HIS "AUTO-ANALYSIS"
In the introduction I have said that if Eugene Field had only written
his autobiography, as was once his intention, it would probably have
been one of the greatest works of fiction by an American. Early in his
career he was the victim of that craze that covets the signatures and
manuscript sentiments of persons who have achieved distinction, which
later he did so much to foster by precept and practice. He was an
inveterate autograph-hunter, and toward the close of his life he paid
the penalty of harping on the joys of the collector by the receipt of
a perfect avalanche of requests for autographs and extracts from his
poems in his own handwriting. The nature of his most popular verses
also excited widespread curiosity as to the life, habits, and views of
the author of "Little Boy Blue" and "Wynken, Blynken, and Nod." The
importunities of this last class of admirers became so numerous that
during the winter of 1894 he wrote and had printed what he called his
"Auto-Analysis." "I give these facts, confessions, and observations,"
wrote he, "for the information of those who, for one reason or
another, are applying constantly to me for biographical data
concerning myself." Such was its author's humor, that behind almost
every fact in this "Auto-Analysis" lurks either an error or a hoax.
Its confessions are half-truths, and its whimsical observations are
purposely designed to lead the reader to false conclusions. And withal
the whole document is written with the ingeniousness of a mind without
guile, which was one of Field's most highly developed literary
accomplishments. No study of Field's character and methods would be
complete without giving this very "human document":
AN AUTO-ANALYSIS
I was born in St. Louis, Mo., September 3d, 1850, the second and
oldest surviving son of Roswell Martin and Frances (Reed) Field,
both natives of Windham County, Vt. Upon the death of my mother
(1856), I was put in the care of my (paternal) cousin, Miss Mary
Field French, at Amherst, Mass.
In 1865 I entered the private school of Rev. James Tufts, Monson,
Mass., and there fitted for Williams College, which institution I
entered as a freshman in 1868. Upon my father's death, in 1869, I
entered the sophomore class of Knox College, Galesburg, Ill., my
guardian, John W. Burgess, now of Columbia College, being then a
professor in that institution. But in 1870 I went to Columbia, Mo.,
and entered the State University there, and completed my junior year
with my brother. In 1872 I visited Europe, spending six months and
my patrimony in France, Italy, Ireland, and England. In May, 1873, I
became a reporter on the St. Louis Evening Journal. In October of
that year I married Miss Julia Sutherland Comstock (born in Chenango
County, N.Y.), of St. Joseph, Mo., at that time a girl of sixteen.
We have had eight children--three daughters and five sons.
Ill-health compelled me to visit Europe in 1889; there I remained
fourteen months, that time being divided between England, Germany,
Holland, and Belgium. My residence at present is in Buena Park, a
north-shore suburb of Chicago.
My newspaper connections have been as follows: 1875-76, city editor
of the St. Joseph (Mo.) Gazette; 1876-80, editorial writer on the
St. Louis Journal and St. Louis Times-Journal; 1880-81, managing
editor of the Kansas City Times; 1881-83, managing editor of the
Denver Tribune. Since 1883 I have been a contributor to the Chicago
Record (formerly Morning News).
I wrote and published my first bit of verse in 1879; it was entitled
"Christmas Treasures" (see "Little Book of Western Verse"). Just ten
years later I began suddenly to write verse very frequently;
meanwhile (1883-89) I had labored diligently at writing short
stories and tales. Most of these I revised half a dozen times. One,
"The Were-Wolf," as yet unpublished, I have rewritten eight times
during the last eight years.
My publications have been, chronologically, as follows:
1. "The Tribune Primer," Denver, 1882. (Out of print, very scarce.)
("The Model Primer," illustrated by Hoppin, Treadway, Brooklyn,
1882. A pirate edition.)
2. "Culture's Garland," Ticknor, Boston, 1887. (Out of print.) "A
Little Book of Western Verse," Chicago, 1889. (Large paper,
privately printed, and limited.) "A Little Book of Profitable
Tales," Chicago, 1889. (Large paper, privately printed, and
limited.)
3. "A Little Book of Western Verse," Scribners, New York, 1890.
4. "A Little Book of Profitable Tales," Scribners, New York, 1890.
5. "With Trumpet and Drum," Scribners, New York, 1892.
6. "Second Book of Verse," Scribners, New York, 1893.
7. "Echoes from the Sabine Farm" (translations of Horace), McClurg,
Chicago, 1893. (In collaboration with my brother, Roswell Martin
Field.)
8. Introduction to Stone's "First Editions of American Authors,"
Cambridge, 1893.
9. "The Holy Cross and Other Tales," Stone & Kimball, Cambridge,
1893.
I have a miscellaneous collection of books, numbering 3,500, and I
am fond of the quaint and curious in every line. I am very fond of
dogs, birds, and all small pets--a passion not approved by my wife.
My favorite flower is the carnation, and I adore dolls.
My favorite hymn is "Bounding Billows."
My favorites in fiction are Hawthorne's "Scarlet Letter," "Don
Quixote," and "Pilgrim's Progress."
I greatly love Hans Andersen's "Tales," and I am deeply interested
in folk-lore and fairy-tales. I believe in ghosts, in witches, and
in fairies.
I should like to own a big astronomical telescope and a
twenty-four-tune music-box.
My heroes in history are Martin Luther, Mademoiselle Lamballe,
Abraham Lincoln; my favorite poems are Körner's "Battle Prayer,"
Wordsworth's "We are Seven," Newman's "Lead, Kindly Light," Luther's
"Hymn," Schiller's "The Diver," Horace's "Fons Bandusiae," and
Burns's "Cotter's Saturday Night." I dislike Dante and Byron. I
should like to have known Jeremiah, the prophet, old man Poggio,
Walter Scott, Bonaparte, Hawthorne, Mademoiselle Sontag, Sir John
Herschel, Hans Andersen.
My favorite actor is Henry Irving; actress, Mademoiselle Modjeska.
I dislike "politics," so called.
I should like to have the privilege of voting extended to women.
I favor a system of pensions for noble services in literature, art,
science, etc. I approve of compulsory education.
If I had my way, I should make the abuse of horses, dogs, and
cattle, a penal offence; I should abolish all dog laws and dog
catchers, and I would punish severely everybody who caught and caged
birds.
I dislike all exercise, and play all games indifferently.
I love to read in bed.
I believe in churches and schools; I hate wars, armies, soldiers,
guns, and fireworks.
I like music (limited).
I have been a great theatre-goer.
I enjoy the society of doctors and clergymen.
My favorite color is red.
I do not care particularly for sculpture or for paintings; I try not
to become interested in them, for the reason that if I were to
cultivate a taste for them I should presently become hopelessly
bankrupt.
I am extravagantly fond of perfumes.
I am a poor diner, and I drink no wine or spirits of any kind; I do
not smoke tobacco.
I dislike crowds, and I abominate functions.
I am six feet in height, am of spare build, weigh 160 pounds, and
have shocking taste in dress.
But I like to have well-dressed people about me.
My eyes are blue, my complexion pale, my face is shaven, and I
incline to baldness.
It is only when I look and see how young, and fair, and sweet my
wife is that I have a good opinion of myself.
I am fond of companionship of women, and I have no unconquerable
prejudice against feminine beauty. I recall with pride that in
twenty-two years of active journalism I have always written in
reverential praise of womankind.
I favor early marriage.
I do not love all children.
I have tried to analyze my feelings toward children, and I think I
discover that I love them, in so far as I can make pets of them.
I believe that, if I live, I shall do my best literary work when I
am a grandfather.
So cleverly are truth and fiction dove-tailed together in this
"Auto-Analysis" that it would puzzle a jury of his intimate friends to
say where Field was attempting to state facts and where he was laughing
in his sleeve. Even the enumeration of his publications is amazingly
inaccurate for a bibliomaniac's reply to the inquiries of his own
guild. Francis Wilson's sumptuous edition of "Echoes from the Sabine
Farm" preceded that of McClurg, Chicago, 1893, by more than two years,
and a limited edition of the "Second Book of Verse" was published
privately by Melville E. Stone, Chicago, 1892, more than a year before
it was published by the Scribners, as stated in Field's chronological
order.
Under ordinary circumstances such lapses in a list of a writer's
published works would be a venial fault, and not worth mentioning; but
in the case of one who set such store on "special large paper limited
editions," they would be inexplicable--if that writer had not been
Eugene Field. With him they were simply a notification to his intimates
that the whole thing was not to be taken as a serious bibliology of his
works or index of his character.
So far as the cyclopedic narrative of his life is concerned, it is
intended to be fairly accurate; but Field's notion that he suddenly
began to write verse very frequently in 1889 runs contrary to the
record in Denver and Chicago from 1881 to 1888, inclusive. The
intentional waggery of misinformation masquerading as truth begins
where Field leaves the recital of his life to give what purports to be
an analysis of his character and sentiments. Here he lets his "winged
fancy loose." He mingles fact with his fiction even as
_The instruments of darkness tell us truths;
Win us with honest trifles, to betray's
In deepest consequence._
Not that Field had any deep design to betray anyone lurking behind the
fictitious and facetious candor of this apparent self-revelation. This
"Auto-Analysis" was written in response to the almost innumerable
questions which, about that time, were being propounded in the
newspapers and on the leaves of sentiment autograph albums. Hence the
forms of Field's replies. For instance, to "What is your favorite
flower?" he answered, "My favorite flower is the carnation;"--and with
utter irrelevancy, added--"and I adore dolls!" Now Field was not
particularly fond of flowers, and if he had a favorite, it was the
rose, the pansy, or the violet.
Of his three favorites in fiction "Don Quixote" is the only one to
which he gave a second thought, although early familiarity with
"Pilgrim's Progress" undoubtedly left its impression on his retentive
memory. A more truthful answer would have been "The New England
Primer," "The Complete Angler," and Father Prout. To another inquirer
he said, "My favorite authors of prose are Cervantes, Hawthorne,
Andersen, Sir Thomas Mallory," a very much more accurate statement.
His love for the fairy-tales of Andersen and Grimm survived from the
knee of his little Mormon nurse to the last tale he wrote; but his
belief in ghosts, witches, and fairies was all in his literary mind's
eye. He took the same delight in employing them in his works as he did
flim-flams, flub-dubs, and catamarans. They were a part of his stock
in trade, just as wooden animals were of Caleb Plummer's toy-shop. I
think Field cherished a genuine admiration for Abraham Lincoln, whose
whole life, nature, personal appearance, unaffected greatness, manner
of speech, and fate appealed to his idea of what "the first American"
should be. But strike the names of Newman, Horace, old man Poggio,
Walter Scott, and Hans Andersen from the list of his favorites that
follow the name of Lincoln, and it gains in truth as it shrinks in
length.
Upon the question of extending the right to vote to women, Field
wasted no more thought than he did on "Politics," whether so called or
not. This was a springe to catch the "wimmen folks, God bless them."
He seldom took the trouble to vote himself, and ridiculed the idea of
women demeaning themselves to enter the dirty strife for public
office--as he regarded the beginning, middle, and end of all politics.
Field had the strongest possible aversion to violence or brutality of
any kind. He considered capital punishment as barbarous. He was not
opposed to it because he regarded it as inaffective as a punishment or
a deterrent of crime, but simply because taking life, and especially
human life, was abhorrent to him. Hence his "hatred" of wars, armies,
soldiers, and guns.
Something more than a paragraph is needed to explain that word
"limited" after Field's declaration "I like music." "Like" is a feeble
word in this connection, and "limited" by his sense of the absurdity
of reducing its enjoyment to an intellectual pursuit. He loved the
music that appealed to the heart, the mind, the emotions through the
ear. But for years he scoffed at and ridiculed the attempt to convey
by the "harmony of sweet sounds" or alternating discords impressions
or sentiments of things than can only be comprehended through the eye.
He loved both vocal and instrumental music, and was a constant
attendant on opera and concert.
I have a unique documentary proof of Eugene Field's taste in music.
Written on the folded back of a sheet of foolscap, which, on its face,
preserves his original manuscript of "A Noon Tide Hymn," are three
suggestions for the "request programmes" with which Theodore Thomas
used to vary his concerts in the old Exposition Building in Chicago.
Field seldom missed these concerts, and he always made a point of
forwarding his choice for the next "request night." This one was as
follows:
1. Invitation to Dance Weber
2. Spring Song Mendelssohn
3. Largho Handel
4. Rhapsody Hongroise(2) Liszt
1. Vorspiel Lohengrin
2. Waltz movement Volkman
3. Serenade Schubert
4. Ride of Walkures
1. Sylvia
2.
3. Ave Maria Bach-Gounod
Introd. }
4. Nap. } Wagner.
March. }
The only limitation to a liking for music such as is revealed here is
that it be good music. Mr. Thomas in those days scarcely ever made up a
programme without including in it one of Field's favorites.
Referring to music recalls the fact that Field once seriously contemplated
writing a comic opera; and he only failed to carry out his purpose
because he could not get the dialogue to suit him; moreover, he
realized that he had but a limited grasp of the dramatic action and
situations necessary in such work. How completely he had this work
mapped out may be judged from the following memoranda, the manuscript
of which is before me:
THE BUCCANEERS
Fernando, the Begum--basso.
Paquita, his daughter--soprano.
Christopher, the buccaneer--baritone.
Mercedes, his sister--contralto.
Carlos, a Peruvian lieutenant--tenor.
Gonzales, Begum of Ohnos.
Buccaneers, maidens, ballet, servants, etc.
Time of action--three days, 1860.
Scenes: First and third acts, in garden adjoining Fernando's mansion,
suburbs of Piura.
Second act, on board the ship "Perdita," port of Payla.
FIRST ACT
Fernando, the Begum, is about to give a moonlight fête in honor of
his daughter's betrothal to Carlos. The young people are not
particularly overjoyed at the prospect of their union, Carlos having
given his heart, some years previously, to Mercedes, who is now
married to a captain in the Chilian army, and Paquita having fallen
desperately in love with a handsome young stranger whom she has,
upon several occasions, met upon the sea-shore. This stranger is
Christopher, who, for his participation in a petty revolt, has been
declared an outlaw, and has taken to the life of a buccaneer, joined
by numerous lively companions. Overcome by love of Paquita,
Christopher manages to get himself and his band introduced at the
fête, and in the midst of the festivities the young women are seized
and carried aboard the buccaneers' ship.
SECOND ACT
Carlos, who has been taken prisoner with the girls, discovers that
Mercedes, the buccaneer captain's sister, is his old fiancee, and is
now a widow; explanations ensue and a reconciliation takes place.
While debating how they shall advise Paquita of the truth, they
overhear a conversation between Christopher and Paquita. Paquita
declares that if Christopher really _loves_ her, he will come and
woo her as an honorable man should. Christopher is about to release
the captives, when Mercedes suggests, that to ensure the safety of
the buccaneers Carlos be detained as a hostage. Carlos indorses the
suggestion. The young ladies are permitted to go ashore.
THIRD ACT
While Fernando storms over the retention of Carlos, Paquita sadly
broods over her love for Christopher. As she soliloquizes at her
window Christopher appears. He cannot remain away from the object of
his love. A scene ensues between the two. In the meantime Carlos and
Mercedes have secretly stolen from the ship and been married by the
village priest. They appear while Paquita and Christopher are
conversing. (Quartette.) Fernando hears the commotion. (Quintette.)
Christopher is discovered and apprehended. The buccaneers appear to
rescue their long-absent captain. Explanations. Fernando informs the
buccaneers that under the amnesty act of the king they are no longer
outlaws. Christopher's estates await him. Carlos and Mercedes
appear. Fernando gives Paquita to Christopher.
It will be perceived that the spirited action of this "argument," as
Field styled it, practically ends with the first act, a fault which the
veriest neophyte in the art of libretto writing knows is fatal. But the
most interesting feature of this opera in embryo is the list of songs
which Field had planned for it. They were:
SONGS
"Begum of Piura."
"The Crazy Quilt."
"My Life is One Continuous Lie."
"By Day Upon the Billowy Sea."
Lullaby--"Do Not Wake the Baby."
"The Good Old Way."
Barcarolle--"I've Come Across the Water."
TRIO
"He Really Does Not Seem to Know."
DUETS
"My Love Was Fair."
"To the Sea, O Love!"
"O Dearest Love, Through all the Years."
"Into God's Hands."
FEMALE CHORUS
"Down the Forest Pathway."
MALE CHORUS
"From the Farms."
"We are a Band of Gallant Tars."
MIXED CHORUS
"Hail, O Happy Nuptial Day!"
"Ah!"
"Where Turtle Doves are Cooing."
"The Spanish Dance."
"They're Delightful."
"Oh, Can Such Wonders Be?"
"How Sweet to Fly."
"He Really Must Be Ailing."
"Adieu, Sweet Love."
QUARTETTE
"The Old Love."
"The Parent's Voice."
QUINTETTE
"Oh, What Were Life."
Field always insisted that Messrs. Smith and DeKoven got the title, if
not some of the inspiration, for their opera "The Begum" from the
argument of his "Buccaneer," the scheme of which he showed to Harry B.
Smith, then a member of the Morning News staff. But the reason for his
failure to carry out his operatic venture is obvious in the argument
itself. It is intrinsically deficient in the elements of surprise,
novel situations, and dramatic action necessary for stage effect. Field
would have made it rich in lyrics, but as has been often proved, lyrics
alone cannot make a successful opera. He quickly appreciated this and
abandoned the work with "Oh, What Were Life?"
There never was any doubt of Field's "shocking taste in dress," and he
never sought to cultivate or reform it. But what will those who knew
him say of the statement, "I am a poor diner, and I drink no wine or
spirits of any kind; I do not smoke tobacco." Field was, by the common
verdict of those who had the pleasure of meeting him at any dinner
company, the best diner-out they ever knew. He had a keen enjoyment of
the pleasures of the table, and but for that wretched stomach would
have been as much of an authority on eating as he came to be on
collecting. He loved to discuss the art of dining, although he was
forbidden to practise it heartily.
His favorite gift-books "appertained" to the art of cooking, in one of
which (Hazlitt's "Old Cooking Books") I find inscribed to Mrs.
Thompson:
_Big bokes with nony love I send
To those by whom I set no store--
But see, I give to you, sweete friend,
A lyttel boke and love gallore!
E.F._
Field gave up drinking wine and all kinds of alcoholic liquors, as has
been related, before coming to Chicago. And yet I have seen him sniff
the bouquet of some rare wine or liquor with the quivering nostril of a
connoisseur, but--and this was the marvel to his associates--without
"the ruby," as Dick Swiveller termed it, being the least temptation to
his lips.
Eugene Field "not smoke tobacco"! He was one of the most inveterate
smokers in America. If he had been given his choice between giving up
pie or tobacco, I verily believe he would have thrown away the pie and
stuck to the soothing weed out of which he sucked daily and hourly
comfort. He had acquired the Yankee habit of ruminating with a small
quid of tobacco in his cheek when a good cigar was not between his
teeth. He consumed not only all the cigars that fell to his share in a
profession where cigars are the invariable concomitants of every chance
meeting, every social gathering, and every public function, but also
those that in the usual round of our life fell to me. And I was not his
only abetter in despoiling the Egyptians who thought to work the
freedom of the press with a few passes of the narcotic weed. It is a
curious fact that Field's pretended aversion to tobacco persists
through all his writings, from the Denver Primer sketches down. In
those we find him attributing the authorship of this warning to
children to S.J. Tilden:
_Oh, children, you Must never chew
Tobacco--it is Awful!
The Juice will Quickly make you Sick
If once you get your Maw Full._
He never ceased having discussions with himself over the wording or
authorship of the famous lines attributed to "Little Robert Reed," as
in the following:
Lo and behold! This is the way the St. Louis Republican mangles an
old, quaint, beautiful, and popular poem:
_"I would not use tobacco," said
Little Robert Reed.
"I would not use tobacco, for
'Tis a nasty weed."_
We protest against this brutal mutilization of a grand old classic.
The quatrain should read, as in the original, thus:
_"I'll never chew tobacco--no,
It is a filthy weed;
I'll never put it in my mouth,"
Said little Robert Reed._
By the way, who was the author of the poem of which the foregoing is
the first stanza?
I need scarcely refer the reader to Field's confession in his letter of
December 12th, 1891, to Mr. Gray of his struggle to give up the use of
tobacco, and to the photograph of Field at work, to indicate that his
"I do not smoke tobacco" was but one more of those harmless hoaxes he
took such pains to carry through at the expense of an ever-credulous
public.
Only one more point in regard to the "Auto-Analysis," and I am through
with that whimsical concoction; and that is in reference to his
attitude toward children. Knowing full well that his inquiring admirers
expected him to rhapsodize upon his love for children, he deliberately
set about disappointing them with:
I do not love all children.
I have tried to analyze my feelings toward children, and I think I
discover that I love them in so far as I can make pets of them.
Of course this was received with a chorus of incredulity--as it was
intended it should be. The autograph hunters who had formed their
conception of Field from his lullabies, his "Little Boy Blue," his
"Krinken," his "Wynken," and his score of other poems, all proving his
mastery over the strings that vibrate with the rocking of the cradle,
at once pronounced this the most delicious hit of their author's humor.
They knew that such songs could only emanate from a man whose heart
overflowed with the warmest sentiment to all childhood. They were
convinced that Field must love all children, and nothing he could say
could change their conviction.
[Illustration: FIELD THE COMEDIAN.]
And yet those words, "I do not love all children," are the truest six
words in his "Auto-Analysis." Field not only did not love all children,
he truly loved very few children. His own children were very dear to
him, both those that came in his early wedded life and the two who were
born to him after his return from Europe. They were a never-failing
source of interest and enjoyment to him. They were the human documents
he loved best to study. They wore no masks to conceal their emotions,
and he hated masks--on others. But above all, they were bone of his
bone and flesh of his love, the pledges and hostages he had given to
fortune, and they were the children of her to whom he had vowed eternal
faith "when their two lives were young." But Field's fondness for other
people's children was like that of an entomologist for bugs--for
purposes of study, dissection, and classification. He delighted to see
the varying shades of emotion chase each other across their little
tell-tale faces. This man, who could not have set his foot on a worm,
who shrank from the sight of pain inflicted on any dumb animal, took
almost as much delight in making a child cry, that he might study its
little face in dismay or fright, as in making it laugh, that he might
observe its method of manifesting pleasure. He read the construction of
child-nature in the unreserved expressions of childish emotions as he
provoked or evoked them. Thus he grew to know children as few have
known them, and his exceptional gift of writing for and about them was
the result of deliberate study rather than of personal sympathy. That
his own children were sometimes a trial to their "devoted mother" and
"fond father," as he described their parents, may be inferred from the
facts which were the basis of such bits of confidence between Field and
the readers of his "Sharps and Flats" as this:
An honest old gentleman living on the North Side has two young sons,
who, like too many sons of honest gentlemen, are given much to
boyish worldliness, such as playing "hookey" and manufacturing yarns
to keep themselves from under the maternal slipper. The other day
the two boys started out, ostensibly for school, but as they did not
come home to dinner and were not seen by their little sister about
the school-grounds, the awful suspicion entered the good mother's
mind that they had again been truant. Along about dark one of them,
the younger, came in blue with cold.
"Why, Pinny," said the mother, "where have you been?"
"Oh, down by the lake, getting warm," said the youngster.
"Down by the lake?"
"Yes; we were cold, and we saw the smoke coming up from the lake, so
we went down there to get warm. And," he continued, in a
propitiatory tone, "we thought we'd catch some fish for supper."
"Fish?" exclaimed the mother.
"Yes; Melvin's comin' with the fish."
At this juncture the elder boy walked in triumphantly holding up a
dried herring tied to the end of a yard or so of twine.
That night, when the honest old gentleman reached home, the young
men got a warming without having to go to the steaming lake.
But all of Field's keen analytical comprehension of child-nature is
purified and exalted in his writings by his unalloyed reverence for
motherhood. The child is the theme, but it is almost always for the
mother he sings. Even here, however, he could not always resist the
temptation to relieve sentiment with a piece of humor, as in the
following clever congratulations to a friend on the birth of a son:
_A handsome and lively, though wee body
Is the son of my friend, Mrs. Peabody--
It affords me great joy
That her son is a boy,
And not an absurd little she-body._
More than thirty years since the late Professor John Fiske, when asked
to write out an account of his daily life for publication, did very
much the same thing as Field palmed off on his correspondents in his
"Auto-Analysis." He gave some "sure-enough" facts as to his birth,
education, and manner of life, but mixed in with the truth such a
medley of grotesque falsehoods about his habits of study, eating, and
drinking, that he supposed the whole farrago would be thrown into the
waste-paper basket. For thirty years he lived in the serene belief that
such had been its fate. But one day he was unpleasantly reminded of his
mistake. The old manuscript had been resurrected "from the worm-hole of
forgotten years," and he was published widecast as a glutton, not only
of work, but in eating, drinking, and sleeping. A man who defied all
the laws of hygiene, of moderation, and of rest. And when he died, from
heat prostration--an untimely death, that robbed his country of its
greatest student mind, while yet his energies were boundless--that
thoughtless story of thirty years ago was revived, to justify the "I
told you sos" of the public press.
His "Auto-Analysis" was not the only hoax of this description in which
Eugene Field indulged. In 1893 Hamlin Garland contributed an article to
McClure's Magazine, entitled, "A Dialogue Between Eugene Field and
Hamlin Garland." It purported to be an interview which the latter had
with the former in his "attic study" in Chicago. Field was represented
surrounded by "a museum of old books, rare books, Indian relics,
dramatic souvenirs, and bric-a-brac indescribable." The result is a
most remarkable jumble of misinformation and fiction, with which Field
plied Garland to the top of his bent. What Garland thought were bottom
facts were really sky-scraping fiction. As if this were not enough,
Garland made Field talk in an approach to an illiterate dialect, such
as he never employed and cordially detested. Garland represented Field
as discussing social and economic problems--why not the "musical
glasses," deponent saith not. The really great and characteristic point
in the dialogue was where something Field said caused "Garland to lay
down his pad and lift his big fist in the air like a maul. His
enthusiasm rose like a flood." The whole interview was a serious piece
of business to the serious-minded realist. To Field, at the time, and
for months after, it was a huge and memorable joke.
But there are thousands who accept the Eugene Field of the
"Auto-Analysis" and of the Garland dialogue as the true presentment of
the man, when the real man is only laughing in his sleeve at the reader
and the interviewer in both of them.