• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1122 0

to admire Wilton’s gardens, it is entirely likely that Hans Willem Bentinck did, and that he, in contrast to Huygens, chose to accompany Prince William on that cold afternoon tour. It may even have been he who proposed the sightseeing detour. Bentinck was himself a lifelong gardening enthusiast, whose own country estate at Sorgvliet – purchased from the heirs of the cultivated Dutch statesman Jacob Cats in 1675 – was considered in Dutch court circles to be an outstanding example of garden design, in which architecture and statuary perfectly complemented formal landscaping and topiary.24 His passion for horticulture and expertise in garden design were recognised when, immediately after William and Mary ascended the English throne, the royal favourite was appointed to the official post of Superintendent of the Royal Gardens.

It was Bentinck who designed key features of the gardens at Hampton Court and Kensington Palace, and he too who was responsible for the realisation of the magnificent gardens at William and Mary’s favourite palace at Het Loo, near Apeldoorn – both monarchs’ favourite retreat. From his correspondence we know that he often combined business with horticultural pleasure – requesting rare plant specimens and seeds from fellow enthusiasts, and exchanging advice and expertise.

During the period when Bentinck was gathering intelligence in the first half of 1688, he observed to one of his key pro-William informants, Charles Mordaunt, that their letters were undoubtedly being read by James’s agents, who would be likely to read sedition into anything that passed between them, however innocent: ‘If, enthusiastic gardeners that we are, we were to talk only of plants and flowers, the eavesdropper would want to find some sinister meaning in it.’25

I bring this early chapter in our exploration of the world of seventeenth-century Anglo–Dutch relations to a close with a last, suggestive example of the complex and subtle ways in which ‘talk of plants and flowers’ did indeed, in the circle of William of Orange, acquire cultural significance beyond the simple act of exchange of desirable material objects. Freighted with symbolic meaning, such shared cultural pursuits bridge any notional divide between the United Provinces and the British Isles.

The elaborate, clandestine preparations for the 1688 invasion would not have been possible without loans of almost unimaginable size from wealthy supporters of the Orangists in The Hague. Foremost amongst these was the Portuguese Jewish banker Francisco Lopes Suasso, who provided the massive sum of two million guilders, lent without any collateral security. Effectively, William’s entire expedition was underwritten by Suasso.26 Following the successful invasion, now installed as the English King, William III presented Suasso – a man of considerable cultivation, at whose house the élite of The Hague regularly congregated for concerts and recitals – with a fine contemporary painting, as a thanks offering. The painting is of an orange tree, in an exquisite blue faïence container, with orange blossom and vibrantly coloured fruits appearing together amid the vividly green foliage.27

It needs little imagination, even today, to recognise the thriving little orange tree as a symbol of the success of the house of Orange, supported financially in its ambitions by men of business like Suasso. I shall return later to the way in which the meticulously depicted porcelain container also refers directly to the global ambitions – territorial and commercial – of the Dutch under William’s leadership. Collecting porcelain became a passion of Queen Mary, whose example created an Anglo–Dutch rage for acquiring exquisite blue-and-white Chinese-style porcelain ware which lasted well beyond her death in 1697. So the grateful King, newly settled in his English kingdom, rewards his financial backer with a small, tasteful token of his gratitude, an enduring sign of the mutual respect that underpinned the financial commitment, in the form of a Dutch painting of an exotic potted plant. This shared passion for