I have received your letter. It makes me sick and sad but I know that I have but one feeling towards you, which is and always has been sweet and pure. My error seems to have arisen thus. When we went into the competition I knew you were superintendent but did not attach the meaning to the word that you did; When we recd the premium & divided it at my office at Appleton’s Building I told you that a time had arrived at which our connection might be properly severed and that you were at liberty to proceed to carry out the design without my taking further part in it, provided that our joint names were duly recognized in the plan as it then stood. You replied that you did not feel at all able to undertake individually the execution of the design and requested me to continue to act with you. I acceded. Shortly afterwards on receiving from the Commrs an offer of the title of A in C, my claims being wholly unrecognised, you consulted me before sending in your reply, not on the advisability or otherwise of accepting it but merely on the form of words you should use. I felt that was not what I should have done to you. I could have protested but assumed that it was a temporary expedient to get the work started. I certainly then felt that I had full right and title to be considered on a thorough equality with you, not with regard to superintendence X’ or merely organization of labor but with regard to what we had agreed to devote our attention to for the next five years probably.

In the course of the next day or two the question was discussed in so far as there was any discussion and I became convinced that you had a very different immediate intention with regard to our partnership, as I supposed it was, to what I had. I also became fully aware that you [178]were “as innocent as a child of perception of any wrong to me in the neglect of the Commrs to associate me with you” and were looking at the matter not from my professional point of view at all. I could have readily gained your attention but I perceived instinctively that it would be impossible as you were then constituted to make you feel that it would be better otherwise than it was and I felt that if I carried my point it would be at a great sacrifice of your working efficiency in so far as it was dependent on my cooperation. I therefore determined to postpone indefinitely the discussion of the whole question involved, not because I thought there would be any difficulty in inducing the Commrs to associate us together or because I believed the course you pursued the most judicious for the ultimate success of the scheme, not out of regard to your feelings in any way, not out of respect to your previous history but simply because I had the most absolute trust in your purity of aim and intention and saw that we must work together and that you must have the title. I made then as I considered it a sacrifice of my professional rights for the good of the common cause, not our common cause but the common cause of the park and all it meant in its best sense. I judged that it was better to co-operate cheerfully with you, although convinced that another course would have been better in every way.

I did not consider it desirable to be more frank at that time. If there had been the slightest feeling in the matter it would have been, because otherwise hearty practical cooperation would not have resulted for an hour. There was not any feeling, however, but a latent difference of opinion.

I knew I should have the opportunity of working out our plan and felt that I could at any moment talk this or anything else over with you. I was as you say responsible and was fully aware of it—and I acted straight through with firmness, and without looking back and with no lack of frankness except in this particular. I thought you recognised our equality and so you did, so far as it existed, and I supposed you would some day see the propriety of changing the title. I distinguished the superintendence X’ always as a matter in which I had no share and did not see its intimate relation to X. I did not attach any particular importance to it, as I included in X a great deal of it but not probably the most important part and thought you overrated it. It was your affair however, not mine.

So the work was gone on with. I felt that it would be time enough to talk about titles when the work was well advanced. I was absorbed in my part of the work and in our simple, friendly, actual, bona fide relation which I all the while believed meant equality in your eyes as absolutely as it did in mine (except as to a certain slight superiority which would have been expressed by your name being first on the firm.) I could see no reason why it should not, and as I thought this was the case whenever [179]I thought about it at all, which was not as often as perhaps I may have led you to suppose, it did not trouble my pride or sense of absolute right in the matter.

When the time came I did not understand your reluctance to change the title to be traceable to your X’ hopes. That you were reluctant was evident, that the change was not expressive of your convictions was certain. I did not understand why, but knew that to you it was proper and best that you should think so and I respected your idea without understanding it, that is I knew it was entirely an intellectual question in which you had as much right to your opinion as I had to mine. I was not vexed or irritated or annoyed, or filled with mean thoughts but I was disappointed—it was not easy for me to comprehend as we were situated. It made me feel sure however that you did not consider we were equally entitled to X in any extended sense, and I now perceive that you did not and never did; but I could not, at that time see it so. I knew your opinion must be right to you, to me it seemed that I brought as much as you to the park, that I brought education, special fitness to take up new problems, a love of the race, a love of the park and all it meant intellectually and that I had worked faithfully and fraternally with you throughout. It seemed to me you must be wrong in not accepting me as an equal partner in X heartily. However, as it was not in accordance with your conviction, it was entirely useless to me intellectually. It was a disappointment, I could not see why you saw the matter so differently to what I did. I thought however that perhaps it would come to me in time, and bored on as I best could in duty to the work.

When the paragraphs you referred to appeared, I became aware that you conveyed to everyone the impression that our positions were not nearly as equal in your mind as I thought they ought to be. I knew that you were an intimate friend of Godkin’s & Godwin’s and knew that you had defended my rights as you understood them, but what was the total result? You had not convinced the men, not as I should have convinced them speaking of you and therefore you were not convinced yourself, never would be to all appearances. We had a joint title that you did not believe in and I was here to speak and act for you and for me for years to come. I became convinced that our estimates of each other’s value differed as regarded X in its usual extended sense, not X’ which I considered yours wholly. I supposed then we must diverge at this point, so far as our entire one-ness of action in park matters was concerned & that you must state your case so that I might know it and do justice to it and that I must be free to state mine as I of course could not be until I had spoken to you. All this not in respect to any definite action but as a guide to me in every word or intonation of a word that I might hereafter use in connection with our relation. I therefore wrote an ill conceived statement which plainly enough conveyed the idea that I felt you wronged [180]me, as I thought you did, not morally but intellectually. I felt that you ought so far as regards a liberal interpretation of X, to have regarded me from first to last as an equal (but whether this was acknowledged or unacknowledged by the public was a matter of very secondary moment) and that you had not and did not. It actually did not occur to me that you could read in it that I had a feeling that you had morally wronged me. This was not in my mind at all or I must have guarded against it by acknowledging my co responsibility in all the acts that had been done with regard to defining our respective claims to the property we held in the Park—this however was what I meant by saying that I was not at liberty to express my individual views.

I have your reply—and what is the result? It shows me that you did not and that it was right you should not. You have been aware all along as I have not been that my services to X have been valuable. Yours have been invaluable and have at all times, consciously or unconsciously, conveyed that idea. You conveyed it to me in the beginning of the work but I thought this was merely deficiency on your part in professional training. I did not see the intimate relation between the early stages of X’ to X, merely even as a paper plan, till now. I did not know much about your early superintendent history and I did not allow that you were justly the representative man of the park including my share in it. I do now. If I had seen it before, I would have allowed it before. I see now that you are architect in chief both in X and X’. Henceforward I take my true position in my own mind call it by what name you will and am glad to have got to understand it at my sacrifice. My perception of your real relations to the work have been incomplete hitherto as you are aware and my professional habits of thought have stood in the way of my more rapid comprehending of it. I have divided X from X’. Henceforward they are as indivisible in my mind as in yours. On the whole on reviewing the affair from first to last I find that my want of frankness in the first instance has fortunately not injured you. I have spoken and acted throughout in accordance with the absolutely right view, not as freely as I shall hereafter do—being no longer silent as I often have been when our relation has been discussed—but because I had accepted you as an actual representative of our affairs without protest in the first instance. The A in C resignation must be excepted. I asked you to resign for the reasons I stated. I thought it was more business like and better for you whether you thought so or not. I certainly wanted you to change the title to an ordinary partnership one on my account but only when you became convinced of the propriety of so doing without being asked or on my choosing to ask you to do so on personal grounds. If I were to be in the same position again I should now act differently, fully believing in your superior claims to X and understanding its relations to X’.

I think the last analysis would show that after all I have a share [181]in X’, having included it in my estimate of X and that in both together, that is in the Park not as a work of the arts of architecture and landscape gardening only but of the art of administration and good government in its extended sense, we stand as co-workers—you being preeminently the representative man, and I hope that the time may come when you will carry forward your whole idea to its completion. And now I have said all I can say on this or any other point at this time.

I shall like at some time to hear more of your experiences. Poor Mrs Schuyler you will have heard is dead. Daniels also has died lately. I saw Mrs Olmsted a day or two since, we are working on the “Marion House.” I have elaborated your idea and think it a good one. My impression is that the plans had better be adapted on the spot as to material & dimensions. The drawings sent will enable Pieper or any other draftsman to work your plan out under your own directions, taking the local circumstances into consideration. Mrs Vaux and the children are well. She sends love.

I enclose a copy of Gantt’s speech at the Cooper Institute, the other evening. I presume that you will get it in your files, but may not have your attention drawn to it. The occasion was a very interesting one. Dr Bellows spoke well and Mr Gantt was a fair representative I should conjecture of the better type of Southern or South western man. It was a curious coincidence that Gen Anderson should come onto the stage at the time he did. Together they represented the Alpha and the Omega of the Rebellion and the audience seemed to understand this for he was most warmly and heartily received.

I do not suppose that you find “the New Path” among your newspapers. I intend to ask Mrs Olmsted to take out the back numbers for your edification. It is an art paper of the Naturalistic or Pre Raphaelite school and Mr Cook and others write for it. I am anathema maranatha but kiss the rod and am really glad that a thoughtful little paper has been started, with the idea of giving architecture its true place among the arts and of basing all study for Painting, Architecture or Sculpture on earnest naturalistic drawing. I should like to know how the tone of the paper strikes you, perhaps you may think it worth while to pen down a sketch of the Mariposa scenery at some time, for its pages.

It has struck me at times that it might be well before too long a time has elapsed, to present a sort of report to the public about the C.P. I mean for you to describe as it were how far the thing had been carried and what remained to be done, so that there should be as little confusion of ideas in the public mind as possible on this subject. I do not think that the Commrs need be very much considered. We are not bound to them in any way now and have a right to present the idea as a whole. Of course it would attract attention and might keep the powers that be from doing as much harm as they otherwise will be likely in time to do if unrestrained. [183] Pilat tells me that the extension is being carried out pretty much in accordance with the plan. He was not in favor of the central road himself when his opinion was asked, preferring to leave the scenery intact, but before resigning and indeed afterwards I pressed on Green the absolute necessity in our view of leaving and entering the park at this point with a favorable impression of its size and sufficiency, which no road creeping round its edges would do. If Pilat stays I think the leading outlines will be fairly preserved. He is working with me a little here and there now on other things. A survey is being made of the Newhaven district but nothing is at all settled. You will remember that when I left for England, Green deducted per diem for salary and I never could get any satisfaction. Lately I put the matter in the hands of Judge Monell as a matter of principle as I thought it a bad precedent and he I believe commenced a suit. He came to see me several times about it and at first told me that Green was very anxious that I should return to the C.P. and that he M. could not see why I should not. I did not argue the matter much with him but told him to go ahead and get a settlement. After a most tedious delay he succeeded in getting the money and when he gave me the cheque he seemed to have a realising sense that there might be very good reasons for not desiring to act in perpetual conjunction with the Treasurer & Comptroller.

In thinking over what I said in my last letters it seems that I should add a few words and then drop the subject for ever. When we commenced work it was quite evident to me that you were not pursuing this matter either for the love of Art, Fame or money, and I met you and rejoiced to meet you in the same spirit. I believed that this work was chiefly an example of the art of design, incidentally of the art of administration. You thought the administration all inclusive and the design secondary. When therefore I speak of my interests, I mean that the dignification of the art element in contradistinction to the administration element was a natural thing for me to work for and insist on and this I did not press, except a little now & then by way of counterpoise. If you look closely you will see that if you failed to carry out your full intentions it was not for want of anything I could do to sustain you—except as already admitted, in the matter of the A in C resignation.

In my first letter it was not ungenerous to compel you to forget, having a personal purpose to serve, confessedly, nor was it possible to get at the facts without leaving out all the love, all the heart, all the life for the time being. It would have been much better to have left the whole thing for time to settle, but this was not possible.

If I had gone to California & you had staid here, I should have dismissed the subject from my mind with entire confidence and the paragraphs I referred to would have made no particular impression. But the painful impression was that I must either sustain this view to some [184]extent or else appear to be not of one mind with you; perhaps if I had been entirely strong and well with the prospect of remaining so, I should have seen my way through this as through other things but I felt otherwise and I felt that your best interest as well as mine demanded that I should write to you in a plain business way. I thought it was a plain business way—but I see that it could not fail to be read by you, as you read it—and thus at one blow, the whole delicate structure of an affectionate personal relation, invaluable to me, was I am afraid, destroyed, but I cannot, I will not believe that this is really so. I feel that I have well deserved your affection and that I have returned it with earnestness. My letter was ill conceived, over-done and ungentle, but it is but a letter, and altho it gave you pain and uneasiness and led you to form altogether wrong impressions, I think that you will have penetration enough to understand now that it is impossible for me to have had any such thoughts as it led you to suppose I had. So I leave the subject, never to return to it.

I hope to see Mrs Olmsted on the 13th before leaving It seems a long tedious journey for her and the little ones but I hope she will rejoin you in good health and spirits. My wife is expecting daily to be confined and I am glad to say is pretty strong and cheery. I look forward to our all meeting again here at no very remote period. I used to tell you that you would be wanted for the public service even in the old romantic days, but you would not listen. Perhaps you will not now but I think you will allow me to be