X
Farewell to Boston
During the two years Louis dwelt in the home of the John A. Tompsons, in Wakefield, he was very busy in thought and deed. A certain materialistic clarification of intellect was proceeding within a new light which enabled him to see things superficially and to share in that state of illusion concerning realities which was the common property of the educated and refined. The dreams of childhood—that form of mystical illumination which enables the little one to see that upon which the eyes of its elders seldom focus—were thereby eclipsed; and, in one less romantic and willful by nature, would have vanished permanently from active consciousness in the usual and customary way. For this very period of imaginative childhood is by most adults relegated to obscurity; and if referred to at all, dismissed as inconsequential and “childish.” But childhood, thus banished, remains sequestered within us unchanged. It may be obscured by an overlay of our sophistication, our pride and our disdain; we, the while, unaware that to disdain our fertile childhood is precisely equivalent to disdain of our maturity. Hence the illusion that we are no longer the child; the delusion that we are any other than grown children. For where lives the man who does not firmly believe in magic and in fairy tales; who does not worship something with a childlike faith, who does not dream his dreams, however sordid or destructive, however high, however nobly altruistic? And Louis thus dared to disdain and eclipse his own childhood. For was he not rising now like a toy balloon into the rarefied atmosphere of intellect? And what had intellect to do with childhood? Intellect, indeed, was the cachet of manhood, in whose borderland he was now wandering, making ready to cross the frontier, some day to enter what men called “real life.” This mood began when Louis was well settled in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—familiarly known as “Tech”—pursuing his special course in Architecture.
To John A. Tompson’s tutelage Louis owed many pirouettes, particularly some knowledge and some understanding and misunderstanding of the great oratorios. Under the sway of their beauty, the sensuous allure of the sacred music, Louis would return again and again to his childhood’s sensibilities and faith. But there came a telling change when he had acquired from John A. some knowledge of their structure, some definition and labelling of the wondrous chords and modulations that had exalted him to an agony, and had borne him along in a great resplendent stream of song, which became a stream of wonder upon wonder, that men had made these things—had made them all out of their heads. And in this maze of hero-worship he had dreamed again and again his natal dream of power, of that power within man of which no one had told him; for he had heard only of the power of God. And in this special dream he had in truth and noble faith seen man as magician bringing forth from nothingness, from depths of silence of a huge world of sleep, as though, by waving of some unknown unseen wand, he had evoked this sublime, this amazing fabric; which equally would pass away and vanish with the sound of the last note, even as the bare thought of such passing left a haunt within.
It was then John A. Tompson, he of the precise, the articulate, the exact, the meticulous, the hard intelligence—who bit by bit led Louis on. He dispelled for him the music-world of enchantment wherein simple faith had seen the true substance and value of results; he substituting therefor a world of fact and technique. It was all subtly done, bit by bit. The first effect of this was to arouse in Louis a new interest—an interest in technique—in the how. John A. Tompson, himself, indeed loved these oratorios, with a fanaticism peculiarly his own, somewhat as though he were impersonating a machinist’s vise. He clung to them indeed as though imagining he was a shipwrecked mariner and they a saving raft; yet he was quiet and gleeful amid the dangers of the open sea of sound.
He used to grit his teeth when he was pleased and he frequently was pleased when on shore he was giving Louis a hypodermic of technique. Louis’s utter innocence of music’s artful structure, form and content was John A.’s joy, his secret delight. Thus Louis learned, concerning chords, that the one in particular that had overwhelmed him with a sort of gorgeous sorrow was called the dominant seventh, and another that seemed eerie and that gave him a peculiar nervous thrill and chill was named the augmented fifth. Louis had been very curious concerning these two chords; and furthermore he was insistent to know why certain parts of the music filled him with joyful, inspiriting and triumphant pleasure, while other parts made him sad even to melancholy and despair. He was told that these opposites were known as the major and the minor modes and he was much concerned too, regarding what he later learned were the diatonic and the chromatic scales—and further concerning that strange swaying and turning of surging harmonies—that it was a movement technically known as a modulation from one key into another. Now Louis became avariciously curious concerning all the remaining technicalities and names, and amassed them as one might collect precious curios. It seemed to him that in giving names to all these sounds and movements he had heard and felt, it was much like giving names to the flowers and shrubs and trees he had loved so well. But this difference he marked: That while his plants and trees in spite of names lived on in mystery, and slept their winter sleep, to be again awakened by the call of Spring, giving names to music had dispelled the mystery, and had caused its sweet enchantments one by one to pass in defile into a group of words, which might mean much or nothing according as one first had felt the living power without their aid. That the danger was that music might become enslaved to the intellect and might nevermore be free. For as he began to see the full bulk of the mechanics, the mechanisms, and the tyranny of rules he became alarmed that music might die. For he could not yet see that here also, spite of names, the mystery, the enchantment would live on even though it be in winter sleep, and, at imagination’s rousing call, again and again would renew its onward flow of rejuvenescence, and thus retain its magic power to stir the heart.
Thus Louis learned a modicum concerning music. A very trifle, to be sure. For he lived in Puritan New England where large utterances of joy and faith in the Earth, of faith in Life, of faith in Man, were few and far between.
Nevertheless he had now definitely entered the cultural world, within which were the blest, without which were the damned. The world of intellectual dissection, surgery and therapeutics; the world of theory, of conjecture, of analysis and synthesis; the world of Idea, of Abstraction, of tenuity, of minute distinctions and nuances, filled with its specific belief in magic, its own superstitions, its aberrations, its taboos, denials and negations, and yet equally a world of vast horizons, of eagle-eyed range, of immense powers of ethereal flight to the far and the near, seeking the stars to know them, seeking the most minute to know it, searching the invisible to inquire what may be there, ever roaming, ever inquiring, inquisitive, acquisitive, accumulating a vast fund of the how and why, wherewith to record, to construct, to upbuild; and yet, withal, in giant service to the willful power of Imagination without whose vitalizing spark it could not stir; while in the fullness of its strength it can no more than carry on the heart’s desire.
The living relationship of Intellect and Instinct has far too long been overlooked. For Intellect is recent, and neuter, and unstable in itself, while Instinct is primordial and procreant: It is a power so vast, so fathomless, so omnipresent, that we ignore it; for it is the vast power of all time that sleeps and dreams; it is that power within whose dream we dream—even as in our practical aspect, our hard headed, cold-blooded, shrewd, calculating suspicious caution we are most obviously dreamers of turbid dreams, for we have pinned our faith to Intellect; we gaze in lethal adoration upon a reed shaken by the wind.
About this time flamboyantly arose Patrick Gilmore with his band and his World Jubilee. Then Louis discovered there had been in existence music quite other than oratorio, hymn, sentimental songs of the hoi polloi and burnt-cork minstrels, or the classic grindings of the hurdy-gurdy.
He found it refreshing and gay, melodious above all. When he heard full bosomed Parepa sing in coloratura, he could scarcely keep his seat; never was such soprano heard in oratorio, and when the elder Strauss like a little he-wren mounted the conductor’s stand, violin in hand, and dancing, led the orchestra through the lively cadence of the Blue Danube, Louis thought him the biggest little man on earth; and when it came to the “sextette” from Lucia, Louis roared his approval and listened just as eagerly to the inevitable encore. And the “Anvil Chorus”—oh, the Anvil Chorus! And so on, day by day, night by night from glorious beginning to glorious end. He had heard the finest voices in the world, great orchestral outpourings, immense choruses. But he was, above all, amazed at the power of the single voice, when trained to perfection of control. He felt again with delight its unique quality, its range, its fluency, its flexibility, its emotional gamut, its direct personal intimate appeal; he felt a soul, a being, in the single voice, the heartful, the perfect instrument whereby to interpret and convey every state of feeling and of thought; and he was glad indeed.
This blossoming of music exotic to all he had known hitherto, made him glad, made him gay, relaxed his sobriety, refreshed his outlook on life. It filled him with a new consciousness of beauty; of a beauty that seemed free and debonair, like a swan in the pool, like rain on the roof, like roses on a garden wall, with groves, and a turquoise sky; like bold and joyous horses, saying ha! ha!—and like unto furtive gentle creatures of wood and stream, and like curling breakers when close by, or the tossing of trees in a hearty gale.
More excitement: Came the great conflagration of 9 and 10 November, 1872. Louis saw this terror from its trifling beginning—a small flame curling from the wooden cornice of a building on the north side of Summer street. There were perhaps a half dozen persons present at the time. The street was night-still. It was early. No fire engine came. Horses were sick, “epizootic” was raging. Engines must be drawn by hand. All was quiet as the small flame grew into a whorl and sparks shot upward from a glow behind; the windows became lighted from within. A few more people gathered, but no engine came. Then began a gentle purring roar. The few became a crowd but no engine came. Glass crackled and crashed, flames burst forth madly from all windows, and the lambent dark flames behind them soared high, casting multitudes of sparks and embers abroad, as they cracked and wheezed. The roof fell, the floors collapsed. A hand-drawn engine came, but too late. The front wall tottered, swayed and crumbled to the pavement, exposing to view a roaring furnace. It was too late. The city seemed doomed. With this prelude began the great historic fire. Louis followed its ravages all night long.
It was a magnificent but terrible pageant of wrathful fire before whose onslaught row after row of regimented buildings melted away. As far as the eye could reach all was consuming fire, and dire devastation; an inferno, terrible and wonderful to look upon. Louis went here and there; retreating as the holocaust advanced ever northward. All the city seemed doomed, but it was not. All hope seemed lost, but it was not. The end came at last; courageous, weary and worn men triumphed, after agonies of hope and despair. What a terror, what a holocaust, what ruin of men, what downfall, what instant collapses of fortune, what a heavy load to meet and bear, what a trial and a test. Yet a proud spirit, the eternal spirit of man rose to the height of the call of calamity. The city was rebuilt. For Louis it was a terrifying experience; so sudden, so overwhelming, so fatalistic, so cruel.
When the ruins cooled Louis found it difficult to locate the streets. They seemed labyrinthine, lost in a maze of wreckage and debris; bit by bit he found his strange way about. At night he was put on guard duty as a member of the M.I.T. battalion. Clad in full uniform with Springfield rifle and fixed bayonet at right shoulder, he walked his beat from Tremont street to Pleasant street as far as opposite the tower of the Providence Depot, and return. For hours in the night, all alone, he walked his beat and saw not a soul. At first it was novel and exciting, but as nothing happened, he became weary from loss of sleep, bored by the monotonous to and fro, and glad to be relieved. He had two nights of this. Then came a show of order throughout the city and the great work of clearing and upbuilding, in due time began. He returned to his studies in Tech.
He had liked military drill; he had had two years of it at “High.” He liked the exercise, the sense of order and precision, the neat evolutions and the compact team work of the many cadets. But he considered it as discipline in play. He had no thought of war other than to loathe it, as the wild dream of madmen who stood safely behind the evil. For Louis long since had begun to sense and to discern what lay behind the veil of appearances. Social strata had become visible and clear, as also that hypocrisy of caste and cant and “eminence” against which his mother, time and time again, had spoken so clearly, so vehemently in anger and contempt. Her ideal she averred was a righteous man, sound of head, clean of heart, a truthful man too natural to lie or to evade. These outbursts of his mother sank deep into the being of her son; and in looking back adown the years, he has reason justly to appraise in reverence and love a nature so transparent, so pure, so vehement, so sound, so filled with a yearning for the joy of life, so innocent-ecstatic in contemplation of beauty anywhere, as was that of the one who bore him forth, truly in fidelity, to be and to remain life of her life. Thus the curtain of memory ever lifts and falls and lifts again, on one to whom this prayer is addressed. If Louis is not his mother’s spirit in the flesh, then words fail, and memory is vain.
Upon his entry into Tech Louis felt a marked change in atmosphere from that of “High.” It was now an atmosphere of laissez faire, of a new sort of freedom. Tuition paid, the rest he found was up to him. There was no special regularity of hours or of attendance. He might exert himself or not as he saw fit. He might learn as much or little as he chose. There was no discipline further than this: That one was expected to conduct himself with decorum and with a reasonable degree of application. It was broadly assumed that the student was there in his own interest and would apply himself accordingly.
The school was housed in Rogers Hall, adjoining, on the south, the Museum of Natural History, at Boylston and Berkeley streets. The quarters were pleasant and airy, the long drafting-room or atelier facing broadside to the south. There was also a Library and a Lecture Room. At this date the school was comparatively new, having been opened in 1865. Louis therefore was among its early students. This one building housed the Institute entire.
The School of Architecture was presided over by Professor William R. Ware, of the Boston architectural firm of Ware & Van Brunt. Among the important works of this firm were the Memorial Building at Harvard, and the large Railway Station at Worcester. Professor Ware was a gentleman of the old school; a bachelor, of good height, slender, bearded in the English fashion, and turning gray. He had his small affectations, harmless enough. His voice was somewhat husky, his polite bearing impeccable and kind. He had a precious sense of quiet humor, and common sense seemed to have a strong hold on him. Withal he was worthy of personal respect and affection. His attainments were moderate in scope and soundly cultural as of the day; his judgments were clear and just. The words amiability and quiet common sense sum up his personality; he was not imaginative enough to be ardent.
His assistant, Eugene Letang, was a diplomé of the École National des Beaux Arts, Paris, and specifically an ancien of the atelier libre of Emil Vaudremer, architect, a winner of the Grand Prix de Rome.
This man Letang was sallow earnestness itself; long and lean of face with a scanty student beard. Let us say he was thirty. He had no professional air; he was a student escaped from the Beaux Arts, a transplanted massier as it were of the atelier, where the anciens, the older students, help the nouveaux, the younger set, along. He was admirably patient, and seemed to believe in the real value of the work he so candidly was doing; and at times he would say: “From discussion comes the light.” So here was a student absorbed in teaching students, while Professor Ware conserved the worldly pose and poise of the cultural Boston of the time—creating and maintaining thus an air of the legitimate and approved.
There were perhaps not over thirty students, all told, in the architectural course, and Louis found them agreeable companions. Some of them were University graduates and therefore older than he and much more worldly wise, in their outlook. And there were as well a few advanced students. A few were there as rich men’s sons, to whom the architectural profession seemed to have advantages of tone. Arthur Roche was one of these. A few were there as poor men’s sons. They worked hard to become breadwinners. Among these was William Roche Ware, nephew of the Professor, and George Ferry of Milwaukee. What certain others were there for, including Louis, is a somewhat dubious surmise. But Louis began to like companionship for the first time. Hitherto he had been entirely neglectful of his school comrades, caring neither who nor what they were as persons. Here, however, there was space, freedom of movement and continued personal informal intercourse. So Louis began to put on a bit of swagger, to wear smart clothes, to shave away the down and to agitate a propaganda for inch-long side whiskers. A photograph of that date shows him as a clean-cut young man, with a rather intelligent expression, a heavy mop of black hair neatly parted for the occasion, a pearl stud set in immaculate white, and a suit up to the minute in material and cut. But inasmuch as in this photograph he neither moves nor speaks, we are free to infer that, being young, there may be either something or nothing of real value there. Louis, however, knew more about that picture than the picture knew or could convey of him. For memory, reviving, he knew all his past; and this does not in the least appear in the picture, nor what was of abiding significance in that past. So Louis posed a bit, sensing the reflected prestige and social value of a student at Tech. But he did not altogether make a nuisance of himself, not a complete nuisance, for he was toppy rather than vain.
Louis had gone at his studies faithfully enough. He learned not only to draw but to draw very well. He traced the “Five Orders of Architecture” in a manner quite resembling copper plate, and he learned about diameters, modules, minutes, entablatures, columns, pediments and so forth and so forth, with the associated minute measurements and copious vocabulary, all of which items he supposed at the time were intended to be received in unquestioning faith, as eternal verities. And he was told that these “Orders” were “Classic,” which implied an arrival at the goal of Platonic perfection of idea.
But Louis by nature was not given to that kind of faith. His faith ever lay in the oft-seen creative power and glory of man. His faith lay indeed in freedom. The song of Spring was the song in his heart. These rigid “Orders” seemed to say, “The book is closed; Art shall die.” Then it occurred to him: Why five orders? Why not one? Each of the five plainly tells a different story. Which one of them shall be sacrosanct? And if one be sacrosanct the remaining four become invalid. Now it would appear by the testimony of the world of scholarship and learning that the Greek is sacrosanct; and of all the Greek, the Parthenon is super-sacrosanct. Therefore there was and has been in all time but the unique Parthenon; all else is invalid. Art is dead. And it should not be forgot that the unique Parthenon was builded by the ancient Greeks, by living men. It was physically upreared in an exact spot on the Acropolis at Athens, a timely demonstration of Greek thought concerning ideas.
Now after centuries of ruin the Parthenon is dead; therefore all is invalid, Art is dead. This line of reasoning amused Louis quaintly. It seemed to him romantic; much like a fairy tale. And this is all that he gathered from the “Orders”—that they really were fairy tales of the long ago, now by the learned made rigid, mechanical and inane in the books he was pursuing, wherein they were stultified, for lack of common sense and human feeling. Hence he spent much time in the library, looking at pictures of buildings of the past that did not have pediments and columns. He found quite a few and became acquainted with “styles” and learned that styles were not considered sacrosanct, but merely human. That there was a difference in the intellectual and therefore social scale, between a style and an order. Professor Ware did not press matters thus; he did not go so far as to apotheosize the cognoscenti and the intelligentsia. He himself was quite human and in a measure detached. The misfortune was that in his lectures on the history of architecture he never looked his pupils in the eye, but by preference addressed an audience in his beard, in a low and confidential tone, ignoring a game of spitball underway. Yet a word or a phrase reached the open now and then concerning styles, construction and so forth, and at times he went to the blackboard and drew this and that very neatly. Louis picked up something of all this melange, but his thought was mostly on the tower of the New Brattle Street Church, conceived and brought to light by the mighty Richardson, undoubtedly for Louis’s special delight; for was not here a fairy tale indeed! Meanwhile there were projets to be done and Eugene Letang surely earned his pay in the sweat of his brow. Prof. William Ware did the higher criticism and frequently announced he had no use for “gimcrack” roofs.
Thus passed the days, the weeks, the months in a sort of mishmash of architectural theology, and Louis came to see that it was not upon the spirit but upon the word that stress was laid, even though it were a weighty matter of sprinkling or immersion. He began to feel a vacancy in himself, the need of something more nutritious to the mind than a play of marionettes. He felt the need and the lack of a red-blooded explanation, of a valiant idea that should bring life to arouse his cemetery of orders and of styles, or at least to bring about a danse macabre to explain why the occupants had lived and died.
Moreover, as time passed he began to discover that this school was but a pale reflection of the École des Beaux Arts; and he thought it high time that he go to headquarters to learn if what was preached there as a gospel, really signified glad tidings. For Louis felt in his heart that what he had learned at Tech was after all but a polite introduction to the architectural Art—as much as to say, “I am glad to meet you.” He reflected with a sort of despair that neither immaculate Professor Ware nor sweaty, sallow, earnest Eugene Letang was a Moses Woolson. Ah, if but Moses Woolson had been versed in the story of architecture as he was in that of English Literature, and had held the professorship; ah, what glowing flame would have come forth to cast its radiance like a rising sun and illuminate the past. But why dream such foolish dreams?
Louis made up his mind that he would leave Tech at the end of the school year, for he could see no future there. He was progressive, aggressive and impatient. He wished to live in the stream of life. He wished to be impelled by the power of living. He knew what he wanted very well. It behooved him he thought before going to the Beaux Arts, to see what architecture might be like in practice. He thought it might be advisable to spend a year in the office of some architect of standing, that he might see concrete preparations and results; how, in effect, an actual building was brought about. So he said a warm goodbye to Boston, to Wakefield (to his dear South Reading of the past), to all his friends, and made straightway for Philadelphia where he was to find his uncle and his grandpa. On the way he stopped over in New York City for a few days. Richard M. Hunt was the architectural lion there, and the dean of the profession. Louis called upon him in his den, told him his plans and was patted on the back and encouraged as an enterprising youngster. He listened to the mighty man’s tale of his life in Paris with Lefuel, and was then turned over to an assistant named Stratton, a recent arrival from the École to whom he repeated the tale of his projects.
Friend Stratton was most amiable in greeting, and gave Louis much time, receiving him in the fraternal spirit of an older student toward a younger. He sketched the life in Paris and the School—and in closing asked Louis to keep in touch with him and be sure to call on him on the way abroad. Thus Louis, proud and inflated, went on his joyous way to face the world. He arrived in Philadelphia in due time, as they say. He had noticed in New York a sharper form of speech, an increase of energetic action over that he had left behind, and also a rougher and more arrogant type of life Stratton had mentioned that Louis, on his arrival in Philadelphia, should look up the firm of Furness & Hewitt, architects, and try to find a place with them. But this was not Louis’s way of doing. Once settled down in the large quiet village, he began to roam the streets, looking quizzically at buildings as he wandered. On the west side of South Broad street a residence, almost completed, caught his eye like a flower by the roadside. He approached, examined it with curious care, without and within. Here was something fresh and fair to him, a human note, as though someone were talking. He inquired as to the architect and was told: Furness & Hewitt. Now, he saw plainly enough that this was not the work of two men but of one, for he had an instinctive sense of physiognomy, and all buildings thus made their direct appeal to him, pleasant or unpleasant.
He made up his mind that next day he would enter the employ of said Furness & Hewitt, they to have no voice in the matter, for his mind was made up. So next day he presented himself to Frank Furness and informed him he had come to enter his employ. Frank Furness was a curious character. He affected the English in fashion. He wore loud plaids, and a scowl, and from his face depended fan-like a marvelous red beard, beautiful in tone with each separate hair delicately crinkled from beginning to end. Moreover, his face was snarled and homely as an English bulldog’s. Louis’s eyes were riveted, in infatuation, to this beard, as he listened to a string of oaths yards long. For it seems that after he had delivered his initial fiat, Furness looked at him half blankly, half enraged, as at another kind of dog that had slipped in through the door. His first question had been as to Louis’s experience, to which Louis replied, modestly enough, that he had just come from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Boston. This answer was the detonator that set off the mine which blew up in fragments all the schools in the land and scattered the professors headless and limbless to the four quarters of earth and hell. Louis, he said, was a fool. He said Louis was an idiot to have wasted his time in a place where one was filled with sawdust, like a doll, and became a prig, a snob, and an ass.
As the smoke blew away he said: “Of course you don’t know anything and are full of damnable conceit.”
Louis agreed to the ignorance; demurred as to conceit; and added that he belonged to that rare class who were capable of learning, and desired to learn. This answer mollified the dog-man, and he seemed intrigued that Louis stared at him so pertinaciously. At last he asked Louis what in hell had brought him there, anyway? This was the opening for which Louis had sagaciously been waiting through the storm. He told Frank Furness all about his unaided discovery of the dwelling on Broad street, how he had followed, so to speak from the nugget to the solid vein; that here he was and here he would remain; he had made up his mind as to that, and he looked Frank Furness in the eye. Then he sang a song of praise like a youthful bard of old to his liege lord, steering clear of too gross adulation, placing all on a high plane of accomplishment. It was here, Louis said, one could really learn. Frank Furness admitted as true a part of what Louis had said, waving the rest away as one pleasantly overpraised, and said: “Only the Greeks knew how to build.”
“Of course, you don’t want any pay,” he said, to which Louis replied that ten dollars a week would be a necessary honorarium.
“All right,” said he of the glorious beard, with something scraggy on his face, that might have been a smile. “Come tomorrow morning for a trial, but I prophesy you won’t outlast a week.” So Louis came. At the end of that week Furness said, “You may stay another week,” and at the end of that week Furness said, “You may stay as long as you like.” Oh what a joy! Louis’s first task was to retrace a set of plans complete for a Savings Institution to be erected on Chestnut street. This he did so systematically and in so short a time that he won his spurs at once. In doing this work he was but carrying out the impulsion of Moses Woolson’s training in accuracy and speed; and Moses Woolson followed him thereafter everywhere.
The other members of the firm was George Hewitt, a slender, moustached person, pale and reserved, who seldom relaxed from pose. It was he who did the Victorian Gothic in its pantalettes, when a church building or something of that sort was on the boards. With precision, as though he held his elements by pincers, he worked out these decorous sublimities of inanity, as per the English current magazines and other English sources. He was a clean draftsman, and believed implicitly that all that was good was English. Louis regarded him with admiration as a draftsman, and with mild contempt as a man who kept his nose in books. Frank Furness “made buildings out of his head.” That suited Louis better. And Furness as a freehand draftsman was extraordinary. He had Louis hypnotized, especially when he drew and swore at the same time.
But George Hewitt had a younger brother named John, and John was foreman of the shop. He was a husky, smooth-faced fellow under thirty. Every feature in his clean cut, rather elongated face, bespoke intelligence and kindness, in fact a big heart. He had taken a fancy to Louis from the start. He was the “practical man” and Louis ran to him for advice whenever he found himself in a tight place. John was patience itself and made everything clear with dainty sketches and explanatory notes. These drawings were beautiful and Louis frankly told him so. He begged John to teach him “touch” and how to make such sketches, and especially how to “indicate” so crisply. This John did. In fact, it was not long before he had made of Louis a draftsman of the upper Crust, and Louis’s heart went out to lovable John in sheer gratitude.
In looking back upon that time Louis Sullivan gives thanks that it was his great good fortune to have made his entry into the practical world in an office where standards were so high—where talent was so manifestly taken for granted, and the atmosphere the free and easy one of a true work shop savoring of the guild where craftsmanship was paramount and personal. And again he goes back to the day of Moses Woolson and his discipline. We may say in truth that Moses Woolson put him there. For without that elastic alertness and courage, that grimness Moses Woolson imparted, it is sure that Louis would not have broken through the barrier of contempt in that first interview.
Louis worked very hard day and night. At first he had lived with his grandpa and uncle in West Philadelphia. But soon he decided to move into town to be nearer the office and to be freer to study into the small hours. His relaxation on Sundays was Fair-mount Park and a walk up the rough road of the Wissahickon valley, a narrow beauteous wilderness such as Louis had never seen, and with which he was completely charmed. He loved the solitude through which the Wissahickon purled its way. The companionship of the wild was soothing to him. The isolation gave him comfort and surcease. Thus passed a hot summer.
The offices of Furness & Hewitt occupied the entire top floor of a new, brick, four-story building at the northeast corner of Third street and Chestnut.
One day in September, it was very warm, all windows were open for air, the force was wearily at work. As they worked, there came through the open windows a murmur, barely noticed at first; then this murmur became a roar, with wild shouting. Then, all to the windows. Louis saw, far below, not pavement and sidewalks, but a solid black mass of frantic men, crowded, jammed from wall to wall. The offices of Jay Cooke & Co. were but a short distance south on Third street. Word came up that Jay Cooke & Co. had just closed its doors. Louis saw it all, as he could see down both Chestnut street and Third. Chestnut westward from Third also was a solid mass. The run on the banks had begun. The devastating panic of 1873 was on, in its mad career. Louis was shocked, appalled at the sight. He was too young, too inexperienced, to understand what it really meant, even when told it was a panic in finance, that credit had crumbled to dust, that men were ruined, and insane with despair; that this panic would spread like wildfire over the land leaving ruin in its wake everywhere. And still he could not understand what had brought it about.
The office held steady for a while; there was work on hand which had progressed so far that it must be completed.
One day in November Frank Furness said: “Sullivan, I’m sorry, the jig is up. There’ll be no more building. The office now is running dry. You’ve done well, mighty well. I like you. I wish you might stay. But as you were the last to come it is only just you should be first to go.” With that he slipped a bill into Louis’s hand, and wished him farewell and better days.
Within a week Louis took the Pennsylvania train for Chicago. He saw the great valley of the Susquehanna; surmounted the huge Alleghenies; passed along the great descending Horseshoe Curve, the marvel of the day; and then night fell. He was aroused and broadened by what he had seen. It was all new. His map was enlarged. So was his breadth of view; his inner wealth.
Next morning he was utterly amazed and bewildered at the sight of the prairies of northern Indiana. They were startling in novelty. How could such things be! Stretching like a floor to the far horizon—not a tree except by a watercourse or on a solitary “island.” It was amazing. Here was power—power greater than the mountains. Soon Louis caught glimpses of a great lake, spreading also like a floor to the far horizon, superbly beautiful in color, under a lucent sky. Here again was power, naked power, naked as the prairies, greater than the mountains. And over all spanned the dome of the sky, resting on the rim of the horizon far away on all sides, eternally calm overhead, holding an atmosphere pellucid and serene. And here again was a power, a vast open power, a power greater than the tiny mountains. Here, in full view, was the light of the world, companion of the earth, a power greater than the lake and the prairie below, but not greater than man in his power: So Louis thought.
The train neared the city; it broke into the city; it plowed its way through miles of shanties disheartening and dirty gray. It reached its terminal at an open shed. Louis tramped the platform, stopped, looked toward the city, ruins around him; looked at the sky; and as one alone, stamped his foot, raised his hand and cried in full voice:
“This is the place for me!”
That day was the day before Thanksgiving in the year Eighteen Hundred Seventy-three.