Make Me a City

by Jonathan Carr

  * * *

  There is a noise behind her. She did not notice them before, but a line of four or five people are seated in armchairs underneath the trees in the garden. They have their backs to her. None of them, she decides, resembles Mr. Wright. A man is on his feet. He starts to dance, except that the dance is not really a dance. His movements are contorted and become increasingly frantic. It is distressing to watch. An attendant in a white coat hurries across the grass toward the group. He is shouting, telling the patient to sit down again. The man’s movements only grow faster. He drops to his knees, shaking uncontrollably, beating his head against the ground. The attendant grips him underneath the arms and begins to drag him back, an unwilling, struggling hostage, toward the building.

  She eyes the bell cord at the door. It was always going to be unnerving to see him again. A part of her had been thinking it might be best if they refused to allow her in. That way, she could at least have consoled herself with the fact that she had tried. But what is the point of seeing him at all, if he is in such a state? She turns to leave.

  At that moment, the front door swings opens and a young nurse in a long black dress, white apron and frilly cap rushes out. The nurse trips over something, reaches out to Aureka for balance and almost knocks her over. She apologizes profusely. “Oh dear, sorry, that was silly, I’m afraid that’s not the first time I’ve done that. They say I must take things slowly but I’m not like that. I’m new here,” she says. She is short, stout and willfully cheerful. “Nurse Agnes,” she says. “Can I help you?”

  Aureka, even though she’s decided against trying to see him, mentions John Wright’s name to justify her presence. Before she can say any more, Nurse Agnes has taken her by the arm and is propelling her down the steps. “Oh good, you’re here at last. Come along, come along. The poor man’s been expecting you. He’ll be very happy. I’ll take you straight over.”

  Before Aureka can explain, she is being led across the lawn. It is hard to keep up. Nurse Agnes takes short steps, but she takes them fast. She chatters as they go. “Oh, what a different world it is inside these gates. You meet all sorts, if you know what I mean. Some of them are quiet enough and you wonder what’s wrong with them until they say something cuckoo, and then you remember they’re only here in the first place because their minds are in a loop. The things I’ve heard, and I’ve only been here for two weeks, but I could write a book of nonsense already.” It’s true there are some violent ones, she says, and you have to be careful with them. But most of them aren’t too bad. Because they suffer from fits and spasms does not mean they’re violent. “Your Mr. Wright, though,” she says, “now he’s one of the nice ones and I’m not just saying that because he’s your father.”

  “I’m not his…”

  Nurse Agnes does not let her finish. “You did sign the book when you arrived?”

  “No, I’m afraid I didn’t see a book.”

  “Oh dear, that’s another thing for Matron to get upset about, if she finds out. Could you sign it for me before you leave, ma’am? It would save me another rap on the knuckles!”

  Aureka gives up trying to say who she isn’t. Yes, she will sign the register before she leaves.

  “Thank you indeed, ma’am, thank you. And here we are.” Nurse Agnes points toward a big oak tree near the high brick wall that marks the limit of the grounds, beneath which a man is seated on his own, bowed over a small wooden table. Aureka stops, her hands go cold and she’s aware of a shortening in her breath. That posture is so familiar. It is him, she thinks. It is really him. He is wearing a top hat. His hair flows out from underneath, long, curly and white.

  “Writing away as always,” says Nurse Agnes, “as though there aren’t enough words in the world already.” She leans over him. She says that his daughter is here at last to visit him.

  There is still time to stop this. Aureka can simply walk away. He hasn’t yet looked up. In fact, he’s taking no notice of the nurse. His pen is racing across the paper.

  Nurse Agnes turns to her and shrugs. “I’m not surprised,” she says. “You should see what we give him every day. I sometimes wonder if it doesn’t make them more confused than they were in the first place.”

  Aureka steps forward and places a hand on his shoulder. Through the coat, she can feel him trembling. “Mr. Wright?” she whispers in his ear. “Hello John.”

  His pen slows. He turns his head and looks up. His fine blue eyes are set in a cloudy film. He seems to be trying to focus, to put her into context, but it is a battle he loses. “Eliza?” His mouth is lopsided and his voice slurred.

  “Aureka,” she says gently, leaving her hand on his shoulder. She gives him a light, affectionate squeeze.

  “Don’t worry,” says Nurse Agnes. “He’s always doing that, ma’am, muddling people up. I’m Eliza sometimes. Even your mother, she was Eliza when she was here. Probably that’s who he’s writing to now.” She rolls her eyes. “No Eliza ever came here. And I don’t imagine they ever will. I don’t think Eliza exists, except up here.” She taps her head. “Now I must be off. Remember to ring that bell if you need help. An attendant will be over at once.” She leans forward again. “Now you be nice to your daughter, Mr. Wright. She’s come a long way to see you. And she looks just like you, doesn’t she?”

  Nurse Agnes sets off across the lawn.

  In all this time he has not looked away from Aureka. Purple pouches lie beneath each eye. His white whiskers are raggedly cut, as though he allowed someone to start shaving him and then changed his mind. Lines furrow his brow. He looks anxious. He also seems unbearably shrunken and diminished. The sight fills her with an inexpressible sadness.

  “Hello John,” she says again. “I’m not really your daughter.”

  His mouth falls into a smile. “I know you’re not.”

  “We’re both getting older,” she says.

  “I’m glad to see you, Aureka.”

  She smiles in relief and gratitude. She starts to explain how she happened to overhear the conversation in Finns. But she stops herself. “It’s been such a long time,” she says.

  His pen is still in his hand, but he seems to be concentrating closely on everything she says. “The Exchange Coffee House.”

  “Yes,” she says, taking his other hand in hers. “I miss those days.” She runs her fingers over the back of his hand. The skin is wrinkled, the veins prominent; the nails are bitten down. He is still looking at her. “The basin,” he says. “Do you remember?”

  She chuckles. “Of course I remember. The blue porcelain basin of my mother’s that I broke, and you paid for a new one. That’s what I was thinking of too. How did you know?”

  He taps his forehead. “It’s still here, my dear, whatever they tell you.”

  She bites her lip. “I think you look very well.”

  He regards her suspiciously.

  “I do,” she insists, as forcefully as she can.

  He lays down his pen and frowns. “And … and how is … you know?”

  “Jearum?”

  “The Automaton,” he says. “No, not him.”

  “You mean Stephen?”

  “Yes. Stephen.”

  Aureka tells herself it is not his fault, that his mind is damaged, that he is being given all kinds of medicines, but the fact that he needs help to remember Stephen’s name still hurts.

  “He is well,” she says.

  “My children don’t listen to me. They think I’ve lost my wits, which is why they had me locked up here. Stephen has spirit. I would teach him not to make the mistakes I made.”

  Aureka nods. She squeezes his hand. She does not know what to say.

  “And he mustn’t look back, my dear,” he says, as some confusion seems to come into his eyes. “We must never get sucked into the past. It’s pointless to look back.”

  She has heard him say that many times before, and she has never given it much thought. He is, after all, the educated one, the wise one. This time, though, the argument sounds flaw
ed. The past has far more meaning for her than the future, and it grieves her to see it slipping away.

  He picks up his pen again, and looks down. “Three years from now,” he says, “in 1876, on the Fourth of July…”

  He tries to continue writing but she takes hold of that hand too, and encourages him to drop the pen. That, though, only makes him hold on to it more tightly.

  “You always had such beautiful hands,” she says.

  “Does Stephen know?” he asks. “About me?”

  She shakes her head, fighting back the tears.

  He nods in a way that seems to say this is a pity.

  Silence falls.

  She breaks it with talk about Stephen. She praises Stephen, and then she hears herself tell a lie. “One day,” she says, “I have decided I shall tell him that you are his father. It will make him very proud.” The fantasy of telling Stephen the truth is one she has often entertained. She talks about the ways in which Stephen resembles him, in his looks and behavior. She talks about the silver pocket watch—his old silver pocket watch—he always carries.

  At first, John seems to follow her and he even asks some questions. Where is Stephen now? Could she bring him to visit? And when she mentions the watch, he quotes something in Latin, which he says was once on the back of it. She can see that what she is saying makes him happy. And it makes her happy too. Even if she is only speaking about how it might have been, to share that possibility with him is a relief. There is no shame involved, and there are no unpleasant repercussions. For a moment, she can dream that the truth would make Stephen happy, that he would forgive his mother. And that would mean there was nothing left to hide.

  John’s attention, she notices, has strayed. His eyes have wandered off. He looks worried, taps the table with his fingertips. “There is so little time left,” he says. “So little time. The printers close at noon. This must be with them by then or we are lost.” He stares, a pleading look in his eyes. “You know I must do this for Chicago, don’t you? Otherwise the country will fall into the hands of villains and cheats, into the hands of the judges and the juries and those cursed brothers of mine. Who will speak, if I don’t? The common law is an abuse of God and Nature. There is only One who can make laws and His name is God.”

  Aureka wipes her eyes. She did not even know she was weeping. She stands up and places her hand on his shoulder for what she knows will be the last time. How fiercely he is trembling. His words are becoming more confused. He is talking again about the Fourth of July, 1876, and about the government in Washington.

  “I mustn’t delay you any longer, John,” she says. “You are very busy. I will be leaving now.”

  He pauses again to look up at her. His eyes struggle to come back from where they have gone.

  “Good-bye, John,” she says.

  She wonders if he will remember that she was ever there.

  1874

  IN MEMORIAM

  Published in the Chicago Daily Tribune on October 2, 1874 John Stephen Wright (July 16, 1815–September 26, 1874)

  At 12:00 noon yesterday, in the tranquil surroundings of Rosehill Cemetery, a somber group of settlers from Chicago’s earliest days gathered to pay their respects to Mr. John Stephen Wright, who passed away on September 26, aged 59 years.

  Chicago clocks, some wags have claimed, must be running faster than any others in the Union. How else do we explain the frantic pace of change? It was your writer’s reflection, during the proceedings in question, that the same principles might apply to our collective memories. How few are the names that survive when history is written. No doubt Chicago will keep forever its Kinzie and Ogden and “Long John” Wentworth and Potter Palmer, but what about Mr. Wright? How carelessly we consign significant lives to oblivion. The name of John Stephen Wright, alas, is probably unfamiliar to most of our readers. And yet how many touching stories were told yesterday of the role played by Mr. Wright when this city was but a flickering light in the American firmament.

  Mr. Wright arrived over forty years ago, when Chicago was nothing more than a frontier settlement of log cabins and Indian wigwams, set in swamps that stank of wild onions. But from the moment he landed, he never had any doubts about Chicago’s glorious prospects. John Wright helped George W. Snow build the very first balloon frame house. He trained himself to make maps and gained such a reputation for excellence that his work was adopted by the Government Land Office. One of the pallbearers yesterday was Mr. Philo Carpenter. He recalled how he and Mr. Wright would strike out into the untracked prairies with their surveying equipment to measure land—some of which is now prime real estate in the heart of the city.

  The achievements of the deceased were too numerous to list in this brief notice. But to mention a few: Mr. Wright was one of the key voices behind the building of the original Illinois & Michigan Canal, and by lobbying in Washington he did more than anyone else to bring the Illinois Central Railroad through Chicago. Thousands of farmers across the country will be grateful to him for founding the Prairie Farmer newspaper. One speaker recalled that it was Mr. Wright who led the campaign to use the Osage Orange plant to fence the prairies, long before the invention of barbed wire. His early support for the Atkins Automaton self-reaper revolutionized the way in which crops are harvested.

  In particular, Mr. Wright was applauded for being the finest booster this city has ever seen. This was true to the end. Even after the Great Fire, three years ago, it was Mr. Wright who immediately saw the potential offered by that tragedy. While others were bemoaning their losses, he could look only to the future. There had never been a better time, he claimed, for investment in property. “Five years,” he wrote, “will give Chicago more men, more money, more business, than she would have had without this Fire.” The city was not “burnt up”; it was “only well blistered for bad ailments, to strengthen her for manhood.” Well, five years have not yet passed since then, but his prophecy has already come true.

  And so was sadness at the passing of this noble pioneer mixed with pleasant recollections of his achievements. The most touching moment of all came at the very end when a spontaneous address was given by the sprightly Mrs. Eliza Porter, a lady with whom I happened to become acquainted during the War when I was reporting on conditions at the front. I met her in Fort Pickering where she did exemplary work for the Sanitary Commission in the most wretched conditions imaginable. Her fortitude in the face of so much suffering and bloodshed as she ministered to the wounded and dying was admirable. While I was at Fort Pickering, I never once saw her shed a tear. I mention this only because it was, therefore, all the more moving to observe with what difficulty she strove to control her emotions as she spoke about her “old and inspirational friend” Mr. Wright. She recalled that conversation with him was like “gazing up at the aurora borealis, alive with shooting stars. You never knew where the next bright idea would come from.” Mrs. Porter said most people would not remember that when she arrived in Chicago in 1834 with the intention of teaching, there was not a single school in the community. “I would like to put on record,” said Mrs. Porter, her voice at breaking point, “that John Stephen Wright built the first Normal school in this city.” She paused to wipe her eyes, before adding, in a curious turn of phrase: “In spite of everything, he was a goodly, generous man.”

  Mr. Wright passed peacefully away in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, far from his beloved Chicago. He was the most loyal and devoted husband to Kitty, and a kindly, caring father to Augustine, Maria and Chester, who loved him dearly.

  1874

  THE PENNSYLVANIA ASYLUM FOR THE INSANE

  Special Report of the Board of Commissioners into the death of Mr. John Stephen Wright

  CASE SUMMARY

  Mr. Wright, aged 59 years, was admitted to this hospital on May 17 suffering from acute mania. It is believed he had been a patient in two other Hospitals for the Insane within the three years prior to this one. The first was the Massachusetts Hospital for the Insane in Boston at the turn of 1871/2, after he
was found guilty of disturbing the peace. His offense was to have attempted, allegedly with much ranting and raving, to gain entry into private business premises to alert capitalists to the opportunities for building and profit-making in Chicago after the Great Fire that had taken place the previous October.

  He was later committed for eight months at the Illinois Northern Hospital and Asylum for the Insane at Elgin on the grounds that he had attacked one of his own brothers with a surveying tool. He claimed this brother had swindled him out of some valuable property. In the courtroom, Mr. Wright denied all charges brought against him but was adjudged not to be in his right mind.

  The patient was brought to the Pennsylvania Asylum after again being assessed as insane by judge and jury after he attempted to impersonate Bishop Ledimer in the pulpit of the First Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. After being forcibly removed, he claimed he was only doing what his mother wanted him to do, and what Christian could disobey his own mother? On his arrival here, Mr. Wright was received by Superintendent Dr. Thomas Kirkbride. The patient’s first question of Dr. Kirkbride was to ask him where the ceremony was taking place. His son, he explained, had told him they were coming here to celebrate the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the Prairie Farmer newspaper.

  On inquiry, it was discovered that Mr. Wright’s son had indeed brought him here under this pretense. It also transpired that the true purpose of the court convened earlier in Philadelphia—i.e., to assess whether or not he was sane—had also been concealed from him. Dr. Kirkbride said: “Mr. Wright, do you not realize you are in a hospital?” Mr. Wright was greatly surprised by this, and became very agitated and excitable. He cursed his son for deceiving him and the judge and jury too, for he now seemed to comprehend the subterfuge behind their hearing. The patient then tried to escape through the front door. Despite his declining health, three attendants were required to catch and restrain him, at which point he was placed in Ward B2 under the supervision of Dr. Dewhurst.