Since H. L. Mencken has called Chicago "the literary capital of the United States," it is proper for a progressive literary journal to support a correspondent at the capital. Chicago has been the cradle of many movements, since the day the now famous Elgin movement was established, and rocks a number of them at present with incredible enthusiasm.
Here, then, at the heart of things, I propose to write to The Double Dealer, and to mix praise with blame and comment with criticism, as I mix my poetical allusions, recklessly.
Seriously, the number of Chicagoans who have done noteworthy things, or one way or another have been honored for achievement, within recent weeks, is significant of something, and, thank you, significant of Chicago.
Lee Masters has published "Mitch Miller," hailed as a classic of the "Tom Sawyer" school, and Floyd Dell, formerly literary critic of the Chicago Post, has published "Moon-Calf." About both these novels, the best critics have said enthusiastic things, and there can be little doubt that they belong to our permanent literature. Dell is a New Yorker just now, and editor of The Liberator, but that his heart turns backward is evidenced by his "Moon-Calf," which, I think, is significant of these novels.
In poetry, Carl Sandburg, writing with his early gusto, has given us his third and perhaps his most powerful collection of verses, "Smoke and Steel," and Masters' "Domesday Book" has also been released by publishers. This latter volume is tremendous, and is rather a return to the author's "Spoon River" manner. Somewhere in its depths, a shrewd and ultra-modern bookseller furtively pointed out to me certain lines which, in his opinion, might allow of cataloguing the work under the caption "Facetiae." He chuckled obscenely; and I let him live out of sheer good nature, for I had sold an essay that day; but this sort of thing should be expunged from the human record. It was some such ass who brought about the suppression of "Jurgen," in New York, and who will turn with a leer, doubtless, when my own unwritten novel comes from the press.
Then there is Knut Hamsun, who used to ring up fares on the old Halsted street line, who went back to Sweden (I think it was Sweden; it may have been Norway) and wrote novels, and who now is the winner of a Nobel prize and called "the best writer in Scandinavia." John Masefield did that sort of thing, and look at him — he was once a bartender in something, the last time he was here and lectured at Orchestra Hall, he looked like a lost soul beset by innumerable club women eager to shake the hand that once had combed the flowing locks of the Münchner. When the conductors and bartenders begin to write their novels or their memoirs we shall be able to talk more loudly of "our literature."
But our own submerged ones, if they are writing, are not finding publishers. I don't think they are writing. I don't think, in New York, and in Chicago, although I think —
An interesting sign of New York's decadence as a literary center is the attention the New York publishers are giving Chicago "Reviews." The Chicago Evening Post, Daily News, and Tribune, I believe, are more frequently quoted in advertisements than the other journals that boast a book page, and when a critical and descriptive booklet is required, a Chicago critic gets the job. Llewellyn Jones, by opinion, is the leading contributor to Knopf's Mencken. The Post has just produced an excellent eulogy of Joseph Hergesheimer for Knopf, and not long ago did the same for Johann Bojer, for that author's handsome booklet, while Burton Rascoe, long the Tribune critic, is the leading contributor to Knopf's publications.
Jones is conducting an amiable altercation with Amy Lowell anent the form, function, physics, eugenics and raison d'être of poetry. The debate has not yet reached any platform, but has been exercised in the columns of journals, and in the mails. Jones knocked him at that point in a disagreement, by reprinting and circulating a pamphlet — a long article contributed by himself to the Sewanee Review; and it is now Miss Lowell's inning.
Rascoe, who, since leaving the Tribune in circumstances reported to be ranching in Oklahoma (do they ranch in Oklahoma?), has actually been rewriting the G.N., but is translating French classics for Knopf. "Mademoiselle de Maupin" and "Manon Lescaut" were the first two. I wish he would translate Remy de Gourmont and Octave Mirbeau, but he won't — I've asked him. He says they are "too much so."
Harry Hansen, who succeeded Henry Blackman Sell as literary editor of the Daily News, has written no booklets, so far as I can ascertain, but is likely to be called upon, at any moment, to pamphletize F. Scott Fitzgerald.
"Stuart Mason," Oscar Wilde's bibliographer (in private life Mr. Christopher S. Millard of the Bungalow Bookshop, London), has sent me his latest catalogue. It is delightful on a number of counts, but hidden away for the shrewd ones to find there is the record of Aldous Huxley having called Wilde a "second rate literary man," in some issue of — re-printed the insolence on a page of his catalogue, opposite, and listed Huxley's two esteemed volumes (which bring about 30 shillings in their first edition) at a shilling and sixpence for large paper copies. To add insult to this injury, he quoted a London reviewer on Huxley to the effect that there had been nothing like Aldous since Oscar Wilde. Peace hath her victories! The feud, as the London Mercury continued it, a magnificent one, Mason immediately on the effect — I am permitted, some time, to talk at greater length of The Bookfellows. At present, let me say that they are a handsome organization, their publications are handsomely printed in limited editions. The latest issue of the organ of the order, the Step Ladder, contains a clinical analysis of publishers' prices, and the first threatened campaign. George Steele Seymour heads the order.
The idea of a poet being a "best seller" is shocking; but Carl Sandburg has given up his rented place in Maywood and has purchased a retired villa in Elmhurst, a little nearer the city. Three sentinel geese patrol the front yard. What they symbolize I do not know.
Another minor poet has burst into song on the subject of "Sleep," in a recent issue of a popular magazine. In praising sleep, poets often neglect to say how much their art promotes it.
Walter M. Hill, the antiquarian bookseller, has become a publisher in earnest. His recent ventures include collectors' brochures on Stevenson, Ambrose Bierce, Lemuel Gulliver, and Lincoln.
Charles C. FitzMorris has been appointed chief of police of Chicago. Charlie FitzMorris. As a school boy, Fitz won a 'round the world race for Chicago, in competition with a handful of other cities, financed by the Hearst newspapers. Later, he became a reporter for Hearst; still later he was made secretary to Mayor Harrison and was confirmed in that office by Mayor Thompson, and now he is Thompson's choice for police chief. There is material for a special article in this department. Yet a chronicle of Chicago events, in doing nice things nicely, and doing better things, would be incomplete without this mention. I await my first sight of his uniform. Like grand opera tenors, one thinks of police chiefs as particularly fat; but occasionally a good one surprises us. FitzMorris can still wear the dress suit he wore when he was married. Chicago's far-famed crooks are reported "coming right down."
Eastern book notices chronicle the prospective advent of "The Americanization of Edward Bok," by the gentleman who for years edited The Ladies' Home Journal. No doubt this will interest many persons, but a more important matter, which, as yet, has had too little attention, might be called "the Bok-ing of America." I suspect Mr. Bok of responsibility for the bungalow, the casserole, pink literature for pink people, illustrated magazine covers, and other things too irritating to mention. His disservice to literature is hardly overestimated — they say he has a gruff masculine taste for doing it well.
The reason why so few marriages are happy, says Dean Swift, is because young ladies spend their time in making nets, not in making cages.
When we are beaten we bawl for the rule book.
Indignation is always a source of wonder, but in this abstruse era they seem to have shattered previous records by a brazen attempt to lay bare the whole show and prompt us to apologize for our intrusion into polite society — with the spirit of the man who inadvertently opens the wrong bath-house door.
Times have changed, you say. Questionless they have, but we are old-fashioned enough to opine that the hoary gentleman with the scythe cannot condone everything. Glancing over what I have written, it seems uncommonly amiable, which I had not exactly intended. Perhaps, however, that is as well. The long winter days are ahead, and one should hoard one's ammunition.
VINCENT STARRETT