549
depressed; the communities are bled by depopulation, by the country-to-town
drift that divorces men from their environment and their heritage.”
14
So confluent a syndrome, this, that should the madding crowd run riot with
“belittling influences” (Johann Schiller’s phrase), there theoretically remains a refuge beyond. Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold” toured its wilds, theorizing upon the
resident savagery in a revitalized poetic that would be taken up by British
Parliament in an attempt to appease the public’s declared need of nature. Plans
were adopted for the first public park, at Birkenhead in 1847.
15
New York’s Central
Park was soon to follow, Frederick Law Olmsted looking back to the complicated
idea of pure landscape that had been advocated by English landscape architect
William Kent (1685–1748). Kent’s masterpiece, Rousham, laid out in 1740 at
Buckinghamshire, had, according to Horace Walpole, “leapt the fence and saw that
all nature was a garden.”
Kent wanted no evidence of humanity in his landscapes, no straight lines, no
conventional grazing deer upon cleared greens beside nestling brook. But
Buckinghamshire was not to be confused, even by Kent, with some paleolithic outback. There had been nearby agriculture since the Norman Conquest, and bodies
were sure to have been burnt and/or buried in the near enough vicinity. John Milton
had occupied a cottage in the area and Thomas Gray had composed his famed
“Elegy” close by. Indeed, with the famed and fertile Vale of Aylesbury just North,
this was scenery the English had celebrated for a millennium: longer if the Roman
megalithic ruins in the neighborhood could be said to attest to yet additional antiquated fondness for the region (Fig. 58.2).
Kent mowed no lawns, pruned no trees, in his efforts to engineer the ultimate
rusticity. It’s hard to know what he would have made of Rousham today—“No children under 15. No dogs.”—a venue that allows for “wedding receptions, photographic shoots and events such as car club rallies.”
16
And after all, Olmsted and
Vaux introduced every single plant, walkway, bench, sculpture, water element, to
Central Park: it was a human creation imposed on land that had, previously, been
characterized by America’s “father of landscape architecture,” Andrew Jackson
Downing, as nothing but “squares and paddocks.
17
Ultimately, our downsizing of the wilderness into our own likeness was, perhaps, best captured by Roelant Savery (1576–1639) in his painting, “The
14 Eryri, the Mountains of Longing, An interpretation and case study by Amory Lovins, with photographs by Philip Evans and an introduction by Sir Charles Evans, Edited by David R. Brower,
The Earth’s Wild Places: 5, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1972, pp. 78–79.
15 See “The History of Birkenhead Park,” Wirral, https://web.archive.org/web/20080626164507/
http://www.wirral.gov.uk/LGCL/100006/200073/670/content_0001110.html, Accessed March 19,
2020.
16 See https://www.rousham.org/
17 See “The Legacy of Central Park: How Downing, Vaux and Olmsted Set the Standard for
front.org/the-legacy-of-central-park-how-downing-vaux-and-olmsted-set-the-standard-for-american-parks/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzMOji9Cn6AIVh5WzCh1-_gyoEAAYASAAEgI8nvD_BwE,
Accessed March 19, 2020
58.3 “Even in Arcadia There Am I”
depressed; the communities are bled by depopulation, by the country-to-town
drift that divorces men from their environment and their heritage.”
14
So confluent a syndrome, this, that should the madding crowd run riot with
“belittling influences” (Johann Schiller’s phrase), there theoretically remains a refuge beyond. Lord Byron’s “Childe Harold” toured its wilds, theorizing upon the
resident savagery in a revitalized poetic that would be taken up by British
Parliament in an attempt to appease the public’s declared need of nature. Plans
were adopted for the first public park, at Birkenhead in 1847.
15
New York’s Central
Park was soon to follow, Frederick Law Olmsted looking back to the complicated
idea of pure landscape that had been advocated by English landscape architect
William Kent (1685–1748). Kent’s masterpiece, Rousham, laid out in 1740 at
Buckinghamshire, had, according to Horace Walpole, “leapt the fence and saw that
all nature was a garden.”
Kent wanted no evidence of humanity in his landscapes, no straight lines, no
conventional grazing deer upon cleared greens beside nestling brook. But
Buckinghamshire was not to be confused, even by Kent, with some paleolithic outback. There had been nearby agriculture since the Norman Conquest, and bodies
were sure to have been burnt and/or buried in the near enough vicinity. John Milton
had occupied a cottage in the area and Thomas Gray had composed his famed
“Elegy” close by. Indeed, with the famed and fertile Vale of Aylesbury just North,
this was scenery the English had celebrated for a millennium: longer if the Roman
megalithic ruins in the neighborhood could be said to attest to yet additional antiquated fondness for the region (Fig. 58.2).
Kent mowed no lawns, pruned no trees, in his efforts to engineer the ultimate
rusticity. It’s hard to know what he would have made of Rousham today—“No children under 15. No dogs.”—a venue that allows for “wedding receptions, photographic shoots and events such as car club rallies.”
16
And after all, Olmsted and
Vaux introduced every single plant, walkway, bench, sculpture, water element, to
Central Park: it was a human creation imposed on land that had, previously, been
characterized by America’s “father of landscape architecture,” Andrew Jackson
Downing, as nothing but “squares and paddocks.
17
Ultimately, our downsizing of the wilderness into our own likeness was, perhaps, best captured by Roelant Savery (1576–1639) in his painting, “The
14 Eryri, the Mountains of Longing, An interpretation and case study by Amory Lovins, with photographs by Philip Evans and an introduction by Sir Charles Evans, Edited by David R. Brower,
The Earth’s Wild Places: 5, Friends of the Earth, San Francisco, 1972, pp. 78–79.
15 See “The History of Birkenhead Park,” Wirral, https://web.archive.org/web/20080626164507/
http://www.wirral.gov.uk/LGCL/100006/200073/670/content_0001110.html, Accessed March 19,
2020.
16 See https://www.rousham.org/
17 See “The Legacy of Central Park: How Downing, Vaux and Olmsted Set the Standard for
front.org/the-legacy-of-central-park-how-downing-vaux-and-olmsted-set-the-standard-for-american-parks/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzMOji9Cn6AIVh5WzCh1-_gyoEAAYASAAEgI8nvD_BwE,
Accessed March 19, 2020
58.3 “Even in Arcadia There Am I”