The Secret Springs

Just as the mediaeval abbey, a gathering-place of the devout for the worship of God, was also a hostel, a school, a court, a workshop, a farm, and many other things besides, so the theatre, become a gathering-place of the devoted for the understanding of man, might assume a dominant position in the life of a community. -from "My Theatrical Life" Few Americans have had as many creative lives as Claude Bragdon who designed theatrical sets and churches, who dabbled in theosophy and the occult, who wrote about it all with spirit, passion, and penetrating insight. Here, in delightfully effervescent prose, Bragdon tells the story of his life-or lives. From his Personal Life ("Born under the constellation Leo, the heart sign, I was never long out of love") to his Occult Life ("I frightened [my mother] by declaring that I was the chosen vessel for the pouring out of a new revelation upon mankind"), Bragdon is surprisingly frank, frequently hilarious, and always wonderfully self-deprecating. First published in 1938, this is an intimate dispatch from a true American character. Other works by Bragdon available from Cosimo Classics: The Beautiful Necessity, Architecture and Democracy, Episodes from An Unwritten History, and A Primer of Higher Space (The Fourth Dimension). American architect, stage designer, and writer Claude Fayette Bragdon (1866-1946) helped found the Rochester Architectural Club, in the city where he made his greatest mark as a building designer with structures including Rochester Central Station, Rochester Institute of Technology, and the First Universalist Church; he also designed Peterborough Bridge in Ontario. In later life, Bragdon worked on Broadway as scenic designer for 1930s productions of Cyrano de Bergerac and Hamlet, among others.