For Love of a Rose,
story of the creation of the famous Peace Rose, by Antonia Ridge.
“Any other time that
wonderful feeling would have then caught at both their hearts as it always did
at moments such as this, when something told them that this was one of the
dearest, the most beautiful things about their love for each other. And it
would always be like this, they would love each other and roses to the end of
their lives, the one love so closely entwined with the other that there could
be no separating one from the other, ever,”
It was a sweet,
romantic, and heartwarming story. It was not only the story of the creation of
roses, but also a true story of four generations of two rose-lovers and
love-growers families (the Meillands and Paolinos) linked forever in one family
–all by love of the rose.
This story set in
Chamboeuf, a quiet village near the city of Lyons,
France
in its 1900s. it was interesting to see Parisian’s lives at that time, where
women did the housekeeping, lay down her life for her family. Sometimes, I
thought that that was something that made a woman –how sweet and peaceful it
would be to keep the house and make everything ready for my family, but at the
second thought, I realized that it’s hardly possible to be done at this time,
where women insist on being independent and build their own carrier to prove
that they’re exist.
Another thing that
attract me was that at that time, they put a name on roses, as they believe
that ‘a good name, for a rose, is better than any gold medal,’ The names given
are: the scarlet ‘Jean Liabaud’, the golden-yellow ‘Duchesse de Ausstädt’, the
violet-scented ‘Sarah Bernhardt’, and the famous ‘Peace Rose’; “a glorious rose
with its pale gold, cream and ivory petals blending to a lightly ruffled edge
of delicate carmine, which its name represented the world’s greatest desire
after the Second World War end: Peace.
This 252-page book
also told us the struggle in creating new kind of roses, from selecting the
seeds; handling them with such a care; cross-pollinating them; propagating;
eliminating the bad-quality; and then picking them at dawn where the dew still
on their buds. And it also told us how Frances Meilland fought for the patent
name of a rose in France,
which caused a problem among the hybridists or rose-growers.
It was nice to have
chance to read this romantic story, but there were some words or contexts that
I did not understand, like red-letter occasion. I don’t know what it is. And
there were some words or sentences in French which hadn’t been translated into
English, like “Oh, vieni pezzettino mio!
Oh, bambino mio!”,”Stupendo! Magnifico!”, “mais … mais… qu’as-tu?”
I felt quite curious
about the meaning, but it didn’t affect my result about this book: good,
awesome, and worth reading! So, happy reading!
