One for the booklist: My Darling Heriott: Henrietta Luxborough, Poetic Gardener and Irrepressible Exile, reviewed this morning in the Guardian.
By the time Henrietta was in her 30s her gilded life had lost its shine. In 1727 she married Robert Knight, the son of the chief cashier of the infamous South Sea Company. Robert was pompous and vulgar, and Henrietta suddenly found herself in the company of men who talked only of money instead of poetry, gardens or art. She found companionship with a young poet, though she insisted that “the passion was platonick”. When the scandal broke in 1736, her furious husband sent her to his Warwickshire estate, Barrells, to “moulder and die”. Virtually imprisoned, she was not to see London, her two children or most of her friends for many years. Gardening helped her to keep her sanity, and My Darling Heriott reminds us of the unrivalled therapeutic value of nature, muddied fingers and the sprouting of seedlings.
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