Loving Frank (Lloyd Wright) ~ Nancy Horan ~ May 1st

[ANNIE]

   

Before the publication of Loving Frank in 2007, few details were known about the love affair between Martha (nicknamed Mamah) Borthwick Cheney and the legendary architect Frank Lloyd Wright. The two met in 1903 when Mamah and Edwin H. Cheney commissioned Wright to design a new home for them. The strong attraction between Mamah and her Frank led to a very publicly conducted affair that scandalized Oak Park, Illinois. Shunned by society, haunted by the press, the lovers decamped to Paris in 1909, leaving behind their spouses and children. They lived abroad for a year. Scholars have relegated Mamah to a footnote in the long, tumultuous life of America's greatest architect. Loving Frank is based on years of solid research that has unearthed letters, diary entries,  and newspaper headlines.  With remarkable restraint and great sensitivity, Nancy Horan has blended the known facts with novelistic imagination to create a compelling narrative of a dramatic, ultimately tragic love story.  Rich in period detail, the story is told in Mamah's voice and vividly portrays the conflicts of a woman struggling to reconcile the roles of wife, mother, lover, and intellectual one hundred years ago. Please join us for the May discussion. ~ Ann & Traude

Links Brief Biography of Frank Lloyd Wright Taliesin - Slide show Chicago Landmarks Save Wright (Preservation) Frank Lloyd Wright & Mamah Cheney] The Edwin Cheney house - photos with Nancy Horan

Discussion Divisions ---Part One --    May 1st-May 10th ---Part Two --   May 11th-May 21st ---Part Three -- May 22nd-May 31st

Questions to Consider ~Part Two

1. What do you think of the relationship between our two lovers, now that they will be living together, on the ship and in Europe?

2. Do you find it hard to read much of Frank's reaction to Mamah's devastation over the headlines in the home newpapers?

3. Mamah is free and she wants to take advantage of this new found freedom.  Would we all feel this way, in this situation? 

4. How does Catherine's response to the journalists who question her make you feel?  Do you have empathy for her?

5. And after reading Edwin letter to Mamah, did you feel sorry for him?

6. The death of Mattie has really saddened Mamah.  Wouldn't we all feel this way?  Have you lost an old and dear friend in the past few years?  Or did you lose one early in your life?

7  Are we being told early on that Mamah has a drinking or drug problem?

Discussion Leaders:  Ann & Traude

[ANNIE]

MaryZ,
After I opened your link, the timing in the article didn't fit with our story.  I thought when he built the Cheney house, he was out on his own.  But according to the timing in the Newsweek article, he was still with Sullivan and Co.  And he is 35 in 1902?  Hmmmm!  Maybe I getting his age and Mamah's  mixed up.
Our book says that she was 30 in 1901?? and the article says that FLW was 35 in 1902.  Well, I guess they weren't as far apart in age as I once thought.
And, the Larkin building was his first.  I wonder if there is a picture of it.  I will look!

Here is an article about the Larkin building from Great Buildings:
http://www.greatbuildings.com/buildings/Larkin_Building.html

[joangrimes]

Sorry that I have not been here in the last few days but I have been so busy with my family over the Mother's Day weekend that I did not have computer time.  Now I am so worn out after all of the weekend activities that I can hardly think.

However it was a wonderful weekend !!!


Joan Grimes

[ANNIE]

JoanG
Glad you had a great Mother's Day weekend and glad that you are back with us.  Do try to answer some of the header questions as we go on to Part 2 of the book. Let us know what you think of these folks as they try to get through their complicated lives.

[ANNIE]

I did look for a picture of the Larkin building but so far no luck.  From a MapQuest map provided by the link above, it looks like Buffalo put in a freeway, in 1950, where the Larkin and many other buildings once existed.
But with this building, FLW put himself on the map due to this quote:

""I think I first consciously began to try to beat the box in the Larkin building [Wright said years later]. I found a natural opening to the liberation I sought when [after a great struggle] I finally pushed the staircase towers out from the corners of the main building, made them into freestanding, individual features."
— Frank Lloyd Wright. from Peter Blake. Frank Lloyd Wright: Architecture and Space. p55.

"It is interesting that I, an architect supposed to be concerned with the aesthetic sense of the building, should have invented the hung wall for the w.c. (easier to clean under), and adopted many other innovations like the glass door, steel furniture, air-conditioning and radiant or 'gravity heat.' Nearly every technological innovation used today was suggested in the Larkin Building in 1904."
— Frank Lloyd Wright. from Frank Lloyd Wright, Edgar Kaufmann, Ed. An American Architecture. p137-138.

[JoanP]

Just awful, my memory.  Please, Ann, refresh my mind - what exactly was the Larkin Building?

I did look up  the luxury hotel, Hotel Adlon in Berlin where the lovers began their "honeymoon".   It must have been brand new at the time - built in 1909.  I wanted to check to see if it had been bombed during WWII.  Located right next to the Brandenberg Gate, somehow it escaped.

Wasn't it interesting to read that she and Edwin had honeymooned in Berlin too?

At least Mamah is showing signs of missing the children while surrounded by luxury - We see her thinking of young John, crying into Franks lapels as the pair of lovebirds danced to Shubert. Oh how I want to see her react to the absence of these children!

She cries again  at the opera - Faust of all things!  Did you notice Frank's black cape - and then Mefistofele's red one.  She looks at Frank's handsome face, knowing that she has succumbed to the beauty of his face.

And then we come to the crux of the matter -

How could anyone condemn Faust, so desperate for a piece of happiness that he would sell his soul in order to say - "Yes, for a brief moment, I was truly alive."

Are we to believe that Mamah is not that unusual?  That most people who are tempted in this way will sell his soul, anything for a brief moment of happiness?

[ANNIE]

Whoa, I hope not!  His soul??? That was his spirit.  Was anything worth his spirit??

Do you remember that Mamah's sister, Lizzie, referred to FLW as "the cape"??  She had a good sense of humor.

I wonder what happened to the little niece that they took in when Jessie, Mamah's oldest sister, died??  Her name was Jessie also.

[straudetwo]

Faust and his soul
Legend has it that an old German scholar promised his immortal soul to the devil in exchange for knowledge and power.  The theme captured people's imagination and the legend has endured in music and art.  Almost two centuries before Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote his two part drama "Faust", Christopher Marlowe (1564-93) wrote "The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus".

It is astonishing to realize that the lovers have been together for five (5) years before they sailed to Europe.  It will be interesting to see how the actual LIVING together develops.  FLW's detailed timeline contains many photos of him in his cape, his face and the famous mane. 
And his houses.  One of the most acclaimed was Falling Water, photographed numerous times. The Larkin House, I take it, has the distinction of having been Wright's first one. Interesting to see him rearranging the furniture in the posh hotel

[maryz]

Here's the link from Wikipedia about the Larkin Building.  It was an office building in Buffalo, NY.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larkin_Administration_Building

[straudetwo]

Many thanks, maryz. I admire anyone who has the ability to post links and compose  headers.
Alas, that is not one of my talents. Thank you again.

[JoanP]

Thanks for the information on Faust, Traudee.  As I'm reading Part 2, I find myself wondering how much of this is fact, and what parts are fiction.  Do you think Mamah and FLW actually attended this opera - or is this a bit of Nancy Horan's imagination at work, comparing FLW to the evil Mephistopheles - red cape/black cape?

We do see Mamah writing in her diary. (What does a grown woman write in a diary?  Her innermost thoughts  and concerns forher children? Her feelings about her love for FLW, as a teenager might write  of her boyfriend - or perhaps it's a touristy journal of all the sights she is seeing in Berlin?  If this is what she's writing about - then it is very possible that she recorded attending the opera and her reaction it.

Was there an actual diary?  Did Nancy Horan have access to this diary?  That would be interesting to know, wouldn't it?

On p.35 - back in 1907,  two years before she went off with FLW, we read of a diary entry - which may be an indication of the kind of diary Mamah kept...again, was this taken from an actual diary that Nancy Horan used for her research?

August 20, 1907
I have been standing on the side of life, watching it float by.  I want to swim in the river.  I want to feel the current.

We do know that the newspaper clippings from the Chicago Sunday Tribune were real - and that the portrait of Mrs. E.H. Cheney was the size described in the book - filling nearly a quarter of the page.                                                                                             

This was really big news, wasn't it?  Whose reaction was more extreme, did you think?  FLW or Mamah's?

[ANNIE]

Well, JoanP, I think that their reactions were different but very strong in both of them.  And, Mamah has to deal with the newspapers and the death of her best friend, Mattie.  She cries and goes to a church to meditate on her relationship with Mattie.

While Frank curses and swears and throws the newspaper at the wall.  While he is having a fit, Mamah immediately plans for them to move where the journalists won't find them.  In other words, she takes up the mother role that she was so good at and sees that they are out of gossip's way.

You know, she is a suffragette, in her feelings and in her and Mattie's reaction to the movement before they were married.  Remember the Colorado trip where they passed out flyers and the men were so upset that they cornered them on the street, making fun of them.  And, Mattie, sweet and quiet Mattie, tells them what she and Mamah are struggling to accomplish for the women of the world. 

I can't even imagine what it would be like, not to vote and to have the same rights that men do.
Have you seen the movie about the suffragettes back then? "Iron Jawed Angels" is the title.  Very powerful movie.  We watched it a few months ago.   Amazing women!

[joangrimes]

I am having a difficult time answering the questions in the heading because I have read on in the book and I cannot even remember some of the things that are asked about.   It has always been difficult for me to read slowly if I like a book.

I do remember that I had no empathy for Catherine at all.  I also remember that I was not sorry for Edwin because I always felt that he had really insisted that Mamah marry him in the first place...she did no ever seem to really love him.  I think she only married him because she felt that she was getting older and she did want to have children.

" The death of Mattie has really saddened Mamah.  Wouldn't we all feel this way?  Have you lost an old and dear friend in the past few years?  Or did you lose one early in your life?"  At my advanced age I have lost most of my old friends.   I find that I am usually the oldest in my group of friends now.   I have continually made new friends throughout my life.  I did lose a  close friend a year or so ago who happened to be the exact same age as I was.  We were born on the same day of the same month of the the same year.  Of course it did upset me...but I quickly moved on since I knew that she had never had the same outlook on life as I had.   I still think of her at times.  Of course since I have lost two husbands I know that I have to move on, no matter how difficult it is.

I think the fact that Mamah and Frank are so hounded by the press must have been horrible.


I am sorry that I cannot answer the questions better.

Joan G

[straudetwo]

JoanP,   Horan's extensive research is very much in evidence. The book, of course, is billed as a novel.  Hence the conversations between the lovers, as indeed any conversation between charachters,  can be assumed  to be the author's work.

There is an interview with the author on record but I am unable to effectively link. It answers all sorts of questions in which we too are interested.
Here is the link but it does NOT work for me.
http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.fcm?author_number=1480

[joangrimes]

Here is a link to the interview with the author Traude.

http://www.bookbrowse.com/author_interviews/full/index.cfm/author_number/1480/Nancy-Horan

Is this the one that you wanted Traude?

Joan G

[straudetwo]

On Page 110 we read "On a whim they'd gone to a meeting of the local suffrage association that June to meet new friends. There was a woman passing out flyers ..." On a whim.
To meet new friends. Hmmm

In the same paragraph Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Carrie Chapman Catt and Frederic Douglas are mentioned.  All three promoted specifically voting rights: Stanton and Catt for women; Douglas for blacks.
But voting is not mentioned in the text right then and the narrative half down to page 111 gives the impression that the two young women were addressing social and practical issues (even child labor) and more independence for women. Without telling them (or even thinking!)  that their lot might improve if they had the right to vote.

By the time they get to Europe they have had an affair for five years. Mamah is 40 years old. She is an educated woman.  FLW already has a name and a professional reputation. Is it possible that neither of them anticipated the reaction at home?
Of course it was Mamah who was considered the hussy, the temptress, a monster.  In such circumstances women are blamed automatically. Men are more easily forgiven, and that was true in this case.
And it hit her hard.  But how could she not have foreseen that? In what phantasy world had she lived all these years?  Then she meets Ellen Key, the feminist "who didn't bother herself with the vote" (page 128).

On page 135 Mamah tells Ellen: "But I worry about the children. And I'll run out of money soon enough. Edwin certainly won't send me any."
"What about Frank?", asks Ellen.
Mamah answers "He doesn't talk much about money. But I think he has only enough to support himself through this project." Support himself. Hmmm

FLW punched a hole in a flimsy wall once but he had his work to rely on and decided to ignore it all, certain they would eventually be left alone by the press hounds.   It was harder for Mamah. The idea to move to less conspicuous quarters was HIS, but it fell to Mamah to pull the chestnuts out of the fire, do the footwork and make it happen.   Mrs. Wright Senior is being mentioned more and more often - it bears watching.  We know she was always close to her son; she had lived with him and Catherine in the same house.

Then Catherine broke the silence Frank had counted on. She aimed straight for Mama while swearing unwavering loyalty for her husband who, she said,  was sure to return to her and the children. Frank's oldest son was 19 at this time and in college.  Catherine remained firm and refused  to give Frank a divorce --- until 1922, that is.

When pouring her heart out to Ellen after the lecture Mamah old her that she had read the English translation of Ellen's book "Love and Marriage" done by Ellen's English translator in London, and that "it lacked soul."  Ellen looked indignant.

Then Mamah added "I read parts of it to Frank. He said the translation is a poetry crusher. It is too British, too stiff."  Thanks to Ellen, Mamah became financially self-reliant.

What do you think of Ellen's more radical pronouncements, to wit

"Love is moral even without legal marriage."
"But marriage is immoral without love."

Well,  Mamah bought them, lock, stock and barrel.

JoanG,  wonderful, Joan. That's the one.  Hats off.  Many thanks.

[Aberlaine]

I haven't been commenting often because I returned the book and am reading others.  The story of Mamah and FLW is no longer fresh in my mind.  But your comments have brought the story back to me a bit.

I commented early in this discussion that I had no sympathy for either character - especially Mamah.  Men have reputations as women-chasers (not that I condone that either).  But for a mother to leave her children is awful.  I don't care the reason.

I found myself in a loveless marriage, but survived for 27 years until both my children were out of the house.  Then I followed them.  Funny, when I did, my daughter asked, "Mom, what took you so long to leave Dad?" 

So, I guess, according to Ellen, my first marriage was immoral.  But my second one made up for it.

[JoanP]

Ann, Mamah took Mattie's death really hard.  I've lost several friends recently - one was probably one of my very closest friends.  I was supposed to go up to NY to see her when she went into the hospital for surgery - let her talk me out of it, wanting to wait until she got home.  I guess I will always regret that.  She died in that hospital.  I think I know how Mamah felt - but at least I hadn't left my children with a friend who had just had a baby!  Mamah had a reason to react as strongly as she did to the news of Mattie's death.

Remember the woman in the café who helped Mamah when she collapsed after reading the obituary notice?  She was described as a rather "eccentric-looking" woman.  I was certain that this woman was going to be "somebody" in the story - I thought she was going to be Ellen Key.

Ellen Key played an important role - she freed Mamah's conscience - made her confident that she was not such a monster after all.  M. even got up the nerve to sit down and write a letter to 8 year old John - her first since she had left home.

Nancy, do you remember getting the impression that the author, Nancy Horan, was trying to justify Mamah's actions by spending so much time and ink on Ellen Key's philosophy?
I don't think Ellen Key's ideas were very different from what Mamah had been thinking - but it was heartening to Mamah to hear that someone else was championing her perspective.
Traude, yes, Ellen's words certainly hit home regarding the immorality of staying in a loveless marriage.  This too eased her conscience.

Frank reveals - (is this Nancy Horan writing?) - that he thought Mamah could stand leaving her children  when she told him - when they were back in Chicago -

"You can't keep your children by having no life of your own.  Your own unhappiness will plant seeds of unhappiness in your children - and they will blame you."

Maybe Frank believed her words - maybe that's what gave him the strength to leave his own six children.

I'm wondering if Nancy Horan believes there is truth in this belief too.  Do you feel the rest of the book will attempt to convince us of this?

[straudetwo]

Nancy, your # 56 is  very much appreciated and I thank you.
What we can consider the action begins in Part 2, which I finished re-reading today.  Now it remains to be seen how everyday life evolves, first in Berlin, then in two locations in France,  in Italy,  and back to Berlin. 

A few interesting facts about FLW have emerged, filtered of course through Mamah's adoring eyes.
For my own satisfaction I'd like to check some of them.  I have just started reading a small 168-page book about FLW and Mamah.  I need to know more about Catherine and the circumstances of their lives before 1909.

JoanP, the interview with the author, graciously linked earlier by JoanG, gives some good answers to some general questions.

Have fun in TN.

[ANNIE]

Nancy,
How awful it must have been to be in a loveless marriage for so long.  But you are happy now and I assume things are going very well.
I have SIL whose loveless marriage was put to the test with the death of the youngest child (she drank some furniture polish at the age of 2 1/2).  When the father didn't respond to my SIL's overwhelming grief, she put the marriage to a test by leaving for two weeks to visit an old friend.  The reactions to her return were happy cries from her three children.  Whereas, the reaction of the husband's return from a business trip were not that meaningful for the children. As she has said, the man was not a bad person, he was just very cold.  She tried for a little while longer and trying to talk about it with him,  but she felt that she just had to get a divorce.  Luckily, she found a loving man shortly thereafter, married him and went on with her life, as a very caring wife and mother.

In my own thoughts of Ellen Keys words about great love, I find her thinking very deep and meaningful especially when Mamah reads from "Love and Marriage".   After all, this is Keys' own philosophy and she has thought it through and come to her own conclusion.  And what Mamah reads to Frank is quite well written.  
Keys believes that love means only one thing:"the enhancement of life" and therefore, one love or many loves accomplish this. Well, she defends multiple loves as normal and maybe needed by some men.  And, that is where she leaves me cold as she does seem to only be considering the "men".
I love Nancy Horan's words that next come from Frank.  "Finding you was like finding a safe place to think again".  But "you make me want to be a better man" sounds like Jack Nicholson lines from "As Good as it Gets".
Here is where we part ways, as there are many loves in one's life,  one has to consider the love given between husband and wife, between parents and children, etc etc.  Each of those loves enhances our lives.  When one is so self centered as to discount the other loves,  where do our lives all go?? 

[JoanP]

Pitkins, Ann.  Poor little Jessie, hardly mentioned in the tale, has left the household to live with her father's family, the Pitkins.  Hopefully she was better off than she would have been living with the beleaguered Wrights.  I imagine that Lizzie will miss her, but Lizzie has her hands full with Martha and John right now.

I get the feeling that the rest of the book will be an attempt to convince us that everyone was better off than continuing on in a loveless marriage for the sake of the children.

Do you wonder if Mame's life would have been different if she and FLW had never crossed paths?

[joangrimes]

Yes Joan P,, I do wonder if her life would have been different .Would she have gone on with her life as it was without loving her husband, continuing to fill it with other things .  I wonder if she and FLW were really star crossed lovers or if another man might have come along that she would have fallen in love with.  I really want to think that she and FLW were meant to be together.  I guess it appeals to my romantic soul to believe that they were meant to be.<smile>

But why do I have to try to make what they did all right by my standards.  Really things like this do happen all the time.  I probably am trying to reconcile it because I so want to think better of FLW.  I really think he was a low life inspite of all his talent.I need to realize that I can appreciate his talent inspite of the way he lived his life.  I don't usually have such a problem with this sort of thing.

Joan G

[ANNIE]

In the book, "The Women" by T.C. Boyle (which is also fiction), the author has FLW going home while Mamah stays in Europe.  After Christmas that year, he tells Kitty, his wife, that he is leaving her for Mamah.  That Mamah is his "soul mate".  He informs her that he will moving up to the family land in Wisconsin where he will purchase more land to add to it, and then he will build a home for his mother who wants to return to Wisconsin.  She, at that time, lived in a small house behind the Wright's home in Oak Park. 
He goes up to Wisconsin and begins to build the house which is actually for him and Mamah, who is still in Europe, studying and translating for Ellen Key.
JoanG,
Its hard to believe that he was just a gigalo when you read these books about him as he is always presented as such a pearl!  But in "The Women", the author does manage to paint a picture of a man who ran up huge debts and wasn't even concerned about how they would be paid.   That his wife, Kitty, opened a day care center to be able to support herself and the 6 children.
Once again, we are reading "historical fiction" and really don't know which happenings to believe because the authors have to flesh out their characters and happenings for our enjoyment in reading the books.

[maryz]

On CBS Sunday Morning today, they did a segment with T.C. Boyle  - mainly about the fact that he lives in an FLW house in CA.  Interesting piece.  You might be able to find it on the CBS web site or on On Demand.

[ANNIE]

Thanks, MaryZ.  I will go their website and see if its available. 

[straudetwo]

maryz.  Thank you. I did not see the CBS program.

T.C. Boyle's book is "The Women" and I had mentioned it earlier in this discussion.  It is a comprehensive  endeavor that does not deal much with FLW's buildings but expansively chronicles his relationships with women. T.C. Boyle also uses a narrator: a fictious Japanese apprentice.  

In the interview with the author, linked by JoanG, Nancy Horan explains why she wrote LF.  Clearly, Mamah meant a great deal more to Frank than the terse official statistical annotations can express. And  in LF Nancy Horan set out  to  correct an unfairness.  After all, they were in this together.

LF is our source, but I believe it is inevitable to  also consider information from other sources that might help us evaluate FLW more objectively than Mamah could.  Based on Horan's extensive research, LF is beautifully written. It is fortuitous that she was given access to Mamah's letters to Ellen Key - whom Mamah worshipped.  But the dialogue between Mamah, Frank and others is clearly the novelist's reconstruction.

IMHO we don't need to approve or disapprove of Mamah's and FW's actions. It is painful to even  fathom them.  But this is their  unalterable story.   Like JoanG, I believe it was one of the great love stories of all time.   What was and still is much harder to "swallow"  is their elopement,  which has been dubbed by some  as "Hegira", after Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina.  And to abandon nine children in the process is indefensible.  They were magnetically attracted to each other. And I believe Mamah could never feel the same way for any other man. Of course she was never put to the test. They were in truth ill-starred and ill-fated.

It is difficult to ask questions on Part 2 - in order not to convey information before readers have come to the end of this part.  But we can mention some salient details about Frank.

* He had a mercurial temper.  
* He was capable of exploding in anger, e.g. when he punched a hole in the wall of the rented rooms.

* He was careless with money - often broke,  and slow to repay people from whom he had borrowed.
He did not pay his sons, John and Lloyd on a regular basis.  True,  architects depend on commissions and have to pay contractors and building materials. Getting paid  could take time.  That may well have been the reason for the frequent turnover of the apprentices who flocked to him.
Then Lizzie wrote that accordin to "rumors"  FLW left behind an unpaid grocery bill before sailing.
Were these just rumors?

* FLW was possessive, as we see in the book. He was outraged when  Mamah told him she needed to go to Leipzig  for two to three months to study Swedish in the total immersion process, as Ellen Key had demanded. He insisted that  he needed her to be with him.  But this was one battle she won.

We can see that Mattie's sudden death was kind of a wake-up call for Mamah.  BTW, I don't think M. had an alcohol or drug problem (question 7). The cough syrup incident seems to have been a one-time thing. Thanks to  Ellen Key she was able gain a financial footing. Mamah was totally taken with Ellen Key and her theories.
She was 60 years old when Mamah visited her, the first guest in a large house by the lake. From all indications she was alone.  She had no children.  But had her emancipation made her happy?
Her influenced waned even in Europe, where she was popular and well known. But her ultimate hope that "the human race will evolve to  higher plane where there won't bea need or laws regulating marriage and divorce."
page 129. To Mamah, Ellen's words were like manna from heaven.

Mamah had gone wit Frank our of her free will. With him she lived in Berlin, then went with him to France and then to Italy.  She loved Fiesole (pronounced F-e-AY-sola) - the e at the end is heard, as in guacomole or Beyoncé), the terraced housing on the hills above Florence and she wad happy there. She would have liked to settle there and wished nothing more than have Frank build a house there. His son Lloyd and a young man from Utah had joined Frank in Fiesole when Mamah was still in Germany.  Catherine allowed it on condition that her son's paths must never cross Mamah's. And they did not. In time Lloyd went back to Oak Park.  Frank and the apprentice from Utah labored in a different part of the rented house and Mamah had little contac with the young man

Will this idyl be permanent?  



  

[winsummm]

FLW and his works are part of my art history background and I am a fan of his work.  As a person he was known to be difficult.  I think I will pass on his love life. It is possible to admire the artist without being interested in the personal. I find that is often true for me in these discussion which often center on just that.

claire

[straudetwo]

Good morning, hello Winsum, dear old friend.  I am so glad to see you here.  Thank  you for your post.
Your point is well taken, and JoanG has voiced a similar opinion.

He was a visionary and an innovator and his work endures, but as a man??
Here is what one of his biographers, Meryle Secrest, said

"One can look at Wright and be awed by the dimensions of ... his achievements ... On the  other hand, when you look at who he was as a human being, he was so incredibly at the mercy of his emotions, he's at the other end of the spectrum.  He's barely a human being."

Certain things come out in this book but Mamah wears rose-colored glasses ...

We'll also need to elaborate  a little more on Wright's Japanese connection;  some terms in Part 2 have  to be explained so we get the full flavor of the meaning.

I'll be back later after the house-cleaning scheduled for today.
So good to hear from you!  Thank you.

[mrssherlock]

Just started reading this last night so I need to catch up on the posts.  Back soon.

[ANNIE]

Welcome, Jackie!  So glad you are reading along with us.  I have spent the day looking for a character in the book.  Will return tomorrow.

[straudetwo]

Jackie,  thank you very much for your # 68 and for your interest in this book. We look forward to your impression and input.  In Part 1 the reader meets dramatis personae. The story of Mamah's and FLW life together is sensitively told.  The author clearly thought it needed to be told, if for no other reason than to right a wrong.  Perhaps it could even be considered an object lesson for women in the 21st century, though I'm not sure THAT was  Horan's intention.

Interesting questions arise and comparisons aremade in Part 2 (one of them asks,"Isn't Chicago
cosmopolitan?"). 
The term "doss house" was new to me and I am not sure if 'flophouse' is the proper synonym. The name of the Wedding district may strike us as odd:  it was a part of the city of Berlin where people lived in abject poverty. However, the name has nothing to do with weddings.  A footnote would have explained that, but of course only in a work of nonfiction.

We have three more days to discuss our thoughts and feelings about Part 2 before we cme to the final revelations.

[ANNIE]

I found my character yesterday and have read this about her:

http://jhom.com/personalities/else_schuler/index.htm

Else Lasker-Schuler!  Quite a well known artist, poet etc  by 1911.
Having met our Chicago born lady when Mamah struggled with her grief over her friend, Mattie,  Else remembers her and takes her into her crowd at the Cafe des Westens where the modernists meet on most days.  She explains the Modernist new arts and its place in Berlin while Mamah explains the modern movement going on in America.  She places FLW as one of the most important people in the American movement and says that in her home, the architects are the poets and artists. 


Question:

Why does our author include these Bohemians and their world in this book??

Do you think that this helps us understand where Chicago and Germany stand, pertaining to the arts, in 1911?

[straudetwo]

Ann,  I'm afraid only the author herself could answer this question. 
All we can do is speculate, but I believe we can assume that Horan wanted to outline Mamah's own odyssey, where it led her, whom she  and he met, or is likely to have met, beyond the official record - such as it is.
 
We know Mamah and Wright took the night train to Berlin;  we are not told WHERE  in Europe the ship landed, which may have been either Southampton or, more likely, Le Havre in France.  Berlin was chosen because of Wright's business dealings with this Mr. Wasmuth. FLW was up and about every day, and Mamah walked adount the city.  Distraught after hearing about Mattie's death,  she happened into the Café des Westens, where a good Samaritan comforted her.
Only later in the story does the reader learn who the somewhat unusually-attired woman was: Else Lasker-Schüler. The Bohemian fringe Horan describes continued to exist in Berlin until the beginning thirties.  Fortunately Else  left Berlin for Switzerland in 1932 and later Jerusalem where she died in 1945.
In Berlin Mamah met Wasmuth's wife and the four went to the opera, but the women were not congenial.
FLW argued with Wasmuth about  the cost of printing the portfolio and the slowness of the process.

Soon restless Frank took Mamah to Paris.  Some time later she went to the city of Nancy where she met Ellen Key. After some months she spent in Leipzig to study Swedish, Mamah joined Frank in Fiesole in the hills above Florence.  Fiesole dates back hundreds of years. It is there that Giovanni Boccaccio is said to have written his "Decameron" (Il decamerone, in Italian).
Mamah felt happy there. Frank was restless.
He also was not quite honest with Mamah, did not tell her about correspondence he had received from Oak Park.
Then Frank announced that we would return to America.  He had it all planned. A done deal.

Question : What did you think of Mamah's decision to return to Berlin and stay there by herself?
 

[JoanP]

Hello everyone - and hello Claire!  It has been a while!  I can understand your interest in an artist's work - apart from his/her personal life!  Frank Lloyd Wright is quoted in this book -  expressing his strong feelings that an artist's work must be self-centered to be worthwhile - everything else, family, relationships must come after, once he has expressed himself through his art.  Would you say this is true of most artists?

I wonder if Mamah Cheney really understood that.  How must she have felt when she learned that Frank was telling people he had returned to Catherine on his return to Chicago?  Perhaps she dismissed it as tabloid journalism - wearing rose-colored glasses as Annie says.

Traude, I think that Mamah went to Berlin alone to prove something to herself.  She felt the need to be independent, to have her own income.  Perhaps she sensed this was necessary if she was to enter FLW's world.  I was a bit surprised to learn of his financial situation, weren't you?  I thought he was a wealthy architect who had made a name for himself at this point.  Am I wrong?  Mamah seems to be getting stronger as a person - without a husband - or a male escort,moving comfortably in the bohemian circles she now feels a part of. 
She seems to fit  right in  -  living on little as they were, her underwear threadbare, we're told.

JoanG -  I was interested to read on p. 185 that she left Ed because her marriage had been "all wrong." So maybe she'd have left him even if FLW hadn't appeared on the scene. 
 As for the children, she's convinced herself that children need happy people around them...and she wasn't happy. HM
Do you think that's true?  Or do you think that young children need their mamas, happy or unhappy?  Are you beginning to sense some regret on her part? 

[straudetwo]

It occurred to me that LF is an ode to love or perhaps Horan's ode to Mamah, lovingly and credibly complementing
what is known for sure. Still I found it necessary to look upo ther references to supplement, for example, FLW's "Japanese connection".
Somewhere in Part 1 he tells Mamah how much the clean, simple  lines of Japanese architecture impressed him. When she suggested that the style had influencedhim,  he heatedly protested that  it was HE  who set trends, rather than BEING influenced (!). An early sign of supreme self-assurance.

He had designed the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo in 1890 to replace a wooden structure and it was a huge success.   
A few years later, when his marriage to Catherine was already in jeopardy, he visited Japan with Catherine and another couple. That's when he bought and brought back a number of priceless of pieces of Japanese art.  In fact he sold part of it to finance his voyage to Europe.

We have seen how much Mamah risked and gave up. But that was true for FLW as well.  By 1909 he had designed some 25 houses and was widely known. He had obviously never imagined the furor their flight would cause and that his livelihood was at stake. 

[straudetwo]

To read this book for the second time has brought me new insights, and I have benefited from your thoughts and input. This discussion has been much more detailed than is possible  f2f in a few afternoon hours.  In this regard our discussions here are unsurpassed IMHO.

As we head into Part 3 we are aware that there was a horrible end to the idyl in Taliesin, even as we discover that not everything was milk and honey. Now a question has occurred to me and keeps haunting me. It may be premature and, furthermore, I am no friend of speculations like "if only we had done such and such instead of so and so, imagine where we could be today"! or variations thereof. 
But let me please give voice to it any way.

Is it really possible that this grand passion could have lasted?
Might FLW have become bored with Mamah as he was of Catherine?

This colossal egotist, poor misunderstood husband!,  had the audacity to complain to Mamah that Catherine did not give him enough attention and devoted all her time to the household and the six children who arrived like clockwork every other year or so!
What else could she have done?
And  Mamah in turn displayed the same flagrant disregard for her own family.

Let's see what Part 3 reveals to us.

[JoanP]

An interesting question, Traudee.  Could the grand passion have lasted into old age, the strong-willed artist and the "feminist" who yearns for freedom!  Too bad we will ner know the answer.  It's an important question, I think.  

I find Mamah confusing much of the time.  She seems to  want to be her own person, make her own decisions, be respected - and yet she allows FLW to dictate what she wears, where she lives...   I see her caving in to his wishes so much of the time.

Perhaps she is just very, very clever and knows how to pick her battles. She does choose to stay in Berlin - and live a life of her own among the artsy crowd.  She really doesn't seem to be the stereotypical  "suffragette" though, does she?  I'm beginning to think that my stereotype is not quite accurate.  I thought it was all about the right to vote.

I was amused to read the questions her landlady is asking her about the Women's Movement -
"Should women be allowed to exercise naked at the gymnasiums?" Was this really an issue now?  Were men doing this in Germany, I wondered.

Exercising naked was something men did in ancient Greece, did you know that?  The Greek word, gymnasium  means "a place to be naked."  I'm wondering if this was  one of the "rights" that women were seeking in Mamah's time - in Europe?  

Mamah is "finding little excitement in translating Ellen Key's Woman's Movement" - and yet at the same time she
 wonders  whether her translation will cause a revolution in the movement in the US. I wasn't  quite sure why it would cause a revolution if it wasn't all that exciting.  Or maybe it is just Mamah who isn't all that excited about Ellen's philosophy...

[JoanP]

Before moving on to Part III - I just had to look up the frequently mentioned  Froebel Blocks that young Frank used to play with.  Now that I see them, I realize my own boys played with the same blocks - but none of them turned out to be architects!

[straudetwo]

JoanP,  of course, Fröbel's blocks!  Thank you for mentioning them.
Friedrich Fröbel, born in Germany  (1782-1852) was a great influence int he field of education,  and so were

Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827), a Swiss, born in Zurich,
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), an Austrian, and
Maria Montessori (1870-1952), the first female doctor of medicine in Italy.
The methods of Steiner and Montessori are still taught in this country in schools bearing their name(s).

It must have been like lightning our of a clear blue sky when FLW told Mama he was returning to the U.S.  FLW surely knew she had no wish to go back there at that time -- if ever.  The only choice was a return to Berlin to the spartan "Pension" (yes, the highest floor in a building was always the cheapest and the floor up from the Paterre was the most expensive) and started teaching English in a seminary that prepared young women for teaching.
Education was NOT coeducational. She made a meager living, and I can't quite believe she remained only in order to mix with the bohemian crowd.  But it is understandable (isn't it, almost?) that at Christmastime she did NOT want to think of her  own children in Oak Park without their mother, and preferred to be where this Christian holiday was not celebrated.

The seminary director did not know who Mamah was and when she approached Mamah one day, Mamah feared she had been found out and was going to lose the job.  That was not the case. Instead te director asked Mamah to compose letters for poor charges of the comunity to their relatives in the U.S.
Mamah was exhausted and rudderless. When FLW came back for her, she offered no resistance.  

The power, the sway he held over her is actually frightening.  With the benefit of hindsight we have every reason to wonder how deep his love for and devotion to Mamah really were.

Here is what Meryle Secrest, one of FLW's biographers, said of him:

"One can look at [Wright] and be awed by the dimensions of ... the achievement. On the other had,  when you look at who he was a human being, he was so incredibly at the mercy of his emotions, he's at the other end of the spectrum.  He's barely a human being.

JoanP, about nudity in a "gymnasium".
A gymnasium in Germany is a school of higher learning that prepares for university and teaches the classics.  
In this country, a gym is a sports arena.  In Germany a sports arena is called Sporthalle .
In whatever sense the term is understood,  I tend to believe that the landlady  was incredulous, even mocking Mamah, and far from serious.

[mrssherlock]

As I'm reading my curiousity about Wright's buildings is overwhelming.  Looking for reference material i was aghast at the number of books in my little library (Salem OR pop = 150,000) but I did find that PBS had a Ken Burns show about him in 1998 so I've ordered it.  The Talesein site has some items to drool over.  Like Wright I have a yearning for things Japanese.  How do I see this tragic couple?  Not knowing how it ended until I looked in Wikipedia, I still felt a foreboding in the author's descriptions.  How could such intense emotion endure?  (Just an aside but I have learned through reviewing my own life that my marriage was loveless on both sides so I have no  expierence with the love that others seem to have.)  To resist such attraction would have required superhuman strength of character, IMHO.  Catherine seems to be one of those women for whom motherhood satisfies all emotional needs.  Else she was exhausted and too numb to respond.  FLW was definitely what is called High Maintenance!  Mamah (I stumble over that name every time I read it!) could lose hersef in Belrin, escape from the pull of Frank's need for her and recoup.  The bohemians took her at face value, did not judge her.  She surely was judging herself,  don't you think?  Funny, Edwin and Catherine would have been perfect for each other, wouldn't they?