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Horace Walpole's essay On Modern Gardening: The Ha Ha

Introduction Ancient gardens Roman gardens Renaissance gardens John Milton  Sir William Temple William Kent Early 18th century gardens Ha Ha Thomas Whately Landscape Gardens Lancelot 'Capability' Brown 

The Ha Ha (sometimes spelt HaHa)

But the capital stroke, the leading step to all that, has followed, was (I believe the first thought was Bridgman's) the destruction of walls for boundaries, and the invention of fosses - an attempt then deemed so astonishing, that the common people called them Ha! Ha's! to express their surprise at finding a sudden and unperceived check to their walk. One of the first gardens planted in this simple though still formal style was my father's at Houghton. It was laid out by Mr. Eyre, an imitator of Bridgman. It contains three-and-twenty acres, then reckoned a considerable portion.

I call a sunk fence the leading step for these reasons. No sooner was this simple enchantment made, than levelling, mowing and rolling followed. The contiguous ground of the park without the sunk fence was to be harmonized with the lawn within; and the garden in its turn was to be set free from its prim regularity, that it might assort with the wilder country without. The sunk fence ascertained the specific garden, but that it might not draw too obvious a line of distinction between the neat and the rude, the contiguous outlying parts came to be included in a kind of general design: and when nature was taken into the plan, under improvements, every step that was made pointed out new beauties and inspired new ideas. 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. He felt the delicious contrast of hill and valley changing imperceptibly into each other, tasted the beauty of the gentle swell, or concave scoop, and remarked how loose groves crowned an easy eminence with happy ornament, and while they called in the distant view between their graceful stems, removed and extended the perspective by delusive comparison.

Thus the pencil of his imagination bestowed all the arts of landscape on the scenes he handled. The great principles on which he worked were perspective, and light and shade. Groups of trees broke too uniform or too extensive a lawn; evergreens and woods were opposed to the glare of the champaign, and where the view was less fortunate, or so much exposed as to be beheld at once, he blotted out some parts to thick shades, to divide it into variety, or 'to make the richest scene more enchanting by reserving it to a farther advance of the spectator's step. Thus selecting favourite objects, and veiling deformities by screens of waste to add its foil to the richest theatre, he realized the compositions of the greatest masters in painting. Where objects were wanting to animate his horizon, his taste as an architect could bestow immediate termination. His buildings, his seats, his temples, were more the works of his pencil than of his compasses. We owe the restoration of Greece and the diffusion of architecture to his skill in landscape.

But of all the beauties he added to the face of this beautiful country, none surpassed his management of water. Adieu to canals, circular basins, and cascades tumbling down marble steps, that last absurd magnificence of Italian and French villas. The forced elevation of

cataracts was no more. The gentle stream was taught to serpentize seemingly at its pleasure, and where discontinued by different levels, its course appeared to be concealed by thickets properly interspersed, and glittered again at a distance where it might be supposed naturally to arrive. Its borders were smoothed, but preserved their waving irregularity. A few trees scattered here and there on its edges sprinkled the tame bank that accompanied its meanders; and when it disappeared among the hills, shades descending from the heights leaned towards its progress, and framed the distant point of light under which it was lost, as it turned aside to either hand of the blue horizon.

Thus dealing in none but the colours of nature, and catching its most favourable features, men saw a new creation opening before their eyes. The living landscape was chastened or polished, not transformed. Freedom was given to the forms of trees; they extended their branches unrestricted, and where any eminent oak or master beech had escaped maiming and survived the forest, bush and bramble was removed, and all its honours were restored to distinguish and shade the plain. Where the united plumage of an ancient wood extended wide its undulating canopy, and stood venerable in its darkness, Kent thinned the foremost ranks, and left but so many detached and scattered trees as softened the approach of gloom and blended a chequered light with the thus lengthened shadows of the remaining columns.

Succeeding artists have added new master-strokes to these touches; perhaps improved or brought to perfection some that I have named. The introduction of foreign trees and plants, which we owe principally to Archibald, Duke of Argyle, contributed essentially to the richness of colouring so peculiar to our modern landscape. The mixture of various greens, the contrast of forms between our forest-trees and the northern and West Indian firs and pines, are improvements more recent than Kent, or but little known to him. The weeping-willow and every florid shrub, each tree of delicate or bold leaf, are new tints in the composition of our gardens. The last century was certainly acquainted with many of those rare plants we now admire. The Weymouth pine has long been naturalized here; the patriarch plant still exists at Longleat. The light and graceful acacia was known as early; witness those ancient stems in the court of Bedford House in Bloomsbury Square; and in the Bishop of London's garden at Fulham are many exotics of very ancient date. I doubt therefore whether the difficulty of preserving them in a clime so foreign to their nature did not convince our ancestors of their inutility in general; unless the shapeliness of the lime and horse-chestnut, which accorded so well with established regularity, and which thence and from their novelty grew in fashion, did not occasion the neglect of the more curious plants.

But just as the encomiums are that I have bestowed on Kent's discoveries, he was neither without assistance or faults. Mr. Pope undoubtedly contributed to form his taste. The design of the Prince of Wales's garden at Canton House was evidently borrowed from the poet's at Twickenham. There was a little of affected modesty in the latter, when he said, of all his works he was most proud of his garden. And yet it was a singular effort of art and taste to impress so much variety and scenery on a spot of five acres. The passing through the gloom from the grotto to the opening day, the retiring and again assembling shades, the dusky groves, the larger lawn, and the solemnity of the termination at the cypresses that lead up to his mother's tomb, are managed with exquisite judgment; and though Lord Peterborough assisted him 'To form his quincunx and to rank his vines', those were not the most pleasing ingredients of his little perspective. I do not know whether the disposition of the garden at Rousham, laid out for General Dormers, and in my opinion the most engaging of all Kent's works, was not planned on the model of Mr. Pope's, at least in the opening and retiring shades of Venus's vale. The whole is as elegant and antique as if the emperor Julian has selected the most pleasing solitude about Daphne to enjoy a philosophic retirement.

That Kent's ideas were but rarely great, was in some measure owing to the novelty of his art. It would have been difficult to have transported the style of gardening at once from a few acres to tumbling of forests: and though new fashions like new religions (which are new fashions) often lead men to the most opposite excesses, it could not be the case in gardening, where the experiments would have been so expensive. Yet it is true too that the features in Kent's landscapes were seldom majestic. His clumps were puny, he aimed at immediate effect, and planted not for futurity. One sees no large woods sketched out by his direction. Nor are we yet entirely risen above a too great frequency of small clumps, especially in the elbows of serpentine rivers. How common to see three or four beeches, then as many larches, a third knot of cypresses, and a revolution of all three! Kent's last designs were in a higher style, as his ideas opened on success. The north terrace at Claremont was much superior to the rest of the garden.

A return of some particular thoughts was common to him with other painters, and made his hand known. A small lake edged by a winding bank with scattered trees that led to a seat at the head of the pond, was common to Claremont, Esher and others of his designs. At Esher, 'Where Kent and nature vied for Pelham's love', the prospects more than aided the painter's genius-they marked out the points where his art was necessary or not; but thence left his judgment in possession of all its glory.

Having routed professed art, for the modem gardener exerts his talents to conceal his art, Kent, like other reformers, knew not how to stop at the just limits. He had followed nature, and imitated her so happily, that he began to think all her works were equally proper for imitation. In Kensington garden he planted dead trees, to give a greater air of truth to the scene-but he was soon laughed out of this excess. His ruling principle was, that nature abhors a straight line. His mimics, for every genius has his apes, seemed to think that she could love nothing but what was crooked. Yet so many men of taste of all ranks devoted themselves to the new improvements, that it is surprising how much beauty has been struck out, with how few absurdities. Still in some lights the reformation seems to have been pushed too far. Though an avenue crossing a park or separating a lawn, and intercepting views from the seat to which it leads, are capital faults, yet a great avenue cut through woods, perhaps before entering a park, has a noble air, and 'Like footmen running before coaches To tell the inn what lord approaches, announces the habitation of some man of distinction. Of this kind one of the most noble is that of Stanstead, the seat of he Earl of Halifax, traversing an ancient wood for two miles and bounded by the sea. The very extensive lawns at that seat, richly enclosed by venerable beech woods, and chequered by single beeches of vast size, particularly when you stand in the portico of the temple and survey the landscape that wastes itself in rivers of broken sea, recall such exact pictures of Claude Lorraine, that it is difficult to conceive that he did not paint them from this very spot. In other places the total banishment of all particular neatness immediately about a house, which is frequently left gazing by itself in the middle of a park, is a defect. Sheltered and even close walks in so very uncertain a climate as ours, are comforts ill exchanged for the few picturesque days that we enjoy: and whenever a family can purloin a warm and even something of an old-fashioned garden from the landscape designed for them by the undertaker in fashion, without interfering with the picture, they will find satisfactions on those days that do not invite strangers to come and see their improvements.

Fountains have with great reason been banished from gardens as unnatural; but it surprises me that they have not been allotted to their proper positions, to cities, towns, and the courts of great houses, as proper accompaniments to architecture, and as works of grandeur in themselves. Their

decorations admit the utmost invention and when the waters are thrown up to different stages, and tumble over their border, nothing has a more imposing or a more refreshing sound. A palace demands its external graces and attributes, as much as a garden. Fountains and cypresses peculiarly become buildings; and no man can have been at Rome, and seen the vast basins of marble dashed with perpetual cascades in the area of St. Peter's, without retaining an idea of taste and splendour. Those in the piazza Navona are as useful as sublimely conceived.

Grottos in this climate are recesses only to 'be looked at transiently. When they are regularly composed within of symmetry and architecture, as in Italy, they are only splendid improprieties. The most judiciously, indeed most fortunately placed grotto, is that at Stourhead, where the river bursts from the urn of its god and passes on its course through the cave.

But it is not my business to lay down rules for gardens, but to give the history of them. A system of rules pushed to a great degree of refinement, and collected from the best examples and practice, has been lately given in a book entitled Observations on modern gardening [by Thomas Whateley]. The work is very ingeniously and carefully executed, and in point of utility rather exceeds than omits any necessary directions. The author will excuse me if I think it a little excess, when he examines that rude and unappropriated scene of Matlock Bath and criticizes nature for having bestowed on the rapid river Derwent so many cascades. How can this censure be brought home to gardening? The management of rocks is a province can fall to few directors of gardens; still in our distant provinces such a guide may be necessary.

The author divides his subject into gardens, parts, farms and ridings. I do not mean to find fault with this division. Directions are requisite to each kind, and each has its department at many of the great scenes from whence he drew his observations. In the historic light, I distinguish them into the garden that connects itself with a park, into the ornamented farm, and into the forest or savage garden. Kent, as I have shown, invented or established the first sort. Mr. Philip Southcote founded the second, or ferme ornée (at Woburn farm in Surrey), of which is a very just description in the author I have been quoting. The third I think he has not enough distinguished. I mean that kind of alpine scene, composed almost wholly of pines and firs, a few birch, and such trees as assimilate with a savage and mountainous country. Mr. Charles Hamilton, at Painshill, in my opinion has given a perfect example of this mode in the utmost boundary of his garden. All is great and foreign and rude; the walks seem not designed, but cut through the wood of pines; and the style of the whole is so grand, and conducted with so serious an air of wild and uncultivated extent, that when you look down on this seeming forest, you are amazed to find it contains a very few acres. In general, except as a screen to conceal some deformity, or as a shelter in winter, I am not fond of total plantations of evergreens. Firs in particular form a very ungraceful summit, all broken into angles.

Sir Henry Englefield was one of the first improvers on the new style, and selected with singular taste that chief beauty of all gardens, prospect and fortunate points of view: we tire of all the painter's art when it wants these finishing touches. The fairest scenes, that. depend on themselves alone, weary when often seen. The Doric portico, the Palladian bridge, the Gothic ruin, the Chinese pagoda, that surprise the stranger, soon lose their charms to their surfeited master. The lake that floats the valley is still more lifeless, and its lord seldom enjoys his expense but when he shows it to n visitor. But the ornament whose merit soonest fades is the hermitage or scene adapted to contemplation. It is almost comic to set aside a quarter of one's garden to be melancholy in. Prospect, animated prospect, is the theatre that will always be the most frequented. Prospects formerly were sacrificed to convenience and warmth. Thus Burleigh stands behind a hill, from the top of which it would command Stamford. Our ancestors who resided the greatest part of the year at their seats, as others did two years together or more, had an eye to comfort first, before expense. Their vast mansions received and harboured all the younger branches, the dowagers and ancient maiden aunts of the families, and other families visited them for a month together. The method of living is now totally changed, and yet the same superb palaces are still created, becoming a pompous solitude to the owner, and a transient entertainment to a few travelers.

If any incident abolishes or restrains the modern style of gardening, it will be this circumstance of solitariness. The greater the scene, the more distant it is probably from the capital; in the neighbourhood of which land is too dear to admit considerable extent of property. Men tire of expense that is obvious to few spectators. Still there is a more imminent danger that threatens the present, as it has ever done all taste. I mean the pursuit of variety. A modern French writer has in a very affected phrase given a just account of this, I will call it, distemper. He says, l'ennui du beau amene le gout du singulier. The noble simplicity of the Augustan age was driven out by false taste. The gigantic, the puerile, the quaint, and at last the barbarous and the monkish, had each their successive admirers. Music has been improved, till it is a science of tricks and sleight of hand: the sober greatness of Titian is lost, and painting since Carlo Maratti has little more relief than Indian paper. Borromini twisted 'and curled architecture (in particular, he inverted the volutes of the Ionic order), as if it was subject to the change of fashions like a head of hair. If we once lose sight of the propriety of landscape in our gardens, we shall wander into all the fantastic Sharawadgis of the Chinese. We have discovered the point of perfection. 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 touch.

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