Caroline Dormon in Briarwood
Speaker: Elise Smith
The correspondence of Caroline Dormon (1888-1971) and Elizabeth Lawrence (1904-1985) reveals two gardeners who, despite their many differences, were able to build a close friendship almost exclusively through their letters. About three hundred have survived, written over twenty-seven years from 1944 until six months before Dormon’s death. They only met in person twice, for very brief visits in 1958 and 1959, but the letters reveal a remarkable rapport based on shared interests as gardeners, as writers about gardening, and as single women dealing with a range of personal and professional issues. Their friendship was strengthened by their willingness to share failures and frustrations as well as “horticultural gossip,” and their exchange of practical gardening insights was often accompanied by packets of seeds, cuttings, and rooted plants. Later, Dormon also sent drawings and suggestions as she collaborated on Lawrence’s Gardens in Winter (1961), which she illustrated. As Lawrence wrote in The Little Bulbs (1957), “No one can garden alone.”
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Meet the Speaker
Elise Smith received her M.A. from Vanderbilt and her Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, both in art history, and she is now retired after 37 years at Millsaps College. In addition to a number of journal articles, she has written or co-authored five books. The first two focus on individual artists, the 16th-century Netherlandish painter Lucas van Leyden and the late 19th-century British painter Evelyn De Morgan. The next two, co-authored with a literary scholar at the University of Florida, Judith Page, explore the garden as a personal and professional space for British artists and writers, from the 18th through the early 20th century. Their third book, just out in January, is entitled Southern Women, Southern Landscapes: Cultural Reflections on the Garden, 1870-1970.
