Stourhead

The trouble with Stourhead is you can go and look at it all you want, but you can’t have a temple, a fake Roman arch, a bridge, a tower, an artificial lake, a waterfall, a cross, an island, a cottage, and a grotto all in a quarter-acre suburban garden.

It still seems stupendously profligate and unjust that one man or one family could rearrange whole landscapes for their private pleasure. [2003]

Stourhead is as lovely and unchanging as ever. Actually they are probably not unchanging—it’s just that we see them at the same time of year each time we come, so they’re like seeing the same woman in the same dress, or the painting on the same wall and in the same light year after year. For the first time the temples struck me not only as fake and empty, but as vacuous, empty of meaning, like one-dimensional props for the theatre. Even though they’re made of stone, they’re fake, focal points only for the eye, with no other function. Not real. But what could be prettier, across the water (fake lake) than a beautifully proportioned little temple? Too bad it isn’t real up close. The garden itself is blooming, lovely, alive, however. I would like to see it in all its seasons, not only in late spring. [2005]