I have recvd yours of 7th & the plans.

Be so good as to remember that when you first did me the honor to ask my counsel you said that you did not want me to make a plan for your grounds but only to advise you upon the question of house site and a possible division of the property. This I have done and I doubt whether, as I am only occasionally in Boston, it would be worth your while to employ me to make plans and give you advice as to details in a situation of such difficulty. In truth I do not feel much inclined to be the responsible planner of your grounds partly because I think that whoever plans them ought to direct the work more closely than I probably should be able to, and partly because I do not feel that you and Mrs Schlesinger would be quite satisfied with what I should be moved to aim at.

It is true that I have already gone beyond your first commission and made several sketch plans but I did this only because I could not otherwise fully state my views of the question of site. Further than was necessary for this purpose my planning did not go. I had to say: “Here is a site which I can recommend, provided you are willing to accept such and such an arrangment of approaches &c. as this or even such as this other.” Thus I put before you several alternatives. If I failed to make my opinion plain to you it was because you seemed to be ready to accept the conditions which, as to one of these sites, I had in view. Your present letter, however, leads me to think that you do not accept the conditions as they lie in my mind; in which case I must take care that you do not accept the site as upon my recommendation. What I should have said before had I not thought you agreed with me, I must say now, namely that the Amory property does not contain a site suitable for such a house as you contemplate unless you are willing to put up with some conditions which many people would regard as eccentric, queer and unsuitable to be associated with so fine a house as you mean to have but which I should hope would carry their own justification and therefore simply secure an individuality of character appropriate to the house. This being, however, a matter in a certain degree of personal tastes and habits, it is one which you should decide with your eyes open.

The question is of the general ideal to be had in view.

This Amory site has a certain poetic character as it stands, more or less obscure and more or less mangled by the buildings, roads, fences, planted trees, &c. What you are to do will either result in pretty well destroying it and [465]

[466] substituting another character, or in unveiling and developing it in a much higher degree.

I have not a spark of the sentimentalism which would prevent me from adopting the first course if I thought I could get on the whole a more satisfactory result — satisfactory as to convenience, health and beauty. But I have very maturely considered the question and I do not think so.

The question with me, therefore, as to your suggestions of varying from my plan, is what way do they tend? To a better recovery and development of the old poem of the place or to putting it away and composing a new one?

Of course you see certain small difficulties in the way of what you would like. You may understand better what I mean — it is not easy to explain — if you suppose these difficulties to be all just a little greater.

Imagine the highway a little more on a hill side and a little more crooked, the descent from it into the place a little steeper, the valley a little deeper, the hill of the house a little higher, its slope a little sharper, the distance between the boundaries a little less, the space available for a house and lawn a little more contracted and the neighbors a little nearer. Give a few minutes practical study to the question where you would enter, under these circumstances; where you would carry your road and at what grades; where you would place your kitchen, your stable and all your dependencies; how you would grade about your house and what general landscape quality you would aim at. Do this and you will find I suspect, that you would come to my conclusion, either to abandon your building altogether upon this site or else to abandon making the place one of such a character as you are now inclined to. If so, this shows that it is only necessary that the objections that I feel to what you propose should be a little more obvious to be conclusive to you also. And this again proves that what you are trying to do if not quite bad is hardly good. Now the dishing and garnishing (if you take so very poor a view of the outside part of your proposed home) of such a house ought to be more than hardly good. It should be perfectly excellent of its kind.

You may recall houses built in situations of like but greater difficulties, more cramped and rocky and crooked, as on little seacoast promontories about which you have found a peculiar charm. Why? Largely because all the arrangments in such a case were compelled to be what they are by the difficulties of the topography. What would elsewhere be a defect becomes under such circumstances, a merit, and each adds to the general quaint fitness of the artificial to the natural.

Now, although your ground only approaches in character to such a situation it is too much like it to be dealt with on a different principle. Adopt that principle and an admirable result is possible. Undertake to smooth down and bridge over the difficulties, as for instance by a more direct descent into the valley, by forcing a back road, by long indirect communications between your kitchen and your stables and by aiming at a dress ground or “front yard” character between the rear of your house and the highway and you could [467] hardly fail to emphasize all the natural disadvantages of the situation. Everything would have a certain awkwardness. At best, as it seems to me, you would attain only to a respectable common place character.

If I state it too strongly it is to make the difference between what I should be inclined to and what you, I think, are inclined to more obvious.

I will even confess that I almost think Mrs Schlesinger’s old quarrel with the green-house an unfortunate one. I feel that the green house was put where it is for a good reason in the natural circumstances. This reason remains; it is obvious and it not only qualifies and compensates for the blemish but to my mind makes it a beauty — at least a picturesqueness which if it were gone I should miss.

Again, if I found the place with a square entrance like Mr Sargent’s near the middle of its front I would, if needed at great expense, abolish it & get a corner entrance with a long easy sweep toward the house as suggested in my drawing, and if I were willing to spend more on the improvemnt of this entrance & approach I would apply it to making the occasion for an entrance so far different from what is commonly looked for, more decided, by banks, retaining-walls and the planting of rocks and large trees in that part of the ground where a more common sort of entrance might possibly be otherwise forced in. I would make it appear that no more had been done than was necessary to obtain access in the easiest way from the public road across an interposing valley to a fine situation upon a neighboring height. There should not be a suspicion of effort about it for anything but convenience. If there were well grown Norway Spruces on this part of the ground I would fell them because in such a place they would be fussy and destroy the unsophisticated character at which I should be aiming.

If the kitchen end of the house must be to the Eastward, (which, if there is a chance of your getting some of the White property, I think more than ever a mistake), I should prefer to let the stable be seen (barely seen) between the house and the main road, primarily because it would be the most convenient situation but partly also because it would help to make sure that the place would not be judged by ordinary standards — that it would appear to be a law to itself. Also because it would a little suggest that the house was not built because of what was between it & the highway, {and that the ground passed through was not a “front yard”} but that the key of the whole arrangment was to be looked for on the other side of it — its domestic, not its public side.

Thus I would find in each of the difficulties of the situation not a difficulty but an advantage.

I have not meant to give definite advice upon anyone of the points of your inquiry. Perhaps (except as to the Spruces) I should, upon more full consideration upon the ground see reasons for agreeing with you. I think not however, and at any rate all I have said is pertinent as to the question of the general scope of improvemnt to be attempted. If you should adopt my views you will be certain to hear much good natured remonstrance, be told that you are [468]

[469] transgressing receivd rules of landscape gardening and oftimes be tempted to insipid compromises. Nor can I honestly say that I think that you would save a great deal in outlay. To do well what is unusual is always costly and if you try to overleap common standards you must expect to use spur and whip more than on the beaten track. In aiming at less than would commonly be thought appropriate to so fine a house you must be sure of success in what you undertake at whatever cost.

I am sure that you and Mrs Schlesinger, to whom I beg to be most respectfully remembered, however little you may like what I have said, will not fail to appreciate the friendly object of this long letter and will believe me