Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [107]
Altered fashions and tastes in pleasure gardens reflected changes in Dutch outlook and temperament in the latter part of the seventeenth century. After the marriage in 1677 of the Stadholder William III (reinstated officially in 1672) and Charles II’s eldest niece, Princess Mary Stuart, it was widely assumed, in the absence of direct heirs, that William would eventually ascend the English throne. Peace and prosperity in the United Provinces allowed the burgeoning commercial economy to flourish, and with it the fortunes of mercantile families and those who invested heavily in new money-making ventures at home and overseas. From the early 1680s, the growing international aspirations and economic self-confidence of the United Provinces were echoed in ever grander and more extensive garden plans on the part of Dutch country estate owners – the emerging northern Netherlandish nobility.
Meanwhile the Dutch East and West India Companies were playing an increasingly important role in international global commerce, their market aspirations exerting considerable influence over the politics of territories as far removed as Surinam and the Moluccas. Rare and unusual plants, fruits and vegetables from the new Dutch colonies became as sought-after – and as expensive to acquire – at home in the United Provinces as comparably fashionable porcelain and lacquerwork. Wealthy garden enthusiasts dealt directly with contacts at the East India Company headquarters at the Cape and, via the West India Company, at Paramaribo in Surinam, to obtain well-grown specimens, transported on Company ships at the owner’s expense, to grace their terraces and hothouses for the delight of their visitors. The practice became so widespread that the directors of the Dutch East India Company attempted (unsuccessfully) to forbid the use of their ships for the transport of private goods. In October 1677 its officials reported that the deck of a ship recently returned from the Cape was
covered and obstructed in such a way with boxes, and in such great numbers, as if they were whole gardens, resulting in so great a weakening and damaging of the ship by all the weight on top that we were obliged to write off and prohibit herewith the sending of all those cuttings, trees and plants.9
Garden design metamorphosed and became ever more ambitious to match the aspirations of the Dutch élite. Philips Doublet and Susanna Huygens’s gardens at Clingendael and Hans Willem Bentinck’s acquisition and modernisation of Jacob Cats’s beloved garden at Sorgvliet are elegant examples of this transformation. Engraved panoramic views of these two neighbouring garden estates between The Hague and the coast – both substantially redesigned during the last quarter of the seventeenth century – show Dutch self-confidence and national pride renewed and reflected in ostentatious displays of wealth and magnificence.
William III’s Honselaarsdijk, whose early struggles with the environment paved the way for general Dutch garden enthusiasm, was also completely redesigned in the 1680s, matching William’s increasingly ‘royal’ aspirations. The redesigned gardens were openly intended to match in splendour, if not in scale, Louis XIV’s world-renowned gardens at Versailles.
Increasingly elaborate and extensive gardens like these also mirror another Dutch development of this period – the consolidation of wealth and power through marriage, which produced prominent and powerful families whose influence was exerted on both