I SEE that poor JP McManus has been forced to revise plans to build a lake two-and-a-half times the size of Croke Park and in the shape of Co Limerick on the grounds of his new mansion.
Such a feature would not blend in with the actual Co Limerick, planners decided. So instead he will have to settle for a much smaller lake, of more regular shape and with no fish.
This must be frustrating. But if it's any consolation to the legendary gambler, the work of a fellow county man Frank McCourt has already gone some way to achieving his vision. Thanks to the rain-soaked memoir Angela's Ashes, a lake the shape of Limerick exists in the minds of thousands of readers worldwide, its levels swollen regularly by their tears. Another such monument might be superfluous.
Still, one has to admire the grandiosity of JP's original plan, carrying as it does echoes of the great era of landscape gardening, about which I've been reading lately.
I refer to the mid-to-late 18th century, an age that culminated with Marie Antoinette's "Petit Hameau" a quaint, specially built village set around an artificial pond in the grounds of Versailles. Not only was her lake stocked with fish; the village also included a working farm with real peasants. No problems with planners then.
The Petit Hameau was the decadent phase of the "Picturesque" movement, a trend mainly among English gardeners, but one that that was inspired in the first place by a French painter. We have long grown used to the idea that landscape paintings should reflect things as they really appear. Back in the 17th and 18th centuries, however, this would have been regarded as avant-garde madness.
Artists then did not expect nature to come up to their standards of beauty. They relied on imagination instead; and the master of the genre was Claude Lorrain. His poetic landscapes were so fashionable for a century after he died (in 1682) that when a similar scene was discovered in nature, it was admired for resembling his paintings rather than vice versa. Hence the term "picturesque", which we still use as a compliment to scenery.
One of the offshoots of Lorrain's popularity was that wealthy gentlemen of the 18th century wanted gardens that looked wild and unplanned, and they hired the best designers to achieve this effect. Ruined buildings and dead trees were an important part of the look. Moss-covered grottoes were good too. But as the genre developed, the ultimate accessory was to have an actual live hermit wandering the grounds.
Accordingly, hermitages came to be built into the designs and, where necessary, the owners advertised for hermits to occupy them - typically on a seven-year contract, with conditions sometimes stipulating that they must not wash or cut their hair or nails during this period. They might also be bound to silence or, conversely, expected to say something wise when met by a party of guests wandering the grounds after dinner, for whom they would be part of the entertainment.
One such hermit was hired by Painshill House in Surrey, where the owner offered a salary of several hundred guineas, payable at the end of the seven-year term. Unfortunately, the working conditions, which also obliged the hermit not to leave the grounds at any time, proved too rigorous. After only a few weeks, he was found taking a break in the local pub and his contract was terminated. Such industrial relations problems led many gardeners to opt for mere wax figures instead.
In fairness to the Picturesque movement, hermitages were not always mere decoration. In some cases, they may - like JP's Limerick-shaped lake - have been attempts to express a mystical relationship with the countryside, and at least an aspiration to live at one with nature. In this vein, another English garden hermitage carried an inscription from Milton's Il Penseroso: "And may at last my weary age/ Find out the peaceful hermitage,/ The Hairy Gown and Mossy Cell,/ Where I may sit and rightly spell/ Of every Star that Heav'n doth shew,/ And every Herb that sips the dew;/ Till old experience do attain/ To somthing like Prophetic strain./ These pleasures Melancholy give,/ And I with thee will choose to live."
Marie Antoinette took the fashion to extremes with her make-believe hamlet set on a carp-filled pond. A contemporary visitor admitted: "It is not easy to conceive of any thing that art can introduce into a garden that is not here: woods, lawns, lakes, rivers, islands, cascades, walks, temples and even villages." But he also added that the result suggested "more expense than taste".
The queen's fantasy extended to role-playing. She and her maids are said to have dressed as peasants on occasion and milked cows specially chosen for their placid temperaments. The village also had custom-built "rustic" dwellings for the royal parties to stay in, although naturally, they were rustic only on the outside. Inside, the fittings included silk wallpaper.
Still, the "Hameau" was Marie-Antoinette's attempt to get back to nature, or as close to it as she had ever been. It's touching too, in a way, being probably the supreme example of a phenomenon that has affected many very wealthy people before and since: the desire to live a simple life, no matter what the cost.