Luigi’s earlier item on HM The Queen’s mulberry collection jogged a few memories loose. Like John Evelyn’s famous mulberry down in Deptford, often erroneously associated with Peter the Great.
Search for “John Evelyn mulberry,” however, and the top item is likely to be this well-worn quote from his diaries:
“Mulberry Garden, now the only place of refreshment about the town for persons of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated at.”
That doesn’t sound right for a royal orchard, but if, as instructed by Luigi, you read the full story of those mulberries, you might have been intrigued by one sentence:
The Mulberry Garden itself was in existence for a number of years and latterly became a pleasure ground before being swept away in the rebuilding of the house.
A pleasure ground? Ah, now we’re getting somewhere on the cheating front. Further searching, however, reveals little more of interest. There’s a Restoration comedy by Sir Charles Sedley, which Samuel Pepys didn’t think much of. Nor did he think much of the garden itself (which his modern-day amanuensis seems unable to locate).
James’ mulberry garden was planted after 1609. The Mulberry Garden was first performed in 1668. In the meantime, the plot to build a silk empire had failed. And by 1649 one Clement Walker, in his Anarchia Anglicana: or the history of independency, refers to “new-erected sodoms and spintries at the Mulberry Garden at S. James’s”.
Just the place for a person of the best quality to be exceedingly cheated.