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

FIELD.

Detroit, 0; St. Louis, 0; game called at end of fifth inning. Chicago walloped Kansas City.

VI

CHICAGO, Sat.u.r.day, September the 18th, 1886.

This, sweet lad, is the dullest Sat.u.r.day that has befallen me in many a year. John and his bride are over at Hooley's Theatre watching that lachrymose melodrama, "Alone in London." There is nothing worth seeing at any other house. There is n.o.body for me to visit with, so here I sit in this box trying to kill the time. I see very little of Cowen. A disreputable looking friend of his from the West is here dead-broke and hunting work; Cowen is feeding and sleeping him ad interim, and I think the fellow has an evil influence over our friend....

I am, as ever, your friend,

FIELD.

VII

CHICAGO, Sunday, September 19th, 1886.

My dear Old Boy:-This man Reilly whom you have put upon me has just played upon me the most shamefulest trick I ever heard tell of. He invited me out to supper and told me he had only eighty cents. He ordered twenty cents worth and made me scrimp along on sixty cents. When he came to pay the check he produced a five-dollar bill! I never felt so humiliated in all my life. I pine for the return of the sweet friend who seeks not by guile to set limit to my appet.i.te.

My children insisted upon going to bed last night with pieces of Gussie's wedding cake under their pillows. Dady had the presence of mind to wake up in the night and eat his piece. He told me this morning that he dreamed that he was married to Mr. Cowen. Last evening I wandered down town in a furious rainstorm and tried to find somebody I knew. Failing in this, I meandered home and went to bed without saying my prayers, conscious of having spent an ill day.

At the theatre this week: Columbia, "Pepita"; McVicker's, Lotta; Grand, Kate Castleton; Hooley's, "Private Secretary." Dock is trying to get me to go to the Columbia to-night, but your pale face looms up in my mind's eye and warns me not to go, or, at least, not to sit in a box if I do go.

The conclusion of this letter has been sacrificed to the importunity of some autograph fiend from whose tribe I have had the greatest difficulty in preserving its fellows.

VIII

CHICAGO, Monday, September the 20th, 1886.

The envious old Dock, who has never had an emotion, an ambition or a hope beyond a quart bottle of Ike Cook's Imperial, said to me but just now: "Why do you waste your time writing to that man Thompson? He will never thank you for it; he will put up none the more liberally when he returns." Then he added, with a bitter look: "You never wrote to me while I was at Springfield!" Ah, how little he knows of you, this peevish old glutton who cares for naught above pandering to his dyspeptic maw! But my writing to you has caused a great deal of scandal here in the office, and I fear I am seriously compromised. Cowen has been threatening to denounce me to you, but I have no fear that he will be able to grant you any time from his numerous [a] hoydens, doxies, and beldames. He threatened me for the mountenance of an hour this afternoon, but I bade him write and it pleased him-pa.s.sing well knew I that he could not missay me with you.

I am delighted with the result of the game at Detroit to-day-7 to 3 in favor of Chicago! This, I think, insures us the champions.h.i.+p.

Miller, our circulator, is very much disturbed because our country circulation has dropped about 1,000 in less than a fortnight; he has been hobn.o.bbing with Ballantyne about it to-day. Mr. Stone is still in Kansas City hunting wild geese.

"Pepita" is billed as the joint production of Thompson and Solomon, and about twenty people have asked me if you were the Thompson referred to and I have indignantly repudiated the libel, for, maugre my head, "Pepita" is just a little the rottenest thing I ever saw or heard.

I have not clapped my eyes on any of [b] your suburban friends since you departed. At McVicker's the other evening I found myself being scrutinized by a buxom country la.s.s who looked as if she might be the fair unknown from Evanston. Her rueful visage and the sympathetic glance she bestowed on me seemed to a.s.sure me that she, too, was pining for the grandest of old grands.

My wife has been away for a week, but not a line have I had from her. It has comforted me a good deal, however, to hear John say that she looked just about sixteen years of age at the wedding.

I took the Dock out to supper to-night and heaped coals of fire upon his head. I let him have everything he wanted and I paid the bill with a flourish that would have reflected credit upon a Roman conqueror.

I wish you were going to be here day after to-morrow [c] to go with us to the last base-ball game of the season-a postponed game between the Chicagos and the St. Louis Club. I am to have a private box on account of being a mascot.

The Dock has just informed me that he has just rung into one of his editorials the expression "seismic phenomena," and he seems to be as tickled as Jack Homer was when he pulled an alleged plum out of that historic pie.

I don't know what you think about it, but this business of writing with five different colors of ink is queering me at a terrible rate and I am sure that I would die of softening of the brain if I were to keep it up any length of time. But I presume to say that your sceptical little Bessie will think this the most beautiful page she ever saw. I am sorry, but not surprised, to hear that your pa.s.ses failed you on the Canadian Pacific. You should have applied for them sooner. I have always [d] found railway officials the slowest people in the world, and they are particularly slow when it comes to the matter of pa.s.ses. Of course you are having a charming time with your home folk; well, you deserve it, and I hope you will make the most of it. Give my love to them all. You see I regard myself as one of the family. Let me hear from you whenever you feel like writing, but don't bother about it.

Ever your friend,

EUGENE FIELD.

Small wonder that even Field's patience revolted at the self-imposed "business" of writing this letter in five different colors of ink. The first page, which ran down to the letter "a" in the above, was written in pale green ink; the second, running to "b," was in black; the third, running to "c," was in red; and the fourth was a medley of these with purple, gamboge, and mauve to make the six colors. The fifth page from "d" was completed in plain black.

IX

CHICAGO, Tuesday, September the 21st, 1886.

What you say in your letter, dear chuck, is quite true. The paper has become fairly disreputable of late. The issue of last Sat.u.r.day was as base a specimen of daily journalism as ever was inflicted on a civilized community. Stone (who has returned from Kansas City) says he was disgusted with that Sat.u.r.day issue, but I have heard him suggest no scheme whereby the dawdling condition of affairs is to be bettered. The whole staff is demoralized, and I believe that, so far from getting better, matters and things are steadily going to worse. The outlook is very discouraging. One sensible thing has been done in hiring Reilly to do regular work. Under the new arrangement he is to receive forty dollars a week, which Stone considers a big price for an editorial writer, but which I regard as too measley for any use. Still Reilly is satisfied, for he will be able to do, under the new arrangement, as much work for Rauch (of the State Board of Health) as he has been doing in the past.

Not a word have I heard from my spouse since she went to St. Louis-in fact, I have never been informed that she arrived in St. Louis. I thought she might arrive to-night, and so I went down to the station and sat around on the trucks and things like a colossal male statue of Patience. The train was late, and, when it came, it came without her, of course.

Getting back to the office, I find that Dock has had a de'il of a time. He had to wait this evening to get some data from Yount for a political editorial. Yount did not show up until half-past eight; after he had disgorged the necessary information he left the Dock c.o.c.ked and primed for quick work. But the Dock had no sooner got fairly started-in fact, had scarcely reached his first politico medical phrase-when in came Roche (fresh from his bridal tour through Colorado) with a thunder-gust of tedious experiences. The Dock bore the infliction with Christian fort.i.tude and thanked G.o.d when Roche left. In a moment or two thereafter, however, a Kansas City friend of mine called-very drunk, and not finding me, insisted upon discussing me, my work, and my prospects, with the Dock. John Thatcher dropped in subsequently, and so the Dock had quite a matinee of it. By the time I got back to the office the old gentleman was as vaporish as a hysterical old woman and he vented his spleen on my unoffending head. G.o.d knows what a trial that man is to me! Yet I try to be respectful and kind to him, for age is ent.i.tled to that much tribute at least from youth. Since penning these lines I have read them to the Dock and it would do your soul good to see him squirm.

We are all well. When are you coming home? Paying postage on daily letters to Canada is swiftly bankrupting me; then, too, it is a long time since I had a square meal. But, j.a.pes, bourds, and mockages aside, we miss you and will be glad to see you back. Salutations to the home folk.

Yours in friends.h.i.+p,

EUGENE FIELD.

The pen-picture in this letter of the delays, intrusions, and interruptions that aroused Dr. Reilly's ire is a fair portrayal of the difficulties under which the editorial staff worked in those days. Field was the only one who could shut himself away from such annoyances to do his own wood-sawing. But when released from this, he delighted to add to the tribulations of his less erratic a.s.sociates by his never-ending "j.a.pes, bourds, and mockages."

X

CHICAGO, Wednesday, September 22d, 1886.

A second letter came from you to-day, dear boy, and I am glad to hear that you are enjoying yourself, although I made mone pa.s.sing measure when I learned that the caitiff Brunswick knight had forejusted you at tennis. I don't know why the revered Miss Mollie Tillie deems me a capricious man and a fickle; nor can I imagine. You should not suffer her to missay me so grievously. Where could the skeptical damosell have found a person more faithful than I have been in writing each day to her big brother? But if Miss Mollie throws me overboard, so to speak, I shall look to her bustling sister, Miss Nellie, for less capricious friends.h.i.+p. "Varium et mutabile semper foemina."

Poor old Dock! He comes into the room and leaves his key sticking in the door; to complicate matters still further, he leaves another key sticking in the book-case. When I reproach him with these evidences of a failing mind, he smiles and cries. I wish he were here that I might read these lines to him. Then there is Cowen-but I will not fill this letter with incoherent criminations. The enclosed sketch will explain all.

It represents a scene in this office. I have stepped out to post a letter to you. Coming back I peep in at the window and behold baby Dock in his high-chair weeping l.u.s.tily, whilst baby Cowen has crept out of his chair, toddled to the wall and is reaching for his bottle! Betwixt the hysterics of the one babe and the bottle of t'other I am well-nigh exhausted. Come back and take care of your babies yourself!

I do not see that any effort is being made to get out a better paper. The sheet has been simply rotten, and everybody says so-even the dogs are barking about it. Meanwhile I am sawing wood. I am reading a great deal. Read Mrs. Gordon's Life of Christopher North, parts of Burns's poems, life of Dr. Faustus, and Morte D'Arthur since you left, and hope to read Goethe's poems, Life of Bunyan, Homer's works, Sartor Resartus and Ra.s.selas before you get back. I have about made up my mind to do little outside writing for four or five months and to do a prodigious amount of reading instead.

My wife will be back to-morrow evening; as I am to meet her at the station, I may not have time to write you your daily note. She writes me that she has had a bad cold ever since she reached St. Louis and is heartily glad that she is coming home. Dunlap, of the McCaul Company, invites me to be his guest at the Southern Hotel while the company sings in St. Louis, but that sort of thing is out of the question. Do you intend to go to Indianapolis with me? E-- W-- has been very friendly of late. I suspect he is getting hard up. B--'s latest fad is to organize a Friday night club to discuss literature, art, science, etc. Hearing him talk about it to-day gave the old Dock a violent attack of nausea. Speaking of nausea reminds me that P-- has been seriously indisposed for two days as the consequence of eating nine peaches, two apples, and a pound of grapes! He is satisfied, however, that this variable fall weather is very trying. Shackelford is off on his vacation, but I do not complain, since I find Rogers, his subst.i.tute, a pleasant gentleman to do Sat.u.r.day business with....

Affectionately yours,

EUGENE FIELD.

An interesting point in this letter is its reference to his proposed first appearance as a reader after coming to Chicago before the convention of Western a.s.sociation of Writers at Indianapolis. Previous to this, during our acquaintance he had repeatedly declined requests to appear upon the platform. But in this case he was persuaded by Richard Lew Dawson, the secretary of the a.s.sociation, to make an exception in its favor. In a letter to Mr. Dawson, under date of September 3d, 1886, Field gives the following interesting estimate of some of his own work:

"Since reading your last letter, I have thought that it might be wise for me to contribute to your programme the following pieces, which exhibit pretty nearly all styles of my work:

1. Death and the Soldier Prose. 10 minutes.

2. The Humane Lad (new) Verse. 3 minutes 3. The Noontide Hymn (new) Verse. 3 minutes 4. The Merciful Lad (new) Verse. 2 minutes 5. The Divine Lullaby (new) Verse. 2 minutes.