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'Madame Caroline Testout' rose Reviews & Comments
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Adding a Q & A posted 8 days ago under a general heading:
Q by VMartini
Hello all,
I'm researching the story behind the Mme Caroline Testout rose, and noticed on the description page for Mme Caroline Testout the rose is listed as being dedicated to the wife of a magistrate of Grenoble. Does anyone know where this information came from? The other more repeated story about the Testout rose is that Caroline was a dressmaker from Grenoble who bought silks in Lyon, and purchased naming rights to the rose as a PR stunt for her business in London. Trying to track down the source of this alternate story, about she being a magistrate's wife.
Thanks so much,
Veronica
A by jedmar:
There is a lot of hearsay and copy paste regarding the attribution of the name:
- Journal des Roses of January 1910 says: dedicated to a lady of Grenoble, a lover of flowers
- Biltmore roses catalogue of 1913 : "named in honor of a distinguished and enthusiastic Rose-lover"
- House & Garden of 1929: "a fashionable couturière of London" [20th century books say a fashionable dressmaker of Grenoble who had salons in Paris and London!]
- The Gardeners Chronicle of May 29, 1937: "wife of a friend and customer of his who was a leading magistrate in Grenoble....M. Testout was an enthusiastic amateur gardener and had considerable success locally, principally in raising Gladioli"
- Les Amis des Roses of December 1939: wife of a magistrate of Grenoble
Now for some fact checking:
- There is no evidence of a couturière/dressmaker named Testout or Testoud in Grenoble, Paris, or London. If she was so successful, we should have found some trace of her on the web. This seems a made up story.
- The name Testout or Testoud is indeed common in the Grenoble area
- An Adolphe Testout bred a chrysanthemum 'Vaucanson' in 1893. No info on gladioli.
- A magistrat in France is a member of a court. There was indeed a A. Testout who was at the Court of Appelation in Grenoble in 1882. He is, however, mentioned as an amateur entomologist. Is this the same as Charles Adolphe Edmond Testout (January 17, 1845 - May 13, 1912 Grenoble)?
- The Zoologisches Adresssbuch of 1895 lists (p. 274) a Ch. Testout at 112 Cours Berriat, Grenoble, with collection of insects and butterflies. He is a Greffier (clerk) at the Court of Appelations. This address is a multi-story apartment building in the centre of the town. No garden in sight.
- Earlier, in 1855 a M. Testout is mentioned as propriétaire (landowner) in "La Frise, près de Polygone, 10 minutes de Grenoble". This La Frise is not far from the Cours Berriat above.
- A Mme Testout was a science teacher at the gymnasium for girls in Grenoble until 1901. Was she named Caroline?
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A person can be a lover of flowers without having a garden. In town, a person could have a conservatory or some other way of taking care of flowers without an outside garden; or the person could simply be a person who, without having a garden of her own, has an enthusiastic interest in horticulture, flower displays in parks, or floral exhibitions. It also was not unusual in those days for 'the better sort' to have not only a town house for purposes of society and having a place to stay when in town on business, but also another more private residence out in the countryside, where a person so minded could do all the gardening she might like.
Not that I believe the dressmaker story in the least in this case; but in truth there is precedent for it. Moreau-Robert's 'Mme. Yorke' possibly (speculating!) commemorates a prominent hat-making worthy of that name whose main shop was at 40/51 Conduit St., London, but of whom it was recalled in 1895 that 'adopted the French plan of making hats and bonnets to suit individual customers, and she is one of the few gentlewomen in business who believe in advertising; for the generality of lady dress-makers do not seem to care to avail themselves of the ordinary methods of publicity. She pays frequent visits to Paris, and adapts rather than copies French fashions. Every hat turned out of her establishment is designed either by herself or her daughter.' [The Idler, vol. 8, 1895, p. 479] Do the blossoms of 'Mme. Yorke' look like the fashionable creation of an expert milliner? Perhaps. One thinks of the found rose 'Grandmother's Hat'.
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#2 of 7 posted
10 MAR by
 HubertG
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I'd be asking if the original name at its introduction was 'Caroline Testout' or 'Mme Caroline Testout'. Maybe she wasn't married at all, and if she was married I'd then ask why the rose was introduced with her first name and not her husband's first name. I don't know the French etiquette of the time surrounding that point, but if she was married and her first name was used because she had some celebrity of some sort in fashion circles you might expect some trace of her to survive in old magazines etc.
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#3 of 7 posted
10 MAR by
jedmar
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That was also my thought. The milliner 'Madame Yorke' is mentioned several times in the 1890s, but there is no dressmaker Testout in London, at least in 1891.
Moreau-Robert's rose 'Madame Yorke' predates the mentions of the milliner in London. It is possibly named after the character Lady Augusta Yorke ("Madame Yorke" for the French) in Mrs. Henry Wood's novel "The Channings" (1861).
There is also an 1850 water-colour of a Madame Yorke, by paintress Mira Vigneron (1817-1884).
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#4 of 7 posted
10 MAR by
HubertG
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I found this from 1945 in 'The Flower Grower' Vol. 32, Issue 11 (November), page 552 but it is reproduced from the Royal Horticultural Society journal of March 1945:
"Mme. Caroline Testout was so called by a fashionable London dressmaker of that name who purchased the variety as part of a publicity campaign. The rose was distributed in 1890 by that great French raiser, Joseph Pernet-Ducher, of Venissieux, nr. Lyon, who died in 1928. As a rule, raisers of new plants are quite naturally inclined to think more of their productions than other people, but sometimes they err in the opposite direction. This was a case in point, for at the time Pernet-Ducher considered the pink seedling which Mme. Testout selected was no more than mediocre, but the dressmaker thought otherwise and, much to the raiser’s surprise, she turned out to be right. Incidentally, Mme. Caroline Testout was the seed-parent of Frau Karl Druschki. The well-known yellow rose Julien Potin was named in honor of M. Julien Potin, the proprietor of a chain of grocery stores. This was another case in which Pernet-Ducher was mistaken, for he had decided to discard the seedling when a committee of Potin’s employees asked to be allowed to purchase it as a gift to their employer.— Reprinted from the Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society, March 1945"
There are sporadic newspaper articles from the 1960s and 70s saying more or less the same thing - that she had "bought the rights" to the rose and named it after herself. However, 1945 is a timeframe presumably in someone's living memory of a famous dressmaker, if she was one. It still seems strange that if she was so advanced in promoting her business by using novel techniques like this rose why she couldn't have advertised on paper. Perhaps she did and nothing survived of it?
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#5 of 7 posted
10 MAR by
jedmar
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The earliest dressmaker/couturière story is in "House & Garden" of 1929. J. H. Nicolas in "Better Homes and Gardens" in 1936 expounded on this, saying that it was told to him personally by Pernet-Ducher (who had died in 1928). A nice story probably for marketing purposes! Often repeated in publications in English, but not in France.
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#6 of 7 posted
10 MAR by
HubertG
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There's probably no reason to doubt Nicolas that Pernet-Ducher told him this story. I just wonder if Caroline Testout herself when buying the rose might have 'embellished' her credentials a bit to Pernet-Ducher, who might have had little clue who she was.
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What's worrisome about it is that this interesting detail about one of the era's best-known roses waited nearly forty years to be made public, that P-D evidently told no one else about it (or at least no one else saw fit to share this interesting detail about one of the era's best-known roses), that one of the principals in the anecdote (P-D) was dead by the time it went public, that no evidence has come to light about Testout's existence as a dressmaker, that if it was done for publicity purposes for a dressmaking concern it seems to have failed spectacularly to accomplish its goal, and that it does not account for the much more timely assertion that had been made that the rose was named for a flower-loving lady of Grenoble (though I suppose a person could be both a dressmaker and a flower-loving lady of Grenoble). As for the rose being named for our lady of Grenoble, it's hard to conceive how someone could benefit from telling a lie to that effect; but it's worth at least noting that, that fact having been stated in print, no one at the time appears to have contradicted it--including P-D, who was alive at the time.
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Just informational, Heirloom Roses lists this as Zone 5.
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I had a 'Madame Caroline Testout' survive almost a decade in zone 6; but it is just a matter of luck and the weather. A warm late Feb. or early March approaching 60 deg. followed by a deep freeze in the teens will kill many roses.
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Can I ask if you had winter protection on those or not? I'm just curious, I haven't lost a rose yet here in zone 5 Wisconsin but I have compost and mulch mounded on the roses. I probably just jinxed myself.
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Generally I would mound up some wood chips around the base of the plant. But the failure I describe above is a function of the rose starting to leaf out and then having a cold spell kill the emerging foliage. Mounding the base would not have an effect on this type of failure.
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Does Mme Caroline Testout have pink eyelashes (stamens)? I'm trying to identify a foundling.
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I live in the Western United States. Can you tell me where I can order online the CarolineTestout Rose. Thank you for your help.
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Click the BUY FROM tab for a list of suppliers offering this rose.
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