Fortune's Many Houses by Simon Welfare

Author:Simon Welfare
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2021-02-16T00:00:00+00:00

Alas! The visit to Ireland cost Mr White his life.… Unhappily he caught a chill, pneumonia developed, and after seven weeks of ups and downs he passed away.

Ishbel, who thrived in a crisis, took immediate action: in Chicago work on the village was far from finished, and the spinners, lace-makers, weavers, and dairymaids, who had been issued with “pretty travelling dresses” and “cloaks of Irish navy blue serge, lined with crimson satin,” were about to embark on the White Star liner Britannic from Queenstown. Despite being newly widowed and with six small childrenVIII to care for, White’s wife, Annie, agreed to take over his job. And while she and Ishbel chivvied the plasterers and fussed over the “villagers” as they settled into their quarters in McDonnell’s replica of Blarney Castle, Johnny, not to be left out, appointed himself the odd-job man and spent many happy hours “wandering amongst miles of freight train cars on the side tracks, searching for consignments for the Irish Village,” because the railwaymen would not unload the cars without a bribe.

Although the London Times grumbled that the World’s Fair had opened in “an incomplete condition” thanks to “outrageous weather” and disorganized exhibitors, Ishbel’s Irish Village was finished in time, albeit only on the night before the exposition began. But all skepticism vanished when the crowds saw the spectacular “White City” that had arisen on the southwestern shore of Lake Michigan and discovered that it offered, over the course of a few hours, an eye-opening virtual tour of the wonders of the world.

Every nation and American state, it seemed, had risen to the occasion with its own eccentric temple of culture. The Times correspondent admired Britain’s “English half-timber house of the 16th century” with its “wall panelling and elaborate ceilings like some of the best English country houses”; Germany’s “magnificent structure” which boasted “high roofs and gables and conical turrets, with a clock and chimes that are heard from a long distance”; and France’s equally “magnificent hall in the Renaissance style,” flanked by two pavilions packed with art treasures. Florida had contributed “the oldest structure in America, the ancient Spanish fort San Marco of St. Augustine”; Pennsylvania had built an independence hall “containing her precious relic, the ‘Liberty Bell’ ”; and Idaho had sent a “mammoth log house.” But the exhibit that really caught the reporter’s eye was the “Corn Palace” from Iowa, which contained “a mass of most artistic decoration made entirely of grains and grasses wrought into beautiful designs” and a “fine model of the Iowa State Capitol composed of grain and seeds.”

Both Ishbel’s and Mrs. Hart’s Irish villages loomed over a wide thoroughfare, the Midway Pleasance. One observer called it “the preferred destination of thrill- and pleasure-seekers” and the exhibits there were far more entertaining, if rather less worthy, than those in the solemn temples of engineering and industry of the official exposition. The guidebook dubbed the Pleasance “the highway of the nations,” and, for once, the writer could not be accused of hyperbole. Mrs.

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