ŷ������

The presence of death brings life into sharper focus, makes some things more important and others less so. I couldn’t stop my friend’s death, or fight against it. I stood out by the log cabin and the dead tree that night and thought that what I could do was make a journey alongside Joanne—a journey that was about something life-affirming something as basic and fundamental as an apple.

Our primitive senses can open pathways long sealed, if not necessarily guarded. I do not think I have ever had a Proustian moment in which the taste of something, madeleine or otherwise, has summoned a rich palate of memory, let alone several autobiographical volumes. My remnant memory cells seem more receptive to tactile and olfactory sensations. A cool breeze on my cheek summons images from decades long past. The scent of mold emanating from a building, for example, reminds me of a house where old Mrs Kelly lived when I was a kid. I worked for her for a brief span, running errands. She had a dog named Johan, which was a name I had never heard before, and another pooch whose name has slipped away, if in fact it had ever settled in. She was not there long, at least I was not long aware of her presence in our neighborhood. But I remember well sneaking into her abandoned house with other youthful criminals, feeling the old floorboards sag, fretting about the possibility of falling through, and twitching my nose at the pervasive aroma of mold. Helen Humphreys is more in the flavor camp. It is the taste of an apple that connects her to other things, although not necessarily memories.


Helen Humphreys - image from Chatelaine.com

It is an intimate act, tasting an apple—having the flesh of the fruit in our mouths, the juice on our tongues. Ann Jessop bites into an apple in an English orchard in the hot summer of 1790 in the middle of her life, and I bite into the same kind of apple in 2016, in the middle of my life, and taste what she did. For the time it takes to eat the apple, I am where she was, and I know what she knows, and there is no separation between us.

Malus Domestica: Acker �� 1901 - by Bertha Heiges �� from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection

The MacGuffin here was the passing of a dear friend, Joanne Page, and the madeleine the associated sensation of tasting, fresh from a tree near an abandoned cabin near her home, specimens of what is reputed to be the best tasting apple in the world, the White Winter Pearmain. I was never entirely clear on how looking into the history of this amazing fruit connected much to her friend. I found the connection between friend and apple mushy, except in a very broad sense, but one can certainly still enjoy her beautifully written recollections of their friendship for their own sake. The book focuses on apples.

How had an apple I had never heard of ended up in my particular pocket of southern Ontario? It seemed an impossible task to determine the apple’s thirteenth century beginnings in Norfolk, but surely, if the fruit had made its journey to America, I could find out who had brought it over from Europe.

Malus Domestica: Admiral Schley �� 1904 - by Bertha Heiges �� from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection

You will learn a fair bit about this most common of fruits (not the Pearmain, the apple, generically), where it is thought to have originated, how it was brought to North America, and spread once here. (There was a second seeder). How apples were cultivated, how their placement impacted where people lived, and vice versa, their usefulness, their diversity, the difference between wild and cultivated sorts.

I have come to think of apple trees as akin to human beings, not just in the fact of their individuality, and their diversity, but also in the brief tenure of their lives. A hundred years is very old for an apple tree, as it is for a person. An apple tree exists for the same length of time that we do, and this gives our relationship to the trees a certain poignancy.

To stand under an apple tree in May is to feel its life in the branches vibrate with the industry of bees visiting blossoms. The noise of the bees, and the rich, sweet scent of the blossoms is an intoxicating combination, and I feel, pausing at the base of the tree and looking up into the branches, that I am in the presence of the divine.

Malus Domestica: Alabama Beauty �� 1903 - by Bertha Heiges �� from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection

Humphreys�� historical digging turns up some very interesting information on relations between European invaders and Native Americans around apples. She looks at the importance of apples to the Native, settler and early American economies. It was a great benefit, for example, for different kinds of apples to ripen at different times of year, to ensure a food supply as long as possible.

With the central interest being tracing the history of this most delicious apple, Humphreys grafts onto that a bit of art history. The United States Department of Agriculture, in order to be able to answer thousands of queries from apple-growers across the nation, decided to create a national catalogue of the various breeds of apples (among other produce) extant in the USA. A team of artists was employed in this task for decades, producing thousands of watercolor illustrations. Not only does Humphreys tell us a bit about how this came to be, but offers seventeen of these beautiful paintings in the book, lovingly presented on high-quality glossy paper. In writing of this project Humphreys tells of the artists�� lives, a bit, anyway, and relates their experience to visual artists she has known, and also to the art of writing.

After years of being an artist, or a writer, it is hard to separate who you are from what you do. I don’t remember a day—a moment, even—when my grandfather wasn’t painting or drawing or talking about art…He believed, and made me believe, that the role of the artist was the most important in the world, and the hand of the artist was everywhere and in everything. “Someone had to think of that,�� he would often say, about anything—a book cover, the design on a packet of tea.

Malus Domestica: Alstott �� 1897 - by Bertha Heiges �� from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection

This leads to a look at one of the best known (tastiest?) practitioners of that art form and his relationship to apples, Robert Frost. He planted several orchards on sundry properties in New England after gaining an appreciation during a spell in England. She transcends Frost to include some reporting on Thoreau’s affection for apples as well. HDT insisted that they taste better when eaten outdoors.

Each of the sundry elements of this book is interesting on its own. I would have preferred a bit, (a lot, actually) more about the science of apples. How did they come to be in the first place? I wanted more of a blow-by-blow of how they ripen, their parts, the diversity in skin types, thicknesses, color, the importance of cider, alcoholic and not, to early growers, more deep core stuff.

The strength of the book is Humphreys�� inquisitive mind, and beautiful, lyrical writing, her contemplations of life, death, history, remembering, preserving, rediscovering, friendship, art and plenty more.

There should be a word for how the dead continue, for how the fact of them gives over to the thought of them.��

Even love. Even rain. The fox crossing the leafy avenue. Darkness lifting from the field. The wet ring on the table under the beer glass. The scent of lilacs on the hill. Even laughter. Even breath won’t remember you. Nevertheless, you are still there. In the line of morning song outside the window. The dark plum of dusk. The dream. In the scatter of words on a page.
The rise of green before the wild orchard.
In the taste of this apple.

Malus Domestica: Alton �� 1903 - by Bertha Heiges �� from the USDA Pomologic Watercolor Collection

You will learn some pretty fascinating information about the pedestrian apple. (no, that is not a breed), not least of which is the impressive number of breeds that once grew in North America. You will learn the size of the largest recorded apple, and some surprising similarities between you and the apple tree. And that she managed to do this with no mention of Eden or of Adam’s laryngeal prominence is impressive. There is knowledge and joy to be had here, and taking a bite out of this scrumptious remembrance and appreciation of people and things past will not cause you to be cast out of anywhere but the shade of pomological ignorance.


PS �� The watercolor images here are all taken from the same source Humphreys uses, the US Department of Agriculture, but none of the images used in this review are in the book.

Review Posted �� September 1, 2017

Publication �� September 5, 2017

=============================EXTRA STUFF

The author’s site

The USDA National Agricultural Library Digital Collection - - mouth-watering