|
Abelia
By Melanie Devore
In a
letter to John Hawkes dated 6 October 1959, Flannery O’Connor explained
that it would have been mechanically impossible to write Wise Blood
without the character of Enoch Emery. According to O’Connor, a mechanism
in a novel, such as the Enoch Emery character, makes a novel work.
However, she clearly stated to Hawkes that she felt that a device that
makes a novel work also detracts or lowers the reader’s interest. Let’s
face it; Flannery O’Connor felt Hazel Motes was the only character in
Wise Blood who could handle irony being tossed his way. Enoch was the
last character in the novel worthy of irony. O’Connor clearly states this
sentiment in an earlier letter to Carl Hartman dated 2 March 1954.
Careful reading of O’Connor’s letters spells things out pretty clearly.
Hazel Motes is the protestant saint whose wise blood directs him on an
inner journey. Enoch Emery’s wise blood directs him down a path ending in
a gorilla suit. But before Enoch and Hazel’s trajectories intersected,
Enoch was trapped in a predictable daily ritual beginning in the abelia
bushes and climaxing in the presence of the divine grotesque.
Enoch Emery
was employed as a guard at Taulkinham’s City Forest Park.
The heart of the park consisted of a swimming pool; zoo and museum accented
by a hot dog stand, and of course, plenty of green space. Every day when
Enoch relinquished his watch to the second shift guard, he systematically
made his rounds starting at the abelia bushes overlooking the swimming pool
and ending with mystery in the museum. O’Connor refers to Enoch as having a
“terrible knowledge” that grew like a nerve inside him. How fitting that
Enoch started his daily ritual under the branches of a bush named for a man
who had to deal with tension, rituals, and a blotched attempt to open
diplomatic relations with the mysterious emperor of China.
In 1816
Clarke Abel was granted an opportunity that made him the envy of every
naturalist of his time. The only drawback was that it came when the British
Empire had at least two nerves of its own growing inside of it. One of
those nerves was Napoleon Bonaparte and a second was the tangled mess of
miscues surrounding trade with China. Abel would be the first British
naturalist to explore the interior of China as part of Lord Amherst’s
embassy. The East India Trade Company influenced the King of England to
send a British embassy to ease the friction between the Company and the
Viceroy of Canton. Tensions were high between the British and the Chinese
and the trade balance between the two nations was not equal. Let’s just say
that the English tea habit was supported by the Chinese opium addiction.
Opium was always a rare, expensive quantity in China, and the British had
learned that they could potentially equalize trade in their favor by
introducing the narcotic from their Indian provinces. The Chinese emperor,
not surprisingly, did not view this arrangement favorably. Amherst’s
embassy was about to twitch the nerve growing in the Emperor Kiaking.
Lord
Amherst, Abel and the rest of the party spent most of August 1816 making the
slow journey from the Chinese coast to Yuen-Ming-Yuen (Peking) for an
official meeting with the Emperor. The series of events that occurred once
they arrived could best be described as a comedy of errors, except, there
was no humor involved. Ray Desmond, in “The History of the Royal Botanic
Gardens Kew,” provided the shortest explanation of these events. According
to Desmond, the inability of Britain and China to establish a “fair” trading
agreement was because “British diplomacy failed to appease Chinese
xenophobia.” From all other accounts, the willingness to perform the
Chinese “ko-tou” ceremony, a traditional ritual in the Emperor’s court, was
the growing nerve within Lord Amherst. Central to this ritual was executing
a complete, prostrate bow to the Emperor. Failure to agree to perform the “ko-tou,”
or kowtow, in public would result in NO audience with the Emperor. The
Emperor wanted to meet with Amherst the moment he arrived to discuss the
matter privately and had all the arrangements in place for a public
reception. Amherst clearly let the Emperor know that he was sick and that
he couldn’t meet just yet because his dress uniform and gifts for the
Chinese ruler had not arrived yet. A court official was sent to try and
convince Amherst to meet with the Emperor anyway. Amherst still would not
budge, and it became apparent that the English nobleman was not keen on
kowtowing to the Emperor. At this point, the Emperor simply dismissed the
entire British embassy. Instead of leaving, Amherst stayed in China until
January 1817, and Abel had a month to document the geology of inland China
and collect plants.
Abel
published a diary of the expedition and this work, Narrative of a Journey
in the Interior of China…, but don’t expect to find a blow-by-blow
account of the Mexican standoff between Amherst and the Emperor.
Immediately in the preface, Abel tells us “the tale of the transactions of
Lord Amherst’s Embassy has been too well and too circumstantially told by an
official pen….” What you will find is that Abel had a nerve growing inside
him too. When the East India Trading Company funds you, they do want
something in return. That something would be the fruits and seeds of
Chinese plants that could be introduced to English gardens or be the source
of “economic products” like opium. Plants were a part of the power of the
British Empire, and it is no coincidence that the Empire had botanical
gardens in most of their colonies. The East India Company placed the command
of making plant collections on the shoulders of Abel. One plant he
collected would bear his name and would later be introduced to gardens in
both England and Georgia.
Abelia
(common and scientific name are the same) is a genus of about 25 species
belonging to the honeysuckle family. Besides thriving in China and Japan,
Abelia is distributed in Mexico. This unusual spatial pattern likely
reflects a previously wider distribution that included Canada and the United
States. The flowers of the Chinese species are rather small, and usually
purple to white in color. Abelias may not be as flamboyant and fiery as
azaleas, but what these bushes lack in floral splendor they more than make
up for with other outstanding attributes. Unlike azaleas, abelia will bloom
from about May until the first frost dusts its leaves in early winter. Abelias
are rugged, fast growing plants capable of battling disease, drought, and
insect pests. It is not surprising that Georgians have made these hardy
hedge formers a prime choice for landscaping.
The
University of Georgia has a long rich history of creating new varieties,
cultivating and promoting the use of Abelia for landscaping. The College of
Agricultural and Environmental Sciences (CAES) has been crusading to make
Georgians fall in love with the “gas station plant.” Carol Robacker,
research horticulturist for CAES, tags Clarke Abel’s namesake with this
colorful nickname since “you could plant it beside a gas station, surrounded
by asphalt and forget about it and it would still survive and thrive.” You
can learn more about the work Robacker and her colleagues have done to
develop and promote Abelias by exploring the Georgia Faces, the CAES
newsletter, at
georgiafaces.caes.uga.edu.
As you read this, there is a team of researchers and graduate students
laboring to develop just the right, aesthetically pleasing Abelia, to grace
your lawn. It seems the growing nerve of CAES with the failures of
Georgians to further embrace Abelias despite their diminutive flowers will
soon become resolved.
Issues were not resolved too
well for the other cast of characters in our story including Amherst,
British-Chinese relations, Abel and, of course, Enoch. On the way home to
England, Amherst’s party stopped off at St. Helena to visit Napoleon. The
ex-emperor was charming and greeted each member of the party personally and
warmly. Then, after the ships left port, Napoleon issued his own statement
regarding Amherst’s failed diplomatic attempts and refusal to kowtow to the
Chinese emperor. Bonaparte stated, “It is my opinion that whatever is the
custom of a nation, and is practiced by the first characters of that nation
towards their chief, cannot degrade strangers who perform the same.” Even
after facing Waterloo, Napoleon could still rejuvenate the nerve he
cultivated within the English.
The English continued to fail
at cultivating diplomatic relationships with China. When the Chinese
emperor confiscated massive amounts of opium, the two nations were propelled
into the Opium Wars (1839 and 1859). By 1860 the British exerted their
authority and opium became widely produced and used in China.
Plants documented by Clarke
Abel became widely used in both Britain and the United States. However, it
was not the seeds and fruits collected by Abel that served as the stock for
these horticultural novelties. The
Alceste, the flagship
of the expedition, sunk and almost all of Abel’s collections were lost.
Abel wrote: “After leaving the wreck of the Alceste, I had the mortification
of hearing that the cases containing these seeds had been brought upon deck
and emptied of their contents by one of the seaman, to make room for some of
the linen of one of the gentlemen of the Embassy.” Fortunately, Abel gave
some of his treasures, including collections of pressed, dried Abelia, to
Sir George Staunton, of Canton. Staunton turned over the Abelia specimens
to Robert Brown, who described the new plant species and named it after
Abel.
As for Enoch, his fate was no
longer the same the day he shared his ritual with Hazel. Enoch’s wise blood
tells him to steal the mummy from the museum and to prepare a place for the
object of wonderment in his own dwelling. The ritual was changed forever.
Despite missing their morning visitor, the Abelia patch in
Taulkinham’s City Forest Park would remain, enduring drought and disease.
After all, no plant with a good life strategy needs to be justified,
especially a “gas station” plant.
|
