72 
THE GARDENS OF ITALY. 
Among those who succeeded the old Cardinal the best remembered personality is, perhaps, 
Pauline, the sister of Napoleon I, who married Don Camillo Borghese in 1803. Silvagni, in 
his Corte Romana, gives us a vivid description of her, her passion for dress, her beauty, white 
and transparent with a Greek profile, her hair done in curls d la Grecque, and her sylph-like form. 
In spite of her frivolitv she was full of wit and delicacy, and all smiles and soft words, and was 
universally beloved. Her statue by Canova, as Venus Vincitrice, is one of the most popular 
attractions in the gallery. The Duchess d’Abrantes, who knew her well, declares in her 
memoirs that she was quite as beautiful as the statue. 
Early in the nineteenth centujy Charles IV, the abdicated King of Spain, had rooms in the 
villa. He was a miserable creature, with a wife of whom the Duchess d’Abrantes writes that 
“ she knew not how to be wife or guilty woman, or mother or sovereign.” 
A more sympathetic memory that haunts these halls and woods is that of Lady Gwendoline 
Talbot, who in 1835 became the wife of a later Camillo Borghese. Her charity, simplicity, 
kindness and culture made a deep impression on Rome, where she was worshipped during her 
short married life. Silvagni gives a charming description of her as fair, with great brown 
eyes, a delicate profile, smiling mouth and masses of chestnut hair. She helped the poor, 
befriended and found dowries for orphans, and provided work for able-bodied women. Her courage 
and charity during a visitation of cholera in Rome were long remembered. She was the delight of 
her husband and the admiration of society, which, corrupt as it was, was still able to appreciate her 
angelic purity. In October, 1840, the villa was, according to custom, thrown open to the people, 
and a fete was held there. Lady Gwendoline, full of life, was there superintending the games, her 
delightful smile ever ready to greet her friends. The following day she had a sore throat, but 
after two days’ illness was sufficiently recovered to sit up in bed and breakfast with her husband, 
whose anxietv was quite reassured. Later in the day the doctor came and found mischief 
hitherto unsuspected, and it was broken to her that she had only a few hours to live. In the 
midst of the anguish at parting with her husband and her four little children, she kept up his 
courage and her own, displaying the utmost resignation. Rome was in consternation, and 
the mourning for her was universal. Her husband was beside himself with grief, and even 
then the tragedy was not complete ; for in a few days three of the children had followed their 
mother and only the last with difficulty was saved. 
In later days the Borghese family ruined themselves by building speculations, and, after three 
hundred and eighty years of sumptuous splendour, the villa was sold to the State for three million 
lire. A writer in 1700, Montelatici, says that the grounds were divided into four parts : The 
Giardino Boscareccio, which embraced the whole piece from the entrance at Porta Pinciana to 
the Fountain of Horses and included the palace itself ; the piano della Prospettina, the stretch 
at the back of the villa, where there is a fine view towards Tivoli ; the park, or middle part, 
including the Giardino del Lago ; and the garden of Muro Torto, reaching to the west wall and 
going down to the entrance from the Piazza del Popolo. Broad, smooth carriage drives now 
make a complete circuit of the grounds and traverse them at intervals. Casinos of two storeys 
are placed in various parts and serve as park lodges, and there were originally many little 
buildings scattered about which have now disappeared. 
The slopes are rich in woods, park-like meadow stretches, groups of oaks and elms, and 
close, fine turf under the shade of pines and cypresses. It is the union of art and nature which 
gives to Italian pleasure-grounds their peculiar fascination. ” The ilex trees,” says Hawthorne 
jj-i Transformation, ” so ancient and time-honoured are they, seem to have lived for ages 
undisturbed. It has already passed out of their dreamy old memories that only a few years ago 
they were grievously imperilled by the Gaul’s last assault upon the walls of Rome 
never was there a more venerable quietude than that which sleeps among their sheltering 
boughs ; never a sweeter sunshine than that which gladdens the gentle gloom which these leafy 
patriarchs diffuse over the swelling and subsiding lawns. 
“ In other parts of the grounds the stone pines lift their dense clumps upon a slender 
length of stem, so high that they look like green islands in the air, flinging down a shadow on 
the turf so far off that you scarcely know which tree has made it . . . there is enough ol 
human care bestowed long ago, and still bestow'ed, to prevent wildness growing to deformity, 
