by Nancy Horan
She could understand his creative process only to a point. “It’s a mystery,” he’d once said, “even to me.” Proof of that was the boyish joy he took in one of his buildings when it was finished. He seemed as delighted as a total stranger might be coming upon it for the first time.
There was no question that the men who had worked on Taliesin were immensely proud of it. To the man, they were devoted to Frank, probably because he would never ask them to do something he himself would not do. He honored what they knew and who they were, and they returned the sentiment. It was always “Mr. Wright,” never “Frank.” But they weren’t afraid to complain about the lack of working drawings or how he kept changing plans on the spot. They weren’t so respectful that they didn’t ask him to leave when he hovered around them as they worked. Any skeptics among them had been won over as they beheld the strange beauty of Taliesin, the “organic” house they had shaped with their own hands out of Wisconsin rock, sand, and timber.
By November the living room had taken on the feel of a camp lodge. Most nights, away from their families, the workmen gathered around the main fireplace, still wearing their coats and caps to keep warm. A shy fellow who assisted the Norwegian stonemason always brought his pennywhistle to play.
One evening Mamah set up Frank’s camera in the living room and had the men pose. It was hard to get them to sit still. They kept up their banter, laughing and teasing the young man who had recently married, saying he would look fat in the picture. “He may be pinin’ for the new missus,” someone said, “but it don’t put him off his feed none.” Their jokes were a measure of how relaxed the men had become in her presence. Yet they were respectful, even protective of her. If one of them launched into an off-color story within her earshot, he was quickly cut off.
When she peered through the camera, she regretted what the shutter couldn’t capture: the accents of Ireland and Norway and backwoods Wisconsin. The sweet, high longing of the flute. The smell of tobacco on the men, and sweat muffled under layers of wool. But the camera would see their smoking pipes and calloused hands. It would catch the twinkling eyes and puckish grins on their faces. Mamah knew then what she wanted to give Frank for Christmas. The men’s portrait would be one of a whole series of pictures for a photo album that would tell the story of Taliesin.
There wasn’t much time; snow was coming on. She made a mental list of what she wanted: long views from every direction, then close views of Frank’s studio, the bunk room, bedrooms, and living room. To capture the expanse of the living room, she would take three photos and splice them together in a triptych, like a Japanese screen. He would love that. She would photograph the simple oak tables and chairs and beds Frank had commissioned. And, of course, “Flower in the Crannied Wall,” looming like a guardian angel at the gate.
THE SECOND WEEK of November, Frank’s sister Jennie called to say that a letter from Ellen Key had been delivered to her house. Mamah ran up the hill to Tan-Y-Deri, embraced Jennie, then hurried back to her own house to read the letter. When she opened it, she found that it was long and sprawling, like Ellen’s essays.
Dear Mamah:
I have not heard from you in some time and wish to know the progress of the subjects we touched upon when you were at Strand in June. In your last letter you indicated that Mr. Putnam was not in his office and you had to speak to his representative when you were in New York. You said there was not much interest in the “personal freedom” selection. Might we regroup some other essays and give them to Putnam under another title? I would consider such a change in selection. Did you look up my friend Miss Emmy Sanders while you were in New York? Have you sent anything to the Atlantic Monthly? To The American? Also, you said at the time that Mr. Seymour had the manuscript in hand for Lieb und Ethik, but I have had no word on the progress of its publication.
Mamah cringed as she read down the list of questions. She would have to write back to Ellen immediately and reassure her, point by point.
The next paragraph, by contrast, made her nearly leap for joy. I authorize you to commence translating “Missbrauchte Frauenkraft” and “Frauenbewegung” right away.
The prospect of new work meant that Ellen had not given up on her. Near the end of the letter, she inquired about Mamah’s life at Taliesin.
I was sorry to learn that your situation with Mr. Wright has garnered unfavorable publicity. In reading the account of your departure from the United States two years ago, I find myself much concerned about the manner in which you have chosen to pursue certain choices. It has been my belief and expressed philosophy that the very legitimate right of a free love can never be acceptable if it is enjoyed at the expense of maternal love. It distresses me deeply that my words to you have been misinterpreted. I urge you to reconsider this matter and return to your children if there is any question of their happiness.
You know the esteem I hold for you. I trust you will make a choice in harmony with your own soul.
Ellen Key
Mamah had to sit down. She took the letter into the newly stuccoed study and sat with it on her lap, trying to catch her breath. The smell of lime from the wet plaster, or perhaps the letter itself, created a sour taste in her mouth. Perched on the chair, squeezing her eyes shut, she felt like such a stupid, selfish fool. She had made a mess of so many lives. If she had waited a few more years…if she had simply moved to Boulder with the children…But how would they have survived? She felt as if she were butting her head against the same old wall.
Anger welled up in her. It struck her that Ellen Key’s ideas were inherently self-contradictory. Mamah had found inconsistencies as she had translated, but none so disheartening or confusing as this. What did Ellen want her to do? Return to Edwin for the sake of the children? How ironic, in light of what she had written about staying in an unloving marriage—that it was tantamount to prostitution.
“I FEEL LIKE I just lost a friend,” Frank said when Mamah read the letter aloud to him. He was tired from the train ride from Chicago and had stretched his feet out in front of the fireplace. “You know, you’re right. It does sound as if she would have you return to Edwin.”
“What’s strange is that I thought I had made my situation clear to her. I thought she knew I was not going to do that.”
“Did you tell her you were coming to Wisconsin after you left Europe?”
“No. She didn’t ask. We talked almost entirely about business that last time I was at Strand. She was giving me all kinds of instructions and new responsibilities. She was very positive. She said, ‘You will be the mouthpiece for me in America.’ The mouthpiece. I remember that because it seemed such a funny word to come from her. We were planning a whole strategy for bringing her ideas to this country, and it was incredibly exciting.”
“Someone got to her. Maybe Huebsch sent her the Examiner article to discredit you.”
“Well, I can understand that it may not look good for Ellen to have me as her translator. There are other things lately, though, that I haven’t wanted to admit to myself. For example, she hints in her letters that somehow you and I are making money off her books that we aren’t reporting to her. It’s laughable, isn’t it? I’ve explained that it’s you who has lost money out of your pocket. And then there’s Huebsch. Did she really give him translating rights? I’m not sure she can remember exactly what she has promised to whom. I know for certain she can’t keep straight what she has given me permission to do.” Mamah shook her head. “It makes me question if I know her well at all. Before I even met her, just reading her books, I felt closer to her than I have ever been to almost anyone in my life, except you. And then to be welcomed by her in Sweden, almost as a daughter—it was wonderful. Now, though, I feel as though I’ve fallen from grace with her.”
Frank shook his head. “Now, wait. She asked you to do more translating. She told you when you were there before that you were her mouthpiece. Do you still want to be her sole translator in America?”
“More than anything. I’ve told her
all along that it wasn’t the money I cared about. You know all this, Frank. I truly feel no one else understands her work quite the way I do. And it has always been about getting her ideas into the mainstream.”
“Then don’t let this slip away. And anyway, you adore Ellen Key. Even I adore her, and I’ve never clapped eyes on the woman.”
“Ah, Frank,” Mamah said sadly.
Frank had been feeding the fire with fragrant fresh-split wood. He used a log to poke the others, and the fire spat red cinders back at his feet.
“Do you mind if I just go and write her this minute?”
“Go,” he said. “I’ll finish making dinner.”
DEAR ELLEN KEY. Mamah did not begin with Beloved Lady, as she usually did. She started with business issues, itemizing each point of concern and reiterating what they had agreed to, while reminding Ellen that she had named Mamah her sole authorized English translator in America. Mamah told her about the pirated translation of Huebsch, which the publisher claimed Ellen had authorized. She paused to consider how to word what she had to say next. She had not been forthcoming about her plans when she’d been at Strand with Ellen last June, and it had come back to bite her. Now was not the time to mince words, whatever the consequences might be.
I have as you hope “made a choice in harmony with my own soul”—the choice as far as my own life was concerned was made long since—that is, absolute separation from Mr. Cheney. A divorce was obtained last summer and my maiden name is now legally mine. Also I have since made a choice in harmony with my own soul and what I believe to be Frank Wright’s happiness and I am now keeping his house for him. In this very beautiful Hillside, as beautiful in its way as the country about Strand, he has been building a summer house, Taliesin, the combination of site and dwelling quite the most beautiful I have seen any place in the world. We are hoping to have some photographs to send you soon. I believe it is a house founded upon Ellen Key’s ideal of love. The nearest neighbor half a mile away is Frank’s sister, where I visited when I first came here. She has championed our love most loyally, believing it her brother’s happiness…. My children I hope to have at times, but that cannot be just yet. I had a good summer alone with them camping in the Canadian woods….
I will wish you now a very happy Christmas and tell you that Frank is sending you a little Hiroshige, which we hope you may care to hang in your new house.
I am grateful indeed for your words of friendship and I trust I may live my life and I believe I am living it so that you may not be ashamed of it as a testimony of faith in the beauty and purity and nobility of Ellen Key’s wonderful words.
Your loving disciple,
Mamah Bouton Borthwick
Taliesin
Spring Green, Wisconsin
U.S.A.
CHAPTER 38
December 23, 1911
Such a painful “early Christmas” with the children in Chicago last week. Everyone uncomfortable in the hotel room. And then Edwin, suddenly friendly, pulling me aside at the end of my allotted day and a half to confide so happily his secret. He has not even told the children yet that he plans to marry this Elinor Millor woman next August. If she is one of Lizzie’s best friends, how is it I have never once heard mention of her? How magnanimous Edwin thought himself, offering to allow me to have the children an extra month while he is on his honeymoon next summer.
I should feel glad for him. I should be happy when Edwin says she shows only the tenderest concern for the children. Instead, I am ashamed to admit, I feel stupidly betrayed. Replaced, more like it. Cannot think on it much or I will surely go mad.
Frank had his own “holiday”—ate his sliced turkey downtown with his children and Catherine, then took them all shopping. He won’t go back to Oak Park on Christmas Day, says it will only encourage Catherine in her fantasies. So it will be just the two of us here for a quiet Christmas—our first at Taliesin.
Icicles have made the most beautiful, glassy veil around the house. They hang from the roof edge all the way down to the snow on the ground. Frank has hung some Japanese prints and the pictures we bought in Berlin. This place is taking on the feel of a real home. No rugs or much furniture, but here and there he has made assemblages of things from nature—rocks, pine boughs, and branches with berries. So lovely.
Mamah noticed the horse first. She was making coffee when she heard neighing outside. The roads had been impassable around Taliesin for the past week, and the workmen came in on horseback now. But today was Saturday, two days before Christmas. Everyone was gone, even Frank’s mother, who had decided to pass the week in Oak Park.
When Mamah went to the door, she found a red-cheeked young man peering in, his fist poised to rap on the glass.
“Good morning,” he called cheerfully. She looked him up and down, opened the door. He was clean and well-spoken. “Is Mr. Wright here?”
“Come in,” she said.
“Say, something smells good.” She couldn’t place his face, but his manner made her think he was a workman’s son come back home for the holiday and looking for work.
“He’s here. I’ll be right back.” Mamah found Frank in front of the fireplace. “There’s someone here to see you.”
Frank got up from his knees and went into the kitchen, wiping his hands on his pants.
“The name is Lester Cowden,” the visitor said, extending his hand. “I’m from the Chicago Journal.”
Frank withdrew his hand. “What is it you want?”
“Sir, we had a report that Mrs. Cheney is living here, and I was sent out to confirm it.” The young man seemed without shame in stating his business.
“I won’t say a word!” Frank shouted. He yanked open the door and pulled the man’s coat sleeve until he was outside. “Go on, get out of here.” He slammed the door and waited until the man had mounted his horse and turned down the driveway. “The invidious sons of bitches,” he muttered.
“I wasn’t thinking. He seemed to know you.”
“Don’t talk to any of them, Mamah. Don’t let anyone you don’t know into this house.”
Later that afternoon, while Frank was out in the barn tending to the horses, the telephone rang.
“Mamah?” A man’s voice. “Mrs. Cheney?”
She hung up, threw on her coat, and went to the barn to tell Frank.
“The vermin are back,” he said.
THEY HALFHEARTEDLY ate the lamb and greens she had cooked that night. When the phone jangled again, they both started. Frank got up and answered it. “All right,” he said. “Just read it to me.”
Mamah knew this meant a telegram. That was how they had to handle telegrams sent to them at Taliesin, unless they wanted to travel into the train station in Spring Green. It was an unsatisfactory system for all purposes, business and personal, as the telegraph office was patched through by the telephone operator on a rural party line. “You might as well just put an ad in the Weekly Home News,” Frank would grumble after such a transaction.
“The Chicago Tribune, you say, not the Journal?” He was pressing a finger against his free ear. “No. No. Wait a minute, Selma. Just a minute.” He looked over at Mamah. “The Tribune’s on to it now. What do you want to do?”
Mamah bit down on the inside of her cheek. “Call them back later.”
“I’ll call you back, Selma…What is it? Well, I don’t give a damn about their deadline.” Frank hung up the receiver and slumped into a chair.
“So they all know I’m here,” she said.
“It was only a matter of time.”
“Now what?”
“Just carry on with our lives. You can’t let them rattle your footings every time they show up.”
“Why don’t you say some small thing, Frank? Tell them I’m divorced. Say we are living quietly together and wish not to be disturbed. Something like that. Then they’ve gotten their quote and it’s over with.”
He picked up the phone and called the telegraph office. “It’s Frank Wright,” he said. “Look, about t
hat telegram from the Tribune. Just send one back to them from me. Say this: ‘Let there be no misunderstanding. A Mrs. E. H. Cheney never existed for me and now is no more, in fact. But Mamah Borthwick is here, and I intend to take care of her.’”
Frank listened to the woman on the other end reading it back to him. “B-O-R-T-H-W-I-C-K,” he said. “No, that’s all. Just sign my whole name.”
The next day Frank stood at the window of her study, brooding and waiting. From where he was positioned, he had a commanding view of the driveway. At ten o’clock, a party of three men on horseback turned off the highway and rode toward the house.
“Stay here,” Frank instructed her.
When the knock came at the kitchen door, he answered it. The men included the reporter from the Journal, one from the Chicago Record Herald, and the other from the Tribune. The Journal reporter had been chosen spokesman.
Mamah crept down the hall to better hear what they were saying.
“Not a man here wants to be spending his holiday this way, Mr. Wright. Personally, you have our respect and sympathy. But the fact is, the editors think the only way to sell papers is with sensational news stories. That’s what the people want.”
“I won’t be a part of it,” Frank said.
“Sir, you already are. Here are today’s papers.”
She heard Frank cursing.
“Mr. Wright, why don’t you tell your side of the story? I honestly think people would be sympathetic, and it could put an end to this.”
“That’s right,” the other ones said.
She heard the door shut hard, and watched Frank walk disconsolately into the living room carrying the newspapers. When she joined him and picked up the top paper on the stack, it was ice-cold. Like a familiar bad dream, there was her portrait on the front page of the Journal. Next to her head, black letters shouted the “news.”
