One Sunday evening in the winter of 1890 Eugene Field and the writer
were walking in Lake View, Chicago, on their way to visit the library of
a common friend, when the subject of publishing a book for Field came up
for discussion.
The Little Book of Western Verse and The Little Book of Profitable Tales
had been privately printed the year before at Chicago, and Field had
been frequently reminded that the writer was ready and willing to stand
sponsor for any new volume he, Field, might desire to bring out.
"The only thing I have on hand that might make a book," said Field, "are
some few paraphrases of the Odes of Horace which my brother, 'Rose,' and
I have been fooling over, and which, truth to tell, are certainly freely
rendered. There are not enough of them, but we'll do some more, and I'll
add a brief Life of Horace as a preface or introduction."
It is to be regretted that Field never carried out his intention with
respect to this last, for he had given much thought and study to the
great Roman satirist, and what Eugene Field could have said upon the
subject must have been of interest. It is my belief that as he thought
upon the matter it grew too great for him to handle within the space he
had at first determined, and that tucked away within the recesses of his
literary intentions was the determination, nullified by his early death,
to write, _con amore_, a life of Quintus Horatius Flaccus.
This determination to write separately an extended account of Horace
greatly reduced the bulk of the material intended for the Sabine Echoes,
and it was with respect to this that Field apologetically and, as was
his wont, humorously wrote:
"The volume may be rather thin _in corpore_, but think how hefty it will
be intellectually."
When it came to the discussion of how many copies should be printed it
was suggested that the edition be an exceedingly limited one, in order
to cause as much scrambling and heartburning as possible among our
bibliophilic brethren. And never shall I forget the seriousness of the
man's face, nor the roars of laughter that followed, when he suggested
that fifty copies only should be made, and that we should reserve one
each and burn the other forty-eight!
It was a biting cold night and we had been loitering by the way,
stopping to debate each point as it arose--but now we plunged on with
excess of motion to keep ourselves warm, breaking out with occasional
peals of laughter as we thought of our plan to make the publication what
the booksellers call "excessively rare."
Field, elsewhere, has said he did not know why the original intention as
to the destruction of the forty-eight copies was not carried out, but
the answer is not far away. As the time for publication approached it
was found impossible that such and such a friend should be forgotten in
the matter of a copy, and so it went on until it was deemed prudent to
add fifty to the number originally intended to be issued, and that
decision, in the light of what followed, proved to be an eminently wise
one. More than once some to me unknown friend of Field would write a
pleasant lie as a reason to gain possession of the book, and up in a
corner of the letter would be found an endorsement of the request after
this fashion:
What's writ below
I'd have you know
Nor falsehood nor romance is;
It's solemn truth,
So grant the youth
The boon he seeks, dear Francis.