Apples and Orchards Since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition 9781350378483, 1350378488

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Preface
Introduction
What is an apple, and what is an orchard?
The early orchard in the changing landscape
The nineteenth-century orchard
The scientific apple
The apple network
The urban apple – trade and supply
The political apple
The apple in the kitchen, the palace and the ‘cyder house’
The cultured apple – the apple in the grove, garden and gallery
The community apple
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

APPLES AND ORCHARDS SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations Series Editors: Peter Scholliers Amy Bentley This new monograph series pays serious attention to food as a focal point in historical events from the late eighteenth century to present day. Employing the lens of technology broadly construed, the series highlights the nutritional, social, political, cultural and economic transformations of food around the globe. It features new scholarship that considers ever-intensifying and accelerating tensions between tradition and innovation that characterize the modern era. The editors are particularly committed to publishing manuscripts featuring geographical areas currently under-represented in English-language academic publications, including the Global South, particularly Africa and Asia, as well as monographs featuring indigenous and under-represented groups, and non-Western societies. Published: Food and Aviation in the Twentieth Century: The Pan American Ideal, Bryce Evans (2021) Feeding the People in Wartime Britain, Bryce Evans (2022) Rebellious Cooks and Recipe Writing in Communist Bulgaria, Albena Shkodrova (2022) Globalization in a Glass: The Rise of Pilsner Beer through Technology, Taste and Empire, Malcolm Purinton (2023) Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century: Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition, Joanna Crosby (2023)

APPLES AND ORCHARDS SINCE THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Material Innovation and Cultural Tradition

Joanna Crosby

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 29 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2, Ireland BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in Great Britain 2024 Copyright © Joanna Crosby, 2024 Joanna Crosby has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work. Cover image © The Grafter, photograph by Peter Henry Emerson, 1887. History collection 2016 / Alamy Stock Photo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Plc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any third-party websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: HB: 978-1-3503-7848-3 ePDF: 978-1-3503-7849-0 eBook: 978-1-3503-7850-6 Series: Food in Modern History: Traditions and Innovations Typeset by Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. To find out more about our authors and books visit www.bloomsbury.com and sign up for our newsletters.

CONTENTS Prefacevi INTRODUCTION

1

WHAT IS AN APPLE, AND WHAT IS AN ORCHARD?

7

THE EARLY ORCHARD IN THE CHANGING LANDSCAPE

15

THE NINETEENTH-CENTURY ORCHARD

35

THE SCIENTIFIC APPLE

59

THE APPLE NETWORK

81

THE URBAN APPLE – TRADE AND SUPPLY

101

THE POLITICAL APPLE

121

THE APPLE IN THE KITCHEN, THE PALACE AND THE ‘CYDER HOUSE’

143

THE CULTURED APPLE – THE APPLE IN THE GROVE, GARDEN AND GALLERY

163

THE COMMUNITY APPLE

183

CONCLUSION

203

Bibliography208 Index221

PREFACE Old orchards, and the heritage of archaic fruit varieties which they contain, have long been subjects of popular interest. Numerous guides have been published to the different kinds of apple, and most areas of Great Britain and America have their ‘apple days’, organized by groups of enthusiasts, at which members of the public can have fruit from their own orchards and gardens identified. Such enthusiasm has not, for the most part, been reflected in academic research, making Joanna Crosby’s erudite, yet immensely readable, book a major contribution to the field. Effortlessly weaving together social, economic and cultural history, she reveals the centrality of apples and orchards since the eighteenth century. She charts the complex relationship between the expansion of commercial fruit growing, the development of scientific approaches to breeding and cultivation, and the emergence of a discourse of pomology. At the same time, she explores how all these were in turn related to the changing iconography of the apple in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: to its political symbolism and cultural meanings, not least as a metaphor for individual and public health. Indeed, all aspects of the cultural life of the apple in this period are meticulously examined, from its use in the kitchen to its representation in literature and the visual arts. Joanna’s study is a tour de force, forging connections across diverse disciplines and serving to highlight, in innumerable new ways, the unexpectedly complex role of the apple in modern history. Tom Williamson Professor of Landscape History, University of East Anglia

I N T R O DU C T IO N

An apple tree may appear to be entirely natural, yet it can be argued that apple (and other fruit) varieties only exist today because of the ancient technological innovation of grafting or joining one plant onto another. This technique later allowed the selection of apples for particular purposes – eating, cooking, cider making – while local tastes and preferences influenced which apples were favoured and propagated. Subsequent innovations in fruit production and orchard disease management were essential to allow yields to be increased, but by the nineteenth century there was a sense that old and valuable varieties were being lost to the demands of intensive production. Apple growers, like other food producers, used research and technological developments to drive down costs and improve yields, but the wider cultural reception of the orchard regarded its aesthetic appeal as equally, if not more, important than the crop. This tension has persisted into the twenty-first century, causing a split between high-density, high-yield orchards, and heritage or community orchards grown primarily to be attractive natural spaces and preserve old varieties. This book explores the origins of this tension, looking at technology and innovation from the other, shaded side of the apple. The economic value and the cultural reception of the apple are the core and the flesh of the same fruit. Any slice through its history requires consideration of both.  Within each chapter, therefore, I examine the ‘material apple’, seeking to answer the questions of what happened to the apple as a commodity, and how it was used and represented. I consider the commercial orchard as a place of change and progress, the supply chain and processes necessary to bring the apple to the urban consumer, and the influence of the nurserymen, horticultural experts and illustrators who turned the apple from a basic food into something to be prized and celebrated. The apple is unique in that its cultural history is linked to, yet not dependent on, its economic value, while its cultural value works independently from associations with the apple as a culinary object. My examination of the cultural apple explores how the apple was represented, and the place of the imaginary or symbolic apple in culture and society. Individual apple trees live for about a hundred years, and very rarely have individual orchard sites continued for much longer. Orchards from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have nearly all vanished, but they linger tantalizingly within the memory of local landscapes, in the varieties of apples that are still

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century

cultivated, and in maps, field plans, text, art and visual culture. However, from the nineteenth century onwards, there is a surfeit of textual and visual material and it has been a challenge to consider the apple as a ‘thing’, the study of which informs our debates about the place of food and ingredients in history, rather than to re-write or add to the history of the apple. The botanic history of the apple has been studied before by eminent figures including Victorian pomologists or apple experts. Their work is of course discussed in detail, particularly in Chapter 5 and where relevant throughout this book, while the work of recent experts such as Joan Morgan, Barrie Juniper and David Mabberley has been essential to me and was used as a starting point for exploring the primary sources from the era.1 Unlike other objects studied as material history, apples are not a finite resource. Although commercial orchards are in decline in England at present, new orchards are being created, and a proportion of ‘lost’ varieties has been found and saved.2 Because each variety is grafted, you can eat the same apple today as one that was picked in Queen Victoria’s orchards, or even served to Henry VIII. Most of the readers of this book will have eaten apples; the fruit is easily recognizable, although its taste is harder to describe. Apples are a way of time travelling that is more accessible than creating a recipe from a manuscript or looking at early adverts or food packaging. They are ubiquitous, but the experience of eating each one is different. You do not have to be a specialist in fruit growing to have experiences of apples and how they are used, whereas many items of material culture require contextualization and explanation, and may not be accessible to haptic experience. The history of the apple, and the extent to which that history was known in previous centuries, is outlined in the chapter following this introduction, since it forms an essential background to understanding the habits and decisions of orchard growers and apple consumers. By the end of the nineteenth century both Britain and America had claimed the apple as the most patriotic of fruits, and I explore how it became embedded in culture through a process of consistent myth building and invention. Although I have demonstrated that the apple was used with care and deliberation as a symbol across many texts and works of art, there 1. Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, The New Book of Apples (London: Ebury, 2002). Joan Morgan is one of the foremost apple experts; she has been awarded the Royal Horticultural Society’s Veitch Memorial Medal; she is one of only fifty recipients of the Institute of Horticulture Award for ‘Outstanding Services to Horticulture’ and an Honorary Freeman of the Worshipful Company of Fruiterers. Barrie E. Juniper and David J. Mabberley, The Story of the Apple (Portland: Timber Press, 2006). Dr Juniper worked within the Plant Sciences Dept at Oxford University and was largely responsible for tracing the apple’s earliest history. 2. ‘The total area of orchards and small fruit decreased by 3.0% between 2021 and 2022 to thirty thousand hectares. Orchards account for 68% of this total and cover twenty thousand hectares in 2022. The remaining area of just over nine thousand hectares is used to grow small fruit’. https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/agricultural-land-use-in-england/ agricultural-land-use-in-england-at-1-june-2022.

Introduction

3

have been very few thematic studies of the apple positioned entirely within art or cultural history.3 Far from being a disadvantage, however, this has encouraged me to draw on the work of scholars of varying disciplines outside the various branches of history, including horticulture, geography and literature studies, to extract the importance of the apple as a symbol. There are many works on domestic fruit growing that cross genres between horticulture and cookery, in order to inform the readers how to grow the fruit that they enjoy eating, or what to do with surplus crops they have grown.4 Most of these acknowledge the cultural history – or the folklore, at least – of the fruit, while the number of cookery books solely devoted to apples continues to increase during the twenty-first century, just as it did in the nineteenth.5 Using all these sources allows me to position this book within the fields of social, economic and cultural history.6 I have employed an inductive, thematic, textbased approach, using other cultural objects and artwork where appropriate. The majority of the primary sources are nineteenth-century texts directly concerned with apples and orchards in both horticultural and cultural settings. As wide a range as possible has been included, such as published recipes, readers’ letters in newspapers and accounts of meetings and speeches. Other primary sources were used to explore the significance of the apple, for example, texts that attempted to set out how the fresh produce trade functioned, or instruction manuals on how to grow an orchard. Paintings and other art objects were studied to consider how and why apples were represented, and to place such depictions within the context of art movements and changes in wider culture during the period. Such paintings provide some of the most intense depictions of the importance and meaning of 3. See Claire de Torcy, La Pomme dans l’Art (Paris: Groupe Eyrolles, 2013). Robert Triomphe, Le Signe de la Pomme (Strasbourg: Universitie de Strasbourg, 1999) and Barnaby Barford, The Apple Is Everything (Woodbridge: ACC Art Books, 2022). 4. For example, Andrew Mikolajski, The Complete World Encyclopedia of Apples (Wigston: Hermes House, 2012), described on the cover as ‘a gardener’s practical guide to growing, harvesting, storing and cooking an array of delicious apples from around the globe’. 5. A nineteenth-century example is Georgina Hill, How to Cook Apples: Shown in a Hundred Different Ways of Dressing That Fruit (London: Routledge, Warne and Routledge, 1864), while a recent book is Raymond Blanc, The Lost Orchard (London: Headline Home, 2019). 6. Christopher Kent, ‘Victorian Social History: Post-Thompson, Post-Foucault, Postmodern’ Victorian Studies Vol. 40 No. 1 (Autumn 1996) pp. 97–133 neatly dissects the historiography of social history through Thompson and Foucault. Christopher Lloyd, ‘The Methodologies of Social History: A Critical Survey and Defense of Structurism’ History and Theory Vol. 30 No. 2 (May 1991) pp. 180–219 defines social history, which he sees as having become part of culture itself, as a study of the ‘old and crucial problems of the relationships between individuals and structures and among the material, social, and mental aspects of society.’ p. 181.

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century

apples to the viewer, so, although some of them could not be said to constitute fine art, they have been examined here without artistic censure. I have been able to access many primary sources online. However online access is not ideal, in that the subtleties of the publication as a material object are missing, and text recognition is not always totally accurate. Therefore, where the quality of the original book is a part of its story, I have seen it in the original. This has included rare copies of pomonas and other illustrated texts. Archives of letters were also searched, including those of Ruskin and Dickens, which revealed some correspondence between Charles Darwin and the nurseryman Thomas Rivers. I read many autobiographies, memoirs and collected letters from nineteenthcentury rural workers but, although these were useful in providing context, I found very little material on orchard cultivation or labour.7 There is some material on the folk tradition of wassailing and its background (see Chapter 10), but little devoted to consuming apples, beyond recipes. Despite the apple’s cultural importance and the volume of texts devoted to growing fruit, it would appear that the act of consuming apples, when not described symbolically, was so familiar as to pass without comment. Apples and orchards were certainly familiar to me as a child, growing up in the county of Kent, famous, as Charles Dickens knew, for its orchards. ‘Kent, sir’, exclaims Mr Jingle in Pickwick Papers, ‘Everybody knows Kent – apples, cherries, hops, and women.’8 About fifteen years ago I returned to apples when I helped to establish a community orchard in Cambridgeshire, a county not often thought of in terms of orchards.9 In order to raise funds for the project, I gave talks to local groups and societies about what we were doing, and in the course of researching those I became fascinated with the history and the cultural significance of the apple. With a background in social history and heritage studies, I chose to focus on apples and orchards for my doctorate because I realized that studying the role and representation of the apple would bring something fresh to the conversation around so many aspects of social and cultural history, from labour relations to the decorative arts, and, as in this book, inform the debates around food and food processing. I discovered that my research is accessible to many different audiences, and many people respond with a story about an apple they picked when they were a child, or their favourite apple, or ask me how to care for the tree in their garden. All over the country, and all around the world, there are groups of enthusiasts working hard to find and rescue old varieties of apples, or holding exhibits of the finest ones just as the Victorians did. I have talked about apples at schools,

7. John Burnett, David Vincent and David Mayall, eds., The Autobiography of the Working Class: An Annotated Critical Bibliography (Brighton: Harvester Press, 1984), Winifred Foley, A Child in the Forest (London: BBC Books, 1986). 8. Observation by Mr Jingle in Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (London: Chapman and Hall, 1887) Chap. 2. 9. trumpingtonorchard.org.

Introduction

5

garden societies, church groups and carnivals. Every conversation has taught me something in return. I hope that my enthusiasm for apples, shared with so many others across the centuries from the Victorian pomologists to present-day growers and consumers, is evident in this book, and that my readers pay attention to the attributes of the next apple they encounter.

6

Chapter 1 W HAT I S A N A P P L E , A N D W HAT I S A N O R C HA R D ?

The purpose of this chapter is to define an apple and an orchard, before moving on to consider the history of the apple from its earliest botanic origins until the nineteenth century. The latest developments in apple genetics are discussed in Chapter 4. In this chapter I have juxtaposed the recently established history of the apple with eighteenth- and nineteenth-century sources, demonstrating what awareness their writers displayed of the apple’s ancestry, and how they manipulated and re-used what information they had to turn the apple from an exotic incomer into part of their culture and landscape. This chapter also defines many of the terms that are specific to apples and their orchards, as well as indicating the extent of academic interest in the apple throughout the period. Apple-related terms are indicated in this chapter in bold, so that the chapter can be consulted as a glossary. In order to consider the apple both as a commodity and as a cultural artefact a definition of the object under scrutiny is essential. The first question must be simply ‘what is an apple?’ The Victorians in particular were concerned with the complicated answer to this seemingly straightforward question, and, perhaps surprisingly, uncertainty over the origins and therefore the taxonomy of the apple continues today, particularly as the use of DNA sequencing gives further information into the apple’s ancestry. The taxonomy of the apple is important, since it has changed over time, and there is more than one apple species. An apple is, of course, an edible fruit. Botanically it is a pome – a fruiting body with the seeds, known as pips, at the centre. Or, more accurately, as J. E. Jackson describes it, ‘a fleshy, indehiscent so-called false fruit formed from a flower of which the true fruit is surrounded at maturity by an enlarged floral tube or a fleshy receptacle, or both’.1 Jackson’s detailed taxonomy notes that in 2003 there were still two hypotheses as to the nature of the fruit tissues. As I write this in 2022, apples are classified as belonging to the genus Malus, in the Rosaceae family. In the nineteenth century they were also often described as Pyrus malus (being considered more closely part of the pyrus family, which 1. J. E. Jackson, Biology of Apples and Pears (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) p. 22. Juniper and Mabberley, The Story of the Apple p. 27.

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century

includes pears) or Malus domestica. Currently the botanic name for the domestic, sweet apple (including ‘cooking apples’) most commonly used is Malus x domestica Borkh, commonly written as Malus domestica or M. domestica. Many modern taxonomists however have argued that the correct taxonomy is Malus pumila Mill., and Malus pumila is used in recently published works on the apple.2 ‘Mill’ refers to Philip Miller, who first described the botanic nomenclature of the species in 1768, and separated the apple from the pear on the grounds that the one could not be grafted on to the other.3 This process of grafting is essential to the success of the apple, and will be discussed in detail throughout the book, particularly in Chapter 4. An important botanical feature of apples is that they do not breed true from their pips. The seeds inside each apple, if each were to germinate and grow, would give rise to apple trees that do not greatly resemble their pollinating parents or their siblings from the other seeds. Therefore, in order to continue supplies of a particularly tasty apple, it must be propagated by grafting. Commercially grown apple trees from the eighteenth century onwards are compound trees, created by taking a slip of wood or a bud (a fruiting scion) from the desired variety and attaching it to a growing rootstock, which influences the size and vigour of the tree. Rootstocks were developed and interbred for centuries from wild apples, but may be from a number of different malus species, including Malus x robusta and M. Sieboldii.4 I use the term ‘apple’ in this book to describe the fruit of M. domestica, eaten and enjoyed both cooked and raw through many centuries. This fruit comes in many thousands of named varieties and cultivars. A variety is a subspecies of plant that naturally occurs, whereas a cultivar is one that has been bred deliberately. Modern apples such as Honeycrisp are cultivars, whereas older varieties arose from seedlings or have unknown parents. In this book I will usually use ‘variety’. However, there is also a small-fruited, sour wild European apple, now described as M. sylvestris, and known as ‘crab apple’ which is thought to have been native to Britain long before the introduction of M. pumila. The date of that introduction is contested, but pre-dates the Roman Occupation.5 M. sylvestris or crab apple may be the species referred to in some place names and early English texts, and originally used in cider production.6 The apple, therefore, dates back into pre-history. Its ancient ancestors were first discovered in 1793, when intrepid botanist, Johann Sievers, was travelling through the mountainous region of what is now Kazakhstan. He was looking for

2. Introduction to the DNA Fingerprinting of Apples and Pears (n. p.: Fruit ID, 2015). 3. Philip Miller, ‘Malus. The Apple-Tree’ in The Gardener’s Dictionary (London: printed for the author, 1768) n.p. https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/394481#page/21/mode/1up. 4. Jackson, Biology of Apples p. 23. 5. Ibid. p. 4. 6. Juniper and Mabberley, The Story of the Apple p. 129.

1. What Is an Apple, and What Is an Orchard?

9

a medicinal rhubarb, but found instead a fruit forest, with many examples of wild trees bearing large and sweet apples – the origin of M. pumila. However, Sievers’ sudden death meant that his discovery was not disseminated until the species was named Pyrus sieversii (now M. sieversii) in his honour in 1833.7 The fruit which came to epitomize the English countryside and the homesteads of America has its ancestry in the mountains of Inner and Central Asia, in particular what is now the Tian Shan region of China, and in the forests of Khazakhstan approximately one and a half million years ago. At that time the fruit forest also contained the ancestors of other fruits and nuts, including walnuts, pears, plums and almonds. From there, M. pumila was distributed along banks of mountain streams and eventually moved slowly across Europe, the seeds carried in the guts of bears, horses and early man. Apples need a cold spell for the seeds to germinate, but cannot survive very cold winters, so this naturally limits them to temperate regions with seasonal variations.8 It is not clear when the sweet apple reached Britain, or how much it hybridized naturally with the crab apple or wild apple M. sylvestris, but certainly during their period of occupation the Romans grew apples across the country, and had a good knowledge of the techniques of grafting, which they had learned from the Egyptians and the Greeks.9 Roman texts gave complete instructions on grafting, and those texts became accessible to educated Victorians. Henry Phillips, author of Pomarium Brittanicum, published in 1820, and many other botanical and horticultural works, noted that Pliny described over twenty varieties of apple, and differentiated between those sweet apples which have a tender skin and the rest. The tender apples had been specifically propagated, so that it was those varieties which, according to Phillips, Pliny declared, ‘immortalised their first founders and inventors’.10 Phillips and other nineteenth-century horticulturalists demonstrated the Victorian awareness that it was the Romans who brought to Britain the technique of grafting to propagate particular fruit varieties or characteristics. Some writers drew on the authority of earlier English horticultural and estate management texts, 7. Named by Carl Friedrich von Ledebour in his Flora Altaica (Berolini, 1833). https:// www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/29330#page/5/mode/1up 8. Juniper and Mabberley, The Story of the Apple; Jackson, Biology of Apples; Joan Morgan and Alison Richards, The Book of Apples (Kent: Brogdale Trust, 1993). James Luby, Philip Forsline, Herb Aldwinkle, Vincent Bus and Martin Geibel, ‘Silk Road Apples: Collection, Evaluation and Utilisation of Malus sieversii from Central Asia’ HortScience Vol. 36 No. 2 (2001) pp. 225–31. 9. Although some texts mention Roman orchards, the archaeobotany gives just a scattering of records of apple and pear pips. No site has been confirmed as an orchard, but it is likely that apples were grown within gardens. Marijke van der Veen, Alaxandra Livarda and Alistair Hill, ‘New Plant Foods in Roman Britain – Dispersal and Social Access’ Environmental Archaeology Vol. 13 No. 1 (April 2008) pp. 11–36. 10. Henry Phillips, Pomarium Brittanicum (London: T. & J. Allman, 1820) p. 38.

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particularly William Lawson’s work of 1618, A New Orchard and Garden.11 Lawson asserted that the Romans brought the sweet apple M. pumila to Britain, and that until that period only the crab apple M. sylvestris had grown in the British Isles as a wild native tree. However, Dr Robert Hogg, noted horticulturalist, founder of the British Pomological Society and Chair of the Royal Horticultural Society, was sure that the sweet apple was also a native plant; the sweetness and different varieties he attributed to natural hybridization and being ‘cultivated and subject to the art and industry of man’.12 He drew on the etymology of the word apple in Celtic languages, which ‘make mention of the apple in the most familiar terms’ to show that the sweet apple was ‘known to the ancient Britons, before the arrival of the Romans’.13 Here again is the juxtaposition of the cultural or historic apple with the horticultural apple, its lineage being used to popularize new varieties of fruit. Hogg also argued convincingly that the apple was not lost to cultivation entirely between the departure of the Romans and the early Tudor period. There is indeed evidence for this in texts that were researched and re-published by Victorian scholars. The Franciscan monk Bartholomaeus Anglicus wrote in his encyclopaedia, On the Properties of Things (c. 1240), that ‘Malus the Appyll tree is a tree yt bareth apples and is a grete tree in itself … with good fruyte and noble … the fruit is gracious in sight and in taste and virtuous in medecyne’.14 Anglicus also described grafting, noting that ‘the tame apple tree is of double kinde, for the stocke thereof, springeth on the ground, and the graffe thereof springeth of another tree, and is graffed on the stocke, and is so oned by graffing, that of the twaine is one composed’.15 This work was examined and edited by Robert Steele, and extracts were republished in 1893 with a preface by William Morris, in which he urged the reader to consider that ‘the people of that time were eagerly desirous for knowledge, and their teachers were mostly single-hearted and intelligent men, of a diligence and laboriousness almost past belief ’.16 The book was published at the height of the Victorian interest in medieval culture, linking the apple and other medicinal plants into both the folk history of the country and the decorative fashions of the time. By the early Tudor period apples were not just being grown in monastic gardens, but in commercial orchards, that is, a place where fruit trees are grown in order to get the maximum fruit yield from them, with the intention of selling the fruit 11. William Lawson, A New Orchard and Garden with the Country Housewife’s Garden ed. by Malcolm Thick (1st edn. 1618. London: Prospect Books, 2003). 12. Robert Hogg, Dr, The Apple and Its Varieties (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1859) p. 3. 13. Ibid. 14. Bartolomew Anglicus, De Proprietatibus Rerum, On the Properties of Things trans. by John Trevisa (London: Thomas East, 1592) Book XVII Chap. 98 p. 302. 15. Ibid. 16. William Morris, preface to Robert Steele, ed., Mediaeval Lore from Bartolomew Anglicus (London: Elliot Stook, 1893) p. vii.

1. What Is an Apple, and What Is an Orchard?

11

for profit. However, an orchard is not an easy place to describe, existing as it does as much in our imagination as on the ground. Contemporary sources from the seventeenth century onwards provide tangential evidence that an ‘orchard’ was a fluid definition for a pocket of land containing crop-bearing trees. An orchard was not always given that status even by those who knew and used it, which accounts partly for the under-recording in official documents and surveys, and for the historian’s subsequent difficulties in assessing the acreage of fruit growing, as I discuss in Chapter 3. During the sixteenth century orchards in some form spread out into the landscape across much of southern England as a source of income, and the primary ingredient of cider. In this book I use the term ‘cider’ to describe alcoholic, fermented apple juice, now often known as hard cider in America. Cider was extremely popular, particularly in rural areas, until it declined during the nineteenth century. In 1820 Phillips quotes from the mediaeval herbalist, Gerard, who wrote in the sixteenth century of the importance of apples and cider across southern England. Phillips quoted Gerard as reporting that, The tame and grafted apple-trees are planted and set in gardens and orchards made for that purpose: they delight to grow in good and fertile grounds. Kent doth abound with apples of most sorts; but I have seen in the pastures and hedge rows, about the grounds of a worshipful gentleman dwelling two miles from Hereford, called Mr Roger Bodnome, so many trees of all sorts that the servants drink, for the most part no other drinke; but that which is made of apples. The quantitie is such, that by the report of the gentleman himself, the parson hath for his tithe many hogsheads of cyder.17

Early Tudor texts include an increasing number of references to apples and orchards, but the quantity of apples, and the level of skill used within the orchards, may have been under-recorded since literacy levels were so low and books were few. Fruit cultivation skills would have been passed on orally and through practical demonstrations between influential gardeners and the emerging plant nurseries. As horticulture in general developed, a greater number of specific varieties of apples were grown and traded, and some named varieties were greatly esteemed. Gardeners were also sought out for their skills in fruit propagation. It was known to the later Victorian era, for example, that Henry VIII specifically sought out Richard Harris, a fruiterer who had learned his craft in the orchards of the French court, to set up a royal orchard of up to a hundred acres (40.47 hectares) in Kent.18 Many varieties of apple were developed in subsequent centuries, including some specifically for cider production, notably the Redstreak apple developed by 17. Phillips, Pomarium Britannicum p. 44. 18. Alicia Amherst, A History of Gardening in England (2nd edn. London: Bernard Quaritch, 1896) p. 101. She quotes a pamphlet she describes as ‘rare’ called The Husbandman’s Fruitful Orchard by ‘NF’ (London: Roger Jackson, 1609).

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Viscount Scudamore purposely to rival the superior French cider in the 1640s. Nurseries selling young trees and rootstocks were a profitable business sector, and by 1730 the apple cultivars were the most popular type of fruit tree on offer.19 In Britain (but not in Europe) during the eighteenth century the dessert or eating apple began to be differentiated from the larger, sharp-tasting apples used in cooking. In earlier periods these ‘cookers’ were not described separately, since most apples would have been cooked before being eaten, and varieties were expected to be dual use. Apple production, and certainly adulation, seems to have reached its peak in the mid-nineteenth century, with commercial orchards being established to feed the growing cities, and many depictions of apples in high and genre art. Nurseries selling young, grafted trees (called ‘maidens’) were plentiful, and growers put both energy and capital into developing reliable rootstocks, particularly to make smaller trees for garden use. However, Victorians were also mourning the loss of the old, picturesque cider orchards in the West Country, while struggling to preserve the best historic varieties of apple locally. The botanic history of the apple outlined above was one that was known in part to the Victorian botanists and apple enthusiasts. They used the knowledge that they had at the time to weave into wider culture a particularly patriotic narrative that claimed the apple as British, while acknowledging its Roman ancestry. By the nineteenth century the commercial orchard was a space that was considered both decorative and highly productive, but its appearance varied according to the apples and other crops that were grown there. Cider apples were grown on very large trees, whereas dessert apples could be grown on shorter trees, underplanted with anything from daffodils to cabbages. I shall describe these different orchard environments in detail in the following chapters, but it is important to acknowledge that readers of this book may have a pre-disposition to think of an orchard in the way it is most often represented in art – large spreading trees with grass and perhaps some flowers underneath. To visit a modern commercial orchard, with endless lines of heavily pruned trees grown as bush or spindle trees, machinery going up and down the rows, and bird netting overhead, is a reminder of the continuing distance between the apple and the orchard as a material object and as a cultural construct. Until the twentieth century, most of the British writers about apples and orchards were keen to show that orchards had formed part of the British, especially the English, countryside for centuries. They emphasized this continuity of heritage to give importance to the apple itself, and from these primarily horticultural texts comes the imbuing of the apple with the abstract properties and ideas of Englishness, so that the orchard stands symbolically for the landscape, and thus for the nation as a whole, and must be as carefully tended. This symbolism was then transplanted to America where, thanks in 19. John H. Harvey, ‘The Stocks Held by Early Nurseries’ The Agricultural History Review Vol. 22 No. 1 (1974) pp. 18–35 p. 22.

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part to John Chapman, also known as Johnny Appleseed, the apple tree grown from seed became an emblem of the pioneer spirit and the desire to become part of a particular environment. This concept is one that has persisted into the current enthusiasm for saving and reviving ‘heritage’ apples, in both America and Britain.20

20. There are also European societies devoted to saving ‘lost’ or ‘forgotten’ fruit varieties. For example, http://fruitsoublies.org/ based in France.

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Chapter 2 T H E E A R LY O R C HA R D I N T H E C HA N G I N G LANDSCAPE

The eighteenth century is not where the story of the apple orchard begins, but it is a point at which there is a measurable shift in agricultural and horticultural practices, and where commercial apple growing increased in response to societal and technological changes. But in order to understand these changes in the orchard, it is necessary to go back briefly to the landscape of the seventeenth century. Like the fruiting spurs along the branch of an apple tree, the commercial and cultural changes to fruit tree growing during the seventeenth century influenced the growth in apple varieties, plant nurseries and the popularity of the fruit in the following centuries. The commercial orchards that were planted in the later decades of the seventeenth century set the pattern for regional fruit growing in England, from the cider orchards in the West Country to the densely planted fruit orchards of Kent, that persisted until the railway network opened up new markets. Likewise, American fruit growers in settler communities learned what could be achieved in their new climate, and established orchards wherever they settled, using local seedling varieties to push the limits of the fruit. As I mentioned in the previous chapter, orchards might seem to be a very straightforward space to describe and define, but in practice they are extremely varied and somewhat mutable. In this chapter I shall attempt some categorization of orchards; these categories will be carried through the rest of this book, allowing an understanding of the influence of apple-growing science and cultural changes on the nature of the orchard. Establishing an orchard is a simple, understandable process of planting trees in a designated space, but the appearance, purpose and representations of that space have long been subject to change and experimentation.1 Three broad categories of apple-growing environments were common across England in the eighteenth century: the kitchen garden or domestic orchard, the ornamental fruit garden and the commercial orchard. This latter includes cider orchards (since cider was the way in which many apples were consumed during the eighteenth century), the expanding sector of commercial nurseries which 1. For detailed discussion on the categories of orchards, see Gerry Barnes and Tom Williamson, English Orchards: A Landscape History (Oxford: Windgather Press, 2022) pp. 1–63.

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provided young plants for all types of orchard, and orchards growing ‘eating apples’ for the table. There is one further way in which apple trees were used within a landscape, and that was in America during the pioneer period, when the sweet apple was introduced to the country. Fruit trees were planted, often close together around the borders of a property, in order to secure a claim to land, to provide shelter belts and to later supply fruit to feed livestock, for home consumption or trade. This use is discussed in detail in Chapters 4 and 5. The ways in which these categories fluctuate and overlap are indicators of the economic and cultural status of the apple. Orchards were influenced by the major changes to the English eighteenthcentury landscape – the effects of enclosure of common land, the ‘agricultural revolution’ and the fashion for landscape gardening, yet all these apple-growing environments survived and flourished into the nineteenth century. There are only a handful of sites where an orchard of the period once stood and in some form survives, and these, including Hampton Court and Versailles, can hardly be considered representative, although they are informative.2 Textual and visual evidence of any of these categories of orchard is not common at the beginning of the seventeenth century, but as texts and prints became cheaper and more popular, by the end of the nineteenth century a vast amount of material was circulating, a good proportion of which survives. However, as I shall discuss later, commercial and productive orchard settings were not a common choice of subject matter for paintings or other representation, seeming to be unpopular with artists, or, presumably, with their patrons and consumers; the cultural evidence for these environments is therefore scarce.

Kitchen Garden Orchards The commonest type of orchard, and of garden, during the early decades of the seventeenth century was the domestic or kitchen garden orchard. During this period every sizeable English country house and farm was an almost self-sufficient unit. As such, each estate had an area close to the house that was designated as a garden. While this usually included some ornamental flowers, it was a functional, busy space, crammed with beds of herbs, vegetables and soft fruit, as well as dovecotes, a fishpond and beehives. Fruit trees were either grown as part of the mixed garden, often in corners that would be otherwise difficult to cultivate, or in a separate, adjacent orchard that would often double as a grazing space for pigs or chickens.3

2. Jan Woudstra, ‘Fruit Cultivation in the Royal Gardens of Hampton Court 1530–1842’ Garden History Vol. 44 No. 2 (Winter 2016) pp. 255–71. 3. Amherst, A History of Gardening; Susan Campbell, ‘Digging, Sowing and Cropping in the Open Ground 1600–1900’ in The Country House Kitchen Garden 1600–1950 ed. by C. Anne Wilson (London: The History Press, 2010) pp. 9–31.

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Many different varieties of fruit, apples in particular, were grown to ensure that there was fresh fruit for as much of the year as possible (fresh or stored apples from June all the way through until the following April is possible with a good selection). Everything that the cook and the housekeeper needed was close at hand, and every part of the garden was cultivated in a way that would contribute to the produce and economy of the household. After the needs of the household had been met with preserved and fresh produce, any surplus could be sold or exchanged for other goods. Even a small apple orchard is capable of producing more fruit than the household could eat, so apples were often sold or traded in local markets. Gervase Markham, in his gardening book of 1613, thought that domestic orchards should always be both beautiful and productive, and set out with care, so that the orchard’s appearance would increase its usefulness: Although many Authors which I have read, both in Italian, French and Dutch doe make a diversity and a distinguishment of Orchards, as namely, one for profit which they fashion rudely and without forme, the other for delight, which they make comely, decent, and with all good proportion, dividing the quarters into squares, making the Alleyes of a constant breadth, and planting the fruit trees in artificiall rowes: yet foreasmuch as the comlinesse and well contriving of the ground doth nothing abate, but rather increase the commoditie, I will therefore joyne them both together, and make them onely but one Orchard.4

Walking along the ‘alleyes’ or paths in the domestic orchard, the household members were in their own ‘earthly paradise’, a phrase used by John Parkinson in Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris; his book, published in 1629, that lays out an incredible amount of knowledge about plants and horticulture.5 In his chapter ‘Of the Ordering of the Orchard’ Parkinson places the orchard in its traditional location, between the ornamental flower beds and the kitchen garden, each in their most auspicious aspect. He states, ‘I hold that an Orchard which is, or should bee of some reasonable large extent, should be so placed, that the house should have the Garden of flowers just before it open upon the South, and the Kitchen Garden on the one side thereof, should also have the Orchard on the other side of the Garden of Pleasure.’6 A neat, productive garden was also a statement of status; it demonstrated the extent to which the household had control over nature. Productivity was the result of good order, and when everything was under control and in good order there was no hiding place for immoral behaviour or sin. This view of the function of a garden was made clear in 1653 by Ralph Austen, whose very practical book, A Treatise on 4. Gervase Markham, The English Husbandman (London: T. S. for John Browne, 1613) p. 119. 5. John Parkinson, Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (London: Humphrey Lownes and Robert Young, 1629). 6. Ibid. p. 535.

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Fruit-trees, Showing the Manner of Grafting, Setting, Pruning, and Ordering of them in All Respects, included a tract, later published separately, on ‘The Spiritual Use of an Orchard’ comparing the work of the hard-working fruit grower to the way in which God cared for his people.7 He wrote that understanding the natural world led to a better understanding of the Divine: The world is a great library, and fruit trees are some of the books wherein we may read and see plainely the attributes of God, his power, wisdome, goodnesse & c. and be instructed and taught our duty towards him in many things, even from fruit trees: for as trees (in a metaphoricall sence) are books, so likewise in the same sence they have voyce, and speak plainely to us, and teach us many good lessons.8

The frontispiece of Austen’s work shows an enclosed, formal orchard with a very elaborate parterre at its centre. However outside the orchard and its encircling Bible verse some extremely practical gardening tools are depicted, making a clear connection between the work required in rearing both ‘Naturall and Spirituall Fruit-Trees’.9 Joan Morgan links the growth in the popularity of apples to the spread of Protestantism, noting that ‘everywhere that Protestantism took root and climate allowed, orcharding followed’.10 Apples were the preferred fruit because the trees were tough, adaptable, highly productive and required no cossetting; apples were wholesome and suitable for everyone to eat. Apples grew best in northern and eastern Europe, and later in similar conditions along the eastern seaboard of America. She continues, The orcharding traditions of northern Germany, the Rhine, the Palatinate and Bohemia, Switzerland, Poland, Scandinavia, northern France, Flanders, the Netherlands and England were all enthusiastically encouraged during the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and when the Catholic backlash sent Protestants fleeing to the safe havens of Holland (the erstwhile Spanish Netherlands), England and the east coast of America, they took their skills and love of apple trees with them.11

However, although the geographic spread of orcharding and Protestantism may be linked in that manner, a love of apples was not confined to this group. Catholic symbolism linked the apple closely to the Fall, and used this imagery in art, while 7. Ralph Austen, The Spiritual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees (Oxford: H. Hall, 1657). The work was reprinted many times, as late as 1851. 8. Ibid. p. vii. 9. Ibid. frontispiece. 10. Morgan and Richards, The New Book of Apples p. 58. 11. Ibid.

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the skills of grafting had been practised throughout the seventeenth century in Catholic France, in particular under the patronage of Louis XIV, who enjoyed strolling around his ‘potager’ at Versailles, where hundreds of different varieties of fruit were grown, in particular pears, which he loved. The fruit growers of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France were part of an extensive network of specialists, and French gardeners went to Britain and Germany, while cider apple trees were traded through the Channel Islands. The commonality with the spread of apple orchards is not so much religion, as the proprietorship of horticultural skills.12 Huguenot orchardists had skill at grafting trees onto more dwarfing rootstock (possibly from crab apple), resulting in a tree that grew to twenty feet, rather than forty, and was much easier to pick. It also, says orchardist Agnes Philpot, ‘made the Huguenots the most successful and in time the most hated farmers in France [so that] French Catholic apple growers were probably instrumental in the expulsion of Protestant Huguenots’.13 While the Huguenots developed and traded their skills, and Dutch still-life paintings depicted their harvests in sumptuous detail, most English gardens were usually designed around a pattern that was familiar to the Tudors, primarily because it had been proved functional. Garden writers such as Markham and Parkinson cannily provided instructions and border designs that could be scaled up or down in size as required, but their customers were the literate gentry with plenty of outside space in which to experiment with the latest fruit-growing fashions. Evidence of planning and planting for lower-status gardens during the seventeenth century is very rare, but there are some comments about the nature of cottage gardens and orchards attached to much smaller homesteads from the early eighteenth century. John Beale, describing, with a very favourable bias, the  landscape of Herefordshire in 1724, observes, ‘From the greatest Persons to the Poorest Cottager, all Habitations are encompassed with Orchards and Gardens; and in most Places our Hedges are inriched with Rows of Fruit-Trees, Pears, or Apples, Gennet-Moyles [a variety of cider apple possibly dating back to the fifteenth century] or Crab Trees.’ He also describes how ‘many times Servants when they betake to Marriage, seek out an Acre or two of Ground, which they find fit for Orchards; for this they give a Fine, or double value for Years or Lives; and thereon they build a Cottage, and plant an Orchard, which is all the Wealth they have for themselves, and their Posterity’.14 This demonstrates that apple trees were being grown productively in hedgerows in some counties, particularly in the West Country and Kent, as well as in gardens, but also that orchards too small to be recorded on maps or other official documents were in fact functioning as 12. Bernd Brunner, Taming Fruit trans. by Lori Lanz (Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2021) pp. 97–110. 13. Agnes Philpot, ‘The Story of the Apple’ Pomona Vol. 12 No. 1 (Winter 2019) pp. 7–11. 14. John Beale [I. B.], Herefordshire Orchards: A Pattern for All England (London: W. Mears, 1724) p. 2.

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commercial orchards. This lack of recording and the scarcity of documents that have survived from the period are further reasons for the extent of the apple economy being underestimated. During the later decades of the seventeenth century came cultural changes that altered the ways in which domestic or kitchen garden orchards were grown and used. At this time the placing of the kitchen garden changed, and it was moved further from the house. There were various practical reasons for the shift; a greater understanding of how plants grew led to recommendations that the kitchen garden should be on a gentle slope, with crops arranged to get the right amount of sunshine. Societal influences on the layout of the house and garden included the rise in income of the landed gentry, with concomitant increase in leisure time, now seen as a high-status (in)activity, particularly for the unmarried women in the household. This meant that the physical work and effort of the kitchen garden with its ‘dunging’ and the smell of the brassicas and alliums was no longer considered suitable for the immediate surrounds of a polite house. The kitchen garden, by the mid-eighteenth century, was often quite a walk from the main house. The household still enjoyed strolling there, and the fruit trees were set out with some thought that they might be enjoyed aesthetically, as somewhere to wander through. Eighteenth-century domestic orchards, therefore, continued to occupy the same spaces in, or adjacent to, these removed kitchen gardens. However, this did not indicate a loss of status. Instead new varieties of fruit were popularized – not just apples and pears but, as the climate became milder, apricots, peaches and almonds. Increasing horticultural knowledge, disseminated through a widening range of publications, meant that more fruit could be produced from a smaller area with fewer trees, for example, by growing them in new ways, as ‘wall fruit’ trained against walls which, in the grandest gardens, could be heated through a series of shafts. The kitchen garden orchard was not discarded; in fact, it became the nursery for many new fruit varieties during the century.

Apple trees in ornamental and ‘landscaped’ settings Meanwhile apple trees were also planted in the ornamental gardens, in both a formal and informal style. Both styles began in the seventeenth century and persisted throughout the eighteenth. The largest change to the ornamental garden and its surroundings was brought about by the mid-to-late century fashion for ‘landskip gardening’, a term used, and possibly coined, by poet and gentleman gardener William Shenstone in the 1760s.15 Shenstone embraced 15. ‘I have used the word landskip-gardiners; because in pursuance of our present taste in gardening, every good painter of landskip appears to me the more proper designer.’ William Shenstone, Unconnected Thoughts on Gardening in The Works in Verse and Prose of William Shenstone Esq: In Two Volumes, the second edition Vol. II (London: J. Dodsley, 1765–6) p. 111. Published posthumously.

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the trend for improving upon nature, and embellished his estate at Leasowes, near Birmingham. He added obelisks, bridges, waterfalls and statuary to his gardens, while including views out of the garden and into the wider landscape of his sheep meadows. Meanwhile the celebrity gardeners of the age, Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton, were persuading other landed gentry to undertake wide-scale changes, from planting groves of trees to slowing rivers into limpid lakes. The landscape movement has been seen as a fundamental change in garden design, one that could only have happened once the strip fields were enclosed, and therefore brought into the large estates. Larger fields, delineated by hedgerows, were also a function and result of the changes in agricultural practice. Still, they could be gazed upon from the house, particularly if those views were enhanced by landscaping. Landscaping opened up large houses to views of the countryside, and to being viewed in return. The significance of the external view of the house is demonstrated within the guidebooks to those stately homes that felt obliged to open at least a portion of the house, and often the gardens, to public viewing. Their souvenir guidebooks often contained an illustration of the house, seated within its landscape and framed by trees.16 Another landscaper of the period, Thomas Whately, described the concept of the garden as, Being released now from the restraints of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within its province: for it is no longer confined to the spots from which it borrows its name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm or a riding.17

Planting trees had become linked to values of patriotism, since the trees gave a sense of solidity and tradition to the enclosed estates. However, planting the wrong sort of tree, quickly growing conifers and larches, was a sign of new money and a lack of sense of history. Tree-growing was encouraged in order to provide wood for the navy to use in future, but even these utilitarian forests had to be placed correctly to provide the most aesthetically pleasing effect. The landscape designers were known for felling, and planting, vast numbers of trees and shrubs to give the effect of ancient parklands and groves, or to achieve the wild effect advocated by garden designer Stephen Switzer, who wanted dense, but orderly, thickets of mixed species on the edge of the formal lawns. These small ‘wildernesses’ were seminatural areas with paths and perhaps some statuary set among them. Fruit trees, grown to their full height (and therefore, I would say, more often seedling trees than grafted), were included in these forest gardens, making an unmistakeable 16. Jocelyn Anderson, ‘Remaking the Space: The Plan and the Route in Country-House Guidebooks from 1770 to 1815’ Architectural History Vol. 54 (2011) pp. 195–212. 17. Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening, Illustrated by Descriptions (2nd edn. London: T. Payne, 1770) p. 1.

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splash of colour in the groves at blossom and fruit time, especially the perry pear varieties, which can grow up to forty feet high. John Phibbs, assessing the persistence of older styles of gardening among the fashionable landscapes, observes, There can be little doubt even in the eighteenth century that the words “orchard” and “garden” had strongly overlapping meanings. The orchard was a favoured place for walking and was planted near the house; the orchard too, while even in the sixteenth century associated with fruit growing, derived from the Latin hortus meaning “garden”. […] It is not surprising, therefore, to find that many wildernesses were developed on places that had previously been known as orchards. Indeed, as the word “wilderness” became more popular in the early seventeenth century, it may have been applied to “orchards” without any change of use or planting.18

America and Canada came a little later to the picturesque style, but fruit trees seem to have been used in a similar way, to provide a wild barrier between the house and its wider environs. Bellevue House in Kingston, Ontario, built in 1840 and inhabited by Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, had a garden in the Italianate style, which Helen Humphreys describes as ‘that heady mix of order and chaos – the contained grandeur of the house juxtaposed with a wild apple orchard full of long grass and with no regularity to the placement of the trees’.19 This little wilderness, a patch of countryside in an urban area, gave status to the house and its inhabitants, as well as shielding the property from the road. Despite such imaginative uses of fruit trees there was no place in either the landscape or the later picturesque style for the formal orchard with its neat ‘alleyes’ of trees. Productive orchards remained, but were hidden out of sight behind walls that also enclosed the kitchen garden, which was still a necessary and valued part of the estate. The landscape style may have been more influential in culture than it was materially, since it was not an effect that could be replicated in the grounds of a smaller house. It reminds me of the current desire of many urban gardeners to have a patch of wildflowers and call it a meadow. However, there are examples of urban gentry going to great lengths to achieve the same open prospects, buying land across rivers or busy roads in order to lay them out as detached pleasure gardens, sometimes including an orchard.20 Some of the wealthy urban population with relatively small gardens attempted something of the landscaping style. Alexander Pope, moving to what was then the rural village 18. John Phibbs, ‘The Persistence of Older Traditions in Eighteenth-Century Gardening’ Garden History Vol. 37 No. 2 (Winter 2009) pp. 174–88. 19. Helen Humphreys, The Ghost Orchard: The Hidden History of the Apple in North America (Toronto: Harper Collins, 2017) p. 148. 20. Jane Harding and Anthea Taigel, ‘Air of Detachment: Town Gardens in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ Garden History Vol. 24 No. 2 (Winter 1996) pp. 237–54.

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of Twickenham, near London, began in 1720 to create a garden with a grotto, reached by a tunnel under the road. His vision for his garden of about five acres (2.03 hectares) was Palladian, and Pope tried to find someone who gardened like Switzer.21 Although a few examples of landscaped parks and gardens still exist on the ground and are often treasured today, they are, like the early orchard sites, rare, documented examples from very wealthy estates, and the extent to which the landscaping movement influenced the wider, productive landscape, in particular the nature of orchards, is extremely hard to estimate. Texts are few, and written by, and for, large-scale, wealthy fruit-growers. Although the landscape garden movement inspired artists to produce beautiful topographical views of the enclosed estates and surrounding countryside, there is little evidence of the labour that was required to keep them productive, or of the areas so essential to keeping the household fed. John Barrell and Timothy Barringer have investigated representations of labour during the period, noting how the visual and poetic expression of the concept of landscape often excluded agricultural workers, or included rustic figures as a purely decorative element of pastoral landscapes, in both high art and genre painting. Farm labourers are depicted as a decorative motif, to give a splash of colour to a landscape, or to give a sense of scale to a prospect. Their inclusion was often overlooked completely in contemporary critical reception of the work.22 Very seldom were their labours depicted realistically, or noted by commentators on the painting, before the turn of the twentieth century. Within these constraints, therefore, the depiction of realistic orchard work (or any other kind of rural labour) would be a radical departure from the accepted forms of landscape painting. In the early nineteenth century the popularity for landscaping diminished. It seems that these open prospects were closed in partly due to the pressure on land, and partly as society moved towards a more private domesticity, with a smaller garden around the home at its heart. In these private gardens, the ‘wilderness’ of Switzer became the shrubbery, while apple trees, dwarfed, pruned and neatly arranged, stood close to the house once again. In 1816 Jane Austen described in Emma the use of espalier apple trees either side of a broad, neat gravel walk to lead up to the front door of the large house at Abbey-Mill Farm.23 As Shannon E. Campbell notes, the apple trees broadcast information on status at any time of year. Their selection,

21. Anthony Beckles Willson, ‘Alexander Pope’s Grotto in Twickenham’ Garden History Vol. 26 No. 1 (Summer 1998) pp. 31–59. A. J. Sambrook, ‘The Shape and Size of Pope’s Garden’ Eighteenth-Century Studies Vol. 5 No. 3 (Spring 1972) pp. 450–5. 22. John Barrell, The Dark Side of the Landscape (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983). Timothy Barringer, ‘Representations of Labour in British Visual Culture 1870–1875’ (doctoral thesis, University of Sussex, 1994). 23. Jane Austen, Emma (London: Vintage Books, 2007).

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century Reflects a sophistication of taste, stability in the family occupying the farm for a number of years sufficient to develop the espalier, and an appreciation for creating what would be an attractive entrance to the farmhouse throughout the year [...] Imagine how differently we would perceive this family if Miss Smith had stepped down to a muddy track flanked by straggling rosebushes.24

Austen often uses green spaces in her novels, including shrubberies and groves, to provide opportunities for characters to meet in private, but also to give further insight into the social class of the different households. In the wealthier classes women’s contribution to the activity of landscaping and gardening was for them to be a decorative part of the landscape. Susan Groag Bell notes how the changes in the garden reflected those in wider society: Between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries, the upper-class garden was transformed from an area in which food dyes, medicines and flowers were produced together into an entity that had not only an aesthetic but also a political character as the aristocracy and gentry sought to affirm their social predominance. […] Women were increasingly excluded – not only from the creation of politically significant garden showplaces but from the kitchen garden as well. […] Eighteenth century women are portrayed by their contemporaries only in the passive enjoyment of the garden.25

While all the famous landscape gardeners of the period were male, women, says Groag Bell, made an aesthetic contribution that has been overlooked. She has provided ample evidence of women who enjoyed making decisions on designing and planting, and who engaged in physical gardening. Among her examples she quotes an article from 1745 in which the female author urges her readers to acquire the skill of grafting. Landscaping may have been a way in which to bring the countryside under male authority, but gardening and fruit tree propagation continued to be enjoyed by women behind the walls and boundaries of their gardens.

Commercial and cider orchards There is little evidence for commercial orchards of dessert fruit during the seventeenth and most of the eighteenth century; this may be because, with the exception of the orchards around London, there were very few. London was 24. Shannon E. Campbell, ‘Apples and Apple Blossom Time: Wherein Jane Austen’s Reputation for Meticulous Observation Is Vindicated’ Persuasions: The Jane Austen Journal No. 29 (2007) pp. 89–98 p. 90. 25. Susan Groag Bell, ‘Women Create Gardens in Male Landscapes: A Revisionist Approach to Eighteenth-Century English Garden History’ Feminist Studies Vol. 16 No. 3 (Autumn 1990) pp. 471–91 p. 474.

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already well served, as this summary of land utilization at the end of the eighteenth century makes clear: It is clear that both the character of the soils and the proximity to the London market combined to condition the cultivation of fruit and vegetables on ‘the excellent dry loam’ north of the City, between Stepney, Hackney and Islington, and westwards of Westminster, between Chelsea and Twickenham. The orchards were stocked with an ‘upper crop’ of apple, pear, cherries, plums, walnuts etc, and an ‘under crop’ of small fruits – raspberries, strawberries, gooseberries, and currants – which could grow beneath the shade of the ‘upper crop’ trees. The market gardeners in these areas made plentiful use of dung, brought from London, and, in some cases where their land lay within the alluvium of the Thames, irrigated it with river water. A wide variety of vegetables, including salads, was grown, testifying incidentally to the increasing consumption of vegetables in eighteenth-century England.26

In Chapter 8 I consider the market gardens around London in order to examine how apples were consumed throughout the period. However, the other use for apples was to make cider, which until the mid-nineteenth century was an everyday drink in Britain, particularly in areas where barley for beer could not be profitably cultivated. Here it might be wise to quote Mr Radcliffe Cooke MP, who felt the necessity to begin a lecture in 1895 with these words: ‘Cider is the expressed and fermented juice of the apple: perry the expressed and fermented juice of the pear. I should have thought it unnecessary to mention these elementary facts had I not discovered, even among persons who would be much nettled if they were not regarded as well-informed, a surprising degree of ignorance on the subject.’27 I examine the history of cider as an apple product and from a more cultural perspective in Chapter 8, but in regard to the eighteenth-century landscape, the impact of the cider orchards was considerable. Cider making in England can be traced back to Norfolk during the reign of King John (1199–1216), but orchards grown specifically for cider apples were initially established across the south and west of England, where they became part of the farming landscape from the eleventh century; every farm and monastery had an orchard of some size, and made cider for the household, the farm labourers and the local villagers. The cider trade grew in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially after the introduction of the Redstreak or Red Strake cider apple, brought from France by Viscount Scudamore around 1650.28 By the nineteenth 26. Gordon East, ‘Land Utilization in England at the End of the Eighteenth Century’ The Geographical Journal Vol. 89 No. 2 (February 1937) pp. 156–72 p. 160. 27. Radcliffe Cooke MP, ‘Cider’ Journal of the Society of Arts (8 March 1895) pp. 396–409 p. 396. 28. James Crowden, Cider Country (London: William Collins, 2021); Juniper and Mabberley, The Story of the Apple.

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century there was also some cider production in Norfolk, Suffolk (where Aspells cider is still in production) and the Home Counties. Cider apple trees and their orchards looked very different in the landscape from the kitchen gardens or ornamental orchards, and, going into the nineteenth century, from commercial dessert apple orchards. The best crops were believed to come from varieties that grew big apples on tall trees, so these trees had more height and spread, requiring them to be spaced further apart than in dessert apple orchards. This is one reason why cider was not a major product in the East of England, where the exposed, windy sites and soft Fenland and Brecks soil did not allow trees to grow particularly sizeable. Instead East Anglian cider was originally made from any mixture of dessert and cooking apples, rather than from hightannin apples grown specifically for the purpose of being turned into cider. Although the cider apple trees were deliberately cultivated, pruned and cared for, cider orchards have a long history of being regarded as wild groves where the trees do as they please, and this too makes the extent of them more difficult to calculate. In 1664 John Evelyn in his Pomona (an annexe to his great work, Sylva) refers to the ‘red strake’ as ‘a pure Wilding’ and describes a cider orchard as ‘but a wild plantation’.29 He recommends planting trees thirty-two feet (almost ten metres) apart for a grazing orchard, but acknowledges that trees can be closer if the orchard is ploughed every year. However cider orchards became less wild in time, meeting the need for land to be more productive. In 1797 Herefordshire apple grower Thomas Andrew Knight, in his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and the Pear, wrote that Herefordshire orchards were planted either in the quincunx pattern (five trees to a square, like the five spots on dice) or in rows, allowing for ‘tillage’ between the rows and some underplanting of corn or other ‘herbage’. Trees were tall, and had their lower branches removed, to allow grazing of sheep, pigs or cows underneath. He also advocated planting single varieties in large blocks or rows.30 It is this pattern of orchard planting, practised most successfully in the West Country, that can be seen in paintings and illustrations from Evelyn’s time, throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and into contemporary depictions. Cider orchards are shown as looser, informal spaces planted with fullsize trees with wide, spreading branches and, often, sheep grazing underneath, or even sheltering a reclining maiden or two. In the cider industry the cultural depiction of the product was, and remains, at odds with the reality of a wellmaintained, single-variety orchard. One place to look for references to cider and commercial orchards is in the works that described the countryside of the time. In the eighteenth century accounts of tours around Britain became popular. Some, like those of Arthur Young, were 29. John Evelyn, Sylva, or a Discourse of Forest Trees … to Which Is Annexed Pomona, or an Appendix concerning Fruit Trees in Relation to Cider (London: Martyn and Allestry, 1664) p. 7 and p. 18 of the Pomona annex. 30. Thomas Andrew Knight, A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear and on the Manufacture of Cider and Perry (1st edn. Ludlow: H. Proctor 1797. 5th edn. London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1818) p. 57 5th edn.

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made to assess the economic worth and agricultural production of the country, and to explore what improvements may be possible. Some, like those of Daniel Defoe, covered a range of social and cultural points of interest. William Gilpin, who admired, and painted, picturesque scenes, wrote about history, scenery and the best views. Tours of all kinds were at first hindered by the state of the roads, but these improved, and mail coaches sped up communication, particularly outside London. Amid all these letters and accounts of tours are a few scant records of orchards. Those counties that were recorded as having commercial orchards in the 1720s were Kent, Worcestershire, Somerset, Devon and Cornwall, with the latter three producing predominantly cider and cider apples.31 Later the increase in market gardens, many of which were dominated by fruit crops, was recorded. In the 1720s the writer Daniel Defoe made ‘a Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain’, the account of which he published in a series of ‘letters’.32 However, although he often observed specific details of crops and their acreage, in the whole account of his journeys Defoe makes just four references to orchards (and scarcely more to fruit) and only two to commercial fruit growing. He makes a passing mention of the growing of fruit for ‘cyder’ around the ‘South-Hams’ of Devon, while in Kent he notes the contrast between the fruit growing and the industrial landscapes: All this part of the country, from Guilford to this Place [Westerham], is very agreeably pleasant, healthy and fruitful; and is overspread with good Towns, Gentlemen’s Houses, populous Villages, Abundance of Fruit, with Hop-Grounds and Cherry-orchards, and the Lands well cultivated; but all on the Right-hand, that is to say, South, is over-grown with Timber, has Abundance of waste and wild Grounds, and Forests, and Woods, with many large Iron-works, at which they cast Iron Cauldrons, Chimney-backs, Furnaces, Retorts, Boiling-pots, Iron Cannon, Bomb-shells, Stink-pots, Hand-grenadoes, Cannon-ball &c.33

Here is a very early example of a depiction of the juxtaposition between ‘agreeably pleasant’ orchards, and the increasingly industrialized landscape around them. Although Kent came early to industrialization, having at least fifty ironworks in operation by the sixteenth century, the ‘large Iron-works’ that Defoe describes were an indicator of the switch from an agrarian to an industrial landscape to which his readers could relate.34 The contrast between the description of the ‘Lands well cultivated’ and the enthusiasm of Defoe’s descriptive list of the jumble of domestic and military items made in the iron works suggests the pull of these two interests, 31. T. S. Ashton, An Economic History of England: The Eighteenth Century (London: Methuen & Co, 1977) p. 32. 32. Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain Divided into Circuits or Journeys (7th edn. London: Printed for J. and F. Rivington, 1769). 33. Ibid. pp. 250–1. 34. P. J. Ovenden, ‘Preliminary Survey of the Iron Industry of the Western Weald’ Wealden Iron No. 1 (Spring 1969) pp. 10–11.

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something that would become increasingly important in the orchard’s cultural representation. However, Defoe was optimistic about the state of the countryside in these reports, at least where he found it to have been enclosed and ‘improved’. As Ashton noted, ‘the impression left by Defoe of agriculture in the seventeentwenties is one of enterprise, experiment, mobility’.35 Another place where cider orchards enter the official record is in the documentation of the attempts made to enforce a particularly unpopular cider tax in 1763. There had previously been some level of tax on cider since 1643, but when the country emerged from war with France, the government looked for ways to increase tax revenue to pay off the war debts. Prime Minister Lord Bute extended taxation of cider into the cider-drinker’s home, requiring a five-shilling payment for everyone in the household over eight years old. Paying this as a lump sum was impossible for many labourers. If they could not pay, they were required to pay four shillings for every hogshead of cider found on the premises. Riots in the West Country followed the announcement of the tax and effigies of Lord Bute were hanged and burned at the stake. He sensibly resigned before the Act came into force, but the civil unrest continued until the Act was repealed in 1766. The importance of cider to the rural economy had been grievously underestimated by Westminster, and the high level of dissent was alarming. As James Crowden notes, ‘the rural economy functioned on cider. It oiled the wheels of commerce. Tithes were paid in cider, rents were paid in cider, debts were paid in cider, wages were paid in cider’.36 The tax also affected the profits of the traders who shipped cider to London, and impacted the large landowners. Many simply refused to pay, and the excise men who came to count the hogsheads of cider and measure the orchards were subject to threats and physical harm. Given the extent of this non-compliance, the excise records of the time may have recorded a low estimate of cider production. However they give a county breakdown of the number of cider makers and the quantity of cider they produced. Crowden calculates that there were ‘103,760 cider makers in England and Wales [between 1763–1766]. The population was 6,736,000: one cider-maker for every sixty-five people’.37 West Country cider orchards, therefore, even if they were not often larger than a couple of acres, must have been visible almost everywhere across the region, while the cider was enjoyed as far as trade could carry it.

The American apple landscape Crowden argues that it was the protests against the cider tax that inspired the actions against the tea tax in America, leading to its fight for independence. Whatever the impact of the cider riots, the introduction of apple trees in the 1600s was a major change to the American landscape, for both humans and fauna. The apple is not indigenous to America, but early European settlers brought apple 35. Ashton, An Economic History p. 32. 36. Crowden, Cider Country p. 264. 37. Ibid. p. 270.

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pips, grafted trees and scion wood, and began to establish orchards and plant nurseries. Native Americans also cultivated orchards across the United States, in such numbers that the term ‘Indian orchard’ came to mean any old orchard where the variety and planting date were unknown. Helen Humphreys describes some of the known Native American orchards: There was a Tuscarora orchard in Oneida County, in the middle of New York State, that was planted around 1715 and was described as having several hundred apple trees in it. There was a Seneca orchard in the hamlet of Egypt in Ontario County, New York. The Algonquians had many orchards in Southern Ontario. The Cherokee orchards were so plentiful that a nurseryman named Jarvis Van Buren collected seedling apples from them in the 1850s to use for sale. The first commercial orchard in the United States was rumoured to have been started in Maysville, Arkansas, by a Cherokee woman who used African American slaves to do her labour. When the slaves were liberated after the Civil War, she was unable to work the land anymore. The orchard was subsequently purchased by a white settler, H. S. Mundell, who continued to operate it commercially.38

The early European settlers brought grafted trees and scion wood, but these trees often did not adapt well to their new surroundings and did not survive for many years. However, the seeds from those survivors grew into trees that were quite different from their parents, and that became naturalized in the landscape over subsequent generations. Marcia Reiss notes that the spread of apples and other fruit crops was assisted by the introduction of the European honeybee, which was established in the Midwest before John Chapman – ‘Johnny Appleseed’ – scattered his first handful of seeds to make an orchard at the beginning of the nineteenth century.39 His cultural effect and his choice of seedling trees will be discussed in subsequent chapters, but in the eighteenth century seedling apple trees were already being planted by pioneers to establish their territory. Reiss considers the apple as important as gold in the development of the country, noting ‘while the pursuit of gold was a flash in the pan of California’s demographic development, the apple trees planted on the American frontier of the early eighteenth century (today’s Midwestern states of Ohio, Western Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois and Michigan) rooted people to the soil’.40

Orchards, enclosure and boundaries The extent of the impact of the enclosure of common land on rural communities and the rural landscape has long been debated by historians, and I am not going to enter that wider debate here, instead keeping the focus on its effect on orchards. 38. Humphreys, Ghost Orchard p. 13. 39. Marcia Reiss, Apple (London: Reaktion Books, 2015) p. 80. 40. Ibid. p. 81.

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The evidence seems to suggest that there was little or no negative impact, since orchards were already established in areas where enclosures were ‘old’ and happened gradually, such as Kent, or in areas where there was little previous farming on common land. There may have been an increase in the number of small commercial orchards, since the number of small farmers appears to have increased during the period of Parliamentary enclosures, especially those with farms of less than twenty-five acres.41 Some of these farmers may have been tenants who were compensated with land after enclosure, or common-right cottagers. In areas of mixed farming, a fruit orchard of perhaps an acre, or even trees tucked into any patches of waste ground, would be a useful supplement to seasonal income and to the family’s diet; this sort of orchard remained part of the landscape, and has been under-reported in number and scale, throughout the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Small groups of fruit trees growing wild on the edges of common land often provided forage for the commoners and their pigs, and losing access to these apples in particular would have diminished the winter diet. Alongside enclosure came what is often described as the British ‘agricultural revolution’, the term now used for the collective improvements in land management, stock breeding and farming practices, leading to an overall (if regional) rise in agricultural productivity during the eighteenth century. This development of farming technology impacted other sectors of agriculture, in particular arable and livestock farming, more than fruit farming. However, the development of land management techniques later influenced the conversation about the best soils on which to grow fruit trees, and, particularly from the mid-century onwards, writers on orchards demonstrated awareness of these emerging technologies, which I discuss further in Chapter 4.

The rise of the urban apple Apple trees were also part of the eighteenth-century boom in urban trade. Commercial horticulture sites – plant nurseries, market gardens and orchards selling fruit to the nearest cities rather than just their own region – increased in number and scale throughout the eighteenth century. Such enterprises were overlooked by Defoe and the other reports on agriculture, perhaps because they did not fit the accepted pattern of the sweeping and visible agricultural ‘improvements’ of the four field system in Norfolk and the wheat-growing counties of southern England. There are some mentions of the increase in horticulture and fruit growing, for example, the cherry and apple orchards of Kent, and the descriptions in the county reports for Middlesex, discussed above, of the market gardens, nurseries and orchards around London in 1792.42 Orchard growth seems 41. Ashton, An Economic History p. 46. 42. G. E. Fussell, ‘English Countryside and Population in the Eighteenth Century’ Economic Geography Vol. 12 No. 3 (July 1936) pp. 294–310.

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to have happened slowly throughout the century, and indeed since the fruit from an orchard cannot be harvested for the first few years, it is not something that is planted in response to short-term changes in the market. Orchards, like those around London, were planted where there was an increase in the local population that would have been obvious to the farmer, or, like the cider apple orchards around Bristol, where the transport infrastructure had improved enough to be able to get the apples to a large urban market. The existence and ambitions of these nurseries can be measured through printed materials, including their own advertisements and catalogues, and regional newspapers which carried horticultural advice columns, news articles on harvest and market prices, and advertisements for farms and their produce. For example, here is an advert for a small market garden, that is, a small enterprise selling fruit and vegetables direct to consumers and local retailers: To be Lett at Lady Day next [around the end of March], At Market Deeping a Garden of Flowers, Herbs, Greens and Trees, also Asparagus Beds. Containing in all, three Acres of Ground, with a 100 Fruit Trees, and the like Number of Goose berry and Currant Trees, with all sorts of Flowers and Edging to be Sold to those who enter at the Time above-written, with 400 Cabbage Plants. Enquire of William Harvey of Market Deeping in Lincolnshire and be farther satisfied.43

This advertisement gives a good picture of small-scale commercial fruit growing throughout the first half of the eighteenth century, and fits with the description given above of the cultivation of orchards around London. A bit of horticultural knowledge allows us to work out how the space may have been utilized. It is not usually possible to grow asparagus under fruit trees, so it is most likely that the gooseberries and currants were grown in between the trees, leaving the rest of the land free for the asparagus, which is perennial and takes time to establish, and the annual crops. This would be a tightly packed, highly productive space, laid out rather like a large allotment today. The existence of this text illustrates another technological development that had an impact on fruit growing and horticulture generally. The improvements to the printing press allowed newspapers and books to be printed more quickly and sold much more cheaply. Although much of the population was illiterate, or at least could only read very simple texts, newspapers and books permitted the spread of ideas, so that by 1800 almost everyone in Britain had directly or indirectly encountered the products of the printing press.44 Regional newspapers began in the first decades of the century, and many contained agricultural news and advice. There was a boom in cheap books aimed at farmers and growers, and the farmer’s almanac became particularly important in America. These texts were often written by those 43. Stamford Mercury, 22 November 1722. 44. James Raven, ‘Why Ephemera Were Not Ephemeral: The Effectiveness of Innovative Print in the Eighteenth Century’ The Yearbook of English Studies Vol. 45 (2015) pp. 56–73.

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who endorsed the new farming technologies, either because they had seen success with them or because they had invented an improvement of their own. There was also a push towards self-improvement for everyone. For example, the advert for the fifteenth edition of a book called The Young Man’s Companion or Arithmetick Made Easy boasted that it included chapters on everything from book keeping, the rates to pay journeymen, how to measure heights and distance, descriptions of all the cities in England and ‘Choice Monthly Observations on Gardening, Planting, Grafting, Inoculating Fruit-Trees, and the best Time to prune them’.45 In the contents of these texts there was certainly mobility of ideas and an exchange of what may now be called ‘best practice’. There was a perception that the new developments in agricultural science and machine technology would be the best way to meet the food demands of the rapidly growing population, and this urgency increased the volume of information and advice. In G. E. Fussell’s study of ‘writing farmers’ in Britain he notes that in the sixty-two years between the publication of Jethro Tull’s The New Horse-Houghing Husbandry in 1731, and the foundation of a Board of Agriculture supported by public funds in 1793, ‘many more books on farming, horticulture and farriers came off the press than ever before in a similar space, and they contained all sorts of novelties to try the patience of their readers, as well as common sense as sound now as when it was written’.46 A further source of evidence for the popularity of apples during the eighteenth century is the advertisements, plant lists and catalogues produced by the plant nurseries. All of the plants that were grown, tended and planted out in the pleasure and kitchen gardens had to be supplied from somewhere, and increasingly the supplier was domestic. This was a change from the seventeenth century, where, as David Green has noted, ‘although botanic gardens had been founded and nurseries, most of them modest, were becoming common, the usual practice of private persons intending to plant on the grand scale was to order fruit and forest trees from Holland and Flanders and to transplant the hardier ornaments such as elm and holly from the local countryside’.47 On the smaller scale scions and cuttings were requested from friends and family. John Harvey’s unsurpassed work on the quantity and variety of plants held by early nurseries in England does not need repeating here, apart from his conclusions on the fruit trade: In fruit trees the pear was still favourite as it had been since the thirteenth century, but the apple was moving up towards first place by 1730. The peach and 45. Newcastle Courant, 22 October 1737. 46. G. E. Fussell, More Old Farming Books from Tull to the Board of Agriculture (London: Crosby Lockwood, 1950) p. 1. See also Nicholas Goddard, ‘Information and Innovation in Early-Victorian Farming Systems’ in Land, Labour and Agriculture 1700–1920: Essays for Gordon Mingay ed. by B. A. Holderness and Michael Turner (London: Hambledon Press, 1991). 47. David Green, Gardener to Queen Anne: Henry Wise (1653–1738) and the Formal Garden (London: Oxford University Press, 1956) p. 30.

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nectarine, much grown by the gentry in the seventeenth century, were still in demand. Cherries and plums were popular and, rather surprisingly, the filbert. Currants (red and white rather than black), and to a less extent gooseberries, were of substantial importance, and (black) mulberries were adequately stocked; but for medlars and quinces there was not much sale, then as now. Pineapples and strawberries, not included in the earlier inventories, had arrived by 1767.48

Harvey’s work on nurseries has been expanded on by Kathleen Clark, who concludes that the impact of the various printed matter produced by nurserymen and seedsmen was considerable in shaping the eighteenth-century British landscape and garden.49 These nurseries were not confined to Britain; there was trade in scion wood with European growers, and in 1771 the Old American Nursery of Long Island listed 180 types of fruit trees and plants in a two-page advertisement.50 The trade in plants shaped gardens and landscapes throughout the international trade networks. Now that it is possible to access and search online so many British newspapers, Harvey and Clark’s work can be usefully supplemented by studying the advertisements from small, regional and perhaps more transitory nurseries and plant merchants that would not otherwise be recorded. Here, for example, is an advert from 1727: All Sorts of new and choice Fruit Trees, Baron Trees, Flowers and Greens; the newest and choicest Seeds of all Sorts; as also the finest Collection of Aples on Paradice, ever yet seen in the North: Sold by Mr. John Oliver Gardiner, lately from London, at his House without Pilgrim-gate, Newcastle.51

The enticements here are that Mr Gardiner has come from London, and by implication knows the latest methods, and that he has apples grown on the fashionable ‘Paradice’ or Paradise rootstock, which dwarfs the tree, making it suitable for gardens and for more closely spaced orchards. It is further evidence of the importance of the eighteenth-century trade in apple trees across England, a trade that became increasingly important during the nineteenth century, as these innovations in rootstocks and propagating were developed further.

48. Harvey, ‘The Stocks Held by Early Nurseries’ pp. 18–35. 49. Kathleen Clark, ‘What the Nurserymen Did for Us: The Roles and Influence of the Nursery Trade on the Landscapes and Gardens of the Eighteenth Century’ Garden History Vol. 40 No. 1 (Summer 2012) pp. 17–33. 50. Brunner, Taming Fruit p. 173. 51. Newcastle Courant, 22 October 1727.

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Chapter 3 T H E N I N E T E E N T H - C E N T U RY O R C HA R D

This chapter demonstrates that there were significant changes in the English nineteenth-century orchard in four interconnected areas: agricultural development, landscape management practices, rural labour relations and the quality of the crop itself, all affecting the rates of return and potential prosperity for growers and handlers. It sets the orchard in context within the wider agricultural landscape, and introduces some of the notable apple experts who had influence over how apples were grown and consumed. The cultural influence and the writings of these experts will be considered in Chapter 5.

American orchards The majority of this chapter is focused on the English orchard, partly because the nineteenth century was a period where English society expressed such interest in apples, both cultural and commodity, and partly because the English experience is one for which I have access to the most information. There are difficulties in finding and verifying information about the apple economy in Britain in the nineteenth century; undertaking the same research for the entire spread of American orchards would require at least one more book.1 However, I hope that the methodology used here can assist future studies of American orchards. Certainly the same themes apply in both countries – that cultural representations of the orchard emphasize its nostalgic, domestic attributes, and that the acreage and importance of orchards has been consistently under-reported and underestimated. Throughout this book, information on American orchards has been used to contrast or emphasize the status of orchards in Britain, while this short section may be taken as an overview of American orchards in the period. Helen Humphreys notes that ‘the recorded history of the apple in North America is the history of white settlement during the nineteenth century’.2 Orchards were 1. See Dan Bussey and Kent Whealey’s masterpiece in seven volumes, The Illustrated History of Apples in North America and Canada (Mount Horeb, WI: Jak Kaw Press, 2017) and Tom Burford, Apples of North America (Portland: Timber Press, 2013). 2. Humphreys, Ghost Orchard p. 12.

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first established by European settlers along the Eastern seaboard, and then (with the help of Johnny Appleseed and other itinerant grafters and growers) along the routes  of the westward migration in the 1860s. By the end of the century there were a vast number of named varieties, although many of these may have been the same apple re-christened with a local name. In 1905 W. H. Ragan produced his Nomenclature of the Apple: Catalogue of Known Varieties Referred to in American Publications from 1804–1904, in which he listed seventeen thousand cultivars and synonyms.3 Orchard growth in America during the nineteenth century was influenced by the development of plant nurseries, who marketed named, grafted varieties partly at the expense of the seedling orchards which had flourished to make cider. By 1820 cider was not only a drink but a currency, the major commodity used in barter, and tens of thousands of trees rose up in orchards from scattered seeds. Those seeds were in turn a by-product of cider; the pulp that is discarded after the apple juice is pressed out is known as pomace, and it contains all the apple pips. Among them, apples that were good for eating or for processing into dried apples were discovered, and these were then grafted and the new trees distributed. Figures for the numbers and size of orchards are difficult to find or to validate. In 1845 pomologist Andrew Jackson Downing asserted ‘The planting of fruit trees in one of the newest States numbers nearly a quarter of a million in a single year’, while the 1850 federal census, evaluating trees and fruits for the first time, valued them at nearly eight million dollars, and at twenty million dollars in 1860.4 The American Pomological Society published reports from its members, which demonstrate the extent of apple growing, but which states planted the most apple orchards during which decades, and on what scale, is not precisely known. As in England, the first commercial orchards were centred around sites which offered good fruit-growing conditions, increasing population and good transportation – in the Hudson Valley and on Long Island, New York.5 Orchards migrated west during the 1870s, following the transcontinental railroad to Washington State. By the 1920s Washington State produced the most apples of any state, and grows over half of the entire American crop today.6

British agricultural and landscape management practices British agriculture in the nineteenth century continued the changes in the late eighteenth century. Regional differences in what was grown became dependent on local soil conditions and the improvements that could be made, rather 3. Tom Burford, Apples of North America p. 13. 4. Emily Pawley, ‘Cataloguing Nature: Standardizing Fruit Varieties in the United States 1800–1860’ The Business History Review Vol. 90 No. 3 (Autumn 2016) pp. 405–29 p. 406. 5. Susan A. Dolan, Fruitful Legacy: A Historical Context of Orchards in the United States (n.p.: National Park Service, 2009) p. 42. 6. https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/gallery/chart-detail/?chartId= 75112.

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than on traditional practices.7 Nineteenth-century farmers benefitted from increasing mechanization of farming processes, although the introduction of machinery was often contested by, and unpopular with, their labourers.8 In the mid-nineteenth century the coming of the railway network and increasing urban populations saw an increase in market gardens and orchards along the railways, while other areas of the country remained undisturbed by such changes, although roads were further improved and canals built, allowing internal trade of perishable items over longer distances.9 By the end of the century the land devoted to orchards seems to have increased, although estimates of the extent vary, and overall the geographical pattern of crops and landscapes was largely settled. Lord Ernle’s influential narrative of nineteenth-century farming divided the era into the period of ‘High Farming’ (1850–73) and a subsequent long, slow depression. Ernle argued that High Farming saw increased use of feed, fertilizer and mechanization and a correlating increase in output, and therefore profits, from farms of all kinds. Depending on the area, there was a shift within mixed farming to concentrate more on raising livestock, rather than growing grain.10 This shift, in the areas of the country where it happened, was in response to higher prices for livestock, fuelled by greater demand from consumers for meat and dairy products. The increase in urban and industrial workers led to a slow but long-term rise in disposable income, and those workers had little time and few facilities to prepare and cook food, which in turn led to higher individual consumption of processed and cooked meat, milk and cheese.11 However, agricultural historians examining this narrative on a more regional level have found that there is evidence that very little farmland changed use, and that Essex, the county most dependent on cereal farming, showed hardly any change in land use during the period.12 The extent of the agricultural revolution is also subject to variation, and the depression was regional, but overall agricultural 7. G. E. Mingay, ‘Introduction’, The Agrarian History of England and Wales Vol VI 1750–1850 ed. by G. E. Mingay and Joan Thirsk (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) p. 16. 8. Mingay notes that the ‘Captain Swing’ riots of 1830 came out of a long series of protests by the poor against low wages, before turning to destruction of farm machinery. G. E. Mingay, A Social History of the English Countryside (London: Routledge, 1990) p. xii. 9. G. E. Mingay ‘Introduction,’ Agrarian History of England and Wales sets out these changes. pp. 5–20. 10. Lord Ernle, English Farming Past and Present (London: Longman, Green, 1936) pp. 349–50. 11. These changes in diet have been documented by, among others, G. E. Fussell, The English Rural Labourer (London: The Batchworth Press, 1949) and P. J. Atkins, ‘The Retail Milk Trade in London 1790–1914’ Economic History Review Vol. 33 No. 4 (November 1980) pp. 522–37. 12. E. H. Hunt and S. J. Pam, ‘Essex Agriculture in the “Golden Age” 1850–73’ Agricultural History Review Vol. 43 No. 2 (1995) pp. 160–77 p. 160.

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profits and output declined slowly until the start of the First World War.13 This was despite the increase in the acreage of land under production, as better management allowed previously unproductive land to be used for crops or grazing. The decrease in profit may be due to the size of individual farms remaining smaller than may be expected from the narrative of revolution and improvement. In his social history study, Mingay stated, Even in the middle nineteenth century, the ‘average’ farm (a statistical rather than a realistic concept) was only a little over 100 acres, and a large proportion of all farms, as much as 30 percent, covering nearly a half of the total acreage, fell into the 100–300 acre range; such farms employed from two to three to between five and a dozen regular hands, depending on the extent of the acreage that was in pasture as against the much greater demands of the area of arable.14

Orchards would have been included within those arable farms, since not even the largest cider orchards would come close to being an entire farm. Large estate holders consolidated their lands, selling off distant farms or parcels of land that were inconvenient to oversee, but few land holders put new land up for sale, leading to very little movement in the land market, where most farmers were tenants rather than landowners. Assessing accurate rental values of farmland is essential in order to calculate any profits that could have been made from orchards, and in determining why farmers would have increased their acreage of fruit. However, Gregory Clark has noted: Determining the rental value of farmland is not easy, since in early years much farmland was not rented for its current rental value. Instead, land was held on a bewildering variety of tenures – customary leases well below market values, leases for lives where the current rent has little relation to current market conditions, renewable leases with low annual rents but large entry fines and so on.15

His detailed analysis used Charity Commission reports and Property Tax listings to calculate the average rent in each area. From this information he argued that agricultural productivity doubled between 1860 and 1869, although the productivity growth was fairly evenly spread from 1500 to 1900, and was much slower in the years 1760–1860 than some accounts of the effects of the Industrial 13. E. J. T. Collins, ‘Did Mid-Victorian Agriculture Fail?’ REFRESH – Recent Findings of Research in Economic and Social History No. 21 (Autumn 1995) pp. 1–8 p. 3. 14. Mingay, A Social History pp. 95–6. 15. Gregory Clark, ‘Land Rental Values and the Agrarian Economy in England and Wales 1500–1914’ European Review of Economic History Vol. 6 No. 3 (December 2002) pp. 281–308 p. 307.

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Revolution may have suggested. Clark concluded that ‘contrary to expectation, the source of productivity growth before 1869 is overwhelmingly growing yields as opposed to growth of labour productivity’. As regards land rents, Clark’s analysis of Charity Commission reports yielded an average farm size of sixty acres. According to his calculations, the average rental and tithe value of agricultural land was £1.2s 6d per acre in England in 1888. Using the comparisons of the value of a pound at that time gives an approximate 2018 income value of £888.80.16 Tenants on short-term leases had to make a profit as quickly as possible, which gave them no incentive to plant orchards, since they were not certain that their lease would be renewed, and feared that the next tenant, or the landlord, would reap the harvest of fruit. From the papers delivered at the 1888 Apple and Pear Conference in London, it is evident that the growers were concerned about the short-hold tenancies, citing examples of lack of compensation for investment in trees.17 William Paul from Waltham Cross in Hertfordshire spoke of the lack of stability of tenancy and the extra investment required for fruit. He explained that after planting fruit trees a good harvest could not be expected for four years, ‘although rent charges on land and expenses in cultivation are going on and have to be met. Then when [the tenant’s] crop brings him a larger return than ordinary produce would bring, the charges on the land are raised!’18 Although such issues must have seemed urgent and prevalent at the time, statistically today there is little evidence that it widely influenced what tenant farmers chose to grow; instead, it seems that there was relatively little mobility of ‘rack rate’ tenants during this period, and farms were often passed down through the family.19 Nevertheless there were periods of agricultural depression (1873–94 has been labelled the Great Depression) during which land prices fell to a third of their previous value in the southeastern counties, making tenancies unstable. Such instability, together with the difficulty of getting, and paying for, extra or suitable land, should have made other crops with a much quicker and rising rate of return seem more appealing than apples, which require long-term investment. Despite these restrictions to growth, most recent rural and horticultural historians have agreed that the acreage of orchards, and their number, increased 16. www.measuringworth.com/calculators/ukcompare explains different ways of arriving at an equivalent figure. The cost of land may also be compared to the cost of property. Renting an average urban house has been estimated at £25 per year in 1888. www. victorianweb.org/economics/wages4.html 17. A. F. Barron and Rev. Wilks, ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference Held in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Chiswick Oct 16–20 1888’ Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society Vol. 10 (1888). The material relating to the ‘reading of papers relating to Hardy Fruit Culture’ (p. 9) was prepared by Rev. Wilks, who has an apple named after him. 18. Ibid. pp. 25–6. 19. David R. Stead, ‘The Mobility of English Tenant Farmers 1700–1850’ Agricultural History Review Vol. 51 No. 2 (2003) pp. 173–89.

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throughout the nineteenth century. Much of this increase was due to the growth of the market garden sector, which as we have already seen was expanding during the late eighteenth century and weathered out the depressions. Some may also have been due to the popularity of cider, although this declined towards the end of the century. Alun Howkins has concluded the growth in orchard acreage was due to the growth of urban consumers demanding fresh fruit and jam, while Mingay noted how they followed the railways ‘eastward from London into north Kent and new orchards were planted in the Vale of Evesham to supply growing markets in the west’.20 Howkins also attributed the growth to better farming methods, so that, ‘the area under orchards increased from 155,000 acres in 1875 to 226,000 in 1898 and continued to rise until the Great War.’21 Howkins obtained his base figures from the agriculture section of Mitchell and Deane’s Abstract of British Historical Statistics (1968) but commented that ‘mapping these figures locally is an endless task’. It is one that is still being attempted by supporters of historic orchards across the country.22 Brian Short used the Report of the Departmental Committee upon the Fruit Industry of Great Britain (1905) to conclude, Already by 1883 the agricultural expert Charles Whitehead could look back on some years of definite progress in fruit farming in southeast England. In 1873 the national orchard area had been 141,000 acres but by 1904 this had risen to 236,000 acres and to 245,657 by 1907. … Holdings of less than one acre were excluded from government figures. Overall, between 1875 and 1895 the recorded area of orchards in England and Wales increased by 40 per cent and by 1900 the value of fruit production exceeded that of wheat.23

20. Mingay and Thirsk, eds., Agrarian History p. 18. 21. Alun Howkins, Reshaping Rural England: A Social History 1850–1925 (London: Routledge, 1991) p. 147. 22. At the time of writing there are many parish and county-level projects using tithe maps to record lost orchards and give status to surviving ones; these are being fed into a survey of traditional orchards held by PTES (People’s Trust for Endangered Species) (http://ptes.org/get-involved/surveys/countryside-2/traditional-orchard – survey/orchardmaps/). This survey uses a mixed methodology including Ordnance Survey maps, aerial photographs and ‘ground truthing’ – sending volunteers out to assess what they can see of the orchard. All of which demonstrates that the search for accuracy in orchard acreage continues, and that any figures from either the nineteenth or the twentieth century must be taken as provisional. 23. Brian Short, Peter May, Gail Vines and Anne-Marie Bur, Apples and Orchards in Sussex (Lewes: Action in Rural Sussex and Brighton Permaculture Trust, 2012) pp. 90–1. Charles Whitehead, referred to in the quote, is the author of (among other works) The Progress of Fruit Farming (London: W. Clowes and Sons, 1885).

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This is a higher rate of growth, from a lower starting figure, than that given by Howkins. It is clear that, despite the work of Short, Howkins and others, finding reliable evidence for the extent of orchards in nineteenth-century England is not straightforward. It requires consideration of both primary and secondary sources, recognizing that many are partial and incomplete. Not all contemporary sources that consider apples as a commodity provide information on acreages. Some sources are relevant for the weight of economic importance they give to apples, and how they measure abundance (or decline) of fruit crops. However, in certain areas of the country, particularly in the West Country and more rural areas of East Anglia, a few relic orchards have survived, while partial orchards linger as hedge boundaries or commemorated in street names across southern England. Since an apple tree lives about ninety years in a garden, and nineteenth-century commercial trees were thought to have a maximum productive life of thirty years, material evidence such as local varieties growing in gardens, or surviving commercially planted orchards, is becoming increasingly sparse, but increasingly relevant.24

Assessing the scale of orchards The major works on landscape history have not seen orchards as worthy of attention, and there has been a similar lack of awareness of the significance of orchards in horticultural and garden histories of both Britain and America.25 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries most, if not all, small orchards were multi-functional, and therefore often misclassified or overlooked from official records. In Britain there are no contemporary estimates of the numbers of small orchards attached to small farms or cottages, since the data collected in the government survey into land use from 1890 only included orchard sites larger than one acre. Many semicommercial orchards were smaller than this, and the data did not include fruit in other locations such as allotments or gardens. In his investigation of orchards Ian Rotherham stated: It was suggested that in around 1873 there were 148,221 acres of orchards in Great Britain and this increased to 250,686 by 1911 […] (of which) there were 170,154 acres of apples. … These figures are huge, but exclude the smaller or 24. Jackson, Biology of Apples, notes that trees on a dwarfing rootstock (including the ‘Paradise’ rootstocks popular in the nineteenth century) are under stress, and are likely to ‘induce precocious and heavy fruiting at the expense of vegetative growth’ (p. 148), which is a further reason for the lack of old commercially grown trees. 25. Roderick Floud, An Economic History of the English Garden (London: Allen Lane, 2019) notes that nearly all garden histories fail to appreciate the role of money in gardening (p. 4). This may be the reason why decorative but productive orchards in domestic settings have been overlooked.

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century more complex occurrence of fruit trees in smaller sites, in hedgerows, and as components of other wooded landscapes.26

Rotherham was referring to figures from the governmental agricultural returns into land use, in the Agricultural Census of Great Britain, first attempted in 1865.27 Coppock, in his paper on using these returns, gave 1892 as the date on which the acre was settled as the minimum size of return. He also noted the difficulty of using what remains of the return data, the Parish summaries, for investigating smaller areas such as orchards, the figures for smaller areas being produced, Not as ends in themselves, but incidentally in the collection of the national totals. In a country such as Britain with its great variety of natural conditions, in which relief, soil and climate show considerable contrasts within a small area, attention must necessarily be focused on [...] the parish and the county, yet figures for these areas are the least reliable and most difficult to interpret.28

Coppock set out the difficulties in differentiating orchards from other market garden activities, since, as Rotherham and others have agreed, and contemporary accounts demonstrate, land was used for more than one purpose. Nevertheless, valuable information and evidence of orchard cultivation at a local level can be extracted from the agricultural returns as well as other primary sources, including tithe maps. After the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836, which commuted tithe payments in kind to a monetary payment known as a ‘corn rent’, tithe Commissioners were sent out to map the boundaries of every district in which tithes were paid separately across England and Wales. These boundaries usually, but not entirely consistently, followed parish borders. Tithe district maps survive for about three-quarters of the parishes surveyed. Again, however, there were differences of interpretation of land use when the maps were drawn up. The surveyors recorded what they found in cultivation on the land at the time, and had a category for ‘orchard’ but some orchards could have been rated (and rented to the tenant farmer) as pasture, or as other crops.29 The Parliamentary Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade (1839), chaired by Mr John Parker, heard evidence on the extent of orchards and their profitability. The Committee had been established to enquire into the state of the fresh fruit 26. Ian B. Rotherham, ‘Orchards and Groves: A Misunderstood and Threatened Resource’ Landscape Archaeology and Ecology Vol. 7 (2008) pp. 129–37 p. 133. 27. B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1972) p. 76. 28. J. T. Coppock, ‘The Statistical Assessment of British Agriculture’ Agricultural History Review Vol. 4 Nos. 1 and 2 (1956) pp. 66–79. 29. H. C. Prince, ‘The Tithe Surveys of the Mid-nineteenth Century’ Agricultural History Review Vol. 7 No. 1 (1959) pp. 14–26 p. 14.

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trade, and to see what the consequences had been for English trade, when the duty payable on imported fruit was reduced in 1832. The Committee heard from ‘numerous and highly respectable petitioners’ that the removal of duty was harming the domestic trade, but nevertheless reported that ‘the natural impediments to the importation of Foreign Apples, in addition to the duty now payable, constitute a sufficient protection to the home growers, regard being had to the adequate supply of the Public, and more especially of the middle and poorer classes of the Metropolis, in an important article of domestic consumption’.30 The evidence concerning free trade and the attitudes towards imported fruit are discussed in detail in Chapter 7. These Select Committee proceedings are a significant primary source for evidence on mid-century apple production, the distribution and sales of apples primarily in London, and on labour relations in commercial orchards. Each witness, however, brought an agenda of their own concerns into the committee chamber. The orchard owners who were interviewed by the committee were recovering from a bad harvest the previous autumn.31 The growers and traders were often anxious to show that they were losing money on apples under both the old regime of duty on foreign fruit and when it had been removed. Whilst acknowledging the particular concerns of the growers, their statements provide in-depth and reliable economic details, while their personal testimony yields an insight into the working practices on fruit farms of various sizes, and on the complexities of the nineteenth-century trade in apples and fruit, both foreign and domestic. The witnesses also demonstrate a high level of knowledge of their own sector of the trade and of how that may relate to others in the business. Evidence given to the Committee demonstrated that the orchard was a variable construct on a farm, due to varying regional agricultural practices, and therefore not easy to survey or record. One landowner from Kent stated to the Committee that the surveyor attending his farm had not been aware of the local practice of growing apple trees among hop vines, and had therefore ignored the orchards. Although tithe surveys were considered accurate enough to be used in legal cases until the 1960s, where orchards are concerned, it is still necessary to use them in conjunction with other evidence, such as aerial photography, archaeology, other maps and textual evidence. The conclusion is that the amount of orchard land was, and is currently, under-recorded. Having established, therefore, that the increase in orchard acreage is more difficult to quantify than it is to see in its results, orchard increase and productivity must be set in context against other significant changes to agricultural practices and the rural landscape.

30. Report from the Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade (London: House of Commons, 12 July 1839) pp. iii–iv. Hereafter referred to as Report on Fresh Fruit. 31. ‘After the deficient crop of 1838 there were imported about 120,000 bushels of Apples into the Port of London, and the average price of Apples in London for the season 1838–9 was 4s. 9d.’ Report on Fresh Fruit p. iv.

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The influence on orchard profitability of changes in labour patterns and status Nineteenth-century changes to the status and working conditions of rural labourers also influenced the number and profitability of orchards. In general orchards were part of mixed farms, which required more labour than either arable or livestock farms. As wages grew and fruit profits were uncertain, orchards did not escape the tensions that arose in the mid-century between rural workers and their employers, however tranquil their depiction in art. This section considers how these wider changes impacted work on the orchard and if labour patterns affected the rate of orchard increase. In part due to the impact of the ‘cultural’ and ‘material’ turns in history, economic historians have moved away from the established narrative of agricultural progress, which held that innovative production methods in the midnineteenth century will lead automatically to increased food production and so to improved conditions for rural workers.32 Instead, a more nuanced approach has developed that takes into account both the shorter-term periodic depressions in the rural economy and the substantial regional differences. There are recent studies of the significance of regional identity and the intermingling of town and country life. Across Britain the environments of the country’s rural workers were extremely varied; only a small proportion lived around the village green. Many farm labourers commuted out from new sources of accommodation around the market towns, while others, especially women, were walking from their village homes into towns to work in service, retail or specialized crafts.33 The connections which labourers had with their rural environment and their fellow workers also altered. The nineteenth century saw the dissolution of traditional rural working practices, including farm hands ‘living in’ with the farmer and his family, sharing social occasions as well as labour. Therefore not only customary working practices but also leisure and community activities and traditions were being less often observed. Fewer farm workers were housed in ‘tied’ cottages, where the accommodation was conditional to the work, and were instead renting rooms and cottages away from the supervision of the farm owner. This led to fewer restrictions but also more uncertainty of tenure. In Captain Swing, their ground-breaking study of the rural protests of the early 1830s, Hobsbawm and Rudé concentrated on this restructuring of the relationship between land, capital and work.34 They argued that rural dissent was an inevitable reaction to the change in this relationship, since rural society ‘was transformed into one in which the cash-nexus prevailed, at least between farmer and labourer. The worker was 32. Tony Bennett and Patrick Joyce, eds., Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (London: Routledge, 2010). 33. Barry Reay, Rural Englands: Labouring Lives in the Nineteenth Century (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004). 34. Eric Hobsbawm and George Rudé, Captain Swing (New York: Pantheon, 1968).

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simultaneously proletarianised – by the loss of his land, by the transformation of his contract’ – and deprived of his ‘modest customary rights’.35 The farm worker, who used to get food from his own land, alongside accommodation and cash (and often beer or cider) from working for the farmer, became a day labourer; ‘a hired man, a rural proletarian’ paid only for the hours worked, rather than throughout the year, and with no plot of his own to feed the family when there was no work.36 The Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade also considered the importance of the apple crops grown in each cottager’s garden. A good crop could allow the cottager to stay in the village and maintain the established patterns of work. The Committee heard that some of the tenant cottagers in Kent relied on the sale of apples from their small garden orchards to pay off the annual rent on their cottage. A fruit grower stated that in his neighbourhood his eight tenant cottages ‘have all gardens attached, and they are under the cultivation of fruit, and they grow a few vegetables between the gooseberries and currants and apples’ and this produce they relied upon for their rent.37 An estate owner said that in a good year one or two trees in a cottager’s garden had been enough to pay the rent on the cottage.38 The crop was more valuable as a commodity traded for cash than as food for the family. Further evidence for the importance of a crop of apples to tenant workers has been uncovered by Mick Reed. In his study of English ‘peasantry’ he provided the examples taken from the papers of Philip Rapson, a small-scale farmer during the 1830s, to demonstrate that barter was used more often than cash. Rapson rented a cottage to William Leggatt, his son-in-law, for years. Reed concludes, As well as his cottage, Leggatt received from Rapson, over a five year period, a pig, cider, apple trees, faggots, peas, 10 bushels of swedes, a bedstead, and loans in cash. In addition, Rapson made 72 gallons of cider from Leggatt’s own apples, for which he made a labour charge of 6s. He also paid Leggatt’s taxes and rates. These items were debited to Leggatt along with his rent. The account was reduced by cash payment occasionally, paid in small amounts, but mainly by casual work or by supplying garden produce …. [including] apples for Rapson’s cider making. These features bring the production and circulation spheres into a tangled unity that can only be separated theoretically.39

The amount of labour, in terms of the number of people and of hours, was reducing across agriculture during the nineteenth century, making bartering arrangements 35. Ibid. p. 15. 36. Ibid. p. 26. 37. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 46. The witness was Israel Harris Lewis from East Farleigh, Kent, who owned about forty acres. 38. Ibid. p. 62. 39. Mick Reed, ‘The Peasantry of Nineteenth-Century England: A Neglected Class?’ History Workshop Vol. 18 No. 1 (Autumn 1984) pp. 53–76 p. 61.

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of the type described above perhaps more complex but less common, as cash was preferred. The least labour was required on the increasingly mechanized wheat farms and on cattle farms (outside the dairy itself). However there was work throughout the year on mixed farms, and especially those with orchards, since the bulk of tree maintenance and pruning takes place after the fruit crop in the dormant winter months, and some in early summer, when other arable crops require less attention. Women and children could also be employed in orchards and in fruit processing, but the extent of their contribution is difficult to quantify, particularly as they were hardly ever depicted as doing so in art or popular images, except in very idealized ways.40 Here again the Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade heard evidence as to the amount of labour used in fruit farming, since the Committee was concerned with the effect that lowering the duty on imported, foreign apples was having on the domestic fruit industry. It was stated by more than one witness that fruit farming used about four people to each person required when growing arable crops, with female workers being required at specific times of year. One witness when asked to calculate ‘the difference of hand labour required in an acre of orchard ground compared with an acre of corn’ arrived at the following calculation: We will take 100 acres of fruit land, if you please, that is the quantity in our  parish; we conceive the expenditure upon that to be about 51. an acre annually, which would be 5001.; that will employ 14 families; and those families therefore,  exclusive of hop – picking, receive 35/. each; the hop-picking they receive besides. 14 families [refers to] Fourteen labourers; a man and his wife and three children. […] The men are employed the whole of the year; the women are employed in cherry-gathering and one little thing and another till the end of October; hop-picking generally comes before the apple-gathering. [The Committee asks] If those fruit plantations can be no longer maintained, in consequence of the apples not paying, what will become of them? [He answers] I do not conceive that we shall grub up all the plantations; I do not want to overstate it, but we suppose that eight of those families will be thrown out of work.41

Keeping labourers in employment may have been a factor in farmers’ decisions to turn previously unproductive corners of the farm over to orchards, if labour was available and otherwise under-occupied on the farm. However at various times, as they stated to the Committee, fruit growers also considered grubbing up their orchards, since the return on a long-term investment was so low, and some had already begun to do so. For example Mr Israel Lewis told the Committee that he was reducing his orchards, although he feared what this would mean for his

40. Barringer, ‘Representations of Labour’ p. 80. 41. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 17.

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tenants who depended on the work. He said, ‘In the year 1837 the price was low; and the duty being taken off in 1838, I considered the price would not answer, and I cut down some of my trees.’ He also remarked that the gentlemen who farmed around him were disheartened and ‘talked of grubbing’.42 Grubbing out trees means removing them from the ground entirely, roots and all. Apple trees do not grow well where an apple tree has been grown previously, so grubbing out an orchard means the ground must be turned over to another crop or to pasture. Once orchards are lost, they are gone for good.

The changing diet of the rural working class The changes both to the farmed landscape and patterns of rural work had a further effect of altering the diet of the rural working class. They became less immediately dependent on the produce from their own cottage plot to eat, but looked to sell it in the market if they could, to enable them to buy food sourced from across the country and from overseas. The shifts in working-class eating patterns had been observed with alarm and interest in previous decades, during both the ‘golden age’ of agriculture and the subsequent depression. As early as 1816 the horticulturalist William Salisbury, who had studied under Mr Curtis, founder of the Chelsea Physic Garden, linked the poor diet of the working classes to ‘the bad state of our apple trees at this time’. He explained: For if we travel in a stage-coach, or mix with company at an inn, or call at a farmhouse, the conversation is found generally to turn to this point … that there is no chance of seeing again a general hit of fruit; or that cider will ever again be made in this country as it used to be; and I have in several instances heard farmers declare, […] that the apple trees in their present state are little more than an incumbrance on the ground as, by preventing a due circulation of atmospheric fluid, they render what would otherwise be good pasturage sour and unfit for the food of cattle.43

Salisbury published these thoughts in a pamphlet sold at the London Botanic Garden in Sloane Street, which he had founded and laid out, and where he gave lectures to gentlemen. The garden contained a conservatory and greenhouses, but not, it seems, an orchard. However, Salisbury had purchased fruit trees from another expert pomologist, Thomas Andrew Knight, and those must have been planted somewhere to observe their progress. Salisbury stated that his observations were the result of tours he took around the ‘cider countries’ in the previous four summers before his book was published. 42. Ibid. p. 46. 43. William Salisbury, Hints to Proprietors of Orchards (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Brown, 1816) p. vii.

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Another concerned commentator and apple expert was Charles Roach Smith, who, after a celebrated career as a numismatist and antiquarian, retired to the countryside and turned his attention to local apple trees. He was in correspondence with the nurseryman Thomas Rivers, who quoted from one of Roach Smith’s letters to him in River’s best-selling book The Miniature Fruit Garden, describing Roach Smith as ‘the archaeologist’.44 In 1863 Roach Smith wrote an open letter, subsequently circulated as a pamphlet, entitled On the Scarcity of Home Grown Fruits in Great Britain, with Remedial Suggestions.45 It is clear that Roach Smith did not consider there had been any progress since Salisbury’s publication fifty years before. In the opening paragraphs he emphasized the importance of the apple to a healthy diet, saying, ‘Nature intended that fruit and vegetables should constitute at least the chief support of man.’46 He then drew on the particularly English heritage and antiquity of the apple, mentioning with regret the decline of the ‘pagan superstition’ of wassailing: That [apples] were cultivated everywhere in the middle ages there can be no doubt. Brand’s ‘Popular Antiquities’ contains an immense number of references to the Apple. The old custom, of ‘wassailing’ the Apple trees at Christmas to make them fruitful (a relic of pagan superstition) was universal throughout England and is not yet quite extinct. But the trees no longer exist to be ‘wassailed.’ Even within our memory, where large orchards were cultivated we see now only a few old, cankered stumps, producing nothing and cumbering the ground. From some cause or other the general cultivation of this valuable fruit has become more and more neglected, while the population has gone on rapidly doubling and re-doubling itself.47

Roach Smith also describes the high costs of apples, having seen that ‘even in Kent, (a reputed fruit county) it is nothing uncommon to find Apples towards the month of January fetching from 2s to 3s a gallon; and I have known them supplied to a nobleman’s family in the spring, at the rate of from 4d to 6d per Apple!’48 Roach Smith asserts that for this reason, apples were not often consumed by rural families, where they lacked apple trees of their own. Among his remedial suggestions, Roach Smith hoped that all landowners should be required to plant trees for their tenants, and that apple trees be planted along railway embankments 44. Thomas Rivers, The Miniature Fruit Garden (London: Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer 1870) p. 58. 45. Charles Roach Smith, ‘On the Scarcity of Home Grown Fruits in Great Britain with Remedial Suggestions’ Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire New Series Vol. III (1862–3). The pamphlet seems to have been widely re-printed; this is the best extant copy I have found. 46. Ibid. p 129. 47. Ibid. p. 131. 48. Ibid.

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‘at a thickness of 250 trees per mile’, so that poor boys who would otherwise be starving in the winter could be encouraged to ‘steal’ these apples.49 His pamphlet ran to several editions and was referred to in other publications, showing that these concerns over the lack of apples in the rural diet were not entirely as eccentric as they may seem.50 In fact this anxiety about the lack of home-grown, English apples to the working-class diet continued throughout the Victorian era, voiced in very similar terms. A letter to the East Anglian Times, from their ‘regular correspondent on orchards’, The Rev. Abbay, shows this clearly: Sir – I trust you will allow me to appeal to the owners of property to assist in increasing the supply of hardy fruit, especially apples, in Central Suffolk. [...] No one can have lived for a few years in this district without coming to the conclusion that it is poorly supplied with the most useful of English fruits – apples – as any part of England, and no one can have tried to grow apples on its stiff, clay soil without being convinced that, with care, it is admirably adapted for producing the finest fruit.51

This letter was published in the paper in January 1892 and is one of a series on the subject. Abbay’s letter is particularly interesting in that he goes on to list carefully the reasons for the lack of apples in the working-class diet, having noticed the change from locally sourced foods to imported oranges, rice and tea. What he calls a ‘feeling of unsettlement’ is his description of the short-term nature of many tenancy agreements, even for smallholdings, that would make the tenants reluctant to plant trees when they may not be there for the harvest, as discussed earlier in this chapter: The cause of the scarcity is that very few apple trees have been planted during the past twenty years, whilst many have died, and others have been destroyed as being worn out and useless. Any feeling of unsettlement in regard to residence makes both farmer and cottager disinclined to plant trees from which there is a large chance that he will reap no benefit, and the work of re-planting, if done, must be done by the owners, or by the friends of the poor. The cheapness of groceries, such as rice and sugar, has made the housewife indifferent about apples; whilst their value for purposes of health, especially in families, has never been brought home to them. One result is that children of the poor rarely taste an apple after October, when the fruit is most beneficial; and oranges, grown 49. Ibid. p. 132. 50. William Henry Smyth, Aedes Hartwellianae, or Notices of the Manor and Mansion of Hartwell (1st edn. 1844, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), refers to Roach Smith’s work. p. 94. 51. Rev. R. Abbay, Our Orchards: Letters to the East Anglian Daily Times 1892–1920 with Notes by The Rev. R. Abbay, Rector of Earl Soham and Hon. Canon of Norwich (Ipswich: The Ancient House Press, 1920).

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century thousands of miles away, are cheaper and more common in the very heart of rural districts than the fruit which is specially suited to our soil and climate.52

Abbay concludes with detailed costings of a project to provide the tenant cottagers with fruit trees. His easy supposition that ‘a Squire has a village of 100 cottages’ demonstrates the persistence and stability of the old landowning structures in East Anglia: May I appeal then to the landlord to supply his tenant with such standard trees as he requires for his orchard; and to the cottage owner to supply bushes or standards, according to the size of his garden, up to six in number. As to the cost to the owner: suppose a Squire has a village of 100 cottages. Every cottage can be supplied with a bush apple, as a trial, for £4 4s. Messrs. Daniels (Norwich) and, I believe, other nurserymen supply such trees at the rate of 25 for a guinea. … The price of standards is 18s a dozen, and such a village might be supplied with standard trees in six years by an outlay of £7 10s a year.53

Two years later, in 1894, another concerned member of the clergy, The Revd E. Bartrum, was writing on The Present Distress, especially in Essex, in a pamphlet sold for threepence, where he suggested some remedies for the hardships caused by ‘the continued and persistent decline in the price of cereals’ due to foreign imports and Government Duties, which he claimed has hit Essex hardest, as cereals were its primary crop.54 Bartrum set out the deficiencies in ‘skills and energy’ that he saw in all branches of agriculture in the county, and as regards fruit culture he quoted ‘a lady’ who pointed out that the orchard is the first thought of the American farmer, and ‘in England it is the Farmer’s last thought’. Bartrum wanted to offer prizes for the best cultivated orchards, and to train teams of men to go about pruning all the local orchards. He noted that he will be told ‘fruit culture does not pay’ and admitted it cannot be relied upon for an income ‘but if a choice of sorts is made with judgement, and if the trees are properly planted and cared for, some good results are sure to follow; “Every little helps”’. However, if the aim were to give the most nourishment to the poor during times of agricultural depression and unemployment, these gentlemen might have urged landlords to provide tenants with chickens, and the railway embankments could have yielded a good harvest of potatoes. There is more behind these anxieties over the loss of orchards and English apple crops than the economic and nutritive value of an apple; the writers are equally concerned with the loss of orchards as part of the traditional landscape, and their loss within the changing agricultural patterns to the rural farm worker, who is changing into 52. Ibid. p. 3. 53. Ibid. p. 4. 54. The Revd E. Bartrum, The Present Distress, Especially in Essex: Some Remedies Suggested (Colchester: Essex County Standard, 1894) p. 12.

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a day labourer, trudging back to a rented room on the edge of town to live off imported rice and tea. There were other centralized attempts to intervene against this trend, although they were sporadic, and lacked the support and funding to make an impact. As more workers migrated to the towns, it was feared that the countryside would be emptied and left to fall back into wilderness. In 1887 the Mansion House Inquiry into the Condition of the Unemployed considered settling urban unemployed families onto vacant farmland, and the Salvation Army also attempted to set up farming camps.55 However, such initiatives failed to take hold, not least because a different set of skills was required from new farmers, as well as for any who attempted to convert from wheat to fruit. Rider Haggard noted in his popular survey of the country, Rural England, that ‘a good fruit farmer in his way is something of an artist, and though these skills were plentiful in specialist districts such as the Vale of Evesham, they were absent in many wheat-growing counties’.56

Increasing orchard yields Investigating the economic and material importance of the nineteenth-century orchard requires some attempt to calculate how profitable and productive English orchards may have been. Since orchards were usually a small area of a farm, it may be thought that they were for local or domestic use only, for either cider or fruit consumption, but there is evidence which indicates that small orchards of approximately an acre could have local commercial viability. Evidence for the quantities of apples produced from a defined acreage can be found in contemporary accounts of the development of market gardens growing crops for London. The reports of the Apple and Pear Conference of 1888 also touch upon expected yields. Nineteenth-century accounts of the production and sale of the apple crop are sparse, particularly at the beginning of the century, but give some useful figures, allowing a tentative calculation as to the extent of the demand for apples, particularly from urban consumers. Again, with the exception of the evidence of the Select Committee on Fresh Fruit, there is little information as to how much of a profit apples could make for the grower, wholesaler and retailer along the chain to the customer. The evidence that is available has been extrapolated from an examination of a wider range of sources, including press reports, advertisements and books of instruction for orchard growers, many written by influential and enthusiastic nursery owners and fruit experts – pomologists – whose high public profile was one of the major influences on the growth of orchards, and therefore perhaps their figures for expected yields and profits could be on the generous or optimistic side. 55. Michael Bunce, The Countryside Ideal: Anglo-American Images of Landscape (London: Routledge, 1994) p. 84. 56. Lilias Rider Haggard, Rural England (London: Longmans, Green, 1905) p. 339.

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The increase in influence of existing, successful growers of fruit trees and rootstocks made fruit growing a more attractive and modern proposition for the small-scale farmer. By the nineteenth century hundreds of nurseries competed for the custom of home gardeners and commercial orchard growers alike, drawing on endorsements from the experts to advertise their trees. The Select Committee on Fresh Fruit heard the evidence of Mr Joseph Kirk, who described himself as a nurseryman ‘all my life’ in Brompton. He may have worked at Brompton Park Nursery, which covered approximately a hundred acres (40.87 ha) in Kensington, London, and had been established in the seventeenth century. Kirk described how he had sold ‘many thousands of trees for the last fifty years’ to orchard growers in Kent, and had been constantly improving the varieties offered, particularly moving to trees grown on a dwarfing rootstock, which would come into a productive fruit crop after fewer years than a large, standard tree.57 Another influential nursery was that run by Thomas Rivers, one of the most prominent figures among nineteenth-century nurseryman and fruit growers. Rivers inherited the family nursery, at Sawbridgeworth in Hertfordshire, from his father where he developed new varieties of plums and apples. The original Thomas Rivers was his grandfather who set up the nursery in 1725. The name of Rivers, therefore, was already influential in the profession and known to amateur gardeners. Rivers wrote a great number of articles and books, setting out many of his ideas on how to maximize an apple crop in The Miniature Fruit Garden. Written in 1852, by 1870 it had run to seventeen editions, each amended and updated. It was aimed at the aspirational or hobby fruit-grower with enough land for a commercial orchard, but it was popular with home gardeners as well, especially because it set out how to grow dwarfed trees, and how to train them in a decorative way against garden walls, as espaliers or cordons, making the most of the space available in a domestic garden. Rivers advocated the use of dwarfing rootstocks and even growing apples and other fruit trees in pots and under glass. Glass became cheaper during the middle decades of the nineteenth century so that a glasshouse fell within the means of a well-off suburban gardener, rather than something from which only the largest gardens could benefit. Rivers himself was constantly striving to improve not only apples, but the gardener’s knowledge about growing fruit on any scale. Rivers described market gardeners as ‘very deficient in their knowledge of fruit tree culture’, and their usual practice as planting standard or half standard trees in rows, ‘some twenty or thirty feet apart’.58 By a standard tree, Rivers was referring to an apple that is not grown on a dwarfing rootstock, so will reach its full height of, depending on the variety, fifteen to thirty feet (4–9 metres) if not pruned. A half standard tree would now be called a ‘semi dwarfing tree’ and will reach a height 57. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 39. Kirk may, however, since he said he lived ‘near’ to Brompton, have been one of the many small independent nursery growers who benefitted from their famous neighbour. 58. Rivers, Miniature Fruit p. 82.

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of eight to twelve feet (2.4–4 metres). His estimate of the spacing used by market gardeners was extremely generous, but he wished to emphasize that trees could, and should, be grown more profitably when planted as much as ten times closer. Many market gardeners sought to maximize productivity by intercropping fruit, perhaps gooseberry or currant bushes, but also strawberries or cherries, or even flowers or potatoes. Rivers wrote against this practice, which he described as the usual practice in Kent, and instead advocated his experimental acre containing nothing but Cox’s Orange Pippin apple trees: These trees in the season of 1864, the third of their growth in their present quarters, and the fourth of their age, gave an average of a quarter of a peck from each tree, so that we might have from 4840 trees, growing on one acre of ground, 302 bushels of fine apples worth 5s. per bushel, or £75. In 1866, the trees then averaging half-a-peck each, would double this sum, and make an acre of apple trees a very agreeable and eligible investment.59

The first time Rivers mentions this acre, he states it has been planted with one hundred trees. How he has now arrived at 4,840 is not entirely clear, but his point is that these trees are extremely dwarfed, and planted ‘only four foot apart’. In fact the total of 4,840 trees can be arrived at by assuming the trees are planted even closer together, at one tree per square yard (or three feet or just under a metre apart). Rivers answers the readers’ question of the cost of buying nearly five thousand young trees by replying that ‘stocks costing only a small sum per thousand may be planted and grafted where the trees are to grow permanently, and, secondly, that a large demand which my method of planting will create, will also create a cheap supply’. The large demand would of course benefit nurseries like his own. Rivers’ work reflects his confidence that there were sufficient fruit nurseries nationally with enough supplies of young, grafted trees, which could, at least in theory, fulfil such orders. Rivers goes on to describe how to prepare an acre of ground for a market garden apple orchard, and gives the costs of the enterprise: The preparation of an acre of ground should be as follows: – It should, previous to planting, be forked over to the depth of twenty inches [...] this ought to cost £6 13s. 4d., The annual expenses are, forking the surface in spring, £1 6s. 5d., and hoeing the ground, say four times during the summer, £1 4s. I give the amounts paid here for such work. Then comes the summer pinching of the shoots by a light-fingered active youth, and this may, at a guess, be put down at £1, making the aggregate annual expenses, £3 10s. 8d., or, say, £4 per acre. The large return will amply afford this outlay, even adding, as we ought to do, the interest on capital, and rent.60 59. Ibid. p. 84. 60. Ibid. p. 85.

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To achieve the £75 profit Rivers mentioned earlier this orchard must become highly productive quickly, ideally reaching a full crop in its third year, which is achievable on a dwarfing rootstock in a highly well-tended orchard, but not likely. Rivers contrasts his orchard again with ‘the usual old-fashioned mode’ where large apple trees ‘are planted in orchards at twenty feet apart, or 108 trees to the acre; if the soil be good and the trees properly planted, and the planter a healthy middle-aged man, he may hope at the end of his threescore and ten, to see his trees commencing to bear.’ Here Rivers, to strengthen the arguments for his close cultivation method, is exaggerating the length of time a large apple tree takes to fruit, since it is usually no more than five, even on a non-dwarfing rootstock. The tree will fruit while it is still growing. The work of Rivers and other nurserymen alerted farmers to the varieties that were available and made a profit seem possible, albeit after a high initial outlay and a delay of a few years before a crop could be taken to market. However those growers who had been in the business for many years were not at all optimistic, as this eloquent statement to the Select Committee on Fresh Fruit made clear: In my humble opinion there is not a single article of consumption, either in agriculture or horticulture, that requires so much outlay of capital, time, and trouble, as apples, pears, and cherries, to bring to perfection. […] The horticulturist, planting an orchard, is obliged to purchase his trees at a very considerable expense, which are liable to numerous casualties; and after paying the greatest attention to them, at an expense of at least 50 L [£] per acre, he cannot get them into profitable bearing in less than from 14 to 20 years, and a very large portion of his produce he is obliged to put into storehouses to supply the market during the winter and spring months; and on the same produce there is merely a nominal duty.61

The profitability of orchards was also discussed by the Horticultural Society at the Apple and Pear Conference of 1888. Attendees to the conference addressed the ongoing issue of how to make a living from selling apples. Both large commercial growers and those with small orchards shared their outlay and expected profits in order to discuss how fruit production could be increased. The conference proceedings provide a good counterpoint to the optimism of Rivers, while also demonstrating the open and collaborative nature of many of those involved in apple production, who were willing to share what may now be termed ‘best practice’ in apple cultivation. The records of this conference show how the trend for intensive growing of apple trees had been taken up by experienced apple growers, such as Mr William Paul, FRHS, who shared his experience of his harvest from two hundred Ecklinville apple trees, planted on a mere quarter of an acre four years earlier:62 61. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 104. 62. The Ecklinville apple is a large culinary variety, still in garden cultivation, that was bred in Northern Ireland, and esteemed by the Victorians for use in apple sauce. See www. fruitid.com.

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[The trees] grew well. The third year they produced five bushels, the fourth year seventeen bushels, which sold on the ground at 5s. a bushel. They were planted about 6 ft. by 6 ft., but strong growers might be planted 9 ft. by 9 ft., and small fruits or vegetables might be grown between the trees for a few years. I estimate the expenses of planting and cultivating [...] as follows:– Cost of trees, 200 at 50s. per 100 £5 Planting and digging 15s Four years’ cultivation, at 15s. per year Rent, rates, &c, at 10s. per year [total costs] £10 15s Returns in 1888: Twenty-two Bushels of Apples sold on the ground, at 5s. per bushel £5 10. Next year I expect to get the outlay back, and look to the future for profits.63 Even intensively grown, therefore, this apple orchard cannot yield a profit within six years, although this orchard is only a quarter of an acre of a larger farm, thus mitigating some of the risk. George Bunyard of Maidstone, Kent, delivered a paper on ‘Apples for Profit’ to the 1888 Conference. Bunyard’s eponymous nursery was one of the largest commercial nurseries of fruit trees and rootstocks, and he also published popular books on fruit growing. His method of getting profit out of an orchard was to interplant the large standard trees with the newer, fashionable dwarf trees, as Rivers recommended, but Bunyard also incorporated the fashionable commercial idea of underplanting with short-lived crops, which Rivers thought took all the goodness from the soil. Bunyard recommended laying his orchard out in a rather complex sequence of standard trees, with dwarf trees in the spaces between them, until the larger trees shade the light out, and with ‘potatoes, or lily of the valley, or daffodils’ underneath them. He was confident that ‘in three or four years the standards would commence to fruit, and a much larger return would annually be made, and if properly managed, at the end of fourteen years the crop would buy the fee simple of the land outright’.64 This demonstrates that an apple orchard, while it could be profitable if skilfully worked, was a long-term investment. This was another reason why apple orchards were kept small, to minimize the outlay and the labour costs. As another nurseryman wrote when sending in his apples to be exhibited at the conference, There are only two market orchards exceeding two acres, our own and one of twenty acres on the Roupell estate, but considerable quantities of fruit are sent to market from cottage gardens, and trees planted in accommodation paddocks on grass.65 63. William Paul, ‘Fruit Culture for Profit in the Open Air in England’ in A. F. Barron and Rev. Wilks ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference Held in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Chiswick October 16–20 1888’ Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society Vol. 10 (1888). 64. George Bunyard, ‘Apples for Profit’ in ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference’. 65. Messrs Paul and Son, Nurserymen, Cheshunt. ‘Exhibitors’ Notes’ in ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference’.

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Almost fifty years earlier the Select Committee on Fruit of 1839 had heard that cottagers relied on the sale of apples to pay their rent, sending fruit to the major markets rather than just selling it locally from the doorstep. It would appear that despite the improvements made in large commercial orchards, the majority of the crop was grown on a small scale, and the profits, when they could be made, were essential to the immediate economy around the orchard as well as to the wider network of salespeople. All of the examples given above, from River’s more aspirational orchards to Bunyard’s well-practised methods, show that even without the benefits of mechanization that served other crops, a nineteenth-century commercial orchard would have been a highly productive regulated space, where something could have been brought to market every year, and often in every season. Set against that, the sources also demonstrate how long a fruit grower would have expected to wait to recoup their outlay and turn a profit. The growth in orchard acreage throughout the nineteenth century, therefore, cannot be attributed to farmers wanting to turn a quicker profit or needing a cash crop to offset the rise in grain prices. The orchards of the east of England (in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk) can be used as an example that demonstrates the complexity of orchard management and the potential for profit. Information about the extent of fruit growing in the east of England has been studied by Patsy Dallas, by this author and by other local groups now committed to preserving older varieties of fruit tree. The east of England is not an area that has retained the sense of being orchard country, partly because so many orchards were grubbed up at the turn of the twentieth century and the land converted to wheat or sugar beet production, but throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries East Anglian orchards were producing fruit for London as well as for their local towns and markets, by successfully adapting what they grew and how they grew it to suit local conditions. In the ‘High Farming’ era in particular there were extensive orchards. The whole of the area around Wisbech, in the Cambridgeshire Fens, was producing far more apples than could have been consumed locally. Patsy Dallas noted how established the orchards were: The concentration of large areas of fruit trees around Wisbech in the 1880s can, in part, be attributed to the availability of rail transport from the town to major markets [...] However, tithe apportionments show that this area was already growing extensive areas of fruit in the 1840s. For example at Walsoken the apportionment of 1843 recorded 38 hectares of orchard [...] The commissioners described some of the pieces as orchard and pasture and some as orchard and arable whilst others were just orchard. Even allowing for the intermingling of arable with fruit trees there was still a substantial fruit growing industry in West Norfolk in the 1840s. Prior to the advent of rail transport it is likely that produce was shipped along the inland waterways … or around the coast.66 66. Patsy Dallas, Orchards in the Norfolk Landscape: Historic Evidence of Their Management, Contents and Distribution (Norwich: University of East Anglia, 2010) p. 35.

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A ‘fruit note’ in the Gardeners’ Chronicle from August 1881 provides an indication of the different varieties of apple, for both cooking and eating, that were grown in the east of England at the time. This article also made clear that the apples were grown for the commercial market, in ‘extensive’ orchards, rather than local consumption, and that this was an improving trade. The apples listed are all dessert or cooking apples, not cider varieties: In that district of the country stretching from Northampton away to the east coast, where Apples are largely grown for market purposes, a variety named Perkins’ Seedling finds great favour. It is one of the earliest in cultivation, is in the style of White Juneating, but flatter, and a very free bearer. Other varieties that have already, and are still being planted largely, are the Red and White Juneating, Keswick Codlin, Lord Suffield, Lord Grosvenor, or Jolly Beggar, of the type of Lord Suffield, but a more robust grower and a very free bearer – a firstrate early cooking Apple, and a variety that is being very largely planted in the more extensive market gardens; New Hawthornden, Court pendu-plat, a dessert Apple highly esteemed in this part of the country; Cellini Pippin, Blenheim Orange, Normanton Wonder, King of the Pippins, and Wyken Pippin. Those who propagate Apples largely for market planting are found asserting that the planting of Apple trees in the particular district named is being so extensively followed that the supply fails to keep pace with the demand; it would, therefore, seem that English grown Apples will largely increase during the coming years.67

Joan Thirsk has commented that the Victorian reliance on a wide range of varieties was partly to get around the problems of long-term storage, as different varieties of apple ripen in different months, and some store longer than others.68 In the varieties given above, those described as ‘early’ will be in the market as soon as mid-July. This gives the regional, commercial growers an advantage in the market, albeit one that was soon cancelled with the arrival of imported apples, despite the optimism of the writer quoted above. With the twentieth-century introduction of refrigerated transport, robustness in handling and resistance to spoiling from cold became more important characteristics than the taste or appearance of different varieties. Thirsk also notes that market gardening at the end of the nineteenth century benefitted from a convergence of developments in transportation, refrigeration and food preservation, and all these factors benefitted the apple, while also providing challenges to its share of the fruit market. From the 1890s in the east of England, the Bramley became the main apple variety grown, with the orchards under-cropped with gooseberries to make the most of the space.69

67. ‘Fruit Note: Apples for Market’ Gardeners’ Chronicle, 13 August 1881. 68. Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) p. 175. 69. Laura Mason and Catherine Brown, From Norfolk Knobs to Fidget Pie: Traditional Foods from the Midlands and East Anglia (London: Harper Press, 2010) p. 2.

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The apples were first taken to London by boat, across the Broads or down The Wash and then along the coast, but later Wisbech’s railway (partially a tramway, in fact) seemed also to have been built on the promise of goods trading with London and the North, rather than on passenger fares or mail.70 The example of the East of England demonstrates that profitable orchards were to be found across the country, adapting to local conditions and demand even during the times when agricultural output in cattle or wheat had declined.

70. Still in operation in the 1960s, the Wisbech ‘Growers’ Special’ was an important means of getting goods to the mainline depots. http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/139644.

Chapter 4 T H E S C I E N T I F IC A P P L E

This chapter introduces the particular areas in which science, technology and innovation have influenced the material orchard. I have selected examples from the eighteenth to the twenty-first century, in order to show how apple research has been given serious consideration since the first commercial orchards were established, and is still driving crop selection and yields today. Where appropriate I have also engaged with the cultural depictions of the apple and the orchard, in particular to demonstrate how representations of orchard work in art and culture provide a very limited and unrealistic idea of the nature of orchard work and the challenges of apple growing. Anyone setting out to establish an orchard today will find much in common with the challenges faced by orchardists of three hundred, or more, years ago. The trees must be a suitable size and shape; they must be kept sheltered from wind, frost and hail, and free from pests and diseases. When the fruit is harvested, it must be done carefully to minimize damage, and the fruit must be stored to prolong its qualities out of season. The ways in which orchardists both past and present use the latest technological and scientific advances to tackle these issues demonstrate that the apple has for centuries been a highly cultivated crop, reliant on the advances of science for a good financial return. Despite the orchardists’ realism and commercial drive, the apple retained its cultural associations with getting fruit in an easy, traditional, family-farm way that requires little labour or economic investment. Developments in apple breeding and productivity have been achieved through the combination of individual, specific research in orchards and the wider improvements in literacy, transportation and communication. These societal changes allowed the apple to maintain its importance as an economic crop and to be traded ever further from its orchards. They also facilitated the dissemination of research, results and apple material across the country and around the world.

Grafted consistency against seedling vigour The most significant innovation in apple growing was the development of reliable rootstocks; the understanding of rootstock grafting has been described as one of the most significant developments in pomology over the last thousand

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years.1 As discussed earlier in this book, apples do not grow true from seed; they also do not  root easily from cuttings. Therefore varieties can only be increased by grafting a scion (a slip of wood or a bud) of the known variety onto the rootstock. The rootstock is a compatible plant, usually another apple, with qualities that will strengthen the variety. The rootstock usually influences the vigour and height of the tree. This was learned through direct observation of  ‘natural’ grafting, which can happen where the branches of adjacent trees rest and rub against each other, or have been pressed together when laying a hedge or making a structure. Through centuries of careful observation and experimentation, grafts became more successful and reliable as understanding increased of the familial bonds between species. By the medieval period works on horticulture included information on grafting. Some of these merely repeated the beliefs and practices of early authors such as Pliny the Elder, so that the limits of graft compatibility and outcomes were stretched into the fanciful, such as a white rose scion grafted onto a red rose rootstock would produce red- and whitestriped flowers. However, some writers recorded their personal observations and what had worked in their own experiments, and the compatibility of different species became better understood in later eras. Robert Sharrock, writing in the 1650s, refuted the earlier assertions that ‘a white rose grafted upon a red, will bring the Rosa Mundi or a flower both red and white. This I have often prov’d false by mine own trial’.2 However, even with twenty-first-century science, what precisely happens when a scion meets a rootstock is not known. Ken Mudge and his colleagues explain that the extent of the genetic bond between the two tissues is still being evaluated: From a genetic perspective, grafting involves the creation of a compound genetic system by uniting two (or more) distinct genotypes, each of which maintains its own genetic identity throughout the life of the grafted plant. For example, a scion of a red-flowering rose grafted on a white rose stock will continue to produce red roses rather than pink (hybrid) roses. However, controversial claims of graft ‘hybridization’ have persisted, and new information on gene silencing caused by the transmission of RNA across the graft union suggests that grafting could have genetic consequences.3

The most notable, or perhaps the most apple-obsessed, of the British grafting experimenters at the end of the eighteenth century was Thomas Andrew Knight, a Herefordshire squire and acclaimed fruit breeder.4 He became a founder member 1. Ken Mudge, Jules Janick, Steven Scofield and Eliezer E. Goldschmidt, ‘A History of Grafting’ Horticultural Reviews Vol. 35 (2009) pp. 437–93. 2. Ibid. p. 465. 3. Ibid. p. 440. 4. Joan Morgan, ‘Orchard Archives: The National Fruit Collection’ in Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library: Studies in the History of British Fruit Part 2 ed. by Brent Elliot Vol. 7 (London: Royal Horticultural Society, 2012) p. 5.

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of the Horticultural Society of London, and then its president from 1811 every year until his death in 1838. He gave the impetus to much of the society’s research into apples, having published his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and the Pear in 1797. He made his name two years earlier with grafting, the subject of his first paper to the Royal Society, written in the form of a letter to Sir Joseph Banks. Knight’s letter was a demonstration of his detailed observations and careful experiments. He found that old varieties of apple, even when grafted on to new and vigorous rootstocks, failed to thrive, or did not produce blossom. He attributed this to the natural life span of the old varieties which carried diseases within them and recommended that new varieties be planted instead. To a certain extent he was right, but the persistence of disease on newly grafted trees was probably due not to the effects of grafting, but to the transfer of spores and microbes on the tools used. (See the section on pests and diseases, below.) Knight ended his paper by stating his conviction that, Immense advantages would arise from the cultivation of the pear and apple in other counties, and that the ill success which has attended any efforts to propagate them, has arisen from the use of worn out and diseased kinds. Their cultivation is ill understood in this country, and worse practised; yet an acre of ground, fully planted, frequently affords an average produce of more than five hundred gallons of liquor[cider], with a tolerably good crop of grass; and I have not the least doubt but that there are large quantities of ground in almost every county in England capable of affording an equal produce.5

Knight recognized the need for ‘improvements’ within fruit growing, and the benefits of starting with new varieties. He also showed the economic potential of even a small orchard, providing cider to sell as well as grass for grazing or to cut for hay. Cider orchards were becoming rural businesses. In his experiments, Knight was attempting to see if young scion wood acquires the characteristics of the age of the rootstock, that is, if new scions on old rootstocks will come into fruit quickly. He had no success, because he was thinking the wrong way round. It is now recognized that mature scions grafted onto young rootstock retain their maturity and so come into fruit much sooner than seedling trees, and this is one reason why they became so popular with later fruit growers. The other control that the rootstock brings is the eventual height of the tree. The search for a vigorous, yet ‘dwarfing’ rootstock may have begun in the travelling court of Alexander the Great, or possibly with the Roman orchardists, and continued wherever apples were grown across Europe. These dwarfed trees were desirable for several reasons. Agnes Philpot visualizes the scene in detail: 5. Thomas Andrew Knight, ‘Observations on the Grafting of Trees in a Letter from Thomas Andrew Knight Esq. to Joseph Banks Bart. PRS’ Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Vol. 85 (1795).

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Apples and Orchards since the Eighteenth Century The early French Huguenot apple growers found that by grafting an apple onto a wild European crab apple or possibly French Paradise rootstock, they could produce a fully productive apple tree less than 20 feet in height. Grafting the apple scion onto a seedling rootstock or growing from seed, the tree, if unpruned, typically grew to 40 feet, the height of a fourstory building. Huge apple trees tend to develop a dense canopy whereby only the fruit at the upper and outer portions of the canopy is good; only puny fruit of poor quality and little value is produced in the light-deprived middle and bottom of the tree. Not only do large apple trees produce a limited amount of useable fruit; imagine, if you will, apple pickers having a buzz from their daily apple cider ration and climbing 40-foot ladders to pick the fruit. It must have been a sight to behold, as well as occasionally leaving the already tight labor force in even shorter supply. On the other hand fruit from an 18-foot, fully productive apple tree is easily harvested. The tree is also easier to prune, opening it to sunlight so that the resulting fruit production is more uniform throughout the tree. The apple’s green skin is capable of photosynthesis, so sunlight has a direct effect on the fruit’s sugar content. Apples develop sugars within the fruit itself as well as receiving them from the tree. By grafting his trees, the Huguenot farmer could grow the same type of apple in his orchard giving him the advantage of harvesting and processing the fruit at one time, an additional labor efficiency.6

The Paradise rootstock, mentioned here, was first referenced in the late fifteenth century.7 It dwarfed the trees while retaining the health of the variety, and seems to have been both more dwarfing, and more reliable, than using seedling crab apple rootstocks. There has been a great deal of fascinating debate, during the nineteenth century and to the present day, as to the origin and exact nature of this rootstock, but my focus here is what can be learned about this rootstock as both a technology and a commodity. Early recommendations of apples on Paradise stock emphasized its utility, and that it had been tried and tested. Richard Bradley wrote in 1718: For Dwarf-Apples, I believe every one will allow that those grafted upon Paradise Stocks are the best, I mean for their keeping in a small compass and bearing abundance of Fruit with very little pruning: I have known them frequently cultivated in Pots, sometimes so full of Fruit, that the Apples themselves have weighed more than the Tree and the Pot they grew in. At great Entertainment,

6. Philpot, ‘The Story of the Apple’ pp. 7–11 p. 11. 7. Harold Bradford Tukey notes the ‘first mention of a Paradise apple in horticultural literature is by Champier in 1472, speaking of apples in Normandy’ in Dwarfed Fruit Trees for Orchard, Garden and Home (New York: Macmillan, 1964) p. 125. See also R. G. Hatton, ‘Paradise Apple Stocks: Being the First Report of the Work in Progress at the Wye College Fruit Experiment Station, East Malling’ Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society of London New Series Vol. 42 (1916–17) pp. 361–99 and D. C. Ferree and I. J. Warrington, eds., Apples: Botany, Production and Uses (Wallingford: CABI Publishing, 2003).

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how delightful would it be to set several sorts of Apples, growing, upon the Table! It would be a kind of movable Orchard, which could seldom fail to bear good Fruit … [Paradise Stocks] strike root and grow freely, so as to be fit to graft on in two or three Years: they are brought originally from France, but now they are to be met with in almost every Nursery about London.8

This indicates that eighteenth-century plant nurseries were selling rootstocks separately, as well as using them for grafting trees to order, as in this advertisement in a regional paper from 1747: JOHN BRICE, Gardener and Nursery-Man, Lives in the Lord Archbishop’s Palace near Christ-Church Canterbury …. Dwarfs; Apple grafted on the Dutch Paradice-Stocks of many Kinds, which are by all Judges allow’d the Best Kind of Stocks that any Gentleman in this Kingdom can desire to plant with, not only for Bearing but for the Beauty of so small a Tree of Growth as they are, whole Boughs but very little or not at all (by their Shadowing) spoil the Growth of any Thing nigh them, which other Trees are a great Enemy to.9

However, Knight cautioned against ignorant nurserymen who do not know what they are selling, and although he was referring to promises of trees that are disease-resistant, the same practices must have taken place when describing rootstocks. In the nineteenth century the name ‘Paradise’ rootstock was used to describe almost every type of potentially dwarfing rootstock, and the tree buyer had no guarantee as to what they would get. In 1870 Rivers noticed fourteen different types of rootstock being marketed as ‘Paradise’, a situation that was not good for commercial orchard growers, or for the reputation of nurseries.10 At the end of the nineteenth century research efforts began across Europe to find reliable rootstocks that could themselves be increased by clonal propagation, rather than from seed. Early twentieth-century fruit growing techniques were assessed and improved at the experimental farms of the Duke of Bedford’s Farm at Woburn, at Wye College, which was based at the East Malling Research Station in Kent, and at the National Fruit and Cider Institute at Long Ashton in Devon.11 By the 1920s East Malling had assembled a collection of seventy-one ‘Paradise’ rootstocks from thirty-five sources, including France, Germany and the Netherlands. From trials on these samples came the apple rootstocks used today in commercial orchards and by gardeners – the M (for Malling) series rootstocks. Using these it is possible 8. Richard Bradley Frs, New Improvements of Planting and Gardening Both Philosophical and Practical (2nd edn. London: W. Mears, 1718) p. 26. 9. Kentish Weekly Post, 28 February 1747. 10. Mudge, ‘A History of Grafting’ p. 476. 11. F. R. Tubbs, ‘East Malling Research Station’ Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, Series B, Biological Sciences Vol. 139 No. 894 (31 December 1951) pp. 1–18.

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to grow a tree of any size from fifteen to twenty-five feet (4.5–7.6 metres) tall (M111) down to no more than six feet (1.8 metres) on the most dwarfing M27 rootstock. At this end of the scale comes the ‘Ballerina’ or columnar apple tree, popular in small gardens. This was developed at East Malling in the 1970s, from a columnar-shaped mutation on an old McIntosh tree, crossed with a Cox’s Orange Pippin. These trees produce fruit from spurs on the main trunk, rather than from branches. They come into fruit early, take up little space and are best grown in pots, but they are short-lived, prone to disease and require a lot of watering. The M series of rootstocks allowed commercial growers to achieve a very uniform orchard that was easy to maintain with machinery. Rootstock development has continued into the twenty-first century, attempting to breed disease resistance into the stocks, which may then be transferred to the scions. As apples are a valuable global commodity, and as agricultural land becomes a scarce resource, the focus of the research is on apple trees that can be productive in particular conditions, such as heat, altitude or high salt levels.12 Eighteenth-century horticulturalists often seem to have carried out experiments in their orchards in the spirit of scientific enquiry and improvement which was one of the defining characteristics of the age. However, there was an ideological dimension to grafted trees, which later became part of the debate and anxiety around hybrids and the creation of new plants that extended to Darwin and beyond. Ralph Austen in 1657 had compared his spiritual observations on orchards to scion wood cuttings that readers could graft into their hearts and minds, but some saw the process of grafting as unnatural and against the wishes of God.13 This antipathy to grafting has formed part of the myth of John Chapman, known as Johnny Appleseed, who planted seedling apple trees across the MidWest of America at the end of the eighteenth century. Johnny Appleseed has become part of American folklore and legend, and, as this favourable 1945 essay described him, as ‘a symbol of American democracy. […] His apple trees were the token of all the unselfish, constructive forces that work in the creation of the true commonwealth’.14 Part of the legend was that he believed grafted trees to be against the principles of the Christian theologian Swedenborg, whose teachings Chapman followed, and whose works he distributed wherever possible. However, his recent biographer, William Kerrigan, disputes this, pointing out that most New England farmers chose to raise seedling trees, not through lack of knowledge, but for practical reasons. Grafted stocks, brought from England, were expensive and prone to failure, while making new grafts was time consuming. Mudge notes: 12. Rong Yin, Tuanhui Bai, Fengwang Ma, Xinjuan Wang, Yonghong Li and Zhiyong Yue, ‘Physiological Responses and Relative Tolerance by Chinese Apple Rootstocks to NaCI Stress’ Scientia Horticulturae Vol. 126 No. 2 (2010) pp. 247–52. 13. Austen, The Spiritual Use of an Orchard or Garden of Fruit Trees p. xvi. 14. Robert Price, ‘Johnny Appleseed in American Folklore and Literature’ in Johnny Appleseed: A Voice in the Wilderness (Paterson: The Swedenborg Press, 1945) p. 4.

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The prevailing view was that grafting of fruit trees was time consuming, difficult, and unnecessary given that the primary goal was to produce fruit for hog feed or cider. The third President of the United States, Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), was an avid fruit tree gardener (170 cultivars of fruit trees). At his home at Monticello, he preferred to grow most fruit trees from seed because he believed they were healthier than grafted trees, but he did have his gardener graft named cultivars of apples or bud cherries in order to preserve their dessert qualities.15

Kerrigan agrees: Planting from seed not only preserved scarce capital and labor, but it also enabled farmers to ‘laboratory test’ their trees. Those seedlings that proved their climate hardiness in the farmer’s nursery they transplanted to the orchard, planted in a dooryard or scattered about meadows, while those that withered they discarded. [They] preferred climate hardiness over fruit quality or yield, something traditional farmers in pre-modern societies where food security was paramount have always favored.16

As the apples were used to make rough cider or for livestock feed it was not so important if they were, as Henry Thoreau described them in Wild Apples, ‘sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and make a jay scream’.17 Johnny Appleseed, or rather Chapman the nurseryman, continued to supply the pioneers with apple seeds, seedling trees and improving literature, until his death in the mid-1840s. His story was not, however, widely known when, two decades later, Thoreau noted that ‘our Western emigrant is still marching steadily toward the setting sun with the seeds of the apple in his pocket, or perhaps a few young trees strapped to his load. At least a million apple-trees are thus set farther westward than any cultivated ones grew last year’.18 In order for these emigrants to meet the settlement rules and acquire ownership of land, they had to build a cabin and improve the land within a short period of time, determined by the state. Kerrigan explains the Settlement Land Act of 1792 for northwestern Pennsylvania as being, As confusing a piece of legislation as any ever created by democratic institutions. […] Beyond the construction of a log home, evidence of improvement might include cleared forest, ploughed and planted ground, gardens cordoned off by split rail fences, and the establishment of orchards. John Chapman’s seedling

15. Mudge, ‘A History of Grafting’ p. 468. 16. William Kerrigan, Johnny Appleseed and the American Orchard: A Cultural History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012) p. 11. 17. Henry David Thoreau, ‘Wild Apples’ Originally published in The Atlantic Monthly, November 1862. Reprint (Bedford: Applewood Books, n.d.) p. 18. 18. Ibid. p. 5.

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Seedling apple trees were cheap, tough and could transform the landscape. If Chapman saw no practical benefit in grafted varieties, Thoreau saw the rejection of them as necessary to the development of American culture. He felt that in losing traces of the wild apple and the seedling orchard there was a danger of diminishment and detachment from nature.20 Thoreau also declared he had ‘no faith in the selected lists of pomological gentlemen. Their “Favourites” and “None-Suches” and “Seek-no-farthers,” […] commonly turn out very tame and forgettable’.21 In England, however, two ‘pomological gentlemen’ were in correspondence over the vigour of seedlings. Nursery owner Thomas Rivers, writing to Charles Darwin in 1863, observed the forces of seedling selection at work in his own orchards, in a patch of seedling trees. Presumably Rivers was using these seedlings for rootstocks or to grow into potential new varieties: You should live near a large nursery & your mind would find abundance of food. When I first read the ‘Origin’ I was amused at what I had observed with regard to ‘selection’. A patch of seedling trees if not transplanted seems to illustrate this (but perhaps I am taking a wrong view) the first year they are all equal in two or three years several will have pushed up—not confined to the outside of the patch which is easily accounted for by their finding more food— at the end of five or six years one or two or three will have smothered nearly all their brethren & then one alone will often be left.22

Rivers’s seedlings demonstrated survival of the fittest, in an orchard bed.

Apple breeding and DNA Apple pips do not produce fruit that is identical to the parent plant, or to the pollen-donating plant. Breeding a new variety, therefore, is still a matter of trial and error. In order to breed an apple, it is necessary to take the pollen from one known variety and use it to fertilize the flower from another. The mechanisms of pollination were studied in great detail towards the end of the nineteenth century; Charles Darwin wrote about pollination biology to support his theory of evolution

19. Kerrigan, Johnny Appleseed pp. 50–1. 20. Steven Fink, ‘The Language of Prophecy: Thoreau’s “Wild Apples”’ The New England Quarterly Vol. 59 No. 2 (June 1986) pp. 212–30. 21. Thoreau, ‘Wild Apples’ p. 17. 22. Darwin Correspondence Project, letter DCP-LETT-3965. www.darwinproject.ac.uk.

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in The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom in 1876.23 Darwin quotes Knight, who, says Darwin, wrote in 1799 of ‘the various means by which pollen is transported from flower to flower, as far as was then imperfectly known’.24 Once the apple fruits, of course, you still do not have the variety, you just have an apple. Planting the seeds of that apple, waiting for them to grow into trees and fruit, then testing all the different fruits are a process that takes time and investment, and even today cannot be sped up. It is no wonder that so many apple varieties were the result of chance. The apple’s DNA, its whole genome sequence (WGS), was published in 2010 and an improved WGS followed in 2017, known as WGS GDDH13 v1.1.25 This work was the result of collaboration between scientists from fourteen institutions in five countries, demonstrating the global significance of the apple. The variety chosen for the first sequence was Golden Delicious, because it had been in cultivation for a long time and was still grown commercially, and also because it was believed to be the parent of many other commercially viable varieties. As well as the commercial implications for manipulating the apple genome, there is another bonus. The information can be used to assist in clearing up the identity of many historical varieties. A study of the recent uses of the WGS notes, More than 10,000 apple cultivars have been described worldwide. Thousands of these cultivars are curated in large national repositories, in addition to those managed by private institutes or associations and active amateur networks, especially in Europe and the U.S. Until the end of twentieth century, characterization of each cultivar was mostly phenotypic, using pomological traits, phenology, fruit sensory quality, etc. Genetic characterization with simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers has been performed intensively in the last 10–15 years, allowing identity checking and designations of synonym groups (containing synonymous cultivars and sports), assessment of the genetic structure at the collection or multicollection level and preliminary parentage inferences among cultivars.26

In Britain, the current ‘active amateur networks’ now have the opportunity to put a name to more ‘lost’ apples, by having an apple leaf checked at a genetic level against a known variety held in the National Collection at Brogdale, Kent. I believe this will in time reduce the numbers of synonyms and possibly the number of varieties, as duplicates are found.27 23. Charles Darwin, The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1877). 24. Ibid. p. 7. 25. Cameron P. Peace et al., ‘Apple Whole Genome Sequences: Recent Advances and New Prospects’ Horticulture Research Vol. 6 No. 59 (2019) pp. 1–24. 26. Ibid. p. 5. 27. Introduction to DNA Fingerprinting of Apples and Pears (n. p.: FruitID, 2017).

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Orchard sites, soil and boundaries It is not always possible to choose the site or aspect of an orchard, and fortunately apple trees are quite tough. Of course, centuries of observation had taught farmers that fruit trees should be sited away from frost hollows and strong winds, while eighteenth- and nineteenth-century developments in printing allowed this wisdom to be shared with new orchardists. Orchards require as much sun as possible, and the traditional square or quincunx pattern of the trees facilitated this, as well as ease of access for maintenance. Although apple trees will grow almost anywhere, orchards do less well in certain types of soil, which in part accounts for their distribution. In the mid-twentieth century the East Malling Research Station investigated the effects of different soils on crop yield. A paper written in 1935 noted the increasing acreage of commercial orchards, and therefore more competition for profit, which meant every aspect of apple growing needed to be considered: In studying the question of efficiency in fruit-growing we cannot afford to neglect the efficiency of the soil upon which the trees are planted. If costs of production are to be kept down to a minimum without deterioration of cropping and quality of fruit, then a soil must be selected which is thoroughly suitable for the type of trees to be planted.28

The conclusions were that there was much more research still to do, but that the most important factor was not so much the type of soil, as the drainage. If the orchardist carries out a thorough soil survey, they can choose where and what to plant.29 Once the site has been chosen, the orchard must be protected from theft, by humans and animals, and from any strong winds. Boundary hedges became a common feature of the post-enclosure landscape, and these were often primarily hawthorn, which created a dense, thorny barrier to stock. Pomace – the discarded apple pulp from cider production – could be spread along a boundary and the pips would soon germinate into a hedge of seedling apples. In East Anglia orchards were often surrounded by cherry plums; today the presence of cherry plum trees at the bottom of adjacent gardens can be the only surviving indicator of an old orchard site. The straight and regular hedges of newly enclosed fields may have represented, as Tom Williamson says, ‘the forces of agricultural capitalism destroying the independence of an ancient peasant society’, but they also presented more barriers to livestock and deer, allowing mass planting of trees, including 28. Basil S. Furneaux, ‘Selection of Soils for Dessert Apple Growing’ Scientific Horticulture Vol. 3 (1935) pp. 42–54 p. 42. 29. See also A. H. Hoare, The English Grass Orchard and the Principles of Fruit Growing (London: Earnest Benn Ltd, 1928) p. 26.

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orchards.30 Espaliered trees were also used as dual purpose boundaries, providing shelter and aesthetic appeal, particularly in gardens. In 1741 English writer Ephraim Chambers in his Cylopaedia described a form of the British espalier as ‘rows of trees, planted regularly round the out-side of a garden, or plantation, for the general security thereof ’. For a shorter barrier, or hedge espalier, Chambers recommended apple, holly or laurel.31

Pruning and shaping Once the orchard site had been chosen and made secure, the trees could be planted. Grafted trees, usually a year or two old, were bought as ‘whips’ or ‘maidens’ which are small trees that have yet to form branches. They were usually planted in the winter, and the subsequent winter pruning or ‘dressing’ of trees was a source of employment for farm labourers. Trees were pruned in the summer to remove unproductive wood, and the fruit was thinned, perhaps, as Rivers recommended, ‘by a light-fingered, active youth’.32 The orchard was a source of work throughout the year. The orchardist who followed even some of the advice in the horticultural periodicals of the nineteenth century would have an increasing need of hired labour. During this period apple tree health was thought to be largely down to the pruning regime and method of growth, and many techniques of the period advocated drastic measures such as regularly digging up the tree to prune the roots, or to re-bury part of the trunk. These interventions would have spurred the tree into putting out more shoots and fruit in response to stress, but probably at the expense of its overall health and lifespan.33 In the 1950s the orchard became much denser as low-growing bush or ‘spindle’ trees were used, grown tightly together almost into hedges. However the planting density did not decrease the labour required. Martin Hayes, who spent decades as an itinerant farm labourer in Wales and the West Country during the late twentieth century, recalls that pruning and cider-making in the Vale of Evesham (usually on larger, standard trees) kept him in work from November to March, while in April 30. Tom Williamson, ‘Enclosure and the English Hedgerow’ in The Romantic Age in Britain: The Cambridge Cultural History ed. by Boris Ford (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 269. 31. Ephraim Chambers, Cyclopaedia, or An Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences 2 Vols. (London: D. Midwinter, 1741–3). 32. Rivers, The Miniature Fruit Garden p. 86. 33. The Apple and Pear Conference of 1888 discussed many pruning and training regimes, which are not now practised and which must have entailed a good deal of extra work in the orchard. See Shirley Hibberd’s paper and the subsequent discussion in Barron’s Report pp. 32–8.

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he started pruning plum trees. Martin chose to pick strawberries and potatoes during the early summer but returned to the orchards in July to remove the nonfruiting water-shoots on the apple trees, before plum picking began in August.34 This pattern of orchard work has persisted from the eighteenth century and indicates the amount of investment required to sustain a commercial orchard, not just in labour but in training the workers how to disbud and prune. Martin Hayes noticed that indigenous labourers were being replaced by workers from Eastern Europe, but that, wherever they come from, ‘travellers with little overheads will always be the backbone of harvest work’.35

Orchard threats Keeping a growing tree healthy has always been a challenge, and is particularly important when it will not provide a saleable crop for three or more years. Nichole L. Busdieker-Jesse and colleagues explain the commercial and economic implications of this. They are studying the twenty-first-century orchard, but their figures are valid for every period using stable rootstocks: Growers make year-to-year decisions based not only on economic benefits but also on environmental and biological conditions. Apple trees vary in the length of non-bearing years after initial establishment: a standard apple tree takes six to ten years, a semi-dwarf tree takes four to six years, and the commercially common dwarf trees bear apples at two to three years of age. … Lengthy nonbearing periods increase the difficulty of orchard establishments, with high initial costs and no revenues from those trees. The nonbearing years occur at the beginning and at the end of the life of an orchard. Life expectancy also varies by size: standard apple trees live 35–45 years, semi-dwarf trees 20–25 years, and dwarf trees 15–20 years. … These timeframes for bearing years and life expectancy can also vary by variety.36

To discuss the threats and their mitigations in detail would be to turn this book into an orchard advice manual, so I will keep the focus on how innovations in agriculture and elsewhere assisted the fruit grower to achieve higher production, while also noting the potential harmful effects of any progress made in the orchard.

34. Martin Hayes, Memories of Life as an Itinerant (Gloucestershire: Gloucestershire Orchard Trust, 2016) p. 43. 35. Ibid. p. 47. 36. Nichole L. Busdieker-Jesse, Lia Nogueira, Hayri Onal and David S. Bullock, ‘The Economic Impact of New Technology Adoption on the US Apple Industry’ Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics Vol. 41 No. 3 (September 2016) pp. 549–69 p. 550.

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Frosts, bad weather and climate change Fruit growers and vineyard owners have a set of nightmares in common. These include a late frost that drops the blossom from the trees before it has set fruit, windy weather in spring that shakes the fruitlets to the ground, or a wet sodden autumn that rots the fruit on the trees before it ripens. Unseasonal weather also tends to encourage the growth of insect pests and diseases. In 1852 the representative of the Kentucky State Fruit Committee described the effects of a drop in the March temperatures, when the fruits were in bud, leading to the loss of a season’s fruits: Hence it follows that all vast districts of country, like the valley of the Mississippi, have riveted upon them by the action of fixed laws those features of a climate which are termed fickle, great diurnal ranges of the mercury, and great and sudden changes of temperature in the seasons. […] On the 18th of March, the fruit crop, except peaches, was fast coming forward; apricots had partially bloomed; some apples and pears had in their fruit buds made considerable development, leaves being formed … At this time the thermometer sank to thirteen degrees above zero, [Fahrenheit] a temperature thirty-one degrees warmer than that of January; yet the harm resulting from the temperature at thirteen above zero has been ten fold greater. […] Some pears and apples had every fruit and wood bud killed so as to slough off.37

Early attempts to deter the late frosts included lighting fires between the rows of trees. In vineyards bales of straw were burned, and candles which burned slowly were set between the rows. Because apple trees were taller than vines or citrus crops, at least until the mid-twentieth century, methods such as these would have been less effective, but the extra height meant the apple buds were less affected by ground frosts. It was, and remains, difficult for fruit-growers to take measures against bad weather.

Pests and diseases The use of inorganic chemicals to deter or kill insect pests can be traced back to Ancient Greece and Rome, with Homer recommending burning sulphur, and Pliny the Elder using arsenic as an insecticide. There was an awareness of insect pests, but, until the twentieth century, no invertebrates, apart from bees, were considered beneficial. In 1616 the gardener was praised who ‘kils the slimie Snayle, the Worme, and labouring Ant, /Which many times annoy the graft and tender 37. L. Young, ‘Report from Kentucky’ in Arthur Cannon, Proceedings of the Second Session of the American Pomological Congress Held in the City of Philadelphia 13 and 14 September 1852 (Philadelphia: Staveley and McCalla, 1852) p. 117.

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Plant’.38 Early remedies, for apple trees as well as for the farmer’s family, were the results of folk medicine and experimentation. For example in 1791, by treatment with ‘a plaister’ or poultice, William Forsyth hoped to cause diseased fruit and forest trees to grow new wood in places where decay had set in. He described his process in Observations on the Diseases, Defects and Injuries in all kinds of Fruit and Forest Trees with an account of a particular method of cure invented and practised by the Author. Forsyth obviously hoped to earn money if not from the poultice then from the pamphlet in which it was publicized.39 However, until the late nineteenth century, farmers had few branded pesticides, often making up mixtures of their own or asking the local pharmacy to do so. British late-nineteenth-century commercial pesticides for use on top fruit were often proprietary mixtures made by each nursery, so there is less evidence for use of the two best-known ‘brands’ (manufactured by several firms) ‘Paris Green’ and ‘London Purple’, both of which were mixtures of arsenic and copper, and both widely used across America from the 1867 onwards, where Paris Green had been developed to kill the Colorado Beetle.40 That these preparations were known to British fruit growers is demonstrated by an article in the Gardeners’ Chronicle giving the correct proportions, but this article was written by, or syndicated from, the University of Michigan, so it is possible that these brands were an imported novelty, most British gardeners preferring to use tar wash or nicotine solutions. These early brands were written about with enthusiasm in the gardening press. As Mr Ward, from the Herefordshire Association of Fruit Growers and Horticulturalists, stated in 1899, ‘If the fruit growing industry is to advance and become the profitable, commercial undertaking it should be in this county, spraying must become universal to ensure the production of regular, full and clean crops of fruit.’41 He went on to advocate Paris Green, a solution of petroleum and soft soap, and hellebore powder. One of Mr Ward’s fellow fruit growers expressed concern over the possibility that larvae poisoned with any of these solutions might be harmful to chickens grazing in the orchards, but he was reassured by another orchard grower who had ‘never lost a fowl yet’. Despite these qualms, during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries there was very little concern over the possible transfer of these chemicals to the crops, the soil or the workers applying 38. Michael Drayton, ‘Song Eighteen’ Poly-Olbion (1612) online text at https://polyolbion.exeter.ac.uk/ 39. G. E. Fussell, Old English Farming Books 1523–1793 – Fitzherbert to the Board of Agriculture (Aberdeenshire: Aberdeen Rare Books, 1978) p. 150. 40. Peter Jentsch, Historical Perspectives on Fruit Production (Ithaca NY: Cornell University [n. d.]) pp. 9–10. This report was written by Jentsch for his outreach programme to local growers. See also ‘Preparation of Insecticides: London Purple and Paris Green’ Extension and Experiment Station Bulletin Vol. 1 No. 5 Article 4 (1888) at: http://lib. dr.iastate.edu/bulletin/vol1/iss5/4. Robert Thompson, The Gardener’s Assistant (1st edn. 1859 London: The Gresham Company, 1910) p. 43. 41. Hereford Times, 8 April 1899.

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the spray. The caption to a picture of the Chivers Orchard in Cambridgeshire being sprayed in 1914 notes that after spraying ‘the orchard looks as if covered with snow’ and the men pictured applying the spray have no protective clothing except gloves and a sou’wester hat.42 Martin Hayes, writing of farm work in the 1980s, recalled that ‘disposing of banned or out of date sprays was like a chemistry lesson gone wrong. Throwing glass jars of unknown liquid on to fires made with old tyres was the norm. Amazing how some farmers would claim to be the guardians of the countryside’.43 However, although they may not have been aware of the hazards to the land and its workers caused by progressive farming practices, Victorian consumers and food producers were increasingly cognizant of the serious effects of food adulteration, especially after the investigations of Dr Arthur Hill Hassall, whose subsequent articles in The Lancet (1851–4) listed hundreds of foods that were routinely adulterated all along the supply chain. Apples had not escaped his condemnation, as he found some were being painted to make them more attractive. The press reported his findings with alarm: APPLES: Purchased in James Street, Covent Garden. The apples in this sample are coloured yellow, and on one side deep red; the yellow colour extending to a considerable depth in the substance of the sugar. The red consists of the usual non-metallic pigment, and the yellow is due to the presence of CHROMATE OF LEAD in really poisonous amount!44

Over a century later there was a very similar scare in America (and to a lesser extent in Britain) over the use of a growth regulator sold by Uniroyal Chemical under the name Alar. Alar was used to give apples extra colour, and to delay abscission, that is when the apple drops from the tree. In 1989 CBS news unveiled a report prepared by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), one of America’s most widely known environmental organizations. The report alleged that agricultural chemical residues in food posed unacceptable health risks to children. The subsequent row involved the NRDC, consumer groups, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the manufacturer of Alar and the apple growers’ industry. Actor Meryl Streep campaigned against its use, founding the group Mothers and Others for Pesticide Limits.45 Within months, many apple growers stopped using Alar to mitigate consumer fears and Alar’s manufacturer withdrew the product from the market. However, science and technology writer Kerry E. Rodgers notes that ‘remarkably, though, industry, scientific,

42. The Illustrated London News, 11 April 1914 p. 614. 43. Hayes, Memories of Life p. 52. 44. The Quarterly Review Vol. 96 (London: John Murrary, 1855) p. 248, original emphasis. 45. https://www.simplystreep.com/projects/1989-mothers-and-others-for-pesticide-limits/

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environmental, and government organizations continued to refer to Alar in their work more than two years after the product effectively ceased to exist’, and that the divergent interpretations of Alar lingered and coloured subsequent debates on pesticides.46 Arsenic, lead and copper sulphate were known to be poisonous; that was the reason for their use, but in the nineteenth century it was not understood how much of a residue could build up in crops while they were being treated in the orchard, and so it was felt that washing fruit and vegetables would be enough to make them safe and remove Paris Green and similar solutions. Tests were carried out in America on the toxicity of Paris Green (which was 58 per cent arsenic) and it was not found to be harmful. Other gardening books noted that it was not harmful to livestock in the orchard, even when it was being sprayed. It was not until 1919 that tests showed that washing was not enough to remove residues from the surface of fruit.47 During the twentieth century more sprays against pests and diseases were introduced, as much for the home gardener as for the commercial fruit grower. The science of crop management looked at every pest and disease as a problem that could be solved with a specific spray. In the years between the two World Wars, tar oils, which include anthracene, creosote and naphtha, were used to control eggs of aphids on dormant trees. Tar washes dated back to the eighteenth century but these chemical compounds could be better targeted and were much stronger. During the Second World War the insecticidal potential of DDT was discovered in Switzerland and insecticidal organophosphorus compounds were developed in Germany.48 Hormone-based growth inhibitors and accelerators gave the fruit grower greater control over the harvest, particularly useful with the large, single-variety plantations that became the ideal orchard model at this time. However, there are still some apple diseases that affect orchards today, which have been the cause of fruit tree failure for centuries. The major disease that the apple grower has been fighting is one called ‘canker’, which causes the branches to stunt and twist, and the whole of a young tree to look like an ancient specimen after just a couple of years. Knight believed that the old varieties could not be saved from canker, and that even if scions of those varieties were grafted onto new rootstocks the disease would be transmitted.49 Apple tree canker, as known today, is transmitted by a fungus, Nectria gallingena Bres., and is worse on heavy, wet soils.50 Knight’s failures with grafting were probably due to transference 46. Kerry E. Rodgers, ‘Multiple Meanings of Alar after the Scare: Implications for Closure’ Science, Technology and Human Values Vol. 21 No. 2 (Spring 1996) pp. 177–97. p. 178. 47. Jentsch, Historical Perspectives p. 44. 48. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499667/ 49. Thomas Andrew Knight, A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear and on the Manufacture of Cider and Perry (1st edn. 1797, London: Longman and Rees, 1801) pp. 8–10. 50. Jackson, Biology of Apples p. 459.

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of canker spores during the grafting process, with the spores carried over on the grafting knife, and the lack of canker resistance in the nineteenth-century rootstocks, since some varieties of apple are more susceptible than others. Canker is particularly easily transferred among young trees in the nursery lines and at planting time, which again was not information known to Knight and other growers. As late into the century as 1888 the gentlemen at the Apple and Pear Conference were still discussing canker, with three speakers on the subject, each pointing out that the authoritative works on apples gave very little guidance or hope on how to treat it, and each suggesting remedies as diverse as draining the soil, root pruning the trees and putting slaked lime around them.51 The Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1900 states that canker is due to ‘poorness of the soil, and by a fungus which enters the cracks of the bark’ and suggests rubbing the wound with a chisel until healthy wood is visible, and then dressing with tar.52 Unfortunately this would serve only to spread the spores, and then keep the infection protected in the wood underneath the tar coating. All such work would have affected the profits of a commercial orchard, as would removing and replacing the trees with newer, hopefully more resistant, varieties. Although the Victorian orchardist’s sprays, such as winter tar wash, would have had some effect against canker, very little they could have done would have eradicated it, and it is still a major disease of orchards. Once again it is the modern developments in rootstocks that may provide the answer, as it seems to be possible to pass resistance to canker in the rootstock into the whole tree.

Harvesting, storage and transportation: reality and cultural depiction Even the toughest russet-skinned apples bruise when they fall from the tree, so apples for eating require careful picking by hand. A recent review of apple harvesting technology shows the intensity of, and investment in, the harvest period in America: Apples are still primarily hand-harvested by seasonal farm employees who carry fruit from trees to a bin (0.71 m3 is a typical size) in bushel buckets weighing up to 19 kg when fully filled. Apple harvest is physically demanding and potentially hazardous work. During the apple harvest season, approximately 45,000 to 50,000 harvest employees across the U.S. use ladders and bags and pick each apple by hand. Labor expenses account for a significant proportion of apple production costs. Using ‘Gala’ apples grown in Washington State as an example, up to 58% of the production cost is labor expense, and 25% is in harvesting. Professional pickers can pick apples at a rate of approximately 400 kg per hour. Bruising standards are typically based on hand picking because pickers are 51. Barron, Report 1888 pp. 39–53. 52. ‘Fruit-Tree Enemies’ Gardeners’ Chronicle, 13 January 1900 p. 20.

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As the review goes on to explain, all this climbing up and down ladders with heavy bins of apples results in injuries, strained muscles and fatigue, and the nature of the work decreases the pool of available labour to the fittest. At times when labour was cheaper, and orchards were on a much smaller scale, itinerant and local harvesting teams could meet the need, with women and children working with the men. Women were often seen to be more efficient pickers, and gentler with the fruit, particularly with cherries. Mechanized apple harvesting machines, therefore, were not introduced to orchards until the 1950s. The first of these were experimental devices that shook all the apples from a tree, but the bruising levels were too high to allow them to be used on anything but cider orchards. In the twenty-first century, therefore, mechanized harvesters are used in ‘assisted harvesting’ where two workers are on platforms either side of the machine, enabling them to pick the apples at the top of the trees which are approximately two to three metres high, and two more workers are at ground level. The machine moves along at walking pace, and as the workers place the apples in it, there is a system of belts to take the apples and store them carefully. In cider or juicing orchards the apples are mechanically shaken from the tree and then picked from the ground, either by hand or by another machine, before being passed into the pressing plant. Once apples arrive at a modern processing facility, they are stored in water in a ‘dump tank’ before being washed, sorted and packed. During this process they may be treated with a fungicide, with an acid to wash off any calcium film that has adhered to them as a result of being sprayed and irrigated in the field, and with anti-microbial agents to prevent any organisms such as listeria building up in the water flumes and tanks. They may then be further sorted, washed with soap and brushes and finally coated with a thin layer of wax.54 All of these processes have become integral to the modern commercial apple orchard’s survival, yet the apple largely retains the cultural symbolism of a natural, unprocessed food. This cultural symbolism has served to hide the hard labour involved in apple harvesting and processing. Such work remains either hidden from the cultural gaze entirely, or romanticized in genre art. Artist Barnaby Barford, known for his installations of giant apples, has curated a vast selection of apple-related images in his recent book, The Apple Is Everything.55 However, he has collated very few, from any era, that depict the hard labour of apple growing and harvesting. 53. Z. Zhang, P. H. Heinemann, J. Liu, T. A. Baugher and J. R. Schupp, ‘The Development of Mechanical Apple Harvesting Technology: A Review’ Transactions of the American Society of Agricultural Engineers Vol. 59 No. 5 (October 2016) pp. 1165–80. 54. Ewa Pietrysiak, Stephanie Smith and Girish M Ganjyal, ‘Food Safety Interventions to Control Listeria Monocytogenes in the Fresh Apple Packing Industry: A Review’ Comprehensive Reviews in Food Science and Food Safety (October 2019) pp. 1705–26. 55. Barford, The Apple Is Everything. See Chapter 9 for more on his work.

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Even nineteenth-century genre art, while acknowledging the influence of apple cultivation on the landscape, rarely depicted the intensive work of harvesting or sorting the fruit. Such art is however a source of information about the smallscale features, such as domestic orchards, that are overlooked in landscape paintings.56 Lowenthal, looking at the material landscape, stated that ‘like the archetypical sacred garden, the English landscape is not natural but crafted’, and in particular that ‘few features of lowland Britain lack embedded links with those who have held and tenanted and tilled it’.57 Archaeologists John Terrell and John Hart have also unpicked the distinctions that tend to be taken for granted between natural and domesticated landscapes, showing that there are few landscapes that have not had constant human intervention and interaction.58 This interaction has been represented by the genre orchard, where the images show a cultivated scene, with associations to the ‘sacred garden’ of Lowenthal’s landscapes, while often depicting those who were tenants of the land, working in the orchard. The depictions of their labour, however, are usually stylized. Examples of happy labourers can be found in the orchard scenes of Frederick Morgan, a prolific, and still popular, painter of rural life and childhood. Morgan produced several works of apple pickers, including An Apple Gathering (also known as The Apple Gatherers) from 1880.59 This shows a family group holding a sheet under an apple tree to catch the crop as a small boy up a ladder shakes the branches. The children are well dressed and smiling. The oldest girl, perhaps the mother, is dressed mainly in white, and the sunlight shines down directly onto the white sheet already laden with apples, and onto her face, giving her a serene and sacred expression. There are plenty of apples in this orchard for all to pick. There is no suggestion of an organized labour force or of a supervisor of any kind, although this seems to be a large enough orchard to be farmed for profit. In the same style Morgan also painted the winsome work, A Heavy Load, showing three clean and happy children carrying a basket of apples across a field. Morgan saw out the end of the fashion for idealized depictions of childhood and rural work, as artists changed and challenged their interpretation of genre art, and moved towards showing their own day-to-day life more realistically. This change in interpretation of the values of English work and Englishness is exemplified in the rural naturalist work of Henry Herbert La Thangue, an exhibitor of the New English Art Club in the 1890s, who influenced

56. Elizabeth K. Helsinger, Rural Scenes and National Representation: Britain 1815–1850 (New York: Princeton University Press, 1997) p. 6. 57. Lowenthal, ‘British National Identity’ pp. 215–16. 58. Bruno David and Julian Thomas, ‘Domesticated Landscapes’ in Handbook of Landscape Archaeology ed. by John Edward Terrell and John P. Hart (London: Routledge, 2016) pp. 338–2. 59. Frederick Morgan, An Apple Gathering (also known as The Apple Gatherers) 1880, private collection.

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many Edwardian painters.60 Although his work is not considered to be what is now termed ‘realist’ art, La Thangue attempted to distance his paintings from the sunlit work of Morgan and others. La Thangue’s orchard scenes often showed apple pickers, young men or older boys, hard at work, not smiling at the artist or at each other. La Thangue lived in a small fenland village in Norfolk, and later Suffolk, and spent most of his career painting en plein air, in all manner of agricultural locations, seeking to find and record authentic farming practices that were already in decline.61 Despite a similarity in the subject matter of rural workers and their families, much of his work is not soaked in the same nostalgia, or optimism, as earlier genre paintings. However, although his depiction of farming scenes was more realistic than sentimental, even La Thangue’s works do not show the type of larger-scale, low-growing commercial orchard that would have been familiar to the nineteenth-century itinerant labourers of his local area in East Anglia. He was interested in representing the traditional way of apple farming, concentrating on the small-scale orchard and the intimacies of working by hand, and in doing so making explicit the work of the rural labourer. Manual labour, therefore, especially within a setting that was considered clean and natural, such as an orchard or a field at harvest time, was a suitable subject for pedagogical art, but only when the physicality of the work and the extreme poverty of the itinerant labourers were excluded from the narrative. Representations of the orchard functioned as decorative reminders of those tenant farmers and of their agricultural work without having to show the realities of it. After picking, most apples, if properly stored, will keep for months. Some of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century varieties, such as D’Arcy Spice and Norfolk Beefing, were valued because they improve on keeping, as the sugars develop in the apple and the taste intensifies. Advice on how to store apples was included in every fruit-growing book from Pliny onwards, and that advice – keep them cool, out of sunlight, with a good air circulation, checking and turning them often – did not vary until refrigerated storage became available in the early twentieth century. The onus was on the consumer to select the freshest apples, either from their own trees or in the market, and to store them appropriately, with their knowledge of how best to treat specific varieties. However, the rising power of the consumer and the retailer began to influence the choice of apple varieties during the nineteenth century, while in the twentieth century consumer preference has been put forward as a reason for the lack of diversity in fruit and vegetable crops. Apples are presented in modern supermarkets as a ‘fresh’ product, and today’s consumer is not required to think further than the fruit bowl.62 The storage now takes place on the supply side. 60. See the lot essay for sales of his paintings at Christies – https://www.christies.com/ lotfinder/Lot/henry-herbert-la-thangue-1859-1929-sussex-apples-6154058-details.aspx 61. Exhibition catalogue, Painters and Peasants: Henry Herbert La Thangue and British rural naturalism, 1880–1905 (Bolton: Bolton Museum and Art Gallery, 2000). 62. For a full discussion on the meanings of the term ‘fresh’ see Susan Freidberg, Fresh: A Perishable History (Massachusetts: Belknap Press, 2009) pp. 1–17.

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Nineteenth-century American consumers were thought to have a preference for apples with a fine, thin skin and a high colour. During the late nineteenth century apples were stored and transported in barrels, each apple being inspected, wiped clean and dry, and then carefully packed in sand. Some popular varieties which did not travel well lost out in favour of those that survived barrelling. Emily Pawley uses the example of the Red Astrachan apple to illustrate how American growers had misgivings about the increasing importance of appearance as a factor in apple choice: The Red Astrachan, a popular market apple in both Britain and the United States, proved a particular sore spot. A Russian apple, its red skin was given depth of colour by Northeastern winters, making it attractive, particularly to Londoners. However even [the sellers] admitted it was ‘not a first-rate eating apple’ [and one said] ‘it had been remarked that the apple was good for market on account of its beautiful skin; when we get within its skin there is very little left.’ … Were consumers lured against their best interests by a deceptive skin? If so should consumers be catered to, or educated? Was the Red Astrachan, in short, a moral and trustworthy apple?63

Cultural figures, including Eve and Snow White, have been faced with the challenge of trusting an apple, but this passage brings Christina Rossetti’s remarkable poem, ‘Goblin Market’, to mind.64 This famous tale of sensible Lizzie, who ignores the temptations of the goblin fruit sellers, and her sister Laura, who tastes the forbidden fruit and wastes away until Lizzie saves her, has been interpreted in many ways, but within the text are echoes of how the fruit sellers of Rossetti’s time, and their apples, were regarded. It is significant that Rossetti begins the goblins’ enticing list of ‘fruit forbidden’ with apples, perhaps projecting her own fears of physicality onto an already ambiguous symbol: ‘Come buy our orchard fruits, Come buy, come buy: Apples and quinces, Lemons and oranges, Plump unpeck’d cherries, Melons and raspberries, Bloom-down-cheek’d peaches, Swart-headed mulberries, Wild free-born cranberries, Crab-apples, dewberries,

63. Emily Pawley ‘Cataloging Nature: Standardizing Fruit Varieties in the United States, 1800–1860’ The Business History Review Vol. 90 No. 3 (Autumn 2016) pp. 405–29 p. 426. 64. Christina Rossetti, ‘Goblin Market’ in Goblin Market and Other Poems (London: Macmillan, 1862).

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The fruits are luscious and exotic, growing out of season, while the descriptions of the familiar yet dangerous apple mimic that of the ultimate forbidden fruit, that growing on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in Eden, described in the Bible as ‘good for food’ and ‘pleasant to the eyes’ (K.J.V. Genesis 3:6). Rossetti’s goblins describe their fruits as ‘sweet to tongue and sound to eye’.66 However, like the Red Astrachan, the fruit can only disappoint.

65. Ibid. lines 3–16. 66. Ibid. line 30.

Chapter 5 T H E A P P L E N E T WO R K

In order to understand how the apple came to occupy its prominent position among the many competing horticultural and cultural objects and symbols of the Victorian era, it is important to consider the work of the men and women who planted orchards, developed cultivars and published books about apples. This chapter provides cultural context to those texts that have been referred to throughout this book. The apple experts functioned and flourished, particularly during the latter half of the nineteenth century, because both horticulture and pomology were becoming recognized as a profession, a science and a profitable industry, while amateur gardening was seen as both a fashionable and a beneficial pastime. The activities of the pomologists, including the Apple Congresses that they held, are situated within the cultural and economic network around the apple. This chapter describes the primary inhabitants of that network and their major works, demonstrating how their desire for improvement, order and knowledge of the natural world was represented in text and image. Improvement, innovation and ideas were the intellectual currency of the eighteenth century, facilitated by the developments of printing, the mail service and better roads, and given increasing status by the foundation of many societies and associations. Books and correspondence crossed the Atlantic and circles of men with similar interests in science and the natural world flourished. Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of naturalist Charles Darwin, published The Loves of the Plants, a long and well-regarded verse work describing the Linnean system of botany, in 1789.1 Erasmus Darwin was also a member of the Lunar Society, and the works of the society’s members, including the paintings of Joseph Wright of Derby, popularized scientific methodology and outcomes. For orchardists, becoming a member of, for example, the Society of Improvers of Agriculture (established in Scotland in 1723) was a useful way of hearing about the latest ideas.2 The Scottish Enlightenment, as it was later called, was a period in which these societies flourished. Many of the nurserymen and horticulturalists

1. Boris Ford, ed., Eighteenth Century Britain: Cambridge Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) p. 30. 2. Ibid.

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who were so instrumental in developing new apple varieties were Scottish, a fact remarked upon by Patrick Neill in his early nineteenth-century survey of Scottish gardens and orchards: Scotland has long been remarkable for producing great numbers of professional gardeners; more perhaps than any other country of Europe, of equal extent. … At the present day, most of the principal nobility and gentry in England have Scottish head gardeners; while the numbers of an inferior class to be found in every county of South Britain is quite surprising.3

Neill explained that the reasons for this included the superiority of the Scottish education system, the willingness of head gardeners to teach their apprentices, their ‘taste for the reading of books’ and geometry, as well as ‘daily opportunities of conversing and consulting with their employers, and the visitors of their employers, and a frequent and very commendable practice of masters indulging deserving gardeners with ready access to their libraries’.4 This demonstrates the improving status of gardeners, and the ways in which they gained and shared knowledge. Some of the employers whom Neill praised were among those investigating the science of the natural world. One such was Charles Darwin, whose book On the Origin of Species was first published as a complete work in 1859. In a later additional work, Darwin wrote about variation in those ‘plants and animals under domestication’ (publishing this title separately in 1868) and in this he specifically studied apples. However, the notable characteristic of apples – that they do not grow true from seed – made Darwin almost dismissive of them, since his theory of evolution depended on the predominance of hereditable differences and similarities. He noted, ‘In the catalogue of apples published in 1842 by the Horticultural Society, 897 varieties are enumerated; but the differences between most of them are of comparatively little interest, as they are not strictly inherited. No one can raise, for instance, from the seed of the Ribston Pippin, a tree of the same kind.’5 Darwin was interested in how apples (and other species, of course) inherit the characteristics of their parents, so that later he described incidents where apple trees produced ‘fruit of two kinds, or half-and-half fruit; these trees are generally supposed to be of crossed parentage … and … the fruit reverts to both parent forms’.6 The inclusion of the apple among other domesticated plants in Darwin’s work perhaps gave the apple some extra credibility as an object of study and worthy

3. Patrick Neill, On Scottish Gardens and Orchards (Edinburgh: Caledonian Horticulture Society, 1813) p. 4. 4. Ibid. pp. 4–5. 5. Charles Darwin, Complete Works: Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication Vol. 1 (New York: New York University Press, 2010) p. 325. 6. Ibid. p. 350.

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of scientific attention by others, something not to be considered as simply an agricultural or cottager’s crop. The concept of evolution, as widely received in the nineteenth century, can be described as progress and improvement from the most primitive life forms through to human beings, so the natural, and the deliberate, selection of apples from the wild to the sweet made the apple an apt species for inclusion, where progress could so clearly be seen and where every grower might attempt their own improvements on nature. Particularly important, therefore, are Darwin’s citations of other books on the subject of pomology, and his references to other contemporary apple experts. In the section on rootstocks in the previous chapter, I quoted from the correspondence that Darwin had with the nursery and orchard owner, Thomas Rivers. Their letters, and others from Darwin to other correspondents, demonstrate Darwin’s practical horticultural skills, which were good enough for Rivers to be willing to learn from and to apply Darwin’s arguments to his nursery work. There is a concern for progress and for the improvement of the apple, here and across this network of growers, a state of mind that is scarcely found in the cultural representations of the apple, most of which are markedly nostalgic in their symbolism and mood.

National Societies and Apple Congresses America In September 1852 the second meeting of the American Pomological Congress came to order in the Museum Building, Philadelphia. Those attending arrived early, but had brought so many fruit specimens with them that the first session had a delayed start, while everything was unpacked. After the introductory remarks, the meeting turned its attention to the tragic loss of their founder. Andrew Jackson Downing was one of many lives lost when a steamboat, the Henry Clay, caught fire and sank on The Hudson River in July 1852. Downing, it was said, was a good swimmer, who perished trying to save other passengers, including his wife, who survived. He was only thirty-six, yet was already considered to be a leading landscape gardener, responsible for influential books including A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Adapted to North America, (1841) as well as his contributions to The Horticulturalist periodical, where he became editor. At the time of his death he was engaged in landscaping the parks around the White House in Washington DC.7 If esteem can be measured by such gestures, it is significant that Downing’s fellow pomologists raised over a thousand dollars for a monument. 7. John Clagett Proctor, ‘The Tragic Death of Andrew Jackson Downing and the Monument to His Memory’ in Records of the Columbia Historical Society ed. by John B. Larner Vol. 27 (Washington City: Published by the Society, 1925) pp. 248–61.

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In 1845 Downing had published The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America, in which he set out the synonyms for each variety, as well as an outline of the fruit, traced from a specimen. He explained: I have chosen this method as likely to give the most correct idea of the form of a fruit, and because I believe that the mere outline of a fruit, like a profile of the human face, will often be found more characteristic than a highly finished portrait in colour. The outlines have been nearly all traced directly from fruits grown here.8

The Pomological Society continued his work, setting up a Committee on Synonyms, and a Seedling Fruit Committee, as well as a Fruit Group from each of the states represented, to facilitate ‘a thorough examination of the Horticultural resources of each State, chiefly with the view of developing its native Pomology’.9 The Pomological Society went on to meet and to report its findings almost every year, and is still active today.10 England and Scotland Rivers’ correspondence and Darwin’s references reveal that the nexus of apple enthusiasts was a relatively small one (then as now) but they had significant influence. One highly regarded organization, to which many of the experts belonged, was the Horticultural Society of London, founded in 1804 and becoming the Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain (RHS) in 1861, when Prince Albert awarded it the Royal Charter and rescued the Society from serious financial difficulties. One of the reasons for the difficulties was the Society’s attempts to maintain its elite status, not permitting non-members into any of its gardens, and discouraging the mainly working-class ‘florists’ from taking part in its shows.11 By the 1880s, however, the RHS had changed its attitudes, doing much more to encourage working-class amateur gardeners. However perhaps this initial hauteur is behind the hostile tone of comments about the RHS in popular gardening periodicals such as The Gardeners’ Chronicle whose contributors recorded the Society’s activities in tones ranging from criticism to scorn. In 1823 the Horticultural Society of London established an orchard on its own land in Chiswick, following on from one of the first research programmes 8. Andrew Jackson Downing, The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (New York: John Wiley, 1855) p. ix. 9. Arthur Cannon, Proceedings of the Second Session of the American Pomological Congress (Philadelphia: Stavely and McCalla, 1852) p. 7. 10. https://www.americanpomological.org/ 11. Anne Wilkinson, ‘The Development of Gardening as a Leisure Activity in Nineteenth Century Britain and the Establishment of Horticultural Periodicals’ (doctoral thesis, Open University, 2002) p. 31.

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of the Society. The research on ‘resolution of synonymy in fruit varieties’ began in 1815, prompted by the increase in the number of new and improved cultivars and the growth of commercial orchards.12 This orchard became what is now the National Fruit Collection at Brogdale, Kent, which consists of an orchard of specimen apple, pear, plum and cherry trees, growing at least one of each known and established cultivar. In her history of the National Fruit Collection, Joan Morgan notes the international reach of this research from its formation, since ‘in these studies the Society acted as the focal point for Europe and served as an entrepôt distributing scions of the latest introductions, sending them even across the Atlantic to its American sister societies under the energising presidency of Thomas Andrew Knight, a Herefordshire squire and acclaimed fruit breeder’.13 This was the Thomas Andrew Knight who had written on rootstocks and canker. He gave the impetus to much of the society’s research into apples, having published his Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and the Pear in 1797. The horticulturalist in charge of growing the orchard was Robert Thompson, whose catalogues of fruit were particularly useful in terms of reducing synonyms. Thompson’s 1831 catalogue recorded the names, details and synonyms of 1,400 apple varieties, although not all of these were in cultivation at Chiswick. However when the Society went through a period of decline in the 1850s, it no longer focused on fruit growing. This meant that the Chiswick fruit collection failed to include new cultivars, and therefore was of less use to commercial growers and nurserymen, and was not able to influence or to benefit from the enthusiasm for apple breeding that was in the air at that time. In order to redress this, the Pomological Society was formed. This organization, independent of the Horticultural Society, had a brief existence from 1854, until it was subsumed into the Horticultural Society and became the Society’s Fruit Committee in 1858. The Pomological Society had Sir Joseph Paxton, designer of the Crystal Palace and of the Gardens at Chatsworth, as its president; John Spencer, the head gardener at Bowood House, a stately home in Wiltshire, as its secretary; and Dr Robert Hogg as its (intermittent) chairman. Hogg was a botanist and nurseryman who had been working for Hugh Ronalds, another London nurseryman, since 1836. Having toured Europe extensively and studied apple growing in detail, he had produced the first volume of British Pomology, detailing the apples in cultivation, in 1851. As such he was acclaimed as the foremost apple expert in the country at the time. Contemporary reaction to the formation of the Pomological Society was favourable. As Brent Elliott records in his history of the RHS, ‘the gardening press greeted the new society as a tonic, acknowledging that there would have 12. Brent Elliott, The Royal Horticultural Society: A History 1804–2004 (London: Phillimore and Co., 2004) pp. 25–67. 13. Joan Morgan, ‘Orchard Archives: The National Fruit Collection’ in Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library: Studies in the History of British Fruit Part 2 ed. by Brent Elliott Vol. 7 (London: Royal Horticultural Society, 2012) p. 5.

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been no need for it had the Horticultural Society maintained its former level of fruit-directed activity’.14 The Pomological Society considered all fruits, not solely apples (a meeting in 1856 was concerned with assessing the best varieties of strawberry) and it is unclear why it did not continue, since in August 1857 it declared at its AGM that it was ‘steadily, surely and firmly established, and increasing in usefulness’.15 However, perhaps its success as an independent organization persuaded the Horticultural Society to pay more attention to fruits, since in 1858 the Horticultural Society’s Fruit Committee was formed, and once this was established the Pomological Society ceased. The Fruit Committee membership also included Hogg and Spencer and therefore when its first meeting took place on 5 July 1858 it was greeted as a further favourable development. The positive reaction in the gardening press shows how much the Horticultural Society was looked to for direction and authority, with very few influential voices standing outside it for long, even during its periods of difficulty. Having a central authoritative organization, practising gardening in its own trial beds, certainly influenced the focus of the horticultural trade as to which plants or varieties were considered suitable for commercial and domestic gardens. Awards and prizes given to the finest and best-performing plants gave publicity to the nurserymen and stimulated the demand for new cultivars. What is now the RHS Award of Garden Merit carries a great deal of weight. Its Victorian equivalent may, perhaps undesirably, have swayed which apple cultivars were available to the domestic and the commercial grower. One of the stated aims of the Horticultural Society’s research into apples was to decide on a few varieties that were worthy of being grown commercially. These research aims show that the Society was concerned with improving, rather than with preserving or restoring the apples of the past. Gardeners and commercial growers alike were looking for the newest, most improved, most attractive varieties. The high point of the Horticultural Society’s interest in fruit was the National Apple Congress of 1883, held from 5 to 25 October, during the peak of the apple harvest. The Society acted as host and provided the venue, the first public exhibition ever held on its Chiswick site. As the Congress began, the popular weekly publication, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, often critical of the Horticultural Society, described the preparations for the Congress as being handled ‘half-heartedly’, as though the Society felt ‘it was departing from its dignity in applying itself with an exhibition of Apples, even in its own gardens’.16 However, the Society had been discussing fruit varieties and related questions as a regular part of its transactions, and the preparations for the Congress were in fact both swift and effective. There may have been concern that holding an open exhibition might attract unwelcome visitors, but this does not seem to have been a serious consideration, 14. Elliott, The Royal Horticultural Society: A History p. 60. 15. The Florist, Fruitist and Garden Miscellany (London: ‘Florist’ Office, 1857) p. 284. 16. ‘Chiswick as It Is’ The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 6 October 1883 New Series Vol. 20 p. 423.

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as horticultural shows were seen as events that would encourage good behaviour among the working-class attendees. Fortunately, 1883 was a very good year for apples, with thousands of sample fruits sent in by gardeners and nurserymen across the country. As Barron noted, in the official report on the Congress, ‘[apples] were of such an exceptional and remarkable character as to attract the notice and command the special attention of all those interested in the cultivation of this, the most important of our national fruit’.17 Weather conditions in previous years had not been so favourable for apple crops, so this was a particularly notable harvest. Joan Morgan has argued that the Congress was in direct response to the quantity, and organized promotion, of American and other imported apples, but this motivation is not mentioned in the official records. Press coverage around the event did refer to American apples, in that American growers benefitted from the poor British harvests, and had been efficient at taking advantage of it. As The Standard noted when reviewing the Congress, ‘cultivators of apples in this country are thus, like cultivators of grain, brought face to face with American competition, and English growers have had sufficient experience of the enterprise of Transatlantic farmers to be assured that […]they can only be fairly met by the superiority of home-grown produce’.18 This concern about foreign produce, however, had been expressed by growers throughout the decades preceding the Congress, as the following chapter on ‘foreign’ apples will detail, and is unlikely to have been the primary impetus for this particular event. Instead, it is likely that the push to hold the Congress came from Hogg, who made research trips to France each year, and was aware of the work on cider apples happening in Rouen, including the series of Congresses endorsed by the French government and held, as Hogg described ‘successively in the leading cider districts of France’ with the results being published as ‘Le Cidre’ in 1875.19 Hogg noted, ‘This work is of a highly scientific and comprehensive character. It is thoroughly practical, and has rendered great service to the Orchards of Normandy.’20 Hogg, who always advocated that the RHS be of use to the practical, working gardener, would be keen for domestic apples to have the same status and recognition. However the formal ‘originator of this great national assemblage of apples’ was Mr Barron, Superintendent of the Society’s Chiswick Gardens, who also wrote the report of the results.21 The request for apples went out via regional horticultural clubs on 11 September 1883, asking that each basket of apples be fully labelled with as much information as possible. The call for entries stressed that the purpose was to reduce synonyms 17. A. F. Barron, British Apples: Report of the Committee of the National Apple Congress (London: Macmillan, 1884) p. 2. 18. The Standard, 5 October 1883. 19. Dr Robert Hogg and Henry Graves Bull, The Apple and Pear as Vintage Fruits (Hereford: Jakeman and Carver, 1886) p. vi. 20. Ibid. 21. Barron, British Apples p. 6.

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and gather more information, and that prizes would not be awarded. Members of the Fruit Committee would act as agents in the various regions. Before long many samples arrived, and the quantity ‘far exceeded the most sanguine of anticipations, promises of support and consignments of fruit … completely filling the Conservatory’ in the Horticultural Society’s land at Chiswick, as Barron described.22 The apples were laid out on plates in the Conservatory, the Chiswick Garden vinery and other marquees. Viewing was opened to the public and the press as well as the fruit growers. The Illustrated London News gave the number of visitors as ‘over five hundred each day’ which does not perhaps imply great crowds, but the Congress remained opened some extra days to meet demand, and the press coverage records that railways offered cheap excursions and fares to the members of the working class attending the event.23 The humorous full-page illustration that appeared in The Illustrated London News to celebrate the National Apple Congress shows a variety of visitors from the respectable working and middle classes, including several women. The Daily News commented, ‘Whatever “poor men’s politics” may be, the apple is the poor man’s fruit, and it is pleasant to see its interests duly considered in the highest horticultural circles.’24 Such was the popularity of the exhibition that it was transported from London to Manchester’s Town Hall, where the apples made a celebrity appearance, along with others from the region, from 2 to 9 November, complete with evening viewing and an organ recital.25 The local press reported a full list of the exhibitors, noting that ‘a show of so many varieties as have been brought together […] must be fraught with deep interest to all – to the general public as well as to the horticultural specialist’.26 The press advertising for both events – the London Congress and the Manchester Apple Show – was positioned in the local and London press among adverts for concerts, operas, lectures and other middle-class and aspirational activities. The larger apple shows were something to attend for improvement, not mere amusement. The horticultural aim of the Congress was to improve the recording of apple varieties and unravel the synonyms used by nurserymen and growers in different regions. The Congress also aimed to arrive at a consensus among the exhibitors as to which were the best commercial cultivars. Although no prizes were offered, as Berrow’s Worcester Journal put it, ‘exhibitors, while contributing their quota of particulars may find a reward for their pains in the increased value every addition to the data will give to the generalizations it may be possible to record about the conference’.27 As a result of the publicity from this conference, growers of the 22. Ibid. 23. Illustrated London News, 15 October 1883. 24. The Daily News, 6 October 1883. 25. Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 23 October and 1 November 1883. 26. Ibid. 3 November 1883. 27. Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 October 1883.

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recently introduced Cox’s Orange Pippin and Bramley’s Seedling were able to profit from these being named among the best apple varieties. As well as the exhibition of apples, the Congress and its successor in 1888 included a series of talks and conference sessions where growers shared their experiences, and it is these accounts that I used in Chapter 3 to illustrate the Victorian debate over the profitability of an apple orchard. Many of those growers considered the older varieties to be unsuitable for commercial orchards, and so the Congress may well have decreased the number of apple varieties grown for sale as trees. The aims of the Congress were to reduce the number of synonyms and achieve positive identification of varieties, but it was not concerned with holding on to all the rare varieties, those which would today be marked as valuable ‘heritage’ apples. Knight had been influential in spreading the idea that apple varieties had a limited life, and growers often agreed that the old varieties were hard to keep in cultivation, and that newer ones must be better. The success of the Apple Congress led in England to the National Pear Congress in 1885 (at which Thomas Rivers won first prize with his ‘Conference’ pear, being too alert to a double entendre to wish to call it ‘Congress’) and one further combined Apple and Pear Conference in 1888. In total the experts identified some 1,500 apple cultivars in 1883 and over 600 pear cultivars in 1885.28 In the last week of November 1885 the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society held an Apple and Pear Congress in the Waverley Market, Edinburgh, inspired by that year’s abundant crops.29 Their aims were ‘gaining information about the apples and pears grown in Scotland, comparing their merits and correcting their nomenclature’.30 The advertising took a less high-minded tone, promising the Band of the Hussars playing day and evening, while admission to the whole event, which included a chrysanthemum competition and the winter flower show, was just sixpence.31 Over twelve thousand dishes of fruit, with an average of four fruit per dish, were laid out for display. Scottish, Irish and English counties were represented, as well as Nova Scotia.32 As with the London events, no prizes were awarded. Although the winter show, which was a new event for the Society, resulted in a loss of over two hundred pounds, ‘the Chairman thought they might consider that the money had been well spent, and the Treasurer added that he was of opinion that good work had been done for it’.33 These fruit conferences were reported and discussed within gardening periodicals and the national and local press, giving publicity to the work of 28. Morgan and Richards, The Book of Apples p. 91. 29. Malcolm Dunn, ed., Report of the Apple and Pear Congress Held by the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, Edinburgh 25–28 November 1885 (Edinburgh: Maclachlan and Stewart, 1887). 30. Ibid. p. 4. 31. The Scotsman, 23 November 1885. 32. Glasgow Herald, 26 November 1885. 33. The Scotsman, 18 December 1885.

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horticultural Societies, the study of pomology and the work of the fruit growers. The National and Scottish Apple Congresses were simply the largest of thousands of other fruit, flower and vegetable shows that had been held across England throughout the nineteenth century by various gardening societies. For example, there was a long-standing show held in the Dog and Partridge public house, Woodhouses (Greater Manchester). This delightful-sounding event was considered as a holiday by the locals, where alongside the display of culinary apples there was ‘the model of a villa worked in flowers’ with ‘a piece of mechanism, worked by steam, of a figure dancing’.34 In this context, the societies and their shows provided examples of moral and physical improvement that could be gained through the pursuit of gardening, as well as the advances in horticultural techniques and knowledge.

Pomonas The popularity of the apple exhibitions indicates that there was a public desire to experience the beauty and variety of forms of apples. Another way in which these qualities of apples could be experienced, albeit initially by the wealthy few, was through the high-quality illustrated books of apples and fruit, known as ‘pomonas’. The texts of the pomonas were written by the same group of pomologists behind the national societies and shows, and the language these experts used to describe apples, and the aesthetic qualities of the illustrations, brought the apple into prominence as something to be admired for its beauty and connections to the unspoilt past, as well as for its taste or utility. Pomological periodicals and pomonas can be used as a measure of the apple’s popularity, both as a crop and as a subject for study, since it is clear to see how much effort and money was used in producing them. The text of the pomonas also highlights the continuing problems of taxonomy, which again affected the continuity and popularity of many of the older varieties. Before I discuss the development of pomonas and pomological works in detail, below is an annotated list of the major pomological publications of the late eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in order of date of publication of the first edition. This is a very partial list, concentrating on those pomologists and illustrators who have been mentioned within this book. The most comprehensive review of fruit literature was produced in 1996 by H. Frederic Janson, whose book Pomona’s Harvest is the result of decades of work, describing every text on the subject from antiquity to the early nineteenth century.35 The purpose of my list is to demonstrate how many extensive, and expensive, publications on apples (or apples and other tree fruits) were produced in just a few years. Also apparent are 34. The [Manchester] Reporter, 30 September 1871. 35. H. Frederic Janson, Pomona’s Harvest: An Illustrated Chronicle of Antiquarian Fruit Literature (Portland Oregon: Timber Press, 1996).

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the recurring names of a very few authors; the output and influence of Dr Hogg in particular is extraordinary. 1768 John Gibson, The Fruit Gardener, Containing the Method of Raising Stocks for Multiplying of Fruit Trees by Budding, Grafting Etc (London: J. Nourse, 1768): Referred to by many nineteenth century pomologists. 1797 Thomas Andrew Knight, A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear and on the Manufacture of Cider and Perry (Ludlow: H. Proctor, 1797): This ran to at least four subsequent editions, demonstrating the influence of Knight’s work, particularly on improvements to cider. 1810 George Brookshaw, Pomona Britannica: The Most Esteemed Fruits at Present Cultivated in This Country (London: White, Cochrane & Co.,1810): The book contained ninety beautiful aquatints, by Brookshaw’s brother Richard, of many fruits including pineapples. 1811 Thomas Andrew Knight, Pomona Herefordiensis (London: The Agricultural Society of Herefordshire, 1811): Discussed further below. 1818 William Hooker, Pomona Londiniensis; Containing Coloured Engravings of the Most Esteemed Fruits Cultivated in the British Gardens (London: published by the author; sold by J. Harding, 1818): Probably authored by Salisbury with Hooker’s illustrations, although as Janson notes, Hooker was ‘his own publisher, author, delineator, engraver, colourist, pomological expert and sales manager’.36 Published as a part work but discontinued after part 7. 1826 Robert Thompson, A Catalogue of the Fruits Cultivated in the Garden of the Horticultural Society of London (2nd edn. London: W. Nichol, 1831). 1828–30 John Lindley and Robert Thompson, Pomological Magazine: Figures and Descriptions of the Most Important Varieties of Fruit Cultivated in Great Britain (London: James Ridgeway, 1828–30). Re-issued as Lindley’s Pomologia Britannia (London: Bohn, 1841): The illustrations were provided by Mrs Augusta Withers, described by Janson as ‘the leading lady of fruit painting and the tutor of the aspiring daughters of some fruit nurserymen’, and Charles Curtis.37 1831 George Lindley, ed. by John Lindley, A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831): George Lindley, John’s father, was a nurseryman near Norwich. 1831 Hugh Ronalds, Pyrus malus Brentfordiensis or a Concise Description of Selected Apples (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831): Notable for its illustrations by Miss Ronalds. 1838 John Loudon, Arboretum et Fruiticum Britannicum, or; The Trees and Shrubs of Britain (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1838): This also grew into subsequent ‘collected’ editions. The chapter on apples (Vol. II chap. XLII pp. 891–908) includes a list of apples recommended by Robert Thompson, a section on how to make cider and a section on myths and folklore associated with apples. 36. Ibid. p. 299. 37. Ibid. p. 306.

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1847 David Taylor Fish, The Apple: Its History, Varieties and Cultivation (London: ‘The Country Office’, 1847): This pamphlet contains a list of varieties, including those for ‘a particular purpose’ and an illustrated guide to pruning, grafting and training. 1851 Robert Hogg, British Pomology: Or the History, Description, Classification and Synonymes of the Fruits and Fruit Trees of Great Britain Vol 1: The Apple (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1851): Intended to be the first of a series covering all British fruits. 1859 Robert Hogg, The Apple and Its Varieties: Being a History and Description of the Varieties of Apples Cultivated in the Gardens and Orchards of Great Britain (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1859): Largely a re-issue of British Pomology. 1860 Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual: Containing the Descriptions and Synonomes of the Fruits and Fruit Trees Commonly Met With in the Gardens and Orchards of Great Britain, with Selected Lists of Those Most Worthy of Cultivation (London: Cottage Gardener Office, 1860): Subsequent editions were released without major changes in 1862 and 1866. 1862 Robert Hogg, John Spencer and Thomas Moore, The Florist and Pomologist: A Pictorial Monthly Magazine of Flowers Fruits and General Horticulture (London: Journal of Horticulture Press, 1862): Previously The Florist (1848), this occasional periodical emphasized fruit culture under Hogg’s ownership. It ceased in 1884. 1872 John Scott, Scott’s Catalogue of Orchard Fruits (London: H. M. Pollett 1872): Re-issued as Scott’s Orchardist in 1873 (London: H. M. Pollett, 1873) but withdrawn after Hogg sued for plagiarism, as discussed below. 1875 Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual (London: Cottage Gardener Office, 1875): Revised from its 1860 edition with new material, especially historic background to the cultivars, it is over 600 pages long. 1878 Robert Hogg and Henry Graves Bull, The Herefordshire Pomona (Hereford: Jakeman and Carver, 1878): Published in annual instalments from 1878 to 1884, on a very small print run of approximately 600 hand-coloured copies. 1884 Robert Hogg, The Fruit Manual (London: Journal of Horticulture Office, 1884): Final edition of 759 pages, including a section on cider apples. The pomological publications that pre-dated the Apple Congress of 1883 all shared the aims that were publicized at that event, to classify the apple cultivars and explain how best to grow them. The first notable attempt at this was made in 1847 when David Taylor Fish published The Apple, Its History, Varieties and Cultivation. Fish was a Scottish gardener and horticultural scholar, only twentythree when this work was published. It was thoroughly researched and gave more information on a great number of cultivars, making it more extensive than either the previous catalogues of fruits, or the pomonas, limited to one county. However, Fish’s work was not pre-eminent for long, since in 1851 Hogg outdid Fish with his British Pomology. In the introduction to this work, intended to be the first in a series of volumes about every British fruit, Hogg acknowledged his sources, notably George Lindley’s A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (1831) and the Catalogue of

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Fruits compiled by Robert Thompson, Fruit Superintendent at the Horticultural Society, and last updated in 1842. Hogg did not include Fish in his list of sources, presumably because Hogg’s work would have been almost complete at the time of Fish’s publication. Instead, Hogg noted that there had been such growth in the number of available varieties of apple that both Lindley’s and Thompson’s work required updating. In their respective introductions both Lindley and Hogg romanticized the apple. Hogg’s opening sentence, ‘There is no fruit, in temperate climes, so universally esteemed and so extensively cultivated, nor is there any which is so closely identified with the social habits of the human species as the apple’, sets the tone of his text, demonstrating the importance of the apple, and the importance that he saw of its relationship to culture.38 In Lindley’s catalogue of apple varieties, which forms over half of his text, he describes them in terms that could be applied to children; St Padley’s Pippin is ‘a very neat and excellent dessert apple’ while the Nonesuch is ‘handsome’ and the Pomme de Neige is ‘beautiful and singular’.39 Both works, and the other major pomological works listed above, describe the origins of each variety. An apple’s ‘parentage’ is important in horticultural terms, in that it helps to determine the characteristics of the apple, but these descriptions also add to the reader’s impression of apples having personalities. Their breeding and heritage is as much a part of the description of the apple as its taste or how to cultivate it, and is included by nearly all the pomology works, showing it was considered to be of interest to their readers. Hogg’s history of the apple in cultivation concurs with that outlined in the section on the long history of the apple at the start of this book. Hogg’s version has been proved through the works of later fruit historians such as Joan Morgan to be the most reliable and accurate of the nineteenth-century versions. Hogg provided evidence to dispel the popular idea that the Romans introduced the sweet apple to England, whereas Fish, for example, was vague about the history and could only say ‘it is generally supposed’ that the Romans were responsible.40 Hogg also provided textual evidence to show that the apple was not lost to cultivation entirely between the departure of the Romans and the Tudor period. In these pomological works the apple is described within the discourse of evolution; showing how it developed from a primitive, sour apple into the improved sweet apple. However, for the writers of the pomonas, this is due not to natural evolutionary pressures, like those described by Rivers observing his seedlings, but by the improving, guiding and far-thinking actions of expert growers throughout the centuries. 38. Robert Hogg, British Pomology; or the History, Description, Classification and Synonymes of the Fruits and Fruit Trees of Great Britain – Vol. I the Apple (London: Groombridge and Sons, 1851) p. 1. 39. George Lindley, ed. by John Lindley, A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831) St Padley’s Pippin p. 21, Nonesuch p. 20, Pomme de Neige p. 22. 40. D. T. Fish, The Apple: Its History, Varieties and Cultivation (London: The Country Office, 1847) p. 2.

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Hogg, Lindley and Fish comment on the confusion of names for apples. Synonyms are listed for almost every variety, and local pronunciations and spellings add to the mix. One example that illustrates the complexities that Victorian pomologists faced is the history of the Norfolk Beefing apple. This is an apple that was extremely popular during the later nineteenth century as a culinary apple until it was superseded by the Bramley’s Seedling. The Norfolk Beefing (still grown today under that name) was listed by Lindley as the ‘Norfolk Beaufin’ and ‘undoubtedly a Norfolk variety’ in origin. Lindley noted that ‘many thousands of these apples are dried by the bakers in Norwich, annually, and sent in boxes as presents to all parts of the kingdom, where they are universally admired’.41 Hogg, however, described the apple as German in origin, recording similarly that the apples ‘are baked in ovens, and form the dried fruits met with among confectioners and fruiterers and called ‘Norfolk Biffins’. He believes Beefing to be the correct name, ‘from the similarity the dried fruit presents to raw beef ’.42 ‘Beaufin’, to Hogg, erroneously implied a French origin for this variety. The Biffin is the apple delicacy mentioned in Dicken’s Christmas Carol as a festive treat. ‘Norfolk Biffins, squab and swarthy, setting off the yellow of oranges and lemons, and in the great compactness of their juicy persons, urgently entreating and beseeching to be carried home in paper bags and eaten after dinner’.43 Here again is an apple with a distinct personality. ‘Biffin’, therefore, seems to have been most often the name under which the apples were sold in London, in their cooked form. An advert in the Morning Post in 1820 claimed that ‘families may be accommodated with real dried Norfolk Biffins … those at one shilling per dozen are of an excellent flavour’.44 Biffins remained popular as a Christmas and winter delicacy throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century; R. F. Ladell in Norwich was still advertising them in 1885, while Barnes and Williamson say they were still being sold by Norwich bakers in the 1950s.45 This etymological discord makes tracing the origins of any apple now extant a difficult undertaking; today, as discussed in Chapter 4, the increasing use of DNA tests at the National Fruit Collection is likely to result in a reduction in the number of genetically distinct varieties. What remains from Hogg and Lindley, however, is a sense of the desire, the need, to classify every apple tree according to its variety. Hogg lists 942 different named varieties. Both authors claimed to have made extensive tours of the country studying the different growing conditions and local varieties. Hogg made an attempt to classify apples in a scientific manner by their characteristics. He noted that ‘a great desideratum in pomological science is 41. Lindley, A Guide to the Orchard p. 56. 42. Hogg, British Pomology p. 147. 43. Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol: A Ghost Story of Christmas (1st edn. 1843, Bungay: The Reprint Society, 1950) p. 62. 44. The Morning Post, 4 January 1820. 45. Norfolk Chronicle and Norwich Gazette, 24 October 1885. Barnes and Williamson, English Orchards p. 187.

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a system of classification for the apple, founded on characters which are at once permanent and well defined’.46 Hogg showed familiarity with the work of German botanists, summarizing their work, before using a similar classification of shape, colour, season of ripening and growth habits. These categories, put together with the work of John Bultitude and other fruit taxonomists in the twentieth century, are still in use for apple identification in the orchard, with DNA more frequently providing the final answer, as well as throwing up many subsequent questions.47 Lindley lists 214 separate apples, saying, in defeat, that the variety of apples is ‘far too numerous to attempt any thing like a complete description: even to enumerate them would be a most difficult task, owing to the great uncertainty of their names among nurserymen, gardeners and orchardists, and the multiplicity of names under which they are known in different parts of the kingdom’.48 Lindley, as a conscientious nurseryman himself, blames the growers and nurserymen for not checking the origins of their stock, and so leading gardeners to perpetuate the errors. As well as the factual information on the development of the apple as a crop and a favourite tree for gardeners, what is notable in Hogg and Lindley is the tone of enthusiasm for the apple, and the pride in the fruit and its growers, both amateur and commercial. Hogg gave his volume extra authority by citing the work of the Horticultural Society, with which he was so closely involved, and his work requires the reader to understand both Latin and French. For example, his discussion of the origins of the Api variety, an apple which may go back to the seventeenth century, if not to the Roman Empire, includes paragraphs in both languages and an evaluation of the textual evidence.49 Deconstructing and evaluating Hogg’s work as a text, therefore, as well as reading it for the information contained in the content, is enlightening. It conforms in structure to other earlier works on the apple, beginning with the history of the fruit and leading into lists of varieties. The language has a tone of certainty, and the use of Latin passages perhaps indicates the level of education that Hogg expects from his readers, but such inclusions also demonstrated to the reader the amount of research and the level of erudition that Hogg himself had obtained. The reader was left in no doubt that the apple was a species worthy of study. The influence of Hogg’s writing is demonstrated by the plagiarism case between Hogg and John Scott, over the text of The Orchardist. Hogg brought the case in 1874, having realized that large sections of the text of the second edition were taken directly from British Pomology. Scott’s defence was that Hogg’s descriptions were so good it was unnecessary to re-write them. As it was reported, Scott’s method 46. Hogg, British Pomology p. 7. 47. John Bultitude, Apples; A Guide to the Identification of International Varieties (London: Macmillan Reference Books, 1989). He divided apples into groups according to their size, shape and season of ripeness. 48. Lindley, A Guide to the Orchard p. 115. 49. Hogg, British Pomology pp. 24–5.

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was that ‘where such description was found exact and true, and corresponded accurately with his specimens, he did, to save the useless labour of writing an entirely new description for the sake of rewriting (and which might besides expose him to the imputation of colourably altering), adopt the description already at his command’. Although it is clear, as Janson has proved, that each pomona or descriptive catalogue relied heavily on the textual matter of the previous ones, Hogg won the case. The vice-chancellor judging it was recorded as stating that, regarding Scott’s ‘contention that the same fruit could only be described in the same words, he thought that the English language must be very poor indeed if it did not allow of different expressions being used in this respect’.50 Hogg later went on to win a similar plagiarism case against William Robinson, editor of The Garden magazine. Hogg was defending not only his expertise, but the particular way in which he used the language of pomology. The use of his language by others shows that he had refined the art and science of apple description to the extent that it was taken for a standard methodology and text. The effort, time and expense given to writing, printing and distributing such works demonstrate that the Victorians perceived apples as much more than a humble ingredient of pies or cider, but as a suitable fruit for scientific study or horticultural experiment, as well as continuing to enjoy apple trees as decorative elements in even the finest and most fashionable gardens. The economic importance of the apple was enhanced by these texts, which all encouraged domestic gardeners to grow more fruit. In the introduction to his pomona, Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis, Hugh Ronalds declared, ‘There seems no reason why a fancy should not be indulged in Apples as well as in Tulips, Ranunculuses &c., as they present the greatest and most beautiful variety of any species of fruit, and so eminently combine the useful with the agreeable.’51 Here Ronalds was referencing the various flower societies established by working-class groups, which I discuss further in Chapter 8, on the role of the apple in leisure gardening. The plates in the illustrated pomonas show apples arranged as things of beauty, as Ronalds wished, not just for scientific clarity, which is further acknowledgement of the aesthetic appeal of the material as well as the cultural apple. The illustrator’s art is to combine the necessary accuracy and detail with aesthetic appeal, and pomonas are among the finest demonstrations of their talents. Pomonas, as illustrated catalogues of fruit, have a long history. The first in English with illustrations, in this case line drawings, was Pomona, or the Fruit Garden Illustrated by Batty Langley, published in 1729 and, as he said, ‘the whole illustrated with above Three Hundred Drawings of the several fruits, Curiously Engraven on Seventy-nine large Folio Plates’ drawn by Langley himself.52 Edward Bunyard 50. Brent Elliott, ‘Hogg’s Fruit Manual, Its Rivals and Successors’ Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library Vol. 4 (October 2010) pp. 11–15. 51. Hugh Ronalds, Pyrus malus Brentfordiensis, or, a Concise Description of Selected Apples (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831) p. vi. 52. Batty Langley, Pomona, or, the Fruit Garden Illustrated (London: G Strahan, 1729) title page.

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(son of George Bunyard, the Victorian fruit nurseryman who gave a presentation at the Apple Congress) described it in 1915 as a folio volume, in which the line drawings ‘show a real appreciation of the characters of the fruits’.53 As pomonas became more specialized, cataloguing fruits rather than including large sections of generalized growing advice, the illustrations in pomonas came to be considered as equal in importance to the text. Later pomonas were produced in very small editions, because of the expense of the lithographs and hand-drawn and coloured illustrations. The first pomona of the nineteenth century was brought out by George Brookshaw, his Pomona Britannica appearing in parts between 1804 and 1808 before being produced as a complete volume in 1812. Richard Brookshaw was the principal artist, and his coloured plates (between seventy and ninety of them, depending on the edition) have little accompanying text from George. The subtitle tells us that he used the fruits growing in Hampton Court Palace orchards for his subjects.54 At the same time, Knight produced the Pomona Herefordiensis, a pomona which is still in use today among apple identifiers, so clear are the illustrations and the text, as well as being reprinted and enjoyed as a work of art.55 This depicts the cider apples and perry pears of Herefordshire, often drawn from trees in Knight’s own orchards. The preface attributes the engravings to William Hooker, the most expert of fruit painters; however only one plate is signed ‘W. Hooker fecit’. Although Hooker had been drawing and engraving plants and fruit for the Transactions of the Horticultural Society since at least 1807, he was not asked to draw the fruits for the book, but only to engrave them. In Knight’s introduction he states that the paintings, from which the plates were prepared, were done by ‘Miss Mathews of Belmont’ who produced the ‘most excellent drawings’.56 Knight’s own daughter, Frances, described in the introduction as ‘a very young and inferior artist of my own family’ contributed three plates when Miss Mathews was not well enough to finish.57 Frances, later Mrs Stockhouse Acton, became an artist in a variety of fields and contributed a plate to the Herefordshire Pomona, seventy years later.58 The plates in the Pomona Herefordiensis are not only clear, but beautiful, and the apples are shown with scabs, spots and blemishes particular to each variety. The apples are shown on the bough, the leaves are shown so that both the

53. E. A. Bunyard, ‘A Guide to the Literature of Pomology’ Journal of the Royal Horticultural Society Vol. 40 Part 3 (1915) p. 421. 54. George Brookshaw, Pomona Britannica: A Collection of the Most Esteemed Fruits Cultivated in Great Britain, Selected Principally from the Royal Gardens at Hampton Court (London: Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme and Browne, 1812). 55. Thomas Andrew Knight, Pomona Herefordiensis (London: The Agricultural Society of Herefordshire, 1811). 56. Ibid. p. viii. 57. Ibid. 58. Brent Elliott, ‘English Fruit Illustration Part 1 Knight and Reynolds’ Occasional Papers from the RHS Lindley Library ed. by Brent Elliott Vol. 4 (October 2010) p. 41.

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top and underside can be seen, and the leaves have holes, the twigs are adorned with lichen. This is both a romantic and a realistic depiction of apples, where the fruit is something worthy of being drawn from life, like the most exotic of blooms. It follows the tradition of the way fruit was illustrated in European pomonas such as Duhamel du Monceau’s Traité des Arbres Fruitiers (1768) giving a full portrait of each variety with blossom, bud and fruit.59 Hugh Ronalds’s pomona of the apples of his nursery in Brentford, Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis, contains forty-two coloured plates, made from drawings ‘drawn from nature on stone’, that is, by lithography, by Ronalds’ daughter, Elizabeth.60 Ronalds’s nursery provided the specimens for her. John Loudon’s description of the business demonstrates how many varieties would have been available to her, the scale of the top commercial nurseries and the expertise of the staff: Mr. Ronalds has, for many years, paid great attention to the culture and improvement of the apple, and has collected above 300 sorts, all of which have borne fruit for several years. The quantity of fruit grown on his specimen trees this season is estimated at upwards of 800 bushels; and it will easily be conceived, from this circumstance, that the trees are of such a size and age, and Mr. Ronalds’s experience respecting their individual character and habits of such an extent, as to enable him to determine fully, and with confidence, the merits of every variety.61

The plates in Ronalds’ pomona were printed by Charles Hullmandel, an important lithographer. However it was Elizabeth herself, who, as she signed, was drawing the apples ‘from nature and on stone’, that is, she was drawing directly onto lithographic stone, rather than making the original drawings on paper for another artist to copy onto the stone. Sadly her original lithographic stones have not survived. The most ambitious of the Victorian pomonas was the Herefordshire Pomona, collated and written by Hogg and Dr Henry Graves Bull.62 It was inspired by research from the Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club, founded in 1851, into the cider orchards of their local area of Herefordshire. The Woolhope club had noted traditional varieties of apple were in decline in their area and were keen to record the trees and their fruit. Their pomona had chapters on the history of apples and some folklore, contributed by Bull, and details of over 200 different cultivars, with the text largely based upon Hogg’s Fruit Manual. The Herefordshire Pomona was created in seven parts during 1878–85. These were bound together and produced

59. Duhamel du Monceau, Traité des Arbres Fruitiers (Paris: Saillant et Desaint, 1768). 60. Hugh Ronalds, Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1831) p. vii. 61. J. C. Loudon, ‘The London Nurseries’ Gardener’s Magazine, Vol. 5 (1829) p. 736. 62. Robert Hogg and Henry Graves Bull, Herefordshire Pomona (Hereford: Jakeman and Carver, 1876).

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in two volumes in 1885, sadly just as Bull died. The illustrations used the new process of chromolithography (drawing onto lithographic stones with colour) and the plates were taken from hundreds of watercolours drawn by Alice Blanche Ellis, a Gold Medallist water colour artist from the Bloomsbury School of Art who had recently moved to Hereford, and Bull’s daughter Edith Elizabeth. Many of the apple subjects were brought to local shows and horticultural exhibitions, so there are more laid out as single specimens, with several apples to each image, and fewer in life, hanging on the bough, since there was less opportunity for the apple trees to be observed throughout the year. Alice and Edith drew over four hundred varieties of apples and pears during the autumn seasons, while Bull drew the fruit outlines that give a guide to identification of each variety. Alice and Edith appear to have left little other evidence of their lives behind, whereas Bull (posthumously) and Hogg received all the acclaim possible as botanists and ‘pomologists’ of this new work. However, Alice and Edith were later presented with a miniature of Bull and a hundred guineas in appreciation of their work. Only six hundred copies of the pomona were ever printed, paid for by subscription (£1 per annum for those who were not members of the Field Club), and now they are highly sought after and extremely valuable.63 The wider benefit of this pomona in particular was that the work of Hogg and Bull helped to prompt a nationwide survey of apples, the subsequent National Apple Congress of 1883 and its successors. Although not many apple lovers could afford to buy a pomona of their own, cheaper books on fruit and fruit growing increased in number during the nineteenth century. One such was published in paperback in 1867. The Orchard and Fruit Garden: Their Culture and Produce was written by Elizabeth Watts. In her introduction she clearly, and somewhat pointedly, positions her book away from the artistic pomonas from her first sentence. ‘We have so many excellent large and expensive works on fruit culture, that I should never have thought of writing this one, if its peculiar place had not stood vacant, waiting to be filled. It is the first cheap work on the Orchard and Fruit Garden.’64 It would certainly not be the last.

63. Richard Wheeler, introduction, CD Edition of the Herefordshire Pomona (Hereford: Marcher Apple Network, 2005). 64. Elizabeth Watts, The Orchard and Fruit Garden: Their Culture and Produce (London: Frederick Warne & Co., 1867) preface.

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Once the apple was harvested, it had to reach the consumer. Apples were often sold and eaten locally, at the cottage door or village market, but, as this book has previously demonstrated, apples were a nationally, and internationally, traded commodity with a fluctuating price. This chapter considers the end-links in the chain between grower and consumer, before the apple is eaten or drunk (which is discussed in Chapter 8). Here, I investigate the economic importance of the apple in the nineteenth century by focusing first on the urban fruit trade and then on the costermongers or street fruit sellers of London. Although costermongers as studied here were unique to London, the information available about their way of life helps to inform a determination of the economic and social importance of the apple as an item of everyday, and luxury, consumption. By exploring the social and cultural significance of those selling apples on the street, I can determine how their reception and representation may have affected the economic worth and status of the apple.

The nineteenth-century fruit trade I have used a variety of contemporary and secondary sources, since there is little written explicitly on the subject of the trade in apples, even into the early twentieth century. Historians of urban provisioning, retailing and distribution have largely overlooked the importance of the fruit (and vegetable) trades. James Jefferys, in his aggregation of large-scale retailing trends from 1850 onwards, noted that fresh produce continued to be sold by small independent retailers and therefore, he maintained, did little to influence, and were little affected by, the so-called ‘retail revolution’ of that period.1 Janet Blackman, studying the food supply of Sheffield, argued that the growth in the number of fixed shops was the most important change to retailing in the early nineteenth century. Therefore in her study the role of the street fruit seller was downplayed, since they were not part of the expanding 1. James B. Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain 1850–1950 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954) p. 244.

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stationary retail nexus.2 Gareth Shaw considered the distribution network from the geographer’s perspective and noted that both Blackman’s and Jefferys’s arguments were simultaneously valid, since Blackman was concerned with changes in the material retail structure and Jefferys with the overall organizational trends of the period.3 In accordance with Shaw’s methodology, therefore, it is necessary to view the distributive system for any product in its entirety over the period to gain a clear picture of how the distribution functioned, and how this affected the product’s economic worth. In addition, recent research has looked at more facets of the retail process, including the spatial geography of markets and other retail spaces to see how this influenced consumer patterns.4 As P. J. Atkins’s study of the retail milk trade in London demonstrated, ‘studies of individual trades in their urban setting can contribute to our understanding of how the Victorian city economy behaved in the important everyday function of supplying retail goods’.5 An efficient food supply, along with sufficient housing and sanitations, is one of the necessities for a functioning city. Roger Scola and Janet Blackman have traced the changes in food arriving to feed the urban populations of Manchester and Sheffield, respectively. Within their discourses on retailing and food distribution the apple has been given little attention. This may be due to fruit not being a staple crop. The apple, like other seasonal fruits, occupied a space in the nineteenth-century diet between essential daily staple and imported luxury, and therefore has not been given the academic attention paid to either. Scola’s work however implies that the apple was an important commodity and a food that the consumer actively sought out. He noted that throughout the nineteenth century Manchester’s fruit market was known as ‘the apple market’ and that apples came into the city not only from local orchards but from Worcestershire and Kent, and, later in the century, at a premium price from America.6 Scola’s sources included advertisements and articles in the local press as well as agricultural reports, which demonstrated that agricultural writers of the time believed that ‘commercial fruit growing was poorly developed in the surrounding area’.7 Scola noted that most of the apples came into Manchester from a distance, especially after the development of the surrounding canal network, although local small-scale farmers took surplus

2. Janet Blackman, ‘The Food Supply of an Industrial Town: A Study of Sheffield’s Public Markets 1780–1900’ Business History Vol. 5 No. 2 (1963) pp. 83–97. 3. Gareth Shaw, ‘Changes in Consumer Demand and Food Supply in Nineteenth Century British Cities’ Journal of Historical Geography Vol. 11 No. 3 (1985) pp. 280–96. 4. Colin Smith, ‘The Market Place and the Market’s Place in London c.1660–1840’ (doctoral thesis, University College London, 1999). 5. Atkins, ‘The Retail Milk Trade in London’ p. 522. 6. Roger Scola, Feeding the Victorian City: Food Supply of Manchester 1770–1870 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1992) p. 120. 7. Ibid. p. 121.

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product to market when they could. The advertisements from the major Manchester paper, The Mercury, do indeed show dealers in imported and local fruits, such as W. Burnand, ‘Dealer in English and Foreign Fruits’, who in 1800 was advertising fashionable varieties, ‘Golden Pippins and Nonpareil Apples, very fine.’8 These varieties were the top-quality dessert apples and may have been imported, although, as the next chapter discusses in detail, there was often hostility towards foreign apples. However, Scola’s comprehensive survey cannot allow space to include more information on the apple, beyond his conclusion that local pollution depressed nearby crops, and that ‘as a major commercial undertaking, fruit growing for the Manchester market was almost non-existent’.9 Janet Blackman considered the retail trade in Sheffield in order to counterbalance the concentration on London; she noted that in Sheffield there was also trade with other large, local towns such as Rotherham. Despite the growth in demand for fresh fruit and vegetables, Sheffield ‘was largely dependent on the seasonable foodstuffs grown in a fairly narrow locality around the town … supplemented by water and land carriage from Goole, Thorne and Doncaster’ until the arrival of the railway expanded the sources available.10 Sheffield merchants petitioned for a covered market, similar to those in Newcastle, Liverpool and Birmingham. Blackman noted that the granting of this petition, by establishing markets close to the centre of the city, demonstrated the changing retail structure and increasing importance of fruit and vegetables for sale.11 Blackman’s conclusions are similar to Scola’s – that markets have grown to meet local circumstances, without any organizational structure. Comparisons between these major cities and London, where the Guilds influenced the nature of the retail and market trade, are therefore hard to draw. The food supply of New York developed over the same period, but in a way that contradicts Blackman and Scola’s conclusions, since New York produce markets changed from a model of extremely tight regulation under the municipal government, to a free-market economy with thousands of unregulated, individual shops.12 At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the fruit and vegetable markets were controlled by the Markets Committee, and the individual stalls within the markets were taken by farmers who transported their own produce and sold it themselves, without the reliance on wholesalers or middle men that characterizes the English urban produce trade. As the city grew larger and more densely populated, farmers were able to take advantage of good transport links, particularly down the Hudson River, in order to get their produce in front of the consumer. In a study of agriculture around New York, Louis Tremante notes: 8. The Mercury, 4 March 1800. 9. Scola, Feeding the Victorian City p. 122. 10. Blackman, ‘The Food Supply of an Industrial Town’ p. 92. 11. Ibid. p. 94. 12. George Baics, Feeding Gotham: The Political Economy and Geography of Food in New York 1790–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

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Agricultural production in the vicinity of New York adopted a distinct geographic pattern characterized by intensive use of space: commercial production of perishables (such as milk, fruit, and vegetables), succession cropping, use of season extension technologies, and heavy reliance on street sweepings and stable manure. Contemporary observers commented on this distinct spatial orientation of agricultural production along New York City’s urban fringe. In 1804, the Reverend Timothy Dwight noted: ‘The country between Jamaica and Brooklyn, being generally owned by persons who have grown rich with the aid of New York, and being manured from the streets and stables of that city, is under high cultivation.’13

Tremante investigates the spatially specific nature of his five ‘drivers’ of urban agricultural growth – ‘a large and increasing population, high land values, a deep pool of immigrant labor, the availability of large quantities of stable manure, and the presence of a large retail market’.14 The availability of immigrant labour, and the high value placed on their industry and skills, is one driver that was specific to New York. The nature of the retail market was also different in its regulation and the physical spaces that were allocated for trade. However, by the mid-nineteenth century, New York’s produce markets were experiencing challenges similar to those of London, as Tremante describes: Beginning in the 1840s farmers and gardeners faced challenges from a growing class of wholesalers and grocers who aggressively attempted to take over the retail market, and from City administrators who had lost confidence in the public market as an institution. Overcrowding, for example, posed a vexing problem as throngs of buyers, sellers, performers, thieves, pickpockets and wagons so crowded the country markets that traffic sometimes came to a standstill. Regarding conditions near Washington Market, one observer wrote that West Street was ‘so filled with Carmen, Grocers and Country Carts and wagons as to be difficult to cross even on foot’.15

Produce markets had become multi-functional spaces that served as entertainment, either intentionally or just for those who came to watch the interactions between the traders. Traders seeking more stability began to set up independent shops instead, and the consumers followed them. Throughout this book, I have considered how the apple was perceived as a commodity, and set that against the changes in the nature and motivation of the consumer. Focusing on the apple in this context provides an original insight into how fresh food was transported, consumed and eaten in large towns and cities, and 13. Louis Tremante, ‘Agriculture in the Vicinity of Mid-Nineteenth Century New York City’ New York History Vol. 97 Nos. 3–4 (Summer/Fall 2016) pp. 265–92 p. 265. 14. Ibid. 15. Ibid. p. 289.

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demonstrates how the apple was received and perceived by its urban consumers, and how that affected its economic value. Reginia Gagnier has noted that during the nineteenth century the concept of ‘economic man’, one bounded by his labour and production, transformed into the ‘universal man of insatiable consumer desires’.16 This consumer, made newly aware of products’ levels of ‘relative scarcity’ only through knowledge of all that is put before him/her to consume, must demonstrate taste, class and their ‘level of civilisation’ through purchases.17 This shift from production to consumption as a moral impetus may seem removed from such a mundane purchase as an apple, but the transaction made in buying an apple was one that could indeed demonstrate the class and cultural perceptions of the purchaser.

The supply network for London The distributive network for fruit in London was often studied and commented on during the nineteenth century itself, since the expansion in population and the subsequent growth in fixed retail outlets were so obvious to residents and social commentators, and many journalists were based in London and able to examine the nearby market gardens. The articles and commentaries produced from that period form part of the discourse on production, process and the progress of individual commodities. This discourse in turn was a popular subject in middleclass periodicals throughout the second half of the century, and these texts influenced the way in which those commodities were received.18 The nineteenth-century growth in market gardening is, throughout the period, viewed by those within the industry, and by cultural commentators, in a positive light as an example of economic progress. They comment on the amount of land given over to market gardening, as have historians. Recent estimates as to the extent of the area covered by market gardens in and around London therefore vary. Floud uses Malcolm Thick’s figures from his study of Neat House to estimate a total of 13,000 acres at the beginning of the nineteenth century.19 Contemporary accounts put the total rather lower, especially since, as horticulturalist C. W. Shaw observed in 1879, the total land given over to fruit cultivation decreased during the century ‘for the land is high rented, and old orchards are being yearly cleared off to make room for the builder, and few care to speculate in a very large way in orchard planting’.20

16. Reginia Gagnier, ‘On the Insatiability of Human Wants: Economic and Aesthetic Man’ Victorian Studies Vol. 36 No. 2 (Winter 1993) pp. 125–53 p. 126. 17. Ibid. 18. Peter Gurney, Wanting and Having; Popular Politics and Liberal Consumerism in England 1830–70 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015). 19. Floud, An Economic History p. 138. 20. C. W. Shaw, London Market Gardening (London: [n. pub.], 1879) p. 119.

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In 1820, at the start of the boom in market gardening, horticulturalist Henry Phillips published his master work Pomarium Britannicum.21 Prefaced as ‘the first historic account of fruits, which has been attempted in the English language’, Phillips brought his history up to date with a description of the production of fruit around the capital. He described the extent of the market gardens, and quoted other contemporary sources, presumably other nurserymen, to give an estimate of the scale of the enterprise; ‘Stevenson informs us, that 3,500 acres of ground in Surrey alone are employed as market gardens; and Middleton observes, that from Kensington to Twickenham, the ground on both sides of the road for seven miles composes the great fruit gardens, north of the Thames, for the supply of the London market.’22 Phillips also wrote a description of the production of fruit around the capital, where ‘night soil’ – human waste – was ‘so carefully removed to manure the ground occupied by gardeners in the environs, which are now calculated to exceed six thousand acres within twelve miles of London … in constant cultivation’.23 Floud has calculated that the city produced ‘about 300,000 tons of human waste and horse dung’ each year in 1800. He commented, ‘Presumably the citizens of London knew – but did not care – that the fruit and vegetables they bought at Covent Garden Market had been nourished by human and equine waste.’24 Phillips’ remarks makes clear that his readers, at least, knew of the use of night soil, which he obviously saw as an advantage for London and its crops. Market gardens and plant nurseries alike were distributed around the capital in close proximity to the Thames, so that produce, and other supplies such as night soil, could be moved easily along the river to the markets, also close to the Thames shore. The orchards were integrated into the whole fruit- and vegetable-growing business, and any land with fruit trees was itself cultivated on horticultural, market garden models, where every single plant has to earn its keep all year round. Apples were one crop crammed into this highly productive and efficient business. Phillips also commented on the number of market garden employees, which he found ‘gratifying’ since ‘even during the six winter months, it is computed that it affords work to five persons an acre, and at least double that for the summer months, who are principally female’.25 This is a comparable figure to that given to the 1829 Select Committee on Fresh Fruit by several witnesses, as discussed in Chapter 3. Phillips did not give an indication of how high labour costs would impact the profits of the market gardens. George Dodd, a journalist and writer on statistics and industrial process, first published his bestselling work, The Food of London, in 1855. In it he sought to give, as he said, ‘a sketch of the chief varieties, sources of supply, probable quantities, 21. Henry Phillips, Pomariam Britannicum (London: T and J Allman, 1820) p. iv. 22. Ibid. p. v. 23. Ibid. p. iv. 24. Floud, An Economic History pp. 138–9. 25. Phillips, Pomarium p. v.

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modes of arrival, processes of manufacture, suspected adulteration, and machinery of distribution of the food for a community of two millions and a half ’.26 He also sought to answer the question ‘where does London end?’ in an effort to define the population, and noted that ‘our green fields are departing; our trees and shrubs, herbs and wild flowers, are being swallowed up in the wilderness of new streets and squares exhibited by the metropolis on all sides; and were it not for the marketgardens, the suburbs would be still more wearisome’.27 In Chapter 9 I consider how horticulture was considered a force for moral good and a space that improved the emotional, and even the spiritual, health of the working classes, but within the context of the economic or material value of the apple, it should be noted that writers such as Dodd were aware of, and in favour of, the access to parks, public and private gardens, green spaces and plant nurseries as benefitting the capital as a whole. Even the intensive market gardens had a recognized aesthetic appeal. Dodd celebrated the extent of fruit cultivation within these market gardens, geographically adjacent to the residential centres of London, with this description of the very intense cropping of a productive space in Fulham, where the apple trees were kept heavily pruned, and thus shortened. This maximizes the crop, the ease of picking and the use of space: When the onions are gathered, more cabbage or colewort is put in; and then come cauliflowers, gherkin cucumbers, French beans or scarlet runners. So the gardener proceeds, never allowing his ground to remain idle for a single day, and acting upon the well-assured maxim that the enormous expense of manure and labour will be more than repaid by the enormous returns per acre per annum. It is said that, in the month of November, this garden contains more than twenty acres of London greens: every hole and corner under trees, and every bit of spare space, being filled with them. There are fifty acres of apple, pear and plum plantations; the trees are pruned after the manner of currant bushes; and the ground under them is cropped with rhubarb, currants and gooseberries in summer, and with colewort and cabbages in winter.28

Here, Dodd is describing a very profitable enterprise, one where ‘enormous expense’ quickly yields ‘enormous returns’, but only if the gardener works every single day. The imagery is of an active, progressive space, giving a sense of movement and growth. The passage has similarities with descriptions of the newest factory lines, popular in the press throughout the nineteenth century as items familiarly made by hand became mass produced. For comparison, this passage by Richard Phillips from 1817 describes a recently mechanized shoe factory in Battersea: ‘All the details are performed by ingenious applications of 26. George Dodd, The Food of London … (London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans, 1856) p. ix. 27. Ibid. pp. 10–11. 28. Ibid. p. 374.

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the mechanic powers, and all the parts are characterized by precision, uniformity, and accuracy.’29 In Dodd’s commercial Eden the fruit trees are one crop among many, and the cultural image of the orchard as a serene, pastoral place is at odds with this fast-paced enterprise. The type of market-garden orchard that Dodd describes was the usual model for the southern and eastern counties with access to the London market, and one that remained popular and, as discussed above, could prove profitable throughout the period. Fourteen years later an article in All the Year Round, a periodical edited by Charles Dickens, describes in idealized and romantic tones a similarly productive scene in Kent, sketching the distribution chain of the apples which will go to a ‘salesman’ who is in the role of a wholesaler, rather than a retailer: From Tunbridge to Maidstone – fourteen miles – through Hadlow, Peckham, Mereworth, Wateringbury, Teston, and Barming, there are hops and orchards all the way. The prettiest orchards are those in which rows of apple-trees are mixed with filberts, cherries, and other low-growing trees. Filberts and cob-nuts do not want so much sun as the larger fruits; they need shelter, and they do not suffer from a little shade. The apple-trees, therefore, are planted wide apart, as tall standards, and are allowed to grow to a considerable height; under them, grow smaller trees, filberts, cherries, plums, damsons, and sometimes currants and gooseberries. The lower trees are kept small, and the filberts are pruned as bushes. They are all planted in rows, but a mixed orchard in full bearing looks like one mass of foliage and fruit. Inside, it is a busy scene. The orchards are often secluded within high hedges and close gates, and when picking is going on a merry humming is heard from within. The cost of picking a good crop of apples is from twopence to threepence a bushel. They are sent to London in bushel and half-bushel baskets (sieves). These belong to the salesman, who often sells and delivers the fruit, without unpacking it. … But in growing fruit for market there must be economy of labour and space; there must be no fancy work. … The apple-trees of Kent are five or six stories high, and produce five or six times as many apples, on an equal space, besides leaving room for a harvest of filberts and cherries beneath.30

This article has been quoted at length since it is not only a source of information about nineteenth-century commercial orchards, but it demonstrates how the cultural and material significance of the apple are blended together, and how the readers and the writer responded to the apple as a commodity, but one with more than an economic value; the orchards were prized for being pretty, and the workers were represented as happy within them. 29. Richard Phillips, A Morning’s Walk from London to Kew (London: Souter, 1817) p. 47. 30. Author unknown, ‘English Hop Gardens’ All the Year Round Vol. II (3 July 1869) p. 103.

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All the Year Round began in 1859 as a replacement for Household Words. Both publications included serialized fiction, travelogues and sometimes contained articles that described the cultural and material history of various commodities.31 However, this description of the orchard also has similarities to the travelogue, describing an unfamiliar and often ‘hidden’ place to which the author has privileged access. The article (author unknown) makes explicit the romanticized view of hard labour, and the symbolic innocence of the fruit and those who worked with it – the women whose ‘merry humming’ can be heard, like bees, rising above the enclosing hedges. Those selling apples and other fruit and vegetables – the wholesalers, the costermongers and the women with baskets on the street – had to rely on the attributes of the apple as being innocent and safe to eat, as a foodstuff that had come in fresh from the country. It served a vendor well to play on the rurality of the fruit, flowers and vegetables on offer, and link them to a section of society that was particularly celebrated in genre art by the mid- and late-Victorians – the unmodernized rural labourer, the ‘apple cheeked’ country maiden. Periodicals such as the Illustrated London News showed portraits of particular kinds of workers, and included an example of an apple harvester, pretty, healthy and happy in her work. Sellers and consumers alike wanted to conspire in this fantasy that fruit and flowers were collected and sold by shy country girls who skipped into town every day. Cultural representations of the rural-based apple seller and grower and the urban trader, the costermonger, were an integral part of the economic life of the apple as a traded commodity. The author in All the Year Round may be over-emphasizing the happiness of the orchard workers, but the article is also exaggerating the productivity of the apple trees within this mixed orchard. This is an instance where some practical knowledge is required in order to extrapolate the author’s intentions further. Apple trees cannot reach ‘five or six storeys high’ if the comparison is to the storeys of a house. Although the fruit trees in Kent, particularly the cherries, were grown tall, and the fruit was picked by women up precipitous ladders, a productive apple tree will not get much above thirty feet (9.2 metres), even on its own rootstock. Assuming ten feet (3 metres) per storey, an apple tree could reach to the roof of a three-storey house at most. It is likely that the author is, if not simply exaggerating for effect, referring to the number of extending branches coming off the main trunk. Kentish orchards would have had a trunk height in the region of ten feet to allow for dwarfing cherry trees and fruit bushes to be planted underneath, before 31. For example: All the Year Round Vol. 2 (12 November 1859) ‘English Mutton’, which is concerned with changes to the countryside and the loss of knowledge; ‘Strawberries’ by Edmund Saul Dixon, Household Words Vol. 18 No. 432 (3 July 1858), which sees the introduction of new varieties as a mark of progress; ‘Economic Botany’ by Edmund Saul Dixon, Household Words Vol. 12, No. 319 (3 May 1856), which describes many plants that most of the readers would never have encountered in plant form but were used in drugs and spices, and ‘Cherries’, All the Year Round Vol. 7 No. 167 (5 July 1862) which starts with the Roman General, Lucullus, who supposedly introduced the cherry tree to Britain.

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the branches are allowed to develop in a ladder-like pattern. The height may have been particularly striking in comparison to the dwarfed trees of the market gardens around London, described by Dodd. This system of mixed planting is referred to, or self-publicized as, part of the ‘The Kentish System’ by George Bunyard in one of his many popular books, Fruit Farming for Profit, first published in 1881, where he suggests all manner of crops that may be grown between the apple trees, including potatoes, lily of the valley flowers or daffodils to make better use of the available land.32 Once these apples were picked, they were packed up, usually by women, and brought to London by cart or by train. The Select Committee on Fresh Fruit of 1839 asked the growers what the effect of ‘railroads’ might be on their business. One answered that since apples were a luxury item, the expansion of the distribution routes would open ‘new fields of speculation’.33 At the same time, however, the growers acknowledged that apples could now be brought to London in fine condition from Scotland and the continent, as well as from other counties that would previously have only sold to the local market. As Roger Scola noted, it was the introduction of the railway around Manchester that allowed more apples to be sent to market there from Herefordshire and Worcestershire.34 Claire Masset believes the railway in turn ‘led to the planting of new orchards in Herefordshire … A few large orchards ran their own trains, and Lord Sudeley’s 1000 acre Toddington Orchard Company in Gloucestershire even had its own terminus’.35 This orchard was primarily growing cider apples, not dessert fruit. However some growers and particularly the wholesalers in Covent Garden complained to the Select Committee on Fresh Fruit that the ‘carriage was too heavy to receive much fruit from further away in the British Isles’.36 By the end of the nineteenth century, cargoes of refrigerated fruit were arriving in London from America, New Zealand and the West Indies. This cold storage did not prove popular with European wholesalers, or consumers. Wholesalers were concerned that consumers would

32. George Bunyard, Fruit Farming for Profit: With Detailed Instructions for Successful Commercial Culture on the Kent System (6th edn. Maidstone: Vivish and Baker, 1911) p. 69. C. W. Shaw, London Market Gardening, recommends roses, wallflowers and lettuces under the apple trees. p. 115. 33. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 152. 34. Scola, Feeding the Victorian City p. 123. 35. Claire Masset, Orchards (Oxford: Shire Publications, 2012) p. 17. The Sudeley Orchard was extremely ambitious, and included an order to George Bunyard for half a million trees. However Lord Sudeley was made bankrupt in the 1890s before the orchard really came into full fruit, and the extent of the area under orchard varies according to the source. See http://stablecurrencies.org.uk/forum/backgrnd/lsudeley.htm for Merlin Sudeley’s somewhat partial account. The legacy from the orchards is the Lady Sudeley apple, still grown today. 36. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 5.

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fear that chilled produce was old, and not fresh, while consumers continued to prefer to shop for whatever was best or cheapest in the market each day.37 Once the apples arrived in London, they were sold off through the network of ‘salesmen’ ready to meet them. The exact structure of this network, and how much money could be made from it, is difficult to ascertain with accuracy. Mr J. Godwin, giving his evidence to the Select Committee on Fresh Fruit in 1839, explained that he bought apples directly to sell, and also received consignments from ‘proprietors’ which he then sold on for a commission. He appears to have had many individual customers; he explained that he could only know what kind of crop of English apples to expect ‘from persons writing to me and stating that they have apples and enquiring what the price is and whether it is worth their while to send them’.38 Once these large cargoes of apples were received by fruit salesmen such as Mr Godwin, they were sold on as barrels, bushels and ‘sieves’ of individual apples. For a full discussion on how many apples were held in these containers, see the section in Chapter 7. The apples in their bushels and barrels went primarily to London’s Covent Garden market, the wholesale market for fresh produce, and from there they were sold to retailers, in local markets, shops and, more frequently, to the penultimate buyer in the chain – the costermongers and so-called ‘apple women’ who sold apples on the streets.

Costermongers Costermongers, as they were described in contemporary accounts, may have affected the reception of the apple into the middle-class home, as well as increasing its cultural significance. Costermongers, the fruit and vegetable traders of London, were the subject of intense social and cultural attention in the nineteenth century; it seems because they represented a particular strand of working-class life that was part condemned and part celebrated by their peers and by middle-class observers. They were visible, certainly very audible and lived much of their lives in the street. Stephen Jankiewicz notes that for costermongers the streets were not ‘blank, empty voids between banks, shops, workshops and factories – but a space where the battle over political authority and communal identity was being fought every day’.39 The costermongers themselves are a much-studied ‘tribe’, by both contemporary social commentators and historians, yet still remain part of the undervalued, less-explored sub-class of retail workers. This section, therefore, considers an often-overlooked aspect of their lives, their relationship to the produce they sold, and how the nature of their goods affected how they were

37. Freidberg, Fresh pp. 26–7. 38. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 5. 39. Stephen Jankiewicz, ‘A Dangerous Class: The Street Sellers of Nineteenth-Century London’ Journal of Social History Vol. 46 No. 2 (Winter 2012) pp. 391–415 p. 398.

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viewed in turn. The costermongers can be seen, like the apple, as operating on the intersection between the cultural and the material marketplaces. However, in economic terms, concentrating on the possible profits of the costermongers serves to illustrate not only the precarious nature of each individual livelihood, but also the number of men and women who were involved in the supply chain from orchard to kitchen. The fresh fruit trade was among the last to become part of the nexus of factors, salesmen and wholesalers operating across London’s markets and the country, possibly because of its intensely seasonal nature, until that season was extended by foreign imports. Many farmers still took their own crop to market, rather than rely on middlemen, but the salesmen were certainly interested in the fruit trade, and they took on more dealings in apples as the century progressed. As Colin Smith summarized it in his study of markets, ‘at Covent Garden, there were two levels of exchange: “all articles of common consumption”, it was noted in 1813, “have constantly been sold twice in the market, first by the grower to the wholesale dealer and again by the wholesale to the retail dealer. The town could not be supplied in any other way.”’40 The retail dealer either sold directly to the consumer or else sold the produce on again to smaller-scale retailers, primarily the costermongers, and, finally, to other street sellers, such as the vendors of hot apple fritters or baked goods. Although all classes used markets, the costermongers, street sellers and hawkers were used regularly only by those with the least income, who purchased the cheapest, inferior produce whenever they had a spare penny. A contemporary account stated that ‘while the shopkeeper supplied the gentry of the metropolis with the necessaries and luxuries of life, the street seller was the purveyor in general to the poor’.41 Colin Smith describes how street markets also minimized interaction between the classes by making themselves more suitable for certain types of consumer at certain times, so that on, Saturday evenings the working classes were out in force in the markets, when cash was at hand and stocks were sold off cheap. During the day, however, the middle ranks would be more prominent, even in a place like Clare market, a district unsavoury in reputation if not in provisions. Above a certain level of income, a household would send servants to market.42

There were also retail shops specializing in the very best out of season produce, such as winter fruit, but many of these shops were situated within Covent Garden Market itself, and the rent was too expensive for the costermongers, who found what customers they could from roaming the streets of the residential neighbourhoods. Smith notes that for many classes fruit was ‘income elastic – spending on it rose faster than incomes in general’ and higher-quality produce 40. Smith, ‘The Market Place’ p. 45. 41. Jankiewicz, ‘A Dangerous Class’ p. 396. 42. Smith, ‘The Market Place’ p. 132.

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on sale increased the popularity of fruit and vegetables to the middle and working classes.43 The sheer number of vendors at Covent Garden, around two hundred market gardeners in the 1820s and double that towards the end of the century, reflects the competitiveness of such environments. In his in-depth study of Covent Garden, Ronald Webber has detailed the improvements that the landowner, the Duke of Bedford, made to the market.44 The area had a reputation during the eighteenth century for lewd behaviour and illegal activities, and this must also have tarnished the reputations of the fruit sellers, particularly the women. The new Charter Market, built in 1830, was an effort to increase trade and deter those seeking nightlife. It had a conservatory for those selling potted plants, a glass roof over the sellers of imported fruit, a marble terrace and an indoor fountain. The costermongers and ‘higglers’, however, were still working from uncovered stalls around the market’s edges. During the late eighteenth century books were published that purported to be directories of the sex workers of the Covent Garden area, while Hogarth had made that side of the street life infamous in his Rake’s Progress, copies of which were widely distributed in the popular press.45 Therefore, when Victorian journalists, writers and reformers began to write about the working-class districts of London,  including Covent Garden, they were sure of a receptive audience for their accounts, one that had already formed an unfavourable opinion of the costermongers, apple sellers and other traders making a living in the area. In 1872 the Methodist reformer and writer, Godfrey Holden Pike, published a description of life in Clerkenwell, or ‘Jack Ketch’s Warren’ where he noted that ‘descriptive accounts have repeatedly appeared of London rookeries [slum districts], apparently composed for readers who love a dish of literary horrors’.46 Depictions of life in the rookeries kept middleclass readers both appalled and interested in equal measure, and were published from a number of motives, varying from the charitable to the sensationalist. The slum districts of London were not, however, inhabited entirely by thieves, drunks and those whom Victorian moral commentators perceived as workshy, or ‘the undeserving poor’. Many families worked hard to pay the rent on a couple of rooms, and selling whatever produce they could was one way to make a few pence. The colourful descriptions of costermonger life were not confined to the sensationalist periodicals. Rev. William Rogers, a curate living among them in the East End, had so many street traders in his flock that he referred to his parish as ‘Costomongria’.47 He was invited to give a talk about his parishioners to the 43. Ibid. 44. Ronald Webber, Covent Garden: Mud Salad Market (Letchworth: J. M. Dent, 1969) pp. 70–122. 45. Ibid. p. 74. 46. Godfrey Holden Pike, [‘A Rambler’] The Romance of the Streets (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1872) p. 114. 47. Rev. William Rogers, ‘On the Trade, Habits and Education of the Street Hawkers of London’ Journal of the Society of Arts Vol. 3 No. 4 (1857) p. 98.

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Royal Society for the Arts in 1857, rather in the manner in which an explorer would report back on the ‘tribes’ he had found in the wilder places of the world. Rogers began by defining the costermongers in terms of their very ordered ‘class’ structure, which they determined by their assets and income: A costermonger then, is, properly speaking, one who sells apples, but the name is not confined exclusively to the dealers in this kind of merchandise alone, but it is applied to all those who, as it is technically termed, get their living in the streets – who hawk about fish, vegetables, &c. The most aristocratic possess a cart and donkey, the next class a truck or barrow, the lowest have their little all contained in a basket. Their earnings are necessarily most precarious. Vendors of watercresses, onions, oranges, apples, and fried fish, generally carry their stock in a basket, and their profits vary from 2d. to 2s. or 3s. per day.48

It is significant that Rogers uses the term ‘aristocratic’ for the better-off traders, since this gives credence to the sense of history and lineage that was associated at least with the term costermonger, if not with individuals so trading. The name ‘costermonger’ is thought to come from the large apple, the costard (now lost to cultivation) which medieval fruit traders were described as selling. Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861) uses quotes from Beaumont and Fletcher and Dr Johnson to illustrate the costermonger’s lineage and long history, emphasizing for his readers their claims to some historical nobility as a trade.49 However, in his 1886 biography of Lord Shaftesbury, Edwin Hodder noted that the costermongers themselves did not think much of their ancient associations with apples, quoting one who responded to Dr Johnson’s definition of a costermonger as a seller of apples as ‘all gammon’ and explained to Hodder that ‘a Coster is a cove [meaning something like “a guy”] wot works werry ‘ard for a werry poor livin’. 50 Costermongers became a particular study of social reformers, including Shaftesbury and Mayhew, because they formed a large distinct, independent group. Mayhew estimated that in the summer, during the fruit season, there were 2,500 costermongers every day in Covent Garden, sometimes twice that number, to say nothing of the men unable to attend market due to ‘dissipation’ and an army of small boys who worked for them.51 This ‘tribe’ while not conforming to bourgeois moral codes appeared to have rules of behaviour of their own. Henry Mayhew went ‘down among’ the workers of the East End of London, intending, through his articles in the Morning Chronicle, to draw attention to the terrible conditions in which the poor of London struggled to survive. Lord Shaftesbury 48. Ibid. 49. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor Vol 1 (London: Griffin, Bohn and Company, 1861) p. 8. 50. Edwin Hodder, The Life and Work of the Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury, KG (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014) p. 269. 51. Mayhew, London Labour p. 5.

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went as far as buying a costermongers’ barrow and donkey and trying out the life for himself, albeit only for a day. This may seem to be a gesture, but the Earl made it his business to help the costermongers as much as he could, and there seems to have been a rapport between them. Hodder noted, ‘In a very remarkable manner, Lord Shaftesbury threw himself into the work among these strange people, and very speedily gained their entire confidence.’52 Henry Mayhew’s motives were to interview, investigate and bear witness. Barringer’s work on visual representation of labour draws attention to Mayhew’s attempts to ground his project in the natural sciences and to deliberately use the language of ethnography in order to give a factual basis to his new analysis of labour, one that would ‘undermine political economy’s stranglehold on debates surrounding labour’.53 Eileen Yeo noted that through his writing for the Morning Chronicle and beyond, ‘Mayhew emerges as a self-conscious investigator whose survey of industrial conditions in London and attempts at economic and social analysis entitle him to an important place in the history of social investigation’.54 However, he was writing commercial pieces designed, in part, to attract readers, and therefore his writing is immediate and vivid. Mayhew’s use of ethnographic terms emphasized the distance between himself and his readers, from his subjects, referring to the costermongers and the other ‘street-folk’ as a ‘wandering tribe’ in the contents list of the book and throughout the text, categorizing them even apart from the ‘settled’ poor.55 Mayhew took his readers into the hidden world of the costermongers, at their London labour, when they were working hard on the streets, and at their leisure, for Mayhew dared to enter into the garish world of ‘penny gaff ’ theatres, where ‘the stage is turned into a platform to teach the cruellest debauchery’.56 Here the sellers of wholesome fruit such as apples are linked with temptation and sin. Not surprisingly such highly coloured reports drew a salacious interest from the middle-class readers, and costermongers as a class gained renown for their ‘immoral’ family arrangements, their lewd leisure pursuits and rough manners, especially those of the women. Just before Mayhew braved the penny gaff, in 1858 the journalist James Ewing Ritchie wrote an account of visiting a similar entertainment, called a ‘free and easy’. This was a night of entertainment, singing and drinking, which, in contrast to Mayhew, Ritchie seemed to have enjoyed. He reported, Costermongers are not remarkable for keeping all the commandments; their reverence for the conventional ideas of decency and propriety is not very 52. Ibid. p. 270. 53. Barringer, ‘Representations of Labour’ pp. 254–8. 54. Eileen Yeo, ‘Mayhew as a Social Investigator’ in The Unknown Mayhew ed. by E. P. Thompson and Eileen Yeo (London: Merlin Press, 1971) p. 51. 55. Mayhew, London Labour contents page and passim. 56. Ibid. p. 40.

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profound; their notions are not peculiarly polished or refined, nor is the language in which they are clothed, nor the mode in which they are uttered, such as would be recognised in Belgravia.57

Within this account there is a sense of mockery of the refined habits of Belgravia, as much as condemnation of the costermongers, but again there is also the sense that these people are ‘other’, some type of distinct and different or ‘strange’ tribe, as Mayhew describes them. Holden Pike calls all such street folk ‘Arabs’ and Rev. Rogers also called the costermonger’s way of living ‘Arabian.’58 As Barringer noted, the illustrations in London Labour were intended to show representatives of the various ‘types’ that Mayhew interviewed, but instead serve to draw attention to each person’s individuality, and their own awareness of their social standing within the costermonger hierarchy. Barringer concludes, ‘These contrasts undermine the easy duality of self and other, middle-class consumer versus proletarian – “nomade”-costermonger, and indicate the infinite readings of body, clothing, posture and also of voice and language which effected the production of class difference during each individual encounter.’59 The city’s uncanny, Gothic character ‘intensifies throughout the century’, wrote Alexandra Warwick, ‘gathering further associations in post-Darwinian thinking about issues of degeneration, race and empire’.60 Erika Rappaport’s study of Victorian female consumers explored the physical and moral perils of a woman out shopping alone. She concluded: ‘Perhaps nothing was more revolting than the spectacle of a middle-class woman immersed in the filthy, fraudulent, and dangerous world of the urban marketplace.’61 This sense of otherness and of a place of danger must have affected the significance of buying apples on the street, with the consumer wondering if the apple and the seller could be trusted.62 In many of these descriptive texts the economic realities of the apple trade were set against the author’s moral judgement of the costermongers, demonstrating the dual nature of the apple’s representation and status in nineteenth-century culture. The apple was an innocent, honest fruit, sold by untrustworthy, coarsemannered vendors. Apples from the countryside were taken into the city, and absorbed within it, ending up under the squalid beds of the costermongers, before being polished up and made presentable for sale. Both Mayhew and 57. James Ewing Ritchie, The Night Side of London (London: William Tweedie, 1858) p. 223. 58. Rev. Rogers, ‘On the Trade’ p. 298. 59. Barringer, ‘Representations of Labour’ p. 292. 60. Alexandra Warwick, ‘Gothic, 1820–1880’ in Terror and Wonder: The Gothic Imagination ed. by Dale Townshend (London: The British Library, 2014) p. 102. 61. Erika Diane Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure: Women in the Making of London’s West End (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001) p. 16. 62. See Chapter 4 for a discussion on the influence of the costermongers on Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘Goblin Market’.

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Holden Pike described apples being stored under the bed, with a sense that the innocent fruits are witness to whatever might happen around them. Mayhew described how, A cheap red-skinned fruit, known to costers as ‘gawfs’, was rubbed hard, to look bright and feel soft, and was mixed with apples of a superior quality. ‘Gawfs are sweet and sour at once’, I was told, ‘and fit for nothing but mixing’. Some foreign apples, from Holland and Belgium, were bought very cheap […] and on a fine morning as many as fifty boys might be seen rubbing these apples, in Hooperstreet, Lambeth.63

If the narrative of the country apple, polished up and falsely presented for sale, has an echo of stories of the fate of young country women coming to find work in town, it is one that may not have been conscious, but was so much a part of the cultural fabric that it would have resonated with the contemporary reader.64 Indeed, there was particular alarm about the lack of morality among the female costermongers or ‘apple women’ selling apples from their barrows or baskets. In cultural representation, and perhaps in life, they lacked the romantic appeal of the girls selling milk or posies; apple women were older, bigger and brawnier, mainly because of the weight of the apple carts that they had to lug around and, it seems, the toughness required to make a living on the street markets.65 Webber noted: ‘They drank like men, swore like men and were just as strong.’ Some carried out feats of strength for a bet.66 Mayhew described them as wearing ‘straw pads on their crushed bonnets, and coarse shawls crossing their bosoms, [they] sit on their porter’s knots [pads to ease the loads], chatting in Irish and smoking short pipes. Every passer by is hailed with the cry of “want a baskit, yer honor?”’67 Costermongers themselves were pragmatic about their morality, at least in relation to deceiving their customers. One apple woman admitted to Mayhew that

63. Mayhew, London Labour p. 61. 64. Examples of this subject include Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Found (begun 1853, Delaware Museum); William Holman Hunt, The Awakening Conscience (1853, Tate Britain); George Frederic Watts, Found Drowned (1867, Watts Gallery). Watts was inspired by Thomas Hood’s poem ‘The Bridge of Sighs’ (1844), which was widely anthologized. 65. The Bristol Mirror, 16 April 1842, describes a case of ‘a fruit woman, name of Courtenay’ who had been carrying 256 apples in her basket, until a policeman stole a couple while she was being processed for obstruction. Allowing 150 g per apple that is at least 38.4 kilos of apples, plus the weight of the basket. 66. Webber, Covent Garden p. 90. 67. Mayhew, London Labour p. 82.

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she stuffed bad apples in the bags with good ones, but she had to do so because consumers demand to buy apples for less than they cost. Mayhew reported, ‘If we cheats in the streets’, a young woman said, ‘I know we shan’t go to Heaven, but if we didn’t cheat we couldn’t live. Why, look at apples. Customers want them for less than they cost us, and so we are forced to shove in bad ones and if we’re to suffer for that, it does seem to me dreadful cruel.’68

Mayhew also interviewed an Irish woman who told him that she had turned to selling fruit to get away from the sexual dangers of being in domestic service. Mayhew seemed less shocked by the danger she had been in than he was by her solution, stating that an English domestic servant would instead try for any other position in service, rather than working as a street trader, and thereby again emphasizing the ‘otherness’ of the code by which these (Irish) apple traders lived.69 Catherine Gallagher has used the work of Malthus and Mayhew to examine ‘the social and economic significance of the vigorous body’.70 She stated that Mayhew’s fascination with costermongers (and that of his readers) is because of what they raised to the middle-class consciousness, the transactions that were taking place in every building across the city, embodied by what takes place in the open air. The Irish fruit seller ‘is a visible and audible emblem of the sexual and economic exploitation that goes on behind closed doors and has driven her onto the street … [costermongers] are embodying and hence raising to the surface of consciousness a ruthless struggle for marketplace advantage that Mayhew thinks is going on everywhere unseen’.71 Costermongers held a particular place on the edge of both the formal, expanding produce trade, and most societal norms. Although Mayhew, Rogers and others were concerned with the plight of the street traders and wanted to assist them, these texts describing their lifestyles were written or constructed to give advice and to educate the reader about changes in urban society, and to warn them of the dangers of being outside societal norms and approval.72 Describing the functions of the trade in apples and other foodstuffs is not central to these descriptions of urban street life. However, these texts arose from, and were a function of, the urban trade in apples, from the orchard to the street cart. As such, they influenced the perceptions of the consumers of apples, as did the behaviour of the costermongers with whom 68. Ibid. p. 46. 69. Ibid. p. 459. 70. Catherine Gallagher, ‘The Body Versus the Social Body in the Works of Thomas Malthus and Henry Mayhew’ The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century ed. by Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laquer (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987) p. 83. 71. Ibid. p. 101. 72. Mayhew, London Labour p. 101.

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the customers came into direct contact. The ‘otherness’ of the street traders, with their pride in their produce and their willing separation from the genteel suburbs, was acknowledged and played upon by the writers and the costermongers themselves. One costermonger proudly reminded Mayhew and his audience of other sellers that ‘notwithstanding their degradation in the eyes of some, the first markets in London were mainly supported by costermongers. What would the Duke of Bedford’s market in Covent Garden be without them? This question elicited loud applause’.73 Nevertheless, the anxiety over the relationship between the low-class seller and the (slightly) higher-class buyer was certainly implicit in the reports of their sales techniques. There is some evidence that this cultural alienation was transferred to the actual goods on sale. Apples were perceived as being a simple, relatively wholesome pleasure, the consumption of which would only bring benefit, even though the thought of where the apples had been since they left the orchard may have been less delightful. Representations of the apple that linked it to sin and temptation may have impacted the reception and uses of the material apple and fuelled distrust of apple sellers. This is speculative, since it would have been quite a subtle link for most apple consumers. However, in her examination of fruit in literature, Liz Bellamy traces the difference between the perceived qualities of native, home-grown fruits such as the apple, and the tropical, foreign fruits that were beginning to come into the shops by the midnineteenth century. Examining the georgic ode, Cider, a Poem, written by John Philips in 1708, Bellamy sees that ‘the health benefits of consuming domestically produced goods are reinforced by political and economic arguments, rejecting the emphasis on foreign goods, international trade and colonial expansion’.74 The connection between the simple fruit and concepts such as class, patriotism and moral value was present in every transaction.

73. Ibid. p. 104. 74. Liz Bellamy, The Language of Fruit Literature and Horticulture in the Long Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019) p. 142.

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Chapter 7 T H E P O L I T IC A L A P P L E

The economic importance of the apple can be measured in part through the legislation by which it was affected. Some of the more recent regulations around apple growing have been designed to affect the way in which it was grown; and concern the use of chemicals on the trees, or the provision of rights for agricultural workers. Away from the orchard, two important linked influences on the declining or uncompetitive sales of British apples in the nineteenth century were the high quality of foreign imports and the effect of Free Trade policies. These issues were the subject of lively debate in Parliament and in the press, but it appears that British apple growers, and their representative bodies, were not effective at communicating throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. American fruit growers, however, concentrated on creating organizations to give themselves influence and help to ensure favourable legislation. The apple has been central to a nexus of concerns over national identity and power in Britain, Europe and America. Throughout the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries apples were imported into England from France, and in increasing quantities towards the end of the century from Canada and America. English cider had been traded to the West Indies in the eighteenth century, but exports of apples remained low. English growers did not form into an organized trade and marketing body until the twentieth century, and this affected how they could respond to foreign competition, and take advantage of new developments in agriculture. Meanwhile American apples and processed apple products became an important export crop in the nineteenth century, particularly to China, until that route was closed when the Chinese began developing their own commercial orchards. During the twentieth century English orchards underwent a further process of colonization by ‘foreign’ varieties, while heritage and community orchards are now seeking out the most local of varieties.

Early trade in foreign fruit Part of the impetus of the development of orchards and apple varieties in the eighteenth century was the trade with Flanders and Holland.1 During the seventeenth century, until the development of market gardens around London, 1. I am using the term Flanders and Holland to refer to the provinces that were named or referred to as such at the time.

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Britain had a heavy reliance on Flanders for much of its fruit and vegetable crops sold in the towns and cities. In 1776 Adam Smith noted that ‘the greater part of the apples, and even of the onions, were, in the last century, imported from Flanders’.2 At the beginning of the eighteenth century, as Lizzie Collingham notes, ‘Britain was still an integral part of the European economy, with the Continent absorbing 85 percent of its exports and sending it 68 percent of its imports’.3 However, there is little evidence for the extent of early trade in apples. Nancy Cox and Karin Dannehl have collated some sources, noting that apples were rarely recorded in probate inventories (although orchards and trees were more often listed). Their examples include, ‘An olde cofer and some apples in it’ [Inventories (1638)], ‘In the Apple Loft … Some broomes & Apples’ valued at 2s 6d [Inventories (1730)], and ‘In the Woodhouse Cole Broomes Wood Rakes Apples & ye Hay valued in with it at nearly £14’ [Inventories (1766)]. They were also only infrequently listed in the Gloucester Coastal Port Books, and virtually not at all after 1725 just when the growing of apples commercially in this country was becoming important [Gloucester Coastal Port Books (1988)]. The occasional evidence from diaries shows they were on sale at least in local markets. For example in 1707 Nicholas Blundell sent his cart ‘to Leverpoole with Apples which [he] sold for 2s 6d’ [per bushel].4

As I discussed in Chapters 2 and 3, apples and cider were also offered in lieu of rent. During the eighteenth century there was little trade between England and North America. Exports to North America made approximately 8 per cent of all English trade, while America exported tobacco, forest products and processed fish to England. However, perhaps under-recorded was the quantity of seeds, scions and other plant material that were carried over and, with faster ships, stood a better chance of getting there alive. As the British Empire expanded, new foods entered the domestic market. Collingham has drawn attention to the extent to which exotic and ‘foreign’ articles such as ‘pepper, calicoes, rice, sugar and tea’ became assimilated into British life and diet.5 Troy Bickham notes that these items, as well as coffee, tobacco and spices, reached the tables of ‘even the poorest and remotest Britons’, and were ‘far more 2. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (London: Random House, 1937) Chapter VIII ‘Of the Wages of Labour’. 3. Lizzie Collingham, The Hungry Empire (London: Vintage, 2017) p. 140. 4. Nancy Cox and Karen Dannehl, ‘Apaveris – Apulia Oil’ in Dictionary of Traded Goods and Commodities 1550–1820 (Wolverhampton: University of Wolverhampton, 2007) Hosted by British History Online, London: University of London & History of Parliament Trust. https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/traded-goods-dictionary/1550-1820/apaverisapulia-oil#h2-0012 5. Collingham, Hungry Empire p. 144.

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pervasive than any of the traditional print media – pamphlets, newspapers, travel narratives – upon which scholars have relied so heavily’ since food accounted for as much as half of a typical British household’s budget.6 The various conflicts in which Britain was involved during the eighteenth century had a stop-start effect on the trade in apples as a commodity, and possibly on the trade of pomological skills between Britain and France, and Britain and America. A more liberal trade policy was encouraged by Adam Smith, among others, until the Eden Agreement of 1786 was accepted in the hope of boosting the domestic economy after the loss of the Thirteen Colonies in America. Although the French had lowered their tariffs two years earlier, the British did not reciprocate, and trade effectively ceased. William Eden’s proposal, however, was not initially backed by William Pitt’s government, and negotiations were difficult. The Treaty was in place for just over five years, collapsing after the French Revolution.7 However, it has been seen as important in shifting the economic preference towards more free trade.

The nineteenth-century free trade apple By the 1820s British merchants and manufacturers began to express their views that the British economy no longer needed protectionist duties, as it was strong enough to withstand foreign competition. Petitions to Parliament from London, Manchester and Glasgow for free trade – the abolition of all duties – led in 1823 to the Reciprocity of Duties Act, which enabled Britain to sign trading agreements with other countries on an individual basis. It was hoped that this would make goods cheaper to produce, increasing exports and prosperity. However, as with every trading agreement since, opinion was divided as to the wisdom of the free trade policy, and its results. The wisdom of removing tariffs on ‘foreign apples’ was questioned in a Kentish paper in 1839: The impolicy – as respects the revenue – as well as the manifest injustice, of taking off the duty on Foreign Apples, may be traced by an attentive view of the following return: – It may be observed that apples imported in London only, from 16th August, 1838, to 25th April, 1839, amounted to 11,947 bushels, and paid only £1,217 7s duty; whereas, had the duty been undisturbed, government would have received, at 4s per bushel, on apples only, in London, £22,389.8 6. Troy Bickham, ‘Eating the Empire: Intersections of Food, Cookery and Imperialism in Eighteenth Century Britain’ Past and Present Vol. 198 No. 1 (February 2008) pp. 71–109 p. 73. 7. William Eden, A View of the Treaty of Commerce with France: Signed at Versailles September 20, 1786 (London: J. Debrett, 1787). 8. Maidstone Journal and Kentish Advertiser, 25 June 1839.

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Joan Morgan notes that the development of English commercial apple growing was erratic compared to that in America, because, since apples were grown in mixed farms and market gardens, the growers were not formed into an organized trade body.9 This affected how English growers could respond to foreign competition and the removal of tariffs. The ad hoc nature of the English fruit trade has been remarked upon, but perhaps not effectively addressed, ever since the early nineteenth century. William Salisbury, one of the instigators of the Botanic Garden now at Kew, wrote about the importation of French apples in 1815, with memories of the Napoleonic Wars and the trade blockade very fresh in his mind. He noted the vast supply of apples from France on sale in Covent Garden wholesale market: I have this evening, 20th November 1815, passed through Covent Garden, and seen upwards of 1000 casks of apples that have been imported from France, and not less than an equal quantity heaped together in warehouses near Fleet Market, containing in the whole not less than 40,000 bushels [...] The fruit I have this evening seen is, at a moderate calculation, worth twenty thousand pounds [...] and this has been paid for in hard cash, to those who are our political enemies.10

Covent Garden market remained the centre of the wholesale fruit trade in London, throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth, and many fruit growers and sellers across the country took an interest in the index of its prices for homegrown and imported fruit as a guideline to setting their own rates. Therefore The Gardeners’ Chronicle (founded in 1841 as a horticultural and agricultural trades journal) gave weekly reports of what was doing best at Covent Garden, and some indication of the prices fetched: The weather still continuing favourable, trade has been pretty brisk [...] Apples are as yet plentiful. Among them are nice examples of the American Newtown Pippin, and we also observed Lady Apples very fine, as from 1s 6d to 2s per dozen.11

By the 1880s the reports were by-lined to James Webber from the Wholesale Apple Market. His accounts were laconic, but they give an idea of the apple trade fluctuations against foreign imports. For example he reported in December 1881, ‘Our market has been very dull, and all classes of Apples have receded consequent upon the arrivals of Canadian and American consignments’.12 The prices Webber

9. Morgan and Richards, New Book of Apples p. 98. 10. Salisbury, Hints Addressed p. 110. 11. The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 1 January 1853. 12. James Webber, The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 3 December 1881.

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listed show that apples were selling for one shilling to three shillings and 6p per half sieve (equivalent to half a bushel) on 1 December 1881. This compared with lemons which were fetching from four to six shillings per hundred, making the imported fruit much more attractive.

A bushel and a peck – apple weights and measures At this point another difficulty in quantifying the economic importance of the apple as a commodity becomes apparent. Apples were traded in bushels, sieves, baskets, barrels and, in Scotland, sleeks, but the number or weight of apples that constituted each measure was not a fixed quantity.13 Aashish Velkar’s significant doctoral thesis on nineteenth-century measurements does not address apples directly, but does consider the problem of measuring quantities of potatoes, which were traded in the same way as apples.14 He has determined that a nineteenth-century bushel, when used to measure fruit, was equivalent to thirty-three quarts or four pecks. However, the bushel varied regionally, so that in Lancashire it was equivalent to 90 lb, but in Middlesex around 56 lb. In addition bushel baskets could be ‘heaped’, and thus weighing up to 10 per cent more, or ‘stricken’, filled only to the top of the basket and not beyond it. Nine heaped bushels was equivalent to ten stricken, legal weight bushels. After the introduction of the Act for Ascertaining and Establishing Uniformity of Weights and Measures of 1824, a bushel was supposed to be eight gallons in capacity, or four pecks.15 Therefore, if a half sieve was equivalent to half a bushel, it can be supposed that a sieve of apples was equivalent to a bushel volume, but perhaps a different weight. A barrel, often used to pack and transport imported apples, was in earlier centuries held to be equivalent to three bushels.16 The Committee on Fresh Fruit, grappling with calculating how many apples had been sold and at what price and duty, learned that the difference between a sieve and a bushel was about a peck, or the difference between a heaped and a striked measure, and were informed by Mr Godwin, a wholesaler, that superior English apples were sold by the bushel, but American apples were sold by the barrel, ‘but sometimes they come out of a barrel so badly that you do not get more than two or three dozen to a barrel’.17 Therefore, given the variability of weight and volume of apples in every source that lists them, all descriptions of the quantities of apples traded must be considered as broad estimates, and it is not possible to measure, 13. A sleek being ‘equal to one and half peck, Edinburgh measure, or eighteen Scots pints’ Patrick Neill, On Scottish Gardens and Orchards (Edinburgh: Caledonian Horticulture Society, 1813) p. 55. 14. Aashish Velkar, ‘Markets, Standards and Transactions: Measures in NineteenthCentury British Economy’ (doctoral thesis, London School of Economics, 2008). 15. Ibid. pp. 26–9. 16. Ibid. p. 35. The measure was determined in the reign of Charles II. 17. Report on Fresh Fruit p. 8.

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for example, the supposed weight of apples sold against quantities of lemons, or any other similar commodity.

The effect of tariffs on British apples The Gardeners’ Chronicle’s occasional ‘fruit notes’ of the 1881 season, probably also written by Webber, carried the following musings on the lack of profit in apples: Those who, at the instance [sic] of Mr Gladstone and of well-stocked nurserymen, are largely planting fruit trees may well read – with all the profit they will ever get – my account of last Saturday’s sales in Covent Garden: [the remainder of the list is of pear prices] 1 ½ bushels Ribston Pippins 10s 6d. I may add that the sales were not made on commission or by auction, but at my own stand, and with long endurance. […] No finer English fruit than mine goes to Covent Garden. […] When the price of fruit was at its best, and I was comparatively young and sanguine, one of our leading nurserymen observed to me – ‘Ah sir, it pays a long way better to grow the trees than the fruit, even when you can get it.’ Twenty-five years I have now been a fruit grower, and in only one season has the produce paid the wages, let alone manure, repairs, interest on capital &c. … signed A Victim to Pomona. 18

Pomona’s Victim was referring back to, and refuting, a speech on the subject of growing apple trees, made by Gladstone in 1879 at the flower show held on his estate at Hawarden, where, Mr Gladstone told his audience that a gentleman on the Hudson River, in the Northern States of America, has got an apple garden of 200 acres, and all of these, apples which are direct descendants of English apples of former generations. Yet these apples are now sent back to England. If, at the high rate of wages paid for labour in America, it paid this gentleman to send us his apples, would it not pay English cottagers to grow such apples for the English market themselves?19

Since the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, the effects of the country’s free trade policies had been to increase low-cost food imports from America. Gladstone continued to remove duty on many imported items, believing that free trade would stimulate market growth and prosperity, while reducing state expenditure.20 These 18. ‘A Victim to Pomona,’ in ‘Fruit Notes,’ The Gardeners’ Chronicle, 26 November 1881. 19. The Spectator, 30 August 1879. 20. Peter Cain, ‘British Free Trade 1850–1914 Economics and Policy’ REFRESH Autumn 29 (1999) pp. 1–4 p. 1.

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free trade policies affected the price of home-grown, as against imported, apples. David Harvey has noted that ‘the tariff on apples, for example, was reduced from 4s. per bushel to a 5 per cent. ad valorem duty which was equivalent to between 3d. and 7d. per bushel’.21 Also affected was the cost of sugar. Previously a scarce luxury, when the import tariffs on sugar were reduced after 1846, the demand for fruit of all kinds increased, as did the production and consumption of jam. It is difficult to gauge the impact of the policies on apple orchards overall, especially when set against the general trend for a growth in orchard acreage during the same period. Harvey used his study of the growers in Kent to show that the policy was seen as a positive or negative force depending on political allegiance as much as on prices: William Harryman wrote to the Maidstone Journal in 1841 that ‘by repealing the duty on foreign fruit, they rendered valueless the orchards which had taken all my life to raise and upon which I have expended large sums of money’. The editor of the Maidstone Gazette, true to his free trade colours, maintained on the other hand that the ‘prediction of ruin, low rents and land thrown out of cultivation’ had not been borne out by events. But even the Gazette reported in 1842 that ‘the fruit growers are now scarcely able to get a market for their fruit’, while Lord Torrington voiced the opinion that ‘the sooner Kent is without an apple tree the better’.22

Free trade policies, together with the development of steamships that lowered transportation costs and speeded up shipping, certainly increased the amount of wheat and many other goods, including apples, coming into the country. At the same time, England’s apple growers faced difficult trading conditions exacerbated by a series of bad harvests due to unseasonal weather from 1877 to 1881. Gladstone must have been speaking to his Hawarden tenants during what Lord Ernle described as the ‘sunless, ungenial summer of 1879’ and therefore his admonitions seem particularly brave.23 Gladstone returned to his concerns over the imported foods at another Hawarden speech in 1884, during his second stint as prime minister, when he lectured his tenants about the dangers of buying foreign jam: He showed how vastly the amount of food imported for every member of the population had increased in the last generation. [...] Mr Gladstone remarked that English farmers ought to compete with the Continent more strenuously than  they do in the supply of poultry, eggs, butter, fruit etc and especially as 21. David Harvey, ‘Fruit Growing in Kent in the Nineteenth Century’ Archaeologia Cantiana Vol. 79 (1964) pp. 95–108 p. 96. 22. Ibid. 23. Lord Ernle, ‘The Great Depression and Recovery’ in British Agriculture 1875–1914 ed. by P. J. Perry (London: Routledge, 2006) p. 3. ‘The Cold Weather of Last Winter and Spring’ Nature Vol. 20 No. 502 (12 June 1879) p. 151.

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regarded fruit, he pointed out that the high price of butter was leading to a very large consumption of foreign jam, which could be bought for from 7d to 9d a pound, while butter costs from 1s 3d to 1s 8d a pound. He thought that this foreign jam ought to be more or less undersold by the English jam, and that the farmers should cultivate fruit with a direct view to the supply of good, wholesome jams, either better than those sent from abroad, or equally good at a cheaper rate.24

The latter half of the nineteenth century, therefore, saw anxieties about foreign competition impact on both home-grown apple consumption and the reception of new, well-packed varieties from America and France. These anxieties continued to the middle of the twentieth century, and indeed beyond into the hinterland of Brexit. In his account of a year on his own Kentish fruit farm in 1897, George Bunyard lists what was being bought and sold each week in Covent Garden, from his first-hand experience. As a very astute grower and trader, Bunyard had an eye on the market at all times but often found that he was unable to compete on price. Here he gives a knowledgeable and practical insider’s analysis of the reasons behind the attraction to the consumer of the imported fruit: Just after Christmas [apples] went down to ridiculously low values, and all the Americans and Canadians which had been kept over had to be almost given away. [...] Buyers have been, and are, used to the barrels of Americans, which are always infinitely better packed than English goods; and if they can be persuaded to give long prices for our home grown apples, it must be for something that is good and looks taking. For quite the best, many buyers would not hesitate over sixpence or a shilling per bushel; but, failing really good samples, such buyers will give preference to the Americans, even though they may have to pay more than double the price of medium English fruit.25

Bunyard is also aware of the seasonality of English apples, competing with out of season imports: Our British home grown apples are getting very scarce. The stocks in the country are very low indeed, but I do not anticipate seeing our apples go any dearer, as there is no doubt the Americans will be with us until the Tasmanians come. Thus we have always a foreigner to reckon with, no matter what season it may be.26

The Eastern Daily Press took much the same line in 1896 in a snippet headed with the familiar complaint ‘Foreign Apples for England’: 24. The Spectator, 12 January 1884. 25. George Bunyard, A Year’s Work on a Kentish Fruit Farm, by a Practical Man (Maidstone: G. Bunyard and Co., 1898) Entry for 19 January 1897 p. 6. 26. Ibid. Entry for 2 February 1897 p. 9.

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In the past 10 years (1885 to 1894) the total amount of imported apples has exceeded 331/2 millions of bushels, valued at over 9 ½ millions sterling, or an average of about 5s 6d per bushel. In the same period the area under orchards in Great Britain has increased by 20,000 acres, the total for 1894 being returned at 214,187 acres. The area under small fruits is 65,487 acres. From France, Italy, Holland, Belgium, the Channel Islands, Canary Islands &c., nearly all consignments of fruit come in light, strong boxes of convenient size, with scarcely any packing beyond paper shavings or a sheet or two of thin coloured paper. American apples come in barrels without any packing material whatsoever, and the secret is the strict exclusion of damaged or over-ripe fruit, and very firm but careful packing. 27

I discussed the innovative use of this method of barrelling in Chapter 4, and here is further evidence from J. G. Thompson, an apple grower in Kansas, of the importance that American growers placed on high standards and careful packaging: During the week ending December 11, 1897, there were exported from the United States to Europe 25,447 barrels of apples; of these, Liverpool got 3335, London, 2580, Glasgow, 3567, Hamburg, 5264; equalling 14,756. The total export to Europe this year [...] is 586,906 barrels, bringing this country over one and a half million dollars. We packed, last fall, 1000 boxes of Willow Twig and Ben Davis; these were packed in pear boxes, each apple wrapped in paper; the boxes (filled) would weigh about forty pounds. The apples are placed in layers … ninety six apples to the box, putting the finest apples on top [...] One thousand boxes make a good car-load, weighing about 40,000 pounds … These cases of selected apples are expected to sell readily for eight shillings (or $2) per box, and packed in this careful manner should go through in perfect condition. If they bring satisfactory prices, I predict that next year more than one Kansas orchard will be packing apples for foreign export.28

Here is the English apple, considered a home-grown delicacy and a food capable of improving the health of the urban working classes and the prosperity of small rural producers, characterized as something at war with ‘a foreigner’ whatever the season. This has been represented, by Morgan in particular, as an organized campaign against foreign imports, but it seems to have been more of a mood that caught on with certain growers and apple traders. For example, a grocer’s advertisement from the Kilburn Times in 1896 proudly stated: ‘We have never sold a foreign apple.’29 However, other advertisements from the same period boasted of 27. Eastern Daily Press, 8 January 1896. 28. William Barnes, ed. and J. G. Thompson, The Apple: The Kansas Apple (Topeka: Kansas State Horticultural Society, 1898) p. 13. 29. Kilburn Times, 26 September 1896.

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the fine quality of their ‘Canadian assignment’ of apples or of those from America, for example, an advertisement from the East Anglian Daily Times where ‘Wm. Bennett, Family Grocer’ announced that he ‘has just received a Consignment of Fresh Canadian Apples for Dessert’.30

The apple in wartime Much has been written about the lack of fitness and malnutrition evident in those called up to fight, and also about the food insecurity faced by Britain, when in 1914 ‘the unexpected scope and success of the submarine warfare made it clear that it was by no means impossible for Britain to be starved into capitulation’.31 Every cargo, therefore, had to be justified. Although the official view was that lemons, oranges and apples were luxuries whose cargo space should be given over to wheat, the Royal Society, mindful of recent experiments to find cures for scurvy and beriberi, warned that ‘if the importation of fresh fruit were cut off, the people would be harmed, as a result of a lack of ‘essential subtle principles’.32 There were also attempts to limit the use of sugar to processed foods and cakes, with the result of a sharp rise in the cost of jam. Apples, as a relatively cheap fruit, were used in the manufacture of jam for the troops, Tickler’s jam in particular. ‘Not a firm set, it was simply poured out without the need for a knife or spoon. It came in two colours, green and red (the colour was disconcertingly unimportant as they were both plum-and-apple flavour), with the bonus that empty tins were recycled as homemade grenades known as “Tickler’s artillery”.’33 During the First World War apples were imported from Nova Scotia, where, it was reported, the apple industry has shown a ‘steady and gratifying increase’, with the export crop reaching two million barrels, and profits from ‘well-managed orchards’ reaching 15 per cent. At the start of the war ‘growers feared that, owing to the closing of the Continental markets, Great Britain would be unable to absorb the available output’. However in 1916 ‘the whole quantity for export was taken by this country and sold at satisfactory prices’.34 Canada continued to export apples to England during the 1920s, when their success seems to have been met with interest and enthusiasm, partly because of the desire to encourage emigration from Britain and trade with its territories, led 30. East Anglian Daily Times, 7 June 1879. 31. Dorothy Hollingsworth, ‘The Application of the Newer Knowledge of Nutrition’ in J.  C. Drummond and Anne Wilbraham, The Englishman’s Food: Five Centuries of British Diet (London: Pimlico, 1991) p. 432. 32. Ibid. 33. Vincent Franklin and Alex Johnson, Menus That Made History (London: Kyle Books, 2019) p. 129. 34. Birmingham Daily Post, 21 April 1916.

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by the Empire Marketing Board. In the press, Canada, Nova Scotia in particular, was described as ‘calling’ to the reader, or as the ‘land of opportunity’. Orchards were depicted in Edenic terms. In 1924, the Dominion Fruit Commissioner reported total investments of more than twenty-four million pounds in the Canadian fruit industry, with an export crop of over three million barrels, worth a million pounds.35 In the same year, visitors to the Australian Pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley ate so many apples that a further stand of fruit had to be erected, while those ‘contentedly munching’ were taught that ‘thanks to its vastness, Australia has an astonishing range of fruits, from the products grown under tropical sun to those of the cold country of the northern hemisphere. By the end of June [1924] 7,000,000 apples had been sold, and 60,000 cases’.36 During the Second World War, some unproductive orchards were cleared to make way for crops such as potatoes, but most eating apple orchards were retained, since the fruit was a good source of vitamin C. The National Farmers’ Union issued reports on how fruit prices were determined, and these fixed prices helped apple growers to stay in business. From the tone of this report in 1944, however, it is clear that these prices were not always favourably received. J. Sandall, chairman of the Fruit Committee, began by saying, I am aware that there is considerable dissatisfaction in different parts of the country in regard to the prices which have been announced this year for certain fruits. […] Negotiations in regard to apple prices are not yet completed, but growers will bear in mind that until this year’s Order is issued the concluding price in last year’s Orders remains in operation. This 37s 4d per cwt for Group II apples, with culinary varieties subject to the minimum 2in size.37

Barrels of apples were imported from Canada, and were rationed out to retailers whenever they were available. In August 1944 a statement from Colonel Llewellin, the minister of food, brusquely explained the distribution of the apple crop: Scotland, Northumberland, Durham, Westmorland and Cumberland will this season receive all the home apple supplies from Northern Ireland. The rest of England will draw on its own home-grown apples. When it is seen how these supplies work out, the Ministry will decide where to send the Canadian apples and others imported from America. People in the North will have to be content largely with cooking apples as Bramley’s Seedling is the principal Northern Ireland crop. Eating apples will be very scarce in the South also.38

35. Western Daily Press, 29 December 1926. 36. Illustrated London News, 19 July 1924. 37. Evesham Standard and West Midland Observer, 29 July 1944. 38. Birmingham Daily Post, 30 August 1944.

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The growers, however, were concerned that low-quality British and foreign apples were being sold, and presumably making profits for the retailers well above the price received by the growers and at the expense of the consumer: Sales of no grade apples at maximum prices was described as a scandal by the Chairman … of the Exeter Horticultural Branch of the Devon Farmers’ Union. Mr S. B. Neill said the ‘rubbish that ought to be on the cider heap’ was being sold in Exeter shops. […] Mr S. R. Cummings, vice-chairman, said when the war was over growers would be unable to pay existing rates of wages if the government allowed agricultural and horticultural produce to be dumped into the country. It was a very knotty problem because it involved the question of control of import duties. Their first duty, however, was to look after the Empire.39

Later developments would prove Mr Cummings largely correct, and the knotty problem of import duties remained part of political debate. Outside of the protected Empire, however, were American apple growers, who had become an organized and efficient trade body, with power to take on the British apple market.

As American as apple pie At this point, before considering the effects of post-war imports on the British apple market, it will be helpful to consider the way in which the American apple trade was influenced by legislation and the domestic political environment. During the last decades of the nineteenth century, fruit growers began to work together to call for state interventions that would assist their market. In his study of Californian deciduous fruit growers (apples, peaches, plums, etc.), Howard Seftel notes how the rise of their marketing cooperatives led to legislation in key areas such as irrigation, reduction of railroad rates and fruit standardization: In 1895, [the deciduous growers] established the California Fruit Growers’ and Shippers’ Association. They set up a bureau of information to direct fruit to the best markets and sought more favorable railroad rates, but the association did not sell any of the fruit itself. A cooperative marketing association finally arose in 1901. Like the Sunkist [citrus] growers, deciduous growers in the California Fruit Exchange – with state help – instituted uniform grading and packing procedures, gathered information, coordinated distribution, and secured better freight rates and fruit box prices.40 39. Western Morning News, 21 December 1944. 40. Howard Seftel, ‘Government Regulation and the Rise of the California Fruit Industry: The Entrepreneurial Attack on Fruit Pests, 1880–1920’ The Business History Review Vol. 59 No. 3 (Autumn 1985) pp. 369–402 p. 371.

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During the next four decades, state, and then national, legislation was passed to regulate and standardize the quality of apples and other fresh produce and institutions. In 1930 the Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA) required all buyers, sellers and shippers to be licensed, and created a low-cost alternative to taking disputes through the legal system. Although enforcement at first proved difficult, the mechanisms for standardizing fruit quality that were in place by the 1930s exist today and are widely used by the fresh produce industry to specify the writing and enforcement of contracts.41 With PACA testing its strength, in 1935 Congress received free apples from Oregon, who hoped that Congress would declare them superior. Not to be outdone, New York sent seventy-five apple pies to the Capitol. There were compliments on both sides, including the comment, ‘Eve would have done better with a pie like this.’42 Ohio sent a further batch of pies a few days later, claiming that ‘the finest apples pies in the world are grown in Ohio’.43 Raj Patel has recently asserted that ‘the apple pie is as American as stolen wealth, land and labour. We live its consequences today’.44 This statement produced the predictable backlash on social media, demonstrating the cultural significance retained by this dish.45 In 1935, rounding up the story of the apple pies sent to Congress, Catherine Mackenzie’s light-hearted article had the sub-heading ‘Rival Claims Made of “Best Apples”’ but The Pie Belongs to the Nation’.46 She gave a short history of the apple pie’s own migration from Europe to America, before asserting that the best apple pies are made, and eaten, at home. Such articles must have fed into the apocryphal stories of American soldiers fighting for ‘Mom and apple pie’ in the Second World War.47 The phrase ‘as American as apple pie’ appears to date back to 1910, again demonstrating the cultural claims of the apple.48 Catherine Mackenzie concluded her article with an unattributed recipe for an apple pie from Devon that includes cider, which, the recipe stated, would 41. Carolyn Dimitri, ‘Contract Evolution and Institutional Innovation: Marketing Pacific-Grown Apples from 1890 to 1930’ The Journal of Economic History Vol. 62 No. 1 (March 2002) pp. 189–212. 42. New York Times, 18 April 1935. 43. New York Times, 20 April 1935. 44. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/01/food-injustice-has-deeproots-lets-start-with-americas-apple-pie 45. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9666503/Now-apple-pie-racist-Tweetershit-Guardian-article-condemned-American-treat.html 46. Catherine Mackenzie, New York Times, 5 May 1935. 47. For details on this saying, see Rebecca Claire Bunschoten, ‘As American as Apple Pie: The History of American Apple Pie and Its Development into a National Symbol’ Senior Projects Bard College No. 18 (Spring 2014). https://digitalcommons.bard.edu/senproj_ s2014/18 48. The phrase appeared in a review of a play, ‘Bobby Burnit’ Metropolitan Magazine Vol. 33 (1910) p. 120.

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‘be more beneficial in the present day, when the apples used for cooking are largely of the imported variety which lacks the juicy crispness of the best English apples’. Catherine’s final comments link apple exports, American quality and the English apple trade together. ‘There you are. Devonshire wouldn’t like imported apples even if Parliament said they were just as good. Congress will never settle our rival claims either. Out West or back East, home is where the heart is, and home remains the place for the best apple pie.’49

Post-war imports Barnes and Williamson describe the period 1850–1950 as ‘the orchard century’ when British fruit growing reached its peak.50 From the parliamentary record and other sources, there is evidence that the domestic crop increased in some areas after the war, until the 1960s, when it went into a rapid decline. However, complaints about foreign apples ‘flooding’ the British market or being ‘dumped’ on the British consumer can be found in reports and press articles from every decade. The sentiments expressed are exceedingly similar to those from the nineteenth century, with the same pessimism, despite the figures, as to the decline of British orchards and fruit, and the same inability to match the careful packing and presentation of the imported fruit. In 1948 a spokesman from the Essex Farmers’ Union said, The guaranteed prices imposed during the Second World War had ‘removed the price incentive to grow, grade and pack to the best possible standard’. Foreign competitors, he argued, had focused on quality – on ‘good growing and packing which had not been applied to anything like the same extent in this country’. Consumers preferred these good-quality imports, and prices for home-grown fruit were depressed by the ‘effects of large quantities of poor quality, badly graded stuff coming onto the market in glut years from scrub orchards’.51

A decade later, here is an excerpt of a report of the Herefordshire National Farmers’ Union (Horticultural Branch) meeting in 1958: There is a real need for apple and pear publicity – we all know that, and it becomes more apparent every day. Fortunately the Union [the National Farmers’ Union] has already launched an interesting voluntary scheme for apple publicity. … The question of foreign apples on the market while it was still flooded by this country’s own fruit was also mentioned by the chairman. He thought the Union

49. Catherine Mackenzie, New York Times, 5 May 1935. 50. Barnes and Williamson, English Orchards p. 35. 51. Ibid. p. 124.

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should try to keep the foreign apple off the market while home grown apples were on the market.52

In 1968 the Liverpool Echo explained in detail why English apples were once again so expensive, and foreign apples even more so, while managing to sneak in a reference to a local pop group:53 Getting the Pip The Beatles have taken a bite at it. An MP has just done so in the House. The apple is as British as oak. Most of the apples we eat are home-grown. Yet English apples have been rotting on the trees in thousands. Why? First, we can blame the British weather [we had frosts and rain while] Italian apples basked in sunshine. Mr Keith Sims, a fruit importer, said: ‘For this reason British apples are neither red nor green. They do not appeal like foreign apples.’ Despite the climate our farmers are expected to have produced 211,000 tons this season, compared with 189,000 in 1967–68 and 212,000 in 1966–67. Why are they so dear? Coupled with the shortage in home-produced apples, caused by the weather, is the quota fixed annually by the Board of Trade, which decides how many foreign apples are allowed in. This quota has remained almost constant for 20 years while the population has grown. Except for sterling area countries like South Africa and Australia, the normal quota is 68,750 tons from January to June, and 15,000 tons from July to December. … A good Cox’s Pippin – king of British apples – sells wholesale at 1s 6d a pound, reaching the housewife at between 2s and 3s 6d. Foreign apples are 6d a pound dearer. Mr Sims said, ‘Imported apples have reached record prices of up to £5 a box of 40lb, double the usual price.54 These prices may drop a little after Christmas, but are likely to remain high for at least three months.’ In the first ten months of this year we have imported £31.2 million worth of apples, compared with £29.5 million for the whole of 1967. South Africa was our biggest supplier in 1967 with £8.4 million, followed by Australia (£5.9 million), France (5.2 million) and Italy (3.3 million).55

When Britain entered the European Economic Community (the EEC) in 1972, it was after much debate on both sides as to the impact on all types of commodities, including British apples. In December 1969 the colourful Conservative MP Sir Gerald Nabarro was, after weeks of putting himself forward in the ballot, finally given an adjournment debate in the House of Commons to talk about the import 52. Kington Times, 26 December 1958. 53. In 1968 The Beatles established Apple Records, founded as the creative division of Apple Corps Ltd. 54. As a reference on prices in 1968, my parents were paying £3 per week rent for a small flat in London. 55. John Jackson, Liverpool Echo, 6 December 1968.

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of foreign apples, and particularly the impact on his constituency of South Worcestershire, in the heart of the apple-growing counties.56 Sir Gerald began with the figures for imported apples: When I mention that apples have economic importance, I remind the House of the large sums of money which we spend in bringing in apples from abroad. The relevant figure for the last full year for which figures are available is £32.6 million. That is the aggregation of the value of imported apples during the calendar year 1968. […] Of the total of £32.6 million of imports in the calendar year 1968, 66 per cent. or almost exactly two-thirds measured ad valorem were from foreign sources, and 34 per cent. measured ad valorem were from Commonwealth sources. The respective figures ad valorem were £21.4 million from foreign sources and £11.2 million from Commonwealth sources.57

He then continued, despite interruptions, to demonstrate that the finest quality Evesham apples, from his constituency, were traded nationally but effectively made a loss on each sale: I have the documentary evidence here and I will give the names. The grower and supplier was Byrd Brothers, fruit and vegetable merchants of Evesham, who write: This return was in respect of 100 cartons of selected Sunset-Cox apples, 12 lbs. per tray, first grade, minimum size 2½ inches, sent to the wholesaler to sell for us. You will see that we have been returned 2s. per carton (i.e., 2d. per lb.). When one deducts the cost of the carton, packing and handling, we are left with virtually nothing, and this is not taking into account other costs entailed in growing the fruit. The firm in Leith [Scotland] which took the apples and returned 2d. a lb. for them was Harry Glass Ltd., of 12, 14 and 28 Constitution Street, Leith.

The MP for Hereford intervened to make the point that ‘the amount of money invested in this industry is very considerable but the grower is getting virtually nothing for it’. Sir Gerald agreed: He is, indeed, getting nothing for his investment. So we have the situation of apples at 2d. a lb., sent a distance from the Vale of Evesham to Leith of about 400 miles, whereas dumped, imported foreign apples were selling on the same day at Paddington Station at 3s. a lb. Yet the Government plead that their policy is one of import substitution. Does one wonder, therefore, that my constituents are 56. Sir Gerald was a backbencher from 1945 to 1973. Despite his working-class background he affected all the attributes of a Tory ‘toff ’ including a splendid moustache and a booming voice with upper class pronunciation. 57. This and all subsequent extracts from the debate are from Hansard, House of Commons Debate, 3 December 1969 Vol. 792 cc1661–72.

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not only hostile to the Government but utterly disbelieving of their purpose in pleading for a policy of import substitution in agriculture and horticulture? […] All of this is sufficient evidence that the British apple growers are ready, willing and able to deliver the goods to the market but that their efforts are completely destroyed by the arrival of foreign apples dumped on our markets, often from France, in unripe condition before the close season prohibits further imports. The French apples come in unripe and are left in store here in order to beat the ban on foreign imports.

Sir Gerald finished with a plea to reduce the quota of imported apples in the coming year: My claim is that the notional import quota for foreign apples in respect of the first half of 1970 at 68,750 tons ought drastically to be reduced. I believe that the huge amount in the volume and value of first quote English apples of every kind and grade, both eaters and cookers, presently in cold stores – and every cold store in Britain today is bulging to capacity with English apples unsold would last through until next June without importing more than approximately 20,000 tons of foreign apples.

Mr Arthur Lewis, MP for West Ham (London), in reply took up the issue of the cost of apples to the ‘housewife’, and teased out Nabarro’s political agenda: I agree that these apples are good, well-packed and that the producers must get a fair return. The hon. Gentleman ought to have gone round the street markets, as I have done, and seen these apples being sold at 1s. 3d. and 1s. 4d. a pound. These apples are almost on a par, with the exception of Golden Delicious, which are not easily obtainable, with the other imported apples and at the moment are about the same price. The housewife has to have the choice. The hon. Member is a loyal supporter of his leader, a great champion of entering the Common Market … He is all for increasing trade with the Common Market to ease our entry into it. […] If we are to trade with France, we have to import some of its commodities so that it can earn the currency to pay for our goods.

Gwyneth Dunwoody, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade, made the final response on behalf of the minister for agriculture, in which she explained that the quota would not be altered, despite the increase in the homegrown crop: Since the war, home growers of apples have increased their production. We have always been self-sufficient for cooking apples, but our growers now produce 50 per cent. of our total supplies of dessert apples compared with 20 per cent. before the war. The main support for the horticultural industry generally is through the tariff. But for apples, where the tariff is bound at nil or a low level,

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we have used quota restrictions …. I should add that these quotas have remained unchanged for the last 10 years with the single exception of 1968 when the United Kingdom crop was so thin that we had to seek additional imports.

Debates about the quotas and tariffs on many goods made up a large proportion of Parliamentary business, often, like the so-called ‘cod wars’ generating much more press coverage, and direct action, than the worries of apple growers could command. Stories about trading difficulties with the EEC were particularly popular in the regional press. A Kentish paper went to local greengrocers to see what the situation was like in 1977, and was duly alarmed by the high prices, but as this piece was written in August the shortage of local apples is not particularly surprising. Note that these prices are post-decimalization: Warning on apple prices Despite assurances from the National Farmers’ Union, some Whitstable greengrocers warned their customers this week that sky-high apple prices are unlikely to drop significantly. Shopkeepers have been waiting for the first crop of English apples to come on to the market and offset the high price of foreign apples selling in the shops at an average 35p a pound. But now they say that only the least-popular home-grown produce will be significantly cheaper and top quality fruit such as Cox’s Orange Pippins could be as much as 40p a pound. [...] Johnny’s Fruitshop in Whitstable High Street is selling foreign apples at 36p a pound. ‘There just don’t seem to be any English apples on the market’ said a spokesman. ‘The wholesale price of the foreign ones is very high and we have to work to normal profit margins. Even so we are hardly making any profit selling them at 36p a pound. I don’t think the price will be coming down very much even when we get these new English apples.’ [...] Mr Mark Eldridge of Mark’s Fruitshop … is more optimistic. ‘I think that when the English apples are well established in a few weeks’ time they could come down to 12p a pound, though this applies only to Laxtons.’58

In 1980 the National Farmers’ Union once again resorted to blaming the French farmers, with the accusation that the French were scaremongering: ‘Scaremongering’ – the core of the problem Mr Dan Neuteboom, chairman of the NFU Apple and Pear Committee said this week that Exporters of French apples to Britain misled the public, and indulged in ‘scaremongering’ about the alleged prospective price of apples if imports from France are restricted, Mr Neuteboom said: ‘A so-called “warning” from the French that apples might reach £1 a pound is manifestly absurd. I could make similar forecasts as to horrific prices if we allow them to kill off the English apple industry, and our consumers find themselves at the mercy of the

58. Whitstable Times and Herne Bay Herald, 12 August 1977.

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French. They have been worried by the good publicity the English apple, and our producers, have received. What we are doing, and will continue to do, is to encourage consumers to buy English apples. We must ensure that the UK apple market is not upset by the importation of inferior quality foreign apples.’59

The language here uses the terms of warfare and invasion that the population might find themselves ‘at the mercy of ’ the French, once the domestic apple growers have been ‘killed off ’. This perhaps shows a centuries-old, low-level hostility of the British to the French, as well as the seriousness with which the domestic growers viewed their future. However, the collaboration in the nineteenth century between English and European pomologists seems to have been completely forgotten. The efforts of the Apple and Pear Development Board, set up in 1969, and the National Farmers’ Union did not seem to make much impact, since in 1989 a Kentish paper reported, Thousands of apples from local orchards may have to be dumped unless the public starts buying them. David Butterworth, horticultural policy advisor for Kent and East Sussex NFU warns the bumper year for local orchards may not mean bumper sales – foreign apples are flooding the British market at low prices.60

And finally, at the close of the twentieth century, regional newspapers reported that plucky English apple growers were out of pocket because they ‘refused to drop the word English’ from the descriptions of their apples, which ‘rendered themselves ineligible for European financial support’. The rest of the article is very similar to the preceding ones, the beleaguered spokesperson here being Adrian Barlow, chief executive of the English Apples and Pears promotion committee, who said, ‘This country is renowned for growing the finest eating apples in the world, yet we are told we are unable to tell consumers that.’ Further comment from ‘Tory peer Lord Tebbit’, again using the language of invasion, makes the subtext of this article extremely clear: ‘When the English are punished for rejoicing in the quality of English apples, who would dare say that we are not ruled by Europe?’61 Sir Gerald would no doubt have agreed.

When is an apple not ‘Delicious’? Since its introduction in British shops in the 1960s the Golden Delicious apple has been described by British apple growers and spokespeople as watery, inferior quality, tasteless and foreign. Nevertheless, as the above cuttings prove, ‘the English 59. Grantham Journal, 15 August 1980. 60. Sevenoaks Focus, 19 October 1989. 61. Birmingham Daily Post, 17 September 1999.

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housewife’ persisted in buying them. The variety came from a seedling tree grown in Missouri in about 1890 and was introduced to England in 1926 as a tree suitable for the garden, although it needs more sunshine than England can usually provide in order to do well as a commercial crop. Joan Morgan describes the taste as ‘at its best, honeyed with a crisp, juicy, almost yellow flesh … But little acidity and often tastes flat, cloying, especially if picked early’.62 In the 1960s it was popularized by French colonials returning from Algeria, who invested in fruit farms in the Loire Valley, where it grew beautifully. The problem for the British market was that the Golden Delicious was usually picked early, often while very green and decidedly not golden, and left in the ambient temperatures of small British greengrocers, where it quickly turned watery, as Sir Gerald described. There are now various ‘sports’ of the original variety that have improved its appearance, but not its taste when picked too early or stored too long. In the 1980s it was often grown in Britain as a pollinator tree between rows of Bramley apple trees (a triploid variety, benefitting from two other varieties nearby to ensure pollination) but the fruit was not even harvested. During the 1980s the French attempted an advertising campaign ‘Le Crunch’, showing bright green, not golden, fruit with a juicy crunch when bitten, but the British retaliated by re-purposing the term to describe Rugby Union games between any of the British nations and the French.63 During the early twentieth century the Red Delicious apple was widely planted in American orchards. This variety does not share a parent with the Golden Delicious. The Red Delicious was discovered by a farmer in Iowa in the 1870s. He sent his fruit to the major fruit nursery and breeders, the Stark Brothers in 1894. According to the Stark legend, C. M. Stark pronounced the apple ‘delicious’, and it was put into propagation with a fence around it to protect it from scionwood thieves. However, when a crimson ‘sport’ of the apple was propagated in the 1920s, further scions became selected for appearance and keeping qualities, making the fruit ubiquitous in supermarkets but also somewhat reviled. As Tove Danovich describes it, ‘the Red Delicious is a crime against the apple. The fruit makes for a joyless snack, despite the false promise of its name, with a bitter skin that gives way to crumbling, mealy flesh’.64 By the 1980s it made up 75 per cent of Washington State’s apple crop, but as different varieties such as Gala became more popular, the growers found themselves making a loss. Despite a government bailout of the apple industry in 2000, the Red Delicious became one catalyst for the decline in commercial orchards in America in the late twentieth century. It is 62. Morgan and Richards, New Book of Apples p. 218. 63. The ‘Le Crunch’ campaign by MullenLowe agency of 1981 ‘achieved a value of £100 million in a market worth £235 million in less than a decade in an environment that was often hostile to the product if not the brand’ https://ipa.co.uk/knowledge/case-studies/ french-golden-delicious-apples-le-crunch-in-1981. Aberdeen Evening Express, 17 March 1984 ‘Fans invade capital for le crunch’ (describing a rugby union match between Scotland and France in Edinburgh). 64. https://thecounter.org/history-economics-red-delicious-apples/

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an example of how an internal market for a domestic product can fail, particularly when the novelty of the product wears off. Those growers who retained their trees found the tough skin and uniformity of the Red Delicious made it suitable for long-distance export, with half the current crop going overseas. Even this market, however, is in decline as consumers in Mexico, Indonesia and China assert that the modern Red Delicious looks beautiful but is not tasty. Those with longer memories of the ‘old’ Red Delicious say that they used to taste different – delicious – in fact. This might be true, or it might be that our ‘edible memory’ for these fruits makes the apples of our childhood always superior to glowing, standardized fruit in the supermarket shelves.65

65. Jennifer A. Jordan, Edible Memory: The Lure of Heirloom Tomatoes and Other Forgotten Foods (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015).

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Chapter 8 T H E A P P L E I N T H E K I T C H E N , T H E P A L AC E A N D T H E   ‘ C Y D E R H O U SE’

So far this book has explored the apple growing in the orchard, and its journey as a commodity. But in order for the apple to be traded, it had to have consumers. The final step in tracking the economic journey of the apple is to consider what happened after it had been purchased and taken into the kitchen. The apple was primarily bought unprocessed, with no added value, but throughout the centuries the consumer – in itself a developing concept – had increasing access to extra ingredients such as sugar, and to recipes and ideas that could transform the apple through cooking, permitting its use as an ingredient or its appearance as the dessert course at the most fashionable of dinner parties. This chapter first considers the apple as a ‘thing’, placing it within the context of other ‘things’, and ingredients studied by historians of food and of material culture. Following on is an investigation into the ways in which apples changed in fashion and status, before considering how the same issues affected the cider industry. The apple is of course a consumable good, a commodity that is perishable, seasonable and has a short life, destined to be eaten. In that sense it is not possible to handle, or to have as part of our material culture, an edible apple that has been in an eighteenth- or nineteenth-century kitchen. However, it is possible to study it through the lens of the ‘material turn’ in history.

The apple as a thing to be studied The apple of previous centuries, separated by time and distance from its tree, polished up in a fruit bowl or waiting to be peeled and cooked, is a material object, or ‘thing’ that cannot be experienced directly by the historian. Material and cultural history is undertaking a dialogue around the centrality of the ‘thing’, and the interdependence of society and things has been acknowledged among food historians, tracing the actions and influence of a particular ‘thing’ or ingredient through time and across the world. Ian Hodder has noted that, in order to keep our world of things functioning effectively, ‘a massive mobilization of resources, humans, dependencies is involved. Things have lives of their own that we get drawn into, and society depends on our abilities to manage this vibrancy of things

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effectively, to produce the effect of stability’.1 This is particularly visible in the story of the apple, where there is a clear interdependence between all the things (and processes) associated with apple growing, the people using those things to earn a living from the apples themselves, and the cook and consumer. As Terry Eagleton has observed, ‘food looks like an object, but is actually a relationship’.2 If edible ‘things’ can be explored by historians of material culture, then the influence of apples and other such ingredients should be tangible in the realm of food studies and food history. The historiography of food studies is one of the most quickly developing areas for study, and one in which this series of books is playing a significant part. I shall, therefore, briefly consider it here in order to contextualize the decisions I have made concerning which aspects of the apple as a food have been included throughout this book, and to develop the argument that an ingredient can be worthy of academic study, since even the most basic of eating or food-related decisions has a whole slew of social and cultural motivations and associations behind them. Food studies, or food history, has developed in academic rigour since the 1990s, when Jennifer Ruark described food studies as still ‘puttering along’ somewhere between folklore and anthropology for decades, while the activity of ‘recipe studies’, although taken up by historic re-enactors and practical historians, was rarely allowed to step out of the kitchen into debates on modern historiographic issues such as gender, material history and class.3 According to Ruark, Sidney Mintz once described food scholars as having been ‘distained and patronised’ but, thanks in no small part to the academic rigour of his own work on sugar, food is now considered one of the most suitable subjects for exploration.4 Ken Albala, writing ten years after Ruark’s article, describes how the discipline has largely settled into food history, researching the ‘social, economic, intellectual and cultural parameters of consumption’ and culinary history, which ‘focuses on ingredients, cooking methods, recipes and the history of the cookbook’.5 In practice most recent books, and indeed this study, pick up elements from both these categories. As food historians work on projects with other academic disciplines such as social history and anthropology, there will be more that can be uncovered from the texts and ‘things’ available to us. Recipes are coming to be ‘read’ as a source of information 1. Ian Hodder, ‘The Entanglements of Humans and Things: A Long Term View’ New Literary History Vol. 45 No. 1 (Winter 2014) pp. 19–36 p. 21. 2. Terry Eagleton, ‘Edible Ecriture’ in Consuming Passions: Food in the Age of Anxiety ed. by Sian Griffiths and Jennifer Wallace (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998) p. 204. 3. Jennifer K. Ruark, ‘More Scholars Focus on Historical, Social, and Cultural Meanings of Food, but Some Critics Say It’s Scholarship-Lite’ The Chronicle of Higher Education (9 July 1999) p. 17. 4. Ibid. 5. Ken Albala, ‘History on the Plate: The Current State of Food History’ Historically Speaking Vol. 10 No. 5 (November 2009) pp. 6–8 p. 6.

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about the lifestyle, beliefs and cultural context of the writer or compiler and the readers or users of the recipes, as well as about the ingredients or cooking methods or anything more concerned with the technicalities of cookery. Like any other text, recipes can be deconstructed such that the form and language of the recipe can be given preference over the information in the content. Such readings, while sometimes obscuring the idea of a recipe as something intended to lead to the production of a material object – such as the apple dumplings discussed below – are allowing ‘recipe studies’ to develop a more scholarly influence in the wider field of food studies and social and cultural history.

The apple in the kitchen In order to consider the apple as a consumed, material ‘thing’, while lacking the apple itself, it is necessary to look for the traces of that relationship between apples and those who prepared and ate them in the house, and occasionally on the street. In this section I shall look for that relationship in the apple’s preparation in the kitchen, how particular varieties were marketed by the fruit trade and selected by the consumer, before focusing on a detailed study of the apple dumpling, as an example of the ways in which apples were referred to in recipes and related texts. I have considered recipes rather as I have considered texts giving advice on growing apples – as a source for what they can reveal about the wider context of the domestic use and cooking of apples, and for any insights into the economic value of the apple, how it was appreciated as an ingredient and as part of culinary culture and fashion. The apple leaves few traces in the kitchen, requiring no unique processing tools or storage equipment. There is a scarcity of apple-related kitchen ‘things’ or paraphernalia, since they need no preparation other than coring and peeling, which can be done with any kitchen knife. Even the dishes on which apples are cooked and served are not of necessity differentiated from other kitchen dishes. Perhaps part of the reason for the apple’s popularity in the past is that it did not require any particular size or expensive type of dish, allowing it to be cooked and preserved in the most modestly equipped kitchen as well as in the most up to date. The only specific tools that may be required are the apple scoop and the mechanical peeler. The apple scoop was a small tool often made in the home by carving a sheep’s bone. Such homemade scoops were in use from the 1600s until at least the late nineteenth century. This tool had a long shallow scoop at one end, and looked something like a modern apple corer. However the apple scoop was used to pierce the apple skin and then extract little slivers of apple flesh, so that someone with not many teeth could manage to eat a fresh apple.6 Since the apple scoop was semi-disposable (if it broke there was always a fresh bone to make another) few examples have survived, and as dentistry and dentures improved the necessity 6. https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/antique-apple-scoops

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for them faded. In the Herefordshire Pomona, Henry Graves Bull notes that ‘some fifty or sixty years ago [in the 1820s–30s] apple-scoops were in general use and were even placed on the dessert table with a dish of apples [...] but the fashion has changed, and it is rare now to meet with one of the old bone scoops, and still more rare to see any person scooping an apple in the old-fashioned way’.7 Mechanized apple peelers, an American invention, were not imported to England until the 1870s, and did not become a kitchen essential in English kitchens, presumably since most English cooks were not looking to peel and preserve an entire orchard’s worth of fruit, in the manner of the American homesteader.8 Another source of information about an ingredient or product is its advertising, which had become a sophisticated business by the nineteenth century. For examples of the power of food advertisements as texts, Lesley Steinitz’s research into how Bovril and other ‘health foods’ were marketed at the end of the nineteenth century unpicks the messages contained within customer and celebrity endorsements and images.9 At the end of the nineteenth century and into the early decades of the twentieth, American apple growers began to advertise to their domestic market with colourful adverts in print media, billboards and even radio jingles extolling the virtues of Michigan or Skookum apples. Exported fruit arrived in Britain in decorated apple boxes and with illustrated labels.10 However, no such movement occurred among British growers. Each variety of British apple was grown in any number of orchards across the country, with the result that, although certain varieties became particularly popular, they were not associated with any major growers or even particular counties or regions. Apple-related advertising was limited to advertisements from retailers, listing the varieties available. In 1923 the Fruit Broker’s Federation of Great Britain held a national campaign in print media with the slogan ‘Eat More Fruit’. Their adverts appeared in a variety of publications from the expensive Tatler periodical to regional newspapers. A newspaper report of the results stated that a year after the campaign the expenditure on fruit had increased by a million pounds, although that had only raised the consumption in 1924 to ‘one apple every four days’, one orange a week and one lemon a month per person.11 Since then British campaigns have focused either on the plight of English apple growers, as discussed in the previous chapter, or on more general healthy eating messages. Some apple varieties were advertised in gardening periodicals, but the adverts were placed by nurseries, attempting to draw the attention of the gardener to a particular new variety to grow in the garden or hobby orchard, and 7. Hogg and Bull, Herefordshire Pomona p. 60. 8. Don Thornton, ‘Apple Parers: A Slice of American History’ Gastronomica Vol. 2 No. 1 (Winter 2002) pp. 58–61. 9. Lesley Steinitz, ‘The Language of Advertising: Fashioning Health Food Consumers at the Fin de Siècle’ in Food, Drink and the Written Word in Britain 1820–1954 ed. by Mary Addyman, Laura Wood and Christopher Yiannitsaros (Abingdon: Routledge, 2017). 10. Freidberg, Fresh: pp. 138–47. 11. ‘Eating Fruit’ Northern Advocate, 30 March 1925.

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the copy tends to emphasize the disease resistance or other good qualities of the tree, rather than how to use the apples. However, grower’s endorsements and the awards from events such as the National Apple Congress brought new varieties to the attention of gardeners, retailers and consumers.

‘Branding’ the Bramley and the Cox’s Orange Pippin Two of the most commercially successful and popular varieties of the late nineteenth century were helped to success by the endorsements of nurseries and national societies. They were the Bramley Seedling, a cooking apple, and Cox’s Orange Pippin, a dessert apple. These two apples provide an example of how in Britain the named variety took on the attributes of a brand. Although the commercial apple breeders cannily named new varieties after themselves, for instance, the Charles Turner apple or Laxton’s Superb, in the case of the Bramley and the Cox the naming honours were retained by amateurs, as had been the tradition among amateur breeders of all kinds of plants. The Bramley Seedling is a culinary apple that was grown from a tree raised from a seed planted by Miss Mary Anne Brailsford between 1809 and 1813 in her garden in Southwell, near Nottingham.12 By 1857, after Mary’s death in 1852, the apple tree and the cottage belonged to Mr Bramley, the village butcher, and it was producing good harvests of large apples that cooked well. A local nurseryman, Mr Merryweather, admired the tree at that time and took away fruiting wood to graft in 1876, finally exhibiting this new apple in 1883. After the apple was greatly praised at the National Apple Congress of 1883, it became extremely popular. The first commercial Bramley orchards were planted in 1880 in Loddington, Kent, but Bramleys were widely grown in the East of England, becoming a major crop around the town of Wisbech.13 The Bramley displaced from the market all other culinary varieties of apple, and is now the only culinary apple grown in large-scale commercial cultivation. By 1955 the Bramley was described by grower Robert Atkinson as ‘a single variety almost as commonplace and universal a commodity as potatoes, with a season nearly as long’.14 At the end of the twentieth century, however, the Bramley had its own campaign group, despite accounting for 41 per cent of the English fresh fruit sector in season.15 The other popular apple of the nineteenth century, the Cox’s Orange Pippin, was also raised by an amateur grower, Mr Richard Cox of Colnbrook Lawn, 12. Morgan and Richards, New Book of Apples p. 194. For an account of a recent visit to Southwell, home of the Bramley, see Pete Brown, The Apple Orchard (London: Particular Books, 2016) pp. 222–32. 13. Christopher Stocks, Forgotten Fruits: The Stories Behind Britain’s Traditional Fruits and Vegetables (London: Windmill Books, 2009). 14. Robert Atkinson, Growing Apples (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955) p. 36. 15. The Grocer, 19 February 2000.

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Buckinghamshire, around 1825. Grown commercially in the nurseries and orchards of Thomas Rivers and Charles Turner, it was also exhibited at the National Apple Congress in 1883 where it was awarded ‘best dessert apple’. Atkinson devotes several pages to all the faults that the Cox tree and its fruit can have, and the difficulties of raising a profitable crop. Nevertheless he recommends it as an orchard variety, since the fruit commands a premium price even over imported Cox apples. He notes: Cox with all its temperament yet achieves at least a recognisable degree of the famous Cox flavour under all sorts and conditions of season, soil and management. It is encouraging that in our shoddy age of mass production anything so difficult as a Cox’s Orange Pippin should have become a national favourite on the grounds of quality alone; the market was waiting for it long before the growers had learned to produce it.16

Approximately one hundred apple varieties now have Cox’s Orange Pippin as one of their parents, although, as Atkinson notes, the unique taste of the Cox, its ‘highly characteristic aroma, “bite” and effervescence’ do not transfer strongly to these crosses.17 The Cox and the Bramley are apple varieties that are well known today, available in supermarkets and farmers’ markets, and to eat one is to share a physical experience with the Victorians in a way that even cooking from a nineteenth-century recipe, with all its variables, cannot equal.

Processed apple products Another source of evidence of the popularity of apples is the quantity of processed foods that use it as an ingredient. Although single apples, especially from premium varieties, seem to have been the most profitable way to sell the orchard crop, apple products often made use of bruised or insect-damaged apples that would not be suitable for the dessert market. However, the primary value of the apple to the cook was that it could be bought as an inexpensive, raw product and relatively easily be transformed at home and kept for long-term storage by drying, turning into fruit leathers (fruit pulp dried and preserved as strips, usually rolled up), jams, relishes or pickles. Prepared apple products were not often shop-bought until the end of the Victorian era. There was some use of apples as a bulking agent in jams and bottled fruit, but the apple was unable to compete with imported fruit such as oranges or bottled apricots or even with sweeter home-grown seasonal fruit such as strawberries or plums. All of these fruits had the added advantages of making more attractive preserves, and most survived the new canning process much better than apples, 16. Atkinson, Growing Apples p. 21. 17. Ibid. p. 29. www.fruitid.com lists cultivars by their parentage, where known.

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which turned to an unattractive grey mush. Mass-produced apple sauce was beginning to be a branded item in America, but the product was not popular in Britain, its use being confined to a condiment served with roast pork. Apples were used in jam, to bulk out more expensive or fragile fruit. Jam gained popularity as the wholesale price of sugar decreased, particularly after the removal of the Duty on sugar in 1874, and even ten years before that Crosse and Blackwell were using 450 tons of fruit for jam production each summer. As mechanization increased, the cost of jam was reduced, and a pot of Crosse and Blackwell jam that cost 2s. in 1840 cost just 9d. in 1857, although this was still too expensive for the poorest consumers.18 Much of the jam fruit was imported as pulp from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, which again worked against any great increase in domestic fruit production or orchard growth. However, it has been argued that the increase in British fruit production from the 1870s can be attributed to the popularity of jam, resulting from, as Peter Atkins explained in his study of jams and pickles, ‘demand from jam and bottling factories, met especially by smallholders in their immediate locality and by the expansion of production in the traditional fruit-growing regions. Examples include Chivers of  Histon, near Cambridge, and Wilkin of Tiptree Heath in Essex,’ both in the East of England.19 Stephen Chivers bought an orchard near the new railway line in 1850 and later noticed that the bulk of their crop went to jam manufacturers, so in 1873 the Chivers sons began their own jam production in a barn in the orchard.

Apple dumplings and other culinary triumphs To write this section I have had to choose one apple recipe among thousands to stand in for the rest, in order to undertake any kind of cultural analysis. The intention here is not to make a comparison of the merits of the recipes, but to use these texts in order to extract further data on the wider cultural or economic context of the apple and the orchard. Some comparison of recipes across history is relevant here, because it demonstrates the long lifespan of an apple recipe, and how the fruit has been appreciated across changing class and social structures. To this end, I have chosen the apple dumpling – a whole, cored apple covered in dough, and boiled, steamed or baked. This has been a popular dish for centuries, being cooked in England long before Thomas Tryon listed it in 1691 as one of the finest puddings, stating, ‘Apple Dumplins eaten with Butter, or Butter and Sugar, hath the first place of most sorts of Puddings; they are easie of Concoction, and afford a friendly nourishment.’20 Tryon, a vegetarian, also describes apple pies as ‘friendly to 18. Peter Atkins, ‘Vinegar and Sugar: The Early History of Factory-made Jams, Sauces and Pickles in Britain’ in The Food Industries of Europe in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries ed. by D. J. Oddy (Farnham: Ashgate, 2003). 19. Ibid. p. 9. 20. Anne O’Connell, Early Vegetarian Recipes (Totnes: Prospect Books, 2008) p. 180.

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nature’ which perhaps refers to the pastry not containing lard, as well as ‘friendly’ to the digestion. Following through from this early mention, apple dumplings can be found in many recipe collections through the centuries, including, of course, Hannah Glasse’s The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy, first published in 1747 and a best seller for the next hundred years. Glasse has two recipes for apple dumplings, both of them are cooked by boiling. One recipe recommends filling the core of the apple with cinnamon, sugar and lemon peel, elevating the humble apple and indicating the exotic flavours already available to her readers.21 Surprisingly, given what has been established about their popularity, she does not include many recipes for apples, but then she does not include many recipes for fruit. Apples are recommended to bulk out oranges in a tart, or as an option in a pie: ‘pears, apples, apricots &c.’22 This may reflect the familiarity of apple dishes, considered too simple for her readers, or the greater expense of sugar, or perhaps simply the taste in Georgian cuisine for more savoury items, since apples are used in meat dishes as a stuffing or in a sauce. Glasse was eventually superseded (and sometimes copied) by Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household Management (1861) where the apple dumpling would be recognizable both to Thomas Tryon and to Hannah Glasse, although in Beeton’s recipe the pastry is made with suet (animal fat) rather than the more expensive butter, and the dumplings are baked. The succinct recipe states, Baked Apple Dumplings (a Plain Family Dish). INGREDIENTS. – 6 apples, 3/4 lb of suet-crust, sugar to taste. Mode. – Pare and take out the cores of the apples without dividing them, and make 1/2 lb. of suet-crust by recipe No. 1215; roll the apples in the crust, previously sweetening them with moist sugar, and taking care to join the paste nicely. When they are formed into round balls, put them on a tin, and bake them for about 1/2 hour, or longer. Should the apples be very large, arrange them pyramidically on a dish, and sift over them some pounded white sugar.23

The description of this as a ‘plain family dish’ indicates that it would already be familiar to the Book of Household Management’s intended readership. By comparing other nineteenth-century texts including recipe books, menus and advertisements, as well as illustrations, it can be seen that recipes using apples cross all social classes and occasions. Apples were sold to the urban poor on the street as fritters or baked apples, yet there was no opprobrium against serving even these same dishes as part of a banquet or at any respectable household dinner party. At the time many other ingredients, such as certain cuts of meat, were 21. Hannah Glasse, The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy: A New Edition (London: published for the author, 1764) p. 228. 22. Ibid p. 144. 23. Mrs Isabella Beeton, The Book of Household Management (London: S.O. Beeton, 1866) p. 621.

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viewed as suitable only for particular classes, and not solely because of their cost. Apples were suitable for different types of consumers, including women, children and convalescents, in the privacy of the home, but they were also suitable for public occasions or dinner parties. Service of the dessert en pyramide had been fashionable in the high-ceilinged rooms of French chateaux since at least 1650, and apples, interspersed with moss and seasonal flowers, made an eye catching display, where apples were appreciated for their appearance as much as their taste. When these apples had been grown in the host’s own orchards, they were a status symbol and a sign of economic plenty. Sometimes they were too much of a good thing; Madame de Sevigne attended a dinner party where the fruit pyramid, stacked twenty layers high, toppled over.24 Joan Morgan described how ‘discerning Victorians of the 1890s discussed the flavour of their apples as passionately as they debated the finer points of wine’ since the changes in the way in which food was served allowed room on the table for a display of the finest fruit, including apples.25 The appearance of such delicacies as pineapples alongside the russets and non-pareils signified ‘the splendour and generosity of the occasion at the outset. […] Mere city dwellers who had to buy in their own fruit could not begin to match this paradisiacal plenty, which put even the finest sweetmeats in the shade’.26 Of course the city dwellers bought fruit of all qualities, and expensive, finest-quality apples were one of the items they chose. As transport improved, the range of apple varieties increased, and the gap between a town and a country dessert course narrowed. The title of Edward Bunyard’s 1930s book on fruit, The Anatomy of Dessert, is a reminder that in England ‘dessert’ meant a course of fresh fruit, served after the main course, and illustrates the continued status of that course. Bunyard justifies his book eloquently. ‘There are some in England who say, “Why all this trouble about food and drink, ordinary food is good enough for me.” I have never heard them add “Ordinary books and ordinary music.”’27 Apples could star in an impressive and complicated dessert such as Charles Francatelli’s ‘Apples à la Portuguaise’ where they are made into a ‘marmalade’(a stiff puree), covered in custard and enrobed in meringue before being decorated with apple jellies.28 Francatelli was chef to Queen Victoria, and his cookery book allowed readers to share in, or at least read about, some of the recipes that the Queen herself enjoyed. Less elaborate and within the reach of any cook in service was Mrs Beeton’s ‘Rich Sweet Apple Pudding’, a dish for a family meal or dinner party, at a cost of two shillings per pudding.29 The apple itself may have 24. Morgan and Richards, New Book of Apples p. 55. 25. Ibid. p. 83. 26. Ibid. p. 84. 27. Edward Bunyard, The Anatomy of Dessert, with a Few Notes on Wine (New York: Modern Library, 2006) p. xxix. Reprint of the American edition of 1933. 28. Anne Currah, ed., Chef to Queen Victoria: The recipes of Charles Elmé Francatelli (London: William Kinber, 1973) p. 280. 29. Mrs Beeton, The Book of Household Management p. 624.

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been reasonably cheap, but it was an excellent ingredient for putting alongside, and making the most of, more exotic and expensive flavours that were becoming regular items in the Victorian diet, such as nutmeg, almonds and fine or powdered sugar, as used in the Rich Sweet Apple Pudding. Mrs Beeton in particular made much use of the apple, and from her notes and recipes in the Book of Household Management aspects of the importance of the apple in the middle-class Victorian kitchen can be seen. A large portion of her book is didactic, giving instruction to those who ran a home, and those who aspired to do so or worked within a larger establishment. The choice of the recipes, therefore, can be considered part of the didactic process. Like all the others, the apple recipes were compiled from many sources, which again demonstrates the popularity of the apple as an ingredient and its status within the kitchen as something wholesome. In Mrs Beeton’s work is another point at which the economic apple, in this case held within the form of a text to be bought and sold, meets the cultural representations of the fruit. Mrs Beeton appears to have shared the anxiety of her age over the growing sense of loss of connections to rural ways and foods, as demonstrated in some of the notes between the recipes that describe an ingredient’s heritage. On the other hand she was also, as Hughes says, ‘a sharpedged daughter of the industrial age’, who knew that while her readers may not be picking apples from their own orchard (although she expects or hopes that they will have a ‘fruit room’ for storage), they are interested in the connection between the recipes and the ingredients available.30 Interspersed with the apple recipes in The Book of Household Management are passages about apple history and traditions, paraphrased mainly from the works of Hogg, and while the apple is described there as a ‘native’ fruit, and ‘excellent and abundant’ in England, the passage goes on to state that ‘immense supplies are also imported from the United States and from France. The apples grown in the vicinity of New York are universally admitted to be the finest of any’.31 Mrs Beeton and her publisher were in tune with consumer demands and fashions, incorporating adverts for the latest household gadgets into the various editions of her book, so although advocating English fruit might be expected from her other musings on bucolic traditions, she knew what fashions her readers would aspire to have at home, and that a foreign apple could be a marker of discernment. It is clear from recipe books of the period, including Mrs Beeton’s, that the readers or users of the books were expected to be able to recognize, or at least ask for, different varieties of apple for different purposes. For example, Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery from 1892 recommends ‘the Wellington, or Dumeloro’s Seedling’ (sic) when making blackberry jam; this variety, more often called Dumelow’s Seedling, was a cooking apple that lost out to the Bramley.32 Mrs Beeton’s recipes and fruit knowledge illustrate that demand for fruit and fresh produce was rising during the 30. Hughes, Short Life p. 40. 31. Mrs Beeton, The Book of Household Management p. 622. 32. Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery (London: Cassell, Petter & Galpin, 1892) p. 69.

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nineteenth century. In The Food of London (1856) George Dodd commented on the amount of fresh produce for sale in Covent Garden Market. ‘One would almost imagine, looking at the formidable array, that Londoners had nought else to do but eat sacks of vegetables and bushels of fruit.’33 It is useful to note the importance given to fresh produce in these nineteenth-century texts, balancing the work of D. J. Oddy and others into the working-class diet. The perception has been that the diet was of bread, bacon, cheese and a few overcooked vegetables, with only a little fruit cooked in puddings. Oddy noted that ‘the nineteenth century Briton restricted his choice of food by prejudices and preferences about which we today know little: but it seems clear that attitudes of distrust towards fruit, vegetables and milk remained strong until the very end of the nineteenth century’.34 However, although there is a narrative about the impact of cheap sugar and tea on the British diet, and evidence of concern over the quantities of jam eaten by children, it seems that eating fresh fruit and vegetables was attempted whenever it could be afforded, and that insufficient or irregular consumption was more to do with available income for food, rather than lack of desire or suspicion. Francatelli published a small, cheap volume, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes in 1861, in which there are recipes for salads with cos lettuce, for onion soup and baked haricot beans. He prefaces a recipe for ‘economical vegetable pottage’ with the observation that ‘in France, and also in many parts of Europe, the poorer classes but very seldom taste meat in any form; the chief part of their scanty food consists of bread, vegetables and … their soup, which is mostly made of vegetables’. The recipe consists of any herbs and vegetables simmered together, but he does concede that it is a recipe for those ‘who may have a little garden of their own’.35 For all classes, baked apples were seen as especially good at aiding the digestion. Mrs Beeton noted that ‘in a roasted state [apples] are remarkably wholesome, and, it is said, strengthening to a weak stomach’, and that ‘apples, when peeled, cored, and well cooked, are a most grateful food for the dyspeptic’.36 Francatelli informed his working-class readers that ‘baked apples or pears, with bread, form a cheap, wholesome and proper kind of supper for children’.37 Mayhew, however, had earlier pondered the decline of the roasted apple being sold in the street, noting that baked potatoes had taken their place. A street seller told him that in her youth (presumably around 1830) ‘roasted apples was reckoned good for the tooth ache in them days, but, people change so, they aren’t now.’38

33. Dodd, The Food of London p. 387. 34. D. J. Oddy, ‘Food in Nineteenth Century England; Nutrition in the First Urban Society’ Proceedings of the Nutrition Society Vol. 29 No. 1 (1970) pp. 150–7 p. 150. 35. Charles Elmé Francatelli, A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (1st edn. 1862, reprint Whitstable: Pryor Publications, 1993) pp. 47–8. 36. Mrs Beeton, The Book of Household Management p. 622. 37. Francatelli, Plain Cookery p. 57. 38. Mayhew, London Labour p. 90.

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Apples for health and beauty It seems to be around the turn of the twentieth century that the saying ‘an apple a day keeps the doctor away’ came into common use in America and, with a few variations, in Britain.39 However, the health benefits of fresh fruit and vegetables had been promoted since the middle of the nineteenth century, at least. Eating fresh fruit and vegetables for reasons of health was encouraged among the literate classes, as in this article in The Lady’s Home Magazine of 1860, which devotes a whole paragraph to the praise of the apple, particularly to its curative properties: There is scarcely an article of vegetable food more widely useful and more universally loved than the apple [...] The most healthful dessert which can be placed upon the table is the baked apple. If taken freely at breakfast with coarse bread and butter … it has an admirable effect on the general system, often removing constipation, correcting acidities and cooling of febrile conditions more effectually than most approved medicines. If families could be induced to substitute the apple, sound, ripe and luscious, for the pies, cakes, candies and other sweetmeats with which their children are too often indiscreetly stuffed, there would be a diminution in the sum total of doctors’ bills in a single year, sufficient to lay in stock of this delicious fruit for a whole season’s use.40

By 1896 in America apples were being listed as one way to prolong life: The apple is such a common fruit that few persons are familiar with its remarkably efficacious medicinal properties. Everybody ought to know that the very best thing they can do is to eat apples just before going to bed. The apple is excellent brain food because it has more phosphoric acid, in an easily digestible shape than any other fruit known. It excites the action of the liver, promotes sound and healthy sleep, and thoroughly disinfects the mouth. It also agglutinates the surplus acids of the stomach, helps the kidney secretions and prevents calculus growth, while it obviates indigestion and is one of the best preventives of diseases of the throat. Next to lemon and orange it is also the best antidote for the thirst and craving of persons addicted to the alcohol and opium habit.41

It should be remembered that another popular remedy for a bad complexion and ill health was the arsenic wafer, promoted by quack doctors in England and 39. The February 1866 edition of Notes and Queries magazine has this anonymous snippet: ‘A Pembrokeshire proverb. Eat an apple on going to bed, /And you’ll keep the doctor from earning his bread.’ 40. The Lady’s Home Magazine, 16 December 1860. 41. William Kinnear, ‘How to Prolong Life’ The North American Review Vol. 163 No. 477 (August 1896) p. 251.

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America.42 Eating apples would probably have had a better result than most of the bottled remedies, with considerably fewer side effects. A short article in The London Journal of 1898 shows the persistence of the idea of apples as a beauty aid throughout the century, where ‘a recipe for beauty’ and a ‘soft complexion’ turns out to be eating ‘three large apples just before retiring to bed’ as recommended by ‘a celebrated beauty’.43 However, even this article has to cite medical authorities to allay the ‘visions of nightmare and dyspepsia’ at the thought of eating these raw apples, and these same caveats are also earlier expressed in an American book, The Market Assistant (1867), which includes this undated quote from The Journal of Health: Be it remembered that the eating of ripe fruit does not imply the necessity of swallowing the skin and stone or seed, as many are in the fashion of doing. Certain it is – to say nothing of the labor to which the poor stomach is put on the occasion – nature never intended those parts of the fruit to be eaten.44

However, as there could be no monetary gain from recommending generic apples as an aid to health and beauty, unlike the profits from advertising or endorsing patented products, these pieces in print media were confined to the letters or ‘ladies’ pages. The one non-kitchen product which was originally said to contain apples was ‘pomatum’ or ‘pomade’ used to keep hair in place and looking glossy, but by the nineteenth century apples had disappeared from the recipe entirely and commercial pomade was mainly lard mixed with scented oils. I have found an intriguing advert for Dr Baldwin’s Apple Tonic – ‘It gets to the core of the disease.’ This was advertised in the Republic of Ireland in an unchanging, but presumably profitable, advertisement that ran from 1911 until at least 1917, but I cannot find any information as to what the Apple Tonic contained, although I would imagine watered-down apple brandy might be a start.45 In the twentieth century, once the role of vitamins became better understood, there was more advice to eat raw fruit and vegetables for health reasons. Apples had additional benefits; the ‘Eat More Fruit’ campaign of the 1920s recommended giving apples to children because ‘Children won’t need correctives’ … An apple is better than an aperient.’46 Both corrective and aperient are terms for laxatives. The focus on the health benefits of apples at this time shows how the apple was

42. Caroline Rance, The Quack Doctor: Historical Remedies for All Your Ills (Cheltenham: History Press, 2013). 43. ‘The Toilet Table: A Recipe for Beauty’ The London Journal, 1 January 1898 p. 8. 44. Thomas F. De Voe, The Market Assistant (New York: Hurd and Houghton, 1867) p. 369. 45. Dr Baldwin’s Apple Tonic was advertised at least monthly in the Sligo Champion. 46. The Bystander, 31 October 1923.

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shedding its cultural associations both with the Fall from Eden and with aspects of feminine behaviour, and becoming symbolic of natural health.

Apple juice and cider Throughout this book, and particularly in this section, remember that I use the term ‘juice’ or ‘apple juice’ to describe the unfermented, non-alcoholic product, and ‘cider’ (or ‘cyder’) to describe the fermented, alcoholic (sometimes very strong) product. There is little evidence of apple juice being consumed as a product before the late nineteenth century. Presumably those who pressed their apples for cider may have consumed the juice straight from the press, but if apple juice is stored for even a short length of time it tends to ferment naturally. Fresh juice is a good carrier of disease, and illnesses still occur today from drinking unpasteurised juice.47 For juice to become the popular product that it is today, the food technologies of concentration, pasteurization and refrigeration were required, alongside the innovations of glass bottles and screw tops, labelling and, most recently, the Tetrapak carton and plastic bottles, together with all the developments in transportation, advertising and print media. For example, Duffy’s apple juice from New York State was advertised in 1906 as health drink that was ‘sterilized and non-alcoholic’, bringing together all these food processing systems into one longdistance product.48 Juicing was important to commercial orchards as one of the ways in which surplus or bruised fruit could be processed. An article in Scientific American noted that ‘cider’ (by which they mean apple juice) was now a modern, urban drink: But what old-timers knew about apple cider was as nothing to the kind of knowledge which the nation is now rapidly acquiring. The consumer in large cities is learning that apple juice is a wonderful beverage, and demanding it, and overnight a manufacturing industry of large proportions has developed. The seat of twentieth-century cider making is not, as it was twenty-five years ago, the country water mill. It is a city industrial plant, to which apples for cider are often shipped long distances.49

In 1950 R. M. Smock and A. M. Naubert produced a thorough and unique study of the commercial uses of the apple, in which they gave the following summary of processed apple products, demonstrating the increasing importance of apple juice:

47. ‘Unpasteurised Fruit Juices and Ciders: A Potential Health Risk.’ British Columbia Health Link No. 72 (February 2010). https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/ 48. http://www.atticpaper.com/proddetail.php?prod=1906-duffys-apple-juice-ad. http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/mott-s-inc-history/ 49. Scientific American, 23 July 1921 p. 63.

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In the United States the quantities of apples processed annually during the period from 1934 to 1944 inclusive varied between twenty and thirty-five million bushels, representing from 19 to 30% of the total commercial crop. Slightly over half of this fruit was used in preparing canned, dried and frozen apples. The remainder was used in the manufacture of apple juice, vinegar, fermented beverages, and miscellaneous food products. Among foreign countries only Canada produces appreciable quantities of dried and canned apples though the production of dried apples in Australia, Union of South Africa, and New Zealand is increasing. Apple juice is becoming an important outlet for apples in Canada, England and European countries, particularly Germany.50

When fresh apple juice was not an option, cider was a product with much a longer shelf-life than either fresh apples or juice and the potential for a sizeable profit. In eighteenth-century England cider was an extremely popular drink, particularly in the West Country, but in contrast to the bustling market gardens around the urban centres, cider apple orchards fell into decline during the early part of the  nineteenth century, and did not strongly revive until the craft cider boom of the late 1980s. In America cider went through a similar story of growth and decline, with both the temperance movement of the nineteenth century and the later Prohibition causing growers to grub up apple orchards. As I mentioned in Chapter 2, cider making became a more commercial enterprise after the introduction of the Redstreak or Red Strake cider apple, brought from France by Viscount Scudamore around 1650.51 Scudamore had connections to the leading lights in science and experts in all manner of areas, including pomology. John Beale, whose book on cider in Herefordshire was published in 1658, was friends with Dr Bosworth, Scudamore’s physician, but also an expert in cider making, who judged many local competitions. Beale wrote: ‘He that hopes for victory sends his [sample of cider] into Hereford to Dr Bosworth, who will judge them “touching gust and wholesomeness”’.52 John Philip’s Georgic verse, ‘Cyder’, written in 1708, is infused with his observations of the landscape of his home county of Herefordshire, centre of the cider industry.53 The poem’s second half contains much practical advice on how to make cider. It is also an important work in the cultural history of the apple, since, as Liz Bellamy describes, the practical sections of the work are also ideological, and extend the symbolism of the apple as a hardy, native, British product, despite the recent French ancestry of most of the varieties.54 50. R. M. Smock and A. M. Naubert, ‘Apples and Apple Products’ in Economic Crops Vol. II ed. by Z. I. Kertesz (New York: Interscience Publishers, 1950) p. 247. 51. Juniper and Mabberley, The Story of the Apple pp. 165–6. 52. Hartlib Papers 52/23 A-B. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/hartlib/ 53. John Philips, Cyder. A Poem. In Two Books (London: Printed for Jacob Tonson, 1708). https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/works/rpj08-w0010.shtml 54. Bellamy, Language of Fruit, pp. 136–57.

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Throughout the eighteenth century cider rose in popularity, particularly in the areas of England, like the West Country, that were unsuitable for growing barley for beer. At its eighteenth-century peak bottled cider was exported to the West Indies, while the best cider apples fetched higher prices than dessert apples.55 This popularity was related to the innovations in the technology of cider millstones and glass bottles, the increased efficiency of both allowing cider to be more easily produced and transported.56 Cider drinking was bolstered by the wars against the French, during which the importing of wine was forbidden. It was seen as a more patriotic drink, something rustic and wholesome. However, in his history of ‘cyder’, R. K. French dates the start of the decline in cider consumption to the mid-eighteenth century, and sees the decline as more geographically widespread than in just the West Country. He noted that cider gradually came to be seen as a working-class drink, and therefore less socially acceptable among the aspirational workers and rising middle classes, during the period when wine was favoured and made fashionable by the middle and upper classes: When the Board of Agriculture commissioned reports on the state of agriculture in the counties of England towards the end of the eighteenth century, they found that cyder fruit was no longer the important crop it had been. The orchards were suffered to remain while they needed no attention and still served to provide the labourers with their gallon a day; but the old varieties were losing their vigour and becoming diseased [...] Moreover, since cider was increasingly identified with the working class, it became easy to disapprove of it and the orchards that produced it.’57

Although cider had once been drunk in ‘cyder houses’ at the same prices as wine, the mid-century professional classes began choosing wine to drink at mealtimes, and the social drinking of cider declined, particularly swiftly in urban areas. In France, over two decades of study of declining apple orchards in Normandy led to the publication in 1875 of Le Cidre, by L. de Boutteville and A. Hauchecorne. This was described by pomologist M. Auguste Chevalier in 1921 as, A work of great and lasting value, with a precise manner of describing the varieties which they had adopted and the innovative methods of chemical analysis which A. Hauchecorne had first devised to determine the value of each sort of press fruit. […] It focused attention upon the old elite varieties […] it encouraged some nurserymen in the Rouen region to undertake the creation of new varieties of cider apple trees having increasingly high saccharin content. About a third of 55. Mingay, and Thirsk eds., Agrarian History p. 270. 56. Jim Chapman, Orchards: Those Other Industries (Hartpury: Hartpury Heritage Trust, 2016) covers transport, millstones and glass bottles. 57. R. K. French, The History and Virtues of Cyder (London: Robert Hale, 1982) p. 31.

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the varieties of cider apple classified by the French Pomological Association at the beginning of the twentieth century were obtained by skilled practitioners responding to the call of the Societe d’Agriculture de la Seine-Inferieure.58

Dr Robert Hogg’s contribution to the Herefordshire Pomona (1878) included a long list of cider apple varieties which were ‘formerly very highly esteemed’ but now could not be cultivated.59 Thomas Knight, writing in 1800, believed that no variety of apple could be kept in cultivation for more than two hundred years, and Hogg and other growers concurred with his earlier findings, partly believing that the fungal disease of canker was killing off these old varieties, which were not responding well to be being grafted onto new, dwarfing rootstocks.60 There seemed to be little incentive to create new varieties of cider apples due to the decline in demand. However, Hogg was prepared to try, and put forward a plea for a revival: The profits of agriculture from the growth of cereals, and the production of cattle, threw the Orchards into a state of neglect from which they have yet to recover. In these days the changes of commerce have again brought Apple culture into consideration, and it has become a matter of importance to attend more carefully to the Orchards, and to bring Science to the aid of individual effort as derived from experience.61

As well as the changes to agricultural trends, there were a number of other societal reasons for the ‘state of neglect’ of the cider orchards in the nineteenth century. I have discussed the importance of the eighteenth-century cider tax in Chapter 2, and it was another piece of legislation that influenced the decline of cider in the late nineteenth century. The West Country farmers had long observed a custom of paying their seasonal workers at least partly in cider, usually that made from the second pressing of the apples and therefore considerably less alcoholic. This custom had begun to decline during the mid-nineteenth century, as it was becoming socially less acceptable, and workers preferred cash as more consumer goods were available for sale. The practice was finally made illegal by the ‘Amendment to the Truck Act of 1887’, which extended the remit of the Truck Act of 1831 to include food and drink, although cider payments may have continued informally into the early years of the twentieth century. The decline in cider production in both Britain and America has also been linked to changes in drinking habits. Both Brian Harrison and John Burnett have offered the growth in sales of tea and coffee and the rise in visibility of the temperance 58. Auguste Chevalier, ‘Histoire et Amélioration des Pommiers et Spécialement des Pommiers à Cidre’ Journal d’agriculture traditionnelle et de botanique appliquée Vol. 1 No. 3 (1921) pp. 149–215 trans. by Michel Travers at https://applesandpeople.org.uk/legrand 59. Hogg, Herefordshire Pomona p. iv. 60. Knight, A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear p. 6. 61. Hogg, Vintage Fruits p. v.

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movement as further reasons for cider’s decline.62 Perhaps more importantly in rural districts, festivals such as ‘harvest home’ were slowly transformed away from an opportunity to drink to excess into a more abstemious Church and familybased event. The temperance movement in America, which began in the eighteenth century, was particularly vocal by the nineteenth. Since 1830s consumption of alcohol, mainly whiskey, reached more than seven gallons a year for every person over fifteen, their cause was probably not without merit.63 There was a long debate as to whether cider should be given up when one ‘took the pledge’ to abstain from liquor, since many temperance league members drank cider daily, and did not see it as in any way harmful. However the temperance movement began to see even sweet cider – apple juice – as a gateway to drink. One writer declared: ‘The friends of total abstinence must discard the use of cider as a beverage, whether sweet or sour. True, there is no intoxicating element in unfermented cider; but then fermentation begins much sooner than people suppose.’ He explained that ‘it is impossible for drinkers to tell when new cider becomes intoxicating.’64 However, by the 1850s cider was already losing its market dominance to beer. During the Civil War northern troops began to prefer German light lager beers, and this period established some of today’s major breweries including Anheuser-Busch and Miller (originally Mueller).65 Another product that was definitely banned for all teetotallers was applejack. This was at its most popular during the eighteenth century. Applejack was a product of cold winters, where cider produced in the autumn was left outside to freeze. The ice that formed contained the water in the cider, so removing it left a much stronger ‘jacked’ drink behind. This freeze distillation was easy to do, requiring no equipment, but it was largely superseded in the nineteenth century by mass-produced, more consistent spirits, as well as running into the opposition of the temperance movement. However, Prohibition, adopted as a temporary measure in 1917, did not make drinking cider illegal, only its manufacture and sale. As with the British Cider Tax, this was difficult to police, particularly in rural, orchard-growing areas. When Prohibition was ended in 1933, it had changed the way in which liquor was consumed, with a shift away from the masculine environment of the saloon towards acceptance of women drinking, and of home consumption, particularly of wine. There is also little evidence that the temperance movement destroyed, or instigated the destruction of, orchards, or that any were grubbed up during Prohibition. It 62. John Burnett, Liquid Pleasures: A Social History of Drinks in Modern Britain (London: Routledge, 1999). Brian Harrison, Drink and the Victorians: The Temperance Question in England 1815–1874 (Keele: Keele University Press, 1994). 63. W. J. Rorabaugh, ‘Alcohol in America’ OAH Magazine of History Vol. 6 No. 2 (Fall 1991) pp. 17–19. 64. William A. Thayer, New Cider a Dangerous Beverage (New York: National Temperance Society and Publication House, 1881) pp. 1–3. 65. W. J. Rorabaugh, ‘Alcohol in America’ p. 18.

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may have been that farmers decided cider orchards were unprofitable, and either grew an alternative crop or topworked a new, dessert apple, variety on to the trunks of the existing cider trees. In both America and Britain, due, presumably, to the decline in cider’s popularity, nineteenth-century information on specifically cider orchard acreage and profitability is scarce. One source that provides some figures on cider orchards is, of course, Dr Robert Hogg, as primary author of The Apple and Pear as Vintage Fruits (1886) who extolled the benefits of growing apples particularly in order to produce cider, and in retaining the old varieties. He used the agricultural returns to show a slight increase in fruit tree acreage in the cider counties of Herefordshire, Devon, Somerset, Kent, Worcester and Gloucester between 1877 and 1883. Although he used these sources to argue that cider orchards were not diminishing everywhere, the returns on which his figures are based do not differentiate between cider orchards and those growing eating apples. Moreover, although Hogg was deliberately promoting cider apples, his own calculations appear to demonstrate that only a very small profit could be made from an acre of cider apple trees, and then only if the costs are kept low. Growing dessert apples, other arable crops or keeping livestock would almost certainly produce a greater return even on a small acreage. Hogg calculated that, Using the figures for Herefordshire, taking five-sixths of the crop for the production of Cider and Perry (pear cider) would yield on a very low average two Hogsheads of 100 gallons per acre; and this at the low price of 3d a gallon would give £564 17s 10d., and thus at this computation purposely made so low, the yield from fruit for this County would be at the rate of £3 per acre of Orcharding annually.66

In an effort to re-invigorate their local cider industry, Hogg and other members of the Woolhope Naturalist Club travelled to France to attend the pomological show in Rouen, since this area of France, once famed for its cider and calvados, was experiencing the same sense of anxiety over the future of its orchards and the health of the old varieties. Hogg brought back scion wood of eight varieties of cider apple, selected for juice quality, health, disease resistance and the season the fruit matured, criteria which are similar to those used today. One variety, Michelin, became widely used by twentieth-century cider makers, keeping a material link between the cider enthusiasts of the past and present.

66. Hogg, Vintage Fruits p. 74.

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Chapter 9 T H E C U LT U R E D A P P L E – T H E A P P L E I N T H E G R OV E , G A R D E N A N D G A L L E RY

In this chapter, I examine some aspects of the cultural significance of the apple, demonstrating how its long history informs its present status. My examples are taken primarily from the nineteenth century, reflecting my area of expertise in art history, as well as an increasing number of images from which to choose. Throughout this book I have integrated cultural artefacts such as the pomonas and the advertising of the material apple; therefore, in this chapter I set the apple tree in context in both the material and the more aspirational garden and in the re-discovered grove of Classical antiquity. I then consider how both these environments influenced, and were affected by, the representation of women in the garden and in the gallery. I have chosen to end with a study of representations of apple blossom, a fleeting symbol of innocence and more.

The orchard as Classical grove The Classical World’s landscape mythology and its reception in nineteenthcentury culture might seem too far removed from a study of the apple orchard, which, as I have explored throughout this book, was often culturally represented as an expression of a sense of place and landscape history. However, a look at the nature of Classical groves in art and literature is informative. These sacred trees were the cultural rootstock of the English orchard. Their treatment in art is descriptive of how the landscape of the Classical world and other imaginary landscapes influenced the educated Victorian’s imaginative thinking and connections in contemporary culture. Just as the grove represents a moment of order within the wild forest, so is the orchard a space that is part cultivated, and part untamed – something between the garden and the wild wood. A productive orchard, however, cannot exist without the intervention of humans to plant and tend the trees, but in art it has often carried the associations of the supernatural, untamed forest and grove. In Chapter 2 I described how the eighteenth-century landscape gardening movement affected the use of apple trees and the placement of the orchard. The landscapes of the Classical world, both in the antiquities explored by

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travellers and in art, provided the philosophy and inspiration for the features of the landscape garden, the faux temples, the serene reflections and the groves of trees. Maiken Umbach describes the merging of English landscape with Classical allusion: It seems clear that to date, only two major conceptualizations have emerged to explain the coexistence of classical content (reinforced by the presence of purist Neo-Palladian villas in many of these gardens) and the garden’s apparent visual anarchy – its defiance of geometrical shapes, its meandering paths, its uncut hedges and seemingly untamed natural appearance. Of these interpretations, one, which saw the `English’ garden as the Romantic opposite of the neoclassical country house, has gone out of fashion. [although it was popular with Victorian historians] The other view, which still dominates today, sees both features as part of a dialectic tension. The landscape … functioned as an antithesis to classicism, in much the same way as neo-Gothic architecture with its lack of regularity and balance was employed as a counter-balance to neoclassical forms.1

In the eighteenth century, education in ‘the Classics’, and the ability to read and speak Latin and Greek, became a mark of the elite classes, while in the Victorian era the world of the ancient Greeks and Romans became more familiar, as the number and quality of translations of classical works increased, alongside further archaeological discoveries and research about the material artefacts.2 This led to an increase in scholarly works on the period and heightened intellectual debate on the nature of Greek and Roman society and culture and how it was manifest.3 Certain figures from Classical literature became heroes in the Victorian school room, epitomizing the effects of (masculine, manly) progress and civilization, while some myths and events from history were depicted as dire warnings of what may happen if Victorian moral codes were not obeyed. Victorian enthusiasm for ‘Hellenism’ also resulted in the introduction of planted groves, and newly ruined temples, into parks, landscapes and gardens across England. Like any trend this was often executed with less taste than aspiration. The gardener and writer John Loudon wrote of one fashionable London garden in 1838: ‘We are aware that there are many persons of a simple and severe taste, who will think that the … villa is too highly ornamented with statues and sculptures, but allowance must be made for individual taste, for devotion to the subject, and for the limited extent of

1. Maiken Umbach, ‘Classicism, Enlightenment and the “Other”: Thoughts on Decoding Eighteenth-Century Visual Culture’ Art History Vol. 25 No. 3 (June 2002) pp. 319–40 p. 333. 2. Patrick Cruttwell, ‘The Eighteenth Century: A Classical Age?’ Arion: A Journal of Humanities and the Classics Vol. 7 No. 1 (Spring 1968) pp. 110–32. Quotations from contemporary sources reveal the era’s attitudes to the Classical world. 3. G. P. Gooch, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Century (London: Longman, Green, 1913) Chap. 24.

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the space.’4 A depiction of an apple or a grove of fruit trees in a Classical setting, therefore, said more about the nineteenth century than it did about Greece or Rome, and was partly intended to do so. Traces of these Classical associations also merged with contemporary artistic depictions of English orchards, and thus Classical groves affected the way in which both material and cultural orchards were regarded, and the importance they were afforded. The nineteenth-century understanding was that a grove of trees was the correct background for Classical temple architecture. This was the landscape represented in art, both ‘high’ and ‘popular’. However, the trees were also sacred in themselves, since groves were places to encounter, through worship or by accident, the other-world of gods, nymphs, fauns, dryads and other mythical beings living within them. To include apple trees in the background of paintings depicting Classical themes was not, therefore, incongruous to a Victorian artist or their public. The interest in Classical groves also provided paintings of English orchard scenes with an extra importance, an allusion for the educated middle classes to savour. To the ancient Greeks, as received by the Victorians, the forested hillsides and their groves beyond the city were also places of danger, where the rules of civilization had been overturned, and where decency regressed. This representation of the forest was epitomized by Euripides’s play, ‘The Bacchae’, which was widely studied during the nineteenth century. In this play the women, the Bacchae, ran wild in the forest under the influence of the god Dionysus or Bacchus, tearing the livestock apart with their bare hands and consuming the raw flesh. In the society of Euripides meat was seen as the proper food for warriors, and not to be eaten by women who were societally encouraged to eat a largely vegetarian diet. The women therefore are transgressing in every way possible, in a landscape that is male; wild, untamable and strong. They have been changed by the supernatural influence of Bacchus who represents desire, by the effects of the forbidden wine but also by the landscape itself. Bacchus first appears to them as a rural worker at one with both the wild and farmed landscape. There is an obvious erotic appeal in artistic depictions of the Bacchae, who often demonstrate their lack of restraint by being only partially dressed. Victorian artists, however, also used the dangers inherent in following Dionysus through the uncivilized, uncultivated forested hillside to represent a moral lesson, particularly concerning the perceived natural tendency of women to stray, or to become ‘fallen’ women. Lawrence Alma Tadema painted a large work, The Women of Amphissa (1887), which depicts the moment when the Bacchae are no longer in the grip of Dionysus, and wake in the market square of their enemies wondering what has happened.5 The women of Amphissa clothed, cleaned and cared for them, despite 4. John Loudon, Gardeners’ Magazine (July 1838) and discussed in David C. Stuart, The Garden Triumphant (London: Viking, 1988) p. 34. Loudon’s illustrations of the statue-lined walk give an indication of how much of the Classical World could be crammed into a large suburban garden. Further information at https://thegardenstrust.blog/2015/09/05/mrloudon-a-second-rate-suburban-villa/ 5. Lawrence Alma Tadema, The Women of Amphissa 1887, private collection.

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being at war with the Bacchae’s home city of Phocis. Alma Tadema appears to have been making the not too subtle connection between that act and charity towards contemporary ‘fallen women’, against whom there was a moral war. Representations of groves and their surrounding forests, therefore, carried symbolism from the Classical World and pre-Christian imagery, but conflated with Christian and nineteenth-century virtues, whether the grove was represented as deep within a natural forest or as a tamer mass of fruit trees in the background of a Pre-Raphaelite frieze. This symbolism was altered in ways specific to Victorian cultural aspirations, to draw parallels and contrasts with the admired Classical world. Of course, many other plants were plucked from Classical gardens and put into Victorian paintings (and indeed vice versa), but the apple tree itself was widely included in Classical-themed landscapes, and rarely, if ever, was it there to stand just for itself. The tree and its fruit are reminders of particular ways of behaviour, especially for women. Women were to be educated and improved by these examples in art, while men were to be judged against the Classical heroes and the Christian story at one and the same time. The apple tree was a consistent symbol drawing both worlds together, holding the imagery within the stability of the orchard. The Christian symbolism of the apple shows through in Classical-themed paintings like an under painting, or the first wash of colour on the canvas. Consider various depictions of the Grecian ‘apple of discord’ which in mythology played its part in starting the Trojan War. Turner exhibited The Goddess of Discord Choosing the Apple of Contention in the Garden of the Hesperides in 1806. Ruskin, champion of Turner’s methods, drew attention to the way in which it deviated from more formulaic compositions, although in a later assessment he commented that he was not entirely happy about the result, in particular the lack of cultivation of the ‘garden’ and its fruit trees, which were more suggestive of a wild grove: Indeed, unless we were expressly assured of the fact, I question whether we should have found out that these were gardens at all, as they have the appearance rather of wild mountain ground, broken and rocky; with a pool of gloomy water; some heavy groups of trees, of the species grown on Clapham Common; and some bushes bearing very unripe and pale pippins approaching in no wise the beauty of a Devonshire or Normandy orchard, much less that of an orange grove, and, least of all, of such fruit as goddesses would be likely to quarrel for.6

Ruskin had earlier called this painting Turner’s first ‘religious’ painting. Ruskin’s allegorical interpretation, that the ruined garden and its sleeping dragon stand for the spiritual health of England, may not have been shared by other reviewers at the time, but it ties in once more the depiction of a scene with apples and an apple tree to ideas about England, its physical and mental landscapes. However, most 6. John Ruskin, Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House 1856–57 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1857) pp. 20–1. See also Suzanne Fagence Cooper, To See Clearly: Why Ruskin Matters (London: Quercus, 2019).

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striking in the painting are the similarities with depictions of the Garden of Eden, which can also be seen in other paintings of the Hesperides, where the dragon is much more like a serpent.7 Two Roman deities in particular were associated with apples, Venus and Pomona. Venus, the Roman equivalent of Aphrodite, was often pictured holding a golden apple, which would have reminded the educated nineteenth-century viewer of the apple of discord, of the dangers inherent in accepting an apple from a woman (Eve) and of the shape of Venus’ breasts. Pomona, the Roman goddess of the harvest and of fruits, was a more chaste nymph. Her story was told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, another work studied as part of a Victorian Classical education. Pomona loved to grow fruits and fruit trees, but as she was a very beautiful maiden she became increasingly bothered by the attentions of various gods and satyrs. So much so that she shut herself up inside a walled orchard, and refused all advances. A young man (or, in some versions, an Etruscan god) called Vertumnus loved Pomona, and he worked in her orchard in disguise but she always ran away from him. Finally, disguised as an old woman, he told Pomona a tale designed to reveal Vertumnus’ good qualities, and Pomona fell in love with Vertumnus when he revealed his true identity. Paintings of Vertumnus disguised as a crone, old age set against the youthful and semi-clad Pomona, can be found from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, painted by Ruebens, among others. However, despite the literary interest in Ovid, as nineteenth-century painting moved towards a more realistic, yet romantic style, depictions of Pomona as a goddess seem to have fallen from artistic favour. The last major representations of Pomona in British art were both exhibited in 1882. Burne-Jones designed a tapestry for William Morris and Company, showing Pomona as the representation of Autumn and the harvest. She is alone, with windfall fruits gathered into her skirts, and although she is beautiful, she lacks the playfulness and fecundity of many earlier representations. Morris’ poem set into the tapestry’s border has a mournful tone: I am the ancient Apple Queen, As once I was so am I now. For evermore a hope unseen, Betwixt the blossom and the bough. Ah, where’s the river’s hidden Gold! And where the windy grave of Troy? Yet come I as I came of old, From out the heart of Summer’s joy.8

7. Joan Larsen Klein, ‘From Errour to Acrasia’ Huntingdon Library Quarterly Vol 41. No. 3 (1978) discusses representations of the serpent as an embodiment variously of Satan, sirens, sin and lust, pp. 173–99. 8. William Morris, ‘Pomona’ in Poems by the Way (London: Longmans, Green, 1896) poem 35. 6.

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Millais exhibited a painting titled Pomona in 1882, but his representation was far away from the protective goddess of a Classical walled orchard. For Millais, Pomona became a sentimentalized figure, representing the romantic side of the English landscape. As The Morning Post noted with approval: The subject of this beautiful picture is not a Roman goddess surrounded by the fruits over which mythology gives her domain, but is simply a pretty little English child, apple gathering in an orchard, on whom this name has, with a happy fancy, been bestowed. … ‘New Eves in all her daughters came’ [Thomas Moore ‘the loves of the Angels’] and this tiny damsel is certainly not the least bewitching of the race. [...] Harmonising admirably with the bright graceful little figure and acting to it as a foil in a manner which assists the realism and force of the picture are the rich hues of the grass and the fruit-laden trees in the orchard back-ground. It is not too much to say that there is no artist, British or foreign, who could excel this masterly representation, at once vigorous and delicate, of a pretty little blue-eyed girl.9

Pomona, the Classical goddess, had been transformed into a ‘pretty little English child’ making apparent again the national affection for apples, and children, and the identification between the fruit and the unspoilt, virginal, English countryside. Even this ‘Pomona’ in her orchard is significant because of her links to the other female figures associated with apples, Eve and the Virgin Mary. Not just because she is surrounded by fruit, but because Pomona also lived, walked and worked within a garden. Her garden is enclosed, like the ‘hortus conclusus’ in which the Virgin could be found. The enclosure in both cases is a symbol of virginity and spiritual purity.

The suburban apple tree The enclosed gardens of the late nineteenth century became status signifiers in the new suburbs and planned urban housing, while also harking back to the ‘lost’ peace of the countryside. Apple trees moved from the orchards into domestic gardens, where, although they might have been trained into odd shapes or grown in pots, they still retained the symbolism of both the countryside, and the apple from the Garden of Eden. Much of the symbolism of the orchard was extended to include apple trees in urban domestic gardens. As gardens became smaller individually, but collectively more culturally important, these carefully tended and trained trees also took on a new identity as part of the feminized garden environment. Gardens became a part of the class dynamic, where Victorian virtues could be displayed in aspirational working-class and suburban neighbourhoods. Or, as the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge 9. The Morning Post, 13 November 1882.

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put it in 1832, ‘the domestication of plants … constituted the barrier between civilization and savagery’.10 The garden became another ‘room’ in the suburban villa where that civilization could be expressed, and the values of the home-maker displayed, including their taste in gardening commodities. It therefore became a place where women were permitted, and perhaps expected, to refine their innate talents for artistry and nurture in even the smallest outdoor space. Fruit trees could be incorporated into a suburban garden, especially when grown on the new ‘Paradise’ dwarfing rootstocks and trained according to the latest methods, such as those of Thomas Rivers or George Johnson, as discussed earlier in this book. Ford Madox Brown, in his narrative painting, An English Autumn Afternoon, depicted a scene of energetic, ordered, sympathetic suburban life.11 Tucked within it is an apple tree, occupying a liminal or crossover space between an orchard and a garden. Painting during October 1852, Madox Brown captured a view across the Hampstead suburbs in a very particular autumn light. There is, therefore, the significance of the word English being used in the title, alongside the view of cultivated suburbia. Ruskin, using the language previously employed by Thomas Andrew Knight on the decline of orchards, despaired that the suburban houses would ‘canker’ the ‘roots of our national greatness … when they are thus loosely struck in their native ground’ and called the painting’s view ‘ugly’. However, Madox Brown showed in this and in his masterpiece, Work, that he was interested in ennobling the genre scene or domestic view – that there was a subject worthy of being painted everywhere, without having to go to wild crags or Alpine meadows to find it.12 Since Madox Brown was painting an English October afternoon, it is not surprising to find apple pickers in a small orchard in the centre of the painting. They are tucked into one of the ‘valleys’ through which the painting seems to dip and roll. Although, as I discussed in previous chapters, Hampstead had many commercial market gardens at the time, this orchard is on a domestic scale, and the group of apple pickers is composed of more children than adults. The large trees require the use of ladders to pick the fruit, but this orchard is neither a commercial space, nor part of a constrained villa garden. It is somewhere in between, somewhere transitioning between two worlds, but with just the slightest reminder of a lost Eden as it may soon be incorporated into another housing development.

10. Harriet Ritvo, ‘At the Edge of the Garden: Nature and Domestication in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Century Britain’ Huntingdon Library Quarterly Vol. 55 No. 3 (Summer 1992) pp. 363–78 p. 366. 11. Ford Madox Brown, An English Autumn Afternoon, Hampstead – Scenery in 1853; 1854, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. 12. Timothy Barringer, Reading the Pre-Raphaelites (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2012) describes this particular spat between Madox Brown and Ruskin. pp. 70–1. John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (New York: John Wiley, 1849) p. 149.

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These suburban gardens, particularly the front gardens that faced the public realm, provided a space where the bright colours of new plants could be displayed. In domestic horticulture, as in agriculture, innovation in plant breeding became fashionable, leading to plants with larger, more colourful and more robust flowers becoming available and desirable. The nurseries and florists took advantage of the publicity opportunities available in media including periodicals, seed packets, catalogues, advertising hoardings and at flower shows, to display these plants and fruits in full colour. Bright planting schemes of tender annuals or ‘bedding plants’ were also to be seen in the flowerbeds of the new urban parks and gardens, which made the flowers on public display seem particularly desirable for private gardens.13 Somewhat predictably, this style of modern, progressive garden design was not usually admired by the cultural elite, nor by all gardeners. William Robinson, champion of the natural style, described bedding as ‘repulsively gaudy’.14 Ruskin saw nothing to be admired in the manipulation of ‘nature’, stating in The Poetry of Architecture: A flower-garden is an ugly thing, even when best managed: it is an assembly of unfortunate beings, pampered and bloated above their natural size, stewed and heated into diseased growth; corrupted by evil communication into speckled and inharmonious colours, torn from the soil which they loved, and of which they were the spirit and the glory, to glare away their term of tormented life among the mixed and incongruous essences of each other, in earth that they know not, and in air that is poison to them.15

It seems that Ruskin was describing the newly urbanized inhabitants of the modern villas, just as much as the flowers. However despite his reservations about flower beds, Ruskin was among a movement of concerned cultural commentators who championed the morally improving benefits of taking leisure, and working in, a productive urban garden. As he made particularly clear in Proserpina, he saw England as a garden, and therefore every garden as a potential Eden. He warned audiences in inner Manchester of the evils of being prepared to give up their gardens, and advocated city allotments to keep workers in touch with the countryside.16 Martin Gaskell has looked at the wider societal impetus for supplying gardens to the working classes. He regards early Victorian factory owners as consciously choosing to provide gardens to support the desired social order, noting, ‘The allocation of gardens had … been recognized as one of the possible means of control over the moral and physical lives of the labouring population. Gardens were 13. Stuart, The Garden Triumphant, describes different types of ‘bedding out’ in detail. 14. William Robinson, The Wild Garden (London: John Murray, 1870) p. 5. 15. John Illingworth, ‘Ruskin and Gardening’ Garden History Vol. 22 No. 2 (Winter 1994) pp. 218–33 p. 222. 16. Ibid. p. 230.

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to continue to offer the means of such control, just as much as the tied house, the school, the chapel, or the institute.’17 Gaskell uses Bournville Village, constructed in 1893 by the Cadbury family for their factory workers, as a further example of the power of gardening in behaviour modification. As Gaskell describes, when the first occupants moved in, they found that, The garden was already dug over and hedges, creepers, and fruit trees planted before the house was occupied. […] Newcomers to gardening were guided by the management’s plans for dividing the individual gardens into three sections: the front area for flowers, the rear for vegetables, and the end part for fruit trees. This pattern secured a pleasing aesthetic appearance for the front and privacy and economy for the rear.18

Margaret Willes specifies that those fruit trees included eight ‘apple and pear trees, assorted according to the nature of the soil’, which were also intended to provide privacy between the back-to-back houses.19 By the 1880s the attitude to the most desirable outdoor space for the working classes had incorporated belief in its moral purpose, but also in the need to provide some kind of aesthetically pleasing (if not to Ruskin) garden. During the same period the education of ordinary people in the values of gardening became a continuing, stated commitment of The Gardeners’ Chronicle, and in 1887, at a conference of the Agricultural and Horticultural Cooperative Association Limited, these values were itemized as ‘increasing food, providing a refining occupation, serving to brighten people’s lives, and stimulating a higher influence which would develop from contact with nature’.20 Nineteenth-century private gardens, therefore, were considered to be a boundaried space where the cultivation of productive and aesthetically pleasing plants could, or should, lead to better health, moral uplift and decency within the home, particularly the homes of the working classes. However, for some social commentators and many professional gardeners there was concern over how many practical gardening tasks should be performed by women. Jane Loudon’s very popular book on ‘gardening for ladies’ (1840) began with the science behind digging, and she asserted that ‘a lady, with a small, light spade may, by taking time, succeed in doing all the digging that can be required in a small garden’.21 Despite this, most of the increasing number of gardening publications that addressed women readers concentrated on the aesthetic, 17. Martin S. Gaskell, ‘Gardens for the Working Class: Victorian Practical Pleasure’ Victorian Studies Vol. 23 No. 4 (Summer 1980) pp. 479–501 p. 498. 18. Ibid. 19. Margaret Willes, The Gardens of the British Working Class (Newhaven: Yale University Press, 2014) p. 291. 20. Gaskell, ‘Gardens for the Working Class’ p. 497. 21. Jane (Mrs) Loudon, Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (London: John Murray, 1840) p. 8.

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decision-making aspects of gardening rather than the heavier practical tasks. Gardening was considered primarily a male pastime, and trade, where gardens may be created for the enjoyment of women, but the hard work of gardening – digging, pruning, watering and so on – is far less frequently depicted in English art, and rarely if ever shown being performed by women.22 The feminization of the garden is one reflection of the changes in the role of women, or the values associated with that role, during the later nineteenth century. The cultivated, enclosed and feminine garden also had obvious Christian associations, utilized by artists and writers throughout the nineteenth century, which is why a discussion of how those associations affected both the representation of women and the treatment of the apple is pertinent at this point.

Eden and Eve In order to be truly accepted in the suburban garden the apple also had to reduce the strength of its cultural associations with the fruit that tempted Eve in the Garden of Eden. This first orchard had become identified with the perfect garden of Paradise. As Delumeau’s history of Paradise stated, the Old Persian word from which ‘paradise’ was formed means ‘an orchard surrounded by a wall’.23 The enclosed orchard formed the setting for the encounter between Eve, the serpent and the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. This association allowed for representations of the orchard as a place of loss and danger. It was also, in visual art, an achievable version of Paradise, one that could be gazed upon, and populated on canvas with men and woman, on equal standing with the prelapsarian Adam and Eve. The hunt for Eden as a material, physical location had once sustained much exploration, but by the nineteenth century, when more of the world was being mapped and named, and finding Eden on earth seemed increasingly unlikely, this first orchard retreated into art and metaphor. Central to the nineteenth-century importance of the Eden story was the increasing cultural prominence of the role and characters of Adam and Eve. There was debate over how much responsibility they could be said to have had for their actions and therefore whether the fate of all mankind was a matter of unavoidable original sin or the responsibility of the individual and the choices they took. By the mid-nineteenth century Eve in particular, after centuries of cultural and folkloric representation, had acquired a personality and agency of her own, far

22. Christina Zaat, ‘Virtual curator’ has a vast collection of images on her Facebook page. See album ‘it’s all about gardens and parks’ for many examples of how gardens in nineteenth-century art are depicted as leisure spaces. www.facebook.com/christa.zaat/ 23. Jean Delumeau, History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition trans. by Matthew O’Connell (New York: Continuum, 1995) p. 4. There are alternative translations but all retain the sense of an enclosed and productive garden.

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beyond the few passages devoted to her in the Bible. The Old Testament verses concerning Adam and Eve do not, however, provide the origin of the apple’s long and close cultural association with disobedience and sin. The fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, from which Eve takes a bite, is not described with the Hebrew word for apple. The King James translation, the standard text during the nineteenth century, describes the fruit of the tree as ‘good for food and pleasant to the eyes’.24 The word for apple is used in other passages throughout the Old Testament, such as in the ‘Song of Solomon’, where again an orchard or enclosed garden with fruit trees is associated with the female form and love. The poet sings, ‘As the apple tree among the trees of the wood, so [is] my beloved among the sons. I sat down under his shadow with great delight, and his fruit [was] sweet to my taste.’25 Early Christian art from the Roman Empire, therefore, depicted Adam and Eve eating, and covering their nakedness with, many varieties of local fruits and foliage, including palms and dates. However, as Christianity spread across Europe the artists in the more northern countries settled on the apple as the fruit of temptation, probably because it was recognizable to the illiterate congregations who were looking at representations of the biblical stories in cold, dark, smokefilled churches, and also because artists borrowed aspects of Classical myths with which they were familiar. E. H. Gombrich has suggested that the explosion of church frescoes and woodcarvings with representations of Bible stories was due to the itinerant preachers in the thirteenth century. He stated that ‘it was the friars who took the Gospel story to the people and spared no effort to make the faithful re-live and re-enact it in their minds’ and that Pope Gregory the Great believed that ‘painting was to serve the illiterate laity for the same purpose for which clerics used reading’.26 The figures of Adam and Eve were carved into confessionals, misericords, ceiling trusses and headstones in Gothic churches across Europe, painted onto the walls and captured in stained glass. With each iteration the fruit came to be more obviously, and more often, an apple. The apple was also favoured because it linked in with the indigenous stories and folklore familiar to these new Christians. In the early mediaeval period, a time when artistic representations of Christian themes were in flux, the link between Eve and the apple was determined very quickly and has remained constant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Eve gained importance as a symbolic character, taking the blame for the expulsion from Eden and all subsequent woes.27 As gender roles became more defined, Eve became a reminder of the fate of females who did not conform. Milton’s Paradise Lost, in particular, ensured that an apple in art became identified with Eve’s disobedience in Eden, and the consequences of her actions or, as Milton had it, ‘what misery th’inabstinence 24. K.J.V. Genesis 3:6. 25. K.J.V. Song of Solomon 3:2. 26. E. H. Gombrich, The Uses of Images (London: Phaidon, 1999) p. 29. 27. Philip Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth Century Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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of Eve shall bring on men’.28 By the nineteenth century, as women’s roles were becoming both codified and contested, Eve had acquired attributes never ascribed to her originally, including sensuality, lust, inconstancy and unfaithfulness. A few nineteenth-century female writers attempted to rescue Eve from the judgement of Milton, for example, the Unitarian and historical writer Lucy Aikin, writing as Mary Goldolphin, called Milton’s Adamic hierarchy ‘blasphemous’.29 However in popular culture the association between Eve, the apple, and guilt was inseparable. Instructive manuals on female behaviour often quoted Milton and took his theology as a foundation text. Novels reworked Paradise Lost and used its themes as a warning to independently thinking girls and women. The influence of Paradise Lost (and embedded Edenic images) has been traced in canonical nineteenthcentury novels such as Middlemarch, Tess of the D’Urbervilles and Frankenstein, along with girl’s fiction such as Little Women and What Katy Did.30 The posture of Eve and the setting and action in which she was placed also changed over time. By the nineteenth century Eve’s nudity had become more sexualized, her pose more self-aware. She was often represented alone, without Adam, and with none of the significant trees, Eden’s animals or even the serpent beside her. It was enough to simply paint a nude female in a pastoral location with an apple, as Anna Lea Meritt chose to do, in Eve Overcome By Remorse, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1885.31 Any consideration of the reception of Eve, and of depictions of women generally in nineteenth-century art, should rightly reference Laura Mulvey’s term, ‘the male gaze’.32 Her phrase has been appropriated across art forms to neatly describe the way in which the female body in art and literature is displayed for the delectation of the (heterosexual) male. Female figures in art are there to be the decorative element of the scene, often wearing fewer, or more decorative, clothes than the setting or the action might require. Eve is necessarily nude, gaining admission to ‘high art’ by her status as a sacred warning to women. Eve’s admission ticket to the Academy is usually the apple beside her, since without this she is not a nude Biblical figure, but a naked woman. 28. John Milton, Paradise Lost (Penguin: London 2003) line 476. 29. Ana Acosta, Reading Genesis in the Long Eighteenth Century: From Milton to Mary Shelley (Aldershot: Ashgate Publishing, 2006) p. 67 and Rebecca Styler, Literary Theology by Women Writers of the Nineteenth Century (London: Routledge, 2016). 30. Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, eds., The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth–Century Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1979). 31. Anna Lea Merritt, Eve Overcome by Remorse 1885, private collection. Her painting won a medal, and was commended in the press for its originality, with ‘A Lady’ approving that ‘women artists are venturing to paint the nude figure’ (Hampshire Telegraph, Saturday 16 May 1885 p. 11 and syndicated). 32. Laura Mulvey, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ Screen Vol. 16 No. 3 (Autumn 1975) pp. 6–18.

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Eve may have brought sin into the world, but Mary, the Virgin, the Mother of God, was the carrier of the world’s redemption. Therefore it is not surprising to find the apple and the fruit garden making a symbolic background to the presence of Mary in Christian sacred art, and in secular art that carried a redemptive message. From the early modern era onwards, there are examples in art and sculpture of the Virgin and Child, where either the child Jesus or his Mother is holding an apple. Until the early twentieth century apples were given to teething infants to chew on, so there is a pleasing mixture of the familiar and the sacred in this use of the imagery of the apple. The apple is also a discreet metaphor for the breasts of the Virgin, sustaining the Christ child. When either Mary or Christ is depicted with an apple, the fruit becomes a symbol of redemption, or life, rather than of sin or temptation. For example, William Holman Hunt’s painting, The Light of the World (1851–3), shows Christ emerging from the darkness of a neglected, rotten orchard, or Eden, with windfall apples beneath his feet.33 Here, Christ is associated with the love He is offering to the world, or the soul, behind the closed garden door, and the apples underfoot are symbols of the sin being cast out, or literally stamped on. They, like the lantern He carries, also represent redemption and new life. Eden, therefore, was associated with the Virgin’s innocence from the early centuries of Christian worship, and early writers and folk traditions retained the myth of a lost, peaceful garden – somewhere always just out of sight, to where man could never return. Delumeau described how the links between the lost garden and happiness became fused: In the mentalities of earlier times a quasi-structural link existed between happiness and garden; this link was the result of an at least partial fusion, beginning in the Christian era, of Greco-Roman traditions with biblical memories of the orchard in Eden. Inside a favoured area, the generosity of nature was joined to water, pleasant fragrances, an unvarying springtime climate, an absence of suffering, and peace between human beings and animals.34

This mythical space was known as the ‘locus amoenus’ (a pleasant place), and representations of it began to appear in art from the thirteenth century onwards, sometimes identified as Eden and sometimes as the ‘hortus conclusus’ or the enclosed garden in which the Virgin walked. John Prest has asserted that ‘this identification of the Garden of Eden with the earthly Paradise, of the Virgin with Paradise, and of the enclosed garden of the Song of Solomon with the Virgin, leading to the equation of the enclosed garden with the Garden of Eden, was to have important consequences for the history of gardening’. Prest argued that 33. William Holman Hunt, The Light of the World 1851–3, Keble College, Oxford. The orchard in the background was at Worcester Park Farm, Ewell, also the site for The Hireling Shepherd. This painting became so popular, he painted two versions of it, and prints were hung in many Sunday Schools and school rooms (including this author’s) into the 1970s and beyond. 34. Delumeau, Paradise p. 6.

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representations of Paradise led to changes in real gardens, since ‘all the ideal qualities associated with the Virgin Mary and with the earthly Paradise thus came to be identified with the small, contemporary, enclosed garden from which the animals were excluded altogether’.35 This association of gardens with Paradise was already strong in the mediaeval period, when gardens were a luxury that were only for the wealthy, but gardens referred to as ‘Paradises’ were maintained in monasteries, where the monks walked in contemplation of the Virgin.36 In images from the early modern era, Mary is often shown in an enclosed, walled garden, the ‘hortus conclusus’, filled with allegorical flowers and symbolic of her innocence and her virginity, also recalling the Garden of Eden. In this sacred space, the apple, sometimes separate from its tree, is present as a reminder of original sin, but also to show the possibility of redemption. The symbolism of plants associated with the Virgin grew in complexity, and the Virgin herself was sometimes depicted as embodying or using these plants to heal.37 At the Feast of the Assumption, celebrated on 15 August, flowers and fruits are brought to church, blessed with holy water and dedicated to Mary. Early representations of Eden, Paradise and Marian gardens survived in sacred paintings, frescos and tapestries, particularly in Catholic countries. Some of these images and rituals were seen by those Victorian artists who toured Italy or France, and may have influenced their work. The visually appealing image of the ‘hortus conclusus’ persisted throughout the centuries in both gardening and art, so that in Victorian art depictions of the Annunciation often take place in a cloistered space or garden, symbolizing Mary’s purity and setting her apart from the secular world.38 Surviving ‘Mary Gardens’ themselves, with roses and lilies surrounding a shrine to Mary, were seen as quaint manifestations of Catholicism, but the mid-century revival of interest in Medieval art, and in the cult of the Virgin, brought them once more into fashion, so that plants seen as sacred to the Virgin Mary, in particular the lily and the rose, were once again used in works of art such as paintings of the Annunciation, while floral symbolism became increasingly important in paintings of and about women, and an increasingly popular subject for women to study. Earlier I discussed the nineteenth-century discourse on women studying botany and natural history; one aspect that was considered suitable was the natural history of the Bible and the flora of biblical lands, and therefore, although the study of plants associated with the Virgin and the Saints was considered more as folklore than either devotion 35. John Prest, The Garden of Eden (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981) pp. 21–3. 36. Carole Rawcliffe, ‘“Delectable Sightes and Fragrant Smelles”: Gardens and Health in Late Medieval and Early Modern England’ Garden History Vol. 36 No. 1 (Spring 2008) pp. 3–21. 37. Naoë Kukita Yoshikawa, ‘The Virgin in the Hortus Conclusus: Healing the Body and Healing the Soul’ Mediaeval Feminist Forum Vol. 50 No. 1 (2014) pp. 11–32. 38. The Annunciation was not such a popular subject from the mid-nineteenth century onward, as tastes and Christian worship changed, but Burne Jones and Rossetti both painted the scene and included the Virgin’s floral symbol, the lily.

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or botany, the interest in the place of plants within a sacred landscape grew. Also feeding into this fashion was the more frivolous craze for the ‘language of flowers’ or ‘floriography’. This became a particularly popular hobby for middle-class young ladies, who were the main consumers, and illustrators, of sentimental flower books.39 Through both these routes the symbolism and hidden meanings of flowers found their way into art of the period, including that of the Pre-Raphaelites.

Apple blossom In these flower dictionaries every bloom in a bouquet carried meaning, and ‘floriography’ was a complicated language. The flowers associated with Mary, the rose and the lily, seem to be the most frequently painted. However, Beverly Seaton notes that ‘the language of flower books differs from moral and religious floral works because their terminology is that of the love affair’.40 It is in this context that apple blossom is prominent. In the dictionaries of flowers apple blossom did not carry the negative associations of the fruit, but instead usually meant good fortune or preference. The beautiful apple blossom was one reason for the popularity of planting fruit trees within the urban garden. The blossom was so transient and so pure each year against the blackened landscape, and the ‘floriology’ meanings attached to it added to its suitability. Ruskin increased the art world’s interest in blossom in 1858, when he wondered in his Academy Notes why no Pre-Raphaelite had yet attempted to paint it.41 Perhaps in response, three painters exhibited works including fruit trees in full blossom in 1859: Arthur Hughes, John Callcott Horsley and Millais. Hughes’ In the King’s Orchard is an odd composition of three children dressed in Tudor styles, squashed awkwardly together on the trunk of an old apple tree, with the orchard in full bloom behind them.42 Apart from the association of childhood with the fleeting life of blossom, the choice of the apple blossom does not appear to carry much significance within the painting. John Callcott Horsley exhibited Lovers under a Blossom Tree, a sentimental work where the undefined blossoms are a decorative background, laden with the meaning of choosing one lover, and would not have met Ruskin’s demands for truth from nature.43 For Ruskin, blossom represented purity and a sacred appreciation of the garden, more

39. Beverly Seaton, The Language of Flowers: A History (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2012) pp. 3–29. 40. Beverly Seaton, ‘Considering the Lilies: Ruskin’s “Proserpina” and Other Victorian Flower Books’ Victorian Studies Vol. 28 No. 2 (Winter 1985) pp. 255–82 p. 257. 41. John Ruskin, Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy No. IV 1858 (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1858) p. 13. 42. Arthur Hughes, In the King’s Orchard 1858, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge. 43. John Callcott Horsley, Lovers under a Blossom Tree 1859, Philadelphia Museum.

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important than the promise of the harvest to come, and this belief is one that has been transformed into symbolism within the painting by Millais known as Apple Blossoms, which was the third ‘blossom painting’ to be exhibited in 1859.44 Here, the blossom and the orchard setting are an integral part of the atmosphere and meaning of the painting. Millais has used the apple blossom to represent purity but also transience and mortality, demonstrating that the meaning of flowers could be very personal to the artist, as well as taking on both religious and secular associations, and the trends of fashionable art. Apple Blossoms (also known as Spring, and exhibited under that title at the Royal Academy in 1859) depicts a group of girls and young women relaxing in an orchard, surrounded by the blossom and seated on a bed of wildflowers. Their only activity is to make curds and whey – the three stages of the process being shown from left to right on the painting.45 However, they do not seem to be particularly bonded by this activity, and one girl on the far right, Alice Gray, seems to be waking from sleep, or perhaps succumbing to it, as she is reclining on her back with one knee bent in an unguarded pose. Propped against the low wall behind her, so that in the composition it points alarmingly at her heart, is a scythe. The use of this symbol was discussed by Allan Staley, who saw in it a ‘vestigial echo of the personification of death’ from a fourteenth-century fresco in Pisa, depicting ‘an elegant group in a garden and a scythe-wielding figure in black bearing down upon them’.46 Ruskin had a very intense, almost violent reaction to the painting’s orchard setting. For him it showed a place, ‘carpeted with ghostly grass, a field of penance for young ladies, where girl-blossoms, who had been vainly gay, or treacherously amiable, were condemned to recline in reprobation under red-hot apple blossom, and sip scalding milk out of a poisoned porringer’.47 This surprisingly cruel imagery echoes the punishments found in fairy tales for false behaviour, as well as the Classical myths of women transformed into trees or flowers. The relationships in the painting between cultivated apple varieties, blossom, girl and scythe have been analysed by Melissa Elston, who saw the scythe as ‘as much a symbol of anthropocentric alteration of a landscape as it is a symbol of phallic social “policing,”’ that gives the message that emergent female sexuality is to be ‘culled’ or perhaps pruned back, in the way in which the apple trees are contained and managed within the enclosed orchard.48 The vitality of the orchard in spring 44. John Everett Millais, Apple Blossoms 1859, Lady Lever Gallery, Wirral. 45. This is my own interpretation of their activity, which appears to have puzzled many commentators but, having experience of the process, it seems quite clear. 46. Allan Staley, ‘Pre-Raphaelites in the 1860s: III’ The British Art Journal Vol. 5 No. 2 (Autumn 2004) pp. 3–12 p. 4. 47. John Ruskin, The Works of John Ruskin Vol XIV ‘Academy Notes’ ed. by E. T. Cooke and Alexander Wedderburn (London: George Allen, 1904) p. 26. 48. Melissa Elston, ‘A World Outside: George Eliot’s Ekphrastic Third Sphere in “The Mill on the Floss”’ George Eliot – George Henry Lewes Studies Vol. 62 No. 63 (September 2012) pp. 34–48 p. 36.

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may seem part of the charm of the painting, but when it was first exhibited the attitudes and direct gaze of the girls in the orchard provoked disgust. The Daily Telegraph critic described them as ‘a parcel of girls inconceivably ill-favoured. One girl sprawls on the turf and leers at the spectator, with her head upside down, as if to say “Here we are! All alive! What do you think of us?”’49 It should be kept in mind that this painting was exhibited alongside The Vale of Rest in which Millais shows two nuns digging a grave. One nun stares out at the viewer in a similar fashion to Alice Gray in Apple Blossoms, and the nuns are also without a male in view. Although these paintings were not companion pieces, Ruskin, and others, considered them together, and both were unsettling enough to be unpopular when exhibited; Apple Blossoms remained unsold at Millais’ death. Victorian culture was familiar with death and surrounded it with rituals, both to keep the loved one constantly in the memory, such as lockets of hair, and also to emphasize the loss, the distance and the otherness of the dead one, such as elaborate tombstones. The orchard is important as a gothic background that emphasizes the incongruity of the scythe and the poses of the girls, and their blasé or even gloomy reaction to the life affirming, blossoming orchard gives extra importance to the setting in a circular relationship between the elements in the painting. Christina Rossetti’s poem ‘An Apple Gathering’ also uses the symbolism of apple blossom. This poem was one of the shorter poems included in Goblin Market, Rossetti’s first book of poems, published in 1862. In this poem, the speaker mourns her loss. That may be of love, or the opportunity to marry and be a mother, or perhaps of her virginity and reputation. Where other girls come back from gathering apples with full baskets that ‘jeer’ at the speaker, she has missed the harvest and found nothing. Her admirer, Willie, whom she addresses or calls to in the poem, thought her love ‘less worth than apples with their green leaves’ and was perhaps faithless or otherwise disappointing. I plucked pink blossoms from mine apple-tree And wore them all that evening in my hair: Then in due season when I went to see I found no apples there. With dangling basket all along the grass As I had come I went the selfsame track: My neighbours mocked me while they saw me pass So empty-handed back.50

49. Gordon H. Fleming, John Everett Millais: A Biography (London: Constable, 1998) p. 180. 50. Christina Rossetti, ‘Apple Gathering’ in Goblin Market and Other Poems (London, Macmillan & Co., 1862) lines 1–8.

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But when the apple blossom was out, she had adorned herself with the pink flowers. She certainly seems to have acted as one of the ‘girl-blossoms’ whom Ruskin tried to warn. Here the apple blossom is subverted from representing purity, innocence and youth to being something that can provide only transient pleasure, its brevity being its attraction. That the blossom made the speaker more sensually or sexually attractive is hinted at by the time of day at which she wore them, since ‘evening’ carries a suggestion of parties and leisure time, and of course of night. In the title poem ‘Goblin Market’ with its encounter between Lizzie, Laura and the goblins, it is ‘evening by evening’ when the girls see the goblin men, and Lizzie warns ‘twilight is not good for maidens’.51 The use of evening in ‘An Apple Gathering’, both here and in the last verse, where the speaker ‘loitered’ in the orchard, although the ‘night grew chill’, adds to the uncanny atmosphere of the poem. Again in ‘Goblin Market’ Lizzie warns her sister ‘you should not loiter so’.52 Staying out in the countryside or an orchard in the evening, when all the neighbours have gone home, leads to sadness, loss and possibly danger. I let my neighbours pass me, ones and twos And groups; the latest said the night grew chill, And hastened: but I loitered, while the dews Fell fast I loitered still.53 The reader is left to wonder if the speaker a ghost or a spirit, trapped forever in the orchard, doomed to be in an abundant Eden but never to take part in its harvest. Like Millais, Rossetti has taken the apple blossom imagery far from the usual sentimentalism of the language of flowers, and the orchard is no longer the safe, sacred space of Eden or the ‘hortus conclusus’ of the Virgin.54 The artist has a choice of viewpoints when depicting an orchard. It is possible to stand within it and be enclosed in Eden with its endless blossoms, or beside the Virgin in her power of purity. The other place for an artist, and the viewer or reader, is outside in the fallen world, looking in. Carol Jacobi, considering sexual symbolism in works by Millais, quoted his affirmation that a picture’s advantage over writing is that ‘it is all at once put before the spectator without that trouble of realisation often lost in the effort of reading’.55 Therefore, it is not fanciful or speculative to look for so many symbols, hints and layered readings in any Victorian 51. Rossetti, ‘Goblin Market’ line 32. 52. Ibid. line 163. 53. Rossetti, ‘Apple Gathering’ lines 25–8. 54. For more on this theme see Joanna Crosby, ‘The Gothic Orchard of the Victorian Imagination’ in Ecogothic Gardens in the Long Nineteenth Century: Phantoms, Fantasy and Uncanny Flowers ed. by Sue Edney (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020) pp. 48–64. 55. Carol Jacobi, ‘Sugar, Salt and Curdled Milk: Millais and the Synthetic Subject’ Tate Papers No. 18 (Autumn 2012). https://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tatepapers/18/sugar-salt-and-curdled-milk-millais-and-the-synthetic-subject

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narrative painting, for it is no less than the educated Victorian viewer would have expected to find. The apples in a nineteenth-century painting are usually there to help the viewer towards meanings that are put before them, as Millais said, but which require a deeper reading of the painting. Like all the flora and fauna in the composition, they are certainly not meaningless decoration. Indeed, this painting demonstrates that where the apple has been taken out of the allegorical garden or orchard, and into more realistic or recognizable landscape settings, its power as a cultural avatar is enhanced. Eve and the Virgin, the dual nature of woman, are both present in the apple which, as has been demonstrated, carried both risk and reward to the Victorians, as a wholesome food and the symbol of temptation, with the risky nature of a cash transaction in play as well. Like the material apple, the apple in painting and art crossed over any class or cultural barriers, being understood and enjoyed by consumers of Academy paintings, illustrations and popular art. The type of orchard represented in these works segued between one closer to the material orchard, albeit of an older, wilder type and the more highly imaginary. However, to judge from the negative reception of Apple Blossoms it would appear that critics and viewers were not always eager to appreciate the difference. The orchard that was preferred above all was that found in genre art, which was the orchard that represented England – lost, but also waiting to be rediscovered.

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Chapter 10 T H E C OM M U N I T Y A P P L E

In the previous chapters I have argued that an orchard, however small, is much more than a collection of trees in a field. Community orchards in particular still resonate with the cultural significance of imagined and material spaces, and of apples as a crop. As the founders of Common Ground remind us, once an orchard is lost, those associations are scattered: When we lose an orchard we sacrifice not simply a few old trees (bad enough, some would say), but we risk losing forever varieties particular to the locality, together with wildlife, songs, recipes, cider, festive gatherings, the look of the landscape and the wisdom gathered over generations about pruning and grafting, aspect and slope, soil and season, variety and use. We sever our links with the land.1

In this chapter I shall bring the themes that I have explored into the present day, using examples from different orchard projects that have influenced their surrounding community. I shall also draw on the experiences of the often unacknowledged network of pomologists, orchard enthusiasts, volunteers, growers and developers, of which I am a member. This chapter, therefore, takes a more personal tone here and there, in order to share my haptic knowledge of valued non-commercial orchards. Finally, I consider what the future of all types of orchard may be, both in the landscape and in our cultural imagination.

The art of apple identification In 1983 a small environmental organization called Common Ground was established by Sue Clifford, Angela King and Roger Deakin, with the aim of preserving and celebrating local distinctiveness and connecting people with their local environment.2 They launched the first Apple Day on 21 October 1. Sue Clifford and Angela King, England in Particular (London: Hodder and Staughton, 2006) p. 310. 2. https://www.commonground.org.uk/

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1990, holding a celebration of English apples in the old apple market at Covent Garden. The fruit market had been re-sited sixteen years before, the costermongers replaced by tourists, but it was the spiritual home of the English apple trade. Thousands of people attended the first event, and Apple Days are now fixed into many local calendars as a celebration of the distinctiveness of the place and the season, as well as its regional and heritage apples. Their first Apple Day, and subsequent ones, looked back to the great apple shows of the 1880s, where the idea of an Apple Day was born, an idea which continued to circulate, especially when it was feared that the consumption of apples was influenced by the availability of imported fruit, as this newspaper report from 1920 demonstrates: At a conference of the Fruit Growers’ Federation, held at Glasgow on March 18, joint methods of enlightening the public on the food value of Apples were discussed, and the suggestion of a National Apple Day found considerable favour. Mention was made of the greatly increased consumption of Bananas and Currants that followed collective advertising, and the conference approved of a fruit propaganda scheme, though the suggestion of a member from Hull, that to encourage better cooking of Apples, prizes should be given for Apple tarts, was not seriously considered.3

Apple Day is now fixed as 21 October, and, as well as offering tastings, judging of apples and apple products (including apple tarts) and the opportunity to buy unfamiliar varieties of apple, these events often provide an opportunity to put a name to unknown apples. Since the 1990s, members of the public have had easy access to apple experts, and a chance to find out what the apple tree in their garden was called. However, apple identification is not straightforward. In Chapter 5 I described how the various pomological societies were concerned with correctly identifying the apple varieties on sale and in collections, and I have previously explained how varieties can only be reliably propagated by grafting. There is little evidence, however, as to how these pomological gentlemen set about identifying an unknown apple, a task which is as difficult today as it was for them. Imagine you are at a work gathering of about a hundred people. A colleague of yours, someone you know quite well on sight, hands you a cup of coffee and says, ‘Please take this to my sister.’ You have never met their sister. Working on the likelihood that she resembles, in some ways, your colleague, can you pick her out before her coffee gets cold? This is similar to the challenge accepted by an apple identifier when presented at an Apple Day event with a smallish, reddish, greenish apple. It looks similar to so many other apples. The apple identifier, therefore, relies upon their own knowledge and experience, particularly if they work in orchards or grow a collection of heritage varieties, and leans on the wisdom of others – very heavily, in my case. I have been taught 3. Glasgow Chronicle, 3 April 1920.

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identification by extremely knowledgeable orchardists and growers, but lacking an orchard of my own I only have a few weeks every year to hold apples in my hand and get to know them. In order to assist the identifiers we bring our most trusted books with us, and these days even a laptop connected to the invaluable resource that is the FruitID database.4 The identifier needs the entire history of the tree, its age, its location and any history of the site. Exact location is important, since people come some distance to get an apple identified. At an event in Cambridgeshire, I was struggling with an unfamiliar apple, and only late into the conversation thought to ask where the apple was growing. ‘In my mother’s garden in Edinburgh’ was the answer. I suggested that an apple day around Edinburgh might have the necessary local knowledge, as older apple varieties are regional. If the apple identifiers are at a loss, or if a mild disagreement breaks out, the apple may be retained for a more detailed examination. This will consider all its external and internal characteristics including stalk length, the structure of its eye (the opposite end to the stalk) and the shape of the core. If there are enough samples it might be tasted, but this is not often helpful because the taste of an apple depends on how and where it grew (sunny or shady, drought or damp) and is in any case a subjective measure. John Bunker has devoted decades to hunting for ‘lost’ and rare varieties of apple in Maine. In his substantial and entertaining book Apples and the Art of Detection, Bunker likens apple identification to listening to music. He maintains that just as sometimes all it takes is a few notes to recognize a tune, an identifier has to learn to ‘hear’ an apple. He describes the thrill of opening a paper bag with an apple inside, ready for identification: Sometimes I open a bag and I know I’ve seen it before but what is it? There are some that get me every time. I open that bag, and I pull out the apple, and the apple says to me, ‘Here I am again, you bum. I know I’ve fooled you before, and I’m back, and no clues. You’re going to have to do this all by yourself!’ Other times I sit at the table and open the bag, and I know I’ve never seen this one before. Who is this? This is a new one. I’ve never heard this apple before. This is awesome.5

Apple identification is where science and art combine with received and newly acquired wisdom, but although it is a lot of fun to try, there are fewer people with the knowledge of local varieties, or with the time to devote to ‘listening’ to the tune of a particular apple, and therefore it is becoming difficult to expand the number of apple experts. The same is true of other orchard skills such as grafting, topworking and formative pruning. As the number of traditional orchards declines, there are fewer opportunities to acquire or practise these ancient skills. 4. https://www.fruitid.com/#main. A community-created catalogue of over six hundred British apple varieties, it also has information on plums and cobnuts. 5. John Bunker, Apples and the Art of Detection (Maine: John Bunker, 2019) pp. 29–30.

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Here we come a’ wassailing Apple Days have helped to revive interest in local orchards, as well as providing a fun day out. Another orchard-based celebration that has recently been revived is the custom of wassailing. Wassailing started off as drinking, with singing, over the Christmas period, and evolved in some areas into a celebration of the orchard and of apples, as I describe in more detail below. It can be traced back, in its original form of a drinking toast, to Anglo Saxon times. The word wassail comes from the Norse and old English, ‘Was hael’ meaning ‘Good health.’ The response is ‘Drinc hael!’ or ‘I drink to your health’, which is equivalent to ‘Cheers!’ This toast became attached to the wassail drink and the orchard blessing, which only takes place between Christmas Eve and Twelfth Night, using either the Old or New calendar dates, according to local preference. Wassailing in its various forms became more ritualized from the twelfth century to the sixteenth, and then went through a period where it was not formally observed, until the Victorians rediscovered it. Wassailing then declined, as the orchards lost their importance to communities, becoming part of the agricultural processing landscape instead. With the interest in old apple varieties, however, and the urge to preserve orchards, wassailing had another revival in the late twentieth century. Although some Victorian commentators, and some modern ones, strove to see wassailing as a living remnant of ancient ‘pagan’ rituals, there is no evidence to support this origin. During the Victorian era, the wassail was a folk ritual that was celebrated in prose and image more often than it took place on the ground, but it was certainly a living Christmas custom. The changing depictions of wassailing show the importance that the Victorians attached to historic Christmas customs that pointed back to a representation of ‘feudal’ England. Like the histories of the apple included in gardening and recipe books, the accounts of wassailing show that ‘history’ was a product of, and for, the emerging middle classes and aspirational working class in Victorian England. The use of folk history to preserve the hegemony was debated by Martin Wiener, in his influential text, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit.6 Wiener argued that England’s industrial power declined after the 1850s because of the continuing cultural influence of the landed elite, who had turned to the myths of the past, including King Arthur, to influence how they constructed or fabricated their own narratives. The ideal of living like a country gentleman was too appealing, even to those aspiring to suburban villas with only a garden over which to rule. The schools of the landed elite stressed out of date gentlemanly values through a ‘Classical’ education that did not include entrepreneurial and technical skills, so necessary for profitable trade or agriculture. Wiener argued that ‘the values of the directing strata, particularly in a stable, cohesive society like modern Britain, tend to permeate society as a whole and to take on the colour of national 6. Martin Wiener, English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit 1850–1980 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).

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values’.7 Wiener provided many quotes from primary sources to support this argument, but without the deep contextualization that would have prompted acknowledgement of the advances in cultural studies and social history, which have considered the significance and role of communities outside the ‘directing strata’ of society. However, he drew attention to the use of ‘rustic imagery’ across the period to support what he termed ‘the countryside of the mind’, a place that was ‘everything industrial society was not – ancient, slow-moving, stable, cozy and “spiritual”’.8 This cultural countryside forms the landscape of much imagery of orchards, while even apple trees that have taken root in urban gardens are often portrayed with something of the ancient and spiritual about them. In 1996 Peter Mandler surveyed the literature that had anatomized Englishness since Wiener and, in his essay ‘Against ‘Englishness’’, sought to contradict the prevailing definition of Englishness as a late-nineteenth-century construct, holding modernism at bay.9 Mandler maintained that the popular interest in English history outstripped that of the elite and landed classes, who were not taught their own history at school, but that of an idealized Classical world, particularly during the late-Victorian Classical revival. For Mandler, the Classical education produced the opposite result, so that those in the upper classes, apparently schooled in English values, were ‘philistines’, with no interest in preserving their houses and the treasures within. He saw the cultural shift ‘towards a swooning nostalgia for a rural past’ as confined to ‘a small, articulate but not necessarily influential’ section of the cultural elite, rather than spreading throughout the landed class.10 However, my argument is that the nostalgia for a rural past registered across society more widely than Mandler has acknowledged. The inclusion of the history of the apple in gardening texts, as well as the emergence of a whole genre of Christmas books containing a historiography of Christmas celebrations, is evidence of middle-class interest in folk history, in the history of England that could be investigated and packaged through stories, song and accounts of surviving customs, as well as through paintings and novels describing the past as it should have been. At the same time there was an opposing push towards modernity, at least in print, and influential middle-class publications recommended throwing off those aspects of folk customs that they saw as absurd or uncivilized, in particular those where there was an element of rowdy and possibly anarchic behaviour. In the wider context, there is a similar push and pull in the appropriation of the particular custom of the orchard wassail as an example of what was being lost from rural culture as the innocent countryside was torn up, a custom scattered by growth and urban development. 7. Ibid. p. 5. 8. Ibid. p. 6. 9. Peter Mandler, ‘Against ‘Englishness’: English Culture and the Limits to Rural Nostalgia 1850–1940’ Transactions of the Royal Historical Society Vol. 7 (December 1997) pp. 155–75. 10. Ibid. p. 160.

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Lambswool and the wassail bowl The oldest use of the term ‘wassail’ described a form of carolling from door to door, including going into public houses and attending private parties. A wassail bowl was carried by the carollers, who also sang wassail carols asking for money, apples or other treats. Samuel Pepys recorded in his diary for 26 December 1661, ‘We went into an alehouse and there a washeall-bowle woman and girle came to us and sung to us.’11 Not only were apples handed out as a treat for the wassailers, but apples were an ingredient in ‘lambswool’, the alcoholic drink filling the wassail bowl. There is a wassail carol, dating from the beginning of the seventeenth century and still sung today, which derives from this type of processional wassailing. The decoration of wassail bowls with rosemary and evergreens accounts for the ‘leaves so green’ in the carol: Here we come a wassailing Among the leaves so green, Here we come a wassailing So fair to be seen Love and Joy come unto you And to you your wassail too And God bless you and send you A happy New Year.12 This particular presentation of a wassail bowl is what differentiates it from other drinks, such as punch, used at ceremonies and festivals. Over time the drink became richer, and more associated with Christmas hospitality. On 4 January 1667 Pepys mentioned the contents of the ‘Christmas draught’ he served to his guests as a ‘flaggon of ale and apples, drunk out of a wood cupp’.13 The basic lambswool recipe included toasted bread and roasted crab apples floated in the mixture. Putting toast into wine was a long-established and common practice, thought to improve the flavour and soak up any sediment. The crab apples were roasted in a pan or on a string over the fire, until they sizzled. They were then dropped, still hot, into warmed, spiced, sweetened ale, where the apple flesh frothed to resemble lambswool.14 Like any fashionable recipe, it quickly acquired 11. Samuel Pepys, diary entry for 26 December 1661. http://www.pepysdiary.com/ diary/1661/12/ 12. This version of this anonymous carol is quoted in Peter Brears, ‘Wassail: Celebrations in Hot Ale’ in Liquid Nourishment; Potable Foods and Stimulating Drinks ed. by C. Anne Wilson (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1993) p. 114. 13. Samuel Pepys, diary entry for 4 January 1667. https://www.pepysdiary.com/ diary/1667/01/ 14. Nell Heaton, Traditional Recipes of the British Isles (London: Faber and Faber, 1950) p. 91.

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variations. In Gerard’s Herbal (1633), it is described as a drink of warmed, spiced ale or cider, in which bob roasted apples: ‘Sometimes, eggs or cream, or both, are whisked in, and sometimes it is served poured over small fruit cakes.’15 Lambswool with cakes continued to be enjoyed at wassail celebrations until the mid-nineteenth century. P. G. Bond, giving a personal account of a wassail he attended as a boy in 1860, in South Hams, Devon, recalled, ‘The drink offered was warmed cider in which were placed baked apples. The cake offered was good currant cake … the cider cup was passed to all and sundry (including the boys) with the cake.’16

Down in the orchard In apple-growing areas, in particular the south and south-west of England, a form of orchard-based wassailing prevailed. It is this form which has survived into the present day, and has now been taken up in orchards across England, including orchards in East Anglia and some of the community orchards of London. The basic elements of the custom were a procession to and around the orchard, making a noise with guns, or by banging pots and pans or both, and drinking a lot of cider, and possibly lambswool. The following account comes from Johnson and Errington’s article on the apple, in the Gardener’s Monthly of 1847. I have earlier discussed the importance of such histories of the fruit, and here wassailing is described, giving extra cultural status to the apple: Let it rain, hail, blow or snow, this very essential and interesting ceremony is always commenced at twelve o’ clock at night, a tremendous fire being kept up for several hours afterwards. They repeat or sing the following interesting song, with all the might which their lungs will permit. The juice of the fruit is generally made use of for many hours, pretty freely, previously to this interesting ceremony, so that a perfect ripeness of address and expertise in gunnery is the result. Guns and firelocks long laid by are on this remarkable occasion brought forward. The following is what I have heard sung on these occasions, although much more is added in some localities:

Here’s to thee, old apple tree Whence thou mayest bud, and whence thou mayest blow And whence thou mayest bear apples enow [enough] Hats full, caps full 15. John Gerard, The Herbal or General History of Plants (New York: Dover Publications, 1975). See also Joanna Crosby, ‘Wassail’ in The SAGE Encyclopaedia of Alcohol: Social, Cultural and Historical Perspectives ed. by Scott C. Martin (London: SAGE Publications, 2014). 16. J. Rendel Harris, Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults (London: Longman, Green, 1919) p. 49.

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Bushel, bushel sacks full And my pockets full too!17 Johnson and Errington’s account is within a work aimed at the hobby gardener of the suburban class, who might be growing a couple of apple trees, and who may be living hundreds of miles from the cider orchards of the west. The description of the wassail ceremony is therefore included for entertainment, to inform the new leisure gardener about the heritage of the apple tree in England. The language used in their description indicates some of the Victorian attitudes towards the wassail. Although the phrase ‘essential and interesting ceremony’ may sound patronizing, the repetition of ‘interesting’ – the song and the ceremony are both separately described as such – draws the reader’s attention to the events described. The wassail takes place each winter at the same time, in the same way, regardless of the weather, so there is clearly something more ‘essential’ to it than just an opportunity to have a drink around a bonfire. The lack of detail on the conclusion of the ‘solemn rites’ gives an air of something being withheld, something that only the initiated participants can know, and have not vouchsafed to the writer or to his urban readers. It is clear from the description that the participants in the orchard are familiar with the wassail song, and there is a sense of an oral tradition being recorded, preserved and now served up for a much wider, literate audience. Those reading this account in their urban and suburban homes were the first of the industrialized classes, for whom an orchard was a distant, quaint place. For them the countryside, and its unmodernized rural folk, had become separate not only physically but culturally. If the wassail bowl in the communal hall or suburban parlour was a symbol of Christmas and the generosity of the season, the orchardbased wassail carried additional symbolism as a reminder of the customs of preindustrial agrarian society, holding out against the darkness of the urban streets. Thomas K. Hervey’s Book of Christmas was first published in 1837 and re-printed each year until the turn of the century. It has a number of pieces on the wassail and in 1888 commented that the wassail bowl in the house was in desuetude, but the orchard wassail was a current custom. The rather humorous description drew attention to the pre-Christian origins of the custom: Not content with pledging all those who could drink in return, [the company] proceeded to an excess of boon-companionship, and after quaffing a wassaildraft to the health and abundant bearing of some favourite fruit-tree, poured what remained in the cup upon the root, as a libation to its strength and vitality. Here, also, we cannot fail to recognize the rites of classical times lurking in the superstitions used in the cider districts of England.18 17. George W. Johnson and R. Errington, ‘The Apple: Culture, Uses and History’ The Gardener’s Monthly Vol. 1 (November 1847) Vol. 2 (December 1847). 18. Thomas K. Hervey, ed., The Book of Christmas 1888 – reprint by The Folklore Society, ed. and intro Stephen Roud (London: Wordsworth, 2000) p. 342.

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This is a theme that ran through Hervey’s commentary on Christmas customs, explicit in his introduction where he described the Roman feast of Saturnalia, and commented, ‘Not only in the spirit of the time, but in many of the forms which it took, may a resemblance be traced to the Christmas rejoicings of later days.’19 Descriptions of wassailing in these Christmas books are not pinned down to any particular location such as a town or parish, nor is the year in which the activities are observed given, so tracking the veracity of any one account is certainly beyond the scope of this chapter. Many of the accounts echo each other, and the verses and songs supposedly chanted by the wassailers can often be traced back to the verses of the seventeenth-century poet, Robert Herrick. Apart from the Christmas books discussed above in this chapter, descriptions of orchard-based wassailing are to be found in compendiums of country customs, in almanacs and year books, where they appear to be intended to give an engaging account of rustic traditions, and provide a link between the modern, up-to-date Victorian reader and the traditional agrarian calendar that the suburban villa household has left far behind. In his history of almanacs, Brian Maidment notes that although they had previously reflected a radical ethos, by mid-Victorian times this had faded away, such that ‘their Georgic connection with the agricultural year was almost as diluted as their distant recall of the demands of the liturgical year’.20 Instead the almanac had become another Christmas book – one of the many ways of reading about country customs from the warmth of an armchair. The decline of these customs was apparent at the end of the nineteenth century. In order to preserve them, many local reports were written and collated by members of the British Folklore Society and were then re-published in a comprehensive study of British calendar customs, in 1940, at another time when it was felt that traditional England was under threat. What is noticeable from the folklorists’ collected entries on wassailing and other apple-based customs is the tone of regret, of loss and of dwindling in participation in these rituals during the late Victorian era. Miss Partridge noted the debasement of wassailing in Minchinhampton, Gloucestershire, and how it had become pared down to a simpler and more generic form: On Christmas Eve [footnote: ‘On Old Christmas Eve, the 5th of January, wassailers used to come with their traditional song’] men go round the Minchinhampton district singing a wassail song. They carry a large bowl, formerly of wood, decked out with evergreens. It used to have small dolls among the decorations but this is not done now. The bowl used to be kept by one man, 19. Hervey, Book of Christmas p. 37. 20. Brian Maidment, ‘Re-arranging the Year: The Almanac, the Day Book and the Year Book as Popular Literary Forms 1789–1869’ in Rethinking Victorian Culture: Essays from the 1996 Conference on Victorian Studies ed. by Juliet John and Alice Jenkins (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000) p. 101.

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known as the ‘King of the Wassailers’. An old man says there used to be as many as twenty of these wassailers, but never more than one band or set in a village. Now, only three or four wassailers come.21

This is an adaptation of rural popular culture so that some form of the tradition continued. Some rituals, especially those that could not be replicated in urban settings, such as orchard wassailing, fire ceremonies and well or tree dressing, served to emphasize and contribute to the divide between the urban and rural ways of life. This separation, however, added to the appeal of rural life to those now removed from it. The pace of that removal was swift. The changing nature of the orchard wassail reflects the consequences of the considerable upheavals in rural life, culture and living standards. I have previously discussed the diet of Victorians in the context of the urban apple trade and in orchard profits for the tenant farmer. The high price and scarcity of home-grown apples for town dwellers have been mentioned, but food supplies were little better in the countryside. The life of a rural labourer, surviving the two agricultural depressions of the Victorian era, was extremely hard, with short life spans, ill health, poverty, meagre possessions and constant hunger being far more usual than the idyllic picture of a cottage with roses round the door and a fattening pig and hens in the garden, as depicted in genre art. The cottage was most likely rented, and the garden dug over for winter cabbages and potatoes. The Victorian agricultural labourer’s diet was recorded as mainly bread, a little bacon in the West Country especially, and a little cheese. Canon Tuckwell, estimating the expenditure of such a family in 1885, allocated them only bread, flour, bacon, potatoes, cheese, sugar, tea, butter, milk and treacle. Even supposing they were ‘growing their own’ and had access to some apples, this is a poor diet and liable to be more so in winter. The Canon acknowledged that ‘Dreary England had taken the place of Merrie England’.22 In the light of these reflections on the reality of Victorian rural life, it is worth considering the availability of the ingredients of a wassail bowl, which denoted its place as a celebration dish by the cost and scarcity of its ingredients. Certainly lambswool, thick with eggs and cream, would have been fanciful at Christmas time, in the depths of winter, when the labouring rural poor were scraping through on potatoes and burnt toast grated up to make ‘tea’. At that time of year the milk would not have been thick enough for much cream, and the hens would have stopped laying regularly. Fussell remarks: ‘Legendary history is rarely so apparent anywhere else as it is in discussion of people’s food. Feasts are easier to remember than the orderly procession of normal days; cake is more memorable than bread and its recipes more extensive in cookery books … so that it is difficult for contemporaries to record anything but the festivals.’23 In 21. A. R. Wright and T. E. Lones, eds., British Calendar Customs. Vol. 3 England. Fixed Festivals (London: William Glaisher for the Folklore Society, 1940) p. 223. 22. Fussell, The English Rural Labourer p. 135. 23. Ibid. p. 82.

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other words, wassailing is not representative, and in its most elaborate form must be all the more remarkable for the demands it would have made on the villagers’ provisions, and the place it subsequently held in their memories. However, the wassail in its various forms allowed a celebration of trees as sentient and beneficent. Wassailing was a ritual from an undefined and romanticized past, with promises of hospitality that the realities of the confined, home-based Christmas often failed to fulfil. Singing around apple trees was an activity that brought up Victorian suspicions of superstition and ‘mummery’. Nevertheless they also felt a sense of loss, and perhaps of guilt, at the decline of these communal, village-based traditions. Like the idealized depictions of the orchard in genre art, the wassail was therefore re-packaged and sold back to urban consumers through nostalgic texts and illustrations.

American apple heritage Orchard wassailing may appear to be a quaint custom of the south-west of England, but it has some affinity with other celebrations of winter that took place in America in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Again, the initial impression might be of a quiet, religious occasion. Peter Kalm, visiting Philadelphia in 1749, wrote in his diary on Christmas Day, ‘Nowhere was Christmas Day celebrated with more solemnity than in the Roman Church. Three sermons were preached there, and that which contributed most to the splendor of the ceremony was the beautiful music heard to-day. … Pews and altar were decorated with branches of mountain laurel, whose leaves are green in winter time’.24 However, historian John Grossman describes Christmas fifty years later as very different: Drunken rowdies roaming the streets at night in New York and Philadelphia, banging pots, pans and drums, blowing horns and whistles, making raucous noises … In the South, gunfire and fire-crackers, all-day drinking by all classes, more horn-blowing and hell-raising. Home invasions by masked people, most of them young men, poor or from the working class, entering houses with impunity, doing little skits. Demanding gifts of food, drink or money, threatening broken windows or worse unless they got it. Public feasting, drunkenness and gluttony everywhere. This was the Christmas season in early America around 1800.25

Gunfire, legitimized home invasion, demanding gifts and performing songs all have links to the rowdier side of the orchard wassail in England. During the nineteenth century the wassail drink became similar to a punch bowl – a drink to be enjoyed with friends and family over Christmas. The social tradition of 24. The Colonial Williamsburg Interpreter Vol. 16 No. 4 (Winter 1995–6) pp. 2–5. 25. John Grossman, Christmas Curiosities – Old, Dark and Forgotten Christmas (New York: Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2008) p. 76.

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wassailing was honoured in this way, but the orchard version fell into disregard until a farm in Washington, a state famous for its apple orchards, took it up again in the 1960s.26 Today, wassailing has been taken up by the craft cider brewers and new orchardists. At an orchard in Trumansburg established in 2003, which has been making cider since 2010, the owner describes their celebrations: ‘We’ll have a potluck dinner and make a big bonfire,’ says Eric Shatt, co-owner of Redbyrd. ‘There will be singing, and we have musicians play guitars and fiddles in the orchards. Then everyone huddles around one tree, typically the oldest or biggest tree, and we offer toasts soaked in cider to the spirit guardians of the orchard. We also make noise with pots and pans, drums, and scream and shout.’27

This rediscovery, and re-purposing, of wassailing is part of an interest in heritage varieties of apple. Wenatchee Valley Museum has a large exhibit on the Washington State apple industry, and there is the National Apple Museum in Biglerville, Philadelphia. There are scores of small networks of apple enthusiasts working across America to preserve old orchards and save as many varieties as possible.

The orchard’s decline and future The mid- to late twentieth century was a period of rapid decline in the acreage of orchards in both Britain and America, for very similar reasons. Barnes and Williamson, tracking ‘the long decline of commercial orchards’ in Britain, include a list of by now familiar causes – foreign imports, unfavourable trade tariffs and overproduction caused by the improvements in orchard yields for which the growers and the scientists had worked so hard. The government offered incentives to reduce the number of varieties in cultivation, and to grub up orchards. There was also the difficulty in finding and retaining a workforce, and structural changes in the wholesale and retail networks, particularly the decline in numbers of independent greengrocers. The result was a decline in commercial orchards that was ‘catastrophic’ for the landscape and the environment, as Barnes and Williamson describe it. ‘Overall the area occupied by commercial orchards in England plummeted after the 1950s, falling from 108,600 hectares in 1950 to 61,700 hectares in 1970, and reaching less than 30,000 by 2010. It is still falling, albeit now at a slower rate.’28

26. John Matthews and Caitlin Matthews, The Winter Solstice: The Sacred Traditions of Christmas (London: Thorson, 1998) p. 192. 27. Jennifer Nalewicki, ‘New York’s Cideries Bring the Tradition of Wassailing to the Finger Lakes’ The Smithsonian Magazine (26 December 2019). 28. Barnes and Williamson, English Orchards p. 127.

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In addition to the decline in commercial orchards, the removal from the landscape of the small farm and domestic orchards has had an effect on biodiversity and the quality of the environment around us.29 These traditional orchards, including the cider orchards of the West Country with their tall trees, were harder to work and yielded less fruit than the standardized apple monoculture plot. As I have discussed, such orchards have been under threat ever since the pomologists of the nineteenth century wanted to improve them by re-planting. This government advice from the 1960s echoes those earlier warnings about unprofitable varieties: Is your orchard an asset or a liability? There is no doubt that quite a number of orchards – the smaller ones in particular – are likely to be an embarrassment to the owner rather than a source of gain …. In these days of fierce competition only the quality product can hope to find a paying market. … What can be done with these worn out orchards, those orchards which are so small that they do not warrant the expenditure on spraying tackle and equipment for grading and packing? What can be done with those mis-sited orchards where frost claims the crop three years out of four? What can be done to clear the rubbishy samples of fruit which not only clutter up the market but – worse – depress the price of first class sendings? There can only be one answer – grub out and put the land to more profitable use.30

One result of the grubbing up of smaller orchards was the decline of the visibility of orchards in the landscape, and their aesthetic attraction that had connected them to their representations in art. In the mid-decades of the twentieth century a day out in the car or coach, looking at the apple blossom in Kent, or in the Vale of Evesham, had been a favourite outing in spring. Although motoring organizations produced ‘apple blossom maps’ until the mid-1980s, the decline in orchard numbers meant that the bulk of the large commercial plots were situated away from public roads, and as the trees were shorter there was little to see from a car.31 The decline took a similar trajectory in America. Many orchards did not survive the Great Depression, and the 1930s intensified the rate at which orchards were abandoned across the country, the trees dying through neglect and the drought of the Dust Bowl Era.32 The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a work programme to provide income to the rural workers, but part of their remit in restoring abandoned farmland was often to grub up old orchards. However, they also recreated a few eighteenth-century orchards in sites of historic value within the National Parks estate, and sometimes the threatened orchards found a friend. 29. See Benedict Macdonald and Nicholas Gates, Orchard: A Year in England’s Eden (London: William Collins, 2020) for a lyrical account of an ancient orchard’s ecosystem. 30. MAFF booklet, 1961. Quoted in Barnes and Williamson, English Orchards p. 128. 31. Sheerness Times Guardian, 1 May 1981, describes two tours around the Kentish orchards. 32. Dolan, Fruitful Legacy p. 101.

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John Bunker recalls how Stearns Lothrop Davenport, known as Davey, was put in charge of a federal project to, Cut down thousands of old apple trees and distribute the remain as firewood. The idea was to clean up feral trees that might host disease or insect pests. Like most of the rest of New England, Massachusetts was transitioning from a three hundred year orchard culture of vast diversity to a commodity form of commercial orcharding based around one apple: McIntosh. The thousands of ancient trees in the small orchards of Worcester County had become a nuisance and had to go. It was Davey’s job to get rid of them. Fortunately for the rest of us, they had hired the wrong guy.33

Davey realized the plant heritage that would be lost, and began collecting scion wood, storing it in his lunchbox before top working it into his own orchard. By the 1960s he had a collection of sixty heirloom apple varieties which, in a new location, is being maintained today. From 1945 onwards, further threats to old apple orchards included the expansion of more profitable crops such as almonds, citrus, peaches and olives, as well as urbanization, changes in labour patterns and ongoing climate change.

Recent apple consumption Orchards in the landscape may be in decline in Britain and America, but apples as a crop are a global success. China has over two million hectares of apple orchards, producing an estimated forty-three million tonnes of apples, almost half of the entire world apple crop. North America is second, producing over six million tonnes, and Britain is some way behind, with an estimated production in 2017 of 446,440 tonnes. Figures on individual consumption, however, are varied, such that only a rough calculation can be attempted. If the average apple weighs 150 grams, that gives 667 apples per tonne. On which assumption, Britain could be producing 297,775,480 apples per year.34 Given a British population of sixty-three million people over the age of four (and theoretically capable of eating an apple) that equates to just under five home-grown apples per person per year. Including the consumption of imported apples, cooking apples and apple products such as juice would, I hope, raise that low consumption to something in the region of the figures floating about on the internet which centre around sixty-five apples per person per year in Europe. Even this is not an improvement on the 1920s figure of ‘one apple

33. Bunker, Apples and the Art of Detection p. 347. 34. Figures taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_apple_ production, https://quadram.ac.uk/spotlight/apple-facts/,  https://www.britishapplesandpears. co.uk/volume-of-apples/ and https://www.agmrc.org/commodities-products/fruits/apples

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every four days’, after the first ‘Eat More Fruit’ campaign.35 It would seem that there is plenty of capacity for high-quality, locally grown fruit in Britain, America and Europe. British Apples and Pears Ltd (BAPL), which describes itself as ‘a registered company formed in 1990 to organise and develop the promotion of the British apple and pear industry’, notes that 42 per cent of apples and pears consumed in the UK are home grown. Its aim is to increase that to 60 per cent of apples being home grown by 2030.36 The organization is the latest iteration of the various committees, boards and councils that have been set up to support the British top fruit market, but their own recent research has demonstrated how much of the market relies on imported apples. Ali Capper, the executive chair of BAPL, told the trade journal Fruit Net that although supermarkets made public pledges to support local farmers, their analysis had shown that 48 per cent of apples packs from 3 October to 14 November 2022 were imported. She said: It’s peak British apple season; the supermarket shelves should be full of our amazing new season British fruit. However, retailers don’t seem to be listening to what consumers want. Across the top six supermarket brands analysed, only 52% of the apples … were British. Imported apples were coming from as far away as New Zealand and South Africa, as well as Italy, Spain, France and Belgium. Why are we importing so much fruit, with the associated food miles, when British apples are at their peak? Capper added that the findings make ‘tough reading for hard-working British apple growers. In the face of extraordinary inflationary pressures, we need supermarket support more than ever,’ she stressed. ‘Consumers can only buy the fruit they want if it’s offered to them. It’s time the supermarkets did more than talk about support for British farmers and demonstrated it by paying a fair price and packing their shelves with our amazing British produce.’37

BAPL had a brief moment in the news when it temporarily ‘renamed’ the Gala apple as Eos, the Goddess of the Dawn, to mark ‘Brexit Day’ on 31 January 2020.38 However, in 2018 the official response to the challenges of Brexit for food and farming, a document from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), optimistically titled Health and Harmony: The Future for Food, Farming and the Environment in a Green Brexit, had not mentioned orchards, and the only fruit specifically referred to was the banana.39 There would seem to be a 35. See Chapter 8 p. 155. 36. https://www.britishapplesandpears.co.uk/new-eap-chair-calls-for-governmentaction-to-secure-industry-growth-plans/ 37. Fred Searle, ‘Half of Supermarket Apples Imported Even during the British Season’ Fruit Net., 8 December 2022. 38. https://www.britishapplesandpears.co.uk/a-new-apple-just-for-brexit-day/ 39. DEFRA, Health and Harmony: The Future for Food, Farming and the Environment in a Green Brexit (London: HMSO, 2018).

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lack of communication between the various interested parties. Perhaps a second Parliamentary Inquiry, similar to that held in 1839, should be considered.

Community orchards Given the amount of competition that the British apple faces, not only from imported apples but from other fresh fruit including bananas, ‘the UK’s most bought fruit’, dragon fruits, satsumas and watermelons, it is unlikely that there will be another ‘orchard century’ through the efforts of the major fruit wholesalers and BAPL alone.40 Instead, the revival of interest in heritage apple varieties has been at the extremely local level in Britain, where communities are recording the surviving trees in their area, restoring neglected orchards and planting new ones. Community orchards can take different forms. I have selected a few here; Barnes and Williamson list more, and an online search in Britain for ‘community orchard near me’ will take you, at the time of writing, to the data held by the People’s Trust for Endangered Species, which has an interactive map of over a thousand sites.41 An example of a distributed orchard, that is, one that is scattered over a number of small sites or as individual trees, is one created, and then rediscovered, in the London Borough of Hampstead. Hampstead Garden Suburb Horticultural Society hunted for fruit trees planted by residents in 1907, and found more than forty varieties survived, scattered across front and back gardens. They did the same in 2009. Fruit tree maps are also being created for other areas of London.42 My example of a new community orchard is from my own experience. In 2007, I was one of a group of volunteers who established a small orchard at the end of my local allotment site, in Trumpington, just south of Cambridge. This small site has allotments on one side, a guided busway behind us and new build houses overlooking it. In 2009 we planted nineteen trees of varieties believed to have originated in Cambridgeshire, with names that recalled local places, such as Histon’s Favourite, and people, such as Chivers’ Delight. Since then, our volunteers have constantly weeded, planted and maintained the space, and the orchard has hosted a range of events, from bug hunts, bat nights and teddy bears’ picnics to a wedding. In our first winter, we hesitantly wassailed the trees. That first wassail was three of the founders (including me) singing some kind of song and banging a saucepan. We attracted the interest of a few neighbours who came out to see what the racket was. Since then, our wassail has grown into a sizeable and popular event, welcoming everything from lantern processions to a wheelbarrow orchestra, to folk dressed as Green Men, Green Women, and even as penguins. It seems that 40. Ibid. p. 12. 41. https://ptes.org/campaigns/traditional-orchard-project/orchard-network/ community-orchards/ 42. Clifford and King, England in Particular p. 310.

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we were ahead of the trend in reviving, or re-inventing the wassail, and we have continued it in some form every year.43 Volunteers become involved with community orchards for a number of reasons. The desire to preserve local varieties of apple is just a part of the motivation. Other reasons that I have discussed anecdotally with fellow volunteers include the desire to preserve the land against development (certainly a factor in establishing the Trumpington orchard) and to increase biodiversity. There are also those who see the need to preserve or enhance the spirit of a place or the sense of a local community. My last example mixes a new distributed orchard with a sense of history and an overall cultural vision. In 2019–20, artist and writer Annie Lord worked with residents to establish ‘The Neighbouring Orchard’, a network of 160 apple trees across the East of Edinburgh and East Lothian. When she circulated a call for those who wanted to host a tree, she found that the hundreds of responses gave her insights into people’s lives. They are ‘the tenants of flats who have come together to begin gardening their shared green – these often-overlooked spaces are now a precious resource. There are people applying on behalf of their elderly relatives. There are parents whose young children have started taking an interest in plants’.44 She explains how the trees were sited to evoke a sense of community and communal ownership: Each tree is planted in a visible location – in front gardens, in shared tenement greens, in school playgrounds and in communal land. They can be seen from the windows of buses, from top floor flats and by pedestrians. Some are planted where orchards stood several centuries ago. Some are growing in the freshly demarcated gardens of newbuilds, others have been planted in ground previously seen as wasteland.45

Community orchard projects, including some dedicated to the revival of cider orchards, are not usually intending to grow fruit on a profitable scale. Instead the benefits are less tangible, but relevant to our current concerns about the environment, while giving an insight into what the apple represents culturally. Annie Lord captures these concerns in her description of the site of one of the project’s trees: I am walking on the site of a former orchard. In its place is a sheltered housing estate. I turn a corner, into a courtyard and find a garden which sings of pleasure. It is small and gravelled and filled with splashes of colour. This garden is home to one of the Neighbouring Orchard apples – an East Lothian Pippin. It is surrounded by bright pots, planted with small, purple grape hyacinths and

43. https://trumpingtonorchard.org/ 44. Annie Lord, The Neighbouring Orchard (Edinburgh: Art Walk Press, 2022) p. 29. 45. Ibid. p. 1.

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shocking pink daisies. A group of small statues complete the scene – a ceramic robin, a family of stone meerkats and a frog which implores us to ‘enjoy’.46

At first this little garden has nothing in common with the large domestic gardens of earlier eras, yet all the elements are there – the use of structure and symmetry, fashionable, highly decorative flowers, even the allegorical statuary so enjoyed in the gardens of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century aristocracy. The pippin links the site to its orchard history, while this new tree is connected to the other 159 trees in the project, making it part of a twenty-first-century orchard that is entirely modern, an almost post-modern construct or fantasy of an orchard. This is the apple of our current culture.

The changing shape of the cultural apple Start an internet search for ‘apple’ today and at least the first hundred or so results will be about computers, fitness watches and other well-known products bearing that distinctive logo. The status of the apple as a cultural commodity has shifted, although not diminished. The gentle, sentimental genre art of the nineteenth century is not reproduced so often to adorn our homes and has been taken down from the walls of provincial museums and art galleries. The Pre-Raphaelites are still popular, attracting thousands of visitors to the major exhibitions, but their concern with floral symbolism has not been re-appraised in the same manner in which their personal lives have been scrutinized. Of course, the apple remained a powerful symbol in art. Since Cezanne famously, but apocryphally, declared, ‘with an apple I shall astonish Paris’, before exhibiting Still Life with Apples in 1879, the apple has been liberated from the Garden of Eden, the orchard and from the fruit bowl. Around 1917 Vanessa Bell painted ‘Apples’ after viewing Cezanne’s work, positioning the apples within her own home, arranged on a china plate, absorbing the apples within the domestic quotidian and subtly referencing the old, but still unanswered questions about the relationships between gender, genre, work and art. In 1946 Magritte painted Son of Man, which depicts an apple hovering, menacingly, in front of the face of his suited, bowler-hatted subject, and in 1952 Nicolas de Stael, again answering Cezanne, painted Five Apples – blue apples on a blue ground, where the impact was in the distance the image had travelled from the still life genre.47 And yet even in these examples, there is, as Cezanne scholar and art historian T. J. Clark acknowledged, a hint of the orchard’s sacred and uncanny past. His description of the effect of Still Life with Apples draws out the resonances in modern depictions of the fruit:

46. Ibid. pp. 17–18. 47. De Torcy, La Pomme Dans L’Art pp. 118–21.

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But ‘constrained’ or ‘uncanny’ or ‘in a state of high tension’ – keeping some kind of peculiar energy just under control – words like these do seem justified, or at least understandable. I look at the sugar bowl perched on its carpet, or the apples rolling off their plate, or the wall carved out of blocks of ice, and I know I am somewhere beautiful but dangerous.48

Several artists have been drawn to the impact of apples in the context of a gallery. Kiki Smith scattered red apples across a gallery floor to comment on gender and the power of good and bad. Sarah Boxer’s review of her 2001 exhibition made that link: The exhibition ‘Kiki Smith: Telling Tales’ organized by Helaine Posner, draws all the connections between fruit and females. Little Red Riding Hood and her basket of goodies, Snow White and the poisoned apple, Eve and the apple. Ms. Smith has made a multimedia mythology: sculptures, photographs, drawings, puppets and videos winding their way through a creepy narrative forest. The soundtrack of apple eating is only the beginning. Vine-ripe glass raspberries crawl up the walls. Photographs of persimmons and of all-white plaster girls hang mutely. And apples, apples, apples. A crown of apple seeds strung on gold wire is mounted high on a wall. Lying on the floor is a crop of waxy-looking apples made by the artist: red ones the shade of Bliss potatoes and lethal black ones, some whole and some chewed to the core.49

In the post-modern art world, or at least among the Western art gallery circuit, the expectation remains that the viewer retains some knowledge of, and values, the link between the apple, the orchard and Eden. Another example is Claire Partington’s 2017 porcelain sculpture, Drunk Eve, which shows Eve discarding her fig leaf as she drinks from a bottle of cider.50 The very puny serpent is crushed beneath her foot. Reproductions of an apple on an exaggerated scale confront the viewer with the ordinary made extra-ordinary, disconcerting. Claes Oldenburg’s Apple Core sculptures from 1992 gesture to the memento mori within still lifes, with giant, decaying fruit. Also exploring giant apples, apple cores and the processes of decay are Claude Lalanne, who put a giant golden apple in the ‘Big Apple’ of New York in 2006, Barnaby Barford, who places beautiful giant apples in public parks and gardens, and the graffiti artist known as My Dog Sighs. He explained to me the significance of his use of real apples, into which he carves words, before leaving them to decay somewhere in the urban streetscape, waiting to be found: 48. T. J. Clark, ‘Not Writing about Cezanne’ The Threepenny Review (Winter 2021) n. p. 49. Sarah Boxer ‘Fairy Tales in a Forest of Women and Fruit’ The New York Times, 27 April 2001. 50. https://www.jamesfreemangallery.com/artworks/claire-partington/drunk-eve

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I used to do a lot as street pieces [carved with] Apple (pi symbol) ‘Bad’ apple ‘Rotten’ Apple. Etc. A process involving carving text into a fresh apple (which I grew on my allotment). The marks were invisible until the Apple was left out, leaving it to shrink and decay (revealing the text) and then leaving them on the street. I’m fascinated by decay. Peeling paint and rust melt my heart so these slowly decaying apples were a playful vehicle for word based street intervention. Personally I was fascinated at how the decaying process revealed the art and that the nature of the material made it incredibly transient. At the time, I was still a teacher (although back then no one knew these parallel lives) which added a nice personal narrative.51

Perhaps the artist most dedicated to the contemporary apple was Billy Apple® (1935–2021) who, in 1962, changed his name from Barrie Bates for greater brand awareness, and later became a registered trademark and launched his own brand of apples and cider. In 1964 he exhibited alongside Andy Warhol as part of the American Supermarket show in New York, firmly associating the apple with commodities, modernity, consumerism and, perhaps less consciously, with gender, since the supermarket/gallery was a clash between the expected consumer of food – the ‘housewife’ and the purchaser of art – the usually male gallery owner or collector. Billy Apple’s® work did not look back to the old symbolism of the apple, freighted with ideas of sin or decay. Instead his work spoke of the apple that was endlessly replicated, always identical, fridge-fresh and modern.52 His work captured one aspect of the nature of the cultural apple that we imagine today, even while we celebrate the ancient heritage of orchards with re-imagined wassails.

51. My Dog Sighs, personal correspondence to the author, 17 December 2022. 52. Zoe Gray, Nicolaus Shafhausen and Monika Szewczyk, eds., Billy Apple® Source Book (Rotterdam: Witte de With, 2009).

Chapter 11 C O N C LU SIO N

My primary argument throughout this book is that there was a disparity between the technological innovations within the material orchard and its commodification of fruit, and the cultural conservatism in representations of orchards and apples. I have determined that both these aspects were necessary for the apple and the orchard to grow in economic and cultural significance. The orchard was a place of discovery and improvement, employing the developments in natural science, agriculture and biology to create new varieties of apples from stronger, high-yield trees. However, many representations of the orchard continued to hold associations of loss and nostalgia while depicting a rural ‘golden age’ that was culturally conservative. Despite this tension the economic and cultural significance of the apple is grafted together. My first chapter explored definitions of the apple and the orchard, and concluded that a space such as an orchard, which seems so easy to define, is in fact subject to change and variation in cultural and material status. I began Chapter 2, therefore, in the orchard of the early eighteenth century. Apple trees can grow almost anywhere that the climate allows, but an orchard is a deliberate partnership between humans and trees. It is a defined space, the boundaries and expectations of which came to be more defined throughout the century, and one which began to look very different according to its context. An orchard could be part of a productive kitchen garden, laced with flowers and surrounded by walls, or an open space with tall trees yielding enough fruit to make hundreds of hogsheads of cider. Throughout the century the wider landscape was changed in Britain by the aggregation of smaller fields and by the agricultural revolution, and in America by settlement, conflict and the introduction of new plant and animal species. The apple tree was adapted by its growers to meet these changes and the increasing demand. The evidence for the extent of commercial plant nurseries in the eighteenth century shows a sizeable increase in the quantity of the young trees, and increased consumer demand for different varieties. Cider became a fashionable drink that was more widely available with increased transport links, and this too was celebrated culturally in verse and images. These developments demonstrate that apples were becoming as fashionable in the dining room as they were in the cider house.

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I demonstrated in Chapter 3 that during the nineteenth century the orchard changed significantly. Orchards supplying urban areas were intensively managed spaces that were part of the network of market gardens. Here, growers utilized every part of the ground to get the highest yield and the maximum profit, and the fruit trees were part of a complex series of crops. For those who grew apples, it seems as if the rising popularity of the fruit, with all its new varieties, was never in doubt. Apples were worth the money; they were a desirable, even essential, part of a modern diet and of British cuisine. However, profits were uncertain, and an orchard was a considerable investment of time, money and resources. The widening availability of printed matter permitted easier exchange of ideas on all aspects of fruit growing and allowed commercial growers to plan ahead and make the best use of their resources. Commercial fruit growers in both Britain and America also sought, and gained, improvements in transport and packaging in order for longdistance trade to become economically viable. An intensive, productive nineteenth-century orchard would have looked very different from its depictions in nineteenth-century art, and from presentday representations of a ‘traditional’ orchard. Cultural representations, and descriptions in some horticultural texts, reveal an undercurrent of despondency at the state of English orchards. The apple tree and its growers are portrayed as resistant to scientific innovation and improvement, resulting in the persistence of old, cankered varieties. In artistic representation the connection is strengthened between orchards and that lost rural past, that mythical country which the Victorians loved, and painted, so often. A grubbed-out orchard, or a lost apple variety, symbolized the loss of the collective memory of the country. Part of the strength of the orchard as a cultural avatar is the length of the relationship between the trees and the grower. This may be another reason for the cultural depiction of apple orchards as beautiful places with happy workers. However, as Chapter 4 explored, the reality for the ‘scientific apple’ is that achieving a crop requires cooperation between the tree and the grower. With any fruit tree, the decisions and mistakes made in one year will affect the crop in the next, and so on through the life of the tree. These realities are seldom depicted in art, which concentrates on the bounty of the harvest as if it was entirely natural. The ‘scientific apple’ is one where its needs have been calculated carefully, and where everything has been maximized for high yields of good-quality fruit. Pests, diseases and adverse weather can change that expectation overnight. These challenges remain for orchard growers; the solutions have differed across the centuries. The influence of the network of pomologists, orchard growers and others who addressed these challenges was discussed in Chapter 5. While the members of the various pomological societies concerned themselves with reducing synonyms and selecting the best varieties, enjoyment of gardening and horticulture seems to have been a mark of working-class respectability, something the apple exhibitions endorsed. Growing apples and other long-term crops was encouraged, since waiting for the crop required planning, foresight and a regard for the future that was lacking, it was felt, among the poorer classes. As gardens and orchards

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improved, so too would cleanliness and moral standards. These expectations informed attitudes towards the urban fruit seller, as well as the cultural importance of the apple more widely. In Chapter 6 I concluded that the particular relationship between the urban fruit sellers – the costermongers – their customers and the apple embodies multiple anxieties of the Victorian era, which are embedded in the materiality of the trade in apples. This in itself points towards the cultural significance of the apple, and why it was grown and celebrated, even when there was an uncertain profit to be made along the supply chain. The material apple as sold by the costermongers still retained the associations that linked it to the concept of country, as experienced by the Victorians, and expressed by Raymond Williams as ‘the idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue’.1 The costermongers may not have embodied all the positive ideas of urban life, as listed by Williams, but they certainly represented ‘the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition’.2 In the figure of the costermonger, at the point of sale, is where these two concepts came together, where buying an apple on the London streets was a material act with surprising levels of cultural symbolism. In Chapter 7, I explored the political and national environment around the apple trade. The apple has embodied the anxieties over boundaries and identity since the eighteenth century. Particularly in Britain, it seems that any competition to the domestic apple crop was felt as a personal attack on British values, rather than a legitimate economic pressure. The language used in the parliamentary debates and press coverage has often been that of warfare and threat, but the various twentieth-century lobby groups have proved ineffective in promoting the domestic crop or securing changes to the supply chain that could smooth out the surpluses. Perhaps it is the ingrained attitudes towards imports that seem to have hindered the development of a British apple export market. Although the packaging and advertising of the first American apple exports were seen as something to be emulated, later texts carry the implication that ‘foreign’ apple growers did not understand what customers required from a delicious apple. The final destination of the material apple was, usually, the kitchen. Histories of food can often be divided into two types – those that emphasize the differences in cuisine between ‘then’ and ‘now, between ‘near’ and ‘far away’, and those that trace the connections between unlikely ingredients or culinary cultures. The apple is more than a connection; it is a fixed point. By choosing to eat, or cook with, a heritage variety, it is possible to indulge in culinary time travel. In Chapter 8 I explored the various ways in which the apple was regarded as an ingredient, an aid to health and a drink, and concluded that there was a tension between the modern ways in which the apple was cultivated and the traditional ways in which it was cooked. Recipes as familiar as apple dumplings or baked apples could be incorporated into a discourse around urban and country foodways. Cider changed 1. Raymond Williams, The Country and the City (London: Vintage Classics, 2016) p. 1. 2. Ibid.

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status from a rural necessity to an urban, urbane drink, before falling out of favour under pressure from society and the more stable economics of brewing beer and lager. Still, the cultural associations of apples and orchards with the countryside and its ‘old ways’ persisted, and it is here that the apple in the kitchen began to circle back to the apple in art. Chapter 9, therefore, considered some examples of how the apple and the orchard were woven into the various cultural movements of the nineteenth century, and how those representations drew on the cultural language of earlier centuries. Apples, trees and orchards were used to transform the meaning of an artwork into something beyond the decorative, with a message that the viewer could receive if they wished. The apple, familiar occupant of the parlour fruit bowl, became transformed into the fruit protected and fought over by goddesses, or the magical apple of ancient myth. Decorative though these paintings are, the inclusion of an apple, or its blossom, gives a subtle feeling of unease, of the unexpected that may happen. However, those emotions are conveyed through conservative imagery that often uses visual tropes of loss, time passing and nostalgia. Even the inclusion of the latest dwarfed apple variety in a domestic garden looked back to the serene and sacred spaces of the past. Although the technologically improved orchard is still rarely represented in modern culture, the uses of the apple, in the community and in art, are constantly shifting. In my final chapter I concluded that the cultural apple is more integrated into advertising and popular culture than ever before, and not just because of its association with computers. Eve, however, has stepped off this stage; women are now depicted biting into or eating apples in order to demonstrate their health, or the strength of their denture fixative, rather than their tendency to yield to temptation. The apple was always placed in art with care and deliberation, but perhaps we have less need for culturally specific symbolism in the international cultural orchard. Meanwhile the community orchard is a twentieth-century concept that looks back to an undefined, yet recognizable era when the orchard was a valued place in the network of rural communities. Apple Days and similar events are one way in which twenty-first-century orchard enthusiasts attempt to preserve and bring together these different aspects of the material and cultural apple. Finally, there are some conclusions that can be drawn across the centuries. It is clear that the economic importance of the apple and the extent of the apple trade have largely been overlooked. Little attention has been paid to the fruit and vegetable wholesale and retail markets when compared with the work on other perishable goods. A further reason for the lack of scrutiny of orchards could be the difficulty of calculating the extent of land under orchard cultivation. Although it is clear that the acreage of orchards increased until the twentieth century, it is difficult to calculate a particular rate of increase. It may seem from this lack of attention that the apple’s economic value was low, but its cultural value was disproportionately high. Although this is true in terms of the proportion, I have concluded that the apple was an important commodity. Its cultural value was used to increase its economic worth, not necessarily in terms of bushels of apples sold, but in allowing more nurserymen, writers and apple enthusiasts of all kinds to

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profit from its popularity. It remains true that the influence of the works of orchard experts is hard to establish, but there is evidence in the sheer number of books, articles and letters in the newspapers to show that apples were as often talked about as grown. Orchard work, because it took place in a largely non-mechanized setting, was seen as one of the old ways of surviving in the rural economy, which was itself looked on with nostalgia, as the texts on wassailing and the depictions in genre and fine art, explored in this book, have revealed. By contrast, the costermongers selling apples in the street carried the associations of low morality, of being set apart from respectable society, into every transaction they made, with the fruit itself symbolizing deception. I have concluded that in both fine and genre art, apples were not often depicted as merely decorative, but were used with precision to convey a range of cultural associations and meanings. Until the late twentieth century, the story of Eve was implicit in any representation of a woman (or girl) and an apple. Women in the narrative paintings largely supported the prevailing cultural hegemony concerning the place of women, with the apple being used to enforce associations between women and ‘sin’. Although this association is fading, it is still part of the apple’s cultural vocabulary. In the twenty-first century, the apple retains a cultural significance that is out of proportion to its value as an economic crop, even in these times of high-yielding, intensive fruit production. In this book I have explored how this happened and set out to determine if the consumers’ experience of an actual, material apple was ever influenced by the cultural story that went with it. Surprisingly, I have concluded that there is little overlap between the two identities of the apple, and that the consumer has always been capable of enjoying and indeed celebrating apples to eat, while simultaneously engaging with them in art and culture as objects that act as references towards religious messages, moments in history and moral indicators. Within those cultural representations, the realities of apple production are deliberately ignored. This was evident in the nineteenth century and has become obvious in the twentieth, where there is a growing, and I would argue, deliberately cultivated, disconnect between the consumer and where the food originates from. The familiar unpalatable backstory around chemicals, labour supply, sustainability and habitat loss exists even in the peaceful orchard. Finally, my conclusion at the end of this book returns to my introduction; the apple is an object worthy of academic study as well as popular interest, because it has become part of our culture as well as our diet. I have considered both halves of the apple; the material and the cultural, and can conclude that both were of significance from the eighteenth to the twentieth century, to an extent that has been previously overlooked. The history of food has become both deeper and wider, subject to more challenging academic scrutiny. I hope that this work will provoke further research into apples and orchards, as there is so much left to explore.

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INDEX Abbay, Rev. R. 49–50, 49 n.51 Abstract of British Historical Statistics (Mitchell and Deane) 40 ‘Against ‘Englishness’’ (Mandler) 187 agriculture/agricultural British 36–41 depression 39, 50, 192 production 30, 38, 104 revolution 16, 30, 37, 203 Aikin, Lucy (Mary Godolphin) 174 Alar 73 Albala, Ken 144 All the Year Round 108–10 American apple landscape 28–9 American Newtown Pippin apple variety 124 American orchards 28–9, 35–6 American Pomological Congress (1852) 83 American Pomological Society 36 The Anatomy of Dessert, with a Few Notes on Wine (Bunyard) 151, 151 n.27 Anglicus, Bartholomaeus 10 Annunciation 176, 176 n.38 Api apple variety 95 apple 8 cooker 12 core 149–50, 201 crab 8–10, 19, 62, 188 culinary 147 cultivars 8, 12, 36, 65, 67, 81, 85–6, 88–9, 98 dessert 12, 26, 57, 103, 147, 161 eating 12, 16, 75, 131, 155 (see also consuming apples) peel 145–6 pips 7, 36, 66 seeds 8, 9, 29, 36, 65, 67, 82, 122, 155, 201 skin 62, 75, 79, 141, 145 variety (see variety)

Apple (Reiss) 29, 29 n.39 The Apple and its Varieties (Hogg) 10 n.12, 92 The Apple and Pear as Vintage Fruits (Hogg and Bull) 87 n.19, 159 n.61, 161 the Apple and Pear Conference of 1888 39, 51, 54–5, 69 n.33, 75, 89 Apple and Pear Development Board 139 Apple®, Billy 202 Apple Blossoms (Millais) 178–81 Apple Day 183–4, 186, 206 apple dumplings 145, 149–53, 205 An Apple Gathering (Morgan) (painting) 77, 77 n.59 An Apple Gathering (Rossetti) (poem) 179–80 The Apple is Everything (Barford) 3 n.3, 76–7 The Apple: Its History, Varieties and Cultivation (Fish) 92, 93 n.40 The Apple Orchard (Brown) 147 n.12 apple pies 132–4, 149–50 Apples; A Guide to the Identification of International Varieties (Bultitude) 95 n.47 Apples and the Art of Detection (Bunker) 185, 185 n.5 Apples: Botany, Production and Uses (Ferree and Warrington) 62 n.7 apple scoop 145–6 Apples of North America (Burford) 35 n.1 The Apple: The Kansas Apple (Barnes and Thompson) 129 n.28 apple women. See costermongers Arboretum et Fruiticum Britannicum, or; The Trees and Shrubs of Britain (Loudon) 91 The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy (Glasse) 150 Atkinson, Robert 147–8 Atkins, P. J. (Peter) 37 n.11, 102, 149 Austen, Jane 23–4 Austen, Ralph 17–18, 64

222

Index

‘The Bacchae’ (Euripides) 165–6 bad weather 71 Ballerina/columnar apple tree 64 Barford, Barnaby 3 n.3, 76, 201 Barnes, Gerry 15 n.1, 94, 134, 194, 198 Barrell, John 23 Barringer, Timothy 23, 23 n.22, 46, 115, 115 n.53, 116, 116 n.59, 169 n.12 Barron, A. F. 87–8 Bartrum, Revd E. 50 Beale, John [I. B.] 19, 19 n.14, 157 Beeton, Isabella 150–3 Bellamy, Liz 119, 157 Ben Davis apple variety 129 Bickham, Troy 122 Biffins. See Norfolk Biffins Biology of Apples and Pears (Jackson) 7–9, 41 n.24, 74 n.50 Blackman, Janet 101–3 Blenheim Orange apple variety 57 The Book of Apples (Morgan and Richards) 9 n.8, 89 n.28 Book of Christmas (Hervey) 190–1 Book of Household Management (Beeton) 150, 152 Bradley, Richard 62 Bramley apple variety 57, 89, 94, 131, 140, 147–8, 152 brand/branding 72, 147–9, 202 breeding 66–7, 85, 93 British agriculture 36–41 British Apples and Pears Ltd (BAPL) 197–8 British Apples: Report of the Committee of the National Apple Congress 1883 (Barron) 87 n.17 British Pomological Society 10, 84–6 Brookshaw, George 91, 97 Bull, Henry Graves 98–9, 146 Bultitude, John 95 Bunker, John 185, 196 Bunyard, Edward A. 96–7, 151 Bunyard, George 55–6, 110, 128 Busdieker-Jesse, Nichole L. 70 bushel/bushels 43 n.3, 45, 53, 55, 75, 98, 108, 111, 125–9, 153, 157, 190, 206 Bute, Lord 28

Cambridgeshire 4, 56, 73, 185, 198 Campbell, Shannon E. 23 Canada 22, 35 n.1, 121, 130–1, 149, 157 canker 74–5, 85, 159, 169 Capper, Ali 197 Captain Swing (Hobsbawm and Rudé) 44 ‘Captain Swing’ riots 37 n.8 Cassell’s Dictionary of Cookery 152–3 Cellini Pippin apple variety 57 Chambers, Ephraim 69 Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed) 13, 29, 36, 64–6 Charles Turner apple variety 147 Charter Market 113 Chevalier, Auguste M. 158, 159 n.58 Chiswick 84–8 Chiswick (RHS Garden) 39 n.17, 55 n.63 Chivers’ Delight apple variety 198 A Christmas Carol (Dickens) 94 Christmas season 48, 94, 128, 135, 186–94 cider (cyder) 11–12, 27, 36, 156–61, 189, 203–5 apples 69, 97–8, 110, 132 consumption 119, 133, 158, 194, 202 orchards 12, 15, 24–31, 38, 47, 51, 61, 161, 183, 190, 195 production 11–12, 25–6, 159–60 tax 28, 159–60 trade 19, 121–2 Cider Country (Crowden) 25 n.28, 28 n.36 Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) 195 Clark, Gregory 38–9 Clark, Kathleen 33 Clark, T. J. 200 Classical groves 163–8 Clifford, Sue 183–4 climate change 71, 196 commercial orchards 1–2, 10–12, 15, 24–30, 36, 52, 56–8, 85, 140, 194–6 Common Ground 183 community orchards 1, 4, 121, 183, 189, 198–200, 206 consuming apples 119, 184, 194–8 Coppock, J. T. 42 costard apple variety 114 costermongers 101, 109, 111–19, 184, 205, 207 Court pendu-plat apple variety 57

Index Covent Garden 73, 106, 110–14, 119, 124, 126, 128, 153, 184 Cox, Nancy 122 Cox’s Orange Pippin apple variety 53, 64, 89, 138, 147–8 Crowden, James 25 n.28, 28 cultural apple 200–2, 206 Cylopaedia (Chambers) 69 Dallas, Patsy 56 Dannehl, Karin 122 D’Arcy Spice apple variety 78 Darwin, Charles 4, 66–7, 81–4 Darwin, Erasmus 81 Davenport, Stearns Lothrop 196 Deane, Phyllis 40 Defoe, Daniel 27–8 Delumeau, Jean 172, 175 dessert apple 12, 26, 57, 103, 147, 161 Dickens, Charles 4, 94, 108 DNA sequence/sequencing 7, 67 Dodd, George 106–8, 110, 153 Downing, Andrew Jackson 36, 83–4 Duffy’s apple juice 156 Dumeloro or Dumelow’s Seedling apple variety 152 Dunwoody, Gwyneth 137 Dwarfed Fruit Trees for Orchard, Garden and Home (Tukey) 62 n.7 dwarf/dwarfing 19, 23, 33, 41 n.24, 52–5, 61–4, 70, 109–10, 159, 169, 206 Dwight, Rev. Timothy 104 East Anglia 41, 50, 68, 78, 189 East Lothian 199 East Lothian Pippin apple variety 199 eating apple. See apple, eating ‘Eat More Fruit’ campaign 146, 155, 197 Ecklinville apple variety 54, 54 n.62 An Economic History of the English Garden (Floud) 41 n.25 Eden Agreement 123 Eden, Garden of 167–70, 172–7, 180, 200–1. See also Paradise The Effects of Cross and Self Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom (Darwin) 66–7 Elliott, Brent 85–6

223

Elston, Melissa 178 English apples 49–50, 111, 125–6, 128–9, 134–5, 137–9, 146, 184 An English Autumn Afternoon (Madox Brown) 169 English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit (Wiener) 186 The English Grass Orchard and the Principles of Fruit Growing (Hoare) 68 n.29 The English Husbandman (Markham) 17 n.4 English Orchards: A Landscape History (Barnes and Williamson) 15 n.1, 134 n.50 Ernle, Lord 37, 127 Errington, R. 189–90 espalier 23–4, 69 Essex 37, 50, 56, 134, 149 European Economic Community (EEC) 135, 138 Eve 79, 133, 168, 172–5, 181 Evelyn, John 26 First World War apples 38, 130 Fish, David Taylor 92–4 Flora Altaica (von Ledebour) 9 n.7 Floud, Roderick 41 n.25, 105–6 The Food of London (Dodd) 106–7, 107 n.26, 153 food studies 144–5 foreign apples 43, 46, 87, 103, 117, 123, 128–9, 132, 134–9, 152, 205 Forsyth, William 72 Francatelli, Charles Elmé 151, 153 free trade 123–4, 126–30 French, R. K. 158 frost 59, 68, 71, 195 Fruit Farming for Profit (Bunyard) 110, 110 n.32 Fruitful Legacy: A Historical Context of Orchards in the United States (Dolan) 36 n.5 FruitID database 54 n.62, 148 n.17, 185, 185 n.4 The Fruits and Fruit Trees of America (Downing) 84, 84 n.8 Fussell, G. E. 30 n.42, 32, 37 n.11, 72 n.39, 192

224

Index

Gagnier, Reginia 105 Gala apple variety 75, 140, 197 Gallagher, Catherine 118 The Gardener’s Assistant (Thompson) 72 n.40 The Gardener’s Dictionary (Miller) 8 n.3 Gennet-Moyles apple variety 19 Gerard, John 11, 189 Gibson, John 91 Gilpin, William 27 Glasse, Hannah 150 ‘Goblin Market’ (poem) (Rossetti) 116 n.62, 179–80 Goblin Market and Other Poems (Rossetti) 79–80, 79 n.64, 116 n.62, 179–80, 179 n.50 Golden Delicious apple variety 67, 137, 139–40 Gombrich, E. H. 173 grafting/graft 1, 8–10, 18–19, 24, 32, 59–66, 74–5, 91–2, 183–5 Green, David 32 Groag Bell, Susan 24 groves 21–2, 24, 26, 163–6 Growing Apples (Atkinson) 147 n.14 ‘A Guide to the Literature of Pomology’ (Bunyard) 97 n.53 A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (Lindley) 91–2, 93 n.39 Haggard, Rider 51 Hampstead Garden Suburb Horticultural Society 198 Hampstead, London 169, 198 Harryman, William 127 Hart, John 77 harvesting 75–80 Harvey, David 127 Harvey, John 12 n.19, 32–3 Hayes, Martin 69–70, 73 health and beauty 154–6 A Heavy Load (Morgan) 77 Henry VIII 2, 11 The Herbal (Gerard) 189 Herefordshire Orchards: A Pattern for All England (Beale) 19 n.14 The Herefordshire Pomona (Hogg and Bull) 92, 97–9, 98 n.62, 146, 159

heritage, American 193–4 heritage varieties 89, 184, 198, 205 Herrick, Robert 191 Hervey, Thomas K. 190–1 High Farming (Ernle) 37, 56 Hints Addressed to Proprietors of Orchards (Salisbury) 47, 124 n.10 Histon’s Favourite apple variety 198 The History and Virtues of Cyder (French) 158 n.57 A History of Gardening in England (Amherst) 11 n.18, 16 n.3 ‘A History of Grafting’ (Mudge, Janick, Scofield and Goldschmidt) 60 n.1 Hobsbawm, Eric 44 Hodder, Edwin 114 Hodder, Ian 143 Hogg, Robert 10, 85–7, 91–6, 98–9, 152, 159, 161 Holden Pike, Godfrey 113, 116–17 Honeycrisp apple variety 8 Hooker, William 91, 97 Horsley, John Callcott 177 horticultural knowledge 19–20, 31 horticultural periodicals 9–10, 69 Horticultural Society of London 54, 61, 82, 84–6, 88–9, 93, 95 Howkins, Alun 40–1 How to Cook Apples: Shown in a Hundred Different Ways of Dressing that Fruit (Hill) 3 n.5 Hughes, Arthur 177 Huguenot orchardists 19, 62 Hullmandel, Charles 98 Humphreys, Helen 22, 29, 35–6 Hunt, William Holman 117 n.64, 175 identification, apple 183–5 Industrial Revolution 38–9 Instructions in Gardening for Ladies (Loudon) 171 n.21 In the King’s Orchard (Hughes) 177 Introduction to the DNA Fingerprinting of Apples and Pears 8, 8 n.2 Jackson, J. E. 7, 41 n.24 Jacobi, Carol 180 jam 40, 127–8, 130, 149, 152–3

Index Jankiewicz, Stephen 111 Janson, H. Frederic 90 Jefferson, Thomas 65 John I 25 Johnny Appleseed. See Chapman, John (Johnny Appleseed) Johnson, George W. 169, 189–90 Jolly Beggar apple variety 57 juice 25, 36, 156–61, 189, 196 Kent, 27, 30, 40, 43, 45, 48, 52–3, 55, 63, 67, 85, 102, 108–9, 127, 139, 147, 161, 195 Kentucky State Fruit Committee 71 Kerrigan, William 64–5 Keswick Codlin apple variety 57 King of the Pippins apple variety 57 kitchen, apple’s preparation 145–7 kitchen garden orchard 16–20 Knight, Thomas Andrew 26, 47, 60–3, 67, 74–5, 85, 89, 91, 97, 159, 169 labour patterns and status 4, 23, 37, 43–6, 69–70, 76–8, 115 Lady Apples 124 Lady Sudeley apple variety 110 n.35 lambswool drink 188–9, 192 landscape movement 20–4 ‘landskip’ gardening 20–4 La Thangue, Henry Herbert 77–8 Lawson, William 10 Laxton’s Superb apple variety 147 Le Signe de la Pomme (Triomphe) 3 n.3 Lewis, Arthur 137 The Light of the World (Hunt) 175 Lindley, George 91–5 Lindley, John 91–5 London food supply 102, 105–11 London Labour and the London Poor (Mayhew) 114, 114 n.49 London Market Gardening (Shaw) 105  n.20, 110 n.32 London Purple pesticide 72 Lord, Annie 199–200 Lord Grosvenor apple variety 57 Lord Suffield apple variety 57 Loudon, Jane 171 Loudon, John 91, 98, 164, 165 n.4 Louis XIV 19

225

Macdonald, John A. 22 Mackenzie, Catherine 133–4 Madox Brown, Ford 169 ‘maiden’ apple tree 12, 69 Maidment, Brian 191 Malus 7–8 Malus domestica 8 Malus pumila 8–10 Malus Sieboldii 8 Malus sylvestris 8–10 Malus x robusta 8 Mandler, Peter 187 The Market Assistant (De Voe) 155 Markham, Gervase 17, 19 Masset, Claire 110 Mayhew, Henry 114–19, 153 McIntosh apple variety 64, 196 Michelin apple variety 161 Millais, John Everett 168, 177–81 Milton, John 173 Mingay, G. E. 32 n.46, 38, 40 The Miniature Fruit Garden (Rivers) 48, 52, 116 n.57 Mitchell, B. R. 40 Morgan, Frederick 77–8, 77 n.59 Morgan, Joan 2, 2 n.1, 18, 85, 87, 93, 124, 129, 140, 151 Morris, William 10, 167 Mudge, Ken 60, 64–5 Mulvey, Laura 174 My Dog Sighs 201 National Apple Congress of 1883 86, 88–9, 92, 99, 147–8 National Farmers Union 131, 134, 138–9 National Fruit Collection 60 n.4, 85 Native American orchards 29 Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) 73 Naubert, A. M. 156 Nectria gallingena Bres. 74 The Neighbouring Orchard (Lord) 199–200, 199 n.44 Neill, Patrick 82, 125 n.13 The New Book of Apples (Morgan and Richards) 2 n.1, 124 n.9, 147 n.12 New Hawthornden apple variety 57

226 A New Orchard and Garden with the Country Housewife’s Garden (Lawson) 10 n.11 New York food supply 103–4 The Night Side of London (Ritchie) 116 n.57 Nonesuch apple variety 93 Norfolk 25–6, 30, 56, 57 n.69, 78 Norfolk Beefing apple variety 78, 94 Norfolk Biffins 94 Normanton Wonder apple variety 57 Notes on Some of the Principal Pictures Exhibited in the Rooms of the Royal Academy No. IV 1858 (Ruskin) 177 n.41 Notes on the Turner Gallery at Marlborough House 1856–57 (Ruskin) 166 n.6 ‘Not Writing About Cezanne’ (Clark) 201 Observations on Modern Gardening, Illustrated by Descriptions (Whately) 21 n.17 ‘Observations on the Grafting of Trees in a Letter from Thomas Andrew Knight Esq. to Joseph Banks Bart. PRS’ (Knight) 61 n.5 Oddy, D. J. 153 On the Origin of Species (Darwin) 82 On the Properties of Things (Bartholomeus Anglicus) 10 The Orchard and Fruit Garden: Their Culture and Produce (Watts) 99, 99 n.64 orchards 10–11, 15–16, 22, 30–1, 189–93 American 35–6 cider 15, 24–8, 38, 61, 161 Classical groves 163–8 community 1, 4, 121, 183, 189, 198–200, 206 decline and future 194–6 kitchen garden 16–20 profitability 44–7, 54 scale of 41–3 sites, soil and boundaries 68–9 threats 70 yields 51–8 Orchards (Masset) 110, 110 n.35

Index Orchards in the Norfolk Landscape: Historic Evidence of Their Management, Contents and Distribution (Dallas) 56 n.66 Origin and Meaning of Apple Cults (Harris) 189 n.16 ornamental gardens 20–4 Our Orchards: Letters to the East Anglian Daily Times 1892 – 1920 (Abbay) 49 n.51 Paradise 17, 172–6. See also Eden, Garden of Paradise Lost (Milton) 173–4 Paradise rootstock 33, 41 n.24, 62–3, 169 Paradisi in Sole Paradisus Terrestris (Parkinson) 17, 17 n.5 Paris Green pesticide 72, 74 Parkinson, John 17, 19 The Parliamentary Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade (1839) 42–7, 51–2, 54, 106, 110–11, 125 Paul, William 39 Pawley, Emily 79 Paxton, Joseph 85 Pepys, Samuel 188 Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act (PACA) 133 pesticides 72–4 pests and diseases 71–5 Phibbs, John 22 Philip, John 119, 157 Phillips, Henry 9, 11, 106 Phillips, Richard 107–8 Philpot, Agnes 19, 61 A Plain Cookery Book for the Working Classes (Francatelli) 153 planting trees 15, 19, 21–2, 26, 36, 68, 126 Poems By the Way (Morris) 167 n.8 The Poetry of Architecture (Ruskin) 170 Pomarium Britannicum (Phillips) 9, 106, 106 n.21 pomace 36, 68 pome 7 Pomme de Neige apple variety 93 Pomona Britannica (Brookshaw) 97, 97 n.54

Index Pomona Herefordiensis (Knight) 91, 97–8 Pomona, or, the Fruit Garden Illustrated (Langley) 96, 96 n.52 pomonas 90–9 Pomona’s Harvest: An Illustrated Chronicle of Antiquarian Fruit Literature (Janson) 90, 90 n.35 Pope, Alexander 22–3 Pre-Raphaelites 169 n.12, 177–8, 200 The Present Distress, Especially in Essex: Some Remedies Suggested (Bartrum) 50, 50 n.54 Prest, John 175–6 Proceedings of the Second Session of the American Pomological Congress Held in the City of Philadelphia 13 and 14 September 1852 (Cannon) 71 n.37, 84 n.9 processed apple products 148–9 The Progress of Fruit Farming (Whitehead) 40 n.23 pruning 46, 50, 62, 69–70, 75, 172, 183, 185 Pyrus malus 7 Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis or a Concise Description of Selected Apples (Ronalds) 7–8, 91, 96, 96 n.51, 98 Pyrus sieversii 9 Ragan, W. H. 36 Rappaport, Erika Diane 116 Red Astrachan apple variety 79–80 Red Delicious apple variety 140–1 Red Juneating apple variety 57 Redstreak or Red Strake apple variety 11–12, 25–6, 157 Reed, Mick 45 Reiss, Marcia 29 Report from the Select Committee on the Fresh Fruit Trade (1839) 43 n. 30, 43 n.31, 45 n.37, 46 n.41, 52 n.57, 54 n.61, 110 n.33, 110 n.36, 111 n.38, 125 n.17 ‘Report of the Apple and Pear Conference Held in the Royal Horticultural Society’s Gardens at Chiswick Oct 16 – 20 1888’ (Barron and Wilks) 39 n.17

227

Report of the Apple and Pear Congress Held by the Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society, Edinburgh 25–28 November 1885 (Dunn) 89 n.29 Ribston Pippin apple variety 82, 126 Rich Sweet Apple Pudding (Beeton) 151–2 Rider Haggard, Lilias 51 Ritchie, James Ewing 115 Rivers, Thomas 4, 48, 52–6, 63, 66, 69, 83, 89, 93, 148, 169 Roach Smith, Charles 48 Robinson, William 96, 170 Rodgers, Kerry E. 73–4 Rogers, William 113–14, 116 Ronalds, Hugh 85, 91, 96, 98 rootstock 8, 12, 19, 33, 41 n.24, 52, 54–5, 59–64, 66, 70, 74–5, 83–5, 109, 159, 163, 169 Rossetti, Christina 79–80, 179–80 Rotherham, Ian B. 41–2 Royal Caledonian Horticultural Society 89 Royal Horticultural Society of Great Britain (RHS) 10, 84–7 Ruark, Jennifer K. 144 Rudé, George 44 Rural England (Rider Haggard) 51 Ruskin, John 4, 166–7, 169–71, 177–80 Salisbury, William 47–8, 91, 124 Sandall, J. 131 ‘On the Scarcity of Home Grown Fruits in Great Britain, with Remedial Suggestions’ (Smith) 48, 48 n.45 scion 8, 29, 32–3, 60–2, 64, 74, 85, 122, 140, 161, 196 Scola, Roger 102–3, 110 Scotland 81–2, 84, 89, 110, 125, 131, 136, 140 n.63 On Scottish Gardens and Orchards (Neill) 82 n.3, 125 n.13 Scott, John 92, 95–6 Scudamore, Viscount 12, 25, 157 Second World War apples 74, 131, 133–4 seedlings 8, 15, 21, 29, 36, 57, 59–66, 68, 93, 140 ‘Selection of Soils for Dessert Apple Growing’ Scientific Horticulture (Furneaux) 68 n.28

228

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Settlement Land Act of 1792 65 The Seven Lamps of Architecture (Ruskin) 169 n.12 Shaftesbury, Lord 114–15 Shaw, C. W. 105 Shaw, Gareth 102 Sheffield food supply 101–3 Shenstone, William 20–1 Short, Brian 40–1 Sievers, Johann 8–9 Smith, Adam 122 Smith, Colin 112 Smith, Kiki 201 Smock, R. M. 156 Society of Improvers of Agriculture 81–2 Spencer, John 85–6, 92 Stark, C. M. 140 Steele, Robert 10 Steinitz, Lesley 146 Still Life with Apples (Cezanne) 200 The Story of the Apple (Juniper and Mabberley) 2 n.1, 9 n.8 St Padley’s Pippin apple variety 93 suburban apple tree 168–72. See also ornamental gardens Sudeley Orchard 110 n.35 Sunset or Sunset-Cox apple variety 136 Switzer, Stephen 21 Tadema, Lawrence Alma 165–6 Taming Fruit (Brunner) 19 n.12, 33 n.50 Terrell, John 77 Thirsk, Joan 57 Thompson, Robert 85, 91–3 Thoreau, Henry David 65–6 Tithe Commutation Act of 1836 42 ‘On the Trade, Habits and Education of the Street Hawkers of London’ (Rogers) 113 n.47 trading 32–3, 101–4, 111–14, 118–19, 121–32, 134 A Treatise on Fruit-trees, Showing the Manner of Grafting, Setting, Pruning, and Ordering of them in All Respects (Austen) 17–18 A Treatise on the Culture of the Apple and Pear (Knight) 26, 26 n.30, 61, 85, 91

Tremante, Louis 103–4 Turner, Charles 148 Turner, J. M. W. 166–7 Umbach, Maiken 164 urban apple 30–3, 168–72, 192 variety, apple definition of 8 new 10, 20, 52, 61, 66, 146–7, 158–9 old 1, 4, 61, 74, 89, 158–9, 161 propagation of 9, 57, 140 Velkar, Aashish 125 wartime, apple in 130–2 wassail bowl 188–90, 192 wassailing 4, 48, 186–94, 198–9, 202, 207 Watts, Elizabeth 99 Watts, George Frederic 117 n.64 Webber, James 124, 126 Webber, Ronald 113, 117 weights and measures 125–6 Whately, Thomas 21 Whitehead, Charles 40 White Juneating apple variety 57 whole genome sequence (WGS) 67 Wiener, Martin 186–7 Wild Apples (Thoreau) 65 wilderness 21–3, 51, 107 The Wild Garden (Robinson) 170 n.14 Willes, Margaret 171 Williamson, Tom vi, 15, 68, 69, 69 n. 30, 94, 94 n.45, 134, 194, 195 n.30, 198 Williams, Raymond 205 Willow Twig apple variety 129 Wisbech 56, 58, 58 n.70, 147 The Women of Amphissa (Tadema) 165–6 Woolhope Naturalists’ Field Club 98, 161 working class 47–51, 84, 87–8, 96, 107, 111–13, 129, 153, 158, 168, 170–1, 186, 193, 204 Wyken Pippin apple variety 57 A Year’s Work on a Kentish Fruit Farm, by a Practical Man (Bunyard) 128 n.25

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231

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