Summer Homes For City People

The title inspiration for my magazine from last summer…

I like to search the term “Lake Geneva”. I search it on Twitter so I know what the masses are saying about my lovely town. I search it on Google so I can find out if all these words I write have caught the attention of the Google robots. I’ve scanned newspapers from the 1920’s for real estate advertisements featuring my favorite lake name. And, when I think about it, I search for items listed on Ebay that contain the objection of my affection. Such was the case last Tuesday, when I sat down and plunked in Lake Geneva and commanded Ebay to go find the results. I do this fairly often, and have bought plenty of old postcards and old things with my favorite two words emblazoned on their front. Or sides. Or bottoms.

Since I’m an old pro at stalking the letters that spell Lake Geneva, I was surprised when I found an old book that I had never before seen. Perhaps everyone else knows about it, but I have a feeling that’s not the case. There are plenty of books written in and about Lake Geneva. The most recent, Stories from the Shore, is available by clicking on the link to the left of this post. So while there have been plenty of books written about the history of my cherished lake, I have yet to find a book like the one I found last week on the series of tubes created by, and known by one other Congressman as The Internets.

The book was titled “The Story of Lake Geneva: Or Summer Homes For City People”. I liked the title. I liked the candid nature of it, and the way Summer Homes for City People rolls off my tongue. The book was written by one F. R. Chandler, who is not nearly as well known to Google as Lake Geneva is. I ordered this book last Tuesday, and yesterday, it arrived. I tore it open like a six year old who has been forced to wait until after breakfast to open his presents on Christmas morning. I flipped through it in the lobby of the Williams Bay Post Office, and then again in the car. It wasn’t an old book in appearance, rather a reprint of an old book onto new pages. The historical feel might be gone, but the text and pictures are pure historical Lake Geneva. The first page was like eye candy for me, both in message and in the quaint style of the lettering.

The Story Of Lake Geneva or, Summer Homes For City People. Dedicated to the wandering well-to-do of Chicago who seek country places. Printed under the auspices of the Lake Geneva Villa Association 1898.

And with that, I was in love. To provide a guy like me with a phrase like “the wandering well to do of Chicago who seek country places”? That’s about the best thing I’ve ever read. At least it was, until I turned the page. There, along with an old black and white photo of the shore path and a stamp from the Harvard College Library, January 18, 1899, Cambridge Mass., were two quotes that couldn’t more accurately, and more poignantly describe my entire existence. One quote, by President Eliot, who, as far as I can tell, was the president of Harvard University in the mid to late 1800’s, leads the page.

It is a very honorable pleasure to maintain generously and handsomely a fine family estate in the country- an estate to be transmitted from generation to generation.

Wow. President Eliot, whoever you are in your Google reclusiveness, I applaud you. I immediately thought that you must be the finest purveyor of vacation home justifying quotes ever, but it wasn’t until I read the next quote, seemingly also attributed to you, that I so willingly bestowed that very title upon your presumably broad, certainly dead, vacation home loving shoulders.

Our rich men have lost great pleasures which the rich men of other times used to enjoy.

And with that, my mind was blown. How could it be that this one L’d president Eliot could so accurately and so eloquently- so concisely- explain what it is that I waste tens of thousands of words attempting to do in vain. A years’ worth of my words cannot measure up to the handful of properly arranged words that Mr. Eliot probably spoke without even a slight stammer. Mr. Eliot, your table is ready sir.

I read that phrase last night before bed, and had a hard time sleeping. I’d toss- rich men have lost great pleasures– and turn – an estate to be transmitted from generation to generation – and I thanked the good Lord that I had the fortune of discovering these quotes. I read the remainder of the slight book this morning, and as far as I can tell, it was a brochure of sorts, produced by the Lake Geneva Villa Association in an attempt to further convince Chicagoans of the great pleasures that awaited them at Lake Geneva. The little book is filled with facts, and even goes as far as to list every lakefront owner at the time. The names must have been to offer up further proof of the elite status of the lakefront, and names like Seipp, Koch, Wacker, Meacham, Ayer, Sears, Crane, Chandler, and Leiter, probably did a sufficient job of conveying that exclusivity.

The book is laced with superlative prose, so intense that it makes my writings look like I hardly appreciate the lake at all. The book is also filled with hyperbole at best, downright lies at worst. Consider this doozy…

Lake Geneva is the deepest as well as the purest body of inland water in Wisconsin or in the United States, being fully two hundred and thirty feet deep and so pure that certain portions of the bottom is clearly seen to a depth of forty or even fifty feet.

I won’t argue with the clarity, but I have a feeling Lake Tahoe may take exception with some of the other claims. So just who put together this beautiful little book, full of facts intermingled with sensationalized hyperbole? None other than the Lake Geneva Villa Association, better known to Chicagoans of the 1890’s as the office of Messrs. Chander and Co. at 110 Dearborn Street, “where all inquiries for purchase of villa sites can be made”. To whom do we owe this marvelous little book of attributes? Realtors. My figurative forefathers if you will. If the folks at Chandler and Co. were alive today, I can only imagine how they would delight to read my blog that carries on their fine tradition of expounding the virtues of the lake that they so boldly declared “a poem set to music”.