Heaven and Hell (103 page)

Spectators, with umbrellas, flowed through the main gates beginning at nine. They found imposing buildings--Machinery Hall and Main Hall side by side--and, beyond, avenues and paths, fountains and monuments, beautiful and colossal. There were halls of agriculture and horticulture; a hall of the U.S. government; and another devoted solely to women's crafts and domestic activities. There were campgrounds for visiting Bedouins and for Army demonstration units. There were massive flower beds and reflecting pools. There were statues representing Columbus, religious liberty and Moses striking the rock for water. There were also, by design, many comfort stations, popcorn stands, and restaurants--French, German, Japanese, Tunisian, and more.

"That we may the more thoroughly appreciate the excellencies and deficiencies of our achievements, and also give emphatic expression to our earnest desire to cultivate the friendship of our fellow-members of this great family of nations. ..."

Four thousand people quickly filled the special stands in front of Memorial Hall, which was granite and had a great glass dome sur
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mounted by Columbia with arms outstretched. Inside were more than thirty-two hundred paintings, more than six hundred sculptures, and in a separate building, something completely new: an exhibit of more than twenty-eight hundred photographs.

". . . the enlightened agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing people of the world have been invited to send hither corresponding specimens of their skill. ..."

A symphony orchestra played anthems of the sixteen nations represented.

Since the host country had no official anthem, the orchestra played "Hail, Columbia."

' 'To this invitation they have generously responded.''

At 10:30, drums and cornets announced President and Mrs. Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro II and the Empress Theresa of Brazil. No reigning monarchs had ever before visited the United States. A huge military escort of soldiers, sailors and marines marched them to the platform.

"The beauty and utility of the contributions will this day be submitted to your inspection by the managers of this Exhibition."

The orchestra played the "Centennial Inauguration March," a new piece composed by Wagner. After a prayer, a hymn, a cantata, and presentation of the buildings, the President spoke:

"While proud of what we have done, we regret that we have not done more."

Grant finished at twelve. Accompanied by an organ, eight hundred choristers sang Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." Bells began to peal. From a hill overlooking Fairmount Park, artillery fired a hundred-gun salute.

"And now, fellow-citizens, I hope a careful examination of
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what is about to be exhibited to you will not only inspire you with a profound respect for the skill arid taste of our friends of other nations ..."

Marshals organized the U.S. and foreign dignitaries into a long procession. Rank on rank, the notables proceeded along the walkways to Machinery Hall.

". . . but also satisfy you with the attainments made by our own people during the past one hundred years.''

In the Hall, President Grant and Emperor Dom Pedro climbed the iron stairs of the dual-cylinder wonder and showpiece of the exhibition, 658 HEAVEN AND HELL

the Centennial Engine. Twenty boilers in another building powered the fifty-six-ton flywheel and the twenty-seven-foot walking beams of the fourteen-hundred-horsepower engine. George Corliss of Providence demonstrated one of the two silver-plated cranks that would start the engine. Below, among his fellow commissioners, George Hazard gazed blankly at the mammoth machine. He could not quite believe the moment had arrived after so many months of struggle and doubt. He was gratified, exhausted, lonely in the vast crowd. Dom Pedro turned his crank. President Grant turned his. The great walking beams began to shunt up and down. A thrill of response, a wordless exclamation like a rushing wind, rose around George, and then he began to hear the other machines in the hall. Turning, cranking, thumping--all driven by the Corliss engine, by U.S. industrial might.

"I declare the International Exhibition now open."

George wrote:

Please be my guests for a week's reunion of the Main and Hazard families at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia. It will be my honor to underwrite all travel expenses, meals, incidentals and lodging commencing Saturday, July 1.

"When I first saw Los Angeles three years ago," Billy said, "it wasn't much besides unpaved streets and some old adobe houses. Now
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we're tearing up the whole place and building hotels, warehouses, churches. The town's going to boom. We'll be sixty thousand instead of six thousand soon. I've banked my family's future on it."

His listener, a Unitarian minister from Boston, clutched his hat to keep the sea breeze from snatching it. The little excursion steamer was just putting out from the pier at Santa Monica, bound up the coast to Santa Barbara. It was a perfect morning, with some whitecaps showing on the Pacific.

"You are a civil engineer, you told me--"

"By training." Billy was forty-one now, and as he grew more portly, he resembled his brother George more strongly. His side-whiskers were tipped with gray. He wore an expensive suit. "I actually spend more time developing and selling building lots."

"Many customers yet?"

"No, but it's the future I'm counting on." He leaned on the rail, enthusiasm crinkling the corners of his eyes. "The transcontinental line brought seventy thousand visitors and newcomers last year. It's only the Crossing Jordan 659

beginning. We have everything, you see. Room for new cities. Magnificent scenery. Healthful air. A temperate climate. I grew up in Pennsylvania.

I dream of the snow sometimes, but I don't miss it."

Brett came along the deck, stouter now, holding their youngest, two-year-old Alfred, securely by the hand. Billy introduced Brett to the cleric, who asked, "Is this handsome lad your only child?"

She laughed. "Oh, no. We have four girls and two other boys.

Our oldest son's eleven. He's taking care of the others in our cabins."

"And you're all going to "Philadelphia by train?" The cleric was amazed.

"Yes," Billy said, "after we travel up the coast and show the children the sights. We'll have one of the Concord coaches all to ourselves, I expect."

"You must be very happy to be going home," the visitor said.

Billy smiled. "I'll be pleased to see my family after so many years.

But California's our home."

Brett slipped her arm in his and followed his gaze back past the pier and the shore and up to the bluish mountains. The tiny steamer's
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whistle momentarily scattered the gulls swooping in her wake over the bright sea.

George read Scientific American for a while. He sat in a plush chair in the writing room of the Pennsylvania Building, which faced Fountain Avenue, one of the two main promenades crossing the exhibition grounds. The building, an outrageously ornamented Gothic cottage, was the work of young Schwarzmann, the Bavarian engineer who'd surveyed and platted the grounds and designed several of the major buildings. Since Pennsylvania was the official host, the cottage naturally emerged as the largest of the twenty-four state-sponsored buildings. Objectively, George knew it was a horror. The people of Philadelphia were terrified that it would remain in Fairmount Park permanently. Still, considered as part of the whole exhibition scheme, it was something for a citizen of Lehigh Station to be proud of, and he was.

It had been a busy year for George; a busy three or four years as far as the exhibition was concerned. He was one of the seven vice presidents of the private Centennial Commission, and a member of its Board of Finance. He'd helped raise a million dollars in state funds to underwrite the mammoth exposition. And when funding lagged, he'd spent weeks in Washington lobbying for a congressional appropriation. He'd worked hard on behalf of the Franco-American Union, too, helping to bring part of Bartholdi's planned monument to the exhibition grounds.

The statue was to be erected on Bedloe's Island in New York harbor, if 660 HEAVEN AND HELL

it was ever finished. But as George had predicted to the journalist Levie, the mood of the times was conservative, and even an outright gift from the French was suspect.

George had lately returned from Cincinnati. There he and his friend Carl Schurz and some like-minded Republicans had succeeded in blocking the presidential nomination of Speaker of the House James G. Blaine, who was evidently involved in some insider stock trading that was connected with the Union Pacific. The last thing the Republicans needed after the scandals generated by members of Grant's administration was a tainted presidential candidate. George and his associates had gotten Governor Rutherford B. Hayes of Ohio to be the party's standard-bearer.

He was proud of the Hayes nomination, just as he was proud of the exhibition--two hundred forty-nine large and small buildings on two hundred eighty-four acres of parkland along the Schuylkill River.

He was particularly proud that so many foreign nations had decided to exhibit. It validated the country's claim to be a new industrial giant. He liked to walk the aisle of Machinery Hall where Hazard's displayed locomotive boilers, railroad track and ornamental iron. In the artillery
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display outside the government building, Hazard's was represented by two of the smoothbore coastal defense guns cast by the Rodman method during the war. Though less impressive than Friedrich Krupp's enormous thirteen-incher, dubbed "Krupp's Killing Machine," the Hazard pieces were contributions to the Union war effort in which George took pride.

The words of the Scientific American article blurred suddenly. Quite without wanting to, he saw the sham of all his activity. The work he did was worthwhile, he'd never for a minute deny that. But it was a substitute for home and family. He was a lonesome man, and he had been ever since Constance died. He hated the silences at Belvedere. He hated his bed on a cold January night. His children's growing up only aggravated the loneliness. He was a dervish in politics and civic work, so that he wouldn't have to stop and think about what his life had become.

But he seemed to remember anyway.

He heard noise in the foyer. Today's exhibit there was yet another Liberty Bell, this one from Harrisburg, a yard high, entirely of sugar.

From behind the bell, Stanley stepped into sight.

Stanley would this fall stand for reelection, unopposed, as United States representative from Lehigh Station. It would be his third term.

Stanley was quite heavy now, and florid, but he carried himself with the air of power that soon mantled those who went to Washington. With him, munching popcorn from a bag bought at one of the stands on the Avenue, was his ferretlike son Laban.

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George laid the tabloid paper aside and strode over to shake his brother's hand. It was half past noon on Friday, the last day of June.

"The train was late," Stanley said, offering no apology.

"They'll hold my reservation," George said. "I haven't seen you in a while, Laban. How are you?"

"Prospering," said the young lawyer with a smirk.

Stanley brushed at his side-whiskers. "Where are we taking dinner?"

"Lauber's,"

George said as they walked out into the crowds. Far

to the left, at the end of Fountain Avenue, a whistle hooted and a train shunted by on the narrow-gauge sightseeing railroad that made a circuit of the grounds every five minutes, for five cents.

As they stepped around a couple of burly Centennial Guards who were hustling a drunk toward the gate, George surveyed the crowds with
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satisfaction. "We had more than thirty-five thousand paid admissions yesterday." For a while, after the crush on opening day, admissions had limped along at little better than twelve thousand each day.

"It will still lose money," Stanley said.

That was true. The commissioners had lost their war with Philadelphia's preachers, who insisted that opening the exhibition on Sundays would desecrate the Sabbath. Although most Americans worked six days a week, they were unable to visit the exhibition on their day off.

"Well, we wouldn't be here at all if the House hadn't passed that million and a half in special appropriations," George said. "I'll always be grateful for your support there."

"Think nothing of it," said Congressman Hazard, who lately had begun to act like what he was, an older brother. George smiled, but Stanley didn't notice.

"When do the others pull in?" Laban asked as he tossed his empty popcorn bag on the ground.

"William and Patricia and their families are already here," George said. "They'll be joining us at the German restaurant. The next group should arrive this evening. Orry's cousin Charles, all the way from Texas."

At that same hour, a train from New York carried Colonel Charles Main, his wife, Willa, and their twelve-year-old son, Augustus, toward Philadelphia. "Colonel" was an honorary title given Charles by his neighbors when they perceived that he was growing rich and therefore becoming important.

Charles still wore his hair long, and he dressed like what he was, 662 HEAVEN AND HELL

a prosperous rancher, in tooled boots, a creamy white hat with broad brim and a flowing neckerchief instead of a cravat. He owned fifty-five thousand acres a half-day's ride west of Fort Worth and was negotiating to double that. His cowboys drove a huge herd to Kansas every summer.

His ranch was named Main Chance; his horse Satan was enjoying a comfortable retirement there. He also owned several large blocks of Fort Worth real estate, and the opulent Parker Opera House, which was less than a year old.

As the train chugged through the farmlands of New Jersey, Charles
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read a book with the aid of a pair of spectacles. His son, who still bore a long, thin scar on his right cheek, was a solemn, dark-eyed boy, already growing tall and muscular, like his father. Willa loved him like her own, something of a necessity since she'd never been able to conceive a child, much as they wanted that.