Who was ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’?

Read about ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ online and you usually learn that the famous noisette was named after the wife of Monsieur E. A. Carrière, who for three decades – from 1866 to his death in 1896 – was editor of the French gardening journal Revue Horticole [1].

But that was Élie-Abel Carrière. Not Alfred. So who were Monsieur and Madame Alfred Carrière?

The rose

‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ was bred by Joseph Schwartz – an important figure in France’s rose breeding capital of Lyon. And a rather sad one.

Joseph Schwartz

Schwartz was born in 1846 and apprenticed to the famous rose breeder Jean-Baptiste Guillot, succeeding him when the old man retired in 1870.[2]

Only 25, taking on such a well-known nursery was a big step for Schwartz. But he flourished, with the help of his wife, Sophie, who he married in 1872. Both were the children of professional gardeners and shared a passion for the industry. In 1875 he bred from seed ‘Madame Alfred Carrière’, putting it into commerce in 1879.

Tragedy

The following year Sophie died from typhoid fever, aged 33, leaving him alone with two young children. He remarried in 1881. His new wife Marie-Louise Trievoz also worked alongside him in the nursery and learned the craft of rose breeding.

She soon became pregnant and in 1882 gave birth to her first child, Georges. He did not live long and when the following year she had another son, the couple baptised him Georges, too.

In that same year the growers of Lyon honoured Schwartz. They chose him as one of two delegates to be part of an international jury of rose experts at a large exhibition in Saint Petersburg – then the capital of Russia. He set off the following spring but during the trip caught a serious cold. Schwartz returned exhausted and thin. He never recovered.

The great rose breeder lived long enough to see his last child, Joseph, born but died in October 1885, aged just 39.

Remarkably, Marie-Louise continued where he left off, growing the reputation of the nursery with roses of her own, as well as discovering ‘Mme Ernest Calvat’ (a sport of ‘Mme Isaac Péreire’).

Mme Alfred Carrière?

Signatures from the public register

A number of leads give a clue as to the true identity of the woman after whom ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ is named. An edition of the Journal des Roses, published in 1886 – a year after Schwartz’s death – includes an article on noisettes. It features ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ and welcomes the rose as a good addition to the growing list of repeat flowering roses. The article reveals: “It was dedicated to the wife of a great rose lover from the province of Dauphiné.”

In the 19th century Dauphiné was a province in Southeast France dominated by Grenoble – just over an hour’s drive from Lyon.

The Schwartz’s clearly had connections with the city – Guillot Père grew up there and Mme Ernest Calvat was the wife of a glove maker in Grenoble whose father-in-law had been a respected mayor of the city.

It is here that we find Alfred Carrière – a manufacturer of cement and concrete fountain pipes [3] who had a passion for horticulture. His firm is listed as an exhibitor at the 1862 International Exhibition, a huge trade fair which took place beside the site of the old RHS gardens in South Kensington, London.

If we want further evidence that this is the right Carrière, we learn that he was the President of the Dauphinoise Horticultural Society in the same year (1891) as Ernest Calvat fils won a grand diploma from the society for his roses and chrysanthemums. [4] The Journal Officiel of 25 July 1891 reports that Carrière was awarded the Medal of Agricultural Merit.

And his wife? She was Louise Élisa Marie Périer from Pontcharra, a town 40km north of Grenoble. Born on 25 August 1836, she married Léon-Antoine Alfred Carrière on 10 December 1862. And that is about as much as we know about her!

Awards

‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ was not a universal success on its launch. Henry Ellwanger described it as ‘undesirable’ in his book, The Rose.[5] But in 1902 Gertrude Jekyll described ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ as the best white climbing rose.[6] In 1908 the National Rose Society gave it the same accolade. It received an RHS Award of Garden Merit in 1993 and in 2003 was inducted into the World Federation of Roses Hall of Fame.

Neither its creator nor the Carrières lived long enough to see Schwartz’s rose become so well loved. Alfred died on Christmas Eve 1894. Louise Élisa Marie died on New Year’s Day in 1903, both oblivious to the fact that, thanks to this rose, 120 years later people would be asking: “Who was Mme Alfred Carrière?”

I am indebted to my friends, the French garden historian Vincent Derkenne and rose breeder Dominique Massad, whose research has helped uncover the true identity of Mme Alfred Carrière.

Kari-Astri Davies has also discovered a heliotrope named Madame Alfred Carrière

1. The journal of the National Horticultural Society of France, the Revue Horticole, was published across 146 volumes from 1829 to 1974.
2. Much of the Schwartz biography is taken from Gérard Petit’s article in Roses Anciennes en France Bulletin no 21, 2015.
3. Official Catalogue of the International Exhibition 1862 Volume 1 p194
4. L’Actualité daupinoise illustrée 18 Jan 1891
5. The Rose [New York, 1882] p.246
6. Roses for English Gardens, G. Jekyll and E. Mawley 1902

Banner image: ‘Mme Alfred Carrière’ in the Storyteller garden, Nottingham. Copyright Martin Stott