Chapter I: Part 1

THE AUGUSTAN REPRINT SOCIETY

AN
EXPLANATORY
DISCOURSE

BY
TAN CHET-QUA,
of
QUANG-CHEW-FU, Gent.

SIR WILLIAM CHAMBERS
(1773)

_Introduction by_
RICHARD E. QUAINTANCE, JR.

PUBLICATION NUMBER _191_
WILLIAM ANDREWS CLARK MEMORIAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES
_1978_

GENERAL EDITOR

David Stuart Rodes, University of California, Los Angeles

EDITORS

Charles L. Batten, University of California, Los Angeles
William E. Conway, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
George Robert Guffey, University of California, Los Angeles
Maximillian E. Novak, University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

James L. Clifford, Columbia University
Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia
Vinton A. Dearing, University of California, Los Angeles
Arthur Friedman, University of Chicago
Louis A. Landa, Princeton University
Earl Miner, Princeton University
Samuel H. Monk, University of Minnesota
Everett T. Moore, University of California, Los Angeles
Lawrence Clark Powell, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library
James Sutherland, University College, London
H. T. Swedenberg, Jr., University of California, Los Angeles
Robert Vosper, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

CORRESPONDING SECRETARY

Beverly J. Onley, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

Frances M. Reed, University of California, Los Angeles

INTRODUCTION

This "Explanatory Discourse" first appeared, in the latter part of March 1773, annexed to the second and last edition of Sir William Chambers' _Dissertation on Oriental Gardening_ of the preceding May. As an effort, curiously hedged, to impersonate a Chinese spokesman it seeks to exploit the satiric vantage points of philosophic naivety and trenchant candor enjoyed by Goldsmith's observer Lien Chi Altangi in London a dozen years earlier. But Chambers' ventriloquism is both more defensive and more aggressive than what we find in _The Citizen of the World_; the Preface here in his own voice admits sensitivity to the "abuse" which the Dissertation had incurred for its scenic fantasy, its brief opening and closing attacks on "Capability" Brown, and its pervasive criticism of the blandness of Brownian landscaping. By assuming the voice of Tan Chet-qua Chambers is able to pretend to more authoritative familiarity with actual Chinese gardens even as he deplores his readers' misapprehension that his interest lay mainly in masquerade, entertainment, or "the mere recital of a traveller's observation" (p. 113). It was probably a strategic error to entrust the substance of his genuine and quite respectable challenging of Brownian style, to what he terms the "vehicle" of alleged first-hand reports of preferable "Chinese" lay-outs. By this date, some two decades after the chinoiserie fad had crested in England, most of his readers might fairly be termed rather jaded. They preferred to overreact to the frivolity and whimsey they had come to think essentially Chinese, rather than to ponder what Chambers seriously urges from behind his silken "screen": his interest in a variegated emotional response to deliberately variegated landscape. An admirer of Burke's Sublime, Chambers saw advantage in complicating the suavity of Brown's gentle contours, shaven lawns, free-form reflecting lakes, and still short tree-clumps, through a program of landscaped stimulation of contrasting associative moods. This is the essence of that argument which Chambers "cloathed ... in the garb of fiction, to secure it a patient hearing" (p. 112) in three publications appearing over sixteen years. There is no evidence that he was better understood through publication of this "Discourse," the last of the three.[1]

Of course, it is not as a satirist, an aesthetician of landscape, or even as a masquerading orientalist that Sir William Chambers (1723-96) has been best known in his time and since: with Robert Adam, he led the British architectural profession virtually from the time he undertook his first commissions around 1757. The two buildings for which he is justly best remembered are the Chinese Pagoda at Kew Gardens and Somerset House, between London's Strand and Waterloo Bridge. Yet from that solid Palladian structure now housing the General Register Office it takes more than the dozen miles up Thames to reach the pagoda which in 1762 reared its eighty bright wing-displaying dragons on ten successive roofs, and from the height of fifty meters flashed its glazed tiles across suburbia. Chambers developed simultaneously and maintained through his career two contrasted sensibilities. The dignified town house he designed for his family in 1764 fronted Berners Street with a massive rusticated doorway, yet had interior chimney-pieces and a rear elevation modelled in "fanciful" papier-mache which his biographer John Harris supposes was painted and varnished chinoiserie. He made his way to the top of his profession and earned royal recognition through tectonic skills that absorbed him with Somerset House, for instance, during the last two decades of his life. But as early as 1752 he had ventured the striking practice--standard by the century's end through his pioneering and Adam's--of drawing elevations of a building proposed as it would appear if already conditioned by time, decaying and overgrown by vegetation.[2] Deciding what to make of his three publications on Chinese gardens will not be eased by polarizing his sources of inspiration or consigning his life into stretches during which the dominant interest was product or process, structure or affect. Here is no schizoid or frustrated Pre-Romantic--a Chatterton who somehow survived his suicide attempt to edit copy for the _Gentleman's Magazine_--but a consummate professional.[3] The mythic "Cina" of which this "Discourse" was Chambers' latest account grew and changed with him from his first-hand experience of Canton at the age of twenty, through his architectural training in Paris and Rome, and throughout his practice and success as the Establishment architect of his age in England.

The recent thorough Harris biography leaves it appropriate here only to survey the facts most pertinent to his publications on Chinese gardens and to advance a few speculations. The first son of a well-to-do Scottish sutler to the armies of Charles XII of Sweden, Chambers early left his native Gothenburg for schooling supervised by relatives in Yorkshire. Between the ages of 17 and 26 his cosmopolitan rearing proceeded with his apprenticeship to supercargoes or agents aboard three successive vessels of the Swedish East India Company trading in ports along the Indian coast and as far east as Canton. Although his eye and sketchbook were thus early busied with oriental sights, what Chambers later wrote of Peking (or much else Chinese beyond the docks of Canton) was, as he admitted, based upon the observations of others. Yet it must have been rare and significant enough in those days that when this Westerner determined to devote his earnings from the final voyage to an education in architecture, he had seen proportionately so much of non-European building. Even before enrolling in J.-F. Blondel's Ecole des Arts for the 1749-50 winter, Chambers may have met Frederick, Prince of Wales, in London, and been encouraged by Frederick's exotic interests.[4] It was during his second of five springs in Rome, living with his English wife over the shop of Piranesi, that Chambers learned of Frederick's death in March 1751 and designed for him a mausoleum based on the ancient and neo-classical shapes before his eyes; in one of his sections for this project he depicted it decaying like some of them, with cypress trees beginning to grow out of the rubble that was to have been its roof! Though this design was never executed, Chambers did meet with royal patronage upon his return to London and dedicated to the new Prince of Wales--soon his pupil in drawing, and three years later, George III--his first book, _Designs of Chinese Buildings, Furniture, Dresses, Machines and Utensils_ in 1757.

The opening sentences which Samuel Johnson contributed to Chambers' _Designs_ scorned the "power" with which "novelty attracts regard"[5]--a ground-note directly contrary to Chambers' sarcastic apology for "the monster Novelty" here in his 1773 Preface. But in 1757 he could expect his crisp text and twenty-one plates to administer a calming dose of authenticity to the chinoiserie fever then raging. In fact, this large and handsome volume appears to have driven from the market the pattern-books of "William Halfpenny" and others, with their ridiculous dragon-finials atop Georgian hip-roofs and Venetian windows bordered by crockets--the carpentry trade trying to sustain a mood for renovations waning by the early fifties. Chambers hoped to put a stop "to the extravagancies that daily appear under the name of Chinese, though most of them are mere inventions, the rest copies from the lame representations found on porcelain and paper-hangings." This sniffy professionalism would broaden by 1772 into mockery of the "kitchen gardeners, well skilled in the culture of sallads, but little acquainted with the principles of Ornamental Gardening"[6]--which everyone took for a swipe at Launcelot "Capability" Brown, "yon stately gentleman in the black perriwig" (p. 157 below).

Yet probably a more general and generous motive prompted Chambers to boost in this public way, on the last five pages introducing his _Designs_, a landscape-style in which he could hardly expect to exercise his training or build the career just beginning. The lay-outs of Kent and Brown took inspired advantage of topography, plants and climate peculiar to the south of England, but to anyone coming like Chambers from the gardens in and near Paris and Rome it might appear by 1757 that the English style risked parochial self-exaggeration to the point where all anecdotal human interest would be suppressed in the name of a "Nature" literally isolated. Cosmopolitanism, more enlightened than ever, befitted a Britain engaged in Pitt's "Great War for the Empire" which would extend its holdings from Montreal to Madras. Was there not an earlier empire whose leader had left visible tokens of his eclecticism? "[H]Adrian, who was himself an architect, at a time when the Grecian architecture was in the highest esteem among the Romans, erected in his Villa, at Tivoli, certain buildings after the manner of the Egyptians and of other nations."[7] It was timely to identify a pure "original" example of culture native to quite another organic whole, and then to transplant it intact to a British scene large enough to sustain it. Botanically viewed, this is the principle on which arduous horticultural experiments were being performed at this stage in England's imperial history: the removal to Kew of Lebanese cedars, oriental Ginkgoes, persimmons and Sophoras, or American locusts in the earlier 1750s, and later, the infamous Bounty venture to transplant in Jamaica breadfruit from the South Seas. Architecturally applied, it would seem to be the principle on which Chambers developed his designs for a score of buildings after the manner of the Romans, Chinese, Moors, and of other nations, erected at Kew Gardens by the time the Treaty of Paris was signed in 1763.[8] In this concern he seconded but went beyond the hopes of Horace Walpole and William Mason that "this whole kingdom might soon become one magnificant vast Garden, bounded only by the sea" (below, page 133). The syntax of Lewis Mumford seems apposite: of Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York's Central Park just a century later, Mumford has remarked that "By making nature urbane he naturalized the city."[9] At Kew, by making the garden cosmopolitan, Chambers helped to globalize the capital of empire and proposed the world as Enlightened Eden.

It was not, of course, such national or global edenic visions which chiefly exercised readers of Chambers' 1757 essay "Of the Art of Laying Out Gardens Among the Chinese" and brought down upon his 1772 _Dissertation_ the ridicule which prompted the "Explanatory Discourse." Rather, it was the lurid details through which both accounts maintained that "The Chinese artists, knowing how powerfully contrast operates on the mind, constantly practise sudden transitions, and a striking opposition of forms, coulours, and shades." Though this principle earned sympathetic response from theorists like Burke and Karnes at home and Delille on the Continent, Chambers pressed his luck too far when he described what he claimed to have observed, or heard from Chinese observers, of "three different species of scenes, to which they give the appellations of pleasing, horrid, and enchanted." Particularly vulnerable were the programmed _frissons_ of "their scenes of horror": "some miserable huts dispersed in the mountains serve, at once to indicate the existence and wretchedness of the inhabitants."[10] By 1772 the _Schadenfreude_ has deepened: "Their scenes of terrour are composed of gloomy woods, &c. gibbets, crosses, wheels, and the whole apparatus of torture are seen from the roads. Here too they conceal in cavities, on the summits of the highest mountains, foundries, lime-kilns, and glass-works, which send forth large volumes of flame, and continued columns of thick smoke, that give to these mountains the appearance of volcanos." This was the sort of opening which William Mason exploited in his _Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers_ of March, 1773:

Now to our lawns of dalliance and delight,
Join we the groves of horrour and affright;
This to achieve no foreign aids we try,
Thy gibbets, Bagshot! shall our wants supply;
Hounslow, whose heath sublimer terrour fills,
Shall with her gibbets lend her powder mills.[11]

Mason's _Heroic Epistle_ was one of the century's most popular poems and, cheered on by Walpole, a viscously successful effort to tar with Chambers' lavish brush his patron George Bute and other assorted Scots, any critic of Brown, and the Tory establishment at large.

Yet behind Chambers' oriental screen the novelty, enduring interest, and even the practicality of some of his ideas can be observed. That concern to naturalize the smoky mills of industrialization may be developing a hint (concerning Middleton Dale, in the Peak District) on page 94 of Thomas Whately's supremely influential _Observations on Modern Gardening_ (1770). If Chambers' generation was neither the first nor last to grapple with what "progress" had done to the land, the English landscaping movement presented a new stage for that encounter. While Chet-qua's proposal to frame the dreary tracts around a metropolis "into scenes of terror" seems less than helpful, how neatly he anticipates Cezanne's transfer of his easel into the abandoned Bibemus Quarry (pp. 130-132). Foreshadowing William Cowper's satire of "Th' omnipotent magician, Brown" in _The Task_, Chambers had warned that estate-"improvement" could lead to irreparable devastation of the nation's woodland. Several of Chambers' means to certain effects sound more like a practical landscape architect at work than a Disneyland impressario parading his promised thrills: when he urges diversification of material relative to seasonal change or human entertainments, for instance, or the use of wire fencing and other substitutes for the ha-ha. His interest in the harmonizing of diverse but massed hues and textures has been recognized as an early glimpse of the "English" effects secured by Gertrude Jekyll a century and a quarter later.[12] Though extravagances of Chambers' language distracted attention from the liberalism of his views, such passages of the _Dissertation_ as pp. 49-50 read like the Picturesque identified by William Gilpin, Uvedale Price, and Richard Payne Knight in the 1780s and '90s. Far from the (Sino-British) imperial privity which Mason tartly mocked are Chet-qua's suggestions that the country-house owner drop his palings and open his grounds to "Holy-day folks," as he opens his Park to his kitchen-garden. More than this, he should offer "meats for every palate," plan not for his family or honored guests alone, but for tastes more susceptible to surprise than theirs. Likewise the circuit plan would be well replaced by another less coercive.[13] Points like these reveal in Chambers a solicitude on behalf of a general public of garden-strollers not at all necessarily landholding, nor self-conscious as "connoisseurs." Perhaps this is why, when the planners grouped around Nikolaus Pevsner and his _Architectural Review_ surveyed their task in postwar England, they would find fresh applications for the term "picturesque" and fresh relevance in this Tory's "Chinese" gardens.[14] Sinologists and landscape-historians have long recognized, to be sure, that Chambers' descriptions (like most of what the West has wrought in the name of Chinese gardening since Sir William Temple enunciated his shadowy _sharawadgi_ principle in 1685), while they may correctly celebrate specific details, or the general principles of surprise and variety, register no sensitivity to the Taoist or Buddhist teleology crucial to oriental planning. What Chet-qua calls "supernatural scenery" is hence "enchanted" by the same spirit of diversion animating the Druid or Dark Walk and subterranean Fairy Music of Vauxhall Gardens, across the Thames from Somerset House.[15] Enlightened secularization of the genuine oriental principles of immanence and affect may, however, be exactly what makes a paragraph on page 52 of the 1773 _Dissertation_ sound so much like a ground-plan for a short story of strollers' interwoven and inconsequential conversations and interior monologues, Virginia Woolf's "Kew Gardens."

If allowances are made for the persistent difficulty of transcribing Chinese phonemes, and for Chambers' dependence upon Cantonese rather than Mandarin dialect, the oriental dress of the _Discourse_ is less bogus than might be assumed. Chambers' varying spellings of the then reigning emperor's name would exemplify the first problem, my failure to authenticate the poem on pages 118-119 the second. (Over 42,000 unindexed poems in Mandarin are attributed to this emperor, now known here as Ch'ien-lung.) Proustian though they may seem to Westerners, the synesthetic effects of tea-taking and the evocativeness of the scents and hues of "Mei-hoa" (plum-blossom), "fo-cheou" (chrysanthemum), and pine are indeed celebrated in much Chinese poetry.[16] Whoever wrote the poem, it aptly dramatizes the suggestible ethos which Chambers recommends to English artists and their public.

This "Discourse" is appreciably more puckish in tone than the earlier two-thirds of Chambers' published "Chinese" work. The half-title here, page [109] of the second edition, heaps Chambers' own initialed honors[17] upon the Canton "Gent." Chet-qua, and with the ironies of his Preface and elaborate courtesies of the Introduction, the fun has begun. Identification of a Chinese alter ego enables Chambers to claim a kind of diplomatic immunity for both his enthusiasms and his judgments against the English style. By half-heartedly ascribing the preceding 107 pages of _Dissertation_ also to Chet-qua, and receding as mere "Editor" of the lovable old gourmet's remarks (page 148n), he trusts to keep one step ahead of his Whig adversaries. With exemplary tolerance such as had enhanced the European stereotype of the Chinese sage throughout the century, Chet-qua finds more to commend in French and Italian gardens, more to tease disarmingly in the Dutch, than Chambers had earlier. Finally, since an actual Chinese artist-about-town usually known as Chitqua had only recently returned to Canton, Chambers may have hoped his masquerade could stir British hospitality for his ideas. Within weeks of reaching London in August 1769, Chitqua had had a royal audience. The miniature portrait busts he modelled in clay at ten guineas apiece, as well as his delicate manners and physique ("the eyelashes almost always in motion") earned the admiration of Wedgwood's friend Thomas Bentley. One of his busts was shown in the 1770 Royal Academy exhibition, and during that year he visited Oxford, met Chambers and Bishop Percy, and sat down with Horace Walpole among others at the first official Academy dinner. Lashes and all, he figures in Zoffany's "Life School of the Royal Academy," painted in 1771. But what peculiarly recommends Chitqua to Chambers' purposes here is perhaps a mob's intervention at the start of his homeward voyage to Canton that spring, when xenophobia and "the superstitious fears of the mariners" forced him to return to London for another ship. On page 141 Chambers differs from the _Gentleman's Magazine_ reporter who had Chitqua "accidentally ... fall overboard" at Gravesend, but whatever the facts, the parallel to Jonah at Joppa might be as clear to Chet-qua's adversaries as it was to that reporter and win the "Discourse" a more candid hearing than the _Dissertation_ had enjoyed.[18] To an unidentified reader of his first edition Chambers had justified such artfulness, and his entire "Chinese" myth for the promotion of a change in landscaping-style, this way: "I thought it necessary to move in an exalted sphere. Our Gardeners, and I fear our Connoisseurs too, are such _tame_ animals, that much sparring is necessary to keep them properly on their haunches."[19] Such quixotic energy even Mason had to salute, in the last line of his _Heroic Epistle_.

Douglass College
Rutgers University

NOTES TO THE INTRODUCTION

[1] The "Explanatory Discourse" is the last of Chambers' works to be reissued in 20th-century facsimile. Chambers' _Designs of Chinese Buildings_ (London, 1757), rpt. in facsim. (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1968), concludes its text with his essay "Of the Art of Laying Out Gardens Among the Chinese," pp. 14-19, rpt. in John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, eds., _The Genius of the Place_ (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), pp. 283-288. _A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening_ (London, 1772), of which the illus. title-page reappeared in the 2nd ed. (London, 1773), hence here, was rpt. in facsim. ed. John Harris (Farnborough, Hants.: Gregg International, 1972). I quote from pp. 111-113 of "An Explanatory Discourse"; Chet-qua drops his mask on p. 159 below. Concerning the fad see Hugh Honour, _Chinoiserie: The Vision of Cathay_ (London: John Murray, 1961), esp. ch. vi.

[2] John Harris, _Sir William Chambers, Knight of the Polar Star_ (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1970), p. 24 and pls. 7, 94 (not to be confused with the earlier accepted practice of designing ruins: pls. 31, 81). For the "fanciful" aspects of his town house see pp. 11, 217.

[3] For the evidence of correspondence esp. from 1770-74 see Heather Martienssen, "Chambers as a Professional Man," _Architectural Review_, 135, 2 (1964), 277-283.

[4] Harris gathers evidence for the meeting with Frederick, pp. 33-35, and on pp. 18-19, surmises that Blondel's teaching "may well have been the foundation of Chambers's eclecticism.... The choice of a Parisian education underlines Chambers' European character."

[5] _Boswell's Life of Johnson_, ed. George Birkbeck Hill and L. F. Powell (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1934), IV, 188.

[6] _Designs_, first page of unpaginated Preface; _Dissertation_ (1773), p. iii. Cf. "William and John Halfpenny" [Michael Hoare], _Chinese and Gothic Architecture Properly Ornamented_ (London, 1752), e.g. pl. 2.

[7] _Designs_, second page of unpaginated Preface.

[8] W. J. Bean, _The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew_ (London: Cassell, 1908), pp. 194-195, following Sir John Hill, _Hortus Kewensis_ (London, 1768); Chambers, _Plans, Elevations, Sections and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew_ (London, 1763).

[9] "Frederick Law Olmsted's Contribution," _Roots of Contemporary American Architecture_, ed. Lewis Mumford (New York: Reinhold, 1952), p. 111. _Dissertation_ (1773), p. 103 and cf. his letter of 13 May 1772 in Harris (1970), p. 192; Walpole, _On Modern Gardening_, ed. W. S. Lewis (New York: Young Books, 1931), p. 66; Mason, _The English Garden_, Book I (1772), final line.

[10] _Designs_, p. 15 (ed. Hunt and Willis, p. 284).

[11] Chambers' prose is cited _Dunciad_-fashion in the _Epistle, Minor English Poets, 1660-1780: A Selection from Alexander Chalmers'_ The English Poets [_1810_], ed. David P. French (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), VIII, 108. See Isabel W. Chase, "William Mason and Sir William Chambers' Dissertation on Oriental Gardening," _JEGP_, 35 (1936), 517-530; R. C. Bald, "Sir William Chambers and the Chinese Garden," _JHI_, 11 (1950), 287-320.

[12] Cowper, Book III, "The Garden," 1. 766, in _A Collection of English Poems 1660-1800_, ed. Ronald S. Crane (New York: Harper, 1932), p. 998; _Dissertation_ (1773), pp. xi, 23-30, 37-39, 91-99; cf. Derek Clifford, _A History of Garden Design_, rev. ed. (New York: Praeger, 1966), pp. 211-212.

[13] "Discourse," pp. 125-128, 133, 137-138, 143, 155-156; _Dissertation_ (1773), pp. vi, 53; Harris, p. 192.

[14] Pevsner, "The Other Chambers," _Architectural Review_, 101 (1947), 195-198.

[15] Temple, "Upon the Gardens of Epicurus," ed. Hunt and Willis, p. 99; Osvald Siren, _China and Gardens of Europe of the Eighteenth Century_ (New York: Ronald, 1950), p. iv; "Discourse," pp. 155-156.

[16] I owe this information to Prof. Ching-I Tu of Livingston Coll. and Dr. Nelson Chou of the East Asian Lib., both at Rutgers Univ. Likewise helpful but in no way blameworthy in my remarks on matters Chinese were Prof. King-Lui Wu and Mr. Antony Marr of Yale Univ. and Prof. Andrew Plaks of Princeton Univ. Though some of the proper names Chet-qua uses eluded verification, the worst blunder noted was "Ty," which means "emperor," at p. 139_n_. Endowing Chet-qua with "nine whiskers" instead of the traditional five beards sorts with the unusually narrow proportions and numerous stories of the Kew Pagoda. Rhymes and short syntactic groupings in italics, pp. 141, 158, are not Confucian; the 28th year of Ch'ien-lung's reign (p. [115]) would be 1764. Yet the idiom in the final n., p. 163, is authentic.

[17] The initials stand for Fellow of the Royal Soc. of Sweden; Member of the Royal Acad. of Arts, Paris; Member of the Italian Acad. of Arts, Florence; Treasurer of the Royal Acad.; Comptroller General of His Majesty's Works; Architectural Tutor to the Queen. Chambers' international reputation was assured by his _Treatise on Civil Architecture_ (1759).

[18] "Historical Chronicle," G.M., 41 (1771), 237-238; William T. Whitley, _Artists and their Friends in England, 1700-1799_ (Boston: Medici Society, 1928), I, 269-272; "Johnson, Percy, and Sir William Chambers," _Bodleian Library Record_, 4 (1952-53), 291-292.

[19] Harris, p. 193 (Chambers' emphasis).

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The facsimile of "An Explanatory Discourse" is reproduced from a copy (Shelf Mark: PML 53026) "annexed to" the second and last edition of _A Dissertation on Oriental Gardening_ (1773) in The Pierpont Morgan Library. The total type-page (p. 113) measures 208 x 127 mm.

A

DISSERTATION

ON

_ORIENTAL GARDENING_;

BY

S^r: WILLIAM CHAMBERS, Kn^t

_Comptroller General of his Majesty's Works._

LONDON:

Printed by W. GRIFFIN, Printer to the ROYAL ACADEMY; sold by Him in
_Catharine-Street_: and by T. DAVIES, Bookseller to the ROYAL ACADEMY,
in _Russel-Street, Covent Garden_: also by J. DODSLEY, _Pall Mall_:
WILSON and NICOLL, _Strand_: J. WALTER, _Charing Cross_: and P.
ELMSLEY, _Strand_. 1772.

A

DISSERTATION

ON

_ORIENTAL GARDENING_;

BY

S^R WILLIAM CHAMBERS,

COMPTROLLER-GENERAL OF HIS MAJESTY'S WORKS, _&c._

THE SECOND EDITION, WITH ADDITIONS.

TO WHICH IS ANNEXED,

AN EXPLANATORY DISCOURSE,

BY

TAN CHET-QUA, of QUANG-CHEW-FU, Gent.

LONDON:

Printed by W. GRIFFIN, Printer to the ROYAL ACADEMY; sold by Him in
_Catharine-street_; and by T. DAVIES, Bookseller to the ROYAL ACADEMY,
in _Russel-street, Covent-Garden_: also by J. DODSLEY, _Pall-Mall_;
WILSON and NICOLL, _Strand_; J. WALTER, _Charing-Cross_; and P.
ELMSLEY, _Strand_. 1773.

AN

EXPLANATORY DISCOURSE,

BY

TAN CHET-QUA,

OF

Quang-Chew-fu, Gent. FRSS, MRAAP;

ALSO,

MIAAF, TRA, CGHMW and ATTQ.

WHEREIN

The PRINCIPLES laid down in the Foregoing
DISSERTATION, are illustrated and
applied to PRACTICE.

PREFACE.

Every new system naturally meets with opposition; when the monster Novelty appears, all parties, alarmed at the danger, unite to raise a clamour: each cavils at what it doth not like, or doth not comprehend, till the whole project is pulled to pieces, and the projector stands plumed of every feather; not only robbed of the praise due to his labour and good intentions, but, like a common enemy, branded with scorn and abuse. In the first hurry of criticism, every deviation is accounted an error; every singularity an extravagance; every difficulty a visionary's dream: warm with resentment, biassed by interests and prejudices, the angry champions of the old, rarely show mercy to the new; which is almost always invidiously considered, and too often unjustly condemned.

Sensible of these difficulties, the Author of the foregoing Dissertation, written in direct opposition to the stream of fashion, harboured no sanguine hopes of fame from his Publication: far from expecting at the first, either applause or encouragement, he even judged artifice necessary to screen him from resentment; and cloathed truth in the garb of fiction, to secure it a patient hearing.

The success of his little work, however, in one sense, far exceeded expectation: at its first appearance here, it found not only a patient, but a very indulgent reception; and it has since been equally fortunate in France, and other parts of Europe; where Monsieur Delarochette's elegant translation has made it known.

Yet flattering as this extensive suffrage may seem, it is in reality rather mortifying to the Author; who finds, from the nature of the encomiums bestowed upon his performance, that it has been more generally liked than understood; and that, whilst a few have honoured it with a deliberate reading, and separated the substance from the vehicle in which it was contained, far the greater number have mistaken the mask for the reality, and considered it simply as a pleasing tale; as the mere recital of a traveller's observation; or, as the luxuriant effusions of a fertile imagination, a splendid picture of visionary excellence.

Whether these misapprehensions arose from want of perspicuity in the writer, or want of attention in the readers, admits of no dispute; the former was most probably the case. The Author therefore, who wishes to be perfectly understood, and is more ambitious of being useful than entertaining, humbly begs leave to offer, at the end of this second edition, such reasons and explanations as seem necessary, either to remove doubts, or clear obscurities; he flatters himself they will be found sufficient, and serve to place the work in its true, its most advantageous light.

Of these illustrations he saw the necessity some time ago, and framed them into a Discourse supposed to be pronounced by Chet-qua, then in England; judging it, at that time, a sort of propriety to put in the mouth of a Chinese, what farther information was wanted relative to his country.

But as there is now no longer any necessity for disguise, both the Dissertation and Explanatory Discourse ought certainly to appear in their natural dress. To new-model them, however, would require more time than the Author can possibly spare; he therefore has republished the Dissertation, in its original form, and the Discourse as it was originally written; hoping the indulgent reader will pardon these defects, and gather the fruit, if there be any to gather, without minding the trees on which it grows.

_Introduction._

All the world knew Chet-qua, and how he was born at Quang-chew-fu,[20] in the fourth moon of the year twenty-eight; also how he was bred a face-maker, and had three wives, two of whom he caressed very much; the third but seldom, for she was a virago, and had large feet. He dressed well, often in thick sattin; wore nine whiskers and four long nails, with silk boots, callico breeches, and every other ornament that Mandarins are wont to wear; equalling therein the prime macarones, and scavoir vivres, not only of Quang-chew, but even of Kyang-ning, or Shun-tien-fu. Of his size; he was a well-spoken portly man, for a Chinese; a pretty general scholar; and, for a heathen, a very compleat gentleman. He composed a tieh-tse, or billet-doux, at pleasure; recited verses, either in Mantchou or Chinese, and sung love-songs in many languages. He likewise danced a fandango, after the newest taste of Macao, played divinely upon the bag-pipe, and made excellent remarks; which, when he lodged at Mr. Marr's, in the Strand, he would repeat to his friends over a pipe, as often as they pleased; for he was fond of smoaking, provided the tobacco was good; and, upon these occasions, was always vastly pleasant, and very communicative.

Amongst his favourite topics were painting, music, architecture and gardening; to the last of which he seemed most affected, often disserting thereon till he was tired, and the audience fast asleep; for the tone of his voice was like opium to the hearers; his method was diffuse, and the subject, though a good one, not generally interesting.

One day he launched out into a long description of the Eastern Gardens, especially those of his own country, to which he was exceedingly partial; and, in the conclusion, compared them to a splendid feast, at which there were pleasures for every sense, and food for every fancy; whilst our Gardens, he said, were like Spartan broth, which was disgustful to all but Spartan palates; or like the partial niggardly treats of the fable, adapted only to organs of a peculiar construction: he advanced many other odd positions, spoke very freely, as well of our Gardeners, as Gardens, and ended recommending the Chinese taste, in preference to all others.

We were diverted with the discourse, from its singularity, and the variety of new ideas in which it abounded; yet as it ran in direct opposition to the general opinion and usage of England, and recommended a system which appeared to us rather visionary than practicable, we animadverted upon all its parts with the utmost freedom; neither sparing the speech nor speaker in any particular.

The severity of our criticism at first disconcerted poor Chet-qua, who remained silent, and in apparent confusion; but, after a short pause, he reassumed his usual good humour, his countenance cleared up, he arose, bowed to the company, and stroking his nine whiskers, began the following discourse.

DISCOURSE, _&c._

_Tan lou ty tchan yue[21]
Ko ou, pou ko choue.
Ou yun king tai pan
Fou fou teou lo ty_

If, in the hurry and warmth of speaking, Chet-qua has used expressions that seemed disrespectful, or inadvertently started notions that appeared extravagant, as you, Gentlemen, are pleased to assert, it is more than he intended; his sole aim at this meeting, has been to point out a style of Gardening preferable to your's; and to shew how much more may be done in that Art, than has hitherto been thought on, by your or any other European nation: to enumerate impossibilities, or amuse an audience with golden dreams and glittering shadows, would answer no useful purposes; and could, therefore, neither be the business nor intention of Chet-qua, who speaks not for the pleasure of speaking, nor with a desire of tickling the ear, but with the hope of being serviceable; he laments his want of perspicuity, to which alone your misapprehensions must be imputed; and begs leave to trespass on your patience a few moments longer, to explain himself more clearly, and endeavour to remove your prejudices against him.

He is sorry to have been under a necessity of censuring, even in a distant manner, what seemed to him imperfect amongst you; but whoever would be instrumental in the advancement of science, must declare his mind freely, and sometimes enforce his precepts by examples that exist: his observations have been as general as the subject would permit; for it is never his inclination to give offence; yet where truth is to be investigated, the truth must necessarily be told; else little or no progress can ever be made: where men play the sycophants, and tacitly suffer, or meanly applaud, what they do not approve; no amendment can ever be expected.

It is true, that dissentions in opinion, however well meant, will often bear an invidious aspect, and always must offend some interested individuals; yet, to the community, they are generally advantageous, and should always be favourably received, as they give birth to new discoveries, and ultimately point out the highest perfection: had no man ever ventured to dissent from his neighbour, our age would be as dark as were those of Fo-hii, Shing tong, or Whoang-tii;[22] and I am firmly persuaded, that your English Gardening would now have been much more perfect, had any one ever dared to dispute its excellence: but to dissent, is an unthankful business; a dangerous talk, that few have spirits to undertake, particularly where party-rage is violent, at it now and then seems to be amongst you.--But I come to the point.

In China, our large Gardens are obtained at an almost incredible expence, and attended with many inconveniencys: amongst you, whose policy, whose manners are totally different from ours, they might often be had at a moderate charge, and without much trouble; for formidable as they may at first appear, it is certain that most of their scenery is easily executed, when proper opportunities occur, which is frequently the case in Europe, particularly in England; where your illustrious families have large domains; where agriculture is neater and more various than in other countries; and where the face of nature is in general more luxuriant; as well as better contrasted.

It is natural enough for a stranger to be dazzled with the splendor of our Oriental plantations; upon a cursory inspection, to conclude them too vast, too magnificent, too expensive for European imitation; and that, in your part of the world, the greatest princes should not be indulged with such articles of luxury, calculated, as they seem, to exhaust their treasures, waste their lands, rob and oppress their subjects: but a more attentive examination will probably give birth to more favourable opinions, and serve to prove, that not only your princes, but even your private gentlemen, may emulate us in this particular very safely; and that our style of Gardening may be adopted amongst you, even in its whole extent, without being attended with any of the inconveniences just now recited.

It is not the fence that constitutes the Garden; Cobham, Stourton, Blenheim, would still be what they are, though the pales or walls by which they are enclosed were taken away: neither is privacy necessary to the essence of a Garden; for Richmond and Kew are surely the same, when open to all the world, as when they are only accessible to the Royal Family; nor is useful or profitable culture incompatible with the idea, either of our Chinese, or your English Gardening.

Any tract of land, therefore, whose characteristick expressions have been strengthened by art, and in which the spontaneous arrangements of nature have been corrected, improved and adorned by the hand of taste, ought to be considered as a Garden, though only fenced with common hedges, and although the roads or paths passing through it be publick, and the grounds of which it is composed cultivated to the utmost advantage.

There remains then no obstacle to your rivalling the Chinese, either in the grandeur or extent of their Gardens: in which, you seem to fix, the insuperable difficulties of the imitation; since you have parks, forests, manors and royalties, some even in private hands, more extensive than is necessary; and since these may be so improved, and converted into gardens upon the plan now mentioned, without waste of land, without invasion of property, without annoyance or seclusion of the public, and certainly with less damage or expence to the owner, than are usually incurred in the article of your common Gardening; as no chargeable keeping or fencing would be necessary, no grounds unprofitably employed, no considerable assistance from art wanted: for the features of real nature, being in themselves generally more perfect, as well as greater than the finest imitations, require very few helps; seldom any that are expensive.

Every artist, therefore, who has the fortune to meet with patrons of large possessions, and liberal sentiments, may give full scope to his imagination, and boldly apply whatever he has seen, heard, or his own fancy may have suggested, that is great, extraordinary, or surprising: instead of confining his views to a few acres, to form a trifling composition, scarcely superior to the desert at a festival; and which, insignificant as it would be, none but the healthful and vigorous could ever see; he may convert a whole province into a Garden; where the spectator, instead of toiling on foot, as usual, to see a few nothings, and performing more revolutions than a horse in a mill, may wander over a whole country at his ease, in ships or in barges, in carriages or on horse-back, feasting the sight with scenes of the boldest dimensions, and contemplating the luxuriant varied productions of Nature, improved and nobly enriched by Art.

And permit me to say, that Gardens of this sort, would not only be more magnificent, but also much more beautiful and perfect in every respect, than any even amongst the best of your artificial performances. In the great style of Gardening, neatness is not only superfluous, but destructive of the principal intent: the common roads, bridleways and paths, of a country, however wild, are always preferable to the stiff, formal, made walks of a Garden; they are, in themselves, grander, more natural, and may, with a very little assistance; a few accompanyments, be made as commodious, as rich, as varied, and as pleasant.

Fields covered with corn, turneps, beans, potatoes, hemp, or productions of a similar nature; meadows, pasture lands, hop grounds, orchards, and other parts of English culture; interwoven with common hedges, or blended with accidental plantations, require little, if any assistance from Art, to be more picturesque than lawns the most curiously dotted with clumps; and villages, country churches, farm-houses or cottages, when placed with judgement, and designed with taste, enrich and adorn a landscape as well as more expensive structures.

The rivers of Nature flow in forms that Art can never equal: their natural modifications, particularly in mountainous places, are sufficiently numerous; a little management heightens or diminishes all their expressions, varies their appearances, and adapts them to scenes of any character: their banks are soon adorned, even in the richest manner; for roses, a thousand other shrubs, and most perennial flowers, will grow as easily, and with as little culture, as primroses and briars do. A few of these, a little planting properly employed, and blended with rural buildings, bridges, ruins, monumental urns, and other trifling decorations, spread over the whole an appearance that equals, even surpasses the most elaborate cultivation.

In every large tract of land, there generally are some places abundantly supplied with water, which often flows through uncouth marshy bottoms of little use or value to the owner: by raising heads at their extremities, these are easily overflowed; and lakes of very considerable dimensions may thus be obtained, often without much trouble, always with great advantages, as well in point of profit as of pleasure; and wherever it may be necessary to dig, in order to give a proper depth to the water, the earth may be raised into islands of various shapes, which serve to complicate the forms, to enrich and beautify the scenery.

Though woods, from various causes, are now more rare than heretofore amongst you, yet are there, in most parts, some still remaining; their natural beauties are many, and little more is left for art to do in them, than to form roads, to thin or thicken them occasionally; where it may be wanting, to intersperse, amongst the plantations, a few proper shrubs and flowers; to open recesses, and to decorate them with objects; this done, they will be infinitely superior, in every respect, to any of the gaudy trifling confused plantations with which all your English-made Gardens are so crouded.

England abounds with commons and wilds, dreary, barren, and serving only to give an uncultivated appearance to the country, particularly near the metropolis: to beautify these vast tracts of land, is next to an impossibility; but they may easily be framed into scenes of terror, converted into noble pictures of the sublimest cast, and, by an artful contrast, serve to enforce the effect of gayer and more luxuriant prospects.

On some of them are seen gibbets, with wretches hanging in terrorem upon them; on others, forges, collieries, mines, coal tracts, brick or lime kilns, glass-works, and different objects of the horrid kind: what little vegetation they have, is dismal; the animals that feed upon it, are half-famished to the artist's hands; and the cottagers, with the huts in which they dwell, want no additional touches, to indicate their misery: a few uncouth straggling trees, some ruins, caverns, rocks, torrents, abandoned villages, in part consumed by fire, solitary hermitages, and other similar objects, artfully introduced and blended with gloomy plantations, would compleat the aspect of desolation, and serve to fill the mind, where there was no possibility of gratifying the senses.

In prosecuting a plan of this extensive nature, many other opportunities would present themselves to the able artist, of dignifying nature, and of heightening his compositions with all the force of novelty and grandeur; stone quarries, chalk pits, mines, might as easily be framed into vast amphitheatres, rustic arcades and perystiles, extensive subterraneous habitations, grottos, vaulted roads, and passages, as into other shapes; hills might, without much difficulty, be transformed into stupendous rocks, by partial incrustations of stone, judiciously mixed with turf, fern, wild shrubs and forest trees; gravel pits, or other similar excavations, might be converted into the most romantic scenery imaginable, by the addition of some planting, intermixed with ruins, fragments of sculpture, inscriptions, or any other little embellishments; and, in short, there would be no deviation, however trifling, from the usual march of nature, but what would suggest, to a fruitful imagination, some extraordinary arrangement, something to disguise her vulgarity, to rouse the attention of the spectator, and to excite in his mind a succession of strong and opposite sensations.

It is thus that far the noblest part of our Chinese Gardens, and those which at first sight appear most impracticable, may be obtained even amongst the common dispositions of English nature; and the great might thus have pleasure-grounds, extensive and extraordinary as those of the East, without any very considerable expence: men of less note would naturally imitate their superiors, by embellishing their possessions in the same manner; and instead of spending large sums to fence and to lard a little field with twigs, to give it the name of a Garden, they would beautify their whole estate; which, by a proper attention to the [oe]conomical precepts of our Chinese Gardeners, might be done in such a manner as to encrease its value, as well as improve its appearance.

By these means this whole kingdom might soon become one magnificent vast Garden, bounded only by the sea; the many noble seats and villas with which it abounds, would give uncommon consequence to the scenery; and it might still be rendered more splendid, if, instead of disfiguring your churches with monuments, our Chinese manner of erecting mausoleums by the sides of the roads was introduced amongst you; and if all your public bridges were adorned with triumphal arches, rostral pillars, bas-reliefs, statues, and other indications of victory, and glorious atchievements in war: an empire transformed into a splendid Garden, with the imperial mansion towering on an eminence in the center,[23] and the palaces of the nobles scattered like pleasure-pavilions amongst the plantations, infinitely surpasses any thing that even the Chinese ever attempted: yet vast as the design appears, the execution is certainly within your reach.

Such, as far as I am able to judge, continued our Orator, is the true application of nature to horticulture; perhaps the only one that can be attempted with success: wherever she is made in little, or introduced upon a confined plan, the effect is always trifling and bad, as will appear to any man of real taste, who inspects the artificial scenery even of your most approved gardens: Nature admits of no reduction in her dimensions; trees will not grow in miniature; nor are her bold movements to be expressed upon the surface of a few acres: and not to mention any of your performances, it is scarcely in the power of the most consummate art, to imitate nature perfectly; nor were it possible, could the most skilful arrangements acquire their true effect, till after the expiration of many years: our children may see the perfection of what we plant; we never can.

Our eastern artists, therefore, seldom attempt to create, but rather imitate the tonsor, the habit-maker, the posture-master, and all the other polishers of man; who dispose, decorate, cleanse, clip, and add grace to what is already formed to their hands: to make nature, they say, is tedious and difficult beyond conception; but she may soon be embellished, her redundancys suppressed, her faults corrected, her wants supplied, her beauties improved, and set to view.

The truth of these assertions is, I think, apparent in many of your famous plantations; but the beauties of improved natural scenery, the defects of artificial, are no where so strongly marked as at B----m, the most magnificent seat I have yet seen in Europe. On our entrance into the Park, we were astonished at the sight of a stupendous palace, surrounded with one of the noblest scenes of nature that can be imagined; the extent is vast, the parts uncommonly large, the grounds naturally well contrasted, the transitions bold, the plantations in perfect maturity: what assistance was necessary from art, has hitherto been judiciously administered; the removal of some trees, has exposed to view beauties that seem before to have been concealed; the addition of some others, has enriched parts that were bare; and the trifling, though very judicious circumstance of raising a head at the end of a valley, has obtained a very considerable lake of water, which enriches and enlivens all the prospects; and which, by following the natural bent or windings of the valley, has taken, without any assistance from art, the most picturesque forms that could be desired: in short, the whole is now admirable; and, when improved to the utmost, according to the design of the munificent owner, will yet be more so. Ornaments to characterize the Garden more strongly, are yet wanting, and some masterly finishing touches still very necessary: one only little twining path, within ten cubits of the fence, is certainly not in character with the grandeur of the place; but the fence may be removed; and there is room, even now, on the declivity of the banks, and by the sides of the lake, for more considerable walks, with many recesses, which, when made and decorated, will add variety to grandeur, and render the whole as entertaining and splendid, as it is now great.

You enjoy the sight of this noble prospect for more than a mile; when the little path is suddenly turned into a little wood, whence, after having advanced a few paces, you behold a piece of scenery, all artificial, which I cannot venture to describe in this presence: some of you, Gentlemen, have seen what it is; and, with all your national partiality, must allow, either that it proves the impossibility of creating nature with any degree of success; or, that the ablest of your countrymen have no talent that way; to create, or to improve, are indeed very different operations; the former of which requires infinitely the most skill: it is ten times more difficult to paint a picture, than to judge, or suggest improvements, in one already painted.

Hitherto I have only described of B----m, what strangers usually see; but the whole park, above twelve miles in circumference, and several farms adjoining to it, are uncommonly beautiful, rich in old planting, in water, and in a great variety of picturesque sites and points of view; so that, with a very little dressing, with some assistance from the sister arts of architecture and sculpture, the whole might easily be converted into one large magnificent Garden.

And give me leave to observe, that these advantages are by no means peculiar to B----m; England boasts at least a hundred other places, many as extensive, most of them as capable of improvement, in various ways; which, under the management of true artists, might soon be made to rival the Tse-hiu and Chang-lin[24] of ancient days, the Yven ming, the Tchang tchun yven,[25] or any of the present splendid pleasure Gardens of our sublime Emperor, Kieng-long; the torch of the east, and true descendant of Tay-tsoy, the providence of Heaven, whom Joss[26] preserve in flesh and good spirits.

It must, however, be confessed, that there is an inconveniency subsisting amongst you, which will always retard, and often prevent the execution of this extensive plan of Gardening; it is the licentiousness of your youth and common people, who delight in destroying every extraordinary thing that comes in their way: if a great man plants trees to shade and beautify a road, the people cut them down; if statues, or other pieces of sculpture, are set to adorn places of public resort, the boys pelt at them with stones, till all their extremities are demolished: wherever there are buildings, or seats, even in your Royal Gardens, we see them constantly disfigured with scurrilous inscriptions, or obscene rhimes; and where there are any uncommon trees, they are divested of every branch within reach; the shrubs are robbed of their blossom; the flowers are trodden under foot; the birds and animals are destroyed: in short, no mischief, that drunken mirth or deliberate malevolence can suggest, is left undone. What pity that such destructive brutality should exist in a country so particularly favoured by Nature, and so capable of improvement in the highest degree; whilst, in every other part of the world, it is unknown, almost unheard of!

But there is a strong tincture of the rhubarb in all human competitions; and liberty, which has so many advantages, is, nevertheless, attended with some inconveniencies, of a very serious nature; amongst which, the ferocity of its lowest votaries is none of the least formidable. Since our arrival here last July, I have seen at least twenty of their boisterous pranks; in which, not to enumerate the broken windows, the bloody noses, the kicks, and the bastinadoes of other gentlemen, I have myself been a melancholy sufferer upon various occasions; particularly at Portsmouth, where I was thrown into the sea, and narrowly escaped drowning, for the diversion of the company. Would to Heaven!--as I say to the mistress Chet-quas in a morning--would to Heaven, my ducks, we were well at Quang-chew-fu again, with all our long nails, and all our whiskers about us! The rigours of an Emperor are less frightful to me, than the frolics of a savage mob, elevated to madness with songs of freedom, and tons of strong beer: it is easier to please a man with one good head, than a monster with ten thousand, all bad ones.

_Miao kao faan-quai_[27]
_Tsat paat quai-tsai_

Pardon this digression, which the terrors of a disturbed imagination have drawn me into; and permit your servant to re-assume the thread of his Discourse.