I've shared a few stories about Daisy and her involvement rebuilding Vitrimont in France. When Daisy left to be married, someone needed to take over. That someone was Alice Dickson. Mrs. Dickson was another very remarkable woman who should be remembered.
     Daisy and Alice were well acquainted from their days in London through their friendship with the Hoovers and then working together on the American Relief Committee (ARC) at the Savoy Hotel when the war broke out. And by the end of 1914, Herbert Hoover had expanded this committee into a much larger organization—the Committee for the Relief of Belgium (CRB), the organization that worked with the British, French, and German governments to coordinate civilian relief efforts in Belgium, overseeing the importation and distribution of food, clothing, and other supplies to Belgian and northern French civilians. Daisy and Alice were active in both organizations.
   Daisy and Alice also got involved in the International Women’s Relief Committee (IWRC), which was formed in August 1914 by Mary Sheepshanks, a prominent British suffragist and pacifist and the editor of a suffragist newsletter "Jus Suffragii" (The Right of Suffrage). The IWRC helped repatriate  women and schoolchildren stranded in Britain, Germany and Belgium when the borders closed. Because these countries were all combatants, neutral American women acted as escorts for these trips.
     Daisy volunteered to be an early escort for the IWRC in October 1914 when she accompanied thirty-five German schoolgirls from England back to Berlin and returned with a number of British girls. What follows is the letter she wrote to Lou Hoover (Mrs. Herbert  Hoover)  detailing this experience:
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​    Endie’s gentlemen showed me Tabourin on Boulevard de Clichy which gave wall space to van Gogh and where Gauguin was considered a regular; the Cabaret des Quat’z’Arts and the Café des Incohérents/Décadents in Rue Fontaine where Toulouse-Lautrec painted the performers. I saw the Lapin Agile, Chat Noir cabaret, Moulin de la Galette up the hill and the Elysée Montmartre below, the latter having its own newspaper. It was in the Elysée Montmartre where the Quadrille Naturaliste - or French Cancan - was born. What became the most famous nightclub of them all, had opened up on the boulevard Clichy, what we now call the Moulin Rouge. It opened the year before in 1889 with a great red windmill above the entrance.
​      At first, the Moulin Rouge was known as the Jardin de Paris. Behind the mock moulin — designed to evoke the old mills-turned-dancehalls uphill — was a whimsical champagne garden. It was an open air Belle Époque music hall. The proprietors had acquired several set decorations from the now closed Universelle Exposition and though it made no thematic sense, it added to the joie de vivre atmosphere they hoped to create. There was the two-story high plaster elephant said to house an opium den inside, his tail end facing the street. Layers upon layers of frocked and tassled curtains, fabric and ribbon draped about. There were decorative monkeys, birds, and flowers adorning trees strung with hundreds of glowing gas-lit globes alongside all sorts of palms in giant planters. The large stage provided space for magicians, dancers and entertainers to perform. 
     But I only saw this during daylight. Pigalle was commercial and bustling then where Montmartre was still rural with meandering paths, untamed gardens, steep hills and occasional artists around every corner. Endie assured me it was a circus spectacle at night when the inky dark of Paris and gentle glow of streetlights masked the overcast reality of Parisian days.
   We also discovered the Montmartre cemetery, or Cimitière du Nord, under The Pont de Caulaincourt bridge. It was acres full of shade from maple, chestnut, lime and thuja trees perfect for exploring. Beneath the sylvan canopy lay Berlioz, Léon Foucault, Offenbach, and many other notables in their final resting place. Endie was most interested in finding Marie Duplessis, the real life courtesan whose short life ended at twenty-three.  She was the inspiration for the semi-autobiographical Dumas fils novel La Dame aux Camélias (Camille), and later immortalized in Verdi’s opera La Traviata. To Endie, the story of the star crossed lovers was a tragic romance. To many it was a cautionary morality tale of love, suffering and sacrifice. But the real tragedy in the story were the narrow choices available to women and what can befall those who depend financially on men, demimondaine or wife. Or maybe that’s me adding my hindsight lens to the view.
   As she had in Pére Lachaise cemetery, Endie placed small offerings of bluettes or muguet and prayers to love at the grave. This seemed pointless to me as she was out almost every night with a suave suitor who I surmised would have happily returned her love. But what did I know of love? Very little at the time. And I knew even less about death.
    Every day on our return home we would visit our bankers for letters from Father and my brothers to whom we often wrote. I would mark this period as the beginning of my epistolary proclivity. Although my style left a lot to be desired, I think this is the best way to share the rest of this story from Paris. For in 1890 there were no telephones, no airplanes, and telegrams were frightfully expensive. The art of the well written letter was the order of the day. And a letter from Paris would arrive to my Father ten-days after I had posted it. And for some news, this was too late.

 An Excerpt from the Chapter:
Potions, Puccini and Pandemics
Milan and Paris 1889 - 1890

I saw a Paris with Endie that would have been invisible to me at my age. We explored the Left Bank, along the Rue Bonaparte she showed me the École des Beaux-Arts where Miss Annie’s new husband and Willis’s friend Bernard Maybeck had studied. Another day exploring the right bank we entered the Passage des Panoramas, the oldest of the covered passages of Paris. Here was the Académie Julian’s headquarters where we met a number of artists painting and sculpting. Then we climbed the steep slope to Montmartre, hill of the martyr Saint Denis, the first bishop of Paris where the Basilica Sacré Coeur was being erected, but was far from complete in 1890.
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    I have always found the Basilica fascinating as much for the building difficulties as the reason for the build. One only has to do some simple research to learn the history of the Paris Commune and the misfortunes of France in 1870 to understand the ongoing confusion. Emperor Louis-Napoleon, Napoleon’s none-to-bright nephew, provoked a war with Bismarck’s powerful Prussia. Why? For the usual reasons that demagogic governments provoke wars: distracting a weary population with fear, and a common enemy. In this case, Prussia was the evil next-door. Louis-Napoleon and his generals were sure of a win. The Prussians were delighted. Bismarck needed German unification, and his generals were correctly reassuring. The outcome, like Waterloo before, was catastrophic for the French, capturing the Emperor himself and Paris beseiged. The French government accepted “humiliating” terms of surrender; but of course what terms of surrender aren’t humiliating? The Prussians finally retreated, having reclaimed the northern regions of Alsace and Lorraine as German territory. 
     The resulting widespread famine in Paris led to a total collapse of two successive governments. Some Parisians formed their own marxist government lasting two months. The communards’ stated purpose still seems prophetic in its moral stance, but the mob’s disorganized acts of looting and reprisals, was soon quelled. In 1871, Bloody Week “semaine sanglante”, the national army took the city with overwhelming force at great human and property cost. I wasn’t there, but the word massacre is still used here in Paris with estimates of twenty-thousand people killed in Paris during this time.
   Here’s the wrinkle, the French Parliament made the land available for the construction of a church on the Montmartre site before the Paris Commune. The French defeat was conflated with the “moral decline” of France and church leaders sought a church dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus “to obtain infinite mercy and pardon to reverse the misfortune of France.” The church also wanted their Pope released by the Italians, but that’s another story. The hill of the martyr was chosen because Saint Denis was beheaded there by the Romans. Still, at the highest point of the city, overlooking the site of the Commune, many see it as a symbol of the repression of the martyred Communards. Again, if a Parisian told you the story, it would be different from a Frenchman in the countryside as to which martyrs are being honored.
     The Montmartre hill site also posed some problems for the builders. The remarks -There is more of Montmartre in Paris, than Paris in Montmartre - is literally true. Because that hill, that keeps sliding downwards to this day, and has been mined for almost two thousand years. The two hills on the right bank, Montmartre and Menilmontant (Belleville), were quarries for gypsum - plaster of paris - used in almost every building in Paris. From Roman times adobe deposits were also found used both as mortar and terracotta flooring tiles we still see commonly in France, called “carreaux” and the red roofing tiles called “tuiles”. The Tuileries gardens actually derived their name from a tile-making factory built there in 1372 and torn down in 1564 when Catherine de Medici replaced it with her Tuileries Palace - burned by the Communards of 1870.
     Besides fouling up the city’s water, gypsum’s “permeability” and mining caused another problem. The inside of the hill was riddled with hundreds of tunnels. The hill was not stable enough to support large structures above. Indeed, the piers holding up Sacre Coeur needed to be poured cement dug as deep as the church is high. Other buildings in the area are constantly having foundations reinforced because they are “sitting” atop Swiss cheese.
     The hill, giving no indication to the problems below ground, was a picturesque spot then. Several of its many windmills still survived, wine was still made from a vineyard on its slopes, and its maquis, a large patch of open ground that was dotted with small cottages and gardens, gave it an undeniably rural sensibility. Artists in search of peace, cheap rents and good air had begun to migrate to the hill and it was a flourishing colony and a popular rendezvous for writers, journalists and “Bohemians”.

     Whether Palazzo or warehouse, buildings lost their luster on closer inspection even in the few flat areas along the Strada Nuovo and Bilbi. Elsewhere narrow labyrinthine alleys snaked between the tall buildings which cast ominous shadows at every turn. And the streets were nearly deserted during the long midday dinner riposo which made them seem even more portentous. Only two alleys were wide enough for a cavalli and horse to pass. Venturing without escort by day was strongly discouraged, and we were told not to walk anywhere at night.
     These warnings may have been good advice but had little consequence as we were only in the port long enough to dine, rest and explore for a day. We had been well prepared by previous pessimistic travelers to expect badly built and insulated houses, a disgracefully irregular railway system, inconvenient and slow postal arrangements, dirty and ill paved streets, beggars, cheats and Casanova’s. Endie looked forward to the latter, while I had prepared for the promise of the unrivaled beauty of Italy as written by poets and philosophers.
     Full of every caution, we expected to find rents were too high and taxes higher, or maybe I remember that from Mr. Twain’s good book. He was certainly right about the insidious smaller hidden tips, bribes and gift exchanges in Genoa. Everywhere we went; heads bowed, hands extended and the expectations for gratuities was not subtle. We tipped the man who appeared to help us board a carriage we had already hailed and needed no help to board. We paid for the corsage Endie didn’t want but was pushed on her by a small child whose mother was close at hand to collect for the favor. We paid for bougie tapers and matchsticks at the front desk of the inn because apparently the ability to see or walk about after sundown was not included with the unelectrified room.
     A black robed priest at one of our guided stops looked irritated when we didn’t offer him prompt thanks in the form of coins. And then he grimaced at the amount proffered. Mother quickly gave him more and received a muffled gripe as he walked away shaking his head.
     “Who ever heard of paying a man-of-the-cloth to act in such a manner! The ingratitude.” she said with irritation as she climbed aboard the cavalli. “We were quite generous in the cathedral.”
     Our driver laughed,“Lui è un po’ fuori.” twirling his finger at the side of his forehead. We took the meaning, “he was a bit crazy”, and maybe not even a real priest. Each day in every way, these small grifts made daily living a taxing inconvenience. We were sure to always have coins at hand.
     The next day we boarded the worst train I had ever been on for the journey to Milan. Madame Marchesi’s woeful warnings about Milan were never far from mind, despite my eager optimism at seeing another great European City.
     The neglected rail lines belied the beauty we saw from outside the rattling windows. Had we travelled just one year later, we could have travelled in luxury on the new Rome Express line that was to replace this regional line. In and out of tunnels we jostled, in and out of light. Some were short, others were over twenty minutes of frightful dark as black as ink. Even today when I emerge from a long tunnel, I cannot help but breathe a deep sigh of relief to see the light again. And after emerging, the colors and sights were more vibrant as any I have ever seen. This is what I remember of the hill country of Italy - the Lombardy hills dotted with white walled red roofed villas under sunny bright blue skies. And then exiting our last tunnel, we descended into a beautiful green valley as wide and far as one could see.
   “Italy is one of those places one hears so much about, you wonder if her charms are not exaggerated.” Mother commented.
    “And the same might be said of her faults.” answered Endemial.
   To be sure, Italy was both charming and changeable. We saw her natural beauty in the earth and sky. The latter, praised by poets when blue and bright, could turn violent and deadly with sudden storms.
  “You know that Shelley lived just south of Genoa in Lerici writing his epic poems surrounded by all this,” I added. “When returning from visiting Lord Byron, a sudden squall sank his small boat. He died at only twenty-nine. Imagine.”
      “Truly tragic” said Mother.
      “Thank you Daisy,” Endie said with all sarcasm. “That’s such an inspiring story.”
      “Mother, Look! This is Shelley’s green sea! The waveless plain of Lombardy.”
    “Please don’t start a recitation” chided Endie, “Let us just enjoy the scenery - silently.” Which was fine. I recited it to myself.
     Before us tumbled such beauty - endless orchards, fields and vines and no fencing to interrupt the expanse. Like a painting off the walls of the Louvre, this valley was surrounded by a cathedral of granite snow capped mountains to the North. Convents, churches, fortresses, glorious water cascades, and high walls around rambles, palazzo, and moss-covered landmarks from Lombardy’s historic past were half hidden by the overgrowth of a new civilization rising up around cultivation of grape, mulberry vine and fig trees. It was an Eden.
     As we drew nearer Milan, the unmistakable spires of the great white cathedral came into focus long before anything else could be identified.
     “Endie, isn’t it magnifique!” The Duomo shone like a great gem in the center of Milan and the waterways were the jeweled ring around it. “The canals are sparkling.”
​     “Everything around the cathedral seems so small, like my doll-house,” she answered.
     Indeed, even the great castle in the center of the city seemed cowed underneath her ethereal presence. She was glowing in the eventide. I might have been jaded having seen several lovely cathedrals in France, but this first glimpse of Milan will always stay with me. She was remarkable from the outskirts of the City, the tallest and largest structure by far, but she had a delicacy despite her enormity. The Duomo looked as if it was made from a paper-cutting, the delicate tracery piercing the bright azure sky.
     And all around the Duomo we saw the City of Milan. Here, charmed by the reveries and inspired by this mingling of ancient and modern, we saw the remaining moments of the journey slip by as we came into the electrified station of Milan lit up like an Opera stage. Mr. Edison was due to follow us here in a few weeks to see the electrification progress himself. It seemed the perfect bright welcome and a big change from Genoa.
     Mr. Edison owed a great deal to Milan, the Opera and her grand stage La Scala. In 1881 the Compagnie Continentale Edison, the firm that would oversee the sale of Edison patents in Europe, was established and employed some of the finest technical minds to run franchises, like Italiana Edison. In 1883 the site of Santa Radegonda at the center of Milan’s main commercial district was chosen for Europe’s first electric power plant station. The firm would operate in, and only in, Milan for the next decade and is the oldest Italian Energy Company and one of only a few in the world in 1889. But it was almost a failed effort.
     Before the power plant was finished and ready to electrify the streets as planned, Milanese politicians signed a union contract to use gas lights banning electric lights from the City center. Realizing the need to showcase electric illumination on a grand scale to gain necessary contracts, Italiana Edison chose the Opera House La Scala. There they installed the lights quickly at their own cost. The theater’s incandescent installation was at the boundaries of the Union’s control and the theater won an important but neglected role in the history of electrification with overwhelming benefits. Incandescent illumination meant that theaters were no longer prone to deadly fires when gas burners overturned. They provided light with less heat leaving a more comfortable audience and performer. In 1881, Edison had proven the value at the first public building to be completely illuminated by electricity - the brand-new Savoy Theater in London. But the incandescent installation in 1883 at the Teatro alla Scala outdid even the Savoy.
     ​La Scala set the precedent of darkening the auditorium to focus audience attention on the soft stage lighting. It added to the drama and a new aesthetic in live performances. The audience was literally in the dark. Of course, it is quite common now the world over. The introduction of this innovation, in other words, was made possible by Edison.

     Before a response could go out to San Francisco, twenty-two year old Willis was back in Kansas City. This was certainly not because he missed our family. And within minutes of his arrival, he was sharing his unsolicited tone-deaf opinions.
     “Father, the new house is well executed and grand. Really well done. Congratulations, but who is going to fill all these rooms?”     
​     “Mother are we too insolvent to furnish the house? What is your plan here? Are you moving in or out? Maybe you need my help.”
     “Dan, doesn’t touring get old? Haven’t you milked that turnip long enough? Time to get a real career.”
     And for me, “My, my Daisy. What a young lady you have grown into. Who’d have thought it?”
     His arrival inconveniently fell on an April weekend five days before my seventeenth birthday, so I remember it all too well. Dan and I were set to perform at the Platte City Opera House to raise funds for a veterans home on a full and quirky bill that included clog dancing. Willis announced he would be delighted to perform with us, although I don’t remember Dan offering an invitation.
     Willis and Dan left me on my own with the excuse they needed to practice. But as was my habit, I eavesdropped on all their conversations. And all these discussions revolved around San Francisco. Willis wove a wonderful picture of the money, the building and the opportunities present in the city at continent’s western edge.
     “Dan, we met through my clubs. Hearst is remarkable, and only four years older than I am. In ‘87 he took over the Examiner and has tripled it’s readership already. He’s a maverick. Yes sir,  and really shaking up San Francisco. ”
     “Well bully for Mr. Hearst.” mocked Daniel. “What has this to do with me?”
     “Well just everything! The Chicago Exposition project is on the table. He’ll hire me. I’ll hire you! All published in his paper to stir up local interest and readership.”
     “Is this a real job, or a Willis Polk pipe dream?”
      “No it’s real Dan. Did you read the articles I wrote? I sent them to you. That’s a copious amount of column space in his Examiner.  I have no reason to doubt his resolve, especially now that he has come into his fortune. He's ready and willing to spend it.”
     Dan became more polite as the conversation went on. Willis mentioned his introduction to Hearst's mother Mrs. Phoebe Apperson Hearst who also had building projects under consideration. Anyone who read newspapers knew about the Hearst's.  California’s Senator Hearst had just died in February and Mrs. Hearst was a well known proponent of suffrage. Both the Senator and his wife were often showcased in our papers as native Missourians. How extraordinary that Willis should have become friendly with her son, I thought, if it's true. 
          The first clear signs that Dan was committed to joining Willis were the scenes he started drawing of The World’s Columbian Exposition. He re-interpreted images from a Spring Harpers Weekly Magazine which dedicated an entire issue to the forthcoming 1893 Chicago event and progress at the site.
      “These drawings are pure imagination,” Dan told me as I watched their progress. “Very little has yet to be built on the site.” This remark referring to the 600 acres of cleared land in Fredrick Law Olmsted’s Jackson Park. Once the drawings were completed, he sent them to Willis to become part of his presentation to Randolph Hearst.
     Those signed detailed drawings were eventually published in The Examiner in December of 1891 in a multi-page spread showcasing a “Feasible Plan” to eclipse Chicago with a World’s Fair in San Francisco. This was quite a brag when Chicago was not even opening for another 18 months. And before this article appeared, Willis and Dan had an all expense paid visit to the Chicago site to report first hand about the plans and progress for the Examiner. All of this was included in the article. But more importantly, Willis and Dan’s San Francisco renderings allowed everyone to see this possibility as imagined through the art and descriptions. The drawings were remarkable.
     By the end of summer 1891 Dan had joined Willis in San Francisco, and Father was selling our brand new Hyde Park house and preparing for another move. I spent the final months researching for my new adventure and everything I would need to know about my new City. At a Farewell Fete given by Mrs. Goodlander whose husband G.W. was a good friend and business partner with Father, I said goodbye to Nick and Warren. All the ladies present consoled me about missing my debut. I tried to act as though I gave one fiddlestick. But neither the Warren’s nor I shed a tear at the lost prospect or the end of our sterile romance. We boarded our train for San Francisco the next day.  

***
Author's Note:
​Willis did become the Chief Architect for the 1915 San Francisco Pan Pacific International Exposition. Although it was not Hearst's plan, he took credit for it in an article from 1911.

     Building were assigned by The Chief Architect, and as was his perogative Willis chose The Palace of Fine Arts as his building. In his office discussing his plans, his employee and long-time friend Bernard Maybeck and other staff were given an opportunity to submit designs. Willis gave the entire commission to Maybeck when he saw his design. When asked why Willis would do this rather than have his office take credit, he commented "because ​no-one could do it better". And so, Bernard designed what all San Franciscans have loved as a beautiful landmark. But it was only a temporary building. Following the close of the Fair, Willis campaigned to preserve the PFA for future generations. It stands today after two such campaigns for all to enjoy.

     "Therefore, let us preserve our Palace of Fine Arts as long as possible, six months, six years, or any length of time — maybe someday it can be made permanent…”
                                                     Willis Polk, 1915

​     But that's another story ...