 1870s, and then only by supporters taking soft steps, did Bournemouth acquire a licence to hold public theatrical performances. If unable to recruit unskilled sturdy beggars into respectability, organised religion warded them off with much energy. The High Church Anglican installation and the Dissenters, otherwise quite separate, agreed on this point.
The ever-improving chrysanthemum
Against this broader social background, therefore, the resort’s Chrysanthemum Exhibition acquired a significance greater than horticultural aesthetics. The plant appeared receptive to a constant process of genetic modification. In parallel with the arrival of seeds and cuttings from the East came the practice of scientific manipulation to enhance the chrysanthemum’s aesthetic appeal. By the time Bournemouth’s interest in chrysanthemums coalesced, the plant had undergone a century of this process at the fingers of English gardeners. Opening the 13th Exhibition, Lady Theodora Guest emphasised the plant’s receptiveness to attention. ‘Culture had [improved the chrysanthemum], but there were some things the art of culture could not do. It could not make a rose that was blue, or a tulip that was black, and it could not make a Boer that was not treacherous. (Laughter)’. Nevertheless, growing chrysanthemums did provide opportunities to manage human improvement closer to home.
Victorian Bournemouth (225): improvement and involvement
Hard work and abstinence
The Bournemouth Chrysanthemum Society, from its beginning, supported improvement amongst working people. The ‘… society also did a great good among the working classes.’ They avoid spending time in ‘less profitable and satisfactory ways’. It also taught them about the use of vegetables and fruit as articles of diet. ‘The committee wish to call attention to the good work this society has done amongst the cottagers of the district, who are allowed to exhibit without charge.’ In thanking Lady Theodora, Mr Charles Brown noted that Bournemouth soil would not grow vegetables. Nevertheless, ‘it was one of the objects of the society to encourage growers of vegetables in small gardens, and, if they looked at the exhibits, it would be plain that they could, in spite of the dry summer, succeed very well in that line.’ Thus, hard work could prevail against the odds. They restricted one prize category to cottagers.
The ‘people’s flower’
The society’s efforts to include involvement from many parts of society found support within the object of its existence: the chrysanthemum. The plant had a solid advantage, helpful to the wider social agenda. ‘… it might be grown equally well in the cottages of the poor as in the mansions of the wealthy, and equally decorated the humble cottage porch, or window, or the drawing room.’ Chrysanthemums travelled along a vernacular road, whereby they could become what some might have described as the ‘people’s flower’. Mayor Hankinson, a gardener’s son, hoped the show would ‘bring in all classes of society’. His life’s trajectory stood as a shining example of how hard work might deliver substantial improvement and the prize of respectability. To some extent, therefore, the society managed to socialise, if not politicise, their chrysanthemums. Nevertheless, subtle distinctions remained. The prizes for cottagers prioritised fruit and vegetables over chrysanthemums.
Takeaway
Victorian Bournemouth (225) has explored wider social and symbolic factors associated with the resort’s chrysanthemum show. The society encouraged the idea that cultivating chrysanthemums, as well as fruit and vegetables, might engender moral improvement amongst the labouring sector of society. Horticulture offered additional support or, even, an alternative to Temperance, as a mechanism of social control.
References
For references and engagement, please get in touch. Main primary sources: here and here (subscriptions needed). See also here.
Kitablios