I have yours of the 22nd September.

I am glad to hear what you say of Ulrich. The report about him which I saw in a newspaper was very wicked, and so far specific that I needed some assurance from you to be entirely satisfied that there was nothing in it.

I shall expect to hear from you at Biltmore. It will be difficult for me to come to Chicago in October, but more difficult later. I shall probably be occupied at Biltmore & Atlanta for nearly a month to come. I do not suppose that you will by that time be prepared to enter upon negotiations with the South Park Commission, but it will be full time for some conference on the subject, and it will be desirable that such conference should be held and the policy of the Directors determined before Ulrich leaves, as his testimony may be required as to various matters of detail; in regard to the destruction and removal of trees, for example. If he is going back to California it may be desirable that the legal counsel of the Directors should obtain some affidavits from him before he leaves.

I shall not be able to be with you on the ninth. You say that you will be glad to receive any suggestions that I can offer as to making the best use of “the opportunity to wind up in the proper way for our corps.” You are very much better at that sort of business than it is in my power to be, but I will give [698]you the leading thought which is in my mind at this time on the whole subject of the Fair, though it seems to me that I have expressed it to you before.

In a pioneer condition of society it necessarily occurs that each man has to depend to a great degree upon the application of his own personal knowledge and skill to the meeting of his wants. As to many wants he is at least in a condition but measurably better in this respect than was Robinson Crusoe after he was able to secure an interchange of services with man Friday.

In every old and well organized community, in the degree that each member of it devotes himself to a special field of service to others of that community, and in the degree that he becomes a notably proficient, wise and refined worker in that special field, he becomes useful to the community and by interchange of services becomes prosperous.

What we call the pioneer condition is the antithesis in this respect of an old and fully organized social state. The pioneer condition is a condition in which the elements of a fully organized state of society are not, and cannot be brought together and into co-operation. I have lived in communities in which a farmer not only farmed, but often did the best he could in making his own shoes, his own harnesses, his own tables and chairs, and in which if a shoemaker, a harnessmaker or a cabinet maker by chance strayed he soon lost skill in his calling through disuse of it, and became a make-shift farmer and little better than a botcher at his own trade as well as at all others. Necessarily, in such a primitive state of life, make-shift arrangements are the rule. And if this is true in regard to matters which we call materialistic, how much more in such matters as courts of justice, such matters as banks, and yet more in regard to matters spiritualistic, and yet again more in regard to matters of what we call cultivated life; matters of Art.

The chief historic interest of the Columbian Exposition will be found to lie in the demonstration which it has presented that it had at this period become possible in this New World that those placed in charge of such an enterprise, should be disposed and should be able to find and get together and make work together, such a body of men, each specially apt in a distinct field of refined industry, as have been necessary to the degree of success that has been secured in an undertaking which is so largely of a Fine Art character; to secure in this undertaking, in such degree as has been secured, the primary condition of a work of art, that is to say, the subordinateness and contributiveness of many and varied particulars to a finely effective action upon the imagination.

Without assuming that in this one respect of the most essential quality of a work of art, the Columbian Exposition has as respectable a standing as any world’s fair that has been had in the Old World, I think that you may, without bragging, assume that it stands so well as to make it a demonstration that the United States is well advanced in its emergence from the distinctive necessary hardship of pioneer life.

Possibly the Exposition even suggests that something may have been [699]gained by a vacation of the white races from the artificial and highly regulated conditions to which they have for many generations been subject. I would not say this without distinctly recognizing that the vacation has been taken at considerable cost, as manifest, for instance, in the continuation of Whitecap and Lynch-law proceedings and in the setting of certain currents toward such ideas of commercial exchange and media of commercial exchange as are characteristic of a primitive and childish state of human society.

Faithfully Yours,

Fine weather and we have got our planting well started. Leaving the Arboretum problem and others that are coming up from day to day I find that we shall be able to do a good deal more planting than I had supposed that we could this Fall. We shall stay longer. And I shall then bring home for study a number of problems, including a recast of the Biltmore village; a new plan of the Garden terrace and some extension of the road-system. I shall need a winter outfit before I go to Atlanta; certainly before I go North. Send me my black (dress) over coat and leather-jacket. The latter with a summer over coat will answer for out of door work probably. It is now freezing at night.

I am having a mild attack of my usual illness here. I keep at work. The worst of it is that I feel as if I might come, the next moment, to be deadly sick and especially when on horseback.

The Hot Springs letter has not yet come.

Eliot writes as if you did not think it necessary that I shd go to Louisville & Chicago. Let me hear from you distinctly if such is the case. It seems to [701]me highly desirable that I shd go. Most important that I shd go to Chicago with regard to South Park and the general settlement of affairs of the Exposition. I feel this to be a necessity. It would not be treating them right to fail to place ourselves at their service. I mean the Exposition Company, & it would not be just to ourselves not to follow up the opening presented by Ellsworth. And if I am going to Chicago, surely I ought not to fail to visit Louisville, at least. So it strikes me, but I shall be glad if you can persuade me to think otherwise, for I dread the journey & exposure. I think also I shd visit Milwaukee. And I fear it wd not be just or politic to go by Rochester without stopping. Detroit and Buffalo less important but still I think a visit is due them & that it would be impolitic to pass them by. But, surely, I shall be glad if you can persuade me otherwise.

To return to the subject upon wh. I last wrote. Our way of designing, our way of doing business, in distinction from Bowditch’s, for instance, or Cleveland’s or Widenmann’s, or, perhaps, Parson’s, or that of the ordinary jobbing so called Landscape Gardener; even from Andre’s—or any living Englishman’s is pretty well established & justified by results, with reference to Public Parks. We stand very distinctly at the head & if anybody else is employed for any considerable work it will be because he is cheaper or because of personal favoritism. And our position in this respect gains with evy year’s growth of trees. We have been unfortunate with private places. We have had no great success, have gained no celebrity. Have made several failures—or what will be, by many, so regarded. We have been badly used, our reputation injured, by the folly of our clients. The more important that we make a striking success where a chance is given us. This is a place & G.W.{V.} is a man, that we must do our best for. This is critical for you, for our “school,” for our profession. We do not give it the care {we} should. It is “critical” as the Central Park was critical. You cannot afford not to do the best for it. It is far & away the most distinguished private place, not only of America, but of the world, forming at this period. It will be criticized and reviewed and referred to for its precedents & for its experience, years ahead—centuries ahead. You cannot afford not to {do} the best with it even if you were not to be paid for it at once. Mistakes or negligencies will be very costly.—At Lenox we have been unfortunate and it is most important that we should show some good results of our employment there, but nothing there is of the highest critical importance such as this is.

So again, I feel about work we have not in hand at Boston, other than in the great parks and other than private works. Our reputation is still to be made in such dealings with pleasure roads outside of “parks,” and in such “wild” public grounds, as those that we are now first to engage with about Boston. As much is to be made in this respect, as was to be made in Central Park. In your probable life-time, Muddy River, Blue Hills, the Fells, Waverly Oaks, Charles River, the Beaches, will be points to date from in the history of American Landscape Architecture, as much as Central Park. They will be the opening of New Chapters of the Art. And there will be fashions starting from [702]

them, which will run across the Continent. And our first stroke of importance in this sort of work is that now being made on Muddy River. Twenty years hence you will be looking back to Muddy River, as I do to Central Park. That is what I mean when I say that it is a critical work. It will bring confidence of the public to you for a certain distinct class of works. You cannot afford to undertake other work or yield to pressure for your services elsewhere to any degree that will so take up your time that you cannot do the very best for the Muddy River work. There can be no excuse for not giving it daily attention, studying every detail and personally superintending it to any degree that may be desirable. It is close at hand. A visit to it every day will cost you not necessarily more than half an hour. You can trust Fischer to design details better than you can design them yourself, provided he understands the general principles of design to which local particulars are to be subordinate and is not disconcerted by failure of facilities for doing what he will want to at the right time. Within reasonable limits he must be allowed his own way & you must, from day to day, see that Howe & Cook (and Sargent & the Mayor) are not interfering with him, and are providing what he needs opportunely. Do your best—see that he is allowed and encouraged to do his best, yet after all you must expect that the results at many points will not be satisfactory in detail. I have never seen any such work the result of which was satisfactory. Fischer’s is the best I have seen in Europe or America but it is not at all points satisfactory. After all, then, I look to such planting, especially on the Brookline side, as will obscure and subdue and make intricate and subordinate the less satisfactory places—the less satisfactory being in general those less natural in aspect as contributive to general naturalness.

But the main thing that I want you to realize is the importance and the [703]

[704]duty of all desirable degree of administrative watchfulness and suggestiveness, inventive design, in the Muddy River work this Fall. Upon the impression that that work makes upon the cultivated public a few years hence, will your reputation depend more than upon anything else with which you are to be engaged this year. There is work of a very similar character to be done for example at Hartford—and a hundred other places. As to which no one there has as yet the least conception. By & by, making a marked success in an original way at Boston, the idea of such a new class of works will be caught by many cultivated men visiting Boston. Thus all the time and thought you give that work is so much seed of good work in the future. Work that you will enjoy and which will be for your prosperity.

Absolutely the most difficult work before you, with the exception of some here, the formal work at Newport, and the bluff at Milwaukee, is probably the shore of the Scarboro Lake, but that can be postponed, or mended and improved later. The most critical work is Muddy River.