MRS. CHENEY AND WRIGHT ELOPE AGAIN
FAMOUS CHICAGO ARCHITECT LIVES WITH
DIVORCEE IN SECLUSION AT HILLSIDE, WIS.;
LEAVES WIFE AT HOME
FORGIVEN AFTER FIRST ESCAPADE,
HE NOW TACKS RENT SIGN ON RESIDENCE
She looked at the Sunday Chicago Tribune. Running down the middle of the front page was a similar headline. Mamah shuddered as she read accounts of their love affair rehashed from two years before. But the Tribune, on a tip, had gone to the office of the Wrights’ lawyer, Sherman Booth, and had come upon Catherine, who insisted that the woman up in Wisconsin was Frank’s mother and not Mamah. Asked about the wall Frank had built between the studio and the house, Catherine insisted Frank was renting out one part of the house because he thought it had become too large.
It occurred to Mamah that Catherine might be mentally unstable. Why else would she carry on with this fiction?
“The bastards bushwhacked my daughter,” Frank growled. His voice was murderous.
Mamah read the paragraph he pointed to in the Tribune.
At the bungalow, Wright’s 17-year-old daughter met all inquiries with the flat statement, “We have nothing to say.” When shown a copy of the report exploiting her father’s latest fall from grace she seemed surprised and amused.
“We have become hardened to the sensational features of this case,” she said, finally with a smile, “and we really don’t pay much attention, one way or the other. Just say for Mr. Wright and Mrs. Wright, and all the little Wrights, that we don’t know anything about this awful story, and that it must be untrue.”
It was young Catherine’s bravado in the last paragraph that pierced Mamah’s heart. She remembered the pretty blond girl as deeply shy.
“Frank, are your children really expecting you for Christmas?”
“I made it very clear to Catherine that I would not be back there for Christmas.”
“But did you tell your children?”
Frank threw up his hands. “I have tried to talk with my children.”
“Catherine does know you live with me here, right? She doesn’t actually believe you built this house for your mother—”
“Oh, for Chrissakes. Of course not. She’s pulling us all down with her insanity. There won’t be a client left after all this.”
Mamah looked through the kitchen window and confirmed what she suspected: the reporters had not left. “Come sit down with me for a minute,” she said when she returned. “Let’s think this out together. I believe the reporter could be right. There’s a part of me that feels we should lock the door and never speak to those people again. But I keep thinking maybe it’s time to tell our side of the story once and for all.” Now it was Mamah who paced. “Just imagine for a minute what would happen if we dignified this whole witch hunt with an explanation spoken from our hearts. I believe it would help.”
“You think rather highly of the man on the street.”
“Seriously, how many times have we talked about exposing people to Ellen’s ideals—our ideals? If I stand up on a podium and talk about living an honest, authentic life, no newspaper is going to cover it. But now, at this moment, in the context of this absurd situation, it may be the one chance we get to explain ourselves.”
“Beat them at their own game?”
“I don’t want to use Ellen’s name at all. It would be our own thoughts.”
Frank sat for a while, considering, then got up and went into the kitchen. Mamah could hear the relief in the reporters’ voices as they piled through the kitchen door. They were probably nearly frozen. “Come back tomorrow,” she could hear Frank telling them. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Be here at ten.” He let them stay for a few minutes to warm themselves, then sent them packing.
“Do you think it’s wise to have them come back on Christmas Day?” she asked when they were gone. “Maybe we should wait until the day after.”
“If we’re going to talk, we can’t take the hand railing down the stair on this. If it means a press conference on Christmas Day, then so be it.”
DURING THE AFTERNOON and into the late evening, they struggled to put words on paper.
“I’ll talk,” he said. “They’ll crucify you if you speak out.”
He was trying to protect her. When she looked at him sitting there with his arms crossed, she knew he would not be budged on this point. “Then say I am in accord with all your remarks.”
“Agreed.”
He read the sentences to her as he composed, and Mamah was the editor, responding to the words he had chosen about squaring one’s life with one’s self. By nine o’clock Frank was depleted. In bed, she stared into the dark, waiting for the blankness of sleep.
In the morning Frank built fires and bathed. He emerged from the bathroom wearing his bright red robe over a white shirt and pajama bottoms. “We’re going to have Christmas, even if it’s for ten minutes,” he said. She bathed, dressed, and hurried down the hall. There wasn’t much time before the reporters were scheduled to arrive. When she saw a gift waiting for her under the tree, she dashed back and pulled from beneath the bed the wrapped picture album she’d made for him.
They took their ten minutes, he studying her photo story of Taliesin, she examining the Genroku kimono he’d bought for her. It was exquisitely dyed and embroidered with pine trees, wisteria, and jagged rocks.
She carried it back to their bedroom and laid it out on the bed. On any other Christmas morning, she would have put it on to please him. And to please herself, really. She hesitated, then held it up and viewed herself in front of the long closet mirror. In the space of a few seconds, she was pulling off her dress and wrapping the kimono around herself.
In the kitchen she made two pots of coffee, briefly considered biscuits, and then thought better of it. She was not willing to stoop that low.
Frank sat at the table while she prepared oatmeal, poring over the Christmas Day newspapers Jennie’s husband, Andrew, had brought from the Spring Green train station that morning. “Thank God for Mrs. Upton Sinclair,” he said. “She’s knocked us off the front page.”
Mamah looked over his shoulder. There was a portrait of the unfortunate woman next to a headline that read, AFFINITY OF POET DECLARES SHE WANTS ONLY FREEDOM IN HER ACTIONS. Mamah cringed at the word affinity. The yellow journals had turned a lovely word into a weapon—a code for “ridiculous whore.”
“Atta girl,” Frank muttered.
“What is it?”
“She let ’em have it. Listen. ‘ “I don’t give a d—about marriage, divorce, reports of courts or the findings of referees,” declared Mrs. Upton Sinclair, wife of the novelist. “I am so exhausted by the worries of the divorce suit that I have decided to live my own life with Harry Kemp as I see fit. Here we are hid away in a little insignificant bungalow, away from the outside world…. It is here in the wilds with our sacred feelings in perfect accord….” ’” Frank looked up at Mamah. “Dear God, did all these hack writers go to the same lousy school?”
“No one talks like that,” Mamah said. “No one says, ‘Here we are hid away in a little insignificant bungalow.’”
“Didn’t you know? All affinities talk alike. And they all live in bungalows. It’s the only way the editors will have it.”
“I think she’s made a mistake.”
“Mrs. Sinclair?”
“To come out swinging like that. I understand it, but there’s a more dignified way.” Mamah went and retrieved the notes they had composed the night before. “Do it as we said, darling, will you?” she said, handing him the paper.
“I’m no good at recitation.” He sighed, but when he saw her worried look, he muttered, “All right. I’ll read the darn thing.”
At ten there were six reporters gathered around the fireplace, from papers in Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, and Spring Green. For reporters who were supposed to be fiercely competitive, the men were behaving like old chums. They seemed to have formed a quick camaraderie, the way travel
ers do when they find themselves thrown together in a strange place. Frank assumed a position in front of them, standing in his long red robe with one arm propped on the hearth. When Mamah entered the room, they turned en masse, then jotted madly in their notebooks. Mamah took a chair as Frank began to speak.
“In the first place, I haven’t abandoned my children or deserted any woman, nor have I eloped with any man’s wife. There has been nothing clandestine about this affair in any of its aspects. I have been trying to live honestly. I have been living honestly.
“Mrs. E. H. Cheney never existed for me. She was always Mamah Borthwick to me, an individual separate and distinct, who was not any man’s possession.”
Frank glanced toward Mamah, and she nodded in return. He seemed to be in full command of his faculties, almost glad to be in front of an audience.
“The children, my children, are as well provided for as they ever were. I love them as much as any father could, but I suppose I haven’t been a good father to them.
“Certainly, I regard it as a tragedy that things should have come about as they have, but I could not act differently if I had it all to do over again. Mrs. Wright wanted children, loved children, and understood children. She had her life in them. She played with them and enjoyed them. But…I found my life in my work.”
Frank set down his notes on the hearth. “You see, I started out to give expression to certain ideals in architecture. I wanted to create something organic—something sound and wholesome. American in spirit and beautiful if might be. I think I have succeeded in that. In a way, my buildings are my children.”
Mamah winced. She knew what he meant, but the newspaper readers would not, she was certain. And how would his children feel, reading it? She cleared her throat. Frank looked over at her, then continued on.
“If I could have put aside the desire to live my life as I build my buildings—from within outward—if I could have persuaded myself that human beings are benefited by the sacrifices others make for them…if I could have lied to myself, I might have been able to stay.”
The Journal reporter jumped in. “How can you justify leaving when you have children?”
Frank kept his calm. “I believe we can’t be useful to the progress of society without a stubborn selfhood…. I wanted to be honestly myself first and take care of everything else afterward. I can do better by my children now than I could have done had I sacrificed that which was life itself to me. I believe in them, but no parent can live his children’s lives for them. More are ruined that way than saved. I don’t want to be a pattern for them. I want them to have room in which to grow up to be themselves.
“I have taken nothing and shall take nothing from them. My earning capacity is as rightfully at their service as ever. I hope to be something helpful and suggestive of better things to them. When they get a little older, I hope they will see me in another light.”
“And Mrs. Wright?”
“Mrs. Wright has a soul of her own and much greater matters than this to occupy her heart and mind. It’s not for me to say what she may do.”
Frank looked away, thoughtful, then turned his face to the men again. “Look,” he said, “it will be a waste of something socially precious if this thing robs me of my work. I have struggled to express something real in American architecture. I have something to give. It will be a misfortune if the world decides not to receive what I have to give.
“As for the general aspect of this thing, I want to say this: Laws and rules are made for the average man.”
Mamah stood up abruptly. She knew what was coming next. She tried to get his attention, but Frank kept talking.
“The ordinary man cannot live without rules to guide his conduct. It is infinitely more difficult to live without rules, but that is what the really honest, sincere, thinking man is compelled to do. And I think when a man has displayed some spiritual power, has given concrete evidence of his ability to see and to feel the higher and better things of life, we ought to go slow in deciding that he has acted badly.”
Mamah glared at him. Had he not heard what she’d said to him this morning? That nothing made better copy than someone who thinks himself more important than the common man? It was like throwing meat to lions.
“That’s all I care to say to you, gentlemen,” he said when she finally caught his eye. “If you want to see what I have done here, I’ll take you around Taliesin.”
While Frank went to change his clothes, the men stood waiting in the foyer. She could tell he was keeping them waiting on purpose, probably to prevent them from making their deadlines. Mamah collected coffee cups and stood on the other side of the wall to listen.
At first they didn’t speak, and then she heard their schoolboy snickers. She stood frozen, listening. She heard “kimono” and “red” as their titters escalated to choked laughter.
Mamah hurried out into the kitchen.
“I thought the interview went rather well,” Frank said quietly to her when he appeared at last.
She looked at him standing there with his regal bearing in the suit he had designed for himself. She saw him then as the reporters had viewed him—an eccentric figure of a man, all too self-serious. She knew at that moment that they would not be spared.
“Just get rid of them,” she said.
CHAPTER 39
The morning of December 26 began with a gaggle of reporters at the gate. Josiah brought in the newspapers that the men had shoved at him when he arrived. Mamah skimmed down, pausing at the hurtful parts.
Apparently Mr. Wright did not feel any regret he was not present in the Oak Park house where his lawful wife and their six children were spending their Christmas and Mamah Borthwick seemed to have forgotten the Christmases of the past which she had spent with her husband and children.
“What do you want us to do?” Josiah asked.
“Ignore the mutts and go on with your work,” Frank said. “And do not talk to them, do you understand? Tell all the men that I said so.”
“Yes, sir.”
“On second thought, escort the lot of them out of here.”
“Yes, sir.”
Mamah stood up to watch Josiah approach the reporters. He opened the gate and spoke to them. After a while, he took to feinting and lunging forward like a boxer before he closed the gate and retreated, looking fiercely frustrated. The men climbed on their horses and rode down the driveway only to dismount at the entrance from the road to Taliesin.
When the phone rang, she answered it cautiously. It was Jennie, saying that some reporters had already been to her house and over to Hillside School to besiege Frank’s aunts as they began classes. Aunt Jennie and Aunt Nell were frantic and begging Frank to come immediately to Hillside.
Frank had dressed that morning in his riding clothes and saddled his horse, intent on getting some fresh air. He mounted Champion and rode the mile to the school. When he returned an hour later, he was wild with anger. “They’re terrified. They had parents show up this morning, threatening to pull their children out of the school if something isn’t settled.”
“Do you think—”
“Yes, I think it could happen. Aunt Jenny and Nell’s finances are shaky anyway. They’re trying to buy back the school from Uncle Jenk. He bailed them out when they went bankrupt a couple of years ago, but this could be the end of everything for them.” Frank turned around and headed out the door again.
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to find the gun.”
“What gun?”
“I have a rifle somewhere. In the shed, I think.”
Mamah went to her study and looked out the window. The cluster of men out near the entrance had grown, and a party of them was mounting their horses. She watched in horror as they headed up the driveway toward the house. She ran out to the shed, where she found Frank trying to put together a disassembled old firearm.
“If you love me, Frank, you will keep your head. Listen to me—put that thing back in the box.”
br /> “Oh, hell, Mamah, the damn thing doesn’t work anyway.”
“Just come into the house with me. The reporters are headed up here again.”
Frank leaped to his feet, grabbed his battered old Stetson off a hook, and charged out of the shed. He placed himself in front of the gate, arms folded. “Get out of here, you boobs,” he shouted when they were in earshot.
The reporters kept coming. When they reached him, they appeared to be pleading their case to Frank. Mamah stood outside the kitchen door, straining to hear their words. “If you continue to intrude on me,” she heard him shout, “I shall have only one recourse, and that is my revolver.” He turned on his heel and came back to the house.
“We’ve got big problems,” he said when he slipped into the kitchen. “They say people in Spring Green are up in arms, and somebody has filed a complaint with the sheriff. They’re telling me Pengally over in Dodgeville is coming here to arrest me.”
Mamah steadied herself by holding on to a chair back.
“Let him come,” Frank said, furiously scratching the back of his neck. He paced around the kitchen, red-faced. “There’s not a chance in hell he’s going to arrest anybody.”
“You have a revolver, too?” Mamah asked.
“Of course not,” Frank said. “I haven’t even got a decent slingshot.”
They retreated into the bedroom. She climbed under the bedcovers, shaking. Frank had let the fires go out.
“You see what they did, don’t you?” he said. “They wrote their stories, ran to the train station to wire them to their editors yesterday, then went straight to goading the Iowa County sheriff to do something. One of them told me a petition was going around, trying to get us to leave. Now, who do you think started the goddamn petition? One of those asses outside right now, that’s who. They’re making money hand over fist on us because we sell their papers. We are the fodder in their circulation wars.”
“There’s enough food in the house to stay in here for a few days.” She shivered. “If we don’t go out, they will go away.”