William Henry Teale (The Major)

Quick Facts

Role: Former British Army officer turned orchardist; patriarch who founds the “Osgood Wonder” orchard and builds the main yellow house
First appearance: “Osgood’s Wonder,” Being the Reminiscences of an Apple-Man”
Home: The north woods property he purchases around the wild “Wonder” tree
Family: Twin daughters Alice and Mary Osgood; siblings Constance and John Osgood
Allies and foils: Rumbold (batman and companion); Dr. Arbuthnot (comic antagonist); Mr. Fludd (ethical foil)
Allegiance: Loyalist during the American Revolution
Legacy: The orchard, the house, and a valedictory letter that becomes the property’s founding document

Who They Are

Bold, contrary, and romantic in the old sense, William Henry Teale abandons the career and identity the world assigned him—“martial Osgood”—to become the Apple-Man. He is a bridge between wilderness and cultivation: the man who locates a feral apple of astonishing quality and then uses European horticultural craft to root a family, a house, and a tradition around it. In doing so, he embodies the book’s fascination with The Interconnectedness of Nature and Human History: the tree alters his fate, and his choices in turn alter the landscape for generations.

Personality & Traits

Teale writes with a theatrical wit and a scholar’s polish, yet his pages are most alive when he’s teaching his daughters to graft or puzzling out an apple riddle. His “pomomania” is both a joke at his own expense and a life creed—an organizing passion that gives moral and aesthetic shape to everything he does.

Passionate, even obsessive: He leaves a decorated military path to devote himself “entirely to apples,” a choice his family brands lunacy but he treats as vocation. His quest for the “perfect” fruit is spiritual as much as scientific.
Eccentric and witty: His mock-heroic account of Dr. Arbuthnot’s exam skewers fashionable diagnoses while revealing his self-awareness; at home, he composes apple riddles and mythic games for his daughters.
Learned experimenter: Classical allusions (Pomona, Mars, Paris) sit beside pomological method; he reads, argues, and trials grafts, turning obsession into disciplined craft.
Loving father and pedagogue: He writes a valedictory not only to love them but to equip them—technique, ethics, and wonder. His pet name “Malus!” fuses Latin taxonomy with affection.
Principled and stubborn: He refuses to sell cuttings of the Wonder to Mr. Fludd because the man’s land was gotten by “bloody business,” and he clings to Loyalism out of faith in order and distrust of “the rabble.”
Physical presence, self-described: He deflates vanity with humor—first the “cloud-borne” ruffle and careful sideburns in his younger reflection, later the “old man of fifty” with a creased brow and furred ears—casting himself as a comic, mortal steward rather than a hero-king.

Character Journey

Teale’s transformation precedes his chapter and defines it. On the Plains of Abraham, a French soldier rises from slicing a sweet pippin and drives the bayonet into Teale’s chest. The blade that wounds him is the tool of an apple-eater: war and fruit, death and sustenance, braided in a single stroke. In convalescence he dreams a soul-feeding tree and reads this not as madness but as summons. With Rumbold, he tramps New England until a boy leads them to the feral tree by an abandoned stone cabin; the first bite is revelation, proof that the wild can outstrip any cultivated “Fruit.” He purchases the land, builds the yellow house, and cultivates the “Osgood Wonder,” recasting himself as orchardist and father. His letter—part how-to, part credo—precedes his Loyalist departure for the Revolution, where he dies “defending his seeds.” The arc traces Sanctuary and Escape: flight from armies into an Eden of his own making, then the return of history to claim him. Yet his trees outlast him, enacting The Cycle of Life, Death, and Renewal that his work has always modeled.

Key Relationships

Alice and Mary Osgood: The twins are Teale’s audience, heirs, and creative partners. He turns pedagogy into play—myths refitted for apple lore, riddles with grafting tips hidden inside—so that knowledge is inseparable from delight. He entrusts them with both the technique and the ethic of the Wonder: cultivate together, keep its origins uncorrupted, choose wonder over fashion.
Rumbold: First the batman who hauls him from death, then the companion who hauls him across back roads and hedgerows. Rumbold’s steadiness counters Teale’s flights of rhetoric; together they make a practical mysticism—vision paired with labor—that actually finds the tree.
Constance and John Osgood: Their “cure” for Teale’s pomomania represents respectable common sense, and their attempts to restrain him throw his stubbornness into relief. As comic foils, they reveal how far Teale must step outside social norms to build his orchard and how fully he replaces family approval with a legacy he forges on the land.

Defining Moments

Teale’s life coheres around scenes where appetite, imagination, and principle crystallize into choice.

The wounding on the Plains of Abraham: A bayonet that moments before cut a pippin pierces his chest. Why it matters: It fuses violence with nourishment, making apples the emblem not of trivial craving but of survival and rebirth.
The dream of the soul-feeding tree: During recovery he envisions a tree that “fed the souls.” Why it matters: He interprets the image as vocation, transfiguring trauma into purpose and exchanging Mars for Pomona.
Discovering the “Wonder” tree: A boy guides him to a wild apple by an abandoned stone cabin; the first bite overwhelms him. Why it matters: The quest’s end births the orchard, the house, and the family mythos that will structure the property’s future.
The Judgment of Paris retold: In his household version, Paris chooses the apple. Why it matters: He places wonder above vainglory and teaches his daughters that value lives in perception and cultivation, not in courtly prizes.
Writing the valediction: Anticipating war, he sets down method, maxims, and love. Why it matters: The letter is both bequest and bulwark—turning fragile memory into durable practice and making his voice part of the house’s foundations.

Essential Quotes

“God had willed me to raise an orchard, I said.” This is Teale’s theology of vocation: not a hobby but a calling. By appealing to providence, he justifies his rejection of military duty and social expectations, reframing obsession as obedience.
“When I bit into it, I had the sense of tasting not only with my tongue, but deep within my palate, a scent more than a flavour, as light as lemon blossoms, before a second wave came spreading through like syrup. What in heaven was this?... No one had ever eaten an apple like this.” The synesthetic rush elevates taste into revelation. Teale proves his criterion for the Wonder is not yield or profit but astonishment—the fruit must change perception itself.
“For a Fruit is a Thing, while that which I was searching for was nothing less than that which could transcend the tangible, speak to astonishment, invoke not only pleasure, but the perception of something vast, supernal, nothing less than enchantment itself. ‘You mean Wonder?’ they asked, at once.” This exchange with the twins distills his creed and pedagogy. He tutors them toward the word “Wonder,” turning language into an apprenticeship in attention.
“Wrong,” I would say, and, palming the Wonder, I would take a bite. “In this version, Paris chooses the apple.” By rewriting myth, Teale asserts alternative values: appetite rightly ordered, craft over vanity, domestic joy over imperial fame. The joke is a lesson about choosing what sustains.
“Having sown my seeds, I must defend them. I do not trust the rabble that thinks the land is theirs, and not vice versa.” Here the pastoral ideal meets politics. His Loyalism reveals the limits and tensions of his worldview: a paternal stewardship ethic that can shade into elitism, even as it arises from devotion to what he’s planted.

William Henry Teale