Since H. L. Mencken has called Chicago "the literary capital of the United States," it is meet and 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, a few miles to the westward, and rocks a number of them at present with incredible enthusiasm. Those it does not rock, it stones . . . I thank you. Here, then, at the heart of things, I propose to play Autolycus to The Double Dealer, and to mix praise with blame and comment with criticism, as recklessly as I mix my poetical allusions.
Seriously, the number of Chicagoans who have done noteworthy things, or who, in one way or another, have been honored for achievement, within recent weeks, is significant — significant of something, and, I think, of Chicago.
Edgar Lee Masters has published "Mitch Miller," hailed as a classic of the "Tom Sawyer" school, and Floyd Dell, formerly literary critic of the Chicago Evening 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
book. In poetry, Carl Sandburg, writing with all his early gusto, has given us "Smoke and Steel," his third and perhaps his most powerful collection of verses, and Masters' "Domesday Book" also has been released by its publishers. This latter volume is rather tremendous, and is 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 his 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 person should be expunged from human record. It was some such ass who brought about the suppression of "Jurgen," in New York, and who will turn up 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 a Nobel prize winner and called "the best writer in Scandinavia." John Masefield did that sort of thing, and look at him now. He was once a bartender in New York, and something, I think, in Chicago, although the last time he was here, and lectured at Orchestra Hall, he looked like a lost soul beset by furies, surrounded as he was by innumerable club women eager to shake the hand that once had combed the flowing locks of 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.
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, it is likely to be a Chicago critic that gets the job. Llewellyn Jones of 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 publisher, while Burton Rascoe, long the Tribune critic, is the leading contributor to Knopf's handsome booklet on Mencken.
Jones, by the way, 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 a number of journals, and in the mails. Jones knocked out a home run by reprinting and circulating as 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 that point to a disagreement, has been ranching in Oklahoma (do they ranch in Oklahoma?), is reported to be writing the G.A.N., but actually he 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 succeded Henry Blackman Sell as literary editor of the Daily News, so far as I can ascertain has written no booklets, 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 a magnificient feud. As follows: Aldous Huxley having called Wilde a "second rate literary man," in some issue of the London Mercury, Mason reprinted the insolence on a page of his catalogue, and immediately opposite 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!
Some time, if I am permitted, I shall talk at greater length of The Bookfellows. At present, let me say that they are doing nice things nicely, and will do better things. They publish only for their own membership, and 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, the first stone in a 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 bloom 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 high school boy, Fitz won a 'round the world race for Chicago, in competition with a handful of callow youths from other cities, all financed by the Hearst newspapers. Later, he became a reporter for Hearst; still later he was made secretary to Mayor Harrison and was continued 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, but no room in this department. Yet a chronicle of Chicago events of interest to enlightened persons would be incomplete without this mention. I await my first sight of him in uniform. Like grand opera tenors, one thinks of police chiefs as fat; but occasionally a particularly good one surprises us in error. FitzMorris can still wear the dress suit he wore when he was married. Chicago's far-famed crooks are reported to be "coming right down."
Eastern book notices chronicle the prospective advent of "The Americanization of Edward Bok," 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 all 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 pale people, illustrated magazine covers, and other things too irritating to mention . . . His disservice to literature hardly can be overestimated . . . Yet they say he is a gruff masculine person, in private life, with a voice like a rusty lock.
Glancing over what I have written, it all seems uncommonly amiable, which I had not exactly intended. Perhaps, however, it is as well. The long winter days are ahead, and one should hoard one's ammunition.
VINCENT STARRETT