The Codman Estate-“The Grange”: a Landscape Chronicle ALANEMIMET

The Codman Estate-“The Grange”: A Landscape Chronicle ALANEMIMET

efore the Revolution, the sixteen list of his library reveals a person of broad acres which comprise SPNEA’s culture. IO addition to many books on law, B Codman property in Lincoln, Mas- history, and religion, Russell read Ovid, sachusetts were only a tiny fraction of a Pope, Bacon’s New Atlantis, Miltons’ seven hundred acre estate, albeit the esseo- Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, tial fraction. since they held the house and John Gay’s Rural Sports, and practical barns. The estate was assembledsoon after volumes on husbandry by William Ellis and 1700by Charles Chambers of Charlestown, Edward Lisle.2 Chambers Russell was a Massachusetts,a merchant, legislator, and lawyer, legislator, and a judge, but not a judge who had amassed a fortune in the merchant as were his grandfather, father, West Indies trade. Although the config- and brothers. He was as noted for his ioteg- uration of the property changed over rity as for his hospitality and generosity. the years, the major part of this great Chambers Russell, a founding father of farm remained in the Chambers-Russell- Lincoln in 1754, bestowedon the new town Codmao family for more than two ceo- the name of his grandfather Chambers’s turies, with the exception of one fifty-year birthplace in England. interval, until SPNEA acquired it in 1%9. After Chambers Russell died in 1767, the The history of this landscape can be or- estate was administered by his executors ganized accordingto the successionof fam- during the disruptive years of the Revolu- ily members who had the greatest impact tionary War, and by 1790, belonged to 00 it. Chambers Russell, Jr. IO that year he died, and, having no children, left the property to Chambers Russell his six-year-old nephew, Charles Russell Codman. Little Charles’s father, John, as Charles Chambers bequeathed the land one executor, began immediately and for he had acquired to his grandson and pro- the remaining thirteen years of his life to tig& Chambers Russell, who between 1735 treat the place as his own. and 1741 built the two-story Georgian The first glimpse we have of the house in house now encased within the present its landscape setting comes from two brief mansion. The original house was a mao- phrases in an inventory of 1778. The ap- sioo, too, according to the 1767 inventory praiserslist “The Mansion House with the of Chambers Russell’s estate.’ (See fig. 1.) Front Yard,” and “The Octigoo piece of Russell owned barns and farmhouses in mowing Front of the Grate House about Lincoln, as well as another family farm in Five acres.“” The particular mention of the Charlestown. Of his six slaves, five were “front yard” indicates that there may have listed as having no monetary value, probably because of old age or infiity. Their This articleis a revision of a report preparedby master, who had always treated them as Christine Fernandez and Alan Emmet for the “entitled to the rights of humanity,” pro- SPNEA Properties Department. Aan Emmet, vided in his will for them to be supported author of Cambridge, Massachusetts: The Changing of a Landscape, is a consultant in for life on his farm. Russell grew corn, hay, landscapehistory who is presently conducting oats, and flax. He raised sheep, cattle, an inventory of landscape-relatedphotographs oxen, swine, and poultry. The three-page and engravingsin SPNEA files. 6 Old- Time New England

FIG. 1. CHAMBERS RUSSELL’S FARM, LINCOLN (ca. 1767). SPNEA’s present holdingsare indicated by a dotted line at the center. The balance of the acreage now includes conservationand residentialland, MassachusettsAudubon Society’s Drumlin Farm, and Lincoln’s entire businessdis- trict. (Drawn by the author.)

been somethingspecial about the treatment upper and lower platform by a high glacis of that sloping ground. [artificial slope] surrounded by a richly The placement of the Russell-Codman wrought railing decoratedwith gilt balls.“6 house on an elevated site is typical of the The Russell-Codman forecourt may have eighteenth century. Landowners of wealth been as ornate. In the 1920s it was still and culture in England through mid- partially enclosed by a balustrade (fig. 8). century and in America for longer built “Octagon” is a term which has con- their mansions atop hills to gain “pros- tinued to be applied to the wet meadow and pect.” The slopes were then shaped into a pond embraced by the two accessroads on series of platforms, with terraces and steps the Codman property (fig. 11). Though axial to the facade. These features at the neither pond nor meadow display the Russell-Codman house may well be con- geometry implied by their name, it is likely temporary with its construction shortly be- that the pond was at one time a “bason” in fore 1740. One similar local example was a formal setting. John James, in his 1712 Thomas Hancock’s house on Beacon Hill, Theory and Practice of Gardening, in- where a landscape gardener contracted in cluded the octagon in his suggestedforms 1735to “lay out the garden, trim the beds, for pieces of water. Or “ifa bason be circu- and sodd ye Ten-as.“” Bulfinch’s 1792 lar,” he wrote, “the walk that surrounds it house for Joseph Barrel1 at Charlestown, should be octangular.“7 Stowe, one of the “Pleasant Hill,” was one of many set upon greatestand best known English landscape grassed terraces.s gardens, included a “large Octagon Piece A contemporary account describesPeter of Water” with an obelisk fountain seventy Fanueil’s Boston mansion soon after 1738: feet high at its center.sThe garden at Stowe “The deep courtyard, ornamented with was laid out in the 1720s by Charles flowers and shrubs, was divided into an Bridgeman, with parterres, terraces, and a The Codman Estate

canal descendingon an axis with the south self and his heirs.9 Up went a new barn, front of the houseto the Octagon Lake near stable, farmhouse, and fences. Fields were the entrance gates (fig. 2). It is not unlikely ditched and wells were dug. Agricultural that Chambers Russell had visited Stowe, production rose swiftly under a new man- even though the scant surviving records of ager. In 1792 Codman became founder of his life provide no evidence of it. The gar- the Massachusetts Society for Promoting den was, in any event, well known through Agriculture, organized to share knowledge published plans and poems. It is entirely and encourage experimentation. John possible that Russell may have been creat- Codman’s major impact on the estate was ing a simplified imitation in Lincoln just the transformation of the house into a when, ironically, William Kent, Bridge- three-story high style Federal mansion, its man’s successorat Stowe, was engaged in design attributed to Bulfinch. With respect reshaping and “naturalizing” the Octagon to the landscape, we can read in his letters there in the 1750s. The lake at Stowe, de- what he admired and what he wanted to do, spite further softening of the outline by but it seemsprobable that he accomplished Capability Brown, continued to be called no major change. His accounts include bills the Octagon, just as have the meadow and for repairs and refurbishments between pond at the Codman estate. 1791and 1796. Thomas Clement, his estate carpenter, charged Codman for “fences and espaliers” , “ arches, stepts,and border John Codman III boards”, “pickett posts and rails for gar- When John Codman took over the run- den”, “poles for trees”, “fence at house” down estate in 1790, he began immediately and a “large hottbed.“iO In 1799 Codman to build and refurbish the property for him- ordered thirty-nine “Alm” trees.

FIG. 2. THE OCTAGON LAKE AT STOWE, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE, 1739.One of Rigaud’s drawings from Sarah Bridgeman’s PIans of&we. This view shows the lake in its original geometric shape, with the long axial approach rising to the great house far beyond. (Photograph from Frances Loeb Library, Harvard University; Courtesy of the Newberry Library, Chicago.) Old- Time New England

John Codman’s delightful letters to his And six weeks later: beloved second wife Catherine, written I do not know any place in America during a business trip to England in 1800, so much like Gentlemens’ seats in this reveal a pride in his own estate, as well as country as Lincoln (dear Lincoln) all it his changing tastes in response to what he wants is the foreyard all knocked away observed as he traveled. He was charmed and the house to stand in the midst of a lawn . _ . .I4 by the seclusion of the English country seats. The hedgesand clumps of trees en- At the start of the eighteenth century, circling them-products of the Enclosure nearly every English country seat por- Acts and of deliberate reforestation, as trayed by Kip, Knyff, and others in their much as of fashion-were to Codman bird’s_eye view engravingshad an enclosed pleasantly unlike his homeland. He visited front courtyard. A hundred years later, several seats, where he was impressed by however, when John Codman made his the fine distant views, and the deliberate tour, most great houses had had their concealment of roads and structures. foreyards “knocked away,” along with Kitchen gardens, greenhouses, and farm every other formal element. Lawns and buildings were all “covered from sight” drives now swept up to the very door, a and “of course hid by trees.“‘] He mar- result of the stylistic revolution which veled at the clean gravel walks “in serpen- Capability Brown had carried to its tine and twisted forms,“r2 which circum- extreme. navigated the grounds. The grandest seat Proud as John Codman was of his own he visited was Wilton, where old geometric place, he now realized that it was old- gardens and canals had been remade in the fashioned in its formality. “I think I shall new natural style, as at so many English make some improvements when I return,” estates during the second half of the he wrote to Catherine. How much he was eighteenth century. able to accomplish in the remaining two Codman sent messagesthrough his wife years of of his life is not known. The ter- Catherine to his manager, Isaac Goode- races exist today, however, and the tree nough, telling him to plant more trees so as that later Codmans referred to as ‘grand- to hide the barns, the road, and the father’s mulberry” survived on the second schoolhouse. He wanted to emulate the terrace until 1920. Apparently the foreyard English houses and gardens in every re- was not made “a I’Anglaise” after all. spect. His most cherished schemeCodman Even though he did not live to fulfill all attributed to Mrs. Christopher Gore, a his dreams, John Codman’s improvements Boston friend who was living in England to his house and his 450 acres must have during the term of her husband’s diplo- brought the place to a dazzling elegance. matic mission from 17% to 1804. Within His death in 1803 at the age of forty-eight two weeks of his arrival in England, John put an end not only to landscape changes, Codman wrote to his wife, but to his expressed wish that one of his Mrs. Gore and myselfhave beenplanning older sons carry on the estate after him. improvementsat Lincoln, she says it is Charles Russell Codman, who came of age the handsomestplace in America and soon after his father’s death, sold the place might be made a 1Anglaise’ with ease. I Iike her plan that the foreyard should be without apparent remorse as soon as he thrown down into a lawn that carriages could. His ostensible reason was that he may drive to the front door . . . .I3 needed the money to establish himself. It was his children and grandchildren who grew up to regret the sale. The Codman Estate

Charles Russell Codman sold the estate stated proudly, “My father’s country in pieces. The main parcel passedthrough a houseat Lincoln was thoroughly of the 18th successionof owners: dewolfes, Homers, century.“is His letters to his brother Tom Percivals, and Minnses. When in 1815An- frequently praised the taste of “the Honor- drew Homer advertised the sale of “A Val- able John,” their great-grandfather,as evi- uable Farm” of 280 acres, he made it sound denced by their ancestral demesne. a magnificent place still. He boasted that it When Ogden, Sr., reacquired the family was “formerly the residence of the late estate in 1862, he named it “The Grange.” John Codman, Esq.“iS The Percivals, The word grange is defined as a country however, stored farm tools in the house, a housewith associatedbarns and other farm hint of diminished grandeur. Tax records, buildings, which indicates that Codman in- inventories, and sale notices reveal a tended to develop the estate agriculturally. steady decline in livestock, crops, and real He purchased at least seventy-five books value. The most significant impact of the on agriculture and horticulture during the Minns family-which owned the property 1860s. Even before Ogden gained title, he for twenty-seven years-was the sale in took his brother-in-law, the architect John 1844of a seven-acre strip to the Fitchburg Hubbard Sturgis, out to look over the run- Railroad. The right-of-way cut a swath down property. Sturgis designed a new through the estate, and the train ran-as it farm cottage, and recommended that the still does-less than two hundred yards deteriorated 1790sstable be torn down to from the house. make way for the new one, which is still StZUldillg. There was a fever of activity on the OgdenCodmm grounds, too. For seven months during Ogden Codman, the son of Charles Rus- 1863, Ogden’s accounts show that “stone sell and grandson of John, married Sarah men” and other laborers were at work with Fletcher Bradlee in October 1861.The fol- horses, cement, lime, drills, blasting pow- lowing July, according to Sarah’s diary, der, stone posts, and two granite door Ogden proposed his “Lincoln plan.“i6 steps. The retaining wall between the This plan, which he may have dreamed of house and the Octagon was constructed or as a boy, was to buy back and restore the re-constructed. Wells were dug, drains estate which his father had sold long before were laid, and stone fence walls were built. Ogden was born. Ogden thought of his Roads and walks were improved. Ogden grandfather as if he had been the lord of an embarked on reclamation of the wet Octa- English manor. The grandson idealized his gon meadow for a hayfield and an oma- grandfather, and modeled himself after mental pond, while Sarah noted progressof him. Over the years Sarah, and eventually the work in her diary. their children, came to share this idolatry. Even as these improvements were being Even the “stump and last branch of carried out, Ogden entered into a diverse grandfather’s mulberry,” according to Og- and extensive farm program. He kept work den’s caption on an 1890sphotograph, were horses, ponies for sport, hens, pigs, and a preserved as living eighteenth-century ar- dairy herd. To feed the animals, he grew tifacts in front of the house, long past the corn and hay. All vegetablesfor the family time when the tree was an object of and their tenant employees were raised on beauty.” When the woods were thinned the place-a custom which was to continue out in 1908Sarah wrote happily to her son through the 1940s. Ogden established an Ogden, “it looks now as I think it must asparagusbed in 1864. His March 1866veg- have looked in Grandfather John’s time.” etable seedorder included cucumber plants Ogden, Jr., in a 1935letter to Fiske Kimball for forcing, indicating the existence of a 10 Old- Time New England

greenhouseor a sun-heated pit, perhaps in The books Ogden read and used were accordance with J.C. Loudon’s instruc- oriented more toward the practical side of tions in The Horticulturist (1860). Ogden’s horticulture than toward the ornamental copy of this comprehensive practical and design aspects. This suggeststhat he treatise is well worn. Like his others, it was believed a satisfactory design already an English book. existed, and had since the days of Grand- Estate accounts show that Ogden father John. In 1871,Codman obtained Au- planted fruit trees and began raising small gustus Mongredien’s newly-published fruits. In 1864 he purchased raspberries, Trees and Shrubs for English Plantations. strawberries, blackberries, and currants He may or may not have been familiar with from a nursery in Dorchester. His farm American literature on similar topics, such equipment purchases included a wheeled as the work of Andrew Jackson Downing, Whitcomb rake, a “garden engine,” prun- that popular arbiter of “taste.” Nonethe- ers, and weeders. In 1866 Ogden ordered less, Codman was busily planting orna- Peruvian guano, an exotic fertilizer highly mental trees and shrubs. In 1872 Sarah recommendedfor field crops by another of noted in her diary that her husband had his books, John Wilson’s 1862 British gone to see about some trees sent from Farming. England. Practicality did win out over his

FIG. 3. “THE GRANGE,” LINCOLN, 1872.Barton Sprague, photographer.Ogden, SC’S newly- planted trees and rhododendronsdot the lawns under eighteenth-century elms. “Grandfather’s mulberry” is visible on an upper terrace. YoungOgden and Alice pose with their ponies, while little Tom sits on the grass. (SPNEA, Codman Family PhotographCollection.) The Codman Estate 11

FIG. 4. VIEW FROM THE HOUSE TO THE OCTAGON, ca. 1890.The pondhad recently been dug out, andits edgeswere kept clear. Outlines offlower bedscan be seenon theterrace. (SPNEA, Codman Family PhotographColle&ion.) anglophilism, and most of his purchases he set out most of the trees some 75 came from American nurseries. years ago,” or about 1870.19Several old Photographstaken in the 1870sand 1880s eighteenth-century elms survived when show a host of newly-planted trees on the Ogden bought the place, and one of them front lawn, west of the terraces(fig. 3). The lasted until 1922. There were two larches, combination of evergreen and deciduous or tamaracks, in front of the house. These trees, densely planted, does reflect the are shown in a pencil sketch still in the fashionable Downing influence. Pictures house, which was probably done by Sarah from the late 1890s show the slope quite in the 1860s. clear of these trees, however, reflecting a Ogden, Sr. ordered climbing vines- change in taste favoring open lawns. wisteria, honeysuckle, and clematis-from In 1866Codman ordered nineteen differ- nurseries in Jamaica Plain and Brighton, ent deciduoustrees from the Ellwanger and Massachusetts. In 1867 he purchased Barry nursery in Rochester, New York. ninety-four assorted herb plants, although These included several weeping varieties, herbs are not commonly associated with which were much in fashion at the time. Victorian gardens. The annual vegetable Also popular then was the concept of col- seed order from Schlegel, Everett, and lecting trees in what were essentially pri- Company of Boston for many years in- vate arboretums. The sales receipts that cluded seeds for one flower, the fragrant have survived show that Ogden, Sr. set out mignonette. an enormous number of trees during his Typically the Codmans would have had first years in Lincoln. A 1939letter from his gardensof carpet bedding, as they did until son Tom to Ogden, Jr. refers to a “big En- recently on the front terraces. (See figs. 4, glish elm the pater must have planted when 8.) An 1872 sales slip includes heliotrope 12 Old- Time New England

and red and blue verbena, in quantities suf- forts. Resembling Marie Antoinette, she ficient to make a stylish show. Photographs makes butter in a glass churn. depict beds of tall cannas. Ogden also or- There is a continuous counterpoint, dered fuschias, carnations, “assorted however, to this rural idyll. Visitors come plants for vases,” and perennials, but loca- and go. Sarah and Ogden make frequent tions of other 1860sand 1870sgardens are trips to town-to balls, to the theater, to the not recorded. Spiraeas, of varieties then opera. They travel to the mountains, to the newly introduced from Japan, are the only sea, to Europe. Suddenly, in 1873Ogden is shrubs for which receipts survive. Other going to town “nearly every day.” The old survivors which Ogden probably great Boston Fire of 1872,by destroying his planted about 1870 are philadelphus or holdings in Boston, almost ruined him fi- mock-orange-then called syringa-and nancially. In 1874 the whole family sailed Japanesequince. The rhododendron beds, for France for a ten-year exile in the little well establishedby the time they appear in town of Dinard, on the coast of Britanny. 1890s photographs, were planted in 1872, The quasi-eighteenth-century pastoral at according to Sarah’s diary. Lincoln was over. Sarah Codman’s diary, kept meticu- While the Codmans were away, the man- lously during the years from her engage- sion “pleasure grounds, garden, and pas- ment until her death in 1922, provides a ture’ ’ were leased out, while Ogden’s vivid picture of family life during the first brother Jamesrented the farm on the prop years of ownership of “The Grange.“2o erty. In his increasingly gloomy letters, After several construction delays, they set- Jameskept Ogden abreast of the deteriora- tled in July 1864, with their small son, Og- tion of “The Grange,*’ and urged his den, Jr. The cistern promptly gave out, and brother either to resume living there or to persistent servant troubles began. “The sell the place. The tenant farmer was quar- cook wretched”; “new cook comes”; reling with the caretaker, he reported, and “servants fight about church”;-the both were undoubtedly cheating Ogden. phrases form a litany throughout all the The horses were “abused,” most of the Codman years in Lincoln. cows “not worth their keep,” the grass- The outdoor staff proved equally dif- land “much run out,” and the orchard trees ficult: “The farmer and the coachman “old and worthless.“*’ Even Ogden’s old quarrel”; “the farmer leaves”; “a fuss dog had become “a thief and a chicken with the farm men about their board, and killer.” Only the recently planted trees and they all leave.” Meanwhile, more babies shrubs were growing well. are born, Sarah’s sister Alice spends the Ogden did bring his family home at the summers, they go out riding or driving in end of 1884, but his financial situation was the buggy. They take walks and picnics, still precarious. He had to lease out the and explore the local ponds. The children farm, and in summer the mansion house, learn to ride ponies; they fall off. Some- too. The family’s relationship to their es- times they go in the yellow wagon or the tate was oddly tentative into the 189Os, sleigh. Every year they ah go to the Con- when they again lived in Europe for several cord Cattle Show, and sometimes to a fair years. Finally, in 1897, they settled perma- at Lowell. Ogden goes to the steeplechase, nently at “The Grange.” Sarah developed and one year lays out a race course at “The a new interest there in gardening with wild Grange.‘* They play croquet, a fashionable plants during the 1880s.Her diary mentions new lawn sport. Mr. H.H. Hunnewell of several expeditions to dig up ferns, marsh Wegesley, a famous gentleman-gardener, marigolds, and yellow violets. Copies of comes to dine. Sarah, later an avid gar- Wild Flowers and Where They Grow (1882) dener, makes her first modest planting ef- and Flora of Middlesex County (1888), The Codman Estate 13

which are still in the house, probably were house and the stable. He also proposed a acquired by Sarah at this time. tall, elegant, and unnecessary addition to The older four of the five children the east side of the mansion. (See Metcalf, seemed to be developing their talents and this issue.) Several of his sketchessurvive, reaching out toward life. Ogden, Jr., born which are plans for an imposing axial en- in 1863, spent a miserable two years in trance court adjacent to his proposedell.22 Lowell as an apprentice architect, followed One of these little drawings shows, under- by a stint with the Boston fii of Andrews lying the proposed layout, the casual tear- and Jacques. In 1892 he opened his own drop shape of the drive as even today it Boston office. Alice, or “Ahla,” three loops up to the side door. Another sketch years younger, studied painting and often shows two old elms which Ogden was de- went to parties at the Lyman estate, “The termined to retain (fig. 5). Vale,” in nearby Waltham. Tom, two years Much as he admired his eighteenth- behind Ahla, had taken up photography, century great-grandfather, Ogden, Jr.‘s while Hugh, born in 1875, showed great splendid formal schemesare the opposite promise on the violin. Dorothy, eight years of John Codman’s dreams. If built, young younger than Hugh, was the baby of the Ogden’s design would have created a land- family. scape similar to the gardens so ruthlessly demolished by the English landscape im- Ogden Codman, Jr. provers whose work John so admired in Young Ogden was always intensely in- 1800. Ogden’s plans would have extended terested in his family’s place. He drew up the architecture of the house into the land- plans for changes that were made to the scape, and imposed a unified, symmetrical

FlG. 5. SKETCH PLAN AND ELEVATION OF “THE GRANGE.” Drawn by OgdenCodman, Jr., 18Ws,showing his proposednew east ell and formal treatmentof the approachdrive. Two dark spotsat the lower edge representold elms of the John Codman era which were to be preserved. (SPNEA, Codman Family ManuscriptsCollection.) 14 Old- Time New England

I Ld(r ’ FIG. 6. LANDSCAPE PROPOSAL FOR “THE GRANGE,” 1890s.By OgdenCodman, Jr. The existing houseand its front terraces are shown at the top. Courtyard, flanking wings, avenues,rond point, and terracingwest of the houseremained merely paper plans, but Sarah’s Italian gardenwith its curved westernend was soonto be built on the spotmarked “sunk garden.” (SPNEA, Codman Family ManuscriptsCollection.) plan. The impact on “The Grange” in its scape Architects, and one of the nation’s totality would have been far more signifi- leading garden designers. She and young cant than the effect of the Italian garden of Ogden may well have shared ideas as to 1900, which is so oddly unrelated to the how the groundsof “The Grange” might be house. improved. Young Ogden approved of the existing After the family’s return to Lincoln in terraced front, in part because it was so 1897, Sarah’s diaries continue for years to firmly related to the facade. His embryonic refer to the “children,” when they were plans show on the east a geometrical court, hardly children anymore. By 1900 Alice with an opening out into the wilder terrain, and Tom were in their thirties, Hugh was and, on an axis with the north side of the twenty-five, and Dorothy seventeen. Yet house, a circle with radiating allees (fig. 6). all of them but Ogden remained at “The A Le Notre-like landscape might have ap- Grange,” unmarried, for the rest of their peared in South Lincoln, but these lives, gradually abandoning their indepen- changes, so reflective of Ogden, Jr.‘s con- dence and their talents. They lived much as tinental classicism, did not progress be- they did when they were children: snapping yond the drawing board. pictures of each other, taking walks, riding A brief phrase in Sarah’s diary an- bicycles, playing tennis or tether ball, and nounces the three day visit in 1892 of looking after their pets. Ahla made lovely “Trix” Jones. Beatrix Jones Farrand, a watercolors of the Lincoln landscape until niece of Edith Wharton, became a founder her mysterious ailments kept her from pur- in 1899 of the American Society of Land- suing what was obviously a real ability.23 The Codman Estate 15

FIG. 7. SARAH PRESIDES AT THE TEA TABLE, AUGUST 1899. White geraniums bloom by the house, and a lawn roller attests to maintenance standards in this snapshot from one of Alice’s albums. (SPNEA, Codman Family Photograph Collection.)

Ogden, Sr., who died in 1904, seems a Sarah Bradlee Codman shadowy figure in his last years. He had Near the west corner of the house were a apparently decided that farming and gar- locust, an old elm, and the horse chestnut dening were not for him, after all, although which is there still. In this shady spot, re- he continued to buy trees of many varie- clining in canvas deck chairs, the Codmans ties. Curiously, one book which he signed gatheredon summer afternoons at the turn in 1898 may be the only American volume of the century around a cloth-covered tea he acquired in connection with his estate. table and a huge silver samovar, presided This was Liberty Hyde Bailey’s Garden over by Sarah (fig. 7). The family spent Making, a thoroughly practical manual for other hours in the rocking chairs on the side ordinary folk of modest means and modest piazza, where rolled awnings of striped grounds who would actually work the soil canvas sheltered them and the potted themselves, as Sarah began to do. Even palms from the heat of the noonday sun. before she was widowed, Sarah, with advice from her son, Ogden, took charge of The English garden writer, Gertrude “The Grange” by 1900. Jekyll, whose Woodand Garden (1899)was in the Codmans’ library, wrote that gardening required a true artist to create a living 16 Old- Time New England

picture. The old and,accord&to her, ugly afternoon in 1898. They both painted the practice of “bedding out” tender plants in same view of their house rising above its parterres of brilliant colors was entirely out verdant terraces (fig. 8). Both show what of fashion, she wrote. The Codmans- photographs of the period do not: color. artists though they indeed were-still kept The geraniums near the house and the sal- up the old practice in front of their house. via in the round beds were flaming red.26 Geraniums, ageratum, and petunias from a Roxbury nursery were planted in the lower terrace.24Schlegel and Fottler, suppliersof vegetable seeds to the Codmans since the 186Os,prepared a plan for round beds surrounded by arcs and smaller circular beds. The central beds were to include phlox, while the arcs and small circles were to be devoted to scarlet, blue, and yellow annu- als.2sThe outlines of these beds can still be discerned (fig. 4). Dorothy’s garden book for 1913 includes her sketch for the same FIG. 8. VIEW OF THE CODMAN HOUSE plan. Every year Sarah noted the date of AND TERRACE GARDENS FROM THE OC- the first hard frost which killed the salvia TAGON, 1898.A watercolor sianedand dated by and heliotrope there. Sarah Bradlee Codman. Alice-painted the same Sarah and Ahla, both watercolorists of scene. All flowers in both paintings are red. (SPNEA, Codman Family Manuscripts Collec- skill, sat and painted in the Octagon one tion.)

FIG. 9. PLAN OF THE ITALIAN GARDEN, “THE GRANGE,” LINCOLN. Construction extended from 1899to 1903.(Drawn by the author.) The Codman Estate 17

The propped-up remnant of the old John began putting in plants. The site was so wet Codman mulberry on the second terrace that a pool-which Sarah ever after re- lasted until 1922, the year Sarah died. By ferred to as “the ditch”-was a necessity. the steps were Italian pots with small trees Men were digging and pumping all through in them, while at the outer edges of the the spring of 1900.That summer she wrote, terraces were urn vasesplanted with yucca “Neptune comes to lay the Pond Hole or aloe. The grassin the Octagon looks well steps.” tended in photographs, but Sarah was un- The pergola nearest the house was built satisfied. Weeds kept appearing, despite next. The columns were made by Tom, who frequent ploughing and replanting. In a had learned to work with concrete. Rough 1907 letter she reported having trees cut poles were placed across the columns. A down so that “we can now see the end of year later the curved arbor at the far end the road from the porch as we used to was built, using delicate marble columns do.“27 At that time the pond in the Octagon and heavy Corinthian capitals from a build- was larger than now, and its banks were ing which Ogden, Sr. had owned at Ex- clear of brush. change Place in Boston. Squared timbers In 1899,when Sarah was fifty-seven, she were laid across the columns at this, the embarked on her grandest project at “The so-called “Exchange end.” Statues of Grange.” Northwest of the house was a Bacchus and Flora, free-standing decora- low, wet area known to the Codmans as the tive columns, and two fountains were in “Pond Hole,” which may once have been a place by 1903.28 Soon clematis, wisteria, pond. Here, over the course of two years, a and honeysuckle clambered over the per- walled Italianate garden was built (fig. 9). golas. Huge oil jars, potted trees, and The Codman’s coachman and handyman benches were placed symmetrically here began clearing and digging in September and there. Plants everywhere soon gave the 1899. The following spring, although the garden a look of maturity (fig. 10). walls were only partially completed, Sarah

FIG. 10. PEROOLAINTHE ITALIAN~ARDENAT-THEORANGE," ca. 1903. Pots, statuary, and vines have given the new garden a look of age. (SPNEA, Codman Family Photograph Collection.) 18 Old- Time New England

Sarah herself called it simply “the gar- Hostas and lilies grew in the bed at Flora’s den,” while her daughter Dorothy in her feet. In front of Bacchus, at the far end, garden book referred to it as “SFC’s gar- were iris bordered by nasturtiums. Every den.” “ The Italian garden” is its current year the big Italian pots were set out with appellation. The garden was carefully their little citrus and cypress trees. planned and laid out by someone. That The “long bed,” as Sarah called it, someone was probably Ogden, Jr., but sunny and sheltered by the north wall, re- Sarah’s diary, usually so inclusive, is silent quired the most work. She grew many pe- as to the planning phase. No rendering of it rennials there, as well as bulbs. She was has been found among the architectural always revising it, raising it for better drawings in the Codman collection. The drainage, trying new plants, or dividing the design may have been measured and care- old. She had rosesthere, and phlox, tulips, fully staked out directly on the ground. daylilies, lupins, delphiniums, and dozens The garden’s enclosing architectural more.3o Dorothy worked with her mother elements, its statuary, and its use of water in the garden day after day. When the out- are of Italian derivation. This garden is a door gardening season ended, they potted walled outdoor room-a giardino segreto. bulbs and flowering plants in the green- Lacking in any visual links to the house or house which was built in 1904. the countryside, the garden is more In 1911 Sarah, almost seventy, was in medieval than Renaissance. Its sense.of pain. Her doctor diagnosedher problem as enclosure is increased by its location in a “housemaid’s knee.” If he knew her well hollow. The trees along the ridge and he should have called it “gardener’s knee.” nearby knoll increase this sense, while After that it was Dorothy who did the gar- softening the transition between its formal den work for her mother. lines and the natural landscape. The nar- rowing perspective within the garden, Dorothy Codman which increases its apparent length, was planned with assurance and skill. Dorothy remained. close to her mother Outside the garden, the slope from the and lived out her entire life in her childhood house is treated poorly. The steep narrow home. Her interest in gardening and her steps which drop obliquely acrossthe hill- knowledge grew apace with Sarah’s, but side are inadequate. There is no good ap- this avocation played an even more central proach to the garden. Perhaps the major role in the younger woman’s life. Thirty- contribution to landscape art of the great five years after her mother’s death Dorothy Italian villa gardens lies in their adaptation was still tending a garden which she con- of sloping sites, whereas the so-called tinued to think of as her mother’s. Italian garden at “The Grange” entirely Dorothy was a compulsive collector and ignores the slope. record-keeper. She tried in her own garden For Sarah, the garden became her pas- next to the stable to grow a multitude of sion. She worked on it continually, and different plants. Some of them were not when not working she sat there at a little hardy or were otherwise unsuitable, thus table shaded by a willow in a comer near insuring failure, but many succeeded. Her the pergola. She planted many sorts of careful plans, with lists of exactly what vines. Along the shady southern border grew where, would make a restoration of Sarah planted foxgloves, wildflowers, and her special garden easy.31 Maintenance ferns. From Mr. Pratt’s Concord Nursery would be less easy. Dorothy devoted her she bought white lilacs, forsythia, yellow life to it. caragana,and other shrubsto set out above Despite so complete a written record, the waUz9 In the pool were water lilies. there are almost no photographs of The Codman Estate 19

Dorothy’s garden. Even if family members some homely little plant, such as violets or considered it unworthy of preserving on pinks. Up the wired arches grew roses and film, why did she not do so herself? She clematis. Dorothy grew herbs among her filled many albums with her snapshots, flowers and grapeson a little arbor. She had taken on trips and at home. The Italian a hotbed in which rhubarb still grows. The garden, by contrast, was photographedre- lily pool, with Japanese iris around it, peatedly from every angle. Among the few seems too exotic a feature, but Dorothy photographsof her garden by the stable are cared more for a pool than for stylistic two taken by Ahla about 1900, showing purity. blue larkspur and the picket fence. The At the time when Dorothy made her gar- only other pictures date from 1958, and den, the revived architectural and land- show roses, foxgloves, arches to support scape styles of the American colonial climbers, and water lilies in the pool. period were widely popular. The Codmans In July 1908 Sarah wrote, “Dorothy’s shared this admiration. Dorothy and her made over garden has been very successful family drove for miles to look at and photo- and she takes a good deal of pleasure in graph old houses. Nonetheless, the fami- it.“32 Tom made acircular pool for Dorothy ly’s anglophile leanings were even stronger. in 1909, and Dreer’s, the Philadelphia seed In Dorothy’s garden a direct English infIu- merchants, filled an order for water liIies.33 ence seems more prominent than any ver- Dorothy and her mother made frequent sion filtered through an idealized colonial trips to local nurseries. In June 1905, “Og- America. Even her failures can be attrib- den, Tom, D. and I to the Shady Hill nur- uted to the frequent choice of a plant better sery [of Bedford] in the auto,” wrote Sarah suited to the milder English climate than to in her diary. The Codmans had bought their Massachusettswinters. first car in 1903, which made possible ex- The garden was a lot for one person to peditions further afield. look after, unless she had help. But Dorothy’s creation was in the style of an Dorothy did not think so, for she rambled English cottage garden. Gertrude Jekyll off in all directions with plans and lists for was among the first to acclaim and beds of flowers, vines, and shrubs all the popularize the small, crowded, and color- way to the railroad tracks. Evidently, there ful garden enclosures of rural villagers. In were so many plants she wanted to grow this century, old-fashioned cottage flower that she had to expand to make room. gardens were often self-consciously Three old locusts were spaced along the copied. The sunny and protected site of wah. and Dorothy added three more. She Dorothy’s garden was ideal for her pur- planted clematis at the base of each. Her poses; it was far from the formal manor ideal, she noted in 1913, was “to connect house with its elegant appurtenances, and the trees by a garland of vines.” A year close, not to a cottage, but to the horsesand later, she penciled in tragically, “but the hens of a simple pastoral life. trees are dying.” In cottage garden style, Dorothy’s is en- In 1913 the Codmans’ greenhouse was closed by a wall and a modest fence. The refurbished with rooms of different tem- small flower beds are geometrically ar- peratures. Dorothy ordered bulbs and exo- ranged, with no central axis, and the walks tic seedsfrom Vilmorin-Andrieux in Paris. are quaintly narrow. Dorothy carefully ar- From Japan the Yokohama Nursery sent ranged her plants so that their height would her camellias, gardenias, and citrus trees.34 complement the curves of the scalloped Her banana trees produced fruit. Winter picket fence. Each bed was edged with could not stop Dorothy from gardening. 20 Old- Time New England

Decline about biological pest control. Sarah, too, was optimistic about finding a parasite After Ogden, SK’S death in 1904, Sarah “who will fight them.” She also embarked continued during her own last two decades upon a program of thinning out the woods. to try to maintain “The Grange” as she felt This was supposed to discourage the it should be. She and her children treasured moths, but Sarah admired the aesthetic ef- their house and its setting. Any changes fect, as a reminder of how it must once have were intended to enhance the eighteenth- looked. century ambience of the place. The last The vegetable garden was rehabilitated major structural addition to the landscape in 1907. Trees that had begun to shade the was the woodshed/carriagehouse in 1908. garden were cut down. Decaying old pear Sarah wrote to Ogden’s wife that she, Tom, trees were removed, and new ones or- and Hugh drove about “looking for an old dered. “We are going to put it back as it was woodshedto c~py.“~~ The result, designed in the beginning,” wrote Sarah, in a com- by architect Richard A. Fisher, may be a ment which typifies her approach to the copy of a building they saw on one of their estate.36(See fig. 11.) drives. In 1922one of the towering elms remain- In the early years of this century Lincoln ing from John Codman’s time had to be trees were being defoliated by an infesta- removed from the front lawn. The same tion of gypsy moths. Dorothy, Ahla, and year Sarah died at the age of eighty. A year their brothers spent hours in 1906,1907,and later Ahla died, too, at fifty-seven, after 1908 killing the caterpillars. The local tree years of mysterious ill health, “good warden initiated spraying with arsenate of days, ” “bad days,” and regular doses of lead in 1907, but was more enthusiastic VeronaI. Ogden, the only one who lived

FIG. 11. PLAN OF “THE GRANGE” (ca. 1910).AU gardens, structures,and plantings had been completedby this time. A heavy black line marks the presentSPNEA boundary.(Drawn by the author.) The Codman Estate 21

FIG. 12. HAYING IN THE OCTAGON, ca. 1930.From one of Dorothy’s photo albums. (SPNEA, Codman Family PhotographCollection.) away from home, seems to have made his downed ninety-six trees around the house last visit to “The Grange” at the time of his and the Octagon. Cleaning up was an mother’s death. enormous task. Tom wrote Ogden that one Ogden, Jr. did not lose interest in the elm had 167 rings, indicating that it had place, however. Tom’s letters kept him in- been there since the time of the Revolution. formed, and Ogden replied with advice. He Tom and Dorothy struggled to keep go- felt that their mother had “let the place run ing. As Tom wrote in 1939, when he was in down.“38 The farm, still rented out, was a his seventies, “men are busy with haying, bad investment, he thought. He told Tom mowing the lawns the vegetable garden wistfully that “P&e Cot,” their father, had and the usual things. . . .“40 These “usual once uncovered a sample of John Cod- things” had been done every year since man’s exterior paint color: yellow. He their father had purchasedthe place nearly wondered whether “any of the old elms eight decades earlier. After Tom had gone around the Octagon still remain.” Ogden to join Ogden in Europe in 1949, Dorothy wrote of his dream of re-foresting for the wrote him, “The red geraniums are looking future. Perhaps Ogden introduced the or- very well,” as they had each season for namental well heads and the changes on more than fifty years. the porch. A photograph taken about 1930 Hugh died in 1946, and Ogden in 1951. shows the porch railing removed, and in Tom remained in Europe until his death in its place, wooden settees, their backs 1963. Dorothy was left alone at “The squarely to the edge, alternating with Grange.” She had some help, her garden clipped trees in French-style wooden still bloomed, and she still walked in the boxes. Ogden’s hope, as he wrote Hugh, woods a little. Hay was still cut by a was that “The Grange” would “resume its horse-drawn mower, but baled in the field place as the head of the big houses in by machine, to Dorothy’s amazement. Lincoln.“3g “Lo! the Octagon was sprinkled with bales The hurricane of September 1938 of hay!” she wrote.4i (See fig. 12.) In 1956 22 Old- Time New England

she received word from the Lincoln tree inactivity and decline for the Codmans and warden that two Codman elms were for “The Grange.” But by foresight and afflicted with Dutch elm disease. DDT was fortune, this landscape has not been and the recommended remedy.42 will not be paved over or built upon. It The very dearth of records-written or survives, a legacy of the accumulated ef- photographic-from the 1930sto the 1960s forts of generations of Codmans and their is clear proof that these were decades of ancestors.

NOTES

1. Christine Fernandez and Alan Emmet, 9. Codman Family Manuscripts Collection “The CodmanEstate: A LandscapeChronicle,” (hereafter referred to as CFMC), John Codman 1980, Appendix B (on file at SPNEA). to Samuel Dexter (typescript), 29 December Additional information on Chambers Russell 1797, box 118. was derived from John Langdon Sibley’s Hur- 10: CFMC, bill, Thomas Clement to John Cod- vard Graduates (Boston: MassachusettsHistor- man, March 1797, box 5, folder 54. ical Society, 1%8), 9: 81, and from “An Account 11. CFMC, John Codman to Catherine Amory of the Russell Family” by Miss Mary Russell Codman (typescript), 24 August 1800,box 118. (1806), in the Russell family papers, Massachu- setts Historical Society. 12. Ibid., 20 July 1800. 13. Ibid., 18 July 1800. 2. William Ellis, The Modern Husbandman (London, 1742);Edward Lisle, Observafions on 14. Ibid., 24 August 1800. Husbandry (London, 1757);Middlesex County 15. Ibid., sale notice(typescript), 12 September Probate Records (East Cambridge, Mass.), 1815. docket number 19591. 16. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman diary, July 3. Fernandez and Emmet, “Codman Estate,” 1862, box 58. Appendix C; Middlesex County Probate Rec- 17. Codman Family Photograph Collection, ords, docket number 19593. Album COD 3 OC. 4. Alice B. Lockwood, Gardens of Colony and 18. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman to Ogden Srate (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, Codman, Jr., 23 June 1908,box 120,folder 1933; 1931), 1:32. Ogden Codman, Jr. to Fiske Kimball, 17 March 5. For a good analysis of the importance of 1935. auoted bv Pauline C. Metcalf, “Ogden view and the use of terracing in eighteenth- Codman, Jr., Architect, Decorator: ‘Elegance century English and American gardens, see Without Excess” (M. S. thesis, Columbia Uni- Danella Pierson, “Shirley-Eustis House Land- versity, 1978) p. 22. scape History,” Old-Time New England 70 19. CFMC, Thomas Newbold Codman to (19801, pp. l-16. Ogden Codman, Jr., 28 May 1939, box 86. 6. Lockwood, Gardens of Colony, p, 31. Nineteenth-century photographs of “The 7. John James, trans., The Theory and Pruc- Grange” are located in the CFMC oversize file, rice of Gardening, by Antoine JosephDezaBier album COD 3 OC, Jr., and file 54. (See index to D’Argenville (London, 1712), p. 20. Codman Family Photograph Collection, 8. Christopher Hussey, English Gardens and SPNEA.) Landscapes 1700-17.50 (New York: Funk and 20. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman diaries Wagnalls, 1967), p. 96. Stowe was commemo- 1864-1920. rated by Rigaud’s drawings (1733), Seeley’s 21. CFMC, JamesMcMaster Codman to Ogden guides,and William Gilpin’s “Dialogue upon the Codman, Jr., 22 September 1878, 18 April 1880, Gardens of the Right Honorable Lord Viscount and undated, box 35, folder 809. Cobman at Stowe” (1748). In 1732, poems by 22. CFMC, Ogden Codman, Jr., architectural Alexander Pope and Gilbert West sang its notes, box 217, folder 3003. praises. These works are reprinted in The Genius of the Place, John Dixon Hunt and Peter 23. CFMC, Alice Newbold Codman papers, Willis, eds. (London: Elek, 1975). box 133, folder 2127. The Codman Estate 23

24. CFMC, bill, J. Lawrence Carney to Ogden 34. CFMC, bill, Suzuki and IIDA, the Codman, Sr., 10 July 1902, box 40, folder 954. YokohamaNursery to Dorothy Codman, 26 Au- 25. CFMC, Ogden Codman, Sr. papers, box 46, gust 1913, box 161, folder 2383; bill, Vilmorin- folder 1083. Andrieux et Cie to Dorothy Codman, 9 February 26. Codman Collection of Architectural Draw- 1914, box 161, folder 2383; bill, the Yokohama ings, SPNEA. Nursery to Dorothy Codman, 2 April 1914,box 161, folder 2383. 27. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman to Leila 35. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman to Leila Howard Codman, 18 September 1907,box 120, folder 1934. Howard Codman, 18 August 1908,box 120,folder 1936. 28. Codman Family Photograph Collection, 36. Ibid., 13October 1907,box 120,folder 1934. Italian gardenphotographs, COD 3 OC, Jr., COD 5 ANC, COD 12ANC, COD 18DC, COD 24 DC; 37. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman diaries files 20, 48, 49.4. 1913-1920,box 58. 29. CFMC, bill, EC. Pratt to Ogden Codman, 38. CFMC, Ogden Codman, Jr. to Thomas Sr., 25 October 1900, box 40, folder 953. Newbold Codman, 21 June 1923, box 87. 30. CFMC, bill, Shady Hill Nursery to Ogden 39. CFMC, Ogden Codman, Jr. to Thomas Codman, Sr., 18 October 1902, box 41, folder Newbold Codman, 30 June 1934, 12June 1935,4 956;Ibid., 11November 1902,box 41, folder 957; October 1935, box 88; Thomas Newbold Cod- bill, E H. Horsford to Sarah Bradlee Codman, man to Hugh Codman, 3 March 1929, box 174. 29 April 1905,box 59, folder 1293. 40. CFMC, Thomas Newbold Codman to 31. CFMC, Dorothy Codman notebooks, box Ogden Codman, Jr., 16 July 1939, box 86. 197, folders 2972-2974. 41. CFMC, Dorothy Codman to Thomas New- 32. CFMC, Sarah Bradlee Codman to Leila bold Codman, 17 June 1949, box 154, folder Howard Codman, 9 July 1908, box 120, folder 2301. 1936. 42. CFMC, Robert Ralston, Arborway Nurs- 33. CFMC, bill, Henry A. Dreer to Dorothy ery, to Dorothy Codman, 6 February 1957,box Codman, 1 July 1910, box 193, folder 2893. 189, folder 2862.