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The Landscape Gardener

The Landscape Gardener image
Parent Issue
Day
12
Month
December
Year
1902
Copyright
Public Domain
OCR Text

THE LANDSCAPE GARDENER

A REVIEW BY MRS. CHARLES DAVIS OF A LIFE

Read Before the Ladies' Union at their Meeting in the Unitarian Church Yesterday

At the meeting of the Ladies' Union Wednesday afternoon Mrs. Chas. Davis gave a most interesting review of the book which was written by Pres. Eliot entitled "The Landscape Gardener." Mrs. Davis prefaced her remarks by saying she would give a resume or abstract of the book rather than a review. The fact that this book was written by a father as a biography of his son was most unusual ant pathetic. It is really an autobiography as well as a biography, the thread of the two lives of father and son being closely intertwined. As Walt Whitman says, "It is not a book but a man" showing the characteristics of the son and throughout the whole a vein of tenderness runs.

Charles Eliot was born of good New England stock. He was not a strong lad and always lived a great deal out of doors, He had the advantage of most boys in that he had spent three years in Europe before he reached the age of ten. He was accustomed to spend his time in taking long walks around Boston. He made and maps of the country and took notes which helped him greatly in his profession.  He attended Harvard college and chose chiefly to study history, sciences and languages. He had made no choices of profession when he came to his senior years when he decided to become a landscape architect. He helped to this choice more by his sports than by his studies. After graduating at Harvard he took some special courses in botany and geology at Bussey Institute. There was no place in America to study for his chosen profession, so he joined his uncle, Mr. Olmstead, and designed and worked with him for some time. He came west with Mr. Olmstead and designed many of the beautiful features of Belle Isle park. He himself designed a decorative and appropriate landing place, which has never been erected.

After about one year Eliot started out for himself and travelled extensively and studied the natural beauties of the various countries and the public parks and grounds of large estates.

In all his work he urges the enhancing of natural beauties by natural means. He heartily condemns the Anglo-American mania, and insists that there is no sense in transporting English gardens to America. Natural trees grow best and that is the most desirable thing. His special detestation was the planting of shrubs or trees alone like so many measuring points or exclamation marks on the face of a lawn.

Mr. Eliot met his wife on board the steamer when he took his first trip abroad to study and they were married a year afterward. He was the father of four little girls. He died in 1896 of cerebral spinal meningitis.