Gardens at Vaux: French Gardens

Not only was monarchy absolute in France, but the notion that man required an absolute unquestionable central authority was accepted almost without question. The certainties of the medieval Church, despite St. Bartholomew's Day, had lost some of their reality. In place of them other certainties had to be found; the ox was ill at ease without a yoke. Upon the monarchy as the central pivot a whole system of order had to be constructed, an order that permeated all arts and finally enmeshed life in the complex tangle of a ceremonial Byzantine in its thoroughness. All art mirrored this political subordination to a central theme, but the theme was a facade, a dummy in the robes of a god, bolstered and gilded at every point to give to it a grandeur it did not of itself possess. Life had to be made larger than life, and the side-curtains, the spotlights, the fanfare and the backcloth were there for that purpose. Still further to sustain the little spirits who strove to acquire stature in their own eyes was the interrelationship, the nice distinction, between the component parts of this social fabric. `For ladies the King took his hat quite off, but more or less far, as occasion demanded. For noblemen he would half remove it, holding it in the air or against his ear, for a few moments, or longer. For landed gentlemen he only touched his hat. Princes of the Blood he greeted in the same way as the ladies. ... By these complex means you were able to feel part of a subtly co-ordinated whole. You knew your place which all men wish to know. Admirably the gardens at Vaux reflected all this. There was a great central theme to which all else was subordinated, yet within and related to the grand design were many other designs, complete in themselves yet contributory, thus allowing variety within unity. It is true that Louis XIV did not show himself absolute until after the completion of Vaux and the fall of Fouquet, but Le Roi Soleil no less than the garden of Fouquet was made to fulfill a demand. There was nothing very remarkable about Louis the man; the beams of light that shone from him were the creation of his court; he was as much a work of art as Versailles itself, a formal theatrical personality, strutting on tiptoe, blowing out his chest and attempting to attain certainty by the dubious means of establishing precedents. The age needed an absolute authority and created it. The gardens of Versailles played a large part in creating the King who created them. The King was not present at the first fete held at Vaux. Servants should not out-shine their masters.