“Taylor is coming for dinner tonight.”
“Perfect. I bought him a little going-away gift. But do you like this jacket? It’s not too narrow, is it?”
“No, it fits beautifully. Who are all these packages for?”
“My children. Plus a little something for you.” He put a large wrapped package on the table in front of her.
Mamah stared at the brown paper imprinted with lilies. “You shouldn’t be spending money on me,” she said softly.
“Open it, sweetheart.”
“I need to talk to you about something.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out the letter. “I found this today.”
She hated seeing the gaiety drain from his face.
“What about it?”
“What does it mean?”
“Walter Griffin doesn’t deserve a civil word from me.”
“Why didn’t you send it?”
He studied her face. “Why are you asking?”
“Because I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you don’t have money to send to Griffin. That you’re in trouble financially and somehow protecting me.”
“The portfolio is going to change everything.”
“I was just thinking…” She gestured toward the packages.
“Mamah. Relax a little!”
She looked at him skeptically. “So I shouldn’t worry about money.”
Frank sighed. “No, it always comes. It’s never been the reason I practice architecture. But money can buy beautiful things, and I
need
beautiful things around me. I’m an artist, Mame. You more than anyone should comprehend that. Beautiful objects stimulate me, they inspire me. Look at this.” He pointed to the delicate hand stitching on the lapels. “I don’t buy junk. When I buy something, it’s got to be perfection or I don’t want it,” he said. “You won’t find me coming home with five cheap suits, one for each day of the week. I’d rather have one perfect suit or none. This suit wasn’t even that expensive. You see, I happened upon this tailor a couple of weeks ago, before you got here. If I tried to have this made in Chicago…” Frank threw up his arms. “Jesus, Mamah, we’re in Italy. We’d be
insane
not to buy clothes here!”
“I was only asking.”
He nudged her arm gently. “Now, go on, have a look.”
She unwrapped the paper and felt something soft inside. It was a dress—two, actually, a paper-thin satin chemise with tiny straps and an overdress of the sheerest, gauziest embroidered and beaded cream silk she had ever seen.
“It’s exquisite, Frank.”
“Wear it tonight.”
“But this is a dress for the opera.”
“And this is a festive occasion. We’re finished with the portfolio. I want to celebrate.”
IN THE EVENING
Estero brought dinner. She spread a white cloth on the garden table, set it with dishes, then laid out the food on a small table nearby.
“Fettunta…bistecca…”
The tiny gray-haired woman named each dish, from the bread to the beef surrounded by small grilled onions, and all of it rubbed or soaked or roasted or otherwise imbued with olive oil and garlic. She put out a bowl of cooked spinach, then the individual caramel custards she had made for dessert. As she did so, Estero shook her head. It was not how she would choose to serve the food—all at once—but she knew they wished to be alone.
Mamah guessed Frank had told Taylor how to dress, because he arrived in a suit and tie. Frank wore his new suit. He bowed elegantly to Mamah when she appeared in the garden in the dress he had bought her.
She was amused by his grand manners. He was playing the role of the most gracious of hosts, seating her and Taylor formally, then serving them Estero’s dinner with the exaggerated seriousness of an English butler.
Next door the Russians began their evening session. “Ah,” Frank said, pausing in his serving to sniff the air, as if to smell the notes cascading from the side window. “The Boccherini minuet.”
“SIMPLE FOOD,”
he said, tearing apart a piece of crusty bread, “is the only good food. My mother knew this, and the Italian peasant knows this. Have you noticed the Italians apply the same instincts to building their houses?” He dipped his bread in some oil. “Or have you missed that fact during your forays into gilded cathedrals, Woolley?”
“I have noticed it, sir.”
“And what have you found?”
“Organic architecture, sir.”
“You found houses made out of the same mud the Etruscans used,” Frank said. “Buildings that spring naturally from the earth where they stand.” He pointed his fork in Taylor’s direction. “Mud huts are the people’s architectural folk tales. Pay attention to the folk tales, Woolley.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re going back to the desert. Where will you look for inspiration there?” Frank didn’t wait for an answer. “You’ll look to the desert, the mountains. What form has true spell power there? Are the mountains in the distance triangular, for instance? That big Mormon temple won’t give you an ounce of help. Every landscape has its own latent poetry. Let the contours of the land and the plants reveal to you the geometry of its soul. Then dig your hands into the earth and get acquainted with its properties.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m not worried about you, Woolley.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“Now, tell me this. Are you up to the task of seeing Wasmuth?” Frank turned to Mamah. “I’m having him pay a call on the old bastard. They’re dragging their heels, I’m persuaded. Only twelve plates have been pulled out of seventy-six.” He flicked his hand as if he were batting away an insect. “I don’t want to think about Wasmuth tonight.”
They ate and drank, and Frank held forth. The Russians switched to bohemian dances.
“Most of these cathedrals we’ve visited have no soul,” Frank said.
“Don’t you find any of them beautiful?” Mamah asked.
“I’d rather look at a pine tree for inspiration. It teaches me more about architecture than all the marble in St. Peter’s. A pine tree speaks to my soul. As for
saving
my soul, you know where I fall on that topic.”
“Here it comes, Taylor. ‘Mariolatry!’” Mamah pounded her fist on the table for emphasis, imitating Frank in full tirade. It was a favorite word of Frank’s these days, and they all laughed. Both she and Taylor had been lectured by him several times on the Renaissance artists’ obsession with the Virgin.
“It’s everywhere, is it not? I understand why. But I’m confounded by the end result of it all—people bowing down before statues. Where’s the God in that?” He stood up and opened another bottle of wine. She took note of it because she had stopped drinking, and Taylor, a devout Mormon, had partaken only of water all evening. Frank usually drank very little, if at all.
“It’s pretty much settled here in Italy,” he said as he poured the wine. “It would be hard indeed to practice modern architecture in a country with traditions as set as Italy’s. But in America this is the moment. The landscape is yours for the building. You’re a young man in architecture, Woolley, no obligations.”
“You’re not exactly old, Mr. Wright.”
“No,” Frank mused, “and I have no plans of rolling over, though I can count on two hands the people who wish I would. But if we’re ever going to achieve an architecture of our own in America—a democratic architecture that expresses the spirit of the place—then we have to change the way we teach young minds. Is there a university-trained architect in America today whose head hasn’t been filled with Beaux Arts crap? They’re all decorators, for Christ’s sake!” Frank was pacing now. “We need to show young people there’s more to design than the Greek column. What happened to the spirit of individualism? My God, isn’t that what our democracy is supposed to be about? Yet what are America’s architects doing? They’re mimicking the architectural traditions of monarchies!”
He stopped in his tracks, his eyes wide. “I could change all that. I really could. Give me a handful of young unschooled minds, and we’ll change the face of America. Never mind classrooms with blackboards. And the only book they’d need would be Viollet-le-Duc’s.
Discourses on Architecture
—they could read it themselves. That’s what I did. Beyond that, my drafting table would be the classroom. I would take them through the process of discovery. Let them
watch
me. When they’re true problem solvers, they’ll be worthy of the title ‘architect.’ And they will go out and change the world.”
Frank sat down and talked on, with Taylor listening intently, but Mamah drifted on the edge of the conversation. The music from next door was softer now. She wanted to remember every detail of the night—the food and music and cameraderie, Frank’s white shirt glowing in the candlelight, the black valley below them twinkling with lights. It was almost eleven when she realized she’d forgotten Taylor’s gifts.
She fetched two slim packages she had wrapped up—her dog-eared Italian and German dictionaries, each with a different inscription. She presented them to him, and he seemed pleasantly embarrassed. Frank gave him a fine pen.
The candles burned down, and they grew quieter. No one seemed to want to leave the table. When she looked across at Frank, though, she saw tears dripping down his cheeks.
Mamah stood up. “I hate to say good night, but I’m so tired, Taylor. Will I see you in the morning?” She helped Frank to his feet. He slid away from her hands, then stumbled inside without a word.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“No, no, Taylor, it’s all right. He’s exhausted, I think.”
She found Frank hunched over the upright piano in the parlor, picking out some old tune on the keys. She approached him and put her hand on his shoulder.
“I’m going back,” he said. He stopped playing.
Mamah stood still, waited.
He began to rub his eyes. It was something he did, a tic, when he had something hard to say. “Not to Catherine. But to the children. Do you understand?”
She couldn’t speak.
“My practice is in shambles. The people I trained are stealing my work, passing off my ideas as theirs.” His face was more agonized than angry. “If any of them ever wanted to do work of their own, I encouraged them, gave them a place to draft after hours. I swore when I started the studio that I would never punish anybody for being ambitious, the way I was fired by Sullivan for doing after-hours work. But this isn’t ambition. It’s theft.”
He looked up at her. “I haven’t visited a work site or had honest dirt under my fingernails in a year. It’s against my nature,” he said softly. “I need to build. It’s ludicrous—my sitting here in an Italian villa, talking about democratic architecture. Staying here is impossible for me.”
“Why did you let me believe?” She felt a fury rising inside.
Frank began to weep. “I can’t live with myself. Their letters…”
He was talking of his children’s letters. She had seen them, and they weren’t very different from the ones she got—sweetly scrawled childish words, misspelled sometimes.
I am seven years old,
John had last written. As if she had forgotten.
“I’ve received the same letters,” she said. She hated the bitterness in her own voice.
“I never meant to harm them. I always hated the sound of the word ‘Papa.’ Now…” Frank’s shoulders shook as he sobbed. “I thought if they could just see a life lived out in front of them that was honest, that was dedicated to something—it would be the best I could do for them.” He dabbed a tear with his thumb. “I never dreamed it would come to this.”
Her whole body ached with anger. And shame at being angry. “Neither did I,” she said.
MAMAH SLEPT LITTLE
that night. Before daylight, she tiptoed downstairs to his studio and went to his drafting table. When she found Frank’s first simple sketch of the Italian villa tucked underneath the more detailed version he had shown her, she pulled it out of the stack, rolled it up, and set it aside.
Taylor would be there in a couple of hours to collect the last of his items and be on his way. She wanted to memorize this place before Frank began to pack up, before it became one more disassembled camp. She knew where Frank kept his correspondence, in a cigar box in the corner. The twinge of guilt she felt perusing his letters was overruled by the anger still simmering inside.
Looking through the box, she found no evidence that Catherine had written to him. Mamah supposed Frank had thrown those letters away, for there had been some. But he had kept his children’s notes. And a letter from his mother expressing her sorrow that he hadn’t replied to her many letters.
Mamah noticed another long letter from a minister in Sewanee, Tennessee, dated May 14, 1910. Mamah couldn’t discern the signature, but the tone was that of an old friend. He was answering Frank’s request for advice; point by point, he explained to Frank why he must abandon his foolish rebellion with Mamah.
The minister knew Frank well enough not to use scripture on him. Instead, he seemed to be challenging Ellen Key’s ideas, which Frank had obviously outlined in a letter to him. The minister talked of how wrong it was for the exceptional individual to go against the social order. If an ordinary man does, it has few long-term consequences. But for Frank it would be disastrous, as his God-given gifts would be used up in his fight with society. And
that
would be a great loss to the world.
Even if Mamah were the most heavenly of beings, he said, even if they both secured divorces and managed to create a wonderful new home together, Frank would be robbing his children of his full presence in their lives. It would be better to carry on a carnal relationship in secrecy than to try to change society to accommodate such an affair.
Mamah put the minister’s letter into the cigar box along with the others.
So this is how it is.
Until last night Frank had revealed little of the conflict raging inside himself. He had shown such brave resolve in Berlin when the hideous scandal arrived in an envelope. He had been her loving protector when she might have destroyed herself. He’d been the one most insistent about pursuing a life together. She’d never seen him happier than he was here in Fiesole.
What he had kept from her, though, was what she kept from him—the terrible weight of remorse and doubt that daily, hourly sometimes, shifted inside like cargo. Last night Frank had listed decisively to the side that would pull him back home to his family.