THE TIMES WE LIVED IN:THERE'S SOMETHING about the expression "garden party" which sets some people's teeth on edge – while others reach unhesitatingly for their parasols and straw boaters.
This study of the 1992 garden party at Trinity College, Dublin has something of the same divided loyalties. The pair on the left of the picture are wearing rebellious Gothic black. The man gazes lugubriously at the camera; his companion’s head is turned defiantly away.
On the right, by contrast, two women in white glow in the summer sunshine like a couple of lilies, all smiles and frills, gloves and heels.
If you’re still not sure which side of the garden-party debate you’re on – a tooth-grinder? a straw boater? – have a quick read of these opening sentences from Katherine Mansfield’s short story The Garden Party.
“They could not have had a more perfect day for a garden-party if they had ordered it. Windless, warm, the sky without a cloud. The gardener had been up since dawn, mowing the lawns and sweeping them, until the grass and the dark flat rosettes where the daisy plants had been seemed to shine. As for the roses . . . Hundreds, yes, literally hundreds, had come out in a single night; the green bushes bowed down as though they had been visited by archangels. . .”
Teeth on edge yet?
You should read the whole story. It’s not all champagne and cucumber sandwiches. There’s quite a sting in the tale; not unlike the one administered by Peter Thursfield in his gently subversive image.
As for the people who can be seen milling around in the background of the picture, well, they look a lot more like the rest of us: neither black nor white, just shades of garden-variety grey.
But hey. Back here in the spring of good old 2012, summer is on the way. So even if you haven’t had your invite to the garden party at Trinners this year; or Buck House; or the Sarkozy bash at the Palais de l’Elysée on Bastille Day, you can still look forward to sitting outdoors, of a long and balmy evening, with a glass of wine and a bag of crisps. Garden parties don’t have to be what they used to be.
Arminta Wallace
Published on may 15th, 1992 photograph by Peter Thursfield irishtimes.com/archive
