FORTY YEARS OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

Brookline, July 28, 1922.

... I offer a small contribution of individual experience towards the history of the latter half of the first century of the American republic,—the period in which the work of the railroad, the electric telegraph, the ocean steamship, the Darwinian hypothesis, and of Universal suffrage began; in which what is called the temperance reformation and the abolition of slavery have occurred; in which millions of people have been concentrating at New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Chicago, St. Louis, and San Francisco, while rural neighborhoods in New England, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia have been rapidly losing population and still more rapidly losing various forms of wealth and worth.

His teachers are the people, books, animals, plants, stones and earth round about him.—Philip Gilbert Hamerton.

Glen Falls (N. Y.), Aug. 3, 1845.

Dear Father: or whoever is at home, if Father has gone to Saratoga:

I believe the only description of the country between here and Burlington I have given you was in a pencil letter written[Pg 65] at Charlotte. The afternoon’s ride of that day was through a very poor country, clay and stones. What land had been cleared seemed to be principally devoted to the raising of burnt stumps and mullen; some little grass, to be sure did now and then make its appearance, but I should think the poor sheep would find it hard work enough to live, without troubling themselves with growing wool. A little ways out of Charlotte, though, I recollect I was met by one of the finest views I had ever seen. It was on a hill which overlooked the country and the lake towards the southwest. Between me and the Lake lay some pretty village or other on the ground sloping towards it, the land looking really very rich,—and by the way the soil just by the lake all along is fine. Beyond lay the Lake itself,—bays, islands, etc.,—looking beautifully; but the chief charm was the background, a heap of mountains over in Essex Co. I never saw mountains rise more beautifully one above another, the larger ones seeming to cluster round and protect the smaller, nor did the summer veil of haze ever sit on them more sweetly. Back of all rose some magnificent thunder-heads and they rose fast too, compelling me at five o’clock to take refuge and toast and eggs in a little road-side inn.

“Hartford, Sept. 1, 1845.

“My dear Fred [Kingsbury][5]:

Charley and I had a fine cruise ’round. Charley wanted to get home before Emma left, and we drove, with all night[Pg 66] sleeping in a boat or on the ground, and one night on a sloop’s transom. Sunday night we camped out at Haddam, below. Made a sq. sail of our tent, and turned in on a blanket under it. It was a most beautiful place, a green grassy dell glen sloping gently up, lofty and picturesque trees opening a way for it back to a most lovely vista. A most charming prospect of our Rhine in front and on either side. Lots of wild pigeons, meteors, owls, sturgeons, mosquitoes, wipporwills, methodists, and hydrophious quadrupeds to lull us to grassy sleep. We struck our tent and broke up camp at an hour or two before day break, and were till noon working up to the landing a few miles above. I believe you will think we didn’t do much at Mineralogizing. We went with John and Rev. Mr. Gilbert to the mines—a rocky hillside, and in an hour or two got a pocket full of tourmalines, garnites and something else (?) and appetites and a glass of brandy for my cholic, because we were too lazy to kindle a fire Sunday morning and eat green apples to kill-hunger....

Once on a time my father took me with him on a journey which carried us into Canada. While there we had for several days as a traveling companion an Englishman, animated, amiable, frank and engaging. As I think of our intercourse now, I can see plainly that he looked upon me as a new specimen and was drawing me out and turning me over with the interest of a naturalist. It is clear also that he got some new ideas from me and often when our conversation was interrupted, he took notes. My experience with men in America, though I was a youngster, had been various, and I was then fresh from association with a large number of youngsters,—youngsters merely, but gathered from all parts of the Union. With these I had been made intimate at foot ball and boat club, in long walks, trouting excursions, duck shooting, long winter night talks over the stove and more formal debates of our “Society.” My experience of mankind and my views of men were crude and bigoted, but they were obviously sincere and simple convictions and they were as strange to the Englishman as average English country-gentlemen’s convictions would surely be to me.

I am thinking that of all the young men you know, I was the least likely to do what I have, and that you cannot know or guess in what way I was led to it. Nor can you know what is most prominently in my mind when I refer to these doings. I need not conceal from you that I am sure that the result of what I have done is to be of much more consequence than any one else but myself supposes. As I travel, I see traces of influences spreading from it that no one else would detect, which if given any attention by others, would be attributed to “fashion.” There are, scattered through the country, seventeen large public parks, many more smaller ones, many more public or semi-public works, upon which, with sympathetic partners or pupils, I have been engaged. After we have left them, they have, in the majority of cases, been more or less barbarously treated, yet as they stand, with perhaps a single exception, they are a hundred years ahead of any spontaneous public demand, or of the demand of any notable cultivated part of the people. And they are having an educative effect perfectly manifest to me—a manifestly civilizing effect. I see much indirect and unconscious following of them. It is strange how often I am asked: “Where did you get that idea?” as if an original idea[Pg 69] on the subject had not been expected. But I see in new works of late much evidence of effects of invention—comprehensive design; not always happy, but symptomatically pleasing. Then I know that I shall have helped to educate in a good American school a capital body of young men for my profession,—all men of liberal education and cultivated minds. I know that in the minds of a large body of men of influence I have raised my calling from the rank of a trade, even of a handicraft, to that of a liberal profession, an art, an art of design. I have been resolute in insisting that I am not to be dealt with as a mere agent of my clients, but as a councillor, a trustee, on honor. I have always refused to take employment on other terms, and when it has appeared that I must do so or yield the point, I have seven times already resigned the charge of important and interesting works. It is what I have done in these respects, and what I see of the indirect effect on the standing of my profession and the progress of my art, that leads me to write to you after so many years, in the self-complacent way that I do. This, rather than anything you have seen, or of which you have read.

I was saying that of the young men, comradic young men, that you knew, I was the last to have been expected to lead such a life as I have. I was strangely uneducated,—mis-educated. Because of an accident putting my eyes in some peril, I was at the most important age left to “run wild,” and when at school, mostly as a private pupil in families of country parsons of small, poor parishes, it seems to me that I was chiefly taught how not to study,—how not to think for myself. I tried to learn Euclid by rote, without trying to understand what it meant. While my mates were fitting for college, I was allowed to indulge my strong natural propensity for roaming afield and day dreaming under a tree. The year before John entered college, I went to sea before the mast. It was soon after my return from China that I first met you and you lifted me a good deal out of my constitutional shyness and helped more than you can think[Pg 70] to rouse a sort of scatter-brained pride and to make me realize that my secluded life, country breeding, and mis-education were not such bars to an “intellectual life” as I was in the habit of supposing. Or, if this is too personal, let me say that, through visiting at your house the first winter I was at New Haven with John, I was given a turn, not to study, but toward an “intellectual life” to which I feel that nearly all that I have been saying complacently of my doings is to be remotely attributed. You will smile of my thinking of you at all as a mentor, especially in a literary way, if you remember a certain Christmas present that you gave me: (It was burned thirty years afterwards with some heirlooms, autograph letters of Washington and Webster and other treasures). But in some way in which you had to do, I was led up at that time to Emerson, Lowell and Ruskin, and other real prophets who have been familiar friends ever since. (Here they are on my bed-table). And these gave me the needed respect for my own constitutional tastes and an inclination to poetical refinement in the cultivation of them that afterwards determined my profession. Yet that is not quite fair, for I had had two lifts in the same direction before. One, when I had heard my father reading the books of travel in New England of President Dwight, Professor Silliman and Miss Martineau, in all of which the observations on scenery with which I was familiar had helped to make me think that the love of nature, not simply as a naturalist but as a poet loves it, was respectable. The other, when, yet a boy, I found in the Hartford Public Library certain books, which it is a strange thing that I should have looked into; stranger that I should have assimilated as much as, when re-reading them perhaps twenty years afterwards, I found that I had. They were Price on the Picturesque and Gilpin on Forest Scenery,—books of the last century, but which I esteem so much more than any published since, as stimulating the exercise of judgment in matters of my art, that I put them into the hands of my pupils as soon as they come into our[Pg 71] office, saying, “You are to read these seriously, as a student of law would read Blackstone.”

Moral Philos: “Butler’s Sermons,” (recommended by Dr. Chalmers, Sir James Mackintosh, Arnold, Pycroft and others). In place of it, “Sewell’s Chstn. Morals”; “Abercrombie’s Philos. of Moral Feeling” (brief and comprehensive); “Foster’s Essay on Decision of Character.” Mental Philos: “Abercrombie on the Intellectual Powers, and the Investigation of Truth”; “Combe’s Constitution.” Political Philos: “Miss Martineau’s Tales,” (I suppose they are to Polit. Philos. similar to Historic Novels to History); “Whately” [Richard]; “M’Culloch’s Principles”; “The Encyclopedia” (Rent, tax, etc.); “Jefferson”; “The Federalist, etc.”; Art: “Abstract of Sir Josh. Reynolds’ discourses”; “Abstract of Pilkington’s Lives of Painters”—(Visit collection in compy. with an artist); “Allan Cunningham’s British Painters”—Sculpture—Encyclopedia. British History: “Socy. for Prom. Chstn. Knowledge”; “Miller’s Life of George III”; “Lives of George IV and Wm. IV”; “History of British India”; “Basil Hall”; “Macaulay.”

I say nothing about Poetry or Fiction or Ecclesiastical Literature. I’ve read enough already to choose from to read over again without going wrong, and I presume I can read back to better advantage than I can read ahead. I say nothing either about Agriculture or Law—I have a course in each laid out. I expect to read on Geology, Mineralogy, and Anatomy before long and Nat’l History generally as I have opportunity or inclination.

I’ll thank you to give me any advice suggested to you in reading the above. I have left out “Cobbett’s Grammar,” “Whately’s Rhetoric and Logic.” I have read “Burke on[Pg 72] Taste” and your Rept. of Prof. Lardner’s Lecture. I should like to find more of those comprehensive Lectures on such subjects. Prof. Lardner’s Lectures are brief and comprehensive and very well adapted to give a simple man a common information in regard to Natural Science and Mechanics. You must have been bored with this letter but I expect you to answer it becomingly.

I have been looking for a letter from you and the Monthly Journal for two or three days. I am anxious to hear about the Head Farm. If the Farmer’s Library can be had separately at half subscription price, I would drop the Monthly Journal though it is very good, in favor of Drs. Emmons and Prime’s Quarterly Journal of Agriculture and Science, a very able, practical, scientific, periodical, $1.50.

I have thought of writing an article about Fuller’s Farming, etc. for the Cultivator, but have given it up because I have not myself sufficient reliance on the correctness of statements.

The first portfolio of prints that I ever saw was a possession of my childhood and was a series of views of English park scenery. Chance soon after put in my hand Gilpin’s Forest Scenery and Gilpin’s and Marshall’s Tours and criticisms of parks. I have been studying the subject ever since.

For myself I have every reason to be satisfied with my prospects. I grow more contented or more fond of my business every day,—really, for a man that has any inclination for agriculture, the occupation is very interesting, and if you look closely you will be surprised to see how much honorable attention and investigation is being connected with it. The Cultivator has now five regular monthly European correspondents. Scientific men of highest distinction are there devoting their undivided attention to its advance; and I think here, the coming year will show a remarkable progress.

For my part I believe that our farmers are, and have cause to be, the most contented men in the world; and for the matter of profit, it is sufficient to know that they live and[Pg 76] bring up their families in what they consider comfortable circumstances, with the usual system and management. I should think by the use of the proper tools and machinery which a man of intelligence and information could procure and invent, at least half of the most disagreeable and hard labor of our old-fashioned farmers might be dispensed with to advantage. But I doubt whether taste for its peculiar pleasures, or inclination or ability for its manual exertions, will make you a farmer. If you could, however,—and of this you are the best judge,—become interested in its operations for a year or two, and connect yourself with its present rapid advance as an honorable and learned profession, you would not only find it a sufficient means of support, but an agreeable and healthful pursuit.

I shall start I think directly after the election, I presume going to Albany first, and then on west to Syracuse, etc., with letters from Mr. Norton and Tucker of the Cultivator. Father has obtained 15 new subscribers for the Cultivator here.[8] Perhaps, and I should prefer to, come per New Haven and N. Y. and first with Professor O’s letter to Owego. Please do say what you think about it. I should like to make[Pg 77] you a visit again before I go for good and I shall probably spend next winter on [the] farm.

I want to make myself useful in the world, to make others happy, to help to advance the condition of Society, and hasten the preparation for the Millennium, as well as other things too numerous to mention.

Now, how shall I prepare myself to exercise the greatest and best influence in the situation of life I am likely to be placed in. You know perhaps as well as I what that is—I suppose it’s not very great stretch of ambition to anticipate my being a Country Squire in Old Connecticut in the course of fifteen years. I should like to help then as far as I could [to foster] in the popular mind generosity, charity, taste and etc.,—independence of thought of voting and of acting. The education of the ignoble vulgus ought to be much improved and extended.

The Agricultural Interest greatly preponderates in number and wealth in the state, but perhaps has the least influence in Legislation. Lawyers whose sense of right and truth is blunted by profession—the sense of law—and traffickers who value themselves as they can make their own interest appear—whether truly or not—the interest of another, make our laws, make public opinion, because they have had their intellectual faculties sharpened by practice and education. Now the people-farmers and mechanics—the producing classes that the rest live on—want to think and judge for themselves, to cultivate the intellectual.

“In the summer of 1847 Mr. John Olmsted of Hartford, Conn., was staying, with his family, at the Sachem’s Head Hotel where he met Mr. John Bowne of New York. Mr. Bowne’s wife was the daughter of Dr. Akerly late of Staten Island, whose family were desirous of selling the farm left by Dr. Akerly. Mr. Olmsted and his son Frederick, being dissatisfied with the prospect for success in the small farm at Guilford, bought not long before for Frederick, accepted Mr. Bowne’s invitation to go to Staten Island, South Side, and inspect the Akerly farm. Their impression was so favorable that Mr. Olmsted bought the place, 130 acres, paying for it $12,000.00 and took possession the following winter. The farm stretched from the Main Road to the shore of Prince’s Bay about a mile in length.

“Leaving the main road one entered a very pretty wood of trees of fair size,—oaks, maples, sweet and sour gum, sassafras, holly, etc. After about a quarter of a mile one came out upon the cleared land on the top of a small rise. The soil was heavy red clay, very suitable for wheat, etc., yielding up to 40 bushels per acre. There was a sort of plateau from which the land sloped gently down for about quarter of a mile and then an almost level stretch went to the bank six feet above the beach. From all this part of the farm there was a fine view of Prince’s Bay looking across to Sandy Hook (slightly foreshortened), Navesink, and the New Jersey Hills stretching away to the southward. There were no trees on this level with the exception of one tall old pear tree at the foot of which were found from time to time the bones of the slaves who had been buried there....

“The farm commanded a view of all shipping outward or inward bound....

“The house, standing at the foot of the slope, was built of rough stone plastered over with lime, and had been, until shortly before Dr. Akerly’s death, only a story and a half high. He had, in order to accommodate his growing family of grand-children built on in wood a full story and a half, giving nine bed chambers. Outside the junction of the stone and wood was disguised by the roof of an all round piazza. Inside the effect was rather odd for the stone wall a foot and a half thick came up nearly three feet and on top of it were built closets convenient, but queer. Downstairs was an entrance hall of 12 × 16 feet going through from east to west and on each side a 16 ft. square room with tolerably high[Pg 79] ceiling, windows with deep seats looking east and in one room a window looking south either side of the fireplace.

“On the south end, the ground sloped so that there was an easy entrance for barrows to the cellar, large and well lighted, and used as a dairy. There was a small outbuilding north of the house where was found a breast plate engraved ‘The King’s American Dragoon’s,’ laid away on a beam in what had evidently been a stable.

“The first time I ever saw Frederick was in February of 1848 when he came over to Holly Hill to tell Grandpa Perkins the news of the flight of Louis Philippe from Paris, just received in New York.

“Frederick was then settled on his farm with his Aunt Maria Olmsted as housekeeper and provider for two jolly green freshly imported Irish maids and three or four farm laborers. We soon called on her and the families were very friendly. At that time Grandpa occupied Holly Hill Farm and Uncle Frank was living in South Brooklyn. John Hull Olmsted had just graduated and had come to New York to Dr. Willard Parker’s office to study medicine. He came to the farm for week ends and holidays bringing Charles Brace generally and sometimes Frederick Kingsbury. By the winter time I had grown so intimate with the Olmsteds that it was arranged that I should pass Christmas at Hartford on my way back from a visit in Boston, which I did.

“In June his father, step-mother and half sisters Mary and Bertha and young half brother Albert came to pass a long season, bringing with them a fine span of horses and an open carriage, the regular farm outfit being Old Black subject to blind staggers and not too speedy at best and an old Rockaway.

“Frederick was at this time 26 years of age full of life and fun. He threw himself into farming with enthusiasm, introduced system and order to his men, expecting for one thing that at knocking off time every tool used should be returned to its appointed place and that every ‘chore’ should be done at the hour fixed, the foreman to report progress before going in to supper. He engaged in planting and dealing in fruit-trees, pears principally, which he imported from France. All was done in a simple inexpensive way, using the old buildings on the place and practicing rigid economy. He interested himself in the County Agricultural Society and soon became an active member in company with Wm. H.[Pg 80] Vanderbilt who was at the time a farmer at New Dorp Lane.

“Frederick had a very pretty talent for caricatures, not of a grotesque kind but full of quiet humor.... He was fond of long discussions on moral points as when, if ever, it is allowable to depart from a direct statement of fact, etc., etc. He was perhaps over fond of arguments to be pleasing to women. Whimsies had no charm for him. Sartor Resartus and Modern Painters were our text books.

“Aunt Maria was a dear kind devoted woman of fifty, plain as a pikestaff and devoid of vanity.

“Mr. Olmsted, the father, had just retired from business with a modest competence. He was the kindest and most indulgent of fathers,—a man with a strict sense of justice and of duty, exacting toward himself rather than toward others. His wife was a Puritan, a model of order and system, most efficient as an organizer and full of interest in Nature and Man.

“The family continued to make its summer home at the farm until the end of the summer of 1853, six years.”

I have been to Flushing and got the trees. Parsons’ bill is $258. and he desires especially if it cannot be paid before the 1st of May that he may have paper that he can use—your note. I have been so unfortunate in my sales that I concluded not to take so many by 300 trees as I had intended. Parsons being very willing, he will probably sell the trees from 5 to 10 per cent more than my price. Mr. Field strongly recommends me to purchase for myself in France. Thinks I might find ready sale for some thousand on Staten Island within a few years, at 100 per cent over cost of importing them. I called at the Packet offices this morning but could not get anything reliable as to freight. As near as I can guess the bulk of 100 trees (small dwarf pear) of ordinary goods would not be over $1.00. S—— gave me to understand it would be near $10. I think he lied. But even at that I could[Pg 81] import them one year younger than these I have of Parsons for but little more than one half what I pay him and at about one quarter what Mr. Field paid for his.

South Side, Dec. 21, 1850.

There is a good deal of building this winter.

My trees are to arrive soon, so I cannot go to Connecticut at present. More of them than I had calculated the man could supply, about 5,000 pears. The nurseryman makes me a present of 200 samples of his shrubs and trees. They are also lower than they had been offered and promise very fine. You have a nurseryman in Waterbury. I wish you would ask him if he does not want some pears on pear or quince stock, of the latter I have the finest lot ever imported and will sell them lower than the regular nurserymen. I shall have a few popular shrubs and trees of other sorts. How would a few hundred go at auction in Waterbury? I have a lot of (pot plants) cedar of Lebanon.

We are likely to have a Plank Road upon the island, contract is offered at exactly the sum per mile I estimated in an article upon the subject in the Staten Isler last spring. Our society does well, I have near $20. worth of premiums.

I have sold near $100. worth of trees besides those sent to Terry. Received order for a small lot to be delivered at Hartford at wholesale prices from Sol. Porter, Porter Place, Banker. I referred him to my letter but told him that on the supposition that he meant to increase his order I would send the trees, putting them on board Hartford boat at $50. rate, if I did not hear from him this week to the contrary. He ordered also some peach trees, which I shall have to get, I don’t know where. Next day another order, “2d, not for Porter Place,” for 20 more pears. I have had two calls from men that wanted a large number shade trees—evergreens—and other fruit trees, that I could not supply—and could not get the ordering of. One of them[10] is engaged in laying out grounds for Aspinwalls, Livingston and others at Clifton and told me he should have bought a good many hundred trees if I had had such as he wanted. He took 31 pears at 60 cts. for Livingston and O’Conner. Townsend called & took 24, Bunker, 15 and others of that sort, making the best sort of nest eggs for the business.

I have thought a good deal about that Sachem’s Head place without knowing it was for sale (so I have of ’Miah’s). There is no fruit there, I suppose, and perhaps no soil for it. I should like to hear more about it. There is the prettiest ground for a ferme ornée in that place of ’Miah’s I ever saw almost, a beautiful nook under the mountain or dell, with a fine large trout brook running through it, a quarter of a mile from David’s, half a mile from the railroad canal. The farm has been miserably cultivated by the old miserly tyrant that has gone to his account, but there is by nature excellent land and every convenience and beauty desirable.

I wrote shortly to father yesterday and now reply to yours of the 18th inst.

I note what you say about Alsop’s and trees. I intend to plant (trans-) but few ornamental trees and with them to take great pains,—until I know where to put my house exactly, I cannot arrange the lawn very well. The lawn is to be the grand feature of my gardening. The ground is[Pg 85] naturally graded and finely adapted for a broad, smooth green plat broken only by a few trees or clumps, along on the rear edge of it and so circling towards the shore, some low thick shrubbery (a) is wanted. Back (cornering on b) I suppose will be a good place for an orchard (beyond the proposed barn). ’Tis there we are carting our manure now and mean to plant corn and potatoes this year.

We have planted 75 apple trees in first rate manner, 60 quinces, too. About a dozen ornamental forest trees on the back bone of the point lot; which make quite a pretty show,—but I do not think many of them will live.

I am glad you are disposed to notice such things as Harral’s house so much. The effect such things have on the taste of a community,—and through that on their hearts and lives—the elevation,—I believe is very much underestimated.

I do exceedingly enjoy the view from my house, sometimes it is “wondrous beautiful”; just now for instance in this charming sleepy autumn haze, I cannot attempt to describe it, constantly changing, always renewedly interesting. I can tell you a few features always present. The water view extends over just half the circle. From the immediate opposite front, to the left of the arc, it is bounded by the horizon,—dark blue ocean, with forever distant sails coming up or sinking as they bid good-bye to America. Then all over that quarter at all distances are all sorts of vessels—at anchor or under sail—and in all variety constantly shifting. On the extreme right, across the water (Raritan Bay), the horizon is broken by the hills of Jersey some twelve miles off, I suppose. They sweep off gradually growing into something like mountains as they curve round facing us; yet to the front, suddenly and abruptly they end in a precipitous cliff similar to their relations, the Palisades of N. River. This is the Highland of Navesink, and we can just discern a cluster of white towers upon its brink, the fixed and revolving lights and the Telegraph Station.

A little beyond it (on the circle’s edge) you imagine the horizon is half broken by a long yellowish white streak. It is the sand and spray or foam of Sandy Hook, and the three singularly distinct sails are nothing but its three white light-houses.[Pg 87] There is yet another light in sight of us and in a dark night these six lights are curiously interesting,—affecting different minds with different ideas or feelings. To me they present a cheerful, neighborhood effect. To a stranger coming here in the dark it seems to me they must have a very sociable look. It is almost impossible to realize their distance. Staten Island I am sure you would like in itself,—there are many charming inland views.

“Those who knew A. J. Downing and have written about him have made it clear that he was just the sort of man to have had a marked influence on the young and impressionable men who later became the designers of Central Park. It is incontestable that he had every opportunity to impress his knowledge and cultivated taste in subjects related to park designing on at least the younger of those two young men, namely Calvert Vaux, because he had brought Mr. Vaux in the summer of 1850 from London, where he had been a pupil and draughtsman in the office of a London architect[Pg 89] named Truefitt, to act as his architectural assistant. He soon advanced him to be his partner. Mr. Downing was drowned about two years after he brought Mr. Vaux to this country. Mr. Vaux no doubt took over the business of the firm and completed the unfinished works. For that purpose I think he continued to live in Newburgh for probably two years or more, when he removed to New York City....

“Knowing how wide awake and keen for intellectual cultivation and knowledge Mr. Calvert Vaux was, and having listened to innumerable conversations of his, I can imagine the profound influence upon the younger man of his intellectual intercourse with his well read and thoughtful partner, A. J. Downing....

“The other designer of Central Park, Frederick Law Olmsted, it can well be imagined was somewhat influenced by A. J. Downing, although for the most part indirectly through the latter’s writings. I know he several times spoke to me of A. J. Downing, but my recollection of what he said is too vague to be of much help. I simply have the impression that he had met and knew A. J. Downing both as a social acquaintance and as a man, like himself, professionally concerned in the education of the public in horticulture, agriculture and rural taste.”

Southside Staten Island,
Nov. 23, 1850.

Dear Sir:

I wish to thank you for your kindness in sending me, through Mr. Field last spring, a letter of introduction to Mr. Thompson of London. I did not arrive in London in season to attend the exhibition you wished me to, but I twice visited the gardens and enjoyed valuable conversations with Mr. Thompson, who was very obliging and communicative. I took his advice as to what I should see in Paris, and I had thought to offer you some account of what most interested me there, but nearly all that was new and valuable of my observations there has already now appeared in the Horticulturist in the article by Mr. S. from the Journal of the London Soc’y.

[Pg 90]

I spent only about one month on the Continent, mostly Germany, where I much enjoyed the social out-door life, and the frequent approaches to realizations of your ideal village. The custom of taking meals in the gardens or summer houses is very common; and it seemed to me the middle classes at least lived in the open air more than even the English; nor did it seem to me, as is frequently asserted, that their habits in these respects injured the family influence, or made Home any less homelike and lovable, but the contrary.

I saw the best parts of England, spending two months travelling through it on foot, seeing the country of course to great advantage, so that I feel as if I had not merely seen the rural character, but lived in it, and made it a part of me. I was then two months in Ireland and Scotland.

I wish you would when convenient do us (your disciples in Horticulture) the favor to explain distinctly the terms used to describe the different ways of growing pears, etc. I think your correspondents of the Horticulturist have generally used the term Standard to designate pears grown on pear stock only, and Dwarf for those on Quince or Thorn. But in Europe does not Dwarf mean a low ill-shapen tree, or a maiden tree that has lost its leader, and is only suitable for walls?... I was disappointed at not finding the pear grown on quince more abroad. Even at Paris I saw but few in open culture. Those at the Jardin des Plantes and at the Luxembourg are splendid full grown trees, and even this bad season were as full as could be desired of fruit. At Versailles they were mostly on trellis or walls—those en quenouille invariably looked unhealthy.

I saw your Fruits of America in France and England and Scotland; always shown as something for me to be proud of as your countryman.

Yours Respectfully,
Fred. Law Olmsted.

Mr. A. J. Downing.

[Pg 91]

That the two men were regularly in correspondence on subjects of professional interest may be inferred from a bit in a letter to Charles Brace, not yet returned from the Continent, Jan. 11, 1851: “I have written to Downing to tell him who you are. He wants me to write him in familiar letters Rough Impressions of Germany, etc. I find I cannot do it. I saw and know too little of Germany to write distinctly upon it, but I agree with him that whoever could do it would be in the way of doing a good deal of small good.”

There is only a word to be found in the correspondence of that period about Mr. Olmsted’s visit to Downing,—in a letter to Fred. Kingsbury, Aug. 5, 1851: “I liked Ossining and Newburgh.[12] There is a piece in my book in one of the Horticulturists this summer, on Birkenhead Park mostly.”

In an article by Mrs. Van Rensselaer in the Century for October, 1893, based directly on reminiscences which Mr. Olmsted gave her in conversation, it is stated that he visited Downing at Newburgh and made the acquaintance of Calvert Vaux.

The second volume[13] of Mr. Olmsted’s first book, Walks and Talks (1852), contained the following dedication:

To the Memory of
Andrew Jackson Downing:
Whatever of good, true, and pleasant thought this
volume may contain, is humbly and
reverently inscribed.

Mr. Olmsted left among his papers a jotting evidently intended to be used in beginning an address for some occasion or other.

A. J. Downing

There are also a number of little sheets which Mr. Olmsted had had printed off, perhaps for the same occasion, and perhaps for some other public use, bearing the following quotation,—which expresses Mr. Olmsted’s own ideals of democracy as well:

Mr. Olmsted and Mr. Vaux were consulted in 1860 with regard to the memorial to Mr. Downing appropriately proposed to be erected in the Central Park but never carried out, and again in 1889 with reference to the Downing memorial park at Newburgh. Mrs. Downing,[14] who afterwards married Judge Monell, was a lifelong friend of the Vauxes and Olmsteds.

We know from Mr. Olmsted’s own words that he had a particular interest in visiting parks both on his first European journey of 1850, and in 1856, when he was abroad attending to his publishing business and travelling also somewhat with his sisters. In his Walks and Talks of an American Farmer in England, first published in 1852, there are a number of passages which should be quoted here, particularly as showing the trained observation of scenery which he later brought to his landscape designing, and his keen interest in the social and economic aspects of rural life.[15] It is interesting to know, too, that the book was illustrated by his own sketches.[16]

[Pg 95]

Although he went primarily as a farmer, he had in mind to see all sides of the country. He wrote to his father before sailing: “I can have now the advantage of letters from Norton to the Scotch farmers, from Field to the English, from Antisell to the Irish. They all have warm friends there yet among just the men I want to learn from. Parsons will introduce me to the gardens and nurseries. Prof. Johnston returns to Edinboro, Judge Emerson and Stevens direct me to the lions of London, and Field opens the manufacturies.”

BIRKENHEAD AND ITS PARK

Birkenhead is the most important suburb of Liverpool, having the same relation to it that Charlestown has to Boston or Brooklyn to New York. When the first line of Liverpool packets was established, there were not half a dozen houses here; it now has a population of many thousands, and is increasing with a rapidity hardly paralleled in the New World. This is greatly owing to the very liberal and enterprising policy of the land-owners, which affords an example that might be profitably followed in the vicinity of many of our own large towns. There are several public squares, and the streets and places are broad, and well paved and lighted. A considerable part of the town has been built with reference to general effect, from the plans and under the direction of a talented architect, Gillespie Graham....

The baker had begged of us not to leave Birkenhead without seeing their new park, and at his suggestion we left our knapsacks with him, and proceeded to it. As we approached the entrance, we were met by women and girls, who, holding out a cup of milk, asked us—“Will you take a cup of milk, sirs?—good, cool, sweet, cow’s milk, gentlemen, or right warm from the ass!” And at the gate was a herd of donkeys, some with cans of milk strapped to them, others saddled and bridled, to be let for ladies and children to ride.

The gateway, which is about a mile and a half from the ferry, and quite back of the town, is a great, massive block of handsome Ionic architecture, standing alone, and unsupported[Pg 96] by any thing else in the vicinity, and looking, as I think, heavy and awkward. There is a sort of grandeur about it that the English are fond of, but which, when it is entirely separate from all other architectural constructions, always strikes me unpleasantly. It seems intended as an impressive preface to a great display of art within; but here, as well as at Eaton Park, and other places I have since seen, it is not followed up with great things, the grounds immediately within the grand entrance being very simple, and apparently rather overlooked by the gardener. There is a large archway for carriages, and two smaller ones for those on foot, and, on either side, and over these, are rooms, which probably serve as inconvenient lodges for the labourers. No porter appears, and the gates are freely open to the public.

Walking a short distance up an avenue, we passed through another light iron gate into a thick, luxuriant and diversified garden. Five minutes of admiration, and a few more spent in studying the manner in which art had been employed to obtain from nature so much beauty, and I was ready to admit that in democratic America there was nothing to be thought of as comparable with this People’s Garden. Indeed, gardening had here reached a perfection that I had never before dreamed of. I cannot undertake to describe the effect of so much taste and skill as had evidently been employed; I will only tell you, that we passed by winding paths over acres and acres, with a constant varying surface, where on all sides were growing every variety of shrubs and flowers, with more than natural grace, all set in borders of greenest, closest turf, and all kept with most consummate neatness. At a distance of a quarter of a mile from the gate, we came to an open field of clean, bright green-sward, closely mown, on which a large tent was pitched, and a party of boys in one part, and a party of gentlemen in another, were playing cricket. Beyond this was a large meadow with rich groups of trees, under which a flock of sheep were reposing,[Pg 97] and girls and women with children, were playing. While watching the cricketers, we were threatened with a shower, and hastened back to look for shelter, which we found in a pagoda, on an island approached by a Chinese bridge. It was soon filled, as were the other ornamental buildings, by a crowd of those who, like ourselves, had been overtaken in the grounds by the rain; and I was glad to observe that the privileges of the garden were enjoyed about equally by all classes. There were some who were attended by servants, and sent at once for their carriages, but a large proportion were of the common ranks, and a few women with children, or suffering from ill health, were evidently the wives of very humble labourers. There were a number of strangers, and some we observed with notebooks and portfolios, that seemed to have come from a distance to study from the garden. The summer-houses, lodges, bridges, etc., were all well constructed, and of undecaying materials. One of the bridges which we crossed was of our countryman Remington’s patent, an extremely light and graceful erection.

I obtained most of the following information from the head working-gardener.

The site of the park and garden was, ten years ago, a flat, sterile clay farm. It was placed in the hands of Mr. Paxton, in June, 1844, by whom it was laid out in its present form by June of the following year. Carriage roads, thirty-four feet wide, with borders of ten feet, and walks varying in width, were first drawn and made. The excavation for a pond was also made, and the earth obtained from these sources used for making mounds and to vary the surface, which has been done with much naturalness and taste. The whole ground was thoroughly under-drained, the minor drains of stone, the main, of tile. By these sufficient water is obtained to fully supply the pond, or lake, as they call it, which is from twenty to forty feet wide, and about three feet deep, and meanders for a long distance through the garden. It is stocked with aquatic plants, gold fish and swans.

[Pg 98]

The roads are macadamized. On each side of the carriage way, and of all the walks, pipes for drainage are laid, which communicate with deep main drains that run under the edge of all the mounds or flower beds. The walks are laid first with six inches of fine broken stone, then three inches cinders, and the surface with six inches of fine rolled gravel. All the stones on the ground which were not used for these purposes, were laid in masses of rock-work, and mosses and rock-plants attached to them. The mounds were then planted with shrubs, and heaths and ferns, and the beds with flowering plants. Between these, and the walks and drives, is everywhere a belt of turf (which, by the way, is kept close cut with short, broad scythes, and shears, and swept with hair-brooms, as we saw). Then the rural lodges, temple, pavilion, bridges, orchestra for a band of instrumental music, etc., were built. And so, in one year, the skeleton of this delightful garden was complete.

But this is but a small part. Besides the cricket and an archery ground, large valleys were made verdant, extensive drives arranged, plantations, clumps, and avenues of trees formed, and a large park laid out. And all this magnificent pleasure-ground is entirely, unreservedly, and for ever the people’s own. The poorest British peasant is as free to enjoy it in all its parts as the British queen. More than that, the baker of Birkenhead has the pride of an OWNER in it.

Is it not a grand good thing? But you are inquiring who paid for it. The honest owners—the most wise and worthy townspeople of Birkenhead—in the same way that the New Yorkers pay for “the Tombs” and the Hospital, and the cleaning (as they amusingly say) of their streets.

Of the farm which was purchased, one hundred and twenty acres have been disposed of in the way I have described. The remaining sixty acres, encircling the park and garden, were reserved to be sold or rented, after being well graded, streeted, and planted, for private building lots. Several fine mansions are already built on these (having[Pg 99] private entrances to the park), and the rest now sell at $1.25 a square yard. The whole concern cost the town between five and six hundred thousand dollars. It gives employment, at present, to ten gardeners and labourers in summer, and to five in winter.

The generous spirit and fearless enterprise that has accomplished this, has not been otherwise forgetful of the health and comfort of the poor. Among other things, I remember, a public washing and bathing house for the town is provided. I should have mentioned also, in connection with the market, that in the outskirts of the town there is a range of stone slaughter-houses, with stables, yards, pens, supplies of hot and cold water and other arrangements and conveniences, that enlightened regard for health and decency would suggest.

The consequence of all these sorts of things is, that all about the town lands, which a few years ago were almost worthless wastes, have become of priceless value; where no sound was heard but the bleating of goats and braying of asses complaining of their pasturage, there is now the hasty click and clatter of many hundred busy trowels and hammers. You may drive through wide and thronged streets of stately edifices, where were only a few scattered huts, surrounded by quagmires. Docks of unequalled size and grandeur are building, and a forest of masts grows along the shore; and there is no doubt that this young town is to be not only remarkable as a most agreeable and healthy place of residence, but that it will soon be distinguished for extensive and profitable commerce. It seems to me to be the only town I ever saw that has been really built at all in accordance with the advanced science, taste and enterprising spirit that are supposed to distinguish the nineteenth century. I do not doubt it might be found to have plenty of exceptions to its general character, but I did not inquire for these, nor did I happen to observe them. Certainly, in what I have noticed, it is a model town, and may be held up as an example[Pg 100] not only to philanthropists and men of taste, but to speculators and men of business.

After leaving the park, we ascended a hill, from the top of which we had a fine view of Liverpool and Birkenhead. Its sides were covered with villas, with little gardens about them. The architecture was generally less fantastic, and the style and materials of building more substantial than is usually employed in the same class of residences with us. Yet there was a good deal of the same stuck up and uneasy pretentious air about them that the suburban houses of our own city people so commonly have. Possibly this is the effect of association, in my mind, of steady, reliable worth and friendship with plain or old-fashioned dwellings, for I often find it difficult to discover in the buildings themselves the element of such expression. I am inclined to think it is more generally owing to some disunity in the design,—often, perhaps, to a want of keeping between the mansion and its grounds or its situation. The architect and the gardener do not understand each other, and commonly the owner or resident is totally at variance in his tastes and intentions from both; or the man whose ideas the plan is made to serve, or who pays for it, has no true independent taste, but had fancies to be accommodated, which only follow confusedly after custom or fashion. I think, with Ruskin, it is a pity that every man’s house cannot be really his own, and that he can not make all that is true, beautiful, and good in his own character, tastes, pursuits, and history manifest in it.

But however fanciful and uncomfortable many of the villa houses about Liverpool and Birkenhead appear at first sight, the substantial and thorough manner in which most of them are built will atone for many faults. The friendship of nature has been secured to them. Dampness, heat, cold, will be welcome to do their best. Every day they will improve. In fifty or a hundred years fashions may change, and they will appear, perhaps, quaint, possibly grotesque; but still strong, home-like, and hospitable. They have no[Pg 101] shingles to rot, no glued and puttied and painted gimcrackery to warp and crack and moulder; and can never look so shabby, and desolate, and dreary, as will nine-tenths of the buildings of the same denomination now erecting about New York, almost as soon as they lose the raw, cheerless, imposter-like airs which seem almost inseparable from their newness.

A FERME ORNÉE

A few miles further on we came to a large, park-like pasture, bounded by a neatly trimmed hedge, and entered by a simple gate, from which a private road ran curving among a few clumps of trees to a mansion about a furlong distant. We entered, and rested ourselves awhile at the foot of some large oaks. The house was nearly hidden among trees, and these, seen across the clear grass land, were the finest groups of foliage we had ever seen. A peculiar character was given it by one or two copper-leaved beeches—large, tall trees, thickly branched from the very surface of the ground. (These trees, which are frequently used with great good effect in landscape gardening in England, are rare in America, though they may be had at the nurseries. There are two sorts, one much less red than the other.) The cattle in this pasture-lawn were small and black, brisk and wild-looking, but so tame in reality, that as we lay under the tree, they came up and licked our hands like dogs. The whole picture completely realized Willis’s beautiful ideal, “The Cottage Insoucieuse.”

EATON PARK

In the afternoon we walked to Eaton Park.

Probably there is no object of art that Americans of cultivated taste generally more long to see in Europe than[Pg 102] an English park. What artist so noble, has often been my thought, as he who, with far-reaching conception of beauty and designing power, sketches the outline, writes the colours, and directs the shadows of a picture so great that Nature shall be employed upon it for generations, before the work he has arranged for her shall realize his intentions.[17]

... We came to the great castellated edifice that I have before spoken of as the gateway to the park. Such we were told it was, and were therefore surprised to find within only a long, straight road, with but tolerable mowing lots alternating by the side of it, with thick plantations of trees, no way differing from the twenty-year old natural wood of my own farm, except that hollies, laurels, and our common dogwood were planted regularly along the edge.

We tramped on for several miles through this tame scenery and most ungentlemanly farming, until it became really tiresome. At length the wood fell back, and the road was lined for some way with a double row of fine elms. Still no deer. A little further, and we came to a cottage most beautifully draped with ivy; passed through another gate. Ah! here is the real park at last.

A gracefully, irregular, gently undulating surface of close-cropped pasture land, reaching way off inimitably; dark green in colour; very old, but not very large trees scattered singly and in groups—so far apart as to throw long unbroken shadows across broad openings of light, and leave the view in several directions unobstructed for a long distance. Herds of fallow-deer, fawns, cattle, sheep and lambs quietly feeding near us, and moving slowly in masses at a distance; a warm atmosphere, descending sun, and sublime shadows from fleecy clouds transiently darkening in succession, sunny surface, cool woodside, flocks and herds, and foliage.

[Pg 103]

The road ran on winding through this. We drew a long breath, and walked slowly for a little way, then turned aside at the nearest tree, and lay down to take it all in satisfactorily.

We concluded that the sheep and cattle were of the most value for their effect in the landscape; but it was a little exciting to us to watch the deer, particularly as we would sometimes see them in a large herd leisurely moving across an opening among the trees, a long way off, and barely distinguishable.

It is not my business to attempt a criticism of “the finest specimen of the pointed Gothic” in England; but I may honestly say that it did not, as a whole, produce the expected effect of grandeur or sublimity upon us, without trying to find reasons for the failure. Even when we came to look at it closely, we found little to admire. There was no great simple beauty in it as a mass, nor yet vigorous original character enough in the details to make them an interesting study. The edifice is long and low, and covered with an immense amount of meaningless decoration.

Such was our first impression, and we were greatly disappointed, you may be sure. We admired it more afterwards on the other side, from the middle of a great garden, where it seems to stand much higher, being set up on terraces, and gaining much, I suspect, from the extension of architectural character to the grounds in its front. Here we acknowledged a good deal of magnificence in its effect. Still it seemed as if it might have been obtained in some other style, with less labour, and was much frittered away in the confusion of ornament.

This garden is a curiosity. It is in the geometrical style, and covers eight acres, it is said, though it does not seem nearly that to the eye. It is merely a succession of small arabesque figures of fine grass or flower beds, set in hard,[Pg 104] rolled, dark-coloured gravel. The surface, dropping by long terraces from the steps of the hall to the river, is otherwise only varied by stiff pyramidal yews and box, and a few vases. On the whole, the effect of it in connection with the house, and looking towards it, is good, more so than I should have expected; and it falls so rapidly, that it affects the landscape seen in this distance from the house but very little. This is exquisitely beautiful, looking across the Dee, over a lovely valley towards some high, blue mountains. From other parts of the hall grand vistas open through long avenues of elms, and there are some noble single trees about the lawn.

This English elm is a much finer tree than I had been aware of—very tall, yet with drooping limbs and fine thick foliage; not nearly as fine as a single tree as our elm, but even more effective, I think, in masses, because thicker and better filled out in its general outline.

ENGLISH LANDSCAPE

I must say, that on the whole, the agriculture of Cheshire, as the first sample of that of England which is presented to me, is far below my expectations. There are sufficient reasons to expect that we shall find other parts much superior to it; but what we have seen quite disposes of the common picture which our railroad and stage-coach travellers are in the habit of giving to our imagination, by saying that “all England is like a garden.” Meaning only a “landscape garden,” a beautiful and harmonious combination of hill and dale, with the richest masses of trees, and groups and lines of shrubbery, the greenest turf and most picturesque buildings, it might be appropriately said of many parts, particularly in the south of the country. But, with reference to cultivation, and the productiveness of the land, it might be quite as truly applied to some small districts of our own country as to this part of England.

[Pg 105]

... We reach another lane and cultivated fields again, and, being on elevated ground at the knarly feet of a glorious, breezy, gray, old beech-tree, lay ourselves down, and, looking back upon the extensive landscape, tell our friend in what it differs from American scenery.

The great beauty and peculiarity of the English landscape is to be found in the frequent long, graceful lines of deep green hedges and hedge-row timber, crossing hill, valley, and plain, in every direction; and in the occasional large trees, dotting the broad fields, either singly or in small groups, left to their natural open growth, (for ship-timber, and, while they stand, for cattle shades,) therefore branching low and spreading wide, and more beautiful, much more beautiful, than we often allow our trees to make themselves. The less frequent brilliancy of broad streams or ponds of water, also distinguishes the prospect from those we are accustomed to, though there are often small brooks or pools, and much marshy land, and England may be called a well-watered country. In the foreground you will notice the quaint buildings, generally pleasing objects in themselves, often supporting what is most agreeable of all, and what you can never fail to admire, never see any thing ugly or homely under, a curtain of ivy or other creepers; the ditches and the banks by their side, on which the hedges are planted; the clean and careful cultivation, and general tidiness of the agriculture; and the deep, narrow, crooked, gulch-like lane, or the smooth, clean, matchless, broad highway. Where trees are set in masses for ornament, the Norway spruce and the red beech generally give a dark, ponderous tone, which we seldom see in America; and in a hilly and unfertile country there are usually extensive patches of the larch, having a brown hue. The English elm is the most common tree in small parks or about country-houses. It appears, at a little distance, more like our hickory, when the latter grows upon a rich soil, and is not cramped, as sometimes in our river intervals, than any other American tree.

[Pg 106]

There seems to me to be a certain peculiarity in English foliage, which I can but little more than allude to, not having the skill to describe. You seem to see each particular leaf, (instead of a confused leafiness,) more than in our trees; or it is as if the face of each leaf was parallel, and more equally lighted than in our foliage. It is perhaps only owing to a greater density, and better filling up, and more even growth of the outer twigs of the trees, than is common in our drier climate. I think that our maple woods have more resemblance to it than others.

There is usually a much milder light over an English landscape than an American, and the distance and shady parts are more indistinct. It is rare that there is not a haziness, slightly like that of our Indian summer in the atmosphere, and the colours of every thing, except of the foliage are less brilliant and vivacious than we are accustomed to. The sublime or the picturesque in nature is much more rare in England, except on the sea-coast, than in America; but there is every where a great deal of quiet, peaceful, graceful beauty, which the works of man have generally added to, and which I remember but little at home that will compare with. This Herefordshire reminds me of the valley in Connecticut, between Middletown and Springfield. The valley of the Mohawk and the upper part of the Hudson, is also in some parts English-like.

Soon after leaving Warminster, began a very different style of landscape from what I have before seen: long ranges and large groups of high hills with gentle and gracefully undulating slopes; broad and deep cells between and within them, through which flow in tortuous channels streamlets of exceedingly pure, sparkling water. These hills are bare of trees, except rarely a close body of them, covering a space of perhaps an acre, and evidently planted by man. Within the shelter of these you will sometimes[Pg 107] see that there is a large farm-house with a small range of stables. The valleys are cultivated, but the hills in greater part are covered, without the slightest variety, except what arises from the changing contour of the ground, with short, wiry grass, standing thinly, but sufficiently close to give the appearance at a little distance from the eye, of a smooth, velvety, green surface. Among the first of the hills I observed, at a high elevation, long angular ramparts and earth-works, all greened over. Within them at the summit of the hill were several extensive tumuli, evidently artificial, (though I find nothing about it in the books,) and on the top of one of these was a shepherd and dog and a large flock of sheep, clear and coldly distinct, and appearing of gigantic size against the leaden clouds behind. In the course of the day I met with many of these flocks, and nearly all of the hill-land seemed given up to them. I was upon the border, in fact, of the great Southdown district, and, during the next week, the greater part of the country through which we were travelling, was of the same general character of landscape, though frequently not as green, varied, and pleasing as in these outskirts of it.

THE DESCRIPTION OF SCENERY

There is always a strong temptation upon the traveller to endeavor to so describe fine scenery, and the feelings which it has occasioned him, that they may be reproduced to the imagination of his friends. Judging from my own experience, this purpose always fails. I have never yet seen any thing celebrated in scenery, of which I had previously obtained a correct conception. Certain striking, prominent points, that the power of language has been most directed to the painting of, almost invariably disappoint, and seem little and commonplace, after the exaggerated forms which have been brought before the mind’s eye. Beauty, grandeur,[Pg 108] impressiveness, in any way, from scenery, is not often to be found in a few prominent, distinguishable features, but in the manner and the unobserved materials with which these are connected and combined. Clouds, lights, states of the atmosphere, and circumstances that we cannot always detect, affect all landscapes, and especially landscapes in which the vicinity of a body of water is an element, much more than we are often aware. So it is that the impatient first glance of the young traveller, or the impertinent critical stare of the old tourist, is almost never satisfied, if the honest truth be admitted, in what it has been led to previously imagine. I have heard “Niagara is a mill-dam,” “Rome is a humbug.”

The deep sentiments of nature that we sometimes seem to have been made the confidant of, when among the mountains, or on the moors or the ocean,—even those of man wrought out in architecture and sculpture and painting, or of man working in unison with Nature, as sometimes in the English parks, on the Rhine, and here on the Isle of Wight,—such revealings are beyond words; they never could be transcribed into note-books and diaries, and so descriptions of them become caricatures, and when we see them, we at first say we are disappointed that we find not the monsters we were told of.

Dame Nature is a gentlewoman. No guide’s fee will obtain you her favour, no abrupt demand; hardly will she bear questioning, or direct, curious gazing at her beauty; least of all, will she reveal it truly to the hurried glance of the passing traveller, while he waits for his dinner, or fresh horses, or fuel and water; always we must quietly and unimpatiently wait upon it. Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; the beauty has entered our souls; we know not exactly when or how, but going away we remember it with a tender, subdued, filial-like joy.

Does this seem nonsense to you? Very likely, for I am talking of what I don’t understand. Nature treats me so[Pg 109] strangely; it’s past my speaking sensibly of, and yet, as a part of my travelling experience, I would speak of it. At times I seem myself to be her favourite, and she brings me to my knees in deep feeling, such as she blesses no other with; oftener I see others in ecstasies, while I am left to sentimentalize and mourn, or to be critical, and sneering, and infidel. Nonsense still; but tell me, do you think it is only for greed of trouts that your great and sensitive man lingers long, intently stooping over dark pools in the spray of the mountain torrents, or stealing softly a way through the bending rushes, or kneeling lowly on the darkest verdure of the shaded meadow? What else? I know not what he thinks, but of this I am assured: while his mind is most intent upon his trivial sport, his heart and soul will be far more absorbent of the rugged strength, the diffuse, impetuous brilliance, the indefinite gliding grace, or the peaceful twilight loveliness, of the scenes around him, than if he went out searching, labouring directly for it as for bread and fame.

The greater part of the Isle of Wight is more dreary, desolate, bare, and monotonous than any equal extent of land you probably ever saw in America—would be, rather, if it were not that you are rarely out of sight of the sea; and no landscape, of which that is a part, ever can be without variety and ever-changing interest. It is, in fact down-land in the interior, exactly like that I described in Wiltshire, and sometimes breaking down into such bright dells as I there told of. But on the south shore it is rocky, craggy; and after you have walked through a rather dull country, though pleasing on the whole, for hours after landing, you come gradually to where the majesty of vastness, peculiar to the downs and the ocean, alternates or mingles with dark, picturesque, rugged ravines, chasms, and water-gaps, sublime rock-masses, and soft, warm smiling inviting dells and dingles; and, withal, there is a strange and fascinating enrichment of half-tropical foliage, so deep, graceful, and luxuriant, as I never saw before any where in the world. All this district is thickly[Pg 110] inhabited, and yet so well covered with verdure, or often so tastefully appropriate—quiet, cosy, ungenteel, yet elegant—are the cottages, that they often add to, rather than insult and destroy, the natural charm of their neighbourhood. I am sorry to say, that among the later erections there are a number of very strong exceptions to this remark.

As to Mr. Olmsted’s travels in 1856, we have a memorandum that he visited Rome, Genoa, Florence, Prague, Leipzig, and Dresden as well as London. We have a delightful reference to his brief Italian visit in a letter written to Charles Eliot, then abroad, March 4, 1886:

From the letters and books relating to his Southern journeys, there is less of scenery or of rural art. He was concerned with giving a true picture of the economic and social conditions in the South, especially as affected by slavery, and his observations were directed mainly to men and their affairs rather than to their landscape surroundings. There are, however, numerous passages of great interest in this regard, especially on the Texas journey of 1853-4. Several are here given.

One is written from San Antonio, Texas, March 12, 1854, to a friend.

The following selections are from the Back Country book:

THE LANDSCAPE—ROSE HEDGES

Although in his Walks and Talks the public had ample evidence of Mr. Olmsted’s taste in scenery, he was known principally as a literary man, a writer on agriculture, and a student of our social and economic conditions. His reasoned observations had been widely circulated through his letters in the New York Times and the books subsequently made up from these,[19] which are still considered to give the truest picture of the South before the war. Mr. Raymond of the Times is quoted in 1854 as thinking “highly of his powers of observation and detailed reporting, giving just the facts that people want.”

Among his intimates he was known as an enthusiast and keen analyst in debate. It is pleasant to quote two references to these qualities in letters, which were prophetic, in spirit if not in exact detail:

And in the Life and Letters of Charles Loring Brace,[20] there is a letter probably late in 1848:

Although he had not had a chance to prove his executive ability in any public capacity, he was known as a capable manager in the handling of farm labor. Very early in his agricultural career, there is an evidence of this in a letter (1848) to his brother:

His democratic ideals in general were well understood from his writings. There are some passages from letters written early in his career as a landscape architect which further interpret these with special regard to his chosen profession.

The letter of 1860, addressed to a subordinate who had referred to the difference in their “stations in life,” contains the following:

In 1863, when the political situation on the Central Park made it difficult for Mr. Olmsted to entertain the idea of returning to his work there, he wrote to Mr. Vaux from California:

Mr. Olmsted’s own summary of his fitness for the opportunity which presented itself in 1857, he gave in Spoils of the Park, written in 1882, to be reprinted in full in Volume Two of this work.

It is worth while also, perhaps, to give in conclusion two of the endorsements submitted with his Central Park application in 1857. (See facsimile opposite.)

Similar petitions bear the signatures of Russell Sturgis, Horace Greeley, George H. Putnam, Henry Holt, Whitelaw Reid, William Cullen Bryant, Bayard Taylor, Alexander Hamilton, Philip Schuyler, John M. Scribner, August Belmont, Morris K. Jesup, Henry Havemeyer, E. D. Morgan, Roosevelt & Co., and many others.

Pleasantest of all was the letter from Professor Asa Gray:

Facsimile of Petition to Secure Appointment of Mr. Olmsted as Superintendent of Central Park, 1857

[Pg 121]

[Pg 123]

PART III
AMERICAN LANDSCAPE GARDENING IN 1857

Almost every large town in the civilized world now has public pleasure grounds in some form....

Birkenhead park [which Mr. Olmsted had visited in 1850][23] is a piece of ground of 185 acres in a suburb of Liverpool, and is surrounded by villas the grounds of which connect with it. Though small, it is by its admirable plan the most complete, and for its age the most agreeable park in Europe. It was designed and its construction superintended by Sir Joseph Paxton and Mr. Kemp....

In the United States there is, as yet, scarcely a finished park or promenade ground deserving mention. In the few small fields of rank hay grasses and spindle-trunked trees, to which the name is sometimes applied, the custom of the promenade has never been established. Yet there is scarcely a town or thriving village in which there is not found some sort of inconvenient and questionable social exchange of this nature. Sometimes it is a graveyard, sometimes a beach or wharf, sometimes a certain part of a certain street; sometimes interest in a literary or a charitable, a military, or even a mercantile enterprise, is the ostensible object which brings people together. But in its European signification the promenade exists only in the limited grounds attached to the capitol and to the “white house” at Washington, and in the yet half-made park of New York....

[Pg 126]

Landscape gardening in the United States[24] has hitherto been chiefly directed to the improvement of naturally wooded scenery, and that on a small scale, yet in many instances, of which the best are on the banks of the Hudson, with admirable results. Publicly the art has been chiefly directed, also, to the improvement of naturally wooded picturesque scenery in the formation of rural cemeteries.

In the various Picturesque Tours of Gilpin, and the voluminous Essays on the Picturesque by Sir Uvedale Price, the true principles of art applicable to the creation of scenery were laboriously studied and carefully defined. Shenstone, Mason and Knight, by their poems, materially aided the revivification of the art. In more recent times the good service of Repton, Loudon, Paxton, Kemp, our own Downing, and other artists and writers on the subject during the present century merits warm acknowledgment. Downing’s works especially should be in every village school library.

With reference to your undertaking there is less room for choice than may be supposed among the landscape gardeners or landscape architects of the country. (I have come to prefer the latter term, tho’ I much objected to it when it was first given me. I prefer it because it helps to establish the important idea of the distinction of my profession from that of gardening, as that of architecture from building—the distinction of an art of design.)

Of those who have given themselves the title of landscape gardeners not one of many more than a hundred have the smallest right to it. As a rule they are further from it than the average citizen of fair general education. This because the most of them have passed the best educational years of their lives in close and toilsome confinement to matters horticultural, botanical and on a small scale decorative, pursuing a course in this and other respects in which faculties of close observation and handicraft skill are cultivated. A course in fact such as you might prescribe for a patient whom you wished to wean from too great susceptibility to and interest in grasses, bushes and trees as components of natural scenery. The gardening to which they apply the term landscape is just that, in its essence, which the term landscape gardening was first used as a means to rule out of view.

Hamerton in his treatise of Landscape says that “scape” in this word was from the same root and properly has the same significance with ship, e. g. in friendship—meaning, that is to say, the comprehensive state, to the eye, of the land or region to which it is applied. (I should rather say the character, broadly considered, of the scenery of a region.) Of late the training of gardeners has been not at all to landscape in this sense but to elements, incidents and features of the materials of landscape considered by themselves; to make[Pg 128] them artists possibly in a certain way, as an ordinary house furnisher may be trained to something of art in respect to articles of furniture, pictures, books and bric-à-brac, but not artists in respect to scenery, as scenery acts in the emotional nature of some of us. That a training which is innocently assumed to be a training in landscape gardening is a training in fact away from it, I have often seen evidences. For example, a man came to me with a letter of introduction in which it was stated that he was a landscape gardener. As the best feast that I could offer a visitor of this description fresh from the old world, I dropped my business for a day to take him up the Hudson. It was soon apparent that he took less than ordinary interest in its natural scenery. When we came near to the best of it I had to urge him to move to a position on the boat where he could see it. Having done so, in a minute or two he left it, and when near West Point, I found him below sitting at a table with a bottle of porter. Yet when I took him to the grounds of a friend’s country-seat he proved to be really an enthusiast in particular matters of gardening.

I have seen much of two of the most accomplished gardeners in the United States but I never saw either of them look at anything a stone’s throw away or show the slightest interest in or understanding of landscape. There is nothing to prevent them from presenting themselves in good faith as landscape gardeners. In conversing with one previously called a florist but who had offered himself and been appointed landscape gardener of an important work, I found that he applied the term ‘harmony,’ with reference to the grouping of trees, on the supposition that it meant botanical kinship. In the gap between two masses of fine indigenous foliage he had planted some Chinese curios not only in complete discord with them but where, if they lived long, they would screen off his finest distant view.

Even of landscape gardening rightly so called, the practice of most has been at best upon small grounds or upon[Pg 129] grounds in which the convenience and probable wants of but a single family and its selected guests were to be considered, a good design for which is a very different thing from good design for grounds in which the movements of many thousands are to be provided for and precautions taken not only against careless and erratic movements but against occasional malevolent torrents of a disorderly rabble.

Of the thirty-four plans of so many assumed landscape gardeners offered to Commissioners of the Central Park in 1857, but one made the slightest provision for requirements which everyone now sees it was absolutely necessary should be provided for. If any one of the others had been adopted an almost complete reconstruction of the Park would before this time have been necessary. Among the plans offered, that which, from the opportunities and well-earned reputation of the planner, I had expected to be the best, aimed at nothing more than a connected and diversified series of effects appropriate to confined private suburban pleasure grounds.

Of twenty-two plans obtained ten years ago by the Boston Park Commissioners—several of which had cost the planners over a thousand dollars each, and were most painstakingly studied—even that which they adjudged to be the best was after a few months entirely abandoned. (They finally came to me for a plan which when published was bitterly denounced, declared publicly, by an alleged landscape gardener of large experience, wholly impracticable and so held up to scorn that an association of citizens—large property holders—privately employed a civil engineer to professionally examine and report upon it. It has been carried out with no essential variation and all objections have fallen to the ground.)

I have written all the foregoing to justify the opinion I now give you that in all Europe and America, among all the men who with no dishonest intention take the name of landscape gardeners (or architects) there are very few who have[Pg 130] shown or are likely to possess any respectable power of dealing with problems of the class that properly come before the Park Commissioners of a large and growing city.

Of those among them likely to be available to you the man of highest proved ability is my old partner Calvert Vaux of New York. There are respects of design in which he is probably the superior of any living man.... There are in the country to my knowledge but two other (properly speaking) landscape designers who have had any experience that would specially qualify them to advise you.

One of them is H. W. S. Cleveland. He is a cultivated Boston born and bred man, has been employed in responsible positions on the public parks of Brooklyn, Chicago and Minneapolis. He is the oldest landscape gardener in the country....

The other is J. Weidenmann, the author of a book published by the Appletons[25] on landscape gardening; a Swiss by birth. He laid out and superintended for years, the public park at Hartford, Conn....

No doubt there are other promising men whom I don’t know or think of, for the profession is not organized and every man fights on his own hook.

There are three or four men who tell fine stories of themselves as landscape gardeners, even in some cases showing what appear to be reputable testimonials, whom I should like to caution you against but I do not feel quite justified in mentioning them by names. One, an Englishman, I have good reason to believe a knave. Another, a clever young fiddler, comes from the north of Europe originally, later from Paris. Another has published a pamphlet on Landscape Gardening in which he aims to appear a man of Science and shows himself a hopeless ignoramus.

If there were fewer pretenders to the landscape art in 1857, there was also an even less developed public taste, and Mr. Olmsted could scarcely have been precipitated into a field where his already recognized talent of literary expression could have joined to greater advantage with his appreciation of scenery, his latent genius as an artist, and his knowledge as a practical farmer.