Joanna Crosby Progress Report Jan 2013

Joanna Crosby Dept. of History Jan 2013

First Supervisory Board January 2013

Progress Report:

An investigation of the social and cultural history of the apple during the

Victorian era (1837-1901), with consideration of how its status influenced,

and was affected by, its commercial value.

(street art by Mydog Sighs, graffiti artist, 2012)

‘And make us as Newton was, who in his garden watching

The apple falling towards England, become aware

Between himself and her of an eternal tie.’

(W.H.Auden, ‘This Island’)

1


Why this topic?

The research topic is a development of the informal research that I undertook for teaching

and talks that I have given over the past four years as part of my voluntary work running the

Trumpington Community Orchard Project in Cambridge (TCOP). I am one of the four

founders of the project; at its inception we took the decision to plant ‘heritage’ varieties of

apple - those which had a history of being grown in East Anglia. In response to queries from

TCOP’s supporters and the media, I explored the history of the apple in cultivation and

mythology. I was struck by the concept of apples being marketed today as ‘heritage’; I

wanted to explore the cultural, social and psychological reasons behind the preservation and

celebration of old varieties of apple, since I had experienced the belief, held by the Project’s

volunteers and various ‘heritage’ growers, that old varieties deserved to be valued more

highly than modern apples. There was much support for the idea that it is worth persisting in

growing apple trees that may not provide the largest or most reliable crop, in order to

preserve a rare variety. During my research and work with orchard supporters I developed

some statements, or beliefs, even, about the English relationship to the apple. It is these

statements, summarised as ‘structure’, below, which I wish to investigate further.

Hypothesis

I believe that I can demonstrate that apples have acquired layers (a discourse) of significance

to their English consumers, over and above their importance as a foodstuff. These layers were

acquired primarily during the Victorian era, and affected the cultural and symbolic status of

the apple, as well at its commercial value. The current trend of orchard restoration and

saving old varieties draws on the Victorian championing of apples. There is evidence that

the Victorians developed and re-worked apple myths and traditions from earlier eras in order

to mould the social agenda concerning landscape, rural stability and the notion of certain

desirable home and family behaviours. I will describe these significances and analyse why

they were developed and sustained in the Victorian era, and thus describe the complexities of

the Victorian cultural and social relationship to apples, orchards, growers and consumers.

2


Structure and chapter plan

The use of the term ‘investigation’ in my suggested thesis title allows me to develop

my research around the following three questions, each of which gives rise to supplementary

ones:

i) How did the Victorians consume apples? – how did they grow, sell, buy, eat, profit from

and advertise apples and their related products.

ii) How was the symbol or sign of the apple used, and to what purpose? – in art, literature,

speech and decoration.

iii) What did the Victorians think of orchards and apple trees? – as part of the landscape, as a

symbolic representation (of loss?), as significant to English identity and the cultural

representations of the nature of women.

While formulating answers to those questions I will also consider how the symbolism

of apples and orchards has persisted and has contemporary cultural relevance to modern

apple consumers and growers. I do not anticipate comparing and contrasting the two periods

at every point of my thesis, but I will draw out the differences and similarities, and analyse

them in the concluding chapter. My aim is to give this research contemporary cultural

relevance and to make a valuable and original contribution to the debates on heritage foods

and traditional foodways, enabling my work to be used by others in the academic disciplines

of food and cultural history.

I have not developed a detailed chapter outline at present. I could devote a large

chapter to each of the three major questions, or I could organise the material more

thematically. At present I feel that I need to gather more material before I can map the

relevant connections and draw key points between the information and the writers’ opinions.

What I wish to avoid, however, is the very linear and empirical line taken by Mabberley,

Morgan et al in previous histories of the apple. Therefore I have used the chapter outline to

sketch out some areas for consideration under each question, but these are very much subject

to addition and reorganisation as the research progresses. All chapter titles are provisional

and intended more as an aide memoire. My sources are discussed in further detail in the

accompanying literature review, and listed in the bibliography.

i) The Economic Apple

This chapter will form the spine of my social and cultural research and provide the

answers to my first question – in what ways did the Victorians consume apples? I shall

3


consider the economic importance of the apple, and investigate if its value as a commodity

changed during the Victorian era. My hypothesis is that varieties of sweet eating apples were

considered valuable, and this is evidenced by the effort and expertise that was put into

developing new varieties, both by amateurs and for commercial orchards. There is also

evidence in the court cases of the day (written up in the Old Bailey records and in the local

press), showing that apple trees were worth going to court over, with owners seeking

compensation for theft or damage. Victorian agriculture suffered periods of depression but

there is evidence that fruit farmers, particularly those in East Anglia, were shielded from the

effects of this, as they were not dependent on corn or livestock prices, and their crop survived

the unusually harsh winters of the period.

In the East of England and the Home Counties the commercial apple crop was not

grown on large scale orchards, but on a whole network of small orchards and market gardens.

There is evidence of these in, for example, the maps around Wisbech, which show orchards

circling the town, far bigger than could be needed to supply the town alone. Wisbech

acquired a railway line and this led to further expansion of the orchards, particularly to grow

the new Bramley Seedling variety for cooking. High pectin apples went into cider and,

particularly in East Anglia, into jam. Family jam making enterprises such as Chivers also put

money into apple development – there is a variety still extant called Chivers Delight. This

demonstrates that the apple was becoming commodified, in that it was put into more

complete products; it had added value – rather than just being sold as a raw ingredient by the

costermongers.

The apple was, of course, a very familiar foodstuff to the Victorians, and the

costermongers who sold them were an accepted part of the urban street scene. For writers and

commentators the apple woman, however, lacked the romantic appeal of the girl selling

oranges or posies; rather costermongers were renowned among the literate classes for their

poverty and rough manners. For example, here is an extract from one journalist’s fastidious

report of his penetration into a den of vice; a ‘costermongers’ ‘free and easy’’

‘The costermongers have not very strict notions of meum and tuum; they are not remarkable for

keeping all the commandments; their reverence for the conventional ideas of decency and propriety is

not very 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.’

(Ritchie, Ewing J 1858)

Between the rough costermongers and the clean, rural orchards were the produce

markets of London (and other major cities). I have found in one contemporary source tables

4


showing the numbers of bushels of apples that were processed by the various markets, but I

have not been able to find many contemporary sources or other information to cross reference

the quantities. I hope to investigate the archives of the Fruiterers’ Guild and any other leads;

perhaps in the Museum of London. At present I cannot find evidence of any academic

research into this area.

Part of the investigation of the apple as a commercial product could develop into

researching products that were for sale at the time, such as tinned or bottled fruit and various

preserves and desserts. I feel that this strand of the investigation is the appropriate place to

consider how apples were used in the domestic kitchen (and in restaurants); even a brief

study of Victorian cookery books confirms that apples were used in many different dishes,

and cooked apples were also considered a ‘safe’ food for infants and invalids. Catering for

these groups takes up a large proportion of many standard family cookery books. Since the

apple is so perishable, there is little advertising for it –apple products had a short shelf life

and, in this era before frozen or chilled food, were made and consumed locally in bakeries

and restaurants. However how much the apple was enjoyed by all classes is illustrated in the

wide variety of recipes, some of them very ornate and fine dining; the apple was not just

baked, stewed or put in a pie, but could become a dainty dessert for guests.

The Symbolic Apple

This incorporates the themes of class and culture, woven into a thread of symbolism,

where the apple pickers, and the life of the orchard, stand for nostalgia for a feudal way of

life that the Victorians saw being overturned. Down in the orchard, however, the Wassail

ceremony, like many harvest and seasonal rites, had a suggestion of anarchy in which the

feudal order was, briefly, set aside if not overturned. In some regions a small boy was hoisted

into the apple tree, and took on the part of the master of ceremonies that one might expect

would be taken by the land owner. In nearly all Wassails the land owner was expected to

provide food and especially drink for the workers, and to serve them personally.

Under this theme I could consider the importance of the farmed landscape, or rather

the representations of farming and its ideals, to the Victorians, and specifically I will

investigate how the Victorians perceived the orchard and used it symbolically as a space

performing particular functions. Recent research has expanded the idea of reading the

landscape, and feminist historians have introduced the idea of the gendered landscape, largely

through literary examples. I am interested in exploring the idea of the orchard as a very

specific, unique space; part garden, part farmed landscape. As an enclosed space it is female

5


in nature, decorative, widely held to be peaceful and safe. Examples that I have found so far

esteem the orchard as a symbol of an ordered bucolic landscape that many Victorian writers

contrasted favourably with the changing urban environment, which they felt was a physical

desecration and a morally destructive force on the country.

Certainly apple growing resisted mechanisation or large scale farming practices that

were found in other crops. Since the majority of growers were either smallholders or small

scale tenant farmers, it was in their own interests for the countryside to remain unchanged.

Apple harvesting was a community effort, with woman and children helping to gather the

crop. It usually took place in good weather and was observed by artists, writers and memoir-

writers to be a time of celebration and plenty. This community spirit is partly what the

instigators of modern Apple Days and community tree projects are hoping to re-capture.

Woods and forests have a long history of a place of ‘the other’ – wilderness originally

meant a thicketed wood, not a vast open space. With their shadows and possibilities for

escape, woods have attracted outlaws, poachers and many looking for an alternative lifestyle.

In the Victorian era there are examples of alternative religious sects attempting to set up new

Edens in forests, and trees retained their older mysticism and symbolic references throughout

the Victorian era, even at a time of strong Christian observance. That such deference was

paid to trees can be seen as a way of counter-balancing the middle class, urban discourse that

came to prominence at the time.

The Cultural apple

It follows from consideration of the apple as a symbol of the old order that the apple

finds its way into the Victorian pre-occupation with class and status. I will consider how the

apple can be used to illustrate Victorian concerns with rural poverty and the urban underclass,

and if Victorian writers freighted apples with the same symbolism. I will discuss the answers

to my second question – how did the Victorians see the apple – and consider specifically why

these ideas were important to Victorian society, and what did social commentators feel was

lacking or had been lost; what was it that Victorian bucolic art was reacting against?

I will take as an example the representations of women with apples, since such works

of art and social commentaries demonstrate both ends of the class spectrum. Representations

linking feminine beauty with the apple start with Idrun – the Norse Goddess, and continue

through classical Romans with their Goddess Pomona, the goddess of harvest and fruit, who

was shown carrying a basket of apples– Pomona is Latin for apple. Classical representations

linked the apple with femininity and peace – the Greek myth of Atlanta demonstrates an

6


independent woman athlete being tamed (or duped) into the feminine role of lover (and wife)

by the temptation of golden apples.

Eve became rapidly linked to the apple in early Christian art, although the fruit is not

defined as such in the Hebrew texts, just as a fruit. Early Medieval representations of the

Adam and Eve story used the apple as it was a fruit well known to both artist and

worshippers, and easily seen in a painting across some distance. At a time when artistic

representations of Christian themes were in flux – for example the varying depictions of

Lucifer the link between Eve and the apple was determined very quickly, and has remained as

a constant.

Eve became a symbol of sexual womanhood, of all the characteristics that were

considered to be weaknesses or faults of the female nature – deviousness, trickery, guile,

inconstancy, faithlessness, sexual enthusiasm, (leaving aside the obvious truth that men can

possess these traits as well); thus Eve became the opposite to the Virgin Mary, both being

necessary to hold the idea of the other.

In secular representations, the apple became linked to a class that was particularly

celebrated by the mid and late Victorians – the unmodernised rural working class, in

particular the ‘apple cheeked’ country maiden. Agricultural workers were viewed as the

antithesis of the corrupted, pale, dirty, unhealthy urban slum dwellers, but of course the mass

migration into cities meant that most slum dwellers had been country maidens only a few

years or months previously, and conditions in country cottages were often as cramped,

insanitary and morally lax as in any of the slums of London.

Henry Mayhew, walking through those slums and interviewing their inhabitants,

described the costermongers in detail, and noted that they had formed a distinct ‘tribe’ with

their own language and customs. I will explore the origins of the costermongers and their

association with apples in particular, and their representations in the Victorian press, as an

example of the concern with the behaviour of the lower orders.

The apple is seen as something wholesome in the midst of the city – cooked apple in

particular was recommended as part of the diet of infants, and it held enough attraction for

children to try to steal apples from the carts. It was a pure item – unlike milk or bread there

was no way in which an apple could be adulterated, and therefore it was associated with

innocence, claiming it back again from Eve and the idea of the apple as evil.

However the apple’s strongest symbolic association is with the fall of man, and

woman’s sin, and therefore a woman offering an apple can never be trusted, as Snow White,

of course, discovered.

7


Apple growers are an interesting representation of the social structure. The Victorian

era saw a huge increase in the number of apple varieties being grown. Many of these were

bred up by the gardeners on large estates, and although they put the work in (literally the hard

graft) the apples were named after their employers. Examples of such named varieties still

extant include Lady Henniker and Lord Burleigh. These professional gardeners often carried

off the prizes at local flower and produce shows, where their employer may be acting as

judge. One step down from estate gardeners in status could be found the dedicated hobby

breeders, the vicars and local squires who were putting their spare time into breeding new

varieties of apples to suit their own fancy.

Class was not fixed within the Victorian period and many social commentators were

concerned with the pace of change. The impact of Darwin’s publications must be considered

– both on botany and on its implications for the social order. Perhaps some growers were

breeding ‘good’ apples – well behaved trees. Certainly the language in some of the apple

catalogues is bordering on anthropomorphic, describing apples as ‘handsome’ or ‘reliable’.

Threats to the existing order saw many writers looking back to the feudal order, and

especially to strengthening the family structure; attaching increasing importance to family,

domestic celebrations such as Christmas. This moved away from being an occasion for

communal feasting and into the domestic parlour, attended by closest family and friends only.

The riotous wassail celebration became a sweet drink served to the adults in the family.

Victorian writers re-interpreted some Christmas traditions and moved them within the

domestic setting. These writers were reacting against the growth of cities and towns, and the

uncertainty that was around them in the doubts about religions, evolution and the changes in

social order, especially in the later Victorian era, where certainty was dwindling.

Methodology

The apple is particularly suited to a thematic study, drawing on new areas of research

within history including landscape history, gender history, history of the emotions and

branches of food history. I will also look to anthropology, social sciences, literature studies

and psychology for further insights into the actions of those who cultivate, eat and celebrate

apples. My research will take an interdisciplinary, holistic approach, analysing

representations of the apple within folklore, literature, art, culinary works and some material

artefacts. My sources are discussed in the literature review.

8


Scope

I have been reading around the theory of materials culture, or materials history, which

is a new field to me. There is cross-over between materials history and food history, but an

apple itself is a very temporary artefact, a consumable product. At present I feel that looking

at surviving artefacts (cider presses, apple barns, kitchen gadgets) takes me further away from

the apple itself. I have found, however, that looking at (and eating) the Victorian apple

varieties that are extant does have some merit, in that I can gain an insight into what the

Victorians esteemed in an apple. There are newspaper reports of apples that grew to a large

size (measured in girth, more often than weight) and of trees which produced a great quantity

of apples. The extremes of size, shape and colour in these old apples are striking to a

modern consumer, and something that the champions of ‘heritage varieties’ today seem to

enjoy and comment upon the most. Therefore I will incorporate the debates and insights from

the field of materials culture, but discussion of apple artefacts and relics, other than the

varieties themselves, will be outside the scope of this research.

I am setting some practical limits on my research, especially that conducted on

primary sources. For examples of commercial orchards I will consider those in East Anglia,

especially the Bramley orchards around Wisbech. I will consider the economic evidence for

how apples were bought and sold in London, particularly in the Fruit Markets of the period.

Although there is plenty of material on the cider industry in the West Country I feel that cider

production is a separate topic, and I will not consider it except tangentially. I will look at

cider in regard to Victorian attitudes to alcohol, and the survival of the Wassail and similar

rites, but I do not wish to examine the economics of cider making.

Talks Attended

I have been looking for seminars and conferences on food history or studies, which, as

a growing subject, often attracts speakers from across the disciplines as well as from the food

trade. I have attended the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery twice, first in 2007,

when the theme was 'authenticity' and again in 2011 when the theme was 'celebration.' In

2011 I presented a paper on the wassail tradition, which was well received and has been

published in the Symposium papers. Oxford attracts some notable food historians including

Warren Belasco, Paul Levy, Ken Albama and Bee Wilson.

9


I have also attended the Leeds Food Symposium twice; the first time was at least eight

years ago, and the theme was cookery books. This year the theme was 'vegetables' with

Malcolm Thick and Ivan Day as the key speakers. This year I have been invited to speak on

apple folklore, as the theme is 'fruit.'

In the autumn of 2011 Cambridge University’s Centre for Research into Arts and

Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) set up the Food and Drink network. I attended as

many of the seminars in the Michaelmas term as I could, including: ‘Intoxication and

Sociality: The Symposium in the Ancient Greek World’ with Professor Robin Osborne

(Classics, University of Cambridge); ‘Dialogues in Trust: Eating in India, Bangladesh and

Britain’ with Dr Manpreet Janeja (Social Anthropology, University of Cambridge); ‘Routes

to Food Consumption in Deep History’ Professor Martin Jones (Archaeology, University of

Cambridge) and ‘History, Food and Drink’ with Dr Phil Withington and Dr Lizzie

Collingham (History, University of Cambridge). Unfortunately work commitments meant I

was not free so often in the Lent and Easter terms, but I attended ‘Weighty matters – Lessons

from Historical Body Mass’ with Deborah Oxley (Professor of Economics, University of

New South Wales); ‘Brimmers and boozers – materialities, identities and politics of drinking

in Early Modern England’ with Dr Angela McShane (V & A – RCA History of Design) and

‘Eating as a Moral Philosophy’ with Richard Wilk, (Anthropology, Indiana University) and a

discussion seminar on ‘Delight and disgust – the alteration of the senses’ led by Lizzie

Collingham and Mark Jenner (History, University of York). I also attended the Comparative

Social and Cultural History seminars at Clare College, since they were exploring food

themes.

In 2012 I attended conferences to improve my knowledge of current themes and

debates in the fields of social and cultural history, and to increase my connections to other

researchers. In March I attended the one-day conference of the Histories of Home Subject

Specialist Network , entitled ‘What’s cooking? Food and eating at home.’ In May I attended

‘Putting Historical Theory Into Practice’, a one-day study day organised by the Centre for

History and Theory at Roehampton University and History Lab. The interactive sessions

looked at current historical theory and the ways in which theory can be used in producing

historical research. I have since attended a number of the ‘methods workshops’ organised by

the History Lab and hosted and presented by doctoral students from different universities.

These have been really useful for making me feel connected to my academic peer group;

something that I otherwise unavoidably miss out on as a part-time student at some distance

from my campus. Recently I attended a one-day course at the British Library on using

10

http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1768/

http://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/1768/


archives to research food issues. Although most of the speakers were from a social science

background the themes and methodology were common to all. Key speakers included

Stephen Mennell.

Speaking engagements 2013

I am booked to speak on aspects of the history of the apple to the following groups:

Leeds Symposium on Food History

Cambridgeshire Orchard Conference

Plant Heritage Group

Herbal History Group

Scotsdales Garden Centre Apple Day

Bourne Garden Club

I have recently given a short interview on local radio about the TCOP’s ‘Wassail Weekend.’

11


Literature Review

Scope

In these preliminary stages my research has been primarily text-based, and more

wide-ranging and superficial than detailed. In the first few weeks of study I took steps to

refresh my skills as an academic researcher and historian, after a decade away from

academia. I therefore read and considered discussions on the current trends in historiography,

with particular focus on the postmodernist school. Since my research is of necessity, and

inclination, multi-disciplinary, many postmodern techniques, especially semiotics and textual

deconstruction, are essential tools. I discovered in my preliminary reading that they are now

so much part of the mainstream analytical methods that any social and culturally focussed

study would seem incomplete without them.

This initial review, therefore, is confined to those works that are, hopefully, relevant

to the research topic, and does not include sources that I consulted to improve my research

skills. Those are however listed in the attached bibliography. I begin with primary sources,

which I am defining as any text, artwork etc created during the Victorian era itself. I have not

differentiated between those I have accessed in the original and those accessed as

reproductions or online.

Primary Sources

In 1847 D T Fish published The Apple, its history, varieties and cultivation, which,

although thorough, was only one of a number of books on the subject of pomology. In the

mid-Victorian era, apples in particular and fruit in general were a popular subject for

scholarly enquiry as well as horticultural practice. In 1851 Robert Hogg outdid Fish with his

British Pomology. In the introduction he acknowledged his sources, notably George

Lindley’s A Guide to the Orchard and Kitchen Garden (1831) and the catalogue of apples

compiled by Mr Robert Thompson, Fruit Superintendent at the Royal Horticultural Society.

(He did not include Fish, presumably because Hogg’s work would have been almost

complete at the time of Fish’s publication). Hogg noted that there had been such growth in

the varieties of apple that both Lindley’s and Thompson’s work required updating. In their

12


respective introductions both Lindley and Hogg romanticise about 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. Lindley’s catalogue of apple varieties, which

forms over half of the text, describes them in terms that could be applied to children; St

Padley’s Pippin is ‘a very neat and excellent dessert apple.’ The Nonesuch is ‘handsome’ and

the Pomme de Neige is ‘beautiful and singular.’ Both works consider the origins of each

variety they describe to be of importance – as much a part of the description of the apple as

its taste or how to cultivate it – and of interest to their readers. This interest in the story and

symbolism of the apple can be found in other texts of the period (and of the present day),

even cookery books.

Georgiana Hill’s contribution to the Household Manual series, How to cook apples

shown in a hundred different ways (1864), states in the introduction that ‘an apple is the

emblem of temptation: in the language of flowers, its blossoms denote preference; and in the

interpretation of dreams, apples are indicative of joy and gladness.’ Which last seems

somewhat contrary to the emblem of temptation, and demonstrates the dual nature of the

apple as both pure and sinful.

I am using Hogg (who leans on Lindley) as my key primary text, because his history

of the apple in cultivation has been proved through the works of later horticulturalists to be

the most reliable and accurate, and because of the high status Hogg achieved in his life within

Victorian horticulture and botany (his biography is given in Morgan, 2002). Hogg sees the

apple as a native plant, the sweetness and different varieties being attributed to man-made

selection or natural hybridisation. He also draws on examples from Celtic literature to show

that the apple was ‘known to the ancient Britons, before the arrival of the Romans.’ He

therefore dispels the popular idea that the Romans introduced the sweet apple to England;

whereas Fish is vague about the history of the eating apple and can only say ‘it is generally

supposed’ that the Romans were responsible. Hogg also demonstrates that the apple was not

lost to cultivation entirely between the departure of the Romans and the Tudor period. Indeed

Hill also notes that ‘Tradition tells us that the brightest ornaments to the monasteries of the

Middle Ages were the flourishing apple gardens which surrounded them’ although she gives

no sources for this. Hogg, and to a slightly lesser extent, Lindley, note the confusion of

names for apples – there are lists of synonyms for almost every variety, and local

pronunciations add to the mix. For example, an apple famous in the period, the Norfolk

Beefing, (still grown today) is listed in Lindley as the Norfolk Beaufin and ‘undoubtedly a

13


Norfolk variety’. Lindley notes 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.’ Hogg, however, describes the apple as German in origin, records

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.’ ‘Beaufin’, to Hogg, erroneously implies a

French origin for this variety. The Biffin is the apple delicacy mentioned in Dicken’s

Christmas Carol – ‘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.’ (first published 1843).

This etymological discord makes tracing the origins of any apple now extant a difficult

undertaking; modern DNA tests in use at the National Fruit Collection are likely to see 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. Hogg lists

942 different named varieties. Both authors claim that they have made extensive tours of the

country studying the different growing conditions and local varieties. Hogg makes an attempt

to classify apples by their characteristics, drawing on the work of German botanists, but then

gives a more useful classifications by colour, season of ripening and growth habits. These

categories have survived as of practical use to gardeners; see Mikolajski (2012) for an

example.

Lindley lists 214 separate apples, saying, in defeat, that the variety of apples is ‘far

too numerous to attempt any thing (sic) 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.’Lindley 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 valuable from Hogg and Lindley is the tone of

enthusiasm for the apple, and the pride in its growers. Hogg gives his volume extra authority

by citing the work of the Royal Horticultural Society, and his work references scientific

language. It is therefore possible to deconstruct and evaluate Hogg’s work as a text, as well

as reading it for the content. It conforms to the structure of other works on the apple,

beginning with the history and leading into lists of varieties. The language has a tone of

certainty, and the use of Latin quotes indicates the level of education that Hogg expects from

14


his readers. This text can be compared to Darwin’s entry on the apple, in The Variation of

Animals and Plants Under Domestication, (1868) which, although more academic in tone,

especially in his use of references, conforms in content on the difficulty of differentiating

apples. Darwin’s focus, however, is different:

‘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.’(1868 vol 1) For Hogg, and for growers and appreciative

consumers of apples then and now, it is precisely this characteristic that gives the apple its

particular interest.

Hogg’s bibliography provides details of other Victorian texts on the apple, and reveals

the earlier works Hogg saw as authorities on the history of the apple. Hogg’s bibliography

lists works on horticulture from the seventeenth century, as well as works from Germany and

France. Illustrated Floras were in fashion at the time of Hogg’s work, with the development

of botanical painting and improvements in colour printing techniques decreasing production

costs and making the volumes more available. Pomonas, beautifully illustrated catalogues of

fruit varieties, were part of this fashion, and Hogg cites both Pomona Londonensis, compiled

by William Hooker, editor of the Botanical Magazine, and, the even more decorative,

Pomona Britannica, compiled and illustrated by George Brookshaw. The effort, time and

expense given to producing such works demonstrates that the Victorians perceived apples as

much more than a humble ingredient of pies or cider, but as decorative elements in even the

finest and most fashionable gardens. In the introduction to his Pyrus Malus Brentfordiensis,

Hugh Ronalds says ‘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.’

There were also many books and periodicals offering practical advice for the new

gardener in Victorian suburbs or the expanding market towns. The authority and expertise of

the gardener to the nobility on the large country estate added status to these publications

when they were drafted in as authors, or when an aristocrat provided the introduction. For

example in 1847 The Gardener’s Monthly devoted two volumes to ‘The Apple’, carefully

noting the authors as ‘George W Johnson and R Errington (Gardener to Sir Philip Egerton,

Bart)’. This style was perhaps continued from early recipe books, such as the closet of the

eminently learned Sir Kenelm Digby, opened (1669), although cookery books written in the

Victorian era tend to stress that they are for the private family, the domestic cook, and offer

15


advice on economy, rather than status and display. (See below)

Domestic gardening was such a popular hobby in mid-Victorian England that weekly

publications appeared, such as The Gardener’s Chronicle, which began in 1841. References

to apples occur often in The Chronicle, usually in the form of a note from a reader or

contributor, enquiring about their apple tree and its growth. There is discussion over the

nomenclature of varieties and descriptions of various trees. Questions of practical

horticulture, such as feeding or pruning, appear far less frequently. The other regular

reference to apples in the Chronicle is contained within the reports from the London

wholesale fruit markets, where the wholesale price of apples is listed, when in season,

weekly. This shows that the magazine was intended to reach commercial growers as well as

amateur gardeners. However it appears that James Webber is not the most enthusiastic of

correspondents, since most of the reports describe trade as ‘quiet’, ‘dull’ or ‘no alteration.’

Webber record s the imports of apples from Canada and America, which are suppressing

domestic sales. A detail for further enquiry is that the quantity of apples is given in ‘sieves’,

but at present I have not been able to find the capacity of the sieve.

In The Food of London (1856) George Dodd attempts to calculate how much fresh

fruit is brought into London. He first notes the difficulty of obtaining reliable data, and

attempts to make a definition of the bounds of London, deciding that it ends in the belt of

market gardens that ring the city. Dodd takes his figures from the work of Mayhew,

published in The London Chronicle in 1849. The total estimate of fruit traded through

London markets is given as 17, 150 tons per year. Dodd comments ‘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.’ and it is interesting to note the importance given to fresh

fruit at this time, when the modern perception of the Victorian diet is of little fruit except that

cooked in puddings, and few, overcooked, vegetables. In fact eating fresh fruit and vegetables

was encouraged, although with some caveats, as expressed in an American book, The Market

Assistant (Voe, de 1867) which gives an 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.’ Eliza Acton also warns against the fashion for serving vegetables crisp,

on the grounds of health.

Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor (1861), drew attention to the lives

of the Costermongers – the fruit sellers, who, Mayhew relates, saw themselves as a separate

16


‘tribe’ and had particular habits. Mayhew uses quotes from Beaumont and Fletcher and Dr

Johnson to illustrate the costermonger’s lineage and long history. Mayhew’s portraits of

street life are certainly colourful and at times romanticised, but his research was genuine and

he was among a cohort of Victorian reformers attempting to draw attention to the terrible

living conditions of the poor. His details are fascinating; he gives as much attention to the

vagaries of the apple trade as do the costermongers themselves. I shall draw on Mayhew

further when considering the use of the apple as a symbol within depictions of the Victorian

lower classes, both urban and rural. Current historians are still finding new material in

Mayhew; Gallagher uses Malthus and Mayhew to analyse their representations of the

physical bodies of the working class as a metaphor for the social organism. (Gallagher 1986).

Other texts of the period that I have studied so far have included those giving

descriptions of how to cultivate a domestic orchard, such as The Gentleman’s House, Robert

Kerr (1864) and various cookery and domestic arts books. Mrs Beeton’s Book of Household

Management (1861) lists over a hundred dessert and pudding recipes, demonstrating the

British love of sweet things. Apples feature in recipes as diverse as apple snow and apple

soup. I do not anticipate making an exhaustive list of apple recipes of the period, since the

provenance of such recipes is obscure and often disputed. However my overview has

indicated that apples are used in haute cuisine recipes as often as they are in plain or family

dishes. Francatelli, chef to Queen Victoria, has a recipe for an elaborate dessert called Apples

a la Portuguaise in The Modern Cook (1846, quoted in Currah, 1973). He also has baked

apples, apple dumplings, apple pudding and apple-water in his A Plain Cookery Book for the

Working Classes (1861). The apple does not have any class attached to it as an ingredient,

unlike, for example, certain animal parts, although it does carry the symbolism of what may

now be called ‘comfort food.’ I have, as yet unverified, references that both Queen Victoria

and Dickens were particularly fond of baked apples.

The last strand of primary information about the apple comes from almanacs, day

books and similar compendiums about rituals and customs, which recount descriptions of

wassailing and other folklore. One example that I have looked at is William Hone’s The

every-day book and table book (1830) However, these must be approached with caution since

many mainstream Victorian writers and their publishers were working to a social and cultural

agenda that celebrated home, harmony and the sanctity of domestic rituals. Maidment notes

that although almanacs had 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

17


their distant recall of the demands of the liturgical year.' (Maidment in John and Jenkins (eds)

1996) Roud notes that ‘Victorians had an uncanny knack of clothing their inventions and re-

modelled traditions in an aura which implied that they were traditional and ancient,’ (Roud

2000) and this is certainly the case with many aspects of the rural folk calendar, including

wassailing, tree dressing and May Day rites. I undertook specific research into the wassail

before I began this wider project, and noted that the accounts of wassailing given in almanacs

are often re-working of earlier accounts. It is difficult to unpick the earlier ritual from the

Victorian re-modelling, but I believe that it is an important theme to explore, since it

illuminates the Victorian nostalgia for ‘Merrie England’ that existed more in the collective

cultural imagination. The Victorian desire to keep up old orchards and preserve varieties of

apple, as well as encouraging some form of wassail ritual, are all indications of this. I am

following the new research into the history of emotions in order to root my belief into current

historiography.

Other non-fiction primary sources that I will incorporate in my research include

national popular press and regional newspapers such as The Eastern Daily Press (obtainable

from the Norwich Records Office). I have obtained some interesting information from the

court records of the Old Bailey, where certain court cases concerning theft of apples and

damage to apple trees has demonstrated the material value of the trees to their owners, even

allowing for the high penalties meted out for theft of low-value items.

I have begun to research maps of the area around Wisbech, Cambridgeshire. This

town was ringed with orchards in the late Victorian period and the new railway ensured that

London was a ready market for the apple crop. I have looked at maps drawn in 1837, where

although the land is agricultural, no orchards are listed, and in 1887, where orchards, likely to

have been Bramley apples underplanted with gooseberries (Mason 2010), are shown

surrounding the small town. I intend to visit the archives of the Wisbech museum next year,

and to consult the tithe maps held in the National Archives.

At present I am concerned that I have not been able to determine many primary or

indeed secondary sources on commercial fruit growing, apart from a few nursery catalogues

(such as those from the Rivers Nursery). I would like to trace manuals for commercial

growers, which would give evidence on the spacing of trees at the time, and possibly on what

varieties were best for larger scale production. There are some gardener’s records from large

estates (eg Audley End) but I have not found anything purely commercial. I am also trying to

trace the records from the British Pomological Society, which was founded by Dr Hogg and

existed from 1854 – 1864 (Cambridge University Library has the Transactions from 1857)

18


before being subsumed into the Royal Horticultural Society, and of the Woburn experimental

fruit farm (which was a project endorsed by the RHS), as well as the RHS’ own orchards at

Chiswick.

I also intend to bring in examples from memoirs, novels, children’s books and non-

text primary sources where appropriate. I recently attended the exhibition ‘Pre-Raphaelites:

Victorian Avant Garde’ (Tate Britain, London 2012) and I am collating examples of the

apple, both actual and symbolic, in Victorian painting, poetry and popular culture.

During 2013 I will undertake visits to archives that I have identified as holding useful

primary source material. These are: The Royal Horticultural Society, The National Fruit

Collection at Brogdale Farm (archives curated by the University of Reading), The University

of Cambridge Botanic Garden (which holds a collection of pomonas), Kew Garden archives,

the Brotherton Collection of cookery books at the University of Leeds, The National Archive,

Norwich Records Office, Wisbech Museum archives and Cambridge History Archives

(which holds a collection of material from Chivers jam plant).

Secondary Sources

My initial literature review has included texts exploring the following themes;

i) theory of the Victorian era overall

The Victorian era has undergone several re-evaluations in recent times and I find that the

works on the era now being published have given Victorian studies greater academic

credence to an era which, when I first studied it, seemed to be one where there was little left

to discover. I eased my way back in to the social and cultural evaluation with Matthew Sweet,

Inventing the Victorians, (2001) where he debunks the myths that the Victorians were, among

other traits, earnest and prudish, and demonstrates that modern society has much in common

with Victorian times, outwardly in its leisure pursuits, love of spectacle, novelty and gadgets,

and inwardly in a surprisingly tolerant attitude towards differing expressions of sexuality,

loss of religious faith and alternative lifestyles. Seeing the Victorians as ourselves in different

clothes is an idea explored in Victorian afterlife: postmodern culture re-writes the nineteenth

century, (Kucich and Sadoff (eds) 2000) where the contributors consider how the cultural

critic views the modern interpretations of the Victorian period, and how their investigations

‘construct a history of the present by writing about rewritings of the Victorian past.’ I would

argue that constructing, or at least commenting on, one’s own era is inevitable when writing

about the past; deconstructing Victorian texts about the early history of the apple will inform

me about all three eras – that under discussion, that of the writer, and my own. I have found

19


Christopher Kent’s article ‘Post-Thompson, Post-Foucault, postmodern’ (in Victorian Studies

1996) Postmodernism for Historians by Callum Brown (2005) and Deconstructing History

by Alan Munslow (1997) to be the most helpful works in negotiating my way through

postmodern history theory. I have read the principle arguments in Debord’s The Society of the

Spectacle (1983) and some of Foucault’s writing; the theory of heterotopias is something that

I will be able to discuss when considering the significance of orchards and gardens. I have

also become intrigued by the idea of gendered landscapes, and particularly Jacqueline

Labbe’s insight that women’s landscapes are enclosed and at ground level, where as

masculine views take in the unbounded landscape from the high ground or exposed vantage

point. This would make an enclosed orchard a particularly feminine space, which feeds into

the symbolic weight of the apple – perhaps the fruit most closely aligned to the ‘female’.

(Labbe 1998). I recognise that I need to become more adept at incorporating theory within

my research, and I intend to read and refer to it throughout my studies, rather than devoting

one particular period of time to it, so that it will underpin my more specific research.

ii) materials culture

Asa Brigg’s study of Victorian things (1988) drew out the social history narrative from non-

elite items such as the safety match. Since then, materials culture has become a fashionable

way of understanding the past. Certainly the Victorian era lends itself to study of its

commodities, since it was the period that discovered, if it did not name, the concept of

‘added value’, and revelled in trade, new commodities and advertising. Thomas Richards

notes that: 'This series of advertised spectacles perfected the process by which the middle

class justified the ways of capital to man.’ (1991) He uses Debord’s definition of spectacle as

the medium by which messages of capitalist stability were transmitted to, and within, the

middle classes. However he asserts that the consumer economy did not reach the working

class until the end of the Victorian era; the costermongers, not dealing in manufactured or

altered goods, were outside consumer culture. Thorstein Veblen, writing in 1899, defines the

leisure class in part by their conspicuous consumption of socially visible consumer goods.

However, A H Miller (1995) deconstructs Victorian novels to allow them to be viewed

through the commodities contained with them. His reading of Our Mutual Friend and of

Vanity Fair turns on the aspirations of working class characters to acquire high status goods.

It seems to me that working class, urban people would surely have been affected by

advertising, even if it was not intended for them, just as consumers are today. Victorian neo-

consumers would also be affected by displays in shop windows (made beautiful with electric

20


lights and plate glass) and contact with higher income folk displaying new goods and

fashions. As Stearns (2006) notes, from 1850 onwards, department stores added to the

atmosphere of urban shopping areas, turning shopping from a prosaic activity into an event.

Although they only accounted for five percent of shopping, they were the showcase for new

materials such as Celluloid and Rayon, and displayed how new items should be used or worn.

Food has become a useful commodity for considering the interplay of personal desires with

economic motivators. As Bruce Pietrykowski puts it ‘A key question for social economists is

whether material pleasure and the symbolic expression of identity through consumer goods is

compatible with a more politicized, socially conscious consumption ethos.’ (Dofsma (ed)

2008)

It may be possible to characterise the apple as a domestic product, rather more than a

simple ingredient, and one of those few items not transformed by the progress of

commodification into kitsch (Richards) or topical commodities. If the increase in apple

varieties and efficient growing methods, both commercial and amateur, is part of the

Victorian march of progress, it seems to me that the apple as a symbol within Victorian

culture is outside that forward drive, and indeed is used to represent the longing to slow down

progress or to reverse it and return (at least in culture) to an agrarian idyll.

iv) landscape and orchards

Under this theme I have reviewed texts on subjects including agriculture, the changes to the

rural landscape and society, and Victorian attitudes to it, and the emotional and psychological

importance of the landscape to the English national identity. I am thinking about how an

orchard fits into the man-made, but idealised, landscape, alongside other representations of

rural life and work. The Victorian orchard looked pleasing; even in commercial orchards any

technology of picking and packing was kept out of the way. Families picked apples together,

adding to the observer’s image of rural communal harmony. This symbolism became more

resonant during the agricultural depression of the 1880s, when orchard and soft fruit growing

was the area of agriculture least affected by the slump in cereal prices. Happy apple pickers

was one sector of the rural economy that could be represented without guilt.

Coppock (1956) notes that there are difficulties with the accuracy of the agricultural

statistics of the time, since some orchard land was recorded as market gardens, while

orchards underplanted with soft fruit were often recorded as a soft fruit area, and those with

sheep grazing underneath as pasture. Martins and Williamson (2008) note that commercial

fruit farms had begun to operate in the Fens as early as 1850, and that fruit farmers in this

21


region did indeed survive the depression, along with others who diversified into market

gardening, pigs, poultry and, above all, dairy farming (an industry less dependent on grain

that it is today.)

The Victorian landscape, therefore, was certainly changing at a pace that attracted

both comments and criticism, from rural and city folk (as documented in E P Thompson).

Wilder spaces held increasing allure, not only because of the Romantics and their celebration

of natural solitude, but through movements such as the Arts and Crafts and a variety of

alternative religions and groups who looked to forests and meadows as a refuge. This is

charted in Phlip Hoare’s book, England’s Lost Eden (2006), which links the actions of the

Girlingites, who followed their leader, Mary Ann Girling, into ultimate destitution and

homelessness in the New Forest, with a wider desire in society to found and find utopias,

connecting with the innocence of natural places. Elizabeth Baigent looks at the Commons

Preservation Society, and the campaign to Epping Forest, and argues that ‘Christianity

however was a significant motivation for some open space campaigners whose theology

explained how nature was to uplift those who experienced it.’ (2011) She notes that analyses

of the Victorian open space movements either consider it founded on anti-modernism and

nostalgia, or, as Hoare does, a progressive and democratic movement. ‘Many from each

camp agreed that the preservation of significant landscapes, which were overwhelmingly

rural, was linked to a changing understanding of national identity.’ (2011)

Roger Ebbatson looks at the England that is given to the reader in the work of

Tennyson, Quiller Couch and D H Lawrence, among other writers of the late nineteenth and

early twentieth century. He notes that, far from being a stable representation, the descriptions

are concerned with drawing and re-drawing imaginary boundaries in the light of increasing

cultural uncertainties. ‘Landscape representation … …acts as a ‘carrier’ of cultural authority

through the operation of a complex set of visual or verbal conventions. If modernity and the

industrial revolution cut humanity off from persistence and continuity, creating a rift between

the self and the environment, in favour of mobility and dynamism, any imagined return to a

place is fraught with a sense of the ghostly or the archaic… … The concept of Englishness is

thus produced out of trauma but becomes a potent constellation of values throughout a period

especially marked by a crisis of representation.’ (2005)

Nature writing was popular in the Victorian era, as a reaction against urbanisation. It

varied in sophistication from the columns of the Dicky Bird Society in the Newcastle

Chronicle and other children’s nature clubs, through to John Ruskin musing on landscapes,

buildings and nature paintings. Of course there were also scientific enquiries into how the

22


natural world functioned, leading to the work of Charles Darwin, among others. But this

dissection of nature’s wonders leaned up against both an increasing sentimentalism and more

realistic concern for animal welfare. In Man and the Natural World Keith Thomas argues that

campaigns and organisations such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals

was actually ‘yet another middle-class campaign to civilise the lower orders.’ (1984), who

saw animals as food or working machinery, and also resented similar interference in how

they should treat their children.

Modern writers about trees and landscapes are using emotive language that John

Evelyn, and Ruskin, would recognise. In Beechcombings, Richard Mabey describes his

attempt to make sense of the shape and life history of old pollarded beech in Burnham Wood;

‘I’m seeing it through a mist now, astonished that I could be so moved by a vegetable… [I try

to] frame it as a picture, the old Picturesque discipline. But the bony pterodactyl in its halo of

green does not look like any ancient landscape painting. It’s defiantly modernist. It could be a

Miro squiggle, or a bizarre surrealist coupling, or abstract expressionalism gone three-

dimensional.’ (2008) Here, Mabey uses imagery from art history, religion and evolution to

summon up the age-defying individuality of this tree.

There is a narrative of Victorian rural life that charts its decline as more landworkers

moved into the cities, and farming began to become mechanised and systematised. 'In 1801

four out every five people lived on farms, in hamlets or in villages: a hundred years later four

out of every five lived in towns and cities and earned their livings in ways increasingly

unconnected with the now decaying British Agriculture’ (Burnett, (ed) 1994)

Gary Moses (Rural History, 2011) argues that rural popular culture in mid-Victorian

years was not diminished, but instead adapted to the changes and continued to be robust in

their traditions. I believe that these rituals, especially those that could not be replicated in

urban settings such as fire ceremonies or well and tree dressing, served to strengthen 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, and fuelled the various movements looking

for an Eden in the countryside. However, as G E Fussell noted, (1949) the life of a rural

labourer 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. The cottage was most likely rented,

and the garden dug over for winter cabbages and potatoes. Despite this evidence, the

charming cottage is such a persistent fantasy that it is still all around the modern consumer of

the countryside, not just on the clichéd chocolate box lid, but in recipe books, television

23


programmes and holiday adverts. The current popularity of creating community orchards and

restoring ‘neglected’ ones is a response not only to a sense of loss of the country ways in

contemporary society, but also to the same concerns felt by the Victorians.

v) food and taste

As Ruark commented on the status of food historian Warren Belasco, ‘"food studies," is

much like rice: Once shunned as too ordinary, it's now a hot commodity, available in

countless varieties’ (Ruark 1999) Since then, food studies has grown further into a wide-

ranging but seriously regarded academic discipline. Therefore the number of food-related

resources available for research is innumerable, and growing every year. For this initial

review I have selected texts that are less empirically concerned with how particular sectors

of Victorian society cooked, in favour of those that consider the factors influencing the food

choices made by Victorian and modern societies. I have also looked at works that tackle the

history of single ingredients, and I discuss briefly below works that have influenced me

personally and informed my choice of research subject.

The key writers on taste, food and society must include the sociologist Pierre Bordieu,

whose Distinction: a social critique of the judgement of taste (1984) opened up the concept

of good and bad ‘taste’ far beyond food, and into the rituals of every self-selected item that

societies (in his case the contemporary French middle class) make, use and consume. A year

earlier, Anne Murcott had published The sociology of food and eating, (1983) which

considered the moral weight that can be attached to food choices, such as ‘a proper dinner.’

These articles were later added to and expanded in The sociology of food: eating, diet and

culture (Menell, 1992) which included articles by another key sociologist, Stephen Mennell.

Mennell’s study of the sociology of dining etiquette, All manners of food, had a long

historical scope, from the Middle Ages in French and English courts through to the time of

writing. (1985). Meanwhile, historians began to approach food from another angle, taking the

journey of diet or a single ingredient as a vehicle to carry a narration of history. Some, such

as Colin Spencer in The Heretics’ Feast, (1994) tracked certain diet choices (vegetarianism)

while others considered a single ingredient as emblematic of the passage of history.

Foremost among these was Sidney Minz’s masterly study of sugar, Sweetness and Power

(1986), although among the earliest must be Redcliffe Salaman’s extremely thorough text

The history and social influence of the potato, first published in 1949. Margaret Visser

deconstructed an entire ‘ordinary meal’ of chicken and rice with seasonings, followed by ice

cream, considering the history, myths and symbolism of each ingredient before tracking how

24


it ends up on the American plate. (Much depends on dinner 1989). Recent studies, written (or

at least packaged) for the popular end of the market have included An edible history of

humanity (Standage 2010) and Nicola Humble’s study of cookery books from Mrs Beeton to

‘now’; the book, Culinary Pleasures: cookbooks and the transformation of British food, was

published in 2005. More scholarly works have also approached food and cookery books as

cultural history, including the new six volume series A cultural history of food, (series editors

Fabio Parasecoli and Peter Scholliers, 2012), of which vol. 5 ‘In the age of Empire’ considers

the Victorian diet through themes including food production and systems, eating out, body

and soul and food representations. In choosing these themes, the editors and authors are

following the current focus of food studies practitioners, who debate the meanings inherent

and explicit in the modern meal and why (usually Western) consumers make certain choices,

often rejecting ‘sensible’ choices of nutrition and cost. Ulrik Thoms, writing the chapter

‘body and soul: from tension to bifurcation’ in the above volume acknowledges that the

history of philosophy has split the (physical) body from the (intellectual, emotional) soul.

Thoms concedes that, surprisingly, ‘the relation between food, body and soul is seldom

discussed head-on’ in food studies.. [although] eating and drinking, very material activities,

are also affective, if not necessarily sensuous activities: they generate sensations and are, in

turn, affected by moods.’ (p165) Deborah Lupton, also, argues that sociologists have ignored

food and eating choices, seeing taste and appetite as lower, more basic senses. She believes

that food can be classified into binary categories, masculine and feminine, comfort or

punishment, healthy or non healthy and, of course, raw or cooked. In this she is taking a

postmodernist approach wherein each sign also contains the notion of its opposing sign.

Lupton states; ‘Each of these binary oppositions contains the power to shape food preferences

and beliefs in everyday life, to support some food choices and militate against others, and to

contribute to the construction of subjectivity and embodied experiences.' (1996)

All of which esoteric debate stands against the sensual, experiential texts of cookery

books, which use particular and familiar phrases and vocabulary (both textural and pictorial)

to entice us to cook, or at least to buy and read the book. Cookery books have always been

more than compendiums of recipes, and those of the Victorian era usually contained advice

on domestic arrangements, managing servants and dealing with minor ailments. (excerpts

from the key works, together with notes and commentary can be found in The Victorian

Kitchen by Jennifer Davies, 1989). Modern food writers are usually well informed about the

heritage of a dish, and there are many which use the ideas of authenticity, or history, to add

allure to their recipes, albeit these are usually far removed, or at least updated, from any

25


original dish. Food writers often cross the boundaries between history, food studies and

cookery writing, as demonstrated by Elizabeth Luard, particularly in European Peasant

Cookery (2007), and the series of books on regional delicacies compiled, edited and written

by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown (originally one book; The taste of Britain, 2006). The

volume on East Anglia (From Norfolk knobs to fidget pie 2007) contains history, recipes and

a directory of local artisan producers. A final example of this trend, again picked from my

own bookshelf, is English puddings, sweet and savoury, by Mary Norwak (2009). This

includes unusual, and often delicious, recipes from the Victorian era, alongside those from

Mediaeval and Regency cuisine, with excerpts from the original manuscripts, many of which

are otherwise unpublished household recipes.

I have read many food-related texts from a number of disciplines – anthropology,

history, social sciences, geography before I began this doctoral research, and attended food

symposiums and conferences. I have also worked as a re-enactor, cooking ‘historical’ food in

modern day settings. My MA thesis concerned the representation of kitchens in English

country houses open to the public, and more recently I studied the history of chocolate for

about four years while working with a small chocolate company. Therefore I am most

confident with this aspect of my research. However, I believe that, fashionable though it may

be, the academic discipline of food studies is not yet able to stand alone, outside the remit of

another subject such as history, because as a subject it lacks the mechanisms for robust

challenge and academic debate. There is a great deal of research into exactly what was eaten,

and how, and with what, but rather less concern about ‘why’ certain foods became status

symbols, or were shunned, or were linked to particular life events. Once food choices evolve

past hunting and gathering, there is such complexity of choice that perhaps researchers feel

that they are moving away from what interests them, the food itself, into another area such as

psychology. However I think that, with history’s increasing interest in the non-material, such

as the history of emotions, together with the parallel development of materials culture, it is

possible to dig down past the recipes for apple pies, dumplings and sauce, into the reasons for

the consuming of an apple, raw and cooked, symbol of wild landscape and garden, of sin and

virtue.

vi) gardens and horticulture

26


At present I have not gone deeply into the study of the semiotic reading of gardens,

and I have not been able to find many texts that deconstruct a Victorian garden as a social

statement. With the enduring popularity of Victorian styles of garden and planting schemes,

and the ability to see ‘real’ Victorian gardens on the ground, there is less critical analysis of

the themes and purpose of a garden, and more books aimed at the practical gardener. Books

on the history of gardening tend to follow an uncritical story of the so-called’ development’

of the garden from the mediaeval bower through to the Victorian cottage garden, with the

secondary narrative of the changes in gardening fashions in the grand country houses running

in parallel. For example, the exceedingly popular The Victorian Kitchen Garden, (1997)

which came from the BBC television series of the same name.

I am compiling a reading list that will include alternative readings of gardens and

gardening as an activity, especially in relation to the role of women. I am also considering a

closer examination of pomonas and other botanical art sources from this angle, since most

were illustrated by women. I have been alerted to possibilities of such a reading from the

article by Jackson-Houlston (2006) I am also starting to consider the messages contained in

visual representations of orchards, including early photography. (See Kocol, 2010)

I have used Ray Desmond’s bibliographies of Victorian gardening magazines and of

actual gardens, to research availability of primary source material. I hope to find more

contemporary references directly related to domestic, ornamental fruit growing, and garden

planning incorporating orchard areas. There is overlap in this area of my reading list between

this, art and culture and apples themselves, so I anticipate that this topic may remain

relatively minor in terms of the number of specific garden-focussed sources consulted,

although I hope to go deeper into the study of why Victorian gardeners created and followed

particular fashions, such as the trend for growing fruit for display in the garden and on the

dining table.

vi) apples

The major research on the apple was undertaken by Joan Morgan, who, with Alison

Richard published The Book of Apples (1993). This has recently been updated; especially the

directory of extant apple varieties, and published as The New Book of Apples (2002). The

evolution of the apple was further researched by Barrie E Juniper and David J Mabberley,

who published The Story of the Apple (2006). Both books consider the folklore of the apple,

and its appearances in art and culture. However, both texts take an empirical narrative stance,

27


and the images are listed, largely without comment. The folklore is re-told and accredited

back to previous writers on the apple, rather than to a primary text. Indeed, Juniper and

Mabberley sidestep the story of the rapid adoption of the apple. ‘Yet for reasons that are not

at all clear… … the apple entered, in every country into which it was brought, and almost

immediately, the realms of the village and private residence, poetry, prose, the visual arts,

language (including aphorisms), music (including carols) mythology and philosophy.’ (2006)

So far I have not found a text on the apple that incorporates this symbolic apple, rather than

nodding towards it.

This is not to say that there are no works on apple folklore; of course this story is of

great appeal to writers, although it is not unfairly critical to say these are not usually the most

scholarly of texts. Richard Folkard Junior published the often cited Plant Lore, Legends and

Lyrics embracing the myths, traditions, superstitions and folk-lore of the plant kingdom in

1884. This is a compendium of folk tales and ideas, with little or no attribution, rather than

any analysis of them, so that his description of wassailing begins ‘In some places the

parishioners walk in procession visiting the principal orchards of the Parish’ The content, and

often the phrasing, of Folkard was repeated by other folklore writers, and has found its way

into contemporary books on apples such as A Harvest of Apples (Ward, Ruth 1993) and

Apples: a social history (Twiss, Sally 1999) and in the USA Mark Rosenstein uses the same

sources in his book In praise of apples – a harvest of history, horticulture and recipes. (1996)

A more individual view was taken by J Rendell Harris, who declared that the god

Apollo was in fact the representation of the northern worship of the apple. The origin and

meaning of apple cults (1919) suffers from the weight of scholarship and fixed beliefs of its

author, but there are insights within it, and an understanding of the need to look beneath the

material representations of tradition. Rendell Harris begins thus: ‘All students of folk-lore are

aware that, in collecting and comparing the quaint customs which still linger on the country-

side, they are not merely dealing with customs, but with cults that underlie them, with

misunderstood rituals and lost divinities ; in many cases the rituals and worships which are

thus embalmed like flies in the amber of unchanging or slowly-changing popular habit, turn

out to be the very earliest beliefs and the most primitive religious acts of the human race.’

(1919) As an example of a text using rural mythology to promote a specifically English

identity it would be hard to outdo this text. Rendell Harris quotes Aubrey, Evelyn, Hazlitt,

Herrick and, of course, Shakespeare to build his case. (I remain unconvinced about the links

to Apollo, but I love this book.) Tamra Andrews in Nectar and Ambrosia, (2000) a study of

sacred foods around the world, notes that the ‘ancient belief systems’ used food to feed the

28


soul as well as the body ‘and it acted as a means of worship and a social binder.’ (ibid).

As I noted with the recipe books, many books about apples feel the need to put in an

introduction or some pages about the apple’s origin, history and folklore. Andrew Mikolajski

includes two pages on ‘apples in history and mythology’ in The complete world

encyclopaedia of apples (2012) Frank Browning’s personal reflections on his enthusiasm for

growing apples also dwell on the origins of the apple and even give a nod to Rendell Harris

when he says ‘some classical folklorists have even traced the Greek sun god Apollo's origin

to the apfel worshippers of Nordic forests.' (Apples 1999). There are many books about

apples being published each year, and most of them trace the same history and throw in a few

out of context folk myths or stories, so that soon it will become harder to trace the origins of

the stories than to trace the lineage of the apple varieties themselves.

29

Joanna Crosby Progress Report Jan 2013

Documents

Transcript of Joanna Crosby Progress Report Jan 2013