May 13, 1898. 
THE GARDENING WORLD. 
577 
FIFTY YEARS OF 
FLORICULTURE. 
A Sketch and Reminiscence. 
The forties were years of great import in flori¬ 
culture, and equally so in the life of the nation. 
Writers in comparatively recent years have referred 
to the good old times of floriculture, times when 
every town and hamlet had its show of Carnations, or 
Tulips, or Auriculas, or Ranunculas, and have made 
their lament over their decadence. Vain lament ! 
Very little could they realise the conditions of those 
days. Let us briefly recall the past. Barbarous 
fiscal laws laid iron hands upon every necessary, 
every adjunct to comfort in life. Odious excise laws 
everywhere tied and bound our industries; invention 
was suppressed. The food of the people was taxed 
to augment the revenues of a class, and one-half of 
the population existed in a state of semi-starvation. 
All the requisites for successful horticulture—wood, 
iron, bricks, glass were subject to cruel imposts ; the 
very light of heaven itself was taxed. Duties on 
paper, advertisements, and stamps, tied, bound, 
gagged the press. Heavy tolls upon all important 
roads, recurring with successive stages, strangulated 
traffic, shut town from country, hamlet and village 
from market town. Ruling powers everywhere 
frowned on education. Only those who lived and 
wrestled in those weary times can realise their sore 
oppression. The masses writhed, groaned, pro¬ 
tested—it seemed in vain. 
So opened the early months of 1841. Not a hope¬ 
ful condition for floriculture, yet the love of flowers 
was a sentient thing, and tfieir cultivation solaced 
and soothed anxious thoughts in many doubled 
minds, and the genius of the people could not be 
repressed. The intuition of an untaught millwright 
had canalised the country ; George Stephenson, the 
Northumbrian miner, another untaught, had married 
the rail of the iron road to the flanged wheel of the 
locomotive, and the unconquerable energy, the 
indomitable patience and perseverance of Rowland 
Hill, rising superior to ail.the pettiness and pettish¬ 
ness of red tape, the insolence of office, had secured 
for us the inestimable blessing of the Penny Post. 
Then in 1841 a revolution was wrought in our 
fiscal system. Following a succession of sheer 
incapables, whose pitiful blundering in the national 
exchequer had resulted in ever increasing deficit, 
the late Sir Robert Peel came to power, laid a tax 
upon property and income, and with the assistance 
of his young lieutenant, the present Mr. Gladstone, 
struck off the fetters from some twelve hundred 
articles, all of more or less importance, and left 
industry, invention, and energy to find their natural 
channels. Five years later the revolution was further 
emphasised by the abolition of the horrible starvation 
creating duty on corn. 
Gardening Literature. 
As in social life so up to 1841, garden literature 
as effecting the florist, whether descriptive of his 
methods or indicating his aims, was in a most 
unsatisfactory condition. Not that there was 
deficiency, but, so far as I know, no writer had gone 
beyond the baldest dogma, or offered the shadow of 
a reason, as founded in Nature, for his properties or 
his practice. The neophyte was called upon to shut 
his eyes, open his mouth, and swallow whatever was 
presented to him. 
Books and papers of varying degrees of interest 
had been written. Hogg, just then, after some years 
of paralysis, fading from the stage, had given to us 
his " Book on the Carnation,” by far the best of the 
older works on the flower, and Mr. Glenny, who 
especially posed as a floral authority, had established 
the Gardeners' Gazette , the first weekly journal devoted 
to the garden, and had commenced or completed—in 
the absence of works for reference I can only speak 
from memory—a codification of the properties of 
florists’ flowers. Mr. Glenny had a clear, terse, con¬ 
cise power of expression, which forcibly recom¬ 
mended his rulings to the great mass of his readers, 
he had unbounded faith in himself, and was ready 
and confident in controversy. So Mr. Glenny made 
a mark, and was accepted by many, and probably is 
so accepted to this day, as an authority on the pro¬ 
perties of florists’ flowers. But Mr. Glenny had 
little science and less philosophy, and when his 
writings were read in the later years of the forties, 
in the light of the “Essays on the Tulip,” by Dr. 
- Hardy, and the “ Philosophy of Florists' 
Flowers,” by the Rev. George Jeans, their inaccura¬ 
cies and inconsistencies were only too apparent. 
1841 however, marked a great event in floriculture, 
the Gardeners' Chronicle, with Dr. Lindley in the 
editorial chair, was established. Here we had gar¬ 
dening with the reason why, possibly some¬ 
times rather too much of the reason why, for 
some of the weaklings. No man passed muster who 
failed to render a reason for the faith that was in him, 
and no question could be made of the mighty in¬ 
fluence the paper exercised on the work of the 
garden. But Dr. Lindley had small respect for the 
florist, he lacked sympathy for his work, and regarded 
the results rather as perversions of the harmony and 
order of nature than as additions to its beauty. So 
Mr Wood, John Frederick Wood, who in the 
earlier years had been' the accredited exponent of 
floriculture in the columns of the Chronicle, in 1847 
issued the first number of the Midland Florist, a 
monthly publication remembered to this day with 
affectionate respect by every florist fortunate enough 
to have been acquainted with its issue. In the 
succeeding year, Mr. Edward Beck brought out the 
Florist, with illustrations of the supposed to be better 
varieties of florists’ flowers then existing. Able 
writers gave interest and force to each work, and 
then for the first time in floriculture we had an 
appeal to law for the reason why, and demonstra¬ 
tion and illustration of the truth and wherefore of 
the florist’s respect for beauty in his flowers. In 
the “ Essays on the Tulip," by Dr. Hardy and the 
essays of the Rev. George Jeans, the intelligent 
reader had supplied to him, irrefragable proof that 
the properties in his flowers, sought and maintained 
by the florist, rest upon immutable law, and so his 
work is in full accord with the harmony and beauty 
of Nature. 
The Florists of Long Ago. 
My title, Fifty Years of Floriculture, is a large one 
but I justify its use in the facts above recited. My 
reminiscence will be confined to the Carnation. 
How vividly the scenes and forms of loved actors in 
those scenes long lost to sight, flit before me, as I go 
back upon those early days ! When practically, 
after ten years of exile in the very heart of the city— 
an attic chamber in Carpenters’ Buildings, London 
Wall—my florist life commenced, the Carnation 
Picotee was in a marked stage of evolution. Hogg, 
whom I have always regarded, from the simplicity 
and guilelessness of his mind, as filling a very fore¬ 
most place amongst florists of his day, had at an early 
period of the century evidently been impressed with 
the gracefulness andheauty of the curvilinear mark¬ 
ing then attaining definite character in this section 
of the Carnation, and his enthusiasm had drawn 
many devoted co-workers to his side. The Revs. J. 
Burroughes and Charles Fellowes, of Norfolk, the 
latter yet I trust in life; Twychet and Headly, of 
Cambridge; Edmonds and Barnard, of South 
London; Marris and Holyoake, of Leicester; 
Benjamin Ely, of Rothwell Haigh; Summerscales, 
Sharp, Garratt, Mr. Morgan May, Norman, and 
Ward, of Woolwich; John and James Dickson, of 
Acre Lane; Wood and Ingram, of Huntingdon; 
Willmer, Green, Bragg, and the Rev. M. Matthews, 
all with more or less success worked to obtain a 
definite curvilinear edge of colour on the margin of 
the Picotee, in place of the fine lines, spot bars, and 
broken stripes, the original of the section (as it had 
been the original of the longitudinal markings, the 
flakes and bizarres of the present day), and the later 
years of the forties gave us some wonderful examples 
of what may be realised in Nature by evolution and 
intelligent selection. 
The Flowers of the Forties. 
The flowers of the earlier years had been defaced 
with creamy, clouded, and impure grounds, and the 
marginal colour in the majority of cases was 
irregular and undefined ; but ere the decade closed, 
Marris, Matthews. May, and the Rev. Charles 
Fellowes had given to us Prince Albert, Prince of 
Wales, Enchantress, Juliet, Ganymede, and Haidee, 
all flovyers of purest ground and definite marginal 
markings, Mr. Wood, of Huntingdon, his Princess 
Alice, the first heavily-edged purple with a perfectly 
pure white ground, and a bantling of my own, 
Alfred, a heavy-edged purple, had won renown and 
given some notoriety to my name. In bizarres and 
flakes, the Carnation proper of the old and untaught 
florist, the Derby growers had obtained Admiral 
Curzon, scarlet bizarre, a veritable type of perfection 
in this the most advanced of the sections, and Mr. 
Puxley, of Tenby, and Mr. Morgan May, of Sonning, 
gave to us annually by Mr. Charles Turner, of the 
Royal Nursery, Slough, a perfect bevy of beauties in 
their several classes. Mr. Headly had many beauti¬ 
ful breaks both in flakes and Picotees, and Mr. 
Norman, “ Nat ” Norman as he was to his familiars, 
gave us the glorious heavy edged red, Mrs. Norman, 
a variety which has never been surpassed, I some¬ 
times doubt if it has ever been fully equalled by 
anything in its section since. Thenceforward genera¬ 
tions of flowers came and went — many beautiful 
things were given to my own work—friends and 
fellow-workers, dearly esteemed, passed to their rest, 
and others younger, with an equality of devoted 
enthusiasm, prominent amongst the number my 
dear old friends Ben Simonite, Robert Lord, and 
Wm. Hewitt stepped into the ranks to fill their 
place. 
The Earlier Florists’ Flower Shows. 
Another important development far reaching in 
its influence,came to us in the later years of the forties, 
the establishment of annual open competitions for 
specific florist flowers. The iron road and locomotive 
had abridged space, and one hundred miles could now 
be compassed within the time formerly required for 
thirty—so localities were brought together pre¬ 
viously separated by impassable distance. The 
Ancient Society of York Florists, I am not sure if 
veritably the oldest, but one of the most important 
of the present, as of all past time, had the honour of 
opening the road. The flower was the Tulip, and 
an unusually precocious season having carried the 
flower out of bloom a month before the date arranged 
for the show, the competition was abandoned for 
the year, and the funds collected, some £20, were 
made the nucleus for the succeeding season. The in¬ 
creased canvass and increased subscriptions pro¬ 
duced a competition largely beyond any beforetime 
realised, and the " National Tulip Society,” with 
interchangeable meetings annually in the localities 
especially interested, was successfully floated. Man¬ 
chester, with Dr. Hardy as chairman of committee, 
and Mr. Dixon as hon. sec. had the second meeting. 
Derby the third. But the meetings were not long 
confined to the Tulip. Controversy had been brisk, 
sometimes bitter, as to the relative merits of Carna¬ 
tions raised in the northern and southern portions of 
our land, and some few, blinded by their ignorance 
and prejudice, averred there were hopeless differences 
in the ideals of the respective districts which would 
for ever keep them apart. So the trial exhibitions 
of 1850 were organised—one to be held at the Royal 
Nursery, Slough, the other in the County Hall of 
Derby, and the absurd delusion was effectually 
dissipated. 
Following these exhibitions the National Carna¬ 
tion and Picotee Society was established, holding its 
first meeting in the Royal Nursery, Slough, in 1851, 
its second in Norwich in 1852, third at York in 1853, 
and fourth at Derby in 1854. Thence to Oxford, to 
Birmingham, to Manchester, Moira, Ashby-de-la- 
Zouch, and Chesterfield, until the fifties 
were exhausted. Thence forward for fourteen 
years, the deaths, first of my elder and later of my 
younger brother, brought such a weight of business 
upon my shoulders, as practically to compel my 
exile from the competitions of floriculture. But in 
1874, the stringency of business engagements having 
somewhat relaxed going again amongst my old and 
valued friends, I was urged to attempt a revival in 
the south of an interest in florists’ flowers, which had 
seemed for some little time to be dormant. So in 
r875-76, the National Auricula Society, southern 
section and th3 National Carnation and Picotee 
Society, southern section, were established and 
flourished. 
The Carnation and Picotee Union. 
In 1881, broken health having compelled absolute 
abandonment of business I came to Oxford, and in 
1885 being no longer able to sustain the fatigue of 
travel and the labour of conducting exhibitions away 
from home, the Carnation and Picotee Union was 
founded, holding its exhibitions in my own little 
garden, and at once took a foremost place amongst 
associations devoted to the culture of the Carnation, 
and year by year it has continued to advance in an 
ever increasing ratio. 
Coming thus to matters personal, I may here 
perhaps acknowledge obligation, without which my 
reminiscences would be incomplete. In the same 
year which saw me settled at Derby, with means to 
gratify my long pent-up taste for the garden, the 
late Mr. Charles Turner, at Chalvey, commenced 
