We spoke to Vanessa Berridge about her new book The Princess’s Garden (Amberley Publishing, £20)
Tell us about your new book.
The Princess’s Garden: Royal Intrigue and the Untold Story of Kew is about the political and personal background to the founding of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The princess is Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died in 1751 before he could inherit the British throne.
In her widowhood, Augusta built on the foundations laid by Frederick at Kew and established a physic garden there in 1759, helped and advised by John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute, later a calamitously unsuccessful Prime Minister. These were turbulent times politically, with Britain still in a state of transition to becoming a fully constitutional monarchy. Augusta was thought to be helping her son, George III, put the clock back to a more authoritarian regime.
Far from being praised for her work at Kew, she was hated and hissed to her grave in Westminster Abbey in 1772.
Why did you want to tell this story?
On a 10-day tour of Scottish gardens, I visited the gardens at Mount Stuart on the Isle of Bute where there is a towering, statue-topped column dedicated to Augusta. The head gardener told me that it had been erected by Lord Bute in the 1770s in memory of Augusta with whom he had work closely at Kew. I was intrigued by a relationship which resulted in a man raising such a memorial to a woman who was not his wife.
The inscription (from Virgil) on the column’s pedestal means, loosely translated, ‘You will remain in my memory so long as I am conscious and my spirit controls my limbs’. As I researched, I wanted to restore Augusta to her overlooked position as founder of Kew. When Diana, Princess of Wales, opened the new Princess of Wales Conservatory in 1987, few people appreciated that it was named not for her, but for her predecessor.
How did you research it?
I read published diaries and memoirs of the period before delving into archives at Kew, Stowe, various university libraries and the British Library. One problem was that Augusta burned all of Frederick’s papers after his death because she thought his political programme would be unpopular with her father-in-law, George II, and might cause problems for her and for her son, the future George III.
The spiteful memoirs of Lord Hervey, a courtier of George II and his wife, Caroline of Ansbach, were a fruitful source of gossip about both Frederick and Augusta, while Horace Walpole’s memoirs and diaries took up the story later in the period. The British Library has a collection of Bute’s correspondence which reveals him to be a petulant, disappointed man who believed himself entirely misunderstood.
What fascinating and surprising things did you uncover?
I discovered just how dysfunctional the Hanoverian royal family was. Every Hanoverian king hated his heir, but George II took this to a new level with Frederick, kidnapping him from Hanover, and then isolating him personally and politically. Caroline of Ansbach was even heard to say that she wished he were dead. I also found out how vicious political cartoons were in the 18th century.
Bute and Augusta were thought to be lovers, and the cartoons depicting their affair, some of which have been included in the book, were breathtaking in their virulence and explicitness.
Who do you think would enjoy reading this book, and why?
I have tried to bring out the importance of 18th century gardens as a means of political expression, so I hope that the book will appeal both to garden lovers and to people who enjoy history.
Purchase your copy of The Princess’s Garden online.
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