Building Taliesin

by Ron McCrea

  One must give Ellen Key credit for responding to a novice and entrusting her with her work. Mamah Borthwick had not been published or tested. The texts Key was giving her on marriage and sexuality, unlike her clear writings on home design, were murky and convoluted.

  One must give Borthwick credit for being game enough to take them on. To compare passages from the Borthwick and Bogutslawsky translations of Love and Ethics produces no clear winner. Without the original Swedish edition in hand, and a knowledge of Swedish, it is hard to know whether either translator could have done any better. Borthwick had gone the extra mile and taught herself to read and write in Swedish just for Ellen Key.

  The Borthwick-Key correspondence is one-sided. One hears only Mamah’s voice, though it is usually clear what she is reacting to, and often she quotes Key back to herself. Without the full correspondence available, including letters from Putnam’s, it is difficult to judge who is being unfair in each instance. It is difficult to judge whether Wright was really forced to take the three smaller translations to Ralph Fletcher Seymour, his personal publisher, as a last resort, or whether it was his first resort. Putnam’s was the logical publisher for Love and Ethics since that book was, in part, Key’s reply to the wave of criticism that greeted the 1912 Putnam edition of Love and Marriage. But Putnam’s in the United States may have wanted to lie low, as can be judged by the frightened preface of the Huebsch edition.

  “Frank’s mother has just telephoned me she has a letter so I must run over there. Pardon haste—”

  —Mamah Borthwick to Ellen Key from Taliesin, July,1913

  Wright considered the East Coast a lost cause when it came to advancing new ideas. He believed the future was in the Midwest and West. But that was not the opinion of Europeans like Key, who regarded New York as the only serious place to be published in the United States. In her first letter from Taliesin, in which Mamah says she has learned that a New York house is coming out with an edition of Love and Ethics, she tries to make a case for Seymour: “He is very well known in the West at least—particularly for the high-class artistic books which he brings out, in fact devotes himself exclusively to that class of work. I feel sure you would be satisfied that the three or four little things have gone to him. The réclame [the reputation] of his publishing house is of course of a different order from that of Putnam’s—so it is not a bad thing to have both?” Key was not persuaded.

  No one could have asked for a more dedicated, patient, consistent, cooperative, hardworking and loyal translator than Mamah Borthwick. She was constantly at work, translating many more essays than were published and always asking for more. Key, suspicious, complaining, and controlling, would not give Borthwick or Wright any freedom to market or repackage her work. Mamah emerges as the soul of charity, never disrespectful but earnest, considerate, and obedient. She is so grateful for the personal liberation Key has helped her find, and so happy with her life, that no abuse by Key can dampen her warmth or temper her high spirits. Taylor Woolley would remember Mamah as “one of the loveliest women I ever knew.”94

  For his part, Frank Lloyd Wright did everything he could to help make Mamah’s mission the success she wanted it to be. From her letters one can see he is fully involved. He told Francis and Mary Little, “We work together,” and he meant it. Wright and Borthwick are constantly discussing her work. He offers ideas for articles and anthologies, puts his publisher and networks at her disposal, advances his own money, accepts losses, writes letters in Mamah’s defense, sends magazines to Sweden for Key’s consideration, and accompanies her to her appointments in New York.

  He never takes credit for what she does, except for the shared translation credit for Love and Ethics. Lena Johannesson believes he took the credit because he paid for the printing. But he paid for all the printing at Seymour. This title page, the product of their time in Italy, was their public declaration of their commitment to each other.

  MAMAH AT TALIESIN: NOTES FROM LIFE

  Woven among Mamah Borthwick’s letters to Ellen Key are enticing glimpses of the life she and Frank Lloyd Wright were living together and insights into their state of mind, their hopes and plans. Soon after arriving in Wisconsin, Borthwick is excited to tell her mentor about the new home he has built for her “in this very beautiful Hillside, as beautiful in its way as the country about Strand.” She knows its name—Taliesin—and describes “the combination of site and dwelling” as “quite the most beautiful I have seen anyplace in the world.” Frank’s sister Jane Porter, her host at Tanyderi while Taliesin was still under construction, “has championed our love most loyally, believing it her brother’s happiness.”

  “I have been thus far very busy with the unfinished house and because of the fact that workmen were boarded here in a nearby farmhouse, sometimes as many as 36 at a time. Mr. Wright’s sister has looked after this all summer but when I came it was turned over to me and I have done very little of your work in consequence of the building. The house is now, however, practically finished and my time again free. Mr. Wright has his studio incorporated into the house and we both will be busy with our own work, with absolutely no outside interests on my part.”95

  Responding to Key’s quizzing about her children, she says, “My children I hope to have at times, but that cannot be just yet.” She says, pointedly, “I believe it is a house founded on Ellen Key’s ideal of love.”

  As progress continues on the house, Borthwick sends two photographs, probably prints made by Taylor Woolley. “The interior looks pretty bare, for there are no rugs yet nor many other things which will make it look more home-like,” she says. She mentions that “a draughtsman of Frank’s whose wife is a Swedish woman brought us a copy of Jul Kvällen [the Christmas issue of a magazine] with its photograph of Strand, Ellen Key’s article “Hemma” [“at Home”]—and—an unusually lovely likeness of Ellen Key’s lovely self.” Draftsman Herbert Fritz’s wife, Mary Olava Larson Fritz, was a daughter of Norwegian immigrants (see Fig. 96). This little act of thoughtfulness shows that Mamah already had made friends.

  Her dignified comportment during the press onslaught of December 1911 may have impressed those around her. She tells Key, “Except for the newspapers we have been treated with every possible respect and uniformly courteous consideration.”

  On November 10, 1912, a year into their life at Taliesin, Mamah sends a happy report. “You will be interested, I think, to know how our attempt to do what we believed right has succeeded. I can now say that we have, I believe, the entire respect of the community in which we live. I have never encountered a glance otherwise and many kind and thoughtful things have been done for us by the people around here.

  “I do not go to Chicago, but Frank does and sees his children every week. My sister [Lizzie Borthwick] brought my children here for the summer during Mr. Cheney’s absence in Europe for his wedding trip. He married a very lovely young woman, a dear friend of my sister’s—and the children are very fond of her and she of them.

  “The place here is very lovely; all summer we had excursion parties come here to see the house and grounds, including Sunday-schools, Normal School classes, etc. I will try to send you some new photographs—you will scarcely recognize them from the others.”

  One also gets a flash of Mamah’s experience of her first winter in Wisconsin. “I hope you will have time to write me a word or two—I cherish your letters very dearly,” she says. “I have again a long, shut-in winter to read and study your work.”

  Key must have responded skeptically to the good news and questioned Mamah closely about the children’s welfare. In her reply of January 5, 1913, Mamah provides the answers:

  “Yes, Mrs. Cheney is lovely with the children. My sister lives there, you know, and no one could have the interest of the children nearer her heart than she has, and she thinks Mrs. Cheney wonderfully wise and lovely with them always. Only my sister’s being there made my absence possible. I hope to go to Chicago to see them in a few days. Yes, Frank was here when the chil
dren were here last summer and they love him dearly.”

  By July 8, 1913, Borthwick is looking forward to a new life and a new adventure in Japan. “I have a dream of you coming to America, visiting us, and then of our going over to Japan together,” she tells Key. “Will you realize it, do you think possibly? Frank must go again in connection with the hotel, so we expect to have a little house there where you would again be our guest, during your stay in Japan. Would you consider it? Of course you would be perfectly independent to make whatever side trips you might wish.”

  She adds a telling postscript: “Frank’s mother has just telephoned me she has a letter so I must run over there. Pardon haste—With dearest love, Mamah.”

  “Over there” is probably Hillside Home School, where Anna Lloyd Wright stayed with her sisters Jennie and Nell Lloyd Jones. They have phone service at Taliesin, but the mail is delivered to the school. Although Wright described Taliesin as his mother’s home in a 1911 letter to clients, Frank and Mamah have the place to themselves. Anna is on cordial terms with Mamah, giving her a call when there is mail. “Running over there” is probably something Mamah does regularly.

  Borthwick’s final letter to Key, on July 20, 1914, is personal and newsy. She talks about the weather. “Strand must be lovelier than ever now. You are to be envied its coolness if nothing else. It is nearly 90 Fahr. in the room as I write, with every prospect of reaching 100 very soon. It is of course extremely enervating.”

  Wright is doing great things. “Frank has been very busy; had a special exhibit of his work in the Art Institute this winter, which attracted a great deal of attention. I am taking the liberty of sending you one of the articles on some Concert Gardens he has just built,” the Midway Gardens.

  Wright is still supporting Mamah’s relationship with Key by sending her presents. “Frank said a few days ago he was going to send you a photograph of me, if you still care to have it. I should be so happy to have a word from you when you can spare me one.”

  Their social life at Taliesin is one Key might envy but also resent. “Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been here to see us a couple of times recently,” Mamah says, naming Key’s chief antagonist in American feminist debates,“—an extremely interesting woman of course, with a terrifyingly active brain. Then we have had some other interesting people here lately—editor of The Dial,96 artists, etc.; but best of all my children come in a day or two to spend the summer with us.”

  Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright had been through a long ordeal and had survived each trial. They had been scandalized in the U.S. press while in Germany and forced to separate, but they found each other again in Italy. They had been hounded by the Chicago press in Wisconsin but they faced it down. They had been ostracized as creative partners, living together unmarried, but now the world was welcoming them. They were on the verge of vindication.

  Fig. 146. A bust of Ellen Key sits in a window next to her writing desk at Strand. Photograph courtesy of Björn Sjunnesson.

  But it was the summer of 1914. It all would soon be destroyed.

  Fig. 147. Ellen Key and Mamah Borthwick probably sat at this partner desk at Strand in June 1911. The palette shows Key’s preference for pale colors, sunlight, and wood. Photograph courtesy of Björn Sjunnesson.

  CHARLOTTE AND ZONA AND MAMAH AND FRANK

  “Charlotte Perkins Gilman has been here to see us a couple of times recently—an extremely interesting woman of course, with a terrifyingly active brain.”

  —Mamah Borthwick to Ellen Key, July 20, 1914

  Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s journey to Taliesin began in mid-June, 1914, when she, Zona Gale, and Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones all appeared at the 12th Bienniale of the General Federation of Women’s Clubs in Chicago. The conference, which drew an immense crowd of 15,000 clubwomen from the United States and around the world, including 5,000 delegates, took place over seven days starting June 10. Gilman spoke on “The New Art of City Making.” Gale chaired the Civics Committee’s programs and read a “Friendship Village” story. Jones spoke on peace and temperance.97

  After the conference Gale and Gilman traveled to Madison, where they appeared with 28-year-old Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the president’s daughter, at a five-day “Suffrage School” attended by numerous movement, university, and political leaders. Wilson’s special interest was in building grassroots democratic activity by using public school buildings as social centers, coordinated by appointed “civic secretaries.” (The Wisconsin Legislature had passed a law permitting such use as part of its 1911 Progressive agenda.)98

  “I made up my mind to know Zona Gale better when I got home. … I had met her at Taliesin with Charlotte Perkins Gilman.”

  —Frank Lloyd Wright, An Autobiography

  On the evening of June 22, Wilson, Gilman, and Gale left Madison for Gale’s riverside home in Portage. They were accompanied by former Chicago school system architect Dwight Perkins (who had worked with Frank Lloyd Wright in Louis Sullivan’s studio) and his wife. They traveled together by car. A local paper reported that they ran into “almost impassable” roads with “water and mud over the hubs” after a heavy rain, and did not reach Portage until almost midnight. The president’s daughter traveled without security.99

  Fig. 148. Zona Gale

  Fig. 149. Charlotte Perkins Gilman

  The next evening they put on a program at Portage High School to campaign for Wilson’s social centers. Wilson, a singer, also treated the audience to “several songs, including ‘The Lass With the Delicate Air.’”100

  The parties went their separate ways, and Gale and Gilman traveled to Spring Green, where they stopped to visit Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s Tower Hill summer colony. Gale recalled an example of Gilman’s relentless rationality and truthtelling: “Mr. Jones, with his shock of silver hair and silver beard and ruddy face, came smiling toward us as we sat talking to a little girl. ‘See,’ I said to the child, ‘here comes Santa Claus!’ The child’s eyes widened and deepened, and Mrs. Gilman touched my arm. When she had my attention, she held me in silence for a moment, and then she said, very low: ‘It isn’t true.’ A memorable moment.”101

  PROMOTING THE WOMEN’S BUILDING

  Fig. 150. Margaret Woodrow Wilson, the president’s daughter and a noted singer, was 28 when she joined Zona Gale and Charlotte Perkins Gilman for travels in Wisconsin.

  On July 7, the two women appeared on stage at the Spring Green high school auditorium to raise funds for a new Women’s Building and Neighborhood Club at the Iowa County fairgrounds. The building was a project of Frank Lloyd Wright’s sister Jane Porter, who was interested in finding ways to bring country women together and help them overcome the isolation of rural life. Her Lend-a-Hand Club was another Progressive endeavor; on June 6 she had welcomed the club to Tanyderi, her home on the Taliesin grounds, where “dainty and abundant refreshments were served,” girls from Hillside Home School sang and paraded with flags, and the honored guest was Richland Center neighbor Ada James, the leader of the Women’s Suffrage League of Wisconsin.102 Wright had contributed a design for the Women’s Building and pledged to fill its gallery with a display of his newest art treasures from Asia for the building’s dedication, which would be on September 2, the opening day of the county fair. Herbert Fritz, Wright’s senior draftsman, did the rendering of the building that appeared on the front page of the Home News.103 Fritz brought his violin to the high school and played solos to open and close the program.

  “NOT ONE MOMENT LACKED INTEREST”

  “There was only one regret” at the end of the evening, the Home News reported, “and that was that anyone should have missed the opportunity of hearing two such gifted women as Mrs. Gilman and Miss Gale.”

  Fig. 151. Frank Lloyd Wright’s design for a Spring Green Women’s Building and Neighborhood Club appeared on the front page of the Home News on July 2, 1914. It was to have a skylighted gallery and a separate children’s play and nap area. A different design was finally adopted.

  Gilman, who had tu
rned 54 four days earlier, was described as “a lecturer of wide reputation, author, owner and publisher of The Forerunner, a live monthly magazine.” She “offered poems and stories which showed her keen understanding of human nature, and she mentioned ways of improving social conditions, emphasizing the idea that human nature need not remain stationary but grow and develop.”104

  Gilman praised the Women’s Building, saying it could serve as a respite center for mothers (separate children’s play and nap areas were in the design), an art gallery, a hall for lectures and dances, a women’s exchange for the display and sale of homemade items, and a “tea room for automobilists.”

  “The audience showed sympathetic appreciation of Mrs. Gilman’s wit and there was not one moment of her talk that lacked interest,” the Home News reported.

  Zona Gale, 40, read excerpts from an unpublished story. “It was a story that brings us in close sympathy with the life about us and gives us the desire to work for the advancement of the community,” the reporter wrote. “An unusually earnest and friendly atmosphere pervaded the audience and Miss Gale’s enthusiasm gave [everyone] courage to surmount many difficulties and prejudices.”105

  Ellen Key maintained that women’s work outside the home was “socially pernicious, racially wasteful, and soul-withering,” and criticized the women’s movement “for setting up male models and male standards of success and fulfillment.”

  Gale also announced a benefit performance of her new play, The Neighbors, in the Hillside Home School gym in late August. Although she lived 50 miles up the Wisconsin River, she was a familiar figure at Hillside and Tower Hill and had accepted a lead role in the Women’s Building drive before it was announced on July 2.106