On the day we were travelling to the prairie city, while the thermometer was rising in that section of the country, it was falling in the eastern and southern States, registering thirty degrees below zero at Whitehall, New York. The Straits of Mackinaw, connecting Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, were navigable only on foot or runners. We arrived in Chicago on Monday, Jan. 7. On the 6th the thermometer registered twenty-two degrees below zero. Monday’s newspapers congratulated their readers that, “the wave had passed over.” Incidents of its severity were curious and numerous. Hundreds of hogs had been frozen to death on freight-trains. The Terre Haute express from Chicago was snowed up for thirty-one hours. At fires which had broken out, water from the engines froze as it fell, and covered the buildings with strange, fantastic shapes.
I had arranged to visit Gunnison (Colorado), and other mining cities, within a reasonable distance from Chicago and St. Louis; but was persuaded to postpone my trip by private and public reports of the storm in those regions. One day’s newspaper (the “Daily-News-Democrat,” of Gunnison) contained startling evidence of the difficulties I should have had to encounter. Within a few days twenty-seven men had been killed by snow-slides in the mountains between Ouray and Telluride. A local mail-carrier was among the victims. All the available snow-ploughs and engines of the various districts were at work on the tracks. Engines were helplessly stuck in the snow on the Rio Grande. “The miner,” remarked the “Daily News” editor, “who goes into the mountains at this season takes his life in his hands.” I remained in Chicago with Irving, and am spared to chronicle these things. The weather was sufficiently cold for both of us in Chicago. It varied, too, with a persistency of variation that is trying to the strongest constitution. One hour the thermometer would be fairly above zero, the next it would be far below it. Men went about the frozen streets in fur coats and caps, carefully protecting their ears and hands. Along the shores of Lake Michigan were barricades of ice; they looked like solid palisades of marble. Here and there, where tiny icebergs had been formed, the polar bear would not have looked out of place. It was strange to see the ice-boats, with their bending sails, literally flying along, while away out lay ships at anchor. Mr. Lyon took Miss Terry, Irving, and myself sleighing along the lake shore and upon the prairie beyond. My friends were delighted with the novel excursion, astonished at the fine boulevards through which we passed, amazed at the possibilities of Chicago, as they realized what had been done and what space had been laid out for the future. A forty-mile drive through great, wide boulevards designed to encompass the city, is the biggest of the city’s schemes, and it is in vigorous course of formation.
“One is forced to admire the pluck of Chicago,” said Irving, after our first drive. “Twice burnt down, twice built up, and laid out anew, on a plan that is magnificent. Some of the houses along Prairie and Michigan avenues are palaces.[37] The art revival in street architecture and house decoration is as actively rife here as in London. And what a superb stone they have for building purposes in their yellow cream-colored marble! It is marvellous to see how they have taken hold of the new ideas. The Calumet and the Chicago club-houses,—nothing could be more chaste than their decorations.”
One day we went to Pullman City, an industrial town, akin to Saltaire, near Bradford, in its scope and enterprise. We were invited and accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Pullman, Miss Terry, Mr. and Mrs. Dexter, Mr. and Mrs. James Runnion, and several other ladies and gentlemen. Going out in Mr. Pullman’s private car, we lunched with him at the pretty hotel of the novel city, and afterwards inspected the workshops and principal buildings.
“The story of the conception and creation of this Pullman City,” said Irving, “interested me very much, though I confess the method of it all strikes me as somewhat like living by machinery: the private houses being massed, as it were, en bloc; the shops collected together like arcades; the whole place laid out with geometrical system; and yet one feels that there are fine principles underlying it; that the scheme is founded upon wise plans; and that, from a moral and sanitary stand-point, the city is an ideal combination of work and rest, of capital and labor. Pullman’s idea was a lofty one, and the result is very remarkable: a centre of industry that should give to labor its best chance, with capital taking its place on a platform as human as labor. That is the notion, as Pullman explained it to me. What a square, level head it is! Just the determined kind of man to be the author of a new city on new lines. He told me that Charles Reade’s novel, ‘Put Yourself in his Place,’ had influenced him greatly in his ambition to found this place; that it has affected all his relations towards the people under his direction. Politically, Pullman City is a paradox. A despotism, it still is very democratic. It owes its successful administration to what may be called a benevolent autocracy. The theatre, I am told, is more prosperous than the church proper, though religion is represented by several earnest communities. The idea of giving the people a chance to buy land and build cottage homes for themselves, at a reasonable distance beyond Pullman, appears to be a good one. Pullman himself may well be proud of his work. It is worthy of Chicago and the West.”
II.
In spite of “wind and weather” the people of Chicago crowded Haverly’s Theatre, where Irving and Miss Terry appeared, night after night, for two weeks; and the critics of the great papers of the West, the “Times,” “Tribune,” “Inter-Ocean,” and “Daily News,” were equal to the occasion. They showed a knowledge of their work, and an appreciation of dramatic art, as illustrated by Irving, quite in keeping with the spirit and ambition of their new and wonderful city. A news-collector, having in view the prejudices of New York and London, as to the literary and journalistic cultivation of Chicago, selected an enthusiastic line or two from the Chicago notices of Irving and Miss Terry, with a view to cast ridicule upon western criticism. This kind of thing is common to news-collectors on both sides of the Atlantic. A reporter desires to please his editor, and to cater for his public. In London, believing that New York will be stirred with the report of a hostile demonstration against an American artist, he makes the most of the working of a rival American clique there against Lotta. New York looks down loftily upon the art culture of Chicago, and London chiefly knows Chicago through its great fire, borne with so much fortitude, and for its “corners in pork.” The local caterer for the news columns of New York and London panders to these ideas. The best-educated writer, the neatest essayist, might appear foolish by cutting unconnected sentences out of his work, and printing them alone.
In the journalistic literature of modern criticism there is nothing better than some of the essays on Irving and his art that appeared in the papers of Chicago and the West. In this connection it is worth while pointing out that the absence of an international copyright between England and America forces native writers, who otherwise would be writing books, into the press. So long as publishers can steal or buy “for a mere song” the works of popular English authors they will not give a remunerative wage to the comparatively unknown writers of their own country. Therefore, busy thinkers,—men and women with literary inspirations devote themselves to journalism. It would be surprising if, under these circumstances, the western press should not here and there entertain and instruct its readers with literary and critical work as much entitled to respect, and as worthy to live, as the more pretentious and more happily and fortunately placed literature of London, Boston, and New York. The American authors best known to-day, and most praised in both hemispheres, have written for the newspapers, and some of them had their training on the press: Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Howells, Aldrich, John Hay, James, Habberton, Winter, Bryant, Artemus Ward (I leave the reader to complete the list, for I mention these name en passant and at random); and how many others are coming on through the columns of the newspapers to take up the running, who shall say? The Chicago press often sacrifices dignity and good taste in the headings with which it seeks to surprise and excite its readers. But this is a feature of Western journalism that will go out with the disappearance of the lower civilization to which, in covering the entire ground of its circulation, it unhesitatingly appeals. The London press is not free from the charge of pandering to depraved tastes in its reports of sensational murders and divorce cases, though the great body of its writers and contributors no doubt sit down to their work with a higher sense of their responsibility to the public than is felt by their American contemporaries.
“Do you think that is so?” Irving asked, when I was propounding this view to an American colleague.
“Yes,” said the journalist addressed; “but I think our newspapers are far more interesting than yours. At the same time you beat us in essay-writing, for that is what your editorials are,—they are essays.”