It was bad enough to run a clothing store in this town,/ But to be buried here-ach!” “If the excursion train to Peoria/ Had just been wrecked, I might have escaped with my life-/ Certainly I should have escaped this place./ But as it was burned as well, they mistook me/ For John Allen who was sent to the Hebrew Cemetery / At Chicago,/ And John for me, so I lie here.
The poem’s wry vey iz mir! tone suggests that Masters was accustomed to hearing Jewish friends kvetch: Small wonder that “Spoon River” includes an epitaph for Barney Hainsfeather, a fictional Jewish haberdasher in west-central Illinois.Ī tragic schlimazel along the lines of Darrow’s Louis Epstine, Hainsfeather planned to be buried in Chicago’s Hebrew Benevolent Society Cemetery, but a fiery train wreck left his remains unidentifiable, so he was interred at Spoon River instead. Masters acknowledged the acumen of a colleague whose career was diametrically opposed to his own Mayer had earned a fortune by representing corporations in lawsuits against workers.Īs he turned from the law to poetry, Masters continued to befriend Jews, including the legal philosopher Jerome Frank and the novelist and historian Waldo Frank (no relation) who published his magazine writings. Levy Mayer’s widow sponsored the biography, which lauded Mayer as a “great lawyer and a good man,” underlining his “professional integrity, loyalty to his country, generosity to the weak and devotion to his friends and family.” Meyer later represented Masters in a divorce case, even lending him money during difficult times. This commission was obtained through Abe Meyer, a Chicago attorney and the subject’s brother-in-law, who had done business with Masters and Darrow. Not long before abandoning his legal career in 1930 for full-time poetic pursuits, Masters wrote his first biography, of the Chicago Jewish corporate lawyer Levy Mayer, published in 1927.
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