Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe—Michael Garfield patron–artist relationship

Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s relationship with Michael Garfield was both professional and personal in its consequences: she employed the young landscape gardener to transform the disused quarry at Quarry House, paid for his work and a house for him, and ultimately left him the property. Their arrangement joined her wealth and design ambitions to Garfield’s professional skill, while his account of her satisfaction suggests a working partnership shaped by how closely he followed her wishes.

The Commission and Its Setting

After her health failed, Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe returned from living abroad to be near her nephew and niece, Mr and Mrs Drake, and bought Quarry House. The large Victorian house included a disused quarry that appealed to her as a place with possibilities. Passionately interested in gardening, she spent thousands of pounds turning the hollow into a sunken garden and brought in a professionally qualified young landscape gardener, Michael Garfield, to design it.

The result made the commission more than a routine improvement to the grounds. The quarry became a carefully composed garden of flowers, bushes, paths and artificial water, with the view opening toward the bay and distant hills. Its planting accommodated different seasons: beech and birch, thorn, white rose and juniper were imagined among the spring growth, while gold and red acers and a winding path gave autumn its own display. Poirot saw the place as unexpectedly beautiful, a transformed hollow set within otherwise conventional countryside. Garfield, in his assessment, had not failed his patron.

Patronage and Creative Control

Poirot’s description of Garfield as a well-paid worker engaged to do his patron’s bidding captures the material imbalance between them: Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe commissioned the work and could pay a large fee, while Garfield supplied his professional expertise. She also built a house for him at Quarry House. The evidence presents this generosity alongside a clear division of roles, with her imagination and instructions setting the terms of the design.

When Poirot asked whether she had been satisfied with the garden, Garfield answered that she had been satisfied up to a point and said that he had ensured this. He explained that she was easy to satisfy because he assured her that what he had done exactly carried out her instructions, imagination and ideas. His account makes fidelity to the patron’s vision central to his method: the garden’s beauty is Garfield’s achievement, but he presents its conception as hers.

The Bequest and Aftermath

Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe left Quarry House to Garfield in her will. By the time Poirot asked about it, Colonel and Mrs Weston owned the property, having obtained it cheaply; Garfield confirmed that he had sold it. The commission therefore extended beyond paid work into a substantial transfer of property, although the evidence does not specify the circumstances or timing of the sale.

The relationship is defined by this movement from commissioned creation to inheritance. Mrs Llewellyn-Smythe’s investment gave Garfield both the opportunity to make the garden and a home at the estate; her will then made him its beneficiary. In Garfield’s account, the garden remains at once a work of professional design and the realization of a patron’s own instructions.