The Richmond palladium and sun-telegram. [volume] (Richmond, Ind.) 1907-1939, 1921-09-02
Beauty and the Beef
BY FREDERIC J. HAsKIN

ing a mere market for literary wares,
while the people that make them seem
more and more to be westerners, and
especially middle westerners.
A generation ago poets and artists
generally were as scarce along the
Chicago river as fish in the Sahara.
Then group of newspapermen gath
cred there which included several
poets of real merit and at least one
good novelist. This group broke up
and most of its members became
mere popular writers. 1t is only
within the last few years, with the
rise of the so-called Chicago school of
poets, that the great beef town has
begun TO get highbrow reputation.
In part, this reputation has been
wished upon Chicago. H. L. Mencken.
the eminent critic, impressed by the
fact that nearly all of our worthwhile
contemporary novelists have at some
time lived in Chicago, announced to
the world that Chicago was becoming
the literary capital of the western
hemisphere. He published this state
ment not only here. but in leading
London weekly. The cry was taken
up by others. No doubt the case for
Chicago as a center of Intellectual
activity has been considerably over
drawn. The Chicago highbrows are
after all a small group or few small
groups.
Taxing Bohemia.
But they do seem to be growing.
The Dill Pickle club, down on Tooker
Court, was long their favorite rendez-
-I1 -y1Ia i-5t I'D
by all sorts of curious people, and it
recently went into ostensible eclipse
when the Government levied an
amusement tax upon it!
The Dill Pickle club is supposed to
be closed, and maybe it is, but mean
time there is a large area of the city
up north of the river which is dotted
with studio buildings, all of which
are inhabited by artists, poets, and
other professional worshippers of
freedom and beauty. 1t looks as
though Chicago were developing in
that section a genuine art quarter, like
the Latin quarter in Paris and Green
witch Village in New York.
This Towering of intellect in the
great city of wealth and business is a
phenomenon attended by romantic hap
penings-by strange and dramatic so
cial contacts of the kind that o. Henry
| liked to write about. For the wealthy
folk of Chicago, while they generally
affect indifference toward all things
aesthetic and highbrow, are often Sc
cretly curious about them. Especially
! is this true of the women. Daughters
/ of the rich seem often to be afflicted
with highbrow cravings. The Dill
| Pickle club began as a band of poor
poets, with mixture of vagabounds
/ but it was not long before limousines
began rolling up to its doors bringing
! fashionably dressed women. AT least
one affair of the kind romancers like
| to write about originated there. The
daughter of wealthy Chicago family
| fell in love with a young sculptor who
wears his hair long, dispenses with a
! hat, and continually hurls his scorn
! at the pork packers. The two became
engaged, and have been trying ever
since to overcome the opposition OF
the girls family to a marriage. The
sculptor has since achieved some rep
utation but his hair and his radical
ideas remain unchanged, and the up
! town family cannot stomach either
! There is little bookshop in Chicago
at which you can buy almost any
radical book, pamphlet or periodical,
ever published and it is said that this
shop is financed partly by Chicago so