Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume II Part 16

THE LAMBERT TREE Oh, tell me not of the budding bay, Nor the yew by the new-made grave, And waft me not in spirit away, Where the sorrowing willows wave; Let the s.h.a.g-bark walnut blend its shade With the elm on the verdant lea- But let us his to the distant glade, Where blossoms the Lambert tree.

The maple reeks with a toothsome sap That flavors the brown buckwheat, And the oak drops down into earth's green lap, Her fruit for the swine to eat; But the Lambert tree has a grander scope In its home on the distant wold, For the sap of the Lambert tree is soap, And its beautiful fruit is gold.

So sing no song of the futile fir- No song of the tranquil teak, Nor the chestnut tree, with its bristling burr, Or the paw-paw of Posey creek; But fill my soul with a heavenly calm, And bring sweet dreams to me By singing a psalm of the itching palm And the blossoming Lambert tree.

Public sentiment within the Democratic party prevented the consummation of the deal to supplant Morrison with Tree, the death of a Democratic a.s.semblyman enabled the Republicans to steal a march on their opponents in a by-election, and the deadlock was finally broken by Logan securing the bare 103 votes necessary to election. How Field rejoiced over this outcome, to which he contributed so powerfully, may be inferred from the pictorial and poetic outburst shown on the opposite page:

BEFORE. AFTER.

There came a burst of thunder sound, The jedge-oh, where was he?

His twigs were strewn for miles around- He was a blasted tree.

Field was never in sympathy with the independent lines upon which the Morning News was edited. As I have said, he was a thorough-going partisan Republican, and he preferred a straight-out Democrat to an independent-or Mugwump, as the independents have been styled since 1884, when they bolted Blaine. To his mind the entire Mugwump movement revolved around Grover Cleveland and opposition to the election of Mr. Blaine. The former was not only the idol, but the Declaration of Independence, the Const.i.tution, and the decalogue to many of Field's Mugwump friends whom he cherished personally, but detested and lampooned politically. It pleased him to represent the Mugwump party of Chicago as consisting of General McClurg, John W. Ela, now president of the Chicago Civil Service Commission; Melville E. Stone, Franklin MacVeagh, and myself; and as late as 1892 he took delight in reporting its meetings after this fas.h.i.+on:

When the Mugump party of Chicago met in General McClurg's office yesterday, considerable agitation was caused by Mr. Slason Thompson's suggestion that a committee be appointed to investigate the report that John W. Ela was soliciting funds in the East for the purpose of electing the Democratic ticket in Illinois.

General McClurg thought that a serious mistake had been made. As he understood, Colonel Ela was soliciting subscriptions, but not to promote Democratic success. What funds Colonel Ela secured would be used toward the election of the great white-souled Cleveland, and that would be all right. (Applause.) The use of money elsewise would be offensive partisans.h.i.+p; devoted to the holy cause of Cleveland and Reform, it would be simply a patriotic, not to say a religious, duty.

Mr. Thompson said he was glad to hear this explanation. It was eminently satisfactory, and he hoped to have it disseminated through Illinois.

On motion of Mr. M.E. Stone, Colonel Ela was instructed to deposit all campaign funds he might collect in the Globe National Bank.

Mr. Thompson then introduced Mr. Franklin H. Head, who, he said, was a Mugwump.

"Are you a Mugwump?" asked General McClurg.

Mr. Head: "I am, and I wish to join the party in Chicago."

General McClurg: "Do you declare your unalterable belief in the Mugwump doctrine of free-will and election?"

Mr. Head: "As I understand it, I do."

General McClurg: "The Mugwump doctrine of free-will argues that every voter may vote as he chooses, irrespective of party, so long as his vote involves the election of Grover Cleveland."

Mr. Head: "I am a Mugwump to the extent of voting as I choose, and irrespective of party, but I draw the line at Grover Cleveland this time." (Great sensation.)

Mr. Stone: "I guess you've got into the wrong 'bus, my friend, and I'm rather glad of it, for one vice-president of a bank is all the Mugwump party can stand."

Mr. Thompson: "I supposed he was all right, or I wouldn't have brought him in."

General McClurg: "No, he is far from the truth. Upon the vital, the essential point, he is fatally weak. Go back, erring brother-go back into the outer darkness; it is not for you to sit with the elect."

Mr. Stone invited the party to a grand gala picnic which he proposed to give in August in Melville Park, Glencoe. He would order a basket of chicken sandwiches, a gallon of iced tea, and three pink umbrellas, and they would have a royal time of it.

Mr. Thompson moved, out of respect to the Greatest of Modern Fishermen, to strike out "chicken" and insert "sardine." Mr. Stone accepted the suggestion, and thus amended, the invitation was hilariously accepted.

After adopting a resolution instructing Mr. Stone to buy the sardines and tea at Brother Franklin MacVeagh's, the party adjourned for one week.

Field was very fond of describing himself as a martyr to the Mugwump vapors and megrims that prevailed in the editorial rooms of the Daily News. He would say that the imperishable crowns won by the heroes of Fox's "Book of Martyrs" were nothing to what he, a stanch Republican partisan, earned by enduring and a.s.sociating daily with the piping, puling independents who infested that "ranch." He said that he expected a place high up in the dictionary of latter-day saints and in the encyclopedia of nineteenth-century tribulations, because of the Christian fort.i.tude with which he endured and forgave the stings and jibes of his puny tormentors.

There was a great scene in the reporters' room of the Morning News the day after Cleveland's first election. The News had been one of the first of the independent newspapers of the country to bolt the nomination of Mr. Blaine. It had favored the renomination of President Arthur, and had convincing evidence of a shameful deal by which certain members of the Illinois delegation, elected as Arthur men, were seduced into the Blaine camp. But this alone would not have decided the course of the paper-that was dictated by the widespread mistrust felt throughout the country as to Mr. Blaine's entire impeccability in the matter of the Little Rock bonds. Field, throughout the campaign, stood by Blaine and Logan and defied the Mugwumps to do their worst. So on the morning after the election he was in a thoroughly disgusted mood. He scoffed at the idea of becoming a Mugwump, but declared himself ready to renounce his Republicanism and become a Democrat. To that end he prepared a formal renunciation. It consisted of a flamboyant denunciation of the past glories and present virtues of the Republican party and an enthusiastic eulogy of the crimes, blunders, and base methods of the Democratic party. Field announced that he preferred to be enrolled as a Democrat, and to accept his share in all the obloquy which he laid at the Democratic door rather than affiliate with the Mugwump bolters. He said that he would rather be cla.s.sed as a thoroughbred donkey than be feared as a mule without pride of pedigree or hope of posterity, whose only virtue lay in its heels. Then he swathed himself in a shroud of newspapers and laid himself out in the centre of the floor in the role of a martyred Republican. He bade the rest of us form a procession and walk over him, taking care not to step on the corpse. After the ceremony was carried out he rose up, a Jacksonian Democrat in name, but a bluer Republican than ever.

There was a sequel to this scene, for which it will serve as an introduction. In May, 1888, Mr. Stone sold out his interest in the Morning and Daily News and retired from the editors.h.i.+p of the former. Under Mr. Lawson, who succeeded him in sole control, both papers retained their independence, but became less aggressive in the maintenance of their views. Mr. Lawson sought to make them impartial purveyors of unbiased news to all parties. Hardly had the blue pencil of supervision dropped from Mr. Stone's fingers before Field made an opportunity to unburden his soul upon the subject of his martyrdom in the following extraordinary and highly entertaining screed:

The second letter which Mr. Blaine has written saying that he will, under no circ.u.mstances, become a candidate for the presidency refreshes a sad, yet a glorious, memory.

Just about five years ago five members of the editorial staff of this paper were gathered together in the library. Blaine had just been nominated for the presidency by the National Republican Convention. For months the Daily News had advocated the renomination of Arthur, but now within an hour it beheld its teachings go for naught, its ambitions swept ruthlessly away, and its hopes cruelly, irrevivably crushed; Mr. Stone was then editor of the paper; he was in the convention hall when Blaine's nomination was secured. His editorial a.s.sociates waited with serious agitation his return, and his instructions as to the course which the paper would pursue in the emergency which had been presented. There were different opinions as to what Mr. Stone would be likely to do, but there was a general feeling that he would be likely to antagonize Blaine. One of the editorial writers, a Canadian, who had just taken out his last naturalization papers, expressed determination that the paper must fight Blaine. He hated Blaine, and he had reason to; for Blaine had, during his short career as prime minister, evinced a strong disposition to clutch all Canadians who were caught fis.h.i.+ng for tomcod in American waters. Therefore, Carthage delenda est.

The debate ran high, yet every word was spoken softly, for the most violent excitement always precipitates a hush. Even the newsboys in the alley caught the awful infection; they stole in and out noiselessly and with less violence than usual, as if, in sooth, the dumb wheels reverenced the dismal sanct.i.ty of the hour. The elevator crept silently down with the five o'clock forms, so decently and so composedly as scarcely to jar the bottle of green ink on the Austin landholder's table. All at once the door opened and in stalked M.E. Stone, silent, pallid, protentous. His wan eye comprehended the scene instantaneously, but no twitch or tremor in his lavender lips betrayed the emotions (whatever they might have been) that surged beneath the clothes he wore.

Cervantes tells how that Don Quixote, in the course of one of his memorable adventures, was shown a talking head-a head set upon a table and capable of uttering human speech, but in so hollow and tube-like a tone as to give one the impression that the voice came from far away. A somewhat similar device is now exhibited in our museums, where, upon payment of a trifling fee, you may hear the head discourse in a voice which sounds as though it might emanate from the tomb and from the very time of the first Pharaoh.

Mr. Stone looked and Mr. Stone spoke like a "talking head" when he came in upon us that awful day. His face had the inhuman pallor, his eyes the lack-l.u.s.tre expression, and his tones the distant, hollow, metallic cadence of the inexplicable machine that astounds the patrons of dime-museums. He seemed to take in the situation at once; knew as surely as though he had been told what we were talking about and how terribly we were wrought up. His right arm moved mechanically through some such gesture as Canute is supposed to have made when he bade the ocean retire before him, and from his bloodless lips came the memorable words-hollow, metallic, but memorable words-"Gentlemen, be calm! be calm!"

The calmness of this man in that supreme moment was simply awful.

He had been betrayed by one who should have been bound to him by every tie of grat.i.tude. He had seen his political idol overthrown. He had witnessed the defeat and humiliation of what he believed to be the pure and patriotic spirit of American manhood. His highest ambition had been foiled, his sweetest hopes frustrated. Yet he was calm. Ever and anon the sky that arches the Neapolitan landscape reaches down its lips, they say, and kisses the bald summit of Vesuvius; as if it recognized the grand impressiveness of this scene, the Mediterranean at such times hushes its voice and lies tranquil as a slumbering child; all nature stands silent before the communion of the clouds and the t.i.tans. But this ineffable peace, this majestic repose, is protentous. To rest succeeds activity; after calm comes tempest; out of placid dream bursts reality.

Mr. Stone's calmness, like the whittler's stick, tapered up instead down. He who had, at five o'clock on that never-to-be-forgotten day, come upon us with the insinuating placidity of hunyadi janos-he who had addressed us in the tone of prehistoric centuries-he who bade us be calm, and at the same time gave us the finest tableau of human calmness human eye ever contemplated-he it was whom we found at eleven o'clock that very night, frothing at the mouth, biting chunks out of the hard-wood furniture, and tearing the bowels out of everything that came his way.

This singular madness has raged, unabated, for four years. It was so infectious that his a.s.sociates caught it-all but three. The men about the Daily News office who clung to the Republican party through thick and thin, who endured, therefore, every scoff, jibe, and taunt which sin could devise, and who, preferring honorable death to the rewards of treachery, proudly cast their votes for the nominees of the grand old party,-these three men are ent.i.tled to places in the foremost rank of Christian martyrs. Two of them were Joe Bingham and Morgan Bates. Bingham is dead now; peace to his dust. He never was his old hearty self after the defeat of Blaine; and when, upon the heels of this calamity, he moved to Indianapolis, Ind., he could stand it no longer and yielded up his life. He was a stanch soldier in a holy cause; and there is consolation in the fact that he is now at last enjoying the eternal rewards that are prepared for all true Republicans.

As for Morgan Bates, he got somewhat even with his malicious persecutors by writing and producing plays; but retaliation is never satisfactory to a man of n.o.ble impulses, and Bates would not pursue it long. He preferred to go into voluntary exile at Des Moines, Iowa; and in that glorious Republican harvest-field he accomplished a great and good work, which being done, symmetrized and concinnated, he returned to this Gomorrah of Mugwumpery and identified himself with that sterling trade journal, the Hide and Leather Criterion.

Next November the two surviving members of the old guard of three will march, arm in arm, to the polls, and will then and there cast their individual votes for the nominees of the Republican party-it matters not whether they be statesmen or tobacco-signs, so long as they be nominees.

As the blasts do but root a tree more firmly in mother earth, so have the trials to which we Republicans of the Daily News have been subjected for the four years riveted us all the more securely to the faith. We have been forced in the line of professional duty to turn humorous paragraphs upon the alleged insincerity of our beloved political leader, but every paragraph so turned shall eventually come home d.v. (and we hope d.q.) to roost, like an Ossa, upon the Pelion of Infamy, which shall surely mark the grave of Mugwumpery. Every poem which we persecuted defenders of the faith have been bulldozed into weaving for the regalement of our persecutors shall be sung again when the other sh.o.r.e is reached, and when the horse and the rider are thrown into the sea. Never for a moment during the trials of these four years have we doubted (and when we say "we," Bates is included)-never have we doubted that there was a promised land, and that we should get there in due time. What we have needed was a Moses; to be candid, we still need a Moses; and we need him badly. We care naught where he comes from-it matters not whither, from the New York Central or from the Western Reserve or from Dubuque, so long as he be a Moses, and that kind of an improved Moses, too, that will not fall just this side of the line.

O brother Republican, what rewards, what joys, what delights are in store for us twain! Lift up your eyes and see in the East the dawn of the new day. Its warmth and its splendor will soon be over and about us. And, mindful of our martyrdom and contemplating its rewards, with great force comes to us just now the lines of the inspired Watts, wherein he portrays the eventual felicity of such as we:

What bliss will thrill the ransomed souls When they in glory dwell, To see the sinner as he rolls In quenchless flames of h.e.l.l.

Never did a cheerful sinner extract such entertaining enjoyment for himself and his friends from a fict.i.tious martyrdom as Field did from these political tribulations. That he never lost his waggish or satirical interest in politics is evidenced by the following parody on his own "Jest 'fore Christmas," written in December, 1894, being at the expense of the then mayor of Chicago:

JEST 'FORE ELECTION My henchmen say "Your Honor," as on their knees they drop; Some people call me Hopkins, but to most I'm known as Hop!

For pretty nigh a year I've run the City Hall machine, Protecting my policemen and the gamblers on the green.

Love to boss, an' fool the pious people with my tricks- Hate to take the medicine I got November 6!

Most all the time the whole year round there ain't no flies on me, But jest 'fore election I'm as good as I can be!

Gran'ma Ela says she hopes to see me snug and warm In the bosom of Mugwumpery, whose motto is reform; But Gran'ma Ela he has never known the filling joys Of bossing "boodle" candidates and training with the boys; Of posing as a gentleman although at heart a tough; Of being sometimes out of scalps while some are out of stuff- Or else he'd know that bossing things are good enough for me, Except jest 'fore election I'm as good as I can be!

When poor Rubens, wondering why I've left my gum-games drop, Inquires with rueful accent: "What's the matter with Hoppy Hop?"

The Civic Federation comes from out its hiding-place And allows that Mayor Hopkins is chock-full of saving grace!

And I appear so penitent and wear so long a phiz That some folks say: "Good gracious! how improved our mayor is!"

But others tumble to my racket and suspicion me, When jest 'fore election I'm as good as I can be!

For candidates who hope to get there on election day Must mind their p's and q's right sharp in all they do and say, So clean the streets, a.s.sess the boys for everything they're worth, Jine all the federations, and promise them the earth!

Say "yes 'um" to the ladies, and "yes sur" to the men, And when reform is mentioned, roll your eyes and yell "Amen!"

No matter what the past has been-jest watch me now and see How jest 'fore election I'm as good as I can be!

I will conclude this exposition of the att.i.tude of Eugene Field to politics, public affairs, and public men with a whimsical bit of his verse, descriptive of how business and politics are mixed in a country store, premising it with the note that Colonel Bunn has since become a national character:

A STATESMAN'S SORROW 'Twas in a Springfield grocery store, Not many years ago, That Colonel Bunn patrolled the floor, The paragon of woe.

Though all the people of the town Were gathered there to buy, Good Colonel Bunn walked up and down With many a doleful sigh.

He vented off a dismal groan, And grunt of sorry kind, And murmured in a hollow tone The thoughts that vexed his mind.

"Alas! how pitiful," he said, "And oh! how wondrous vain, To run a party at whose head Stands such a man as Blaine.

"'Tis here, with eager hearts and legs, Folks come to buy their teas- Their coffee, sugar, b.u.t.ter, eggs, Mola.s.ses, flour, and cheese- And every article I keep, As all good grocers do, They purchase here amazing cheap- The very finest, too.