Building Taliesin

by Ron McCrea

  Fig. 159. The view west down the courtyard shows the statue “Flower in the Crannied Wall” at the terminus leading to the upper garden and Tea Circle. The hayloft crosses at the end, and a Holstein cow and calf can be seen through the lower passageway. Photograph by Clarence Fuermann.

  Fig. 160. A view from the hayloft looking east shows the residential wing in the distance and the semicircular Tea Circle under the oaks at right. Photograph by Clarence Fuermann.

  Fig. 161. The breezeway, or loggia, separates the residential wing at right from the studio wing at left. The slab in front of the studio is the same one Clifford Evans is standing on in Fig. 51.

  Fig. 162. A view of the courtyard from the Tea Circle shows a pond and, under the porte cochere, two children and a horse. This was taken in the late summer of 1912 when the children of Mamah and Edwin Cheney, John and Martha, were visiting. Photograph by Clarence Fuermann.

  Fig. 163. A dose-up detail of Fig. 162 shows the children more dearly. Martha Cheney was 6 in 1912 and John was 9. They both were killed on August 15, 1914, at ages 8 and 11.

  Fig. 164. Taliesin is a smoking ruin in the aftermath of the fire and mass murder. The roof of the porte-cochere has crashed to the ground. Frank Lloyd Wright may be standing with arms folded at left, next to a seated woman. If the photo was taken on the day of the fire, Wright may not yet have arrived from Chicago and the couple could be Andrew and Jane Porter. A man sits in the breezeway with a rifle across his lap. A bearded man who could be Jenkin or Enos Lloyd Jones stands at the center, talking with other men.

  THE DAY OF DESTRUCTION

  Saturday, August 15, 1914, should have been a day of national celebration. It was the opening day of the Panama Canal, the largest public works project since the Pyramids. But the opening ceremony in Panama City was subdued, with no ranking dignitaries attending. That was because 10 days earlier the “guns of August” had sounded and europe was plunging into war.

  “The children want to go home. She will not tattle, or tell them what grown-ups say about their mother. It is not that they are different, only rich.”

  —Edna Meudt, on John and Martha Cheney, 1914

  In Jones Valley, Unitarians and Progressives were gathering at Tower Hill for the big end-of-summer event, the 33rd annual grove Meeting. On Sunday there would be uplifting speeches, lectures, readings, music, and picnics for a large crowd. Rev. Jenkin Lloyd Jones would deliver one of his most popular sermons, “The gates of the Future Stand Wide Open.”

  Saturday was a warm day. It was threshing time. Eight-year-old Kristin Kritz rode her mare, Beauty, toward Taliesin, her legs sticking straight out on the horse’s “balloon-wide” back. She was going to invite her summer friends, John and Martha Cheney, city kids, to come to her family’s farm three miles away to watch the threshers work.11

  John, 11, and Martha, 8, Mamah Borthwick’s children from Oak Park, did not have many playmates, so Kristin’s father, John Kritz, who had worked on a Lloyd Jones uncle’s farm with Frank Lloyd Wright as a boy and had served as a coachman for Hillside Home School, urged his daughter to make friends. “Are not the children innocent?” he said to any who criticized.

  In an eyewitness memoir written as a poem by the adult edna Meudt, Kristin (her name as a child) says Martha and John did not like Taliesin, and neither did she. The scents and sights that made the house magical to Wright’s sister Maginel made it seem sinister to Kristin. She describes its “strangeness”: “Incense; on the floors creamy bears with no insides; birds that talk back; shadowy flowers she never knew; wall-hangings to be put out of her country mind. Windows too high for her seeing out are hung with boughs.”

  Fig. 165. A man holds the murder weapon aloft, a shingling hatchet used by Julian Carlton in his attacks on nine people.

  “The children want to go home,” she says. “She will not tattle, or tell them what grown-ups say about their mother. It is not that they are different, only rich.” This is the only intimate description written of John and Martha Cheney.

  As Kristin neared Taliesin, the horse sensed something wrong. Kristin saw a little smoke, the plume appear above the buildings. Kristin heard shouts and screams. Terrified, she climbed off Beauty and into a tree where she and Martha had played with dolls. There she sat paralyzed with fear, saying the “Hail Mary” over and over—until she apparently passed out.

  THE SURPRISE ATTACK

  Julian Carlton staged his surprise attack on Taliesin with commando-like tactical planning. He waited until the noon hour, after everyone was seated at opposite ends of the house. He served them lunch. Everyone who could put up a fight was grouped, accounted for, and off guard.12

  Carlton, a small man of about 31 who came for the summer with his young wife, Gertrude, to serve as chef and maid, attacked the woman and children first. He went after Mamah and the children on the porch off the living room, savagely killing Mamah with one blow to the skull from a long-handled shingling hatchet. He attacked and killed 11-year-old John in his chair. Martha ran, but he caught up with her and bludgeoned her; she died in the courtyard. He splashed the bodies with gasoline and set them afire; afterward only a few charred remains of John were found, not enough to provide a death certificate.

  “The first person to reach Mamah Borthwick was Wright’s brother-in-law Andrew Porter,” says Meryle Secrest. “He found her body ablaze and thought it had been saturated with gasoline. Her corpse was badly burned and her hair almost completely burned off. It was 12:45 p.m.”13

  Fire, an accelerant, and surprise gave Carlton the power of many when he took on the men. He poured gasoline under the door of the dining room at the far end of the residence, where five men and a 13-year-old boy were seated. Draftsman Herbert Fritz, one of two survivors, remembered a bubbly liquid coming under the door. Then the room leapt into flame. Fritz crashed through a window, breaking his arm. He saw Carlton kill Emil Brodelle, the draftsman with the talent for the bird’s-eye view.

  As the others rushed through the door to escape the flames, Carlton was waiting with his hatchet. He attacked Wright’s trusted foreman, William Weston, and his 13-year-old-son, Ernest. Ernest died hours later and his father was knocked down but struggled to his feet and escaped. Carlton attacked 65-year-old Thomas Brunker, a laborer from Ridgeway with 10 children, and David Lindblom, 38, a gardener. Both of them survived the day but later died of burns and injuries.

  “The first person to reach Mamah Borthwick was Wright’s brother-in-law Andrew Porter. He found her body ablaze and thought it had been saturated with gasoline. It was 12:45.”

  —Meryle Secrest

  Fig. 166. Rubble of the residential wing of Taliesin shows two levels, with a kitchen stove and shelves holding pots and pans in the upper center. The former living room was at right, and its roofline can be seen against the wide fireplace chimney.

  Fig. 167. Men walk through the burned-out residential wing. The man at center with suspenders and a cap is William Weston, who was struck by the attacker but escaped and returned to halt the fire’s spread. He lost a 13-year-old son.

  Flames quickly spread through the residential wing of the house. Carlton ran to the basement and climbed into the furnace, on the other side of the fireproof wall. He had a small bottle of hydrochloric acid in his shirt pocket—a suicide fallback. He swallowed it when he could stand the heat no longer and was discovered. It did not kill him immediately; he lived for 47 days.

  Weston and lindblom ran for help to a neighboring farm. Weston returned and turned a garden hose on the flames to keep them from spreading to the studio wing. He had lost his son ernest, his summer companion with whom he had bicycled four miles to work every day. But he saved “the working half” of Taliesin, as Wright gratefully said in his autobiography.

  “In thirty minutes the home and all in it had burned to the stonework or to the ground,” he said. “The living half of Taliesin—violently swept down in a madman’s nightmare of flame and murder. The working half remained. Will Weston saved that.”

>   Dozens, and then hundreds of people came running to put out the fire and search for Carlton. Jenkin Lloyd Jones and some of the men from Tower Hill formed a posse. After Carlton was pulled from the furnace by Sheriff John Williams there was a brief stand-off with angry men who wanted to lynch him. Williams and his deputies got Carlton safely to the Dodgeville jail.

  Wright had left Taliesin on Tuesday evening and had spent the days since then putting finishing touches to Midway Gardens with his son John. He had painted over murals that he disliked and was creating his own. “Thirty-six hours earlier I had left, leaving all at Taliesin living, friendly, and happy. Now a blow had fallen like a lightning stroke,” he wrote.

  Kristin’s parents led her into the courtyard to show everyone that she was safe. She walked past bodies, “covered shapes like statues in Lent fallen over.” She walked past Martha.

  Kristin’s frantic parents found her horse and lifted her out of the tree. They led her into the courtyard to show everyone that she was safe. She walked past bodies, “covered shapes like statues in lent fallen over.” She walked past Martha.

  Fig. 168. Onlookers gape at the ruins of Taliesin in a souvenir postcard photo. Two women are in the foreground. Several men can be seen over the elbow of the woman on the left. One of the men wears a hat with a brim.

  In the evening Kristin’s father took her to meet the train carrying Wright, his son John, and Edwin Cheney. Back at Taliesin, she witnessed a pitiful sight: “One man watching with folded arms while another weeps over rubble, raking with blackened fingers in trickling smoke for bones eleven summers young—his son.”

  Edna Meudt took a hard view of Wright. In an earlier version of her poem she wrote of Wright watching Cheney “with icicle-eyes.” Later she softened her views. Taliesin’s casualties were transported to Tanyderi, the Porters’ house a quarter mile away. Franklin Porter, who was four at the time, remembered “teams of horses rushing up the road from the school and loud shouts as black clouds of smoke rose from Taliesin.”

  He wrote: “Those who had been burned fighting the fire were brought over to Tanyderi and laid on improvised beds on the porch, right below the room in which I slept. Mingled with the memory of intense excitement of the fire is that of men moaning in the night with pain, and of a whippoorwill singing during moments of quiet. For ever after the song of a whippoorwill at night at Tanyderi seems infinitely sad.”14

  Dr. Marcus Bossard and Dr. Frank Nee of Spring Green spent the rest of the day and part of the next tending to the suffering. Bossard’s bill was $25, plus $10 for David lindblom. Wright paid it.15

  THE CARLTONS

  Julian and Gertrude Carlton were from Chicago. Both were African American, although Julian claimed to have come from Barbados. They had been recommended to Wright by John Vogelsang Jr., the caterer of Midway Gardens. The Carltons had been servants in his parents’ home on the Near North Side. John Vogelsang Sr. was the owner of Vogelsang’s Restaurant, a popular dining spot in the loop. The family residence was on Astor Place near lake Michigan, not far from where Wright had wanted to build his Goethe Street townhouse.

  “The gardener spoke before he died. It was the black devil Julian.” No! Kristin thinks, Not the new cook. Julian makes better desserts than anyone else!

  —Edna Meudt, “A Summer Day That Changed the World”

  The Carltons had arrived at Taliesin in June. Julian Carlton had struck Wright as competent, agreeable, and “well-educated for a member of his class.” Wright’s sister Jane Porter had found Julian to be “mild-mannered” and could not believe that he had been the killer. It also surprised Kristin. She overheard a bystander say, “The gardener spoke before he died. It was the black devil Julian.” “No! Kristin thinks, Not the new cook. Julian makes better desserts than anyone else!”

  Despite his geniality Julian Carlton had a volatile, troubled side that grew into agitation and then full-blown paranoia in the days preceding the rampage. His wife, Gertrude, said Carlton wanted to get out of Wisconsin and back to the city. She told authorities that Julian had ordered her to give Wright notice, and told her to say it was because she was lonely. The real reason, it appeared, was that he felt the place closing in on him and that he was being persecuted. He started keeping a butcher knife next to the bed and staying up late at night, watching at the window.

  Wright had placed want ads for replacement help in the Wisconsin State Journal before he left for Chicago; they ran on Wednesday and Thursday, August 12 and 13. Saturday was to have been the Carltons’ last day. They were expected to leave on a train for Chicago after lunchtime. Gertrude was wearing her travel clothes and hat when she was found in a nearby field where she had fled, covered with burrs.

  Julian had a score to settle before he left. His antagonist was Emil Brodelle, who was 26, five years younger. On Wednesday Brodelle, the draftsman from Milwaukee, had ordered Carlton to saddle his horse. Carlton refused; he was a house servant, not a farmhand, and Brodelle was not his employer. Brodelle cursed him and called him “a black son-of-a-bitch.” Carlton told a doctor in the jail that there had been a second confrontation on Friday morning with Brodelle, and that Brodelle had struck him. The motive was revenge.

  But why attack everyone? Why take on nine people at once and burn down Taliesin? Carlton told the doctor that he had planned to escape and had stashed a change of clothes in the woods. If the intent was to destroy all the witnesses and evidence of a crime, then Taliesin and its occupants were collateral damage. It was cunning and well-planned—and completely insane.

  Thirty minutes of insanity brought an end to Taliesin in its original vision. It ended the life of Mamah Borthwick, “she for whom Taliesin had first taken form.” It was the end of the story of Mamah Borthwick and Frank Lloyd Wright.

  IN THE AFTERMATH

  Joseph lins owned a hardware store, a furniture store, and a funeral parlor in Spring Green, a common combination. The ledger for lins & Hood includes these entries for August, 1914:16

  Frank Wright

  Embalm Mamah Borthwick 12.00

  Box and trips 8.00

  E.H. Cheney

  Casket 50.00

  Embalming 10.00

  Trip to train 5.00

  Tom Brunker

  Casket 65.00

  Hearse 10.00

  Embalming 10.00

  Shroud and clothing 4.75

  Trip to Ridgeway 5.00

  Frank Wright for David Lindblom

  Casket 40.00

  Embalming 10.00

  Hearse 10.00

  Shroud 4.00

  Preacher 4.00

  Edwin Cheney left by train on Sunday, August 16, carrying the remains of his children. As evening approached, Wright cut down Mamah’s garden, “the flowers that had grown and bloomed for her,” and placed them in a plain pine box. His son John helped him lift the body into it. They closed the lid. The coffin was placed on “our little spring-wagon,” the wagon that Wright and Mamah had ridden in together. It was draped with more flowers and hitched to two horses, Darby and Joan.

  Fig. 169. Mamah Borthwick’s cause of death is listed as “Killed by a negro.” Her personal data is attested to by Andrew Porter, Wright’s brother-in-law.

  Fig. 170. Mamah Borthwick’s daughter Martha Cheney, was 8, not 10 as listed. Her cause of death is listed as “Killed by a negro.”

  “Since Taliesin was first built the faithful little sorrel team had drawn us along the Valley roads and over the hills, in spring, summer, autumn, and winter, almost daily,” Wright said. Now, walking beside the wagon, he drove the team to the Unity Chapel churchyard, with John following behind. They were met by two young cousins, Ralph and Orrin Lloyd Jones, who assisted at the gravesite.

  “I asked them to leave me there alone. I wanted to fill the grave myself.”

  —Frank Lloyd Wright

  “Then I asked them to leave me there alone. I wanted to fill the grave myself. The August sun was setting on the familiar range of hills … then—darkness. I filled the grave
—in darkness—in the dark.”

  There was no grave marker.

  “All I had to show for the struggle for freedom of the past five years that had swept most of my former life away”—Taliesin and Mamah, his home and his love—“had now been swept away. Why mark the spot where desolation ended and began?”

  Fig. 171. Ernest Weston, William Weston’s 13-year-old son, a gardener, was “murdered by a blow on head and burned,” dying after eight hours. He and his father had bicycled together four miles to Taliesin each day during the summer.

  Fig. 172. Emil Brodelle, 26, was the main target of Julian Carlton after tangling with him twice. The Milwaukee draftsman, who was engaged to be married, drew the bird’s-eye perspectives of the Imperial Hotel and Midway Gardens for Wright.

  WRIGHT SHOWS UP

  Borthwick had no funeral—another sign of Wright’s wantonness, some newspapers said—but his workmen did. Wright attended them, and paid the burial expenses for some.17

  He also showed up for the county fair. The dedication of the Women’s Building was scheduled for September 2, opening day. But there was a question: “We have been asked many times if Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright will now make an exhibit of his Japanese art products,” as he had promised.

  “We have been asked many times if Mr. Frank Lloyd Wright will now make an exhibit of his Japanese art products. He says that he will.”

  —Spring Green Home News, August 27, 1914

  The answer: “He says that he will. He does so gratuitously.”

  The headline promised visitors “Antiques from Scene of Tragedy.” “Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chicago architect, has consented to place on exhibition his wonderful collection of oriental art products from his bungalow where seven persons were killed recently,” the story said.