Make Me a City Read online

  Every day, supplies were coming in. Every day, more wagons were pitched on empty lots. Everywhere you looked, there were horses grazing. At least once a week, a ship would anchor offshore in the Lake, unloading people and goods. Prairie schooners kicked up funnels of dust as they skirted the line of sandhills and clipped into town, bearing another complement of young Yankee settlers or immigrants from the Old World or sometimes a whole family, the final stage from Detroit now completed after traveling for weeks over rutted tracks from far-off New Hampshire or New England in search of a new life. Like him, they believed that this was no false dawn for the West. Chicago was as young and ambitious as John Stephen Wright. Together, they would forge a glorious future for themselves.

  He and his father built a new store that summer, providing a fine opportunity to discourse with Miss Chappell on one of his favorite topics—frame houses. They had been invented by Mr. Snow only two years before, he told her, when he built a warehouse with nothing but a bag of nails and a pile of two-by-fours. And now they were everywhere. What would Chicago be without them? He wasn’t claiming they were pretty—the Kinzie family’s old log mansion was the finest building in town—but they were practical. Think of the lumber that was saved. There was no need for a skilled carpenter. Anyone could put up a frame house as long as they had the proper lengths of scantling and sidings, ordered in the right proportion.

  “And a plentiful supply of nails, Mr. Wright?” he remembered her suggesting. “Perhaps,” and at this point she read from the sign on the counter, “CUT NAILS FROM 3 TO 20 P. OF SUPERIOR QUALITY BY THE KEG?”

  John laughed. “Scantling, sidings and nails will hold this town together. You’ll see, Miss Chappell. Believe me.”

  “Chicago is a town already?”

  He pointed to the sign propped up on the counter: NEXT YEAR WILL BE EVEN BETTER! “It shall be soon, Miss Chappell. And a big one.”

  “Then perhaps I should address you as Mr. Prophet, not Mr. Wright?”

  He liked that. “Now, if you are ready to start building at once, I can offer you an excellent price on nails, if only you would buy three kegs at once?”

  She smiled, in a tight-lipped way. “Perhaps I should alter the spelling? P-r-o-f-i-t?”

  * * *

  On another occasion she said, to his delight: “Conversation with you is like gazing up at the aurora borealis, alive with shooting stars. You never know where the next bright idea will come from.” He would never forget her saying that.

  But the truth was that the more they talked, the less certain of himself he began to feel. Ideas were one thing, points of view another. Miss Chappell already seemed to know what she believed in. One day, he had been telling her about a corner lot he had bought for $12,000 on Water Street for a down payment of just $300. The location was excellent. He had no doubt it would be worth three times that amount within a year.

  “Tell me, Mr. Wright,” asked Miss Chappell, “how does this property speculation profit humankind? Does it educate our children? Does it grow food? Does it improve our health? Does it strengthen our faith? Does it develop civilization? Does it assist us in ridding this country of the abomination of slavery? Does your property speculation heighten our love for Almighty God?”

  For all his learning and quick wit, John floundered in his response to this battery of questions. He stood behind the counter and fiddled with a box of nails. His mind was racing. The problem was that the questions she posed were the same ones that, in moments of quiet reflection, troubled his own soul. What good was he doing in the world, with all this activity, with all this buying and selling, with his frantic purchasing of new lots? What did he really think, in his heart, about the rights and wrongs of slavery? Was it enough to argue that anti-slavery agitation was a matter of high-up political maneuvering that did not concern him? Was it enough to say, each to his own? Was it enough to pledge never to employ a slave himself, while at the same time refusing to cast judgment on those that did?

  “It is a question of morality, Mr. Wright. I suggest we all need to take a moral stand.”

  He admired her for saying that. He understood she meant more than simply following the teachings of our Lord. All he could do was nod his head and agree. She raised a small, gloved hand and smiled. “I’m sure not all speculation is bad,” she said. “In fact, I wondered if I might ask you to speculate on my behalf?”

  John looked at her in surprise.

  “I am, as you know, a teacher without a school. Might you be able to speculate as to where a Normal school might be established in Chicago, so that the child of the humblest cottage and the finest palace can meet on equal terms? And might you also, perhaps, speculate as to how that school might be equipped with furniture by the beginning of September?”

  And with another smile, tight-lipped but so infectious that John found himself smiling back, the slight Miss Chappell swung around on her heels as neatly as a dancer on the turn, opened the door and stepped lightly across the boards at the entrance in the direction of Dearborn Street, where he heard she had taken lodgings.

  He watched her until she was out of sight.

  Shortly afterward, he closed the shop and went to visit his friend Mark Beaubien. This fall, when they moved into the new store, the room they were currently renting from Mark would become vacant. It would be big enough for a schoolroom. If Mark agreed, he would be happy to pay the rent for it out of his own savings. And then, who knows? Maybe next year he would build Miss Chappell a school of her own. How grateful and indebted to him she would feel, though he would make nothing of it. His mother would also be delighted to hear he was building a Normal school. The matter of education for all was dear to her heart and it would give him enormous pleasure to break the news to her. How proud of him dear Mater would be.

  * * *

  John’s upbringing had been strict, one in which innermost feelings were not discussed. His communications with women, in particular young women, had been limited. In the presence of Miss Chappell, he often had the uncomfortable sensation that he was not sure what he was doing or what he was meant to do. He knew only that the day felt empty when it passed without sight or sound of Miss Chappell.

  Perhaps his inability to recall anything about their initial encounter was because he did not, in the beginning, find her mightily attractive. His first impressions had been of a slight, feathery creature. Everything about her looked fragile and petite. And yet he came to realize that this appearance of physical frailty was deceptive. She showed stamina. She was energetic. He had never met anyone who was as full of ideas, nor anyone who was as confident, intelligent and forceful. She was also, he discovered, remarkably brave. On one occasion, he expressed his surprise that she had lost some teeth so early in life. He had become accustomed to the quirks of her diction—the breathy sounds that substituted for the harder sounds a full set of teeth would have given her. In fact, he found her voice charming, and that made it even more difficult to argue against her.

  “I have lost all my teeth, Mr. Wright,” she corrected him. “It is as well that I am partial to porridge, batter cakes and apple dumplings.”

  The rot began with prolonged salivation by calomel, she explained, which had been prescribed for other maladies. The surgeons who came afterward could find nothing good in any of her teeth, so they had been extracted, one by one, over a number of years. A majority had been removed shortly before she came to Chicago, which had affected her speech. And her diet was much changed too. She mentioned this terrible misfortune as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

  He looked at her directly, where she stood upright and diminutive, across the counter. Her eyes were green and turned his way. They were flooded, it seemed, with sunlight.

  “I think of it this way, Mr. Wright,” she said. “I shall never again suffer from toothache. Is that not a most particular blessing?” She grinned, in her tight-lipped way.

  He grinned back. And as he did so, something stirred in his heart. For the first time, pe
rhaps, he was seeing her properly. He had never gazed at a young woman like that before. It was not done. And yet it was being done, and done without embarrassment. How could he have failed to recognize her beauty? It struck him now, with the force of an epiphany, how happy he felt in her presence, and how much he desired more of it. Their eyes were engaged in a conversation that went beyond any words they had exchanged. He did not intend to be the first to look away.

  But they were interrupted. A customer came in and asked for rope. Or maybe for timber or nails, or a hammer or a hoe. Whatever it was he asked for had long since vanished from his mind. The look they shared, though, had not. That, he decided, would be his first memory of her, even though it could not have been.

  “I am twenty-eight years old.”

  “Impossible,” he said. “The registrar’s pen must have slipped.”

  “You flatter me, Mr. Wright, and I shall not object. And you are, I am guessing, at least nineteen?”

  “I will be next year,” he said. He busied himself with rearranging those boxes of nails again, which did not need rearranging.

  “I thought you should know that about me,” she said. “So there is no misunderstanding.”

  Misunderstanding, exactly, about what? He wanted to tell her that age should not matter where feelings were concerned. “I believe my mother must have been about that same age,” he said, “before she wed.”

  She raised one fine eyebrow.

  “What I mean is…” But he did not know what he really meant. He reminded himself that he was John S. Wright, already a notable merchant and storekeeper in Chicago, and the owner of over 350 acres of real estate. He reminded himself that there was nothing in the world he could not do if he applied himself, and that included conducting a conversation on his own with Miss Chappell.

  “I’m sure you must miss your mother, Mr. Wright?”

  He agreed he did. “She will be moving to Chicago,” he said, “in the spring.”

  She was pleased to hear that. “Sometimes we don’t realize how much we miss those we love,” she said, “until we are driven apart from them.”

  This was another of those things he would remember her saying.

  * * *

  One fine afternoon in mid-October, John closed the new store and set off across town. There had been a lot of ribaldry about the distant, isolated lot on which it had been erected. Nobody would cross that open prairie to buy a bag of nails, especially after rain. John had played along with the joke. “We shall call it,” he told his father, “The Prairie Store.” They had confounded their critics. They were already doing double the business they did in the old store. John was certain it wouldn’t be long before the center of town shifted in their direction.

  The day was so warm it might have been left behind by summer, were it not for the turning of the leaves and the ground fall of nuts beneath the cluster of water hickory that grew on the northern edge of his land, nearest to the river. He was taking a shortcut across his friend Philo Carpenter’s lot. Then he would walk along Madison Street and cross to Water. He wanted to inspect a lot that was up for sale at the corner of South Water and Dearborn. John pushed back his hat and whistled a tune. He wished he had been born more musical than he was. Maybe, when he had more time, he would have another go with the fiddle.

  He paused to watch three or four men working on a new house near the intersection with Halsted Street. It was a frame, of course. He could see the stack of two-by-four scantlings, ready to be nailed up. He walked across to bid them welcome. This was a habit he had picked up from Mark Beaubien, whose warm, generous greeting for his father and himself, when they first arrived off the boat, had made a deep impression on him. He asked where they were from, said they had made the best decision of their lives in coming to Chicago, and told them where to find his store.

  On he strode.

  The lot he was on his way to inspect had last been sold in March. John was considering how much he was prepared to pay. There were no other vacant lots on South Water Street and the values had been rising even faster than he had anticipated. He’d done another census—150 new buildings with a population increase from eight hundred to eighteen hundred. He was as optimistic as ever. Next year would indeed be even better.

  That optimism may have partly explained what he did next. Before proceeding to the corner lot he would agree to purchase later that afternoon for $1,500 (a staggering threefold increase on the $500 for which it had been sold in March) John stepped into a new store on Water Street. The sign hanging outside said that it belonged to a Mr. J. H. Mulford from Albany, New York, purveyor of: FINE SETTS OF JEWELLERY; DIAMOND PINS, EAR RINGS AND FINGER RINGS; NECKLACES, MEDALIONS AND OTHER TRINKETS; AMERICAN WATCHES IN GOLD AND SILVER CASES.

  1834

  LETTERS FROM CHICAGO

  Chicago

  October 14, 1834

  My dear F____,

  You must be weary of my endless descriptions of the difficulties we face here and my carping on about the fact that no civic organization exists to address some of the most glaring problems. Greed, dear F____, seems to consume those in society on whose shoulders such a responsibility might be expected to fall. And yet I believe there are grounds for hope. The congregation at Reverend Porter’s church continues to grow, talented people have chosen to make Chicago their home, and there is a determination to better themselves in many I meet that could, if properly harnessed, be a force for good. But enough of generalizations. Let me tell you about someone I have met.

  Mr. W is the young man who provided me with a schoolroom, for which he has done all and more than I could expect. He even paid a carpenter to make desks and chairs for my charges. (I have 32 unkempt little angels at the latest count, their souls lined up like rows of rough-cut diamonds in need of a good polish.) Mr. W behaves like a man who fears time will end and find him wanting. He seems to work on a dozen different projects at once. There is something of the distracted scholar in his appearance, with his curly uncombed hair and fraying sleeves, that I confess I find charming.

  Though there is nothing dishonorable either in Mr. W nor in the attention he shows me, the sibyls in Chicago warn me it is unwise to keep his company. Eliza, they whisper, Mr. W is considerably younger than you (I suspect they mean, by that, “indecently younger”) and he is not yet established in the world. But I have never been swayed by this kind of talk. You know how I am, and how opposition spurs my resolve. I regret to say that Revd Porter, for all the goodness he shows towards me, is one such voice. There is another reason, left unsaid, for their reservations. Mr. W behaves with a haste and foresight that frequently troubles the more staid among those that are, as they say here,“in society.” Prolific and persuasive with the pen, he is also skilled in oratory. Do you wonder then, my dear, at my interest in him?

  Let me make a wild conjecture, in a manner I would not dare with anyone else in the world but you. If a gentleman such as Mr. W were ever to honor me with an offer of marriage, what should I do? When I try to imagine what kind of life it might be, I see only through a glass darkly. I worry that if I yoked myself to a man such as Mr. W, even though he is most diligent in his attendance at church, I would be unable to serve God as whole-heartedly as I desire. I shall give you two reasons why.

  * * *

  October 15, 1834

  My candle gave out last night, and I had none in reserve. And perhaps it is a blessing, given the matter at hand, that I am writing this at first light, my mind and soul refreshed by prayers and sleep.

  The first reason is this. Mr. W, despite my arguments against land speculation, sees nothing unjust about the practice. There is a mad race for the acquisition of property in Chicago and he considers it no sin that land “bought” off the Indians for 3 cents an acre is now being sold at $100 a squire. He seeks to justify his gain as a reward for the risks he has taken. “Risks?” I retort. Our newspaper, the “Chicago Democrat,” says there has never been such a boom in real estate prices in America. The value of empty lo
ts (i.e., open prairie depicted by lines on a chart) goes up each week like magic. For which reason, I contend the only “risk” he faces is that of being beaten to a purchase. These exorbitant profits are arithmetical anomalies that militate against every lesson taught in our Scriptures.

  The second reason is even more worrisome to me. He declines to view slavery as an abomination before the Lord that must be abolished. His first line of defense is to argue he will practice no slavery himself, but nor will he presume to pass judgment on those that do. Why will he practice no slavery himself, I ask? Because, he says, he does not care for it. As though, I goad him, slavery were a dish not to your liking? We debate in this fashion. He pretends neutrality where there can be none, while I too often become prey to my feelings. He will admit to me, when pressed, that the question of slavery is not yet entirely clear to him. But beyond this point, I cannot take him.

  You see my dilemma. And it becomes more complicated by the day. I believe Mr. W might have feelings for me. No, that is disingenuous. I cannot and would not deceive you, dear F____. The truth is that he has proposed marriage to me twice already, and each time I have refused him. But I have not refused as directly as I might have done, and I suspect my ambivalence has not escaped his notice. For this reason he is discouraged, but by no means vanquished.

  He continues to court me. Only last week, he brought me a silver-plated watch he had ordered some weeks previous from a Jeweler called J. H. Mulford. It had to be sent direct from New York it was of such rarity (and, doubtless, expense). I am looking at it now. Inside the cover, my initials have been engraved above an inscription in Latin: “Sed fugit interea, fugit irreparabile tempus.” Whenever I want to check the hour, it is as though I hear his voice, hectoring me: “But meanwhile it is flying, Miss Chappell, irretrievable time is flying.”