Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

with men in originating planting schemes for public parks; but that, if she must work alone, private estates are better adapted to her powers.

Mr. John Nolen points out that, in justice to the women, it should be remembered that they are little likely to get the chance to show what they might do in a public way. In other arts there is nothing to restrain a woman from making a deliberate display of her powers. If she wants to paint a Last Judgment, or model a Pietà, no one can stop her. But in landscape architecture success was on invitation. A woman might map out the most ambitious plans for an imaginary park. But even supposing she could get any one to look at them, they would be valueless. For the essence of success in such designing is that the plans shall fit specific conditions. Public prejudice would operate against a woman's being trusted with public work, and she would rarely be asked to submit plans for specific projects.

There is one notable exception to the statement that women do not excel in public designing-Miss Wilkinson, an English woman who was adjudged worthy to be made adviser to the London Board of Works. However, we will let Miss Wilkinson prove the rule, leaving to women the ample field of designing beautiful settings for beautiful homes. Herein her male critics agree in paying her more than tolerant regard. Her feeling for beauty is allowed to be, if anything, more sensitive than man's; she has a discriminating eye for color. Moreover, she has that kind of genius which consists in a capacity for taking limitless pains. "A woman will fuss with a garden," so says Mr. Guy Lowell, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology," in a way that no man will ever have the patience to do. If necessary, she will sit on a camp-stool and see every individual plant put into the ground. I have no hesitation in saying that where the relatively small garden is concerned, the average woman will do better than the average man.'

Oh, yes, there's a field for women in landscape gardening; but scarcely a field large enough to invite the sex in a body.

Who, then, are the women who ought to feel themselves called to prepare for it?

In answering this, it should be pointed out that landscape gardening, being not a trade but a profession, shares with other professions this peculiarity, that it cannot be taught. You cannot reduce it to tables, as: four trees make one clump, ten clumps make one grove, ten groves make one wood. Much that is contributory to it, like horticulture, may be learned in the schools, indeed must be learned; the novice may be put in the way of coming to her highest development; but, however lavish her initial equipment, in the long run she must work out her own salvation.

This argues a certain native endowment. And, indeed, the woman who looks towards landscape gardening may well take serious counsel with herself. As truly as any painter must she have pictorial imagination, the artist's eye for form and color, for proportion, for composition. For, looking upon ugliness, she must see the potential beauty beneath. She has not the painter's freedom of hand, for no blank canvas, but a more or less stubborn tract of the earth's surface, is spread to receive the picture conceived by her brain. In a sense she needs to add the sculptor's gift to that of the painter, for it is hers to mold the very contours of the earth.

This is much, but there is more. The work of the landscape artist needs not only beauty that appeals to the eye, but that added beauty of fitness, of perfect adaptation to use. Not only to dream dreams, but to make the dreams comfortable to live in-such is the demand upon her who makes beautiful compositions out of home grounds. Hence along with imagination must go keen practicality. And with practicality, constructive ability. Most women plan well, many women arrange well, but the building, the constructive, instinct has sometimes seemed the monopoly of man.

Suppose a woman sufficiently an artist, a devout lover of nature, with the necessary practical endowments, she may then proceed to ask herself whether she is enough of an artist in dealing with men. She may have pictured her future life as

[graphic]

FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY THE J. HORACE M'FARL-ND COMPANY

"IT IS ALL ONE WHETHER IT BE THE GROUNDS OF A MODEST SUBURBAN VILLA, OR A PARK"

spent in coddling plants in the "wise stillness" of a garden. There are other things to be coddled, though-namely, the feelings of fussy or opinionated garden-owners, at the very roots of whose warped taste it may be her duty to strike. Nothing short of consummate tact will harmonize the relations of client and designer. Let her, therefore, be wise as the serpent and harmless as the dove.

A certain moral hardihood should be thrown in. For the landscape gardener must sometimes destroy in order to create. She must violate her woman's nature which leads her to protect, to nurse, laying the ax at the root of a beautiful tree for the sake of a more beautiful vista, condemning a lovely detail for the higher loveliness of unity. Sternness is needed, and also the courage of her convictions. For, as Mary Caroline Robbins says in her delightful "Rescue of an Old Place," "Suppose we don't like it when the bushes are down, what then?"

Lastly, for she who assumes the care of other people's gardens becomes an executor at once, disburser of other people's money, let her seek in herself no inconsiderable business acumen.

Given a woman with this rare combination of qualities, how shall she best equip herself for her profession?

The pioneers among the women, like the pioneers among the men, worked out their problems before such things as courses in landscape gardening were to be had. And there are some who think that that is still the better way, quarrel ing with the academic method as likely to produce narrow dependence on rules. It is, however, now possible for a woman to put herself through a stiff course at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Harvard, with the only other fully developed course in landscape design, does not admit women, though for the present they are not barred from the work in horticulture and silviculture at the Bussey Institution. Cornell offers a somewhat less rigorous programme, open to men and women alike.

But whether a woman subjects herself to training in an institution or conducts her own education, it should be remembered that she cannot learn too

much. Horticulture she must master in all its branches, and some knowledge of practical forestry will not come amiss. The principles of architecture and of design must be part of the familiar furniture of her mind. She must be able to draw, both to sketch rapidly and accurately--that she may be able to put her suggestions before her clients in graphic form-and also to draft plans. So much understanding of surveying as will enable her to interpret topographical maps, and of engineering as will at least permit her to consult intelligently with experts when problems emerge that lie beyond her professional ken-these are essential. An easy reading knowledge of French and German will open up a whole realm of technical and critical literature. Somehow she must contrive to get a knowledge of business methods.

There is a general feeling among established landscape architects that the young women now preparing for the profession are impatient of acquiring so much detail. There are rumors that some of them decline to learn to draw, proposing to stake out their plans on the ground, and that others scorn to learn draughtsmanship, since they can always command the services of male underlings to do the stupid work.

Among professionals these airy notions are provocative of vast mirth, and sundry disrespectful stories of blunders made by fair but untechnical landscape artistes go the round of the offices. It is maintained that no woman can properly direct the work of underlings unless she is their superior in knowledge.

For the matter of that, I do not find that the established women in the profession are much more tolerant of scamped preparation. And they one and all bemoan the fact that the keystone of such training-apprenticeship in the office of a great firm-is so difficult for a woman to put in place. Says Miss Marian Coffin, another successful member of the profession in New York: “It is hard to get a start, as there is a prejudice in many offices against employing women. . . . A woman has to solve many problems and learn the ropes entirely by herself, while a man has the advantage of long office training.

[ocr errors]
[graphic][merged small][merged small]

and experience." It is possible that if women held their noses more doggedly to the technical grindstone, the prejudice against employing them in offices might gradually wear away.

Her preparation finished, does the landscape gardener graduate into an existence of dignified otiosity? Is it a species of rest-cure?

Here it would seem the public is under some slight misapprehension. So far from being a placid, it is a peripatetic, profession. The landscape gardener may be classed as a traveling man. If he has National reputation-and if he has not, he may as well starve unostentatiously at once and be done with it--his services will be called for from all quarters of the map.

And may not an established firm insist upon work in a chosen locality? Perhaps so, though landscape architects are pretty well "bunched up" in New York and Boston, and it seems doubtful whether local work would go round. But they would not so limit themselves if they could. Above everything else, a landscape architect wants breadth and plasticity of mind. He fears coming to work by formula. Hence it is of the utmost importance that he be constantly confronted by fresh problems, new conditions. One architect, whose work car

ries him from Maine to Virginia, from Oregon to Southern California, told me, between his moans over the heavy travel his year had brought him, that he wouldn't part with the experience for the world.

As the man, so the woman. A large part of that "open-air" life held up so alluringly before her is really spent on overheated sleeping-cars. The fact is, her days are compounded of alternate exposure and confinement as she vibrates between her desk and the field. For much of the preliminary examination of estates must be done in the winter. Country places-worse luck to them!are usually in the country, and visiting them in blizzardy weather means long, bitter drives, chilling tramps round deserted grounds, meals at impossible places and uncertain intervals, and general misery such as the average woman is not often called upon to endure.

And then the spring! Suppose a woman has a dozen gardens on her hands and the planting season falls due. Why, then she must be as nearly as possible in a dozen places at once. What incredible skippings about the map! What total abandonment of the laws of health! What magnificent indifference to hunger and fatigue, to wet skirts and chilled blood! While the

rush lasts, your woman is the stuff that sion as a means of support." And Miss martyrs are made of.

But women pay for such strains. Miss Jones testifies that "robust health is an essential to a woman who wishes to build up more than a small practice in landscape gardening. The physical fatigue involved in this perpetual traveling is very great, and I do not know of any woman who has been for any length of time engaged in a large practice who has not had to stop all work for a longer or shorter time as the result of a breakdown."

When I tell that to landscape gardeners of the other sex, they shake their heads and say, "Pretty much the same might be said of the men."

Away go our flowery visions of a light and puttering pursuit! Landscape gardening deserves to rank among the most taxing of professions.

And the compensation? Well, was it ever known that any fine art was overpaid? Hear the testimony of those who have succeeded. Says Miss Coffin : "Unless a woman has capital, or influence, or is able to get into a good office, she is very foolish to take up the profes

Jones writes: "I do not know of any of the women who are considered to be successful landscape gardeners who have not some means of their own assured to start with, and supplement their incomes by their professional earnings. At present I do not think there is an opportunity for many or few women who depend upon it entirely for their support." Miss Brown opines that it is wrong to look to it for a living primarily, as if it were a trade, and she suggests that some of the women who are turning their thoughts that way because they love growing things and need money, but not because they have large æsthetic endowment, will do better to start nurseries or greenhouses for the nurture of some particular kind of flowers.

As to the question whether the reward is commensurate with the outlay of effort and artistic skill, my feminine informants hesitate to speak lest they seem to put a money value on their own gifts. From men I glean that in all probability women who are making more than $2,500 a year have cause to thank their stars. Also that, as the natural assumption among

[graphic][merged small]

44

THE DESIGN MAY BE FORMAL, AS IN THE OLD FRENCH OR ITALIAN GARDENS"

« AnteriorContinuar »