UK Edition
Behind the iconic snowdrop lies an intriguing history of quirky characters
It is in the darkness of winter that snowdrops emerge, gladdening hearts and sparking an annual outpouring of love. Although familiar, they are too compelling and too versatile ever to become stale, and now it seems that there are further stories to tell.
Behind the iconic plant lies a rich social history, threading through from around 1854 to the present, and this is at the heart of The Galanthophiles: 160 Years of Snowdrop Devotees, a new book by Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer (see offer at bottom).
Snowdrop fanciers have a reputation for being quirky, idiosyncratic, exacting and belligerent on the one hand, yet loyal, dedicated and generous on the other. Through meticulous detective work, Kilpatrick and Harmer have unearthed a wealth of new material, casting a fresh perspective on snowdrops and society; busting myths and unravelling mysteries as they go.
Conceived in 2005, the book has been a long time coming. “The more I looked, the more information I found and the more fascinated I became,” says Harmer, who is historian for the Hardy Plant Society. Forming a researcher-writer team with author and fellow historian Kilpatrick, they trawled through archives and libraries; contacting family members, discovering unpublished pictures and gaining insights into the personalities central to snowdrop lore.
Kilpatrick explains: “People get sidetracked by big names such as Capability Brown and E A Bowles, partly because it is easy to find information, but there are not so many stories about the small, ordinary people.”
And Galanthophiles is very much a book of stories. The tale of “dry old Quaker” James Atkins leaving his canary to his sister in his will, conjures a vision of the frail old man at the window, only a bird for company. Then there is the enigma of what James Sanders, discoverer of yellow-marked snowdrops in Northumberland, was doing there in the first place – an odd location for a busy Cambridgeshire plantsman in the 1870s. “It turns out that his mother-in-law was the housekeeper at Chillingham Hall – so he was probably amusing himself while visiting relatives,” reveals Harmer.
There are paintings and drawings of plants: snowdrop lovers and nurserymen show themselves to be not too shabby artists, either. Archive images reveal a sense of their personalities and allow us to step into their world and see things through their eyes.
Legendary breeder Philip Ballard is pictured as a child atop an agricultural machine pulled by heavy horses and, again, as an old man, raising a pint of his own cider. “He showed David Bromley, a Shrewsbury collector, around his snowdrop collection in his carpet slippers, too enthused to bother with shoes,” says Kilpatrick.
A painting of E A Bowles provided a revelation: “We realised that the artist was John Gray, also of snowdrop fame,” says Harmer. This thread continued with the discovery of two sketches of John Gray himself, cartoonishly depicting vigour and sparkle. A contemporary description of the man reads: “He had a most striking appearance for he was a giant in stature and wore a patriarchal beard. On his head was perched always a felt hat of antiquity… his clothes hung together by some inexplicable magic.” Thus, his name is suddenly imbued with character. Then there was Alice Bickham, who amassed one of the best collections in the country; building up a network of contacts and sending letters and bulbs to Bowles, badgering him with queries. Her requests were peremptory, often underlined, and she was also a talented botanical artist.
“We discovered these lovely drawings in the Lindley Library – about 150 of them,” says Harmer. “It looks as if, after her mother’s death, she got the hump with her siblings and left, taking with her lots of valuable paintings, which she hung two deep on her cottage wall as they didn’t fit.”
Kilpatrick agrees: “She was just something else. She did whatever she wanted, drove hundreds of miles in her little car on her own in the Twenties… quite an adventure in those days.”
In many ways, Bickham epitomises galanthophile women who, no matter how smart or feisty, have slipped from view. “We tend to have a rather Jane Austen view that women were married off,” says Harmer, “yet there were a number of wealthy industrialists’ daughters who felt no such constraint. Why get married and risk childbirth when you have all the money, status and freedom that you could want?” Miss Helen Russell of Ashiestiel, Miss Jane Cathcart of Auchendrane and the colourful Miss Bickham concurred.
History tends to depict these women as amateurs or groupies, distant satellites of Bowles and his influential ilk. In reality, however, they were often talented gardeners with an eye for a new cultivar – and one could imagine their frustration in sending new discoveries to the boffin du jour, only for them to be deemed merely adequate.
Another leitmotif of galanthophiles is one of personal pain; poignant memories of a time with higher mortality rates and less advanced medicine; daughters and mothers dying young, sons lost to war, friends ageing and fading away. As one walks in their shoes, it is impossible not to feel their hurt and their grief and to empathise with turning to plants for comfort and distraction.
“It was a period of extraordinary social change, there were two devastating world wars which shattered the society that most of these people knew, so it was natural that they would seek solace in their gardens,” says Kilpatrick. “A quiet world that is hopeful and ordered. There is control, you are in charge and it is a safe place.”
As an antidote to what can be quite a solitary life, however, snowdrops have always been a point of contact between gardeners. A source of discussion, an opportunity to amass a collection, a convivial comparing-of-notes and sharing of information. Although niche in the post-war period, snowdrops slowly regained popularity. In 2001 they were further bolstered by the publication of Bishop, Davis and Grimshaw’s Snowdrops: A Monograph of Cultivated Galanthus. It is now de rigueur to visit gardens and sociably enthuse over new varieties, yet the links to the early galanthophiles remain.
Shepton Mallet in Somerset, is both birthplace of Victorian galanthophile wunderkind, James Allen, and home to a new snowdrop festival (sheptonsnowdropfestival.org.uk). Energetic and public-spirited, Allen was the first person to deliberately save and germinate snowdrop seed and he wrote a significant paper for the 1891 snowdrop conference. Sadly, most of his cultivars were lost to disease but three, ‘Robin Hood’, ‘Magnet’ and ‘Merlin’, survive.
“Galanthophilia is at an extraordinary level in the UK and it was mad that the town wasn’t getting the benefit of it,” say Dominic Weston, one of the festival organisers. “When we moved here, we read about James Allen, ‘The Snowdrop King’, but there was very little local knowledge. We thought it was staggering; remarkable work done by a remarkable man, yet not celebrated.”
The garden at the Allen family home is now under a car park, while the handsome stone obelisk at his grave has been deemed unsafe and removed. But the tide is now turning. In 2013 a new Snowdrop Project set out to give Shepton Mallet something to be proud of, starting by planting 300,000 bulbs around the town. The first Snowdrop Festival in 2017 saw shops sponsoring planters along the high street, window displays and an events programme including poetry and art competitions. “It is a determined whitewashing campaign – in a good way,” says Weston.
“The aim of the festival is to give people back their own story; bring to life the legend that is James Allen,” he says. “The great thing is that now everybody wants to grow them – they are doing it themselves. There is increased awareness, particularly in primary schools. We want it to be a long-term project and if you can get the young ones back on board, that is the future.”
Honouring the legacy of the old-time galanthophiles, they are busy making a new tradition, focused on the flower, a move that inspires not just the local community, but attracts interest and competition entries from as far away as Canada, Africa and Australia. For Weston, this is proof of the snowdrop’s enduring qualities.
“It resonates with people even if they don’t grow snowdrops,” he says, “We get a lot of poetry about people who have been lost, or, because snowdrops contain a compound used in medicine to fight dementia, who are becoming lost. It is slightly melancholic, but it is a welcome melancholy that speaks of hope in desolate times.” Kilpatrick agrees. “It is something to hold on to. When all else is dying, snowdrops are starting to live”.
But what would prolific, nonconformist, modest James Allen have made of all this? Weston laughs. “He loved people to be into his plants and he was very civic-minded. I think that he would find it strange to celebrate him as a person, but he would be proud of the community engagement.”
READER OFFER
The Galanthophiles: 160 Years of Snowdrop Devotees by Jane Kilpatrick and Jennifer Harmer (Orphans Publishing, £45). Buy now for £35 at books.telegraph.co.uk or call 0844 871 1514.