I am grateful for your letter of 23d which I have but now opened. I hardly need say that I have been passing the bitterest week of my life, resentment gradually giving way to a realization of the truth. In my flurry I have done some things which I would not do now and for which I am sorry. If I can be treated in the spirit suggested by your letter; if I can continue to live at home, and, especially, if I can, in any humble and limited way, be useful to you for a short time longer, it will be a great comfort to me. You cannot think how I have been dreading that it would be thought expedient that I should be sent to an “institution.” Anything but that. My father was a director of an Insane Retreat, and first and last, having been professionally employed and behind the scenes in several, my dread of such places is intense. Your letter indicates a view of my condition which I have hardly dared to anticipate. It seems to me not unreasonable; not unsound. I cannot say that I am fully prepared to accommodate myself to it. I cannot say that I do not hope that with cooler weather I shall be found to be better than I am now thought to be. But depend upon it (you and John and the family) that I shall try hard to justify the most favorable view that can be taken of my case. If I can be treated in the spirit of your note, gently, and with consideration for a gradual decay of my faculties, it seems, today, that I shall be able to reconcile myself to the facts of the situation. I shall need to be reasoned with patiently but I cannot believe that I am incapable of being reasoned with. It was perhaps right to deceive me as I was deceived when brought here, but further dealings with me in that spirit—with [951]any deception—will greatly aggravate my misfortune. Dealt with frankly and kindly I hope to be able to cultivate a spirit of Christian resignation. I shall be greatly helped to do so if I am consulted with and otherwise treated as a man of not wholly unsound mind.

Affectionately Yours

I beg you to bear in mind that wholly apart from professional duties—considering myself set aside professionally—I shall continue to take extreme interest in the progress of operations and in the results of work and of growth at Biltmore. I do not ask you to give much time to work to gratify me in this respect. I want you to devote yourself to your education, but such study as you will have to give to enable you to make a clear statement of the condition of things, together with such as you will have to give to enable you to take desirable photographs of the condition this Fall of different parts of the work, such photographs as will always be valuable as records from which to date progress,—such study—will always have been useful to you. And, this being the case, I feel as if I might press you a little more than I otherwise should feel that it was right to do.

Of course if you can afford time for it, I shall be extremely glad to have your comments, your criticisms, and your forecasts of the results of work. I shall, I think, continue to take the greatest interest in the enterprise, and I think that it will be a good thing for you to give yourself the task of reviewing the work and of giving form to your observations and comments in letters addressed to me. They will, of course, be read by the firm.

You will not suppose that because of my expulsion, retirement, I really am less interested in the development of the Estate in all particulars than when I was a member of the firm. At present, at least, I am more restricted; the more anxious that is to say, that what I have had in view is advancing favorably and is being developed with the motives that I have entertained.

In short, my dear Rick, put yourself measurably in my place, and write me of affairs on the Estate, as, in that place, you would wish to be written to. All that you write me will be read by the active partners and will be helpful to them. Moreover, if well done, it will help you with them.

It is unfortunate that neither Eliot nor John, have any real knowledge of the Estate or of the business, except as they have obtained it from me and from the written reports which are extremely perfunctory, and which they have very little followed. In what further they may be allowed to have to do with [953]it, they will not only have to be crammed by you but, in a much larger degree than as to any other work, to be guided—piloted—by you. Bear this in mind and study in all ways to be well-informed, accurately, as to matters of figures, for example, and to be ready at any and all times to furnish information on all points. All that you know, all that you can speak about in a statistical way, and all the sound judgments that you can express that have evidently been formed thoughtfully and with accurate knowledge of the facts, topographical and otherwise, and which give evidence of real professional insight and study of what it has been important to study, will be helpful to Olmsted & Eliot, will give you weight with them and tend to bring you into their own councils—Really a most valuable thing for you, if you are able to make good use of it. Study in the little time you remain on the Estate to put an encyclopedia of it in your mind. And do this with forecast; all the forecast that you can.

You will find in the drawers of our back hall at home, a good many old photographs taken on the Central Park. Some, of the original topography. It will be a capital help in your training if you compare these with the present conditions. (In general the Central Park suffers greatly from neglect of thinning, and from bad thinning). (Also, between ourselves, from a disposition which Vaux has much more than I ever had, and which Parsons has much more than Vaux, to aim at garden, in distinction from landscape, effects—broad effects of scenery.)

Your affectionate father.