A gentle rose, but with a sting in its tale, for this is John Ruskin, named after the artist - and in June 1853 he and his current wife, Euphemia Gray, travelled to Scotland with fellow artist, and his protege, John Everett Millais. And before summer was out, Euphemia Gray and John Millais were together, so much so that she left her husband forever on April the 25th, 1854, and married John Millais on the third of July, 1855.
The rose is a dark red hybrid tea, and it is rather interesting that it is in our 1914 set as rose manuals say it was bred some time before 1922, in America, by a man called Dr. Walter Van Fleet. However it was not introduced in that country until 1928, when it was just called Ruskin. In fact it appears that it was nothing to do with the artist, it was named for the Ruskin Colony in Tennessee, a socialist experiment where all people worked together on all things, and seem not to have been repaid in money, just in work certificates. where Dr. van Fleet was the physician. But in 1899 it all ended, because it ran out of money. Curiously none of this is mentioned on our card, it just says the rose was introduced in 1902. So is it the same rose, or not? Maybe there is a rose specialist out there who can help us out?
I am surprised that I have not featured any of these sets before, only the overseas edition issued with "Purple Mountain" Cigarettes, which was our Card of the Day for the 11th of August, 2022. Anyway, now we have a new set to discover!
Now at first when I wrote this I said that the home issues were three in number, and they are first described in our original Wills reference book part three, as :
- 94. ROSES. Two series of 50 and re-issue. Fronts lithographed in colour; backs in grey with descriptive text. Home issues :-
A. Series of 50, numbered 1-50. With Album Clause. Issued 1912
B. Second series of 50, numbered 51-100, With Album Clause. Issued 1914
C. Series of 50, numbered 1-50. Without Album Clause.Issued 1926. This series repeats 9 subjects from A, and 7 from B (letterpress in some cases revised) with 34 new subjects.
That sounds like a list to me, but not tonight.
We also know the months of issue, which were April 1912 for the first series, June 1914 for the second series, and May 1926 for the re-issue. But this means that in our original World Index you will find the first two together in section 2.A, for sets issued between 1902 and 1917, and the third shelved away to section B, for sets issued between 1922 and 1939. The listing of our set is :
- ROSES. Sm. Nd. See W/94. ... W62-100
1. "A Series of 50"
2. "Second Series ....." Nd. 51-100
However, when I went to section B, I found the following :
- ROSES. Sm. Nd. (50). See W/94.C. ... W62-174
- ROSES. Lg. Nd. (40). ... W62-175
This large set was obviously not mentioned in the same breath as the later set in our Wills reference book, or I would have seen it, but when I looked at the London Cigarette Card Catalogue for 1950 it was there, so it must have been known of. Therefore I went back to the original Wills book part three and picked up the thread again. and it was not there. And it turns out that the large set does not appear until part four of the Wills books, where it is described as :
- 314. ROSES. Large cards, size 73 x 62 m/m. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour. Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issue, 1936.
In our later Wills combination volume, which contains all the original booklets reprinted under one hardback cover, we also find a month of issue, January 1936, which was almost ten years later than the third small sized set mentioned above. However that did make it easier to find when I came to the updated World Tobacco Issues Index, where the sets are listed as follows :
Section 2.A - Issues 1902 - 17.
- ROSES. Sm. Nd. Series title in curved panel. See W/94. ... W675-133
1. "A Series of 50" 2. "Second Series....."
and
Section 2.B - Issues 1922 - 39. Excluding cards with adhesive backs.
- ROSES. Sm. Nd. (50) Series title in straight panel. See W/94.C ... W675-215
- ROSES. Lg. Nd. (40). ... ....................................................................W675-216