Autumn 2020 Issue 23

THE ıntage rose Autumn V2020, Issue 23 NOTE: please change your pdf view to landscape mode for optimum screen viewing. NEWSLETTER FOR THE FRIENDS OF VINTAGE ROSES Autumn 2020, Issue 23 IN THIS ISSUE: Featured Rose: ‘Baltimore Curator’s Report Four Uncommon Noisettes Fostering The Friends of It’s a New Day on Our Belle’ Vintage Roses Modern Shrub Website On windowsills the vases Many rose lovers who Collection It’s a lovely rose, as most count the days—blue are fond of climbing and I am so happy to tell you are that survive the whims, cobalt glass, powder blue clustering flowers are fond When I agreed to foster about the new look and ravages, and vicissitudes of pottery, clear cylinders of Noisettes and Tea- The Friends of Vintage changes to our website time. But it’s also a head- in steel. They are always Noisettes. The Noisette, Roses Modern Shrub Col- www.thefriendsofvintage turner of robust health, ready, smiling at me, an original American rose lection, several years ago, roses.org. Thanks to the and, despite being 177 asking me to bring a rose (c. 1810), boasts virtual I thought it would be no hard work . see page 14 years old . see page 3 blossom. see page 5 bouquets . see page 7 big deal . see page 12 On the cover: ‘Earl of Eldon’ (photo by Gregg Lowery) • • • 2 • • • TABLE OF CONTENTS Featured Rose: ‘Baltimore Belle’. 3 Curator’s Report . 5 Four Uncommon Noisettes . 8 Fostering the Friends of Vintage Roses Modern Shrub Collection. 13 It’s a New Day on Our Website . 15 ‘Marechal Niel’ . 16 EDITOR’S NOTE As you all know, this has been a difficult time. For The Friends of Vintage Roses, it has meant we have had to cancel an important fundraiser in May because of COVID-19. It has meant we have had to cancel our Dirt Days of volunteer work. It has meant we have had to rethink, regroup, re-plan how we would now raise neces- sary funds. Out of that difficulty, came an experiment, an answer: ‘Baltimore Belle’ (photo by D. Schramm) We would hold a drive-in sale of roses. Our curator put together an enormous list of salable roses, posted it online, had buyers order the roses AND select a day and time they would drive onto the property, and, without getting out of their vehicle, receive their A Head-Turner: ‘Baltimore Belle’ order of roses. It worked. Wonderfully. And we raised money more Darrell g.h. Schramm efficiently, with less work, than previous sales at other venues. As of this writing, we are now dealing with smoke and the fear It’s a lovely rose, as most are that survive the whims, ravages, and of fires threatening our collection. While this too shall pass, we vicissitudes of time. But it’s also a head-turner of robust health, and, hope you will continue to be with us and to support our efforts in despite being 177 years old, it is known for an occasional autumn preservation. bloom. A rather sexy rose, its exuberant blossoms call to mind a —Darrell g. h. Schramm, editor rumpled, unmade bed. While the flower in full bloom suggests a salacious woman, its name supposedly refers to a head-turner, a proud, pretty young woman known in the early 1800s as The Belle of Baltimore. All her several portraits show her as not beautiful but • • • 3 • • • definitely quite pretty. Daughter of William Patterson, a banker and three months) shipowner of a distinguished Baltimore family, she was a dauntless, and cer- enterprising and strong-willed woman. tainly wiser, declined, writ- Equally enterprising but more self-serving than strong-willed was ing that she the youngest brother of Napoleon, the foppish Jerome Bonaparte, would deal who landed on America’s shores in search of escape and pleasure— only with the not adventure—in 1803. In short time he met Elizabeth “Betsy” Emperor him- Patterson. Bored with Baltimore and, no doubt, seeing an exciting self. Jerome future, this young lady agreed at age nineteen to marry the brother replied that of the most powerful man in the Western world. Honeymooning in she should Washington, D.C., they were feted by Dolley Madison. For a time come as well, they became America’s and that he most famous couple. ‘Baltimore Belle’ (photo by Bill Grant) would make Unfortunately, Napoleon her a princess. refused to honor the A squanderer of money and a philanderer of countless women, marriage and insisted Jerome now had two wives, for Napoleon’s declaration of their that it be annulled. annulment was not valid. Succumbing to pres- In any case, the Belle of Baltimore did not trust Jerome. By now she sure, Jerome in 1805 had heard of his royal marriage to Catherine. And though Betsy essentially abandoned filed for an American civil divorce (which Congress granted her), she the Belle of Baltimore. refused to marry another man. According to historian Desmond A few months later, Seward, she declared, “Nothing could persuade me to marry any- Betsy Patterson gave body in America after having had an Emperor’s brother for a hus- birth to a son whom she band.” So much for love. named Jerome Napoleon Bonaparte. Four years after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo, she and her son “Bo” visited Rome where they were graciously received by both At the end of 1807, Napoleon’s mother and by his sister Pauline. The purpose of Betsy’s Napoleon made Jerome Elizabeth Patterson Bonaparte (Gilbert Stuart, 1804) trip to Italy may have been more calculating than adventuresome. King of Westphalia and According to Seward, she had hopes of her son marrying one of had him marry Catherine of Wurttemberg, after which King Jerome Uncle Joseph Bonaparte’s daughters. Instead, to Betsy’s disappoint- wrote to Betsy asking her to send their son to Europe to be educated ment and chagrin, Bo married a girl from Baltimore. and to grow up as befit his station as son of a king. Betsy, older (by • • • 4 • • • By the 1830s Betsy had made a large fortune in real estate, having become a shrewd —and miserly—business woman. Yet it would seem that she still retained her attractiveness a decade later when in 1843 the Feast Brothers of Baltimore bred and named a rose reput- edly in her honor. When Jerome died in 1860, she and her son sued in the French courts to claim part of his estate—and lost. The fact that by then the nepotistic Napoleon III was ruler of France did not help her cause. Having related all this (because we do enjoy a good story), I will now backpedal somewhat. I have not found an original source that confirms the rose was indeed named for Betsy Patterson. In fact, by the time the rose was introduced in 1843, Betsy would have been nearly sixty years old, hardly what most people would refer to as a Raindrops on Roses— “belle.” Usually that term was applied to a debutant, an ingenue, a young marriageable and attractive woman. Perhaps the Feast The Curator’s Report Brothers named the rose for itself—the rose was and is the Belle— Gregg Lowery the beauty—of Baltimore. This pale pink rose, ‘Baltimore Belle’, is a hybrid of Rosa setigera and On windowsills the vases count the days—blue cobalt glass, powder perhaps R. gallica, perhaps a Noisette rose. Clusters of round buds blue pottery, clear cylinders in steel. They are always ready, smiling form on this rambler, opening into fully double roses with incurved at me, asking me to bring a rose blossom. Sometimes I tag the sill petals that detest damp weather. Sometimes they exhibit a button with tiny Post-its, savoring the names, memorizing new and old eye. The blossoms flower late and last long, with some autumn alike. They need not be perfect blooms nor offer a leaf. Some blow rebloom, at least in California, rather like Betsy Patterson returning their perfume round the kitchen and others flaunt bright colors, to Europe in the autumn of her years. vibrant against the cobalt glass. The Belle of Baltimore, Seward informs us, ended her life “an This is the rhythm of life with a rose collection. It grounds me. This immensely rich old dragon” sipping brandy. That habit could has been a year like many before, full of the work-day life of trying lead anyone to slide into the pool of oblivion. However, she had to keep the roses alive, hoping they can thrive, and seeing the results rubbed more than just shoulders with a Napoleonic sibling and had of our daily efforts, delighted when the stories have good endings. had a rose named for her—perhaps, thus ensuring that she, Betsy And this has been a year of calm upheaval and turbulent quiet. Patterson, would not be forgotten. One wonders how much at age I struggle every few months to share with our community where we 94 she herself remembered after all that brandy. Was it, I wonder, have come from and where we are now, where I think we are going. ■ Remy Martin? I measure these things against our mission to hold fast to the living • • • 5 • • • beauty of these old roses, and to be the guardians to pass them on to the future. And, I am confident that in this past year we have BECOME A GUARDIAN OF done well. THE ROSE AT $10 PER November of 2019 sent a jolt through our ranks when we wit- MONTH—JOIN THE nessed a portion of our Floribunda collection afflicted with severe GUARDIANS’ PRE-SALE OF ROSES crown gall.

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