Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume I Part 7

There is a moment when a man's soul revolts against the dispensations of Providence, and that is when he finds that his wife has been using his flannel trousers to wrap up the ice in.

To the average Athenian the dearest spot on earth is the Greece spot.

Mr. Deer was hung at Atlanta. Of course he died game.

'Tis pleasant at the close of day To play Croquet.

And if your partner makes a miss Why kiss The siss.

But if she gives your chin a thwack, Why whack Her back!

A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable inst.i.tution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon in it.

It was during his earlier connection with the St. Louis Journal that Field was a.s.signed the duty of misreporting Carl Schurz, when that peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for re-election to the United States Senate. Field in later years paid unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr. Schurz's futile appeals to the rural voters of Missouri. But during the trip his reports were in nowise conducive to the success of the Republican and Independent candidate. Mr. Schurz's only remonstrances were, "Field, why will you lie so outrageously?" It was only by the exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz's party was saved from serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field laid for the grave, but not revered Senator. On one occasion when a party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet Field stepped out on the veranda, and, waving the vociferous cornet and trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English. As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed unceremoniously aside by the real one. Mr. Schurz had great difficulty in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented his broken English more than his political heresies.

On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:

LADIES AND SHENTLEMEN: I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to introduce to you my prilliant chournatistic friend Euchene Fielt, who will spoke you in my blace.

It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage. Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanations that followed. A love of music common to both was the only thing that made Field tolerable to his serious-minded elder.

Regarding Eugene Field's work upon the St. Jo Gazette, it was local in character and of the most ephemeral nature. There is preserved in the pocket-books of some old printers in the West the galley proof of a doggerel rhyme read by him at the printers' banquet, at St. Joseph, Mo., January 1st, 1876. It details the fate of a "Rat" printer, who, in addition to the mortal offence of "s.p.a.cing out agate" type with brevier, sealed his doom by stepping on the tail of our old friend, the French poodle McSweeny. The execution of the victim's sentence was described as follows:

His body in the fatal cannon then they force Shouting erstwhile in accents madly hoa.r.s.e, "Death to all Rats"-the fatal match is struck, The cannon pointed upwards-then kerchuck!

Fiz! Snap! Ker-boom! Slug 14's grotesque form Sails out to ride a race upon the storm, Up through the roof, and up into the sky- As if he sought for "cases" up on high, Till like a rocket, or like one who's trusted, He fell again to earth-completely busted.

There is not much suggestion, or even promise, in this doggerel, of the Eugene Field whose verses of occasion were destined within a dozen years to be sought for in every newspaper office in America.

Long before Field learned the value of his time and writing, he began to appreciate the value of printer's ink and showed much shrewdness in courting its favor. He did not wait for chance to bring his wares into notice, but early joined the circle of busy paragraphers who formed a wider, if less distinguished, mutual admiration society than that free-masonry of authorship which at one time almost limited literary fame in the United States to Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles Dudley Warner, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Robert J. Burdette is about the only survivor of the coterie of paragraphers, who, a quarter of a century ago, made such papers as the Burlington Hawkeye, the Detroit Free Press, the Oil City Derrick, the Danbury News, and the Cincinnati Sat.u.r.day Night, widely quoted throughout the Union for their clever squibs and lively sallies. Field put himself in the way of the reciprocating round of mutual quotation and spicy comment, and before he left St. Louis his "Funny Fancies" in the Times-Journal had the approval of his fellow-jesters if they could not save that paper from its approaching doom.

Before leaving St. Louis, however, Eugene Field was to strike one of the notes that was to vibrate so sweetly and surely to his touch unto the end. He had lost one baby son in St. Jo, and Melvin was a mere large-eyed infant when his father was moved at Christmas-time, 1878, to write his "Christmas Treasures," which he frequently, though incorrectly, declared to be "the first verse I ever wrote." He probably meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility and technique in the art of versification seldom surpa.s.sed.

In Mr. Field's "Auto-a.n.a.lysis" will be found the following reference to this early specimen of his verse:

I wrote and published my first bit of verse in 1879: It was ent.i.tled "Christmas Treasures" [see "Little Book of Western Verse"]. Just ten years later I began suddenly to write verse very frequently.

Which merely indicates what little track Field kept of how, when, or where he wrote the verse that attracted popular attention and by which he is best remembered. I need hardly say that with a few noteworthy exceptions his most highly-prized poems were written before 1888, as a reference to the "Little Book of Western Verse," above cited, and which was published in 1889, will clearly show.

In the year 1880 Field received and accepted an offer of the managing editorship of the Kansas City Times, a position which he filled with singular ability and success, but which for a year put an almost absolute extinguisher on his growth as a writer. Under his management the Times became the most widely-quoted newspaper west of the Mississippi. He made it the vehicle for every sort of quaint and exaggerated story that the free and rollicking West could furnish or invent. He was not particular whether the Times printed the first, fullest, or most accurate news of the day so long as its pages were racy with the liveliest accounts and comments on the daily comedy, eccentricity, and pathos of life.

Right merrily did he abandon himself to the buoyant spirits of an irrepressible nature. Never sparing himself in the duties of his exacting position on the Times, neither did he spare himself in extracting from life all the honey of comedy there was in it. His salary did not begin to keep pace with his tastes and his pleasures. But he faced debts with the calm superiority of a genius to whom the world owed and was willing to pay a living.

There lived in Kansas City, when Field was at the height of his local fame there, one George Gaston, whose cafe and bar was the resort of all the choice spirits of the town. He fairly worshipped Field, who made his place famous by entertainments there, and by frequent squibs in the Times. Although George had a rule suspending credit when the checks given in advance of pay day amounted to more than a customer's weekly salary, he never thought of enforcing it in the case of 'Gene. More than once some particularly fine story or flattering notice of the good cheer at Gaston's sufficed to restore Field's credit on George's spindle. At Christmas-time that credit was under a cloud of checks for two bits (25 cents), four bits, and a dollar or more each to the total of $135.50, when, touched by some simple piece that Field wrote in the Times, Gaston presented his bill for the amount endorsed "paid in full." When the doc.u.ment was handed to Field he scanned it for a moment and then walked over to the bar, behind which George was standing smiling complacently and eke benevolently.

"How's this, George?" said Field.

"Oh, that's all right," returned George.

"But this is receipted," continued the ex-debtor.

"Sure," said the gracious creditor.

"Do I understand," said Field, with a gravity that should have warned his friend, "that I have paid this bill?"

"That's what," was George's laconic a.s.surance.

"In full?"

"In full's what I said," murmured the unsuspecting philanthropist, enjoying to the full his own magnanimity.

"Well, sir," said Field, raising his voice without relaxing a muscle, "Is it not customary in Missouri when one gentleman pays another gentleman in full to set up the wine?"

George could scarcely respire for a moment, but gradually recovered sufficiently to mumble, "Gents, this is one on yours truly. What'll you have?"

And with one voice Field's cronies, who were witnesses to the scene, e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, "Make it a case." And they made a night of it, such as would have rejoiced the hearts of the joyous spirits of the "Noctes Ambrosianae."

From such revels and such fooling Field often went to work next day without an hour's sleep.

While in Kansas City Field wrote that pathetic tale of misplaced confidence that records the fate of "Johnny Jones and his sister Sue." It was ent.i.tled "The Little Peach" and has had a vogue fully as wide, if not as sentimental, as "Little Boy Blue." Field's own estimate of this production is somewhat bluntly set out in the following note upon a script copy of it made in 1887:

Originally printed in the Kansas City Times, recited publicly by Henry E. Dixey, John A. Mackey, Sol Smith Russell, and almost every comedian in America. Popular but rotten.

The last word is not only harsh but unjust. The variation of the closing exclamation of each verse is as skilful as anything Field ever did. Different, indeed, from the refrain in "Wynken, Blynken and Nod," but touching the chords of mirth with certainty and irresistible effect. Field might have added, that none of the comedians he has named ever gave to the experience of "Johnny Jones and His Sister Sue" in public recitation the same melancholy humor and pathetic conclusion as did the author of their misfortunes and untimely end himself. As a penance, perhaps, for the injustice done to "The Little Peach" in the quoted comment, Field spent several days in 1887 in translating it, so to speak, into Greek characters, in which it appears in the volume given to Mrs. Thompson, which is herewith reproduced in facsimile as a specimen of one of the grotesque fancies Field indulged:

For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Greek characters, I have retranslated this poem into corresponding English, which the reader can compare with his version of "The Little Peach."

THE PEAR (In English Equivalent.) A little pear in a garden grue A little pear of emerald 'ue Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due, It grew.

One da, going that garden thro'

That little pear kame to the fue Of Thomas Smith and 'is sister Sue Those tou!

Up at the pear a klub tha thrue Down from the stem on uikh it grue Fell the little pear of emerald 'ue Peek-a-boo!

Tom took a bite and Sue took one too And then the trouble began to brue Trouble the doktors kouldn't subdue Too true (paragorik too?).

Under the turf fare the daisies grue They planted Tom and 'is sister Sue And their little souls to the angels flue Boo 'oo!

But as to the pear of emerald 'ue Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due I'll add that its mission on earth is thro'

Adieu.

CHAPTER IX

IN DENVER, 1881-1883

It was in Denver that Eugene Field entered upon and completed the final stage of what may be called the hobble-de-hoy period in his life and literary career. He went to the capital of Colorado the most indefatigable merry-maker that ever turned night into day, a past-master in the art of mimicry, the most inveterate practical joker that ever violated the proprieties of friendship, time, and occasion to raise a laugh or puncture a fraud. As his friend of those days, E.D. Cowen, has written, "as a farceur and entertainer no professional could surpa.s.s him."

Field was tempted to go to Denver by the offer of the managing editorship of the Tribune, which was owned and controlled by the railroad and political coalition then dominant in Colorado. It was run on a scale of extravagance out of all proportion to its legitimate revenue, its newspaper functions being altogether subordinate to services as a railroad ally and political organ. The late O.H. Rothacker, one of the ablest and most versatile writers in the country, was at the head of its editorial staff, and Fred J.V. Skiff, now head of the Field Columbian Museum, was its business manager. These men, with Field, were given carte blanche to surround themselves with a staff and news-gathering equipment to make the Tribune "hum." And they did make it hum, so that the humming was heard far beyond the borders of the centennial state.

In studying the character of Eugene Field and his doings in Denver, it must be borne in mind that we are considering a period in the life of that city years ago, when the conditions were very different from those prevailing there now or from those to be met with to-day in any other large city in the country. Denver in 1881 was very much what San Francisco was under the influence of the gold rush of the early fifties, only complicated with the struggles of rival railway companies. All the politics, railway, and mining interests of the newly created state centred in Denver. The city was alive with the throbbing energy of strife and speculation over mines, railway grants, and political power. Life was rapid, boisterous, and rough. Nothing had settled into the conventional grooves of habit. The whole community was fearless in its gayety. It had not learned to affect the sobriety and demureness of stupidity lest its frivolity should be likened to the crackling of thorns under a pot.

Into this civilization of the mining camp and smelter, just emerging into that of the railway, political, and financial centre of a vast and wealthy territory, came Eugene Field at the age of thirty-one, as free from care, warm-hearted, and open-handed as the most reckless adventurer in Colorado. Although a husband and a father, devoted as ever to his family, he threw himself into the bohemian life of Denver with the abandon of a youth of twenty. It is almost inconceivable where Field found the time and strength for the whirl of work and play in which there was no let up during his two years' stay in Denver. His duties as managing editor of the Tribune would have taxed the energies and resources of the strongest man, for he did not spare himself to fulfil the purpose of his engagement-to make the paper "hum." He mapped out and directed the work of the staff with a comprehensive shrewdness and keen appreciation of what his public, as well as his employers, wanted that left no room for criticism. He kept the whole city guessing what sensation or reputation would be exploded next in the Tribune.

But he did not confine himself to the duties of directing the work of others. He started a column headed "Odds and Ends," to which he was the princ.i.p.al and, by all odds, the most frequent contributor. He had not been in the city many months before he began the occasional publication of those skits which, under the t.i.tle of "The Tribune Primer," were gathered into his first unpretentious book of forty-eight pages, and which in its original form is now one of the most sought after quarries of the American bibliomaniac. Writing of these sketches in 1894, he said:

The little sketches appeared in the Denver Tribune in the Fall of 1881 and winter of 1882. The whole number did not exceed fifty. I quit writing them because all the other newspapers in the country began imitating the project.