Loving Frank

I was very moved by the novel Loving Frank by Nancy Horan.

[If you have not read it yet and are thinking about doing so, you may not want to read the rest of this as I will reveal the “shocking ending.” Caveat! The shocking ending, as with the love story itself, however, is true. So if you know the history of Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, you will probably already know this story. Or not.]

I was actually shocked that such a horrible event involving such a famous person could have occurred and I had never heard about it before! That may have shocked me more than the event itself.

Although the event itself was positively gruesome.

Loving Frank is the fictionalized account of the actual love affair between famous architect Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney (wife/mother, intellectual, and feminist). The duo caused a huge scandal in the early 20th century when Wright (married and with six children) and Cheney (married and with two children) forsook their respective families and went off to Europe together. They had been carrying on an affair for several years prior to that. Wright had designed the Cheneys’ home in suburban Oak Park, Illinois, and that is when he met Mamah.

Newspapers had a field day with their relationship, which was considered scandalous, illicit, and positively evil. While the scandal severely impacted Wright’s career, Mamah was the one who took the brunt of the criticism, for it was considered far worse for a mother to leave her young children.

Upon returning to the States, Wright designed a house specifically for Mamah in Wisconsin, where he had grown up. Taliesin was a very modern Prairie School house and had been influenced by their travels to Germany, Italy, and Japan. Mamah lived there with Wright “in sin” until the shocking, horrible event that ended her life in 1914.

To be perfectly honest, the dust jacket on the book did allude to a “shocking turn of events.” I interpreted that phrase very differently, though, than how it had been intended. As I was reading, I kept expecting to find out (in a narrative written largely from Mamah’s point of view) that Frank Lloyd Wright (a renowned womanizer) was actually having an affair with someone else (or multiple someone elses) and this was going to break Mamah’s heart. That would have been shocking enough for me. The truth caught me completely off guard and seemed almost surreal.

The surprise axe murder of Mamah and her two children from her marriage to Edwin Cheney, as well as several other workmen, by a servant at Taliesin while Wright was in Chicago putting the finishing touches on his latest architecture project, Midway Gardens, was a lot more than “shocking.” The fact that this event was real, true, historical – i.e., it really happened! – left me stunned. Not only did Julian Carlton murder seven people with an axe on a sunny summer afternoon, he also tried to burn Taliesin to the ground!

How could I never have heard of this before? I live near Pittsburgh and have visited Fallingwater and Kentuck Knob several times in my life. I know that Wright lived to be a very old man – heck, I think he was in his mid-eighties when he designed Kentuck Knob. He was only in his mid to late forties when Mamah was murdered and Taliesin burned. It made me wonder how someone who suffered such a horrific, devastating loss could go on with his life and continue to create such amazing wonders of architecture.

But he did. He rebuilt Taliesin. In fact, he rebuilt it twice, because Taliesin II burned down in 1925. And what is standing now for tourists to visit is Taliesin III. And within a year after the grisly murders and loss of his true love, he was involved with Miriam Noel, a beautiful, flamboyant whacko woman, who eventually became his next wife after his first wife Catherine finally granted him a divorce in 1923 (she had refused to divorce him while he was with Mamah). His marriage to the unstable, morphine-addicted Noel did not last very long, and he then became involved with yet another woman, Olgivanna Lazovich Hinzenburg, who eventually became his third and final wife. He also went on to design some of his most famous structures, like Fallingwater.

I know, I know. It sounds like a soap opera or Aaron Spelling mini series.

What struck me most about the relationship between Wright and Mamah, though, was her love for this obvious genius who was also an incredibly selfish, self-absorbed ass. I think he genuinely loved her and found a true intellectual soul mate in her, someone he could talk with openly and in depth. And she the same in him. And I think that physically they were passionate about each other as well. The fact that they actually did what they did, especially Mamah, given the timeframe of events, was astounding to me. The infusion of Ellen Key, a radical (for her time) Swedish feminist for whom Mamah was a translator, and her influence upon the couple (or at least upon Mamah) were fascinating.

Mamah was clearly head over heels in love with Frank Lloyd Wright. The fact that it took her so long to come to see the man he really was – or the side of him that was “less nice” – or at least the fact that it took her so long to take umbrage with the man he really was was eye-opening. Although Wright was clearly a genius, he was also pompous, arrogant, and had little regard for “details.” Like paying bills on time. He felt he was above all that and that he should be held to a different standard. He often did not even pay the people who worked for him on time. Yet he was a man who liked luxuries and amenities and extravagance. And felt he deserved them all, no questions asked. Even if he had no way of paying for them.

Although she eventually called him to task for his extravagances and irresponsible behavior and threatened to leave him, she was still very, very much in love with him. And he in love with her.

I was so fascinated by the fictionalized account of the relationship between Wright and Mamah, as well as the grisly ending, I wanted to find out more. And so I stumbled upon a book called Death in a Prairie House: Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Murders by William R. Drennan and published in 2007 by the University of Wisconsin Press. It seems Drennan, a Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, became fascinated with this story while touring the nearby Taliesin with visiting friends and the 1914 murders were mentioned. He had never heard about them before, either.

While Drennan’s book is fascinating in its historical details, Horan’s book intrigued me because she told most of the story through Mamah’s point of view. Granted, one of the criticisms I have read of the book is that Horan suddenly changed the point of view – upon Mamah’s death by axe and fire – to that of Wright’s. I think Horan’s intent was to bring to life the little known woman, Mamah Borthwick Cheney, and in that I think she succeeded. Wright was larger than life already; his perspective in the final part of the book actually served to make him seem more human and less of an ass. Truthfully, the unexpected axe murders at the end seemed like a total deus ex machina, except for the fact that that is what really happened.

I still have to wonder: if the murders had never happened, how long would Mamah and Wright have remained together? Would his lusty eye have been caught by someone else, as I so feared the entire time I was reading the book? Or multiple someone elses? And would this have severed their relationship?

Would Mamah have turned a blind, tolerant eye to his physical indiscretions as long as he was faithful to her “intellectually”? Wright’s first wife certainly held on for a very long time, thinking Wright would eventually come home to hearth and family.

Or would Mamah have come to the stark realization that Wright was far too irresponsible and arrogant for her to remain with? He had already pushed her to the brink once with his financial irresponsibilities.

Or would he have changed for her? For the woman he loved so?

We shall never know.

And in the end, are any of us really capable of changing who we are?

I thought Loving Frank was well worth the read, and I am enjoying the totally different, yet highly informative Death in a Prairie House.