With hindsight, and our studied suspicion of things empirical and colonial, Britannica’s pomposity seems absurd. We know that the enlightenment reflected in its pages – and the many subsequent decades of what Koning calls ‘almost official, almost religious optimism’ – was doomed to be snuffed out forever on the battlefields of France and Belgium; the half morocco bindings crumbled like, yes, old books. But just four years before, Koning reasons, on the Oxbridge quads and in all the other learned stations of Britain and America, ‘all of humanity appeared to be on the threshold of being totally understood, described, improved, and then perfected’. The encyclopaedia was the natural repository for all this, the ultimate pure salon for the world. And even after the First World War, with so many uncertainties and dislocations, Britannica provided a leaning post, unstable as it was; in our minds, this was still the world we would defend in the next war, the twenty-nine volumes as good a domestic shelter as anything else.
The eleventh edition has 44 million words. My favourite ones concern the apple, for the simplest of reasons. It tells you something you didn’t know, and it does so with an economy of expression, a lack of pretentiousness and an element of delight. Most importantly, it stands the test of time. Alongside historical description and practical instruction on grafting, propagating, fertilising and harvest, about 2000 words in all, there is a genuine love for the subject. As with many of its most noteworthy articles, this one is signed, or at least initialled: A.B.R. It is the work of Alfred Barton Rendle, FRS, FLS, MA, DSc, Keeper of the Department of Botany at the British Museum.
A slice:
APPLE: (a common Teutonic word … aphul, aphal, apfal, modern German Apfel), the fruit of Pyrus Malus, belonging to the sub-order Pomaceae, of the natural order Rosaceae. It is one of the most widely cultivated and best-known and appreciated of fruits belonging to temperate climates. In its wild state it is known as the crab-apple, and is found generally distributed throughout Europe and western Asia, growing in as high a latitude as Trondhjem in Norway. The crabs of Siberia belong to different species of Pyrus. The fruit is too well known to need any description of its external characteristics.
The apple is successfully cultivated in higher latitudes than any other fruit tree, growing up to 65° N., but notwithstanding this, its blossoms are more susceptible [to] injury from frost than the flowers of the peach or apricot. It comes into flower much later than these trees, and so avoids the night frost which would be fatal to its fruit-bearing. The apples which are grown in northern regions are, however, small, hard, and crabbed, the best fruit being produced in hot summer climates, such as Canada and the United States.
Apples have been cultivated in Great Britain probably since the period of the Roman occupation, but the names of many varieties indicate a French or Dutch origin of much later date. In 1688 Ray enumerated seventy-eight varieties in cultivation in the neighbourhood of London, and now it is calculated that about 2000 kinds can be distinguished. A large trade in the importation of apples is carried on in Britain, imports coming chiefly from French, Belgian and Dutch growers, and from the United States and British North America.
But the greatest delight is a list, a catalogue of apples arranged in order of their ripening. I found it bizarrely inspiring, almost moving, in its variety and obsession. The list made me hungry for the crunch. And it made me sad to think that when I next visited a supermarket, or even the keenest grower in Kent, I would find hardly any of them.
White Juneating: July
Irish Peach: Aug.
Devonshire Quarrenden: Aug.–Sept.
Duchess of Oldenburg: Aug.–Sept.
Peasgood’s Nonesuch: Sept.–Nov.
Sam Young: Oct.–Dec.
King of the Pippins: Oct.–Jan.
Court of Wick: Oct.–Mar.
Sykehouse Russet: Nov.–Feb.
Fearn’s Pippin: Nov.–Mar.
Reinette de Canada: Nov.–Apr.
Ashmead’s Kerneclass="underline" Nov.–Apr.
White Winter Calville (grown under glass) Dec.–Mar.
Braddick’s Nonpareiclass="underline" Dec.–Apr.
Court-pendu Plat: Dec.–Apr.
Northern Spy: Dec.–May
Scarlet Nonpareiclass="underline" Jan.–Mar.
Lamb Abbey Pearmain: Jan.–May
This is just half of the dessert apples. There are nine varieties of pippin. In addition, the large number of ‘kitchen’ (i.e. cooking) apples included the Keswick Codlin, the Lord Suffield, the Yorkshire Greening and the Bess Pool. How utterly enticing is this information? Just the thing, I’d suggest, to lighten the load between Appin, a coast district of Argyllshire, and Appleton, Nathan (1770–1861) American merchant and politician. (These days the entry would be preceded by App Store and followed by Apple Computer.) And it is just the thing to support the view that the eleventh edition may be the most life-affirming Britannica ever made, and the most amenable to a general open-me-anywhere read.
If it wasn’t so unwieldy you might take it everywhere to recite to friends. This is particularly true of the biographical entries, the amuse-bouche of the encyclopaedist’s art. To open just one spread, pages 714–5 in Volume 12, provides seven entries from Gulf Stream to Gum. We learn that Gulfweed is the popular name for the brown seaweed observed by Columbus. We read of Sir William Withey Gull (1816–90), a clinical physician who believed in never giving his patients false hope, and the first to describe (in 1873) the disease now known as myxoedema, defining it as a ‘cretinoid state in adults’. We discover the Larinae, Sterninae and Rhynchops grouping of Gulls, and read how, in 1878 Howard Saunders, of the Zoological Society of London, counted forty-nine species. And we encounter the remarkable John Gully (1783–1863), for five years the unlikely MP for Pontefract, Yorkshire. Why was he unlikely? Because he was first a sportsman, and for many years it seemed possible that he might never leave his varied fields of play alive:
He came into prominence as a boxer, and in 1805 he was matched against Henry Pearce, the ‘Game Chicken’, before the duke of Clarence (afterwards William IV) and numerous other spectators, and after fighting sixty-four rounds, which occupied an hour and seventeen minutes, was beaten. In 1807 he twice fought Bob Gregson, the Lancashire giant, for two hundred guineas a side, winning on both occasions. As the landlord of the Plough Tavern in Carey Street, London, he retired from the ring in 1808, and took to horse-racing. In 1827 he lost £40,000 by backing his horse Mameluke (for which he had paid four thousand guineas) for the St Leger. In partnership with Robert Ridskale, in 1832, he made £85,000 by winning the Derby and St Leger with St Giles and Margrave. In partnership with John Day he won the Two Thousand Guineas with Ugly Buck in 1844, and two years later he took the Derby and the Oaks with Pyrrhus the First and Mendicant, in 1854 the Two Thousand Guineas with Hermit, and in the same year, in partnership with Henry Padwick, the Derby with Andover. Gully was twice married and had twelve children by each wife. He appears to have been no relation of the subsequent Speaker, Lord Selby.
Sixty-four rounds; the Game Chicken; twenty-four children in all; appears to have been no relation. We not only forgive but celebrate the idiosyncrasies; these entries were far from algorithmic in their construction. The eleventh edition contained more biographies than any previous Britannica, many vivid with human foible and eccentricity. Hans Koning was both delighted and alarmed by the number of bizarre Germans included, not least princelings and captains of long-forgotten military campaigns, and the ‘amazing number of times’ little towns popped up with names like Ingolstadt. No subject was too insignificant. Friedrich Rudolf Ludwig, for example, had a book of poems published posthumously in 1700, which were ‘for the most part dry and stilted imitations of French and Latin models’, but not so dry or stilted that they were considered unworthy of mention. And inclusion began young: Christian Heinrich Heinecken was a talented student of history, and spoke Latin and French, and all by the age of three (alas he died at the age of four in 1725).