(1985)  Includes photo(s).
 
I must say that the sight of Charles Ryder painting ‘Brideshead’ (quite literally, in his case) amused me greatly. When I was twenty-two I painted it at a certain distance, in thick snow, and a big black car used to slither out on mercy missions carrying a thermos for the frozen artist. On one occasion, I discovered they’d sent an empty thermos by mistake. My heart sank a bit when I got the cork stopper out, and I blackened my renditition of an approaching snow cloud a little more than was justified on that day. Curiously, there were inky black thunderstorms encircling the domain when I was last there, in mid summer. The ground was rock hard as there had been no rain for weeks, yet the roses for the most part looked astonishingly untroubled. Just to be tiresome I shall illustrate a couple that weren’t there when last I looked; Lady Alice Stanley of 1909, and .....

(1985)  Page(s) ?.  Includes photo(s).
 
By this time I had made friends with my local rose breeder Peter Beales.....
Thence to Peter's establishment. "Hmmmm," he said twirling a bloom or two at arm's length.  I knew by the lift of his eyebrows that it was a useful hmmmm.  Usually, when the eyebrows stay  down, one knows that the hmmmm is not justifying the petrol.  But this time the eyebrows were way up.  I volunteered Lady Mary Fitzwilliam of 1882, more by way of a fleeting acquaintanceship with a Fitzwilliam home than by any true knowledge;  However, the eyebrows were still 'up' so I knew we had something.     In the fullness of time, as they say, when we had published a photograph, tentatively accredited, word came through from Mrs. Burdett, the great-granddaughter of Henry Bennett (the breeder), that the rose accorded with her family's records; and also, from Australia, from the son of the rose breeder Dean[e] Ross, that the picture was indeed of the bloom they had always known as 'Lady Mary Fitzwilliam'.  She is outside now, having survived a severe winter, as she must have done in '47 and '63. 

(1985)  Includes photo(s).
 
p21. Picture. Ohl.

p24. I did bring a number of the less well-known plants to my newest address (where Mr. Thomas noted down Ohl and velutinaeflora)

(1985)  Page(s) 30.  
 
The present Lady Tollemache is doing all sorts of interesting things with that amazingly romantic moated house in Suffolk where, in the old walled gardens, one can find….. and Russelliana – to name just a few of the lurkers from the past.