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In these last two years Cameron had disappeared from his office for weeks at a

time, and Roark had not found him at home, and had known what was happening, but

could only wait, hoping for Cameron’s safe return. Then, Cameron had lost even

the shame of his agony, and had come to his office reeling, recognizing no one,

openly drunk and flaunting it before the walls of the only place on earth he had

respected.

Roark learned to face his own landlord with the quiet statement that he could

not pay him for another week; the landlord was afraid of him and did not insist.

Peter Keating heard of it somehow, as he always heard everything he wanted to

know. He came to Roark’s unheated room, one evening, and sat down, keeping his

overcoat on. He produced a wallet, pulled out five ten-dollar bills, and handed

them to Roark. "You need it, Howard. I know you need it. Don’t start protesting

now. You can pay me back any time." Roark looked at him, astonished, took the

money, saying: "Yes, I need it. Thank you, Peter." Then Keating said: "What in

hell are you doing, wasting yourself on old Cameron? What do you want to live

like this for? Chuck it, Howard, and come with us. All I have to do is say so.

Francon’ll be delighted. We’ll start you at sixty a week." Roark took the money

out of his pocket and handed it back to him. "Oh, for God’s sake, Howard! I...I

didn’t mean to offend you."

"I didn’t either."

"But please, Howard, keep it anyway."

"Good night, Peter."

Roark was thinking of that when Cameron entered the drafting room, the letter

from the Security Trust Company in his hand. He gave the letter to Roark, said

nothing, turned and walked back to his office. Roark read the letter and

followed him. Whenever they lost another commission Roark knew that Cameron

wanted to see him in the office, but not to speak of it; just to see him there,

to talk of other things, to lean upon the reassurance of his presence.

On Cameron’s desk Roark saw a copy of the New York Banner.

It was the leading newspaper of the great Wynand chain. It was a paper he would

have expected to find in a kitchen, in a barbershop, in a third-rate drawing

room, in the subway; anywhere but in Cameron’s office. Cameron saw him looking

at it and grinned.

"Picked it up this morning, on my way here. Funny, isn’t it? I didn’t know

we’d...get that letter today. And yet it seems appropriate together--this paper

and that letter. Don’t know what made me buy it. A sense of symbolism, I

suppose. Look at it, Howard. It’s interesting."

Roark glanced through the paper. The front page carried the picture of an unwed

mother with thick glistening lips, who had shot her lover; the picture headed

the first installment of her autobiography and a detailed account of her trial.

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The other pages ran a crusade against utility companies; a daily horoscope;

extracts from church sermons; recipes for young brides; pictures of girls with

beautiful legs; advice on how to hold a husband; a baby contest; a poem

proclaiming that to wash dishes was nobler than to write a symphony; an article

proving that a woman who had borne a child was automatically a saint.

"That’s our answer, Howard. That’s the answer given to you and to me. This

paper. That it exists and that it’s liked. Can you fight that? Have you any

words to be heard and understood by that? They shouldn’t have sent us the

letter. They should have sent a copy of Wynand’s Banner. It would be simpler and

clearer. Do you know that in a few years that incredible bastard, Gail Wynand,

will rule the world? It will be a beautiful world. And perhaps he’s right."

Cameron held the paper outstretched, weighing it on the palm of his hand.

"To give them what they want, Howard, and to let them worship you for it, for

licking their feet--or...or what? What’s the use?...Only it doesn’t matter,

nothing matters, not even that it doesn’t matter to me any more...." Then he

looked at Roark. He added:

"If only I could hold on until I’ve started you on your own, Howard...."

"Don’t speak of that."

"I want to speak of that.... It’s funny, Howard, next spring it will be three

years that you’ve been here. Seems so much longer, doesn’t it? Well, have I

taught you anything? I’ll tell you: I’ve taught you a great deal and nothing. No

one can teach you anything, not at the core, at the source of it. What you’re

doing--it’s yours, not mine, I can only teach you to do it better. I can give

you the means, but the aim--the aim’s your own. You won’t be a little disciple

putting up anemic little things in early Jacobean or late Cameron. What you’ll

be...if only I could live to see it!"

"You’ll live to see it. And you know it now." Cameron stood looking at the bare

walls of his office, at the white piles of bills on his desk, at the sooty rain

trickling slowly down the windowpanes.

"I have no answer to give them, Howard. I’m leaving you to face them. You’ll

answer them. All of them, the Wynand papers and what makes the Wynand papers

possible and what lies behind that. It’s a strange mission to give you. I don’t

know what our answer is to be. I know only that there is an answer and that

you’re holding it, that you’re the answer, Howard, and some day you’ll find the

words for it."

6.

SERMONS IN STONE by Ellsworth M. Toohey was published in January of the year

1925.

It had a fastidious jacket of midnight blue with plain silver letters and a

silver pyramid in one corner. It was subtitled "Architecture for Everybody" and

its success was sensational. It presented the entire history of architecture,

from mud hut to skyscraper, in the terms of the man in the street, but it made

these terms appear scientific. Its author stated in his preface that it was an

attempt "to bring architecture where it belongs--to the people." He stated

further that he wished to see the average man "think and speak of architecture

as he speaks of baseball." He did not bore his readers with the technicalities

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of the Five Orders, the post and lintel, the flying buttress or reinforced

concrete. He filled his pages with homey accounts of the daily life of the

Egyptian housekeeper, the Roman shoe-cobbler, the mistress of Louis XIV, what

they ate, how they washed, where they shopped and what effect their buildings

had upon their existence. But he gave his readers the impression that they were

learning all they had to know about the Five Orders and the reinforced concrete.

He gave his readers the impression that there were no problems, no achievements,

no reaches of thought beyond the common daily routine of people nameless in the

past as they were in the present; that science had no goal and no expression

beyond its influence on this routine; that merely by living through their own

obscure days his readers were representing and achieving all the highest

objectives of any civilization. His scientific precision was impeccable and his

erudition astounding; no one could refute him on the cooking utensils of Babylon

or the doormats of Byzantium. He wrote with the flash and the color of a

first-hand observer. He did not plod laboriously through the centuries; he

danced, said the critics, down the road of the ages, as a jester, a friend and a

prophet.

He said that architecture was truly the greatest of the arts, because it was

anonymous, as all greatness. He said that the world had many famous buildings,

but few renowned builders, which was as it should be, since no one man had ever

created anything of importance in architecture, or elsewhere, for that matter.

The few whose names had lived were really impostors, expropriating the glory of

the people as others expropriated its wealth. "When we gaze at the magnificence

of an ancient monument and ascribe its achievement to one man, we are guilty of

spiritual embezzlement. We forget the army of craftsmen, unknown and unsung, who

preceded him in the darkness of the ages, who toiled humbly--all heroism is

humble--each contributing his small share to the common treasure of his time. A

great building is not the private invention of some genius or other. It is

merely a condensation of the spirit of a people."

He explained that the decadence of architecture had come when private property

replaced the communal spirit of the Middle Ages, and that the selfishness of

individual owners--who built for no purpose save to satisfy their own bad taste,

"all claim to an individual taste is bad taste"--had ruined the planned effect

of cities. He demonstrated that there was no such thing as free will, since

men’s creative impulses were determined, as all else, by the economic structure

of the epoch in which they lived. He expressed admiration for all the great

historical styles, but admonished against their wanton mixture. He dismissed

modern architecture, stating that: "So far, it has represented nothing but the

whim of isolated individuals, has borne no relation to any great, spontaneous

mass movement, and as such is of no consequence." He predicted a better world to

come, where all men would be brothers and their buildings would become

harmonious and all alike, in the great tradition of Greece, "the Mother of

Democracy." When he wrote this, he managed to convey--with no tangible break in

the detached calm of his style--that the words now seen in ordered print had

been blurred in manuscript by a hand unsteady with emotion. He called upon

architects to abandon their selfish quest for individual glory and dedicate

themselves to the embodiment of the mood of their people. "Architects are

servants, not leaders. They are not to assert their little egos, but to express

the soul of their country and the rhythm of their time. They are not to follow

the delusions of their personal fancy, but to seek the common denominator, which

will bring their work close to the heart of the masses. Architects--ah, my

friends, theirs is not to reason why. Theirs is not to command, but to be

commanded."

The advertisements for Sermons in Stone carried quotations from critics:

"Magnificent!"

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"A stupendous achievement!"

"Unequaled in all art history!"

"Your chance to get acquainted with a charming man and a profound thinker."

"Mandatory reading for anyone aspiring to the title of intellectual."

There seemed to be a great many aspiring to that title. Readers acquired

erudition without study, authority without cost, judgment without effort. It was

pleasant to look at buildings and criticize them with a professional manner and

with the memory of page 439; to hold artistic discussions and exchange the same

sentences from the same paragraphs. In distinguished drawing rooms one could

soon hear it said: "Architecture? Oh, yes, Ellsworth Toohey."

According to his principles, Ellsworth M. Toohey listed no architect by name in

the text of his book--"the myth-building, hero-worshipping method of historical

research has always been obnoxious to me." The names appeared only in footnotes.

Several of these referred to Guy Francon, "who has a tendency to the overornate,

but must be commended for his loyalty to the strict tradition of Classicism."

One note referred to Henry Cameron, "prominent once as one of the fathers of the

so-called modern school of architecture and relegated since to a well-deserved

oblivion. Vox populi vox dei."

In February of 1925 Henry Cameron retired from practice.

For a year, he had known that the day would come. He had not spoken of it to

Roark, but they both knew and went on, expecting nothing save to go on as long

as it was still possible. A few commissions had dribbled into their office in

the past year, country cottages, garages, remodeling of old buildings. They took

anything. But the drops stopped. The pipes were dry. The water had been turned

off by a society to whom Cameron had never paid his bill.

Simpson and the old man in the reception room had been dismissed long ago. Only

Roark remained, to sit still through the winter evenings and look at Cameron’s

body slumped over his desk, arms flung out, head on arms, a bottle glistening

under the lamp.

Then, one day in February, when Cameron had touched no alcohol for weeks, he

reached for a book on a shelf and collapsed at Roark’s feet, suddenly, simply,

finally. Roark took him home and the doctor stated that an attempt to leave his

bed would be all the death sentence Cameron needed. Cameron knew it. He lay

still on his pillow, his hands dropped obediently one at each side of his body,

his eyes unblinking and empty. Then he said:

"You’ll close the office for me, Howard, will you?"

"Yes," said Roark.

Cameron closed his eyes, and would say nothing else, and Roark sat all night by

his bed, not knowing whether the old man slept or not.

A sister of Cameron’s appeared from somewhere in New Jersey. She was a meek

little old lady with white hair, trembling hands and a face one could never

remember, quiet, resigned and gently hopeless. She had a meager little income

and she assumed the responsibility of taking her brother to her home in New

Jersey; she had never been married and had no one else in the world; she was

neither glad nor sorry of the burden; she had lost all capacity for emotion many

years ago.

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On the day of his departure Cameron handed to Roark a letter he had written in

the night, written painfully, an old drawing board on his knees, a pillow

propping his back. The letter was addressed to a prominent architect; it was

Roark’s introduction to a job. Roark read it and, looking at Cameron, not at his

own hands, tore the letter across, folded the pieces and tore it again. "No,"

said Roark. "You’re not going to ask them for anything. Don’t worry about me."

Cameron nodded and kept silent for a long time. Then he said: