Don’t overlook the article headed “The British Boston,” in this, Saturday, Evening’s Transcript. Observe the historic propriety of the term “Fens.” It’s too bad that people so generally call the place the Back Bay Park; it being no more park-like than it is orchard-like or corn-field-like. This was the reason that before the first stroke of work was done upon it, we had its name officially changed to that of the Fens; a term made familiar to me when visiting a gentleman who, after living some time in America, had bought an Estate in Lincolnshire. Otherwise, also, by a friend who spent a summer’s vacation with his family cruising in a sail boat in the Fens of Lincolnshire. (I have an English Dictionary of 1706, in which the signification of Fens is “Marsh or Boggy Ground”). The name Fens should preserve the fact that there are at this time hundreds of acres of land and water to which this term is perfectly appropriate, being descriptive of a natural condition which in the public pleasure ground that we have made has {been} attempted to be, to a small extent, preserved, partly as a matter of historical interest.

We are waiting for a good euphonious name of ancient origin, or perpetuating some historic circumstance, which we can propose as a substitute for “North End Park.”

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But it is a real loss to Boston that the recreation ground which has been laboriously built on its fens should be called by the name it is. We have never recognized the term. In all our reports it is called The Fens. No better definition of the geographical character of the region as it has been, is, and will be, can be found than that signified by the name Fens.

Gilpin, the most exact writer in the English language on this class of subjects, defines a Fen as “a plashy inundation, formed in a flat, xxx of ambiguous texture, half water and half land.” Consider that our plan provides for a slight inundation of the marshy ground every tide and you will see the propriety of the term.

It will be a pity if this recreation ground shall continue to be called a park. It has not a single characteristic of a park. I have defined this historical meaning of the word park in an article under that head in the American Cyclopedia written more than thirty years ago.

Such inexactness of terms as this Boston usage illustrates is not favorable to good morals. It ought to be strenuously put down. It ranges with the usage of calling a piece of paper a dollar, leading people to forget that it is but the promise of a dollar.

I am waiting for you to supply me with names that can be applied to our new North end pleasure landing. There will be a bit of strand upon it. Perhaps Northstrand would do. But I feel sure that a good euphonious name, perpetuating a circumstance of some historical importance, could be turned up with sufficient research. I think that I have looked over pretty nearly every thing in print without success. A real antiquary would hit it in an hour, probably. I am a life member of the Boston Historical Society, I believe, but I know no one at its office and have never searched its records.

Yours Truly,

It troubles me that we are standing in a widely different attitude towards the Hartford Park Commission from that in which we have ever stood at a corresponding period toward any of the twenty park commissions with which we have had to do, and I have a vague apprehension that we may be neglecting a duty in not making some move by which the Commissioners would be led to recognize this, and to consider whether a change of our footing may not be desirable. It is barely possible that I am mistaken in supposing that they have wished us to understand that they proposed to employ us, and I should be sorry to give them any reason to imagine that we are at all presuming in this respect. [946]You must consider this. If they have not had it in view to employ us, we have in some way been misled, and all that I shall now say is to go for naught. But if they have entertained such a purpose as I suppose they have, without suggestion from us or from anyone in our behalf, I should like to have it intimated to them, if this can be done without indelicacy, that our experience with the numerous park commissions that we have heretofore served leads us to suppose that at no period in the future will our counsel be of more importance to them than at the point at which some newspaper reports indicate that they are now standing. There is not one instance in twenty where counsel has {been} had with us at all by park commissioners that we have not led them, because of reasons that we have given, to make some changes in the choice they would otherwise have made of lands to be obtained for their purpose, and I am sure that no service that we have rendered to park commissions has been more appreciated than that which we have given them in the preliminary stage of their work. Through that advice they have gladly and unanimously completely revised the intention they had formed.

You will remember that I have been a park commissioner, have been president and have been treasurer of a park commission; have, by invitation, sat with and taken part in the debates of several park commissions, and because of the experience that has thus come to me, am more ready than I otherwise should be to look at the subject from the point of view of the commissioner in distinction from the point of view of a landscape architect.

Looking at the subject in this way, I think that there is no duty of the commission in which it is more likely to be benefitted by professional advice than that in which the Hartford Commission may, for all that I know, be at this moment engaged, and I am thinking that the Commissioners do not realize this, and it may be partly my fault that they do not. If, therefore, without seeming to urge our views upon the Commissioners, and without danger of indelicacy in any other respect, you can ascertain whether we are neglecting what, from our point of view, may be a duty, I should like to have you do so.

You understand that we have never met the Commissioners as a Board, but we suppose that we are understood to be standing in some sort of professional relation to them. Their business has, in fact, been a good deal in my mind for some time past, and I have given considerable thought to it. Having no authority to do so, the situation is one of delicacy, differing from any in which we have ever before been placed.

I have written this to you not so much with a view to your taking action upon it in any way as in order to obtain your opinion as to whether any action should be taken. Nevertheless, if you think it best to consult one of the Commissioners, and can do so with more directness and frankness by showing them this letter, I would like you to do so.

Yours affectionately,