In On Reading (Souvenir Press, 1972), Marcel Proust describes himself as a child, looking for a reading nook in a maze of hedges. Near ‘the asparagus bed, the strawberry edgings, the pond’, he was able to read in silence, undetected and undisturbed by parents (or servants).
One of Proust’s points, in this typically rambling but charming essay, is that books are often mementos of lost gardens—we remember, not always the exact words, but the trees we read them under, or the cut grass we smelt as we turned the pages. What remains is a mixed impression: part text, part landscape.
This isn’t a one-way relationship. If books contain miniature landscapes, they also retouch and recolour these as we read. Put less ornately, they enrich impressions, enlarge sympathies. Ivy clinging to my study window recalls Woolf’s Ceylon, while pansies suggest Proust’s nostalgia (there’s less dodgy innuendo in their French name: pensées). For all my atheism, the blooms-like-clockwork Camellia in our front yard now suggests Voltaire’s deism. The peace lily by my desk, aping an aspidistra, has Orwellian overtones.
In short, there is a continuing to-and-fro between books and gardens, which enhances both. The garden is a bookish space. With this in mind, I’ve written a few words on the literature that has informed or inspired this book, and my own outlook.
For all the philosophy in gardens, there is very little good modern philosophy on them. But David E Cooper’s A Philosophy of Gardens (Oxford, 2006) stands out for its lucidity and sensitivity. In particular, Cooper’s idea of ‘exemplification’ makes a good case for the particular meaning of gardens: the interdependence of nature and humanity. Cooper is also convincing on the virtues encouraged by gardens. His use of Cézanne—whose work is nicely reproduced on the cover—is particularly suggestive.
Tom Turner’s Garden History: Philosophy and Design 2000BC–2000AD (Spon Press, 2005) combines the history of gardens, the history of ideas and a keen eye for the specifics of design. His diagrams of gardens, which give general designs and their variants, are particularly helpful. The book is expensive new, but beautifully produced.
Christopher Thacker’s The History of Gardens (Reed, 1979) stands out for its charming prose, literary tone and relevant illustrations. It is also widely available second-hand. I enjoyed Ronald King’s The Quest for Paradise (Mayflower Books, 1979) for the same reasons. A more comprehensive—in content and illustrations—and recent history is William Howard Adams’ Nature Perfected (Abbeville Press, 1991). Jane Brown’s The Pursuit of Paradise (HarperCollins, 2000) is a compelling social history of gardens. Brown’s chapters on military and childhood gardens are particularly fascinating.
On the history of gardening in England, Thacker also wrote The Genius of the Garden (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), which combines technical details on design and planting with philosophical and literary currents. Thacker’s prose is typically good. Jane Fearnley-Whittingstall’s The Garden: An English Love Affair (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2002) is a detailed (and gorgeous) book, written by a practising landscape architect and garden designer. The Genius of Place (MIT Press, 1988), edited by John Dixon Hunt and Peter Willis, is not as well illustrated, but is a fantastic collection of historical garden documents by notable English authors, including Alexander Pope and Jane Austen.
Philosophy Alfresco
The earliest life of Aristotle is from Diogenes Laërtius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers (Harvard University Press, 2006). This Loeb Classical Library edition includes the original Greek as well as English (translation by RD Hicks), but cheaper translations are widely available new and second-hand. Likewise for the works of Aristotle himself. I use the two-volume Bollingen Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton University Press, 1994), edited by Jonathan Barnes. The translations are good, and it is helpful to have all the works in one place. But Oxford and Penguin have cheap, well-translated editions with notes.
AN Whitehead’s reference to the ‘temporary laws of nature’ comes from Lucien Price’s Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (Max Reinhardt, 1954). While Whitehead’s philosophical writings can sometimes be difficult—for their subject matter, not because he is obfuscating—his conversations are brilliant examples of the civilised art of talking and listening.
Martin Heidegger describes physis most clearly (for want of another word) in his essay ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’, in Martin Heidegger: Basic Writings (Routledge, 1993), edited by David Farrell Krell. Not coincidentally, Heidegger also discusses Cézanne in the same volume. Heidegger’s ideas are taken up by David Cooper in his work. RG Collingwood’s The Idea of Nature (Oxford, 1960) provides a clearer historical overview of physis in ancient Greece. Both books are relatively easy to find new and second-hand.
Roberto Calasso’s The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony (Vintage, 1994) is a brilliant meditation on myth and reality, appearance and semblance, and the nature of art (amongst other things).
The Consolations of Chawton Cottage
The day-to-day descriptions of Jane Austen come from her relatives, in A Memoir of Jane Austen (Wordsworth, 2007), written by James Austen-Leigh, her nephew; from her own correspondence, collected and edited by Deirdre le Faye in Jane Austen’s Letters (Oxford, 1996); and from biographies. Of these, I most relied on Jon Spence’s Becoming Jane Austen (Hambledon & London, 2003), and Claire Tomalin’s Jane Austen: A Life (Penguin, 2000). Spence carefully traces Austen’s romantic life, telling a plausible and often moving story of her development from flirty young miss to mature writer. Tomalin paints a bigger picture of Austen’s life and era, but does so with considerable sympathy and detail. A Portrait of Jane Austen (BAC, 1978), by David Cecil, provides a well-illustrated character sketch of Austen and her age.
There are more editions of Austen’s novels than days to read them in. I have the collected edition, published by Collector’s Library in 2003. The Hugh Thomson illustrations are charming if a little twee, and the volumes are light, small and robust—perfect for portable or bedtime reading. But Austen’s works can be purchased in various sizes and editions, priced for every budget.
On the critical reception of Austen, Jane Austen: The Critical Heritage (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1987), edited by Brian Southam, is exhaustive, and contains some remarkable failures of taste. Gilbert Ryle’s seminal essay on Austen is reproduced in Critical Essays on Jane Austen (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), also edited by Southam.
Alexander Pope’s poems are widely available in hardback and paperback, and on the internet. Everyman (1969) does a typically robust edition of his collected poems, edited and introduced by Bonamy Dobrée, but I also have a cheap Kindle edition. His translations of Homer are particularly memorable, even today. Maynard Mack’s Alexander Pope: A Life (WW Norton, 1986) is comprehensive on Pope’s life, works and era—Mack’s descriptions of England’s religious backdrop are particularly illuminating. George Fraser’s Alexander Pope (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978) gives a concise argument for Pope’s status as a moralist. Pope’s status as an author can also be understood more fully with Pope: The Critical Heritage (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1973), edited by John Barnard.
Bonsai in the Bedroom
Many of the details of Proust’s home and habits come from his housekeeper, Céleste Albaret, in Monsieur Proust (Collins & Harvill, 1976). Albaret was loyal to her employer, and perhaps a little naïve about his sexuality. But she is an invaluable source of information about Proust’s rooms and routines.
Jean-Yves Tadié’s Marcel Proust: A Life (Viking, 2000) is a landmark biography, which gives a panoramic view of Proust and his era. George D Painter’s two-volume Marcel Proust (Penguin, 1977) lacks Tadié’s up-to-date scholarship but gives a bold and dramatic portrait of the author. Richard Barker’s Marcel Proust (1958) is clearly written and concise, but without Tadié’s factual mastery or Painter’s psychological acumen. On the relationship between the younger Proust and Marie Nordlinger, The Translation of Memory (Peter Owen, 1999), by PF Prestwich is fascinating.
The best short, well-written story of Proust’s life and work is Proust (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1999), by Edmund White. This is part of the Lives series, which also features Jane Austen, St Augustine and others—an excellent introduction to many great lives.
In his own words, Proust’s In Search of Lost Time remains a modern classic—a unique combination of memoir, fiction, psychology and philosophy. My family owns a beautiful but heavy three-volume set by Chatto & Windus (1982), but the smaller, lighter Penguin editions are much cheaper and easier to find. His correspondence is collected in Letters of Marcel Proust (Helen Marx Books, 2006). Proust’s non-fiction, including the essays from Contre Sainte-Beuve, can be read in Marcel Proust on Art and Literature: 1896–1919 (Meridian Books, 1958).
The Apples of Monk’s House
Most of the details and quotes from Leonard Woolf’s long, stoical life come from his remarkable memoirs, collected in five volumes, published by the Hogarth Press: Sowing (1961), Growing (1964), Beginning Again (1965), Downhill All the Way (1967) and The Journey Not the Arrival Matters (1969). Woolf’s correspondence, edited by Frederick Spotts in The Letters of Leonard Woolf (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1989), is also a fascinating record of his life and century. A shorter version of Woolf’s life is given in Leonard Woolf: A Biography (McClelland & Stewart, 2006), by Victoria Glendinning.
Woolf’s first novel, The Village in the Jungle (The Hogarth Press, 1971) is rarely spotted new or second-hand, but I purchased a copy, in good condition, online from England.
On the marriage of Virginia and Leonard Woolf, George Spater and Ian Parsons’ A Marriage of True Minds (Jonathan Cape & The Hogarth Press, 1977) is a fine tribute to an exceptional relationship and contains many family photos. Virginia’s diaries, published in five volumes by Penguin from 1977 to 1984, and edited by Anne Oliver Bell, are intimate portraits of day-to-day life, and literature in their own right. Likewise for her sparkling letters, edited by Nigel Nicolson in six volumes, and published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich from 1975 to 1982. Hermione Lee’s biography of Virginia, Virginia Woolf (Chatto & Windus, 1996) also provides balance for Leonard’s more personal account.
The Thought-Tree
The reference to Nietzsche’s Gedankenbaum comes from Friedrich Nietzsche: A Biography (Pimlico, 2003) by Curtis Cate. Cate’s work is well written, and clear on the philosopher’s ideas and scholarly development. Cate tells a good yarn to boot. A more sober, but also more intellectually illuminating, biography is Rüdinger Safanski’s Nietzsche: A Philosophical Biography (Granta, 2003). RJ Hollingdale, a noted Nietzsche translator, wrote Nietzsche: The Man and His Work (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965), which is plainly written and sympathetic (when many works on Nietzsche are obscure or fawning).
Some of the most rewarding Nietzsche scholarship in a now crowded market is by Walter Kaufman, whose Nietzsche: Philosopher, Psychologist, Antichrist (Princeton University Press, 1974) remains as enlightening and challenging as when it was first published.
Nietzsche’s books and essays are all published widely and cheaply by Penguin, often in Hollingdale’s translations. Cambridge also publishes his works, in its Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy series, often with helpful notes and commentaries. Amongst the most provocative and enjoyable of Nietzsche’s works are his notebooks, published as The Will to Power (Vintage, 1968), edited by Walter Kaufman. My edition is almost dust—testament to my repeated readings, rather than the quality of the binding. Kaufman’s translation of The Gay Science (Vintage, 1974) is also excellent.
Nietzsche’s correspondence can be buoyant on one page and deflated on the next—but always fascinating. Christopher Middleton edited and translated the Selected Letters of Friedrich Nietzsche (University of Chicago Press, 1969). In yet another advertisement for second-hand books, my copy was owned by the American composer David Diamond and contains some marvellous marginalia (‘I’d have biffed the cab owner in the mouth or nose’, says Diamond’s note on Nietzsche’s collapse in Turin, as the philosopher watched a cabman beat his horse).
Sex and Roses
On Colette’s life (and appetites), Judith Thurman’s Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette (Bloomsbury, 2000) is excellent. Thurman gives a vivid impression of the author’s notoriety, without being salacious on one hand or an aloof apologist on the other. Herbert Lottman’s Colette: A Life (Minerva, 1991) is shorter, more dramatic and certainly more fun.
Colette’s reflections on childhood, My Mother’s House and Sido, are published together by Penguin (1966).
In Earthly Paradise (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1966), editor Robert Phelps brings together excerpts from Colette’s autobiographical and journalistic essays. As a biography, it is limited, but it works very well as an introduction to the author’s writings and ideas. Colette’s writings on flowers, herbs and gardens are collected in Phelps’ Flowers and Fruit (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1986).
Colette’s collected works are published in the Uniform Edition (Secker & Warburg), including the classics Claudine at School (1956) and Gigi/The Cat (1958).
There are several versions of Arthur Schopenhauer’s World as Will and Idea, but the Everyman (1995) edition, edited by David Berman, is readable and readily available.
Botanical Confessions
Over two centuries on, Rousseau’s Confessions (Penguin, 1984) remains a startling read. The author’s narcissism and delusion are oddly charming in their naivety. And he writes beautifully—simply, boldly and with an eye for anecdote. Reveries of the Solitary Walker (Penguin, 2004) is more paranoid, but also more lyrical, and shorter.
Most of Rousseau’s main philosophical and political works are published by Penguin, though I prefer the layout and typesetting of the robust Everyman editions: The Social Contract/Discourses (1966) and Émile (1966)—I have quoted from these in the text. The treatises and essays are also published in the Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought series, with commentaries, notes and replies to Rousseau’s contemporaries.
Rousseau is at his most calm, patient and instructive in Botany: A Study of Pure Curiosity (Michael Joseph, 1979), his letters to Madame Étienne Delessert. This edition also contains some exquisite illustrations by the Belgian master Pierre-Josef Redouté, court painter to Marie Antoinette.
On Rousseau’s life, Maurice Cranston’s three-volume biography stands out for its detail and generosity: Jean-Jacques (1982), The Noble Savage (1991) and The Solitary Self (1997). JH Huizinga’s Rousseau: The Self-Made Saint (Grossman Publishers, 1976) is a more savage biography—but a good remedy for Rousseau’s own conceits.
Down and Out with a Sharp Scythe
The minutiae of Orwell’s day-to-day living are preserved in Orwell: Diaries (Harvill Secker, 2009), edited by Peter Davidson. Alongside social, political and economic observations, the entries on Orwell’s Jura gardening are regular and chiefly practical (9.10.47: ‘Cleared out fuchsia stump), but they give a charming portrait of his existence (and experiments) on the island.
On Orwell’s life, Jeffrey Meyers’ Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (WW Norton & Company, 2000) is generous to the author but rightly critical of his more destructive instincts. David Lebedoff’s The Same Man (Scribe, 2008) is a unique dual biography of Orwell and Evelyn Waugh, which combines extensive research with fine prose, literary sympathy and a keen eye for anecdote.
Orwell’s journalism and reviews are some of the finest of the twentieth century—with that of Virginia Woolf, his work exemplifies the modern essay form. These are published with Orwell’s letters in four volumes by Penguin (1970), edited by Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus. Down and Out in Paris and London (1970) and Burmese Days (1978) are also published in paperback by Penguin. As with Orwell’s fiction, including Keep the Aspidistra Flying (Penguin, 2010), all of these volumes are readily available new and second-hand, though often separately.
My edition of 1984 (Chancellor Press, 1984) is published alongside Animal Farm. But one of the virtues of Orwell’s (late) popularity is that there are many other options for weight, cost and layout. Second-hand bookshops might sometimes be, as Orwell complained, cold, fly-blown and dusty—but they are full of his excellent writings, at Comstockian prices.
The Acres of Perhaps
Because of her continuing popularity, particularly in the United States, Emily Dickinson’s poems are available in many bookshops, used and new. They are also available quickly and cheaply as ebooks. But the standard editions are more faithful and complete. The most recent standard collection is The Poems of Emily Dickinson: Reading Edition (The Belknap Press, 2005), edited by RW Franklin, which is a shorter edition of Franklin’s earlier edition with sources. The reading edition contains all Dickinson’s poems, formatted and punctuated as Dickinson left them. An older, but also authoritative, collection was edited by Thomas Johnson (Faber & Faber, 1976).
The standard edition of Dickinson’s letters—often literally tied up with the poet’s flowers—is the two-volume Letters of Emily Dickinson (The Belknap Press, 1958), edited by Johnson and Theodora Ward. A cheaper and less reliable collection, edited by Mabel Loomis Todd, is published by Dover (2003). This still gives a good glimpse of the poet’s life and ideas, in her own words.
Alfred Habegger’s My Wars Are Laid Away in Books: The Life of Emily Dickinson (The Modern Library, 2001) is a superb biography, which gives a gripping and psychologically penetrating portrait of the poet. Lyndall Gordon’s Lives Like Loaded Guns (Virago Press, 2011) shows how Dickinson’s legacy, and public reputation, was changed by continuing family conflicts. On Dickinson and gardens, Judith Farr’s The Gardens of Emily Dickinson (Harvard University Press, 2004) is excellent—not only on the poet’s horticultural habits, but also on their relationship to her poems, social life and ideas.
Raking Stones
Nikos Kazantzakis was a committed and curious traveller, who sent many reflections home to his second wife, Eleni Samios. She collected these and others, with her own commentary, in Nikos Kazantzakis: A Biography Based on his Letters (Cassirer, 1968). He also wrote extensively on his travels, including Japan China (Simon & Schuster, 1963), England (Cassirer, 1965), Spain (Simon & Schuster, 1963) and Journeying (Little, Brown & Co., 1975). His time in Japan and China was also fictionalised in The Rock Garden (Simon & Schuster, 1963). Many of these are difficult to find new but can be found online second-hand.
The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (Secker & Warburg, 1959) is a poetic version of Kazantzakis’ process philosophy. Translated with punch by Kimon Friar, it remains the fullest expression of Kazantzakis’ ideas. Simon & Schuster (1958) also does a cheap, readily available paperback edition. Kazantzakis’ friend, Cretan author Pandelis Prevelakis, wrote a critical but sympathetic study of the poem, Nikos Kazantzakis and The Odyssey (Simon & Schuster, 1961).
Kazantzakis also outlined his philosophy in The Saviors of God: Spiritual Exercises (Simon & Schuster, 1960) and parts of his memoir, Report to Greco (Simon & Schuster, 1965)—a masterwork of fictionalised autobiography, alongside classics like Rousseau’s Confessions.
On Kazantzakis’ life and work, Peter Bien’s two-volume Politics of the Spirit (Princeton University Press, 1989 & 2007) is an immense contribution. Investigating the author’s ideas, politics and art, and their relationships, it draws on decades of research to present a convincing portrait of Kazantzakis. It is not a simple read, but it is a compelling one.
Chestnuts and Nothingness
Sartre’s Nausea (Penguin, 1965) is not a systematic treatise, but it is a better introduction to existentialism than Being and Nothingness (Philosophical Library, 1956). The point is not that Sartre’s opus is bad philosophy—not at all. The point is that it is badly written, and fails to invite readers into existentialism’s transformative worldview. Having said this, Being and Nothingness’s passages on slime alone are worth the price of admission—to say nothing of the author’s defence of free consciousness.
‘The Humanism of Existentialism’ is from Essays in Existentialism (Citadel Press, 1974), edited by Wade Baskin, as are other short essays and excerpts. Sartre’s essay on the sculptor Alberto Giacometti is particularly memorable for its description of the ‘promise’ of the statues—their unreachable solidity.
Ronald Hayman’s Writing Against: A Biography of Sartre (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986) is a broad portrait of the philosopher, which skilfully binds philosophy, politics and the personal. Sartre’s own memoir, Words (Hamish Hamilton, 1964), is more biased, but no less fascinating for this. Sartre: The Philosopher of the Twentieth Century (Polity, 2003), by Bernard-Henri Lévy, is an illuminating and often witty investigation of the philosopher’s life, work and era. Lévy is particularly revealing on Sartre’s longing to escape himself, for all his defence of freedom.
Sartre’s journals from World War II show Sartre, in his thirties, coping with the boredom, class politics and absurdity of war. They also reveal the development of Sartre’s philosophy up to Being and Nothingness, including notes on Heidegger, authenticity and history. They are collected in The War Diaries of Jean-Paul Sartre: November 1939–March 1940 (Pantheon Books, 1984), edited by his adopted daughter, Arlette Alkaïm-Sartre.
Some of Sartre’s letters are as dramatic, keen-eyed and funny as his fiction. Many of his best are contained in Witness to My Exile: The Letters of Jean-Paul Sartre to Simone de Beauvoir 1926–1939 (Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), edited by de Beauvoir herself. Her replies are in Simone de Beauvoir: Letters to Sartre (Vintage, 1992), edited by Quinton Hoare. The early years of their love and friendship, including Sartre’s stay in Le Havre, are recorded in de Beauvoir’s The Prime of Life (Penguin, 1981). The late Hazel Rowley’s recent portrait of the couple, Tête-à-Tête (Chatto & Windus, 2006) is light on their work but heavy on their romantic cruelties. It also shows de Beauvoir’s loyalty to Sartre—and his desperate need of it.
The Best of All Possible Estates
This chapter was first suggested by Adam Gopnik’s elegant essay ‘Voltaire’s Garden’, in the New Yorker, 7 March 2005.
John Pearson’s Voltaire Almighty: A Life in Pursuit of Freedom (Bloomsbury, 2005) gives a full depiction of Voltaire’s era, personality and ideas. Pearson reveals the great author’s faults and relationships without being snarky or gossipy. Richard Aldington’s Voltaire (Chatto & Windus, 1935) lacks Pearson’s depth and breadth but is intelligent and often pithy.
In Voltaire (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1986), AJ Ayer offers a sharp analysis of Voltaire’s philosophical ideas and debates, and is not afraid to judge Voltaire’s literature (‘Voltaire’s tragedies were melodramas and like over-cooked soufflés they have fallen flat’).
Voltaire’s literary and philosophical works are readily available in French and translation, on paper and in electronic editions. Everyman (1962) has a good collection of Candide and other tales, though Three Sirens Press (1930) has a striking stand-alone edition, illustrated by Mahlon Blaine. A Pocket Philosophical Dictionary (Oxford, 2011) has a reader-friendly layout and contains two contemporary portraits of Voltaire. I also have a free electronic edition, which lacks the introduction and appendices, but is a workable translation and can be searched quickly. My copy of Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters (Hackett, 2007) is also electronic, but it is not difficult to find in paperback by Penguin, published as Letters on England (1980).
A Stranger at the Gates
There are many good editions of Plato’s dialogues. I have the Collected Dialogues (Princeton University Press, 1996), edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. This includes the letters and an excellent index. But Plato’s works are widely available in cheap paperbacks new and second-hand, and in ebook formats. While away from my home library, I also bought an ebook edition of Plato and Aristotle’s collected works—it cost less than the coffee I was drinking.