I have your very kind note of 6th inst. I was sorry to fail of seeing you again. It was {…} fault in miscalculating the time needing to reach the ferry.

There are some things that cannot be done and there are standards that cannot be reached & which it is useless to set. Putting those out of the question, what have you to be afraid of? Who could more surely command the subject? It is exactly on the line that you have been following, and, the undertaking having taken the shape that it has, no one else is half as well fitted for it. It is not desirable that you should have been nearer to Mr Richardson than you have been. It would be better in order to take a thoroughly discriminating, candid historical view that you should stand further away. But on the whole if you can avoid the natural tendency to eulogy and partisanship no one could be better placed than you are to think out the true instructiveness of his life.

For my part I find it impossible to do so. But the conviction is rather growing upon me that there was a good deal of luck in Trinity and in all his best work until lately. Only toward the last was he constant to himself and able to proceed unexperimentally. His success was but partially that of an architect. It was very largely that of gaining the interest of common place men in matters that would otherwise have been of no concern to them, and in this way securing opportunities,—a freedom to work in his own spontaneous way—that no other architect could hope for. I do believe that it was in his ability to secure from clients a proper footing more than anything else that his success is due. Architects are so generally compelled to consider not what will be satisfactory to themselves but to [333]their clients and the public. The public is so far behind good architects and finds it so hard to understand what they are driving at.

The book will be worth more to the public than to architects.

And this—the interpretation of artists to the public—is your public mission.

No, thank you ever so much, I can’t think of taking any such refresht as you offer at Southapton. I expect to start in ten days for the Pacific and it is today decided that Harry Codman as well as my boy ’Rick go with me. When we get back you will have got well over the bar of the book and going along with a clear sea before you.

Mrs Olmsted sends her kindest regards—Moll is away on another drive. Sometime Mrs Sargent will be away and we shall have the carpenters out of the house for a vacation, then we shall be looking for a visit from you.

Very Truly Yours