127a. Whately, Thomas.
OBSERVATIONS / ON / MODERN GARDENING, / ILLUSTRATED
BY / DESCRIPTIONS. / Where Wealth, enthron'd in Nature's
pride, / With Taste and Bounty by her side, / And holding
Plenty's horn, / Sends Labour to pursue the toil, / Art to improve the
happy soil, / And Beauty to adorn. F. / THE SECOND EDITION. /
LONDON, / Printed for T. PAYNE, at the Mews-gate. / MDCCLXX.
8vo. Title page (1 leaf); table of contents (3 leaves); text ([1]-257).
Thomas Whatley (d.1772) was a politician and a student of literature.
He wrote widely, especially on politics. He says about gardening in
general:
Gardening, in the perfection to which it has been lately brought in
England, is entitled to a place of considerable rank among the liberal arts. It is
as superior to landskip painting, as a reality to a representation: it is an exertion
of fancy; a subject for taste; and being released now from the restraints
of regularity, and enlarged beyond the purposes of domestic convenience, the
most beautiful, the most simple, the most noble scenes of nature are all within
its province: for it is no longer confined to the spots from which it borrows its
name, but regulates also the disposition and embellishments of a park, a farm,
or a riding; and the business of a gardener is to select and to apply whatever
is great, elegant, or characteristic in any of them; to discover and to shew all
the advantages of the place upon which he is employed; to supply its defects,
to correct its faults, and to improve its beauties. For all these operations, the
objects of nature are still his only materials. His first enquiry, therefore, must
be into the means by which those effects are attained in nature, which he is
to produce; and into those properties in the objects of nature, which should
determine him in the choice and arrangement of them.
Nature, always simple, employs but four materials in the composition
of her scenes, ground, wood, water, and rocks. The cultivation of nature has
introduced a fifth species, the buildings requisite for the accommodation of
men. Each of these again admits of varieties in figure, dimensions, color, and
situation. Every landskip is composed of these parts only; every beauty in a
landskip depends on the application of their several varieties. [Pp. (1)-2]
Of terror as an agreeable sensation he says:
This river [the Derwent] would be better suited to a scene characterised by
that terror, which the combination of greatness with force inspires, and which
is animating and interesting, from the exertion and anxiety attending it. The
terrors of a scene in nature are like those of a dramatic representation; they
give an alarm; but the sensations are agreeable, so long as they are kept to
such as are allied only to terror, unmixed with any that are horrible and disgusting;
art may therefore be used to heighten them, to display the objects
which are distinguished by greatness, to improve the circumstances which
denote force, to mark those which intimate danger, and to blend with all, here
and there a cast of melancholy. [P. 106]
But disgust may stem from another characteristic:
If regularity is not entitled to a preference in the environs or approach
to a house, it will be difficult to support its pretensions to a place in any more
distant parts of a park or a garden. Formal slopes of ground are ugly; right
or circular lines bounding water, do not indeed change the nature of the element;
it still retains some of its agreeable properties; but the shape given to it
is disgusting. [P. 144]
But regularity can never attain to a great share of beauty, and to none
of the species called picturesque; a denomination in general expressive of excellence.
[P. 146]
And he defines picturesque in the following way:
The term picturesque is therefore applicable only to such objects in nature, as,
after allowing for the differences between the arts of painting and of gardening,
are fit to be formed into groupes, or to enter into a composition, where the
several parts have a relation to each other; and in opposition to those which
may be spread abroad in detail, and have no merit but as individuals. [P. 150]
The book is divided into sections on ground, wood, water, rocks,
buildings, art, picturesque beauty, character, the farm, the park, the
garden, the riding, and the seasons. It uses the following gardens as
examples - Moor Park, Ilam, Claremont, Esher, Blenheim, Wotton,
Middleton, Matlock, Bath, Dovedale, Enfield Chace, Tintern Abbey,
Caversham, Leasowes, Wolvern farm, Painshill, Hagley, Stowe, Persfield.
The book had its first edition in 1770, and a second that same year.
It had gone into a fourth edition by 1777, a fifth in 1793, and an expanded
edition in 1801. A French translation appeared in 1771 and
exerted considerable influence on later French authors.
Although Kimball (p. 101) says Jefferson had his copy of the
Observations on Modern Gardening before 1783, Sowerby (4227) says
his copy was bought in 1785 from the Rev. Samuel Henley. That he had
a copy before March 1786 we know from a note made by Jefferson,
quoted in Sowerby:
Memorandums made on a tour to some of the gardens described in England
by Whatley in his book on gardening. While his descriptions in point of style
are models of perfect elegance and classical correctness, they are as remarkable
for their exactness. I always walked over the gardens with his book in my
hand, examined with attention the particular spots he described, found them
so justly characterised by him as to be easily recognized, and saw with wonder,
that his fine imagination had never been able to seduce him from the
truth. My enquiries were directed chiefly to such practical things as might
enable me to estimate the expence of making and maintaining a garden in
that style. My journey was in the months of March and April 1786.
As can be seen the importance of this book in the Jefferson canon
is very great, and its influence on his feeling for garden design cannot
be overestimated.
This is the edition Jefferson sold to Congress. Although he had
another copy of this book at the time of his death, it is not known
whether it was this edition or that of 1777. The library's present copy of
the second edition has recently entered its collections, the gift of the
Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation. It is uncertain whether it was
this edition or that of 1777 which was ordered for the University.
U. Va.?
*SB471.W55.1770
M
Sowerby 4227
