Horace Walpole and Eighteenth-Century Garden History Author(S): Stephen Bending Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol

Home , Thomas Whately

Horace Walpole and Eighteenth-Century Garden History Author(s): Stephen Bending Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 57 (1994), pp. 209-226 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/751470 . Accessed: 02/09/2014 13:50

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This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE AND EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GARDEN HISTORY Stephen Bending

... All these devices are rather emblematicalthan expressive; they may be ingenious contriv- ances, and recall absent ideas to the recollection; but they make no immediate impression ... and though an allusion to a favourite or well known subject of history, poetry, or of tradition, may now and then animate or dignify a scene, yet as the subject does not naturally belong to a garden, the allusion should not be principal; it should seem to have been suggested by the scene: a transitory image, which irresistibly occurred; not sought for, not laboured; and have the force of a metaphor, free from the detail of an allegory. (Thomas Whately, Observationson ModernGardening..., 1770, p. 151) * homas Whately's distinction between the emblematic and the expressive in T garden ornamentation has been proposed by a number of recent garden historians as an appropriate description of historical changes in the eighteenth- century landscape garden:1 changes in form, it is suggested, can be explained in terms of a shift from readable intellectual designs to instantaneous effects upon the sensibility. Thus, if Alexander Pope's garden at Twickenham demands an educated and intricate response, 'Capability' Brown's designs later in the century are con- cerned to evoke the more immediate, less structured responses of mood. Whately's distinction implies an historical transition not only from emblem to metaphor, from the indirect to the direct, but also from the artificial to the increasingly natural; and since the late eighteenth century, garden histories have tended to fit individual gardens within a similar narrative of 'progression'. Arguably the greatest support for such a history of progressive 'naturalness' in garden design came from Horace Walpole in his well-known essay 'On Modern Gardening'. Walpole, writing at about the same date as Whately, did not challenge the notion of emblem and expression as an historical distinction; but his work articulated a far more explicit political ideology, and Walpole's essay therefore offers a substantially different account of garden history. If not all of Walpole's polemical claims are now accepted, his notion of an historical narrative of great gardens and great designers continues to have considerable influence as a framework for many modern accounts of the 'rise' of the landscape garden in eighteenth-century England.2 Yet despite the influence of Walpole's history, its judgements did not go unchal- lenged by his contemporaries. In this essay I will explore some of the competing

* Observations on Modern Gardening, illustrated by De- 2 See e.g. J. Sambrook, The Eighteenth Century: The scriptions, London 1770. Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1700- 1 j. D. Hunt, 'Emblem and Expressionism in the 1789, London 1986, pp. 154-65; and D. M. Roberts's Eighteenth-Century Landscape Garden', Eighteenth Cen- introduction to D. C. Streatfield and A. M. Duckworth, tury Studies, iii, Spring 1971, pp. 294-317; and R. Paul- Landscape in the Gardens and the Literature of Eighteenth- son, Emblem and Expression. Meaning in English Art of the Century England (Clark Library Seminars, 1978), Los Eighteenth Century, London 1975. Angeles 1981.

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Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 57, 1994

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 210 STEPHEN BENDING attempts to construct a history of the English landscape garden in this period, and the importance of those histories to contemporary interpretations of gardens as a part of English culture. It is well known that by the later eighteenth century the English landscape garden was characterised as originating quite abruptly with the Spectator papers of Addison in 1712, the influence of Pope's writings and his garden at Twickenham, and the work of William Kent in the 1730s. It is now accepted that such a position is untenable: foreign influence, textual sources and an inconvenient chronology all belie the assertion. Much work has been done to establish the stylistic genesis of the landscape garden,3 one result of which has been that the contemporary defenders of a now debunked history are largely ignored. This essay considers the strategies by which eighteenth-century writers of garden history set about supporting the originality and significance-indeed the Englishness-of the English landscape garden. It traces through the works of a number of these writers the construction, and defence, of an historical discourse which was deemed appropriate to the aims of the landscape garden. The task which these garden historians undertook may be characterised, through a paraphrase of Whately, as that of forging an 'irresistible' link between the English landscape garden and British political history: of demonstrat- ing that British political history is a subject which 'naturally belongs to a garden'. The later eighteenth century saw a surge in the number of publications on the history of the English garden. Earlier works on gardens had sometimes included discussion of the gardens of other ages, but they were not conceived with the same stringent historical-and polemical-objectives as their later counterparts; nor did they so confidently judge gardens of past ages, or from within such a firm historical narrative. Many of the later works are openly Whiggish in their historical stance, and defiantly patriotic: a discourse of aesthetic history is constructed as a means of providing, and justifying, value-judgements upon what was considered by some to be England's major original contribution to the fine arts in the eighteenth century.4 Yet one need not adhere to the later eighteenth century's homogenising narrative of natural progress. I want first to consider a work from earlier in the century which fails to fit neatly within the constructed tradition: Richard Bradley's Survey of Ancient husbandry and Gardening (1725).5 Bradley, who had recently been made professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge despite a complete ignorance of Latin and Greek, spends much of his time in this work detailing the techniques of ancient husbandry as a guide for modern agriculture, but briefly considers the design of ancient gardens. He writes:

3 See e.g. H. F. Clark, The English Landscape Garden, can call our own; the only proof of our original talent London 1964; Hunt (as in n. 1); idem, Garden and Grove: in matter of pleasure, I mean our skill in gardening, or the Italian Renaissance Garden and the English Imagination rather laying out grounds; and this is no small honour 1600-1750, London 1986; Paulson (as in n. 1); and to us, since neither Italy not France have ever had the Streatfield and Duckworth (as in n. 2). least notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when 4 See Gray's much quoted comment on the orig- they see it'. The Poems of Mr Gray. To which are prefixed of the Memoirs his and W Mason, York inality English landscape garden: challenging of Life Writings by M.A., Count Algarotti's views, Gray denied European and 1775, pp. 386f. Chinese influence upon the English style and wrote, 5 R. Bradley, A Survey of the Ancient husbandry and 'He is highly civil to our nation; but there is one point Gardening, collectedfrom Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, and in which he does not do us justice; I am the more sol- others..., London 1725. icitous about it, because it relates to the only taste we

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 211 In the next place I come to take Notice of the State-Gardens of the Ancients, how they were design'd for Grandeur; the Fashion, or Taste of the Greeksand Romans,in such Grand Gar- dens, was to make them free and open, to consist of as much Variety as possible; to afford shade, and give a refreshing Coolness by variety of Jet-d'eauxand Water-falls. When they laid out their gardens in any Figures (for I do not find that they ever used Knots or Flourishes) those Figures were either Squares, Circles or Triangles, which they commonly encompass'd with Groves of Pines, Firrs, Cypress, Plane-Trees, Beech, or such like; in some convenient Place they also contrived their Ornithons,or Aviaries... He continues that among these features there were also fish ponds, ... in which it was a Custom to have moving Figures, contrived by a famous Clock-Maker at Athens,which, by the motion of the Waters, were continually in Action, which Piece of Art was held mightily in Esteem. This was the Humour of the Gardens of the Ancients, which, in my Opinion, we have hardly mended by our extraordinary Regularity; which, however it may appear well on a Paper Design, is stiff and surfeiting when it comes to be put into Execution. In our Modern Designs we see all at once, and lose, the Pleasure of Expectation; fine irregular Spots of Ground, which in themselves had ten thousand Beauties, are brought to a Level at an immense Expence, and then give us so little Amusement, that the Charge is generally regretted, and the Spirit of Gardening, which began to grow in the Gentlemen who have been at the Expence of such Works, sinks, and concludes in a Resolution of abandoning their Design of Gardening ... [so that] even in the best Performances in this Way, a good Judge cannot help discovering the petit goust, except in such Gardens as we find at the Earl of Burlington'sat Chiswick,where the Contrivance and Disposition of the several Parts, sufficiently declare the grand Taste of the Master. (pp. 358-60) I quote at length because the passage contains many of the themes and values which are to appear in later histories; what differs is the subject to which those values are attached. Bradley asserts that classical gardens were 'free and open' and that their foremost consideration was 'Variety'. He then describes a landscape of 'Squares, Circles or Triangles', of 'Jet-d'eaux', aviaries and mechanical devices, while also praising the 'fine irregular Spots of Ground' upon which the later landscape garden was itself to depend. As Bradley continues, we discover that 'Variety' is provided by a mixture of old elements and new, of features drawn from the gardens of the ancients and from those of contemporary France. 'Amusement', 'Expectation' and the 'entertaining' are demanded, but the means of providing such effects are almost entirely at odds with those of subsequent theorists. Squares, circles and triangles, and mechanical devices, were all to be damned by later writers. Of note, however, is that the value-laden language of the landscape garden is already in place by 1725-set against variety and its concomitant amusement, entertainment and di- version, is 'extraordinary Regularity', the 'stiff and surfeiting', 'the petit goust' and the wasted expense: what differs are the formal features to which those terms are ascribed. The terms of approbation remain the same throughout the century; that to which they refer, however, changes dramatically. Bradley's target in this passage, it would seem, is the Dutch style which became popular in Britain with William and Mary, for he then goes on to suggest that along with the 'Advantage to be made of Wood and Water', such 'Agreeables' could be improved if we were to borrow so much ... from the VersailesGardens as one might take in at small Expence, such as the Fables of Aesop, to be here and there intersperc'd in our Woods,

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 212 STEPHEN BENDING represented by Figures as big as the Life, of Men, Birds and Beasts, painted in their natural Colours... (p. 360) Bradley's vision is thus of a firmly emblematic garden, adding credence, perhaps, to Whately's analysis of garden history. Yet what is more important for the present argument is the author's willingness to accept foreign influence in a way which would not be possible thirty years later. His justification, as he makes clear, is the classical precedence of such designs-a precedence which would itself be either challenged or ignored in the second half of the century. Bradley's championing of Chiswick on classical grounds is therefore of particular note, for although Lord Burlington's design was quite openly an attempt to reclaim the classical style, by the 1760s and '70s classical influence had been attenuated precisely by the anglicising histories of that later period. Chiswick, in this later version of history, was not a neoclassical garden but an early-and prophetic-essay in the English landscape tradition. That such an argument is teleological hardly needs remarking. It is worth quoting from Bradley further to illustrate an alternative vision of 'progress' in garden design-a vision which was to be discredited, if not erased, by later historians. Bradley writes: ... how extremely might the Delights of such a Place be heighten'd, if in some Part of the Wood there should be placed either in a Summer-House, or Grotto,such a Musical Machine, as has been lately invented by Mr. Pinchbeckthe famous Clock-Maker in Fleetstreet,which by Means of Water may Play Perpetually, and give us the agreeable Entertainment of Symphonies, Airs, Sonata's and Concertosupon Flutes, GermanFlutes, Trumpets, and other Instruments, performing compleat consorts when we are remote from good Performers, and our Mind is disposed to Solitude; such an Entertainment, I say, where the true Taste of the Musick is kept up, and the Graces are rightly adapted, as appears in all Mr. Pinchbeck'sPieces of this Sort, must surely render such a Retreat delightful beyond Description; where this happens to be, it would be no small Addition to the Pleasure we propose from it, if the bye-Walks were so order'd, that one could not come at once upon such a Summer-House, but be led to it by Degrees, first hearing the Musick faintly, and then led insensibly from it, and by turns losing and recovering it, 'till at length we came to enjoy its Harmony compleat. I think nothing could be more enchanting than a Thing of this Nature, and yet need not be of any great Expence, as far as I can understand, where there is a Command of Water. Here like- wise we might have Grotto's and Caves disposed in a Rustick Manner; and at certain Points of View, Obelisksmight be placed or Summer-Houses, or Pavilions, built after the Manner of GrecianTemples, to be planted about with Firr-Trees, at such Distances as not to obstruct the Sight; 'tis in this Manner I conceive a Garden may be made more delightful, and possess more Beauties than any Garden we have yet in England... (p. 361) Bradley's design is predicated upon variety; it conjoins nature and art; it emphasises emotional effects; but in acknowledging classical and more recent foreign influences it precludes recognition of the originality-the Englishness-of the design. In the works I shall next consider, such a view is no longer possible. From the 1760s to the mid-1790s a series of publications addressed the question of the Englishness of the English landscape garden, and they did so by placing contemporary designs in the context of a world history of gardens from earliest re- corded time.6 While this led to frequent gestures in the direction of the Garden of

6 Texts from this period which include accounts of in this essay include: Henry Home, Lord Kames, garden history, but which I do not have room to discuss Elements of Criticism,Edinburgh 1762; Daniel Malthus,

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 213

Eden, serious commentary began with rather better documented cases, and, given the lack of physical evidence, this was an almost entirely textual exercise. In the following pages I will consider a number of later eighteenth-century discussions of ancient and Renaissance gardens before moving on to discussions of contemporary English design. The value of these historical accounts lies in the overt ideological framework they employ, a framework used also in discussions of contemporary gardens, but one which is often ignored by twentieth-century historians. Such accounts provide an important corrective to those modern historians who continue to see eighteenth-century histories not as ideological constructs keyed to a particular and definable stance, but as a series of facts, as a transparent-almost Rankean-narrative of what really happened. Our canonical history of gardens, that is, is largely a received history, carefully produced in the eighteenth century, and one which influences not only the narrative we now consider to comprise garden history in the period, but also aesthetic judgements on those achievements. At issue is not simply the use of Whig rhetoric, of a language saturated with political allusions:7 eighteenth-century narrative history was largely responsible for creating the very tradition of the English landscape garden.

Horace Walpole, in his essay 'On Modern Gardening', having nodded at Eden begins his narrative with the garden of Alcinous.8 The garden is introduced as 'the most renowned in the heroic times', and Walpole asks, 'Is there an admirer of Ho- mer who can read his description without rapture...?' But, he continues, Homer's description, when 'divested of harmonious Greek and bewitching poetry', referred to nothing more than 'a small orchard and vineyard with some beds of herbs and two fountains that watered them, inclosed within a quickset hedge. The whole com- pass of this pompous garden inclosed-four acres.' Thus the great classical garden, stripped of the poetry of Homer, is suddenly unworthy of its renown. Not only is it ordinary, but it is small. Small, that is, when compared to the English landscape garden of the eighteenth century; and in Walpole's text-as in the other texts I shall discuss-historical gardens are always compared to the contemporary produc- tions of England. This becomes clearer in the next garden in Walpole's chronology: the hanging gardens of Babylon. The hanging gardens of Babylon were a still greater prodigy. We are not acquainted with their disposition or contents, but as they are supposed to have been formed on terrasses and the walls of the palace, whither soil was conveyed on purpose, we are very certain of what they were not; I mean they must have been trifling, of no extent, and a wanton instance of expence and labour. In other words they were what sumptuous gardens have been in all ages

'Preface' to Louis-Rene de Girardin, Essay on Land- not set this within the wider context of garden histori- scape, London 1783; Archibald Alison, Essays on Taste, ography's more general use as an ideological tool in the Dublin 1790; Richard Steele, Essay on Gardening, York 18th century. Without this context, the premise of Wal- 1793. pole's history appears more unusual than it should. 7 Cf. R. Quaintance, 'Walpole's Whig Interpretation 8 H. Walpole, 'On Modern Gardening', in his Anec- of Landscaping History', Studies in Eighteenth-Century dotes of Painting in England... To which is added The History Culture, ix, 1979, pp. 285-300. Quaintance draws atten- of The Modern Taste in Gardening, edn London 1782, iv, tion to the Whiggish nature of Walpole's text, but does pp. 247-316 (250-2).

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 214 STEPHEN BENDING till the present, unnatural, enriched by art, possibly with fountains, statues, balustrades, and summer-houses, and were anything but verdant and rural. (p. 253) What they were not was the English landscape garden of the later eighteenth century. Rather than arguing his case, Walpole asserts it rhetorically by loading the description heavily in favour of his own position. The 'other words' he chooses here, and throughout the essay, are the negatives of his own, polemical interpretation of the landscape style. Walpole does not need to be acquainted with the disposition or contents of the garden on this occasion because the basic historical assumption has already been made: the true style of gardening was not discovered until the eighteenth century, in Britain. His own language then dictates the outcome from the basic formal elements he provides. The design is necessarily 'unnatural', a 'prodigy', and Walpole can load it with all the paraphernalia of what he considers to be the pre-landscape garden g-although many of the features he lists were to remain in 'landscape' gardens throughout the century. A somewhat different account of classical gardens comes from William Falconer, the well-respected scholar and physician, in his 'Thoughts on the Style and Taste of the Ancients' Rather than the Gardening among (1789).1o decrying Babylonian gardens as irredeemably beyond the pales of taste, Falconer describes them in terms of 'a variety and extent of view' (p. 301), concluding that they were formed with 'judgement and taste' (p. 302). However, while this may suggest an attempt to avoid the imposition of Walpolian teleology, the gardens are deemed tasteful because, although different from those of eighteenth-century England, they never- theless meet-or can be interpreted as meeting-the fundamental aesthetic criteria of the landscape garden, namely variety and prospect. And it is these aesthetic terms which guide eighteenth-century historiographers in their narratives and evaluations of garden history. An apparent irony in this is that prospect and variety -claimed by this time to be uniquely English-were also operating principles in the Italian garden aesthetic, the movement of which to England has been detailed by John Dixon Hunt." By the later eighteenth century, however, the perception of these qualities had become so transformed, in the context of an English garden aesthetic, that when English critics considered Italian gardens, prospect and variety were no longer recognised as organising principles underlying them.'2 William Burgh's account of Pliny's gardens is typical in this respect. In the commentary to his close friend William Mason's four-part poem The English Garden, Burgh's narrative moves quickly from Babylon to Rome. Stopping only to remark that Cicero was an admirer of topiary work and therefore of no consequence to the

See also William The Garden: A In a Letter from the Hon. 9 Mason, English poem Gardening. Daines Barrington in Four Books. To which is added a commentary and notes by to the Rev. Mr. Norris Secretary', Archaeologia: or Miscel- William Burgh, York 1783. Burgh, who included long laneous Tracts relating to Antiquity. Published by The Society historical notes in his commentary, concurs with Wal- of Antiquaries of London, 1785, vii, pp. 113-30, where he pole in this regard and makes short work of Babylon: writes, 'As for the gardens of Babylon, they could only 'The hanging gardens of Babylon, and of the Egyptian have been celebrated for the great expense which must Thebes, like the pastures on the roof of Nero's golden have attended piling up earth as was necessary for plant- palace, are rather to be considered as the caprices of ing trees in so singular a position'. Architecture' (p. 194). Not only are they 'caprices' but, 10 Published in Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical when categorised in such a way, they can only be un- Society of Manchester, edn London 1789, i, pp. 297-325. natural, and thus Burgh's case is proved without the 11 Hunt (as in n. 3), passim, esp. pp. 162-9. 12 need for further argument. A similar point is made by See further below, pp. 217f. Daines Barrington in his essay 'On the Progress of

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 215 modern style, he moves on to discuss the Younger Pliny's 'laboured description' of his Tuscan villa (pp. 195-7). The natural scenery around the garden is described in some detail: The valleys are 'crowned with old patrician Forests', there are various 'bold projections', 'varieties of inclosure and cultivation', and 'eternal rills'. 'Such', he writes, are the glowing scenes of Italy, and how well adapted they are to the canvas Pliny himself has perceived; for he declares, 'the view before him to resemble a picture beautifully composed rather than a work of Nature accidentally delivered'. The natural scene having been set, and the association with the English landscape garden having been suggested, Burgh turns his attention to Pliny's garden art, which forms the foreground of this scene. Behold him then hemmed in by a narrow inclosure, surrounded with a graduated mound, tracing, perhaps, his own or his Gardener's name scribbled in some sort of herbage upon a formal parterre, or ranging in allies formed of boxen pyramids and unshorn apple-trees placed alternately, in order, as he declares himself, 'happily to blend rusticity with the works of more polished art;' nay, it is even possible that seated now upon a perforated bench, so contrived as, under the pressure of his weight, to fling up innumerable jets d'eau, he thence takes in the view of this 'vast Theatre of Nature' from between the figures of fantastic monsters or the jaws of wild beasts, into which he has shorn a row of box-trees at the foot of an even sloping terras. In brief, in a foreground probably designed, but certainly applauded by the Younger Pliny, no vestige of Nature is suffered to remain; and if, from a man of his eru- dition and accomplishments, we receive no better a model for our imitation, I believe we may safely infer, that however lovely Italian scenery in general may be to the eye, the search of classic aid to the Art of Gardening must prove absolutely fruitless... (pp. 196f) Thus, having conceded that the Italian landscape itself provides the beauty of both prospect and variety, Burgh neatly vitiates the image by setting it between the figures of fantastic monsters and the jaws of wild beasts. Prospect becomes simply background, and variety is replaced by formality. Interest is focused instead upon the artifice of a foreground of names scribbled in herbage, boxen pyramids, narrow inclosures and jets d'eau. From this treatment of a 'representative' example Burgh is able to argue that the classical garden provides no model for modern English design-the premise of his entire commentary. When this same passage from Pliny is considered by William Falconer, he not only dismisses the garden as formal, but goes on to equate the style with French gardens-and despotic French politics. In a move characteristic of such garden histories, Falconer telescopes the whole of garden history into the narrative of one unchanging, a-historical style,'3 and thus, in an essay ostensibly on ancient gardens, is able to introduce modern gardens and to emphasise the revolutionary nature of an English garden which claims no antecedents. Much in the style of Walpole, he then widens the debate by drawing upon the regular designs of Eastern gardens, further augmenting his case for the originality of the English garden but also quite overtly linking regular gardens with despotic governments. According to Falconer, the regularity and formality of both manners and gardens in Eastern countries

13 Cf e.g. Walpole (as in n. 8), p. 256: 'There wants garden in the reign of Trajan serve for a description of nothing but the embroidery of a parterre, to make a one in that of king William'.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 216 STEPHEN BENDING results from despotic governments which are jealous of innovation and genius. In England, he argues, the regular taste ... prevailed in this country, at a time when our system of manners, dress, and behaviour was extremely ceremonious, formal, and reserved, and approaching to those of eastern countries. As this stiffness wore off, the taste of the people improved. Shakespeare was no longer censured for inattention to dramatic strictness; the turgid, but regular bom- bast of Blackmore, fell into disrepute and ridicule, and a more easy and natural style was adopted, both in sentiment and writing. (p. 321) Thus, the history of England from the reign of Elizabeth to the late eighteenth century is that of a gradual removal of 'stiffness' from culture, and the English garden represents the apotheosis of that process. Falconer concludes, The general method of laying out grounds, in this country, seems at present to be very rational. Natural beauties, or resemblances thereof, are chiefly attempted; which are the more proper, as being more comfortable to the climate and situation of the country, and disposition of the people, who are best pleased with great and sublime objects, which are found only in nature. (ibid.) The English landscape garden, then, is a reflection both of Britain's cultural disposition and of correct-natural-government, for if regular gardens represent despotic interests, the 'rational' landscape garden is a reflection of a variegated- constitutional-regime. The patriotism this implies is made manifest in Falconer's assertion that, while classical descriptions are striking and affecting by the things they call to memory, he has no doubt that an English grove of oaks would be more beautiful and magnificent than the olive grove of Academe or the plane trees in the Athenian Lyceum (p. 323). The cultural, and more specifically the political symbol- ism of the English oak-a central feature of the landscape garden-is championed as a modern-day successor to and apotheosis of those Greek icons of civilisation. As with Walpole and Burgh, Falconer sets the classical garden against its modern English counterpart and finds the former wanting. It is this same assertion of Eng- lish values which informs discussion of the landscape garden in its contemporary European context, and it is to these works that I now turn. As Falconer's account suggests, such discussions of English gardens inevitably take the form of commentary on a broader notion of English culture.

In 1772 William Mason confidently asserted that the English garden was a wholly national product, that it was indebted to no European model for its genesis, and that the few theoretical antecedents it had lay in seventeenth-century English works, if anywhere. I had before called Bacon the prophet, and Milton the herald of true taste in Gardening. The former, because in developing the constituent properties of a princely garden, he had largely expatiated upon that adorned natural wildness which we now deem the essence of the art. The latter, on account of his having made this natural wildness the leading idea in his exquisite description of Paradise. I here call Addison, Pope, Kent, &c. the Champions of

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 217 this true taste, because they absolutely brought it into execution. The beginning therefore of an actual reformation may be fixed at the time when the Spectator first appeared. (William Mason, TheEnglish Garden,1783, i, n. VIII) 14 Yet, as John Dixon Hunt has shown, the gardens of Italy were a formative influence on the creation of the English style, and an influence that was openly acknowledged in the late seventeenth century, from physical features to the use of iconographic programming and the organising concepts of prospect and variety.'5 However, as Hunt remarks, despite classical allusions, variety, 'Like groves themselves or the prospect of fecund fields...was Italian without calling attention to itself or its Italian- ness; it emphasized not borrowings or debts, but continuities by which classical and modern traits passed from Italian into English modes almost without notice'.'6 And it was arguably this self-effacing quality of Italian garden design which allowed writers like Walpole and William Mason not simply to ignore but effectively to write out of English garden history any mention of Italian influence upon the 'new' style. By the middle of the eighteenth century Italian influence had become so complete- ly naturalised as a part of the 'native' English tradition that it no longer appeared to exist. Such a reading of England's garden history could not be effected without dealing with a number of troublesome texts even within the newly forming canon. In Burgh's commentary to The English Garden, he makes a somewhat circuitous attempt to explain Addison's well-known but inconvenient expression of admiration for both Italian and French gardens, at a time when the revolutionary new style was supposed to have been first practised. After running through various examples of undeniably regular ('formal') examples of Italian gardens of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Burgh moves on to Bishop Burnet's approving commentary on the Borromean garden in Lake Maggiore. He begins by quoting directly from Burnet, but then continues by summarising the commentary in his own terms: So here is an Italian Garden, walled round, watered by fountains, and an elevated stone- channel at its extremities, and divided into box-plots by long, even, high-hedged walks; 'but they have no gravel,' he [Burnet] says, 'to make these firm and beautiful like those we have in England'. (p. 199) Isola Bella, the Borromean island garden, is a convenient example for Burgh's pur- poses. Although prospect was arguably present in some form as views across the lake, the garden could not capitalise on the kind of views which the many Italian gardens set upon hillsides could afford. Moreover, within the limited space of the island, the artificial wilderness of the bosco could not be incorporated. As a consequence, Burgh is able to emphasise the regular, 'formal' qualities of Italian gardens without the awkward problem of dealing with a design which clearly utilises prospect, variety, and at least the kernel of an irregular design. It is only at this point that he introduces Addison's remarks on Italian and French gardens at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and argues that it is probably the lack of gravel paths that Addison has in mind when he praises these designs:

14 The note originally appeared in book I of Mason's 15 Hunt (as in n. 3), passim. 16 poem which was first published separately as The English Ibid, p. 162. Garden: a Poem. Book the First, London 1772.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 218 STEPHEN BENDING he says, their Gardens then contained a large extent of ground covered over with an...'for agreeable mixture of Garden and Forest, which represent every where an artificial rude- ness, much more charming than that neatness and elegance which we meet with in our own country;' but he bestows the same encomium upon the Gardens of France, where there is but little reason to believe that he really found a better stile than that which prevailed at home; he desired to reform a mode that disgusted him; he saw the fault and wished to avoid it, but had never formed an idea of the perfection to which it was possible the art could be carried; whatever differed from the obnoxious track he had been used to afforded him satis- faction, and this he probably exaggerated to himself, and was glad to make use of as an example of his doctrines. (pp. 199f) Burgh's misreading-indeed, twisting-of Addison's text is characteristic of later eighteenth-century attempts to discount Italian influence. The lack of gravel is of course a minor point. Addison's approval rests not upon this but precisely upon those elements of Italian garden design which Burgh is conveniently able to deny in his chosen example: namely prospect, variety, and the representation of untouched nature-the stock principles of the English landscape garden.'7 It is this ability to choose and to manipulate appropriate examples, and to create a compelling historical narrative based on stylistic change, that enabled eighteenth- century garden historians effectively to rewrite even the canonical texts of their own recent past. The continuing influence of such readings can perhaps most easily be illustrated by the example of Shaftesbury's writings on gardening. Only recently has an argument been mounted that Shaftesbury was not, as his commentators have led us to believe, a prophet of the 'English' style. David Leatherbarrow has argued convincingly that Shaftesbury's views on gardening have been consistently mis- represented since the later eighteenth century.'8 Taking his lead from the contrast between the highly regular plan of Shaftesbury's own garden and the views apparently stated in the Characteristics, Leatherbarrow's argument rests on nothing more novel than a careful reading of Shaftesbury's text, instead of what others have said of that text. That such an approach was novel, however, attests to the influence of those eighteenth-century histories which claimed Shaftesbury as their own. From that period on, readings of Shaftesbury's text-and in particular his use of the term 'natural'-were informed by a polemical garden history which claimed the status of a neutral narrative. Moreover, what is true of Shaftesbury's text is true of garden history in the eighteenth century more generally. Instead of foreign influences and continuity, English garden histories of the later eighteenth century provided a narrative of breakthroughs, of historically significant designs which were said to embody the new tradition of the English landscape garden. Within these histories, gardens are to be read as part of a larger tradition, which is at once created from individual gardens and a means of imbuing 17 Such examples could be multiplied: in a note to The fancy than a delineation of that ornamental scenery English Garden (as in n. 9, pp. 206f), Mason-failing to which had no existence till about a century after it was recognise Italian precedent-writes, 'The third part [of written. Such, when he descended to matters of mere the garden], which Lord Bacon calls the Heath, and the Elegance (for when we speak of Lord Bacon, to treat of other [Sir William Temple] the Wilderness, is that in these was to descend) were the amazing powers of his which the Genius of Lord Bacon is most visible; "for universal Genius.' this," says he, "I wish to be framed as much as may be to 18 See D. Leatherbarrow, 'Character, Geometry and a natural wildness." And accordingly he gives us a de- Perspective: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's Principles scription of it in the most agreeable and picturesque of Garden Design', Journal of Garden History, iv.4, 1984, terms, insomuch that it seems less the work of his own pp. 332-58.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 219 all English gardens with a wider significance. That is, an historical polemic is written into the very experience of the garden, and garden history becomes itself a form of allegory in which each historically significant garden plays a part. The visitor to an English garden is to comprehend the individual garden as part of an historical- and national-process wherein each garden alludes beyond itself to this larger narrative. Within such a closed system there is no room for influence. The ability of English garden history to act in such a way rests precisely upon its construction as a discourse of stylistic, formal analysis, resulting in the creation of a seductive narrative. Despite their apparent concern for history, such narratives are attached primarily to a perceived evolution of formal features. Equally, the definition of those features alters with the narrative framework within which they are placed. In the context of the garden, for example, it is often remarked that a viewer in the seventeenth or eighteenth century would describe the same garden feature as Dutch, French, or Italian, depending upon his or her visual (but also moral, political, historical) perspective.19 If the same feature can be defined in different ways by different viewers, then the feature itself becomes less important than the way in which it is perceived. And a history based on the perceived evolution of such features, while attractive in its apparent causality, becomes questionable, for the ability to define the same object in different ways-an object necessarily dissociated from its historical context-allows that object to fall prey to self-consciously political writing. Denying the taxonomic instability of garden forms, eighteenth-century garden history imposes a narrative of necessary progress-from the emblematic to the expressive, from the regular to the irregular, from the unnatural to the natural. In championing a formal, stylistic explanation of change, such narratives emphasise the apparently neutral relating or listing of events-which 'naturally' follow one another in a causal fashion. In so doing, they draw attention away from their own, necessarily partisan manner of reading and relating those stylistic events, and thus from the fact that the construction of a narrative must inevitably be an act of interpretation. Horace Walpole's essay 'On Modern Gardening' provides the foremost dem- onstration of this point. The success of Walpole's version of garden history-which continues largely to this day-lies in the author's ability to present an ideological polemic as a neutral commentary on stylistic change. If one summarises his history in simple terms-and indeed Walpole relies heavily upon the rhetoric of simplicity -it is a story which chronicles the progress of a series of major artists in their attempts to reach the perfection of the English landscape garden, ending with the final attainment of that goal by the time of writing. It is a simple construction with room for only one line of narrative: a narrative of great men and great gardens. Conventional garden histories of the present century have largely followed Wal- pole's lead, re-documenting the 'progress' of the landscape garden as revealed through a study of these same works. Only recently have historians considered the

19 Each of these national epithets of course implying Dutch garden is?" The Dutch Garden in the English specific cultural evaluations, which would themselves be Imagination', The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century, determined by, among other things, the nationality of ed. idem (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History the spectator. For an interesting account of 18th-cen- of Landscape Architecture, xii), Washington, DC 1990, tury English perceptions of and attitudes towards Dutch pp. 175-206. gardens see J. D. Hunt, '"But who does not know what a

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 220 STEPHEN BENDING smaller and very different sites of local gentry, raising questions about the conventional image of eighteenth-century garden history, and the 'neutrality' of Walpole's text.20 For Walpole, the medieval English deer park, with its 'contracted forests, and extended gardens' (p. 266), provides the origin of the landscape garden, and he claims to be at a loss to know why this model was not taken up centuries earlier: 'It is more extraordinary that having so long ago stumbled on the principle of modern gardening, we should have persisted in retaining its reverse, symmetrical and unnatural gardens' (ibid.). Arguably, it took the Italian mode of spatial organisation to alter perceptions of the deer park in such a way that it came to be recreated and recognised as the English landscape garden. For Walpole, however, the important point is that there is an English origin for the landscape garden. That it was not taken up, we discover, was due to the baneful influence of false politics-the politics of medieval England and contemporary France; and it is at this point in Walpole's narrative that he introduces Milton, as the prophet of the landscape garden: One man, one great man we had, on whom nor education nor custom could impose their prejudices; who, on evil days though fallen, and with darkness and solitude compassed round, judged that the mistaken and fantastic ornaments he had seen in gardens, were unworthy of the almighty hand that planted the delights of Paradise. He seems with the prophetic eye of taste ... to have conceived, to have foreseen modern gardening; as Lord Bacon announced the discoveries since made by experimental philosophy. (pp. 267f) This nomination was not new. Stephen Switzer had made the same claim in his Ich- nographia rustica of 1718; indeed, by the time Walpole wrote his history, the epithet appears to have been well accepted. Like Bacon in the world of science, Milton is the prophet of Britain's greatness in the eighteenth century. He is important for Walpole's chronology because he can be characterised as an a-historical figure who, in stepping outside his own age, can be excused from the rigorous determinism of Walpole's narrative, while at the same time endorsing his thesis of inevitable progression. In an age of false politics, only a prophet could divine the true style of gardening, for the landscape garden was, for Walpole, the direct result of Britain finally attaining the perfect system of constitutional government. Hence Walpole's comment upon The English Garden in his notes to Mason's political satires: At least it will show what a Paradise was England while she retained her Constitution-for perhaps it is no paradox to say, that the reasonwhy Tastein Gardeningwas neverdiscovered before the beginning of the present Century, is, that It was the result of all the happy combinations of an Empire of Freemen, an Empire formed by Trade, not by a military & conquering Spirit, maintained by the valour of independent Property, enjoying long tranquillity after virtuous struggles, & employing

20 See e.g. T. Williamson, 'Gardens and Society in 18th evolutionary narrative depends-are rarely apparent. Century England', paper for the 'History from Things' More often, regular designs were replaced immediately conference, Smithsonian Institute, Washington 1989. by informal parks: the slow but certain progression In one of the few comprehensive studies of a single from one form to another seems to have taken place area, Williamson has recently shown that, in Norfolk at predominantly in garden histories. See also S. Farrant, least, gardens often retained a relatively small regular 'The Development of Landscape Parks and Gardens in core, perhaps with avenues stretching outward across Eastern Sussex c. 1700 to 1820. A Guide and Gazeteer', the landscape, until well into the 1770s and '80s; in this Garden History, xvii.2, autumn 1989, pp. 166-80; and T. county the large aristocratic garden of Walpole's his- Williamson and E. Bellamy, Property and Landscape: A tory was a rarity. Equally, Williamson argues, the semi- Social History of Land Ownership and the English Country- regular, transitional designs-upon which Walpole's side, London 1987.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 221 its opulence & good sense on the refinements of rational Pleasures.21 Moreover, Milton's own anti-monarchist politics make him an ideal choice of prophet when placed within this Whig history of constitutional progress: only when that constitutional perfection was attained could the landscape garden come into being, and only a man of Milton's aesthetic and political vision could recognise this. In a further note to Mason's political squibs, Walpole wrote: The English Taste in Gardening is thus the growth of the English Constitution, & must perish with it. It must be rare under any arbitrary government, because extensive property is possessed by very few, & by Those only while in favour ... Should Mr Mason's English Gardensurvive the Constitution, as it probably will for many ages, He will be the second of our great Bards & Patriots, who has left a poem on ParadiseLost.22 Thus Milton's stance as the poetic champion of the constitution and of the landscape garden prefigures that of Mason both politically and aesthetically; indeed, the recognition of one brings with it the recognition of the other. Moreover, in each of the above quotations Walpole highlights the fragility and possible loss of such perfection-both in politics and in garden design. Concomitantly, he argues that a loss of the former would entail the loss of the latter. False politics and false garden design are one and the same: the English landscape garden is only possible in a nation of independent property and constitutional health. The task of Walpole's 'On Modern Gardening' is to make this point explicit, and to that end he constructs the tradition of great names and independent property to which I have already referred. In so doing he both creates and defends the politically polemical canon which has largely been accepted for the last two centuries. With all of history dismissed before the eighteenth century-excepting Milton and possibly Spenser (Tasso, Spenser's model, is conveniently omitted) -Walpole fixes the beginning of the new style at the work of William Kent.23 While Pope's garden at Twickenham receives an honourable mention, and Bridgeman, Kent's precursor, is deemed to have made some attempt to remove regularity from the garden (aided, Walpole suggests, by the hints in Pope's Guardian paper), it was for Kent to introduce the new taste in its physical form: At that moment appeared Kent, painter enough to taste the charms of landscape, bold and opinionative enough to dare and to dictate, and born with a genius to strike out a great system from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a garden. (p. 289) Walpole surveys Kent's achievements, his use of water, perspective, light and shade, and concludes that 'men saw a new creation opening before their eyes' (p. 292). This new creation he admits to be unlike the original one in that it was not perfect.

21 Satirical Poems Published Anonymously by William perfection recently attained, but referred also to Tasso Mason with Notes by Horace Walpole.Now first published (as in n. 9, p. 129): 'We are now arrived at a more par- from his manuscript,ed. P. Toynbee, Oxford 1926, pp. ticular aera for taste in gardening, which we chiefly owe 43f. to Kent, who most properly banished the more ancient 22 Ibid. ornaments, nor though I have the honour of being a 23 Tasso was not avoided by all garden historians; just member of this learned society [of Antiquaries of Lon- as a number of classical authors were praised by some don], can I repine at the reformation. / We have indeed historians for their appreciation of landscape, so Tasso allusions to gardens in the present style so early as the was given mention. Daines Barrington, for example, time of Tasso, but they existed only in the poet's imagin- concurred with Walpole in praising Kent and the ation, and were never executed'.

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 222 STEPHEN BENDING And that admission allows him to introduce those other figures who form at once his gardening canon, the culmination of his narrative progression, and his definition of landscape genres. If Kent established 'the garden that connects itself with a park' (p. 303), it was Philip Southcote who 'founded' the ferme ornee, and Charles Hamilton who gave a 'perfect example' of alpine scenery at Painshill. These three figures and these three styles, Walpole asserts, characterise the achievements of the English landscape garden; the other designers and the other gardens he cites simply act to refine those achievements and therefore to confirm his view. Indeed, as Walpole reaches the perfection created by these figures-a perfection continued in the work of Kent's living successor, 'Capability' Brown-historical narrative is abandoned in favour of precepts for the present. Notwithstanding his claim that 'it is not my business to lay down rules for gardens, but to give a history of them' (pp. 301f), that history becomes itself perhaps the most influential definition of the landscape style. 'We have discovered the point of perfection', Walpole writes: We have given the true model of gardening to the world; let other countries mimic or cor- rupt our taste; but let it reign here on its verdant throne, original by its elegant simplicity, and proud of no other art than that of softening nature's harshnesses and copying her graceful touches. (p. 307) Thus the final choice of historical examples becomes for Walpole the creation of a standard of taste; a standard he has sought to justify by a 'simple' recounting of the apparently neutral stylistic changes in garden design from the creation of Eden to the 1770s. Claims to neutrality become suspect, however, when Walpole's account is compared to other versions of the same 'historical' events. A somewhat different account appears, for example, in the anonymous The Rise and Progress of the Present Taste in Planting Parks, Pleasure grounds, Gardens, &c. from Henry the Eighth to Georgethe Third, published in London in 1767. Like Walpole, the author condemns gardens before the eighteenth century, pillories Sir William Temple for his lack of taste, marks out Milton as the prophet of the new style, and praises Brown for practising that style in its perfection. Unlike Walpole, he also singles out the Chinese style for the power of its emotional effects, and includes a six-page eulogy on a Chinese style which represents the 'highest taste in Horticulture'. He commends the Royal gardens at Kensington and Kew, and praises Sir William Chambers, the architect of both those gardens and the champion of Chinese taste: 'But now the striking scenes at Kew behold, Where Taste and Chambers every grace unfold' (p. 12). According to this history, then, the Chinese is perhaps the most powerful influence on English landscape design. Walpole, however, dismisses this style in a matter of lines, and pays scant regard to Chambers. For Walpole, the history of stylistic change is an emblem of English liberty, gained by Whig politics and stylistic and political history running in parallel. Throughout the 1770s and 1780s he and William Mason gave firm support to 'Capa- bility' Brown as the foremost proponent of the landscape style; and they did so largely at the expense of designers such as Chambers. Arguably, Brown's style was attractive for its very openness and malleability: he provided a form of garden design which allowed-indeed invited-the kinds of historical and political reading

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions HORACE WALPOLE 223 that Walpole and Mason wished to inculcate. Such readings were not acceptable to all, however, and by the 1790s the influence of many of the canonical figures of the landscape 'tradition' was being questioned. William Marshall, for example, attempted to reinforce Brown's importance but at the expense of that of William Kent.24 The most radical challenge to the canonical version occurred in the work of Uvedale Price and Richard Payne Knight, who denied Walpole's garden history in its entirety, and sought to replace it with their own. Not only did they challenge the status of Kent, but all those who followed him were dismissed as wrong-headed. Such questionings of the canon were, by definition, further attempts to reconstruct eighteenth-century garden history. The work of these men represents a challenge to any sense of a monolithic 'tradition' in garden history; it should be seen not as the continuation of a single line of narrative, or as the evolution of a form, but as a dis- ruption, indeed a denial, of any such narrative coherence.25 In 1795 George Mason (no relation of the poet William Mason) published the second edition of his Essay on Design in Gardening, in which he set about revising the garden canon. Mason was a Member of Parliament and a substantial landowner. He had spent much of his time landscaping Porters, his estate in Hertfordshire, and this edition of the essay was addressed squarely to other gentlemen-landowners. Reacting to the work of William Mason and Horace Walpole, but also to that of Price and Knight, George Mason reasserted Kent's importance while denying the influence of Brown. His critique was predicated upon the belief that garden design is a liberal art. Mason had made this argument, in part, in the first edition of his Essay, published in 1768; however, in this second edition the historical commentary is brought up to date, and he reacts in particular to the writings of contemporary garden historians. In his critique of Price and Knight, Mason sets about defending much of Walpole's canon, but in so doing, rewrites and justifies that canon in his own terms. His stated purpose is to delineate 'The real state of taste in gardening, as it has prevailed over this country for more than the last half century' (p. 105). To that end he sets about reaffirming a canonical style, and with it the importance of history, in the understanding and creation of the landscape garden. Like Walpole, Mason asserts the importance of Kent, and then goes on to construct a narrative of the major figures of English garden history: thus Southcote is followed by Hamilton, Lyttelton, Pitt, Shenstone, Morris, and Wright, each of whom is ascribed a particular innovation or perfection in garden design. It is only later in the work, in a new section added to the second edition, that Mason includes in his chronology the work of 'Capability' Brown. In the first edition, Brown had only appeared in disparaging allusions to the characteristic features of his designs, or in references to his status as a 'professional'. In the 1795 edition, Mason takes the opportunity to elaborate his views on both Brown and the notion of a professional gardener. Again, this elaboration takes the form of a defence of landscape gardening as a liberal art. He happily admits to his exclusion of Brown in the first edition

24 W. Marshall, A Review of The Landscape, a didactic see e.g. A. Bermingham, Landscape and Ideology: The poem; also of an essay on the picturesque: together with English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860, London 1987, chap. practical remarks on rural ornament, London 1795; idem, 2; C. Hussey, The Picturesque, London 1967; W.J. Hipple, Planting and Rural Ornament, London 1796 (= 2nd edn The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque, Carbondale of and Ornamental London 1957. Planting Gardening, 1785). 25 Among numerous discussions of Price and Knight

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 224 STEPHEN BENDING of the Essay, arguing that, 'It would have been very inconsistent in a writer to have praised any of that artist's designs, whose vogue he considered as really detrimental to the art itself'. Brown, he continues, ... always appeared to myself in the light of an egregious mannerist, who, from having ac- quired a facility in shaping surfaces, grew fond of exhibiting that talent without due regard to nature, and left marks of his intrusion wherever he went. (p. 129) In his views on Brown, Mason finds himself in agreement with Uvedale Price. However, whereas Price at once recognises, and disregards, the influence of Brown, Mason goes further and challenges that influence in itself. He argues that the reputation of an artist results not from 'a mere number of admirers' or 'the most prac- tice', but instead from 'having the approbation of good judges'. He asks, 'would Mr. PRICE look upon any man to be a judge of gardening, that should prefer the designs of Brown to those of Hamilton?' (pp. 185f). Reputation can only be conferred by those who are able to judge correctly, and such judgement comes from the ability to perceive general truths rather than mere particularities. Brown, with his mannerist designs and practical dexterity, practises not a liberal but a mechanical art; and while that art may appeal to the vulgar, it is of no consequence to the man of taste. In estimating 'national taste' Mason relies upon a notion of 'public' which is that also of Reynolds's Discourses: a public which forms at once a political republic and a republic of taste.26 The value of the landscape garden-as recognised by that public -is found in its ability to represent the general truths of an ideal Nature and not simply local detail or mannerist conventions. Thus Mason's claim, in the first edition of the Essay, that there has been a decided superiority of British taste in gardening, is defended in the second edition by reference to the discriminative judgement of such a public: The preference given by the public to the designs of true genius, in comparison with those of mechanical professors, was what regulated my opinion. For I never doubted, but that this discriminative approbation was pretty general with them, who could be allowed to have any judgment at all in the matter. As to the decisions of the mere vulgar, are they ever put into the scale to weigh works of genius? (p. 133) Similarly, Brown's merely popular acclaim is of no consequence, for the ability to shape surfaces is merely a mechanical art. It is by denying Brown's status as a liberal artist that Mason excludes him from the republic of taste. That exclusion is made emphatic in the assertion that Brown is a professional and therefore cannot be considered a gentleman: Though genius is the gift of nature, it requires the sun-shine of tuition to ripen it. Without this assistance the mind is rarely fitted for the task of designing. There is also another reason, why a designer ought to be a gentleman. Pretending by the glance of an eye to regu- late scenery, even of a moderate extent, is a downright species of quackery; and such pre- tensions have been one of the causes of that amazing difference between the works of the common professor, and those of proprietors of taste. (pp. 124f)

26 See J. Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from Reynolds to Hazlitt, London 1986.

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Thus the true designer of the landscape garden is both a gentleman and a pro- prietor; not only must he be educated in the liberal arts, but, ideally, he must own the property he improves. Indeed, the final words of the quotation suggest the de- fensive agenda of the Essay: Mason's 'proprietors of taste' are both landowners with taste and the guardians of taste, asserting a proprietorial role over both land and the liberal arts. The very activity of historiography appears to support Mason in his evaluation, and narration, of garden history. While Mason argues for the importance of great works (where the 'great' can only be achieved by a liberal artist), historical narrative itself appears to have room only for the characteristic, for that which summarises an historical period: for Mason, the genre of historiography is in happy collusion with his ideological evaluation. Brown and his like, 'who from handling a spade have set up for designers', practise nothing more than the 'quackery' of a mechanic and so should be excluded from the history of a liberal art. For Mason, the liberal artist also partakes in the English tradition of empiricism, and the great examples which form his history of English gardening are to be considered as successful experiments. Although many bad designs are created, those designs are part of the tradition of experimentation which makes Britain strong: 'In ADDISON'Stime France and Italy far exceeded us in artificial rudenesses: and whence can proceed our present superiority, but from the scope of experiment?' (p. 51). This rhetoric of empiricism-set against the Cartesian system of France27-adds further justification to Mason's championing of a history of great names and great works. As successful experiments, the worth of such designs has been proved, and they should therefore not only be accepted but followed. Their place in a history of garden design is necessarily assured. Equally, the vast number of unsuccessful experiments is of no consequence, and Mason takes Uvedale Price to task for using bad examples of garden design to condemn English garden history in its entirety. He agrees instead with William Mason's praise of the landscape garden in his poem The English Garden: I cannot agree with Mr. PRICE'Sconclusion, because I look upon these defectsas not con- cerned in it. The real landscapes, which I have recited and alluded to, very sufficiently vin- dicate the justness of the poet's general idea. Their paucity by no means precludes the sup- position of such an effect from them. Fewer classical writershave immortalized the title of Augustan age. In all liberal arts, the merit of transcending genius, not the herd of pretenders, characterizes an aera. I am almost convinced, that Mr. PRICEmust by this time be sensible of his mistake, and see, that he had not been aware of the proper light for viewing the question in. (p. 135) Mason's 'proper light' may be equated with that group of concerns now termed 'civic humanism'.28 Such a light does not impartially illuminate the history of the English landscape garden; rather, it is the medium which allows the operation of perspective. Mason, like Walpole before him, utilises an historical discourse both to construct and to evaluate a history of the English landscape garden. However, if for Walpole that history is the story of a now threatened Whig progress, for George 27 For a brief but illuminating discussion of this op- by many apologists for a landowning ruling class assert- position see M. Baridon, 'Ruins as a Mental Construct', ing its control over aesthetic appreciation. In this regard Journal of Garden History, v.1, 1985, pp. 84-96. see Barrell (as in n. 26). 28 While the term remains contested it does at least point to a group of values and assumptions articulated

This content downloaded from 128.103.149.52 on Tue, 2 Sep 2014 13:50:02 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 226 STEPHEN BENDING Mason it is the more general history of landed property and of the landowner's unique right to rule. The 'real' landscape garden-the product of a genius able to transcend the particularities (the mere copying) of the 'herd of pretenders'-both represents and demonstrates the propriety of such rule. Mason's history, like the others I have discussed in this essay, represents its narrative as the 'natural' progression of the art of gardening. However, the very range of 'inevitable' progresses these histories proffer must undermine any sense later historians may have given of a monolithic or homogeneous history of the English landscape garden in the eighteenth century. Indeed, twentieth-century garden historians have too frequently been content to repeat and reconstruct in the familiar form an eighteenth-century polemic of narrative inevitability. The claims to originality upon which the Englishness of the English garden depend are themselves only possible in so far as narrative is able to control the interpretation and definition of relationships between changes in garden design. Consequently, and despite the rhetorical power of narrative, no single eighteenth-century 'history' of the English garden-least of all Walpole's-can be accepted as an adequate explanation of those historical changes which took place; rather, such histories should be considered as a form of cultural self-representation which relies upon an historical discourse to represent political claims as natural causes. Within the corpus of eighteenth-century garden historiography, English landscape gardens are recognised not only as true representations of nature but as representations of the land-both historical and political-from which they are formed. What holds such accounts together is not an inevitable series of stylistic breakthroughs, such as Walpole's 'true model' or George Mason's 'real landscapes', but the shared assumptions of national interest and of narrative history.

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

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