(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 171.  
 
Honorine de Brabant; introduced 1880; pale lilac with deeper shadings; full flowers repeating well in the autumn. Growth strong and vigorous -again to 5 ft.

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 127.  
 
Invitation [One of Harry Wheatcroft's selections of the Best Hybrid Teas.] Description... salmon-pink shading to yellow at base... heavily scented with a fruity flavour... A rare beauty, too often overlooked in Britain...

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 124-125.  
 
Isabelle de France [One of Harry Wheatcroft's selections of the Best Hybrid Teas.] Parentage: ('Peace' x seedling) x ('Mme. Joseph Perraud' x 'Opéra'). Description... in colour there is still nothing like it; vivid orange-scarlet, vermilion, overlaid with a dusky matt finish, so that each petal looks like velvet...

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 32.  
 
'Ena Harkness', one of the finest roses of our time, was raised by an amateur, Mr. Albert Norman, whose real job was connected with diamond cutting in Hatton Garden. But his success with 'Ena' was no fluke, for he also gave us 'Frensham', for many years the best seller among floribundas, and he later produced 'Isobel Harkness', 'Ann Elizabeth', 'Vera Dalton', and others.

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 123.  
 
Josephine Bruce [One of Harry Wheatcroft's selections of the Best Hybrid Teas.] Description... darkest crimson, yet each fragrant bloom lit with an iridiscence that makes an eye-catching appeal... Trial ground certificate, Britain, 1953...

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 22-23.  
 
Some roses, like 'Karl Herbst', for instance, can be winners in the relatively congenial, mild atmosphere of the south of England; magnificent in the garden, capable at any time on the exhibition bench of taking the award for 'best in show'. But they can fail to make any sort of impact in the wetter, colder north.

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 137.  
 
[Svend Poulsen] used 'Orléans Rose', reputed to be another Mme. Levavasseur' seedling, crossed with another crimson hybrid tea, 'Red Star', a semi-double. They produced 'Else [Poulsen'] and 'Kirsten Poulsen', which in 1924 were to set the whole rose world on the trail of new wonders... 'Else' ('Joan Anderson' in the United States) was a clear, deep, rose-pink semi-double, 'Kirsten' a bright scarlet single. Both were landmarks, to be planted all over the world for their brightness and hardiness...

(1970)  Includes photo(s).
 
Plate 26.  ‘Lady Mary Fitzwilliam’ [This photo is credited to Graham Thomas.  However the text on page 69 credits the photo to Gordon Rowley.]

p65.   ....I would raise my hat in silent homage to two great performers of even earlier ages - 'Mme. Caroline Testout' and her mother 'Lady Mary Fitzwilliam'.....

p66.  After being used by  Bennett in several crosses, and by Pernet-Ducher to produce our worthy ‘Caroline [Testout]’, ‘Lady Mary Fitzwilliam’  was allowed to fall into a decline. In my own copy of that classic manual The Book of the Rose by the Reverend Andrew Foster-Melliar, there appear these fateful words against Lady Mary's name: "Eliminated from this edition" (the third edition dated 1910). It could have been no consolation to her and her devotees to find the same damning verdict recorded against her parent, Victor Verdier.  The rose world, it seemed, had no further use for Lady Mary.  But enter now her Scarlet Pimpernel who was to snatch her from utter extinction: our old friend Willi Kordes
“Caroline Testout was always a great favorite of mine,” Willi wrote to me ”But I wanted a scented Caroline, so I tried to pollinate her with General Jacqueminot (the old deeply scented, dark red, hybrid perpetual) But none of these seedlings showed as I'd hoped.”
So Kordes tried again and this time crossed a Caroline descendant, Superb with the American-bred crimson Sensation, itself of Caroline blood.  Lady Mary lineage occurred four times in that pedigree.  The result was Cathrine Kordes, virtually a crimson Testout but, like Caroline, still lacking that elusive quality, scent.  Once more Kordes tried, this time crossing Cathrine with the English rose, W. E. Chaplin. And their progeny came dark red and scented.   Scented so strongly that when you entered a room it could be almost overpowering.   It was named Crimson Glory and, as I've told you, a real glory it has been.
But what happened to Lady Mary Fitzwilliam while all this was going on?  Kordes, now at the peak of his triumph, made a careful check on all his breeding records and decided that the one rose that had given him scent was Lady Mary Fitzwilliam. He decided to use her again. And to do so he had to have her growing in his own trial grounds. The decision was far easier reached than the achievement. Eventually, after prolonged searching, he was able to obtain some bud-wood of Lady Mary from the German national rose garden and trial ground at Sangerhausen. Lady Mary's future seemed restored.  But another of those desperately hard German winters wiped out Kordes's entire stock of Lady Mary Fitzwilliam. And not only his but also that of his only known source of further supply, the 'old rose' beds at Sangerhausen. In desperation Willi tried throughout Germany to find a surviving Lady Mary specimen—just one. No luck. And no luck, again, when he advertised his need in the rose journals of the world.
When his final appeal to British growers in the Rose Society's Annual brought no response, Willi told me: “I am convinced Lady Mary Fitzwilliam has now completely gone out of existence. No more in the world. What a loss!”
But wait, save those tears. An English rose enthusiast, Mr Gordon Rowley (to whom I am indebted for the colour photographs of Lady Mary, and of Crimson Glory which adorn this book), on the staff of one of our big horticultural research institutes, heard in 1957 of a reputed Lady Mary Fitzwilliam growing in a back garden of a London suburb. He checked - and found it was indeed a Lady Mary, planted there thirty years before by an amateur enthusiast who was interested in old roses. Later one other plant was found in Ireland - and another 'unconfirmed' Lady Mary Fitzwilliam in New Zealand. Delightedly, Mr Rowley set about re-establishing the great lady in her proper place. Bud-wood was sent to a leading British nursery, Harkness's, who specialised in restoring old varieties.
It took a few years to restore the stock from the three sticks of bud-wood originally available but now Lady Mary Fitzwilliam, the rose that was almost lost to the world, is growing again. And I have no doubt that it will never again be allowed to get so near to extinction. For as Kordes says “Even if it is a poor grower, it has a wonderful flower and as a parent it has been invaluable.”
I was interested enough in this romance of a rose aristocrat to find out who the real-life Lady Mary Fitzwilliam was. She was a nineteenth-century lady-in-waiting to the German court of Saxe-Coburg. She died in 1929 at the age of eighty-three. As grand an old lady as the rose which bears her name.
 

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 127.  
 
Lady Seton [One of Harry Wheatcroft's selections of the Best Hybrid Teas.] Description... medium pink... can be of exhibition quality... British awards: Certificate of Merit and the Clay Cup for the best Fragrant-scented rose of 1964.

(8 Mar 1970)  Page(s) 130.  
 
'Mary Poppins' (syn. Lady Sunshine).  Belgium, 1969, Lens;  'Belle Etoile x ('Michele Meilland' x 'Tawny Gold').  Golden yellow pointed buds, 28 petals, opening to full, well-shaped flowers; scented too, a rare quality among yellows;  growth vigorous, upright; foliage glosdsy, dark green.  A large exhibition rose of good habit and growth.