I have received your note of 27th April with proofs, which I herewith return, I am sorry to say, in a mutilated condition.

Being dissatisfied with the original article furnished the Cyclopaedia, I hoped by extraction and insertion to shape an article that would be more to my mind. The result, because of my literary unskillfulness, being botchy, an editorial revision has been made. My manuscript not coming with the proof, [776]I am not sure for how much of the article as it now stands in type I am responsible. I judge, however, that the revision has been made under the influence of a doctrinal view which I think in the highest degree heretical.

The introductory definition, editorially inserted, limits the function of Landscape Architecture to the forming of “scenes.”

“The various details are subordinated to a characteristic effect of the scene as a whole.”

I suppose from this and other indications that in the editorial mind the word landscape in the term landscape gardening has the same meaning that it has in the term landscape painting. I believe that this is an historical mistake, and a mistake which is at the root of countless errors in practice. The term “landscape gardening” was introduced as a convenient means of distinguishing gardening applied with certain motives from “Italian,” “geometric,” “formal,” “architectural” gardening. So different was the purpose of landscape gardening that Horace Walpole and others refer to it not as a new school of an old art, but as a “new-born” art. The Italian gardening, the results of which are described by Mr. Platt, is no more landscape gardening in this original use of the term than genre painting is landscape painting.

The use of the word park, made editorially, with reference to the ground adjoining the garden at Fontainbleau, is not in accordance with English usage, and is liable to suggest to one brought up on English literature wholly wrong ideas of the scenery of this ground.

The common and popular use of the word park in America, as it has floated traditionally to us from old English springs, is shown by the idea which is conveyed in the work park-like. This, I apprehend to be as far as possible from the idea of scenery in the likeness of that of a French parc. Again, it is illustrated by the fact that in Colorado, for example, various places have been named parks on our Government maps. These names were first applied descriptively by the pioneer settlers and officially accepted and made proper names by the Government. Examples of them are “South Park,” “North Park,” “Smith’s Park,” and “Jones’s Park.” There are scores of them. In every case the designation park is applied to them because of their scenery and nothing else, and in every case their scenery has a certain resemblance to the characteristic scenery of an English park, and not the most distant resemblance to that of a French parc. They are invariably, as far as I have seen them, prairie-like spaces surrounded and interspersed with scattered trees and scattered groups and bodies of trees naturally and in some degree picturesquely disposed. Such scenery is distinctly antithetical to the scenery of a French parc as it is to the scenery of a Roman villa. But it was to the opening, improving and making more available to enjoyment of such English park scenery by Kent that the word landscape first came into use in connection with the word gardening, and any other use of it must be confusing to the general American public. Landscape gardening and English gardening have been used as synonymous terms.

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So far as the question I have been discussing is to be considered a literary question, I do not wish to appear to express my views in an authoritative manner, but simply to show that what I consider to be the editor’s point of view differs from that which I am in the habit of taking, and to point out the danger which this involves.

I do not like to attempt a definition. There are some terms of which any brief definition is liable to be misleading, and I have never found the meaning of the term landscape architecture or landscape gardening at all fairly expressed in one or two sentences. But, agreeing that an introductory definition is wanted, I offer the best that I can in a reasonably brief form, prefixing it to the proof sheets. This will show the ground of my protest against the editorial doctrine.

Yours Respectfully

We have received your note of the 30th ult. with regard to which we beg to offer the following observations: for the consideration of your Board:

Our duty to you is to devise a comprehensive general design for the South Park.

In this design every part of all the park must be planned subordinately to and dependently upon every other part. As we proceed in this duty the question at any moment before us is not simply what shall this thing or what shall that thing be in order to be pleasing in itself, but how shall what is to be seen here and what is to be seen there affect the enjoyment of what is to be seen elsewhere in all the park and be affected by what is to be seen elsewhere in all the park. In this interdependence of parts lies the difference between landscape gardening and gardening. It is as designers, not of scenes but of scenery, that you employ us, and we are not to be expected to serve you otherwise than as designers of scenery.

That such interdependence and unity of design as we are thus to have in view may be secured, it is not best that one part of a work should be designed in advance of another. The study of the conditions to be dealt with and the determination of general motives of design for the whole work based upon such [779]study of conditions should, as far as practicable, precede the study of parts. To take up parts by themselves and devise plans for them in advance of the general design is likely to involve waste of opportunity never to be recovered, and for which no compensation can afterwards be made. As we have before explained, we think it of the most critical importance that there should at the outset be a thorough discussion with your engineer of certain questions of fundamental character, and that it would be much better with reference to such discussion that your engineer should become familiar with the aims and the points of view which we have been accustomed to take, and which it is the requirement of our profession in distinction from that of an engineer or a gardener that we should take. We wish to consider your engineer, not as a subordinate, but as a co-operator with us in this duty.

As we lately wrote you, the value of your park is to turn, to an amount of several millions of dollars, upon the question of the degree in which it may be possible to control the fluctuation of its waters. There could be no greater folly or more culpable dereliction of duty on our part than to adopt conclusions on this point precipitately, and to proceed to devise a plan for laying out all parts of the park with regard to such conclusions before we had been compelled to consider that no possible room for hope was left for gaining some improvement upon the present most unsatisfactory conditions in this respect. With a strong sense of our distinctive professional responsibility, we again advise you that it would be worth many millions of dollars to the City of Chicago to have some means contrived by which the fluctuations of the interior waters of the South Park could be better controlled than they were during the period of the World’s Fair. We further give it as our professional opinion that if such means can be contrived, there are large parts of the park the best laying out of which cannot be safely determined in advance of the devising of such improvements.

We have considered the question which you suggest, whether we could not reasonably devise a plan for the laying out of some part of your work before we are forced to despair of finding any means of better control of the waters.

As to this question, we have thought that the ground upon which it is most important and feasible for you to operate early this Summer was that part of the Lakeside division of the park which lies north of the Midway. But it is obvious that a good design for laying out no part of this ground can be devised without regard to such requirements of public convenience, as well as of landscape consistency, as are imposed by the Art Museum. The plan must be controlled by regard for the approaches and immediate entourage of this great prominent structure. What would otherwise be desirable in this part of the park reasonably gives way to this consideration. In regard to this primary question, it was our duty to consult the architect of the Museum. We personally called on him several weeks ago and asked him to consider the problem and advise us of his conclusions as soon as possible. We have since twice [780]written and twice telegraphed him, representing your urgency. Our latest information from him is that he is in consultation with Mr. Marshall Field upon it, and that we may soon expect to receive a sketch embodying the results of this consultation. It would be unwise for us to attempt to make a plan for laying out this quarter of the park before we had received such advice from the architect. In all probability the result of proceeding upon the best plan that we could at once advise would ultimately be the attempt to introduce amendments of a compromising character, ending in unsatisfactory results obtained at heavy unnecessary cost.

We have been studying plans for parks for nearly forty years past, but in all that time we have not had a more difficult problem before us than that which you present, and we have never but once taken less than six months to think out a plan to our satisfaction for any considerable park. It is not to be supposed that a solution of the question, what character of scenery should now be had in view in the contrivance of your general design, is facilitated by what has already been done by your Commission and by the Exposition Commission. On the contrary, the difficulty of reconciling good aims in this respect with economy in the use of what has hitherto been done, greatly increases the difficulty of the problem and the study necessary to the best solution of it.

Yours Respectfully,