^tirftmtHfrolfe flitetarf| €Wb THE INDIANAPOLIS LITERARY CLUB an historical memoir compiled by Francis H. Insley, Secretary A particular debt is due to Stephen C. Noland's paper read, December 7, 1934, be­ fore the Indiana Historical Society (printed for the Club in 1934) and to John H. Holliday's address, "A Third of a Century", read before the Club on January 10, 1910, and printed for the Club in that year. Printed for the Club - 1970 INDIANAPOLIS LITERARY CLUB In the middle seventies of the last century, with its pioneer days behind it, the bitter memories of the Civil War beginning to recede, its industries and its cities growing space, the middle west acquired some measure of substance and leisure and began to flex its cultural muscles. Says Arthur W. Shumaker, in his^ HISTORY OF INDIANA LITERA­ TURE: "The Golden age of Indiana literature, the fifty year period from 1871 through 1921, was the era during which the most significant writing was produced, the writing for which Hoosier literature is best known and remembered." A little further on he remarks, "It was the age of famous men and their famous books. In it Indiana, and particu­ larly Indianapolis, became a literary center which in many ways rivaled the East." So, on January 10, 1877, all the omens were propitious for the six citizens of Indianapolis who met at the home of John D. Howfand, clerk of the Federal Court, and organized the Indianapolis Literary Club. They were, in addition to Mr. Howland, the Rev. William Alvin Bartlett, clergyman; George H. Chapman, lawyer; Charles Evans, librar­ ian; William P. Fishback, lawyer - three lawyers, a librarian, a clergyman and the clerk of the Federal Court. They appointed a committee to draw up a constitution and invited twelve others to Join them as charter members. The eleven who accepted included one clergyman, Hanford A. Edson, four physicians, Albert E. Fletcher, William B. Fletcher, Theophilus Parvin and Luther D. Waterman; three lawyers, Walter Q. Gresham, Livingston Howland and Albert G. Porter; one teacher, J. Henry Kappes, one journalist, John H. Holliday; and one banker, Ebenezer Sharpe. It was a representative group, very fairly paralleling the composition of the Club today, except that the preachers have dimished. The cloth is still represented on the roll but no longer takes the active part that it did during the early days of the Club. The teachers, however, have grown in numbers and influence until after, or, perhaps, along with, the lawyers they are very nearly the dominating power in the Club. History is not silent as to who had the original idea for an Indiana­ polis Literary Club. If it were we would be distressed but would accept what Sir Thomas Browne calls "the iniquitous oblivion of time" and forget it. Unfortunately history has been unable to make up its mind. -1 - . There are no less than three equally acceptable versions. An unsigned Indianapolis News account of a dinner at the University Club, January 10, 1905, celebrating the Club's twenty-eighth anniversary, pays tribute to Mr. Howland as the founder. "It is to the late John D. Howland, more than to any other, that the Club owes its existence. Mr. Howland was for many years the clerk of the United States courts in this city, a quiet man of forceful character, a lover of good books, fond of the society of cultured men. He organized the Indianapolis Library Associa­ tion which was the fore-runner of the present city library, and the books of this institution formed the nucleus of the later institution." In a paper on "The Club's Secretaries", read at the tenth anniversary dinner, January 10,1887, Theodore L. Sewall, then secretary, suggested another candidate. "By a happy coincidence," he said, "we meet to­ night on the very date of the first Club meeting ten years ago. The man who brought about that first meeting was Charles Evans. It was my fortune to meet Mr. Evans soon after my arrival in this city, ten and a half years ago. He was then full of his plan for a literary club, and told me much about it." Charles Evans, of course, was the young man whom the city broughtfrom Boston to establish the new city library. In addi­ tion to being a charter member of the Club and its first secretary he has, obviously, a strong claim to consideration as the Club's founder. There is a third claimant. At the thirty-third anniversary dinner, John H. Holliday, a charter member, said, in his paper on the history of the Club: "There were literary clubs in Indianapolis before ours. The soil was congenial to them and, even 'long before the war', they sprouted into being, flourished with more or less success, fulfilled some sort of mission and died. They were the forerunners, the field pre­ parers. Into this ground fell the acorn from which sprang the mighty oak of tonight. Whose idea was it? Well, probably it was due more to the Rev. William Alvin Bartlett than to any other, though the time was ripe and somebody would have started it if he had not. The doctor came here in 1876 to succeed John L. Witherow as pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church. He was a live wire and immediately became popu­ lar. There was no clericalism about him. He would have thrown a fit if he had been made to wear a choker or a high-cut vest. He was from Chicago and was saturated with the breezy spirit of that town, quick -2- action, mental alertness, magnetic enthusiasm, a tendency to hustle and no indisposition to scrap . What made the doctor bethink him­ self to start a literary society I can not tell. I have the impression that there was one of prominence in Chicago of which he was a member" {Note: There was. Dr. Bartlett was elected a member of the Chicago Literary Club in March of 1874.) "and that may have given him the notion. Perhaps he needed an arena in which to cross swords and work off his surplus energy, and perhaps he thought the town needed an en­ livening institution. Whatever the stimulus, it took effect quickly, and according to Club tradition Mr. Charles Evans, the public librarian, was the first congenial spirit chosen." So take your choice, John D, Howland, Charles Evans or Dr. Bartlett. "It is too much to hope, of course," remarked Stephen C. Noland, one of my distinguished secretarial predecessors; "that these men conspired then and there to lay a trap for historians and with quizzical ceremony agreed that in subsequent accounts of the inspiration of the event they would erect three conflicting authorities of great probity, thus weaving about their origin a mystery to confound the historian obliged to rely upon their records more than half a century later. It is too much to hope, but it is a fair conjecture that if the suggestion had been offered they would not have hesitated to carry it out, for one of the delights of these early members was to pillory a controversialist, a mere picker at detail." Out of professional secretarial pride I am, naturally, inclined to plump for Charles Evans; but I am bound to admit that the evidence is split very fairly into three disconcertingly equal parts. Now, nearly a century after the event, there is no real way to make a choice. The Club has had a variety of meeting places. Of course, it began by meeting in the homes of various members, but that lasted only five months. It was, and remains, an all male assembly, and such a gathering is not happy without its own 'hide-out'. The instinct that prompts this behavior is sure and sound. A private home is inevitably dominated by the female of the species. She is altogether delightful, indispensable, and well meaning — but she is always there, in spirit if not in body, and sooner or later that club meeting turns into a tea-party. When that happens the men's club ends. Another and very pleasant sort of or­ ganization may succeed it (I happen to belong to one such), but it -3- won't be agentleman's literary club. So the Club appointed a committee to find a sanctuary, and an appropriate room was found in the old Halcyon Block at the Northwest corner of Delaware and New York Streets. At the end of the season the rendezvous was changed to the Kappes seminary, the popular name of an institution variously known as the Indianapolis Young Ladies' Institute and the Indianapolis Female Seminary. J. H. Kappes, a charter member of the Club, had started this school a year earlier in his residence on North Street, but it had out­ grown such restricted quarters and had soon moved to 345 (Old Num­ ber) North Pennsylvania Street. The Club still did not feel entirely at home and, after a year in a Female Seminary, it yielded completely to its instincts and removed its meetings, on November 14, 1881, to the parlors of the Denison Hotel, then, and for many years thereafter, the center of such night life as the city offered. The Club was happy there, but there soon ensued what can only be described as problems domestic! Too many wives apparently mistrust­ ed the atmosphere of the Denison, and too many members had to undergo a searching cross-examination on the evening's activities when they returned home. Such occurrences have not been altogether un­ known even later in the Club's history.