186. Wright, Frank Lloyd . Autograph Letter Signed "Father" to his daughter Catherine expressing his disappointment in her "theatrical aspirations". 8vo. 3 pages written on the recto only, includes original envelope; light wear, creased at folds.

Spring Green, Wisconsin, May 15, 1914 [2500/3500]

Dear CatherineI have had some distressing news from Oak Park that leads me to think you are not playing exactly fair with your father in the matter of this New York experience.First. You abandoned your work in the school there - as here - informing me afterward that you had done so. This method is now somewhat worn.Second. You have seen very little of your Aunt Maginel - What I had hoped might reach you from her and her circle has failed to touch you more than casually it seems. You didn't find it worth going after with any pains on your part.Third. Your theatrical aspirations (of which you have said no word to me) at which you have been nibbling there it seems if reports are true, in a fashion which is only foolish.Fourth. It seems that your time there is spent in the old proposition of pleasuring one's self anyhow first and whatever else afterward if possible. The acquaintances and amusements of New York seem to require this powder rag and tango tea to an unpleasant extent.In other words - Catherine - the serious business of life seems more likely than ever to come up an hit you from behind knocking you flat - instead of finding you facing it squarely with some determined effort on your part to make yourself strong enough to meet it and conquer it.I didn't send you to New York to continue the vaudeville "Follies" idea of life that you seem to be drifting toward. It will leave you a discredited, cheap, spent affair before you are thirty with nothing to go on afterward except the growing disillusionment, and increasing emptiness of the woman who failed to get hold of anything in life except that element in herself that responded to the pleasure of the moment.You see women around you by the thousand - the ones who tried to beat the game of life by shirking work and you know them by their daubed or dried up or sensual faces, the lack of fine feeling in their attire - the unhappy dread in their eyes of being left alone with themselves. It is a common enough fate. You have never yet made a cultural effort in any direction that more than enough money for the purpose was not forthcoming from your father. If you have any serious desire to go on the stage I have no objections but your present tendency will take you on it by way of the back door into the cellar instead of the more difficult away of the main entrance by dint of thorough preparation in cultivating yourself for it by hard work in the proper schools.There is no short cut by which you can succeed in any artistic calling without more hard, grinding, plain everyday work than you would find in any other pursuit, that of wife and mother not excepted.If you could get this "good times while young" idea out of your circulation and realize that if you spend yourself that way while young you will leave nothing left of yourself that is worthwhile in middle life and old age which should be and usually is the richest and best age - you might be willing to dredge with some patience and get results.As it seems to me now, I am not enthusiastic about providing the necessaries for the style of existence you seem to prefer.I want you to write me frankly and fully what you want to do, how you want to do it and why.Then I will make up my mind what to do after I have looked the ground over there and find out for myself, just how you have been putting in your time.Before long I am coming down to learn from you what I can in this connection.Meantime with affection and disappointment - this from your FatherMay 16 1914"