In Pre-Christmas Crackers (15 December 2025), I stated that I was retiring my Browning BAR Mk1 in favor of a Sig-Sauer Cross Fury and a custom Model 1917 Enfield rifle. Regarding the former, and as a consequence of attending The Stalking Show several weekends ago (See If life is to be played as a card game…), I’ve decided to put a Schmidt and Bender 3-20×50 PM II Ultra Short telescopic sight on it later this month. And regarding the latter, again as I stated in Pre-Christmas Crackers, it is primarily for the purpose of hunting wild boar and feral pigs and thus will be equipped to accept a USMC OKC-3S bayonet, as the intended quarry is generally finished with a blade whenever dogs are employed.
I actually started the custom Model 1917 Enfield in 2018 as a DIY project, but soon realized that I was out of my depth, lacking the requisite skill to pull it off. Life then got in the way. Yet once the docket cleared, I struggled to find a gunmaker willing to build it. The problem was always the same. While the gunmaker understood and recognized the validity of the concept, it nonetheless declined to accept the commission on the grounds that it specialized in making elegant ordnance, essentially ‘man jewelry,’ not battle rifles fit for action against wild boar and feral pigs.
Thankfully, my luck turned for the better last December when Greylock Gunworks, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, happily accepted the project. And with it being only a 1.25-hour scenic drive away from where I am in Cambridge, New York, I’m able to regularly visit the shop to assay progress and refine ideas. Consequently, there’s a good chance the finished product will be in my hands by this coming October. I’m excited.
A New Rose Garden
Firearms and knives: It may appear as if that’s about all I want. Yet, I assure you that I’m far from being a one-track man. To illustrate, with no bookings in Maryland this week, I chose to remain in New York to scout streams in anticipation of my Adirondack Summer season, but I’m actually taking a break from it today to plant roses. You see, the first week of May always falls within Eastertide, and thank God for that. Therefore, I can think of nothing more fitting than to establish a new rose garden at my fishing camp, and so that is what I’ll be doing around noon after I finish my morning boxing routine. However, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither will this new rose garden. Only three shrubs are going in. But May 7th next year: Just you wait!
Antique Roses as a Diversion
I think most people who enter graduate school with the hope of earning the Ph.D. in their chosen discipline enjoy it, finding it to be intellectually stimulating. Even so, it also is an ordeal, and it helps to have a diversion to keep your powder dry. Fortunately, while I was working on my doctorate in chemistry at the University of Rochester (Rochester, New York), I had three. The first was year-round fieldsports. I bet you saw that coming. The second was Summer league softball. I played second base. And the third was antique roses. Though I was not, and am not, a gardener by temperament, I was smitten by these and subsequently turned much of my backyard into a rose garden.
What makes a rose antique?
An antique rose is a cultivar developed before 1867 when Jean-Baptiste André Guillot (1827 – 1893) introduced the first hybrid-tea rose, La France. Without going into all the details, hybrid-teas and other modern roses sacrifice everything for the sake of two characteristics. The first is heavy repeat blooming. The second is a high-set, pointed bud that opens to reveal thickly curled petals.
Antique roses, in contrast, are complete garden plants in my view. Firstly, they’re hardy and disease-resistant relative to moderns. Secondly, antiques are attractive shrubs in their own right even when they’re not blooming whereas modern roses are usually no more than skeleton-like fingers poking out of the ground only to bear a few buds. Thirdly, the flowers of antiques generally possess a heady and intoxicating perfume whereas those of modern roses smell like black tea at best. In sum, there’s really no comparison between antique and modern roses.
I’ll go even further and criticize modern roses as a group where they’re purportedly at their strongest (a.k.a. that which makes them so popular) and that is flower-form. While glamorous, I think that it’s too blunt and therefore it doesn’t demand much from the observer. The antique flower-form, in contrast, is far more nuanced. There’s a lot to take in. Moreover, from cultivar to cultivar, the flowers of antiques are nearly all so elegant.
Why did they attract my interest?
I simply don’t remember. Yet, if I am to hazard a guess, it’s that I was introduced to antique roses through my interest in history – things like the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of York, the Tudor rose, and the Jacobite rose, etc. I’ve always been more than a mad scientist, you know, even as far back as first-grade when I gave Mrs. Miller fits. She disliked me despite my winning personality. Although I digress. The point is that roses are medicinally, symbolically, and artistically significant in the history of Western Civilization. I believe that is what drew me in.
(The two photos above are recycled from Orbis Non Sufficit.)
What sustained my interest in antique roses, however, was the list of qualities already described – their growth form, their elegant flowers, and their heady perfume. Yet additionally, I believe I also was enamored by the preponderance of French names amongst these roses, reflecting the outsized role that culture played in developing them since the early Medieval period. One figure in particular deserves mention, here. It is Joséphine Bonaparte (1763 – 1814). The Empress loved roses and subsequently established the world’s first truly scientific rose breeding program at Chateau de Malmaison, her estate west of Paris. Interestingly, many of the cultivars emanating from the program begin with ‘Souvenir de,’ or in English, ‘Memory of’ – the most notable example is Souvenir de la Malmaison, which is a member of the Bourbon class of antique roses – and I think that’s a nice touch.
Speaking of classes, the three original ones – meaning those that existed in the Medieval period – are Albas, Damasks, and Gallicas. Yet, others were added beginning in the 17th Century. These include Bermudas, Bourbons, Centifolias, Hybrid Perpetuals, Moss, Portlands, Noisettes, and Ramblers.
Now, some modern rose classes are informally grouped with the antiques as a function of their appearance inasmuch as they generally split the difference between the two branches. These include Hybrid Musks, Hybrid Rugosas, and English Garden Roses. The last of the three deserves special mention. For it is product of one man, David Austin of Shropshire, England, who sought to breed a type of rose that possessed many of the attributes of the antiques – attractive shrub form, antique-style flowers, heady perfume, etc. – but with the expansive color-range typical of the moderns. I think he succeeded and to the point that it is the one and only modern class that will be represented in this new rose garden of mine.
While the three being planted this year are Hybrid Perpetuals and they’re all the same cultivar, Ardoisée de Lyon, my two favorite antique rose classes are Albas and Gallicas. Although I couldn’t quite put my finger on the underlying reason or reasons why until I began this dispatch. But as it often happens with me, the process of writing forces amorphous ideas and emotions to crystallize into definite forms. So, why are Albas and Gallicas my favorites? I believe it’s due to the fact that Albas exude femininity, and Gallicas exude masculinity, unmatched by other rose classes.
Regarding Albas, their growth form is noble and graceful. Moreover, their grey-green foliage and nearly thornless stems impart to them a demure persona that is all the more heightened by the fact that they actually do best in mixed sun and shade. And it’s in this setting that their flowers come into their own. Ranging from pure white to light pink, they’re about as soft and delicate as a rose bloom can get and they possess a fragrance that is equally the same. In sum, an Alba is quite a lady.
Gallica roses, however, are the exact opposite. There’s nothing subtle about them. In fact, they’re given the sobriquet ‘Mad Gallicas’ for a reason. Requiring full sun, their growth form is generally solid and muscular. They tend to sucker and will overtake the garden in the absence of constant pruning. In contrast to Albas, their foliage is the standard green and their stems are packed with thorns. And though their flowers are fragrant in the manner of all antique roses, their appearance is totally over-the-top, much like a boss rooster’s – an ornate and ornery gamecock that needs to be taken down a rung and therefore has it coming. Ranging from pink to burgundy to deep purple, they’re large and bold. In fact, the flowers of some Gallica roses, such as Cardinal de Richelieu, are nothing short of psychedelic.
If I were to breed a rose…
I would seek to develop a cultivar of an Alba. My starting point would be Madame Le Gras de Saint Germain, which was my favorite of the antique roses I planted when I lived in Rochester, New York. I would lose track of time just staring at it. But my goal would be to develop an Alba rose that absolutely dripped femininity. Although to avoid overburdening the point, I’ll simply focus on what I’d attempt to achieve with respect to its flower. For it would be so delicate and well-formed that it would verge on being otherworldly. It would appear purest white after say 07:00 hours on a sunny morning in June. Yet, from first light until that moment, the observer would note the faintest blush of pink, but only if he paid close attention. In fact, it would be so faint that, if he gazed at the bloom a second too long, the blush would elude him, much like the woman caught glancing darts her eyes away from the man. And I know exactly what I’d name it. For it would be a rose of the highest calibre.
Je me souviendrai toujours de toi. Mais…
The problem is that it’s too lofty an ambition for an amateur to achieve. It would very likely turn Icarian. For it takes more than a mad scientist such as myself to breed a rose that ennobles everything around it, including the very soil from which it springs. One must be a master of the craft to pull off such a spectacular fete.
On the level, I’m certain that if I attempted to create this Alba fit for Heaven, then development would unfortunately follow the same course as the one taken by my custom Model 1917 Enfield. Again, that began as a DIY project – a project that actually had an antecedent. For earlier in 2018, I re-blued the metal and refinished the stock of the Stevens Model 15, chambered in .22LR, that my Uncle Everett, of All’s Fair in Love and War fame, gave me at the 1982 Jones family Christmas reunion. Everything turned out nicely, too. I polished the metal to 800-grit to achieve a Browning-style effect and treated the wood with a chestnut stain and an oil finish. And I couldn’t have been happier with the result. But it left me so overconfident in my gunmaking ability that I concluded I was up to building this custom Model 1917 Enfield, and so why not?
Yeah, why not? Again, I had to turn the program over to a master once I realized that was the only option if the final product was to be up to scratch. Well then, what’s the point in attempting to develop an Alba rose so nonpareil that it eventually would require handing the project over to another? I simply can’t do that, as this is too personal a venture to permit a hand-off.
Guns and Roses
So there you have it. If you regularly visit voyageursfieldsport.com, then you already knew I love guns. And now after this dispatch, you also know that I feel the same about antique roses, and that my interest in them is decades old and runs quite deep. Although if you’ve freely explored voyageursfieldsport.com in the past, the evidence of the latter always has been in view. For example, if you migrate to Joie de la Chasse: The Drawing Room, you’ll find several prose excerpts and two poems that, firstly, invoke antique roses and, secondly, intertwine them with fieldsports. These are Quatre Saisons, Burnham Hill, and The Paraclete, the Son, and the Father.1
A Guy Like Me
Now, most fieldsports types express their passion for deerstalking and fly-fishing, etc., via things like putting decals on their vehicles or wearing Realtree camo apparel, which is perfectly acceptable. Of course, there are other ways, too. And for me, one is by invoking antique roses to reveal the humanity of the hunter. It certainly makes me an outlier, though.
That’s a shame. For the reality is that possessing an interest in something like antique roses would benefit a lot of guys. For there’s far too many who lack range. I usually don’t fuss about it. Yet, what’s this business of taking your lady for an evening out wearing a Bass Pro Shops ball cap and a Ducks Unlimited t-shirt instead of a jacket and tie? What are you: A method actor? Switch it up for once. And to the fly-angler sporting a trout tattoo on your flabby bicep: What, there’s nothing else, and is it really so central to your life that you’re compelled to suggest to the World that, among all things under the Sun, it’s a fish that lies at the core of your identity? I don’t like it. There has to be more.
Although perhaps I’m being too hard on you…or them. Fine, here’s one to get even. In August 2024, I made an off-hand comment to a reporter freelancing for Frederick News-Post that began with the phrase, “Call me a romantic.” In the end, she co-opted it for the article title. Yet, I always considered myself a clear-eyed realist. You know – a scientist. And it’s for this reason that I privately took exception to being portrayed as a romantic. In retrospect, though, I reckon there are just some things that I go mad over. I can’t help myself (Ooh! Pretty! Antique roses!). So, go ahead then and have fun. Throw your best punch.
Either way, I’ve gone on longer writing this dispatch than I intended. And with my line of work being what it is and the fly-fishing in the environs of Cambridge, New York really turning-on at the present, one might argue that I really should have spent the time out and about with rod in hand scouting streams. Yet, it comes down to priorities and the fly-fishing can wait. Perhaps that sets your eyes rolling. If so, then just call me a romantic and move on. For the World has enough fly-fishing ghillies to last a day being down one. What it really needs, however, is a guy like me – a sportsman who goes mad over antique roses.
- The antique rose that we in the Anglosphere refer to as Autumn Damask, is called Quatre Saisons (Four Seasons) in the French-speaking world. Either way, it’s the type specimen of the damask class of antique roses. ↩︎