Mr Five Per Cent by Jonathan Conlin

Author:Jonathan Conlin [Conlin, Jonathan]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2019-01-09T16:00:00+00:00

A Garden Near Deauville

Back in 1922 Gulbenkian had dreamed of retiring to a large garden in Istanbul, ‘on the sea [where] I could sit beneath my big pine trees at lunch-time and gaze at the sea while being caressed by langorous winds from off the sea’.45 The Kemalists had put paid to that hope, by refusing to return properties confiscated from Gulbenkian and other Ottoman Armenians. Now, fifteen years later, Chester Beatty tried to persuade his sixty-eight-year-old friend to slow down. Writing from the Breakers in Palm Beach, where he was enjoying the sun and fishing, Beatty set his ‘pupil’ Calouste some homework: to step back from his business affairs for set periods of time and try to cultivate a less anxious attitude. When Beatty returned to Europe in April, Gulbenkian would have to ‘report how many hours per week you have spent in studying your collections and in reading interesting books’. Beatty urged him to follow his own example in commissioning illustrated catalogues of his collections. Supervising such scholarly projects was one way ‘to cultivate a spirit of tranquility and enjoy each day as it comes along without losing tranquility’.46

Gulbenkian had acquired the estate of Les Enclos in 1927, adding further parcels of land in 1931. He now set about consulting landscape architects and hiring workers to develop it into his ideal garden, creating a special company, the Société Horticole et Foncière, as a tax-efficient means of managing it. The estate was situated on a ridge behind Mont Canisy, just outside Deauville. The higher parts were wooded, the rest parkland and fields. A two-storey house stood at one end, a set of farm buildings at the other. From the start it was clear that Les Enclos was intended for the exclusive enjoyment of Gulbenkian and the birds. As with 51 Avenue d’Iéna, so here Gulbenkian issued the Armenian retainer in charge of the project with numbered feuilles d’instructions. Feuille number one ordered him to ‘take all steps to prevent hunting on the property. Encourage the birds to make their nests on the property.’47

Though dubbed ‘the Napoleon of paysagistes’ (landscape architects) and held to be one of the founders of the profession in France, Achille Duchêne met his match in Gulbenkian, who proved a demanding client at Les Enclos. Duchêne’s father had helped design the squares and public parks of Haussmann’s new Paris, seeking to revive that great tradition of highly architectural landscape gardening that began with André Le Nôtre in the seventeenth century. Gulbenkian felt that he knew and understood this tradition well, and did not appreciate receiving long screeds in which Duchêne expanded on his historicising vision or his particular understanding of the term romantique. ‘In all modesty I think that my knowledge of art is extensive enough to spare me the need to receive such lessons,’ Gulbenkian wrote in April 1938. ‘It is high time that you made your mind up and began following my wishes, rather than your own.’

Nor did he welcome Duchêne’s somewhat personal probing.

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