Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
By the mid-nineteenth century, the roster of pears was fairly set. An orchardist's list
from 1857 is full of familiar names: Bartlett, Bosc, Anjou, Forelle, Seckel and Nellis. The
only one missing is Cornice, which had yet to cross the Atlantic. The queen of pears was
discovered by a gentleman farmer in France's Loire Valley, where the inquisitive pear lov-
er can still find a plaque reading: "In this garden was raised in 1849-50 the celebrated pear
Doyenne du Cornice by the gardener Dhomme and by Millet de la Turtaudiere, President
of the Cornice Horticole." In his 1934 book The Anatomy of Dessert, the English writer
Edward Bunyard is palpably overcome by the Cornice's grandeur: "In the long history of
the pear the year of 1849 stands alone in importance. The historian will be reminded of
the annexation of the Punjab, the accession of Francis Joseph, while in that year America
hailed her twelfth President in the person of Zachary Taylor. But what are such things to
us? ... Happy those who were present when Doyenne du Cornice first gave up its luscious
juice to man. Whom could they envy at that moment? Certainly not Zachary Taylor."
As in France and England, there was an explosion of interest in pears and pear growing
among the New England landed gentry from roughly 1820 to 1870. Even though the pear
is most unsuited to cultivation on the East Coast - being subject to a devastating blight
that thrives in the wet, warm eastern summers - it was widely planted. The results were
predictable. "It is folly to suppose that every person who plants an orchard of pear trees
succeeds," wrote a disheartened P. T. Quinn in his Pear Culture for Profit, published in
1869, at the tail end of the craze. "On the contrary, as far as my personal observation has
extended, there has been more money lost than made, for I could enumerate five persons
who have utterly failed to every one who has made pear culture profitable.... It is during
the time spent in wading in the dark, without any beacon to guide their steps, that the in-
experienced suffer from a series of disappointments."
On the West Coast, though, pears did very well. They were originally brought to the
region by Franciscan missionaries (descendants of these original trees were still growing
in the orchard at the San Gabriel Mission at the turn of the twentieth century), but modern
West Coast pear growing really began with the pioneers who settled Oregon's Willamette
Valley in 1847 and the California prospectors who came looking for gold in 1849. The
pear thrived in the drier summers there, and with the advent of rail shipment of fruit in
1869, its cultivation became an industry. The West Coast has become the natural home of
the Cornice, by nature an extremely temperamental fruit that is difficult to cultivate on the
East Coast or even in Europe.
"Who does not know the melting Cornice, now available so large a part of the year,
thanks to the Panama Canal and our own Dominions?" Bunyard asks. "Two thousand
