J^ortli (Earaltna ^tatp This book was presented by Mrs. Krnest E. VJalker SB470 E6E6 IFCH THIS BOOK MUST NOT BE TAKEN FROM THE LIBRARY BUILDING -// . X y (^oX^^^^^^XvV CHARLES ELIOT iLantJScape ardjitect A LOVER OF NATURE AND OF HIS KIND WHO TRAINED HIMSELF FOR A NEW PROFESSION PRACTISED IT HAPPILY AND THROUGH IT WROUGHT MUCH GOOD BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOLTtIITON MIFFLIN C0:MPANY COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY CHARLES W. ELIOT ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Published June, igoa FOR THE DEAR SON" WHO DIED IN" HIS BRIGHT PRIME FROM THE FATHER TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER I Inheritances 1-4 Eliots, Lymans, Peabodys, and Derbys, 1 ; inherited taste for out-of-door art, 2 ; early travel, 3 ; inherited enjoyment of scenery, 4. CHAPTER II Geisteral Education 5-31 School work, 5, 15, 16 ; committing poetry to memory, 5 ; predilections for history and natural liistory, 6, 7 ; imagi- native sports, 7-9 ; riding, camping, and making jilans, 7-11 ; camping at Mt. Desert and Naushon, 9-13 ; journeys to Florida and in New England, 13, 14 ; cross-country walks, 14 ; drawing lessons, 15 ; cruising in the Sunshine, 11, 17-24 ; entering college, 17 ; sketching, 20 ; reading, 24 ; Camp Champlain, 25, 26 ; the house at Mt. Desert, 27 ; mother, 16, 27 ; college course, 28-31. CHAPTER III Professional Training — Apprenticeship .... 32-49 Choice of profession, 32 ; Bussey Institution, 33 ; ad- mitted to the office of Fredei'ick Law Olmsted, 34 ; inspect- ing works in progress, 35, 36, 39 ; draughting, plant orders, planting-plans, 37 ; Arnold Ai-boretum, 38, 44, 45 ; absorb- ing Mr. Olmsted's princii)les, 37, 39, 40 ; instructive designs in i)rogress — Belle Isle, Lawrenceville School, Back Bay Fens, Boston and Albany stations, City Point, Franklin Park, 40-44 ; notes of landscape, of trees, shrubs, and vines by their uses, of contracts, and prices, 43-46 ; walks and excursions, 45-48 ; first eai-nings, 48. CHAPTER IV Landscape Study in Europe. London and Paris . . 50-75 Objects in going to Europe, 50 ; journal, correspondence, Ti CONTENTS sketches, lists, and notes during the year, 50 ; Liverpool and Chester, 51, 52 ; London and the neighborhood in win- ter, 52-67 ; London parks, 52-54 ; Kew, 53 ; Hampstead and Highgate, 55 ; Epping Forest, 56 ; Bedford Park and Pinner, 57 ; Harrow-on-the-Hill, 58 ; Ashstead Park, 62 ; Dorking and vicinity, 63-66 ; Reading-room of the British Museum, 56, 58-62, 67 ; ugly London, delightful country, 63, 59 ; pictures, 52, 61, 67, 69, 70 ; visit to Oxford, 67 ; Can- terbury, 68 ; Paris and the neighborhood in winter, 69- 75 ; She of Melos, 70 ; Paris parks, 70-75 ; some curiosities of Paris, 75. CHAPTER V Landscape Study in Europe. The Rivieka .... 76-118 Lyons, Fourvieres, Pare de la Tete d'Or — prospects, per- spectives, plantings, 76-78 ; Avignon — new scenery, 79, 80 ; Provence, Marseilles — a glorious prospect, 80-82 ; Hyeres — a lovable place, 82, 83 ; Cannes, 84-87 ; VaUom- brosa and Larochefoucauld compared, 85 ; Antibes — gar- dens, sea-views, and sunsets, 88, 89, 92-94 ; Nice, 90, 94, 95 ; a lovely garden, 93 ; Eze — a picturesque hill-village, 95 ; Mentone, 96-98, 99 ; the spring outburst, 97 ; Monte Carlo gardens, and Monaco, 98 ; the Riviera a lovely dream, 99 ; Bordighera, San Remo, Alassio, 100-102 ; a sand beach, 102 ; Genoa — puerile gardens, fine palaces, 102, 103 ; Santa Margherita and Portofino — a hiU-piercing cove, 104-106 ; Pisa, 107 ; Florence — the setting of a city, 108-112 ; Venice — the perf ectest spot, 113 ; Lake Como — a beautiful lakeside, 114 ; describing scenery, ^15 ; by St. Gotthard and Lucerne to Paris, 116-118. CHAPTER VI Landscape Study in Europe. Paris again . . . 119-132 The Salon, 119 ; Paris squares well used, 120 ; Mons. Andre's methods of executing his designs, 121 ; Exhibition d'Horticulture, 122 ; Bois de Boulogne, 122 ; the gardens of Versailles — the Petit Trianon the best part, 123 ; Fer- rieres — a costly country-seat, 124-126 ; ErmenonviUe — the park use of waters, 126, 127 ; Buttes-Chaumont and the garden of the Luxembourg compared, 128 ; Mortefontaine — concealing public roads, ponds held by dams, a place of CONTENTS landscape charm, 129, 130 ; the vicinity of Havre, 131 ; the difficulty of getting advice, 132. CHAPTER VII La n dscape Study in Europe. Tue South of Eng- land 133-151 Parks, gardens, and woods about Southampton, 133 ; the New Forest, 134 ; true English scenery, 134 ; Salisbury and Wilton, 135 ; famous nurseries, 136 ; Bicton Park, Hayes Barton, and Salterton, 138 ; Dawlish and Powderham — river, port, cliffs, gardens, castle, and i)ark, 139, 140 ; Teign- mouth — another town on a spit, 140 ; Torquay, Kingswear, Dartmouth — lovely places recalling the Riviera and Lake Como, 141, 142 ; by the Dart to Totness, 143 ; Port Eliot, 143 ; Plymouth and Mt. Edgcumbe, 144, 145 ; Clovelly — a quaint, steep village, 146 ; Lynmouth — an ecstatic spot, 147 ; a superb region, 148 ; Dunster, WeUs, and Bath, 149 ; Bowood — woods, deer, Pinetum, lakeside, and terrace gardens, 150./ CHAPTER VIII Landscape Study in Europe. London and the North 152-163 Parks, nurseries, and gardens in and near London in July, 152-154 ; Cambridge, 154 ; Matlock Bath — the Pavil- ion Gardens, 156 ; Chatsworth and Haddon Hall, 157 ; the Pavilion Gardens of Buxton, 158 ; the parks of Manchester and Preston, 158 ; the Lake country — scenery of its sort the perfectest imaginable, 159-161 ; to Edinburgh by Car- lisle and Glasgow, 162, 163. CHAPTER IX Laijdscape Study in Europe. Hamburg, Denmark, Sweden, and Russia 164-186 J The water parks of Hamburg, 164-166 ; Kiel, 166 ; Copenhagen, 167-172 ; the Frederiksberg-Have, 108 ; the Castle of Elsinore, 170 ; Skodsborg and the royal forest, 170; Charlottenlund, 171 ; into Sweden and t/ Stockholm, 172 ; a water-girt and water-cut city, 173-177-4 scenery and flora like that of the Maine coast, 174-176 1 Upsala, 177 ; the ii CONTENTS approach to Finland, 178 ; Helsingfors — gardens, wooden houses, and fences, 179 ; the ride to St. Petersburg, 180 ; a huge, long-distance city, 180-185 ; the Botanical Gardens, ■ 180 ; Peterhof, 181 ; the park of Yelagin Island, mixed water, greensward, and wood, 182 ; the Imperial Park, Pav- lofsk — a charming piece of scenery, 184 ; the emptiness of St. Petersburg's streets, 185. CHAPTER X Landscape Study in Eueope. Germany, Holland, and Homeward 187-203 The dull ride to Berlin, 187 ; the Berlin Botanical Gar- den, and the city sqixares, 188 ; seeing the government park and forest work about Berlin under the guidance of Dr. Carl Bolle, 188; Muskau — the most remarkable and lovable park on the Continent, 190, 191 ; Dresden — the gallery, the Elbe, Pillnitz and its arboretum, 192 ; Leipsic parks, 193 ; Weimar and its park, 194 ; Eisenach — framings and fore- grounds for the Wartburg, 194 ; Wartburg, 195 ; WiUielms- thal, a simple, quiet place, 196 ; Wilhelmshohe, huge of its kind, but a bad kind, 196 ; Arnhem — a road of villas, 197 ; an open villa-garden, 198 ; the park of Sonsbeck, 198 ; the Hague and the beach of Scheveningen, 199 ; real Dutch landscape, 200 ; Repton's cottage, 201,; the Pavonia ashore, 201-203. / CHAPTER XI Starting in Practice. First Writing 204-223 Methods of practice, 204-206 ; first planting design, 207 ; the suburbs in March, 208 ; the Longfellow Memorial, 210- 214 ; engagement, 214 ; laying out the Norton estate in Cambridge, 214 ; Anglomania in park making, 215-218 ; the beginnings of landscape art — a short list of books and papers, 219-223. CHAPTER XII Three Congenial Undertakings. Two Parks and a Church Site 224-233 The Common at Newburyport, 224 ; the village church at Weston, 225-227 ; the White Park at Concord, N. H., 227- 233 ; a typical New England scene, 228, 231 ; fit and dis- tinctive beauty, 233. CONTENTS ix CHAPTER XIII / Two Scenery Problems — Marriage . / 234-239 An avenue entrance, 234 ; a new approach-road on a large estate, 235, 236 ; cutting down precious trees, 235 ; mar- riage, 238. CHAPTER XIV Six Old Ajmerican Country-seats 240-260 The Gore Place, Waltham, Mass., a lesson in simplicity and harmony, 240-243 ; the Lyman Place, Waltham, Mass. — helping and not forcing Nature, 243-246 ; the Cushing- Payson Place, Belmont, Mass., a comprehensive design ; Clermont on the Hudson, a manor-house with great Locusts on the river hluff, 250-253 ; Montgomery Place, second to no seat in America for its combination of attractions, 253- 256 ; Hyde Park — broad, stately scenery — nothing which does not contribute to the effect of the whole, 256-260. CHAPTER XV v/The Function of the Landscape Architect . . . 261-274 For what object to employ the landscape architect, 261 ; the problems of landscape architecture, 262 ; horticulture and design in the surroundings of houses, 263-265 ; the house scene, 266 ; the house and its surroundings one com- position, 267 ; the suburban house scene, 268 ; the inappro- priate house setting, 269 ; planting about a suburban house, 270 ; the country-seat, 271 ; the definitions of architecture and landscape architecture, 272-274. CHAPTER XVI Selected Letters to Private Owners, Trustees, or Corporations 275-303 A planting-plan for house grounds, 275-280 ; an improve- ment of station grounds, 280 ; laying out a new estate at Irvington on Hudson, 281-284 ; a new country-seat near Boston, 285 ; a to^vn site on Salt Lake, Utah, 286-291 ; the Harvard Yard, 291, 292 ; perfecting an old cemetery, 293- 296 ; selecting a site for a college or academy, 296, 297 ; a suburban garden, 298 ; the park at Youngstown, Ohio, 298- 301 ; a seaside village, 301-303. z CONTENTS CHAPTER XVII Adequate Open Spaces for Urban Populations, and Public Ownership of Coast Scenery 304-315 Parks and squares of United States cities, 304-308 ; the coast of Maine — its scenery, trees, history, and summer colonies, 308-314 ; the danger of the present situation, 314 ; defenses against the danger, 315. CHAPTER XVIII The Trustees of Public Reservations 316-350 The Waverley Oaks — a plan for their preservation for the people, 316-318 ; a metropolitan open spaces commission suggested, 317 ; the suggestion of scenery trustees, 319 ; in- teresting the Appalachian Mountain Club, 319-321 ; giving effect to an existing public sentiment, 321—325 ; an outline of the scheme, 326 ; the first public meeting, 328-330 ; the committee to promote the establishment of a board of trus- tees, 330 ; circulars issued by this committee, 330-332 ; framing a biU, 333, 334 ; the act passed, 335 ; the need of parks, 336-343 ; the first gift to the trustees, 344 ; the first work of the trustees, 345 ; the Province Lands, 346-348 ; a similar association in England, 349. CHAPTER XIX The Creation of the Preliminary Metropolitan Park Commission of 1892-93 351-357 A meeting called by the Trustees of Public Reservations, 351 ; a committee appointed to prepare a memorial to the legislature, 352 ; the trustees present a petition, 353 ; nu- merous supporting petitions for an inquiry, 353 ; a public hearing, 353-355 ; the appointment of the Commission to inquire, 355 ; the argument presented in 1890, 356 ; legiti- mate efforts to procure beneficent legislation, 357. CHAPTER XX Writings in 1891 and 1892 358-379 A German country park, 358-363 ; landscape gardening in its relations to architecture, 363-367 ; arboriculture in its CONTENTS relations to landscape, 367-372 ; the formal garden in Eng- land, 372-374 ; beautiful villages, 375-378 ; fine scenery- should be preserved as a matter of business, 379. CHAPTER XXI The Work of the Metropolitan Park Commission op 1892 380-415 Appointed landscape architect to the Commission, 380 ; the main lines of action, 381 ; photographs, 381, 382 ; the prophetic map, 382 ; composition, powers, and resources of a permanent commission, 383 ; " picturing " the open spaces still obtainable near Boston, 383 ; the report to the Commis- sion of 1892, 384-412 ; the creation of tlie permanent Com- mission, 412 ; the landscape architect's bill, 413 ; notes on the map, and key to the figures on the map, 413—415. f CHAPTER XXII Family Life — Joining the Olmsted Firm .... 416-419 The home at Brush Hill, 416, 417 ; joining the Olmsted firm, 418 ; the home in Brookline, 418, 419. CHAPTER XXIII i General Principles in Selecting Public Reservations AND Determining their Boundaries 420-451 Preliminary study of metropolitan park boundaries, 420 ; studies for two other commissions, 421 ; a large pond as park, 422 ; parks for Cambridge, 423^28 ; reservations in a seashore town ("Winthrop), 429, 430 ; reservations for a bay-shore city, 430-435 ; a sea-beach as reservation, 435, 436 ; a forest and pond reservation, 437^39 ; a forest reser- vation, 439^41 ; parks, parkways, and pleasure grounds — purposes, government, sites and boundaries, general plans or designs, and construction, 441-451. CHAPTER XXIV Letters of 1894 on Metropolitan Park Work . . 452-473 Precautions against forest fires, 453 ; provisional paths in the forests, maps, and bounds, 454 ; halving Stony Brook i CONTENTS reservation, 455 ; the first parkway legislation, 456 ; ap- proaches to Middlesex Fells, 457-459, 461 ; the Blue HiUs parkway, 459, 460 ; parkways must he metropolitan work, 462-464 ; improving reservation houndaries, 464-467 ; the Mystic Valley parkway, 467 ; continuous border roads, 468 ; abandonments of land once taken, 469 ; parkway studies, 470 ; public ownership of watercourses, 471 ; history of the lands taken, 472 ; geology of the reservations, 473. CHAPTER XXV Letters of 1894 concerning Parks not Metropoli- tan 474^86 The treatment of abused commons, 474^76 ; concerning a design for Fresh Pond Park, Cambridge, 476-^78 ; the field house on Cambridge Field, 478 ; I'oads and paths should be placed on the best lines, 479 ; Morton Park at Newport, 480-482 ; what four acres can furnish, 482-484 ; the Copps Hill terrace, and North End beach, 484-486. CHAPTER XXVI First Seventeen Months of the Executive Metropoli- tan Park Commission 487-512 Landscape architects' report for 1893, 488^91 ; landscape arcliitects' report for 1894, 492-512 ; determination of bound- aries, 492-494 ; exploration of the lands acquired, 494-498 ; work to be done in the reservations, 498-504 ; proposed reservations, 504-508 ; metropolitan parkways, 508-512. CHAPTER XXVII Letters of 1895 on Parks Metropolitan and other 513-527 Names, signs, and permanent marks in the metropolitan reservations, 513, 514 ; pleasuring in the Fells, 515 ; parks for Waltham — Prospect Hill and Charles River, 516-518 ; pleasure grounds for Chelsea, 519 ; the Snake Creek park- way, 519 ; Cambridge Field — the uses of a field house, 520-522 ; paths in a small city square, 522 ; Buttonwood Park at New Bedford — pond, house, playgrounds, circuit drive, meadows, and sheep, 523-526 ; a suburb round a common, 527. CONTENTS xiii CHAPTER XXVIII Reports of the Landscape Architects for 1895 to the Metropolitan and Boston Park Commissions . 528-545 Altering the boundaries of the forest reservations — good changes and bad, 528-530 ; general designs for exhibit- ing and improving the scenery of these reservations should await the completion of the topographical maps, 530, 532 ; costly roads on wrong lines are unadvisable, 531 ; Beaver Brook Reservation, 532 ; Mystic Valley parkway, 533 ; Charles River Reservation — the dam, 534, 535 ; Revere Beach, 535, 536 ; metropolitan parkways, 537-541 ; extent of the metropolitan public open sj^aces, 541 ; hoardings — the advertising plague, 542 ; humanized landscape, 543 ; a public park cannot closely resemble either a farm or a country-seat, 544. CHAPTER XXIX What would be Fair must first be Fit 546-556 Art out of doors, 546 ; man transforms natural scenery, 547 ; the Italian villa one composition, 548 ; the differing gospels of out-of-door beauty, 549-551 ; beauty founded on rationality, 551-553 ; man improves primitive landscape, 554-556. CHAPTER XXX Charles River — 1891-96 557-592 The most important park problem in the metropolitan district, 557 ; first report of the Charles River Improvement Commission of 1891-93 — the natural features, history, and present (1892) condition of the river, and its best uses, 559-569 ; far-seeing recommendations of this Commission, 569 ; second report of the Commission of 1891-93, 570 ; the Joint Board of 1893 on the imj)rovement of Charles River, 571; landscape report to the Joint Board, 571-582; the river as drain, 572 ; the river as open space, 574 ; its banks to become a residence quarter, 575 ; the lower river should be converted by a dam into a pond, 576 ; the fresh-water section, 578 ; the marsh section, 578-580 ; river drives and a speedway, 579 ; the basin section, 580-582 ; the argument V CONTENTS for a dam, 582-584 ; the project for a dam arrested, 584 ; what the damming of Charles River would accomplish — the lesson of Muddy River, 584-589 ; sea-walls along the river undesirable, 590 ; the choking of the river mouth — a new North Station, 591, 592. CHAPTER XXXI Policy and Methods of the Metropolitan Park Com- mission, 1896 593-612 Distribution of the reservations, 594 ; additional reserva- tions, 595 ; the parkway problem, 596-599 ; general plan of the metropolitan reservations — marshes, rivers, hills, woods, brooks, beaches, ocean, bay shores, two special parkways, no general scheme of parkways, 599-607 ; a great work accom- plished, 608 ; the financial machinery, 609 ; the composition of the Commission, 609 ; its professional experts, 610 ; its construction department, 611 ; payments, 611 ; the coopera- tion of many communities in an undertaking requiring fore- sight, discrimination, and skill, 612. CHAPTER XXXII Selected Letters of 1896 613-631 A busy summer, 614 ; chances which Boston has lost, 615 ; dangerous abandonments of metropolitan lands once taken, 615, 616 ; the edges of Charles River Basin, 617 ; the pro- posed Charlesmouth bridge, 618 ; the duties of park keepers, 619-621 ; a memorial to Elizur AVright, 621 ; looking into or over a park, and looking out of it — bordering screens, rights of abutters, many entrances undesirable, 622-625 ; special bicycle paths unfit for parks, 625-627 ; the best use of a city playground, 628 ; landscape art a part of architec- ture, 629-631. CHAPTER XXXIII Making Good Use of the Skill and Experience of a Landscape Architect 632-645 Advice concerning the house site on a large estate, 632- 635 ; on improving the grounds of an institution, 635-639 ; concerning the house site on a sea-side estate, 639 ; on the CONTENTS XV arrangement of the buildings of a college, 640-642 ; on the comparative value of two tracts of land for a town park, 642-645. CHAPTER XXXIV General Plans. 1894-97 646-667 Early work in the reservations (summer of 1894), 647- 649 ; maps should precede road-building, 649 ; general de- signs should precede woodland work, 650-652 ; guiding plans needed at once (1896), 653, 654; general plans are simply programmes of work, 655-657 ; the inevitable results of " letting Nature alone " are monotony, obliteration of ex- isting scenery, and additional ultimate expense, 657, 658 ; the wastefulness of planless work, 659 ; road-plans should be made so as to develop scenery resources, 660 ; well-rea- soned planning a necessity, 661-664 ; plantations in parks — the uses of the axe, 664, 665 ; widening a makeshift road, 667. CHAPTER XXXV Revere Beach. 1896 668-679 Primary questions about Revere Beach, 668-670 ; avoid- ing bulkheads and sea-walls — the promenade, 671 ; pleasure drive, and traffic way, 672 ; pavilions, terraces, and bath- houses, 673-675 ; alternative schemes, 675 ; the bath-houses placed on the landward side of the reservation, 677 ; the matured opinion of the experts, 677, 678 ; a unique public provision, 679. CHAPTER XXXVI Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1896 680-689 Topographical maps and botanical list completed for the forest reservations, 680, 681 ; mapping of the woods and ground-cover nearly completed, 681 ; piecemeal, hap-hazard work uneconomical, 081, 682 ; pleasing scenery a human product, 682 ; Charles River Reservation, 683-686 ; Revere Beach Reservation, 686-688 ; making the very best of the beach, 687 ; river-side and seashore strips particularly desir- able as reservations, 688 ; metropolitan parkways, 689. xvi CONTENTS CHAPTER XXXVII Selected Letters of January, February, and March, 1897 690-708 The true distinction between construction and mainte- nance in park work, 690-692 ; true park planting is neither gardening nor forestry, 693 ; the best places about Boston for speedways, 694 ; the Charles River Basin again, 695 ; a Revere Beach parkway, 696, 697 ; the Olmsted firm makes formal designs as well as picturesque, 699 ; planting the Boston Harbor islands, 699-701 ; the Botanic Garden in Bronx Park, 701, 702 ; the Outdoor Art Association, 703 ; report for 1896 to the Boston Park Commission, 704-708. CHAPTER XXXVIII Landscape Forestry in the Metropolitan Reserva- tions 709-736 The treatment of the reforested pastures^ 710 ; of the sprout-lands, 711, 712 ; foremen of woodcraft suggested, 713 ; the forest survey, 714 ; vegetation and scenery in the reser- vations, 715-732 ; the object of the investigation, 715- 717 ; the methods pursued, 717 ; the principal types of the vegetation — the summit, 718-720, the swamp, 720, 721, the coppice, 721-726, the field and pasture, 726, 727, the bushy pasture, 727-729, the seedling forest, 729-731 ; con- elusions, 731, 732 ; the kind of work in the living woods which ought to be begun at once, 733 ; a method of work proposed, 734 ; beginning forest work in the Blue Hills, 735 ; rescue work in the Fells, 736. CHAPTER XXXIX Metropolitan Parks and Parkways in 1902 . . . 737-741 The design of 1892 and its execution up to December, 1901 — rock-hills, 737, ponds and streams, 738, bay and sea, 739 ; expenditures of the Commission, 740 ; designs awaiting execution, 741. CONTENTS xvu CHAPTER XL The Last Dats 742-748 The Hartford parks, 742-744 ; death, 744 ; bodily, men- tal, and moral qualities, 744-747 ; the fruition, 747 ; creed and character, 748. APPENDIX I Circular as to professional methods and charges . . . 751, 752 II Circular letter asking for names of persons who ought to be invited to a meeting to promote the preservation of fine scenery or historical sites in Massachusetts 752 III Committee action preliminary to the creation of the Trustees of Public Reservations 753-756 IV Draught of a General Order respecting the government of the Metropolitan Reservations, and of Rules for the Conduct of Keepers 756-758 V Articles of Agreement between the Trustees of the Keney Estate, Hartford, and Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot . . . 759 Index 761-767 Key to the letters and figures on the map of December, 1901, in the right-hand pocket of the cover 768-770 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS PAGB Charles Eliot (jet. 33). Photograviire . . . Frontispiece Map of Existing and Proposed Public Open Spaces IN the Metropolitan District, December, 1892 In front Cover The Camp on Calf Island. (Looking southwesterly at Mt. Desert. From a drawing by C E.) 8 Ellen Peabody Eliot (^et. 31). Photogravure ... 12 Profile of the Mt. Desert Hills from Great Duck Island. (Sketch by C. E., aet. 16, compared with a pho- tograph of the Hills from the same spot) 20 Camp Chainiplain, 1880 and 1881. (From a drawing made after a photograph taken in 1880) 26 Small Front Yards for Houses in Blocks. (C. E.) . 54 Types of Yards, along the Highway, Brixton Hill . 56 English Compact Place, Keswick. (A tracing from Kemp by C. E.) 60 Two Sketches of Antibes. (C E.) 88 portofino from the opposite heights. (c. e.) . . 104 French Trees and Avenues. (C E.) 124 Parterre and Flower-bed at the Park of Dalkeith. (C. E.) 163 Facsimile of the Last Page of a Letter from C E. TO his Mother from London, October 15, 1886 . . . 201 Mr. John Parkinson's Estate at Bourne, Massachu- setts, 1887. (From a photograph of the bare field with some of the first plantings) 206 Mr. Parkinson's Estate at Bourne, 1901. (This view is taken from about the same direction as the preceding one) 206 Mr. Parkinson's Estate at Bourne, 1901. (View from the doorstep. All the near plantations are artificial) . . 207 Design for the Division ok the Norton Estate, Cam- bridge, Massachusetts, 1887-88. (The portion of the map divided into house-lots represents the Estate) . . . 214 The Old Common at Newburyport, Massachusetts. (Preliminary sketch showing the proposed improvement) . 224 XX FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS The Common at Newburypobt. (Now Washington Park) 225 The Surroundings of the Church at Weston, Massa- chusetts 2^6 The Church at Weston, Massachusetts 227 White Park, Concord, N.ew Hampshire. (General plan) 232 Mr. Rowland Hazard's Estate at Peace Dale, Rhode Island. (Plan showing a change of the avenue and an enlargement of the South Field) 236 The Lyman Place, Waltham, Massachusetts. (Sketch plan by C. E. for " Garden and Forest ") 244 Clermont on the Hudson (from " Garden and Forest ") . 250 Montgomery Place on the Hudson (from " Garden and Forest ") 254 Hyde Park on the Hudson (from " Garden and Forest ") 258 Planting-plan fob Mr. Thomas M. Stetson. (New Bedford, Massachusetts, 1889) 277 Mr. Thomas M. Stetson's Estate at New Bedford, Massachusetts. (View of the avenue (1901) approach- ing the Porte Cochere) 278 Mr. Stetson's Estate at New Bedford, Massachusetts. (Avenue entrance in stone) 278 Mr. Stetson's Estate at New Bedford. (Another view of the walled entrance from the highway) 278 Mr. Stetson's Estate at New Bedford. (A view of the plantations near the house, 1889-1901) 279 Plan of Dr. Carroll Dunham's House and Approach Road at Irvington-on-Hudson 282 Dr. Carroll Dunham's Estate at Irvington-on-Hud- son. (The avenue seen from the highway, 1901) . . . 284 Dr. Dunham's Estate at Irvington-on-Hudson. (The hare house and stable in 1890) 284 Dr. Dunham's Estate at Irvington-on-Hudson. (View of the house and stable from nearly the same point in 1901) 284 Dr. Dunham's Estate at Irvington-on-Hudson. (View from the lawn over the invisible highway in 1901) . . . 285 Mr. Henry S. Hunnewell's Garden Plan, Wellesley . 286 The Youngstown, Ohio, Gorge — the Drive along the Smalleb Lake 300 ViBGiNiA Wood, Hemlock Knoll. (From the Annual Re- port of the Trustees of Public Reservations for 1894) . . 344 The Pbovince Lands — the Edge of the Naked Sands. (From the Annual Report of the Trustees of Public Reser^ vations for 1892) . . . . 348 FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS xxi The Province Lands — a Sand Drift filling a Lilt Pond. (From the Annual Rejiort of the Trustees of Pub- lic Reservations for 1892) 349 Park at Muskau, Lower Lausitz, Germany. (From " Garden and Forest," January 28, 1891) 362 The Open Spaces of Paris, London, and Boston (1892), DRAWN TO the Same Scale. (From C. P^.'s Report to the Preliminary JNIetropolitan Park Commission of 1892-93) 384 Charles Eliot (jet. 35). Photogravure 486 The Hemlock Gorge at Newton Upper Falls, Charles River. (From the Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1896) 508 Charles River Reservation. (The Longfellow marshes flooded hy the tide. From the Landscape Architects' Re- port to the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1895) . . 534 Charles River Reservation. (The Longfellow marshes with the water at Grade 8. From the Landscape Archi- tects' Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1895) 534 Charles RI^^:R Reservation. (The River at Lemon Brook, the tide having partly ehbed. From the Landscape Archi- tects' Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1895) 534 Charles River Reservation. (The River at Lemon Brook, with the water at Grade 8. From the Landscape Archi- tects' Report to the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1895) 535 The Charles River Basin — the Back of Beacon Street, at Low Tide. (From the Report for 1894 of the Park Department of Cambridge) 588 The Upper Alster Basin at Hamburg. (From the Re- port for 1894 of the Park Department of Cambridge) . . 589 A New North Station North of Charles Ri\t;r. (Re- duced from a map made in January, 1894, by Olmsted, Olmsted «&; Eliot, for the Joint Board on the Improvement of Charles River) 592 Revere Beach in 1892. (Shabby structures intruding on the beach. From the Report of the Preliminary Metro- politan Park Commission in 1893) 670 Revere Beach Reservation in 1898. (The sidewalk, drive- way, and promenade on the crown of the beach. From the Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1898) 670 xxii FULL PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS Revere Beach Reservation. (Terrace and shelters in front of the hath-house ; throng on the dry sand ; bathers ; raft in deep water. From the Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1898) 676 Revere Beach Reservation. (One mile and a quarter of the Reservation, showing the beach, the approaches, the driveway and promenade, the bath-house with its subways, and the terraces. Reduced from the Engineer's plan of December, 1897, for the Metropolitan Park Commission) . 678 The Location of Charlesmouth Bridge, and a design FOR the head of Charles River Basin. (From the Landscape Architects' Report for 1896 to the Metropolitan Park Commission) 685 Stump of a Chestnut-tree, showing the Vigor of THE first Generation of Sprouts. (From the Land- scape Architects' Report to the Metropolitan Park Com- mission, February 15, 1897, on Vegetation and Scenery in the Reservations) "... 722 An Old Stump, showing feeble Sprouting after re- peated Chopping. (From the same Report) .... 722 A Broad Valley of the Southeastern Fells, whose Trees, about to hide the Blue Hill Range, have ALREADY HIDDEN THE VALLEY OF THE MySTIC. (From the same Report) 724 Broad-spreading Trees developed in Open Land and NOT YET SURROUNDED BY OTHER TrEES OR SpROUT- GROWTHS BECAUSE PASTURING HAS BEEN CONTINUOUS. (From the same Report) 730 Tree-clogged Notch near the Southeastern Escarp- ment OF THE Fells, which might command the Mal- den-Melrose Valley and the Saugus hills. (From the same Report) 732 The Open Spaces of Boston in 1892 and 1902 com- pared 738 Map of the Public Open Spaces of the Metropolitan District, December, 1901. (From the Metropolitan Park Commission's Report for 1901) In back Cover ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT PAOB Diagram of Camp on Calf Island. (C. E.) . . . . 9 Muscle Shoal Light, and Dutch Island Light, Nar- RAGANSETT BaY. (C E.) 19 Whaleback Light, off Portsmouth, New Hampshire. (C. E.) 19 A Pier at Newport. (C E.) 20 Prudence Island Light, Narragansett Bat. (C. E.) 31 Block House at Edgecomb, Maine. (C E.) . . . . 31 An Unusual Design for an Avenue. (C. E.) ... 49 Spacious Driveways to a Large House and Four Screened Out-buildings. (A tracing from an unknown French source. C. E.) 60 Short Driveways — French. (Tracings by C. E.) . . 75 Yacht in the Port of Cannes. (C E.) 87 Two Riviera Arrangements for a Drive and Sea- wall ALONG A Beach. (C. E.) 102 PoRTOFiNO. (Sketch map. C E.) 105 Steep Inclined Path below the "David," Florence. (C. E.) 109 ViALE DEI Colli, Florence. (Sketch plan. C. E.) . . Ill Railway Passage of St. Gotthard. (Sketch plans of curved Tunnels. C. E.) 116-117 Edges of Thicket Plantings, Parc Monceaux, Paris. (Diagram. C E.) 121 Tree Guards, French. (C. E.) 122 The Versailles Perspective. (Diagram. C. E.) . . 124 Ermenonville. (C. E.) 132 Hayes Barton, Birthplace of Sir "Walter Raleigh. (C. E.) 138 Powderham, Trees and a Cottage. (C. E.) . . . . 140 Sea-wall at Torquay. (Diagram. C. E.) 141 Section of a Devon Lane. (C. E.) 146 Clovelly Street. (Sketch plan. C. E.) 147 Bo WOOD, Fence to exclude Deeb and Rabbits. (Dia- gram. C. E.) 150 xxiv- ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT English Barns. (C. E.) 151 Hamburg, a Water-side Arrangement. (Sketch plan. C. E.) 165 Stockholm, a Summer House on a Cliff, Djurgarden. (Diagram. C E.) 176 The Sea Islands off Stockholm. (Sketch plan. C. E.) 177 Typical Pavlovsk. (Sketch plan. C E.) 186 ROWBOAT ON THE ElBE. (C. E.) 192 A Bastion and Landing on the Alster Basin, Ham- burg. (Sketch plan. C E.) 203 Parterre at Bowood. (Sketch plan. C. E.) . . . . 223 A Plain Fence : White Park, Concord, New Hamp- shire. (C. E.) 230 A VERY LOW Stone Bridge, Ermenonville. (C E.) . 233 The Gore Place, Waltham, Massachusetts. (Sketch plan. C. E., for " Garden and Forest ") 241 The Cushing-Payson Place, Belmont. (C. E., for " Garden and Forest ") 249 A Chateau with a Moat, Ermenonville. (C E.) . . 274 Road on a Steep Bank, Irvington-on-Hudson. (Dia- gram. C.E.) 282 Dr. Carroll Dunham's Estate at Irvington-on-Hud- soN, looking down the Curving Avenue. (Sketch from a photograph) 284 Diagrams of Road-beds. (C. E.) 299 Nahant. (Sketch map reduced from a jjlan accompanying the Report of the Metropolitan Park Commission for 1901) 303 Old House, Towns End, Maine. (C E.) 315 Low Rustic Bridge, Ermenonville. (C. E.) .... 350 A Public Square — no direct Cross-paths. (Tracing, C. E.) 451 Pleasure Grounds between Copps Hill and Boston Harbor. (Reduced from a plan in Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot's Report to the Boston Park Commission, December, 1894) 486 Diagram illustrating various treatments of the shores of Charles River. (Reduced from a diagram by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, in the Report for 1896 of the Cambridge Park Commissioners) 592 CHATILES ELIOT LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT CHARLES ELIOT CHAPTER I INHERITANCES He hears his daughter's voice, Singing in the village choir, And it makes his heart rejoice. It sounds to him like her mother's voice, Singing in Paradise! ^ Longfellow. Charles Eliot was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the 1st of November, 1859. His father was Charles Wil- liam Eliot, at that time Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry in Harvard College ; his mother was Ellen Derby (Peabody) Eliot, daughter of Ephraim Peabody, min- ister of King's Chapel, Boston (1845-1856), and Mary Jane (Derby) Peabody. His father came from a line of Boston Eliots who for several generations had been serviceable and influential people, and on the maternal side from a line of Lymans who in three successive generations had lived at Northampton, Mass., York, Maine, and Waltham, Mass., and had iDcen useful and successful in life. On his mother's side, his grandfather Peabody (Bowdoin College, A. B., 1827), son of a blacksmith at Wilton, N. H., was a man of keen insight, lofty character, and much poetic feeling ; while his grandmother was a Salem Derby, at a time when that family had acquired in world-wide commerce a wealth con- siderable in those days, — the first quarter of the XlXth century. His father and mother, and all four of his grand- parents, were carefully educated persons ; and among his progenitors were several men who had been rich in their generation, able to support considerable establishments, and to give their children every accessible advantage. ^ The quotations at the heads of chapters are taken from Charles's com- monplace books, or from poems he knew by heart. 0. H. Hflt LIBRARY North Carolina State College 2 INHERITANCES [1863-8 It is altogether probable that Charles Eliot's tastes for out-of-door nature and art were in part inherited, for some of his ancestors manifested in their day dispositions and lik- ings to which his were akin. Among the Trustees of the Massachusetts Society for Promoting Agriculture, a public- spirited body established in 1792, appear his great-grand- father Theodore Lyman, his great-uncle George W. Lyman, and his great-great-grandfather Elias Hasket Derby ; while among the earliest mend^ers of the Massachusetts Horticul- tural Society, which was founded in 1829, appear E. Hersey Derby, of Salem, his grandmother Peabody's uncle, and John Derby, her father, Theodore Lyman, his great-uncle, and Samuel Atkins Eliot, his grandfather, Theodore Lyman of Waltham ci^eated one of the handsomest country-seats in New England ; E. Hersey Derby introduced and tried various breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, and different kinds of crops, hedges, trees, and shrubs from foreign parts on his beautiful estate at Salem, ^ and Samuel A. Eliot was one of the first citizens of Boston to build a house at the seaside (Nahant) for summer occupation. In 1825 this same Eliot, Charles's grandfather, planted the greater part of what has since been known in Cambridge as the Norton Woods. Samuel A. Eliot's sister Catherine having married Professor Andrews Norton, her father pi'ovided a handsome residence for the newly married pair, and her brother Sam- uel, who had just returned from a European tour, was allowed to improve both the house and the grounds. More than thirty years afterwards he himself passed a summer with his family in this sister's house, and wrote as follows to her about the result of his efforts : " Being here has reminded me of the part I had in making it a fit residence for you ; and the vision of the old house fronting the wrong way, and with its awkward, bare, comfortless look, has come up to me strongly several times since I have been here ; and I find it hard to recollect how it used to look, without the trees of the avenue and circle, which are now so beautiful, and with a garden full of apple-trees (of which I see some still remain), and without the pines which make so capital a screen on the north and west. My visions of improvement have been lai'gely fulfilled." When in after years Charles was invited 1 Mr. Derby's house was a very hospitable one. There descended to the next generation a tablecloth of his which was eight yards long. His collection of books on rural architecture descended to his graudnephew, Robert S. Peabody, architect. iET. 4-9] EARLY TRAVEL 3 to write accounts of some of the finest American country-seats for the weekly publication called " Garden and Forest," it turned out that of the six places in different parts of the country which he described, one had been created and an- other occupied by his kindred. His training' in drawing and sketching began early. His grandmother Peabody had all her life been in the habit of using her pencil, and her two daughtei's and one of her sons inherited, or imitated, this habit. Ciiarles's mother and her sister Anna used both pencil and brush for pleasure ; and they and their mother set Charles drawing and painting at a tender age. " Charley is making us a little visit just now. Mamma [grandmother Peabody] devotes herself [to him]. They paint from the same picture pattern, and write letters at the same time." . . . (From a note by aunt Anna H. Peabod3\) His childhood was different from that of most American children, in that he had spent nearly three years in Europe before he was ten years old. From the middle of 1863 to the middle of 1805 his father and mother and their two little boys were in Europe for the professional improvement of his father ; and the family were again in Europe from June, 1867, to June, 1868, on account of the ill-health of his mother. During these two periods Charles saw many of the most interesting cities, and much of the most beautiful scenery in Euro])e. He spent tlie greater part of one summer in Switzerland, and of another in rural England ; and he played in Regent's Park, St. James Park, and Hyde Pai'k, London, on the Champs Elysees in Paris, in the Boboli Gardens at Florence, along the Philosopher's Path at Heidelberg, on the Fincian Hill at Rome, and the Hautes Plantes at Pan. The whole family enjoyed visiting collections of animals ; so tliat the boys became acquainted with the principal zoological gardens in Europe, and found in them stores of delight. In all this foreign residence and travel Charles showed a good sense of locality, a decided fondness for maps, and great enjoyment of scenery. His mother had the keenest enjoy- ment in travel, and Charles from childhood felt the same pleasurable excitement in change of scene, and in the sight of natural beauty. In 1855, at the age of nineteen, Ellen Derby Peabody spent a week at Niagara Falls in company with some older friends, and this is the way in which she de- scribed her enjoyment of it : "I am so hapi:>y, and am enjoy- ing it so very, veiy much that I cannot help writing on and on to tell you about it. I don't believe anybody ever enjoyed 4 INHERITANCES [1869 anything more in the world." Thirty-one years afterwards her son Charles, at the age of twenty-seven, wrote thus to his father from Florence, — he had been spending a month along the Riviera : " I have never been quite so happy as I have been this past month. I have been simply revelling in the beauty of this fair land. I think my inadequate journal must have in it some signs of my great pleasure ; and now that I am come to the city of all others where are works of man which partake of the loveliness of nature, — my heart is more than full and I am extravagantly happy." His mother's delight in beautiful scenery found expression in her letters whenever she was away from home. Thus, in June, 1858, when she was just twenty-two, she paid a visit with her sister Anna to some friends of her father and mother, who lived at Irvington on the Hudson; and this is her description of the place : " We arrived at this beauti- ful place just in time to be welcomed by a most glorious sunset. The river and the hills were all lighted up with glowing colors, and the birds were singing their loudest. It is a very pretty stone house with piazzas and pointed win- dows, and vines climbing all about it, and trees all around, and a garden filled with roses, and certainly as beautiful views of the river in every direction as one could well wish for. It stands very high, but it is nestled in among the trees so cosily, and if ever there was a happy family, it certainly is here. . . . Such a morning as we waked up to ! I would not undertake to describe to you all the beauties we saw from our window. Such an air, and such a sky ! The white sails glancing in the fresh new light, the river lying so still and calm, and the Palisades lighted up far down the shore with morning sunshine ! " (From a letter written by Ellen Derby Peabody to Charles W. Eliot, to whom she had become engaged two months before.) In March, 1869, his mother died at the age of thirty-three, and soon after his father was chosen President of Harvard University. In September, 1869, Charles returned to Cam- bridge with his father and younger brother, and the Presi- dent's House on Quincy Street was thereafter his home until 1891. From June, 1867, to September, 1869, grandmother Peabody and aunt Anna had made one household with the Eliots, and exercised a strong and precious influence on the two little boys. The summer of 1868 was spent in Brookline, that of 1869 at Chestnut Hill, and that of 1870 on Pond Street, Jamaica Plain. Wherever the family lived, Charles roamed the country. roundabout, and learnt it by heart. . CHAPTER n GENERAL EDUCATION Many gardeners assume that before beginning their plantings they must dig up everything that Nature has nursed up ; whereas experi- ence proves that they would accomplish their ends much sooner and better, if they should try to second Nature by making slight changes here and careful additions there. — Hikschfeld. As soon as the family was again settled in Cambridge, Charles began to go to school regularly, which had hardly been possible before. He began Latin just before he was ten years old, and in general followed the usual course of pi-epa- ratiou for admission to Harvard College. The languages, except English, were a trial to him, and for mathematics he had no special aptitude ; but he patiently accomplished that amount of work in those subjects which was then considered necessary. History was interesting to him ; and from the first, even before he could use a pen himself, he showed an unusual capacity for making a clear and concise statement of facts, or giving an accurate description. Here is a short note which he dictated to his mother for his aunt Anna when he was five years old. The dear aunt had been travelling with the Eliot family in Europe during the summer, and had returned to America. " Dear Aunt Anna : I love you very much. Papa tells me to look at all the donkeys' and cows' and horses' tails, and see if they are just alike, or not. We have got a new lamp, and it is tin, and papa tells me all about how it is made. On my birthday morning I found it very hard to have to sit in my chair and eat my breakfast, because I wanted so to get down, and play with my new things. Here is a little kiss for Aunty Anna — O. I have made a windmill for you like what we have seen in the cars. Good-by, dear Aunty Anna — I think every night about you, and wonder how you are getting along — Charley." Both Charles and his brother Samuel began early to com- mit to memory hymns and other short poems; and their parents took pains that the poetry they learnt should be worth remembering. Before Charles was fifteen years of age he 6 GENERAL EDUCATION [1870 had in his mind a considerable store of excellent verse, which probably affected favorably his own style in writing English, and certainly heightened his appreciation of rhythm, melody, and poetic imagination. In a note which Charles wrote to his aunt Anna in December, 1869, when he was ten years old, he says : " I have just learned ' The Village Black- smith ' and ' The Rain ' from Longfellow, and I am going to learn ' How They Brought the Good News from Ghent to Aix ' from Browning." They both learnt early Bryant's " To a Water-Fowl " and " Not in the solitude alone may man commune with Heaven ; " and these two poems continued to express for Charles through all his life much of his own phi- losophy and religion. The first entry in the commonplace book which he began when he was seventeen years old, except a sort of dedication taken from Chaucer, is Sir Henry Wotton's hymn, " How happy is he born or taught," which he had learnt when a little boy. The following " composition," written February 19, 1870, at the school kept by Miss Sarah Harte Page, further illus- trates his early tendency to exact observation and descrip- tion : — SNOW, ITS USES, AND THE SPORTS IT GIVES US. Snow is solid water. Some times it falls six inches thick, and then it makes a warm blanket for the earth. It is good for sledding heavy things, like stone, and timber, and great logs out of the woods. The Esquimaux build their houses of it. Boys can make a great many things of it. They can build forts, and make snow-balls. This winter with Sam's help I built a snow-man ; but just as it was finished, it tumbled over and broke all to pieces. I like to coast very much ; it is good fun to slide so fast over the frozen snow. We also built a fort ; it was on the bank of our house, and was higher than my head, and was very thick indeed. It lasted longer than any of the other snow. This last snow we tried to build another fort, but when the rain came it got beaten all down. It was square, and its walls were about a foot and a half thick ; it was made of lumps of snow all plas- tered together. I like to see the snow-plough making paths through the snow. The deeper the snow is the more men must stand on the plough to press it down. iET. 10] BOOKS AND SPORTS 7 Another composition, written January 21, 1870, shows how early his predilections for history and natural history were declared : — A COMPOSITION ABOUT THE BOOKS I LIKE TO READ BEST. I like to read the Child's History of the United States very much ; it is in three volumes, the first is about the dis- co veiy of America, and how it was settled, the second is about the war of the Revolution, and the third about the Rebellion. It has plans and pictures of the battles, and is very inter- esting. I also like the Natural History of Animals by Rev. J. G. Wood ; it is illustrated, and tells the habits, color, and country where they live, of all the animals in the world, I should think. There are accounts of adventures men have had with wild beasts, and a great many stories. Robinson Crusoe is another book I like — how he was wrecked on a desert island, and fought the savages, and how he did not get home for a great many years. It is very exciting. There is one more book that I like very much, and that is Frothing- ham's Siege of Boston ; it has accounts of the battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill. I have a great many other books, but the ones I have mentioned I like best. \His school work was occasionally interrupted by headaches and short feverish turns, which incapacitated him for a few hours or days. On this account, and also because of his slightness of form, his father was anxious to limit as much as possible his hours of indoor occupation, and to encourage him in all sorts of out-of-door sports. The two boys had a sagacious and competent pony, that could easily keep up with their father's saddle-horse ; and both learned to ride at an early age. In a note to his grandmother Peabody on January 1, 1871, Charles says, " Papa wants me to say that I can ride pretty well. I have got a McClellan sad- dle ; and yesterday the pony jumped a good deal, and I did not fall off. He stopped short, and dodged round a cart." In the summer of 1870, when the family were living at Jamaica Plain, the boys and their playmates in the neighbor- hood organized a band called the " Knights of the Woods," to the imaginative sports of which their aunt Anna con- tributed many suggestions. This society was continued at Quincy Street, Cambridge, where thirteen boys were enlisted. 8 GENERAL EDUCATION [1871 and equipped with silvered helmets, decorated shields, and wooden swords and spears. Their adventures took place chiefly in the Norton Woods, although their combats ex- tended to the yards and interiors of their fathers' houses. By 1872 another band, called the " Lances of Lancaster," was duly organized, and a pitched battle took place in that year between the " Knights of the Woods " and the " Lances of Lancaster." All the Knights and Lances had names, mainly copied from Scott's novels, which the boys were at that time reading. These bands of knights soon gave place to the Quincy Cricket Club, the Quincy Telegraph Company, the Football Eleven, the Society of Minerals, the Good Fun Club, and the Theatrical Club, in all of which organizations Charles took active part, and of all of which he subsequently (1875) made systematic member-lists which are still pre- served. In the spring of 1871, actuated by a desire to get for their families the most thorough possible open-air life during the summer, Charles's father and uncle (Henry Wilder Foote, minister of King's Chapel, Boston) agreed to live together in tents on an island in Frenchman's Bay (Mount Desert) during the larger part of their vacation. Mr. Eliot provided the sloop yacht Jessie, thirty-three feet long, as means of transportation and of pleasure sailing. The party consisted of Mr. and Mrs. Foote and their little daughter, Mr. Eliot and his two boys, a woman nurse and seamstress, and a man cook. The sailor from the yacht gave assistance at the camp. Here is a note from Charles to his grandmother, in which he describes the camp with characteristic precision. July 22, 1871. Dear Grandma, — I got your letter this afternoon, and I am sorry you are not any better. Our Camp is on Calf Island which is farther off than Iron-bound, There are four tents. The tent Sam, and Papa, and I have, is the largest, and has a curtain in the middle to separate it, from the Par- lor and Dining-room. Aunt Fannie and Uncle Henry have one tent, Agnes and Mary another, and Kelly sleeps in the kitchen. Here is a plan of the way our tents are placed : they are on a peninsula with water all round except to the right, where it broadens into an island. Kelly built the arbor to wash dishes in and eat. We have little beds with rubber pillows and hay mattresses. On the end of the point iET. 11] CALF ISLAND CAAIP Door. D Agnes. Aunt Fannie. D is a flag-pole where we have a flag, and sahite all the Boats that go by. It is foggy to day and we cannot see Mount Desert at all. Your affectionate grandson, Charles Eliot. The camp described in the above letter was subsequently moved to a more central position on the island. This way of passing the summer in camping and yachting combined was continued by the family until 1878 inclusive, excepting the summer of 1877. The chiklren began with imaginative sports in the woods on Calf Island and about the puddles the tide left in the gently sloping ledges which formed part of its shores. They sailed their shingle boats on the puddles, and imagined the sailors, cargoes, and har- bors, and the lighthouses and day-marks of the coast. They had caches of treasures at various mysterious points on that larger half of the island which was wooded, and with the help of their elders they made various beloved paths to at- tractive points of view. The island was more than a mile long, had a considerable variety of surface and of shore, and commanded exquisite views to the northeast, the northwest, and the southwest. The children came into close contact with Nature in all her various moods ; the rain beat loudly on the tent-flies right over their heads ; the wind shook the canvas shelters and threatened to prostrate them, but never did ; the oxen — the only other inhabitants of the island — walked about the tents in the early morning, waking some of the sleepers by their loud breathing ; the sun beat fiercely on field and tents, but the double roofs were always an ade- 10 GENERAL EDUCATION [1871 quate protection ; and from the kitchen-tent the cook produced in all weathers the elements of simple but delicious repasts. They learnt by experience that in summer at least, health, comfort, and great enjoyment can be secured without elabo- rate apparatus or many costly possessions, and that the real necessaries of healthy and happy existence in warm weather are few. In notes to his aunt Anna written about this time Charles mentions some of his reading and other mental occupations at Cambridge. Thus in November, 1871, he says : " We write compositions in German now, and read too. There are eleven children and fourteen or fifteen ladies and gentlemen." This was a school conducted in the so-called natural method by Mr. Theodore Heness. In the same note he says: "I have read the ' Pathfinder ' and the ' Spy ' lately, and I like them both very much. On Saturday we are going to see ' Guy Mannering ' at the Globe. Sam and I have read the story." In the following April, he writes : " We acted our play [Red Ridinghood in German] last Friday at Mr. Houghton's house on Main Street. Willie Putnam was a dog, Sam was a young man just married, George Dunbar was the wolf, and Charlie Cole was a robin. Lulu Parsons was a Grandmother, and Helen Hinckley was Red Riding- hood. Harry Spelman was an old cross farmer, and I was the hunter who killed the wolf. ... I had to ask Red Rid- inghood to give me a kiss." In the autumn of 1871, when he was only twelve years old, Charles and his playmate George R. Agassiz made a plan of the northwestern portion of the Norton estate, using a com- pass to get the angles, and a rope marked off in equal parts by knots to measure distances, a knot being the unit of length. On the map so prepared they indicated the different vegetations which occurred in the different parts of the region mapped ; so that the map showed the combination of forest and marsh, the forest without marsh, the grassy portions, and the small sandy desert. They then named each district on the map, the boundaries of the districts being marked by red lines. The names of the districts were Violet, Pine, Pond, Barn, Skunk Cabbage, Wild Cherry, and the Desert. This prophetic plan was duly preserved by his aunt Anna, and marked " C. Eliot, twelve years old." At the same age, after his return from the first camping season at Calf Island, he used to amuse himself by laying out plans of imaginary towns, with their roads, water-courses, houses, wharves, and harbors, the towns being always situated by the sea. The slopes of ^T. 12] TOWN PLANS — CRUISING 11 the sites are always indicated by proper hatching ; the har- bors are invariably well protected from the sea by islands, points, or promontories, and their approaches are marked by lighthouses and buoys. Three such plans were preserved by his aunt Anna, and on all three of the plans public reserva- tions are indicated. In one sketch this reservation is called " Public Land," in the next " Public Reserve," and in the third " Public Park." These labors were performed entirely spontaneously and in the way of play ; but they required a good deal of patience. In the largest of the three plans the sites of over one hundred and forty buildings are indicated, beside wharves and quarries. His spontaneous interest in the subject was strong enough to carry him through a deal of work. The next year he began to be interested in house-plans, which he took pleasure in drawing with some elaboration and DO little ingenuity. In the one plan which has survived, it is interesting to see that he indicated the way in which both the front door and the back door should be approached by the driveway. During his professional life he often had occasion to say that architects seemed to deposit their houses on the ground without considering at all how roads were to be got to the entrances. In 1871 the small sloop Jessie was for the children the vehicle for half a day's sail only, or for doing errands about the Bay ; but in the winter and spring of 1872 Mr. Eliot had built a family cruising sloop 43| feet long, with a high trunk, and room enough for four adults and two children in the cabin, beside two men forward. Thereafter, the cruises before and after camping became important to the children, and particularly to Charles and Samuel. The Sun- shine cruised in successive summers along the shores of New England from Sag Harbor and Fisher's Island on the west to Eastport on the east, going up the principal rivers, and visiting all the bays and harbors, and many of the outlying islands like Shelter Island, Block Island, Nantucket, the Isles of Shoals, Monhegan, and Grand Manan. Parts of the coast were of course visited many times. Thus Charles grad- ually became acquainted with the whole New England shore. He acquired skill in the use of charts, and of all the other aids to navigation which the government publishes, including the List of Lighthouses, the List of Buoys and other Day- marks, and the admirable Coast Pilot. He also became inter- ested in the history of the coast, and in the adventures of its 12 GENERAL EDUCATION [1873 early explorers, like Cabot, Verrazano, De Monts, Cham- plain, Weymouth, and Smith. This interest lasted the year round, and gave direction to some of his spontaneous reading at Cambridge. In 1873 the camp with additional tents was pitched on the island of Nonamesset, Buzzard's Bay, instead of at Calf Island, in order that the children might learn in the warmer water south of Cape Cod how to swim well. This island adjoins Naushon, and Charles there became familiar with the Elizabeth Islands, and particularly with Naushon, the most beautiful of the group. An acquaintance with these islands was the more desirable because their configuration, soil, cli- mate, and flora are different from those of the coast of Maine. Billy, the pony, and a stout horse and wagon added to the resources of the party, Naushon, unlike Calf Island, being large enough for much delightful riding and driving. Charles had an inherited interest in Naushon ; for through all his mother's childhood the Peabody family had spent a month there every summer as guests of Governor Swain, its then owner ; and she had the strongest affection for it. The following note written from Naushon by his mother to her Grandmother Derby about 1850 shows what the charms of the island were for the Peabody children. My dear Grandma, — We have no time to write at all except Sundays, but then we have nothing to do till eleven o'clock, when Papa reads a sermon. Last Sunday I wrote a good long letter to Eliza, and Anna wrote one to Aunty. We are having a splendid time, riding, walking, swimming, draw- ing, fishing, and sailing. I have seen twenty-one deer, and Anna has seen seventeen. We generally go to ride on horse- back in the evening, and almost always see one or two deer. When we get home, we unharness the horses, and ride them bare-back to the field. We have been to bathe quite often, and the waves have been splendid. Saturday they were so high, they went over Rob's head all the time. Since Cousin Annie Drinker has been here, we have drawn a good deal. We intend to finish our sketches with Cousin Annie at New Bedford. We have a good many baskets of egg-shell which are very pretty. We knock off the top of the egg and bind it with ribbon. We cover the egg-shell with the pith of rushes. Annie and I have kept a daily journal, which will be very pleasant to look over. I have a great deal more to tell you, but I must save it for another note, because the mail v/v, .^/L/r.A, /;/./ ^T. 13] JOURNEYS 13 is going now to Wood's Hole. Please give my best love to them all. Your affectionate granddaughter E. D. Peabody Grandma's birthday. In the summer of 1858 Ellen Derby Peabody and Charles W. Eliot spent a delightful week together at Naushon as guests of Mr. and Mrs. John M. Forbes. Governor Swain, her father Mr. Peabody, and several friends who were inti- mately associated in Ellen's mind with the lovely island had died, so that sadness was mingled with the joys of this visit. In the following October, a few days before her marriage, Ellen wrote as follows to her betrothed : " Am I not glad I have had that week at Naushon with you ? It was a strange kind of pleasure I had. It was more a pleasure of memory, I think, and the sharing with you the pleasures and the feel- ings of years now gone, than what we really did and enjoyed now." Aunt Anna, who had shared with Ellen every Nau- shon delight, helped to transmit to Charles an interest in the island. Its hollows full of old wind-clipped beeches, its breezy uplands, its sheltered hai-bor — the Gutter — and its wide sheep pastures were enjoyed by Charles at fourteen as they had been by his mother and aunt in their happy child- hood. Between the end of January, 1874, and the middle of the following May, Charles made a journey with his grand- mother Peabody and his aunt Anna to Florida, and visited also Savannah and Charleston, his father going to England at the same time. This excursion enabled him to obsei've sub-tropical vegetation, the mild winter climate of the south Atlantic shore, a low-lying country without hills, and rivers and creeks as unlike as possible those of New England. It distinctly enlarged his experience of landscape. He was encouraged and helped to draw, paint, and keep a journal ; and he illustrated the journal with photographs, cuts, and pen-and-ink drawings of his own. One effect on his mind is brought out in a letter he wrote his grandmother the follow- ing September from Maplewood, in the AVhite Mountains. " Bethlehem, I think, is very beautiful indeed. I have a very pretty view out of my window across a wide valley with dis- tant blue hills in the background. There is a swift little river in the valley which, like all the streams here, have very rocky beds. I like the streams and brooks very much ; they 14 GENERAL EDUCATION [1875 are so swift, and seem so jolly and frisky, — much nicer than the sluggish Southern streams." In the next spring he took a different kind of journey, which again enlarged his observation of scenery. He de- scribed it on a postal card written to his aunt Anna, then become Mrs. Henry W. Bellows. " May 14, 1875. Papa and I are on a journey with Jack in the buggy. We left Cambridge at 3.30 Thursday, and drove througli Waltham, Weston, Wayland, and Sudbury, to Maynard, formerly As- sabet, where we arrived at 6.45, and put up at the only hotel. This morning, came through Stow, Bolton, between Lancas- ter and Clinton, to Sterling, where, as the hotel was closed, we had dinner at a Mr. Merriam's at 12. At 1.30 left again, and came on to Pi-inceton, arriving here at 3.15, twenty-four hours from home, forty-three miles, about. We have had splendid weather, and the horse gets on very well. We go home by Leominster, Plarvard, and Concord, to get home Monday to tea." That little journey showed him some of the fairest of the New England towns at the apple-blossom season. By 1875 Charles took up a sport which had an important bearing on his professional career. It was suggested to him by his father, who had got much pleasure from it when a boy himself. In company with two or three other boys, Charles would take the steam-cars or horse-cars to some convenient point of departure within easy reach of Cambridge, and then walk from five to ten miles cross country to another point whence there was railroad communication to Boston or Cam- bridge. These excursions always took half a day, and some- times more, and it was part of the fun to take luncheon or supper in the open air on the way. At that time there were no contour maps of the vicinity of Boston ; so that, in making plans for walks, Charles had only the guidance of the com- mon maps which showed the roads, water-courses, and rail- roads, and, in a rough way, the hills. From such maps of the region round Boston Charles would make beforehand a small tracing covering the particular portion which he pro- posed to explore, and this tracing, which was seldom more than six inches square, he carried in his vest pocket on each walk. On every such map he put a scale, and for his guid- ance he carried a pocket compass. As Charles made all the preparations for such walks, he was invariably the guide. This sport, which he followed for years, made him familiar with the whole of what is now known as the " Metropolitan District" round Boston, and, moreover, afforded a good ^T. 16] CROSS COUNTRY WALKS 15 training in discerning the lay of land, picking out the land- marks, and finding a way over or round obstacles. In a note-book for 1878 he made a "partial list of Saturday walks before 1878." There are sixteen walks enumerated, and they stretch from Quincy on the south of Boston to Lynn on the north. No better preparation in youth for some of his most important work as a man could possibly have been de- vised ; but all was done without the least anticipation of his future profession. It was to him just an interesting though laborious play. Tliere was another kind of research which interested both the boys before they went to college, namely, the identifica- tion of the localities mentioned in such books as Frothing- ham's " Siege of Boston " and Drake's " Historic Mansions of Middlesex." They sought for all the sites and structures mentioned by these authors, which had not been completely obliterated by streets and buildings, and became acquainted with all such relics of Colonial and Revolutionary times in and about Boston. All this time he was getting on at school with what were then the regular studies for his age. He writes to his aunt Anna in December, 1875 : " My school I like moderately; go at 8.30, get out at 1.30; and I am studying Latin, Latin composition, algebra, and Harvard examination papers in arithmetic. I begin Ovid to-morrow. There are some good fellows at school ; but I never see them except in school hours. I ride often, but the best fun is the telegraph line which I joined about a month ago, and the drawing class Tuesdays and Fridays." This drawing class was conducted by Mr. Charles H. Moore, afterwards instructor and pro- fessor in Harvard College. A year later he speaks of this drawing again : " November 25, 1876. I am having draw- ing lessons four hours a week from Mr. Moore. The last things I have done are a twig in profile and also the same foreshortened. I have been in to Uncle Bob's [Robert S. Peabody, architect], and he has given me a whole set of plans, elevations, etc., to copy. I trace them on tracing cloth in India ink with bow pens, and color them, and put in all the dimensions, etc." He was at this time seventeen years old. In a note a few weeks earlier than that from which the last quotation was taken, he writes to his aunt Anna : " I am going to Mr. Kendall's school, as I did last year, and at present I am studying the following subjects : Virgil, one hundred lines daily ; Ovid, last review, seventy-five lines daily; Caesar, last review, three paragraphs daily; Greek 16 GENERAL EDUCATION [1877 grammar or Greek composition, daily ; algebra, last review, daily ; arithmetic, one examination paper a week ; geometry, last review, twice a week; Roman history on Saturday; Botany on Saturday ; Latin composition, three times a week. ' Last review ' means that I am going over it the last time before the examination for College next spring." He never really enjoyed his school work ; but he liked the master, Mr. Joshua Kendall, and he made two valued friends there, — Roland Thaxter and John H. Storer. He was never con- fident of success in his studies ; so that when in June, 1877, he passed the preliminary examinations for admission to Harvard College in seven subjects, it was a great surprise to him. He was diffident and sensitive, and found it difficult to express his feelings, though they burned within. In the next house but one to the President's house on Quincy Street lived the family of Professor Lane, whose children, one son and two daughters, were not far removed from Charles in age. The companionship of these merry and sympathetic children was a real source of happiness to Charles, who was often lonely and tended to be down-hearted. At this time, there was no feminine influence in his home ; his dear aunt Anna was living in New York ; grandmother Eliot had died ; his Eliot aunts were all married, and no one of them lived in Cambridge ; and grandmother Peabody was crippled by rheumatic gout and could never come to Cambridge, though her house in Boston was always open to Charles and Samuel, who went thither at least once a week. Then his father and brother had very different temperaments from his. They were sanguine, confident, content with pre- sent action, and little given to contemplation of either the past or the future ; Charles was reticent, self-distrustful, speculative, and dissatisfied with his actual work, though faithful and patient in studies which did not interest him or open to him intellectual pleasures. In July, 1877, his father was engaged to Grace Mellen Hopkinson of Cambridge. Charles heard the news from his father with calmness but without pleasure ; and all sum- mer long, though he was yachting on his beloved Sunshine, he was not cheerful, though well in body. When the mar- riage took place at the end of the following October, and " mother " — as the boys soon called her — came to live in the President's house, Charles was pleasant and interested, but did not at once open his heart to her, and claim her sym- pathy and affection. It was not till four years later that an intimate and tender relation was established between these ^T. 17] COLLEGE — YACHTING 17 two, a delightful intimacy never afterwards interrupted for a moment. He rode much on horseback during the year 1877-78, and was active in the " Game Club," which successfully produced in the spring a little play called " Andromeda." With the springtime of 1878 a great delight in natural scenery awoke in him, a conscious love of buds and blossoms, rocks, sky, and sea ; and in after j^ears he recalled this s])ring as an epoch in his reflective life. In June he was admitted to Harvard College, and much to his surprise with only two in- considerable " conditions," namely, Greek graumiar and composition. At that date the Freshman year in Harvard College was a year of required studies, and these studies were little else than a continuation of his uncongenial school studies. He therefore got little pleasure from his regular work ; but he persevered with it, and finished the year clear of all condi- tions. He did, however, record a thanksgiving that his " classical education " was at last ended. He had a room in the " Yard " and took his meals at Memorial Hall, coming home for Sundays, like students whose families did not live in Cambridge, but yet were not so far away as to make a weekly visit impossible. His summer yachting was an important element in Charles's education; and in particular the Sunshine gave him good training in writing condensed English. It was the custom to keep a log on board the boat, mentioning the weather, the winds, and the chief events of each day. Charles was always a careful reader and critic of the log. Moreover he acquired the habit of reading all the year round the brief accounts of marine disasters which appeared almost daily in the newspaper taken by the family, accounts which were usually extracts from the logs of the vessels concerned, or were furnished by their masters. As a rule, no words are wasted in log-books. The first time that he kept the log himself was in 1876, when he was nearly seventeen years old. In the following extract from the log of the Sunshine in that summer, the first two days were written by his father, the rest by Charles. The extract will serve to show the mode of life on the yacht, and the interest it had for the two boys and their friends. One or two boy friends and one older guest were genei-ally on board during cruising. On July 25th the yacht was at Boothbay, Maine : — July 25. Calm. Waiting for J. E. Cabot who did not 18 GENERAL EDUCATION [1876 arrive. Telegraphing. In p. m. with fresh S. W. ran up Muscongus Sound (visited New Harbor and Round Pond) to Hockamock Channel. July 26. Still. Variable. Showers. Wind. Ran by Gull and Friendship Islands, and Herring Gut entrance to Rockland. Beat through Muscle Ridge Channel. F. G. Peabody joined. In evening to Rockport. July 27. With a light breeze, across West Penobscot Bay to Gilkey's Harbor, C. E., R. W. G., and C. W. E. climbing the hill of 700-Acre Island. Thence to Belfast. Thence with a fresh S. E. wind up the Penobscot as far as Bucksport. Mounted the hill by the Seminary in evening. July 28. Up river to Bangor, a cracking S. E. wind all the way. Anchored off the Kenduskeag at 11 A. m., but later hauled in to the Brewer wharves to avoid tide and steamers. Explored the city of sawmills and enjoyed view from hill back of Seminary. July 29. R. W. G. took steamer to Boston. A drizzling mist all day. Down river as far as Winterport, stopping at Hampden to visit sawmills and wait for tide. Climbed the Winterport hill in evening to the beautiful Soldiers' Monu- ment. July 30. Dropped down river with early tide and fanned over to Castine by noon. Walked to the forts in P. M. Sun- day School concert at church in evening. July 31. Rainy and calm all day. Lay at Castine till 3 P. M., then with tide and light air reached Cape Rosier. Found good bottom in Cove, and anchored after a fine sun- set. Visited the lone house near by, and talked with intelli- gent father of seventeen children. August 1. Cloudless and lovely morning with light north- erly air. Ran very slowly across to North Harbor, N. W. side of N. Haven Island. Thence through " Leadbetters Narrows " and " The Reach " to Carver's Harbor, sweeping her through " The Reach " at its narrowest part. Rambled over the quarries, and watched the polishing of granite. Aug. 2. Early start. Very little wind. Inside Brim- stone Island to Isle au Haut. Climbed the highest hill to Coast Survey Beacon, and piled stones to guide future ^T. 16] KEEPING THE LOG 19 comers. After dinner, with fine breeze, beat through chant's Row," but wind failed before reaching " Burnt Coat Harbor," and it was another ease of sweeps and towing. Aug. 3. Beat out the narrow E. entrance of "Burnt Coat" with very light air, past Long Is- land and by Long Ledge Buoy up Somes Sound. Fine run up the Sound. Shopping at Somesville. Beat down the Sound, and being caught by flood tide and cahn an- chored off Fernaki's Point. Mounted Fer- nald's Hill [Flying Mt.] in evening. Superb view. Aug. 4. Got under way at about 9 a. m. Light air to Great Head, then more breeze, and took in topsail. Arrived at Bar Harbor at 11.45. In p. M. took aboard Ernest Lovering and Willie Thayer, visited Calf Island and an- chored at Point Harbor [Sorrento]. Mei ::.rj Off Portsmouth, N. H. A certain felicity of expression is already apparent, and particularly his choice of simple words that fit. As the Sunshine was constantly visiting bays, rivers, and harbors previously unknown to all on board, and as It was not her custom to take a pilot, she was directed by the ad- mirable charts and Coast-pilots published by the U. S. Coast 20 GENERAL EDUCATION [1877 Survey. In the use and application of these guides Charles early became an adept. When the yacht was approaching an unknown passage or entrance, and it was desirable to recognize the guiding features of the land, Charles was quicker than anybody else on board to discern the char- acteristic hill, headland, promontory, or island from com- parison with the contour charts, or with the profiles and descriptions of the Pilot. He soon learned to conceive from the contour lines the aspect of the land represented, as it would appear on his line of approach. This practice culti- vated his perception of the main features of scenery, and made easy his subsequent professional use of surveyors' plans and contour maps. In yachting Charles had the habit of sketching objects which interested him, such as lighthouses, wharves, old houses, or outlines of hills. Reproductions of a few of his sketches are placed on this page and page 19. A Pier at Newport. The accompanying profile of the Mt. Desert hills, taken from an island lying about nine miles south of the Mt. Desert shore under Sargent Mountain, fairly illustrates the accuracy 2 - S .^* I" S I - if ^T. 17] IN THE BAY OF FUNDY 21 of his boyish work. In another respect this summer mode of life cultivated his natural tendency to an admiring obser- vation of nature. His watchfulness of the weather on the yacht and in camp contributed to the development of his maturer keen enjoyment of the different aspects of the sky. In 1877 Charles kept the log altogether, and in that year and often thereafter he was the captain on board, giving all orders concerning destination, navigation, and piloting. In September, 1880, he was captain during a cruise from Mt. Desert to Eastport and back to Boston, a cruise during which he encountered fogs, storms, the rushing tides of the Bay of Fundy, and heavy seas, but also enjoyed much fine weather. This cruise lasted about four weeks. The following extract from the log-book will show what the captain's responsibili- ties and pleasures were. The yacht had been weather-bound for two days at Grand Manan in a northeaster : — Sept. 12th. Hauled out from the wharf at 6.45 a.m. Mr. Gaskell would take no wharfage money. With a little N. W. air we got under way at 7.30 o'clock bound for Bos- ton. Stood close under Swallowtail, and also followed the shore close under the Six Days Work, and Ashburton and Bishop Heads. When the tide began to flood we were becalmed, and consequently were drifted much up the bay. With some little S. W. airs we stood over to the N. and made the shore of Campobello Island about midway of its length. The air grew thicker and thicker, until about noon the fog-whistles at Quoddy and N. Head began to blow. At last a respectable S. AV. arose and we made N. Head at about 2.30 o'clock. Here we tacked and laid the course for Quoddy Head. The tide began to ebb about 4.30, but C. E. was un- willing to try a night outside, and so at 5 p. m. we anchored in Quoddy Roads. After an early supper the cabin party got milk and water ashore at Mr. Wormell's house. Sept. 13th. At about 7 o'clock got under way with a good S. by W. wind. Sky was pretty clear at this time, but about 8, when we were laying our course alongshore, a very wet fog surrounded us very suddenly. We made the land 2 or 3 times, and C. E. made up his mind to get into Little River if he could find the entrance. We tried to make Little River Head, but on hearing the fog bell at Little River Light we headed for that. Here the fog cleared up somewhat, and 22 GENERAL EDUCATION [1880 C. E. changed his mind and kept on. At 9.15 breakfasted. Took a long tack outside of Libby Island, which we had abeam at noon, and stood towai-ds Mark Island of Moos-a-bec Reach. The island was not to be seen owing to a fog bank which began to envelop us when we were S. by E. from the Brothers. C. E. gave up trying to make the Beach, and kept off, passing the Brothers at about 1 P. M. The fog was not very thick, and we followed up Roques Island, and anchored in Shorey's Cove at about 2 p. m. Dined. During the rest of the day the fog was thick and the winds very variable. Whist, etc., in the evening, and boat-racing in the P. M. S. A. E. and deW. beat R. T. and C. E., and William and Orrin. (For some information about the E. entrance to Englishman's Bay, see C. E.'s journal.) Sept. 14th. Much rain last night : very calm this morn- ing. Sky looking very rainy. At 9 there came a little air from S. E., and we got under way with gafftopsail set, and stood down to the first black buoy in Moos-a-bec Reach, around which we turned, and after crossing the Bar with a fair tide, we anchored in Jonesport at 11 o'clock. Got some provisions ashore, and mailed letters. At a quarter to 12 we were off again with a very gentle N. E. wind and in a heavy rain. Passed slowly through the Reach and down to Nash Island Light, which we passed at 3.45 o'clock. Here C. E. gave up getting around Petit Manan and headed for Shipstern Island, the most western land to be seen. Soon Pond Island appeared through the rain, and we ran in past its northern end. The sky now began to look windy, and we took in the topsail. Passed slowly into Pigeon Hill Bay between Cur- rant Island and Big Pea Ledge, and anchored under Pigeon Hill, just N. of Chitman's Point, at 5 P. m. C. E. got milk ashore on the Point. At about 9 p. m. got out the second anchor, the N. E. wind having begun to blow quite furiously. Sept. 15th. We anchored in 2.^ fathoms yesterday after- noon, but at 3 o'clock this morning C. E. found the yacht aground and the wind blowing a gale. The bottom all over the Bay is level and eel-grassy, and it being low tide the ledges around the Big Pea kept off all the sea. About 3 ft. of water was around the yacht at this time. Knowing that ^T. 20] SEPTEMBER CRUISING 23 at high tide the riding would be pretty hard, C. E. had the big mooring hoisted out and prepared. At breakfast time (9.30) the yacht was riding pretty easily at 2 anchors, the tide was high, and the wind blowing very hard indeed from N. E. At 1 o'clock the wind went down somewhat, but the heavy rain continued all day. A. Thorudike departed for home via Mill-bridge. Sept. IGth. A doubtful looking morning. Wind light S. W. Much low cloud driving over our heads towards the N. E. Breakfasted at 7 a. m. and soon after 8 got under way. The tide was nearly high, but still rising, the wind ahead. We beat down Pigeon Hill Bay, paying close atten- tion to the Pilot's description of the dangers, none of which are marked. Took one tack close to Boisbubert Ledge, which was just awash. Stood towards Petit Manan, leaving the AMiale, where the sea was combing, to the eastward. Crossed Petit Manan outer bar at about 10.15 o'clock, having a strong ebb tide in our favor. A big rip all along the bar. Fetched Moulton's Rock on the same tack as that on which we crossed the bar, and then stood off shore. When, at 11.10 A. M., Petit ]\Ianan bore E. by N. ^ N., we tacked and laid a course outside of Schoodic Island. Passed the island at 11.55, and continuing across the mouth of Frenchman's Bay on the same tack we passed Bunker's Ledge at 1.20. Great fog banks enveloped Mt. Desert, and stretched away down along the mainland to the eastward. Abreast of Sutton Island we ran into this fog region ; and thence into S. W. harbor, where we anchored at about 2 o'x-lock ; -we had a very wet time of it. S. A. E. went to the P. O., and C. E. to the store. The barometer was now very low, having been falling constantly since the beginning of the last N. E. storm, and C. E. was doubtful about putting to sea again. However, we got up sail again at 3.45, and beat out the Western Way with a good breeze from S. W. by W. Some very dark clouds came over us, and once or twice we got heavy showers of rain. Had to take 2 tacks to weather Bass Harbor Head, and then put into the harbor, where we anchored at 6 P. M. The sky was very handsome during most of the afternoon, with great rolling clouds, and now and then a rift showing the sunlit 24 GENERAL EDUCATION [1880 blue above. A Fusion celebration took place ashore in the evening. Besides keeping the log, Charles also kept a journal throughout the summer of 1880, in which he entered many particulars about anchorages, provision-stores, approaches to harbors, geological features, and hospitalities given and re- ceived. So he got much practice in good writing during this summer. He had so much to record that his constant effort was to write concisely. Between seventeen and twenty-one Charles suffered a good deal at times from that mental and moral struggle, that ques- tioning of self and the world, which all thoughtful and reserved boys, who have a good deal in them, have to pass through. They become aware that they are thinking and responsible beings, and find themselves forced to consider questions of conscience, faith, and love, and the meaning of life and death. Sudden floods of emotion overwhelm them, and seasons of uncontrollable doubt, misgiving, and sadness distress them. The struggle is apt to be a lonely one. Nobody will or can answer their deeper questions. " I have trodden the wine- press alone." The struggle in Charles's mind was intensified and prolonged by the nature of his voluntary reading. He read much in Emerson, Carlyle, and Goethe ; in Mill, Ruskin, Spencer, Lecky, and Buckle ; in Huxley, Tyndall, Wallace, and Darwin ; and in Lyell, Le Conte, Geikie, and Lubbock. He preferred poetry and history to fiction ; and in all three of these realms of thought he was more open to the sad than to the cheerful aspects of life. He " browsed " in the ori- ginal texts of Schiller, Lessing, Rousseau, Montaigne, and Victor Hugo, and in translations of Plato, Herodotus, Lucre- tius, Plutarch, Dante, and Boccaccio. George Eliot had a strong influence on him. He kept a commonplace book for a time while in college, and the headings in this book suggest the seriousness of his meditations. They are : Duty ; The Law of Righteousness ; Materialism versus Idealism ; Belief in Dogma ; Maggie TuUiver ; The Moral Law ; Darwin's Theory of Morals ; Art and Morality ; Beauty and Goodness ; the Pursuit of the Highest ; The Beautiful and the Useful ; Religion ; Measure not with Words the Immeasurable ; Will ; Virtue and Vice ; The Eternal Life of Humanity. In this book he entered extracts from most of the authors above men- tioned, and also from James Russell Lowell, John Robert Seeley, Geoi'ge Henry Lewes, Charles Eliot Norton, Edwin Arnold, Arthur Hugh Clough, John Fiske, David Friedrich ^T. 20] CAMP CHAMPLAIN 25 Strauss, and William B. Carpenter. It chanced that two of his most intimate friends at this period were young men of a temperament similar to his own ; so that his converse with them did not tend to counteract the depressing effects of much of his reading and meditation. At home, on the other hand, the influences about him were wholesome and cheerful, particularly after the summer of 1877 ; but even there he sometimes felt lonesome or " left out." In the spring of 1880 his father and mother decided to spend the summer of that year in Europe, and the question arose how Charles and Samuel should pass the vacation. Thereupon Charles organized a party of friends, all of whom were college students, to make use of the Sunshine and the camping outfit at Mt. Desert during the summer. With slight assistance from his father he made the whole plan, and put it into execution himself. He invited twelve persons to become members of a club, and at a second meeting of the persons thus invited, eleven men agreed " to spend at least the number of weeks set against their names at the camp of which Charles Eliot is to be director," two persons agreeing to stay eight weeks, one six, four four, one three, and three two. It was an important element of the plan that each member of the party should do some work in a branch of natural science. There was a " primary assessment of three dollars per week of stay," payable in advance. An ad- ditioual assessment was levied on each person actually in camp each week. The number in camp at any one time varied from four to eight, the commonest number being six. The assignment of scientific subjects to the members of the club in 1880 included geology, ornithology, marine inver- tebrates, meteorology, botany, entomology, ichthyology, and photography ; and some work was done in every one of these subjects. Charles selected the place of encampment, man- aged the camp, gave all directions about the use of the yacht, and kept the accounts ; and the successful exercise of these functions had a considerable influence on the development of his character. The camp was pitched on July 5th in a beau- tiful position on the east side of Somes's Sound, a little to the north of the house of Mr. Asa Smallidge, and opposite Flying Mountain and the cliff of Dog Mountain on the west- ern side of the Sound. A clear and abundant brook which descended from Brown's Mountain just north of the camp furnished an excellent supply of water. The Sunshine was moored on the outer edge of the cove just off the camp. This camp was maintained till August 25th, when the party dis- 26: GENERAL EDUCATION [1881 persed. The geological work of the party was much aided by a short visit in August from Professor Davis of Harvard College. Of the young men who took part in this camp, one turned out to be a landscape architect, one a professor of cryptogamic botany, and one a physician, while two others, who are lawyers by profession, retain keen interest in their respective subjects, and have an ample amateur knowledge of them. The Champlain Society, as the club was called in honor of Samuel de Champlain who named Mt. Desert, was main- tained for several years, and two scientific publications re- sulted from it, one, an " Outline of the Geology of Mount Desert," by Professor William M. Davis, and the other, a book on the " Flora of Mount Desert, Maine," by Edward L. Rand and John H. Redfield. The Society held occa- sional meetings in Cambridge during the winters, at which papers were read by various members on their several spe- cialties. In 1881 the camp was pitched again in the same place, and was carried on under Charles's direction during that summer much as before, though it was not continued after the 13th of August. The Society conducted a camp again in the summer of 1882, but not under the direction of Charles Eliot. This experience in the summers of 1880 and 1881 was very serviceable to Charles. He found that he could plan and perform executive work, exercise authority over a con- siderable party, some of whom were older than himself, and do business and give orders in a manner which satisfied the interested persons, and led to success in a somewhat complicated undertaking. He saw that his authority was respected, and that the participants all enjoyed the camp and did some serious work. His previous experience on the yacht of course helped him in the camp ; but the camp was decidedly the more complex and difficult thing to manage. At the time of the first camp, he had just finished his Junior year in college. It will subsequently appear that the plan of this enterprise resembled in certain respects plans he after- ward made for work in connection with the Metropolitan Parks about Boston. He began to exhibit at this time a quality which was of great value to him in his professional life, — he showed that decision, and that persistence in a plan once conceived, which prevent waste of time for subor- dinates. In spite, however, of the increase of self-confidence which came to him from these summer camps of 1880 and 1881, he \ * h \;:% J i! _. \ ra ^'^Cim ^ '^'■^;|l ^T. 21] THE HOUSE AT MT. DESERT 27 remembered in after years that when camp broke up in August, 1881, and he joined his father and mother in their new house at Northeast Harbor, he there had days of min- gled exaltation and dejection. A flood of thought and feel- ing, such as he had never experienced before, swept over him. His head was full of memories and dreams, of fearful hopes, dreads, and pains ; the beauty and the wonder of God's earthly paradise burst upon him like a holy vision, and the depths of the hell on earth opened at his feet. The new house at Mt. Desert had resulted from his advice. When his father and mother returned from Europe in late September, 1880, Charles said to them : " If you really wish to build a house at Mt. Desert, you had better examine the coast from our camp-ground on Somes's Sound to Seal Har- bor. Somewhere on that line you will find a site that will suit you, — a site with beautiful views of sea and hills, good anchorage, fine rocks and beach, and no flats." The father and mother followed his directions in October, explored the shore he had indicated, — on which at that time not a single summer residence had been built, — and found a site of rare beauty on which the new house was built in the spring and summer of 1881. From that good planting came much sub- sequent delight to three generations of Charles's kindred and friends, the older, his own, and the younger. From the new house, at the end of that season, Charles sailed away in the Sunshine to return to college work. It happened that his mother stayed on through October at Northeast Harbor ; and from Cambridge Charles wrote her letters expressing the strongest affection and gratitude. The following is an ex- tract from one of tliese delightful letters : — My dear Mother : This is the second Sunday that we 've been away from you. I met father this morning before church, and said, " Is n't this a wretched business, this leaving mother down East?" and he said it was a total failure, and that he should never do so again. . . . You asked me the other day if I did n't find it interesting to be growing up, and I must say that I do find it so, — very, — and I 'm par- ticularly glad to find one thing, — that I am growing (though only little by little) out of my habit of shrinking from show- ing my feelings. . . . I 've come to see what a blessed and h olpful thing real human sympathy can be, and what a terri- ble loss it is to live without it. If Mamma had lived, perhaps 28 GENERAL EDUCATION [1881-2 I should never have formed this shrinking habit, for I cer- tainly should have continued to go to her with all my joys and troubles. As it is, I know that most people, judging from my conduct, think me indifferent, unenthusiastic ; but the fact is that I have felt the enthusiasm, though I have n't shown it. Though I have enjoyed your singing as I have enjoyed nothing else, ever since I first heard you in Phillips Place, it was only the other day that I began to show you this ; and now, somehow, it adds greatly to my pleasure in your singing to know that you know that I enjoy it with you. . . . Grandma Peabody wrote to me when you were engaged to father, — " How delightful it will be when a sweet lady takes you into her heart, sympathizes with your pleasures and your cares," — and now I 'm so glad to have found this delight that I can't help telling the sweet lady of it. His Senior year was somewhat clouded by uncertainty about his profession. His choice of electives, during the three years when election was permitted, was as follows : In the Sophomore year, physical geography under Professor Davis ; descriptive chemistry with laboratory work under Professor Jackson ; the principles of design under Professor Moore, with much drawing in pencil, ink, sepia, and water colors ; and a rapid reading course in German. All these studies he found interesting and good. The required themes and rhetoric he did not enjoy. For his Junior year he chose qualitative analysis under Professor H. B. Hill ; Renaissance and Gothic art under Professor Norton ; the constitutional history of England and the United States under Professor Macvane ; and a second rapid reading course in German. Forensics he liked better than themes ; but still required writing was not agreeable to him. In his Senior year he took Professor Norton's course on the history of ancient art ; a course with Professor Dunbar on political economy ; a course in mineralogy with much laboratory work ; and a rapid reading course in French. All his electives he liked well ; but he succeeded best in fine arts, science, history, and forensics. He arrived at the end of his Senior year without having any distinct vision of the profession which awaited him, neither he nor his father having perceived his special gifts. Nevertheless, it turned out, after he had settled with joy on his profession, that, if he had known at the beginning of his Sophomore year what his profession was to be, he could iET. 22] CHOICE OF STUDIES 29 not have selected his studies better than he did with only the guidance of his likings and natural interests. He took dur- ing his last three years in college all the courses in fine arts which were open to him ; he subsequently found his French and German indispensable for wide reading in the best litera- ture of his profession ; his studies in science supplied both training and information appropriate to his calling ; and his- tory and political economy were useful to him as culture studies and for their social bearings. In the year of his graduation Charles pasted into one of his scrap-books these two lines from the " Taming of the Shrew : " — " No profit grows where is no pleasure ta'en ; — In brief, sir, study what you most affect," — an admirable bit of educational philosophy. One of his Senior forensics was written on the question : "Is college life so far analogous to that of the world at large that the conditions of success are the same ? " It begins as follows : " I want to define, for the purposes of this discussion, the word ' success.' I define success in college to be the attainment of two things, namely, high standing as a scholar, and influence as an example of right living. I define success in the world at large to be the attainment of a sufficient competency, com- bined with the largest amount of usefulness to one's fellow- men." These two definitions are both different from the common ; they combine a direct practical quality with social idealism. He seemed while in college to have no desire whatever for either sociability or popularity. He had a few intimates and a few more acquaintances ; but apparently no desire for the society of a large number of his fellows. He was physically incompetent for the competitive athletic sports. He was asked to join both the Hasty Pudding Club and the Pi Eta Society, but declined the invitation to the latter, and did not rectify a misunderstanding about his invitation to the former. Most of his classmates knew him only by sight. He went his way comparatively alone in a crowd, and when he graduated, neither he nor his classmates knew what there was in him. In the early winter of 1881-82 his digestion was some- what disturbed, and he had more headache than usual. As a precautionary measure, he and his mother made an enjoy- able journey to Canada in December. While he was thus absent his father wrote to him as follows : " I hope you will not feel in haste to get through with your education, your ' infancy,' or period of training. There is no reason why you 30 GENERAL EDUCATION [1882 should, and I want you to enjoy a sense of ease and calm in that matter. It would suit me excellent well if you should quietly study for an A. M. next year, or should spend a year in study and reading without aiming at a degree at all. If you would like to have two Senior years and take your A. B. in 1883, I should be entirely content. You need not feel that you ought to be earning your living, or doing something in the actual market-place. That will come soon enough. There are fields of knowledge and philosophy which you have hardly set foot in. Take time to view them with a disen- gaged mind. The sense of being driven or hurried is very disagreeable to you ; then arrange your life so that you can- not be driven or hurried. Nothing in the way of college rank or college degree is of consequence enough to cause you the loss of enjoyment in study and of tranquillity of mind. I want you to have an intellectual delight in study for the study's sake. You have had a large mental growth during the past two years, but have not been as happy in it as I would like to have you. For the rest of your infancy — and do not shorten it — seek quiet and cultivate contentment." This letter shows that his father had no vision of the calling which Charles was so soon to enter upon. During his Senior year the indigestion from which Charles occasionally suffered of course affected his spirits. It caused some palpitation of the heart, and a painful sort of nervous- ness. Once or twice he came near giving up college work. The struggle was hardest in the spring months, when he longed to be in the open air all the time. By means of short absences from Cambridge and a careful use of some free hours in each day for out-of-door exercise, he got through the year. He made visits at the Thaxter place near Kit- tery, at Mt. Desert, and at Washington, beside taking the Quebec journey. By these means he managed to keep at work, and near the end of June he passed his examinations successfully, and in due course received the degree of Bach- elor of Arts cum laude. As soon as his examinations were over, without waiting for Class Day or Commencement, he started for Mt. Desert, putting a horse and light wagon, which were to be transported to the Mt. Desert house, on board the Bangor boat, landing at Bucksport, and driving thence, via Ellsworth, to Northeast Harbor. His comment on this drive, made to his friend Thaxter, is as follows : " A very beautiful road. Woods, big hills, and many lakes and ponds. Everything very fresh and green. Apjdes in blos- som, and corn about four inches up." 22] GRADUATION 31 So ended his general education. Regarded as undesigned preparation for his profession, his plays, sports, and com- pletely voluntary labors had obviously been quite as impor- tant as the systematic work of school and college. Prudence Island Light, Narragansett Bay. CHAPTER III PROFESSIONAL TRAINING — APPRENTICESHIP Whatever contributes to better determine or to emphasize natural character is a resource of the art of landscape ; whatever destroys, enfeebles, or confuses that character the art forbids. — Hirschfeld. Charles's ichoice of profession was practically made dur- ing the summer of 1882, , which he spent at Mt. Desert, partly on shore and partly on the Sunshine. The Cham- plain Society conducted its summer campaign in a somewhat different manner from that of 1880 and 1881. In those two years they had not succeeded in extending their explorations all over the island. They had skirted its whole shore, and had explored thoroughly the regions within convenient walk- ing distance of the camp. In 1882 they engaged a number of houses in different parts of the island where the mem- bers could pass the night or get meals ; so that they could conveniently travel on foot all about the island, and cover the whole ground for geological and botanical exploration. Charles was again much interested in the work of the So- ciety ; but did not live much at the camp, the new house being close by, and the Sunshine being an appendage of the house. During this summer Charles decided on the first step towards his profession, not without much consultation with his father, but still on his own responsibility, and as a result of his own reflection on the modes of life which were possible and desirable for him. He proceeded by the method of elimination, and rejected one after another of the common professions. Next he decided that there was no form of ordi- nary business which had the least attraction for him. Hav- ing established these comprehensive negative propositions, he asked himself, and his father asked him, what he would best like to do in the world. His uncle Robert S. Peabody was well established in Boston as an architect ; and through him Charles had heard something of landscape architecture, because Mr. Peabody was a near neighbor of Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted in Brookline, and from time to time had pro- fessional relations with him. The Boston Department of ^T.23] AT THE BUSSEY INSTITUTION 33 Parks was already eight years old, and its great services to the public were beginning to be manifest. The occupation of the landscape architect was probably one which not only permitted but required a good deal of open-air life ; and its studies and its results seemed to fall in with Charles's natural tastes and desires. Before the end of September he had decided to try to prepare himself for that profession ; although as yet he had no very distinct idea of its func- tions and prospects. This preliminary decision once reached, he and his father both began to perceive how clearly his whole education and experience up to the age of twenty- three pointed to this occupation. On his return from Mt. Desert, he forthwith entered the Bussey Institution, the De- partment of Agriculture and Horticulture of Harvard Uni- versity. In a letter to Roland Thaxter dated October 15th, Charles thus describes his first experience at the Bussey Institution : I am at the Bussey, and find it very interesting — quite different from college. We are a class of five, with five instructors, — Storer (agricultural chemistry), very interest- ing; Watson (horticulture), lectures and garden and green- house work, also interesting ; Slade (applied zoology), anat- omy of domestic animals, with dissecting, etc., — pretty dry at present, the subject being bones ; Faxon (applied botany) has not appeared yet, but will no doubt be interesting ; Bur- gess (applied entomology) does not begin till the second half year ; Motley (farm management), a queer old fellow who lectures and takes us on excursions once a week ; Dean (topographical surveying), a course given at Cambridge which only three of us take. The practical gardening work is entertaining and tiresome at once, and the same may be said of the surveying. Mr. Storer is a very able lectui-er, and ought to have a class of a hundred men at least. At this time the profession of landscape architecture was hardly recognized in the United States, and there was no regular process of preparing for it. There was no estab- lished school for the profession in any American university, and, indeed, not even a single course of instruction which dealt with the art of improving landscape for human use and enjoyment, or with the practical methods of creating and improving gardens, country-seats, and public parks. The 34 APPRENTICESHIP [1883 course of instruction at the Bussey Institution did, however, deal both theoretically and practically with several subjects of fundamental importance in the landscape art, and sup- plied the best preliminary training for the profession which was then accessible ; although it offered nothing on the artis- tic side of large-scale landscape work. The Bussey Institution is situated on a magnificent estate southwest from Boston proper, and seven miles from the Cambridge site of the University. For greater convenience of access to the Institution, Charles spent the fall and winter of 1882-83 partly at the house of one of his Eliot aunts (Mrs. Charles E. Guild), which was near the Bussey Institu- tion, and partly at his grandmother Peabody's in Boston. Mrs. Guild's house commanded a charming view of the Great Blue Hill, and was close to the beautiful region which after- wards became Franklin Park. The variety of places about Boston in which Charles lived at one time or another was an important element in his preparation for some of his best professional work in after years. During the winter his father had opportunities at the Saturday Club of talking with Mr. Frederick Law Olmsted about the means of preparing a young man for Mr. Olmsted's profession ; and Professor Norton, who had formed a good opinion of Charles's capacity, had also opportunities of interesting Mr. Olmsted in him. Finally, on the 22d of April, 1883, his uncle, Robert S. Peabody, introduced him to Mr. Olmsted at Brookline. There resulted from this interview an invitation for Charles to enter Mr. Olmsted's office as an apprentice, an invitation which Charles promptly accepted ; for Mr. Olmsted was at the head of his profession, and had had a hand in almost every considerable park-work that had been attempted in the country. He had at the time a large business in landscape designing of many kinds, both public and private. By the 29th of April Charles was established in Mr. Olmsted's office, and on that day he set out with Mr. Olmsted on a short jour- ney of work-inspection. His courses at the Bussey Institu- tion were thus somewhat abruptly interrupted ; but he had already got from them much valuable information, and he had assured himself that he wished to be a landscape archi- tect ; for he found attractive and interesting all the various knowledges which contributed to the practice of that profes- sion. Mr. Olmsted was sixty years old, and not very strong in body ; so that it was well for him to be accompanied on his frequent journeys by a young man who could relieve him of iET. 23] VISITING WORKS IN PROGRESS 35 all care in travelling, and could make notes and write letters for him. Charles writes on May 13th to his friend Thaxter : " I am to go about with Mr. Olmsted, and am expected to gather the principles and the practice of the profession in the course of this going. I am to be of what service I can, and this, if I am to judge by ten days' experience, will consist chiefly in* doing draughtsman's work, making working-draw- ings from preliminary design-plans, etc. I have already had a little journey with Mr. Olmsted to Newport and Provi- dence, and learned much and enjoyed more. I exj^ect to give two years to this apprentice education, and then hope to study and travel abroad. I have a high idea of what a land- scape architect should be, and a high ideal of what his art should be ; and you may believe that I was highly excited by this sudden plunge into the midst of things. The world says I am a lucky fellow, and congratulates me on all sides." Charles kept an interesting record of his various trips with Mr. Olmsted and other persons connected with the firm, a record which shows how very instructive to him were these opportunities of observing work in progress. The work which Mr. Olmsted had in hand at that time was of great variety. Thus, on the first excursion Charles made with Mr. Olmsted, they visited the Town Hall of North Easton, Mass. (by H. H. Richardson), which is set on craggy rocks made apparently higher by removing earth at the base. Broad, easy flights of steps with ample landings, and well fitted to the jutting ledges, lead up to the main door of the hall ; a natural growth of deciduous wood flanks the building on the uphill side ; while the pockets in the rocks about the building are planted with Honeysuckles, Prostrate Juniper, Yucca, and Sedums. A remarkable soldiers' monument (of the Civil War) stands before the hall at a meeting of three roads. It consists of an irregular pile of large boulders brought together from far and near, and forming a sort of cairn, on the highest point of which is a flagstaff. Every chink in the pile is crammed with peaty soil, and about the foot of the higher rock-walls runs a deep bed of rich earth. Here were planted Kalmias, Andro- medas, Rhodoras, Daphnes, wild Roses, and Honeysuckles, the tallest plants in the rear of the bed. From North Easton they went to a Newport estate, which was originally a com- pletely bare field at the end of a point commanding a wide sea-view. Here Charles records that the bare and gentle slope from the house to the shore is to be left entirely un- planted, since any elaborate gardening or planting would be utterly inappropriate. Another estate in Newport in the 36 APPRENTICESHIP [1883 older part of the city was to be improved by Mr. Olmsted by removing trees from the old neglected plantations, and de- veloping the principal lawn. A walling-off of a kitchen and stable court was earnestly recommended by Mr. Olmsted. Thence they went to Providence to study a design for grounds about a new suburban mansion set in one corner of what had been a large village lot. Here the gardener was instructed to plant, always irregularly, three or four of the to-be-large trees together, all but one of which were to come out by and by ; to mix shrubs with the trees ; to use shrubs to break the edges of the plantations ; and to see that there were no sharp lines between groups of this and groups of that. All the walls about the estate were to be vine-clad — English Ivy on the shady side of the house and in other sunless corners, Virginia Creeper on the brick walls, and Japanese Ivy on the stone posts. One can easily see how instructive and interest- ing such days as these were to the receptive disciple. Shortly after this excursion Charles spent a delightful day with Mr. Olmsted on Cushing's Island in Portland Harbor, Mr. Olmsted having been called on to advise the owners of the island about laying it out as a seashore resort. Mr. Olmsted's advice included the enlargement of the brick hotel ; the reservation of a considerable area near it for hotel cot- tages ; the making of play-grounds for common use by all the island people ; the laying out of about fifty house-lots on the island, small on the landward and smooth part of the island, larger on the ocean shore where the building sites are finest ; the reservation of White Head at one end of the island, and of the southwest point at the other end, these two to be connected by a wide strip down the middle of the island along the highest ridge, whence views can be had in both directions at once. The whole shore was to be common to all the inhabitants. The SiJruces on the island being badly blighted, Mr. Olmsted recommended that Pine seed should be sown among the dying Spruces, so as to have a growth to fall back on, when the Spruces should necessarily be removed. To clear away the present forest immediately would not be safe ; for the mosses, ferns, and other undergrowth might be lost. The greater part of Charles's time was of course spent in the office, and his work there consisted in making sketches, enlarging or reducing plans, calculating earth-work, making preliminary studies for laying out grounds, some private, some public, and some belonging to schools and colleges ; and finally, often after repeated reconsideration and revision by /ET. 23] WORKING-DRAWINGS — PLANTIXG-PLAXS 37 the master, in preparing working-drawings, with all tlieir elaborate details of figuring, lettering, and coloring. Before Charles had been six months in the oftice, he was making sketch-plans and working-drawings in considerable variety, and occasionally freehand drawings to accompany letters which explained designs. He also prepared not infrecpiently what he called '' show maps," that is, maps intended to inter- est prospective buyers in estates which it was jn-oposed to cut uj) into house-lots. He acquired considerable skill in both mechanical and freehand drawing ; and gradually came to prefer for his own use the least elaborate sort of drawing. A drawing which was clear, easily interpreted, and as accu- rate as the methods which were to be used in working from it on the ground, always answered his purpose. The prepara- tion of planting-maps was also a part of his work, and, in connection with these designs, he received much instruction from Mr. Olmsted and his assistants, — instruction relating to the kinds of plants which could be advantageously used on the different soils and in the different climates of the United States, and to the best mode of disposing plants in groups. He was taught to distrust specimen planting, — that is, the use of single specimens of plants in an ambitious variety, — and also to be cautious about using plants the hardiness of which had not been demonstrated by the experience of many seasons. While plants of various merits would naturally be used, — as, for example, plants with colored stems, handsome blooms, or foliage remarkably beautiful in spring, summer, or autumn, — preference should always be given to such trees and shrubs as will certainly thrive and come to perfection under the climatic and soil conditions of the places whei-e they are to be put, and the planting should be in masses. The ordering of plants for private places, both in the coun- try and by the seaside, was an instructive part of Charles's practice in the office. He learnt what the most desirable and trustworthy plants were, what appropriate effects could be produced on sites of various kinds, where the plants desired could be most advantageously purchased, and how the satis- faction of proprietors with the planting could be best assured. In making plans for the approaches to private houses, Charles was early initiated into the importance of frankness about the kitchen region. Some proprietors would rather pretend that they had no back door, kitchen garden, or stable ; but Mr. Olmsted always advised perfect frankness about the whole service region, the convenience of every household requiring that waofons should be able to stand at the back door, and 38 APPRENTICESHIP [1883 stables and kitchen gardens being Indispensable adjuncts of every large establishment. By frequent visits, often with some specific object in view, Charles became familiar with the Arnold Arboretum, — a collection of all the trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants which will thrive in the New England climate, — to which a considerable portion of the Bussey estate had been devoted by an agreement between the University and the City of Bos- ton. Here was a precious opportunity to study the materials available for artificial plantations. It fortunately happened that in the winter of 1884-85 the planting-plans of the Ar- boretum, which were originally made by Mr. Olmsted, had to be thoroughly revised in view of ultimate extensions of the Arboretum. Charles worked on the new drawings, and It was a great advantage to him that he was thus obliged to study carefully systematic planting in a very large collection, in which not only a great variety of species was to be ex- hibited, but fine specimens of each species as well. Sundays and occasional half-holidays Charles contrived to utilize for walks and drives. Under date of Sunday, May 27, 1883, he writes : — Delightful spring weather. Woods full of delicate tints and shades of color, and soft and feathery with the young leafage. Thickets still more or less transparent, and horse- chestnuts and some maples as yet the only trees that are solid against the sky. This Sunday a delicious drive to Belmont and over Wellington Hill with E. L. B. [one of his Eliot aunts]. Apples in bloom, Judas-trees out, and many flower- ing shrubs In their glory. Towards the end of September, 1883, he made a short visit at Mt. Desert, at the end of which he records : — What with Mother, Sally Norton, and Sara, there was much good music. On last Sunday evening the music — mostly gentle and tender — went straight to my heart of hearts as music seldom has before. I hope that, some day or othev, work of mine may give some human being pleasure, plea- sure of that helpful kind which beauty of music and of scenery gives me. Charles continued to profit very much by casual but fruit- ful suggestions which he received from Mr. Olmsted during the inspection-tours on which he accompanied him. Thus, iET.23] MR. OLMSTED'S PRINCIPLES 39 when visiting Easton's Pond at Newport in 1883, — a shal- low lagoon behind the bathing-beach, largely overgrown with sedges, and partly filled with blown sand from the beach, — Mr. Olmsted suggested a treatment of the unsightly pond which foreshadowed the method afterward so admirably used at the Chicago Fair. He proposed to the city to dredge an irregular water-basin, and with the material so obtained to raise the level of the remaining area, thus making land and water of a place then neither the one nor the other. On the same occasion, Mr. Olmsted pointed out that any large structure, like a city bathing-house, on the sandy and surf- beaten beach would appear wholly incongruous and out of place. This hint bore fruit in Charles's mind thirteen years afterward on Revere Beach, one of the Boston jMetropolitan reservations. A visit to the Capitol grounds at Washington was very instructive. Charles here noted that an immense, massive building requires visibly firm and broad ground- suppott, and adequate and dignified approaches ; that curved drives and foot-paths must be justified by some necessity of climbing by easy grades ; that there should be no curves for the curves' sake, unless in absolutely formal gardening on a small scale ; that single conifers tend to betray the small size of a piece of ground, acting as exclamation marks or measuring-poles ; that the sclieme of planting round a build- ing should consider the permanent visibility of the best aspects of the building on the one hand, and, on the other, should provide for the obscuring of the necessary spaces of gravel and asphalt. By reading Mr. Olmsted's printed writings, by listening to his conversation, and going over the letters he wrote about new undertakings, Charles soon absorbed the fundamental principles which had long guided Mr. Olmsted in his land- scape work. Mr. Olmsted always desired to emphasize in park-work the antithesis between the objects seen in city streets and the objects of vision in the open country. He thought that trimmed trees, flowers in pots, clipped grass, and variegated flower or foliage beds savored of the city, or at least of the suburb ; and he preferred for the purpose of refreshing a city population, undulating meadows fringed with trees, quiet, far-stretching pastoral scenery, and groves which preserved the underbrush and the rough surface of the natural forest. Paths, roads, resting-places, and restaurants were always to be regarded as the necessary facilities for enabling the population to enjoy the essentially restful ele- ments of park scenery. These artificial features were not the 40 APPRENTICESHIP [1883 objects of any landscape undertaking, but its necessary impediments. Although in general Charles had the greatest admiration for his master, and sympathized completely with his general principles in landscape work, he took the liberty of exercis- ing his own independent judgment about some of Mr. Olm- sted's designs. A high degree of complication and artifi- ciality in a design never pleased him. Within three months of his entrance into the Olmsted office, he records his objec- tions to the design for a small suburban lot in which stood a house and stable, partly of brick and partly of wood. " The cramped turn at the door, the brick wall around it, the hand- some but far-fetched and out-of-place boulders, the equally improbable made valley with its boulder bridge across a dry brook, make it altogether the least pleasing work of Mr. Olmsted's I have yet seen." In connection with various pieces of work which were in hand during the years 1883 and 1884, Charles had steady guidance towards fundamental principles of landscape work which he was already well prepared to accept and transmit. Thus, in one New England city the owner of a large estate had given the city a tract of land of varied and delightful interest, comprising a steep gi-avelly shore with its islands and peninsulas of drift all clothed with woods, rocky spots overgrown with wild verdure, and groves of large trees. It commanded also a noble prospect from the top of its hill. The park commissioners appointed by the city expected a general smoothing of everything, — a cutting down of the rough sumacs and brambles, and a making of nicely kept lawns with flower-beds and plantations of fancy trees and shrubs. Mr. Olmsted advised against all such work. He regarded the park-land in its actual condition as a fine piece of rural scenery, to be religiously preserved so far as the use and enjoyment of the place by the public would permit, as a scene of quiet character, graceful and picturesque by turns, in which only such changes and additions should be per- mitted as would bring out still further the prevailing char- acter of the place, — such work, for instance, as the removal of stone walls and fences, the cutting out of the poorest trees, and the planting of indigenous trees and thickets in further- ance of nature. One of the important works of which Mr. Olmsted had charge during Charles's apprenticeship was the Belle Isle Park of Detroit. The river is the pleasure resort of Detioit. There are many excursion steamers ; there is always a breeze; iET. 24] BELLE ISLE — LAWRENCEVILLE SCHOOL 41 and great numljers of lake-craft are to be seen. Belle Isle itself is a flat, wet island, two miles long- by balf a mile broad, with a thin soil and a clayey subsoil. The highest point is but six feet above the level of the river, and many acres are subject to flood. The interior is well wooded with Elm, Oak, and Hickory, of natural but too close growth. The chief elements of Mr. Olmsted's plan were drainage by means of a system of canals with tile drains discharging into them, and gates and pumps to keep the canals at the normal level when the river should be in flood. The shores of the island were wearing away ; so it was a part of the plan to give the exposed parts of the shore a beach form with a grade of one in six. The quality of the natural woods was allowed to determine the character of the park. The usual park woods were out of the question, owing to tlie spindling form of the trees ; but the interest of the existing woods was heightened by open- ing glades, by judicious thinning, and by breaking into the edges. The scheme involved the raising of the roadways by means of the material derived from the canals, in order to ensure the dryness of the driveways even immediately after rain. On this design, with its landing-pier and other acces- sories, Charles worked a long time as a draughtsman, his interest in the drawings being greatly stimulated by visits to the locality. The steamboat pier presented many complica- tions of curvature and structure. It had two decks and a roof, and inclined i)lanes on brackets leading to the second deck. The line of the eaves was undulating, and the roof was full of curvature. The ridge rose and fell according to the width of the deck below, and the section of the roof varied with every wave of the eaves-line. It will easily be seen that such a complicated design cost the draughtsman much labor, particularly as the design was repeatedly modified. After all, it was never built. Another very interesting project which was in the office some months, and on which Charles frequently worked as a draughtsman, was the layout of the grounds of the Lawrence- ville School, at Lawrenceville, N. J., the school buildings be- ing simultaneously designed by Messrs. Peabody & Stearns, his uncle's firm. The designing of these spacious grounds and numerous buildings was an interesting piece of work, such as is very seldom presented to a landscape architect and an architect together. The estate was handsome and ade- quate ; and the buildings were to be erected simultaneously on a well-studied scheme. In the autumn of 1883 work was active on the Back Bay 42 APPRENTICESHIP [1884 Fens, and Charles had ample opportunities of watching its progress. At the end of November he records the interest- ing variety of work which was going forward there. The great dredge was digging into the existing marsh across the channel near the gate-house, and the material there obtained was going to fill the promontory which was to carry West- land Avenue across the reservation. Men and teams were carrying marsh-mud from the vicinity of Westland Avenue and spreading it over the bare gravel slopes near Beacon Street. Teams were carrying marsh-sod for the shores and coves between Boylston and Beacon streets. Trains were bringing gravel for filling, and good soil from the new Sud- bury River water-basins of the Boston Water Works ; and men with barrows were spreading this loam on the finished slopes north of Boylston Street. Carts were bringing quan- tities of suitable manure to compost heaps which were being prepared for use when planting should begin in the spring ; and plants were arriving and being heeled-in close to Beacon Street, so as to be handy in the spring. He noted, also, the quantities of plants received at the Fens for planting at the opening of the season of 1884. At this time the Boston and Albany Railroad was rebuild- ing many of its stations, and laying out, under Mr. Olmsted's direction, the grounds about them. With all these plans Charles was familiar, and on many of them he worked. He came to value more and more a good topographical survey of an estate or region for which he was to prepare road-plans or a division into house-lots ; and his test of the excellence of the engineer's plan was the amount of revision which his own plans, made in the Brookline office, required when with these plans in hand he visited the ground. On a good topographi- cal survey he maintained that he could do his own work as well in the office as on the ground, and often better, — par- ticularly in the laying out of roads. For Owners he thought it a real economy to get a good survey. During February, 1884, he made some progress in gather- ing material for a paper on the History of Mount Desert, which he proposed to read before the Champlain Society ; and in due time he presented the results of his researches to the society. At times there was not work enough in the office during Mr. Olmsted's absences to keep both Mr. J. C. Olmsted and Charles busy. At such moments Charles turned with pleasure to the study of the best authors on landscape architecture, and to out-of-door excursions. In the spring of 1884 he had leisure to copy many citations from JET. 24] NOTES OF LANDSCAPE 43 the best authors on his subject. In the winter of 1883-84 Charles worked for some weeks on the City Point design made for the Boston Park Commission, one of the most interesting of the many designs of extraordinary originality and utility which the city of Boston owes to Mr. Olmsted's genius. It included two long piers, facilities for bathing, rowing, and sailing, the improvement of Castle Island, — which belongs to the government of the United States, — a small artificial island as a pier-head, and several build- ings for the accommodation of the public. The whole was planned with great forethought and a vivid conception of the needs of the future. On all the details of these plans Charles worked with enthusiasm, in company with Mr. J. C. Olmsted; and when the great design was itself nearly finished, he pre- pared a reduced map of Boston Bay to serve as a key-map to accompany the City Point design. This public reservation, which is not yet completely executed, though it has long been in use, stands as one of the best monuments of the genius of its designer. On all the journeys Charles took during his apprentice- ship, he made notes of the landscape through which he passed. It was a great pleasure to him just to ride rapidly through fine country, though he could only see the alternat- ing woods and fields, the cultivated valley-bottoms, the fields of buttercup or clover or white-weed, the various shades of green in the growing crops, and the moulding of the hill- sides. He always noted, also, the prevailing industries of the regions through which he passed. If it was a coal region, for example, he observed the picturesque, ungainly shaft- houses and breakers, the great waste dumps, and the miser- able hovels of the miners. If it was a Western city, he observed the mode of planting the streets, the addition of the radial system of streets to the rectangular, and the quality of the houses, pretentious or simple, commonplace or pictur- esque, of the Greek portico period or the Queen Anne. Of course he always visited any public parks which lay in his way ; and before long he was familiar with the parks of Bal- timore, Philadelphia, New York, Brooklyn, and Buffalo. In the opening months of 1884 he began to record in his commonplace book the action of the various public bodies with which jNIr. Olmsted dealt in carrying on his chief works. He noted the appropriations made, and the conditions at- tached to the appropriations. On a single day at the end of March, 1884, he records the condition of fourteen different undertakings which were then under way, part of them pub- 44 APPRENTICESHIP [1885 lie parks, part school, college, and railway grounds, part real estate speculations, and part grounds of private owners. He was thus studying the conditions under which both public and private landscape work had to be carried on. By the summer of 1884 he had begun to pay attention to contract prices for dirt roads, stoned roads, drains supplied and laid, silt basins, and stone walls. The prices of such construction varied, of course, in different parts of the country ; but as work of tliis descriptiou often enters into landscape work, whether of large scale or small, he found it desirable to inform himself concerning its cost. He began to classify trees and shrubs in his mind according to their uses. For example, he made lists of plants in the summer of 1884 suitable for the following objects : for the seaside, for cascade planting, for covering ground under thick-growing trees, for autumn beauty of foliage or fruit, for autumn flowering, for high exposed places, and for bare or rocky places. The winter of 1884-85 Charles spent at his father's house in Cambridge, going to and from the Brookline office on horseback or by wagon. His office work during the autumn was chiefly draughting on a variety of private places, all in- structive, but less interesting to Charles than public work. Near the end of October, 1884, he took time to lay out a new approach road to his father's house at Mt. Desert, and did a considerable quantity of planting about the roads and the house, using only plants native to the place, such as Birches, Spruces, Ashes, Oaks, Pines, Golden-rod, Blueberry, Huckle- berry, wild Roses, wild Asters, Brakes, and Ferns, and care- fully avoiding the introduction of grass. The onl}-^ plants he used which were not absolutely native were Virginia Creeper, Clematis, Honeysuckle, and a Japanese Willow. The study of the Arboretum planting-plans, which began in January, 1885, continued at intervals during the spring of that year, and was very profitable to Charles. He also worked at this time on the Franklin Park plans, which were then developing in Mr. Olmsted's office. This great project was at that time referred to in Charles's notes as the West Roxbury Park. He labored on the design until the close of his service as an apprentice. The last entries in his diary during his apprenticeship relate to large-scale drawings of what was then called the Corso in the West Roxbury Park, now the Greeting in Franklin Park. On tlie 1st of April Charles makes the laconic remark in his diary : " No more draughting," and thereupon his service as an apprentice seems to have ceased, although he was frequently at the iET. 25] WALKS -EXCURSIONS 45 office during the spring. He also worked at the Arboretum, staking out shrub beds from plans he had helped to prepare. It was not till the 31st of May that he wrote a letter of farewell to Mr. Olmsted thanking him for the instruction he had received and for the great privilege of working under his direction. After the 1st of April that spring, he renewed his connec- tion with the Bussey liistitution by attending there a course of lectures on horticulture and arboriculture by Mr. Benja- min M. AVatson. He also began to make a collection of dried plants, coufiuing himself, however, to those trees, shrubs, and other plants which would be useful in his pi'ofessional work. Mr. Watson's class was often carried through the Arboretum, so that Charles had further opportunities of becoming familiar with this comprehensive collection. During this period of col- lecting, Charles took many walks with congenial friends through the wild parts of what is now known as the Metro- politan District. He thus completed his knowledge of the flora of the district, not from the point of view of a botanist, but from that of the student of scenery. He covered in these walks the whole half-circle from Nahant, Lynn, and East Saugus, on the north, by the Middlesex Fells, Belmont, Lin- coln, and Waltham, through Wellesley and the Newtons, by Dedham, Readville, Hyde Park, Milton, and Quincy, to the south siiore. He also spent several days on tlie upper parts of the Charles River, renewing his acquaintance with the most beautiful parts of that stream. These excursions bore ample fruit in later years. He travelled during the summer and autumn of 1885 into other States, visiting Newport and Bridgeport, the popular seashore resorts in the vicinity of New York city, Greenwood Cemetery and Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Sandy Hook, and Long Branch. On this joiu-ney he spent several profitable days in the Bridgeport Park, which he had visited two years before. His notes of botanical observations on this journey cover tlnrty-five pages, and relate to the flowers and shrubs in bloom at that season, to the materials of hedges and of vine coverings for walls, to decoration by tub-plants and green- house exotics, to the extraordinary defacing of the beaches accessible from New York by badly placed hotels, shops, and pile-work, to the selection of plants in the great parks of Brooklyn, New York, and Philadelphia, to the autumnal condition of the parks as regards flowers and the foliage of the less familiar trees and shrubs. At Sandy Hook he was at pains to make a list of the luxuriant vegetation which covered 46 SANDY HOOK — BRIDGEPORT — MT. DESERT [1885 the sand. He admired greatly the fine old Cedars of all shapes and habits, — many intensely blue in color, by reason of great quantities of berries, — the thrifty Sumacs, the vast quantity of poison Ivy and Golden-rod, and the interesting sand grasses or sedges. During his stay at the Beardsley Park at Bridge- port, he made twenty-three pages of notes, relating to plant hardiness, to changes of color in the course of the season, to spread, to color of bark, twigs, or foliage, to power of resist- ance to cold, ice, and drought, and to strength or rankness of growth, and consequent tendency to kill oat weaker plants. In a letter to his mother he tells how he passed a Sunday at Bridgeport : — Yesterday was a delightful day — the sky pai'tly cloudy, so that it was not too hot for walking. I tramped out over some pretty roads and lanes, not caring whither, and by and by came in sight of some church spires rising from a fine mass of woods. Slowly I travelled towards them, and discovered a very pretty village hidden under the trees, and hard by the churches a little inn — the Fairfield Hotel — where I got a good dinner. In the afternoon I returned by a still ci'ookeder course than that of the morning, climbed some gentle hills, got many delightful views of the shadow-flecked country, investigated many woodsides and shrubberies, and enjoyed myself highly. Whenever in his travels he found himself in the vicinity of a large nursery, he invariably explored its resources, and made himself acquainted with its prices and its methods of work. From Bridgeport, in the midst of these labors, he wrote to his intimate friend Roland Thaxter : — Why did n't you come along with me ? ... I approve less than ever of travelling alone. I have not had a soul to speak to for fourteen long days and nights, and I think another fourteen would probably drive me mad. How in Heaven's name am I ever to spend nine months in Europe ? I can't. He allowed himself but a short vacation this year, and that was spent at beloved Mt. Desert. On the 14th of September he started for AYashlngton, Vir- ginia, and the southern peaks of the Appalachian range, visiting with several older friends, Natural Bridge, Roan Mountain, ^T. 25] THE APPALACHIANS 47 Burnsville, Marion, Asheville, Charleston, Great Smoky Moun- tain, Nantahala, Hiawassee, and Highlands, whence he re- turned to Asheville. On this journey he saw forests of a different character from those of New England, and a pop- ulation whose history, traditions, and habits were very unlike those of the New England people. From Roan Mountain he wrote thus to his mother : — Thus far our trip has been very enjoyable. The valley of the Shenandoah is very beautiful in a soft and fertile way, the Natui-al Bridge is far finer than the Geography picture would lead one to expect, and this mountain, and the approach to it, are grand and lovely at once. In the limestone gorges near the Bridge grow Cercis and Ptelea and other trees not seen North, beside large and fine specimens of Sassafras, Magnolia, Linden, Beech, and Hem- lock, and many fine shrubs. In the mountain passes climbed by the narrow-gauge railroad on its way to the Cranberry Forge and the foot of this mountain, grow acres of Rhodo- dendron and Kalmia, with Holly and Oxydendron and Aralia, and Andromeda in variety. The most beautifully wooded hill- sides I ever saw. Then the flanks of the mountain (which it took us seven hours to climb) are clothed with a great forest of large timber ti'ees, among which are nineteen species attaining such size that clean logs fifty feet long can be got from them. None of this is yet cut save the Cherry. Near the top conifers take possession, and — wonderful to relate — the summit, which is some three miles long, is almost wholly in grass, great thickets of Rhododendron and some patches of Fir with oc- casional ^Mountain Ash being the only trees of the place. Fine ledges crop out at a few points, and give glorious views over a vast stretch of wooded mountains, only one or two of which are higher than this. Later he wrote to her about the journey as follows : — We saw a great deal in our three weeks of travel — much beautiful scenery — some magnificent forests of large trees — innumerable beautiful shrubs and flowers — and a few very interesting human beings — all men! Much of the country we rode through is but just being settled — we found one new 48 NATURAL BRIDGE — FIRST EARNINGS [1885 colony made up largely of New Englanders, and in another place a little band of Germans. The few mountain valleys that were occupied before the war have not yet recovered from the killing off of their men. In these parts the war- times still monopolize conversation. The mountains abounded in Unionists, and their trials and adventures make fine stories. Men are now living in the same valley who burned each others' houses in the war-time — and in Swain County almost everybody seems to have shot a man. Everywhere the people are shiftless and ignorant, and have plenty of time to waste in hunting, and in attending Court at the county-seat. Whole families travel to town, and women carry babies into the court- room to watch the progress of the shooting cases. In all the western counties of North Carolina only one man has been hanged since the war. On his return he spent a week at Natural Bridge, having been recommended by Mr. Olmsted to Colonel Parsons, the proprietor of over 2000 acres of diversified lands, to help him about thinning the woods and making cuttings for roads and vistas. Although Colonel Parsons gave him his board and lodging in consideration of his services, and these were his first professional earnings, he by no means regarded himself as practising his profession, but rather as trying his 'prentice hand. To his mother he described this experience as follows : My week at Natural Bridge was very pleasant. I was out every morning and afternoon, nearly half the time with Colonel Parsons. As I never had more than two axemen, results are not very tremendous. We attempted only easy work giving immediate effects — breaking up straight edges of woods — opening vistas — clearing to bring out fine trees — and oj)ening lines through the woods for two new roads. Returning homeward through Philadelphia, he made there a stay of several days to refresh his knowledge of the admira- ble parks of that city. In a note to his mother he speaks with delight of the Cumberland valley, — " the most ideal farming country I ever saw." By the middle of October he was again in Cambridge. He now began to prepare for a year of travel in Europe, in execution of the purpose he had formed when he first entered Mr. Olmsted's office, — largely on his advice that for the education of a landscape architect much .ET. 26] OFF FOR EUROPE 49 observation of many kinds of scenery was indispensable. On November 5th lie took steamer for Liverpool, and on the 14th arrived in England for the third time in his life. His own country was in great part rough and wild, and its large agglomerations of population were but recent ; he was going to see what landscape and scenery had become in regions which had been occupied by man for many centuries, and what rural delights remained possible for the population of great cities a thousand years old. Tlie placing of a new house on top of a high rock close to the sea, too near the public road, and surrounded by rough ledges between which grow Bay, Sumac, Juniper, Huckleberry, and the like. The shore is bold and surf-beaten. Mr. Olmsted's design for tlie avenues (1883). The approach-road passes between two big ledges, and goes under one wing of the house. No proper grade could in any way be obtained short of the distance to the other side of the house. The turning space on the seaward side of the house, and the road which leads out across the head of the little ravine are held by low retaining-walls. (C. E.'s note-book.) CHAPTER IV LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. LONDON AND PARIS Invention, strictly speaking', is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory, — nothing can come from nothing ; he who has laid up no materials can produce no combinations. — Sir Joshua Reynolds. Chahles went to Europe to study, just as mucli as if It had been possible for him to settle down at a university like a student of languages, history, or philosophy ; but his objects and methods were necessarily very different from those of the ordinary student. His first object was to ex- amine public parks and gardens, private country-seats and suburban house-lots, nurseries, and public collections of trees and plants. Next, he needed to study in the gi-eat art- museums paintings of landscape, that he might learn what sort of scenes the masters of landscape painting had thought it worth while to depict. Then, he wanted time to acquaint himself with the bibliography of his subject, and to read the works of some of the chief authors, where he could grasp the European conditions, both climatic and social, under which they were written. Finally, whenever the weather and the situation permitted, he observed scenery and studied its parts and its composition. From the start, November 5, 1885, to October 7, 1886, he kept a journal, and he maintained through all the year of his absence a tolerably regular correspondence with his father and mother, five female cousins, two male cousins, and two college friends. He also made lists of plants and books, and numerous sketches and diagrams as notes of scenes and designs. This large amount of writing was chiefly done in the evenings or in bad weather. It proved to be a very valuable part of his year's work ; for it gave him prac- tice in a graphic, condensed, and interesting style of writing which was subsequently of great advantage to him. The journal begins with the voyage to Liverpool. " There never was a smoother or more prosperous voyage." His letters describe some of his fellow-passengers, most of whom ^T. 26] THE VOYAGE — LIVERPOOL 51 he found uninteresting. " Sunday I was assailed by my room-mate on the subject of becoming a ' Christian ; ' and also by a Methodist gentleman of emotional character who wept over me." But there was one party from Philadelphia which engaged his attention, — "a Mrs. Beadle, who was a Miss Yale, Mr. Beadle her son, and three young ladies, a Yale and two Pitkins, — all, I believe, of Philadelphia. The eldest jVIiss Pitkin is very good to look at, and I must con- fess that after I was at length (on the fourth day) intro- duced to her, the voyaging became much more agreeable." At Liverpool he began at once the study of the parks, and presented a letter of introduction from Mr. Olmsted to Mr. Kemp, — a jovial old Englishman, very cordial and agreeable, — a man who has worked hard in his profession in his day, and who seemed interested in my account of the works going on in our country. He told me that his profession was lan- guishing in England ; that proprietors were all too ready to accept the services of nurserymen instead of landscape gar- deners proper, and that the results of this practice were necessarily inartistic and bad. The nurseryman offers his services as designer for little or no pay, getting his reward from the plants he supplies. ... It is impossible for him to have an eye solely directed to his client's interest and the interest of good design. Birkenhead Park he found excellent as regards botli grading and planting ; but Sefton Park seemed to him bad, and he records his opinion with great candor. After his inspection of Prince's and Sefton Parks, — feeling like walking, I kept on towards the country, and discovered Mossley Hill, a little suburban district of beauti- fully planted grounds and gardens, which I enjoyed very much. Most of the places are on the American scale. The houses are brick or stone, and the grounds, whether large or small, shut off from the path by high walls grown with Ivy. Evergreens, such as Hollies, Laurels, Arbutus, and Laurustinus, make the plantations very beautiful, even at this season. Primulas, Violets, AVallflowers, and so forth, are abundantly used in the foregrounds, and under the shrubs. Then I also had a glimpse of real country, with 52 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1885 hedgerows and farmsteads ; and a look at a small village of "tenantry, with its church, school, and inn — newish, and look- ing as if built to order, but very neat, and orderly, and petite. Another gala day he spent at Chester, a place he had visited when a boy. " Almost the last thing in our walk about the walls, we came upon the so-called Phoenix Tower, which 1 have remembered well all these years — the Tower from which King Charles saw his army defeated at Rowton Moor." That night he passed at the house of a hospitable Englishman who had visited Harvard University ; and the next morning he had the advantage of examining liis host's grounds, which had been designed by Mr. Kemp, and were adorned with many plants new to him. On Saturday, November 20th, he went up to London and took rooms with his steamer acquaintance, Mr. Beadle, in Southampton Row, Russell Square. Then followed a week of sight-seeing in London, some parks being always taken in the daily route. When the weather was too bad for walking, the British Museum, close by his lodgings, was his resort. The whole daylight of one day he gave to the Kensington Museum, where the great collections of architectural casts, sculpture, and stucco work especially interested him. Thursday, November 26th, was Thanksgiving Day at home ; but in London it was " very dark, too dark for col- lections or interiors. . . . The atmosphere and weather gen- erally are utterly abominable and oppressing. At the Zoo all the morning, and for luncheon. A walk through the Regent's Park and Regent Street in the rain." Of West- minster Abbey he remarks : " Beautiful interior greatly marred by hideous modern monuments." At St. Paul's, too, he says : " More monstrous monuments to unheard-of mili- tary and naval gentry." On the 28th of November he records an " intensely inter- esting morning at the National Gallery, and the pictures not half seen ; after lunch, across Hyde Park, — glorious sky- scape." On Thanksgiving Day he wrote to his mother as follows : — One year ago Sam and I dined at Aunt Annie Bob's. Since then I believe I have had the best year of my life to date, — the first half of the year with Mr. Olmsted, and this made pleasanter than the preceding eighteen months by the presence of Codman in the office ; the latter half spent ^T. 26] LONDON — KEW — PARKS 53 in roaming about, observing and enjoying in so many differ- ent and intei-esting places, — the Arboretum, the Botanical Garden, and New York, Washington, Philadelphia, Bridge- port, and Mt. Desert. A very rich year, and one that has been hugely enjoyed by reason of my seeing so much that was beautiful. My introduction to the Old World has been gloomy enough, — dark, sunless weather ever since landing. Here in London, the yellow darkness is peculiarly disheart- ening and oppressive. A young man in our square killed himself the other day ; and he had eighty pounds and a check-book with him at the time. And London is so hor- ribly ugly and so abominably grimy, and poverty and vice are so conspicuous in the streets, and the darkness of mid- day is such that the things of beauty in the museums, to which one goes for relief, are only dimly seen. On the other hand, my voyage over here to this dark Old World was a time to be always remembered with exceeding pleasure. On the 1st of December he remarks in his journal: " Yesterday the Tower, — the last sight-seeing for the pi-e- sent. To-day Kew." The Kew gardens offer to the student, not only an immense collection of trees, shrubs, and herba- ceous plants in open ground, with extensive plant-houses of every sort, but also very lovely landscape effects. It was always the landscape which most delighted Charles. Al- though he found many trees and shrubs of extraordinary beauty in the grounds, he was chiefly struck with the pleas- ing effects of distance in the soft English atmosphere, and with the long shadows cast in a tolerably clear day by the very low December sun. On his way back to London, by Brentford and Hammersmith, he noticed especially " one extremely picturesque farmstead with old and crooked tile- roofed barns." Those were the pictures which remained in his memory. The London parks afforded him, even in December, very interesting i-esorts. He contrasts the simple, broad, and dig- nified character of Hyde Park and Regent's Park with the recent Battersea Park, made in the American way out of the whole cloth at great cost, — with its large, well-outlined lakes, and big cement rock-work, "with springs issuing from near the summit, — the highest ground anywhere about, — and this on the extreme end of a longish promontory in the lake." Such unnatural features in park or landscape — like 54 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1885 an artificial pond placed on a hill-top and filled by pumping — Charles always found extremely distasteful. In his view they were wholly unlike ponds or reservoirs in natural val- leys : they were mere engineering necessities, which by good judgment might be adoi*ned and slightly disguised. His journal criticises the " clumpish " spaded shrubberies in Battersea Park, their borders trimmed with some low grow- ing herbaceous edging-plant, and the beds for exotics scat- tered about everywhere, with other beds of Koses, Pinks, and Wallflowers. He found the best part of Battersea Park to be that which was most like the old parks, — " long stretches of greensward with trees in ranks, or scattered on the borders." Conspicuous artificiality, and the introduc- tion of flower-garden treatment, he found intolerable in any large park. For him the flower garden was a thing distinct. An artificial treatment, appropriate to a small city enclosure into which many elaborate features might be compressed to interest and amuse children or childish men and women, he thought never desirable in spacious country parks. Any unnatural treatment of the banks of a brook, or of the shores of a pond or lake, always distressed him. Thus he writes of the water in Regent's Park as " the miserable ditch, called the lake, with its shore a wide muddy path, and an iron fence at the brick edge of the water." The Park Road at Regent's Park afforded him a profitable study of house- yards in great variety: some decorated with piles of slag, white quartz, or blue glass (probably called " rockeries "); and some with statuettes or rustic seats made of iron ; the best " those in which the path to the door is carried conven- iently direct, and simple green grass or Ivy covers most of the remaining ground. Ivy as a green cover is particularly useful in the shade of trees or shrubs." Here he notes the good effect of plantations of low-growing shrubs set under the windows of the house itself. We shall see hereafter how he applied these observations at home in the suburbs of Boston. On the 8th of December he writes thus in his journal of a day spent at Hampstead : — A gloriously bright, cold day, — bright for London. Off for Hampstead by ten o'clock, by means of a 'bus from Tottenham Court Road. After some twenty minutes' ride over stone pavements a third horse was hitched on, and the ascent of the northern heights began. Open fields ap- peared between the buildings along the highway ; but the ^T. 26] HAMPSTEAD — HIGHGATE 65 road itself is now built up all the way to the Heath, — a picturesque road it is, as it winds and struggles up the steep hill. Numerous narrow footpaths and lanes appear, sometimes lined with pollarded trees. Up on the height is an indescribable mixture of tree-planted, private places enclosed by high walls, clusters of tile-roofed cottages, little inns now and then with their hanging signs, a big church, a little old church, and a chapel ; and worked in and among and around these the bays, straits, and reaches of the wild, untamed Heath, with its Furze, Gorse, and Bracken, and its innumerable trodden cross-paths leading in every direc- tion. And then the glorious outlook, — southward over all London ; westward to Harrow-on-the-Hill ; northward over a smiling farming land as green as green can be ; and east- ward to the companion height of Highgate with its con- spicuous church, and its tree-embowered gentlemen's places. After a delightful tramp all through and about Hampstead, I pushed on for the town-end of Highgate by way of the open fields and hills, by the Ponds, and through a big farm- yard with its elaborate ricks, to the beginning of the villa region ; then to the top of the hill by a footpath leading between private places. At the top is a confused meeting of many ways, lanes, highroads, and paths, and one wide and straightish ' Broadway ' lined with small irregular buildings, such as cottages, shops, inns, and stable-yards. At one end an (open) toll-gate and an old inn building block the way, — the Old-Gate Inn, 1671. Letters of introduction brought from home procured for Charles a brief acquaintance with a considerable number of persons interested in forestry and horticulture. At a single dinner of a horticultural club he met a learned horticulturist, editor of a paper devoted to that subject, a white-haired grower of flowers, a fern specialist, a fruit-tree grower, a landscape gardener to some of the nobility, and several nota- ble amateurs in gardening. There was real profit for the young student in intercourse with such men, who showed him much kindness, and manifested an interest in what he had to tell them of the difficulties of the New England garden and landscape work. One evening he listened to the recom- mendations of a master in the art about shrubs for London 56 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1885 town gardens ; and when called upon to contribute some- thing himself to the discussion of the subject, he was able to tell them that of all the twenty evergreens recommended by the author of the paper, only one, the Box, would endure the New England climate. In the pleasant English fashion, the first professional acquaintances Charles made in London passed him on to others, who could give him valuable information or introduc- tions not only in England but also on the Riviera. On those December days when the weather did not lend itself to excursions in the open air, Charles had other re- sources in the Reading-Room of the British Museum and in the South Kensington Library, where he had access to many books relative to his profession, and to valuable collections of photographs and plates illustrating English and Continental gardens and parks. In the long evenings there was time for much note-making, journal and letter writing, and for occa- sional dining or theatre-going with the members of the plea- sant Philadelphia family whose acquaintance he had made on the steamer, or with English friends. Some of the indoor days were highly profitable, — thus, one was spent at Mr. Milner's office, looking over plans, and hearing from the master about his manner of making his charges, and of carrying out his designs ; but the out-of-door days were for Charles much the more enjoyable. On the 17th of Decem- ber he sjjent the best part of the short day on horseback, going with the superintendent of Epping Forest through that beautiful reservation of about 6000 acres, which is only sixteen miles from London. Here he saw the work of thin- ning coppice, the product being made up in three grades from poles to fagots. The Forest has immense masses of coppice and thicket where the trees and shrubs kill each other, — the result being dangerous quantities of materials for fires. Yet the superintendent's intelligent efforts to clear and thin the woods encounter incessant popular opposition, and it is a useful part of his function to make " explanatory excursions " with committees. There is no large variety of vegetation in the Forest ; and no large variety is necessary to produce the finest landscape effects. Gorse, Heather, Broom, Thorns, Hornbeam, Crabs, Birch, Beech, and Oak are quite sufficient. On the 22d of December he had an interesting day in the country, of which his journal gives the following account : — Gloomy, as usual ; but being thoroughly sick of the town I g^:r :';::>i)iiiijiiJJiJi!i'M^viiiipi™^ 1h -ET. 26] BEDFORD PARK -FAUST — PINNER 57 took train to Bedford Park where I tramped till lunch time. It is a whole town, built of pretty houses of red brick and tile, with picttiresque chiraneystacks, dormers, and roofs, stoops, porches, and leaded windows, a church, a block of " supply " stores, and a " Tabard Inn." The houses are rather crowded ; but in a few streets there are little gardens, — some extremely well contrived and pretty. The roads are narrow, with curbstones, paved gutters, and street trees throughout. There are no service alleys ; so that in some parts of the town the houses look across the street at the backs of other houses ; but then, the backs are good-looking. There is a pleasing variety of street palings, walls, and fences, and a few houses are well grouped with large elms. After luncheon in a neat little den, I walked down to the Thames and Chiswick by way of a snarl of narrow lanes, and thence turned cityward by footways and lanes, sometimes on a river wall, sometimes behind factory or wharf properties, — everywhere crookedness and surprises. There were a few regions of pretty, riverside dwellings, one or two boat-land- ings, groups of large Elms on the river wall, and occasional red-sailed barges drifting by. It was a population of poor folk, living in jumbled cottages, in many parts approached only by footways or by the river. That day closed with a sharp contrast, — " Faust " at the Lyceum Theatre in company with two young ladies of the Philadelphia family and their male cousin. Of this per- formance Charles wrote in a letter home : " It was a won- derfully perfect work of art and acting in every particular, — superlatively beautiful and appropriate scenery and cos- tuming, and wholly faultless acting. Not a failing or imper- fection or regrettable thing about it anywhere, save that phy- sically Miss Terry is not one's idea of Margaret. It does one good to see work of human skill and thought and taste accom]>li.shed in such perfection." On December 23d, which brought a brightish morning soon changing to cloud, Charles got out to Pinner by a forty- minute journey from Gower Street, his object being to see a true country village, — an object which was completely attained. He found a rambling, uphill street of cottages, farm barns, shops, taverns, yards, and gardens, with a square-towered church built of flints at the top, and old 68 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUEOPE [1885 graves about the cliurch. In the neighborhood there were a few very pleasant small country-seats, one or two " half- timbered i^arks," and many time-worn houses. Thence I followed a crooked lane past two outlying farms, — with great ricks and tottering tile-roofed barns, — towards the dimly visible church on Harrow-on-the-Hill. Finally, the lane having become untravelled and grassy from hedge to hedge, I took a path across fields and stiles which brought me to the foot of the hill most pleasantly. On the hill — on the London road — I passed many small " parks " pastured by sheej). When I became hungry, the " Mitre " supplied me with a half-bitter and some crackers. At the " Swan " I turned back by another road, and climbed to Harrow itself, — a hill-top village commanding great views, — and there pro- cured beef and potatoes in a little shop frequented by the schoolboys (it is vacation now). In a graveyard on the brink of the hill, with old trees about it, stood the church, built of flints again, and showing some Norman work. Inside the village, maids were busy putting up Christmas green. On the hillside were two or three delightsome views out over the surrounding counties, through openings between tree masses or between great trunks. The school buildings were scat- tered, and all but the old one which stands on the hill terrace were uninteresting. The London weather towards the end of December gave Charles some gloomy days. On the 28th of December he writes : " Raining now and then, — miserable weather ; Christmas Day, Boxing Day, and Sunday are three mon- strously doleful days for any one who is a stranger in Lon- don : the streets are muddy, dark, wet, and slippery, and nearly half of such people as are in the streets are drunk or partly so, the public houses being open, and crowded with men, women, and children on all these days, — drunken men and women being in the omnibuses, in the underground rail- way, and on the church steps." His best refuge in this weather was in the Reading-Room of the British Museum, where he could always find what was to him very interesting professional reading. On the 29th of December he wrote his father and mother as follows : " I always learn something on my suburban and country excursions ; and from Kemp's books in the Library I have got some good points. I enjoy ^T. 26] UGLY LONDON -DELIGHTFUL COUNTRY 59 my country walks exceedingly, as I do the National Gallery, and Henry VII.'s Chapel, and the Elgin Marbles, and the Cast Room at South Kensington ; but it is all solitary, self- centred, unexpressed enjoyment ; and will it help me at all to create what shall be beautiful when I may get a chance to try my hand ? " On the 30th of December he wrote thus to his brother from the Eeading-Room of the British Museum : — My digestion, about which you inquire, is in good shape most of the time ; and I want to assure you that I am not at all gone in the other region you mention. My heart is sound as ever, though on the Germanic I was really frightened lest I was about to lose it. I have explored this hateful London pretty thoroughly, finding a monstrous deal of interest mixed up with all the ugliness and foulness. The streets are always interesting ; there are so many more marked types of men and women, houses, vehicles, and buildings, than in our towns. But the suburbs and the country I like so much better, ■ — the great Elms, the Lebanon Cedars, the half-timbered houses, the parish churches, the quaint village streets, the lanes and hedges, the footpaths, the occasional parks, the soft greensward, the soft atmosphere, and the long shadows. In spring and summer this land must be a very garden of de- lights. . . . The political situation here has interested me much. Parnell's almost complete victory throughout Ii-eland has made home-rule the question of the hour ; and only just behind this (to the English mind) momentous question stand the problems of church disestablishment, free schools, and land reform. Curiously enough, all these were questions settled for us in America some time ago. . . . Such talk as one hears about the Church goes beyond belief, — such cant, bigotry, and intolerance, such crying that disestablishment means the knell of religion in England and the beginning of the end for the Empire. And then I never realized at all, till now, what a monstrous burden is this almost feudal land- system, and the whole aristocratic concern. In the worst days of cold, rain, and fog, Charles could always go to the British Museum and study Repton, Kemp, and other masters of his art. There, also, he made numerous LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 tracings of plans and sketches, and notes on practice. There, too, he found much good reading on landscape gardening of the last century, such as Horace Walpole's " Essay on Gar- dening," and Thomas Whately's " Observations on Modern Gardening," and the works of Shenstone, another of the dis- coverers of the beauty of natural scenery. He was often Spacious driveways to a large house and four screened out-buildings. Highway oblique to the buildings. amused by his companions at the Reading-Room. Here is one of his descriptions of them : " There are all manner of cranks in the Reading-Room, male and female ; men with whole walls of books piled about them ; men copying and making drawings, and painting in water colors ; many very old gen- tlemen, their noses rubbing the pages of great books : many youthful women in strange dress, most of them reading Ruskin ; a few old women hard at work copying or at water colors, and looking as if they had been in the room all their lives. The attendants are very civil ; but the time required to get out a book is incredibly long." In spite of the advantageous use he was making of his time in London, and of his thorough enjoyment of his excur- sions to the country, he was quite capable of falling into a mood of depression, such as moved him to write as follows to his father : — I^ACGjvVSH Coi^Pf-^ct Pkl^Q.f^, jjSe,.^ ri »2- >4.rO«.*j^v^ A TRACING FROM KEMP ^T. 26] BOOKS — PICTURES 61 Sunday, 3 Jan'y, 1886. I am oppressed with a sense of ac- complishing little or nothing. Somehow I am getting to think that nothing I can or may do will make much difference in my professional life ; just as Aunt A says that she can hardly influence her children's characters at all; and just as college makes so much less difference in men's lives than it is commonly supposed to. After all, it is what a man is by nature that counts. On the 7th of January he records his Reading-Room ex- perience thus : " I finished Girardin, — good ; W. Mason's poem, ' The English Garden ; ' and another Mason's essay on ' Gardening,' both very intei-esting, — the first dated 1772 ; the second, 1768, the time of the breaking away from the old formal style. I also discovered a five-volume book in French by one Hirschfeld, published in 1785, and full of the then new spirit." His letters of introduction having pro- cured him admission to certain friendly gatherings of ai'chi- tects and artists, sometimes at clubs, sometimes in private houses, he not infrequently remarks that he had seen the whole thing before in Du Maurier's drawings. He was always much interested in any proof of the accuracy of an artist's representations, whether of landscape or of human society. On the 9th of January he spends the greater part of the day at a winter exhibition of old masters at the Royal Academy. " The day fled all too fast ; a I'oom full of old Italian, another room of Flemish, and a much mixed room of English and Dutch works, Wilkies, Constables, and Teniers, with a great show of ladies' portraits by Gainsborough and Sir Joshua ; but far beyond all these in interest for me was a collection of forty- six water-color landscapes by Turner, — for the most part scenes in England and Scotland, and in the Alps, — every one of them poetic, lovely, enchanting, like the poetry of Shelley ; all the landscape painting I have ever seen is as nothing in comparison with these. These pictures take right hold of my heart, and move me as real landscape sometimes does. I am transported." He refreshed himself also with music occa- sionally. Thus, on January 11th : " After dinner I went dowai to St. James's Hall for the Monday ' Pop,' one shilling, which admits one to an unreserved region behind the players, where on a steep grade are arranged a few rows of chairs, and behind them some backless benches. The concert was of chamber music. A new pianist, in whom the audience was much interested, played several bits of Schumann that 62 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 E plays ; and Mr. Lloyd sang, among other things, Schu- bert's ' Serenade ' most beautifully. At Mrs. S.'s invitation I took an omnibus with herself and Mr. B., and at their house partook of a supper, — curry and rice, bread and cheese, and beer. Bed at 12.30." He is often at the Read- ing-Room of the British Museum, reading Hirschfekl and Hermann Jaeger, and Sir W. Chambers's " Essay on Orien- tal Gardening," and R. P. Knight's poem " The Landscape," — both good works of the last century, — and Gilpin and Price, of which he says : " After all perhaps the best general works on modern landscape art." There was an inner sanc- tuary at the Reading-Room where he could look over volumes of plates, such as Adolphe Alphand's superb volumes, " Les Promenades de Paris." On the 16th of January the sun was actually visible ; and he immediately took train for Ashstead Park, a forty-minute ride, to see one of Mr. Milner's places. The station is in the fields, some distance from a very small hamlet. Beyond this hamlet is a rising ground, cov- ered with great woods, and in the edge thereof stands an old square-towered church. I walked up the hill accom- panied by an old fellow in big boots, who told me all about the farms and the gentry of the neighborhood. With him I followed the public way through and across a park to the house of the head-gardener ; but the head-gardener had gone away with the owner, so I walked all about the walled gar- dens and the neighborhood by myself, observing the houses for peaches, pineapples, and grapes, the convenient quarters for the workmen, the very old espalier fruit trees, the stand- ard roses, and the old house of brick, its chimneys clasped by the twisted branches of an old espalier pear planted at one corner. At one o'clock the head-gardener arrived, and walked with me until 3 o'clock, showing me Milner's terrace, and other architectural work about the mansion, his " pleasure- ground," with undulations and evergreen plantings (which harmonized but ill with the surrounding park), his " new pond " and his many " game covers." The deer formerly browsed up to the very walls of the house. A new walled entrance court on one side, and double terraces on the other side, add greatly to the views both of and from the house. £T. 26] ONE OF MR. MILNER'S PLACES 63 There is a grand view from the terrace front down a long sweep of greensward, having groves of noble trees on both hands, to the wide hills of Ashstead Common on the further side of the intervening valley. I did not like the " pleasure- ground," — some wandering paths in undulating ground, the little swells invariably crowned with elose-phmted masses of shrubs, mostly evergreens. All this in the edge of the finest possible wood of great Oaks and ancient Elms, where no shrubs ever grew and no undulations ever were. The pond is still worse, though it will appear much better when the planta- tions are grown. Its jiosition, near the foot of the said long hill, involved a dam on the lower side of its whole length, — a thing very difficult to conceal. The outlines are stiffly curvi- linear, and are all neatly sodded and trimmed, and the plan- tations are too dressy, and such as will never harmonize with the surrounding great woods. These open woods are the glory of the Park, — no undergrowth, numerous trunks, deer browsing among them. The old church is very picturesque, a great yew being crowded into the corner beside the squat tower. At three o'clock, Mrs. S. having provided me with two buns and three apples, I set out again and walked to Leather- head, where about four o'clock I got a train for Dorking, and there put up at the White Horse at dark. Dorking is a crooked little place, with narrow streets, save in the centre where a greater breadth gives room for markets. The Lon- don road, for instance, is twenty-one feet wide, with one side- walk twenty-one inches wide ; and other streets are even narrower, and with no flags. There are many crooked old buildings, narrow lanes, and small cottages crowded among patches of garden. Over all, rules a tall-spired parish church. I explored the town by moonlight ; for the evening, like the day, was gloriously fine. The inn was very com- fortable, save for its low ceilings and doorwa5'S. In the centre of the building was an inner s(inctuary, having sliding small-paned sasl)es on three sides and the chimney on the fourth side, whence drinkables were supplied to gentlemen in the smoking-room on one side, and to mere men in the hall on the other. 64 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 Sunday, litli of January. As I am the only guest of the house, my meals are served in great state in a good-sized room, with a fire and many newspapers. Chops for break- fast ; and for dinner, roast beef, of course, carved by myself, with apple tart, and celery and cheese later. This morning I had a grand tramp, the weather being still clear, eastward through an old park — Betchworth — to a hamlet called Brockham Green, where a number of cottages, an inn, and a church are prettily clustered together. Thence, across the Mole, and by several seats and farms, to the great hill of the North Downs, — Box Hill, — which stands over against Dorking, and commands a most interesting view of one of the many gardens of England, — the county of Surrey. The extent of the woodlands about Dorking, and the great num- ber of country-seats, not counting mere villas, were most sur- prising to me. The hill itself is really grand ; its slopes very steep though reckless, and the groves of Box-trees on the summit very remarkable. Then, the road descending into the valley of the Mole (by which the railway from Lon- don reaches Dorking) overlooks a lovely country, well watered and richly cultivated, the great ranges of the surrounding Downs carrying much wood and many mansions on their slopes and summits. I crossed the Mole again at Burford Bridge, where the Guide tells me Keats wrote " Endymion." Between half-past three and dark I wandered close to town among the lovely lanes and woods, and in the mansion grounds of Deepdene, the estate of the Hope family ; also through and over several bits of rough common, — where the lord of the manor has set up signs forbidding the cut- ting of peat or fagots, — and through the highland wood called the " Glory." In the smoking-room I wrote letters, and listened to the village worthies growling about the length of the sermon and the late bad weather for hunting. 18th of January. Weather not so fine, but still too good to think of going back to grimy London. To-day I took the Guildford road, having the hills of the Downs white with frost on my right, and many ridges stretching towards Leith Hill (the top of all this country) on my left. Again there were many seats and many bits of common ; and one mile JET. 26] THE HOME OF MALTHUS 65 out a hamlet called "Westcott, with a church in the midst of a Furze-common on a steep hillside. Presently the road crosses a brook ; and looking upstream I see an ancient manor-house in a lovely green valley, the hills around it clothed with great woods. By the side of the brook is an " avenue " arched with enormous Beeches. Down this road comes a little cart drawn by two donkeys tandem ; and from the driver thereof I learn that a public footpath passes the house, and that the place is the " Rookery." In the Guide I read that the Rookery was the home of Malthus, translator of Girardin's " Essay on Landscape," and author of the " Essay on Population." Therefore I enter said arch of Beeches, and passing some small mill-buildings, smothered in vegetation, and the house with its terrace-garden, I reach the head of the valley, whence the backwai'd view of the house set on this hillside and backed by woods, with a gentle slope from terrace to millpond, and then hanging woods again on the other side, is very lovely. No dressy planting is here, — nothing out of place or unharmonious, — all is simple, and yet rich enough. The foot of the pond is shrouded in thick evergreens. The two or three islands near the head, and the slopes about a rock-set fall of water from a second pond above, are clothed with overhanging shrubbery. The pond shore is not geometrically curved, and the steep hill on the opposite bank is wooded in part, the trees standing on its steepest parts only. All in all, this is a spot which art of man has made more beautiful, and much more characteris- tically expressive, than ever it could have been in its natural condition. Is not this the true object of real landscape gardening ? A public path beyond the house looked tempting, and I kept on, — first, over a really wild-wooded hill, and into another meadow valley, this one with a farmstead in the midst. Keeping the path which followed the stream, the valley began to lose its soft character, and finally came to be narrow and deep, shut in by steep Fir-clad hills, with now and then open Gorse-covered patches. Suddenly there ap- penred a cluster of four or five very poorly kept cottages with thatched or tiled roofs, and small enclosures for vegeta- 66 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 bles, — tbeir water drawn only from the streamlet. Thence I advanced over a high wind-swept common towards an ap- parently endless Pine forest. No houses were in sight ; but the sound of a church bell came, striking the quarter hours, from the great valley between me and the Downs. The Pine v/ood had its many paths, and a lovely undergrowth with many little Beeches ; and by and by I struck a distinct lane which soon began to dive downhill, sinking itself into the earth in the process (as roads do in North Carolina) ; and soon it brought me to cottages, and to the wall of a park. Then the "great house" appeared, — a very great house, rambling in the extreme, built of red brick, and in some parts evidently Elizabethan, at least. From a little hill before the lodge gates I could overlook the whole place, lying as it does in a tight little valley surrounded by woods, most characteristically English, and ancient, and aristocratic. When I asked the only visible inhabitant — a very old man in the road — what house this was, he said, " Wotton House, sir, — Mr. Evelyn's." True enough, — the Guide confirmed him, and told me this was the house of John Evelyn, the writer of the " Sylva," in whose family the place has been since Queen Elizabeth's days. Then I went down and, ask- ing permission at the lodge, I had fifteen minutes' strolling in the ancient gardens, to my delight. The blue smoke from the old chimneys rose straight into the air. In the outer court a young lady was playing with a big dog. There was not a sound but her voice, and the notes of some birds now and then. Really, I felt as if I were in a dream. However, I managed to arouse myself in time to walk back through Westcott to dinner at the White Horse at 1.30. This time it was calf's head and bacon ; and I was hungry and tired, and sat long over it ; and did nothing in the afternoon but buy three poor photographs, and get myself back to London. On disagreeable days, towards the end of January, he was reading the work of Fiirst Piickler-Muskau on " The Land- scape Art." He found it tough reading, but good ; and when he had finished it, he notes that " after all it is one of the best books on the subject." London society was con- sumed at this time by the home-rule question in Ireland ; ;ET. 26] PROFESSIONAL READING — OXFORD G7 and at almost every breakfast, or dinner, to which Charles was invited, this was the topic of a somewhat exciting con- versation. Even his horticultural and landscape frienels could hardly keep out of it. Charles was, of course, inter- ested in these discussions, but would have much prefei'red to hear about English gardens, parks, and scenery. On the 20th of January, after a breakfast with Professor James Bryce, M. P., at wiiich there was a great deal of talk about Ireland, Charles went into the Grosvenor Gallery where are Millais's works. His comment in his journal was that the collection was very interesting, as showing all the stages of Millais's development from his pre-Raphaelite times to the latest of his pretty children pictures. " Interesting, too, to see how throughout all he has held to the central truth of pre-Kaphaelitism, — the all-surpassing importance of ex- pression and character." Among the few landscapes, Charles especially noted the wonderfully expressive " Chill October." All through December and January Charles went with much regularity to hear the preaching of the Kev. Stopford Brooke, finding his discourses luiusually interesting and profitable. He is occasionally at pains to enter the sub- stance of the sermon in his journal, and repeatedly expresses his pleasure in the evening services at Mr. Brooke's church. On the 30th of January he records that he had comi)leted, at the Reading-Koom of the British Museum, the course of pro- fessional reading which he had determined on for the bad weather of the winter ; and he celebrated the completion of this undertaking by going to the pantomime at Drury Lane, where he saw " a great show, being a combination of ifarce, comedy, opera, spectacle, ballet, and old-fashioned columbine and hai'lequin business." At the end of January and the first of February, he had a five days' visit to Oxfoi-d, where he was very kindly received by English friends of his father, friends who had known him as a boy in New England Cambridge. He was entertained for short periods in Oriel College, at All Souls, and at the house of the Master of Merton. He walked^ all about the town and through the grounds and buildings under the best and kindest possible guidance, and was presented to a laj-ge number of cultivated and interesting strangers. He listened to the talk of a considerable number of young men who had won high standing at the University, and fellowships as the appropriate prizes for such attainment. But the total result of his observation of these young men was a feeling of sad- ness, — almost of pity: "They strike me — with all their 68 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 learning, which in things classical and accepted is plainly- great — as a monstrously anti-natural product of civilization, — a very much forced crop. They seem to me a set of fel- lows tightly bound in the bonds of conformity, conservatism, and precedent, and unable to see the narrowness of the educa- tion they have all received at the hands of their public school and their college. I like much better the average under- graduate who spends his days at tennis or on the river and just gets through his pass examinations." The general views of Oxford delighted him ; and he says of it : " There is no town of man's building with more character of its own than this." The hospitality of Professor James Bryce, both in London and at Oriel College, was of great advantage to Charles, for he heard at the London house much interesting political talk ; and at Oxford the son was entertained just as the father had been more than twenty years before. At this moment Mr, Bryce was about to receive an appointment in the new government, — the appointment of Under-Secretary of Foreign Affairs. On February 6th Charles awoke " with a strong desire to get out of London, and away from the ill-managed house in which I have been lodging. The liorridness of it seems worse after life at Oxford." That evening he arrived at Canterbury on his way to Paris. Sunday, the 7th of Febru ary, he spent in Canterbury, and went to the Cathedral morn ing service. Here are his comments thereon : " Long, — fit rather for the Dark Ages than for the nineteenth century Sermon very bad, — a perversion of the meaning of the phrase 'the liberty with which Christ hath made us free. Shocking ! A carefully arranged seating of the congregation — the quality, their coaclimen in livery, their house servants the commoners and ordinary townspeople, the charity school children, the strangers, — the latter put behind the reading- desk and pulpit." After the service he walked westward up a little hill beyond the embattled Westgate and the Stour, whence he gained a good general view of the town lying in a shallow depression, the cathedral rising high from the midst. " Cultivated slopes rise all about the town, crowned by several large windmills, — a dust of snow over all." The next morning he explored the Cathedral, recalling Professor Norton's lectures on the great structure ; but what he most enjoyed was the " lovely intricate region adjoining the Cathedral, — garden mixed with old buildings and ruins." The fresh appearance of the Cathedral surprised him ,• it had ^T. 26] ARRIVAL IN PARIS 69 " nothing of the ancient look of dirty Westminster." That evening he reached Paris long after dark ; and, having thoroughly studied the map of Paris beforehand, he walked from the station to the hotel he had decided to try, — No. 55 Kue de Provence. Supper over, he forthwith walked out on the boulevards. He had not seen Paris since he was nine years old. This was his earliest comment : " Interesting shop windows, lively people, — vast contrast to the gloom and glumness of London." The next day he made a sort of general tour of the city, which appeared to him wonderfully fresh, bright, and cheerful. Almost his first performance was to mount the tower of Notre Dame for the fine view of the city. Having an extraordinary facility in mastering the map of any city and all its means of transportation, — omnibuses, tramways, and steam railways, — he wa« com- pletely independent of guides, and of the usual resorts of English-speaking people. His first luncheon in Paris was taken in a cafe in the Latin quarter, on which he chanced at the right hour. " I found I comprehended the geogi'apliy very well, and knew many of the buildings at sight." He also understood the language well enough for the common purposes of a traveller. In the evening he ordinarily wi'ote either in his journal or letters to go homewai'ds ; but on this first day in Paris he took pains to buy a ticket for " Faust " at the Grand Opera the next night. On the 11th of February he wrote as follows to his mother : — "What a sight are Paris shop windows, and how fine are the new boulevards with their handsome terminations in domes of Pantheons, and Columns of July, and pediments of Made- leines. Verily, it is good to see a well-designed city, and one so superlatively well kept. Our American cities have been made to order ; but how ill in comparison with this made- over one. I knew that Paris was handsome and cheerful ; but I never realized the degree of its beauty and brightness. Already I have been to the Louvre, — first to the shrine of the Venus of Milo (pity to call her a Venus, as if she were one of the softly pretty creatures) ; and then to stand before the glorified men and women of Titian. "What superb crea- tures ! gifted with the same calm divinity as the Victory ; more than humanly lovely, healthy, and sane. "We folk of to-day — and particularly these French — are the veriest 70 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 apes and idiots in comparison. How I wish I might liave a drop or two of their rich, warm blood put into my feeble heart. What would n't I give for something of their com- plete naturalness, their unconsciousness, their magnificent physical perf ectness ? After a sight of these, the rest of the Louvre counts for little, — at least one cannot care for it the same day. His journal thus describes his first morning at the Louvre : — I discovered She of Melos from afar; and fell down in worship at her shrine like any Pagan. Then in the Salon Carre and the next room I discovered adorable creatures of Titian's, Giorgione's, and Veronese's painting ; and after long gazing on these I found I could not care for the rest of the liouvre, and so left, surprised at finding it three o'clock. The landscape backgrounds of the Titians were not the least interesting parts to ufie, — some of them being very lovely, and all interesting as first examples of landscape painting in the modern sense. The thi'ee or four Raphaels were very sweet and beautiful ; but not nearly so interesting to me as the Titians, beside lacking the richness of color of the Venetian's work. The several reputed da Vincis were very disappoint- ing, — all the same type of gently smiling woman, figuring as " Virgin," " Mistress," or what not. It is impossible to record the innumerable impressions and delights of my four hours. That evening he visited the Place de I'Etoile, where he used to play when a little boy, and climbed to the top of the arch for the fine view. Thence he went to the little Pare de Monceaux. He says of it : — The little Pare was interesting, — nearly spoilt by being cut into four quarters by two cross-roads, but possessed of some well-modelled little lawns, shady walks, and some bits of made ruins, set about a pool and elsewhere, that smack of the earlier days of naturalistic gardening, and, being well planted and partly vine-clad, and hidden away in groves, are not unlovely. In summer the whole park is evidently given over to the exhibition of exotics, many strangely shaped and conspicuously placed beds being scattered about. ^T. 26J FAUST — PARIS PARKS 71 After dinner I went early to the Grand Opera, loafed in the magnificent foyer, watched the coming of the throngs, and saw several parties I took to be American. From my seat (in the very centre of the parterre, and just in front of the abominable claque) I studied the gorgeous decoration of the room, and the behavior of the demi-nude females in the first circle. " Faust " was very well sung and acted ; — as a whole, it was not nearly so interesting or beautiful as the play at the Lyceum, but in parts, by reason of the power of music, exceedingly thrilling and moving. There was a really lovely ballet (in place of Irving's witch-scene of the Brocken), — the first charming one I ever beheld. After a bock bier and a petit pain, to bed considerably weary, it being one o'clock. He was chiefly bent on seeing the parks and out-of-door recreation-grounds ; but when the weather was unfit for such explorations, he resorted to the museums, where the landscapes and seascapes always interested him. On the 13th of February he went to the Pare des Buttes-Chaumont, where he foixnd much good planting, and some very well-executed rock-work. " As a ^yhole, the place is dangerously close to being fantastic and far-fetched : originally, a quarry ; now, a recreation-ground for a poor quarter of Paris. A well- planted railway cutting, ingenious concrete brooklets (!), and very good rock-plantings, — too many carriage roads, per- haps." He noticed that the men who were at work pruning were evidently trained hands. On the 14th of February he had a day of great enjoyment which he thus described : — Pont Royal to Suresnes, by river. The day bright and warmish, the water blue, the company gay. We changed boats at the city line. The heights of Meudon and Mont Valerien were on the left, and low suburban districts on the right bank. We had a glimpse of the architectural cascade of St. Cloud ; and in the park of St. Cloud there was a con- spicuous mass of pink twigs of Limes (?). At Suresnes I crossed the bridge and entered the Bois de Boulogne. The effect of the great open space of the race-course of Long- champ was grand. The windmill of Longchamp was very pretty, — Ivy-clad, standing on a mound of well-clothed arti- ficial rocks, with moat-like water about it. Near by was much interesting planting. The " Grande Cascade " has a 72 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 good effect from the distance of the cascade knoll, with its lichen-covered ledges, its Pines and White Birches. The detail of rock-forming and rock-planting is admirable ; but the anti-naturalness of the position of the cascade spoils half the charm. I walked to the Carrefour, between the two lakes. Great crowds were hurrying to the Auteuil steeple- chases. The view down the larger lake was very pretty, with swans flying in the distance. At Pre Catelan I had beer and bread and butter ; and then strolled by crooked paths through the wood till I came out at the end of the lake. Here was a vast throng of carriages and foot-passengers, a very gay scene, — far beyond anything I ever saw. I walked thence all the way to the Tuileries, meeting the same throngs on the way. The crowd on the Champs-Elysees was very democratic, with many shows in progress, much eating and drinking, crowds at open-air tables as if it were summer, swarms of children and pretty bonnes, — all very amusing. February 15th was spent at the Botanical Garden, " getting acquainted with unknown evergreens and other strangers lately met with in the parks (Chionanthus [Fringe-tree] and Rhod. Dahuricum, in bloom)." The next day he visited the Jardin d' Acclimatation, " where I loafed away the after- noon, — not very profitably professionally, unless a zoological garden should be required of one. There were many amus- ing creatures, — human, and other." February 17th he men- tions that after dinner he had a talk with a Rev. somebody, a Cambridge man, — " my first conversation since Oxford, ex- cept a few words with an American on the Channel steamer. I find the mere riding on tram and omnibus-tops highly interesting, — the people very easy, good tempered, and democratic in their ways. It is strange to see so many women bareheaded, and so few men with overcoats or gloves. The cheerfulness of even the very poor is a great contrast to the desperate glumness of the hideous London poor. Apparently they know better how to live on very little." Another day he called upon the leading French landscape architect, having an excellent letter to him. This gentleman's practice was enormous, as was that of the Eng- lish landscape architect whose acquaintance Charles had made earlier in London. Charles made the same comment on both offices, the English and the French, — " Work of men so much driven, as these men are, can hardly be artistic, ^T. 26] THEATRE — PARIS PARKS 73 I fear. It is very doubtful if an architect, like U. R. for example, can do artistic work of any excellence under such circumstances ; much less can a landscape gardener, whose works cannot be executed from drawings only." On the 21st of February he wrote to his mother : — The fine weather fled three days ago. Chill, and cloud, and some wet have succeeded. No more wandering in parks, or riding on tops of omnibuses ; and the Louvre, too, is cold ; and the Luxembourg remains closed. . . . Last night I was at the Eden Theatre. Lots of ballet, and a very Parisian audience ; innumerable dangerous-looking women ; but all well-dressed and well-behaved. I concluded I regarded the ballet dancers (as I do the professional ball-players in Amer- ica) with much more respect than their audience. At mid- night, when the show was over, I adjourned to a cafe for a bock and a sandwich, and then to the Place de 1' Opera, where a great throng was enjoying the arrival of innumera- ble maskers, a bal masque being about to begin at the Grand Opera, — a strange Sunday morning spectacle! And it was so cold that the half-clothed dancers had to run from their cabs up the great steps, — a brilliant sight under the light of long rows of gas jets on the front of the building and of electrics in the square. The weather during the last week of February was often bad ; but he could always find plenty of occupation at the Louvre or the National Library, or in reading guide-books in anticipation of his proposed INIediterranean journey. On the 22d of February, although the weather was still cold and dreary, he walked to IMontsouris, where he was much inter- ested in the artificial hiding of the two railways that cut the land into four quarters. There, too, he found some excellent planting, and more artificial rocks, brooklets, and cascades. Of these he says in a letter to his father : " I am astonished at the French work in the smaller city squares and places. Their formal work — fountains, parterres, etc. — I like well ; but artificial rocks, cascades, streams (all edged with con- crete!), and cement stalactites in concrete caves, seem some- what childish." From Montsouris he went again to the Luxembourg to study the cold and dreary gardens, and thence to the Trocadero, where were more grounds and gar- dens to be studied. On the 23d he wrote in his journal : 74 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 " Another bad day ; but I concluded not to go south just yet, considering yesterday was so profitable." On the 24th the clouds partly broke at last, and he was off at once to the western end of the Bois de Vincennes, where he had a plea- sant walk about the lake. There he found many very good bits of planting, — Tamarix with Pine and much Mahonia, — delightful rock-plantings, and a lovely bit of shore near the bridge to the island. Thence he walked to the terrace at Gravelle, noting the wide prospect over the Seine and Marne valleys, peaceful as possible save for the incessant rattle of musketry on the practice-ground in the Bois. Then he went on past the race-course, and some great batteries, into the eastern part of the Bois, where were thick woods of trees generally small, meandering, ditch-like, made brooks, a largish lake with islands, — for the most part well handled, — and one especially pretty strait, with steep bank, thickets, overhanging trees, and rushes on the water side. At Porte Jaune Island there is a good bridge. After such a long day out-of-doors he was generally glad to spend a day in a library. Accordingly, he sought the reading-room of the Bibliotheque Nationale, and, on demand- ing a book not to be had there, was admitted " exceptionnelle- ment'*' to the fine Salle de Travail, where he stayed till 4 p. M. " A fine time ! Then I crossed the Seine and bought one of the books I had there discovered, — the descriptive catalogue of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous plants used in planting for ornament in the City of Paris, — a book in de- fault of which I have spent much time in making lists of my own." The next day, February 26th, it snowed, with sleet and rain, till nearly 5 o'clock, when the sky suddenly cleared. Immediately he got out for a walk, and noted the " admira- ble and successful activity of the street-cleaning gangs." On the 27th the sky was partly clear, and he took a tram-car to the Bois de Boulogne. The streets were all perfectly dry, the snow having been swept into the gutters before it hard- ened. The Bois was all white and bright. " I walked to the Butte near the Auteuil grand-stand, viewing the upper lake, and thence by a woodland path to the Bois gate, seeing many pretty glades on the way. Thence I passed along the edge of tlie Longchamp, getting glorious views of the snowy heights* beyond the Seine, to the Cascade ; and into the cafe thei-e for lunch. On by the gates of the Bagatelle to the Mare de St. James, and so to Porte Maillot and the Arc de Triomphe, — a fine walk in a lonely country, for Paris is apparently kept at home by snow." The next day, February 28th, he ^T. 26] CURIOSITIES OF PARIS 75 explored again Pare Monceaux, and also the so-called Square or Place des Butig-nolles. " Both these are interesting works, wholly different from any city plots of similar area in Eng- land or America, or anywhere but just here in Paris, — such, at all events, is my present imagining." In the evenings he was now studying Italian tours, and narrowing his choice between several attractive routes. When he had been in Paris three weeks, he made the fol- lowing memorandum, headed, " Some curiosities of Paris : " " Sharp-cracking whips ; cabmen's white glazed hats ; hatless women ; funeral processions ; also les noces ; fried potatoes ; public cigar-lighting gas jets ; fish-women with a basket on each arm, and perhaps three fish in each ; hand-carts drawn by harnessed men ; women's hand-carts loaded with fruit, vegetables, beans, and flowers, the women enormous, strong, wooden-shod ; monstrous three-horse omnibuses ; long and narrow high two-wheeled cai*ts ; huge horses ; processions of school-children ; pack-men who are also bootblacks ; funeral decorations at house doors ; countless small newspapers ; vast array of trashy books prettily got up ; square yards of pho- tographs of Salon pictures of the nude hung up in shop windows ; acres of sharply worded manifestoes, political and such, posted up on walls ; also whole speeches in the Cham- ber or the Senate, and innumerable public notices headed ' Liberie, Egalite, Fraternite ; ' pretty theatre posters." Short driveways — French. CHAPTER V LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE KIVIERA Let our artists be those who are gifted to discern the true nature of beauty and grace ; then will our youth dwell in a land of health, amid fair sights and sounds ; and Beauty, the effluence of fair works, will meet the sense like a breeze, and insensibly draw the soul even in youth into harmony with the beauty of reason. — Plato. The excessive variety of which some European gardeners are so fond in their plantations, the Chinese artists blame ; observing that a great diversity of colors, foliage, and direction of branches must create confusion and destroy all the masses, — they admit, however, a mod- erate variety. — Sm W. Chambers. On the 3d of March he left Paris for the south, wishing that he had left some time earlier. To his mother he wrote on the 3d of March : — I have bought my ticket, and propose to take the night train to Lyons. The continued bad weather, and the " state of mind " it has got me into, are the reasons of my sudden fleeing. 1 have stayed one week too many in Paris. I wanted to study evergreens, but the weather has prevented being outdoors ; and I ought to have remembered that the evergreens will still be here in early May. ... I vow I do not know why I did not start off south several days ago. ... It is going to be a great treat, — the greatest of the many I have had in my life; though I am sure I cannot enjoy it any more than I have enjoyed days and days of our yachting, camping, and tramping. 4th of March. Comfortable enough ride. ... I awoke as the train passed a small town. The snow-sprinkled roofs were in silhouette against the glow of dawn ; the sky clear and starry. More sleep. Later, the river Saone ; countless Lombardies ; the Jura dimly visible under the rising sun ; vineyards on hillsides ; higher and higher hills, the valley narrowing; suddenly two romantic hillside chateaux, with ^T. 26] LYONS -FOURVIERES 77 towers round and towers square, and high terrace walls ; then a tunnel and Lyons. I went to the Hotel de I'Europe for breakfast at 10 o'clock, the quay of Saone and the heights of Fourvieres before my window. After breakfast I went up the heights in the bright cold morning. The prospect was vastly wide, with the snowy mountains of Auvergne, winding rivers, and a great city in sight. At the foot of the hills were steep flights of steps, a maze of alleys, and all manner of in- tricacies ; on the top, great fortifications, numerous charity schools, nunneries, barracks, poorhouses, and hospitals, and the far-seen church of strange architecture containing the miraculous image (1,500,000 pilgrims annually) ; below the church on the hillside, a garden with a toilsome zigzag path having " stations " and many shrines. Here were proces- sions of priests, soldiers, nuns, barefooted brothers, and school- children ; and continuous pealing of church bells, and sound- ing of bugles in the still air. A cJiainj^s de manoeuvres lies close behind the church. All these are high in the air. Wide prospects stretch into faint blue distances round every corner, and down every alley. Descending the hill and crossing the Saone, I took a tram- car, which passed over the rushing Rhone, and brought me to the Pare de la Tete d'Or. I came first to a pretty lake with two islands in it, yellow with the bloom of Alders. Taking a boat, I explored all its shores, studied the plant- ings, and admired the careful designing of the views from the head of the lake, — the long water-perspectives, with the blue heights of Fourvieres and the church as termination. There was also a good log bridge, and a pretty chalet. Next, I walked round the skirts of the Pare, — a charming glade, long, rather narrow, and gently hollowed, the bounding woods consisting of Conifers in great variety of species, and presenting interesting and beautiful contrasts of forms and colors, all well grown, evidently planted some thirty years. ... A small grotto was visible among the evergreens from far down the glade. It was apparently made of cement, on an iron frame ; but, being planted about with brambles, etc., had a good effect. INIany lovely and delightfully framed views of Fourvieres were to be gained from points beyond 78 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 the head of the lake. The lake-creeks were well planted with rushes, hanging willows, and white birches. Nowhere was there anything gardenesque or presumptuous. The roads were well curved, and not too numerous, and they led to good jjoints of view. They wei-e narrow and without sidewalks. The paths were few and simply curved. There was one good road-bridge of ingenious timberwork frankly shown, with a well-designed roof over it. There was also one shockingly bad bridge of cement concrete, in the form of an arch, but wholly without apjDcarance of keying, so that it had a look of great instability. There was very little underwood or shrub- bery in the Pare ; and there was no attempt at massing flowering shrubs, — such as Rhododendron or the like. That sort of thing was to be found in a separate garden at one side, together with a very large Palm house and other glass houses. Late in the afternoon I discovered a botanical gar- den in a corner of the Pare, and therein cleared up several doubts and ignorances. Apparently there is no great change of climate between Paris and Lyons ; for the same things were covered-in that were covered-in at Paris. I was much pleased with the Pare as a whole, and thought it about what Cambridge or Worcester ought to have. To bed early, after reading of papers. No. 1 of my sixty days [excursion ticket] , — excellent well spent. March 6. I set out in the rain, without having determined on an alighting-place ; but at 3.30 alighted at Avignon, after a railway journey memorable and exciting by reason of the variety and interest of the scenery. The total effect, as I look back on it to-night, is rather confused, being made up of visions of blue, purple, and snow-white mountains, the yel- low-flowing Rlione, wide cultivated plains, vineyards on steep hillsides, hill-climbing towns, hill-crowning ruins of castles, and hilltop churches. There were hillsides of barren whitish rock ; slopes of stone chips (like those on Pierce's Head, Mt. Desert) ; ragged and raw torrent beds and gulches ; rocks of fantastic, wildest form (those near Montdragon) ; rocks, and great steeps clad with evergreens, Pines, Savins, Box, and low- growing Furze and Broom ; lands deep coveiod with debris of torrents ; fields separated by high and wide ridges made iET. 26] AVIGNON — THE MISTRAL 79 of small stones picked up from the soil ; and irrigated lands also. At length we came to a more open, peaceful country, with Olive-trees both cultivated and wild growing. Some sort of Prunus was in full bloom, pink and white, looking chilly enough in the blast of the fierce mistral. There was one region of bright-colored soils, the mountain sides being pink, orange, and chalky, but clad in part with dark Cedars and Pines. The train reached Avignon at 3.30. I went immediately to the Rocher des Doms. The wind was fairly howling through the narrow streets and round the strange building called " Chateau des Papes," the Pines on the rock bending low. The view was glorious, including rivers, moun- tains, and many towns. Across the Rhone were the quaint towers of Villeneuve (what a name !) ; and at my feet the crowded tile-roofed mass of the houses of Avignon, girt by a wall with many towers. I stayed till sunset on the hill, studied the layout of the terraced garden, measured and sketched, and rejoiced in the wealth of lovely evergreens in the plantations. Photinia serrul. a foot through ; Arbutus Unedo the same ! Viburnum Tinus coming into bloom, save on exposed corners where frost has killed the buds ; For- sythia, Jasminum, and Iberis in bloom ; also many Almond- trees, and Pansies. The sun set behind distant hills, the sky but partly clouded, and the stars coming out brightly. This garden of evergreens and waving Pines, on a terrace on a great 200-foot cliff immediately above the Rhone, with the old church behind ci'owned by an image of Mary Virgin, with its several shrines, its monument to the discoverer of madder, its memories of Rienzi, and Petrarch, and of Pe- trarch's " Laura," — the whole a veritable Acropolis. C. E.'s first. Sunday, March 7. A cloudless sky. Tlie mistral (twin brother of our own northwester) still blowing a very gale. The view from the rock was far wider than last night. In the northeast a vast pile of high mountains rose into dazzling snow peaks. Again, C. E.'s first. I made choice of the direction for my walk, and went down across the Rhone, getting a fine view of Avignon and the Mont Blanc (?) behind. I walked down the river bank, and then turned westward, 80 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 finally taking a seven-foot lane leading up one of the many semi-wild hills. There were views in all directions, — or- chards of small Olive-trees ; little terraces for vine-growing ; many small, windowless, white-stuccoed cottages and villas. In the distance, westward, were rougher and higher hills, terribly stony, torrent-swept, and soilless. My lesser hill was very barren also, made of gravel full of large pebbles. The bits of vine or olive land had been cleared with great labor. Elsewhere there was a dense, low growth of a very small- leafed Holly, mixed with various Brooms, Euphorbias, Thorns, and a sort of Green Brier bearing red berries. The general effect was much like that of Cape Ann thickets where Myrica (Bayberry) predominates. I found Genista, Periwinkle, and Dandelion in bloom. I returned through more lanes, and finally by a white highway over the long bridges, the suspended bridge rocking violently with a wave- motion from end to end by reason of the gale. Leaving Avignon by train, we first passed more white rock hills with little Olive orchards in the narrow valleys, then Tarascon, — a castle above the town, and another over the river. This was the home of Rene and the Troubadours ! Next came Aries, and then the sad country of the Camar- gue, low, often stony, fiat, and dismal. The sun set over the dark green water of the Etang de Berre. Then came more barren hill-country, a three-mile tunnel, darkness, down a long valley a glimpse of the sea, and was that a flashing light ? — Marseilles at 6.30. Provence is a sad land, with gray rocks, gray stony soils, little or no grass, gray Olives and almost black Cypresses, dull-colored buildings, and faded tile roofs. No companionable people have been met with yet. I was alone coming from Avignon, and dreamt of its past ; of Hannibal marching up the Isere ; of Csesar marching into Gaul ; of Cinq-Mars, and " In His Name ; " of Petrarch (whom I read in the Junior year), who loved the wild ravine of Vaucluse ; of the minstrels of Beaucaire and Tarascon ; of the Eoman builders of Aries ; and of the fleets of Phoenicians, Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Venetians, and Saracens, who have harbored in this port of Marseilles. £T. 26] MARSEILLES 81 He was up betimes next morning, and could not help visit- ing first the ancient port, being " drawn thither as by a mag- net, just by the sight of masts and gleaming water." But soon he climbed the great hill of Notre-Dame de la Garde, a steep, almost bare rock, above the house line, having on top a high building, — church, fort, and lookout for ships combined. A glorious prospect : two fifths the blue sea, three fifths a jagged hill horizon, the great city filling the valley, and the liills about it set thick with white villas. Seaward there were long breakwaters, miles of quays, and a coast in both directions rockbound, naked, jagged, high, white, and some- what indented. Abreast of the city was a group of bare, high islands, clifty, and castle-crowned. Far seaward was a low rock with a tall tower (like Boone Island, Maine). About the islands were many clustered fishing-boats ; and here, there, and everywhere the graceful lateens were beating or running free, — lovely to see. The water was blue and pur- ple, flecked with cloud shadows, and ruffled but gently by the warm west wind. Two sorts of flowers were blooming in rocky chinks. I laid me down and basked in the warm sun. Uncle F.'s little field-glass is a great pleasure. In the afternoon Charles surveyed a portion of the road which winds along the coast, sometimes walled, sometimes carried on arches across valley-mouths. The coast is high, and is broken by little coves with rough beaches. The heiglits bear Pines and villas ; a vast variety of evergreens adorns the way, with gigantic Aloes, Agaves, tree Tamarisks, masses of yellow-flowering Genista, Periwinkle, and a Cactus which hangs over the cliffs. "I kept one eye on the sea and the sails, the other on the cliffs and blooming vales, and watched a lateen run into a tiny cove and land her catch of fish. Finally, the shore near town becoming rather Coney Islandish, I took the tram and rode through the main streets of the city to the hotel." The next morning he went to the Jardin d'AcclImatation, in hopes of finding the plants named ; but labels were few and far between, as usual. Enormous Agaves were flourish- ing under fine parasol Pines ; and there was much interest- ing, if nameless, vegetation. Eain coming on, I looked into the Art Museum for an hour, — a poor collection in costly haUs. Outside, there is a 82 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 fountain arrangement like that of the Trocadero, — more curious than likable. Train for Hyeres at 1.20, having seen all of profit in big, busy Marseilles. The population seems remarkably homogeneous and tremendously democratic ; if there are any nabobs, they are careful not to show them- selves. No swell turnouts ; hardly a well-dressed person, man or woman, anywhere to be seen. The streets were thronged with chattering humanity, apparently loafing. The town of Hyeres is built on the south slopes of a high, rocky hill which bears many walls, towers, terraces, gardens, and olive orchards. The old town is in a sheltered hollow, and walled ; but the walls are built over with houses. It is a genuine feudal strong-place, with a complication of steep alleys, arched passages, flights of steps, stuccoed houses, ter- races, and little gardens. Above the town are the rock and the ruined castle. I clambered all round the castle rock, observing its hedges of Agaves and Aloes, the blooming Euphorbia and Jasmine, the evergreen Oaks and Olives, and many smaller evergreens making Cape-Ann-like thickets between ledges, filling the crevices in the cliffs, and growing out of the very walls of the castle, — lovely old walls growing, as it were, from the ledges and cliffs. There were round towers and square in all stages of dilapidation, Olives growing out of them, and Ivy, Smilax, and Green Brier clambering over them. On a shelf below a bristling row of Agaves, I met the goatherd and the village flock, behind him the blue sky and the sea, — a perfect picture. I met nobody else. The stillness was wonderful, the air good, and the whole walk delightsome. Next, I went to the Jardin d'Acclimatation, a branch of that of Paris, situated in the plain, but sheltered by plantations of Cypress, Pine, and Eucalyptus. Here were glorious for- eign evergreens, a big collection of hardy Cacti, many sorts of Palms, Palmettos, Bamboos, Yuccas, Dracoenas, Acacias in glorious golden bloom. Viburnum Tinus a snowy mass, Tem- pletonia [?] a mass of red ; with Violets, Pansies, Periwinkle, Salvia, and Geranium in prolific bloom ; early Spiraeas, Pruni, and Willows coming into full leaf (March 10). Re- turning to town, I stopped in the Place des Palmiers to study ^T. 26] HYERES — TO CANNES 83 the layout of the terrace and garden. In the evening, very tired, I read a good book bought in Marseilles, — " La Pro- vence Maritime." 11th of March. This morning is gloriously bright, clear as a bell, and rather warmer. I shall stay another day. A very lovable place this, in spite of the English quarter. The morning he spent at the nursery garden of Huber et Cie., which was filled with all manner of strange and familiar plants, — trees, shrubs, and flowers. He found blooming all the bulbs, Eoses, Camellias, Acacias, Viburnum, Temple- tonia, Vinca, Tritoma, Anemone, Viola, Houstonia, Myosotis, and much else, — Iris of many sorts, for instance. The afternoon was passed — most happily on the castle rock, where was much lovely mixing of walls, cliffs, jutting crags, and bastions overgrown with Agaves, Wallflower, or Smilax, or crowned with clus- tered Cypresses, or shrouded in evergreen Oak. . . . The old walls are mostly bare ; but like the ledges, richly spotted with Lichens, — orange, brown, and pale green. The sum- mit is exceedingly abrupt, approached by steps built in a narrow cleft ; thence a grand prospect, — the sea and the isles, the plain, the presqu'ile of Giens, the wooded ranges of les Maures, the rock-capped hills and mountains back of Toulon, and a glimpse of the Bay of Toulon. The next day he enjoyed the railway ride to Cannes. At Fr^jus I got a glimpse of a Roman amphitheatre, and saw close to the railway the big stone beacon that once marked the end of the Roman jetty, but is now more than a mile from the sea. A sudden leap of the railway into the red rocks of the Esterelle Mountains, a struggling along, through, and under heights and cliffs, by many tiny coves, and deep, narrow valleys filled with Heath breast high and blooming ; under fantastic mountain-topping rocks ; by grand headlands, white surf and deep red cliffs, and one little port with a lighthouse and a single lateen at anchor. This is a sparsely inhabited shore, reminding one a little of that between Seal Harbor and Great Head [Mt. Desert]. . . , To-day has been cloudy, — the sea purple, green, and gray. 84 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPK THE RIVIERA [1886 Two days of stormy weather, and a troublesome ankle hurt at Hyeres, intervened. But on the 15th of March he writes : — I went down to the port and out on the breakwater, where I spent a delicious hour, — the weather bright, blue, warm, and still. I watched the surf, the quaint boats, the bare- legged, red-capped fishermen, and a row of moored trading coasters, their great lateen sails hanging from the long taper- ing booms to dry. Behjnd all this was the ancient rock with its old walls and towers ; and far in the west, beyond a stretch of sea all topaz and emerald, the shadowy masses of the blue and hazy Esterelles. Next I went along the shore promenade, planted with Palms and Planes, — and Venetian masts with banners. Then slowly, and with many pauses to look at pergolas, water-towers, and other strange construc- tions, I walked up the height called la Californie, through loveliest winding lanes, bordered by hedges and walls of Roses, Jasmine, Acacia, Mimosa, and Agave, past many charming villas, commanding westward views, through rus- tling Palms or waving Eucalyptus, the sea spread wide below, the enchanting Esterelles waiting to hide the descending sun. After calling on two English ladies who have lived at Cannes many winters, presenting to them a letter from Mr. Bryce, and being instructed in respect to the gardens best worth seeing, he walked down the hill, " the rapturous sunset squarely befoi'e me. What changeful color of sea ! " The next day was spent in studying the marvellous garden called Vallombrosa, situated on a rather steep slope between the chateau (" a poor castellated affair thoroughly out of place ") and the highroad to Frejus. This famous garden Charles considered rather a museum of specimen plants than a piece of landscape work. He found its general effect to be fantastic, stagy, astonishing, and exciting, rather than restful or calming. As an exhibition of splendid plants in immense variety it was intensely interesting ; but it reminded him, in its general effect, of the scenery of the pantomime stage rather than of anything in the real world. It was to him a medley of incongruous things, — such as Palms of many sorts and all ages, grouped or standing singly on grass, with brilliant flowers massed at their feet. His journal enumer- ates a profusion of trees and plants from many different ^T. 26] VALLOMBROSA— LAROCHEFOUCAULD 85 climates and parts of the world all flourishing here together ; but he says of the scene as a whole : '' There is absolutely no breadth of effect, no landscape gardening save that success- fully directed to concealing the bounds. ... I loafed all the morning here ; and in the afternoon walked on wild hills further inland ; and concluded I should rather live among Heath and Pines and red rocks than in any Vallombrosa." The gardens called Larochefoucauld gave Charles much more satisfaction than Vallombrosa. These lovely grounds are situated between the Frejus road and the sea. They contain but little specimen gardening. The house is of a sober and somewhat Italian character, white but pleasant, concealed in rich foliage, which yet is not too near the walls. The views from the terrace — over a sunken orange garden in one direction — of sea and sails, and in another direction of the Esterelles, are set in frames of tree masses. The sea-view might have been a wide one ; but it is delightfully broken up into bits and glimjDses by plantings of a most varied character, — Pines, and particu- larly Stone Pine, predominating. One little knoll bears a dozen Pines, which reach out seaward and bend low, and break the glare from the water without really concealing anything. In one part there is a steep bank which a path follows, the bank being clothed with a crowded thicket. Ilex and other trees stretch their limbs and trunks over the path. In rough places there are Agaves in shade of Pines, mon- strous Sedums on rocks, and an undergrowth of Abutilon and Aralia, and such greenhouse plants, mixed with com- moner things. Unfortunately, the railway passes between the garden and the beach ; but a sea terrace hides it. Com- pared with ambitious Vallombrosa, this is a most charming place. Once within it the whole world is shut away, and one can see nothing but loveliest foliage, the sea, and the Este- relles. One is not distracted by "exclamation marks," — ■ Asparagus shoots twenty feet long, and Dracaenas like long- handled mops, and glowing carpets of flowers as at Vallom- brosa. I have great respect for whoever made this place. Design is discoverable at many points ; and it is much to have refrained from turning the place into a museum in a region where the climate offers such temptation to indulge in coUectino^ curiosities. 86 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 The Villa Valletta, near Cannes, was a second example of a garden of specimen plants which Charles saw under the most favorable auspices, and thought " probably the most wondrous specimen garden to be seen in Europe." It is said that the place was cleared of 3500 trees in 1878, and then sodded and planted. " No vestige of the original wild hill- side now remains. All is shaved, exquisitely trimmed, and ' well kept ; ' zigzag paths conduct to all parts of the steep sloping ground ; and on all sides and everywhere are groups and single specimens of all manner of plants, great and small, beautiful and ugly, from all parts of the world save the cold parts. Nothing is labelled ; and I therefore learned but little. I became more than ever convinced of the tire- someness and the bad taste of these museum-like gardens." He sought consolation, the next day, in a rough scramble for two hours on the wild promontory of Theoule, among ravines and valleys, and along the shore. Out oi' Cannes Charles took various excursions, — to Grasse with its Rose farms ; to le Bar and Courmes, whence he saw the little town and castle of Jourdon ; to He Sainte- Marguerite ; and to He Saint-Honorat. These low. Pine- clad islands interested him very much, as all islands in view of higher shores had always done. One of the excursions, that to le Bar and Courmes, he thus describes: — In half an hour we reached a high divide [he was with an agreeable English acquaintance], and looked away from the sea down into the deep valley of the Riviere du Loup, and across to high, wild calcareous mountains whose whitish steeps are almost completely bare, and whose broken sum- mits were flecked with snow and partly veiled with cloud. On a spur of the craggy mountain called the " Saut du Loup," and just at the mouth of the gorge from which the river Loup comes down, stands le Bar, a small, compact town of high buildings, which we reached and passed after long following of mountain flanks. The road then turning southward and toward the gorge, we came in sight of the narrow canon and the great cliffs of Courmes, and of a little town and castle called " Jourdon " on a seemingly inaccessi- ble and almost pointed mountain 800 metres above the sea level, — a most astonishing vision ; for I did not know we were coming to anything of the sort. At the Pont du Loup we halted, and walked up the gorge a little way ; but time ^T. 26] CANNES — ILE DE ST. HONORAT 87 was short, and though I wanted to follow the foaming river to its Alpine springs, I was compelled to turn about and travel back to Grasse, and so to Cannes. In a letter to his mother he says of himself at Cannes : — I am loafing horribly on this Riviera. The vegetation is hopelessly strange, and, I suppose, unreprodueeable in America unless in Florida or California. The sea, on the other hand, and the blue Esterelles look very familiar ; and 1 never tire of either. There is one yacht in port here, a creature like this, evidently masted and hulled for Bay of Biscay weather. . . . Time flies terribly ; and, somehow, I don't learn any- thing ; but I enjoy myself much, on the whole. It was good to be approved of by Mr. Olmsted and by Mr. Brodrick. I wish I might some day find something in me I could approve of myself. With some pleasant English acquaintances he visited the Cistercian Monastery on He de Saint-Honorat, and says of the brothers : — They farm it a little, and have a walled garden close by the surf to dig in ; and no man could desire a lovelier spot than is theirs. Adjoining the monastery, but set out in the sea on a low ledge, stands a square-built, tower-like fortress, which was the m(mks' defence against Moorish pirates in the old days (a. D. 1000). This I had seen from far Thdoule ; and I was glad of the chance to climb about the place. An interesting thing this, with vastly thick waUs, and narrow stairs, and battlements, and an inner court which has been restored. Its position, not on a crag or cliff, but on a very low ledge off a low shore, is peculiar. In the afternoon of Sunday, March 21st, he left Cannes for Cap d'Antibes. Of this place he wrote to his mother thus : — Cannes, and my excursions out of it, were good ; but this Cap d'Antibes is better. Here one is set off from the Con- 88 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 tinent a little way, so that there is a fine view of said Conti- nent, the coasts and mountains of it ; and the place is wholly quiet and free fi-oni crowd and swelldom. There is no town, only one big, empty hotel, half a dozen scattered villas (most of them shut up), and a few Orange groves and flower farms. The rest is wild land, with thickets of evergreens, and shelves and banks where bloom Anemones, Daisies, Primroses, and wild Hyacinths. Last night I went to sleep to the sound of gentle surf. This morning there was a thick haze over all the sea and hiding all the shores, — just such as I have often seen in Boston Bay, — and slowly, as the sun came up the sky, this haze was swept away, and showed first the pale sky, then the nearer shores, and the big war-ships in Golfe-Jouan, then He Sainte-Marguerite, a dark line of pine woods, and the Pointe de la Croisette of Cannes ; and it was not till nearly noon tliat the outline of the Esterelles became dimly visible. The sort of problem which was always engaging Charles's attention is well illustrated by his remarks about some private grounds at the Cap d'Antibes. The house had before it a formally modelled lawn, with flower beds on the swells, and at the foot of this lawn was a long, straight, terrace-wall, and a balustrade near the brink of rough cliffs. I could not make up my mind about the wall and balus- trade. They serve as dividing line between the dress ground before the house and the wildness of the cliffs ; and probably they make a good foreground for the grand view when one looks from the house ; but seen from other parts of the shore one wishes them away. They seem wholly out of place ; for they are not near enough to the house to seem a part of the building. A row of small palms just within the balustrade is also of very questionable value. Just below this wall, on a jutting point of cliff, is an ordinary rockery, with the plants labelled in little compartments, — this in the foi-eground of a sea-view which is only bounded by the Esterelles seen over He Sainte-Marguerite ! Too bad ! At the gate is a charm- ing lodge, built of stone, low, and of simplest form, with an " outside room " screened by lattice with creepers. The flowers — chiefly Cinerarias of magnificent colors and huge \£ I 1^ ir' JET. 26] ANTIBES 89 Cyclamens — are confined to the immediate neighborhood of this lodge, and to beds of dress ground before the house. In another private place, which he examined, he speaks of " a region where the original wild shrubbery has been made to make room for a well-chosen variety of plants, which have been naturalized in its midst." The word " naturalized " defines what was, for him, good taste in the artificial treat- ment of rough and essentially wild regions. Again, concern- ing the same place, he says : — On a jutting point of hill is a very pleasant, well-contrived, and pretty sort of arbor, having stone piers and a roof of canes, its irregular ground-plan conformed to the shape of the ledge, the views from within it very wide and well framed. In a hollow, where it is not seen till the hollow is entered, is a small, well-built rockery, — the stones large, with no petty compartments. Some largish trees shut in the whole liollow ; but down a gulch leading to the water is a controlling view. . . . The shore cliffs are made the most of, — rude paths with rude stairs (where necessary) lead to the finest points ; and one big gulch has a way down into it, the stairs so well contrived as not to be visible save to one travelling them. Before going on to Nice, he climbed the hill of Notre Dame (March 23). The air was thick with a smoky haze, all outlines soft, and everything mysterious. Suddenly high in the sky, above a dark headland, something gleaming white, — quick, my glass, — yes, a snow-peak, fine cut, and radiant, seamed with deli- cate lines of blue shadows ; but in an instant wrapt again in mists. I spent most of two hours on this lighthouse hill. Little feluccas crept in and out from the port of Antibes ; goats and kids frisked about on the rocky hillside ; birds kept up continuous singing in the Pine woods and Olive groves at the foot of the hill ; cloud shadows and flecks of sunlight travelled slowly over shores, mountains, and sea ; and now and then the veil of haze behind the foot-hills was silently rent, and jagged summits and long crests of snow- mountains stood revealed. I believe it was all lovelier than 90 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 if the day had been wholly bright, and the mountains com- pletely visible. I passed down into the ancient town by the path used by mariner-pilgrinis when they go up to the church. The quays were of stone ; and about a dozen vessels were moored to them, — one big sloop almost like a Cape Ann stone-sloop. ... I rambled also in the crooked old town. It is the first place I have seen which has not spread over and out of its walls ; but the walls here are modernized. Nice at 3 o'clock. The next day Charles strolled about the town, along the sea fi'ont to the little harbor, and up the high castle hill. A hot sun made the roads very white and glaring. The town he found citified, — a band playing in the public garden. " There is a big cascade on the very summit of castle hill, — how fantastic are some men ! There is no view thence to the eastward, a great wooded mountain being in the way. West- ward, the view includes the Cap d'Antibes. The hills about Nice are dotted with villas. The mountains behind, to-day, are wrapped in cloud." Charles's time at Nice was much taken up with social engagements. A few days later he wrote to his father : — At Nice days disappeared very rapidly. There I saw but one fine garden. I disliked the whole Paris-like place ; and there was nothing particular to see in my line. I have, I fear, yielded of late rather much to the softness of this sunny climate. Several days have fled, I hardly know how. . . . Here I am in one of the fairest regions of the earth ; and daily I am in want of more strength of limb, of eyes, of heart, — more power of grasping and remembering the beauty that I am here fairly overwhelmed by. I say with Keats : " Now Beauty is the substance of things hoped for ; the evi- dence of things not seen ; the shadow of reality to come." The forces of the universe work and work, in aifairs human and social, as often towards ends our souls call evil, as towards ends we call good. I find no correspondence between my soul and the world, save in this, — that the natural world is beautiful, and that my soul loves beauty. The fairness of the earth, not the rainbow only, is the " sign set In the sky." In this letter Charles betrayed some of the gloomy specu- lations about himself in which he had indulged. ^T. 26] LETTERS FROM HOME 91 You urge me to count Mr. Olmsted's [favorable] judg- ment for much ; and I do. It is, however, not in matters of theory and taste that I feel myself so utterly incompetent. It is in the more practical affairs of the profession, and par- ticularly in dealing with men, that I am nowhere. In mat- ters of design I arrive at definite opinions only with great difficulty. I am far from quick in getting new ideas. . . . But I am most at a loss when thrown with other men. I cannot think, and at the same time talk and give attention. I am never at my ease, — indeed, I am as far as possible from being so. ... I know myself to be ill-made, or, as it were, an unbaked loaf of the human bread-batch. To this letter both his brother and his father sent hortatory replies. " Dear Boss, — What a plum you are ! You seem to have occasional blue fits, — a most unwarrantable proceed- ing. You are the only person that I know who does not take a very rosy view of your proceedings and prospects. You 're about the last fellow with reason to growl. Your stomach is the only reasonable excuse, and a man who eats curry at midnight, and seems to be good for all-day tramps over rough country, had better not make too much capital out of stomach growls. The Riviera in April ! Why, man alive, it 's paradise ! All bright sunshine and flowers ; while here, — well it 's as much as a fellow's life is worth to get across the Yard, which is a great lake of dirty slush. ... It makes me quite weary to hear of a youth of your capacity, with a new trade to develop, well equipped and well supported, sitting down to grumble at his prospects." . . . Cambridge, 20 Apr. '86. Dear Charles, — Don't imagine yourself deficient in power of dealing with men. Such dealings as you have thus far had with boys and men you have conducted very suitably. There is no mystery about successful business intercourse with patrons and employes. Nobody can think, and at the same time pay attention to another person, as you seem to expect to do. On the contrary, exclusive attention to the person who is speaking to you is a very important point in business manners. Nothing is so flattering as that. Some audible or visible signs of close attention are of course de- sirable. Then there is very seldom any objection to the statement, " I should like to think that over." On the con- trary, such evidence of deliberation is ordinarily acceptable. 92 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 Good judgment is what people are most willing to pay for. Quickness and reputation for speed are much less valuable. ... I wish you were tough and strong like me. But you have nevertheless an available measure of strength, and within that measure an unusual capacity of enjoyment. In this respect you closely resemble your mother. She enjoyed more in her short life than most people in a long one ; and particularly she delighted in natural scenery. You get a great deal more pleasure out of your present journeyings than I ever could have. I should not have your feelings of fatigue and weak- ness, but neither should I have your perception of the beauti- ful and your enjoyment of it. When you come to professional work, you will have to be moderate in it. Where other men work eight hours a day, you must be content with five. Take all things easily. Never tire yourself out. If you feel the blues coming upon you, get a book and a glass of wine, or go to bed and rest yourself. The morbid mental condition is of physical origin. Take comfort in the thought that you can have a life of moderate labor, — the best sort of life. You will have a little money of your own, and need not be in haste to earn a lai-ge income. I am strong and can work twelve hours a day. Consequently I do ; and if it were not for Mt. Desert, I should hardly have more time for reflection and real living than an operative in a cotton mill. For a reasonable mortal, life cannot truly be said to have " terrors," any more than death. [Charles had quoted the lines : — I am not one whom death does much dismay. Life's terrors all death's terrors far outweigh.] . The love of beauty is a very good and durable correspondence between your soul and the world ; bvit the love of purity, gen- tleness, and honor is a better one. [C. W. E. to C. E.] From Nice Charles returned to the Cap d'Antibes to visit the Garden Thuret ; but Sunday, March 28th, was the love- liest possible day ; and he devoted it altogether to strolling through lanes and woods and alongshore, and watching the sky and the sea. At sunset I watched all the changing coloring of sky and sea, — the paling opal pearl and amethyst of the still water, the glowing and the fading of the sky. The sea was very still ; the water wondrous clear in deep basins among the whitish rocks. The only sound was the splashing of gentlest surf in the caves and crannies of the low and jagged shore. ^T. 26] THE GARDEN THURET 93 Peace here, — Nice witli its swarms of knaves, swells, and cocottes, its luxuries, scandals, and all else, is as though it were not. After dinner the stars were out, and extraordi- narily bright. Verily this out-of-door life by the sea in the month of March is marvellously good and pleasant. A letter of introduction from Professor Asa Gray, of Cam- bridge, caused Charles to be cordially received at the Garden Thuret by Mous. Naudin, — an elderly man with a kindly face, but stone deaf. He showed Charles over the place, spending the whole morning in this way. They communi- cated by signs and a slate. It is the most lovely garden I have ever seen. In reality, a small place ; but very much made of it. Mons. Thuret had his choice of sites on the cape. The house stands at the summit of the northward slope, commanding views of both bays, with a glimpse of the light-tower close at hand, and from under parasol Pines, a view of the town and towers of Antibes, and of the Alps above, — a perfect picture. All the views and glimpses are beautifully framed by varied foliage ; and the rest of the world is shut out completely. A steep lawn descends from the house, — a field of fresh green, thickly strewn with small Daisies, and with brilliant single Anemones of many colors ; many fine Conifers stand about the edges of the lawn ; Eucalyptus trees of many sorts form the bulk of the plantations ; countless foreign and native evergreens from all parts of the world, mixed together in large masses and thickets, take up most of the ground ; Palms have a region near the house to themselves ; a rockery is hidden away. The general effect from the house is not in- harmonious ; although most of the plants used are foreign, and of marked individual character. Mr. Naudin — who is called " director," being appointed to the charge of the place by the government, to which Thuret's relatives gave the gar- den on his death — is particularly interested in the Eucalyp- tus tribe ; so he has been cutting down old Olives and Ilexes which Thuret had spared, to make room for his "dar- lings," of which he has some 130 sorts. He is first a botanist ; and I fear he will sacrifice the beauty of the place to his collecting instinct. Across the road he has large col- 94 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 lections of Irises, bulbs, climbers, etc., lists of which, and of the trees and shrubs grown iu the main garden, are printed in pamijhlet form. March 30. Again clear and most lovely. The doors of the hotel stand open all day. I sleep with a long French window at least half open. The frogs make a great noise at dawn and at sunset. The country becomes lovelier daily. Fig-trees have leaves about half out of the bud ; Wych-Elms ai-e clad in yellow bloom ; Almonds, Peaches, and others of the Prunus tribe, are blooming pink or white, or pushing fi-esh green leaves ; Willows are lovely in light green ; a sort of Thyme, which carpets the ground between clumps of Myrtle and Pistacia, is blooming pink ; lovely wild Anemones are almost everywhere ; Primroses on banks, and Narcissi in wet meadows, are much rarer ; but Hyacinth, Forget-me-not, Daisy, and Dandelion are very common. Another long day was spent in the Garden Thuret and its neighborhood, making notes of the most striking plants, especially of the shrubs. The proprietor of a neighboring nursery gave Charles some information about the indigenous shrubs, twigs of which he had gathered. He went up to the lighthouse to watch the sunset, — a supremely fine one ; and v/alked back in the dusk, meeting many parties of men and women going home from labor on the flower farms, some singing as they walked. The next day, March 31st, he contemplated philosophically the Bataille des Fleurs at Nice. Two interesting young French women were near me in the crowd by the roadside, — one, virtuous, quietly dressed, accompanied by her brother. She threw what flowers she caught always at men, young or old, but got very little in return ; the other, very jauntily dressed, alone, and of doubt- ful reputation, soon got her parasol full of flowers, and got more and more as time went on. ... I was three times favored by a certain painted fair one ; but the pretty Amer- ican at whom I flung what I got, only replied once. I amused myself with imagining what sort of a time I should probably have had that day had Mrs, Beadle not gone. [Mrs. Beadle was the head of the pleasant American family whose acquaintance Charles had made on the Germanic and ii ^T. 26] THE GARDEN VIGIER — EZE 96 London.] Looking on alone at a thing of this kind is not very interesting. April 1st was his last day in Nice. He was shown over the garden Vigier by the gardener, to whom Mons, Naudin had given him a card. There was a small green lawn, and a terrace balustrade to hide the road, the sea view being obtained over the balustrade. Charles noted a grove of Palms, — two very large ones in the form of an arbor, — the grove of Yucca Indivisa, the thickets of huge Bamboos (nigra, gracilis, mitis), the Cedars and Acacias, and the masses of blooming Camellias with tree Ferns in a shady corner ; and many rarities in the way of Palms, Bananas, and Cocoas. Returning to town, he watched a big lateen's arrival in the port under full sail, " with some astonishment until I saw how quickly headway could be stopped by clew- ing up the big sail to the yard." In the evening he saw " a big show of fireworks, with lighted boats, etc., — the Fete Venitienne being the termination of the Mid-Lent carnival. This and all Nice fetes are got up by a committee of sub- scribers to draw visitors, — quite as at Montreal." On his way to Mentone Charles stopped at the romantic hill-village of Eze, placed on top of a seemingly inaccessible rock a thousand feet and more in the air, — once a Saracen stronghold. Catching a glimpse of this village from the rail- way station at the shore, he — was tempted and yielded, — vowed I would get into said stronghold, and took the first mountain path. It climbed and climbed and twisted ; not a house on the way, and a very few scattered Olive terraces, — only gray sunburnt rock and bare baked earth, and clumps of light green Euphorbia, dwarf Pines, yellow-blooming Genista, and Cistus, and Hare- bells. There was a deep ravine, — where was welcome shade, — and down at the mouth of it, blue sea, and a little jutting isoletta or " thumbeap." Up at the head were utterly bare ridges of gray rock, and on the left cliffs, on top of which must be the invisible Eze. There was continuous beauty of rock and natural rock-planting all along the steep zigzags of the path, — a very rude path, its turns very sharp, no rail- ings even on great precipices, a veritable mountain mule- track, — for centuries and now the only road from Eze to the shore. There was one ruined, overgrown, stone and tile 96 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 building at tlie head of a gulch. From that point up the path was rudely paved, often becoming a stair. At last I came in sight of the town, with its high, continuous outer- walls of cliff-perched houses. Prickly Pear and Fern grow- ing from the walls and rocks. There was a crooked, narrow gate and entrance passage, passable only by human beings, donkeys, and goats. Within was a complication of jagged ledges, walls of dwellings, and steep paved alleys, over which the roofs nearly met. Then a high rock with ruins, a church with a campanile, and a most glorious, wide prospect, — in- describable ! The silence of death was all about ; not a human creature ; not a voice. Sheep in a flock were visible over across a monstrously deep valley on the slope of another mountain. Some rude carts were clustered at the end of a road, that seems to have attempted to get up to the town from the landward side. At several points on the mountains round about I could make out the line of the old Corniche road. Trying to find something of the nineteenth century, — so weird was the whole place, — a few telegraph poles follow- ing the Corniche was veritably all I could see. ... A most memorable day : Eze and its mountains, — the most pictur- esque of places. Of Mentone and its neighborhood Charles wrote : " I thought little Mt. Chevalier (Cannes) picturesque ; but this is incomparably more so. The view from the breakwater is enchanting, high buildings rising from the very rocks of the shore, — rocks to which mooring lines are fastened ; a curious church steeple rises above all." The walk eastward into Italy especially delighted him, over the winding and climbing Cor- niche, from several points of which superb views are obtained westward even as far as the Esterelles, and eastward to Bor- dighera on its point. The road curves inland into a shady valley ; and then comes the village of La Mortola, set on an Olive-clad point of mountain. Close by are the gates of Mr. Hanbury's villa. The garden around this villa is the most famous of all the Riviera. " A wonderland of vegetation ; a garden of Eden. ' Cest lepays du bon Dieu ! ' said a man to me ; and he was right. That view from the high cape near Mr. Hanbury's scuola is the most utterly romantic thing mine eyes have seen." Charles made two visits to this garden, having a letter of introduction from an English friend. He iET. 26] MENTONE — LA MORTOLA 97 took Dotes of many lovely things ; but also " noted mttch as what not to do." As usual, he was more delighted with the general aspect of the country and the sea than with the details of garden-work, beautiful and rare as they were. In the afternoon of April 4th, I walked inland ; and again was wrought into a sort of ecstasy, — an exaggerated form of the " spi-ing fever " I have had at home. I went up a valley with a torrent bed in it, bounded by steeper and steeper hills, bearing Olives interspersed with groves of Oranges and Lemons, occasional blooming Peach-trees, and bud-bursting figs, with now and then tali spires of Cypi-ess. The dwell- ings of the peasantry, stuccoed, and colored yellowish or pinkish, were buried in foliage. On the right, above rich woods, was a high-perched town, — Castellar. On the left, a huge mill with three great wheels, set on the steep hillside, the water brought to it from a great distance. Up the val- ley, a distant church nestled in woods ; and behind it great ranges of i-ock mountains with sharp crests, fantastic pinna- cles, and deep gorges. Everywhere fresh plant life was pushing out, — Hornbeams, various Pruni, and the deciduous trees generally were all in loveliest half-burst state, beside many flowers. Ferns, and pretty wall plants. On the 5th of April, beside the time spent in Mr. Hanbury's garden, I took half an hour to look at little La Mortola, — a cluster of houses on a sort of headland above the Corniche road, ap- proached only by footpaths ; but possessed of two churches, and of a prospect lovely beyond words. I met many groups of peasants, with faces and costumes thoroughly Italian ; lovely children and pretty girls. One of the latter, in an Olive wood, was watching bread-baking in an outdoor oven. Women, bearing great sacks or bundles, were travelling the one road, or climbing the paths leading mountainwards ; mules, decked out with all manner of tassels and finery, passed in procession, each with his laden paniers ; little mule carts were freighted with jars, such as the Forty Thieves got into ; flocks of sheep and goats were attended by the conven- tional herder; wall frescoes of "Virgo Potens " and other subjects were painted on the walls of the humble dwellings ; there were wayside inns with little pergolas ; . . . men with 98 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUEOPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 what I have always supposed to be the fisherman's hat, — red woollen and tall so that the top hangs over ; men with bright scarfs around their hips ; and half-naked children run- ning after the few travellers' carriages. I have been coming to Italy very slowly, and the changes have been very gradual ; but, verily, I have now arrived. On the Italian end of Pont de Saint-Louis (near Mentone) sits a haggard beggar ; and on a rock near by is written " E viva Garibaldi ! " From Mentone Charles made an excursion to Monte Carlo, where he spent a whole morning in the famous gardens de- signed by Andre of Paris. His journal describes its broad terraces, with balustrades and vases of stucco ; its steep, pebble-paved walks ; the rich verdure of its formal thickets ; its smooth green lawns, set with specimens in great variety ; and its concrete brook, planted with even more fantastic plants than are used, or can be used, in Paris. On the land side of the Casino there is handsome formal work ; ample gravel spaces ; a circle with a fountain ; a long, narrow sunk parterre with Palms at the corners, borders of Ivy, massed Roses in the borders, and brilliant flowers in raised beds in the centre, — all exquisitely kept and very costly. It is a strange contrast to the barren mountain sides which tower immediately behind, culminating in the mountain headland of the Tete du Chien, and the high ridge, where, seen against the sky, stands a great ruined tower — the Tro- paea of Augustus Caesar. He looked into the gambling hells in the afternoon, noticing "the continuous shoving about of money in big sums and little ; the extreme silence ; the odd faces ; the many queer folk ; and some wild behavior, — a monstrous curious spectacle altogether." Thence he walked round the " Port of Hercules," and up into Monaco, " a place I have always much desired to see, having had some photographs of it at home." He enjoyed the magnificent views east and west along the coasts from the open place before the palace, and the cliff walk all around the old town, and the Pine-grove garden at the extremity of the point ; but when he reached this grove, what he did was to watch two brigs in the offing, and two feluccas, close at hand, beating round the point. ^T. 26] THE LOVELY RIVIERA 99 ... In the palace square, near the wall at the edge of the west cliff, I came upon a row of old cannon, among them two of the same pattern as those on Cambridge Common, and with the same monogram, — " G. R." . . . By train back to Men- tone for table d'hote. Weary, and to bed early. This climate, though divinely fair, is weakening. I am too easily tired ; and, when tired, I see and learn little or nothing. What a curious life I am leading ! Day after day do I come upon some new beauty ; and daily I say, " Here is something more picturesque than ever." To-day I swear I never saw a pic- turesque town until I saw Mentone ; and never a paintable mill until I saw that of the Grimaldis in the Val di Castellar. By the time I am back in Paris I shall be utterly spoilt. How miserable will seem the vegetation of the north, how hard and unlovely my New England ! He wrote to his mother, on the 12th of April, — I live nowadays in a sort of dream — a very lovely dream the Riviera has been — wholly indescribable in any wretched journal tliat I have time or wits to write. I have slept many nights close to the surf ; and several times, on first waking I have thought myself at Manchester [Mass.]. That this sea is veritably the Mediterranean I find it hard to believe ; and how incapable I find myself of taking in and really in any way assimilating the much that I see. I have felt a little rushed since those quiet days at Antibes, so many and so quick-succeeding have been the new scenes, new experiences, and new ideas. Mentone I really came to know something of ; but of Bordighera, San Remo, and Alassio, I got only glimpses — all lovely and different places, and any one of them containing food for a week for a hungry and raw Yan- kee like me. I set out from Paris with the notion that these weeks of March and April were to be given to a pleasure trip almost pure and simple ; that eight weeks would be as much time as I ought to give to this purpose; and that it was my boundcn duty to be back in Paris in very early May. Now I have learned, I think, that I should have started earlier, and planned to stay longer ; for I find and now believe that it would be well worth while to study Italian gardening with 100 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 some thoroughness — particularly as Mr. Olmsted seems to think so too. . . . Perhaps it will be well to come back here in the autumn ; though by that time, Heaven knows, 1 shall be wanting to get home pretty badly. His glimpse of Bordighera included an exploration of the old walled town, and a walk uj) the hillside, through narrow lanes between large Palm gardens — Palms leaning out of and over the walls, and forming large groves, very beautiful when seen against sky or sea. At San Remo he was delighted with a picturesque Olive mill in the first valley east of the town hill, with the sluices carried on slender arches, and a high " flying bridge " for the footpath, its parapets crumbled away, and other slender bridges of great span to carry the waste water to stone settling-tanks built in the side of the gulch. " Thence I climbed through Olives to the church at the top of the town, then down through old narrow staircases, alleys, and tunnels, to luncheon in the restaurant of the new town. The alleys were the narrowest, darkest, and dirtiest of any yet seen — a veritable ant-hill." He took an omnibus thence to the east end of the route ; and then followed a wind- ing mountain road up a long ascent. A turn in my road ; and suddenly, close at hand, a little town on the slope of my mountain, close packed as possible — not one straggling building ; a church with a high, false front, and a campanile in the midst. Suddenly the sound of a deep, distant bell from beyond the great valley. I looked hard, and discovered another small ant-hill town, perched on a steep bluff over across the valley. It was approached only by zigzags through low Pine woods and Olives, or across bare, torrent-washed slopes. At a ruined church on the top of the ridge — a smithy in it — I took a road leading seaward . . . on high land and presently arrived at the Cape Madonna della Guardia — which I had seen in the morning from the port of San Remo — in time to see the final closing-down of the clouds upon the mountains towards Bordighera and the heights back of San Remo. I was on a high point, barren to a degree, a bleak, white chapel on the summit, in which I took refuge from the first shower of rain. A storm was evi- dently brewing. I hurried down, and followed a dull shore road back to San Remo, which town seemed astonishingly far ^T. 26] SAN REMO — ALASSIO 101 away. A second shower fell with vigor ; but I hid in the house of a railway gate-keeper ; and finally arrived at the hotel, dry, just before the continuous downpour began. This was of importance, because my clothes had gone to Genoa. I made a short evening over plant-notes, weary but happy, being fairly drenched with picturesqueness if not with rain, I met much semi-costume to-day and yesterday. Why need these women carry such burdens ? In the towns everybody is lugging something ; and what loads they pile on mules and donkeys ; and what a good time they seem to have gathering olives ; and how unblushingly the pretty and healthy children run after one and beg. Riviera journeying is almost at an end for me. The best of it has been the seeing of real picturesqueness — a sight for which mine ej'es have been hungering many years. I have also got a good idea of what can be accomplished in the way of jilant-growing in a climate of this character ; have made long lists of the trees and shrubs best worth remembering ; have learned to recognize very many sorts (but shall forget them) ; have copies of the printed lists of plants at Monte Carlo and Cap d'Antibes ; and have got together some ideas as to what general design in landscape gardening should be in similar countries. At Alassio Charles visited the garden of General Sir M, McMurdo, to whom Mr, Bryce had given him a letter, — a small but very delightful place, made on a vexy steep hillside as at La Mortola. It was formerly in Olive terraces ; but these are now partly done away with, and parti}' disguised. There was a pleasantly intricate series of along-hill paths, close thickets, rude flights of steps, a less rude but handsome flight, with a turn, made of red tufa rock with a terra -cotta balustrade. In many directions, glimpses of sea and moun- tains were obtained ; but there was only one point of general widespread view. General McMurdo had been the engineer of the place ; and Mrs. McMurdo the gardener. The engineer- ing was conspicuously good, the walks having an adequate appearance of support on the downhill side — an unusual merit. At six o'clock, in loveliest evening light, I set out alone from the hotel ; and walked westward over the sand beach, 102 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 along which is built the old town. . . . The old town is crowded at the water's edge, the railway passing behind it — an altogether unusual arrangement on this coast. There was one short stone pier; but all the boats were drawn up on the sands. The calm was delicious, with lovely reflections ; °n^et4 -J r- — -T 5— — Coft/^ :z:55| Two Riviera arrangements for a drive and sea-wall along a beach. and a gentle white surf played all around the great sweep of the beach. The boats were loading with empty fish-barrels, for a small steamer at anchor outside to carry to the fishing- grounds. There was a pretty scene at the launching of the last boat-load, — crowds of bare-legged boys helping shove off, their backs against the stem of the big seine-boat-like craft. Many children and their mothers were out for air on the beach, — building sand castles and so forth. Sunday, April 12th. The railroad ride to Genoa offered a succession of small bays, valleys, and grand mountain capes, with many charmingly placed towns, and many castles more or less ruined set on romantic heights. There were also glimpses of snow mountains, continuous blue sea, and fine masses of cumuli over both the Rivieras. This ride, however, impaired somewhat Charles's enjoyment of the next day, for it was a succession of black tunnels and bright openings, very trying to the eyes. The countless Renaissance palaces with their courts, loggias, and staircases in many architectural styles, were the chief objects of interest in the city ; but the well-devised promenade Acquasola and the public garden of Villetta di Negro, which offered fine views over the city, port, and environs, were also instructive. The Villa Pallavicini lies a little outside of Genoa ; and was carefully examined by Charles ; but he did not find it very instructive, although it is a famous garden. There were some pleasant shaded walks, some very successful rock-work made of stones from the sea- JET. 26} THOTOGRAPHS OF SCENERY 103 shore, some well-tlevised streamlets, a large stalactite grotto, and a lakelet from which, by taking a boat, fine views are to be had of the Genoa light-tower and the sea. Many fanciful pavilions and summer-houses, Turkish, Chinese, and other, diversified the garden ; also temples of Flora and Vesta ; and a building which, on one side, is a triumphal arch, and on the other, a rustic cottage ! Many odd water squirts entertained the visitors. Among the unusual decorations are the imita- tion ruins of two fortresses, with a tomb of a general supposed to have died in defence of one of them ; and even a sort of imitation shrine of the Virgin in one corner, with an inscrip- tion granting certain indulgences to whoever may salute her image. The Villa Rostan, which Charles also visited, is a less pue- rile place, although there are several squirts, and a liermit's cabin with a stuffed hermit, also a grotto with Diana bathing, and other illustrations of classical legend. Most of this place is a wood with underbrush, through which there are occa- sional very long vistas — one of the distant light-tower very effective. In the depth of the wood is a paved, moss-carpeted dancing-floor, with stone seats in the shrubbery round about, and an overlooking stone gallery ; also a little open-air theatre, all mossy, and (like all else in the place) with an air of neg- lect, or I'omantic dilapidation, about it which is not unpleas- ing. The next day Charles spent much time over photographs in an attractive shop : but, as had often happened to him before, he found but few wortli buying. " They are verily a snare and a delusion except for buildings and architectural details." Throughout all Europe he found it ver}' difficult to get pleasing and instructive photographs of scenery. Either the objects which interested him had never been photo- graphed, or the photographs which had been taken gave no just idea of the real scenes. He came to the conclusion that one who desired to bring away from Europe photographic memoranda of landscape which had interested him must be his own photographer. His last remark before leaving Genoa was, " I looked into two fine palaces. What nabol)S these merchant princes of Genoa were ; and what ingenious archi- tects built them their palaces I " In the afternoon of April 14th he went on to Santa Mar- gherita, enjoying intensely, as usual, the railroad ride by the small crowded towns, the many villas, the lemon groves, and the bits of castles in all sorts of positions, — in torrent beds, on top of heights, on the sea beach, or on slopes of mountains. 104 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 The hotel at Santa Margherita stood on the edge of the water of the port, almost as close as at Alassio, where the surf on the sand beach seemed about to roll into the hall and dining- room. The outlook eastward from the hotel presented a grand succession of mountains, very many of the height of Mt. Desert's highest (1527 feet), rising directly from the sea; and behind these others rising to 3000 feet and more — none quite so fine, however, as those which hang over Monaco and Meutone. April 15. A divine morning, still, bright, and fresh. I took the skore road toward the end of the cape, bound to see Portofino. The road was very winding, always close to the water, and having now heights and cliffs, and now mountain- descended valleys on the right hand. There were many deep coves, many short bits of beach, and many wild cliffs and fantastic forms of coarse, conglomerate rocks. Everywhere were Pines, Arbutus, blooming Coronilla, Heath, and Myrtle, and now and then steep slopes of Olive woods. For three miles there were no houses, save a group at Paraggi ; but a monastery on the flank of the mountain (with one Palm reared above the enclosing walls), and a quaint rectangular castle, set on a jutting rock of the shore at the mouth of a cove, its battered base partly hidden by Pines which also reached down over the shore rocks, its upper parts curiously broken into bays and groups of windows. At the head of one rock-bound cove, in a cleft of the cliffs, were a spring and cistern, where groups of women were washing. Around the next headland the wagon road suddenly ended against the close-built build- ings of the town of Portofino. Hence was one of the quaint- est pictures ever seen, — a deep hill-piercing cove, the shores opposite wooded and reflected in water; small vessels were moored in the inmost corners, their yards almost touching the trees, and the steep wooded heights of the long promontory opposite were crowned by castles of vai-ying form, partly hidden in verdure. The little port was headed by a wide, short beach, with high buildings close about it, and strung in a block along the hither shore. Olive-clad heights close behind rise further off into Pine-clad summits of some two thousand feet. The road having ended, I got down into the ^x. P / .^^/ .4i^ '\ ^fi ('.X % \ \^^ ^ / r\ v\t ^rrmm i Vs 'f^ r r U MT. 26] PORTOFINO 105 piazza at the beach by poking clown a steep staircase under buildings. From the beach, looking outward, the view was more striking. At the right, the wooded castle-crowned heights ; at the left, a little quay and the blocked buildings under the mountain, the opening between crossed in the far distance by the coast line of the mainland. Next I climbed round the cape to the church visible at point No. 1 in the map, using a little path and staircase which winds among cliffs and under mossy boulders, and to my great surprise found myself on the brink of great cliffs of open sea, with white surf dashing far below at their base. I pushed on by a footjiath along the harbor side of the promontory, past the first strange castle, — or, rather, stronghold house, — between lovely thickets, under Olives, past one or two little hidden cottages, and up an exceedingly steep but little trodden p^E.rD I T €. r^ \^ 6=^ N. £ c-\ rsk .^^-fnv T( zigzag to the ruined tower and walls on the highest peak of this much-peaked headland. Here were vastly fine seaward cliffs, where, under a big Pine, I lunched off stuff from my pockets, while far below, and often hidden by Pines, two boats slowly dragged nets close to the rocks, and in the far distance two feluccas and one steamship sailed east towards Genoa. I loafed long on this height, and found many lovely wild flowers, and rescued an earthworm from a centipede. Then I returned to the little piazza (No. 2 on the map), and took a mountain- ward path, which led me up a succession of valleys different 106 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. THE RIVIERA [1886 from anything yet seen, — a sort of fairyland of fresh green grass and Ferns, moss. Ivy, and countless flowers, with new- budding trees and singing birds, and cottages hidden away in corners, and steep side-hills of Olives. Much stairs and much winding among verdurous walls and boulders, the path often but two feet wide between crags, with sudden turns between rude vine-clad trellises. At last a ridge, wholly open, a tre- mendous wild valley going down into the sea just beyond ; a jutting rock close by ; a little shrine ; a view of sea and near mountains, and little Portofino. . . . Hence I discovered a tempting rock over across a deep gulch-like valley, and an Olive wood with a cottage not far from it ; so I went round the head of the valley by a little footpath, meeting a little girl driving cows, and passing the dooryard of the cottage, gained the high rock easily, and was well repaid ; for in addi- tion to all else I got here a view of the fine snow mountains not far back of Rapallo, and also a far better look at the really stupendous cliffs of the coast close at hand at the west, whence a sound of surf in caves came faintly to the ear. This cottage was the highest on all the mountain. Above all is Pine and wildness up to the summit at about two thousand feet. I went down by a new way, through other fairylands, offer- ing surprising views of the sea through trees from a great distance, the hills being exceeding steep. I met a few beau- tifully dressed peasant women, toiling up the hill, two little boys carrying big sacks, and three sweet-looking nuns, also climbing. At the piazza of Portofino at 3 o'clock (I had set out at 8.15), finding myself weary, for 4 lire I got a boatman to carry me back to Santa Margherita. We rowed and we sailed and I steered, and it was sport ! Then, at 4.30, after a hurried cup of tea and a roll, I took train again and travelled the superb coast to Spezia, where the sun set in great glory ; and on in moonlight through Tuscany to Pisa, dining off roast chicken, bread, and wine on the way. My heart on fire ! What a glorious day ! April 16. Yesterday's five-hours' journey to Pisa was largely underground while daylight lasted. ... A flash of daylight, and you cross a narrow gulch or valh^y, surf on the one hand, falls in the torrent stream on the other, then black- ^T. 26] PISA 107 ness again and another mountain overhead. The close-built towns are packed in the mouths of valleys, the railway some- times behind, but unfortunately of tener in front. This is sad, because the railway's high embankment often cuts off the town's view of the sea and the view of the town from the sea. The coast is more precipitous, ruder, and wikler than any part of the western shore. After la Spezia, darkness came soon, but moonlight, the ghostly white mountains of Carrara gleam- ing in the distance, and the marble ballasting of the railway gleaming too. The night was so bright that the Pisan Duomo was visible from afar. Pisa. This morning I looked out on the Arno and its grand, sweeping curve through the town. I rambled out without guide, and discovered a beautiful brick palace on Lung Arno ; admired the wide eaves of the houses ; took side streets, and presently, at the end of one of these, the Leaning Tower. . . . Like the rest of the world, I stood amazed at the Tower, the Baptistery, and the Church, — three marble won- ders. . . . Next I got into the Campo Santo, and there stayed long. These wei-e my first old frescoes, — hells, heavens, and so on ; also many fine monuments, Roman, early Christian, and Renaissance ; some excellent heraldic work in the stones of the floor, and graves of college teachers, — the whole enclos- ure with its neglected court, its faded wall paintings, its light arched tracery, its long roofed aisles, its quiet and seclusion, most utterly expressive of peace and the dead past. From within, through an iron grating, I watched the folk pour out of the Duomo ; and when the preacher appeared, the crowd clapped and cheered — a strange scene. Then I wandered through the emptied church, looking at the rich marbles, the splendid pillars (brought home by Pisan conquerors), and the many peasant women kneeling at shrines — how beautiful are their faded gowns and kerchiefs and their dark faces ! I could not get into the Baptistery, but climbed the Leaning Tower, and said farewell to the Mediterranean — my one true friend since Marseilles. After lunch I went out again to see the famous botanical garden, where I spent two profitable hours. It was an interesting opportunity of comparing the vegetation growable here with that of the western Riviera. I 108 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. FLORENCE [1886 noticed, among many other things, a huge Magnolia and a Yankee Shadbush in bloom. ... At 5.30 I was off for Flor- ence, a two-hours' ride through fertile, highly cultivated country, and one nan-ow defile. Heavy showers were falling on the surrounding mountains. The effects of bursting sun- light on the new leafage in distant parts of the plains, on the hill-set towns, and on the winding Arno, were startling. Near sunset the light-effects were most marvellous. Clouds everywhere, yet much sunlight too ; bright gleams of rain- bows ; dark rain-clouds behind gleaming snow-mouutains ; white, billowy cumuli over shadowed hills — altogether won- drous and Turneresque. . . . Actually in Florence, city of my dreams ! Charles stayed six days in Florence. His visit was con- siderably impaired by heavy rains, which interfered with out- of-door excursions. The following summing up made April 22d will serve as introduction : — End of my present looking on Florence and her treasures : six daylights have fled, and I have seen much ; but sixty would not suffice. Here is not only beauty of situation, and of city as a whole, and of plain and mountain round about it, and of vegetation, and of winding river, — but also beauty in abundance within the town, in the very streets, in broad day. Palaces, churches, fortress-houses, bell-towers, loggias, and bridges are full of character and meaning. The iron- work, bronze-work, mosaic, and sculpture are spirited, quaint, or exquisite. There are precious frescoes on the walls of courts in the open air, and bits of della Robbia's terra-cotta in street-corner shrines. The fine arts are not hidden away in museums, but set into every-day life. In Florence he was looking more than usual at the main objects of tourists' interest, because these main objects are in high degree artistic ; but he also visited the sui-rounding heights to enjoy the setting of the city. The afternoon (April 17) was given to rambling on the heights of San Miniato, whence an entrancing view was made doubly lovely by effects of cloud-broken light. The winding Arno ; the soft colors of new leafage in fertile plains, all ^T. 26] FLORENCE GALLERIES 109 flooded with golden light ; the purple and azure mountains stretching to far distance, and backed by snow crests at many- points ; and clouds, clouds, clouds, of such variety of form, mass; and color as is seldom seen. The city in the midst of the valley is a perfect thing too — a comprehend able place — a composition in the painter's sense. Rich brown roofs, from which rise the white walls of the Duomo and the Cam- panile, and the high stem tower of the town house, — towers and church all rising against exquisite coloring of plain and mountains beyond. He liked the handsome carriage " concourse " with Angelo's "David" in the centre; and noted the Wistaria, Lilacs, Roses, and Spiraeas in bloom on the 17th of April. He noted also the absurd stucco caves within the arches of terrace walls. Another day he visited the Boboli Garden, where he had played every day for a fortnight when he was a boy of five. He explored it thoroughh% and got from it "an idea or two," but found it a dreary jjlace. The Pitti Gallery, however, was close at hand. The Florence galleries invited him strongly, and as the weather was showery, he made frequent visits to them. At these galleries he " was vastly disappointed in some pictures familiar in engravings and photographs, and was delightedly surprised at others. The Venetian work, particularly, cannot be reproduced in photographs. The print of Titian's ' Flora,' compared with the original, is but a blot of ink; and the lovely Madonna, like that yet lovelier iu tha Louvre, is in photograph almost nought." He cared 110 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. FLORENCE [1886 little for any of the famous pictures in the Tribuna at the Uffizi ; but greatly enjoyed the Angelicos and Botticellis, and every one of the Venetians ; " and liked the small picture of ' Tobias and the Angel ' by Granacci, and others unheard of." Of his visit to the San Marco monastery, now museum, he writes : " Here, as at Bargello, and as in Piazza della Signo- ria, and many side streets of the city, a mighty flavor of mediaeval days. Walls of faded frescoes, angel hosts, Madon- nas, saints, martyrs, pagan Aphrodites, Christs, — what crea- tures of imagination are these ! " On the 21st, — in despair of better weather, I took an omnibus to the park, where I was rained on vigorously for half an hour, and was then rewarded by a lovely clear-up. Sunlight through trees and thickets, all in young leaf. Very joyous and refreshing, particularly as I have hardly seen anything of the kind in all the Riviera region. . . . This park is wholly flat, and lies along the Arno. It is mostly woodland with underbrush, the trees large, and close-grown ; but in one part lately thinned and cut back. There are some shrubless groves of Ilex among prevailing deciduous wood ; and Ilex, also, now and then stands singly, — with big Pojjlars, for instance, near the river-side. On the few straight-edged grass lawns, or rather plots, the grass is uncut and poor. The roads and paths run in straight lines through woods and grasslands, and are every- where bordered by at least one row of avenue trees ; a ditch lies outside these trees, and then comes the wild wood, or sometimes a hedge beside the ditch. The edges of the woods towards the river and about the grass spaces are always a straight, unbroken wall, usually with a dense ten-foot Ilex hedge hiding the trunks of the trees, — a hedge over the top of which trees stretch bigger branches. There are many fine vista effects, excellent hedges with bays and stone seats ; and good stone terminals ; and corner posts ; and posts with hang- ing chains to define footpaths ; and curbs around the plant- ing-spaces along the chief avenue where a footpath is carried alongside the drive. The woods with shrubbery are very pretty (when not stupidly hidden by hedges) ; but there is no landscape design in Mr. Olmsted's sense. I actually had to go outside of the park about fifty yards to get a lovely distant view of the city towers and Du'omo, which might easily have been had within the park. JET. 26] VIALE DEI COLLI 111 Charles thought no day well spent unless he was roving about on foot at least ten hours of it. Thus, on the 22d of April he visited in the morning the famous Viale dei Colli !L^ lo'Lf. ^^^^ U^trVwA.-^ O.Uo^. n.QLit? r;.1?-tr.>o J3?S ^^^,• \ClB».<^- V^C^V C;r;>v*^'V and the grounds along it. The morning was fresh and fair, and the views lovely as possible ; the gardens pleasant, but not instructive. There he watched the country carts and the country people. Then he drifted about the streets of Florence, in which there were crowds abroad, apparently going from church to church. He went into the Duomo, where some great function was going on, which culminated in the archbishop washing the feet of a dozen white-clothed ruffians. Great crowds were constantly moving in and out, — all sorts and conditions of men. In the — Baptistery I saw a baptism. The old priest and his assist- ant straight out of a Giotto picture. There was a long rig- marole, through which the mother of the child had to stand, the baby in her arms. Then came the sousing of the little head with water, — what a heathen institution 1 The little 112 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. TO VENICE [1886 crowd from the street that looked on was interesting, — chil- dren who, after the ceremony, crowded to see the baby, and three costumed peasant women, amid rich marbles and gild- ing, and under high, shadowy vaulting. In the church of SS. Annunziata was a great array of candles, and a crowd apparently awaiting some ceremony. In the cloister adjacent I happened on del Sarto's " Madonna of the Sack " in the lunette over the door. Then outside, to my great surprise, I discovered della Eobbia's charming bambinos set into the street wall of the Spedale degli Innocenti. I took an oppor- tunity to say farewell to Bargello and the Ponte Vecchio, and the Campanile ; and, a shower coming on, and my feet being almost sore, I put back to the hotel at the ignominious hour of 4.30. On the 23d of April Charles crossed the Apennines on the railroad route to Venice. The ascent offered " many won- drous views of the plain of Arno and Pistoja's domes and towers seen from a great height ; but the mountains seemed brown, steep, and often bare, wooded only with scarcely started low scrub." The crooked descent to Bologna was more interesting, the mountains being more clifty, with many deep ravines and some valleys gay with fresh green. I got a good look at the leaning towei's and strange domes of Bologna at the beginning of the great plain of the Po ; and then came long rushing over fertile plains, — small fields ditched about, rows of strangely trained fruit trees, and white oxen ploughing. A strange land altogether, where rivers flow on ridges, and railways and wagon roads have to climb long grades to get over them. The towers and domes of Ferrara, Rovigo, and Padua were visible from great distances across a plain of freshest green. The train passed close under one group of blue hills, — Colli Euganei, — whence Shelley once looked over the great plain, " islanded with cities fair;" and eastward — " Where beneath Day's azure eyes, Ocean's nursling, Venice lies." After Padua, the plain grows wetter and wetter, — becomes, indeed, a marsh with creeks ; a bridge is entered on, and the marsh becomes flats ; and Venice appears ahead. At four £T.26] VENICE— THE PIAZZA 113 o'clock the sun was behind a cloud for us, but was beaming bright on the walls and towers of the floating town. In the distance great stretches of sands shone golden, while the nearer flats and channels and grass patches were dullest gray. Sti-ange boats and barges were about ; and westward rose the Euganeans. Soon a hubbub of gondolas at the station ; and then silent, lonely floating through water alleys, twice across the Grand Canal, and into a narrow crack beside the Giar- dino Reale to the steps of the Hotel la Lune. I got a room high up, with a view, over the rich foliage of the garden, to the east end of the Canal, and the churched and towered Isola di S. Giorgio Maggiore. Blue sky, blue water, colored sails, shooting gondolas, a big ship between buoys, off the Piazzetta, — Venice ! and this morning I was on the bridge over Arno ! After washing, I went out into the Piazza. The low sun was shining full on the front of St. Mark's, and in at the open doors. I went in, and out again ; and in, and out. What a wonder of earth is this ! I strolled about the Piaz- zetta and the quays adjoining ; and concluded that for a man of my tastes, and my sea education, this must ever be the perfectest spot." Charles spent four days in Venice, — days fully occupied with a delighted study of the city, — its churches, pictures, and prospects, — in the pleasant company of Cambridge friends. Again into the Piazza on Good Friday evening, — the Church front and the Palace very lovely by the light of gas-lamps. Within the Church, shadows and darkness, a few taper lights, quiet moving crowds, — the singing most touching. I sat in a corner till all was done. Life more a dream than ever. Easter Simday, April 25. Bright as possible ! From the great Campanile, I was surprised to see so many little Ven- ices round about. The Piazza was very gay with huge flags on the masts and St. Mark's banners at the corners of the Church. ... In the evening with A. G drifted an hour in the Grand Canal. About jjerfect this ! 114 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. LAKE COMO [1886 From Venice he went to Lake Como and Bellagio, stop- ping on the way for a hasty look at Verona, and the eatlie- dral and public garden of Milan. Once embarked [on Lake Como], the rain ceased, and the clouds lifted and broke just enough to let the sun through in spots. What heights, what verdurous gulches, and high-set houses and hamlets ; what fresh, soft greens, shaded off up- wards into strange browns and golds ; white snow on the top ridges, and in the deep gullies of the mountain flanks. On the lake shore itself was an infinite variety of wall and arch- ing and bridging. There were little ports, bits of beach and of wild rock, and cliffs, and strings of towns, scattered villas, boathouses, and roofed ports ; strange boats with high sails ; steps leading down into the water; and landings in under houses. The sky was very glorious. Scraps of cloud lay about the sunlit snow peaks. There were showers in many directions, and wreaths of mist about the flanks of green mountains. There was sunlight on soft, green summits ; and great shadows under the western shores. The next day was misty and rainy ; but in the afternoon the showers ceased, and lie " watched the breaking up of the heavy clouds, snow peaks shining with sunlight appearing now and then through gaps in the clouds ; the wind rising out of the north, and tall sails coming down the lake before it; the clouds, too, sailing fast." The afternoon voyage to Como was delightful. I spied diligently at the strange, beautiful lakeside, different from anything I ever imagined. There were walls of every conceivable form and device, with piers, with high or low sup- porting arches, with crannies, crooks, and caves for boats, and complications with beaches and brook-mouths. There were bridges, jutting rocks, waterfalls, mills at mouths of gulleys, and little walled ports. Houses rose from the water, as at Venice, with water doors. Garden things hung down to the water from over garden walls. There were lovely church towers, sometimes on low points of beach, or on top of cliffs, or high-set on spur or shelf of mountain. Villages and ham- lets were charmingly scattered along the shores, and along the mountain flanks. Of the villas, some few were staringly vET. 26] DESCRIBING SCENERY 115 ugly and pretentious ; but many, to American eyes, very original and fine. One, on the tip of a long point, had three arched loggie entirely open, separating its two wings. An- other stood at the head of a wide cove, with wooded mountain shores. A great house stood at the water's very edge, with woods close about it, and no visible means of arriving thither save by water. In the hotel at Bellagio was nobody but two young Ger- mans, and a French party of three. These latter could see no beauty in rain-swept lakes ; although one of them was an amateur photographer. For lovers of landscape or of word-painting it is interesting to compare this description of Lake Como — one of the most beautiful pieces of scenery in Europe — with a description of Goat Island, Niagara Falls, which Charles wrote three years earlier when an apprentice at Mr. Olmsted's office. It occurs in an irregular journal or note-book which he kept during that period. July 8, 1883. I am writing to the sound of the rapids of Niagara after a really worshipful Sunday. A beautiful gray morning. To Goat Island alone as a " passionate pil- grim." The shore is generally regular in its curves, but in detail delightfully intricate with numberless little water-filled chasms, crooks, and caves. There are hanging trees, old gnarled Ce- dars clutching the rocks, overhanging verdure of much variety, rich masses of Bitter-sweet and Virginia Creeper, the young sprays often trailing in the rushing water, and quiet pools behind old stranded logs with Iris in bloom therein. Within is much ancient forest — old and tall Beeches. In the open spaces are luxuriant masses of Sumac, Wild Rose, and Goose- berr}'^, Rubus odoratus, Poison Ivy, Virginia Creeper, and Bit- ter-sweet, the latter often in masses on the ground and twisted about itself. Delightfid narrow wood-roads, and " unimproved " trails and footpaths. Everywhere is the sound of the surrounding rapids, like surf on a shore of broken rocks. To the Sisters, the great Rapids, the brink of the Horse- shoe, and Luna Island. The sun broke through the clouds ; 116 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. ST. GOTTHARD [1886 a mist-bow spanned the spray-fillecl gulf ; and the Gorge and its delicate suspension bridge were marvellousl}' illumined. In the evening of May 2d Charles reached Paris, having enjoyed very much his quick ride by the Pass of St. Gotthard and across France. " Saturday's journey (May 1) over the St. Gotthard was of course the most interesting of all my life," he wrote to his mother May 3. He invariably enjoyed a long ride by railway, whether through a wild or a cultivated country, whether through mountains or over great plains ; but this day's ride was unique, — he was seeing at once stu- pendous scenery and a marvellous feat of engineering. It was a cloudy day, — but the sun came out now and then in beauteous fashion. The train passed through the fresli green valleys of Breggia, past the torrents of Laveggio and the great crags of Monte Generoso ; crossed the crooked Lago di Lugano on bridges, causeways, and islands, twisting along the western shore; climbed slowly the narrowing Val d'Agno ; passed through a tunnel under Monte Cenere ; and burst suddenly into the sunshine of the wide valley of Ticino. Here, from a high position on the mountain side, there was a great view north- ward into Alpland, and southward to green meadows and blue waters at the head of Lago Maggiore. . . . Soon the train followed constantly the river Ticino up a valley shut in by higher and higher mountains, which were very steep and rocky, yet inhabited almost to the sum- mits. Countless waterfalls were in sight, — some exceeding high, — and many chains of falls coming from great heights. Beyond Bodio, the valley, which hitherto had some flat land in it, contracted ; and soon the train passed a bridge over the river, then suddenly jumped back again, and plunged straight into the mountain side, to come out again at a point downstream from the point of entrance, but at a higher level. The same tactics were repeated again immediately, the result being the attainment of a sort of higher valley above a steep, narrow river gorge. Here Firs first appeared high on CROSSING THE ALPS 117 f .ET. 26] the mountain sides ; and here also were the first signs of Swiss builders' work. After more slow climbing, there appeared below Faido a hillside of pastures dotted with dark brown log- barns, — altogether Swiss. Superb waterfalls were in sight. The railway plunged into a huge preci- pice mountain to take another upward spiral ; then crossed a river gulch, and another, and so pulled up through the now slender valley to Airolo, — a lit- tle hamlet where all river meadow-land ceases, and the snow mass of Mt. St. Gotthard blocks the way. The snow- piled zigzags of the carriage road were plainly visible high on the mountain. I slept profoundly all through the nine- mile tunnel ; but was told that the passage took twenty-two minutes. The train came out into wet cloudland, and looked down the steep torrent of Reuse, — quite undescendable in appearance. The down grade was tremendous, through a very wild ravine differing from every- thing in the Italian side. Firs were everywhere. The principal descent was accomplished thus, — the round dot stands for a village. The first view of it is from a great height above it ; but, after long travelling, the train passes at last far below it. The side torrent near the village is crossed three times at different levels ; and the extraordinary changes in the apparent position of the village are exceedingly confusing, Down we went into Switzerland, out of cloud- land and rockland into fresh greenland about Altdorf and the head of the lake of VierwaldstJitter, . . . the lake very dark, and the air full of wet. V' '*\. [•% 118 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE [1886 Of Lucerne and its lake lie says : — It was good to see hillsides of mixed woods, fresh pastures, great apple orchards, big barns, and other almost Yankee- like things. I hunted up the great Lion, and admired the strange bridges and the Northcountrymen's towers, so utterly different from those of the morning. Here are steep roofs of many stories. It is a marvellous transformation in architec- ture. And this dark, gloomy, cold lake, — how different from fair Como, lovely in spite of rain. His brief comment on the ride from Lucerne to Paris (May 2) is as follows : — The country is very beautiful. A charming mixing of hills and valleys, lakes and streams, ravines and intervales. The buildings become thoroughly German, then beyond Bale, slowly French. The long ride across France is really interesting. Farms everywhere, and not a fence or a wall ; not a dozen pastured cattle were in sight all day. There were occasional preserved woodlands, the coppice-cutting lately' completed, and some woods for growing large timber ; all large forests were intersected by straight alleys. Paris at seven o'clock. His sixty days' absence from Paris had cost him on the average $4.60 a day, including the purchase of a trunk, pho- tographs, and some books, — not much more than it would cost a young man just to live in a good hotel in an American city without travel. Nevertheless, he wrote to his mother on May 3d : " I am, in fact, becoming a confirmed spendthrift." To his father he wrote May 11th : — I have to confess to five days of comparative do-nothing- ness, — the five following my arrival in Paris. Verily I was a good deal fagged out in body ; and in mind I was in a state of chaos and confusion : such a whirl of new sights, impressions, and experiences had I been through. Sometimes I wish I were mentally and emotionally duller than I am ! There must be a great peace in unawakedness. But, rather, I wish my mental as well as my bodily digestive powers were stronger than they are, — so that I might make some use of the rich food that has come to me in the last two months. CHAPTER VI LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. PARIS AGAIN I think there are as many kinds of gardening as of poetry : your makers of parterres and flower gardens are the epigrammatists and sonneteei-s in this art ; contrivers of bowers and grottoes, treiUages and cascades, are romance writers ; Wise and Loudon are our heroic poets ; ... as for myself, you will find that my compositions in gardening are altogether after the Pindaric manner, and run into the beautiful wildness of nature, without affecting the nicer elegancies of art. — Addison. Having spent two months on the Riviera, and in Italy, amid great natural beauty and much picturesqueness of man's creation, Charles was now to study artificial park and garden work in a comparatively flat country, mostly culti- vated, and repeatedly injured, within the lifetime of many species of trees, by invading and defending armies. The writing of letters and notes of his journey, of course, occu- pied a considerable portion of his time ; and the art collec- tions of Paris could not be neglected. Thus, he spent the whole day, on the 7th of May, in the Salon. A monstrous big show, with some interesting architectural drawings ; some queer, original sculpture ; and endless walls of paintings. There was an infinite variety of subject and treatment, — horrors, dramatics, mythologies, nudities, por- traits, landscapes, peasautics (after Millet), butcheries, pots and pans, cheeses and old books, all jumbled together in distressing and wearying confusion. A portrait of a great hog, life-size, adjoined " Love Disarmed ; " a scene of battle slaughter was placed beside a group of '■ Sirens " or choir of angels. There were six different " Judiths," as many mur- ders of differing kinds, endless, realistic imitation of old books, glassware, preserves in jars, roast beef, and raw meats ; endless painting of death, — dead soldiery, dead old men, dead girls ; much realistic copying of every -day life, — a yachting party in a steam launch, for example, the figures 120 LANDSCAPE STUDY IN EUROPE. PARIS AGAIN [1886 life-size, — ball-rooms, weddings, funerals, street scenes, fam- ily dinner parties, scenes at the theatre or in restaurants,; every sort and kind of nakedness, from most unreal, conven- tional creatures to completest imitation of even ugly women ; many fairly loathsome creatures, and hardly a respectable creature among them all, — men or women ; though many of a pretty or sentimental kind. Many pictures entitled " La Misere " represented all the ugliness of poverty most faith- fully, and sometimes touchingly. There were numerous archaeological pictures, cold artificial renderings of supposed life and costuming of the Greeks and Komans ; many de- tailed portrayals of crime with all manner of blood and thunder ; in fact, a wholly riotous and chaotic collection, — individualism run mad. Amid all these, the few good land- scapes and seascapes were exceedingly refreshing ; and, in fact, played the same part that landscape plays in real life. Some coast of Norway scenes were especially good in spirit ; though I detested the manner of their painting, — the manner of their execution. He found at Paris the Philadelphia family with whom he had enjoyed intercourse in London several months before. Twice he had sought them on the Riviera, and had been much disappointed to find each time that they had gone on before him. "Mrs. Beadle was kindly as ever; Miss Pitkin as fresh and fair and pretty (I believe it is Louisa L that she is like) ; Miss Yale as wise and quiet. They made me talk ; then I quarrelled a bit with , a Harvard man, over the inevitable Irish question ; and at 9.15 departed. Miss Pitkin desiring me to come in again very soon." He reexamined the Paris squares, which he had before seen in mid-winter, finding them to look far better, when the grass was green and the plantings showed the designed colors of their foliage, than in their bare winter state. He was much interested also in the use made of these squares by the children and women of their neighborhood. One Sunday afternoon spent in the Pare Monceaux was especially delight- ful to him, because of the countless "children and gayly dressed bonnes, with a band of music between 4 and 5 o'clock, the whole driveway occupied by a crowd seated in chairs. The crowd was very quiet and well dressed, — not a sign of a ' mucker,' — as different as j^ossible from the scene at the ^T. 26] PARIS SQUARES — ANDRJ&'S METHODS 121 Boston Coimnou Sunday band concerts." He noted, also, the " very green grass, good even in the shade ; gracefully modelled surfaces ; open groves ; Ivied tree-trunks ; and thicket plantings, edged with Euonymus, Veronica, and Euonymus radicans, or even with formal rows of Geraniums. All the paths were edged by .^riDcaClXZX^ ." ^L-ejt^ VCOww^i .Svw/