Then, as now, I proceeded to risk all credibility and garnered opprobrium by boldly asserting that I really do not like Capability Brown. Because, rest assured, that was the first thought that came into the minds of those who knew about such things when they saw our view. People would look at our soft, flowing landscape, with trees carefully placed on the rises to increase the apparent height of the actually quite modest hills, and strategically positioned to frame views through into the distance. It was extremely advantageous that all the land that could be seen belonged to the estate. They would look at it, and would be put in mind of that thing we call the 18th century English Landscape Garden, and their bodies would relax, they would breathe. In and out. They were in familiar territory. This was the English countryside at its best. This was gardening as we know it. Natural, rolling, native trees, fine views, a soothing blend of greens, and cattle lowing under the Limes.
Now, I don't want to go in detail into a critical appraisal of the work of Culpability Brown with reference to his forerunners such as William Kent, nor do I want to embed myself in the reasons why he fell out of favour with the Romantics and only once again regained popularity in the 20th century. That all happened, but it is not relevant to what I want to say.
I want to say that I can't stand Culpability at all. Full stop. What the hell was he doing?
Well, first of all let me say that he was an iconoclast, but not in a good way. There is hardly a great 16th century garden remaining as a result of his landscape depredations. He swept away our garden history, in the interest of replacing it with a fashion which we have come to see as his unique creation. We have also come to view it mistakenly as a true representation of the English Landscape. Wherever we see its like, we bill and coo, and believe that this is how things used to be before we came along and ruined it. Rubbish. Capability Brown ruined it. He demolished older gardens, and ignored the social history of our landscape. Where are the historic feudal divisions of land in his creations?
He was a garden fascist, parading his footsoldiers in their hundreds over our fields, where they dug out lakes like serfs, and built false hills from the spoil, all to satisfy the craving for displays of power embedded in his wealthy clients. And in so doing, he made himself a whole boatload of money.
But his ideas weren't even original, and far from new. He plagiarised the works of French landscape painters who themselves had lived in Italy more than a century before and had painted a classical ideal of landscape which had never existed. The only thing he did that was new was to recreate someone else's painterly ideal of Arcadia in the flesh, in a climate and landscape where it was completely foreign. His Elysium was somebody else's. It was a hundred years out of date and more by the time he set his minions to build it. He filled our countryside with classical follies and ruins, with lakes where no lakes were.
His was a dictatorship of the mind. Perhaps unwittingly, the stampeding horses of his influence grew into a dictatorial stipulation as to how we should view nature, when in fact it had nothing to do with nature at all. His was a Soviet-type imposition, dictating future style as if his ideas were some ideological truism that bore no dispute. Not, in his case, Socialist Realism, but more Elitist Fantasy.
Now, in saying this, I am not suggesting that his landscapes are not attractive or restful. That comes partly from our familiarity with them. I protest because they were not genuine in any of their parts. They were artificially created at huge cost, the concept belonged to someone else, and as art, they had already been superseded in the painting world from which they derived long before he ever started building them on the ground. So they weren't even new. And they most definitely did not reflect England. They didn't even reflect the Classical Greece or Rome on which the original paintings were modelled. They were artists' fantasies from a bygone era, one which was already bygone before Culpability got hold of them.
You may protest that I have been at pains through all these so far 76 days of blogging on the subject to point out how all gardens are an artistic construct, how they are all artificial, and idealised pictures of how nature might be if we were allowed to reimagine them. What, then, is so wrong with Brown and his followers or predecessors? Essentially nothing. What I am most suspicious of is the way he was able to sell the concept to the world with such force that it swept away everything that came before, leaving us nothing of that period to learn from, and then how the totality of his takeover has been allowed to infiltrate our consciousness to the point where we believe that this is no longer art, but how the world actually is. It isn't.
I'm going to lighten the mood by putting up a picture here. With 1600 acres of estate to juggle with, the Old Man was able to play with these extended countryside views. With his knowledge of garden history, he was able to draw on sources such as 18th century concepts of landscape design, and this he did heavily. I can't fault him for that. He was one of many. He didn't move mountains, though - he placed trees well to achieve a modest result. I do wish he had kept the Laburnums which used to surround the beech plantation on the top of the first rise on the left of the picture, though. That's a proper thumb to the nose at Culpability Brown, Garden Terrorist. If only the Old Man had realised how much more fun it would have been to send up the landscape style, instead of replicating it.
Still, there are no absurd follies or ruins to disturb the eye out there. That is something at least. I did hear a rumour that he once considered a lake for the lowest part of the terrain, just out there below where you can see a glimpse of a post and wire fence at the end of the first field. The lake would have spread out to the right of the picture, and to my mind would have created an off-kilter impression. Anyway, he abandoned the idea. Good job. Just below that fence-line is a bridleway, or actually a Byway open to all traffic (now known by the acronym BOAT). It would have caused a 20th century rebellion to divert that, and he would forever have been known as the man who sank the BOAT in his lake. I can picture hordes of off-roaders in 20th century costume marauding across the hills, armed with pitchforks, bicycle chains and pick-axe handles, ready to protest their rights on the doors and windows of the house. The simple fact is, the Old Man didn't have the clout of old Culpability Brown, and was forced to retreat even before the attack started.
Of course, Brown's real name wasn't Capability, that derived from an 18th century peculiarity of English usage which he favoured. His real name was Lancelot. Nobody should call their little boy that, unless he is covered in boils.
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