She was an independent spirit, a free-thinker. He was destined to become one of the world's most influential architects.
Together, Mamah Borthwick Cheney and Frank Lloyd Wright made a divine couple, their intellects a perfect match.
There was only one thing wrong with their pairing: They were married to other people. Wright's wife, Catherine, would not grant him a divorce; when the affair began, Cheney's husband knew nothing of his wife's infidelities. When Edwin Cheney found out, Mamah (pronounced May-mah) abandoned two young children to be with Wright.
Even by today's standards, the behavior of Cheney and Wright from 1907 to 1914 would be "cause for gossip and consternation," says Nancy Horan, the author of "Loving Frank," a fictionalized account of the relationship.
When newspapers got word of the affair, the couple was harassed. At Taliesen, Wright's majestic Wisconsin retreat, journalists on horseback arrived on Christmas day, requesting an interview. Headlines such as "Mrs. Cheney and Wright Elope Again" (they'd previously taken a trip to Europe) were stripped across the tops of newspapers in bold print.
Why did Cheney and Wright risk so much⢠Horan thinks it was a matter of kindred spirits who saw the same fierce independence in each other.
"In his houses, he was celebrating individualism," Horan says. "Developing a democratic architecture designed for a free people, a nation of individuals. She, on the other hand, was very much interested in the issue of individuality as a woman. She was part of a new wave of the women's movement that was morphing into feminism. ... It was a philosophy that said women should be able to do more than just get the vote, women's freedoms should mean more than that. A woman should be allowed to develop herself and realize her potential just like a man could."
Cheney and Wright met in Oak Park, Ill., the Chicago suburb where he worked and designed a home for her family. Horan, who used to reside in Oak Park, spent seven years researching and writing "Loving Frank," a story she initially knew very little about.
She admits initially she could not get past some of Mamah Borthwick Cheney's behavior, notably how she abandoned her children. One attempt at writing the book using multiple viewpoints failed.
"The only way I could explore the story and the story could come alive and become interesting to me was going inside her mind and telling the story from her point of view," Horan says. "When you do that, you have to tell the story as they would have told it. You have to have a sense of sympathy to do that. You have to be able to explain, sympathetically, why they did what they did. At the same time, you see the consequences of her actions. As time goes on, Mamah evolves and learns the magnitude of the choices she's made, and struggles deeply with it."
Mamah Borthwick Cheney's notoriety was increased via an alliance with Ellen Key, a Swedish writer, suffragist and proponent of free love. When she came across Key's work during a trip to Europe, Cheney felt her desire to pursue a relationship with Wright had been sanctioned. She would meet Key and be enlisted to translate her works for American readers.
In letters to Key, Cheney expressed her ambivalence about leaving her family. But Cheney also found affirmation in Key's ideas about love and the sanctity of marriage.
"Mamah had been carrying this idea of truth inside of her," Horan says, "believing that a loveless marriage was immoral. Then to have Ellen Key's words shine upon her like a huge light was almost a religious experience for her."
Later, however, Cheney would be devastated when Key criticized her for leaving her family. While Key did advocate free love, in her other works -- which Cheney had not read or ignored -- the Swedish writer was adamant that women should, first, take care of their children. The complexities of Key's views disturbed Cheney, who divorced her husband, took back her maiden name and lived with Wright, apart from her children.
"She was being challenged by Ellen Key, but she stood up to Ellen Key," Horan says.
Of her relationship with Wright, however, Mamah had no doubts.Their relationship blossomed when the architect built Taliesen for her near his birthplace in Wisconsin. Although it's impossible to precisely gauge her effect on Wright's work, Horan believes that Cheney did free the architect to think about other possibilities for his work.
"Wright called Taliesen his first truly natural house," Horan says. "He moved out of the prairie period he had been working in Oak Park and began working in a different direction. Midway Gardens (in Chicago) was built during his time with Mamah ... and Taliesen seems to reflect their time together in Italy, because I see in it the Italian terraces and the reflection of their relationship in that house."
Mamah's relationship with Wright came to a tragic end when she was murdered in 1914. All of the sacrifices she'd made seemed to be for nought, and newspapers of the day intimated there was a divine retribution, that she was paying the ultimate price for abandoning her family.
The truth of Mamah Borthwick Cheney's life, Horan believes, is not so simple.
"She was portrayed as a homewrecker -- which of course she was -- and a vampire," Horan says. "I tried to reconcile that with the other things I had read about her. Taylor Wooley, who worked for Frank Lloyd Wright, in one of his letters said she was one of the loveliest women he ever knew. Frank Lloyd Wright's son, John, said of her something loving and gentle in his father was lost when she died. I think that Mamah had a tremendously good effect on Frank Lloyd Wright in that sense, and his son was correct in saying that a piece of her father was lost with her death."
Additional Information:
'Loving Frank'
Author: Nancy Horan
Publisher: Ballantine, $23.95, 368 pages
Additional Information:
Capsule review
Mamah Borthwick Cheney's liaison with Frank Lloyd Wright was scandalous fodder for the newspapers in the first two decades of the 20th century. 'Loving Frank,' a fictionalized account of their romance by Nancy Horan, sheds light on their illicit romance. Horan excels at bringing a sense of balance to two characters whose actions were, at times, unconscionable. Mamah's complexities are especially well-wrought, and Horan deftly illustrates the price she paid for abandoning her family for what she considered to be her true love.
