A World in a Lapel Pin

This carved ivory and painted copy of a cornflower belonged to Albert Young Hassell, one of Western Australia’s most prominent 19th century wool pioneers. He wore it in his lapel buttonhole when fresh cornflowers were out of season. The colour apparently matched his eyes, which I imagine as points of striking blue brightness set against what I know from monochrome photographs to be his balding head, fashionably huge moustache and genial face above the neutral colours of a Victorian gentleman’s outfit.

As I understand it, Albert Young Hassell wore the flower for its hue but more especially as a symbol of appreciation and respect. The Aboriginal people with whom he worked had confirmed his belief that survival depended upon an intimate knowledge of the land.

When Albert’s father, John Hassell, arrived in Western Australia in 1840, he selected land near Albany in the southwest corner where the incredible coastal wildflower diversity spoke to him of sheep grazing potential. But John Hassell soon learned that appearances can be deceptive. Those coastal areas proved unsuitable and he was only able to establish his sheep stations further inland.  

Albert, born in Western Australia in 1841, worked on his father’s stations from the age of eleven. He became an authority on wildflowers and the information they impart about the nature of soil and rainfall. The Hakea victoria, for example, with the stunning rainbow colours of its lantern-like flowers, flourishes best on poor soil. The unsuspecting might assume only rich soil could produce such a spectacle. In 1887, a government botanist assigned in Albert’s honour the name Chorilaena hassellii (now Muiriantha hassellii) (commonly known as False Mountain Bell), to a rare, evergreen shrub endemic to a small area on the south coast of Western Australia. Albert had collected specimens of it from the Stirling Range.

There is, of course, a much wider context to all this. In today’s era when people can make millions sitting behind a computer if they have the nouse (or luck), it is hard to imagine the past’s limited options when land was still the key source of wealth. As opportunities opened up for travel within the expanding British Empire, people studied plants and collected specimens from around the world. Often this was about understanding natural environments so as to benefit economically from land overseas. The stakes were high and adventurers sometimes faced fatal dangers to collect or smuggle specimens back home.

There are many names that could be mentioned but a couple of famous ones are eighteenth-century naturalist and botanist Joseph Banks who contributed to London’s Kew Gardens becoming the world’s leading botanical garden, or nineteenth century naturalist and biologist Charles Darwin, known for Origin of the Species (pub. 1859). Another important plant collector more directly linked with Western Australian history was Georgiana Malloy who worked from the 1830s in Western Australia to supply botanists in England.

But human nature is never one-dimensional – and many adventurers, scholars, scientists and so on were passionate about flowers for their beauty and interest. Even nineteenth century women like artists Marianne North or Ellis Rowan pushed the boundaries of ‘respectability’ by travelling unaccompanied to far-flung parts to paint the local flora. Furthermore, as ugly industrialization spread within Britain, it spawned a concern for the loss of natural habitat. This in turn led to efforts of people like author and artist Beatrix Potter to protect and preserve via organisations such as The National Trust.

My research into Albert Young Hassell led me to conclude that he was indeed a true flower-lover; he did not just view flowers as a potential means to a profitable end. I believe that was why he always wore a cornflower, either real or this ivory copy.

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 It is one thing to collect or paint specimens and return home – but quite another to start a completely new life based on information imparted by flowers in a wild place where reading the land was vital, as the Hassells did. I continue this theme in my post, Would you change your life for a rose?