Your note (5th inst) enclosing one from Mr. McNamee was received on our arrival here last night. We have been having continued cold weather with gusts of snow every day but have enjoyed our tour greatly. Here we found Henry Perkins and Hannah, who had come from London to meet & welcome us. All of the party but myself have driven out this morning intending to visit Stonehenge & some villages. I am shut up with a bad cold supposed to be due to damp sheets at Shrewsbury, but it was time I had a cold anyway. If I am well enough we are all to go to London tonight, and to Chiselhurst. Thence tomorrow, if I am well eno’ to Paris—a day behind our Time Table.

Of course, to get on, we skim a great deal and deny ourselves visits to many places that we might desirably see and it is hard to make the selection. As far as Rick is concerned I am inclined to regard our present journey as a reconnaissance and to expect him to travel {over} the same common roads and restudy the same districts more deliberately & contemplatively after the foliage is out. I find as the result of forty years rumination of landscape that—much as I enjoyed in my first visit I did not nearly understand the beauty & interest of the country. If I could afford it, I would now again go right back over the same ground. Phil is in a somewhat corresponding state of mind, for he had been with his father over much of the ground—moving by rail as we do, and tho’ he often says “I remember this,” he says that he sees much more now than he did then. We have had no rain of consequence—all the showers coming in the form of snow or hail—but the chilliness and dampness of the air and the draftiness of the inns & stations is much against our comfort & my health. We have here a private sitting room & all the fire in the grate that it will hold but I write wrapped in my fur coat. The season is advancing, however, vegetation considerably more expanded than in Cheshire. We shall find Devonshire in the full flush of Spring when we come North a fortnight hence.

It is a great pleasure to meet Henry & Hannah here. Marion will write you all about them. And Rick will I presume journalize our journey. I think that it has been very instructive to him & to Phil—more than they are aware. [507]Instructive a good deal as to what to avoid. Most of the elaborate gardening is very bad from our point of view, but the little places, the skill in arrangement, where there is no purpose of show, and the extreme neatness & snugness admirable & instructive.

We have seen within two days,—large grove-like bodies of naturally growing yews, in which considerable sport of character;—a good deal of English forestry, two systems being obvious, large timber yards & forest products in various forms, all instructive as to Biltmore; large bodies of coppice, with its products in hoop poles, (going to France), hop poles, pea sticks, hurdles, (made up & shipping by rail) fire place wood in bundles & faggots of bushwood. We have seen also water-meadows such as I want at Biltmore. I am surprised at the extent & variety & completeness of the pleasure boating arrangements at evy little river-town we stop at. They are better than the best we have.

(I cannot write with any of the pens here) I shall be sending you newspaper slips suggested by the accident Easter Sunday, as possibly having suggestion bearing on Chicago expedients. When we return to London the Perkinss promise to take a trip to Oxford with us on an electric launch. I look [508]at all the pleasure boats we see, and there are hosts of them, and shall have some suggestions probably to give to our contractors. I hope if the contract is made it leaves some margin for improvements of detail.

To cover ground too densely shaded for turf, a difficulty which we often have to meet & seldom meet agreeably, they have nothing promising here but ivy. Within certain limits ivy looks very well. Nothing else does.

The weather has been much against us. Against me because it depresses and constrains me, though I have enjoyed more and learned more than I had anticipated. Against Phil & Rick because they do not get the full landscape charm & are not moved to truly analyze its constituents. Neither realize fully what they are gaining and Phil is inclined to expect to gain more than he will relatively from the great places. The “landscape gardening” of the time is all a lifeless approximation to a very limited range of patterns, or, at the best, ideals. We see no spark of invention or originality—It is everywhere very fine but the limitations and confinement and uniformity of it make one feel that there is no more original design in any individual case than in a fashionable hat or the 500th proof impression of a copper plate—But the neatness, elegance and perfect order, and the snugness and completeness of the arrangements show the imperious reign of an admirable form of “respectability.”

I was stopped abruptly in writing to you of the World’s Fair yesterday & am not sure how far I had gone. I am much more impressed by reason of what I have seen here and by reflection, with the difficulty we shall have in securing a decently good keeping and in the avoidance of shabbiness, threadbareness and litter. The standard of an English laborer, hack driver or cad in respect to neatness, snugness & elegance of gardens & grounds & paths and ways is infinitely higher than that of a Chicago merchant prince or virtuoso, and we shall be disgraced if we fail to work up to a far higher level than our masters will be prepared to think suitable. We must bear this in mind in our plans & laying out—bear it in mind to avoid difficult places, complicated outlines & corners that will become “slut holes.” And we must be strenuous against the introduction of objects that will demand observation that are not of original and good design and elegant—The chief difficulty in this respect will be with the State and other semi independent affairs. I do not believe that we can overcome it, but all the more we must be exacting where our responsibility will be thought clear.

I believe that it would be well for Phil to stay here some weeks longer than I can afford to—There is so much to be studied that I must pass. I have nothing on my program for which I have not a special reason & that I do not feel bound to see, but if I had a month more before me I think that I should go back over much of the ground that we have passed. So far our trip has been more successful than I had hoped & I don’t think that this cold will prove a permanent set back; though it checks me rather badly at the moment. It has been immensely interesting. I am too old for elation but instead of regarding the elation of my youth (I was 27 years old) with surprise, I only wonder that [509]it was not greater—As the result of 45 years of special study of landscape, I have a much higher and more intelligent regard for England. I rejoice to see Phil’s appreciation of it, and Rick’s. But Rick’s is rather less evident. Because Englishing is newer & stranger & he is {yet younger} & less educated to {it}, I think. Less evident but only less. He takes to it & is very ready to analyze & pursue deductions.

Faithfully,