Chicago’s Left Bank

Title: Chicago’s Left Bank by Alson J. Smith

Location: Google Books       Date: 1953

This is one of my favorite books on the subject of literary Chicago. Smith has a witty style that matches his topic and, I believe, will grab you from the get go. Tracing the history of Chicago’s literati we get a glimpse of the bohemians in their native environment – Towertown. You’ll love it.

Out In Chicago, the only genuinely civilized city in the New World, they take the fine arts seriously and get into such frets and excitements about them as are raised nowhere else save by baseball, murder, political treachery, -foreign wars, and romantic loves . . . almost one fancies the world bumped by a flying asteroid, and the Chicago River suddenly turned into the Seine.—Henry L. Mencken in the Smart Set.

Chapter I
Montmartre in the Midwest

EVERYTHING in Chicago dates from the Year of the Fire, 1871. Post anno incendii, the chief structure left standing on the north bank of the Chicago River was the waterworks building on East Chicago Avenue. The tall stone tower of this inelegant edifice looked out over the fire-blackened ruins of what had been one of the city’s better residential sections, the Near North Side.

It was only natural that when the rebuilding began, the area in the immediate vicinity of the old water tower should be dubbed “Towertown.” And, like the arch in New York’s Washington Square and the golden dome of Sacre Coeur on Montmartre, that tower was destined to cast a long shadow over the world of arts and letters. In the years between 1912 and 1924, it was the geographical center of what was perhaps the most vital literary and artistic upsurge in the history of the country. At least Papa Mencken thought so; in 1920 he went to England to startle the dilettantes of Fleet Street with the information that the Germans had really won the war and that Chicago, Illinois, was the literary capital of the universe.

The part about Chicago was approximately true, although book critic Harry Hansen, speaking for the city’s better classes, angrily denied the accusation. In those years corn-fed hopefuls from all over the Midwest flowed into the free-and-easy bohemia of the gigantic abattoir by Lake Michigan. They came to read their poems to Harriet Monroe in the studio at 543 Cass Street, to study under Lorado Taft at the Art Institute, and to chase fire-engines for Henry Justin Smith and the Chicago Daily News in return for the privilege of rubbing shoulders in the city room with Carl Sandburg and Ben Hecht.

Towertown was the center of this renaissance. It was happily situated between the palaces of a rich residential area, the Lake Shore Drive “Gold Coast,” and the miasmal slums of Little Hell. Little Hell, like the deteriorated areas around New York’s Greenwich Village, was largely Italian, and the cheap spaghetti parlors of the neighborhood had atmosphere to fit the temperament and price to fit the pocketbook of the impoverished artists and writers in the batik-curtained coach houses, studios, and stables of Towertown. North Avenue, main artery of the old German “Nort’ Seit’,” bounded bohemia on the north, and the river, with its many bridges into the Loop, was on the south. Bisecting the whole area was the bright gut of the North Clark Street rialto, traditional main drag of hobohemia and the demi-world, with its saloons, night clubs, gambling joints and “hotels.” Rents were cheap, the Loop was within easy walking distance, and the finest beach in the city was at the foot of Oak Street. All this and Ireland’s, too—for one of the world’s best sea food restaurants was on North Clark Street, and still is.

Cartoons by McCutcheon by John T. McCutcheon

Title: Cartoons by McCutcheon : A Selection of one Hundred Drawings By John T. McCutcheon by John Tinney McCutcheon

Location: Google Books      Date: 1903

John T. McCutcheon worked for the Chicago Record-Herald before joining the Chicago Tribune in 1903. The cartoons in this volume originally appeared in the Chicago Record-Herald and includes McCutcheon’s “Boy in Springtime” series and many of his “Pictoral Sermonettes.”

CONCERNING
MR. McCUTCHEON’S CARTOONS

T HOSE  who have studied and admired Mr. McCutcheon’s cartoons in the daily press doubtless have been favorably impressed by the two eminent characteristics of his intent. First, he cartoons public men ‘without grossly insulting them. Second, he recognizes the very large and important fact that political events do not fill the entire horizon of the American people. It has not been very many years since the newspaper cartoon was a savage caricature of some public man who had been guilty of entertaining tariff opinions that did not agree with the tariff opinions of the man who controlled the newspaper. It was supposed to supplement the efforts of the editorial in which the leaders of the opposition were termed ” reptiles.”

The first-class, modern newspaper seems to have awakened to the fact that our mundane existence is not entirely wrapped up in politics. Also, that a man may disagree with us and still have some of the attributes of humanity.

In Mr. McCutcheon’s cartoons we admire the clever execution, and the gentle humor which diffuses all of his work, but I dare say that more than all we admire him for his considerate treatment of public men and his blessed wisdom in getting away from the hackneyed political subjects and giving us a few pictures of that every-day life which is our real interest.

George Ade

Chicago, March 1, 1903

Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Book Title: Cartoons By Bradley, Cartoonist of the Chicago Daily News

Location: Internet Archive     Date published: 1917

In July of 1899, Luther Bradley (1853-1917) joined the staff of the Chicago Daily News and he became one the newspaper’s most famous and beloved political cartoonists. This book was published after his death. It includes a biography and remembrance written by Daily News editor, Henry Justin Smith and a generous selection of his beautifully drawn cartoons reflecting the issues of the period. 

Bradley

 

Luther Daniels Bradley, whose cartoons commanded admiration

everywhere, was never personally conspicuous. He did not make speeches, or sit on platforms, or seek office. His very portrait was almost unknown. In an age when publicity comes easily to less eminent men, when, indeed, popular persons are so much written about that their work is less known than their way of working, Luther Bradley managed to live unobtrusively. Yet he had friends, thousands of friends who never saw him, but who felt that in his cartoons he spoke directly to them. They wrote to him, not as “Dear sir,” but as “Dear Mr. Bradley.” In the scrapbooks wherein he methodically pasted every cartoon he had published for the last seventeen years, he laid away scores of these letters, some from people of note, the majority from that vast body of “plain citizens” he loved to serve. They said in these letters he had “helped”‘ them. They asked his advice. Mothers poured out to him their thoughts. Little boys sent drawings painfully copying his style. He laid all these tenderly away where he could see them again. They were his banquets.

 

THIS picture, drawn by John T. McCutcheon, the noted cartoonist for The Chicago Tribune, was published in that newspaper January 11, 1917, the day of Luther D. Bradley's funeral. The tribute was characteristic of Mr. McCutcheon's sincerity in his friendships. Equally sincere was his spoken corrunent at the time of Mr. Bradley's death: "He was great all the time… not just now and then."

Walks About Chicago, 1871-1881 By Franc Bangs Wilkie

Full Title: “Walks about Chicago,” 1871-1881: And Army and Miscellaneous Sketchesby Franc Bangs Wilkie

Location: Google Books     Date Published: 1882

The satiric stories and essays written by Franc Wilkie (1832-1892) and contained in this book provide an interesting view of post-Civil War America. Wilkie had been a war correspondent for the New York Timesand during the Civil War he accompanied General Ulysses S. Grant from the taking of Fort Henry to the Battle of Vicksburg. In 1863, Wilkie joined the staff of the Chicago Times and remained with the newspaper until 1882. Wilkie was extremely versatile as a writer, and his satire was some of the best.

The following excerpt gives Wilkie’s view of a strange land, known by locals as the “Nord Seite” of Chicago. I think you’ll enjoy it.

NORD SEITE

THE geography, customs, productions, people, and so forth, of a new country, are always full of interest.

Once, when I was traveling about, I reached a place known among its inhabitants as ” Nord Seite.” I spent some time there. I found much to interest a traveler. Nord Seite is situated in about the same latitude as Chicago, and is about 10 degrees of longitude west of Washington. Its population is about 60,000.

To reach it from Chicago, one can take rail to New York; thence go by steamer to Alaska, via Cape Horn; from Alaska south to about the 42nd parallel; thence east by stage and rail, 2,000 miles, to Nord Seite.

Nord Seite has an immense body of water en one side, and a river whose main stream and one branch inclose two of the remaining sides. Nord Seite is, therefore, a sort of peninsula.

The river referred to is deep and sluggish. It can not be forded. It can not be crossed in small boats on account of its exhalations. These are a combination of sulphuretted hydrogen, the odor of decaying rodents, and the stench of rotting brassica. In crossing this river a sort of contrivance is resorted to, which is termed by the natives, Briicke.

This Briicke is not always reliable. Sometimes one can get over the river by its means, oftener he can’t. The Briicke is built of wood and iron, painted red, and at a distance looks not unlike a stumpy sort of rainbow.

The inhabitants of Nord Seite consist of men, women, children, dogs, billy-goats, pigs, cats, and fleas. In estimating the proportion of each of these classes, it is found that the fleas vastly outnumber all the others. They are not only numerous, but full-grown and vicious.

In the warm season a Nord-Seiter has a lively time in flea-hunting. In hunting this game the Nord Seiter shuts himself or herself in a tight room and strips to the skin. Then the flea is pursued and captured.

Most all the Nord Seite dogs are good flea hunters. They commence hunting fleas when young, without any instruction. Pretty much all their lives are spent in pursuit of this pastime.

The human population of Nord Seite is industrious. In the flea and fly time especially.

 

 

 

The business of the inhabitants of Nord Seite consists of a great variety of pursuits and occupations. These pursuits and occupations divide themselves naturally into two large classes. The first includes every other male resident of Nord Seite. These are engaged in selling a liquid which tastes something like a mixture of hops and rosin. It is the color of amber, and is surmounted with a white, yeasty, flaky coronal. The other class includes every man, woman and child in Nord Seite. This class is engaged in drinking what the other class is engaged in selling.

From the large admixture of hops in this universal beverage, it results that the residents of North Seite are very fond of dancing.

The ladies of North Seite are usually feminine in dress, and oftentimes so in fact and appearance. They mostly wear their hair braided in small plaits, which are again braided in larger plaits, which are braided into still larger ones; and these are once more braided into a large braid, which is twisted, and coiled, and wound and intertwined in, and around, and through, and about, and over, and under itself, till it resembles a riddle tied in a Gordian knot, and the whole enveloped in a rebus which nobody ever can guess.

When a Nord-Seite lady once gets her hair done up in this complex and elaborate style, she never takes it down. She couldn’t if she would. The only method of removing this style of coiffure is to shave the head.

Intercommunication in Nord-Seite is carried on in various ways. Many of the inhabitants go on foot. Others have a small two-wheeled vehicle, to which are harnessed a dog and a small boy, or a little girl.

They also have tracks upon which run vehicles which they term Vagens. The Vagen is drawn by two horses.

The Vagen is used principally for the conveyance of passengers carrying goods. It will answer to what would be an express-car in this country, in which each man should ride carrying whatever article he wished expressed to any point.

I have been in a Vagen in which a woman, on one side of me, carried on her lap a clothes-basket; in which were four heads of cabbage ; six links of imported sausage ; one bottle of goose-grease ; two loaves of a brown, farinaceous product termed Brodt; a calf’s liver; some strips of what is known as Schweinfleisch; a half peck of onions ; a string of garlic ; and a large piece of a fragrant compound known as Limburger Kdse.

On the other side of me was a woman with a baby in her arms ; a small child on each knee ; two other children, a trifle larger, on their knees, on each side of her, looking out of the windows of the Vagen ; and five other children, of various sizes, picturesquely grouped about her knees and on the floor. The same sort of thing was seen all through the Vagen. Each woman either had from four to nine children, or a basket that filled half the vehicle. Sometimes a woman would have the basket and the children both.

A very common patroness of the Vagen was a woman with two buckets of swill, carried by a yoke from the neck. The woman with the swill buckets was very common. She usually made her appearance at every third square. She didn’t generally look very attractive. If possible, she smelt a trifle worse than she looked.

The’ Nord-Seiter is economical. No matted if he earn nothing per diem, he always has enough to buy a mug of the amber fluid, and have five cents over, which he puts away in the bottom of an old stocking.

There is no newspaper published in Nord Seite. But there is a brewery there. So is there a distillery. There is likewise a place where they sell a beverage known as Lager Bier.

When two or three Nord-Seiters are conversing confidentially on a subject which they wish nobody else to hear, their whisper is about as loud as the tone in which a Chicago man would say, “Oh, Bill!” to an acquaintance two blocks away.

When two or three Nord-Seiters converse in an ordinary tone of voice, the result is a tremendous roar. A stranger would think them engaged in a hot, terrific altercation.

A Nord-Seite Vagen is an epitome of one hundred and eight distinct odors, of which onions constitute the dominant.

Some of the Nord-Seiters speak a little broken English.

 

 

 

There are many other curious things about Nord Seite and its population. Any body who has time and money should visit the place. The people are hospitable. Any one can visit them; reside with them as long as necessary; study their customs, and enjoy himself very thoroughly.

Fifty Years a Journalist By Melville Elijah Stone

Full Title: Fifty Years a Journalist by Melville Elijah Stone

Location: Google Books     Date: 1921

Melville E. Stone, 1918

Melville Elijah Stone  (1848-1929) was the founder and editor of the Chicago Daily News. The paper began publishing on Christmas Day in 1875 and cost a penny. In 1888 Stone sold his interest in the paper to his good friend and partner, Victor F. Lawson and set sail for Europe.

“In 1893, Stone became the general manager of the Associated Press of Illinois, which later became the national association, the Associated Press, in New York after absorbing the United Press. Stone extended the foreign service of the Associated Press by established bureaus in the European capitals and speaking with foreign heads of state to secure adequate news and telegraphic facilities and services, even convincing the Czar of Russia to abolish censorship of the foreign press.

“Stone resigned from the AP in 1918, after 25 years of service. Until his death in February, 1929, he held the honorary position of counselor to the association. Stone penned an autobiography in 1921, entitled, Fifty Years a Journalist.”

–Newberry Library

The stories in Stone’s autobiography are priceless. Following is an excerpt from the section on his early life in Chicago.

Boyhood in Chicago

It was during the campaign of 1860 that we moved back to Chicago, my father being appointed pastor of the Des PIaines Street Methodist Church. He served there for two years. We moved into the city from Naperville, a distance of thirty miles, by the usual lumber wagon, my mother and her children sitting high up on the furniture and my father walking a good share of the distance. He found a comfortable home, and we two sons resumed school life. I shall never forget a wise decision made by my father. Mother had traces of aristocracy still surviving, I suppose, as a heritage from her Irish “royal line.” She thought her boys should attend a private school, or have a tutor. “No,” said my father, “I have laboured for years under a distinct misfortune. Sunday after Sunday I have risen in the pulpit and preached a sermon, and there was no one to tell me that I did not know what I was talking about. It will be much better for our children to attend a public school, where they will be drilled in democratic notions, and where they will find independent companions to challenge their ideas.” And so it was settled. I was sent to the Foster Grammar School.

It was necessary to help the family exchequer. I secured a position to carry the Chicago Tribune to its subscribers in a certain quarter of the city. This meant that I must be out of bed about four o’clock every morning, go to the newspaper office for my bundle of papers, and walk out to serve them. I reached home about eight o’clock, breakfasted, and was at school at nine. For a time I also had an afternoon task, the sweeping of the floor of the Board of Trade rooms, which were almost knee-deep with wheat and oats and corn after the day’s session closed. I found time to attend on certain evenings a Palestine Class for the study of the geography of the Holy Land, and a lodge of Good Templars of which I became chief officer. And yet I was pursuing my studies so earnestly that for the year I ranked second in my class and was awarded the “Foster Medal.”

I entered the Chicago High School, but after a year was forced to drop out for a twelve-month. I never finished the course. At the close of his two years’ service, my father was sent to the church at Kankakee, and thither I followed him. I bought and sold old paper and rags for a time, and then secured a position in the leading dry-goods store of the place. Outside of the town there were two or three settlements of French Canadians. I soon picked up their patois and was able to serve them as a clerk in our store. One day there was a public examination for teachers’ certificates, conducted under the auspices of the State Superintendent of Public Instruction. I attended, answered the questions, and was adjudged fit to teach. I was then fifteen years old. I was offered a school in a remote corner of the country, but on condition that I should “board around,” that is, that I should live with one family or another a week at a time. On reflection I declined. Then I learned of a patent gong doorbell, for which there seemed to be a market. Doorbells were a novelty in Illinois in those days. I bought a stock of the bells and the necessary tools to affix them and set out. I peddled them from house to house with success for several months.

My father was next appointed to the church at Morris, Illinois. It was now the early spring of 1864. The Civil War was in full swing. I enlisted as a drummer and was anxious to “go to the front,” but my father promptly cancelled the enlistment, as he had an undoubted right to do. His health was breaking and he retired from the ministry and engaged in the manufacture of saw-mill tools with his brother in Chicago. While in Morris there was a charming little girl who was running about the place, and who, in later years, became famous as Jessie Bartlett Davis, the opera singer.

Back in Chicago I began the study of law. I read Walker’s “Introduction to American Law,” Blackstone, Greenleaf, Parsons, and other standard works, and was in a fair way to pass the bar. My mother dissuaded me. I then went into my father’s factory and divided my time in aiding the bookkeeping and in learning the machinist trade. I qualified to run a lathe and planer and to do a certain amount of work with a file and a vise.

…In the midsummer of 1864 Mr. Ballentine, commercial editor of the Chicago Tribune and father of a schoolmate of mine, asked me to help him in his work. This resulted in a short period of service as a reporter, although I was but sixteen years of age.

There were the makings of big men in Chicago at that time, but we did not know how big they were to become. For example, I used often to take our family washing to a neighbouring laundry. This establishment was maintained by one George M. Pullman who had just invented a sleeping car. He had set up a laundry to wash the bed linen of the cars, and took in consumers’ work to help eke out expenses. He became one of the great millionaires of the nation.

I shall never forget a morning in April, 1865. We lived on West Madison Street in Chicago, and it was my habit to rise early and get the morning paper. I did so on this particular morning and came bounding through the house, announcing the assassination of Mr. Lincoln. I dressed at once and started for the Tribune office. When I reached there the street was crowded, and the windows were filled with bulletins announcing the death of Mr. Lincoln, Secretary Seward, General Grant, and Andrew Johnson. The wild burst of rage was beyond description. Unable to enter the Tribune Building because of the crowd, I made my way around the corner to the Matteson House, which was located on the corner of Dearborn and Randolph streets a block away. In it was an ancient lounging rotunda. It was packed. Very soon I heard the crack of a revolver, and a man fell in the centre of the room. His assailant stood perfectly composed with a smoking revolver in his hand, and justified his action by saying: “He said it served Lincoln right.” There was no arrest. No one would have dared arrest the man. He walked out a hero. I never knew who he was.

Also recommended is: “M.E.S.,”: His Book, a Tribute and a Souvenir of the Twenty-five Years, 1893-1918, of the Service of Melville E. Stone as General Manager of the Associated Press By Associated Press, 1918 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Magazines of a Market-metropolis By Herbert Easton Fleming

Full Title: Magazines of a Market-metropolis: Being a History of the Literary Periodicals and Literary Interests of Chicago  by Herbert Easton Fleming

Location: Google Books     Date: 1906

With a suggestion in its name of the bright give-and-take of afternoon teas, Four O’Clock was conspicuous among the original magazines expressing the attitude of certain literary workers, pen-and-ink artists, and dabblers in art at Chicago in the late nineties. Its descriptive subtitle proclaimed it to be “a monthly magazine of original writings,” and its motto was “Sincerity, beauty, ease, cleverness.” Most of its contents were from Chicago writers. Not all were so original and clever, nor so marked by ease and beauty of style, as to be of special literary value, though some had a degree of merit. The “sincerity” was its expression of that vague spiritual quality known as the artist soul. In illustrations, however, the periodical was original and specially attractive. The reproductions of drawings, done so as to give them the effect of originals, appeared on leaves of special texture, pasted into the magazine. This device gave the periodical distinctive aesthetic values. Young artists, a majority of them students at the Art Institute, did most of this illustrating. Among the illustrators was Carl Werntz, who is now the head of the Art Academy, an independent art school in Chicago. Four O’Clock was started some time after the Chap-Book had reached the height of its career in Chicago. No. I was dated February, 1897. With the seventy-first number, December 1902, Four O’Clock was merged in Muse, another of the art-spirit literary periodicals, which had grown out of still another called Philharmonic. Literary workers who recall these magazines characterize them as dilettante ephemerals.

Note: This is one of my favorite resources on early Chicago magazines. But, be advised. This was Mr. Fleming’s dissertation. There is not one illustration in the entire paper.

Deadlines by Henry Justin Smith

Full Title: Deadlines: Being the Quaint, the Amusing, the Tragic Memoirs of a Newsroom by Henry Justin Smith

Book Location: Internet Archive; Google Books   Date Published: 1922

Henry Justin Smith (1875-1936) was Managing Editor of the Chicago Daily News.

The Day 

It  is still dark in the streets, still dark among the fiat roofs of our block, when the day begins.

It is a winter morning before seven o’clock. Night clings to the city. Windows in some of the tall buildings burn with a radiance never extinguished; others spring into color ahead of the belated sun. On street cars and elevated trains
that sail through the darkness like lighted ships the seven o’clock workers are arriving “downtown.”  They are shabbier, more morose, than those who come later. It is hard to be buoyant before seven o’clock in the morning.

In the newspaper office desks and long tables stand in a twilight due to glimmerings that penetrate through the windows. Typewriters, grotesquely hooded, lie in ranks. Waste-baskets yawn. The wires, clinging to the desks, are asleep; telephones have not yet found their tongues. The electric contact with the waking world is in suspension. What happened yesterday? What will happen today? The wires do not care.

A sleepy boy, shivering, his shoes trickling melted snow, enters the spectral room, carrying a bundle of morning newspapers which he lets fall upon a table. He sighs. He turns an electric switch, and the desks and tables spring into
outline. The boy stares about him, stumbles over a waste-basket, kicks it away, sits in a battered chair in front of the mouth of a tarnished copper tube that runs through the ceiling, and drowses, He has barely settled down when he hears men coming in, and starts up. The men are two ; young, but with graying hair. They have not much to say to each other. They do not even glance toward the boy. With a manner somewhat repressed, but alert enough, they go to desks, call out for the morning papers, and start slicing them up with scissors. Ten minutes go by, while the clock ticks serenely and the windows become grey with creeping daylight ; daylight that sifts down among the roofs and through veils of smoke and fog, that comes cold and ashamed and reluctant. It envelops in new shadows the bowed shoulders of the two young men, touching their cheeks with its own pallor, casting pale reminders upon the papers
they are cutting. One man glances over his shoulder at the clock. The clock presently strikes a puny but peremptory “Ping!” It is seven o’clock.
The day has begun.