Volume 1 - Chapter 16. Nature Of His Daily Work

________________________________________________
_ VOLUME I CHAPTER XVI. NATURE OF HIS DAILY WORK

In the last chapter I have told in general terms how Field employed himself day by day, from which the reader may form the impression that between eleven A.M. and midnight not over one-quarter of his time was actually employed in work, the balance being frittered away in seeming play. In one sense the reader would be right in such an inference. Field worked harder and longer at his play than at what the world has been pleased to accept as the work of a master workman, but out of that play was born the best of all that he has left. His daily column was a crystallization of the busy fancies that were running through his head during all his hours of fooling and nights of light-hearted pleasure. It reflected everything he read and heard and saw. It was a "barren sea from which he made a dry haul"--a dreary and colorless gathering that left him without material for his pen. He did not hunt for this material with a brass band, but went for it with studied persistence. Field never believed that he was sent into the world to reform it. His aim was to amuse himself, and if in so doing he entertained or gratified others, so much the better. "Reform away," he was once reported as saying, "reform away, but as for me, the world is good enough for me as it is. I am a thorough optimist. In temperament I'm a little like old Horace--I want to get all the happiness out of the world that's possible." And he got it, not intermittently and in chunks, but day by day and every hour of the day.

His brother Roswell has said that the "curse of comedy was on Eugene," and "it was not until he threw off that yoke and gave expression to the better and sweeter thoughts within him that, as with Bion, the voice of song flowed freely from the heart."

I do not think it is quite fair to regard comedy as a curse or a yoke. Certainly Eugene Field never suffered under the blight of the one nor staggered under the burden of the other. If there is any curse in comedy, unadulterated by lying, malice, or envy, he never knew it. He knew--none better--that the author who would command the tears that purify and sweeten life must move the laughter that lightens it. What says our Shakespeare?--

Jog on, jog, on the foot-path way,
And merrily hent the stile-a,
A merry heart goes all the day,
Your sad tires in a mile-a.

Eugene Field trod the footpath way to popularity and fame with a buoyant and merry heart. If there was any abatement of his joyous spirits I never knew it, and I do not think that his writings disclose any sweeter strain, as his brother suggests, in the days when ill-health checked the ardor of his boyish exuberance, but could not dim the unextinguishable flame of his comedy. The two books that contain what to the last he considered his choicest work--a judgment confirmed by their continued popularity and sale, "A Little Book of Western Verse" and "A Little Book of Profitable Tales"--were compiled from the writings (1878-1887) that flowed from his pen when he worshipped most assiduously at the shrine of the goddess of comedy and social intercourse.

I have been tempted into this digression in order that the reader may not be at a loss to reconcile the apparent frivolity of Field's life and the mass of his writings at this period with the winnowed product as it appeared in the two volumes just mentioned. Out of the comedy of his nature came the sweetness of his work, and out of his association with all conditions of his fellow-men came that insight into the springs of human passion and action that leavens all that he wrote, from "The Robin and the Violet" (1884) down to "The Love Affairs of a Bibliomaniac" (1895).

The general character of Eugene Field's life and writing went through a gradual process of evolution from the time of his arrival in Chicago to the final chapters of "The Love Affairs," which were his last work. But it can be safely divided into two periods of six years each, with the turning point at the publication of his little books of verse and tales in the year 1889. Nearly all that he wrote previous to that year was marked by his association with his kind; that which he wrote subsequently was saturated with his closer association with books. About all the preparation he needed for his daily "wood-sawing" was a hurried glance through the local papers and his favorite exchanges, among which the New York Sun held first place, with the others unplaced. He insisted that the exchange editor should send to his desk daily a dozen or more small country sheets from the most out of the way places--papers that recorded the painting of John Doe's front fence or that Seth Smith laid an egg on the editor's table with a breezy "come again, Seth, the Lord loveth a cheerful liar." When Field had accumulated enough of these items to suit his humor, he would paraphrase them, and, substituting the names of local or national celebrities, as the incongruity tickled his fancy, he would print them in his column under the heading of local, social, literary, or industrial notes, as the case might be. He seldom changed the form of these borrowed paragraphs materially, for he held most shrewdly that no humorist could improve upon the unconscious humor of the truly rural scribe. Field never outgrew the enjoyment and employment of this distinctively American appreciation of humor. As late as October 29th, 1895, "The Love Affairs" had to wait while he regaled the readers of the Chicago Record with his own brand of "Crop Reports from East Minonk," of which the following will serve as specimens:

All are working to get in the corn crop as if they never expected to raise another crop. The schools are almost deserted, and even the schoolm'ams may yet be drafted in as huskers. As the season advances the farmers begin to realize the immensity of the crop, and the dangers and difficulties of handling it. Owing to its cumbersomeness the old-fashioned way of handling it becomes obsolete, and new methods will have to be adopted and hydraulic machinery procured. Many new uses can be made of the corn-stalks, such as flag-poles for school-houses, telegraph poles and sewer-pipes. By hollowing out a corn-stalk it will make the very best of windmill towers, as the plunger-rod can be placed inside, thus protecting it from the weather, and if desired, an excellent fountain can be obtained by perforating the joints with an awl.

A freight train on the Santa Fe railroad was delayed four hours last Saturday by a corn-stalk in Jake Schlosser's field, which had been undermined by hogs, falling across the track. It was removed with a crane and considerable difficulty by the wrecking crew.

The town of Hegler, on the Kankakee, Minonk and Western railroad, is invisible in a forest of corn. A search party under the direction of the road commissioners are looking for it.

These solemnly exaggerated crop notes were strung out to the extent of over half a column. Some will question the wit of such fantastic extravagance, but Field had early learned the truth of Puck's exclamation: "Lord, what fools these mortals be!" He knew that there was absolutely no bounds to the gullibility of mankind, and he felt it a part of his mission to cater to it to the top of its bent. One of his most successful impositions was international in its scope. On September 13th, 1886, the following paragraph, based on the current European news of the day, appeared in his column:

We do not see that Prince Alexander, the deposed Bulgarian monarch, is going to have very much difficulty in keeping the wolf away from the door. In addition to the income from a $2,000,000 legacy, he has a number of profitable investments in America which he can realize upon at any time. He owns considerable real estate in Chicago, Kansas City, Denver, and Omaha, and he is a part owner of one of the largest ranches in New Mexico. His American property is held in the name of Alexander Marie Wilhelm Ludwig Maraschkoff, and his interests in this country are looked after by Colonel J.S. Norton, the well-known attorney of this city. Colonel Norton tells us that he would not be surprised if Prince Alexander were to come to this country to live. In a letter to Colonel Norton last June the Prince said: "If ever it is in divine pleasure to release us from the harassing responsibilities which now rest upon us, it will be our choice to find a home in that great country beyond the Atlantic, where, removed from the intrigues of court and state, we may enjoy that quiet employment and peaceful meditation for which we have always yearned."

Now it must be confessed that this bears a sufficient air of verisimilitude to deceive the casual reader. It is as perfect a specimen of the pure invention which Field delighted to deck out in the form of truth with facts and the names of real personages as he ever wrote. In that year not only Englishmen, but other foreigners, were investing in American real estate. James S. Norton was indeed a well-known attorney of Chicago, as he deserved to be for his wit and professional ability. He was on such friendly terms with Field that the latter thought nothing of taking any liberty he pleased with his name whenever it served to lend credibility to an otherwise unconvincing narrative. In subsequent paragraphs Field answered fictitious inquiries as to Mr. Norton's reality by giving his actual address, with the result that Mr. Norton was pestered with correspondence from all over the union offering opportunities to invest Prince Alexander's funds.

But the success of this hoax was not confined to the American side of the Atlantic, as the following paragraph from London Truth shortly after proves:

I gave some particulars a few weeks ago of the large amount of property which had been extracted from Bulgaria by Prince Alexander, who arrived at Sofia penniless, except for a sum of money which was advanced to him by the late Emperor of Russia. It is now asserted by the American papers that Prince Alexander has made considerable purchases under an assumed name (Alexander Marie Wilhelm Ludwig Maraschkoff) of real estate in Chicago, Denver, Kansas City, and Omaha, and that he is part owner of one of the largest sheep ranches in New Mexico. The Prince's property in America is under the charge of Colonel Norton, a well-known attorney of Chicago. Prince Alexander must be possessed of a true Yankee cuteness if he managed to squeeze the "pile" for these investments out of Bulgaria in addition to the L70,000 to which I referred recently. The Russian papers have accused him of dabbling in stock exchange speculations, and if disposed for such business, his position must have given him some excellent opportunities of making highly profitable bargains.

Thus was Prince Alexander convicted of having burglarized Bulgaria upon an invention which should not have deceived Mr. Labouchere. How that ostentatiously manufactured alias ever imposed on Truth passes comprehension. Is it any wonder that at one of our numerous mid-day lunches "Colonel" Norton fired the following rhyming retort at Field?--

TO EUGENE FIELD

Forgive, dear youth, the forwardness
Of her who blushing sends you this,
Because she must her love confess,
Alas! Alas! A lass she is.

Long, long, so long, her timid heart
Has held its joy in secrecy,
Being by nature's cunning art
So made, so made, so maidenly.

She knew you once, but as a pen
In humor dipt in wisdom's pool,
And gladly gave her homage then
To one, to one, too wonderful;

But having seen your face, so mild,
So pale, so full of animus,
She can but cry in accents wild,
Eugene! Eugene! You genius!

The deep and abiding interest Field felt in the fortunes of Prince Alexander may be inferred from his exclamation, "When Stofsky meets Etrovitch, then comes the tug of Servo-Bulgarian war!"

He took no end of pleasure in starting discussions over the authorship of verses and sayings by wilfully attributing them to persons whose mere name in such connection conveyed the sense of humorous impossibility, and he thoroughly enjoyed such suggestions being taken seriously. Once having started the ball of doubt rolling he never let it stop for want of some neat strokes of his cunning pen. Several noteworthy instances of this form of literary diversion or perversion occur to me. There never was any occasion to doubt the authorship of "The Lost Sheep," which won for Sally Pratt McLean wide popular recognition a decade and a half ago. Its first stanza will recall it to the memory of all:

De massa of de sheep fol'
Dat guard de sheep fol' bin,
Look out in de gloomerin' meadows
Whar de long night rain begin--
So he call to de hirelin' shepa'd,
"Is my sheep, is dey all come in?"
Oh, den says de hirelin' shepa'd,
"Dey's some, dey's black and thin,
And some, dey's po'ol' wedda's,
But de res' dey's all brung in--
But de res' dey's all brung in."

The very notoriety of the authorship of these lines merely served as an incentive for Field to print the following paragraph calling it in question:

Miss Sally McLean, author of "Cape Cod Folks," claims to have written the dialect poem, "Massa of de Sheep Fold," which the New York Sun pronounces a poetic masterpiece. We dislike to contradict Miss McLean, but candor compels us to say that we have reason to believe that she is not the author of the stanzas in question. According to the best of our recollection, this poem was dashed off in the wine-room of the Gault House, at Louisville, Ky., by Colonel John A. Joyce, from ten to twenty years ago. Joyce was in the midst of a party of convivial friends. After several cases of champagne had been tossed down, a member of the party said to Colonel Joyce, "Come, old fellow, give us an extempore poem." As Colonel Joyce had not utilized his muse for at least twenty minutes, he cordially assented to the proposition, and while the waiter was bringing a fresh supply of wine Colonel Joyce dashed off the dialect poem so highly praised by the New York Sun. We are amazed that he has laid no claim to its authorship since its revival. Unfortunately, all the gentlemen who were present at the time he dashed off the poem are dead, or there would be no trouble in substantiating his claims to its authorship. We distinctly remember he wrote it the same evening he dashed off the pretty poem so violently claimed by, and so generally accredited to, Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

This was written in February, 1885, and though it failed of its ostensible aim of discrediting Miss McLean's authorship of "The Lost Sheep," it succeeded in rekindling throughout the exchanges the smouldering fires of the dispute Field had himself started over that of Ella Wheeler Wilcox's "Solitude," the relevant verse of which runs:

Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone,
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has troubles enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air,
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.

From the day "Solitude" appeared in Miss Wheeler's "Poems of Passion" in 1883, and so long as Field lived, he never ceased to fan this controversy into renewed life, more often than not by assuming a tone of indignation that there should be any question over it, as in the following recurrence to the subject in July, 1885:

It is reported that Mrs. Ella Wheeler Wilcox is anxious to institute against Colonel John A. Joyce such legal proceedings as will determine beyond all doubt that she, and not Colonel Joyce, was the author of the poem entitled "Love and Laughter," and beginning:

"Laugh, and the world laughs with you; Weep, and you weep alone."

Mrs. Wilcox is perhaps the most touchy person in American literature at the present time. For a number of years she has been contributing to the newspaper press of the country, and her verses have been subjected to the harshest sort of criticism. The paragraphists of the press have bastinadoed and gibbeted her in the most cruel manner; her poems have been burlesqued, parodied, and travestied heartlessly--in short, every variety of criticism has been heaped upon her work, which, even the most prejudiced will admit, has evinced remarkable boldness and an amazing facility of expression. Now we would suppose that all this shower of criticism had tanned the fair author's hide--we speak metaphorically--until it was impervious to every unkindly influence. But so far from being bomb-proof, Mrs. Wilcox is even more sensitive than when she bestrode her Pegasus for the first time and soared into that dreamy realm where the lyric muse abides. There is not a quip nor a quillet from the slangy pen of the daily newspaper writers that she does not brood over and worry about as heartily as if it were an overdue mortgage on her pianoforte. We presume to say that the protests which she has made within the last two years against the utterances of the press would fill a tome. Now this Joyce affair is simply preposterous; we do not imagine that there is in America at the present time an ordinarily intelligent person who has ever believed for one moment that Colonel Joyce wrote the poem in question--the poem entitled "Love and Laughter." Colonel Joyce is an incorrigible practical joker, and his humor has been marvellously tickled by the prodigious worry his jest has cost the Wisconsin bard. The public understands the situation; there is no good reason why Mrs. Wilcox should fume and fret and scurry around, all on account of that poem, like a fidgety hen with one chicken. Her claim is universally conceded; there is no shadow of doubt that she wrote the poem in question, and by becoming involved in any further complication on this subject she will simply make a laughing-stock of herself; we would be sorry to see her do that.

And yet whenever his stock of subjects for comment or raillery ran low he would write a letter to himself, asking the address of Colonel John A. Joyce, the author of "Love and Laughter," and manage in his answer to open up the whole controversy afresh. I suppose that to this day there are thousands of good people in the United States whose innocence has been abused by Field's superserviceable defence of Mrs. Wilcox's title to "Laugh and the World Laughs with You." It was delicious fooling to him and to those of us who were on the inside, but I question if Mrs. Wilcox ever appreciated its humorous aspect.

Speaking of his practice of getting public attention for his own compositions through a letter of his own "To the Editor," the following affords a good example of his ingenious method, with his reply:

EVANSTON, ILL., Aug. 15, 1888.

To the Editor:

Several of us are very anxious to learn the authorship of the following poem, which is to be found in so many scrap-books, and which ever and anon appears as a newspaper waif:

RESIGNATION

I have a dear canary bird,
That every morning sings
The sweetest songs I ever heard,
And flaps his yellow wings.

I love to sit the whole day long
Beside the window-sill,
And listen to the joyous song
That warbler loves to trill.

My mother says that in a year
The bird that I've adored
Will maybe, lay some eggs and rear
A callow, cooing horde.

But father says it's quite absurd
To think that bird can lay,
For though it is a wondrous bird,
It isn't built that way.

Now whether mother tells me true
Or father, bothers me;
There's nothing else for me to do
But just to wait and see.

Whate'er befalls this bird of mine,
I am resolved 'twill please--
Far be it from me to repine
At what the Lord decrees.

Mr. Slason Thompson, compiler of "The Humbler Poets," could decide this matter for us if he were here now, but unhappily he is out of town just at present. We have a suspicion that the poem was originally written by Isaac Watts, but that suspicion is impaired somewhat by another suspicion that there were no such things as canary birds in Isaac Watts's time.

Yours truly,

MELISSA MAYFIELD.

We have shown this letter to Evanston's most distinguished citizen, the Hon. Andrew Shuman, and that sapient poet-critic tells us that as nearly as he can recollect the poem was written, not by Dr. Watts, but by an American girl. But whether that girl was Lucretia Davidson or Miss Ada C. Sweet he cannot recall.

Mr. Francis F. Browne, of The Dial, thinks it is one of Miss Wheeler's earlier poems, since it is imbued with that sweet innocence, that childish simplicity, and that meek piety which have ever characterized the work of the famous Wisconsin lyrist. But as we can learn nothing positive as to the authorship of the poem, we shall have to call upon the public at large to help us out.

It is needless to say that the public at large could throw no light on the composition of this imitation of Dr. Watts with which Field was not already possessed, since both poem and "Melissa Mayfield" were creations of Field's fancy.

One of the most characteristic examples of the pains he would take to palm off a composition of his own upon some innocent and unsuspecting public man appeared in the Morning News on January 22d, 1887. It was nothing short of an attempt to father upon the late Judge Thomas M. Cooley the authorship of half a dozen bits of verse of varying styles and degrees of excellence. He professed to have received from Jasper Eastman, a prominent citizen of Adrian, Mich., twenty-eight poems written by Judge Cooley, "the venerable and learned jurist, recently appointed receiver of the Wabash Railroad." These were said to have appeared in the Ann Arbor Daily News when it was conducted by the judge's most intimate friend, between the years 1853 and 1861. Field anticipated public incredulity by saying that "people who knew him to be a severe moralist and a profound scholar will laugh you to scorn if you try to make them believe Cooley ever condescended to express his fancies in verse." Then he went on to describe the judge, at the time of writing the verse, as "a long, awkward boy, with big features, moony eyes, a shock of coarse hair, and the merest shadow of a mustache," in proof of which description he presented a picture of the young man, declared to be from a daguerrotype in the possession of Mr. Eastman. The first "specimen gem" was said to be a paraphrase from Theocritus, entitled "Mortality":

O Nicias, not for us alone
Was laughing Eros born,
Nor shines for us alone the moon,
Nor burns the ruddy morn.
Alas! to-morrow lies not in the ken
Of us who are, O Nicias, mortal men.

Next followed a bit, "in lighter vein, from the Simonides of Amorgas," entitled "A Fickle Woman":

Her nature is the sea's, that smiles to-night
A radiant maiden in the moon's soft light;
The unsuspecting seaman sets his sails,
Forgetful of the fury of her gales;
To-morrow, mad with storms, the ocean roars,
And o'er his hapless wreck her flood she pours.

Field then went on to describe Judge Cooley as equally felicitous in Latin verse, presenting in proof thereof the following, "sung at the junior class supper at Ann Arbor, May 14th, 1854":

Nicyllam bellis oculis--
(Videre est amare),
Carminibus et poculis,
Tra la la, tra la la,
Me placet propinare:
Tra la la, tra la la,--
Me placet propinare!

Beside such grotesque literary horse-play as this, with a gravity startling in its unexpected daring, Field proceeded to attribute to the venerable jurist one of the simplest and purest lullabies that ever came from his own pen, opening with:

I hear Thy voice, dear Lord;
I hear it by the stormy sea
When winter nights are bleak and wild,
And when, affright, I call to Thee;
It calms my fears and whispers me,
"Sleep well, my child."

Then follows "The Vision of the Holy Grail," one of those exercises in archaic English in which Field took infinite pains as well as delight, and to which, as a production of Judge Cooley's, he paid the passing tribute of saying that it was "a graceful imitation of old English." As an example of the judge's humorous vein Field printed the conclusion of his lines "To a Blue Jay":

When I had shooed the bird away
And plucked the plums--a quart or more--
I noted that the saucy jay,
Albeit he had naught to say,
Appeared much bluer than before.

After crediting the judge with a purposely awful parody on "Dixie," in which "banner" is made to rhyme with "Savannah," and "holy" with "Pensacola," Field concluded the whimsical fabrication with the serious comment: "It seems a pity that such poetic talent as Judge Cooley evinced was not suffered to develop. His increasing professional duties and his political employments put a quietus to those finer intellectual indulgences with which his earlier years were fruitful."

Having launched this piece of literary drollery, over which he had studied and we had talked for a week or more, Field proceeded to clinch the verse-making on Judge Cooley by a series of letters to himself, one or two of which will indicate the fertile cleverness and humor he employed to cram his bald fabrication down the public gullet. The first appeared on January 24th, in the following letter "to the Editor":

I have read Judge Cooley's poems with a good deal of interest. I am somewhat of a poet myself, having written sonnets and things now and then for the last twenty years. My opinion is that Judge Cooley's translations, paraphrases, and imitations, are much worthier than his original work. I hold that no poet can be a true poet unless he is at the same time somewhat of a naturalist. If Judge Cooley had been anything of a naturalist he would never have made such a serious blunder as he has made in his poem entitled "Lines to a Blue Jay." The idea of putting a blue jay into a plum-tree is simply shocking! I don't know when I've had anything grate so harshly upon my feelings as did this mistake when I discovered it this morning. It is as awful as the blunder made by one of the modern British poets (I forget his name) in referring to the alligators paddling about in Lake Erie. The blue jay (Cyanurus cristatus) does not eat plums, and therefore does not infest plum-trees.

Yours truly,

CADMON E. BATES.

Upon which Field, in his editorial plurality, commented:

To Professor Bates's criticism we shall venture no reply. We think, however, that allowance should be made for the youth of the poet when he committed the offence which so grievously torments our correspondent. It might be argued, too, that the jay of which the poet treats is no ordinary bird, but is one of those omnivorous creatures which greedily pounce upon everything coming within their predatory reach.

And two days later he made bold to crush the judge's critics with letters from the same versatile pen that never failed to aid in the furtherance of its master's hoaxes:

To the Editor: Prof. Bates may be a good taxidermist, but he knows little of ornithology. Never before he spoke was it denied that the Cyanurus cristatus (blue jay) fed upon plums. All the insect-eating birds also eat of the small fruits. It is plain that the poet knew this, even though the taxidermist didn't.

Yours truly,

L.R. COWPERTHWAITE.

To the Editor: Isn't Prof. Bates too severe in his claim that genius like that of the poetic Judge Cooley should be bound down by the prosaic facts of ornithology? Milton scorned fidelity to nature, especially when it came to ornithological details, and poets, as a class, have been singularly wayward in this respect. My impression is that Judge Cooley has simply made use of a poetic license which any fair-minded person should be willing to concede the votaries of the muse.

Yours truly,

J.G.K.

The echoes of Judge Cooley's youthful verse were never permitted to die wholly out of Field's column, but were frequently given renewed life by casual references. Even the publication of "The Divine Lullaby" in his "Little Book of Western Verse" did not prevent Field from speaking of Judge Cooley's poetical diversions.

On another occasion he spent his odd time for weeks in preparing a humorous hoax upon the critics of Chicago. It consisted of a number of close imitations of the typical verses of Dr. Watts, in which he was a master. The fruits of his congenial labor on this occasion are preserved in his collected works. But the purpose for which they were prepared adds to their interest. They were incorporated in a prose article which gave a plausible account of how they had been exhumed from the correspondence of a sentimental friend of Watts. When the last strokes had been put upon the story, whose tone of genuineness was calculated to deceive the elect, it was mailed to Charles A. Dana, who was thoroughly in sympathy with Field in all such enterprises, and on the following Sunday it appeared in the New York Sun as an extract from a London paper. As soon as the publication reached Chicago a number of the cleverest reporters on the News staff were sent out to interview the local literary authorities. They were all carefully coached by Field what questions to ask and what points to avoid, and their reports were all turned over to him to prepare for publication. Next morning the better part of a page of the News was surrendered to quotations from the fictitious article, with learned dissertations on the value of the discovery, coupled with careful comparisons of the style and sentiments of the verse with the acknowledged work of Watts. In the whole city only one of those interviewed was saved, by a sceptical analysis, from falling into the pit so adroitly prepared by Field.

Loyal to Chicago, to a degree incomprehensible by those who judged his sentiments by his unsparing comments on its crudities in social and literary ways, he never ceased to get pleasure out of serio-comic confounding of its business activities and artistic aspirations. Its business men and enterprises were constantly referred to in his column as equally strenuous in the pursuit of the almighty dollar and of the higher intellectual life. In his view "Culture's Garland," from the Chicago stand-point, was, indeed, a string of sausages. Of this spirit the following, printed in December, 1890, is a good example:

A DANGER THAT THREATENS

The rivalry between the trade and the literary interests in Chicago has been wondrously keen this year.

Prof. Potwins, the most eminent of our statisticians, figures that we now have in the midst of us either a poet or an author to every square yard within the corporate limits, and he estimates that in ten years' time we shall have a literary output large enough to keep all the rest of the world reading all the time.

Our trade has been increasing, too. Last September 382,098 cattle were received, against 330,994 in September of 1889. So far this year the increase over 1889 in the receipts of hogs is 2,000,000.

Last year not more than 2,700 young authors contributed stories to the Christmas number of the Daily News: this year the number of contributors reached 6,125.

Hitherto the rivalry between our trade and our literature has been friendly to a degree. The packer has patronized the poet; metaphorically speaking, the hog and the epic have lain down together and wallowed in the same Parnassan pool. The censers that have swung continually in the temple of the muses have been replenished with lard oil, and to our grateful olfactories has the joyous Lake breezes wafted the refreshing odors of sonnets and of slaughter pens commingled.

But how long is this sort of thing going to last? It surely cannot be the millennium. These twin giants will some day--alas, too soon--learn their powers and be greedy to test them against one another. A fatal jealousy seems to be inevitable; it may be fended off, but how?

The world's fair will be likely to precipitate a conflict between the interests of which we speak. Each interest is already claiming precedence, and we hear with alarm that less than a week ago one of our most respected packers threatened to withdraw his support of the international copyright bill unless the Chicago Literary Society united in an indorsement of his sugar-cured hams.

When we think of the horrors that will attend and follow a set-to between Chicago trade and Chicago literature, we are prone to cry out, in the words of the immortal Moore--not Tom--but Mrs. Julia A., of Michigan:

An awful tremor quakes the soul!
And makes the heart to quiver,
While up and down the spine doth roll
A melancholy shiver.

In December, 1895, Edmund Clarence Stedman contributed to the "Souvenir Book" of the New York Hebrew Fair a charmingly appreciative, yet justly critical, tribute to Eugene Field, whom he likened to Shakespeare's Yorick, whose "motley covered the sweetest nature and tenderest heart." Mr. Stedman there speaks of Field as a "complex American with the obstreperous bizarrerie of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of our oldest culture always at odds within him--but he was above all a child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in any time or country." He also tells how Field put their friendship to one of those tests which sooner or later he applied to all--the test of linking their names with something utterly ludicrous and impossible, but published with all the solemn earmarks of verity. It was on the occasion of Mr. Stedman's visit to Chicago on its invitation to lecture before the Twentieth Century Club. This gave Field the cue to announce the coming event in a way to fill the visitor with consternation. About two weeks before the poet-critic was expected, Field's column contained the following innocent paragraph:

Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, and the foremost of American critics, is about to visit Chicago. He comes as the guest of the Twentieth Century Club, and on the evening of Tuesday, the 28th inst., he will deliver before that discriminating body an address upon the subject of "Poetry," this address being one of the notable series which Mr. Stedman prepared for and read before the undergraduates of Johns Hopkins University last winter. These discourses are, as we judge from epitomes published in the New York Tribune, marvels of scholarship and of criticism.

Twenty years have elapsed, as we understand, since Mr. Stedman last visited Chicago. He will find amazing changes, all in the nature of improvements. He will be delighted with the beauty of our city and with the appreciation, the intelligence, and the culture of our society. But what should and will please him most will be the cordiality of that reception which Chicago will give him, and the enthusiasm with which she will entertain this charming prince of American letters, this eminent poet, this mighty good fellow!

I doubt if Mr. Stedman ever saw this item, which Field merely inserted, as was his wont, as a prelude to the whimsical announcement which followed in two days, and which was eagerly copied in the New York papers in time to make Mr. Stedman cast about for some excuse for being somewhere else than in Chicago on the 29th of April, 1891. This second notice is too good an instance of the liberty Field took with the name of a friend in his delectable vocation of laying "the knotted lash of sarcasm" about the shoulders of wealth and fashion of Chicago, not to be quoted in full. It was given with all the precision of typographical arrangement that is considered proper in printing a veritable programme of some public procession, in the following terms:

Chicago literary circles are all agog over the prospective visit of Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, the eminent poet-critic. At the regular monthly conclave of the Robert Browning Benevolent and Patriotical Association of Cook County, night before last, it was resolved to invite Mr. Stedman to a grand complimentary banquet at the Kinsley's on Wednesday evening, the 29th. Prof. William Morton Payne, grand marshal of the parade which is to conduct the famous guest from the railway station the morning he arrives, tells us that the procession will be in this order:

Twenty police officers afoot.

The grand marshal, horseback, accompanied by ten male members of the Twentieth Century Club, also horseback.

Mr. Stedman in a landau drawn by four horses, two black and two white.

The Twentieth Century Club in carriages.

A brass band afoot.

The Robert Browning Club in Frank Parmelee's 'buses.

The Homer Clubs afoot, preceded by a fife-and-drum corps and a real Greek philosopher attired in a tunic.

Another brass band.

A beautiful young woman playing the guitar, symbolizing Apollo and his lute in a car drawn by nine milk-white stallions, impersonating the muses.

Two Hundred Chicago poets afoot.

The Chicago Literary Club in carriages.

A splendid gilded chariot bearing Gunther's Shakespeare autograph and Mr. Ellsworth's first printed book.

Another brass band.

Magnificent advertising car of Armour and Co., illustrating the progress of civilization.

The Fishbladder Brigade and the Blue Island Avenue Shelley Club.

The fire department.

Another brass band.

Citizens in carriages, afoot and horseback.

Advertising cars and wagons.

The line of march will be an extensive one, taking in the packing-houses and other notable points. At Mr. Armour's interesting professional establishment the process of slaughtering will be illustrated for the delectation of the honored guest, after which an appropriate poem will be read by Decatur Jones, President of the Lake View Elite Club. Then Mr. Armour will entertain a select few at a champagne luncheon in the scalding-room.

In high literary circles it is rumored that the Rev. F.M. Bristol has got an option on all autographs that Mr. Stedman may write during his stay in Chicago. Much excitement has been caused by this, and there is talk of an indignation meeting in Battery D, to be addressed by the Rev. Flavius Gunsaulus, the Rev. Frank W. Brobst, and other eminent speakers.

Small wonder that Mr. Stedman's soul was filled with trepidation as his train approached Chicago, and that he was greatly relieved as it rolled into the station to find only a few friends awaiting him; and among them he quickly singled out Eugene Field, "his sardonic face agrin like a school-boy's."

Enough has been written and quoted to give the reader a fair idea of the general character of Eugene Field's daily work and of the spirit that inspired it. As Mr. Stedman has said, the work of the journeyman and the real literary artist appeared cheek by jowl in his column. The best of it has been preserved in his collected works. That given in this chapter is merely intended to show how he illuminated the lightest and most ephemeral topics of the day with a literary touch at once acute and humorous, and certainly unconventional. In the Appendix to these volumes the reader will find a review of the fictitious biography of Miss Emma Abbott, the once noted opera singer. It is an ingenious piece of work and will repay reading as a satire on current reviewing, besides illustrating the daring liberty Field could take with anyone whom he reckoned a friend.

The following paragraph, which will serve as a tail-piece to this chapter, printed May 31st, 1894, shows how the playful raillery which marked his earlier work in and about Chicago survived to the end:

The oldest house in Chicago stands on the West Side, and was built in 1839 A.D. The oldest horse in Chicago works for the Lake View Street-Car Company, and was present at the battle of Marathon 490 B.C.

_

Read next: Volume 2: Chapter 1. Our Personal Relations

Read previous: Volume 1: Chapter 15. Method Of Work

Table of content of Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions, Volumes 1 and 2


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book