Fine weather and we have got our planting well started. Leaving the Arboretum problem and others that are coming up from day to day I find that we shall be able to do a good deal more planting than I had supposed that we could this Fall. We shall stay longer. And I shall then bring home for study a number of problems, including a recast of the Biltmore village; a new plan of the Garden terrace and some extension of the road-system. I shall need a winter outfit before I go to Atlanta; certainly before I go North. Send me my black (dress) over coat and leather-jacket. The latter with a summer over coat will answer for out of door work probably. It is now freezing at night.

I am having a mild attack of my usual illness here. I keep at work. The worst of it is that I feel as if I might come, the next moment, to be deadly sick and especially when on horseback.

The Hot Springs letter has not yet come.

Eliot writes as if you did not think it necessary that I shd go to Louisville & Chicago. Let me hear from you distinctly if such is the case. It seems to [701]me highly desirable that I shd go. Most important that I shd go to Chicago with regard to South Park and the general settlement of affairs of the Exposition. I feel this to be a necessity. It would not be treating them right to fail to place ourselves at their service. I mean the Exposition Company, & it would not be just to ourselves not to follow up the opening presented by Ellsworth. And if I am going to Chicago, surely I ought not to fail to visit Louisville, at least. So it strikes me, but I shall be glad if you can persuade me to think otherwise, for I dread the journey & exposure. I think also I shd visit Milwaukee. And I fear it wd not be just or politic to go by Rochester without stopping. Detroit and Buffalo less important but still I think a visit is due them & that it would be impolitic to pass them by. But, surely, I shall be glad if you can persuade me otherwise.

To return to the subject upon wh. I last wrote. Our way of designing, our way of doing business, in distinction from Bowditch’s, for instance, or Cleveland’s or Widenmann’s, or, perhaps, Parson’s, or that of the ordinary jobbing so called Landscape Gardener; even from Andre’s—or any living Englishman’s is pretty well established & justified by results, with reference to Public Parks. We stand very distinctly at the head & if anybody else is employed for any considerable work it will be because he is cheaper or because of personal favoritism. And our position in this respect gains with evy year’s growth of trees. We have been unfortunate with private places. We have had no great success, have gained no celebrity. Have made several failures—or what will be, by many, so regarded. We have been badly used, our reputation injured, by the folly of our clients. The more important that we make a striking success where a chance is given us. This is a place & G.W.{V.} is a man, that we must do our best for. This is critical for you, for our “school,” for our profession. We do not give it the care {we} should. It is “critical” as the Central Park was critical. You cannot afford not to do the best for it. It is far & away the most distinguished private place, not only of America, but of the world, forming at this period. It will be criticized and reviewed and referred to for its precedents & for its experience, years ahead—centuries ahead. You cannot afford not to {do} the best with it even if you were not to be paid for it at once. Mistakes or negligencies will be very costly.—At Lenox we have been unfortunate and it is most important that we should show some good results of our employment there, but nothing there is of the highest critical importance such as this is.

So again, I feel about work we have not in hand at Boston, other than in the great parks and other than private works. Our reputation is still to be made in such dealings with pleasure roads outside of “parks,” and in such “wild” public grounds, as those that we are now first to engage with about Boston. As much is to be made in this respect, as was to be made in Central Park. In your probable life-time, Muddy River, Blue Hills, the Fells, Waverly Oaks, Charles River, the Beaches, will be points to date from in the history of American Landscape Architecture, as much as Central Park. They will be the opening of New Chapters of the Art. And there will be fashions starting from [702]

them, which will run across the Continent. And our first stroke of importance in this sort of work is that now being made on Muddy River. Twenty years hence you will be looking back to Muddy River, as I do to Central Park. That is what I mean when I say that it is a critical work. It will bring confidence of the public to you for a certain distinct class of works. You cannot afford to undertake other work or yield to pressure for your services elsewhere to any degree that will so take up your time that you cannot do the very best for the Muddy River work. There can be no excuse for not giving it daily attention, studying every detail and personally superintending it to any degree that may be desirable. It is close at hand. A visit to it every day will cost you not necessarily more than half an hour. You can trust Fischer to design details better than you can design them yourself, provided he understands the general principles of design to which local particulars are to be subordinate and is not disconcerted by failure of facilities for doing what he will want to at the right time. Within reasonable limits he must be allowed his own way & you must, from day to day, see that Howe & Cook (and Sargent & the Mayor) are not interfering with him, and are providing what he needs opportunely. Do your best—see that he is allowed and encouraged to do his best, yet after all you must expect that the results at many points will not be satisfactory in detail. I have never seen any such work the result of which was satisfactory. Fischer’s is the best I have seen in Europe or America but it is not at all points satisfactory. After all, then, I look to such planting, especially on the Brookline side, as will obscure and subdue and make intricate and subordinate the less satisfactory places—the less satisfactory being in general those less natural in aspect as contributive to general naturalness.

But the main thing that I want you to realize is the importance and the [703]

[704]duty of all desirable degree of administrative watchfulness and suggestiveness, inventive design, in the Muddy River work this Fall. Upon the impression that that work makes upon the cultivated public a few years hence, will your reputation depend more than upon anything else with which you are to be engaged this year. There is work of a very similar character to be done for example at Hartford—and a hundred other places. As to which no one there has as yet the least conception. By & by, making a marked success in an original way at Boston, the idea of such a new class of works will be caught by many cultivated men visiting Boston. Thus all the time and thought you give that work is so much seed of good work in the future. Work that you will enjoy and which will be for your prosperity.

Absolutely the most difficult work before you, with the exception of some here, the formal work at Newport, and the bluff at Milwaukee, is probably the shore of the Scarboro Lake, but that can be postponed, or mended and improved later. The most critical work is Muddy River.