A Modern Quest for Knowledge into a Past World of Literature;
or ... Why did Jane Austen write her Famous Strawberry Party Scene?
Appendix for Chapter 2
The English Strawberry - a Brief Introduction
Ch2/1: The English Strawberry
According Internet Archaeology, the earliest indication of wild strawberry in Britain is from Mesolithic Westward Ho, and there are two Bronze Age recordings from Oakbank Crannog, Scotland, and Runnymede in Surrey; Internet Archaeology adds that from the Roman period onwards, strawberry seeds are common in deposits with faeces.[i] Continuing in time, a search for the term strawberry in OED shows that T. Wright & R. P. Wülcker’s work Anglo-Saxon & Old Eng. Vocab. (1884) has recorded the word streaberige dated around 1000 A.D. [Ch2/5].[ii] We thus ascertain that the British strawberry has been native to Britain for a considerable time. From medieval period till the 18th century the only strawberries obtainable for cultivation in Britain were the woodland strawberries, Fragaria vesea native to England. AustenOnly writes that wild strawberry plants were collected from and cultivated in kitchen gardens.[iii] Sam Bilton and David Karp further enlighten us as to the type of strawberries in Britain.
Bilton[iv] writes that the Virginia strawberry was brought to England from America during the 16th century, a sweeter but smaller kind than the English wild type; it was only when the Virginia variety was crossbred with the larger Chilean strawberry (Fragaria Chilensis
imported to France by Amédée François Frézier from South America during the 18th century) that the larger strawberry known today was produced. This ‘Chili’ variety is mentioned by Mrs Elton (‘Chili preferred’, p.282), and AustenOnly remarks that the only varieties current in the early 19th century that Austen failed to mention were the Carolina, Fragaria Carolinensis and the Pineapple strawberry, which are both registered in the Every Man His Own Gardener by Thomas Mawe and John Abercrombie (1800) [Ch2/6] [Ch4/34], a gardening book included in the Godmersham Collection, and thus probably familiar to JA,[v] even though it is printed by the publishers who rejected her early draft of Pride and Prejudice in November 1797, i.e. Cadell & Davies.[vi] I was so fortunate as to be able to borrow this book for a day while being in Oxford July 2018 [Ch4/34].
Bilton adds that by the early 19th century England had gained a reputation for its strawberries, leading large fruits to be dubbed les fraises Anglaises, which translates to ‘English strawberries’.[vii] Karp elaborates on the varieties of strawberries as he writes that from the 16th to the mid-19th centuries, the musk strawberry was widely cultivated in Europe; in Germany it was known as Moschuserd-beere, hautbois in France and hautboy in England.[viii] The latter type is mentioned in the strawberry scene (p.282) ‘hautboy infinitely superior—no comparison—the others hardly eatable’ which indicates that Austen knew of the varieties available in the early 19th century.
[i] ‘7 Discussion of Individual Taxa’.
[ii] ‘Strawberry, n.1’.
[iii] Wakefield, ‘Austen Only Emma Season’.
[iv] Bilton, ‘A Berry Old Tradition’.
[v] Wakefield, ‘Austen Only Emma Season’.
[vi] Austen-Leigh, A Memoir of Jane Austen, 105; Tomalin, Jane Austen: A Life, 123.
[vii] Bilton, ‘A Berry Old Tradition’.
[viii] Karp, ‘Berried Treasure’.
Ch2/5: A Search for the Word Strawberry in OED - Oxford English Dictionary
Ch2/6: Every Man His Own Gardener by John Abercrombie (see also Ch4/34)
Mrs Elton mentions both the chili and the hautboy strawberry varieties which shows that Austen was knowledgeable as to the available types of strawberries for cultivation.
She might have consulted the gardening book Every Man His Own Gardener by John Abercrombie as this book was included in the Godmersham Collection owned by her brother Edward.
AustenOnly writes that John Abercrombie came from Edinburgh in Scotland and he was the son a of a nurseryman and market gardener.
Abercrombie left Scotland to travel south to work for King George III’s mother Princess Augusta in London at her residences in Leicester House and Kew, between 1751 and 1757.
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Mr L. Davis, a bookseller, and the famous Oliver Goldsmith later (perhaps in 1764) invited him to write a gardening book, and Abercrombie composed Every Man His Own Gardener, which became the gardening book of the late 18th and early 19th century. The book was first published in 1767.
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Source: https://austenonly.com/2010/01/27/austen-only-emma-season-mr-knightleys-strawberries/
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It is possible to read this gardeners' bible at the Bodleian Library, Oxford (see Ch4/34).
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Source: Own photo.
See https://hmdanielsen.wixsite.com/hmdanielsen/books-from-the-bodleian-oxford
Source: Own photo.
https://hmdanielsen.wixsite.com/hmdanielsen/books-from-the-bodleian-oxford
Ch2/7: Francis Bacon - Excerpt from Essay Of Gardens
Written or Published Around October 13, 1597
'GOD Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed it is the purest of human pleasures. It is the greatest refreshment to the spirits of man; without which, buildings and palaces are but gross handiworks; and a man shall ever see, that when ages grow to civility and elegancy, men come to build stately sooner than to garden finely; as if gardening were the greater perfection.
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I do hold it, in the royal ordering of gardens, there ought to be gardens, for all the months in the year; in which severally things of beauty may be then in season. For December, and January, and the latter part of November, you must take such things as are green all winter: holly; ivy; bays; juniper; cypress-trees; yew; pine-apple-trees; fir-trees; rosemary; lavender; periwinkle, the white, the purple, and the blue; germander; flags; orange-trees; lemon-trees; and myrtles, if they be stoved; and sweet marjoram, warm set.
[...]
In May and June come pinks of all sorts, specially the blushpink; roses of all kinds,
except the musk, which comes later; honeysuckles; strawberries; bugloss;
Source: Bacon, Essay Of Gardens.
columbine; the French marigold, flos Africanus; cherry-tree in fruit; ribes; figs in fruit; rasps; vineflowers; lavender in flowers; the sweet satyrian, with the white flower; herba muscaria; lilium convallium; the apple-tree in blossom.
In July come gilliflowers of all varieties; musk-roses; the lime-tree in blossom; early pears and plums in fruit; jennetings, codlins.
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In August come plums of all sorts in fruit; pears; apricocks; berberries; filberds; musk-melons; monks-hoods, of all colors. In September come grapes; apples; poppies of all colors; peaches; melocotones; nectarines; cornelians; wardens; quinces.
[...]
And because the breath of flowers is far sweeter in the air (where it comes and goes like the warbling of music) than in the hand, therefore nothing is more fit for that delight, than to know what be the flowers and plants that do best perfume the air. Roses, damask and red, are fast flowers of their smells; so that you may walk by a whole row of them, and find nothing of their sweetness; yea though it be in a morning’s dew. Bays likewise yield no smell as they grow. Rosemary little; nor sweet marjoram. That which above all others yields the sweetest smell in the air is the violet, specially the white double violet, which comes twice a year; about the middle of April, and about Bartholomew-tide. Next to that is the musk-rose. Then the strawberry-leaves dying, which yield a most excellent cordial smell. Then the flower of vines; it is a little dust, like the dust of a bent, which grows upon the cluster in the first coming forth.
[...]
I would also have the alleys, spacious and fair. You may have closer alleys, upon the side grounds, but none in the main garden. I wish also, in the very middle, a fair mount, with three ascents, and alleys, enough for four to walk abreast; which I would have to be perfect circles, without any bulwarks or embossments; and the whole mount to be thirty foot high; and some fine banqueting-house, with some chimneys neatly cast, and without too much glass.
[...]
For the heath, which was the third part of our plot, I wish it to be framed, as much as may be, to a natural wildness. Trees I would have none in it, but some thickets made only of sweet-briar and honeysuckle, and some wild vine amongst; and the ground set with violets, strawberries, and primroses. For these are sweet, and prosper in the shade. And these to be in the heath, here and there, not in any order. I like also little heaps, in the nature of mole-hills (such as are in wild heaths), to be set, some with wild thyme; some with pinks; some with germander, that gives a good flower to the eye; some with periwinkle; some with violets; some with strawberries; some with cowslips; some with daisies; some with red roses; some with lilium convallium; some with sweet-williams red; some with bear’s-foot: and the like low flowers, being withal sweet and sightly. Part of which heaps, are to be with standards of little bushes pricked upon their top, and part without. The standards to be roses; juniper; holly; berberries (but here and there, because of the smell of their blossoms); red currants; gooseberries; rosemary; bays; sweetbriar; and such like. But these standards to be kept with cutting, that they grow not out of course.
[...]
In many of these alleys, likewise, you are to set fruit-trees of all sorts; as well upon the walls, as in ranges. And this would be generally observed, that the borders wherein you plant your fruit-trees, be fair and large, and low, and not steep; and set with fine flowers, but thin and sparingly, lest they deceive the trees. At the end of both the side grounds, I would have a mount of some pretty height, leaving the wall of the enclosure breast high, to look abroad into the fields.
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For the main garden, I do not deny, but there should be some fair alleys ranged on both sides, with fruit-trees; and some pretty tufts of fruit-trees, and arbors with seats, set in some decent order; but these to be by no means set too thick; but to leave the main garden so as it be not close, but the air open and free.
[...], but nothing to the true pleasure of a garden.'
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The underlining and red font are done by me and is not included in the original text.
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Source: https://classic-literature.co.uk/essay-of-gardens/
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Ch2/8: The Knight Collection
The collection of books and other materials at Godmersham Park, the home of JA's brother, Edward Austen Knight, contains works by sir Francis Bacon.
Click here to view The Knight Collection, (PDF)
View the original - click here: 1818 Catalogue of the Godmersham Park Library (arranged alphabetically)
On page 1308 we find his entry for strawberry:
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Stráwberry. s. [A.S. straw-berie, streow-berie, streaw-berge.] Plant and fruit, of the genus Frangaria.
As the first element in a compound.
Ch2/9: Dr Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language
Johnson's Dictionary by Samuel Johnson, published 1755.
In 1746 Johnson contracted with Robert Dodsley and other booksellers to write an English dictionary, for a fee of £1,575. ). A ‘Plan’ and dedication to Chesterfield appeared in 1747. Johnson's object was to produce ‘a dictionary by which the pronunciation of our language may be fixed, and its attainment facilitated; by which its purity may be preserved, its use ascertained, and its duration lengthened’. Working with six assistants in newly rented premises in Gough Square, London, Johnson wrote definitions of over 40,000 words, illustrated with about 114,000 literary quotations from Philip Sidney onwards. Five editions were published in his lifetime, and the work remained work unrivalled until the Oxford English Dictionary. Its monumental authority is occasionally sweetened with playful definitions such as lexicographer, ‘a writer of dictionaries, a harmless drudge’. ​
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Birch, ‘“Johnson’s Dictionary”’.Source:
.A Dictionary of the English Language / Abridged by the EditorJohnson,
Ch2/10 Dr Samuel Johnson
Austen’s nephew and biographer James Edward Austen-Leigh mentions in his A Memoir of Jane Austen that Austen was fond of reading Dr Samuel Johnson:
Amongst her favourite writers, Johnson in prose, Crabbe in verse, and Cowper in both, stood high. It is well that the native good taste of herself and of those with whom she lived, saved her from the snare into which a sister novelist had fallen, of imitating the grandiloquent style of Johnson.
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https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17797/17797-h/17797-h.htm
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Ch2/11 References to Dr Samuel Johnson in Austen's letters
Letter XIX, 13, Queen's Square, Sunday (June 2)
(Deirdre Le Faye. Letter 20 – Sunday 2 June 1799; p. 44. Le Faye, Jane Austen’s Letters. 4th Edt.)
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I spent Friday evening with the Mapletons, and was obliged to submit to being pleased in spite of my inclination. We took a very charming walk from six to eight up Beacon Hill, and across some fields, to the village of Charlecombe, which is sweetly situated in a little green valley, as a village with such a name ought to be. Marianne is sensible and intelligent, and even Jane, considering how fair she is, is not unpleasant. We had a Miss North and a Mr. Gould of our party; the latter walked home with me after tea. He is a very young man, just entered Oxford, wears spectacles, and has heard that "Evelina" was written by Dr. Johnson.
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http://www.pemberley.com/janeinfo/brablet3.html
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Letter XXXVII, Southampton: February 8
(Deirdre Le Faye. Letter 50 - Sunday 8-Monday 9 February 1807; p. 126. Le Faye, Jane Austen’s Letters. 4th Edt.)
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There, I flatter myself I have constructed you a smartish letter, considering my want of materials, but, like my dear Dr. Johnson, I believe I have dealt more in notions than facts.
I hope your cough is gone and that you are otherwise well, and remain, with love,
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The Symbolism of the Strawberry
The literature available on the internet provides hundreds of suggestions as to the symbolism of the strawberry, and in the sections Ch2/31- Ch2/34 a selection of symbolisms has been picked which might be relevant to Jane Austen's interpretation of the strawberry.
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Click on the illustration to continue to read about some of the suggested symbolisms of the strawberry.
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