We have been for several years the professional advisers of Mr. George W. Vanderbilt, in respect to a notable country seat which he has in preparation. It is in a mountain region overlooking the valley of the French Broad River in Western North Carolina; about as far south of New York as Nice [742]from Paris. Parts of it have an elevation above the sea of over 3000 feet. The extent of mountain land now owned by Mr. Vanderbilt in this region is about 100,000 acres; nearly all of it being a forest, and intended to be maintained as a forest under the management of our friend, Mr. Pinchot, who, born in New York, is of a French-Swiss family and has been educated in schools of forestry in France and Switzerland. Mr. Vanderbilt’s architect, Mr. R. M. Hunt, was educated in Paris, has received the highest professional honors there, and the house he is building has much of the character of the historical chateaux of France. We were consulted as to the site and placing of the house, and are forming terraces, pleasure grounds and roads, including an approach road three miles in length, and a picturesque Arboretum Road nine miles in length.

As a part of the establishment we had advised that there should be an enclosed garden near the chateau, and it had been partly formed before I last saw you in Paris. As there is a vegetable garden and as there are orchards elsewhere on the estate, this garden was to be used chiefly for supplying choice fruits, vegetables and cut flowers for the residence. It had been planned in outline and its walls and structures partly built before our visit to Messrs. Croux’s establishment and before we visited a fruit and vegetable garden which you advised us to see near Tours. After visiting these and other French gardens and after our conversation with you and Messrs. Croux, we advised Mr. Vanderbilt that, especially as to a choice and arrangement of the fruit part of his garden, it would be best for him to have counsel in the matter direct from French experts. We thought that you would be the best man to consult but did not feel at liberty to ask you to prepare plans in detail for a work the general plan of which had been fixed by actual construction of walls and houses before your advice was asked. We were under the impression that we had seen at the office of Messrs. Croux drawings and other evidence that they were accustomed not only to provide fruit trees as ordered, but to make plans and to provide all requirements for fruit gardens. With the assent of Mr. Vanderbilt, we accordingly wrote to Messrs. Croux, explaining the situation at much length with the aid of maps and photographs. Their reply indicated that they had not fully understood our explanation of the conditions and of our intentions. They advised elementary operations which had already been made, and proposed that Mr. Vanderbilt should employ an agent whom they would send out, who would spend part of a week at the Chicago Exposition and another part at his estate, not recognizing that nearly all the week would necessarily be spent in traveling between the two places which are 600 miles apart, and connected by crooked and complicated slow, Western railways. For other reasons the proposition was impracticable, and Mr. Vanderbilt felt obliged to decline proceeding upon it.

Mr. Vanderbilt’s gardener is a Scotchman of about the qualifications that you would expect to find in the ordinary Scotch gardeners of the larger class of English country places. An intelligent man who has formerly had the care of wall fruit and who would be apt and willing to do anything he could in proceeding under instructions; but ignorant of French methods and of the [743]French language. The laboring men of the estate, his assistants, are ignorant negroes; emancipated slaves, speaking a mongrel English.

We should greatly like to have a properly trained French horticulturalist put in charge of the trained fruit department, but the situation would not be a pleasant one for him and social and administrative difficulties, besides those of language, make it improbable that this proposition would work out satisfactorily.

The question which, under these circumstances, we venture to advise Mr Vanderbilt to submit to you is whether it would be feasible for you to prepare planting plans, and with the aid of such wood-cuts and directions as Messrs. Croux have published for the benefit of their customers, more especially with respect to methods of training, to give instructions under which a gardener, accustomed to common English methods of training, could so proceed that Mr. Vanderbilt would have the main, essential advantages of a good French fruit garden?

You know that in America much more fruit is used than in England. The climatic conditions of Biltmore are not very different from those of Paris; the Summers are liable, perhaps, to be a little warmer and the early Summer months are moister. The Winters are not usually even as cold, except for a few brief intervals, yet are liable, perhaps once in ten years, to short periods of extreme cold; the mercury having fallen on one occasion for a few hours as low as −9 Fahrenheit, or −22.8 centigrade.

If you should be willing to render Mr. Vanderbilt and to render us such a service as we thus have suggested, will you please advise us that you are so and state what your charge would be. If Mr. Vanderbilt approved the arrangement we should probably inform you by telegraph.

We should wish you to give orders for the plants and for such required fixtures as could not well be reproduced here from samples which you would send. (Excellent mechanics are employed on the estate).

Mr. Vanderbilt often visits Paris, and will probably do so early next Summer, when if you are willing to undertake this service, he would call upon you.

We append some extracts from our letter of last year to Messrs. Croux.