Guillaume’s amazing Garden…
Normandie’s horticultural treasure, Le Bois Des Moutiers
In early May, our family renunion took place in Varengeville-sur-Mer near Dieppe, the coastline memorialized by the impressionists, and where Georges Braque is buried. My Huguenot family meets regularly – a habit started with the French Huguenot diaspora in the 16th century – and this year we got together at Le Bois des Moutiers, a 30 acre spread along the Normandy cliffs where 110 years ago, Guillaume Mallet inspired the building of an Arts and
Crafts house with views stretching over woodland to the sea.
Guillaume may or may not have known he was making history – he simply had a vision of an Arts and Crafts house surrounded by a beautiful garden. But history came with Edwin Lutyens, then 29, just starting his career as the architect of empire, notably the layout and planning of New Delhi, along with his associate, the most influential garden designer of the last century, Gertrude Jekyll, who helped Guillaume create a uniquely English garden. In those days, French Huguenot families were close to their English cousins. My English father remembered French cousins called Pip and Topsy.
The house is whimsical Grimm’s fairy tales, while the gardens are
enchanting, laid out in what is now called the Jekyll style, a series ofoutdoor rooms, informality enlivening formality, a long herbaceous border on both sides of a path and packed with perennials in waves of colour, clematisis draped over everything, and then great waves of lawn sweep down into woods.
The garden was mined during WWii when Nazis occupied the house. It took years for Mary Mallet, Guillaume's daughter-in-law to restore it with the help of her son Robert. He has enhanced the original design with rare plantings, the largest collection of hydrangeas in the world, and carefully cultivated azaleas and 60 foot high rhododendrons enlivening bosky settings.
Today gardeners, horticulturalists from around the world make a
pilgrimage to Moutiers – and often compare it favourably with the
Sissinghurst of Vita Sackville West across the channel. It has the same idiosyncratic charm and family references. I spot an original Lutyens bench given to Mary Mallet by my cousin Philip who lives in a Lutyens house in Kent. Robert and his wife Corinne, the hydrangea expert, are at the gate, and Robert’s nephew Antoine is the one who knows where every plant is.
It’s a glorious day for the rassemblement – standing on the terrace scoffing champagne and foie gras canapés, you can see over the tops of giant budding rhodas a vivid blue glimpse of the sea. But who on earth are all these people? I only know a handful of the 126 who're here to celebrate our common ancestor, one Jehan Mallet, merchant of Rouen who hitched up his wagon to escape the Massacre of St. Barthelomew (1572) and headed for Geneva. Dull to be sure, church five times a day, but Calvin okayed moneylending. At a piffling 6 percent. Revenge was at hand. The indigent French king was always begging for cash. The Genevois obliged - at 23%. "We're descended from userers" cried a nephew in disgust. If only we'd kept the trade says another cousin.
Today we are all merged into the polyglot middleclass. Jim's a geneticist, butterflies his specialty, Victor's with the Financial Times in Madrid, Hugo's an opera singer, Mowbray's in advertising, Larissa's at Goldman Sachs, Mary from Connecticut is a pastry chef, Arthur from Versailles just went down with Bear Stearns, Amy's a freelance journalist in Hamilton, Ontario, Steve's a carpenter in Hampshire, Peter from Georgia sports a ponytail...Mikkie is half Japanese, Charles is half Vietnamese. We have one star, we reckon, my cousin John who has written the defnitive catalogue for the ceramicist Xanto of Maiolica. "What's Maiolica?" asks a millenial Mallet.
We first assemble at the local Huguenot church, scarce as hens' teeth in these parts, and the pastor tries to connect the flight of the mallets to an illegal muslim trapped in Sangiatte seeking a better life - the English are enraged. "Typically French, they try to shed their refugees by pushing them to England." Last time around at St Peter's in Geneva, the pastor urged the congregation to ethnically cleanse the world of Catholics OMG but our Catholic cousin Louis smiled blandly throughout. Just family.
There's a bit of a tussle over history. Jim and Johnny from the English branch are compelled to correct the perfidious French cousin taking people round the house. "Cher cousin you are entirely wrong' they interrupt as he brushes over the role played by our particular ancestor, a crotchety upholder of liberty, a journo no less in the French Revolution. Competition continues when Alice, the chic daughter of the house, challenges everyone to go swimming. Mowbray, watched with ambivalence by Swiss and American cousins, is the only one to jump in the freezing English channel or le manche as the French insist on calling it . "Call me icecube" he howls. Later he explains "A necessary gesture."
As the day winds on, so does speechifying. My grandfather's gen spoke French and English. Today, few of us do. So the speeches drag on in translation. The Americans are quarrelling over precedence, and one describes at length her bootlegger grandfather who wasn't actually a cousin. Heads nod over the Calvados. An ancient cousin suddenly springs to life and waves his stick "Where's my cousin?" Just family.
If you go: Le Bois des Moutiers, Varengeville-sur-Mer. Tel 33-(0) 2 34 85 10 02. Open March 15-Nov 15, 10 am-12.pm, 2 - 6 pm. House and Garden: $10 C. Garden is free.
From London, 6 hr drive including Eurostar crossing. By
train from Paris: 2 hrs.
We stayed at the ***Aguado on the beach, upwards of $100 a night but check
for deals. www.booking.com <http://www.booking.com>