A Clearing In The Distance: Frederick Law Olmsted and America in the 19th Cent

by Rybczynski, Witold

  Today Hartford is not a beautiful city. The interstate highway separates the city from the river, and although the state capitol is handsome, the downtown is an ill-assorted collection of undistinguished modern office buildings. But in the midnineteenth century, Hartford was widely recognized as an attractive town. It was surrounded by rolling countryside and preserved many of the charms of the New England village it had once been. “The town is beautifully situated in a basin of green hills . . . it is a lovely place,” observed Charles Dickens, who spent three days there during his 1842 tour of the United States. People lived in neat, white-painted wooden houses with gardens surrounded by picket fences. Main Street was a broad, unpaved thoroughfare, lined by wooden sidewalks and three- and four-story brick buildings with stores below and offices and rented rooms above. Like all the streets, it was shaded by large trees. The leafy canopy spread over the town like a green blanket, pierced at regular intervals by the steeples of devout Hartford’s many churches. “Of all the beautiful towns it has been my fortune to see, this is the chief,” wrote Mark Twain upon his first visit in 1868. “Everywhere the eye turns it is blessed with visions of refreshing green. You do not know what beauty is if you have not been here.” Twain liked Hartford so much he moved there shortly after.

  Olmsted’s rambles took him to one or another of his scores of uncles and cousins, as well as to his grandmother Content Olmsted, whose husband, Benjamin, had died when Frederick was ten. Benjamin Olmsted had been a strong influence on the boy and had left him with a valuable memory. One day the normally closemouthed old man noticed that his grandson had climbed a tall elm that grew near the house. He told Frederick that as a boy he had planted this very tree, some seventy years earlier. “It came to me after a time as he went on talking about it,” Olmsted recalled, “that there had been nothing in all his long life of which he was so frankly proud and in which he took such complete pleasure as the planting and the beautiful growth of this tree.”

  Olmsted’s favorite relation seems to have been his namesake, Uncle Law, whom he singled out as having had “a notable influence in my education.” Jonathan Law, a friend of the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, was a scholarly man, whom Olmsted recalled as reciting Latin poetry (Frederick evidently had a good grasp of Latin thanks, probably, to Brace’s teaching). Charlotte Olmsted had grown up with her older sister, Stella, and Jonathan Law, so they had particularly warm feelings for their nephew. Moreover, they had no children of their own. Olmsted visited the Laws during his summer holidays. The couple encouraged his interest in plants, and he was given his own garden beds to cultivate. He also frequented the house of his bachelor first cousin Charles Hyde Olmsted, whose shipowner father had left him with a modest fortune. Charles, then about thirty years old, was a Yale graduate, but had been “brought up to no regular calling,” in Olmsted’s words. Charles shared his interest in nature with the boy, whom he later introduced into the Hartford Natural History Society. Like Jonathan Law, Charles was a retiring, bookish man, and he allowed his young cousin the run of his “notable library.” His relations with the Laws and with his cousin underline an attractive trait of Olmsted’s character, here described by a boyhood friend. “He was very fond of society, not only of young people both boys and girls but of elderly people of whom there was anything to learn—and there were few from whom he could not learn something.” It was kindly elderly people such as the Laws and Charles Hyde Olmsted who helped the boy through his sometimes difficult childhood.

  The landscape of Connecticut consists chiefly of gently undulating hills. The main feature is the valley of the Connecticut River, but there are many smaller rivers, and thousands of ponds and lakes. The relatively temperate climate lacks the extremes of neighboring states. The mild winters and humid summers allow the cultivation of a wide variety of trees and shrubs. This was, and is, a countryside of undramatic but exceptional beauty. Olmsted took his surroundings for granted, but they undoubtedly had an important influence on his sensibilities. The landscape of Connecticut is unusual in another way. It is, by North American standards, modestly scaled. There are no great lakes, vast prairies, thundering rivers, or craggy mountains. Even the shoreline, protected by Long Island Sound, has a benign air. Settled early, it has a tamed look that would have been apparent even in the nineteenth century, perhaps even more so then since the state was more rural, and more agricultural, than it is today. Of all New England, it is this picturesque countryside that most closely recalls that of old England. No wonder that the writing of the British landscape gardeners immediately appealed to the young Olmsted. The countryside they described was not exotic—it was familiar.

  Living away from home, being moved from one school to another, gave Frederick the opportunity to experience the variety of the Connecticut landscape. But it also limited his circle of friends. Though he was warm and outgoing, not until later did he make friends—often lifelong friends—easily. During his childhood, his closest companion was his younger brother, John. As the size of the Olmsted household increased through the arrival of new half sisters and half brothers, Frederick and John, separated by only three years, naturally became fast friends. The bond was strengthened by the two terms that the boys spent together in Newington under the sober eye of the Reverend Mr. Brace.

  Years later, Olmsted recalled a hike with his brother to his aunt’s house in Cheshire. “I was but nine when I once walked sixteen miles over a strange country with my brother who was but six, to reach it. We were two days on the road, spent the night at a rural inn which I saw still standing a few years ago, and were so tired when we arrived that, after sitting before that great fireplace and being feasted, we found that our legs would not support us and were carried off to bed. It was a beautiful region of rocky glens and trout brooks.”5 I imagine their adventure. It is a sunny day. The dusty road outside Hartford winds its way through rolling meadows. Olmsted is in the lead, probably talking, pointing out birds and trees in the hedgerows along the verge. He is excited about the prospect of adventure. He holds his younger brother by the hand. John is less sure about the outing. He is thinking that perhaps they should go home before it gets too late. But he goes along, trusting that Frederick will find the way, as he always seems to do.

  * * *

  1. One should certainly not judge it by modern standards. Formal education was neither commonplace nor a prerequisite for future accomplishments. Abraham Lincoln, born thirteen years earlier than Olmsted (in much poorer circumstances), learned to read and write at home and attended school less than a year. Nevertheless, he was able to study law on his own and obtain a license.

  2. Evidently Olmsted did not look back on his extended absences from home with bad feelings since he sent his own boys to a boarding school.

  3. Bushnell was the Olmsteds’ next-door neighbor. He was considered radical, however, and the Olmsted family did not attend his church.

  4. In 1829, Sir Robert Peel organized the first regular police force in London. Philadelphia followed suit five years later, but most American cities lacked regular policing until the 1840s.

  5. It does not say much for Mary Ann Olmsted’s mothering that she allowed the two young boys to make such an excursion alone.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “I Have No Objection”

  NOVEMBER 1837 FOUND the fifteen-year-old Olmsted on the road again, but not for pleasure. He was traveling to Andover, Massachusetts, to board and study with Frederick A. Barton. Unlike the boy’s other tutors, Barton was not a clergyman, at least not yet—he was studying for the ministry at Andover Theological Seminary. He taught mathematics at Phillips Academy. But Olmsted was not to attend classes at Phillips, nor to study mathematics. Barton was by profession a surveyor, and although Olmsted later referred to himself as having been “the pupil of a topographical engineer,” the reality was more mundane. He was to learn a trade.

  There was no dishonor in that. No less a man than George Washington terminated his formal schooling at fifteen to be apprenticed to a
surveyor. Although Washington’s contemporaries Madison, Jefferson, and Hamilton were college graduates, higher education was a rarity, and it remained so in Olmsted’s day. A college diploma may have been required to be a doctor or a clergyman, but most professions were still learned through apprenticeship. Still, Olmsted might have been expected to go to college. His mentors, Jonathan Law and Charles Hyde Olmsted, were both college men, Yale was nearby, and John Olmsted could afford to send his son to college. There was even a relation on the Yale faculty, Olmsted’s second cousin Dennison. He was a professor of mathematics and natural history and would certainly have facilitated the boy’s acceptance.1

  Olmsted himself explained his lack of a college education this way: “When fourteen I was laid up by an extremely virulent sumach poisoning, making me for some time partially blind, after which, and possibly as a result, I was troubled for several years with a disorder of the eyes and the oculists advised that I should be kept from studying.” In a letter to Elizabeth Baldwin he wrote: “Because of an accident putting my eyes in some peril, I was at the most important age left to ‘run wild.’ . . . While my mates were fitting for college, I was allowed to indulge my strong natural propensity for roaming afield and day dreaming under a tree.” The sumac story sounds far-fetched. Contact with the resin of poison sumac, as with poison ivy and poison oak, can cause inflammation of the skin, but is not known to cause ocular disorders. Olmsted’s eyesight problem may have been some form of conjunctivitis. It is unclear exactly when Olmsted first experienced problems with his eyes, but it seems to have occurred in the spring when he was either fourteen or fifteen. One form of conjunctivitis—vernal keratoconjunctivitis—occurs precisely in the spring and is a disease of late childhood or early adulthood.

  Medicine in 1836 was, of course, primitive. Whatever the cause of the eye affliction, there was not much a doctor could do. The typical physician’s bag contained a syringe for enemas, and a lancet, a scarificator, and a cupping glass, for bleeding the patient. There was a pitifully small number of drugs: laudanum for pain, calomel for purging, sarsaparilla to induce sweating, and various compounds containing alcohol that were given as tonics to combat fever. Other than that, doctors could only prescribe rest and fresh air. In the early 1800s, there was a fad for hydrotherapy, and the treatment that was recommended for Olmsted’s malady was seawater bathing (hence, presumably, his summers in Saybrook). Since modern remedies for conjunctivitis include washing the eyes with a weak saline solution, this may, in fact, have helped reduce the inflammation.

  Conjunctivitis can be acute or chronic. It may last for several months, disappear entirely, and then reappear. The following year—again, in the spring—Olmsted suffered a recurrence of his eye disorder. His father took him to New York, to consult a Dr. Wallace, who recommended continuing the sea bathing. The doctor also made another prescription: “Advised to give up college on account of eyes.” This statement appears in an excerpt from John Olmsted’s journal that was included in a compilation of Frederick Law Olmsted’s writings, published in 1922. The excerpt supposedly was based on a summary of John Olmsted’s journal; however, it does not appear in the original journal. John Olmsted noted only that on June 14, 1837, he “went to NYK with Fredk by river returned Monday 19th via New Haven” and that Dr. Wallace charged four dollars to examine the boy’s eyes. The 1922 compilation also includes a comment that when Frederick was with the Reverend Mr. Brace, he was “fitting for college,” and quotes John Olmsted as noting that after going to school in East Hartford, the boy was “now ready to enter college.” Neither statement appears in the original journal.

  Someone altered the historical record to support Olmsted’s contention that he would have gone to college had it not been for his poor eyesight. That does not make the contention untrue, but it does cast doubt on it. There are other questions. Would a boy with faulty vision really have been sent to learn surveying? Sighting through transits, recording columns of figures, and preparing detailed maps requires excellent eyesight. If he was headed for college, why not wait a year or two before aborting such an important decision? Finally, if only weak eyesight prevented him from entering college, why didn’t he apply when the disorder cleared up?

  None of Olmsted’s correspondence from the period of his apprenticeship to Barton has survived, but the Olmsted collection at the Library of Congress does contain several letters written to him at the time by his father. In one letter, dated less than a year after his son arrived in Andover, John Olmsted advised him: “If you will not go back in your surveying by giving it up this term & pursuing other studies . . . I have no objection.” But he quickly added, “I am sorry however to have your mind unsettled on the subject of your studies.” He then counseled him, “Be desirous of pursuing such studies as will most tend to your intellectual and moral improvement & to fit you for the usefulness & employment when you take your place in the great theatre of life & throw everything from you that tends to distract from this pursuit.” He also reminded his son not to study in the evenings, unless he felt that his eyes were up to it.

  This reference to evening study makes it clear that weak eyesight was still a concern. On the other hand, the disorder was evidently not serious enough to have been considered a major impediment to the boy’s present—or future—studies. Equally revealing is the use of the term “your surveying.” It suggests that the decision to become a surveyor was not the father’s but the son’s. Indeed, at the end of the letter, John Olmsted makes it clear that he would be happy if his son chose a different course of study, something that would lead to greater “intellectual and moral improvement.”

  What really discouraged Olmsted from attending college was probably his irregular schooling and the amount of cramming he would have had to do to prepare himself. He had had enough of book learning—he was never, in fact, a strong student. In any case, surveying would have appealed to his love of the outdoors. It is not difficult to imagine the impetuous boy announcing one day, “I’m going to be a surveyor.” He was certainly stubborn enough to defy his father. The choice seems impulsive because not so long after arriving at Barton’s, Olmsted was ready to throw in the towel.

  Although his father’s letter was characteristically uncoercive and left the door open for him to abandon his surveying should he so decide, the boy resolved otherwise. He would stick it out. That was a part of his stubbornness, too. Only two weeks later (father and son corresponded frequently), his father wrote to him: “I am very pleased with the account of your studies . . . & very glad to learn that you are now getting so much interested in them—I thought it could not be otherwise—At 16 or 17, if ever, we begin to feel that the time is come for us to throw off boyish notions & habits.”

  Olmsted would spend more than two years learning to be a surveyor. After twelve months, the now Reverend Mr. Barton moved to Collinsville, Connecticut, some fifteen miles from Hartford, to his first parish. Olmsted accompanied his tutor, despite his father’s hope that his son might remain in Andover and follow a more intellectual course of study. Olmsted was intent on continuing his surveying training. He later downplayed his apprenticeship with Barton and described it as a “decently restrained vagabond life, generally pursued under the guise of an angler, a fowler or a dabbler on the shallowest shores of the deep sea of the natural sciences.” Olmsted certainly would have spent a lot of time out-of-doors, for surveying is literally learned in the field. The student is assigned practice runs across difficult terrain and required to establish the distance between predetermined points and the elevation of different landmarks, and to prepare the contour plans based on these measurements. It is not demanding work. I once spent several weeks in a summer surveying course as part of my architectural training. I remember not unpleasant days spent outdoors in the Quebec countryside, and long, boring evenings when we were obliged to document the day’s observations and make the detailed calculations that never quite—in my case—added up. I can imagine Olmsted enjoyed the paperwork, and he could certa
inly indulge his love of nature and natural scenery as he trudged across the fields, carrying his transit from one station point to another.

  Since Barton had his classes at Phillips Academy, and later his parish work, to attend to, Olmsted did spend much of his time unsupervised. Hence his characterization of this as a vagabond life. At the same time, he couldn’t have helped acquiring at least some of the skills that would later prove useful: how to calculate “cut and fill” (the addition and subtraction of earth when land is reshaped), how to lay out roads and house lots, as well as an understanding of how to read—and prepare—topographic maps, subdivision plans, and other survey documents. That he learned to draw is attested to by an entry in his father’s diary, recording a payment of eleven dollars—a significant sum—to Wyeth & Ackerman in Andover for “Fredrk tuition drawing etc.”

  The apprenticeship was interrupted by summer holidays. In August 1838 he accompanied his parents and his brother, John, on a two-and-a-half-week trip through the White Mountains of New Hampshire. This was the longest vacation that Olmsted had taken with his parents since he was six and they had visited his uncle Owen in upstate New York. That journey had been by steamboat and stagecoach. This time they traveled in their own carriage, up the valley of the Connecticut River and east through Franconia Notch, where they could marvel at that curious rock formation known as the Old Man of the Mountains. They continued south to Lake Winnipesaukee and visited the coastal town of Portsmouth before returning home via Boston. Olmsted’s father recorded the itinerary in his diary and also mentioned that they passed through Andover, so probably his son was dropped off with Barton.

  On April 6, 1840, three weeks short of his eighteenth birthday, Olmsted returned home, his apprenticeship complete. At that age, Washington had already been working as a public surveyor for a year. Olmsted, on the other hand, seemed in no hurry to get a job. He spent most of that summer in Hartford, living in his parents’ house, helping relatives on their farms, seeing family, and sailing on the Connecticut River. Unfortunately, his dear brother wasn’t there to keep him company—that was the summer John had been sent to Paris. They wrote to each other frequently. “Please send us some French Periodicals & remember I am a curiosity hunter,” he reminded John.