JOHN SALTER (1798-1874) AND THE GYPSY QUEEN

Many of my ancestors lived quietly doing good works in small ways, and a lot of the articles I write here are intended to rescue their memory and example from obscurity. It’s as if by naming the dead and remembering their deeds I am keeping them alive.

Others had more illustrious careers, were even celebrated in their day, but are now forgotten. John Salter for example, a half cousin of my 2x great grandfather, was a successful horticulturalist, prominent enough in his sphere to be consulted about fixity of variegation by Charles Darwin when the naturalist was researching his second book.

John’s annual floral displays were a feature of London life, and the flowers which he created, especially varieties of chrysanthemum, remained popular in the garden catalogues for 120 years. It was his chrysanthemums that first caught my eye, because he named some of them after family members. Later someone drew my attention to his fascination with variegated varieties of many other plants. And more recently I stumbled across a beautiful iris which he introduced, Gypsy Queen.

 
Iris Gypsy Queen (Salter before 1859)

I can imagine John being fascinated by the big, beautiful, blousy, bearded iris. There seems to be an infinite variety in its colours and veining, and it must have been an ideal vehicle for his skill as a crossbreeder. His interest in iris (with its Latin origin, the plural of iris is iris, not irises!) began relatively early in his career. A silver salver, still owned by his descendants today, was awarded to him in 1834 while he was still in his thirties. It is engraved:

presented to JOHN SALTER Shepherd's Bush.

For ROSES, IRIS and DAHLIAS 1834

I wish we knew the occasion on which it was presented. The tray itself is much older than the inscription – 1756, according to the hallmarks.

The silver salver presented to John Salter in 1834

Having found Gypsy Queen, I came across two more of Salter’s iris, Fairy Queen and Queen of May – his iris Queens probably had some hybrid connection, just as for example his chrysanthemum Empress of India, named in honour of Queen Victoria, was a sport of his big-selling chrysanthemum Queen of England.

Iris Fairy Queen and Queen of May (both Salter before 1859)

I was impressed to find as many as three Salter iris. But the website Iris Paradise lists some sixteen varieties which John registered before 1859,  at least seven of which can still be found growing today, more than 150 years later. (The Historic Iris Preservation Society of America considers an iris historic if the variation is a mere 30 years old.)

Left to right, top to bottom: Iris Bridesmaid, Fabian, Ignacite and Mexicana (all Salter before 1859)

Sixteen! And then this morning, while writing this article, I found an item in The Gardener’s Chronicle, a nineteenth century magazine, reproduced in the New Zealand based blog Heritage Irises. In the Amateurs Column of the issue of 14^th July 1894, Harrison Weir of Sevenoaks writes:

I commenced the culture of Iris by buying about fifty sorts or varieties of Mr. Salter, of Hammersmith, years ago. I now find several of these have another name … yet I intend to call them by the names I have known them by, and were given to them by their skilful raiser, Mr. Salter.

It really was years ago. By 1894 Weir was himself an enthusiastic iris breeder of some thirty years experience, and Salter’s Hammersmith nursery closed in about 1870. This rediscovering and renaming of varieties is a constant headache for the iris historian. Salter’s Bridesmaid, for example, is virtually identical to Michael Foster’s Mrs Horace Darwin, dedicated to the wife of Charles Darwin’s son in 1888.

Iris Mrs Horace Darwin (Foster M. 1888)

But fifty! Weir names many of them. His descriptions of them, and other descriptions in iris catalogues from the early twentieth century, paint such vivid colourful pictures that it’s easy to see why artists of the time were drawn to them. Even though many of John Salter’s iris are now extinct, they are kept alive by those word-pictures and the images they conjure.

L: William Morris’s Iris textile pattern (1885),

and R: Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises (1889)