LOOKING BACKWARD
The Chicago Club is the rich, substantial club of the city, an
organization which may perhaps be compared with the Union Club of New
York, although the inner atmosphere of the Chicago Club seems somehow
less formal than that of its New York prototype. However, that is true
in general where Chicago clubs and New York clubs are compared.
The University Club of Chicago has a very large and handsome building in
the Gothic style, with a dining room said to be the handsomest club
dining room in the world: a Gothic hall with fine stained-glass windows.
Between this clubhouse and the great Gothic piles of the Chicago
University there exists an agreeable, though perhaps quite accidental,
architectural harmony.
Excepting Washington University, in St. Louis, Chicago University is the
one great American college I have seen which seems fully to have
anticipated its own vastness, and prepared for it with comprehensive
plans for the grouping of its buildings. Architecturally it is already
exceedingly harmonious and effective, for its great halls, all of gray
Bedford stone, are beginning to be toned by the Chicago smoke into what
will some day be Oxonian mellowness. Even now, by virtue of its ancient
architecture, its great size and massiveness, it is not without an
effect of age--an effect which is, however, violently disputed by the
young trees of the campus. Though these trees have grown as fast as they
could, they have not been able to keep up with the growth of the great
institution of learning, fertilized, as it has been, by Mr.
Rockefeller's millions. Instead of shading the university, the campus
trees are shaded by it.
* * * * *
The South Shore Country Club is an astonishing resort: a huge pavilion,
by the lake, on the site of the old World's Fair grounds. It is a
pleasant place to which to motor for meals, and is much used, especially
for dining, in the summer time. The building of this club made me think
of Atlantic City; I felt that I was not in a club at all, but in the
rotunda of some vast hotel by the sea.
I had no opportunity to visit The Little Room, a small club reported to
be Chicago's artistic holy of holies, but I did have luncheon at the
Cliff Dwellers, which is the larger and, I believe, more active
organization. The Cliff Dwellers is a fine club, made up of writers and
artists and their friends and allies. I know of no single club in New
York where one may meet at luncheon a group of men more alive, more
interesting, or of more varied pursuits, and I may add that I absorbed
while there a very definite impression that between men following the
arts, and those following business, the line is not so sharply drawn in
Chicago as in New York.
At the Cliff Dwellers I met a gentleman, a librarian, who gave me some
interesting information about the management of libraries in Chicago.
"Chicago is a business city, dominated by business men," he said. "We
have three large public libraries, one the Chicago Public Library,
belonging to the city, and two others, the Newberry and the Crerar,
established by rich men who left money for the purpose.
"The system of interlocking directorates, elsewhere pronounced
pernicious, has worked very beautifully in affecting cooperation instead
of competition between these institutions.
"About twenty years ago, at the time of the Crerar foundation, the
boards of the three libraries met and formed a gentleman's agreement,
dividing the field of knowledge. It was then arranged that the Chicago
Public Library should take care of the majority of the people, and that
the Newberry and the Crerar should specialize, the former in what is
called the 'Humanities'--philosophy, religion, history, literature, and
the fine arts; the latter in science, pure and applied. At that time the
Newberry Library turned over to the Crerar, at cost, all books it
possessed which properly belonged in the scientific category. And since
that time there has been practically no duplication among Chicago
libraries. That is what comes of having public-spirited business men on
library boards. They run these public institutions as they would run
their own commercial enterprises. The Harvester Company, for example,
wouldn't duplicate its own plant right in the same territory. That would
be waste. But in many cities possessing more than one library,
duplication of an exactly parallel kind goes on, because the libraries
do not work together. Boston affords a good example. Between the Boston
Public Library, the Athenaeum, and the library of Harvard University,
there is much duplication. Of course a university library is obliged to
stand more or less alone, but it is possible even for such a library to
cooperate to some extent with others, and, wherever it is possible to do
so, the library of the University of Chicago does work with others in
Chicago. Even the Art Institute is in the combination."
I do not quote this information because the arrangement between the
libraries of Chicago strikes me as a thing particularly startling, but
for precisely the opposite reason: it is one of those unstartling
examples of uncommon common sense which one might easily overlook in
considering the Plan of Chicago, in gazing at great buildings wreathed
in whirling smoke, or in contemplating that allegory of infinity which
confronts one who looks eastward from the bold front of Michigan Avenue
along Grant Park.
The automobile, which has been such an agency for the promotion of
suburban and country life, seems to have the habit of invading, for its
own commercial purposes, those former residence districts, in cities,
which it has been the means of depopulating. I noticed that in
Cleveland. There the automobile offered the residents of Euclid Avenue a
swift and agreeable means of transportation to a pleasanter environment.
Then, having lured them away, it proceeded to seize upon their former
lands for showrooms, garages, and automobile accessory shops. The same
thing has happened in Chicago on Michigan Avenue, where an "automobile
row" extends for blocks beyond the uptown extremity of Grant Park,
through a region which but a few years since was one of fashionable
residences.
I do not like to make the admission, because of loyal memories of the
old South Side, but--there is no denying it--the South Side has run
down. In its struggle with the North Side, for leadership, it has come
off a sorry second. In point of social prestige, as in the matter of
beauty, it is unqualifiedly whipped. Cottage Grove Avenue, never a
pleasant street, has deteriorated now into something which, along
certain reaches, has a painful resemblance to a slum.
It hurt me to see that, for I remember when the little dummy line ran
out from Thirty-ninth Street to Hyde Park, most of the way between
fields and woods and little farms. I had forgotten the dummy line until
I saw the place from which it used to start. Then, back through
twenty-eight or thirty years, I heard again its shrill whistle and saw
the conductor, little "Mister Dodge," as he used to come around for
fares, when we were going out to Fifty-fifth Street to pick violets.
There are no violets now at Fifty-fifth Street. I saw nothing there but
rows of sordid-looking buildings, jammed against the street.
Everywhere, as I journeyed about the city how many memories assailed me.
When I lived in Chicago the Masonic Temple was the great show building
of the town: the highest building in the world, it was, then. The Art
Institute was in the brown stone pile now occupied by the Chicago Club.
The turreted stone house of Potter Palmer, on the Lake Shore Drive was
the city's most admired residence--a would-be baronial structure which,
standing there to-day, is a humorous thing: a grandiose attempt, falling
far short of being a good castle, and going far beyond the architectural
bounds of a good house. Then there was the old Palmer House hotel, with
its great billiard and poolroom, and its once-famous barbershop, with a
silver dollar set at the corner of each marble tile in its floor, to
amaze the rural visitor. The Palmer House is still there, looking no
older than it used to look. And most familiar of all, the toy suburban
trains of the Illinois Central Railroad continue to puff, importantly,
along the lake front, their locomotives issuing great clouds of steam
and smoke, which are snatched by the lake wind, and hurled like giant
snowballs--dirty snowballs, full of cinders--at the imperturbable stone
front of Michigan Avenue.
[Illustration: As I stood there, studying the temperament of pigs, I saw
the butcher looking up at me.... I have never seen such eyes]
Chicago has talked, for years, of causing the Illinois Central Railroad
to run its trains by electricity. No doubt they should be run in that
way. No doubt the decline of the South Side and the ascendancy of the
North Side has been caused largely by the fact that the South Side
lakefront is taken up with tracks and trains, while the North Side
lakefront is taken up with parks and boulevards. Still, I love the
Chicago smoke. In some other city I should not love it, but in Chicago
it is part of the old picture, and for sentimental reasons, I had rather
pay the larger laundry bills, than see it go.
One day I went down to the station at Van Buren Street, and took the
funny little train to Oakland, where I used to live. One after the
other, I passed the old, dilapidated stations, looking more run down
than ever. Even the Oakland Station was unchanged, and its surroundings
were as I remembered them, except for signs of a sad, indefinite decay.
Strange sensations, those which come to a man when he visits, after a
long lapse of years, the places he knew best in childhood. The changes.
The things which are unchanged. The familiar unfamiliarity. The vivid
recollections which loom suddenly, like silent ships, from out the fog
of things forgotten. In that house over there lived a boy named Ben
Ford, who moved away--to where? And Gertie Hoyt, his cousin, lived next
door. She had a great thick braid of golden hair. But where is Guy
Hardy's house? Where is the Lonergans'--the Lonergans who used to have
the goat and wagon? How can those houses be so completely gone? Were
they not built of timber? And what is memory built of, that it should
outlast them? Mr. Rand's house--there it is, with its high porch! But
where are the cherry trees? Where is the round flower bed? And what on
earth have they been doing to the neighborhood? Why have they moved all
the houses closer to the street and spoiled the old front yards? Then
the heartshaking realization that they _hadn't_ moved the houses; that
the yards were the same; that they had always been small and cramped;
that the only change was in the eye of him who had come back.
No; not the only change, but the great one. Almost all the linden trees
that formed a line beside my grandfather's house are gone. The four
which remain aren't large trees, after all.
The vacant lot next door is blotted out by a row of cheap apartment
houses. But there is the Borden house standing stanch, solid, austere as
ever, behind its iron fence. How afraid we used to be of Mr. Borden! Can
he be living still? And has he mellowed in old age?--for the spite fence
is torn down! Next door, there, is the house in which I went to my first
party--in a velveteen suit and wide lace collar. There was a lady at
that party; she wore a velvet dress and was the most beautiful lady
that I ever saw. She is several times a grandmother now--still
beautiful.
The gentleman who owns the house in which I used to live had heard I was
in town, and was so kind as to think that it would interest me to see
the place again.
I never was more grateful to a man!
The house was not so large as I had thought it. The majestic "parlor"
had shrunk from an enormous to a normal room. But there was the wide
hardwood banister rail, down which I used to slide, and there was the
alcove, off the big front bedroom, where they put me when I had the
accident; and there was the place where my crib stood. I had forgotten
all about that crib, but suddenly I saw it, with its inclosing sides of
walnut slats. However, it was not until I mounted to the attic that the
strangest memories besieged me. The instant I entered the attic I knew
the smell. In all the world there is no smell exactly like the smell
which haunts the attic of that house. With it there came to me the
picture of old Ellen and the recollection of a rainy day, when she set
me to work in the attic, driving tacks into cakes of laundry soap. That
was the day I fell downstairs and broke my collarbone.
Leaving the house I went out to the alley. Ah! those beloved back fences
and the barns in which we used to play. Where were the old colored
coachmen who were so good to us? Where was little Ed, ex-jockey, and
ex-slave? Where was Artis? Where was William? William must be getting
old.
At the door of his barn I paused and, not without some faint feeling of
fear, knocked. The door opened. A young colored man stood within. He
wore a chauffeur's cap. So the old surrey was gone! There was a motor
now.
"Where's William?" I asked.
"William ain't here no more," he said.
"But where is he?"
"Oh, he's most generally around the alley, some place, or in some of the
houses. He does odd jobs."
"Thanks," I said and, turning, walked up the alley, fearing lest I
should not be able to find the old colored man who, perhaps more than
any one outside my family, was the true friend of my boyhood.
Then, as I moved along, I saw him far away and recognized him by the
familiar, slouching step. And as I walked to meet him, and as we drew
near to each other in that long narrow alley, it seemed to me that here
was another allegory in which the alley somehow represented life.
How glad we were to meet! William looked older, his close-cropped wool
was whiter, he stooped a little more, but he had the same old solemn
drawl, the same lustrous dark eye with the twinkle in it, even the same
old corncob pipe--or another like it, burned down at the edge.
We stood there for a long time, exchanging news. Ed had gone down South
with the Bakers when they moved away. Artis was on "the force."
[Illustration: The bold front of Michigan Avenue along Grant Park ...
great buildings wreathed in whirling smoke and that allegory of infinity
which confronts one who looks eastward]
"The neighborhood's changed a good bit since you was here. Lots of the
old families have gone. I'm almost a stranger around the alley myself
now. I must be a pretty tough old nut, the way I keep hangin' on." He
smiled as he said that.
* * * * *
"Of course I'll see you when I come out to Chicago again," I said as we
shook hands at parting.
William looked up at the sky, much as a man will look for signs of rain.
Then with another smile he let his eyes drift slowly downward from the
heavens.
"Well," he said in his nasal drawl, "I guess I'll see you again some
time--some place."
I turned and moved away.
Then, of a sudden, a back gate swung open with a violent bang against
the fence, and four or five boys in short trousers leaped out and ran,
yelling, helter-skelter up the alley.
I had the curious feeling that among them was the boy I used to be.
"IN MIZZOURA"