I have received your notes of 21st April & 2d May. Several memoranda as to trees & plants have been sent you and between letters from Phil to Harry & from Rick & Marion you will have a fair notion of our movements & observations. I have written mother of my personal condition. I have gained a little and am gaining I rather think but the weather is against me and I do not pick up fast. Here we still need a fire in the house and even with a fire Rick insists that I ought to wear my overcoat. The hawthorn is not yet blooming except a chance forerunning spray, and yesterday a snow storm was again reported in Scotland.

Professionally, the results of our journey continue to be valuable in a large degree negatively to me. I mean in the way of confirming previous impressions, understandings & conjectures. I did not suppose, however, that it was as customary as it proves to be to take risks with plants, as to hardiness, or to plant so much of plants which at intervals of years are likely to be killed or injured by frosts. Some things suffer here more than with us & through non-ripening of their wood. As to the question of hardiness, however, the horticulturists we have seen are rather over apt to think that this plant or that will be killed by a certain degree of cold without much regard to its condition at the time of trial. In no place have we failed to find plants in cultivation which upon close inquiry were acknowledged to be liable, once in the course of years, to be winter killed or at least seriously injured. Also, we find irregularities or anomalies teaching that sound conclusions as to the fitness of a plant for a given locality can only be reached as the result of a lengthened experience. To find Magnolia grandiflora more questionable at Angers than at Washington was a sockdollager. Here at Torquay we have seen Mag. grandiflora only on the South side of walls (espalier) but Euonymus Japon. growing openly and both in sheltered and exposed positions. The hotel gardener never has heard of its being at all injured. Eucalyptus globulus is grown here on a South wall. In Guernsey we saw a tree of it forty feet high—to my surprise.

As to your remarks upon our courses & plans; I do not see how they could have been laid out better for the young men. Both are learning more [524]incidentally and unconsciously, without effort, than otherwise. Much more so than they think, I believe. Consequently they value less than I do for them constant opportunities to be used without intention or effort. As to affairs to be gone after—the little lions—they are inclined to give them too much relative importance. Phil is almost morbidly industrious and anxious to advance himself, “practically.” He does not understand that a man gains in a profession—or in our profession—not alone by effort and acquisition but greatly by growth and through being in conditions favorable to growth. Does not understand this as well as he will later. He is always eager for a chance to do something and is plainly dissatisfied that I do not give him more “work” to do. But I am not “making a reckord” now. I don’t think that either Phil or Rick realize the value which close observation of all sorts of things that may come under observation (but observation of which is not recordable, or even to be given form to verbally) may come to have in future practice, in aiding inventive design. Rick is slower & less vigilant in catching such opportunities than Phil, perhaps, but neither as constant and strenuous in this respect as I am. As I am, perhaps, because of a more {nervous} and undisciplined constitution—a more Yankee constitution, but largely, I think, also, because of a sense, coming thro’ experience, of the value of what may be caught and stored in this way; which may become confused and lost to distinct remembrance, and yet, by some subtle process, consciously affect, long afterwards, essentially original inventive action of the intellect, and important convictions. I don’t think the seeds of thought, their germination and conditions of growth, are sufficiently regarded in our current theories of education & metaphysics. Nor are all the injuries that result from cramming and didactic processes.—All this comes, I suppose, from questioning myself whether I am doing the best I can for the boys. I think that I am but I should feel more confidence if they were going to be here longer and could go more pleasantly and contemplatively over a little more ground than we are likely to. There is so much to learn here, I grudge any second not given to observation.

As to the news of the office to the dates of your letters, I consider what you say of the Boston Park affairs as symptomatic, only, and I dismiss it as not to be understood at this distance. About the thatched roof I shall hope that I may be able to talk to the city Architect before it is proceeded with, & to show him some photographs. But I may say that if the plans of the walls & supports does not constructively suit such a roof as I want, then I would add to those plans. The thing

— Some sheets that I wrote at Torquay in continuation of the foregoing are missing. I have not mailed this, thinking that I should find them but I probably threw them into the fire mistaking them for some other rubbish. What I said further upon the thatch matter was, I think, that the structure on Franklin Park had besides its essential utilitarian purpose a dramatic purpose and the planning of its utilitarian structure was designed to be & could without the slightest loss, be adjusted, accommodated, humored, to the dramatic [525]purpose. I am sure that considering its purpose, calling for a variety of cells and passages, and its situation, within the edge of a wood on a crooked rocky declivity, with other rocky wooded ground secluding it, adaptation to scenic effect is reasonably to be had in view in a much greater degree than in ordinary architectural work even of a domestic & cottage character. If the plan does not admit of such a roof as I designed then the plan is defective and I would have the architect {indicate} how supports &c should be provided consistently or without injury to the utilitarian purpose. That every curve & quiddle, twist, undulation, hog’s back, dormers, gable and part that I had proposed may be brought into a cottage roof naturally and with no purpose but to accomplish the purposes of a thatched roof over a purely utilitarian structure below; every sort of play of light & shade, may happen even where there is no purpose of scenic or picturesque effect, we have seen much evidence during the last few days (I write after passing through Devonshire & the New Forest). We have seen outward curves and inward curves, roofs steep at the bottom, steep at the top, ogee sections of evy variety &c. &c. all manner of undulations, on buildings of all classes, where certainly there had been no aim but convenience, comfort & economy; where the last thing thought of was a quaint or fantastic effect. There is something wrong in the architect’s theory who cannot find reason for all sorts of quaintnesses in thatching a building in so broken a situation and which is to be adapted to such varied occasions as the use in question. I hope the roof, if much simplified will not be built and that we can tinker in additions and amendments to the plan of the under construction that Mr Wheelright will recognize to require all I want in the roof. After seeing what I did yesterday, my conviction is that the roof as planned is not, compared with other roofs, eccentric & quaint enough for the place. I certainly must have it complicated with mosses and apparent outworks of ivy and other foliage. If it is to go on upon his theory; then we must depend on personal directions from time to time to the thatcher, & if possible introduce some new complications of requirements which will compel him to avoid regularity. If we must have anything like the ordinary prosaic form of roof, why should we not have the ordinary and less costly form of shingles? But may we not be a little humorous?

After discussing this point, at less length, in my original writing, I went to Chicago. But it might as well have been waste paper, I guess. Only this, can you realize that except Harry’s note written a week after we left, in which he expressed confidence that Ulrich would yet be able to direct the planting, we have not had a scrap even through the newspapers bearing upon the vital question of the successful planting. Not a scrap unless I may infer, as I try to do, that the reports of rains & frosts may be hoped to indicate a prolonged planting season. I am extremely anxious about it and famished for news and restraining myself with an effort from telegraphing to you for it. It is constantly on my mind, and I am looking always for hints toward an improvement of our planting designs and resources. But on the whole, I must admit that if Ulrich [526]is up to the business, no notable improvement can be made on what was in view almost from the first.

If only, it can be worked out in time. I see very little gardening here, that, in one way or another I should not be ashamed of. There is so much copying and conventionality and fashions, so little essentially original design.

The two finest things we have seen are the New Forest, (yesterday, unapproachable) and a little farm with a little park, very wild, in Guernsey. Next Gladstone’s place in Cheshire, extremely simple & rural—really rustic—in design.

We have seen the Darwins’ & having missed the first boat to the Isle of Wight, I use the time in this writing. What follows is a stray sheet of those written at Torquay, & is “of no consequence.”

We are five days behind time, and things which must be seen & attended to are accumulating fearfully. I do not dare to try to fix a day for departure yet. And whatever I do, I really think Phil ought to stay longer & see more than I can.

If you write at once after getting this, I think that we shall receive it.

Affcty.

I am much interested in the Manufactory Village scheme to which you barely refer. There are few things I had rather do, provided I could do it well. If your note had come in time I would have gone to the Menier Chockolate village near Paris. I know of nothing good of the kind in England but will inquire. I have lost modesty a good deal however, since I left home and think that perhaps we should not find much to help us. There is such a thing as checking invention, &, perhaps, if we take up such a problem at the roots, without assistance from the work of others, we shall do better.

When I have spoken of negative results I am far from meaning results of no particular value; only I have not come upon unexpected things in design of much value. I feel as if I were learning a great deal more than I ever did in traveling before, largely in making actual that which was conjectural and doubtful before. Then, in a loose way, I am gaining—so it seems to me—amazingly in education. My enjoyment of sylvan beauty, and of picturesque combinations—accidental as well as designed has never been as great. I hope that the young men are gaining in like manner. I can’t but feel that they are, as I have said much more than they realize.

I have not seen a single sq. yd of strictly decorative planting that was pleasing to me. Tell Harry that all I have seen tends to make me conservative and cautious. I cannot think that I should have been pleased with anything (in the bedding plant way) that they had in Paris. It seemed to me that at the best it must have been extremely disquieting, gaudy & childish, if not savage and an injury to the Exposition, through its disturbance of dignity, and injury to breadth, unity & composure. I do not mean to suggest any change of our plans or limitations on their development; only I hope that in elaborating them simplicity and reserve will be practiced and petty effects and frippery avoided. I think more than ever of large raised beds of tulips and lilies &c, and at emphatic points of the general design of strong & massive objects of verdure—thick groups and columns of Pampas Grass & Palms, for instance. Aralia Sieboldii promises well as a decorative plant.

I hope Miss Bullard of Bridgeport is employed for the roof garden, and that she will be advised to have a large scale in view & to subordinate detail to breadth & mass & simplicity & composure of general effect.

The finest flower effect in all Europe is an old delapidated hawthorn hedge, and the next a barren hillside of gorse. The finest combination is one of gorse, sweet briar, brambles, hawthorn, and ivy. Even when there is no bloom this is charming. And these things can be had by the hundred thousand, (hedge plants)—at very low prices.