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Arrival, we were to have a small Family Supper, after which Mary would divert us with a Concert upon the Harpsichord (hoping, no doubt, to disguise with the Beauteousness of Mr. Handel’s Musick the Ugliness of her Form). Whereupon Mr. Pope would discourse to us concerning his fam’d Hobby, namely the Design of Gardens and Parks according to Nature’s own Rule; for Mr. Pope was one of the most loyal Sons of Flora that e’er liv’d and ’twas his Delight to help his Friends and Noble Patrons to plan their Gardens in such a Manner that the Works of Nature and Art should mutually compleat each other.
    Lord Bellars had written Lady Bellars of all this and she had communicated it to me. Now that he had prosper’d so greatly and amass’d still another Fortune thro’ investing his Profits from the treacherous South Sea Bubble, Lord Bellars was eager to pull down the Family’s ancestral Mansion, a fine Gothick Pile, dating from the Time of Elizabeth, standing upon a Site bestow’d upon one of Lord Bellars’ Ancestors by Gloriana herself, and to replace it with a new House in the modern Palladian Style. So, too, with the Gardens—those geometrick Mazes and Hedgerows laid out in the Time of Charles the Second. They were to be mercilessly uprooted to make way for a Park in the very latest Fashion, design’d at great Expence to mimick Nature, with grazing Sheep, little Temples, diminutive Mosques and Pagodas, a tiny Village, with real Peasants dress’d in rustick Shepherds’ Garb, and e’en a Grotto, modell’d after Mr. Pope’s at Twickenham. The beloved Evergreens of my Childhood, (cut to resemble Peacocks with spread Tails, Bears dancing, heraldick Beasts, great Globes, Pyramids, and Cones), were to be consign’d to the Rubbish Heap in the Name of Fashion, and i’faith, Mr. Pope had come for no other Purpose than to help us plan our Garden, such a Devoté was he of the fine Art of making cultivated Parks resemble the very Wilderness from which they had sprung.
    Alas, it made me very melancholick indeed—this Deference to the fickle Name of Fashion! Lymeworth (for that was the Bellarses’ Country Seat) had been my Home since Childhood, and to say the Truth, the Gothick Style of Building could produce no nobler Edifice. Lord Bellars might call it “a nasty old Gothick Ruin,” but to me it had the Smell of History and Grandeur. Elizabeth herself had once been a Guest at Lymeworth and heard Sweet Musick in the Long Gallery under the fram’d Portraits of the earliest Ancestors of Lord Bellars’. ’Twas rumour’d that Shakespeare had been a Visitor, perhaps coming as part of a travelling Troupe of Players. And ’twas further rumour’d that the High Great Chamber (with its Flemish Tapestries depicting the Court of Diana the Huntress, embower’d in a green Wood) was the Room in which he perform’d. But this was the very Room Lord Bellars had grown most to detest as “barbarously old-fashion’d and lacking in Elegance, Proportion, and Ton .” So ’twas all to be pull’d down, the Bricks and Beams of my Childhood, the long Halls in which I had run and play’d with Daniel and Mary before Age, Envy, and Lust separated us; the vast stone Stair and the carv’d Chimney Pieces, the dancing Stags above the Fire-Place in the Great Hall, that very Fire-Place where we Children us’d to hide from each other (and from our Nurse) in our childish Games, and where once we had e’en burnt a great Full-bottom’d Wig of Lord Bellars’ for Sport (and had been severely punish’d for the Prank).
    And the Gardens, what Villain could find fault with the Gardens? Lymeworth stood just below the Summit of a pleasing Hillock, shap’d like a plump Thigh, looking down upon a peaceful Valley below, shelter’d from the Wind by a Stand of Ancient Oaks, above a gently rolling Meadow embellish’d with Beeches, Elms, and Chestnut Trees. Besides the evergreen Mazes and topiary Trees of which I have previously spoken, there was a