Saturday, May 7, 1949 might have been the best day in Vincent Starrett’s long life. 

That Spring day was a bit overcast in Chicago, but the winds coming off the lake were surprisingly calm as the temperatures slowly made their way into the 60s. Knowing Starrett, he stayed abed until the last moment, drinking a bit of tea and scanning the newspapers. Perhaps he spied the little news item on page 16 of the Chicago Tribune under the headline:

Authors Will Honor Vincent Starrett at 9th Annual Luncheon.

“The 9th annual Authors luncheon, which will bring together scores of writers and friends of literature at 12:30 p.m. today in the Grand ballroom of the Sherman hotel, is a party especially designated for Vincent Starrett, author and educator. The luncheon this year is sponsored jointly by the Friends of the Chicago Public Library, the Society of Midland Authors, and the Caxton club. Louis Zara will be master of ceremonies.

Mr. Starrett writes the “Books Alive” essays in THE TRIBUNE’S Sunday Magazine of Books. He has taught at Northwestern university, and is past president of the Society of Midland Authors. An authority on the Sherlock Holmes stories, he was a founder of the Baker Street Irregulars and holds membership in the Sherlock Holmes Society of England.

Among Mr. Starrett’s writing colleagues expected to attend the luncheon as guests are Frederic Babcock, J. Christian Bay, Jacob Blanch, Van Allen Bradley, Fanny Butcher, Robert J. Casey, J. Finley Christ, Emmett Dedmon, William M. McGovern, Frank H. O’Hara, Harry J. Owens, Lucile Pannell, Carl Sandburg, Lew Sarett, Mary Jane Ward, and Lloyd Wendt.”

The attendees and speakers were a cross-section of the region’s most talented writers, critics and reporters. They were present to honor the man the Chicago Tribune’s Frederic Babcock on May 1 called “Chicago’s most beloved litterateur.” 

That must have put a smile on Starrett’s face.

I wonder what Starrett thought when he walked into the ballroom of the Sherman Hotel to see 425 people gathered in his honor? Perhaps he recalled that in 1929, he had been the MC for a talk in the same hotel by Pulitzer Prize winner Thornton Wilder. And while Wilder drew more people, the hundreds gathered for Starrett’s luncheon were a clear sign of his fame and friendship among those who loved books, writers and the literary world.

So far as I know, there exist no sound recordings of the event. So we’ll have to rely on news stories to help fill in the details and here we are fortunate, because the Tribune considered Starrett one of their own and its staff let the public peek into the afternoon’s details after the luncheon.

First among the reports is that of Fanny Butcher, who seems to have had a bit of a crush on Starrett. Earlier reports by her in the decades leading up to this event mentioned how handsome and witty he was. Even now, at 63, he remained what Burton Rascoe many decades earlier had called “the most distinguished looking writer in America.” The portrait by Don Loving, reproduced above, gives you a sense of how he looked at this time.

Here is Fanny’s column in full. It’s long, and I’m going to reproduce it here at a larger size so you can easily read the whole thing. Her column ran about three weeks after the luncheon.

That’s quite the love letter, wouldn’t you say?

Anecdotes from the luncheon popped up in bits and pieces for months afterwards. Take, for example, another Tribune columnist, Lucy Key Miller. She was so taken with Bob Casey’s tale about how Starrett lost a job over a rare book that she reprinted it months later, in the August 22, 1949 issue.

Many years later, Peter Ruber said that Starrett told him the story was not true.

Or maybe it was, Starrett could no longer remember.

“Well, it could have happened, because it sounds like something I might have done,” Starrett told Ruber, according to the latter’s book, The Last Bookman.

True or not, it became part of the Starrett mythos.

For now, we will leave the last word on the day to Starrett himself. These few paragraphs are from his own column, “Books Alive,” in the Chicago Sunday Tribune Magazine of Books, dated May 29, 1949, the same date as Fanny Butcher’s extensive report.

Part II will offer something no one has seen or heard since that day in 1949 — the comments of Christopher Morley to his friend Starrett. Stay tuned.

You can find Part II of Best. Day. Every here.