Green Retreats: Women, Gardens and Eighteenth-Century Culture by Stephen Bending (review)

Citing examples from letters, diaries, poems, and works of fiction to present an array of perspectives, this valuable book is a much-needed study of the eighteenth-century garden from the point of view of those women who had first-hand experience of the gardens at their country estates. Green Retreats offers memorable quotations about gardens, many never highlighted before.

Mr. Bending’s long introduction demonstrates how much the garden figured in the lives of many elite and literary women and also how it functioned both imaginatively and realistically in their personal lives. His book views the garden as having two sides like Janus, both as a place of pleasing retirement and as a place rife with erotic meanings. He traces the literature of the English garden back to poems on Horatian themes as well as to practical handbooks. In Chapter 1 he cites Maren-Sofie Røstvig’s essential The Happy Man: Studies in the Metamorphoses of a Classical Idea (Oxford 1954). Reviewing the development of the idea of rural retirement in British thought and literature, he points to popular texts that include Pomfret’s “The Choice,” Addison’s essays on the garden, Nicholas Rowe’s The Fair Penitent, and Elizabeth Rowe’s cautionary tales. He incorporates seduction narratives and didactic stories along with broader notions of the virtues of country life in a valuable survey.

“Next Sunday I quit the peaceful groves and hospitable roof of Bullstrode, for the noisy, turbulent city; my books and serious reflections are to be laid aside for the looking-glass and curling irons.” Elizabeth Montagu’s comment exemplifies what makes this book so readable, for not only does she incisively contrast life in the country and in the town, but she includes her curling iron, an object of enduring cultural significance in women’s lives. Women in Montagu’s social circle debated the value of retirement—how much was too much—with Elizabeth Carter reminding her wealthy friend that she should shun a country life that made her neglect her social responsibilities in the town. Carter enjoyed her visits to Montagu’s country house, remarking wistfully on the difference between the size of the garden at her father’s home and Montagu’s estate. Though packed with roses, vegetables, and a few fruit trees, Carter’s backyard was only about the size of Montagu’s dressing room.

The chapter on Elizabeth Montagu is especially good, as it shows another side to the woman known as London’s Queen of the Blues. Most commentators focus on her exciting literary life in London, but she spent at least half of the year in the country. At Sandleford, she liked nothing more than to sit on a garden bench, contemplatively appreciating nature. Not everyone has a green thumb, and sometimes it is by simply abiding in a garden tended by others that one can feel a sense of harmony. Montagu was aware, too, that taking care of the garden meant other people would have jobs; the development and upkeep of the property kept people in the neighborhood gainfully employed. In another letter to a friend, Montagu commented on the thirty-three women and girls who had been hired to weed the grounds one season. Montagu appreciates their appearance, their laughter, their song. Her heart was touched by hearing their cheerful voices. Despite differences in social class, Montagu feels a bond with them.

Lady Caroline Holland, escaping from her husband’s political world to the suburban gardens of Holland House, enjoyed peace in the gardens that she helped to design. But the main focus of Chapters 4 and 5 is on two women who lived in forced retirement due to marital scandals: Lady Coke at Nottinghill House, and Lady Luxborough at Barrells, Warwickshire. It ends rather drearily, with the two trapped in their gardens. Yet Mr. Bending rightly points out the benefits of “the physicality of gardening” as a means of “holding melancholy at bay.” Lady Mary Coke, to...