Once a Week (magazine)/Series 1/Volume 11/The pear
THE PEAR.
Soft sister of the firmer apple, the pear displays so marked a resemblance to its relative that the most unobservant could scarcely fail to detect their kinship, yet is the difference between them sufficiently apparent on very slight inspection, and sufficiently great to justify Loudon in his wish that they may not always continue to be classed together in the same genus, as they are now by botanists too eminent for their decision to be disputed, even when it does not give perfect satisfaction. To this genus the pear has the honour of giving the name, being termed the Pyrus communis, while the apple bears the title of Pyrus malus. Albeit alike in some respects, the trees may be distinguished in a moment by their leaves, those of the apple being broader, very slightly serrated, of a yellow green colour, and hairy underneath, while the dark green foliage of the pear is elliptical, more serrated, and smooth on both sides, the upper surface being absolutely shining; and when both are full grown the low and spreading apple, often uncouthly irregular in form, seldom attains more than half the height of the tall, upright, shapely pear, always inclining to the pyramidal form. In spring-time the large, rosy, fragrant blossoms of the former far outshine the scentless and colourless bloom of its modest rival, though differing scarcely at all botanically, the only distinction being that the five central styles are in the one case united at the base, in the other distinct; while as regards the fruit, though the tender melting consistency of the best dessert pears is different indeed from the crisp solidity of the apple, yet in some varieties the one species could quite compete with the other in hardness, and the characteristic distinction is therefore to be sought rather in the fact that the former is generally convex at the base, while the latter is always concave. Both fruits have woody threads passing from the stalk through the midst of the flesh, but in the pear these are less distinct, on account of the gritty concretions commonly found at the core, and which is caused by the woody matter becoming disseminated near the centre in small masses. The cells of the core, too, are pointed at both ends in the apple and only at one end in the pear, and the latter fruit is more astringent, less acid, and lighter than the former.
The pear does not come into bearing so soon as the apple, seedlings seldom producing any fruit before the seventh or eighth year after planting; but though attacked by the same insects and liable to the same diseases it is usually found to retain its health and vigour far better, at least in Britain (for in France and America this is said not to be the case), and reaches a much greater age, the longevity of pear trees being often reckoned by centuries. Usually the largest of our orchard trees, it sometimes attains extraordinary dimensions, one being recorded to have been fifty feet high, to have had a trunk eighteen feet in circumference, and to have borne in good years one ton and a half of fruit. Another noted pear tree, seeming to "take a leaf" from the Banyan of the East, increased to an enormous size by sending down its branches to the ground, where they took root, and each became a new tree, in turn similarly producing others.
In Europe, Western Asia, and China the pear is found growing wild throughout as wide a range as the apple; but as the crab will never grow except on tolerably good soil, and its humbler sister is content with far poorer accommodation, they are not often found in association. The latter, too, displays a far greater power of adapting itself to peculiarities of situation, a remarkable example of which is afforded by the notched-leaved pear, which grows on the mountains of Upper Nepaul. "Nature seems," says Dr. Lindley, in describing this plant, "to have intended it to brave the utmost inclemency of climate, for in its own country in the earliest spring the leaves, while still delicate and tender, are clothed with a thick white coating of wool, and the flowers themselves are so immersed in an ample covering of the same material as to bid defiance to even Tartarean cold. But in proportion as the extent of the distribution of the plant descends towards the plains, or as the season of warm weather advances, it throws off its fleecy coat, and at length becomes as naked and as glittering with green as the trees which have never had such rigour to endure." In England, where it is grown for ornament, this tree displays scarcely any woolliness, while on the other hand in the woods of Poland and on the steppes of Russia the leaves of the ordinary pear are mostly white and downy.
The great orchardist, Rivers, remarks that the pear seems to require a warm, moist climate, and that many parts of France being too hot, and most parts of England not hot enough, the island of Jersey, where a happy medium is found, is probably the most favourable situation for pears in all Europe; while it may perhaps be some surprise to the many who look on vicinity to the metropolis as incompatible with flourishing vegetation to hear that next in suitability to this sea-girt pyral paradise are the low, moist situations immediately around London, particularly near Rotherhithe, where, he says, the Jargonelle and other fine pears may be said to attain the highest possible perfection.
In what points soever the two principal members of the Pyrus family may resemble each other, most unlike are they as regards the place they have held in the estimation of man, for while poetic fancy in different ages and far-severed climes has everywhere invested the apple with so many mystic charms, no extraneous associations diffuse a halo of borrowed glory around the neglected pear, no graceful legend plants it in celestial gardens, gives it to the guardianship of god or goddess, or links its name with the adventures of the daring heroes or loving nymphs of antiquity. There are few fruits, indeed, of whose history so little is known, though it appears to have been common from time immemorial in Syria, Egypt, and Greece, passing probably from the latter country into Italy. Homer names it as forming part of the orchard of Laertes, and Virgil alludes to having received some pears from Cato, indeed 30 varieties were known to the Romans, including the singularly-named "proud pears," so called because they ripened early and would not keep long; "libralia," or pound weight pears, &c, &c.; but we may imagine that none could have been fruit of very fine quality, or they could hardly have merited Pliny's conclusive assertion that "all pears whatsoever are but heavy meat unless they be well boiled or baked." But little mention is made of the fruit in our own history, and as pear trees are often found growing wild throughout the country it is by some thought to be indigenous, while others believe it to be only native to more genial climes, and to have been first brought here by the Romans. There is no doubt that pears of some sort were eaten by our remote ancestors, though probably they were of no very excellent quality, for a very old English writer pronounces upon them a similar verdict to that of Pliny; but in the days of Henry VIII. some at least were admitted to even the royal table, since an item is found in his accounts of "2d. to an old woman who gaff the kyng peres," and another of 3s. 4d. for "wardens and medlars," the "warden," a baking pear, so named, it is said, from its keeping property, being one of our oldest known varieties, once extensively cultivated by "the monks of old." An ancient medical authority affirms that "the red warden is of great virtue conserved, roasted, or baked to quench choler;" but as it would be libellous to suppose that cloistered serenity could itself require the fruit on this account, imagination is free to picture the benevolent recluses sending round a basket of pears to any notedly fiery spirits in the neighbourhood, as modern good people might distribute a bundle of tracts.
In the time of Gerard that which stood at the head of his list as the best of all the "tame pears" then known, and which he calls the Pyrus superba sive Katherina, was no other than the little brilliant-coloured but ill-flavoured fruit which furnished one of our old poets with so charming an illustration of his mistress's beauty when he says that,—
Her cheek was like the Catherine pear,
The side that's next the sun;
but which, though it still holds a place on Loudon street-stalls on account of being so early ripe, has long since sunk below the appetite of any but children. It might almost be said that it is only during the last 60 or 70 years that the pear has actually been known in Europe, so great is the change that has taken place in it from what it was before that time, when it had hardly begun to manifest the perfection of which it is capable. It was in Belgium, which has therefore been prettily termed the "Eden of the pear tree," that attention was first attracted to it, and to a native of that country, M. Van Mons, who actually devoted his life to pears and their improvement, we chiefly owe it that the poor varieties which gave a modicum of enjoyment to our forefathers have disappeared from all good gardens, and resigned their place to aristocratic races of rich and varied flavour, intensified to a degree hitherto unimagined. This gentleman was no mere empiric lighting accidentally on lucky expedients in fruit-growing, but a scientific philosopher, who, having conceived a theory, set resolutely to work to test it by years of patient experimentalising, for believing that originally there were but few, perhaps but one, species of any genus of plants, and that while in a wild state Nature only aimed at preserving these in a healthy condition, and perfecting seed which should exactly reproduce the parent from which it sprung, he considered that it must be the object of cultivation to refine even by enervating the fruit tree, to subdue its coarse exuberance of vegetation, and while probably lessening the quantity of the foliage as well as the size and vigour of the seeds to improve the quality of the pulp or flesh surrounding the latter. Finding that wild trees transplanted into gardens altered but little, or, though their leaves and fruit might grow larger, that the latter did not become better in quality, and that suckers, buds, or grafts taken from them did but reproduce similar plants, he sought in the seed for means of improvement, and found that the pips of wild fruit sown in good soil produced plants which differed somewhat from the parent (mostly for the better) and from each other; their seeds replanted advanced another stop, and so on, until a certain ultimate point of perfection was reached, when a retrograde movement began, and if the sowing process were still persevered in the descendants of the good plants became worse and worse, until they ended finally, as worthless wildings, much where the original ancestor began. The coincidence of Dr. Lindley, in at least the latter part of this theory, seems apparent from a remark in his works that—"There can be no doubt that if the arts of cultivation were abandoned for only a few years, all the annual varieties of plants in our gardens would disappear and be replaced by original wild forms." The retrograde tendency seems to be most strong in old trees, and Van Mons therefore gathered his first seeds from young trees of common kinds yet not absolutely crabs, and as soon as the trees produced from them bore fruit, which usually proved to be of very middling quality, but at least differing from the parent, and mostly a little in advance of it, ho chose out the best and again planted their seeds. The next generation was found to come more quickly into bearing, while their quality was still more promising; their offspring showed yet greater amelioration, and each succeeding family bringing forth fruit sooner, and producing a greater number of valuable varieties, when the fifth generation was reached the trees began to bear in the third year after planting, and nearly all had attained great excellence. To use Van Mons' own words, "I have found," says he, "this art to consist in regenerating in a direct line of descent and as rapidly as possible an improving variety, taking care that there be no interval between the generations. To sow, to resow, to sow again, to sow perpetually, in short to do nothing but sow is the practice to be pursued, and which cannot be departed from; and this is the whole secret of the art I have employed."
The constant springing up of fine now varieties of fruits in the American States is, as the author of "The Fruits of America" admits, a confirmation of the Van Mons theory, for while the colonists who had taken pains to bring with them seeds of the very best English fruits were doomed to see a grievous falling off in the degenerate produce resulting from their planting, the seedlings proving little better than wild trees, in the course of years this ebbing tide has turned again and borne transatlantic growths with onward flow to heights of excellence beyond what had ever been attained by the British trees from which they are descended; and had the process of continually rearing new generations of seedlings been uninterruptedly followed the good result might perhaps have been much sooner arrived at. Assuredly the Belgian's theory was founded on an observance of natural laws, and in practice his system proved a great success, for having himself raised no less than eighty thousand seedlings, from these and many thousands of others reared by his disciples in Belgium and elsewhere, an immense number of new varieties of great excellence have been obtained, among which the palm is usually given to the Buerré Diel. The method, however, is attended with several disadvantages, for being avowedly an enfeebling process, the trees so grown are usually of weak habit, and apt very soon to decay or become unhealthy; and being, too, almost absolutely artificial products, they often require an unintermittent care and culture never needed by the hardy children of Nature, so that some of the Flemish pears latest introduced into America have already begun to show symptoms of decay or disease. Whether it be that our climate suits them better, or that our cultivators pay them more attention, the pears of Belgium succeed better in England and are found much hardier than those of either France or Jersey, which seldom thrive here, or at least are very precarious. Yet though both England and America have gladly availed themselves of the result of Van Mons' labours, the process which he pursued has never found much favour with us, and still less with our more impatient and "go-a-head" cousins, so long a time being required before any result can be expected. Some have tried raising seedlings without observing any method, but as a proof of the capriciousness of fortune in such matters, a celebrated French horticulturist has recorded that for fifty years ho had been in the habit of planting pear pips without ever having thus produced a good variety; while on the other hand Major Esperen, of Belgium, who simply sowed seeds indiscriminately and trusted to chance, originated five or six sorts so fine as to be unsurpassed by any in the Van Mons colcollection. In our country, however, the method introduced by Mr. Knight of obtaining new kinds by means of hybridisation or cross breeding, which is far less tedious, and in which, too, the result can be prognosticated with some degree of accuracy, has been attended with so much success that there has been little temptation to resort to any other. Of course when fine kinds are once obtained, by whatever means they may have been produced, nothing more is needed to perpetuate them than to continue their propagation to any extent by grafting; and as with regard to the hardier kinds at least Loudon assures us that the best pears can be grown with no more trouble and expense than inferior ones, it is to be hoped that eventually the former will quite supersede the latter, and what is still too exclusively a luxury for the wealthy at length be freely open to all classes.
So much attention having been directed to the multiplication of varieties, it is not surprising that they should now be very numerous, and though there are still not above twenty or thirty pears which are reckoned really first-class, Dochnahl's recent work describes above 1050, and the Bon Jardinier, the chief French horticultural periodical, says that the catalogue in that country now comprises 3000 varieties, each of which, too, has about six synonyms. Attempts have been made to classify these multitudinous races into families, but no very satisfactory arrangement has yet been achieved, and the only classification in use in England is that which divides them into summer, autumn, and winter pears, with the further distinction into the very soft or melting pears (in French beurées), the crisper or breaking pairs (crevers), and the perry (poirée) and baking fruits. According to their forms they are described as pyriform, like the old Windsor; oblate, like the Bergamot; obovate, like the Swan's Egg; or pyramidal when the lines extend upwards nearly uncurved from the broad base.
Many of our old sorts are extinct, and others are doomed to the same fate, for even the popular Swan's Egg is pronounced by eminent horticulturalists to be not worth cultivating in comparison with the more modern sorts; but a few are still welcome to our palates as ever they were to preceding generations, for far from superseded is our common Bergamot, long as great a favourite among English pears as the Ribstone Pippin among apples. Nothing authentic is known of its origin but its antiquity is undoubted, and according to Manger the name is not derived from Bergamo in Italy, as many have supposed, but from the Turkish word beg or bey, a prince, and armoud, a pear, and was formerly written Begarmoud, the natural inference being that it originated in a warmer climate than that of Europe, and was introduced here from Turkey. It is to the French that we have owed most of our good older kinds, for they seem to have had the start of us in pear culture, since good sorts were known in France as early as in the thirteenth century. Foremost among our old fruits thence derived stands the Jargonelle, long since pronounced to be the queen of autumn pears, and which, still scarcely surpassed in flavour and quite unequalled in productiveness by any of her contemporaries of that season, seems hardly likely to be called on to abdicate her throne in favour of upstart modern rivals. This fruit consists literally of little more than eau sucrée enclosed in a rind, the analysis of De Candolle showing that when ripe it contains 83·88 per cent. of water and 11·52 per cent, of sugar. Though we owe both the fruit and its title to France, by some strange contretemps the name is there given to a quite different kind, while our Jargonelle is called by the extraordinary appellation of Grosse Cuisse Madame, or Great Ladies' Thighs. The German name, Frauen Schenkel, has the same meaning.
The Bon Chrétien is another ancient variety still as highly in repute as ever, both here and in its native France. It has many sub-varieties, one of the commonest in England being the William's Bon Chrétien, often called merely the William Pear. Of the Flemish pears more lately introduced into this country, one of the chief in beauty and flavour, scarcely owning a superior, is the Marie Louise, the tree of which is, too, so hardy that it affords an almost certain crop under the most unfavourable circumstances. Other noted Flemish pears are the Beurré Rance, a misnomer for Ranz, its name being borrowed from the district in Flanders where it first grew; and the Glou morceau, so called from a Walloon word equivalent to the French friand, the title meaning therefore delicious morsel or bit.
Among the Germans the pear is more prized at the dessert than almost any other fruit, but the one which ranks highest there, and which may indeed be called their national fruit, as it originated in Germany, is the pretty Forelle, Truite, or Trout Pear, so named from a fancied resemblance between its speckled skin and that of the fish.
In America many of the pears of Europe are grown, but are rated at a much lower standard than on this continent, the Jargonelle, though very common, being looked on as a poor fruit, and even the Marie Louise and Bon Chrétien as but second rate; for, as in the case of the apple, the seeds of most European fruits sown in America have in the course of time originated new varieties peculiarly adapted to that country, and far more highly esteemed there than the sorts from which they were produced. The prince of American pears, a variety exhibiting a rare combination of virtues, the richest and most exquisitely flavoured of fruits being borne on the healthiest and hardiest of trees, is the Seckel Pear, so general a favourite that no garden is considered complete without it. Small sized, dumpy in shape, and dull in colour, it has been called the ugliest of fruits, but if we may so far adapt the old saying as to admit that "Handsome is that handsome tastes," no deficiencies in beauty will be perceived when once the palate revels in the honied spicy richness of the Seckel Pear, its flavour, quite peculiar to itself, being generally pronounced to be unequalled by any of its European kindred.
The pear is peculiar in one respect, for, unlike nearly all other fruits, its being fresh-gathered is by no means a recommendation, most varieties being much finer in flavour if plucked early in the season and ripened in the house than if suffered to mature on the tree; and many which appear very dry and second-rate when ripened in the open air not only keep good much longer but attain first-rate quality when gathered while unripe and shut up for weeks indoors. They however require warmth, for a pear which is of melting consistency after having been ex posed for some time to a temperature of 60 or 70 degrees would prove quite tough if left until wanted in a cold apartment. A German writer recommends packing pears between feather beds as a good mode of ripening them, but this would hardly suit English notions, and the Guernsey method of exposing them to the sun shine on the shelves of a greenhouse commends itself as seeming the most natural and pleasant way of bringing the fruit to healthy maturity. The chief use of pears is as a dessert fruit, but they are also stewed or baked, many of the hard kinds being appropriated exclusively to this use, but most keeping pears, such as the Swan's Egg, &c., are also excellent for baking, for when simply heaped into a dish and put in the oven their own juice forms a rich syrup as sweet as though much sugar had been used, and even windfalls and damaged fruit may thus be turned to good account with little trouble and no expense. In Germany, Russia, and yet more in France pears are also dried; the common sort, sold about the streets in Paris, being merely slowly baked on boards in ovens after the bread has been withdrawn, but their juice being thus lost, they are far inferior to the more carefully prepared best sort, which are first boiled until a little soft, then peeled and put on a dish till the syrup drains from them; afterwards placed on wicker mats in an oven for twelve hours, then soaked in this syrup, to which a little sugar and brandy has been added, till their own juice is thus reabsorbed, after which they are replaced in the oven twice or thrice until they become quite firm and of a rich transparent chestnut colour, when they are packed in paper-lined boxes for homo use or exportation. In hotter countries fires and ovens are not needed for this purpose, for the traveller Burchell mentions having, when in the interior of South Africa, stocked himself before crossing the desert with dried pears, "the manner of preserving which consisted in merely drying them whole and unpeeled in the sun, and afterwards pressing them flat, by which simple process they keep in perfection for more than a twelve-month, as I afterwards learnt by experience, and therefore can recommend them as a valuable addition to the stores of a traveller."
As the apple yields its cider so too does the pear afford a special beverage, less wholesome than the former, but even more agreeable, and therefore scarcely less esteemed, especially as it is made in far less quantities and has there fore more claim to the merit of rarity, its manufacture being now chiefly limited to the cider districts of England and France. Pears for the press may be either large or small, but the more austere the taste the better the liquor; wild pears are found not unsuitable, and the fruit which is esteemed best for this use is so unfit for any other that not only are they quite uneatable by man, but it is said that even hungry swine will hardly so much as smell to them; and it is a curious fact, though not without its parallel in the annals of vegetable peculiarities, that the unexpressed juice of the perry pear is so harsh and acrid as to cause great heat and long-continued irritation of the throat if an attempt be made to eat it, yet no sooner is it separated from the pulp by simple pressure than it at once becomes rich and sweet with no more roughness than is agreeable to most palates. As pears were deemed by the Romans an antidote against poisonous fungi, so perry is still reckoned the best thing to be taken after a surfeit of mushrooms. Though it will not keep nearly so long as cider, it yet contains more alcohol, and also makes better vinegar, while the residue left after pressure serves very well for fuel, for which purpose that of cider is useless. The bark of the pear tree yields a yellow dye, and its wood is eminently serviceable to Art, being much employed not only for making parts of musical instruments but also to furnish blocks for wood engraving. The wood of the wild pear is extremely hard, that of the cultivated kind much lighter and soft.Asterisk.