In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness of Eugene
Field--the poet of whose going the West may say, "He took our daylight
with him"--one of his fellow journalists has written that he was a
jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew in Yorick. He was
not only,--so the writer implied,--the maker of jibes and fantastic
devices, but the bard of friendship and affection, of melodious lyrical
conceits; he was the laureate of children--dear for his "Wynken,
Blynken and Nod" and "Little Boy Blue"; the scholarly book-lover,
withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who wrote with delight
a quaint archaic English of his special devising; who collected rare
books, and brought out his own "Little Books" of "Western Verse" and
"Profitable Tales" in high-priced limited editions, with broad margins
of paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which tempts
bibliomaniacs to break through and steal.
For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very forecast, in
imaginative literature, of our various Eugene. Surely Shakespeare
conceived the "mad rogue" of Elsinore as made up of grave and gay, of
wit and gentleness, and not as a mere clown or "jig maker." It is true
that when Field put on his cap and bells, he too was "wont to set the
table on a roar," as the feasters at a hundred tables, from "Casey's
Table d'Hôte" to the banquets of the opulent East, now rise to testify.
But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick, that mirth was not
his sole attribute,--that his motley covered the sweetest nature and
the tenderest heart. It could be no otherwise with one who loved and
comprehended childhood and whom the children loved. And what does
Hamlet say?--"He hath borne me upon his back a thousand times . . .
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not how oft!" Of what
is he thinking but of his boyhood, before doubts and contemplation
wrapped him in the shadow, and when in his young grief or frolic the
gentle Yorick, with his jest, his "excellent fancy," and his songs and
gambols, was his comrade?
Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene Field seems to
be most like the survival, or revival, of the ideal jester of knightly
times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as if a superior bearer
of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of France, or of English King
Hal, had come to life again--as much out of time as Twain's Yankee at
the Court of Arthur; but not out of place,--for he fitted himself as
aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and mortals of a wood
near Athens. In the days of divine sovereignty, the jester, we see,
was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real fools were those
he made his butt--the foppish pages, the obsequious courtiers, the
swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not seldom majesty
itself. And thus it is that painters and romancers have loved to draw
him. Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric, or Touchstone than Le
Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one of his brutal mockers? Was not
the redoubtable Chicot, with his sword and brains, the true ruler of
France? To come to the jesters of history--which is so much less real
than fiction--what laurels are greener than those of Triboulet, and
Will Somers, and John Heywood--dramatist and master of the king's merry
Interludes? Their shafts were feathered with mirth and song, but
pointed with wisdom, and well might old John Trussell say "That it
often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed when it is
tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive if it be
delivered in jest."
Yes, Field "caught on" to his time--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. Fortune had given him that unforgettable mummer's
face,--that clean-cut, mobile visage,--that animated natural mask! No
one else had so deep and rich a voice for the rendering of the music
and pathos of a poet's lines, and no actor ever managed both face and
voice better than he in delivering his own verses merry or sad. One
night, he was seen among the audience at "Uncut Leaves," and was
instantly requested to do something towards the evening's
entertainment. As he was not in evening dress, he refused to take the
platform, but stood up in the lank length of an ulster, from his corner
seat, and recited "Dibdin's Ghost" and "Two Opinions" in a manner which
blighted the chances of the readers that came after him. It is true
that no clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness of his practical
jokes. Above all, every friend that he had--except the Dean of his
profession, for whom he did exhibit unbounded and filial reverence--was
soon or late a victim of his whimsicality, or else justly distrusted
the measure of Field's regard for him. Nor was the friendship
perfected until one bestirred himself to pay Eugene back in kind. As
to this, I am only one of scores now speaking from personal experience.
There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim of his fun,
even when it outraged common sensibilities, _must_ enjoy it as much as
he. Who but Eugene, after being the welcome guest, at a European
capital, of one of our most ambitious and refined ambassadors, would
have written a lyric, sounding the praises of a German "onion pie,"
ending each stanza with
Ach, Liebe! Ach, mein Gott!
and would have printed it in America, with his host's initials affixed?
My own matriculation at Eugene's College of Unreason was in this wise.
In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, the Boston publisher, was complaining that he
needed some new and promising authors to enlarge his book-list. The
New York "Sun" and "Tribune" had been copying Field's rhymes and prose
extravaganzas--the former often very charming, the latter the broadest
satire of Chicago life and people. I suggested to Mr. Ticknor that he
should ask the poet-humorist to collect, for publication in book-form,
the choicest of his writings thus far. To make the story brief, Mr.
Field did so, and the outcome--at which I was somewhat taken aback--was
the remarkable book, "Culture's Garland," with its title imitated from
the sentimental "Annuals" of long ago, and its cover ornamented with
sausages linked together as a coronal wreath! The symbol certainly
fitted the greater part of the contents, which ludicrously scored the
Chicago "culture" of that time, and made Pullman, Armour, and other
commercial magnates of the Lakeside City special types in illustration.
All this had its use, and many of the sufferers long since became the
_farceur's_ devoted friends. The Fair showed the country what Chicago
really was and is. Certainly there is no other American city where the
richest class appear so enthusiastic with respect to art and
literature. "The practice of virtue makes men virtuous," and even if
there was some pretence and affectation in the culture of ten years
ago, it has resulted in as high standards of taste as can elsewhere be
found. Moreover, if our own "four hundred" had even affected, or made
it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes for real culture,
the intellectual life of this metropolis would not now be so far apart
from the "social swim." There were scattered through "Culture's
Garland" not a few of Field's delicate bits of verse. In some way he
found that I had instigated Mr. Ticknor's request, and, although I was
thinking solely of the publisher's interests, he expressed unstinted
gratitude. Soon afterwards I was delighted to receive from him a
quarto parchment "breviary," containing a dozen ballads, long and
short, engrossed in his exquisitely fine handwriting, and illuminated
with colored borders and drawings by the poet himself. It must have
required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly I would not
now exchange it for its weight in diamonds. This was the way our
friendship began. It was soon strengthened by meetings and
correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture, at the
invitation of its famous social and literary "Twentieth Century Club."
This was Eugene's opportunity, and I ought not to have been as
dumfounded as I was, one day, when our evening papers copied from the
"Chicago Record" a "very pleasant joke" at the expense of his town and
myself! It was headed: "Chicago Excited! Tremendous Preparations for
His Reception," and went on to give the order and route of a procession
that was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort me to my
quarters--stopping at Armour's packing-yards and the art-galleries on
the way. It included the "Twentieth Century Club" in carriages, the
"Browning Club" in busses, and the "Homer Club" in drays; ten
millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers, in a chariot drawn
by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred Chicago poets
afoot! I have no doubt that Eugene thought I would enjoy this kind of
advertisement as heartily as he did. If so, he lacked the gift of
putting himself in the other man's place. But his sardonic face,
a-grin like a school-boy's, was one with two others which shone upon me
when I did reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded sufficiently to
prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to which he bore me
off in triumph. I did promise to square accounts with him, in time,
and this is how I fulfilled my word. The next year, at a meeting of a
suburban "Society of Authors," a certain lady-journalist was chaffed as
to her acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of addressing him as
"Gene." At this she took umbrage, saying: "It's true we worked
together on the same paper for five years, but he was always a perfect
gentleman. I _never_ called him 'Gene.'" This was reported by the
press, and gave me the refrain for a skit entitled "Katharine and
Eugenio:"
Five years she sate a-near him
Within that type-strewn loft;
She handed him the paste-pot,
He passed the scissors oft;
They dipped in the same inkstand
That crowned their desk between,
Yet--he never called her Katie,
She never called him "Gene."
Though close--ah! close--the droplight
That classic head revealed,
She was to him Miss Katharine,
He--naught but Mister Field;
Decorum graced his upright brow
And thinned his lips serene,
And, though he wrote a poem each hour,
Why should she call him "Gene?"
She gazed at his sporadic hair--
She knew his hymns by rote;
They longed to dine together
At Casey's table d'hôte;
Alas, that Fortune's "hostages"--
But let us draw a screen!
He dared not call her Katie;
How _could_ she call him "Gene?"
I signed my verses "By one of Gene's Victims"; they appeared in _The
Tribune_, and soon were copied by papers in every part of the country.
Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by the funny men of
the southern and western press, and it was months before 'Gene' saw the
last of them. The word "Eugenio," which was the name by which I always
addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no doubt as to the
initiator of the series, and so our "Merry War" ended, I think, with a
fair quittance to either side.
Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick's premature death, it is a
solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last interchange of
written words. Not long ago, he was laid very low by pneumonia, but
recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me a sweetly serious
letter--with here and there a sparkle in it--but in a tone sobered by
illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship with his
friends. At the same time he sent me the first editions, long ago
picked up, of all my earlier books, and begged me to write on their
fly-leaves. This I did; with pains to gratify him as much as possible,
and in one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain: