Abroad At Home Part 12

I thought of all this at a Sunday evening supper party in Grand Rapids--a neighborhood supper party at which a dozen or more people of a.s.sorted ages sat around a hospitable table, arguing, explaining, laughing, and chaffing each other like members of one great glorious family. It made me want to go and live there, too. Then I began to wonder how long I'd really want to live there. Would I always want to?

Or would I grow tired of that, just as I grow tired of the contrasting coldness of New York? In short, I wondered to myself which is the worst: to know your neighbors with a wonderful, terrible, all-revealing intimacy, or--not to know them at all. I have thought about it often, and still I am not sure.

The Grand Rapids "Press" fearing that I might fail to notice certain underlying features of Grand Rapids life, printed an editorial at the time of my visit, in which attention was called to certain things. Said the "Press":

It isn't immediately revealed to the stranger that this is one of the clearest-thinking communities in the country. The records of the public library show the local demand for books on sociology, on political economy, on the relations of labor and capital, on taxation, on art, on the literature that has some chance of permanency. The topics discussed in the lecture halls, in the social centers, and in the Sunday gatherings, which are so p.r.o.nounced a feature of church life here, add to the testimony. Ida M. Tarbell noticed that on her first visit. Her impression deepened on her second.... Without tossing any bouquets at ourselves it can be said that we are thinking some thoughts which only the elect in other cities dream of thinking.

I should like to make some intelligent comment on this. I feel, indeed, that something very ponderous, and solemn, and authoritative, and learned, and wise, and owlish, and erudite, ought to be said.

But the trouble is that I am utterly unqualified to speak in that way. I am not one of the elect. If some one called me that, I would knock him down if I could, and kick him full of holes. That is because I think that the elect almost invariably elect themselves. They are intellectual Huertas, and as such I generally detest them. I merely print the "Press's" statement because I think it is interesting, sometimes, to see what a city thinks about itself. For my own part, I should think more of Grand Rapids if, instead of sitting tight and thinking these extraordinary thoughts, it had done more to carry out the plan it had for its own beautification.

That is not to say that it is not a pretty city. It is. But its beauty is of that unconscious kind which comes from hills, and pleasant homes, and lawns, and trees. The kind of beauty that it lacks is conscious beauty, the creation of which requires the expenditure of thought, money, and effort. And if it does nothing else to indicate its intellectual and esthetic soarings, I should say that it might do well to discard the reading lamp in favor of the crowbar, if only for long enough to take the latter instrument, go down to the park, and see what can be done about that chimney which rises so absurdly there.

The lack of coherent munic.i.p.al taste is all the more a reproach to Grand Rapids for the reason that taste, perhaps above all other qualities, is the essential characteristic of the city's leading industry.

I used to have an idea that "cheap" furniture came from Grand Rapids.

Perhaps it did. Perhaps it still does. I do not know. But I do know that the tour I made through the five acres, more or less, of rooms which make up the show house of Berkey & Gay, afforded me the best single bit of concrete proof I met, in all my travels, of the positive growth of good taste in this country.

Just as the whole face of things has changed architecturally in the last ten or fifteen years, furnis.h.i.+ngs have also changed. The improved appreciation which makes people build sightly homes makes them fill those homes with furniture of respectable design. People are beginning to know about the history of furniture, to recognize the characteristics of the great English furniture designers and to appreciate the beauty which they handed down.

We went through the warerooms with Mr. Gay, and as I feasted my eyes upon piece after piece, set after set, of Chippendale, Sheraton, Heppelwhite, and Adam, I asked Mr. Gay about the renaissance which is upon us. One thing I was particularly curious about: I wanted to know whether the improvement in furniture sprang from popular demand or whether it had been in some measure forced upon the public by the manufacturers.

Mr. Gay told me that the change was something which originated with the people. "We have always wanted to make beautiful furniture," he said, "and we have helped all we could, but a manufacturer of furniture cannot force either good taste or bad taste upon those who buy. He has to offer them what they are willing to take, for they will not buy anything else.

I know that, because sometimes we have tried to press matters a little.

Now and then we have indulged ourselves to the extent of turning out some fine pieces, of one design or another, a little in advance of public appreciation, but there has never been any considerable sale for such things." He indicated a fine Jacobean library table of oak. "Take that piece for instance. We made some furniture like that twenty or twenty-five years ago, but could sell very little of it. People weren't ready for it then. Or this Adam set--as recently as five years ago we couldn't have hoped for anything more than a few nibbles on that kind of thing, but there's a big market for it now."

I asked Mr. Gay if he had any theories as to what had caused the development in popular appreciation.

"It is a great big subject," he said. "I think the magazines have done some of it. There have been quant.i.ties of publications on house furnis.h.i.+ng. And the manufacturers' catalogues have helped, too. And as wealth and leisure have increased, people have had more time to give to the study of such things."

On the train going to Chicago I fell into conversation with a man whom I presently discerned to be a furniture manufacturer. I don't know who he was but he told me about the furniture exposition which is held in Grand Rapids in January and July each year. There are large buildings with many acres of floor s.p.a.ce which stand idle and empty all the year around, excepting at the time of these great shows. Last year more than two hundred and fifty separate manufacturers had exhibitions, a large number of them being manufacturers whose factories were not located in Grand Rapids, but who nevertheless found it profitable to s.h.i.+p samples there and rent s.p.a.ce in the exhibition buildings in order to place their wares before the buyers who gather there from all over the country.

Before we parted, this gentleman told me a story which, though he said it was an old one, I had never heard before.

According to this story, there was, in Grand Rapids, a very inquisitive furniture manufacturer, who was always trying to find out about the business done by other manufacturers. When he would meet them he would question them in a way they found exceedingly annoying.

One day, encountering a rival manufacturer upon the street, he stopped him and began the usual line of questions. The other answered several, becoming more and more irritated. But finally his inquisitor asked one too many.

"How many men are working in your factory now?" he demanded.

"Oh?" said the other, as he turned away, "about two-thirds of them."

CHICAGO

CHAPTER XI

A MIDDLE-WESTERN MIRACLE

Imagine a young demiG.o.d, product of a union between Rodin's "Thinker"

and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and you will have my symbol of Chicago.

Chicago is stupefying. It knows no rules, and I know none by which to judge it. It stands apart from all the cities in the world, isolated by its own individuality, an Olympian freak, a fable, an allegory, an incomprehensible phenomenon, a prodigious paradox in which youth and maturity, brute strength and soaring spirit, are harmoniously confused.

Call Chicago mighty, monstrous, multifarious, vital, l.u.s.ty, stupendous, indomitable, intense, unnatural, aspiring, puissant, preposterous, transcendent--call it what you like--throw the dictionary at it! It is all that you can do, except to shoot it with statistics. And even the statistics of Chicago are not deadly, as most statistics are.

First, you must realize that Chicago stands fourth in population among the cities of the world, and second among those of the Western Hemisphere. Next you must realize that there are people still alive who were alive when Chicago did not exist, even as a fort in a swamp at the mouth of the Chicago River--the river from which, by the way, the city took its name, and which in turn took its own name from an Indian word meaning "skunk."

I do not claim that there are many people still alive who were alive when Chicago wasn't there at all, or that such people are feeling very active, or that they remember much about it, for in 102 years a man forgets a lot of little things. Nevertheless, there _are_ living men older than Chicago.

Just one hundred years ago Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the river, was being rebuilt, after a ma.s.sacre by the Indians. Eighty-five years ago Chicago was a village of one hundred people. Sixty-five years ago this village had grown into a city of approximately the present size of Evanston--a suburb of Chicago, with less than thirty thousand people.

Fifty-five years ago Chicago had something over one hundred thousand inhabitants. Forty-five years ago, at the time of the Chicago fire, the city was as large as Was.h.i.+ngton is now--over three hundred thousand. In the ten years which followed the disaster, Chicago was not only entirely rebuilt, and very much improved, but also it increased in population to half a million, or about the size of Detroit. In the next decade it actually doubled in size, so that, twenty-five years ago, it pa.s.sed the million mark. Soon after that it pushed Philadelphia from second place among American cities. So it has gone on, until to-day it has a population of two million, plus a city of about the size of San Francisco for full measure.

There are the statistics in a capsule paragraph. I hope you will feel better in the morning. And just to take the taste away, here's another item which you may like because of its curious flavor: Chicago has more Poles than any other city except Warsaw.

One knows in advance what a visitor from Europe will say about New York, just as one knows what an American humorist will say about Europe. But one never knows what any visitor will say about Chicago. I have heard people d.a.m.n Chicago--"up hill and down" I was about to say, but I withdraw that, for the highest hill I remember in Chicago is that ungainly little b.u.mp, on the lake front, which is surmounted by Saint Gaudens' statue of General Logan.

As I was saying, I have heard people rave against Chicago and about it.

Being itself a city of extremes, it seems to draw extremes of feeling and expression from outsiders. For instance, Canon Hannay, who writes novels and plays under the name of George A. Birmingham, was quoted, at the time of his recent visit to this country, as saying: "In a little while Chicago will be a world center of literature, music, and art.

British writers will be more anxious for her verdict than for that of London. The music of the future will be hammered out on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Michigan. The Paris Salon will be a second-rate affair."

Remembering that the Canon is an Irishman and a humorist--which is tautology--we may perhaps discount his statement a little bit for blarney and a little more for fun. His "prophecy" about the Salon seems to stamp the interview with waggery, for certainly it is not hard to prophesy what is already true--and, as everybody ought to know by now, the Salon has for years been second-rate.

The Chicago Art Inst.i.tute has by all odds the most important art collection I visited upon my travels. The pictures are varied and interesting, and American painters are well represented. The presence in the inst.i.tute of a good deal of that rather "tight" and "sugary"

painting which came to Chicago at the time of the World's Fair, is to be regretted--a fact which is, I have no doubt, quite as well known to those in charge of the museum as to anybody else. But as I remarked in a previous chapter, most museums are hampered, in their early days, by the gifts of their rich friends. It takes a strong museum indeed to risk offending a rich man by kicking out bad paintings which he offers. Even the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has not always been so brave as to do that.

"Who's Who" (which, by the way, is published in Chicago) mentions perhaps a score of Chicago painters and sculptors, among the former Lawton S. Parker and Oliver Dennett Grover, and among the latter Lorado Taft.

There are, however, many others, not in "Who's Who," who attempt to paint--enough of them to give a fairly large and very mediocre exhibition which I saw. One thing is, however, certain: the Art Inst.i.tute has not the deserted look of most other art museums one visits. It is used. This may be partly accounted for by its admirable location at the center of the city--a location more accessible than that of any other museum I think of, in the country. But whatever the reason, as you watch the crowds, you realize more than ever that Chicago is alive to everything--even to art.

Years ago Chicago was musical enough to support the late Theodore Thomas and his orchestra--one of the most distinguished organizations of the kind ever a.s.sembled in this country. Thomas did great things for Chicago, musically. He started her, and she has kept on. Besides innumerable and varied concerts which occur throughout the season, the city is one of four in the country strong enough to support a first-rate grand opera company of its own.

About twenty-five musicians of one sort and another are credited to Chicago by "Who's Who," the most distinguished of them, perhaps, being Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, the concert pianist. But it is the writers of Chicago who come out strongest in the fat red volume, among followers of the arts. With sinking heart I counted about seventy of these, and I may be merely revealing my own ignorance when I add that the names of a good two-thirds of them were new to me. But this is dangerous ground.

Without further comment let me say that among the seventy I found such names as Robert Herrick, Henry B. Fuller, Hamlin Garland, Emerson Hough, Henry Kitch.e.l.l Webster, Maud Radford Warren, Opie Read, and Clara Louise Burnham--a hatful of them which you may sort and cla.s.sify according to your taste.

Canon Hannay said he felt at home in Chicago. So did Arnold Bennett.

Canon Hannay said Chicago reminded him of Belfast. Arnold Bennett said Chicago reminded him of the "Five Towns," made famous in his novels.

Even Baedeker breaks away from his usual nonpartizan att.i.tude long enough to say with what, for Baedeker, is nothing less than an outburst of pa.s.sion: "Great injustice is done to Chicago by those who represent it as wholly given over to the wors.h.i.+p of Mammon, as it compares favorably with a great many American cities in the efforts it has made to beautify itself by the creation of parks and boulevards and in its encouragement of education and the liberal arts."