38 
House & Garden 
MODERN PANSIES AND THEIR CULTURE 
All the Charm of the Old-Fashioned Sort Has Been Retained as a 
Background for the Splendid New Varieties 
HENRY T. FINCK 
M ODERN pansies are what Mark 
Twain would have called violets with 
a college education. They far excel 
that modest wayside flower in size, shape and 
infinite variety of coloring, and their fragrance 
is even more thrilling. 
In view of the fact that there are more than 
two hundred species of violets, this last claim 
may seem rash and reckless. I haven’t nosed 
them all and I admit that there are few things 
in this world so delicious as the fragrance of 
the white Parma violet (pallida plena ) or of 
the tiny Viola blanda which hides itself along 
the mossy, cool banks of trout brooks and 
rivulets; but at any rate I feel that the poets, 
who are forever raving over the sweetness of 
the violets (most of which have no scent at 
all), have failed to do justice to the pansy’s 
entrancing fragrance. 
To throw a perfume on 
the violet is called by 
Shakespeare “wasteful and 
ridiculous e x c e s s,” like 
painting the lily, gilding 
refined gold or adding an¬ 
other line to the rainbow. 
Shakespeare, Milton and 
other poets also refer to the 
pansies. They are called by 
various pet names, such as 
“love-in-idleness,” “hearts¬ 
ease” ; but to their fragrance 
I can find no allusion in 
English poetry. 
Modern Development 
Why this silence? Prob¬ 
ably because the pansy’s 
fragrance, like its varied, 
velvety colors, is a product 
of modern civilization and 
gradual intensification. 
Gerard, a 16th Century 
writer, said of the pansies 
of his time: “smell they 
have little or none.” At 
that time the only colors 
worn by the hearts-ease 
were purple, yellow, and 
white or blue. 
These old pansies, in 
truth, were little better than 
the Johnny-jump-ups we 
find in neglected gardens 
today. You have no reason 
to envy your grandmother. 
She, poor dear, never saw 
any pansies bigger or more 
alluringly colored than the 
common violets of the 
shaded roadside, and not so 
fragrant. Not till about a 
century ago were successful 
come. In the middle seventies of the last cen¬ 
tury three Frenchmen, Cassier, Bugnot and 
Trimardeau, specialized in this flower and got 
results which astonished and delighted the 
whole world, just as Henry Eckford did with 
his new and improved sweet peas in England. 
The names of these French pansy educators 
are still preserved, as they should be, in our 
catalogs of flower seeds. The Trimardeaus are 
of immense size. Cassier achieved unique re¬ 
sults with blotches in threes and fives. To 
Bugnot I feel particularly grateful for special¬ 
izing in the new shades of reds and bronzes 
which are among the most dazzling of all 
pansies. The first cardinal flower I ever had 
in my pansy bed was evidently admired very 
much by somebody else, for on the morning 
after the first blossom had opened, the whole 
plant had completely disappeared! 
Further Hybridizing 
Later hybridizers in sev¬ 
eral countries have gone 
even beyond these French¬ 
men in obtaining larger and 
more velvety flowers, a 
greater variety of delicate 
tints and spots and of queer 
faces in the petals. In 
place of Thompson’s “cat’s 
faces” we now see in some 
varieties of pansies the 
quaintest countenances, 
some smiling, others almost 
grotesque. No one can fail 
to detect the Russian peas¬ 
ant faces among them. Thus 
pansies are the most human 
of all flowers. As Harriet 
Keeler has put it: “The 
bright, cheerful, wistful, or 
roguish faces look up at you 
with so much apparent in¬ 
telligence that it is hard to 
believe it is all a pathetic 
fallacy and there is nothing 
there.” 
A born flower lover does 
not need to know the genea¬ 
logical details regarding the 
modern high-bred pansy to 
be enthralled by its beauty. 
Yet, if you are a born 
flower lover, you will admit 
that your interest is in¬ 
creased by a knowledge of 
these details. You will cer¬ 
tainly, if you know them, 
peruse the pansy pages in 
your seed catalog with in¬ 
creased interest in making 
your selections. 
(Continued on page 64) 
attempts made to educate this flower into some¬ 
thing rich and strange. In the moist, cool 
climate of England, and still more of Scotland, 
the improved varieties flourished. 
In 1830 a man named Thompson, gardener 
to Lord Gambier, introduced the first pansies 
with the blotches on the lower petals which 
now are taken for granted in the finest flowers. 
He also succeeded in changing the blossoms, 
which before him had been “lengthy as a 
horse’s head,” into the rounder shapes we ad¬ 
mire. He took no merit to himself for originat¬ 
ing the modern pansy, for, as he said, “it was 
entirely the offspring of chance. In looking 
one morning over a collection of heaths, I was 
struck, to use a vulgar expression, all of a 
heap, by seeing what appeared to me a minia¬ 
ture cat’s face steadfastly gazing at me.” 
The real Burbanks of the pansy were still to 
The old-time, pansies are jar outranked by the modern fragrant sorts with their large, 
long-stemmed flowers of white, black, blues, reds, bronze and endless combinations. 
They can be had in bloom outdoors in early spring and continue all summer 
