I sent you a T.W. letter yesterday, address, Wellington Hotel, but not being perfectly sure that that was right will address this care of Director Columbian Ex. I told you that I was planning to go to Atlanta Wednesday, returning Saturday to spend Sunday here. If you feel that I can justly to our interests in Chicago stay longer, and write me so, I shall.

Mr Vanderbilt and all are pleased with the work on Ram Branch but I am much dissatisfied with it in several respects, Gall having missed the idea so that to make it as I would have it a great deal of work must be wasted. I don’t know that he is to be blamed. He simply is not familiar enough with what I aim at to rightly understand my instructions and goes ahead in full confidence that what he does will please me. I am sorry that I did not pull that bridge down. I have been all along on the ground for four hours this Sunday afternoon trying to find some way out of the scrape. I feel mortified and conscious-stricken. John writes that we ought to spend more time at Rockwood, which is what you say. But the precept is many times more applicable to Biltmore. What is going to become of us if we get engaged with Chicago?

Our plan for the Pergola essentially approved and applauded, but Hunt suggests improvements, which are good and wh. I adopt cheerfully.

I wish that I had your help about the Ram Branch muddle.

[220]

At all other points yet studied matters are shaping well—but I see some clouds rising from the Agricultural side.

While writing, Mr. V. brings me your letter of 17th. I take your view of every thing. I shd hardly think that you wd succeed in getting the compensation & terms you propose, but I don’t object to your feeling your way to it, and striking for it, if you wish. I am prepared to say that we had better retire if we cannot get it. If we take it, we must make some enlarged arrangemts for other business and must decline commissions that we wd otherwise take. I was never before so impressed with the wrong of our present position. I should like to give myself up to this place. We cannot do it instead by visiting a week at a time three times a year. I rode this morning over some of the newly bought farms, seeing more interesting ground and better trees than any I had seen before. It struck me that I had never begun to think what a big chore we had before us when the Topog. Survey shall be complete to duly plan out the laying out of the Estate. We shall need, one of us, to be familiar with the topography of a region twelve times as large as Franklin Pk. divided by two rivers and a dozen brooks before we can begin. I think that it would take me a week, clear of all other duties to piece out what I know of at present, sufficiently to feel that I could safely adopt a provisional theory of roads. Mr Vanderbilt said today that he had been planning a scheme of roads that would require but three bridges over the French Broad. I can see that our difficulties are to be greatly increased by the schemes of Burnet and the Baron. I heard part of a long letter from the Baron, in which he was contemplating a sort of magnified Deerfoot Farm, but with additions to the sausage and butter departments of sheep, orchards, vineyards, &c. &c. all on a great scale.

Let me hear from you here, next Sunday, advising if I can safely stay two to four days, before going to Nashville.

Faithfully,

Your note of 24th with Marion’s of 23d came last night.

I am still keeping my bed; positive ailments abating, but considerably run down. Eyes weak so I do not read and did not write yesterday. Burnett was the invalid when we started, so he had the best room. He left last night and I was shifted to his room, which is a good deal better. Hunt is getting well. He (& Dick) return with Mr. V. tonight. Mr & Mrs McNamee are to move in; [222]their new house not being ready for occupation & their old house given up to the Brick maker’s family. So I remain in good hands. You may advance all my dates at least two days. I cannot hope to be fit to travel before Thursday, and I shall not leave until I have had part of a day on the work with Gall & Beadle. Your view of Gall is strictly correct except that it leaves out of the account the circumstance that he is beside himself with jealousy & self esteem & is eager to excess to distinguish himself as a L.A. Hence not fully realizing the principles of my instructions, he tries to improve upon them & blunders. He is zealous & welcomes instruction, and I suppose we could not have done better. Personal Superintendence is the one thing that is needed and is perhaps more indispensable in this wild country than on any other of our works. To you & Harry, this work will, twenty years hence, be what Central Park has been to me. The first great private work of our profession in the country. I have gained some points of value, this visit. I shd like to confine myself to it for the rest of my days, and I feel today that I am a good deal nearer seventy than I ever was before. I am planning how to proceed when I come again in February with Manning, when the first approach to complete work must be made, giving the key to much to follow.

I do not think that what we want of Waterer can be ordered by wire—Manning had proposed & I agreed to a form of directions which would require a letter, but a telegram followed by a letter will be desirable. But you will have settled every thing before this. The only point remaining being instructions to the C.H. broker in New York, cautioning him to guard against exposure & prevent opening of cases as much possible, and to hasten all proceedings. A personal interview with him desirable.

What you say of Manning’s theory of Bignonia Capreolata is an old story, and the object of my urgent writing was to prevent its being pursued further. The plants we have here are B. Capreolata & I was no more likely to mistake them for an evergreen than I should be in the case of an Alanthus. There were two vines at the Bissel nursery to which I asked Manning’s special attention. One of them was a remarkably luxurient specimen of Bignonia Capreolata near the house & not in the nursery proper. The other was a distinctly evergreen vine standing in a nursery row (?) Bissel said it had been found wild in the neighborhood & brought into the nursery & that he had intended to propagate from it. He had no name for it. I wanted to secure that at any cost. My notion is that my eagerness to get it led Bissel to withdraw it with the intention of propagating it, (which he may have neglected to do), and that he helped to mislead Manning willfully. The vines that Manning secured are not of the sort that I more particularly wanted.

I may be mistaken in all this. If Harry is with you ask him to review the matter & see if his recollection is positively opposed to mine. The vine I want is the only vine in existence, if it is in existence, that would be suitable for our winter pergola. It would be well worth a thousand dollars for that. I may be mistaken,—under a delusion or dream,—but the chances that I am [223]

Pergola, Biltmore

As to Franklin Park, I have given a good deal of study to the revision of walk system South & West of Quarry. Do not set aside or attempt to improve upon what I have arranged West & North of where the cottage is to be against the Rock facing Ellicotdale—the “tennis ground” cottage. East of that (except for a short distance East of the cottage), the walk system must be left undetermined until it is seen what the Quarry excavation will come to. That & the approach & entrance to the Arbor makes desirable a considerable revision of all the original plan of walks from the point of junction (of the walk along the base of Scarboro’ with the walk leading up to the summit of Scarboro’) to the Williams House, & from the Tennis Cottage to the Arbor. All walks to be [224]made through this district for the present should be provisional & cheap. But the walks north of the drive, between Hagbourne Hill & Ellicott Arch should be completed this Fall if possible; including the hillside walk west of the new staircase on Hagbourne Hill, including the seat, under the rock terrace on the top of which the loop road is now being furnished.

We want to be able to say in Annual Report, that Nazingdale, Scarboro Hill, Elicotdale & the Wilderness north of Ellicot Arch are essentially finished & will be open to public use next Spring—All the walks should show on a map of progress, as “partially constructed” where not “finished.”

I repeat that we shd have sent here this Fall with reference to our planting in February, if possible, a better lot of ivy plants than we have—at least 500. Also, if practicable, Saxifraga & small flowering plants for water side. We could use (at once) quantities of moneywort, sedums & sempervivums to advantage. Everything is wanted that will help to form a thousand feet of roadside as a sample, to look old & settled as soon as possible. To get rid of newness & smartness & gardening, as in our “hollow.”