Going Dutch_ How England Plundered Holland's Glory - Lisa Jardine [109]
In late July 1678 Susanna wrote to her brother Christiaan Huygens in Paris, describing her pleasure at the family’s move from their town house in The Hague to Clingendal for the summer, and pressing Christiaan to describe the redesigned gardens at Versailles:
Two days ago we arrived here with the whole household, hoping that the good weather will last for another month or two. I like it here enormously, and our children are as enthusiastic to be here as I am. It seems to me that the garden is beautiful at the moment – the trees are growing wonderfully well. My husband is astonished at the changes you talk about when you visited Versailles, and continues to hope that he might return one day, so that he could admire all these added beauti- fications with you, and many other beautiful things that I fear I myself will never see.13
A few months later, Philips Doublet himself wrote to Christiaan, asking him to purchase and send complete runs of engravings of the gardens at Versailles, so that Philips could use them as models for his own garden redesign. They would also be useful, Philips added, for the remodelling of William’s palace at Huis ten Bosch, for which he was an adviser.14It took a large number of exchanges of letters, and some false starts with sending the plates (one consignment got badly damaged in transit), but in the end Philips was the proud owner of precise and detailed representations of all the newest and most significant buildings and gardens in Paris.15
Christiaan Huygens also sent his brother-in-law diagrams and descriptions of innovative designs for fountain-driving machinery in use in Paris. Where once canals and drainage ditches had defined the contours of the Dutch pleasure garden, now elaborate waterworks, fountains and pools provided more picturesque focal points for the visitor. In the exchanges of information between Huygens and Doublet – brothers-in-law and fellow enthusiasts for the modern and innovative – we see two Dutchmen, in the forefront of design activities in a variety of areas, both closely involved with the house of Orange and its aspirations towards sovereignty in the British Isles, collaborating at a distance to interpret and develop French ideas, influencing in peculiarly Dutch ways evolving garden projects in the United Provinces.
Christiaan and Susanna’s brother Constantijn junior married Susanna Rijkaert in August 1668. Once again, a member of the influential and politically well-placed Huygens family married into a prosperous merchant family, acquiring its network of commercial connections. Among these were the families of Gaspar Fagel (who acquired his garden at Leeuwen- horst in 1676) and Magdalena Poulle (whose garden at Gunterstein was celebrated throughout the 1680s).16
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, men on the rise in politics and power created grand country estates to match their ambitions. Gaspar Fagel, Grand Pensionary of Holland from 1672, was one of the close advisers to William III in the period leading up to the seaborne invasion of the British Isles in November 1688. With Bentinck and Gilbert Burnet, he shaped the polemic surrounding the Orange claim to the English throne, and may be credited with some of the ‘spin’ that ultimately made the invasion acceptable to the English.
On the rising tide of his influence over the young William, Fagel took possession of the country estate of Leeuwenhorst in 1676. There he presided over the creation of one of the most remarkable gardens in the United Provinces. Throughout the period of feverish planning and preparation for William and Mary to take by force the throne of England which they believed theirs by right, Fagel, who suffered from bouts of ill-health and persistent gout, would retire to his estate near Noordwijk to hunt and to occupy himself with the delights of gardening.
The international renown of the Leeuwenhorst gardens came not just from the ostentation and complexity of its design, but above all from Fagel’s collection of exotic plants. He spent enormous sums on acquiring many species