CHAPTER VI

RELATIONS WITH DOWNING

Since Mr. Olmsted’s particular interest in rural pursuits dated from 1844 and Andrew Jackson Downing did not meet his death until 1852, one naturally looks for some connection between the two men. We know that Mr. Olmsted contributed to the _Horticulturist_,[11] that he had letters of advice and introduction from Mr. Downing for his European trip of 1850, and that he visited Downing at Newburgh, at least once. Nevertheless, there is surprisingly little to be found bearing definitely on their relations.

This subject was presented before the Boston Society of Landscape Architects in 1916, by Mr. John C. Olmsted, in a paper entitled “The Influence of A. J. Downing on the Designers of Central Park,” from which the following is a brief selection.

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

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

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

There is one letter preserved from Mr. Olmsted to Mr. Downing, written after the former’s return from abroad.

SOUTHSIDE STATEN ISLAND, Nov. 23, 1850.

DEAR SIR:

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

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

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

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

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

Yours Respectfully, FRED. LAW OLMSTED.

Mr. A. J. Downing.

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

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

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

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

To the Memory of ANDREW JACKSON DOWNING: Whatever of good, true, and pleasant thought this volume may contain, is humbly and reverently inscribed.

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

A. J. DOWNING

This is not a rhetorical introduction to my subject; it is a plain statement of one of the conclusions of a special study from which I have been led to regard Mr. Downing as a great benefactor of our race and to desire almost above all things to do something to extend and prolong his influence. Although he had a philosophic turn of mind, I do not doubt that he builded better than he knew in that the plans and instructions which he gave to the public were far less excellent with reference to their ostensible ends, than they were with reference to the purpose of stimulating the exercise of judgment and taste in the audience addressed.

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

“And yet this broad ground of popular refinement must be taken in republican America, for it belongs of right more truly here than elsewhere. It is republican in its very idea and tendency. It takes up popular education where the common school and ballot-box leave it, and raises up the working man to the same level of enjoyment with the man of leisure and accomplishment. The higher social and artistic elements of every man’s nature lie dormant within him, and every laborer is a possible gentleman, not by the possession of money or fine clothes, but through the refining influence of intellectual and moral culture. Open wide, therefore, the doors of your libraries and picture galleries, all ye true republicans! Build halls where knowledge shall be freely diffused among men, and not shut up within the narrow walls of narrower institutions. Plant spacious parks in your cities, and unloose their gates as wide as the gates of morning to the whole people. As there are no dark places at noon day, so education and culture--the true sunshine of the soul--will banish the plague spots of democracy; and the dread of the ignorant exclusive, who has no faith in the refinement of a republic, will stand abashed in the next century, before a whole people whose system of voluntary education embraces (combined with perfect individual freedom), not only common schools of rudimentary knowledge, but common enjoyments for all classes in the higher realms of art, letters, science, social recreations, and enjoyments. Were our legislators but wise enough to understand, today, the destinies of the New World, the gentility of Sir Philip Sidney, made universal, would be not half so much a miracle fifty years hence in America as the idea of a whole nation of laboring-men reading and writing, was, in his day, in England.”

--A. J. DOWNING.

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

FOOTNOTES:

[11] As early as Aug. 1847 (Vol. 2, No. 2) there appeared in the _Horticulturist_ a letter from F. L. Olmsted, Sachem’s Head, Guilford, Conn., dated June 29, 1847, under the heading “Queries on Sea-Coast Culture.” The letter asked about quinces and protection of plants at the seashore. Two selections from the MS. of _Walks and Talks_ were published in the _Horticulturist_ (1851 and 1852) with editorial endorsement by Mr. Downing, who reviewed the book at great length. An article on pears by F. L. Olmsted, Southside, Staten Island, appeared in the _Horticulturist_ for Jan. 1, 1852.

[12] Downing’s home.

[13] The first had been dedicated to Mr. George Geddes, of “Fairmount.”

[14] In 1867 Mrs. Downing, who had then become Mrs. Monell, wrote to Mr. Olmsted thanking him for “editing” Downing’s _Cottage Residences_. The “editing” was probably limited to a friendly revision of proofs, since the posthumous editions of the book contain no references to Mr. Olmsted as editor.

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