Lambert Hutchins speaks from beyond the grave about what he left behind. He can point to a grand hilltop house and to the ugly Chicago lakefront rail yard he helped bring about with his vote in Congress — a “hog-pen” scarring the harbor. He admits the real motives were fear of poverty and a wish to give his daughters comfort and status. But the reward turned hollow. Wealth and local prominence couldn’t stop the whispers that followed him, and his daughters grew up flinching as if expecting a blow, then married recklessly just to escape. The poem has a sour, confessional mood: a man sizing up his life and finding that security bought through corruption wrecked his family and left him nothing worth keeping.
Lambert Hutchins — Summary
I have two monuments besides this granite obelisk: One, the house I built on the hill, With its spires, bay windows, and roof of slate. The other, the lake-front in Chicago, Where the railroad keeps a switching yard, With whistling engines and crunching wheels And smoke and soot thrown over the city, And the crash of cars along the boulevard,— A blot like a hog-pen on the harbor Of a great metropolis, foul as a sty. I helped to give this heritage To generations yet unborn, with my vote In the House of Representatives, And the lure of the thing was to be at rest From the never—ending fright of need, And to give my daughters gentle breeding, And a sense of security in life. But, you see, though I had the mansion house And traveling passes and local distinction, I could hear the whispers, whispers, whispers, Wherever I went, and my daughters grew up With a look as if some one were about to strike them; And they married madly, helter-skelter, Just to get out and have a change. And what was the whole of the business worth? Why, it wasn’t worth a damn!