2005 ARS Award of Merit Certificate Winner
The Man who would work and play at the same time
by Jim Delahanty
J.H.Nicolas, A Rose Odyssey: Reminiscences of Many Trips to European Rose Centers. (New York: Doubleday, 1937). (Available on the Internet at prices ranging from $9.00 to $72.00)
Mrs. Frederic Keays once noted that every rose book contains two narratives—one about the development of roses and the other about the author. This is especially true in considering this last book by Dr. J.H. Nicolas, director of research at Jackson & Perkins during most of the 1930’s. Only the ultimate insider and confidante of the breeders and growers, nurserymen and rose exhibitors could have written ‘A Rose Odyssey.’
Dr. J.H. Nicolas (the ‘J.H.’ stood for Jean Henri but he answered to ‘Nicky’ at J & P) was born in France in 1875 and prided himself on the lack of any Latinate heritage; he was tall, blond, heavy and totally able to talk without using his hands (his description of his linguistic talents). Born to a family of cotton manufacturers that had occupied the same estate since the 15th century, his father taught him how to bud roses by the age of ten. As the third son, he was destined for a career in the Army, but his failing eyesight put paid to that career in his twenties. He entered the family business and was sent on a business trip to New Orleans. In the course of this trip in 1902, he met a young miss from Chicago. He asked her father for her hand in marriage. The father consented with the proviso that the young lady not be taken to France to live and that Nicolas acquire American citizenship. The conditions were met and in the course of their marriage, the couple established homes in New Orleans, Indianapolis, West Grove, Pa, and Newark, N.Y. After a stint with the American Expeditionary Force in World War I, Nicolas decided to make his avocation his vocation and to work in the rose business. By 1922 he was writing articles for the American Rose Annual and proceeded to work for both Conard-Pyle in Pennsylvania and later as director of research for Jackson & Perkins in Newark.
Among his contributions to the development of roses, he fostered and supported the method of selling roses whose bare roots were packed in peat moss, studied rootstocks with a view to maximizing rose productions schedules, and coined the use of the term ‘floribundas’ to supplant the less euphonious term ‘hybrid polyanthas’ to designate roses that were a cross of polyanthas and hybrid teas. Given a curious mind and scientific bent, Nicolas achieved degrees in both the arts and sciences—it is no wonder that he was successful in the world of rosaria.
As a member of the smallish group of elite rosarians in the twenties and thirties, Nicolas had enough aplomb to be amused at being discreetly moved aside at a picture taking session with royalty at the opening of the Chelsea Flower show. (He was not properly attired in a morning coat, but allowed that he rarely traveled from an airplane to any event in that attire.) He was sufficiently poised to twit a Mussolini functionary on frictions between the Italian and French governments in the mid-thirties. The functionary replied that ‘Roses nave no frontiers!’ Later Nicolas would use this statement in an assessment of the direction of rose developments in Europe. He believed that Europe was moving to an approach toward roses which rewarded regional roses rather than seeking the rose that would suit all environments. He also believed that American rose developments would also have to move in the same direction given the large fluctuations in climate in the United States.
Based on twenty years of touring European rose centers, he could adduce evidence to contradict the formidable J. Horace McFarland on questions of the suitability of alkaline soils for rose growing, the deep trenching of rose beds and other questions, but without creating any deep hostility. (McFarland wrote a chapter on Australian roses for the ‘Odyssey’ book, but it is one of the most flaccid things McFarland ever penned.) The range of experiences of Nicolas enabled him to wine and dine with both the most aristocratic and the most practical cash-oriented peddlers among personages in his travels. The cast of characters available to him included all of the great European plantsmen of his time—Peter Lambert still fixated on Hybrid Perpetuals, Pedro Dot a devoted Catalonian, the gruff and competitive Pernet-Ducher, and the Reverend Pemberton who shared his whiskey with Nicolas while consigning a less fortunate guest to weak tea and a discussion of Scriptures with his sister.
Nicolas was so beloved in the rose world that his death in 1937 elicited four pages of tributes and accolades from the devastated admirers in the 1938 American Rose Annual. Of some thirty roses hybridized in his career only about a half dozen remain in either commerce or private gardens, the most famous of which are Eclipse’ and ‘Dr. J.H. Nicolas.’ A year before his death, Fred Howard of Los Angeles named a silvery pink rose with a satin sheen and qualities suitable for both a good garden and exhibition rose ‘The Doctor’ in honor of Nicolas, as reported by Jack Harkness in ‘The Makers of Heavenly Roses.’
Nicholas died in his sleep on yet another rose tour with his friends of nurseries and rose centers in the mid-Atlantic states on September 25th, 1937. His last book resonates with his good humor and appreciation for the telling detail.
Some of the material was recycled from past writings in the American Rose Annuals—his concern with a more scientific statement of the ‘Arcticness’ of roses, or his designation of three Dutch schoolboys as the ‘Three Musketeers (Bobbink, van Rossem, and Ruys),’ as examples. Nevertheless, this compilation of personal observations, gossip, and conversations with the hybridizers and breeders of his day remains a fine testament to his personality.
In his world all the women were beautiful, all the men were handsome, and the conversations were witty, incisive, and elegant. Travel by go-cart, automobile, train and airplane are all treated as great adventures (with due regard for the Nicolas size). Even with the evidence of the deteriorating political situation of Europe in the last of the thirties, the world of Nicolas seems a pleasant place to be. Nicolas would have made a wonderful companion on a modern cruise to warmer climes, or a steamboat trip up the Mississippi. And his book is no slouch as a companion, either.
Not to be printed or forwarded without the permission of the author.
