In planning our
Chicago trip, one of the highlights I almost insisted on was lunch at the
Palmer House hotel, followed by the lecture and tour on the historic hotel.
Lunch was at noon, and the tour began at 1:30, scheduled to be over by 3:00. Last
May I published The Gilded Cage, a
novel of Chicago in the late 19th century, the Potter Palmers, the
Palmer House Hotel, and the Columbian Exposition. Okay it’s much more than
that, at least I think so, but those are the main events. I wanted to see if I
was on the mark or not, and I wanted to see the famed hotel, though I think I
was probably there with my parents as a young child.
Lunch was
delicious—most of the kids had salmon, but I had a buttery homemade pasta with
mushrooms and truffle sauce. Absolutely delicious.
We met the tour
guide in the lobby adjacent to the restaurant. Everybody stood around talking,
while Ken Price, the guide, questioned us. Eventually he led us up a floor to
the hotel’s museum. Now, how many hotels do you know that have their own
museum? Price was, if I got the story straight, hired to do marketing for the
hotel, but today he is the archivist, whether or not he still does marketing.
We gathered around
a table in the crowed small space, and he went around the room asking each of
us questions. When he found out I was an English major, he zeroed in on me. But
before that he had orchestral music playing, told us it was from the 1930s and
asked who knew what orchestra it was. I said Eddie Duchin, because who else played
in that decade. A lucky guess.
The next question
was a quote: “In the room, the women come and go, talking of Michelangelo.” His
question was the source, and he looked directly at me. I said T. S. Eliot, and
he asked for more, so I said Prufrock. Yes, it was from “The Love Song of J.
Alfred Prufrock.”
His final question
was, “Who called Chicago the hog butcher of the world?” Easy. Carl Sandburg. I
was a little bit filled with pride to have been singled out and to have
acquitted myself well.
For the next two
hours he gave us a random, rambling history of Chicago, the Palmers, the hotel,
and himself. Charming, garrulous and knowledgeable, he was one of those people
who liked to name-drop and had me convinced that he had important ties. I was
convinced he had important connections. He’s occasionally drag out posters or
other visuals to augment his talk.
When the overlong
lecture wound down, he suggested a 15-minute break and then a tour of the
hotel. We had dinner plans and couldn’t stay which didn’t bother me a lot. I
had learned much from his lecture, most of which confirmed that I got the
information in The Gilded Cage right
except when I deliberately veered off into fiction.
We left a copy of The Gilded Cage with him, along with a
business card, and he promised to be in touch and read the book. Who knows?
This might be my one chance at fame and fortune. On the other hand, I’ll
probably never hear from him. But it was still a heck of an interesting
afternoon.
No comments:
Post a Comment