The Mount THE MOUNT Estate & Gardens June 12, 2006 Ronald and Elizabeth Epp 47 Pond View Drive Merrimack, NH 03054 Ron Dear Ronald and Elizabeth, We at Edith Wharton Restoration would like to thank you for participating in the first ever garden conference at The Mount, Edith Wharton and the American Garden. The enthusiastic, inspired group of attendees made the soggy weekend truly shine with ideas and energy. We hope this conference will be the first of many as we begin to establish The Mount as a center for original scholarship. To echo Hugh Hardy's eloquent call for action: just as Edith Wharton was a forward-thinking woman of ideas, so, too, must we continue in our search to find new and fresh ways of keeping The Mount relevant and vigorous in the years ahead. Your experience at The Mount as both a visitor and a conference participant is important to us. Please take a moment to fill out the enclosed questionnaire and return it in the addressed, stamped envelope. We greatly appreciate your comments, and we hope to see you soon at a future conference at The Mount. Sincerely, Betsy Betsy Anderson Garden Historian Enclosures www.Edietwharton.org 2 Plunkett Street Box 974 Lenox, MA 01240-0974 phone 413-637-1899 fax 413-637-0619 email admin@edithwharton.org Edith Wharton and the American Garden. Lenox, MA The about Press, 2009. CONTENTS Foreword ix Acknowledgments X Introduction xi A Genius for Place: American Landscapes of the Country Place Era Robin Karson 3 Edith Wharton: An Encounter with the Berkshires Honey Sharp 25 Sensations of the Unexpected: The Untamed Forms and Disciplined Lines of Edith Wharton's American Villa David H. Bennett 41 Opposites Attract: The Garden Art of Charles Platt, Maxfield Parrish, and Edith Wharton Rebecca Warren Davidson 61 Wild Gardens and Pathways at The Mount: George B. Dorr and the Mount Desert Island Influence Ronald H. Epp 75 Circles of Influence: Edith Wharton and the Gardens of the Anglo-American Expatriate Community Ethne Clarke 89 Edith Wharton's Plants: Her Influence on the Riviera and in Southern California Diane Kostial McGuire 97 The Romantic and the Practical: Edith Wharton and Beatrix Farrand as Gardeners and Garden Writers Eleanor Dwight 107 Edith Wharton's Literary Garden Betsy Anderson 125 Edith Wharton and the Cultivation of Voice, Authority, Passion, and Privilege Paula Panich 141 Edith Wharton, The Mount, and the Future Hugh Hardy 147 Contributors 161 WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT: GEORGE B. DORR AND THE MOUNT DESERT ISLAND INFLUENCE RONALD H. Epp T he Beinecke Library at Yale University contains a handful of Edith Wharton letters to pioneer conservationist and horticulturist George Bucknam Dorr (1853-1944). This correspondence is commonly passed over by scholars. ² The ten Wharton letters written between 1902 and 1907 are unremarkable when isolated from the richly diverse social context of the Gilded Age. They are remarkable if attention is given to previously unrecognized interactions between the Dorr and Jones families that began twenty years earlier in Bar Harbor, Maine, where Wharton's brother and sister-in- law Frederic and Mary Jones summered. Furthermore, the connection of the Dorr family with Lenox, Massachusetts-site of Wharton's own summer house-tracks back another fifty years to the era of Catharine Sedgwick and Fanny Kemble. 3 The Wharton correspondence to Dorr ranges in length from a few sentences to several hundred words. All but two letters were written during an eighteen-month period between September 1904 and February 1906. Some specialists might describe them as technical, narrowly focused on Wharton's solicitations of Dorr's horticultural expertise. Yet this is not inconsequential, for The Mount's garden historian, Betsy Anderson, indicated on a recent site inspection that there is little evidence of Wharton's use of expert landscaping advice outside her family. Unfortunately, no correspondence from Dorr to Wharton has survived. There has been no inquiry into the connection between the location and naming of gardens and paths at The Mount and Dorr's professional and cultural life on Mount Desert Island. What character traits did he bring to the table in relating to Wharton that encouraged her to invite him repeatedly to her home? What motivated her to involve this little-known Boston Brahmin in her wild gardening? Wharton's letters to Dorr refer frequently to a path at The Mount named for him. Why would she choose to honor him in this way? It is intriguing that Dorr left us no documentation of his relationship with her, especially since his advice to Wharton is the only recorded case of his engaging in a horticultural consultancy removed from Mount Desert Island. Many of these questions will never be resolved since, following his death in 1944, the National Park Service disposed of most of the contents of the Bar Harbor estate that he had gifted to the government. However, in 2006 new primary evidence for the Dorr-Jones family relationship came to light. Both families developed their Bar Harbor properties in the 1880s, and their social interactions are 75 RONALD H. EPP recorded in a guest book kept by the Dorr family at their cottage called Oldfarm. For more than sixty years the Bar Harbor Historical Society Museum displayed this document, yet preservation restrictions prohibited scholarly access until 2004 when the entries were inventoried as part of my biographical research on Dorr as the founder and first superintendent of Acadia National Park (1916-44). The garden concepts of the park founder were framed by generations of family gardening in Salem, Massachusetts, prior to the family's relocation to Boston following the Revolutionary War. The importance of household gardens is repeatedly expressed in the surviving manuscripts of Dorr's maternal grandfather, Harvard College treasurer and renowned banker Thomas Wren Ward (1786-1858).4 His son Samuel Gray Ward (1817-1907), frequently identified as the first Lenox cottager, "had a passion for gardening and manfully ploughed and planted in the beautiful surroundings of Lenox."S The Maine coastline dominated Dorr's later life, Boston and the European continent were of this his middle middle years, but the countryside in Lenox and outside Boston shaped his childhood. While the family townhouse adjacent to Boston Common afforded little opportunity for extensive gardening, young George spent summers in country homes in Jamaica Plain, Canton, Nahant, and Lenox where his interests in gardening and birding were encouraged and the nearby woods afforded him pathways for exploration. At that time many Boston Brahmins looked beyond Newport and Nahant for scenic stimulation and recreational opportunities. Mount Desert Island had been celebrated by Hudson River School artists prior to the Civil War, and increasingly word spread about the beauty of Frenchman Bay, Figure 1. Compass Harbor, Frenchman Bay, Mount Desert Island. Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service, Acadia National Park's William Otis Sawtelle Collections and Research Center. 76 WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT Figure 2. George B. Dorr, Harvard College, 1874. Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service, Acadia National Park's William Otis Sawtelle Collections and Research Center. the uniquely colored mountains towering over the deepest fiord in North America, and the primeval old-growth forests. The Dorrs were captivated and in 1868 purchased more than a hundred acres of Bar Harbor woodland fronting the bay (figure 1).6 At Harvard College Dorr received no specialized instruction in botany. Like his elder stepcousin Charles Sprague Sargent Dorr possessed exceptional botanical aptitude derived from an amalgam of family values, wide reading, and extensive field experience-a not uncommon lineage at the time.7 He also acknowledged the "unsurpassed" influence of landscape designer Andrew Jackson Downing, crediting to him the "foresight [for] our present American system of broad free municipal parks" incorporating picturesque precepts that Dorr eventually applied on Mount Desert Island. 8 After Dorr's graduation from Harvard College in 1874 (figure 2), he and his parents traveled abroad for several years, where much of their activity centered on visits to a great variety of European gardens. More than a dozen essays written by Dorr in his later life detail these visits to both modest and grand European gardens; not content with a mere tourist's acquaintance, Dorr's scholarly curiosity led him to pursue their historical origins and development. In those early years Dorr was most impressed with the simple gardens surrounding English cottages. The reason he offers for this preference is unambiguous and yet surprising for someone of his class: their modest efforts brought beauty into the monotony of their lives. Dorr describes the specific location that the family chose in 1878 for their new Mount Desert home, "[a] broad, flat top of an old sea-cliff, facing north to the long reach of Upper Frenchman Bay" (figure 3).° Few properties on the island offered such superb views, and the considerable water 77 WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT frontage was cloaked in dense woods. Dorr repeatedly insists that the gardens at Oldfarm, initially developed by his mother, would not have come into being were it not for the effect on the family of the beautiful old English gardens and the remnants of the old English homes they visited. It is Dorr's sincerest conviction that the Oldfarm gardens, more than anything else, led him step by step to the founding of Acadia National Park. Mary Gray Ward Dorr (1820-1901) and her son modified the landscape, acquired local plant stock, and transplanted their hardy Massachusetts flowering shrubs and herbaceous plants to Mount Desert Island (figure 4). They were intent on experimenting to determine whether their relocated garden would adapt to local conditions. In 1883 Edith Wharton's brother Frederic Jones and his wife, Mary, purchased their original two-acre Bar Harbor property, Reef Point. The Jones family relationship with the Dorrs likely dates to this time when Edith Newbold Jones (later Wharton) joined her brother, sister-in-law, and niece, Beatrix, in Bar Harbor, rented a cottage, "mealed" at the Hotel des Isles, and explored the coast and mountainous terrain. Teddy Wharton was also in Bar Harbor that summer, it is probable that he and Dorr interacted since they had been Harvard College classmates ten years earlier. Figure 4. Entrance to Oldfarm from the southwest drive, Bar Harbor, Maine. Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service, Acadia National Park's William Otis Sawtelle Collections and Research Center. 79 RONALD H. EPP The Dorr and Jones family exercised leadership as charter members in the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association. 10 It is not until July 1891, however, that we have confirmation of a certain level of "intimacy" between the families. That July Mary Cadwalader Jones pens a poem beside her signature in the Oldfarm guest book; twenty-year-old daughter Beatrix is a guest-perhaps only for dinner-the following September. Their most notable shared friends are the James brothers, Henry and William. For weeks at a time William, the famed Harvard philosophy professor, and his wife, Alice, are Oldfarm guests. 11 The social interaction between Oldfarm and Reef Point likely had an impact on the professional development of young Beatrix Jones, who would become the eminent landscape architect Beatrix Farrand. Although Dorr's influence on Farrand lies beyond the scope of this paper, the depth of Farrand's appreciation of Dorr is reflected in the 1917 article she wrote for Scribner's Magazine on "The National Park on Mount Desert Island." Here she refers to his decades of "unswerving and far- sighted devotion to the ultimate usefulness of the island" and that every Mount Desert Island visitor "owes a large share of his enjoyment to the clear vision, the wise development, and the self-sacrificing enthusiasm of [George Dorr]. 12 GARDENS-PERSONAL - AND PROFESSIONAL We know that a rose garden lay to the northeast of Dorr's Oldfarm home screened by a rock ridge to the east that ran down to Compass Harbor. Cedar hedges enclosed garden paths-bordered by phlox, peonies, false Solomon's seal, gladioli, and golden lilies-that led visitors to huge vegetable gardens intermingled with fruit trees, all maintained for at least half a century. The local paper described the property as "one of the most attractive of the showplaces of the village," praising its wood-encircled, old-fashioned flower gardens as sufficiently diversified to "fit the taste of any flower lover." 13 What remains undocumented are the planting designs; the role of indigenous species; whether plantings enhanced scenic views; which species were native to the property; or whether artificial devices (for example, lighting or sculpture) were design elements-all matters that may have influenced his advice to Wharton. Dorr was not content to restrict himself to family gardening. The famous Boston flower shows, the woody plant experimentation at the Arnold Arboretum, and Sargent's Garden and Forest motivated him to start a business that reflected not only his values but those of his parents and grandparents. He established the first island nursery in 1896, converting more than thirty acres of adjacent Oldfarm property into the Mount Desert Nurseries. Although both Dorr and Sargent lacked formal instruction in the botanical sciences, they combined the horticulturist's interest in cultivated species with the botanist's research focus on wild plants, a "relatively rare combination" for the era. 14 By 1901 the Bar Harbor Record referred to the "immense scale on which this business is conducted," with plant stock shipped to the West Coast as well as meeting the demands of the burgeoning hotel and cottage communities.¹5 Wharton surely heard about this expansion from her niece since Farrand's Mount Desert commissions utilized Dorr's plant stock. In subsequent years, greenhouse expansion and reconsideration of the purposes of a nursery anticipated what we today refer to as a garden center. The plans included a forty-eight-foot-long nursery gallery showcasing 80 WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT Dorr's "unrivalled collection of photographs of the Wild National Parks of the West and a great many photographs of flowers. Unfortunately, the catastrophic island forest fire of 1947 laid ruin to scores of businesses-including Dorr's nurseries-and the cottage culture. WHARTON'S LETTERS TO DORR As we focus on the era of Wharton's letters to Dorr, the year 1901 proves particularly significant. Both lost their mother that year; the Whartons purchased farmland in Lenox to experience what she described as "the joys of six or seven months a year among fields and woods of my own"; ¹ Wharton's early short story collection Crucial Instances was published; and Dorr became the central figure in an organized effort to conserve Mount Desert Island. Harvard University President Charles W. Eliot gathered together conservation-minded island residents to establish the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations, a group that included George W. Vanderbilt. 18 Dorr was both the Trustees' organizational executive and the field agent who was almost singularly responsible for the acquisition of more than five thousand acres of land that would be accepted by the federal government in 1916, a precedent-setting effort recounted in Dorr's The Story of Acadia National Park19 Dorr's involvement in the development of The Mount gardens may have had as much to do with his Bar Harbor and Boston social interactions as with his horticultural reputation. When the timeline of Dorr's and Wharton's lives are compared, we see that Wharton's first known visit to George W. Vanderbilt's Biltmore estate in Asheville, North Carolina (November 26, 1902) is the day before Dorr arrived. 20 Vanderbilt was a fellow trustees incorporator whose Point d'Acadie estate was a short walk from Oldfarm; he was also a friend of Dorr's who shared a command and appreciation of languages and a serious interest in woodlands. Whether the Vanderbilts arranged these visits to overlap we cannot say. Less than a month after her departure from Asheville, Wharton writes to Dorr-the first of the ten surviving letters to him in the Beinecke Library-expressing the hope that they might be able to accept his dinner invitation in Boston.21 In the summer of 1904 Dorr planned a backpacking trip to the largely unexplored Sierra Nevada Mountains south of Yosemite. En route he stopped at The Mount, as indicated by a letter Wharton wrote him on September 3 that begins the most fruitful period of their correspondence. She has found one of his books on the terrace after his departure (which was forwarded to Boston), and she thanks him for his help with landscape design problems. Wharton flatters him by stating that he left behind "so many fruitful ideas that I often feel you are not really gone, and must be somewhere about, ready to answer the new questions." Moreover, she informs him that "your path is finished, and the task of planting its borders now confronts me; & we are just about to attack the laying out of the path from the flower-garden to the little valley which is to be my future wild garden." Referring to Dorr's trip West, she is hopeful that "you may be able to spare us a day or two on your return" when the autumn work will be nearly over and future plans can be discussed unless "my pigmy planting will quite vanish from your mind among the giant boles of the redwoods!" In late 1994 Wharton writes Dorr (October 29) that she is delighted at the prospect of another visit with him since she and Teddy both are "so interested to hear about your explorations." 81 RONALD H. EPP A month later (November 29), she acknowledges his October letter but fears that her letter to him may have gone astray, and regrets that a November visit seems unlikely since they are snowed under "and therefore of no interest from the landscape gardener's standpoint." Nonetheless, she hopes for a visit in 1905 when "[you could] see how far I was able to carry out your advice, and tell me what to do next." Dorr's final visit to Biltmore (October 18, 1905) precedes the Whartons' Christmas visit, a festive occasion when jasmine, honeysuckle, and laurel set the tone for a seasonal fete for the 350 people who lived and worked on the estate. Two days after Christmas she writes Dorr from the Biltmore house stating that she has "never received an invitation more comprehensively hospitable than yours," regarding his proposal for a January 1906 visit to his Commonwealth Avenue home in Boston, where she looks forward to "good talks on horticulture, free-will and predestination." That the later two topics are mentioned should startle no one familiar with the Dorr and James family associations with psychical research and philosophical inquiry. While Dorr was on Wharton's mind, however, he was much occupied on the same day with the Harvard University dedication of Emerson Hall. Four years earlier Dorr had been charged by the overseers with raising sufficient funds to erect a facility to house Harvard's philosophy and psychology departments. Two months later (February 17, 1906), Wharton informs Dorr of the postponement of her departure for Europe until March 10, expressing hope that she and her husband may yet be permitted "a little visit" to Dorr's home-and extending an open-ended invitation to Dorr once they return from Europe in June to pay us "a longer visit than last summer," the only evidence we have of Dorr's visit in 1905. A week later she writes to a mutual friend of theirs, Justice Robert Grant, that "your letter makes me still more regretful that we have had to give up our plan of going to Mr. Dorr for a few days this month,"2 yet on the next day she writes to Dorr that she expects him within the week in New York. On her return from France later that year, she writes Dorr on August 21 asking him to come to The Mount since Teddy is eager to show him the property "improvements." The next to last letter is problematic since it is undated though contextually futs this time frame; it simply asks Dorr to arrive on another date when "the Edward Robinsons, the Grant LaFarges, and Roger Fry (our new curator of paintings at the Museum)"23 will be present. Concluding these known exchanges, Wharton writes to him on July 24 in response to another invitation from him; she regrets that she must stay at The Mount and work, although Teddy is especially sorry that they can't now have another "Bar Harbor Revisited." There is more talk of flowers and again encouragement that Dorr visit in August or September and see "the George Dorr path, the new pond, and other improvements." This one-way correspondence provides unique biographical details about both individuals and demonstrates Wharton's persistence in developing a relationship with Dorr not restricted to horticultural matters; although Beatrix Jones Farrand is nowhere mentioned, her role in this relationship cannot be overlooked. Wharton's repeated invitations to Dorr should not be treated casually, recognizing that the Whartons were very selective in their invitations to The Mount. These letters also show Wharton's sincere appreciation of Dorr's gardening counsel, demonstrated by repeated references to "the Dorr path." Since this was the only physical feature of the estate named for a person, it is reasonable to conclude that she is acknowledging the value of his advice. Finally, the correspondence shows that the Whartons relished their shared Bar Harbor experiences and that they were sincerely disappointed at not being able to accept Dorr's repeated invitations to his Boston home. However, if written discussion of common acquaintances, literature, and one's emotional landscape are the measures of deeper levels of friendship, then we have little evidence that they were "intimate" friends-a highly selective term of endearment in that era. 82 WILD GARDENS These letters lack specifics to flesh out the details of Dorr's path and the development of wild gardens at The Mount and on Mount Desert Island. We do know that Dorr's indebtedness to the pioneering work of William Robinson is documented in The Dorr Papers by the scores of references to The Garden serial that Robinson launched shortly after the 1870 publication of The Wild Garden. What is a "wild garden"? A logician. might dismiss this conjugation as an oxymoron. But sidestepping this rationalistic approach, it could be argued empirically that a wild garden is a grouping of what is native to a region prior to any efforts to "naturalize." Harvard Botanist M. F. Fernald in "The Acadian Plant Sanctuary" similarly advocates the conservation of environments "which by good fortune still remain in their natural condition."24 Judith B. Tankard's recent introduction to a reprint of The Wild Garden points out that William Robinson was not advocating wilderness but "landscapes enhanced by the use of carefree hardy, native plants. "25 Robinson also proposes placing "perfectly hardy exotic plants under conditions where they will thrive without further care" and situates these gardens "on the outer fringes of the lawn, in grove, park, copse, or by woodland walks and drives."26 One of Dorr's objectives was to foster interest in the preservation of the beauty of native plants threatened by the progress of development. Dorr recognized that woodland plants require woodland conditions and that experimentation in naturalizing such plants requires consideration of a host of environmental considerations (for example, climate, rock texture, shade, and so on). Indeed, wild gardens were experiments, annual efforts to determine which new species would prosper and which would not. Robin Karson could just as easily have been speaking of Dorr when she emphasized that in the wild gardening of Warren H. Manning, "the failures were as interesting as the successes. "27 Even after Wharton departed from The Mount, wild plant botany was still viewed as a youthful enterprise. Commenting in print on Dorr's Acadian plant sanctuary proposal in 1914, landscape architect C. Grant LaFarge emphasized that "to acquire this knowledge under present conditions is well-nigh impossible. The country is too vast; its flora too scattered. Even the most superb examples of wild growth are but stimulating suggestions Your plan offers all of this. "28 The Wild Gardens of Acadia, established by Dorr in 1916, was described by Beatrix Jones Farrand as "an offshoot corporation" of the Hancock County Trustees. Its purpose was to cooperate with the federal government in developing a seacoast national park that would not only conserve Acadian flora and fauna but go beyond the National Park Service mandate and provide "opportunities for observation to students of plant life, of gardening, forestry and landscape art" of native plants in legally protected sanctuaries accessible to future generations, undiminished in diversity of genera and species. 30 As an advocacy instrument, the Wild Gardens of Acadia published ten small but widely circulated monographs (part of the Sieur de Monts Publications series, 1916-18) promoting public understanding of Acadian flora and fauna. set within the cultural. historic. and scientific, justifications for conserving more of the available island. The corporation also acquired land-much of it donated by Dorr-that was then turned to purposes consistent with its mission. The most enduring and visible expression of Dorr's application of the Wild Gardens of Acadia corporation is the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory, established in 1921; today this scientific enterprise is a world-famous center for the study of epithelial transport, the physiology of marine vertebrates, and the toxic effects of environmental pollutants. 31 83 RONALD H. EPP As the Country Place Era unfolded, the "wild garden" concept continued to be open to diverse interpretations. In his memoirs, written during the last decade of his life, Dorr presents a view of wild gardens that I believe he proposed to Wharton nearly forty years earlier: namely, that they are "permanent gardens of naturalization where the hardy flowering plants, herbaceous and woody, might be planted in generous groups as though native to the region and become an outstanding exhibit of what might be planted and grown permanently in it in favorable locations that brings that beauty out by proper placing and artistic background so as to be in harmony with the landscape and a feature of it."32 We are left to wonder whether there is any evidence that Wharton would have agreed with the similarly expressive language of Mariana Van Rensselaer, who characterizes the naturalistic gardener as one who produces "many effects which, under favoring conditions, Nature might have produced without man's aid. Then, the better the results, the less likely it is to be recognized as an artificial and artistic result; the more perfectly the artist attains his end, the more likely we are to forget that he has been at work." Even those who have walked only the most accessible parts of the current Mount property realize that marble ledge outcrops are enduring landscape features. These natural objects were not removed and were critical concerns in siting the drive, the house, and the formal gardens. The effect of these rocky ledges is a matter of perspective, clearly softened when viewed from the upper story windows. The Mount itself is deliberately nestled within unseen rocky ledges that define the foundation, and it appears that Wharton deferred to the natural constraints of the rocky landscape. Further evidence of the preference for natural landscape is the simple fact that of the 113 acres of the estate, only 10 percent was given over to the placement of physical structures and formal Figure 5. Oldfarm estate, Bar Harbor, Maine. Photograph courtesy of the National Park Service, Acadia National Park's William Otis Sawtelle Collections and Research Center. 84 WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT gardens. But there are no further details about the selection, development, and use of the property. Possibly the Whartons' real estate agents advised their clients to acquire sufficient woodland to broaden and protect the outlook. It is unknown whether plans were developed for garden expansion into the available woodland. Wharton's resources may not have been the constraining factor; instead, she may have heeded Gertrude Jeykll's advice that "the size of a garden has very little to do with its merit. Jekyll, creator of the exceptional gardens at Munstead Wood, knew from experience that large gardens can enslave their caretakers. Aside from the labor commitment, however, Jeykil's argument is clearly aesthetic: if one has considerable acreage, "a great part had better be laid out in wood [for] woodland is always restful and enduringly beautiful."36 More specifically, she cautions against the then-fashionable efforts at placement of garden plants in wild places: "Wild gardening is a delightful, and in good hands, a most desirable pursuit, but no kind of gardening is so difficult to do well, or is so full of pitfalls and of paths of peril."37 Dorr had the right "hands" for this task: wide travel and a scholarly disposition made him well versed in European horticulture traditions, his family legacy was couched within the geographical limitations of New England gardening, and as a nurseryman he was thoroughly familiar with what could and could not be accomplished in the environment of the Maine coast or the Berkshire landscape of his boyhood. Did woodland paths wend their way throughout The Mount property? More than twenty years ago, Harvard Graduate School of Design scholars affirmed that the flower garden "linked into adjacent areas with sinuous curving paths emanating from both ends of the east-west axis [and] the other sinuous path, to the east, disappeared around the small mount into the meadow en route to the lake."38 Furthermore, David Bennett refers to "an extensive system of paths for walks and rides [that] extended into the woodland, and linked the Mount's grounds to adjacent estates. 39 THE DORR PATH We cannot be certain that Wharton involved Dorr in the design of his named path-or other paths-but it is not unreasonable to infer that this path was named for him because of his dominating influence on its character. His decades of experience as a Mount Desert Island trailbuilder might suggest paths of roughly uniform width and rough surface. But this would surely have been considered inappropriate-to impose- paths designed for the unusually rugged Maine coast into the Berkshire Hills. The graduated materials used as borders for Wharton's formal gardens might also have been incorporated into pathways, becoming more rustic as one walked away from the house. Or she and Dorr might have weighed the merits of paths of uniform character in order to make them inviting to her more formally attired guests. Arguments could be advanced to show that Dorr favored the rugged, forested terrain west of the property entrance for path development because of his formidable trailbuilding experience with the severe Mount Desert Island mountains (figure 5). On the other hand, the Dorr memoirs contain frequent descriptions of path development on less severe topographies such as the Great Meadow development and its garden paths into downtown Bar Harbor. Indeed, one of his earliest successes was constructing and landscaping a nearly mile-long bicycle path through a marshy beaver pond in Bear 85 Brook Valley, developed in the mid-1890s to allow his aging mother walks and gentle carriage rides.4 40 In view of available evidence, it is most likely that Dorr advised Wharton on the suitability of paths to access wild gardens and recommended that she consider linking paths with more formal walkways. He may have proposed tying these paths to adjacent properties; he played a role in carrying out a similar plan at that time for linking Mount Desert Island town paths. Through the expertise of Beatrix Jones Farrand and George B. Dorr, an island off the coast of Maine would leave its imprint on The Mount. Regrettably, we cannot speak with finality on Wharton's garden design intentions for the last five years of her residency. Dorr's experience with paths and wild gardens on Mount Desert Island may have been applied to the Lenox site, but de locacion of these landscape features remains unknown. Finally, no property map bears the "Dorr path" name that Wharton repeatedly claims as an established landscape feature. This omission leads me to conclude that at one time the Dorr path wended its way through the property-until the woods reclaimed it. NOTES 1 Edith Wharton's letters to George B. Dorr are contained in folder 753, box 24, in the Edith Wharton Collection, Yale Collection of American Literarure, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New Haven, CT). 2 The exception to this is Eleanor Dwight's Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life (New York: Abrams, 1994), 116. 3 Richard S. Jackson Jr. and Cornelia Brooke Gilder, Houses of the Berkshires, 1870-1930 (New York: Acanthus, 2006). 4 Thomas Wren Ward papers, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. 5 Edward Waldo Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club: 1855-1870 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), 110. The Ward family estate Highwood was located near Highlawn, which belonged to George B. Dorr's paternal aunts and uncles prior to Dorr's acquisition of the property. Highlawn is the largely forgotten predecessor to Blantyre, an opulent Tudor-style cottage that is now run as a country-house hotel. 6 The Bar Harbor Historical Society Museum holds the Dorr memoirs, The Dorr Papers. A Guide to 'The Dorr Papers' (2004) has been prepared by this author and is available with microfilm copies of Dorr's memoirs at the Jesup Memorial Library, Bar Harbor, ME, and the Sawrelle Research Center, Acadia National Park. 7 S.B. Sutton, Charles Sprague Sargent and the Arnold Arboretum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), chap. 1. 8 Dorr Papers, B2.f.2. 9 Ibid., B1.f.14. 10 Minutes of the Bar Harbor Village Improvement Association, Bar Harbor Historical Society Museum (Bar Harbor, ME). 11 William James, The Correspondence of William James, vol. 2, ed. I. K. Skrupskelis and E. M. Berkeley (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1993), 46, 272. In addition to entertaining James family members in 1886 and 1893, the Oldfarm guest book documents visits in 1897 and 1907. 12 Beatrix Farrand, "The National Park on Mount Desert Island," Scribner's Magazine 61 (April 1917): 484-94. Farrand family respect for George Dorr is also evident in Max Farrand's September 1932 correspondence with John D. Rockefeller Jr., Rockefeller Archive Center, III.2.I. B110. f.1093, Sleepy Hollow, NY. WILD GARDENS AND PATHWAYS AT THE MOUNT 13 Bar Harbor Record, May 8, 1901; Bar Harbor Times, April 18, 1928. 14 Sutton, Charles Sprague Sargent, 18, 327. 15 Bar Harbor Record, May 8, 1901. 16 Ibid. 17 Edith Wharton quoted in Millicent Bell's Edith Wharton and Henry James (New York: Braziller, 1965), 78. 18 Minutes for the Hancock County Trustees of Public Reservations are archived at the Woodlawn Museum, Ellsworth, ME. 19 The Story of Acadia National Park,. ed. (Bar Harbor, ME: Acadia Publishing, 1997). 20 House Guest Book 1895-1996, Biltmore Estate Archives, Asheville, NC. 21 Edith Wharton to George B. Dorr, December 28, 1902. Edith Wharton Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New Haven, CT). 22 Edith Wharton to Robert Grant. Edith Wharton Collection, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (New Haven, CT). 23 In 1906, English artist and critic Roger Fry (1866-1934) was appointed curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. 24 Sieur de Monts Publications 5 (1916): 2-9. 25 Judith B. Tankard, introduction to The Wild Garden, by William Robinson, reprint (Portland, OR: Sagapress, 1994), xiii. 26 William Robinson, preface (1881) to The Wild Garden, reprint (Portland, OR: Sagapress, 1994), xvi. 27 Robin Karson, The Muses of Gwinn (Sagaponack, NY: Sagapress/Abrams, 1995), 131. 28 C. Grant LaFarge, in George B. Dorr, "Garden Approaches to the National Monument," Sieur de Monts Publications 17 (1919): 11. See also Ronald H. Epp, "George Dorr's Vision for 'Garden Approaches to Acadia National Park," Chebacco: The Magazine of the Mount Desert Historical Society 4 (2004): 55-63. 29 Farrand, "The National Park," 494. 30 Wild Gardens of Acadia: By-Laws. Rockefeller Archive Center, III.2. I. B.85.f. 840. Sleepy Hollow, NY. 31 Franklin H. Epstein, ed., A Laboratory by the Sea (Rhinebeck, NY: River Press, 1998) discusses extensively the role of Dorr and the Wild Gardens of Acadia in the establishment of the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory. 32 Dorr Papers, B3.f.1. 33 Mariana Van Rensselaer, Art Out-of-Doors (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1893), 4. See her Accents as Well as Broad Effects, ed. David Gebhard (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). 34 Wendy Baker, David Bennett, and Diane Dierkes, Landscape Architectural Analysis and Master Plan for The Mount (Lenox, MA: Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc., 1982). 35 Gertrude Jeykll, Wood and Garden, reprint (Woodbridge, UK: Antique Collectors' Club, 1981) chap. 14. 36 Ibid., 249. 37 Ibid., 358. 38 Baker, Bennett, and Dierkes, Landscape Architectural Analysis, 58. 39 Eleanor Dwight, in Edith Wharton: An Extraordinary Life, 94, credits this claim to David Bennett. 40 Dorr Papers, B2.f. 6 and 7. See also Margaret Coffin Brown, Pathmakers: Cultural Landscape Report for the Historic Hiking Trail System of Mount Desert Island (Boston: Olmsted Center for Landscape Preservation/National Park Service, 2006), 55-59, 67-74. 87 CHAPTER I - THE SITE OF THE MOUNT BEFORE THE WHARTON PURCHASE Plate 1 P I T T S F I E L D LENOX B E L Figure I.2 Plate 1, Atlas of the Garden Spots of the Berkshires: Stockbridge, Lenox and Lee, Massachusetts, 1894. Made from surveys by Barnes and Jenks, Civil Engineers, Pittsfield, Mass. and from plans loaned by W.H. Barnes, Housatonic. Published under the direction of James L. Beirne. Draughtsmen, J.P. Barnes, T. W. Hill and H.E.Jenks. [Boston Public Library, Rare Book Room.] CHAPTER II - EDITH AND TEDDY WHARTON AT THE MOUNT, 1901-1911 Carnduff Paterson Interlaken Est. Clipston Warm Goelet Southwood Lessee Estate R.W The Mount Merrywood Chas Buller LAUREL LAKE The Poplaus Samuel Frothingham I Ersk Erskine Park Mrs. Geor Mrs. Westinghouse Highlawn Farm Figure II.1 Plate 22 from the 1904 Barnes and Farnham Atlas of Berkshire County, Massachusetts (M&P-1). [SM] Landscape Features Plunker Street 1. Gate 2. Orchard 3. Old Field 4. Maple Allee 5. Site of Kitchen Garden 6. Spring House FOREST Foundation 7. Meandering Brook o 8. Narrow Maple Port 9. Clearing 10. Swamp (1 of 2) 11. Old Tennis Court 13. Lawn 12. Dog Graves 14. Site of Giant Elm 18. Former Flower Garden 15. Forecourt 19. The Two Hills 16. Service Area 20. The Terraces 21. Former Lime Walk 17. Stage (Shakespeare & Co.) 22. Sunken Garden 23. Pergola/Steps to Meadow 24. Laurel Lake Pond FOREST, 25. Old Sargent Farm 26. Edith THE M o UN T Wharton Park THE EDITH WHARTON ESTATE LENOX. MA. HARVARD GRADUATE SCHOOL OF DESIGN COMMUNITY ASSISTANCE PROGRAM-SPRING 1982 WENDY BAKER . DAVID BENNETT-DIANE DIERKES Laurel Lets 1.-5. Entrance Features 6.-12. Woodland Features 13.-17. Forecourt Features 18.-23. Garden Features 24.-26. Pastoral Features 61 SPRING 1982 From Landscape architectural analysis and master Plan for The mount. 1/2 in BOX is MUNTIN 1/14 2646 CLASS 2/2 x it's & M If STILE My SECTION DETAIL NO BCALE WEST ELEVATION SCALE -1-0" THE MOUNT GREENHOUSE N SCALE m-1-0 LENOX, MASS. BUILT IN 1902 FRANCIS HOPPIN HOPPIN & KOEN ARCHITECTS NEW YORK, N.Y. drawn C. 1988-90 - by Yoshi Sato For Terry Hallock Architects Map of 2 Plunkett St Lenox, MA by MapQuest Page 1 of 1 Sorry! When printing directly from the browser your map may be incorrectly cropped. To print the entire map, try clicking the "Printer-Friendly" link at the top of your results page. MAPQUEST 8 2 Plunkett St Lenox, MA 01240-2704, US Sorry! When printing directly from the browser your map may be incorrectly cropped. To print the entire map, try clicking the "Printer-Friendly" link at the top of your results page. enox 183 20 7 Lily Pond 7A Cranwell Resort Golf 20 Club Stockbridge Bowl Lenox Dale 7 Laurel Lake Summer St Interlaken 800 E '0 2400ft MAPQUEST CH 2007 MapQuest Inc. 2007NAVTEQ All rights reserved. Use Subject to License/Copyright This map is informational only. No representation is made or warranty given as to its content. User assumes all risk of use. MapQuest and its suppliers assume no responsibility for any loss or delay resulting from such use. http://www.mapquest.com/maps/map.adp?formtype=address&country=US&popflag=0&la.. 4/27/2007 First published in the United States of America in 2004 by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc., 300 Park Avenue South, New York, NY IOOIO www.rizzoliusa.com Text @ Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc. 2003. Photographs @ Jonas Dovydenas 2003. Used with permission. All rights reserved. "EDITH WHARTON" and "THE MOUNT" are trademarks belonging to Edith Wharton Restoration, Inc. See www.edithwharton.org. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior consent of the publishers. 2004 2005 2006 2007/ IO 87654321 Distributed in the U.S. trade by St. Martin's Press, New York Printed in China ISBN: 0-8478-2609-0 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937. 2004 The cruise of the Vanadis / Edith Wharton; photographs by Jonas Dovydenas.- - Ist American ed. p. cm. ISBN o-8478-2609-0 I. Mediterranean Region-Description and travel. 2. Wharton, Edith, 1862-1937-Travel-Mediterranean Region. 3. Americans-Mediterranean Region-History. 4. Vanadis (Frigate) I. Dovydenas, Jonas. II. Title. D973.W56 2004 910'.9163'809034-dc22 2003025705 Page 3: Steam yacht VANADIS of 1880 © Mystic Seaport, Mystic, CT Page 224: Image of Edith Wharton. Reprinted by permission of the estate of Edith Wharton and the Watkins/Loomis Agency. E dith Wharton in her memoirs, A Backward Glance, relates how in the winter of 1888, then a bride of three years, aged twenty-six, she confided in a Newport friend and cousin-in-law, James Van Alen, that she would give anything in the world to make a cruise in the Mediterranean. But she was not prepared for his answer: "You needn't do that if you'd let me charter a yacht and come with me." Van Alen meant what he said. He was a hearty and adventurous soul, a world traveler, a.member of an old Knickerbocker family and the widower of Edith's second cousin, Emily Astor who had died in child- birth. He had volunteered to fight the Turks in Greece in Lord Mulcaster's ill-fated expedition in the 1870s, but had fortunately been prevented from going by a last minute attack of malaria. He was rich enough to pay his half of the charter of the yacht Vanadis, but Edith and her husband Teddy had to come up with their half, which they sportingly did, though it amounted for them a full year's income. Luck, however was on their side, for a distant cousin of Edith's died while they were at sea, and her unanticipated share of his estate more than covered the cost of a cruise which Edith called a "taste of heaven." The account that she kept of this excursion is the only writing of hers of which we have any knowledge, except for some juvenilia, from the first quarter century of her life. As a published writer she was certainly a late starter. Keats was dead at an age when she had still not begun. But those earlier years had not been wasted. She not only read deeply in English, French, Italian and German literature; her keen eyes had taken in and her copious memory had recorded the myriad details of her child- hood visits to Europe and her home life in brownstone Manhattan and the shingle villas of Newport. She had stored a gallery in her mind from which she would be able to illustrate the many volumes she was destined to write. The portrait that the French novelist, Paul Burget, provided of a Newport intellectual matron in Outremer (1893) has long been recog- nized as Edith Wharton. She "has read everything, understood every- thing, not superficially but really, with an energy of culture that could put to shame the whole Parisian fraternity of letters." And yet he found him- THE CRUISE OF THE VANADIS I5 selflonging to cry, "Oh, for one ignorance, one error, just a single one!" But he longed in vain. One can see a little of what he means in reading the account of her cruise. Edith Wharton's observations are SO richly detailed, so vividly expressed, and, one is sure, with so unerring a taste, and SO accurate a rendition, that one wonders at times if any tourist could really be so exquisitely equipped for the experience of travel. Yet any such begrudg- ment is soon swept away by the excitement of feeling that one is witnessing the genesis of a great literary career. Edith Wharton was not going to sub- ject herself or the public to the spectacle of any awkward first steps; all of these would be kept to herself until she was ready to present a really fin- ished product. The style of her first published work of fiction, "The Greater Inclination" (1890), did not have to be improved upon for the rest of her long literary life. In her log of the Vanadis we have a kind of dress rehearsal for the fiction of one of America's greatest novelists. The diary, if diary it was-and the sharpness of its details certainly suggests an almost daily recording-is strictly limited to just what Edith saw at each Ionian or Aegean stop. One occasionally has a glimpse of the author's sometimes rather domineering personality in her admissions that her rigorous schedule of exhaustive sightseeing may have caused a bit of a strain on her two more easygoing male companions, and we note that she found the captain surly and indifferent. There are also moments when she voices her dissent from popular opinion, as when she suggests that the famous Sicilian cathedral at Monreale lacks depth and variety of color, or when she disagrees with those romantics who find ruins improved by their very dilapidation. How the architect of the temples at Girgenti, she exclaims, would have shuddered to think that "his raw masses of sandstone would remain exposed to the eyes of future critics!" For the most part, however, the beauties of nature and ancient civilization speak for themselves in her vivid and elegant prose, and the splendid photographs of Jonas Dovydenas of the actual scenes she describes shed a fascinating modern light on a world that has actually changed very little since the cruise of the Vanadis-and where it has changed tourists would not be anxious to penetrate. The industries of the day, THE CRUISE OF THE VANADIS 16 Edith states, might be a source of pride to modern Greeks, "but very uninteresting to the traveler who has hoped in sailing eastward to leave the practical realities of life behind." So minutely does Edith observe the phenomena that attract her that it is hard to believe that she was only a day or two in most of the sites visited. Take for example this description of what the women of Amorgos had on: "They wore linen petticoats grotesquely embroidered with images of beasts and birds in red and green silks, and some had linen jackets, still more elaborately embroidered, with enormously wide sleeves; while oth- ers wore skirts and jackets of scarlet cloth. All of them had chemisettes of gold-embroidered gauze and necklaces of old coins; while their heads were wound in long yellow scarves falling to their shoulders." One can see in the diary the trained eye that would one day enable its possessor to recreate the gleaming overstuffed Victorian interi- ors of Fifth Avenue and the small bright lawns and big bright sea of Newport, as so unforgettably depicted in The Age of Innocence. Edmund Wilson would call Edith Wharton the pioneer and poet of interior deco- ration, but her gardens were just as fine as her houses, in her books as in her life. We see in what she wrote about her cruise that she was ready to set her stages, to fill her backgrounds, to create the world in which her char- acters would enact her plots. The characters and plots would come in due time. THE CRUISE OF THE VANADIS I7 3 4600 00503 4779 ITALIAN VILLAS AND THEIR GARDENS BY EDITH WHARTON ILLUSTRATED WITH PICTURES BY VILLA CAMPI, NEAR FLORENCE MAXFIELD PARRISH- AND BY PHOTOGRAPHS LIRE NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1904 VIVIAN R USSELL Part E DITH WHARTONS ITALIAN GARDEN'S A Bulfinch Press Book Little, Brown and Company Boston . New York P Toronto . London Edith Wharton's home at the Mount in Massachusetts was inspired by Edith would take. She may well have written the articles in the Belton House in England, at the time assumed to be by Sir Christopher Wren. atmospheric, painterly vein of her writing in her novel, had she From her second-floor apartments, where she spent the mornings writing, not discovered quite quickly into her researches that no serious Edith could look out over the clipped box, geometrical parterres and statues of work on Italian gardens existed in English. The 1894 peregrinations the Italianate garden she had created. The garden and surrounding landscape of Charles Platt, a landscape architect and friend and neighbour of are recognizable in descriptions in her novel The House of Mirth, Parrish's in Bar Harbour, Maine, had produced some splendid published three years after she moved there. photographs of less than two dozen of the grandest gardens, but the accompanying text contained not a single date or architect, The editors at Century Magazine thought that this poetry-in-prose and Edith instantly recognized the potential of SO interesting and rendering of an Italian garden would perfectly complement the unexplored a subject: 'having been given the opportunity to do a romantic style of the artist Maxfield Parrish. Shortly after the Valley book that needed doing, I resolutely took it.' After the critical of Decision was published, they asked Edith to write a series of success of The Valley of Decision, 'nothing would appease her creative articles to accompany paintings of Italian gardens by him. She was and critical appetite', noted her biographer, Professor R. W. B. enthusiastic about the idea, as Parrish had already illustrated one Lewis. She tackled this project with what Paul Bourget dubbed of her short stories. The Century editors, confident that her prose energy of culture', which Henry James sometimes found would be as rhapsodic as Maxfield Parrish's 'moonlight and overwhelming, describing the experience of 'travelling under the nightingale' fantasies, underestimated the high-minded approach spur' with the 'rich, rushing, ravening' Whartons. L EDITH WHARTON AND ITALY Edith fully understood that the Italian garden had almost nothing to do with the art of gardening and everything to do with the garden as a work of art. Principles of architecture, the study of painting, sculpture and architectural detail were all disciplines she had long schooled herself in, and which had given her an excellent grasp of the 'plastic arts'. Spanning many years, her reading of Italian literature, poetry and mythology had been comprehensive. In the Renaissance garden, seeped in symbolism, allegory and the visions of poets, she would recognize the enchanted gardens of Tasso, the fables of Ariosto, the philosophy of Petrarch, the spiritual journey of Dante and how these writers were inextricably bonded to the old Italian garden, as indeed was the whole cultural background of Italy. Edith launched herself into the uncharted waters of her Italian garden voyage on 3 January 1903, when she and Teddy sailed for Genoa. Now fifty-four, Teddy's underlying mental instability was beginning to surface. The doctor had ordered him to spend time in wintery sunshine, and SO for three weeks Edith sat under a palm tree in detested San Remo, impatient to be off prospecting for the gold of the Italian garden. From San Remo the Whartons went to Genoa, and from Genoa to Rome, where they arrived at the end of the first week in February for a month's stay. From Rome Edith wrote to her childhood friend Daisy Chanler, 'You don't need to be told, I am sure, that I have thought of you very often in scenes which are SO associated with you. We have been here a month, and we leave, alas, the day after tomorrow, with a sense at once of regret and repleteness. I think sometimes it is almost a pity to enjoy Italy as much as I do, because the acuteness of my sensations makes them rather E The fashionable and successful Mrs Wharton in Paris in 1907, a exhausting. The highlight of the stay was undoubtedly her first d when she was enjoying the fame earned by her novel The House of experience of a motor car, driven by the American ambassador, , which had become a bestseller. George Meyer, from Rome to Caprarola, a round trip of 100 miles that she was astonished could be accomplished in an afternoon. SITE The and gold inclept to the first edition of LEFT Robert Norton's watercolour four of Edith Wharton's last garden at Plac Pavillon Colombe, Saint-Brice, refe complements the description left by othe a visitor in the 1930s: 'there was an the atmosphere of repose and other- world so strong that one shed one's forg present day self at the threshold Through the window my eyes of rested among the green trees whose you trunks were shot by the late sun- grea rays. Stone jars with pink climbing tida geraniums stood out against the only vivid fat grass of a wet summer, and the smell of box rose pungently from chu the formal clipped hedges.' her OPPOSITE Edith Wharton on the the terrace at Sainte-Claire in the first 1930s. Beside her are her sper housekeeper Gross and her little frie dogs who always accompanied her on her travels. her Edith Wharton cared for her gardens with passionate devotion. rendering of a garden that elicited the comment from the Austrian She ministered to her plants as if they were young charges; perhaps ambasssador, as he looked out from the terrace over a formal it garden, rock garden, trees, rolling hills and lake: 'Ah, Mrs Wharton, bec they replaced the children she never had. 'Edith was very learned about gardens, reported Berkeley Updike, the stylish printer of when I look about me I don't know if I am in England or Italy.' ma her books, on a visit to the Mount, and she and a neighbour, Miss She never made a garden in Italy, seeming to have exhausted Charlotte Barnes, used to hold 'interminable and to me rather her subject, and henceforth treated it, she said, as 'dessert' whilst she boring conversations about the relative merits of various English France became her 'daily bread'. She made two gardens in France, seedsmen and the precise shades of blue or red or yellow flowers her two saints she called them: Saint-Brice outside Paris, and Sainte- that they could guarantee their customers. I have never thought it Claire, built on an Hyères hillside overlooking the Mediterranean. very interesting to hear about other people's gardens and have She spent her winters there in the company of two of the greatest laughed at the prosey discourses of their owners until I had one of gardeners of this century, Lawrence 'Johnnie' Johnston and her hop my own, when I found myself victimizing guests in precisely the neighbour Charles de Noailles. same way.' The art critic Bernard Berenson had by this time replaced Walter Although she commissioned her niece Beatrix Farrand to design Berry and Henry James as her intellectual confidant. Bernard and the kitchen garden at the Mount, Edith wanted to do the rest of his wife Mary Berenson's villa, I Tatti, near Florence, became her the landscaping there herself. Teddy was also involved, 'opening spiritual home and she visited them every year, usually en route to a up vistas through trees' with mixed results. In her later years, or from Hyères. Sainte-Claire, she wrote to Berenson, was no mere sme Edith admitted how her Italian book influenced the Italianate parterre of heaven; it is the very "cielo della quieta" that Dante dise VISITING In cases where different guidebooks give different names for the same villa, alternatives have been given, after the name THE used in this book. Relevant phone numbers have been supplied where available. It is GARDENS worth telephoning first, as some villas may be open only by appointment. LOMBARDY ISOLA MADRE 28050 Isole Madre (VB) Tel: 323 31261 One of the Borromean Islands, on Lake Maggiore; reached by boat from Stresa, Baveno or Pallanza ISOLA BELLA 28050 Isola Bella (VB) Tel: 323 30556 One of the Borromean Islands, on Lake Maggiore; reached by boat ( 1 from Stresa, Baveno or Pallanza 3 VILLA D'ESTE 7 Via Regina 40 ( 22012 Cernobbio (CO) I Tel: 031 511471/512471 On the west shore of Lake Como, I 33 miles/53 km N of Milan and \ 3 miles/5 km N of Como 3 7 VILLA CARLOTTA ( Via Regina 2 22019 Tremezzo (CO) Tel: 344 40405/41011 I On the west shore of Lake Como, A 18 1/2 miles/30 km north of Como, 3 on the S340 between Tremezzo 7 and Cadenabbia; or by boat 1 from Bellagio or Como 3 0 via Aurelia Antica, 21050 Bisuschio (VA) 37023 Grezzana (VR) Tel: 55 697205 Via di S. Pancrazio name Tel: 332 471134 Tel: 45 907045/907135 1 1/4 miles/2 km on the far side of or Via Vitellia 5 miles/8 km north of Varese 5 1/2 miles/9 km north of Verona Settignano, 5 miles/8 km north- 00165 Rome on the S344 t is towards Negrar east of Florence Tel: 6 5899359/5813717 (tours) South-west of the city centre, some entrance beyond the Porta San VENETO FLORENCE SIENA Pancrazio VILLA PISANI VILLA PRATOLINO VILLA GORI CAPRAROLA Via A. Pisani 6 Parco di Villa Pratolino Via di Ventena 8 Villa Farnese 30039 Stra (VE) Demidoff 53100 Siena Piazza Farnese Tel: 49 9800590 loc. Pratolino Tel: 39 577 2209 (tourist office) 01032 Caprarola (VT) On the Brenta canal, 5 miles/8 km Via Fiorentina 6 North of Siena on the road to Tel: 761 646052 east of Padua on the S11 50030 Vaglia (FI) Vicobello near the Monastera 11 miles/18 km south-east of Tel: 55 2760529-538 Osservanza Viterbo off the Via Cimina is, on CASTELLO DEL CATAIO 7 1/2 miles/12 km north of Florence oat 35041 Battaglia Terme (PD) VICOBELLO VILLA D'ESTE nza Tel: 49 526541 VILLA CASTELLO Villa Vicobello Piazza Trento 1 About 10 1/2 miles/17 km south-west of Villa Medici Castello Via Vicobello 12 00019 Tivoli (Roma) Padua on the SS16 towards Monselice loc. Castello Vico Alto Tel: 312070 Via di Castello 53100 Siena Town centre, 18 1/2 miles/30 km GIUSTI GARDENS 50141 Firenze Tel: 39 577 2209 (tourist office) east of Rome on the S5 ds, on Giardino Giusti/Palazzo Giusti Tel: 55 5 454791 (porter's lodge) Just outside the city walls of Siena oat Via Giusti 2 South of Sesto Fiorentino, 3 1/2 VILLA LANTE nza 37129 Verona miles/6 km north-west of Florence CETINALE Via J. Barozzi 71 Tel: 45 8034029 Villa Cetinale 01031 Bagnaia (VT) City centre, on the east bank of the BOBOLI GARDENS Cetinale Tel: 761 288008 River Adige Piazza Pitti 1 Sovicille 1 3/4 miles/3 km east of Viterbo 50125 Firenze 53018 Siena PADUA BOTANIC GARDEN Tel: 55 218741 (tours) Tel: 39 577 2209 (tourist office) VILLA ALDOBRANDINI Como, Via Orto Botanico 15 and City centre, behind the Pitti Palace 8 miles/13 km south-west of Via G. Massaia 18 35123 Padua (PD) Siena, between Ancaiano and 00044 Frascati (Roma) Tel: 49 656614 VILLA PETRAIA Celsa, via the S73 Tel: 6 9426887 City centre Villa Medicea della Petraia 13 1/2 miles/22 km south-east of loc. Castello Rome on the S215 VALSANZIBIO Via della Petraia 40 ROME Villa Barbarigo/Villa Pizzoni 50141 Firenze Ardemani Tel: 55 452691 VILLA MEDICI Como, Como, 35030 Valsanzibio di Galzignano (PD) South of Sesto Fiorentino, 3 1/2 Via Trinità dei Monti Tel: 49 9130042 miles/6 km north-west of Florence 00187 Rome 11 miles/18 km south of Padua, On the Pincian Hill at the top of t 31/2 miles/6 km west of Battaglia Terme the Spanish Steps OPPOSITE A rainy day at the on the A13 or the S16 Jardin d'Amour at Isola Bella. 187 Manchester, A. x A BACKWARD GLANCE by EDITH WHARTON Je veux remonter le penchant de mes belles années Châteaubriand: Mémoires d'Outre Tombe Kein Genuss ist vorübergehend. Goethe: Wilhelm Meister DAVISION D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY THE AUTHOR INCORPORATED NEW YORK LONDON 1934 Sectude Jekyll Wood and Garden rptd. Lade: Deen to 1981 (1899) Month by mouth treatment. Lage t Small garden Pg 358 "Will gordeny is a delogetife, and in good handsca most desidable, yoursuit, but No herd of gordency Lo so difficult to do well, or IS 80 full f pitfall odd paths of perit." Says ,7 is now fashionable " " ? understand to we Marty exotics in will places not can that ay guide plat iF, placed 02 will place a wild youdy She steme need for the "Not cauped Considertia for ay wilt gardy. f.359 The place "seeved tr ash for th plasty a " fair in picture value Shanes the wond Jour the gorden replant 88 that the gorde influence pretrite the here of there, Jekyle 2 the then. better to fairth one to the p.H. a guidencia a friend teacher Rt track patience ad cauful waterfulness; it teacher Indu try + thrift, above all, it teacher estire trust Ch. 14 : Large Small gordens "The size of a feeler has by lette to do write it merit. them hournuch carbe done un a small space P 242 "I do not envy the ourseen veg large gording . the goide should fit its master or his taste just as he clothes do, it should be neither too large nor too fail l net just confortable, is tru loup to wange, the le become its slove. of expecientry torese + their garden, p 243 the 1sl they is to for laye unbroke laun space Als., a broad walk day Sunath pubuls level hear ford word Jebyll-3z lawn as bounded "G five fees, 244 away beyond that is all weld wood. of carn the "wood world from into shub plactations, ad father still leb guide & wild achard - ask a garden should neveribe large dings to butting ad if on 2.249 hase a laye space, "apeat that # had better be loud aat in wood Woodlarn always realfal + deduringly beautiful, + then the be intermediate kind g wordland that should be made more I - woodland the orchaed type." Leon Edel. Henry James ? a Life ny: Harper + Row, 1985. Rev.versus of Hearz Jam. The Untreat Years 1843-1870. etc. PP.579F The Agreeable women," Whaton had "pursued" H.J. R would have more "men fueld than women and they was dwgs men high in the life of the country What endesure her to HI was "that she pursoned also a avilized mind ad art st's style." 1st net in Dec. 1903 despite executes in 1090's awells Whitter descules have "the Nort intructe fuel p.581 have wer had though in deg ways we were so different 597 Lody phenixy. Heny James Letters Ed. hean Edil. Haward U.P., 1 E80. Vol. 3 HY to WT. 9/10/86. Refer to WY's short letter of 8/24 after spet greater pat v visit in bed mt desert w aat a bad placet to have missed in p.131-2 that ay." HJ recall visit there c g James before return England "I never sow a place of which I understand less than itthould be rovedabout - or even endured. 3 pp-letter to VML 4 n HJ7. may Cadeshadee Jones from Rye 8/20/02. HI to Sarah Butler Wister (daughter I Fanug Kenble) for Rya 12/21/02. Refersts Samuel G. Word as a person to whom A-260 WJ "part wash vibrate(s). HT to Edith Wdaction from Rye 11/8/05. Refers to Eath Beatray who did net look too well if of the would fiving "Doctors ad waters "and connet the self to the advice of "Livine Hetcher. HJ to Edith, Rye, 10/4/07. He s y no he hoojjust you H62 sput 5 day may & Beating in" requeste weather expressed when? at John Cadwaladers grousenoor." HJ to Edith, By Cambridge (MA), 2/9/11. Again effer to 1.594 spendy too time in ny e May Beatras - -mod affectionality. 2. letters of Henry James p. 669 HJ to Howard Shurgis, 5/12/13. Effort to dear up ancestry issues. " Gussy Baher un the son of z Grent Jonet (Janes) the, day at but (I think) or very early nedes, had married Willian B., brother of anna Barker", mrs. S.G. Ward, the latter wife of the 'good' Some ward, of boston, ad late the mother of from dear deaf 'Tom' of Bossie vou Schonberg (wife of Ernst) of Lily V. Hoffmann of the old Roman days etc." note: Sheya had be ready a small Bay + Others Joanette James ( 1814-42 who married William H. Barker in 1832 ad Seid jay butk to her 4th child, Augustus Janes in 1842 Her second child us Eliz abete Hojard Bacher, who married George Hoggingon + died in 1901. (p.671). # HJ to Edith Eye, 9/19/14. Refers to Mary Cadinal as here. "atte thought of eecing you, however, my eye does feel itsey kindle..." 3/14/06 : lots to understand the as applied here a on MDI, are rust first griff its creators - nus Whatton - for Farmed and The background interests f W.D.D. catalyzed their Creater little endsever + combend to Deshape the garde at th mout what Sevi W.co the better humin of the bus, I'll form trace some before ideas that shoped Mr. Jani developmet -and subquest attraction to Mrs. W. Parchpround of D. -enghase Europea Travest - " garding traditions, First lekel BH Dorr - Cadwaladeria In B.H. (1881-83). Beatrix Johnsonallection of 1883 Reef Print grouds Both failte Dan. Whother, Farmed were surforded g girlshy decerse cultural setting *Seeps 2 2. Doris Many knoots in BroSales the Borton Dessociation c fracetical, act Acidy lettery figures such as Chach Dichen, margant fuller, etc. contabrated the stimulested Dear development, top Harvard Edwart frouls, ad Park Street accommonant avenu association formal been of a Docul networ that proveded durise opportunities for ones. Dau. Cresm of Charle Sproper taynt-ude lehon Intelly Beating which rate be profedf refleced Does wound friquity corresponded c the Hawark address expects uped identifical Anetabit of local flora Ident ff travel locations - Englad, Europe E gypt, ad the Seerra any other trip X n.P.S. Conferences. Ner vivid impressions of gailers visited development Papers, also in frendo monts pubs moup Desert nursere opened in 1896, the you afte Beatrey Jone reba for Europe & established of hern.y. practice 3 We know heg letter of the walulu of th MDNursew offer details ald Farm - A its Gardens 1934 (?) HAn 1930, the Garden Clut of America Chose MDI for ets anual meet locators, signal continuing status of then garbers at a tan fut May believed that the grande Sount are of the Gelded aye had longwaneshield JaWhit after scare of gaiden visited, one l noted for the havey acheved subs 3 that true, what Patierh Charoe, calls, "the peak In the gardus developut." garden at Seal Harbor of course the an the Albe Roelefalle Egree note We don't know what: - planting designs were wellyed - the role of indigenous species - wheller effect are thoroughly nebbratistic a trial to the event, as at the Eyrie - how planting elated to cultivated of views - what trees were nature to property - corobler scupture and ligeting were used to labouce D whith Forrard budges would of feed input 4- - was Old Farm we a nursery for the commercial enterprese? - were wachings aparts used shore thogleat the prepared or restricted fo a access for the cottage ? - was old form decorated c fresh flowl anonputs few the proplef or seurced s th MD nuseries ? - as Dorrs experience e gords was refund were there chaaps in the derection of he guide that hrp acted - has profession advice to gredever the Edith Whatton ? - Wh the a contray prequire for personal an and (green amount of certa colors ALCE ? - Thigh Dorr mode concerted efforest the be attach no restrictions. to preseure propers by gifty if to Sadl, the property was reflected its design healey has been lost. Site Visit 4/13/06 The Mount Q.: Tax assessment-plastor of Old Farm? Kitchen Sande designedy BFContainer funts & vegetable covery 150x300' now used as packing area between gatehnm + stables July 1901. Spunhhage at the Mout is Scounde elont Rechech Whatton Uss. l illy Lobay, Indiana u Edith is photograph might very cutical of imaces taken of her! less the 10% of landscape at the near give over to placeaut of halses, outbuildings, t freed gardening Remolide "wild' (Di 113+ Earth at th blout did not ug on the Mr. Dorr, + her our may for bostrultural expect sc other garden + Beatrix. No moving imges of E.W. nor audio, ZIW vez selective @ guests 2 4/13/06. Wetlad adjocent to Forecourt. Stream Hank house, one is rented as cascade Houry to Lawel Puid. under here t energes in funt center bedges cradle" the Hout. Roch outgrophing@abound x Rechech GeorgeCobot Lodge ("BAY"Lodge). Would limiewall have bee extended out of Red formal gaid into wold garden trid it loops around property ? Was its composition graduated toward len expensive -+ more natural- Materialion Whaeta did C her borders. Use of grass terraces body toward here Verdant paths ? Floriculture See Annette Handers x omarism Cruger Coffin, Ellen Ship ment 4 Edite Whenton neece. Mrs Whaten' lettest GBD of a "technical" nature accord to Betry. 4/14/06. The first decade f 20th certy sae both EW+ CBD freed of maternal their mother in 1201 constraints fallery the death of "Bosco" 1 define ré walled stuetu Re VFI - look at pond lake t faim buildings and Elm plasting is of a rustic / partoral contaxt more ohin to (ala Betsy ) th Englist Garde uidded than Itelial. Farm Complex t Road to it farm Ban + Gate Holse Outbuildage Tiled Terrace Check image for fcatts book lear cover Jam Gambaco plato from pond hode to herese. = The degart this wanderful abode - is an ex quintle t marvelour place, a delicat ock x Edith Jahoway beooge Romsden. 1999. Cherk Dors Papers guide le E.W. aerial news - X marie house Gathein . Q History of Garden art