A Clearing In the Distance by Witold Rybczynski
Author:Witold Rybczynski
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
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1. Godkin wrote Olmsted describing the trial—“there is a tremendous libel suit going on here between Weed (Thurlow) & Opdyke, from which it plainly appears that one is as great a scoundrel as the other.” But Olmsted did not receive the letter until the end of January.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
A Heavy Sort of Book
WHATEVER HAPPENED to the Mariposa Company, Olmsted’s tenure at the Estate was over. Even if the company recovered, it could never again afford a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year manager. Yet he did not pack up and leave. He decided to stay at least until the end of September, which would conclude his second year of service. This was partly a question of pride. He was also being practical. If he stayed, he had a slim chance of being paid—he had telegraphed New York with a request for five thousand dollars. The cost of living in Bear Valley was high; Mary had been obliged to let two of the servants go. Still, he was not unhappy to remain even at his own expense. The children were healthy; he and Mary enjoyed their outdoor life. When it got hot, they planned to return to their idyllic summer camp in the mountains. That would give him time to complete the Yosemite report, which was his personal responsibility.
The long-term future was uncertain. “I wish you could find some commission business in which you and I could engage together,” he wrote Godkin, who was still trying to get “the paper” off the ground. What Olmsted had in mind was something “wherein a little capital would go a good way and be safe.” Alternatively, he thought himself suited to be president of a railroad company, head of a news wire service, or editor of a newspaper. He considered the Foreign Service. “I have had ever since I have been in this burnt country, a real craving for the English climate. Mary has the same and agrees to live on bread and cheese for a year if I will get the consulship to any slushy old town where there are donkeys to let,” he confessed. He was open to almost any career—except landscape architecture. Miller was still in San Francisco working on the cemetery and preparing to survey the College of California site, but Olmsted considered these projects as merely sidelines.
One thing, at least, was sure. He would leave California. It was not only the arid climate. After three months in San Francisco, he had concluded that without more capital his chances of making his fortune in the West were limited. “There are men of high position who would like to make use of me,” he wrote Godkin, “but it is only because they think that I could get capital for them in New York—get up stock companies, of the Mariposa model, for the development of California property of questionable value, which I wouldn’t if I could.” The inference that Mariposa had been “of questionable value” is unmistakable, although Olmsted could not bring himself to admit that
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