EARLY EXPERIENCES IN JOURNALISM
Although Eugene Field made his first essay in journalism as a reporter,
there is not the shadow of a tradition that he made any more progress
along the line of news-gathering and descriptive writing than he did as
a student at Williams. He had too many grotesque fancies dancing
through his whimsical brain to make account or "copy" of the plain
ordinary facts that for the most part make up the sum of the news of
the average reporter's day. What he wrote for the St. Louis Journal or
Times-Journal, therefore, had little relation to the happening he was
sent out to report, but from the outset it possessed the quality that
attracted readers. The peculiarities and not the conventions of life
appealed to him and he devoted himself to them with an assiduity that
lasted while he lived. Thus when he was sent by the Journal to
Jefferson City to report the proceedings of the Missouri State
Legislature, what his paper got was not an edifying summary of that
unending grist of mostly irrelevant and immaterial legislation through
the General Assembly hopper, but a running fire of pungent comment on
the Idiosyncrasies of its officers and members. He would attach himself
to the legislators whose personal qualities afforded most profitable
ammunition for sport in print. He shunned the sessions of Senate and
House and held all night sessions of story and song with the choice
spirits to be found on the floors and in the lobbies of every western
legislature. I wonder why I wrote "western" when the species is as
ubiquitous in Maine as in Colorado? From such sources Field gleaned the
infinite fund of anecdote and of character-study which eventually made
him the most sought-for boon companion that ever crossed the lobby of
a legislature or of a state capital hotel in Missouri, Colorado, or
Illinois. He was a looker-on in the legislative halls, and right
merrily he lampooned everything he saw. Nothing was too trivial for
his notice, nothing so serious as to escape his ridicule or satire.
There was little about his work at this time that gave promise of
anything beyond the spicy facility of a quick-witted, light-hearted
western paragrapher. Looking back it is possible, however, to
discover something of the flavor of the inextinguishable drollery
that persisted to his last printed work in such verses as these in
the St. Louis Journal:
_THE NEW BABY
We welcome thee, eventful morn
Since to the poet there is born
A son and heir;
A fuzzy babe of rosy hue,
And staring eyes of misty blue
Sans teeth, sans hair.
Let those who know not wedded joy
Revile this most illustrious boy--
This genial child!
But let the brother poets raise
Their songs and chant their sweetest lays
To him reviled.
Then strike, O bards, your tuneful lyres,
'Awake, O rhyming souls, your fires,
And use no stint!
Bring forth the festive syrup cup--
Fill every loyal beaker up
With peppermint!
March, 1878._
In the spring of 1879 the St. Louis Times-Journal printed the following
April verses by Field, which were copied without the author's name by
London Truth, and went the rounds of the papers in this country,
credited to that misnamed paper, and attributed, much to Field's glee,
to William S. Gilbert, then at the height of his Pinafore and Bab
Ballad fame:
_APRIL VESPERS
The turtles drum in the pulseless bay,
The crickets creak in the prickful hedge,
The bull-frogs boom in the puddling sedge
And the whoopoe whoops its vesper lay
Away
In the twilight soft and gray.
Two lovers stroll in the glinting gloam--
His hand in her'n and her'n in his--
She blushes deep--he is talking biz--
They hug and hop as they listless roam--
They roam--
It's late when they get back home.
Down by the little wicket-gate,
Down where the creepful ivy grows,
Down where the sweet nasturtium blows,
A box-toed parent lies in wait--
In wait
For the maiden and her mate.
Let crickets creak and bull-frogs boom,
The whoopoe wail in the distant dell--
Their tuneful throbs will ne'er dispel
The planted pain and the rooted gloom--
The gloom
Of the lover's dismal doom._
Just by the way of illustrating in fac-simile and preserving the
character of the newspaper paragrapher's work in the last century, the
following "Funny Fancies," by Field, from the St. Louis Journal of
August 3d, 1878, may be of interest:
A green Christmas--No, no, we mean a green peach makes a fat
graveyard.
A philanthropic citizen of Memphis has wedded a Miss Hoss. He doubtless
took her for wheel or whoa.
We have tried every expedient and we find that the simple legend:
"Smallpox in this House" will preserve the most uninterrupted bliss in
an editorial room.
There is a moment when a man's soul revolts against the dispensations
of Providence, and that is when he finds that his wife has been using
his flannel trousers to wrap up the ice in.
To the average Athenian the dearest spot on earth is the Greece spot.
Mr. Deer was hung at Atlanta. Of course he died game.
'Tis pleasant at the close of day
To play
Croquet.
And if your partner makes a miss
Why kiss
The siss.
But if she gives your chin a thwack,
Why whack
Her back!
A great many newspaper men lie awake night after night mentally
debating whether they will leave their property to some charitable
institution or spend it the next day for something with a little lemon
in it.
It was during his earlier connection with the St. Louis Journal that
Field was assigned the duty of misreporting Carl Schurz, when that
peripatetic statesman stumped Missouri in 1874 as a candidate for
re-election to the United States Senate. Field in later years paid
unstinted tribute to the logic, eloquence, and patriotic force of Mr.
Schurz's futile appeals to the rural voters of Missouri. But during the
trip his reports were in nowise conducive to the success of the
Republican and Independent candidate. Mr. Schurz's only remonstrances
were, "Field, why will you lie so outrageously?" It was only by the
exercise of careful watchfulness that Mr. Schurz's party was saved from
serious compromise through the practical jokes and snares which Field
laid for the grave, but not revered Senator. On one occasion when a
party of German serenaders appeared at the hotel where the party was
stopping, before Mr. Schurz had completed a necessary change of toilet
Field stepped out on the veranda, and, waving the vociferous cornet and
trombone to silence, proceeded to address the crowd in broken English.
As he went on the cheering soon subsided into amazed silence at the
heterodox doctrines he uttered, until the bogus candidate was pushed
unceremoniously aside by the real one. Mr. Schurz had great difficulty
in saving Field from the just wrath of the crowd, which had resented
his broken English more than his political heresies.
On another occasion when there was a momentary delay on the part of the
gentleman who was to introduce Mr. Schurz, Field stepped to the front
and with a strong German accent addressed the gathering as follows:
LADIES AND SHENTLEMEN: I haf such a pad colt dot et vas not bossible
for me to make you a speedg to-night, but I haf die bleasure to
introduce to you my prilliant chournatistic friend Euchene Fielt, who
will spoke you in my blace.
It was all done so quickly and so seriously that the joke was complete
before Mr. Schurz could push himself into the centre of the stage.
Annoyance and mirth mingled in the explanations that followed. A love
of music common to both was the only thing that made Field tolerable to
his serious-minded elder.
Regarding Eugene Field's work upon the St. Jo Gazette, it was local in
character and of the most ephemeral nature. There is preserved in the
pocket-books of some old printers in the West the galley proof of a
doggerel rhyme read by him at the printers' banquet, at St. Joseph,
Mo., January 1st, 1876. It details the fate of a "Rat" printer, who,
in addition to the mortal offence of "spacing out agate" type with
brevier, sealed his doom by stepping on the tail of our old friend,
the French poodle McSweeny. The execution of the victim's sentence
was described as follows:
_His body in the fatal cannon then they force
Shouting erstwhile in accents madly hoarse,
"Death to all Rats"--the fatal match is struck,
The cannon pointed upwards--then kerchuck!
Fiz! Snap! Ker--boom! Slug 14's grotesque form
Sails out to ride a race upon the storm,
Up through the roof, and up into the sky--
As if he sought for "cases" up on high,
Till like a rocket, or like one who's trusted,
He fell again to earth--completely busted._
There is not much suggestion, or even promise, in this doggerel, of
the Eugene Field whose verses of occasion were destined within a dozen
years to be sought for in every newspaper office in America.
Long before Field learned the value of his time and writing, he began
to appreciate the value of printer's ink and showed much shrewdness in
courting its favor. He did not wait for chance to bring his wares into
notice, but early joined the circle of busy paragraphers who formed a
wider, if less distinguished, mutual admiration society than that
free-masonry of authorship which at one time almost limited literary
fame in the United States to Henry James, William Dean Howells, Charles
Dudley Warner, and Thomas Bailey Aldrich. Robert J. Burdette is about
the only survivor of the coterie of paragraphers, who, a quarter of a
century ago, made such papers as the Burlington Hawkeye, the Detroit
Free Press, the Oil City Derrick, the Danbury News, and the Cincinnati
Saturday Night, widely quoted throughout the Union for their clever
squibs and lively sallies. Field put himself in the way of the
reciprocating round of mutual quotation and spicy comment, and before
he left St. Louis his "Funny Fancies" in the Times-Journal had the
approval of his fellow-jesters if they could not save that paper from
its approaching doom.
Before leaving St. Louis, however, Eugene Field was to strike one of
the notes that was to vibrate so sweetly and surely to his touch unto
the end. He had lost one baby son in St. Jo, and Melvin was a mere
large-eyed infant when his father was moved at Christmas-time, 1878,
to write his "Christmas Treasures," which he frequently, though
incorrectly, declared to be "the first verse I ever wrote." He probably
meant by this that it was the first verse he ever wrote "that he cared
to preserve," those specimens I have introduced being only given as
marking the steps crude and faltering by which he attained a facility
and technique in the art of versification seldom surpassed.
In Mr. Field's "Auto-Analysis" will be found the following reference to
this early specimen of his verse:
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.
Which merely indicates what little track Field kept of how, when, or
where he wrote the verse that attracted popular attention and by which
he is best remembered. I need hardly say that with a few noteworthy
exceptions his most highly-prized poems were written before 1888, as a
reference to the "Little Book of Western Verse," above cited, and which
was published in 1889, will clearly show.
In the year 1880 Field received and accepted an offer of the managing
editorship of the Kansas City Times, a position which he filled with
singular ability and success, but which for a year put an almost
absolute extinguisher on his growth as a writer. Under his management
the Times became the most widely-quoted newspaper west of the
Mississippi. He made it the vehicle for every sort of quaint and
exaggerated story that the free and rollicking West could furnish or
invent. He was not particular whether the Times printed the first,
fullest, or most accurate news of the day so long as its pages were
racy with the liveliest accounts and comments on the daily comedy,
eccentricity, and pathos of life.
Right merrily did he abandon himself to the buoyant spirits of an
irrepressible nature. Never sparing himself in the duties of his
exacting position on the Times, neither did he spare himself in
extracting from life all the honey of comedy there was in it. His
salary did not begin to keep pace with his tastes and his pleasures.
But he faced debts with the calm superiority of a genius to whom the
world owed and was willing to pay a living.
There lived in Kansas City, when Field was at the height of his local
fame there, one George Gaston, whose café and bar was the resort of all
the choice spirits of the town. He fairly worshipped Field, who made
his place famous by entertainments there, and by frequent squibs in the
Times. Although George had a rule suspending credit when the checks
given in advance of pay day amounted to more than a customer's weekly
salary, he never thought of enforcing it in the case of 'Gene. More
than once some particularly fine story or flattering notice of the good
cheer at Gaston's sufficed to restore Field's credit on George's
spindle. At Christmas-time that credit was under a cloud of checks for
two bits (25 cents), four bits, and a dollar or more each to the total
of $135.50, when, touched by some simple piece that Field wrote in the
Times, Gaston presented his bill for the amount endorsed "paid in
full." When the document was handed to Field he scanned it for a moment
and then walked over to the bar, behind which George was standing
smiling complacently and eke benevolently.
"How's this, George?" said Field.
"Oh, that's all right," returned George.
"But this is receipted," continued the ex-debtor.
"Sure," said the gracious creditor.
"Do I understand," said Field, with a gravity that should have warned
his friend, "that I have paid this bill?"
"That's what," was George's laconic assurance.
"In full?"
"In full's what I said," murmured the unsuspecting philanthropist,
enjoying to the full his own magnanimity.
"Well, sir," said Field, raising his voice without relaxing a muscle,
"Is it not customary in Missouri when one gentleman pays another
gentleman in full to set up the wine?"
George could scarcely respire for a moment, but gradually recovered
sufficiently to mumble, "Gents, this is one on yours truly. What'll you
have?"
And with one voice Field's cronies, who were witnesses to the scene,
ejaculated, "Make it a case." And they made a night of it, such as
would have rejoiced the hearts of the joyous spirits of the "Noctes
Ambrosianæ."
From such revels and such fooling Field often went to work next day
without an hour's sleep.
While in Kansas City Field wrote that pathetic tale of misplaced
confidence that records the fate of "Johnny Jones and his sister Sue."
It was entitled "The Little Peach" and has had a vogue fully as wide,
if not as sentimental, as "Little Boy Blue." Field's own estimate of
this production is somewhat bluntly set out in the following note upon
a script copy of it made in 1887:
Originally printed in the Kansas City Times, recited publicly by Henry
E. Dixey, John A. Mackey, Sol Smith Russell, and almost every comedian
in America. Popular but rotten.
The last word is not only harsh but unjust. The variation of the
closing exclamation of each verse is as skilful as anything Field ever
did. Different, indeed, from the refrain in "Wynken, Blynken and Nod,"
but touching the chords of mirth with certainty and irresistible
effect. Field might have added, that none of the comedians he has named
ever gave to the experience of "Johnny Jones and His Sister Sue" in
public recitation the same melancholy humor and pathetic conclusion as
did the author of their misfortunes and untimely end himself. As a
penance, perhaps, for the injustice done to "The Little Peach" in the
quoted comment, Field spent several days in 1887 in translating it, so
to speak, into Greek characters, in which it appears in the volume
given to Mrs. Thompson, which is herewith reproduced in facsimile as a
specimen of one of the grotesque fancies Field indulged:
[Illustration: "THE PEAR" IN FIELD'S "GREEK" TEXT.]
For the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Greek characters, I have
retranslated this poem into corresponding English, which the reader can
compare with his version of "The Little Peach."
_THE PEAR
(In English Equivalent.)
A little pear in a garden grue
A little pear of emerald 'ue
Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due,
It grew.
One da, going that garden thro'
That little pear kame to the fue
Of Thomas Smith and 'is sister Sue
Those tou!
Up at the pear a klub tha thrue
Down from the stem on uikh it grue
Fell the little pear of emerald 'ue
Peek-a-boo!
Tom took a bite and Sue took one too
And then the trouble began to brue
Trouble the doktors kouldn't subdue
Too true (paragorik too?).
Under the turf fare the daisies grue
They planted Tom and 'is sister Sue
And their little souls to the angels flue
Boo 'oo!
But as to the pear of emerald 'ue
Kissed bi the sun and bathed bi the due
I'll add that its mission on earth is thro'
Adieu._