Continued from Introduction

THE FAIR AS A SPECTACLE.

How it seemed to a visitor—Strolling and dreaming by day and by night.

By Charles Mulford Robinson

Part 1: “Behold my grandeur!”

As a loving word rings in the heart when the voice that breathed it is still, as a beautiful face dwells in Memory’s kingdom after years have flown, and a noble deed still lives though its occasion be passed, so the beauty of the Fair, written anew in thousands of hearts each day of its continuance, lives in thought and arises in countless minds as a veritable “dream city.” How many eyes still see its snowy domes and turrets against the sky of blue, as real now as they ever seemed when the flags were flying and the pennants waving! For the city that must have existed first as only a dream of beauty was realized, and then, before fire and wind destroyed it, was translated into a million dreams, to be cherished until the dreamers pass away. The Fair will have closed when it is no longer a memory, but not till then; for no words can pass the picture along quite as it appeared to us who saw the artists’ fancy at first hand, quite as it truly was.

The common verdict during the summer of the Exposition was that the best way to approach the grounds for the first time was by the water route. It was held that the first impression, if not always the most lasting, was yet of great importance as affecting the subsequent point of view. If one came in by the Midway, the Fair itself would thenceforth seem but an adjunct, a fanciful dessert following the pièce de résistance, which, alas! was too often not resisted; if your entrance was by one of the “back doors,” at Fifty-seventh or Sixty-second Streets, you would hardly forget that the ornaments of the buildings were staff, not marble; if the arrival was through the Terminal Station, it was said you would always think of the people more than of the show; but if you came by water—that was a different matter.

The sail up the lake from the city gave ample opportunity to gain the proper frame of mind without serious interruption. The distant city panorama glided slowly by on one side, and on the other the blue waves rose and fell in idle undulation, putting to sleep the cares of busy minds. With a strong breeze, the band playing, and the sharp bow swiftly cleaving the waves, all felt an exhilaration of spirits that only needed an object. The boats landed at the long pier, facing the Peristyle. At first one saw the whole of this, its splendid proportions, harmony, and symmetry, and then, as he came nearer, its details rose impressively before him.

Passing through the Peristyle, for impatience rarely permitted that slow study from the pier which was so well deserved, the whole beauty of the Exposition broke upon the newcomer. He found himself in the Court of Honor, described and pictured to him so many times. Beauty surrounded him and was fairly shouted at him whichever way he turned. “See, am I not beautiful?” cried the shore at his left, where rose the Agriculture Building with its graceful Diana and the distant Machinery Hall. “Behold my grandeur!” thundered Liberal Arts on the right, replying, and “my lines of grace!” whispered Administration over the rippling waters of the Basin, which murmured “my loveliness!” on its own account. And so he turned from one to the other, dazed, astonished, yet not overwhelmed, for distance held the buildings far from him. Thus the unattainableness, which is so pathetically constant an attribute of beauty that we can hardly conceive of visual perfection without it, was present here. “Thou may’st look at all my beauty of form and proportion,” each building said, “but thou may’st not touch. When thou touchest me my most delicate charm will pass away.” One foresaw then that the column approached would be only a column, no longer a member of a perfect colonnade supporting a cornice with lightness and grace, and stood still, awed, hushed, exhilarated, in the midst of beauty. The faculties were all alert; he forgot himself or he felt the limits of his own personality slipping away, extending widely, boundlessly, until the whole scene was in his own soul. That was the first, unanalyzed impression of the Fair; not the impression merely of the artist, the architect, or the poet, but of the everyday person, sounding infinite depths whose existence he never had known before.

As one turned back to gaze again upon the Peristyle, not yet ready to leave the beauty that was passed, and perused the noble inscriptions written upon it, a direction was suddenly given to his abundant emotion, and the heart went out indeed “To the Pioneers of Civil and Religious Liberty.” All one’s Americanism surged over him then, and with a patriotism, half love, half pride, he turned once more to the Court of Honor.

And now was seen a phase of it that had been unnoticed in the first bewildering glance—a phase that you never afterward would miss. This was the whole scene’s purity, simplicity, and yet depth of color. It made little difference whether clouds were gray or sky was blue. The gray toned with the lighter buildings, while against the blue the structures were printed with a distinctness that threw every carving into high relief. Marble towers and domes and statues broke the skyline; waving pennants of crimson threw warm dashes of color into the colder hues; the golden figure of Liberty, which stood colossal, majestic, serene, for the republic, rose out of the ruffled Basin, where the white buildings and blue sky, the green plants, and marble balconies were reflected again. Here and there white Venetian bridges spanned the entrances of the lagoon and the canals, far away the fountains sang and played, strange flags waved from many buildings, and golden cords and tassels flapped against their crimson masts. And up and down surged the resistless, restless tide of humanity, each individual so small in this scene of grandeur and of beauty, yet each one’s spirit in harmony with the strange environment, each one’s heart stamped with its deathless picture. Oh, wonderful was that Grand Court, and little seemed the figure therein of man; but far reached and high soared his divinity, for out of his dreams was this city born! Behind were the columns of Greece, and amid them was Rome’s triumphal arch; yonder rose the light Moorish towers of Machinery Hall; there played the fountain that Versailles might have envied; and nearer passed the swiftly gliding servants of the Bride of the Sea. More than picturesque was this City of Beauty, this Court of Honor, indeed, for every tower and dome, every waving flag and sculptured figure, proclaimed mankind’s sincere aspiration, persistent efforts, and transcendent faith.

With thoughts something like these, a visitor walking through the Court of Honor might have turned and entered the first and most prominent of the buildings—that of Manufactures and Liberal Arts. It would mean nothing to write that this was the largest building in the world, to say that a good-sized farm might have been encompassed by its walls, or that the nails that fastened its floor were measured not in kegs, but in car loads. Yet these oft-scorned similes did come to mind as you entered the building, and such comparison seemed to furnish the only means with which one could describe it. To some extent, the immensity of the building, its vast height, and the almost unadorned bareness of that cobwebbed wilderness above, where one knew every strand to be a girder of iron, was oppressive, made one sigh for the airy lightness, the infinite reach, the sky line’s unpractical poetry without. And, turning the gaze earthward, all was earthy still. A center aisle, almost as broad as a boulevard, extended the length of the building. It was crowded with people, with shoppers, holiday-making sightseers, and various earnest folk, each looking with open eyes and mouth, jostling one another good-humoredly, eating wherever there was a place to sit, talking—nay, complaining and jesting—with a freedom rarely shown in the Court of Honor. Or was it one of the triumphs of that great external beauty that it stilled the inclination for jests and plaints?

The scene within the building was picturesque and full of life and interest. The exhibits were much crowded, and the great throng that flowed down the central street swept around each counter in eddies, the men like bits of helpless driftwood carried by the flood of women; while here and there a baby, borne on the summit of the wave, marked the slow movement of the stream as it circled round an exhibit and then flowed on. The displays themselves were of every kind—some beautiful, many interesting, all clever. Over this department rose the graceful arches on which “Italy” was inscribed, and within was a wealth of statuary; there was the heavy wooden portal of Russia, an exhibit in itself; yonder were caryatides staggering beneath the arch of Austria; and further along the aisle the beautiful iron gates of Germany. Upon each pavilion were the flags of its nation and, in some instances, the names of which the nation was proud, and within was the country’s handiwork. Certainly all was clever, but the great crowd was like a mere swarm of ants—and ants are clever—and the nations in which it showed itself to be divided were as rival hills.

In the center of the building, half way down the long street, one’s attention was arrested by the clock tower. From an upper story a chime of bells rang out above the din of trade. It was impressive to think how well the clock was chosen, since time was something that all these people of diverse nations held in common, and the song of the bells almost the one song that could bear a similar message to each! Nothing but a clock erected there could have been thus the cynosure of all eyes, and what other voice than that could have been French to French ears, English to English, Greek to Greek? So regarded, this structure was the most picturesque in the building, and one listened with fascination for its polyglot call. There were also amusing incidents around it, for the clock was a commonly appointed meeting place; but it happened that two persons might be there together and wait long and anxiously for each other, for it was one hundred and sixty feet around, had ever so many corners, and was crowded always. Thus a perpetual game of hide-and-go-seek was played around the clock, the more amusing because the players so rarely smiled. It made you think of the greater game with time, where Death and Life are players and the Fates look on and laugh. Still, the whole scene was earthy. Even the picturesque was the most human side of humanity; and the Dream City of the Court, with its snowy palaces, its silent statues, its fluttering flags and blue lagoon, seemed separated from this Exposition by the broad gulf, that arm of Lethe, which flows as a mighty barrier between the unreal and the real. You longed to recross the gulf; to see once more those palaces and domes and minarets; to read that they were real, as they cut into the sky, by their flickering reflection in the waves of deeper blue. If the lagoons had not thus happily put a shadow city side by side with the structures of staff and iron, we might never have believed that the Dream City really was.

At intervals in the broad central aisle of the Manufactures Building hung from the closely cobwebbed ceiling what seemed a single silken thread that the human spider might have spun in getting down. And this to some extent it was, for a nearer view proved the thread to be of many strands, and each a series of stout iron girders, between which elevators ran to the roof. It was a dizzy ride, and the Fair looked more a fair than ever as pavilion tops were passed and one saw the dusty upper side of the arches that were gazed upon with such admiration by the little black ants below; and then, as the series of aisles that paralleled this central boulevard on either side, and crossed it at right angles, cutting the exhibits into blocks, were noticed, it was easier to realize the greatness of the city beneath that roof. But through a door that opened upon it, after a short walk over a bridge giddily suspended from the top of the elevator shaft, came a current of cool air. And this was a marvelous wind. It seemed to blow the wonderful Exposition quite out of your head, and all the thoughts of crowded cities, of ants, and cobwebbed roofs disappeared; for there before you lay the broad blue lake, and up and down, to right and left, the fair White City. It was very still up there. The noise of the multitude could not reach so far; the waves lay at rest in the grand Basin. Along the Peristyle the sun shone glintingly, here throwing a high light on a snowy surface, there casting a long, dark shadow behind the row of columns, and making the allegorical statues on the summit stand out as if alive. And what a goodly company it was, the quadriga in the center! You felt that each statue lived; that it was Columbus himself standing in the chariot, the sun lighting his face as if with inspiration; and that the maidens who held the horses were goddesses at whose uplifted arm alone we all were still, the noise hushed, the waves calmed, the horses motionless on their haunches! And the charm continued until you dared to turn away, sure of finding Columbus still with bared head lifted to heaven, and the figures still facing the Court of Honor. There were many things to learn from this bird’s-eye view of the Exposition, practical things about the topography of the great city, and the location of the buildings; but the picture that will remain longest in the mind is that which first appeared to you: of a white, enchanted country on the shore of a silent sapphire sea.

Continued in Part 2