The time for wild apples is the last of October and the first of
November. They then get to be palatable, for they ripen late, and they
are still perhaps as beautiful as ever. I make a great account of these
fruits, which the farmers do not think it worth the while to
gather,—wild flavors of the Muse, vivacious and inspiriting. The farmer
thinks that he has better in his barrels, but he is mistaken, unless he
has a walker’s appetite and imagination, neither of which can he have.
Such as grow quite wild, and are left out till the first of November, I
presume that the owner does not mean to gather. They belong to children
as wild as themselves,—to certain active boys that I know,—to the
wild-eyed woman of the fields, to whom nothing comes amiss, who gleans
after all the world,—and, moreover, to us walkers. We have met with
them, and they are ours. These rights, long enough insisted upon, have
come to be an institution in some old countries, where they have
learned how to live. I hear that “the custom of grippling, which may be
called apple-gleaning, is, or was formerly, practised in Herefordshire.
It consists in leaving a few apples, which are called the gripples, on
every tree, after the general gathering, for the boys, who go with
climbing-poles and bags to collect them.”
As for those I speak of, I pluck them as a wild fruit, native to this
quarter of the earth,—fruit of old trees that have been dying ever
since I was a boy and are not yet dead, frequented only by the
woodpecker and the squirrel, deserted now by the owner, who has not
faith enough to look under their boughs. From the appearance of the
tree-top, at a little distance, you would expect nothing but lichens to
drop from it, but your faith is rewarded by finding the ground strewn
with spirited fruit,—some of it, perhaps, collected at squirrel-holes,
with the marks of their teeth by which they carried them,—some
containing a cricket or two silently feeding within, and some,
especially in damp days, a shelless snail. The very sticks and stones
lodged in the tree-top might have convinced you of the savoriness of
the fruit which has been so eagerly sought after in past years.
I have seen no account of these among the “Fruits and Fruit-Trees of
America,” though they are more memorable to my taste than the grafted
kinds; more racy and wild American flavors do they possess, when
October and November, when December and January, and perhaps February
and March even, have assuaged them somewhat. An old farmer in my
neighborhood, who always selects the right word, says that “they have a
kind of bow-arrow tang.”
Apples for grafting appear to have been selected commonly, not so much
for their spirited flavor, as for their mildness, their size, and
bearing qualities,—not so much for their beauty, as for their fairness
and soundness. Indeed, I have no faith in the selected lists of
pomological gentlemen. Their “Favorites” and “None-suches” and
“Seek-no-farthers,” when I have fruited them, commonly turn out very
tame and forgetable. They are eaten with comparatively little zest, and
have no real _tang_ nor _smack_ to them.
What if some of these wildings are acrid and puckery, genuine
_verjuice_, do they not still belong to the _Pomaceae_, which are
uniformly innocent and kind to our race? I still begrudge them to the
cider-mill. Perhaps they are not fairly ripe yet.
No wonder that these small and high-colored apples are thought to make
the best cider. Loudon quotes from the “Herefordshire Report,” that
“apples of a small size are always, if equal in quality, to be
preferred to those of a larger size, in order that the rind and kernel
may bear the greatest proportion to the pulp, which affords the weakest
and most watery juice.” And he says, that, “to prove this, Dr. Symonds,
of Hereford, about the year 1800, made one hogshead of cider entirely
from the rinds and cores of apples, and another from the pulp only,
when the first was found of extraordinary strength and flavor, while
the latter was sweet and insipid.”
Evelyn says that the “Red-strake” was the favorite cider-apple in his
day; and he quotes one Dr. Newburg as saying, “In Jersey ’t is a
general observation, as I hear, that the more of red any apple has in
its rind, the more proper it is for this use. Pale-faced apples they
exclude as much as may be from their cider-vat.” This opinion still
prevails.
All apples are good in November. Those which the farmer leaves out as
unsalable, and unpalatable to those who frequent the markets, are
choicest fruit to the walker. But it is remarkable that the wild apple,
which I praise as so spirited and racy when eaten in the fields or
woods, being brought into the house, has frequently a harsh and crabbed
taste. The Saunterer’s Apple not even the saunterer can eat in the
house. The palate rejects it there, as it does haws and acorns, and
demands a tamed one; for there you miss the November air, which is the
sauce it is to be eaten with. Accordingly, when Tityrus, seeing the
lengthening shadows, invites Meliboeus to go home and pass the night
with him, he promises him _mild_ apples and soft chestnuts,—_mitia
poma, castaneae molles_. I frequently pluck wild apples of so rich and
spicy a flavor that I wonder all orchardists do not get a scion from
that tree, and I fail not to bring home my pockets full. But perchance,
when I take one out of my desk and taste it in my chamber, I find it
unexpectedly crude,—sour enough to set a squirrel’s teeth on edge and
make a jay scream.
These apples have hung in the wind and frost and rain till they have
absorbed the qualities of the weather or season, and thus are highly
_seasoned,_ and they _pierce_ and _sting_ and _permeate_ us with their
spirit. They must be eaten in _season_, accordingly,—that is,
out-of-doors.
To appreciate the wild and sharp flavors of these October fruits, it is
necessary that you be breathing the sharp October or November air. The
out-door air and exercise which the walker gets give a different tone
to his palate, and he craves a fruit which the sedentary would call
harsh and crabbed. They must be eaten in the fields, when your system
is all aglow with exercise, when the frosty weather nips your fingers,
the wind rattles the bare boughs or rustles the few remaining leaves,
and the jay is heard screaming around. What is sour in the house a
bracing walk makes sweet. Some of these apples might be labelled, “To
be eaten in the wind.”
Of course no flavors are thrown away; they are intended for the taste
that is up to them. Some apples have two distinct flavors, and perhaps
one-half of them must be eaten in the house, the other out-doors. One
Peter Whitney wrote from Northborough in 1782, for the Proceedings of
the Boston Academy, describing an apple-tree in that town “producing
fruit of opposite qualities, part of the same apple being frequently
sour and the other sweet;” also some all sour, and others all sweet,
and this diversity on all parts of the tree.
There is a wild apple on Nawshawtuck Hill in my town which has to me a
peculiarly pleasant bitter tang, not perceived till it is
three-quarters tasted. It remains on the tongue. As you eat it, it
smells exactly like a squash-bug. It is a sort of triumph to eat and
relish it.
I hear that the fruit of a kind of plum-tree in Provence is “called
_Prunes sibarelles_, because it is impossible to whistle after having
eaten them, from their sourness.” But perhaps they were only eaten in
the house and in summer, and if tried out-of-doors in a stinging
atmosphere, who knows but you could whistle an octave higher and
clearer?
In the fields only are the sours and bitters of Nature appreciated;
just as the wood-chopper eats his meal in a sunny glade, in the middle
of a winter day, with content, basks in a sunny ray there and dreams of
summer in a degree of cold which, experienced in a chamber, would make
a student miserable. They who are at work abroad are not cold, but
rather it is they who sit shivering in houses. As with temperatures, so
with flavors; as, with cold and heat, so with sour and sweet. This
natural raciness, the sours and bitters which the diseased palate
refuses, are the true condiments.
Let your condiments be in the condition of your senses. To appreciate
the flavor of these wild apples requires vigorous and healthy senses,
_papillae_ firm and erect on the tongue and palate, not easily
flattened and tamed.
From my experience with wild apples, I can understand that there may be
reason for a savage’s preferring many kinds of food which the civilized
man rejects. The former has the palate of an out-door man. It takes a
savage or wild taste to appreciate a wild fruit.
What a healthy out-of-door appetite it takes to relish the apple of
life, the apple of the world, then!
“Nor is it every apple I desire,
Nor that which pleases every palate best;
’T is not the lasting Deuxan I require,
Nor yet the red-cheeked Greening I request,
Nor that which first beshrewed the name of wife,
Nor that whose beauty caused the golden strife:
No, no I bring me an apple from the tree of life.”
So there is one _thought_ for the field, another for the house. I would
have my thoughts, like wild apples, to be food for walkers, and will
not warrant them to be palatable, if tasted in the house.