The Washington herald., 1911-12-31
ART MATES TELL
REMARKABLE TALE
OF THEIR 'HEGIRA'
Living Life as Truth Die
tates, They Say.
CONDEMN RENO METHODS

depart tomorrow for Chicago. where he
will meet his wife and endeavor to in
duce her to sign a release" on him.
Frank Lloyd Wright, the Chicago archi-
tect, on A spiritual hegira" here with
Art Mate Mamah Borthwick, formerly
Mrs. Edwin Cheney, issued a remarkable
statement to-day. Both Wright and
Mamah Borthwick subscribed to its senti-
ments in this manner:
The man is tired. The woman is tired.
We are living the life that truth dictates.
Our desire is to harm nobody. Our hope
is that we may benefit humanity.
Here are four people. a wife and a
man and a husband and woman, who
had, each according to his or her ability,
assumed earlier in life the responsibilities
of marriage and had begot or given birth
to children.
Then the thing happened to them that
has happened to men and women since
time began-the inevitable.
AS soon as their situation became ap-
parent to them there was the usual strug-
gle with conscience.
Time was asked by the husband. a
year. in fact was asked, and the man
and the woman agreed to make certain
that love was love. The wife character
lied the matter as a mere infatuatiOn.
Both the wife and the husband de-
cIared that anything they could do to
break up the new relationship they would
do.
Year of Mental Struggle.
For A year the woman continued in
her household separated from the hus-
hand. The man likewise continued in his
household separated from the wife.
AT the end of year no divorce was
in sight. No immediate separation. pos
sible, except on statutory grounds, which
secured needlessly harsh and untrue con-
ditions or a visit to Reno for the docu-
ment with which society is content to
quibbt for respectablity.
The man was called abroad for a year.
Up to this time it would be hard to
say which of the persons concerned suf-
fered most. but probably the man and
the woman did.
THE established order in this case lost.
and the unknown, untried, the daring
struggle for higher. more organic per-
sonal life won. The husband and the
wife remained loyal. the one willing to
grant a divorce if pressed, the other still
unConcerned.
There were no real obligations neg
lected Neither the wife nor the children
of the man had ever lacked, or then
lacked, or should ever lack. anything that
could be prevented for their education or
comfort. But the hue and cry Of the
yellow press was raised, and from one
end of the country to the other the
a bandoned Children wife deserter.' 'af-
finity.' and the hegira' were proclaimed.
After a year of travel and work and
trial. It appeared that the conditions,
which seemed sufficiently secure to In
sure the mans family comfort until he
could regain his practice. were not as he
thought. and so, leaving the woman in
Berlin. he returned, not as Il husband to
the wife but by an agreement with her
10 return only as the father of his chill
dren, to make what he could out of re-
sources rapidly being destroyed.
Friends Discarded Him.
He returned to find that the work he
had left in other hands to be held over
for him had unscrupulously been taken
from him: that his friends, when they
learned he had not come as a dependent
husband to rejoin his family on the only
basis they could claim as a family basis,
refused at first to help him. Finally they
did help.
The woman remained to work in Ber-
lin, in communication with her husband
and her children. She was prepared to
remain there alone until the legal divorce
which she insisted upon was granted.
To some place. ii was planned her
children both might come and find room
and welcome if they wished. Out OF
this the so-Called bungalow grew on the
hillside
The woman in the meantime had re-
turned in order to see her children. The
children returned to their father and TO
school; She now divorced and homeless,
Joined the man at the retreat into which
he had gathered the remnant OF his
forces to fight for the life of his work.
And the wife asserted still her faith in
the manhood of the man, and still ex-
pressed the belief that he was infatuated.
The husband had freed the woman, but
not because he had lost faith in her
womanlineSS. The struggle is to live and
let live, to remain true to all obligations
humanity dischargable and still be serv-
ceable.'