Books: On Garlic Creek

CHICAGO—The History of its Reputation—Henry Justin Smith & Lloyd Lewis —Harcourt, Brace ($3.75).

Chicago’s smart visitor today knows Quigley’s place, under the bare forearm of the Palmolive Building. He hears crack dance bands at the Drake, drinks his drink in the gaudy Balloon Room. But the historical panorama of Chicago reveals scenes far more polychromatic.

Baptiste Point du Sable, a Negro, was Chicago’s first inhabitant. A fugitive Kentucky slave, he lived there before blue-coated, pig-tailed U. S. soldiers occupied the banks of Garlic Creek. Then Fort Dearborn was wrenched from the soldiers by the Indians and for several years the garrison’s burned bones stuck out of the sand.

William B. Ogden, Chicago’s first great realtor, was bitterly disappointed when he first arrived, but in the ’40s Garlic Creek became the Chicago River. In 1861 Cook County offered $300 for each substitute, to keep the county free of conscription. In 1867 Chicago “had the pick of the best food and nothing remained but to know how to cook it.” Bismarck, campaigning against the French, said to General Sherman: “I wish I could see that Chicago.”*

After the blackening destruction that followed the blaze in Patrick O’Leary’s barn at 137 De Koven St. on the night of Oct. 8, 1871, the city convulsed in agony, caught its breath. It shook its head, came up for a final, triumphant round. Among its innovators were: Cyrus McCormick and his reaper; George Pullman and his “palace car”; Pinkerton and his sleuths; Bross and his Tribune; Frances Willard and her “praying women”; Brunswick, Balke and their billiard table; Rand McNally and his maps; Crane and his valves; Kimball and his pianos; Kuppenheimer and his clothes.

In Indiana one man said: “If Harrison’s mayor [of Chicago] I’m going to the Fair, but I’m going to wear nothin’ but tights and carry a knife.” MacMonnies molded a statue; George Pullman put up cigar money; the Fair was held. The day it closed Mayor Harrison got three lead shots in his middle and died.

Eugene Victor Debs came with Socialism. George Spoor and E. H. Ahmet took pictures that moved (“Essanay”) of Gloria Swanson, Charlie Chaplin. Eddie Foy tried to stop the fire-panic at the Iroquois Theatre. Carl Sandburg and Edgar Lee Masters got an audience denied in the East. Three young businessmen began Rotary.

William Hale Thompson, from one of the “oldest and best-known families,” shouted for the “full dinner pail,” refused Joffre an official welcome. In 1919 a Negro boy was stoned at a white bathing beach; next day 30 blacks were maimed in the city’s worst race riot. Alfonse Capone came from New York with a scar on his face. Dean O’Banion, onetime acolyte, draft-dodger, said “Hello” to two strangers, fell slug-riddled in his flower shop. Mayor Thompson took some friends down the brown Mississippi, washed water over levees, was shot at. “Just yesterday” Capone was jailed in Philadelphia. “For God’s sake,” says Chicago, “what does it matter who sits in the City Hall?”

The Significance. Journalized history —the notion that whatever is news is history—is, in the U. S., only as old as the Sullivan-Beer school. Such a news-history of Chicago, a city with a blood-red reputation hitched to a star, is a book bound to pall in its chaotic, undigested collection of facts en masse; yet it is big with significance for readers who like to generalize. Author Smith’s own generalizations include the following:

“The city has a daemon-Innovation. . . . We’ll all be philosophers and scholars some day; but now it’s too early … we work.”

The Authors. Lloyd Lewis, 38, is responsible for Part I of the book. Graduated by Swarthmore in 1913, he went to a Colorado sheep ranch, then to Balaban & Katz, Chicago movie-operators. Lately returned from Europe, author of Myths After Lincoln, his next book will concern General Thomas West Sherman.

Henry Justin Smith, 54, spouts quips from a dry, poker face. He is 1) author of this book’s Introduction and Part II, 2) Poet Carl Sandburg’s proud “boss,” managing editor of the Chicago Daily News. That Mr. Smith makes no attempt to glorify his city is a sign of the regeneration of U. S. editors.

Never Solved

TEN REAL MURDER MYSTERIES-Sidney Sutherland-Putnam ($2).

Anyone may commit murder, but not anyone can commit a “good” murder. Says Author Sutherland: “By a ‘good’ murder I mean one that involves, in the order named, sex, wealth, mystery, romance, celebrities, beauty, and youth.” The murderers in these ten cases are yet unproved by the police, but mere readers may solve the mysteries as they please. In this book Author Sutherland gives all salient facts of these cases: Elwell, Dot King, Taylor, Kennedy, Lambert, Borden, Molineux, Dorothy Arnold, Mary Phagan, Hall-Mills. To the task of giving them more permanent value Author Sutherland, 20 years a newsgatherer, brings graphic powers.

Counsel to Eagles

EAGLES FLY HIGH-E. B. Dewing-Stokes ($2).

Selina Martin, 21, was a tall, angular blonde. She worked for Julies Freres, Couturiers-the brothers Raphael and Paul. Raphael, a dress designer himself, appreciated her original work, therefore advanced her salary after her mother’s death left her living alone. Then one day he noticed something in her work on a dress in three shades of red-“I mean the clever child is growing up-she has ideas that are not all dreams. She is getting down to earth. I wonder why. . . .”

Big Bill Jones was “why.” He came to the city remembering how she had come “down to earth” for him on her vacation. In the city he married her, took her from Julies Freres. Raphael hated to see her go for more than business reasons.

Jones took Selina to the Midwestern college where he taught her chemistry. There she learned from a doctor that it would be dangerous for her to conceive a child. She was cold as well as unfit. Yet when Bill was killed in a laboratory explosion and Raphael came from Manhattan for her, she married Raphael and together they went traveling in Europe. By him she conceived at last, and a blood transfusion failed to save her life. An oracular gnome called Bolonowski, whose delicate embroidery seems to exude from her body like spider-thread, helps the author explain that these events are “a counsel to eagles, and a warning to their despoilers.”

Elizabeth B. Dewing is the philosophical, rusty-haired lady who returned, with My Son John in 1926, to something of the spurt of fame she made as Painter Thomas Wilmer Dewing’s precocious daughter, who, at 23, wrote and published A Big Horse to Ride (1911). In the interim she married, bore two daughters, divorced. Lately she lost her second husband, a Dane, to Death. She tells her stories with warm, effortless naturalism but suffers, like so many sincere writers, from a too great dependence on platitudes in dialog.

Sad Sugar

THE YOUNG MAY MOON-Martha Os-tenso—Dodd, Mead ($2.50).

Marcia Gunther looked over her left shoulder at the young May moon and so her troubles began. Her husband drowned himself because he thought she meant it when she said she was eloping with another man. Her mother-in-law, a certain doctor friend, and the rest of the town condemned her for infidelity both marital, of which they presumed her guilty in fact, and religious, for they knew her father hated God. After the mother-in-law dies, Marcia wins over the doctor and the town for the happy ending, by sheer force of youth, love, indifference. A satisfying story for those who like their moons made of sad sugar.

Maurois Novel

ATMOSPHERE OF LOVE-Andre Maurois—Appleton ($2.50).

In 1923 Author Maurois wrote Ariel: The Life of Shelley. Thereafter interest in the “new” human biography did not dwindle. When Author Maurois recreated another life, that of Disraeli, more copies of it sold in the U. S. than of any other non-fiction book of 1928.

Atmosphere of Love is a novel, two-fold in form. In the first part Philippe Marcenat writes to his new wife Isabelle describing his great but jealous love for his previous wife, Odile, telling how she was untrue and shot herself when abandoned. In the second part Isabelle writes how Philippe “hung on. me, as one hangs a cloak on a peg, a soul much more beautiful and worthwhile than mine really was”; also how he died of pneumonia. Throughout Philippe becomes more and more transparent, leading to the conclusion: “If one truly loves, it is not really necessary to attach great importance to the actions of those we love. We need them; only through them can we live in a certain ‘atmosphere.’ And it is an atmosphere without which we cannot live.”

André Maurois, 44, was born in El-beuf, France, of a family which owned the textile mills there. The War released him from his family’s uncongenial business, his knowledge of languages procured him with the British G. H. Q. a post easy enough to permit him to write three books. The War over, he still found need to work at the mills three days a week, writing the last three days. Many a U. S. student remembers his U. S. lectures in the autumn of 1927. Now Author Maurois lives in Paris with his wife and three children.

Mention

PECCADILLOES-Faraday Keene-John Day ($2).

In Vanity Fair and other smartcharts Author Keene’s piquant stories have been appearing side by side with more mature work. Mostly the characters are English in names and dialect while the style has more than an air of Russian futility. This compilation contains Author Keene’s idea of his best stories to date. Typical is “The Latch-Key,” a story wherein a girl returns to her apartment on the eve of her marriage to find a discarded lover’s compromising revenge: suicide in her supposedly virginal bed.

*Last week a modern German conquerer, Commander Hugo Eckener of the Graf Zeppelin declared: “I have never thought such enthusiasm possible as that manifested when we circled Chicago.”