Devonshire Characters and Strange Events. Baring-Gould Sabine

of the South-Hams will condescend to give it a place in their orchards, they will undoubtedly exceed us in this liquor, because we must yield to them in the apple soil. But it is happy for us, that at present they are so wrapt up in their own sufficiency, that they do not entertain any thoughts of raising apples from us; and when they shall, it must be another twenty years before they can do anything to the purpose, though some of their thinking gentlemen, I am told, begin to get some of them transported thither, (by night you may suppose, partly for shame and partly for fear of being mobbed by their neighbours) and will, I am well assured, much rejoice in the production.

      “The colour of the Royal Wilding cyder, without any assistance from art, is of a bright yellow, rather than a reddish beerish tincture; its other qualities are a noble body, an excellent bitter, a delicate (excuse the expression) roughness, and a fine vinous flavour. All the other qualities you may meet with in some of the best South-Ham cyder, but the last is peculiar to the White-Sour and the Royal Wilding only, and you will in vain look for it in any other.”

      Mr. Stafford goes on to speak of his second favourite, the White Sour of the South Hams.

      “The qualities of the juices are precisely the same with those of the Royal Wilding, nay, so very near one to the other, that they are perfectly rivals, and created such a contest, as is very uncommon, and to which I was an eye-witness. A gentleman of the South-Hams, whose White-Sour cyders, for the year, were very celebrated, (for our cyder vintages, like those of clarets and ports, are very different in different years) and had been drank of by another gentleman, who was a happy possessor, an uncontested lord, facile princeps, of the Royal Wilding, met at the house of the latter gentleman a year or two after: the famed Royal Wilding, you may be sure, was produced, as the best return for the White-Sour that had been tasted at the other gentleman’s; and what was the effect? Each gentleman did not contend, as is usual, that his was the best cyder; but such was the equilibrium of the juices, and such the generosity of their breasts (for finer gentlemen we have not in our country) that each affirmed his own was the worst; the gentleman of the South-Hams declared in favour of the Royal Wilding, and the gentleman of our parts in favour of the White-Sour.”

      As to the sweet cyder, Mr. Stafford despises it. “It may be acceptable to a female, or a Londoner, it is ever offensive to a bold and generous West Saxon,” says he.

      Mr. Stafford flattered himself one year that he had beaten the Royal Wilding. He had planted pips, and after many years brewed a pipe of the apples of his wildings in 1724. Mr. Wollocombe was invited to taste it. “The surprise (and even almost silence) with which he was seized at first tasting it was plainly perceived by everyone present, and occasioned no small diversion.” But, alas! after it was bottled this “Super-Celestial,” as it had been named, as the year advanced, appeared thin compared with the cyder of the Royal Wilding, and Hugh Stafford was constrained after a first flush of triumph to allow that the Royal Wilding maintained pre-eminence.

      According to our author, the addition of a little sage or clary to thin cyder gives it a taste as of a good Rhenish wine; and he advises the crushing to powder of angelica roots to add to cyder, as is done in Oporto by those who prepare port for the English market. It gives a flavour and a bouquet truly delicious.

      At the English Revolution, when William of Orange came to the throne, the introduction of French wines into the country was prohibited, and this gave a great impetus to the manufacture of cyder, and care in the production of cyder of the best description. But the imposition of a duty of ten shillings a hogshead on cyder that was not repealed, as already said, till 1830, killed the industry. Farmers no longer cared to keep up their orchards, and grew apples only for home consumption. They gave the cyder to their labourers, and as these were not particular as to the quality, no pains were taken to produce such as would suit men’s refined palates. The workman liked a rough beverage, one that almost cut his throat as it passed down; and this produced the evil effect that the farmers, who were bound by their leases to keep up their orchards, planted only the coarsest sort of apples, and the higher quality of fruit was allowed to die out. The orchards fell into, and in most cases remain still in a deplorable condition of neglect. Hear what is the report of the Special Commissioner of the Gardeners’ Magazine, as to the state of the orchards in Devon. “They will not, as a rule, bear critical examination. As a matter of fact Devonshire, compared with other counties, has made little or no progress of late years, and there are hundreds of orchards in that county that are little short of a disgrace to those who own or rent them. The majority of the orchards are rented by farmers, who too often are the worst of gardeners and the poorest of fruit growers, and they cannot be induced to improve on their methods.” The writer goes on to say, that so long as the farmers have enough trees standing or blown over, to bear fruit that suffices for their home consumption, they are content, and with complete indifference, they suffer the cattle to roam about the orchards, bite off the bark, and rend the branches and tender shoots from the trees.

      “If you tackle the farmers on the subject, and in particular strongly advise them to see what can be done towards improving their old orchards and forming new ones, they will become uncivil at once.”

      It is sad to have to state that the famous “Royal Wilding” is no longer known, not even at Pynes, where it was extensively planted by Hugh Stafford.

      Messrs. Veitch, the well-known nurserymen at Exeter and growers of the finest sorts of apples, inform me that they have not heard of it for many years. Mr. H. Whiteway, who produces some of the best cyder in North Devon, writes to me: “With regard to the Royal Wilding mentioned in Mr. Hugh Stafford’s book, I have made diligent inquiry in and about the neighbourhood in which it was grown at the time stated, but up to now have been unable to find any trace of it, and this also applies to the White-Sour. I am, however, not without hope of discovering some day a solitary remnant of the variety.”

      This loss is due to the utter neglect of the orchards in consequence of the passing and maintenance of Lord Bute’s mischievous Bill. This Bill was the more deplorable in its results because in and about 1750 cyder had replaced the lighter clarets in the affections of all classes, and was esteemed as good a drink as the finest Rhenish, and much more wholesome. Rudolphus Austen, who introduced it at the tables of the dons of Oxford, undertook to “raise cyder that shall compare and excel the wine of many provinces nearer the sun, where they abound with fruitful vineyards.” And he further asserted: “A seasonable and moderate use of good cyder is the surest remedy and preservative against the diseases which do frequently afflict the sedentary life of them that are seriously studious.” He died in 1666.

      Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the advantage or disadvantage of cyder for those liable to rheumatism. But this difference of opinion is due largely, if not wholly, to the kinds of cyder drunk. The sweet cyder is unquestionably bad in such cases, but that in which there is not so much sugar is a corrective to the uric acid that causes rheumatism. In Noake’s Worcestershire Relics appears the following extract from the journal of a seventeenth-century parson. “This parish (Dilwyn), wherein syder [sic] is plentiful, hath and doth afford many people that have and do enjoy the blessing of long life, neither are the aged here bed-ridden or decrepit as elsewhere, but for the most part lively and vigorous. Next to God, wee ascribe it to our flourishing orchards, which are not only the ornament but the pride of our country, yielding us rich and winy liquors.” At Whimple, in Devon, the rectors, like their contemporary, the Rev. Robert Wollocombe, the discoverer of the Royal Wilding a century or so later than the Dilwyn parson, were both cyder makers and cyder drinkers. The tenure of office of two of them covered a period of over a century, and the last of these worthy divines lived to tell the story of how the Exeter coach set down the bent and crippled dean at his door, who, after three weeks ‘cyder cure’ at the hospitable rectory, had thrown his crutches to the dogs and turned his face homewards “upright as a bolt.”1

      The apple is in request now for three purposes quite distinct: the dessert apple, to rival those introduced from America; that largely employed for the manufacture of jams – the basis, apple, flavoured to turn it into raspberry, apricot, etc.; and last, but not least, the cyder-producing apple which is unsuited for either of the former requirements.

      In my Book of the West I have given a lengthy ballad of instruction on the growth of apple

1

Whiteway’s Wine of the West Country.