A Garden Party is a scene of enchantment, to which the lawn-tennis net lends an additional grace and variety.

A lady, living near a city, who chooses to inaugurate the season with a garden party, sends her invitations a week in advance, and carefully incloses a card telling her guests by what roads, railway trains, and boats she may be reached. There must be no confusion or lack of carriages at the end of the route. This hospitality must cover everything. If the weather is fine and the distance short, ladies generally drive to these entertainments in gay dresses and bonnets or hats; for a garden party should look as much like a Watteau as possible. Those who have had the advantage of seeing a garden party in England—at Holland House, or at Buckingham Palace—will remember how beautiful, finished, and gay a scene it is. A dressy parasol and a fan hung at the side are indispensable. Ladies go either in the short Amazonian dresses which the practice of games has made so fashionable, or else in Worth’s last and most elegant trailing costumes, trusting to the grass being dry, and knowing that they can sit on the piazza.

Most garden-party givers provide band music, which plays either in the grand hall, or at some spot on the lawn where dancing can go on. But our turf is not like the English turf, and modern dancing is not that springing measure of “young Bertine,” as she bounds under the walnut-trees of Southern France. So we can not count in dancing as one of the usual pleasures of a garden party, unless a broad platform is laid; and this has in its way a very pretty effect under the trees or in a large tent.

A garden party is for all ages; so there should be in our uncertain climate full provision for the elderly, who can not always spend an afternoon on the lawn. Broad piazzas are very useful, and much enjoyed by those who fear our treacherous malarious soil; and if one can not exercise, it is better to sit on a piazza than on the grass.

As it is always prone to rain at picnics and garden parties, it is better to have the refreshments in the house. Gentlemen can run into the banquet-hall and get a plate of lobster-salad for a lady, or the waiters can carry the refreshments about; but for a sudden shower of rain to descend on a table is miserable, and defeats the object of the table.

The lady of the house, however, often improvises a hasty roof or covering for her table, put up by the carpenter at a small outlay, if she is determined to have everything al fresco. Frozen coffee, iced tea, punch, ice-cream croquets, salads, jellies, pressed turkey, potted meats, pÂtÉ de foie gras, and sandwiches, are spread about. Do not attempt any hot dishes at a garden party; they are out of place, and impossible.

The garden party is said to be “the first hybrid which unites society and nature.” It is a growing taste with us Americans, and will grow to be a greater favorite as time goes on. The popularity of the game of archery, that relic of Robin Hood and Maid Marion, “that vision of Lincoln green,” is now added to lawn tennis, croquet, and “les Graces,” as one of the most popular features of a garden party. One would think that there was nothing needed but the long sweep of the trees upon the lawn, the vision of the distant city, the flower-beds where geraniums and calceolaria vie in color, the “pleached alley,” the buttercup in the grass, the Watteau-like picture, or groups of gay ladies and gallant cavaliers causing “unpremeditated effects” to make the garden party agreeable. But there is always a need of preparation for such a party. No lady should trust alone to the power of her guests to amuse themselves. She must do all that she can.

In the country a lady can wait for a day of fine weather, and invite her guests only the day before. The grounds and garden walks, the lawn tennis, the archery, should all be in order, and a few chairs out under the trees. It is not long before all her guests begin to enjoy themselves in their own way, and to appreciate how much better a room is made by the Gothic arch of the trees than by any sort of cramped-up house arrangement.

One can be more general in the invitations to a garden party than to any other; for if people like each other they can group together, and if they do not, they can easily walk apart, and get rid of each other. In a small room, particularly at a dinner party, how two people can glow and glare at each other, to the dreadful dismay of the hostess! But at a garden party Nature is too wide for them. They are almost obliged to seem amused whether they are or not. If not at all amused, they can, however, go and sulk under the lilacs. Those fragrant vegetables will not care whether the guests sulk or smile.

Every country house has its charms. How lovely a garden party can be given at the Locusts, when all those trees are in flower, sending down the perfume of Araby the Blest! How the perfume reminds one of St. John’s Gardens, Oxford, when the lime-trees are in bloom, and every bough is laden with wild bees who make a music as they sip! A flowering tree is the most perfect thing which Adam and Eve saved from Paradise. One seems, in inhaling its fragrance, to have just recovered from a long illness.

The best part of a spring or early summer garden party is this first whiff of fragrance which is brought to the disused or insulted nostril of the city. We little know until then how the most aristocratic of the senses has been wronged. We are always, and all of us, most patient over our city bad smells until we go into the country and realize what a bath of delicious odors a forest is—a bit of woodland, a field of growing grass, one sweet cherry-tree, an apple-blossom, a violet! The perfume of lilacs is the perfume of luxury; and the first scythe of the mower, as it sweeps through the young blood of the grass, reveals a thousand scent-bottles all uncorked for our use. A lady in giving a garden party should always have a bundle of new-mown hay somewhere about the grounds.

And at the garden party what may not those who sit on the benches remember? All the sprightly, frivolous, charming figures who seem to have posed for us at garden parties in France! Philippe d’OrlÉans and La Phalaris; the Duc de Richelieu and the Abbess de Chelles; Watteau, Voltaire, Carmargo; Louis XV, with Pompadour and Du Barry; Boucher and Vanloo; Greuze, Voisenon, and Bernis; Guimaud and Sophie Arnould; CrÉbillon, the tragic, and Dancourt, the gay! What a faithful study of naiads and hamadryads did the beautiful women of these days suggest to the artists at those garden parties when, toward the end of spring, the trees were in blossom, and the enameled grass carpeted the parks! Madame de Pompadour asked Louis XV to come and see her hermitage! Venus, Hebe, Diana the huntress, the three Graces—all were in order! The garden itself a masterpiece of attraction—a wood, rather than a garden—a wood peopled with statues, formed of verdant and odorous arcades, of charming groves, of dark, shaded retreats. Such was the Parc aux Cerfs.

We think again of the rose-tree of Jean Jacques at the hermitage. We remember Dufresny, who “studied love in his heart, grandeur at the court, war upon the field of battle, architecture in the erection of buildings, nature in his garden, music in song.” Dufresny was in love with gardens. A poet, a friend of Louis XIV, he loved roses better than any other luxury. It was he who broke up the stiff, old-fashioned plan of gardening at Vincennes, and introduced Nature with her charming caprices and fairy fantasies. It was he who said, “Cultivating roses, marking out paths, planting hedges, is the same as writing sonnets, songs, and poems.” In his day a picturesque garden was often called “À la Dufresny.” Under his rule Versailles became what it is. “I shall never be poor while I have a garden!” said he to the King. “I find there the green vine-tendrils, or the roses, for a crown.” To him verdant prospects were real terrestrial paradises.

We can remember how the boy Florian gathered cherries, and forgot his Greek and Latin! We remember him, in Voltaire’s garden, naming the poppies after the faithless Trojans. The most beautiful he called “Hector,” and then demolished him with a blow from his wooden sword. Later, when he had grown up, still wandering in gardens, he wrote his eclogues, poems, dramas, fables, and “Numa Pompilius.” His style has all the tender freshness, the brilliancy, the perfume, the clear color, of a “garden party.” It is an idyl of primroses and dandelions.

We hardly think of Buffon at a garden party. (When Voltaire heard of his “Natural History”—“Not so natural,” said the great wit.) The laborious and tranquil life of the great author of the “Garden of Plants” seems out of place at a garden party, and yet he lived and wrote in a garden. He submitted Nature to a crucible, and tore a lily to pieces to see of what it was made; and yet he brought together the flowers and trees of all nations. We admire, but do not love Buffon.

We cross the Channel and see, in imagination, the Princess Anne with Lady Castlemaine and Miss Stuart, Lady Churchill, and all their friends, loftily walking in the groves and alleys of Spring Gardens, emerging into St. James’s Park. The glories of Bird-Cage Walk come back to us. From these models did Colley Cibber get his “Lady Betty Modish,” and what a pretty, stylish, affected model it was! Lovely Lady Fitzhardinge was of the Princess’s party, and later, when Lady Churchill became Duchess of Marlborough, what garden parties at Blenheim!

A garden party always brings back Lady Mary Wortley Montague, who left many an account of those stately old-time gardens at Rome, Florence, Naples, Genoa, Avignon—not to speak of the early adventures at Twickenham, and later at Strawberry Hill. All England is a garden. The garden party is possible anywhere.

And the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire and Mrs. Crewe! How they adorn a garden party! We almost see the splendid cream-colored horses of George III drive up past Carleton Gardens, to proceed in solemn state to St. James’s, as we hear the low, rippling laughter of the two beauties in brocade.

The Prince of Wales forgot his two hundred thousand pounds of debts as he received the Buffs and Blues at a garden party, which began at noon and continued all night, at Carleton House. The Duchess of Devonshire was then lady paramount of the aristocratic whig circles, in which rank and literature were blended with political aspirations. It was she who canvassed for Fox, and allowed the butcher to kiss her for his vote; and to her was paid the compliment, highly prized, by the link-boy who asked if he “might light his pipe at her eyes.” These women seem to have lived in garden parties.

Sweet Madame de SÉvignÉ, with her children, at Les Rochers, and later at Paris, talking gayly under the trees of her garden, with Corneille, Racine, MoliÈre, La Fontaine, and Boileau, again wins us back across the Channel, and back a hundred years or so.

Garden parties have this advantage: they are like Madame de StaËl’s age—“not dated.” They are of all time. Madame de SÉvignÉ’s garden party comprised Pascal, Bourdaloue, Mascaron, Bossuet, the restless De Retz, the Scotchman Montrose, La Rochefoucauld, Marshal Turenne, Le Grand Colbert, and CondÉ. The ladies were the Duchess de Longueville, the political intrigante of the Fronde; the penitent La ValliÈre; the heartless Maintenon; Madame de Montespan; the Comtesse d’Olonne, daughter of Madame de Rambouillet, and one of the PrÉcieuses; Madame de La Fayette, the authoress of “Zaide.” Alas, and alas! we could not get together such a garden party of to-day! No! not if we had a fortnight’s time before us, and all the wealth of the Indies.

Madame de SÉvignÉ was that delightful combination—a beauty, a wit, and a femme d’esprit. As an instance of the flattery to which even genius stooped in speaking to a monarch who loved flattery and adulation more than anything, she relates an answer made by Racine to Louis XIV when that sovereign expressed his regret that the poet had not accompanied the army in its last campaign. “Sire,” said Racine, “we had none but town-clothes, and had ordered others to be made; but the places you attacked were all taken before they could be finished.” “This,” adds Madame de SÉvignÉ, “was well received.”

It is in her famous correspondence with her daughter that we find many an account of a garden party, or a fÊte, which we should gladly have seen, and which at our own garden parties we are glad to remember. Her letters contain much talk on books, religion, philosophy, and politics; on the frowns and smiles of the great monarch; the favor accorded to this courtier, the disgrace of that; the marriage contracted, the bons mots circulated. But it is upon society that she is strongest. She loved nature, too, in a Frenchwoman’s way. When she walked the garden of her uncle, the AbbÉ, at Livry, or far away in the solitudes of Brittany, she rejoiced in the song of the nightingale, in the change of the leaf, in the glad freshness of the air. She is a poet, without meaning it. Her garden-party letters are her best letters.

Very stately must have been those garden parties at Wilton, when Ben Jonson and Philip Massinger afforded amusement to the intellectual great. The Masque, an entertainment of the rich and noble in the time of Elizabeth and James I, called out the powers of these men. The actors were people of the highest class, sometimes royal personages, the masques always in the open air. Dancing and music were introduced. These various actors learned their parts under the tutorship of the Master of the Revels. Lawes composed music, to which the poetry of Jonson was sung; and the scenes, decorations, and dresses were contrived and executed by Inigo Jones. Certain great families copied the example of the court, and ordered masques to be written, and played at their own country-seats; calling in for the choruses the children of the Chapel Royal, who were regularly trained to take their part in masques. At Wilton, at Belvoir Castle, at Whitehall, at Windsor, these charming but costly diversions were carried on. Ben Jonson might have been heard scolding and working over these garden parties at the house of the beautiful Mary Sidney, sister to the author of the “Arcadia,” who was afterward Countess of Pembroke. She often gave these entertainments at Wilton. She there received Queen Elizabeth, Walter Raleigh, the Earl of Essex, Will Shakespeare, Spenser, and Cecil. Philip Massinger was in her servants’ hall, a humble retainer. The pious Countess, for her solemn hours, had Dr. Donne, most devoted of servitors. The death of her noble brother, Philip Sidney, broke her heart, and there were no more garden parties at Wilton. We all know how Walter Scott has described these garden parties in “Kenilworth.” Indeed, they make us rather out of love with our later attempts.

Once in our own land a masque was attempted, the famous Mischianza of Major AndrÉ, on the Delaware, at Philadelphia. Had not he and Arnold gone out together in that rather sad way, we might like to tell of that garden party, but we will skip it.

After all, man was born, the race was started, in a garden. Adam and Eve held the first garden party. What a pity that the serpent crawled in!