There were perhaps not over thirty students, all told, in the architectural course, and Louis found them agreeable companions. Some of them were University graduates and therefore older than he and much more worldly wise, in their outlook. And there were as well a few advanced students. A few were there as rich men’s sons, to whom the architectural profession seemed to have advantages of tone. Arthur Roche was one of these. A few were there as poor men’s sons. They worked hard to become breadwinners. Among these was William Roche Ware, nephew of the Professor, and George Ferry of Milwaukee. What certain others were there for, including Louis, is a somewhat dubious surmise. But Louis began to like companionship for the first time. Hitherto he had been entirely neglectful of his school comrades, caring neither who nor what they were as persons. Here, however, there was space, freedom of movement and continued personal informal intercourse. So Louis began to put on a bit of swagger, to wear smart clothes, to shave away the down and to agitate a propaganda for inch-long side whiskers. A photograph of that date shows him as a clean-cut young man, with a rather intelligent expression, a heavy mop of black hair neatly parted for the occasion, a pearl stud set in immaculate white, and a suit up to the minute in material and cut. But inasmuch as in this photograph he neither moves nor speaks, we are free to infer that, being young, there may be either something or nothing of real value there. Louis, however, knew more about that picture than the picture knew or could convey of him. For memory, reviving, he knew all his past; and this does not in the least appear in the picture, nor what was of abiding significance in that past. So Louis posed a bit, sensing the reflected prestige and social value of a student at Tech. But he did not altogether make a nuisance of himself, not a complete nuisance, for he was toppy rather than vain.
Louis had gone at his studies faithfully enough. He learned not only to draw but to draw very well. He traced the “Five Orders of Architecture” in a manner quite resembling copper plate, and he learned about diameters, modules, minutes, entablatures, columns, pediments and so forth and so forth, with the associated minute measurements and copious vocabulary, all of which items he supposed at the time were intended to be received in unquestioning faith, as eternal verities. And he was told that these “Orders” were “Classic,” which implied an arrival at the goal of Platonic perfection of idea.
But Louis by nature was not given to that kind of faith. His faith ever lay in the oft-seen creative power and glory of man. His faith lay indeed in freedom. The song of Spring was the song in his heart. These rigid “Orders” seemed to say, “The book is closed; Art shall die.” Then it occurred to him: Why five orders? Why not one? Each of the five plainly tells a different story. Which one of them shall be sacrosanct? And if one be sacrosanct the remaining four become invalid. Now it would appear by the testimony of the world of scholarship and learning that the Greek is sacrosanct; and of all the Greek, the Parthenon is super-sacrosanct. Therefore there was and has been in all time but the unique Parthenon; all else is invalid. Art is dead. And it should not be forgot that the unique Parthenon was builded by the ancient Greeks, by living men. It was physically upreared in an exact spot on the Acropolis at Athens, a timely demonstration of Greek thought concerning ideas.
Now after centuries of ruin the Parthenon is dead; therefore all is invalid, Art is dead. This line of reasoning amused Louis quaintly. It seemed to him romantic; much like a fairy tale. And this is all that he gathered from the “Orders”—that they really were fairy tales of the long ago, now by the learned made rigid, mechanical and inane in the books he was pursuing, wherein they were stultified, for lack of common sense and human feeling. Hence he spent much time in the library, looking at pictures of buildings of the past that did not have pediments and columns. He found quite a few and became acquainted with “styles” and learned that styles were not considered sacrosanct, but merely human. That there was a difference in the intellectual and therefore social scale, between a style and an order. Professor Ware did not press matters thus; he did not go so far as to apotheosize the cognoscenti and the intelligentsia. He himself was quite human and in a measure detached. The misfortune was that in his lectures on the history of architecture he never looked his pupils in the eye, but by preference addressed an audience in his beard, in a low and confidential tone, ignoring a game of spitball underway. Yet a word or a phrase reached the open now and then concerning styles, construction and so forth, and at times he went to the blackboard and drew this and that very neatly. Louis picked up something of all this melange, but his thought was mostly on the tower of the New Brattle Street Church, conceived and brought to light by the mighty Richardson, undoubtedly for Louis’s special delight; for was not here a fairy tale indeed! Meanwhile there were projets to be done and
