The Rose of all flowers has been most praised by poets. From Isaiah's day to our own they have celebrated its charms. In English history it figured as the badge in the feuds between the houses of York and Lancaster. Among the ancients the Rose was the symbol of secrecy, and was hung up at entertainments as a token that nothing there said was to be divulged—hence the well-known phrase "under the rose" (sub rosa). The Romans at their voluptuous entertainments suspended roses in golden network from the ceiling, which, throughout the feast, fell slowly upon the reclining guest. All day, while the skillful Roman chef busied himself with his ragouts of flamingo tongues, his patés of locusts and honey, and his roasts garnished with "chilled mushrooms," slaves, in garden or forcing-house (as the season might be), wove fresh wreaths of roses for the invited guests, which beautiful youths, with hair in golden nets, waiting at the door of the triclinium, put upon their heads, warning them, as the custom was, to pass the threshold "right foot foremost." One sees, in fancy, the couches of these recumbent feasting voluptuaries, with the roses dropping, dropping, all night long, while the wine cup brimmed and "the hours went by on velvet feet."
The flower-loving Persians held annually a "Feast of Roses," which, we are told, continued the whole time of their remaining in bloom, and still another known as "The Scattering of the Roses." Groups of beautiful children then went through the streets strewing these delicious flowers.
Tom Moore tells us that "every part of the city was then as fragrant as if a caravan of musk from Khoten had passed through it."
My own rose garden is not much to brag of, having been made up of such miscellaneous rose bushes as were (without outlay) attainable. The greater part of these had come over with us from the Cambridge garden. Most plentiful of all are the Blush Roses. (Bushels of their scented petals are yearly cured by me for Potpourri.) One or two bushes of it still straggled on in the old-time border, and brought up to their possibilities by transplantation and sufficient food, soon became good to see, as also did the lone rose bush from the edge of the grass-plot, dear to the Lady's heart as the gift of a dead friend, and, summer after summer feeding the delusive hope of bloom, nursed in her optimistic soul. Now there is a second bush of its kind, both bravely blooming.
I have never learned the name of the Lone Rose. It is so very double that I have fancied it might be a descendant of the Persian "Gul sad buk," the Rose of a hundred leaves, a particular species much prized in the Vale of Cashmere. Be that as it may, it is a lovely flower. Its petals are legion, and its buds so rounded and compact as to have the appearance of big pink "alleys." More exquisite still is a single rose rescued from choking in a snarl of waxberry bushes.
It has since taken to itself a big slice of the rose garden, and, enlarged by good living to twice its ancient size, its daintily shaded flowers, for decorative use, are simply perfection. Unhappily their bloom is evanescent. They seldom outlast in water a day and a night.
Among the Cambridge roses was a little half-wild pink darling "unknown to fame." I found it at Farm Hill (Weymouth Town), where it ran riot among the vegetables in a carelessly ordered garden patch, and straggling through the picket fence, held its own among the seldom-trodden wayside weeds and grasses. Its color is bright pink, and it has the size and habit of the Scotch Rose, and is in full bloom when other roses are but buds.
Another early pink rose which we found in the Cambridge garden is the next earliest. It flowers about the 9th of June. I have no clue to its name. It must have been one of the Botanic Garden roses. Its blossom is exquisite in form, but not over fragrant. In habit it is straggling, almost a climber, and does not take kindly to pruning. Then there are the well-known Damask Roses, which must have come long, long ago from the Harvard collection. In their own habitat the Damasks are cultivated for their mercantile value, being, as we are told, the special roses from which the costly foreign Attar is obtained. I had thought that the Damask Rose had in the family three colors, but Bacon sets me right. He says: "It is large, pink, hardy, and has not been known in England (at the time of his writing) above one hundred years." It is by no means a distinguished-looking rose, but seems to have conserved within its sweet heart the perfume of a thousand summers.
A Yellow Scotch Rose takes kindly to my garden. A rose bought of a Cambridge florist for the beloved daughter, gone home to God (whose latest care it was), and now known as "Mary's Rose," bore well its second uprooting. It has come to be a tall bush, bearing abundant clusters of deep pink bloom, and all summer putting forth crisp shoots, with leaves red as a sunset cloud, and lovely as flowers for decorative uses.
A Sweetbriar—rifled years ago from the wildwood—after a fourth transplanting knew three summers of thrifty growth in its latest home, and then gave up, without notice, the experiment of being cultivated. Not so a sturdy wilding brought all the way from Maine, as a dear souvenir of happy seaside "days that are no more." It still accommodates itself to Massachusetts soil and bears with fortitude the exigencies of Massachusetts "culchure."