Lecture d'un jardin anglais : Stowe (Buckinghamshire)

Abstract

The garden of Stowe can be "read" at three different levels. As a book reflecting contemporary debates on aesthetics, it shows the evolution of taste from geometrical shapes and a domesticated nature influenced by foreign art - Italian, Dutch and French styles - to a more natural landscape, more congenial to the English love for liberty. Such were the remarkable achievements of Bridgeman, William Kent, and Lancelot Brown. Stowe also reads as a book of emblems, a political satire and a moral creed, an echo of Lord Cobham's conflicts with the government of Walpole. Compared with the beautiful temples dedicated to Ancient Virtue and to the British Worthies, Modern Vitue is a mere ruin. The whig ideal of liberty and the cult of Saxon ancestors are everywhere written in the stones of Stowe. Such is the message of this "incredibly learned and witty garden" (John Dixon Hunt) to the privileged elite possessing the keys to that emblematic language. But visitors to Stowe can also enjoy a solitary walk in the alleys and groves, along the brooks and lakes, their senses delighted by the sights, smells and sounds of the place, their imagination full of reminiscences of pictures and poems which have also inspired the creators of that "fair paradise" (James Thomson): a perfect illustration of the harmonious interaction of the Sister Arts, so highly praised by Ancients and Moderns alike.