Chicago Historical Society Library--Founded 1856

IN

N taking stock of the educational institutions of Chicago, the question has sometimes been asked, What is the function of the Library of the Chicago Historical Society? In brief, this is a collection of materials relative to the history of America, assembled and administered wholly at the expense of the members of the Society but freely open to the public at all times.

With remarkable foresight the founders of the Society realized, at its very inception, that the literature relative to the Central West would eventually be so extensive that the task of collecting and housing it would constitute a labor of sufficient magnitude to demand the best efforts of the Society for all time.

Because it so accurately outlines the aims of the organization in the formation of these collections, the following extract is quoted from an address delivered in 1870 by Isaac N. Arnold, a charter member:

"The Chicago Historical Society had its origin in the conviction felt by a few leading citizens that the unexampled growth and development of the north-western states made an unusually strong demand upon the present generation for the adoption of measures that would insure a faithful record of their primitive condition, and of the marvelous transformation they have undergone since their first settlement. The few interesting traces to be found of the pre-historic race, or races, that once inhabited this continent, were fast disappearing. The Indian tribes, our immediate predecessors in the occupancy of the country, were also passing away, and, with them, the traces left by their ancestors, and all traditions of the more recent events in their own unwritten history. The imperfect records of the deeds. performed, privations endured, and conquests made by the heroic men who were the pioneers of this present civilization were being lost. And even the yet more wonderful achievements of the men of to-day, whose subjection of vast areas of wild lands, immense forests of timber and inexhaustible mineral resources to the uses of civilized life, whose construction of public works

and opening of continental highways, and whose building of villages and cities, with countless institutions of every kind, have been without parallel in the history of the world-these, too, would be lost to the generation to succeed us, unless an institution were founded whose chief end it should be to collect, record, and diffuse historic knowledge.

"In harmony with these ideas and plans, the Chicago Historical Society was organized, on the 24th of April, 1856, by the adoption of a constitution which defined its general object to be "to encourage historical inquiry and spread historical information, especially within the State of Illinois and also within the entire territory of the North-West."

In the half century and more that has elapsed since the field of the library was defined, those who have succeeded the founders have adhered strictly to the principles voiced above, with the result that there has been brought together a collection in which every phase in the development of the Middle West is represented, and in which certain departments have become very complete. Naturally, the two sections that have been the most highly developed are Illinois and Chicago. Another section in which it rarely happens that a book of value can be added, is the section of exploration and travels in the Central West. The books specifically on the Mississippi Valley, including its archæology, exploration, settlement, and commercial development, fill several cases. A class of books which is seldom consulted to-day but which, as may be imagined, may be eagerly sought fifty years from now by students of manners and customs and writers of fiction, is that of the narratives of travelers in this part of the country previous to the civil war. The shelves where these books are housed grow dusty, and the faded browns and magentas and greens of their cloth bindings become a uniform yellowish color, while the sides are as fresh as they were the day the books came from their printers in Boston, Philadelphia, or Cincinnati, forty, fifty, or sixty years ago. In such books the very atmosphere of the frontier has been preserved, for here are first-hand records of happenings set down, usually in the form of letters and diaries, in the very hour of their occurrence, sometimes by foreign travelers, sometimes by itinerant preachers, or circuit-riding law

yers, or other scribe, who, besides his own observations, often recorded the narratives of the aborigines, and of the scouts, river men, and adventurers who preceded the permanent settlers.

The materials for the study of Illinois history, as has been said, are very complete. Of these materials, none are more valuable than the maps; for, beginning with the charts of pre-historic periods and continuing with the maps of the explorers and, later, the atlases of counties, an idea can be gained of the determining factors in the distribution of population and other problems.

The Society is fortunate in having early begun the collection of Illinois newspapers, for students frequently come from distant parts of the United States to consult these files, which date from 1819 and include a large number of the more important papers published outside of Chicago. The collection of the Chicago papers begins with the Chicago Democrat, 1833, and includes the titles of perhaps every paper ever published in the city, although many files are far from complete.

It is quite inevitable that the subject of Chicago should become more highly specialized than any other for, in the gathering of this material, the officers of the Society have had not only the enthusiastic assistance of the members but the intelligent co-operation of patriotic Chicago citizens generally. The fact has been appreciated that the Historical Society had the facilities for taking care of all of the sources and materials for history, such as personal memoirs, however fragmentary-newspaper clippings, portraits, old letters, and documents, and indeed all of the flotsam and jetsam that would be out of place in a general library. The extraordinary precautions against fire, employed in the Society's stone and iron building, where even the furniture is of the latter material, have caused the owners of collections of family papers to deposit them here. They are all indexed and filed in special cases ready to be used by the future historian, who, by means of these more intimate and detailed materials for history, may, if he will, make the past live again in the text-books of the rising generation. And right here it should be said that it seems most desirable that the publication of a one-volume text-book of Chicago history should be undertaken, which should be worthy of the name and of the subject,-a book the price of which should be

within the means of the school children of Chicago. In the opinion of the writer, the only model for such a book is to be found in Andreas' three-volume history, which is long since out of print, but which was compiled by a committee of competent historians under the supervision of Mr. A. T. Andreas, the work being done within the walls of the old Historical Society building, and with the cordial co-operation of the Society and its scholarly secretary, Albert D. Hager. Why should not this subject form the basis of theses in our various institutions of learning?

Space is lacking to treat in any detail the manuscript collections of the Society. For the purposes of this article it is perhaps sufficient to say that the collection consists of over fifteen thousand manuscripts, among them many of first interest to scholars. On the other hand, children will be able, in examining those that are in the frames about the walls, to pick out the handwriting of the great Central-West heroes they have studied about-Marquette, Joliet, Allouez, LaSalle, Tonty, George Rogers Clark, Father Gibault, Francis Vigo, Pierre Menard, Ninian Edwards, Shadrach Bond, John Edgar, Gurdon S. Hubbard, John Kinzie, John Wentworth, and many more.

It should not be forgotten that almost every phase of the development of the Old North-West Territory and Mississippi Valley, treated of in the library, is graphically illustrated in the Society's historical museum by means of relief maps, models of Indian mounds, and of forts, original pictures of early streets and residences, relics from battlefields, and a portrait gallery where may be found, chronologically arranged, representatives of the various regimes— Spanish, French, British, American-which have been the determining factors in the history of Chicago, and so of America, since Chicago has been, with much truth, called "the heart of the country".

Perhaps the most substantial benefit which the Chicago Historical Society is rendering to the community will be found in the reverence which it inspires for American institutions and traditions. Educators are coming to recognize that the society, by keeping alive a knowledge of the beginnings and continuity of local institutions, has become their ally in the effort to make good citizens of the children, native and foreign born, entrusted to their care.

CAROLINE M. McILVAINE.

Book Reviews

THE LIFE OF WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE EXPURGATED. By William Leavitt Stoddard (M. A. Harvard). W. A. Butterfield, Boston.

This year promises to be a notable one in Shakespearian biography. Mr. Frank Harris has given us what he calls "The Tragic Life Story of Shakespeare". There is, of course, nothing tragic in the story, but there is something positively comic in Mr. Harris's naïve assumption of a miraculous knowledge of the poet's inner life. Shakespeare's heaviest or lightest words, dropped in the writing of his plays, are confirmation to Mr. Harris that such and such events were, past question, part of the poet's history-that such and such moods were his habitual reactions to experience. "Shakespeare can be judged only by his peers," says Mr. Harris. Mr. Harris judges him after his own hypothesis, and, therefore, writes himself a peer of Shakespeare. It is well-nigh mirth-provoking, this which is meant as a new gospel of Shakespeare. Now comes Mr. Stoddard with what he calls an "expurgated" life of Shakespeare. This word "expurgated" Mr. Stoddard is careful to explain: "I have presented the life of Shakespeare expurgated of surmises, doubts, likelihoods, and other text which tends to obscure the vision of one who is trying to select for himself the known facts, and draws for himself his own conclusions."

If Mr. Harris, in his description of Shakespeare as a weakling and a neuropath, is close to the absurd, Mr. Stoddard's method of expurgation brings the whole matter of the poet's personal history to the verge of an aching void. The crux of the whole matter, according to Mr. Stoddard, is to prove, or not to prove, that William Shakespeare, of Stratford, and William Shakespeare, who became part of the London literary class, are the same. Who or what shall identify Shakespeare the actor with Shakespeare the writer of plays? Mr. Stoddard is indeed to be thanked, as he says he deserves to be, for reducing an uncertain biography to this single inquiry, and for compressing his research into "a tabular view of the ascertained facts concerning the two Williams". This tabular view consists of a reprint of all the documents concerning Shakespeare's family at Stratford, his will, the chance poems ascribed to him, all allusions, real or supposed. All of these are found wanting as an identification of actor and poet. The reiterated "no proof, no proof" grows into a formula; and, just as we are ready for a total annihilation of either actor or poet, Mr. Stoddard saves both for us by calmly showing that The First Folio, of 1623, proves them to have been one. Mr. Stoddard's momentous conclusion reminds us that Shakespeare himself was fond of oscillating between the tragic and the comic, and why should he not now, "being dead and turned to clay", serve either Mr. Harris's personal vanity or Mr. Stoddard's love of anti-climax? The thanks due Mr. Stoddard are not for