I had a memorable first date at The Huntington. I wanted to show off my happy place, my haven, a soulful spot guaranteed to refresh in every turn. My date and I took in the exhibits in the library and the galleries and walked around the gardens. In the end, I asked my erstwhile suitor what he thought of the place.
“It has a lot of plants!” he said, with a smile.
Dear reader, I married him.
I still tease said husband of 27 years about his oh-so-discerning comment about The Huntington, every time we visit, through summer concerts and camps with the kids, tea dates, lectures and plant sales.
“Look at all the plants!” I will say to him at some point. Is an eye roll a sign of true love?
This year, perhaps I will avail of the helpful self-guided tour, “Fourteen Things to Love at the Huntington.”
You can find expressions of all kinds of love curated on this tour: beginning with making a puzzle purse at the Mapel Orientation Gallery, to finding, then admiring red and orange aloes in peak bloom at the Desert Garden. Consider taking in the North Vista with its more than 1,200 cultivated varieties of camellias, including Arrabella, which brings to mind the love stories of Arabella Huntington, who was married to railway magnate Collis, and then his nephew Henry Huntington.
Henry, it is said, had the Japanese Garden built as a surprise for his wife, a way to entice her to spend more time in California. Are there any records documenting her reaction to this gift? (My now-well-trained husband knows better than to buy gifts for me. The question “Have I bought your birthday present yet?” is music to my ears.) After he realized she was unimpressed by the garden, did Henry just add to Arabella’s legendary jewelry collection, which would later be purchased by Harry Winston in 1926 for $1.2 million? (There’s a lesson there for beloveds, pay attention.)
Nevertheless, I like to imagine Henry and Arabella bonding over art and books in their San Marino home and am grateful their love story brought The Huntington to us.
Other kinds of love, of course, can be found on this Valentine’s tour: bookish souls can check out the exhibition “Stories from the Library: From Bronte to Butler,” which features personal writings and objects that reveal the lives and creative processes of women writers from 1800s on. Look for and admire Pasadena’s own Octavia Butler’s manuscript, in which she writes about how she wants to “speak well and tell a good story.”
There are 16th-century wedding chests, stained glass windows, paintings galore, of course, and then the gardens, including the Pavilion of the Three Friends in the Chinese Garden, which celebrates love in friendship. And don’t forget this institution’s collection of paintings of the Madonna and Child, and Mary Cassatt’s warm depictions of moms and children.
Off-tour you can always wander through scenes featured in many a romantic movie that was filmed at The Huntington (“Memoirs of a Geisha,” “Mame” and “The Wedding Planner” to name a few).
My own love stops include an unassuming fountain at a corner of the Rose Garden where my firstborn baby and I spent many an hour just sitting on a wooden bench in our first-months-together haze of wonder and exhaustion. I always stop and say hello to a beautiful bust of a young girl named Sabine by Jean-Antoine Houdon in the 17th-century that I adored years before I had a little girl of my own.
There are several interior and exterior spots, now iconic in our family, where I posed my three children through the years. Yes, I am that mother who herds her kiddos for just one more shot.
Love is love is love is love, indeed, in all its forms and glories. Even the love of “a lot of plants,” and one story that bloomed from it.
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