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To Amasa Leland Stanford
| Dear Governor Stanford:- | 7th August, 1890. |
I trust that you have gained all that you hoped from the baths and subsequent tour; that you are now looking to an early return and beginning to think over what is before you on this side of the ocean. I have been slow to ask your attention to the circumstance to which I shall refer below, but do not think that I can defer to do so longer, without becoming responsible for possible consequences.
I thoroughly respect Mr. Lathrop as your lieutenant. I understand how important he is to you and how necessary it is that he should have all the power and influence he has. But, reviewing all that has occurred since Mr. Codman and I first visited you in 1886, I cannot resist the conviction that, from the outset, there has been a difference between us and Mr. Lathrop, operating harmfully to the business for which you employ us. I do not fully understand what the difference is. No doubt it lies deeper than I can see. But superficially and with reference to its obvious effect, I may give an idea of it in this way:-
If you wanted a group of statuary, there are some honest men who would advise you to get a draughtsman to make a drawing, and then to give this drawing, with an order for the work, to a stone-cutter. Hundreds of wretched statues in granite have been made here for soldiers’ monuments under such advice during the last twenty years. If, instead of taking such advice, you should employ a professional sculptor, the manner in which the sculptor would proceed with the business would seem to an advisor of this class, very unwise. Not seeing any good reason for the sculptor’s proceeding in any other way than that which a stone-cutter would adopt, he would assume that there were no reasons and treat contemptuously the sculptor’s assertions that there were. A sculptor could do no work fit to be called sculpture, if, from day to day, as his work advanced, he were required to satisfy such an adviser.
Of course, I am imagining an extreme case. What I mean is that Mr. Lathrop’s view of the University work differs from ours in the manner, if not in the degree, that such a view of the requirements of sculpture differs from a sculptor’s view. Imagine a sculptor attempting to produce a statue, through work on and by processes which a stone-cutter would use, throwing over-board all that he has learned of his profession beyond what a stone-cutter had learned;- imagine this, and it may give you some idea of the position in which I feel that Mr. Lathrop demands that we shall place ourselves. We do not offer our services to be rendered under such conditions, and you have no right to put us, or let us be put, in such a position.
What has occurred this Summer, compelling me to say this to you, is this:- A few days before you last left San Francisco, Mr. Codman advised you,
[162]in our behalf, to give certain directions as to work to be done in your absence, and as to arrangements for doing it. He was careful not to ask too much. One of his objects was to obtain your protection for what we thought our professional responsibility in the premises against the danger which Mr. Lathrop’s habit of looking upon the work had previously made manifest to us. After considerable discussion, you determined to adopt our advice, and two writings were made, embodying this determination. These writings were read to you at the time and you assented to them as correct statements of what you had determined. Mr. Lathrop was present; objected to our advice; was over-ruled by you and was furnished in your presence with one of the written statements of your determination in favor of what we advised. Nevertheless, immediately after you left San Francisco, we were informed of orders given by Mr. Lathrop which, in our judgment, nullified the arrangement in particulars which he knew that we considered of much importance. Information of his action did not come to us from him, nor did he give us any reason for it. He thought it none of our business. Considering that the arrangement had been made by you, under our advice, against his, in his presence, we thought that you must see that it plainly was our business, and that we should be neglectful of our professional duty if we failed to protest against it. Referring to one point of our written protest, you told me in Washington that you had directed Mr. Lathrop to have Mr. Clement visit the work and give his opinion as to the proper part that Mr. McMillan, as our representative, should have in directing the work. You seemed to think that this would be sufficient to place the business on the footing we desired. We did not think so, but you were preparing to depart for Europe; it was no time for argument with you and we returned home to await the result. The result was that immediately afterwards Mr. McMillan was dismissed from your employment without having seen Mr. Clement. There may have been reasons for his dismissal unknown to us. If there were, Mr. Lathrop’s difference with us appears none the less strikingly in the fact that he did not think it his duty to consult us before taking such a step; to advise us of his intention to take it; to give us his reasons for taking it, or to indicate to us what course he wished us to follow in consequence of it. He put no one in communication with us in Mr. McMillan’s place. It is now three months since any communication has come to us from any one at the University. As far as was in his power, in dismissing Mr. McMillan, Mr. Lathrop dismissed us. Why?
You had gone to Europe to escape business. It seemed to me possible that I could satisfy Mr. Lathrop, not only that you had wished, expected and demanded a kind of service from us that his manner of dealing with us made impossible, but that I could make it appear probable that you had not been fooled by us into doing so; that it was a perfectly reasonable proceeding, justified by the experience of others in employing us. I thought it possible that if I could convince him of this, he would be willing to take counsel with us, or allow others to do so, as Mr. McMillan had been in the habit of doing from
[163]week to week, as the work progressed. If so, it would be unnecessary to further trouble you in the matter.
Accordingly, I wrote him a letter, of which I enclose a copy. If you were to read it, you would recognize it to be a long, patient, pains-taking and respectful effort to remove what might be an accidental prejudice against us and our profession, and to place ourselves on a conciliatory, friendly and co-operative footing with him. Not reading it, you will take my assurance that such was my purpose, and that I was not sparing of time or trouble in trying to accomplish it. You will see also, from Mr. Lathrop’s reply, of which a copy is likewise enclosed, that I completely failed, Mr. Lathrop taking the ground that we have nothing to do with the University business, except to supply drawings. If we want data for the preparation of these drawings, he will direct a surveyor to obtain such data for us.
That, you see, accords with the idea with which people order stonecutter’s statues. You may get in that way what can be called a statue, but you cannot get a work of art. Proceeding in that spirit, you cannot expect your statue to have much of the quality of unity or composition; to be refined, delicate, graceful, or subtly suggestive to the imagination. You cannot expect it to have a useful educative influence, if set up in a school room. What do you expect when you require such work as you have undertaken at Palo Alto to be dealt with in a similar perfunctory, mechanical spirit?
If you think me presuming in writing you at last in this plain way, I must ask you to remember that I have been, for upwards of thirty years, in charge of works of landscape architecture, and to reflect that it is natural that I should imagine that I have learned in that time more than is commonly understood, by what may be called good business men, of the manner of management that is necessary to accomplish lastingly satisfactory results in such works. To reflect, also, that I am too old a man to be reasonably asked to put aside all that I have learned of my business, because a man of Mr. Lathrop’s training and habits has not learned as much.
I submit the matter to your wisdom and remain with the most sincere respect and regards;
Your friend and servant,
Fredk Law Olmsted.
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To Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
| Dear Rick, | 7th Aug. 1890. |
I have been trying {to} find a few minutes in my writing hours to write you but have been constantly mortgaged. I stick in now late at night, as Harry & I are to leave early tomorrow for Chicago on a call from the World’s Fair Commns. to help them decide about sites. Last week we were at several points centering on New York; the most interesting being West Point, where I shd like to take you. We were called there by the Supdet for advice. The most interesting thing we saw there was the collection of drawings of the last graduating class. I don’t know how many—perhaps a hundred—arranged in order of merit, free hand, topographical, mechanical, black and white and tinted. The range was not great, the poorest being good enough for ordinary purposes, the best not strikingly fine. The cadets were in camp and made a fine show. The quarters were singularly bare & cheap, furniture rude, neat, of course, as far as scrubbing and paint would make them so. It was fine to see the set up of the men. You ought to gain in that respect. The old men—grey beards—carried themselves even better than the younger, showing the effect of early forming a good habit. First, a matter of compulsion and gymnastics, it sticks.
I meant to save & send you all that appeared about the Herald’s prize essays but going to New York, I lost the tabular statement, giving an order of merit for a good number—perhaps fifty of the competitors. Your name was not among them. I enclose one little bit which has a thought in it to be considered. I don’t know that I quite agree. But I rather think of a young man it is generally true that the cultivation of the critical faculty is stunting to the literary faculty. I question if it is not so up to a certain point, and a comparatively high point, in all arts. It has struck me, for example, that most people who are very critical about music, acting, painting have little enjoyment of them. But that is up to a certain point. High cultivation—very high, high to a degree that is very rare—gets the better of the difficulty. And the most critical writer may be the most graceful, e.g. Lowell.
The proposition for a three years college course has drawn out some notable discussion. There has been a drift in it that I had not expected to the notion that preparatory training in study—i.e. the ordinary academic &
[166]collegiate education—may profitably break joints more than has hitherto been allowed with professional study. I enclose what Profr Shaler says about it. I am not ready to adopt his view with reference to men in general. Perhaps it depends on what the profession is, or rather upon the character of the professional study in view, the necessary early studies of some professions being of a very general cultivating tendency. To read Blackstone and Kent is a capital mental exercise—and a capital bit of literary training. In your case I do not feel that there is any question from the start. You should steadily pursue a course of reading and of thinking upon the suggestions of that reading, that would have the effect of both general and special professional training. You should have gone with interest and a good appetite and digestion through all the literature of the profession before you leave college, and do a good deal of what, if you were to be a chemist, would correspond in the college course with laboratory work. All that the college allows you in the field of fine arts, both as to observation of examples and as to history; and all it allows in the pursuance of a general liberal education, in the way of drawing, &c. You must make the most of, for the reason that it not only gives you what it is intended to give all who take it, but sends you forward materially in such study for a purpose as is generally taken after the college course.
William P. is living with us, taking your place as best he can. Good fellow. In working hours he is at the Arboretum. I almost wish you were with him but I suppose you are better off on the whole where you are.
Your affect Father
F.L.O.
Touching this matter of “straighter” early school instruction, Goodwin’s position seems to be pretty well established but I don’t see the mode in which the alleged advantage is obtained sufficiently defined. If it is by an improved or more scientific order of instruction, all right. But if it is by holding the mind more continuously, strictly and strenuously to study with less freedom, spontaneity and babyisness than is at present customary with us, will not some power and quality be dwarfed? That is to say, prematurely and unnaturally checked in development? It seems to me that that is a wise question of pedagogical science here which the public discussion of preparatory school methods does not sufficiently recognize.
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