Yours of 5th just received. Pray do not imagine that we do not understand and sympathize with your anxiety to have at least Codman with you just now. Perhaps you do not as well understand that day after day we feel more and more the hazard of any attempt to settle anything until we have had opportunity of reviewing the general design with the data in hand that will be supplied by the topographical maps now preparing & which we are daily hoping to receive, and with the advantage of passing the conclusions at which the exhibit may arrive as the result of this last week’s meeting in New York. With these advantages it will not take us long to come to fixed points of departure, from which we can proceed with much more confidence than we have yet had that all the thought that we gave to the matter might not be wasted. We suppose that this point may be reached in a day or two, and we feel that if it can, we here (the three Landscape Architects) should have a chance to help one another by debate and conference before Codman goes again to Chicago. Codman thinks as we all do that these matters will be farther advanced by the end of this week if he remains here three or four days longer than if he started at once.

I think that we may hope to reach some solid bottom by the end of this week. Yet I am not without a good deal of fear that the {Grandees} will compel changes to be made, that will be serious—changes that will make it better that the present plan should be abandoned altogether and a new start made. The worst thing that could happen must be a compromise by which the distinguishing merits of the plan as it now stands, would be sacrificed. An entirely new design, a design with radically different motives, would be much better than the present design mutilated.

Yours faithfully,

Confidential.

I do not suppose that you, or any one else in Chicago, yet begin to realize the importance and the difficulty of setting the leading element of the Exposition in really {accurate} maps. I have had experience of similar business, and from the moment we began to think of the Jackson Park plan, have seen that its success would turn largely upon what could be done and what could be prevented in the use of the lagoons. I began at once to seek sound information and to study the subject. When I was last in Chicago, I verbally advised you and advised the Committee on Buildings and Grounds that I was engaged with it and begged that I might be allowed to go on for the present privately, and with assurance that no proposition would be entertained for any use of the lagoons until after I could have a conference with the proper authority in the matter. Nevertheless, afterwards, knowing what a pressure would be brought to get some advantage for securing privileges, I thought it best to write you as fully as [312]I could at the time upon the subject and engage your interest in it. The effect of the publication of my letter can hardly fail to wake up a host of speculators and hobby riders to the opportunity and to set them to putting obstacles in the way of what is desirable for the public.

Looking over my letter, I see that I was at fault in not stating my objects and wishes more explicitly and in not marking the letter “confidential.” I am very sorry for it, but the mischief is done, and the only question now is how it can be { … }.

Would it be practicable for you to get me authority to proceed now in the matter officially? {Limited}, of course, only with reference to maturing a proper scheme to be submitted. Am I authorized to consult Burgess professionally?

Do take my word for it that this is a matter of extreme importance to the success of the Exposition and a matter requiring most cautious and deliberate study. It may easily take a shape that will make the whole lagoon plan a bad one; one of which I should be ashamed.

Yours faithfully.