The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It’s what happened to the Enlightenment, isn’t it?
HANNAH . . . It’s perfect, isn’t it? A perfect symbol, I mean.
BERNARD Oh, yes. Of what?
HANNAH The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It’s what happened to the Enlightenment, isn’t it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There’s an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone—the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains, an avenue of limes—the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown.
