Continued from Part 3

THE FAIR AS A SPECTACLE.

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

By Charles Mulford Robinson

Part 4: A Transformation Scene

In such a mental condition, the best thing one could do was to take the Intramural Electric Railroad, itself a scientific exhibit, to the southern end of the grounds, and there to visit La Rabida. This was not part of a dream city, but of the living world—the theater once of extraordinary though quiet human action. Its adobe walls rose upon a sandy promontory, with a terrace of tropical plants on one side and on the other a sea wall of rugged rock. It seemed as if Nature foretold in this meeting of land and sea that coming together of the two strangely typical characters—one all gentleness, love, and repose; one all firmness, eagerness, and resolve—that was to make this convent famous through the ages.

The collection of historical relics in the reproduction of La Rabida was the most valuable at the Fair. The ancient documents, the faded paintings, the mementoes of the splendid court of Ferdinand and Isabella, of the aged and demure little convent, and of Columbus, had been gathered from museums the world over. But there was a picturesqueness in the mediaeval structure itself, in the vistas through low arches, the cold stone corridors, and the sunny cloister-circled court, which even the musty fragments that were in glass cases could not claim. Through this reproduction of the religious architecture of old Spain was surging a talking, staring, modern crowd; yet it somehow did not destroy the romance of the ancient structure, for over the prattle of the sightseers’ classic chants seemed still to echo from the vaulted ceilings, the stone floors still seemed made for pious knees, and the gloom of the passages once more clothed slow-moving, distant figures in holy, somber gowns. Outside the blue sea tossed, and the long rays of the Western sun tipped the crests of its waves with gold while the bordering rocks were in cheerless gloom; so athwart the radiance of the Fair lay this little shadow out of the night of Europe, romantic, mysterious, fascinating.

But now the haze that stole softly as a phantom figure across the lake and the glow of the Western sky, whose union was to be twilight, sent one hurrying back to the Court of Honor to witness, in fitting surroundings, the death of day. By a passage between the Casino and the Agricultural Building the Court was gained, and the ever-new surprise of its daylight beauty thrilled one as at first—only now the light was softening and the snowy surfaces glowed, but did not gleam. Golden waves rippled in the basin, and the gilded dome of Administration threw its shadow at the feet of golden Liberty. No longer calm and cold was she; but stately impassioned, fiery, she raised her symbols aloft till those and her burnished crown seemed answering beacons to the radiant dome. But ever sweeping nearer, gliding through the darkening arches of the Peristyle, climbing the lofty porticoes, and creeping to the water’s edge, stole those shadow veils that drape the scenes new widowed of imperial day. Yet never swiftly do they fall. Slowly faded the brilliant whiteness of the buildings; by degrees alone a rosy hue suffused the sky and tinted with a delicacy beyond expression the gray-growing facades, the sculptured figures, and the marvelous bulls that stood before the palace of Agriculture. It was a transformation scene of a thousand changes, imperceptibly made; it was the diminuendo of music, except that with the lessening volume came also a change in tone, a minor chord immeasurably sweet. For as one sat in the Court of Honor and watched this sunset change, saw the tinted palaces and the glowing sky and sea, it appeared more than ever a dream city’s center, and the beautiful, dying radiance that “light that never was on sea or land.” And with this thought came the remembrance, impossible before in the confidence born of daylight, that the city was indeed a short-lived creation, that it must pass away, its walls must crumble, and its balustrades and pillars might be broken. The very transformation that etherealized the Court had another, earthy, meaning in the transitoriness it foretold. This was the exquisite melancholy that refined the beauty of the Fair; for with the power of pathos the Exposition was drawn, by this very thought, out of the realm of the merely beautiful and at once brought close to your loving heart, with the divine tenderness that makes the fleeting dearest, the more fragile the more loved. As the chimes from the tower of Machinery Hall now broke through the twilight stillness in solemn requiem, they were like the bells of that lost city seen by Breton fishermen beneath the foaming waves.

And yet, as with sadness one watched the fading of the distant details of sculpture, saw repeated in a thousand statues the miracle of the death of day as like white souls they vanished, mankind’s old faith in immortality arose to comfort him. Far away in a building outside the Park a series of congresses was daily gathering, was learning by the harmony of apparently incongruous elements brotherhood, love, and tolerance, and was teaching those precious, almost newly discovered, qualities to the world. The official motto for the congresses was “Men, not things”; and with the sigh for the too fleeting material beauty there was also a thrill of pride and satisfaction in the thought of the no less lovely spiritual structure which, though so intangible, must outlast this. The Exposition itself was felt to be not a vain dream, but a promise; marking not what had been, but what should be. In the great city of an older civilization it might have been a culmination indeed; but here it could be only the beginning, the ideal; and as it passed would come the awakening of efforts to regain it, the realization of grand and lasting possibilities. One was in a city of mirage, and a bow of promise aided the sunset in tinting domes and towers.

Suddenly, as if in answer to this hope, the beauty and splendor of the night illumination burst on the gathered gloom. Under the cornices of the great buildings, and around the water’s edge, ran the spark that in an instant doubly circled the Court with beads of fire. The gleaming lights outlined the porticoes and roofs in constellations, studded the lofty domes with fiery, unfalling drops, pinned the darkened sky to the fairy white city, and fastened the city’s base to the black lagoon with nails of gold. And now, like great white suns in this firmament of yellow stars, the search lights pierced the gloom with polished lances, and made silvern paths as bright and straight as Jacob’s ladder, sloping to the stars; or, shooting their beams in level lines across the darkness, effulgent milky ways were formed; or, again, turned upward to the zenith, the white stream flowed toward heaven until it seemed the holy light from the rapt gaze of a saint, or Faith’s white, pointing finger! In front of the Administration Building, upon whose second portico the flaring flambeaux threw their incense to the night, three fountains played. These were Columbia’s sculptured white barge, and on either side of it the bewildering beautiful jets of electrically colored fire that tossed and intertwined. The colors deepened, faded, mingled, or wholly changed. The Greek philosophies, which no more seemed ancient amid the Fair’s wealth of carven beauty, were here confounded in the combined ultimates, water and fire. But it was a triumph for Heraclitus, for even Thales would have forgotten the water in witnessing that hot, mad loveliness of rioting color. One could think of it only in the single drops that, detached from the richer stream, fell as diamonds, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, or amethysts. A circle of black shadows that you knew were people watched the fountains and gazed upon the wondrous scene; and now, alas! it is only in their hearts that the fountains play again, and only in their memory, as in yours, that the colors chase and catch and change with the brightness of that vanished night, long passed.

And still the darkness on the lake crept nearer, and the twilight faded until sharp outlines were softened; and the buildings showed as pale gray masses, indistinct save where the incandescent lights marked porticoes, domes, and cornices, or as stray fragments of sculptured snow where an are light threw its beams. Then, as the real world slipped away, shadows folded also round one’s years and cares and toils and one had childhood’s dream again, free from the mist of time and tears, for surely one was face to face with youth’s lost paradise.

Out on the broad, smooth Basin, as in the harbor of an enchanted city, strange craft moved silently, some propelled by flashing oars and some with purposeless direction by the breath of night alone. From high bow and stem, lanterns threw a quivering light on waters slowly cleaved and brilliant barge. These boats were the wandering pages of the Queen of the Adriatic, and were adorned as in those splendid days before gondolas were uniformly black. Thus on the darkly gleaming waters it was not only the years to childhood that were spanned, but centuries were bridged of toil and war and learning, and one was back in the romantic time when civilization was young and innocently vain in her adorning.

The City of the Lagoons had faded, and when these lights should disappear the fairyland also would vanish; but now one lay on the cushions watching the supple gondolier ply his oar with grace and strength, and in the supreme happiness of the moment felt secure amid the exquisite beauty. Here a search light thrown on a white building made a wondrous contrast of high light and shade where the shore was left in darkness. Then, lowered a little, the rays unveiled a mystery of the shadow and revealed a bed of suddenly awakened pansies beside the great white pile. Overhead fireworks blazed and sang like meteors, yet still the senses were lulled by the breeze that wafted low, sweet music from singers drifting near. What wonder, amid such scenes, that a prosy, unemotional people re-named the World’s Columbian Exposition with the simple, directly appealing metaphors that were used! And is it not natural that when you now ask those who visited the Fair what most impressed them they forget the Plaisance and exhibits and name the great white buildings and the grandeur of the Court of Honor? The Dream City that seemed so transitory is still to be seen by many eyes—imperishable as the loving word, the beautiful face, the noble deed, in the heart that cherishes what shall be no more.