Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2plfb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T02:43:57.187Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

CAPTAIN FREDERICK MARRYAT AND THE FLORAL TELEGRAPH; OR, A FORGOTTEN CODER AND HIS FLORAL CODE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 March 2014

Daniel Wuebben
Daniel Wuebben*
Affiliation:
University of California, Santa Barbara
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

This essay examines the floral telegraph; A New Mode of Communication by Floral Signals, a rare Victorian novel published anonymously in 1836 and reprinted in 1850 with a new tagline – The Floral Telegraph; Or, Affection's Signals. The reprint includes an ascription to Captain Frederick Marryat, Royal Navy (1792–1848) (See Figure 5). The majority of Marryat's biographers, scholars, and archivists have doubted the posthumous ascription. Here, I challenge the critical consensus and argue that Marryat did indeed write The Floral Telegraph published in 1836 and that the attribution of 1850 is correct. I begin with a biographical sketch of Marryat, a brief synopsis of the novel, and a review of its scant, mostly skeptical reception. I then argue that the “floral code” presented in the text resembles (albeit through parody) Marryat's famous codebook for maritime flag signals and that the Captain's acknowledged interest in botany and horticulture gave him the fluency necessary to create the Table of Flowers (See Figure 6). In addition, Marryat had a strong relationship with the novel's publisher, Saunders and Otley, and he was the editor of the Metropolitan, a literary magazine which ran a favorable review shortly after The Floral Telegraph was first published. The narrative also reflects Marryat's stylistic tendency to satire and parody and his ideas about literacy and widespread publication seem to be inversely reflected in the ironic digressions of the unreliable narrator, Horace Honeycomb, and the diatribe against the “cursed and abominable art of Printing” (117) offered by the inventor of the floral code, Floribel. I conclude my essay by viewing The Floral Telegraph as representative of early Victorian issues of literacy, affect, and disembodied, long-distance communication in the age immediately preceding the advent of the electromagnetic telegraph.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 209 - 233
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

WORKS CITED

Altick, Richard D. The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800–1900. Chicago: U of Chicago, 1963.Google Scholar
Bateson, F. W., ed. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. 4 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1941.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. The Reading Lesson: The Threat of Mass Literacy in Nineteenth-Century British Fiction. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.Google Scholar
Conrad, Joseph. “Tales of Sea.” 1898. Joseph Conrad: Notes on Life and Letters. London: J. M. Dent, 1921.Google Scholar
Rev. of The Floral Telegraph; a New Mode of Communicating by Floral Signals.” Metropolitan Magazine 17 (Dec. 1836): 105. Microfilm.Google Scholar
Hannay, David. Life of Frederick Marryat. London: Walter Scott, 1889.Google Scholar
Johnson, R. Brimley, ed. “Introduction.” The Novels of Captain Marryat. Vol. 1. London: J. M. Dent, 1895–1896.Google Scholar
Rev. of The Language of Flowers. Metropolitan Magazine 10 (Jul. 1834): 74. Microfilm.Google Scholar
Lawrence, Lindsay Michelle. “Metropolitan Magazine (1831–1850).” Dictionary of Nineteenth-Century Journalism. 2009. Web. 3 May 2012.Google Scholar
Levine, Susan, and Levine, Stuart. “‘How-to’ Satire: Cervantes, Marryat, Poe.” Modern Language Studies 16.3 (1986): 15–26. JSTOR. Web. 5 Aug. 2013.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lloyd, Christopher. Captain Marryat and the Old Navy. London: Longmans, 1939.Google Scholar
Marryat, Florence (Mrs. Ross Church), ed. Life and Letters of Captain Marryat. Vol. 1. New York: D. Appleton, 1872.Google Scholar
Marryat, Frederick. A Code of Signals for the Use of Vessels Employed in the Merchant Service, Including a Cypher for Secret Correspondence. 4th ed. London: J. M. Richardson, 1826.Google Scholar
Marryat, Frederick. Diary of a Blasé. Philadelphia: E. L. Cary and A. Hart, 1836.Google Scholar
Marryat, Frederick. The Floral Telegraph; A New Mode of Communication by Floral Signals. London: Saunders and Otely, 1836.Google Scholar
Marryat, Frederick. The Floral Telegraph; Or, Nature's Affections. 2nd ed. London: Saunders and Otley, 1850.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parascandola, Louis J. Puzzled Which to Choose: Conflicting Socio-Political Views in the Works of Captain Frederick Marryat. New York: P. Lang, 1997.Google Scholar
Pocock, Tom. Captain Marryat: Seaman, Writer, Adventurer. Mechanicsburg: Stackpole, 2000.Google Scholar
Poe, Edgar Allan. “Frederick Marryat.” The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe. Vol. 7. Ed. Richardson, Charles F.. New York: G. P. Putnam, 1902.Google Scholar
Sadleir, Michael. XIX Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Record Based on His Own Collection. Vol. 1. London: Constable, 1951.Google Scholar
Sadleir, Michael. “Captain Marryat, a Portrait.” Yale Review 13 (1924): 774–89.Google Scholar
Seaton, Beverly. The Language of Flowers: A History. Charlottesville: U of Virginia, 1995.Google Scholar
Shattock, Joanne, ed. The Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature. 4 vols. 3rd ed.Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000.Google Scholar
Spilka, Mark. Hemingway's Quarrel with Androgyny. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P, 1990.Google Scholar
Sutherland, J. A.Victorian Novelists and Publishers. London: Athlone P, U of London, 1976.Google Scholar
Taylor, John Tinnon. Early Opposition to the English Novel: The Popular Reaction from 1760 to 1830. New York: King's Crown, 1943.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Warner, Oliver. Captain Marryat: A Rediscovery. London: Constable, 1953.Google Scholar
Waters, Michael. The Garden in Victorian Literature. Cambridge: Scolar, 1988.Google Scholar
Woolf, Virginia. The Captain's Deathbed, and other Essays. London: Hogarth, 1950.Google Scholar