Serpent in the Garden

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Author’s Note
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
About the Author

ALSO BY JANET GLEESON

Fiction

The Grenadillo Box

Nonfiction

The Arcanum

The Moneymaker

SIMON & SCHUSTER
Rockefeller Center
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright© 2003, 2005 by Janet Gleeson
All rights reserved,
including the right of reproduction
in whole or in part in any form.

Originally published in Great Britain in 2003 by Bantam Press,
a division of Transworld Publishers

SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks
of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gleeson, Janet.
The serpent in the garden : a novel / Janet Gleeson.—1st Simon & Schuster ed.
p. cm.
1. Portrait painters—Fiction. 2. Country homes—Fiction. 3. Art patrons—Fiction. 4. Pineapple—Fiction. 5. Gardens—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction. I. Title.

PR6107.L44S47 2005
823′.92—dc22
2004056622

ISBN-13: 978-1-4165-8851-1
ISBN-10: 1-4165-8851-5

Visit us on the World Wide Web:
http://www.SimonSays.com

To Sarah, George, and Olivia
from your godmother
with love

P
INEAPPLES have long fascinated British gardeners. According to John Evelyn, the first pineapple seen in England was given to Oliver Cromwell in 1657. Among the earliest gardens where pineapples were successfully grown was Matthew Decker’s at Richmond in the early eighteenth century. Pineapples were widely grown in Britain by the middle of the century. The gardens at Heligan, Cornwall, include an eighteenth-century pineapple pit that, since the restorations, is once again in production. By the middle of the century extravagant pineries containing a hundred plants or more were not unusual. The century’s fascination with the fruit is documented in many publications, including
A General Treatise of Husbandry and Gardening
by Richard Bradley, which was published in 1724, and
Ananas; or, A Treatise on the Pine-Apple
by John Giles (1767). Many of these publications included designs for pineapple frames or pits as well as tips on heating.

Apart from eighteenth-century accounts detailed above, I am indebted to
Charleston Kedding: A History of Kitchen Gardening
by Susan Campbell (1996);
The Lost Gardens of Heligan
by Tim Smit (1997); and
Early Nurserymen
by John Harvey (1974). The role played in this story by Capability Brown is entirely fictitious, but his career and lively character is well described in
Capability Brown and the Eighteenth-Century English Landscape
by Roger Turner (1985).

Joshua Pope is a fictitious character but his working techniques and practices are those of portraitists of the age, which are well documented. I am grateful to Rica Jones from the restoration department at the Tate Gallery, London, for her help in my research into this subject. I have also relied upon
The Portrait in Britain and America
by Robin Simon (1987),
Paint and Purpose
, edited by Stephen Hackney et al. (1999),
George Romney
by Alex Kidson (2002),
The Artist’s Craft
by James Ayres (1985), and
The Art of Thomas Gainsborough
by Michael Rosenthal et al. (1999).

Finally, special thanks are due to my agent, Christopher Little; to Sally Gaminara, Patrick Janson-Smith, Simon Taylor, and Simon Thorogood at Transworld and to Ruth Fecych at Simon & Schuster, for their encouragement, criticism, and support; and to my family, Paul, Lucy, Annabel, and James, for their forbearance when the fridge was empty and supper late.

J
OSHUA POPE was not expecting a visitor to call. It was an October evening in the year 1786, and as was his habit when circumstances permitted, he intended to pass the evening at his easel. He had donned his morocco slippers and Indian nightgown, and taken a light supper—a slab of cold pie and a bottle of claret—to his parlor in Saint Peter’s Court.

Outside, an autumn tempest was roaring. A keen east wind howled through Saint Martin’s Lane and the surrounding alleys and streets. Rain flailed roofs with such insistence it drowned the cries of streetwalkers, scavengers, and watchmen in this vicinity of London. The wind creaked the signboards on Slaughter’s Coffee House, the Coach and Horses Inn, and outside the gilded showrooms of cabinetmaker Thomas Chippendale. The tempest picked debris from the gutter and threw it against the windows of the house once occupied by the eminent painter Francis Hayman; it dislodged slates from the roofs of the great architect James Paine and the renowned tenor John Beard as easily as those on a hovel. It penetrated to the very fabric of Joshua Pope’s rooms, rattling doors and panes, guttering candles, blowing his papers about.