Anna Morgan 'L I B R.ARY OF THL U N I VERSITY OF ILLINOIS 977.51 M82, j if 8 i *.. lc 2 c.2 tuo 2-5 "O o> ir *- C ' " o n I = 111 a > w > > ^ g nag i ] k t Jl 11 II OJ ct: CO oo uo SJ'. QO CM UJ ^1 ex. .-> C- c 2 DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE GIRL WHO PAINTED THE BUNCH OF POP- PIES ON THE CHINA JAR. Anna Morgan, My Chicago L by Anna Morgan "Where are they gone, and do you knoiv If they come back at fall o' deiv. The little Ghosts of long ago, That long ago ivere you? . And all the songs that ne'er 'were tung And all the dreams that ne'er come true Like little children dying young Do they come back to you?" Ralph Fletcher Seymour Publisher, Chicago A nnn My Chicago L by Anna Morgan " Where are they gone, and do you know If they come back at fall o' deiv. The little Ghosts of long ago, That long ago Anna Afrit-gun, fro in the manuscript of Captain Hrassbt'und's Conversion, LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS My Chicago 75 The play had been written for Mansfield and had been declined by him. It was afterwards played profes- sionally by Sir Forbes Robertson, with Gertrude Elliott as Cleopatra. Richard Mansfield happened to be playing at the Chi- cago Opera House while I was working on the play. I invited him to attend a rehearsal, which he did. The next day to my astonishment he sent me the following letter: The Virginia, Chicago. My Dear Miss Morgan: I neglected to con- gratulate you upon the excellent acting of your pupils yesterday; I really was quite astonished, and I am sure their remarkable proficiency is due en- tirely to your admirable method of teaching. Pray accept this sincere word of praise now, with the best wishes of your very faithful servant, RICHARD MANSFIELD. Miss Jeannette Gilder, editor of the New York Critic, in writing of my work said, "It is safe to say that no other school has called forth more universal expressions o ap- proval from thoughtful persons in public life whose opinions are worthy of note. . . . Miss Morgan's young people have presented Rostand's "The Romancers" and Maeterlinck's "The Intruder." They have boldly plumbed the depths of Ibsen; they have played Stephen Phillips' poetical drama ; they have tried Henry Fuller's parodies, and spoken Edith Wharton's subtle, finished dialogue. The astonishing thing is that they have done all of these things well. The performances are looked forward to as a unique feature of the Chicago season to an extent they take the place of a Theatre Libre. "Mr. G. Bernard Shaw's 'Caesar and Cleopatra' has been given its first appearance in Chicago before select 76 My Chicago audiences, largely composed of the literary and artistic people of the town. It is not the first time Miss Mor- gan's pupils have played in a Shaw piece. A year or two ago, when Mr. William Archer was travelling through the country to study American matters dra- matic, they gave a remarkable interpretation of 'Can- dida.' Mr. Archer's report of it was sufficient to make Mr. Shaw grant special permission to put on 'Caesar and Cleopatra.' " In 1903 I said to Miss Florence Bradley, who had created the role of Cleopatra, "What would you like to rehearse?" "Hamlet," she replied, without a moment's hesitation. As I had been very much given to rehearsing Hamlet for a number of years, I replied "All right, I'll put it in rehearsal." The play was given at Powers' Theatre on May nth, 1903, the cast for the first time in the history of the play being composed entirely of women, Miss Bradley play- ing the title role. The play was given in costume, with- out scenery or properties, with a simple background of green curtains, and owing to the extreme length of the play closed with Hamlet's speech at the end of the grave digger's scene : "Imperious Caesar, dead and turned to clay, Might stop a hole to keep the wind away; O, that that earth, which kept the world in awe, Should patch a wall to expel the winter's flaw !' " To which I added these lines, which occur later in the play: "If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all. Since no man knows aught of what he leaves, what is't to leave betimes? Let be." There was a large audience, composed of a discriminating public and many members of the dramatic Profession then playing in Chicago, among them Miss ulia Marlowe, who was then filling an engagement and by whose courtesy we had the use of the theater. On My Chicago 77 the whole I consider it the supreme effort of my career as a dramatic instructor. At the invitation of Miss Jane Addams the play was repeated at Hull House. Chapter Nine ILONG about 1904 I began to hear a great deal about Miss Marjorie Benton Cooke, then recently graduated from the University of Chicago, and one night she was pointed out to me at the theatre, a very individual looking young woman with black eyes and Titian hair. It happened that she came to see me a few days later. I recall her vividly as seated on the window bench she dis- closed her literary ambition to me, and asked what she should do. It was at the time when the monologue form of writing was beginning to develop, and for which there was a great demand. She listened to what I had to say with the poise which has always been one of her marked characteristics, and took her departure, returning in a few days with her first monologue, "Cupid Plays Coach." The occasion was the day of a woman's golf tournament, the scene the veranda of a club house, on which the mem- bers and their friends listen to the successful competitor. The monologue ended with a love scene and altogether was effective. This first effort was followed in swift succession by many others, which resulted in the publica- tion of two volumes entitled "Modern Monologues!" and "More Modern Monologues," and "Dramatic Epi- sodes," many of which were given on the stage of my studios, conspicuous among them being one in which Miss Cooke played the part of Nell Gwynne, William Raymond (a prominent Chicago youth then studying with me who has since flourished on the professional 78 My Chicago stage) playing the part of King Charles II. After win- ning considerable reputation in Chicago, Miss Cooke went to New York, where she has continued as a writer and has won distinction, especially in two of her novels, "Bambi" and "Cinderella Jane." Alice Gerstenberg, another member of my profes- sional classes, a little later began her career as an author while in the studios by writing a one-act play, "Captain Joe," the title part being especially designed for Miss Josephine Lydston, a fellow student. Miss Gerstenberg Jias since written other things, a one-act play called "Overtones," which has been produced with success pro- fessionally. She also adapted "Alice In Wonderland" for the professional stage. Once while playing an engagement here during the early nineteen hundreds, Maxine Elliott came to the Studios and one of our classes rehearsed "A Midsum- mer Night's Dream" for her entertainment. Bottom, who was being represented by a girl, had not been on the stage five minutes before Miss Elliott exclaimed, "that girl, why, do you know, she's a wonder. She is pos- sessed of talent for real comedy. Don't you see she's funny whether she speaks or not? I must let Mr. Dil- lingham (her manager) know of her at once. She has a talent rare upon the stage." The girl in question was Alice Gargeer, a Bohemian by birth, who had taken an opportunity to come to this country in the capacity of a nurse. One of our wealthy women, discovering her talent and desire for a dramatic career, brought her to my Studios for a course of study. In appearance she looked much as I imagine the dis- tinguished Mme. Janauschek must have looked at twenty years of age. During that summer Miss Gargeer ac- cepted a position in a company in order to gain a better knowledge of English, and to get stage experience. One morning in August I picked up The Tribune, where, on My Chicago 79 the first page was the announcement of her tragic death. She had been thrown from a motor car and instantly killed. Two weeks later a telegram came to me one morning, "Send Miss Gargeer to me at once for rehearsals, DlLLINGHAM." By her death our American stage was robbed of one who in all probability would have become a great comedienne. While we were at work on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Paul Lawrence Dunbar came to a rehearsal. I found he was a charming man as well as a delightful poet. He was well versed in Shakespeare, and made many valuable suggestions. I was at that time com- piling a volume of "Selected Readings" and he gra- ciously gave me permission to include several of his poems in my collection; and later himself chose the ones which were published in that volume. He was not only the greatest poet among his own people, but was among America's sweetest poets. Like Shelley, Keats, Ben King, Stephen Crane, and many other gifted writers, he died in his early thirties. My "Selected Readings" was published that year by A. C. McClurg and Company, also a companion volume called "The Art of Speech and Deportment." In the spring of that year I wrote a Shakespearean fantasy, "The Great Experiment," in which I summoned the Shakespearean heroines to a tea party. The booklet was published by Ralph Fletcher Seymour. Just before the opening of my classes that fall a woman perhaps sixty years of age, who had once been a leader in Chicago society, and had spent large sums yearly in entertaining her friends, came to me and con- fessed that she was entirely without means. Her hus- band had become involved in speculations of various 80 My Chicago kinds, and had lost her fortune as well as his own before his death. She told me that she was unwilling to accept checks from her friends, and said she wished to take up reading as a profession in order to make her living. Beerbohm Tree had just produced "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in London with success, and a good deal was being said about it. As this woman was mistress not only of English but the various languages and dia- lects with which this play abounds, I started her off with readings from it, with charming results. When the classes met a little later for their opening rehearsal, I decided to use this play for the beginning work, simply to familiarize the pupils with a Shakespeare flay seldom read and little used in schools of expression, had no thought it would prove anything more than of momentary interest. But at the first rehearsal Falstaff appeared in the person of a very pretty girl, Miss Leora Moore, who later on became one of my instructors. It was extraordinary; she would walk up stage, turn and come down facing the audience, and in some subtle way the characteristics of that unctuous old knight were instantly suggested so cleverly that even those in the room who were entirely unfamiliar with the character were convulsed with laughter. Strange as it seemed and incredible as it must appear to my readers, one after another of the varied characters developed in the play until the entire cast was secured; and strange as it is to relate the girls who created the male roles were more remarkable than those who characterized the Merry Wives. In Beerbohm Tree's production of the play the wives were played by Ellen Terry and Mrs. Kendal. I gave a recital of the play one evening in my Studios and invited the members of the Little Room to be my guests. I remember that Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler came to me upon her arrival and said, "I remarked to my husband as we came down on the train that Anna Morgan had given My Chicago 81 a great many clever performances, but how on earth she expected to do anything with the Merry Wives, with a cast of girls dressed in tailored skirts and shirt waists, was beyond my comprehension." The play proved inter- esting and entertaining to her as well as to all who saw it, and its production remains one of the unique recitals given in my Studios. I have dwelt at length upon the presentation of plays during my professional career as a teacher of dramatic art for the reason that they have been the avenues through which the culture obtained in the general classes was displayed, the "show work," so to speak, of the school. One of the most educational and interesting of recent plays was the presentation of ''The Contrast" in 1917. This play was the first comedy written by an Amencan. Its original production was in New York in lySj. It is quite impossible for me to go into further details regarding my production of innumerable plays during the past ten years, but I may say they included 'The Hour Glass," by William Butler Yeats, and the Greek plays "Antigone" and the "Electra" of Euripides, in these and many plays given during the last five years I have been materially assisted by Miss Lillian Fitch, an honored member of my faculty. I should like to recount if it were possible the many social affairs given in my Studios during the past nineteen years. Such an account would include a famous luncheon given on my stage to Sir Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliot in 1902, at which Mme. Modieska and her hus- band, Count Bozenta, also were guests: and of the visits of Henry Irving, Ellen Tern-. Maxine Elliott. F. H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe, and hosts of other men and \vomen illustrious in the various fields of art. In the year 1910, when there was unusual interest in the publication of dramatic plays, I gave a series of four 80 My Chicago kinds, and had lost her fortune as well as his own before his death. She told me that she was unwilling to accept checks from her friends, and said she wished to take up reading as a profession in order to make her living. Beerbohm Tree had just produced "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in London with success, and a good deal was being said about it. As this woman was mistress not only of English but the various languages and dia- lects with which this play abounds, I started her off with readings from it, with charming results. When the classes met a little later for their opening rehearsal, I decided to use this play for the beginning work, simply to familiarize the pupils with a Shakespeare play seldom read and little used in schools of expression. I had no thought it would prove anything more than of momentary interest. But at the first rehearsal Falstaff appeared in the person of a very pretty girl, Miss Leora Moore, who later on became one of my instructors. It was extraordinary; she would walk up stage, turn and come down facing the audience, and in some subtle way the characteristics of that unctuous old knight were instantly suggested so cleverly that even those in the room who were entirely unfamiliar with the character were convulsed with laughter. Strange as it seemed and incredible as it must appear to my readers, one after another of the varied characters developed in the play until the entire cast was secured; and strange as it is to relate the girls who created the male roles were more remarkable than those who characterized the Merry Wives. In Beerbohm Tree's production of the play the wives were played by Ellen Terry and Mrs. Kendal. I gave a recital of the play one evening in my Studios and invited the members of the Little Room to be my guests. I remember that Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler came to me upon her arrival and said, "I remarked to my husband as we came down on the train that Anna Morgan had given My Chicago 81 a great many clever performances, but how on earth she expected to do anything with the Merry Wives, with a cast of girls dressed in tailored skirts and shirt waists, was beyond my comprehension." The play proved inter- esting and entertaining to her as well as to all who saw it, and its production remains one of the unique recitals given in my Studios. I have dwelt at length upon the presentation of plays during my professional career as a teacher of dramatic art for the reason that they have been the avenues through which the culture obtained in the general classes was displayed, the "show work," so to speak, of the school. One of the most educational and interesting of recent plays was the presentation of "The Contrast" in 1917. This play was the first comedy written by an American. Its original production was in New York in 1783. It is quite impossible for me to go into further details regarding my production of innumerable plays during the past ten years, but I may say they included "The Hour Glass," by William Butler Yeats, and the Greek plays "Antigone" and the "Electra" of Euripides, in these and many plays given during the last five years I have been materially assisted by Miss Lillian Fitch, an honored member of my faculty. I should like to recount if it were possible the many social affairs given in my Studios during the past nineteen years. Such an account would include a famous luncheon given on my stage to Sir Forbes-Robertson and Gertrude Elliot in 1902, at which Mme. Modjeska and her hus- band, Count Bozenta, also were guests; and of the visits of Henry Irving, Ellen Terry, Maxine Elliott, E. H. Sothern, Julia Marlowe, and hosts of other men and women illustrious in the various fields of art. In the year 1910, when there was unusual interest in the publication of dramatic plays, I gave a series of four 82 My Chicago lenten readings which attracted large audiences. The course opened at the home of the Chatfield-Taylors, who at that time were occupying the residence of Hamilton McCormick at the corner of Ontario and Rush streets, where I read Maeterlinck's "The Blue Bird." On Feb- ruary fourteenth I read "The Faith Healer," by Wil- liam Vaughn Moody, at the Harold McCormick home on the Lake Shore Drive. The reading for February 2 1st was to have been given at the home of the James B. Wallers on Superior street, but was given at the Mark Willings on Rush street instead. The course ended with a reading of "What the Public Wants," by Arnold Bennett, at the Robert B. McGanns in Pearson street. Chapter Ten jURING the season of 1904 I instituted a series of book recitals in which ten or more students took part. The idea was to pre- sent the entire book, parts of it being related to connect the most striking scenes that were read. Early in the series Miss Clara E. Laughlin's story "Felicity" was presented, Miss Laughliri herself being present. The occasion was unusually interesting. Miss Laughlin's gifts are various. She is recognized by magazine editors as one of the best judges of sub- mitted scripts. Her judgment is sound and just, though kindly. She is a writer of excellent fiction, essays and description. Her perception of character makes her an unusually good biographer. She is blessed with humor. She has an unusually departmented mind, with all its departments immediately at command. Her style is lucid, and so simple no one need read any line of hers a My Chicago 83 second time to know exactly what it means. Probably the truest story of Riley's career and output was the one she wrote shortly after he passed away. A warm friendship had grown up between them during Riley's declining years a friendship based upon mutual under- standing of the finer things of life, and a respect which each had for the genius or the talent of the other. Just here I am reminded of an incident in connection with one of the many recitals of Mr. Riley's sketches I had given previous to the recital of "Felicity." A new pupil, a bashful, unsophisticated girl from some suburb, had come to me for instruction. I asked her to recite. To my surprise and joy she gave Riley's "The Happy Little Cripple" with singular vividity. I was particularly enthusiastic because I considered it one of Riley's master- pieces, and up to that time I had never found any one who could bring out its peculiar pathos. Of course I at once determined to put it on a program and so informed her. The following day she came to me accompanied by her mother, who told me she would not like her daugh- ter to appear in "that little thing of Riley's," that she wanted her to do something big and dramatic. It took much reasoning on my part to convince them that "Truth is the strong thing," and not the size of a canvas nor the subject or length of a poem that counts. One of the most interesting events in my Studios was a visit of Joseph Jefferson the year before his death in 1905. The capacity of the Studios is supposed to be about one hundred and twenty-five, but on this occasion I believe about five hundred crowded in, squeezing each other off their feet. Girls fought for places at his feet, and on the arms of his chair. Among them was Mar- jorie Cooke, who became one of his special admirations, and I did not know but he would carry her off with him. Mansfield did some time later and she rehearsed with 84 My Chicago him, but decided that she would not give up her writing for a dramatic career. I came to know a good many things about Mr. Jeffer- son that are not known to many people. He had as many facets as a rose diamond. He was an excellent painter in water colors, but not so good in oils, though he prided himself as a master in oil painting. He had pet peculiarities, referable to his self acquired education. He knew nothing of scholastic methods, but on the other hand he knew many things that are unknown to formal scholars. He made his success in life on one half of one lung. In his earlier years, before the public found him, his physical condition was such that his mind brooded intensely upon those questions of death and of what comes after that puzzled Job and have plagued the innumerable generations ever since. When it became clear that he was not going to die, the cloud lifted, and left him with a clear vision of spiritual things. He had passed middle life and fame had come to him and brought him ease before his attention was drawn to the phenomena upon which rests that which is known as spir- itualism. He became an industrious investigator, and seemed through those investigations to have found out that spiritualism was not at all the thing it was thought to be by those who believed in it. Yet by his own ac- knowledgment it had shown him enough to satisfy him that death is only an incident in life; that individual ex- istence is continuous; that as some one has put it, "Were there no night, there'd be no day; Were there no death, no life." In other words, and by assiduous research continued up to his passing away, he proved for himself a line of phil- osophy very like that ancient body of philosophy and fact that appears in the Sanscrit writings, and constitutes today the heart of the thought and belief that prevails in Hindustan and the farther orient, under the much My Chicago 85 misunderstood name of Buddhism. He partook of Hamlet's view that we are endowed with "capabilities and godlike reason, looking before and after." Once he said, "If you find it possible to imagine a stick having only one end, will you please tell me which end?" His notion of individual continuity seemed to include neces- sarily a past as well as a future existence, emerging from and disappearing in regions beyond our power to chart. It is anomalous that a man perfected as he was in the art so engrossing as the one in which he had towered to the highest, should have found the time or had the bent to study and to reason in domains so esoteric, so far re- moved, so little explored. I think the anomaly may be explained by his highly spiritualized nature, his clarity in perceiving spiritual possibilities, his passion for inquir- ing after truth and his utter lack of prejudice. While I am on the subject I may as well say that Edwin Booth was strongly tinged with beliefs similar to those held by Mr. Jefferson. Mr. Booth was profoundly studious. I am aware this statement will be received with surprise, possibly with incredulity by most people. The answer is that only to his intimates did he show himself as he really was. My own acquaintance with him was limited, but it so happens that some of these intimates were in the circle of my friendship, and through them I have this picture of him "in his habit as he lived," not in the pose in which Ke stood behind the footlights and before the people. Something along parallel lines may be said of Richard Mansfield as I knew him in his personal as well as his professional life. Like Mr. Booth he posed to the pub- lic. Also like Mr. Booth, he was a pure joy to his friends. I doubt if the American stage has known a greater melodramatic actor. His Baron Chevreal had a verisimilitude that was simply astonishing. In "Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde" he smployed adroitly several 86 My Chicago tricks that were very shuddery, but purely theatric using that term in its mechanical sense. When he attempted higher things, he made the judicious grieve. It was in his hours of relaxation that he really came out strong. He was a brilliant musician, with a fine voice, well trained. He had a streak of fun in him that was simply entrancing. He would play, he would sing, he would dance, he would tell stories that would waken the dead, they were so funny. There were no limits to his gifts. He was one of the most interesting talkers on more sub- jects than any one else I ever have known. And he had friends in every town, to whom he gave of all these gifts most lavishly. Some of those evenings at which I was present are among the brighest of my memories. He never came to my Studios but that he brought sun- shine. All of us were fond of him; all of us mourned him, none of us more sincerely than myself. He was supposed to be unapproachable and so he was. To strangers his manner was forbidding, sometimes harsh, sometimes positively discourteous. It was when he chose to be the approacher that he disclosed the real Mansfield. Mr. David Warfield's visits to my Studios were little events in themselves. He took an intelligent interest in the work that was being done there, and my pupils were always glad to see him. On one occasion, after listening to several scenes and plays, he engaged one of my pupils to take a place sud- denly vacated in his company. The young woman made good and remained with him several seasons. Mr. War- field is one of the best exponents of the art of expres- sion that ever graced the stage. His versatility in dialect has delighted thousands everywhere. For a long time P thought it was a gift, but I was only half right. The gift back of it was a peculiarly keen sense of melody. If he heard a dialect spoken, he would catch and repro- My Chicago 87 duce it, exactly as people catch and sing a song. This is equivalent to saying he had a perfect melodic memory. It is easier for him to remember than to forget a song or a dialect. I think in this respect he has only one equal on the stage, and that is Nat Goodwin, who at one time in London played a Cockney part, and was both amused and amazed when the critics wanted to know where that Cockney had been all the years they had never heard of him, and how any Cockney ever broke into so good a company in a high class theatre. It took a lot of trouble to convince them that he was an American, distinguished in his own country and profession. Their somewhat indignant curiosity is easily understood when it is con- sidered that no one save here and there an English actor has been able to speak as the Cockney speaks. The dia- lect comes near to being a separate language, and its inflections do not lend themselves to imitations, they are so queer. The Cockney tongue is spoken only in that part of London which is known as the Land of Cockaigne, an urban district bounded on the east by the Minories, on the south by the Thames, on the west by the old Temple Bar, and on the north by Holborn. About the middle of this district stands the church of St. Mary le Bow (locally known as Simmerylabo). In the tower of this church is a chime of most sweet bells. The Cockney language is not supposed to be spoken by any one who lives beyond the sound of Bow Bells. My Chicago Chapter Eleven T will always be a pleasant memory that Ben King came to my Studios in response to my invitation. The visit was a delightful one to my pupils and myself, and if evidences mean anything, he also enjoyed it. With this began an acquaintanceship that was all too suddenly terminated by his death within a year. It was at Bowling Green, Kentucky, that his call came. He was doing platform work that season in conjunction with Opie Read, and for the first time in his life had found prosperity in a new field for which his talents eminently fitted him. It is probable that out of the many poems he wrote the best remembered is "If I Should Die To-Night," a whimsical travesty on a serious poem bearing the same title. One verse of it floats to this day through the minds of many millions, most of whom never heard of the man himself. I mean "If I should die to-night, And you should come to my cold corpse and say, Weeping and heartsick o'er my lifeless clay If I should die tonight, And you should come in deepest grief and woe And say 'Here's that ten dollars that I owe,' I might arise in my large white cravat And say 'What's that?' If I should die to-night, And you should come to my cold corpse and kneel, Clasping my bier to show the grief you feel, My Chicago 89 If I should die to-night, And you should come to me and there and then Just even hint 'bout paying me that ten, I might arise the while, But I'd drop dead again." After the entertainment that night, the live boys of Bowling Green flocked with Opie and Ben to the hotel seeking more of the same stuff they had been listening to at the hall. Mr. Read very early excused himself and went to his room. Ben King was teased into about a half hour of fun and would have been up all night if he had done all they wanted of him. After some time they compromised and agreed to let him go if he would recite "If I Should Die To-night." He did, and went to bed and died that night. A call for six o'clock had been left. When the bellboy reported to Mr. Read that Mr. King did not answer, he went himself and found Ben cold. It broke up the season's engagements and came very near breaking up Mr. Read himself. A very strong attachment had grown up between them through daily and nightly association in The Chicago Press Club. That rather unemotional group of disillusioned men was stunned when the news came. The Press Club took charge of the obsequies and laid their friend away in a beautiful place near the city of St. Joseph, Michigan, which had been his home for some time. As Opie Read said at the time, "the people of the United States have at last found out there is a place in Michigan called St. Joe." Ben King's monument is a large and beautiful granite boulder bearing this chiseled inscription : 1857 BEN KING 1894 Opie Read is now the President of that same Press Club. I think he was the man who suggested the absorp- tion of another club, probably the most amazing that 9o My Chicago ever was formed in this or any other country The Whitechapel Club. At any rate, he was a member of both organizations and the two had common origin among newspaper men and artists living in Chicago. The Press Club was organized in 1879, and had grown into a large membership and a fairly substantial condition. The Whitechapel Club was organized in 1888 and had grown into a glorious reputation and a condition of perfect penury. The elder took compassion upon the younger, enfolded it and paid its debts, so that as an entity it ceased, but as a nursery or preparatory school .of genius it will be remembered for a long, long time. The membership included Brand Whitlock, afterward Mayor of Toledo, and still later United States Minister to Bel- igium, whose story of the invasion and desolation of that [sweet country is one of the most earnest and profoundly! 'touching records thus far made of any episode in the! ! great war. George Ade; Wallace Rice; W. W. Dens- low, the artist who died but recently at Buffalo; Finley Peter Dunn, the philosophy of whose Mr. Dooley has held the attention and delighted the hearts of all the English speaking peoples these many years; Charlie Holloway, now admittedly the foremost mural painter in the United States; Alfred Henry Lewis, who after- ward wrote the only stories of western life (particularly of the cattle era) that had absolute validity; Alfred's brother, William E. Lewis, now editor and proprietor of the New York Morning Telegraph, a great and ag- gressive newspaper; Herbert A. Hallet, now the adver- tising manager of the New York Morning Telegraph; Tom E. Powers and Horace Taylor, cartoonists, both of them working now in New York and syndicated throughout the land; Hon. Wm. E. Mason, afterwards United States Senator and then Congressman at large from Illinois; Dr. G. Frank Lydston, whose work both My Chicago 91 professional and literary is as well known in Europe as at home; Hermann the Great (wizard) ; Dr. Frank W. Reilly, later managing editor of The Chicago Daily News, and his son Leigh Reilly, managing editor of the Chicago Herald up to the time The Herald was ab- sorbed by The Examiner. He has recently become the most important man in the news field in the United States having been called to Washington where he was made United States News Bureau head; John C. Eastman editor and proprietor of The Chicago Evening Journal; Opie Read, Ben King, and a few others who achieved fame and success locally, but who probably were not so well known outside of Chicago. The Whitechapel Club spent the larger part of its interesting life in one room opening on the alley back of The Daily News office. It had no janitor, no key. The center table was a gigantic coffin. The' wall decorations were relics of murder and other sports. These were such things as pieces of rope with which ladies or gen- tlemen had been hanged; knives, pistols, and a fine line of assorted tools having lethal purposes. The club had a collection of skulls that had been made by Doctor Spray, a widely known alienist, who for several years had charge of the Elgin Asylum for the Insane. Chap- lain Thompson, imbued with the spirit of his flock, had the crowns sawed off these skulls and the eyeholes en- larged, then with the assistance of Charlie Holloway he mounted in each of the eyeholes a prism of colored glass red glass, green glass, blue, and so on. Being thus provided with a ventilating hole on top, and eye pieces, they were mounted on the gas jets. After dark the only light in the place was chromatic if not exhil- arating it was a wonderful stained-glass effect. The irreverend chaplain was given much credit for this artistic triumph. The principal and most delicately-cherished mortuary 92 My Chicago relic in the whole place was an especially distinguished skull that usually occupied the center of the stage that is, the middle of the coffin lid. Previous to her abrupt departure from a too respectable world, it had been part of a lady who was best known to the police of our fair city as Waterford Jack, the Queen of the Sands. Her Majesty's domain had included an area bounded by the lake, Chicago avenue, State street, and an indefinite line to the north running somewhere through what is now known as the Astor street neighborhood. It had Sir Walter Scott's Alsatia faded to the pallor of Puritanism. It was invaded and searched every time a burglary or murder turned up in the social annals, no matter where committed, but after each invasion it closed up as water does when you poke your finger in and take it out again. When Long John Wentworth became mayor he lost such scanty patience as he had, called out the fire depart- ment, and with the lake for a reservoir wiped the whole kingdom out in one desolating flood. The subsequent history of Her Majesty is unknown; but her skull was fully authenticated before it was given the honor of cen- tral interest I have just described. A good many artists of international reputation from time to time contributed wonderful drawings commem- orating occurrences in the Whitechapel Club, and having in general a tendency to celebrate or to cynically dis- close the toxic virtues of alcohol, most of the sketches having been made at hours anywhere between three A. M. and twelve noon, when those present were in a state to enlist the lively interest of the Keeley Institute. Somehow in the transfer of membership to the Press Club these pictures, some of them priceless and bearing great signatures, disappeared. So did the visitors' book, which abounded in autographs worth all kinds of money. The Whitechapel Club had no regular meetings. It had regular officers, one of whom was a treasurer of My Chicago 93 whom no bond was required because the treasury in his keeping was minus of even the character usually and sardonically described as red ink. The doings invari- ably were indecorous. It is a pity no record of them was kept, though if one had been, a good deal of it never would have passed the censor, because it was too funny, too brainy, and too squarely in opposition to all things dogmatic or conventional. I will venture to record one episode because it mirrors the name of a man whose memory will outlast the mem- ory of most other Chicago men by reason of his having shown distinct talent, sometimes approaching genius, as a writer of fiction. Two guesses? Yes, you got it the first time Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor. Mr. Taylor was a member of the Whitechapel and was not by the others worshipped from afar. The treasurer was no less a man than Frederick Upham Adams, since distinguished as a novelist, but then commonly known to his friends as Grizzly Adams. The Club was in arrears in the matter of rent, to say nothing of liabilities to some of the principal liquor houses. The treasury was about eight hundred worse off than nothing. On the monetary side of its character the Club was somewhat callous, but the creditors were eager, sometimes insolent, and something had to be done. A municipal election was about to come off. The popular but unrespected chaplain of the Club, the very, irreverend Tombstone Thompson (real name Tomo) had an inspiration. He proposed that the Club become a political body, declare a platform, nominate, candidates for city offices on a ticket of its own, and extract from outsiders the largest possible campaign fund. This carried. The platform was "No gas, no water, no police," a sturdy statement of manly independence. Grizzly Adams and Tombstone Thompson were appointed a nominating committee. As by one impulse these two great minds pounced upon 94 My Chicago Hobart Chatfield Chatfield-Taylor for the mayoralty, and forthwith they proceeded to call upon that estimable gentleman and ask that he permit the use of his name in that lofty connection, or, if he objected to the use of it in full, that he permit the use of any part of it. Mr. Taylor in a burst of unexampled generosity told them they might use the whole of it and go as far as they liked. They did. They nominated an entire ticket with his shining name at the head, and haying the inside of the newspaper offices, got as much publicity as the regu- lar tickets. The ground being thus prepared, the entire member- ship resolved itself into a finance committee (they called it "touching" committee) and went after the public without mercy. The ticket polled nearly one thousand jocular votes, and the touching committee raised nearly nine hundred dollars cash. Thus and by these means the creditors, to their amazement, were paid in full, new credit was established, and the life of the Club prolonged. Chatfield-Taylor was not elected Mayor on this ticket, but did continue his work as a writer, producing among other works "The Crimson Wing," probably his best novel, and biographies of Moliere and Goldoni, for which he was decorated by France and Italy. His latest contribution to literature is a handsome volume illus- trated by Lester G. Hornby, called "Chicago." The Whitechapel was distinctively and exclusively a man's club. If any woman ever entered its door or doors I do not know, nor have I ever heard of her. In order that a woman might know a good deal about the institu- tion it would be necessary merely that she have some of the Club members on the list of her acquaintances. That was my case. But I dare say most of the things that happened would fall inclusively in that realm of wonders My Chicago 95 vaguely hinted by the lady in Tennyson's "Princess" in the impersonal query, "What kind of tales do men tell men When they are by themselves?" In answer I will quote "Bunthorne," the dear old thing, in his sage conclusion concerning certain meanings in the decrees of>Nature: "I cannot tell." Of course not. The Whitechapel Club was so closely interrelated with the Press Club that a large membership was common to both ; and while the Whitechapel could show a creditable list of men who have since become famous, the Press Club shows a larger. The Press Club itself originated in an earlier organ- ization called the Owl Club, which had been formed in 1876 by James H. McVicker, Will Eaton, and Will E. Chapman. Its membership at first was restricted to newspaper men, actors, musicians and painters, but within three years the qualifications for membership were broken down, and pretty much all the men in La- Salle Street and the Board of Trade came in so that the original members, feeling themselves at a monetary dis- advantage, broke away and started afresh under the dis- tinctive Press Club name in November, 1879. The Press Club was a success from the beginning, the members profiting by their recent experience as Owls. As a professional club, it ranks to-day with its famous prototype, the Savage Club of London, and outranks all other organizations of the same nature on this side of the Atlantic. In its earlier years, while it was cabined and confined to a limited space on the top floor of a building at the corner of Madison and Clark streets, it practiced a gen- erous although a homely hospitality. It was in the way of honoring distinguished writers, actors, singers, and other artists whose occasions brought them to Chicago. 96 My Chicago So many of my own friends were members of the Club that I used to go frequently, and these visits brought me into contact with many people who otherwise would have been strangers and who were interested in the same things that interested me. Friendships formed then continue now save those few that were terminated by death. Of some of these old friends I would like to say a few things that will be new to my readers. The first name that occurs to me is that of William D. Eaton (handsome Will Eaton as he was always called). At the time I met him he was one of the then famous Chicago dramatic critics. Will was on the Times, the others were Teddy McPhelim on the Tribune and Elwyn A. Barren on the Inter Ocean. To me and many others at that time these men seemed more impor- tant than the Czar of all the Russias. While critic of the Times Will wrote "All the Rage," the first farce to fill an entire evening and which had a run of six years. Shortly after this in, (I think) 1881, Will left the Times and founded the Chicago Herald, making that paper a big success in eight months. In addition to his pro- nounced success as a newspaper man he has many times proven himself a born promoter in the more lucrative field of commercial exploitation, his energetic endeavors taking him to England, where he passed several success- ful years, becoming a member of the celebrated Savage Club of London. Walter Hurt in a recent biographical sketch of Mr. Eaton said, "To more than touch a few of the high places in the remarkable life-road travelled by William D. Eaton would necessitate writing a book. In Mr. Eaton character and personality affinitively com- bine to an admirable and a satisfying harmony. Men- tally and temperamentally endowed with those special qualities that make for a fine fellowship, with a mind both informed and informative, he is the most charming of companions, delightful in discourse and sympa- My Chicago 97 thetically receptive. He is a public speaker of fluency and grace, and a writer of admirably varied accomplish- ments, surpassingly gifted with the power of satire. Speaking of him to me, Edmund Vance Cook, the poet, once said, "He is the most interesting talker I ever met." Congenitally and by culture he is essentially a gentleman. Courtly, dignified, genial, one instinctively associates him with the stately halls and spacious gardens of an old manor house of England, rather than with the rough- neck atmosphere of a husky young American metropolis, where humanity, still in the stage of commercial hoodlumism, retains all its raw edges." It would be assuming a task too large and possibly too out of proportion in comparison with others to give to John McGovern all that might be deservedly given him. He was a peculiar influence in the life of Chicago and in some degree of the country for almost forty years; and his posthumous influence may prove larger than that of his own life time. I can do no better than repeat here the memorial resolution of the Press club passed when he died late in nineteen hundred and seventeen. It says: "For almost forty years, since the earliest days of this Club John McGovern had been so much of it, and the Club so much to him, that his passing created a strange and sudden blank. The term of his membership in- cluded various changes not only in the Club's condition, but in its roster; so that men came and went, and were forgotten, and others who knew nothing of its.beginnings took their places; and these mutations were continuous. Yet through all of them he remained, a figure so con- spicuous that a sense of permanence attached to him in the memory of every man who at any time had been one of us. "And this was referable to his personality not only, though that of itself was peculiarly compelling, but to the remarkable bent of his genius, the depth of his 98 My Chicago humor, the greater depth of his scholarship, his stark democracy in all things, his inflexible honesty, the sin- cerity of his friendships. No other man among us held higher ideals; none was more perfect in the artistry of words, none had clearer perceptions of poetic beauty, none ever expressed perceptions of that kind in more perfect poetic forms. In literature he was a craftsman greater than most men knew. Later time may give him higher praise and truer estimate than came to him here. "His biography and the record of his work will ap- pear in other documents. This one is a heart-felt tribute by brothers to a brother who is gone, whose going smote our elder ones with the pang of a great loss, a pang that will not soon abate. His own philosophy of life and death would have forbidden our mourning him. He would have us take counsel with that Maeterlinck he so admired, and reflect that it is foolish to complain where there is so little distance between one who is dead and those who mourn him considering that all mankind, destined to one and the same end, is divided only by little intervals, even when they appear very great. Since we must all travel the same road, is it not unworthy of a wise man to weep for one who has set out earlier than ourselves? He who is born into the world must also leave it. His stay may be longer, but the end is always alike. If you consider the ills of life, it is long even for a child; i^f you regard the duration, it is short even for an old man. If you have lost a friend, you ought to bring yourself to this frame of mind: that you are more pleased at having had him, than grieved that you have him no longer. "And even so, we think of John." Next stands the stately figure of Stanley Waterloo, a great man, whose true value is not yet really understood. He wrote many books, some of which were evanescent because their writing was crammed into the intervals My Chicago 99 of newspaper work for a working newspaper man he remained down to the time of his sudden demise in 1913. But one of them, "The Story of Ab," is in my opinion and in the opinion of many others whom I believe to be competent, the only serious book written by a Chicago author that will live and go on living. It is a story of the stone age, the era of the cave man. As a story merely, it is intensely interesting; but it is also a scien- tifically accurate account of human life as it was and was carried on past the turning point where man dis- covered the possibility of opposing the thumb of either hand to the finger tips, and so found out the way to make and use a tool. The first of these tools was a weapon, a stone bludgeon. This was followed by an axe of stone. Other implements, some of them for war, some for domestic use, followed in due course. I am not writing either an account or a criticism of the book, but I think it worth while to say it was and is scientifically sound in its paleolithics and its paleontology. Stanley told me that he put twelve years of patient research into the subject before he wrote a line. Its scientific accuracy is evidenced by its use in the supple- mentary reading courses in the public schools of about a dozen states, and of its similar or related uses abroad. It has had several reissues in England and has been translated into all the languages of continental Europe. It is recognized that Stanley knew more about the cave man and knew all of it with more certainty than any of the scholars who had specialized in the same line. As an instance: While he was trying to clear up to his own satisfaction the question whether the sabre-toothed tiger antedated the stone age or coexisted with the cave man, he called on the Curator N of the Museum in the Smith- sonian Institute at Washington and asked the privilege of examining the skull of a sabre-toothed tiger that had recently been acquired. When he explained to the Cura- ioo My Chicago tor the reason why he wanted to see the skull, the curator smiled and assured him he need go no farther, because it was established that the tiger had disappeared before the beginning of the stone age. Stanley was not inclined to dispute the point; he simply said he would like to see the skull anyway. The curator personally conducted him to the place of exhibit, and there, to the profound surprise of the curator, they found embedded in the skull the blade of a stone axe the axe that had killed the tiger. On that day there occurred a chronological introversion of history in the case of tigers and men. Instead of being merely an extinct creature the sabre-toothed tiger was promoted to association with the human race, which promotion undoubtedly accelerated real extinction at a date considerably postponed. Stanley's last book appeared very shortly after his death. The closing chapters had been left in skeleton, but were rounded out and finished by his intimate friend and Press Club fellow member, Harry Irving Greene, with whom he had been in consultation over it and who knew Stanley's style so well that he was enabled to pre- serve complete continuity in Stanley's own vein down to the end. Stanley may be said to have set a style among fiction writers whose plots include things scientific or ac- credited facts in history. This last book of his bears the title "A Son of the Ages." An episode essential to the thread of the narrative necessitated a description of Noah's flood. In his own way and in a direction, the possibilities of which never had suggested themselves to the Biblical archaeologists, he established the fact of that flood in the region and approximately at the time dealt with in the book of Genesis. Geological research and studies of ancient land and water distribution dis- closed a seismic disturbance then and thereabout, in which there was a deep depression of a large land area con- My Chicago 101 tiguous to a sea of which the present Mediterranean is a vestigial remainder. All living things in that area were drowned, and the assumption of unusual meteorological phenomena may be granted, or at least needs no argu- ment. He established, further, a subsequent upheaval of the area submerged, by which the waters were thrown back and a higher land surface established. This per- fectly unconcerned way of accounting for a long dis- puted event rather overtopped the performance of Professor Heilprecht of the University of Pennsylvania who went to the site of the pre-Assyrian city of Nipur, there to dig for records that would confirm the Bible story. Professor Heilprecht found records that might be construed as offering such a confirmation, which was not at all surprising, because there are records or fairly uniform traditions of similar floods all over the world; but being on the job and being fired with professional zeal, he went on digging until he had uncovered the ruins of other buried cities under Nipur, of an easily determined age of twelve thousand years, and showing a develop- ment that could not have been reached in a term less than twelve thousand preceding years. By this double discovery Professor Heilprecht at one stroke confirmed the flood and destroyed the Mosaic chronology. The University of Pennsylvania published all this in full as conclusive proof of Bible truth, somehow overlooking the effect upon that same truth of what their Professor had done to the other Bible truths, as affecting the Mosaic chronology. Stanley Waterloo had rather the best of the University, but Stanley was not a Presby- terian and Professor Heilprecht was. Whenever I think of Stanley there appears beside him the figure of Opie Read. For a large part of their lives these two were inseparable. Stanley wrote maybe a dozen books. Opie has written I don't know how many. He came to public notice first while he was on the Little 102 My Chicago Rock Gazette, and rose to national reputation as editor of the Arkansaw Traveller. Since then he has been on the New York World, the Cleveland Leader, and several Chicago newspapers. Of late he has been doing Chau- tauqua work, being at the same time under contract for special stories with The Chicago Evening Journal. His first big selling books embodied his knowledge of Arkansas and Arkansas characters. His stories are purely human, sometimes dramatic, sometimes episodic, but always interesting. One of his books, "The Juck- lins," published about thirty years ago, has up to this time had a sale of around two million copies. He has been translated into all the languages of continental Europe excepting the Russian, but including the Scandi- navian. The Scandinavian translation was made by a man who knew English on the Scandinavian plan. It was a pretty good translation even at that, but the trans- lator succeeded in correcting an error in the author's name. Now, Opie's name is Opie; but the translator could find no such word in his valuable handbook, nor his English dictionary, therefore to him it was clear that the English printer had blundered. He knew there was such a word as Open. Evidently that was the right name. So on the title page the author's name appears as Open Read. r^" As an individual Mr. Read enjoys and deserves wide popularity. A formal dinner was spread in his honor in the Press Club, May 2, 1902. Wallace Bruce Ams- bury, whose book, "Ballads of the Bourbonnais" cele- brates the habitant population of the Kankakee region, much as Doctor Drummond's celebrated the habitant of Quebec, came forward at that dinner with the toast which faithfully though humorously describes the man. I could not do better than quote it here: Dis language Anglaise dat dey spe'k, On State of Illinois, My Chicago 103 Is hard for Frenchmen heem to learn, It give me moch annoy. Las' w'ek ma frien', McGoverane He com' to me an' say, You mak' a teas' on Opie Read Wen dey geeve gran' banquay. I mak' a toas'? Not on your life, Dat' man's wan frien' of me; Wat for I warm heem op lak' toas' De reason I can't see. An' den John laugh on hees eye Wen he is to me say: "To mak' a toas' is not a roas' It's just de odder way." * Dat's how I learn dat toas' an roas' Is call by different name, Dough bot' are warm in dere own way, Dere far from mean de same. An' so my frien', in lof I clasp Your gread beeg brawny han', An' share vit you in fellowship An' pay you on deman'. You're built opon a ver' large plan, Overe seex feet you rise; You need it all to shelter in Your heart dat's double size. You are too broad for narrow t'ings, Too gr'ad for any creed; I'll eat de roas' but drink de toas' To my friend, Opie Read. It may be insidious to say with too much assurance that Waterford Jack was the first lady before Cynthea I / 104 My Chicago Leonard to impress her personality, her principles and her methods upon the public life of this city, but between Jack and the dawn of Cynthea were many years unmarked by feminine influence upon public affairs. Mrs. Leonard swooped down and fluttered the dove- cotes of our Corioli before the embers of the great fire had ceased to smoulder. While it cannot be denied that all of her ideas were fantastic, it must be admitted that she strove for their realization with untiring activity. Mrs. Leonard was out for woman suffrage with both hands and the whole of her volubility, which was reverber- ant and unceasing. As a new phenomenon she excited the interest and exalted the joy of living of the news- paper men, who gave her a noble liberality of newspaper space. The term of her prominence was comparatively brief. That sort of thing never does last very long. Her one contribution to the world at large was her daughter Lillian, whom we know as Lillian Russell. During the declension of her mother Lillian emerged, a girl of sixteen or thereabout, at first a tiny star in theatrical skies, and mounted swiftly in augmented lustre to that place in the zenith which she still holds. Tony Pastor discovered her and gave her a first appearance at his theatre in Fourteenth street, New York. She was and is a singer well worth hearing, but she was with- held from becoming an actress by a singular limitation. Her beauty and a certain subtle emanation that could not be resisted any more than it could be defined, put her across the footlights into great and enduring popularity; but an inborn reserve somewhat like the restraint of a great lady stood between her and any adequate expres- sion of theatric art. Another interregnum: and who is this we see? Tall, square shouldered, well set up, vivacious, black eyed, and as Franc Wilkie described her, purple haired; distin- guished by an ability to write things that never were dis- My Chicago 105 creet, and sometimes were astonishing. What was it Charlotte Perkins advocated? I have forgotten. But she held the stage, down center, during the latter half of the eighteen eighties. Then for a time she was obscured, to emerge again somewhat subdued, rather dignified, and otherwise improved. She is Mrs. Charlotte Perkins Gil- man now, and is lecturing and writing, creditably. Chapter Twelve I OR some time I had become much interested in Reinhart's productions of The Miracle and Shakespearean plays in Berlin and in May, 1914, I sailed for Paris enroute to Germany, actuated largely by my desire to see some of his work. After a month spent in Paris I started in company with my friends the Ralph Clarksons on a leisurely trip to Berlin. On reaching Heidelberg I received a telegram from George Hamlin, who had learned of my plans in Paris telling me that I must go to Berlin at once in order to see the two last performances to be given by Reinhart that season. I gave up a visit to Leipsic, to which I had looked forward with interest because among other things there I should see the original of Bocklein's "The Isle of Death" which for years I had greatly longed to see, and took the first train for Berlin. Upon my arrival I went to a pension Krause where I secured a charming apartment and sallied forth in search of a seat for the play which on that night was The Miracle. The demand for seats was so great, altho this spectacular play was given in what formerly had been a skating rink transformed into a theatre for this produc- tion and seating between five and six thousand persons, io6 My Chicago for a time I was in a state of mind bordering on despair because the finding of even a single seat seemed hopeless. Just as I was about to give up the hunt, I chanced to meet an old Chicago newspaper friend who in some mys- terious way produced not only a seat for that" night's performance but also one for the production of Twelfth Night which was given at the celebrated Deutches Theatre the next night. It surely was a novel experience and a somewhat ex- citing one to be driven alone through the streets of Berlin the route to the theatre taking me through the Thier- garten, and by many of the enumerable statues which line the streets in every direction. Then to find myself seated in the midst of the great audience in which I did not find a single face that I had ever seen before, but as soon as the curtain went up on the opening scene I was completely absorbed in the wonders of the production which surpassed anything I had seen with its two thousand people and two hundred horses besides mules, dogs, etc., in the cast. Frau Krause had provided me with a card on which was printed her name and address a neces- sary precaution as my knowledge of German was too limited to insure my safe return to the Pension. On the following night I attended the performance of Twelfth Night which closed the Reinhart season. The performance was one of extreme interest to me. In fact it is difficult for me to express all that I got out of it. I had considered myself well acquaihted with the play in all its details, having taught it for many years, and having seen notable productions of it in America, but as the curtain rose and the setting of the stage for the opening scene was revealed I was convinced that I was to see something very different from any production of the play I had ever seen before. The setting was a shal- low one showing a sanded beach shore in the extreme foreground, with just the hull of the ship in view show- My Chicago 107 ing the captain, some sailors and Viola whose entire figure including her head and most of her face was con- cealed by a dark hooded cape, as she stepped on shore asking, What country's this? The illusion was so start- lingly real, that it was difficult to believe it was not true. I recalled a presentation of that scene given years ago at the Grand Opera House when the stage was so over- loaded with scenery that it looked like a store house and Miss Viola Allen dressed in the most gorgeous be- spangled costume ascended a flight of steps from a full fledged vessel and with broad and sweeping voice and pantomime inquired What country's this ? I had seen sufficient to know that the fame which Reinhart had achieved was deserved. The whole play was remarkable in its reality and truth. The character of the Lady Olivia played in America by a socalled first lead to the star and a very negative one at that, on this occasion by a sterling actress possessed of beauty and charm. The lady was permitted to move about as though she actually lived in her own house, a privilege which I had never seen accorded her before, Maria was a revelation. Instead of a pert saucy com- monplace miss, in this case she was represented as a girl who had been born and reared in the household accus- tomed to the vulgar improprieties of Sir Toby and An- drew Aguecheek but entirely unaffected by their familiar- ity, joining somewhat in their ribaldry and laughter yet holding herself aloof from too much presumption on their part, I was greatly impressed with her pictorially. I had always seen Maria on the stage as a saucy brunette of a cheap type. This girl was fair with her blonde hair parted in the middle and falling to her waist in two braids. Her costume was dull greys and blues and altogether she was a distinct and pleasing feature of the play. Malvolio too was represented as having the distinc- io8 My Chicago five qualities which the text calls for quite distinct from the extreme finicky and impossible character depicted by Sir Henry Irving and others. The Clarksons reached Berlin before my departure and joined me at the Pension. Miss Katherine Winterbotham of Chicago, now Mrs. Thompson Buchanan of New York, was spending the year there pursuing her musical studies with Frank King Clark, who previously had been a successful singer and teacher in Chicago. One evening Mr. Clark gave a soiree in his Studio which we all at- tended, and where we met Mr. and Mrs. Howard Wells, George Hamlin, his wife and daughter, Miss Walton and so many other artists and friends that it seemed almost like a home reception. Alas ! the breaking out of the war closed the beautiful studio and within a year poor Frank died, and all the coterie that was assembled there that evening had returned to Chicago. From Berlin I went to Carlsbad and stopped enroute to visit the then celebrated Dalcroze School just outside Dresden. The school building resembling a Greek temple stood on a high eminence and had with its equipment cost a million dollars which had been subscribed by dev- otees of Dalcroze who had known him and his work in Geneva and Paris. The interior which had been de- signed with special reference to the accommodation of large classes in physical culture and dancing and which included a small theatre, was uniformly decorated in sand color, with here and there curtains and draperies of flame color of soft and simple fabric the whole thing produc- ing a modern and artistic effect which quite delighted me. I had had considerable difficulty in gaining permission to visit the school as visitors were being scrutinized closely, many having carried away the distinctive features of the classes and introducing them wherever they lived without giving credit to Dalcroze. Alas ! the war brought My Chicago 109 this enterprise to a speedy close and I believe the build- ings have since been used as a hospital. From Dresden I went to Carlsbad for a month's stay and while there a brother of Fredrick Charles, Arch Duke of Austria while playing on the golf links received news of the shooting of his brother which proved to be the touching of the button which set the German war forces in motion. Nothing alarming happened for a few days, altho rumors of war filled the air. It was only when Mrs. Baxter of Evanston and I reached Zurich on our way to Lucerne that matters begun to assume a more threatening aspect. There the streets were filled with soldiers and indications seemed ominous. However we travelled the length of lovely Lake Constance after our visit to Zurich and enjoyed in tranquillity the battle- ments and towers "Which have stood above Lake Con- stance, a thousand years and more." When we reached the Hotel Nazionale at Lucerne matters begun to look grave. Groups of people were huddled together and talking in low tones, gravely shaking their heads, as the necessity for getting to England safely seemed imminent, Mrs. Baxter had occasion to return to Germany and wished me to accompany her but I decided to yield to the importunities of the Clarksons to join them at Lake Como. I left Lucerne at 9 A. M. on the morning of August first. When the train reached Lugano a man in military attire came on board and took a seat near me. He told me that war between Germany and France had been declared and that he had just taken leave of his family and was off to war. When I reached Tremezzo Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson were on the wharf as the steamer landed. Mr. Clarkson had just received a paper which contained alarming dispatches. In twenty-four hours we found ourselves to be comparative prisoners, that is we could not get to either France or England. Our only hope of escape to America was from Genoa or Naples. no My Chicago Anxious days followed as continued news of war became more and more threatening. We could neither cable home nor receive cable messages for a time. We had very little money and could get none. We were so panic stricken that we refused to spend money enough to get a little alcohol with which to make afternoon tea or to buy a round trip ticket to Belaggio which cost only thirteen cents. On the first day of my arrival I had been reck- less and spent a quarter to see the interior of Car- lotta the finest villa on Lake Como. It nearly ad- joined the hotel and its present owner allowed visitors to see the grounds and entrance hall which contained some mural decorations by Thorwaldsen and the original statue of Cupid and Psyche, the money received being given to charity. Our anxieties increased day by day. Finally Mr. Clarkson and I together with others decided to go to Milan and try to get some money on our letters of credit or the Chicago First National bank checks which I car- ried. We could get none as nothing but Cooke's checks were being cashed anywhere. We however secured the promise of obtaining some money a little later. Mr. Clarkson had been in constant communication with the steamship offices in Milan, Naples and Genoa, hoping to get passage for himself, Mrs. Clarkson and me as day by day the possibility of getting home looked more and more dubious, together with the fact that Italy might at any moment be drawn into the war making our escape more difficult and more hazardous. He finally received word that a small Italian steamer which had been reno- vated and fitted up for the purpose of carrying Ameri- cans to New York was about to sail from Naples and there were three berths to be had in the steerage. This opportunity Mr. Clarkson saw fit to decline, largely on account of the inferiority of the vessel and that it would mean being separated from Mrs. Clarkson during the My Chicago in voyage. I, however, was impressed with the advisability of taking advantage of the opportunity as the chances for getting home were becoming less and less each day. Tickets could not be reserved by telegraph, so I was obliged to go to Genoa to secure my passage. I stopped at Milan enroute and there held a conference with George Hamlin and Norman Mason, son of my friends the A. O. Masons of Highland Park who were then looking for sailing accommodations for themselves and families. George told me he hated to see me start off alone in such an undesirable boat but I made up my mind that under any conditions my mind would be more tranquil if I were journeying toward home, so I continued on my way. When I reached Genoa to my great joy I encountered a piece of good luck. A South American steamer had been chartered by some wealthy Americans and was sail- ing the next morning and I could get passage on it. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was a memorable trip. We were holding our breath until we passed Gibraltar as there were reports of the danger of being turned back if Italy were to declare war which seemed probable at any moment. However we passed the great rock in safety and settled down to recover from the weeks of anxiety and to enjoy the trip. The Rev. Freeman of Minneapolis was a passenger and conducted services in the large salon on each of the two Sundays we were on shipboard. On each occasion we attempted to sing America but our voices were choked by emotion, the first time because we had fears of never seeing our beloved land again, the second time because we were so overjoyed at the sight of it. I was guilty of throwing kisses to a huge sign of Kirk's American Family Soap which was the first familiar sight which my eyes rested on as we sailed into New York Harbor early on the morning of the last day of August. It looked good to me for more reasons than one. H2 My Chicago I expected when I reached Chicago to find the members of my family in an emaciated condition on account of having worried about my ever getting home. To my disappointment and somewhat to my disgust they told me they had not worried at all, they knew I would man- age to get home somehow. The Clarksons followed in another boat two weeks later. Chapter Thirteen 'R. CLARKSON had gone abroad largely in the interests of the Art Institute, and his work had not been half done when the war stopped it. For a number of years he had been and still is active in committee work of various kinds, and has not only contributed to the gallery many of his own artistic canvases, but has helped in securing some of the most valuable contributions that have been made by other artists. He is continuing those activities, and undoubtedly will continue them to the end of his days. Practically all the more distinguished painters who lived in Chicago during the last forty years or more were members of the Art Institute. G. P. A. Healy, who rose to be a celebrity was one of these. So also was Leonard W. Volk, the sculptor, L. E. Earl, and E. F. Bigelow. Henry F. Spread, Charles A. Corwin, Oliver Dennett Grover, John F. Vanderpool, Charles Francis Browne, Frederick Freer, Lorado Taft, Ralph Clarkson, Fred Richardson, Ralph Fletcher Seymour and Mrs. Herman Hall, are among the most important instructors the school has been fortunate enough to get. Prominent artists from other cities have been brought here to aid My Chicago 113 in its work. Charles Francis Browne, Pauline Palmer, Louis Betts, Harriet Blackstone, and Cecil Clark Davis are familiar names in its history. The success which the Art Institute has always met with is due first to its central location, and second to the co- operation of the large number of prominent citizens of Chicago who are annual members. The membership and that of the school exceeds that of any museum in the country and the attendance also exceeds that of any museum in the United States. I am not going to write a categorical account of the Art Institute and its various stages of progress, but I have been in close contact with it through most of its life ; and it means so much to me, even as it must mean to many others, that I would like to give a little side light upon its earlier days, and particularly upon the beginnings of its really fine gallery of paintings. James H. Dole, of the firm of Armour-Dole and Com- pany, was one of the most influential men in the group that originated the old exposition enterprise, and built the Exposition Hall on the lake front site now occupied by the Art Institute Building. Mr. Dole was an unusual man in many ways. He had been highly successful in his commercial occu- pations, but these occupations were by no means his prin- cipal interest in life. He had a native perception in the graphic arts, and was ready at all times with his in- fluence and his money to advance the development of art locally. It was through his effort that an art exhibit was added to the others in the old exposition, and to this exhibit he gave great and sympathetic care. From year to year he continued to get together meri- torious paintings, until the exposition gallery became a recognized feature. That collection became the nucleus of the Art Institute gallery we know today. I am not far out of the way, if at all, in crediting Mr. Dole with H4 My" Chicago the more potent share in that work which took up the old Art School and Academy of Design that had begun in 1867 and was snuffed out temporarily when the Crosby Opera House was destroyed in the fire of 1871. Mr. Dole helped bring it back when the city was rebuilt; and in that process the Art School, the Academy of De- sign, and the Exposition gallery were naturally brought together as a permanent institution. He was a reticent man, ceaseless in doing good and never so much annoyed as when publicity was thrust upon him. He became a first rate judge of paintings, though his education began with minus. He was entirely candid about this so candid that he disclosed it in his own private collection. He had a beautiful home in Dearborn avenue, close by Oak street. In this house he had built a large and beau- tifully lighted long room for an art gallery of his own. The first picture to the left as you entered the room was the first picture he ever bought. The last picture on your left, as you passed out again, was his latest purchase. The gradual rise in quality disclosed by the purchases between the first and the last was astonishing, but while the earlier pictures were crude some of them dauby, all of them and all the others down to the latest had in them a living touch. He never bought a picture, of any degree, that had not in it something that would stir an emotion or set in movement a train of thought sufficient to carry you away from the grosser things of life for the moment at least. I am inclined to think that in the power to do this lies the real definition of art, in any of its various forms. The technical skill employed in a painting counts for much in its own way, but by itself never made any picture great; whereas not even slovenly execution can obscure the virtue of a painting that has a fundamental element of truth. My Chicago 11$ I do not know what became of Mr. Dole's gallery. I think some of the pictures, especially a Fortuny, are in the Art Institute gallery, but the rest have been scattered by the scattering of his family. He died but a few years back. In all his useful life he carefully, sensitively, avoided impressing himself or the things he did upon the public mind, so that I am not sure he is remembered outside a circle whose diameter slowly decreases as the old men die who were his contemporaries. But I am sure his memory is tenderly cherished by many artists now prominent both here and abroad, to whose early efforts he gave sympathetic encouragement. Of the artists I have named above, the one who was nearest Mr. Dole was L. C. Earl. Earl at that time had climbed so high in public notice that New York had begun to call him. Along about the middle eighties he went there. He was the first American painter sought, with good results, by the Prang concern of Boston. The Prangs had for some time been reproducing works of Art by the mechanical process known as chromo-lithog- raphy. Earl had painted a picture showing a city sports- man with a most elaborate and expansive equipment but no birds, in negotiation with a one-gallus, barefoot country boy who carried a sawed-off, single barrel, muzzle loading shotgun, and had a string of about fifty ducks. The ground was marshy, the skies were grey and the daylight fading. The city sportsman's hand was in his pocket. The story told itself. I don't know what they paid Earl for the right to reproduce it; but whatever it may have been it was noth- ing compared with what it brought them. They sold over two million copies of the reproduction. Among the artists grouped about the Art Institute, Lorado Taft is probably the most widely known out- side Chicago. This is no derogation of the others, but a fact referable to Mr. Taft's peculiarly adroit method n6 My Chicago of evoking criticism and controversy in matters where he knows he is going to come out on top. Mr. Taft has more than once had New York about his ears and profited by the assault. New York being an art storm center, whatever goes a-howling there is heard all over the continent. It is not to be denied that for this reason, and aside from his undeniable merit, Mr. Taft's reputa- tion is national. The achievement by which perhaps he is best known is the towering, almost sentient figure of Chief Black Hawk that stands upon an eminence near the town of Oregon. Aside from its size and its prominence in the landscape it is a significant and worthy art work. From its completion only a few years ago, it has had a wide- spread post card celebrity. It has the peculiar distinc- tion of standing close by the home of Frank O. Lowden, who at the time of this writing is Governor of Illinois, and who for the part of his life thus far lived and the part as yet unlived stands and will stand as one of the great men of the west. Associated with the Art Institute are the names of Charles L. Hutchinson, W. M. R. French, and N. H. Carpenter. Mr. French gave the best that was in him to the Institute and its operations through many years, up to his death in 1914. Charles L. Hutchinson has been president of the asso- ciation since 1882, and before that time had been a director and a most ardent promoter of its best interests. It is a fortunate and infrequent thing when a man is found who combines genius in finance with a love of art and who is willing to put his combined powers back of an estab- lishment like this. We all know what the Art Institute has become, how much it means in this community and the western states, but we do not know how much of its standing and influence it owes to Mr. Hutchinson. This much is clear: that without his devoted and unselfish Charles L. Hutchins'tn. ii6 My Chicago of evoking criticism and controversy in matters where he knows he is going to come out on top. Mr. Taft has more than once had New York about his ears and profited by the assault. New York being an art storm center, whatever goes a-howling there is heard all over the continent. It is not to be denied that for this reason, and aside from his undeniable merit, Mr. Taft's reputa- tion is national. The achievement by which perhaps he is best known is the towering, almost sentient figure of Chief Black Hawk that stands upon an eminence near the town of Oregon. Aside from its size and its prominence in the landscape it is a significant and worthy art work. From its completion only a few years ago, it has had a wide- spread post card celebrity. It has the peculiar distinc- tion of standing close by the home of Frank O. Lowden, who at the time of this writing is Governor of Illinois, and who for the part of his life thus far lived and the part as yet unlived stands and will stand as one of the great men of the west. Associated with the Art Institute are the names of Charles L. Hutchinson, W. M. R. French, and N. H. Carpenter. Mr. French gave the best that was in him to the Institute and its operations through many years, up to his death in 1914. Charles L. Hutchinson has been president of the asso- ciation since 1882, and before that time had been a director and a most ardent promoter of its best interests. It is a fortunate and infrequent thing when a man is found who combines genius in finance with a love of art and who is willing to put his combined powers back of an estab- lishment like this. We all know what the Art Institute has become, how much it means in this community and the western states, but we do not know how much of its standing and influence it owes to Mr. Hutchinson. This much is clear: that without his devoted and unselfish (.hurl,! /.. LIBRARY OF THt UNIVLKSITY t ILLINOIS My Chicago 117 interest and activity it would be far short of what it actually is. Something of the same nature can be said of Mr. N. H. Carpenter, who was with the Institute since its or- ganization as Secretary, Director and Business Manager the latter office, held for forty years. A record any man might be proud of. Mr. Carpenter died May 27, 1918. Mr. Frederic Clay Bartlett and Mr. Howard Van Doren Shaw have been prominent among the workers on the board of the Art Institute and are men of artistic sense and achievement, Mr. Shaw's "civic center" recently built in Lake Forest being important in its effect. Other prominent men associated with the Institute in various capacities are Martin L. Ryerson, William O. Goodman, Frank G. Logan, and Dr. Frank W. Gun- saulus. Chapter Fourteen MONG the distinguished foreign painters to visit Chicago and the Art Institute in 1904 was Blommers, the great Dutch painter who shares honors with Israel and Maude. I met Blommers and his wife in Ralph Clark- son's studio, and found we had much in common. He urged me to visit them at the Hague whenever I came to Holland. Another important visitor to Chicago about that time was Signor Biazi, Librarian of the Laurentian Library in Florence. He came to my Studios and ex- pressed much interest in the work being done at that time. It happened that occasion took me to Florence two years later. Soon after my arrival there I paid a visit to Signor Biazi at the library, which my readers ii8 My Chicago will recall was designed by Michel Angelo and contains a wonderful collection of books, early manuscripts, and hand engravings of priceless value. Signer Biazi received me with the utmost cordiality. When recalling his visit to Chicago and the work he had seen in my Studios he suddenly exclaimed, "You must be entertained by our dramatic school while you are here. It is a state institution of importance. Salvini is one of its directors." Whereupon he went to the telephone and had a talk with Signer Luigi, head of the school, with the result that a formal invitation was sent me at my hotel for the following afternoon, signed by the Director of the Royal School of Art. The program which had been arranged for my enter- tainment was given in a small theatre, a part of the school's equipment. Naturally I was keenly interested in seeing the work of an Italian school, especially one of such recognized importance. At that time I was im- bued with the idea that Italians were to be relied upon for truthful pantomime and action correctly supplement- ing the thought expressed by the voice, and was sur- prised to note that the performers in the plays indulged in as much excess and unrelated action as that observed in our American students. Signor Luigi confided to me that a young woman, their most gifted pupil, was so nervous that she could not be induced to appear before Salvini and myself. I re- quested an introduction and engaged her in conversation so far as my knowledge of Italian would permit, and finally asked her to tell me about some object which stood upon the stage. She accompanied me there with- out the slightest hesitation. I walked about on the stage with her until unconsciously she grew accustomed to me and the audience below, and then I whispered to her the advantage it undoubtedly would be to her to recite for My Chicago 119 Salvini. After a slight hesitation she did recite, and very well, with almost the expression and subtle quality of Duse. I never heard how she got on. After this I talked to the school and gave several monologues and recita- tions, among them being Othello's apology, which I had heard Salvini recite in McVicker's Theatre some years before. I left the theatre on the arm of Salvini, who escorted me to my carriage, which I found had been filled with roses by the directors and students of the school. For once in my life I felt like a Patti or a Bernhardt. The next day I received an invitation to remain in Florence as an instructor in the school. But my devotion to America and home was too great for me to consider the offer, flattering though it was. Some time before reaching Florence I had accepted an invitation to go to Cologne and visit my friend Mrs. H. M. Millard of Highland Park, and her daughter, Mrs. Hugo Fisher, then as now a resident of Cologne. I had a most enjoyable visit. I remember the first time I saw the cathedral. It was on a beautiful moonlight night. I was so overcome by its impressive architecture that I could hardly resist prostrating myself before it, so great was its spiritual effect upon me. .It chanced that this year, 1906, the tri-centennial of Rembrandt was being celebrated with great pomp in Am- sterdam. I recalled the Blommers invitation to visit them should I be in the neighborhood, so I dispatched a note asking them to send a reply to the American hotel in Amsterdam. On my arrival there a few days later the porter informed me that he hadn't a vacant room, at which I muttered to myself something about Blommers, whereupon he informed me that Mr. Blommers and his wife were in the hotel. I was more disappointed than ever to be unable to remain there, but acted upon the porter's advice and drove to another hotel, where I was I2O My Chicago only able to obtain meager accommodations, the city being so crowded. After dinner as I stood at the tele- phone, some one pulled my sleeve. I turned and saw an old pupil from Des Moines whom I had not met for several years. Being more or less of a tuft-hunter she was eager to accompany me to call on Mr. and Mrs. Blommers. It was the last night of the celebration. The streets were full of revelers, many in masquerade, and all bent on making the most of the occasion. It was impossible to obtain a carriage. As we stood in the door of the hotel two American youths who happened to over- hear our conversation offered to escort us to a car which would take us to the American hotel. We were glad to accept their polite attention. As we stepped into the hotel Mr. and Mrs. Blommers entered from an opposite door. Although he had not received my letter, he came to me without a moment's hesitation, exclaiming, "Miss Morgan of Chicago !" He at once ordered some refreshments. When I told him we proposed going to the Isle of Marken the next day he said, "Oh no, go with us to the Art Galleries tomorrow. We will all go to Marken next day." It was a great privilege as well as a great pleasure to view the pictures with him and get his ideas concerning them. Being a conventional painter of little children and domestic scenes such as a mother rocking her baby in its cradle, or holding it up to view a parrot in a cage; or groups of little boys playing on the seashore. He had no tolerance of ideal painters like Bocklin and Thoma, who drew largely upon their imagination. Not- withstanding my expressed admiration of them he told ne they were a crazy lot. A special room had been pro- vided ^ for Rembrandt's "The Night Watch," an honor to which every great work is entitled, and which thereto- My Chicago 121 fore, so far as I know, had only been accorded "The Sistine Madonna" and the "Venus de Milo." We were certainly repaid for our visit to Marken the next day. Never have I seen any place so primitive, so distinctive. The houses consisted chiefly of one room, each of which contained all necessaries for a family of perhaps five or six, space being gained by the beds closed up against the wall. The women wore quaint figured gowns, muslin caps and dainty aprons, all scrupulously, even painfully clean. The chief object in life of those women evidently was to keep themselves and their homes immaculate, and they succeeded. I spent the next day at the Hague, leaving in the after- noon for Holland, where I was to cross over to London. I stopped for a couple of hours en route at Delft, to see the china factories and other things. My guide there was an interesting youth with an alert mind. He ex- pressed much interest regarding Chicago, and said he was collecting postal cards, and wished I would send him some. When I asked him what kind of pictures he would like he said, "O, do send me some about the hogs." The Harry Selfridges at the time of my visit to Lon- don were occupying a noble old country house about sixty miles north of town. It was part of my purpose in England to accept an invitation to visit them at this home. Americans who have not enjoyed the hospitality of an English country home cannot imagine the quiet comfort of life in such a place. It was an old and stately home, made rich by some aura of many generations of generous living, of culture, faith and fine ideals. There is a sense of fullness, of spiritual as of bodily things attained in the atmosphere of such a home. And the setting is in perfect harmony with it. Ancient lawns that to the tread have the soft spring of heavily piled velvet; trees that are old and noble in their age, gardens that carry varying blends of color through the seasons, 122 My Chicago always rich; a sky of soft blue with clouds of soft grey, blending tenderly over a landscape of green from the tenderest tint to the deepest coloration; stretching fields of grain and meadow-lands with here and there a cottage of grey stone, roofed in old red tiles, vines covering the walls with a spray of delicate blooms, or sometimes with the gentle tone of ivy; hedge-rows everywhere, that in their season are fragrant of their pretty flowers; paths winding here and there to quaint stiles; a church tower mildly looking toward heaven from out some venerable church yard, with its solemn, immemorial oaks. The scene breathes serenity and peace. I had always loved to dwell upon a line in the speech of Orlando to the banished Duke in the forest: "If ever been where bells have knolled to church." There is soft summer and tranquillity in the picture carried by those appealing words, but I never understood them nor got the picture truly until I heard the bells of a church a mile or so away calling the people on a Sunday morning. The bells were old, their tone was mellow, the distance just enough to shade their volume to a dying fall. We have all of us heard church bells toll, or heard them clang together, or one at a time, we have heard them ring. Never before had I heard them "knoll." To me they seemed ancestral voices, calling to those long mouldered generations who lay asleep under the turf below a holy sound. The Selfridges were more than kind in their recep- tion of me. They made their home my home, and all my wishes were anticipated, in that unobtrusive way they have those good people, those kind friends. Mrs. Self ridge died on May 14, 1918, nine days after Mrs. Potter Palmer's death. Out of all the motor trips I had one in particular which was made memorable by my visit to the almost prehistoric village of Broadway in Worcestershire. Mrs. Harry Gordon Selfrid%e. 122 My Chicago always rich; a sky of soft blue with clouds of soft grey, blending tenderly over a landscape of green from the tenderest tint to the deepest coloration; stretching fields of grain and meadow-lands with here and there a cottage of grey stone, roofed in old red tiles, vines covering the walls with a spray of delicate blooms, or sometimes with the gentle tone of ivy; hedge-rows everywhere, that in their season are fragrant of their pretty flowers; paths winding here and there to quaint stiles; a church tower mildly looking toward heaven from out some venerable church yard, with its solemn, immemorial oaks. The scene breathes serenity and peace. I had always loved to dwell upon a line in the speech of Orlando to the banished Duke in the forest: "If ever been where bells have knolled to church." There is soft summer and tranquillity in the picture carried by those appealing words, but I never understood them nor got the picture truly until I heard the bells of a church a mile or so away calling the people on a Sunday morning. The bells were old, their tone was mellow, the distance just enough to shade their volume to a dying fall. We have all of us heard church bells toll, or heard them clang together, or one at a time, we have heard them ring. Never before had I heard them "knoll." To me they seemed ancestral voices, calling to those long mouldered generations who lay asleep under the turf below a holy sound. The Selfridges were more than kind in their recep- tion of me. They made their home my home, and all my wishes were anticipated, in that unobtrusive way they have those good people, those kind friends. Mrs. Selfridge died on May 14, 1918, nine days after Mrs. Potter Palmer's death. Out of all the motor trips I had one in particular which was made memorable by my visit to the almost prehistoric village of Broadway in Worcestershire. Mrs. Harry Gordon Selfridgi . LIBRARY OF THE UNIVLKSITY Of ILLINOIS My Chicago 123 Broadway is one of the many sequestered places in England of which no one outside the immediate neigh- borhood knows anything. It would have remained an undiscovered delight to me if it were not for its being the home of my old friend Mary Anderson Navarro. It is a far cry from McVicker's Theatre in Chicago to Broadway in Worcestershire, but the last time I had seen this gifted woman was in McVicker's, when she played both Perdita and Hermione. I had not forgotten the sweet witchery of her dance on the green in the earlier part of the play when she was Perdita, the purely Greek impression when the curtains were drawn apart to show her as the seeming statue of Hermione, nor the depth of feeling she revealed when the statue became the living Queen, once more came back from her unknown retirement. It was altogether the best performance of "A Winter's Tale" I have ever seen, and in my opinion the finest piece of work Miss Anderson ever accomplished. She was Mary Anderson then. "Our Mary" we used to call her. It was toward the end of her career here at home. Not long after she became Mrs. Navarro, and retired to private life. The Navarro home is at this same old world Broadway. She has emerged from time to time and appeared in London for various charities. But after each such occasion she has gone back to Broad- way, to the life of an English gentlewoman and the care of her family. 124 My Chicago Chapter Fifteen ROM the ashes of the great fire arose with feverish haste many men and many move- ments that strove without coordination to the creation of a new city with higher ideals. Nearly all of them were futile and fleeting, but one true note was sounded by one man theretofore comparatively unknown, a young man eager, active, splen- did in temperament and mentality George Benedict Carpenter. How much we owe to him it would be hard to say. For a time that is long to look back upon he has been resident in climes more happy than are known here below, but the things to which he gave impetus are alive, and will project their influence through the times to come. The fire had destroyed all the halls as well as all the theatres ; but the bulk of population and the best residen- tial neighborhoods were on the west side, which the fire had not touched. In association with another young man named Sheldon he formed the firm of Carpenter & Shel- don, and made arrangements with the trustees of the Union Park Congregational church in Ashland avenue overlooking the Park, by which arrangements they had the use of the church audience-room for lectures and concerts. Here they gave two or three successful seasons. I cannot go into particulars in that regard, for I had not then come to Chicago. But when I did come in 1876, Carpenter & Sheldon had the lead in all the better enter- tainments of that kind, and had become well known throughout the western country as high class managers. Rebuilding on the south side had drawn away the value of the Union Park location, and the firm was some- times embarrassed by inability to control desirable places My Chicago 125 on the south side with any certainty beyond immediate dates. This gave rise to Mr. Carpenter's desire for a hall of his own. Mr. Sheldon was not inclined to follow that lead, and before the project took complete shape he withdrew from the firm and went to live in London as the representative of a financial concern that had extensive connections in England. Having a free hand. George proceeded to formulate the project which resulted in the old Central Music Hall being built on the southeast corner of State and Randolph streets. Until after the Auditorium was built, that is to say until 1889, Central Music Hall was the scene of all the best in concert, ora- torio and lecture work, and the meetings or conventions of musical and other societies. Mr. Carpenter was particularly distinguished by his strict adhesion to the higher planes of musical perform- ance, but in the pure democracy of his nature he wanted to bring great music to the many, being that great major- ity which knew nothing of the better forms and never patronized the more select places. The old exposition building on the lake front where the Art Institute now stands (it covered about three times as much as that covered by the Institute) was vacant in the summer time. He took a tentative hold upon it, and then made a master stroke. He engaged Theodore Thomas and the Thomas Orchestra, one of the largest and best in the world, to play a season in that building, giving the best music that ever was brought to the town for an entrance fee of fifty cents, sometimes on afternoons for twenty-five cents. The building had a capacity of at least ten thousand. There never was a bad day nor an empty house. The success was so complete in every way that it was followed by several other equally successful seasons, the result being that arrangements were made by which the Orchestra be- came a Chicago institution, retaining the name of Thomas until Mr. Thomas died, after which time it was known as 126 My Chicago the Chicago Symphony Orchestra the same organization that now has its home in the Orchestra Hall Building. Mr. Carpenter's splendid and beneficent career was at its height when death took him suddenly away in 1882. Milward Adams, who had entered Mr. Carpenter's em- ployment about 1870, while yet a boy, and who was familiar with Mr. Carpenter's plans and methods was retained to carry on his work, and did carrry it on until he was engaged to manage the Auditorium Theatre in 1889. The Thomas Orchestra was transferred to the Auditorium and remained there until Orchestra Hall was completed some years later, when Mr. Thomas died and was succeeded by Frederick Stock, who is still at the head of the Orchestra. It would be difficult to overestimate the value of what George Carpenter did for Chicago and for music in Chi- cago. There is no doubt whatever that the orchestra gave the first great offering of real music to the whole population; nor is there any doubt that we owe to Car- penter's spacious conception the really sound musical taste for which this city has become so well known that musical organizations below the first rank know better than to come here. His genius was creative, and its oper- ation was happily facilitated by his executive ability, his prompt and thorough habit of action. In his private capacity he was a most companionable man, bubbling over with good humor, widely informed, witty and warm hearted. No one could ask to have a better or more constant friend. He was the exception that proved the accepted rule that a man of positive character is sure to make enemies here and there. He had none. No, not one. A statement of this fact would be his noblest epi- taph. I am but one of many who benefited by his friend- ship and advice. Long before I came to Chicago there flourished a large and well balanced musical organization called the My Chicago 127 L Germania Maennerchor. I do not know whether it antedated the introduction of Germany's far sighted prop- aganda system, but it was thoroughly German, and beyond any doubt had a large influence in favor of things Germanic, for two reasons: it sang and played the best music that had ever come out of Germany; and its mem- bership was drawn from the most substantial citizenry in the German population of Chicago, which after the Civil war was almost half of the entire population. In 1869 this society gave a superb performance of "The Magic Flute" in the Crosby Opera House. It was so good a performance that it was still talked about when I arrived here, eight or nine years later. Sometime in the eighteen-seventies they gave in full, and I think in Mc- Vicker's Theatre, the opera, "The Bat." Somehow I missed this event, but I remember it was the talk of the town. The Maennerchor descended from father to son through many later years. For all I know to the con- trary it may in some form still be going on, but it fell out of prominence when George B. Carpenter built the Central Music Hall and by so doing terminated the use of the great hall in the McCormick building at the corner of Clark and Kinzie streets. That hall had housed all the big choral performances from the time it was com- pleted just after the fire. It lapsed into disuse, except for occasional meretricious indoor fairs, or third or fourth rate dances, until it bumped the bottom of respectable use and became a home for cheap dramatic stock com- panies, and then still cheaper vaudeville. In reaching around through the past to find (perhaps unnecessarily) the beginning of things as they are, I get nothing antedating the Maennerchor. But after-days are clearer; and from the fading clouds of the great fire emerges the Beethoven Society. It is matter for regret that more distinct records of the Beethoven Society were not kept, for it died away many years after, and lives 128 My Chicago only in the memory of those few elders who were con- cerned with it, or who drank delight at its hands. The Beethoven Society was best known for its perfection in chamber music. Naturally operating in this withdrawn and lofty area, it was not obtruded upon general public notice, nor did it care for any attention or patronage from the majority, because the majority had no ears for those high and pure things in which it wrought. It may seem somewhat anomalous, but a large part of its patronage and most of its courage grew out of the earnest and wise counsel and sympathy of August Blum, a Jewish gentleman of delicate tastes and a sound knowl- edge of all that is best in music. It is characteristic of such people that the good they do and the help they give are done and given for the sake of doing and giving, without a thought of self. Mr. Blum was a banker. Up to the time the Union bank of Chicago was absorbed in the First National, he had been in charge of its foreign bond de- partment. After the combination he became a second vice president of the First National, and so remained until his retirement in 1916. It would be curious to learn just how much of the development of the best interest in music were due to him and to his altruism. Most of those who might have told have been "guests on high" these many days, and for himself, the rest is silence. The Apollo Club began to loom large while yet the Beethoven Society was safely seated in its lofty niche, where all might see. The rise of the Apollo club was inversely accompanied by the fade-out of the Beethoven. It came into full hearing while yet it was young. It was and remains a choral organization. Every season it sang some one of the great oratorios, and all it undertook it did well. I think perhaps its best work was its sing- ing of the Messiah. Its most vigorous term of life was passed under the direction of William L. Tomlins. When Mr. Tomlins stepped aside his place was taken by Har- My Chicago 129 risen Wild, under whose administration it goes tran- quilly on. The Woman's Amateur Musical Club had its origin in the wareroom of a piano firm where four ladies met to practice. Gradually they attracted a band of listeners and players, which grew in number until the club in- cluded a large number of the most musically gifted women in Chicago, whose influence in cultivating a taste for good music has been distinguished. One of the original four was Nettie Roberts, later Mrs. Ben Jones. Among the organizers of the club were Mrs. Theodore Thomas, Mrs. John M. Clark, Mrs. Frank Gordon, Mrs. George B. Carpenter, Mrs. Charles Haynes and Mrs. William Warren. The Woman's Amateur Musical Club has been amply justified of its works. It would seem that after a few years of personal endeavor, the membership came into a great light, in which they discovered a purpose and a cause leading by broader highways to more perfect ends. It decided to become a useful instead of an amateur club, changed its name to the Musicians' Club, and began to devote its attention and funds to discovering and advanc- ing talents in music outside its own membership, and wherever there was a deserving case. In this they have been successful in many instances, disappointed only in a few, and instrumental in furnishing to the ranks of the profession many creditable, even excellent musicians, men and women. The club has not restricted itself to any one kind of individual ability, but has accepted possible singers, of whatever voice or register, and instrumen- talists employing any instrument. These people it has tried out, and with what I must call admirable judgment has taken hold of the best, helped them in their training, finding them professional employment, sometimes going so far as to pay for the maintenance and education of 130 My Chicago a singer or a player at the best schools of this country and western Europe. It is really an admirable, practical and effective or- ganization, not riotously enthusiastic, but steadily intent upon the best good to be accomplished, in behalf of music first, and next in behalf of individual aspirants. Its quarters are in The Fine Arts Building. Chapter Sixteen. OHN ALDEN CARPENTER has made a deep, and I think and hope a lasting impres- sion, upon the music of this country. There are many competent people who place his name alongside some of the best song writers of Europe, and somewhat in advance of other scholarly composers native to our own soil. Not long ago Kurt Schindler, a writer of recognized authority, had this to say about him: "The works of John Alden Carpenter are a most un- usual offering; in trying to characterize them one has to give to them some of the noblest attributes that can be given to music. Written to the most exquisitely chosen poetry, they are wrought with a sound musicianship, in a style quite personal and new. The fact alone that such wonderful poems as 'The Green River,' the Blake songs and Stevenson's verses are set for the voice with perfect diction, with the most graceful and melodious outline, will give valuable testimony to the fact that the English language, if properly set, is a perfect means of musical expression. Furthermore these vocal settings are framed in piano accompaniments of such delicate refinement, such a wealth of lovely sound, that the general effect of the songs becomes one of exquisite pictures, that you want to My Chicago 131 revel in, that you want to hear over and over again. John Alden Carpenter's songs have heart and blood, they have the spirit and grace, coupled with a refined har- monic sense, of some of the modern French lyricists, Chausson and Duparc; and yet there is with it all a de- lightful English sub-current, as if inherited from ances- tral times, that gives these songs their particular fragrance." Mrs. Carpenter, herself a musician and poet of dis- tinctive merit, has collaborated with him in the produc- tion of several works, the best known of these being "Improving Songs for Anxious Mothers." These books are in great vogue probably the only things of their kind produced here which sell freely in the music market Aside from her gift in music and in rhyme Mrs. Car- penter has honestly earned a high and growing reputation as a decorative artist, excelling particularly in mural decoration. People who visit the Auditorium Theatre may find an expression of her powers in the interior decoration of that house. Other places less accessible or less widely known have been graced by her good taste and skill. She is almost uncomfortably in demand for work of that kind, though I hope she will not allow it to divert her from the direction of her original endeavors. Mr. and Mrs. Carpenter collaborate in music. They are singularly congenial. They work and play together, everywhere. Each might fitly be imagined as repeating continuously to the other the declaration of Ruth to Naomi. Chicago has given to the world several composers, and some of these have made songs that have been sung all round the world, and will be sung by generations yet to come. The name of George Root presents itself the moment this subject comes up. His best work was done while the civil war was on; but its message, its pure ap- peal, went at once and always will go to those deep emo- 132 My Chicago tions that are implicit in human nature and human nature is the same in all ages. A long course of years followed before another Chicago composer produced a song that similarly addressed itself to all the people. How Carrie Jacobs Bond came to write "The Perfect Day" I do not know, but I share the common knowledge that it is one of those great songs whose words and music interblend to the expression of a thought that is fraught with con- solation and hope to all who hear it. It is quite incidental that the sale of this song has lifted Mrs. Bond from straitened circumstances to affluence. The glorious climate of California and that particular part of it which scintillates around and about San Diego, agrees with Mrs. Bond's disposition, wherefore she has gone there to enjoy the end of many perfect days as they have out yonder each year. How many operas have been written by Chicago people? I might almost as well ask how many are the unsung songs. Nebulous memories of operatic ambi- tions that died dumb float around in the gathering mists of the backward years. I hear a faint note of Frederick Grant Gleason, a fainter of Silas G. Pratt. There are others still fainter, but the names are forgotten, possibly to be evoked for renewal in some future domain of life beyond the stars, where good intentions may be counted for as much as mere performance. But there is one glorious burst of music that surges down in waves of harmony along the many days, and will go on because it is true. Reginald de Koven belongs to a family distinguished for its culture and for its excellence in finance. A star sang, and under that he was born. His mind was filled with melody, but his hands were filled with money. The disharmony between melody and money dragged him forth from the bank in which his father was a power, and landed him where he belonged. The other birds in My Chicago 133 the de Koven nest were disconcerted by this new one. It took them a long time to realize that operas may happen in the best regulated families. I heard him once declare to Eugene Field that he had never committed any crime that would justify his being shut up behind a brass grating and compelled to talk through the bars with uninteresting people, about currency. It was shortly after that declara- tion that he and Harry B. Smith put their heads together and elaborated "Robin Hood." It is curious that this same topic or story was used by the first composer of an opera in English, about the end of the fourteenth century. It is a big jump from the rural England of King John to the last quarter of the nineteenth century, but de Koven and Smith made it and landed in safety, high up. There is little more to be said about this, unless, maybe, that the song number most familiar, the one that is instantly suggested by the mention of "Robin Hood," is "Oh Promise Me." It was not in the original score, but in the place where it now occurs there was a soft spot, a slowing down, that puzzled managers and composers alike. Tom Karl, the first tenor in the company, told de Koven he thought he could fill that out if de Koven would write him a song to be interpolated. The song was written, and fell flat. After two or three perform- ances Karl wanted to cut it out. Here came in our own Jessie Bartlett Davis, the contralto of the company (and what a glorious contralto!) who liked the song and thought she could do something with it. With Karl's consent de Koven transposed it for Mrs. Davis. It had one rehearsal with orchestra, and she sang it that night. It set the audience wild. They made her sing it over and over and over again. From that time on it was the feature always waited for, always called for. Wherever Mrs. Davis went she was entreated to sing it. She sang it so often that the words became to her most hateful things; but of the song itself she never wearied. Do you I 134 My Chicago blame her about the words? Suppose you had to say or sing all the time: "Oh promise me that some day you and I Will take our love together to some sky!" What did Harry Smith have in his mind when he wrote that? Why should anybody promise any such thing? And to what sky ? and again why ? Was he cryptic ? Was he trying to start something? Or did he think he was Robert Browning? A strange reversal of function is to be observed by naturalists and other disinterested observers continuously and unfailingly manifests itself in the concerns of com- posers and performers of music, an action and reaction as it were, in which the reaction becomes permanent and the action is forgotten. A composer may compose his head off without a chance of getting anywhere unless a \ performer brings out his work. This applies particularly to music that is intended to be sung. I am reminded of it (without prejudice in any direc- tion) by a state of facts that gradually shaped itself before my looking eyes. Everybody knows George Hamlin. That is, everybody hereabout who is interested in music. Critics and public alike conceded him a place in the first row of the concert stage, while yet his career was young. He holds that place without dispute, and with growing approval. He is at once a man solidly in- formed, a voice with a homely, human warmth of heart. Because this is true he is a great singer, a satisfying artist. By many competent critics he is accounted the best tenor on the concert stage in this country. I think it may be said freely that he is the only American tenor voice pos- sessing the power to stir emotion. It has exquisite power in the lower register, and it has remarkable range. I was led to the foregoing action and reaction observa- My Chicago 135 tion by a consideration of this and the knowledge that he had been instrumental in bringing into public notice Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf, Max Reger, Tipton Camp- bell, H. Burleigh and several other composers theretofore unheard, even unheard of. How familiar those names are now; how easily they took their places on the shelves of all music dealers after they had been heard through Hamlin's voice ! How sure they are of the place he won for them with the people, and how long they will stay and be sung after that witching voice has died away, gone to the place where music is, and beauty has no shade ! While most of his work was done elsewhere, a good deal of it in Europe, John McWade will not be forgotten in his native Chicago. By many he is given a place next to George Hamlin, but he diffused his efforts in too many directions to have built up, as he might have done, in any one. John McWade gave up singing and took up in- surance a few years before his death in 1905. Who among the elder people of Chicago can forget the big, sonorous, rich bass of Frank Lombard. More than any other singer we ever had he was a part of the public life of the town. Whenever any movement was on, especially if it were a Republican or a civic better- ment movement, Frank was called in to sing. He could engage and hold the feelings of an audience and sway them like so much standing wheat in a great wind. The darkey songs, "Old Black Joe" and "Old Shady," are sung today, because Frank saner them first and made their depth of feeling known. "Old Black Joe" is ele- mentally simple and in itself affecting. It may be taken as a specimen of American negro music at its best though I do not know who wrote it. Frank's brother Jules survived him many years, and may be said to have taken his place a peculiar one, which has disappeared 136 My Chicago since neither Frank nor Jules are here to hold it; and there is no other. During the last forty years four names of distinction among the foremost pianists have identified themselves with Chicago. One, Mrs. Ellen (Nellie) Crosby, has gone away. One of the others has retired from the public view Julia Rive King. Another, William H. Sherwood, died not long ago. The fourth, Mrs. Fanny Bloom- field Zeisler, maintains her standing and raises it higher from year to year. She has become a world celebrity. Mrs. King made her first appearance here in 1874, while she still was Julia Rive. It was in Chicago she received her first complete recognition. After that she toured the country as a concert pianist, sometimes as a solo artist with one or another great orchestra, but during much of her time she lived here. Followed a few years in New York, and then a return to Chicago as teacher in one of the schools of music, apparently a permanent position. Mrs. King had a most remarkable power in memorizing complex music of the higher order. She had wrists of steel, and a superb command of technical expres- sion. To those she owed her prominence. Mrs. Crosby has a singularly clear intuition for musi- cal meanings, an almost uncanny appreciation of emo- tional values. Her technical training was sufficient to enable a transmission of those values to her hearers. In these things she may be put in a class by herself. Mr. Sherwood came from Boston. Before he joined the Chicago Conservatory he had acquired a considerable reputation in concert work. He was an excellent tech- nician and a competent teacher. I speak of him in the past tense, because he is no longer living. But the greatest pianist we can call our own is Mrs. Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler. In earlier days she was a pupil of Carl Wolfsohn, who was not only himself a musician, but quick to recognize latent genius in others. My Chicago 137 When she had learned all he could teach her she had gone far enough to make her future clear. Her educa- tion was completed in Europe. Upon her return and from her first public appearance she was acclaimed an artist of the first class. How she learned or what she learned from any of the masters under whom she studied matters little, for her own innate power would have found a way to its own expression, by itself. There are few people of whom this can be said with equal truth. The piano after all is a machine, and only a soul touched by the true fire can transcend its mechanical limitations, and make it sing the whole range of pure feeling. Before Mrs. Zeisler's advent Mme. Essipoff was the one pianist who could "play like a lady, and make the piano sing like an angel," as was said of her by a critic I have here- tofore mentioned. Mrs. Zeisler overtopped Mme. Es- sipoff in that she could bring out not only delicacy and beauty, but a majesty and panoply of color that neither Mme. Essipoff nor any other player I have ever heard could even remotely approach. It is not only my own opinion that speaks now. Two continents have given full recognition to her transcendent ability. Mrs. Zeisler's home is here, and that fact gives its own shade of mean- ing to the name of Chicago. In addition to these four, I should speak of Allen Spencer, one of a younger group, who without abandoning the classic composers has developed surprising facility and felicity in interpreting the works of DeBussey and other modern composers, both European and American. With these he has been recognized broadly in concert work. 138 My Chicago Chapter Seventeen N OCTOBER 30, 1899, my friend Irving K. Pond, doubtless animated by a desire to con- tribute to my knowledge of Delsarte, invited me to accompany him to the Literary Club, which then held its meetings in the old Uni- versity Club house in Dearborn street, where he read a paper on "The Poetry of Motion." Whenever there was a fourth Monday in the month it was called ladies' night, and this was one of these occasions. Among others honored by the privilege of speaking before the ladies were Fred Root and Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor. The Literary club has the distinction of being the oldest of the men's literary clubs in Chicago, having been established in June, 1874, one year after the Woman's Fortnightly, which was founded in June, 1873, making it the pioneer among woman's clubs. Robert Collyer was the first president of the Literary Club, and its list of members include many of the leading personalities of our best citizenry. Its unflagging interest and prosperity has been largely due to the indefatigable efforts of Mr. Frederick Gookin, who has been its secretary and treas- urer since 1880. The club occupies a suite of rooms on the ninth floor of the Fine Arts Building, in connection with the Caxton Club, the members of which are lovers of the technicalities of book making and who frequently publish standard works in beautiful bindings. An interesting little story is connected with Fred Root's evening with the Literary Club. At that time Mrs. Coonley-Ward was holding a series of what might be called literary and musical symposiums at her home on the Lake Shore Drive. Mr. Root thought he My Chicago 139 would try out the program he had prepared for the Literary Club at one of these meetings, which on this occasion had been arranged in honor of Abbie Sage Richardson of Boston. Mr. Root had composed music which had for its theme a mother whose necessity com- pelled her to work all day, and the joy she experienced on returning home at night to be reunited to her baby child. He asked the audience to guess the subject of the composition while hearing it played. The company sug- gested many possible themes, without success, when Sud- denly Irving Pond exclaimed with his habitual acumen, "Why, it's something about a mother, a mother and her child." So the riddle was solved. Fred Root, be it remembered, was the son of George Root of early musical fame, and the brother of Mrs. Clara Louise Burnham, to whom she is indebted for her start as a story writer. The story goes that Mr. Root had urged his sister to become an author, but she had persistently refused to experiment, declaring she could not write. Finally he is said to have shut her up in a room, declaring he would not unlock the door till she had written a story, which she did, taking the boyhood of Fred and his brother Charles for a subject. I believe this story was never published, but it led to her writing many other widely read and successful stories, chief of which is "Jewel." To return to the evening at the Literary Club : Mr. Pond succeeded so well in his address before the ladies and in many other contributions to artistic Chicago that he was made president of the American Institute of Architects at Washington, and while filling that office represented not only the Institute, but our government, in the international congress of Architects, and delivered addresses in Rome and Venice, and before the congress in London at the Royal Institute of British Architects. 140 My Chicago Mr. Pond and Daniel H. Burnham are two of four of our Americans who have been so honored. While there have been many clubs in Chicago that have made a feature of receiving and entertaining distinguished visitors the Twentieth Century Club which was founded in 1889 at the suggestion of Mrs. Fernando Jones and her daughter Mrs. George Roswell Grant, was distinc- tive among them. The meetings were designed not only to afford distinguished writers and other artists an op- portunity to meet the men and women who largely con- stituted Chicago's culture, to make the stranger within our gates acquainted with the more gracious aspects of our community life, but to address them as well. The first meeting was held at the residence of Mr. George M. Pullman, December 18, 1889. The speaker on that occasion was Charles Dudley Warner who spoke on "Our Criminal Classes." The club closed its twenty-fifth year on January 26, 1916, John Masefield being the speaker, his subject Shakespeare. William Morton Payne was the Secretary and Treas- urer of the club during the entire term of its existence. It fulfilled the mission for which it was organized. The necessity for its continuance diminished as the town out- grew the state of things that had originally made its formation desirable and for almost a quarter of a cen- tury had enjoyed. It is more than a pleasant memory; and this memory is kept alive by t;he names of a few of those who had sometimes inspired, often directed those activities. First among the owners of these names comes Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth. It is a happy thought, a strange thing, that Mrs. Wilmarth throughout her long life (she was born in 1837) has been a good, often a strong in- fluence in all that has made for higher aims and finer living in this place, for a strong influence is not always a good one. She was of New England origin and came Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth. 140 My Chicago Mr. Pond and Daniel H. Burnham are two of four of our Americans who have been so honored. While there have been many clubs in Chicago that have made a feature of receiving and entertaining distinguished visitors the Twentieth Century Club which was founded in 1889 at the suggestion of Mrs. Fernando Jones and her daughter Mrs. George Roswell Grant, was distinc- tive among them. The meetings were designed not only to afford distinguished writers and other artists an op- portunity to meet the men and women who largely con- stituted Chicago's culture, to make the stranger within our gates acquainted with the more gracious aspects of our community life, but to address them as well. The first meeting was held at the residence of Mr. George M. Pullman, December 18, 1889. The speaker on that occasion was Charles Dudley Warner who spoke on "Our Criminal Classes." The club closed its twenty-fifth year on January 26, 1916, John Masefield being the speaker, his subject Shakespeare. William Morton Payne was the Secretary and Treas- urer of the club during the entire term of its existence. It fulfilled the mission for which it was organized. The necessity for its continuance diminished as the town out- grew the state of things that had originally made its formation desirable and for almost a quarter of a cen- tury had enjoyed. It is more than a pleasant memory; and this memory is kept alive by t;he names of a few of those who had sometimes inspired, often directed those activities. First among the owners of these names comes Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth. It is a happy thought, a strange thing, that Mrs. Wilmarth throughout her long life (she was born in 1837) has been a good, often a strong in- fluence in all that has made for higher aims and finer living in this place, for a strong influence is not always a good one. She was of New England origin and came Mrs. Mtir\ //. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS My Chicago 141 here in her earlier womanhood, the wife of H. M. Wilmarth. Long before the Congress Hotel was built the Wilmarths lived in a house covering part of the ground in Michigan avenue where the hotel now stands. During much of that time the neighborhood was one of the best though whenever the stormy winds did blow the lake, had a playful way of slapping over the opposite sidewalk and spraying the grass in front of their door. From her arrival in Chicago and quite with- out self assertion, Mrs. Wilmarth's native traits of char- acter brought her and her opinions a growing deference. Those opinions were of the kind that prevailed in the New England of her youth, and had firm roots in a mind that offered a blend of positivity and kindliness. Through all her days she has held fast to those principles for their own sake, and without regard to their bearing upon any of the formulated religions. All of us who have known Mrs. Wilmarth for any length of time have been aware of her peculiar clarity of thought, the charm of her wit, which now as then was trenchant; her generosity, her capability for sincere friendship. If I were to try to describe her in the fewest words and with the fullest truth, I would say that in her soul and in all her acts she distilled the essence of what we call the law of service. I cannot help feeling a regret that the radius of these acts of hers was in the comity of things so localized. Next in perspective is Franklin H. Head, who was a very big man in the club but a bigger man outside it. Before Mr. Head, in the middle formative stage of Chicago as we know it, there had been many brilliant lawyers, a few great ones, and some glittering wits. He came in after Emory Storrs, Wirt Dexter, Leonard Swett, and the great group to which they belonged had pretty much passed away. He typifies now the broader and more adaptable school of the present day. His 142 My Chicago professional ability is well enough known and freely conceded. But his other sides, those in which he shone at his best, were reserved for private life. His famili- arity with and judgment of English Literature was wide and sound. He was himself a writer good enough to justify a belief that he might have risen to distinction in that line, had he chosen to follow it. He exercised the largest hospitality without ostentation. At his home, a beautiful colonial house at No. 2 Banks street he entertained distinguished writers, musicians and states- men in a congenial atmosphere. Men and women, what- ever their achievements in those fields were always in the front line of his friendships. Mr. Head died in June, 1914. Chapter Eighteen ARLY in March, 1918, I wrote to Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor at her home in Santa Bar- bara, telling her that I was engaged in writ- ing a book which I hoped to complete and that I should like to have her picture to adorn its pages adding that it made no difference at what period of her life the picture was taken. With the re- sponsiveness and promptness characteristic of her, I re- ceived the following note which if not the last was among the very last notes she ever wrote: Franklin H . Mend. 142 My Chicago professional ability is well enough known and freely conceded. But his other sides, those in which he shone at his best, were reserved for private life. His famili- arity with and judgment of English Literature was wide and sound. He was himself a writer good enough to justify a belief that he might have risen to distinction in that line, had he chosen to follow it. He exercised the largest hospitality without ostentation. At his home, a beautiful colonial house at No. 2 Banks street he entertained distinguished writers, musicians and states- men in a congenial atmosphere. Men and women, what- ever their achievements in those fields were always in the front line of his friendships. Mr. Head died in June, 1914. Chapter Eighteen ARLY in March, 1918, I wrote to Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor at her home in Santa Bar- bara, telling her that I was engaged in writ- ing a book which I hoped to complete and that I should like to have her picture to adorn its pages adding that it made no difference at what period of her life the picture was taken. With the re- sponsiveness and promptness characteristic of her, I re- ceived the following note which if not the last was among the very last notes she ever wrote : Frtinklin H. Hold. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS L/BRARy OF THE ITY OF Mrs. Chat field-Taylor. My Chicago 143 FAR AFIELD Mrs. Taylor died on April 5th, after a brief illness of one week. The following tribute to her memory by her friend Caroline Kirkland appeared in The Chicago Tribune. "To conquer death, to chase its shadows away by the radiance of your personality, is a notable achievement. No one who ever knew Mrs. Hobart Chatfield-Taylor (beautiful Rose Farwell Taylor) will ever think of her as anything but alive, young, gay, serene, unfailingly gentle and kindly in her attitude toward every one. "Imperishable youth and beauty is an enviable portion. It takes a stoic to face old age, a philosopher to endure it, and a saint to pass successfully through it to the only gate leading out of it. Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor had all these qualifications, but she was fortunate in not having to draw upon them, and to remain for her contemporaries a vision of all that is desirable in and for a woman." . 1 / r.v . (j IKI t fit' III- 1 "uy /or, My Chicago 143 Mrs. Taylor died on April 5th, after a brief illness of one week. The following tribute to her memory by her friend Caroline Kirkland appeared in The Chicago Tribune. "To conquer death, to chase its shadows away by the radiance of your personality, is a notable achievement. No one who ever knew Mrs. Hobart Chatfield-Taylor (beautiful Rose Farwell. Taylor) will ever think of her as anything but alive, young, gay, serene, unfailingly gentle and kindly in her attitude toward every one. "Imperishable youth and beauty is an enviable portion. It takes a stoic to face old age, a philosopher to endure it, and a saint to pass successfully through it to the only gate leading out of it. Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor had all these qualifications, but she was fortunate in not having to draw upon them, and to remain for her contemporaries a vision of all that is desirable in and for a woman." 144 My 1 Chicago Mrs. Potter Palmer was a daughter of H. H. Honore and H. H. Honore was a man of gentle blood, descended from an old French family of high degree. Immediately after the civil war Mr. Honore began to climb into fortune and prominence through his share in rebuilding the city. This fortune proved a mutable quantity, but he formed associations with several men of less imagination and greater tenacity, and through these associations he and his children first assumed, then by sheer merit retained leadership in such social life as the town could show. Bertha Honore married Potter Palmer. Potter Palmer possessed many splendid traits, and exceptional force of character. The great fire had totally ruined him. Its ashes were not cold before he had begun again to build up riches for himself. He was one of the few Chicago men who never bothered with politics, nor fussed with public affairs, yet whose names are in the mouth or mem- ories of all their countrymen. Mrs. Potter Palmer had a genius for great enterprises that matched her husband's; and she had graces of manner and a charm of mind that went a long way, by complementing them, to make their joint powers complete and effectual. Mrs. Palmer had foresight, clear vision and with her husband her counsel was potent. Far in advance of its present development she saw the future of the great north division of the city, and in this glimpse of futurity lay the tremendous and permanent increase of the Palmer fortune. She was a beautiful woman, with the calm air and gracious bearing of a Marquise of old France. I never can forget the fascination that looked out from the splendid full length portrait of her painted by Healy in the eighteen seventies. Supremacy in every thing she touched seemed to come to her unasked. She was more than a local figure, she was known everywhere and every- where admired. In Europe she came nearer to being accepted on equal terms in patrician circles, than any . Potter Palmer. 144 My 1 Chicago Mrs. Potter Palmer was a daughter of H. H. Honore and H. H. Honore was a man of gentle blood, descended from an old French family of high degree. Immediately after the civil war Mr. Honore began to climb into fortune and prominence through his share in rebuilding the city. This fortune proved a mutable quantity, but he formed associations with several men of less imagination and greater tenacity, and through these associations he and his children first assumed, then by sheer merit retained leadership in such social life as the town could show. Bertha Honore married Potter Palmer. Potter Palmer possessed many splendid traits, and exceptional force of character. The great fire had totally ruined him. Its ashes were not cold before he had begun again to build up riches for himself. He was one of the few Chicago men who never bothered with politics, nor fussed with public affairs, yet whose names are in the mouth or mem- ories of all their countrymen. Mrs. Potter Palmer had a genius for great enterprises that matched her husband's; and she had graces of manner and a charm of mind that went a long way, by complementing them, to make their joint powers complete and effectual. Mrs. Palmer had foresight, clear vision and with her husband her counsel was potent. Far in advance of its present development she saw the future of the great north division of the city, and in this glimpse of futurity lay the tremendous and permanent increase of the Palmer fortune. She was a beautiful woman, with the calm air and gracious bearing of a Marquise of old France. I never can forget the fascination that looked out from the splendid full length portrait of her painted by Healy in the eighteen seventies. Supremacy in every thing she touched seemed to come to her unasked. She was more than a local figure, she was known everywhere and every- where admired. In Europe she came nearer to being accepted on equal terms in patrician circles, than any I Mrs. Potter Palmer. - . LI OF THE Of ILLINOIS My Chicago 145 other Chicago woman. Had she chosen to remain abroad, she might have been a figure in the old capitals. Her sister Ida married General Grant's son Frederick, and his sister Nellie married Captain Algernon Sartoris, a member of one of the old county families of England. Ida Grant's daughter Julia mar ried Prince Cantacuzene. These marriages were not made by contrivance nor in pursuit of any ambition to climb. They gave Mrs. Palmer, as a matter of course, entrance to the best houses in the old country. But after Potter Palmer's death the care of a great estate, and her sincere love for her own country and her own city, brought her home for a part of every year; and finally, to remain. She was completing a fine estate in Florida when she was called away on May 5, 1918, just a month to a day after Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor died. Mrs. Palmer's distinction was, that of all the women of Chicago who were widely known elsewhere, she was the only one who in a commanding way concerned herself with social life. When she died, something large, some- thing eminent and worthy went out, and left vacant a place that has not yet been filled and is not likely to be for a long time. Another grand dame may come, but never another whose life had been so closely knit into the life of her city, during a period so significant. In the course of an appreciative story of Mrs. Palmer's life The Evening Post of New York says: "Her reign synchronized with the career of another Chicago woman, unlike her in everything but prominence. What the 'first lady' was to an undefined realm that included social functions on the one hand and the presidency of the board of lady managers of the Columbian exposition on the other, Frances E. Willard was to a very definite move- ment of which we are just now seeing the final strokes. It is doubtful if any other of our cities can boast in their history of three women contemporaries, so diverse, so 146 My Chicago widely known, so influential, as Mrs. Palmer, Miss Wil- lard and Jane Addams. "The customary sneer at the cultural pretensions, or indifference, of the city by the lake fades on the lips at the picture of this unique group. Each fitted into the niche that she made for herself. Each commanded the respect, not only of her numerous entourage, using the word in a rather wide sense, but also of the general public. Each achieved a triumph sometimes thought to be difficult, the triumph of being a lady and a woman at the same time. In their various ways they have left their impress upon their age, an impress not exceeded by that of any politician or captain or industry of their era and locale." There needs no herald to proclaim the sturdy labors of Miss Addams, nor the high intent with which they were and are being performed. The name of Miss Addams and the fame of her exploits are borne abroad upon the winds of all the world. Later time will do a fuller justice, concede a higher merit to her career, than could be expected from her contemporaries. She stands within the meaning of the axiom that perspective is necessary to define the relativity of greatness. In the beginning of these records I referred briefly to the talents of my sisters Ida and Marian, both of whom have contributed much to artistic endeavor and to the higher things of life. Both have benefited not only by instruction from American teachers of note in various branches of art but those of London, Paris, Berlin and Munich. Marian (Mrs. Walter Everett Carr) among other things did creditable portrait work especially under the instruction of William T. Dannat in Paris. Since her marriage she has not worked professionally although had she chosen to do so she might have taken a place among the best of our artists. , . Marian Morgan Carr. 146 My Chicago widely known, so influential, as Mrs. Palmer, Miss Wil- lard and Jane Addams. "The customary sneer at the cultural pretensions, or indifference, of the city by the lake fades on the lips at the picture of this unique group. Each fitted into the niche that she made for herself. Each commanded the respect, not only of her numerous entourage, using the word in a rather wide sense, but also of the general public. Each achieved a triumph sometimes thought to be difficult, the triumph of being a lady and a woman at the same time. In their various ways they have left their impress upon their age, an impress not exceeded by that of any politician or captain of industry of their era and locale." There needs no herald to proclaim the sturdy labors of Miss Addams, nor the high intent with which they were and are being performed. The name of Miss Addams and the fame of her exploits are borne abroad upon the winds of all the world. Later time will do a fuller justice, concede a higher merit to her career, than could be expected from her contemporaries. She stands within the meaning of the axiom that perspective is necessary to define the relativity of greatness. In the beginning of these records I referred briefly to the talents of my sisters Ida and Marian, both of whom have contributed much to artistic endeavor and to the higher things of life. Both have benefited not only by instruction from American teachers of note in various branches of art but those of London, Paris, Berlin and Munich. Marian (Mrs. Walter Everett Carr) among other things did creditable portrait work especially under the instruction of William T. Dannat in Paris. Since her marriage she has not worked professionally although had she chosen to do so she might have taken a place among the best of our artists. I Marian Morgan Carr. LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS Lib.. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS \ Ida Morgan Palmer. My Chicago 147 Ida Morgan Palmer continued her artistic endeavors with intervals of interruption up to the time of her death in 1916. The last years of her life were chiefly devoted to artistic photographic portraiture in which art she excelled. When William B. Dyer left Chicago he chose Mrs. Palmer to continue the work in his Studios in the Fine Arts Building, which she did until failing health caused her retirement. However much she gave to the beauty of life in material things she contributed more to the spiritual side and found her highest joy in intercourse with her family and her friends. She was actuated in everything she did by a desire to contribute to the comfort and happiness of others and one rarely came in contact with her without being benefited in some way as hundreds of letters testified at the time of her going away. She left her sisters and her numerous friends a rich legacy of devoted ministration and love. Chapter Nineteen )OHN T. McCUTCHEON has excelled his own writings with his cartoons, yet his writ- ings, taken by themselves, would have made a distinguished place for him. He is one of the newspaper cartoon makers whose cartoons are quick and penetrating editorials. His fer- tility is amazing, his power of satire, his depth of feeling, his broad sympathy, are without equal in that field. Take three pictures for example; the complete expression of world sorrow when the great pope died a picture of the world itself draped with a mourning band, not a word added; the expression of puzzled surprise when for the first time Missouri went Republican all the southern states lined up and trying to identify "The Mnrnn I'tilnni . My Chicago 147 Ida Morgan Palmer continued her artistic endeavors with intervals of interruption up to the time of her death in 1916. The last years of her life were chiefly devoted to artistic photographic portraiture in which art she excelled. When William B. Dyer left Chicago he chose Mrs. Palmer to continue the work in his Studios in the Fine Arts Building, which she did until failing health caused her retirement. However much she gave to the beauty of life in material things she contributed more to the spiritual side and found her highest joy in intercourse with her family and her friends. She was actuated in everything she did by a desire to contribute to the comfort and happiness of others and one rarely came in contact with her without being benefited in some way as hundreds of letters testified at the time of her going away. She left her sisters and her numerous friends a rich legacy of devoted ministration and love. Chapter Nineteen )OHN T. McCUTCHEON has excelled his own writings with his cartoons, yet his writ- ings, taken by themselves, would have made a distinguished place for him. He is one of the newspaper cartoon makers whose cartoons are quick and penetrating editorials. His fer- tility is amazing, his power of satire, his depth of feeling, his broad sympathy, are without equal in that field. Take three pictures for example; the complete expression of world sorrow when the great pope died a picture of the world itself draped with a mourning band, not a word added; the expression of puzzled surprise when for the first time Missouri went Republican all the southern states lined up and trying to identify "The 148 My Chicago Mysterious Stranger" who had joined them; and the tremendous appeal to the United States for haste, in the picture of France and England with their shoulders against the door the German Emperor was trying to push open. This last appeared in the Chicago Tribune late in April 1918, when the German drive that had begun in March was so dangerously near to wearing down the French and British lines between Amiens and Ypres. McCutcheon is a world figure. During the war he has become one of the biggest men in Chicago, the one whose daily effort has counted more for righteousness than the work of any dozen others. He is so big that to say this does not in any degree belittle any one else. Bert Leston Taylor might and does thread his way through the throngs of the busiest streets in the loop, brushing and being brushed by the multitudinous rank scented many, unnoticed, unknowing and unknown a mild looking man, a little (at least a very little) past middle life. The sort of man you see in prosperous commercial affairs, responding to no idea of literary type. In that regard he is very like other newspaper people, who in turn are very like all other people, provided the other people are decent. Yet his name is known wherever English is spoken, or at any rate his initials are: "B. L. T." Inside himself and to himself he is an inclusive, initiatory and final authority in the science of golf. In the world he is one of the cleverest if not the most clever of all those men who are known as column conductors, the men who write in short para- graphs those things which give sharp illumination to passing events. He has a strange gift of satire. His column on the editorial page of The Chicago Tribune is quoted more widely than any other column of its kind. A good many of his admirers wonder how on earth he does continue to keep it up from day to day without deterioration. The answer is easy. He is a shrewd t John T. McCutcheon. 148 My Chicago Mysterious Stranger" who had joined them; and the tremendous appeal to the United States for haste, in the picture of France and England with their shoulders against the door the German Emperor was trying to push open. This last appeared in the Chicago Tribune late in April 1918, when the German drive that had begun in March was so dangerously near to wearing down the French and British lines between Amiens and Ypres. McCutcheon is a world figure. During the war he has become one of the biggest men in Chicago, the one whose daily effort has counted more for righteousness than the work of any dozen others. He is so big that to say this does not in any degree belittle any one else. Bert Leston Taylor might and does thread his way through the throngs of the busiest streets in the loop, brushing and being brushed by the multitudinous rank scented many, unnoticed, unknowing and unknown a mild looking man, a little (at least a very little) past middle life. The sort of man you see in prosperous commercial affairs, responding to no idea of literary type. In that regard he is very like other newspaper people, who in turn are very like all other people, provided the other people are decent. Yet his name is known wherever English is spoken, or at any rate his initials are: "B. L. T." Inside himself and to himself he is an inclusive, initiatory and final authority in the science of golf. In the world he is one of the cleverest if not the most clever of all those men who are known as column conductors, the men who write in short para- graphs those things which give sharp illumination to passing events. He has a strange gift of satire. His column on the editorial page of The Chicago Tribune is quoted more widely than any other column of its kind. A good many of his admirers wonder how on earth he does continue to keep it up from day to day without deterioration. The answer is easy. He is a shrewd T. McCutchenn. LI Or THE illt OF ILLINOIS My Chicago 149 editor. By inviting contributions, and by setting up a sort of competition among contributors in an effort to "make the line," and by their natural growth in numbers, he is in receipt of daily mail enough to fill a half dozen of such columns. That is to say, he long ago devised a scheme by which a great many outsiders went to work for him. He has thus reduced his labor to the pleasant task of sorting his correspondence, picking out the best ideas, scrapping all the rest, and writing enough of his own stuff to let the whole tribe of them know who is boss. I do not state it as a fact of my own knowledge, but I have been told by newspaper friends that Eugene Field was the first to set up this Tom Sawyer system, but B. L. T. is certainly the first to have put it into full operation, and he has no rival. Robert B. Peattie has worked in the Chicago Tribune office with B. L. T. these many years; and being himself of a somewhat caustic though a kindly mind has had his little tiffs and turns with that illustrious colleague. Bob, as he is known by all who care for him and for whom he cares, began his newspaper career in the late eighteen seventies on the Chicago Times, which then was the greatest newspaper published between Sandy Hook and San Francisco. Later on he was on the News with his close friend Eugene Field. In the early eighteen eighties he had a call to a better salary in Omaha where, for eight years, he was editor of the Omaha World-Herald. He returned to Chicago to follow various newspaper occu- pations which were subseqently extended to New York, though Chicago has remained his home, and here his family has grown up. Before he went to Omaha he was married to Miss Elia Wilkinson with whom he had been in love ever since their first meeting in Judge Kohlsaat's Sunday School on the West Side when they were little more than children. From the beginning Robert was watchful of her tendencies in thought, her girlish ambi- 150 My Chicago tions, her taste in all things, and began a practice he has kept up ever since, of listening and suggesting, of bring- ing her books and all that. They complimented each other in mentality, character and sympathies, and were in perfect understanding a rare thing under the sun. Mrs. Peattie has become one of the foremost American reviewers. It is a near axiom that excellence in criticism, that is in analysis, shuts out its possessor from the creative power. Mrs. Peattie offers a contra- diction to that opinion. If she had not taken upon her- self the onerous duties of a book reviewer for one of the leading newspapers in all the English speaking world, there is no guessing how far she might have gone as a writer of splendid fiction; she has the gift of imagination, she has knowledge acquired partly by experience and observation, partly intuitive that gave her stories a singular quality of truth. Perhaps her most important book is "The Precipice," published by Houghton Mifflin and Co. and which has many qualities of per- manent value. It is to be regretted that she has not been able to give more of herself to sustained narrative. She has sat at a work bench, so to speak, turning out stuff for the passing hour, while others, men and women of vastly less endowment, have gone afield and found renown and fortune in more free and wider forms of expression. But if she has not attained to full measure in her literary endeavors it has been compensated for in the fullness of life which she has enjoyed in other avenues, the joy which she has experienced in coming in contact with the many and varied types of people whom she has met in the course of many lectures which she has given, and of the many lasting friendships formed. She has been the recipient of hundreds of letters and gifts from many whom she has never met not only from the higher planes of society but from the poor, the needy and the unpopular. These things have given her the My Chicago 151 s realization of the highest living to which she chiefly aspires and in which she finds the richest rewards. A unique experience in Mrs. Peattie's literary career was a practical joke which she perpetrated on Margaret Anderson of The Little Review. Under the pseudonym of Sade Iverson she sent to the magazine several Imagist poems, chief of which was called "The Little Milliner." Miss Anderson was completely mystified; she ascribed the writing of them to Amy Lowell, Mary Aldis, and other Imagist writers. I had the fun of divulging the secret to an audience to whom I was then presenting a list of Imagist writers. The information created much surprise and amusement. In personal consideration I hold Elia Peattie and her husband Robert in warm affection. Their life together, in their home and their family were all that a home and family could be. I am sorry to have to employ the past tense there, but their children have grown up. Ned the eldest son is in business in New York, Rod is serving his country in France, and Don the youngest is engaged in literary work. Their daughter Bab (a bril- v liant and lovable girl) has passed to a better place than this, and the call of new duties to the public has drawn Robert and Elia to New York. In the line of fictional literature, the one Chicago woman Who has made a distinct impression on the mind of the nation is Edna Ferber. It was Miss Ferber's good fortune, a gift maybe from one of those fairy god- mothers about whom we used to hear so much, to be \ born with a very kindly nature, and to have developed V a habit of observation. Very little goes by without her having seen it, and back of whatever she sees she finds a reason. It is this combination of sympathy and under- standing that has enabled her to tell true stories of con- temporaneous life, especially that part of it which is concerned with commercial pursuits. Miss Ferber is a i $2 My Chicago Michigan girl. By some trend of happenings of which I am unaware she found herself at Appleton, Wisconsin, a reporter on The Daily Crescent of that town. After- ward she was on the Milwaukee Journal, an evening paper, and from the Journal she came to Chicago and took a place on The Tribune. Miss Ferber's mother was a business woman, and from her experience Miss Ferber drew a good groundwork of knowledge of com- mercial things. Her newspaper employment gave her the best sort of opportunity for widening that knowl- edge. The result was a series of short stories that came slowly at first, but found a ready market in eastern magazines. A number of these stories were brought together in book form and so became permanent addi- tions to the great American Library. Everybody recalls the McChesney stories, a running account of the experi- ences of Emma McChesney, a travelling saleswoman, that had the merit of a new point of view and disclosed a new line of character. Other writers in these later days made haste to grab the idea, with the result that current ephemeral fiction sparkles all over with Emma McChesneys, most of whom are Jewish ladies, but none of whom are quite as much alive as the original. Then there were "Dawn O'Hara," "Buttered Side Down," "Roast Beef Medium," ''The Man Who Came Back," ' and a whole series of character studies, delightfully carried out. Miss Ferber is a busy woman now as always. Her latest book, "Sally Herself," was pub- lished in 1917. I congratulate myself upon her being my friend. Her face is one of the many that was always welcome to my Studios, even as her social qualities and the charm of her mentality fit so well with the others time has so graciously brought around me. Miss Ferber's name suggests another, not by any reason of personal association, but because the owner of the other one is also a Chicago woman, a copious My Chicago 153 writer of descriptive narrative, I mean Maude Radford Warren. Mrs. Warren refutes the idea that an academic education and instructorship are handicaps to a popular writer. She has won two degrees from the Uni- versity of Chicago and has been associated with it both as an instructor of English and as one of those un- seen guides of the university extension course. Mrs. Warren's fiction is touched with satire and reveals her predeliction for the repertorial method. She may indeed be best described as a sublimated reporter, and in the pursuit of her work and as a representative of a number of the liveliest periodicals of the country, she has visited many of the out-of-the-way places as well as scenes where news is thickest. She has been to France and England several times during the process of the war and is now there engaged both in canteen work and in writing. The title and chevrons of an honorary cor- poral has been given Mrs. Warren recently for her serv- ices at the front. Madeline Yale Wynne though she came to Chicago from the east, made herself very much a part of us all. AS has been stated elsewhere her curious psychological title "The Little Room," the story of a room which was sometimes invisible and sometimes visible gave the name to The Little Room that intimate and inimitable group of artistic workers which not long ago celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in Ralph Clarkson's Studio. Mrs. Wynne had a bewitching personality, and hardly needed her skill as a writer, a worker in the fine metals, a painter and mural decorator, a violinist and general artisan, to recommend her. She was a great encourager of others and liked persons of many sorts and dwellers in many lands, she held old age at bay with a bright gallantry and went out of view with inevitable swiftness, leaving behind her the feeling that in her death as in her life, she was victorious over circumstances. 1 54 My Chicago At this point I find myself somewhat in the position of Longfellow toward the end of his protracted con- templation of that bridge: "I see the long procession still passing to and fro." Such a swarm of names has entered into and passed out of my field of view, that to enumerate or describe them here would stretch this book out to the crack of the printer's patience. Please remember, this is not a history of Chicago nor a descrip- tive human catalogue. I am trying to let you know ( something about the men and women whom I know or have known, who have done things sufficiently good and sufficiently high to give them places among the most I significant influences in the development of the arts ; and of literature in this part of the world; and especially those with whom my own work has brought me in touch. But I cannot close this part of my story without paying tribute to the admirable and forceful patriotism of Mrs. Jacob Baur, sometimes my pupil and associate, always my cherished friend. Next after her warm and generous qualities of heart and mind comes her extraordinary executive ability! her power of organization, her way of grasping the essentials of any undertaking and deal- ing with them unerringly, while she sees to it that details are in competent hands. I think her strength might be described as lying in the power of coordination. She has given many an illustration of this power in very large affairs, some civic, some governmental, some social. But to my mind she never did anything better nor with more success than her part in floating the vast internal loans to the government for the purposes of war. To tell how she did this war work, what a prodigious work it was, and yet with what ease she seemed to get through with it, would fill a book. And I am sure it would be a very good book, which certainly would be interest- ing and informative. In my humble opinion the town does not yet, nor may not until time provides a per- Mm. Jacob Knur. ij54 My Chicago At this point I find myself somewhat in the position of Longfellow toward the end of his protracted con- templation of that bridge: "I see the long procession still passing to and fro." Such a swarm of names has entered into and passed out of my field of view, that to enumerate or describe? them here would stretch this book out to the crack of the printer's patience. Please remember, this is not a history of Chicago nor a descrip- tive human catalogue. I am trying to let you know something about the men and women whom I know or have known, who have done things sufficiently good and sufficiently high to give them places among the most significant influences in the development of the arts and of literature in this part of the world; and especially those with whom my own work has brought me in touch. But I cannot close this part of my story without paying tribute to the admirable and forceful patriotism of Mrs. Jacob Baur, sometimes my pupil and associate, always my cherished friend. Next after her warm and generous qualities of heart and mind comes her extraordinary executive ability, her power of organization, her way of grasping the essentials of any undertaking and deal- ing with them unerringly, while she sees to it that details are in competent hands. I think her strength might be described as lying in the power of coordination. She has given many an illustration of this power in very large affairs, some civic, some governmental, some social. But to my mind she never did anything better nor with more success than her part in floating the vast internal loans to the government for the purposes of war. To tell how she did this war work, what a prodigious work it was, and yet with what ease she seemed to get through with it, would fill a book. And I am sure it would be a very good book, which certainly would be interest- ing and informative. In my humble opinion the town does not yet, nor may not until time provides a per- f I/' A. Jacob Hfiur. Jessie Harding. My Chicago 155 spective, realize either the value or the splendor of Mrs. Baur's service, freely given to our nation. This exalta- tion of Mrs. Baur has not been written with any lack of appreciation of the splendid work done by other women along similar lines. The same patriotic zeal manifested in Mrs. Baur may be justly accredited to Miss Jessie Harding, who in a different field and in another way has demonstrated her love of country and her loyalty to its cause. Among her activities has been the reading of "The Man With- out a Country" to over two hundred audiences, with musical accompaniment arranged by Mrs. Annette R. Jones and played by Miss Priscilla Carver. Miss Hard- ing has been associated with me since 1898, first as pupil then as assistant and associate teacher. Of the thousands of students who have come to me for instruction Miss Harding stands pre-eminently the best instructor of the speaking voice among them all. Quiet and unobtrusive in speech and manner, she carries with her a poise and a gentle authority as refreshing as it is effective in char- acter building. To her I owe a debt of gratitude which can neither be measured nor recompensed. Chapter Twenty ARRIET MONROE is the high priestess of a cult that has the incomparable virtue of taking itself seriously. In the early nineties Miss Monroe was for three or four years a member of my staff of teachers. At that time Ibsen was at the height of general discussion. Bernard Shaw had just begun to excite the human race by stinging it incessantly. Percy Mackaye was promoting himself as the son of his father. Stephen Phillips had Jr ssr My Chicago 155 spective, realize either the value or the splendor of Mrs. Baur's service, freely given to our nation. This exalta- tion of Mrs. Baur has not been written with any lack of appreciation of the splendid work done by other women along similar lines. The same patriotic zeal manifested in Mrs. Baur may be justly accredited to Miss Jessie Harding, who in a different field and in another way has demonstrated her love of country and her loyalty to its cause. Among her activities has been the reading of "The Man With- out a Country" to over two hundred audiences, with musical accompaniment arranged by Mrs. Annette R. Jones and played by Miss Priscilla Carver. Miss Hard- ing has been associated with me since 1898, first as pupil then as assistant and associate teacher. Of the thousands of students who have come to me for instruction Miss Harding stands pre-eminently the best instructor of the speaking voice among them all. Quiet and unobtrusive in speech and manner, she carries with her a poise and a gentle authority as refreshing as it is effective in char- acter building. To her I owe a debt of gratitude which can neither be measured nor recompensed. Chapter Twenty ARRIET MONROE is the high priestess of a cult that has the incomparable virtue of taking itself seriously. In the early nineties Miss Monroe was for three or four years a member of my staff of teachers. At that time Ibsen was at the height of general discussion. Bernard Shaw had just begun to excite the human race by stinging it incessantly. Percy Mackaye was promoting himself as the son of his father. Stephen Phillips had * 1 56 My Chicago burgeoned forth with : "Herod," and brief notes of rebellion against the established form of poetry and the other arts were making themselves heard, though as afar. Miss Monroe was predisposed to recusance in them, but her knowledge of English literature and of all the more eccentric poets qualified her as a talker on those subjects, and I engaged her to deliver a lecture to my pupils once a week. Toward the end of that term the notes of rebellion above referred to had drawn quite near; in fact, the rebellion had broken out. Miss Mon- roe evolved the idea of a, magazine which should give printed utterance to its wails and its mutterings. She had no difficulty in securing the necessary financial back- ing, and her magazine became an actuality. It has been going on ever since. Its name is "Poetry, A Magazine of Verse," and its annual subscription price is two dollars. It is the recognized organ or arbiter of that widespread movement against conventional forms; the conservative / consider the animating principle to be "Whatever becomes ( Intelligible ceases to be Art." At any rate, its career has been a noble and consistent advocacy of the purpose behind those words. With few exceptions Poetry has received such recognition abroad as few American publi- cations can boast of. To Miss Monroe and her magazine must be ac- credited the discovery of Tagore and Vachel Lindsay. Mr. Lindsay's "General Booth Enters Heaven" first appeared in Poetry Magazine, and made a stunning and well-deserved impression. It would be stretching defini- tion too far to call it a poem; but it certainly was and is what the judicious outside the inner circle would call "big stuff." It had a pounding ring, a panoply, a sustained sonority that its author has not followed up in any of his later attempts. The discovery of Lindsay gave the magazine fresh impetus. Another such impulse might have been given it if William Marion Reedy had not beaten Miss Monroe My Chicago 157 to Edgar Lee Masters' "Anthology of Spoon River." But she has had other contributions from Mr. Masters, as well as from Amy Lowell, Charles G. Blanden (John Rhudlau) and a long line of less renowned though equally incoherent fabricators of verse free, whorl, inconvertible, and of many or of any other formless style that may lack reason, but must lack rhyme. Wil- liam Butler Yeats and Ezra Pound have also contributed. It is possible that the rebellion touched its highest point in Mr. Pound's invention of verse that reads just as well from the bottom up as it does from the top down. As a curiosity of literature so called, Poetry is inval- uable to those who have been accustomed to the staid and formal institutions with which our forefathers were content, knowing no better. Its wake is wrinkled with smiles, and these would be succeeded by sad lappings should its voyage end in foundering. The memory of Miss Monroe even in case of that catastrophe would outlive the memory of the magazine, because in her earlier life she wrote things that have their place in modern literature a volume of poems which contains her "Ode to Shelly." Her "Ode to Columbia," celebrating the opening of the World's Columbian Exposition, stands out prominently as a fea- ture in any retrospect of that great day and that great show. It is found in the anthologies, and deserves a place there. Critics of sound judgment accepted it with full approbation as falling within the best rules, and embodying with dignity and yet with fervor the spirit and significance of the occasion that evoked it. Alice Corbin Henderson has been a most efficient co-editor with Miss Monroe from the earliest days of Poetry Magazine. Mrs. Henderson has written many poems but she will be more readily identified as author of the prose comment, critical and otherwise in that publica- tion. She has a good style in writing and must be 1 58 My Chicago complimented for consectivity in her treatment of any subject she takes up. She has been a frequent contributor to other periodicals. A few years ago Mrs. Henderson wrote "Adam's Dream" and two other mystery plays for children which were published by Scribner. Eunice Tietjens has also been an associate editor with Miss Monroe. Not very long ago Ralph Fletcher Sey- mour brought out a little book of poems by Mrs. Tietjens, called "Profiles from China," a piece of work good enough to move Llewellyn Jones to call it, "a serious and penetrating study, true both to the inexplicable beauty and the magic desolation of all human life." And William Marion Reedy (of Reedy's Mirror, St. Louis) read it through and made this pertinent com- ment: "She makes you hate the east." Mrs. Tietjens has been a frequent contributor to Poetry and other publications. Henry B. Fuller came unheralded into public notice with the appearance of his book, "The Chevalier of Pensieri-Vani," which won immediate recognition and placed him as the best stylist not only among our Chi- cago writers, but one of the few choice writers of Eng- lish. His naturally retiring disposition had made him almost as much of a stranger as though he had not been born in Chicago, and there was so much of a cosmopoli- tan flavor in his writing that the east was loath to believe that he could be accredited to a city chiefly noted for its sky-scrapers and its packing interests, and with this single credential command recognition as a writer of genuine literature. This claim he has confirmed in "The Chatelaine of La Trinite," "The Cliff Dwellers," "With the Procession," "The Puppet Booth," "From the Other Side," "The Last Refuge," "Under the Skylight," "Waldo Trench," "Lines Long and Short," "On the Stairs," and "Bertram Cope." ' 4 My Chicago 159 Mr. Fuller's friends and critics have accused him of being severe and perhaps unfair in his expressed reflec- tions upon the crudity of our city in its evolutionary development. We will at least credit him with being sincere in his recorded impressions. I once read a book by Harold Frederic in which occurred a character described as a cross between a hermit and a canon regular. Sometimes in considering this friend of mine the description seems to me to fit him, save for the ecclesiastical limitation employed. And even that might be allowed, for if he is distinguished by any one trait more than another, that trait would be a lofty and contemplative purity of mind. Hermit he is, as nearly as anyone could be whose lot in life has fallen in noisy places. Those who know him super- ficially might think him more critical than sympathetic, and in their thoughts confer upon him the character of one who shrinks within himself. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Those friends he has and their adoption tried find him sweet as summer. He may be anomalous, for he is of the world, yet not in it. His genius is creative. He has no need to search the gates and alleys of life in order that he may know who and what they are that go about the world so busily, -yet in themselves mean so little. His thought and his work are placed upon a level high above the throng. His percep- tions have to do with essentials, and his manner of expressing them is perfect. There is no writer extant whose understanding of the human spirit and the human character is more sympathetic or more true. His knowl- edge of character is so wide that it includes the saving element of humor; but his artistry withholds him from the overuse of that element. His way of life is modest, almost seclusive, quiet. Popularity and the social muni- ments that inhere in it are repellant to his nature. I doubt whether there is anyone who lives more strictly - ' > 160 My Chicago the intellectual life. His joy is in his work, and his works are in the world to stay. William Vaughn Moody, who was called away all too soon, left behind him a body of work the value of which is recognized everywhere. His abilities were various. He is becoming recognized in those more cos- mopolitan European centers where Arts and Letters are more definitely appreciated, as the most important modern poet in America. The public knew him best by his plays "The Great Divide" and "The Faith Healer." But he wrote a great deal of verse, and one piece that is already in the Anthologies and is likely to stay The Fire-Bringer. Who knows what splendid possibilities were blotted out when he was called across the Great Divide. When I first came to Chicago Mrs. Amelia Gere Mason held high place among the writers living here. It is a happy thing to be able to say that now, after a considerable number of yesterdays, the beauty of her thought and the grace of its expression still command admiring attention. Her writings, especially her books on the Women of the French Salon, the Women of the Golden Age, are human documents, wisely informative, and are valuable contributions to a fine form of literature. To me they might be symbolized by a broadly cut cameo, well balanced in design and exquisitely finished. It has been my good fortune to meet Mrs. Mason many times a year at the meetings in the Little Room. Per- haps I may convey to others the best and most fitting impression if I say that to me she typifies the aristocrat as our best traditions preserve that type. My Chicago 161 Chapter Twenty-one is just as well that the multitudinous person- ality known as the man in the street is not always aware of those with whom he brushes elbows. If he were his complacency would be disturbed and his comfort forgotten many times a day. This thought was brought home only the other day when I saw men and boys and a few women who in the nature of things must have had occupation of one kind or another, streaming in a great flock, first across the street, then down the street, then gathering in and milling around before the door of an hotel, then flocking off again down the street, then around a cor- ner, all the time being joined by other men and boys and wqmen, and all of them jostling and looking in the same direction. A little, a very little in advance, walked a heavily built fellow with his hat off. Inquiry disclosed the reason for all this. The hatless one was William S. Hart. The man in the street had suddenly discovered that he had brushed elbows with the man of the screen. Now, there are many men and some women here of -locarfjfatipnal, even international renown (more or less), all; jof w?&>m stand for more substantial things than any film s<%t could ever hope for, since the film star's best performance is only a shadow, having but two dimensions, and totally lacking the spirit of life that can flow into expression only by the use of words; whereas the others, having unparaded faces, but brain enough to serve superior minds in uttering things worth while (more or less), rub elbows freely every day with the multitudinous many, who in all liklihood never had a thought worth 1 62 My Chicago while, and whose vocabulary in average would not exceed eight hundred words. Edgar Lee Masters lives in Chicago and makes his honest living in the practice of law. To save your life you could not tell, to look at him, that he made his living or lived his life in any way essentially different from the way of the man in the street. Yet Edgar Lee Mas- ters, stepping over the stile of his own field, has roamed abroad over the sweet plains of poesy, culling nothing, but planting much. It is true that none of his planting has had time to burgeon, even to flower in full, so that nooody as yet can tell what it is really, or is going to be. Thus an active curiosity has buzzed his name into the winds that gently ventilate inquiring minds; and thus his poesy has been much circulated and is much discussed. The one certainty attached to Mr. Masters and his output is that he wrote "The Anthology of Spoon River" and that "The Anthology of Spoon River" is long. In say- ing all this I am stating a general view. In my own opinion "Spoon River," taken either in its entirety or by isolated details, is a remarkable production, first for its general plan, next for its power to impress; and finally for the mere humanity, the pure poetic feeling and expression that animate some of its parts. It might be described as a village Iliad, so true that with a change in nomenclature might have been the anthology of a village anywhere. That is to say, it has one trait that appears in all the great poems or all time, so far as we know the history of poetry the trait of universality. No trait is higher nor any so rare. Mr. Masters has written many other poems, but in "Spoon River" he may be credited with having touched the level of Oliver Gold- smith's "Deserted Village," though in form and style it is larger, more diffuse, and lacks the sustained beauty of that sweetly, wistfully memorable revery. I am happy in saying that the circle of my friendships My Chicago 163 include not only Mr. Masters but many another of those who live here and who have distinguished themselves in letters. Take for example Hamlin Garland, who is widely recognized as a writer of histories of emigrant and pioneer life, filled with local color. He began his literary career in Boston, where he published "Main Traveled Roads." This story of frontier life in Wis- consin best illustrates Mr. Garland as a chronicler of desolate life on the prairie and as a sympathetic delin- eator of primitive types. In his next volume, entitled "Crumbling Idols" he demolished Shakespeare and all the other gods and Ikons, downing all established con- ventions. Having written himself out in that line he came into the fine atmosphere of the middle west with Chicago as a focus, where he married Zuleme Taft, the sister of his friend Lorado Taft, wore evening clothes (which up to that time he had stubbornly refused to do), and returned to his stories of the frontier. A few years ago he took up his residence in New York. His last book, "A Son of the Middle Border" published in 1917, is his autobiography. Mr. Garland has been made a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters. It is right and proper to state that Chicago is indebted to Mr. Garland for having founded The Cliff Dwellers, the leading organization for artistic men. One of the most popular forms of native fiction is that which concerns itself with the cattleman. And the cattleman of fiction is mythical; yet he persists and swaggers across the page and across the screen, pic- turesque and utterly untrue. Two writers, and only two, have given us the range and the cattleman with fidelity, Emerson Hough and Harry Leon Wilson. Wilson's work is openly fictitious; Hough's is historic, and for this reason it is the better. It preserves for these and later days a faithful record 164 My Chicago of a period that was at once prosaic and fruitful in romance. The best of Mr. Hough's writings have come within the last fifteen years. During those years the prairie provinces of Canada have been opened to occupation. In southern Saskatchewan and Alberta across the line from the old ranges of Montana the cattle interest became active, the life of our own early west was acted over again. Mr. Hough's personal knowledge of chang- ing conditions governing the life on the prairies from Mexico on the south to the Arctic circle on the north, is wider than that of any other man. This accounts for the straightforward and convincing quality of his stories. In none of them will you find the shop-wearing, whooping, six-gun creature who rollics, and roars and makes a nuisance of himself in the typical cowboy story; nor will you read any of the hyperbolic, weirdly meta- phoric language in which the cowboy is suffered to express himself. Mr. Hough is a man of the world and has a happy way of making his readers see what he himself sees. The list of his books is long. It includes several that deal with economics and with events that had a bearing on the development of North American history. If I were asked how to class him I would be at a loss for to me he constitutes a class of his own. He himself takes most seriously his historical fiction "The Mississippi Bubble," "54-40 or Fight," "The Mag- nificent Adventure." He believes (and acts upon this belief) that our history is as interesting and as rich in the dramatic, as that of any other country, in any other age. S. E. Kiser has a peculiar understanding of the modes of thought and living that prevail among the great majority of the people in the northern states. As I have said in another connection these people constitute the bulk of our solid body of common sense, especially in My Chicago 165 the states that are called the middle west, but should be called the north central. He loomed large and first in the Cleveland Leader about twenty years ago. The "Little Georgie" of his feature work in that paper was a perfect example of all that characterizes the growing boy whom all of us know so well. He was a shrewd little chap full of enterprise, some of it mischievous; and unconsciously keen in judging his elders. His suc- cess there brought him an offer from the Chicago Her- ald, and in that paper he became a national character. Mr. Kiser is a poet, almost kaleidoscopic in his manner of changing the lights, from the homely or grotesque to those that sometimes touch points almost sublime. He is the most kindly humorist that ever found expression through an American daily paper. To say that is not to derogate Eugene Field, because Gene, while usually kind, sometimes was vitriolic. Mr. Kiser has issued several books. One of them "Sonnets of An Office Boy," a col- lection of a series that appeared in the Herald had instant vogue and still is selling. Any man who ever had an office boy or ever had been one himself took to it with avidity, it was so true. I always have had an idea that he might have made a novelist, had fortune favored him with any leisure. Fortune never did. He is a hard working Journalist. His present engagement is with The Times of Dayton, Ohio. If ever he knew any one who did not become his friend I have yet to hear of it. He is not a rounder, but these many friends he has, find him companionable in all the best meanings of the word. Not because they have many resemblances in com- mon, but because their newspaper popularity coin- cided here in Chicago, Kiser and Wilbur D. Nesbit are thought of together. That is the name of one always suggests the name of the other. Nesbit's gifts were more definitely poetic in their direction than Riser's 1 66 My Chicago were. His tendency was toward satire, though his satire was adroit, not biting. He had a quick eye for character and perhaps was at his best in letting character display itself rather than by disclosing it. One of the funniest things he ever gave out was a recitation of "Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight" with parenthetic instructions for action and business accompanying the words. From time to time he has made collections of his verses in book form and they have sold remarkably well. Nesbit is peculiarly differentiated from the general run of writers, in that he has a strong instinct for things commercial. He has been paid more money for writing advertisements, than most poets can lay hands upon in a life time. A few years ago he abandoned literature as such for that more profitable field. He is at the head of a successful advertising house, I think President of the Advertisers Association. He recently contributed to the mass of war poems, "Your Flag and My Flag" which has sold by the million copies. It was my pleasure to have Frank H. Spearman and his son under my tutelage at one time. Mr. Spearman first came into public notice as a writer of railway stories. He familiarized himself with railway conditions as they affected the lives and distilled the characters of the men who actually operate railways. His studies of these men included all grades, from section hands up to general superintendents. His stories of railway operations and railway men are the most vivid and the truest ever pro- duced by any American writer. They brought him into international reputation. Among his books are "The Nerve of Foley" in 1900, "Held for Orders" in 1901, "Whispering Smith" in 1906, and "Nan of Music Moun- tain" in 1916. Wallace Rice is an unusual personality. He is aca- demic. He has read widely and germinated a set of My Chicago 167 opinions that he holds with firm rigidity. But he has two entirely human gifts; swift and withering retort, and a sense of humor that is both warm and deep. He is a Harvard man and was educated in the law, but he switched abruptly into newspaper work and became a first rate feature writer. While he was on the city staff of The Chicago Herald, there came along a certain Pro- fessor Garner who had spent some years in the wild parts of Africa getting acquainted with monkeys and satisfying himself that they had a language of their own. In exploi- tation of this discovery Professor Garner had elaborated a lecture and travelled through the country delivering it and being interviewed. The evening of his arrival in Chicago, one of the boys came back to the office about eleven o'clock and the man on the city desk asked him where in blazes he had been. "Been interviewing Professor Garner" said the reporter. "Who the blazes is he?" "He's the man who says monkeys can talk." Mildly inquired Wallace Rice, "Could he understand you?" I. K. Friedman was intended for the law, but found his medium of expression in sociological work, first in the newspapers, then in books, then back again into the news- papers in which he has devloped strength enough to make his return to the book field a matter of doubt. In the later eighteen hundreds and the earlier nineteen hundreds he issued three books of fictional narrative which com- manded immediate public attention and had a pretty good vogue during the time that covered things as he saw them, and the coming of other things that crowded those things out. Perhaps the best known of them was a collection of short stories with the title "The Lucky Number." Wil- liam Dean Howells was pleased to say it was the best 1 68 My Chicago first book by any new author he ever had read. The other two were "Poor People" and "By Bread Alone." Edith Wyatt has been abundant in ideas and is herself so sound a critic of her own work that she has put only her best into her books. Of all those writers whom I personally know, she comes nearest, in a combina- tion of charm, solidity, and what I might call the mas- culine quality of thought, to that other Edith, who lives in New England and inherited the name of Wharton. I can say this in an honest desire to convey an honest compliment not to institute a strict comparison. Robert Herrick belongs to the quadrangle group of the University of Chicago but has mixed with the resi- dents of the desolate plains which stretch away from those scholastic walls and support a race, a population, whose only commendation to any notice by the truly superior lies in the bald and indifferent fact of their being human, at least in part. Mr. Herrick has written several books descriptive of social life among these homuncules, which the creatures themselves have thank- fully read, yea, even 'they that dwell and subsist within the farther rims of those plains which they as aforesaid have inherited for a dwelling place. Some of these books have descended upon those that dwell in happier lands beyond the seas, who understood the words that he hafe written, and received them even as manna. "Let your light so shine that men shall see your good works and glorify," and so forth. At times he rises to heights far above these plains, and produces a masterpiece like his short and poignant story, "The Master of the Inn." Will Payne is a writer of contemporaneous life, finan- cial stories of deals in corporations. All his works are marked by a human and tender quality. I think it would be almost a derogation to call him a stylist, especially if the word were to be taken in its usual meaning. He is better than that. He is a man whose ideas are always My Chicago 169 good, always luminous, and whose manner of expression is limpid. No man writes better English. Henry Kitchell Webster is best known to me as one of The Little Room group, and I have to confess a slighter acquaintance with his books than with those of his im- mediate contemporaries and fellow members. But I am inclined to give his story of "The Great Adventure" a pretty high place and I know it has been accorded wide and warm approval by those whose judgment is better than my own. He is a young man with his best work before him. Edgar Rice Burroughs is a young man, who made a splendid beginning with a totally impossible but singularly absorbing story called "Tarzan of the Apes." Tarzan was a success so immediate and so strong that he has followed it up with other Tarzan stories, thereby in- curring a danger inherent in any theme that is over- worked. When he gets Tarzan completely out of his system and goes back to his original fountain of inven- tion, he will probably bring thence much more that will be equally refreshing with the Tarzan of his first ap- pearance. When Mary Hastings Bradley was graduated from Smith College she had made up her mind to become an author and to found her first book upon Anne Boleyn. She accordingly went to England and made special prep- aration for the work, which was published in 1912, under the title "The Favor of Kings." In 1914 she published "The Palace of Darkened Windows," and "The Splen- did Chance" in 1915. She has contributed many stories to Harpers and other magazines, and is among our younger successful Chicago writers. Another among our younger writers is Anne Higgin- son Spicer who published only last year through the house of Ralph Fletcher Seymour a book called "Songs from the Skokie and Other Verse." For the benefit of 170 My Chicago those who may not know it let me say that Skokie is the Indian name for a marshy piece of country lying back of the ridge that runs north from Evanston and parallels Lake Michigan. The volume contains among other things a group of short poems called Real People, among which is one addressed to Alan Seeger, the lamented poet of the Foreign Legion who died in a charge at Belloy-en Santerre July 4, 1916, and whose name is immortalized by his poem, "A Rendezvous with Death." Alan Seeger. Soldier, you kept your rendezvous with death Bravely at that disputed barricade, Poet, you met the terror undismayed, Unconquered by the fear that conquereth, In the chill hour when all else vanisheth Your gleaming flower of courage did not fade A singing warrior, valiant, unafraid, You cheered your comrades with your waning breath. The soul that claimed all earthly beauty knew That death thus met was part of beauty too. And though your path inevitably led Where laurelled vistas let the sunshine through, Yet future lads shall march with surer tread Because you did not fail your rendezvous. . : After the taking of Jerusalem by the English Mrs. Spicer wrote a stirring poem called "The Last Crusade," which seems to me to be her best effort up to the present time. Miss Julia Cooley is probably the youngest of all the literary women of Chicago. She has done enough to command attention, even more, considerable admira- tion for some of her performances. Lewellyn Jones a man whose judgment must command respect and whose prophecies of the future of new writers has never yet My Chicago failed of fulfillment looks to Miss Cooley's talent for brilliant fruition, a prophecy all of us hail with hope. Her first pubished volume bears the title, "Poems of a Child." Richard Le Gallienne wrote the introduction and Harpers published it. Chapter Twenty-two X EVERY city of the first class and in many a country town there is sure to be a number of people who think they have a message to be delivered or a purpose to be wrought out. By some strange quirk of fate the idea of a magazine seems to strike these people as the one pre- senting widest possibilities for their propaganda or whatever it may be they have or think they have in view. This common error accounts at once for the extraordi- nary number of periodicals, publications that flicker in and flicker out from year to year, like a recurring rash, all over the country. Chicago has had its full share of these pinwheel prints on full consideration, more than its share. Only a few are worth remembering. Of those few still fewer re- main; the rest are like the dear dead days now gone beyond recall. President Van Buren declared a land district with its offices at Chicago in 1836, when the town was a sprawling village on the edge of a marsh. Seven years later, in 1843, tne village literati burst into view with the first local magazine. Considering the infantile stage through which the town was living, it was happily called "The Youth's Gazette." The next year, 1844, "The Gem of the Prairie" made its appearance. "The Gem of the Prairie" persists unto this day, in The Sunday Tribune. 172 My Chicago It was absorbed by The Tribune as a Sunday edition in 1854. When "The Youth's Gazette" had expired of inanition, there came another sweet young thing called "The Youth's Western Banner." Chicago may without fear claim priority in juvenile periodicals, for after these two, in 1865, came "The Little Corporal," antedating "St. Nicholas" by ten years. "The Little Corporal" was more than a fad. It must have been good, for it jumped to a circulation of over one hundred thousand in its first year. Between "The Youth's Western Banner" and "The Little Corporal" "The Western Magazine" came in and went out; so did "The Literary Budget" and "The Chicago Record." The first serious literary magazine followed close upon the heels of "The Little Corporal." It was called "The Northwestern Quarterly Magazine." I am glad to be able to say "The Northwestern Quarterly" took a place at once among the best American literary magazines. A contemporaneous critic said that its first number was "the best first number of any magazine published in this country." That splendid line established itself as a per- manent locution in critical notices of first numbers of pretty much all the magazines and most of the books that have been produced since then. Whether or not the locution expressed a truth signifies nothing. It never misled anyone nor did any harm; and it has warmed the hearts of hundreds of editors and of editors' angels, at junctures when a little warmth was needed. James Grant Wilson was the editor of "The North- western," a man of force, who had a well-formed style in writing, most excellent judgment in the selection of material, and good taste in typography. The next man of whom the same thing can be said truthfully was Francis Fisher Browne, who founded and edited "The Lakeside Monthly in 1870." He was the first real editor of a real magazine in this real old town. ^T^/I 172 My Chicago It was absorbed by The Tribune as a Sunday edition in 1854. When "The Youth's Gazette" had expired of inanition, there came another sweet young thing called "The Youth's Western Banner." Chicago may without fear claim priority in juvenile periodicals, for after these two, in 1865, came "The Little Corporal," antedating "St. Nicholas" by ten years. "The Little Corporal" was more than a fad. It must have been good, for it jumped to a circulation of over one hundred thousand in its first year. Between "The Youth's Western Banner" and "The Little Corporal" "The Western Magazine" came in and went out; so did "The Literary Budget" and "The Chicago Record." The first serious literary magazine followed close upon the heels of "The Little Corporal." It was called "The Northwestern Quarterly Magazine." I am glad to be able to say "The Northwestern Quarterly" took a place at once among the best American literary magazines. A contemporaneous critic said that its first number was "the best first number of any magazine published in this country." That splendid line established itself as a per- manent locution in critical notices of first numbers of pretty much all the magazines and most of the books that have been produced since then. Whether or not the locution expressed a truth signifies nothing. It never misled anyone nor did any harm; and it has warmed the hearts of hundreds of editors and of editors' angels, at junctures when a little warmth was needed. James Grant Wilson was the editor of "The North- western," a man of force, who had a well-formed style in writing, most excellent judgment in the selection of material, and good taste in typography. The next man of whom the same thing can be said truthfully was Francis Fisher Browne, who founded and edited "The Lakeside Monthly in 1870." He was the first real editor of a real magazine in this real old town. Zi., " s . *. j i > ? / ,, , Lil OF THE UNIVEi&ilV OF ILLINOIS My Chicago 173 "The Lakeside" suspended in 1874. Mr. Browne became managing editor of "The Alliance," a periodical that had been founded a year before by Prof. David Swing, the Rev. Robert Collyer, the Rev. Hiram W. Thomas and a few others. "The Alliance" was a powerful promoter of independent religious thinking, a leader in the movement stirred up by those men and others like them who had wearied of submediaeval Christianity. It ran until 1882, and Mr. Browne, by that time having acquired standing with the liberal-minded people in this neighborhood and the respect of all who had any real love for literature, started "The Dial." "The Dial" at once impressed the public, and became an influence in the higher literary affairs of the whole Union. It so remains, with every prospect of so continu- ing, for its present editors and managers have wisely maintained the tone imparted by Mr. Browne. It is the one and only standard literary periodical issuing from Chicago, and one of the few issued anywhere in America that is accepted upon equal terms by the best reviews and literary journals of the British empire. The Dial of- fices have recently been moved to New York. In the nine years between 1871 and 1880, forty-seven periodicals of a literary or quasi literary nature were born and died. I don't believe anybody remembers them, because I am quite certain nobody has specialized in memorizing things that were not worth while. In 1883 Edgar Wakeman established a pretty good weekly called "The Current." It lasted two years, and might have been going yet if Mr. Wakeman had not taken fright over a debt of fifteen hundred dollars and disappeared one night, to be discovered two or three months later in a Trappist monastery somewhere in Wis- consin. I think he became a monk, and died there. The incident was unhappy and unnecessary, for Melville Stone or any one of several of his friends would have been 174 My Chicago glad to tide him over, and "The Current" might have gone on. It was revived afterward by Slason Thompson and another man whose name I cannot recall, and had quite a run for awhile, dying of causes interior to itself. A monthly called "Literary Life", was established in 1888, and astonished everybody by living three years. The first distinctive and completely successful fictional magazine came along in the nineties. ;It was called "The Red Book" but its founders and promoters paid out some- where around one hundred thousand dollars before tlm got it on its feet. Its success was so great that the same geople followed it with two other magazines, "The Blue ook" and "The Green Book." These three bacame national in reputation and sale. The first one, "The Red Book," outranks all others in its class, wherever pub- lished. But in the meantime, between "Literary Life" and "The Red Book" there was a swarm of semi-literary, dramatic and serial publications. Of all these, two stand out as having intrinsic merit, "Elite" and "The Saturday Evening Herald." "Elite" was established in 1881 by The Elite Publishing Company, of which Mary Stuart Armstrong was President. Mrs. Armstrong was its editor, a clever woman endowed wiffr good gifts, thor- oughly competent. Under her direction "Elite" carried on successfully through seventeen years, until 1908, not long before her death. Mrs. Armstrong had the support of a great following of people in what is called society especially of women. Only one other woman held anythingjjike the same au- thority. Emma Paulding Scott ha at the same time the principal ganglion of land transporta- tion lines, yet it has no harbor, nor any center, nor any system of organized terminal facilities. The river can- not be deepened to accommodate vessels of the size and draught now swarming the great lakes. It has no dock- age nor anything like sufficient wharfage. A new and great harbor must be constructed on the lake front. The facilities of the Calumet river and lake must be employed. A great wedge-shaped piece of land bounded on the eQst by the lake front, the north by the main Chicago rivr, the west by the south branch, and the south by Fifty- ninth street (at least) will cease to be what it is now and will be covered by railway terminals and transfer tracks, great freight stations, great warehouses and a congeries of such facilities as lie back of the piers and wharves of great harbors elsewhere. The beautiful residential neighborhoods which once were, and in part still are, the best in the city, will be obliterated and their inhabitants dispersed to the north and west. Transit facilities already here are capable of moving the people from their residential to their occupa- tional homes. They are well laid out in a manner to make extensions easy; and by that time the motor car will have become so common that a daily double trip of fifty miles each way will mean no more than a trip of five miles does now. Travel through the air, already instituted by private individuals, will become as much a matter of course as travel by trolley car is now. What will be the result? Friendships and associations will be reduced to matters of miles, maybe of streets. It is possible that some great social center may arise, but nobody now can guess where. It is much more prob- able that dozens of small social centers will occur, widely separated, unrelated to and knowing nothing of each other. Where then will be the art center, the succes- zoo My Chicago *. sion to that short section of Michigan avenue, of which the Fine Arts building and the Art Institute are chief features? That there will be an art center admits of no more question than that there will be other centers. That is about all that can be said about it now. When L'Enfant planned the city of Washington he dealt with a locality and a topography that involved no problems of the future which would not find place within the lines that he laid down, or with any extension of them. When Daniel H. Burnham had his vision of a beautiful Chicago he planned better than he knew, for in his time the gales of change now sweeping around the world were whispers merely; yet, genius that he was, he foresaw an ultimate centralization, a sense of radiation on the west side. It is too early as yet to guess what havoc may be wrought upon his general plan in its details, but every- thing now is symptomatic of a reduction of his simpler thought to actuality. These things are pertinent to my theme and to the welfare of those fine and high departments of life and living to which I as one among many have given the best I had. The cultivation of idealism, of culture in the arts, will go on and will be more favored and encouraged than heretofore they have been, but they will be without one principal encouragement, one element of strength to which they have been so deeply indebted, so splendidly helped, the unfailing support, the intelligent patronage of well defined, well centered society. What will take the place of that energizing friendship I do not know. I discourse now of the things that were and that led up to the things that are. Let me repeat: This story of mine deals with a period in the life of this city corresponding to the dangerous period in the life of a boy, when he leaves off being a boy, becomes a young man and begins to acquire the fibre, the vigor and the permanent form of actual manhood. i ' My Chicago 201 The art history of Chicago, concurrent with the indus- trial and commercial history, has passed through exactly that same period. We are at the edge of a new period, and looking over the edge as far as we can see into the new things it will bring. And we look with eyes of hope, of expectation, with eyes that dim wistfully while we think upon the busy, the warm and soulful past through which we have worked up toward this our Pisgah the threshold of the new. "THE FUTURE I MAY FACE HAVE PROVED THE PAST."