I had made an appointment with myself to meet you at your house when I was last at Biltmore, but was prevented from keeping it by a call from Mr. McNamee and could not afterwards. Please say this to your sister.

There was something that I wanted to say to you privately. Privately, only because I don’t want unnecessarily, when talking to Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. McNamee, to refer to considerations that turn largely on personal circumstances which I mind less mentioning to you. Nevertheless show this to Mr. McNamee if there is any occasion to refer to it and by no means leave him to suppose that I wish to conceal anything from him or to move clandestinely. The private considerations in this case have since been augmented and give occasion for this letter. I had it in mind that I could not expect to come many times more to Biltmore and since then this probability has been more impressed upon me. After I left you I came to Chicago by rail and then, leaving my business there unfinished and with the intention of returning, went on to meet an engagement with the Park Commission at St. Paul. The trip by rail there used me up and I had to leave all the business for which I came to my son, not even going to the parks that I came to see or meeting the Commission. I kept my bed for a week and was visited twice a day by a physician who [798]gave me a sharp warning that it was time I stopped traveling. It was plain that I traveled by rail at my peril. I had to write to Chicago that I could not keep my engagement to return there and to avoid railroads came north to Duluth and from there was able to pass through all the lakes and the Saint Lawrence by boat and so get home with but little railroading. I want you to make inquiries, when you conveniently can, whether I cannot much shorten the necessary transit by rail between here and Biltmore by taking steamer to Wilmington, N.C., and then get within a day’s railing of Biltmore by steamboat on Cape Fear River (I once made a passage by a stern-wheeler on this river from a point near Fayetteville, if I remember rightly, to a point near its mouth, going on by land from this latter point to Charleston). If I can do this, I may be able to get to Biltmore once or twice more than I could if obliged to go wholly by rail.

That at Biltmore which I am most anxious to see advanced as rapidly as practicable is the Arboretum. If I am to have much more to do with it, there must be a more rapid advance of it than now seems provided for. I do not think that Mr. Vanderbilt appreciates it. Still less does Mr. McNamee. Nor do either of them realize, nor do I wish them to, that if the Arboretum is to benefit much more by my personal contributions to the laying out of it, certain progress toward it must be made this Summer. There are many considerations to be regarded in managing it to which my experience makes me more alive than either of my partners, or than Mr. Manning and Beadle can be. I do not wish to urge this thought upon Mr. Vanderbilt or Mr. McNamee, but I may refer to it confidentially in writing to you as a reason why it is advisable that as much work should be done in preparation for the Arboretum planting this Summer as can well be made practicable. Except a few comparatively small matters, there is no other work nearly as important to be urged. Reason enough for thinking so lies in the fact that the larger part of the trees to be planted will, before the ground can be well prepared for them, have grown to a larger size than that at which they can most successfully be planted. (and, at the same time, at the least cost for labor, for transportation, and in all respects) Then it is to be considered that all the more interesting parts of the Estate between Biltmore Station and the House will, within a year, have been well provided with roads and well planted. Either in passing between Asheville and Biltmore Station and the House, or in short drives and walks from the House, Mr. Vanderbilt and his guests will find themselves familiar with them and Mr. Vanderbilt will want to be able to take a long drive. The Arboretum Drive will provide what he wants for this purpose and will open up the larger part of the Estate to observation, and this the most interesting part of it. For such reasons as these, as well as because I think it desirable that my judgment should be applied to details of the work, I am anxious that some notable advance should be made this Summer in preliminary work for the Arboretum, and I ask you, as far as practicable, consistently with instructions and with the limitations of force to which you will be restricted, to do what you can to this end.

The first thing is to get the road made. Mr. Vanderbilt has decided that it shall be an earth road: that is, not macadamized. I think it possible that later he will so far change his mind that a macadamized center of the road will be made, more especially with reference to the transportation of forest products and the possible use for this purpose of steam traction engines, but, for some years to come, and perhaps permanently, it is to be an earth road. I would have you use your best judgment at all points to make it a model earth road: that is, as good an example as practicable of what a truly economical earth road in a hilly district should be; an example that can be referred to in the advocacy of good economical roads for all the country; a matter about which there is now much discussion, and about which discussion is sure to be advancing for many years to come. Even farmers are beginning to be stirred up about it, and in some Northern states there is a prospect that Advisory Engineers will soon be employed by the States to aid country people to properly construct such roads. The road should be of such a character as to prompt people who will go over it, and who know only the common ways of making and keeping rural roads, to demand similar roads in their own neighborhoods. That this may seem to them practicable and reasonable, there should be the least show of expense that there can be consistently with really sound construction. Therefore, the exhibition of drainage appliances, of bridges, culverts, causeways, etc. should be as inconspicuous as it well may be. The simplicity and essential economy of the arrangements should surprise people who know only the common methods of making and keeping country roads and the wretched results that are produced by these methods. The main thing needed, of course, is drainage, and the means of drainage should be such as to prompt people to ask themselves if they cannot do something towards getting good roads in their own neighborhoods without going to unjustifiable expense. Roads in which at least four horses need never be used to do the work of one, as I suppose is the case every Spring in much more than half the country roads of the United States at this time. The first Winter of our work at Biltmore it was at one time obvious that the use of the public roads had been in a great degree abandoned, and in going from Brick House to Asheville there was at least one wagon in each mile which had been hopelessly “stalled.” To set a good example of a country road—an effectively moving example—make the drainage and bridging arrangements as simple and inconspicuous as possible. Try to get outlets for drainage on the surface near at hand. That is to say, keep off water, and carry off water with the least show possible of constructed means for the purpose. Let the simplicity and economy of these means, and their efficiency, surprise people who are familiar only with the makeshift, temporizing means commonly used. Of course, the main thing to accomplish is thorough drainage, but make the means for thorough drainage appear to be simple and inexpensive and in every way do all you can to prompt visitors to ask themselves if they cannot have roads at home at not impossible expense that shall be passable at all [800]times of the year. Such an earth road will do much more effective preaching than the macadamized roads we have been making with their numerous and conspicuous gratings and show of masonry in the bridges.

What I want is that you should lay out and cut out and, at least, roughly grade, or sub-grade, and fashion as to the substantial structure, such a road for all of the Arboretum; so that I can have a chance to inspect it, in the rough, at least. Shape the borders, also, if that is possible, sufficiently to make it feasible for me to review, with reference to adjustments of the planting plan, the shaping and treatment of the immediately adjoining ground. I want very much to be allowed to do this work with a degree of nicety of adaptation of various elements that is impossible to be used in planning in advance of the ruder utilitarian modeling of the road border and drainage ducts. Put in, if you can, all needed pipe culverts, but do not face up the ends of the pipes or give a final finish to the bordering banks. Avoid all masonry except as you may find places where waste will result if a substantial trunk is not made at once. That is to say: make temporary bridges, to serve during the period of rough construction, whenever it will not be obvious that doing so will be wasteful. Build no bridges of masonry or any other construction of masonry until I have personally studied the situation and advised with the Architect.

I suppose that you understand that an elaborate planting plan for the Arboretum has been prepared; that as much study has been given to this as well can be at present; that it has been reviewed and provisionally approved by Prof. Sargent and has been adopted, for what it is, by Mr. Vanderbilt. The road so far as planned has been planned with reference to the planting map, and this planting map has been planned with reference to the road, so far as this can be done upon the small scale of our mapping operations. But whenever a restudy is possible upon the actual ground, from the road, and with all the conditions that after the rough shaping of the road and its rough borders will be under close view, I hope that we shall be able to make many improvements of detail, both with reference to the scientific arrangement of the trees, and to picturesque effect. Not improbably you will, as you go on, see opportunities of improving the plan of the road, considering it simply as a pleasant road. These will be practicable if slight. If at all considerable, they will involve readjustments of the planting plan, and it will be a question whether these can be made without sacrificing something from the scientific scheme that will more than compensate for the gain. Whenever this is possible, you would better send us sketches showing us what you would suggest as a probable improvement and let us see if we can adopt a variation of the planting plan to fit it. The planting plan, as it stands now, is the result of several months work, under our direction, of Mr. Manning and his office assistants, but we fully expect to make many improvements of detail in it when trying it on, after the road and its near borders are roughed out. The first ploughing of the ground and all operations of grading of the ground to be planted should, as far as practicable, go on hand [801]in hand with the road building. I do not suppose, however, that you can have force enough for this purpose before next Winter. In that case, all the force you can have should be applied to getting the entire line of road through. This for this reason among others, that a fair road will facilitate and lessen the cost of nearly all the operations to follow near the line of the road. But I chiefly want it (this being the case) because, the road being made, I shall be able to improve the plan of the borders of it, and of the planting, better; more surely and accurately, as well as more easily. Keep in mind the consideration that I shall be able, from a road well blocked out, to do my part of the work better, as well as more easily and surely, as a kindness to me. My anxiety is very great to personally study and be satisfied with the plans for adjusting the slopes, for adjusting trees to the smaller local circumstances that cannot have been much considered in the plans as they stand, for securing becoming relations of the Arboretum trees to those which will appear back of them; for making many little refinements that may be possible upon closer study of the plan on the ground; refinements of detail with regard to relationships, topographical and forestal, which, in a deliberate and contemplative study from the point of view of a visitor passing over the road, will be suggested between the trees to be planted and conditions already fixed.

Mainly this Summer do all that you can, consistently with other absolute duties, get Mr. McNamee to let you do {all} by which the trunk construction of the Arboretum may be advanced in all its length. Urge the forestry force to get out of your way. If they are not moving as fast as for this purpose you need to have them, let me know and let me personally urge Mr. Pinchot. I am sure of his good will in the matter and that it will only be necessary that he should have some understanding of what I want and of my reasons for wanting it to secure from him all cooperation that he will be allowed to give me.

The question of getting manure for the Arboretum and some other questions give me, of course, a good deal of concern. I am sorry that it has been thought best to go so much more largely than I originally thought best into truck farming, for which there can never be enough manure, and so little into beef fattening, etc. making a manure manufactory. But a determination of just what to do in this and several other matters is not at once so critically important as in matter of primary construction. You can be thinking of these questions. (I mean questions of lime; of methods of local drainage in certain localities without danger of the root penetration of tiles, etc.) But as to these questions, they can mostly be deferred; not much needs to be done this Summer decisively of them. As to the construction of the essential trunk road of the Arboretum, the shaping of its borders and the stirring of the soil of the Arboretum strips, all this I shall be grievously disappointed not to find essentially accomplished before next Winter. To do what I can do in elaborating the design of the Arboretum after it has been accomplished is the most important duty that I look forward to, and you cannot over-rate my desire to be able to do it.

This is a personal letter and you will please make your reply to it “personal.”

Very truly yours

Let me know if you are in want of any instructions or counsel. I believe that I have given you written instructions as to grades, breadth of road, gutters &c. and that the course of the main road is as closely staked out as you will wish to have it.