I have just recvd yours to me, and yours to John of 6th, & 7th and as I have to go at once into the Board meeting I cannot fully read them, much less answer. But I have gone far eno’ to want to ask if you are not writing under a mistaken idea.

It has seemed to me desirable that we should display, in order, all [899]trees & shrubs of what I may call normal sorts—or of sorts not varieties—& perhaps with them a very few varieties of such character & established value in landscape as would properly be classed with them as established landscape material, such as purple beech, but not monstrosities or anything like them. But places for these must be provided inconspicuously. I think that the paper to which you refer distinctly shows this. Therefore I don’t see your point. Perhaps I shd if I had time to study your letter. I want you to be prepared to discuss the subject intelligently, so write in haste. Distinctly, we propose to put all these nursery man’s varieties (not, like the purple beech, of plain landscape value) in places by themselves—hospitals; keep them small: simply that they may be referred to when there is occasion, but not to present them to view from the Arboretum Road. I think this purpose is plainly stated in the paper approved by Profr Sargent. I only write because I do not think that you would be likely to have overlooked this, and I do not see why it does not reverse your otherwise very severe criticism of the plan. What puzzles me most is that you don’t turn to Beadle in such a matter & get a satisfactory explanation from him. It looks as if he did not understand it.

I am afraid that the muddle in some way grows out of jealousies between Beadle & Manning.

I am in haste & I only say that at the moment I do not understand your difficulty & wd like to have you write more fully.

I do not doubt that we have a great many duplicates under difft names. We are testing them & in nursery, as a preliminary step, are getting the question settled. I do not see any fault in our plan. But you cannot do us a greater service than to study the questions you raise & suggest improvemts. It only strikes me that you are not or that we are not on quite the right terms with Beadle.

At the bottom of the difficulty it is quite possible stands jealousy between Manning & Beadle.

I am glad to hear your criticisms & comments. It is a very difficult matter & of the highest importance and you need not be backward to question. On a hasty reading of your letter I only get the idea that you do not understand the plan and that Mr Beadle does not (which I can hardly think) or that you are not on the terms with him which I do wish you to be.

Affty

I enclose copy, for your private information of a letter to Gall (in which is another for Mr McNamee). Look out as far as you judiciously can that every facility is prepared for a final review of our plans at critical points. [901]See, also, that your mother and sister are going to be comfortable at the Forester house, i.e. if you can without exciting jealousy or making yourself a Miss Nancy.

There are some matters, more especially the nursery arrangements, (what we can depend upon with reference to provision of shrubs a year or two hence, for example) about which I feel myself to be a little less clear-headed than I ought to be. The uncertainty of Mr McNamee’s position and as to what can be expected in the way of plant and other preparation, has been disconcerting and perhaps my memory is a little weak. I mean that you shd be prepared to give me a little guidance if you find that I need it. To this end you should have reviewed all the work in progress and found out what the calculations & expectations of all the Superintendents are, as far as convenient. I say this, as pretty much everything else, with reference to what is desirable for your own education. I want you to be as fully as possible en rapport with every directing mind on the estate and as fully posted up at all points as possible. You must make yourself an advanced ’prentice Superintendent, but with a better standard of a Superintendent’s duties, and more especially of a Superintendent’s information of what has been done, of progress and of what is to be done & a general mastership of the whole situation than Superintendents’ often have.

We are well but with Grippe about us—in Mr. Eliot’s family, for example. Dead winter with deep snow & continued good sleighing. A good deal of embarrassment in park-affairs because of questions of available funds & consequent difficulties of laying out & pursuing well-studied policy & plans.

Affectionately