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To James Gall, Jr.
| Mr. James Gall, Jr., Biltmore, N.C. Dear Sir:- |
29th July, 1895. |
Your brief report of the 23rd instant is received. An occasional informal note such as this supplies would be very useful, helping us to feel that we are more closely en rapport with you than we otherwise could be.
About gravel, I remind you that we have often and strongly urged that all practicable search should be pressed for good gravel beds, and, failing to find them, experiments should be pushed with a view to obtaining the best practicable artificial substitutes. We have never received a report from you or anyone else on the Estate indicating that the urgency of our wishes in this respect have been {appreciated}. The lack of satisfactory gravel is to be constantly looked upon as the most important defect of the Estate. It would be worth many thousand dollars to get even a little the better of it. There is nothing to be hoped for in the future that would add as much to the value of Mr. Vanderbilt’s property as the discovery within transportable distance of it of a bed of gravel like that at Royer Hook, which we came upon some years after we began work on the Central Park, meantime having been using other gravel which was not of one quarter the value relative to cost, though its cost to us was much greater. A million dollars would not have been too much for New York to have paid for the discovery of that bed, and a discovery of anything like it within one hundred miles of Biltmore would be worth more to Mr. Vanderbilt than anything that can now be done for him. There is today nothing on the Estate nearly as unsatisfactory to us as the lack of good gravel. Every bit of gravel walk that we have is very, very, very bad compared with what it is perfectly reasonable for us to hope may be secured. The road surface material which we are using is still more unfortunate. The discovery of a bed of gravel anything like that at Sing Sing, within one hundred miles by rail of Asheville, would be worth many thousand dollars, and search for it should be constantly and indefatigably pushed now and hereafter. Nothing else that Mr. Boynton can do; no discovery of plants that can be made, will have a fraction of the value to Mr. Vanderbilt that a discovery of a good bed of gravel might have. This simply because such a discovery would greatly increase the value of every tree and bush, in fact, of everything on the Estate. The whole Biltmore investment would rise in value if a good gravel bed could be found anywhere in Eastern Tennessee or Western North Carolina. The very first memorandum that I made after arriving on the Estate was: “Search for gravel,” and I fear that my last will be a repetition of it. There is nothing in the geological conditions, as far as I understand them, that make us despair of such a discovery, and I
[938]sometimes question if it would not pay Mr. Vanderbilt to employ a special geological expert for a year or two exclusively in search of it. At any rate there is before us no problem of such importance as that of finding some better road and walk surface material than we have. I have had this conviction and have urged it from the very day of my first visit to the Estate, and there is nothing in the {history} of the work since that has been as disappointing to me as {the failure} to find gravel. I cannot believe that as much has yet {been done} for this purpose as there should have been. We have {not yet} had the first response from you or from anyone else on {the Estate} to all that we have written and said upon the subject, {and I} am in danger of thinking that my anxiety about it is not {attended} to. From my first visit the question has given me more {anxiety} than anything and everything else.
Yours Truly
Fredk Law Olmsted.
Please show this note to Mr Beadle and confer with him as to the employment of Mr Boynton to search for gravel &c. It must be considered that this is now the most important question of the Estate. Let no effort or painstaking be thought too much to spend in advancing a satisfactory conclusion. I have from my first visit found that it might prove so and every year’s experience confirms my anxiety. You must be thorough in dealing with it.
To Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr.
| Dear Rick:- | 29th July, 1895. |
I draft this while taking shelter on the Parkway from a thunder squall.
What road material we can get is at this time perhaps the most difficult question of the Estate before us. Without dropping your main duty of the summer, that of making an intimate personal acquaintance with plants, you can work up and write a monograph on the question of road making and construction, more especially on available material for this purpose, to great advantage. What it may be possible for you to ascertain and demonstrate may be worth many thousand dollars to Mr. Vanderbilt, besides its incidental value educationally to you, and the relief which it would give me on the subject, which can hardly be over-estimated. You need not limit yourself to questioning Gall. You should speculate, study and explore the country far and near for yourself, having in view always to help us to determine where the best stone can be quarried at reasonable expense, and where beds of the best gravel can be found, and the means and cost of getting metal from them. In the course of the summer you may make an exhaustive study and report to us on this subject, as I am waiting for you to do on the subject of fences.
Hardly anything at Biltmore gives me as much concern as the difficulty we find in getting a good, hard surface on the roads. Any help you can manage to give us in approaching the best conclusion will be much valued. Whatever you do for this purpose will be directly in the line of your professional education, and without seriously interfering with your main study, (I mean that of plants, propagation, planting, etc. under Mr. Beadle), you can pursue the subject of road material and gravel thoroughly as a stated duty to this office. This, with what you are doing with respect to the fence question, will be your specific contribution to our professional duty to Mr. Vanderbilt.
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As to the questions of road and walk material, you can, if necessary to do it justice, make journeys to distant points, collect and try samples, etc. At any rate let us have the best, the most practical report on the subject that you can possibly make after investigations, explorations and discussions with Thompson, Gall, Boynton, and, if you think best, with the State geologists. Make a visit to Raleigh if you think best for this purpose. Do not under-value this duty. It is just the sort of work in which you need to have practice, that of gathering and compiling information scientifically; forming opinions and cogitating and preparing monographic reports.
I am all the time expecting some report from you of the results of the thorough study which I suppose you to have been making of the question of fencing; a exhaustive statement of facts about the different sorts of fences, with estimates, etc. This I asked you to undertake last Spring, and it should now be about mature. When are we to look for it? We are depending upon you for it. I mean more particularly that we are depending upon your having gathered all the important facts, and upon your making a workmanlike analysis and collation of them in regard to the adaptation of different sorts of fencing for the different situations, conditions and requirements which we have to fit. This after discussion and study with Gall, and as a task, the literary part of which you should be better able than Gall is to undertake; saying nothing of the saving of time to him.
Both questions, that of fencing and that of roads, are of the most serious importance, and you should realize that we are depending on you for a sound analysis of the facts, and an indication of the practice that should be based upon them. What professional ability you have is to be drawn out and tested by the manner in which you collect, collate and present the facts, and their bearing on the practical questions. We are putting off our discussion of these questions until we get the contribution to it which we are expecting to obtain from you. Your report will be largely a summary of conclusions after full discussion with Thompson, Gall, Beadle, McNamee, and others with whom you will have conferred on the subject.
Consider that the study of these two questions with reports upon them are your first serious professional responsibility. (i.e. not simply preparatory) According to the way in which you meet them, the place that you will be able to fill in our organization must be judged. Of course in such a matter John and I will be deferring to Mr. Eliot. That is to say, you are not to consider it in the least as a family matter. If I can help you, if there are any books that you want; any inquiries about plants, for example, needing to be made, let me know.
But, go your own way; only take care that you do not let yourself fall, in the least, into a shiftless, indolent, irresponsible way of looking at your duty on the subject. It is a serious professional responsibility I am putting upon you. I do not want it to actually interfere with your duty as a student of plants, that is, your regular course of study under Mr. Beadle. But, if you do not see how the two classes of duties can be pursued together, then you had better adopt
[941]the conclusion that you will be wise to take another year at Biltmore in order to pursue them apart, and that your duty with respect to the fence question must have precedence, because it must be acted upon this year. But it seems to me that if you study to make the most of your opportunity; if you organize your arrangements as well as possible, I have not been expecting too much of you in supposing that you will get through this year.
You do not write so that I can judge very well what progress you have been making, but I hope that you will get the special grounding of familiar personal acquaintance with plants in their adolescent as well as in their older conditions, and at the same time pursuing the art side of the business and the side of administration, to gain which is the special object of your apprenticeship at Biltmore.
Returning to the subject of roads, I wrote last year to Gall, asking him to get certain materials, mainly those suggested by the State geologists, and make trials of them. He has never reported to me that this has been done. If it has not been done, will you set about it for him, conferring with him on the supposition that he has not had time to do it as thoroughly as I have been expecting, and that you would like to assist him under his orders.
If it will not interfere with your regular botanic studies too much, you should write a monograph on the subject. The writing of such monographs I consider to be the most important means of your professional education. You must determine, after discussion with Mr. Beadle, how much time you can afford to give to this duty.
The question is: First, what materials are available, and how can they best be obtained for securing a harder surface for the roads and a more agreeable surface for the walks that we have made and are to make.
We started with some slight trials of brick-yard materials for walks, and asked for trials of other materials. Have they been made? At any rate, I want you now to report as, after due conference and discussion, you best can on this problem. Report exclusively and, as nearly as you can, finally and conclusively.
I am not keeping the run of what you are doing as well as I should like to. What are you gaining from day to day? Is it all that you can? Can I improve your position at all so that you will be gaining more? Are you drawing out explanations and lectures and demonstrations from Beadle, Gall, Howard, the brick-maker and others, as I have advised you to be diligent in doing? I want you to review the facts and report to me upon this question. Suppose you give me a mid-summer report on all points of your present rapidly passing period of post-graduate university education. Also I want from you a report about the progress of all the work, and the growth and progress and present conditions and prospect of the plantations. The stated reports that we have from different chiefs are necessarily perfunctory. Of course, what I mainly want to know is how you are getting on, and this I should be able to judge as to most matters from such letters as you might write on special subjects. (The exact man is made by writing.)
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I am pulled down, as always of late years in summer; my condition being little different from that I was in when under Dr. Raynor’s care at Hampsted; sleeplessness being at the core of my trouble. John is returning from a long tour in the West. Eliot is on a short vacation at Bar Harbor. Your mother is keeping her bed, and has a trained nurse, but is in good spirits. She does not seem very uncomfortable or regard her trouble, whatever it is, as serious. Marion is at Deer Isle. George Glessner has been with us for a few days, rather with me, and this only at mealtime, but he has now just gone to the Rocks. He says that he does not hear from you. Your Jap friends have taken an affectionate leave of us.
We are having some troublesome questions in the office, but I cannot well convey them to you.
I am in my usual summer distress for want of sleep.
Coming again to business, I want from you a longer and fuller letter about the affairs of the estate than you have yet given me; wanting it, primarily, in order that I may see these affairs from your point of view; second, that you may assure yourself that you are keeping all the reins well in hand, and giving every department the thorough study that you should.
I think that I wrote you that our friends in South Africa are coming home. I simply get the information with no other particulars. You might write them a welcome. I hope that they will settle near Boston.
It is time that, besides reporting on your professional education, you told me something of friends off the Estate.
Your affectionate father.