|
Herbert M. Kinsley, publisher of the first of the lithographs of the cow kicking over the
lantern included in the A Star is Born Gallery for this chapter, evidently distributed this
comic broadside to publicize his business and to poke fun at artist L.V.H. Crosby, the
whole O'Leary story, and himself. Right after the Civil War, in partnership with
Uranus H. Crosby, the impresario of the ill-fated Crosby's Opera House, Kinsley
established what was called the best restaurant in Chicago. After selling out two years
later, he turned his attention to providing food services for hotels and railroad dining cars
(including the special train that served railroad magnates attending the ceremonies in Utah
marking the completion of the transcontinental railroad) before opening another downtown
restaurant, which was destroyed by the fire. According to A.T. Andreas, Kinsley lost
most of his investment since he had insured locally with companies that failed, but he
almost immediately opened again in a shanty near Michigan and Madison that he helped
build himself, and which is jocularly called in this broadside the "Emergency Saloon." In
time he was again operating the most fashionable restaurant in the city and defining the
standards of elegant behavior for Chicago's best.
In florid mock-heroic language, the broadside tells of Kinsley's commissioning L.V.H.
Crosby, "that universal genius" who is described as "probably the author of a greater
number and a greater variety of 'Songs and Ballads' than any man in America," as well as
"a painter of rare merit," to prepare the "Historical Picture" of the origins of the fire.
The picture depicts "the precise moment when the uplifted foot has 'spent its force' but had not yet
been returned to the stable floor." The broadside then concludes with a poem, supposedly
dictated by Mrs. O'Leary, which blames Crosby himself for
frightening her cow by snooping around the barn that evening in quest of his picture.
|
A String of Endorsements 