Remembering Chicago

Henry regnery likes this anecdote. Last summer, Bill Buckley accepted his invitation to visit the Cliff Dwellers Club on the top floor of Orchestra Hall in Chicago and play the harpsichord for members and their guests.

Regnery, born in 1912, five years after the club’s founding, had this to say in his introductory remarks: “We are especially grateful to Bill Buckley for his willingness to play for us this evening, making this one of the great Cliff Dweller occasions, on the order of the dinner given at the Cliff Dwellers in 1914 by Harriet Monroe (the founder of Poetry magazine) to honor William Butler Yeats, on which occasion Vachel Lindsay came up from Springfield and read a new poem, ‘The Congo,’ with such eloquence and expression that one of the waiters fainted.”

JR

About the Author

John R. Coyne Jr.

Henry regnery likes this anecdote. Last summer, Bill Buckley accepted his invitation to visit the Cliff Dwellers Club on the top floor of Orchestra Hall in Chicago and play the harpsichord for members and their guests.

Regnery, born in 1912, five years after the club’s founding, had this to say in his introductory remarks: “We are especially grateful to Bill Buckley for his willingness to play for us this evening, making this one of the great Cliff Dweller occasions, on the order of the dinner given at the Cliff Dwellers in 1914 by Harriet Monroe (the founder of Poetry magazine) to honor William Butler Yeats, on which occasion Vachel Lindsay came up from Springfield and read a new poem, ‘The Congo,’ with such eloquence and expression that one of the waiters fainted.”