* » 1 \ * \ V "^ c'?- ':T^*\^' "C if -sy \^ son, /^. "^'*-s A \^ ^'^. r- "O. ^v ' o " ,0-' ^ 'is- ^ 'X^ t; '"oo^ v^^ '"''^. .'''. -J- % / ^ A •^ ^-c. ,,^^ vN '> aV^^ '>!, y ^ ..# s^ . */''o. c .^'' ' ') o V *• . .0 A ' ^., ' •\ -^^ N c ^ xOe< ,0-' ■^.^' .^• o^ The Landscape Beautiful THE POTATO PATCH ll'iu. H. Zcrhc The Landscape Beautiful A Study of the Utility of the Natural Landscape, Its Relation to Human Life and Happiness, With the Application of These Principles in Landscape Garden- ing, and in Art in General By FRANK A. WAUGH ILLUSTRATED BY MEMBERS OF THE POSTAL PHOTOGRAPHIC CLUB NEW YORK ORANGE JUDD COMPANY 1910 Cp l^^"' Copyright, 19t*, by ORANGE JUDD COMPANY Printed in U. S. A. CCi.A2:iviei4U To the Postal Photographic Club ^^^HE illustrations in the book will seem ^^ like old friends to you, I know. The orig- inals are yours. They have all gone the rounds in our albums, and you have criticised and praised them with that candor and generosity so characteristic of our fraternity. Several of them have been prize winners by judgment of your suffrages. In the issue of the book I am deeply grateful to you all, and especially to those particular members who graciously loaned their best pictures for the improvement of my essays. In a large way you have all helped in the making of this book, for the principles, opinions and observations here set down have nearly all borne the heat of discussion with you in the club note-books. These friendly discussions in which I have par- ticipated for more than a decade, have been like a liberal education to me. The Postal Photographic Club has been my school of art, — my photographic alma mater, if I might call myself a reputable graduate, — and you have been at once my teachers and THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL my classmates. I think I may justly love you a little, and, wishing to earn your indul- gent remembrance, may proffer you this memento of my labors. These essays, if you try to read them, may seem less familiar than the pictures, but even the farthest-fetched of them will not be wholly strange, I hope, seeing how often we have gone over such matters together. Every theme bends to the attempt to see the beauty that is in the world, and to make that beauty visible, worth while, and regnant in the lives of men and women. For we all need to know and follow beauty as we need to know and follow truth and duty. F. A. WAUGH. Amherst, Massachusetts, January, 19x0. VI Program of Essays PAGE 1. On the Relation of Landscape to Life ii 2. On the Ministry of Trees ... 25 3. On Some Other Elements of Land- scape . . . . . . . . . 39 4. On Looking at the Sky . . 53 5. On the Weather 67 6. On the Art Which Mends Nature . 81 7. Concerning the American Land- scape 95 8. On American Landscape Gardening 1 1 1 9. As to the Field of Criticism . .135 10. On American Landscape Gardeners 149 11. On American Masterpieces of Land- scape Architecture 177 12. On the Improvement of the Open Country 203 13. On the Ownership of Scenery . 223 vii THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL PAGE 14. On the Decorative Use of Landscape 237 15. As to Landscape in Literature . .249 16. On the Beauty of Landscape Psy- chologically Considered . .265 17. Suggesting Some Practical Applica- tions 297 Summary . , . ;. , ,.. . . 321 xnocx • • ;, uj [t< i,j ;,j , . 37 List of Illustrations FACING PAGE The Potato Patch Frontispiece Digging Quahaugs .,.,.,,.... i6 ^ A Halt for Lunch ...,,.,... 17 Helping Grandpa 24 At the Well 25 Edge of the Woods 32,' Pine Trees . 33 The Open Sea 48, River Scene 49 Looking up the Valley ,., . 56 ' Afternoon Clouds 57 Winter Woods 72 Sunlight and Breeze 73 Royal Palm Avenue 88 -^ Souvenir of Petit Trianon, Versailles ... 89 The Desert 104 The Path Along the Hillside ...... 105 In the Park 120 Rhododendrons 121 Returning to the Fold . . . ..... 136 Veterans 137 Along the Stream ......... 152 Bend of the River 153 Flood-tide at Duck Island . . . ,. . . 160 ix THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL FACING PAGE The Frog Pond i6i The Hillside 176'' The Four-arch Bridge . 177 Farm Road in Winter 184'' Earth's Awakening 185 Where the Waters Meet 208 "^ Summer Landscape 209 In Gloucester Harbor 224 •- Aurora Lake 225 The River Path 232 / Sand and Sea 233 Pine Trees, Cape Cod 240 y A Path in the Snow 241 The Hand to the Plow 256 Haying Time 257 Old Friends 264 The Path to the Woods 265 Brown October 272 The Meadow Brook 273 "Women Must Wait" 280 The Charles River 281 The Fragrant Fruit Trees, Blossom Full . 304 The Ford 305 Woodland Mist 312 The Harvest Field 313 z ESSAY NUMBER ONE On the Relation of Land- scape to Life The difference between landscape and land- scape is small, but there is a great difference in be- holders. There is nothing so wonderful in an}) landscape as the necessity of being beautiful, under which ever}) landscape lies. Emerson, "Nature" 5mi7e O voluptuous cool-breath* d earth! Earth of the slumbering and liquid trees! Earth of departed sunset — earth of the mountains mist^-topt! Earth of the vitreous power of the full moon just tinged with blue! Earth of shine and dark mottling the tide of the river! Earth of the limpid gra}) of clouds brighter and clearer for m}) sa^e! Far swooping elbow'd earth — rich apple-blossomed earth! Smile for })our lover comes — Prodigal, })ou have given me love — therefore I to you give love! O unspeakable, passionate love! Walt Whitman, "Song of Myself" 13 ^he Landscape Beautiful ON THE RELATION OF LANDSCAPE TO LIFE '^^HAT charming essayist who wrote a ^^ lecture on the relation of literature to life did not hesitate to claim every- thing for literature. He made it his thesis that literature is really the whole stream of life so far as the thoughts and passions of mankind have any continuity through the generations. It would be too much to say of landscape that it is the whole of life, but this is true at least, that life, as we know it, could not exist apart from the landscape. Human life has a few fundamentally necessary conditions, such as food, speech, a social organization, a certain conception of the Infinite Power, and a ready contact with the material world. I have not put litera- ture in this category. This may look like taking the negative against Charles Dudley 15 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Warner's proposition; but, in the first place, the foregoing list is not intended to be a complete one; and, in the second place, I am not convinced that literature is really one of the conditions of life. It seems to me to be rather one of its products. Landscape is one of the fundamental conditions. The contact with the physical world is threefold— carnal, intellectual and spiritual. Out of the earth we first get sub- sistence for the body; second, our ideas of things and phenomena; and third, our ex- perience of beauty and our clue to the para- dise not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In the first order of earth contact we may or may not know the landscape. The miner, toiling in the coal shaft, may never realize to himself the existence of the sky, the water and the green rolling hills. But the farmer plows and sows and harvests the landscape, and thus in his carnal strug- gle for food comes into conscious and be- nign relationship with the fields. In the second order of contact with the physical world, the landscape is woven into the very fiber of all our mental processes. Our knowledge of space and number, and all the most elementary ideas psychology has ever 16 o _^ J3 "Si < 2 i 1 o o ^ ■£ o -; (I, ^ i ^ ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE named, are suggested, illustrated and demonstrated to us by what we see in the external world out-of-doors. But most of all the landscape becomes a necessary con- dition of our human life when we come into contact with it through our aesthetic and spiritual faculties. It is at this point that landscape be- comes indispensable. Robinson Crusoe lived a very human sort of life with the outdoor world and without society. Jeremiah in the pit had human society, but no land- scape. Who would not prefer to be Crusoe? What notion of beauty could any one have who had never seen the landscape? Of her first introduction to society Miranda was able to exclaim, "How beauteous man- kind is!" But if all her life she had been locked into a dungeon or a palace what might she have cried on her first sight of the beautiful world? In this life we are taught chiefly by three great agencies — by other men, by the printed page, and by the landscape; that is, by what we see of the natural world. Of these three Adam at first had only the landscape, showing this to be the most primitive and elementary of all. And it is 17 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL noteworthy (with all high respect to Mother Eve), that when human society, the next great teacher, entered the world, sorrow came also. So that from the first day till now the one has taught us of pain and sin (and forgiveness, to be sure!), while the other has taught of peace and beauty and hope. It is most simply and emphatically true that the landscape is our chief teacher in the world of beauty. The lake, the river, the hills, the sky, the sunset, these (with the human form) are the great themes of all art. Painting, poetry and music en- deavor to interpret to us what here we may see face to face. And what part of most men's lives is painting or music, or even poetry and architecture, beside the landscape? Once or twice in a lifetime we visit the great art gallery, or we hear the best music; but every day we have the ever- lasting hills. Occasionally a line of poetry stirs our whole soul; but every breath of wind in the pine-trees can tell the same story. The landscape is omnipresent. All these other things are accidental and escapable. It is like the air that we breathe 18 ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE sleeping or waking compared with the champagne that we taste once a year at the annual reunion. The champagne costs more: we are apt to notice its effects more. Very likely it gives us a headache. One can take a long ocean trip and rid himself of the newspapers. One can go to Bolivia or Hudson's Bay and get away from society. But even in New York or Paris it is hard to evade the landscape. Some persons there are in the slums of the great cities who come near doing it; but they are comparatively few, and their wretched condition shows too well what the penalty is. And, simply enough, those philanthropists who are seeking to help such wretched ones — submerged in society — use as a chief means the introduction of more landscape into their lives. For landscape is one of the greatest curative agencies. Hospitals are built in the country whenever that is possible. The fresh-air fund is established to provide sick and dying ones with some touch of the healing landscape. The fashionable physi- cians prescribe country air and change of scenery for their wealthy patients. The landscape has almost unthinkable 19 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL sanitative power. When a man's brains or nerves have become so clogged or worn by city excitements that they can no longer perform their functions, he goes back to the fields and woods to be renovated. A wise man takes regular baths to keep his body clean. The mind, which is more sensitive to all disturbances than the body, needs equally regular ablutions. Parks are put into cities for this very sort of sanitative service which they are able to render. The power of environment upon every living species has come to be accepted as a fundamental law of life. There are those, indeed, who read into this principle the whole law, and who assert that it accounts for everything. Environment certainly does exercise an almost unlimited influence, no less upon human life than upon the con- stitution of a mollusk or the form of an orchid. And in this all but all-powerful environment what part does the landscape play for us? Is it not, in fact, the principal part? For we are environed night and day, from birth till death, by the landscape. Its power may be judged further from its effects. Compare the people of Switzer- land with those of Holland. What makes 20 ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE the differences between them? Is it edu- cation? Education has grown out of his- tory and literature. What have been back o£ these? Away down at the root the primary and irresolvable difference is chiefly one of landscape and of climate; — and climate is one-half landscape and the other half the result of landscape. We can institute a similar comparison on our own soil. Hardly could men be more unlike than the cowboys of New Mexico and the careful close-fisted sons of New England. Yet the cowboys and the New Englanders are own brothers. Some of them slept together in the same trundle- beds, and went to the same schools. We can see the effects of landscape in our own friends. Mary Winthrop has never been the same since she went to live in Colorado. The large mountains have taught her to regard the great qualities in life; but they have made her neglectful of her manicure set. Paul and Harvey Hud- son were as much alike as two brothers usually are when they used to go to school in Schoharie County, New York; but they are decidedly different now. Paul has lived twenty years in Concord, New Hampshire, 21 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL where he has his garden and all his polite and well-ordered pleasures. Harvey has been twenty-two years in Iowa in the real estate business. There is no need to make an inventory of their present differences. Any one can do that without ever seeing the two men. Harvey's character is like the broad open plains; Paul's is like the rich and beautiful, but immovable granite hills. In our own characters, if we will look into them, we may trace yet more plainly the effects of landscape. I know very well what those twenty-five years on the Kansas plains have meant to me, and also the years in the mountains. It is hardly necessary to recall how often the landscape has been the inspiration for the best artists, — especially poets and painters. This ought to be noticed, too, that the best poetry began with love of nature and after men left off flirting with impossible goddesses; and also that paint- ing was stiff and formal till the landscape began to dominate it. So that in all strict- ness one may say that in art the dis- covery of landscape has made humanity more human and divinity more divine. It 22 ON LANDSCAPE AND LIFE I gives the former its proper environment, and the latter its material expression. In large part the effect of landscape on human lives is unnoticed and unknown even to the personality affected. The greatest and deepest and most ineffaceable results are probably of this sort. Yet it is no rare thing to find an attachment to landscape, both conscious and powerful, thus acknowledging its influence. My friend Mr. Kinney has a fruit-storage house on the top of which he has built a cupola for the special purpose of viewing the country round. It is hardly possible for a visitor to leave the farm without first fol- lowing Mr. Kinney up the steep and narrow stairs to have a look at the lake and the mountains. There is nothing about the homestead, not even the magnificent apple orchard, that the owner is prouder of or enjoys more. The doctors have discovered a new name for an old disease — the name is nostalgia, which, translated into English, means, "We want to see our home again." There were dark and terrible days of homesickness for the men and women who went from New England to settle the great 23 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL plains. Many a woman of gentle nurture really died in the trial. And the great longing was not to see the old schoolmates, nor even, — in most cases, — to see parents or brothers and sisters, but to look once more on the peaceful green hills, on the dark pine forests and the quiet clustering houses of the village in the valley. 24 2 « o ESSAY NUMBER TWO On the Ministry of Trees The pleasing tranquillity of groves hath ever been in high repute among the innocent and refined part of mankind. Indeed, no species of land- scape is so fitted for meditation. The forest at- tracts the attention h^ its grandeur; and the park scener}) h^ its beauty; . . . but the uniform sameness of the grove leaves the eye disengaged; and the feet wandering at pleasure where they are confined by no path, want little direction. The mind, therefore, undisturbed, has only to retire within itself. Hence the philosopher, the devotee, the poet, all retreated to these quiet recesses; and from the world retired, conversed with angels and immortal forms. In classic times the grove was the haunt of gods : Habitarunt dii quoque sylvas. And in the days of Nature, before art had in- troduced a kind of combination against her, man had no idea of worshipping God in a temple made with hands. Gilpin, "Forest Scenery" 27 The groves rvere Cod's first temples. Ere man learned To hew the shaft, and la^ the architrave. And spread the roof above them — ere he framed The lofty vault, to gather and roll hack The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood. Amid the cool and silence, he ^ne/< down. And ofered to the Mightiest solemn thanks And supplication. William Cullen Bryant, "A Forest Hymn" Pour vous, mon ami, pour tout le monde, ce grand tilleul est une tente magnifique, d'un vert transparent; vous p vo'^ez sautiller des oiseaux, volt- iger quelques faunes ou quelques sylvains, papillons qui aiment V ombre et le silence; vous respirez la douce odeur de ses fleurs. Mais pour moi, il me semble que le vent qui agite ces feuilles me redise ioutes ces choses que fai dites et entendues au pied d*un autre tilleul, a une epoque deja bien eloignee; V ombre des feuilles de Varbre et les ray- ons de soleil quelles tamisent forment pour moi des images que je ne revois que la; cette odeur m'enivre, et trouble ma raison, et me plonge dans des extases et dans des reves. Alphonse Karr, *'Voyage autour ^c mon Jardin" 29 ON THE MINISTRY OF TREES yi^HARLES DUDLEY WARNER said ^^ that until he saw the Annapolis at low tide, he never realized how much it added to the looks of a river to have water in it. One might say the same thing of trees in the landscape. There are, indeed, some landscapes without trees; but they are exceptional, desolate, or vain. It will not do to go too far with this rule. I love the prairies. There is inspira- tion in the view where one can see for twenty miles in every direction without tree or shrub to arrest the eye. I remember when the buffaloes were there, and an occa- sional coyote, and the white-topped prairie schooners crawling along the trail. A tree would be a false note in that picture. Two trees would ruin it. Nevertheless, let God be praised for trees. Even the plains would lose some of their charm if one could not compare them with the mountains and the forests. Western Kansas is beautiful partly by con- 31 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL trast with Colorado and Vermont. It would be terrible to be without trees alto- gether. If there should ever be a dull, monotonous world, where all landscapes must be alike, let it be a world full of trees. A recent magazine story tells of a seven-year-old Arizona girl who stood dancing under a scrubby little cottonwood tree and clapping her hands to the rustling leaves. The stranger said to her mother, *'Your little girl seems to be much de- lighted by the tree." "Ah, yes, she may well be so," said the mother. "It is the first tree she ever saw." One might live without art galleries, without theaters, possibly without libraries; but to live to be even seven years old with- out trees seems like the culmination of all hardships. Trees are peculiarly adapted to the landscape. They are suited to it like sails to a boat. They are the most indispensable of materials for landscape-making. Even the landscape architects, in their puny, little works, use thousands of them. Amongst these craftsmen, trees are bought and sold by millions, and they all go to landscape- making. 32 EDGE OF THE WOODS Wm. T. Knox PINE TREES H. F. Perkins THE MINISTRY OF TREES The characteristic note is given to many of the greatest natural landscapes by trees, usually by some particular species. The pine forests of northern Wisconsin, the larches of eastern Quebec, the palm groves of Florida all play this role. In eastern Oklahoma, and through the Ozark Mountains, the whiteoaks and jackoaks, scattered sparsely over the hillside, clothe the landscape with a weird and unforgeta- ble character. What would the White Mountains be without pines or spruce? Just what Niagara Falls would be without water. It is interesting to take a glance at the literature of trees. On my shelves are perhaps fifty books devoted to them. About one-third are scientific or technical works, dealing with botany, arboriculture, or forestry. The remainder were intended to be poetical. A few of this number really have poetry in them; but the significant thing is that so much of the literature of trees should be given to their aesthetic and spiritual appreciation, rather than to the mere technical knowledge of them. It may be well to remember in this connection, what Professor Bailey has 33 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL pointed out, that there are two quite dif- ferent interpretations of Nature, namely, the scientific and the poetical. The two should not be confused. A book on science should not be mixed with poetry; and a book of sentiment should not pretend to be scientific. But both interpretations are legitimate. The beauty of the trees has appealed to artists of all kinds, though more especially to landscape gardeners, painters, and poets. We can quickly see how inevitable this is in the case of the landscape gardener. He works with trees. They are the best of all his picture-making materials. The painters have painted trees ever since they have painted landscape at all, but especially since the days of Corot. The poets have written of trees from the day they discov- ered the natural world, — that is, we may say, from Chaucer down, but particularly from the time of Wordsworth. One of them said, I remember, I remember, the fir-trees dark and high; I used to think their slender tops would almost reach the sky. And another, when the yearning for 34 THE MINISTRY OF TREES the old home was strongest in him, remem- bered first the trees. He said, Kennst du das Land wo die Citronen bliihen? Though the nature lovers' cult had no place amongst the old Hebrews, their poets and prophets could find no better images than the trees with which to dress their most vivid revelations of things eternal and divine. The sinless Paradise was a garden full of trees; and in its center the knowl- edge of good and evil grew upon the tree of life. The psalmist said that the righteous shall flourish "like the palm-tree.'* The cedars on Mount Lebanon will be re- membered by thousands of generations yet to come. A single tree is beautiful in itself. Next to the human form the most beautiful unit in nature is a tree. The symmetry of the per- fect elm or pine or palm satisfies the eye like the symmetry of a Greek temple. There is something more in the tree, though, than in any piece of statuary or architecture. There is life. And the symmetry of life is always more beautiful than that of any dead or inert thing. A tree is beautiful, too, for texture and 35 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL color, as well as for form. It is beautiful in expression, in the associations that clus- ter around it, or which are gratuitously given to it. There is one elm in Cambridge which we cannot see without vividly imag- ining how the great Washington looked as he stood beneath its early shade. When I find a very old tree in the forest, my mind blossoms full of pictures such as this tree might have seen,— of wigwams and camp fires, and a whole race of men and women now gone forever. Even the imperfect tree is beautiful; or, as Gilpin or Downing would have said, it is picturesque. For this is the figure which these men used to illustrate the difference between the beautiful and the picturesque. A tree which reaches full, perfect, and normal development is beautiful; one which bears upon it the scars of severe struggle, broken by storms and living against partial defeat, is picturesque. A certain school of landscape gardeners used to plant dead and blasted trees in private parks just to give this note of picturesqueness. A tree seems more human than most objects in the world. We more readily ascribe human qualities to it. The oak-tree 36 THE MINISTRY OF TREES stands for strength, and the delicate white birch for feminine fragility. The quaking aspen reminds us of the instability of cer- tain men and women, and the somber pine of the cold serenity of others. The poet or painter may go further, — nay, is even certain to go further, — and is sure to find in trees something quite beyond the suggestion of human character, — some symbolism of the divine mysteries. Ruskin, who speaks often of trees, nearly always rises to this plane, as when he says in the Ele- ments of Drawing, "As you draw trees more and more in their various states of health and hardship, you will be every day struck by the beauty of the types they present of the truths most essential for mankind to know, and you will see that this vegetation of the earth, which is neces- sary to our life, first, as purifying the air for us and then as food, and just as neces- sary to our joy in all places of the earth, — what these trees and leaves, I say, are meant to teach us as we contemplate them, and read or hear their lovely language, written or spoken for us, not in frightful, black letters, nor in dull sentences, but in fair, green, and shadowy shapes of waving 37 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL woods, and blossomed brightness of odor- iferous wit, and sweet whispers of unintru- sive wisdom, and playful morality." We infer the character of God chiefly from our experience of human nature ; but of all those things in external nature which speak to us of divine love and care, the trees seem to be the preeminent ministers, — the symbols and the substance of wor- ship. The Druids used to worship the oak- trees, it is said. They must have been a kindly, amiable folk. The Hebrew preach- ers used to object to their people going to the groves for worship, but their objection seems to have been factitious and purely technical. "The groves were God's first temples," and it is hard to believe that there could ever be any idolatry there. 38 ESSAY NUMBER THREE On Some Other Elements of Landscape Look-' under that broad beech-tree I sat down when I was last this wa}) a- fishing; and the birds in the adjoining grove seemed to have a friendly) contention with an echoy whose dead voice seemed to live in a hollow tree near to the brow of that primrose hill. There I sat viewing the silver streams glide silently toward their center, the tempestuous sea; \)et sometimes opposed b\f rugged roots and pebblestones, which broke their waves, and turned them into foam; and sometimes I beguiled the time by viewing the harmless lambs; some leaping securely in the cool shade, whilst others sported themselves in the cheerful sun; and saw others craving comfort from the swollen udders of their bleating dams. As I thus sat, these and other sights had so fully possest my soul with con- tent, that I thought, as the poet has happily exprest it, I was for that time lifted above earth; And possest of joys not promised in my birth. IzAAK Walton Behold! the Sea, The opaline, the plentiful and strong. Yet beautiful as is the rose in June, Fresh as the trickling rainbow of July; Sea full of food, the nourisher of k^nds, Purger of earth, and medicine of men; Creating a sweet climate by my breath. Washing out harms and griefs from memory. And, in my mathematic ebb and flow. Giving a hint of that which changes not. Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Seashore" 41 ON SOME OTHER ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE ^^ HOSE who think of the landscape as ^^ being diffuse and lacking composi- tion frequently reach their inadequate conclusions from giving too much heed to details. To the child the finest painting may contain nothing but a house, a water- fall and a mountain, while the composition — ^the relation of part to part — ^the chief reason of being for the picture — is entirely lost in his curious interest in details. In the larger musical pieces, like the oratorios, it is extremely hard for the unprofessional listener to find anything more than a suc- cession of disconnected airs and recitations. Some passages may be pleasing, some rather flat, many quite unintelligible; but the oratorio as a whole does not stand forth with any form and individuality. So the details of landscape have their own values; certain items please us; a few offend. There are, of course, very few details of landscape which are offensive, — in nat- 43 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL ural scenery probably none. I have seen the alkali plains and the bad lands; but these latter are full of interest, while the former are truly beautiful. Every river is beautiful, big or little. As Mr. Ward said of girls: "I like big girls: — and little ones." Every mountain is worth knowing and every little hill. Every valley in the world is a panorama of beauty; every plain is a picture; even the desert is an inspiring sight in spite of the physical discomforts which it may yield. In another essay we have talked of trees. They are the most conspicuous liv- ing elements in the landscape and most closely touch our humanity. But the throbbing ocean, the quiet lake, the gossip- ing brook also appeal to our human moods. Each has been personified a thousand times in literature. Each one, indeed, has spoken to my life and to my neighbor's, and waste, indeed, is that soul where no response has been heard. Who could stand on the deck of the boat in mid-ocean, with a thousand miles of unmarked water on every side inviting the eye to invisible horizons be- yond, and not feel the infinite stretch of his own life? Or who, standing by the peace- 44 ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE ful lake at sunset, could help yearning for an equal peace in his own heart or believ- ing that his soul was truly capable of it? Or who can listen closely to the cheerful songful music of the mountain brook — the brook which "goes on forever" — without longing for the hours when his own human life might run a similarly care-free course? In fact, this is the great glory of the phys- ical world, that it is inter pretable into the noblest passions and aspirations of the human heart. Every nature lover has his specialty. One man's muse rides on "The Seven Seas," another man fishes quietly along "Little Rivers"; another finds his pastime hunting big game in the Rockies. Stevenson's love for the tropical ocean was almost pathetic. The mountains have always drawn men. Even the savages resorted to them. Now in the days of a superheated civiliza- tion men and women go back to the moun- tains with a peculiar confidence. The mountains of Colorado annually call to- gether thousands of tourists; but better than the tourists are the thousands of old friends recalled as to a parental home by the mountains of Manitou or Middle Park. 45 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL The White Mountains are visited every summer by hordes of idle pleasure-seekers, some with new clothes to show, and some with budding daughters ; but there are many many more who return to the White Moun- tains in summer for a real recreation of body and of spirit, for the renewal of senses worn threadbare and the uplift of souls depressed with the sins of city life. Such people find a heart's refuge in the hills, as did the poet who remembered them in a beautiful figure, saying As the mountains are roundabout Jerusalem, So the Lord is roundabout them that fear Him. The mountains appeal also to the lust of adventure. Every year a toll of lives is taken by Mt. Blanc and the Matterhorn. The hardiest American explorers are now attacking Mt. McKinley. The noble peaks of the Himalayas are yet unspoken. Even the small mountains excite some appetite for conquest in the mildest breasts. Re- member how Thoreau set out for Wachu- sett. Here in our own neighborhood is the Appalachian Club (and many smaller mountain clubs), composed of lawyers, teachers and parsons bound together as by 46 ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE a pirates' oath to scale some thousand-foot altitudes. The sense of beauty finds nourishment everywhere in mountain views. I have seen the Presidential Range from the west when the afternoon sun was thrown back from the first soft snow caps; and if there are any lovelier sights in Heaven it will surely be worth a few thousand years to revel in the glory of them. I have seen the Jung- frau from Rugen Park at Interlaken when the bridal veil of mist lifted for a moment from her front revealing one of the most sublime pictures of the mortal world. I have looked for hours in quiet joy upon the tiny Holyoke range; I have climbed Mt. Orford in the rain; I have loved Mt. Marcy from afar; I have viewed Pike's Peak from many angles; I have walked the dome of Mt. Helena by daylight and by night ; and every contact with every one has been a feast of beauty to me. The one I knew best of all was Mt. Mansfield. A strong and rugged profile juts against the east- ern sky, Where human face some Ukeness finds in mountain imag'ry,— A "nose" and "chin" are certified to each Ver- monter's eye. 47 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL The morning's purpling shadows spread along the mountain base, While nearer mists are lifting from Winooski's silvery trace, And spectrum clouds their hues reflect upon the upturned face. Or evening lights, with gentle touch on wood and field and farm, Reveal the landscape fair and dear with every homely charm, Where good men live and love and die free from the world's alarm. O Mansfield, firm and steadfast friend! Thy patience still be mine! When cares afHict I'd pattern thee, my life to God resign, With equal peace, with faith as firm, my face upturned like thine! In passing it may be worth remark that the beauty of the mountain is more elusive even than the beauty of the sea. The great painters have caught the spirit and even the movement of the ocean with some suc- cess; but Orizaba and Rainier have not yet been put on canvas. As the mountains, so the rivers. Their appeal lies to the appetite for adventure, to the sense of beauty and to a deeper spiritual sense through which we seem to be next of kin to the physical world. As 48 < tj u CO n Z 15 H P* ^ O -j H S H ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE one stands on the levee at New Orleans and sees the flood of waters coming down from the lap of the continent, he must have a wooden imagination, indeed, if he does not wish to penetrate the country in a dozen states more than a thousand miles away whence these waters come. The early voyageurs who explored the valley of the St. Lawrence were carried forward by this irresistible appetite quite as much as by any holy desire for the conversion of the Indians. Why, even the little brook drives me half insane with its coquetry as it vanishes round the next turn. I long to follow it; and if by good fortune it should be apple-blossom time and I have my hat- band stuck full of trout flies, then I will indeed stifle every other call and follow on from pool to pool as long as I can see the flash of a leaping trout. Every river and every brook is beauti- ful, and each in its own individual way. Some critics disparage the muddy Missouri, but they show a provincial and undeveloped taste in doing so. Some travelers say the Rhine is a disappointment. May Heaven forgive their hardness of heart! Some peo- ple find little joy in the Hudson; but then, 49 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL indeed, there are those who do not care for Handel's Largo nor for Hamlet. Let Lucy Larcom speak for the Merri- mack: Dear river, that didst wander through My childhood's path, a vein of blue. Freshening the pulses of my youth Toward glimpsing hope and opening truth, A heart thank-laden hastens back To rest by thee, bright Merrimack! I once knew a brook, — a creek the neighbors called it. It was muddy, its banks were somewhat squalid, and the trees along its borders would not take any prizes at an international competition; but there was a practicable swimming-hole, and I once caught three catfish just above the bend, and my sweetheart used to walk with me through the trees there. Oh, poor and homely creek, with what glorious visions of true and worthy beauty did you fill my ex- panding boyhood! There could not be an unlovely lake, I suppose, just as no woman could ever be unlovely except for her own sins. A lake can not be sinful, of course. Superior has a beauty wild and vast like that of the ocean ; Champlain is glorious with a queenly 50 ELEMENTS OF LANDSCAPE majesty; Killarney and Lomond are famous in song and story; and we can never forget how far-away Galilee used to yield rest and inspiration to the homeless Man of Sor- rows. The marshes of Glynn inspired Lanier of fragrant memory, and Walden Pond through Thoreau was the means of enriching our literature forever. The plains seem dreary to some eyes; but I must think that such eyes look out of darkened souls wherein the sense of beauty lies dead or unawakened. Twenty-five years of my boyhood were spent upon the plains. Even in those days of immaturity they seemed beautiful to me; and I will always remember with what poignant joy that beauty all swept back over my soul, when, after some years of wandering, I suddenly found myself once more in the center of the world, with the flat unbroken land stretching out everywhere to kiss the shimmering horizon. When the plains used to be lighted up at night with miles on miles of prairie fires, that was almost the sublimest sight of a lifetime. I never saw the Sahara, but I should like to. That, too, must be magnificent, in sun or in storm. And so whether it be the great moun- 51 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL tain peak or the little hill, the mighty river or the trickling brook, the boundless ocean or the reedy pond, every jot and item of the landscape has its message of beauty, of adventure and of the heart's uplift. In a large sense, yet in a near and real truth, they seem to be the voice of God speaking to mankind. And as I believe in humanity, I must think that the message finds a true response in the souls of most men. 52 ESSAY NUsBER FOUR On Looking at the Sky // is strange hojv little in general people ^noip about the s^i;. It is the part of creation in Tvhich Nature has done more for the sake of pleasing man, more for the sole and evident purpose of talking to him and teaching him, than in an^ other of her Tporks, and it is just the part in which Tve least attend to her. . . . There is not a moment of any day of our lives when Nature is not producing scene after scene, picture after pic- ture, glory after glory, and working still upon such exquisite and constant principles of the most perfect beauty, that it is quite certain it is all done for us, and intended for our perpetual pleasure. And every man, wherever placed, however far from other sources of interest or of beauty, has this done for him constantly. . . . The sky is for all. RUSKIN, "Modern Painters" We nestle in Nature, and draw our living as parasites from her roots and grains, and we re- ceive glances from the heavenly bodies, which call us to solitude and foretell the remotest future. The blue zenith is the point in which romance and reality meet. I think if We should be rapt away into all that and dream of heaven, and should converse with Gabriel and Uriel, the upper sky would be all that would remain of our furniture. Emerson, "Nature" 55 ON LOOKING AT THE SKY ^^HIS has been a lovely day. ^^ I ask no excuse for the school- girlish adjective. It fits. Even a schoolgirl may state a scientific truth if the fact happens to suit her word. It has been a lovely day, and I have had the opportunity to enjoy it with more than usual freedom. I have run away to a lonely hill to gain a little solitude and to detach myself from too much work. Before me spreads a panorama of New England's fairest scenery, — sloping green pastures, interspersed with regal centenarian trees, and, almost hidden in the distance, a quiet, homely village. A more engaging and soul-satisfying landscape it would be hard to find. But to-day my eyes wandered continually to the sky, for my soul sought a larger freedom and a deeper rest than could be expressed even in these miles of peaceful Massachu- 57 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL setts hills. The sky is often the best part of the landscape. Every little while I have a quarrel with some too honest friend about my definition of the landscape. In an exhibition of pictures I hung some beautiful marine views (not of my own making). "Why, look here," said my matter-of-fact friend, "these are not landscapes ! There is no land in them. They are all water!" Another friend of mine contributed to a show of landscape photographs, and when it was over said that his own prints were the only landscape pictures shown: the others were only sketches. I recognize no such limited definition. For me the landscape is anything and every- thing visible in the world of out-of-doors. Visible, I say; yet there are times when one can smell the landscape, as at haying time, or the wheat harvest, or the spring plowing. There are times when one can hear the landscape, — in the pine woods; on the sand beach where the breakers fall. Yes, and times when the sense of feeling tells its subtle, sensuous story, — as when the warm August wind sweeps across the Kansas prairies, or the sea breeze salts one's face, 58 ON LOOKING AT THE SKY or the bracing stillness of a Quebec winter morning sends one's blood tingling to the surface. With a woman's logic I defy all critics, judges and lexicographers. If the sea and the wind and the sky are not landscape, what are they? Joshua Bender had a large bowl in which he kept soft soap. When he put it on the inventory for the auctioneer at the vendue he entered it as "i sope bole." And when his daughter called him to task for bad spelling he said, "Ef that don't spell soap bowl what does it spell?" But my case is a better one than Joshua Bender's. The sky is a necessary part of every complete landscape. The painter paints it with infinite pains, and the photographers insist upon it. One waggish critic of amateur snap-shots long ago called those skyless pictures baldheaded landscapes, and his word has stuck. So common, so varied, and so necessary are these sky pictures that every practical photographer keeps a selection of them in stock, and uses them in making up his landscape views. A representation of scenery without a sky is like a girl without a smile, or like a mug of beer after the foam has died. 59 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL To-day I looked up into the arched heavens and saw them filled with beauties and delights. How delicate, how varied, how splendid are the clouds! One might make a lifetime study of them. Yet it is hardly worth while, and certainly not nec- essary. One need not describe them or name them. The only absolutely essential thing is to enjoy them. I do not care whether they are seven miles high or seven and a half, or whether they are made of ice crystals or peppermint lozenges. I can see for myself that they are supremely beautiful. When I was a very small lad and used to watch the clouds with other children, we used to be forever trying to make out of them pictures of men, animals or ships. We wished to make every cloud represent some earthly and familiar thing. As I remember myself, I think we expected to find such pictures in the heavens, and that this expectation was founded on some sort of philosophy. Our psychology seemed to demand some practical correspondence between the clouds in the sky and the beasts on the earth. But to-day, as I lay on my back and 60 ON LOOKING AT THE SKY looked up into the blue depths, I saw no camel, no dog, no kangaroo. The high wind-blown cirrus was spread against the azure heavens in strands of unspeakable grace, yet in a form of power, and with a feeling of virility. It would be a close com- parison to say that these clouds suggest the sweeping lines in the best paintings of Sargent, or Whistler, or Dewing. So to-day, instead of seeing fanciful animals and birds among the clouds, I could rather imagine that I saw the souls of great artists blown against the sky. That graceful, awkward, powerful trailing shape, spread- ing upward for ten miles opposite the sun, pure, spotless and serene, might be the soul of Lincoln; and the one sporting and laughing in the sunshine might be Robert Louis Stevenson. It is not alone when the sky is warm and full of sunshiny clouds that it is beautiful and greatly to be loved. I have laid on my back, too, when it rained, look- ing up to see where the drops come from. Indeed, one can see. One catches sight of them a great way off, and it is jolly fun to see them hurrying down to find me. They come from far up in the sky, and yet from a 61 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL place very near, — a great space filled with love and tenderness and blessing, whence every sort of gracious ministry falls on a thirsty and sometimes unsatisfied world. The sky is equally beautiful in a snow- fall, and especially so at the beginning of a warm snow, when the air is filled with soft feathery floating craft, each one loaded with pearls and rainbows. The German women tell their children that the old woman is picking her geese. A more poetic little girl said that the angels were throw- ing kisses to the children. Lowell, when he looked out on "The First Snow-Fail," knew that God was sending the snowflakes to heal the wounds of the earth, both phys- ical and spiritual. It is worth a man's time to look up into the sky and see where the snowflakes come from. All this is the sky of the day season. But the night cometh, and with it new beauties and beatitudes. There is more of brooding tenderness and the spirit of motherhood in the night sky. The stars are serene and still, yet they sing together like the choirs of the judgment day. How many they are ! How far away they are ! Yet the Infinite Love reaches to all of them. 62 ON LOOKING AT THE SKY To see the stars well one must make his camp in the desert. There, as he lies rolled for the night in his blankets, sur- rounded only by distance and desolation, he looks up into greater beauties than all the museums, galleries and conservatories of civilization can offer. But these things can be seen in part from any farm, and a little even from the street corner. The wonder is that any man should prefer ser- mons or Sunday papers. The sky is capable of tremendous shifts and changes. I have seen "the cloud battalions wheel and form." Three times in my life I have seen the cyclone descend upon the earth and sweep everything in its path. Oh, the awful majesty of that sight! The simple memory of it makes a man's heart stand still. What has the drama or literature or painting, or any art to put beside that picture? Every mood and every temper has its representative in the clouds and the sky. There are afternoons when the heavens frown like Oliver Cromwell, days when they weep like Keats, mornings when they are as fair as Esther. Above, hangs the blue dome, the de- 63 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL spair of painters, the joy of pedestrians. It is as wide as the world, as high as heaven, as infinite as love. Brother, how often do you practise to stand by yourself and take a long look thither? Does not your life need that quiet, that exaltation, that peace? The sky and the sea are twin types of infinity. As we gaze steadfastly upon either, we see plainly how endless are space and time, and how small our present vexa- tions. We understand how much there is still in store for us, — yea, how much is already bestowed upon us. Some persons testify that in such a vision they see their own smallness; but it were better and truer to be able to say that here one sees his own greatness, feels his divine infinity, and lays hold on all space and eternity. It is no mere matter of accident that the ancient words for the Deity are the same as for the sky, such as Deus and Dyaus. When those far aboriginal peoples caught the first glimmering thought of God it was out of the bright, shining sky, — the smiling, overarching, protecting sky, — and they looked up and prayed and called Him Deus, that is, the sky. I look up into the sky. I see it filled 64 ON LOOKING AT THE SKY with delectable beauties and celestial promises. Some men have said that Heaven lies that way. Perhaps. At any rate, I feel sure that if I could realize in my life the largeness, the freedom and the purity that I see there, that would be Heaven. 65 ESSAY NUMBER FIVE On the Weather The sea and the s^p are always changing. What appears at first a monotony) is, in fact, an unending diversity). Time was, doubtless, in the infanc}) of the earth ivhen the beds of the oceans were filled with pestilent gases and vapors, and time ma}) be in the earth's old age when the seas will be great frozen depths of ice; but to-da^ the^ are in their prime, in the heyday of their glory), strong in mass and movement, overwhelming in extent and power, splendid in color and light. J. C Van Dyke. "Nature for Its Own Sake" All that grows has grace, — All are appropriate, — bog and marsh and fen Are only) poor to undiscerning men. Crabbe 69 ON THE WEATHER ^^ HE landscape is inseparable from the ^^ weather. Every change in tempera- ture, wind or humidity introduces a corresponding change in the aspect of mountain and lake. To my way of think- ing these changes present differences not of degree, but of quality only. The land- scape always seems to me equally beautiful, whether in rain, or mist, or full sun. I have studied the woods with a camera in all weathers, — have photographed them in the noonday shine, in fog, in silvery mist, in pouring rain and in a driving January blizzard; and while the camera, of course, works better in some atmospheres than in others, the woods themselves are never diminished in beauty by the state of the weather. If we begin to talk about different degrees of merit we shall be forced to admit, of course, that some of the most beautiful effects in landscape are developed in what ignorant and superstitious people call bad weather. The prairies in a snow-squall are 71 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL magnificent; so is the ocean in a storm. Even Broadway is worth seeing in a pour- ing rain. Speaking of "bad" weather, this oppor- tunity cannot pass without a challenge to this pet superstition of civilization. It is too bad that such a foolish notion should have such universal currency. That is a wise aphorism of Professor Bailey's that the weather cannot be bad, because it is not a human institution. Many persons will still think, perhaps, that certain sorts of weather are disagreeable, the drizzling rain in the city, or the driving storm in the country; but this is really only because of their own negligence in not being prepared for it. The bugaboo of bad weather is kept alive principally on three kinds of diet, — first, a stupid enslavement to conventionalities ; sec- ond, a thoughtless neglect of proper clothing ; and, third, the truly idiotic habit of making the weather bear the burden of all small con- versation. Some persons dislike the rain because it spoils their clothes. It is true that one can not comfortably wear trailing skirts and silk petticoats on the street on rainy days; but the trailing skirts are an 72 Q O h ;-^^^«' ill .^^< •T-^ ^V '^-^m. f - * ON THE WEATHER abomination under any circumstances, and any one who wears them certainly has no license to blame the rain. Yet people who care more to be comfortable than to be stylish sometimes suffer from inclemencies of weather because they do not provide themselves with proper clothing. Perhaps they try to wear the same underclothing the year round, or they go about carelessly without overshoes. I saw a man once on his first voyage across the Atlantic. He went without any overcoat or blanket, because it was July. He didn't know any better, and he suffered for it, but even he could not help saying that we had glorious weather on the promenade deck. But what shall we say of those people who, wishing to make talk and having nothing within themselves to draw on, make capital of the weather and call it "nawsty"? Their crime is worse than ordinary slander, because the defamation falls on a great and noble object. In fact, it is worse than lese-majeste, as the sky is higher than any earthly potentate. It is noteworthy, too, that the weather critics are chiefly the people who stay most indoors and really know the least about the weather. 73 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Every kind of weather is good. I well remember a record-breaking blizzard on the plains. All day long and into the night I was out in it working with a herd of insuf- ficiently protected cattle. Some of the cattle suffered, but I was happy and I still look back on that day with joy. It certainly was a glorious spectacle to look at. For six weeks one summer I lay abed with a raging fever in a southern country where the thermometer every day ranged well above one hundred degrees, yet I still remember with delight the wavering, cool- ing breeze that came in at the open window, and the magnificence of the thunder showers that swept over the sky while I lay there. I was not well nor happy those days, but I couldn't blame the weather for it. I have been on the open ocean when the wind blew a gale, and when every third roller came sweeping over the upper deck. I confess I was miserably sick, but I laid that, not to the wind, but to my stomach. When I could momentarily command that rebel- lious organ, I went on deck and faced the storm, and I thought it was the most glorious weather I ever saw. I envied those old sailors with their waterproof 74 ON THE WEATHER stomachs, who could stand on the bridge and nose it all day long, and I begrudged the sea-gulls their easy enjoyment of it. No; when we say we are not suited with the weather, it is always some little defect of our own that is to blame, and usually one that could be easily remedied. With Pro- fessor Bailey, I hope the time will soon come when intelligent people will cease to talk about "bad" weather. A twin superstition is the one about "bad" climates. We are forever hearing that this or that district has a bad climate — "an unhealthy climate," they call it in the vernacular. Science has demonstrated that there is no such thing. Where people used to charge the ague up to the climate, we now know that we are dealing only with mos- quitoes. Even the dreaded yellow fever is not propagated by an untoward climate, but it, too, is spread abroad by insects. Any climate is good if you get enough of it. Men with weak lungs used to go to Colorado and be cured. It was because they were obliged to live out-of-doors in Colo- rado. The men who have done the most to stop the ravages of the white plague have done it by making their patients take the 75 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL weather. On the face of it nothing could look more unpromising than to make a frail and waning woman sleep in the woods, with the temperature at zero, and the snow falling on her couch; yet this is precisely what she needs. And even in the impure air of New York City men and women by hundreds are cured of consumption in its early stages, simply by working and sleeping out-of-doors, and taking the weather as it comes. If one takes this point of view it will be seen that he leaves small praise for those migratory men and women of nerves and lei- sure, who are always flitting about the coun- try in search of a more agreeable climate. They spend two months in Florida or Southern California, a month at Asheville, a fortnight at Old Point, a few days at Atlantic City, and are on the move again for the Adirondacks and the Thousand Islands. In trying to equalize the climate they lose the variety and spice of life, and gain neither health nor comfort in return. Then there are the real estate agents who play on this whim, and who advertise their particular localities as having such remarkably equable climate. They pub- 76 ON THE WEATHER lish temperature charts showing that the thermometer never goes above 70 degrees in the summer, nor below 60 degrees in the winter. I am surprised that anybody cares to live in such a country. I prefer a wider variety in my allotment. I like to run the whole gamut of weather. In our country, where we get three whole octaves, chromatic scale, with trills on high C, and shakes on low G, — sometimes all within the space of a week, — here there is some music to life. Here we see the world in a myriad moods. Here the land- scape panorama moves from scene to scene as season follows season, and even as day treads upon day. The world is new to us every morning, and always fresh and full of loveliness. This much had to be said toward put- ting down silly complainers. It is more to our interest, however, to notice how the changes of the weather multiply the beau- ties of landscape. To-day I saw the river covered by a thick mist, between snow and rain. Yesterday it was under a gray win- try sky, white and solemn, bound in snow and ice. To-morrow it may be flooded with sunshine and flashing back the light 77 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL like the flaming sword of the archangel. It is always the same physical landscape, — the same quiet millpond, the same gurgling rapids below, the same tall pines on the bank beyond and the same old mill in the foreground; — but it is a hundred different pictures every month as the weather changes. The kaleidoscope turns even with the hours of the day, for the pines are dark in the morning, while they catch the sun in the afternoon, and the millpond, which is bright with the midday light, gathers heavy shadows from the western hills when the sun begins to sink. In a photographic club to which I belong, prints are habitually submitted marked with the dates showing when the negatives were made. Occasionally an artist makes an error in copying his data, and marks December on a picture which was really made in November. But such mistakes are always quickly detected, for the difference in the landscape is so great, even between neighboring months, that any ordinary photograph will show it. And a picture might as well be untrue to the clouds or the foreground as to distort the calendar or be untrue to the weather. 78 ON THE WEATHER The practical landscape gardener has to have due regard everywhere to the climate and to its habitual traits of weather. He will not make a sun parlor in Arizona, nor will he insist on shady pergolas in Quebec. But even beyond the creature comfort of his clients he should design his landscape pictures with an eye quick to the effects which they are to yield in the round of local meteorologies. An Italian garden, with its terraces, balustrades and statuary, would look sick and lonesome in Kansas during a March wind. The clustering groves of cottonwood and box-elder which look so cheerful and homelike under the glistening sun of Greeley, Colorado, would look tame and flat in the soft, diffused, many-colored light of Kent or Sussex. The fine and dignified terraces which adorn the banks of the Rhine at Cologne would look dreary, or even tawdry, on the banks of the Mississippi at St. Louis. Yes, the landscape and the weather are absolutely interdependent parts of one picture, wherefore they must be adjusted to one another with the utmost nicety ; and the man who would enjoy the one must know and love the other. 79 ESSAY NUMBER StX On the Art Which Mends Nature A novel country; I might make it mine B^ choosing which one aspect of the year Suited mood best^ and putting solely that On panel someTvhere in the House of Fame, Landscaping what I saved, not what I saw; Might fix you, whether frost in goblin-time Startled the moon with his abrupt bright laugh. Or, Augustus hair afloat in filmy fire. She fell, arms wide, face foremost on the world. Swooned there and so singed out the strength of things. Thus were abolished Spring and Autumn both. The land dwarfed to one likeness of the land. Life cramped corpse-fashion. Rather learn and love Each facet' flash of the revolving year! Robert Browning, "The Ring and the Book" 83 ON THE ART WHICH MENDS NATURE 'This is an art Which does mend nature, change it rather, but The art itself is nature." fN all the old-time debating clubs there were three live issues: the relative destructiveness of fire and water, the joy of pursuit versus the satisfaction of possession, and the comparative beauty of the works of art and the works of nature. Well do I remember how, when our school district was matched against No. 23, adjoining us on the south, I heroically defended the beauties of art against the teacher of the opposing school, who sought to show that only nature was fit to be admired! Oh, those were Homeric days, and the question fitted the times. What think you, my cultured reader, in this year of grace, are the works of art more to be loved than those of nature? 85 Till, i.andsiaim: lu.Aurii ul Winf(»i t y^icM (\ coiUu>vruiy i' I'hcic in rt pUuc where Huch « cuiupromise can honoittbly be n\mle. It i» in the ht-Kl of laiubiia|>e ^a^(lenin^^. Here ait aiul nature Mihuir jio prilndy that none* may Uixy, U> thin is ail. t»i ncc here nature. "The art itnell \h natnir " huleed, the ait ol Unulritapr i-^ndenni^ tH HO near to nature that ht»nie hiive denied It (he ii^ht to he called an art at all. A icitani i\unlcin univrisily te\t l>ot>U ol .souinl unahticM anil lugh lepntation pie- teiulH to clasHily all the line artH and to estin\ate the sci>pe and power ol each. The siucesMive chapters discuss painting, sculp tnic, portly, etc.. down to dancing, whu h Ih ably detendctl ioi a place in the list; hut the ait ol landsiapc ^.'.ai dnun^'. is nnpUiced and tor^;t>tten. This is icitamly sui pi ising. hut it illustrates the vul^;ar neglect o{ this Huhject. Laiulscape ganlenin^ is the nioat recent t»l the arts, and the least unils may he excuseil in the laity- ART WHICH MINIiJi NAJUKK This chaotit:, formal ivt:, iniiialory state of aiiiiUti < ouM lididly he heiiei ijlim- liatcd iliiiii ill liic fuel llidl llie ineji ntobi deeply engaged in the art have not decided wiidl lo t d\\ i\. Some ( dlJ it IdJidbt d|>e gaideniiig, bome call it laudbcape at* liit^ct- ure, and bome weakly evade the itibue hy taliiing of landscape art. Now, it is not worth rjiiarreling r>ver these names, for iiot one oi lljeoj lb <|uite sat jblax tot y. J lis* toricflUy, the term landscape gardening outjht to be preferred, — hut, tlieoreti* ally at leabt, the art ib more < lobejy allied tr> architecture tjjan to gardening. One can.- not avoid the rather mean suspicion, liow- evei, that the pictjrjjl fashion among the profebbional hicthicij to call themselves landscape architects is promoted hy two accidental causes, hrst, the feeling that architecture sounds tiig^er than gardening and can cr^mmand a hettef lee; and, be< o/jd, the fact that the architectural btyle of landscape work is the present vogue an)/>/)g wealthy clientb. ilowever, we will let that matter rest niow. It is cited Ijere only Ui illustrate the unsettled state of our ideas. I^ands^ape gardening/ is a fine art for the same reason thiii p.nnU/ig oi nmtzu is; THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL namely, because it leads to something beau- tiful. To be more specific, we might say that it is a fine art because it produces organized beauty. Simple objects of beauty, like a rose or a blue tile, are born or made in various ways — not necessarily in the ways of art; — but their combinations into organic schemes wherein each member serves a particular office, and wherein all the members of any one scheme constitute a whole organism, every part duly and organically related to every other part — that is art. And when these various ele- ments happen to be trees, flowers, lawns, and pergolas, the art which organizes them is landscape gardening. Now, this art is fairly entitled to take high place in the general company of fine arts for several reasons ; first of all, for the very great difficulties which have to be overcome. The genius of art is in the overcoming of difficulties. The first great difficulty that the land- scape gardener meets lies in the fact that his composition is seen from no fixed point of view. This seems so great an obstacle that Professor Santayana thought it could never be overcome, and this led him to 88 ROYAL PALM AVENUE J. Horace McFarland > O 'A < H H Oh 2 O = £ '^ > 'J & o ART WHICH MENDS NATURE speak of the landscape as having no compo- sition. But Olmsted and Vaux made compositions which were satisfying from all points of view. Instead of painting a landscape on canvas to be enjoyed from a point twenty feet exactly in front of the frame, the real landscape, — composed by a proper artist, is enjoyed from every side, and from every distance. The landscape gardener never undertakes anything sim- pler than a cyclorama. Another great test has to be met in the changes brought by passing years. The sculptor's marble rests in proverbial de- fiance of time, but in the gardener's picture the elements are always fluent. The trees grow, the flowers die away, and even the paths and water-courses change. As a rule, the gardener must wait a number of years for Nature to complete the picture which his imagination has planned. Mean- while he presents a series of tentative sketches, changing them every year, every one beautiful and possibly perfect in itself up to the top of the scale. Then for a day the picture is finished. From that point the garden may go slowly down in picturesque decay, and even this may be 89 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL foreseen and turned to account by the artist in landscape. Still more radical and embarrassing are the changes wrought by the succeeding seasons of the year. The garden is one thing in January, and quite a different thing in May, and still another thing in October. The gardener is not dismissed when he composes one picture from one point of view, nor yet when he has com- posed a thousand in one for a thousand points of view, nor yet when he has pro- jected ten thousand pictures for ten successive years: he must make it twelve times ten thousand, so that every month in the year may have its peculiar beauty. It seems like carrying this argument to a ridiculous exaggeration but it is quite true that the landscape gardener must regard also the changes which come from hour to hour during the day. As the sun- shine strikes on one side in the morning, and on the other side in the afternoon, each picture is profoundly modified. The artists who work on canvas, — and who have had such a comparatively easy time of it, — take great pains with the light. It must come from such and such a point, must 90 ART WHICH MENDS NATURE strike at such and such an angle, and must give specified effects of sun and shadow. One whole field of art study (chiaroscuro) is devoted to a consideration of these matters. Yet the landscape gardener has to shift his chiaroscuro with every striking of the clock, and to make it pleasing in twelve different styles every day, for twelve different months in the year, for an indefinite series of years, for the thousand different pictures which first made up his little garden. From painting a cyclorama he has passed to the making of a kaleidoscope. Something has been said by way of comparing the landscape gardener with the painter in the treatment of lights and shadows. In the management of atmos- phere the comparison is equally interesting. The painter rightly takes great pains in this matter. It is a comparatively simple task to draw a tree or a house, but to fill the picture with warm sunshine or wet fog is more to the abilities of a master. Now, the landscape gardener must have atmosphere in his pictures, too. To be sure, Nature supplies it, but the artist cannot stupidly accept what Nature sends, take his chances 91 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL with the weather, and let it go at that. If he cannot make the atmosphere for his picture, he must make his picture to fit the atmosphere, which is a more heroic under- taking truly, and one fit to measure genius. The careless reader may feel that this is a rather fine-spun theory of the land- scape artist's work, but the critics know it is not. The truly great work has this for its final merit, that it is always true to its atmosphere. And, per contra, some of the mediocre and unsuccessful pieces seem always to have found an atmosphere alien to them and inharmonious with their spirit. This is one great reason why the Italian garden is a failure in England. However, the greatness of art is not so much in meeting obstacles as in overcom- ing them. It is some fair credit to the landscape gardener that he has the courage to attack such difficulties as those which confront him. But it is much more to his praise that he surmounts them. This the best landscape gardeners really do. Consider the work of Frederick Law Olmsted. Study carefully the grounds of the Columbian Exposition in Chicago, or the Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston, or 92 ART WHICH MENDS NATURE the grounds of the railway station at Wel- lesley Farms. Here the whole series of obstacles have been frankly met and triumphantly overcome. The more one looks at any one of these pieces of work, changing from one point of view to another, coming again and again at different sea- sons, at different hours of the day, and in different weathers, the surer one grows that the whole series of pictures is good. Such study will reveal, too, the value of premedi- tation in the arrangement of all the parts of the landscape, — ^will show that the whole thing really came from the hand of an artist, and that it is not a fortuitous con- course of exceptionally agreeable and naturally unrelated elements. The camera is the great detective. Apply the camera to the works of the land- scape gardener and you have one of the severest tests. The photographability (save the word) of the gardener's work shows the perfection of its composition. When it shows good masses with pleasing lights and shadows from all points of view, we may fairly allow that the work is an artistic success. Wherefore the study of landscape gar- 93 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL dening is altogether worth while, not alone because it offers some aesthetic pleasure, but also because it opens a field for aesthetic self-expression, and a capital opportunity even for the display of the most masterful artistic genius. 94 ESSAY NUMBER SEVEN Concerning the American Landscape Stream of mp fathers! siveetly still. The sunset rays thy valley fill; Poured slantwise down the long defile. Wave, wood and spire beneath them smile. I see the winding Powow fold The green hill in its belt of gold. And following down its wavy line. Its sparkling waters blend with thine. John Greenleaf Whittier, "The Merrimack" 97 CONCERNING THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE ♦iT T is an habitual trick of complacency II with certain Americans to say that no one should visit Europe until he has seen the sights of this continent. Until he has seen the sights! Ah, yes! The traveler is a sightseer, and he must have a spectacle for his money. There we have the whole vulgarity of it in a word. This unthoughtful phrase shows what such persons unconsciously take to be the landscape. For them it is always Niagara Falls, Old Faithful, the Big Trees, or the Grand Canon. They flit about the con- tinent on the fastest trains, from one great sight to another. On the intervening thousands of miles, they withdraw to their staterooms and read the latest novels. If such persons are put to it they always insist patriotically that we have in America the finest landscape known to any part of the world, just as they will claim the superiority of our political system, or 99 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL the pre-eminence of America in literature. Doubtless, they ought to be pardoned for telling the truth with such very good intentions, but it is sad to think that they can give no better reason for the faith that was born in them. Or, to put it differently: we would all like to believe that the American landscape is the best the Creator ever designed, but our faith is forced to rest on a sadly insuffi- cient, unreasoned and uninformed basis of observation. Mr. Kinosuke Adachi, in a delightful essay on Japanese landscape gardening, tells how the apprentice-gardener of Nippon must take his note-book and travel for months through the Flowery Kingdom, ma- king intimate studies from nature, with notes and sketches of all he sees, and feels, and dreams. For he must not only see and know the natural landscape, — ^he must feel its beauties, and must dream its most inner meaning before he can begin to make land- scapes of his own. It is a fine picture. The young gar- dener with all his best aspirations attune, and with his soul quick to every touch of beauty, going to such an almost holy quest, 100 THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE compels our sympathy and enthusiasm. And I wonder if any young American ever went forth to learn and feel and dream Columbia's beauties, as this Japanese ap- prentice goes to study the loveliness of Nippon. The suggestion is almost overpower- ing. The very word shows us how scant and superficial has always been our thought of the landscape in which we live. What might not one find were he to go to Amer- ica's fields and lakes and mountains in this spirit? Something different, indeed, from a series of cheap spectacular public exhibits, to be conveniently push-button photo- graphed, to be sent home on souvenir post- cards, or to be trapped out for a summer hotel advertisement. No, the landscape is not a show, to be seen and forgotten. It is the environment in which we live. Out of it we draw breath and without it there would be no breathing. Through it the sun sends us his heat, and the moon her pale mysterious light. We walk on the landscape, we drink of it; in it we live, and move, and have our being. We go a mile, and the landscape goes with us. We are born into it, and not even 101 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL death, nor any other creature can separate us from it. Yet even with its nearness and its per- suasiveness, we disallow it. We forget it. Or, if we catch a glimpse of it in the mirror of temporary sanity, we go away and straightway forget what manner of men we are. We do not feel it, cherish it as we ought, cultivate its intimate acquaintance, nor love it consciously and reasonably. The American landscape is, first of all, large. This sounds like a vulgar claim to make for it; but Aristotle said that any object to be beautiful must have a certain magnitude. Microscopic views, strictly speaking, cannot be beautiful. But height and depth and space in a landscape mean vastly more than in a statue, a painting, or a piece of music. A mountain cannot be a mountain until it is a thousand feet high, and if a river is not large enough, it may be mistaken for a brook. I like Champlain better than Lake George, chiefly because it is larger. The plains of Kansas and Texas are magnificent for their illimitable, unbroken stretch. The great passes of the Rockies lift our souls out of our puny bodies just by virtue of the sheer stupen- 102 THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE dous height of the encircling mountains. Yes, mere largeness has its aesthetic value. Size counts. In the beauty of landscape, size plays a more important role than anywhere else, outside of military tactics. The vast breadth of the ocean, and the height of the mountains give us our sense of the sublime. Here we have a whole range of most poignant human emotions opened and measured to us by the big things in the landscape. Outside these things we hardly know sublimity, and if we use the word in any other connection it is usually with apologies. The American landscape is wild. In many places it is truly savage. Here and there it has all the fierce tempestuous wild- ness of the god-like conflict in which the world was made. No one can compare Eng- land with America, for example, without see- ing that the English landscape is cultivated, subdued, humanized, in a sense overcome by the operations of man. The German forests are ordered like gardens, and look no more like the riotous wilds of Canada or Minnesota than a chess-board looks like a battlefield. To be sure, there is some 103 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL subjugation of the landscape in America, and likely to be more ; but the great reaches of the American lakes and mountains must stand eternally above the encroachments of man. They will forever express, more per- fectly than other landscapes, the gigantic forces of the creation. Again, the American landscape is diverse. There are all kinds of landscape on our continent. There are big, threaten- ing mountains, and quiet, peaceful little ones; there are broad inland seas: there are vast fertile plains ; there are noble rivers and gurgling, gossiping brooks; there are pine forests and palmetto groves. Swit- zerland has one sort of scenery; Holland has another; England, still another: America has all kinds. But more than diversity, the American landscape has versatility. We complain sometimes of our changeable weather and our extremes of climate, but these extremes are responsible, in part, for the kaleidoscopic transformations of our fields and hills. In a great German text-book of botany I saw printed with infinite pains a sketch of autumn colors on Lake Ontario. No other landscape in the world can furnish autumn ICM H a X H THE PATH ALONG THE HILLSIDE Jl'm. T. Knox THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE paintings to compare with ours. Then there are our New England winters (not unknown to poetry), and our Arizona sum- mers, and the springtime in Coronado and Palm Beach. Think of the fields! There are the cotton fields of Alabama, the wheat fields of Kansas, the rolling grass fields of Ver- mont, and the orchard-covered hillsides of New York State. They all cry aloud and clap their hands for joy. That painter would be immortal who could truly picture one of them. I have spent certain happy days in the fields of England; I have stood on the rolling fields of Alsace, when the grain fields stretching away toward the Moselle seemed like the choicest lands of Paradise; but if I have a dispassionate judg- ment left in me, I must still prefer the Shenandoah Valley and the banks of the Hudson. And then what lakes are ours! Su- perior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario — the pentateuch of the continent. Besides them we have thousands of others, — Cayuga, Seneca, and Oneida; Champlain and George; Memphremagog and Winne- pesaukee; Okechobee and the Great Dismal 105 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Swamp. Killarney is, doubtless, a pretty lake, and I would like to go and see it. Neufchatel is a beautiful sheet of water, and the best of all I saw in Switzerland. But one can live with such lakes as Seneca and Winnepesaukee. I lived seven years with Champlain, and loved it better every day. And the landscape was made to be lived in, — not for occasional visits. We have trees in America. It is no vain, boastful Americanism to say we have the greatest trees in the world. The red- woods of California are indeed a sight, and so not proper to the true uses of landscape. But the maples of Ohio, the long-leaf pines of South Carolina, and the elms of Con- necticut are unsurpassed and unsurpassable. I once told an Englishman (under provoca- tion) that the trees in the Connecticut valley were finer than anything in Britain. He upbraided me vehemently for prejudice; but afterward, when he visited Sunderland, Amherst, Old Hadley, and Northampton, he was as fully convinced as I was. The Himalayas must be glorious. I should like to see them before they become fashionable. But meanwhile I enjoy the Rocky Mountains, and with all my heart I 106 THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE love the Adirondacks and the Green Moun- tains. If that poet who made such a de- lightful book about Little Rivers had my notions of the world, he would make a better book about Little Mountains. There are the Catskills in New York, and the Wichitas in Oklahoma, and the Bear Paw Mountains in Montana. These little moun- tains are particularly good because men can live with them. There are pastures and hay fields and gardens of potatoes almost to their summits. Here and there one sees a zigzagging road and a farmhouse. Men and women live there, and the landscape grows into their lives. The great geographic regions of the continent have their characteristic land- scape tone. There is the New England landscape, which is of its own sort, best described by naming it. The stretches of flat coast plain scattered with long-leaf pine make another kind of landscape in the Carolinas. The Great Lakes have their proper beauties and the plains theirs, and the mountains beyond another character. Every one is good in its place. Yet these are only general aspects. The landscape grows better and better as 107 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL we get nearer to it, and know it more intimately through daily association. Thus, the landscape of Litchfield is better than the landscape of Connecticut, and the hills and meadows of my great-grandfather's farm far better than all the rest of Litch- field. Every old and real farm has its own landscape, which is, indeed, its very physical matter. It has its own stream, or hill, or woodland, with fields, fences, sentinel trees, and eternal stones. Here is where the world begins to have a meaning. I have hinted that I think the American landscape the best in the world; but I must be fair, and say that Europe has some excellences, too. If one great merit can be claimed above all others, it is that in Europe men and women live more inti- mately into the fields and hills than in America. The hills along the Rhine are molded into terraces by the hands and feet of generations. And if the American sight- seer, floating down the river on the Konigin Victoria, thinks the terraces spoil the spectacle, he should be reminded that the landscape does not exist for him, but for those who are born into it, and who live and marry and die there. 108 THE AMERICAN LANDSCAPE The American landscape is fit to be admired. It is ours, — our patrimony, — our best inheritance, a greater treasury of beauty than all the art museums of Europe combined, and more truly valuable than all deposits of iron, gold and petroleum. It ought to be loved, — not weakly and from a distance, but intelligently, intimately, and with taste and discrimination. 109 ESSAY NUMBER EIGHT On American Landscape Gardening upon a southward slope^ that stretched awa^ Torvards the sea — long since a loving hand. Moved b^ a heart more loving still, had planned. And safe-enclosed against the salt sea spray, A noble garden. There — shall Tve not say? — A loving pair walked in the sunshine bland. Breathing the perfumes of their fruit trees, fanned By breezes soft, for many a happy day. Robert Burns Wilson, "The Old Garden" 113 ON AMERICAN LANDSCAPE GARDENING /TX ARDENS of no mean sort flourished \_[v in America almost from the establish- ment of the first colonies. Even before the Pilgrims on the Massachusetts coast or the settlers at Jamestown had made themselves quite secure from the attacks of the Indians, they began to make their dwellings homelike with such com- forts as their hands could fashion. As soon as the colonies became fixed and in a certain degree prosperous, taste in the matter of gardens developed rapidly. The very earliest shipments of supplies from the old country included quantities of garden seeds, plants and fruit trees. The native fruits were also early impressed into culti- vation. It is probable that the native grapes were grown by Governor Winthrop of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, who was assessed a yearly tax of a hogshead of wine as early as 1634. This was from the vine- yard planted on Governor's Island in Bos- 115 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL ton Harbor, and granted to Governor Winthrop in 1632 for this special purpose. About the year 1630 the Reverend Francis Higginson, writing back to Eng- land from the settlement at Salem, said that "Our Governor (Endicott) hath already planned a vineyard with great hopes of increase. Also mulberries, plums, raspber- ries, currants, chestnuts, filberts, walnuts, small nuts, huckleberries, haws of white thorn." Before the War of Independence came there were some really notable gardens in New England, and some almost magnificent estates in Virginia and Maryland. John Bartram's garden at Philadelphia dates back to 1728, and is still preserved. Mount Vernon, the garden of George Washington, was planted at about the same time. The colonial gardens were almost nec- essarily co-ordinated in their development with colonial architecture, and it is now understood that colonial architecture reached a comparatively high artistic level. The ''colonial style" in architecture has had a great vogue in recent years, a favor which has been shared to some extent by colonial gardens also. If the gardens have been 116 ON AMERICAN GARDENING copied and imitated less frequently than the houses, the reason has probably been that the patterns were vaguer and harder to follow, rather than that they were artistic- ally inferior. If there was a special artistic weakness in the schemes of colonial gardens, it lay in their imperfect adaptation to their envi- ronment. They copied too slavishly the styles of the old country, and clung too tenaciously to the plants which had been favorites in the gardens over-seas. The English farm and garden was naturally the chief model, and it is laughable to think of men planting peas, sowing grass, or se- lecting varieties of fruit upon the strict advice of gardeners in Warwick or Kent. The following quotation from one of the best early American garden books, Cob- bett's "American Gardener," is characteris- tic. Speaking of the cultivation of the vine, he says; "Vineyards, as Tull observes, must always be tilled, or they will produce nothing of value." He adds that Mr. Evelyn says that "when the soil, wherein fruit trees are planted, is constantly kept in tillage, they grow up to an orchard in half the time they would do if the soil 117 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL were not tilled." The idea of quoting Tull and Evelyn to throw light on the cultiva- tion of vineyards in America is laughable enough, but it was the way books were written and gardens were made in that day. This extract, too, is from a book published as late as 1819. These little historical facts sum up easily in a few important conclusions which we may state as follows: First, the colonists had a taste for gardening which they early found time and opportunity to indulge. Second, for many years they were sadly handicapped with the experience, traditions, and prejudice of old-world gardening. Third, we may infer that this slavery to European notions was more effective in the field of taste than in the field of practice. The design of the garden would be more influenced by it than would the selection, planting and cultivation of the plants themselves. There are thus emphatic considerations to show why the first civilized Americans did not promptly develop a distinctive style of gardening on the continent of North America. There are many other reasons, indeed; and chiefly the broad fact that the 118 ON AMERICAN GARDENING production of a characteristic and indi- genous style in literature, art or gardening is the function of a mature and fully accli- matized civilization, something which it has taken two centuries to establish in America, and which, in fact, is not yet fully ripened. It is even now a question whether we have attained to a national character in litera- ture; and landscape gardening certainly lies beyond letters in this respect. But lest all these big reasons may make it seem absurd for us to look for anything American in landscape architecture, it may be noted that there are some very power- ful influences at work on the other side. The greatest of these are soil, climate and the native flora. The methods of managing the land which succeed in England do not succeed in America. The difference in climate is very much more important. An English garden can not grow in America because the climate will not allow it; and the meteorological prohibition is still more insuperable against the French or the Italian garden. But the greatest influence at work upon the gardening of the new world, — or what should have been always the greatest influence, — is the native flora. 119 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Here the Pilgrims found a continent with a store of noble and magnificent trees in- comparable in all the world. Here were new grasses in the meadows, thousands of new shrubs, flowering plants and fruits on plains and hills and mountain sides. Hundreds on hundreds of these have been taken to Europe and naturalized there into their park and garden schemes, showing their attractiveness and adaptability for gardening. In our own country we have been inexplicably slow to recognize the unmeasurable value of this native wealth of trees and fruits and flowers. Only within the last twenty-five years, in fact, has that recognition gained practical headway. When we think of it now it seems very strange that American gardeners have not always turned their energies to the domes- tic plants, rather than to the acclimatization of exotics. But the fact remains, they have not. Landscape gardening in America began to be American with the advent of Andrew Jackson Downing. Downing was an artist, — a real and a great artist, — a genius; and, being a genius, he conceived large things. He gave the country some new ideas; and 120 o ,i; Q ^ W I Q -2 o "■ o X ON AMERICAN GARDENING it is a national misfortune which has not been sufficiently mourned, that he did not live to develop those ideas for us. In order to understand the work of Downing, it is necessary to know something of the circumstances by which he was surrounded, and especially of the ideas brewing in his time among the landscape gardeners of England. Launcelot Brown had passed his vogue, but had left England marked forever with his anti-geometric style. Brown had been succeeded by Repton, a greater artist, who had given the new style a conservative and reasonable cast. Repton was being followed by a mul- titude of honest plodders, like Loudon, Kemp and Milner, who had learned the tricks, and who practiced the new style to the best of their abilities and opportunities. This was the England visited by Downing with childlike wonder and delight, yet with manlike insight and comprehension. The work of Repton evidently made a powerful impression upon him, and the horticultural achievements of the English gardeners equally filled him with new ambitions. In America he continued the story of the development of the natural style. 121 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL If we seek to set forth, in short, what Downing contributed to American garden- ing, we may mention the following: first, a high appreciation of the natural land- scape of our country; second, the develop- ment of all domestic appointments with reference to the enjoyment of the surround- ing landscape; third, the cultivation of gardens full of trees, shrubs and fruits. The last of these contributions seems to me to have been the most important, as it was the most characteristic of Downing. His ideal garden was one filled to over- flowing with splendid full-grown trees, with blooming shrubs and with fertile fruit trees. As we study the plans now, criti- cizing them beside the style of the present day, we say they were too much crowded, and that they lack breadth and dignity. But, at any rate, they were gardens full planted with luxuriant, green growing things, and not with carpentered and ma- soned furniture. This was a great innova- tion in its time, — a real advance, — and Downing's ideals had a widespread and very powerful influence in America, which it would be interesting to trace if we had the time. 122 ON AMERICAN GARDENING Breadth and dignity came with Frederick Law Olmsted. This man was another genius, and he fortunately lived long enough to give the world what was in him. Olmsted was in every way the proper and timely successor of Downing. He took the ideas of Downing, developed and perfected them, and added to them impor- tant contributions of his own. The love of native landscape was again emphasized; but though this was, perhaps, the great con- trolling principle of all Olmsted's work, it was not his discovery. Downing's idea of adapting the scheme of landscape gar- dening to the natural surroundings was so much developed, extended and emphasized by Olmsted that it may fairly be said that it gained a new meaning in his hands. The truly masterly manner in which this one thing was accomplished, — the adaptation of the improvement scheme to the character of the tract in hand, — was the most charac- teristic quality of Olmsted's work, and the one in which his genius soared to its loftiest flights. Striking examples may be cited in Mount Royal Park, Montreal, and the World's Fair Grounds, Chicago. Olmsted also discovered the American 123 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL flora. In the landscape-gardening way, he was the first to make free and effective use of it; and this is probably his most truly original contribution to American landscape art. Downing knew some of the native trees, but he cultivated chiefly ex- otics, especially in fruits and shrubs. Olmsted boldly laid these all aside, and, on occasion, used only the commonest and meanest of the native shrubs and herbs. The meadow and pasture weeds became the materials for painting in his greatest triumphs. How important this new idea was may be seen from the wide vogue it has achieved among Olmsted's followers. Then came Mr. Charles A. Piatt and Carrere and Hastings. These men were the center of a group, each member of which added something to the general wealth of Italian gardens in America. Mr. Wilson Eyre, Jr., Mr. Stanford White, Messrs. McKim & Mead, and even the younger Olmsteds, have built gardens in the Italian fashion; and since these gardens in America depend rather on a trick of imitating details than on a genius for originating new ideas, the work of these well-trained men has been about equally 124 ON AMERICAN GARDENING successful. To a certain extent Mr. Piatt has been the leader and spokesman of this group; and his work, as much as any, shows a real individuality and a masterly good taste. The progress of the Italian style in America, however, has been one great unified movement. By some it has been regarded as a mere passing cult, an artist's whim, a temporary aberration of good taste, which would soon give way to saner things. This view is prejudiced, short-sighted, wrong. The appearance of the Italian style on our soil at this time was just as natural, even inevitable, as the Declaration of Independence or the Meat Trust. It has been the outgrowth of our state of civilization. Given, on one hand, a group of architects whose training has been largely European, and whose ideals have been formed in Paris, Rome and Florence, and, on the other hand, a group of excessively wealthy clients who are also fairly well Europeanized, and nothing under the Stars and Stripes could prevent the introduction of those methods which made the gardens of Versailles and of Rome the wonder of the world. 125 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL The attempt to show that the Italian style of gardening is essentially bad, or that it is improper to this continent, even, is quite as futile as to try to prove its accidental development here. The test of centuries has shown that the style is good in itself — very good. There are many argu- ments of expediency and adaptation to be made in its favor anywhere. As to its adaptability to American conditions, that is more nearly a debatable question. Of course, it must be recognized that different materials have to be used to build Italian gardens in America, and various details require important alterations. In these matters mistakes are easy, and it would have been very surprising had the begin- ners not made grave errors ; but these errors do not affect the style itself, nor prove its failure, any more than the great abuses of democracy in America prove the failure of our system of government. There is room on this great continent for every style of landscape gardening. It is worth while to notice, by way of illus- tration, that a number of gardens are now being done in the Japanese style. Indeed, each and every possible style may have 126 ON AMERICAN GARDENING a real suitability to some special circum- stances. If we inquire which style is gen- erally best adapted to American conditions, we are still away from the point, for adapta- tion does not go by generalities, but has a meaning only in view of concrete condi- tions. Furthermore, all foreign styles, even the well-reputed English style, must be modified to suit American requirements, or it is as much a failure as any other. Is there, then, an American style of landscape gardening? or will there ever be one? These questions cannot be answered categorically and with great confidence. If we have not yet developed a national style in music, painting, literature or archi- tecture, it is quite too much to expect that greater progress should have been made in landscape gardening. Some things have, indeed, been done in a truly American way. We have the park systems of Chicago and of Hartford; we have many magnificent pri- vate estates, like Biltmore and Faulkner Farm; and we have had the Exposition at Buffalo. These are only typical examples, showing the art of landscape architecture in a fairly Americanized form. At least we are no longer dependent on exotic plans, 127 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL plants nor gardeners. With just pride we may label the whole thing "Made in America." In another chapter some attempt has been made to determine what are the char- acteristic features of the indigenous American landscape. We found that it is built on a very large scale, that it contains a great variety of motifs, and that it pos- sesses a large number of extraordinary and spectacular features. All of these things are more or less, — and at the bottom more rather than less, — related to the present and future status of landscape art in America, especially to the large and the characteristic expressions of it. Niagara Falls must eventually be the center of a national park; and the Big Trees are already reserved for the purposes of scenery. Pike's Peak, Mt. Washington and Mt. Rainier will some day work into the compositions of American landscape architects; and it is not beyond the reach of a reasonable faith or a good imagination to think that the Great Prairies and the Everglades may some time and somewhere enjoy the mastery of the artist's touch. Then when Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes, Pike's Peak, the Presidential 128 ON AMERICAN GARDENING Range, the Arizona desert, and the Father of Waters have received the fulness of scenic development, when they have been made the themes of great and adequate park projects, when they have been set forth for human enjoyment, with all the help that art can give to the great achievements of nature, then surely we shall have so much distinctively American landscape architecture. For years we have made ourselves disagreeable boasting about the great un- developed resources of America, meaning coal deposits, iron ore and tillable land: it has seldom occurred to us that our unde- veloped resources of beautiful landscape are even as great, and in their way quite as valuable. If American genius is proud of its native achievements in industry, the field lies open for similar achievements in art. The development of these resources will be the special task of American landscape gardening. There is another way of predicting — perhaps less accurately — the trend of land- scape gardening for the future. This method consists in comparing landscape gardening with the other arts, which have 129 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL already developed much further than landscape art, and proceeding on the fair assumption that the latter will follow some- what the same course that the former have followed. The comparison may be con- veniently made with painting, and for simplicity's sake may be confined to Amer- ica, though, of course, the same phylogeny would be found anywhere else. The development of painting presents three principal stages, — not to analyze more closely. These may be recorded and sum- marily characterized as follows: 1. The period of the representation of details. Smibert, West and Copley built up their pictures by drawing in every pos- sible detail, seen or unseen. Every button on a coat and every stitch on a cuff were represented as fully and as accurately as the skill and means of the artist would permit. 2. The period of the representation of material masses. The painters early learned that masses are more important than de- tails, and so the effort was turned from the latter to the former. The so-called school of impressionism, while earning an unpopu- lar reputation through extravagances, nevertheless settled the thinking world in 130 ON AMERICAN GARDENING favor of the broad effects of masses in preference to a mere childlike exhibition of curious details. William Morris Hunt, George Inness, John La Farge, and nearly- all the most famous of modern American painters exemplify this method. 3. The period of spiritual representa- tion. It is commonly recognized to be one thing to picture the material masses which the eye sees, and quite another to represent the spiritual significance of such masses as they appear to the sympathetic mind. It is understood that some of the most suc- cessful painters of the material world are quite unable to open for us this higher spiritual world. For it is generally recog- nized to be a higher world, and to require higher talents for its communication. Whistler, John H. Twachtman and Mel- chers may fairly be credited with this superior ability. Now let us see what we can find in the field of landscape architecture correspond- ing to this evolution. I. We have the period of details fully exemplified in Downing and his many fol- lowers. Their gardening dealt almost exclusively with specimen plants. These 131 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL details were to them supremely important. It would be easy to press this story further back, and to show how an earlier generation exhibited a more narrowed and inartistic appreciation of details: but we are not making a complete analysis of this matter, and we are confining ourselves arbitrarily to what has taken place in America within our own knowledge. 2. Then came Olmsted and the su- premacy of the mass. Mass planting has been the watchword ever since. Instead of cultivating one Japanese magnolia, Olmsted planted a carload of roadside dogwood in a single group. While the important prin- ciple herein involved has been very imper- fectly applied, even by Olmsted's most careful followers — as Manning and Eliot — it has. nevertheless, gained general recogni- tion, at least among professional landscape architects. 3. Where, when, how and from whom shall we see the spiritual treatment of landscape? Music, literature, painting and sculpture are spiritualized. Even utilitarian architecture, in some hands, takes on this higher expression. Shall we not some day see the landscape treated wdth a touch so 132 ON AMERICAN GARDENING sympathetic, so full of inspiration and mastery, that the whole picture will stand forth with a new meaning? If a painted landscape can suggest human passion or divine mercies, shall not the landscape itself, with its real hills, trees, water and enveloping atmosphere, speak with yet directer and more emphatic language of still higher spiritual themes? 133 ESSAY NUMBER NINE As to the Field of Criticism Q •-) O fa H X 9 * 2 a: VETERANS Mrs. Frank C. Kellogg The charm of Normandy and the Rhine prov- inces, as of New England, lies in the broken, undulating surface. To whatever point of the compass we turn there is unity in variety. The amphitheater of hills surrounding Amherst in Massa- chusetts does not grow monotonous to those who look out upon it from day to day. The encircling parapets always have a new tale to tell, a new wonder to reveal. No sun gilds them twice in just the same way, no atmosphere is repeated for any two days, and the mantle of green in summer, and the robe of white in winter, are never the same from year to year. J. C. Van Dyke, "Nature for Its Own Sake" 137 AS TO THE FIELD OF CRITICISM •YlVf^ E have taken a brief look at Amer- ^^^^ ican landscape gardening. In do- ing so we have glanced hurriedly at certain American landscape gardeners and their works. We have done nothing more, however, than to catch a glimpse, as from the window of a hurrying express train, of a few of the nearest and most outstanding facts. Even yet we have not the long- wished opportunity for a detailed and critical examination of materials; but we must, at least, assume the critic's point of view. It is a point of view which we have seldom (almost never) yet attained, but a point from which matters of large import may be seen. It will be quite worth our while to consider for a moment what relation criticism bears to art, — the critic to the artist. We do this, of course, with our own special art in mind, but we must take our instruction chiefly from what has been 139 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL done in other fields. In the field of land- scape architecture criticism is almost unknown ; and this fact presents unquestion- ably the greatest handicap under which the art labors. The landscape architects themselves appear to be not only blind to this defect, but they seem almost to present an organized opposition to every improve- ment in this direction. Consider, first of all, the refinement to which criticism has been brought in the field of literature. The authenticated works of Shakespeare may be printed in a com- fortable pocket volume, but the books about Shakespeare and his works would fill all the Carnegie libraries between Hyannis, Massachusetts, and Walla Walla, Washing- ton. These treat every conceivable phase of the poet's life and work, viewed from every possible angle, from the Grecian structure of his plays to the rambles with Ann Hathaway on Sunday afternoons along the shady field-paths of Warwick. Homer has been dead some thousands of years. His nation is dead, and the language in which he wrote is dead; but there meet daily in many classrooms thousands of boys and girls to discuss his qualities of style, 140 THE FIELD OF CRITICISM and to wonder what made Helen act so. A volume of criticism even greater in proportion to the apparent need, washes hourly across the meadows of current liter- ature. Mr. William Dean Howells has writ- ten many books, but his critics have written five pages to his one. The newspapers are full of talk about Kipling, Barry and Mr. Dooley; and if there is a dinner party any- where in the land where novels, plays and biographies are not discussed the guests must be very stupid, or very interesting, for they are very rare. Does all this flood of criticism serve any use? Does it fertilize the soil from which literature springs? or to change the figure, is criticism a mere parasitic growth? A good deal of it does, indeed, represent a cheap parasitism, but proper criticism is nevertheless, the very life of literature. Criticism is to literature what the cultivator, the pruning knife, and the spray pump are to the apple orchard. Apple-trees will grow without care, but the wild pasture trees never bear fruit of any value. It is only when the trees are set in proper soil, in orderly rows, pruned, fertilized and cleansed, and given continual expert care 141 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL by the horticulturist, that they bear full loads of perfect apples. No; a progressive literature without constant criticism is an impossibility. Most productive writers recognize this. They welcome intelligent criticism, even when it rests heavily on their own works. Some writers, and all publishers, industriously cultivate criticism. The actor is, perhaps, as obviously dependent on the critic as is any other artist. In the first place, he works with a company of fellow artists whose judgments he must meet with some precision, in order to make his playing go at all. Next, he is usually supervised by a manager whose keen criticism is supplied with peculiar sanc- tions. In the third place, his acting must pass under the scrutiny of the professional critic who does not hesitate to say in the morning paper that the whole business was a shabby plagiarism of Booth or DeWolf Hopper, without ginger, grace or gumption. Finally, the public, passing in front of the box office, pass a very positive sort of criticism upon the art of both playwright and actor. It is easy to point out instances of able actors who have suffered under the 142 THE FIELD OF CRITICISM unjust strictures of any or all these various critics. It is not so easy to prove, however, that any of them have had their powers permanently impaired by such misunder- standings ; and it is all but self-evident that without this ordeal of criticism the art of acting would never rise above the lower levels of mediocrity. In like manner, the arts of painting, sculpture and music enjoy the stimulus and direction of a well-organized criticism. What would be the value of the annual picture salon without criticism? And the great music festivals are partly for present enjoyment, but partly, too, for the sake of future improvement. On every hand, in every art (except only landscape architecture), criticism is wel- comed, and the critic is recognized as filling a position of legitimate service. Not every critic is himself an artist. Probably the best dramatic critics are not actors, nor the best critics of pictures painters, but the field offers attractive employment for high talents. We all allow that landscape gardening is the youngest of the arts, but its ex- ceeding immaturity is in nothing else so 143 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL completely demonstrable, as in the almost childish attitude of the rank and file of landscape artists toward criticism. The contrast which they offer when compared with novelists and actors is discouraging. I have recently organized and con- ducted a somewhat extensive correspond- ence with the landscape architects of America. Naturally, I have written most freely to my own acquaintances, but I have also written personal letters to many others. In this correspondence I have been as polite as my unhopeful expectations could teach me to be ; and my direct questions have been as few and as mild as was consistent with getting any information at all. Some data and some valuable expressions of opinion have, indeed, been secured; but the big result of the whole investigation is to show the very general and hearty suspicion in which all such inquiries are held. Some landscape gardeners politely, but firmly, refuse to give any information regarding their own works or anybody else's. With rare exceptions, information, if given at all, is given grudgingly, as though a favor had been presumptuously and unwarrantably asked. This being the atti- 144 THE FIELD OF CRITICISM tude toward the giving of information, what is to be expected when these men are asked for an expression of opinion? The majority of them refuse fiatly to give it. It seems to be considered a crime to say that Mr. Brown's design for the public park is good, and Mr. White's design for the college campus inadequate. Indeed, some of these good men appear to feel that it is unprofessional and ungentlemanly to think about such things. Let us understand now and evermore that this attitude is wrong and harmful. The right way is to welcome and assist criticism. Well-informed, intelligent criti- cism will clear the air, will set a standard of taste, will foster a wider and better appreciation of our gracious art, will tend to the improvement of technique, will set higher ideals before our professional workers, and in a thousand ways will help both the makers and the enjoyers of land- scape pictures. In the field of landscape architecture the critic meets certain practical difficulties which do not exist in other fields, or which elsewhere offer less serious obstacles. It is quite possible to read all the works 145 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL of almost any popular or classic writer, and to know what his entire output has been. The experienced art critic has seen practically all the works of the masters; and before he writes about Dewing's paint- ings, or of St. Gaudens' sculpture, he will have seen a majority of the artist's pro- ductions. Now it is practically impossible for any critic to know the work of any landscape architect in this complete fashion. Mr. Warren Manning — to use a specific example — has undertaken over 750 pieces of work in his professional career. These are scattered all over the continent, from coast to coast, and from Canada almost to the Gulf. And the work of every other landscape architect is only more or less scattered and inaccessible. Nor is this all. Perhaps it is not even the worst. Nearly all of this work exists anonymously. Alfred Henry Lewis and Edith Wharton put their names on their books; and 200,000 copies of "Coniston" repeat the name of Winston Churchill 200,000 times. But when Frederick Law Olmsted works with equal skill and devo- tion to make Franklin Park a place of beauty and of joy forever, there remains 146 THE FIELD OF CRITICISM no sign nor mark to repeat his name to the thousands who thoughtlessly enjoy his labors. It is well-nigh impossible to discover the existing works of particular landscape architects. It would require a directory and a chart to do it; and it seems hardly necessary to remark that such a directory has not yet been compiled. In many places where good works of landscape gardening exist, it seems to be a point of professional etiquette to keep the names of the designers a secret. Another difficulty lies in the fact that a landscape gardener's picture is not finished when it leaves his hand. Nearly always the lapse of years must be waited for its completion. Sometimes a generation must pass; and it would be hard in any case for the artist himself to say just at what moment his masterpiece gave the fullest expression of his original design. What is even worse is the positive infraction of the design by ignorant or wil- ful meddlers. A gardener, a park superin- tendent, a half-baked engineer, or a thrifty contractor executes the artist's design. Sometimes he executes it to death. This work is often performed ignorantly, often 147 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL without s5aTipathy, sometimes with uncon- cealed hostility. How, then, shall we judge the designer by the result? It is true that artists, like other people, must be judged chiefly by results; and the best landscape architects provide means for overcoming or mitigating these diffi- culties, just as they provide against other technical difficulties in their work. Never- theless, under the best of management these difficulties exist in large measure, and form a serious barrier to the progress of criticism in the field of landscape gardening art. We may here pass over the fact that criticism in the field of landscape archi- tecture has no traditions, no criteria, no background of history. These defects are real and serious, but they are not vital, neither are they permanent. They belong only to the infancy of our art, and will be outgrown in due time. 148 ESSAY NUMBER TEN On American Landscape Gardeners In short, the landscape gardener s tasf( is to produce beautiful pictures. Nature supplies him with the materials, alivays giving him vitalit}), light, atmosphere, color, and details, and often /ove/jj or imposing forms in the conformation of the soil; and she Tvill see to the thorough finishing of his design. But the design is the main thing, and the design must he of his own conceiving. Mrs. Schuyler Van Rensselaer, "Art Out-of-Doors" 151 CO i I O X a lit o '^ Q ^ 2 U n ON AMERICAN LANDSCAPE GARDENERS ♦HEAVING in mind now what has been uJ ^^^^ °^ *^^ state of criticism in land- scape architecture, let us try to apply our principles briefly to the work of American landscape gardeners. Anything which we can do now will be, of course, only the most meager and fragmentary beginning. To criticise the work of Down- ing, for example, one ought to search out carefully the few places which he designed. These places should then be thoroughly examined to determine what part of their present aspect is due to the plans of Downing, and what to the changes of later gardeners. But, most of all, to judge Andrew Jackson Downing fairly, it would be important to look up the work of ihose immediately inspired by him. The connec- tion between Downing and Calvert Vaux should be studied, but more especially should the critic investigate the works of 153 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Frank J. Scott. It is hardly necessary to say that the present writer has not done all this with reference to the work of Down- ing, to say nothing of the hundreds of able men who have succeeded to his pro- fession in America. Once more, however, the writer pleads the immeasurable im- portance of this kind of criticism, and the necessity of making a beginning some- where. In undertaking a discussion of Ameri- can landscape gardeners, we are forced to traverse, in part, the same ground which we have already covered in speaking of American landscape gardening. In this case, however, our point of view is alto- gether different. Then we were tracing the development of the art; now we shall try to estimate the characters and achieve- ments of the men. Professor Bailey names Andre Par- mentier as the first professional landscape gardener in America. However, the naming of any man, in advance of Down- ing, as the pioneer must, of course, be very arbitrary; and with all due respect to the excellent gardens and the able gardeners of colonial days, we may fairly dismiss 154 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS them all with the observation that real American landscape gardening did not exist until about 1850. Downing is by all odds the first of American landscape gardeners. He did some little work on private places about Newburgh and in Washington on the grounds about the Capitol, and the Smith- sonian Institution. Very little, if any, of this work has been preserved. Downing's ability as a student of this art is nearly always judged by one piece of work, namely, his book on Landscape Garden- ing, with occasionally some slight addition for the pleasing essays in the "Horti- culturist." These writings, indeed, show a man of great refinement of character, a man of rather severely voluptuous tastes, of somewhat aristocratic temper, retiring and sensitive, fond of everything beautiful, but with a taste influenced by the spirit of his time toward the curiosities of beauty, a man highly appreciative of the natural landscape, but still more passionately fond of trees, shrubs and fruits. We must not forget that Downing — like hundreds of his followers — ^was a nurseryman before he was a landscape gardener, and this fact had 155 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL a marked influence, as we may see, on all his work. If we are to form any fair judgment of Downing, however, we must not stop here. We must rather draw our conclusions largely from the disciples who followed him. Every great artist or teacher leaves a group of disciples behind. These men work over, and put into effect, the ideas of the master. Judged by the number and character of his disciples, Andrew Jackson Downing's name is the most illustrious in the entire history of American agriculture, horticulture, or landscape gardening. He has been the model and the beau ideal of every pomologist, fruit grower and nursery- man, as well as the direct inspiration of almost every native landscape gardener which our country has produced. Every nurseryman who has grown trees and shrubs in America during the last fifty years has had some fairly definite notions of improving his own grounds, of helping his neighbors to improve theirs, and of help- ing in the beautification of public places. His ideas of these things have been taken "en bloc" from Downing. From the ranks of these nurserymen have come a majority 156 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS of our best landscape gardeners; and the completeness with which they have been controlled by Downing's ideas would be pitiful had the results been less satisfactory or the leadership less worthy. Other ideas have recently begun to overlie those of Downing, but his work still exercises a tremendous influence. This influence, especially in the recent past, has been so plain, and so easily traced, that we may fairly allow it to be the chief support of Downing's reputation as a landscape artist. By this same means, better than any other, can we determine also what were the Downing ideas of landscape gardening. For this purpose we may select for special study Mr. Frank J. Scott, who describes himself as Downing's friend and pupil. In Scott's "Suburban Home Grounds" are found a considerable number of designs of most excellent draftsmanship, and a large number of engravings corresponding perfectly with the plans. From these plans and pictures we may draw certain definite conclusions as to Scott's work, and these conclusions may fairly be carried over to the work of Downing. I. He aimed at an informal or "natu- 157 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL ral" style. His main walks and drives were usually curved, and his trees were not placed in straight rows, except where the circumstances plainly demanded it. This informality, however, was de- cidedly restrained, — we might even say constrained and stiff." It fell far short of the free and easy natural style of the present day. 2. Trees were used chiefly as individ- uals. Each one was given room for its complete development. There were few groups, and no masses. It will be remem- bered that this principle has been most strenuously preached by all the disciples of Downing, though it is now being generally abandoned. 3. Lawns are small and scrappy, the space being taken up very largely with trees and flower beds. Each design, there- fore, presents a somewhat jumbled appearance. 4. Trees of many kinds were used in nearly every place, and, as these were all treated as specimens, the whole assumed the air of an arboretum. This arboretum scheme is highly characteristic of the dis- ciples of Downing. These principles 2, 3 158 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS and 4 in the hands of men of linnited taste, led directly to what Professor Bailey has aptly characterized as the "nursery style" of landscape gardening. 5. Considerable numbers of fruit trees were used on the grounds, being placed in such a manner as to become a part of the decorative scheme. We shall see in a moment that modern taste has confirmed and extended Principle I. Numbers 2, 3 and 4 have been almost reversed, and Number 5 has been neglected. The older and more conservative land- scape gardeners of the present moment, however, hold rather closely to these principles of Downing as here deduced from the work of Scott. Before leaving this discussion of Downing's methods it is proper to inquire their source. Downing did not originate them, however great his originality may have been. We may easily recall the fact that Downing traveled in England, and that he most cordially admired the land- scape gardening which he saw there. Let us remember further that this was the time of Edward Kemp; and a comparison of the work of these two men will show 159 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL that, though Downing was by far the abler man, the methods of gardening, and the whole point of view of the two men were alike to an extraordinary degree. The state of landscape gardening in England in that day — 1 83 5- 1 840 — may be pictured with a few strokes of the pen. The extravagances of Brown and his immediate imitators had been succeeded by the practical common sense and masterful genius of Repton. In the hands of Repton the natural style had been established on a rational basis, and for all future generations. Then had followed the inevitable bevy of copyists, praising Repton's mastery by constant unimaginative repetition of his tricks, — holding to his methods without his genius, — precisely as Downing's disciples were to follow Downing one or two decades later. Downing was influenced chiefly by Repton, but this influence came to him largely at second hand, even as you and I began our work under the second-hand inspiration of the genius of Newburgh. Frederick Law Olmsted stands easily as the greatest figure in American landscape gardening. By many good authorities he is rated as the greatest 160 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS artist of any sort ever produced in America. In a recent vote taken among leading American landscape architects and students of the craft, Olmsted was awarded the primacy by a majority lacking only one vote of unanimity. There are, indeed, some few persons who show a wish to dispraise his work. These persons say that he took over from another man the design for Central Park, that he enjoyed the credit for a great deal of work done by Calvert Vaux, Ignaz Pilat and others. Every claim of this sort might easily be admitted without shaking his reputation in the least. Many of his later works, if not all of them, are greatly superior to Central Park; and if his reputation over- shadowed those of the men with whom he was associated, it was not because of any personal advantage unfaithfully taken. Olmsted was engaged on many works, of which the following are only a few : Central Park, New York. Prospect Park, Brooklyn. University of California, Berkeley. Washington Park, Brooklyn. South Park, Chicago. Morningside Park, New York. 161 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Muddy Brook Parkway, Boston. Mount Royal Park, Montreal. Capitol Grounds, Washington. Commonwealth Avenue, Boston. Belle Isle Park, Detroit. Capitol Grounds, Albany. Franklin Park, Boston. Charles River Embankment, Boston. Parks of Buffalo. Wood Island Park, Boston. Marine Park, Boston. Lynn Woods, Lynn. World's Fair, Chicago. Of these, perhaps the best known are the World's Fair, at Chicago (especially the Wooded Island and Lagoon), Mount Royal Park, Montreal, Biltmore, N. C, and the railway station grounds of the Boston & Albany Railroad. If we add to this list Franklin Park, Boston, and the Muddy Brook Parkway, we have a reasonably representative selection of his best and most characteristic work. However, in any consideration of Olmsted's work, careful attention should be given to his written reports. Among these should be specially mentioned his report on Franklin Park, and his *'Consid- 162 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS erations of the Justifying Value of a Pub- lic Park." With these various works in hand we may be justified in a few generali- zations regarding his methods and their results. 1. He revitalized the natural style. Brown, Repton, Downing and all their followers had professed the natural style, but the works of Olmsted were so much more truly like the best of Nature's work, that the whole doctrine of naturalness in landscape art received a new meaning at his hands. To-day, at least in America, the natural style and the Olmstedian style are synonymous, while the works of all his predecessors would be rated artificial. 2. Olmsted introduced a new apprecia- tion of natural scenery. Other men had been gardeners or improvers on Nature. He first taught us to admire Nature in her own dress. Downing was, of course, a lover of natural landscape, but this element of his character was not brought strongly forward in his landscape gardening. 3. Adaptation to site and surroundings was the keynote of Olmsted's work, and this also amoi-.ited to a new discovery in landscape art. In this direction Olmsted 163 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL had a peculiar gift which is everywhere recognized as one of his distinguishing characteristics. It will be readily seen that this faculty was closely associated with his appreciation of natural scenery men- tioned above. 4. He discovered the native flora. Though artistically less important than other contributions of Olmsted, this was the most revolutionary of his innovations. Downing was a collector of plants, with a fondness for what was rare and exotic. Gardeners everywhere were planting Japa- nese magnolias, purple beeches and Cam- perdown elms. Olmsted turned boldly, and not without violent opposition, to the commonest roadside shrubs. He adopted the outcast weeds. Peter after his vision could not have been more completely con- verted to what had previously been thought unclean. Up to this time, strange as it may seem, American plants had been more used in Europe than here. With the richest indigenous flora of any country in the world, we were still planting the species and varieties of European nurseries. We may remark further that this use of the native flora was the one Olmstedian 164 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS principle most quickly acclaimed and adopted by others. It has had a tremen- dous vogue in this country. It is the point in which Olmsted has been most fully, successfully and sometimes slavishly imitated. 5. The native plants were used in large quantities. Common dogwood and viburnums were put in by carloads. For the first time in the history of landscape art, plants were adequately massed. This principle was not carried to an extreme, how- ever; and, in fact, it has not yet received the development which it merits. While it re- ceived less popular approval than item 4 above, its intrinsic importance from the standpoint of good art is much greater. 6. Indigenous plants were given their natural environment. Much attention was given to the development of this principle, especially by some of the followers of Olmsted. Up to this time, along with the preference for exotics, had gone the gar- dener's pride in growing plants out of their altitude, latitude and longitude. The Alpine garden was the gardener's pet, and Downing himself nursed his lonely fig-trees through the cold New York winters. 165 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL Items 4, 5 and 6, though quite inde- pendent, are all closely related. They deal with the use of native plants in a natural way. It is rather odd that these radical changes in landscape-gardening methods should have come from a man who always mourned his ignorance of plants. Another fact is still more curious, viz., that Olmsted should be generally criticised for his weak- ness as a plantsman. And the present writer wishes just here to record his most emphatic dissent from this current criti- cism. It is one thing to know the names of plants, and quite a different thing to know the plants themselves. It is a still greater accomplishment to know how to use plants to make pictures. Every botanizing old maid, male or female, knows plant names. Every good nurseryman knows the plants. Only the artist and the genius know how to blend these materials into pictures of abiding beauty; and here is where Frederick Law Olmsted qualified. 7. Olmsted's roads were peculiar and characteristic — and peculiarly and charac- teristically successful. A considerable part of their success is due to their adaptation to the contour of the land, and is thus 166 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS related to Principle 3 discussed above. Their striking individuality appears to be largely the result of their nodal treatment, more fully discussed below. As a third characteristic, they were always laid on natural lines. This means that there are no straight lines and no mathematical curves, either in horizontal projection or in profile. In this matter of road design Olmsted has been widely followed, usually without marked success. 8. Olmsted appears to have been the first conspicuously to adopt the principle of rhythm in natural landscape composition, though any artist composing freely, and with a proper feeling for his work will inevitably follow this method more or less. This method cannot be formulated in a sentence, but it may be explained most simply in its application to roads. We may suppose that every road (especially such long "circuit drives" as Olmsted delighted to make) may be composed of a certain number of nodes, connected by corre- sponding internodes. The main features of the landscape composition come at the nodes. Here will be the best views. Here will be the most attractive plantings. Here 167 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL the road will make its principal turn; and at the nodes will come the changes of grade. For instance, there would be a node where the drive crosses a small stream. The grade changes from a decline to an incline. There is a promising curve. There is a specially fine view of the stream. There is a bridge to be admired. The plantings along the brookside are altogether different from those on the meadow just passed. Everything marks this for a node. After enjoying this picture to our time's content, we take the ascent toward the upland beyond, and after traversing a com- paratively featureless internode we come out on the high land above, where gradient and curvature change once more, and where the far outlook blesses us with emotions quite different from those borne to us on the shady bridge over the brook. The same method of composition applies, almost necessarily, to all sorts of landscape work, especially to informal undertakings. Will we design an informal border of hardy herbaceous plants? If there is any logical order at all to the composition we shall find it dividing easily into nodes and internodes. Every row of 168 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS street trees presents a well-marked rhythm like that of martial music. It is not to be assumed that this prin- ciple^-or any of these principles — was explicitly formulated by Olmsted himself. Olmsted was too great an artist to operate upon any formula. The idea was first pointed out to me by my friend Mr. George A. Parker, who by acquaintance with Olmsted, by broad knowledge of his work, and by deep sympathy with everything artistic, is peculiarly justified in suggesting such a generalization. Calvert Vaux was born and trained in London. He came to America in 1848, and in this country his life's work was done. He was commonly considered by his contemporaries to be the ablest land- scape architect in America, this being before Olmsted's commanding genius was recognized. Vaux furnished, in more than one sense, the connecting bond between Downing and Olmsted. He was first the business partner of the former, and after- ward of the latter. The partnership between Olmsted and Vaux was in many respects fortunate. Olmsted had breadth of view, originality and a practical sympa- 169 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL thy for the outdoor world in its largest aspects. Vaux had the technical skill of the trained architect and a knowledge of European practice. In the various works executed by this firm, as notably in Central Park, many of the most pleasing details were of Vaux's suggestion and design, while the unity of the scheme considered all together was due to Olmsted's broader vision. It is an easy inference that, during the period of this partnership, Olmsted learned a great deal from Vaux in the way of technical method which stood him in good service in his later work. The work of Charles Eliot is easier to judge than that of any other American landscape gardener. This is due to various reasons, — (i) to its comparative and lamentable brevity, (2) to its simplicity and consistency, and (3), most of all, to the completeness with which it is set forth in the magnificent memoir by his father. We may say briefly of his work that it follows the Olmstedian methods already outlined, that he showed a great fondness for natural scenery, superior perhaps even to that of Olmsted himself, and that he was a leader in America in the projection 170 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS of large improvement schemes involving wide districts. The Metropolitan Park system in the vicinity of Boston was the first of its kind in this country, and is to be rated as Eliot's masterpiece. The greatest, most significant and most important development of landscape archi- tecture in America in our own day is presented in the work of civic improve- ment, as it is now commonly called. Though Eliot is frequently named as the pioneer in this field, the work is being done now on a large scale, in many places, by many landscape architects, and with a technical proficiency and success which would surely have surprised and delighted Eliot. As examples may be mentioned Mr. Warren Manning's work at Harrisburg; Mr. John Nolen's designs for San Diego, Cal., and Roanoke, Va., Mr. Charles Mul- ford Robinson's plans for Honolulu, and the plans of Mr. F. L. Olmsted, Jr., for Detroit; also the reports of Mr. Harlan P. Kelsey on Columbia and Greenville, S. C, and especially the magnificent new plans for Chicago, by Mr. Daniel H. Burnham. Literary and dramatic criticism give their best service when applied to the work 171 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL of men still living. In pursuance of our determination to apply similar methods to landscape art, we ought now to say some- thing of the work of contemporary land- scape architects. The difficulties of such an undertaking are only too manifest, and have already been enumerated. From recent and somewhat extended correspond- ence with the best judges, however, I beg permission to sketch a few general observations. A considerable majority of these correspondents place Mr. Warren H. Man- ning and the Olmsted Brothers at the top of the list of practising landscape archi- tects. Mr. Manning, who worked for some time with the elder Olmsted, is mentioned by many as the best representative of that master's methods. He is particularly strong in his knowledge of native flora over a large part of the continent, and in his ability to bring this flora into effective use. His methods are particularly adapted to large rural places, and there is some suggestion that on small city places he is less successful, owing to this use of too broad a style. 172 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS The firm of Olmsted Brothers is generally praised for its efficient business organization, making it possible to turn out a large amount of work of uniform excellence. Mr. John C. Olmsted is said to be strong on the organization and adminis- tration of parks and municipal projects generally. Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr., is credited with unusual artistic gifts. Mr. Percival Gallagher, a member of the same firm, is mentioned by those who know him as a young man of special promise. Various accidents of circumstance have combined to place Mr. Charles A. Piatt in the nominal leadership of the American exponents of the Italian style. Mr. Piatt is, first of all, an architect (as, in fact, are nearly all the devotees of the Italian style), and lays no claim to a knowledge of gardening. However, he has designed a number of small places with distinguished success. The Larz Andersen Garden at Brookline, Mass., is the most noted example of his work, but some of the smaller things which he has done at Cornish, N. H., are said to be even better. Mr. O. C. Simonds, of Chicago, made his reputation as designer and superintend- 173 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL ent of Graceland Cemetery. He has since then designed other rural cemeteries, and his name will always be especially asso- ciated with this sort of work. His work seems to be characterized by roads of broad and dignified sweep, and by plantings of large and orderly naturalistic masses conforming admirably to the contour of the land on which they are placed. Mr. Jens Jensen, of Chicago, appeals to my own judgment as one of the ablest men of the hour. He has the advantage of unusual artistic and technical training, and an intimate acquaintance with the best European models. His work is interesting, original, novel, breaking clear away from the formulas now familiar in America, though resembling more the modern work in Germany. His work on the West Park System in Chicago presents many notable features. Many other landscape architects are mentioned with praise. Those most fre- quently named by correspondents are Messrs. Chas. N. Lowrie, H. P. Kelsey, Geo. Kessler, E. W. Bowditch and Frederick G. Todd. But their work is not sufficiently known to the present writer, 174 ON LANDSCAPE GARDENERS nor to his correspondents, who are willing to express any opinion of it, so that it may be characterized in any manner at the present time. It is generally recognized that a great deal is done for the art of landscape gar- dening by those who are not professionally engaged in designing. The park superin- tendents especially have much to do with the progress of the art. In their number Messrs. J. A. Pettigrew, of Boston; George A. Parker, of Hartford, and Theodore Wirth, of Minneapolis, are recognized as men of eminent abilities. Prof. L. H. Bailey has done much through his writings to popularize sound principles of good taste in private gardening. In the same way much was accomplished through the able and courageous preaching of the late W. A. Stiles, of Prof. C. S. Sargent, and that group of enthusiasts who found a pleasant and inspiring exchange for ten years in the weekly issues of "Garden and Forest." 175 ESSAY NUMBER ELEVEN On American Masterpieces of Landscape Architecture / am sitting on a moss^ log tvith an open book on ml; ^nee. At my feet a Utile spring puts forth its trickling runnel. The well is clear and strong, a voice of nature which sa})s, "Sound, sound, rise and flow on." Water is not aware of the academies and the ohsoletes; possibly this is why its noise is so charming in these cool places of the woods. Overhead the crowded, dusky leaves shake with a sound of multitudinous ki^^i^g* ond one trim wood-thrush goes like a shadow through the bosket yonder, piping a liquid, haunting phrase, which wavers between the extremes of joy and pain. There is just enough light to read Keats by — the light of neither sea nor land, the soft crepuscule of a thick forest. Maurice Thompson, "My Winter Garden" 179 ON AMERICAN MASTERPIECES OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE ^^HE uninitiated person hearing of mas- ^^ terpieces easily forms the idea that there is something complete and final about each one. The very word "master- piece" has a big, sonorous and conclusive sound. However, when the critic comes to close quarters with any of the renowned works he finds that they are not without defects. Even the most masterful of the masterpieces, in literature, music or painting, is only a little way in advance of its com- petitors. Or, to state the matter differently, there is no such thing as perfection or finality in the works of human art. In the field of landscape architecture there are special difficulties which have al- ready been hinted at. A piece of work may be left to-day in the very best condition which the landscape architect's skill can give it, and yet five years from to-day, through neglect or abuse, it may be worthless. An artistic 181 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL effect once achieved in landscape gardening will not stay fixed. The long time required to secure results in the best sorts of land- scape work also brings in difficulties. The situation becomes particularly awkward when, through the lapse of time, several different landscape gardeners are employed successively on the same piece of work. Many of the best things that have been done have been necessarily managed in this way, and in such instances it is a puzzle to decide whether one man or another should have the praise for achievement or the blame for failure. Yet, in spite of difficulties, it seems wise and proper to classify some works of art as masterpieces, whether in literature, painting or landscape architecture. It is always good to recognize merit. It is always worth while to give large attention to the best things. Every masterpiece becomes a standard by which other work is measured. It becomes an example all workers may emulate. It marks the goal toward which every am- bitious artist presses forward. As we seek to promote better work in landscape archi- tecture, particularly by setting up higher standards, we should improve every oppor- 182 AMERICAN MASTERPIECES tunity to call attention to the best works in this art also. It will be recognized, of course, that the selection of any particular works of art for pre-eminent recognition is a matter of per- sonal opinion. If the opinion of a large number of well-trained men can be se- cured, and if they agree to any extent, such a consensus of opinion has a special value. But we have not gone so far in landscape gardening, and it will apparently be some time before we can. The opinions of specific works which follow are entirely my own and must be recorded as partial and tentative. The comparisons made in such opinions, moreover, must not appear to be invidious. Doubtless, some excellent works of land- scape architecture have not been mentioned in the following list. In fact, it will be easy to find other works which are undoubtedly better than some of those here mentioned. The list, in fact, has been made up simply with a view to have it broadly represen- tative of American landscape art. It seems to me eminently important that my students, as they are being introduced to the study of landscape gardening, should 183 THE LANDSCAPE BEAUTIFUL have set before them a number of typical works which, if not strictly masterpieces, are recognized as of high merit. Some of the masterpieces which I have included in my list are important on ac- count of their historical significance. Circumstances have conspired to give them special influence. This is the case, for instance, with Central Park, New York. The park itself is by no means the best one in the country, and the original design is by no means the best work of its author. Nevertheless, the making of Central Park marks an epoch in American landscape architecture. It was the beginning of the great city park systems which to-day supply the most magnificent examples of the value and beauty to be achieved in the successful practice of this art. Number One. Therefore, let Central Park, New York City, stand as the first masterpiece of American landscape archi- tecture. The idea of this park was broached by Andrew Jackson Downing, and Down- ing lived long enough to see the beginning of its realization. The original design was the first important work of Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., and it is quite within 184 2 "^ < ^ O ■= S ^ AMERICAN MASTERPIECES the facts lo s;jy th;it. this piece of work opened to him his (:rir(:(;T an a landscape gardener. Whatever thin opportunity may have made of the land between 5rjth Street and Croton Reservoir, it made a world- renowned landscape architect of Olmsted. This in itself mi^/ht entitle the project to rank as a masterpiece. Yet, with all its defects, Central Park has many good qualities. Aftc-r all deduc- tions have been made, it is still a rural park. It brin^/s the important qualities and some of the sentiment of wild nature into the center of the most sophisticated city in America. Moreover, it is actually one of the most useful of parks. Probably more people see it in a year than any other piece of park property in America, — perhaps in the v/orld. For a lar^/e majority of these people, Central Park meets a vtry urgent need. It is more than recreation to them, — it is help and even health or life itself. Every student of landscape architecture ought carefully to consider Central Park. He ou^