A note came from you this morning at Derby, which I gave to Rick for whom it was posted. You refer to some note of mine as having confused you as to our plans & wants. I have no recollection of it. It may have been inserted accidentally in place of one of later date intended to have been sent you. I feel that our journey has been awfully expensive & the more regret as I seem to have made little or no substantial advance toward its primary object. I have not the same trouble but others have come in its place and tho,’ I hope, gaining a little I do not shake them off. It may encourage you in such resistance as you can make to your sanitary crank to know that last Sunday was the hottest and hardest day that we have had this summer, that being at a very interesting place in the Cotswold hills, with the oldest villages & Farm houses of substantial masonry that I have ever seen, and a fine beech wood park and residence in process of forming. I did more walking & got more tired & exhausted & thirsty than any day before; drank three cups of strong tea, a quart of bitter beer & a glass of Scotch whiskey, went to bed at 12 ock, read two of Shakespeare’s plays (Stratford acting edition) then fell asleep and had the longest unbroken sleep that I have had since I left London—five hours, and slept well again the following night. Which helps me to hope that when I get back to Brookline & can resume my old habits, I shall find myself as well able to sleep as I was before. I sleep more when traveling than when at rest I think but since leaving London I have not till this week averaged three hours in each twenty four. The lying awake at hotels with out reading or other occupation is exceedingly depressing. If I can get four hours sleep & keep my mind actively operating on something outside myself for the remaining twenty one, I can get on pretty well.

Rick seems (from some other note) to have given you an impression that I have prevented him from getting as much good from the journey as he otherwise might. It is natural that he should have some such impression. But I think it is an error. Of course, I was hoping from week to week that I should be able to travel & get away from the vicinity of London, & should have ordered things differently if I had not been. But Rick’s detention near London was less than it may have seemed to you. He was away on bicycle trips about three weeks, and it always seemed to me that when not away he was gaining as much in London & his numerous excursions in the outer suburbs, as he would be anywhere else in Engld. There is no ground elsewhere more interesting & instructive, professionally & otherwise. He never spent a day in the house or near it at Hampsted or Chiselhurst. But I did restrain him more than I otherwise should because I observed that in both himself & George, the boyish tendency to lose sight of any special purpose except that of amusement in travel was too [563]strong, and that going over the same ground I studiously observed things ten times as much as they were apt to. They will get engaged in a discussion of the strange follies of English Railway and Telegraph management or of college affairs or others to be just as well considered at night, or in traveling between Brookline and Cambridge and get so interested in it as to be almost impatient of having their attention called to matters picturesque, of scenery or common building. This is natural & healthy at their age but without wishing to keep an over-taut rein upon them it has made me more disposed than I otherwise might have been to bring them often within nudging distance. I have not consciously kept them waiting on me for a single day except as I thought it best for them. I have encouraged & led & trained them to photograph what I thought desirable when I was with them & they have followed out my instructions when by themselves, and thus a habit of observing & studying such things & looking out for them has been established. Clouds, wind & smoke & the sun in the wrong place have prevented their taking more than half that would have been desirable but has often not prevented their study of the objects in question; seeking the possibilities & observing the actualities. And I have made them take a great deal under unfavorable circumstances, partly because to do so compelled close study & partly because a poor memorandum might be better than none.

Mother writes as if you have had it in view that I should start from New York for Chicago, Kansas City &c. &c. &c. before coming to Brookline—You cannot surely calculate on my being able to. Moreover, I should judge from your note that I was as much wanted immediately in Boston as anywhere. But I should like to get to Chicago as soon as can be expedient. If it seems to you important that I should start at once, I shall expect one of you to meet me as we land. I shall be ready to go unless I am the worse for the voyage.

We could not get a carriage at Newsted Station for the Abbey & since I began have made our way to a village on the edge of Sherwood Forest & I am writing, lacking a book, to keep my mind occupied after midnight. We are to go on by carriage thro the Dukeries tomorrow. It is my plan to visit the nursery near Chester again before we leave & see if I cannot get better prices on some things than from Waterer. I don’t think I shall go to Saltoun. It wd be a long & trying journey for doubtful results. It remains rarely warm for England but I am dressed as for winter and suffer only when exercising.

affectionately

The villages in the Cotswold region to which I referred as well built were Camden, Broadway, and Middle Hill. I do not remember if I wrote you about our little tour in the Sherwood Forest, the Dukeries, Chatsworth, and Haddon Hall. Briefly, I enjoyed the remains of the forest and the villages on its borders very much; was much pleased with Thoresby; enjoyed Haddon Hall; enjoyed the more unsophisticated scenery of Derbyshire greatly, including the bleak heathery moorland; enjoyed the park at Chatsworth, did not like the terrace but found, notwithstanding some bad anomalies, the results of Paxton’s [565]work in the pleasure grounds more agreeably interesting than I had in some way been led to suppose or than I remembered them. I suppose this is the result of growth. Justice can often not be done a landscape gardener’s design in less than fifty years after the work has been initiated. Nor then or ever, unless it has been in the hands of one in sympathy with Nature.

Reviewing all that I have seen in England, it appears to me that the selection and disposition of trees and plants, the modeling of surfaces and the arrangement of roads and walks and architectural conveniences, with a view to pleasing general effects of scenery, have been of late much confused and often lost sight of in efforts to provide brilliant local spectacles, to display rarities, curiosities and luxuries of vegetation, and to exhibit masterpieces of horticultural craft and costly garden bric-a-brac. Vast numbers of trees have been planted without knowledge or soundly formed anticipations of what they will become. Many of them are failing, and many that are not failing are conspicuously offensive, because of their unfitness to combine with the native elements of English scenery. Since my earlier visits the country has lost something of picturesque interest, mainly, I think, through agricultural and economical improvements, but a little, I am inclined to think, because of some slight and probably temporary turn of public sentiment toward prosaic neatness and formality.

Since my last visit there has been a decided abatement of the bedding-out nuisance and of all the garish and childish fashions that came in with it. The gardeners and others with whom I have talked have been generally conceding—some with evident regret—that it was going out of fashion. Any who think that with it their occupation will be gone had better come quickly to America, where all the beauty that I have been aiming to provide on various grounds is wholly put out of countenance by it. There has never been a square yard of bedding out on any ground under my direction.