751470

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
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HORACE WALPOLE AND
EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY GARDEN HISTORY
Stephen Bending
... All these devices are rather emblematical than expressive; they ma
ances, and recall absent ideas to the recollection; but they make no
... and though an allusion to a favourite or well known subject of his
dition, may now and then animate or dignify a scene, yet as the sub
belong to a garden, the allusion should not be principal; it shou
suggested by the scene: a transitory image, which irresistibly occurr
laboured; and have the force of a metaphor, free from the detail of an a
(Thomas Whately, Observations on Modern Gardening...,
T homas Whately's
garden ornamentationdistinction between
has been proposed the
by a number emblematic
of recent garden his- and the expressive in
torians 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 introduction
Cen- to D. C. Streatfield and A. M. Duckworth,
tury Studies, iii, Spring 1971, pp. 294-317; and Landscape
R. Paul- in the Gardens and the Literature of Eighteenth-
son, Emblem and Expression. Meaning in English ArtCentury
of the England (Clark Library Seminars, 1978), Los
Eighteenth Century, London 1975. Angeles 1981.
209
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Volume 57, 1994
210 STEPHEN BENDING
attempts to construct a history

the importance of those histor
part of English culture.
It is well known that by the
garden was characterised as orig
Addison in 1712, the influence
and the work of William Kent in
untenable: foreign influence, te
belie the assertion. Much work h
landscape garden,3 one result o
of a now debunked history are l
which eighteenth-century write
inality and significance-indeed
It traces through the works of
fence, of an historical discours
landscape garden. The task whic
acterised, through a paraphrase
between the English landscape g
ing that British political history
The later eighteenth century
history of the English garden.
discussion of the gardens of oth
stringent historical-and polemi
they so confidently judge gardens
narrative. Many of the later w
and defiantly patriotic: a discou
providing, and justifying, valu
be England's major original cont
Yet one need not adhere to th
tive of natural progress. I want
which fails to fit neatly within th
Ancient husbandry and Gardenin
fessor of Botany at the Univer
Latin and Greek, spends much
ancient husbandry as a guide fo
sign of ancient gardens. He writ
3 See e.g. H. F. Clark, can call our own; the English

The only proof of our original talent
Landsca
London 1964; Hunt in matter
(as of pleasure,
in n. 1); I mean our
idem, skill in gardening,
Garde or
the Italian Renaissance rather Garden
laying out grounds; and thisthe
and is no small honour
English
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
inality of the English landscape garden: challenging
Memoirs of his Life and Writings by W Mason, M.A., York
Count Algarotti's views, Gray denied European1775,
and pp. 386f.
5 R. Bradley, A Survey of the Ancient husbandry and
Chinese influence upon the English style and wrote,
'He is highly civil to our nation; but there is one Gardening,
point collected from Cato, Varro, Columella, Virgil, and
in which he does not do us justice; I am the moreothers...,
sol- London 1725.
icitous about it, because it relates to the only taste we
HORACE WALPOLE 211
In the next place I come to take Notice

design'd for Grandeur; the Fashion, or
dens, was to make them free and open
shade, and give a refreshing Coolness by v
out their gardens in any Figures (for I
those Figures were either Squares, Circ
with Groves of Pines, Firrs, Cypress,
Place they also contrived their Ornithons
He continues that among these feat

... in which it was a Custom to have m
Athens, which, by the motion of the W
was held mightily in Esteem. This was t
my Opinion, we have hardly mended by o
appear well on a Paper Design, is stiff a
In our Modern Designs we see all at onc
lar Spots of Ground, which in themsel
at an immense Expence, and then give
regretted, and the Spirit of Gardening
been at the Expence of such Works, si
their Design of Gardening ... [so that]
Judge cannot help discovering the petit
of Burlington's at Chiswick, where the
ficiently declare the grand Taste of the Master. (pp. 358-60)
I quote at length because the passage contains many of the themes a
which are to appear in later histories; what differs is the subject to wh
values are attached. Bradley asserts that classical gardens were 'free and
that their foremost consideration was 'Variety'. He then describes a land
'Squares, Circles or Triangles', of 'Jet-d'eaux', aviaries and mechanical dev
also praising the 'fine irregular Spots of Ground' upon which the later l
garden was itself to depend. As Bradley continues, we discover that 'Varie
vided by a mixture of old elements and new, of features drawn from the
the ancients and from those of contemporary France. 'Amusement', 'Ex
and the 'entertaining' are demanded, but the means of providing such e
almost entirely at odds with those of subsequent theorists. Squares, circle
angles, and mechanical devices, were all to be damned by later writers.
however, is that the value-laden language of the landscape garden is alrea
by 1725-set against variety and its concomitant amusement, entertainmen
version, is 'extraordinary Regularity', the 'stiff and surfeiting', 'the petit
the wasted expense: what differs are the formal features to which those
ascribed. The terms of approbation remain the same throughout the cen
to which they refer, however, changes dramatically.
Bradley's target in this passage, it would seem, is the Dutch style whic
popular in Britain with William and Mary, for he then goes on to suggest
with the 'Advantage to be made of Wood and Water', such 'Agreeable
improved
... if we were to borrow so much from the Versailes Gardens as one might take in at small
Expence, such as the Fables of Aesop, to be here and there intersperc'd in our Woods,
212 STEPHEN BENDING
represented by Figures as big as th

Colours... (p. 360)
Bradley's visio
to Whately's a
argument is t
would not be
classical prec
challenged or
Chiswick on c
Burlington's d
1760s and '70s
histories of th
neoclassical g
tradition. Tha
It is worth qu
'progress' in g
later historians
... how extreme
Wood there sho
as has been lately
Means of Water
Airs, Sonata's a
performing com
disposed to Soli
kept up, and th
Sort, must sure
to be, it would
were so order'd
it by Degrees, fi
losing and reco
nothing could b
great Expence,
wise we might
of View, Obelisk
Grecian Temples
Sight; 'tis in th
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 em
emotional effects; but in acknowledging classical and more recent foreign
ences it precludes recognition of the originality-the Englishness-of the
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 qu
of the Englishness of the English landscape garden, and they did so by
contemporary designs in the context of a world history of gardens from ear
corded time.6 While this led to frequent gestures in the direction of the Ga
6 Texts from this period which include accounts
in this of
essay include: Henry Home, Lord Kames,
Elements
garden history, but which I do not have room to discussof Criticism, Edinburgh 1762; Daniel Malthus,
HORACE WALPOLE 213
Eden, serious commentary bega

the lack of physical evidence, t
following pages I will consider a
ancient and Renaissance gardens
English design. The value of th
framework they employ, a fram
dens, but one which is often ign
provide an important correctiv
eighteenth-century histories no
definable stance, but as a series
tive of what really happened. O
received history, carefully prod
ences not only the narrative we
period, but also aesthetic judgem
the use of Whig rhetoric, of a
eenth-century narrative history w
of the English landscape garden
Horace Walpole, in his essay 'O

begins his narrative with the g
most renowned in the heroic t
mer who can read his descripti
description, when 'divested of
to nothing more than 'a small
two fountains that watered the
pass of this pompous garden in
stripped of the poetry of Home
ordinary, but it is small. Small
garden of the eighteenth cent
shall discuss-historical gardens
tions of England. This becomes
the hanging gardens of Babylon
The hanging gardens of Babylon w
their disposition or contents, but a
the walls of the palace, whither so
they were not; I mean they must h
expence and labour. In other word
'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-Centurydotes 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).
214 STEPHEN BENDING
till the present, unnatural, enriche

summer-houses, and were anything but verdant and rural. (p. 253)
What they were not was the English landscape gar

tury. Rather than arguing his case, Walpole asserts
scription heavily in favour of his own position. Th
and throughout the essay, are the negatives of his
the landscape style. Walpole does not need to be ac
contents of the garden on this occasion because th
already been made: the true style of gardening was
eenth century, in Britain. His own language then d
basic formal elements he provides. The design is ne
and Walpole can load it with all the paraphernalia
pre-landscape garden g-although many of the feat
'landscape' gardens throughout the century.
A somewhat different account of classical gardens
the well-respected scholar and physician, in his 'Th
of Gardening among the Ancients' (1789).1o Rather
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 com-
mentary 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 Gardening. In a Letter from the Hon. 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.
need for further argument. A similar point is made by 12 See further below, pp. 217f.
Daines Barrington in his essay 'On the Progress of
HORACE WALPOLE 215
modern style, he moves on to di

his Tuscan villa (pp. 195-7). The n
some detail: The valleys are 'crow
'bold projections', 'varieties of in
he writes,
are the glowing scenes of Italy, and ho

perceived; for he declares, 'the view
rather than a work of Nature acciden
The natural scene having been se

garden having been suggested, B
which forms the foreground of th
Behold him then hemmed in by a n
tracing, perhaps, his own or his Gar
formal parterre, or ranging in allie
placed alternately, in order, as he decla
of more polished art;' nay, it is eve
contrived as, under the pressure of
takes in the view of this 'vast Theatre
sters or the jaws of wild beasts, into
even sloping terras. In brief, in a fo
the Younger Pliny, no vestige of Natur
dition and accomplishments, we rec
may safely infer, that however lovely
of classic aid to the Art of Gard
Thus, having conceded that the
prospect and variety, Burgh neat
ures of fantastic monsters and t
background, and variety is repla
the artifice of a foreground of n
inclosures and jets d'eau. From t
is able to argue that the classic
design-the premise of his entire
When this same passage from P
only dismisses the garden as for
gardens-and despotic French p
histories, Falconer telescopes the
unchanging, a-historical style,'3
is able to introduce modern gard
an English garden which claims
then widens the debate by draw
further augmenting his case for
overtly linking regular gardens w
the regularity and formality of
13 Cf e.g. Walpole garden

(as in
in the reignn. 8),
of Trajan p.
serve for 256:
a description of 'The
nothing but the embroidery of a parterre, to make a one in that of king William'.
216 STEPHEN BENDING
results from despotic govern

England, he argues,
the regular taste ... prevailed in t
and behaviour was extremely cer
of eastern countries. As this stiffn
was no longer censured for inatt
bast of Blackmore, fell into disr
adopted, both in sentiment and writing. (p. 321)
Thus, the history of England from the reign of Elizab
century is that of a gradual removal of 'stiffness' from
den represents the apotheosis of that process. Falconer
The general method of laying out grounds, in this country
rational. Natural beauties, or resemblances thereof, are chie
more proper, as being more comfortable to the climate and
disposition of the people, who are best pleased with great a
found only in nature. (ibid.)
The English landscape garden, th
position and of correct-natura
despotic interests, the 'rational'
constitutional-regime. The patri
assertion that, while classical des
they call to memory, he has no
beautiful and magnificent than t
Athenian Lyceum (p. 323). The c
ism of the English oak-a central
as a modern-day successor to an
As with Walpole and Burgh, Fal
English counterpart and finds th
lish values which informs discu
European context, and it is to th
suggests, such discussions of Eng
tary on a broader notion of Engl
In 1772 William Mason confid

wholly national product, that it
and that the few theoretical ant
works, if anywhere.
I had before called Bacon the proph
The former, because in developing t
largely expatiated upon that adorn
the art. The latter, on account of h
his exquisite description of Paradise
HORACE WALPOLE 217
this true taste, because they absol

an actual reformation may be fixed
(William Mason, The E
Yet, as John Dixon Hunt has sh

on the creation of the English
in the late seventeenth centur
programming and the organis
Hunt remarks, despite classica
prospect of fecund fields...was
ness; it emphasized not borrow
modern traits passed from Ita
it was arguably this self-effa
writers like Walpole and Willia
out of English garden history
By the middle of the eighteen
ly naturalised as a part of the
exist.
Such a reading of England's garden history could not be effected wit

ing with a number of troublesome texts even within the newly formin
Burgh's commentary to The English Garden, he makes a somewhat circuit
to explain Addison's well-known but inconvenient expression of adm
both Italian and French gardens, at a time when the revolutionary new
supposed to have been first practised. After running through various e
undeniably regular ('formal') examples of Italian gardens of the sixt
seventeenth centuries, Burgh moves on to Bishop Burnet's approving co
on the Borromean garden in Lake Maggiore. He begins by quoting direc
Burnet, but then continues by summarising the commentary in his own t
So here is an Italian Garden, walled round, watered by fountains, and an eleva
channel at its extremities, and divided into box-plots by long, even, high-hedged
they have no gravel,' he [Burnet] says, 'to make these firm and beautiful like th
in England'. (p. 199)
Isola Bella, the Borrom
poses. Although prospe
lake, the garden could
gardens set upon hillsi
island, the artificial w
quence, Burgh is able t
without the awkward p
pect, variety, and at le
that he introduces Add
ning of the eighteenth
paths that Addison has
14 The note originally

15 Hunt appeare
(as in n.
poem which 16 Ibid, p. first
was 162. published
Garden: a Poem. Book the First, Lo
218 STEPHEN BENDING
...'for
an he says,
agreeable their of
mixture Gardens then
Garden an
ness, much more charming than th
country;' but he bestows the sam
but little reason to believe that he
home; he desired to reform a mod
it, but had never formed an idea o
carried; whatever differed from the
faction, and this he probably exag
example of his doctrines. (pp. 199f)
Burgh's misreading-indeed, twisting-o
eighteenth-century attempts to discoun
course a minor point. Addison's approva
those elements of Italian garden design w
his chosen example: namely prospect, var
nature-the stock principles of the Engli
It is this ability to choose and to manip
a compelling historical narrative based on
century garden historians effectively to re
recent past. The continuing influence of
illustrated by the example of Shaftesbury
an argument been mounted that Shaftes
led us to believe, a prophet of the 'Engli
convincingly that Shaftesbury's views o
represented since the later eighteenth ce
between the highly regular plan of Shaft
ently stated in the Characteristics, Leath
novel than a careful reading of Shaftesbu
of that text. That such an approach was n
those eighteenth-century histories whic
that period on, readings of Shaftesbury's
'natural'-were informed by a polemical g
a neutral narrative. Moreover, what is tr
history in the eighteenth century more gen
Instead of foreign influences and cont
later eighteenth century provided a narr
nificant designs which were said to embo
scape garden. Within these histories, g
tradition, which is at once created from
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 be18
to See D. Leatherbarrow, 'Character, Geometry and
a natural wildness." And accordingly he gives us a Perspective:
de- the Third Earl of Shaftesbury's Principles
scription of it in the most agreeable and picturesqueof Garden Design', Journal of Garden History, iv.4, 1984,
pp. 332-58.
terms, insomuch that it seems less the work of his own
HORACE WALPOLE 219
all English gardens with a wid

into the very experience of th
allegory in which each histori
English garden is to compreh
and national-process wherein
rative. Within such a closed sy
The ability of English garden
construction as a discourse of st
seductive narrative. Despite th
attached primarily to a perce
nition of those features alters
placed. In the context of the g
in the seventeenth or eightee
as Dutch, French, or Italian, d
itical, historical) perspective.19
by different viewers, then th
which it is perceived. And a h
tures, while attractive in its a
to define the same object in d
its historical context-allows t
writing. Denying the taxonom
den history imposes a narrativ
expressive, from the regular
championing a formal, stylist
the apparently neutral relatin
another in a causal fashion. In
necessarily partisan manner o
from the fact that the constr
terpretation.
Horace Walpole's essay 'On
onstration of this point. The
continues largely to this day-
polemic as a neutral comment
in simple terms-and indeed W
-it is a story which chronicles
tempts to reach the perfectio
final attainment of that goal b
room for only one line of na
Conventional garden histories
pole's lead, re-documenting
through a study of these sam
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 ed. of idem (Dumbarton Oaks Colloquium on the History
of Landscape Architecture, xii), Washington, DC 1990,
the spectator. For an interesting account of 18th-cen-
pp. 175-206.
tury English perceptions of and attitudes towards Dutch
gardens see J. D. Hunt, '"But who does not know what a
220 STEPHEN BENDING
smaller and very different sites

tional image of eighteenth-centu
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 un-
natural 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 epith
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 f
Walpole's chronology because he can be characterised as an a-historical figure wh
in stepping outside his own age, can be excused from the rigorous determinism
Walpole's narrative, while at the same time endorsing his thesis of inevitable pr
gression. In an age of false politics, only a prophet could divine the true style o
gardening, for the landscape garden was, for Walpole, the direct result of Brita
finally attaining the perfect system of constitutional government. Hence Walpole
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-f
perhaps it is no paradox to say, that the reason why Taste in Gardening was never discovered bef
the beginning of the present Century, is, that It was the result of all the happy combinations of
Empire of Freemen, an Empire formed by Trade, not by a military & conquering Spirit, maintain
by the valour of independent Property, enjoying long tranquillity after virtuous struggles, & employi
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',
Garden History, xvii.2, autumn 1989, pp. 166-80; and T.
the landscape, until well into the 1770s and '80s; in this
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.
HORACE WALPOLE 221
its opulence & good sense on the refin
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 Garden survive 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 Paradise Lost.22
Thus Milton's stance as the poetic champion of the constitution and of the land-
scape 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 per-
fection-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 de-
sign 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 gar-
den (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 sys-
tem from the twilight of imperfect essays. He leaped the fence, and saw that all nature was a
garden. (p. 289)
Walpole surveys K
and concludes th
This new creation
21 Satirical Poems
perfection Publis
recently attained, but referred also to Tasso
Mason with (as in n. 9, p. 129): 'We are now arrived
Notes by at a more par-
Hor
from his manuscript,
ticular aera for taste in gardening, which we chiefly owe e
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'.
222 STEPHEN BENDING
And that admission allows him

his gardening canon, the culmi
nition of landscape genres. If K
a park' (p. 303), it was Philip So
Hamilton who gave a 'perfect e
figures and these three styles,
the English landscape garden; t
simply act to refine those achie
as Walpole reaches the perfecti
in the work of Kent's living su
abandoned in favour of precept
is not my business to lay down
301f), that history becomes itself
scape style. 'We have discovered
We have given the true model of g
rupt our taste; but let it reign her
and proud of no other art than t
graceful touches. (p. 307)
Thus the final choice of hist
standard of taste; a standard h
apparently neutral stylistic c
the 1770s.
Claims to neutrality become suspect, however, when Walpole's account is

pared to other versions of the same 'historical' events. A somewhat differe
count appears, for example, in the anonymous The Rise and Progress of the
Taste in Planting Parks, Pleasure grounds, Gardens, &c. from Henry the Eighth to G
Third, published in London in 1767. Like Walpole, the author condemns gar
before the eighteenth century, pillories Sir William Temple for his lack of
marks out Milton as the prophet of the new style, and praises Brown for pra
that style in its perfection. Unlike Walpole, he also singles out the Chinese st
the power of its emotional effects, and includes a six-page eulogy on a Chine
which represents the 'highest taste in Horticulture'. He commends the Roy
dens at Kensington and Kew, and praises Sir William Chambers, the archite
both those gardens and the champion of Chinese taste: 'But now the striking
at Kew behold, Where Taste and Chambers every grace unfold' (p. 12). Acco
to this history, then, the Chinese is perhaps the most powerful influence on
landscape design. Walpole, however, dismisses this style in a matter of line
pays scant regard to Chambers.
For Walpole, the history of stylistic change is an emblem of English lib
gained by Whig politics and stylistic and political history running in pa
Throughout the 1770s and 1780s he and William Mason gave firm support t
bility' Brown as the foremost proponent of the landscape style; and they d
largely at the expense of designers such as Chambers. Arguably, Brown's st
attractive for its very openness and malleability: he provided a form of gard
sign which allowed-indeed invited-the kinds of historical and political r
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, at-
tempted 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 con-
struct 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 o
appeared in disparaging allusions to the characteristic features of his designs, or
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 professio
gardener. Again, this elaboration takes the form of a defence of landscape gard
ing as a liberal art. He happily admits to his exclusion of Brown in the first editi
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: togetherEnglish
with 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 (= 2ndThe ednBeautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque, Carbondale
1957.
of Planting and Ornamental Gardening, London 1785).
25 Among numerous discussions of Price and Knight
224 STEPHEN BENDING
of the Essay, arguing that, 'It

praised any of that artist's de
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 Pri
However, whereas Price at once recognises, and disregards, the influence of Bro
Mason goes further and challenges that influence in itself. He argues that the r
tation of an artist results not from 'a mere number of admirers' or 'the most p
tice', but instead from 'having the approbation of good judges'. He asks, 'would M
PRICE look upon any man to be a judge of gardening, that should prefer the des
of Brown to those of Hamilton?' (pp. 185f). Reputation can only be conferred
those who are able to judge correctly, and such judgement comes from the abilit
perceive general truths rather than mere particularities. Brown, with his manne
designs and practical dexterity, practises not a liberal but a mechanical art; and w
that art may appeal to the vulgar, it is of no consequence to the man of taste.
estimating 'national taste' Mason relies upon a notion of 'public' which is that
of Reynolds's Discourses: a public which forms at once a political republic and a
public of taste.26 The value of the landscape garden-as recognised by that publ
-is found in its ability to represent the general truths of an ideal Nature and
simply local detail or mannerist conventions. Thus Mason's claim, in the first
tion of the Essay, that there has been a decided superiority of British taste in garden
ing, is defended in the second edition by reference to the discriminative judgem
of such a public:
The preference given by the public to the designs of true genius, in comparison with t
of mechanical professors, was what regulated my opinion. For I never doubted, but that
discriminative approbation was pretty general with them, who could be allowed to have
judgment at all in the matter. As to the decisions of the mere vulgar, are they ever put
the scale to weigh works of genius? (p. 133)
Similarly, Brown's merely popular acclaim is of
shape surfaces is merely a mechanical art. It is by
artist that Mason excludes him from the republ
emphatic in the assertion that Brown is a profess
sidered a gentleman:
Though genius is the gift of nature, it requires the su
this assistance the mind is rarely fitted for the task
reason, why a designer ought to be a gentleman. Prete
late scenery, even of a moderate extent, is a downrigh
tensions have been one of the causes of that amazing
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.
HORACE WALPOLE 225
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 import-
ance of great works (where the 'great' can only be achieved by a liberal artist), his-
torical 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 'quack-
ery' 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 con-
sidered as successful experiments. Although many bad designs are created, those
designs are part of the tradition of experimentation which makes Britain strong: 'In
ADDISON'S time 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 ex-
periments 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 defects as 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 writers have 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. PRICE must 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 'pr
'civic huma
English lan
perspective
construct a
Walpole tha
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
226 STEPHEN BENDING
Mason it is the more general h

unique right to rule. The 'real'
transcend the particularities (t
represents and demonstrates th
Mason's history, like the other
rative as the 'natural' progressio
of 'inevitable' progresses these
historians may have given of a
landscape garden in the eightee
torians have too frequently bee
form an eighteenth-century po
inality upon which the English
only possible in so far as narra
nition of relationships between
spite the rhetorical power of na
English garden-least of all W
nation of those historical chang
considered as a form of cultura
discourse to represent political
eenth-century garden historiog
not only as true representation
historical and political-from w
together is not an inevitable ser
model' or George Mason's 'real
interest and of narrative history.
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Horace Walpole and Eighteenth-Century Garden History

Author(s): Stephen Bending

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

attempts to construct a history

3 See e.g. H. F. Clark, can call our own; the English

In the next place I come to take Notice

He continues that among these feat

represented by Figures as big as th

Eden, serious commentary bega

Horace Walpole, in his essay 'O

till the present, unnatural, enriche

What they were not was the English landscape gar

modern style, he moves on to di

are the glowing scenes of Italy, and ho

The natural scene having been se

13 Cf e.g. Walpole garden

results from despotic govern

In 1772 William Mason confid

this true taste, because they absol

Yet, as John Dixon Hunt has sh

Such a reading of England's garden history could not be effected wit

14 The note originally

all English gardens with a wid

smaller and very different sites

its opulence & good sense on the refin

Moreover, Milton's own anti-monarchist politics make him an ideal choice of

And that admission allows him

Claims to neutrality become suspect, however, when Walpole's account is

of the Essay, arguing that, 'It

26 See J. Barrell, The Political Theory of Painting from

Mason it is the more general h

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