Garland in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

[Garland at the Cliff Dwellers in 1915]

[94] X [Garland at the Cliff Dwellers in 1915] Ralph Fletcher Seymour In 1907 Garland founded the Cliff Dwellers, a Chicago club organized to bring together writers, artists, and patrons and modeled after New York’s Players Club. He served as its president until 1915. Ralph Fletcher Seymour (1876–1966) was a Chicago artist, book designer, and publisher (of Alderbrink Press among others) who was present at many of the club’s activities. Garland, who was known to club members as “Czar Hamlin the First,” apparently ruled the club with an iron fist, forbidding alcohol on the premises and not permitting the presence of women until after 6 p.m., for fear of upsetting the business lunches that had become commonplace. When the members rebelled and enacted an amendment to the bylaws prohibiting a president from serving more than two consecutive terms, Garland naturally became upset, resigned, and decided to abandon Chicago and relocate to New York City in early 1916. hamlin garland was its first president and remained in that office for the next seven years. He poured limitless energy into its growth, vise’d everything and gave it the stamp of his moral and mental viewpoint. He supervised too much and finally became something of a nuisance to the more free spirits of the club. As when the popular Irish Players came to town on one of the earliest of their tours.1 They were given a Sunday afternoon tea in the club rooms at which certain lady wives of members publicly smoked cigarettes. Mr. Garland at the next board of directors’ meeting demanded that a house rule be passed forbidding public smoking of cigarettes by females in the club rooms. One of the directors softly remarked he hoped no action would be taken that would exclude his wife from coming to the club. Mr. Garland was, nevertheless, of great benefit to the club in much the same way that the United States has benefited by the influence of New England forefathers. When he finally removed to New York his portrait was painted by Ralph Clarkson, hung in a place of honor in the large room and a dinner arranged for him. It chanced, however, that he could not attend [95] the dinner, whereupon a few modifications in the program were made. An attractive and glittering bar was rigged up at one end of the room below the ex-president’s portrait and a perfect type of jovial “bar-keep” installed behind it;—none other than thin, long nosed, red faced Roswell Field.2 The portrait was turned face to the wall and a large sign hung across it on which was lettered “this place has changed hands.” Notes 1. In 1911 and 1912 Dublin’s Abbey Theatre sent a group of players on tour with John Synge’s The Playboy of the Western World, among other plays. Garland, who was also involved with the Chicago Theater Society, saw their plays, dined with them, and hosted a gathering at the Cliff Dwellers. 2. Roswell Martin Field (1851–1919), Eugene’s brother, was a journalist and music and drama critic. From Ralph Fletcher Seymour, Some Went This Way: A Forty Year Pilgrimage Among Artists , Bookmen, and Printers (Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1945), 161–62. Ralph Fletcher Seymour ...