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150 disease-free varieties
that will change the way you grow roses

without chemicals

“Peter’s ratings for fragrance,

flowers, and disease resistance
make it easy to choose the right
rose for your garden. I wish I
had this when I planted my rose
garden twenty-five years ago. I
am now about to plant another

Peter E.
garden, full of wonderful rose
varieties and I intend to follow

Kukielski
Peter’s advice wholeheartedly.”
Martha Stewart
Roses
without chemicals
R
Roses
150 disease-free varieties
that will change the way you grow roses

without chemicals

Peter E.
Kukielski

Timber Press
Portland London
Frontispiece: ‘Alexandra Princesse de Luxembourg’

Copyright © 2015 by Peter E. Kukielski. All rights reserved.

Published in 2015 by Timber Press, Inc.

Illustrations on pages 34-35 by Peter Kukielski, produced by David Jacobson.

Photo credits appear on page 258.

The Haseltine Building 6a Lonsdale Road

133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450 London NW6 6RD
Portland, OR 97204-3527 timberpress.co.uk
timberpress.com

Printed in China
Text and cover design by David Jacobson, ORT

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Kukielski, Peter.
Roses without chemicals: 150 disease-free varieties that will change the way you grow
roses/Peter E. Kukielski.—1st edition.
pages cm
Other title: One hundred fifty disease free varieties that will change the way you grow roses
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-60469-354-6
1. Roses—Varieties—North America. 2. Roses—Disease and pest resistance—North America.
I. Title. II. Title: One hundred fifty disease free varieties that will change the way you grow roses.
SB411.6.K85 2015
635.9′33734—dc23 2014020741

A catalog record for this book is also available from the British Library.
For Drew
Contents
Preface (It’s not your fault) 8

The new millennial rose garden 12

The Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden 14

The evolution of roses 18

Rose growth habits 34

Roses in the garden 35

Regional rose growing 50

Rose trials 58
 Growing roses sustainably 62
Buying roses 64

What do roses need? 64

Planting roses 68

Pruning roses 69

Rose care: feeding your soil 73

Rose care: diseases 74

Rose care: pests 76

The chemical-free rose directory: 88

150 disease-resistant roses

Roses by class, habit, and color 242

Roses by class and habit 244

Roses by color 249

Metric conversions 254 Acknowledgments 257

Resources 255 Photo credits 258

Suggestions for further reading 256 Index 259

Preface
(It’s not your fault)

Beautiful, healthy roses

like ‘PlumPerfect’ are
part of a new trend
toward sustainable rose
gardening.
Whether you are a home gardener or the steward of a public rose garden anywhere
in the world, I want you to have the confidence to grow roses, or to grow roses again,
without chemicals. That’s my dream and that’s why I wrote this book. By the time
you have finished reading, I hope you will feel free to grow a huge variety of these
spectacular plants.
Because nearly everyone has heard the phrase “Rose is a created with hardiness in mind, because the hybridizer
rose is a rose is a rose” I often quote it when talking with wants or needs the roses to survive harsh winters.
people in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New With thousands of roses now available on the
York Botanical Garden, where I was the curator for eight market, the choice to the home gardener can be daunting
growing seasons. These words come from the 1913 Ger- and confusing. In my quarter-century of purchasing and
trude Stein poem Sacred Emily, and people have taken growing roses, I have always desired to find a rose that
the line to mean something like “Things are what they is better than the one I am growing at the moment. I’m
are.” Ironically, the rose was a very bad example for Stein always on the lookout for the next best thing, the next
to use for her metaphor. Taken as commonly understood, best rose. Does this sound familiar? Some of my friends
the sentence would mean that all roses are basically the have a similar desire with fashion—always wanting the
same, and no matter which pretty picture you see in a next great trend or popular item. I used to think that
rose catalog, the plants are all going to grow the same, roses are similarly fashionable and that the rose industry
smell the same, and perform the same. Stein would have mirrored the fashion industry. In both these worlds, a
been more on target if she had written, “Rose is (not) color or style can be hot one year and out the next.
a rose is (not) a rose is (not) a rose.” That’s because all Yet too often, when I found a stunning image of
roses are not created equal. Or, more importantly, all a rose in a magazine and determined that I must have
roses are not created for the same purpose. that treasure, ordered it, put it in the ground, cultivated
The process of creating new rose varieties is called it, and loved it—it rewarded me with disappointment.
hybridization. Breeders cross one rose with another rose The leaves became diseased, its color or fragrance was
to create a new variety that has a different combination lackluster, or even worse, the entire rose bush died. Many
of genes than either of its parent plants. Almost all roses despondent and frustrated rose lovers have shared simi-
that you can buy today have been hybridized for one lar stories with me.
purpose or another. Sometimes that purpose is to empha- Perhaps this has also happened to you and if so here
size a gorgeous color that catches your eye. Maybe the is the central point I want to make in this book: it is not
hybridizer likes a certain cupped flower. Sometimes it is your fault. In the pages that follow I am going to explain
for a particular fragrance or growth habit. Some roses are to you why some roses fail to thrive, and how to choose

9
and grow roses in an environmentally sensitive way for
your garden, in your part of the country. In the directory
you’ll find 150 of the best-performing and most disease-
resistant roses available on the market today. I have
grown every one of these roses myself and have chosen
them out of the many thousands of other roses that I have
grown and trialed over the years. I have included a rating
for each rose based on the qualities that matter most to
gardeners: disease-resistance, bloom, and fragrance. You
can rest assured that they are the very best choices for a
sustainable, chemical-free rose garden.

Roses without chemicals

10 Preface (It’s not your fault)
‘Autumn Damask’
The New
Millennial
Rose Garden

The new millennial

rose garden is
full of disease-free,
long-blooming plants.
A rose is hybridized for whatever pur- This book will help you learn about the specific hybrid-
ization efforts toward disease resistance and sustain-
pose or purposes its creator is seeking, ability in roses. Of the thousands of roses available on
those qualities the hybridizer wants to the market, I want you to know about roses that are right
for you and that you will be able to grow successfully,
maximize. But when a rose is hybridized disease-free and chemical-free. I also want you to know
to maximize any one quality, there is the about the best way to plant and care for these roses.
Right for you also means right for the area where
possibility that some other facet will be you garden. Understanding the effect of your local
compromised or sacrificed. Too often in climate on roses determines how successful you will be
in growing them. It’s unreasonable to assume that roses
today’s marketplace, roses are hybrid- that might be successful in Miami or England would also
ized for a narrow, superficial beauty that be successful in Maine or Norway. If together we can
identify roses that are good performers for your region
will attract the consumer in a catalog,
and climate, then I know you will have better, healthier
garden center, or florist shop. But just roses based on that factor alone.
like the fruit and vegetables that are bred I like to use the term “new millennial roses” for
those varieties that are fragrant, beautiful, disease-free,
to look perfect on supermarket shelves, chemical-free, relatively maintenance-free, and region-
these hybridized plants can go bad very ally appropriate. I believe that sustainable rose gardens
are available to every home gardener, and to large com-
quickly. Selecting roses because they mercial growers and public gardens everywhere.
have good looks may actually be counter- I chose the word millennial to reference the year
2000. It was around this time that we—growers, breed-
productive. That lovely rose may soon be ers, and curators—began to shift our way of thinking
riddled with leaf spot because the ability about roses. We started to move in the direction of more
“green” and sustainable roses. We began to look for roses
to resist disease has been bred out of it. that were hybridized specifically to be resistant to dis-
eases. These are the roses that you will find in this book.

13
 The Peggy Rockefeller I left in 2013 it contained a significant living
Rose Garden display of more than 4000 roses and close to
Just as the millennial shift in roses was 700 different varieties.
happening, I became curator of the Peggy The rose garden covers just over an acre
Rockefeller Rose Garden, which is located and is triangular in shape, with a circular
in the New York Botanical Garden. First laid central area containing a focal gazebo. When
out in 1916 by the eminent American land- I took over, the rose garden had been sprayed
scape architect Beatrix Jones Farrand and with chemicals for twenty years. The col-
nestled among beautiful, established trees, lection had about 2000 roses in it, approxi-
the site offers some of the most breathtak- mately 234 varieties. Originally, the goal of
ing vistas available at the botanical gar- the renovation was to increase diversity and
den. Thanks to a generous gift from David make better use of the planting space. During
Rockefeller in honor of his wife, Peggy, the the initial renovation, I took out 400 roses
garden was completed and named for her and added 1700 new roses, almost doubling
in 1988. With continuing support from Mr. the size of the collection.
Rockefeller, I had the honor of renovating the As part of the renovation the beds were
garden through the winter of 2006 and 2007. redefined in order to diversify and reorganize
The garden was reopened in 2007, and when the rose classes in the existing collection.

The rose garden at

the New York
Botanical Garden has
impressed visitors since
its creation
a century ago.

14 The new millennial rose garden

On the southeast side, we created a heritage better represent the diversity of roses and
rose border that features a chronological also to display great garden plants for the
sampling of the history of roses, showing public to learn about and enjoy. As new
their lineage as they were hybridized over plants were being hybridized, trialed, and
the centuries. It begins with species roses introduced from around the world, I felt we
and their cultivars, wild plants that evolved should bring to the forefront those that are
through natural selection, and continues highly disease-resistant and easy to grow.
down the timeline of rose history from Gal- At the same time, we wanted to preserve
licas and Damasks to Albas, Centifolias, and important historical rose varieties of the past
China roses, from Spinosissima shrubs to for educational purposes.
Moss roses, Portlands, Bourbons, and finally As we went through the growing
Hybrid Perpetuals. Two other borders are seasons from 2009 to 2013, we looked for
planted with modern roses. Signage tells the ways to reflect these new millennial roses.
story of the development of the rose, from the With this in mind, we planted revised mod-
antique plants to the more recent varieties. ern collections that included more disease-
After the initial renovation, 2008 pre- resistant varieties such as those from the
sented the rose garden with a new mission. Texas Pioneer, Griffith Buck, and Easy
I wanted to modify the collection to even Elegance series, as well as those with the

Signs throughout the

garden tell the
history of roses from their
wild ancestors to the
present day.

The new millennial rose garden 15

 Earth-Kind designation. We also put in
extensive plantings of roses that emerged
from the hybridization efforts from Kordes
of Germany, Meilland of France, and Will
Radler of the United States, along with sev-
Rose Stories eral of the winners from the ADR Rose Trials
in Germany, which include some of the best
A rose named Eva hybridization efforts in the world.
In the last eighty years, there has been
In June 2007, after the extensive Once satisfied, Eva (the human) a movement away from the use of roses as
renovation of the Peggy Rocke- proceeded back in my direction general garden plants. In part, this can be
feller Rose Garden was com- as quickly as she had left and said, attributed to the level of culture required to
pleted, we reopened the garden. “Thank you. She looks good! I’ll care for roses that were bred without regard
The spectacular first bloom was be back again next year—make for the health of the plants. But things are
under way. I was in the garden sure you take good care of her!”
changing with the new millennial roses.
talking with some visitors when a
young woman with an abrupt
“Oh, I will!” I said, almost fearing Consumers are willing to pay premium
manner approached me.
for my life while I pledged to prices for cultivars that are resistant to
protect her personal floral common diseases, easy to maintain, and ever
“Good afternoon!” I greeted her. symbol.
blooming. I can say with great enthusiasm
“Where is Eva?” she asked Having received direct orders that modern hybridizing efforts are really
impatiently, her foot tapping on from this dynamic young putting the rose back to its rightful place as a
the ground. woman, it became clear to me at great garden plant.
that moment that this was not
I was a little shocked at the stern In June 2010, the Great Rosarians of
only my garden to care for but it
expression on her face. But then I the World (GROW) presented the Peggy
was everyone else’s garden as
guessed why she was perturbed.
well. I watched visitor after visitor Rockefeller Rose Garden with the Interna-
“I bet your name is Eva,” I replied. come into the garden and stake tional Rose Garden Hall of Fame Award. The
their special claim to a favorite same year, the All American Rose Selections
“Yes,” she said, still waiting for an rose or two (or three or more), (AARS) declared the garden one of the best
answer. “Where is my rose?” and derive immense joy from this public rose garden displays in America,
Fortunately, I was able to direct public space that they saw as conferring this honor “in recognition of the
their own. ‘Eva’ and the other
her to the area of the garden Creation of a Sustainable Public Garden
where we grow Hybrid Musks. nearly 700 varieties must be well
Representing an Outstanding Collection
She walked briskly over to taken care of for the enjoyment of
one and all. of Historic Roses.” In the fall of 2012, The
the bed and was able to see
World Federation of Rose Societies pre-
that Rosa ‘Eva’ was blooming
beautifully, with endless clusters sented the Garden with the prestigious
of blended reds. Award of Excellence recognizing it as one of
the best rose gardens in the world.
The garden is under the watchful eye
and care of a team of horticultural profes-
sionals with many years of very specific rose
experience. It is with proactive, consistent
care—the use, for instance, of compost,
mulch, organic fertilizer, and sustainable
growing methods that I will be discussing in

16 The new millennial rose garden

 Many of the roses in
the Peggy Rockefeller
garden have
demonstrated their
ability to resist disease.
 this book—that the health of the garden can records from the Egyptians to the Greeks and
be kept at its highest. Romans, all the way to Europe in the 1700s,
I remember walking through the rose when growers started to develop official
garden with David Rockefeller on one of his classes of roses. Any rose that was hybridized
visits (he used to visit each year on his birth- before the year 1867 is considered a heritage
day). At one particular moment, this kind rose. Any rose after that date is considered a
and gentle man turned to me and whispered, modern rose. I have coined the phrase “new
“Peggy would have loved this.” Although this millennial” for those varieties post-2000
gave me a sense that our mission had been that are specifically hybridized for or have a
accomplished, I also realized that the garden proven propensity toward disease resistance.
must continue to evolve its mission. As with
all gardens, its caretakers must constantly Species roses
look for new ways to make this garden as The species roses (with some exceptions)
beautiful and sustainable as it can possibly have a “simple” flower form. The bloom
be, so that visitors have the same experience opens flat and has only five petals. The family
of loving it year after year. Rosaceae, which includes the species roses,
also includes other plants such as apples,
The Evolution of Roses cherries, and pears, as well as strawberries
I believe that you can’t have a book about and even ornamental shrubs like Kerria and
sustainable roses without mentioning those Spiraea. If you look at the blossoms of these
roses that have grown, survived, and proven species, they all have the simple flower form
themselves over time without chemicals. of five petals.
Many of these are heritage roses, also called
antique or old garden roses, and I urge you
to look further to explore the great diversity Some of my favorite species
among them. Here I want to give you a roses include
general sense of how the world of roses has Rosa blanda
expanded over the last few hundred years.
This includes how and why roses became the Rosa canina
chemically dependent plants that the mod- Rosa chinensis
ern gardener has known them to be over the
past few decades. In order to understand this Rosa gallica
better, it is helpful to look at the development
Rosa hugonis
of roses over the centuries.
Roses have grown wild on this earth for Rosa nutkana
millions of years. A fossil of a rose has been
Rosa roxburghii
found that dates back 34 million years. And
for 34 million years, these plants were not Rosa sericea
treated with any fungicides that I am aware
Rosa spinosissima
of. Just think about it: these tough plants
have been growing throughout the North- Rosa virginiana
ern Hemisphere, thriving on no mainte-
nance and no intervention from humans.
The history of the cultivated rose includes

18 The new millennial rose garden

 Species roses bloom only once per year,
covering themselves with flowers in the late
spring and early summer. The flowers are
followed by colorful rose hips that provide
food for birds and winter interest in the land-
scape. Estimates vary, but there are probably
up to 150 different rose species.
If nature provided this many species
roses, what happens when one rose is
crossed with another? Simply speaking, a
hybrid cross is made—a rose with different
genes than both of its parents. This cross
may occur naturally when bees or other polli-
nating insects disperse pollen from bloom to
bloom, or they can be man-made by purpose-
fully taking pollen from the stamens of one
plant and applying it to the stigma of another
plant to create new seed, then growing plants
from that seed.
Any existing rose can be crossed with
any other existing rose to come up with a
new hybrid rose. If you cross a five-petaled
flower with another five-petaled form, you
might get five-petaled offspring or you might
get offspring that have flowers with more
petals. Now think about what might result
if you crossed this multi-petaled rose with
Rosa chinensis

Rosa canina Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’

The new millennial rose garden 19

 ‘Cardinal de Richelieu’

Some of my favorite Gallica

roses include

‘Burgundian Rose’

‘Cardinal de Richelieu’
Rosa virginiana
‘Charles de Mills’
a five-petaled rose. It might possibly be a ‘Elegant Gallica’
new form of many-petaled flowers that does
not look like the original species rose. This Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’
is how a new class of roses is born. A broad
Rosa gallica ‘Versicolor’
definition of a class of roses is that they share
a common flower form. A class is considered
distinct because the blooms are different Gallica | Rosa gallica is a species rose that is
from those of the parent plants. native to southern and central Europe. The
oldest named form of this plant is R. gallica
Heritage roses
‘Officinalis’ (also known as the apothecary’s
Heritage, antique, or old garden roses are
rose, because it was thought to have medic-
the first roses that were brought into cultiva-
inal properties) and it dates from as early
tion. Their history is a journey through the
as the 14th century. Rosa gallica ‘Officinalis’
centuries, as gardeners and breeders sought
has multiple petals, as do other descendants
to select and then to hybridize new and
of R. gallica, sometimes up to 100 petals per
exotic types of rose.
flower. This class of roses became known as
the Gallicas.

20 The new millennial rose garden

Rosa gallica ‘Versicolor’

Damask | The next new class of roses were ‘Leda’

the Damask roses. The original Damask
rose was thought to be a cross between Rosa
gallica and another species of rose, but many
experts argue over this point. The Damask
roses do not have as many petals as the Gal-
licas before them, yet they have many more
petals than the earlier species. The Damasks
are most known for their fragrance and are a
main source for rose oil or “attar of roses” for
the perfume industry.

Some of my favorite Damask roses

include

‘Autumn Damask’

‘Ispahan’ ‘Ispahan’

‘Kazanlik’ Albas actually include roses that range from

white to pinks. They have a wider variety of
‘Leda’ flower forms and a lighter fragrance than the
‘Madame Hardy’ heavier Damask scent of their predecessor.
Another characteristic of this class is that
the foliage shares a glaucous (grayish-green
Alba | Next to be developed was the Alba or blue) coloring that differs from the
class of roses. Alba means white, but the brighter green foliage of earlier classes.

The new millennial rose garden 21

‘Alba Semiplena’

Early Alba roses are thought to be descen-

dants of the species Rosa canina crossed
with R. damascena.

Some of my favorite Alba

roses include

‘Alba Semiplena’

‘Félicité Parmentier’

‘Great Maiden’s Blush’

‘Königin von Dänemark’

‘Madame Plantier’

‘Pompon Blanc Parfait’ ‘Félicité Parmentier’

‘Sappho’ Centifolia | A simple qualifying

characteristic of Centifolia roses can be
gleaned from the name centi meaning

22 The new millennial rose garden

‘Dometil Beccard’

hundred. These blooms, which are quite

different from other classes of roses, are
generally very cupped or rounded in shape
and do indeed have about 100 petals.
Centifolia roses are said to have been the
first class developed as late as the 17th
century. Maybe because of this early date
of cultivation, I have found the number of
Centifolia roses in commerce to be fewer
than other classes. The ones I have grown
‘Fantin-Latour’
have been a wonderful addition to the
garden. Moss | Moss roses have bloom characteris-
tics similar to those of their predecessors,
and so they can be difficult to identify simply
Some of my favorite Centifolia roses by looking at the flower form. The obvious
include difference is the addition of “mossy” glands
‘Cristata’ to the buds, which changed this flower form
and so distinguished the class. The flower
‘Dometil Beccard’ buds are literally covered with glandular
‘Fantin-Latour’ tips that produce their own oily scent, which
can range anywhere from citrus and anise
‘Le Rire Niais’ to earthy notes, which make a wonderful
‘Rose de Meaux’ complement and contrast to the rose scent of
the flowers. The Moss roses are known to be
sport descendants of the Centifolias.

The new millennial rose garden 23

 ‘Comtesse de Murinais’ ‘Gloire des Mousseux’

Some of my favorite Moss roses include

‘Capitaine John Ingram’

‘Comtesse de Murinais’

‘General Kleber’

‘Gloire des Mousseux’

‘Jean Bodin’

‘La Diaphane’

‘Madame Louis Lévêque’

‘Salet’

‘William Lobb’ ‘La Diaphane’

also brought some pastel shades and some

China | Although there is much to say about darker reds, crimsons, and even purples to
China roses, the simple fact is that they come the world of roses. Any rose called a hybrid
from China and they were developed from China would be a cross between the China
the species Rosa chinensis. China roses are roses and other existing classes of roses. I
among the most floriferous of all roses and have included two China roses (‘Ducher’ and
are credited with having given most modern ‘Mutabilis’) in the directory because, like
roses their remontant qualities. They also several other heritage roses included there,
brought new flower forms and colors to cross they have proven their disease resistance and
with existing European roses. The China blooming capacity in gardens for many years.
roses include shades from white to pink, and

24 The new millennial rose garden

 Some of my favorite China roses include

‘Archduc Charles’

‘Arethusa’

‘Cramoisi Supérieur’

‘Ducher’

‘Mutabilis’

‘Old Blush’

‘Viridiflora’ (the green rose)

‘Archduc Charles’

‘Old Blush’

‘Viridiflora’ (the green rose) with ‘Gourmet Popcorn’ (white)

The new millennial rose garden 25

 ‘Comte de Chambord’ ‘Indigo’

What is a sport?
A sport is a genetic mutation single-blooming rose starts
that occurs innately and to repeatedly flower through-
leads to a difference in part out the year, which is referred
of a plant. The mutation is to as remontant. To retain
often a color sport, such as that new characteristic the
the appearance of a pink changed element must be
flower on a white-flowered selected from the plant and
rose. A growth habit sport propagated to create new
may occur when a rose has a plants with those character-
compact bush growth habit istics. In the example of Moss
but then one of the branches roses, the sport went from a
elongates and develops as simple flower bud to one that
a climbing form. A bloom- had glandular moss covering ‘Rose de Rescht’
ing sport can occur when a the bud.
from classes that preceded them. Portland
roses offer the repeat blooming characteris-
Portland | Because roses inherit the genetic tic that traces back to their China rose heri-
attributes of all their ancestors, the num- tage. They also offer some of the same classic
ber of genetic and possible hybrid crosses flower forms as their previous parent classes
available throughout the world of roses of Gallicas and Damasks. One unique charac-
grows exponentially. Sometimes it can be teristic of Portland roses is that their bloom
difficult to tell certain classes apart, because is “presented” with a grouping of leaves just
they share so many heritable characteristics. below the flower, much like a nosegay. This
Portland roses are a case in point, and I find effect can be detected easily in some varie-
it difficult to distinguish this class of roses ties but less so in others.

26 The new millennial rose garden

‘Edith de Murat’ ‘Variegata di Bologna’

Some of my favorite Portland Some of my favorite Bourbon roses

roses include include

‘Comte de Chambord’ ‘Commandant Beaurepaire’

‘Indigo’ ‘Edith de Murat’

‘Marchesa Boccella’ ‘Eugène Desgaches’

‘Rose de Rescht’ ‘Honorine de Brabant’

‘Rose du Roi’ ‘Louise Odier’

‘Madame Ernest Calvat’

Bourbon | With roots that link back to the ‘Madame Isaac Pereire’
China roses and the Damask roses, Bour-
bons have the qualities of both. From their ‘Souvenir de la Malmaison’
China ancestors, the Bourbons seem to have ‘Variegata di Bologna’
gained a broad range of colors, a delicacy in
their blooms, and good reblooming ability. ‘Zéphirine Drouhin’
From the Damasks, the Bourbons show
some flower form characteristics and deep Noisette | The Noisettes are some of the
fragrance. Bourbons are very easy to find in great flower producers in the rose garden.
commerce and are wonderful for the scented The genes for powerhouse blooms come from
garden. Although I have seen some black spot their China parentage, and their wonderful
on Bourbons in the extreme humidity of the fragrance and clustering of flowering comes
summers in some areas of the country, this from the species Rosa moschata. The origins
class of roses generally has all the character- of this class date back to 1802 when John
istics that the home gardener desires. Champneys of South Carolina developed

The new millennial rose garden 27

 some seedlings and Philippe Noisette further
developed them in France. Although the Noi-
settes are grouped in with these other heri-
tage roses, I have included a few of them in
the directory (‘Alister Stella Gray’ and ‘Blush
Noisette’) because they have consistently
proven their disease resistance and blooming
capacity over and over again in the garden.

Some of my favorite Noisette roses

include

‘Alister Stella Gray’

‘Blush Noisette’

‘Champneys’ Pink Cluster’

‘Duchesse de Grammont’

‘Fellenberg’

‘Madame Plantier’

Hybrid Perpetual | Every time I teach a

class on heritage roses, by the time I get to
the Hybrid Perpetuals, the chalkboard and
overhead projector combined look like a jum-
‘Blush Noisette’
bled mess of words, descriptions, pictures,
and sketches. Like my scribbled chalkboard,
the Hybrid Perpetual roses are a combina-
tion of all the rose genetics before them.
Within the complexity of this class, a new
flower form emerged that tended to be rather
large, full, and higher-centered than previous
classes. This voluptuous bloom got the atten-
tion of breeders and customers alike, and
people began to make crosses of roses more
than ever before. However, due to the jumble
of genes that have been bred into cultivated
roses by this point, and the strict focus on
perpetuating above all else the genes that
determine flower form, this is also the first
class of roses that began to lose the heritable
‘Madame Plantier’ disease resistance of its ancestors.

28 The new millennial rose garden

Another Random Scribd Document
with Unrelated Content
opinions a weekly digests for you from the almost uniform opinions
of the whole of the daily press, in war and peace to be incontestably
and entirely American.
“Now, I should scarcely make bold to be so frank about these
observations if some of my new friends had not reassured me with
the information that they are not novel, that a distinguished
Englishman has put them into what you have considered the most
representative and have made the most popular book about your
commonwealth, that in fact you rather enjoy having outsiders
recognize the success of your efforts in uniformity. There is, of
course, no reason why you should not be as similar to each other as
you choose, and you must not interpret my surprise to mean that I
am shocked by anything except the contradiction I find between this
essential similarity and what I have called your passion for
education.
“On Mars it has for a long time been our idea that the function of
the school is to put our youth in touch with what all sorts of Martians
have thought and are thinking, have felt and are feeling. I say ‘put in
touch’ rather than ‘teach,’ because it is not so much our notion to
pack their minds and hearts as to proffer samples of our various
cultures and supply keys to the storehouses—not unlike your
libraries, museums, and laboratories—that contain our records. We
prefer to think of schooling as a kind of thoroughfare between our
past and our present, an avenue to the recovery and appreciation of
as many as possible of those innumerable differences between
Martian and Martian, those conflicting speculations and cogitations,
myths and hypotheses regarding our planet and ourselves that have
gone into the warp and woof of our mental history. Thus we have
hoped not only to preserve and add to the body of Martian
knowledge, but also to understand better and utilize more variously
our present minds. So it seems to us perfectly natural, and has
rather pleased than distressed us, that our students should emerge
from their studies with a multitude of differing sympathies, beliefs,
tastes, and ambitions. We have thought that such an education
enriched the lives of all of us, lives that ignorance could not fail to
constrict and subject to hum-drum monotony.
 “So when I return to Mars and report that I found Earth’s most
favourable continent inhabited by its most literate great people, a
people that has carried the use of print and other means of
communication to a point we Martians have never dared dream
about; that this people has at once the most widely diffused
enthusiasm for education and the most comprehensive school
equipment on Earth; and finally that this people is at the same time
the most uniform in its life—well, I fear I shall not be believed.”
On subsequent visits the Martian might, as a wise man does
who is confronted by a logical impasse, re-examine the terms of his
paradox.
As regards our uniformity, fresh evidence could only endorse his
first impressions. The vestigial remnants of what regional cultures we
have had are rapidly being effaced by our unthinking standardization
in every department of life. The railroad, the telephone and
telegraph, the newspaper, the Ford, the movies, advertising—all
have scarcely standardized themselves before they have set about
standardizing everything within their reach. Not even our provinces
of the picturesque are immune, the places and things we like to think
of as “different” (word that betrays our standard sameness!) and
glamorous of our romantic golden age. In the Old South, Birmingham
loves to call herself the Pittsburgh of the South; our railroads have all
but hounded the packets from the Mississippi; it is notorious that our
apostles to the Indians, whether political, religious, or pedagogic,
wage relentless war on the very customs and traditions we cherish in
legend; the beautiful Missions that a kindlier evangelism bequeathed
to them are repeated and cheapened in every suburb and village of
the land, under every harsher sky; those once spontaneous fêtes of
the plains, the “Stampede” and the “Round-Up,” have been made so
spurious that the natives abandon them for a moth-eaten Wild West
Show made in the East; and in only a year or two even New Orleans’
Mardi Gras will be indistinguishable from its counterfeits in St. Louis
and elsewhere.
As with these adventitious and perhaps not very important
regional differentiations, so with the one fundamental demarcation
our people have all along recognized as conditioning the give-and-
take of American life. The line between the East and the West,
advancing from the Alleghanies to the Rockies and then part of the
way back, has never stayed long enough in one zone to be precisely
drawn, but it has always been sharply felt. Since Colonial times the
East has meant many things—wealth, stability, contacts with Europe,
refinement, industry, centralized finance—and the West has meant
many things—hardship and adventure, El Dorado, outlawry, self-
reliance, agriculture, vast enterprise; but they have never been so
close to meaning the same things as to-day. To-morrow they will
merge. Even now the geographical line between them may be drawn
anywhere in a belt two thousand miles wide, in which it will be fixed
according to the nativity of the critic rather than by any pronounced
social stigmata. East or West, there is a greater gulf between the
intelligent and the unintelligent of the same parish than divides the
intelligent of different parishes. East or West, Americans think pretty
much the same thoughts, feel about the same emotions, and
express themselves in the American tongue—that is, in slang. If the
slang, the accent, the manner differ noticeably, as they still do, there
are not wanting signs that another generation will obliterate these
differences too. Publishing, to be sure, tends to concentrate in the
East, though without impoverishing the West, since all notable
circulations have to be national to survive. The very fact that the
country’s publishing can be done from New York, Philadelphia, and
Boston demonstrates our national unanimity of opinion and
expression.
Before it overleapt the geographical walls, this national unanimity
had wiped out every class distinction but one, which it has steadily
tended to entrench—the money line. Families may continue to hold
their place only on the condition that they keep their money or get
more; and a moderate fortune, no matter how quickly come by, has
only to make a few correct strokes, avoid a few obvious bunkers,
and it will found a family by inadvertence. The process is so simple
that clerks practise it during their vacations at the shore.
Besides money, there is one other qualification—personal
charm. Its chief function, perhaps, is to disguise the essentially
monetary character of American social life. At any rate, Americans
are almost as uniformly charming as they are uniformly acquisitive.
For the most part it is a negative charm, a careful skirting of certain
national taboos: it eschews frank egoism, unfavourable criticism,
intellectual subtlety, unique expressions of temperament, humour
that is no respecter of persons, anything that might disturb the status
quo of reciprocal kindliness and complacent optimism. The
unpopular American is unpopular not because he is a duffer or a
bore, but because he is “conceited,” a “knocker,” a “highbrow,” a
“nut,” a “grouch,” or something of that ilk. We do not choose, as the
Martian suggested, to be as similar as possible; we choose not to be
dissimilar. If our convictions about America and what is American
sprang from real knowledge of ourselves and of our capacities, we
should relish egoists, disinterested critics, intellectuals, artists, and
irreverent humourists, instead of suppressing them when we cannot
mould them. That we do not relish them, that we protect ourselves
from them, is evidence that we fear them. What reason should we
have to fear them save a secret distrust of our asseverated
convictions? Our unanimity, then, would seem to the Martian to be
an artificial substitute for some natural background we lack but
should like to have; and a most dangerous wish-fulfilment it is, for it
masks our ignorance of what we are and what we may reasonably
become. Far from being self-knowledge, Americanism would seem
to him to be a hallucination, an article of faith supported only by our
determination to believe it, and to coerce others into believing it. The
secret of our uniformity would be a stubborn ignorance.
At which point our critic would have to re-examine his earlier
impressions about our “passion for education,” and strive to
understand the uses to which we actually put our educational
establishment, to appraise its function in our life.
Beginning with the kindergarten, it provides us a few hours’ relief
from our responsibility toward our youngsters. Curiously, the
Americans most given to this evasion are the Americans most
inveterately sentimental about the “kiddies” and most loath to employ
the nursery system, holding it somehow an undemocratic invasion of
the child’s rights. Then somewhere in the primary grades we begin to
feel that we are purchasing relief from the burden of fundamental
instruction. Ourselves mentally lazy, abstracted, and genuinely
bewildered by the flow of questions from only one mouth, we blithely
refer that awakening curiosity to a harassed young woman, probably
less well informed than we are, who has to answer, or silence, the
questions of from a score to three score mouths. So begins that long
throttling of curiosity which later on will baffle the college instructor,
who will sometimes write a clever magazine essay about the
complacent ignorance of his pupils.
A few years, and our expectation has shifted to the main chance.
We begin worrying over grade reports and knotting our brows over
problems in arithmetic by way of assisting our offspring to the
practical advantages of education. For the child, we now demand of
his teachers solid and lasting preparation in the things whose
monetary value our office or domestic payroll keeps sharply before
us—figures, penmanship, spelling, home economics. For us, the
vicarious glory of his “brightness.” But we want this brightness to
count, to be in the direct avenue to his career; so we reinforce the
environment that gently discourages him from the primrose paths of
knowledge. Nothing “practical” is too good for the boy at this moment
—tool chests, bicycles, wireless, what not. Thank God, we can give
him a better start than we had. As for arts and letters, well, we guess
what was good enough for his dad is good enough for him.
Meanwhile we are rather pleased than not at the athletics and the
other activities in which the grammar school apes the high school
that apes the college.
The long spiral of repetitive schooling in study and sport has now
commenced its climb: year by year reviews and adds its fresh
increment to last year’s subject-matter in the classroom and on the
field. Is it so strange that when the boy meets his college professors
he is cock-sure of knowing to a hair the limits of what is normal and
important in life, beyond which lie the abnormal interests of the
grinds? That mediocre C is a gentleman’s mark? Not his to question
the system that, in season and out, has borne down on passing
instead of on training, and that ends somewhere, soon or late, with a
diploma and, amid family plaudits, graduation from family control.
 The high schools are expected to fit ninety-five per cent. of their
charges for life and five per cent. for college. If our boy and girl are of
the ninety and five, we demand very early specialization toward their
precious careers, wax enthusiastic over the school’s model
mercantile and banking establishment, expand to know our children
are being dosed with a course in “Civics,” generously admire the
history note-books in which they have spread much tinted ink over a
little stereotyped information, and in what we fool ourselves into
believing are the margins to all these matters proudly watch them
capture a class numeral or a school letter, grumblingly pay for real
estate signs that have gone up in flame to celebrate some epochal
victory, and bear with their antics during hazings and initiations. It’s a
democratic country, and if the poor man’s son cannot go to college,
why the college must come to him. Nor are we without a certain
undemocratic satisfaction in the thought that he has stolen a four
years’ march into business over the rich man’s son, who spends his
college hours, we assure ourselves, acquiring habits that will leave
him weak in the hour of competition.
Meanwhile the straddling masters are cramming the other five
with all the dates and rules and verbs and prose passages which
long and bitter experience has demonstrated to be likeliest on
entrance examinations. From the classrooms, as term follows term
with its endless iteration of short advances and long reviews, there
rises the bruit of rivalry: masters decorously put forward the claims of
their own colleges; pupils rejoice when their future alma mater
notches another athletic victory to the well-remembered tally; the
weak of heart are urging upon their bewildered parents the superior
merits of the “back-door” route to some exacting university—by
certificate to a small college and transfer at the end of the first year.
There are high schools in whose cases all this is
understatement; and of course there are innumerable others,
especially in these days when the most rigorous colleges have lost a
little of their faith in entrance examinations, where it is absurd
overstatement. Nevertheless your son, if he goes to a representative
Eastern college from a representative high school, goes as a man
steals second in the seventh. And his subsequent instructors marvel
at the airy nonchalance with which he ignores “the finer things of
life”!
The private secondary schools, save those that are frankly
designed to relieve parents of recalcitrant boys when the public
schools will have no more of them, are pretty much without the
ninety-five per cent. of non-college men. Frequently they have their
charges for longer periods. So they are free to specialize in
cramming with more singleness of mind and at the same time to
soften the process as their endowments and atmospheres permit.
But at bottom the demand you make of the “prep school” is the same
demand your bookkeeper puts on his son’s high school: you want
your boy launched into college with the minimum of trouble for
yourself and the maximum of practical advantage for him; your
bookkeeper wants his boy launched into business with a minimum of
frippery and a maximum of marketable skill. One boy is experted into
college, the other is experted into business. You are both among
those passionate believers in education who impressed the Martian
on his first visit.
Some educator has announced that the college course should
not only provide preparation for life but should itself be a satisfactory
portion of life. What college student so dull as not to know that? For
the most part, he trusts the faculty to provide the preparation—
sometimes it would seem that he dares it to—but he takes jolly good
care that the four years shall give him life more abundantly. He has
looked forward to them with an impatience not even the indignity of
entrance examinations could balk; he will live them to the top of his
bent; and he will look back on them tenderly, even sentimentally, as
the purplest patch of his days. So the American undergraduate is
representative of the American temper at its best. He is the flower of
our youth at its moment of perfect bloom, its ideals not yet corrupted,
its aspirations unwithered. As he thinks and feels, all America would
think and feel if it dared and could.
At this point, therefore, the Martian’s inquiry into what we expect
from our educational establishment would have to shift its point of
view from the older to the younger generation. The Martian would be
much in demand at our colleges, both as a sure-fire lecturer and as a
shining target for degrees certain to attract wide publicity to the
donors. Let us imagine him setting aside a page in his notebook for a
scheme of undergraduate emphases, grouped and amended as his
triumphant progress permitted him to check up on his observations.
Athletics would of course head the list. Regarded as play—that
is, as they affect the spectator—college sports proffer a series of
thrilling Roman holidays extending from the first week or so of term-
time to the final base-ball game and crew race of Commencement
week the next June, and for some colleges there may be
transatlantic sequels in midsummer or later. It is by no means all play
for the spectator, whose loyalty to his institution makes it his duty to
watch the teams practise, follow the histories of the gladiators who
are at once his representatives and his entertainers, and drill himself
in songs and yells at noisy mass meetings; to bet on his college
according to his purse and without any niggardly regard for his sober
judgment as to the event; then to deck himself in the colours, march
to the field, and watch the fray from the cheering section, where his
attention will be perpetually interrupted by the orders and the abuse
of a file of insatiable marionettes who are there to dictate when he
may and when he may not give throat to his enthusiasm; and finally,
if Providence please, to be one of the snake-dancing celebrants of
victory. If he have the right physique or talent for one of the sports,
he will find himself conscripted by public opinion to enter upon the
long and arduous regimen that turns out the annual handful of
athletic heroes—to slave on freshman squads, class teams, scrub
and third and second teams, and finally perhaps, if he has been
faithful, to play a dull minute or two of a big game that is already
decided and so receive his coveted letter and side-line privilege as a
charity. Or at the dizziest pinnacle of success, a “star,” to endure the
unremitting discipline of summer practice, incessant training, eating
with his fellow-stars at the training table, in season and out to be the
butt of instruction and exhortation from all the experts of the
entourage. As they affect the participant, then, college sports are to
be regarded as work that differs from the work of professional
sportsmen chiefly by being unremunerated.
 The student’s next most vivid concern is the organization of the
social life in the academic commonwealth of which he is a citizen.
Every American college has, or fancies it has, its own tone, its ideal
type of man; and good citizenship prescribes conformity to the spirit
of the place and observance of the letter of its unwritten code. For
the type is defined by a body of obligations and taboos transmitted
from generation to generation, sometimes through the mouthpiece of
the faculty, sometimes by way of the college “Bible” (to use the slang
name for those handy manuals of what to do and what to avoid
which the college Y.M.C.A. issues for the guidance of newcomers),
but most often by a rough process of trial and error which very
speedily convinces the freshman that the Fence is for seniors only,
or that it is impracticable to smoke his pipe in the Yard, or that it is
much healthier to take the air in a class cap than bareheaded. The
cherished “traditions” of a college are for the most part a composite
of just such privileges and prohibitions as these, clustering round the
notion of the type and symbolizing it; and, curiously, the younger the
institution, the more insistent it is likely to be about the sanctity of its
traditions—a college feels the need of a type in much the same
degree that a factory needs a trademark.
Conformity thus becomes an article in loyalty. Sometimes the
mere conformity is the desiderate virtue, as used (at least) to be the
case in Yale. Sometimes the type will go in for individualism, as at
Harvard a decade ago, where the thing to conform to was non-
conformity. One tradition is probably universal: is there anywhere in
America a college which does not boast that it is more “democratic”
than others? Democracy undergoes some engaging redefinition in
support of these conflicting claims, but at bottom it refers to an
absence of snobs, arrogant critics, incomprehensible intellectuals,
bouncing wits, uncomfortable pessimists—in short, the
discouragement of just such individual tastes and energies as the
Martian found discouraged in our social life at large. The money line
remains. Theoretically, the poor may compete in athletics and in
other student enterprises and reap the same social rewards as the
rich: practically, they may compete and go socially unrewarded,
precisely as in the outside world. It is natural and seemly that this
should be the case, for the poor cannot afford the avenues of
association which are the breath of society to the rich. There have
been football heroes whom the well-to-do have put in the way of
acquiring wealth after they left college, but this is patronage, not
democracy. There are also colleges proud to be known as poor
men’s colleges, and for that very reason devoid of the democracy
they boast. Not long ago the president of Valparaiso had to resign,
and it developed that among the counts against him were the deadly
facts that he had attended the annual alumni dinner in dress clothes
and had countenanced “dances, athletics, fraternities, and such.” No,
all that we really mean by democracy in college is the equal
opportunity to invest one’s inoffensive charm and perfectly good
money in a transient society, to be neighbourly across geographical
and family lines, to cultivate the local twist of the universal ideal—to
be a “regular fellow.” Which is very much what we mean by
democracy outside. Whatever the precise type of man a college
exalts, its characteristic virtues are those that reflect a uniform
people—hearty acceptance of unexamined ideals, loyal conformity to
traditional standards and taboos, unassuming modesty in “playing
the game,” and a wholesome optimism withal.
But as for genuine democracy, the unrestricted interplay of free
spirits against a common background, what college can boast that its
social organization approaches even the measure of equality
enjoyed by its disinterested scholars? There was a modicum of it in
the free elective system that obtained in Dr. Eliot’s Harvard. There
was an indifference to seniority that sorely puzzled the graduates of
other colleges. Alas, freshman dormitories descended upon it,
treacherously carrying the banners of “democracy”; and a “group
system” of courses began to externalize intellectual interests to
which the elective system, abused as it was, had offered every
opportunity for spontaneity. It may be that the Amherst of Dr.
Meiklejohn’s experiments, or the Smith that President Neilson
envisages, will recapture opportunities now fled from Cambridge.
These cases, after all, are exceptional. For the typical American
college, private or public, marshals its students in two caste systems
so universal and so familiar that it never occurs to us to scrutinize
the one and we are liable to criticize the other only when its
excesses betray its decadence.
 The former, the divisioning and tagging of every recruit with the
year of his graduation, looks to be an innocent convenience until you
have surveyed its regimental effect. Freshmen are green; so we clap
ridiculous caps on them, dub them “Frosh” or “Fish,” haze them,
confine them to a York Street of their kind or impound them in
freshman dormitories, where we bid them save themselves, the
which they do in their sophomore year at the expense of the next
crop of recruits. It is not so much the occasional brutality of hazing
parties and “rushes” that should arrest us here, nor yet such
infrequent accidents as the probably insane despair of that Harvard
freshman whose phobia for eggs drove him to suicide to escape the
inflexible diet of his class commons, as it is the remorseless mob
invasion of personality and privacy which either leaves the
impressionable boy a victim of his ingrowing sensibility or else
converts him into a martinet who in his turn will cripple others. In the
case of the Cornell freshman who was ducked for stubbornly
refusing to wear the class cap and was saved from more duckings
by an acting president who advised him—“in all friendliness,” said
the newspapers!—to submit or to withdraw from college for a year, it
is not necessary to applaud what may have been pig-headedness in
the victim, or to flay what may have been wisdom in the executive, in
order to admire the single professor who stood ready to resign in
order to rebuke his college for her bigotry. What was really significant
here, however, and what is everywhere characteristic of this sort of
benevolent assimilation, was the tone of the university daily’s
editorial apologia:

“Complete liberty of action has never been recognized by

any but avowed anarchists; granted the validity of the law, there
can be no charge of intolerance in the enforcement of it.”

The legal “validity” of an arbitrary tradition! No “intolerance” in its

enforcement by Judge Lynch! The editor of the Cornell Sun went on
to say that the existence of the “law” in question is “no secret from
the prospective Cornellian,” implying, no doubt, that to offer oneself
for matriculation at Cornell is ipso facto to accept the whole body of
Ithacan tradition and taboos, along with their interpretation and
enforcement according to the momentary caprice of the majority, as
a contrat social. Small wonder he called the refractory freshman a
“red.” The young editor’s reasoning should recommend his early
appointment to a place in the greater Sun.
The caste system of academic seniority, like all caste systems, is
worst at its base. Such customs as the sequestering of the upper
classes in their private quads or ovals, the jealous protection of
senior privileges, and the calendrical elaboration of the alumni
programme serve to import a picturesque if rather forced variety into
our drab monotony. That men should choose to organize themselves
to protect some more or less irrelevant distinction is of no special
importance to outsiders so long as they do not use their organization
to dragoon minorities or to bully individuals. Yet, speak out against
the exploitation, and you will be accused of attacking the fellowship.
Criticize the shackling of freshmen, and there will not be wanting
college editors to call you a fanatic who cannot bear the jolly sight of
cap and gown.
The other system of caste, to which we give sharp attention
when it goes badly wrong, is of course the club hierarchy. Wherever
there are clubs their social capital will necessarily fluctuate with the
quality of the members they take in. The reformers who deplore the
institution of “rushing” have of course exaggerated its evils, but the
evils are there. In young colleges, and wherever clubs are insecure,
the candidates are liable to be spoiled for any club purposes before
their destination is settled; wherever the candidates must do the
courting, either brazenly or subtly, they tend to debauch the club.
The dilemma holds, in one form or another, all the way from the
opposed “literary” societies of the back-woods college to the most
powerful chapters of the national fraternities; and it is particularly
acute where the clubhouse is also the student’s residence. Any
remedy thus far advanced by the reformers is worse than the
disease.
In many of the older colleges the equilibrium has been stabilized
by a device similar to the gentlemen’s agreement in industry. The
important clubs have gradually adjusted themselves into a series
through which the clubman passes, or into which he penetrates as
far as his personality and money will carry him. So the initial
competition for untried material is done away with or greatly
simplified; one or two large freshman or sophomore clubs take in all
the likely candidates; the junior clubs do most of their choosing from
among this number; and the senior clubs in turn draw on the junior.
Meanwhile the member turnover is perhaps trebled, and initiations
and other gay functions multiply.
It is to be remembered, however, that not all the brethren shift
onward and upward year by year. Many have to content themselves
with clubs already won, and those who pass on are a narrowing
band, whose depleted ranks are by no means restored in the
eleventh hour recruiting of “elections at large,” deathbed gestures of
democracy after a career of ballotting to exclude candidates who had
not taken all the earlier degrees. Thus increasing distinction is
purchased through the tried and true method of decreasing numbers.
To be sure, the same end could be served if all would remain in one
club and periodically drop groups of the least likely members.
Initiations might be reversed, and punches be given to celebrate the
lightening of the ship: it would be no more fantastic than a good part
of the existing ceremonial. But—it would be undemocratic! And, too,
the celebrations might be fatally hilarious. The present pre-initiation
discipline is one that tests for regularity and bestows the accolade on
the inconspicuous, so that the initiates turn out pretty much of a
piece and the entertainment they provide is safely conventional. But
reverse the process, assemble in one squad all the hands suspected
of being exceptional—all the queer fish and odd sticks—and there’s
no predicting what capers they might cut as they walked the plank.
The real evil of the club caste is its taste for predictability, its
standardization of contacts, its faintly cynical sophistication where
life might be a riot of adventures and experiments and self-
discoveries—in one word, its respectability. Not that it does not
provide much good fellowship and a great deal of fun (including the
varieties that have distressed its moral critics). But that everything it
provides is so definitely provided for, so institutionalized, and so
protected from the enrichment different types and conditions of men
could bring to it that it is exclusive in a more sinister sense than the
one intended by the critics of its alleged snobbery.
Normally the club system is by no means so snobbish as it is
thought to be; it dislikes, and is apt to punish with the black ball, the
currying of social favour and the parade of special privilege. For
youth is youth, and in the last analysis the enemy of caste. It is the
glory of college life that the most unexpected friendships will
overleap the fences run by class and club regimentation. It is its pity
that the fences, which yield so easily to irregular friendships once
they have discovered themselves, should nevertheless be stout
enough to herd their victims past so many unrecognized
opportunities for spontaneous association. The graduate who looks
back fondly on his halcyon days is very likely passing over the
Senior Picnic and his row of shingles to recall haze-hung October
afternoons of tobacco and lazy reminiscence on the window-seat of
somebody who got nowhere in class or club, or is wistful for the
midnight arguments he had with that grind who lived in his entry
freshman year—nights alive with darting speculation and warm with
generous combat. Of these clandestine sweets he will say nothing;
he is a regular fellow; but he affords one of the proofs that the well-
worn social channels are not deep enough to carry off all the wine of
free fellowship. And that even the moderate caste of college,
securely established as it seems, must defend itself from youth
(even from its own youth!) is demonstrated by two phenomena not to
be explained satisfactorily on any other hypothesis. What is all the
solemn mummery, the preposterous ritual, the pompous processions
to and from temples of nightmare architecture, the whole sacrosanct
edifice of the secret fraternities, if it be not an embroidery wherewith
to disguise from present and future devotees the naked matter-of-
factness of the cult? And, on the other hand, what are the too early
maturity, the atmosphere of politely blasé languor, the ubiquitous
paraphernalia for comfort and casual hospitality that characterize the
non-secret and citified clubs of the “indifferent” college but so many
disarming confessions of the predictability of everything—the
predictability, and the necessity for quiet acceptance? Under all the
encouraging variations and exceptions runs the regimental
command of our unanimity: if you are to belong, you must conform;
you must accept the limits of the conventional world for the bounds
of your reality; and then, according to the caprice of your genius loci,
you will play the game as if everything, even the minutiæ of the ritual
your club has inherited from freer spirits, were of tremendous
moment, or you will play it no less thoroughly but with the air of one
who knows that nothing is of any moment at all. The clubs, that have
so often been criticized for their un-American treason to democracy,
are only too loyally American.
The third emphasis would be corollary to these two—the political
management of athletic and class and club affairs. The politics are
those of personal popularity, the management is that of
administration rather than legislation, the spirit is the American flair
for petty regulation. Where issues are in question the tone is almost
certain to be propagandist, conservatives and radicals dividing a field
littered with hard names. College life has accumulated an
abundance of machinery for the expression of the managing instinct,
and most of it works. Nowadays the lines of representation finally
knot in a Student Council, which is at once the Cabinet, the Senate,
and the Supreme Court of the undergraduate commonwealth. The
routine of its work is heavily sumptuary, and such matters as the
sizes and colours and seasons for hatband insignia, the length of
time students may take off to attend a distant game, the marshalling
of parades, are decided with taste and tact. Then, abruptly, it is a
tribunal for major cases, just if severe: a class at Yale fails to
observe the honour rule, and upon the Council’s recommendation
twenty-one students are expelled or suspended; it was the Student
Council at Valparaiso that secured the president’s withdrawal; and at
Cornell it was the Student Council that came to the rescue of
tradition when a freshman refused to wear the freshman cap.
Invariably, one concludes, its edicts and verdicts will support
righteousness, as its constituents understand righteousness.
The constituents themselves are ordinarily on the side of light, as
they see the light. Not so long ago the faculty of a small New
England college decided to dispense with compulsory chapel: the
students voted it back. Moral crusades spring up like mushrooms
and command the allegiance of all but the recalcitrant “rough-necks,”
whom student opinion is sometimes tempted to feel are beating their
way through an education for which they make no equivalent return
in public spirit. A typical campaign of the sort was recently put in
motion by the student daily at Brown: the editors discovered that “the
modern age of girls and young men is intensely immoral”; they
penned sensational editorials that evoked column-long echoes in the
metropolitan press; they raised a crusade against such abominations
as petting parties, the toddle (“Rome,” they wrote, “toddled before it
fell”), and “parties continued until after breakfast time”; almost
immediately they won a victory—the Mothers’ Club of Providence
resolved that dances for children must end by eleven o’clock....
And now the undergraduate will emphasize study. But a sharp
line must be drawn between study that looks forward merely to the
A.B. degree as the end of schooling and the beginning of business,
and study that is a part of professional training, that looks forward to
some professional degree at Commencement or to matriculation in a
graduate school. Both come under the head of preparation for life;
but in the former case the degree itself is the preparation, whereas in
the latter case it is recognized that one must master and retain at
least a working modicum of the subject-matter of the professional
courses and of the liberal courses preliminary to them.
The arts man, then, recognizes only the same necessity he has
faced all the way up the school ladder—to pass. If he have entrance
conditions, they are mortgages that must be paid off, perhaps in the
Summer School; he must keep off probation to protect his athletic or
political or other activity status; beyond this, he must garner enough
courses and half-courses, semester hours or points, to purchase the
indispensable sheepskin. Further effort is supererogatory so far as
concerns study per se: prizes and distinctions fall in the category of
“student activities,” hobbies, and belong of right to the “sharks”;
scholarships, which in America are for the poor only, have to do with
still another matter—earning one’s way through—and are mostly
reserved for the “paid marks men,” professional studiers, grinds.
Upon his programme of courses the student will often expend as
much mental energy as would carry him through an ordinary
examination: he will pore over the catalogue, be zealous to avoid
nine o’clocks and afternoon hours liable to conflict with games, make
an elaborate survey of the comparative competence of instructors,
both as graders and as entertainers and even (quaintly enough) as
experts in their fields, and enquire diligently after snap courses.
Enrolled in a course, he will speedily estimate the minimum effort
that will produce a safe pass, unless the subject happens to be one
that commends itself to his interest independently of academic
necessity. In that case he will exceed not only the moderate stint
calculated to earn a C, but sometimes even the instructor’s
extravagant requirements. There is, in fact, scarcely a student but
has at least one pet course in which he will “eat up” all the required
reading and more, take gratuitous notes, ask endless questions, and
perhaps make private sallies into research. The fact that he holds
most of this labour to be self-indulgence will not temper his
indignation if he fails to “pull” an A or B, though it is a question
whether, when the grade has sealed the course, he will be much the
wiser for it than for the others.
On the evils of the course system there is probably no new thing
to be said. Such devices as the “group system” at Harvard interfere
with liberty of election without appreciably correcting the graduate’s
ignorance of the courses he has passed and cashed in for his
degree. Recognizing this fact, certain faculties have latterly
inaugurated general examinations in the whole subject-matter
studied under one department, as notably in History, Government,
and Economics; but thus far the general examination affects
professional preparation, as notably for the Law School, much more
than it affects the straight arts career, where it provides just one
more obstacle to “pass.”
This business of passing is a seasonal nuisance. The early
weeks of term-time are an Arcady of fetching lectures, more or less
interesting assigned reading, and abundant “cuts.” Across the
smiling sky float minatory wisps of cloud—exercises, quizzes, tests.
Then up from the horizon blow the “hour exams,” first breath of the
academic weather that later on will rock the earth with “mid-years”
and “finals.” But to be forewarned is, for the prudent student, to get
armed, and Heaven knows he is amply warned by instructor,
registrar, and dean. So he hies himself to the armourer, the tutor, one
of the brotherhood of experts who saw him through the entrance
examinations; he provides himself with bought or leased notebooks
and summaries; he crams through a few febrile nights of cloistral
deprivations and flagellations; and the sun shines again on his
harvest of gentlemen’s C’s, the proud though superfluous A or B,
and maybe a D that bespeaks better armour against the next onset.
Or, of course, he may have slipped into “probation,” limbo that
outrageously handicaps his athletic or political ambitions. Only if he
have been a hapless probationer before the examinations is there
any real risk of his having to join the exceedingly small company of
living sacrifices whom a suddenly austere college now “rusticates.”
(For in America suspensions and expulsions are the penalties rather
of irregular conduct than of mental incompetence or sloth.) In four
years, after he has weathered a score of these storms and
concocted a few theses, the president hands him a diploma to frame,
he sells his other furniture, puts mothballs in his cap and gown, and
plunges into business to overtake his non-college competitors.
Student opinion recognizes that the man enrolled in professional
courses or headed for a graduate school faces more stringent
necessities. He may devote himself to his more specific training
without the imputation of being a “grind,” and if he pursues honours it
will be in the line of business rather than of indoor sport. He will be
charier of cuts, more painstaking as regards his notes and reading,
and the professional manner will settle on him early. In every college
commons you can find a table where the talk is largely shop—
hypothetical cases, laboratory experiments, new inventions, devices
for circumventing the income tax. All this, however, is really a
quantitative difference, not a qualitative. Of disinterested intellectual
activity he is if anything more innocent than his fellow in the arts
school.
So much for the four great necessities of average student life—in
order of acknowledged importance: athletics, social life, politics,
study. Deans and other official but theoretical folk will tell our Martian
that the business of college is study and that all the undergraduate’s
other functions are marginal matters; but their own conduct will
already have betrayed them to him, for he will not have missed the
fact that most of their labour is devoted to making study as dignified
and popular as the students have made sports and clubs and
elections. These four majors hold their places at the head of the list
of student emphases because no representative undergraduate
quite escapes any of them; the next ones may be stressed more
variously, according rather to the student’s capricious private
inclinations than to his simpler group reactions.
Now, for instance, he is free to “go in for” some of the
innumerable “student activities,” avocations as opposed to the
preceding vocations. There are the minor sports which are not so
established in popularity that they may conscript players—lacrosse,
association football, trap shooting, swimming, and so on. There are
the other intercollegiate competitions—chess and debating and what
not. The musical clubs, the dramatic clubs, the magazines, and
many semi-professional and semi-social organizations offer in their
degree more or less opportunity to visit rival institutions. Then, too,
there is in the larger colleges a club for almost every religious cult,
from Catholic to Theosophist, whose devotees may crave a closer
warmth of communion than they realize in the chapel, which is
ordinarily non-sectarian; a club apiece for some of the great fraternal
orders; a similar club for each of the political parties, to say nothing
of a branch of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, with another
organization forming to supply the colleges with associated Liberal
Clubs. Moreover, all the important preparatory schools, private and
public, are certain to be represented by clubs of their alumni, some
of which maintain scholarships but all of which do yeoman service
scouting for athletes. Frequently there is a Cosmopolitan Club for
foreign students and travelled Americans. And, finally, there are
clubs to represent the various provinces of knowledge—the classics,
philosophy, mathematics, the various sciences, and so on
indefinitely. Then, in colleges in or near cities, there are well-
organized opportunities for students who care to make a hobby of
the Uplift and go in for social service. While, for amateur and
professional sharks and grinds, there is the honour roll of prizes,
scholarships, fellowships, distinctions, and other academic honours.
Verily a paradise for the joiner. Day by day, the calendar of meetings
and events printed in the university paper resembles nothing so
much as the bulletin board of a metropolitan hotel which caters to
conventions.
If at first glance all this welter of endeavour looks to be anything
but evidence of uniformity, at second will appear its significant
principle. Every part of it is cemented together by a universal
institutionalizing of impulses and values. There is scarcely a college
activity which can serve for a hobby but has its shingle and ribbon
and certificated niche in the undergraduate régime.
Even the undergraduate’s extra-collegiate social life, which
would probably stand next on the Martian’s list, is thoroughly
regimented. Speaking broadly, it is incorrect to call on girls at the
nearest girls’ college; and, speaking still more broadly, there is
usually one correct college whereat it is socially incumbent to pay
devoirs. In coeducational institutions the sex line is an exacting but
astonishingly innocent consumer of time and energy, of which the
greater part is invested in the sheer maintenance of convention.
Along both these social avenues the student practises a mimicry of
what seems to him to be the forms regnant in secular society and,
intent on the forms, tends to miss by a little what neighbourly ease
really exists there, so that he out-conventionalizes the conventional
world. The non-college American youth, of both sexes, would
scarcely tolerate the amount of formalism, chaperonage, and
constraint that our college youth voluntarily assumes.
The word “fussing” is the perfect tag for the visiting, the taking to
games and dances, the cherishing at house-parties, and the
incessant letter-writing that are the approved communications across
the sex line. You make a fuss over a girl, and there it ends; or you
make a fuss over a girl and get engaged, and there it ends; or—and
this is frequent only in the large Western universities where well-nigh
all the personable youths of the State’s society are in college
together—you make a fuss over a girl, you get engaged, and in due
time you get married. So far as fussing is concerned, sex is far more
decorous among collegians than among their non-collegiate fellows
of the same ages and social levels. There is a place, of course,
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