We think again of the rose-tree of Jean Jacques at the hermitage. We remember Dufresny, who “studied love in his heart, grandeur at the court, war upon the field of battle, architecture in the erection of buildings, nature in his garden, music in song.” Dufresny was in love with gardens. A poet, a friend of Louis XIV, he loved roses better than any other luxury. It was he who broke up the stiff, old-fashioned plan of gardening at Vincennes, and introduced Nature with her charming caprices and fairy fantasies. It was he who said, “Cultivating roses, marking out paths, planting hedges, is the same as writing sonnets, songs, and poems.” In his day a picturesque garden was often called “à la Dufresny.” Under his rule Versailles became what it is. “I shall never be poor while I have a garden!” said he to the King. “I find there the green vine-tendrils, or the roses, for a crown.” To him verdant prospects were real terrestrial paradises.
We can remember how the boy Florian gathered cherries, and forgot his Greek and Latin! We remember him, in Voltaire’s garden, naming the poppies after the faithless Trojans. The most beautiful he called “Hector,” and then demolished him with a blow from his wooden sword. Later, when he had grown up, still wandering in gardens, he wrote his eclogues, poems, dramas, fables, and “Numa Pompilius.” His style has all the tender freshness, the brilliancy, the perfume, the clear color, of a “garden party.” It is an idyl of primroses and dandelions.
We hardly think of Buffon at a garden party. (When Voltaire heard of his “Natural History”—“Not so natural,” said the great wit.) The laborious and tranquil life of the great author of the “Garden of Plants” seems out of place at a garden party, and yet he lived and wrote in a garden. He submitted Nature to a crucible, and tore a lily to pieces to see of what it was made; and yet he brought together the flowers and trees of all nations. We admire, but do not love Buffon.
We cross the Channel and see, in imagination, the Princess Anne with Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stuart, Lady Churchill, and all their friends, loftily walking in the groves and alleys of Spring Gardens, emerging into St. James’s Park. The glories of Bird-Cage Walk come back to us. From these models did Colley Cibber get his “Lady Betty Modish,” and what a pretty, stylish, affected model it was! Lovely Lady Fitzhardinge was of the Princess’s party, and later, when Lady Churchill became Duchess of Marlborough, what garden parties at Blenheim!
A garden party always brings back Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who left many an account of those stately old-time gardens at Rome, Florence, Naples, Genoa, Avignon—not to speak of the early adventures at Twickenham, and later at Strawberry Hill. All England is a garden. The garden party is possible anywhere.
And the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe! How they adorn a garden party! We almost see the splendid cream-colored horses of George III drive up past Carleton Gardens, to proceed in solemn state to St. James’s, as we hear the low, rippling laughter of the two beauties in brocade.
The Prince of Wales forgot his two hundred thousand pounds of debts as he received the Buffs and Blues at a garden party, which began at noon and continued all night, at Carleton House. The Duchess of Devonshire was then lady paramount of the aristocratic whig circles, in which rank and literature were blended with political aspirations. It was she who canvassed for Fox, and allowed the butcher to kiss her for his vote; and to her was paid the compliment, highly prized, by the link-boy who asked if he “might light his pipe at her eyes.” These women seem to have lived in garden parties.
Sweet Madame de Sévigné, with her children, at Les Rochers, and later at Paris, talking gayly under the trees of her garden, with Corneille, Racine, Molière, La Fontaine, and Boileau, again wins us back across the Channel, and back a hundred years or so.
Garden parties have this advantage: they are like Madame de Staël’s age—“not dated.” They are of all time. Madame de Sévigné’s garden party comprised Pascal, Bourdaloue, Mascaron, Bossuet, the restless De Retz, the Scotchman Montrose, La Rochefoucauld, Marshal Turenne, Le Grand Colbert, and Condé. The ladies were the Duchess de Longueville, the political intrigante of the Fronde; the penitent La Vallière; the heartless Maintenon; Madame de Montespan; the Comtesse d’Olonne, daughter of Madame de Rambouillet, and one of the Précieuses; Madame de La Fayette, the authoress of “Zaide.” Alas, and alas! we could not get together such a garden party of to-day! No! not if we had a fortnight’s time before us, and all the wealth of the Indies.