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Handwritten draft for a public statement by Frank Lloyd Wright, which was later printed in The Weekly Home News, the local newspaper of Spring Green, Wisconsin, on June 10, 1926. Wright wrote this statement as an apology to the people of Spring Green for a recent media swarm of Chicago reporters who descended upon the village to photograph Wright’s ex-wife, Miriam Noel, and her attempts to gain entry into her former home, Taliesin. The statement, penned in black ink on two pages, 7.75 x 11, signed at the conclusion, “Your – Frank Lloyd Wright,” reads, in part: “Taliesin seems to be a storm center for conflicting human interests and emotions. Three times I have built it up from its ashes; each time stronger and more beautiful than before tragedy destroyed it. The cooperation of the countryside was mine in all this and I have appreciated it more than I can tell. But I have never thanked my neighbors and townspeople directly for their friendship and forbearance. I want to do so now, particularly in consideration of their ‘hands off’ attitude in this last attack, this attempt, made in hatred and a spirit of revenge, to destroy any usefulness I have and make what I have struggled to establish here useless to me or anyone…
Enough of that. What I want to say to you was that I like you people of this region. You all seem homelike to me. I’ve been about all over the globe and come back here with that feeling of coming ‘home’ we all seek somewhere, and too often seek in vain…I want to stay here with you, working until I die. I want to mind my own business and not be subject to public question if I can manage it. At the present times it looks as though I yet had some distance to go—and I might die before I got there. I must be patient and I hope those of you who don’t believe in me very much, perhaps, will be patient too—along with those who are closer to me and know better what I have had to contend with and what I would do if I could.
I think the countryside deserves the best of me and if you who make it what it is give me the benefit of the doubt in all this for a year or two, I believe I will come through right side up and you may yet take pride in Taliesin as I have always hoped and believed you would do.” The statement bears copious handwritten corrections by Wright in both ink and pencil. In fine condition.
Accompanied by a printed copy of an article from The Weekly Home News describing the event with the newspapermen and Miriam Noel, Wright’s second wife, with whom he was in the midst of a legal battle. A sculptor, morphine addict, and self-proclaimed spiritualist, Noel became involved with Wright not long after the tragic death of his partner, Mamah Borthwick, one of seven murdered by a deranged Taliesin servant on August 15, 1914. After divorcing his first wife, Catherine ‘Kitty’ Tobin, Wright married Noel on November 19, 1923. The couple quarreled a great deal and, in less than a year, they were separated. Soon thereafter, Wright began a relationship with Olgivanna Lloyd, and Noel filed for a divorce, alleging desertion and cruelty.
Despite what Wright wrote to his neighbors in 1926, things would not get better in “a year or two.” At the end of August, one of Wright’s attorneys (Levi Bancroft) advised Wright to spend some time away from Taliesin, while he and others tried to settle things with Miriam and the Bank of Wisconsin.
Wright and his coterie—Olgivanna, her daughter, Svetlana, and Iovanna—traveled to Lake Minnetonka in Minnesota, where they stayed in a cottage for about a month. However, by driving Olgivanna across the Wisconsin-Minnesota state line, instead of having her get out and walk, Wright inadvertently violated the Mann Act. On October 21, 1926, Wright was apprehended and brought to the county jail, where he stayed for the weekend until a judge was finally made available. The charges were eventually dropped, and on August 25, 1928, in Rancho Santa Fe, California, Wright and Olgivanna were finally married.
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