Genius of Place by Justin Martin Page A

Staten Island.” And here’s a sampling: “We ask you, then, Fellow Citizens, one and all, to associate in this Society. We entreat you to support it. We believe it will increase the profit of our labor—enhance the value of our lands—throw a garment of beauty around our homes, and above all, and before all, materially promote Moral and Intellectual Improvement—instructing us in the language of Nature, from whose preaching, while we pursue our grateful labors, we shall learn to receive her Fruits as the bounty, and her Beauty as the manifestation of her Creator.”
    In his capacity as recording secretary, Olmsted also pushed for a plank road on Staten Island—just like Geddes; he was doing his mentor proud. One thing that’s striking about Olmsted is the speed with which he could inhabit a new role. Blink and he was on the threshold of some bold new endeavor. Blink again and he was deep into it. It wasn’t so long ago that Olmsted had served the apprenticeship at Fairmount. Now he was a farmer in his own right. And as he’d once told Brace: “For the matter of happiness, there is no body of men that are half as well satisfied with their business as our farmers.”

CHAPTER 5
    Two Pilgrimages
    BUT THE HALCYON stretch on Tosomock Farm—this, too, could not last. When Olmsted learned that his brother and Brace planned a walking tour of England, he could scarcely contain his envy.
    John was going partly in an effort to improve his health. Walking in the countryside would do him well, he hoped, and maybe help quell the lingering respiratory ailment that had been bothering him on and off for several years now. Brace was reeling from the recent death of his younger sister, Emma. Walking would be contemplative, a fitting way to mourn her passing. Brace also viewed the trip as an opportunity to learn about the conditions of the poor in another country.
    Olmsted dashed off a letter to his father about this walking tour. The letter starts by striking a note of sober assessment. Olmsted wanted to make it clear that he had his priorities straight. Sure, the idea of a walking tour was enticing. It sounded like a real lark. There was also so much work to be done on the farm. But a few paragraphs into the letter, he could restrain himself no longer: “I have a just barely controllable passion for just what John is thinking to undertake.” And he added, “I confess the idea, if I give it the rein of contemplation at all, is so exciting that I can not control it with impartial reason, and so, for the present I try to forget it.”
    Yet try as he might, he could not forget the matter, not even in that very letter. Olmsted proceeded to scrawl page after page to his father, enumerating all the various reasons that the trip made sense. Though he’d sailed to China, he had never been to England. It would be better to visit now, while he was full of youthful vigor. Then, he could really buckle
down to life as a farmer, contented that he’d seen England at least. For that matter, he would surely gain some useful information while visiting the British countryside that he could apply on his own farm. The trip would be good for his health, too, especially in light of a “bowel complaint” he’d been suffering from lately. He could look out for his younger brother. He could look after Charley Brace.
    In the letter, Olmsted never comes right out and asks permission from his father. John Sr. held the mortgage on Tosomock Farm, after all, and he was in a position to nix the idea. Instead, Olmsted put together a raft of rationalizations. He would be back in time for the fall harvest. The hired hands could look after the farm during his absence. A trip to England would be a kind of pilgrimage—to an important place, conferring all kinds of benefits—and he simply had to go. “I did not mean to argue the matter much,” Olmsted concluded his letter, though