The Ancient Greengage Tree
In a dark, sunless, scrubby piece of overgrown waste land at the bottom of the garden, rising high above the nettles is an ancient straggly greengage tree. Apart from the wasps and birds, it is unloved and forgotten but every year, against all odds, it still manages to bear fruit. The ground is covered with windfalls which have chutney written all over them.
The greengage is in fact nothing of the sort. It’s the small French green plum known as Reine de Claude named in honour of Queen Claude of France who, if not for the plum, would be as forgotten as the straggly old tree.
A fervent admirer of all things Italian, her father, Louis XII, brought the plum, which was unknown in France, back home to Château Blois where he and wife, Queen, Anne of Brittany had an Italian style garden. Claude gave the trees to anyone who expressed an interest which is why, to this day, the area around Blois has many Reine de Claude trees.
The famous English cookery writer Jane Grigson, who lived in the Loire Valley, revered French cooking. In 1982, she included Reine de Claude in Jane Grigson's Fruit Book. The recipe was given to her by a patissier in Montoire, twenty-five miles from Chateau Blois.
Claude known as Good Queen Claude, married Francis I in 1514 when she was fifteen. She died age twenty-four after giving birth to seven children. One son, Henry, married Catherine de Medici but the love of his life was his mistress Diane de Poitiers.
A little known fact about Claude is that at her wedding in Paris she met the fifteen year old Anne Boleyn and took a shine to her. Knowing as Queen of France she would have to host important visitors from England, not able to speak English, she invited the bi-lingual Anne to join her court as her maid of honour and to act as translator.
Anne stayed by Claude’s side for the next seven years through thick and thin until she was recalled to England, to be, like Claude, a pawn in the political game. She, like Claude, had a tragic end to her life.
In 1724, Sir William Gage, a politician who sat in the House of Commons, imported the tree with the green plums from France. It was called The Green Gage but was known in England long before 1724.
It may be that Anne Boleyn introduced the small green plum into England. When Henry VIII’s ship The Mary Rose sank in the Solent in 1545 it was carrying five different varieties of plums including Reine de Claude.
Reine de Claude trees were imported from England to be grown on the plantations of Presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Despite Queen Claude, since 1958 it is almost impossible to think of the fruit without remembering Rumer Godden’s The Greengage Summer. The film of the same name, set in France, was based on the novel.
Post by Pamela
