Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions Volume I Part 12

A dozen years with the boys had done for Field's digestion what the robust Florence was dreading after sixty, and to the day of his death, Field, from the rigid practice of his self-denial, pitied and sympathized with the unhappy wight who had received the warning given to Florence, "You must quit training with the boys, otherwise it will do you up." But he had no more obeyed the warning as to coffee and pie than Florence did as to the injunction of Sir Morell against terrapin and champagne.

Another "Billy," William H. Crane, was one of Field's favorites, and the one with whose name he took the greatest liberties in his column of "Sharps and Flats." His waggish mind found no end of humor in creating a son for Mr. Crane, who was christened after his father's stage partner, Stuart Robson Crane. This child of Field's sardonic fancy was gifted with all the roguish attributes that are the delight and despair of fond parents. Scarcely a month, sometimes hardly a week, went by that Field did not print some yarn about the sayings or doings of the obstreperous Stuart Robson Crane. Every anecdote that he heard he adapted to the years and supposed circ.u.mstances of "Master Crane." The close relations which existed between Field and the Cranes-for he included Mrs. Crane within the inner circle of his good-fellows.h.i.+p-may be judged from the following tribute:

MRS. BILLY CRANE A woman is a blessing, be she large or be she small, Be she wee as any midget, or as any cypress tall: And though I'm free to say I like all women folks the best, I think I like the little women better than the rest- And of all the little women I'm in love with I am fain To sing the praises of the peerless Mrs. Billy Crane.

I met this charming lady-never mind how long ago- In that prehistoric period I was reckoned quite a beau: You'd never think it of me if you chanced to see me now, With my shrunken shanks and dreary eyes and deeply furrowed brow; But I was young and chipper when I joined that brisk campaign At Utica to storm the heart of Mrs. Billy Crane.

We called her Ella in those days, as trim a little minx As ever fascinated man with coquetries, methinks!

I saw her home from singing-school a million times I guess, And purred around her domicile three winters, more or less, And brought her lozenges and things-alas: 'twas all in vain- She was predestined to become a Mrs. Billy Crane!

That Mr. Billy came in smart and handsome, I'll aver, Yet, with all his brains and beauty, he's not good enough for her: Now, though I'm somewhat homely and in gumption quite a dolt, The quality of goodness is my best and strongest holt, And as goodness is the only human thing that doesn't wane, I wonder she preferred to wed with Mr. Billy Crane.

Yet heaven has blessed her all these years-she's just as blithe and gay As when the belle of Utica, and she ain't grown old a day!

Her face is just as pretty and her eyes as bright as then- Egad! their gracious magic makes me feel a boy again, And still I court (as still I were a callow, York State swain) With hecatombs of lozenges that Mrs. Billy Crane!

That she has heaps of faculty her husband can't deny- Whenever he don't toe the mark she knows the reason why: She handles all the moneys and receipts, which as a rule She carries around upon her arm in a famous reticule, And Billy seldom gets a cent unless he can explain The wherefores and etceteras to Mrs. Billy Crane!

Yet O ye gracious actors! with uppers on your feet, And O ye bankrupt critics! athirst for things to eat- Did you ever leave her presence all unrequited when In an hour of inspiration you struck her for a ten?

No! never yet an applicant there was did not obtain A solace for his misery from Mrs. Billy Crane.

Dear little Lady-Ella! (let me call you that once more, In memory of the happy days in Utica of yore) If I could have the ordering of blessings here below, I might keep some small share myself, but most of 'em should go To you-yes, riches, happiness, and health should surely rain Upon the temporal estate of Mrs. Billy Crane!

You're coming to Chicago in a week or two and then.

In honor of that grand event, I shall blossom out again In a brand-new suit of checkered tweed and a low-cut satin vest I shall be the gaudiest spectacle in all the gorgeous West!

And with a splendid coach and four I'll meet you at the train- So don't forget the reticule, dear Mrs. Billy Crane!

And he may doubt, who never knew this master torment, that Field carried out his threat to appear at Crane's "first night" with that low-cut satin vest and that speckled tweed suit, which did indeed make him a gaudy spectacle. But his solemn face gave no sign that his mixed apparel was making him the cynosure of all curious eyes.

Mr. Crane suffered from the same digestive troubles that confined Florence to terrapin and champagne and Field to coffee and pies, and so the state of his health was a constant source of paragraphic sympathy in "Sharps and Flats." In such paragraphs the actor and President Cleveland were often represented as fellow-fishermen at Buzzard's Bay-Crane's summer home being at Coha.s.set. How they were a.s.sociated is ill.u.s.trated in the following casual item:

Mr. William H. Crane, the actor, is looking unusually robust this autumn. He seems to have recovered entirely from the malady which made life a burden to him for several years. He thought there was something the matter with his liver. Last July he put in a good share of his time blue-fis.h.i.+ng with Grover Cleveland. One day they ran out of bait.

"Wonder if they'd bite at liver?" asked Crane.

"They love it," answered Cleveland.

So without further ado Crane out with his penknife, amputated his liver, and minced it up for bait. He hasn't had a sick day since.

By way of introduction to a few words respecting the close, quizzical, and always sincere friends.h.i.+p that existed between Field and Helena Modjeska, the following invention of March 29th, 1884, may serve to indicate the blithesome spirit with which he tortured facts when racketting around for something to add to the bewilderment of his readers and his own relaxation:

A letter from Mr. William H. Crane imparts some interesting gossip touching the Cincinnati dramatic festival. It says that an agreeable surprise awaits the patrons of the festival in an interchange of parts between Madame Modjeska and Mr. Stuart Robson, the comedian; that is to say, Modjeska will take Mr. Robson's place in the "Two Dromios," and Robson will take Madame Modjeska's place in the great emotional play of "Camille." It is well known that Modjeska has a penchant for masculine roles, and her success as Rosalind and Viola leaves no room for doubt that she will give great satisfaction in the "Comedy of Errors." Mr. Robson has never liked female roles, but his falsetto voice, his slender figure, his smooth, rosy face, and his graceful, effeminate manners qualify him to a remarkable degree for the impersonation of feminine characters. Moreover, his long residence in Paris has given him a thorough appreciation and elaborate knowledge of those characteristics, which must be understood ere one can delineate and portray the subtleties of Camille as they should be given. Those who antic.i.p.ate a farcical treatment of Dumas's creation at Mr. Robson's hands will be most wofully surprised when they come to witness and hear his artistic presentation of the most remarkable of emotional roles.

Elsewhere I have referred to the roguish pleasure Field took in ascribing the authors.h.i.+p of "The Wanderer" to Helena Modjeska. That was before he came to Chicago, and seemed to be the overture to a friends.h.i.+p that continued to exchange its favors and tokens of affection to the close of his life. The doings of the Madame and Count Bozenta, her always vivacious and enjoyable husband, were perennial subjects for Field's kindliest paragraphs. As he says, he was a great theatre-goer, but Field became a constant one when "Modjesky" came to town. Her Camille-a character in which she was not excelled by the great Bernhardt herself-had a remarkable vogue in the early eighties. She imparted to its impersonation the subtle charm of her own sweet womanliness, which served to excuse Armand's infatuation and as far as possible lifted the play out of its unwholesome atmosphere of French immorality to the plane of romantic devotion and self-sacrifice. Her Camille seemed a victim of remorseless destiny, a pure soul struggling amid inexorable circ.u.mstances that racked and cajoled a diseased and suffering body into the maelstrom of sin.

Field was so const.i.tuted that, without this saving grace of womanliness, the presentation of Camille, with all its hectic surroundings, would have repelled him. He did not care to see Mademoiselle Bernhardt a second time in the role, and he fled from the powerful and fascinating portrayal of pulmonary emotion which initiated the audiences of Clara Morris into the terrors of tubercular disease. Night after night, when Modjeska played Camille, Field would occupy a front seat or a box. When so seated that his presence could not be overlooked from the stage, he was wont to divert Camille from her woes with the by-play of his mobile features. Wherever he sat, his large, white, solemn visage had a fascination for Madame Modjeska, and from the time she caught sight of it until Camille settled back lifeless in the final scene, she played "at him." He repaid this tribute by distorting his face in agony when Camille was light-hearted, and by breaking into noiseless merriment as her woes were causing handkerchiefs to flutter throughout the audience. When we went to visit her next day, as we often did, she scarcely ever failed to reproach him in some such fas.h.i.+on as: "Ah, Meester Fielt, why will you seet in the box and talk with your overcoat on the chair to make Camille laugh who is dying on the stage? Ah, Meester Fielt, you are a very bad man, but I lof you, don't we, Charlie?" And the count always stopped rolling a cigarette long enough to acknowledge that Field was their dearest friend and that they both loved him, no matter what he did. Next to his wife, the count was devoted to politics, which he discusses with all the warmth and gesticulations of a Frenchman and the intelligence of a Polish-American patriot.

If there were any other visitors present, Modjeska always insisted on Field's giving his imitation of herself in Camille, in which he rendered her lines with exaggerated theatrical sentiment and with the broken-English accent, such as Modjeska permitted herself in the freedom of private life. She would give him Armand's cues for particular speeches and his impa.s.sioned "Armo, I lof, I lof you!" never failed to convulse her, while his pulmonary cough was so deep and sepulchral that it rang through the hotel corridors, making other guests think that Modjeska herself was in the last stages of a disease she simulated unto death nightly. After Field had added colored inks to his stock in trade, these fits of coughing were succeeded by a handkerchief act, in which the dying Camille appeared to spit blood in carmine splotches. No burlesque that I have seen of a play frequently burlesqued ever approached the side-splitting absurdity of these rehearsals for the benefit of the heroine of "Modjesky as Cameel."

An', while Modjesky stated we wuz somewhat off our base, I half opined she liked it by the look upon her face, I rekollect that Hoover regretted he done wrong In throwin' that there actor through a vista ten miles long.

When Field went to California in search of health, in the winter of 1893-94, Madame Modjeska placed her ranch, located ten miles from the railway, half-way between San Diego and Los Angeles, at his disposal. The ranch contained about a thousand acres, and he was given carte blanche to treat it as his own during his stay-a privilege he would have hastened to invite all his friends to share had his health been equal to the opportunity to indulge in merry-making.

At a breakfast given to Modjeska at Kinsley's, April 22d, 1886, Field read the following poem in honor of the guest:

TO HELENA MODJESKA In thy sweet self, dear lady guest, we find Juliet's dark face, Viola's gentle mien, The dignity of Scotland's martyr'd queen- The beauty and the wit of Rosalind.

What wonder, then, that we who mop our eyes And sob and gush when we should criticise- Charmed by the graces of your mien and mind- What wonder we should hasten to proclaim The art that has secured thy deathless fame?

And this we swear: We will endorse no name But thine alone to old Melpomene, Nor will revolve, since rising sons are we, Round any orb, save, dear Modjeska, thee Who art our Pole star, and will ever be.

As originally written by Field, the rhymes in the first four lines of this tribute fell alternately, the lines being transposed so that they ran in order first, third, fourth, and second of the poem as it appears above. For the fifth and sixth lines of his first version Field wrote:

What wonder, then, that we who mop our eyes When we are hired to rail and criticise?

It is a question the reader can decide for himself whether his second thought was an improvement. His original intention contemplated a longer poem, but after he had written a fourteenth line that read:

The radiant Pole star of the mimic stage- Field concluded to wind it up with the fourteenth line, as in the finished version.

Upon the back of the original ma.n.u.script of these lines to Madame Modjeska I find this Sapphic fragment under the line-suggestive of its subject, "The Things of Life":

A little sour, a little sweet, Fill out our brief and human hour, ---------meet -- He never filled out the blank or gave a clue as to what further reflections on the springs of life were in his mind.

I never knew Field to be as infatuated with any stage production as with the first performance of the pirated edition of "The Mikado" in Chicago, in the summer of 1885. The cast was indeed a memorable one, including Roland Reed as Koko, Alice Harrison as Yum-Yum, Belle Archer as Pitti-Sing, Frederick Archer as Pooh-Bah, George Broderick as the Mikado, and Mrs. Broderick as Katisha. The Brodericks had rich church-choir voices, Belle Archer was a beauty of that fresh, innocent type that did one's eyes good simply to look upon, and she was just emerging into a career that grew in popularity until her untimely death. Archer was a stilted English comedian who seemed built to be "insulted" as Pooh-Bah, while Roland Reed and Miss Harrison were two comedians of the first rank. As a singing soubrette, daring, versatile, and popular, Miss Harrison had no superiors in her day. The entire company was saturated with the spirit and "go" of Gilbert, and fairly tingled with the joyous music of Sullivan. The fact that the production was of a pirated version, untrammelled by the oversight of D'Oyley Carte, added zest to the performance and enlisted Field's partisan sympathy and co-operation from the start. He enjoyed each night's performance with all the relish of a boy eating the apples of pleasure from a forbidden orchard. When the season came to an end, as all good things must, Field, Ballantyne, and I went to Milwaukee to see that our friends had a fair start there. We got back to Chicago on the early morning milk train, and in "Sharps and Flats" the next day Field recorded the definitive judgment that "Miss Alice Harrison, in her performance of Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera of 'The Mikado,' has set the standard of that interesting role, and it is a high one. In fact, we doubt whether it will ever be approached by any other artist on the American stage."

It never has been approached, nor has the opera, so far as my information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by comparison "like water after wine."

On the operatic stage Madame Sembrich was by all odds Field's favorite prima donna. He was one of the earliest writers on the press to recognize the wonderful beauty of the singer's voice and the perfection of her method. He easily distinguished between her trained faculty and the bird-like notes of Patti, but the personality of the former won him, where he remained unmoved when Patti's wonderful voice rippled through the most difficult, florid music like crystal running water over the smooth stones of a mountain brook. Field's admiration for Sembrich often found expression in more conventional phrases, but never in a form that better ill.u.s.trated how she attracted him than in the following amusing comment on her appearance in Chicago, January 24th, 1884, in Lucia:

It is not at all surprising that Madame Sembrich caught on so grandly night before last. She is the most comfortable-looking prima donna that has ever visited Chicago. She is one of your square-built, stout-rigged little ladies with a bright, honest face and bouncing manners. Her arms are long but shapely, and in the last act of Lucia her luxurious black hair tumbles down and envelopes her like a mosquito net. Her audience night before last was a coldly critical one, of course, and it sat like a b.u.mp on a log until Sembrich made her appearance in the mad scene, where Lucheer gives her vocal circus in the presence of twenty-five Scotch ladies in red, white, and green dresses, and twenty-five supposit.i.tious Scotch gentlemen in costumes of the Court of Louis XIV. Instead of sending for a doctor to a.s.sist Lucheer in her trouble, these fantastically attired ladies and gentlemen stand around and look dreary while Lucheer does ground and lofty tumbling, and executes pirouettes and trapeze performances in the vocal art.

Then the audience began to wake up. The comfortable-looking little prima donna gathered herself together and let loose the cyclone of her genius and accomplishments. It was a whirlwind of appoggiaturas, semi-quavers, accenturas, rinforzandos, moderatos, prestos, trills, sforzandos, fortes, rallentandos, supertonics, salterellos, sonatas, ensembles, pianissimos, staccatos, accellerandos, quasi-innocents, cadenzas, symphones, cavatinas, arias, counter-points, fiorituras, tonics, sub-medicants, allegrissimos, chromatics, concertos, andantes, etudes, larghettos, adagios, and every variety of turilural and dingus known to the minstrel art. The audience was paralyzed. When she finally struck up high F sharp in the descending fourth of D in alt, one gentleman from the South Side who had hired a dress-coat for the occasion broke forth in a hearty "Brava!" This encouraged a resident of the North Side to shout "Bravissimo," and then several dudes from the Blue Island district raised the cry of "Bong," "Tray beang," and "Brava!"

The applause became universal-it spread like wild-fire. The vast audience seemed crazed with delight and enthusiasm. And it argues volumes for the culture of our enterprising and fair city that not one word of English was heard among the encouraging and approving shouts that were hurled at the smiling prima donna. Even the pork merchants and the grain dealers in the family circle vied with each other in hoa.r.s.ely wafting Italian words of cheer at the triumphant Sembrich. French was hardly good enough, although it was utilized by a few large manufacturers and b.u.t.terine merchants who sat in the parquet, and one man was put out by the ushers because he so far forgot himself and the eclat of the occasion as to shout in vehement German: "Mein Gott in himmel-das ist ver tampt goot!" It was an ovation, but it was no more than Sembrich deserved-bless her fat little b.u.t.tons!

Remember, this was nearly twenty years ago. It argues much for the saneness of Field's enthusiasm, as well as for the perfection of Madame Sembrich's methods, that she is still able to arouse a like enthusiasm in audiences where true dramatic instinct and high vocal art are valued as the rarest combination on the operatic stage.

Two ma.n.u.script poems in my sc.r.a.p-book testify that another songster, early in Field's Chicago life, enjoyed his friends.h.i.+p and inspired his pen along a line it was to travel many a tuneful metre. The first, with frequent erasures and interlineations, bears date May 25th, 1894, and was inscribed, "To Mrs. Will J. Davis." It runs as follows:

A HUSHABY SONG The stars are twinkling in the skies, The earth is lost in slumber deep- So hush, my sweet, and close your eyes And let me lull your soul to sleep; Compose thy dimpled hands to rest, And like a little birdling lie Secure within thy cosy nest Upon my mother breast And slumber to my lullaby; So hushaby, oh, hushaby.

The moon is singing to the star The little song I sing to you, The father Sun has strayed afar- As baby's sire is straying, too, And so the loving mother moon Sings to the little star on high, And as she sings, her gentle tune Is borne to me, and thus I croon To thee, my sweet, that lullaby Of hushaby, oh, hushaby.

There is a little one asleep That does not hear his mother's song, But angel-watchers as I weep Surround his grave the night-tide long; And as I sing, my sweet, to you, Oh, would the lullaby I sing- The same sweet lullaby he knew When slumbering on this bosom, too- Were borne to him on angel wing!

So hushaby, oh, hushaby.

The second of these songs bears the same t.i.tle as one of Field's favorite tales, and is inscribed, "To Jessie Bartlett Davis on the first anniversary of her little boy's birth, October 6th, 1884":

THE SINGER MOTHER A Singer sang a glorious song So grandly clear and subtly sweet, That, with huzzas, the listening throng Cast down their tributes at her feet.

The Singer heard their shouts the while, But her serene and haughty face Was lighted by no flattered smile Provoked by homage in that place.

The Singer sang that night again In mother tones, tender and deep, Not to the public ear, but when She rocked her little one to sleep.

The song we bless through all the years As memory's holiest, sweetest thing, Instinct with pathos and with tears- The song that mothers always sing.

So tuneful was the lullaby The mother sang, her little child Cooed, oh! so sweetly in reply, Stretched forth its dimpled hands and smiled.

The Singer crooning there above The cradle where her darling lay s.n.a.t.c.hed to her breast her smiling love And sang his soul to dreams away.

Oh, mother-love, that knows no guile, That's deaf to flatt'ry, blind to art, A dimpled hand hath wooed thy smile- A baby's cooing touched thy heart.

Lest my readers should conclude from these early specimens of Field's fondness for lilting lullabies that the gentler s.e.x and "mother love" blinded him to the manly attractions and true worth of his own s.e.x, let the following never-to-be-forgotten ode to the waistcoat of the papa of the hero of the two preceding songs bear witness. Mr. Davis has been a manager of first-cla.s.s theatres and theatrical companies for a score of years, and there are thousands to testify that in the rhymes that follow Field has done no more than justice to the amazing "confections" in wearing apparel he affected in the days when we were boys together:

Of waistcoats there are divers kinds, from those severely chaste To those with fiery colors dight or with fair figures traced: Those that high as liver-pads and chest-protectors serve, While others proudly sweep away in a substomachic curve, But the grandest thing in waistcoats in the streets in this great and wondrous west Is that which folks are wont to call the Will J. Davis vest!

This paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie: Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll, While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper b.u.t.tonhole And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed In the contour and the mise en scene of the Will J. Davis vest.

Its texture is of softest silk: Its colors, ah, how vain The task to name the splendid hues that in that vest obtain!

Go, view the rainbow and recount the glories of the sight And number all the radiances that in its glow unite, And then, when they are counted, with pride be it confessed They're nil beside the splendor of the Will J. Davis vest.

Sometimes the gorgeous pattern is a sportive pumpkin vine, At other times the lily and the ivy intertwine: And then again the ground is white with purple polka dots Or else a dainty lavender with red congestive spots- In short, there is no color, hue, or shade you could suggest That doesn't in due time occur in a Will J. Davis vest.