I was obliged to leave you this afternoon, in order to meet Colonel Livermore before we had had our talk out.

As I have thought of what you said, since, it has seemed to me to imply quite a decided misunderstanding between us. Let us see what it is. I have supposed that the large number of very conspicuously flowering plants along the base of the overlook wall had been set there as a means to a temporary and provisional [711]effect while the plants necessary to the designed permanent effect were growing to be large enough to produce that permanent effect. What you said this afternoon seemed to imply that such a display of flowers as we have had this year was designed to be permanent and that you had not had it in view, and did not suppose that I had, that these plants were to be gradually thinned out as the other plants, (chiefly bushes and vines) grew large enough to be effective.

I have never desired to have any broad or high display of flowers, especially of flowers of herbaceous plants of any kind, either at the Overlook or on the Fens, and if you have at any time thought that I assented to your planting with a view to such displays at either place, it is because I had understood you to wish to use the plants in question as a means of rendering the stones of the Overlook wall, and of its base, less conspicuous, and of covering the nakedness of the ground, during the period in which the vines and other woody plants would be growing to accomplish these purposes.

You will remember that in the spring of 1887, I conferred with you very fully on the ground in regard to the permanent planting of the face and the base of the Overlook wall and of the ground below it. I explained to you at length my general views and you fully assented to them. But, to make quite sure that there could be no misunderstanding, before you began planting I sent you a long and careful statement of my views in a plain type-written letter, of which I retained a copy. I have just looked it over, and, as you doubtless have it, I wish that you would oblige me by hunting it up and reading it again. If you had not thought that I was right in what I had in view in that letter, I hope that you would have been careful to tell me so before you began planting. You did not. On the contrary you wrote me that you believed that you fully understood my wishes and that you were well disposed to secure the realization of them.

My intentions on this point had been so carefully considered before the building of the wall was begun, and I had set them before you for discussion so often and so fully, even before I wrote them carefully out for you, that if there has been any misunderstanding between us on this point, I cannot think that it is due to me, or that you can feel aggrieved at my holding more strenuously to my opinions than I am generally apt to do when I find that you do not go with me.

If you have come later to think that what I originally proposed is absolutely wrong, that is to say, in positively bad taste, then I want you to tell me so and try to make me understand how it is so. You know that I am not disposed to ask you to do anything which you think in bad taste. But there is a great difference between asking you to do something which you think in bad taste, and asking to do something which you think is {only} not as good as possible.

So, if you do not think such a conspicuous display of flowers as we have hitherto had, both at the Overlook and at the Fens, absolutely necessary to good taste; if you do not think that it would be in positively bad taste to make less display of that kind, you will oblige me by having in view after this a gradual reduction of them, and, at the Overlook, a gradual complete recurrence to the views expressed in my letter to you of the 21st of July, 1887.

[712]

View of Playstead Overlook Shelter, Franklin Park, Boston, c. 1905

And as to the question of good taste, we often see ladies very splendidly dressed with jewels and bright ribbons and flowers and agree that it is in good taste. We see other ladies dressed quietly without jewelry or any finery of color or material, and we agree that they also are dressed in good taste. If the difference between us is a difference between two ideas, each of which is in good taste, then I think that I have a right to ask you to adopt my more modest rather than your more splendid preference.

Always affectionately Yours,