The Roses of Henry Arthur Bright

Henry Arthur Bright (1830-1884), the author of "A Year in a Lancashire Garden" and "The English Flower Garden" worked in his family shipping firm while gardening at his home in Knotty Ash near Liverpool. His books on gardening were well loved due to their brevity and literary quality. Bright took up the cudgels against carpet bedding which had reached, in mid-Victorian times, absurd proportions. He is thus, along with William Robinson, one of the first "natural gardeners". He was also one of the few to recognize the writings of Forbes Watson and is therefore part of the curious chain from John Ruskin to William Robinson.

It is therefore of interest to see what roses he endorses in his "English Flower Garden" (1881). Unsurprisingly he harks back to many old English favourites at the expense of some contemporaneous roses, which by 1881 were reaching an apoapsis of artifice. To quote Bright:

"Then come roses, and we would strongly recommend that, in addition to the newer "remontant" roses, the old roses and the old way of growing them should not be quite forgotten. Standard roses are all very well, but a rose-bush covered over with blossom is very often much better. "Madame Rothschild" is pre-eminent in beauty, but (if she will tolerate the "odorous" comparison) the old cabbage rose or moss rose has a charm of scent and of association of which their fashionable rival is entirely devoid. The old pink china or monthly rose, which flowers on from early summer to latest autumn, deserves a bed to itself. It should be trained and pegged down, as is so constantly done in Belgium and Holland, and the blue lobelia should be planted in between. A bed of yellow briar rose is still more beautiful, but it lasts for weeks only instead of months. Other beautiful old summer roses are the maiden's blush, the Portland rose, the rose unique, and the rose Celeste. But no rose, taking all the good qualities of a rose together, its hardiness, free blooming, beauty, and scent, will surpass the Gloire de Dijon, though the golden cups of Marshal Niel may be richer in colour, and the fragrance of La France recalls, as no other rose does, the luscious fragrance of Oriental otto of roses".

These selections, of course, mirror the taste of Gertrude Jekyll as detailed in her book, the eponymous inspiration for this blog. We begin to see the threads gathering into her yarn.

The "odorous comparison" is a pointed dig, as Madame Rothschild has no scent and what is a rose without scent? Unique is the white form of the cabbage rose, Rosa centifolia, an old rose and like the pink cabbage rose guaranteed to take any eminent Victorian back to their childhood. Celeste, like Maiden's Blush is an old alba, one of the "cottage garden roses". Gloire de Dijon, an advanced noisette, was universally acclaimed the finest climbing rose of the nineteenth century. Miss Jekyll writes of it: "The most free-flowering of all climbing Roses, and for general usefulness has no equal".

Note: for more on Bright see Beverly Seaton's article "The Garden Writing of Henry Arthur Bright". Garden History, Vol. 10 (1982), pp. 74-79.