18 Tiny Deaths, page 4
“Yes,” Glessner said without hesitation, knowing that he could tear up the plans if they were not to his satisfaction.
The men agreed to discuss plans for the house during dinner at the Glessners’ the following night.
Frances painted a vivid portrait of Richardson in her journal, describing him as “the largest man I have ever seen.” Concerned about resting his girth on the Glessners’ fine furniture, Richardson insisted on sitting on a piano stool during his visit.15
“He parts his hair in the middle,” she wrote in her journal. “He stutters and spatters—breathes very heavily—and aside from his profession is not what I would call an interesting man.”
After dinner was served, Richardson took a scrap of paper and began sketching in pencil. He drew a large L shape, marked the location of entrances, and filled it with boxes to represent rooms. Within minutes, he had designed the first floor of the house, almost exactly as it was ultimately built.
“He was the most versatile, interesting, ready, capable and confident of artists, the most genial and agreeable of companions,” John Jacob said of Richardson. “He delighted in difficult problems.”
Richardson’s plan for the Glessner home was a stark departure from typical residential architecture of the time. It was certainly unlike any other home on prestigious Prairie Avenue. Rather than framing a welcoming front yard, the north and east exterior walls of the Glessners’ house are almost at the sidewalk property line. Rows of rusticated Wellesley granite blocks in contrasting colors emphasize the home’s horizontal lines. With only small square windows at the street level, the public is presented broad, flat, relatively unornamented walls.
The long side of the house on Eighteenth Street has a few narrow windows on the first floor and a service entrance sheltered by a semicircular arch. The main entrance, on Prairie Avenue, is understated, almost plain. No staircase, no veranda, just a modest street-level door of heavy oak. Stylized columns support another semicircular arch, smaller than the service entrance.
From the outside, the Glessners’ house looked institutional, like a prison or hospital. What the public couldn’t see was that the house wrapped around a large private courtyard. All the landscaped spaces of the home were within the courtyard, away from public view, giving the family their own private oasis in the city.
Stepping through the front door, a twelve-foot-wide staircase leads to a foyer large enough to be a hotel lobby. There’s enough room in the eighteen-thousand-square-foot house for a sit-down dinner with more than one hundred guests, which the family eventually did many times.16
Richardson placed the main family rooms in the interior of the house, facing the courtyard. Windows on the southern side bathed the family’s living spaces with warm light. Most of the rooms have two or more entryways, allowing household staff to move discreetly through the house. A hallway along the north side of the house, used primarily by staff, insulated the family from street noise and Chicago’s bitter winter winds.
Reactions to the Glessners’ new home were mixed to say the least. Frances Macbeth dutifully made note of comments she heard about the new home:
“How do you get in it?”
“There is not a single pretty thing about it.”
“It looks like an old jail.”
“I like it. It’s about the oddest thing I ever saw.”
“It expresses an idea, but I don’t like the idea.”
“It looks like a fort.”
“You have astonished everyone with your strange house.”
“It is like themselves, plain and substantial without and sweet and homelike spirit within.”17
Railroad car maker and immensely wealthy industrialist George Pullman, who lived diagonally across the street on the northeast corner of Prairie and Eighteenth in one of the largest and grandest homes in the neighborhood, said, “I don’t know what I have ever done to have that thing staring at me in the face every time I go out of my door.”
A newspaper clipping from July 10, 1886, made note of the unusual addition to Prairie Avenue:
Prairie Ave. is a social street and also a gossipy one and it does not suit the neighbors that this newcomer should exclude all possibility of watching his windows and finding out what may be going on within doors…that this house is going up in spite of disapproval has thrown the neighborhood into a state of stupefaction.18
The Prairie Avenue residence was the last design Richardson completed. Three weeks after finishing the plans, Richardson died of kidney disease at forty-eight years of age. Richardson’s assistants completed every project that was underway at the time of his death, including the Glessners’ home, and gave the entirety of the $85,000 in commissions to his widow.19
“The house responds [to all the demands put upon it],” Glessner wrote in his book about 1800 Prairie Avenue. “It seems available for almost any social function. Large companies have been entertained in it comfortably and easily… Music and dramatic readings have been given to hundreds of persons, and receptions to more than four hundred at one time, without any feeling of crush, confusion or heat. Elaborate course dinners have been served in its rooms to more than one hundred guests at a time, the cooking all done in our own kitchen and by our own cook. Twice the full Chicago Orchestra had dined there, and once the Commercial Club.” The expansive house was the clearest manifestation of Glessner’s rapid journey to the heights of Chicago society.20
On Frances Macbeth Glessner’s birthday or other special occasions, orchestra conductor Theodore Thomas would sneak two dozen or more musicians into the house, unbeknownst to her until the soft strains of music floated from the front hall during dinner. For the Glessners’ twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the entire orchestra sneaked through the Eighteenth Street servant’s entrance and up the rear stairs to surprise the family with an impromptu concert.21
Despite the fatigue and discomfort of chronic health problems, for which she was prescribed “cannabis indicie (Indian hemp)”—a form of medical marijuana—Frances maintained a busy social schedule.22 She was a board member of the Decorative Arts Society and the highbrow Fortnightly Club. Aside from the lessons in languages and literature, Frances applied her silversmithing lessons to refine her skills in jewelry making.
Frances was a voracious reader, completing two or three substantial books a week. In 1894, she established a gathering that became one of the most desirable in their social circle, the Monday Morning Reading Class.23
Membership in the Monday Morning Reading Class was by Frances’s invitation. Every season, Frances created a member roster with up to ninety names. Members were all married women—with the exception of Frances’s sister, Helen Macbeth, and the class’s paid professional reader, Anne E. Trimingham—many of whom were the wives of the faculty of the newly formed University of Chicago. Almost all of the members lived on the city’s South Side.
The classes began at 10:30 a.m. with an hour of serious reading by Trimingham or a lecture by an invited guest, then an hour of lighter, more amusing works or a musical performance by one or more members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. On the first Monday of each month, the class was followed by a luncheon.
Many members of the Monday Morning Reading Class sewed or knitted during the readings. During World War I, the women knitted gloves and sweaters for men fighting overseas. After the war, they made blankets and garments for infants at Cook County Hospital. “The ladies’ fingers were busy with sewing and other womanly occupation,” John Jacob Glessner recalled. “And when the reading stopped doubtless their tongues grew active in womanly conversation.”24
Invitation to the Monday Morning Reading Class was highly sought. “All of Prairie Avenue was present,” the newspaper social page reported, noting a gathering of “smartly arranged women in glossy furs, becoming hats, and the latest importation in work bags over their arms.”25 The classes met weekly in the library of the Glessners’ home from November through May for more than three decades, until Frances’s poor health forced an end to the club in the 1930s.
The Glessners’ wealth ensured that Fanny and George wanted for nothing. The children were provided every advantage: lessons in horseback riding, dance, and art and private tutors. Due to George’s severe hay fever, a doctor advised that he not be subjected to “the nervous strain of school where he would meet the competition of others.”26 George and Fanny were educated at home by some of the finest private instructors for hire in Chicago. Richardson designed the Glessners’ Prairie Avenue home with a schoolroom immediately off the front door, allowing the children to come and go without walking through other parts of the house.
“Over the thresholds of this house has passed a regular procession of teachers for you—in literature, languages, classical and modern, mathematics, chemistry, art, and the whole gamut of the humanities and the practical, considerably beyond the curricula of the High Schools,” John Jacob Glessner wrote in a collection of photographs and remembrances, The House at 1800 Prairie Avenue.27
“Whether this plan of education was wise or not may be questioned,” Glessner said. “Of this I am sure, that it gave to each of you a great fund of general information, a power of observation and of reasoning, an ability and desire for study, and to be thoroughly proficient in what you might undertake. If ever there was a royal road for that, you had it, whatever its defects may have been in other respects.”
Fanny was every bit the achiever she had been groomed to be. Like her brother, she was tutored in literature, art, music, and the natural sciences. Both children learned to play the violin and took dance lessons. From the time she could hold a needle and thread in her tiny fingers as a toddler, Fanny was practiced in sewing, knitting, crochet and other forms of needlework. She became fluent in German, French, and Latin. Accustomed to spending most of her time in the company of adults, her father noted that even at a young age, Fanny was a good conversationalist.
George had a chemistry laboratory that was the envy of his teacher. He had a fire signal repeater installed at his home so he would be notified of fire alarms and a telegraph system with lines running to the homes of seven of his friends. When an alarm came through, George and his “fire brigade” friends chased the fire trucks to the scene. In many cases, George took photographs of fire scenes and the aftermath. He developed into a skilled amateur photographer.
The schoolroom was a “rendezvous for George’s friends and teachers alike, for they were all comrades together,” John Jacob Glessner said. “Here they had their long, long thoughts of youth, their boyish activities, their fire brigade, their regularly organized telegraph company… And similar activities for Frances and her friends—no espionage, no punishment, no need for that; no too hard and fast rules, no too rigid disciplinary regulations.”28
Every summer, Fanny and George escaped the heat of Chicago and enjoyed the freedom of their time at The Rocks. Every season, servants and the cook were sent ahead to open the Big House and prepare for the arrival of the family. Frances traveled with her children and a governess, often accompanied by her sister Helen and other family members. Anticipation built during the two-day train ride as the children counted off the stations until reaching their destination. A carriage drawn by a pair of bay horses met them at the station for the three-mile ride to The Rocks.
“Never shall I forget the effect when, stepping off our car in Littleton, I drew the first full breath of good clean country air,” Fanny wrote in a letter much later in life. “George and I were so happy to be there that we thought we couldn’t live till we got home.”29
“That first night at the Big House was always something never to be forgotten—so cool, so clean, so quiet,” she said. “George and I would settle down in our beds so deliciously comfortable we could hardly get to sleep and wake up in the morning to bright sunshine and getting up to be sure that everything was still there.”
Fanny used the wood-burning stove in the two-room cabin Scott had built for her to make jams and preserves for the household. On at least one occasion, Fanny used her stove to make a full-course meal.
The children were accompanied by Hero, their Skye terrier, a fierce hunter of woodchucks with at least seven kills to his credit who “does not easily make up with strangers,” Frances wrote in her journal.30
Days were spent swimming or exploring in the White Mountains or hiking around Franconia Notch, location of the iconic “Old Man of the Mountain” formation that is a State of New Hampshire symbol, and an eight-hundred foot-long natural gorge called the Flume, where granite walls rise to a right of seventy to ninety feet.
Whether in Chicago or The Rocks, evenings were whiled away with cards or word games or elaborate tableaux vivants—“living pictures”—using improvised costumes and props to represent works of art or figures from the theatre or classical literature.31
At The Rocks, Isaac Scott built a thirty-five-foot tower with a small platform at the top, which the family called an observatory. The elevation of the observatory allowed a grand overview of The Rocks property and the villages of Littleton and Bethlehem below in the distance. George and Scott made a daily ritual to climb the observatory at sunset and light a candle at the top, the flame a faint beacon in the darkness.
Scott was close to both George and Fanny, teaching them drawing and wood carving, but he was bound closer to Fanny. Over the summers at The Rocks, Scott was one of Fanny’s constant companions. He often accompanied the family on walks to observe wildlife.
“We have been most interested in the lovely birds,” Frances wrote in her journal. “There are hundreds of them and of many varieties—bluebirds, king birds, robins, song swallows, gold finches, swallows, chippies, etc. We do not consider the day complete without finding a nest.”32
Fanny developed an interest in medicine at an early age. As a child, she was fascinated with mummies and the anatomical drawings of Vesalius. Her interest in medicine took a personal turn at the age of nine in May 1887 when she developed a serious illness while traveling by train from Chicago to The Rocks—fever, sore throat, and vomiting.
While on layover in New York City, Frances Macbeth took her daughter to a doctor, who diagnosed tonsillitis and recommended she consult with a surgeon. An operation was not a matter taken lightly in those days. Before the advent of antibiotics, analgesics, and aseptic surgical methods, even a minor procedure could easily develop into a harrowing, life-threatening ordeal.
The first consultation was with a surgeon by the name of Dr. Vanderfolk. “He said there was nothing to be done but remove her tonsils, that he painted them with cocaine and snipped them off,” Frances recorded in her journal.33
Fortunately for Fanny, her mother got a second opinion from another surgeon, Dr. Lincoln, who was recommended as one of the best in New York City. Dr. Lincoln said he would do the surgery—and use ether as an anesthetic agent. Frances opted for Dr. Lincoln’s approach.
The surgery was done on the afternoon of May 12. Dr. Lincoln, assisted by Dr. Porter administering the ether, performed the operation in the Glessners’ hotel room.
Fanny “was very brave and good,” her mother reported. “Only once did she hesitate.”
She sat in an armchair with a sheet pinned around her neck. Dr. Porter dripped ether onto a cloth-covered mask over Fanny’s mouth and nose. The operation proceeded uneventfully. Fanny woke briefly as the ether wore off, suffering great pain in her throat and ears, then slept for hours.
There is no way to know what substances may have been given to a nine-year-old girl in such circumstances at that time. Drugs and patent medicines were unregulated. There was no requirement for a drug to be proven safe or effective. A patent remedy might contain opium, morphine, heroin, or cocaine.
Dr. Lincoln gave the Glessners a prescription for an unspecified drug, but there was no need to have it filled. Fanny recovered slowly, without the benefit of modern medicine, over a period of weeks. In two months’ time, she was back to normal.
Once fully recovered, Fanny wrote a poem in gratitude to her doctor:
D is for Doctor Lincoln
Of whom Fanny is constantly thinkoln
If he will come to The Rocks
We will don our best frocks
A white one, a blue one, a pink oln—
My dear doctor
It is very hard to find a rhyme for your name—
But I had to make a verse for you
So I have done my best all the same
And this is all that I can do.
Your little friend
Fanny34
Fanny began to accompany local doctors from Littleton and Bethlehem on their rounds visiting patients convalescing at homes. Watching the doctors’ ministrations filled her with awe. They were always wise and knowledgeable, kind and comforting. When necessary, Fanny was recruited to actively assist the doctor with procedures and minor operations. She began to use her cabin kitchen to make remedies—broths, nutritive wine jelly—for the doctors’ patients.35
“But cooking and surgery were not the only interests in a home where mother and aunt were both domestic and artistic, such activities as fine sewing, embroidery, knitting, crocheting, painting and even working in handmade jewelry were as natural as breathing,” Fanny said in an unpublished memoir.36
In 1890, George began his undergraduate education at Harvard University with the goal of a law degree in mind. He became fast friends with a medical student, George Burgess Magrath. The two Georges, as Fanny called them, were inseparable. They even shared the same birthday, October 2.
Born in 1870, the only son of Reverend John Thomas and Sarah Jane Magrath, George sang in the choir at his father’s church and at an early age became the church organist. Magrath worked his way through medical school as an organist. Through adulthood, he sang with the Handel and Haydn Society, the Boston Cecilia chorus, and the Harvard Alumni Chorus.
One thing seemingly absent from Magrath’s attention was a romantic interest in women. He confirmed his bachelor status in an alumni directory published by Harvard College. “I am unmarried and expect to remain so,” he reported to former classmates.37 A newspaper profile published later in his career noted what might be considered Magrath’s alternative lifestyle in genteel euphemisms. “Yes, he’s a bachelor, not yet old enough to be called ‘confirmed,’” a reporter wrote. “He appears to be one of those who ‘would rather live in Bohemia than any other place.’”38
