I imagine there were quite a few times in the autumn of 1907 when you might have seen a man with a faraway gaze sitting by himself at a Santa Rosa restaurant. The 34 year-old gentleman may have been thinking about a scientific paper he had recently published, or he might have been thinking about his wife and daughter, who had died a few months before. Or he might have been thinking about how much he’d like to wring Luther Burbank’s scrawny neck.

That man was George Harrison Shull, a botanist who worked for the Carnegie Institution, making his fourth stay to Santa Rosa. His job here was to study Burbank’s methods, and it was not going well. In a letter that Oct. 9 to his supervisor back in Long Island, he griped that the great man was even being less cooperative than in his previous visits:

The Carnegie Institution had awarded Burbank a $10,000/year grant in 1905 amid controversy. While he had the enthusiastic support of Andrew Carnegie and Stanford University’s president, Burbank was viewed skeptically by much of the scientific establishment, and considered even to be a charlatan.

In his first report to the Institution, Shull had described Burbank as possessing remarkable skills, able to keep track of hundreds, maybe thousands, of plant-breeding experiments. The problem, however, is that these records were kept in his mind, with precious little written down on paper. Without documentation of all the cross-breeding that led to the final hybrid, his work was scientifically worthless. Yet at the same time, Burbank resented those who said he wasn’t a man of science. “Mr. Burbank says himself that if he were conducting a scientific experiment, he would do it differently, but maintains that it makes his work none the less scientific, indeed stamps it as of a higher scientific type.”¹ (This wasn’t the first time Burbank claimed to be the father of a new field of science – see Part I.)

The main problem, however, was that Burbank didn’t like to be questioned and was hostile to scientific debate. “You say, ‘He is always impatient of a conversation in which he does not do all or nearly all the talking,’ the Institution’s president wrote to Shull. “Now, singularly enough, this is precisely the remark he has made to me concerning you.” Burbank had written a peevish letter to the Institution’s president that complimented Shull as “pleasant and pliable,” yet “it seems to be almost necessary to perform a surgical operation before some fixed impression can be removed to make way for another, but when once convinced by an overwhelming number of facts he at once admits that that is the way he always thought it was.”² In other words, Burbank was annoyed at the concept of being challenged to defend an unorthodox idea, which is at the core of the scientific method. Years later, Shull wrote, “I learned from the start that my problem was chiefly a psychological one.”³

Without field notes of past work, Shull was left to flip through scrapbooks of old newspaper and magazine clippings collected by Burbank’s secretary. When Shull tried to pry information from him about his current projects, Burbank often begged off, claiming illness. “I am sorry his health is so bad,” Shull wrote to his supervisor. “I have spent some time with him every day, but have often been obliged to cut the work short because I find him on the verge of nervous collapse.”⁴ Shull also arrived at the farm before Burbank in order to quiz his field workers and compose simple, direct questions that he had some hope Burbank would deign to answer.

While Shull’s letters and reports to the Carnegie Institution voice his frustrations in dealing with Burbank, the published “Year Book” from the Institution always claimed “grand progress” was being made in Santa Rosa. From the 1906 Year Book:

The 1907 Year Book similarly dished up a vague-on-the-specifics report that “the experiments and investigations of Mr. Burbank and the work of preparing a scientific account of his methods and achievements are progressing as favorably as the available division of time and labor permit…” As Burbank’s first biographer pointed out, the discrepancy is easy to explain: The Carnegie Institution was allowing Burbank himself to write the official summary of the analysis of his own work.⁵

(RIGHT: George H. Shull in 1906. The original picture was of Burbank, Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries and Shull, as seen in the thumbnail. When Burbank published his 12-volume series in 1915, the image was cropped to remove Shull, as can be seen in an earlier article. CLICK to enlarge. Photo courtesy Luther Burbank Museum)

Like it or not, Shull was spending about half of his year in Santa Rosa. A newlywed with a baby on the way, Shull bought the recently-built house at 724 McDonald Avenue in early 1907. His wife joined him here, and on May 5, their baby was delivered stillborn. The mother died two days later. Shull buried them both in the Odd Fellows’ Cemetery (just across the fence from Santa Rosa’s Rural Cemetery) and quickly returned to New York. Although he remarried, Shull ordered that he be interred next to them after he died in 1954.

As noted above, the situation with Burbank did not improve when Shull returned in the autumn of 1907. It was decided by the Carnegie Institution that Shull should spend some time the next year in Europe to gauge the impact of “Burbank’s Creations” outside of the United States. Shull found that the California-bred hybrids did poorly outside of the New World, and Europeans felt that Burbank’s renown was undeserved. ⁶

Meanwhile, the Intuition’s president popped in on Burbank in 1908 to see what was really going on. He wrote to Shull’s supervisor:

Whatever he meant by Burbank being “pretty badly tangled up with the rest of the universe,” that apparently was the last straw. The Carnegie Institution decided at the end of 1908 that Shull should wrap up the Burbank project in the coming year. Burbank would not be told of their decision, but President Woodward alerted him that he was having difficulty in convincing the board of trustees to continue supporting the project because of Burbank’s “misrepresentations.” ⁷

Any doubts about their decision were probably dispelled by the controversy that followed a few months later over accusations of fraud against Burbank. In 1908, Burbank had sold a nursery the rights to a hybrid berry he called the “Sunberry.” Renamed the “Wonderberry,” it was then sold to the public as Burbank’s latest marvel. The seed company even produced a cookbook of Wonderberry recipes to promote it. Problem was, the berries were poisonous when green, and palatable when fully ripe only when they were heavily coated with sugar (it’s said to taste like a cross between a very bland berry and an eggplant). Accusations were made that the plant was worthless (true) and not a hybrid at all but really black nightshade, a weed common around the world (false). Burbank offered $10,000 to anyone who could prove the latter, but the reward offer only became another club used to bash Burbank. In the end, the Wonderberry incident proved Burbank to be his own worst enemy. He couldn’t conclusively prove that the hybrid he created did not have nightshade in it because his recordkeeping was poor to non-existent – exactly as Shull had reported to the Carnegie Institution. As a result, Burbank’s reputation was tarnished for the first time in the popular press.⁸

Burbank learned at the end of 1909 that his grant would not be renewed for a sixth year. There is no (published) account of his reaction (UPDATE: see the final part of this series), but he was vindictive and vituperative when he wrote to the editor of “The Guide to Nature” magazine, claiming “the Carnegie people refuse to give the full facts” regarding the termination of his grant, and sought the editor’s help in bringing shame to his former benefactor. “I have never desired any publicity,” Burbank wrote, without a whiff of obvious hypocrisy, “…but I now desire publicity and lots of it, the more the better. I wish this thing dug to the very earth and the guilty parties exhibited to the light.”

When Shull returned to Santa Rosa in 1910 to wrap up his research, he found Burbank “rather free in his expressions of disapproval of the treatment accorded him by the Institution.”⁹ Burbank was even more uncooperative than before, as Shull wrote to his supervisor,

Shull worked on his final report in Santa Rosa despite Burbank’s unwillingness to help, and continued toiling over it for the next four years. Sometimes the unfinished manuscript clearly took the backseat to his own pioneering work in genetics, but he also dedicated almost an entire year in 1913-1914 to wrapping up the Burbank report. He still didn’t produce a final draft, and biographer Walter L. Howard wrote in 1945 that it was still unfinished. Why?

It would be understandable if Shull simply ran out of steam; by 1914, he had been working on the report for nine frustrating years. Refuting accusations made by The Guide to Nature editor, the Carnegie Institution president also revealed for the first time that there was an agreement that “[Burbank’s] work should not be given to the public until his [death].” Given that Burbank lived until 1926, Shull was spending his most productive years laboring over a tome that wouldn’t see light of day for a decade or more. As Howard wrote: “Shull had become absorbed in his own genetical researches which, to him, seemed more important than working over his old Burbank records to recover a few flakes of gold from a large mass of sand.”¹¹

The most logical reason, however, was that both Shull and the Carnegie Institution saw publication as a lose-lose situation. Whatever result was sure to anger and infuriate. A large body of the scientific community wanted the Institution to expose Burbank as a fraud; Burbank’s legion of supporters wanted him enshrined as no less a genius than Newton. There was no possibility of a compromise report that would leave the reputations of the Carnegie Institution and Shull free of significant damage.

Burbank likely saw the Carnegie grant as a kind of sinecure – an “attaboy” for long years of good works and encouragement to do even more cross-breeding. Given that George H. Shull wasn’t the sort of fawning sycophant that normally wanted to hang with Burbank, it surely occurred to him that any report published by the Institution might have a high risk of being embarrassing and damaging to his reputation. Those were two reasons why Burbank was motivated to be uncooperative. The third reason was that he had others at hand who wanted to write the “Compleat Burbank,” and these parties were far more willing to wear Burbank’s leash. More to come in Burbank Follies, Part III.

NOTES:¹pg. 145, Bentley Glass, The strange encounter of Luther Burbank and George Harrison Shull (American Philosophical Society, 1980)
²pg. 137, ibid
³pg. 439, Walter L. Howard, Luther Burbank: A Victim of Hero Worship (Chronica Botanica 9)⁴pg. 136, Glass
⁵pg. 436-437, Howard
⁶pg. 140, Glass
⁷pg. 173, Peter Dreyer, A Gardener Touched With Genius (Luther Burbank Home & Gardens, Santa Rosa, CA), 1985
⁸pg. 176-177, ibid
⁹pg. 141, Glass
¹⁰ibid
¹¹pg. 442-443, Howard

WILL BECOME SANTA ROSAN
Dr. George Shull Purchases Pretty Home Here

Dr. George F. Shull, of the Carnegie Institute, who is here to write the wonderful works of Luther Burbank, for a series of technical books, has determined to become a citizen of Santa Rosa. On Monday he purchased a handsome residence of Dr. and Mrs. J. N. Hooper on McDonald avenue and will move into the same as soon as possession can be secured.

– Santa Rosa Republican, March 5, 1907

THE SAD DEATH OF MRS. G. H. SHULL
Estimable Young Woman Passes Away in This City Yesterday Morning After Brief Witness

At an early hour yesterday morning the silent messenger summoned from earth the soul of Mrs. Ella Hollar Shull, the dearly beloved wife of Dr. George H. Shull, director in charge of the Carnegie Institute experimental station Cold Harbor Springs, Long Island, N. Y., who came here some time ago to prepare scientific articles on Luther Burbank’s work. Death followed an extremely critical illness of a few day’s duration.

During her brief residence in Santa Rosa the deceased lady endeared herself to many friends and her sudden passing has occasioned the sincerest regret. Life’s span for her was a little over thirty-one years and she was called home at practically the commencement of what seemed destined to be a very happy wedded life. She was a bride only a few months ago, and the devoted husband she leaves behind is almost overwhelmed with the grief that has overtaken him.

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– Press Democrat, May 8, 1907

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Although he was rarely found cracking a smile, Luther Burbank had to be beside himself with joy in 1907. He was a year into the grant from the Carnegie Institution, which gave him $10,000 annually “for so long a time as may be mutually agreeable,” which he expected to be at least ten years. He had a contract with a Midwestern publisher for a 10-volume series on his work. He had sold the rights to his spineless cactus for the grand sum of $26,000. And perhaps best of all, the number of people pestering him had been cut down from 6,000/yr to less than half that multitude, thanks to a blunt, even threatening circular published the year before, warning that Burbank was being “murdered piecemeal as a showman” by the annoying, yapping masses.

This is the first of a three-part series on Burbank in 1907, and it’s fitting to launch it with a description of what his experimental farm looked like that year. Tagging along on a tour with 700 teachers (!) was the Press Democrat’s “Dorothy Anne, Society Gossip.” As I’ve written before, her columns are a guilty pleasure of mine. She wasn’t a very good writer and often snippy and mean, but hers are the only accounts that provide us with a view of what it was like to live in Santa Rosa in those days (albeit from a social climber’s perspective). She had toured Burbank’s new home the year before, leaving us a good description of a very nice, very historic house that Santa Rosa shamefully allowed to be destroyed.

2,500 CALLERS ON BURBANK IN 1907
Gives an Idea of the Great Attraction the Scientist and His Work Here Affords

An estimate obtained by a Press Democrat representative Wednesday shows that 2,500 people have come to Santa Rosa to see Luther Burbank during the present year. This furnishes an idea of the attraction the great scientist and his work really affords. The visitors have included prominent men and women from all parts of this country and some from other countries. In addition to visiting Mr. Burbank here many of his callers have also inspected the large experimental farm near Sebastopol.

Prior to two years ago the number of callers was largely in excess of the figure give for this year. Then, it will be remember, a number of Mr. Burbank’s friends, in order to prevent the great strain upon his health, and in order that he should not be molested in his work, sent out a letter which was given wide circulation, asking people to refrain from paying curiosity calls. The letter had the desired effect and since then the number of callers has been diminishing. In 1905 something like 6,000 callers came to the Burbank place.

– Press Democrat, December 5, 1907

Tuesday last the National Educators, 700 strong, swooped down upon Santa Rosa. They came to see, hear, and admire our distinguished townsman, Luther Burbank. They arrived at noon and departed at 3:30 p. m., apparently in a perfect state of rapture, because they had seen, heard, and admired Mr. Burbank. Being of a curious turn of mind, I wondered, as does all of Santa Rosa, what Mr. Burbank has in this wonderful workshop of his that brings distinguished visitors such distances.

Very few people in Santa Rosa scarcely any in fact, know anything about Mr. Burbank’s work. They know what he has accomplished in a [illegible microfilm]. It occurred to me if I went through the grounds possibly I could relate something of the work he is doing at the present time but–after two and a half hours of seeing, hearing and admiring, I must admit what I can say will be only brief, because the mystery enveloping his wonderful work so winds itself around one’s brain that mere description becomes impossible and inadequate. To properly describe Mr. Burbank’s grounds with the wonderful creations in state of process would take days of study and weeks of careful preparation, therefore what I can tell you is in no way a full or accurate account of all Mr. Burbank’s work. It is merely a glimpse.

The first wonderful creation we inspected was the spineless cactus, “Santa Rosa,” the result of ten years of labor and created from the desert cactus. Aside from the remarkable fact that it is absolutely spineless it has another remarkable feature. It stands in a bed surrounded by the original desert cactus from which this new creation apparently draws away all the strength. The two varieties were planted at the same time. At present the spineless flourishes its smooth leaves to the height of five feet, while the original desert plant has a hard time to live at all. What this will mean to the arid regions of our country and foreign lands it takes but a glance to see.

The red canna bed that can be plainly seen from the sidewalk is the same creation that took the first prize at the Buffalo Exposition. From a novice’s point of view I should judge it is remarkable for its wonderful deep red coloring of the flowers and the apparently hardy condition of the plants.

A dried-up bed, from which arose tall yellow stalks that here and there were tied with unornamental white rags, next occupied our attention. This, explained my guide, was a Canassia bed. To my uninitiated mind this information produced nothing but a blank. I had never heard of Canassia. But when my guide described the flower I recognized the tall, graceful wild flower we all know by the name of “wild onion.” It is curious we should call it “onion” when in reality it is the Indian potato. The Comanche Indians had many a fight with the white in the early days because they would not respect their Canassia beds. Mr. Burbank has increased the size of the flower, making it much more beautiful and has enlarged the size of the bulb from the size of a walnut to that of an apple. Think of the feast a Comanche Indian could have if he could get into that bed.

The poppy beds are scattered around the grounds and included among the varieties the Shirley, Opium, Oriental, Alaskan, Mexican, Mediterranean, Iceland Poppy. All are remarkable for some particular development. The Crimson Rhubarb bed with its green tops, supported by the crimson stems, waving gently in the afternoon breeze, hardly would impress you with the thrill it really ought to, for this creation of Mr. Burbank’s gives to the world Rhubarb the entire year, has received praise from almost every country in the universe.

[..]

The Primrose bed was most wonderful to see. These flowers have developed until now they are 5 inches in diameter. These flowers are a perfect white in the morning, but by night have changed to a most delicate pink.

The bed of Bee larkspur, which can be seen plainly from the street, was all propagated from the deep blue variety. The flowers now are all much larger in size and are pale blue, lavender, pale pink, lavender tipped with pink, blue tipped with pink, combining these colors and making beautiful the flowers in a most amazing way.

There are Trigridias from Mexico that were originally red and now bloom in purple, yellow and white; there are gladiolas that are magnificent in size and colorings such as we only see on the Bird of Paradise; there was the yellow calla lily; there was the Potatoes growing in sand, 50 feet away the potato growing in adobe; there was the many seedless young plum trees, not far away from which were the young apple trees raised from seed; there was the white blackberry, the white strawberry, and the lazy wax bean; there was the “Santa Rosa” rose that blooms all the time; there was the Deadly Night shade; the Monkey tree; the Elm tree; the Guinea, commonly called pig weed, remarkable for its beautiful green and crimson foliage; the grasses–including grass from the Philippines, South America and other foreign lands; all these and many more are being cared for and watched by Mr. Burbank with an idea of improving and creating something more beautiful and beneficial for mankind.

Basking in the sunshine by the gate lay a cat, just a plain black and white cat, all unmindful of the fact that above him towered the wonderful apple tree, upon which at one time there grew 526 varieties of apples and caused one little boy in the East to exclaim upon being told that story, “Oh, Mama, is Mr. Burbank God!”, equally unconscious of the proximity of a Catillina cherry tree that is ever green; he paid no attention to the fig tree on the north and did not seem to sleep any of the less well because within the radius of a few feet, a $10,000 cactus grew! Happy cat! Happy cat!

Wonder you gentle reader that hundreds of visitors come from all parts of the world to see, hear, and admire Mr. Burbank and his wonderful achievements? Wonder you that last Tuesday 600 educators returned home with their faces wreathed in smiles at the close of what one visitor exclaimed, “A perfectly happy day” — even if some did not find trained in the proper manner the “Human Plant,” for which they sought so diligently! It is to be hoped that some day not too far distant that Mr. Burbank will find time to have a “Santa Rosa day,” so that his own townspeople, who love and admire him, will be able to see and admire for themselves his wonderful work, and remarkable workshop.

– Society Gossip by Dorothy Anne, Press Democrat, July 28, 1907

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Santa Rosa should use the creations of Luther Burbank to landscape the new courthouse and every single front yard, suggested San Francisco’s city engineer a few months after the Great 1906 Earthquake. And yes, Burbank promised seed packets, bulbs, and plants when asked by a civic group seeking to beautify Santa Rosa a few weeks hence. You can probably see a descendant or two from Burbank’s greenhouse in many of the old gardens around town: agapanthus, walnut and plum trees, bottlebrush, daisies, and lilies are just some of the possible heritage plants from that era (Burbank’s most prolific years came later.)

If the name of letter-writer Marsden Manson is familiar to anyone today, it’s because of his shameful role in five-year campaign by San Francisco to flood the Hetch Hetchy Valley for use as the city’s reservoir. Starting the following year, Manson would become the point man attacking John Muir and what he called the “short-haired women and long-haired men” in the Sierra Club, whom he ridiculed as sentimentalists standing in the way of San Francisco’s glorious future.

MARSDEN MANSON’S PLAN TO BEAUTIFY NEW SANTA ROSA
A Letter From The Eminent Civil Engineer Suggests Laying Out of New Courthouse Grounds and Gardens Everywhere With Flowers and Trees of Luther Burbank’s Creations

Marsden Manson, the well known civil engineer of San Francisco, who is at present doing so much in planning and designing the new and greater San Francisco, has found time to interest himself in the beautifying of the new and greater Santa Rosa.

Mr. Manson’s pertinent suggestions are contained in the following letter which will be read with much interest from a man who has given the subject much thought:

San Francisco, Jan. 11, 1907– The Editor of the Press Democrat, Santa Rosa, Cal.: Santa Rosa is the point towards which the agricultural scientists of the world look with great interest. From this far away town have gone forth to the world plantforms new to nature; and. which have added millions to the wealth of those who till the soil.

Rare flowers, delicious fruits, trees of unusual growth and beauty, vegetables and grasses of higher food values, even desert growths changed into valuable forage plants–all the product of the skillful scientific work of one man. No catalogue of trees, fruits, vegetables, etc., is complete unless its lists contain some at least of the creations from Santa Rosa. The work has just begun. Yet Santa Rosa does not realize her possibilities and advantages. I therefore make the following suggestions:

In rehabilitating the grounds around your new court house let the grass, flowers and trees be those developed and improved by Luther Burbank.

Let every front yard present one or more of the flowers he has given the world, and let that world know that some of the choicest products of his work greet the stranger, who visit your town, at every gate with the beauty and odor of some flower which has made Santa Rosa the mecca of the scientific horticulturalist and florist.
Sincerely yours, Marsden Manson.

– Press Democrat, January 13, 1907

BURBANK WILL ASSIST IN BEAUTIFYING THE CITY
Flower Planting In Santa Rosa Much Favored

Luther Burbank has promised to aid the movement started by the Women’s Improvement Club and endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce and other organizations for the beautifying of the City of Roses.

At a joint meeting of the committed of the Improvement Club…Mr. Burbank willingly promised a generous gift of flower seeds and later of bulbs and plants and to aid in every way the movement to make the gardens of the city blossom as the rose by the time of the rose carnival in May. The promised gift from Mr. Burbank fired the committee with enthusiasm and he was heartily thanked.

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– Press Democrat, March 22, 1907

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