I trust that you recognize that, while aiming to secure a consistent adherence to motives, outlines and broad features of our general design for the Exposition work, it has been our policy to avoid as far as possible giving you instructions which would tend to cramp the free action of your mind, or to unnecessarily fetter your course in any way. I have never before, in all the numerous works for which I have been broadly responsible, trusted as much to the discretion of an assistant or co-operator. And the results have been such that in the straights in which we are placed by the death of Mr. Codman and my ill health, and the consequent excessive pressure of other duties, I am more than ever disposed to pursue this policy, and to carry it further. But I must confess that I cannot do so without much anxiety. And this anxiety mainly grows out of my knowledge of your constitutional propensity to trust too much [605]to overcoming difficulties of all sorts by means of an increasing degree of personal vigilance, activity and industry: a degree that precludes such exercise as is urgently needed on your part of deliberate and contemplative study; the delegation to your subordinates of all duties not of the first importance; the reserving to yourself of adequate personal direction of work that you can not safely put upon others, and of providing, in case of accidents, or illness, the best expedients for minimizing the bad results of such misfortunes.

We are close upon the most critical period of our task. I am so tied by other duties and by my infirmities that I cannot be sure to be with you at that period. I can but urge you with all the rights of official authority and of friendship that I have to do so, to guard against this propensity, and especially not to trust as much as you are disposed naturally to do to overcoming difficulties as they arise, by extraordinary personal exertions. I want you to guard all you possibly can, without distinct insubordination, against duties being put upon you that are not absolutely essential to your special professional responsibility. You certainly have been doing much that a good engineer could do almost, if not quite, as well as you. It would be perfectly practicable for Mr. Burnham to employ a hundred good engineers within a week. It is wholly out of the question for him to find one man who could at this stage take up your special professional duties. You cannot, in justice to your reputation, afford to be occupied with other than these special duties. We cannot afford to have you. I must strenuously urge you to do all you can to clear yourself of all business that it is not indispensable that you should be saddled with. It is simply out of the question for you to give as much deliberate thought as is desirable to duties that can be taken by no one but yourself.

Now, as to these duties, I want to present and reiterate once more certain ruling conditions and precepts. Never lose sight of the fact that our special responsibility as landscape artists applies primarily to the broad, comprehensive scenery of the Exposition. This duty is not to make a garden, or to produce garden effects, but relates to the scenery of the Exposition as a whole; first of all and most essentially, the scenery, in a broad and comprehensive way. I mean that this is what the word landscape implies as to our duty (the word landscape signifying the general character of a portion of the earth’s surface as it appears when looked at broadly and comprehensively). It is our business to secure suitability in this respect in distinction from that sort of beauty in particulars, details and small compositions that are suitable to confined localities. The latter sort of beauty being that which is to be aimed at in gardening that is not landscape gardening.

If for lack of time and means, or of good weather, we come short in matters of detailed decoration, our failure will be excusable. If we fall short in matters affecting broad landscape effects we shall fail in our primary and essential duty.

Thus the shore plantations of the lagoons must first be thoroughly well cared for, whatever else we shall be unable to attend to.

[606]

Now with reference to what is to be done in this respect during this Spring’s planting season, bear in mind that there is every reason to expect an unusually short Spring and very brief planting season at Chicago. I remember being there some twenty years ago when the ice on the lake was not so thick as it is now; when it was less piled up along the shores; when the ground was frozen less deeply, and when there was less snow in all the country around. Whenever, during what should have been the planting season, the wind came south, there was a superficial thaw, the ground below remaining frozen, while the surface was flowing with water and mud. Then the wind would shift to the northward, coming off the icy lake, and the surface would stiffen; then a thaw would follow, thawing the surface, but not reaching the bottom of the frozen ground before the wind came north again and once more the surface stiffened. Finally, we had two or three days of rain, clearing up with a warm sun and a southerly wind, and almost as soon as the ground was again dry enough to work, buds were swelling and the planting season at an end. The whole planting season did not last a week.

You will not be wise if you do not lay your plans with reference to similar conditions.

Now as to what must be done in the planting season, and as to what you can afford to postpone rather than fail to have this done, let me remind you that the whole field of the Exposition has already come to be popularly called “THE WHITE CITY.” The architects are going to make it much whiter than, having regard to general effects of landscape or scenery, I should have been disposed to have them. I fear that against the clear blue sky and the blue lake, great towering masses of white, glistening in the clear, hot, Summer sunlight of Chicago, with the glare of the water that we are to have both within and without the Exposition grounds, will be overpowering. All the relief that we can possibly provide will, therefore, be wanted of dark green foliage. Other colors, especially red and yellow, will be best seen, as I have often said, only in glints, and as they will have the effect in a near view of making the general masses of green more vivid. I would rather that there should be no gardening decoration on the terraces, or anywhere about the buildings, than that you should fail to secure all that is yet possible in dense, broad, luxuriant green bodies of foliage, and in conditions everywhere simply of neatness in such particulars as perfect conditions of turf and good edgings for the walks. For the present, therefore; that is to say, during the period in which general planting will be possible, give yourself the least possible concern about other matters than these.

And then, finally, do not lay out to do anything in the way of decorative planting that you shall not be quite certain that you will have ample time and means to perfect of its kind. There can be little fault found with simple, neat turf. Do not be afraid of plain, undecorated, smooth surfaces.

I did feel at one time that there was danger that some of our ground might have a bare and unfinished aspect unless masses of foliage and flowers should be introduced upon it. But as I see the constantly increasing number [607]of small structures for which concessions are making, and which are to be scattered everywhere to supply visitors with water, cigars, news-papers, lemonade, tea, chocolate, parched corn, peanuts, fruit, medals and other souvenirs, and as I realize the number of seats, awnings, flags and streamers which the architects are planning to use at innumerable points, I have begun to feel that instead of being unfurnished, the spaces between the buildings are in great danger of being crowded with incidents, and I now have much more fear that they will have a vulgar, fussy, over-decorated aspect than that they will be too plain and simple.

My last accounts from Paris are that M. André himself is making the plans and will perhaps come out and personally direct the decoration of the grounds about the Woman’s Building. It is not essential that you should provide any decoration elsewhere, but it is of great importance to your reputation that when people see whatever decoration you may undertake to provide it shall not strike them as less refined or less admirable in execution and maintenance than that which shall have been done by the Frenchman.

I believe that you have taken care to have ready a very much larger amount of material for decorative garden work than you will want to use. That is all right, if you only pick the very choicest of it for use, and are not over reluctant to throw away all but the choicest. I should think that you would do well to divide it into three parts, according to its quality and value for needed pieces of decoration; then use the very best for such places as are required near the larger and finer buildings; use the second part so far as it may be wanted near the State Buildings, and give it to those in charge of these buildings and to those managing various similar structures upon the Plaisance, if they will have it. Then do not be reluctant to throw away the third part, even if that should be the larger part.

Let us under-decorate rather than over-decorate. Let such decoration as we have be distinguished for simplicity, elegance and refinement rather than lavishness and splendor. Let it occur only where it will be unquestionably fitting and becoming. Let all our decorations be strictly auxiliary and subordinate to extended general effects. Let us have no decorating of any kind that is not of the very best of its kind. Let us be thought over-much plain and simple, even bare, rather than gaudy, flashy, cheap and meretricious. Let all our decoration be a protest, challenge and defiance against the taste that calls for such decoration as has been exhibited in Washington Park. Let us manifest the taste of gentlemen.

But, for the present, and until the end of such planting season as we may be allowed, bear in mind that all decoration is of extremely minor importance, relatively, to the more substantial body dress of the Exposition in plain verdure and foliage. Are you sure that you have abundance of everything that in any contingency will be wanted to add to the mass of trees, shrubs, vines, creepers and aquatic planting—everything, I mean in organization, in men, teams, boats, tools, plants, seeds, and so on. Have you taken all precautions [608]possible to guard yourself against being interrupted, interfered with, bothered and diverted from your essential duties during that one week when you can hope to have entirely suitable conditions. It is a most important part of all you have to do. Excuse my persistence on this point. I am sure that it is on this point that we are going to win or lose in comparison with all other World’s Fairs. I would rather have but the smallest amount of decorative planting than fall short of the best that can possibly now be done in making both shores of the lagoons as dense, varied, luxuriant, over-hanging, intricate, mysterious, as you have skill to make them.

Yours truly,