[Taken from the forward by Léonie Bell of the 1978 facsimile reproduction (Earl M. Coleman, Publisher, New York) of Old Roses by Ethelyn Emery Keays, 1935, Macmillan, New York.]


FOREWORD TO THE 1978 EDITION

     Around 1930, a watershed period in so many ways, interest in old roses seemed at a nadir. Despite the attention given them by Ellen Willmott's great monograph, The Genus Rosa, published in London in 1914, too many forces were even then gathering momentum to deflect interest to other aspects of the Rose.

     In the early decades of the century, the rose-buying public was inundated with rambler roses; if one did not have enough fence to support them, one built arbors and set up sturdy posts. Next came the Polyanthas, small and scentless roses but bright and in bloom for five months, ideal for bedding at ground level to hide the basal canes of all those lofty climbers. Concurrently, the moment M. Pernet-Ducher stunned the world with his initial offspring of Hybrid Perpetual and Austrian Brier, the well-named `Soleil d'Or', in 1900, hybridizers began to concentrate on what came to be known as "Pernetianas", or Hybrid Teas of heretofore unknown colors, of brilliant yellows, orange, flame, scarlet, spectrum red.

     The old roses were indeed in a state of eclipse. Yet, thanks to the untiring efforts of a few old-rose aficionados, a healthy ferment of interest bubbled behind the public scene. In the 1920's, Lambertus Bobbink imported a collection of 3,000 old roses from a French estate but would not publish a first tentative list of them for two more years.

     In California, Francis Lester was busy collecting the many roses brought West and left in abandoned settlements around depleted goldmines; these roses were to form the nucleus of a future nursery of world renown.

     Horace McFarland, one of the founders of the American Rose Society and editor of its Annual, had a completely Lyon, steadily worked their way around the countryside of Calvert County, asking for samples of family garden treasures at every household, from the very poor to the very wealthy, for there is no common denominator quite like a shared love for heritage roses. The big south-facing hill at "Creek Side" provided ample space for growing the roses to study at close hand, in a climate mild enough for tender sorts yet sufficiently cold to please the hardy varieties as well.

     From the beginning of her search she kept notes, and wrote, and translated. We know from this book that she tried to draw, but shaky tracings from old books were the best her 60-year-old hand could manage. She augmented these drawings with a few photographs, but how we wish there were more! By 1934 she turned out three long articles for the Rose Annuals as well as the manuscript for Old Roses. Such a clear, firm grasp had she by then of the species and classes of 19th Century roses that little of it need be amended forty-four years later. Her skill in popularizing the history and botany of the Rose is on a par with such immensely admirable horticultural writers as Louise Beebe Wilder, Alice. Morse Earle, and Gertrude Jekyll, yet no dictionary of biography records her achievement.

     Mrs. Keays has so long been a part of my life that I cannot remember who introduced us or when she joined my family of books. Probably Richard Thomson, a few of whose roses I had to draw for a book on climbers in 1954, lent me Old Roses, for it was he who opened the eyes of many of us to the untold beauties of the other roses. Mrs. Keays' chapter of suggestions for further reading led me to the rest. Then there were those long articles in the American Rose Annuals, year after year, each on some new aspect of her ongoing search. (A list of the content of these appears at the end of this foreword.)

     I developed a method of recording rose information different from hers. Instead of using a notebook as she did-before the looseleaf kind came along-I found 5X 8inch index cards more convenient. The year 1954 saw the start for me of a regular orgy of copying from Old Roses and other books, not mere notes but whole chunks of description, each on its proper card. Thanks to the generosity and patience of a librarian at the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, I do believe I had typed onto cards most of Mrs. Keays before I could afford the price of a copy of my own.

     Just as she'd hoped, her work led the way. There is not a strange rose we come upon that we do not check out with her discoveries, for often she had found both rose and identity years before. One pale pink mailed here as "Mrs. Pryne's Grandmother's Favorite Rose" (try to fit that on a label), now sold as "Fantin Latour", is, we are confident, her much older `Celine'. What many before me called `Shailer's Provence', I did not acknowledge until Mrs. Keays' description clinched the realization that mine was hers. Our `La Reine', lost for 80 years to rose nurseries, is beyond question hers.

     For once Ethelyn Keays settled upon a name, you can be sure that she had exhausted every printed word about it first. Read of her struggle to pin down `Jaune Desprez' and the long list of Tea-Noisettes which she discarded as possibilities, to get an idea of her thoroughness and honesty.

     We find some names absent both here and in her later writings. The fact that she never came upon Multiflora carnea or `Lauré Davoust' or `Rivers' Bernard' or 'Bella Donna', legitimately old roses which we discover in widely diverse locations, leaves us with small nagging doubts about our own identifications.

     Her single slip, thanks to a wrong steer by another well-intentioned loner, was with the pink Albas, about which she never felt comfortable because her pink ones were so different from the type whites. But the very care she took in noting their differences led us to recognize, years later, members of the mysterious "Banshee" strain, which has stymied even experienced botanists.

     Some very fine rose books have come from European writers in the past twenty years, particularly from England. For all their excellence, they are uniformly weak on three groups, most examples of which seem to have disappeared from the Continent. And yet these three, the small, early Noisettes, the initial Hybrid Perpetuals, and the very old Teas, are among Mrs. Keays' best and longest chapters. Such rarities still flourish in countless areas in the United States, but especially in our South where they are cherished for their great age and sentimental associations.

     Some indefatigable people in the South have already found and saved a few dozen Teas. We are at present discovering the first of her Noisettes, and more. A start has been made on her Hybrid Perpetuals. Who can possibly read her descriptions of Adella Butler's Pink, or Anna de Diesbach, or Mrs. Baker's Deep Pink, or Queen Victoria, and not long to find them?

     In the late Forties, her husband's failing health compelled them to sell their beloved "Creek Side" to a private club. A complete collection of her roses was presented to the University of Maryland-we have a copy of the list-but, never seriously appreciated or cared for, it has long since disappeared. The 17th Century house is gone, burned to the ground. A few plants survive the yearly struggle with encroaching honeysuckle and bittersweet along the shore of St. Leonard's Creek, as one young man who has returned there several times reports, but each year there are casualties. Mrs. Keays retired to Long Island at close to 80 years, never again to write about roses.

     When we learned that she had died in 1961, the realization hit us: she was still living when we in turn found Old Roses in 1954, and survived for seven years more, and we did not know it. How pleased she would have been to find that some of us have taken up her challenge and opened her "wicket gate into the ancestral estate of a queen whose reign has no ending".

Léonie Bell

Conshohocken, Pennsylvania

February, 1978






Léonie Bell

MRS. KEAYS' ARTICLES IN THE AMERICAN ROSE ANNUALS

1932--Old Roses in Calvert County, Maryland, with b/w photographs of 5 roses

"Faded Pink Monthly"--Blush Noisette"Tulip Rose", R. gallica officinalis--Red Gallica: La Belle Sultane?--Spotted Gallica?--Portland Rose--Rose du Roi-Rose du Roi â fleurs pourpres?

1933--Vibert: the Bengal Roses, translated by Mrs. Keays

Gloire des Rosomanes--Aimée Vibert--Miss Glegg? "St. Leonard's"--George IV?--Coupe d'Hébé

1934--Visitors to Old Roses 1935

1936--What Greater Delight?--with b/w photos of 6 roses

La Tourterelle, or Dove Rose?--Baltimore Belle--Queen of the Prairies--Multiflora Polyantha--Harison's Yellow--Red Boursault --"Red Damask"

1937--Getting On With Old Roses, with b/w photos of 3 roses

R. alba flore-plena--Maiden's Blush?--Celestial?--"University"--Blanche Belgique--Phénice--Hebe's Lip--"Crimson Velvet"--R. francofurtana?

1938--What Old Rose Is This?

Botanical characters.

1939--A shelf of Old Rose Books

1940--Shakespeare on Roses

1941--Studying the Old Roses, with 7 b/w photos, some used in 1937

Bishop--Hebe's Lip--Queen of Denmark?--George IV--R. francofurtana--Maiden's Blush ("Banshee")--Coupe d'HébéMme. Plantier--Noisette characters

1942--Old China and The Rose No photos.

Old Blush--Semperflorens--R. laevigata--R. bracteata--R. anemonaeflora--Beauty of Glazenwood--R. fortuniana

1943--Noisette Roses No photos.

Aimée Vibert--No. 1--No. 2--No. 3--R. noisettiana--Isabelle d'Orléans--Fellemberg--Belle Vichysoise? --Mme. Alfred Carrière--Crépuscule--Fraser's Pink Musk? Belle Henriette?--Conque de Venus? --R. moschata? R. brunoni?

1944--Some Always Dependables No photos.

R. alba flore -plena--Old Blush China--Gruss an Teplitz"--Faded Pink Monthly"--Hermosa--Duchesse de Brabant--Zéphirine Drouhin--Childing's Provence?--Common Moss--Old Red Moss--Magna Charta

1945--

1946 --Moss Roses No photos.

"Old Red Moss" (Tinwell's)--"Red Moss"--White Bath--Blanche Moreau--R. centifolia cristata--Princess Adelaide--Gloire des Mousseux

 

From the forward of the 1978 facsimile reproduction (Earl M. Coleman, Publisher, New York) of Old Roses by Ethelyn Emery Keays, 1935, Macmillan, New York.



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