Rosetta E. Clarkson

Herbs!

Sep 04, 2024

Smithsonian Institution Archives, Accession 90-105, Science Service Records, Image No. SIA2008-0137

This past week, I’ve been researching several Lost Ladies of Garden Writing who wrote primarily about herbs. Along this herbal path, one writer led to another, and then that writer mentioned someone else and sometimes they put whole bibliographies in the back of their books with all their fellow writers, past and present, listed.

I found so many. Where does one start to talk about them?

I decided today to start with Rosetta E. Clarkson, because several other writers pointed back to her as an inspiration.

Her Biography

Between her obituary in the New York Times and the foreword to a 1972 reprint of her book, Herbs: Their Culture and Uses, written by Gertrude B. Foster, I learned quite a bit about Rosetta.

Rosetta Elizabeth Shear was born in 1892 in Orwell, New York. She went to Vassar College and graduated with a degree in Chemistry in 1914. Her father, superintendent of public schools in Poughkeepsie, New York, did not think a woman would have a future in chemistry working in a laboratory and talked her into becoming a teacher. So Rosetta started her career teaching English in a high school in New Rochelle, New York.

In the early 1920s, she took a leave from her teaching career to work on an advanced degree in English at Columbia University.

Per the New York Times obituary:

“While researching her study of Henry Porter, an Elizabethan dramatist1, she became fascinated with old herbals and began to study and cultivate herbs.”

Per the Foreword by Gertrude B. Foster in Herbs: Their Culture and Uses,

“It was in pursuit of an advanced degree in English at Columbia University that Rosetta Clarkson spent a good part of 1931 in England. A trip to the countryside took her to the Herb Farm, Seven Oaks, Kent, and while in London, she would pass Culpeper House, which was a supplier of herbs for culinary and medicinal purposes. The fragrance that emanated when its doors opened spelled enchantment to Rosetta, the scent bringing with it a strong remembrance of her grandparents’ farm in upstate New York.”

When she returned to the United States after that trip, she started growing herbs and studying old herbals she had ordered from London.

Her husband, Ralph P. Clarkson—they got married in 1934, she was 41, he was 47—shared her interest. Per Foster,

“Rosetta Clarkson shared her hobby with a number of friends and students, but the keenest of her herb admirers was her husband, Ralph P. Clarkson, a journalist, patent lawyer, inventor, and writer. He typed up the reams of notes she had brought back from her studies of the Elizabethan period. These notes interested him so much that it was his idea to publish the extracts as The Herb Journal.”

Per the New York Times obituary

“In 1938 she and her husband, Ralph P. Clarkson, moved to Milford, Connecticut, where she devoted herself exclusively to herbs. Her work at their home, Salt Acres, was instrumental in reviving herb culture in the United States. She grew more than three hundred herbs, lectured widely, showed her gardens to hundreds of visitors annually, and supplied seeds to commercial growers and private individuals at no charge. From 1936 - 1939 she published THE HERB JOURNAL, which was sent free to more than two thousand people each month. She wrote several books on herb cultivation and use, and founded the Herb Lovers Book Club to publish reprint editions of old herbals and gardening books which she and her husband collected. After years of poor health she died in 1950.”

Her husband, Ralph, died around 1964.

Her Books

Rosetta wrote three books on herbs, all of which were reprinted as new editions by Gertrude B. Foster who wrote a foreword for each one. The new editions have different titles than the originals, which if you are looking for all the books by Rosetta, can be confusing.

The books were:

Magic Gardens: A Modern Chronicle of Herbs and Savory Seeds (1939), republished in 1972 as Herbs and Savory Seeds: Culinaries, Satches, Simples, and Decoratives.

In the Springfield Daily Republican, Dec, 17, 1939, they wrote “Mrs. Clarkson has long been eminent as a herbalist. Her library of herbals and old stillroom and garden books, many of which she has reprinted for private circulation, is one of the finest collections in existence. All the herbs she discusses are growing at Salt Acres, the Clarkson home on the Connecticut shores, a mecca for garden lovers the country over.”

Green Enchantment: The Magic Spell of Gardens (1940) was republished in 1972 as The Golden Age of Herbs and Herbalists (1972).

In the Sunday, Nov 3, 1940 issue of the Springfield Daily Republican, Springfield, Massachusetts, a reviewer wrote: “Green Enchantment" is copiously illustrated with old drawings, herb and gardening book frontispieces from the 19th centuries and garden designs from medieval monasteries and large English and French estates. A useful index completes this fascinating work.”

Herbs: Their Culture and Uses (1942), republished several times with the same title.

Per Gertrude Foster, Rosetta wrote this book due to an “overwhelming demand for a practical guide to growing herbs and creating herbal products.

Her Gardens

Rosetta and her husband never really had an herb business, as many herbal writers did. She described her garden in 1949 for her alma-mater, Vassar. Her description is quoted in the foreword to the revised edition of Herbs: Their Culture and Uses.

“My so-called herb farm was always an avocation, a means to study in connection with my writing and a demonstration for the hundreds of herb lovers who came to ‘Salt Acres’ in the summer months. We had a little garden with a little cottage facing it, in which were shelves of herbs dried and prepared for use.
In the garden at the edge of the salt pond were several of the old-fashioned bee skeps, and around a tree was a wattled garden seat, as in Elizabethan gardens. One plant of each of perhaps a hundred herbs formed a border, in the center was a sundial surrounded by many varieties of mint; and geometrically spaced were bushes of old-fashioned roses: the apothecaries’ rose, Rosa Mundi, and the Tudor Rose. Another part of the grounds was fenced in with some three hundred or more herb varieties in raised beds.
We had a bed of sage, one of coriander, one of dill, one of sweet marjoram, one of thyme, one of basil, etc., etc. We even grew cumin, to the amazement of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, which had given up in despair trying to get it started. During the early forties, we helped restock the English seed houses… sending over some skirret seed to one of the famous firms, who wrote me there was none in England.”

Questions

As noted in her obituary, Rosetta died in 1950, age 57, “after years of poor health.” She and her husband did not have any children. One wonders what else she would have added to the world of herbs and literature about herbs if she had been in better health or lived longer?

What became of her “little garden with a little cottage,” which sounded fairly large to me?

What is skerrit? I had to look it up! Skerrit is Sium sisarum, a perennial plant grown for its white roots. In Scotland, they call it crummock. Seeds are apparently tricky to get to germinate.

Did I buy any of her books? I have ordered a reprint of one of her books, The Golden Age of Herbs and Herbalists. I’m sure it will be a giant rabbit hole of more garden writers, perhaps some who will turn up as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing.

Finally, a quote:

“The only ancient plants we have are the herbs.” - Rosetta E. Clarkson

Do you know of other women authors of gardening books that I should research as Lost Ladies of Garden Writing? Send them my way via a comment or email!