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
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HORACE WALPOLE AND
GARDEN HISTORY
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY
Stephen Bending
... All these devices are rather emblematicalthan expressive; they may be ingenious contrivances, 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) *
T
homas Whately's distinction between the emblematic and the expressive in
garden ornamentation has been proposed by a number of recent garden historians as an appropriate description of historical changes in the eighteenthcentury 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 concerned 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 unchallenged by his contemporaries. In this essay I will explore some of the competing
* Observations on Modern
Gardening, illustrated by Descriptions, London 1770.
1 j. D. Hunt, 'Emblem and Expressionism
in the
Eighteenth-Century
Landscape Garden', Eighteenth Century Studies, iii, Spring 1971, pp. 294-317; and R. Paulson, Emblem and Expression. Meaning in English Art of the
Eighteenth Century, London 1975.
2 See e.g. J. Sambrook,
The Eighteenth Century: The
Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 17001789, London 1986, pp. 154-65; and D. M. Roberts's
introduction to D. C. Streatfield and A. M. Duckworth,
Landscape in the Gardens and the Literature of EighteenthCentury England (Clark Library Seminars, 1978), Los
Angeles 1981.
209
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 57, 1994
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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 origthe English landscape garden.
the Englishness-of
inality and significance-indeed
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 demonstrating 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
as their later counterparts; nor did
polemical-objectives
stringent historical-and
from within such a firm historical
or
of
so
past ages,
confidently judge gardens
they
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,
London 1964; Hunt (as in n. 1); idem, Garden and Grove:
the Italian Renaissance Garden and the English Imagination
London 1986; Paulson (as in n. 1); and
1600-1750,
Streatfield and Duckworth (as in n. 2).
4 See Gray's much quoted comment on the originality of the English landscape garden: challenging
Count Algarotti's views, Gray denied European and
Chinese influence upon the English style and wrote,
'He is highly civil to our nation; but there is one point
in which he does not do us justice; I am the more solicitous about it, because it relates to the only taste we
can call our own; the only proof of our original talent
in matter of pleasure, I mean our skill in gardening, or
rather laying out grounds; and this is no small honour
to us, since neither Italy not France have ever had the
least notion of it, nor yet do at all comprehend it when
they see it'. The Poems of Mr Gray. To which are prefixed
York
Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W Mason,
M.A.,
1775, pp. 386f.
5 R. Bradley, A Survey of the Ancient husbandry and
Gardening, collectedfrom Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, and
others..., London 1725.
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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 Gardens, 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 diis
version,
'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,
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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
in
second
half
of the century. Bradley's championing of
or
the
challenged
ignored
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
in the English landscape
neoclassical garden but an early-and
prophetic-essay
tradition. That such an argument is teleological hardly needs remarking.
It is worth quoting from Bradley further to illustrate an alternative vision of
vision which was to be discredited, if not erased, by
'progress' in garden design-a
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 likewise 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 influthe design.
ences it precludes recognition of the originality-the
Englishness-of
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 recorded time.6 While this led to frequent gestures in the direction of the Garden of
6 Texts from this period which include accounts of
garden history, but which I do not have room to discuss
in this essay include: Henry Home, Lord Kames,
Elementsof Criticism,Edinburgh 1762; Daniel Malthus,
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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 Homer 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 comacres.' Thus the great classical garden,
pass of this pompous garden inclosed-four
is
of
the
of
Homer,
stripped
poetry
suddenly unworthy of its renown. Not only is it
but
it
is
that
small.
Small,
is, when compared to the English landscape
ordinary,
of
the
and
in Walpole's text-as
in the other texts I
garden
eighteenth century;
shall discuss-historical
are
to
the
gardens
always compared
contemporary productions 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 Landscape, London 1783; Archibald Alison, Essays on Taste,
Dublin 1790; Richard Steele, Essay on Gardening, York
1793.
7 Cf. R. Quaintance, 'Walpole's Whig Interpretation
of Landscaping
History', Studies in Eighteenth-Century
Culture, ix, 1979, pp. 285-300. Quaintance draws attention to the Whiggish nature of Walpole's text, but does
not set this within the wider context of garden historiography's more general use as an ideological tool in the
18th century. Without this context, the premise of Walpole's history appears more unusual than it should.
8 H. Walpole, 'On Modern Gardening', in his Anecdotes of Painting in England... To which is added The History
of The Modern Taste in Gardening, edn London 1782, iv,
pp. 247-316 (250-2).
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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
many of the features he lists were to remain in
pre-landscape garden g-although
the
'landscape' gardens throughout
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 Gardening among the Ancients'
Rather than decrying the Babylonian
(1789).1o
of
as
the
taste, Falconer describes them in
irredeemably beyond
pales
gardens
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 nevercan be interpreted as meeting-the
fundamental aesthetic criteria
theless meet-or
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
also operating principles in
by this time to be uniquely English-were
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
9 See also William Mason, The English Garden: A poem
in Four Books. To which is added a commentary and notes by
William Burgh, York 1783. Burgh, who included long
historical notes in his commentary, concurs with Walpole in this regard and makes short work of Babylon:
'The hanging gardens of Babylon, and of the Egyptian
Thebes, like the pastures on the roof of Nero's golden
palace, are rather to be considered as the caprices of
Architecture' (p. 194). Not only are they 'caprices' but,
when categorised in such a way, they can only be unnatural, and thus Burgh's case is proved without the
need for further argument. A similar point is made by
Daines Barrington in his essay 'On the Progress of
In a Letter from the Hon. Daines Barrington
Gardening.
to the Rev. Mr. Norris Secretary', Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity. Published by The Society
of Antiquaries of London, 1785, vii, pp. 113-30, where he
writes, 'As for the gardens of Babylon, they could only
have been celebrated for the great expense which must
have attended piling up earth as was necessary for planting trees in so singular a position'.
10 Published in Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical
Society of Manchester, edn London 1789, i, pp. 297-325.
11 Hunt (as in n. 3), passim, esp. pp. 162-9.
12 See further below, pp. 217f.
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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 erudition 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
nothing but the embroidery of a parterre, to make a
garden in the reign of Trajan serve for a description
one in that of king William'.
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of
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 bombast 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 disfor if regular gardens represent
position and of correct-natural-government,
the
'rational'
is a reflection of a variegatedinterests,
landscape
garden
despotic
The
this
constitutional-regime.
implies is made manifest in Falconer's
patriotism
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 symbolism 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 English 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
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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 Italianness; 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 completely 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 stonechannel 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 purposes. 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
poem which was first published separately as The English
Garden: a Poem. Book the First, London 1772.
15 Hunt (as in n. 3), passim.
16 Ibid, p. 162.
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218
STEPHEN BENDING
he says, their Gardens then contained a large extent of ground covered over with
...'for
an
agreeable mixture of Garden and Forest, which represent every where an artificial rudeness, 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 satisfaction, and this he probably exaggerated to himself, and was glad to make use of as an
(pp. 199f)
example of his doctrines.
Addison's text is characteristic of later
Burgh's misreading-indeed,
twisting-of
to
discount
Italian
influence. The lack of gravel is of
eighteenth-century attempts
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
stock principles of the English landscape garden.'7
nature-the
It is this ability to choose and to manipulate appropriate examples, and to create
a compelling historical narrative based on stylistic change, that enabled eighteenthcentury 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 misrepresented 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
histories which claimed Shaftesbury as their own. From
those eighteenth-century
in particular his use of the term
that period on, readings of Shaftesbury's text-and
informed by a polemical garden history which claimed the status of
'natural'-were
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
to
English Garden (as in n. 9, pp. 206f), Mason-failing
'The third part [of
recognise Italian precedent-writes,
the garden], which Lord Bacon calls the Heath, and the
other [Sir William Temple] the Wilderness, is that in
which the Genius of Lord Bacon is most visible; "for
this," says he, "I wish to be framed as much as may be to
a natural wildness." And accordingly he gives us a description of it in the most agreeable and picturesque
terms, insomuch that it seems less the work of his own
of that ornamental scenery
fancy than a delineation
which had no existence till about a century after it was
written. Such, when he descended to matters of mere
Elegance (for when we speak of Lord Bacon, to treat of
these was to descend) were the amazing powers of his
universal Genius.'
18 See D. Leatherbarrow, 'Character, Geometry and
Perspective: the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's Principles
of Garden Design', Journal of Garden History, iv.4, 1984,
pp. 332-58.
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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 historicalwherein each garden alludes beyond itself to this larger narand national-process
rative. 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
that object to fall prey to self-consciously political
its historical context-allows
taxonomic
the
instability of garden forms, eighteenth-century garwriting. Denying
the emblematic to the
den history imposes a narrative of necessary progress-from
from
to the natural. In
to
the
the
unnatural
from
the
regular
irregular,
expressive,
of
such
narratives
a
formal,
emphasise
stylistic explanation
change,
championing
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 demonstration of this point. The success of Walpole's version of garden history-which
in the author's ability to present an ideological
continues largely to this day-lies
on
as
a
neutral
stylistic change. If one summarises his history
commentary
polemic
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 Walthe 'progress' of the landscape garden as revealed
pole's lead, re-documenting
a
of
same
works. Only recently have historians considered the
these
through
study
19 Each of these national epithets of course implying
specific cultural evaluations, which would themselves be
determined by, among other things, the nationality of
the spectator. For an interesting account of 18th-century English perceptions of and attitudes towards Dutch
gardens see J. D. Hunt, '"But who does not know what a
Dutch garden is?" The Dutch Garden in the English
Imagination', The Dutch Garden in the Seventeenth Century,
ed. idem (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History
of Landscape Architecture, xii), Washington, DC 1990,
pp. 175-206.
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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 Ichnographia 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 neverdiscoveredbefore
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
Century England', paper for the 'History from Things'
1989.
Smithsonian
Institute, Washington
conference,
studies of a single
In one of the few comprehensive
area, Williamson has recently shown that, in Norfolk at
least, gardens often retained a relatively small regular
core, perhaps with avenues stretching outward across
the landscape, until well into the 1770s and '80s; in this
county the large aristocratic garden of Walpole's history was a rarity. Equally, Williamson argues, the semiwhich Walpole's
regular, transitional designs-upon
rarely apparent.
evolutionary narrative depends-are
More often, regular designs were replaced immediately
by informal parks: the slow but certain progression
from one form to another seems to have taken place
predominantly in garden histories. See also S. Farrant,
'The Development of Landscape Parks and Gardens in
Eastern Sussex c. 1700 to 1820. A Guide and Gazeteer',
Garden History, xvii.2, autumn 1989, pp. 166-80; and T.
Williamson and E. Bellamy, Property and Landscape: A
Social History of Land Ownership and the English Countryside, London 1987.
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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 perin politics and in garden design. Concomitantly, he argues that a loss
fection-both
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.
Milton
With all of history dismissed before the eighteenth century-excepting
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
Mason with Notes by Horace Walpole.Now first published
from his manuscript,ed. P. Toynbee, Oxford 1926, pp.
43f.
22 Ibid.
23 Tasso was not avoided by all garden historians; just
as a number of classical authors were praised by some
historians for their appreciation of landscape, so Tasso
was given mention. Daines Barrington, for example,
concurred with Walpole in praising Kent and the
perfection recently attained, but referred also to Tasso
(as in n. 9, p. 129): 'We are now arrived at a more particular aera for taste in gardening, which we chiefly owe
to Kent, who most properly banished the more ancient
ornaments, nor though I have the honour of being a
member of this learned society [of Antiquaries of London], can I repine at the reformation. / We have indeed
allusions to gardens in the present style so early as the
time of Tasso, but they existed only in the poet's imagination, and were never executed'.
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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 corrupt 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 'Capability' 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 deinvited-the
kinds of historical and political reading
sign which allowed-indeed
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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 disruption, 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
poem; also of an essay on the picturesque: together with
practical remarks on rural ornament, London 1795; idem,
Planting and Rural Ornament, London 1796 (= 2nd edn
of Planting and Ornamental
London 1785).
Gardening,
25 Among numerous discussions
of Price and Knight
see e.g. A. Bermingham,
Landscape and Ideology: The
English Rustic Tradition, 1740-1860, London 1987, chap.
2; C. Hussey, The Picturesque, London 1967; W.J. Hipple,
The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque, Carbondale
1957.
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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 acquired 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 practice', 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 rerecognised by that public
public of taste.26 The value of the landscape garden-as
-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 regulate scenery, even of a moderate extent, is a downright species of quackery; and such pretensions 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)
The Political Theory of Painting from
26 See J. Barrell,
Reynolds to Hazlitt, London 1986.
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HORACE WALPOLE
225
Thus the true designer of the landscape garden is both a gentleman and a proprietor; 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 defensive 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'S
conclusion, because I look upon these defectsas not concerned in it. The real landscapes, which I have recited and alluded to, very sufficiently vindicate the justness of the poet's general idea. Their paucity by no means precludes the supposition 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 opposition see M. Baridon, 'Ruins as a Mental Construct',
Journal of Garden History, v.1, 1985, pp. 84-96.
28 While the term remains contested it does at least
point to a group of values and assumptions articulated
by many apologists for a landowning ruling class asserting its control over aesthetic appreciation. In this regard
see Barrell (as in n. 26).
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STEPHEN BENDING
226
Mason it is the more general history of landed property and of the landowner's
product of a genius able to
unique right to rule. The 'real' landscape garden-the
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 origthe
which
Englishness of the English garden depend are themselves
inality upon
in
so
far
as
narrative is able to control the interpretation and defionly possible
nition of relationships between changes in garden design. Consequently, and despite the rhetorical power of narrative, no single eighteenth-century 'history' of the
be accepted as an adequate explaof all Walpole's-can
English garden-least
nation 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
which they are formed. What holds such accounts
historical and political-from
of stylistic breakthroughs, such as Walpole's 'true
an
series
is
not
inevitable
together
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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