The Devil in the White City

Independence Day

THE MORNING OF JULY 4, 1893, broke gray and squally. The weather threatened to dull the elaborate fireworks display that Frank Millet had planned as a further boost for the exposition’s attendance, which despite steady week-to-week increases still lagged behind expectations. The sun emerged late in the morning, though squalls continued to sweep Jackson Park through much of the day. By late afternoon a soft gold light bathed the Court of Honor and storm clouds walled the northern sky. The storms came no closer. The crowds built quickly. Holmes, Minnie, and Anna found themselves locked within an immense throng of humid men and women. Many people carried blankets and hampers of food but quickly found that no room remained to spread a picnic. There were few children. The entire Columbian Guard seemed to be present, their pale blue uniforms standing out like crocuses against black loam. Gradually the gold light cooled to lavender. Everyone began walking toward the lake. “For half a mile along the splendid sweep of the Lake-Front men were massed a hundred deep,” the Tribune reported. This “black sea” of people was restless. “For hours they sat and waited, filling the air with a strange, uneasy uproar.” One man began singing “Nearer My God to Thee,” and immediately a few thousand people joined in.

As darkness fell, everyone watched the sky for the first rockets of the night’s display. Thousands of Chinese lanterns hung from trees and railings. Red lights glowed from each car of the Ferris Wheel. On the lake a hundred or more ships, yachts, and launches lay at anchor with colored lights on their bows and booms and strung along their rigging.

The crowd was ready to cheer for anything. It cheered when the exposition orchestra played “Home Sweet Home,” a song that never failed to reduce grown men and women to tears, especially the newest arrivals to the city. It cheered when the lights came on within the Court of Honor and all the palaces became outlined in gold. It cheered when the big searchlights atop the Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building began sweeping the crowd, and when colorful plumes of water—“peacock feathers,” the Tribune called them—began erupting from the MacMonnies Fountain.

At nine o’clock, however, the crowd hushed. A small bright light had arisen in the sky to the north and appeared to be drifting along the lakeshore toward the wharf. One of the searchlights found it and revealed it to be a large manned balloon. A light flared well below its basket. In the next instant bursts of sparks in red, white, and blue formed a huge American flag against the black sky. The balloon and flag drifted overhead. The searchlight followed, its beam clearly outlined in the sulphur cloud that trailed the balloon. Seconds later rockets began arcing over the lakeshore. Men with flares raced along the beach lighting mortars, as other men aboard barges set off large rotating flares and hurled bombs into the lake, causing the water to explode in extravagant geysers of red, white, and blue. Bombs and rockets followed in intensifying numbers until the climax of the show, when an elaborate wire network erected at Festival Hall, on the lakeshore, abruptly flared into a giant explosive portrait of George Washington.

The crowd cheered.

Everyone began moving at the same time, and soon a great black tide was moving toward the exits and the stations of the Alley L and Illinois Central. Holmes and the Williams sisters waited hours for their turn to board one of the northbound trains, but the wait did nothing to dampen their spirits. That night the Oker family heard joking and laughter coming from the upstairs flat at 1220 Wrightwood.

There was good reason for the merriment within. Holmes had further sweetened the night with an astonishingly generous offer to Minnie and Anna.

Before bed Anna wrote home to her aunt in Texas to tell her the excellent news.

“Sister, brother Harry, and myself will go to Milwaukee tomorrow, and will go to Old Orchard Beach, Maine, by way of the St. Lawrence River. We’ll visit two weeks in Maine, then on to New York. Brother Harry thinks I am talented; he wants me to look around about studying art. Then we will sail for Germany, by way of London and Paris. If I like it, I will stay and study art. Brother Harry says you need never trouble any more about me, financially or otherwise; he and sister will see to me.”

“Write me right away,” she added, “and address to Chicago, and the letter will be forwarded to me.”

She said nothing about her trunk, which was still in Midlothian awaiting shipment to Chicago. She would have to get along without it for now. Once it arrived, she could arrange by telegraph to have it forwarded as well, perhaps to Maine or New York, so that she could have all her things in hand for the voyage to Europe.

Anna went to bed that night with her heart still racing from the excitement of the fair and Holmes’s surprise. Later William Capp, an attorney with the Texas firm of Capp & Canty, said, “Anna had no property of her own, and such a change as described in her letter meant everything for her.”

The next morning promised to be pleasant as well, for Holmes had announced he would take Anna—just her—to Englewood for a brief tour of his World’s Fair Hotel. He had to attend to a few last-minute business matters before the departure for Milwaukee. In the meantime Minnie would ready the Wrightwood flat for whatever tenant happened to rent it next.

Holmes was such a charming man. And now that Anna knew him, she saw that he really was quite handsome. When his marvelous blue eyes caught hers, they seemed to warm her entire body. Minnie had done well indeed.