“I Want You at Once”
IN LATE NOVEMBER THE young Pittsburgh engineer once again put his proposal for out-Eiffeling Eiffel before the Ways and Means Committee. This time in addition to drawings and specifications he included a list of investors, the names of the prominent men on his board, and proof that he had raised enough money to finance the project to completion. On December 16, 1892, the committee granted him a concession to build his structure in the Midway Plaisance. This time the decision held.
He needed an engineer willing to go to Chicago and supervise the construction effort and thought he knew just the man: Luther V. Rice, assistant engineer of the Union Depot & Tunnel Company, St. Louis. His letter to Rice began, “I have on hand a great project for the World’s Fair in Chicago. I am going to build a vertically revolving wheel 250’ in dia.”
Nowhere in this letter, however, did he reveal the true dimension of his vision: that this wheel would carry thirty-six cars, each about the size of a Pullman, each holding sixty people and equipped with its own lunch counter, and how when filled to capacity the wheel would propel 2,160 people at a time three hundred feet into the sky over Jackson Park, a bit higher than the crown of the now six-year-old Statue of Liberty.
He told Rice, “I want you at once if you can come.” He signed the letter: George Washington Gale Ferris.
Chappell Redux
ONE DAY IN THE FIRST week of December 1892 Emeline Cigrand set out for Holmes’s building in Englewood bearing a small neatly wrapped parcel. Initially her mood was bright, for the parcel contained an early Christmas present she planned to give to her friends the Lawrences, but as she neared the corner of Sixty-third and Wallace, her spirits dimmed. Where once the building had seemed almost a palace—not for its architectural nobility but for what it promised—now it looked drab and worn. She climbed the stairs to the second floor and went directly to the Lawrences’ apartment. The warmth and welcome resurrected her good spirits. She handed the parcel to Mrs. Lawrence, who opened it immediately and pulled from the wrapping a tin plate upon which Emeline had painted a lovely forest.
The gift delighted Mrs. Lawrence but also perplexed her. Christmas was only three weeks off, she said kindly: Why hadn’t Emeline simply waited and given the plate then, when Mrs. Lawrence could have offered a gift in return?
Her face brightening, Emeline explained that she was going home to Indiana to spend Christmas with her family.
“She seemed delighted with the anticipation of a visit to them,” Mrs. Lawrence said. “She spoke in most affectionate terms of them and seemed as happy as a child.” But Mrs. Lawrence also sensed a note of finality in Emeline’s voice that suggested Emeline’s journey might have another purpose. She said, “You are not going away from us?”
“Well,” Emeline said. “I don’t know. Maybe.”
Mrs. Lawrence laughed. “Why, Mr. Holmes could never get along without you.”
Emeline’s expression changed. “He could if he had to.”
The remark confirmed something for the Lawrences. “It had seemed to me for some time that Miss Cigrand was changing in her feelings toward Holmes,” said Dr. Lawrence. “In the light of what has happened since, I believe now that she had found out to a certain extent the real character of Holmes and determined to leave him.”
She may have begun to believe the stories she heard in the neighborhood of Holmes’s penchant for acquiring things on credit and then not paying for them—stories she had heard all along, for they were rife, but that she at first had dismissed as the gossip of envious hearts. Later there was speculation that Emeline herself had trusted Holmes with her $800 savings, only to have it disappear in a fog of promises of lavish future returns. Ned Conner’s warning echoed in her mind. Lately she had begun talking of returning one day to Dwight to resume her work for Dr. Keeley.
Emeline never told the Lawrences good-bye. Her visits simply stopped. That she would leave without a parting word struck Mrs. Lawrence as being very much out of character. She wasn’t sure whether to feel wounded or worried. She asked Holmes what he knew about Emeline’s absence.
Ordinarily Holmes looked at Mrs. Lawrence with a directness that was unsettling, but now he avoided her gaze. “Oh, she’s gone away to get married,” Holmes said, as if nothing could have interested him less.
The news shocked Mrs. Lawrence. “I don’t see why she didn’t mention something to me about getting married.”
It was a secret, Holmes explained: Emeline and her betrothed had revealed their wedding plans only to him.
But for Mrs. Lawrence this explanation only raised more questions. Why would the couple want such privacy? Why had Emeline said nothing to Mrs. Lawrence, when together they had shared so many other confidences?
Mrs. Lawrence missed Emeline and the way her effervescence and physical brightness—her prettiness and sunflower hair—lit the sullen halls of Holmes’s building. She remained perplexed and a few days later again asked Holmes about Emeline.
He pulled a square envelope from his pocket. “This will tell you,” he said.
The envelope contained a wedding announcement. Not engraved, as was customary, merely typeset. This too surprised Mrs. Lawrence. Emeline never would have accepted so mundane a means of communicating news of such magnitude.
The announcement read:
Mr. Robert E. Phelps.
Miss Emeline G. Cigrand.
Married
Wednesday, December 7th
1892
CHICAGO
Holmes told Mrs. Lawrence he had received his copy from Emeline herself. “Some days after going away she returned for her mail,” he explained in his memoir, “and at this time gave me one of her wedding cards, and also two or three others for tenants in the building who were not then in their rooms; and in response to inquiries lately made I have learned that at least five persons in and about Lafayette, Ind., received such cards, the post mark and her handwriting upon the envelope in which they were enclosed showing that she must have sent them herself after leaving my employ.”
Emeline’s family and friends did receive copies of the announcement through the mail, and indeed these appeared to have been addressed by Emeline herself. Most likely Holmes forged the envelopes or else duped Emeline into preparing them by persuading her they would be used for a legitimate purpose, perhaps for Christmas cards.
For Mrs. Lawrence the announcement explained nothing. Emeline had never mentioned a Robert Phelps. And if Emeline had come to the building bearing marriage announcements, she surely would have presented one in person.
The next day Mrs. Lawrence stopped Holmes yet again, and this time asked what he knew about Phelps. In the same dismissive manner Holmes said, “Oh, he is a fellow Miss Cigrand met somewhere. I do not know anything about him except that he is a traveling man.”
