Arthur
Meeker Jr. (November 3, 1902 – October 22, 1971) was an American novelist and
journalist. Partner Robert Molnar
Queer Places:
1815 S Prairie Ave, Chicago, IL 60616
Arcady Farm, 80 Waukegan Rd, Lake Bluff, IL 60044
3030 N Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60657
Harvard University (Ivy League), 2 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138
Princeton University (Ivy League), 110 West College, Princeton, NJ 08544
1100 N Lake Shore Dr, Chicago, IL 60611
4 Gramercy Park W, New York, NY 10003
Graceland Cemetery
Chicago, Cook County, Illinois, USA
Arthur
Meeker Jr. (November 3, 1902 – October 22, 1971) was an American novelist and
journalist.
Meeker was born in Chicago to a prominent, wealthy family on November 3, 1902.[1] He had three sisters: Grace, Katherine and Mary. His father, Arthur Meeker, retired from his position as an executive with Armour & Co. in 1928 and died in 1946.[2] His mother Grace Murray, the daughter of a well known Chicago family, died in 1948.[3] The family lived on Prairie Avenue and They later built a luxurious home at 3030 Lake Shore Drive. They also owned Arcady Farm near Lake Forest.[4]
During the 11 years the Meekers lived in "Meekerville" the family fortunes prospered. Flush with Armour's wartime profits, Meeker now owned the eleventh largest private yacht afloat, the SS Arcady." In 1925 he took an apartment closer to downtown, at 1100 Lake Shore Drive, an eight-story building on the aptly named Gold Coast immediately south of Lincoln Park, at the intersection with Cedar. Though limited to 12 rooms and five baths, Meeker could console himself that the apparently even wealthier Samuel Insulls deigned to occupy one of the building's seven other flats. But in 1932, at the height of the Depression, Insulls' immense utilities empire collapsed and he precipitously departed 1100 Lake Shore Drive. The Depression also affected Meeker, who, "at the stroke of a pen ... lost three million dollars'" Still, he came out better than did the firm he worked for, now run by Odgen Armour, P. D.'s successor and Meeker's closest business associate. Armour and Company lost a million dollars a day for 130 straight days.
Meeker Jr studied play-writing at Harvard and Princeton, but left without graduating. He wrote society and travel articles for the Chicago American, the Chicago Daily News, and the Chicago Herald. He achieved critical acclaim as the author of several historical novels, notably The Ivory Mischief, which was a Book of the Month Club selection.[5] Time said "It seems another of those long (840-page), thickly upholstered Jumbos of period fiction.... But unlike most books of the type, its re-creation is solid, convincing and intimate, its characterizations are shrewd, its style adult, and even the upholstery is interesting."[6] He wrote two novels set in contemporary Chicago, The Far Away Music and Prairie Avenue (dedicated to Robert Molnar), which the New York Times called a "light and colorful entertainment."[7] At the start of his career as a novelist, one report of literary events said:[8] "Quite a formidable person is Arthur Meeker Jr., whose first novel...has just been published....According to his publishers, he has been dubbed "the embryo boy-king of Chicago society" and is "in a fair way to become the Ward McAllister of the West." We are informed further that "hostesses tremble at his epigrams, and the fact that his father was host to Queen Marie and his Royal Highness, David Windsor, is forgotten in dread of the son's gift for putting into words the amusement he finds in watching the pranks of his own 'set'. In brief, a lift of the Meeker eyebrow holds somewhat the same terror that once inhered in the late Mrs. Potter Palmer's frown." Somebody ought to write a book about Mr. Meeker."
Arthur Meeker owned Lord Byron, 1826, by Thomas Sully, inherithed by his
father who bought it in the 1920s
Meeker spent part of each year in Europe, became fluent in French, and purchased a chalet in Switzerland on the Bürgenstock above Lucerne.[9] He often accompanied the Chicago socialite-journalist Fanny Butcher and her husband on tours of Europe.[10] He gave up his Chicago home in 1951 for an apartment at 4 Gramercy Park in New York City.[9] Meeker served as president of the Society of Midland Authors[9][11] and with Butcher co-founded the Chicago chapter of P.E.N. about 1931, serving initially as its secretary.[12]
Letters he wrote to his family from Europe in the 1930s suggest he was homosexual.[13] He had a thirty-year relationship with Robert Molnar, with whom he lived from at least 1940 until Meeker's death in their New York City home on October 22, 1971.[13] Meeker named Molnar his heir.[13] Meeker died from injuries sustained in a car accident in Truro, Nova Scotia, Canada, a year earlier.[1] He is buried in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.[1]
My published books:
