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 <wcre you?
And all the songs that ne'er were sung
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
Copyrighted 1918
By
Anna Morgan
Other books by Anna Morgan
AN HOUR WITH DELSARTE
THE ART OF EXPRESSION
SELECTED READINGS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Anna Morgan Frontispiece
Mrs. Scott Siddons Opposite page 28
Anna Morgan as she appeared with Scott Siddons in 1881 32
Reproduction of the portrait of Anna Morgan by Harriet
Blackstone 52
.' . ^*
Bernard Shaw reading to Anna Morgan from the manuscript
of Captain Brassbound's Conversion 74
Charles L. Hutchinson 116
Mrs. Harry Gordon Selfridge . 122
Mrs. Mary H. Wilmarth 140
Franklin H. Head 142
Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor 143
Mrs. Potter Palmer 144
.-
Marian Morgan Carr 146
Ida Morgan Palmer 147
John T. McCutcheon 148
Mrs. Jacob Baur .............. 154
Jessie Harding 155
T
5
I "127669
Foreword
|N THE midst of Chicago's turmoil, there
has been for a number of years a colony
of painters, writers, and lovers of the
Fine Arts which has been striving with
might and main to create within our material city a
spirit of idealism. A scant corporal's guard at first,
these pioneers of the finer things of life have slowly
grown in number, until they form a goodly sized regi-
ment exerting a noble influence upon Chicago's soul.
The city's uncouthness, however, has been a thorn
in the side of this aesthetic colony; and, living aloof
as they have from the material world about them,
its members have been tempted, I fear, to brush aside
unfeelingly the achievements of her captains of in-
dustry, while magnifying unduly their own en-
deavors. But if the artists and writers of Chicago
have one of the common failings of their craft, they
are, I am proud to say, singularly free from the other;
since nowhere, I believe, is there an artistic colony
so untainted by jealousy as is that of Chicago. In-
deed, those of its members to whom success has
opened her glittering doors, have ever extended
a helping hand to their comrades at the threshold.
Never has the green-eyed monster played the baleful
My Chicago
role in their midst it plays, all too often, in the artistic
coteries of older cities. It is the pioneer spirit, I
believe, which has united our artists and writers in
generous friendship, and made them strive as one for
the betterment of the city they have seen grow from
an upstart village to a world metropolis, before their
astonished eyes.
Many a member of this sympathetic colony is
introduced to the reader in the pages of Miss Mor-
gan's book; while the story of its growth and achieve-
ments is told by her with a genuineness and a sim-
plicity which are truly refreshing in a day when
clap-trap is so rife. It is meet, moreover, that she
should be its chronicler; for in the creation of Chi-
cago's aestheticism she has been truly a pioneer.
From that day, long years ago, when a stranger
asked at her door for "Miss Anna Morgan the
dramatic reader," and gave her a first engagement
for the modest honorarium of ten dollars, to this year
when "the shadow of war lowers over the land" she
has been a tireless champion of dramatic art, and
ever true to its ideals.
Upon the little stage of her studio, or in some
theatre of the city at a special matinee given by her
pupils, we, who are of her following, have made first
acquaintance with the plavs of such modern masters
as Ibsen, Maeterlinck, and Bernard Shaw. Indeed,
she had a knack of scenting the greatness of such
men as these, when even their names were unknown
in America; and I am constrained to confess that it
Foreword
was she who introduced me to Carlo Goldoni, the
Venetian, whose biographer many years later I be-
came. \s
While the plays she has given have been chosen
with rare discrimination, the sincerity with which
they have been acted has been quite as notable. In-
deed, I confess that I have never seen a performance
by her pupils, even that of Hamlet with only girls
in the cast, in which the note of earnestness was
lacking. Although the histrionism of some of the
players has been crude at times, I have never left
her theatre without feeling that the play had been
honestly given, and that she had succeeded in in-
spiring her pupils with true reverence for her art.
Although others have given notable plays in Chi-
cago from time to time with an equal defiance of the
box-office, it is well to recall to our civic mind the
fact that the trail which our dramatic ideals have
followed, albeit with faltering steps, was blazed by
Anna Morgan. Throughout the years she tells of
in her book, her courage has never faltered ; nor has
her loyalty to her art been dimmed by the many
discouragements she has met. Her Chicago, more-
over, is the Chicago of that zealous colony of artists
and writers of which I have spoken. By its mem-
bers, one and all, she is loved for her endearing qual-
ities, and admired for her many achievements.
H. C. CHATFIELD-TAYLOR.
-
Preface
This book was written when the shadow of war was
lowering over this country deepening as the months
went by that followed the first year of our entry. They
are growing still darker and spreading toward what
depths, we do not know; creeping round every home in
the land, peering through every window like a sinister
stranger. -
My story deals with happier times, and throngs with
faces once familiar, always beloved.
What we shall find when we emerge into the light once
more, we cannot guess; but we have hope that the old
days now obscuring will be compensated by better days,
for the world could not pass through a Gethsemane so
poignant without a wonderful refining in which much
dross and many errors must be cast out. A new state of
being, social, ethical, political and spiritual, is coming
toward us.
That we shall remember tranquil times, filled with
the ardor and the glow of old ambitions, old achieve-
ments, is sweet and proper,. That we shall look forward
to a new heaven and a new earth, confidently, is natural.
But between the two states we find ourselves confronted
by one great, plain duty, the duty of Work. Work for
the one end now worth striving after the liberation of
all the races of men that dwell upon the face of the
earth ; and no one must neglect or evade any jot or tittle
of the labor that comes to our hands asking to be done.
The^ women of Chicago like those of other cities
have risen to a realization of this one duty. The men of
Preface
military age have gone and are going into battle. The
women are doing what they can for these men. All
those I know are laying aside other things for this. To
name them would not only be to reprint the social register,
but also to print the names of hundreds of noble women
in the humbler walks of life. How much they have done,
how much they will find to do is a matter of public knowl-
edge, and therefore needs no particularization here.
I send this book out at this time as a possible one
among the many things that will be useful, I may
say needful in the hours of rest. I send it now because
I realise the period of my professional work must soon
draw near; and because my share in the war work calls
me and is not to be denied.
My wish has been to share with you who read, the
pleasure and profit which were mine in knowing those who
have here been brought before you; if you have enjoyed
this experience it will therefore prove to be my greatest
reward.
- '
.
My Chicago
Chapter One
NNA, why don't you take up public read-
ing? I think you'd make a great success
of it."
The words came gaily, lightly, from a
young friend of mine who at that par-
ticular moment was engaged in painting a bunch of pop-
pies on a china jar. There was a pause of some minutes.
Then I inquired from the couch where I was lying,
"How would you go about it?"
"I would go to the Hershey Music School and enter
the classes of Professor Walter C. Lyman."
I had never heard of the Hershey Music School nor of
Professor Lyman, nor had I ever heard anyone read for
entertainment with the exception of Mrs. Scott Siddons,
although at that time dramatic reading and the recital of
dialect and humorous selections was already popular, with
several successful artists in the field.
Why the idle remark of my friend should have made a
sufficiently deep impression upon my mind to cause me
to act upon her suggestion, is a psychological question I
am not prepared to answer. I only recall that nothing
further was said upon the subject, but that nine o'clock
the next morning found me in the office of the Hershey
School.
I was met by Mrs. Hershey, who informed me that
Professor Lyman's connection with the school had been
II
12
My Chicago
severed and that a young man from Elgin, Mr. Samuel
Kayzer, had been engaged to take his place and was to
give his first class lesson at ten o'clock, and added that, she
would be happy to have me stay and hear the lesson.
I did.
Mr. Kayzer had been in America but a short time. He
came from Warsaw, where as a child he had been a
devotee at the shrine of Madame Modjeska. He had
been earning his living as adjuster in a watch factory in
Elgin where, being an appreciative and talented student
of dramatic literature, he had found his way to the classes
which Professor Lyman was then conducting there and
had won so much approbation for his interpretative read-
ings that Professor Lyman had cordially recommended
him to fill his place in the Hershey School. He gave
up his position in the watch factory and entered upon his
career as instructor in 1877.
Of course my first class lesson was all Greek to me;
but for the same unknown reason which brought me to
the school I engaged a term of lessons, and took a private
lesson before leaving. The lesson consisted of repeating
after my teacher, line by line, a poem, then popular, by
J. F. Waller, called "Magdelena, or The Spanish Duel,"
the first verse of which is:
"Near the city of Sevilla, years and years ago,
Dwelt a lady in a villa, years and years ago.
And her hair was black as night
And her eyes were starry bright.
Olives on her brow were blooming,
Roses red her lips perfuming,
And her step was light and airy
As the tripping of a fairy;
When she spoke, you thought, each minute,
'Twas the thrilling of a linnet;
My Chicago 13
When she sang you heard a gush
Of full-voiced sweetness like a thrush.
'
Ah ! that lady of the villa !
And I loved her so,
Near the city of Sevilla,
Years and years ago."
The poem was long, filled with unpronounceable names,
but effective when recited by men reciters of that day.
I went through it, as I said, parrot fashion, and hastened
home to report the result of my visit to my mother, and
to learn the poem.
We were living at 447 West Washington street, which
at that time was the most desirable residential district
in Chicago. In our block lived Bishop Whitehouse and
his family, the Albert Spragues, Tuthill Kings, Philo
Carpenters, J. J. Glessners, T. M. Averys, R. T. Cranes.
A little farther east were the Benjamin H. Campbells.
After Abraham Lincoln's death, Mrs. Lincoln and her
children sojourned for a time at number 375. Not far
from them lived Bishop Fallows and near by was the
home where Hobart C. Chatfield-Taylor was born and
passed his childhood. On the corner of Ada Steet lived
Dr. Joseph P. Ross who with Dr. DeLaskie Miller and
Dr. Ephraim Ingalls (both of whom lived in the neighbor-
hood) , were the three great physicians in Chicago at that
time. Dr. Miller was the father of Mrs. Charles C.
Curtiss. In the next block west lived the Andrew Mc-
Leishes and the C. K. G. Billings. Two blocks south on
Monroe Street were the Allan Pinkertons, Thomas
Chalmers, and the Francis A. Riddles. Around the cor-
ner on Ashland Avenue were the John A. Hamlins,
E. Nelson Blakes, Henry Wallers, J. Harley Bradleys,
J. Russell Jones, Carter H. Harrisons and a few years
later, the William J. Chalmers and Heaton Owsleys.
14 My Chicago
My father, Allen Denison Morgan, had died at
Auburn, New York, where we lived during the panic of
1871, and left my mother (who before her marriage was
Mary Jane Thornton), with five children my two
brothers, Seward and Charles, both of whom died in
1890, two sisters, Ida and Marian; and myself. My
mother upon the advice of friends had moved with her
children to Chicago in 1876.
China painting was then the rage, and my sisters were
proficient artists. My sister Marian taught in one of the
schools in St. Louis in 1877. Later she had classes in
Chicago, one of them being at the home of Mrs. John
M. Clark, 2000 Prairie Avenue. My part was to or-
ganize the classes. Mrs. Clark was a bride at that time,
and I shall never forget how fascinated I was by her
beauty, and charm of manner.
I had grown tired of "promoting" and was eager to
enter upon a career of my own, which in a measure
accounts for the readiness with which I acted upon my
friend's advice to become a "reader" as she called it.
I had had no preparation for a public career, had lived
very quietly in Auburn and the country about it, had at-
tended few lectures, concerts or plays; in fact, I think
I had only attended two plays "Fanchon the Cricket"
and "Jane Eyre" but from the departure from my home
and the taking of my first lesson I seemed to have been
imbued with the determination to succeed, not so much
to win renown as to become independent financially and
to be able to help others who might need my help. So I
worked with unflagging interest and a steady determina-
tion, which was never deterred by the innumerable ob-
stacles which everyone who sets out on an artistic career
is bound to encounter.
Being ignorant of the ways of the world, of the history
of great artists, of their beginnings, struggles and achieve-
ments, I was unable to estimate what it meant to attain
My Chicago 15
to a masterful position in art; so I rushed in, dared to
do what I should now hesitate to undertake, and thus
arrived shortly where I could command opportunities
and demand a good price for my services.
Like all schools of Music and Dramatic Art, the
Hershey School, which had been founded in 1873 by
Sarah Hershey, a successful teacher of singing, frequently
gave recitals, to present the members of the faculty and
such students as had proven their ability to appear be-
comingly with them.
My first ambition was to be on one of those programs.
The opportunity came in due time in the receipt of the
following letter :
Hershey Music Hall, Chicago, Feb. 6, 1880.
My dear Miss Morgan : Would you like to assist
us at our next Popular Concert on Tuesday or Wed-
nesday evening of next week? If so, I would be
glad to give you one, two, or three places on the
program, which will be an excellent one, and the
audience will undoubtedly be large. If you can
accommodate us, please send the titles of your selec-
tions by bearer.
Yours in haste,
H. CLARENCE EDDY.
I put down, among other things to recite, a little Scotch
dialect selection called "Charlie Machree." Charlie's
sweetheart was on one side of the river, he on the other.
She calls out to him to come over to her. The poem
relates the perils of his undertaking, and the words
"he's sinking, he's sinking, oh, what shall I do?" are
repeated several times. I remember my mental state
as the time for my appearance on the platform arrived.
I determined to seem very much at home and do various
"things" which I had seen professional artists do when
.
1 6 My Chicago
they stood before an audience. One or two of them was
to move a table slightly, or a chair or both; turn over
the leaves of a book (which need not necessarily contain
the selection to be recited), touch the lips lightly with
a handkerchief, then place it on the table, adjust the
"train," clear the throat, then with a patronizing smile
and a "real bow" announce in a sententious tone the
title of the thing to be recited. I believe I carried out
these details to the letter, and started off fairly well ; but
alas and alack! I began to be overtaken by stage fright
a usual part of first appearances, and when Charlie was
in the middle of the stream I forgot my lines. I kept on
repeating "He's sinking, he's sinking, oh, what shall I
do?" The audience became a black and seething mass.
I wrung my hands and wildly kept on crying "He's sink-
ing^ he's sinking, oh, what shall I do ?"
Finally the concluding lines came to me and I landed
Charlie safely in the arms of his sweetheart, and so
concluded one of the greatest pieces of realistic reciting
I ever remember being engaged in. I recall that when I
reached the green room Mr. Eddy remarked,
"Poor Charlie ! We thought at one time he was going
to the bottom, but thank Heaven you landed him safe
and sound."
The faculty of the Hershey School at this time com-
prised H. Clarence Eddy, Frederick Grant-Gleason,
Frank T. Baird, Clayton F. Summy, W. S. B. Matthews,
Samuel Kayzer, Prof, von Klenze and his wife Clara von
Klenze, and Mrs. Hershey. Among the advanced music
students were Grace Hiltz, Mina, Pauline, and Annie
Rommeis, and Agnes Cox. Grace Hiltz afterward mar-
ried Mr. Gleason; Mina Rommeis became the wife of
Mr. Summy; and finally Mrs. Hershey became Mrs.
Clarence Eddy.
The one member of the faculty of the Hershey School
whose memory stands out by reason of his written work
My Chicago 17
was W. S. B. Matthews, a man of unusually broad and
varied mental equipment. His text books on music have
become standard the whole world round. He was less a
musician in the ordinary sense than he was a master in
the knowledge of the theory and art of music. He was
the only one of the few great scholars in music with whom
my work has brought me into contact, who was totally
without bias in his attitude toward all the departments
of the art, to all of the socalled schools of music, and to
the performances of professional musicians.
It is highly unusual to find creative or synthetic powers
residing peacefully in any one mind side by side with
the power of analysis. Mr. Matthews had Jsoth, and
their possession and coordinate action made him a truly
great critic. As illustrative of this I remember a curious
embarrassment that overtook Will Eaton, while Will was
music critic on the Chicago Times. Will Eaton used to
say of himself that all he knew about music of any kind
was whether or not he liked it; and that all he could
write about it was why he liked or disliked. He was
honest enough to feel that his public was in all fairness
.entitled to a judgment that would stand; so when he was
confronted by performances that required high technical
knowledge, he called in Matthews to go hear the thing
and write the criticism. A succession of such criticism,
highly informed and expressed in phrases that anybody
could understand, brought recognition and respect from
all the great lights in music in this country and Great
Britain. They were quoted, sometimes reproduced in
full, in publications devoted to music. Hence the em-
barrassment of Eaton. He found himself with a reputa-
tion he had not earned, and it took him a long time to get
that credit transferred to Matthews. Neither one of the
two had been aware that their style of writing was the
same.
Mr. Matthews had a curious sense of humor. But he
1 8 My Chicago
had a defect of oral delivery which made him unintel-
ligible to most people, a fact of which he himself was
totally unaware, and which was productive $t,. times of
strange results. He had a story that must have been up-
roariously funny, because he could not tell it without going
into paroxysms of laughter. No one ever found out any
more about it than that it was concerned with two dogs.
Several of his newspaper friends, aching to get at it, tried
to induce him to put it in writing. The request invariably
stirred him to indignation. He regarded it as an attempt
to make public property of the funniest story that was ever
told. He is dead now ; and the story died with him.
While I was at the Hershey School and he was one of
the instructors he made a point once every week of lectur-
ing to his class with the assistance of a blackboard.
These lectures usually occupied an hour, and the class
would go away without understanding a solitary word
that he had uttered.
In a short time I rose to the distinction of giving sev-
eral numbers in an evening recital with Mr. Kayzer, I
having the first half of the program, he the last. This
opportunity was considered a great honor. I wish I might
put down the numbers on the program, but I cannot recall
a single one. The Tribune of August loth, 1879, con '
tained the following announcement.
"Professor JCayzer will give the third of his series of
readings at Hershey Music Hall on Thursday evening,
August 1 2th. The program will consist of a choice se-
lection of miscellaneous pieces in which Miss Anna
Morgan, a young lady who is said to possess excellent
dramatic powers, will take part."
My next appearance was at Austin, Illinois, where I
received my first five dollars. The town was deluged
with posters announcing that Miss Anna Morgan,
Chicago's Favorite Reader, would appear in the town hall
My Chicago 19
on Tuesday evening November i6th. Admission twenty-
five cents.
I now considered myself a professional. Soon after
that on a never-to-be-forgotten evening about seven
o'clock the doorbell rang, and I opened the door. A very
dignified man said:
"I am looking for Miss Anna Morgan, the dramatic
reader."
I was greatly annoyed to have been deprived of the
privilege then in vogue, and thought an essential point in
business, of keeping him waiting and then sailing into the
"parlor" with an air of great importance, calculated to
impress the caller. In this case I had to admit that I was
Anna Morgan, and ask him to be seated. He told me
he had been sent by the Bryant Literary Society to engage
me to read on a program to be given the following week.
He said he wanted two numbers and would send a carriage
and pay me ten dollars. I remember I straightened up,
assumed much dignity, knit my brows and tried to figure
out whether my engagements would permit my accepting
this date. I finally said I could, and the man left with
what seemed to me much satisfaction at having secured
my services. I don't remember who composed the Bryant
Literary Society, nor where it was situated, nor whether
I ever had been on the north side before. I remember
I recited "The Maiden Martyr" and "Asleep at the
Switch," and some humorous encores, and regarded it as
the most important event in my life up to then.
About this time occurred a most amusing incident.
My mind had begun to expand beyond the limits of Chi-
cago, and as Mr. Kayzer had lived in Elgin I thought it
would add to our fame and fortune to give an entertain-
ment there. Accordingly my brother Seward made a trip
to Elgin as advance agent and engaged Mendelssohn Hall
for Thursday evening November I4th, 1878. It was
the custom to intersperse readings with musical numbers
2O My Chicago
at that time, so we engaged the Chicago Ladies Quartette,
which consisted of Grace Hiltz, Agnes Cox, Mina and
Pauline Rommeis. My brother, who by the way had never
had the slightest experience in promoting an entertain-
ment, had some bills struck off and distributed about the
town, confident that they would produce a crowded house.
The day came and we all went down, my brother
Charlie going along to take the tickets and the money.
Alas! as between the performers and the audience, the
latter was in the minority; and we returned to Chicago
having paid dearly for the privilege of appearing in Elgin.
Sometime in 1879, Henry L. Slayton, a manager of
local entertainments, got up a Readers' Tournament,
which was given in McCormick hall, situated on North
Clark Street just over the bridge. I remember George
Vandenhoff, Sr., one of New York's famous readers, was
on the program, also James E. Murdock, a reader and
teacher much respected and admired, one of America's
numerous Hamlets, and who was asked to read "The
Lord's Prayer." I remember he said he could not do this
in cold blood, but consented to read a selection in which
it was suitably introduced.
There now seemed to be a "growing something" in the
air about "Anna Morgan's recitals," and one day Mrs. E.
Nelson Blake, mother of Mrs. H. H. Kohlsaat called at
my home to engage me to read in the Second Baptist
church, which was then in Sangamon street on the west
side, and of which she and her husband were leading mem-
bers. She said she would pay me twenty-five dollars,
which she did, making me feel as thojugh I belonged to
the Rothschild family. I do not remember what I read,
nor what I wore, which was an all important thing more
so then than now; but I do remember that immediately
after Mr. Franc B. Wilkie, then one of the editors of
The Times, engaged me to read on the west side in a
Baptist Church on Park avenue, and that I wore a black
My Chicago 21
velvet gown the train of which was so long that it could
not be accommodated on the high pulpit platform, but
swept off on the floor. This I felt must look very grand
as I sat with the utmost dignity in one of the high backed
pulpit chairs and recited Mrs. Browning's "Mother and
Poet" and other funereal numbers.
I remember driving with Mr. and Mrs. Wilkie after
the program to Thompson's restaurant in Madison street
for an oyster stew, which was the gay thing to do at that
time. Mr. Wilkie remarked that my program had re-
counted as many deaths as were recorded in the play of
Hamlet. I also remember that there appeared in The
Times the next morning the first professional criticism of
my work which I had received.
After this, for a time, I never went outside my home
without imagining that everyone was saying "There she
comes 1" or "There she goes that's Anna Morgan 1" A
few years opened my eyes to the fact that the world has
too many interests to concern itself with the advent of any
new aspirant to artistic honors, and that a man or a woman
must do something phenomenal to become a subject of uni-
versal recognition and comment. How delightful, then,
is the blissful ignorance of youth, which admits of a few
brief hours of veritable triumph and happiness before the
hardships and real struggle of a professional career begin !
On April I2th, 1879, posters announced a Reading and
Musicale in the Third Presbyterian church at Ashland and
Ogden avenues. The announcement stated:
"A Dramatic and Humorous Recital will be given by
the highly talented and favorite reader Anna Morgan,
her last appearance in Chicago this season, in combina-
tion with the celebrated Chickering Quartette, Charles
A. Knorr, Charles H. Clark, John E. McWade and
Charles F. Noble, forming one of the most attractive
entertainments ever offered to the West Side public.
Tickets twenty-five cents."
22 My Chicago
The Chicago Tribune on Sunday December 25th, 1880,
contained a half-page advertisement of the Star Lecture
Course to be given in Central Music Hall under the
management of Henry L. Slayton. Holders of season
tickets were asked to pay twenty, thirty, forty and fifty
cents for each entertainment, including reserved seats.
The course opened with four "stars" Jjessie Couthoui,
Reader; Joseph Heine, the great blind * Violinist (first
appearance) ; and The Chickering Quartette. The second
date was October 2yth, with Clara Louise Kellogg
and her Company, Herr Emil Liebling, Solo Pianist.
On November i6th the program announced A. P. Bur-
bank, the renowned dialect reader. Anna Morgan the fa-
vorite reader, and the Chicago Quartette.
On February loth, 1880, I appeared for the benefit of
the Foundling's Home in conjunction with the Chicago
Lady Quartette; reciting "How the Old Horse Won the
Bet," and "How Ruby Played." On September 2d of
that year I appeared in Highland Hall, Highland Park,
in an entertainment given by Mrs. N. E. Swarthout, read-
ing "How Ruby Played." Others on the program were
Samuel Kayzer, who recited "The Diver" by Schiller;
Laura Dainty, who recited "Tom's Little Star," by
Foster; and the Harmonic Quartette.
Perhaps it is time for me to mention the readers best
known in the field in Chicago at this period. They were
Robert L. Cumnock, founder of the School of Oratory in
Northwestern University; Alfred P. Burbank, a successful
reciter of dialect selections; Jessie Couthoui, Laura
Dainty, myself, and a few others of less achievement.
Miss Couthoui and Mrs. Dainty were popular for sev-
eral years. I remember Miss Couthoui chiefly by her
masterful recital of "Darius Green and His Flying Ma-
chine," written by Trowbridge in 1868. After Daedalus
and Icarus, Darius is usually taken as the first man who
wanted to try mechanical flight. Mr. Trowbridge's effort
My Chicago 23
may be allowed the license usually granted to poetry, but
as a matter of fact it expressed the disbelief of his own
day. It hit the public fancy partly on that account, and
partly because it was intrinsically funny, but it overlooked
the fact that man in all ages has wanted to emulate the
bird, has yearned to conquer the one element that seemed
beyond his power to subdue. Long before the day of
Darius Green, Montgolfier succeeded in levitating him-
self far above the ground by means of a balloon filled
with heated air all unaware creating in himself a demon-
stration of an illusory value now commonly deprecated in
a slang phrase. Later on another Frenchman, whose
name I have forgotten, did succeed by means of artificial
wings attached to his arms and legs, in flopping through
several yards of air between the roof of a building and the
turf of a lawn, where he landed with considerable per-
sonal injury to himself. I do not know whether Mr.
Trowbridge got his quaint conceit from this last named
performance, but about forty years later the Wright
brothers justified the query entertained by Darius by mak-
ing their first long glide in a heavier than air machine
at Kittyhawk, North Carolina ; and we all know what has
happened since. Then and there they answered the sturdy
question of Darius :
"The birds can fly
And why can't I ?
Must we give in,"
Said he with a grin,
"That the blue bird and phoebe
Are smarter'n we be?"
"Nur I can't see
What's the use of wings
To a Bumble bee
Fur to get a livin' with,
24 My Chicago
More'n to me.
Aint my business
Importanter'n hisen is?"
Miss Couthoui had very large eyes and a broad mouth,
and when she impersonated Reuben as he watched Darius
about to launch from the barn door in the loft, she had a
trick of first contracting her mouth, and then slowly
opening it as Reuben's amazement increased, until it as-
sumed such unusual proportions that it brought storms
of applause.
Mrs. Dainty had a large repertoire of humorous selec-
tions, among which were "How the Old Horse Won the
Bet," "A Naughty Little Girl's Views of Life in a Hotel,"
"Tom's Little Star." "Money Musk" and "The Dead
Doll." Some years later Mrs. Dainty became Mrs. Fred
Pelham, and has since been associated with Hull House,
where she has efficiently and successfully developed and
managed the Hull House Players, whose fame is more
than local.
In the latter part of November, 1879, just two years
from the time I had resolved to succeed as a reader, I
made my first appearance in New York City. Among my
testimonials is the following:
New York, December 3rd, 1879
My dear Miss Morgan: I want to thank you
for the excellent entertainment you gave us last even-
ing in the parlor of the Church of the Messiah. The
gathering was one you might well be proud of, both
as to number and quality. They were all delighted
with your wonderful recitations, as I was, and gave
proof of their feelings in swift laughter and tears.
ROBERT COLLYER.
Doctor Collyer at that time was one of the few emi-
nent clergymen in the United States, and this word of
t
My Chicago 25
commendation from him proved helpful to me. I
remember it brought an engagement in Boston on De-
cember 1 7th. I do not recall the auspices under which
I read, but I have an excerpt from the Boston Journal
of December i8th, in which the critic stated that "Miss
Morgan read with marked effect, the audience giving
decided evidence of appreciation of her ability as a public
reader."
On April 2Oth, 1880 I gave a recital in the Academy of
Music in Auburn, N. Y. This was an important event
to me, for I had been reared there, also my father and
mother and their parents. Nathan Gallop Morgan and
his wife Ann Allen (for whom I was named). Stephen
Thornton, my maternal grandfather, and his wife
Charlotte Purchais, were all born in the vicinity of Auburn
and lived and died there. Cayuga County was often
spoken of as a "hive of Morgans." My grandfather
Morgan and my father Allen D. Morgan, were promi-
nent as members of the state legislature and were inti-
mate friends of William H. Seward, our most illustrious
fellow-townsman, after whom one of my brothers was
named. Roscoe Conklin was a classmate of my father
at Hamilton College at the same time my mother attended
Miss Kelly's School at Utica, famous at that time.
As nearly everyone in Auburn and vicinity had known
my parents, and me as a child, my appearance as a public
performer was a matter of general interest. I was greeted
by a large and enthusiastic audience. The Auburn Adver-
tiser the next day gave a glowing account of my appear-
ance, and Herrick Johnson, D.D., who was in the audience
and later was identified with the Fourth Presbyterian
Church and McCormick Theological Seminary here in
Chicago, gave the following testimonial :
"I have heard Miss Morgan with real pleasure.
She does not rant and this is an unspeakably grati-
26 My Chicago
fying thing to say in view of so much that is heard
in public readings. Grace and naturalness of
manner, a voice into which can be put tenderness and
tears, a quick appreciation of varying shades of
thought and feeling, and a judgment that prevents
the extravagance of extremes, are Miss Morgan's
marjced characteristics."
During April, 1882, I filled a number of engagements
in Kansas, receiving flattering notices from Lawrence,
Atchison, Wichita and St. Joe, Missouri. In the latter
place I was entertained by Constance Runcie, a poetess
of considerable local fame. My engagement to read there
followed soon after the capture of Jesse James, an out-
law who had outwitted the officers for some time, and
who had become a serious menace to the community and
to the state. His capture had caused much excitement
throughout the country. I mention this because of what
followed.
My next engagement was at Mound City, and the night
after that I was to read in Lincoln, Nebraska. In order
to reach there in time I was obliged to drive from Mound
City, which was off the main line of the railroad, and
catch a train on the main line at 2 a. m. I engaged a
liveryman to take me over after my reading in Mound
City, and reached the station about 10 o'clock. It was
pitch dark save for a dim light which came from a window
in the station. The man deposited my trunk and myself
on the platform. I paid him, and he drove off. I groped
my way into the station and discovered that it was
empty save for the ticket agent. I had also observed that
the house was isolated, no other building being in sight,
I was somewhat frightened, but resolved to put on a brave
front, although I realized that I was in an uncomfortable
position.
I ventured to speak to the ticket agent, who informed
My Chicago 27
me that he usually stayed to meet the two o'clock train,
but that that night he had to leave at once because his
wife was ill. My heart sank at the thought of being left
alone at such an hour on a Kansas prairie. My alarm was
increased by the entrance of six burly men, whom I im-
mediately concluded were accomplices of Jesse James and
part of his gang. My trunk on the platform contained
my best clothes, a valuable set of diamonds, and three
hundred dollars; and I wore a new sealskin coat. I saw
the man in the office and myself gagged and tied with a
rope if not murdered and all my effects appropriated
by the desperadoes. It was a terrible moment, but I sat
apparently composed in a chair close to a red hot stove
with my eye on the man at the office window until the train
came.
The agent, be it said to his credit, did not leave me, but
stayed and saw me safely aboard the train for Lincoln.
For years I could not get over thinking of what might
have happened, and how perilous it was for a young
woman to go out on a lecture tour alone, although in this
instance a companion would have been of little help had
the six men proved to be desperadoes.
Chapter Two
BOUT this time Mrs. Scott Siddons was an-
nounced to appear in a matinee recital at a
small hall on the south side of Madison street
between Clark and La Salle streets. It was
called Farwell Hall. I said not a word to
anyone, but purchased a ticket and took an inconspicuous
seat and listened with rapt attention to her dramatic
recitals from Scott and Shakespeare, entranced by her
rare beauty and gorgeous costume.
28 My Chicago
As I came down the stairs, when the program was
finished, I was suddenly seized with the idea of going to
see her. I learned she was staying at the Tremont House
in Lake street. I had never been in an hotel in my life,
but I mustered up sufficient courage, sought out the
Tremont House, and sent up word to Mrs. Siddons that
a young lady wished to see her. She requested that I be
shown to her room. I found her at dinner, which she
had ordered served upon her return from her reading.
She received me cordially, and to my surprise asked me
to recite for her, which I did, selecting from my repertoire
"The Bells of Shandon" and then "Rock of Ages," a
poem which depicted the singing of the hymn by an old
woman, a young child and other characters. When I had
finished she said,
"Miss Morgan, you read very well. I should like you
to appear on one of my programs the next time I come
to Chicago."
I replied that I should like it very much and that I
thought it would be nice if we could do something to-
gether. She asked what I would suggest, to which I
promptly responded,
"The garden scene from Mary Stuart by Schiller."
She said she thought it was a good idea, and asked me
which part I preferred. I told her Queen Elizabeth;
whereupon she said she would study the scene and mem-
orize the part of Mary Stuart, and we shook hands and
parted.
For months I walked on air in anticipation of this great
event. One day in November, in 1881, as I was about
to board a Madison street car in front of McVicker's
theatre, a man who knew of my expectation hailed me
with:
"Did you know Scott Siddon's agent was in town?"
I said, "No." Whereupon he said, "You better go over
and see Carpenter."
Mrs. Scott Siddons.
28 My Chicago
As I came down the stairs, when the program was
finished, I was suddenly seized with the idea of going to
see her. I learned she was staying at the Tremont House
in Lake street. I had never been in an hotel in my life,
but I mustered up sufficient courage, sought out the
Tremont House, and sent up word to Mrs. Siddons that
a young lady wished to see her. She requested that I be
shown to her room. I found her at dinner, which she
had ordered served upon her return from her reading.
She received me cordially, and to my surprise asked me
to recite for her, which I did, selecting from my repertoire
"The Bells of Shandon" and then "Rock of Ages," a
poem which depicted the singing of the hymn by an old
woman, a young child and other characters. When I had
finished she said,
"Miss Morgan, you read very well. I should like you
to appear on one of my programs the next time I come
to Chicago."
I replied that I should like it very much and that I
thought it would be nice if we could do something to-
gether. She asked what I would suggest, to which I
promptly responded,
"The garden scene from Mary Stuart by Schiller."
She said she thought it was a good idea, and asked me
which part I preferred. I told her Queen Elizabeth;
whereupon she said she would study the scene and mem-
orize the part of Mary Stuart, and we shook hands and
parted.
For months I walked on air in anticipation of this great
event. One day in November, in 1881, as I was about
to board a Madison street car in front of McVicker's
theatre, a man who knew of my expectation hailed me
with:
"Did you know Scott Siddon's agent was in town?"
I said, "No." Whereupon he said, "You better go over
and see Carpenter."
Mm. Si'itt Sid duns.
Ll
Ur [HE
UNlVLr.oiiV Of ILLINOIS
My Chicago 29
"Mr. George Benedict Carpenter was then the Man-
ager of Central Music Hall in State street, at the corner
of Randolph, now covered by a part of Marshall Field's
establishment.
My feet scarcely touched the ground as I fairly flew
to Mr. Carpenter, who told me that Mr. J. Leslie Allen
had just arranged for Mrs. Siddon's appearance in Central
Music Hall, that he was stopping at the Tremont House,
and that I had better get hold of him at once. Over I
went, and instead of going to the office I asked the elevator
boy if he knew Mr. Allen. He said he did and that Mr.
Allen was up in his room. I asked him if he would point
him out to me when he came down, and seated myself
and waited patiently for two hours, when a dapper little
fellow came out of the elevator.
I immediately stepped up to him, told him my name,
and asked him if Mrs. Siddons had told him of our agree-
ment that I should appear on her program. He said "No."
"Where is Mrs. Siddons to-day?" I asked.
He gave me her address, which was some town in
Indiana. I went to the telegraph office and sent this
message :
"Please telegraph your agent informing him of your
invitation to me to appear with you here. ANNA
MORGAN." In two hours the message came :
"Put Miss Morgan on my program. MARY F. SCOTT
SIDDONS."
.
When the eventful day came I was in bed with an old-
fashioned sore throat, and my beloved mother, following
a custom of the time, had my throat "done up" in salt
pork enveloped in red flannel. I was very ill, but when
night came I determined to brave it out and go down to
the hall. Central Music Hall at that time was new, and
a beautiful place it was. It is a great pity Chicago was
30 My Chicago
deprived in 1903 of such a desirable and much-needed
temple of art, one which never has been adequately re-
placed.
Mrs. Siddon's appearance was the first dramatic re-
cital to be given in Central Music Hall. The interest on
the part of the public in seeing the new hall, with that of
seeing and hearing an artist possessed of historic name
as well as of fame and beauty, attracted a representative
audience which tested the capacity of the house.
1 When I arrived in the dressing room Mrs. Siddons
greeted me as a well loved friend, which did much to
quiet my temperature physical and mental. I was so en-
tranced by her beauty that I completely forgot myself and
watched her put the finishing touches to her makeup, an
art of which she was complete mistress. Even after she
went upon the platform she had a fashion of changing a
rose from one side of her belt to the other and doing
various little things to give the audience time to become
acquainted with her before she announced her readings.
The first part of her program consisted of selections
from Scott's "The Lady of the Lake." Then appeared
in distinctive type "How Ruby Played," by Miss Anna
Morgan." I had selected this sketch, which had shortly
before been printed in the New York Tribune, and which
never had been given in Chicago. It was a countryman's
description of Rubenstein's playing on the piano. The ac-
count was not only humorous, but truth'ful. Coming in
contrast to Scott's classic poem and preceded by Mrs.
Siddons' announcement that the next number on the pro-
gram would be given by Miss Anna Morgan, whom she
had no need to introduce to a Chicago audience, and who
was suffering from a severe cold which she as a sister
artist could fully sympathize with, resulted in a storm of
applause in fact a perfect ovation. I remember she
kissed me and said:
"You must give them something more."
My Chicago 31
After going out and bowing a couple of times, I recited
a pathetic little sketch called "Poor Little Joe," which
recounted the death of a little waif, and left the audience
in tears.
I remember I thought it would show great composure
to move the chair on which I had been sitting while I
gave the sketch, after I had finished, and that later on
Mrs. Anna Cowell Hobkirk, an actress who was in the
audience told me I must never do it again because it de-
tracted from the pathos of my climax. To my amaze-
ment The Associated Press the following morning an-
nounced that Miss Anna Morgan had appeared in Chicago
with Scott Siddons and had carried off the honors of the
evening. While mortifying to me at the moment, it prob-
ably had no serious effect upon Mrs. Siddons' business,
and did secure for me immediate openings in the larger
lecture courses of the country, and my fee rose from $25
to $100.
I never knew why Mrs. Siddons was prompted to do
this for me. Mr. Carpenter said the next day:
"It's the most generous thing I ever knew Mrs. Siddons
to do."
At any rate, it gave me a tremendous "boost" which
I have always appreciated, and I wish to contribute my
little bunch of rosemary in remembrance of her kindness.
Mary Frances Scott Siddons was the daughter of Cap-
tain William Young Siddons, and was the great grand-
daughter of the famous Sarah Siddons. She was born in
India and educated in Germany. In 1862 she married Scott
Chanter, a British naval officer. In 1865 she prefixed the
name Scott to that of Siddons, and took up a career upon
the stage as an actress and dramatic reader. Her debut
was made in London as Juliet. Her American debut was
in Boston, where she appeared as Lady Macbeth.
In 1869 Mrs. Siddons was a member of Augustin
Daly's Company at his Fifth Avenue theatre in New
32 My Chicago
York, playing Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice, King Rene's
Daughter, and other parts. She was then in her twenty-
fifth year, and her appearance was characterized as that
of a demure vitality, not great in any part, but charming
in everything. In reply to a letter I wrote her in which
I spoke of her advantage in possessing beauty and a his-
toric name, she replied,
"Before closing allow me to say that in my opinion, you,
in common with many others, err greatly in supposing
that either great beauty or an inherited historic name
are of so great an advantage to me. Beauty never serves
for long, and a great name is a most onerous burden unless
there happens to be a good foundation to support it. The
inheritance of the name of Siddons is- enough to crush at
once any aspirant to dramatic honors, unless he or she
possess something more than that and beauty to make
good the claim. The only good that my maiden name did
me was that it attracted the attention of the public toward
my first efforts; but it never helped me to satisfy their
high expectations rather the reverse.
Yours faithfully,
Mary F. Siddons."
Mrs. Siddons' last performance in Chicago was in 1 883,
when she played at McVicker's Theatre in "King Rene's
Daughter." She died in London in 1896.
Immediately after my engagement with Mrs. Siddons
I went to New York to secure if possible an appearance
in a large course of entertainments then being given in
Chickering Hall. I sought out the manager, one Mr.
Vail, who had an office somewhere on Broadway, I think
near Fourteenth street. I told him of my wish to appear
in his course. He scarcely looked at me, and said,
"My course is full."
"I muttered, partly to myself, something about being
disappointed, something about Chicago; when he sud-
Anna Morgan,
as she appeared with
Scott Siddons in 1881.
32 My Chicago
York, playing Rosalind, Viola, Beatrice, King Rene's
Daughter, and other parts. She was then in her twenty-
fifth year, and her appearance was characterized as that
of a demure vitality, not great in any part, but charming
in everything. In reply to a letter I wrote her in which
I spoke of her advantage in possessing beauty and a his-
toric name, she replied,
"Before closing allow me to say that in my opinion, you,
in common with many others, err greatly in supposing
that either great beauty or an inherited historic name
are of so great an advantage to me. Beauty never serves
for long, and a great name is a most onerous burden unless
there happens to be a good foundation to support it. The
inheritance of the name of Siddons is enough to crush at
once any aspirant to dramatic honors, unless he or she
possess something more than that and beauty to make
good the claim. The only good that my maiden name did
me was that it attracted the attention of the public toward
my first efforts; but it never helped me to satisfy their
high expectations rather the reverse.
Yours faithfully,
Mary p. Siddons."
Mrs. Siddons' last performance in Chicago was in 1 883,
when she played at McVicker's Theatre in "King Rene's
Daughter." She died in London in 1896.
Immediately after my engagement with Mrs. Siddons
I went to New York to secure if possible an appearance
in a large course of entertainments then being given in
Chickering Hall. I sought out the manager, one Mr.
Vail, who had an office somewhere on Broadway, I think
near Fourteenth street. I told him of my wish to appear
in his course. He scarcely looked at me, and said,
"My course is full."
"I muttered, partly to myself, something about being
disappointed, something about Chicago; when he sud-
Anna Morgan.
as she appeared with
Scott Siddons in
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY 01- ILLINOIS
My Chicago 33
denly turned in the revolving chair in which he sat and
said,
"You are not the young woman who has recently ap-
peared in Chicago with Scott-Siddons?"
"Yes, I am," I replied. Then he said,
"Well, Vandenhoff has the gout, and may not be able
to appear on the twenty-eighth."
Then he went on to mention possible openings, and
finally said in a patronizing manner never-to-be-forgotten.
"Let me have your address, Miss Morgan, and I will
telegraph you if I can make an opening for you."
I was staying with some cousins who lived well on the
outskirts of Brooklyn, and thinking the telegram would
reach me quicker, I gave my cousin's business address in
Wall Street and took my departure, feeling perfectly sure
the message to "read" would be forthcoming. My cousin,
Mr. Franklin Morey, was an unsophisticated man of
Quaker origin, wholly unacquainted with people in profes-
sional life, and I never shall forget with what an air of
something distinctly out of the ordinary he came home in
the middle of the afternoon a few days later with a
telegram :
"Have put you on the program for January twenty-
eighth. J. VAIL."
I haven't a program and cannot recall what I read,
probably "How Ruby Played," "How the Old Horse Won
the Bet," "The Brakeman At Church," and other numbers
then in demand. I remember my appearance was produc-
tive of good results, and other engagements in Brooklyn
and that vicinity followed.
On November 2ist, 1882, I appeared in the Roberts
Course, Boston Music Hall. Several years before, my
father had paid a visit to Boston and on his return had
given a wonderful account of the great organ which was
a distinctive feature of this hall, and which he had heard
in connection with the singing of Parepa Rosa.
34 My Chicago
Through the introduction of a friend I went to Hotel
Winthrop in Boylston street, which at that time was the
winter home of John G. Whittier, Celia Thaxter, and
other professional and artistic folk. Soon qfter my arrival
I met Charles Kent, an English actor, then at the Boston
Theatre in a play called "The World," in which he died
in the first act, which enabled him to come to Music Hall
in time to hear me; and I remember how much he encour-
aged and helped me through this eventful occasion. I re-
member that as I stood on the most trying of platforms,
which was remote from the audience (a faulty way of
building platforms at that time), and realized that I was
singing "Rock of Ages" to the great organ which I had
heard my father talk about years before, I was almost
paralyzed with fear. I must have disguised the fact, for
Mr. James H.| Roberts, manager of the course, sent me
a testimonial the next day in which he said :
"Miss Anna Morgan of Chicago appeared in the
Roberts Course, Boston Music Hall, November 2ist,
1882, and made a successful appearance. Although a
stranger to our people, she was heartily encored."
I remained a guest at Hotel Winthrop for two weeks,
during which time I made many charming and helpfuL
acquaintances, the most important of whom was JohnSxG
Whittier. We used to assemble in the parlor evenings
after dinner and listen to his reminiscences. He was the
simplest of men, wholly unsophisticated and untraveled,
in appearance strongly resembling my grandfather
Morgan. His memory was somewhat at fault. He used
to tell us over and over again about a trip he once made
to Hartford on the celebration of (I think it was) the
seventy-fifth birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe. On that
occasion he was delegated to cross the lawn escorting Mrs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, who had a fashion at that time
of dressing in an eccentric way. Mr. Whittier fairly
blushed as he told of his embarrassment in escorting her
My Chicago 35
to her seat. He presented me with a copy of his poems,
on the fly leaf of which was written "To Miss Anna
Morgan, from her friend John G. Whittier."
This little volume I prized highly. Unfortunately it
disappeared from my studios years ago, and I never was
able to recover it. He read to me his poem "Marguerite"
one evening when we were alone in his little parlor, and
told me that he had planned a long poem on the subject
of the French neutrals, but that Longfellow's "Evan-
geline" appeared on the same subject before he had
collected his material, so he contended himself with pub-
lishing the shorter poem. I read for him on this occasion,
and the next day he sent me the following letter:
Hotel Winthrop,
Boston, May 22, 1883
"I have had the pleasure of hearing Anna
Morgan's recitation of Father Prout's 'Bells of
Shandon' and other pieces, which seemed to me nat-
urally and admirably rendered. She has a clear
perception of the thought and fancy of the author,
and a remarkable adaptation of the tone and gesture
to their grave or gay words.
JOHN G. WHITTIER."
In June, 1883, I was invited to pay a visit to some rela-
tions in Evansville, Indiana. Soon after my arrival I was
induced to remain and give instruction to a large number
of society folk who were interested in doing things dra-
matic at that time. The work proved successful and enter-
taining, and at the end of six weeks, as a result of
this, my first experience in teaching, I returned to Chicago
with between five and six hundred dollars in my pocket,
which seemed quite wonderful to me then.
36 My Chicago
Chapter Three
HEN the Chicago Opera House was built, in
1884, David Henderson who had been man-
aging editor of The Daily News, became its
manager. At that time Franklin H. Sargent
of New York had started The Academy of
Dramatic Art in connection with the Empire Theatre, and
Mr. Henderson, wishing to keep abreast of the times,
proposed a similar scheme in connection with his Opera
House, and entrusted Mr. Kayzer, who was an intimate
friend of his, to organize a school which at first was
called The Chicago Opera House Conservatory.
Rooms were secured in the Reaper Block at the north-
east corner of Washington street, diagonally across from
the Opera House. This was not a desirable location
for an aesthetic school, but it was thought it must be
situated near the Opera House. The rooms were any-
thing but attractive, but the moment for starting such a
project seemed auspicious. The school flourished from
the beginning. Unfortunately the records of those first
years, in fact of all the succeeding years, were destroyed.
I write of them entirely from memory.
In view of the fact that I had been successful in my
efforts at teaching and rehearsing in Evansville, I was
invited to become a member of the faculty, which num-
bered twenty-five, the names of whom I cannot recall with
the exception of Colonel Monstery, a celebrated fenc-
ing master, George Sweet, and Katherine Van Arnhem
(who taught singing), George B. Berrell from the Opera
House (who was engaged as Dramatic Coach), Mr.
Kayzer, and myself. Later on John Stapleton who had
been associated with Augustin Daly, became the stage
My Chicago 37
manager and produced some very attractive plays at the
Opera House, which helped to bring the school into im-
mediate notice and favor.
It was the policy of the school to give a miscellaneous
program of recitations and musical numbers before thr
public performance of plays. On one occasion I was re-
citing the garden scene from "Mary Stuart" when smoke
began to appear from the rear of the stage. Realizing
that a panic was imminent, I stepped to the footlights and
assured the audience that the building was fireproof and
there was no danger, and at once began the recital of a
humorous sketch. The next morning The Associated
Press announced in big headlines, "Panic in Theatre
Averted by a Woman," and then went on to state the
facts.
Some time in 1886 Frederick Perry, who has been more
or less distinguished upon the dramatic stage, joined the
Conservatory classes, and I rehearsed him in the first part
in which he ever appeared before an audience. The play
was a one-act farce called "Sixes and Sevens." Bella
Tomlins and Sarah Truax, two young women who have
since won distinction as artists, were also in the cast.
Of course a teacher in dealing with pupils from all
grades of society, and with widely differing ideas re-
garding the art which they are seeking to represent, is
bound to encounter painful as well as humorous occur-
rences. I will mention one which happened in the early
days of the Conservatory. I had rehearsed a young
woman Miss Katherine Alvord in the character of Bar-
bara in a one-act play by Jerome K. Jerome, called "Bar-
bara." Barbara was a poor girl and in the original pro-
duction of the play was properly costumed in a simple grey
gown with plain collar and cuffs. The girl made such a
success of the role that a few weeks later, when Louis
James was playing an engagement in Chicago, we decided
to repeat the play at a matinee performance in order that
38 My Chicago
Mr. James, who was looking for a leading woman, might
judge of her ability. I was ill when the day came, and
unable to be present. After the play I was informed
that Miss Alvord, in order to impress Mr. James, had
appeared in a black gown heavily jetted. She thought it
would give her a finer appearance, and furthermore she
had taken an artificial rose which had been improvised as
a property at the last moment because a genuine one had
not been provided, and in an emotional climax had pulled
the rose to pieces, disclosing to the audience the cotton
on which it was built. Nothwithstanding these errors
of judgment she was engaged, and played several suc-
cessful seasons with Mr. James, and later with Augustin
Daly.
In those beginning years of the Conservatory, evening
as well as day classes were conducted. One night I came
down to the school about 7 o'clock, and as I reached the
elevator I discovered a little mite of a girl, her curly head
and expressive eyes enveloped in a red woolen hood. She
was accompanied by her brother, a youth of perhaps
seventeen, who informed me they had come to see Miss
Morgan because his little sister was talented and wished
to take lessons. When we reached my studio I asked
her name and was told it was Dora Drosdovitch, and
that her father kept a second-hand clothing store in South
Clark Street. I asked her to recite for me. Her recita-
tion was full of all sorts of exaggerations and tricky
"business" which had been taught her by some inartistic
teacher of the old school. But the absurdities could not
hide the expression of real talent with which I readily dis-
covered the child was endowed. I was thrilled with the
belief that I had found another Rachel, and immediately
began to think of plays in which to exploit a child of ten.
A few years previous Augustin Daly had translated
a play from the French for Bijou Heron, then a member
of his New York company, in which the heroine was a
My Chicago 39
little girl. The name of the play was "Monsieur Al-
phonse." I had seen it produced at McVicker's Theatre.
Happening to be in New York, I sought an interview with
Mr. Daly and asked his permission to produce the play
with Dora as the star. When he told me that his price
would be two hundred and fifty dollars for a single per-
formance my enthusiasm waned, and I contented myself
with scenes between Hubert and Prince Arthur, from
King John, and some performances of "Editha's Burg-
lar" written by Frances Hodgson Burnett, a play which
then was popular. "Dora" proved a distinct feature of
Conservatory matinees for about three years, but for
reasons which I do not recall her family moved west, and
so far as I know she never had any connection with the
professional stage.
Previous to that, Walker Whiteside, a lad of ten, had
come to Chicago from Kansas, and after two years' train-
ing with Mr. Kayzer in Shakespeare parts made a suc-
cessful debut at The Grand Opera House as "Hamlet"
and "Richard the Third." On the opening night I yielded
to his childish wish to wear a diamond ring of mine which
he greatly admired and from which, after the play was
over, a large diamond was missing, but it was miracu-
lously discovered later on rolled up in the stage carpet.
After this first engagement Walker grew so tall he could
no longer star as a prodigy, and did not play until some
years later, when he reappeared in "Hamlet" at The
Schiller Theatre. I remember I sat next Teddy Mc-
Phelim, then dramatic critic of The Tribune, and how
thrilled we both were as Hamlet left the stage after the
scene with the ghost, uttering the words "Go on, I'll fol-
low thee." We both agreed it was the most inspired de-
livery we had ever heard in a Shakespeare play. I might
add that Walker Whiteside has continued to act from
that time on, and is still an honored member of the
dramatic profession.
-
4O My Chicago
Among other juvenile recruits to the Conservatory
ranks a little later were the Murphy children, Fred and
Marie, who came from Danville, Illinois. Fred was one
of the most interesting and satisfactory members of my
classes, and turned out to be an excellent reader and
actor.
Under the stage name of Fred Eric, Fred joined Julia
Marlowe's Company while yet he was a boy, remaining
with it six seasons, during which time he won wide recog-
nition as the one actor of the younger generation capable
of reading blank verse with intelligence and proper em-
phasis. He played with Otis Skinner in a varied reper-
toire, and later accompanied the Sothern-Marlowe
Company to England, where he won high praise from
the London critics. He is the youngest American actor
to win recognition at home and abroad for unusual gifts
in the interpretation of poetic drama.
At this period Steele MacKaye had returned to New
York from Paris where he had been studying with
Francois Delsarte his analysis of expression. There was
a great deal of excitement about Delsarte just then. Stu-
dents were flocking to New York from all over the
country, standing in line eager to pay twenty dollars an
hour for instruction, convinced that this "new method"
was a certain road to fame and fortune on the musical
and dramatic stages.
I was impressed with the fact that it was a grammar of
expression and that it would have a great vogue, so I
went down and interviewed Mr. MacKaye, secured two
books, translations of Delsarte's lessons written by two
of his pupils, and at once began to teach the Delsarte
Method of Expression, with the result that large numbers
were attracted to my classes. I arranged a series of ex-
hibition exercises for which I had music specially written,
drilled a class of men in a pantomime depicting the death
of Julius Caesar, and another which I called "The Fate
My Chicago 41
of Virginia," based on Macauley's poem, and announced
"An Hour with Delsarte" which was given in the Opera
House.
I designed the costumes, and in order to get an artistic
arrangement of colors went over to Marshall Field's and
got samples of cheesecloth which I proceeded to pin on a
large sheet of brown paper and experimented with them
until I secured a satisfactory combination. This occasion
was my first introduction to Elia W. Peattie, who had
just begun to write for Chicago newspapers. She was
sent by the Daily News to write up the novel perform-
ance, which she did. Her story with its illustrations oc-
cupied three columns of the paper. I remember she was
greatly amused at sight of my sheet of brown paper with
its bunches of color pinned on here and there. I still have
that sheet in my possession.
Franklin H. Sargent, newly graduated from Harvard,
had with many others become interested in the Delsarte
Method of Expression, and as I have before stated, had
started the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New
York. In 1886 he paid a visit to Chicago and accepted
my invitation to give a talk at the Conservatory, in wnich
he set forth the principles of Delsarte in the peculiar terms
which enveloped that teacher's philosophy, dilating upon
the concentric position of the right foot when the left arm
was eccentric centro, and so on. I dared not look at Mr.
Kayzer, John Wilkie, Lyman Glover, Robert Peattie,
or John Stapleton during the talk, and as soon as Mr.
Sargent took his departure they all swooped down upon
me and said,
"Will you tell us what this man has been talking
about? It's the biggest tommyrot we ever heard."
But it wasn't, it was a grammar of expression couched
in terms of art and at first presented in an impractical
fashion, with much exaggeration which brought it into
42 My Chicago
more or less ridicule, but which left its impress upon the
art of expression through voice and action.
Shortly after this, as I stood before one of my classes,
I was impressed with the necessity for a book that would
be of more practical value than the translation from the
French, and I said "I must write it." So I set about it
at once and prevailed upon my sister Marian and a friend
to make some sketches of my pupils illustrative of the
work, which they did. Before the book was finished I de-
termined to go to New York to arrange for its publica-
tion. I had not the faintest idea of publishers, nor of
their policies, nor methods, but the name of Appletons
made a strong appeal to me, and upon reaching New York
I went at once to their office. The reader for this then
foremost publishing house in New York was an elderly
man, very kindly in his manner. He told me their rule
was never to accept a book without taking time for con-
sideration; but when I told him I was obliged to return
to Chicago the next day he politely consented to take the
manuscript to his home in Brooklyn and read it.
I was in his office waiting for him upon his arrival in
the morning. He told me the Appletons would publish
the book, bringing it put in a paper cover to sell for fifty
cents. This proposition did not meet with my approval,
so I bade him good-morning and repaired to Houghton
and Mifflin's New York office and presented my case.
Young Mr. Mifflin told me I had better go over to Boston
and see his uncle Mr. Houghton, the senior member of
Houghton and Mifflin (by the way, they still are in the
front rank of publishers) ; so I took the night boat for
Boston. As I approached their office I encountered Moses
True Browne, then at the head of the Boston School of
Oratory. He inquired my errand in Boston and when I
told him he said,
"I doubt whether Houghton & Mifflin will take your
book, for they are just bringing out a book of mine and
My Chicago 43
it is against their rules to bring out two books on the
same subject in the same year," which proved to be the
case.
At their suggestion I went to Lee and Shepherd's and
placed with them the book, "An Hour with Delsarte."
They brought it out in most artistic style. It sold for two
dollars a copy.
Among the pupils in the Conservatory classes at that
time were the children of Mr. and Mrs. Ferdinand W.
Peck. Mr. Peck had become interested in the school and
in Mr. Kayzer. As a consequence when the Auditorium
building was projected it was decided the name should be
changed to The Chicago Conservatory, and that we
should remove to rooms especially designed for us in
that building. The school became established in those new
and beautiful quarters in 1889. Eminent teachers were
added to the musical department, William H. Sherwood
being placed at the head of the Piano Department, Leo-
pold Godowsky, Calvin B. Cady, W. S. B. Matthews,
Julia Lois Caruthers, and others being associate teachers.
Sig. Carpi of Milan was engaged as head of the de-
partment of singing, which included many distinguished
teachers. I retained my position as head of the dramatic
department, Mr. Hart Conway being engaged as stage
director and producer of plays. The faculty was a large
one, including all branches of music, dramatic art, danc-
ing, and French, German and Italian.
I cannot undertake to record the many fine concerts
given by members of the faculty and their professional
pupils, nor of the stage productions given by Mr. Hart
Conway from 1889 to 1899, for I have no records of
them.
" -
44 My Chicago
Chapter Four
of my own productions during my con-
nection with the Conservatory are worthy
of record as being among the earliest efforts
in Chicago to produce the literary drama,
which later on was called the New Theatre
Movement and The Little Theatre.
On March 21, 1896, I gave the first presentation in
America of Ibsen's "The Master Builder" at Powers
Theatre, before a crowded house of representative social,
educational, literary and artistic members of Chicago
society. I had taken great pains in rehearsing it. I was
fortunate in having an ideal cast. Altogether it was an
event of dramatic importance in Chicago, and was truly
appreciated by the small number who at the time knew
something of Ibsen and who at least partially realized
what an important share he was to have in the evolution
of the drama.
Unfortunately Edward J. McPhelim, for some years
the dramatic critic of The Tribune, a man of rare literary
intuition and attainment, was too ill to attend the per-
formance though he had looked forward to it with much
interest. He was thoroughly familiar with this most
literary of the Ibsen plays, and enthusiastic over its
being done in Chicago ; and of course would have written
x an intelligent criticism of the performance. As it was,
' Mr. Barrett Eastman was detailed by The Tribune to
write the article. He acknowledged to the Chatfield-
Taylors, with whom he sat at the play, that he had
never read it, had never even heard of it.
Mr. Hamlin Garland, newly arrived in Chicago and
much interested in the new theatre movement, made some
My Chicago 45
remarks before the curtain rose on the first act, in which
he said among other things, "Ibsen is not on trial to-day,
but the people of Chicago." Mr. Eastman took this
remark for his cue and devoted about three columns to
"roasting" Mr. Garland, the play, and its author. I
have dwelt at length on this, because I wish to record the
lack of appreciation and encouragement I encountered
from our critics on this and subsequent occasions.
This being the first production of the play in English,
the cast should be recorded :
Halvard Solness, a master
builder Mr. Edward Dvorak
Aline Solness, his wife Miss Katherine Knowles
Dr. Herdal, their family phy-
sician Mr. Albert Augustus
Knute Brovik, formerly archi-
tect, now assistant to Solnes . .Mr. John Dvorak
Ragnar Brovik, his son Mr. Herbert Skinner
Kaja Foslic, his niece Miss Margaret Wagner
Hilda Wangel Miss Sophea Levea
Miss Maud Caruthers
Ladies Miss Jessie Harding
I also produced in 1896 "Old Wine," a one-act play
written by Herbert Stuart Stone and Harrison Rhodes
during their college days at Harvard. These young
men had just started the publication of "The Chap Book"
and for many reasons were popular, and their play, which
was given at Powers Theatre, was largely attended and
much appreciated by their numerous friends.
Mrs. Edward Mysenberg, mother of Janet Beecher
and Olive Wyndom, was in the cast and distinguished
herself as an old and privileged servant.
In 1896 Maeterlinck, as well as Ibsen, had appeared
on the literary-dramatic horizon, and I had fallen
46 My Chicago
in love with the charm of his work, especially with
a one-act play "The Intruder." Possibly my interest in
the play and its author and the desire to meet him actu-
ated me to visit Europe in July of that summer. I took
passage on an Atlantic transport steamer for Paris. The
boat carried freight chiefly, having accommodation for
only forty passengers. Before we fairly set sail I be-
came possessed of the idea to write an article "In a
Modern Noah's Ark, or From America to Paris by
Freight." There happened to be a man on board bound
for Calcutta who made some clever sketches for me il-
lustrative of my article, one of the Captain and his pet
lamb, and some of the horses on board. I also wrote
an article on Maeterlinck during the trip, called "The
Belgian Shakespeare." Both articles were published in
The Chicago Herald.
On this trip I made the acquaintance of Dr. Marcus
Simpson, who had recently been graduated from Colum-
bia University and who was on his way to Munich for
a course in German literature. He happened to be in
Brussels as-guest of the American consul when I arrived
there on my search for Maeterlinck, and readily accepted
my invitation to go with me to Ghent and help find him.
Upon our arrival after an hour's ride by train, we drove
to a bookstore to learn his address. I remember the
man whom we addressed said he knew no one by the name
of Maeterlinck in Ghent. Whereupon Dr. Simpson said,
"Why, this lady has come all the way from America
to see him. He is a famous man."
After some deliberation the man produced a card
from a small drawer in a secretary remarking, "That
might be the man." We jumped into our waiting cab
and drove to the house, only to find a note tacked to
the door saying Maeterlinck was at Oostaeker, his country
home, a five mile drive into the country.
Although we had promised to join a party of friends
My Chicago 47
on the twelve o'clock train for an afternoon at Bruges,
we determined to carry out our plan of finding Maeter-
linck, so off we started. We arrived at his home in the
nick of time, just as he was mounting his bicycle to go
for a ride. From the nature of his writings I had ex-
pected to see a thin, pale, aesthetic looking man. In-
stead I found a man who was the picture of health, with
black hair, eyes too blue to be violet, a ruddy complexion,
and above the medium size. He was cordial but reti-
cent, spoke French only, asked many questions about art
and literature in America, expressed great interest in
hearing of the production of "The Master Builder."
'When I told him I was going to produce "The Intruder"
he seemed greatly pleased. He took us into his garden
and picked a huge bouquet of old-fashioned flowers
which he presented to me, after which we bade him good-
bye in order to make our train. After my return to
America I received a charming letter from him in which
he referred to my brief visit, adding that he found in
me "one not at all a stranger."
I began rehearsals of "The Intruder" in December,
1896, and although the play required less than thirty
minutes in performance I continued work on it for three
months, presenting it at Steinway Hall, February 27, 1 897.
It is safe to say it is one of the greatest one-act plays ever
written, and the most difficult to rehearse, one that calls
for the utmost patience. I sat and listened to it by the
hour until I got the tone work and the rhythm which the
play demanded, in several instances trying as many as
twenty voices before finding the quality which the lines
required. Three days before the date announced for the
production, the man who had rehearsed the blind grand-
father for three months was taken critically ill, and a new
man had to be rehearsed. Fortunately he had been
present at most of the rehearsals and was thoroughly
48 My Chicago
familiar with the lines and "business" and was able to
give a creditable performance.
The play was given at 9.30 P. M. in Steinway Hall
before the most critical audience which Chicago could
offer, most of whom thoroughly appreciated my enter-
prise and courage in giving Chicago the opportunity of
hearing this remarkable play. The newspaper men for
the most part sat on the back seats and grinned, regard-
ing both it and me as being "queer." I have no record
of their printed criticisms, but Mr. Henry B. Fuller in an
article written for the Atlantic Monthly on the theatres
of Chicago at that time, said "Little can be found for
approval beyond the efforts of Miss Anna Morgan of
the Chicago Conservatory, who gives infrequent per-
formances of Ibsen, Maeterlinck and the like, a work
which she carries on with great enthusiasm and optimism
despite the indifference of the middle public and the re-
sentment of the newspaper press."
Following "The Intruder" I gave the first presenta-
tion of Browning's "In a Balcony" as a play, Miss Jessie
Harding playing the Queen, Miss Amy Swartchild being
the Constance, and James Carew (who later became the
husband of Ellen Terry) acting the role of Norbert. I
took infinite pains in its preparation, building a special
setting in Recital Hall, the Auditorium. When the
evening came the first person to arrive was Jenkin Lloyd
Jones, the dean of the Browning cult in Chicago, who
greeted me with these words:
"Miss Morgan, I am afraid to go in. You know
this is a great poem and I am afraid to see it acted."
As Miss Harding in the role of the Queen slowly
descended the steps of the balcony, draped in some gor-
geous brocaded window hangings which we had resur-
rected from somewhere on the north side, looking the
very embodiment of that particular woman, and said,
"This hair was early grey," the expression of Mr.
My Chicago 49
Jones' eye prepared me for the eulogies which he re-
corded of her work and of the entire performance and
which were printed in Unity Magazine.
An actor, a former student of mine who witnessed the
performance, returned to New York shortly after and
described it to Mrs. Sarah Cowell LeMoyne, then famous
as an interpretative reader of Browning. Mrs. LeMoyne
was loath to believe the poem could succeed as a play.
Nevertheless she herself presented it at the Grand Opera
House five years later, with Eleanor Robson as Con-
stance, Otis Skinner as Norbert, she herself acting the
Queen. It was about as unrelated a cast as possibly
could have been selected. Mrs. LeMoyne smacked of
the reading desk of the old school, was dressed in a con-
ventional theatrical costume ; Mr. Skinner was fresh from
rehearsals of Mark Antony, Miss Robson being the only
fresh material, devoid of traditional mannerisms.
Mrs. Peattie, who criticized their performance, was
careful to note that neither Miss Harding nor our per-
formance in any way suffered in comparison.
In 1898 I gave the first presentation of "The Land of
Heart's Desire" by William Butler Yeats, at a matinee
at the Great Northern Theatre, which had just been com-
pleted; and a little later gave a notable performance of
two one-act plays, "Afterglow" and "The Stranger with-
in the Gates," from Mr. Henry B. Fuller's volume of
twelve one-act plays entitled, "The Puppet Booth."
One incident in "The Stranger within the Gates" de-
manded that the heroine arrive on the scene in a coach.
I had secured from Mr. Leroy Payne the use of an
historic coach then in his possession. Just before the
curtain was to rise on this act, one of the stage hands
came to me in great distress, telling me the coach had
arrived but that it was so large it could not be gotten
through the stage door. Whereupon I flew to the door
and called to the driver of a cab who chanced to be in
My Chicago
the alley, to take his horse from the cab and bring it
upon the stage at once, which he did* When the moment
came for the arrival I had the man whip up the horse
so that his head could be seen from tne wings, and
amidst much excitement the heroine, who supposedly had
alighted from a coach, appeared on the scene; and the
audience applauded, little dreaming of what had trans-
pired off stage.
A few months later I gave the first American produc-
tion of "The Fan," by Goldoni, especially translated for
my use by Mr. Henry B. Fuller. These plays called for
large casts. In them were Mr. Harold Heaton, Mr.
Irving K. Pond, Mr. John Robbins, and Miss Katherine
Knowles, who later became Mrs. Robbins.
For years "Hamlet" had been a favorite play of mine,
and one day in 1898 I suddenly realized what a variety
of tone work the play represented, the role of Hamlet
alone calling for the widest scope in the use of the speak-
ing voice. Accordingly I planned and gave a recital of
the play with nine Hamlets and three Ophelias, selecting
the voices with special reference to their adaptability to
the various scenes, each Hamlet leaving the stage as his
scene was completed, and another Hamlet taking up the
next scene and so on to the end of the play.
The first Ophelia gave the farewell scene with Laertes
as Laertes is leaving for France; the second gave the
scene between Ophelia and Hamlet, ending with Ophelia's
speech "Oh, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown" ! To
the third was given the mad scene where Ophelia
pathetically chants fragmentary and wandering thoughts
regarding her father's death, and takes leave of the
Queen and her brother as she goes out to drown her-
self. Sarah Truax, who had been given these particular
scenes, was studying with an Italian singing teacher at the
time, who advised her that this was too good an oppor-
tunity to display her singing quality not to be taken ad-
My Chicago 51
vantage of. Accordingly, to my consternation, when she
came upon the stage she proceeded to sing in genuine
Italian operatic style. When the distressing scene was
finished I rushed to the dressing room madly exclaiming,
"You have ruined my play!" It is needless to add that
our professional relations came to an end then and there.
Burton Holmes took some lessons in voice culture in
the Conservatory before starting out on his career as a
lecturer, and gave his first talk in Recital Hall, at which
all his neighbors and friends congregated. Mrs. H. O.
Stone declared it to be the best lecture she had ever
listened to up to that time. He scoffed at the idea of
ever being classed with Stoddard, yet he has far out-
distanced Stoddard in the extent of his lectures, the sub-
jects treated, and their numbers.
An interesting event in the days of the Conservatory
in the Auditorium was a visit from Patti, who attended
one of our matinees. A little one-act play called "Fast
Friends" proved so attractive to her that she invited one
of the girls to accompany her to her home in Wales that
she might rehearse the play there and present it to her
friends. Of course the girl accepted the invitation.
Chapter Five
N 1897 a young woman appeared in my
studios. She said she was from Galesburg,
Illinois, a teacher in one of the high schools
there, and added that her name was Harriet
Blackstone and that she wished to take some
lessons: Quickly discovering her talent for charteriza-
tion, I advised her to make a special study of Riley's
boys, which she did and in which she was successful.
She continued to come up now and then from Galesburg
52 My Chicago
and continue her work with me, then disappeared for two
or three years during which she studied painting in Brook-
lyn and New York. One day she reappeared in my
studios exclaiming,
"Miss Morgan, I am here to stay. All my earthly
possessions including my mother are here, and I have
taken an apartment near you on Lake avenue."
"What are you going to do?" I inquired.
"Paint portraits" was the prompt reply.
I smiled, though my heart sank at the thought of it,
but she knew what she was about, and went at it in the
spirit of certainty she had derived from her New Eng-
land ancestry. And she was right. Her first order was
to paint Ottilie Liljencrantz, a young author whose un-
timely death was a grief to all who knew her. Next came
a commission to paint Judge Ewing. Then she moved
to Glencoe, where she executed enough orders to enable
her to build a charming bungalow and later on a studio.
Miss Blackstone has been an industrious and painstaking
worker, and for some years has been recognized as one
of our best portrait artists. I arranged the composi-
tion for the portrait which she painted of me, a reproduc-
tion of which appears in this book. When she entered
the room and took in my scheme for the picture she ex-
claimed,
"Dp you expect me to paint that well, if I don't I'm a
fool, if I do I'm a good one." And she was a good
one.
Ottilie Liljencrantz, whom I have just mentioned, was
a pupil of mine for several seasons, an attractive young
woman with a mind unusually endowed. She had a vivid
fancy and a true sense of proportion, she seemed to have
been set apart for a career in literature, and in this I
believe she would have won distinction. She was under
twenty-five when she was called away, yet voung as she
was she had written one book that would have done
R
c
II
C -i
c ^
52 My Chicago
and continue her work with me, then disappeared for two
or three years during which she studied painting in Brook-
lyn and New York. One day she reappeared in my
studios exclaiming,
"Miss Morgan, I am here to stay. All my earthly
possessions including my mother are here, and I have
taken an apartment near you on Lake avenue."
"What are you going to do?" I inquired.
"Paint portraits" was the prompt reply.
I smiled, though my heart sank at the thought of it,
but she knew what she was about, and went at it in the
spirit of certainty she had derived from her New Eng-
land ancestry. And she was right. Her first order was
to paint Ottilie Liljencrantz, a young author whose un-
timely death was a grief to all who knew her. Next came
a commission to paint Judge Ewing. Then she moved
to Glencoe, where she executed enough orders to enable
her to build a charming bungalow and later on a studio.
Miss Blackstone has been an industrious and painstaking
worker, and for some years has been recognized as one
of our best portrait artists. I arranged the composi-
tion for the portrait which she painted of me, a reproduc-
tion of which appears in this book. When she entered
the room and took in my scheme for the picture she ex-
claimed,
"Do you expect me to paint that well, if I don't I'm a
fool, if I do I'm a good one." And she was a good
one.
Ottilie Liljencrantz, whom I have just mentioned, was
a pupil of mine for several seasons, an attractive young
woman with a mind unusually endowed. She had a vivid
fancy and a true sense of proportion, she seemed to have
been set apart for a career in literature, and in this I
believe she would have won distinction. She was under
twenty-five when she was called away, yet voung as she
was she had written one book that would have done
c
C
I*
LIBRARY
OF THE
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
My Chicago 53
credit to an older head and much longer experience. I
mean her story "The Thrall of Leif the Lucky," really
a noble book, rich not only in imagination but in his-
torical knowledge of the Norse settlements upon the coast
of Greenland a thousand years ago. The book had im-
mediate success. It appeared about 1903, and the best
evidence of its value lies in the fact that it still is selling.
During that season I gave a series of dramatic mati-
nees in Recital Hall of the Auditorium, presenting in
addition to various recitations, monologues and duo-
logues, two one-act plays each week, thus affording
valuable practice for professional members of my classes
who were able to test their ability before an audience
of five hundred. These recitals were supplemented by a
series of noon Shakespearean programs.
I recall that Prof. David Swing was present at one of
the afternoon recitals when a sketch I had adapted from
Anthony Hope was given under the title "Nature and
Philosophy." A young girl (Nature) endeavors to draw
out a confession of love from a hyper-intellectual pro-
fessor (Philosophy). The Professor is much engaged
in research of some kind when she obtrudes herself upon
his time and attention, and presents the case of a girl
having two lovers, which he takes down in legal form
under the titles of A and B. They have a long scene in
which he remains obtuse to her intimations of admira-
tion for him, until finally in despair she takes her de-
parture. After some minutes the Professor looks at his
watch, exclaims,
"Good gracious! Two o'clock. I shall be late for
lunch!" (Rises with books and eyeglasses in hand, takes
a few steps, pauses, speaks.) "Rather an interesting
story, that of Miss May's. I wonder which she'll marry,
A or B."
It has always been pleasant to know that the last time
Professor Swing entertained a caller at his Lake Shore
'
54 My Chicago
home, a few days before his death, as he stood looking
out over the lake he nodded his head, up and down, and
quoted from the play: "I wonder which she'll marry, A
or B." }
In 1898 a very effeminate looking blond young man
appeared at the Conservatory offices one day and en-
gaged twenty private lessons. When I inquired what he
wished to take up he replied that he desired to take the
entire twenty lessons on the grave digging scene from
"Hamlet" with which he proposed entering a public
speaking contest at Northwestern University, Evanston.
He seemed so sanguine of his ability to succeed if
given a chance that I began the lessons, with the result
that I gave him the opportunity to appear in one of my
noon Shakespearean recitals, which he did with credit
both to himself and me. The contest resulted in the
prize being equally divided between him and a young
man who was quite famed for his rhetorical powers and
a great favorite with the audience. The adage "Nothing
ventured, nothing gained" was in his case illustrated.
Another similar case occurs to me : A young woman
not at all prepossessing in appearance came in one day
and said she wished to take up a two years' course of
study, after which she proposed to go before the public
as a platform entertainer. I was inclined to doubt the
possibility of her success, but she was confident. A few
months after her graduation a man came to my office
and asked to see me. He said he was looking for a reader
for Lyceum work in connection with a concert company.
I telephoned this young woman, who fortunately was
able to get to the studios in less than half an hour. The
man heard her, and engaged her then and there. She
traveled with his company for two years, then organized
a company of her own, and for years made successful
trips from Maine to Oregon, and finally made a profes-
sional trip to China. Her name was Emily Waterman.
My Chicago 55
The World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 was
chiefly distinguished to the intellectual people of all coun-
tries by a series of congresses and conventions philo-
sophical, poetical, artistic and educational. With one of
these gatherings I was personally concerned. This was
a convention of Elocutionists. Elocution had flourished
amazingly during twenty or more preceding years. It
had its professors, and the professors their followers, all
of whom took it and themselves seriously. It was sup-
posed to be an art, where as we know now it was only a
manifestation of an attribute of an art. The Exposition
found it at its apogee. Thereafter it declined in a manner
reminiscent of what Mr. Wegg described as "The Rise
and Fall Off the Rooshan Empire." Today the wonder ^^
is that any of its professors ever were regarded as ponti- \
fical; and for its followers and their performances, "the /
winds have blown them all away."
As a part of my system of teaching I had been obliged
to concede a place to it; and because I was at the head
of a great school in Chicago, these Elocution people de-
pended upon me for help. My friend Eugene Field was
the most widely known poet then residing here. He
had been doing considerable platform work, principally
concerned with his own verses, and in that way had
acquired wide personal popularity. I called on Melville
E. Stone, who as editor of The Daily News had been
instrumental in bringing Gene to Chicago. Mr. Stone
had become general manager of the Associated Press, and
I wanted him to give the convention publicity in con-
nection with Gene's appearance. I thought I would better
do that before approaching Gene himself. Mr. Stone
threw his hands in the air and cried out to me.
"Oh Anna ! an elocutionists' convention ! The boys
will have the time of their lives with it!"
And then he laughed and laughed, but finally he agreed
to do what he could. Then I went after Gene and landed
56 My Chicago
him on condition that he would neither be asked to re-
cite nor be recited at.
On the evening of the event Gene was the first arrival;
he whispered to me,
"I will recite if you want me to."
When he was due for his turn, I asked Mr. Stone to
introduce him. Mr. Stone agreed, mounted a chair, and
said,
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Eugene Field has de-
clared his intention to recite. If you will kindly wait
'til I get out of the building, I shall be much obliged."
Some of the visitors who did not know the relation-
ship existing between the men were somewhat shocked
but were soon engrossed in the retorting wit and original
recitations of Mr. Field. No one present can ever for-
get the humor of "The Conversazzhyony," "Casey's
Table d'Hote" or the pathos of "Long Ago" and "Little
Boy Blue."
Few of us have ever been privileged to know another
personality so winsome, so whimsical, so sincere as Eu-
gene Field. Few of those who did know him have ever
given him the place and rating that truly belong to him.
He was widely esteemed as a poet of childhood, the
! children's poet. It was an error to adjudge him so. He
wrote wonderfully beautiful and touching poems about
children, but not for children. His poems of childhood
were written for grown ups. Take for example the poem
of "The Lyttel Boy." No mother or father who has lost
a child can read that poem without tears. Indeed I doubt
whether any normally constituted adult could read it and
not be deeply and tenderly touched. But to no child
did it or could it have any meaning. The same thing
is true of all that group of poems the center and jewel
of which is, "Little Boy Blue." To his closer friends he
made no pretense of anything else. In fact he held but
slight estimate of any of his work. It was not easy to
My Chicago 57
get him to talk of it. He has been known to admit with
candor that he liked to make the women boo hoo. It is
true he was a lover of children, even of his own, but
his sense of being an affectionate father, indulgent and
devoted, sometimes took on strange forms. It was his
joke once when he got home around three o'clock in the
morning after his work on the paper was done, to go up
stairs and rout the children out of bed with the exciting
information that they might find a great big candy mine
in the dining room; and when they had whooped and
tumbled down the stairway to overturn all the furniture
in a search for that nonexistent treasure, he would go
to his own room, close the door, and quietly go to bed.
It was on some such occasion that the children got even
with him. A man who has been up and working until
two o'clock or thereabout may be understood to have
need of rest. The whole troupe stole upstairs on such a
night, and pounded on his door, one at a time, and scuttled
off giggling, and finally came back and went in and dis-
turbed him, also one at a time, until he got tired of it
and arose and drove them forth with a great simulation
of wrath. Then he returned to his pillow and was slip-
ping away to dreamland when the littlest boy softly pushed
the door wide open and stood there in his little white
night shirt and spoke at the top of his dear little voice,
and said,
"Wats you terrior; mice, you pup; turn in to the alley,
I'll do you up!"
He gave up, and got up and played with them at their
rough little games until he wore them out. It so hap-
pened that he had to be at the office by ten o'clock that
morning; and he complained bitterly to Mr. Stone of
the miseries of a man whose family would not let him
sleep.
An interesting dramatic event connected with the
World's Columbian Exposition in 1893 was the presenta-
'58 My Chicago
tion by the Augustin Daly Company on June 3Oth of a
pastoral performance of "As You Like It" on the
grounds of Fairlawn, the home of Mr. Charles B. Farwell
at Lake Forest, in aid of the Children's Home of the Ex-
position. Interesting as the whole occasion was atten-
tion was largely centered upon Mrs. Chatfield-Taylor,
then a bride, who received the guests as they alighted
from their carriages, standing under the spreading
branches of an elm tree, wearing a muslin gown with a
blue sash and a wide leghorn hat, a veritable American
Beauty "Rose."
In June, 1899, I went on a visit to New York and upon
my return found matters in the Conservatory in a chaotic
condition, so much so that it seemed expedient that I
should set out on an independent venture which I had
seriously considered doing for some time. In taking
leave of the Conservatory I wish to express my appre-
ciation of the opportunities it offered me in working out
my plans, in those beginning years of my professional
career. If I brought youth, enthusiasm and ability which
helped to make it distinctive, it generously supported
my endeavors; and so the connection was of common
benefit.
It is doubtful whether any similar school has ever been
so splendidly equipped both in the corps of distinguished
and efficient teachers and in its artistic and adequate en-
vironment attracting discriminating and professional stu-
dents from the east as well as the west. Mr. Kayzer, its
founder, was a man of rare good taste both in music and
dramatic art, but notwithstanding the fact that he had
Mr. Lyman B. Glover and Mr. John B. Wilkie asso-
ciated with him as managers, from time to time the very
large salaries demanded and paid many of the instruc-
tors, together with other large expenses, made it impossi-
ble for a school not endowed to stand the financial strain.
My Chicago '; 59
In consequence Mr. Kayzer gave up the school and trans-
feree! his activities to New York, where he continues
them.
Chapter Six
HE severance of my long connection with the
Conservatory came so suddenly and so com-
pletely that I was wholly unprepared for the
change. It was really a trying hour for me.
I had to decide for myself what I should
do. I walked through Van Buren street, and as I reached
the corner of Michigan avenue I suddenly determined
to go into the Studebaker building. I had heard it was
being fitted up for studios. It has since been known as
The Fine Arts Building. There I met for the first time,
although we had been workers side by side for many
years, Mr. Charles C. Curtiss, who had undertaken to
open and direct this temple of art. When I explained
to him the state of affairs and that I thought I ought to
go to New York, I remember he said, "We want you
right here, Miss Morgan," whereupon he proceeded to
mark off the space he thought I ought to have on the
eighth floor. I summoned my architect friend Irving K.
Pond to the conference. Mr. Pond at once offered valu-
able advice and suggested plans, and I all at once found
myself embarked upon an independent enterprise.
I can still see my friends Mrs. Peattie and Mr. Fuller,
who came in to look over the ground, standing in one of
the windows and shaking their heads dubiously at what
seemed too great a venture it was then late in the sum-
mer for securing students for that year.
But I proceeded to sit down and write a catalogue an-
nouncing the founding of "The Anna Morgan Studios,"
Miss Jessie Harding, assistant teacher, and called up
60 My Chicago
Donnelley's printing office. Ben Donnelley answered the
telephone. I said,
"Ben, I'm starting a new school; I haven't any money,
but if I live you'll get your pay. Do you wish to do my
printing?"
The reply came, "You bet we do," and the catalogues
were printed and mailed.
In the meantime the Studios were built and decorated.
The woodwork was black, and the walls were covered
with a grayish purple burlap, and altogether they pre-
sented a unique and distinctive appearance. In fact the
entire building quickly acquired the artistic atmosphere
which Mr. Curtiss had desired and worked to obtain.
In other places, especially in connection with the art
movements that led to the erection of The Art Institute
and its galleries of paintings, I have mentioned various
localities that were occupied from time to time by this
or the other group of artists whose affair it was to pro-
mote or deal with one or other of the liberal arts. There
is an aspect of the resultant situation apart from that
presented by the Art Institute itself. A little later I will
deal with the first effort to set up a permanent local
center of art interests at the Auditorium; but for the
present purpose I consider it more pertinent to the main
issue to describe the real consummation of that desire in
the present Fine Arts Building.
About the year 1889 Charles C. Curtiss, becoming
aware of the insufficient work done up to that time, took
it upon himself to bring into concrete form the distinct
elements of a generally necessary purpose, and formulated
the plan of a building sufficiently commodious, and per-
fectly located, which might house and become a focal
point of all these interests. After a somewhat difficult
negotiation he got possession of a part of the Studebaker
property facing Michigan avenue; then had plans drawn
for The Fine Arts Building, and with admirable tenacity
My Chicago
fe
took hold of and carried through the financial organiza-
tion necessary to the end in view. Everyone now knows
his ideas were sound. The intermediate years, in which
so many other related things have shifted and changed so
often, have left his architectural and other subordinate
ideas just as they were the day the building was thrown
open for occupancy. This dignified and worthy enter-
prise could not have been carried to completion by any
man of less repute in matters involving foresight, and
probity of character. His own knowledge of art was
based not so much upon schooling as upon native good
taste and clear intuition. His reputation for integrity
and his peculiar ability to deal with all sorts of men made
his achievement one of comparative ease. He has been
in charge of the property from the first, and has managed
it with admirable skill.
In the beginning years of The Fine Arts Building
there was a blending of the social with the artistic life
in the studios that was truly delightful. We were all
prosperous, with plenty of work to do, yet somehow there
seemed to be time to exchange visits with our co-workers
and take an active interest in the work which each was
doing. Visitors were frequent; almost any day we were
sure to see a group of Chicago friends who were enter-
taining out-of-town guests by bringing them to The Fine
Arts Building and its attractive studios. It was a show
place in the town, a rendezvous where you were sure to
see interesting people. The samovar was in daily service
between the hours of four and seven, and for a few
years it was almost a continuous party. On my floor,
in addition to The Fortnightly, John McCutcheon was
domiciled during the first years he was in Chicago.
John was a good neighbor, and of course a most interest-
ing one to my patrons and my visitors. Meeting him
in passing was an event in the day to the men as well
as to the women who traversed the eighth floor in the
My Chicago
I u _| t^
early nineteen-hundreds. After a time John moved to
the tenth floor, which was exclusively an artists' colony.
There he had for neighbors Lorado Taft, Charles Francis
Browne, Ralph Fletcher Seymour and the Alderbrink
Press, Herman MacNeil, Frank and Joe Leyendecker,
Blanche Ostertag, Ralph Clarkson, George Ade, The Rose
Bindery (founded by and presided over by Mrs. Chat-
field Taylor), and many other wellknown artists. Most
of the occupants of this floor constituted the artists'
colony who had their summer camp at Oregon. Many
of them are still there. Not only afternoon teas but
night spreads, generally in the Browne studio, were of
weekly occurrence, the company being augmented by a
privileged few from the outside, with an occasional out-
of-town visitor. There was an informality, a comrade-
ship that is sweet to remember. Passing years and
changed conditions have transferred those happy meet-
ings to other places. The circle has been broken; many
have gone away to other art centers. In addition to The
Little Room, The Arts Club and The Cordon have
come in to claim a share in the social life of the building,
and to provide for the greatly increased number now
affiliated in artistic endeavor.
The Woman's Club has maintained its roomy and
hospitable quarters on the ninth floor and has not only
increased in numbers but in the range of its activities
and influence in both educational and civic movements,
and has contributed in many ways to bringing Chicago up
to a level with her eastern sisters.
Opposite the Woman's Club on the ninth floor was
located the studio of Mrs. Milward Adams. Mrs.
Adams and I began our work as teachers in Chicago
almost simultaneously, working side by side for about
twenty-six years. It is my privilege to record this tribute
to her memory:
Miss Florence James of Keokuk became the wife of
My Chicago 63
Milward Adams on August 23, 1883. It was at the time
when the Delsarte theory of expression had suddenly
sprung into notice, and Mrs. Adams had benefited by
training in the east, especially with Steele MacKaye.
Aside from Mrs. Adams' acquired equipment for her
chosen profession, she was possessed of a unique per-
sonality, an alert and subtle mind, and an especial gift
for impressing the importance of her work upon the
community. That it was the psychological moment for
full fruition there can be no doubt, and the fact that
Mr. Adams was manager of the Auditorium gave her
unusual opportunities to come in contact not only with
the great artists who constantly visited Chicago, but the
public as well. This made the advantage a reciprocal
one, and certainly provided a helpful environment. Un-
fortunately Mrs. Adams died in 1910, deeply regretted
by hosts of friends the world over, a few of whom at-
tested their devotion and love for her by placing a
memorial statue in the Art Institute, and endowing the
DnTversity of Chicago with a permanent scholarship in
her name.
Ferdinand W. Peck had preceded Mr. Curtiss in the
matter of time and with a large but different idea, in
which the art feature was a detail. Mr. Peck like his
father before him was a large figure in the financial
affairs of the city. But when upon his father's death he
became the head of the family and had a large fortune at
his control, he faced at once toward the higher things in
the life of the city, the things that were to shape and
develop so much of the best in its future. He had been
active in bringing about that memorable season of opera
in the old exposition building about 1885. Adelina
Patti and some of the finest voices of that time, sup-
ported by a gigantic orchestra, poured out the best of all
the great works to audiences of ten thousand people.
Qne of the most earnest if not the most able apostles of
64 My Chicago
music then administering culture to Cook County and its
inhabitants was a soulful eyed individual bearing up most
nobly under the name of Silas G. Pratt, a name suggesting
less music than his preceptorship conferred upon those
who were so fortunate as to be his acolytes. Mr. Pratt
was in the spotlight, whenever it wobbled, during all
those memorable performances; and at their end pro-
ceeding to have an idea.
This idea was stately. It included a vast temple, prob-
ably to be erected by the power of some such decree as
produced in Xanadu the wondrous pleasure building of
Kubla Khan the source of funds immeasurable to man
but necessary to the project being no affair of his to
bother about. That was a detail to be dealt with by
men of money. Logically, in the circumstances Mr. Peck
was such a man; wherefore he hied him to Mr. Peck
and revealed his plan. Mr. Peck was an excellent man
of business. He did not care for Mr. Pratt's bold propo-
sition in its entirety, but he caught the main point and set
himself about the business of creating a great hotel, the
biggest theatre in America, and an office structure, all
three included, as a unit, in a single real estate operation.
The result was the Auditorium, the hotel facing Michi-
gan avenue, the Auditorium theatre with its main en-
trance facing Congress street, and the Auditorium build-
ing for offices facing Wabash avenue. It was a great
undertaking, so cleverly devised that its financial returns
would be large. Unhappily this last expectation has not
always been realized, but the project itself as a whole
became famous, the theatre has ever since housed the
great opera companies that have sung here, and the office
building has been fairly well filled all the time. But
while the intent of the office building was to create an
art center, its location and the rapid rise and demand
for business space in that locality shouldered the artists
My Chicago 65
out of that domination which had been hoped for. This
dereliction gave Mr. Curtiss his cue.
The architect of the Auditorium had already estab-
lished a high reputation. He was Louis Sullivan, a Chi-
cago man who had shown sane and well proportioned
genius in several instances. The complete skill and the
perfect good taste he manifested in the case of the Audi-
torium put him at once in the very first rank of great
American architects. His subsequent works were largely
in other cities, but our own treasures many of them. He
planned the Transportation Building at the World's Fair,
the beauty of which must dwell in the memory of all who
saw it. Architecture in itself is a noble art. Mr. Sulli-
van, being one of its masters, may be taken as standing
forth to all the world as one of the greatest artists Chi-
cago has produced.
Let me take occasion here to speak of John Wellborn
Root whose creative genius as an architect has been uni-
versally conceded. He and his partner Daniel H. Burn-
ham (who is mentioned elsewhere) were appointed
architects in chief of the World's Columbian Exposition.
Mr. Root had wondrous visions which, no doubt, would
have reached full fruition had he lived. Chicago has
always fully realized the great loss it sustained in
Mr. Root's untimely death in 1891, two years before the
opening of the exposition.
Mr. Peck has done much more than create the Audi-
torium group. He was one of the founders and later the
president of the Illinois Society, and has been vice presi-
dent of the Board of Education and president of the
Union League Club. He was one of the commissioners
sent by our government to Paris in behalf of and pre-
ceding the World's Columbian Exposition, and in 1900
was appointed by President McKinley to be United States
Commissioner at the Paris Exposition of that year. As
a matter of local history I am reminded that the national
r 66) My Chicago
convention which nominated President Harrison was held
in the Auditorium Theatre in 1888, a year or two before
the building was finished. It had to be temporarily fitted
up for that purpose. It was the only hall in town big
enough to hold such a gathering, and it served its pur-
pose admirably.
The dedication occurred December ninth, 1889, and
was celebrated on the scale of a national event. Presi-
dent Harrison and Vice President Morton, governors of
several states, and Canadian officials, as well as many
men and women of distinction from all over the country,
were in attendance. Harriet Monroe wrote a Festival
Ode, which was set to music by Frederick Grant Gleason,
one of our most scholarly musicians and most accom-
plished men we ever had among us. The music was in
the form of a symphonic cantata and was sung by the
Apollo Club, supported by a large orchestra. The Apollo
Club gave several other numbers. The climax of the
program was furnished by Mme. Patti, who sang "Home,
Sweet Home," and for an encore the "Swiss Echo Song"
of which she was so fond.
For the opera season which followed the dedication
Franklin H. Head auctioned off the boxes and cajoled
George M. Pullman, Marshall Field, R. T\ Crane and
other men of civic pride into paying from seven hundred
to sixteen hundred dollars as premiums for choice, George
M. Pullman paying sixteen hundred for first choice and
Walter L. Peck eight hundred for twelfth choice.
In that opening season I recall Patti, Albani, Signer
Perugini, Signer Del Puente, and Signor Tamagno. Since
then we have heard Emma Eames, Sembrich, Nordica,
Gerster, the De Reszkes and of recent times Caruso,
Muratore, Mary Garden and Galli Curci, who in less
than one year has taken her place at the head of women
singers of opera, Patti not excepted. As for Mary
Garden, she stands in a class distinctly by herself, unap-
My Chicago 67
preached by any artist in individuality and the special
tone work which is called for in the operas in which she
appears. There is an aloofness about her that lifts her
hearers above their surroundings into the realms of crea-
tive expression, which is as charming as it is wonderful.
Those persons, and there are many of them, who measure
every new work of art by tradition and are not satisfied
unless they see and hear what they have always seen and
heard, do not appreciate Miss Garden and never will be
able to understand her, more's the pity. Personally I
have never had such joy as she has given me, since the
advent of Henry Irving, whose performance of Hamlet
swept aside the traditions by which the stage had been
burdened, giving us new readings and new stage business.
Chapter Seven
OR two or three years before I came into the
Fine Arts Building I used frequently to walk
past the old Armory building (later replaced
by the Illinois Theatre) which for some time
stood vacant, and longed to take possession
and convert it into a theatre for the production of the
plays of Shakespeare in a modern and artistic manner.
My idea must have been similar to Rheinhart's, the dif-
ference being that he not only dreamed about it, but made
his dream an actuality. At that time my presentations of
the plays of Ibsen, Maeterlinck, Yeats and other drama-
tists had made a distinct impression and I imagined that
some of my admirers would come forward and offer
the money with which to provide an artistic playhouse.
Time went on and the money did not come and I did
not ask for it. When I went into the Fine Arts Build-
ing I determined to abandon the giving of plays alto-
68 My Chicago
gether and confine my efforts to educational and cul-
tural work, the development of the speaking voice, inter-
pretative readings, and the study of literature. My
reasons were that I was not properly equipped to give
plays on an adequate scale, and the worry and bother of
trying to give them without adequate means was discour-
aging. Another reason was, the constant presentation
of plays gave the public the impression that I was con-
ducting a preparatory school for the professional stage.
Of course I know now that my digression into drama
was an error. It was prompted by a strong admiration
of the glorious literature and picturesque vividity of
English drama. To me it seemed that here lay the best
of all material for educational uses. That prompting
was sound; but its realization would have involved com-
plete abandonment of the field I had so successfully
made my own, and an occupation of other fields requir-
ing managerial skill as well as a technical knowledge of
stagecraft, neither of which I possessed in full. The
ambition to present Shakespeare or the lesser masters
with a company of amateurs carried within itself the ele-
ments of its own frustration. Besides, even the little
I did toward realizing it created the impression that
I was conducting a school of acting, which was not so,
other than cultural instruction in the various parts of
a play was evolved.
I found myself perplexed by outside comment upon
the whole thing. Parents of my pupils became uneasy
lest the pupils might be drawn to the stage as a career.
Yet with the natural vanity of parenthood, if I were
going to produce a play they would object first on that
ground and then exhibit acrid disappointment if the
principal part were not assigned to that particular pupil
each set of parents owned. Then again, when parents
asked their friends about me they got one of two answers :
either that "Miss Morgan is the best kind of a teacher,
My Chicago 69
but she can't place her pupils on the regular stage," or
else "Miss Morgan is one of the best dramatic coaches
and can always find a professional opening for her
pupils." In this situation, to use a current phrase, I got
it both ways, going and coming, and I do not know which
of these ways was worst for me. In retrospect I think
that each seemed considerably worse than the other.
Anyway, I stopped in time and returned on my own
track to the place whence I had started, taking back with
me something I had discovered and through which I found
an advantage. I added little plays to my course of in-
struction, and found the addition good. It was free from
the friendly objections cited above; it was interesting
and informative for my pupils, and pleasing to their
parents and their friends. It in no wise disturbed other
studies, but on the contrary gave them deeper and more
permanent values. An account of these plays I have
written in another place in this book.
Consequently, and in this place, I am going to take
credit to myself for having originated and carried for-
ward to this hour with unimpaired success the "Little
Theatre" idea. There have been many Little Theatres
here and elsewhere. Most of these have been meretrici-
ous, faddy, or feeble. Nearly all of them have professed
a purpose to elevate the drama, and in the face of the
plain fact that the drama has been consistently and
steadily elevating itself, have been plausible enough to
extract considerable sums of money from perfectly well-
intentioned people who were entirely unaware of that
fact. Practically all the little plays produced in these
little theatres might be described as half baked, lacking
even that little leaven which (on apostolic authority) can
leaven a whole lump.
I can and should except two instances, the work done
by Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Browne at the Chicago Little
Theatre in the Fine Arts Building for several seasons,
yo My Chicago
and the work carried out by Mr. and Mrs. Arthur Aldis
in the artistic little theatre on the Aldis estate at Lake
Forest. Concerning this latter I cannot do better than
quote Mrs. Elia W. Peattie, who wrote in The Chicago
Tribune that "Mrs. Arthur Aldis of Lake Forest has
long been an interesting figure in amateur dramatic and
literary circles. With leisure, force and originality, and
free from all the compulsions that poverty entails, she
was, from the first, in the happy position of being able to
choose her vocations and amusements. She could, if
she liked, coax life along pleasantly by playing golf, go-
ing to teas, giving dinners, and sitting in a box at the
opera. These diversions proving, upon trial, not par-
ticularly satisfying, she paid respectful heed to certain
stirrings of talent, commanded a little theatre in her
garden, and in it gave piquant, grotesquely tragic, or
capriciously farcical plays of the most modern type. Her
actors were her friends; her small, critical audiences were
also her friends. Or interchangeably, her friends were
actors and audience. It was immensely interesting, and
not infrequently the actors surprised themselves by the
excellence of what they did. Ambitious, erratic young
playwrights found here an opening for their abilities.
Young ladies who had been doomed all their lives to being
merely polite and innocuous, seized upon this chance to
show that they understood poetry in its most exotic
forms, and repeated Dawson in a moonlit garden to the
sound of falling waters and the gentle applause of appre-
ciative hands."
Aside from the point I make in regard to the origin
of little theatres, there is one other: Less than ten years
ago Irish plays came into favor and were much in demand
for several seasons, but I have not heard of any per-
formance of an Irish play preceding my production of
Synge's "The Shadow of the Glen."
All these Irish plays have mystic lure. A strange
My Chicago 71
charm, as strange as those elusive qualities in the complex
of Irish character which gave to that people a power to
sense the elemental; the unseen; the witchery of desolate
moors coursed by silent shadowy hounds, of moonlight
on flowing waters, of the little people, of the ancient
ghosts that hover in the hills, and the ancient blood that
stirs in the heart at a dance in the moonlit road, or the
song of a wandering poet. They have a spiritual tinge.
They touch the lighter joys of life, its deepest shadows,
its pleasures, its moaning, its shuddering tragedy. No
one of these plays sounds the whole gamut, but when you
group them all you see beyond the outer form the heart
and soul of a race essentially poetic, quick to feel, quick
to act, a race in which feeling dominates logic. A lovable
race, the Irish with a perfect genius for the irrational.
I do not recall any other series of performances that
attracted me more or at one and the same time raised so
many questions in my mind than the Irish series given
under direction of Lady Gregory during the two seasons
she passed in this country for that purpose. The short
play commends itself by being short and compact, but
makes poor material for an evening's entertainment, par-
ticularly upon repetition. I think this is one reason why
the Irish vogue died away. The first impression nearly
always was a deep one; the second and subsequent per-
formances served rather to flatten out that effect. To
stand repetition, a play must give more than one side of
human nature. There is such a thing as happy tears,
but I doubt very much whether anyone would care to be
crying all the time.
72 My Chicago
Chapter Eight
N 1890 I had a singular experience with Mrs.
Fiske. She was playing an engagement at
the Grand Opera House and was invited by
the Woman's Club, whose rooms at that
time were on the northeast corner of Wabash
avenue and Washingtpn street, to speak on the subject
of the Theatre Trust, to which she and her husband were
much opposed. The committee of arrangements for the
occasion invited me to call for her and bring her to the
club. I ordered a carriage and drove to the Congress
Hotel, where she was stopping. She was awaiting my
arrival, and promptly was seated in the carriage. Know-
ing that she was naturally somewhat nervous over mak-
ing her speech, I decided not to talk to her on irrelevant
matters, and not a word passed between us until I handed
her over to the committee.
After the speech was over an intimate friend in my
presence told her something of me anH of my work along
her line in Chicago. When we reentered the carriage
to return to the hotel I thought "now that her anxiety
is over and she knows something of me and my work,
she will probably talk." I waited for her to take the
initiative. Not a word did she utter until just as we were
at our destination she threw up her hands exclaiming,
"Oh, I wonder if I've said the right thing!" I told her
she had spoken from conviction, and not to worry.
We alighted from the carriage I presented her with
a large bouquet of violets which I carried, bade her good
afternoon, and went my way.
When she visited Chicago a year later I received a
summons to visit her at the hotel. She received me cor-
My Chicago 73
dially, as though we had met frequently. We discussed
several books on occult matters in which she seemed deeply
interested, and I took my departure. No reference was
made to our former meeting. No reason assigned for
desiring this interview. I have not met her since.
Among the plays given during 1899 was "The Twilight
of the Gods," by Edith Wharton, with Anne Walker,
Andrew Sheriff and Robert H. Melloy in the cast. Mr.
Chatfield-Taylor, who attended the play, declared it to be
the best amateur performance he had ever attended, and
asked if I would not repeat it in order that others might
have the pleasure of seeing it.
In 1900 I presented "Gringoire," a translation from
the French, which introduced for the first time Mr.
Taylor Holmes, since famous as "His Majesty Bunker
Bean." Later in that year I gave memorable recitals of
Bernard Shaw's "Candida" in which Mr. Holmes dis-
tinguished himself by creating the character of March-
banks. Mr. William Archer, well known as the trans-
lator of Ibsen, happened to be in Chicago at the time
and witnessed a performance. He pronounced the entire
cast of the play excellent, and wrote Mr. Shaw it was
the best performance of a play he had seen in America.
As a result I received a letter from Mr. Shaw, forwarded
from America to me at Carlsbad, whither I had gone
for my summer vacation, in which he cordially invited
me if I were coming to England to visit Mrs. Shaw and
himself at their country home at Hazelmere, a two hours'
ride from London. Of course I went, and went prepared
for the worst; for I did not know what to expect from
the greatest satirist of his age. In fact I was warned
before leaving London that I would probably be made to
feel mighty uncomfortable, that I, a woman and a Chi-
cago woman at that, should presume or dare to produce
his plays. I was not entirely reassured by the cordial
greeting of both Mr. and Mrs. Shaw upon my arrival at
74 My Chicago
their home about ten o'clock one hot July morning. We
were at once comfortably seated, and in less than ten
minutes I felt I was in the presence of a friend and a
friend of long standing.
We chatted about matters dramatic in America. He
referred to Mr. Archer's enthusiastic account of the per-
formance of "Candida," and said that while he would
not on any account go to hear the play given by profes-
sionals, he would journey a long way to hear my per-
formance. He was delighted to see a picture of Taylor
Holmes as Marchbanks, which I presented to him. At
that time he had just finished writing "Captain Brass-
bound's Conversion" and read me portions of it. He
had submitted it to Irving and Miss Terry, and while we
were at luncheon the postman brought a letter from Miss
Terry, declining the play as there was no suitable part
for Irving. After Irving's death Miss Terry produced
the play in America. Mr. Shaw had seen my pupil James
Carew playing with Maxine Elliott and recommended
that he play Captain Brassbound, which he did, with
the result that during their American tour in the play
they fell in love and were married.
To return to Shaw and my visit to him: He told me
at its conclusion that I could do any of his plays and he
would be interested in hearing the result of m'y efforts.
When I wrote him in 1902 that I was presenting "Caesar
and Cleopatra" with a cast of girls which included Miss
Edith Moss as Julius Cassar, and Miss Florence Bradley
as Cleopatra, I received the following letter:
*
10 Adelphi Terrace W. C.
My Dear Miss Morgan: Great Heavens! Is
my Julius Caesar going to be created at last by a
Chicago young lady! Oh Anna, Anna, how can I
show my face in Chicago after this?
Yours Stupended,
G. BERNARD SHAW.
Bernard Shaw reading to Anna Morgan,
from the manuscript of Captain
Brassbomtd's Conversion.
74 My Chicago
their home about ten o'clock one hot July morning. We
were at once comfortably seated, and in less than ten
minutes I felt I was in the presence of a friend and a
friend of long standing.
We chatted about matters dramatic in America. He
referred to Mr. Archer's enthusiastic account of the per-
formance of "Candida," and said that while he would
not on any account go to hear the play given by profes-
sionals, he would journey a long way to hear my per-
formance. He was delighted to see a picture of Taylor
Holmes as Marchbanks, which I presented to him. At
that time he had just finished writing "Captain Brass-
bound's Conversion" and read me portions of it. He
had submitted it to Irving and Miss Terry, and while we
were at luncheon the postman brought a letter from Miss
Terry, declining the play as there was no suitable part
for Irving. After Irving's death Miss Terry produced
the play in America. Mr. Shaw had seen my pupil James
Carew playing with Maxine Elliott and recommended
that he play Captain Brassbound, which he did, with
the result that during their American tour in the play
they fell in love and were married.
To return to Shaw and my visit to him: He told me
at its conclusion that I could do any of his plays and he
would be interested in hearing the result of my efforts.
When I wrote him in 1902 that I was presenting "Caesar
and Cleopatra" with a cast of girls which included Miss
Edith Moss as Julius Cassar, and Miss Florence Bradley
as Cleopatra, I received the following letter:
10 Adelphi Terrace W. C.
My Dear Miss Morgan: Great Heavens! Is
my Julius Caesar going to be created at last by a
Chicago young lady! Oh Anna, Anna, how can I
show my face in Chicago after this?
Yours Stupended,
G. BERNARD SHAW.
Bernard Slum r( ailing t<> 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<J no magazine of
her own, but she became society editqr of The Chicago
Evening Post about twenty years agoj and at once com-
manded attention. Miss Scott still holds that responsible
position with undiminished efficiency. She has seen many
a social set dissolve, to be succeeded by other social sets
My Chicago 175
that in their turn dissolved, and so on up to this present
year.
"The Saturday Evening Herald" was established in
1875 by George McConneil, Lyman B. Glover and John
M. Dandy, it was distinctively a social organ, but it
published a great deal in the way of essays and stories
that might have appeared with credit in any magazine
of general circulation. It jumped into recognition almost
at once, and prospered exceedingly, until the Sunday is-
sues of the daily papers began piling up society depart-
ments at a rate and in proportions growing so fast that
they crowded it off the carpet. "The Saturday Evening
Herald" finally fell into the hands of Edward Freiberger,
who had for years been a member of the Inter Ocean
local staff and who was said to know and be known by
a greater number of prominent people than any other man
in Chicago. But he came too late. He stuck it out
manfully for awhile, until at last the poor old thing
fell down on him and refused to live any longer. Mr.
Freiberger went to New York after that, and became
librarian of the Friars Club. He died in 1916.
The latest new magazine hereaway repeats similar
efforts here and there along the course of time in other
big cities. It is called "The Waste Basket." It is a bi-
monthly, with Carlos C. Drake as its editor-in-chief. Mr.
Drake is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Tracy V. Drake. He
believes that potential authors of tender years are en-
titled to a medium through which they may utter their
thoughts. All people of tender years have thoughts,
or mental disturbances which they believe to be thoughts.
Some of them really have thoughts of value. Imma-
turity does not argue incapacity in all cases. The pathetic
case of Chatterton is in point of that. Mr. Drake re-
fuses manuscripts from authors under sixteen or over
twenty-one years of age or rather, of youth. It has
been appearing now about a year. The content has been
176 My Chicago
creditable surprisingly so when it is considered that
all of it came from boys and girls who still are in school.
Chapter Twenty-three
ERHAPS the most conspicuous factor in the
cultural problems of Chicago is the Uni-
versity of Chicago. This institution was
established many years ago and flourished
in a modest, scholarly, unpretentious way in
a building facing Cottage Grove avenue, somewhere near
Thirty-fifth street. The well-shaded grounds about it
were like a classic grove. It began to stir and grow
when William Rainey Harper became its head, under
the generous patronage of John D. Rockefeller. Dr. Har-
per's claim to eminent scholarship was over-shadowed by
a promotional ability that would have found dominating
expression in any public enterprise he might have under-
taken. If he had gone in for railroading he might have
been a power in the railway interests of North America.
He had initiative, he was original, an organizer second to
none, an executive of the first order. He saw what the
University needed: money, and plenty of it; young blood
that would course free, a faculty equal as a working body
with the faculty of any eastern university, but especially
selected for the adaptability of its members to the pre-
vailing thought and the liberal ways of the north central
states. It was in this last that he succeeded in differ-
entiating this University from Harvard, Yale and Prince-
ton. The students at those universities were, almost all
of them, the sons of rich men, supplied with more money
than was good for them. In the majority of cases their
fathers and grandfathers, and maybe farther back than
that, had gone to those same institutions. In a sense they
\
My Chicago 177
were family concerns, refreshed and renewed as time
passed and old rich families faded out, and new rich
families came in. They had traditions and usages, and
lines of caste. By the irony of fate their professional
administration had fallen into dangerous hands, and
sociology of that lamentably dangerous kind that is dealt
with by closet philosophers only, became an inculcation
so poisonous that years of contact with the rude and
bustling world were required to knock it out of the heads
of the students in order that common sense might find
lodging room. Dr. Harper would have none of this.
The University of Chicago must be representative of
the strong and level-headed people who had created the
west, and on the once empty prairies had built a new and
sturdy structure of life, splendid, broad and perfectly
sane. Dr. Harper's successor, Dr. Judson, has carried
out these purposes with fidelity and ability.
Concurrently with, though in no wise related to the
University of Chicago, our four great libraries have had
much to do with the spread of knowledge, the stimulation
of ideas, and that understanding of the world and its
peoples that can be acquired by reading and by no other
direct means. These are the Public Library, the New-
berry, the Crerar and the Blackstone. Our Public
Library is one of the most comprehensive in the land,
ranking readily with the Boston Public, the Astor, and
the very few other big ones. It has had a history as
quiet as its influence was deep. The office of chief
librarian is filled by appointment, and therefore subject to
change ; but the actual working staff is free from that rule,
and membership in it rests upon merit alone, much of
this merit resulting from the experience of service. As an
example, Miss Caroline L. Elliott, in charge of the refer-
ence department, has been a member of the staff thirty
years. Her knowledge of that department and her quick
response to any question touching any of the recondite
178 My Chicago
:
topics there included has saved hours of time for so many
thousands of people that if all those hours could be to-
talized the sum would probably show a thousand years.
A record like that means something. How many people
are there who can be credited with having saved in a
lifetime a thousand years for others?
The Newberry, the Crerar and the Blackstone were
given in trust to the people of the city by private donors,
whose respective names they bear. They have not the
bulk nor the circulating feature of the Public Library,
but each of its kind is a model. The Newberry Library
is the largest of the three, and probably the most diversi-
fied. Miss Cara Durkee bears the same relation to it
that Miss Elliott bears to the reference department of
the Public Library, the main difference being that the
reference department of the Public Library is simply one
of many departments, while the Newberry Library is
strictly upon reference lines. Those who use it know how
beautifully the Newberry Library is housed, and what a
perfect place it is for study.
The Crerar Library in the Marshall Field block of
buildings is not so large as the Newberry, but is admir-
ably balanced and equipped, especially with authorita-
tive works of a technical and scientific nature.
The Blackstone Library has a building of its own
not far to the north of the University of Chicago grounds.
It was assembled upon a more general plan than that of
the other two, being especially rich in standard English
literature and the best books of history and of travel.
It is especially used by writers in search of color, and of
actual historic dates and places. Of its kind it is about
as nearly perfect as intelligent care and ample funds can
make it.
In addition to the libraries the Chicago Historical So-
ciety has actively served the public. Its collections are
used for research work by historians, genealogists, writers
My Chicago . 179
and students from all over the United States. It is stimu-
lating patriotism through illustrated lectures which it
gives annually to thousands of public school children,
lending them a grasp upon the great and true stories
that lie behind the city of today.
The society was formed in 1846. It occupies a sub-
stantial and commodious brown stone building at the
corner of Dearborn and Ontario streets, ithe scope of
the society is much more broad than most people are
aware of. It includes records and exhibits minutely cover-
ing the history of the whole state, from the time of Father I
LaSalle, and these records and exhibits are of the very
highest value, considered in the sense of history, both
human and natural. The collections are admirably ar-
ranged in themselves and in relation to each other. I
do not know of any other grouping that means so much
culturally, though the natural history museum collected
by Matthew Laflin offers it a very close second.
Chapter Twenty-four
HIS city has every reason to be proud of
itself as an effective center of theatrical ac-
tivities. New York was formerly the great
billboard. For a long time a Broadway pro-
duction was considered necessary to the suc-
cess of any play; and many a good play was presented
there for a run at a heavy loss, merely to get the ad-
vertising, the ballyhoo, as it were, that such a run was
supposed to provide. New York was and is the great
booking place. The best companies are organized there.
But it never has been a steady moneymaker for its
theatres. On the other hand some of the most success-
ful plays of the last forty years had their first perform-
180 My Chicago
ances in Chicago, and toured the country prosperously
through several seasons without showing in New York
at all. For instance Leonard Grover's "Our Boarding
House" ; Denman Thompson's "Joshua Whitcomb" ;
Will Eaton's "All the Rage" ; Augustus Thomas's "Ala-
bama" and "Blue Jeans"; Bronson Howard's "The
Banker's Daughter (as "The Iron Will") and "Sara-
toga" and a good many others that for the moment es-
cape me. And it always has been a moneymaker. In
the dullest season of panic times the Chicago Theatres
have played to the best business in the whole of North
America.
A good many plays have been written by Chicago men,
some of them great successes. For example, the first full
form of the original "Joshua Whitcomb," played for so
many years by Denman Thompson, was built up by Will
Eaton of The Times. James B. Runnion of The Trib-
une wrote a dozen or more, for the most part adaptations
of foreign plays. Elwyn A. Barron of The Inter Ocean
wrote "A Mountain Pink" and several other plays.
Later came George Broadhurst and George Ade, who be-
tween them have written more first rate comedies than
all the other American dramatists put together. This
statement is not a belittlement of Bronson Howard, whose
one great comedy success was "The Henrietta," nor of
any of the other and clever men who have done so much
in burlesque and extravaganza, so called. I am treating
now of Chicago and the things and the individuals known
to myself.
Mrs. Aldis, though by no means a professional
writer, has done more good work along thes'e general
lines than any other Chicago woman. Mrs. Peattie
says Mrs. Aldis in her writings "was more interested in
tangents than in straight lines, and if she is not
startlingly creative, just as certainly she is not hackneyed.
Her free verse poems were finally printed in book form,
My Chicago 181
and many found them not only diverting but instruc-
tive in the way that sympathetic art must always
be instructive. Then came a book of plays plays which
Mrs. Aldis had tried out on her own little stage and
which showed the influence of the modern masters, and
were at once sardonic and kind. That sounds like a
paradox, but can be understood when it is explained that
while Mrs. Aldis found life ironic, she was not so herself;
at least not toward any human being or fictional creature
whom it was her instinct to pity. There was a fine
quality of breeding and courtesy in these plays, and
liberality and humor made them both piquant and
winning, even as the free verse poems had been."
I wonder how many people in Chicago remember
William Young, whose comedy, "The Rajah," had a run
of over a year at the Madison Square theatre in New
York upon its original production, and afterward was
played not only all over this country but in England
during the three or four years next following. Mr.
Young is still living. Before "The Rajah" he had writ-
ten a powerful play founded upon the Arthurian legends,
called "Pendragon," and subsequently to "The Rajah,"
another play dealing with the last days of the Moors in
Spain and called "Ganelon," a really swift and powerful
piece of work. Both "Pendragon" and "Ganelon" were
killed by Lawrence Barrett, and both for the same
reason: The reviewers received them with too much
enthusiasm, and Mr. Barrett's performance with too
little. If Mr. Barrett's ability had been in any degree
commensurate with his sensibility, he would have taken
a different course, for the works were really fine, and
their continuous performance would have raised him to
a level of recognition far beyond any he ever attained.
He missed the one chance of his life to do well the one
big thing any actor can do that is, to give adequate
interpretation to the best conception of a great author.
182 My Chicago
I say great, because these two plays were not only dramas
theatrically effective, but poems vital in universality of
thought. Mr. Young was skilled in the craftsmanship
of drama. His concepts were admirable, his moulding
true. He was the author of several poems that upon
their publication received unstinted praise. One of these,
"There Came Three Queens from Heaven," was given
out through the Atlantic Monthly and immediately
reproduced in all the literary reviews in the English
language. Mr. Young neglected to collect and publish
his works in book form. Coming one by one, they
suffered the misfortune that usually falls upon fragmen-
tary efforts. They dropped out of sight.
Mr. Young inhabited a frail body. His habitual
mood was melancholy. He brooded deeply upon life
and the world. Only now and then in private conversa-
tion he would burst out with a flare of blazing fun. He
is passing the evening of his days on the Island of Jersey
in the English Channel. It is a long time since he ceased
writing. He was a Chicago man, but little known here
or anywhere save among newspaper men and actors.
The late James H. McVicker was his devoted friend
and admirer, Edwin Booth was another, and so was
Frederick Warde.
The nature of my work brought me in contact almost
continuously with the theatres and the distinguished
players who have appeared in them. Personally I esteem
the drama as one of the most potent influences for the
elevation of thought, for education in the niceties of life,
for lifting beauty and all the graces into a light where
all may see. In addition I would esteem it as an incal-
culable blessing if in even its most frivolous form it did
no more than brush the cobwebs from the brow of care.
We have been particularly fortunate in that our
theatres have been conducted by men of probity, excellent
ability, judgment, and public spirit. Those who remember
My Chicago 183
James H. McVicker may take him and his memory
as exemplifying their character at its best. The theatre
that still bears his name was the first to be granted equal-
ity with the leading houses of New York. It was an old
establishment when I was a child. Until Mr. McVicker's
death, its reputation and its standing were maintained and
its popularity never faltered. Mr. McVicker was him-
self an actor, and a remarkably good one, particularly
in Shakespeare plays. When under the old order of
things he had a stock company, he cast the plays strictly
in accord with the merit or qualifications of his actors,
taking upon himself whatever part he felt he could do
best, without a thought of its prominence or its unim-
portance. I have seen him play the first grave digger
in "Hamlet" to the Hamlet of his son-in-law, Edwin
Booth; and a most admirable performance it was. I do
not believe his Dogberry could have been excelled a
minor part, but played in a deadly serious key, the only
key that could have brought out Dogberry's fatuous self
importance. In private life Mr. McVicker was a sound
and safe influence, a perfect model of good citizenship, a
just and generous friend. In the essential meaning of the
word though not in the conventional, he was deeply re-
ligious; but he never made any fuss about it. Simply
he lived it. The impression he left upon the city while
it was yet hebdomadal is with us yet, and will remain.
The good he did lives after him.
Richard M. Hooley's career began about the middle
of Mr. McVicker's. He had been a minstrel man, and
had for a long time been at the head of the most popular
negro minstrel company. Before he came to Chicago
he had established in Brooklyn a theatre which he named
for himself. The story of that theatre would be of no
moment in this place, but after he gave it up, that is,
immediatelv after our great fire, he came here and built
Hooley's Theatre, which is the Powers Theatre of the
184 My Chicago
present. He called it the home of Parlor Comedy. It
was very successful. Upon his death in 1893 Harry
Powers succeeded to the management. Powers Theatre,
as it is now called, acquired under Uncle Dick Hooley
a public peculiarly its own. Its business was practically
assured, for a large number of the best people in the town
came regularly every week, on designated days and had
their seats reserved for them ahead. It always has been
a high class theatre, without a single lapse from the tone
originally imparted to it by Uncle Dick.
The Grand Opera House in Clark street opposite the
county building was opened in September, 1880, by Mr.
John A. Hamlin. From that date until 1907 the theatre
under his management, assisted by his sons Harry and
Fred, was a popular and fashionable playhouse. On big
opening nights one was sure to meet most of his friends
among the representative families of Chicago and vicin-
ity. An individual feature of this theatre is a reception
committee of one in the person of Mr. Zeddis, who has
not missed a single performance of thirty-seven years, and
who always greets each visitor upon his arrival as if he
were the most important member of the community.
Mr. William J. Davis, known as Will Davis, has been
thoroughly identified with the theatrical and musical de-
velopment of Chicago since 1878, when he was manager
of Her Majesty's Opera Company for two seasons. At
one time he was manager of the Grand Opera House,
and during his directorship won for it the title of The
Mascotte Theatre. His success as manager of the
Columbia and Illinois theatres is well known. In fact
both Mr. Davis and his wife, Jessie Bartlett Davis, a
popular and famous singer during the eighties, have made
distinct contributions to Chicago s artistic life.
In 1882 John B. Carson and Col. J. H. Haverly, the
minstrel man, opened Haverly's Theatre in Monroe
street near Dearborn. In 1884 the name was changed
My Chicago 185
by Ellen Terry, who was then filling an engagement there
as a member of Sir Henry Irving's Company. I sat in
one of the proscenium boxes and I remember how irre-
sistibly charming she was as she came modestly and hesi-
tatingly to the footlights and said, "I name this beautiful
theatre Columbia."
What charming entertainments these great artists and
the supporting members of their company gave at that
time, what an event it was in Chicago! Nothing ap-
proaching it in importance and interest has occurred dur-
ing my remembrance. The city seemed changed, in some
way, assumed a metropolitan air. I remember the clos-
ing performance, the play was "Much Ado About Noth-
ing. ' The house was packed, many persons, including
myself, sitting on the steps leading from the boxes to
the parquet. Marshall Field, whom I saw for the first
time, sitting with his young son Marshall Field, Jr., was
in one of the very front seats.
I never shall forget the great deference which Irving
expressed toward Miss Terry when in his curtain speech
he said, "Miss Terry whom you admire, whom I admire,
whom we all admire." What a wonderful performance
it was ! Irving's physical impossibility to properly repre-
sent Benedick pictorially was entirely lost sight of in the
delicious humor of his lines. For instance, in "Lady,
I am loved of all women, only you excepted." Who will
ever forget the indefinable charm of Miss Terry when she
said to Benedick "Against my will I am sent to bid you
come in to dinner." Those were golden days for the
artists and for us. Alas ! things were sadly changed when
in 1903 came the Iroquois fire.
Irving was playing an engagement at the Illinois
Theatre at the time. At his invitation, together with
a friend, I paid him a visit at his apartment in the Con-
gress Hotel a day or two after the fire. He was in the
depths of despair. Owing to the fire, business was almost
1 86 My Chicago
entirely suspended. He was alone, desolate, forsaken,
Miss Terry having terminated her association with him
and joined Beerbohm Tree in a production of "The
Merry Wives of Windsor." Irving had in his company
his son, H. B. Irving, and his wife who, as he mournfully
said, "was trying to play Portia" and other roles made
famous by Ellen Terry. Irving survived but a short time
after this engagement. He was honored by burial in
Westminster Abbey.
,,
Chapter Twenty-five
HE Chap Book. Being a miscellany of cu-
rious and interesting Songs, Ballads, Tales,
Histories, etc., adorned with a variety of
pictures; and very delightful to read, newly
composed by many celebrated writers, to
which was annexed a large collection of notices of Books."
The above was the description on the fly leaf of a little
booklet which was published in Chicago in 1904 by Stone
and Kimball. Herbert Stuart Stone, eldest son of Mr.
Melville E. Stone, founder of the Chicago Daily News,
was the chief originator and principal editor until its
hundredth and last number appeared in 1908. Melville
E. Stone, Jr., was business manager. He died in 1918.
Mr. Harrison Garfield Rhodes was associate editor.
Contributions were received from the leading literary
writers of England and America, which was a stimulus to
ambitious writers in Chicago. Hamlin Garland was a
frequent contributor. So was Wallace Rice. Single
articles were contributed by Edith Wyatt, Elia W.
Peattie, Elizabeth Wallace, Lilian Bell, who later be-
My Chicago 187
came famous as the author of "The Love Affairs of an
Old Maid," Anna Morgan, and many others.
Mr. Stone was in close touch with Aubrey Beardsley,
and many of his clever sketches adorned the pages of
The Chap Book. Other artists found their way to na-
tional reputation and fame, among them being 1 Will
Bradley and Frank Hazenplug, who produced many
unique and clever posters which were an addition to Mr.
Stone's enterprise. They were so artistic and fantastic
that they became very popular. It is interesting to note
that Cecil Clark Davis contributed some sketches for the
magazine, one of Sarah Bernhardt. i
Mr. Stone also inaugurated a series of Chap Book
Teas, given in his publishing office where the literary
folk and various art workers congregated to look at
original drawings and manuscripts, thus becoming better
acquainted with personal endeavor and better prepared
to work in harmony for the artistic development of
Chicago.
The Chap Book teas were forerunners of the Attic
Club, and no doubt suggested the meetings of The Little
Room.
There were twenty-six imitators of The Chap Book,
but it remained the supreme effort among the little maga-
zines, and its advent and life were distinctly artistic con-
tributions to Chicago.
By something that looks a little like irony, the firm of
Stone and Kimball is remembered by reason of their
having issued Mary MacLane's book "The Story of
Mary MacLane," that astonishing revelation of an ego
made interesting to itself by its own fever. That book
outtopped all their more ambitious efforts, outlasts them
all, survives the firm itself, and has let loose upon the
public a simulacrum that cannot sink or be sunk, a joke
that will not die. The book sold tremendously; its pro-
ceeds saved the firm from disaster.
.
.88 My Chicago
Mr. Stone's career ended with the sinking of the Lusi-
tania in 1915, on which, unfortunately, he was a pas-
senger.
The Little Room, which had its beginning in 1893,
is perhaps the most unique of Chicago organizations. It
rose from the ashes of the Attic Club, which had a tenta-
tive existence previous to this, but for well grounded
reasons was disbandecL
The new organization was suggested by Miss Lucy
Monroe (who later became Mrs. William J. Calhoun)
in Mr. Lorado Taft's studio which was then in the
Athenaeum building in Van Buren street, the object be-
ing to furnish a weekly meeting place for the discussion
of art and literature and where distinguished artists
might meet our home artists whenever occasion brought
them to Chicago. It was named after a ghost story
written by Mrs. Madeline Yale Wynne called "The Little
Room" which had a fashion of disappearing and reap-
pearing at intervals. So with the club. It appeared on
Fridays from four to six, at first in Miss Bessie Potter's
(now Mrs. Vonnah) studio, then disappeared until the
following Friday.
The original members were Franklin H. Head, Lorado
Taft, Henry B. Fuller, Hermon Macneil, Allen B. Pond,
Irving K. Pond, Roswell Field, John Vance Cheney,
Hamlin Garland, Frederick W. Gookin, Herbert Stuart
Stone, Melville Stone, Jr., Harrison Rhodes, Lucy Mon-
roe, Harriet Monroe, Madaline Yale Wynne, Lilian Bell,
Jane Addams, Bessie Potter, Anna Morgan and Mrs.
Lindon W. Bates. We continued to meet in Miss Potter's
studio until the Studebaker building on Michigan avenue
was converted into the Fine Arts Building. Then it was
removed to Mr. Ralph Clarkson's studio on the tenth floor
where it has remained up to the present time, with the
exception of the year 1900 when it met in my studio on
the eighth floor of the Fine Arts building.
My Chicago 189
In the intervening years the names of nearly all our
best writers and artists have been added to the original
list.
Carrying out its original idea the organization has
entertained distinguished artists of this country who
have visited Chicago from time to time, as well as
those from other lands, the first guest entertained being
Richard Le Gallienne in May, 1898.
Mrs. Franklin MacVeagh, long one of the best known
and most influential members ol Chicago society, told
this amusing incident: While paying a visit to London
some eight or nine years ago, upon several occasions
when noted artists were presented, they immediately
asked if she were a member of "The Little Room"?
According to her account when she replied in the nega-
tive, and said she had never even heard of it, she fell
perceptibly in their estimation, as they seemed to feel that
she could not have much standing in Chicago if she were
not a member of The Little Room. Upon her arrival
in New York her London experience was repeated. Upon
her return to Chicago, Mrs. Wynne, who was one of
the originators of the club, called upon her, and Mrs.
MacVeagh appealed to her to know if there was such a
thing as The Little Room in Chicago and of course
learned its history. Soon after she came to see us one
Friday afternoon, bringing with her Mrs. Jack Gardner
of Boston, who was her guest at the time. I remember
that I was pouring tea when she came in. There were
only five or six other members present and our distin-
guished visitors did not have a fair chance to judge of
its merits.
During the first years in the Fine Arts building we used
to give unique parties every winter. I remember one, a
buffet supper, which began in my Studio at 7 o'clock
and ended with a dance in my Gymnasium at 3 o'clock
A. M., with Fanny Bloomfield Zeisler playing ragtime
190 My Chicago
music on a bad piano, while the rest of us danced. We
danced until we were dizzy, to keep her at the piano as
long as possible. I remember also that Sam Clover drove
a "team" to Evanston after the party, arriving with his
guests at daybreak.
We had several notable burlesque performances on
my stage, largely under the management of Melville E.
Stone, Jr. One was given on Saturday evening, May
2 3 I 93- The program announced that "the unparal-
leled Stock Company of The Little Room will appear
for the first, last and only time in an unparalleled etcetera
performance of 'Little Room,' a moral play done in moral
English from the mediaeval, that is, out of respect to
twentieth century conventions." The actors were Frank-
lin H. Head, Chatfield-Taylor, Ralph Clarkson, Melville
E. Stone, Jr., Wallace Rice, Hugh Garden, William
Morton Payne, Karleton Hackett, Lucy Monroe and
Marjorie Benton Cook. A note on the program stated
that after the performance an attempt would be made to
restore the appetites of such of the audience as had re-
mained in Mr. Clarkson's studio to which was added
the admonition "Eat and drink, for tomorrow we may
not feel like it."
The most notable performance was given on January
30, 1904, being a dramatization of "The Bird Center"
cartoons made famous by John T. McCutcheon, and run-
ning in the Tribune. I remember that we ransacked the
town to find stage properties which called for a "what-
not," the mottoes "God Bless Our Home," "Live and
Let Live," pink lined shells, satin banners embroidered
with sunflowers, photograph albums and the like. I re-
member I made a white tarlatan dress for the perform-
ance which I wore trimmed with a blue sash and pink
rosebuds, and that I played "The Maiden's Prayer"
while Allen Spencer turned the leaves of the music and
Karleton Hackett wielded the baton. Fanny Bloomfield
My Chicago 191
Zeisler nearly went into convulsions, as did the rest of
the audience.
Program.
BIRD CENTER OPERA HOUSE.
Miss Anna Morgan of Chicago, Illinois, Lessee.
Right Royally will that Colossal Aggregation of Little
Roomers Present for the First Time on Any
Stage the Stupendous Tragedy Entitled
CAP. FRY'S BIRTHDAY PARTY
January 30, 1904
Words by George Ade ; Acting by the Following Galaxy
of Histrionic Stars, First and Last Appearance.
THE CAST.
Capt. Roscoe Fry, a Wild Soldier and Tame Hus-
band George Barr McCutcheon
/. Milton Brown, a (Tin) Type of Bird Center Aris-
tocracy Howard Van Doren Shaw
Rev. Walpole, with a Congregation of His Own. . .
Melville E. Stone, Jr.
Smiley Greene, the Popular Undertaker
Roswell Field
J. Oscar Fisher, "Ye Editor" Henry M. Hyde
The Mysterious Stranger, Right Out of a Dime
Novel . Ralph Clarkson
Mine Host Peters, with a Volubility
Franklin H. Head
Gus Figgey, Who Drums and "Gets Busy"
Hugh Garden
Winthrop K. Biddle, of Philadelphia (Pennsylvania)
Arthur Heun
192 My Chicago
Chris C. Newbower, Never Invited Anywhere. . .
Irving K. Pond
Elmer Pratt, the Village Brummell .... I. K. Friedman
Riley Peters, with a Hundred Sweethearts
John T. McCutcheon
Earnest Pratt, of the Louisianheuser Busch City. .
. . Allen B. Pond
Wilber Fry, a Musician of Note Allen Spencer
Orville Peters, Second Musician of Note
Karleton Hackett
Judge Warden (presumably of the Fat Stock Show)
Will Payne
Dr. Niebling, Who Stays Out Late at Night
John Vance Cheney
Wes Kidwell, "Just Drops In" . .
William Morton Payne
D. I. Bl^ack F. W. Gookin
Mrs. Riley Withersby, the Social Lioness
Mrs. Coonley-Ward
Mrs. Roscoe Fry, Fond of Commanding
Miss Isabel McDougall
Lucile Ramona Fry, One of the "Buds"
Mrs. Elia W. Peattie
Mrs. Rev. Walpole, Part of the Congregation. . . .
Miss Edith Wyatt
Mrs. Smiley Greene, in the Wake . . . Miss Lucy Monroe
Miss Myrtle Peters, Who Dotes on Society. .....
Miss Ottilie Liljencranz
Mrs. Doc. Niebling Mrs. Clara Louise Burnham
Miss Flossie Niebling Mrs. Howard Coonley
Miss Mae Niebling Miss Dodson
Mrs. D. I. Black, a Lawyer's Wife
Mrs. Roswell Field
Miss Kate Warden, Who Loves Philadelphia ....
Miss Harriet Monroe
Miss Norma Cousins, of Lafayette. . Miss Anna Morgan
My Chicago 193
Mrs. Mort Peters Mrs. Charles F. Browne / T- D"TT)
Miss Minerva Maltby, a New Flame
Miss Clara E. Laughlin
Sadie Newbower, Never in Luck or Bed
Mrs. Leland Laflin Summers
Rollicking Walpoles, Villagers, Visitors in Town,
Policemen who are never around, etc
By the Company
SCENE: PARLOR IN CAP. FRY'S HOME-
TIME: FOR THE FIRST TIME.
Specialties of a highly moral character will be intro-
duced during the performance.
Tempting Viands will be dispensed and a magnificent
collation served in the Tintype Studio of Ralph Clark-
son on the tenth floor. Ask the man and take the ele-
vator. Don't crowd.
Table Decoration from the Ladies' Home Journal.
Choice morsels of poetry by poets of the Victorian
Era served with each plate.
Secure telescopes of the ushers to find the stars.
Please report to the management any neglect or in-
civility on the part of the usher. Report loss of jewelry
to the person who sits next to you.
The audience is requested to remain seated to the end.
This is not Parsifal.
194
My Chicago
Chapter Twenty-six
HE record of my experience from 1908 to
1918 would be incomplete without a refer-
ence to Eastgate, my home in Ravinia, where
I spent eight happy years and where the
members of my family and many friends so-
journed with me from time to time. In my guest book
is recorded hundreds of names of men and women illus-
trious in the various walks of life.
In the summer of 1908 I was eagerly seeking a home
of my very own in the country, and accidentally secured
this unusually charming spot from Ralph Fletcher Sey-
mour, it being a part of his estate.
I fairly revelled in the joy of my home ; it was, as every
home should be, the dearest spot on earth to me. The
cottage stood near one of the deep ravines which charac-
terize Ravinia. The entrance was marked by a gate on
which one charming day in October, John Kales had
done the lettering, "Eastgate." On one of the posts
supporting the gate was a quaint hand-wrought iron bell
which had been presented to me by a friend who got it in
Nurenberg.
Some of my friends gave me a house warming. I had
desired to have a motto lettered on the living room
mantelpiece. Ralph Seymour came over about nine
o'clock the evening before the party, exclaiming as
he entered, "No motto, no party, I suppose." I assured
him he was quite right and I proceeded to hold a candle
in a glass bottle while he lettered on the front of the
mantel,
"This house would doubtless perfect be,
Had I first consulted thee."
My Chicago 195
Two years later Alice Gerstenberg came to Eastgate,
and reading the motto promptly wrote in my guest book,
"This home could not more perfect be had I first con-
sulted thee."
At the house warming, in addition to many humorous
stunts, Marjorie Cooke read this original dedicatory
poem:
TO THE MISTRESS OF EASTGATE
Dear friends who gather here tonight
To feast and celebrate
This laying of the corner stone
With proper pomp and state,
I rather think we're all agreed
This fact's as true as fate
That few are born to grace a home
As Anna does Eastgate.
That heart of hers is big enough
To fill her native state,
And hospitality to her
Is nowise out of date.
Her latch string's out, and so's her hand,
So friends don't hesitate,
But stretch out sort o' comf'table,
It's home out at Eastgate.
So here's our love and this our hope
From this auspicious date
May peace and calm and happiness,
A rare triumvirate,
Enter this home and dwell therein
In majesty and state.
May all your days be full of joy
Dear Anna at Eastgate.
196 My Chicago
Among the memorable occasions at Eastgate was a
Sunday afternoon party which I gave for the W. J.
Calhouns, when Mr. Calhoun was Minister to China in
1911. It is safe to say it was the most memorable occa-
sion in the annals of Ravinia. Over one hundred guests
sat in the woods behind the cottage and listened to Mr.
Calhoun as he discoursed in eloquent language, of which
he was master, of China, its people, customs, and of his
own interesting experience there. J '
When the talk was over Mrs. Calhoun, seated in a
Sedan chair which had been presented to;Jme some time
before, was borne to her carriage, mok of the men
present being required to perform the work which two
coolies would have easily done.
The years were full of joy until the beloved sister who
had shared those joys for several years was taken from
me. Then, being unable to bear the loneliness, Dutchie
(her pet dog) and I moved into an apartment in town,
where we try to forget "the things that were" and live
in the things that are.
Chapter Twenty-seven
HIS book concerns itself with the develop-
ment of the finer things of life during that
term of years in which Chicago definitely
changed from a condition of an overgrown
small town and emerged permanently upon
the cosmopolitan plane. I am not essaying a history
of the years preceding those of my own activity, or any
projection of my own opinion as to the future state at
which the arts and the valuable niceties of life may ar-
rive. I consider that the period of evolution within the
scope of my personal activities was one of the most
My Chicago 197
important of the many phases through which our city
has passed; and that the future, by reason of the work
that has been done, and the courses that have been shaped,
is assured in the best sense, and I hold that while Chi-
cago is intrinsically and intensely commercial the evolu-
tion of the commercial interests would be incomplete if
it were not paralleled by an evolution in learning and in
all the arts, in literature and in matters spiritual, using
that word in its finer meaning, not in its dogmatic. With-
out that parallel in evolution it could not be what it has
become, within my own lifetime. My work is not yet
finished but if it were I could find contentment in the
knowledge that "all of it I saw and part of it I was."
Dropped like a pendant from the splendid chain of
waters that stretches from the far Atlantic seaboard to
the heart of the continent we see Lake Michigan. At
the lower end of this mighty pendant is one of the most
important toll gates in all this world. The chain con-
stitutes a barrier of water, an impassable trapezoid more
than a thousand miles in length. To the west of it
stretches a rich and splendid empire, fringed at last by
the Pacific from whose shores stretch ocean lanes of in-
finite trade possibilities in Asia and the continents and
islands of the south. All that goes into that empire or
floats away from its pacific shores must either originate
in or pass through this place of toll; all that comes out
of it, passing to the east, must pay toll here as well. The
great natural resources of interior North America are
so distributed that the raw materials of manufacture can
be brought together here by the shortest hauls and at
the lowest cost. This means colossal industries. All the
conditions taken together constitute an organization, an
assemblage of parts which act upon the whole, the whole
in turn reacting upon all the parts.
It is a magnificent contemplation, a master stroke of
civilization passing far beyond anything of which history
198 My Chicago
can tell us. Before Columbus sailed from Palos it was
written in the Sybiline books that this thing should be.
Here must stand the most mighty capital city. We of
our generation have witnessed and lived in the real be-
ginning that shall lead to that end. It is impossible that
such a plexus should form without its complement of
flowering in the more gracious and beautiful things.
To the cultivation of those things an earnest body of
men and women have through all these changes devoted
their best energies. It is not anomalous that their work
should have brought forth much of the world's best in
the domain of intellect and of art. Singers, actors, great
musicians, great writers, great painters, great architects
have been given to the world out of this garden of
intense commercialism. The genius of Chicago is all-
inclusive. I could not put in writing the truth in that
behalf without mentioning and describing personalities
known in all countries, and to people of all tongues.
There is only one element essential to a permanent
social order that is not present in this great town of ours,
and that is the possibility of placing and holding unchange-
able the stamp of character and quality. The best, and
most exclusive neighborhood of any one span of ten years
is almost certain to become the cheap and shabby neigh-
borhood of the ten next following; the cheap and shabby
will probably give way to the disreputable in the third
ten years; and in the fourth the disreputable may be re-
placed by factories and warehouses. Business has no
respect for anything but its own convenience and accessi-
bility. No one who knows Chicago will ask to have this
statement proven. It is not necessary to prove the ob-
vious. Within the last fifteen years this instability of
social localism has wrought more changes than had come
within all the years before. Other and more sweephig
changes are rolling toward us out of the future fast
enough to be within vision and growing as we look.
.
My Chicago 199
Chicago is one of the great maritime ports, and > 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."
