Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume II Part 8

"The reading of these pieces will require not more than twenty minutes, and I would prefer to give them consecutively. Numbers 2 and 4 are humorous. I do not like 'Death and the Soldier' as much as 'The First Christmas Tree,' the 'Robin and the Violet,' or 'The Mountain and the Sea'-I mean I do not like it so much as a piece of fanciful literary work, but it may be more catchy. You know what your audience will like, and I leave the matter in your hands."

Field closed his letter with a request that an invitation should be extended to me, which I duly received. This accounts for the reference to an approaching visit to Indianapolis in his letter of September 22d.

By the way, Field got more pleasure out of the various p.r.o.nunciations of Goethe's name than instruction from the perusal of his poems. He was always starting or fostering discussions over it, as in the following paragraph:

The valued New York Life a.s.serts that Chicago used to rhyme "Goethe" with "teeth" until the Renaissance set in, since which epoch it has rhymed it with "ity." This is hardly fair. In a poem read recently before the Hyde Park Toboggan Slide Lyceum the following couplet occurred:

"Until at last John Wolfgang Goethe Was gathered home, upward of eighty."

To resume the Fredericton series of letters:

XI

CHICAGO, Sunday the 26th, 1886.

Dear Boy:-Such a close, muggy night this is that I feel little like writing to you or to anybody else. Yet I am not one to neglect or s.h.i.+rk a duty. I have been with Kate Field all the evening, and we have discussed everything from literature down to Sir Charles Dilke and back again. A mighty smart woman is Kate! My wife returned from St. Louis last Thursday, bringing about fifty of my books with her. They were mostly of the Bohn's Library series, but among them was a set of Boswell's Johnson, Routledge edition of 1859. I want you to have an edition of this kind, and I have sent to New York to see if it can be had (cheap). I am reading like a race-horse. The famous history of Dr. Faustus has done me a power of good, and I have been highly amused with a volume of Bohn which contains the old Ray proverbs.

Isn't it about time for you to be getting back home? You have been gone about sixteen days now, and we are growing more and more lonesome. Peattie is looked for next Tuesday. Mr. Stone goes out of town to-morrow-to Dakota, I believe-and is to be absent for a week also. Shackelford will be back at work to-morrow. You alone are delinquent. Not only am I lonesome-egad, I am starving! So if you don't come in propria persona, at least send something. The old Dock has been as grumpy as a bear to-day and I have had a hard time bearing with him. He announced to me to-day that he thought that I was fickle-I tell you this so that you may repeat it to Miss Marie Mathilde, who, I believe, invented that opinion. Entre nous: Hawkins tells me that some of his friends are trying to buy the St. Paul Dispatch for him. There was a fire in the Chicago Opera House building to-night, but, unfortunately, no serious damage was done.

Stone is thinking of having the three of us-Dock, you and your habit-write a department for the Sat.u.r.day News after the fas.h.i.+on of the Noctes. Think it all over whilst you are away. What are you going to bring me for a present? Don't go to buying any foolish trumpery; you have no money to waste on follies. What I need is a "Noctes," and any other useful book you may get hold of in New York. Love to the folks.

Ever yours,

FIELD.

The proposed "Noctes," except the set for Field, never materialized.

XII

CHICAGO, September 28th, 1886.

Dear Nomp:-I am just cunning enough to send this to the care of our New York office, for I surmise that it will reach there in time to intercept you. I do not intend that you shall get out of New York without being reminded of that present you intend bringing me for being so good as to write to you regularly whilst you were away. I confidently expect to see you back here next Sunday. On Monday I go to Indianapolis for two or three days, and I heartily wish you were going with me to help bear the expense of the trip. In fact, I am so anxious to have you along that I would cheerfully consent to letting you pay everything. But at any rate I agree to take supper with you at Mr. Pullman's G.o.dless hotel the night you return. The Dock invited me out to supper to-night. We went to the Drum. Suspecting that I was going to exceed his capability of payment, he handed me over a dollar-all the money he had. I had the check charged to me and kept the dollar. Whereat the Dock grieves pa.s.sing sore.

I have begun to surmise that my remarks about Literary Life will lead to Miss Cleveland's retirement from the editors.h.i.+p of that delectable mush-bucket. The signs all point that way now. I enclose you a letter to my friend Mitch.e.l.l of the Sun. Tell him about the Goethe poem. I promised to send him a copy of it when Literary Life printed it. Scrutinize young Kingsbury's daily life carefully. Heaven forefend all the temptations that compa.s.s him in the modern Babylon. Give my love to Mr. Scribner.

Yours as ever,

FIELD.

Field's satirical comments on Literary Life, a weekly that sought to make capital by engaging President Cleveland's sister, Miss Rose Cleveland, as its editor, not only led to her early retirement from an impossible position, but to the early collapse of the publication itself. When Miss Cleveland first came to Chicago to a.s.sume the duties of editors.h.i.+p Field welcomed her in verse:

THE ROSE Since the days of old Adam the welkin has rung With the praises of sweet-scented posies, And poets in rapturous phrases have sung The paramount beauty of roses.

Wheresoever she 'bides, whether resting in lanes Or gracing the proud urban bowers, The red, royal rose her distinction maintains As the one regnant queen among flowers.

How joyous are we of the West when we find That Fate, with her gifts ever chary, Has decreed that the rose who is queen of her kind Shall bloom on our wild Western prairie.

Let us laugh at the East as an impotent thing With envy and jealousy crazy, While grateful Chicago is happy to sing In praise of the rose, she's a daisy.

CHAPTER V

PUBLICATION OF HIS FIRST BOOKS

Although the bibliomaniac and collector will claim that "The Tribune Primer," printed in Denver in 1882, was Eugene Field's first book, and cite the fact that a copy of this rare pamphlet recently sold for $125 as proof that it is still his most valuable contribution to literature, his first genuine entrance into the world of letters between covers came with the publication of "Culture's Garland," by Ticknor & Company, of Boston, in August, 1887. Whatever may be the truth as to the size of the first edition of the "Primer," so few copies were printed and its distribution was so limited that it scarcely amounted to a bona-fide publication. Neither did the form of the "Primer," a little 18mo pamphlet of forty-eight pages, bound in pink paper covers, nor its ephemeral newspaper persiflage, rise to the dignity of a book.

"Culture's Garland," on the contrary, marks the first real essay of Field as a maker of books. Field himself is the authority for the statement that "Tom" Ticknor edited the book. "I simply sent on a lot of stuff," wrote he, "and the folks at the other end picked out what they wanted and ran it as they pleased." This is scarcely just to Mr. Ticknor. Field himself, to my knowledge, selected the matter for "Culture's Garland," and arranged it in the general form in which it appeared. He then delegated to Mr. Ticknor authority to reject any and all paragraphs in which the bite of satire or the broadness of the humor transgressed too far the bounds of a reasonable discretion. The true nature of this, to my mind the most entertaining of all Field's books, is reflected in its t.i.tle page, frontispiece, emblem, tail-piece, and the advertis.e.m.e.nts with which it concludes. The full t.i.tle reads:

CULTURE'S GARLAND

Being Memoranada of The Gradual Rise of Literature, Art, Music, And Society in Chicago, and Other Western Ganglia

by EUGENE FIELD

With an Introduction by Julian Hawthorne.

The frontispiece is a pen-and-ink sketch of "the Author at the Age of 30 (A.D. 1880)," such as Field frequently drew of himself; the symbolic emblem, which takes the place of a dedication, was a string of link sausages "in the similitude of a laurel wreath," representing "A Chicago Literary Circle," and the tail-piece was a gallows, to mark "The End."

Writing to a friend in Boston, in 1893, Field said that he thought "the alleged advertis.e.m.e.nts at the end of the volume are its best feature." These were introduced by a letter from one of Field's favorite fict.i.tious creations, "Felix Bosbysh.e.l.l," to Messrs. Ticknor & Co.:

CHICAGO, June 26th, 1887.

Dear Sirs:-I am informed that one of the leading litterateurs of this city is about to produce a book under your auspices. Representing, as I do, the prominent advertising bureau of the West, I desire to contribute one page of advertis.e.m.e.nts to this work, and I am prepared to pay therefor cash rates. I enclose copy, and would like to have the advertis.e.m.e.nts printed on the fly-leaf which will face the finis of the book in question.

Yours in the cause of literature,

FELIX J. BOSBYSh.e.l.l, For Bosbysh.e.l.l & Co.

This was accompanied by a Publisher's Note, which Field also supplied:

It is entirely foreign to our custom to accept advertis.e.m.e.nts for our books; but we recognize the exceptional nature of the case and the fine literary character and high tone of the Messrs. Bosbysh.e.l.ls' offering, and we cheerfully give it place over leaf.

In his discriminating and felicitous introduction to his friend's book, Julian Hawthorne said: "The present little volume comprises mainly a bubbling forth of delightful badinage and mischievous raillery, directed at some of the foibles and pretensions of his enterprising fellow-townsmen, who, however, can by no means be allowed to claim a monopoly of either the pretensions or the foibles herein exploited. Laugh, but look to yourself: mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. It is a book which should, and doubtless will, attain a national popularity; but admirable, and, indeed, irresistible though it be in its way, it represents a very inconsiderable fraction of the author's real capacity. We shall hear of Eugene Field in regions of literature far above the aim and scope of these witty and waggish sketches. But as the wise orator wins his audience at the outset of his speech by the human sympathy of a smile, so does our author, in these smiling pages, establish genial relations with us before betaking himself to more ambitious flights."

While Mr. Hawthorne's a.n.a.lysis of the book was correct, his prophecy as to its attaining a national popularity was never realized. The literary critics, East as well as West, whose views and pretensions Field had so often lampooned mercilessly, had their innings, and as Field had not then conquered the popular heart with his "Little Boy Blue," his matchless lullabies, and his fascinating fairy tales and other stories, "Culture's Garland" was left to c.u.mber the shelves of the book-stores. Several of the articles and poems in this book have been included in the collected edition of Field's works. In it will be found Field's famous "Markessy di Pullman" papers, with these clever introductory imitations:

"Il bianco di cazerni della graze fio bella Di teruca si mazzoni quel' antisla Somno della."

-Petrarch.

"He who conduces to a fellow's sleep Should n.o.ble fame and goodly riches reap."

-Ta.s.so.

"Sleep mocks at death: when weary of the earth We do not die-we take an upper berth."

-Dante.

There, too, are reprinted the verses he composed and credited to Judge Cooley, to which allusion has already been made in these pages, and of which Field wrote to his friend Cowen the week they were published: "I think they will create somewhat of a sensation; I have put a good deal of work upon them." All the pieces of verse read by Field at the Indianapolis convention also appear in "Culture's Garland," three of them being included in the article on "Mr. Isaac Watts, Tutor," of which "The Merciful Lad" was one of Field's favorites:

THE MERCIFUL LAD Through all my life the poor shall find In me a constant friend, And on the weak of every kind My mercy shall attend.

The dumb shall never call on me In vain for kindly aid, And in my hands the blind shall see A bounteous alms display'd.

In all their walks the lame shall know And feel my goodness near, And on the deaf will I bestow My gentlest words of cheer.

'Tis by such pious works as these- Which I delight to do- That men their fellow-creatures please, And please their Maker, too.

Field was immensely tickled with the British gravity of one of his critics, who ridiculed this imitation of Dr. Watts, because, forsooth, he could not comprehend how the dumb could call, the blind see, or the lame walk, while he wanted to know what gracious effect the gentlest words could produce on the ears of the deaf.

Throughout "Culture's Garland" Field is the unsparing satirist of contemporary humbug and pretence-social, political, and literary-and that perhaps accounts for its failure to achieve an immediate popular success. I, for one, am glad that so late as December, 1893, and after he had tasted the sweets of popular applause, with its attendant royalties, he had the courage to write of it to a friend in Boston, "I am not ashamed of this little book, but, like the boy with the measles, I am sorry for it in spots."