My formal education was quite diverse. I never went to school without working to foot the bill and in the course of time did about everything, it seems, except selling shoes. I was an usher at the Chicago Theatre (a vast, gaudy temple of entertainment then featuring elaborate stage shows as well as the latest movies), where I eventually became Chief of Service. I was an errand boy and a newspaper boy (selling papers on the corner of Wabash and Van Buren for a dollar a night, seven o’clock to midnight). I worked in a grocery store, a hardware store, a department store. I was a bus boy and a dishwasher. I sold men’s clothing, worked at the University of Chicago, and wrote squibs for a neighborhood newspaper. I went to Crane Junior College, to the old Lewis Institute, and attended graduate courses at the University of Chicago. And during all this, I took courses in every field that captured my imagination or provoked my curiosity: neurology, philosophy, psychology, literature, sociology, anthropology, languages (German, especially) ... everything.
One day, while I was still an undergraduate, a professor whose heart I had captured through my ability to recite from memory the Ode to the West Wind, took me aside and assured me that if I were to be a teacher of literature, which he suspected would be my goal in life, a faculty position in a college or university English department was not likely to come easily to a man named Brodsky. Frankly, it was his suggestion that Stuart Brodsky find another last name—at least if he wanted to become an English teacher. “What name?” I said. “Any other name that seems to fit,” he replied.
I took the suggestion up with my sisters. We thought Brent might do nicely. Then I asked my father for his opinion. He told me that no matter what I did with my name, I would still be his son and be loved no less. It was settled. At the age of nineteen, my name was legally changed to Brent.
Brent or Brodsky, I taught incipient teachers at the Chicago Teachers College. Then I lectured on Literary Ideas at the University of Chicago’s downtown division. The world took a nasty turn and I left teaching to enter the Armed Forces. I spent twenty-seven months in the army, becoming a Master Sergeant in charge of military correspondence under Colonel Jack Van Meter. When a commission was offered me, I asked for OCS training and got it. But toward graduation time, the prospect of signing up for two more years as a commissioned officer was too much and I rejected it. The war was over. I was on my way to the vagaries of civil life and to becoming a bookseller.
The Seven Stairs was born, grew, died. I found myself a widower, endeavoring to maintain my sanity and my household and fighting for commercial survival on Michigan Avenue.
One day in 1956 a tall, pretty redhead named Daphne Hersey grew tired of her job in one of the dress shops on Michigan Avenue and came to work for me. She was a Junior League girl, but a lot else beside. Before I knew it, we had three Junior Leaguers working in the shop, and I was wondering whether the shop was going to be swept away in an aura of sophistication that was incomprehensible to me. But my respect for Daphne and her integrity remained limitless. And I had no notion of the improbable consequences in the offing.
Nothing is easier than saying hello. The day Hope walked in to chat with Daphne, the world seemed simple. She and Daphne had attended Westover together. They had grown up in the same milieu. Daphne introduced Hope to me. I was three years a widower, absorbed in my problems of family and business. Hope was a young girl struggling to stay really alive, teaching at North Shore Country Day School, living in the token independence of a Near North Side apartment shared with another girl. We chatted for a moment or two about books, and I sold her a copy of a more than respectable best-selling novel, By Love Possessed.
Summer was coming. I was intent upon taking my children up to Bark Point. I would spend a week or ten days with them, leave them there with the maid and return for two weeks in the city. Then back again to the Lake. This was my summer routine. But Daphne wanted a vacation, too, and we were short of help. While we were discussing this dilemma, in walked Hope. Daphne asked her what she was doing during her vacation from kindergarten teaching. Nothing. And would she like to work here for three weeks? Hope accepted. The next day I left for the Lake. When I returned, Daphne would leave, and by that time Hope would have learned her way around. Together with our other girl in the shop, we could hold the fort until Daphne came back. It was as simple as that.
When, in due time, I returned, Daphne left and Hope and I were thrown pretty much together. I loved working with her, and she seemed thrilled with the bookstore. It was a courtship almost unaware, then a falling in love with all our might. And the probability of a good outcome seemed almost negligible.
There is such a thing as “society.” It is not a clique or gilded salon of arts and letters such as a Lionel Blitzsten might assemble, but an ingrown family, far more tribal than what is left of Judaism. In point of fact, the old West Side no longer exists—its children, our family among them, are scattered to the winds. But the North Shore, beleaguered perhaps, is still an outpost of the fair families of early entrepreneurs, a progeny of much grace anchored to indescribable taboos.