WASTELAND

A HISTORY

Vittoria Di Palma

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YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
Published with assistance from the Annie Burr Lewis Fund. For my parents
Copyright © 2014 by Vittoria Di Palma. FrancineBarban and BeppeDi Palma
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Jacket illustrations: (front) The Pilgrim$Progress(fig.28); (back) attributed to

John Sell Cotmani St. BenetSAbbey(fig. 51)

Frontispiece: Stephen Penn, "1he South West Prospect of1hurston Water

in Furness, Lancashire" (fig. 58)

P. viii:John Harris 11,A Viewof the Peak: TheDoveHoles(fig. 61)

P.xii: ThePilgrim$Progress(fig. 28)

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix
These fragments I have shored against my ruins.
-T. S. Elioti The WasteLand ( 1922)
Introduction 1

I. Wasteland 12

Ilove all waste

II. Improvement 43
And solitary places; where we taste
The pleasure of believing what we see Ill. Swamp 84

Is boundless 1 as we wish our souls to be ...

IV. Mountain 128
-Percy Bysshe Shelleri Julianand Maddalo:A Conversation(1818-19)

V. Forest 111

VI. Wilderness, Wasteland, Garden 230

Notes 245

Index 259

illustration Credits 266

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would never have come into being without the guidance, wisdom, and
care of my teachers. My greatest debt is to Robin Middleton. Robin introduced me
to the eighteenth century, shaped my ideas about it, and infused me with a love of its
books. In the years since I first became his student, he has been a mentor, a staunch
supporter, a generous reader, and a friend. My thanks to him go beyond words. Barry
Bergdoll has been an inspiration to me ever since I first took a class with him in
graduate school. As my colleague at Columbia, he has been my guide, and I am pro-
foundly grateful for the advice and support he has given me over the years. Richard
Brilliant encouraged my interest in English landscape from the very beginning. He
nurtured the growth of this book with a steady stream of articles, reviews, and other
assorted clippings (one of which became an epigraph), and always pushed me to
clarify my arguments and ideas. In many ways and for many years Hilary Ballon has
been a mentor 1 a champion, and an exemplar. I am deeply grateful for her continuing
encouragement. Mary McLeod has supported my work in-more ways than I can ex-
press. Her enthusiastic and questioning spirit has been an inspiration; her friendship
has kept me going in the toughest of times. All of these extraordinary teachers not
only taught me by example, but they all have also read various earlier incarnations
of this book. I am grateful for their time, comments 1 criticisms, and suggestionsi any
sins of omission or commission are mine alone.
I have also learned a great deal from my colleagues at Columbia. Elizabeth
Hutchinson and Matthew McKelway both deserve a special mention for things both
tangible and intangible. Holger Klein, Stephen Murray, and Esther Pasztory read my
work at various points with care. Particular thanks are due also to Zainab Bahrani,
Francesco Benelli 1 Jonathan Crary, Vidya Dehejia 1 David Freedberg 1 Cordula Grewe,
Bob Harrist, Anne Higonnet, and Reinhold Martin. The late Caleb Smith explored
two New York City wastelands with me, and took beautiful photographs of the
remaining unconverted section of the High Line. At Columbia I also have been for~
lunate to work with some wonderful students, and am thankful for many stimulating

ix
 discussions with Ricky Anderson, Charles Kang 1 Elsa Lam) Yates McKee, Al Narath, the archives of the Bedfordshire County Record Office, the Shakespeare Birthplace
Carol Santoleri, Meg Studer, Daniel Talesnik 1 Robert Wiesenberger 1 Alena Williams, Trust archives 1 and the archives of the Royal Society of London.
and Carolyn Yerkes. Convention dictates that we thank our nearest and dearest last. This book
Among my colleagues at the School of Architectnre of the University of South- could not have been completed without the generosity, strength, and love of Ted
ern California, I would particularly like to note the support of Dean Qjngyun Ma, Abramczyk. He has been my anchor throughout the long process of writing of this
Diane Ghirardo, Amy Murphy, Jim Steele, Marc Schiler, and Victor Jones. book, and the life we have built together with our son Taddeo has brought me the
I am greatly indebted to those people who are at once friends and colleagues. greatest possible happiness. Taddeo's infancy and the coming into being of this
From my graduate stndent days at Columbia, I would like to thank G6khan Karakus, book were two adventures lived in parallel. He is my joy, my steady light, my hope
Victoria Sanger, Shaalini Stone, Edward Wendt, and Richard Wittman for their ca- for the future.
maraderie and continuing friendship. Diana Periton has been my collaborator since My mother, Francine Barban 1 and my father, Beppe Di Palma 1 come at the end,
ji I first taught with her at the Architectural Association; she continues to be my but it is to them that I owe my first and deepest thanks. I would not be who I am
,1 inspiration. Sarah Jackson and Susan Jenkins were both essential to all aspects of today if not for their care 1 sacrificei encouragement, and sustaining love. This book
I my life during my time in London. Other colleagues from my London days who is for them.
deserve special mention are Katharina Borsi, Helene Furj.in, and Barbara Penner.
Mari Hvattum and Mari Lending invited me to Oslo and made my stay there ( with
a small Taddeo in tow) both stimulating and delightful; Kate Bentz, Juliet Koss, and
Janike Kampevold Larsen have done the same for me in New York. David Hays 1
Eduardo de Jeslls Douglas, and Veronica Kalas provided intellectual and other sus-
tenance during our time together at Dumbarton Oaks. The enduring friendship of
Anna Acconciai Lara Belkind, Jean-Gabriel Henry, Sarah Martin, and Anne Hayden
Stevens has sustained me for decades.
Molly Aitken deserves a very special thanks for introducing me to her wonder-
ful editor at Yale, Michelle Komie. Michelle has been a champion of this book since
the very first, and has steered the manuscript wisely and well. The book benefited
greatly from editor Deborah Bruce-Hostler's keen and careful eye, and I would like
to acknowledge her along with the rest of those at Yale University Press who helped
my words to take tangible form. I would also like to thank the anonymous readers of
my manuscripti and in particular Jedediah Purdy, for their erudite and constructive
comments as well as for their support of this book.
My research has been generously supported by a number of institutions. Fellow-
ships from Dumbarton Oaks; the Yale Center for British Art; the William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library; the Huntington Library; the Canadian Centre for Archi-
tecture; the Institute of Form, Theory, and History of the Oslo School of Architec-
ture; the Department of Art History and Archaeology of Columbia University; and
Columbia's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences have all generously contributed
to this project at various points. I have also had the pleasure of working in Avery
LibrarYi the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the National Archives in Kew1

X ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xi ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Conceit,

INTRODUCTION

The tiny island ofVieques lies about eight miles east of Puerto Rico, bordered to the
north by the Atlantic Ocean and lapped to the south by the Caribbean Sea. Begin-
ning in the early 1940s, when the navy purchased twenty-six thousand acres-about
three-quarters of the island-for $1.6 million, Vieques served as the largest training
area for the United States Atlantic Fleet Forces, providing miles of undeveloped
coastline for training exercises involving ship-to-shore shelling and aerial bombing
strikes. But on the morning of May 1, 2003, jubilation began to spread among the
island's inhabitants as they watched the United States Navy prepare to depart the
island ofVieques for good. For decades, they had put up with the loud explosions
that set their living room windows rattling, the huge warships anchored at spitting
distance from their pristine beaches. But after 1999, when two five-hundred-pound
bombs fired from a Marine jet missed their intended target, killing thirty-five-year-
old security guard David Sanes and injuring four others, the protests started. Small
and local at first, they involved not much more than isolated acts of civil disobedi-
ence: cut fences and trespass. But as this David and Goliath case began to attract
international attention, and as high-profile politicians, actors, and artists joined in,
including the Reverend Al Sharpton, Benicio de! Toro, and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,
voices calling for the navy to leave grew louder and more insistent, and the protests
swelled into sit-ins, marches, and candlelight vigils. In 2001, after protracted battles
in Congress and in the face of strenuous objection on the part of the Armed Forces 1
President George W. Bush announced that the navy would leave Vieques in May of
2003 and transfer management of the land it had used for military exercises to the
Department of the Interior.
Two years after the departure of the navy1 the area it formerly controlled was
designated a federal Superfund site, and the Environmental Protection Agency
mandated a cleanup. But the cleanup too, proved contentious. Residents have been
 critical of the navy's practice of burning large areas in order to locate leftover muni-
tions and their penchant for detonating in open air the bombs that they find. Puerto
Rico's health department has linked the island's high rates of cancer, liver disease 1
and hypertension to the presence of toxic chemicals in the island's soil, groundwa-
I ter, air, and fish. In addition to a toxic cocktail of TNT, napalm, depleted uranium,
mercury, lead, PCBs, and a host of other hazardous substances present on the former
navy testing sites, the eastern third of the island has the bonus of thousands of hid-
den and unexploded bombs. To avoid the possibility of residents or tourists stum-
bling upon and inadvertently detonating any live ammunition, the Department of
the Interior has set aside more than seventeen thousand acres as a wildlife refuge for
nesting leath.erback and hawks bill sea turtles (the latter on the list of critically endan-
gered species) and other forms of wildlife 1 "with the area used for exercises with live
bombs ... designated a wilderness area and closed to the public:' 1 Despite Puerto
Rico's vigorous promotion ofVieques as a prime tourist destination, this section
of the island is not expected to be open to human visitors at any time soon.
The idea that an area that had been used for exercises with live bombs, satu-
rated with hazardous substances and deemed unfit for any human being to set foot
in, might not be a suitable habitat for vulnerable forms of wildlife seems to have
occurred neither to the U.S. government nor to the navy. But this is not really so
surprising. By 2003, scores of toxic, polluted, or otherwise dangerous sites closed
off to human use had become-by accident or by design-havens for rare species
of birds, plants, and other forms of wildlife. Some of these had subsequently been
reopened as wildlife observation and recreation areas-an early famous ( or infa-
mous) example is the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge, a site that
has been dubbed '1The Nation's Most Ironic Nature Park" due to what appears to be
its astonishing transformation from a toxic wasteland to a wildlife r~fuge offering the
kinds of sights and activities usually associated with wilderness areas. But the irony
engendered by sites like these is misplaced, for their apparent transformations are
less physical or ecological than they are conceptual, dependent entirely on assump-
tions embedded in our ideas about different kinds oflandscapes and the kinds of
associations that are evoked when we encounter and use terms like "wilderness"
and "wasteland:'
At the turn of the nineteenth century, dichotomous ideas of wilderness as
pristine nature and wasteland as ruined or defiled nature became fully codified in
Western philosophy, literature 1 and art. Wilderness, and 1 in particular, its place in the
formation of a specifically American subjectivity is a topic that has been masterfully
treated by a number of authors, including Roderick Frazier Nash, Max Oelschlaeger 1 or farms. The emptiness that is the core characteristic of the wasteland is also what
and William Cronon, and my book owes many debts to their pioneering work.2 This 1
2 INTRODUCTION
however 1 is not a book about wilderness 1 but about wasteland. But what exactly do
we mean by "wasteland"? The term conjures up visions of wild and remote land-
scapes like deserts, mountains 1 steppes 1 and ice caps 1 and 1 at the very same time 1 der-
elict and abandoned landscapes like former military bases, boarded-up mines, and
shuttered industrial plants. How do we resolve this apparent contradiction? How can
we understand the fact that "wasteland" is a term used to refer to land, like a desert,
which is as yet unmodified by civilization, and to land, like the site of an abandoned
chemical plant, which has been consumed and exhausted through industrial excess-
es? In other words, how can wasteland be culture's antithesis, as well as its product?
One answer is that in both cases, wasteland is a landscape that resists notions of
proper or appropriate use. But this is only part of the story. The fact that a term origi-
nally used to denote landscapes that stood apart from or outside of human culture
is now frequently applied to sites that have been ravaged by industry, abandoned by
the military, or contaminated by chemical waste, points to something more. It is a
telling sign of a shift in our attitudes toward technology and toward our place within
nature. This book aims to investigate that shift.
If we turn to etymology, we find that the English word "wasteland" combines
"waste;' from the Old Frenchgast 1 from the Latin vastus,meaning desolate or un-
occupied, and "land;' from the Old English land, Old Norse laan, and Goth llan,
mearung enclosure. It first begins to appear in English toward the beginning of the
thirteenth century, replacing the Old English westen,which signified a desolate,
wild, uninhabited land. 3 In its earliest incarnations 1 "waste" was a place: people trav-
eled to it and through it 1 they dwelt in it 1 and escaped from it. 4 At first the term was
most often found in English versions of the Old Testament, New Testament, and
Lives of the Saints, used to translate the Latin desertusor solitudo.besertus ( or terra
deserta) and solitudoimply an emptiness; they are lands characterized by absence.
Similarly 1 the wasteland is consistently described as an uninhabited, desolate place.
Sometimes 1 however, the wasteland has mountains 1 cliffs, and caves, while at other
times it is an expanse of sand. It may be described as completely arid and barren 1
or as overgrown with dense woods or a tangle of thorns and brambles. Although at
times it is utterly devoid of any form oflife, in other contexts it figures as the haunt of
wild and dangerous animals, or as a battleground for demons and other supernatural
creatures. The wasteland is a place, but even more it is a category ofland, a category
united not by consistent physical qualities-whether topographical or ecological-
but1 rather, by their absence. The wasteland is defined not by what it is or what it has,
but by what it lacks: it has no water, food, or people 1 no cities, buildings 1 settlements,
gives the term its malleability, its potential for abstractionj a vacant shell 1 it lies ready
3 INTRODUCTION
 to include all those kinds of places that are defined in negative terms, identified
primarily by what they are not.
The wasteland's inherent abstraction makes it applicable to a wide range of
landscapes-in its most general sense it stands in for any place that is hostile to
human survival. Although we may look in vain to find a consistent set of physical
characteristics to define what the wasteland is1 it nonetheless plays a consistent role:
its definition resides in what it does.The wasteland's lacks (of food and waterJ of cit-
ies and towns) and its nonhuman creatures (wild, dangerous 1 or poisonous animals 1
demons, and evil spirits) make it a threatening, challenging, and perilous place.
Although wasteland may be many things, what it doesis provide a space that figures
as the antithesisJ the absolute Other 1 of civilization.
To write a cultural history of wasteland, to write about what the wasteland does 1
is to write about changing concepts and convictions. It is to assume that ideas of
nature have a history. 1his does not entail asserting anything new: in the more than
thirty years that have passed since Raymond Williams declared that "the idea of na-
ture contains 1 though often unnoticed 1 an extraordinary amount ofhuman history;'
the statement that nature is a cultural construct has become a commonplace. This 5
has never meant that nature-in the form of the plants, animalsJ rivers 1 and clouds
we see 1 hear, smell 1 or touch-is merely a figment of our imagination 1 or that there
is nothing "out there" provoking the sensations we feel. But it does assume that the
ways in which we perceive and understand our surroundings are never neutral, and
that seeing and sensing are profoundly cultural actsJ influenced by assumptions and
beliefs that unavoidably frame and color our experiences.
,ii The concept of a landscape that is hostile or threatening can be found in many
'II different cultures over many periods of human history, taking different forms in dif-
ferent times and places. It may even be universal, but to label this kind oflandscape a
wastelandJ to see it as a problemJ and, further, to imagine that it might be a problem
with a solution, is not. Thus, this book does not tell a universal story, but one that
emerges out of a specific set of historical events. 1his book argues that a particular
convergence ofbeliefsJ technologies, institutions, and individuals in seventeenth.-
and eighteenth-century England, Scotland, and Wales ( Great Britain, from 1707
on) resulted in the formulation of attitudes toward land and its uses that continues
to shape the ways in which landscape is viewed and evaluated today. It is precisely at
this moment that landscape is accorded an unprecedented role in the formation of
individual and national identity: the character of a nation and its citizens was under-
stood as being intimately related to its landscapes, making the management of those
landscapes a matter of vital concern. At the same timeJ a developing Enlightenment
philosophy evaluated nature through the lens of use, and posited technology as the
4 INTRODUCTION
means to shape landscapes according to a defined set of human needs. The chapters
that follow chart the implementation of this approach and chronicle its effects on the
development of concepts oflandscape during a critical period that gave rise to the
agricultural revolution 1 the first stirrings of the Industrial RevolutionJ and the estab-
lishment of colonies overseas. By casting a critical eye on the Enlightenment project,
this book aims to formulate the ways in which the contested history of wasteland has
shaped attitudes toward land-in terms ofboth its use and uselessness-that remain
fundamental today.
Landscape and Disgust
Questions of use are important 1 but only part of the story. For it is also precisely in
this period that the modern notion of aesthetics is developed 1 a process in which
landscape played a critical defining role. ln the eighteenth century, the branch of phi-
losophy concerned with principles of natural and artistic beauty was reformulated in
such a way as to give questions of sensory perception and emotional response a cen-
tral significance. And it can be argued that one reason why wasteland has occupied
such a pivotal place in Western cultural imagination is because it has a capacity to
trigger a strong emotional response, a response that tends toward the aversive range
of the emotional spectrum. Fear1 hatred, contemptJ disgust: these are the emotions
the wasteland evokes. But it is disgustJ in particular 1 whose relationship to wasteland
is particularly suggestive. One of the six or seven basic emotionsJ disgust is unique
in that it occurs both as a seemingly instinctualJ reactive responseJ and as a highly
developed, culturally and socially inflected tool of discrimination and moral judg-
ment.6 Disgust is visceralJ powerful, and immediatej but it is also a feeling 1 in the
word~ of William Ian MillerJ "connected to ideasJ perceptions 1 and cognitionsJ and
to the social and cultural contexts in which it makes sense to have those feelings and
ideas:' 7 For Norbert Elias, disgust was a key motor of the civilizing process; for Mary
Douglas, it was the foundation of a society's notions of pollution and taboo. 8 Disgust
is an emotion that operates powerfully in the formulation of a culture's ordering sys-
tems: it establishes and maintains hierarchies; it is fundamental to the construction
9
of a moral code. It is a complex, and as yet poorly understood, but pivotal emotion.
And in recent years, disgust has come to play an increasingly central role in studies
that emphasize the embodied nature of the mind. 10
The starting point for most modern investigations of disgust is Charles Darwin.
ln TheExpressionof the Emotions in Man and Animals, first published in 1872, Dar-
win devoted a scant eight pages to the emotion in the context of a larger discussion
11
of disdainJ scomJ and contempt. For Darwin, disgust was related primarily to the
5 INTRODUCTION
 Figure I. Oscar Rejlander 1 "Disdain, Con-
tempt, and Disgust," published in Charles
Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in
Man and Animals. With Photographic and
Other nlustrations (London: John Murray,
1872). Courtesy Archive Farms.
sense of taste, "as actually perceived or vividly imagined; and secondarily to any-
thing which causes a similar feeling, through the sense of smell, touch, and even of
12
eyesight:' The bodily expression of disgust is immediate and instinctual, it centers
on and around the mouth, and it is directed at distancing oneself from the offending
object or substance as quickly as possible, often in the first instance by spitting or
retching. Darwin illustrates his discussion with photographs taken by the Swedish
photographer Oscar Rejlander, which narrate the progression from mild to acute
disgust (fig. 1). Darwin seeks to establish the universality of disgust, and of the ex-
pressions and gestures associated with iti yet he was no less aware of the critical role
that culture plays in defining what constitutes a disgust-provoking object. Darwin's
famous account of his experience in Tierra del Fuego, where "a native touched with
his finger some cold preserved meat which I was eating at our bivouac, and plainly
showed utter disgust at its softness; whilst I felt utter disgust at my food being
touched by a naked savage, though his hands did not appear dirty;' casts the "naked
savage" as both universal man and as a member of a different (and ostensibly infe-
rior) culture. Disgust may be a universal emotion, but there is no question that its
more nuanced contours vary greatly according to cultural context.
6 INTRODUCTION
'This combination of universality and cultural relativity has made disgust into
something of an ideal test case for researchers working in the field of psychology. But
apart from one foundational article by Andras Angyal published in 1941, not much
was done until the 1980s, when experimental psychologist Paul Rozin began a series
of systematic studies of the emotion and its triggers. 13 Rozin and his colleagues con-
ducted numerous experiments, one of the most famous being one in which volun-
teers were offered plates filled with what appeared to be feces. When volunteers were
asked to eat what had been presented to them, the reaction of disgust was found to
be immediate and universali even when the volunteers were informed that the feces
were in fact formed out of fudge. For these primarily North American experimental
subjects, disgust had a well-developed core that centered around the sense of taste,
was located primarily in the mouth, and was manifested through the actions of spit-
ting and vomiting as the body reacted, attempting to rid itself of the offending object
or substance. 14 Even more important and interesting, however, was the fact that it
did not matter whether or not the volunteer knew that the "feces" were fudge: the
reaction of disgust was identical in both instances.
From studies such as this, Rozin and his colleagues came to a number of con-
clusions. The most common disgust-producing substances tended to fall into three
categories: waste bodily products (such as feces, spiti or mucus) i food considered
unfit to eat (such as rotting meat, most invertebrates, reptiles, and amphibians) i
and repellent animals (particularly slimy or teeming ones like ratsi cockroaches, or
maggots). But the list of disgust-producing objects and categories did not end there.
Beyond this core triad, Rozin and his colleagues identified five other domains of
disgust, including categories relating to sex, hygiene, death, violations of the bodily
envelope, and socio-moral transgressions. Thus disgust was found to be a much
broader phenomenon than a mere visceral reaction. One of the most important
conclusions ofRozin's research was that disgust is at heart a fear of contamination,
and it is this question of contamination that enables disgust-as a broader fear of
pollution-to expand into the sociocultural domain. For Rozin and his colleagues,
"we distinguish disgust from fear on the grounds that fear is primarily a response
to actual or threatened harm to the body, whereas disgust is primarily a response to
actual or threatened harm to the soul:' 15 Rozin's later work extended the implications
ofhis studies to argue that disgust evolved to fulfill a psychic need to distance our-
selves from reminders of our animal origins. Thus, disgust becomes central to
the formulation of our identity as human beings.16
The interconnections between disgust and sociocultural concepts analyzed
by Rozin are central also to William Ian Miller's TheAnatomy of Disgust,but these
relationships were first explored earlier in the twentieth century by Aurel Kolnai in
7 INTRODUCTION
 his pioneering essay "Der Ekel." 17 Kolnai's wide-ranging phenomenological study is
I
![ particularly important for the consideration of the relation between disgust and aes-
![
thetics1 for it contains the crucial insight that "in keeping with its nonexistential and
perceptual emphasis 1 disgust is an eminently aestheticemotion:' 18
In other words 1
I
as demonstrated by Rozin's experiments with the feces/fudgeJ disgust focuses ex-
clusively on the appearanceof the repellent object, on its presentation to the senses,
II
!
rather than on its existential status, or in other words on what it might actually be.
Once the disgusting object becomes present to our senses, it overpowers our reason,
triggering an emotion of startling immediacy and power. It is by virtue of this exclu-
:1
sive fixation on the way that an object makes itselfknown to the senses that makes
l disgust by definitionaesthetic.
l
But there is a further, particularly interesting nuance to the way disgust seems
to work. As Carolyn Korsmeyer has argued in her SavoringDisgust:TheFoul and
the Fair in Aesthetics,the disgusting object is unique in that it "rivets our attention,
even at the same time that it repels. 1his aversion actually searches out its object. In
Kolnai's vivid metaphor, the tip of the arrow of intentionality 'penetrates the object/
thus making this aversion paradoxically caressing and probing. 1his may be the root
of the attraction of disgust, for 'there is already in its inner logic a possibility of a pos-
itive laying hold of the object, whether by touching 1 consuming, or embracing it."' 19
Thus disgust is an emotion that harbors a paradoxical duality, a mixture of repulsion
and allure. When in the grip ofits effects 1 we are both repelled and trans.fixed, over-
come by an impulse to remove ourselves as quickly as possible from the repellent
object's presence 1 yet also often strangely impelled to draw closer.
When we come to consider the relationship between disgust and aesthetics
in more detail, it is important to begin by noting that the English word "disgust"
derives from the French degoUt
1 and thus is associated specifically with the sense of
taste on an etymological level. "Disgust" begins to appear sporadically in English
during the first quarter of the seventeenth century-we find no trace of it in Shake-
speare, for instance-and then with increasing frequency after about 1650.20 DegoUt
and the German Ekel do not emerge as common terms until the late sixteenth or
early seventeenth century 1and in all of these languages it is not until the eighteenth
century that disgust makes more than an isolated appearance in theoretical texts. 21
It would seem to be no coincidence that the increasing proliferation of the term co-
incides with a growing interest in the notion of taste and discussions regarding
its role in aesthetic judgment.
In his fascinating and comprehensive studYiWinfried Menninghaus has shown
disgust to be a central operative in the construction of notions ofbeauty and ugli-
ness1 and thus in the formation of an aesthetic canon. For Menninghaus (whose
8 INTRODUCTION
study concentrates on the rich German-language aesthetic tradition that includes
Lessing, Winckelmann, Kant 1Nietzsche, and Kafka, but also extends beyond strictly
germanophone sources to include Bataille, Sartre, and Kristeva) 1disgust is in fact
fundamental to the development of aesthetics itself. In particular, the concept of
the disgusting provides a foil for the beautiful, helping to define its qualities and
characteristics through opposition, and to limit its boundaries and prevent it from
falling into the opposite error of surfeit. For Menninghaus 1 as for Derrida before
him, disgust thus defines aesthetics by operating both as absolute other and as par-
ergonfor the work of art. 22 Winckelmann established his aesthetics by casting the
smooth, muscular, hairless young male body of classical statuary as his exemplar of
the beautiful, but Menninghaus argues that for this model to be formulated, its polar
opposite-the wrinkled, flabby, wart-covered body of the aged crone, exemplar (for
Winckelmann and many other eighteenth-century writers) of disgust incarnate-
was indispensible.
But in what ways might an analysis of disgust be important to our understanding
of wasteland? Can a rising awareness of disgust as1to borrow Kolnai's term, "an emi-
nently aestheticemotion," be seen as contributing to changing perceptions and evalu-
ations of landscape in England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries? I
think it can, and indeed would suggest that it is no coincidence that the appearance
of the term "disgust" in the English language coincides with the development of new,
aesthetically inflected concepts oflandscape. Indeed, to go further, I would argue
that disgust is there right from the very beginning 1appearing at the same time that
the concept oflandscape itself first takes on the form in which we recognize it today.
Wasteland is a cultural construct 1a creation of the imagination 1 a category ap-
plied to landscapes rather than an inherent characteristic of them. As a construct, it
fulfills certain cultural, social, and psychological needs, most centrally that of provid-
ing a foil to the notion of a benevolent 1 tractable, or pleasing landscape. Wasteland
is thus instrumental-even fundamental-to formulating a landscape ideal. And
by helping to construct a dichotomy between the paradisiacal, beautiful, or "good"
landscape, and the fallen, ugly, or "bad" landscape, disgust also aids in the creation
of a hierarchy, or scale of values, whereby different kinds oflandscapes may be
judged according to their proximity to 1 or distance from, either extreme.
But once we begin to speak oflandscapes as being ideal, or "good," or as flawed,
or "bad/' we have entered into the realm of moral judgment. And with wasteland 1
we find morality operating in a number of ways. In the Western tradition, wasteland
is first and foremost the fallen landscape. The wasteland was Adam's curse, his place
of banishment. It was the antithesis of the Garden of Eden, a barren land filled with
thorns and weeds that could be made fertile oulywith the greatest hardship and toil.
9 INTRODUCTION
- ------- ----- --- --------------------------
The presence of wasteland was understood as testimony to God's wrathi a sign of his
judgment on humankind. It was this nexus of beliefs that gave rise to the conviction,
so widespread in the seventeenth century, that the rehabilitation of unproductive
and barren land-the redemption of wasteland-was a sure path to salvation.
But landscapes were not only condemned on account of their barrenness. They
were also morally suspect if they produced or harbored the wrong kinds oflife-
weeds rather than crops; wild beasts rather than domesticated animals; and crimi-
nals, social outcastsi and even the poor rather than the so-called upright members of
landed society. The moral outrage expressed by upper- and middle-class commenta-
tors when dealing with those morally repugnant highwaymen, fugitivesi squatters,
and commoners who lived in and off the wasteland is evidence of the role disgust
plays in the creation of social hierarchies, and how 1 at the time, landscape and per-
sonal character were understood to be mutually defining.
Yet for all of the suggestiveness of disgnst as a lens through which to read atti-
tudes toward wasteland 1 problems remain. Many commentators have noted that dis-
gust is only rarely elicited by objects of sight~tending 1 instead, to be affiliated more
with the "darker" or "lower" senses of touch 1 taste 1 and smell. It is an object's poten-
tial to adhere to the skin, or, even more disturbingly 1 to enter the body via the mouth
or another orifice1 which most incites the reaction of disgust. Yet because of disgust's
ability to operate on the visceral 1 the associative 1 and the moral levels1 we find that
it has 1 in practice 1 a much wider applicability than might at first be suspected. And it
is this capacity for abstraction that can also account for the fact that despite Kolnai's
assertion that "disgust is never related to inorganic or nonbiological matter/' we find
it is a recurring feature of early modern descriptions oflandscape 1 sometimes elicited
by a landscape's flora and fauna, but at other times by its soil or rocks. It may be that
a mere rock is not capable of provoking a physiological reaction of disgust 1 but it was
unquestionably able to elicit expressions of repugnance from many seventeenth- and
eighteenth-centuryviewers. 23
Finally1 we come to the problem of representation. Menninghaus has argued that
the polar opposite of the beautiful is not the ugly, but the disgnsting. However, the
disgusting poses an even greater problem than the ugly, for it not merely challenges
representation, but actively repulses it. Debates over whether a canonically disgust-
ing objecti such as a heap of dung, or the flayed and bloody carcass of an animali
could or should be represented in painting date from ancient times 1 and were a staple
of academic debate throughout the early modern periodi stoking an awareness of the
paradoxical fact that at times the disgusting has its own particular allure 1 tied to the
thrill of transgression. But when we come to landscape) the task of attempting to ex-
cavate attitudes toward marginal or repellent landscapes is even further complicated
10 INTRODUCTION
by the fact that great lacunae exist in terms of verbal and visual representations. Lin-
gering in order to pen an extended description or to delineate a view was simply out
of the question when the goal was to put as much space between one's self and the
offending environment as quickly as possible. But the wasteland's resistance to rep-
resentation is at least as interesting theoretically as it is frustrating for the researcher.
This book considers some of the modes of that resistance in two ways: first 1 by out-
lining some of the historical circumstances that frame and shape the early modern
notion of wasteland) treated in chapter 11 "Wasteland;' and in chapter 21 "Improve-
ment/' and second 1 by examining a selection of particular ecologies in greater depth.
When the biblical wasteland was transferred to the English landscape, it appeared
in three principal incarnations: swamp, mountain, and forest. Each is the subject of
one chapter. This book aims to excavate historical attitudes toward these three dif-
ferent typologies of wasteland by identifying the central operative role of disgust.
Focusing on the Fens of eastern England, chapter 3J "Swamp;' appraises descriptions
of the region's muddy waters, putrid flora, and slimy fauna in order to analyze the op-
erations of a visceral disgust. Chapter 4, "Mountain;' dwells on the landscape of Der-
byshire's Peak District in order to consider disgust in its aesthetic dimension, as that
"eminently aesthetic emotion'' so critical to the formulation of eighteenth-century
landscape aesthetics and, in particular, notions of the sublime. In chapter S, "Forest"
(with some focus on the Forest of Dean and the New Forest but more on the role of
artificial plantations) i we encounter a moral disgust, directed at the works and actions
ofhumansi rather than at the landscape itself. Chapter 6i "Wilderness 1 Wasteland 1
Garden/' which pursues this tendency to frame wasteland as something produced by
humans rather than given by nature, and to posit gardening. as an activity designed to
compensate for the destructive effects of culture, serves as a conclusion.
Wasteland is a landscape that in all of its various incarnations elicits a strong
aversive reaction, and this book traces the modes 1 contours/ and effects of that re-
sponse. By doing so1 it intends to establish the importance of wasteland in the con-
struction of some of our most fundamental notions about landscape. The concept of
wasteland has-with both positive and negative consequences-enabled the formu-
lation of a landscape ideal, influenced our management of natural resources/ colored
our attitudes toward newly discovered territories, and directed our attitudes toward
pollution and waste. The ideas 1 attitudes, and beliefs associated with the concept of
wasteland may have deep historical roots, but they continue to inflect our attitudes
and opinions. Although, as the subtitle indicates, this book is a history of wasteland,
rather than a meditation on its contemporary incarnations, it is only by being aware
of this history that we can responsibly address the enormous challenges the post-
industrial wasteland confronts us with today.
11 INTRODUCTION
 MINllll!l!atllilatt'""
CHAPTER I -
~
, 91
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Figure 2. A Digger Manifesto. Note the recurrence
of the words "common'' and "commons:' Gerrard

3APPEALE
~ TothcHoufcof = Winstanley, An Appeal to the House of Commons
(London, 1649). The Henry E. Huntington

WASTELAND -i·
3 COMMONS,!
~ Ddiring their AN s vv
~ VVhether the Common --people
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Library and Art Gallery.

= fhall have the quiet enjoyment of the

Commons
and Wajle Land;
-
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-
,,a., Or whether they :!ballbe under the will of ~
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~ w_rnm,m,R"/pJ,r,,.t']Knight, ond RiclmrJw;,,w..,JB(q; S-0-
46
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upon,hchurhorhercof, fori Trefpaf,,in Drgglng
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On Sunday April 1, 1649, a small band of men carrying spades and other farming ""1-6 in rbe Land of E ~G L .AND.
-~ -,,--,-,-----,,---=-cc--c--c~~~~~
SC,.
...
implements appeared on the common at St. George's Hill near Cobham in Sur- ;I v~nghl,.,,,Oppnjfiouk,jnJ/.,,,fa,m,; but Lo11,,11.igh/,ouf. SO,
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rey and began to dig. Over the next few days, as they prepared the ground to sow
beans, carrots, and parsnips, their leader, Gerrard Winstanley, encouraged their
labor and called upon members of the parish to join them in their project. Soon
the group's numbers increased to thirty or forty men, women, and children, and a
squatters' settlement of ramshackle huts was erected on the edge of the common.
With this act of guerrilla farming, Gerrard Winstanley and his experimental com-
munity of Diggers claimed the wastelands ofEngland as a "common treasury" for
the poor. 1
Winstanley had been a London cloth merchant when, in 1643, hard times
brought on by the Civil War forced him to sell his business and relocate to Surrey
near an estate owned by his father-in-law in Cobham. For five years he scraped to-
gether a living by taking care of a few cows and harvesting winter fodder, but this
meager subsistence evaporated in 1648 when a prolonged drought caused crops and
grass to shrivel and livestock to starve. Reduced once more to indigence, Winstanley
was plunged into a deep depression and suffered a profound spiritual crisis. During
this time he began hearing voices and started to write. Soon words flowed from his
pen: TheMysterieof God Concerningthe Whole Creation,Mankind; TheBreakingof the
Day of God; The Saints'Paradise;and Truth Lifting up hisHead aboveScandalswere
published one after another in 1648 alone. During one of his trances in late 1648
or early 1649, Winstanley heard a voice that gave him precise instructions: "Work
together, Eate Bread together, Declare this all abroad," it intoned, as texts flashed at
2
him from the sky. Determined to obey, he began to formulate a plan to put the in-
junction he had been given into practice.
This plan was outlined in TheNew Law of Righteousness,a small book published
-PrintedincheYear, 1649. E
~XCl:~~•;;v(;~~~~~
four days before the execution of Charles I. Tue book turned Winstanley's religious
convictions into a radical social platform, asserting that the whole earth should be "a
common treasury for every man:• 3 Addressing himself to "you dust of the earth, that
are trod under foot, you poor people," he enjoined the common people to embrace
the Law of Righteousness. Under this "universal law of equity/' "none shall desire to
have more then another, or to be Lord over other, or to lay claim to any thing as his;
this phrase of Mine and Thineshall be swallowed up," and the common people will
say "the earth is ours, not mine, [and will] labour together, and eat bread together
upon the Commons, Mountains, and Hils:' 4 After waiting a few months for God to
reveal precisely where this project should be implemented, eventually Winstanley
was told to go to St. George's Hill, conveniently located just a few miles from his
home, and to dig, manure, and sow grain. In late April, Winstanley published the
Diggers' first manifesto, The TrueLevellersStandardAdvanced,and over the following
months additional Digger communities were established at Iver in Buckinghamshire,
Wellingborough in Northamptonshire, and Coxhall in Essex. Although precise
numbers are difficult to calculate, records indicate that over ninety men 1 women 1 and
children were associated with the Digger movement between its inception in 1649
and its collapse a little over a year later. 5
Winstanley's argument 1 progressively refined in a series of pamphlets and broad-
sides published one after another between the years 1649 and 1652, was that all men
had an equal right to cultivate the earth (fig. 2). In the beginning God created man

12 13 WASTELAND
to be "a Lord over the Creation of the Earth, Cattlei Fishi Fowl, Grasse, Trees;' but
not to enslave any other person. There was no private property, no "1bis is mine 1
and that is yours;' since the earth belonged to no man but God alone. 6 With the Fall
came the end of this egalitarian society 1 however: inequality was born as some men
became selfish, enclosed land (thus transforming it from common to private prop-
erty), and enslaved others to work it. In England this theft had been perpetuated by
William the Conqueror, who had robbed the English people of their birthright by
claiming all land as his own, distributing vast estates to the nobles who had support-
ed him in battle. Centuries lateri in order to fulfill Cromwell's promise to liberate the
English people from the monarchy and its abuses, Parliament was obliged to return
to the commoners the land that was rightfully theirs. By doing so1 the government
would be creating a true Commonwealth 1 freeing England not only from the thiev-
ery and despotism of its Norman conquerorsi but also from the legacy of the Fall.
Winstanley's experiment was begun at a time and place where pressures on land
had been simmering 1 pressures that had erupted into antienclosure riots on numer-
ous occasions. He had witnessed firsthand the effects of enclosure and was troubled
by the way that the transformation of common land into private property had alien-
ated the poorest members of society from their ancestral livelihood. Enclosure had
created a group oflandless laborers who could support themselves only by working
for landowner farmers; this 1 for Winstanley, constituted slavery. Private property and
the inequality it created, the owning of one person by another 1 was contrary to the
precepts of natural law. For Winstanley, the freedom established by natural law guar-
anteed to each individual the right to a means of subsistencei understood as the right
to cultivate the land to grow food. Thusi communal ownership ofland was the only
way to ensure true equality.
Winstanley insisted that the commons of England belonged to her commoners.
The rich could keep their enclosures-he allowed them as much land as they were
able to work themselves-but he claimed the wasteland, the "Commonsi Moun-
tains, and Hils;' for the poor. 7 Estimating that only one third ofEngland's land was
presently under cultivation, he argued that England's wastes could provide more
than "land enough to maintain all her children:' 8 lnAnAppeale to All Englishmenhe
addressed his compatriots, encouraging them with rousing words: "Come 1 those
that are free within 1 turn your Swords into Plough-Shares, and Speares into pruning-
hookes, and break up the Common Land, build you Housesi sow Corne, and take
possession of your own Land 1 which you have recovered out of the hands of the Nor-
man oppressour:' These commons, these wastes, "which would have been fruitfull
with Corne, hath brought forth nothing but heath, mosse 1 furseys [furze, or gorse] 1
and the curse, according to the words of the Scriptures: A fruitful Land is made
14 WASTELAND
barren}becauseof the unrighteousnesseof the Peoplethat ruledtherein}and would not
sufferit to beplanted}becausethey would keep the Poorunder bondage,to maintain their
ownLordlyPower,,and conqueringcovetousnesse." "What hinders you now?" Winstan-
ley asks1 "will you be slaves and beggers still, when you may be Freemen? will you
lie in straitsi and die in poverty, when you may live comfortably?" The time had now
come to fulfill the righteous law: "come/' he enjoins his countrymen, "take Plow &
Spade,build & plant, & make the wast Land fruitfull, that there may be no begger
nor idle person among us; for if the wast land of Englandwere manured by her
Children 1 it would become in a few years the richesti the strongest, and flourishing
Land in the World, and all Englishmenwould live in peace and comfort:''
Despite his stirring rhetoric and open invitationi Winstanley and his Diggers met
with fierce resistance from the local populace. Within the first few weeks of begin-
ning to dig and plant on St. George's Hill, they were attacked by a violent mob of
over one hundred peoplei whose members burned a housei stole tools, and dragged
off several Diggers. Some weeks later, more angry parishioners uprooted the Diggers'
crops 1 destroyed their tools, tore down their houses, and attempted to chase them
off St. George's Hill for good. But the Diggers soon returned, and on the first ofJune
they issued a second manifesto, entitled A Declarationfrom the PoorOppressedPeople
of England,which declared "the Common Land and the Common woods to be a
livelihood for us:' 10 Signed by forty-five peoplei it announced the Diggers' intention
to cut) gatheri and sell wood collected on the common while they waited for their
crops to grow. A few days later 1 a group of soldiers came to the common and
attacked four Diggers working therei beating one so brutally that he was not ex-
pected to survive. Their troubles continued 1 but the Diggers refused to be daunted.
In July, Winstanley and a few others were arrested for trespassing and finedj in
August, Winstanley was arrested and fined again. Soon afterwards, the Diggers left
St. George's Hill and reestablished their colony at Little Heath in nearby Cobham,
where they did not fare much better. There they aroused the enmity of the minister
of Horsley, Parson Platt 1 who together with other local men harassed members of
the Digger community over the following months by brutally beating them on sev-
eral occasions, causing one woman to miscarry 1 burning their houses and furniturei
and scattering their belongings up and down the common. In the spring of 1650,
the Diggers were finally thrown off the common and threatened with death if they
were to try to return. Platt even went so far as to hire men to keep a twenty-four-hour
watch on the heath. 11 Barred from returning to their homes 1 the Diggers disbanded 1
their yearlong experiment in civil disobedience at an end.
Two years passed in silence. But in 1652, Winstanley published his last, most
important work 1 TheLaw of Preedomin a Plaiform.Dedicated to Oliver Cromwell) it
15 WASTELAND
takes the insights voiced in Winstanley's Digger manifestos and develops them into
a more comprehensive system, presenting a protocommunist vision of communal
ownership and social equality. Although ultimately the Diggers were small in num-
ber and their movement was geographically restricted and short-lived, Winstanley's
union of agricultural and spiritual aims, his impassioned defense of the freedom of
the individual, and his cogent articulation of the relationship between enclosure and
poverty added an eloquent and radical dissenting voice to contemporary debates
about land and its value. In particular, his identification of the "Commons, Moun-
tains, and Hils" as the domain of his new 1utopian society invested the wasteland
with a heightened significance. Winstanley's use of the terms "wasteland" or "Wast
land" was neither casual nor accidental: the language itself harbored connotations
that made the link between the temporal and the spiritual not only possible, but al-
most inevitable. For Winstanley, as for his contemporaries who were equally steeped
in the biblical tradition, to cultivate the wasteland was to embark on the work of
atonement. Winstanley's choice of English wastelands as his terrain of operation
meant that he aimed not only for a complete social reformation, but for divine
sanction and spiritual redemption as well.
Landscapes of Redemption
The Old English precursor of"wasteland" was westelonde,or, more commonly;
westen;found principally in biblical texts, the term had religious connotations from
very early on. 12 In early versions of both the Old and New Testaments 1the westen is
a place ofbodily danger and hardship: its desolation, its harsh climate, its lack of sus-
tenance, and its menacing creatures are so inimical to human life that merely getting
out of the westen alive constitutes a miracle. The westen tests not only the body, but
also the soul: survival in the westen is dependent on God, requiring faith and sub-
mission to divine will. The westen is a place of trial and tribulation; even more im-
portantly1 the westen is also the site of redemption. In the Old Testament, the westen
was the place to which the Israelites were banished 1 the place where they were made
to suffer and to atone. In the New Testament, John the Baptist, Christ, and the her-
mit saints go into the westen willingly, to test and prove themselves. So while the
Old Testament frames exile to the westen as a punishment, in the Christian tradition
it is seen as an opportunity to acquire and demonstrate sanctity. The westen is not
merely the place where redemption can occur, it is in fact the place throughwhich
redemption can be won.
Around the beginning of the thirteenth century, the Old English root west-began
to be supplanted by the Anglo-Norman wast-.At the same time, usage began to shift
16 WASTELAND
from noun to adjective and verb-in other words 1 whereas in Old English we tend
to find westenused to refer to a thing, beginning in the early Middle English period,
we instead increasingly find wasteused to modify a noun or to signify an action. 13
The Middle English verb waste comes from the Old French gaster,which meant to
devastate 1damage, ravage 1spoil; to spend or squander. The new noun "wasteland"
[wast-+ land] that replaced westenretained the old meaning of an empty and deso-
late place 1but gained a new inflection suggesting that the emptiness was due to some
great devastation or destruction. Where westenhad been used to refer to an existing
state ofland, "wasteland" was land that had become so as the result of some prior
action. Furthermore 1due to the connotations of spending and squandering the term
had now acquired, to designate a land as wasteland also implied ascribing a moral
value. Thus 1"wasteland" was now also used to refer to land that was being improper-
ly used in some way. Concurrent with this subtle shift in meaning, and undoubtedly
contributing to it 1 was the appearance of two words new to English, "desert" and
"wilderness;' which replaced the Old English westen,and signified an empty unin-
habited land without necessarily conveying the associations of devastation
and moral censure that had now become attached to "wasteland." 14
By the beginning of the seventeenth century, the word "wasteland" had under-
gone further changes in both usage and meaning; its appearance in the Authorized
King James Version of the Bible of 1611 cemented a particular set of associations
and connotations for subsequent generations of the English-speaking world. The
KingJames Biblei which aimed to replace earlier translations including the Bishops',
Tyndale, Coverdale, and Geneva bibles, had the goal of standardizing the biblical
text and purging it of textual glosses that were thought to harbor seditious potential.
Its language tended to be both archaic and Latinized, constructing the sense of a
continuous Anglican tradition with roots that reached deep into the past 1 and impos-
ing a new stylistic homogeneity that left a lasting imprint on the English language
and its literatures. 15
No book has had a greater impact on the English language than
the King James Bible, and it was undoubtedly this text that established the unparal-
leled resonance of the concept of wasteland in the English cultural imagination.
The King James Bible tends to use the newer word "wilderness" to replace the
older westen.Like the westen, the wilderness is a desolate, uninhabited place; it is
barren 1arid, and overgrown with thorns and briars. The wilderness is "a land of
desert and of pities, ... a land of drought, and of the shadow of death, ... a land that
no man passeth through, and where no man dwelt" (Jeremiah 2:6-7). The wilder-
ness is a place where one risks getting lost, for it is a place "where there is no way"
(Job 12:24 ). Here losing one's way is not only literal, but also metaphorical, for the
wilderness is the place where the Israelites strayed from God. Submission to God is
17 WASTELAND
required in order to survive the wilderness 1 for God shows his power by making "a
way in the wilderness" (Isaiah 43:19-20) and by bringing his chosen people back to
civilization. ThusJ although one can get lost in the wilderness, it is there that one can
also find onesel£
Whereas at times the KingJames Bible uses the terms "wasteland" and "wilder-
ness" interchangeably/ as when the Lord finds Jacob "in a desert land, and in the
waste howlingwildernesse" (Deuteronomy 32: 10), more often there is an important
distinction in the contexts in which the two terms are deployed. "Wilderness" in the
biblical texts tends to signify a land that is and has always been barren, while "waste-
land" is more often used in contexts where a place is barren and desolate as the result
of an act of destruction 1 as when God threatens: ''And the cities that are inhabited
shall be laid waste, and the land shall be desolate, and ye shall know that I am the
Lord" (Ezekiel 12:19-20). God manifests his displeasure and his power by destroy-
ing the cities and fields, and a devastated region displays the effects of his anger. The
state of a landscape is thus indicative of its standing in the eyes of the Lord. Arid,
barren, dark 1 and desolate landscapes are manifestations of God's censure, while ver-
dant landscapes ornamented with rivers 1 meadows 1 and fruit-laden trees recall Eden
and indicate divine benediction.
It is possible to transform a ruined and desolate place into a verdant one 1 how-
ever/ and such a transformation is proof of redemption and salvation/ as when the
Lord says: "Iu the day that I shall have cleansed you from all your iniquities, I will
also cause you to dwell in the cities, and the wastes shall be builded. / And the deso-
late land shall be tilled, whereas it lay desolate in the sight of all that passed by. / And
they shall say, This land that was desolate is become like the Garden ofEden; and
the waste, and desolate, and ruined cities are become fenced 1 and are inhabited"
(Ezekiel 36:33-38 ). Redemption transforms the wasteland into the garden: "For
the Lord shall comfort Zion: he will comfort all her waste places, and he will make
her wilderness like Eden, and her desert like the garden of the Lord" (Isaiah 51:3 ).
Wasteland 1 wilderness, desert. These terms 1 here used so interchangeably,
nonetheless had subtly different connotations. Like both desert and wilderness 1 "Clouds of confusion" and the outspread wings of Death. The Valley is inhabited
wasteland was desolate, barren, and threatening. Whereas "wilderness" tended to
be used to refer to a primitive or original state of nature, however, "wasteland/' due
to its associations with acts of devastation/ was more frequently linked with the
postlapsarian landscape. But even though the wasteland constituted visible proof of
divine censureJ the Bible also taught that it was by transforming the wasteland into a
garden that salvation was to be achieved. Thus 1 whereas wilderness was the place in
which the lone individual might find salvation 1 wasteland 1 instead, was the landscape
whose transformation by a community could result in redemption for all. These as-
18 WASTELAND
sociations between wasteland and the moral cycle of condemnation 1
devastation,
atonement 1 and redemption would have been utterly familiar to any churchgoing
person in seventeenth-century England. And with the publication of the seventeenth
century's most popular work of prose fiction, John Bunyan's The Pilgrim'sProgress
1
16
the concept of wasteland was to gain an even greater degree of cultural resonance.
Ecologies of Fear
Ihe Pilgrim'sProgressfrom this World1 to Ihatwhich is to Come is one of the most
popular books ever printed. First published in 1678, it went through eleven editions
by the time ofBunyan's death in 1688, twenty editions by 1695, and thirteen hun-
dred editions by 1938. It has never been out of print. 17 Bunyan's allegory recounts
the journey of his pilgrim, Christian, from his home in the City of Destruction to the
Celestial City. Christian's encounters along the way with the Slough of Despond, the
Wall Salvation, the Hill Difficulty, the Valley of Humiliation, the Valley of the Shad-
ow ofDeath 1 the Hill Lucre 1 the Enchanted Ground, and the River of Death present
temptations that must be resisted/ difficulties that must be overcome, and dangers
that must be survived. The allegorical landscape he traverses is thus furnished with
objects whose names mirror their effects: the slough breeds despairj the hill is a
difficult climbj one valley induces humility, the other poses mortal dangerj the en-
chanted ground bewitches; and so on (fig. 3 ). Christian's journey is thus both spatial
and spiritual 1 external and internal: his physical trials and tribulations serve to test
and, consequently, to strengthen his faith, eventually gaining him successful entry
to the Celestial City and assuring his salvation.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death is Bunyan's version of the biblical wasteland.
It is described by Bunyan, paraphrasing the prophet Jeremiah/ as a solitary place, as
''.AWilderness, a Land of Desarts, and of Pits, a Land of Drought, and of the shadow
of death, a Land that no Man (but a Christian) passeth through, and where no man
dwelt:' The Valley of the Shadow of Death is "as dark as pitch;' overshadowed by
by hobgoblins, satyrs, and dragons of the pit, and is full of dreadful sounds, doleful
voices, frightening rushings to and fro 1 and "a continual howling and yelling, as
of a People under unutterable misery:' The path through it is very narrow, flanked
on the right by a bottomless ditch and on the left by a dangerous quagmire, and
in the middle of the Valley is the mouth of Hell, a burning pit that belches flame
and smoke. Beyond this is the second part of the Valley, which, if anything, is even
more dangerous/ being full of "Snares 1 Trapsi Gins 1 and Nets/' "Pits, Pitfalls 1 deep
holes and shelvings:' The Valley of the Shadow of Death is the antithesis of the
19 WASTELAND
 fi,1c./l.
I,
I:
II
i whether they was smothered in the bottom, by the damps that commonly arise, of
I,
,!'
Figure 3. Thomas Condor,Map of ThePilgrimSProgress(London: Trapp and Hogg, 1778).
The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
gardenlike Land of Beulah located just outside the Celestial City, being instead
"every whit dreadful," and "utterly without Order:' The epitome of the threateniug
and treacherous landscape, the reincarnation of the biblical wasteland, it contains
every variety of danger Bunyan can summon, and offers the ultimate test. Christian
battles with the Devil, avoids the ditch, quagmire, pits, and pitfalls by staying on the
narrow path, and survives, but only with divine intervention: at his darkest moment
he hears the words from the Twenty-third Psalm: "Though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear none ill, for thou art with me," and they give him
the courage to press on. 18
But other natural features pose threatsi too-in fact, the entire landscape of The
Pilgrim'sProgressis one of physical and spiritual testing. The Slough of Despond is a
muddy, miry bog that Christian falls into soon after setting out. Bunyan describes it
as the place where «the scum and filth that attends conviction for sin doth continu-
ally run, and therefore it is called the Slough of Despond: for still as the sinner is
awakened about his lost condition 1 there ariseth in his soul many fears 1 and doubts
20 WASTELAND
and discouraging apprehensions, which all of them get together, and settle in this
place." The Hill Difficulty is a precipitous hill that must be ascended. Although at its
base Christian is presented with two alternatives to the way that leads straight up-
one called Danger that leads to a great wood, and another called Destruction that
leads to "a wide field of darkMountains"-Christian knows to keep to the straight
and narrow, even though it is the most difficult path. The Hill Lucre is a small hill
containing a silver mine, which Christian and his companions are tempted to inves-
tigate. Christian resists, but his traveling companions go over 1 and "whether they fell
into the Pit 1 by looking over the brink thereof, or whether they went down to dig, or
these things I am not certain," says the narrator, "but this I observed: that they never
was seen again in the waY:'19 Finally, in the River of Death, the last obstacle before
the Celestial City, the shallowness of the water varies according to the strength of
one's faith-presenting a firm bottom to those whose belief is secure, but treacher-
ous depths to those who doubt. Here, landscape mirrors the state of the soul.
Although ThePilgrim, Progresswas conceived while Bunyan was in the Bedford
County Gaol (serving a sentence for preaching to nonconformist assemblies), by the
time the book appeared in print he had been released and was enjoying a successful
period of itinerant preaching. Twentieth-century scholars have noted that Christian's
journey from the City of Destruction to the Celestial City has many parallels with
20
the route along the main road from Bedford south to London. According to these
interpretations, which have identified at least twenty-one of the places mentioned in
ThePilgrim, Progress,the City of Destruction is Bedford; the Slough of Despond has
been correlated with the large clay deposits to either side of the road from Bedford
to Ampthill (although it might instead be identifiable as the place near Hocldey in
the Hole that the antiquary William Camden in his Britannia describes as a "miry
way[ ...] verie troublesome to travelers;' adding the etymological note that "the old
Englishmen our progenitors called deepe myre hock and hocks""); Salvation Wall
has been matched with the four-mile-long brick wall enclosing the Bedford Estate
beside the Ridgmont to Woburn Road; the Hill Difficulty with Ampthill Hill, the
steepest in the country; the Valley of the Shadow of Death with Millbrook Gorge,
just to the west of Ampthill; the very deep River of Death with the Thames; and
22
the Celestial City with London.
In ThePilgrim~ProgressBunyan transformed his familiar surroundings into an
allegorical landscape, investing particular natural features with moral qualities and
affective capabilities and relocating the biblical wasteland to Bedfordshire. Chris-
topher Hill has argued 1 furthermore, that ThePilgrim~Progressalso functions as an
1 antienclosure allegory, in which the land enclosed and guarded by Giant Despair is
21 WASTELAND
set in contrast to Immanuel's Land, which was common to all pilgrims. 23 Bunyan's
translation of his familiar surroundings into a universal moral landscape makes the
point that wasteland can be located anywhere, as its seat is really in the soul of the
individual. But Bunyan's use oflocal features to fashion his allegorical landscape ties
in to other traditionsi too. In particular, his deployment of certain landscape types
as the places for Christian's testing 1 the starring roles granted to swamps, mountains)
pits, and forests, and their recurring incarnations as places of intense difficulty and
danger, point to other ways in which the biblical concept of wasteland had condi-
tioned popular conceptions oflandscape by this time. For seventeenth-century
English men and women knew very well that wasteland was not only to be found
in the Biblei in literature, and in the human soul, but that it was present in every
county ofEngland as well.

Terrains of Uselessness and Possibility

During the medieval and early modern periodsi land was thought of in dichotomous
terms: there was cultivated landi and wasteland. Cultivated land included arable and
pasture; wasteland (or waste land, as it was also written) was everything else. Waste-
land included forests and chases, heaths and moors, marshes and fens, cliffs, rocks,
and mountains. It was a category that accommodated a variety of ecologies united
primarily by their wildness, by their resistance to domesticationi by their dearth of
conventional signs of civilization such as villages 1 cottages 1 farm animalsi or culti-
vated fields. Up until the Civil War, much of this terrain was royal property. But with
the confiscation of church 1 Crown, and royalist lands by Parliament during the Com-
monwealth, the fate of vast new areas ofland fell into government hands, and what
had formerly been no more than a sporadic focus of attention was transformed into a
pressing concern.
Figure 4. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImproverImproved (London, 1652 ).
1his historical moment is captured well in the frontispiece to Walter Blith's The The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
EnglishImproverImproved of 1652 (fig. 4).'4 Under a banner readingvrvE LA RE
PUBLICK is an escutcheon that unites the English cross of St. George and the Irish
lyre, and a laurel-framed oval cartouche containing the book's title and its author's (Isaiah 2:4 ). With the Civil War at an end, it was time to move on to other concerns.
name. To either side of the cartouche we see the opposing forces of the Civil War: Schemes to convert wasteland to agricultural uses proliferated, displaying the same
the Cavaliers on horseback advancing from the left, the Roundheads on foot coming kind of millenarian zeal that infused so many other post-Civil War projects, and
forward to meet them from the right. As our eyes travel down the page, we see each the task of wasteland reclamation was identified as central to the rebuilding of the
group turning on its heels and retreating. Further down, weapons and armor have nation.
been discarded and farming implements taken up and put to use, as a Cavalier plows According to the doctor and alchemist Robert Child, it was commonly held that
and a Roundhead digs a trench. The quote around the cartouche serves as a caption: there were "more wastelands in England . .. than in all Europebesides, considering
25
They shall beatetheir Swordsinto Plowshares/ And their Spearesinto PruningHooks the quantity ofland:' In a long letter written in 1651 to the agricultural reformer

22 WASTELAND 23 WASTELAND
Samuel Hartlib, Child identified wasteland as one of twenty-one problems, or "de-
ficiencies," plaguing Enghsh agriculture. Comprising six different kinds of terrain-
marshes and fens, forests and chases, "dry heathy commons/' parks, "rushy lands,"
and heaths-England's wastelands were united by their unproductiveness. Marshes
and fens were too wet for cropsj chases, forests 1 and parks were overgrown with
brambles, brakes 1 and furzej rushy lands were choked by tenacious rhizomesj and
heaths were infested with furze, broom, and heather.
The unproductivity of wasteland was not a foregone conclusion, however. Play-
ing on the dual connotations of waste as both something useless and something that
was not being used properly, Child's discussion frames wasteland as both problem
and possibility. ThusJ much of his discussion is devoted to recommendations for the
improvement of different kinds of wasteland. Bogs and fens could be drained, while
the brambles and brakes that flourished in chases and forests could be burned and
used to manufacture potash, a good fertilizer. Parks were reserves of timber, and the
deer they sheltered were a source ofhides and venison. Parks, furthermore, were
eminently suited for raising young cattle, which supplied such commodities as but-
ter, cheese, leather, and tallow. Rushy lands could be converted to arable fields by
trenching, mowing, fertilizing, and plowing, and the furze and broom growing wild
on heaths, though resistant to complete eradication, could at least provide roots and
branches for fences and firewood. Dry, heathy commons could be made to bear good
crops if enclosed and cultivated according to the "Husbandry of Flanders," which
consisted of a system of crop rotation in which wheat, flax, turnips, and clover were
sown in turn. Finally, outmoded forms ofland tenure, such as copyhold and knight
service, which discouraged tenants from improving their lands, were "badges of our
Norman slavery" and should be abolished, with the system used in Flanders that
rewarded tenants for their land improvement instituted in their stead. 26
Of all of the twenty-one "deficiencies" Child enumerated in his letter to Hartlib,
the issue of wasteland improvement was among the most pressing. 'This was because
the consequences of wasteland went beyond the merely economic. Child's conten-
tion that "we know, that it is the Lord that maketh barrenplacesfruitful and he like-
wise that turnethfruitful/ Lands into barrennesse"explicitly casts the contrast between
fertile garden and desolate wasteland in biblical terms: the presence of flourishing,
productive land was proof of God's blessing upon England and its inhabitants. In-
deed, his twenty-first deficiency, "That by reasonof oursins we havenot the blessing
of the Lord upon ourLabours,"suggests that the husbandman must not only labor,
experiment with new techniques, and communicate knowledge, but also that he
must devote himself to prayer: improving wasteland by making the barren fruitful
was to strive for divine forgiveness. And when Child states that indeed he hopes that
24 WASTELAND
England has more wasteland than any other country in Europe because if so, then
there is hope "that it will be mended," he frames the question of wasteland not just
as a problem, but as an unparalleled opportunity. By foregrounding the improving
power of enclosure, however, Child offered a very different vision of Commonwealth
England than that proposed by Gerrard Winstanley. And it was in this clash over the
merits of enclosure, and on what "improvement" and "proper use" might prove to
be, that wasteland became a field of contestation.27
Wasteland as Common Ground
Although the landscapes most frequently mentioned in seventeenth-century dis-
cussions of wasteland are fen, forest, mountain, and heath, another term appears
with notable regularity, one that was so close a synonym that it was often uttered
in almost the same breath: the common. When we examine seventeenth-century
literature, whether husbandry treatises, government documents, or popular pam-
phlets and broadsides, we find a striking slippage between the terms «common" and
"waste:' Robert Child includes commons among his six principal forms of waste-
land. In his writings, Winstanley uses the terms "Wast land;' "common/' and "heath"
ahnost interchangeably. 'This slippage points to another set of resonances: at this
time, "wasteland" referred not only to wild and uncultivated regions, lands outside of
and opposed to civilization, but also to a precise category ofland within the English
manorial system.
So if a wasteland could also be a common, what exactly was a common? In his
1652 tract Common-Good,or the Improvementof Commons,Forrests,and Chases,by
Inclosure1 Silvanus Taylor identified six principal types of common: common fields
located near towns or villages that were used mostly for tillage (open fields, for
example); meadows and marshes that were good for pasture; dry grounds known
as downs 1 chiefly used for grazing sheep; bushy lands that were suitable for raising
young cattle and horses; heaths overspread with furze and moss, on which sheep and
cattle were bred; and, finally, forests and chases used for the preservation of red and
28
fallow deer "to the prejudice of the Inhabitants adjoining:' Although this definition
might do more to complicate than to clarify, one thing is clear: commons were lands
defined not by their ecologies, but, like wastelands, by their relation to notions of use
(figs. S, 6).
As the historians]. L. and Barbara Hammond noted in their 1911 classic,
The VillageLabourer,"it is difficult for us1 who think of a common as a wild sweep
of heather and beauty and freedom, saved for the enjoyment of the world in the
midst of guarded parks and forbidden meadows, to realise that the commons that
25 WASTELAND

Figure 5. A town common. Anonymous artist, Shrewsburyand the River Severn,ca. 1720. Oil on canvas,
77.5 x 181.6 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
disappeared from so many an English village in the eighteenth century helonged to a
very elaborate 1 complex 1 and ancient economY:'29 'This economy was a legacy of the
Norman Invasion. hnmediately after his conquest 1 William I claimed all of the land
of England for the Crown and systematically dispossessed the native aristocracy of
its landholdings, redistributing them among the noblemen who had supported him
in battle. 'This vast reorganization ofland 1 later enshrined in Domesday Book 1 estab~
lished a system oflandholding that held sway until the age of enclosure. Although
all ofEngland's land belonged to the king, the Church and the aristocracy held and
managed large parcels under a system of feudal tenure. The basic unit of this sys-
tem was the manor 1 which consisted of a group of buildings-including the manor
house 1 the church 1 and the village with its tenements-and its associated area of cul-
tivated fields. The manor's landholdings were divided into three categories: arablei
pasture 1 and what was known as the common or waste. The permanent arable and
permanent pasture made up the cultivated areas of the manori while the common or
waste constituted the uncultivated portion of the lord's estates. Thus wasteland had
two related meanings in the early English system ofland tenure: it was both the un-
cultivated land that lay outside of each manor's holdings (and that ultimately was the
property of the Crown) 1 as well as certain portions of the manor's own land.
26 WASTELAND
Figure 6. A village common. Arthur Nelson, A Distant View of Hythe Villageand Church,Kent, ca. 1767.
Oil on panel, 57.2 x 109.2 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Fund.
The lord of the manor and his tenants were enmeshed in a complex system of
mutual rights and obligations that governed the cultivation of the manor's lands 1 and
occupation of one of the village's tenements came with rights over the manor's arable
fields 1 its pasturesi and its wasteland. The large arable fields were cultivated accord-
ing to the open-field system. Each field was divided into long, thin strips, divided
one from another by furrows 1 and each of these strips was associated with one of the
houses in the village (fig. 7). Thus, each tenant had the right, through residence, to
cultivate some particular nwnber of arable strips. Crops were planted according to
a predetermined three-field rotation system that ensured that the manor as a whole
operated as a unit. The manor's arable land was divided into three fields 1 and each
field would be planted in rotation with wheat in the first year 1 with "spring corn"
(barley, oats, peas, or beans) in the second year, and left to lie fallow in the third year.
Thus, at any given time, two fields would be under cultivation and one would lie fal-
low. Each tenant was entitled to farm strips in each of these three fields, and although
some tenants farmed many strips 1 and others just a few1 the strips would always
be scattered all over the village's landholdings. And because oxen and horses were
needed to plow the land 1 and sheep and cows to manure it 1 in addition to the right
to cultivate one or several strips of the arable fields 1 tenants also had rights to pasture
their animals in the common meadows or hayfields of the village.
The third category ofland, the common or waste 1 was the land associated with
the manor and village that was neither arable nor pasture~it was land that was not
27 WASTELAND
Figure 7. Strip farming in open fields, Laxton, Nottinghamshire. Laxton is one of a tiny handful of remaining
open-field villages. Plan ofEarlManvers's Estate in Laxton and Moorhouse, 1862. Manuscripts and Special
Collections, The University of Nottingham, Manvers Collection Ma 5420.

28 WASTELAND 29 WASTELAND
at that moment under cultivation nor destined for a specific productive use. The
waste belonged in the first place to the Crown and secondarily to the lord of the
manor 1 but tenants had rights over it1 known as rights of common. Thus 1 the waste
was also known as a common because it was an area ofland subject to rights of com-
mon. A right of common was "a right which one or more persons have to take or use
some portion of that which another's soil produces"-in other words) it was a right
of use rather than of property-and principal variants included Common of Pasture 1
Common ofMastJ Common ofEstovers, Common ofTurbary, Common of Soil,
and Common of Piscary.
Common of Pasture and Common of Mast both related to animal grazing. Com-
mon of Pasture was the right granted to tenants to pasture a specified number and
type of animal in the common meadows and hayfields, in the open fields during the
fallow period or after they were thrown open in the wake of the harvest and gleaning,
and in the lord's waste. Common of Mast, attached specifically to forest parishes, was
the right to turn pigs out to forage in the autumn for beech mast, acorns, and other

Figure 9. Common ofEstovers. "Thomas Gainsborough, The Woodcutter'.s

Return,ca. 1773. Oil on
canvas. Reproduction by kind permission of His Grace the Duke ofRutland, Belvoir Castle,
Belvoir NG32 lPE, United Kingdom.

nuts. In Thomas Gainsborough's WoodedLandscapewith a Cottageand Shepherd(fig.

Figure 8. Common of Pasture. Thomas Gainsborough, WoodedLandscapewith a Cottageand Shepherd,1748-50.
Oil on canvas, 43.2 x 54.3 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
8)1 we see a young shepherd exercising his right to Common of Pasture, as he sits
with his dog under a tree and nonchalantly surveys a few woolly sheep grazing in the
clearing below. Painted around 1750, at a time when the enclosure movement was
beginning to gain real momentum 1 this work idealizes a form of livelihood that was
to come increasingly under threat. Common of Estovers was the right to cut or take
wood from forests and copses for fuel, fencing, or building repairs; Common ofTur-
barywas the right to dig peat or turf for fuel; and Common of Soil was the right to
take sand, gravel, stone, coal, or other minerals from the lord's property (figs. 9-11).
Finally, the less widespread Common of Piscary constituted the right to fish in wa-
ters located on the lord's land (fig. 12 ). According to the historian of enclosure

30 WASTELAND 31 WASTELAND
 interaction with iti with emphasis on the communal over the individuali the public
over the private. As a model it focuses attention on the notion of proper usei and pro-
motes an attitude of stewardship rather than either aggressive exploitation or remote
contemplation. But even though the customs associated with rights of common were
enshrined in tradition and helped to maintain the fabric of a communityj the value of
these rights was not easy to gaugei and this indeterminacy led to fierce debates over
land and its uses that were to mark indelibly the course of English history.

Gleaning, Foraging, and Poaching

For generations of historians working on England's agrarian history; the common

Figure 10, Common ofTurbary.JosephMallord William Tumer 1 PeatBog, Scotland,ca. 1808,
fromLiber Studiorum (1807-19). Watercolor on paper, 190 x 268 mm.© Tate, London, 2013.
has been contested ground. At the beginning of the twentieth century, J. L. and Bar-
bara Hammond characterized the common as the "nursery" of the English villagej
its disappearance meant the extinction of traditional English life. 31 For their contem-
porary E. C. K. Gonner 1 its value was more debatable. By the 1960s 1 most historians,
following the lead ofJ. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay, had agreed that the rights of
common amounted to little more than a "thin and squalid curtain'' separating the

E. C. K. Ganner, the principal common rights "taken together supply the means
whereby the system of cultivation was maintained) the wants of the tenants other
than those met by the product of the arable and the meadow were supplied, and full
use made both of the waste and of the land in cultivation at such time as the crops
were not in the ground. They compose an intricate mesh of mutual privileges and
obligations which gave permanence and stability to the system of cultivation and
rendered its alteration and improvement difficult:' 30
The term "common" comes from the French commune1 or municipal corporation 1

and ultimately from the Latin communisisignifying a communityj or the common

body of the people of any place or, more broadly, any collective entity. The word is
used in the expression of concepts such as common law, common wealth (or com-
mon weal), and common good, all of which ultimately find their roots in the Latin
notion of respublica (concern of the people)i from which our notion of republic is
also derived. Thus the rights of common associated with wasteland were understood
as rights accorded to a communityj and as such were often exercised by members of
a village acting together-we see illustrations of this kind of group activity in Mor-
land's The GravelDiggers(see fig. 11) as well as in Turner's PeatBog, Scotland (see
Figure 11. Common of Soil. George Morland (1763-1804), The GravelDiggers.
fig. 10 ). The exercise of these rights assumed a particular view oflandscape and one's
Oil on wood, 178 x 229 mm.© Tate, London, 2013.

32 WASTELAND 33 WASTELAND
poor from utter destitution, but more recently, a group of revisionist historians has
questioned these conclusions. 32 J.M. NeesonJ in particular, has insisted on highlight~
ing the myriad ways in which common rights generated an irreplaceable component
of the peasant economy. In her important Commoners:CommonRight, Enclosures,
and SocialChangein Englandof 1993, Neeson presents a compelling inventory of
the products that could be foraged and gleaned from common fenJ forestJ and heath
wastelands. She convincingly demonstrates that for seventeenth- and eighteenth-
century commoners/ wastelands were anything but useless. 33
Wasteland provided those entitled to rights of common with food, fuelJ and
raw materials. Wood was a particularly valuable resource/ used for fuel, for building
and repairing buildings and fences, and for making tools and household objects.
Common ofEstovers did not sanction felling trees or cutting offlarge branches/
but protected the right to gather dead or fallen wood, "lops and tops;' "snapwood"
(wood that snapped easily off the tree), or whatever might be gotten "by hook or by
34
crook" (meaning the shepherd's crook or the agricultural laborer's weeding hook).
Thomas Gainsborough's The Woodcutter's Return of 1772-1773 (see fig. 9) vividly
suggests the contribution such wood might make to a poor laborer's household) as
Figure 12. Common of Piscary. 1homas Smith of Derby, A WoodedLandscapewith a Stream and a Fisherman,
a man, bent over by the weight of his gathered branches 1 arrives at the door of his ca. 1749. Oil on copper, 12.4 x 18.1 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
modest cottage where the numerous members of his family await his homecoming.
The central compositional element of the painting is the tree that almost seems to
grow out of the cottage, its placement suggesting a parallel between tree and building plants like roses, violetsi cowslips, marigolds, crocus, and mustard all grew wild and
as two analogous forms of shelter. With most of its branches now reduced to jagged had a variety of culinary and medicinal uses. 35 BirdsJ rabbits, and other small game
stumps (and one dramatically angled branch dangling just above the man's load, its not protected by Forest Law could be hunted and snared, and fish could be had in
placement suggesting that it too will soon be joining the gathered hoard), the tree's the lakes and streams where Common of Piscary prevailed. Larger game might be
mutilated condition bears witness to the family's particularly vigorous exercise of poached, though punishment was severe. Wild plants could also be used for feeding
Common ofEstovers, and the hardship that has fueled it. Other types of fuel to be animals. In addition to letting out cows, sheepJ geese/ and pigs to graze according to
gleaned from the waste included furze and fern gathered from heaths and moorsJ agreements associated with Common of Pasture and of Mast, furze was often recom-
and peat and turf, whose cutting, sanctioned by Common ofTurbary, was often a mended as a good fodder for cattle and horses. Thomas Smith of Derby's A Wooded
communal activity (see fig. 10). While furze produced a flame powerful enough to Landscapewith a Stream and a Fisherman(see fig. 12) illustrates the numerous ways
fuel bakehouses and limekilns, almost any dry plant material could stoke a hearth- in which a woodland area might provide subsistence for both humans and animals:
dry leaves, twigs, wood shavings 1 bark-all could be collected and used to keep a the shadowy fisherman quietly exercising his right to Common of Piscary is kept
pot boiling or to roast a birdJ as well as to light and heat a home. company by a scattering of cattle taking advantage of Common of Pasture, while the
Foods that could be foraged or gleaned included berries (including blackberries, man and boy in the center of the composition seem to be on the lookout for a catch
raspberries) gooseberries, cloudberries, bilberries, rowan berries) elderberries, and of small game.
wild strawberries)j fruits like crab apples, medlars, sloes, and green pearsj herbs like Foraged plants and other materials also had numerous household uses. Rushes,
fennelJ mint 1 marjoram 1 and chamomile; salad leavesJ borage, wild leeks, dandelions, especially prevalent in marsh and fen parishes, but which also grew plentifully near
hawthorn buds, and other edible greens; and, of course, acorns, walnuts 1 hazel- many brooks and ponds 1 were woven into thatch 1 matsJ chair seatsJ and baskets 1
nuts, chestnuts 1 and many kinds of edible mushrooms in forest parishes. Flowering strewn on cottage floors, and used to make rushlights-an economical and widely

34 WASTELAND 35 WASTELAND
 Figure 13.John Varley (1778-1842),
A Woman Gleaner.Graphite and
watercolor on paper, 237 x 196 mm.
© Tate, London, 2013.
used source of artificial light made by removing the core of the soft rush (Juncusef
fusus) and soaking it in fat or drippings. When ignited, rushlights would burn for
about an hour, producing a bright and smoke-free light." Heather, that staple plant
of upland moors 1 was fashioned into thatchi broomsi ropesi mattress stuffing, and
knife handles 1 and its flowers were used to dye fabric and to flavor drinks. 37 Fern or
bracken was an excellent mattress material) bramble could be used as twine, and
birch twigs made good brooms and whisks. Feathers and stray tufts of wool could
be collected and saved to stuff pillows and quilts, while sand gathered from common
land could be scattered on cottage floors or used as a scouring agent. 1his is only
a fraction of the many products of the waste that formed a staple part of the early
modern economy.
Gleaning and foraging were activities undertaken not only by the poorest mem-
bers of a parish, but also, to varying degrees, by individuals at all levels of the social
scale. 38 In particular, they offered ways for womeni children, and the elderly to con-
tribute materially to their own households (fig. 13 ). Some items, such as berries or
flowers, could be collected and sold locally. Game too might be sold, though if it
had been poached, the exchange would have to be clandestine. But on the whole,
because they were materials and products that were obtained freely or illegally, and
because once obtained they most likely would have been bartered, given as giftsi or
36 WASTELAND
put to use directly in one's own householdi the products of the wasteland tended to
fall outside of the usual byways of commerce. This has made their exact value and
role in the domestic economy virtually impossible to calculate. Although far from
negligiblei the uses of waste were at the timei and remain today, resistant to quantifi-
cation. But this resistance was troublingi and as debates over the value of commons
and common rights grew more heated as the seventeenth century drew to a close 1
proponents of enclosure found a new premise for their beliefs in the works of John
Locke, who furnished the concept of private property with a trenchant philosophical
justification.
Wasteland and the Politics of Property
In the beginningall the WorldwasAmerica. The multiple meanings of wasteland are
eloquently evoked by John Locke's famous phrase. Locke's robust defense of private
property, articulated in his Two Treatisesof Governmentof 1690, hinged on a complex
definition of the word "waste'' that was intlected by a biblical tradition as well as by
conditions ofland ownership particular to seventeenth-century England. 39 "Waste-
land," for Lockei was a complex term that conflated misty origins and contemporary
conditions; the raw and the pure; wilderness and potential paradise. In Locke's com-
pelling and highly intluential argument, a notion of wasteland that had been devel-
oping over the course of the century gained a precise and powerful form.
In the beginning, Locke explained, God created the world for humans to use and
enjoy. Given to all in commoni the earth in its original state furnished some means
of subsistence~acorns and apples festooned its trees; beasts, whose meat could be
eaten and skins used for clothing 1 roamed freely. But the primitive wildness of the
original globe was not seen as a golden age; rather 1 «land that is left wholly to Nature 1
that hath no improvement of pasturage, Tillage 1 or Planting 1 is called 1 as indeed it
isi wast;"Locke wrote 1 "and we shall find the benefit ofit amount to little more than
40
nothing:' Thus, for Lockei the state of nature was not an ideali and the equality
granted by common ownership meant that the earth's potential remained unexploit-
ed: the primitive globei understood as a wasteland 1 was in essence a fund of
raw material awaiting improvement.
For Locke, the great agent of improvement was human labor: "For whatever
Breadis more worth than Acorns 1 Wine than Wateri and Cloth or Silk than Leaves 1
Skins, or Moss, that is whollyowingto labourand industry." v\Thereas water, acorns,
and skins were "the Food and Rayment which unassisted Nature furnishes us with/'
only human labor could transform these raw materials into such superior products
as bread, wine, and cloth. "Labourmakes thefar greatestpart of the value of things,
37 WASTELAND
we enjoy in this World": human labor tamed the wilderness) made the wasteland
productive 1 domesticated and civilized the primitive globe. 41 Labor and industry
created value, and fueled the engine of improvement.
If labor was the basis of improvement, improvement was the basis of private
property. "As much Land as a Man Tills 1 Plants 1 Improves 1 Cultivates, and can use
the Product 0£so much is his Property/'Locke argues 1 "he by his Labour does, as it
were, inclose it from the Common:' Improvement meant both enclosure-the de-
limitation of a particular plot ofland-and agriculture: tilling 1 planting, and cultivat-
ing land formerly used for pasturage. By equating value with labor and, specifically,
with the labor of agriculture) Locke differentiated between enclosed and unenclosed
improved and unimproved: the value ofland that lay "wast in common" was far less
than that which had been marked off and cultivated. Indeed 1 "we see in Commons)
which remain so by Compact 1 that 'tis the taking any part of what is common and
removing it out of the state Nature leaves it in 1 which beginsthe Property;without
which the Common is of no use." Thus 1 the exercise of traditional rights of com-
mon confers use value 1 and transforms what was common into private property. As
Locke explains 1 "the Grass my Horse has bit; the Turfs my Servant has cutj and the
Ore I have digg'd in anyplace where I have a right to them in common with others 1
become my Property1 without the assignation or consent of any body. The labour
that was mine 1 removing them out of that common state they were in 1 hath fixed
my Propertyin them:' 42 Since it was God who had commanded humans to labor 1
and labor (whether that of the landowner himself or of his servants and animals)
was the foundation of ownership 1 Locke could conclude that the concept of private
property-and its earthly manifestation as enclosure~was based on nothing less
than divine sanction. As Max Weber argued in TheProtestantEthic and the Spirit of
Capitalism,for John Locke and men of his ilk, a dedication to work could result in
material prosperity and spiritual salvation at the very same time. 43
But although labor began the property, and enclosure marked its domain, the
institution of private property also mandated responsibility, for "nothing was made
by God for Man to spoil or destroy:' 44
Whatsoever [the landowner] tilled and reaped, laid up and made use of, before
it spoiled 1 that was his peculiar Right; whatsoever he enclosed 1 and could feed 1
and make use 0£the Cattle and Product was also his. But if either the Grass of
his Inclosure rotted on the Ground, or the Fruit of his planting perished without
gathering, and laying up, this part of the Earth, notwithstanding his Inclosure,
was still to be looked on as Waste 1 and might be the Possession of any other. 45
38 WASTELAND
Here Locke articulates the dual connotation of wasteland with precision. Wasteland
was at once land in the raw1 unmarked and uncultivated, as well as land that was not
correctly utilized. Allowing the land's products to lie unharvested or to decay im-
plied improper use: land whose products rotted on the ground "was still to be looked
on as Waste"; although cultivated, its husbandry was insufficienti and thus the right
to ownership was annulled. Basing his definition on the twofold significance of the
verb "to waste" as) on the one hand, to use improperly, and, on the other, to prof-
ligately spend, land was waste if its potential was wasted. It is in this formulation
that we see the extent to which the concept of wasteland was invested with a potent
1 moral charge.
The concept of wasteland so central to Locke's defense of private property was
based on a number of intertwined and culturally specific assumptions. First) waste-
land was synonymous with the original earth, the divinely created globe, the world
in the state of nature. Second, wasteland was any existing tract ofland that had not
yet been improved through the institution of agriculture. Because improvement
was framed as both an economic and a moral imperative, wasteland was not merely
land that had not yet been improved, but was in fact understood as land that was
in need of-and even calling out for-improvement. Thus 1 England's barren and
mountainous tracts and the uncolonized areas of the globe were equally identified
as wastelands-a formulation that ultimately was used to legitimize both enclosure
and the colonial enterprise. But the moral right to property depended on culturally
inscribed notions of good government and proper use. Thus 1 private property and
wasteland stood at the two poles of a continuum: wasteland was land that had not
yet been improved through labor into private property, and private property was
land that could revert to waste if not properly husbanded. Human industry was the
agent that transformed the barren into the productive, that domesticated the wild,
that redeemed the fallen, and "wasteland" was the catch-all term that embraced all
that fell outside of civilization's endeavors. Wasteland was a category that sought to
define the indefinable 1 to circumscribe the unbounded. Wasteland was a concept
whose very elasticity ensured its place at the center of seventeenth-century notions
ofland, of use and value, and of the moral responsibilities encoded in the term
"improvement:' In fact, the enclosure movement itself could be characterized as
nothing less than a crusade against the waste.
Utopia on the Margins
In 1975, Gerrard Winstanley's call for a radical appropriation of the wasteland
reached a wider audience than he ever could have dreamed 0£with the release of
39 WASTELAND
 Figure 14. Still from Winstanley(1975). Directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. ©British Film Institute.
Figure 15. Still from Winstanley( 1975 ). Directed by Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo. ©British Film
Institute.

Kevin Brownlow's and Andrew Mollo's film Winstanley.Shot in black-and-white over

the course of a year (which gave crops time to grow ) 1 the film is both very much a
us with something valuable and rare. For it is through the past's very otherness and
product of the seventies and 1 at the same time) a paragon of historical accuracy (figs.
strangeness that we can gain a critical perspective on our own historical moment 1
14, IS). Its dialogue is culled directly from Winstanley's own writings, its props and
and a critical perspective is the necessary foundation for change.
costumes are either seventeenth-century originals (including a helmet from the
Winstanley's radical insistence on the communal ownership of common land
Tower of London and farming tools from the Museum of Rural Life), or faithful rep-
was an idea that was out of step with its moment. The hostility with which the Dig-
licas. The film is cast almost entirely with nonprofessional actors 1 and includes "King
gers were greeted can be attributed to many factors: landowners would have ex-
of the Hippies" Sid Rawle, leader of the Hyde Park Diggers, who was persuaded to
pected rent for the use ofland, and probably did not relish the presence of squatters'
take time off from agitating with the London squatters' movement to more or less
settlements on their estateSj local villagers could have seen the Diggers' cultivation
play himself in the guise of the leader of a rival group known as the Ranters. Even the
of the wasteland as an encroachment on their traditional rights of common. In all
livestock is authentic: the Sussex longhorns-a rare breed of cattle-and the Black
sorts of ways the Diggers' use of the wasteland collided with assumptions about
Spot pigs snuffling about on set were breeds common in seventeenth-century Eng-
what the proper role of the wasteland should be. The Diggers undermined tradition-
land. Despite its extreme attention to detaili Winstanleymanages to be poetic rather
al practices ofland holding and land usej common land and common rights were
than pedantic. It succeeds in showing the ways in which history can speak to the
concepts that soon were to become historical casualties of an enclosure movement
present, not by simplifying historical events in order to make them "relevant," but
that took Locke's trenchant defense of private property as an article of faith. But
rather by revealing the otherness and the strangeness of the past. In this it provides
Winstanley and his crazy Diggers had good reason to choose the wasteland as their

40 WASTELAND
41 WASTELAND
-
terrain of utopia. AB an underused 1 marginal space 1 the wasteland provided an exem-
CHAPTER II
plary site for the establishment of an alternative society. In fact 1 the wasteland offers
an ideal space for all kinds of civil disobedience for reasons that are intrinsic to the
concept of wasteland itself. For it is precisely the wasteland's apparent lack of valuei
its marginality; that allows it to extend such a powerful utopian promise.
As an idea 1 wasteland is closely intertwined with notions of resistance. As wild
IMPROVEMENT
land, it resists civilization. As useless land, it resists commodification. When desolate
and barren, it resists cultivation. When wild and overgrown, it resists domestication.
As common land, it resists notions of private property 1 and as part of a casual or un-
derground domestic economy, it resists regulation and quantification. Wasteland is
an abstraction, its definition dependent on the assumptions and values of its behold~
ers. But wasteland is also very real, a category ofland circumscribed by precise cus-
toms of access and use. It is in the oscillation between the general and the specific, On October 31, 1653, a small tract entitled Wast Land's Improvementappeared in
the private and the communal, the temporal and the spiritual, the useful and the print. A cheap, popular pamphlet containing the text of a proposal presented to the
useless, the dystopian and the utopian, that the rest of the history of wasteland Parliamentary Committee appointed for the Advancement of Trade, Wast Land's
will unfold. Improvementis entirely representative of mid-seventeenth-century ideas about land
and its usesi announcing a particular constellation of concerns in its very title (fig.
16) .1 For the anonymous writer of this pamphlet, as for many of his contemporaries 1

"wasteland" and "improvement" went hand in hand. But what did the coincidence
of these two terms mean at this particular time and place? The answer reveals a great
deal about a specific convergence of assumptions, prejudicesi aspirations, technolo-
gies, and social configurations that would stamp British attitudes toward land man-
agement for centuries to come.
Wasteland, for this seventeenth-century writer, was not just a problem; it was
one of the most pressing problems facing the nation. "It is well known to all,"he
writes, "what vast quantities, and what great circumferences of ground do at this
day lye wast and desolate, (in Forrests,and Fennygrounds,and other Commons) al-
most in all the Countreys of this Nation, but although so well known, ... yet either
sluggishnesse, or worse, drownes the sense of those discommodities, so that little
or no consideration is had ... for their improvement ... :'2 For this author, as for
many ofhis contemporaries, although the term "wasteland" included a number of
very different kinds oflandscapes-here forests, "fenny grounds" or marshes, and
commons-they were all united by the similarity of the kinds of problems they pre-
sented: forests, fens, and commons were all definable as wastelands because they all
stood in opposition to ideas of a benevolent and tractable nature. "Wast" (or waste)
land is described by the pamphlet's author as a "wilderness" and "a deformed chaos";
it was land that was "desolate/' "wild and vacant," "infertile," and "barren." 3 But in
fact the forests 1 fens, and commons of England were not remotely vacant or barren;

42 WASTELAND 43
 Figure 16. E. G., WastLand'sImprovement( 1653 ). by "idle, vagrant, pilfering, and pernicious persons" who "do receive their nourish-
© The British Library Board. 104.g.34.(2).
WAsT,.,LA No'$· IM.PR ov iii'
i'.M--E ment and encouragement from those vast 1 wild, wide Forrests, which (by reason of
: •· · _· 01'.'certain - ·.·· : _,..,
their vastnesse and largenessei their distance from Towns and houses, the paucity
PROPOSALS. of passengers, &c.) do administer liberty and opportunity to villainous minds to
.Made and cendred to i:he confiderati- perpetrate and commit their wicked and vicious actions." Improvement would also
{)O of the Honorable Committeeappointed
byP All. LI AM EN
nndgcnero.l
Tfortheadvanceol Trade,
profasof clieCo i, Mo N w B .1. t. TH,
eradicate the haunts of another category of marginal and seditious people 1 prevent-
'FPFRrfo ""' fam, hmo t•Hchi~g1h, b.,1 andm,frcommodiMJ "'"J'
•fimr•vhg tho Fo.R-Iu s;: s,FRNNYcl1ia OUN!l $ """ wAST• ing England's wastes from acting as "a receptacle and harbour for troops of assas-
LANnl thro11gf,011, Eogland,w,dmg.,,,ry "'"ch to thi ,nrkhing
, ofrh, C,11,m,,.~.,.,ftJ,;,,g,r.er,t//, the f"""'"'iMof RobG.ry
.,,,J
B,gg.,ry,th,ralf1'g.111d H:.<ima;,,;,,g
•fa P~b/;ok:St•<!,_for
sinating rogues like the Tories in Ireland& the Moss-Troopers in Scotland:'Fourth,
th•f<rpwM/fnpp!J of virm'<HndN,w,c1w1tln1tt T,t.~,1,;.
""' 4i,J £.,·ci,:,,, ""d .,ljbMMJ f01·J~i1faff,i,,, for pdl'f:ofrh, improving England's wastelands would provide poor relief through employment.
Nati,.,, D,br, ,mdO/)!;g,,rfom.
iswdlknown<0all, wh3<v,!lquantiti,s, Md
wha.•<>lilaccil'Cumfo1tn(Os
of g,ound1doattb,s
By renting these unvalued lands to the destitute, and by setting a multitude of hands
doylye"'w,l¼
and difola«, ( in F,rr,jf,, and:
F,eeJ gr.,md,,ondQr/,erComm,n,,)almoflin.oll to the work of digging 1 manuring, and planting 1 many causes of poverty would be
che Counireysof tbls Nacion , but alchoughfo
wellknown , _( t~otherwith thcmu!titude,of eradicated. Fifth, the improvement of wasteland would augment government coffers.
!~~.:1i!~~n•~:0
ir'i~~tdro:!:t~~enC:~?:i~ Jrco~~
;,. Ulllditlei10 ,haditcleornoconlidemi0t1is bod.' ( adeaO:aotcf- By taking possession of these marginal lands, Parliament could survey them, divide
\+teamlly'
j ·fonlieirimpmvruient
; whichos(c1salb~me;mdre-
', ft?achunro/rijb, ~odother likcl~y People, lo mncbmo~
11it a lh•m• cousfngl,fb, be<:auCe
web•:irthe ru1meondrerm•t1~
them up into small plotsi and rent them at reasonable rates. This new source of in-
; <:m1lfaoingcnioniaodindufuious pwple; huenowOllthopesate,
i tbatfuchaure-nowfet in the tbro_oe
of Auth~tlcy, \11illnot on-• come would allow the state to abolish excise and other taxes, "thereby discharging
fomebrcad~s, hl:t
k.ly_be1_berey.,.i1m~I alfow,_11
oo~v=n:-thc
d':fo.
ji,w,u_Rilntti·fiu!tfu!-fidds,andour
v1_1de
howJ1ngwi!demdf~
wto the malcontented people from those ponderous and discontentful impositions:' The
·~abltiitl011¥hatlll.thls(as~llati11,o~tbm~)~ ,,<'.\i
>,.~,:: .. ~~~-'f~~:~if>~~J~ii%~1~~s~)iir'.
.+4;:;ffeJ)ic~ adoption of these proposals by Parliament could herald the dawn of a new era, one
in which those "as are now set in the throne of Authority, will not only be the repair-
ers of some breaches, but also will convert the desolate wasts into fruitful fields, and
rather, they evoked the descriptive language traditionally associated with the bibli- our wide howling wildernesses into comfortable habitationsi that in this (as well as
cal wasteland because they produced and harbored the wrong kinds of life-plants, in other things) we mayinjoy at last some benefit by all our revolutions, transplant-
humans, and other animals that resisted domestication and hindered the progress of ings and overcomings in Authorities." 4
agriculture. England's wastelands were condemned because they challenged notions WastLand'sImprovementwas a slight and ephemeral tract; it might have disap-
of proper use.
peared without trace had it not been collected at the time of its publication by the
Where wasteland was the problem, improvement was the solution. Improvement London bookseller and publisher George Thomason. It was, nevertheless, represen-
meant a very specific set of activities in mid-seventeenth-century England, princi- tative of its moment 1 encapsulating and expressing a set of assumptions and aspira-
pally the conversion ofland to agriculture through enclosure, tilling, fertilizing, and tions that were widespread in England at the end of the Civil War. Its identification
planting. With improvement, lands that were now full of "bushes and briars" (evoca- of the most problematic landscapes as forest 1 feni and common, its assumption of
tive of the "bryars and thorns" of the postlapsarian wilderness) could instead bring an equivalence between productivity and agriculture, and its promotion of specific
forth "flax,hemp, hops, and corn/' and their expanses could provide pasture for kinds of activities-enclosure and fertilization-and particular kinds of crops-
cattle. According to the pamphlet's author, the benefits to be had from the enclosure hemp, hops 1 flax, and grain-are topics and themes that are found throughout the
and improvement of the nation's wastelands were fivefold. In the first place, replac- advanced agricultural literature of the period. Concern for helping the poor and a
ing weeds with crops such as wheat and hemp would lead to a greater production of desire to encourage a social stability that had been absent during the years of war
"bread-corn" for the poor, and supply cordage for the country's shipping industry. are also characteristic of the timei as is the hope voiced in the tract that the installa-
Second, enclosing and fertilizing would result in the preservation and augmentation tion of a new government could help to create an English utopia. But perhaps most
of forest treesi central to the building and repairing of ships. Third, this civilizing symptomatic of all was the belief in the possibility and power of improvement-a
process would affect the wasteland's denizens as well, leading to a substantial de- belief that tended to obscure any awareness or acknowledgment of the very real
crease in the numbers of robberies, thefts, burglaries, rapes, and murders committed negative consequences that attended sweeping changes of this kind.

44 IMPROVEMENT
45 IMPROVEMENT
Imitation and Improvement: The Legacy of Sir Francis Bacon Figure 17. Sir Francis Bacon,
frontispiece to Instauratio
Magna (London, 1620).
"Improvement" was a word whose significance lay on many levels. Its philosophical
The William Andrews Clark
basis can be traced to the writings of Sir Francis Bacon; his goal of making nature Memorial Library.
subservient to human needs was at its heart. Beginning with TheAdvancement of
Learning of 1605, continuing with the Novum Organum ofl620 and De Dignitate et
Augmentis Scientiarum of 1623, and concluding with Sylva Sylvarum of 1627, Bacon
outlined a new approach to the study of natural philosophy intended to serve as
the beginning of a superior and more certain science) built on firmer foundations
than ever before. Bacon's entire system was to have been set out in his "Instauratio
Magna" or "Great Instauration," but this was never completedi and eventually was
published only in fragments (fig. 17). lnits entirety, the "Greatlnstauration" was to
have had six parts: "The Division of the Sciences"; the "New Organon, or Directions
Concerning the Interpretation of Nature"; "The Phenomena of the Universe, or a
Natural and Experimental History for the Foundation of Philosophy"; "The Ladder
of the Intellect"; "The Forerunners, or Anticipations of the New Philosophy"; and
"The New Philosophy, or Active Science:' The first part-the "Division of the Sci-
ences"-was a new version of Bacon's TheAdvancementof Learning,and was later to
be rewritten 1 enlarged, and republished as De Augmentis.The second part, or "New
Organon," took one of the branches of knowledge discussed in TheAdvancement of
Learning-natural history-and provided a blueprint for its study. It consisted of
an introduction/ two books of aphorisms/ and an incomplete third book, "Prepara-
tive toward a Natural and Experimental History/' which included an introductory
essay and a "Catalogue of Particular Histories by Titles:' The third part of the "Great
Instauration'' was intended to provide "such a natural history as may serve for a foun-
dation to build philosophy upon" of which ouly the histories of winds, life and death,
density and rarity, and the heterogeneous experiments included in Sylva Sylvarum investigation: whatever the result of a given experiment 1 the delimited informa-
were completed. 5 The fourth 1 fifth, and sixth parts of the "Great Instauration'' were tion it provided would contribute to the knowledge of nature's processes. But
never written. the goal of experimentation was, above all, imitation: successful imitation would
Bacon privileged knowledge that would lead to use: his aim was to under- demonstrate that nature's processes and laws had been understood. Thus, imita-
stand nature in order to command it. Nature's secrets, however, were not trans- tion meant mastery over nature: it freed humans from a dependency on chance
parent: Bacon saw the external world as a labyrinth, "presenting as it does on occurrence, and enabled them to produce objects and effects on demand. In
every side so many ambiguities of way, such deceitful resemblances of objects other words, imitation-in the form of the applied arts-would enable humans
and signs, natures so irregular in their lines, and so knotted and entangled:' to fashion a new world in their image, a universe subservient to human needs and
Within this labyrinth, the senses, or principal sources of knowledge, shed only demands; it would mean not just controlling nature, but usurping nature's role in
"uncertain light ... sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over:' 6 Thus, ex- the process of creation.
perimentation was intended to play a key compensating role. Experiments would For Bacon, nature and art-in its broadest sense as artifice-were not opposed
help to correct inevitable errors of sense and judgment by limiting the scope of to one anotheri rather, art was the successful imitation of processes already intrinsic

46 IMPROVEMENT 47 IMPROVEMENT
to nature. The interdependence between the two is demonstrated by Bacon's con-
ception of nature's three states: "either she [nature] is free 1 and develops herself in
her own ordinary coursej or she is forced out of her proper state by the perverse-
ness and insubordination of matter and the violence ofimpedimentsj or she is con-
strained and moulded by art and human ministry. The first state refers to the species
of thingsj the second to monstersi the third to things artificial:' "Natural History"
is thus composed of the "history of Generations 1 of Pretergenerations 1 and of Arts:'
The "History of Arts" was the most useful of the threei since it forced nature to reveal
her secrets: "the vexations of art are certainly as the bonds and handcuffs of Proteusi
which betray the ultimate struggles and efforts of matter. For bodies will not be de-
stroyed or annihilatedj rather than that they will turn themselves into various forms:'
The art of experimentation provided the means to understand and master the inner-
most workings of nature; it "takes off the masks and veil from natural objectsi which
are commonly concealed and obscured under the variety of shapes and external
appearance:' Thus it was the study of the applied artsi "mechanical and illiberal as it
may seem/' that was identified as natural philosophy's most urgent task.7
Bacon's understanding of art as an imitation of nature and natural processes is
clearly seen in the unfinished third section of the "New Organ on": the "Catalogue
of Particular Histories by Titles/' or Parasceve.Divided into five sections 1 "History of
the Heavenly Bodies;' "History of the Greater Masses," "Histories of Species," "His-
tories of Man/' and "Histories of Pure Mathematics;' it sets out a total of 130 topics
for investigation, spanning planetary motion and local weather; metalsi fossils 1 gems,
and stones; trees, shrubs, herbs 1 and flowersj fish, birdsi quadrupeds 1 and serpents;
and the anatomy and inventions of human beings. Under the category of"Histories
of Man/' Bacon subsumes the histories of human bones, spittle 1 organs, hairi and the
senses, as well as histories of medicine and music; halting and metalworking; cloth
making and weaving; pottery and glassblowing; agriculture, printing, horsemanship,
and games. Nothing was too "ordinary) meani illiberal 1 filthy, trifling, or childish" for
study, since "the world is not to be narrowed till it will go into the understanding
(which has been done hitherto), but the understanding to be expanded and opened
till it can take in the image of the world, as it is in fact."8 With its integration of na-
ture and the applied arts, set out as a list of topics for practical investigation, Bacon's
Parascevewas to have a fundamental impact on the method, program, and goals of
seventeenth-century improvers.
Bacon's New Atlantis, pubhshed posthumously as part of his Sylva Sylvarum,
evokes an ideal society dedicated to the study of nature as outlined in the Parasceve.
9
Bacon's utopia is the island of Bensalem, reached by European sailors after their
ship is blown off course by a powerful wind encountered in the middle of the Pacific
48 IMPROVEMENT
Ocean. Bensalem knows no poverty, factional strifei or atheism 1 and at the heart of
its social structui-e is the institution of Salomon's House-the "College of the Six
Days Works"-a community of thirty-six philosophers who serve as the communi-
ty's spiritual and philosophical guides. 'Ihe goal of this institution is "the knowledge
of Causesi and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of Human
Empire, to the effecting of all things possible:' 10
To that end, the fellows of Salomon's
House devote their days to experimentation, and their residence includes spaces
for the study of every conceivable natural phenomenon. They have high towers for
observing the air1 weather, and motions of heavenly bodies; underground caves for
investigating mines and metal.Silakes, pools, baysi and violent streams to study the
nature of water; orchards and gardens for experiments involving the maturation of
fruits and flowers and changing the aspect and taste of plants; parks and enclosures
of animals and birds for experiments in dissection; pools for studies of fishes and
insect breedingj brewhouses 1 bakeriesi and kitchens for the preparation of new foods
and drinks; workshops for making paper, cloths, and dyes; "Perspective-Houses" to
study the nature oflight 1 shadow, colorsi and the uses of telescopes and microscopesj
"Sound Houses" to reproduce musical notes, harmonYi echoes 1 animal cries 1 and
language; "Perfume Houses" to investigate the nature of scents 1 "Engine Houses" to
study motion; and a "Mathematicall House" with a collection of instruments. The
fellows of Salomon's House devote themselves to the investigation of the topics list~
ed in Bacon's Parasceve.Drawing no distinction between the productions of nature
and those of culture, they invent and carry out experiments both in order to arrive at
an understanding of nature's first principles-those that "lie at the heart and marrow
of things"-and in order to perfect the applied arts." 'Ihe fellows study the atmo-
sphere with the hope of creating a perfect climate; they investigate the breeding of
animals and fishes with the aim of increasing generation; they attempt to speed the
maturation of fruits and change the taste of plants in order to control the production
of nourishment. Salomon's House was also known as the College of the Six Days
Works because it aimed at a second creationj it embodied the technological fantasy
of fashioning a new, improved world by artificial means.
Technology 1 in Bacon's sense, is an art of imitation. It mimics natural processes
in order to produce objects and effects on demand. The desire to fashion a world
entirely consonant with human desires and needs is at the heart of Bacon's call for
the mastery of nature. But this aim of making nature subservient to humanity has a
resonance that goes far beyond the mere provision of material needs. Bacon dreams
of a nature that is generous and bountiful, not capricious and recalcitrant; he dreams
of a second paradise. According to this vision, technology can make England a new
Edeni an Elysium basking in a perpetual springtime 1 its trees continuously laden
49 IMPROVEMENT
with fruiti its rivers swollen with fish, its forests bristling with game. These fantasies
of England transformed into Eden through the exercise of ingenuity and the applica-
tion of technology were fundamental to the wasteland improvement schemes that
proliferated after the end of the Civil War; they are to be found most consistently
and fully formed in those projects and publications associated with the name of
Samuel Hartlib.
Soil and Soul: Samuel Hartlib and the Reformation of Husbandry
In 1659 Samuel Hartlib published Adolphus Speed's Adam out of Eden, or,An ab-
stractof diversexcellentExperimentstouchingthe advancementof Husbandry)a book
whose mere title makes the link between agricultural improvement and postlapsar-
ian fantasies abundantly clear.12Hartlib devoted his life to promoting three causes:
Protestantism) educational reformi and agricultural improvement, and Adam out of
Eden was just one of a veritable avalanche of books he published between his emi-
gration to England from Polish Prussia in 1628 and his death in 1662. Deeply pious,
the patron of fellow Protestant refugees like John Durie and Jan Amos Komensky
( Comenius ), and wholeheartedly committed to societal reform, Hartlib aimed at
nothing less than the transformation of England into a Puritan utopia. He cultivated
a circle of correspondents comprising a wide range of socially and intellectually
prominent men, and applied himself tirelessly to the task of encouraging and facili-
tating communication: soliciting letters) acting as a conduit for the correspondence
oflike-minded people, and undertaking the publication of numerous works that
drew from the vast river ofletters flowing through his hands. Hartlib believed in
harnessing the power of the printed word. In addition to circulating manuscripts
among his many correspondents, he also rushed these missives into print, helping to
generate an even wider dissemination of inventions and ideas. Over the twenty-five-
year period between 1637-the date of his first publication, Conatum Comeniarum
Prceludia-and 1662, Hartlib published over sixty tracts, pamphlets, and books.13 He
often was not the sole or even the principal author of many of the books published
under his name: instead, the books associated with Hartlib are in a sense the tangible
embodiment of the correspondence and discussion he helped to facilitate among
his circle of correspondents. They provide a printed forum for differing-and often
anonymous-voices to expoundi to debate, to disagree, but most of all simply to be
heard, moving information out of the realm of private correspondence and into the
hands of the public."
Hartlib's wide-ranging interests encompassed schemes for religiousi educa-
tionali and agricultural reform, but they were united by a common epistemological
50 IMPROVEMENT
Figure 18. Plows. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImprover
Improved(London, 1652). 1he WilliarnAndrews
Clark Memorial Library.
foundation: the experimental philosophy of Francis Bacon. Bacon's call for a new
foundation of knowledge based on induction was reflected in Hartlib's proposals for
educational reform; Bacon's championing of the manual arts was furthered by Hart-
lib's promotion of husbandry; and Bacon's program for the advancement of knowl-
edge through the compilation of "natural histories" was implemented by members
of Hartlib's circle. Inspired in particular by Bacon's belief in progress, as well as by
Comenius's elaboration of the principle of pansophy, which-sought a recuperation
of the perfect knowledge Adam had enjoyed in the Garden of Eden before the Fall,
Hartlib sought to weld utopian speculation to practical implementation.
In 1650, after more than a decade of publishing books devoted to spiritual, po-
litical1 and educational matters, Hartlib began to concentrate his activities on the
subject ofagriculture. A host of books followed. 15 Although the authors of the let-
ters, tracts, and pamphlets published by Hartlib were numerous and diverse) they
were united in their concentration on one central theme: improvement. In less than
a decade, Hartlib succeeded in focusing English agricultural discussions on a select
number of problems; the solutions he promoted were to shape the course of English
agriculture.
Hartlib's agricultural publications had the common intent of increasing pro-
ductivity, and in the books and tracts associated with his name, a small number
of themes appears with notable frequency. Hartlib and the members of his circle
promoted new techniques offertilizing and plowing (fig. 18); championed the
51 IMPROVEMENT
 Figure 19. Machines for water-
ing meadows (a windmill and a
Persian wheel) and sowing corn
(grain).John Worlidge, Systema
Agricultura:[1669] (London,
1681). TheWilliamAndrews
Clark Memorial Library.
cultivation of new fodder crops such as cloveri sainfoini and lucerne (alfalfa), and
of industrial plants such as saffron, liquorice (licorice), hops, rape (oilseed), hemp 1
flax1 woad, and madderj recommended that more forest and fruit trees be planted,
particularly in odd scraps oflandllke banks and hedgerows; called for the irriga-
tion of drylands and the draining of wetlands (fig. 19); and promoted the culture of
kitchen vegetables and such useful insects as silkworms and bees. But the titles of
many of the works associated with Hartlib's name point to a dual sense of the term
"improvement:' Books such as TheReformedHusband-Man, TheReformed Spirituall
Husband-man,and A Treatiseof Pruit-Trees... Togetherwith The Spirituall Useof an
Orchard(fig. 20) were concerned not merely with communicating new techniques
for the improvement of agriculture, insect husbandry, and fruit cultivation, but also
with the ways these activities could lead directly to spiritual betterment. And in this
intersection between the improvement of soil and soul 1 the problem of wasteland
gained center stage.
52 IMPROVEMENT
Overcoming the rJcalcitrance of barren wasteland was the subject of the first
agricultural tract Hartlib published, a transcription of a manuscript that had come
into his hands, which he entit!edADiscours ofHusbandrie Usedin Brabant and Flan-
ders,Shewingthe wonderfullimprovementof Land therej and servingas a patternfor our
practicein this Commonwealth.When he first publlshed the text Hartlib was unaware
of its authorj he later learned that it was written by Sir Richard Weston, a Catholic
Royallst and Surrey landowner who had been forced to flee England during the Civil
War as a result ofhis allegiances. In 1644 Weston had visited Ghent, Bruges, and
Antwerp, where he made observations on local husbandry practices that he subse~
quently communicated to his sons in the form of a letter. Weston noted that, to his
surprise, the "barrennest 1 Heathie and Sandie Lands" in those countries produced
more crops than nominally richer soils. The secret of this astounding fertility was the
practice of crop rotation, in which turnips and clover were sown in alternation with
fl.axand oats, with the result that lands could be under continuous year-round culti-
vation with no progressive worsening of the soil. The farming system described by
Weston was particularly suited to the least fertile soils, and he encouraged his sons
to implement this technique on their own lands, noting that in addition to "the ex-
cessive profit you will reap by Sowing these Commoditiesi imagine what a pleasure
it will bee to your Bies [eyes] and Sent [scent], to see the Russet Heath turn'd into
greenest Grass:' 16
Weston's letter was most likely circulating in manuscript by 1645; it reached an
even wider audience when it was published by Hartlib in 1650. Once published,
its thesis was promoted by other associates ofHartllb's, including Robert Child in
"ALarge letter concerning the Defects and Remedies of English Husbandry" (in
Hartlib's most widely read and influential work, Samuel Hartlib his Legacieof 1651);
Walter Blith, in TheEnglishImproverImproved ofl652; and Adolphus Speed, in
Adam out of Eden of 1659. It is difficult to overestimate the significance ofWeston's
text, for it was through the Discoursthat the four-crop rotation system-a farming
method that was to become the principal engine of the agricultural revolution-was
first introduced to England. 17 Weston's description of the conversion of heath to
arable, of the replacement of brown weeds with lush green grasses1 also signals the
twofold nature of this enterprise: his aim was increased economic productivity as
well as the transformation of the barren wasteland into a fertile garden.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century, as mentioned in chapter 1, the most
common form of farming used a three-field rotation system, according to which two
fields would be under cultivation-usually one field with wheat and the other with
barley, oats, or peas-while the third lay fallow. Domesticated animals such as sheep
and cattle were a necessary component of this system not only because they helped
53 IMPROVEMENT

Figure 20. Ralph Austen, A Treatiseof Fruit-Trees. .. Togetherwith TheSpiritual/Useof
an Orchard(Oxford: 1653 ). The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
with the work of plowing and carrying, but also because their manure was essential
to maintaining the fertility of the soil. Thus, the quantity of crops produced was
limited by two things, by the fact that at any given time one-third of a village's fields
would lie fallow, and by the amount of manure that could be generated to fertilize
the soil, which was tied to the number of animals the village pasture was capable of
supporting.
54 IMPROVEMENT
These limitations were eventually overcome by the institution of new crops
and crop rotation schemes along the lines described by Weston 1 which functioned
together in a symbiotic way to increase the amount ofland under cultivation and
to bolster its productivity. Key was the introduction of new fodder crops: three
legumes-clover 1 sainfoin 1 and lucerne-and one root vegetable, the turnip. The
legumes provided food for animals while returning nitrogen and other nutrients to
the soil, thus eliminating the need to let land lie fallow. Turnips required a process
of weeding and hoeing that broke up the soil and made it more receptive to the ap-
plication of fertilizer, and their leaves were a source of winter grazing for animalsi
helping them to get through the lean months before the spring began. This augmen-
tation of fodder through the cultivation of grasses and root vegetables meant that
more animals could be supported, which resulted in a larger quantity of manure.
More manure meant more crops. With the adoption of Weston's method, which
became known in England as the "Norfolk system" after the region in which it was
implemented with particular success, more acres could be fertilized, it was no lon-
ger necessary to let one field lie fallow, and light, dry soils that previously had been
unproductive were dramatically transformed into rich and flourishing arable land.
Although these methods were sometimes practiced in open fieldsi they tended to
go hand-in-hand with enclosure. In many cases farmers wanted to enclose fields
precisely so that they could implement more innovative farming methods rather
than waiting to gain the consensus and participation of the entire village community.
Thus, to speak of improvement was also to speak of enclosure.
Enclosure (or inclosure, as it was written at the time), in its strictest sense of
merely separating out or enclosing an area ofland-whether by surrounding it with
walls1 fences, ditches, or hedges-was an activity that can be traced far back in Eng-
lish agricultural practice. It was commonly used 1 for example, in orchards, where
walls helped with the maturation of fruit and protected the harvest from hungry ani-
mals. This kind of enclosure was not controversial. The kind of enclosure that gave
rise to strenuous and sometimes violent (if ultimately unsuccessful) dissent was that
which concerned common fields and wasteland, where it involved unifying strips of
open fields into single plots controlled by one landowner, and converting to private
property land that formerly had been open to the exercise of rights of common.
When enclosure began 1 how it was achieved, what its effects were1 and whether
in the end it was a beneficial development or a disastrous one are questions that
continue to be argued over to this day. Modern assessments are all, in one way or
another, indebted to Karl Marx 1 who in a few short chapters of Das Kapital estab-
lished an interpretation of the processes and effects of the enclosure movement that
has shaped critical scholarship ever since. Appearing in succession, the titles of the
55 IMPROVEMENT
 relevant chapters-"Expropriation of the Agricultural Population from the Land,"
"Bloody Legislation against the Expropriated," "Genesis of the Capitalist Farmer,"
"Reaction of the Agricultural Revolution on Industry," and "Genesis of the Industrial
Capitalist"-set out Marx's powerful argument in brief. 18 Not only had the small
freeholder disappeared by 1750, but by the end of the eighteenth century so had
"the last trace of the common land of the agricultural labourer:' 19 For Marx, the en-
closure movement, by expropriating land from the yeomanry and smaller farmers in
the name of"improvement" and by converting much arable land to pasture, made
agricultural work an untenable means of subsistence for all but a limited segment
of society. Smallholdings were amalgamated into large estates under the control of
a few rich and powerful landowners, and fewer workers were required to cultivate
the arable fields. This rapid contraction of agricultural employment created a class
oflandless laborers who flooded into the cities in search of work, thus providing
the raw labor power that served to fuel the Industrial Revolution. Marx minced
no words: "the spoliation of the church's property, the fraudulent alienation of the
State domains, the robbery of the common lands, the usurpation of feudal and clan
property, and its transformation into modern private property under circumstances
of recldess terrorism, were just so many idyllic methods of primitive accumulation.
They conquered the field for capitalistic agriculture, made the soil part and parcel of
capital, and created for the town industries the necessary supply of a 'free' and out-
lawed proletariat:' 20
At the beginning of the twentieth century, a generation of historians interested
in the creation of the English working class and the process through which the peas-
antry had become the industrial proletariat focused attention on the agricultural
revolution of the eighteenth century. The first major study, Gilbert Slater's TheEng-
lishPeasantryand the Enclosureof CommonFields,published in 1907, was soon fol-
lowed by Barbara and J.L. Hanunond's influential masterpiece, The VillageLabourer
of 1911. Slater and the Hammonds supported Marx's indictment with a careful
study and analysis of historical records, the Hammonds in particular painting a vivid
picture of preenclosure village life with its intricate network of communal and indi-
vidual rights and obligations. One year after the publication of The VillageLabourer,
E. C. K. Gonner's CommonLand and Enclosureappeared. A much more restrained
work than its predecessors, its careful assessments generated a very different picture
of enclosure than that painted by the Hammonds. Although Gonner refused to take
a partisan stand, on the whole he concluded that enclosure had been, in the main,
beneficial. Gonner's study established that enclosure was not a sudden, revolution-
ary event, but a gradual process that had occurred over a long period of time. He
argued that the process of enclosure had, on the whole, been fairly implemented,
56 IMPROVEMENT
that it had garnered a great deal of consensus from people at all ranks of society,
that smaller landowners had been adequately compensated for the loss of their
holdings, and that popular resistance had been minimal. But Gonner's work, being
somewhat bereft of picturesque incident 1 was overshadowed by the Hammonds'
riveting account 1 and it was not until the 1950s and 1960s, when a new generation of
historians revisited the question of enclosure, that Gonner's study was evaluated in a
new light. 21 For the "optimists" of this period 1 whose position is most succinctly ex-
pressed in]. D. Chambers and G. E. Mingay's TheAgriculturalRevolution1750-1880,
Gonner's study proved that although the methods and processes adopted by the en-
closers did not amount to "perfect justice," "in an age of aristocratic government and
exaggerated respect for the rights of property 1 it was not a bad approximation
to it. Indeed, it may well be said that parliamentary enclosure represented a major
advance in the recognition of the right of the small man:' 22 The evidence was com~
pelling, and as more and more studies of the period confirmed Gonner's conclu-
sionsi historians on both sides of the political spectrum fell into line. But just as
consensus seemed to be in sight, the publication of E. P. Thompson's TheMaking of
the EnglishWorkingClassin 1963 breathed new life into Marx's original interpreta-
tion. Thompson's equally compelling account sought "to rescue the poor stockinger,
the Luddite cropperi the 'obsolete' hand~loom weaver, the 'utopian' artisan 1 and even
the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of pos-
terity," and, in doing so1 it reignited the debate over the effects of enclosure on the
poorest members of English society.23 Most recently, revisionist historians including
J.M. Neeson,Jane Humphries, and Graham Rogers have subjected the benevolent
view of enclosure to a thorough critique and questioning. Focusing on different geo-
graphical areas and different segments of the rural population 1 their studies concur
in foregrounding the revolutionary and often devastating effect of enclosure on the
lives of those for whom common land provided an important component of their
livelihood or domestic economy. For these peoplei the enclosure of commons and
wastelands in the name of"improvement" amounted to a cataclysmic event. 24
Arguments in favor of enclosure can be traced at least as far back as Thomas Tus-
ser's FiveHundrethPointesof GoodHusbandrieof 1557, which promoted the practice
in a section of the treatise devoted to ''A comparison between Champion countrey
and Several!,"and began with the words, "the countrie enclosed I praise / the other
delighteth not me / for nothing the wealth it doth raise / to such as inferior be:' 25
But in the seventeenth centill)lj as enclosure gathered momentum 1 and in the wake
of antienclosure protests and riots, a pamphlet war began to brew. Antienclosure
publications, such as Francis Trigge's Humble Petitionof Two Sisters;The Churchand
Common-Wealth:Forthe restoringof their ancientCommonsand liberties)which late
57 IMPROVEMENT
 Inclosurewith depopulation,uncharitablyhath taken away of 1604 or John Moore's The coops 1 and rabbit hutches. The manor's large fields were enclosed into radial sections
Crying Sin of England, of not Caringfor the Poor.Wherein Inclosure,viz. as doth un- and divided between arable (marked "Corn") and meadow; beyond these were pas-
people Townes,and uncornFields,isArraigned, Convicted,and Condemned by the Word tures for sheep, cows, draft animals, "fat beeves" (animals raised for their meat), and
of God of 1653, argued that the enclosure of arable fields and their conversion to pas- for lean, dry, or young animals. Although Dymock's scheme never left the drawing
ture increased poverty by decreasing the production of grain, reducing employment, board-it was ignored by the fen imp rovers to whom it was initially submitted and
and fostering the depopulation and abandonment of villages. "Horne and Thome he never succeeded in finding another patron 1 nor in implementing it himself-it
26
Shall Make England Forlorne;' Trigge quipped. Gerrard Winstanley, as we saw in nonetheless testifies to a belief, widespread among members ofHartlib's circle, that
chapter 1, made his case against private property not only by publishing a flurry of enclosure offered a potent solution to the problem presented by the wasteland.
pamphlets in the late 1640s and early 1650s, but also, along with his Diggers, by John Dixon Hunt has brought to our attention the way in which Dymock's
physically occupying a common on St. George's Hill. scheme displays a scale of artifice that decreases as one moves out from the farm
On the other side, writers such as Robert Child 1 in ''.ALarge letter concerning the house and its proximate gardens to the surrounding agricultural fields. 29 Further-
Defects and Remedies ofEnglish Husbandry," published in Hartlib's Legacieof 1651; more, if we compare Dymock's model farm to the orchard depicted in the frontis-
Walter Blith, in The EnglishImprover Improved of 1652; Sylvanus Taylor, in Common piece of Ralph Austen's A Treatiseof Pruit-Trees,published by Hartlib in the same year
Good, or,,the Improvement of Commons1 Forrestsjand Chases,by Inclosureof 1652; (see fig. 20), we can see that both designs are generated from alternating and repeat-
E. G.1 in Wast Land's Improvement of 1653; and Joseph Lee, in ConsiderationsCon- ing circles and squares. The similarities behveen these hvo ideal geometrical figures
cerningCommon Fields}and Inclosuresof 1654 1 were united in their condemnation indicate that both Dymock and Austen imagined agricultural land in a form usually
of the common) alleging that common fields increased poverty by producing less associated with a garden. Austen, in fact, makes the point explicit by inscribing in
grain 1 supporting fewer animals 1 contributing to the spread of disease in livestock 1
and fomenting at the same time a culture of idleness. 27 Sylvan us Taylor charged that
ThisChartis thePlOiO""'?jli-
"the hvo great Nurseries ofldleness and Beggery &c. in the Nation, are Ale-houses, pripttonof oneentireLordjhip,
<>r
Jvlamwr-houfo, with iu pro~
and Commons,'' while later in the century, Timothy Nourse waxed apoplectic in his per Demain1 : or it mayforve
Campania Fcelix1 characterizing both commoners and their beasts as exemplars of a for ti con.ftderable
Farmof 100,
~o:,, or 300 Acru.
"starv'd, scabby 1 and rascally race," and the common as «nothing but a Naked Theater A the ~lannor houfe, ordwollinghmifo,
R ,he Ki<ehinGarden.
of Poverty, both as to Men and Beasts, where all things appear horrid and unculti- c ,hcOrchya,d.
n the Gordenforchoyce fruits orflow-
m.
vated, and [which] may be term'd, not improperly, the very abstract of Degenerated E the Gardon for Phyfical! plonts, or
wh,cyouwill.
Nature." 28 FF ,h, O,,.,,ond bndry.
c.'G ,he Sh«p coa<S.
JI H ,he nvog,e:t«frof the homo c1ore1
Hartlib and the members of his circle were centrally involved in promoting to milkd,cCowsin, o.toputaf,ddll! _.:
Na!:;n. -.
I I th0Baliehoufc ,nd Bmvhoufo. hl
enclosure as an efficacious method of improving the productivity ofland. In 1653 r,: ,hclbncling racks for Oxen , &c. 2nd ~
,he great Corn Barn,
Hartlib published A Discoveriefor Division or Setting out of Land, as to the best Form, LL r'lher Barns, S<obks,Cow or Ox·
houb,Swines!tyos.
N N <lie 1;u1e honfes for all forts of
a scheme communicated to him by his associate Cressy Dymock for improving Poukry.
N N lllordhncling R•d:..
O o Concy-b,rries.
land by enclosure. Presenting his plan as perfectly suited to the "Commons, Mores) ."L.!J!...
lkd• C!o!i:, !or• ftonod Horfc , a
M,1re,or Fok, &c.
Heaths) Fens) Marishes, and the like) which are all Waste Ground," Dymock fash- ~ ~,;t~1.~;1~~;;:,k&~SI:!~·
T ,wo Ooks fol Paflur,, foe Ewes,
ioned his model estate as a set of enclosures arranged according to the perfect geom- Lo.ml>>,
or weaketSheep.
I' twolk,kP,nmcsfo,,tnBccfottwo.
etry of a radial farm disposed within a square plot ofland (fig. 21). In the center was w mo llttlePafturosforinfc&:d Cattle.
x two fatk i'afium for yoo1 own , '"
}'""' hi<nd, Sadd!c-ho,fc , that is fot
the manor house) surrounded on four sides by the kitchen garden, the orchard) the pl'cfcntfrrv;c,_
1 ""o li«k Po!hreslo1WCillling
a.JvG.
garden of choice fruits and flowers, and the garden for medicinal plants. Beyond this
were small enclosures for milking, for sick livestock) and for birthing, and these were
Figure 21. Plan of a model farm. Cressy Dymock, A Discoveriefor Division or Settingout of Land, as to the Best
surrounded by a circle of farm buildings, including barnsi sties 1 sheepcotes, chicken
Form (London, 1653). The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

58 IMPROVEMENT
59 IMPROVEMENT
the ring encircling his walled orchard the words from the Song of Solomon ( 4:12),
''A garden enclosed is my sisterJ my spouse:' 1his particular form of garden, divided
into four quarters/ was one that was traditionally associated with paradise 1 and this,
together with its overall compositional scheme of a circle inscribed within a square
(a form ultimately reminiscent of Leonardo's sketch ofVitruvian Man) i signals the
utopian, even cosmic ambitions of these agricultural reformers. To cultivate the
waste 1 for reformers like Dymock and Austen 1 was to perfect and redeem the fallen
landscape 1 it was to transform England into a new Eden, it was to reenact the biblical
cycle described in Ezekiel: "And the desolate land shall be tilled, whereas it lay deso-
late in the sight of all that passed by. / And they shall say, This land that was desolate
is become like the Garden of Eden" (Ezekiel 36:34-35).
Enclosure was the first step, but for Hartlib and his associates, improvement
involved much more than simply enclosure. Robert Child's "Large letter" discussed
the benefits of enclosure along with solutions for remedying twenty other "deficien-
cies" of English agriculture) including better agricultural instrumentsj more efficient
plowing techniques; an increased cultivation of kitchen vegetablesj the prevention
of diseases such as smut and mildew; the planting and care of fruit trees and vines;
the cultivation of crops such as hemp) flax, and clover; the discovery and use of more
kinds of fertilizers; the management of forests and meadowsi the keeping of bees
and silkwormsj and the tending of cattle 1 sheep) and horses. The imagined effects of
remedying Child's "deficiencies" can be seen in the frontispiece to John Worlidge's
SystemaAgricultura:,an image that acts (with the help of its accompanying explana-
tory poem) as a sort of epitome of improvement as understood by Hartlib and his
associates (fig. 22). 30 The farmhouse is at the center of an estate improved through
enclosure) with each field devoted to a different kind of innovative crop. Beyond the
farmyard-with its barns for the storage ofhay 1 pulses) and wheat) its stables, stiesJ
and coops for oxen) cows, pigs) and chickens-is the kitchen garden) filled with veg-
etables and flowers. To the left of the house is the apiary, home to the "industrious
bees" who confer a Virgilian air on the estate as a whole. In the landscape beyond we
see fields of the kinds of crops promoted by Hartlib and his circle-beans, peas, saf-
fron, and liquorice) while cherry, apple) plum) and pear trees fill an orchard and dot
the hedgerows of the enclosed fields. Beyond the orchard is a field devoted to the
cultivation oflucerneJ hopsi and cloveri past that is a planted wood of timber trees.
To the left we see some fields being plowed by teams of horses or oxeni and others
being irrigated by a windmill and a Persian wheel. Cows graze in the pasture, and
near the horizon a shepherd and a flock of sheep can be seen on the downs. This vi-
sion of a countryside where every acre was put to productive use was meant to serve
Figure 22.John Worlidge, frontispiece to SystemaAgricultur<E[1669] (London, 1681). The William
AndreW'SClark Memorial Library.

60 IMPROVEMENT 61 IMPROVEMENT
as a model not only for a well-managed individual estate 1 but also for the transforma-
tion of the landscape ofEngland as a whole.
Hartlib succeeded in creating a community of individuals united in their com-
mitment to improvement through agricultural reform. Their hope was that the
development ofbetter agricultural techniques would result in greater productivity
and prosperity for the nation, but Hartlib's belief in pansophic principles also meant
that husbandry reform was framed as part of a much larger project: the reclamation
of the perfect state enjoyed by Adam and Eve before the Fall. The improvement of
agriculture was thus cast as a redemptive actJ one that had the potential to lift the
curse of Adam. It was through this prism that the transformation of wasteland came
to acquire such a potent moral dimensioni for wasteland/ as the land most resistant
to improvement/ was also the land that most commanded improvement. The cultiva-
tion of the wasteland was posited by the Bible as Adam and Eve's route to salvationj
thus} the redemption of seemingly intractable land} the transformation of all England
into a "fruitfull garden/' would serve as proof that the Commonwealth and its citi-
zens had been saved. For Hartlib and his circle of agricultural improversJ the waste-
lands of England fignred as the very terrain of redemption.
The twentieth deficiency of Child's "Large letter" was "The want of diversthings,
which are necessaryfor the accomplishmentofAgriculture."In this sectioni he recom-
mended that a book addressing all known subjects related to husbandry be com-
piled} urged gentlemen and farmers to try experiments and new techniques in order
to advance knowledge, and hoped that one day "there will be erected a Colledgeof
Experiments,not onely for this, but also all other MechanicallArts:'31 Child's call for
the sharing ofknowledgeJ his scheme for a college of experimentsi and his project of
a "System or com pleat book of all the parts of Agriculture" would soon be heeded,
his precepts implemented less than a decade later by the Fellows of the fledgling
"Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge:'
Landscape as List: The Royal Society
The Royal Society was formed in 1660 by a group of men~many of them friends
and associates ofHartlib's-who had been meeting on an occasional basis for a
number of years in order to pursue their mutual interest in questions of natural phi-
losophy. On November 28th of that year, after attending Christopher Wren's public
lecture on astronomy at Gresham College in Bishopsgate Street} they resolved to
give their association a more formal character. They determined to meet weekly at
the same timej drew up a list of others who might be interested in joining their gath-
eringsj proposed a membership feej appointed a chairman) treasurer, and registrar;
62 IMPROVEMENT
and resolved to seek the king's approbation and patronage. On July 15, 1662, the
Royal Society was formally granted approval by Charles II, and on the afternoon of
August 29 1 the Fellows, including the Society's president, Lord BrounckerJ visited
Whitehall to give thanks to their patron. One by one, they lined up to kiss the king's
hand, pledging to "pursue sincerely and unanimously the end, for which your maj-
esty hath founded this society, the advancement of the knowledge of natural things,
and all useful arts} by experiments:' With this ceremony} the Royal Society was for-
mally established. 32
In 1665, Anglican preacher Joseph Glanvill called Francis Bacon's description of
Salomon's House in the New Atlantis a "Prophetick Schearn'' of the Royal Society. 33
And in TheHistory of the Royal Societyof London, Thomas Sprat, the Royal Society's
first historian and principal apologist} wrote that the scientific method propounded
by Sir Francis Bacon was so integral to Royal Society practice that he wished that
"there should have been no other Preface to the History of the Royal Society,but
some of his Writings:'34 The centrality of Bacon's philosophy to the Royal Society's
self-conception is made visually apparent in Wenceslaus Hollars frontispiece (fig.
23 )J where portraits of Lord Brouncker and Francis Bacon-identified respectively
as "Societatis Pr.:eses" and ''.Artium Instaurator"-flank a bust of the Society's patron,
Charles IL
Sprat characterized the Royal Society's goal as that of investigating nature in or-
der to make her productions entirely "serviceable to the quiet, and peaceJ and plenty
of Man's life:' 35 ThusJ immediately after the Society's foundation} its Fellows-mod-
eling themselves on the philosophers of Salomon's House-began to implement
the vast work of collection and experimentation that lay at the heart of the empiri-
cal method. In 1664, the Royal Society established eight committees to divide this
grand project into discrete areas, forming the Anatomical} Astronomical and Opti-
cal}Chemical/ Mechanical} Trade} Correspondence) and Agricultural (or "Georgi-
cal"-its moniker clearly intended to evoke Virgilian associations) committees/ as
well as a committee whose brief was to collect information pertaining to "all the
36
ph.:enomena of nature hitherto observed) and all experiments made and recorded:'
Samuel Hartlib's connection to the genesis of the Royal Society has been the
subject of much speculation. 37
Many individuals who were later to become members
of the Royal Society in the 1660s were part ofHartlib's circle in the 1640s and 1650s.
Not only did Hartlib correspond with a large number of these men, but he also was
most likely aware of the organization they were seeking to establish. Hartlib's radical
Puritan agenda was abandoned by the Royal Society, however} which on the whole
aimed to leave religion and politics out of its discussions in order to keep sectarian
divisions at bay. Furthermore, Hartlib had the support of Parliament and Cromwell,
63 IMPROVEMENT

Figure 23. Wenceslaus Hollar, frontispiece to Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Societyof London
(London, 1667). 1he Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
while the Royal Society counted Charles II as its patron. And whereas Hartlib pre-
sided over a loose circle of correspondents, the Royal Society sought an institutional
basis for its operations. Still, what united Hartlib's work and that of the future mem-
bers of the Royal Society was an interest in pursuing improvement by putting the
philosophy of Bacon to practical use. For all of these men 1knowledge of nature was
valuable because it led to technological progress, and technology, in turn, was a tool
that enhanced the knowledge of nature. In other words, philosophical speculation
and utility went hand in hand. But by 1662, Hartlib was dead, and it was up to the
64 IMPROVEMENT
Fellows of the Royal Society to pursue the projects he had initiated and promoted.
Central to all of these projects was the activity of composing natural histories, in
the Baconian sense of a natural history as a compendium of every known particular
about a given phenomenon. Observation and experimentation-the twin poles of
empirical investigation-were designed to generate large numbers of discrete facts:
objects and phenomena were to be studied by amassing testimonies of their most
basic physical characteristics (their color, shape, smell, texture, and weight) under
different experimental conditions. Experimentation was a process of dividing 1defin-
ing1 and naming: the external appearance of objects had to be decomposed into a
«good quantitie of orderly observations," as Hartlib 1paraphrasing Bacon 1 had writ-
ten1 if true knowledge of nature were ever to be generated. 38 A fundamental part of
the process evolved by the Fellows of the Royal Society in the 1660s to further these
goals was the drawing up of enquiries and the circulation of questionnaires, methods
that were designed to generate lists of observed characteristics. Thus, the Royal Soci-
ety's approach in its formative years was characterized by a tendency to amass 1rather
than to systematize information. 39 For the Fellows of the Royal Society 1as for Bacon
and Hartlib before them, it was only by keeping knowledge of nature in the seem-
ingly fragmentary, broken state of a list that the real truths of nature-"those that
lie at the heart and marrow of things"-could be discovered. 4°For these empirically
minded natural philosophers 1 a list was the most "natural" (meaning least contrived)
form of knowledge, and the natural histories they produced tended to take the form
oflists in the guise of prose. This methodological proclivity can be found throughout
the documents detailing the activities of the Royal Society in its early years, but its
consequences for the question of improvement are most clearly to be seen in the ef-
forts by the Royal Society's Georgical Committee to compose "as perfect a Hystory
of Agriculture and Gardening, as might be:' 41
The Georgi cal Committee's thirty-two members included many of the Society's
most active Fellows: a number had been among the Society's original founders,
while others, like John Beale and John Evelyn, had been part of Samuel Hartlib's
circle of correspondents.42 Thus, Bacon's interest in application and Hartlib's con-
ception of improvement were part of the assumptions common to the Georgical
Committee's members, shaping the tasks they set for themselves. In fact 1at the com-
mittee's very first meeting, its chairman Charles Howard suggested that the study of
"how waste Lands, heathy grouuds and boggs may be well employed and improved"
should be identified as a top priority. In order to focus on the task of improving Eng-
lish agriculture 1 however 1 the present state of the kingdom first needed to be inves-
tigated1 categorized, and defined. 43 The members of the Georgical Committee thus
determined to embark upon the compilation of a comprehensive history (i.e.,
65 IMPROVEMENT
a natural history) of agriculture, which, using methods developed by Hartlib and his
circlei was to be generated through a four-step process. Firsti committee members
were to compile lists of"GeorgicalAuthors" whose books were to be epitomized
into a list of subjects, or heads of inquiries, with Hartlib's Legacie identified as a mod-
el for their efforts. From this initial survey, lists of questions would be generated. The
questions were then to be sent to "experienced Husbandsmen" throughout England 1
Wales 1 Scotlandi and Ireland, and from this gathering of responses 1 it was hoped that
«thereby it might be knowne 1 what is knowne and done already, both to enrich every
place with the aides 1 that are found in any place, and withall to consider, what further
improvements may be made in all the practice ofHusbandrY:' 44
These responses
were to provide the raw material out of which the natural history of agriculture and
gardening was to be shaped.
Initially the questionnaires were distributed to people the committee members
knew personally, but in an effort to reach a larger audience 1 a decision was made to
publish the questionnaire in the Royal Society's periodical 1PhilosophicalTransac-
tions.45Twenty-five questions 1 divided into two sections 1"For Arable" and "For
Meadows/' asked for information concerning local types of soil; fertilizing and
planting techniques; varieties of crops; and methods of preserving grain from dis-
ease1vermin 1 and decay. In gathering testimony oflocal practices, the members of
the Georgical Committee had a two-fold goal. First was the straightforward one of
amassing information: the answers to these questions would furnish a storehouse of
local conditions, natural resources 1 and practices 1 leading to a comprehensive view
of England's present state. Second was the connection between the local and the na-
tional, the present and the future: it was hoped that this information, once published
and circulated, would foster-from the ground up-the improvement of English
agriculture as a whole.
Thus, we should not be surprised to find a number of questions that address
the topic of improving different kinds of wasteland. One, for examplei asks: "Howi
and for what productions, Heathy Grounds may be improved? And who they are
(if there be any in your Country) that have reduced Heaths into profitable Lands?"
Another solicits information as to "the best waies ofDrayning Marshes 1 Bogs, Fens,
&c?" The Royal Society questionnaire is significant not only because of its inter-
est in the question of wasteland improvementi but also because of the shape this
interesttakes. The first query asks: "The several kinds of the soyls of England, being
supposed to be, either Sandy, Gravelly, Stony, Clayie, Chalky, Light-mould, Heathy,
Marish 1Boggy 1Fenny 1or Cold weeping Ground; information is desired, what kind
of soyls your Country doth most abound with 1 and how each of them is prepared 1
when employed for Arable?" Another notes that the most common annoyances
66 IMPROVEMENT
of pasture or meadow are "Weeds 1Moss, Sourgrass, Heath, Fern 1 Bushes 1 Bryars 1
Brambles, Broom, Rushes, Sedges 1Gorse or Furzes," and asks how these bothersome
plants are commonly eliminated. 46 The form of these questions betrays a particular
approach and set of methodological assumptions. The PhilosophicalTransactions
questionnaire frames its queries as lists of particulars grouped under a general head-
ing. Questions enumerate in exhaustive detail not only types of soil and families of
weeds 1but also species of wheat, peas, and beans; strains of diseases; and varieties
of vermin. Questions such as these, articulated in the form of lists, are testimony to
a method of inquiry that seeks knowledge in the form of discrete particulars. They
indicate that in the quest for improvement, individuation 1 definition, and categoriza-
tion were key strategies. For the nation to advance, a detailed account made up of a
"good quantitie of orderly observations" was necessary. 47 In other words 1 the face of
England was to be transformed by converting landscape into list.
The Georgical Committee's questionnaire does not seem to have generated many
responses 1 in fact, only eleven are preserved in the archives of the Royal Society. 43
But one must take into account that its timing could not have been worse: one week
before its publication 1the plague arrived in London, and both the Royal Society's
assemblies and the publication of its periodical were suspended. Furthermore, the
Georgical Committee seems to have stopped meeting some months earlier; the last
I surviving minutes are dated February 23, 1665. But it is clear that the projects the
I Georgical Committee initiated were not entirely abandoned. At the Royal Soci-
t ety's general meeting on May IO, Charles Howard reported that his committee was
I continuing to work on several fronts 1waiting to receive additional responses to the
l
I
j
agricultural questionnaire, compiling a natural history of English crops 1 composing
questionnaires about evergreens and kitchen garden plants, considering proposals
II for fruit and timber tree planting 1 and soliciting opinions about how "waste Lands,
Heathy Grounds, and Boggs might be well irnployed and irnproved:' 49
Although we
!
I do not know when the Georgical Committee officially met for the last time, other
developments confirm that questions ofland use and improvement maintained their
I
centrality for the Fellows of the Royal Society, even if their pursuit took different
forms. 50
Cartographies of Improvement: John Ogilby's Britannia
If distilling the national landscape into a series of items on a list was key to the Royal
Society's pursuit of improvement 1when we turn to contemporary print culture we
find this project taking shape in two significant ways. The first was the creation of
a new kind of book: the natural history of a particular county. Robert Plot's The
67 IMPROVEMENT
Natural History of Oxford-shireof 1677 was the pioneering work ofthis new genre,
which merged a Baconian approach to natural philosophy with the chorographical
tradition shaped by John Leland and William Camden. Nine years later Plot fol-
lowed up with TheNatural History of Staffordshire,and together these two works
established a template that was to shape the writing oflocal history in Britain for the
next two centuries and more. The second) related manifestation instead took a carto-
graphic form: John Ogilby's majestic road book ofl67S, Britannia,which deployed
the concept oflandscape as list to generate a comprehensive picture of the national
landscape while shaping a new template for English travel (fig. 24 ). 51 Britannia aimed
to survey and map over forty thousand miles of the kingdom's post roads, helped to
standardize the mile at 1,760 yards, established the scale of one inch to the mile, and
gathered together a vast amount of information relating to the history, manufactures 1

natural resourcesi curiosities, and antiquities of different counties 1 providing knowl-

edge of specific localities while generating an overview of the national landscape as a
whole. 52
Although Ogilby's fame rests upon his work as a geographer, he came to this
activity late, after trying and abandoning a number of different occupations. His first
career was as a dancer, but an injury sustained during his performance of Jonson's
The GypsiesMetamorphosedleft him lame, and he was reduced to supporting himself
by serving as a dancing master to young ladies. He subsequently had a brief stint as
a theater owner in Dublin, but in the 1650s he turned to publishing, and translated
and produced lavish volumes ofVirgil, Homer 1 and Aesop. After the Fire of London
in 1666 1 Ogilbywas appointed as one of the City's "sworn viewers" or assistant
surveyors, and by the 1670s he had restyled himself as a cosmographer, hatching a
vast project to depict the totality of the known world on paper. Four large-format
volumes were to map the four quarters of the earth (Africa 1 Asia 1 America 1 and
Europe), while England was to be the subject of a volume unto itself, divided into
three separate parts. 53 The first of these was to present a complete topographical de-
scription of the country in the form of a county-by-county survey, the second was to
provide descriptions of the nation's twenty-five major cities, and the third was to be
a book of road maps. Ogilby lived only long enough to see thelast of these-Britan-
nia~appear in print.
Dedicated to Charles II, Britannia was a paragon of accuracy and comprehen-
siveness. Even more importantly, its maps introduced an innovative graphic con-
vention that was to have important consequences for the way landscape would be
envisioned in England for the next century and beyond: each route is represented as
though drawn on a continuous strip or scroll of paper that loops and doubles back Figure 24. Wenceslaus Hollar, frontispiece to John Ogilby,Britannia (London, 1675). The Henry E.
upon itself as it unfurls from left to right across the space of the page (fig. 25). 54 At Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

68 IMPROVEMENT 69 IMPROVEMENT

Figu1·e25.Map of route from Camarthen toAberistwith.John Ogilby, Britannia (London, 1675).
1he Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
the beginning of each scroll, located at the lower left of each plate, is the city of ori-
gin, usually London, which is represented ichnographically. As the route continues
through the countryside, it fords rivers, traverses heaths, passes through hamlets,
crosses bridges, and ascends and descends mountains until it reaches its city of des-
tination, usually also represented in plan, located at the top right of the same or a
successive plate. Ogilby's strip maps-descendants of the Roman Peutinger Table
and precursors of contemporary navigational aids like the American Automobile As-
sociation's "TripTiks"-are pictorial itineraries: they chart routes rather than roads.5
Ogilby's maps were not the first British itineraries; in fact, as a form of wayfind-
ing guide, the itinerary had a long and venerable history in England, stretching all
the way back to the Iter Britannicumor British portion of the fourth-century Anto-
nine Itinerary 1 the register of the routes connecting the major settlements 1 camps,
70 IMPROVEMENT
and forts of the Roman Empire. 56 Around the beginning of the sixteenth century 1
types of wayfaring aids that undoubtedly had previously existed in manuscript, such
as itineraries 1 lists of roads, and distance tables, began to be published, and the shift
from manuscript to print led not only to greater availability, but also to increased
standardization. England was crisscrossed by a network of thoroughfares of differing
size and importance, from major highways to the smaller and more local ways, paths,
and tracks whose various combinations could offer a multitude of ways to get from
one place to another. But once itineraries began to be printed, and as the country's
postal system developed, particular sequences of roads, punctuated by designated
inns and changing places 1 began to congeal into routes. The term "way" became
specific and directional, indicating a course to be followed ("this is the way to Lon-
don''), rather than simply a path.
Until the middle of the seventeenth century 1 printed itineraries tended to be
small, cheap, and portable. Designed to be carried in a pocket or bag to help with
wayfinding en route, for the most part they were lists or tables oflocations and dis-
tances, sometimes including information about markets and fair days. But Ogilby's
strip maps united the listlike quality of the itinerary with a pictorial interest in repre-
senting local landscapes, establishing a graphic new way of visualizing travel. A strip
map, by definition, is concerned almost exclusively with the terrain to either side
of its chosen route, sacrificing consistent north-south orientation and a sense of a
greater topographical context for more proximate information. Not only do Ogilby's
maps give visual form to the abstraction of a route, but also1and more importantly,
they generate an image of the landscapes passed through. They use words and icons
to denote features and objects on or to either side of the road including cities 1 vil-
lages1and hamlets; churches, windmills, houses of the gentry and bridges of wood
and stonei mountains, rivers, and seas. They indicate whether the roads are open
or enclosed by hedges or stone walls-indeed, they provide important testimony
of the degrees to which enclosure had been implemented in different areas of the
country by the late 1670s-and describe the types of terrain traversed, making note
of prominent characteristics or eye-catching features. To do this, the maps make
use of the cartographic convention of combining ichnographic and perspectival
views: larger towns, rivers, lakes 1and the road itself are shown in plan or as though
seen from above, while objects such as trees, villages, churches, mills, houses of the
gentry, and the occasional castle are depicted in elevation. 1his convention is par-
ticularly striking when applied to the representation of hills and mountains, which
Ogilby depicted in elevation and right side up, to indicate an ascent 1 and in elevation
but upside down, to denote a descent. In addition to these conspicuous objects 1
however, Ogilby also chose to record and draw the traveler's attention to the type of
71 IMPROVEMENT
terrain passed through: printed on the maps are verbal indications denoting when
the land is arable 1 pasture 1 heathy 1 boggy, or moorish. Many of the maps note that the
land is "great partArrable hither/' or that there is "Furse and Fern on both sides;' or
"Heath Grounde and Mooreish on both sides:'
It was during his tenure as an assistant surveyor to the City of London in the
1660s that Ogilby came into contact with two pivotal figures of London's scientific
community: Christopher Wren 1 Commissioner for Rebuilding the City of London
after the Great Fire, and Robert Hooke, a city surveyor and Wren's assistant 1 as well
as Curator of Experiments for the Royal Society at that time. 57
Through these profes-
sional affiliations, Ogilby came into the orbit of a number of men who were actively
involved in some of the most critical scientific projects of the time, many of them
founding members of the Royal Society. Hooke records meeting with Ogilby over
sixty times in the two years preceding the publication of Britannia,malting many
suggestions regarding surveying, mapmaking conventions (including possibly the
upside-down mountains), printing, and even suggesting the use of a mechanical de-
vice of his own invention, the "chariot way-wiser;' that could replace the traditional
foot-wheel and allow the surveyor to travel in the comfort of a carriage while the
distance and direction traveled were recorded directly onto a sheet of paper. It is in
this intersection between early modern science and cartography that Britannia'ssig-
nificant attention to land use can be located.
A printed document preserved among the pages of Royal Society Fellow John
Aubrey's manuscript of the "Natural History of Surrey" sheds additional light on the
genesis of Ogilby's project. Entitled "Queries in Order to the Description of Britan-
nia,"it was drawn up as a questionnaire by a committee that included, in addition
to Ogilby and his assistant Gregory King, Royal Society Fellows Robert Hooke,
Christopher Wren, John Aubrey, and John Hoskins (or Hoskyos). 58 Hooke had been
involved with a number of the Society's projects to generate questionnaires, and
both Aubrey and Hoskins had been members of the Georgical Committee, whose
"Enquiries Concerning Agriculture" had been published a year before the Fire. 59
Ogilby's questionnaire, which was to be circulated among "the Nobility and Gentry,
and all other Ingenious Persons," requests local information pertaining to twenty-
one subjects: cities and towns with their markets and fairs; individual buildings of
note such as houses of the nobility, castles 1 churches, colleges, and hospitals; other
constructions such as mills 1 beacons, and bridges; antiquities, peculiar customs 1
manners, or extraordinary accidents; and the places ofbirth, burial, and education of
eminent figures.
Many of these categories are familiar from English chorographical literature and
the works of John Leland, William Camden, and William Dugdale. But in addition
72 IMPROVEMENT
to these antiquarian concerns, the questionnaire also asks questions about local land
use: what part of the country is arable, pasture, meadow, wood, or champaigni the
extent of forests, groves 1 chases, woods, parks, and warrens; the locations of com-
mons and heaths, mountains and valleys, rivers, brooks, and ponds; whether the area
boasts any unusual springs, wells, or mineral waters, or deposits of mines and miner-
als. By asking for notice of these landscapes and natural resources 1 as well as of any
"Improvements in Husbandry 1 Mechanicks, Manufactures, &c.," the questionnaire
makes manifest the links between Ogilby's project and the Royal Society, provid-
ing evidence that Britannia'slarger goal was to generate a portrait of the nation's
landscapes 1 to identify and locate their resources and productions in order to further
60
both utilization and improvement. In addition 1 the questionnaire's format, with its
particular areas of interest, its intermingling of nature and culturei and its tendency
to shape its questions as lists of individual items or instances, betrays its connections
to Royal Society methods and concerns-ones that ultimately can be traced back
to Francis Bacon. But Britannia'squestionnaire did more than merely seek to accu-
mulate information. By asking the landowners of England to notice certain things in
their surrounding landscapes and to share their observations, the questionnaire also
sought to create a community of like-minded individuals, ones who would begin to
understand 1 evaluate, and picture their local surroundings in specific ways. In this
wayi Britanniahelped to fashion a new sense of national identity that was rooted in
its landscapes.
Tue ways in which specific, local information could be collected and combined
in order to construct a national image is vividly conveyed by Wenceslaus Hollar's
frontispieCe (see fig. 24). ln the foreground, two men on horseback are setting out
on a journey, one holding the scroll of a road map in his hand. Other travelers and
would~be travelers can be seen setting out of the city gate on foot, trundling up a
mountain in a carriage 1 and sitting down to study a map in the lower left foreground.
The road they all travel on (which is presumably the same as that represented on the
map scrolls) leads out of the city gate and through the landscape, crossing a bridge
over a river, winding through valleys and hills, and finally ascending to the top of a
steep mountain. Each of the landmarks commonly used on Britannia'sstrip maps
makes its appearance-we see a town, a church, a windmill, and a gibbet-as do the
types oflandscapes together with their uses: we see men fishing in the river, cattle
and horses grazing on a common, riders hunting on a chase, a shepherd tending his
flock on a heath; ships at anchor and at sail on the sea.
Tue image also reveals the means by which Britannia'smaps were created: the
tools of the surveyor (including a cross-staff, compass, theodolite, and surveyor's
chain and rule) are depicted lying on the table at the bottom right, and a handheld
73 IMPROVEMENT
"way-wiser" is pushed by a surveyor's assistant in the right middle ground. The three
putti overhead carry bannersJ each one standing in for one of the three projected
volumes of Britannia:the first represents the road bookj the secondJ the collection
of city maps (here with London as the example); and the third, the topographical
survey of counties. ThusJ Hollar shows a three-step process of construction: the
means by which the landscape is surveyed in the foregroundj the manner in which
the survey fashions an image of the national landscape in the middle ground and
backgroundj and the way that this idea of a nation becomes an abstract cartographi-
cal representation in the three banners held by the putti above. Central to all of these
acts of representation is motion-the motion of the surveyori the motion of the
traveler! and the virtual motion of the map-reader. Motion produces an image of a
local landscapei links one local landscape to another to form a regioni and shows
how regions joined together form a nation. From the road winding up the mountain!
to the national network of post roads contained in the strip mapsi to the continental
geographies suggested by the globe sitting on the cartographer's table, motion binds
the local to the national to the global, connecting all of these levels of geographical
representation together andJ at the same timei finding a place for Britain within this
web ofinterconnected networks.
Although Ogilby's topographical study of England was never completed, much
of the regional information he collected was presented in Britannia'stext. But even
more importantly, the interest in land use and industry manifested by the ques-
tionnaires made its way into the maps themselves. Britannia imagined the nation's
landscape through the lens of use: the maps note where the land is arablei pastureJ
or forestj they indicate agricultural activity in the form of warrensJ sheep downsi and
wheat fieldsj and record signs of industry, such as coal, limeJ gravel, and marl pitsi
lead minesJ lime kilnsi water and paper millsJ and iron and coal works. In addition to
recording evidence of industry and improvementi the maps also draw attention to
wasteland: to heaths, moorsi bogsi commonsJ and expanses of"furze and fern:' Bri-
tannia'smaps thus differentiated between productive and waste landJ the useful and
the uselessJ picturing the national landscape as a patchwork of the cultivated and the
wild. By defining and locating the considerable expanses yet to be brought under the
yoke of civilizationi Ogilby's maps provided route maps not just for England's travel-
ersi but also for its improvers.
The question of how often Ogilby's maps were used in practice has been much
debated by historians. Although earlier commentators such as J.B.Harley and
Katherine S. Van Eerde assumed that Britannia had been widely employed en routei
Catherine Delano-Smith and Garrett Sullivan have questioned this assumption,
noting that Britannia'ssize and heft may have made it unlikely that the cumbersome
74 IMPROVEMENT
folio was ever packed into a saddle bag. 61 Almost immediately after its publication
in 167Si however, Britannia began to spawn an unruly brood of reprints, epitomes,
knockoffsi and imitations. Smaller and lighter versions of Ogilby's tome were pro-
duced and issued at a breakneck pace, setting the pattern for British route maps for
the next century and beyond (fig. 26).
In addition to these distilled versions of Britannia!there were other ways that
its maps could have been deployed. A manuscript found between the covers of one
of the British Library's copies ofBritannia illustrates one possibility (fig. 27). ltis a
sheet of folio paper that has been divided into three parallel columns, showing the
route from Bagshot to Winchester. Landmarks and landscapes have been carefully
transcribed: the manuscript map identifies the location of intersections, bridgesJ
towns, churchesJ and mills; riversi rillsi and ponds; hills, commons, heathsJ and
forests; it also notes when the landscape is "arable on both sides" or "hiath [heath]
& furze." Significantly, this is no direct transcription of one of Britannia'smaps. By
comparing the manuscript with Ogilby's original platesJ it becomes clear that this
map was tailor-made by copying one section of the road from London to Southamp-
ton, transcribing it carefully, feature by feature, and then grafting on to it a section
of the map from London to Pooli in order to combine on one sheet information
corresponding to the traveler's own route. 62 The possibility that this sheet was not a
mere graphic exercise but indeed used on the road is suggested by the fact that it was
at one point folded in half, presumably to make it fit into a traveling pocket book of
some sort. 63 This kind of use is also evoked by Hollar's frontispiece, which uniformly
represents Ogilby's maps not in the form of a bound booki nor even as a typical
printed page with its trademark ribboni but rather as an ind_ividualscroll or sheet of
paper. The putti flying in the air1 the rider mounted on his horse, and the man sit-
ting by the building at the bottom left of the frontispiece all hold individual sheets
on which a route is depicted. The manuscript map found in the British Library also
suggests how Britannia'sattention to land use could have begun to color its users'
expectationsJ directing their attention to particular landscape features and shaping
what they saw as they moved through their immediate surroundings.
Britannia'sstrip maps are the visual equivalents of the Royal Society question-
naires. By organizing local information along the linear trajectory of particular
routes, the maps follow the same "one-thing-after-another" logic of a list. 1his mode
of analyzing and representing a landscape remained influentialJ with the strip map
remaining the standard template for route maps in England up to the very end of the
eighteenth century.John Cary was responsible for one of its last incarnations in 1790
with his Cary'.sSurvey of the High Roadsfrom London to Hampton Court, although
admittedly his maps paid more attention to houses of the gentry and roadside pubs
75 IMPROVEMENT
 to the development of a new, and even more abstract, way of evaluating the national
landscape 1 one that resulted from subjecting its vast quantity of raw data to the ana-
lytical power of mathematics.
f,)t,~,1•10
e::. .~:f4-,,

Nature and Number: Gregory King's Political Arithmetick

t,/liA

C J In 1672, twenty-four-year-old Gregory King was recommended to John Ogilby

'
/ :1 by Wenceslaus Hollar as an assistant and engraver. King is reported to have been
7 J something of a prodigy: the son of a surveyor and mathematics teacher, he had gone
J to work for the antiquary William Dugdale at age fourteen; during the five years he
spent as his clerk he rapidly became skilled in heraldry and drawing. When he began
to work for Ogilby he was employed at first to etch plates for Sir Peter Leycester's
HistoricalAntiquities,for Ogilby's edition of Aesop'sFables,and for a new edition
ofWilliam Camden's Britannia,but King rapidly became involved with Ogilby's
own Britannia project, then already under way. Surveys of two counties, Kent and
lvliddlesex, were in the process ofbeing engraved, but soon King took on the work
J1~;1.,,_
.........
of surveying himself, traveling to Essex with a surveyor named Falgate to compile
cfir1.,a,,, data firsthand. From this time on, King was central to the Britannia project, devising
<[,,J,r,.:;.:,,.1
, '."%:,,cl<F-/{.C:.,"i-t
• r,-.. book lotteries to help Ogilbywith funding, helping to draw up the list of enquiries
together with Ogilby, Hookei Wren, Aubrey 1 and Hoskins 1 digesting the responses
and surveyors' notes, and directing the engravingsi a number of which he executed
himself. 64 1hrough these experiences of traveling across England to collect informa-
Figure 26. John Owen and Emanuel Bowen, Britannia Depida,
tion and undertake surveys, first with Dugdale, then with Ogilby, and later with the
Figure 27, Map of the route from Bagshot to Winchester. Author
or OgilbyImprov'd (London, l 720 ). The William Andrews Clark unknown, seventeenth century. © The British Library Board. mapmaker John Adams, King amassed the information subsequently used to form
Memorial Library. Maps C.6.d.8. the basis of his "Political Arithmetick;' a pioneering form of statistics.
The result, contained in King's "Natural and Political Observations and Conclu-
sions upon the State and Condition ofEnglandi 1696;' remains the best evidence
than landscape features per se. Britannia's cartographic conventions were deployed for the population and economy of England at the end of the seventeenth century,
for other kinds of maps as well: in 1778 they were used to construct a map of The and 1_once published in the early nineteenth century 1 it became extremely influential
Pilgrim'sProgress(see fig. 3), and in 1790 they featured in a colorful puzzle version, on the development of the science of statistics. 65 Using Ogilby's "Queries in Order
ThePilgrim'sProgressDissected(fig. 28 ), with the Slough of Despond, Dark Moun- to the Description of Britannia" as a guide for accumulating information, King then
tains, Large Wood, Valley of Humiliation, and River of Death all depicted in a style subjected his raw data to a series of mathematical exercises, analyzing England's pop-
that immediately brings Ogilby's maps to mind. Here Chr_istian'sjourney is explicitly ulation by age, gender, marital status 1 and classi and the nation's economy by taking
cast as a trip on an English post road 1 with the swamps, pits 1 mountains, and forests stock of both production and consumption. In his seventh exercise 1 King turned his
of Bunyan's wasteland all making an appearance as discrete objects encountered, one attention to the English landscape, dividing the estimated thirty-nine million acres
after another, along the main route, thus providing a means of imprinting even the of England and Wales into eight categories: arable; pasture and meadow; woods and
youngest imaginations with its particular cartography of aspirational improvement. coppices; forests, parks, and commons; heaths, moors, mountains, and barren lands;
But the significance of Ogilby's project does not end here. Britannia was also central houses and homesteads 1 gardens and orchards, churches and churchyards; rivers 1

76 IMPROVEMENT 77 IMPROVEMENT
 Figw:e 28. The Pilgrim's
Progressas an Ogilbresque
jigsaw puzzle. ThePilgrim's
ProgressDissected,Or a_Com-
plete View ofPilgrim'sTravels
from the City of Destruction
to the Holy-Land (London,
1790 ). © The British Library
Board. C.110.c.20.
78 IMPROVEMENT
lakes, meres, and ponds; and roads, ways1 and other legally unimprovable "waste
lands/' basing his categorization strictly upon value per acre.66 As he analyzed his
data 1 he found that while the value of the produce of arable land was three times as
much as its rent, most of the other categories ofland could not compare in terms of
productivity. Pasture and meadow maintained cattle and produced hay1 and woods
and coppices were a source of timber and firewood 1 but forests 1 parks 1 and commons
fell far below these in value 1 while heaths 1 moors 1 and barren lands were written off
as virtually worthless 1 believed to produce nothing that figured in any significant way
in the national economy.
By devising a way to reconfigure nature as natural resource 1 King's statistical
analysis focused a new lens on the issue of improvement 1 redefining it as an eco-
nomic calculus of costs and returns 1 and bringing a few significant issues into sharp
focus. First, his mathematics revealed not only that pasture and arable were the most
profitable of all forms ofland use 1 but also1 and even more importantly, that pasture
had a significantly greater value per acre than arable because it cost so much less to
work and maintain than an atable field of comparable size. The second important
finding that emerged from King's study was not only that England's heaths, moors,
mountains 1 and "barren lands" were not contributing in any numerically measur-
able way to the economy 1 but also that they constituted a high proportion-over
one quarter-of the country's total number of acres. Their resistance to calculations
of value identified these categories ofland once again 1 this time from a narrowly
economic perspective, as wastelands. We do not know to what extent King may have
used his statistics as a platform to argue for particular land use policies 1 but the mes-
sage his numbers conveyed was clear: pasture was more profitable than arable, and
there were extensive acres of wasteland whose potential remained untapped. The
significance of these findings for the development of the ideology of improvement
can hardly be overestimated, for they provided a solid economic argument for a vast
acceleration in enclosure that targeted precisely these two issues and which 1 over the
next 150 years 1 was completely to change the face of rural Britain and the lives of its
inhabitants. But what is perhaps even more significant from an epistemological point
of view is that King's political arithmetic devised a way to convert nature to number.
Improvement and the Progress ofEnclosnre
Although 1 as we have seen, by the end of the seventeenth century enclosure was a
well-established practice, the eighteenth century saw a vast increase in its implemen-
tation. This was greatly facilitated by the creation of a standardized and streamlined
procedure for securing an Act of Enclosure that took full advantage of the power
79 IMPROVEMENT
 Figure 30. The progress of enclo-
sure, 1700: the manor house is
encircled by its walled garden and
a number of enclosed fields. The
square garden plots mirror the
orthogonally laid out countryside.
Timothy Nourse, frontispiece to
CampaniaFrelix:Or, A Discourse
of the Benefitsand Improvementsof
Husbandry(London, 1700 ). The
William.Andrews Clark Memorial
Library.

Figure 29. The progress of enclosure, 1689: a single enclosed field with fruit trees
planted in the hedgerows; a cider press is in the foreground. John Worlidge, fron-
tispiece to TheSecondPart of Systema Agricultum, or the Misteryof Husbandry&
VintetumBritanicumor Treatiseof Cider(London, 1689 ). © The British Library
Board.1490.s.21.
vested in Parliament. The pace of enclosure quickened dramatically after the first
Parliamentary Act of Enclosure was passed in 1760, with some nine hundred acts
passed over the course of the next twenty years. All in all, it is estimated that four
thousand acts were passed between 1750 and 1850, with activity concentrated heav-
ily in two bursts-in the 1760s and I 770s, and then again during the period of the
80 IMPROVEMENT
Napoleonic Wars from 1793 to 1815. 67 Many of these acts concerned the enclosure
of open fields (figs. 29-32 ), but a significant number were directed toward the en-
closure of wasteland: it is thought that between twu and three million acres of waste-
land were enclosed in the second half of the eighteenth century alone. 68 Enclosure
transformed a traditional agrarian landscape into a modern one. It destroyed a way
oflife that had existed for centuries, irrevocably changing the shape of the English
village and the lives of its inhabitants. Enclosure also led to improved agricultural
productivity, increased (although unequally distributed) national prosperity and a
population boom. Although interpretations and evaluations of the effects of enclo-
sure have varied widely, from writer to writer and generation to generation, no

81 IMPROVEMENT
commentator) whether historical or modern, would dispute the fact that from the
very beginning a central aim of enclosure pursued under the banner of improvement
was the eradication of the wasteland.
But neither the impetus that fueled this eradication/ nor the ideology of im-
provement itsel£ were to remain static. At the end of the seventeenth century, the
utopian hopes attached to the concept of improvement by Hartlib and his circle had
begun to dim. By the I 720s, many commentators felt that the moral and spiritual as-
pirations of improvement had been eclipsed by the pursuit of economic gain. As the
anonymous author of a pamphlet entitled Proposalsfor the Improvementof Commons
and Waste-Landsacknowledged/ when it came to questions of"lrnprovementJ and
En crease of the Products, Manufactures/ Trade, and Navigation of this Kingdom/'
"'twill be in vain to urge the Obsolete Maxims of Religion and Morality, of doing as
they would be done by, to live and let live, &c., which tho' they are certainly the best

Figure 32. Draft enclosure map for Kilnsea, East Riding ofYorkshire, 1818, with additions
of 1840 showing the imposition of new enclosures on existing open-field strips. East
Riding of Yorkshire Council Archives and Record Services, DDX92/ 4.

Figure 31. The progress of enclosure, 1760: even before the heyday of Parliamentary Enclosure, this part of the
Surrey countryside is enclosed as far as the eye can see. The sinuous forms of the landscape garden contrast with
the gridded agricultural landscape. Note the trees planted in the hedgerows. Artist unknown. Claremont:Viewof
theAmphitheatreand Lake, ca. 1760. Private collection. © Sotheby's Picture Library.
Arguments, yet have but little Power and Efficacy where Interest is concern'd:' 69 The
Royal Society's conversion oflandscape to list and Gregory King's reduction of na-
ture to number were critical, interconnected steps in the transformation of the way
the English landscape was interpreted and assessed. As developments they seem to
point to a narrative in which an increasing tide of rationalization) privatization) in-
dustrialization/ and secularization overwhelmed older notions of communal rights,
of multiple and overlapping uses, of the philosophical and spiritual benefits to be
gained through interacting with the land. Yet, as we will seeJ the story of the transfor-
mation of the traditional agrarian landscape into a modern, industrialized one is not
so straightforward. As it became increasingly clear that improvement's benefits were
not unequivocal, the role that aesthetics came to play in developing notions ofland-
scape changed things once again, coloring the ways in which particular wasteland
ecologies-fens 1 mountains 1 and forests in particular-were viewed 1 understood,
and valued.

82 IMPROVEMENT 83 IMPROVEMENT

CHAPTER III
SWAMP
On his way to Manchester in the early 1720s, Daniel Defoe passed by that "great
Bog or Waste call'd Chatmos:' Extending for five or six miles on the left-hand side
of the road leading north to Manchester, Chat Moss was a peculiar and distinctive
topographical feature, neither land nor water, but somethingtroublinglyin-between.
I The Moss was "frightful to think of," dangerous and potentially deadly, "for it will
bear neither Horse or Man, unless in an exceeding dry Season, and then not so as to
be passable, or that any one should travel over them:' Black and dirty-looking from
a distance, from close up the surface of the Moss revealed itself to be made up of"a
Collection of the small Roots of innumerable Vegetables matted together, interwo-
ven so thick, as well the bigger Roots as the smaller Fibres, that it makes a Substance
hard enough to cut out into Tur£ or rather Peat, which, in some Places, the People
cut out, and piling them up in the Sun, dry them for their Fewel. ... In some Places
the Surface of this kind lies thicker, in some not very thick. We saw it in some Places
eight or nine Foot thick, and the Water that dreins from it look'd clear, but of a deep
brown, like stale Beer: Neither entirely solid nor purely liquid, the bog was not only
impossible to traverse, but also difficult to utilize, or even understand: "the Land is
entirely waste, except, as above, for the poor Cottagers fuel, and the Quantity used
for that is very small;' Defoe wrote, concluding, «what Nature meant by such a use-
less Production, 'tis hard to imagine:' 1
In 1772, William Gilpin encountered a similar landscape feature in his journey in
the north ofEngland. Nearing the end of his tour to Cumberland and Westmorland,
he went to survey the "scene of desolation'' presented by Solway-Moss, a few miles
to the west of Carlisle. Gilpin's description of the peat bog is reminiscent of Defoe's:
"Solway-moss is a flat area, about seven miles in circumference. The substance ofit
is a gross flnid, composed of mud, and the putrid fibres of heath, diluted by internal
84
springs 1 which arise in every part. The surface is a dry crusti covered with moss, and
rushesj offering a fair appearance over an unsound bottom-shaking under the least
pressure:' Not only was the Moss unsightly, it was also dangerous: "Cattle by instinct
know, and avoid it. Where rushes grow 1 the bottom is soundest. The adventrous pas-
senger, therefore, who sometimes, in dry seasons 1 traverses this perilous waste to
save a few miles, picks his cautious way over the rushy tussocksi as they appear be-
fore him." However, Gilpin warns, "If his foot slip, or ifhe venture to desert this mark
2
of security, it is possible he may never more be heard 0£"
Defoe and Gilpin described the bogs they encountered in terms evocative of a
wasteland. Frightening, dangerous, unsightly, and useless 1 for them a bog was more
than merely an impediment to travel: it embodied landscape in one of its most
hostile and troubling guises. With its murky and unstable surface, its incalculable
and terrifying depths 1 the bog was landscape as dissimulator, as trickster 1 ready to
engulf the unwary in its muddy, suffocating embrace. But the bog was unsettling in
other ways too. Made neither purely of earth nor of water, the bog was a combina-
tion ofboth elements, a muddy mixture that resisted simple categorization ofliquid
or solid. Perhaps more than anything else, it was this indeterminacy, this resistance
to characterizationi that made the bog a disquieting landscape of particular potency
and led to its eliciting in commentator after commentator a reaction of visceral
disgust.
Defoe's and Gilpin's encounters with swampy wastelands occurred in the north,
where bogs were a relatively common feature of northern England and of Scotland,
but similarly marshy landscapes were to be found in the south (Romney Marsh, in
Kenti being one conspicuous example)i as well as in Wales and other parts of the
west. No area of the kingdom was more associated with swamps and swampiness 1
however, than that great swath of mud, mire, and mere known as the Fens.
The Fens of eastern England comprised a region of over thirteen hundred square
miles, located around the coast of the Wash, that had been inundated by waters that
seeped and settled on an area extending over the six counties ofNorfolk 1 Suffolk,
Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton, and Lincoln (fig. 33 ). Originally, this vast
marsh was a low-lying basin covered by the North Sea, encircled by chalk hills ly-
ing to the north and south, into which the rivers Witham, Glen, Welland, Nenei and
Ouse, and the Ouse's four tributaries, the rivers Grant (or Cam), Mildenhall (or
Lark), Brandon (or little Ouse), and Stoke (or Wissey) emptied their waters.
Over the centuries, this basin gradually became silted up from a combination
of deposits corning from the upland riversi and, to an even greater extent, from the
sea. As the outfalls of the rivers became more and more blocked, the area became
85 SWAMP
Figure 33. Payler Smyth, "An Exact copy of A Plan of the
Penns as it was taken Anno 1604 by William Haywardv
[R59 /31/ 40/ 1]. © Cambridgeshire Archives and
Local Studies.

86 SWAMP
susceptible to flooding, with water coming from the rivers that increasingly over-
flowed their banks on one side, and, on the other side 1 from storms and high tides
from the sea. Some areas became "drowned" or "surrounded" only in the event of a
severe storm 1 some might be underwater for most of the winter but dry in summer,
while others became permanent saltwater or freshwater marsh. In his description of
Cambridgeshire, William Camden wrote, "The upper and north-part of this Shire
is all over divided into river-isles (branch'd-out by the many flowings of ditches,
chanels, and drains,) which all the summer-long afford a most delightful green pros-
pect; but in winter-time are almost all laid under water 1 further every way than a man
can see, and in some sort resembling the sea it sel£''3 Underneath these watersi the
soil was a mix of silts and clays deposited by the sea in some areas, and peati formed
by the extended coexistence of stagnant waters and decomposed vegetation, in other
areas. The surface of this soil was uneven, resulting in some deep depressions that
were full of water year-round (the Whittlesey, Ramsey, and Soham Meres among the
largest of these), as well as the occasional hill or "island" ofhigher land, upon which
the region's earliest permanent settlements were located.
In the Fens 1 the proportion ofland to water, or pasture to marsh, changed from
season to season, year to year, and was dependent on storms 1 tides, and other capri-
cious natural forces. Mutability and instability were the defining characteristics of
this landscape. Inhabitants were at the mercy of the waters, and great floods could
drown entire villages if they were not located on ground of sufficient elevation,
ruining crops and carrying away housesi cattle, and people. Settlement was sparse 1
tending to cluster around the edges of the marshes and on the islands, and the en-
tire area was largely inaccessible and difficult to traverse for great parts of the year:
roads were all but impossible to build or maintain over the "trembling marshes and
unfaithful ground;' and the reeds and rushes that choked the standing waters also
4
hindered travel by boat. In the winter 1 according to one commentator 1 "when the Ice
, is strange enough to hinder the passage ofBoates 1 and yet not able to beare a man 1
the Inhabitants upon the Hards, and the Bankes within the Fennes 1 can have no
helpe of Food, no comfort for Body or Soule, no Woman ayd in her Travell [labor],
no meanes to baptize a Child or to administer the Communioni no supply of any
necessitie, saving what those poore desolate places can afford:' 5 The isolation and
desolation of the Fenland, together with the changeable characteristics of its watery
landscape 1 resulted in the development of a unique culture, separate and distinct
from that of the rest of the country, with firm divisions between insiders and
outsiders.
88 SWAMP
Wetland as Westen
The identification of the Fens as a wasteland 1 and its inhabitants as both insulated
and benighted by their surroundings 1 is to be found in some of the earliest descrip-
tions of the region. William Camden wrote that "the inhabitants of ... the fenny
Country (which reaches 68 miles from the borders of Suffolk to Wainflet in Lin-
colnshire, containing some millions of acres in the four Counties of Cambridge,
Huntingdon, Northampton, and Lincoln) were called Girviiin the time of the Sax-
ons1 that isi according to some mens explanation 1 Fen-men;a sort of people (much
like the place) of brutish unciviliz'd tempers, envious of all others, whom they term
Upland-men,and usually walking aloft upon a sort of stilts, they all keep to the busi-
ness of grazing, fishing 1and fowling:' 6
Although few were willing to brave the difficulties and dangers of the Fenland,
its wildi uncivilized, and desolate nature had another consequence: by conforming
to the typology of a wasteland, the Fens also exerted a powerful attraction on those
religious men and women who sought to escape from the world and to distance
themselves from its temptations and creature comforts. One of the most well known
of these was a young monk named Guthlac 1 who, inspired by the "anchorites who
of yore longed for the westen ... and passed their lives there," began to long for the
westen himself.7
Guthlac found his westen in the Fens. In his Life of St. Guthlac,Felix of Crowland
describes this "fen of immense size, which begins from the river Granta not far from
the city, which is named Grantchester:' The region was unlike any other, with "im-
mense mafshes, now a pool of black water, now foul running streams, and also many
islands, and reeds, and hillocks, and thickets, and with manifold windings wide and
long it continues up to the north sea." According to Felix.1 when Guthlac came to
hear of this wild and uncultivated spot, he immediately made his way there and "he
inquired of the inhabitants of the land where he might find himself a dwelling-place
in the westen:' As they told him many things about the westen of the Fens, about its
vastness and its difficulties 1 a man named Tatwine presented himself and "said that
he knew an island especially obscure, which ofttimes many men had attempted to
inhabit, but no man could do it on account of the manifold horrors and fears, and
the loneliness of the wide westen; so that no man could endure it, but every one on
this account had fled from it:' Hearing this, Guthlac asked Tatwine to take him there
immediately 1 and "he embarked in a vesseli and they went both through the wild fens
till they came to the spot which is called Crowlandj this land was in such wise (as
he said) situated in the midst of the waste of the aforesaid fen 1 very obscure, and
very few men knew of it except the one who showed it to himj as no man ever could
89 SWAMP
 Figure 34. Guthlac arriving at Crowland.
© 1he British Library Board. Harley
Guthlac Roll Y.6., roundel 3.
inhabit it before the holy man Guthlac came thither, on account of the dwelling
of the accursed spirits there:' 8 One of the illustrations accompanying the British
Library manuscript containing the Life of Guthlacshows the saint being taken to
Crowland in a boat; the tree gruwing directly out of the water on the right signals
the marshy nature of his chosen place of exile (fig. 34 ).
In the Anglo-Saxon translation of the original Lalin Life,this place of exile is
consistently referred to as a westen. Guthlac longs to go to the westen; Tatwine takes
Guthlac to the westen; it is in the westen that Guthlac endures the repeated torments
ofhordes of evil spirits. The most frightful of these came to Guthlac late one night
when, awake between his hours of prayer, "of a sudden he discerned all his Cell to
be full of black troops of unclean Spirits, which crept in under the Dore, as also at
chinks and holes; and coming both out of the Sky, and from the earth, filled the Ayr
as it were with dark Clouds:'
Felix describes the demons' horrible aspect in detail, his exhaustive descrip-
tion swelhng into a catalogue of the grotesque: "In their looks they were cruell, and
of form terrible; having great heads, long necks, lean faces, pale countenances, ill-
favoured beards, rough ears, wrinkled foreheads, fierce eyes, stinking mouths, teeth
like Horses, spitting fire out of their throats, crooked jaws, broad lips, loud voices,
burnt hair, great cheeks, high breasts, rugged thighs, bunched knees, bended !eggs,
swolen ankles, preposterous feet, open mouths, and hoars cries; who with such
mighty shrikes were heard to roar, that they filled almost the whole distance from
heaven with their bellowing noyses:' These hideous creatures rushed into Guthlac's
dwelling and "first bound the holy man, then drew him out of his Cell, and cast him
90 SWAMP
over head and ears into the dirty Fen; and having so done carryed him through the
most rough and troublesome parts thereof; drawing him amongst brambles and
briers, for the tearing ofhis limbs:' 9 'Ihis encounter, however, only strengthened
Guthlac's resolve, and he stayed in Crowland for fifteen years, becoming renowned
as a holy man and founding a monastic community that eventually grew into an ab-
bey ofBenedictine monks (fig. 35 ).
However different the watery cast of this region from the biblical desert 1 the
Fens were chosen by Guthlac as his place of exile because they possessed the funda-
mental characteristics of a westen~their remoteness, desolation, inaccessibility, and
resident evil spirits provided sufficient solitude, hardship, and danger. And he was
not the only devout individual to do so. Guthlac's sister, St. PegaJ as well as St. Ethel-
dreda and her sister St. Wendreda came to the Fens; Etheldreda founded a nunnery
at Ely in 673. Monasteries were also founded at Peterborough in 655 and at Toomey
in 662. By the end of the seventh century, the Fenland westen was dotted with a scat-
tering of religious houses that began to give form to a once formless land.
Guthlac's story is important because it illustrates some of the ways that the
landscape of the Fens inhabited the medieval English imagination, bearing witness
to the fears and insecurities this indeterminate marshy land engendered. It provides
evidence that the Fens were associated with the typology of the wasteland from early
on, but it also inflects that typology in a particular way. Felix's dramatic, detailed
ThcSo,rth Prnfp='l of,th,;G.,uenruall
eh ot c,..otnnd:
chu ..... .
Crow:l.and~nfis ecd, co,TV:
facJes ai,llralis.
Figure 35. David King, "1he South Prospect of the Conventuall Church of Croyland," in William Dugdale,
MonasticonAnglicanum(London, 1655~ 73 ). 1he William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
91 SWAMP
 description of Crowland's resident evil spirits establishes them as much more than
run-of-the mill demons. For their evil power is manifest not only in their actions-
in the way they howl and scream, tie up Guthlac, drag him through brambles 1 and
toss him into the muddy waters of the swamp-but also1 and in particular 1 in their
unusually horrible aspect.
The demons of Crowland are epitomes of ugliness 1 paragons of the grotesque.
Their heads are a catalogue of repulsive features-a malformed jumble oflong
necks 1 pale faces, ill-favored beards, rough ears1 wrinkled foreheads, fierce eyes 1
stinking mouths 1 horsey teeth 1 crooked jaws, and burnt hair. Their bodies are no
fairer, with each member sporting some deformity, whether it is their bent legs1
swollen ankles, or "preposterous feet:' In their abject ugliness, the demons symbol-
ize the extreme wildness of the Crowland westen 1 and, by extension, of the Fens in
general. But Felix's litany of grotesquerie does more than inspire fear: it also incites
disgust, a disgust elicited by the appearance of the ugly. And thus, in this early evoca-
tion of the Fens 1 we find the typology of the westen intertwined with the concept of
disgust, an association that would seep into perceptions and representations of the
Fens and other similarly swampy landscapes for centuries to come, clinging to them
like a slimy skin. 10
The Viking invasions laid waste to the Fens and the region's religious houses,
but in the tenth century, monasteries that had been sacked and burned were re-
established and new buildings were erected, including the cathedrals of Ely and
Peterborough 1 as well as the abbeys of Crowland 1 Ramsey, and Thorney. As these
remote outposts of Christianity began to rise up from the dark and stagnant waters
like little islands of salvation, Hugo Candidus, writing in 1150, described the area
around his monastery at Peterborough as a land formed according to a divine plan:
"From the flooding of the rivers 1 or from their overflow1 the water, standing on un-
level ground, makes a deep marsh and so renders the land uninhabitable, save on
some raised spots of ground, which I think God set up for the special purpose that
they should be the habitations of His servants who have chosen to live there." 11 And
as the monasteries flourished, the monks who settled here came to appreciate some
of the peculiar qualities of the Fenland landscape. Hugo commended the vast marsh
around Peterborough as "very useful for menj for in it are found wood and twigs for
fires1 hay for the fodder of cattle, thatch for covering houses, and many other useful
things. It is, moreover, productive of birds and fish. For there are various rivers 1 and
very many waters and ponds abounding in fish. In all these things the district is most
productive." 12
Early in the twelfth century, William ofMalmsbury noted that in the marsh sur-
rounding his monastery at Thorney there was "such vast store of fish, as all strangers
92 SWAMP
wonder atj for which the inhabitants laugh at them: nor is there less plenty of water-
fowli and for a single half-penny five men may have enough of either 1 not only for
a tasteJ but a competent meal:' 13 Furthermore 1 the areas that lay drowned in winter
became luxuriant hayfields and pastures in the summer 1 providing rich grazing for
sheep and cattle. And as the monks began to construct small-scale drainage worksJ
they discovered that the land that emerged from under the waters was phenomenally
fertile. William ofMalmsburywaxed rhapsodic about his surroundings, writing: "the
marshes there abound in trees, who in length without knots strive to touch the stars.
The plain there is as level as the sea; which with its grass flourishing delights the eye,
and which is so smooth that there is nothing to hinder him that runs through it;
neither is there any waste place in itj for in some parts there are apple trees, in oth-
ers, vines which either spread upon poles or run along the ground:' 14 For him, as for
many of his religious brothers and sisters, the Fenland was not simply a westen, but
at the same time also "a very paradise, so that in pleasure and delight it resembles
Heaven it self' 15
In William ofMalmsbury's words we find that equivocal role so of-
ten occupied by the westen, partaking of both utopia and dystopia-a role that was
indelibly to color and shape the region's subsequent history.
Disgust
If the identification of the Fens as a westen was what made the region attractive to
St. Guthlac and his religious brethren, it had an opposite effect on most other visitors
and chroniclers. In Britannia, William Camden wrote of the "unwholsom air" of Ely,
and remarked on the "unfaithful ground" of the Fenland, that "spacious moor ...
where pois'nous fish the stinking water breeds 1 and rustling winds still whistle in the
weeds." 16 Branding the Fens as unhealthy is a recurring leitmotif, found again and
again in descriptions of the Fens even separated by centuries.
Traveling to Ely in 1698, Celia Fiennes found her progress through the Fen-
land hindered by flooding, which left the road underwater, its surface unsound and
riddled with deep holes. While on a causeway just outside of Ely, her horse strayed
to one side to drink the wateri and only "by a special! providence which I desire
never to forget and allwayes to be thankfull for" did she escape falling into one of the
dikes. 17 "The Fens are full of water and mud/' she wrote, noting that it must "be ill to
live there:' 18 This impression was confirmed when she reached Ely, which she judged
the dirtiest place she had ever seen. Ely was "a perfect quagmire,'' the streets filled
with mud 1 the fogs and damp atmosphere creating an environment dangerous to
the health: Fiennes imagined that "to persons born in up and dry countryes it must
destroy them like rotten sheep in consumptions and rhumes:' 19
But Ely was more
93 SWAMP
than merely dirty and unhealthy. When Fiennes found frogs, slow-worms, and snails
in the room ofher lodgings, her displeasure was transformed into a visceral and
powerful disgust. She imagined that the entire town must "be infested with all such
things being altogether moorish fenny ground which lyes low:' 20 Ely became, for her,
not "an habitation for human beings;' but rather "a harbour to breed and nest vermin
21
in," and "a cage or nest of unclean creatures:'
Daniel Defoe, traveling around the country in the 1720s, seems also to have
equated marshes unequivocally with ill health. Along the way from Kings-Lynn to
Wisbech, he and his traveling companions "saw nothing that way to tempt our Cu-
riosity but deep Roads, innumerable Dreyns and Dykes of Water, all Navigable, and
a rich Soil, the Land bearing a vast Quantity of good Hempj but a base unwholsom
Air:' 22 Accompanied in his travels by the "uncouth Musick of the Bittern, a Bird
formerly counted ominous and presaging," 23 Defoe found himself oppressed by the
landscape and its damp atmosphere, with the land "almost all cover'd with Water
like a Sea;'" and the fogs so thick that "when the Downs and higher Grounds of the
adjacent Country were gilded with the Beams of the Sun, the Isle of Ely look'd as if
wrapp'd up in Blankets, and nothing to be seen 1 but now and then, the Lanthorn or
Cupola of Ely Minster:'25 Faced with this prospect, Defoe pitied "the many thousands
of Families that were bound to or confin'd in those Foggs, and had no other Breath
to draw than what must be mix'd with those Vapours, and that Stearn which so uni-
versally overspread the CountrY:' 26 As he grew close to Peterborough, he was seized
with "longing to be deliver'd from Fogs and stagnate Air, and the Water of the Co-
lour ofbrew'd Ale/' 27 and found himself relieved when he finally left the Fens behind,
concluding that "'tis a horrid Air for a Stranger to breathe in:' 28
These descriptions of the Fens by travelers and outsiders emphasize the un-
healthiness of the Fens. For Fiennes and Defoe, as for many of their contemporaries,
marshy landscapes compromised the health, with damp vapors entering and under-
mining the body's own defenses. But these passages point to another fear as well:
the indeterminacy of the swamp was for them at the root of its power to unnerve.
Shrouded in fogs, covered in water, made up mostly of mud, the uncertain landscape
of the Fens confounded the sight and threatened the foot. And in its indeterminacy
and unknowableness, the marshy landscape became more than merely dangerous or
unsightly: it also became profoundly unsettling.
The Fens were a wasteland, but a wasteland of a particular kind. For their trou-
bling resistance to clear characterization endowed them also with a corrupting po-
tential, one that made them much more than simply dangerous. For Celia Fiennes
the Fens were made mostly of mud, with the town of Ely a "perfect quagmire:' Defoe
was disgusted by the Fens' brownish waters. Mud is an imperfect substance, a dirty,
94 SWAMP
sticky mixture of water and earth. If, according to Mary Douglas, dirt is matter pos-
sessed of the power to defile, then mud is dirt in its dirtiest incarnation. 29
Bunyan's
emblematic Slough ofDispond embodies landscape at its most contaminating and
polluting: Pilgrim wallowed and became "grieviously bedaub'd with dirt" in the
Slough, an area impossible to drain because it was the place where "the scum and
filth that attends conviction for sin doth continually run." 30 SimilarlYiwe can discern
in descriptions of the Fenland that characterize its earth as mud, its odors as stench-
es, its waters as putrid, and its fauna as vermin a fear that goes beyond mere concern
for safetYitouching instead upon deeply held notions of contamination, corruption,
and impurity. Amarshi swamp, bog, or fen is neither earth nor water, solid nor liq-
uid, and in its imprecision, its unsettling resistance to categorization, it harbors a par-
ticular charge. The swamp is a landscape that is dangerous not only to the body, but
also to the soul: its muddy substance is the incarnation of uncleanliness, possessed
of the power to defile.
Separating Earth from Water: Mapping and Draining
In 1629, "H. C.;' the author of A DiscourseConcerningthe Drayningof Pennesand
SurroundedGroundsin the sixe Counteysof Norfolke, Sujfolke,Cambridgewith the Isle
ofElJJHuntington,Northampton, and Lincolne,bolstered an argument for draining
the Fens by describing the region's environment in the most disparaging of terms:
its air was "Nebulous 1 grosse and full of rotten Harres [hairs]/' its water "putred
and muddy, yea full ofloathsome vermine," its earth "spuing [spewing], unfast and
boggie," and its fire (here understood as fuel) limited to smoky and "noisome turf
and hassocks" due to the area's lack of timber trees. As for the environment's effect
on the human constitution: "what should I speake of the health of mens bodys;' he
asked rhetorically, "where there is no Element good?" 31 Painting a verbal picture
of the Fenland in which the impurity of its elements (the muddy water, the soggy
ground, the foggy air, and the smoky fire) made the environment "rotten," "putred;'
"spewing/' "noisome," and "full ofloathsome vermine," the author of this pamphlet
equated mixture with corruption.
Draining was the only remedy. By separating the elements and relegating them
to distinct categories-dividing earth from water with ditches and dikes-a com-
prehensive scheme would bestow manifold benefits on the region, from improved
health to security from inundation and increased agricultural productivity. But the
pamphlet's hysterical rhetoric, and its use of terms that in their suggestion of decom-
position and decay were intended to elicit a reaction of disgust, betray that under-
neath these seemingly rational and practical justifications lay a deeper and perhaps
95 SWAMP
even primitive fear of a landscape that was seen as having the power to pollute. The
I 6 O 1• ·
hope was that by dividing and channeling the landscape's constituent elements into A true report of certainewonderful!ouer/lowing
contained spaces and rational categories 1 drainage might impose control on a way- 1
No.rfolke.,and ·other
ofWaterslnow fatelv in Summer[ct...:[h!re,
ward landscape 1 mitigating its ability to corrupt. places ofEngbnd (dcfl:roy!ngmanythoJJfaiills of men~wotm::11) ➔
ar.dchild,ren,onenbrowing and bc:iri1-'g cfownc:
Although there is some evidence that the Romans may have made attempts whole towne$ andvilhgcs,an<ldrowqing
to drain parts of the Fens, and in the Middle Ages a number of the region's larger ir.finitenumben of lheepe ll.1d
other Cattle.
monasteries had undertaken localized drainage projects 1 by and large these works
had been limited in scope. But the dissolution of the monasteries under Henry
VIII in 1536 and 1539 and the consequent passing oflands formerly controlled by
religious houses 1 first to the state and then to individual landowners 1 paved the way
for change. At first 1 the result of the dissolution was that estates in the Fens became
more fragmented 1 making the maintenance of existing drains and embankments-
always a problematic issue-even more difficult/ and hindering any attempts to
promote more comprehensive schemes. 32 Floods were prevalent 1 unpredictable/ and
often severe (fig. 36). Writing in 1585, Camden lamented that in Lincolnshire, the
inhabitants were perpetually subject to "a mighty confluence of waters from out of
the higher countries/ in such sort that all the Winter quarter the people of the coun-
try are faine to keepe watch and ward continually, and hardly with all the bankes and
dammes that they make against the waters 1 are able to defend themselves from the
great violence and outrage thereof' 33
Other areas of the Fens were characterized as being subject to a contest between
bountiful and destructive natural forces. Marshland/ Camden wrote/ is "a low marshy
little tract 1 (as the name impliesi) everywhere parcell'd with ditches and drains to
draw off the waters and moisture into so many rivers. The soil is exceeding fat and
breeds abundance of cartel; so that in the place call'd Tilney-Smeththere feed to the
number of about thirty thousand sheep. But the sea/ what by beating, washing away,
overflowing, and demolishing/ makes such frequent and violent attempts upon
34
Figure 36. "Atrue report of certaine wonderfull overflowing ofWaters, now lately in
them, that they have much ado to keep it out by the help ofbanks:' Likewise, the
Summerset-shire, Norfolke, and other places of England[ ... ]" (London, 1607). The
country around Ely "in the winter-time/ and sometimes for the greatest part of the Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
year, is laid under-water by the rivers OuseJ Grant, NenJ Welland, Glene, and With-
am/ for want of sufficient passages. But when they once keep to their proper chanels 1
it so strangely abounds with a rich grass and rank hey (by them call'd Lid) that Fens, trausforming them from putrid marsh to fruitful field, and eventually making
when they've mown enough for their own use 1 in November they burn up the rest 1 them into one of the most productive agricultural regions in Great Britain.
to make it come again the thicker. About which time a man may see all the moorish The extent of this transformation is vividly illustrated by the contrast between
35
Country round about of a light fire/ to his great wonder:' The Fens may have been two maps published in William Dugdale's TheHistory of Im bankingand Drayning
uncivilized/ unhealthy, and at times extremely dangerous 1 but they could also be of DiversPennsand Marshes,Both in ForeinParts,and in this Kingdom of 1662 (figs.
astonishingly bountiful. And it was this promise of an inherent but untapped natural 37, 38). In the first, ''A.Mapp of the Great Levell, Representing it as it lay Drowned;'
fertility that inspired a series of projects that were utterly to change the face of the shows the central region of the Fens lost under a watery expanse that begins at

96 SWAMP 97 SWAMP
 Figm:e37, William Dugdale, ''A.Mapp
of the Great Levell, Representing it as
it lay Drowned,V The History ofIm bank-
ing and Drayningof DiversPennsand
Marshes(London, 1662). The William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Figure 38. William Dugdale, ''AMap of
the Great Levell Drayned," The History
of Imbankingand Drayningof Divers
Pennsand Marshes(London, 1662).
The William Andrews Clark Memorial
Library.
98 SWAMP
Crowland and reaches almost to Cambridge. The permanent upland 1 including
Ely1 Thorney 1 and other smaller "islands/' and perennial water features 1 such as the
Whittlesey, Ramsey, and Soham Meres1 are small interruptions in what is otherwise
pictured as a vast extent of fenJ moor, and common marsh whose waters ooze over
the landscape, blanketing and obliterating its distinguishing features. This obscure
expanse could not stand in greater contrast to what has emerged from under the
water in the second image, ''AMap of the Great Levell Drayned," where we see a
host of new drains or "cuts" slicing across the once formless landscape, gathering
and channeling the irregular waters between parallel banks and revealing, in their
wake, thousands of acres of fertile plowland now divided and arranged into neat
orthogonal plots.
The story of this grand transformation was Dugdale's subject when he set out to
write the first comprehensive history of English swamps. His scope was extensive,
beginning with the marshes of the Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans,
continuing with those of Europe (the Low Countries in particular), and concluding
with the fens and bogs of his own country, treating, in turn 1 those of Kent, SurreyJ
Middlesex 1 and Essex, then progressing to Sussex, Somersetshire, Gloucestershire,
Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire 1 Yorkshire 1 and Lincolnshire, and finally arriving in
the Fens to recount the history of"that great Levell, which extends it self no lesse
than LX miles, and into six Counties: viz. Cambridge 1 Huntingdon 1 Northampton 1
Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire:' Dugdale's monumental treatise collected and
transcribed a vast number of chronicles, registers, and other historical documents
in order to construct a narrative in which the successful draining of the Fens stood
as the triumphal conclusion. And although Dugdale's individual chapters traced the
history of many of the kingdom's swamps to medieval or earlier times, the story of
the successful draining of the vast Fenland marshes was 1 by and large 1 a seventeenth~
century one, inaugurated by the passage in the last years of Queen Elizabeth's reign
of ''An act for the recovering of many hundred thousand Acres of Marshes 1 and other
Ground subject commonly to surrounding, within the Isle of Ely, and in the Coun-
ties of Cambridge, Huntingdon, Northampton 1 Lincoln 1 Norfolk 1 Suffolk, Essex 1
Kent, and the County Palatine ofDurham:' 36
Although the preamble to the General Drainage Act of 1600 proposed that "the
wastes, commons, marshes, and fenny grounds [of the aforesaid counties] subject
to surrounding [inundation] may be recovered by skilful and able undertakers,
whereby great and inestimable benefit would arise to her Majesty;' it also noted that
the "making dry and profitable of those surrounded grounds" was hindered by the
fact that the area's residents were entitled to rights of common: "the greater part of
them are wastes and commons subject yearly to surrounding 1 wherein divers have
99 SWAMP
common by prescription, by reason of their resiancy [residency] and inhabitancy,
which kind of commons, nor their interest therein, can by the common law be extin-
guished:' Furthermore, the commoners of these regions, «in respect of their poverty,
are unable to pay the great charges to such as should undertake the recovery of the
same," making any comprehensive drainage scheme virtually impossible to finance
37
at a local level. This state of affairs was to open the door to entrepreneurs who
possessed the capital to finance large-scale projects (both the "adventurers" who ad-
ventured their money and the "undertakers" who undertook the venture), but it pro-
duced a situation in which the desires and interests oflocals were pitted against the
grand schemes of outsiders who envisioned, in the words of the Brabanter Humphry
Bradley, "a vaguei deserted Empire without population turned into a fertile regionj
and wild and useless products therefrom into an abundance of grain and pasturage;
humble huts into a beautiful and opulent city," and thousands of acres of new land
that would amount to nothing less than "a regal conquest, a new republic and com-
plete state:' 38
Despite the difficulties acknowledged in the very first lines of the General Drain-
age Act, the passage of this legislation was to usher in a new era, one that saw the
Fens coalesce into a unified entity and enter into visibility in a new way. In 1604, the
surveyor William Hayward drew up "A General Plotte and description of the fennes
and other Grounds within the Isle ofEly and in the Counties of Lincoln, Northamp-
ton, Huntington, Cambridge, Suffolke and Norffolke" for Lord Chief Justice ( Sir
John) Popham and his associates-a mapi as Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger
J.P. Klein have pointed out 1that is notable for taking a topographical element as its
subject. 39 In contrast to earlier English mapsi such as those by Christopher Saxton or
John Norden, which tended to use the county as their unit of representationi in Hay-
ward's map a single environmental feature provided the map's organizational logic
and principal focus.
It is striking, too, that the feature to which Hayward's map was devoted was a
lowly swampi and a swamp, furthermore, located in a remote and sparsely populated
region of the country. And given what might seem at first as a topographical subject
oflimited interest, the map's afterlife is particularly remarkable. For although Hay-
ward's original map has not survived, it is known to us because it was copied 1not just
once, but numerous times. It served as the basis for a map printed by Henricus Hon-
dius in Amsterdam in 1632i and this map was then issued once again in 1645, given
the new title "Region es Inundatae;' and included in Joan Blaeu's Yheatrum Orbis
Terrarum,siveAtlas Novus. In 1725 it was copied by Thomas Badeslade and printed
in his volume on TheHistory of the Ancient and PresentState of the Navigation of the
Port of King's-Lynand of Cambridge,and in 1727 it was copied by the cartographer
100 SWAMP
Payler Smyth, surviving as a large manuscript map 1which 1 after many years hanging
in the Fen Office at Ely, has now been transferred to the Cambridgeshire Archives
(see fig. 33). 40
Hayward's original map was color-coded in order to distinguish landscape fea-
tures on the basis of their degree of mixture of earth and water, differentiating the
fens themselves from high grounds ( colored green), sea banks and other embank,
ments (colored red), water features, including rivers, meres, and drains ( colored
blue), and the high lands bounding the fens (colored light green). Drawn up for
Popham and a corporation of thirty investors, the map, however visually attractive
it might have beeni was intended not as a celebratory representation of a region, but
as a blueprint for its wholesale transformation. And although Popham's corpora-
tion did not 1in the end 1accomplish much more than the five-mile cut subsequently
known as "Popham's Eau," Hayward's map, as we have seeni had a significant afterlife,
providing a tantalizing vision of a wasteland awaiting reclamation.
After Pop ham's venture collapsed) a number of years passed during which no sig-
nificant progress was made on draining the Fens, and it was not until the second de-
cade of the seventeenth century that momentum began once again to pick up pace.
In February of 1621 James I revived the project 1declaring his intention to drain the
Fens by stating that he "would not suffer any longer the said land to be abandoned
to the will of the watersi nor to let it lie wast and unprofitable" and granting himself a
compensation of one hundred twenty thousand acres of reclaimed land if the result
was a success. 41 Funds were scarce 1 however, and in the following year James instead
set his sights on a more circumscribed project: the draining of Hatfield Chase, sev-
enty thousand acres of swampland located near Doncaster on the Yorkshire-Lincoln-
shire border.
James began by appointing a committee to look into "the state of the said Chase;'
in particular whether his tenants had forfeited their rights of common by engaging in
activities such as "building new houses upon it, joysting beasts upon it, cutting down
the trees thereof 1and destroying his game/' as well as "to consider about the Drain-
ing1 Improvingi and disafforestation thereof' 41 1his committee, composed oflocal
landowners, did indeed find that the king's favors were being abused, but doubted
whether the area could be drained, "considering how great the Levels were, and how
continually deep with water, how many rivers run thereunto, and such like:' 43 James
was unwilling to accept this conclusion without a second opinion. He called upon
Cornelius Vermuyden 1a Dutch engineer recently arrived in England, to look into
the matter and draft a prospectus. Although this document has not survived, sub-
sequent events indicate that Vermuyden must have concluded that the draining of
Hatfield Chase was feasible. But in 1625 James died, and his vision offertile arable
IOI SWAMP
land emerging from underneath the kingdom's marshes remained) for the moment)
unrealized. 44
The question of draining, however, was in the air. Upon his succession, Charles
I wasted little time in pursing his father's drainage projects. On May 24, 1626, hav-
ing been king for little over a year, Charles determined to attempt the draining of
Hatfield Chase, appointing Cornelius Vermuyden as chief engineer. Financed almost
entirely by Dutch "adventurers," the project promised to reclaim a total of 24AOS
acresi of which the king was to receive one third as compensation, the adventurers
another thirdi and the inhabitants entitled to rights of common the remaining third.
Vermuyden and his corps of Dutch laborers set immediately to work, and eigh-
teen months lateri Hatfield Chase was declared drained. The story; however, does
not end there. For the drainage works provoked dogged and often violent resistance
on the part oflocal inhabitants who resented the loss of their rights of common and
claimed that they had not been given adequate compensation, having been granted
only the worst of the drained land. Some even complained that the new drains
caused flooding in areas that formerly had been free from inundation) ruining the
value of their estates. Grumbling, petitions, and lawsuits turned into rioting by pitch-
fork-wielding commoners and the demolition of embankments. Vermuyden and his
men began showing up to work armed, and relations between foreigners and locals
deteriorated even further. The devolution of the Hatfield Chase drainage scheme
into a fractious story of death and destruction~including the murder of a local man)
the tearing down of the new banks and drains) the razing of the Walloon town of
Sandtoft, and the financial ruin of many of the original adventurers-is complicated,
and has been told in detail by Dugdale, nineteenth-century regional historians Jo-
seph Hunter, W. B. Stonehouse, and J.Tomlinsoni and Vermuyden's biographer, L.
E. Harris. 45 Although its details lie beyond the scope of this chapter, the story of Hat-
field Chase presents many of the elements~the successes, problems, and failures-
that were to be characteristic of the drainage of the Great Level of the Fens as well.
The Draining of the Fens
The history of the draining of the Fens was set out first by William Dugdale; the nar-
rative has been retold by numerous historians, most thoroughly by H. C. Darby in
TheDrainingof the Fens.In 1629, Charles I invited Vermuyden to become the princi-
pal undertaker of the draining of the Great Level of the Fens. The king's appointment
of a foreigner) however, caused unhappiness and suspicion among local inhabitants,
who approached Francis, 4th Earl of Bedford, one of the region's few large landown-
ers, asking him to direct the project in Vermuyden's stead. Bedford accepted, and
102 SWAMP
in 1630 he drew up a contract with the Commission of Sewers to drain the area in
the southern Fens that is now known as the Bedford Level. According to the text of
this agreement~afterwards referred to as the LynnLaw~Bedford pledged within
six years "at his own charge to drain the said marsh, waste, fenny, and surrounding
grounds, in such manner as that they shall be fit for meadow, or pasture 1 or arable:' 46
Ninety-five thousand acres of reclaimed land were to be his compensation, while
twelve thousand acres were allotted to the king, and forty thousand acres reserved
to offset charges involved in maintaining the works. To aid with the enormous costs
such a project involved, Bedford gathered a group of thirteen investors, and in 1631
they signed a document known as "The Indenture of Fourteen Parts;' setting out
the legal and financial terms of their agreement, with the hope that "in those places,
which lately presented nothing to the eyes of the beholder but great waters, and a
few reeds thinly scattered here and there 1 under the Divine Mercy might be seen
pleasant pastures of cattle and kyne, and many houses belonging to the inhabit-
ants:'47
Over the next six years, with the intermittent help ofVermuyden, a number of
drainage works were begun and completed. The principal undertaking was a great
new cut, twenty-one miles long and seventy feet wide, made between Earith and
Salter's Lode and named the Bedford River in the earl's honor. According to Dug-
dale and Darby, in addition to the Bedford River, the fifteenth-century cut named
Morton's Learn was remadei and Shire Drain, near Crowland, was enlarged. New
drains included Sam's Cut, from Feltwell in Norfolk to the River Ouse; Sandall's Cut
near Ely, two miles long and forty feet wide; Bevill's Learn, from Whittlesey Mere
to Guyhirne, ten miles long and forty feet widej Peak.irk Drain, from Peterborough
Great Fen to Guyhirne, ten miles long and seventeen feet wide; the New South Eaui
from Crowland to Crow's Cross; and Hill's Cut) near Peterborough two miles long
1
and fifty feet wide. Other infrastructural works included great sluices on the Bedford
River, the Shire Drain 1 and Morton's Leam. 48
On October 12, 1637, the work was declared finished, and Bedford and the other
adventurers received their compensation of newly drained land. But trouble soon be-
gan to brew. Inhabitants of towns and villages affected by the draining were unhappy
with the results and began to file complaints. A number of the adventurers alleged
that their compensation was inadequate. Furthermore, structural problems emerged
with some of the drainage works themselves. On April 12, 1638, the Commission
of Sewers sat at Huntingdon and judged the work undertaken by Bedford and his
coadventurers to be inadequate and incomplete) constraining them to forfeit their
recompense. In the wake of this decision, King Charles stepped in. He resolved to
take over the project, reserving an extra fifty-seven thousand acres in compensation
103 SWAMP
for himself, and appointing the unpopular Vermuyden as chief engineer. It is perhaps
not surprising that this decision set the stage for further controversy.
Once hired, Vermuyden drew up a '"Discourse Touching the Draining of the
Great Fennes" for the king, which set out his ambitious draining proposal in detail.
Whereas Bedford and his coadventurers had concentrated their efforts in one area
of the Fens, aiming to drain them only sufficiently to make them summer pasture-
free from flooding during the summer months-Vermuyden's comprehensive new
scheme addressed the entire region and promised to keep it safe from inundation
year-round, guaranteeing both summer and winter pasture. To do so, Vermuyden
divided the entire Great Level into three areas (a division that was to persist
throughout all subsequent projects)~the North, Middle, and South Levels~and
i Et}..
drew up a specific proposal for each.
Verrnuyden's solution involved diverting the flow of the principal rivers into new
channels that would lead in a direct line to their outfalls. By replacing the meander-
ing river beds with straight courses, these new cuts would aid drainage by increas-
ing the velocity of the watersi allowing the flow of the water to scour the bed of the
channel continually and in this way keeping it clear of impediments. The entire
scheme was represented on a map, later printed along with the text of the Discourse
in 1642 (fig. 39). ln contrast to earlier maps of the Fens, which had sought to analyze
the region's topography, Vermuyden's map focuses instead on infrastructure and cir- Figure 39. Map with drainage scheme. Cornelius Vermuyden, A DiscourseTouchingthe Drayningthe GreatFennes,
culation. Dark lines-both the straight new drainage channels and the meandering Lying Within the severallCountiesof Lincolne,Northampton,Huntington,Norfolke,Su.ffolke,Cambridge,and theIsle
rivers-stand out starkly from the vague gray of the marshy landscape, representing of Ely,as it waspresentedto hisMajestie(London, 1642). © The British Library Board. E.143.( 14).

the channels by which the waters of the Fens were to be conveyed out of the marshes
and into the sea. Representing the application of engineering to a recalcitrant land-
scape, the map demonstrates how through the employment of new technologies the
fundamental aim of these improvers-the division of water from earth-could be
attained.
Although he was enthusiastic about Vermuyden's scheme 1 the king was unable to
devote much attention to its implementation. Tensions with Parliament continued
to grow1 and once the country faced civil war, there was no time to devote to mere
drainage projects. Furthermore 1 the chaos of war led to the destruction of existing
drainage works, most notably when Parliament itself caused extensive flooding by
ordering dikes to be torn down in order to halt an advance of the royalist army. It
was not until after Charles's execution that the question of the Fens was taken up
once again in earnest.
Despite the change in government, attention to draining continued. On May
29, 1649, Parliament passed an "Act for the Draining of the Great Level of the Fens"
(known as the "Pretended Act" after the Restoration). 49 The project was entrusted
to Francis's successor 1 William, 5th Earl ofBedfordi and Vermuyden was appointed
Director of Works soon after. This timei the project was more ambitious. The Act
stipulated that by October 10, 1656, the undertakers should have completed such
works as would make the entire Great Level into winter ground, fit for year-round
pasture, the cultivation of wheat and other sorts of grain, and capable of sustaining
industrial crops like coleseed 1 rapeseed, hemp, and flax to be used in the nation's
wool, linen, and cordage industries. 50
Work began in the North and Middle Levels. A new cut parallel to the Bedford
River was dug, with a "wash" area provided in between the New and Old Bedford
Rivers to take care of any overflow. Other new drains included Downham Eauj
Tang's Drainj the Forty-Foot Drain (also known as Vermuyden's) j Thurlow's Drain;
Moore's Drain; Stonea Drain; Hammond's Eau; and Conquest Lode. Numerous
sluices were constructed to control the waters 1 and a host of new roads and bridges
were built. On March 26, 1651, the North and Middle Levels of the Fens-the

104 SWAMP 105 SWAMP


entire area northwest of the Bedford River-was judged to have been successfully
drained; a year lateri the draining of the South Level was declared complete as well.
In March ofl652, a ceremony was held at Ely Cathedral to mark the end of the
work: it seemed to all that the separation ofland and water had been achieved. 51
Amidst this climate of triumphi Walter Blith issuedi in rapid successioni The
EnglishImprover( 1649) and TheEnglishImproverImproved ( 1652 ), thelatter with
an extended section devoted to the benefits of"Fen-drayning/' and Samuel Hartlib
published Cressy Dymock's A DiscoverieForDivision or Settingout of Land, as to the
bestForm (1653 ), with its scheme for the allotment ofnewly drained fenland into
small farm holdings divided and parceled by an orthogonal grid of drains, intended
expressly "for Direction and more Advantage and Profit of the Adventurers and
Planters in the Fens and other Waste and undisposed Places in England and Ireland"
(fig. 40). 52
The draining of the Fens was seen as testimony to the ideology of improvement,
a shining example of the trinmph of human technology over nature. In the second
edition of his work, Blith used the successes ofVermuyden's scheme to set the bar
for all other drainage projectsi defining "perfect Drayning" not simply as recover-
ing the ground so as to bear "sedge or reedy staggy grass, which is the first Fruits
ofDrayning 1 and from which the rude ignorant Fen-man desires no appeale/' nor
merely "to bear morish foul strong grass in Summer and Drowned in Winter," nor
even "to lie dry both Winter and Summer upon the Surface of the Earth 1 and wet and
boggy at the spades or Plow-share point:' It was not even enough to drain the land to
make it fit to be plowed during a hot summer 1 if at bottom 1 it was still unsound. No 1
for Blith, bringing Fenland to its "hes! perfection" meant "going to the bottom of the
Corruption, and tilting away the Venom that feeds the Fen or Moori that watriness
and coldness which gnaws out the spirit at the root:' In practical termsi this meant
completely transforming the Fen's elemental nature, bringing it to the "soundness
and perfectness of Mould and Earth, whether Sand, Clay, Gravell 1 or mixed," so that
it produced not sedge and reeds but "the small common 1histle, Clover 1 Crowflower,
and Hony-suckle:' It was then, and only then) that the improver would "reap the
Quintessence of the Earth, in breeding, feeding or Corning," Blith averred 1 adding
that "these lands thus perfectly Drayned, will return to be the richest of all your
Lands, and the better Drayned the better Lands:' 53
Blith understood bagginess as a disease, speculating that marshes were formed
when free-running springs were "held downe by the power and waight of the Earth,
tbat opposeth the Spring which boyles and works up into the Earth, and as it were
blowes it up, and filleth the Earth with Winde as I may call it, and makes it swell
and rise like a Pussball:' The remedy, similar to that employed by a doctor, was to
106 SWAMP
- ,.,,,, .,,,,,, , '""'"""~::,oo-..,-<T,t,"""}'!'mgOf"'•"'"'"'" '""'ro gr<Qrr annr,<=li11n!r""',11cr,up,,w,,,,a
16 /,!forForm,, ,:rmjf,ingof~5.Acmapier:< .. ; Arnftbt {,Mt[Jl;btbou[i»dAcmm,'l_fxco+1,rdop,rt, .,~eiug
a'ivid«Iin 1"'1miJd{cb.J1W gr,111 jiJ,r
Bd!lftorhi~bw,y, ,vii~thotwo gr,ai Draio,on,,,ib tb, f•mo.
Figure 40. Plan for thirty-two farms on two thousand acres. Cressy Dymock, A
DiscoverieForDivisionor Settingout of Land1 as to the BestForm (London, 1653 ).
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
lance the boil: Blith writes to the would-be improver that if the source of the spring
could be found, "you need but open that very place ... and give it a cleare vent 1 and
certainly your Bogg would decay, by reason whereof it hath so corrupted and swolne
the Earth, a:sa Dropsie doth the Bodie." Earth and water were both pure elements,
but the nature of earth was to be sound 1 and of water to be flowing. When earth and
water mixed and mingled 1 they corrupted one another: the earth became muddy and
"spewing"; the water became "Superfluous and Venomous;' resulting in "Bogginesse,
Myrinessei Rushes, Flagsi and other filth:' By separating water and earth and thus
restoring them to their elemental natures 1 draining became an act of purifi.cation. 54
Important to achieving this transformation was the use of special tools, like
the trenching plow and turving (or turfing) spade, as well as the application of
new technologies and instruments of surveying 1 like the semicircle and water level,
which Blith deemed "most essentially necessary for the casting or laying out of all
the Works:' The process of making drains, discussed by Blith in detail, involved
four steps 1 each necessitating its own particular instrument. First 1 the land was to
be surveyed and the sites for the drains set out 1 using the surveyor's instruments of
line, level, and semicircle (or graphometer) (fig. 41). The trenching plow was then
used to cut a line in the turf marking the limit of the drain on each side. The top layer
107 SWAMP

Figure 41. Surveying instruments for draining the Fens, including a plain level, a water level, and
a semicircle. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImproverImproved(London, 1652 ). The William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library.
of earth was then removed with the turving spade, and finally the trench itself dug
with the trenching spade 1 which was fit with two curving blades to cut the sides of
the trench out evenly (fig. 42). !twas very important to make the drains straight, to
''prevent as many Angles 1 Crooks 1 and Turnings as is possible 1 for those will but oc-
casion stoppages of the water 1 and filling up of Trenches 1 and losse of ground 1 and
108 SWAMP
Figure 42. Spades and plows for drainage works.
Walter Blith, TheEnglishImproverImproved
(London, 1652). The William Andrews Clark
Memorial Library.
much more trouble 1 than otherwise:' In this way the land 1 scored by the parallel lines
of the new drainage ditchesi would emerge out from under the waters ready to yield
its nascent fertility to the eager improver. 55
Blith describes a process of transformation through the application of technol-
ogy. An unknown depth of oozing mud is remade into a level surface of sound earth
by being surveyed and then cut with a grid of drainage ditches. The flat extent of the
Fenland landscape, that "Great Level" of swamp and marsh, was 1 precisely by virtue
of its flatnessi particularly suited to the imposition of a grid. But in the case of the
Fens, the grid had three related incarnations. The first type of grid was the carto-
graphic one 1 a grid that harbors an aim common to all maps, which is to survey and
chart in order to establish the intellectual possession of a region 1 making it appear to
be defined and knowable. The second type of grid was that formed by the network
of drainage ditches 1 which separated land and water into circumscribed areas, purg-
ing the region of its unhealthy, indefinite 1 and uncertain tendencies. The third type
of grid was one brought into being by the application of the first two, which was the
grid of private property imposed on the Fens once the act of drainage was complete 1
transforming acres of common marsh into rows of individually owned plots of arable
land. The imaginative feat that first sparked this transformation from marsh to field
was thus dependent on a process of measuring and drawing, and on the ability to see
109 SWAMP
a reciprocity between landscape and paper that lies at the heart of the cartographic
impulse.
It is no coincidence that throughout the seventeenth century, the map is the
primary vehicle through which the Fens are brought into visibility. In fact, it can be
argued that maps-rather than plows, spades 1 or drainage ditches-were the most
important of all the tools used to transform the Fens. Maps were the chosen means
by which the region was analyzed in order to differentiate marsh from earth (upland)
and from water (river, mere, and sea) to make the scope of the task clear; maps were
the means by which capital (Dutch capital, in particular) was attracted to the region;
and maps were the means by which the "new World," as Blith called it, that emerged
from under the waters was renamed, reassignedi and remade as conventionally
productive arable land. There seems almost to be a necessary correlation between
swamp and mapi in which the slippery indeterminacy of this type of terrain could
only be brought into visibility through the use of a representational technique that
organizes landscape into a regular (and thus seemingly knowable) pattern through
the imposition of a grid.
The ubiquitous presence of the Dutch in this enterprise should come as no
surprise. The Dutch produced the mapsi the engineers, the venture capitalists, and 1
in many cases, the workers who remade the Fen landscape to fit a different model
of productivity. In TheArt of Describing
1 Svetlana Alpers drew our attention to the
connections between Dutch art and cartography, and to the similarities between
the kinds of flat, open landscapes so characteristic of the Netherlands and the maps
and maplike pictures created to represent them. 56 Like the landscapes of the Nether-
landsi the Fensi in their flatness, were particularly suited to the logic of cartographic
representation 1 andi consequently 1 to the kind of transformation a map is capable of
effecting. Furthermore, as Lisa Jardine has argued in GoingDutch, parallels can be
traced between two kinds of Dutch involvement in the transformation of the English
landscape during the seventeenth century: the drainage works in Hatfield Chase and
the Fens, and the development of the Anglo-Dutch style of garden, with its canals,
flowerbedsi and small, compartmentalized spaces, of which Chippenham Park, near
Ely, was a prominent local example. 57
It is no coincidence, then, that a map was also made to mark the completion of
the drainage project 1 commemorating the taming of this once wild and intractable
land. In the late summer of 1650, the mathematician Jonas Moore was commis-
sioned to survey the newly drained Fens; his great map 1 measuring l.2x 1.8 meters,
printed on sixteen individual sheets of paper, was completed about 16SS.58 1his
enormous rnap1 drawn at a scale of two inches to a mile and emblazoned with the
arms of the Earl of Bedford's Corporation of Adventurers, commemorated the work
llO SWAMP
of the drainers. Its size left no doubt as to the scale and importance of the work and
the vast amount of capital invested in its undertaking. Including conventional land-
marks and landscape features such as roads, woods, mills 1 and chl.l.rches1 the map
documented the great works completed by the Earl of Bedford, his coinvestors, and
their team of workers. Dikes and drains crisscross the region, the two great cuts of
the New Bedford River and the restored Morton's Learn most prominent among
them. The map shows clearly what the waters discovered: land no longer held in
common, but now divided into plots, traced out 1 numbered, and ready to enter the
realm of private rather than communal property.
Just as it was most likely that a version of Hayward's 1604 map was the basis
ofDugdale's "Mapp of the Great Levell, Representing it as it lay Drowned;' ii was
Moore's map of 1658 that was used for Dugdale's "Map of the Great Levell Drayned:'
These two maps neatly bookend the seventeenth-century draining enterprisej for
Dugdale's purposesi they illustrated the astonishing transformation and "improve-
ment" his book was intended to celebrate and commemorate. But the sense of
triumph was to be short-lived, for not all was well in the great "new World" of the
drained Fen landscape.
Flora and Fauna, Fen-Men and Foragers
In 1646, or thereabouts, a pamphlet entitled "The Anti-Projector. Or, The History
of the Fen Project" appeared in print. 59 1his small tract was a spirited critique and
condemnation of what the anonymous author deemed to be the "Illegal Drayning"
undertaken by Bedford, Vermuydeni and their "adventurer" and "undertaker" col-
leagues. Objecting that "the undertakers have alwaies vilified the Fens, and have mis-
informed many Parliament men 1 that all the Fens is a meer quagmire 1 and that it is a
level hurtfully surrounded 1 and oflittle or no value;' the author asserted that "those
which live in the Fens 1 and are neighbours to it, know the contrary:' The Fens may
not have offered arable land in the traditional sense 1 but that did not mean they were
useless. To the contrary: the Fens bred "infinite number of serviceable horsesi mares,
and colts, which till our land 1 and furnish our neighbors/' as well as a great number
of cattle, which produced "great store of butter and cheese to victual the Navy;' hidesi
and tallow. The Fens also supplied great quantities ofhayi which "feeds our cowes in
winter, which being housed, we gather such quantities of compost and dung 1 that it
enriches our pasture and corn ground ... whereby we have the richest and certainest
corn land in Englandi especially for wheat and barley:' The Fens' rich water meadows
supported "great stocks of sheep/' and provided pasture not only "to our neighbors
the up landers, but to remote Countries 1 which otherwise, som[ e] years thousands
lll SWAMP
of cattle would want food:' Finally, there were the wild products of the marsh, such
as the "great store of Osier) ReedJ and Sedge/' which, by being made into household The Horse, or other beasti o'rway'd with his owne masse,
objects such as baskets 1 supplied the needs of various parts of the kingdom and cre- Lies wallowing in my Fennes 1 hid over head in grasse:
ated work for the "many thousand Cottagers, which live on our Fens, which other- And in the place where growes ranke Fodder for my Neat;
wise must go a begging:' 60 The Turffe which beares the Hay1 is wondrous needfull Peat. 63
Though dismissed by the drainers as "a meer quagmire/' the Fens had value
that could be preserved only by leaving the marshland ecology intact. The Fenland For Drayton the natural abundance of the Fenlands was to be celebrated, not
meadows, which supported the activities of grazing and hayrnaking, owed their re- transformedi the marshy ecosystem providing fish, fowl, peati sedgei and reeds,
markable fertility 1 their rich and luxuriant grass, precisely to the seasonal flooding so and offering a rich terrain for the enterprising forager (fig. 43):
characteristic of the regionJ which made "our Fens far more profitable to the owners,
lying as they are for grassi then if they were sown with corn, rape, or cole seed:' By The toyling Fisher here is tewing of his Net:
draining the watery environment that nurtured both meadow and marsh, the under~ The Fowler is imployed his lymed twigs to set.
takers would "destroy not only our pastures and corn ground, but also our poor, and One underneath his Horse, to get a shoot doth stalke;
utterly disable us to relive them:' As the pamphlet concluded on a jingoistic note 1 in Another over Dykes upon his Stilts doth walke:
comparison to cattle, sheep, haYileather, cheese 1 and butter, "what is Cole-seed and There others with their Spades, the Peats are squaring out
Rape, they are but Dutch commodities, and but trash and trumpery, and pills land, And others with their Carres 1 are busily about,
in respect of the fore-recited commodities, which are the rich Oare of the Common- To draw out Sedge and Reed, for Thatch and Stover fit.64
wealth:'61
The author of this pamphlet, along with many of the Fens' inhabitants, had a
vested interest in keeping the marshes the way they were. They had no wish to see
swamp converted to arable fields because the products of the Fens, numerous and
diversei were an important part of the local and national economy. They did not feel
that one model oflandscape productivity should fit all, and they certainly did not
believe they should sacrifice their land to the private interests of outside-and often
foreign-investors. For them the Fens were no wasteland 1 but a resource whose un-
paralleled richness lay precisely in the marshland's resistance to rational control 1 in
its indeterminacy, variability 1 and unpredictability.
Locals were not the only ones to appreciate the distinctive ecology of the Fens.
Camden had commended its rich hay-meadows, its herds of cattle and sheep, as well
as its wild marshland products, the "great quantities of Turf and Sedge for firing,
Reeds for thatching; Elders also and other water-shrubs, especially Willows either
growing wild, or else set on the banks of rivers to prevent their overflowing: which
being frequently cut down, come again ... with a numerous offspring/' of which
baskets were made and sent into numerous parts of the country. 62And in 1622 the
second part of Michael Drayton's monumental chorographical and hydrographical
panegyric Poly-Olbionextolled the hountiful fertility and multiple natural products
Figure 43. "Fish," from Nicholas Cox, The Gentleman'sRecreation (London, 1677).
of the Fens in verse:
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

112 SWAMP
113 SWAMP
Drayton's nationalistic poem lists and confers value on traditional Fenland products
and activities, ones divided by H. C. Darby into three categories: those associated
with the marsh proper, including fishing and fowling, gathering reeds, rushes, and
other plants, and salt-making along the shore; those located in the "intermediate
zone" ofland that was intermittently above the water level, such as haymaking, graz-
ing1 and turf-cutting; and, finally, the arable farming practiced on the islands, up-
lands, and permanently drained areas. 65 The seventeenth-century drainage projects
affected all of these traditional occupations (fig. 44 ).
In the preface to TheHistory ofimbanking and Drayningof DiversPennsand
Marshes 1 William Dugdale lauded the results of the recent draining as an example of
the best kind of"improvement of ... Wasts, Commons, and all sorts of barren Land/'
drawing attention to the "many thousands of Acres, which do now yield much ben-
efit, yearly, by Rape, Cole-Seed, Grass 1 Hay, Hemp, Flax, Wheat, Oats, and other
Grain; nay by all sorts of excellent Plants, Garden-stuff, and Fruit-Trees, which in
former times were Dro-wned Lands:' Although he acknowledged the resistance to
the draining so prevalent among Fenland inhabitants, he countered that few char-
acteristic marshland products had entirely disappeared as a result. In addition to

Figure 45. «The Form of the Decoys in Lincolnshire.~ William Stukeley, ItinerariumCuriosum or,An Account of
theAntiquities,and remarkablecuriositiesin natureor art, observedin travelsthroughGreatBritain (London, 1724 ).
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

the remaining rivers and meres, which continued to support an abundance of fish,
and which were better suited to the use of nets, he remarked that "decoys are now
planted upon many drained levels, whereby greater numbers of fowl are caught, than
by any other engines formerly used; which could not at all be made there, did the
waters 1 as formerly, overspread the whole country:' 66
Sixty years after Dugdale's great work appeared in print, Daniel Defoe was as-
tounded by the "Quantities of Wild-fowl of all sorts, Duck, Mallard, Teal, Widgeon,
&c. they take in those Duckoys [decoys] every Week," citing one near Ely that yield-
ed three thousand a week, and others near Peterborough that sent their catch up to
London "whose Waggons before the late Act of Parliament to regulate Carriers, I
have seen drawn by ten, and twelve Horses a piece, they were loaden so heavy," add-
ing that "the Accounts which the Country People give of the Numbers they some-
times take, are such, that one scarce dares report it from thern:' 67
The duck decoy was essentially an artificial wetland, an imitative landscape that
Figure 44, Frontispiece to the chapter on fowling. Nicholas Cox, The Gentleman'.s
Recreation(London, 1677).
aimed to selectively reproduce only the beneficial features of the original (fig. 45).
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library. It was an area of water 1 trees 1 reeds, and tall grass "so adapted for the harbour and

114 SWAMP 115 SWAMP

shelter of Wild-Fowl, and then fnrnish'd with a Breed of those they call Decoy-
Ducks, who are taught to allnre and entice their Kind to the Places they belong to:'
To construct a decoy, a pond, planted with trees 1 reedsJ sedge, and other typical
marsh plants 1 would be equipped with a number of radiating armsi also known as
"pipes:' This was the habitat of the decoy ducks-ducks bred and made so tame by
constant feeding thati according to Defoe, who devotes a long section ofhis seventh
tour to a description of this curious device, "they are used to come even to the Decoy
Man's Hand for their Food:' 68 These decoy ducks were used to lure wild ducks to the
decoy pond 1 where they were caught in an ingenious manner. According to Defoe's
fanciful yet detailed description 1 the decoy ducks were sent abroad-perhaps as far
as Holland or Germany-to convince the foreign fowl "that the English Ducks live
much better than they do in these cold Climates; that they have open Lakes, and
Sea Shores full of Food, the Tides flowing freely into every Creek; that they have
also within the Land, large Lakes 1 refreshing Springs ofWater, open Ponds, covered
and secured from human Eyesi with large Rows of grown Trees and impenetrable
Groves; that the Lands are full of Food, the Stnbbles yielding constant Supplies of
Corni left by the negligent Husbandmeni as it were on purpose for their Usei that
'tis not once in a wild Duck's Agei that they have any long Frosts or deep Snows 1 and
that when they have, yet the Sea is never frozeni or the Shores void of Food; and
if they will please but go with them into England, they shall share with them in all
these good Things:'
Once the decoy ducks return with their foreign hostages, "the first Thing they do
is to settle with them in the Decoy Ponds, to which they (the Decoy Ducks) belong:
Here they chatter and gabble to them, in their own Language 1 as if they were tell-
ing them, that these are the Ponds they told them of, and here they should soon see
how well they should live, how secure and how safe a Retreat they had here:' Once
the new ducks have settled in 1 the decoy men, hidden behind the trees and rushes,
begin to feed the ducks by throwing handfuls of grain in the places in the pool where
the decoy ducks are usually fed, which is done for a few days in a row until the new
ducks have become accustomed to receiving their food in this way.
After three days1 however, the bait, after first being thrown a few times in an
open part of the pond 1 is thrown in a narrower place in the pipe, where the trees are
arched overhead and covered with a large net that is invisible to the ducks. "Here the
Decoy-man keeping unseen, behind the Hedges of Reeds, which are made perfectly
close, goes forward, throwing Corn over the Reeds into the Water; the Decoy Ducks
greedily fall upon it 1 and calling their foreign Guests, seem to tell them, that now
they may find their Words good, and how well the Ducks live in England; so inviting
or rather wheedling them forward, 'ti! by Degrees they are all gotten under the Arch
116 SWAMP
or Sweep of the Net, which is on the Trees, and which, by Degreesi imperceptibly to
them, declines lower and lower, and also narrower and narrower, 'till at the farther
End it comes to a Point like a Purse: though this farther End is quite out of Sight,
and perhaps two or three hundred Yards from the first Entrance:'
At this point, as all of the ducks are swimming up the pipe, eating greedily and
following the decoy ducks, the decoy man would signal to his dog to jump in the
water, and to swim after the ducks, barking loudly as he went. The ducks, frightened
by this sudden appearance, would rise up to fly away, but, finding the net, they would
descend again to the water, and continue to swim forward in the pipe, which would
get narrower and narrower as they progressed, with the net above descending lower
and lower until finally they reached the end of the pipe where they were gathered
by another decoy man "who takes them out alive with his Hands:' The decoy-
ducks-"traytors;' as Defoe calls them-are taught to turn around and fly low out
of the pipe, and in this way some make their escape, while others, "being used to the
Decoy-man, they go to him fearless 1 and are taken out as the rest; but instead ofbe-
ing kill' d with them, are strok' d, made much of, and put into a little Pond just by him,
and fed and made much of for their Services:' 69
In The Gentleman~Recreationof 1686, Richard Blome wrote that the best places
for decoy ponds were "Moist,Moorish1 and Fenny Grounds1 with the conveniency
(if possible) of a River running through, or by it," noting that decoys were most
frequently to be found in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and "such like Fenny Coun-
tries:'70But as the drainage projects transformed marsh into arable land 1 decoys were
constructed in other parts of the country as well 1 in imitation of the swampy condi-
tions characteristic of preferred wildfowl habitats.
At the same time that he was passing legislation to preserve the drainage works
ofB·edford and his associates in the Fens, Charles lI constructed a decoy (known
as "Duck Island") in the southeast corner ofSt.James's Park (fig. 46), which was
extolled by Edmund Waller in his panegyric "On St. James's Park. As lately improved
by his MaiestY:'" This may have helped to make decoys fashionable. Francis Barlow's
painting "The Decoy" was commissioned by Denzil Onslow to decorate his house
at Pyrford; it depicts a gathering of ducks, sparrows, and other birds who are terror-
ized by a red kite, but oblivious of a decoy man and his dog, An allegory of the threat
posed to England by Roman Catholicism, according to Nathan Flis, the painting was
also a commemoration of the decoy on the Pyrford estate, described by John Evelyn,
John Aubrey, and many others. 72 Hampton Court in Herefordshire also had a decoy
in its park, as can be seen in the painting by Leonard Knyff, "The North Prospect
of Hampton Court;' which commemorates the completion of the new gardens by
George London (fig. 47).
117 SWAMP
 ic l)_,dais a Park
J •
~c/
Cf
{l //1 Cd' J C/WtC
1) "'"
}a;;/c
Figure 46. Duck Island in St. James's Park. 1he artificial wetland is located at the bottom right of the plan. Jan
Kip and Leonard Knyff,"St. James Palace and Park," Britannia fllustrata, or Views of Severalof the QueensPalace.s
alsoof the PrincipalSeatsof the Nobility and Gentryof GreatBritain (London, 1707). The Henry E. Huntington
Library and Art Gallery.
Artificial imitations of fen and marsh, the decoys were little re-creations of the
original Fenland preserved at its borders or transplanted to other areas of the coun-
try. But they were imitations with a difference. Faithful in spirit to a Baconian un-
derstanding of the ends of imitation 1 decoys offered in miniature a natural resource
engineered to multiply its returns. Ralph Payne-Gallwey, author of TheBook of Duck
Decoys,TheirConstruction)Management,and History, estimates that the decoys of
the eastern counties contributed at least half a million birds to the market on an an-
nual basis. 73 Furthermore 1 when we turn to decoys located on estates like Pyrford
or Hampton Court, we see a natural abundance that had once been freely available
turned into a resource created and exploited for the benefit of one aristocratic house,
118 SWAMP
de S'JA_Ms
'---ziI
• ·Qs_)
• •
Figure 47. Leonard Knyff,"The North Prospect of Hampton Court with ye Park & Decoy by Mr. Knyfe,"
ca. 1699. Oil on canvas, 148.3 x 214.3 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.
with the men (often from Lincolnshire) who once had been free foragers now turned
decoy-men for hire. In this way, the history of the decoy mirrors larger transforma-
tions in land use and labor that occurred throughout the country in tandem with the
progress of enclosure.
The Age of the Windmill
If the history of the seventeenth-century draining appears to present a story of the
triumph of technology against the odds 1 the narrative of the following century is
much more equivocal. When Daniel Defoe traveled through the Fens in the 1720s,
he found them "almost all cover'd with Water like a Sea, the Michaelmas Rains
119 SWAMP
 having been very great that Year, they had sent down great Floods ofWater from the
Upland Countries." And although impressed by the drainage projects undertaken
"by a Set of Gentlemen call'd the Adventurers," and by how '.'ata prodigious Ex-
pence, they have cut new Channels, and even whole Rivers, with particular Drains
from one River to another, to carry off the great Flux of Waters, when Floods or
Freshes come down either on one side or the other," Defoe also noted that "notwith~
standing all that Hands could do, or Art contrive, yet sometimes the Waters do still
prevail 1 the Banlcs break, and whole Levels are overflow'd together." 74
In 1713 the Denver Sluice-one ofVermuyden's principal works-had been
assaulted by a combination of unusually high tides and raging floodwaters, and
was smashed to bits under the onslaught. The ruin of this work, so critical to the
regulation of the outfall of the River Ouse, led to swiftly deteriorating conditions
throughout the South Level of the Fens. But in addition to the calamities produced
by storms and other catastrophic acts of nature, another force was working against
the proper functioning of the seventeenth-century drainage scheme: changes to the
level of the peat surface itsel£
Not until the nineteenth century would it be understood why draining caused
the surface of the Fens to lower, but by the early eighteenth century it was observed
that the entire drained area, whose elevation had originally been above sea level, had
now fallen below it, and drainage channels once parallel with fields to either side
now towered above them. For it turned out that once water was drained from the
Fens, the peat itself shrunkJ much like a sponge squeezed of its water. In addition,
the surface itself was subject to wastage, as the vegetal matter, now exposed to light
and air, decomposed. This lowering of the surface of the soil meant that the drainage
ditches, once level with the surface of the plain, became increasingly elevated, need-
ing higher embankments andJ increasingly, windmill-driven pumps to raise the water
from the flooded fields. And so the Fens entered what H. C. Darby has termed "the
age of the windmill:' 75
In 1652 Walter Blith had recommended the use of windmills "to lay a good
compass of Land dry in a few daies," publishing an engraving that showed the inner
workings of his preferred "water-engine" (fig. 48 ).76 That it did not take long for the
windmill to become a common element of the Fen landscape is testified to by many
of the maps published by Dugdale (particularly that of Marshland), as well as by the
Cambridgeshire portion of Ogilby's map of the route from London to Kings-Lynn.
Over the next decades, as the results ofVermuyden's scheme became increasingly
compromised, the windmill assumed a vital role in the region's drainage, becoming a
characteristic feature of the eighteenth-century Fen landscape.
In 1726, it was reported to Parliament that land in the Haddingharn Level had
•••• I
il •.,C
g,:,;,,11';~,J,_.,,
•. ,.C,,,t;,.i,1; :
,:\'t"""".J"'If",.,__,_
Figure 48, A -windmill. Walter Blith, The EnglishImproverImproved(London, 1652 ). The Henry E. Huntington
Library and Art Gallery.
been "so often drowned, and surrounded with Waters" over the previous seven years
that its profit had amounted to next to nothing. In the following year an act was
passed that enabled landowners in the region to join together to organize the drain-
age of a particular area independently of the governance of the Bedford Level Cor-
poration. The act acknowledged that the system of drains and dikes established by
the seventeenth-century adventurers was insufficient, and allowed for the creation of
a subsidiary system of smaller drains whose waters would be channeled up into the
area's major drains by windmill-driven pumps. With this act, the role of the windmill
77
in the maintenance of the drained Fenland was established.
But in many cases, even the proliferation of windmills was not enough to keep
all of the Fens in a drained condition. In the summer of 1754, the Swiss engineer
Charles Labelye, asked by the Duke ofBedford to inspect tbe Great Level of the
Fens in order to comment on a proposed draining scheme, found them flooded and
in "a most deplorable Condition;' and accused Vermuyden of"an Ignorance which is
almost criminal:''" Many of the descriptions of the Fens dating from the second balf
of the eighteenth century echo this theme. Commentator after commentator notes
that land that had previously been under cultivation was now "all waste and water:' 79
In 1777, in his Report upon the Middle and South Levels,John Golborne wrote: "Look
which way you will, you will see nothing but misery and desolation; go but half a

120 SWAMP
121 SWAMP
mile from Ely, and you come to 1vfiddle~Fen1 a tract of sixteen thousand Acres 1 given
up and abandonedj there you see the ruins ofWind.mills 1 the last efforts of an indus-
trious people." 80
For William Gilpin) the windmills were the only objects that relieved the dreariness
of the Fenland landscape (fig. 49). When Gilpin toured the Fens in 1769, during a
trip to Houghton to view Walpole's collection of pictures, he was not pleased with
what he saw. Setting out from Cambridge on his way to Ely, he unhappily found him-
self"immediately among fens. Trees 1 groves, extensive distances, and all the variety
oflandscape, are now totally gone. All is blank. The eye meets nothing but dreary
causeways .... Stretches of flat, swampy ground; and long ditches running in strait
lines; and intersected 1 at right angles 1 in various parts 1 by other ditches 1 make the
whole of the scenery on each side:' Further alongi "rows of pollards with slime hang-
ing from their branches 1marked the limits of hedges, which emerged) as the waters
drained off. In the mean time a circumscribed horizon of fenny surface was our only
distance. If it had been remote 1it might have lost in obscurity it's disgusting form.
But it's disagreeable features were apparent to the utmost verge of it's extent:'
Figure 49. Windmills in the Fens. William Gilpin, Observationson SeveralPartsof the Countiesof Cambridge,
Norfolk,Suffolk,and Essex[...] RelativeChieflyto PicturesqueBeauty,in Two Tours,the Fonnermade in the Year
1769 (London, 1809 ). Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
122 SWAMP
The marshy Fens were the epitome of the unpleasing, unpicturesque landscape.
Flat and monotonousi "the only ornaments of this dreary surface are wind.mills,
those types of exposure; and these we observed, in some places, accessible only by
boats. Their use is to pump off the waters into the channel of the river: in dry sum-
mers this is in part effected naturally. But in so flat a surface the water commonly
lies long; and in many parts stretches as far as the eye can reach; the road running
through it) like a lengthened mole, in perspective. The whole scene resembles that
melancholy one described by Tacitus, in which a great part of the army of Germani-
cus was lost:' For Gilpin 1the Fens constituted "such a country as a man would wish
to see once for curiosity; but would never desire to visit a second time. One view
sufficiently imprints the idea:' "Indeed;' as he acidly concluded, "where there is but
one idea, there can arise no confusion in the recollection:' 81
The fen, as a watery landscape type, was at the opposite end of the spectrum
from the picturesque lake: whereas the lake was the epitome of watery beauty 1the
fen was located at the nadir of the displeasing. The lake was the product of a moun-
tainous country, formed by swiftly moving rivers; fens, on the other hand 1 were gen-
erated in flat lands by "land-springs, or the exuberance of rain-waters; which 1 having
no natural discharge, but by exhalation or through the pores of the earth, stagnate,
and putrify upon the surface:' While the lake was "adorned" with "light skiffs, skim-
ming1 with white sails, along it's banks; or with fishing-boats, drawing their circular
nets; or groups of cattle laving their sides near the shore;' the fen had "no chearful
inhabitants:' Instead 1"here and there may be seen a miserable cow 1 or horse 1 (which
in quest of a mouthful of better herbage, had ventured too far) dragging its legs,
besmeared with slime; and endeavouring with painful operation to get some stable
footing:'
AB for their respective forms, the lake had "a beautiful line, formed by the un-
dulation of the rocks, and rising grounds along it's banks," whereas the fen merely
"unites in rushy plashes, with the swampy soil 1 on which it borders. Here and there 1
as the waters subside, the eye traces a line of decaying sedge 1and other offensive
filth, which is left behind:' Lakes were adorned by rocks and woods, while the Fen-
land equivalent was "at best only pollard-willows, defouled with slime, and oozy
refuse hanging from their branches; standing in lines 1and marking the hedge-rows,
which appear by degrees, as the waters retire:' Finally, in terms of reflectivity, the lake
was "a resplendent mirror 1 reflecting trees 1 and rocks from it's margin;and the cope
of heaven from it's bosom;all glowing in the vivid tints of nature;' whereas the fen,
"spread with vegetable corruption, or crawling with animal generation, forms a sur-
face1without depth 1or fluidity; and is so far from reflecting an image, that, it hardly
comes within the definition of a fluid:' 82
123 SWAMP
 Although Gilpin was never one to mince his words when it came to evaluating
landscape scenery, his denigrating dismissal of the marshy Fens was particularly
extreme. The Fenland landscape offended on several counts. In the first place, it was
monotonous. Flat and unornamented, it was "blank/' presenting only one single
idea. 1his flat landscape, blank like a sheet of paper, was, furthermore, divided up
along orthogonal lines by long, straight ditches intersecting one another at right
angles, as if overlain by a grid. But there was worse. For the Fens had not simply sub-
mitted themselves to the logic of the grid, becoming neat plots and therefore visually
boring. Gilpin never liked straight lines or signs of straightforward agricultural pro•
ductivity, but the Fens harbored something different, and far more troubling. For the
attempt at rational control signified by the crisscrossing orthogonal lines of drainage
ditches had not prevented the essential swampy; oozy; fenny nature of the landscape
from returning.
To Gilpin 1 the waters of the Fens were stagnant and putrid; its animals "be-
smeared with slime;" its plants decaying and "defouled." Rather than products, it
had by-products: the offensive filth left by its receding waters, the oozy refuse hang•
ing from its pollard willow branches. And when Gilpin evokes the way the Fen was
"spread with vegetable corruption" and "crawling with animal generation," he was
not recording an objective visual sensation, but the associations of decay, decom-
position, and corruption the idea of the swamp evoked. The Fen "forms a surface
without depth or fluidity," and thus "hardly comes within the definition of a fluid":
neither solid nor quite liquid, with an uncertain border whose outline was under-
mined by decay, the Fenland marsh, in its uncertainty and uncategorizability, con-
jured a powerful disgnst.
The wasteland typology of the swamp exemplifies disgust in its visceral mode.
From Guthlac's encounter with the grotesque demons of the Crowland westen to
the agricultural improvers' aspirations to rid the region's soil of its inherent cor-
ruption, from Fiennes's and Defoe's fears of sickness and contamination to Gilpin's
aestheticized displeasure, the typology of the Fen engenders a consistent response.
The Fen's dirtiness, its rotten flora and slimy fauna 1 its teeming waters, and its impure
air are all characteristics that tend to provoke a relatively direct, instinctual disgust.
The reaction, in most of these cases, was to flee: to put as much distance between the
offending landscape and oneself, as quickly as possible. The exceptions are religious
men, like Guthlac, whose calling requires a high degree of fleshly mortification, and
locals, like the stilt-wearing Fen-Men themselves, for whom the swamp is not land-
83
scape, but home. In all of the typologies considered in this book, this distinction
between insiders and outsiders is an important underlying factor affecting descrip-
tions of wasteland, with accusations of uselessness and reactions of disgust coming,
124 SWAMP
for the most part, from outsiders rather than local inhabitants. Yet these disgust-lad-
en reactions exist side by side 1 in many cases, with a belief that these marshy regions
could be transformed. As wastelands, swamps may have elicited a profound visceral
disgust, but they were also terrains of possibility, their mutable, uncertain, indefin-
able nature key to their potential for change.
To an eye trained to evaluate landscape according to criteria of the picturesque,
the Fens-or any marsh-offended by offering nothing to see. The traditional pic-
turesque composition, comprising a view extending into depth and framed by two
side-screens, was challenged by the monotony and flatness of the Fens, where wind-
mills offered the sole vertical element. This resistance of the landscape to pictorial
representation is clear in Gllpin's attempt to make his view of the Fens conform to
the conventions of the picturesque. His feeble sketch manages to show very little: a
flat extent of ground, lightened here and there by patches of water reflecting the sky;
the three windmills, placed in the foreground left, middle-ground right, and back-
ground center, the only means by which any sense of scale or distance is achieved.
Without them, the landscape would dissolve into nothingness, a grayish surface of-
fering even less visual interest than the rather conventional cloud formations above.
Although Gilpin's image is intentionally not among his most aesthetically pleasing,
it does, almost despite itself, maize two important points.
In the first place, Gilpin captures the way in which the flatness of the Fens be-
stowed a particular prominence to buildings and other structures, one that was
noted by Celia Fiennes and by Daniel Defoe, who commented that the great extent
and extreme flatness of the Fens meant that there was "no Interruption to the Sight/'
with the result that "any Building of extraordinary Hight is seen a long Way; for Ex·
ample, Boston Steeple is seen upon Lincoln Heath near thirty Miles, Peterborough
and Ely Minsters are seen almost throughout the whole Level, so are the Spires of
Lynn 1 Whittlesea 1 and Crowland, seen at a very great Distance, which adds a Beauty
to the Country:' 84 The second point made by Gilpin's image is that with the land of
the landscape receding into aesthetic insignificance, what is gained is an opportunity
for an exploration of the sky.
These were aesthetic lessons understood, later in the nineteenth century, by
Ruskin and Turner, and they were understood also by Norvvich-bornJohn Sell Cot-
man, whose DrainageMills in the Fens,Croyland,Lincolnshire,like many of his other
views of the region, pushes down the horizon line in order to deploy the flatness of
the Fen landscape to his aesthetic advantage, malzing use of it to bolster the pres-
ence of the four windmills, whose towering forms are dramatically silhouetted by
a stormy sky (fig. SO). Colman's mills are not the ingenious devices represented by
Blith, nor Gilpin's mere compositional place markers. By the time Cotman painted
125 SWAMP
 St. Benet~Abbey illustrates a narrative quite different from the one Fen historian
H. C. Darby's described as "one of the mighty themes in the story ofBritain," "a tri-
umphant witness to the power of society in utilizing and subduing its environment/'
and a perfect illustration of the trope "Man and his Conquest ofNature:' 86 1his nar-
rative, instead, would highlight the continued resistance mounted by the Fenland to
human attempts to remake it in another landscape's image. It would reveal the fis-
sures seaming and undermining the ideology of improvement and an Enlightenment
belief in perpetual progress. In the 1820s, windmills were replaced by steam-driven
pumps; a century later the steam pumps gave way to pumps powered by diesel
engine. Like a patient on life support, the Fens continue to be kept dry only by the
constant application of a technology whose improvements do nothing to solve the
essential underlying problem: that the nature of the Fens is neither to be entirely
wet, nor drYibut is rather to be an indeterminate, recalcitrant, muddy mixture 1 con-
stituting a landscape that is unsettlinglYi gloriouslYi and permanently "out of place:'

Figure 50. John Sell Cotman, DrainageMills in the Fens, Croyland, Lincolnshire,ca. 1835. Oil on canvas,
55.2 x 91.8 cm. Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection.

this picture, the windmill was rapidly becoming an obsolete technologyi increasingly
replaced by much more efficient steam engine~driven pumps. One could say that
the way in which these windmills lose corporeality as they recede into the distance
is expressive of the historical fate to which they were increasingly doomed. 85

This sense of impending obsolescence, and, consequentlYi of the eventual futil-

ity of human attempts to tame or claim the Fens is particularly well expressed in
another painting, also (perhaps) by Cotman. In St. Benet'sAbbey (fig. SI) we see the
remains of the monastic establishment at Holmei Norfolki whose ruinous gatehouse
has been taken over by the squat form of a mill. Though the mill may have still been
in operation at this point, the painting portrays both structures as anachronistic
and vulnerablei surrounded on all sides by the dense blackness of a threatening sky.
In this lonely outpost, the projects of humans to inhabiti transform, or exploit the
Figure 51.Attributed to John Sell Cotman, St. Benet'sAbbey, ca. 1810. Oil on canvas, 37.8 x 47.6 cm.
wasteland are depicted as all equally doomed; what remains is a token of failure,
Yale Center for British Art, Bequest of Richard L. Purdy.
standing as mute witness while the battle between land and water goes on.

126 SWAMP
127 SWAMP
 CHAPTER IV

MOUNTAIN
· ..··.·.~,
..
~·

N ewt1._rc-k.
~-~· __.
~-

On the top left of the map that accompanied the 1622 edition of Michael Drayton's
Poly-Olbion(fig. 52 ), we see the Peak District ofnorth-central England and its so-
1
called wonders allegorically represented. The Peak's unusual natural features are
labeled and illustrated: the caves lrnown as Poole's Hole and the Devil's Arse and the
chasm ofElden Hole with the outline of a hill; the springs ofTideswell and Buxton
with the image of a bather. But even more suggestive than any of these is the small
figure located immediately next to the text labeling this portion of the map as "The
Peake": the staff-wielding, hunchbacked profile ofan elderly woman.
This figure is meant to echo the conceit used by Drayton in his description of the
Peak District in Poly-Olbion'stwenty-sixth song, where the landscape is described
and brought to life through a vivid anthropomorphization, being likened to "A
withered Bedlam long, with bleared walrish eyes:'2 The old crone, personification of
the Peak District's landscape, is worn-out, wrinkled} bleary-eyed, and emaciated. In
addition, she is unclean: "Her meager wrinkled face, being sullyed still with lead, /
Which sitting in theworkes, and poring o'r the Mines,/ Whichshee out of the Oare
continually refines:' 3 Old, ugly, wrinkled, and dirty, for Drayton she functions as the
emblem of disgust.
Yet despite the seeming frailty of the Peake's incarnated aspect, she is no harm-
less granny, "Forshee a Chimistwas, and Natures secrets knew," and "the spirits
that haunt the Mynes, she could command and tame, / And bind them as she list
in Satums dreadful! name." 4 Though she has lost her youth and beauty, she has ob-
tained other 1 more sinister powers: the knowledge of minerals together with their
occult properties, and the ability to tame the spirits of the underworld. Tuns, in
addition to being disgusting, this crone is also terrifying.
The trope of the old woman as repulsive witch propels Drayton's treatment
of Derbyshire, for he extends the conceit by styling the region's unusual natural
~
'_1-it'a,,,·,,
hi/[
----c.__.,--
-
Figure 52. William Hole, "Map ofDerbyshire, Nottinghamshire, and Leicestershire," in Michael Drayton, The
SecondPart, or A Continuanceof Poly-Olbionfrom the EighteenthSong (London, 1622). The William Andrews
Clark Memorial Library.
features lrnown as "The Wonders of the Peak" as her offspring: "My dreadful] daugh•
ters borne/ your mothers deare delight:' 5 The Wonders of the Peak included the
mineral well at Buxton; the ebbing and flowing river called Tideswell; the two caves
known respectively as Poole's Hole, after an outlaw who had used it as a hiding place 1
and the Devil's Arse, for its apparent resemblance to that infernal orificei Mam Tor,
or "the shivering mountain" whose sides 1 covered in shale, were continually sliding
down but with no noticeable diminution in the hill's height; and Elden Hole, au
unfathomable chasm whose depths had claimed the lives of sheep and men. These
six natural wonders acted as foils for the seventh 1 artificial wonder: the Duke of
Devonshire's house and gardens at Chatsworth.
Drayton's poem utilizes a vocabulary meant to elicit both disgust and terror in
order to bring the Peak's natural features-in particular those caves and crevasses
that plunged deep below the earth's surface-vividly to life. Adopting the voice of

128
129 MOUNTAIN
the witch-mother Peake speaking to her infernal offspring, he continues: "Yee darke
and hollow Caves, the pourtraitures of Hell, / Where Fogs, and misty Damps con-
tinually doe dwell; / 0 yee my onely Ioyes, my Darlings, in whose eyes, / Horror as-
sumes her seat; from whose abiding styes / Thicke Vapours, that like Rugs still hang
the troubled ayre, / Yee of your mother Peake,the hope and onely care:' The subter-
ranean caves and-chasmsJ daughters of the Peake, are celebrated in verse that paints
their disgusting and frightful aspects as rare charms. In a reverse encomium) the
more repulsive the characteristic, the more it is celebrated. For example, the Devil's
Arse, blessed with "darksome jawesJ"is praised for its obscurity: "For as amongst
the Moores,the lettiest blacke are deem'd / The beautifulst of them; so are your kind
esteem'd, / The more ye gloomy are, more fearefull and obscure, / (That hardly any
eye your sternnesse may endure)/' and the cavern of Poole's Hole is named after the
outlaw who "For his strong refuge tooke this darke and uncouth place,/ An heyre-
loome ever since, to that succeeding race." The dark caves are filled with fogs and
mists, which only serve to further compound their obscurity, and the thick vapors
are stench-laden and persistent, hanging "like Rugs" in the "troubled ayre." Indeed,
Poole's Hole and the Devil's Arse are "pourtraitures of Hell/' with the river that di-
vides the Devil's Arse so "dead and sullen/' that "Acheronit selfe, a man would thinke
he were / !mediately to passe, and stay'd for Charonthere:' Finally, Elden Hole, the
favorite child, is preferred over her siblings due to the fact that she plunges so deeply
into the ground that if one were looking for an entrance "1hrough earth to lead to
hell, ye well might iudge it here:' Deformed, dirty, obscure, stench-laden, and fright-
ening, for Drayton the Wonders of the Peak were the closest thing on earth to Hell
itself.6
In Disgust: Theoryand History of a StrongSensation,Winfried Menninghaus has
argued that as the discipline of aesthetics begins to develop, the figure of the ugly
old woman attains a singular position: ''.Almost all the defects addressed and rejected
by the discourse on disgust are repeatedly compressed into one single phantasm)
that of the ugly old woman. This phantasm conventionally brings together folds and
wrinkles) warts, larger than usual openings of the body (i.e., mouth and anus), foul,
black teeth, sunk-in hollows instead ofbeautiful swellings, drooping breasts, stinking
breath, revolting habits, and a proximity to both death and putrefaction .... With
negative obsession, the founding fathers of the new 'discipline' of aesthetics incor-
porated aged femininity into their system as its maximum disgusting evil:' 7 But this
figure, according to Menninghaus, also contains a peculiar powerJ for he argues that
it is in fact indispensible for the construction of its opposite. In other words, the
ideal body of the new discipline of aesthetics is constructed, feature by feature, in
opposition to a repulsive body that exhibits what Bakhtin identified as the essential
130 MOUNTAIN
characteristics of the grotesque, in which "stress is laid on those parts of the body
that are open to the outside world, that isJ the parts through which the world enters
the body or emerges from it, or through which the body itself goes out to meet the
world. This means that the emphasis is on the apertures or convexities) or on various
ramifications and off-shoots: the open mouth, the genital organs, the breasts, the
phallus, the potbelly, the nose .... The age of the body is most frequently represented
in immediate proximity to birth or death, to infancy or old age, to the womb or the
grave, to the bosom that gives life or swallows it up:' 8 Indeed, the grotesque face itself
is often reduced to its most potent signifier: a widely gaping mouth that not only
mimics the reflex reaction of disgust itself, but also contains wider sets of associa-
tions including both the open womb (and the beginning oflife) and the entrance
to Hell (encountered at life's end). Thus, the figure of the ugly old woman, the aes-
theticians' paragon of disgust) is necessary for the formulation of her opposite) the
young woman in the prime oflife, paragon ofbeauty. When Drayton personified the
Derbyshire landscape as a wizened crone and cast the region's subterranean natural
features as her repulsive offspring, he was not only fashioning the mountainous Peak
District as the epitome of the repulsive landscape) but may also have been laying the
groundwork for the formulation of a landscape ideal.
The Wonders of the Peak
In August 1627, five years after Drayton published the second part of his Poly-Olbi-
on, the philosopher Thomas Hobbes toured the Peak District in the company of his
patron William Cavendish (who had just succeeded to the earldom of Devonshire)
and the poet Dr. Richard Andrews. 1his tour produced two poems: one in English
by Andrews, and another in Latin by Hobbes. Andrews's poem sank rather quickly
into obscurity, but Hobbes's De MirabilibusPecci,dedicated to his friend and patron
William, Earl of Devonshire, was printed in 1636 and soon became wildly popular. 9
De MirabilibusPecci)which begins with a eulogy of Chatsworth and its gardens,
appears at first to be a country house poem in the tradition of Ben Jonson's To Pens-
hurst.However, the scope of Hobbes's poem soon widens beyond patron and estate
to include the broader landscape and its "wonders": "Of the high Peak, are Seven
wonders writ, / Two Fonts, h\ToCavesJ one Pallace, Mount, and Pit;' orJ in other
words, Buxton, Tideswell, Poole's Hole, the Devil's Arse, Chatsworth, Mam Tor,
and Elden Hole. Thus the poem sets up a contest benveen Art and NatureJ with the
repulsive, infernal landscape of the Peak set in contrast to the beautiful and civilized
Chatsworth. The Wonders of the Peak areJ furthermore, characterized in terms that
are clearly meant to evoke repugnance. Near Castleton, for example, "Behind
131 MOUNTAIN
a ruin'd mountain does appear/ Swelling into two parts, which turgent are/ As
when we bend our bodies to the ground, / Tue buttocks amply sticking out are
found./ I'th'midst there is a Cave" whose opening is likened to the jaws of Hell:
"its mouth with horrour does present: / Just like a furnace, or as Hell they paint, /
Swallowing with openJawes the Damned croud / After the sentence is pronounc'd
aloud:' Elden Hole is terrifying, its fathomless depths compared to Hell, Avernus,
and Dis, while the dark cave of Poole's Hole is a "monstrous, horrid, shapeless den."
But Poole's Hole is not just monstrous and shapeless; it is also polluting. Hobbes
notes that after some laborious climbing "Our wearied joints had now bedew'd with
sweat 1 / Our creeping hands with the moist earth were wet." At the entrance to the
caves a crowd of people seeking a handout offered tourists small bowls of water with
herbs to wash themselves after their visit to the underworld 1 though this ritual of
purification came at a price: ''.Andjustly too 1 were we wash'd ne'er so clean, / Some-
thing of Dirtiness would still remain,/ Unless by some rewards (although not great)
/ Their courtesies we should remunerate:' Hobbes's characterization of the Peale as
disgusting and polluting landscape was to have a long afterlife: the poem was reprint-
ed in 1666 and 1675, and subsequently issued in a dual Latin and English edition in
1678 and 1683. And its effect, through this wide dissemination among an educated
public 1 was not to dissuade travel to this perilous, revolting 1 and polluting region, but
rather to encourage it-in fact, the poem inspired a new generation of adventurous
travelers to come to the Derbyshire mountains in search of both wonder and danger,
and colored their expectations and reactions once they arrived. 10
In Wondersand the Orderof Nature,Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park distin-
guish between three orders of monsters based on the reactions-whether of horror,
of pleasure, or of repugnance-they engendered in their early modern viewers. Hor-
ror-evoking monsters were "violations ofboth the natural and moral orders," such
as those interpreted as "portents signifying divine wrath and imminent catastrophe."
Marvels, on the other hand 1 elicited wondering pleasure: they were "prixter naturam 1
rare but not menacing:' Finally, repugnance was inspired by deformities or natural
errors, which were "neither ominous nor admirable but regrettable 1 the occasional
price to be paid for the very simplicity and regularity in nature from which they so
shockingly deviated:' 11 Tue Wonders of the Peak included examples from all three
of these categories: The chasm of Elden Hole and the precipice of Mam Tor evoked
horror; the two caves of Poole's Hole and the Devil's Arse triggered repugnance; and
the waters of Buxton and Tideswell 1 as well as the artificial wonder of Chatsworth,
fell into the category of marvels, eliciting more of a wondering pleasure than either
horror or disgust.
132 MOUNTAIN
These kinds of reactions are strikingly illustrated by a letter written by the young
Edward Browne to his father 1 Sir Thomas Brownei describing a trip he made to Der-
byshire in 1662. Full of youthful bravado and sophomoric humor, the letter gives
vibrant testimony to the kinds of visceral responses such a dramatic laildscape was
capable of evoking. On September 8, Edward set off from Norwich together with
his brother Thomas and some other companions 1 and headed northwest toward a
landscape unlike any he had ever seen. 1his «strange1 mountainous, mistyi moorish,
rocky, wild country,"he writes, where the "floods from the tops of the hills, wash-
ing downe mud and so making a bog in every vallyi the craggy ascents 1 the rocky
unevenness of the roade 1 the high peakes and the almost perpendicular descents"
made travel a frightening enterprise. Browne's account becomes particularly dra-
matic in a description of a perilous ride in the Derbyshire mountains, where he and
his companions were led by local men on a rocky road over hills so high that "cloud
after cloud come puffing up the hill as if they themselves had been out of breath with
dinting it," encountering thick mists and a deafeningly thunderous rainstorm on
their way. At the top of the last high hill they arrived at a landscape even more ter-
rifying than those they had passed: a vast wild moor, "which by the story's wee had
been told of it 1 we might have imagined a wild bore [boar];' strewn with boulders
as big as houses, and pitted with great holes filled with water. Their conductor, in
his haste to pass over this treacherous stretch of ground 1 fell down into "a dirty hole"
and face-first into a "soft place of mud:' Browne infers that the fall filled the man's
mouth "full both of dirt and rotten stick for he seem'd to us to spit crow's nest a good
while after. If his jaws had met with a piece of the rock, I doubt hee would have spit
his teethe as fast:' In this passage, we find landscape inhabiting the role of the dis-
gusting: pressing itself upon the subject and even going so far as to enter his body.
In responsei he gags and spits. And, critically; it is exactly at this pointi the moment
when the landscape triggers the paradigmatic disgust reaction, that beauty makes
its appearance. As the travelers turn from the scene being acted out on the ground
below, out of the mists rises a view that seems almost to be a mirage: the Earl of
12
Devonshire's house at Chatsworth.
Over the course of the next few days, Browne and his companions made the
rounds of Derbyshire's wonders: they went to Mam Tor, to Tideswell, and to Elden
Hole. But it is in Browne's description of the cave known as the Devil's Arse 1 situated
below Castleton on the "left buttock of the peak hill;' that we see the full-scale de-
ployment of a vocabulary of disgust (not unmixed with a gleefully puerile humor).
"At the bottome of the backside of a high rocky mountain," Browne recounts,
133 MOUNTAIN
"bipartite at the top and perpendicularly steep from thence to the level! of the
ground, wee beheld a vast hole or den which was presently understood by us to
bee the anus." Into this orifice they proceeded, embarking on a pioneering form of
excremental tourism: "by the helpe oflight and guides wee did not onely enter, but
travailed some space up the intestinum rectum, and had made further discovery
of the intralls had the way been good, and the passage void of excrementj but the
monster having drunke hard the day before, did vent as fast now, and wee 1 thinking
it not good sayling up Styx against the tidej after some inspection, with no small
~dmiration of these infernall territories, wee returned again to the upper world:' 1his
mixture of tropes of disgust (with evocations of an excrement-filled rectum) and
of terror (with references to Hell) is then extended to the cave's inhabitants, whom
Browne compares to intestinal parasites: "at our entrance wee found the countrey
inhabited, but scarce gesse [guessed] by their habit what kind of creatures they were,
whither they were onely Ascarides, which did wrigle up and downe and live in the
devil's pastern, answerably to wormes in men, or whither they were shades dwell-
ing in these Tartarean cavern es, to us at first was doubtful!. They looked indeed like
furies, but for manners sake wee ask'd whether they were Gipsies:' To Browne these
impoverished men and women are almost inhuman, their abode perilous both to the
body~"this retromingent divell, whose podex they inhabit, is alwaies dribling more
or lesse whereby these doe sometimes suffer inundations"-as well as to the soul. 13
Toward the end of their touri the group visited Buxtoni where they explored
Poole's Hole, emerging "dirty and bedaubed with the slime:' This final polluting ex-
perience was then followed by a ritual purification: as they crawled out of the cavei
they encountered "a company of damsells, very cleanly dreast, having each of them a
little dish of water full of sweet hearbs, which they held out to us to wash our hands:'
Once the final traces of this landscape had been washed away, it was as if a spell had
been broken, and they were free to leave. The next morning they set out for Chester 1
and after a few miles of riding along the road, they encountered "a prospect as deli-
cious as almost England can afford:' From their elevated standpointi they surveyed
"the Valle Royall of England which seemed like paradise to us adorn'd with pleas-
ant rivers, cristall springs, delighted buildings, high woods, which seem'd bending
by sweet gales to becken us to come to them:' If the Derbyshire landscape fulfilled
the role of the disgusting object by threatening, entering, and polluting the body, it
also created the conditions for the experience ofbeautyi understood as the removed
ocular appreciation of an ordered and benevolent landscape, which "seemed like
paradise" in contrast to the infernal regions Browne and his companions had just
traversed. 14
134 MOUNTAIN
1his characterization of the Peak District as a landscape of disgust and damna-
tion is found once again in Charles Cotton's The Wondersof the Peakeofl681. Mod-
eling itself on Hobbes's De MirabilibusPecci,Cotton's poem describes the Peak and
its seven wonders in terms designed to elicit reactions of both horror and disgust
in his readers. The poem opens with a terrified protest: "Durst I expostulate with
Providence,/ I then should ask, where in the innocence/ Of my poor undesigning
infancy, / Could Heaven offend to such a black degree, / As for th'offence to damn
me to a place / Where Nature only suffers in disgrace." Looking down from his posi-
tion on an eminence 1 Cotton surveys two equally repulsive landscapes: the Peak, ''A
Countryso deform'd, the TravellerI Would swear those parts Natures pudenda were:
/ Like Warts and Wenshills on the one side swell, / To all but Natives inaccessible;'
and the Moor-Land, where "a blue scrofulous scum defilesi / Flowing from th'earths
impostumated boyles:' The Peak is likened to "the steps (Mountains on Mountains
thrown) / By which the Giants storm'd the Thunderers Throne," while the Moss
Lands, from his vantage point, resemble "the sulph'rous flood,/ Where sinful So-
dom and Gomorrah stood:' 15
Turning to the Peak's individual wondersi Cotton characterizes Poole's Hole as
"the Crypto-porticus of Hell;' an "Infernal! Mansion;' reverberating with "the dismal
yell/ Of Souls tormented in the flames of Hell:' Mam Tor strikes the visitor with a
cold trembling horror. Elden Hole is a "dreadful] place;' a "formidable Scissure'' that
is "Steep, black, and full of horror:' But most horrible of all is the "dreadful Cave /
Whose sight may well astonish the most brave": the "Court of Dis" otherwise known
as The Devil's Arse. Not only is it dark~one can make one's way only by the "blink-
ing and promiscuous'' light given off by candles held by the "Subterranean People''
who guide those "who are to penetrate inclin'd / The intestinum rectum of the
Fiend," but it stinks: "Stack both of Hay, and Turf, which yields a scent/ Can only
fume from Satan's fundarnent:' During his visit, Cotton is assaulted by stenchesi
by sudden deafening noises, and by other noxious and terrifying sensations. These
experiences, however, all serve to prepare the poet for his final encounter: the won-
der of Chatsworth. A product of art, its perfection and beauty stand in stark contrast
to the deformity of the region's natural phenomena. Chatsworth is "Environ'd round
with Natures shames, and Ills, / Black Heaths, wild Rocks, bleak Craggs, and naked
Hills"; the surrounding landscape is both "informei and rude" like the face of "new-
born Nature" when first created out of Chaos. Chatsworth, by contrast, is like
paradise, testimony to "what Art could 1 spite of Nature, do:' 16 Johannes Kip and
Leonard Knyff's engraving of Chatsworth (fig. 53 ), published in their Britannia
135 MOUNTAIN

Figure 53. Johannes Kip and Leonard Knyff, "Chatsworth House being the seat of his Grace the Duke and Earl of
Devonshire," Britannia Illustrata (London, 1699 ). The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
fllustrata of 1699i echoes this contrast between order and chaosi beauty and disgusti
highlighting the disparity between the regular, geometrically ordered garden with its
avenues, fountains 1 and parterres, its canals and groves, and the wild 1 rocky, formless
landscape that surrounds it on every side.
By utilizing a vocabulary of disgusti these seventeenth-century works establish
a particular set of associations for mountainous landscapes like Derbyshire's Peak
District. Just as the body of the repugnant old woman can be contrasted to that of
the beautiful young maiden 1 mountains provide a foil that is critical to the construc-
tion of a landscape ideal. Like the warts and hooked nose of the wizened crone 1
mountains are construed as protuberances that disfigure the face of the earth, the
sharp outlines of their rocky slopes comparable to the wrinkled, sagging skin of the
aged body. But at the same time that their ragged profiles suggest great age, their
136 MOUNTAIN
irregular shapes also recall the earth's original emergence from chaos. Like Bakhtin's
grotesque body, mountains and their associations thus cluster around the two poles
of birth and old age1 creation and destruction.
The uneven 1 foldedi pockmarked surface of mountains also gives rise to fissures,
crevassesi and caves: the orifices of the upland landscape. These openings figure
prominently in the literature of mountainous disgust, their interiors triggering the
most potent reactions. Disgust, horror 1 and terror are evoked by these subterranean
spaces, a coincidence that only further reinforces the sexual associations contained
in the parallels made between the landscape and the worn-out human body. And
this may also point to some of the reasons why we consistently find a commingling
of excremental (or disgusting) and infernal (or sinful) associations in these textsi
where the exploration of the Devil's Arse 1 for example 1 with its connotations of for-
bidden sexual activity, is explicitly likened to a voyage to the depths of Hell. Lurking
in all of these descriptions is a fear of sin and a terror of punishment, an anxiety that
is expressed in two differenti but related, guises: first in the sense that mountainous
landscapes are themselves interpreted as a legacy of the divine wrath engendered
by human sinfulnessi and second in that contact with these kinds oflandscapes 1
through the kinds of activities they afford and inspire, is seen as being dangerous not
only to the body, but also to the soul.
From Wonder to Resource
But the Peak's wonders did not always impress. In the same period in which these
accounts construct the Peak's mountainous landscape as a terrain of disgust, another
tendency emerges, one that seems at first to be more attentive to questions of use
than to the frisson of fear. In his Britannia,William Camden had drily noted that
"Below [Castleton] is a den or cave under ground call'd (ifl may be pardon'd the
rudeness of the expression) the Devil's Arse, very wide and gaping, and having many
apartments in it ... this Hole is look'd upon as one of the prodigies of England. The
same sort of fables are likewise told of another Cave in this neighbourhood, call'd
Elden-hole, which is wonderful for nothing but the vast bigness 1 steepness 1 and the
depth of it:' Rather nonplussed by what he saw, Camden quipped:
Nine things that please us at the Peake we see,
A Cave, a Den, and Hole, the wonders be,
Lead, Sheep, and Pasture, are the useful three:
Chatsworth, the Castle, and the Bath, delight;
Much more you'll find, but nothing worth your sight.17
137 MOUNTAIN

That "much more" was principally to be found underground. Camden noted that
although the region was "altogether rocky, rough, mountainous, and consequently
barren," it was nonetheless "rich in lead, iron, and coal, and pretty convenient for
feeding sheep:' The Peak was especially renowned for what the miners called "Lead-
stones," which were dug up in such abundance, Camden continued, "that the Chy-
mists (who condemn the planets to the mines, as if they were guilty of some great
crime) tell us ridiculouslyi as well as falsely, that Saturn, whom they make to preside
over Lead, is very gracious to us, because he allows us this metal; but displeas'd with
the Frenchi as having deny'd it to them:' In addition to lead, the mines produced
"Stibium also, which is cairdAntimonyin the shops; is found here in distinctveinsi
us'd formerly in Greece by the women to colour their eye-brows;' as well as mill-
stones, grindstones for sharpening tools, and "sometimes there is found in these
mines a kind of white Fluor ... which is in all respects like Crystal." 18
The paradoxical nature of mountains-apparently barren on the surface, yet
seamed with untold mineral riches-was a familiar trope, found in Pliny and re-
peated over the centuries by numerous later commentators. 19
We find it used repeat-
edly by Celia Fiennes, who deploys it to help her to make sense of the strange and
unfamiliar landscapes she encountered in the north of England. During her "Great
Trip to Newcastle and to Cornwall in 1698;' Fiennes traveled through Derbyshire,
where she was both awed and exhausted hy the bleak and forbidding landscape.
''All Derbyshire is full of steep hills;' she wrote, "and nothing but the peakes of hills
as thick one by another is seen in most of the County which are very steepe which
makes traveling tedious, and the miles long, you see neither hedge nor tree but only
low drye stone walls round some ground, else its only hills and dales as thick as you
can imagine." She noted, however, "tho' the surface of the earth looks barren yet
those hills are impregnated with rich Marbles Stones Metals Iron and Copper and
Coale mines in their bowells, from whence we may see the wisdom and benignitye
of our greate Creator to make up the de:fficiency of a place by an equivalent as also
the diversity of the Creation which encreaseth its Beauty:' At Buxton she observed
that the town was surrounded by "those craggy hills whose bowells are full of Mines
of all kinds of black and white and veined marbles, and some have mines of Copper,
others Tinn and Leaden mines in which is a great deale of Silver."20
During her time in Derbyshire, Fiennes made the rounds of the Peak's wonders:
she bathed in Buxton and drank some of the mineral waters at St. Anne's wellj she
clambered into Poole's Hole and saw its stalactites. At Elden Hole she threw down
the obligatory stone, and she went to see Mam Tor although she did not attempt to
climb it. At Castleton she visited the Devil's Arse where she seemed struck more by
138 MOUNTAIN
the inhabitants and their little houses "thatched like Styes" than she was by the cave.
She entered, but only went so far as the first river: although there was a small boat to
allow tourists to cross to the other side, she was frightened, and "would not venture:'
Fiennes also visited the mines 1 where she saw some lead, which was "so bright just
brought out of one of the mines" that it looked like silver, and a mineral she called
Sparr, which looked like "Crystal or white Sugar-candY:'21
Celia Fiennes was in Derbyshire in 1698; the account ofher journey furnishes
evidence of a more general trend: a waning of interest in marvels and wonders,
and the concurrent rise of a different attitude toward natural phenomena, one that
instead paid much more attention to questions of use. For the developments we
looked at in chapter 2 associated with the Royal Society and its questionnaires had a
significantimpact on tourism as well. Ogilby's maps, the 1695 edition of Camden's
Britanniarevised by Edmund Gibson with contributions from many Royal Society
members, and the publication of a new genre of book, the county natural history 1
had an effect on what people noticed and looked for when they traveled through the
countryside. Fiennes's descriptions of the mountainous landscapes she traversed
contain moments of fear, of displeasure, and of exhaustion, but they also include pas-
sages that exhibit that characteristically empirical form of a list in the guise of prose.
We can see traces of this new attitude in Fiennes's conclusion that the "de:fficiency"
of the Peak District's visual appeal was offset by its mountains' mineral riches, the
"Marbles Stones Metals Iron and Copper and Coale mines in their bowells:' And we
can see it also when Fiennes comes to characterize one of these natural resources in
greater detail: her descriptions are marked by a particular attention to the objects'
sensory qrialities, such as the lead as bright as silver, or the "Sparr" like "Crystal or
white Sugar-candY:'22
In 1700, Charles Leigh-physician, Lancashire native, and Fellow of the Royal
Society-published TheNatural History of Lancashire,Cheshire,and the Peak in Der-
byshire1a county natural history in the vein of Robert Plot's pioneering Natural His-
tory of Oxfordshire.Leigh's treatise contains three parts, Natural Philosophy, Physic,
and Antiquities. The first part on natural history is divided, in accordance with Plot's
template and, ultimately, following the directions for compiling natural histories
given by Francis Bacon in his Parasceve,into sections on the air1 waters, earth, stones,
plants, and animals. Accompanying each of these sections is a plate that includes il-
lustrations of the most notable objects and phenomena discussed in the text. Plates
VI and VII (figs. 54, 55) feature views of two of the Peak's most famous wonders:
Poole's Hole and the Devil's Arse. 23
Like the other plates in Leigh's treatise, plates VI and VII juxtapose images of
different phenomena: in addition to the perspective of Poole's Hole with its various
139 MOUNTAIN
 Figure 54. Poole's Hole. Figure 55. The Devil's Arse.
Charles Leigh, TheNatu- Charles Leigh, TheNaturalHis-
ralHistoryof Lancashire, tory of Lancashire,Cheshire,and
Cheshire,and the Peak in the Peak in Derbyshire( Oxford,
Derbyshire(Oxford, 1700). 1700). TheWilliamAndrews
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Clark Memorial Library.

stalactites) plate VI also includes a fossil or "the representation of plants in rocks;' a

child born with a flame-shaped birthmark on his chestJ and a horned woman whose
picture Leigh had seen at Whalley Abbey in Lancashire. Plate VII, in addition to
a view of "that wonderful Archi commonly call'dJ The Devil's Arse," also features a
piece of a nautilus found in Lancashire) and a portrait of the seventy-two-year-old
Cheshire woman Mary Savis1 whoJ at age twenty-eightJ had developed "an excres-
cence upon her headi which continued 32 years like to a Wennj then grew into 2
hornsj after 3 years she cast them; then grew 2 more; after4years she cast those:' 24
The juxtaposition of these images makes the subject of both plates evident: they fea-
ture phenomena that belong to Bacon's category of"pretergenerations;' ori in other
wordsi monsters. 25 For Bacon 1 the existence of monsters was further proof of the

140 MOUNTAIN 141 MOUNTAIN

usual orderliness of nature: as aberrationsi they served to reinforce the norm.
Thus we could say that Leigh, by including these two plates, was attempting (like
Bacon) to contain the troubling power of these perversions of nature by making
them submit to a more general schema of classification.
The plates provide fascinating evidence of the ways in which new scientific
methods attempted to accommodate the older notions of wonders and monsters.
For notwithstanding the new classificatory spirit animating Leigh's enterprisei his
decision to bring together these seemingly disparate objects in the same illustration
is rooted in that older reciprocity based on disgust that we have been tracing. Even
in a text as ostensibly scientific as Leigh'si hideous crone and subterranean cavityi
monstrous excrescence and mountainous landscape are brought into correspon-
dencei with the repulsive aspect of Mary Savis or the unnamed Lancashire woman
acting as a signifier of the disgusting character of Derbyshire's natural scenery.
Daniel Defoe's Tour Thro'the Whole Island of GreatBritain,published in 1724, exhib-
its traces of a further shift. Defoe had first visited the north in 1704, and the text he
eventually published shows evidence of his kuowledge of all of the Derbyshire litera-
ture: Gibson's augmented version of Camden, Hobbes, Cotton, and Leigh (though
of Cotton he noted rather scathingly that he had "always wondered more at the
Poetry than at the Peak; and in which there was much good Humour, tho' but little
good Verse"). As a government agenti Defoe's aim in his travels was to survey local
resources and manufactures: more than other commentators he tends to see the
countryside through the lens of use. Thusi he echoes Camden's dismissive attitude
when it comes to the Peak's so-called wonders: "The Peak people;' he writes, "are
mighty fond of having Strangers shewed every 1hing they can, and of calling every
thing a Wonder;' but the real wonder was that "so great a Man as Mr. Hobbesiand af-
ter him Mr. Cottonicelebrate the Trifles herei the first in a fine Latin Poemi the last in
EnglishVerse, as if they were the most exalted Wonders of the World:' The wonders
of the Derbyshire landscape resided elsewhere. Inviting his readers "to travel with
me through this houling Wilderness in your Imagination/' Defoe promises that they
"shall soon find all that is wonderful about it:' 26
Defoe makes short shrift of Mam Tor, the Devil's Arse (where "notwithstanding
the grossness of the Name given it ... we must search narrowly for any thing in it to
make a Wonderior even any thing so strangei or odd 1 or vulgar 1 as the Name would
seem to import") 1 Tideswell, and "the great Cave or Hole in the Earthi called Poole's
Hole" (which he deemed "another of the WonderlessWonders of the Peak''). Instead,
the mineral deposits of the hills of Derbyshire, such as "Black Lead, Stibium or Anti-
mony, Christal, and other Things," were what Defoe found to be "all much more rare
142 MOUNTAIN
than the Wonders they speak of;' with the greatest wonder of all being that "in a Na-
tion so curious, so inquiring, and so critical as this is1 any thing so unsatisfying,
so foolish and so weak, should pass for Wonders as those of Mam Tor, Tideswell,
Poole'sHole, etc:' 27
lo the end Defoe reduced the Wonders of the Peak to three: Buxton, Elden
Hole, and Chatsworth, likening Elden Hole to "a window into the Infernal World,
inspiring Horror upon the very Imaginationi when one does but look into it/' while
Chatsworth, to the contrary, was deemed "a perfect Beauty:' Defoe structures his
literary description of Chatsworth in a way that serves to emphasize this contrast
between the deformity of nature and the perfection of art. His visit to Chatsworth,
therefore, opens with his trek across "a vast extended Moor or Waste, which, for fif-
teen or sixteen Miles together due North, presents you with neither Hedge 1 House
or Tree, but a waste and hauling Wilderness, over which when Strangers travel, they
are obliged to take Guides, or it would be next to impossible not to lose theirwaY:'
The contrast between this "Desart Country," this "comfortless;' "barren," and seem-
ingly "endless Moor" and the "delightful valley" within which Chatsworth was situ-
ated is emphasizedi yet for Defoe 1 as for Hobbes and Cotton before him, the "very
Obstructions andi as I called themi Disadvantages ofits [Chatsworth's] Situation,
serve to set off its Beauty:' But the biblical echoes of Defoe's description-the "waste
and hauling Wilderness" of the surrounding landscape that frames the paradisiacal
"perfect beauty" of the estate-are also evidence of a different perspective. When
Defoe concludes that the real wonder of Chatsworth was that it was built "in such a
Pale where the Mountains insult the Clouds, intercept the Suni and would threaten,
were Earthquakes frequent herei to bury the very Towns) much more the Houses, in
their Ruins," he infuses the by-now-familiar juxtaposition of beauty and disgust with
a novel undertone. It is in this vision of Derbyshire as a postapocalyptic wasteland
that the seeds of a new landscape aesthetic can be found. 28
Our Dirty Little Planet
Marjorie Hope Nicolson's classic Mountain Gloomand Mountain Gloryof 1959
begins by setting out a paradox regarding the dramatic change in attitudes toward
mountains that occurred in the early modern period: "During the first seventeen
centuries of the Christian era, "Mountain Gloom" so clouded human eyes that never
for a moment did poets see mountains in the full radiance to which our eyes have
become accustomed. Within a century-indeed, within fifty years-all this was
changed. The 'Mountain Glory' dawned, then shone full splendor. Why?" she asks.29
How is it that a poet like Draytoni writing in 1622, saw mountains as deformities
143 MOUNTAIN
that disfigured the face of the earth (in Poly-Olbion'stwenty-seventh song, he sings
of Lancashire's "Furnesse whose sterne face 1 / WithMountaines set like Warts,
which Nature as a grace / Bestowed upon this Tract" 30 ) while poets like Wordsworth
and Byron in the early nineteenth century saw mountains as the cathedrals of nature,
sites that triggered the most exalted and reverential of emotional reactions? Nicol-
son's answer, compellingly argued over the course of her book, was that the motor of
this fundamental change was the emergence of what she calls "the aesthetics of the
infinite." Thomas Burnet was the key voice of this development: his treatise Telluris
TheoriaSacra,or The SacredTheoryof the Earth played a pivotal role in transforming
British attitudes toward mountains from fear and horror to reverence and awe.
However, a fundamental premise ofNicolson's opening paradoxi and indeedi of
her entire booki is that "Mountain Gloom" and "Mountain Glory" are diametrically
opposed. Her central question assumes that one attitude toward a particular kind
oflandscape was transformed, in a very short period of time, into its polar opposite.
But what if"Mountain Gloom'' and "Mountain Glory" were not so antithetical?
What if, instead, they could actually be seen to be dependent on one another? What
if, in other words, we could see the disgust that is so characteristic of "Mountain
Gloom" as the necessary precondition for the emergence of the sublime of "Moun-
tain Glory"? Before we can begin to address this question 1 however, we must recon-
sider the role of Thomas Burnet.
Thomas Burnet had already reached his mid-thirties by the time he encountered
his first mountain. In the summer of 1671 he set out on the Grand Tour along with
his young charge Charles Paulet, later 2nd Duke of Bolton. Intelligent, cultured, and
erudite, Burnet was prepared for his role as "bear-leader;' but not for the landscapes
he was to encounter on his way. The mountains he was forced to scale on his way to
Italy were a bleak, terrifying jumble of naked rocks and frozen snowi a confusion of
cliffs hanging treacherously over his head. He shrank from precipices that yawned
below him on both sides, and shuddered as black cloudsi emitting ominousi low rolls
of thunder, scudded beneath his feet. The Alpine landscapes he traversed were like
nothing he had seen before, like nothing he could have imagined, and they funda-
mentally changed the way he saw and understood the world.
For Burnet, there was no clearer indication of humankind's sin than the terrify-
ing and desolate landscapes he had encountered. Such wild, vast, and undigested
heaps of stones and earth 1 such a disordered and confused landscape could not re-
flect God's original plan. As a follower of the Cambridge Platonist Henry More, Bur-
net believed that God, clearly, would have made the world in His image 1 its original
smoothness and symmetry representative of His own perfection. The present globe,
"our dirty little planet," was, instead, a wasteland.
144 MOUNTAIN
Burnet's encounter with the Alps shattered his understanding of the world. The
strong sense of mingled repulsion and fascination he experienced spurred him to
construct a theory that would account for the terrifying landscapes he had seen. A
few years after his return to England, he published his ideas in a book entitled Telluris
Iheoria Sacra, dedicated to his young traveling companion. Seeking to reconcile sci-
ence and Scripture 1 to prove, in other words 1 that the biblical account of the earth's
formation was corroborated by the geological recordi Burnet composed a stirring
account of the globe's formation and final destruction, The book, first published in
1681, was a great success. It was promoted by Charles II 1 who encouraged Burnet to
translate it into English: The SacredTheoryof the Earth-an augmented version of
TellurisTheoriaSacra-appeared in 1684, dedicated to the king. 31
The frontispiece (fig. 56) presents an epitome ofBurnet's argument.Jesus stands
astride a circle of seven globes, each one representing a phase of the earth's history.
The cycle begins under His left foot, where a dark and murky orb depicts the swirl-
ing agglomeration of particles that constituted the original chaos. According to
Burnet's theory, little by little the particles began to coalesce, creating, as the heavier
particles descended, separate bands of earth, water, oil 1 and air. As the eons rolled
by, these bands continued to merge. Eventually, a thick and viscous mud was formed
that trapped the layer of water; subjected to the heat of the sun, this muddy globe
slowly dried out, its thick crust enclosing the waters within (fig. 57), The result of
this process was the original earth, illustrated by the second sphere in the frontis-
piece's sequence. The prelapsarian globe was a perfect sphere, its smooth surface
containing the waters within like the shell of an egg does the yolk. The entire globe
was a paradise. Its level surface resulted in a perpetual springi plants and animals
flourished, Eden was everywhere. But this state of affairs was not to last. Human sin
aroused God's wrath 1 and the trapped waters erupted violently, shattering the earth's
crust and inundating the globe. The frontispiece's third sphere represents the Flood:
we see Noah's Ark, tiny and uncertain, riding the waves. For Burnet, this was the
pivotal event of the earth's geological history. The Flood's waters ravaged the globe,
reducing the perfect sphere to a heap of ruins, creating mountain ranges, ragged
coastlines, rocky islands 1 and promontories, and eventually producing the irregular 1
imperfect earth he knew.
But this was not the end of the story. At the Second Coming, Burnet predicted,
the globe will be set alight by volcanoes and consumed by a raging inferno fueled by
coal and other mineral deposits (which England, in particular, abounded in), trans-
forming it into a molten mass. As the conflagration subsides, the earth will gradually
cool, settling, once againi into the shape of a smooth sphere. Finally, having recap-
tured this geometrically nniform state, the earth will fly away and pass eternity as a
145 MOUNTAIN

Figure 56. Thomas Burnet, frontispiece, The SacredTheoryof theEarth
(London, 1684). The William.Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Figure 57. fllustration of the Flood and its effects. In
the first image, the crust of the earth cracks, releasing
the waters. In the second, the waters cover the smooth
surface of the earth. In the third image, the waters flow
back.into the earth, leaving behind "the ruins of a broken
world;' with its mountains (b) and islands (c). Thomas
Burnet, The SacredTheoryof theEarth (London, 1684 ).
The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
fixed star. The frontispiece of TheSacredTheoryof the Earth illustrates this cycle from
darkness to light. The image makes clear through correspondence and repetition that
God's intention was that the form of the earth should be a perfect sphere. Destroyed
once by water as a punishment for human sin, the earth will be restored by fire on
the Day of Judgment. The earth's present, imperfect state is but one stage in the cy-
cle: by positioning the representation of the globe as we know it directly underneath
Jesus (the continents of Africa and Europe are clearly identifiable), the frontispiece
conveys the pivotal role of the Savior in the earth's fate.
For Burnet 1 the earth was a fallen world 1 its ruinous state testimony to the sins of
humankind. Unlike the agricultural reformers discussed in chapter 21 Burnet did not
believe in the redeeming power of human improvement. Eden was not something
humans could re-create: God had ordained the original earth's destruction; only He
could implement its restoration. And the signs of God's wrath were all around.
The surface of the earth was "a broken and confus'd heap ofbodies 1 plac'd in no
order to one another, nor with any correspondency or regularity of parts"; the world
nothing other than "the image or picture of a great Ruine 1 ••• the true aspect of a
World lying in its rubbish:' Disorder and irregularity were everywhere: the outlines
of continents were crooked and crumbling 1 islands seemed to be "scatter'd like limbs
torn from the rest of the body"; the channel of the ocean is "as deform'd and irregu-
lar as it is great:' "If we should imagine the Ocean dry1 and that we loo kt down from
the top of some high Cloud upon the empty Shell," Burnet asks, "how horridly and
barbarously would it look? And with what amazement should we see it under us like
an open Hell, or a wide bottomless pit? So deep, and hollow, and vast; so broken and
confus'd 1 so every way deform'd and monstrous." The "wild and multifarous confu-
sions" of the ocean's floor make it "strange and inaccountable; 'tis another Chaos in
its kind 1 who can paint the Scenes ofit? Gulfs, and Precipices 1 and Cataracts; Pits
within Pits, and Rocks under Rocks, broken Mountains and ragged lslaods, that look
as if they had been Countries pull'd up by the roots, aod plaoted in the Sea:•Even
the interior of the earth is broken and hollow, rent by irregular openings, caves, and
grottos. But those "great heaps of Earth or stone 1 which we call Mountains" are the
most potent testimony, "gastly and frightful," they are truly "the ruines of a broken
World." "There is nothing in Nature more shapeless and ill-figur'd thao an old Rock
or a Mountain," Burnet opines, "and all that variety that is among them, is but the
various modes of irregularity; so as you cannot make a better character ofthem 1 in
short 1 than to say they are of all forms and figures, except regular."
This lack of order and regular design exhibited everywhere on the surface of the
earth indicated, to Burnet 1 that the earth as we know it "was not the work of Nature,
according to her first intention, or according to the first model that was drawn in

146 MOUNTAIN 147 MOUNTAIN

measure and proportion, by the Line and by the Plummet 1 but a secondary work 1
and the best that could be made of broken materials:' The cause of this destruction
was, undoubtedly, the sins of mankind, for "Nature doth not fall into disorder till
Mankind be first degenerate and leads the way." Seen in this light, it was impossible
to conclude otherwise than "what a rude Lump our World is, which we are so apt to
dote upon." For Burnet the world was-and 1 until the Second Coming, would con~
tinue to be-a wasteland. 32
But this wasteland was not without its wonder. Although Burnet's descriptions
of desolate Alpine landscapes littered with towering heaps of rock and snow were
intended to evoke vividly the consequences of human sin, his text nonetheless
makes clear that mountains also exerted a powerful fascination. However perfect the
prelapsarian globe might have been 1 as an unblemished 1 uniformly smooth sphere 1
it may also have been a little boring. Mountains 1 with their dramatic, confused 1and
hideous forms may have been ruins, but they were ruins that "show a certain magnifi-
cence in Nature; as from old Temples and broken Amphitheaters of the Romans we
collect the greatness of that people:' Understanding mountains as ruins conjured up
ideas of apocalypse; it directed attention to God's wrath and the destructive power
of that wrath. In Burnet's description of the global conflagration attendant upon the
Second Coming, he asks his readers to reflect upon "the Vanity and transient Glory
of all this habitable World. How, by the force of one Element, breaking loose upon
the rest, all the Varieties ofNaturei all the works of Art 1 all the labours of Men are
reduc'd to nothing. All that we admir'd and ador'd before, as great and magnificent, is
obliterated or vanish'd. And another form and face of thingsi plain, simple, and every
where the same, overspreads the whole Earth:' The labors and hubris of humankind
are shown to be nothing in the face of divine power when Burnet asks: "Where are
now the great Empires of the World, and their great Imperial Cities? Their Pillars,
Tropheesi and Monuments of glory? Show me where they stood: read the Inscrip-
tioni tell me the Victor's name. What remains, what impressions, what difference or
distinction do you see in this mass of fire?" Fragile and transient as these works of
human culture prove to be, their destruction pales in comparison with the fate of the
works of nature, for
'tis not Cities onely, and works of men's hands, but the everlasting Hills 1the
Mountains and Rocks of the Earth 1 are melted as Wax before the Sun; and their
place is no wherefound. Here stood the Alpes1 a prodigious range of Stone 1 the
Load of the Earth 1 that cover'd many Countries 1and reach'd their armes from
the Ocean to the Black Seai This huge mass of Stone is soften'd and dissolv'd, as a
tender Cloud into rain. Here stood the African Mountains, and Atlas with his top
148 MOUNTAIN
above the Clouds. There was frozen Caucasus1 and Taurus,and Imaus1
and the Mountains of Asia. And yonder towards the North stood the Riphaean
Hills, cloath'd in Ice and Snow. All these are vanish'd 1 dropt away as the Snow
upon their heads: and swallowed up in a red Sea of fire. Great and marvellousare
thy Works,Lord GodAlmighty:Just and true arethy ways, Thou King of Saints.
Hallelujah. 33
Burnet's treatise is, above all1a sustained contemplation of power. God's disgust
at human sin resulted in both judgment and punishment: the ruinous state of the
present earth, seen most vividly in mountainous landscapes, is a reminder of the
scale of divine wrath. Burnet asks his readers to picture the earth as the destruction
rages, to imagine the "Lakes of fire and brimstone: Rivers of melted glowing matter;
Ten thousand Volcano's vomiting flames all at once. Thick darkness, and Pillars of
smoake thrown up into the air1 and the Heavenes dropping down in lumps of fire."
The view would be akin to a vision of the underworld itself, since it would be "hard
to find any part of the Universe, or any state of things 1that answers to so many of the
properties and characters of Hell, as this which is now before us." Burnet takes great
rhetorical pleasure in conjuring up this infernal view.,but he acknowledges "'tis not
possible, from any station 1 to have a full prospect of this last Scene of the Earth: for
'tis a mixture of fire and darkness. This new Temple is fill'd with smoak, while itis
consecrating, and none can enter into it:' Hell was dark and hazy; it could be imag-
ined, but not distinctly. Similarly, the surface of the earth was nothing but a confused
heap of rock. Both of these landscapes were devoid of regularity and design: for Bur-
net, perfect ·nature was uniform and geometrical; fallen nature irregular and obscure.
Thus, The SacredTheoryof the Earth established a powerful congruence between the
fallen and the formless. Hell and the earth were landscapes whose formlessness and
obscurity denoted their common condition: both were sites of sin; both had been
punished by the wrath of God. Landscapes such as these bore witness to divine om-
nipotence1 inspiring awe and terror, and as a consequence, made their viewers keenly
aware of their own powerlessness and insignificance. 34
Burnet redefined the notion of wasteland for a new generation. The SacredTheory
of the Earth was issued over and over again during the first half of the eighteenth cen-
tury (a seventh edition appeared in 1759), and excerpts were published in The Spec-
tator and other periodicals. It is clear that the book's lasting importance was due less
to its geological theories than to Burnet's rhetorical style 1 his prophetic and sonorous
voice that thunderingly evoked scenes of catastrophe and punishment. Mountains
were wastelands both for Burnet and for the agricultural reformers considered in
chapter 2, and questions of morality were important to all of them. But whereas the
149 MOUNTAIN
men gathered aronnd Hartlib who later went on to form the Royal Society based
their categorization largely on questions of utility; for Burnet the issue was instead
aesthetic.
The vocabulary used by Burnet to describe the postdeluvian 1 ruined earth is
identifiably one of disgnst. Through Burnet's eyes we see the formless landscape
of the original chaos, and the infernal reaches of Hell. Our "dirty little planet," this
"rude Lump;' was "broken and confus'd/' "deform'd," "irregular," and "monstrous."
Mountains were "gastly and frightful," "shapeless and ill-figured;' while islands were
likened to dismembered limbs. But strikingly evident within this language is a tone
of mingled repulsion and fascination, that paradoxical combination that Carolyn
Korsmeyer has identified as being a defining trait of disgust in its aesthetic dimen-
sion.35Whereas the agricultural reformers sought to eradicate the wasteland accord-
ing to the ideologies and techniques of improvement, Burnet was content (we might
even say delighted) to contemplate the wasteland as postapocalyptic spectacle.
1hrough Burnet's disgusted 1 horrified, yet at the same time fascinated appreciation
of mountainsJ the defining features of modern aesthetics begin to emerge.

We do not know for certain whether Celia Fiennes read The SacredTheoryof the
Earth)but her interpretation of the river inside the Devil's Arse seems to bear its
traces. Peering quizzically at the waterJ she found it strange: it was dark 1 and deepJ
and although it appeared to be still, she did not doubt that it had "a passage thro' the
veines of the Earth"i since "it seemed to have a motion with it;' thus giving proof
of"the great wisdom and power of our blessed Creator to make and maintaine all
things within its own Bounds and Lirnits 1 which have a tendency to worke out ruine
36
to the whole frame of the world if not bridled by Gods command:' Charles Leigh
found it impossible to account for Derbyshire's "prodigious Cavities" unless one ac-
cepted the hypothesis of a "Universal Destruction;' when "the Strata of the whole
Globe were broke asunder:' As they tossed "to and fro in the Flood upon the reced-
ing of the Waters/' Leigh continued 1 "most of these Strata lying shelving, sometimes
Two opposite Summits convened and in that terrible Confusion wedg'd themselves
together, and by that means might easily form those prodigious Arches and Cavities
which in our Days we observe in these Mountains." For Leigh, "these Phenomena's
ifl mistake not, absolutely evince the Universality ofa Deluge", ruins ofa broken
world, the mountains and caves of Derbyshire were tangible proof of God's displea-
sure. And Daniel Defoe refers to Burnet specifically in his description of Poole's
Hole 1 commenting that the cave was as "antient doubtless as the Mountain itself, and
occasioned by the fortuitous Position of the Rocks at the creation of all ThingsJ or
Figure 58. Stephen Penn, "The South West Prospect ofThurston Water in Furness, Lancashire" ( South-West
Prospectof ConistonLake, Lancashire), 1732. Pen and ink, watercolor on paper, 339 x 496 mm. Wbitworth Art
Gallery, The University of Manchester.
perhaps at the great Absorption or Influx of the Surface into the Abyss at the great
Rupture of the Earth's Crust or ShellJ according to Mr. Burnet's Theoryj and to me
it seems a Confirmation of that Hypothesis of the breaking in of the Surface:' 37 The
shift provoked by Burnet from seeing mountains as warts or boils to understanding
them as postapocalyptic ruins is vividly illustrated by the comparison of William
Hole's map of Derbyshire included in Drayton's Poly-Olbion(see fig. 52) with the
earliest extant view of the Lake District, a prospect of Coniston Water ( also called
1 Coniston Lake) made by the surveyor Stephen Penn around 1732 (fig. 58; inscribed
by Penn with the name Thurston Water). Hole's map fignres the mountains of Der-
byshire as isolated excrescences erupting from the face of the landscapeJ their heavy-
handed shading only serving to emphasize the effect of an angry pimple. Penn's
prospect 1 on the other hand, bears an uncanny resemblance to Burnet's image of
the ruined globe (see fig. 57), though seen from a bird's-eye point of view. It vividly

150 MOUNTAIN 151 MOUNTAIN

conveys the impression of a continuous fabric that has been rent asunder-one
as though the two sides of the lake could easily be sutured back together~while
mountains are not isolated bumps 1 but a crumpled continuity. Educated people were
reading Burnet 1 and they recalled his words when they visited mountains 1 caves1 and
other dramatic and desolate landscapes 1 their thoughts and interpretations shaped
by his theories and tone.
Agreeable Horror and Infinite Pleasure
Joseph Addison was one of these educated people. In 1699 he set off in Burnet's
footsteps 1 traveling to France and Italy to serve as a tutor "on classic ground:'
Although his arrival in Italy was by water, his return was through mountains: in
December 1701 1 on his way back north to Vienna, he crossed the Alps by Mount
Cenis. Addison was already a confirmed admirer ofBurnet's work: in 1699 he had
published a Latin ode "Ad D. Tho. Burnettum;' celebrating The SacredTheoryof the
Earth, and he may have carried some ofBurnet's writings on his travels. 38 It is clear
from Addison's descriptions that Burnet's prose exerted a powerful effect on his
imagination/ shaping his expectations of and responses to the mountainous land-
scapes he saw. "There is nothing in the natural face ofltaly that is more delightful to
the Traveller," Addison recounts in his travel journal 1 published in London in 1705
as Remarks on SeveralParts of Italy, "than the several Lakes that are dispers'd up
and down among the many Breaks and Hollows of the Alps and Appenines. For as
these vast Heaps of Mountains are thrown together with so much Irregularity and
Confusion, they form a great Variety of Hollow Bottoms, that often lie in the Figure
of so many artificial Basins:' As he toured around Lake Geneva, he noted that in the
places where "the Mountains grow thicker and higher, till at last they almost meet;'
there were often to be observed "on the Tops of the Mountains several sharp Rocks
that stand above the rest:' The reason for this, he conjectured 1 was that "as these
Mountains have been doubtless much higher than they are at present, the Rains have
wash'd away abundance of the Soil that have left the Veins of Stone shooting out of
'em, as in a decay'd Body the Flesh is still shrinking from the Bones:• For Addison
these rocks were portents of disaster; he comments that "the Natural Histories of
Switzerland talk very much of the fall of these Rocks, and the great Damage they
have sometimes done 1 when their Foundations have been mouldered with Age, or
rent by an Earthqual,e:•
In Addison's descriptions of Alpine scenery, there is no mention of warts, wens,
or boils. Instead, his vocabulary is one of aesthetic judgment and emotional re-
sponse. This "Prospect of the Alps" he writes, of mountains «broken into so many
152 MOUNTAIN
feels steeps and precipices" formed "one of the most irregular misshapen Scenes in
39
the the World," filling his mind "with an agreeable kind ofHorror:' Addison's turns
of phrase testify to a new kind of reaction, one that initially was specific to exotic
mountainous landscapes: a mingled emotional response ofhorror and delight, or1
to put it another way, a terror that was experienced as pleasurable. And particularly
interesting in this context is the appearance of that paradigmatic figure of disgust:
the decaying corpse. To Addison 1 the mountain's stony structure resembles nothing
so much as a rotting body whose "Flesh is still shrinking from the Bones:' His choice
of metaphor is1 on the one hand, a useful literary device for vividly conveying a par-
ticular image, but it also does more than that, for by comparing the mountain to a
rotting corpse, and thus by enlisting the consummate force of disgust, Addison also
furnishes his evocation of mountainous scenery with the most potent of emotional
charges. In factJ Addison's commentary points to the central role of both moun-
tains and disgust in the development of a new type of aesthetic response 1 one that
mingled those seemingly opposed responses of horror and delight. In other words,
Addison's descriptions suggest that disgust may have in fact been critical, within the
British philosophical tradition 1 to the development of what was to become known as
the sublime.
In 1711,JosephAddison and Richard Steele included an excerpt ofBurnet's
apocalyptic description of the Second Coming in The Spectator.In the following
year 1 Addison penned a series of eleven articles dedicated to an analysis of the "Plea-
sures of the Imagination" and published them in the periodical in consecutive issues
that appeared between June 21 and July 3. Addison's aesthetic theory is grounded in
an epistem6logy derived from John Locke 1 and in this early elaboration of a sensa-
tionalist aesthetics, landscape plays a central role.
The pleasures of the imagination, as Addison defines them, are those pleasures
that reside between the "gross" pleasures of sense and the "refined" pleasures of un-
derstandingj on the whole, they are pleasures furnished to us by the sense of sight.
"Our sight is the most perfect and most delightful of all our senses;' Addison begins.
"It fills the mind with the largest variety of ideas 1 converses with its objects at the
greatest distance, and continues the longest in action without being tired or satiated
with its proper enjoyments." 40 The pleasurable ideas derived from objects of sight are
then divided into three categories, which Addison terms the great, the uncommon/
and the beautiful. Examples of greatness are, for the most part 1 landscapes: Addison
lists views of"an open champaign country, a vast uncultivated desert 1 of huge heaps
of mountains/ high rocks precipices/ or a wide expanse of waters." With sights like
these, we are struck not by the novelty or beauty of the view1 but rather "with that
rude kind of magnificence which appears in many of these stupendous works of
153 MOUNTAIN
nature:' The reason for this, according to Addison, is that "our imagination loves to
be filled with an object, or to grasp at any thing that is too big for its capacity. We are
flung into a pleasing astonishment at such unbounded views, and feel a delightful
stillness and amazement in the soul at the apprehension of them."41
For Addison, the category of disgust does not exist as a separate entity. Although
he imagines that "there may indeed, be something so terrible and offensive, that hor-
ror or loathsomeness of an object may overbear the pleasure which results from its
greatness, novelty, or beauty," he qualifies this by observing that "still there will be
such a mixture of delight in the very disgust it gives us, as any these three qualifica-
tions are most conspicuous and prevailing." In fact, the quality of novelty actually
has the power to bestow "charms on a monster, and makes even the imperfections
of nature please us."42 Due to Addison's unwillingness or inability to separate disgust
from other aesthetic reactions 1 Menninghaus dismisses him rather summarily; unlike
eighteenth-century German theorists like Mendelssohn, Winckelmann, or Lessing,
British writers on aesthetics tend to be less precise in their analyses of disgust. But
there may be structural reasons for this equivocation, for the different, and less cat-
egorical understanding of disgust in the British context. One of these reasons may
have something to do with the fact that the British tended to elaborate their aesthetic
systems with landscape, rather than sculpture 1 as their primary focus.
For Addison 1 as for many theorists before him, there is a difference between
our reaction to objects when they are apprehended directly through our senses and
when they are encountered through the mediating processes of imitation. Drawing
upon classical precedents, in particular Pliny's account of the painter Pyrecius the
Rhyparographer, Addison notes that the description of something as disgusting as
a dunghill can charm "if the image be represented to our minds by suitable expres-
sions:' Even excrement 1that most paradigmatically disgusting of substances, can
furnish pleasure if encountered as a representation. But this seeming paradox leads
to another question, one that also dates from classical times (it is found in Lucretius,
among other writers): How is it that a description of a loathsome object or horrible
event pleases 1 when an encounter with the original would terrify or disgust? Addi-
son's answer (which again, is beholden to precedent) is that the distance created by
the act of representation allows pleasure to appear: "when we look on such hideous
objects 1we are not a little pleased to think we are in no danger of them. We consider
them, at the same time as dreadful and harmless; so that the more frightful appear-
ance they make, the greater is the pleasure we receive from the sense of our own
safety. In short, we look upon the terrors of a description, with the same curiosity
and satisfaction that we survey a dead monster." If, however, we were to see "a person
actually lying under the tortures that we meet with in a description," there is no plea-
154 MOUNTAIN
sure1 because "in this case, the object presses too close upon our senses, and bears
so hard upon us 1 that it does not give us time or leisure to reflect upon ourselves:'
1hrough the distancing inherent to the act of representation 1 the propensity of the
disgusting object to force itself upon us is forestalled 1 its power mitigated. 43
It is thus through representation that wasteland is fully brought into the aesthetic
realm. Addison writes that Homer, poet of greatness, "fills his readers with sublime
ideas": reading the Iliad is likened to an encounter with wasteland in its various guis-
es1akin to "traveling through a country uninhabited, where the fancy is entertained
with a thousand savage prospects of vast desarts 1wide uncultivated marshes 1 huge
forests 1 misshapen rocks, and precipices:' Homer, with his deformed and wild land-
scapes, is opposed to Virgili whose Aeneid is compared to "a well-ordered garden,
where it is impossible to find any part unadorned, or to cast our eyes upon a single
spot that does not produce some beautiful plant or flower:' Addison maintains that
the appreciation of wasteland increases with education; for him the pleasures of the
imagination also serve as a tool of social differentiation. He points out that there are
pleasures a "man of polite imagination" is able to relish "that the vulgar are not ca-
pable of receiving:' The "man of polite imagination'' is able to commune with works
of art, such as paintings and statues. Furthermorei Addison suggests he often feels "a
greater satisfaction in the prospect of fields and meadows, than another does in the
possession;' here giving voice to something that John MacArthur 1 in his nuanced
ThePicturesque:Architecture}Disgustand OtherIrregularities,has characterized as an
aesthetic disinterest that emerges precisely in response to interest-based questions of
private property. Finally, the "man of polite imagination" has the power to make "the
most rude 1uncultivated parts of nature administer to his pleasures: so that he looks
upon the world, as it were in another light, and discovers a multitude of charms, that
conceal themselves from the generality of mankind:' In other words, Addison rede-
fines the experience of wasteland as a refined aesthetic pleasure. 44
But in order to achieve this 1 another critical development was necessary. In the
eighteenth-century aesthetic literature surveyed by Menninghaus, disgust also fre-
quently inhabits another role, that of a limiting agent that restrains the pleasurable
from falling into the dangerous territory of over satiation. In 1760 1 Moses Mendels-
sohn proposed "What is merely pleasant soon produces satiation 1 and finally disgust
... by contrast, the unpleasant that is mixed with the pleasant seizes our attentioni
preventing all too early satiation. Daily experience with those tastes that are sensual
shows that pure sweetness soon leads to disgust:' 45 Furthermore, as Menninghaus
argues, "alongside the satietoryvalues of sheer sweetness 1 wearying repetition 1and
all-too-exhaustive elaboration, one paradigm of Eckel [disgust] above all assumes a
leading role in the eighteenth century ... the disgust from sexual fulfilhnent:' From
155 MOUNTAIN
this perspectiveJ "the problematicJ disgust-endangered moment of satiation is not
the "enough" of joyful satisfactionJ but the "too much" unfolding in just that satietory
moment~namely, to the extent that the object of already fulfilled desire offers itself
to further consumption:' The antidote to this satiation-induced disgust is thus end-
less variation and foreplay, or "an endless foreplay that turns into an endless afterplay
without any excess or peak in between." In other wordsi "the aesthetic provides the
unique kind of pleasure that by its own rules ... conforms to the law prescribing ex-
clusively nonfinite forms of fulfillment:'¾
Addison's discussion of greatness mentions objects that are largei such as heaps
of mountains, high rocks, and precipices; and others that are extensiveJ such as vast
uncultivated desertsi or a wide expanse of waters, but also sights in which "the eye
has room to range abroadi to expatiate at large on the immensity of its viewsi and
to lose itself amidst the variety of objects that offer themselves to its observation:'
Wide and "undetermined" views "are as pleasing to the fancy, as the speculations of
eternity or infinitude are to the understanding;' he notes. "But if there be a beauty
Figure 59, Thomas Smith of Derby, ''.AProspect of the Rocks & that Salt Cavern in Castleton,
or uncommonness joined with this grandeur/' he continuesJ "as in a troubled oceanJ Called Peak-Hole, alias the D _ls A_ se:' Published 31 May, 1743. Eight of the most extraor-
a heaven adorned with stars and meteors, or a spacious landscape cut into riversJ dinaryProspectsin the MountainousParts of Derbyshireand Staffordshirecommonlycalledthe
Peak andMoorlands.Etching. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
woodsi rocksJ and meadowsi the pleasure still grows upon usJ as it arises from more
than a single principle:' 47 Addison's interpretation of particular natural scenes such
as oceans, starry skiesJ or spacious landscapes as examples of variety, infinity, and
eternity constitutes an early example of what Nicolson was to call the "aesthetics of
the infinite:' Yet once againJ disgust is part of the story. Here disgust does not appearJ
however, as it did earlierJ in the guise of the foil to the beautifulJ rather the specter of
excess satiation now redirects the aesthetic toward the realm of the infinite.

Wasteland into Art

The artist Thomas Smith of Derby first came to prominence in the 1740s when he
embarked upon a project to convert the repugnant Wonders of the Peale into proper
subjects for fine art by publishing a series of engravings entitled Eight of the most
extraordinaryProspectsin the MountainousParts of Derbyshireand Staffordshirecom-
monly calledthe Peak and Moorlands.This set of prints included views of the rivers,
cascadesi precipices, caves, and strangely shaped rocky outcroppings found at Mat-
lock Bath, Dovedale, and Castleton (figs. 59, 60 ). Related to this suite of engravings
are two painted views: A View of the Peak: TheDoveHoles (this painting is attributed
Figure 60. Thomas Smith of Derby, ''.AProspect in the upper part of Dove Dale, five miles
to John Harrisj its composition is identical to Smith of Derby's engraving of the north of Ashbourn." Published 7 July, 1743. Eight of the most extraordinaryProspectsin the
same view) (fig. 61), and Smith of Derby's Landscape:Valleyin Derbyshire(fig. 62). MountainousParts ofDerbyshireand Staffordshirecommonlycalledthe Peak and Moorlands.
Etching. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
In 1745, Smith of Derby followed this series with four more prints, including a view

156 MOUNTAIN 157 MOUNTAIN

 of Chatsworth; in 1751, he issued FourRomantick Views,which featured prospects
of such unusual rock formations as Matlock High Tor, the pyramidal mountain of
Thorp-Cloud, and Gordale (or Gorda!) Scar in Yorkshire (fig. 63 ). Smith of Derby's
engraving lavishes attention on the high stone walls 1 cracked through with fissures,
and the debris-strewn ground framing the raging waters of a cataract. The very high
horizon line, which lets in only a small fragment of sky1 and the tiny size of the tour-
ists and their guide at the bottom right create a sense of overwhelming scale. The
engraving's detailed caption underscores the sense of catastrophe that is a ruling
theme of the image as a whole, informing us that the view was intended to record the
effects of a great storm that had inundated the region eighteen years earlier, when the
water that had collected "burst a Passage tluo[ugh] the Rock (where it first appears
tumbling thro [ough] a kind of an Arch) and Rush'd with such Violence that it fill'd
the Valley below with Vast pieces ofbroken Rocks and Stones for a quar[te]r of a
Mile below, w[hi]ch were before a bed of Sand:' As Timothy Clayton has argued in
TheEnglishPrint 1688-1802, Smith of Derby's corpus of dramatic views featuring
caves, precipices 1 cataracts, and scenes of natural disaster and destruction were of
supreme importance for the history oflandscape representation in England, for they
are the first published-and widely circulated-examples oflandscapes that depict
characteristics associated with the category of the sublime. 48
In addition to providing a visual counterpart to earlier literary evocations of the
Wonders of the Peak, Smith of Derby's engravings redefine the region's disgust-pro-
ducing curiosities as fit subjects for artistic representation. The views employ a series
of standard compositional techniques established by such seventeenth-century
masters oflandscape as Claude Lorrain and Salvator Rosa: they tend to be framed to
the left and to the right by high, dark elements, such as rocky cliffs; they often deploy
a central, illuminated water feature that serpentines into the distance to produce an
effect of recession into depthj they utilize a contrast between darkened foreground
and illuminated background to draw the eye back. Yet these images do more than
simply apply the conventions oflandscape representation to domestic scenes. For
the attraction of these particular kinds oflandscape is also conveyed by the high
horizon line and the dramatic contrast between towering cliffs and diminutive tour-
ists, which generate an impression of the cliffs' overwhelming size. Smith of Derby
refashioned his local wonders as landscape, but in doing so1 he also made sure that
Figure61.John Harris II (1715-1755),A View of the Peak: The Dove Holes. Oil on canvas, 114.5 x 106.S cm.
they lost little of their original effect. The caves known as the Dove Holes and the
Dunham Massey, Cheshire. © National Trust hnages.
Devil's Arse are dark spots on the landscape 1 but the eye is not encouraged to explore
their infernal depths. Instead, our attention is drawn back and up, toward the peaks
that rise up out of the valleys. In Smith of Derby's Landscape:Valleyin Derbyshirein
particular (see fig. 62), these rocky eminences multiply and cluster together; they

158 MOUNTAIN 159 MOUNTAIN


Figure 62. Thomas Smith of Derby, Landscape:Valleyin Derbyshire,ca. 1760. Oil on canvas, 83.S cm x 110.S cm.
© Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.
recede into the bluish depths of the distance in a way that suggests their continua-
tion toward infinity. What we are presented with) in this painting 1 is the transforma-
tion of a landscape of disgust into one of perpetual incompletion.
1his transformation can be traced in the literary record as wel11 particularly in con-
temporary descriptions of travel. Some of the very earliest textual examples of this
new sensibility are to be found in the series of accounts by George Smith published
in the Gentleman'sMagazine in the late 1740s and early l 750s. 49 George Smith was
an early modern version of today's adventure tourist-a man who actively went
out of his way to explore landscapes that were remote 1 inaccessible 1 dangerousi and
160 MOUNTAIN
Figure 63. Thomas Smith of Derby, "Gordal, at Malham in Craven, Yorkshire:' Published December,
1751. Etching. © The Trustees of the British Museum.
terrifying, and one who also clearly relished recounting his exploits. 1n 174 7 Smith
published accounts of two expeditions in some of the most remote and desolate
parts of his native Cumbria: an ascent of Cross-Fell Mountaini and an expedition to
the Caudebec Fells.
Smith was deeply interested in natural history, known in his day for a treatise
on comets and a map of the great solar eclipse of 1748. 50 His descriptions provide
strong evidence of an experimental bent: his account of the Cumbrian mountains
is studded with geological references) and initially takes the form of a list of miner-
als. Smith recounts finding "a fluor of the stalactite kind, or a sparry talk resembling
white fling 1 variegated -with hexagonal crystalline sparsi whose points will cut glass
like the adamant, but immediately lose that property from their fragil[ e] quality" as
well as "marcasite oflead, but so blended with an arsenical sulphur that they evapo-
rate in the process of separation/' and other minerals "of the copperas kind; all of
them contained such heterogeneal quahties in their composition) as never to yield a
proper gratification for the tryal:' The region's quarriesi he continued) "only abound
with a fissile blueish slate, useful for the covering of their houses 1 but very remote
from the metalline nature/' while "in the Northern descents/' in addition to the lapis
161 MOUNTAIN

Figure 64, After George Smith, "A Map of the Caudebec Fells:'Gentleman'sMagazine, 1747.
The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
calaminaris, "copper has been formerly dug 1 but the mines are long since worn out:'
So although it was "a received Cumberland proverb, that the mountains of Caude-
beck are worth all England besides;' he admits that "it has not yet been verify'd by
experiencei and if we may be allow'd to conjecture from the nature of their stones 1
found in the rivulets and quarries, it may be difficult to say when they will:' These
mountains-this landscape understood as a list-may have been full of minerals 1
51
but their usefulness was yet to be determined.
But Smith's travel narratives also provide evidence of another perspective, one
shaped more by the writings of Thomas Burnet than by questions of utility. In his
expedition to the "desolate and barren'' Cross-Fell Mountain 1 Smith was forced to
traverse a region of"almost impervious wastes, a country extremely ill represented in
all of our maps yet published:' Passing the spot where the rivers Tyne and Blackburn
met, Smith and his companions entered an "immense waste" whose surface was pit-
ted with what he called "Swallows, those incontestable remains of Noah's deluge:'
Some were as large as thirty or forty yards in diameter, "and near as much deep 1 per-
fectly circular, but contain no water at any season) the ground having gradually fallen
in at the sinking of the waters." Smith notes that these pits were also to be found "in
162 MOUNTAIN
the Pyrenean and Narbone mountains, and our Elden-hole in Derbyshire) whose
depths have never been ascertained with the longest lines:' All were proof positive
of the universality of the Deluge,"
Thus) although Smith's prose contains many traces of earlierJ Royal Society-
inflected attitudes 1 it also suggests an appreciation of the postapocalyptic spectacle
afforded by mountainous landscapes. The area he explored in the Caudebec Fells,
for example, was "distinguished by insuperable precipices) and tow'ring peaks 1 and
exhibiting lanskapes of a quite different and more romantic air than any part of the
general ridge, and of nearer affinity to the Switzerland Alps:' 53 The maps he pub-
lished along with his accounts exhibit precisely this intermingling of utilitarian and
emotive concerns (figs. 64) 65 ) 1 taking note of natural resources like copper mines
and slate quarries, but also delighting in delineating the fantastic outlines of Saddle-
back and Skiddaw mountains) and in characterizing an entire region as "Desolate
and Mountanous."
In August of 1749, Smith set out on anothertrip to visit the black lead mines
he had attempted but failed to view two years earlier. The mountains near Skiddaw,
he writes) "are all very high.1 and the greater part terminate in craggy precipices, that
have the appearance ofhuge fragments of rock, irregularly heaped on one another:'
Journeying through a "narrow valley, which winded thro' mountains that were totally
barren;' he arrived at Seathwaite, just underneath the mines/ where "The scene that
now presented itself was the most frightful that can be conceived: we had a moun-
tain to climb for above 700 yards) in a direction so nearly perpendicular 1
that we
were in doubt whether we should attempt it:' Finding their courage) Smith and his
companions left their horses and began to ascend the mountain) whose "precipices
were surprisingly variegated with apicesJ prominences, spouting jets of water, cata-
racts/ and rivers that were precipitated from the hills with an alarming noise:' After
visiting the mines, they climbed still higher to the top of the black lead mountain,
and once there "were astonished to perceive a large plain to the West, and from
thence another craggy ascent of 500 yards:' Determined to reach the very top, they
forged on 1 gaining the summit in about another hour's time. The path they took is
marked on a map Smith published in the Gentleman'sMagazine (see fig. 65): en-
titled "Map of the Black Lead Mines &c. in Cumberland;' it shows the landscape to
the southwest of Mt. Skiddaw, marked with the location of the lead mines and slate
quarries) as well as evocative titles such as "exceeding high steep Rocks;' ''.Allrocky
and pik'd [peaked] Mountains;' "the only Passage from this Vale ofBorrowdale into
Warsdale ... A very rocky bad One;' and "here Eagles build:' The map also shows
Smith's route through Borrowdale to the top of the mountain he calls "Unisterrei or1
as I suppose 1 Finisterre, for such it appears to be." From this vantage point at what
163 MOUNTAIN

f;:i/}
~/
I Smith visited Matlock Bath, Chatsworth, and Poole's Hole, but he was disappointed
j the level of the lake, he and his companions hired boats, and spent the day rowing
Figure 65, After George Smith, "Map of the Black Lead Mines &c. in Cumberland,~ Gentleman'sMagazineXXI
(June 1, 1751). The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
seemed to be the end of the world, "The scene was terrifying, not an herb was to
be seen 1 but wild ravine, growing in the interstices of the naked rocksj the horrid
projection of vast promontorieSj the vicinity of the clouds, the thunder of the explo-
sions in the slate quarries 1 the dreadful solitude 1 the distance of the plain belowi and
the mountains heaped on mountains that were piled around us, desolate 1 and waste,
like the ruins of a world which we only had survived, excited such ideas ofhorror as
are not to be expressed:' Turning from this prospect, "afraid even of ourselves, and
bidding an everlasting farewell to so perilous an elevation," they fled back down the
mountain. 54
George Smith was a Cumbrian native, and his interest in exploring the country's
most desolate northern regions could be understood as a desire to find out more
about the landscapes he was surrounded by on a daily basis. Yet we can also see
his accounts as evidence of what was to become a more general shift in patterns of
tourism. In 1746 Smith took a trip through Derbyshire to the Lake District, but was
164 MOUNTAIN
clearly much less struck by the Peak and its wonders than by the scenery around
Lake Windermere. In the course of his journey over "the desolate hills of the Peak;'
by Chatsworth, which to him was no paragon ofbeauty, but rather seemed "but
faint and insipid," and he was even less impressed by Poole's Hole, a "dreary cavity,"
whose "horrible forms" existed "more in the imagination of the spectators, than in
the real resemblance to the things themselves:• Passing quickly through the rest of
Derbyshirei Smith continued north, over "some of the wildest hills in Great-Britain/'
until he reached Kendal. And it was here, in the Lake District, rather than in Der-
byshire, that he was presented with "one of the most glorious appearances that ever
struck the eye of a traveller with transport," Lake Windermere. "It measures 11 miles
in length, and two in breadth;' Smith begins, "and is surrounded, on all sides, with
rocks, woods, and inclosures. In some place the crags appear through the trees hang-
ing over the water, in other places little valleys are seen opening between the hills,
through which small torrents empty themselves into the lake; and, in all places, the
border quite round shows itself delicate and beautiful. In the midst of the lake rise
several islands covered with trees 1 which greatly adorn the prospect:' Descending to
and fishing in the lake, visiting a few of the islands, and "exploring the great variety
of beauties which surrounded us on all sides." But the culmination of this journey
occurred while he was seated on an elevated spot on one of these "romantic" islands 1
surrounded by a scene that took his breath away: "the transparent waters of the lake
extend themselves many miles before us 1 round which shade rises above shade, rock
above rock, hill above hill, and mountain above mountain, even to the clouds, form-
ing the most stupendous theatre 1 presenting the most sublime scenes that human
sight can possibly make room for:' At Lake Windermere, George Smith encountered
the aesthetics of the infinite. 55
Disgust and the Sublime
The "aesthetics of the infinite;' or, in other words, the sublime, was the primary
means by which attitudes toward mountainous scenery were fundamentally
transformed over the course of the eighteenth century. Burnet's vivid descriptions
of apocalyptic spectacle and Addison's articulation of "greatness" gave people
new ways to articulate their reactions to landscapes that, although perhaps not
conventionally beautiful, were nonetheless deeply affecting. But it was Edmund
Burke's A PhilosophicalEnquiry into the Originof our Ideas of the Sublime and
Beautiful,eventually published in 1757 after circulating in manuscript for some
165 MOUNTAIN
years, that authoritatively established the sublime as a category of aesthetic
response comparable in every way to beauty. 56 Burke's rigorously sensationalist
aesthetics defined both the sublime and the beautiful as responses elicited by
the body's contact with objects in the world: they were instinctive, automatic
emotional reactions that preceded reason and judgment. Of the twoi the sublime
was particularly affectingi involving a state in which "the mind is so entirely filled
with its object, that it cannot entertain any otheri nor by consequence reason
on that object which employs it:' The power of the sublime resided precisely in
this instinctual basisi since "far from being produced by them, it anticipates our
reasonings, and hurries us on by an irresistible force:' The wellsprings of the sublime
are the emotions of fear and terror: "Terror is in all cases whatsoever, either more
openly or latently the ruling principle of the sublime," Burke writes, for "no passion
so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear:' This
is because fear "being an apprehension of pain or death, ... operates in a manner
that resembles actual pain:' Although Burke does not elaborate on the relationship
between disgust and the sublime (he dismisses disagreeable but not dangerous
creatures like toads and spiders as "merely odious"), it could be argued that the
visceral reaction of disgust 1 with its exclusive and overwhelming fixation on the
objecti served as a template for Burke's understanding of the aesthetic reaction of
the sublime. 57
For Burke, the source, or efficient cause, of the sublime was power: "I know of
nothing sublime which is not some modification of power," he proclaims. Power
produces terror "because the ideas of paini and above all of death, are so very af-
fecting, that whilst we remain in the presence of whatever is supposed to have the
power of affiicting either, it is impossible to be perfectly free from terror:' Thus, the
sublime «comes upon us in the gloomy forest, and in the howling wilderness, in the
form of the lioni the tigeri the panther 1 or rhinocerous;' rather than in the form of
the horse or the ox. "Whenever strength is only useful, and employed for our benefit
or our pleasure, then it is never sublime;' Burke explains, "for nothing can act agree-
ably to us, that does not act in conformity to our willj but to act agreeably to our
will, it must be subject to USjand therefore can never be the cause of a grand and
commanding conception." 'Ihusi for Burke it is not the usefulness of an object that
determines its value, but rather its capacity to evoke a powerful emotional response.
And it is with this link between terror and power, with this association of the sub-
lime with anything that is beyond human control, that the concept of the sublime
leads eventually to God. When we contemplate such vastness and omnipotencei
Burke writes, "we shrink.into the minuteness of our own nature, and are1 in a man-
ner, annihilated before rum:'But if the sublime ultimately led to the idea of God, its
166 MOUNTAIN
presence on earth was inextricably bound up with landscape. Natural objects and
phenomena-particular kinds oflandscapes-were the primary elicitors of the
sublime, united in their capacity to inspire fear in their beholders. Vast plains, end-
less stretches of wateri thundering cataracts, raging storms, towering IIlountainsi
vertiginous precipices, and exploding volcanoes are the kinds oflandscapes Burke
mentions 1 characterized by such abstract physical qualities as vastness or greatness
of dimension; obscurity or blinding light; loudness 1silence, or intermittent sounds;
bitterness; and stench. Thus Burke's treatise was instrumental in constructing a new
scale of values for wild and uncultivated landscapes, one that was based on aesthetic
effect rather than on economic productivity. 58
Burke's treatment of aesthetics is particularly interesting because he does not
limit his discussion to the so-called higher senses of sight and hearing, but also ad-
dresses those darker 1disgust-proximate ones of taste and smell. In the section en-
titled "Smell and Taste. Bitters and Stenches;' he notes that "although it is true, that
these affections of the smell and taste, when they are in their full force, and lean di-
rectly upon the sensory 1are simply painful 1and accompanied with no sort of delight;
but when they are moderated 1as in a description or narrative, they become sources
of the sublime as genuine as any other, and upon the same principle of moderated
pain:' It is precisely this distancing, or moderation, that differentiates the sublime
from mere disgust. When Burke addresses the question of how pain can be a cause
of delight, he explains that terror is a kind oflabori an exercise of"the finer parts of
the system/'-bywhich he means the senses-just as manual labor is an exercise
of the body. lf"pain and terror are so modified as not to be actually noxious; if the
pain is not carried to violence, and the terror is not conversant about the present de-
struction of the person/' they work to clear the physiological system, and in this way
become "capable of producing delight; not pleasure, but a sort of delightful horror, a
sort of tranquillity tinged with terror; which as it belongs to self-preservation is one
of the strongest of all the passions:' Thus, the representation of disgusting sensations,
particularly in literature 1but also (with qualifications) in painting, transforms the
visceral into the aesthetic. Giving as examples Virgil's sulphurous springs of Albunea 1
located deep within "the sacred horror and prophetic gloom" of the Tiburtine for-
est1 or the vapors of Acheron, which poisoned the air near the Sybil's dark cave on
the shores ofLakeAvernus 1Burke implicitly correlates disgust-producing sensations
with those typologies oflandscape we have come to identify as wasteland, while giv-
ing proof of the transformative power of art. 59
Of all of the qualities Burke mentions 1however, infinity and obscurity are para-
mount. For Burke, obscurity is understood in two related ways: as a hteral darkness,
but also as the inability to fully apprehend the outline, limits, or extent of an object.
167 MOUNTAIN
Obscurity is productive of fear because "when we know the full extent of any danger,
when we can accustom our eyes to it, a great deal of the apprehension vanishes:'
Since knowledge and emotional response are opposed, so "in nature dark, confused
uncertain images have a greater power on the fancy to form the grander passions
than those have which are more clear and determinate:' It is this inability to ascertain
the boundaries or limits of an object that brings obscurity and infinity into corre~
spondence: obscurity becomes a formal means to endow an object with associations
of infinity. As Burke explains, "hardly any thing can strike the mind with its great-
ness, which does not make some sort of approach towards infinity; which nothing
can do whilst we are able to perceive its boundsi but to see an object distinctly, and
to perceive its bounds, is one and the same thing:' In the final instance, for Burke
it is infinity that "tends to fill the mind with that sort of delightful horror, which is
the most genuine effect, and truest test of the sublime." 60
Obscurity gives rise to an
impression of infinityi that "truest test of the sublime," by disguising the contours or
limits of an object. Yet a central consequence of linking infinity with obscurity is that
the traditional primacy of sight in aesthetic experience is undermined. By thwart-
ing the eyei obscurity allows the other senses-particularly those "lower," disgust-
proximate senses of touchi tastei and smell~to expand their domain. Though this is
nowhere directly statedi Burke's sublime is implicitly dependent on an understand-
ing of aesthetic appreciation patterned on the disgust response.
It was Burke's explicit correlation between obscurity, infinity, the sublime 1 and
God that was to have the most profound effect on the development of attitudes to-
wards mountains. Burke's codification of the sublime led travelers to see and under-
stand mountainous landscapes as the closest thing on earth to the experience of the
divine, transforming Nicolson's (though the terms derive from Ruskin) "Mountain
Gloom" into "Mountain Glori' It is by following these transformations in reactions
to mountainous landscapes, however 1 that we can also see how these two seemingly
opposed perspectives are in fact linked by a common undercurrent of disgust. And it
is here, too1 that we find Kolnai's observation that disgust is "an eminently aesthetic
reaction" borne out by the birth and development of the discipline of aesthetics it-
self. The eighteenth century's novel formulation of aesthetics, building upon an em-
piricism that was initially located in the natural sciences, established the primacy of
the sense reaction to the object. By following the development of attitudes to moun-
tains from a visceral disgust to an attention to use, then from a horrified appreciation
of apocalypse to a contemplation of the infinitei and then 1 finally, to the sublime, the
sections of this chapter trace the paths by which a focused sensory reaction of vis-
ceral disgust was gradually transformed into an equally sense-based form of aesthetic
response. It is through this series of developments that wasteland makes its entrance
168 MOUNTAIN
into the aesthetic realm. But Burke's PhilosophicalEnquirynot only established a
newly precise and codified vocabulary for the aesthetic experience, descriptioni and
1
representation of mountains and other kinds of wasteland, it also resulted in a shift
in patterns oflandscape consumption. 1hrough the vehicle of the sublime, mountain
wastelands acquired value as touristic commodities. Thus the development of the
aesthetic of the sublime also contributed to changes in patterns of tourism, which re-
sulted in the waning of the Peak's popularity as a tourist destinationi and its replace-
ment by the Lakeland scenery of Cumberland, Westmorland, and Lancashire.
'TheBeautiful, the Sublime, the Picturesque, and the Disgusting
The letter written by the Reverend John Brown describing the lake at Keswick and
its surroundings, first published in the London Chroniclein April 17 66, has long
been considered a turning point in the appreciation of Lake District scenery. 61
With its evocative description of a landscape that would require "the united powers
of Claude,Salvator,and Poussin"to be adequately represented, Brown's short text
was influential on later Lake District admirers from William Gilpin to William
Wordsworth. Like George Smith before him, Brown begins by drawing a stark con-
trast between Derbyshire and the Lake District. Brown was keenly disappointed by
the Peak, finding even its most celebrated landscapes, such as the valley ofDovedale,
to be "but poor miniatures ofKeswickj which exceeds them more in grandeur than
I can give you to imaginej and more if possible in beauty than in grandeur:' Compar-
ing the two regions feature by feature, he continues: "Instead of the narrow slip of
valley which is seen at Dovedale, you have at Keswick a vast.amphitheatre, in circum-
ference above twenty miles. Instead of a meagre rivulet, a noble living lake, ten miles
round 1 of an oblong form 1 adorned with variety of wooded islands. Toe rocks indeed
ofDovedale are finely wild, pointed, and irregular; but the hills are both little and
unanimatedi and the margin of the brook is poorly edged with weeds, morass, and
brushwood:' Whereas the "full perfection'' of Keswick consisted of"Beauty, Horror,
and Immensity united/' in Dovedale he found only the second characteristic, "nature
62
having left it almost a desart:'
Malcolm Andrews has argued that Brown's evocation ofKeswick's "rocks and
cliffs of stupendous height, hanging above the lake in horrible grandeur;' upon
whose "spiry and fantastic" heights "eagles build their nests" and from whose sum-
mits waterfalls tumble "in vast sheets from rock to rock in rude and terrible magnifi-
cence;' was influential on the artist Thomas Smith of Derby, whose engraving of''.A
View ofDarwentwater &c.i From Crow-Park" was published shortly after Brown's
account appeared (fig. 66). 63 Although, as we have seen, Smith of Derby was well
169 MOUNTAIN
Figure 66. Thomas Smith ofDerby, ''A View ofDarwentwater &c., From Crow~Park;' published 1767.
© Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.
known by this time as an artist who specialized in representations of sublime natural
scenery, this view is injected with an emotional undercurrent absent from his earlier
work. 1his is particularly evident when one compares Smith of Derby's view with
that of William Bellers, taken from the same spot on the banks of the lake at Crow
Park, but published some fifteen years earlier (fig. 67). Whereas Bellers had made his
representation conform to Claudean landscape conventions, Smith of Derby instead
patterns his landscape on Salvator Rosa 1 infusing his landscape with the characteris~
tics of the sublime by exaggerating the forms of the surrounding landscape to such
a degree that someone familiar with the region would be hard pressed to recognize
the scene. Dark mountains tower menacingly over the lake, while the peaks ofBor-
rowdale in the distance appear to be in the grip of a terrible thunderstorm. In the
foreground, the hacked-off stumps of the oak trees that formerly grew thick upon
this spot only underscore the impression of a wasted landscape and the general sense
of sublime terror conveyed by the scene as a whole.
Although William Gilpin's ink sketch of Keswick (fig. 68), drawn in 1772 during
his tour to the north of England, takes the same orientation as Bellers and Smith of
Derby's prints 1 its aim is different. Gilpin's sketch is annotated with notes that com-
bine topographical details (the islands are labeled as St. Herbert's, Lord's island, and
170 MOUNTAIN
Figure 67. William Bellers Jr., A View of Derwentwater. Towards Borrowdale. A Lake near Keswick in
Cumberland. 10 October 1752. © Crown copyright: UK Government Art Collection.
Vicar's island; the part of the mountains called the Lady's Rake and the location of
the Lodoar Falls are identified) with an attempt to analyze the view according topic-
turesque principles. "1his is the most beautiful part;' Gilpin writes on the left-hand
side 1 over what he calls the "eastern skreen." The central part towards Borrowdale 1
Gilpin's "front-skreen," is however 1 "too much broken." But even worse is the right-
hand side 1 or "western-skreen;' which is "very much brokeni and the mountain line
of which is bad." 64 In the account of the tour Gilpin published in 1786 as Observa-
tions on SeveralParts of England,particularlythe Mountains and Lakes of Cumberland
and Westmoreland,relativechieflyto PicturesqueBeauty,made in the year 1772, Gilpin
expands upon his initial notes, writing:
Along it's western shores on the right, they [the mountains] rise smooth and
uniform; and are therefore rather lumpish. The more removed part of this moun-
tain-line is elegant: but, in some parts, it is disagreeably broken. On the eastern
side, the mountains are both grander, and more picturesque. The line is pleasingi
and is filled with that variety of objects 1 broken-ground 1-rocks-and wood 1
which being well combined, take from the heaviness of a mountain; and give it an
airy lightness. 1hefront-skreen 1 (if we may so call a portion of a circular form 1) is
171 MOUNTAIN
 more formidable 1 than either of the sides. But it's line is less elegant, than that of Figure 69. William Gilpin, "An explanation of the
the eastern-skreen. 65 shapes and lines of mountains," Observationson
SeveralParts of England,particularlythe Mountains
and Lakesof Cumberlandand Westmorland(London,
For Gilpin, mountains could be lumpish and disagreeable, or grand, picturesque, 1786). Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library,
and pleasing. The reaction they occasioned was a removed and aestheticized sensa- Columbia University.

tion, rather than the immediate and visceral reaction we find in earlier descriptions.
Gilpin abstracted disgust into entirely formal terms, now based on visual properties
N-,✓ '""4 '7"•~'.,__,,."71..£
that served to discriminate between picturesque and nonpicturesque objects. But
in order to be picturesque, or, in other wordsi to be suitable for representation, an 7
,_.,,...c'~~-
- '\_>
•,
object needed to be expunged of its disgust-producing qualities. Winfried Men- ,S~/1,;,,,
ninghaus has characterized the ideal body of eighteenth-century aesthetics as one
that conforms to Herder's ideal of"the softly blown corporeal," a body that exhibits
a beautiful, soft, flowing line. For the body to become an aesthetic object, it needed
to disguisei repress, or otherwise rid itself of all disgust-producing features-its vari-
ous protrusions, orifices, wounds 1 and innards. Thus, the ideal body of eighteenth-
century aesthetics is one that (in the words of Hogarth) can be imagined as an object
whose "inward contents [have been] scoop'd out so nicely1 as to have nothing of it
left but a thin shell, exactly corresponding both in its inner and outer surfacei to the
shape of the object itself:' 66

Gilpin effects this operation with regard to landscape by ridding mountains of

their imposing corporeality, their jagged surfaces, and their horrifying subterranean
depths, and reducing them to a bare outline. We can see this process enacted in the
_;,.___,.7-_
..f.-_......-, i[ plate published in Gilpin's Observationson SeveralParts of England,particularlythe
,,___,-L~
- .·.~, ,t,
I.;_, i;..I. ....___;l_ h-~.~,~.l
;_, 1~":--L_L Mountains and Lakes of Cumberlandand Westmoreland,which analyzes the shapes of
'I various mountain profiles (fig. 69 ). Gilpin's plate includes mountains both real and
imaginary, and it is largely a catalogue of the displeasing. But Gilpin's disgust is far
removed from that with which this chapter began. For Gilpin a mountain is an object
to be analyzed according to its capacity for representation, and disgust is an abstract
reaction, tied to refined notions of taste. Thus Burnwark 1 in Scotland, Thorp-Cloud,
near Dovedale in Derbyshire, and Saddleback mountain in Cumberland "all form
disagreeable lines:' Even the Alps, with their pointed summits, "are objects rather of
singularity; than of beauty." Mountains that "rise in regular, mathematical lines 1 or in
whimsical, grotesque shapes, are displeasing;' because "any continued and unvaried
line, whether it be concave, straight, or convexi will always displease:' Furthermore 1

"the effect also of a broken line is bad, if the breaks are regular;' and those forms
Figure 68. William Gilpin, "The general idea of Keswick-lake," from his MS Lakes Tour notebook, 1772.
that "suggest the idea oflumpish heaviness are disgusting-round, swelling forms 1
The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford 1 MS. Eng . .Misc. e. 488/3, drawing between fols. 303 and 304. without any break to disincumber them of their weight:' Only a flowing irregular

172 MOUNTAIN 173 MOUNTAIN

 ',7?
•,,, :,/W)>i'

line, exhibited in the fourth register, is "the truest source of beauty": if mountains
"break into mathematical, or fantastic forms-if they join heavily together in
lumpish shapes~if they fall into each other at right-angles~or if their lines run
parallel-in all these cases, the combination will be more or less disgusting," Gilpin
concludes.
1his formal analysis is predicated on the assumption that mountains are being
viewed from a distance: "With regard to mountains/' Gilpin explains, "it may be
first premised, that, in a picturesque view1 we consider them only as distant objectsi
their enormous size disqualifying them for objects at hand:' Distance is necessary to
mitigate the power of disgust: it allows the mountain to be reduced to a size that can
"be taken in by the eye; and it's monstrous features, losing their deformity, assume a
softness which naturally belongs not to them." This hollowing out, this reduction of
mountain to outline, is another version of a process that fundamentally transformed
the meanings of wasteland. Yet unlike the conventions of cartography and tech-
niques of agricultural improvement that were brought to bear on the swampy Fens
Figure 70, George Cumberland, Inside the Peak Cavern,Castleton,Derbyshire,ca. 1820. Watercolor
discussed in chapter 3, here instead we find the transformative power of aesthetics on paper, 146 x 219 mm.© Tate, London 2013.
conferring value on 1 and therefore commodifying, what once had been disparaged
as useless. 67
denizens of the Devil's Arse has been replaced, by deploying obscurity as an artistic
'Ihe Obscure, the Infinite, aud the Apocalyptic technique, with an aesthetic response of the sublime.
The subject of James Ward's GordaleScar (fig. 71) is the rocky Yorkshire cleft
The codification and development of the aesthetic of the sublime affected visual depicted in the 1750s by Thomas Smith of Derby (see fig. 63 ). Ward's GordaleScar,
representations of mountains in numerous ways. Burke's conjunction of infinity and painted for the Yorkshire landowner Lord Ribblesdale, takes the formal qualities of
obscurity 1 his discussion of the power of indistinct ideas 1 offered inspiration to artists the sublime identified by Burke and deploys them to spectacular effect. Most notable
in the decades after the publication ofhis treatise. We can see this by examining two is the painting's massive size: well aware/ we may presume, of Burke's hesitations
works: George Cumberland's Inside the Peak Cavern,Castleton,Derbyshire(ca. 1820) regarding paintings 1 in particular that as small, framed, colored objects they were
and James Ward's GordaleScar (ca. 1812-1814). George Cumberland's intimate incapable of eliciting a truly sublime response, Ward explodes the scale of his view
watercolor of the interior of the Devil's Arse utilizes the vocabulary of the sublime by giving it dimensions that measure close to eleven feet high by fourteen feet wide.
to infuse his image of the cave with amplified effect (fig. 70 ). Unlike earlier views Towering over its viewers 1 Gordale Scar aims to achieve a physical presence compa-
of this subterranean wonder such as Charles Leigh's (see fig. 55), in Cumberland's rable to that of the original scene itself.
version the characteristic details of the cave-the river, the huts, the stalactites- In the painting, vegetation is minimal: the sparse trees appear to be dead or dy~
are obscured in dark shadow. Not much can really be seen. The high horizon line ing as they tilt at precarious angles from the rocky walls and floor, their leaves either
formed by the silhouette of the rocky cavity's floor creates a claustrophobic feeling brown or absent. The dark color palette is composed primarily ofblacks, browns/
of oppression as it presses up against the ridged vaults of the cave's ceilingJ while and grays, with the interior of the crevasse cast in the deepest shadow. But Ward's
a presentiment of danger is conveyed by the tiny figure dwarfed by the large rock engagement with the vocabulary of the sublime is most forcibly displayed in the
whose curved ledge juts out perilously over his head. Cumberland utilizes the formal center of the painting, where the obscurity of the Scar's interior is set in direct cor-
techniques of obscurity and juxtaposition of scale to convey his impressions of respondence with the infinity of the surrounding landscape's rocky forms. Here the
this tourist destination. The visceral disgust formerly evoked by the features and jagged cliffs rise directly up and back in infinitely ascending ridges directly from the

174 MOUNTAIN 175 MOUNTAIN


Figure 71. James Ward, Gordale Scar (A Viewof Gordale,in theManor of East Malham in Craven,Yorkshire,the
Propertyof Lord Ribblesdale),ca. 1812-14. Oil on canvas, 3327 X4216 mm.© Tate, London 2013.
impenetrable blackness of the torrent's cavernous source, enticing yet frustrating the
viewer's gaze, and thus making vision aware of its limits.
The principal theme of this work is power. We can see this dearly in the center
of the painting, where a parallel is set up between the frothy waters of the tumbling
cataract and the roiling clouds, whose dark and lowering forms portend the arrival
of a storm of epic dimensions. In its depiction of the destructive power of natural
phenomenai Ward's painting thus simultaneously gestures back to earlier cataclysmic
events (in the first place Burnet's Deluge, but also the subsequent storms that have
contributed to the landscape's savage form), and looks toward a future of continuing
catastrophe. GordaleScar casts "our dirty little planet" as the incarnation ofland-
scape at its most obscure) vast, and apocalyptici as the epitome of the sublime. In this
way, Ward deploys aesthetics to locate and secure the value of mountainsi finding
in their capacity to evoke the most potent of all emotional responses an experience
comparable to an encounter with the Divine.
176 MOUNTAIN
CHAPTER V
FOREST
Henry Peacham's emblem for "Nullipenetrabilis;'published in his Minerva Britanna,
Or a GardenofHeroicalDevisesof 1612, features an image of a cluster of trees under
a starry sky and fourteen lines of verse (fig. 72). Like the "shadie grove" of the open-
ing stanzas of TheFaerieQueene,whose canopy of boughs was "Not perceable with
power of any starr," Peacham's "Shadie Wood" was likewise characterized by its im-
penetrability, by its resistance to light and vision. 1 Peacham's emblem self-conscious-
ly makes reference to Spenser's epic poem 1 echoing its turns of phrase. TheFaerie
Queene's"wandring wood" was a deceitful maze, a grove of fair trees that seemed
to offer safe harbor, but whose labyrinthine paths led instead to the den of the
monstrous Errour,the "loathsom, filthie 1 foule" half-woman half-serpent. Similarly,
Peacham's wood is "pourtraicted to the sight, / with uncouth pathes 1 and hidden
waies unknowne: / Resembling CHAOS, or the hideous night:' Dark, impenetrable 1
labyrinthine, and inhabited by ferocious creatures, the woodland of Spenser's verse
and Peacham's emblem epitomize one of the principal early modern English concep-
tions of the forest.
Peacharn's forest is composed of trees: trees that occupy and dominate the space
of the picture planei trees whose prominent roots and closely spaced trunks crowd
out all of the landscape apart from a small strip of sky. Likewise, Spenser's wood,
with its "trees so straight and hy," is described byway ofits famous catalogue of
sylvan species:
The sayling Pine, the Cedar proud and tall,
The vine-propp Elme, the Poplar never dry,
The builder Oake, sole king of forrests all,
The Alpine good for statues, the Cypress funerall. 2
177
 NtJUipwetr.:bi!h. Figure 72. Henry Peacham, "Nulli penetrabilis,"
c-c-c--~T_l_1e_Booke of Hunti_ng.
______ 91
MinervaBritanna, or a Gardenof Heroical
0:-rhc place where and hvw an aITcmblyiliould be made)inthe prcfence
Devices(London, 1612). The William of a Prinrei or fome honourable pcrfon.
Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

A SH ADIE Wood,poumaifredtothdight,
VVithvncouch pathes, and hidden wa1esvnkaowne:
Re(cmbli11gCH AO S, or the hideous night,
OtthofefadGroues,bybankcof AC HER.ON
With bJ11efollEwe,andEbDJ<ovcrgrownc,
Whofc thickell boughes , and mmoil: entries are
Nmpcirceable ,m power of anyfu.rrc.
Thy Imprefe s IL V_IVS, late I diddevife,
To warne)CQewh~t( ,f not) chot1oughtl.hobe,
Tillis inwarddofe, vnfcarch'd wirhoutwatdcics,
With thoufand mgks ,light fhonld never foe:
Forfoolcs clur moftareopen-he:i.rtedfree, '
V nto the world, their weakenes doe bewuy,
And to the net, the fuil:themfelues bccray.

~~
Cc.• Ym1m

But trees were by no means the defining characteristic of the early modern English
forest. Rather 1 "forest" was a legal term 1 one that could be imposed on an area ofland
irrespective of whether it was densely wooded or not, and one whose primary pur-
pose was to strictly delimit the kinds of activities that were permitted and excluded
within certain bounds. In 1598 1 the felicitously named John Manwood 1 Spenser's
contemporary and author of the authoritative A Treatiseand Discourseof the Laws
Figure 73. George Gascoigne, TheNobleArt ofVenerieorHunting (London, 1575).
of the Forrest,defined a forest as "a certen Territorie of woody grounds and fruitful! The Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
pastures, priviledged for wild beasts and foules ofForest 1 Chase 1 and Warren, to rest
and abide in, in the safe protection of the King, for his princely delight and pleasure:'
Thus 1 in medieval and early modern England 1 a forest included both woody ground association between wooded areas and the term "forest" became established through
and open pasture; it often also included heaths and bogs 1 villages and parish church- common usage. Although a forest was thus by definition not literally enclosed, its
es, roads and dwellings. What set an English forest apart from other types ofland area was nevertheless strictly defined, its boundaries established by such permanent
was not the presence of trees 1 but rather the question of use. and "unremoveable markesi meeres 1 and boundaries;' as rivers 1 hills 1 or roads 1 "either
The word "forest" comes to English from the Latin foresta or forestisi meaning knowne by matter of record 1 or else by prescription/' that acted no differently from a
something outside [forisJior beyond the realm of the enclosed 1 domestic sphere. "stone wall" to delimit the area of the forest and differentiate it from the surrounding
Latin had other words to refer to wooded areas, including silva or sylva1 nemora1 territory. Within these bounds was a different world 1 special and protected 1 set apart
saltus1 and lucusibut since foresta was often used in conjunction with the feminine from other categories ofland 1 and reserved for the enactment of the bloody ritual of
silva or sylva to mean the wood that was quite literally "beyond the pale/' the the royal hunt (fig. 73 ). 3

178 FOREST 179 FOREST

 Manwood, who served as a gamekeeper ofWaltham Forest and as a justice of the
New Forest, wrote A Treatiseand Discourseof the Laws of the Forestto disseminate
and make intelligible the medieval system of forest law, which by the time that he
was writing (late in Queen Elizabeth's reign) had become dusty with disuse. It is
both a lexicon of recondite terms and a catalogue and precis of forest law. Beginning
with a definition, A Treatiseand Discourseof the Laws of the Forestestablishes that for
an area ofland to qualify as a forest, it must have four things: venison, or wild ani-
mals; vert, the leafy cover that gives them food and shelter; particular laws and privi-
leges; and special officers appointed to see that those laws are respected and obeyed.
According to Manwood (though later commentators quibbled with his defini-
tion), the category of venison includes the beasts of the forest-the hart and the
hind (or the male and female red deer), the hare, the boar, and the wolf; the beasts
of chase-the buck, the doe, the fox, the marten, and the roe deer; and the beasts
and fowls of warren-the hare, the conie (or rabbit), the pheasant, and the partridge
(fig. 74 ). 4 The vert is any woody plant that bears green leaf within the forest; it is di-
vided into three subcategories: the over vert, or tall trees, the neather [nether] vert,
or bushes, thorn, gorse, and other low-growing woody plants, and the special vert,
which includes all those plants (both over and neather vert) that by bearing fruit
are a particularly important source of food for the venison, such as crabapple trees,
wild pear trees, blackthorn bushes (for their sloes), and hawthorn bushes (for their
hawberries).
The special laws and privileges were what set the forest off as both a place of
sanctuary for the venison and of recreation for the king. Forest law ordained harsh
punishments-in the most extreme cases even mutilation and death-for interfer-
ing with the venison or damaging the vert, and trespassers were tried and sentenced
in special forest courts, with lesser infringements heard at the Wood.mote and
Swainmote courts, and more serious offenses tried at the High Eyre court once every
three years. The laws were implemented by special officers appointed to oversee the
management of the forest, including Verderes, Forresters, Regarders, Agisters, and
Woodwards, as well as the Justices of the Woodmote, Swainmote, and Eyre courts.
"Forest" was the highest category that could be bestowed on land reserved spe-
Figure 74. Nicholas Cox, "The antientHuntingNotes," 1he Gentleman'sRecreation(London 1 1674).
cifically for hunting, and by law a forest could only be the property of the king. But TheWilliam Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
there were other categories ofland, lesser in significance, which were also associated
with the hunt and which could be the property either of the king or of a member
of the aristocracy: these included chases, parks, and warrens. A chase was an unen- ing of deer, were distinguished from forests and chases by their enclosure: they were
closed area ofland, in most cases held by a member of the aristocraCYiwithin which areas that were surrounded by a wall or fence, and could be either under royal juris-
the owner was allowed to hunt his own deer; governed by common rather than for- diction or granted by the king to a particular subject. Finally, a warren-which, like
est law; it had neither forest courts nor officers. Parks, used for the raising and keep- a park, could be either royal or free-was land granted and reserved for the hunting

180 FOREST 181 FOREST

of smaller animals, including rabbits, hares, pheasants, and partridges. Although
there was a certain amount of slippage in the use and application of these terms to
particular areas oflandi for the most part chases 1 parks, and warrens, unless located
within the bounds of a royal forest, were united with respect to their governance by
common rather than forest law.
These concepts of the forest as an exceptional place that was dedicated to the
pursuit and slaughter of wild animals) and the complex system that maintained the
forest's privileged position in relation to other types ofland, were intimately bound
up with notions of royal prerogative and the duties of kingship. According to Man-
wood's story of origins, in ancient times England was "a wilderness" overspread
by "great huge woods ... full of wild beasts" such as wolves, foxes, and wild boar.
From the time of Edgar the Saxon, the extermination of ferocious beasts (wolves
in particular) for the protection of the populace was identified as a ltingly duty, but
this duty eventually was transformed into a pleasure) as the king and other nobles
relished the activity of the hunt and the dainty meat of certain of their prey. In this
way "the kings of this land ... began to priviledge the woods and places, where those
wild beasts were remaining) which was in the great woods that then were left unde-
stroyedJ so that no man might hurt or destroy them there 1 and so those places, where
the wild beasts were then remayning 1 became Forests:' The forest became identified
as a space of royal recreation and respite from the bustle of the court 1 where kings
and princes were given the chance to "breath a whilei for the refreshing of their free
libertie:'s It was also the place where the king's role as protector of the people was
symbolically enacted in the ceremony of the hunt, an activity thatJ as Simon Schama
has argued, functioned as "a ritual demonstration of the discipline and order of [the
6
lting's] court:'
Although the association between forests and royal recreation can be traced back
to the earliest Anglo-Saxon kingsJ the formal system of forest law was a bequest of
the Norman Invasion, imported by that avid hunter William I and imposed upon
his new subjects to their great discontent. His "afforestation" of vast areas was 1 in
essence 1 a huge land grab, involving the wholesale evacuation of villages 1 the destruc-
tion of scores of parish churches, and the extinction of rights of common. William's
successors-his son William Rufus, and later the Angevin ltings Henry II, Richard
I, and John-added greatly to the extent ofroyal forests, talting over great swaths of
land in the name of princely recreation. By the end of the twelfth century 1 as Man-
wood writes 1 "the greatest part of the reahne was become forest, to the great griefe
and sorrow of all the best sort of the Inhabitants of this land."7 Although afforested
land still technically belonged to its original owner 1 according to forest law the vert
and the venison were the property of the lting, and anyone caught "red-handed"
182 FOREST
(i.e., covered with the blood of the ltill) was to be punished "with the losse oflife, or
of his eyes1 or genitals."8
If a man could be executed for ltilling a deer, harming the plants of the forest
was no less serious an offense. The preservation of the space of the forest for hunt-
ing depended on the maintenance of a particular habitat: if the forest cover were
destroyed 1 wild animals would leave the area to seek shelter elsewhere 1 and a forest
without wild animals was "no forrest at alli but a void and unprofitable peece of
ground:' The importance of the vert was threefold. In the first place, the vert pro-
vided the venison with cover, giving the wild animals of the forest a place to hide and
shelter. Second 1 both the woodland and the forest pastures were a source of food-
acorns, haws, and sloes in the woodsJ and sweeter grasses in the forest meadows and
pastures. Third 1 the forest offered what Manwood terms propter decorum)or visual
pleasure. The vert, he writes, is essential to "the comeliness and bewtie of the same in
a Forrest, for the very sight and beholding of the goodly greene and pleasant woods
in a Forresti is no lesse pleasant and delightfull in the eye of a Prince 1 then the view
of the wild beastes of Forrest and Chase 1 and therefore the grace of a Forrest is, to
be decked and trimmed up with store of pleasant greene coverts, as if it were greene
Arbors of pleasure, for the King to delight himselfe in:''Thus, any destruction of the
vert was simultaneously an offense against the kingJ against the environment) and
against aesthetics.
Destruction of the vert came under three headings: waste, assart, and pur-
presture. All were damaging to the forest habitat, but each inflicted the damage in
different ways. A waste of the forest was any mismanagement ofland within the ju-
risdiction of the forest. In most cases, this consisted of unlawful felling of wood. No
one could go out and cut down living wood in a royal forest 1 and even a landowner
whose holdings fell within the boundaries of a forest needed a special permit to
cut down wood on his or her own land. Once a license was granted) it was lawful to
fell wood in one's freehold, but only if the wood were cut in the appropriate season
and provision were made to enclose the area so that the trees and plants could grow
again safe from the depredations of grazing cattle. Assart was a more extreme version
of waste, involving not merely the cutting of wood, but the total uprooting of trees
and plants in order to level the ground and convert it to arable or pasture. Finally,
purpresture was a trespass that involved erecting houses or other buildings within
the boundaries of the forest. Because the more buildings there were within a forest 1
the greater the number of inhabitants) grazing animals) and dogs, purpresture was "a
terror to the wild beasts of the forest": by altering the balance between the domesti-
cated and the wildJ it constituted a threat to the forest itsel£
Waste 1 assart, and purpresture were severe trespasses because they were actions
183 FOREST
that "wasted" or destroyed the forest. To waste the forest was to mismanage an
area ofland, but it was also more than that: it was to put the forest-ness of the for-
est in jeopardy. It is in this sense that we can understand the puzzling equivalence
Manwood draws between cutting down forest wood 1 plowing a forest meadow to
convert it to tillage1 and the common law offense of allowing a meadow to flood and
remain underwater "whereby the same doeth become full of rushes and barren:' At
first glance these examples seem too different to compare: how can cutting down
wood 1 or allowing a meadow to remain flooded-thus rendering it both overgrown
and barren-be equivalent to plowing a meadow in order to sow it with crops? How
can these three actions-one destructive 1 one passive 1 and one productive-be
understood as analogous? The answer hinges on the word "waste;' which 1 as Man-
wood explains 1 "was brought into this land by the Normans 1 being derived from the
frenche verbe 1 Gaster 1 id. est. Vastare1 to wast: for we English men 1 do often times
use to pronounce a Win steed of a G. in manywords 1 that we doe borrow of the
French tongue." Its meaning is to spoil 1 "for a wast of the forrest is as much by com-
mon intendent 1 as to say; a spoile of the coverts or pastures of the forrest ... Gaster &
detruire 1 id est, vastare, evastare 1 vel devastarei to wast to spoile or consume, and so
a wast of the Forrest 1 is a spoile of the Forrest." To waste, to spoil, to consume: these
are posited as equivalents. In all of the examples Manwood cites 1 the character of the
land has been altered, either through negligence or overactive domestication. The
meadow flooded is no longer a meadow, but a bog; the meadow plowed is no longer
a meadow, but a field; the forest denuded is no longer a forest but "a void and un-
10
profitable peece of ground:' Hinging on the dual connotation of the word "waste"
as both "to neglect to use" and "to use up/' a waste of the forest was a use that under-
mined its wildness, a use that went counter to the forest's own nature.
For the forest to be a forest 1 for it to serve its principal purpose as a place of
princely recreation, it needed a healthy population of wild animals; for those wild
animals to stay within the forest, their habitat needed to be protected from human
encroachment. Forest law supported the preservation of the wildness of the forest
because this wildness, incorporated through the ceremony of the hunt, functioned
as an elixir of royal potency. But the privileges accorded to the king and the wild
things of the forest riecessitated the severe curtailment oflocal inhabitants' rights.
The criminalization of felling wood, plowing pasture 1 or building shelters within
the forest, even on land one held title to, along with the extinction of rights of pas-
ture, pannage, estovers 1 and turbary; gave rise to popular discontent that grew into
local uprisings. Royal privilege was pitted against traditional common rights as the
question of who was allowed to use the forest and for what purposes became the
flashpoint for simmering discontent.
184 FOREST
In 1215 1 a group of noblemen took their grievances to King John, pitching their
tents within three miles of the court at Windsor. Their demands-that the lands af-
forested during the reigns of the Angevin kings be disafforested, that common rights
be reinstated on forest lands 1 that the more grisly punishments for poaching and
trespass be repealed-were granted, and officially passed into law by the child-king
Henry III in 1225 as the Carta de Foresta.ln 1300, the Great Perambulation curtailed
royal privilege even further by greatly reducing the extent of the royal forests 1 draw-
ing their limits back to what they were supposed to have been during the reign of
Henry IL The bounds of sixty-eight royal forests were established, of which the New
Forest, Windsor Forest, and the Forest of Dean were accounted the largest three.
The Carta de Forestamodified some of the harsher and more contentious articles
of forest law, but it did not alter its main intent: the preservation of the wildness of
the forest. And it is thus in forest law-so often seen as merely a crueli despotic, in-
humane instrument of annihilation of ancient freedoms and common rights-that
we also find an early example of a preservationist agenda 1 with specific areas ofland
cordoned off from agricultural 1 industrial, and domestic uses in order to be reserved
for the elite pursuit of a recreation defined as (and made sacrosanct by) an encoun-
ter with the wild. Forest law's union of these associations is of critical importance
for the later history of concepts of wasteland, for whereas in the landscape types
considered up to this point-swamps and mountains-the categories of wilderness
and wasteland both refer to land in its supposed original state (or1 in other words, as
given,whether by Nature or God), in the case of forests a distinction is constructed
between original wilderness and a subsequent wasted state that is the result of hu-
man occupation and use.
With the identification ofwastei assarti and purpresture as parallel activities,
equally condemned for their destruction of the wildness of the forest, we find that
what had been billed in other contexts as improvement is instead judged, in the
forest context, as waste. Thusi considering the category of forest allows us to trace
a different trajectory in the history of notions of wasteland, one in which human in-
dustry is defined as a harmful rather than a beneficial activity. Furthermore, looking
at the forest allows us to identify yet another mode of disgust. The condemnation of
particular activities within the space of the forest went hand in hand with social dis-
tinctions. Hunting-an elite activity identified with the Crown-was allowed, while
foraging 1 poaching, wood gathering, agriculture 1 and construction-all practiced for
the most part by commoners-were proscribed. Thus the disgust we find expressed
in later literature regarding forests is directed not at the landscape 1 but to the people
who were judged to be misusing iti whether the commoners who committed assart
and purpresture; the poachers who, by daring to hunt venison for themselves, flouted
185 FOREST
class boundariesj the rioting artisans of the Western Risingi the charcoal burners
and miners of the Forest of Dean; the rampaging soldiers of the Civil War; the un-
principled speculators who sold off acres of forest trees for profit; or the outlaws who
claimed it for their refuge discussed by Christopher Hill in LibertyAgainst the Law
(in this context the exceptional status of Robin Hood is particularly interesting as his
class standing evolves from yeoman to aristocrat in tandem with his growing popu-
larity ).11It is in elite condemnations of these various groups of outsiders that we find
the kinds of hierarchical distinctions that are a defining characteristic of disgust in its
most culturally conditioned (and least visceral) social and moral dimension.
Trees as Timber
Even preservation has its price. As soon as the Carta de Forestaestablished fines
rather than mutilation as the punishment of choice for poachingi wastei and assarti it
became clear that in addition to penalizing trespass, the granting of rights within for-
est areas could also be a significant source of royal revenue. From the time of Henry
II 1increasing sums of money had found their way into royal coffers in exchange for
licenses to cut trees, pasture animals, or dig minerals within forest bounds. Unsur-
prisingly, in many cases this led to mismanagement and abuse 1including the whole-
sale felling of groves of mature trees in many of these newly disafforested areas. By
the time of Queen Elizabeth's reign, the regulation and administration of the forest
system had reached a nadir. Forest courts were held only rarely, and, as more and
more landowners purchased the disafforestment of their estates, the extent of royal
forests continued to shrink.
The decaying state of the forests was only accelerated by the industrial uses of
trees. For trees were not only important for domestic uses like building and heat-
ing, but they were also critical to national concerns 1such as the iron industry and
shipbuilding for the Royal Navy. In Britannia,William Camden had written that the
ancient Forest of Dean "formerly was so thick with Trees 1 so very dark and terrible
in its shades, and various cross ways, that it rendred the Inhabitants barbarous, and
embolden'd them to commit many outrages:' He also noted, however, that due to the
discovery of"so many rich veins of Iron ... those thick Woods by degrees are becom-
ing much thinner:' 12 Iron had been mined in the Forest of Dean in Roman and medi-
eval timesi but records indicate that the profitable geographical coincidence of iron
ore 1vast stores of timber for stoking furnaces 1and the navigable Wye and Severn
rivers did not really begin to be exploited in earnest until the sixteenth century. The
Crown took advantage of this too, granting rights to operate iron forges within the
forest to local landowners. But with the state of the nation's forests seemingly in
186 FOREST
jeopardy 1 arguments that the prevailing forest system was both anachronistic and
unprofitable began to proliferate, abetted by a growing consensus that the manage•
ment of royal forests needed urgent attention.
Immediately upon his accession, James I attempted to reassert traditional royal
rights to the forest. On May 16, 1603, he issued an act that proclaimed his intention
to revive the system of forest lawi only to use the imposition of fines and the granting
ofrights as a means of combatting his regime's ever-growing tide of debt.13By 1616
over £25,000 had been raised by the enforcement ofobsolete forest laws.14 Atthe
same time, the voices calling for the protection and improved management of forests
began to join into a chorus.
In 1609, eleven years after his publication of A Treatiseand Discourseof the Laws
of the Forest,John Manwood presented a "Project for improving the Land Revenue 1
by inclosing Wasts" to the chancellor of the exchequer, Sir Julius Caesar. Manwood
suggested enclosing the "great abundance of vacant and waste ground" that was to
be found in royal forests, parks, and chases, dividing it up into plots of one hun-
dred acres 1 and leasing the plots to five thousand yeomen, who would be required
to enclose the land and erect farm buildings, pay an annual rent 1 and ensure that
the timber, deer 1and other game continued to be preserved and protected. 15 Two
years later, Arthur Standish, alarmed by the events of the Midlands Revolt of 1607,
lamented in The Commons Complaintthe "general! destruction and waste of wood
made within this ... Kingdome, more within twenty or thirty last yeares then in any
hundred years before:' Illustrating the supreme importance of wood by drawing up
a catalogue of its uses as fuel and as timber, Standish called for the planting of tim-
ber and fruit trees in various types of waste and marginal lands: in rocky, stony, and
gravelly soilj in fens and marshesj in barren heathsi on commons; and in hedgerows.
16 In
NO WOOD NO KINGDOM, he forcefully concluded. An Olde ThriftNewly Revived
of 1612, the king's surveyor Rooke Churche fashioned a conversation between a sur-
veyor, a woodwardi a gentleman, and a farmer in order to demonstrate methods of
tree cultivation, and to argue for the enclosure and planting of decayed forests, com-
mons1 and waste grounds, and in the following year1 Arthur Standish issued another
small tract, New Directionsof Experienceby the Authorfor the Plantingof Timber and
Firewood.Estimating that out of the kingdom's 29,568,000 acres, ten million were
either waste or bushy grounds that yielded little to no profit, Standish enjoined each
parish to plant trees for timber and firewood in high-density plots. 17
Deaf to the voices warning of the dire consequences of deforestation, Charles
I enthusiastically embraced the practice of selling forest rights for cash. As Charles
afforested new areas only to sell off immediately the rights associated with them to
self-styled "improvers," the conversion of Crown woodland to enclosed pasture and
187 FOREST
arable field accelerated. Riots in Gillingham Forest, Braydon Forest, and the Forest
of Dean (a revolt collectively known as the Western Rising) ensued. During the Civil
War and Commonwealth, the destruction of forests continued apace, particularly
after Parliament's seizure of Crown lands. Extensive areas of old growth forest were
sold to individuals who, due to the uncertainties of the timesJ were interested pri-
marily in making a quick profit, and acres of mature trees fell to the axe. Resistance 1
spearheaded by commoners who had lost their traditional rights on account of these
new enclosures 1continued to flare.
By the middle of the century, it seemed to many that the kingdom's forests were
in a pitifully decayed state. As Edmund Gibson noted in his additions to Camden's
Britannia regarding the Forest of Dean, although the "Oak of the forest was so very
considerable, that 'tis said to have been part of the Instructions of the Spanish Arma-
da to destroy the timber of this place ... what a foreign power could not effect, our
own Civil dissentions did; for it went miserably to wrack in the Civil wars:' 18 Spurred
by the violence in the countryside and by fears of a timber shortage, increasing num-
bers of agricultural activists, including members of Samuel Hartlib's circle, began to
19
turn their attention to the issue of woodland management.
Publications on timber management from the middle of the seventeenth century
tend to fall into two categories: those primarily concerned with forests 1and those fo-
cused on tree plantations, although at times there is some degree of overlap between
the two. In the first category are pamphlets and treatises, often alarmist in tone, that
bemoan the deteriorating state of the royal forests 1call for the reform of forest law,
and encourage enclosure and tree planting. The authors of these tracts often endorse
the use of marginal and underproductive lands-like mountains, fensi and heaths 1in
addition to decayed forests-for new timber plantations. In the second category are
those works that seek to encourage landowners of various ranks-though increas-
ingly the intended audience was an aristocratic one-to plant trees on their private
estates to serve the ends of both profit and delight.
Robert Child, in his "Large Letter" published in Hartlib's Legacieof 1651, not
only condemned the neglect of chases and forests-as well as the underutilization
of parks-in his discussion of"Waste-Lands;' but he also devoted his entire twelfth
"deficiency" to woodland management. "It is a great fault that generally through the
Island the Woods are destroyed; so that we are in many places very much neces-
sitated both for fuel, & also for timber for building and other uses; so that ifwe had
not Coales from New-castle, and Boards from Norweyi plough-staves & pipe-staves
from Prussia, we should be brought to great extreamity," Child begins. Although
legislation to protect woods existed 1existing woods tended to be thin, and so little
replenished through continuous felling, that "at this time it's very rare to see a good
188 FOREST
Timber-tree in a Wood:' 20
His remedies for these pressing problems included the
enforcement of existing laws designed to protect woodlands, for "it's well knowne 1
we have good lawes; but it's better knowne, they are not executed"; the use of moun-
tainous1 craggy, and uneven land for tree plantations; the creation oflegislation
specifying that all lands have a certain number of timber trees planted on them per
acre; the imposition of an additional law to ensure that those who felled trees should
also plant or sow new ones; and, finally, "that those things which mightily destroy
Woods, may be restrained/' such as the infamous ironworks in the Forest ofDean 1
which had contributed so much to that region's deforestation. 21
In 1652, Sylvanus Taylor devoted long sections of Common Good:or the Im-
provementof Commons,Forests,and Chasesby Inclosureto issues of woodland
management, treating "Commons which are apt for Wood, and over-spread with
Bushes/' along with forests and chases, as equivalent categories ofland that would
benefit from better management and intensive tree planting. Taylor wrote at a mo-
ment when "all mens eyes" were on the royal forests, and the pressing question of
whether Parliament should sell former forestland to private individuals was still
unresolved:' 22
Unlike Child, who celebrated the usefulness of deerskins and the
delicacy of venison, Taylor viewed the king's protected red and fallow deer primarily
as pests 1and the system of forest law as prejudicial both to the inhabitants of forest
parishes, and to the Commonwealth at large. Instead, Taylor's vision of an improved
England called for the preservation oflarge areas of the Forest ofDeanJ the New
Forest, Windsor Forest 1 Waltham Forest, and Enfield Chase to ensure that supplies
of timber for the navy would be maintained, as well as the enclosure and sale of the
remainder·of the Crown lands in order to convert them into privately owned par-
cels supporting plantations of new trees, fields of grain, herds of cattle 1and flocks
of sheep. Taylor acknowledged, however 1that his protoconservationist agenda was
most likely an impossible goal, recommending that the inevitable felling of the royal
forests should be conducted in an orderly way, and that the navy should project its
needs for ships in the years to come and provide lists of the requisite timber.
The sixteenth century had seen the publication of a few works that addressed
the subject of tree planting, including Thomas Tusser's Fivehundrethpointes of good
Husbandrie,as wellfor the Championor Open countrie,as alsofor the Woodlandor
Severallof 1557, Leonard Mascall's A Booke of theArte and maner,howe to plant and
graffeall sortesof treesof 1572, and Barnaby Googe's translation of Conrad Heresba-
chus's FaureBookesof Husbandry of 1577 (fig. 75). But in Walter Blith's TheEnglish
Improverof 1649, and TheEnglishImproverImprovedof 1651, tree planting was iden-
tified as an aristocratic activity and positioned as part of a larger question of national
improvement.
189 FOREST
 '":&· ,,
.,,,,,.. '
.
Figure 75. Tools for grafting. Leonard Mascall, A
Bookeof the Arte and maner,how toplant and graffe
allsortesof trees(London 1572). The Henry E.
Huntington Library and Art Gallery.
I <
Blith's argument was twofold: tree planting on estates would counteract the
"Ruines ofWood in this Kingdome," while furnishing "Groves or Plumps of Trees
... about any Manour, House, or Place, for delight and pleasure:' 23 Blith describes
basic techniques for planting groves in a square, triangular, oval, or circle, maintain-
ing that "it is as easie, and no more chargeable, to cast or lot out thy Wood into an
Artificial! uniformable Plot, as to doe it rudely or confusedly;' and he notes that
with the application of a modicum of design, a tree plantation would be capable of
providing "as much pleasure, Delight, and Recreation, as in your curious Gardens,
Orchards, Walkes 1 and Bowers:' 24 In the second edition of his treatise, TheEnglish
ImproverImproved,Blith spoke mournfully of "the destruction of Wood [that]
increaseth so upon us;' and augmented his discussion of timber tree planting by
including a section devoted to the cultivation of nine kinds of trees, ranging from
the oak to the osier. The aim of his treatise was to encourage every "Gentleman of a
good Estate" to plant a thousand trees every year on a few acres ofhis land, and he
hoped his words would succeed in "convincing some of profitableness, others of the
fecibleness; some of the commodiousness, others of the usefullness, and all of a pos-
sibility to recover some hope of supplies hereafter 1 when the old stock is yet more
wasted on purpose to provoke the ingenious to the Work:' 25 In Blith's treatises, we
see the coincidence of a number of concerns-an attention to issues involving forest
190 FOREST
management 1 anxiety over dwindling timber supplies, particularly with respect to
the needs of the Royal Navy, and an aesthetic appreciation of the delights of wood-
land scenery-which would also be central to what was to become one of the most
famous books on tree cultivation ever published, John Evelyn's Sylva.
Since the authors of these mid-seventeenth-century tracts were, in most cases 1
associates ofHartlib's 1they were fervent promoters of the ideology of improvement,
and viewed enclosure as a key mea,ns of effecting the transformation of the national
landscape. In this context, enclosure had a number of related consequences. Firsti
it allowed for the consolidation and extension of estates so that large areas ofland
could be devoted to tree plantations. Second, it encouraged the use ofland for in-
dustrial1 rather than merely domestic purposes-the widespread rhetoric that cast
tree planting as a patriotic activity serving the navy's timber needs was central to this
shift. And finally, the operations of enclosure, the hedging and ditching that frag-
mented and compartmentalized what had been open fields into bounded plots, also
had an effect on perceptions of what a well-ordered landscape should look like. Thus,
what we find in the literature of the time is that the promotion of tree plantations-
those groves whose planting was made possible precisely because of the changes in
landholding patterns brought about by enclosure-is bolstered with arguments that
highlight their combined aesthetic 1political, and economic benefits. The merging
of these three considerations into a single platform was to give rise to a new kind of
designed landscape, the forest garden.
John Evelyn'sSylva
Shortly after the Restoration, the officers of the Royal Navy approached the Royal
Society with a list of queries 1asking its Fellows to turn the organization's attention
to the state of the nation's forests and timber supplies. The task of addressing the
questionnaire was entrusted to John Evelyn, whose horticultural enthusiasms and
dose involvement with the Georgi cal Committee and its project of writing a com-
prehensive history of agriculture made him the obvious candidate. Evelyn delivered
his response to the navy's queries at the Society's meeting on October 15, 1662; two
years later it was issued in print as Sylva)Or a Discourseof Forest-Trees,
and the Propa-
gation of Timberin hisMajestiesDominion,published by the Royal Society printers
John Martyn and James Allestry. Sylvawas an astonishingly successful book, it was
held in the highest esteem by Evelyn's contemporaries, went through four editions
during his lifetime (the fourth-edition title appearing as Silva), and continued to be
republished 1 in increasingly voluminous and lavish editionsi up to the beginning
of the twentieth century. It has maintained its place not only as one of the most
191 FOREST
significant books on the management of forests and timber trees ever written in Eng-
lish, but also as one of the most famous of seventeenth-century books. 26
In his report on the Georgical Committee's activities (described in chapter 2 ),
Charles Howard had identified four areas of investigation for the projected history
of agriculture and gardening: husbandry and crop cultivation, garden plants such
as evergreens and kitchen herbs and vegetables; fruit and timber trees, and soil im-
provement. Evelyn's book that appeared in 1664 addressed three of these four topics.
Originally the volume consisted of three parts: Sylva,or ''A Discourse ofForest-
Trees"; Pomonaior ''An Appendix concerning Fruit-Trees in relation to Cider"; and
the KalendariumHortense,or "Gard'ners Almanac:' 27 Later editions included Terra,
A PhilosophicalDiscourseof Earth, published independently in 1676 and included in
the third edition of 1679, andAcetaria, A Discourseof Sallets,first published in 1699
and added to the fourth edition of 1706. In his preface, Evelyn acknowledged that
Sylvawas just one part of a much larger attempt to generate a "compleat System of
Figure 76, Charcoal making in a forest. John Evelyn, Sylva,Or a Discourseof Forest-Trees.
2nd ed.
Agriculture;' something that he identified as "one of the Principal Designs of the (London, 1670). The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
Royal Society:' 28 lhis "compleat System of Agriculture" was, in fact, Evelyn's lifelongi
encyclopedic, never-finished project known as the "Elysium Britannicum," which
remained in manuscript throughout Evelyn's life.29 The material contained in and Sylva'smain purpose, however, was to promote the creation of new tree planta-
incrementally added to Sylva derived from that much larger enterprise. In that spirit, tionsi thus, it also presented techniques related to tree cultivation, maintenance,
instead of being presented as a finished treatise, Sylvawas cast as a first step towards and harvesting. To impress the idea of the profitability of tree planting, the 1670
that goal, a set of building materials 1 a collection of pieces and "scattered parts:' 30 edition included images of machines designed to convert trees to timber. The "Ger-
Sylvawas the Royal Society's first official publication; it undertook the dual task man-devil" was an engine designed to aid in the extirpation oflarge tree roots from
of salvaging the nation's principal form of defense-the "wooden walls" represented the ground, though Evelyn speculated that it could also be used to prostrate huge
by its timber stocks that were necessary to the construction of ships-while promot- trees. Another plate illustrated the "Norway engine," or saw-mill, which used water or
ing the Royal Society's own agenda by encouraging landowners to become actively wind power to transform logs into beams and planks of timber, as well as a machine
involved in cultivation through the planting of timber and fruit trees on their estates. designed to bore holes into elms or other trees to make pipes and aqueducts (fig. 77).
Thus, its goals were simultaneously economic, social, and aesthetic. Sylvabegins But for Evelyn, tree planting was not merely for profit. Evelyn's desire to cast cul-
with a discussion of the oak tree and proceeds chapter by chapter, treating in turn tivation as a noble pursuit is made explicit in Sylva'svery first lines. Stating that his
the principal deciduous trees, including the elm, beechi ash, chestnut, and walnut; goal was "the Encouragement of an Industry, and worthy Labour, too much in our
the lesser deciduous trees, like the service, maple, sycamore, hornbeam, lime, and days neglected, as haply esteem'd a consideration of too sordid and vulgar a nature
quickbeam; the aquatic trees, including the birch, hazel, poplar, alder, and different for Noble Persons and Gentlemen to busie themselves withal," Evelyn insisted that
types of willow; and concluding with evergreens ranging from the large fir1 pine, the restoration of England's timber supplies was an activity that "every Person who
larch, and cypress to the small myrtle, jasmine, yew, box, and holly. But in addition is Owner of Land may contribute to, and with infinite delight, who are touch'd with
to providing this catalogue of arboreal species 1 Sylva also focused on questions of that laudable Ambition of imitating their most illustrious Ancestry, whose Names we
use. One plate added to the second edition of 1670 shows the three stages of char- find mingl'd amongst Kings and Philosophers, Patriots and good Commonwealths-
coal making (fig. 76). Set in a woodland glade, this image illustrates the kind of Men:'31 Sylva'smany references to classical antiquity displayed the erudition of its
activity that was central both to the forest's usefulness, and to its depredation. author while assuming a similar erudition on the part of its readers: it united them

192 FOREST 193 FOREST

 Figure 77. The Norway engine, or
saw-mill, and a machine to bore elms.
John Evelyn, Sylva, Or a Discourseof
Forest-Trees,2nd ed. (London, 1670).
The William Andrews ClarkMemo-
rial Library.
as fellow members of the educated and polite elite. But beyond elevating the status
ofhusbandry and creating a shared frame of reference, Evelyn's classical allusions
and quotations constructed parallels between ancient and contemporary culture. By
encouraging his countrymen to emulate ancient "Kings and Philosophers, Patriots
and good Commonwealths-Men," Evelyn cast planting as an elevated and moral
pursuit while conjuring up images of a classical golden age. Through the improving
activity of cultivation, England could be transformed into Arcadia.
1his vision of England as a new Eden was dependent on a landscape aesthetic
in which trees played a prominent role. Sylvapresents a particular vision of the
improved English countrysidei one that constructs a glorious past while projecting
the re-creation of this Golden Age into the future. In his discussion of the oak tree,
for examplei Evelyn summons a pastoral vision of a land planted "with this spread-
194 FOREST
ing tree at handsome intervals, by which Grazing might be improv'd for the feeding
of Deer and Cattel under them, benignly visited with the gleams of the Sun, and
adorn'd with the distant Landskips appearing through the glads and frequent Val-
lies:' And when he turns to a discussion of the evergreen box and yew1 Evelyn waxes
rhapsodic, comparing the hills of his native Surrey to an Edenic land of perpetual
spring, writing "He that in winter should behold some of our highest Hills in Surrey
clad with whole Woods of these two last sort of Trees ... might without the least
violence to his Imaginationi easily phansie himself transported into some new or
enchanted CountrY:' Sylva is filled with suggestions about planting different spe-
cies of trees in gardens and parks in order to satisfy both aesthetic and economic
considerations. Evelyn recommends elms for "great Persons to plant the Accesses of
their Houses with, for being dispos'd at fifteeni or eighteen foot Intervali they will in
a few years bear goodly headsi and thrive to admiration:' Walnuts "render the most
graceful Avenues to our Country dwellings," hornbeami planted in small trenches
"makes the noblest and stateliest Hedges for long Walks in Gardens, or Parks, or any
Tree whatsoever whose leaves are deciduousi and forsake their branches in winter/'
and lime (or linden) trees he reckons "the most proper and beautiful for Walks, as
producing an upright bodyi smooth and even Bark, ample Leaf, sweet Blossom, and
a goodly shade:' In his conclusion 1 Evelyn evokes a vision of England with "most of
the Demesnes of our Country Gentlemen ... crowned and incircl'd with ... stately
rows ofLimes 1 Firs, Elms, and other ample, shady, and venerable Trees:'31
With Sylva,Evelyn attempted to introduce a woodland aesthetic to the private
estate, and to convince landowners that gardening and tree cultivation were refined 1
elite activities. In the decades following Sylva'spublication, in fact, we see books de-
voted to the theme of aristocratic comportment and recreation expanding in terms
of subject matter, with gardening joining hunting and fishing as a sanctioned gentle-
manly pursuit. For example, although Nicholas Cox's The Gentleman'sRecreationof
1674 and Richard Blome's The Gentleman~Recreationof 1686 were largely devoted
to hunting, hawking, fishing, and fowling, Stephen Switzer's The Nobleman, Gentle-
man, and Gardener'sRecreationof 1715 and its successor, IchnographiaRustica,01j The
Nobleman)Gentleman,and Gardener'sRecreationof 1718, were both primarily gar-
dening treatises. Gervase Markham's works, published in the early seventeenth cen-
tury with titles like TheEnglishHusbandman or Country Contentments,were collected
and reissued posthumously in 1695 as The CompleatHusbandman and Gentleman's
Recreation~a book that includes sections not only on angling, fowling, hawking,
and hunting, but also on planting and raising trees for timber and fruit. 33 Bolstered
by this publishing trend, Evelyn's exhortations to his social equals and betters to
plant trees had widespread effect, and in the years immediately following Sylva's
195 FOREST
 ~Jr.p. vrr. A'i!ifi••rfa,f Fo><fr-T,m.
initial appearance, ornamental woods began to proliferate in the gardens of the na-
tion's gentry.
a , • , , • a , , • , ,
Like so many other products of the Royal Society during this period that were
, , , a , , • , , a • • , • ,
generated in response to questionnaires, Sylva1 Pomona,the KalendariumHortense)
"
and Acetariaare all lists in the guise of prose. In Sylva this is evident in everything
from the table of contents-a list of trees-to the text itself, which is presented as a
series of numbered paragraphs rather than as an integrated whole. The book gestures
to Baconian precedent both in its title, reminiscent of Bacon's Sylva Sylvarum,and Tkfi=.,n!'IMRl.idftrm"'Vrif~~-:Y.dh,r.PlAl.'JGr&..1r""':LrcdtAbfi0f)
nnv~ J,it.l{mu, acf't,vi:cru!ffe,{!dmMLao&
ttnd ~'/) ~rl,Yh,n: ._TA~,wbk
in its conclusion, which is composed as a set of aphorisms and further exemplifies ;: ... ,,,nral'W'4'akzaf,.~.l'"·ur-dhl"', _ _ ·
JV';jfe /o:M abi,-ut: 8,
Th.IJu;N,, bh., H'.alh an aAir,t:2;0,F,n,t:.,v-id.,,an.i.J
Fpat:wl<U.
Evelyn's tendency to present Sylva as a collection of individual elements. Multiple
voices are also a hallmark of the text. Sylva'scontent, following commonplace book
conventions, is gleaned in large part from other authors. Pomonaincorporates six a a Hum6,,rtJ/
C:nt:e,.._,.
essays by various Royal Society Fellows, set off from one another typographically so a '

as to reinforce the impression of a hybrid text. 34
Rather than presenting Sylva as a finished whole, Evelyn drew attention to its
fragmentary character. In fact, Evelyn defended what he described as his "tumultuary
Method," asserting that "such rude and imperfect draughts" were "far better in their
[the Fellows of the Royal Society's] esteem (and according to my Lord Bacon's) than
such as are adorn'd with more pomp, and ostentatious circumstances, for a pretence
35
to Perfection:' By adopting this aphoristic and fragmentary style, Evelyn hoped
that others would be inspired to contribute to the project by adding their own piece-
meal observations, and that Sylvawould be a work "which our industrious Gardn'er
may himself be continually improving from his own Observations and Experience." 36
As a treatise that exemplifies Bacon's notion of a natural history in both its content
and its form, the fragmentary Sylva promoted the creation of a wooded landscape
that would mirror its own composition as a collection of discrete parts.
Sylva'sthird edition of 1679 included new sections that instructed landowners
in the art of woodland gardening, providing precise directions for planting trees and
constructing walks and clearings in the resulting groves.And in 1706 1 the year of Ev-
elyn's death, a fourth, lavishly illustrated edition appeared (as Silva),which included
a number of plates intended to give visual form to Evelyn's ideal woodland garden.
Figure 78 shows alternative designs for planting trees, some in simple rows 1 others
in quincunx, and still others in more complicated geometrical figures. To illustrate
how the ideal woodland garden might look and function in practice, Evelyn included
a plate with the plan of"Mr. Kirke's Wood" (fig. 79). The creation of the antiquary,
topographer, mathematician) and Fellow of the Royal Society Thomas Kirkei Mose-
ley Wood was located in Cookridge 1 a few miles north of Leeds in Yorkshire. 1his
ornamental grovei dotted with clearings and cut with radiating paths, serves as an
Thi.JZ',/,/ulwv.rin. thji'rJ.t:C'dlww:..c,_ the. Vumberaf He1VJ _in
" .o.zcht1mter,in fmf,:t,J,ul{:u/lum,;e f .JVumber'7Cent;;,n,.md.
mytlurd f t,;,t.:zl./Vum.6e.ruf«lltAe 11'.:mJ ..
Figure 78. Designs for tree planting. Figure 79. ".Mr. Kirk e's Wood at Mosely, Yorkshire at Cookeridge,"
John Evelyn, Silva, Or a Discourseof John Evelyn, Silva, Or a Discourseof Forest-Trees,4th ed. (London,
Forest-Trees,
4th ed. (London, 1706). 1706). © The British Library Board. 1479.d.l 7.
The Henry E. Huntington Library
and Art Gallery.
illustration of the woodland aesthetic Evelyn was so instrumental in creating and
encouraging. 37 According to Kirke's friend 1 distant relative, and Royal Society Fel-
low Ralph Thoresby, Moseley Wood attracted the attention of"almost all Foreigners
and Gentlemen of Curiosity of our own Nation/' who came to Cookridge expressly
to visit this "most surprizing Labyrinth/' which, crisscrossed by intersecting paths,
38
boasted sixty-five crossings and a total of306 differentviews.
Below the plan of the grove is a table that calculates the numbers of views by
multiplying the number of intersections by the number of paths radiating from each
crossing. The plan of the grove and the table below it can be understood as two
equivalent representations, both documenting a particular kind of visual experience.
Utilizing the mathematical principle of permutation, the design of Moseley and its
accompanying table evidence the striking coincidence of a mathematical method
and an aesthetic vocabulary, with multiplication and permutation positioned as
aesthetic aims in themselves. And Moseley would have provided a visual experience
that could not have been more distinct from the quality of impenetrability associated

196 FOREST 197 FOREST

 . j,.
'
. .Flf·_,s._
ci.. ·
Figure SO.Designs for tree planting. Moses Cook. The Manner
of Raising,Ordering,and ImprovingForrest-Trees
(London,
1676). The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
with the forests with which this chapter began. Whereas the archetypal concept of
the forest-as represented in Spenser 1 Peacham, and Manwood-emphasized its
inviolability, here instead we have an artificial grove that aims to provide as many
paths as possible, opening the woodland up to visual penetration 1 mathematical
calculation, and financial speculation.
The fourth edition's augmented final chapter, '"Of the Laws and Statutes for the
Preservation, and Improvement ofWoods," included Evelyn's vehement exhorta-
tion to his fellow landowners to aid the restoration of the kingdom's timber stores by
making woodland gardens of their estates. "What;' he asks, "can be more delightful,
than for Noble Persons, to adorn their goodly Mansions and Demesnes with Trees
ofVenerable Shade, and profitable Timber? By all the Rules and Methods imagin-
able, to Cut and dispose those ampler enclosures into Lawns and Ridings for Ex-
ercise, Health, and Prospect"? 39 "Such an Universal Spirit and Resolution, to fall to
Planting 1 for the repairing of our Wooden-walls and Castles 1 as well as of our Estates 1
should truly animate us;' Evelyn declares. "Let us arise then and plant, and not give
it over till we have repaired the Havock our Barbarous Enemies have made: Pardon
198 FOREST
then this Zeal 1 0 ye Lovers of your Countrey 1 if it have transported me! To you
Princes, Dukes 1 Earles, Lordsi Knights, and Gentlemen 1 Noble Patriots (as most con-
cerned) I speak, to encourage and animate a Work so glorious 1 so necessary:' 40 In or-
der to commend those who had heeded his earlier injunctions, Evelyn also includes
a long list of estates known for their trees, organized alphabetically. Beginning with
Audley-End, Althorp, and Awkland, and ending with Wilton, Woburn, Woodstock,
and Wrest, the list provides a catalogue of gentlemen-gardeners and their improve-
ments, chronicling the great changes wrought on the nation's estates in the wake of
Sylva'sinitial publication, and encouraging others to add their names to the roster.
For Evelyn 1 the solution to the pressing problem of the nation's forests was to be
found in the application of an empirical approach. The conversion oflandscape to
list-that method so characteristic of both Evelyn and of the Royal Society in gen-
eral-was instrumental in reframing nature as resource 1 trees as timber. By replacing
decaying ancient woodland with newly planted trees 1 neatly ordered into rows 1 quin-
cunx:, and other regular patterns, the landscape typology of the forest would be cre-
ated anew, its aesthetic generated from the logic of a list 1 understood as a collection
of parts. No longer impenetrable, the artificial plantation was a forest open to the
light of scientific investigation and knowledge, a forest made available for financial
speculation, a forest shorn of its terrors and secrets 1 perhaps, but a forest, in the final
conclusion, bereft ofboth its sanctity and its wildness.
Forest Gardens
In 1676, Moses Cook, gardener to the Earl of Essex at Cassiobury, published The
Manner of Raising)Ordering,and ImprovingForrest-Trees 1 a treatise avowedly indebt-
ed to Evelyn's Sylva. Cook's publication, which included a few plates of basic designs
for ornamental groves, helped to disseminate techniques for planting 1 designing 1 and
caring for woodland gardens (fig. 80 ). 41 Ten years earlier, Cook had created one of
the first seventeenth-century forest gardens at Cassiobury, where he planted acres
of evergreen and deciduous trees and laid out walks through the resulting woods to
form vistas for the eye and paths for the feet. Round clearings 1 paved with grass or
enlivened with fountains 1 marked changes of direction and provided open enclaves
among the trees (fig. 81 ). 42 The garden at Cassio bury became an exemplar and
Cook's treatise a handbook for the new genre of forest garden 1 a landscape conceived
in mathematical terms as a collection of discrete elements. Both were important
sources for Evelyn as he continued to augment new editions ofhis treatise.
In 1681, Cook, together with the gardener George London, founded the Bromp-
ton Park nursery, London taking the business over about six years later when he
199 FOREST
 Figure 82. "New Parke in Surry
the Seat of the Rt. Hon.ble the
Earle of Rochester," Leonard
K.nyffand Jan Kip, Britannia
nlustrata (London, 1707). ©
The British Library Board.
191.g.15.

Figure 83. Artist unknown,

eighteenth century, British.
TheEarl of Rochester'sHouse,
New Park,Richmond,Surrey.
1700-1705. Oil on canvas,
107.3 x 212.1 cm. Yale Center
for British Art, Paul Mellon
Collection.

Figure 81. "Cashio bury the Seat of the Rt. Hon.ble the Earle ofEssex in Hartfordshire," Leonard Knyff and
Jan Kip, Britanniafllustrata (London, 1707). © 1he British Library Board. 191.g.15.

formed a new partnership with Henry Wise. The Brampton Park nursery became
the most celebrated and successful landscaping firm of its time) and the collabora-
tion between London and Wise one of the great partnerships of garden history 1 with
Wise occupying himself with the nursery, and London taking care of commissions
and designs on individual estates. 43 Around 1692) London was employed by the Earl
of Rochester to remodel his gardens at New Park 1 Surrey. London devised a spec-
tacular parterre cut out of a slope to one side of the house 1 and planted an extensive
forest garden that stretched over the surrounding hills (figs. 82, 83 ). The garden at
New Park can be understood as a development of the genre begnn at Cassio bury.
Acres of woods, interlaced with tree-lined avenues of varying widths and dotted with
fountains) glades 1 and other small openings 1 provided long wa1ks1 secret recesses 1 and
shady bowers. Combinations of avenues 1 their crossings) and clearings supplied a
complex and shifting sequence of experiences. AB at Moseley, various dispositions of
avenues offered differing collections of views 1 with forks providing twoj goose-feet 1
threej crossings 1 four; and the large rond-point 1 eight. Sequence and repetition 1 the
multiplication and alternation of a few basic elements-the avenue 1 the clearing 1 the
crossing 1 the tree-generate an experience that would have been characterized by an
almost infinite multiplicity and variety.

200 FOREST 201 FOREST

 Figure 84. "Designs of
Woods ofForresttrees,"
John)ames, The Theory
and Practice of Gardening,
London, 1712. Collec-
tion Centre Canadien
d'Architecture/ Canadian
Centre for Architecture,
Montreal.
The fashion for forest gardens in England began on the ground, but in 1712, the
trend was furnished with some theoretical ballast when Antoine-Joseph Dezallier
D'Argenville's La theorieet la pratique du jardinagewas translated by John James as
The Theoryand Practiceof Gardening.44 The translation and publication of this work
testifies to a growing English interest in texts on gardening that broached issues of
aesthetics as well as cultivation. Including sections on parterres 1 terraces, walksi
groves 1 cabinetsi bowling greens, fountains) and cascades, as well as directions for
preparing the ground and transferring designs from paper to site) this work brought
the principles of French gardening pioneered by Andre Le Notre across the Chan-
nel. Woods) the "greatest Ornament" of a gardeni were the subject of one chapter
and a sequence of ten plates. 45 These plates) furnishing plans for ornamental groves
of differing size and height 1 convey a sense of progressive multiplication: the first
plate has twu alternate planSj the second, fourj the third 1 sixj the fourth, ten. In plate
3 (fig. 84 ) 1 six different designs for woods are shown. These are all variations of a
single type: a wood) of about four acresi cut by paths and dotted with clearings 1 cen-
tering around a water feature ornamented with a jet or statue. Each example has a
clear centeri and makes use of symmetry and repetition. The designs of the paths are
all variations of a St. Andrew's Cross 1 and the entry paths are invariably intersected
by ring paths of varying shape: octagon) square, oval, diamond. Here we see a limited
number of elements-treesi paths) clearings) benches, and central water features-
combined in six different ways to generate six different landscape designs.
A delight in mathematical exercises of repetition and multiplication is evident
in the text as well) which points out that the fifth design has six entrances 1 and that
it contains "tv.,roGoose-feet) eight Cross-Alleys, and tvvo Recesses) or Sinkings) with
Benches:' 46 This additive aesthetic is present in many of the treatise's descriptions:
202 FOREST
one wood is "pierced to such Advantage 1 that which way soever you turn yourself,
you have three Walles at least that face you 1 and form a Goose-footi and so at the
eight Entrances: A little forwarder you find small Cross-ways with four Alleys; and
in the great ones) ... there are six Walks that meet in a Center) and compose Stars;'
while the fountains likewise evoke pleasure through plurality: they "make a fine
Sight 1 when in walking you discover three Spouts at least in every Alley, in some
Five, and at each end of the Middle-walk you see all the seven:' 47 Like the grove
at Moseley or the gardens at Cassio bury and New Park, these designs deploy the
mathematical operations of multiplication) combination, and permutation to
generate patterns characterized by interpenetrating sight lines and multiple vistasi
their resulting labyrinthine quality the product of an excess of sameness and repeti-
tion. By using the power of number to give shape to nature) the new genre of forest
garden brought together the two aims of profit and pleasure.
Profit and Pleasure
In the opening years of the eighteenth century, the planting of forest gardens con-
tinued apace 1 spurred by a building boom and by the publication of new treatises
like Stephen Switzer's TheNobleman1 Gentleman1 and Gardiner'sRecreationand John
Laurence's The Clergyman1s Recreation)both of 1715, and Richard Bradley's New Im-
provementsof Plantingand Gardeningof 1717. 48 In 1718 1 Laurence and Bradley came
out with revised editions of their works, and Switzer published an expanded version
of The Nobleman1 Gentleman1 and Gardiner'sRecreation)which was given the new title
of IchnographiaRustica.49 All of these treatises addressed the benefits of tree plant-
ing, but it was Switzer's IchnographiaRustica that provided an emerging style with
a theoryi showing how a forest garden could address the requisites of profit while
stimulating the Addisonian "Pleasures of the Imagination:'
The landscape designer, seedsman 1 and author Stephen Switzer began as an ap-
prentice to George London and soon became established in the Brampton Park
nurseries as lieutenant to London and Wise. Although he was prolific as a writer and
designer) little is known of his life.50 It is likely that he was involvedi after London's
deathi in the design ofWray Wood at Castle Howard, a project that in its integra-
tion of irregular and axial pathways marks a watershed in the evolution of the forest
garden. But the first major landscape project with which his name can unquestion-
ably be associated was at Grimsthorpe 1 Lincolnshire, for Robert Bertie 1 4th Duke of
Ancaster.
In the years around l 715i Switzer enlarged the existing gardens by creating an
embanked and bastioned grove that led to a tree-hned walk, which was punctuated
203 FOREST
by framed vistas extending over the surrounding landscape (fig. 85). When he pub-
lishedichnographia Rustica in 1718, he included an idealized version of his design for
Grimsthorpei renaming it the "Manor of Paston/' and used it to illustrate techniques
for surveying and laying out an irregular site (figs. 86, 87). Infigure 86, Switzer de-
picts Paston's landscape "before" his intervention: the estate is divided into thirteen
fields, whose names, like "Clay field;' "Lamb field;' "Windmill field;' and "Well-Pond ,,
I ,· ,,,,,.,,,
field" refer rather prosaically to their features and uses. A walled and gated enclosure
filled with trees is designated as ''AWilderness:• Surrounding the fields of the estate Cm, litlrl

on all sides is open land marked as "Common:' Loru.b .fidd.

Switzer's aim in his treatise was to popularize a style oflandscape design that he \l Oute,·l,d,!.
termed "Extensive and Rural Gardening:' 1his style was noti he acknowledged, of his
own invention, noting that it had been "us'd already in some parts of this Kingdom;'
l' '~
I
,>,,,,,_,,,
although it perhaps was still not as widespread as he hoped it might be. 51 Switzer '~""'"'"'
acknowledged his debt to earlier writers on gardening as welli providing a list of il-
lustrious names that included Hartlib, Blith, and Evelyn, with the latter singled out
52
'•
I Hunts Jklrl.

for particular praise. S'IAlitzer'saim was to displace a Dutch style of gardening and : d✓.'-;_,t,- r( _Ei</ht- rlu,i""
J '----'-1, 6 G
53
to replace it with an approach he referred to as "La Grand Manier" (fig. 88). But
the translation of French gardening to an English climate and soil involved some
adjustments. Switzer recommended that the garden adhere to the traditional French
composition that included a central axial feature) such as a canali a parterre near the
Figure 86. "The Mannour of Paston,"
Stephen Switzer, IchnographiaRus-
tica,Or, TheNobleman,Gentleman,
and Gardener'sRecreation(London,
1718). Collection Centre Canadien
d'Architecture/Canadian Centre for
Architecture, Montreal.

Figure 87. "The Manor ofPaston di-

vided and planted into Rural Gardens,"
Stephen Switzer, IchnographiaRustica1
Or, TheNobleman, Gentleman,and
Gardener'sRecreation(London, 1718).
Collection Centre Canadien cl.Architec-
ture/Canadian Centre for Architecture,
Montreal.
~

''

Figure 85. William Stukeley, "Grimsthorp Gardens 26 Jul. 1736:' The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford,
Department ofWestern Manuscripts, MS. Top. Gen d. 14, fol. 36v.

204 FOREST 205 FOREST


Figw-e88. La Grand Manier, Stephen Switzer,IchnographiaRustica1 Or, TheNobleman,Gentleman,and Gardener's
Recreation(London, 1718). Collection Centre Canadien d.Architecture/Canadian Centre for Architecture,
Montreal.
housej terraces for connecting changes in levelj and an extensive grove at a further
distance. He also argued 1 however 1 for an overall simplification 1 reinterpreting the
ornate French parterre as a set of tidy plots of grass and gravel.
We can see these recommendations implemented in Switzer's design for the im-
proved landscape of Pastoni where the garden is connected to the house by a series
of terraces 1 while a plain grass parterre, terminated with a basin and jet, carpets the
area of the garden closest to the house. A central axis is formed by a long walk that
runs from the house through a bastioned ornamental grove 1 then shoots out in be-
tween rectangular clumps of trees into the countrysidei extending all the way to the
edge of the furthest field where it is terminated by a grass plat. Just as striking, how-
ever, are the changes to the agricultural land. Although the original boundary lines
of the fields have mostly been retained, they are now intersected by meandering ser-
pentine paths that bring the different parts of the estate into correspondencei while
the fields themselves are now divided from one another and framed by plantings,
and ornamented with basins and individual trees. A kitchen garden with a central
basin has appeared in the Windmill field, and what seems to be a collection of fish
ponds disposed into the plan of a fortress has been inserted into the "Caw [cow?]
field:'
Particularly interesting in this context is the treatment of the area of the estate
labeled as ''A Wilderness:' Here 1 wilderness is no longer the wild land outside of or
opposed to the space of cultivation, it is instead an enclosedi gated, protected area.
Its transformation into a labyrinth in the second plate, whose combination of axial
206 FOREST
and irregular paths vividly recalls the labyrinth at Versailles, retains the emotional
power of the archetypal forest by gesturing to the fear of getting lost, but transforms
it into a game, while the mythological beasts and dragons have been replaced by stat-
ues of more benevolent sylvan gods. The fear occasioned by an encounter with the
forest wilderness in its original incarnation has been transformed into a mere frisson
of excitement that adds piquancy to a safe form ofleisured recreation.
Of all the elements of a garden, for Switzer the most important was the grove 1
"the greatest of all the natural Embellishments of our Country Seats:' In Switzer's
chapter on "Woods 1 Groves, Wildernesses 1 Parks," he distinguished between the
"open Park or Forest, where the Owner rides and hunts;' and the garden grove de-
signed for walking. Whereas in the hunting park a regular disposition oflong open
avenues is appropriate 1 the garden grove should be designed on an irregular site. A
plot "naturally compos'd of several Levels, Hills, and Hollows ... is a Place design'd
by Nature, for the Exercise of a good Genius in Gardning," Switzer writes 1 adding
that the wood should be cut with both straight and meandering paths, and planted
with evergreen and deciduous trees to make "an agreeable Mixture and Variety:' In
the hollows and depressions 1 small gardens and cabinets "of infinite variety" can be
made, and care should be taken that the paths leading to them are not prolonged too
much "for that will make one unvoidably split upon the former Error ofRegnlarity:•
Trees should be cut to frame distant prospects 1 or retained to hide unsightly ones 1
and where the wood is thin the trees may be cleared and open lawns planted. Finally,
Switzer cautions that the two sides of the grove should not mirror one another 1
for "this is, in Truth, the having of only half a Gardenj since wherever the sides are
equally the same 1 when one has seen and enjoy'd the half, there is little Occasion to
view the same all over again."
By following the dictates of the site 1 "the natural Gardener" will succeed in creat-
ing a garden that unites the embellishments of art with an imitation of an ideal forest
landscape. This imitation is best achieved by what Switzer characterizes as «follow-
ing nature": ''As soon as the Designer has stroke out by Arti some of the roughest
and boldest of his strokes 1 he ought to pursue Nature afterwards, and by as many
Twirlings and Windings of his Villa will allow, will endeavour to diversify his Views,
always striving that they may be so intermix\ as not to be all discover'd at oncei but
that there should be as much as possible, something appearing new and diverting 1
while the whole should correspond together by the mazie Error of its natural Av-
enues and Meanders:' 54
Switzer's recommendations for the design of a "natural" garden merge into a uni-
fied vision in the final chapters of his treatise 1 where he presents his ideal garden in
both verbal and visual form. "The Plan of an Ideal Rural Garden," perhaps Switzer's
207 FOREST
 __
,,,':%<'"';
,

most famous plate, provides an illustration ofhis "natural" gardening aesthetic (fig.
89). The manor house, situated in the lower third of the plate, is surrounded by gar-
dens, pastures, and fields of crops, which are "handsomely divided by Avenues and
Hedges" into plots of various shape. The estate as a whole is bisected by a central axis
formed by a sequence of canals and basins, while water is scattered around in other
parts of the estate to provide pools for boating and fishing. Groves, clearings, and
fields of crops are mingled together, recalling Switzer's assertion that "Hedge Rows,
little natural Coppices, large Woods, Corn Fields, &c. mix'd one amongst another,
are as delightful as the finest Garden:' And threading its way throughout the entire
estate is a grand, tree-lined serpentine path, whose turning and windings ensure that
the "Owner does not see all his Business at once, but is insensibly led from one Place
to another) from a Lawn to a Hill, or a Dale, which he is not apt to perceive, till he is
just upon it;' and which provide a feast for the senses and the mind, as it is "in these
direct Circular and Serpentine Lines that the :Mind is pleasingly carried forwards and
backwardsi and while in one place a Valley presents itself; then likewise Hills, Basons
of Water, and Fish Ponds, and little Glades cut down to shew for Cascades" will be
present in others.
Switzer's ideal rural garden is another version oflandscape as list, made up of
a collection of individual features, compartmentalized and divided, yet linked one
to another by grand axial and serpentine lines. It represents the improved English
countryside in epitome, incorporating such features as hills, valleys, arable land,
forest, lakes 1 streams, glades, and meadows in a concentrated areai with one part
divided from another by avenues and hedges. By creating an aesthetics that was ap-
plicable to arable land, and diminishing the distinction between countryside and
garden, Switzer united the two principles of profit and pleasure. Yet this relationship
between garden and arable works in two reciprocal ways. Not only did Switzer's "Ex-
tensive and Rural" garden infuse a landscape oflabor with the aesthetics of a garden,
but the typology of enclosed arable field is also echoed in the compartmentalized
spaces of the garden. In this waYicountryside and garden are united by the same
kinds of spatial configurations and viewing practices 1 ones that alternate between the
confines of compartments and the extensiveness of axial views. 55
For Joseph Addison, whose Essay on the Pleasuresof the Imaginationwas quoted
extensively in IchnographiaRustica,serving as the theoretical foundation of Switzer's
text, prospect and property were intimately connected. Although Addison admitted
that it might be "of ill consequence to the public 1 as well as unprofitable to private
persons, to alienate so much ground from pasturage and the plough in many parts
Figure 89. An Ideal Rural Garden, Stephen Switzer, lchnographiaRustica, Or, TheNobleman, Gentleman,and
of a country," he nonetheless suggests "why may not a whole estate be thrown into Gardener'sRecreation(London, 1718). Collection Centre Canadien dArchitecture/Canadian Centre for
a kind of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much to the profit as the Architecture, Montreal.

208 FOREST 209 FOREST

most famous plate, provides an illustration ofhis "natural" gardening aesthetic (fig.
89). The manor house, situated in the lower third of the plate, is surrounded by gar-
dens1 pastures 1and fields of crops 1which are "handsomely divided by Avenues and
Hedges" into plots of various shape. The estate as a whole is bisected by a central axis
formed by a sequence of canals and basins 1while water is scattered around in other
parts of the estate to provide pools for boating and fishing. Groves 1clearings 1 and
fields of crops are mingled together 1recalling Switzer's assertion that "Hedge Rows 1
little natural Coppices 1large Woods 1Corn Fields 1&c. mix'd one amongst another 1
are as delightful as the finest Garden." And threading its way throughout the entire
estate is a grand 1tree-lined serpentine pathi whose turning and windings ensure that
the "Owner does not see all his Business at oncei but is insensibly led from one Place
to another 1from a Lawn to a Hilli or a Dale 1which he is not apt to perceivei till he is
just upon it/' and which provide a feast for the senses and the mindi as it is "in these
direct Circular and Serpentine Lines that the Mind is pleasingly carried forwards and
backw-ards; and while in one place a Valley presents itself; then likewise Hillsi Basons
ofWater, and Fish Ponds, and little Glades cut down to shew for Cascades" will be
present in others.
Switzer's ideal rural garden is another version oflandscape as listi made up of
a collection of individual features, compartmentalized and dividedi yet linked one
to another by grand axial and serpentine lines. It represents the improved English
countryside in epitome 1incorporating such features as hillsi valleys, arable landi
forest, lakes 1 streams, glades 1 and meadows in a concentrated area, with one part
divided from another by avenues and hedges. By creating an aesthetics that was ap-
plicable to arable land 1and diminishing the distinction betvveen countryside and
garden, Switzer united the two principles of profit and pleasure. Yet this relationship
between garden and arable works in tvvo reciprocal ways. Not only did Switzer's "Ex-
tensive and Rural" garden infuse a landscape oflabor with the aesthetics of a garden 1
but the typology of enclosed arable field is also echoed in the compartmentalized
spaces of the garden. In this way, countryside and garden are united by the same
kinds of spatial configurations and viewing practices 1 ones that alternate between the
confines of compartments and the extensiveness of axial views. 55
For Joseph Addison, whose Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagination was quoted
extensively in Ichnographia Rustica, serving as the theoretical foundation of Switzer's
text 1prospect and property were intimately connected. Although Addison admitted
that it might be "of ill consequence to the public, as well as unprofitable to private
persons 1to alienate so much ground from pasturage and the plough in many parts
Figure 89. An Ideal Rural Garden, Stephen Switzer, IchnographiaRustica, Or, TheNobleman, Gentleman,and
of a country," he nonetheless suggests "why may not a whole estate be thrown into Gardener'sRecreation(London, 1718 ). Collection Centre Cana di en cl.Architecture/Canadian Centre for
a kind of garden by frequent plantations, that may turn as much to the profit as the Architecture, Montreal.

208 FOREST 209 FOREST

pleasure of the owner?" The combination of nature and art can produce a landscape
that speaks both to aesthetic and economic concerns: ''Amarsh overgrown with wil-
lows, or a mountain shaded with oaks 1 are not only more beautiful 1 but more benefi-
cial1than when they lie bare and unadorned. Fields of corn make a pleasant prospect 1

and if the walks were a little taken care of that lie between them 1if the natural em-
broidery of the meadows were helped and improved by some small additions of art 1
and the several rows of hedges set off by trees and flowers that the soil was capable
of receiving 1a man might make a pretty landscape of his own possessions;' he coun-
sels.56The alienation of vast tracts ofland from traditional patterns of agriculture
and pasture is thus justified by considerations of visual pleasure 1 with the economic
interest inherent to this act tempered by the mollifying presence of aesthetic disin-
terestedness. 57
Although none of the many gardens designed by Switzer presents an exact
implementation of his ideal, the gardens at Riskins (or Richins), Buckinghamshire,
and Wrest Park, Bedfordshire, have some pronounced affinities with his published
plate. 58 Switzer had praised Wrest Park in his IchnographiaRustica,grouping it along
Figure 90. "Wrest House & Parke in ye County ofBedford, the Seat of ye Rt. Hon.ble Henry Earl
with Wanstead and Wray Wood at Castle Howard 1 of which he wrote: "'Tis There of Kent," Leonard Knyff andJan Kip, Britannialllustrata(London, 1707), plate 19. The Henry E.
that Nature is truly imitated, if not excell'd 1and from which the Ingenious may draw Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

the best of their Schemes in Natural and Rural Gardening: 'Tis There that she is by a
kind of fortuitous Conduct pursued through all her most intricate Mazes, and taught
even to exceed her own selfin the Natura-Linear 1 and much more Natural and Pro-
miscuous Disposition of her Beauties:' 59By using Addison's aesthetics as the basis
for his new style 1and labeling it as "extensive;' "rural," and "natural," Switzer natural-
ized the radically new landscape created by the proponents and processes of enclo-
sure, setting up an enclosed and privatized countryside as the British ideal.

Imitation and Improvement: Wrest Park

Wrest Park was the principal estate of Henry Grey, who became the first Duke of
Kent in 1702. For almost forty years, from the year of his inheritance until his death
in 1740, the Duke of Kent made Wrest Park a perpetual work in progress as he con-
tinually altered and, redesigned his gardens. An unusually rich set of plans and views
made over the course of the first third of the eighteenth century enables us to map
the changing face of this estate over a considerable span of time. 60Two bird's-eye
views of Wrest were published by Jan Kip and Leonard Knyff in Britanniafllustrata
in 1707, although most likely they were drawn a number of years earlier (figs. 90,
Figure 91. Wrest House & Parke in ye County ofBedford, the Seat of ye Rt. Hon.ble Henry Earl
91) 1and manuscript plans and views dating from the 172Os survive in the archives of of Kent," Leonard Knyff andJan Kip, Britanniafllustrata(London, 1707), plate 20. The Heruy
the Bedfordshire County Record Office (fig. 92 ). In addition, two plans were made E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery.

210 FOREST 211 FOREST


Figure 92. Wrest Park Estate Atlas, folio 3: Silsoe, Wrest Park, n.d. (ca. 1719 ). "Rest Park in Bedfordshire the
Seat of His Grace the Duke of Kent" (Edward Laurence, surveyor). Ink and watercolor (blue and gray) on
paper, backed with blue paper, 72.39 x 33.02 cm. Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service (Lucas Collection
133/286 f.3). Photograph© English Heritage.
by the topographer John Rocque in the 1730s: one in 1735 (fig. 94) and another in
1737, which was subsequently published by Rocque and Thomas Badeslade in their
61
VitruviusBritannicus,Volumethe Fourth of 1739.
The distant view ofWrest by Kip and Knyff (see fig. 90) shows the estate and
its gardens in the middle of a large tract of gently rolling countryside whose distinc-
tive features are a single hill to the east and two wooded areas to the southwest. One
powerful axis stretches from the estate's gated entrance to the northi down a wide
avenue lined with double rows of treesi through the house 1 and along a canal that
extends out toward the horizon. Much of the property is taken up by a large deer
park. The close bird's-eye view (see fig. 91) allows us to see the gardens near the
house in more detail The garden immediately to the southi constructed between
1687 and l 702i according to the estate accountsi is divided into two rectangular
212 FOREST
Figure 93. Pieter Tillemans ( 1684-1734 ), "My Lady Duchess Square; n.d. Watercolor on paper,
22.86 x 34.29 in. Bedfordshire & Luton Archives Service (Lucas Collection 133/134).
and two square quarters. The rectangular quarters 1 completed circa 1700, are sub-
divided into four grass plats dotted with potted dwarf evergreen trees surrounding
a central basin with a jet. Tue square quarters house two hedge labyrinths (each
referred to as a "wilderness" in the estate accounts) of different design 1 one made of
yew and the other ofblackthorn, constructed between 1692 and 1698. The walls that
surround this garden support espaliered fruit treesi as do those enclosing an orchard
to the east of the housej estate accounts document purchases from Henry Wise and
the Brampton Park nursery in 1697 and 1698. To the east there is an ornamental
parterre, two diagonally oriented canalsi more orchardsi and what appears to be a
kitchen garden with beds of vegetables or herbs. Beyond the enclosed gardens the
long canali framed by two rows of treesi continues the principal north-south axis
into the deer park. 62
This garden was largely swept away upon Henry Grey's accession to the duke-
dom. An estate map preserved in the Bedfordshire County Record Office docu-
ments the changes made between 1702 and about 1720 (see fig. 92). Although the
northern part of the estate appears to have changed little, the same cannot be said of
the gardens to the south. In 1703, a number of new tree-planting campaigns began,
including one at Cain Hill to the east of the house where the ascent was smoothed
into a regular shape 1 planted with trees to form a radiating pattern of avenues, and
213 FOREST
topped with a summerhouse by Thomas Archer. In 1707 the account book records
that the yew wilderness was dug up and it is likely that the blackthorn maze was
removed at this time as well. Most dramatically, however, the area around the canal
was transformed into an extensive forest garden. Tree planting began on both sides
of the canal around 1710, and the resulting grove was pierced with straighti angled,
and winding walks and dotted with square and circular cabinets. 63 The canal was
extended with two arms and provided with a new focal point: a pavilion built in
1708-1711 byTuomasArcher. 64
The resulting forest garden was portrayed in two anonymous panoramic water-
color views dating from about 1721-1722, and in a series of nine watercolors by
Pieter Tillemans done some time after 1726. 65 One of the panoramas is drawn from
a point behind the pavilion: it depicts the long axis of the canal stretching toward
the house, and the summerhouse at the top of Cain Hill up to the right. Tue view
shows the new groves, enclosed by hedges and intersected by diagonal paths, and
documents the way in which Archer's pavilion and summerhouse act as focal points,
their multifaceted sides aligned with the paths that radiate from them. Small clear-
ings and cabinets cut into the woods offer enclosed spaces that contrast with the
extensiveness of the main axis of the canal and other principal avenues. Pieter Tille-
mans's views of the south garden depict a corner ofWrest Park from four alternating
perspectives and represent a building phase not shown on any of the surviving plans 1
Figure 94.John Rocque, Plan of Wrest Park, Bedfordshire,1735. © The British Library Board. Maps. K.Top.7.11.a.
while the enclosed nature of the cabinets within the grove is vividly illustrated by
his view of"My Lady Duchess Square" (fig. 93 ). In all of these images, the aesthetic
possibilities offered by wooded groves are exhibited from numerous points of view. to imagine strolling down its paths. Their inclusion of both front and back elevations
A delight in variety is exhibited by the differing width, shape, and degree of shade of conveys an impression of multiplicity, underscoring the sense that there is no single
the forest paths, as well as by the various forms of the plots of trees bounded by the perspective capable of providing total knowledge. Although partially a result of com-
grove's intersecting paths. positional conventions 1 the effect of these images is to give the viewer a sense that
The .finalphase ofWrest's construction prior to the Duke of Kent's death is illus- the experience ofWrest is one of succession 1 of a chain of experiences and of a multi-
trated in the two maps engraved by John Rocque in the 1730s. Tue map from 1735 tude of views, but that the order of this sequence of views is unimportant 1 involving
(see fig. 94) presents a plan of the garden surrounded by small vignettes of the prin- a degree of randomness. 66
cipal architectural elements disposed within it, including a view of the main house 1 Wrest is the artful incarnation of the improved 1 empiricist landscape. Composed
the front, back, and plan of the pavilion, the Hill House in both plan and elevation, of a collection of elements, intended to be experienced as a sequence of discrete
two views and a plan of the Bowling Green House, the alcove seat in My Lady Duch- but variously ordered experiences 1 it is garden as list. The enclosed cabinets of the
ess's Walk, Diana's Temple, and an obelisk situated in the fields outside of the garden. grove 1 bounded by hedges 1 mirror the new enclosed spaces of the countryside: they
The map indicates that narrow serpentine paths have been added to the grove, some are parallel spatial manifestations of the ideology of improvement. Tue diagonal al-
of them replacing earlier axial paths. Tue topographical conventions of Rocque's lees are perfected versions of the new enclosed roads depicted on Ogilby's maps,
plan, which join ichnography to perspectival renderings of individual objects like their straight contours providing lines of sight that give the eye the illusion of an
treesi swansi and monuments 1 as well as the vignettes illustrating the garden build- unfettered liberty. Furthermore 1 the garden presents the three principal varieties of
ings in their settings, encourage the viewer to enter mentally into the image's space, wasteland in their imitated and aestheticized form. Swamp, mountain 1 and forest

214 FOREST 215 FOREST

have become the rectangular canal, the conical mount 1 and the compartmentalized
grove 1essential garden features discussed by Evelyn in his "Elysium Britannicum"
and important parts of his own garden at Sayes Court in Deptford. If, according to
Bacon 1imitation was the surest proof of mastery, Wrest's idealized representation of
the new 1 improved landscape of enclosure stood as confirmation that the successful
transformation of the nation's wasteland into a British Elysium had been achieved.

On the bottom register ofRocque's 1735 map of Wrest are two views of the Bowl-
ing Green House, designed in the 1730s by Batty Langley. In 1728 Langley had
published two works that addressed the subject of tree planting, New Principlesof
Gardening)Or the Laying out and PlantingParterres)Groves)Wildernesses)Labyrinths1
Avenues,Parks,&c.,and A SureMethod of ImprovingEstatesby Plantationsof Oak,
Elm, Ash, &c.Although both treatises are clearly indebted to Sylva,it is telling that
whereas Evelyn had combined discussions of the profitable and the pleasurable as-
pects of tree planting in a single treatise, Langley divides them into two. Like Sylva,A
SureMethod of ImprovingEstatesorganizes its discussion of tree cultivation according
to species. But whereas a few varieties of trees) like the horse chestnut 1lime) and ma-
ple1 are considered as both timber and as ornamental shade) others) like the oak 1 elm,
ash, and beech, are discussed primarily as timber (fig. 95). 67 Langley's New Principles
of Gardeningis likewise presented as a list of botanical specimens 1 including sections
on fruit trees 1 forest trees 1 evergreens 1 flowers, kitchen garden vegetables 1 and medic-
inal herbs 1 but in addition to directions regarding the care and propagation of plantsi

Figure 95. Trees as timber. Batty

Langley, A SureMethod of Improving
Estates(London, 1728). The William
Figure 96. Plan of a garden with wildernesses and groves. Batty Langley, New Principles
Andrews Clark Memorial Library.
of Gardening(London, 1728 ). The William Andrews Clark Memorial Library.

Langley also addresses the question of design. 1n a chapter entitled "Of the Disposi-
tion of Gardens in General;' he provides a list of directions for laying out "grand"
and "rural" gardens, illustrated with a series of extraordinary plates illustrating his
conception of the "arti-natural style" (fig. 96). Contending that "the End and Design
of a good Garden, is to be both profitable and delightful;' Langley echoes Addison,
stressing that "its Parts should be always presenting new Objects 1 which is a continu~
68
al Entertainment to the Eye 1 and raises a Pleasure oflmagination:' Langley's groves
,a,,.,,,,.,-1 ,:, 11,5 _N ,; tll m ,,,) M~. iru.~ .~ol.idity ;'/" K O.
present a further development of the approach found in John James and Switzer ( the

217 FOREST
216 FOREST
two best books on gardening 1in Langley's opinion). He juxtaposes axial dispositions
with concentric 1irregular, and even seemingly random layouts 1and advises that "in
the Planting of Groves 1you must observe a regular Irregularity; not planting them
according to the common Method like an Orchard, with their trees in straight Lines
ranging every Way, but in a rural Manner 1as if they had receiv' d their Situation from
Nature itsel£"69
Although Langley was no great theoretician, he did like to make lists. The "wil-
derness;' for example, is described as being cut through with meandering paths and
ornamented with "the agreeable Entertainments of Flower Gardens 1Fruit Gardens,
Orangerys 1 Groves of Forest Trees, and Ever-Greens, Open-Plains, Kitchen Gardens,
Physick Gardens, Paddocks of Sheep, Deer, Cows, &c. Vineyards, Inclosures of
Corn 1Grass, Clover, &c. Cones of Fruit Trees, Forest Trees 1Ever-Greens 1Flowering
Shrubs 1Basons, Fountains 1 Canals, Cascades 1Grottos 1 Warrens of Hares and Rab-
bets1 Aviaries 1Manazeries [menageries JiBowling-Greens; and those rural Objects 1
Hay Stacks, and Wood Piles, as in a Farmer's Yard in the Country:' At first glance this
list appears surprising: what are haystacks 1enclosures of corn 1 cows, or kitchen gar-
dens doing in a "wilderness"? Furthermore, this list is strikingly similar to Langley's
equally exhaustive (or exhausting) list of the elements to be included in "a beautiful
Rural garden:' 70 Like a set of nested Chinese boxes, the garden was to be made up of
a collection of elements, each of which was also formed of a collection of elements.
But even more importantly 1the definitions of wilderness and garden now overlap
to such a degree that it becomes difficult to distinguish them from one another: the
artificial wilderness becomes an idealized version of the nation's countryside as a
whole. The intended effect of including all of these features and ornaments within
the wilderness was one of profusion and variety: the individual components were
to be "dispos'd of in such a Manner, and Distance, as not to see1or know of the next
approaching 1 when we have seen the first, so that we are continually entertain'd with
new unexpectedObjectsat everyStep we take;for the Entrances into those Parts being
made intricate/ we can neverknow when we haveseenthe whole.Which (ifI mistake
not);' Langley concludes, "is the true End and Design oflaying out Gardens of
Pleasure:' 11
Wildernesses were Ofparticular interest to Langley; the plates illustrating his
book include an "improvement on the Labyrinth of Versailles/' as well as numer-
ous wildernesses of his own design. In TheFloweringof the LandscapeGarden,Mark
Laird has traced the fascinating development of the designed wilderness under the
combined influence ofBatty Langley, Richard Bradley, and Phillip Miller. Miller's
handbook, The GardenersDictionary,was first published in 1731 and became one of
the most influential gardening texts of the eighteenth century. Its long entry on the
218 FOREST
subject of"wilderness" makes clear that the idea of the forest garden was shifting. As
Laird establishes, the high hedges of forest gardens like Wrest were being replaced by
much lower enclosures and a form of graduated planting that relegated high trees to
the middle of compartments arid surrounded them with progressively lower-growth
shrubs. The serpentine walks of these newer wildernesses were thus bordered with
small flowering plants like roses and honeysuckles, creating a completely different
visual experience from the earlier forest gardens; sight was now allowed to penetrate
between the variously spaced trunks of the deciduous and evergreen trees, rather
than being contained within the high walls of palisades. 72
Tracing these changing notions of wilderness draws attention to an important
theme. For the garden designers of the first half of the eighteenth century, wilder-
ness was not a remote and perilous landscape 1 the haunt of wild beasts, but closer
to an artificial Eden, generous with its fruits and flowers, inhabited by benevolent
animals, stocked with grain and hay and wood. The remaining associations common
to both the original meaning of the term and its new incarnation were the presence
of trees, and a labyrinthine quality augmented (as recommended by both Miller and
Langley) by the meandering, serpentine lines of paths. The purpose ofan artificial
wilderness was to provide those "pleasures of the imagination" furnished by novelty 1
variety 1and the surprise elicited by a knowledge that was always partial 1 fragmentary 1
and incomplete. In this way they represent the most evolved incarnation of an em-
pirical1 additive aesthetic. In their successful imitation (and hence their mastery) of
this primordial landscape type, they redefine the original sylva1 or wild forest 1as gar-
den. And although Langley's designs stand in a line that can be traced directly back
to the concerns espoused by Hartlib and the members of his circle, they also look
forward, toward an emerging interest in irregular landscape design that was to find
its fullest expression in the aesthetic of the picturesque.
Like Wrest, most of the gardens that were created as a result of the tree-planting
campaign spearheaded by John Evelyn and the Royal Society fell to a new wave
of "improvements" associated with the name of Capability Brown. In the middle
decades of the eighteenth century, the astonishingly successful landscape designer
succeeded in wiping away most of the traces of the ornamental groves that had been
planted only a few decades earlier. In thrall to changing tides of taste, landowners
replaced their shady walks and cabinets with broad swaths oflawn surrounded by
thin belts of trees, punctuated merely by the occasional clump. 73 The era of the forest
garden was overi but the topic of the forest was by no means exhausted. In the sec-
ond half of the eighteenth century, it experienced a significant revival1spearheaded 1
on the one hand, by new developments in painting 1 and, on the other, by proponents
of the picturesque.
219 FOREST
Gainsborough's Forest
The painting by Thomas Gainsborough variously known as CornardWood or Gains-
borough~Forestis a youthful work, beguu, according to Gainsborough himself, be-
fore he left home in 1740 atthe age of thirteen, although it most probably was not
completed until 1748 (fig. 97). 74 Nonetheless, it contains themes that would preoc-
cupy the artist throughout his working life. The subject of the painting is a wooded
landscape -with a road running through it; gently rolling ground covered with bushes
and other low undergrowth surrounds the road to either side, while to the right, the
waters of a pool fringed with burdocks and long grasses reflect the darkening sky.
The road leads the eye toward a vista 1 just to the left of center 1 centering on a church
steeple, which has been identified (though with no sure proof) as that of the village
Figure 97, Thomas Gainsborough, Cornard Wood,near Sudbury,Suffolk ( Gainsborough's
Forest),1748.
Oil on canvas, 122 x 155 cm.© Copyright The National Gallery, London, 2013.
220 FOREST
of Great Cornard, located near Gainsborough's natal home of Sudbury. Ori the road
we see two travelers: one, a caped figure riding on horseback, the other, a man ac-
companied by his dog, his. more humble station suggested by the fact tbat he is mak-
ing his way on foot.
Dispersed throughout the forest landscape are other figures occupied with vari-
ous tasks. In the foreground, we see a man kneeling on a pile ofbranches 1 forming
them into a neat bundle; he is surrounded on both sides by piles oflarger branches
that have been sawn into logs. Presumably, he is preparing all of this wood so that it
can be taken back home, in keeping with his right to Common ofEstovers. Further
back, a young man standing on a pile of earth and holding a shovel exhibits the ex-
ercise of his right either to Common ofTurbary or of Soil; he is kept company by a
young woman with her dog. Peering here and there between the trees are asses and
cattle, grazing in the forest according to their owner's rights to Common of Pasture.
As in Gainsborough's WoodedLandscapewith a Cottageand Shepherd (see fig. 8), this
painting depicts a local landscape being used and enjoyed by its inhabitants accord-
ing to age-old rightsi creating a nostalgic vision of a forest parish whose way oflife 1 at
the time of the painting's composition, was under steady and increasing threat from
the enclosure movement.
According to the Academy's established hierarchy, landscape painting occupied
a low place in the ranking of genres. As is well known (and even perhaps partly be-
cause of this inferior position), it was Gainsborough's passion. In a letter to his friend
William Jackson, Gainsborough jocularly defended his attraction to landscape paint-
ing by contrasting the amount of work needed to complete a history painting versus
that required by the "little dirty subjects of coal horses & jackasses and such fignres
as I fill up with:' 75 By characterizing the elements oflandscape paintings as "little
dirty subjects;' Gainsborough borrows the vocabulary of disgust, deploying it to ex-
press the equivocal appeal of these representations of"low life."
Landscape, together with the other lower genres of still life and "petitgenre;'or
scenes of peasants and rural life, were most commonly associated with the Dutch.
And despite its local subject matter, in its composition and color scheme Gainsbor-
ough'sForestmakes manifest its indebtedness to Dutch paintings, particularly the
forest scenes of Jacob van Ruisdael. But Gainsborough interprets his painterly prece-
dents in important ways. As Ann Bermingham has observed in Landscapeand Ideolo-
gy, the trees in this painting are disposed along parallel lines that mimic the structure
of the allees of a forest garden. Whereas the central opening, which aligns with the
road that meanders into the background 1 provides a view of the church steeple 1 the
other parallel lines of trees simply lead deeper into the forest: they provide axes, but
with no corresponding views. As Bermingham points out, "These screens of trees
221 FOREST
and allees supply a consistent organizing principle in the early landscapes. Unlike
Ruisdael's screens) however) they unfocus the composition. Rather than direct the
eye through the landscapes) they contain it 1delaying or actually frustrating its jour-
ney to the horizon:' By amassing the elements ofhis landscape and compressing
them all into the foreground 1 Gainsborough presents landscape as "a collection of
things rather than an expanse of space; as a confined place rather than a prospect." 76
As we have seen, this kind of fragmentation was the principal defining character-
istic of the forest garden. And just as the forest garden echoed the spatial configura-
tion of enclosure in its compartmentalization of spaces) the same logic can be found
to be operating in Gainsborough's forest painting as well, where 1as Bermingham
has argued, "the bounded and broken spaces of these landscapes, together with
their blocking screens of trees, relocate the phenomenon of enclosure in the viewer's
visual perception itself The contemporary parceling of the commons and wastes
into pieces of property that is rejected in the subject matter is at the same time
reinstated in the form as piecemeal perception of the countryside .... Although
Gainsborough's rustic landscapes do not actually depict the eighteenth-century en-
closures1 they enforce a mode of perception that profoundly accommodates them:' 77
Thus, Gainsborough's painting takes a spatial configuration that had been elaborated
in the artificial landscape of the forest garden and superimposes it back onto the
original forest.
But Gainsborough's
Forestalso presents a vision of a social landscape that was fast
disappearing. Its depiction of a forest open to the free exercise of common rights and
privileges offers a construction of wooded landscape far removed from the private
artificial plantations that had been created to serve as forest substitutes. The nostal-
gia of this) and of many of Gainsborough's other works, is for a vanishing way of life.
It is a nostalgia, however) achieved by suppressing all of the contentious history that
marked forest history from the start. And Gainsborough's perspective, which, in its
nostalgia, relegates the forest to history; was to become crucial to the emerging land-
scape aesthetic of the picturesque.

Return to the Forest
When William Gilpin published his Remarks on ForestSceneryand other Woodland
Viewsin 1791, he was already the celebrated prophet of the picturesque, famous for
his books on the picturesque scenery of the River Wye) the Lake District, and the
Highlands of Scotland (fig. 98 ). Unlike his other books, however, which were based
on tours conducted almost every summer between 1768 and 1776 when he was
headmaster of the boy's school at Cheam 1Remarks on ForestScenerywas a work
Figure 98. Manuscript page from William Gilpin, Remarkson ForestScenery.London, 1791. The Bodleian
Library, University of Oxford, MS. Eng. Misc. e. 3326, 23-24.
composed in the years after he had moved from Cheam to Boldre in the New For-
est, to take up the position ofvicar. 78
Like every other book on the subject of trees published in England during the
eighteenth century; Remarks on ForestScenerytook Sylva as its touchstone. But

222 FOREST 223 FOREST

 "'""~
"'•')p,

despite its frequent references to Evelyn's foundational work, the book Gilpin pro~
duced took a radically different perspective. Remarks on ForestSceneryis organized
,.:.y';//2ad/./-~rn
rl6.~1:f'·/;/[/;/d;>,,~--r?71
c(v;r111ch /l~•rd.;h,e/c./!1,:1J7
into three sections: Book One treats trees as single objects, investigating their gener-
-;unter /he 101, 1 n-u-C,e/✓ /4/ic- trNtk~ daz ·rIV'c.11-<1':::'JY
rc<:7//4:_:.·~
al picturesque qualities, the specific character of particular species 1and narrating the
histories of individual celebrated or famous trees. Book Two treats trees in combina-
tion, from the clump to the forest (fig. 99 ), and provides a short overview of forest
history that summarizes the state of the forests of Great Britain 1largely gleaned from
John St. John's Observationson the Land Revenueof the Crown,pubhshed in 1787. 79
Book Three is entirely devoted to the New Forest 1which is described from three per-
spectives: with respect to its general topography and situation 1through descriptions
of particular scenes, and byway of a discussion of its characteristic animals. Thus 1it
h-1,/:,,::r,',71;;/4.t..-'Jru/l -/a.Jt:._,/1
.l/U(-/1..'z/,,{~:1';}7ab-a,
is primarily Book One 1with its discussion of tree species and its individual histories ~-? 0

of famous trees 1that owes the greatest debt to Sylva.But whereas Evelyn's focus had
been on artificial plantations 1Gilpin 1with his picturesque bias) takes the existing
forest as his subject.
Gilpin makes short shrift both of clumps and of park scenery, enjoining his
readers to turn their backs on the "scenes of art;' and "hasten to the chief object of
our pursuit 1the wild scenes of nature-the wood-the copse-the glen-and open-
grove:'Gilpin does not restrict his use of the term "forest" to the legal definition
inherited from forest law; instead 1he includes "every extensive combination of forest-
trees1in a state of nature"within his category of forest scenery. For Gilpin 1the forest
is in every way opposed to the plantatiOnj forests are "not newlyplanted; but natural
woods 1set apart for the purposes of sheltering 1and securing game:' Rather than be-
ing composed of trees of the same age and planted at the same time, they include
trees "of all ages1and sizes1from the ancient fathers of the forest 1to the scion 1and the
seedling [and] grow also in that wild 1disordered manner 1which nature prescribes:'
In contrast to the designed forest garden or park 1whose scenes are "all within the
reach of art; and in fact1have all been the objects of improvement/' the forest "dis-
dains all human culture. On it the hand of nature only is impressed. The forest 1like
80
beautiful scenes 1pleasesthe eye;but it's great effect is to rousethe imagination."
Gilpin considers the forest from hvo points of view: from near at hand 1as the
scenery of a foreground 1and as an object at a distance from the eye. "When we
speak of forest-scenery; as afore-ground;'he writes 1"we mean the appearance 1which
it's woods present 1when we approach their skirts 1or invade their recesses:' Once
within the woods 1one of the scenes most productive of picturesque effect is the for-
est vista 1so superior to those "tame vistas formed by the hand of art:' In the artificial
vista 1product of the plantation 1"the trees are all of one age1and planted in regular
growth;' and it is usually composed only of one species of tree 1in most cases the fir 1
Figure 99. Outlines of distant woods. William Gilpin. Remarkson ForestScenery(London, 1791 ), Collection
Centre Canadien d'.Architecture /Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
the lime tree, or the elm: "The whole plan is the offspring of formality; and the more
formal it is1the nearer it approaches that idea of perfection 1at which it aims/' Gilpin
complains. The forest vista is something else altogether. First 1-the trees are of differ-
ent sizes and species 1large and smalli bushes and underwood 1"which are continually
producing new varieties in every part:' Second 1they are arranged in a random man-
ner1 either "growing in clumps 1or standing singlei crouding upon the foreground 1
or receding from it; as the wild hand of nature hath scattered them:' Although ''.Art
may admire 1and attempt to plant 1and form combinations 1and clumps like hers:
but whoever examines the wild combinations of a forest ... and compares them
with the attempts of art, has httle taste, ifhe do not ackuowledge with astonish-
ment1 the superiority of nature's workmanship:' Rather than the ornamental grove's
uniformity of paths and views 1in the forest the larger vistas are varied with "such
smaller openings 1and recesses 1as are formed by the irregular growth of treesj they
are broken also by lawns 1and tracts of pasturage 1which often shoot athwart them:'
Finally, unhke the flatness of the plantation, a result of its having been designed as
a plan on paper, the forest exhibits an inequahty of ground, which although subtle,
"is sufficient to occasion breaks in the convergency of the great perspective lines:'

224 FOREST 225 FOREST


Figure 100. British School, eighteenth century. Park Scenewith Boy, 1780. Graphite and watercolor on paper,
278 x 392 mm.© Tate, London, 2013.
All of these characteristics serve to give "the forest-vista a very different air from the
artificial one, diversifying the parts, of which it is composed 1 so much, that the eye
is never fatigued with surveying themj while the whole together presents one vast 1
sublime object. Like a grand gallery of exquisite pictures, it fills the eye with all it's
greatneSSj while the objects 1 on each side 1 continually changing, afford at each step a
new entertainment." 81
Gilpin's preference for the wild forest over the artificial grove, and his emphasis
on the aesthetics of trees and woods, also means that he dislikes any sign of utility in
a forest scene. Whereas Evelyn, Switzer 1 and Langley had attempted to unite pleasure
and profit, casting trees both as profitable timber and as objects of visual delighti
Gilpin takes pains to distinguish the two. "The oaki the ash, and the elmJ are com-
monly dignified, in our English woods, as a distinct class, by the title of timber-trees,"
226 FOREST
he writes. "But the picturesque eye scorns the narrow conceptions of a timber-
merchant:'82 And whereas a fallen tree can be a beautiful objecti "when we see it
deprived of it's beautiful ramification/ squared, and sawn in lengths 1 as it sometimes
continues long to lie about the forestJ it becomes an object of deformity, and we la-
ment what it once wasJ without receiving any equivalent from it's present state."83
The usefulness of trees, in fact, is opposed to most notions of picturesque beauty 1
as it is not the business of the picturesque eye "to consider matters of utility. It has
nothing to do with the affairs of the plough, and the spade; but merely examines the
face of nature aS·a beautiful object." 84 Furthermore, it was precisely the practice of
seeing trees as timber that had caused the forest's decline: "The value of timber is it's
misfortune;' Gilpin laments, "It is rarely suffered to stand, when it is fit for usej and
in a cultivated country, woods are considered only as large corn-fields; cut, as soon
as ripe" (fig. 100), 8'
Gilpin's indifference 1 or hostility, to the economic uses of mature trees under-
lies his conviction that even a blasted tree can have "a fine effect" in landscape (fig.
101). "When the dreary heath is spread before the eye, and ideas of wildness and
desolation are required, what more suitable accompaniment can be imagined, than
the blasted oak, ragged, scathed 1 and leafless; shooting it's peeled, white branches
athwart the gathering blackness of some rising form?" Gilpin asks. 1his sensitiv-
ity to the aesthetics of desolation runs, like an undercurrent, throughout Gilpin's
text. ¼'hen he surveys the condition of the kingdom's forests, he sees not profitable
timber stores, but a melancholy picture of decline. ''.Atpresent/' Gilpin writes, "even
the vestiges of most of our English forests are obliterated. Of a few of them we find
the site marked in old maps; but as to their sylvan honours, scarce any of them hath
the least remains to boast. Some of the woods were destroyed in licentious times:
and many have been suffered, through mere negligence 1 to waste away-the pillage
of a dishonest neighbourhood:' Although at one time forests overspread much of
the island of Britain, "none of them at this day possesses it's original grandeur. A few
have preserved some little appearance of scenery: but the greater parts are wastes:'
The wasting of the forest 1 first by the "northern barbarians;' then the Normans, and
then in succeeding generations by every individual who felled a treei is the wood-
land's fate.
Although Gilpin was no supporter of the tradition of forest law, characterizing
it as a part of jurisprudence "conceived in the highest spirit of despotism and ex-
ecuted with the utmost rigor of vindictive tyranny;' he laments the spirit of utility
that succeeded it, and the consequent loss of protection for the woodland's plants
and animals. Thus the sensibility Gilpin expresses is preservationist in tonei its roots
traceable to Manwood with his celebration of the "comeliness and Bewtie" of the
227 FOREST
 for a garden derived from practices associated with an empiricist methodology. In
the process, they formulated an idealized vision of a national landscape as an Eden
founded upon science and the principle of private property.
By the end of the century, however, belief in the power of improvement had
waned, and the connotations of the term "wilderness" had shifted from threatening
to threatened. No longe~ ,associated with progress, or a beneficial transformation of
the useless to the useful, 'for Gilpin improvement was a destroyer of picturesque
effect and 1 more importantly, of the forest's essential wildness. Thus 1 in the case of
the forest, disgust is present in its moral dimension as a condemnation of human
culture. Butit is a disgust that also leads to an awareness of the fragility of the natu-
ral environment, and of its need for protection, paradoxically, by the very cultures
whose activities threaten its existence most profoundly. It is in the history of the
typology of the forest, then 1 that we see the operations of a moral disgust leading to
the emergence of a division between the terms wilderness and wasteland, with wil-
derness understood as the fragile, untouched, uninhabited landscape, and wasteland
the despoiled landscape, ravaged by the detrimental activities of an unscrupulous
culture.
Figure 101. ''A blasted tree on a heath," William Gilpin. Remarks on ForestScenery(London, 1791 ).
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.

"goodly greene and pleasant woods in a Forrest:' But the spectacle of decline that
Gilpin was confronted with on every side produced only a sense of melancholy, as
he attempted 1 with a sense of desperation 1 "to chronicle scenes 1 which once existed 1
and are now gone:' 86
From a very early era1 the forest had been conceived of as a landscape whose
wild qualities were in need of protection. The depredations of human industry,
whether related to building 1 fuel1 mining 1 war 1 or financial speculation, had created
wasteland where once was forest. In the forest context, the activities of domestica-
tion, of construction 1 and of agriculture were seen as compromising 1 rather than
improving 1 the state of the landscape. But if, in the case of the forest, wasteland was
understood as sometJ:ung produced by humans 1 rather than given by Nature or God,
there was nonetheless a moment 1 in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth cen-
turies1 when it was also felt that humans could redeem these wasted landscapes. The
ideology of improvement was applied not just to land deemed waste in its original
state, but also to land laid waste by human activity, and the methods of science were
cast as a tool that could redeem the misdeeds of industry. In this context, gardening
was positioned as a compensatory activity. Evelyn and his followers, by their promo-
tion of artificial plantations, transformed the typology of the forest into the pattern

228 FOREST 229 FOREST


CHAPTER VI
WILDERNESS,
WASTELAND,
GARDEN
In 1772, the architect William Chambers publish~d a treatise entitled A Dissertation
an OrientalGardening,dedicating it to his patron, George III. Chambers's fanciful
description of Chinese gardens was intended to serve as a critique of the work of
Capability Brown and his followers, champions of a "false taste:' These men, in thrall
to the rallying cryof"improvement;' had devastated the nation's woodland gardens:
uthe ax has often, in one day, laid waste the growth of several agesj and thousands
of venerable plants, whole woods of them, have been swept away, to make room for
a little grass, and a fewAmerican weeds:' According to Chambers, these so-called
virtuosi had "scarcely left an acre of shade, nor three trees growing in a line, from
the Land's-end to the Tweed; and if their humour for devastation continues to rage
much longer, there will not be a forest-tree left standing in the whole kingdom:' 1 the inhabitants:' The animals inhabiting the groves are owls 1 vulturesi wolvesi tigersi
The aim of Chambers's critique, and of his treatise as a whole, was to show how
gardens might be designed in order to provoke the Addisonian "Pleasnres of the
Imagination:' In contrast to the anodyne uniformity of the Brownian landscape,
Chambers instead offered descriptions of imagined garden scenes inspired by dif-
ferent genres of poetry, grouping them into the three categories of the pleasing, the
terrible, and the snrprising. Although modeled on Addison's three classes of the
beautiful, the great, and the uncommon, Chambers's headings are subtly modified to
refer not to the qualities of an object, but to their effect on the spectator.
The wilderness of the forest garden served as the template for Chambers's "wil-
derness of sweets," a central featnre of his gardens of pleasure. His interpretation of
Milton's phrase reimagines the wilderness as an exotic garden of delights, its feral
creatures transformed into beautiful courtesans who inhabit pavilions furnished
with "bedsJ couchesJ and chairsJ of various constructionsJ for the uses of sitting and
230
lying in different postures:' The surprisingJ or supernatural scenesi "abound in the
marvellous; being calculated to excite in the minds of the spectatorsi quick succes-
sions of opposite and violent sensations:' These landscapes seem almost to be a psy-
chedelic version of Bacon's Island ofBensalemi containing rocky chasms where the
traveler is subjected t~ s_hocksof electrical impulsei showers of artificial raini violent
gusts ofwindi and fie!'y explosions; and lofty woods filled with colorful serpentsi liz-
ards, parrots 1 and "beauteous Tartarean damsels;' who, dressed "in loose transparent
robes 1 that flutter in the air/' present the visitor with "rich wines 1 mangostans, ananas 1
and fruits of Quaugsf' Air is employed to produce artificial echoes that simulate the
noises of shuffling feet 1 rustling garments 1 and human voices 1 while optical decep-
tions are presented by paintings and mosaics whose aspect varies with the position
of the spectator. There are plantations of sensitive plants and menageries of mon-
strous birds, reptiles 1 and animals 1 while in other areas cabinets of curiosity contain
"all the extraordinary productions of the animal 1 vegetable 1 and mineral kingdoms;'
as well as ingenious works of the fine and mechanic arts.
Gardens of a terrible character are "composed of gloomywoods 1 deep vallies
inaccessible to the sun) impending barren rocks, dark cavernsi and impetuous cata-
racts rushing down the mountains from all parts:' These scenes of desolation are
furnished with "trees ill-formed, forced out of their natural directions 1 and seemingly
torn to pieces by the violence of tempests: some are thrown down, and intercept
the course of the torrents; others look as if blasted and shattered by the power of
lightening: the buildings are in ruins; or half consumed by fire, or swept away by the
fury of the waters: nothing remaining entire but a few miserable huts dispersed in
the mountains 1 which serve at once to indicate the existence and wretchedness of
and jackals; half-starved beasts wander across the plains. To either side of the roads
are instruments of torturei including gibbets 1 crosses 1 and wheels 1 while "in the most
dismal recesses of the woods, where the ways are rugged and overgrown with weeds,
and where every object bears the marks of depopulation 1 are temples dedicated to
kings of vengeance:' In other parts, adjacent to deep caverns in the rocksi are pillars
carved with accounts ofhorrific deeds perpetrated by outlaws and robbers. Finally,
"to add both to the horror and sublimity of these scenes;' objects of industry, such as
foundries, lime kilns 1 and glassworks, are included in order to "send forth large vol-
umes of flame, and continued columns of thick smoke 1 that give to these mountains
2
the appearance of volcanoes:'
The public misinterpreted the exaggerated nature of these descriptions 1 and to
minimize damage to his reputation 1 Chambers published a second edition in 1773 1
adding An ExplanatoryDiscourseby the work's purported author Tan Chet-qua, a
231 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
Cantonese sculptor who, as Eileen Harris has noted, "had conveniently left England
in 1772 after a four-year visit."3
The correspondence Chambers establishes between industrial factory and ex-
ploding volcano was made possible by the development of the aesthetic of the sub-
lime. We can see this same correspondence illustrated in Joseph Wright of Derby's
explanation of his contemporary paintings of Vesuvius in eruption and of the annual
fireworks at the Castel Sant'Angelo, the "one [demonstrating] the greatest effect of
Nature, the otherof Artthat I suppose can be" (figs. 102, 103 ). 4 With its focus on
power, the sublime united nature and technology under the same rubric, and paint-
ers like Wright of Derby and Philip James de Loutherbourg responded by casting
fireworks and factories as equivalent producers of exalted aesthetic effect. But if
technology-and in particular technology's power-was capable ofbeing a source
of the sublime 1 then it also became possible to imagine that rather than being only an
instrument of improvement, technology could also be a threat. Making a factory into
a sublime object meant that what could have been seen as proof of the triumph of
human ingenuity could instead be understood as something over which we possibly Figw:e 102.Joseph Wright ofDerby, Vesuvius.fromPortid, ca. 1774--76. Oil on canvas,
have no control. The fantasy of mastering nature carries within it the potential to be- 101 x 127 cm.© Courtesy of the Huntington Art Collections. Purchased with funds
come instead a nightmarish vision of the creations of humankind running amok and from the Frances Crandall Dyke Bequest.

uuleashing an apocalypse of chaos and destruction. No longer merely the heralded

instrument of progress, technology could now also be seen as producing exactly that
which it had been intended to redeem: rather than turning the wasteland into a gar-
den, it could also be capable of turning the garden into a wasteland. 5
Yet the postapocalyptic landscape was not 1 as we have seen, without its own
aesthetic appeal. In the second edition of his Dissertation,Chambers expanded his
discussion to consider the subject of wasteland: "England abounds with commons
and wilds 1 drearYibarren, and serving only to give an uncultivated appearance to the
country, particularly near the metropolis," Chambers writes, and "to beautify these
vast tracts ofland, is next to an impossibility:' Instead 1 he suggests converting these
formless landscapes into "scenes of terror;' or "noble pictures of the sublimest cast,"
which, "by artful contrast, serve to enforce the effect of gayer and more luxuriant
prospects." He imagines that in some of them "are seen gibbets 1 with wretches hang-
ing in terroremupon them; on others, forgesi collieriesi mines, coal tracts, brick or
lime kilns, glassworks, and different objects of the horrid kind:' As to their flora and
fauna 1 "what little vegetation they have, is dismalj the animals that feed upon it, are
half-famished to the artist's hands; and the cottagers, with the huts in which they
dwell 1 want no additional touches, to indicate their misery." Finally1 "a few uncouth
Figure 103,Joseph Wright of Derby, FireworkDisplayat the CastelSant:<l.ngclo
in Rome (La Girandola),
straggling trees, some ruins, caverns, rocks, torrents 1 abandoned villages, in part 1779. Oil on canvas, 162.5 x 213 cm. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photograph©
consumed by fire, solitary hermitages, and other similar objects 1 artfully introduced The State Hermitage Museum/photo by Vladimir Terebenin! Leonard Kheifets, Yuri Molodkovets.

232 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN 233 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN


and blended with gloomy plantations, would compleat the aspect of desolation, and
serve to fill the mindJ where there was no possibility of gratifying the senses/' he ad-
vises. Chambers suggests that quarries) chalk pitsJ and mines could "easily be framed
into vast amphitheatresi rustic arcadesi and peristylesi extensive subterraneous
habitations 1 grottoes, vaulted roads and passages," while hills could be transformed
into "stupendous rocks, by partial incrustations of stoneJ judiciously mixed with turf,
ferni wild shrubs and forest trees:' Gravel pits and other excavations of a similar kind
"might be converted into the most romantic scenery imaginable) by the addition of
some plantingi intermix'd with ruins 1 fragments of sculptures) inscriptions, or any
other little embellishments;' which would enable not just a single estate, but the en-
tire kingdom to become "one magnificent vast GardenJ bounded only by the sea."
In this extraordinary passage, we find Chambers dreaming of gardens that ac-
tively deploy the marginal, terrifying, and disgusting qualities of wasteland as the
raw material of their various scenes. Chambers proposes that although the senses
might normally be repelled by such objects as forests and mountains 1 caverns and
torrents) ruins and industry, hermits and commoners, abandoned villages and
weeds, when these objects are features oflandscape scenes, they become capable
of eliciting pleasure. Aesthetics has the power to transform the effect of the disgust-
ing object, creating a visual spectacle out of desolation and misery (and providing a
textbook example of what Ruskin was later to condemn as the heartlessness of the
picturesque). 7
Chambers is the first theorist writing on gardens to articulate an aesthetics of the
industrial wasteland. Qµarries, chalk and gravel pits, mines 1 forges, collieries, coal
tractsJ glassworks, or brick and lime kilns are not valued as emblems of progress and
improvementj ratheri they become "objects of the horrid kind;' productive of that
combined response of repulsion and allure that characterizes the sublime. Chambers
had first written about landscape in 1757, when he included a discussion of Chinese
8
gardens in his Designsof ChineseBuildings. Edmund Burke judged the piece to be
"much the best that has been written on the subject/' and included it in the first vol-
ume of his Annual Register.Burke's PhilosophicalEnquiry had also first appeared in
1757, and the sympathy between the perspectives of these two writers is a striking
indication of the decline of utility as a central aesthetic virtue and its replacement
with effect.
In his PhilosophicalEnquiry, Burke challenged the established notion that "the
idea of utility; or of a part's being well adapted to answer its end, is the cause of
beauty, or indeed beauty itself' If utility were the cause of beauty, Burke contended,
then «the wedge-like snout of a swineJ with its tough cartilage at the endJ so well
234 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
.,,,"!§
.")!)/"
adapted to its offices of digging, and rooting, would be extremely beautiful. The
great bag hanging to the bill of a pelican, a thing highly useful to this animal, would
be likewise as beautiful in our eyes:' As for the human body, although the interior
organs, such as the stomach, lungs, and liverJ "are incomparably well adapted to their
purposes," they too "are·far from having any beauty:' Burke contrasts the satisfaction
of an anatomist, "who discovers the use of the muscles and of the skin," to that of
"an ordinary man;' whose gaze is arrested at the limit of the body's "delicate smooth
skin:' v\Thereas the aesthetic appreciation of a smooth skin makes the "ordinary man"
oblivious to "the artifice of its contrivance;' in the case of the anatomist, the "odious
and distasteful" qualities of the flayed body must be suppressed in order for him to
6 admire the body's inner workings. Burke was no anatomist, and for him, the "delicate
smooth skin" had the critical function of hiding the "odious and distasteful" muscles
and organs. 9 By concealing the disgust-provoking innards, the skin allowed the body
to be perceived as though it had no interiori an exemplar of Herder's ideal of the
10
"softly blown corporeal:' Thus Burke positioned the concept of utility as veering
dangerously close to the territory of disgust: for an object to be perceived as beauti-
ful, knowledge of its function had to be suppressed.
The new attitudes toward utility articulated by Chambers and Burke were critical
to transformations in the evaluation and perception oflandscape, and, in particular,
to the development of the aesthetic of the picturesque. The picturesque located the
value oflandscape not in its yield per acre, but in its ability to produce stimulat-
ing sensationsi giving rise to widespread and sustained critique from those (like
Ruskin, but he was merely the most eloquent of a long line of critics) who deemed
its aesthetic precepts inunoral. 11 William Gilpin was habitually disgusted by signs of
improvement: he disliked the orthogonal lines of cultivated fields in the countryside,
the furniture of industry in the cities. He disdained all those villages bereft of "rural
ideas;' their "trees, and hedge-rows without a tinge of green-and fields and mead-
ows without pasturage, in which lowing bullocks are crouded together 1 waiting for
the shamblesj or cows pennedi like hogsJ to feed on grains." But even these offensive
sights paled in comparison to those offered by the great metropolis. London was
disgraced by "all those disgusting ideas, with which it's great avenues abound-brick
kilns steaming with offensive smoke-sewers and ditches sweating with filth-
heaps of collected soilJ and stinks of every denomination-clouds of dustJ rising and
vanishing) from agitated wheelsJ pursuing each other in rapid motion-or taking
stationary possession of the road 1 by becoming the atmosphere of some cumber-
some) slow-moving waggon:' Assaulted by a "succession of noisome objects, which
did violence to the senses by turns;' Gilpin reproduced the classic response to the
235 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
 ,'Ci;p,

,'fzi,;!

disgusting: he fled, back to his home in Cheam and "the quiet lanes of Surry:' 12
These changing associations of improvement are further illustrated by compar-
ing John Worlidge's vision of an enclosed and improved countryside in the fron-
tispiece to his SystemaAgriculturae
ofl669 (see fig. 22) with the plate Humphry
Repton ironically entitled "Improvements," from his Fragmentson the Theoryand
Practiceof LandscapeGardeningofl 816 (fig. 104). Although Repton was more than
happy to take advantage of Parliamentary Acts of Enclosure when a commission was
involved, he nonetheless felt equally at home deploring the effects enclosure had
wrought upon the English landscape. 13 In "Improvements;' Repton caricatured his
trademark device of"before" and "after" views by illustrating a stretch of countryside
he claimed to have visited twice at a distance of ten years 1 the second time after the
land had been bought up by a new owner (see fig. 104).
In the earlierview 1 significantly placed below (in contradiction of his usual prac-
tice of putting the later 1 improved version in second place) 1 we see the road ambling
gently between a park, where deer gambol in the shade provided by venerable oaks,
and what Repton identifies as either a "forest 1 waste, or common." The park fence's
decayed state and leaning ladder indicate that the landowner tolerated the exercise
of rights of common, while the well-placed bench at the edge of the common or
waste invites weary travelers to rest. In the "improved" view that Repton placed
above, the ramshackle park fence has been replaced by a tall paling whose closely
spaced planks permit no "liberty of the gaze" and which is topped by a sign warning
potential trespassers of mantraps and spring guns. The ancient oak trees have been
cut down and their place taken by fast-growing conifers-emblems of the nouveau-
riche, as Stephen Daniels has convincingly argued-while to the left the common
has been enclosed and converted to arable. Leisure has been displaced by labor: we
see an agricultural worker plowing the field with his team; he is working not his own
land 1 but another's 1 indicated by the imperative outstretched arm of the figure on the
road below. 14 As Repton acidly comments, the new owner had certainly "improved
[his estate]; for by cutting down the timber, and getting an actto enclose the com-
mon, he had doubled all the rents," thus giving up "beauty for gain, and prospect for
the produce of his acres. This is the only improvement to which the thirst for riches
aspires." 15 Although for Repton 1 "improvement" has in this case mutilated the scene,
his positioning of the original view underneath the newer one signals that he hopes
another version of improvement, one that privileges aesthetic sensibilities over
crude motives of financial gain, might someday be employed to restore to the land-
scape some measure of its ancient appeal.
Figure 104. Humphry Repton, "Improvements," Fragmentson the Theoryand Practiceof LandscapeGardening
Uvedale Price had fewer qualms than either Gilpin or Repton about the presence (London, 1816).Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
of utility in the landscape. Agrarian landscapes did not disgust 1 but 1 at the same time 1

236 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN 237 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN

 ·,:x,J7'0;
,;;,::,
ft"
they could by no means be considered picturesque. Instead) disgust was reserved
for the landscapes of Capability Brown. "The clumps, the belts, the made water, and
the eternal smoothness and sameness" of a Brownian landscape would repel anyone
who looked at it with the eye of a painter) even though, to "an improver" like Brown,
they were to be considered "as the most perfect embellishments, as the last finishing
touches that nature can receive from art:'
But Price's formulation of the picturesque is particularly important for its direct
engagement with the aesthetic possibilities of disgust, discussed under his novel
category of"picturesque ugliness:' Rather than being merely repellent) picturesque
ugliness was characterized by a piquancy that was pleasing, although the bound-
ary between picturesqueness and deformity was fragile. Price enjoined his readers
to imagine the face of a woman, feature by feature 1 as it progressed along a trajec-
tory from an insipid formlessness toward a disgusting amplification, her eyebrows
increasing "to a preposterous size;' her eyes cast into a squint, her skin scarred and
pitted with smallpox, and her moles swelling into excrescences) in order to make ap-
parent the connection "between beauty and insipidity, and between picturesqueness
and deformity, and what 'thin partitions do their bounds divide.'" To illustrate the
applicability of his conceit to landscape, Price contrasts Capability Brown's insipid
style to that of"an improver;' who, "byway of being picturesque" were to "make
broken groundJ pits, and quarries all about his placej encourage nothing but furzei
briars, and thistlesj heap quantities of rude stones on his banks; or, to crown allJlike
Mr. Kent, plant dead trees:• Whereas Price notes that "the deformity of such a place
would, I believe, be very generally allowed;' he adds that "the insipidity of the other
might not be so readily confessed:'
Although Price proclaims that the deformed landscape) scarred with quarries,
clogged with weeds, and skewered.with blasted trees would be something "none but
depraved and vitiated palates will endure;' one senses a degree of equivocation. The
line dividing disgust and pleasure, present in both the distinction between insipidity
and beauty, and between picturesqueness and deformity 1 is not a wallJ but merely a
"thin partition:• And by drawing attention to the fragility of these distinctions, and to
the way in which pleasure can slide toward disgusti Price also raises the possibility of
an opposite motion, from disgnst to pleasure, and of the thrill that might accompany
16
such an act of transgression.
Winfried Menninghaus has characterized the trajectory of notions of disgust
from the eighteenth century to the present in the following terms:
the eighteenth century affirms disgnst as doing a thoroughly "right" and healthy
job, propagates the cultivation of disgust as a spur to the progress of humanity
238 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
and civilization, and celebrates the codification of the aesthetic body as free from
everything potentially disgustingj the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries
discover both the costs of this sort of cultivation and the (forbidden) attractions
of the disgusting; since the end of the twentieth century, the cultivation of disgust
itselfbecomes brittle, and at the same time-as though the (repressive) barriers
of disgust have grown more decisive than before-the terrain of the abandoned
become_~,_,invirtually programmatic fashion 1 the promised land of a fiercely as-
serted re;aluation of the disgusting in artistic, politicali and academic work. 17
To follow this tantalizing trail through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in
order to bring the consideration of disgust (in its visceral, aesthetic) and socio-moral
dimensions) and landscape up to the present day would require not just another
chapter, but another book. Unfortunately, such an investigation is beyond the pres-
ent scope of this book, but the possibilities of this kind of analysis are profoundly
suggestive. 18
Wilderness and Wasteland
The debates over the picturesque in the 1790s can be understood as symptoms of
doubt regarding one version of the narrative of progress. Such doubts led to changes
in attitudes toward the respective roles of art (understood in its widest sense to in-
clude also industry and technology) and nature, which consequently had profound
effects on ideas of wasteland as well. 19 These new ideas were brought across the At-
lantic by the British-born Thomas Cole, whose seriesJ The CourseofEmpirei depicts
the negative trajectory of the civilizing process, the counternarrative to Enlighten-
20
ment fantasies that the control of nature can lead to Eden reincarnate. His five
panels, painted between 1834 and 1836, portray the rise and fall of civilization, be-
ginning with TheSavageState (fig. 105), which shows early humans (here imagined
as Native Americans) hunting and fishing in the wilderness (a painting that brings
John Locke's famous phrase "In the beginning all the world was America'' to mind);
progressing to ThePastoralState)which illustrates the beginnings of agriculture and
the invention of the arts and sciences; culminating in The Consummationof Empire,
with the apex of culture envisaged as a scene of revelry and feasting in a resplendent
marble-dad city; meeting its end in Destruction)which shows the city under attacki
its inhabitants massacred, its statues dismembered, its bridges collapsingi and its
buildings consumed by fire; and ending with the final empty scene of Desolation,
whose wasteland bears witness to an overreaching society's ruinous fate (fig. 106). In
this painting, a lonely column looks out over a scene of devastation, with the isolated
239 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
Figure 105. Thomas Cole, The Courseof Empire: TheSavageState (1st in series), 1834. Oil on canvas,
39 ½ x 63 ½ in.; negative #604Sc; #1858.1. Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
remains of the once-opulent city now abandoned and overgrown with vines. The
Courseof Empirevividly illustrates the dichotomy between wilderness and waste-
land: wildemess 1 as depicted in The SavageState)and wasteland) as seen in Desola-
tion)stand in direct opposition to one anotherj in the beginning is the wilderness
with humans living in harmony with original nature, and in the end is the wasteland)
revealed to be the direct and unavoidable consequence of the civilizing process.
But although at first glance we may be inclined to think that The Courseof Empire
positions wilderness and wasteland merely as diametrical opposites at two ends of
a temporal trajectory, things are not quite so straightforward, for the series was not
intended to be hung in a line) but instead according to the configuration shown in
figure 107. This arrangement sets up a more complex relationship between The Sav-
ageState and Desolation,for Cole's declensionist plot also contains within itself a
cyclical understanding of history. The wasteland may have been the fate of ancient
societies 1 and) implicitly, of Cole's own) but a new civilization might rise from the ru-
ins) and if this time it were a better) more humble society, it might escape the fate of
its predecessors. Thus Desolation'sruined column has a double message. On the one
hand) the figure of the ruin contains a moral lesson. But on the other) in its incom-
pletion) irregularit)7j and imperfection) the ruin also contains within it the potential
for growth and change. If the ruin can signal the end of one era, it can also point to
240 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
Figure 106. Thomas Cole, The Courseof Empire:Desolation(5th in series), 1836. Oil on canvas, 39 ½ X 63 ½ in.;
#1858.S. Collection of the New-York Historical Society.
an opportunity for renewal and rebirth. Cole signals the possibility of this rebirth-
which in this case is more akin to a redemption-by the encroaching presence of
"nature"-by the vines creeping up the shaft of the column and over the fragments of
entablature, and by the stork that has made its nest on top of the column's capital.
Such a formulation of the relationship between wasteland and wilderness can be
found lurking in many contemporary landscape management strategies that must
grapple with the challenges posed by former landfills, disused mines and quarries,
outmoded urban infrastructure, derelict factories, power plants, and military instal-
lations. When confronted with problematic sites like the Rocky Mountain Arsenal
National Wildlife Refuge) or the "wilderness area" ofVieques, the hope is that
they will conform to the narrative rendered so vividly in paint by Thomas Cole. In
Vieques, once the navy withdrew and the area was sealed off, it was assumed that
241 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN

Figure 107, Thomas Cole, layout for The CourseofEmpire, 1833. Pen and brown ink on off-
white wove paper, sheet (irregular) 25.08 x 33.34 cm. Detroit Institute of Arts. Founders
Society Purchase, William H. Murphy Fund. Photo© 2013, Detroit Institute of Arts.
fast-growing tropical plants would spring up and cover over the bombs and the scars
they once etched in the landscape 1 that the endangered sea turtles would clamber
up to shore to nest and breed. As the story goes, "man" (in the form of the military-
industrial complex) exits, the violence and destruction that were inflicted on the site
fade from view, the wild reclaims its domain. Stories like these are popular because
they are farn.iliar~in their apparent timelessness they aspire to the status of myth-
and because they resonate with commonly held assumptions regarding nature and
our place within it. To encounter a derelict site that appears to have been reclaimed
by nature is to see humanity's hubristic fantasies of control and domination put in
their place (though how "nature" and "reclaimed" are defined, in terms of what they
include and exclude in, each case/ is of course always highly ideological). It is to see
the underdog (in the form of the ravaged landscape, the endangered species) win.
And 1 because when we see a hawks bill sea turtle thriving and multiplying despite
all of the harm we have done to its habitat 1 we can start to believe that the damage
we have inflicted isn't perhaps quite as bad as we feared, it is also to breathe a collec-
tive sigh of relief. So if we believe in the story 1 to see a landscape where the wasteland
seems to have become a wilderness once again is to see the clock turned back 1 it is
to be given a fresh start. But stories like this one are rarely so simple.
242 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
Part of the issue is that to believe in this story means taking on assumptions
inherent to the concept of wilderness, which 1 as William Cronon has argued 1 is a
construct that assumes a problematic polarity between nature and human culture 1
defining nature as authentic and pure only when it is untainted by human presence
or interference. But wilderness 1 as Cronon and his fellow historians of wilderness
Roderick Frazier Nash and Max Oelschlaeger have shown, is not a natural creation:
it is a human invent_ion.21 Wilderness is a concept, a category oflandscape devised
and used by humans at particular points in history to respond to specific sets of cul-
tural needs. If in its earliest forms wilderness was a term used interchangeably with
wasteland to refer to wild and therefore threatening and hostile landscapes, by the
early nineteenth century these associations had changed. Once a place of terror and
confusion, wilderness was now Eden incarnate. But the "trouble" with the construct-
ed concept of wilderness/ as Cronon so lucidly observes, is that it "embodies a dual-
istic vision in which the human is entirely outside the natural. If we allow ourselves
to believe that nature 1 to be true 1 must also be wild 1 then our very presence in nature
represents its fall. The place where we are is the place where nature is not." 22
The rehabilitation of wilderness left wasteland unredeemed, but also gave its def-
inition a new tw"ist.No longer was the fallen landscape given by Nature 1 or created
by God; it was instead brought into being by the polluting touch of the human hand.
But this Romantic fable conceals the fact that wasteland and wilderness are both
of our malting. We have created the concepts/ as we have created the landscapes,
whether by poisoning them, or by cordoning them off. So if we view wilderness as
somehow representing the solution to wasteland, and believe that merely by restrict-
ing human access to a polluted site "nature" will go about its business 1 heal its own
wounds 1 and transform the wasteland «back" into a wilderness, we risk falling for
"the false hope of an escape from responsibility, the illusion that we can somehow
wipe clean the slate of our past and return to the tabula rasa that supposedly existed
before we began to leave our marks on the world:' 23 But this is no solution, for there
is no flight from history 1 no tabula rasa 1 and no place for humans outside of nature.
The challenges and possibilities offered by postindustrial landscapes have attracted
increasing attention in recent years. Ignaci de Sola-.Morales's "terrain vague;' Antoine
Picon's "anxious landscapes/' Alan Berger's "drosscapes;' Mira Engler's "waste land-
scapes," and Niall Kirkwood's "manufactured landscapes" are different versions of a
contemporary version of wasteland. 24 High-profile projects such as Duisburg Nord
Landschaftspark, Downsview Park, the High Line, and Fresh K.illsLifescape have all
confronted the question of how a wasteland might be converted into a space oflei-
sure and recreation, as well as a place to reflect on the casualties of a naive faith in an
243 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
infinitely perfectible future brought into being by advances in science and technol-
ogy. There is no question that today the challenges are different than they were in the
past. Tue crumbling of the Enlightenment belief in progress has led to a completely
different understanding of our place in the world. Tue kinds of fears elicited by our
environment, as Ulrich Beck has persuasively argued, are structurally different than
they were in the past: they are now invisible, pervasive, and created by our. own tech-
nology.25It is now culture, rather than nature, which is the source of our fears. Yet
the constellation of associations embedded in the concept of wasteland continues
to inflect and guide many of our attitudes and actions. Only by becoming aware of
these associations can we achieve the critical perspective necessary to forge a new
approach.
Unlike the concept ofwildernessi wasteland offers the possibility of a more
responsible understanding of our place in the environment. Rather than restrict-
ing "nature" to areas devoid of human presence, wasteland includes humans as
part of nature, it assumes that our actions are just one set of activities, of reactions
and responses 1 along with those of the rocks 1 plants, animals, and atmosphere that
surround and interact with us. Wasteland leaves no place "over there" that is un-
touched by human presence, but posits all placesi all categories as interconnected:
the domesticated and the wild, the urban and the rural, the local and the global.
It is in wasteland's precarious, yet fertile conjunction of disgust and utopia that its
greatest potential lies. Our actions-both good and bad-have a historyi and leave
traces: we cannot wish them away.Wasteland bears witness to these actions; it is our
conscience 1 our terrain of contestation. As a space of resistance, of challenge 1 and,
ultimately, of possibility and change, wasteland has the potential to be the landscape
paradigm for our uncertain and troubling times.
244 WILDERNESS, WASTELAND, GARDEN
NOTES
Introduction
L As cited in Dana Canedy, «Navy Leaves a Battered Island, and
Puerto Ricans Cheer," New YorkTimes,May 2, 2003.
2. Roderick Frazier Nash, Wildernessand the AmericanMind
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), Max Oelschlaeger,
TheIdea of Wildernessfrom Prehistoryto theAge ofEcology
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), William Cronon,
"1he Trouble with Wilderness, or, Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature," in UncommonGround:Rethinkingthe Human Placein
Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton, 1995),
69-90.
3. According to the OxfordEnglishDictionary,"weste londe" ap-
pears around 1200 in the Trinity CollegeHomily.1he origins and
literary uses of the term "waste" have be_enextensively treated
in Ruth L. Harris, "1he Meanings of Waste in Old and Middle
English" (PhD diss., University ofWashington, 1989).
4. Harris, "Meanings ofWaste;' 16.
5. Raymond Williams, "Ideas of Nature," in Problemsin Materi-
alismand Culture(London: Verso, 1980), 67.
6. Vvhether there are such things as basic emotions has been
subject to debate. See A. Ortony and T. Turner, "vi/hat's Basic
About Basic Emotions?" Psychological
Review97 ( 1990 ):
315-331; P. Ekman, "An Argument for Basic Emotions," Cogni-
tion and Emotion6 (1992): 169-200.
7. William Ian Miller, TheAnatomy ofDisgust(Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1997), 8.
8. Norbert Elias, The CivilizingProcess,trans. EdmundJephcott
( Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); M:rry Douglas, Purity and Danger:
An Analysisof Conceptsof Pollutionand Taboo(London: Rout-
ledge, 1966).
245 NOTES TO PAGES 2-8
9. For recent assessments of the evolutionary role of disgust, see
Valerie Curtis, "Why Disgust Matters," PhilosophicalTransac-
tionsof the Royal SocietyB 366 (December 2011): 3478-3490.
10. See George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Philosophyin the
Flesh:TheEmbodiedMind and Its Challengeto WesternThought
(New York: Basic, 1999).
11. Charles Darwin, TheExpressionof the Emotionsin Man and
Animals.With Photographicand Otherfllu.strations(London:
John Murray, 1872), 253-261. For more on the photographs
used by Darwin, see Phillip Prodger, Darwin'sCamera:Art and
Photographyin the Theoryof Evolution(Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press, 2009).
12. Darwin, Expressionof the Emotions,253.
13. AndrasAngyal, "Disgust and Related Aversions," Journalof
Abnormaland SocialPsychology36, no. 3 (July 1941): 393-412.
14. Paul Rozin, Jonathan Haidt, and Claik R. McC~_uley,"Dis-
gust," in Handbookof Emotions,ed. Michael,Lewis and Jeannette
M. Haviland (New York: Guilford, 1993), 575-594.
15. Rozin et al., "Disgust;' 575.
16. Ibid., 590. See also Curtis, "vl/hy Disgust M<ltters:'
17. Aurel Kolnai's "Der Ekel"was first published in Edmund
Husserl's Jahrbuchfor Philosophieund phiinomenologisch
Parse-
hungin 1929. See Aurel Kolnai, On Disgust,ed. Barry Smith and
Carolyn Korsmeyer ( Chicago: Open Court, 2004 ), vii.
18.AurelKolnai, "The Standard Modes of Aversion: Fear,
Disgust, and Hatred," in Kolnai, On Disgust,100.
19. Carolyn Korsmeyer, SavoringDisgust:TheFouland the Fair
inAesthetics( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 37.
20. Miller,Anatomy of Disgust,1.
21. WinfriedMenninghaus, Disgust:Theoryand Historyof a
StrongSensation,trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb (Albany:
State University ofNew York Press, 2003), 3-4.
22. See Jacques Derrida, uEconomimesis," Diacritics11, no.
2 (June 1981): 3-25, and The Truth in Painting,trans. Geoff
Bennington and Ian McLeod ( Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1987).
23. Kolnai, "Disgust," in Kolnai, On Disgust,30.
Chapter I. Wasteland
L For more on Winstanley, see David W. Petegorsky, Left-wing
Democracyand theEnglishCivilWar:A Study in the SocialPhi-
losophyof GerrardWinstanley(London: Victor Gollancz, 1940 );
George W. Sabine, introduction, The Worksof GerrardWinstan-
le» with anAppendix ofDocumentsRelatingto the DiggerMove-
ment, ed. George W. Sabine (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 1941); Christopher Hill, The WorldTurnedUpsideDown:
RadicalIdeasDuringthe EnglishRevolution(London: Temple
Smith, 1972 ); and Winstanleyand the Diggers,1649-1999, ed.
Andrew Bradstock (Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 2000).
2. Wmstanley, The TrueLevellersStandardAdvanced [April 26,
1649], Worksof GerrardWinstanley,261.
3. Winstanley, TheNew Law of Righteousness[January 26, 1648 ],
Works,147-244.
4.Ibid., 183,184,194, 195-196.
5.J. C. Davis and J.D. Alsop, "Wmstanley, Gerrard," in Diction-
ary ofNationalBiographyonline.
6. Wmstanley, New Law of Righteousness,
183-184.
7.Ibid., 196.
8. Ibid., 200.
9. Winstanley, An Appealeto All Englishmen[March 26, 1650],
Works,407-408.
10. Winstanley, A Declaration
from thePoorOppressedPeopleof
England[June I, 1649], Works,273.
11. Winstanley, An HumbleRequestto the Ministersof Both Uni-
versitiesand toAll Lawyersin EveryInns-a-Court[April 9, 1650],
Works,433-435.
12. Ruth L. Harris, "The Meanings ofWaste in Old and .Middle
English" (PhD diss., University of Washington, 1989).
13. Harris 1 "Meanings of Waste," 93ff. According to the OED,
these changes can be dated to circa 1200 on the basis of the
246 NOTES TO PAGES 8-23
first recorded instance of the word "wilderness" in the Trinity
College Homilies.
14. "Desert" comes from the Latin deserto;"wilderness" from
the conjunction of the Germanic wild-,meaning undomesti-
cated, and-nessmeaning promontory or headland. According
to the OED, although both "wilderness" and "desert" denote an
uninhabited region, "desert" implies the area lacks vegetation.
OxfordEnglishDictionaryonline.
15. Robert Carroll and Stephen Prickett, introduction, The
Bible:AuthorizedKingJamesVersion( Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1997), xxvii-xxviii. See also Christopher Hill, TheEnglish
Bible and the Seventeenth-Century EnglishRevolution(London:
Allen Lane, 1993).
16. John Bunyan, ThePilgrim'sProgressfrom this World,to That
whichis to Come [1678], ed.James Blanton Wbarey and Roger
Sharrock, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960).
17. Richard L. Greaves, "Bunyan, John," in OxfordDictionaryof
NationalBiographyonline.
18. Bunyan, Pilgrim'sProgress,61-65.
19. Ibid., 15, 42, 108.
20. See Albert J.Foster, BunyanSCountry:Studiesin the Bedford-
shireTopographyof ThePilgrim'sProgress(London: H. Virtue,
1901 ); Vera Brittain, In the StepsofJohnBunyan:An Excursion
intoPuritanEngland(London: Rich and Cowan, 1950); and
Cynthia Wall, TheProseof Things:Traneformations of Description
in the EighteenthCentury(Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
2006).
21. "Wee were not gone forward farre from hence but wee came
to Hockley in the Hole, so named of the miry way in winter
time, verie troublesome to travelers: For the old Englishmen
our progenitors called deepe myre Hock and Hocks:' William
Camden, Britain,or a Chorographicall
Descriptionof the most
flourishingKindgomesEngland,Scotland,and Ireland,trans.
PhilemonHolland (London, 1610), 402.
Full text online at: http:/ /www.philological.bham.ac.uk/cam-
brit/ england.html.
22. See Foster, BunyanS Countryand Brittain, In the Stepsoflohn
Bunyan.
23. Christopher Hill, LibertyAgainst the Law: Some Seventeenth-
CenturyControversies(London: Penguin, 1996), 39.
24. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImproverImproved,or the Surveyof
HusbandrySurveyed(London, 1652).
25. Robert Child, ''A Large Letter Concerning the Defects and
Remedies ofEnglish Husbandry," published in Samuel Hartlib,
SamuelHartlib hisLegacie(London, 1651), 40.
26. Child, "Large Letter," 57-58.
27. Ibid., 107.
28. Silvanus Taylor, Common-Good,or,the Improvementof
Commons,Forrests,and Chases,by Inclosure(London, 1652),
Thomason TractE. 663[6].
29. J. L. and Barbara Hammond, The VillageLabourer,1760-
1832: A Study in the Governmentof EnglandBeforethe Reform
Bill (London: Longmans, Green, 1911), 27.
30. E. C. K. Ganner, CommonLan4 and In closure,2nd ed. (Lon-
don: Frank Cass, 1966), 16. ' Heath (London, 1860) 1 N: 28.
31. Hammond and Hammond, VillageLabourer,27.
32. J. D. Chambers and G. E. Min gay, TheAgricultural
Revolution:1750-1880 (London: B. T. Batsford, 1966); J.D.
Chambers, "Enclosure and Labour Supply in the Industrial
Revolution," reprinted in Agricultureand EconomicGrowthin
England,1650-1815, ed. E. L.Jones (New York: Barnes and
Noble, 1967), 117.
33. See J. M. Neeson, Commoners:CommonRight,Enclosure,and
SocialChangein England,1700-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993), 158-184. See also Dorothy Hartley,
Foodin England(London: MacDonald and Jane's, 1954), and
Richard Mabey, Plantswith a Purpose:A Guideto the Everyday
Useof Wild Plants (London: William Collins' Sons, 1977).
34. Hartley, Foodin England,33.
35. Ibid., 414-416.
36. Mabey, Plantswith a Purpose,134-138.
37. Ibid., 99.
38. Neeson, Commoners,176.
39. John Locke, Two Treatisesof Government[ 1690 ], Cambridge
Texts in the Historyof PoliticalThought,ed. Peter Laslett ( Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 301.
40. Locke, Two Treatises,285-286, 297.
41. Ibid., 297-298.
42. Ibid., 290-291, 294; 288-289.
43. Max Weber, TheProtestantEthic and the Spiritof Capital-
ism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons,
1958).
44. Locke, Two Treatises,290.
45. Ibid., 295.
247 NOTES TO PAGES 24-51
Chapter II. Improvement
l. E. G., Wast Land'sImprovement,British Library, Thomason
Tracts E715 (18). The author is identified only by initials, and
the pamphlet includes no printed information about place or
date of publication. However, Thomason noted "October 31,
1653" on his copy of the pamphlet's title page.
2. E.G., WastLand'sImprovement,1.
3. Ibid., 1-2.
4. Ibid., 1-4.
5. Francis Bacon, "The Great Instauration," in The Worksof
FrancisBacon,ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas
6. Bacon, "Great lnstauration;' IV: 18.
7. Ibid., 253,257.
8. Ibid., 265-270, 258, 255-256.
9. Bacon's New Atlantis,A WorkeUnfinished,published with
SylvaSylvarumor a Natural Historyin Ten Centuriesin 1627, was
most probably written before 1617.
10. Francis Bacon, "New Atlantis," in FrancisBacon,ed. Brian
Vickers ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 480.
11. Bacon, uGreat Instauration," 25.
12. Adolphus Speed,Adam out of Eden (London, 1659). For
more on Speed, see Ernest Clarke and Mark Greengrass,
"Speed, Adolphus," in OxfordDictionaryofNationalBiography
online.
13. This already impressive number includes titles, but not
new editions of already published works. For a complete list of
Hartlib's publications, see G. H. Turnbull, Hartlib,Dury, and
Comenius:Gleanings
from HartlibSPapers(London: Hodder and
Stoughton, 1947), 88-109.
14. In this sense they have a kinship '\"'ith other types of miscel-
lany publications of the period. See Adam Smyth, Profitand
Delight:PrintedMiscellaniesin England,1640-1682 (Detroit:
Wayne State University Press, 2004 ).
15. See Turnbull, Hartlib,Dury, and Comenius,88-109. For
more on the importance of Samuel Hartlib and his circle, see
Charles Webster, The GreatInstauration:Science,Medicine,and
Reform, 1626-1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975); SamuelHar-
tlib and UniversalReformation:Studiesin IntellectualCommunica-
tion,ed. Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor
( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); and Culture
and Cultivationin EarlyModernEngland:Writingand the Land,
ed . .Michael Leslie and Timothy Raylor (Leicester: Leicester
University Press, 1992). Hartlib's papers, edited by .Michael
Leslie et. al., were published in 1996 on CD-ROM; an aug-
mented version is now available online, see http:/ /www.shef.
ac.uk/hri/projects/projectpages/hartlib.
16. Richard Weston, A Discoursof HusbandrieUsedin Brabant
and Flanders,Shewingthe wonderfallimprovementof Land therei
and servingas a patternfor ourpracticein this Commonwealth
(London, 1650)! 25.
17. The traditional account ties the agricultural revolution to
three principal changes in farming practice: enclosure, the selec-
tive breeding of livestock, and the transformation of cropping
methods through the introduction of turnips and clover. See
John D. Chambers and Gordon E . .Mingay, TheAgriculturalRev-
olution,1770-1860 (London: Batsford, 1966); Eric Kerridge,
TheAgriculturalRevolution(New York: Augustus M. Kelley,
1968 ); and Mark Overton, AgriculturalRevolutionin England:
The Transformationof the AgrarianEconomy,1500-1850 (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
18. Karl Marx, Capital:A Critiqueof PoliticalEconomy(London,
1867), I: chapters 27-31.
19. Marx, Capital,I: 1033.
20. Ibid., 1048-1049.
21. Gilbert Slater, TheEnglishPeasantryand theEnclosureof
CommonFields(London: Archibald Constable, 1907); J. L. and
Barbara Hammond, The VillageLabourer,1760-1832: A Study
in the Governmentof Englandbeforethe ReformBill (London:
Longmans, Green, 1911); E. C. K. Ganner, CommonLand and
Enclosure(London: Macmillan, 1912).
22. Chambers and Min gay,AgriculturalRevolution,88. For
Chambers's refutation of Marx, see his classic article,]. D.
Chambers, "Enclosure and the Labour Supply in the Industrial
Revolution;' EconomicHistoryReview5, no. 3 (1953): 319-343.
23. E. P. Thompson, TheMaking of the EnglishWorkingClass
(New York: Vintage, 1963), 12-13.
24. J.M. Neeson, Commoners:CommonRight,Enclosure,and
SocialChangein England,1700-1820 (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993); Jane Humphries, Childhoodand Child
Labourin the BritishIndustrialRevolution( Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2010)f Graham Rogers, "Custom and
Common Right: Waste Land Enclosure and Social Change in
West Lancashire," AgriculturalHistoryReview41 1 no. 2 ( 1993):
137-154.
25. Thomas Tusser, FiveHundrethPointesof GoodHusbandrie
(London, 1557), 58.
26. Francis Trigge, HumblePetitionof Two Sisters;The Church
and Common-Wealth(London, 1604), n.p.
248 NOTES TO PAGES 53~63
27. Robert Child, "A.Large letter concerning the Defects and
Remedies ofEnglish Husbandry;' in SamuelHartlib his Legacie
(London, 1651); Walter Blith, The EnglishImproverImproved
(London, 1652); Sylvanus Taylor, Common-Good:or,the
Improvementof Commons,Forrests,and Chases,by Inclosure
(London, 1652) Thomason Tract E. 663[6]; E.G., WastLand's
Improvement;Joseph Lee, ConsiderationsConcerningCommon
Fields,andinclosures(London, 1654).
28. Taylor, Common-Good,51; Timothy Nourse, Campania
Frelix(London, 1700), 98, 99.
29. See John Dixon Hunt, "Hortulan Affaires;' in SamuelHartlib
and UniversalReformation,323-328; and John Dixon Hunt,
GreaterPerfections:ThePracticeof GardenTheory(Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000), 180-187. Hunt also
reproduces Dymock's original sketches contained in his letter
to Hartlib ( Sheffield University Library HP 62/29 /3A and HP
62/29/4A).
30. John Worlidge, Systema Agricultur.z(London, 1669 ).
31. Hartlib, Legacie,105-106.
32. This account is contained in Thomas Birch, TheHistoryof the
Royal SocietyofLondon (1756-57; reprint, NewYork:Johnson
Reprint, 1968), I: 107.
33. Joseph Glanvill, SeepsisScientifica( 1665), ed. John Owen
(London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1885), 65.
34. Thomas Sprat, History of the Royal Societyof London,Forthe
ImprovingofNatural Knowledge(London, 1667), 35-36. See
also Charles Webster, The GreatInstauration;M1chael Hunter,
Establishingthe New Science:The Experienceof the EarlyRoyal
Society(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boyd ell, 1989 ); Michael Hunter,
Scienceand Societyin RestorationEngland( Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1981); .Michael Hunter, Scienceand
the Shapeof Orthodoxy:IntellectualChangein Late Seventeenth-
CenturyEngland(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1995); W.
T. Lynch, "Solomon'sChild1': Method in the EarlyRoyal Society
of London (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); W. T.
Lynch, "A Society ofBaconians? The Collective Development
of Bacon's Method in the Royal Society ofLondon," in Francis
Baconand the Re.figuringofEarlyModem Thought:Essaysto
Commemoratethe Advancementof Learning(1605-2005), ed.
J. R. Solomon and C. G. Martin (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005),
173-202.
35. Sprat, History,110.
36. Birch, History,I: 402-3.
37. G. H. Turnbull, "Samuel Hartlib's Influence on the Early
History of the Royal Society;' Notes and Recordsof the Royal
Societyof London 10 (1953): 101-130; Webster, GreatInstaura-
tion, 88-99; and R.H. Syfret, "The Origins of the Royal Soci-
ety," Notes and Recordsof the Royal Societyof London 5 (1948):
75-137.
38. Hartlib as quoted in Turnbull, Hartlib,37.
39. See D. Carey, "Compiling Nature's History: Travellers and
Travel Narratives in the Early Royal Society," Annals of Science
54 (1997): 269-92; .Michael Hunter, "Robert Boyle and the
Early Royal Society: A Reciprocal Exchange in the Making
ofBaconian Science," BritishJournalfor theHistory of Science
40,no.1 (March2007): 1-23; andJustinStagl,AHistoryof
Curiosity:The Theoryof Travel,1550-1800 (Chur, Switzerland:
Harwood, 1995), 95-153.
40. Bacon, "Great lnstauration," IV: 25.
4 L Royal Society Archives, Domestic Manuscripts 5, number
63.
42. For more on the links between Hartlib, Evelyn, and John
Beale, see also Peter Goodchild, '"No Phantasticall Utopia,
but a Real Place': John Evelyn,John Beale, and Backbury Hill,
Herefordshire;' GardenHistory 19 (1991): 106-27;John Dixon
Hunt, "'Gard'ning Can Spe.ak Proper English'," in Cultureand
Cultivationin EarlyModernEngland,195-222; John Dixon
Hunt, "Hortulan Affaires"; and John Dixon Hunt, Greater
Perfections,especially chapter 7.
43. Royal Society D. M. 5, number 63.
44. Royal Society Archive D. M., 5, nos. 56, 63-64. See also R.
Lennard, "English Agriculture under Charles II: The Evidence
of the Royal Society's 'Enquiries,"' EconomicHistoryReview4
( 1932-34): 23-45; and Hunter, EstablishingtheNew Science,
108-109.
45. "Enquiries Concerning Agriculture," PhilosophicalTransac-
tions11 no. 5 (July 3, 1665): 91-94.
46. "Enquiries," 94.
47. Hartlib as quoted in Turnbull, Hartlib,37.
48. Royal Society Classified Papers X (3): nos. 10, 12,22-26,
28-31.
49. Royal Society D. M. 5, n. 65.
SO.John Evelyn's sprawling, magisterial, never-completed
"Elysium Britannicum" is one of the most significant of these
subsequent developments. The original manuscript is held
by the British Library, but was edited and Published by John
E. Ingram as John Evelyn, ElysiumBritannicum,or the Royal
Gardens(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000).
For more on Evelyn's manuscript and its significance, see John
249 NOTES TO PAGES 65-72
Evelyn's"ElysiumBritannicum"and EuropeanGardening,ed.
Therese O'Malley and Joachim Wolschke-Buhnahn (Washing-
ton, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1998); and Frances Harris, "The
Manuscripts of John Evelyn's 'Elysium Britannicum,"' Garden
History25, no. 2 (1997): 131-137.
51. John Ogilby, Britannia,Volumethe First:Or,an fllustrationof
the Kingdomof Englandand Dominionof Wales(London, 1675).
52. Ogilby and his team surveyed about two-thirds of their goal,
and published over twenty-five hundred miles in all.
53. After publishing the translation of a Dutch work, Embassyto
China,in 1669, OgilbypublishedAfrica and Atlas Japannensisin
1670,Americaand Atlas Chinensisin 1671, and Asia in 1673.
54. See also Catherine Delano-Smith, "Milieus of Mobility: Itin-
eraries, Route Maps, and Road Maps," in Cartographies
of Travel
and Navigation,ed. James R. Akerman ( Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2006), 46-49; and Catherine Delano-Smith and
Roger J.P. Klein, EnglishMaps:A History (Toronto: University
of Toronto Press, 1999), 170.
55. See Alan M. MacEachren, ''A Linear View of the World:
Strip Maps as a Unique Form of Cartographic Representa-
tion;' AmericanCartographer13, no. l (1986): 7-25; Alan
M. MacEachren and Gregory B. Johnson, "The Evolution,
Application, and Implication of Strip Format Travel Maps,"
CartographicJournal24 (December 1987): 147-158; and
Nick Paumgarten, "Getting There: The Science of Driving
Directions," New Yorker,April 24, 2006, available online at
www.newyorker.com. Meredith Donaldson Clark also kindly
shared her "'Now through you made public for everyone': John
Ogilby's Britannia (1675), the 1598 Peutinger Map Facsimile,
and the Shaping of Public Space" in TheAssociationof Space:
Relationsand Geographiesof EarlyModernPublics,ed. Angela
Vanhaelen and Joseph P. Ward (forthcoming).
56. The Iter Britannicumcontained fifteen itineraries measured
out in Roman miles and paces, documenting the routes be-
tween the province's major cities and military encampments.
57. For the links between Ogilbyand Hooke, see E.G. R.
Taylor, "Robert Hooke and the Cartographical Projects of the
Late Seventeenth Century (1666-1696)," Geographical
Journal
90, no. 6 (December 1937): 529-540; and Robert Hooke, The
Diary of RobertHooke (London: Taylor and Francis, 1935).
58. John Ogilby, "Queries in Order to the Description of Britan-
nia,"Bodleian Library Department of Western Manuscripts, MS
Aubrey 4, fol. 244r.
59. For Hooke's queries, see Robert Hooke, "Proposals for the
Good of the Royal Society," Royal Society Classified Papers XX,
no.SO.
60. Ogilby, "Queries:'
61. See]. B. Harley, introduction, in John Ogilby, Britannia
(1675, reprint, Amsterdam: Theatrwn Orbis Terrarum, 1970),
xvii; Delano-Smith, "Milieus of Mobility;' 16-68; andDelano-
Smith and Klein, EnglishMaps, 168-172.
62. Ogilby, Britannia,plates 51 (London to Southampton) and
97 (London to Pool), respectively.
63. I thank Diana Peri ton for her characteristic meticulousness
in checking for the presence of a fold on my behalf.
64. The lotteries were held at Garaway's coffeehouse in London
in March 1673, and at the Bristol Fair in July of the same year.
See Taylor, "Robert Hooke;' 531.
65. It remained in manuscript until the early nineteenth century,
when it was published as Gregory King, Natural and Political
Observationsand Conclusionsupon the State and Conditionof
England,1696 (London, 1801).
66. King, Natural and PoliticalObservations,52.
67. Chambers and.Mingay;Agricu1tura1 Revolution,77.
68. Ibid., 35.
69. Anonymous, "Proposals for the Improvement of Commons
and Waste-Lands," n.p., n.d., 47.
Chapter III. Swamp
l. Daniel Defoe, A TourThro'the vVholeIslandof GreatBritain,
2 vols., with an introduction by G. D. H. Cole (London: Frank
Cass, 1968), 669.
2. William Gilpin, Observationson SeveralPartsof England,
particularlythe Mountainsand Lakes of Cumberlandand Westmo-
reland,relativechieflyto PicturesqueBeauty,made in theyear 1772
(London, 1786), vol. 2, 134.
3. William Camden, William Camden'sBritannia,Newly Trans-
latedinto English:With LargeAdditions and Improvements,ed.
and trans. Edmund Gibson (London, 1695), 408-409.
4. Camden, Britannia,409.
5. H. C., A DiscourseConcerningtheDrayningof Fennesand
SurroundedGroundsin the sixe·CounteysofNorfolke,Suffolke,
Cambridgewith the IsleofEly,Huntington,Northampton,and
Lincolne(London, 1629), 4.
6. Camden, Britannia,408-409.
7. TheAnglo-SaxonVersionof the Life of St. Guthlac,Hermit of
Crowland,trans. Charles Wycliffe Goodwin (London: John
Russell Smith! 1848), 19.
8. Life of St. Guthlac,21-23.
250 NOTES TO PAGES 73-96
9. Felix of Crowland, cited in William Dugdale, TheHistoryof
Imbankingand Drayningof DiversFennsand Marshes(London,
1662), 179-180.
10. On monsters and the marvelous in Western culture, see
Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park, Wondersand the Orderof
Nature, 1150-1750 (New York: Zone, 1998). On the relation-
ship between ugliness and disgust, see Mark Cousins, "The
Ugly" (Part l),AAFiles no. 28 (1994); "The Ugly" (Part 2),AA
Filesno. 29 (1995); "The Ugly" (Part 3),AAFiles no. 30 (1995).
11. Cited in H. C. Darby, TheMedievalFenland( Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1940), 21.
12. Darby, MedievalFenland,21.
13. Cited in Camden, Britannia,409.
14. As cited in H. C., A Discourse.The writer is paraphrasing
Camden, Britannia,5.
15. Ibid.
16. Camden, Britannia,409.
17. Celia Fiennes, TheJourneysof CeliaFiennes,ed. Christopher
Morris (London: Cresset, 1949), 146,150,155.
18. Fiennes,Journeys,154-155.
19. Ibid., 156.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid., 155-156.
22. Defoe, Tour,I: 74.
23. Ibid., II: 494.
24. Ibid., I: 78-79.
25. Ibid., 80.
26.Ibid.
27. Ibid., II: 500.
28. Ibid., 496.
29. Mary Douglas, Purityand Danger:An Analysisof Conceptsof
Pollutionand Taboo(London: Routledge, 2005).
30.JohnBunyan, ThePilgrim'sProgress.fromThisWorld,to That
whichis to Come [1678], ed.James Blanton Wbarey and Roger
Sharrock., 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1960), 15.
31. H. C., Discourse,4.
32. See H. C. Darby, TheDrainingof the Fens,2nd ed. ( Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968 ), 6-8.
33. Camden, Britannia,391.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid., 408.
36. William Dugdale, TheHistoryof Imbankingand Drayningof 52. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImprover,Or a New Surveyof
DiversPennsand Marshes(London, 1662), 16ff; 43 Elizabeth, Husbandry(London, 1649 ); Walter Blith, TheEnglishImprover
cap. 11, cited in Darby, Draining,22. Improved,or the Surveyof HusbandrySurveyed(London, 1652);
37. Darby, Draining,29. Cressy Dymock, A DiscoverieForDivisionor Settingout of Land,
as to the bestForm (London, 1653).
38. Humphry Bradley; ''A treatise concerning the state of the
marshes or inundated lands ( commonly called Fens) in the 53. Blith, ImproverImproved,46-47.
counties of Norfolk, Huntingdon, Cambridge, Northampton 54. Ibid., 40, 37.
and Lincoln, drawn up by Humphry Bradley, a Brabanter, on
55. Ibid., 55, 42.
the 3rd of December 1589." British Museum, Landsdown MS
56. Svetlana Alpers, TheArt of Describing:Dutch Art in the
60/34. See Darby, Draining,267-268.
SeventeenthCentury( Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
39. Catherine Delano-Smith and Roger J. P. Klein, English
1983), 148.
Maps:A History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1999),
57. Lisa Jardine, GoingDutch: How EnglandPlunderedHolland's
79. See also Edward Lynam, "Early Maps of the Fen District,"
Glory(New York: Harper Collins, 2008 ), 232.
GeographicalJournal84, no. 5 (November 1934): 420-423;
58. Sir Jonas Moore, ''A Mapp of ye Great Levell of ye Fenns
Frances Willmoth, SirJonasMoore:PracticalMathematicsand
extending into ye Countyes ofNorthampton, Norfolk, Suffolke,
RestorationScience(Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell, 1993).
Lyncolne, Cambridg & Huntington & the Isle of Ely as it is now
40. Cambridgeshire Archives, R59 /31/ 40. See Lynam, "Early
drained." Moore's map is in The National Archives in Kew, PRO
Maps of the Fen District"; "William Hayward" in A. W. Skemp-
MPC 1/88. See Willmoth, SirJonasMoore.
ton, A BiographicalDictionaryof CivilEngineersin GreatBritain
and Ireland,1500-1830 (London: Thomas Telford, 2002 ), 59. Anonymous, "The Anti-Projector. Or, The History of the
308-309; Willmoth, SirJonasMoore,89-90. Fen Project," s. l., s. d. (1646?).
41. Cornelius Vermuyden, A DiscourseTouchingthe Drayning 60. Ibid., 8.
the GreatFennes,Lying Within the severallCountiesof Lincolne, 61. Ibid.
Northampton,Huntington,Norfolke,Suffolke,Cambridge,and the
62. Camden, Britannia,408.
Isle ofEly, as it waspresentedto hisMajestie(London, 1642), L
63. Michael Drayton, TheSecondPart, orA Continuanceof
42. Cited in L. E. Harris, Vermuydenand the Fens:A Study of Sir
Poly-Olbionfrom the EighteenthSong (London, 1622 ), 24.
CorneliusVermuydenand the GreatLevel (London: Cleaver-
Poly-0/bion,orA chorographicall descriptionof all the tracts,
Hume, 1953), 41.
rivers,mountaines,forests,and otherparts .. . of GreatBritaine,
43. Harris, Vermuyden,41. first published in 1612, consisted of eighteen "songs" -written in
44. Ibid., 33. alexandrine couplets. The second part published ten years later
added a further twelve songs, for a grand total of thirty compris-
45. aAbriefe Remembrance Wben the Report concerning the
ing some fifteen thousand lines of verse. Additional songs cover-
pretended Ryot in the Isle of Axeholm shall be read" (July 6,
ing Scotland were planned but never written.
1653 ). On Hatfield Chase, see Dugdale, Imbanking;Joseph
Hunter, South Yorkshire(London, 1828-31); W B. Stonehouse, 64. Drayton, SecondPart ... of Poly-Olbion,108.
Historyand Topographyof the IsleofAxeholme (London, 1839); 65. Darby, MedievalFenland,22.
John Tomlinson, TheLevel ofHatfield Chase(London, 1882);
66. Dugdale, "To the Reader," in Imbanking.
and Harris, Vermuyden.
67. Defoe, Tour,I: 79; II: 496--497.
46. Cited in Harris, Vermuyden,67.
68. Ibid., II: 497.
4 7. Darby, Draining,40.
69. Ibid., I: 79; II: 497-499.
48. Ibid., 41-42; Dugdale, Im banking,410.
70. Richard Blome, The Gentleman'sRecreation(London, 1686),
49. An Actfor the Drainingof the GreatLevelof the Fens(Lofldon,
II: 128.
1649).
71. Edmund Waller, On St.James'sPark.As latelyimprovedby hi.s
50. Ibid., 561.
Maiesty (London, 1661).
51. See Darby; Draining,70-75.
251 NOTES TO PAGES 99-117
72. Nathan Flis and Michael Hunter, FrancisBarlow:Painter
of Birdsand Beasts(Oxford: The Robert Boyle Project, 2011);
John Evelyn, Diary, entry for August 23, 1681;JohnAubrey,
NaturalHistoryand Antiquitiesof the Countyof Surrey(London,
1718), 3:198
73. Ralph Payne-Gallwey, preface, TheBook ofDuck Decoys:
TheirConstruction,Management,and History (London: John Van
Voorst, 1886).
74. Defoe, Tour,I: 78-79; II: 496.
75. Darby, Draining,83-116.
76. Blith, ImproverImproved,56-57.
77. Darby, Draining,119-120.
78. Charles Labelye, TheResultof a Viewof the GreatLevel of the
Fens(London, 1745).
79. Arthur Young, as quoted in Darby, Draining,169.
80. John Golborne, as quoted in Darby, Draining,130.
81. William Gilpin, Observationson SeveralParts of the Counties
of Cambridge,Norfolk,Suffolk,and Essex.Also on SeveralPartsof
North WalesiRelativeChieflyto PicturesqueBeauty,in Two Tours,
the Formermade in the Year1769. TheLatter in the Year1773
(London, 1809), 15-16,18.
82.Ibid., 16-18.
83. In this context the distinction made by James Corner
between landskipand landschaft is particularly useful. See
his "Eidetic Operations and New Landscapes," in Recovering
Landscape:Essaysin ContemporaryLandscapeArchitecture(New
York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999), 153-169.
84. Defoe, Tour,II: 495.
85. Steam-driven pumps began to be used in the 1820s. Darby,
Draining,220-237.
86. Ibid., 28.
Chapter IV. Mountain
1. See Sukanya Dasgupta, "Drayton's 'Silent Spring': Poly-Olbion
and the Politics ofLandscape;' CambridgeQuarterly39, no. 2
2010: 152-171.
2. Michael Drayton, TheSecondPart, orA Continuanceof Poly-
OlbionJrom the EighteenthSong(London, 1622), 123.
3. Drayton, SecondPart ... of Poly-Olbion,123.
4. Ibid., 124. 'Ibis section was derived directly from William
Camden's description ofDerbyshire in his Britannia,see Wil-
liam Camden'sBritannia,Newly TranslatedintoEnglish:With
LargeAdditions and Improvements,ed. and trans. Edmund
252 NOTES TO PAGES 117-138
Gibson (London, 1695), 493-494.
5. Drayton, SecondPart ... of Poly-Olbion,124.
6. Ibid., 124-125.
7. Winfried Menninghaus, Disgust:Theoryand Historyof a
StrongSensation,trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb (Albany:
State University of New York, 2003 ), 84, 86.
8. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelaisand His World,trans. Helene Iswol-
sky (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 26-29.
9. Noel Malcolm, "Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679)," in Oxford
Dictionaryof NationalBiographyonline [http://www.
oxforddnb.com/view/article/13400, accessed July 13, 2012].
10. Thomas Hobbes, De MirabilibusPecci:Beingthe Wondersof
the Peak in Darby-Shire,CommonlycalledTheDevil'sArse of Peak
(London, 1678),14,31-32,42-48, 74-76,80.
11. Lorraine Daston and Katharine Park, Wondersand the Order
ofNature, 1150-1750 (New York: Zone, 1998), 209.
12. Edward Browne, "Tour in Derbyshire," British Library MS
Sloan 1900, reprinted in Sir ThomasBrowne'sWorks,ed. Simon
Wilkin (London, 1836), I: 27-29.
13. Browne, "Tour," 32-33.
14. Ibid., 35-36.
15. Charles Cotton, The Wondersof the Peake(London, 1681),
1-2.
16. Ibid., S, 19, 30-31, 47, 49, 76-77.
17. Camden, Britannia1 495.
18. Ibid., 490,493.
19. On the usefulness of mountains, see Marjorie Hope Nicol-
son's Mountain Gloomand Mountain Glory:TheDevelopmentof
the Aestheticsof the In.finite(Seattle: University of Washington
Press, 1959), chapters 2 and 3. See also NumaBroc, Les mon-
tagnesvuespar lesg€ographesct lesnaturalistesde languefrani;ais
au XVIIIe sifcle:Contributional'histoirede lagtographie(Paris:
Bibliotheque Nationale, 1969); Gavin Rylands de Beer, Early
Travellersin the Alps (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1930);
Robert Macfarlane, Mountainsof theMind: A Historyof a Fasci-
nation (London: Gran ta, 2003 ); Simon Schama, Landscapeand
Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995); Francis Spufford, I May Be
Some Time:lee and the EnglishImagination(London: Faber and
Faber, 1996); and Rosalind Williams,Notes on the Underground:
An Essayon Technology, Society,and the Imagination(Cambridge,
MA:11ITPress, 1990).
20. Celia Fiennes, TheJourneysof CeliaFiennes,ed. Christopher
Morris (London: Cresset, 1949), 96-97, 102.
21. Ibid., 107, 108; 102.
22. Ibid., 108.
23. Charles Leigh, TheNaturalHistoryof Lancashire,Cheshire,
and the Peak in Derbyshire( Oxford, 1700).
24. Ibid. 1 187, 192.
25. Francis Bacon, "The Great Instauration," in The Worksof
FrancisBacon,ed. James Spedding, Robert Ellis, and Douglas
Heath (London, 1860), IV: 253.
26. Daniel Defoe, A Tour Thro'The"WholeIslandof GreatBritain
(London: Frank Cass, 1968); II: 564, 566-568.
27. Ibid., 576-580, 585-586.
28. Ibid., 581,583,585.
29. Nicolson, Mountain Gloom,3. On Burnet, see Ernest Lee
Tuveson, Milleniumand Utopia:A Study in the Backgroundof the
Idea of Progress(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949 ).
30. Drayton, SecondPart ... of Poly-Olbion,135.
31. ScottMandelbrote, "Burnet, Thomas," in OxfordDictionary
of NationalBiographyonline.
32. Thomas Burnet, TheSacredTheoryof the Earth (London,
1684), 102, 104-105, 112,115; 108,109.
33. Ibid., 109,306.
34. Ibid., 305.
35. Carolyn Korsmeyer, SavoringDisgust:TheFouland the Fair
in Aesthetics( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011 ).
36. Fiennes, Journeys,108.
37. Leigh, Lancashire,187-188, 576.
38. Joseph Addison, "Ad D. Tho. Burnettum;' MusarumAngli-
canarumAnalecta (London, 1699 ), English trans., Mr.Addison's
FineOde to Dr. ThomasBurnet,on His SacredTheoryof the Earth
(London, 1727).
39. Joseph Addison, Remarkson SeveralPartsof Italy (London,
1705 ), 445, 455, 458. My thanks to Robin Middleton for draw-
ing this passage to my attention.
40. Joseph Addison, "An Essay on the Pleasures of the Imagina-
tion," TheSpectator,nos. 411-421 (June 21-July 3, 1712), no.
411.
41. Ibid., no. 412.
42.Ibid.
43. Ibid., no. 418.
44. Ibid., nos. 417; 411; John MacArthur, ThePicturesque:
Ar-
chitecture,Disgustand OtherIrregularities(London: Routledge,
2007), 57-109.
253 NOTES TO PAGES 139-166
45. Moses Mendelssohn, "Rhapsodie oder Zusiitse zu den
Briefen Uber die Emp.findungen" ( 1761 ), inAsthetischeSchriften
inAuswahl, 139-140, as cited in Menninghaus, Disgust,26.
46. Menninghaus, Disgust,26-27.
47.Addison, "Pleasures of the Imagination," no. 411.
48. Timothy Clayton, TheEnglishPrint, 1688-1802 (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 157-158.
49. See Emily Lorraine DeMontluzin, in "George Smith ofWig-
ton: Gentleman's Magazine Contributor, Unheralded Scientific
Polymath, and Shaper of the Rom.antic Sublime," Eighteenth-
CenturyLife 28, no. 3 (Fall 2004): 66-89, and in "Topographi-
cal, Antiquarian, Astronomical, and Meteorological Contribu-
tions by George Smith ofWigton in the Gentleman's Magazine,
1735-59," ANQ14, no. 2 (Spring 2001): 5-12.
SO.George Smith,A Treatiseof Comets(London, 1744). The
map is entitled "The geography of the great solar eclipse of July
14 MDCCXLVIII: exhibiting an accurate map of all parts of the
Earth in which it will be visible, with the North Pole, according
to the latest discoveries."
S 1. George Smith, ''AJourney to Caudebec Fells, with a Map
and Description of the Same;' Gentleman'sMagazineXVII
(1747h23.
52. George Smith, ''AJourney up to Cross-fell Mountain,"
Gentleman'sMagazineXVII ( 1747): 384-385.
53. Smith, "Caudebec Fells," 522.
54. George Smith, "AJourney to the Wad, or Black Lead Mines;'
Gentleman'sMagazineXXII(1751): 51-53.
55. George Smith, "Letter from Carlisle, June 9, 1746," Gentle-
man'sMagazineXVIU (1748): 562-563.
56. For the influence of Burke's ideas on eighteenth-century
literature and art, see Peter de Bolla, The.Discourse
of the Sublime
( Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Walter J. Hipple, TheBeautiful,
TheSublime,and the Picturesquein Eighteehth-Century British
AestheticTheory( Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University
Press, 1957); and Samuel H. Monk, The Sublime:A Study of
CriticalTheoriesinXVIlI-CenturyEngland (Ann Arbor: Univer-
sity of Michigan Press, 1935). See also Timothy J. Costelloe, The
Sublime:FromAntiquity to the Present(Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press1 2012); Immanuel Kant, Observationson the
Feelingof the Beautifuland Sublime,trans. John'T. Goldwaithe
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003); Immanuel
Kant, CritiqueofJudgment,trans. Werner S. Pluhar (India-
napolis, IN: Hackett, 1987);James Kirwan, Sublimity:The
Rationaland the Irrationalin theHistory ofAesthetics(London:
Routledge, 2005);Jean-Fran~ois Lyotard, Lessonson theAnalytic
of the Sublime,trans. Elizabeth Rottenberg (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1994); and Philip Shaw, The Sublime(London:
Routledge, 2006).
57. Edmund Burke, A Philosophical Enquiryinto the Originof our
Ideas of the Sublimeand Beautiful,ed. James T. Boulton (Notre
Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1968), 57, 65, 58, 86.
58. Ibid., 65, 66, 68.
59. Ibid., 85-86, 136.
60. Ibid., 59-63, 73.
61. See James E. Cummings, "Brown,John (1715-1768)," in
OxfordDictionaryofNationalBiographyonline.
62. John Brown, A Descriptionof the Lake at Keswick,(And the
adjacentCountry)in Cumberland(Kendal, 1770), 3-5.
63. Malcohn Andrews, TheSearchfor the Picturesque:Landscape
Aestheticsand Tourismin Britain,1760-1800 (Stanford: Stan"
ford University Press, 1989), 184.
64. Wtlliam Gilpin, "Tue general idea ofKeswick-lake;' MS
Lakes Tour notebook ( 1772 ), Bodleian Library, University of
Oxford MS Eng. Misc. e. 488/3, drawing between fols. 303 and
304.
65. Gilpin, Observationson SeveralPartsof England,particularly
the Mountainsand Lakes of Cumberlandand Westmoreland
(London, 1786),I: 182.
66. Johann Gottfried Herder, "Plastik" ( 1778 ), and William
Hogarth, TheAnalysisof Beauty ( 1753), cited and discussed in
Menninghaus, Disgust,52-56.
67. Gilpin1 Mountainsand Lakes, I: 88-90.
Chapter V. Forest
1. Spenser was clearly the inspiration for this emblem of
Peacham's: compare Edmund Spenser, TheFaerieQueene
(London, 1590) I: 1:vii and Henry Peacham, MinervaBritanna
(London, 1612), 182. See also Christopher Burlinson,Allegory,
Space,and the MaterialWorldin the WritingsofEdmund Spenser
( Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006): 172.
2. Tue entire catalogue is contained in Spenser, FaerieQueene,
1:1:viii-ix.
3. John Manwood.A Treatiseand Discourseof the Laws of the
Forrest(London, 1598), l, 2. See also J.Charles Cox, TheRoyal
Forestsof England(London: Methuen, 1905); Raymond Grant,
TheRoyalForestsofEngland(Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1991);
Thomas Hinde, Forestsof Britain (London: Victor Gollancz,
1985); Ralph Whitlock, HistoricForestsof England(New York:
A. S. Barnes, 1979); Charles R. Young, TheRoyalForestsofMe-
254 NOTES TO PAGES 166-188
dievalEngland(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
1979 ). John Langton and Graham Jones are currently engaged
in a large research project on the early modern forests of Eng-
land and Wales; see Forestsand ChasesofEnglandand Walesc.
1500-c. 1800: Towardsa Surveyand Analysis,ed. John Langton
and Graham Jones ( Oxford: St. John's College Research Centre,
2005). Other works on forests and timber include Robert
Pogue Harrison, Forests:The Shadowof Civilization( Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992 ); Joachim Radkau, Wood:A
History,trans. Patrick Camiller (London: Polity, 2012); Simon
Schama, Landscapeand Memory (New York: Knopf, 1995); and
InvaluableTrees:Culturesof Nature, 1660-1830, ed. Laura Au-
ricchio, Elizabeth Heckendorn Cook, and Giulia Pacini, SVEC
( Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century) ( Oxford:
Voltaire Foundation, 2012).
4. Manwood, Laws of the Forrest,2.
5. Ibid., 12, 34.
6. Schama, Landscapeand Memory, 145. See also Daniel Beaver,
Huntingand the Politicsof Violencebeforethe EnglishCivilWar
( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008 ).
7. Manwood, Laws of the Forrest,127.
8. Ibid., 35.
9. Ibid., 33 1 34.
10. Ibid., 46, 48; 33.
11. See Christopher Hill, LibertyAgainst the Law: Some Seven-
teenth-CenturyControversies (London: Allen Lane/Penguin,
1996); Buchanan Sharp, In ContemptofAll Authority:Rural
Artisans and Riot in the Westof England(Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1980 ).
12. William Camden, William Camden'sBritannia,Newly Trans-
latedinto English:With LargeAdditions and Improvements,ed.
and trans. Edmund Gibson (London, 1695), 231.
13. Act of 16 May, !James (London: Robert Barker, 1603).
14. Grant, Royal Forests,192.
15. John Man wood, "John Manwood's Project for improving
the Land Revenue, by in closing Wasts. For Sir Julius Caesar.
27 April, 1609;' published in John St.John, Observationson the
Land Revenueof the Crown(London, 1787), Appendix 1, 1-2.
16.Arthur Standish, The CommonsComplaint(London, 1611).
17. Rooke Churche, An Olde ThriftNewly Revived(London,
1612); Arthur Standish, New DirectionsofExperienceby the
Authorfor the Plantingof Timberand Firewood(London, 1613).
18. Camden, Britannia,245.
19. See R. G. Albion, Forestsand Sea Power:The TimberProblem
of the RoyalNavy, 1652-1862, (Harvard: 1926); and G. Ham-
mersley, "Tue Crown Woods and 'Their Exploitation in the
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," Bulletinof the Institute
ofHistoricalResearchXXX(1957): 136-160. See also John
Brewer, The Sinewsof Power:War,Money,and the EnglishState,
1688-1783 (New York: Knopf, 1989).
20. Robert Child, "A Large letter Concerning the Defects and
Remedies ofEnglish Husbandry," published in Samuel Hartlib,
SamuelHartlib hisLegacie(London, 1651), 58-59.
21. Child, qLarge letter," 59-62.
22. Sylvan us Taylor, Commci_n
Good:or the Improvementof Com-
mons,Forests,and Chasesby Inclosure(London, 1652\ 29.
23. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImprover,orA New Surveyof Hus-
bandry(London, 1649), 123.
24. Ibid., 125.
25. Walter Blith, TheEnglishImproverImproved(London,
1651), 162.
26. Lindsay Sharp, "Timber, Science, and Economic Reform
in the Seventeenth Century," Forestry48, no. 1 (1975): 51. For
more on Evelyn's Sylva,see E. S. De Beer, TheDiary ofJohn
Evelyn,6 vols. (Oxford, 1955 ); Geoffrey Keynes, JohnEvelyn:A
Study in Bibliophilyand a Bibliographyof his Writings(New York:
Grolier Club, 1937); Arthur Posonby,JohnEvelyn:Fellowof the
Royal Society,Author of "Sy!va'1 (London, 1933 ).
27. After its initial publication 1 Sylvawent through three more
editions (1670, 1679, 1706) before Evelyn's death.
28. John Evelyn, Sylva,Or a Discourseof Forest-Trees,
and the
Propagationof Timberin hisMajestiesDominion(London,
1664), "To the Reader."
29. Much of the material in Sylvawas drawn from Evelyn's "Ely-
sium Britannicum;' British Library Evelyn MS 45. Published
in John Evelyn, ElysiumBritannicumor the Royal Gardens,ed.
John E. Ingram (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 2001 ). See also Geoffrey Keynes, JohnEvelyn:A Study in
Bibliophilyand a Bibliographyof his Writings(New York: Grolier
Club, 1937): 126-161; 206-211; 234-239; and JohnEvelyn's
"ElysiumBritannicum"and EuropeanGardening,ed. Joachim
Wolschke-Bulmahn and Therese O'Malley (Washington, DC:
Dumbarton Oaks, 1998).
30. Evelyn, Pomona,4, published in Sylva ( 1664 ).
31. Evelyn, Sylva,"To the Reader,~ n.p.
32. Ibid., 9, 65, 66; 18, 115.
33. Nicholas Cox, The Gentleman'sRecreation(London, 1674);
Richard Blome, The Gentleman'sRecreation(London, 1686);
255 NOTES TO PAGES 189-202
Stephen Switzer, TheNobleman,Gentleman,and Gardener's
Recreation(London, 1715); Stephen Switzer, Ichnographia
Rustica,or,TheNobleman,Gentleman,and Gardener'sRecreation
(London, 1718 ); Gervase Markham, The EnglishHusbandman
(London, 1613); Gervase Markham, CountryContentments
(London, 1615); Gervase Markham, The CompleatHusband-
man and Gentleman'sRecreation(London, 1695).
34. A visual tactic that recalls Samuel Hartlib's earlier agricul-
tural miscellanies.
35. Evelyn, Sylva,115.
36. Ibid., 57.
37. "Mr. Kirke's Wood at Mosely, Yorkshire at Cookeridge" in
Evelyn, Silva [4th ed.] (London, 1706), 307.
38. See Clare Jackson, "Kirke, Thomas," in Dictionaryof National
Biographyonline.
39. Evelyn, Silva [4th ed.], 304.
40. Ibid., 301.
41. Moses Cook, TheManner of Raising,Ordering,and Improv-
ingForrest-Trees(London, 1676). See also Douglas Chambers,
The Plantersof theEnglishLandscapeGarden:Botany,.Trees,and
The GeorgicS(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993 ), 38--42;
Stephen Daniels, "Tue Political Iconography of Woodland in
Later Georgian England," in TheIconographyof Landscape,ed.
Denis Cosgrove and Stephen Daniels ( Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1988), 144-161; John Dixon Hunt, Garden
and Grove:TheItalianRenaissanceGardenin the EnglishImagina-
tion, 1600-1750 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1996); and Mark Laird,_TheFloweringof the Landscape
Garden:EnglishPleasureGrounds(Philadelphia; University of
Pennsylvania Press, 1999 ).
42. It is well known that the engravings by Kip and Knyff often
include elements that were either still under construction or, in
some cases, never actually built-notably, in this plate of Cas-
sio bury, a -wing of the house.
43. See John Harris, "London, George," in Dictionaryof National
Biography,http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/37686,
accessed 2/10/2012.
44. Antoine-Joseph Dezallier D'Argenville's La theGrieet la
pratiquedujardinagewas first published in Paris in 1709. James
was apprenticed to Matthew Bancks from 1690 to 1697 while
Bancks was employed by the Earl of Rochester for the design of
the house at New Park.
45. John James, The Theoryand Practiceof Gardening(London,
1712),48.
46. James, Theoryand Practice,54-56.
47. Ibid., 52.
48. John Laurence, The ClcrgymanSRecreation(London, 1715 );
Stephen Switzer, TheNobleman,Gentleman,and Gardiner's
Recreation(London, 1715); and Richard Bradley, New Improve-
ments of Plantingand Gardening(London, 1717).
49. Laurence combined The Clergyman's
Recreationand his later
The GentlemanSRecreationand published them as Gardening
Improv'd(London, 1718); Bradley published further editions
of his New Improvementsin 1718, 1719, l 720, 1724, 1726, and
1739. Switzer's augmented work was published as Ichnographia
Rustica(London, 1718).
50. Switzer's name has been associated with garden designs
at Blenheim, Grirnsthorpe, Cirencester, Riskins, Newbury
Park, Ebberston Lodge, Breamore, Spy Park, Duncombe Park,
Stourhead, Marston! Bold Hall, Exton Park, Nostell Priory,
Audley End, Rokeby Park, Beaumanor, Rhual, and Wilton. The
only full-length work on Switzer remains William Brogden,
"Stephen Switzer and Garden Design in Britain in the Early
18th Century" (PhD thesis, UniversityofEdinburgh, 1973).
See also J.Finch, "Pallas, Flora, and Ceres: Landscape Priorities
and Improvement on the Castle Howard Estate, 1699-1880,''
in EstateLandscapes:Design,Improvement,and Powerin the
Post-MedievalLandscape,ed. J.Finch and K. Giles (Woodbridge,
Suffolk: Boydell, 2008), 19-37; and]. Turner, "Stephen Switzer
and the Political Fallacy in Landscape Gardening History,"
Eighteenth-Century
Studiesl 1.4 ( 1978 ): 489-496.
51. Switzer, IchnographiaRustica,I, xx:viii.
52. Ibid., 58-60.
53. Ibid., xiii. See also .Michel Baridon, "Cross-Cultural Ex-
changes and the Rise of the Landscape Garden ( 1700-1815 ),"
in "Betterin France?":The Circulationof IdeasAcrossthe Channel
in the EighteenthCentury(Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press,
2005).
54. Ibid., II, 196; II, 200; I, 262,273; II, 200; 11,188; II, 201;
III, 6.
55. Ibid., III, 45, 46, 107-108.
56. Joseph Addison, "Essay on i:he Pleasures of the Imagina-
tion," Spectator,no. 414 (June 25, 1712).
57. See John Macarthur, ThePicturesque:
Architecture,Disgust,
and otherIrregularities(London: Routledge, 2007), 75-76.
58. Douglas Chambers identified the "Ideal Rural Garden" as
Riskins in ThePlantersof the EnglishLandscapeGarden,10.
59. Switzer, IchnographiaRustica,I, 85, 87.
256 NOTES TO PAGES 202-220
60. See Linda Cabe Halpern, "The Duke of Kent's Garden at
Wrest Park," Journalof GardenHistoryv; 15, no. 3 (July-Sep-
tember 1995): 149-l 78;Joyce Godber, WrestPark and the Duke
of Kent,Henry Grey(1671-1740) (Elstow Moot Hall, Leaflet 7,
1963); and the section on Wrest Parkin Eileen Harris, Thomas
Wright,Arbours & Grottos(London, 1979 ). For the Duke's
involvement in architecture, see Terry Friedman, "Lord Harrold
in Italy, 1715-1716: Four frustrated commissions to Leoni, Ju-
varra, Chiari, and Soldoni,'' BurlingtonMagazineCXXX ( 1988):
36-45; and Timothy Hudson, ''ADucal Patron of Architects,"
CountryLife CLV (1974), 78-81.
61. Eileen Harris and Nicholas Savage, BritishArchitectural
Books and Writers,1556-1785 ( Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1990),467.
62. See Bedfordshire County Record Office CRO 131/288. The
"Ewe Wilderness" and "Blackthorne Wilderness" are mentioned
on fols. 22 and 25. The purchases from Brampton Park nursery
are documented in CRO 131/295-296.
63. See Cassandra Wlllougby's description of 1710: "An Ac-
count ofye journeys I have taken & where I have been since
March 1695/fromMarch 1695 to May 1718 being in all23
years," The Shakespeare Birthplace Trust, DR 18/20/21/1 1
fols.
3lr-32r.
64. Ibid., fol. 31r.
65. Bedfordshire CRO 133/127-128 and 133/129-137.
66. See also Vittoria Di Palma, "The School in the Garden:
Science, Aesthetics, and Perceptions of Landscape in England,
1640-1740" (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999).
67. Batty Langley, A SureMethod of ImprovingEstates(London,
1728).
68. Batty Langley, New Principlesof Gardening(London, 1728 ),
193.
69. Ibid., 202.
70. Ibid., 195-196.
71. Ibid., x-:xi.
72. Laird, Floweringof the LandscapeGarden,27-59.
73. Wrest's forest garden survived despite the fact that Capabil-
ity Brown was employed on the estate in the 1750s.
74. Letter to Henry Bate dated March 11, 1788, published
in TheLettersof ThomasGainsborough,
ed. Mary Woodall
(Greenwich, CT: New York Graphic Society, 1963), 35, cited
in Ann Bermingham, Landscapeand Ideology:TheEnglishRustic
Tradition,1740-1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1986), 33, note 54. For more on Gainsborough, see John Bar-
rell, TheDark Side of the Landscape:TheRuralPoorin English
Painting,1730-1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1980); John T. Hayes, TheLandscapePaintingsof ThomasGains-
borough:A CriticalText and CatalogueRaisonni (Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press, 1982 ); Sir Joshua Reynolds, Discourses
onArt, ed. RobertR. Wark (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1975); .Michael Rosenthal, The.Artof ThomasGainsborough:
'J\.Little Businessfor the Eye" (New Haven: Yale University Press,
1999); and Ellis Kirkham Waterhouse, Gainsborough(London:
E.Hulton, 1958).
75. Woodall, Letters,99, cited in Be:i:mingham, Landscapeand
Ideology,44, note 81.
76. Bermingham, Landscapeand Ideology,33-39.
77. Ibid., 40.
78. The book was published in 1791 but Gilpin notes that
the manuscript was completed over ten years earlier. William
Gilpin, Remarkson ForestSceneryand otherWoodlandViews
(Relativechieflyto PicturesqueBeauty)fllustratedby the Scenesof
theNew-Forestin Hampshire(London, 1791), I, v.
79. St.John, Observations,in Report of the Commissioners
appointedto enquireinto the State and Conditionof the Woods,
Forests,and Land Revenuesof the Crown(London, 1787).
80. William Gilpin, Remarkson ForestScenery,I, 191; 209-212.
81. Ibid., I, 211; II, 65-68.
82. Ibid., I, 42.
83. Ibid., II, 154.
84. Ibid., I, 298.
85. Ibid., I, 42i II, 154,298,305.
86. Ibid., I, 14,297; II, 1, 10-11, 306.
Chapter VI. Wilderness, Wasteland, Garden
L William Chambers, A Dissertationon OrientalGardening
(London, 1772), x.
2. Chambers, Dissertation(1772), 27; 38-43; 36-37.
3. Eileen Harris and Nicholas Savage, "Chambers, Sir William
( 1723-1796)," in BritishArchitecturalBooks and Writers,
1556-1785 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990),
155-164.
4. Wright to his sister, Derby,January 15, 1776, cited in
Benedict Nicolson, JosephWrightof Derby:Painterof Light,vol.
1 (London: Routledge, 1968), 279 1 note 2. Wright of Derby
painted numerous versions of both of these subjects, the view
ofVesuvius forming the original pair in the Pushkin Museum.
257 NOTES TO PAGES 221-235
5. See Stephen Daniels, FieldsofVtsion:LandscapeImageryand
NationalIdentity in Englandand the UnitedStates (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1993), 43-79.
6. William Chambers, A Dissertationon OrientalGardening,2nd
ed. (London, 1773) 1 130-132.
7. John Ruskin, "Of the Turnerian Picturesque,'' in Modern
Painters,The WorksofJohnRuskin, ed. E. T. Cook and Alexander
Wedderburn, 39vols. (London: George Allen, 1903-12), vol.
4 (6: 19-20). See John Macarthur, "The Heartlessness of the
Picturesque: Sympathy and Disgust in Ruskin's Aesthetics,"
Assemblage32 (April 1997): 126-141; John Macarthur, ThePic-
turesque:Architecture,Disgust and OtherIrregularities(London:
Routledge, 2007), 96-103; and Alessandra Ponte, DesertTesting
(Hamburg: Hochschule fur bildende Kiinste/material-verlag,
2003), 14-15.
8. William Chambers, Designsof ChineseBuildings(London,
1757).
9. Edmund Burke, A PhilosophicalEnquiryinto the Originof Our
Ideas of the Sublimeand Beautiful,ed. James T. Boulton (Notre
Dame: University ofNotre Dame Press, 1968 ), 104-108.
10. Wmfried Menninghaus, Disgust:Theoryand Historyof a
StrongSensation,trans. Howard Eiland and Joel Golb (Albany:
State UniversityofNew York Press, 2003), 52.
11. On the picturesque, see William Gilpin, Threeessays:onpic-
turesquebeauty;onpicturesquetravel;and on sketchinglandscape:
to whichis added apoem, on landscapepainting (London, 1792);
Richard Payne Knight, An AnalyticalInquiry into the Principlesof
Taste(London, 1805); Richard Payne Knight, TheLandscape,a
didacticpoem, in threebooks.Addressedto UvedalePrice,Esq.,2nd
ed. (London, 1795); Uvedale Price, Essayson the Picturesque,
as comparedwith the sublimeand the beautiful;and on the use
of studyingpictures,forthe purposeof improvingreallandscape,
3 vols. (London, 1810); and Humphry Repton, Sketchesand
Hints onLandscapeGardening(London, 1795 ). Secondary
sources include Malcolm Andrews, The Searchfor the Pictur-
esque:LandscapeAestheticsand Tourismin Britain, 1760-1800
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Walter]. Hipple,
TheBeautiful,the Sublime,and the Picturesquein Eighteenth-
CenturyBritishAestheticTheory( Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1957);JohnDixonHunt, Gardensand the
Picturesque:Studiesin the Historyof LandscapeArchitecture
( Cambridge, 11A: MIT Press, 1992 ); Christopher Hussey, The
Picturesque:Studiesin a Point of View (London: E. T. Putnam's,
1927); John Macarthur, ThePicturesque:Architecture,Disgust
and OtherIrregularities(London: Routledge, 2007); and Sidney
K. Robinson, Inquiry into the Picturesque( Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 1991).
12. Gilpin, Observationson SeveralParts of England,particularly
the Mountains and Lakes of Cumberlandand Westmoreland(Lon-
don, 1786), II: 267-268.
13. Humphry Repton, Fragmentson the Theoryand Practiceof
Landscape Gardening(London, 1816), 74-77; 232-238.
14. Repton, Fragments,191-194. See Stephen Daniels, "The
Political Iconography of Woodland in Later Georgian Eng-
land," The Iconographyof Landscape,ed. Denis Cosgrove and
Stephen Daniels ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1988), 67-73; Stephen Daniels, Humphry Repton: Landscape
Gardeningand the Geographyof GeorgianEngland (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1999 ); Stephen Daniels, Fieldsof Vision,
80-111; Stephen Daniels and Susanne Seymour, "Landscape
Design and the Idea oflmprovement, 1730-1900," An Historical
Geographyof England and Wales,ed. R. A. Dodgson and R. A.
Butlin, 2nd ed. (London: Academic Press, 1990), 487-520;
G. Carter, P. Goode, K. Laurie, Humphry Repton: Landscape
Gardener,1752-1818 (Norwich: Sainsbury Centre for the
Visual Arts, 1982 ); Dorothy Stroud, Humphry Repton (London:
Country Life, 1961 ); and David Worrall, ''Agrarians against the
Picturesque: Ultra-radicalism and the Revolutionary Politics
of Land," in ThePoliticsof the Picturesque:Literature,Landscape,
and Aestheticssince 1770, ed. Stephen Copley and Peter Garside
( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994 ), 240-260.
15. Repton, Fragments,192.
16. Uvedale Price, An Essay on the Picturesque,As Comparedwith
the Sublime and the Beautiful,2nd ed. (London, 1796), 16-17,
219-228, 247-248, 326-327. On Price, see Macarthur, The
Picturesque,chapter 3.
17. Menninghaus, Disgust, 15-16.
18. Some works that have begun to map out such territory
include David Gissen, Subnature:Architecture'sOther Environ-
ments (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2009); Ben
Campkin, Remaking London: Declineand Regenerationin
Urban Culture (London: I. B. Tauris, 2013); and David Gissen,
Manhattan Atmospheres:Architecture,the InteriorEnvironment,
and Urban Crisis(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press,
2014).
19. Changing notions of the concept of improvement after the
period covered in this book were central to the development of
urban parks in Europe and the United States. On shifting ideas
ofimprovement, see Stephen Daniels and Susanne Seymour,
"Landscape Design and the Idea of Improvement, 1730-1900."
20. For more on Cole and the sublime in American painting,
see Tim Barringer and Andrew Wilton, American Sublime:
LandscapePainting in the United States, 1820-1880 (London:
258 NOTES TO PAGES 236-244
Tate, 2002), 38-65; Daniels, Fieldsof Vision, 146-173; Ellwood
C. Parry, Thomas Cole:Ambition and Imagination (London:
.fulsociated University Presses, 1988); Thomas Cole:Landscape
into History, ed. William H. Truettner and Alan Wallach (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1994 ); and Barbara Novak, Na-
ture and Culture:American Landscapeand Painting, 1825-1875
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1980).
21. Roderick Frazier Nash, Wildernessand the American Mind
(New Haven: Yale University Press 1 1967); Max Oelschlaeger,
TheIdea of Wildernessfrom Prehistoryto the Age of Ecology
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); William Cronon,
"The Trouble with Wilderness, or, Getting Back to the Wrong
Nature," in Uncommon Ground:Rethinking the Human Placein
Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: WW. Norton, 1995),
69-90.
22. Cronon, "The Trouble with Wilderness," 80-81.
23. Ibid., 80.
24. Ignaci de Solii.-Morales Rubi6, "Terrain Vague," inANYp1ace
(Cambridge, .MA: :MIT Press, 1995), 118-123; Antoine Picon,
''Anxious Landscapes: From the Ruin to Rust;' Grey Room l
(Fall 2000 ): 64-83; Alan Berger, Drosscape:WastingLand in Ur-
ban America (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006);
.Mira Engler, DesigningAmerica's WasteLandscapes(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004 ); and Niall Kirkwood,
ManufacturedLandscapes:Rethinking the Post-Industrial
Landscape (London: Taylor and Francis, 2001). See also Linda
Pollack, "Sublime Matters: Fresh Kills," PraxisJournalof Writing
and Building4: Landscape,ed. Amanda Reeser and Ashley Scha-
fer (2002): 40-47; TheLandscape UrbanismReader, ed. Charles
Waldheim (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006);
Large Parks, ed. Julia Czerniak, George Hargreaves, and John
Beardsley (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2007);
and VikMuniz's wonderful movie Waste Land (2010).
25. Ulrich Beck, Risk Society:Towardsa New Modernity
(London: Sage, 1992), and other works. See also Giuseppe Di
Palma, TheModern State Subverted:Risk and the Deconstruction
of Solidarity (Colchester: ECPR, 2013).
INDEX
Page numbers in italicsindicate illustrations. 46, 47; ideal society as imagined by, 48-49, 51; as influence on
Hartlib, 51; on monsters, 141--42; natural philosophy of, 46-50,
Adams,John (mapmaker), 77 73; NewAtlantis,48-49; Novum Organum,46; Parasceve, 48--49,
Addison,Joseph, 217; as influence on Switzer, 203,208,210; 139; and the Royal Society, 63-65; SylvaSylvarum,46, 48, 196
mountainous landscapes as viewed by; 152-153, 165; on the Badeslade, Thomas, 100,212
pleasures of the imagination, 153-155, 203,208,219,230 Bakhtin, :Mikhail, 130-131, 137
aesthetics: Addison's theories of, 152-155, 165,203,208,210, Barlow; Francis: "1he Decoy," 117
219; as applied to forests, 183, 191, 194-195, 199; as applied to Beale,John, 65
landscape, 83, 125-126, 143, 153-156, 167-169, 222-229; as beauty: and disgust, 136; oflandscapes, 134; and utility, 234-235.
Seealsoaesthetics
applied to wasteland, 155, 159-160, 168-169, 174, 215-216,
232-234; Burke's theories of, 165-169; and disgust, 8-10, 130- Beck, Ulrich, 244
131, 150, 154-156, 159-160, 166,167,168,234, 238-239; and Bedford, Francis, 4th Earl of, 102-103, 104, 105
the ideal body, 172-173; of the infinite, 144, 156, 165; modem Bedford, William, 5th Earl of, 105, 110-111
notions of, 5, 8-10. Seealsoforest gardens; sublime, the Bellers, William,Jr.: A ViewofDerwentwater, 170, 171
Bensalem (Bacon's utopia), 48-49, 231
agriculture: commons used for, 14-15, 16; conversion ofland to, 44,
45; and enclosure, 55-62, 81-83; Hartlib's publications relating Berger, Alan, 243
to, 51-53; under the manor system, 27; Royal Society's study of, Bermingham, Ann, 221-222
65-67 Bertie, Robert, 4th Duke of Ancaster, 203
Allestry;James, 191 Bible: science applied to stories from, 145-148; wasteland as concept
Alpers, Svetlana, 110 derived from, 9-10, 14-15, 16-22, 24
Alps, the: Addison's view of, 152-153; Burner's view of, 144-145; Blaue, Joan, 100
Gilpin's view of, 173. Seealsomountains Blith, Walter: as advocate for the draining of fens, 106-110, 120; The
Andrews, Malcolm, 169 EnglishImprover,106, 189-191; The EnglishImproverImproved,
Andrews, Richard, 131 22-23, 23, 51, 53, 58,106,108,109,121, 189, 190-191
Angevin kings, 182 Blome, Richard, 117, 195
Anglo-Dutch gardens, 110 bogs: draining of, 66; as wasteland, 24, 74, 85. Seealsofens; Fens, the
Angyal, Andras, 7 Bowling Green House, 216
animals: domesticated, 53-54. Seealsoroyal hunt Bradley, Humphry; 100
"Anti-Projector, The. Or, The History of the Fen Project," 111-112 Bradley, Richard, 203,218
Archer, Thomas, 214 Britannia(Camden), 21, 77, 137-138, 139,186,188
art: as imitation of nature, 47--48. Seealsoaesthetics Britannia(Ogilby), 68-77, 69, 70, 77
assart, 183-184, 185,186 Britanniafllustrata(Kip and Knyff), 118, 135-136, 136,200, 201,
Aubrey,John, 72, 77, 117 210,211,212
Austen, Ralph: A TreatiseofPruit"Trees,
54, 59-60 BrittaniaDepicta(Owen and Bowen), 76
BromptonParknurseries, 199-200, 203,213
Brouncker, Lord, 63
Bacon, Francis, 216,231; TheAdvancementof Learning,46; De
DignitateetAugmentisScientiarum,46; "Great Instauration," Brown, Capability, 219,230,238
259 INDEX