Roses of Yesterday 471 



In England the payment of a Rose as rent was 

 often known. The Bishop of Ely leased Ely house 

 in 1576 to Sir Christopher Hatton, Oueen Eliza- 

 beth's handsome Lord Chancellor, for a Red Rose 

 to be paid on Midsummer Day, ten loads of hay 

 and ten pounds per annum, and he and his Episco- 

 pal successors reserved the right of walking in the 

 gardens and gathering twenty bushels of Roses yearly. 

 In France there was a feudal right to demand a 

 payment of Roses for the making of Rose water. 



Two of our great historians, George Bancroft 

 and Francis Parkman, were great rose-growers and 

 rose-lovers. I never saw Mr. Parkman's Rose 

 Garden, but I remember Mr. Bancroft's well; the 

 Tea Roses were especially beautiful. Mr. Bancroft's 

 Rose Garden in its earliest days had no rivals in 

 America. 



The making of potpourri was common in my 

 childhood. While the petals of the Cabbage Rose 

 were preferred, all were used. Recipes for making 

 potpourri exist in great number ; I have seen several 

 in manuscript in old recipe books, one dated 1690. 

 The old ones are much simpler than the modern 

 ones, and have no strong spices such as cinnamon 

 and clove, and no bergamot or mints or strongly 

 scented essences or leaves. The best rules gave 

 ambergris as one of the ingredients ; this is not 

 really a perfume, but gives the potpourri its staying 

 power. There is something very pleasant in open- 

 ing an old China jar to find it filled with potpourri, 

 even if the scent has wholly faded. It tells a story 

 of a day when people had time for such things. I 



