Halcyon Days in the Dream City

by Mrs. D. C. Taylor

Continued from Part 12

To-day we went to the “Dream City,” as Mrs. Candace Wheeler so prettily named the Chicago Exposition,[1] and saw the grand weekly illumination in the evening. At about five o’clock in the afternoon we pressed on with the crowd toward the grand basin. It seemed to be the objective point with all and we were so fortunate as to secure a seat on one of the benches facing the basin.

It was an ideal evening, an ideal scene, a scene such as no man ever gazed upon before, and as no man will ever see again, for the dream will soon vanish, and nothing but the memory be left us of this divinely beautiful work. As we were seated we had behind us the long façade and noble triumphal arch of the building of liberal arts and manufactures, with its terraces and balustrades in the front, and stretching down to where we sat a beautiful sweep of green, green velvet turf. On our right rose the gilded dome and columned front of the Administration building; before it on the edge of the basin, the great MacMonnies fountain played and rippled in gentle silken flow of water more purely white than the snowy figures that seemed to live and move in its midst.

Directly opposite us rose the Agricultural building, its wealth of crowning statues clearly cut against the calm evening sky, and the flying figure on the apex of the dome seemed springing into the air to scale the heights of the stars.[2] On the left stretched the long collonade [sic] of the Peristyle, showing like a vision against the dim and cloudy blue of the lake, while its peopling groups of statuary seemed melting into the evening depths as if they were only a misty mirage of the air.

Facing us on the left the great golden figure poising the ball so lightly in her fingers, seemed smiling benignantly down upon us as if in tender compassion for us poor mortals, who knew not of the grander, diviner beauties, toward which the staff in her left hand pointed us.[3] At her feet and ours heaved softly, like molten silver, the water of the basin, and far, far on either hand stretched the long graceful lines of the Electricity and Mechanic’ Art palace, fading into the blue shades of the closing evening.

A vast crowd of people, people such as you can see only in America; a vast crowd well dressed, well mannered, sat, stood, and walked about; but no loud voice disturbed the evening calm; all seemed rapt in contemplation, and the very spirit of art seemed brooding over the whole scene. Slowly the day light faded. The shadows at the bases of the buildings grew deeper; when suddenly around the stone coping on the edge of the basin sprang a line of electric fire reflected in dancing jewels in every little wave. Then the cornice of the Agricultural building twinkled into flames outlining every peak and dome. On, on it crept, along the Casino, across the Peristyle, in among the pillars, hanging out little dots of light on each one, then out again, along the line of the Manufactures building, across the bridges back to the Administration building, and then a miracle of beauty grew into being.

At first a long line of tall flaring torches at the foot of the dome bloomed out like flame flowers, then suddenly a crown flickered into flame on top of the dome, and glittered and glowed like a veritable jeweled coronet; then on each section of the melon shaped dome, around the cornice of the whole building, across the pillard front, up and down, crept the fairy jeweled thread, until the whole structure seemed alive, transparent, palpitating with living light. And we sat entranced, hemmed in, encircled in bands of fire.

We sat for an hour spell bound, watching the fairy spectacle. Dark gondolas full of dark forms glided over the irridescent [sic] waters, showing here and there a gleam of color in the waist scarfs of the gondoliers, but swift and silent as shadows; now and then soft notes of music rose to enhance the charms of the scene, but subdued and harmonious and dying gently into silence again; and we thought this is the flower of arts’ growth, the crown, the culmination; after long ages of growth the flower has bloomed, it can not bloom again for ages more.

Nothing earthly can ever exceed this; man has reached high, higher, his fingers have almost touched the bars of heaven. Here he must pause; the Divine only can go beyond. Beautiful vision must we leave thee? Must our lingering feet pass out the gates of this paradise? Farewell! then! But one final gleam of splendor was vouchsafed us; as we passed out through the Electric building there seemed to rise before us a magical column of color, white, crimson, scarlet, blue, green, golden, violet, crept the tremulous wavering spirit of light, from floor to roof it spread and separated in four streams of fire along the rafters, until they centered in a great globe of whirling, dazzling, blinding opalescence, and awed and bewildered we stepped out into the cool and fragrant night. A pale peaceful moon lighted our tired feet to the train and we sped away, seeing still in the distance a phantom dome, painted with a pencil of fire on the dark canvas of the night.

Continued in Part 14

NOTES

[1] Candace Wheeler designed the interior décor of the Woman’s Building.

[2] The “flying figure on the apex of the dome” of the Agricultural Building was the famous statue of Diana by Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

[3] The “great golden figure” was the colossus Statue of the Republic by Daniel Chester French.