Culture Watch
Page Two of Culture Watch, 11/13/07
Struggling to make his way in the world, he joined the military, and following that, eventually made his way to a secretarial position to the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal (the latter roughly the equivalent in power to the Lord Chancellor), a big step up. He then had the misfortune to fall in love with someone above his status, as well as seven or eight years younger than he. He and his Ann were married clandestinely, causing her father to refuse her the marriage gift she should have had (i.e. a yearly income). The Lord Keeper promptly fired him.
The marriage having taken place outside of canon law, Donne was thrown into prison. There followed many years of hardship, with the young couple living with friends, even after their children began to arrive – ultimately 12 of them, of whom seven lived.
Eventually, however, Ann’s father came around (they named their second son after him, which may have helped) and granted the little family a yearly income. This, coupled with assorted jobs of writing and lawyering, kept them afloat until Ann’s death, at age 33.
Throughout his life, Donne was first and foremost a poet. As a contemporary of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson, he was well-known among the literati, and while he did not publish his writings, they were often shared with friends and copied out longhand.
What this book shows brilliantly is Donne’s growing maturity of thought and deed. At some point during the internal struggle between Roman Catholicism and Protestantism (both Church of England and Puritan), Donne developed a more truly catholic – in the sense of universal – view that differences of faith were used “...to cover up political and personal differences, dicing humanity.”
“What pained Donne above all about religious schism,” says Stubbs “was that God was supposed to be the glue between humans, not their greatest point of contention.”
Donne ultimately chose to become a priest of the Church of England, and rose to the position of Dean of St. Paul’s Cathedral, a position he held until his death in 1631, at the age of 60. He never remarried.
This book is long and scholarly (there are 58 pages of notes at the end), but it is eminently readable for the layman, especially for those of us who have read and loved John Donne’s poetry or sermons.
— JS
LOVING FRANK
by Nancy Horan, ©2007
Published by Ballantine Books; 356 pp,
hardcoverIt is a fine, humbling, instructive thing to approach a book with great skepticism, only to find that skepticism dead wrong. Loving Frank is a remarkable piece of research, a novel, if you will, built on truth.
Nancy Horan has presented us with the story of Frank Lloyd Wright’s affair with Mamah (pronounced MAY-muh) Bouton Borthwick Cheney, who was the wife of a friend and client. Wright himself was married, the father of six children. Mamah was the mother of two.
It is not hard to imagine the scandal this relationship caused in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1907. Respectable people didn’t engage in such activities, or if they did, they had the decency to hide them. Neither did a mother worth the title leave her children to follow her lover halfway around the world.
The press of that time hounded both Wright and Borthwick mercilessly. Frank Lloyd Wright was just emerging as America’s premier, avant garde architect. He designed many homes in Oak Park, where he lived and had his studio, during the development of his “Prairie Period.”
Mamah Borthwick Cheney was a brilliant, educated woman who spoke several languages and read even more. She and Wright connected on an intellectual and physical level that was missing in their lives with their marriage partners.
Fleeing together to Europe was only a temporary answer to their troubles. Although their stay in Italy was in some ways idyllic, Mamah missed her children dreadfully, and Frank battled his own guilt, in the end deciding to return to Oak Park. His wife, Catherine, had adamantly refused him the divorce he sought, as did Mamah’s husband (although eventually the latter capitulated). Frank and Mamah maintained a lively correspondence during their separation, with Wright begging her to come home.
When Frank went back to America, however, Mamah turned to a Swedish philosopher of the emerging Women’s Movement, named Ellen Key. Mamah described her as “...cool and logical, not a firebrand, not a ‘subversive saint’ like Jane Addams.” Eventually, Mamah enrolled in the University at Leipzig to study Swedish so that she could become Key’s American translator. She then moved to Berlin, where she supported herself by teaching while she worked on the translations.
When Mamah returned to America, Frank Lloyd Wright built a home for the two of them on his family’s property in the Wisconsin hills. We know it now as Taliesin. The story of Taliesin’s construction and Mamah’s part in it is particularly moving. The two of them lived together openly there, despite difficulties from the press. Given the times, what surprises the reader is the acceptance of many of their neighbors and most of the construction crew – all of which makes the tragic ending quite devastating to an unsuspecting reader, which I certainly was.
I must confess that the shock of that ending left me feeling cheated, as if it had been the contrivance of a novelist who didn’t know quite how to finish his book. That the horrifying ending is simply the truth of what actually happened left this reader stunned and deeply upset, angry that I hadn’t seen it coming (or perhaps hadn’t done research on their story before reading it). But that kind of reaction is, in the end, testimony to the power of the story in the hands of a first-rate writer. It’s a marvel of a book, and I recommend it highly.
— JS
Page Three of Culture Watch; The Italian Lover>>
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