RELATIONS WITH STAGE FOLK
Reference has been made to Field's predilection for the theatrical
profession and to his fondness for the companionship of those who had
attained prominence in it. During his stay in Denver he had established
friendly, and in some instances intimate, relations with the star
actors who included that city in the circuit of their yearly
pilgrimages. The story of how he ingratiated himself into the good
graces of Christine Nilsson, at the expense of a rival newspaper, may
be of interest before taking a final farewell of the episodes connected
with his life in Colorado. When Madame Nilsson was journeying overland
in her special drawing-room car with Henry Abbey, Marcus Meyer, and
Charles Mathews, Field wrote to Omaha, anticipating their arrival
there, to make inquiry as to how the party employed the dull hours of
travel so as to interest the erratic prima donna. It was his intention
to prepare a newspaper sketch of the trip.
The reply was barren of incident, save a casual allusion to certain
sittings at the American game of poker, in which the Swedish songstress
had the advantage of the policy or the luck of her companions. Out of
this inch of cloth Field manufactured something better than the
proverbial ell of very interesting gossip. The reconstructed item
reached San Francisco as soon as Madame Nilsson, and was copied from
the Tribune into the coast papers on the eve of her opening concert.
Now, the madame thought that the American world looked askance at a
woman who gambled, and when the article was kindly brought to her
attention she flew into one of those rages which, report has said, were
the real tragedies of her life. When returning overland to Denver,
Abbey telegraphed ahead to Field, and he, with Cowen, went up to
Cheyenne to meet the party. On entering the drawing-room car the
visitors were hurried into Abbey's compartment with an air of
bewildering mystery, and were there informed in whispers that Madame
Nilsson was furious against the Tribune and would never forgive anybody
attached to it.
"Oh, I'll arrange that," said Field. "Don't announce us, but let us
call on the madame and be introduced."
After some further parley this was done, and this is how he was
greeted.
"Meestair Field--zee--T-r-ee-bune," Madame Nilsson exclaimed hotly. "I
prefair not zee acquaintance of your joor-nal."
"Excuse me, madam," persisted Field, blandly and with grave
earnestness, "I think from what Mr. Abbey has told us that you are bent
on doing the Tribune and its staff a great injustice. It was not the
Tribune that published the poker story that caused you so much just
annoyance. It was our rival, the Republican, a very disreputable
newspaper, which is edited by persons without the least instinct of
gentlemen and with no consideration for the feelings of a lady of your
refined sensibilities."
At this Madame Nilsson thawed visibly, and promptly appealed to Abbey,
Mathews, and Mayer to learn if she had been misinformed. They, of
course, fell in with Field's story, and upon being assured that she was
in error the madame's anger relaxed, and she was soon holding her sides
from laughter at Field's drolleries. The result was that the innocent
Republican staff could not get within speaking distance of Madame
Nilsson during her stay in Denver. The second night of her visit being
Christmas eve, the madame held her Christmas tree in the Windsor Hotel,
with Field acting the rôle of Santa Claus and the Tribune staff playing
the parts of good little boys, while their envious rivals of the
Republican were not invited to share in the crumbs that fell from that
Christmas supper-table.
"I have been a great theatre-goer," says Field in his "Auto-Analysis."
And it may be doubted if any writer of our time repaid the stage as
generously for the pleasure he received from those who walked its
boards before and behind the footlights. No better analysis of his
relations to the profession has been made than that from the pen of his
friend Cowen:
"At the very outset of his newspaper career," says he, "Field's
inclinations led him to the society of the green-room. Of western
critics and reviewers he was the first favorite among dramatic people.
Helpful, kind, and enthusiastic, he was rarely severe and never
captious. Though in no sense an analyst, he was an amusing reviewer
and a great advertiser. Once he conceived an attachment for an actor
or actress, his generous mind set about bringing such fortunate person
more conspicuously into public notice. Emma Abbott's baby, which she
never had, and of whose invented existence he wrote at least a bookful
of startling and funny adventures; Francis Wilson's legs; Sol Smith
Russell's Yankee yarns; Billy Crane's droll stories; Modjeska's spicy
witticisms--these and other jocular pufferies, quoted and read
everywhere with relish for years--were among his hobby-horse
performances begun at that time (1881) and continued long after he had
settled down in the must and rust of bibliomania."
For a long time not a week went by that Field did not invent some
marvellous tale respecting Emma Abbott, once the most popular
light-opera prima donna of the American stage--every yarn calculated
to widen the circle of her popularity. Upon an absolutely fictitious
autobiography of Miss Abbott he once exhausted the fertility of his
fancy in the form of a review,[1] which went the rounds of the press
and which, on her death, contributed many a sober paragraph to the
newspaper reviews of her life.
[1] Vide Appendix.
To the fame of another opera singer of those days he contributed, by
paragraphs of an entirely different flavor from those that extolled
the Puritan virtues and domestic felicities of Miss Abbott (Mrs.
Wetherell), as may be judged from the following "Love Plaint," written
shortly after he came to Chicago:
_The tiny birdlings in the tree
Their tuneful tales of love relate--
Alas, no lover comes to me--
I flock alone, without a mate.
Mine eyes are hot with bitter tears,
My soul disconsolately yearns--
But, ah, no wooing knight appears--
In vain my quenchless passion burns.
Unheeded are my glowing charms--
No heroes claim a moonlight tryst--
All empty are my hungry arms--
My virgin cheeks are all unkissed.
Oh, would some cavalier might haste
To crown me with his manly love,
And, with his arm about my waist,
Feed on my cherry lips above.
Alas, my blush and bloom will fade,
And I shall lose my dulcet notes--
Then I shall die an old, old maid,
And none will mourn Miss Alice Oates._
[Illustration: FRANCIS WILSON.]
Of his friendship with Francis Wilson there is no need to write here,
for is it not fully set forth in that charming little brochure, in
which Mr. Wilson gives to the world a characteristic sketch of the
Eugene Field and bibliomaniac he knew, and in whose work he was so
deeply interested? But Mr. Wilson does not tell how he was pursued and
plagued with the following genial invention which Field printed in his
column in 1884, and which still occasionally turns up in country
exchanges:
"Mr. Francis Wilson, the comedian, is a nephew of Père Hyacinthe, the
ancient divine. During his recent sojourn in Paris he was the père's
guest, and finally became deeply interested in the great work of reform
in which the famous preacher is engaged. His intimate acquaintances say
that Mr. Wilson is fully determined to retire from the stage at the
expiration of five years and devote himself to theological pursuits. He
gave Père Hyacinthe his promise to this effect, and his sincerity is
undoubted."
William Florence, the comedian, was an actor of whom, on and off the
stage, Field never wearied. Night after night would we go to see
"Billy," as he was familiarly and irreverently called, as Bardwell
Slote in the "Mighty Dollar," or as Captain Cuttle in "Dombey and Son."
Although originally an Irish comedian of rollicking and contagious
humor, Florence had played "Bardwell Slote" so constantly and for so
many years that his voice and manner in every-day life had the
ingratiating tone of that typical Washington lobbyist. Before his
death, while touring with Jefferson as Sir Lucius O'Trigger in "The
Rivals," he renewed his earlier triumphs in Irish character, but, even
here the accents of the oily Bardwell gave an additional touch of
blarney to his brogue.
One of the stories that Field delighted to tell of Florence dates back
to 1884, when Monseigneur Capel was in the United States. It related
with the circumspection of verity how Florence and the Monseigneur had
been friends for a number of years. Meeting on the street in Chicago,
the story ran, after a general conversation Florence asked Capel
whether he ever spent an evening at the theatre, intending, in case of
an affirmative reply, to invite him to one of his performances. Capel
shook his head. "No," said he, "it has been twenty-four years since I
attended a theatre, and I cannot conscientiously bring myself to
patronize a place where the devil is preached." Florence protested that
the monseigneur placed a false estimate on the theatrical profession.
"Ah, no," replied Capel, with a sad smile; "you people are sincere
enough; you don't know it, but you preach the devil all the same."
"Well, your grace," inquired Florence, with great urbanity, "which is
worse, preaching the devil from the stage without knowing it, or
preaching Christ crucified from the pulpit without believing it?"
"Both are reprehensible," replied Monseigneur Capel; and, bowing
stiffly, he went his way, while Florence shrugged his shoulders à la
his own fascinating creation of Jules Obenreizer in "No Thoroughfare,"
and walked off in the opposite direction, whistling to himself as he
walked.
Florence delighted in companionship and in the good things and good
stories of the table, whether at a noon breakfast which lasted well
through the afternoon or at the midnight supper which knew no hour for
breaking up, and he never came to Chicago that we did not accommodate
our convenience to his late hours for breakfast or supper. Nothing
short of a concealed stenographer could have done these gatherings
justice. Mr. Stone footed the bills, and Field, Florence, Edward J.
McPhelim of the Chicago Tribune, poet and dramatic critic, and three or
four others of the Daily News staff did the rest. The eating was good,
although the dishes were sometimes weird, the company was better, the
stories, anecdotes, reminiscences, songs, and flow of soul beyond
compare. Field, who ate sparingly and touched liquor not at all, unless
it was to pass a connoisseurs judgment upon some novel, strange, and
rare brand, divided the honors of the hour with the entire company.
In acknowledgment of such attentions, Florence always insisted that
before the close of his engagements we should all be his guests at a
regular Italian luncheon of spaghetti at Caproni's, down on Wabash
Avenue. It is needless to say that the spaghetti was merely the central
dish, around which revolved and was devoured every delicacy that
Florence had ever heard of in his Italian itinerary, the whole washed
down with strange wines from the same sunny land. Florence's fondness
for this sort of thing gave zest to a story Field told of his friend's
experience in London, in the summer of 1890. The epicurean actor had
made an excursion up the Thames with a select party of English clubmen.
Two days later Florence was still abed at Morley's, and, as he said,
contemplated staying there forever. Sir Morell Mackenzie was called to
see him. After sounding his lungs, listening to his heart, thumping his
chest and back, looking at his tongue, and testing his breath with
medicated paper, Sir Morell said:
"As near as I can get at it, you are a victim of misplaced confidence.
You have been training with the young bucks when you should have been
ploughing around with the old stags. You must quit it. Otherwise it
will do you up."
"Well now," said Florence, as related by Field, "that was the saddest
day of my life. Just think of shutting down on the boys, after being
one of them for sixty years! But Sir Morell told the truth. The
Garrick Club boys were terribly mad about it; they said Sir Morell was
a quack, and they adopted resolutions declaring a lack of confidence
in his medical skill. But my mind was made up. 'Billy,' says I to
myself, 'you must let up, you've made a record; it's a long one and an
honorable one. Now you must retire. Your life henceforth shall be
reminiscent and its declining years shall be hallowed by the refulgent
rays of retrospection.' To that resolution I have adhered steadily.
People tell me that I am as young as ever; but no, they can't fool me,
I know better."
[Illustration: WILLIAM J. FLORENCE.]
Whereupon, according to Field, "Joe" Jefferson broke in incredulously:
"Just to illustrate the folly of all that talk, I'll tell you what I
saw last night. When I returned to the hotel, after the play, I went
up to Billy's room and found Billy and the President of the
Philadelphia Catnip Club at supper. What do you suppose they had?
Stewed terrapin and frappéd champagne!"
"That's all right enough," exclaimed Mr. Florence. "Terrapin and
champagne never hurt anybody; I have had 'em all my life. What I
maintain is that people of my age should not and cannot indulge in
extravagance of diet. The utmost simplicity must be the rule of their
life. If Joe would only eat terrapin and drink champagne he wouldn't
be grunting around with dyspepsia all the time. He lives on boiled
mutton and graham bread, and the public call him 'the reverend veteran
Joseph Jefferson.' I stick to terrapin, green turtle, canvasbacks, and
the like, and every young chap in the land slaps me on the back, calls
me Billy, and regards me as a contemporary. But I ain't; I'm getting
old--not too old, but just old enough!"
A dozen years with the boys had done for Field's digestion what the
robust Florence was dreading after sixty, and to the day of his death,
Field, from the rigid practice of his self-denial, pitied and
sympathized with the unhappy wight who had received the warning given
to Florence, "You must quit training with the boys, otherwise it will
do you up." But he had no more obeyed the warning as to coffee and pie
than Florence did as to the injunction of Sir Morell against terrapin
and champagne.
[Illustration: COMMODORE CRANE.
_From a drawing by Eugene Field._]
Another "Billy," William H. Crane, was one of Field's favorites, and
the one with whose name he took the greatest liberties in his column
of "Sharps and Flats." His waggish mind found no end of humor in
creating a son for Mr. Crane, who was christened after his father's
stage partner, Stuart Robson Crane. This child of Field's sardonic
fancy was gifted with all the roguish attributes that are the delight
and despair of fond parents. Scarcely a month, sometimes hardly a
week, went by that Field did not print some yarn about the sayings or
doings of the obstreperous Stuart Robson Crane. Every anecdote that he
heard he adapted to the years and supposed circumstances of "Master
Crane." The close relations which existed between Field and the
Cranes--for he included Mrs. Crane within the inner circle of his
good-fellowship--may be judged from the following tribute:
_MRS. BILLY CRANE
A woman is a blessing, be she large or be she small,
Be she wee as any midget, or as any cypress tall:
And though I'm free to say I like all women folks the best,
I think I like the little women better than the rest--
And of all the little women I'm in love with I am fain
To sing the praises of the peerless Mrs. Billy Crane.
I met this charming lady--never mind how long ago--
In that prehistoric period I was reckoned quite a beau:
You'd never think it of me if you chanced to see me now,
With my shrunken shanks and dreary eyes and deeply furrowed brow;
But I was young and chipper when I joined that brisk campaign
At Utica to storm the heart of Mrs. Billy Crane.
We called her Ella in those days, as trim a little minx
As ever fascinated man with coquetries, methinks!
I saw her home from singing-school a million times I guess,
And purred around her domicile three winters, more or less,
And brought her lozenges and things--alas: 'twas all in vain--
She was predestined to become a Mrs. Billy Crane!
That Mr. Billy came in smart and handsome, I'll aver,
Yet, with all his brains and beauty, he's not good enough for her:
Now, though I'm somewhat homely and in gumption quite a dolt,
The quality of goodness is my best and strongest holt,
And as goodness is the only human thing that doesn't wane,
I wonder she preferred to wed with Mr. Billy Crane.
Yet heaven has blessed her all these years--she's just as blithe and gay
As when the belle of Utica, and she ain't grown old a day!
Her face is just as pretty and her eyes as bright as then--
Egad! their gracious magic makes me feel a boy again,
And still I court (as still I were a callow, York State swain)
With hecatombs of lozenges that Mrs. Billy Crane!
That she has heaps of faculty her husband can't deny--
Whenever he don't toe the mark she knows the reason why:
She handles all the moneys and receipts, which as a rule
She carries around upon her arm in a famous reticule,
And Billy seldom gets a cent unless he can explain
The wherefores and etceteras to Mrs. Billy Crane!
Yet O ye gracious actors! with uppers on your feet,
And O ye bankrupt critics! athirst for things to eat--
Did you ever leave her presence all unrequited when
In an hour of inspiration you struck her for a ten?
No! never yet an applicant there was did not obtain
A solace for his misery from Mrs. Billy Crane.
Dear little Lady-Ella! (let me call you that once more,
In memory of the happy days in Utica of yore)
If I could have the ordering of blessings here below,
I might keep some small share myself, but most of 'em should go
To you--yes, riches, happiness, and health should surely rain
Upon the temporal estate of Mrs. Billy Crane!
You're coming to Chicago in a week or two and then.
In honor of that grand event, I shall blossom out again
In a brand-new suit of checkered tweed and a low-cut satin vest
I shall be the gaudiest spectacle in all the gorgeous West!
And with a splendid coach and four I'll meet you at the train--
So don't forget the reticule, dear Mrs. Billy Crane!_
And he may doubt, who never knew this master torment, that Field
carried out his threat to appear at Crane's "first night" with that
low-cut satin vest and that speckled tweed suit, which did indeed make
him a gaudy spectacle. But his solemn face gave no sign that his mixed
apparel was making him the cynosure of all curious eyes.
Mr. Crane suffered from the same digestive troubles that confined
Florence to terrapin and champagne and Field to coffee and pies, and
so the state of his health was a constant source of paragraphic
sympathy in "Sharps and Flats." In such paragraphs the actor and
President Cleveland were often represented as fellow-fishermen at
Buzzard's Bay--Crane's summer home being at Cohasset. How they were
associated is illustrated in the following casual item:
Mr. William H. Crane, the actor, is looking unusually robust this
autumn. He seems to have recovered entirely from the malady which
made life a burden to him for several years. He thought there was
something the matter with his liver. Last July he put in a good share
of his time blue-fishing with Grover Cleveland. One day they ran out
of bait.
"Wonder if they'd bite at liver?" asked Crane.
"They love it," answered Cleveland.
So without further ado Crane out with his penknife, amputated his
liver, and minced it up for bait. He hasn't had a sick day since.
By way of introduction to a few words respecting the close, quizzical,
and always sincere friendship that existed between Field and Helena
Modjeska, the following invention of March 29th, 1884, may serve to
indicate the blithesome spirit with which he tortured facts when
racketting around for something to add to the bewilderment of his
readers and his own relaxation:
A letter from Mr. William H. Crane imparts some interesting gossip
touching the Cincinnati dramatic festival. It says that an agreeable
surprise awaits the patrons of the festival in an interchange of
parts between Madame Modjeska and Mr. Stuart Robson, the comedian;
that is to say, Modjeska will take Mr. Robson's place in the "Two
Dromios," and Robson will take Madame Modjeska's place in the great
emotional play of "Camille." It is well known that Modjeska has a
penchant for masculine rôles, and her success as Rosalind and Viola
leaves no room for doubt that she will give great satisfaction in the
"Comedy of Errors." Mr. Robson has never liked female rôles, but his
falsetto voice, his slender figure, his smooth, rosy face, and his
graceful, effeminate manners qualify him to a remarkable degree for
the impersonation of feminine characters. Moreover, his long
residence in Paris has given him a thorough appreciation and
elaborate knowledge of those characteristics, which must be
understood ere one can delineate and portray the subtleties of
Camille as they should be given. Those who anticipate a farcical
treatment of Dumas's creation at Mr. Robson's hands will be most
wofully surprised when they come to witness and hear his artistic
presentation of the most remarkable of emotional rôles.
[Illustration: MODJESKA.]
Elsewhere I have referred to the roguish pleasure Field took in
ascribing the authorship of "The Wanderer" to Helena Modjeska. That
was before he came to Chicago, and seemed to be the overture to a
friendship that continued to exchange its favors and tokens of
affection to the close of his life. The doings of the Madame and Count
Bozenta, her always vivacious and enjoyable husband, were perennial
subjects for Field's kindliest paragraphs. As he says, he was a great
theatre-goer, but Field became a constant one when "Modjesky" came to
town. Her Camille--a character in which she was not excelled by the
great Bernhardt herself--had a remarkable vogue in the early eighties.
She imparted to its impersonation the subtle charm of her own sweet
womanliness, which served to excuse Armand's infatuation and as far as
possible lifted the play out of its unwholesome atmosphere of French
immorality to the plane of romantic devotion and self-sacrifice. Her
Camille seemed a victim of remorseless destiny, a pure soul struggling
amid inexorable circumstances that racked and cajoled a diseased and
suffering body into the maelstrom of sin.
Field was so constituted that, without this saving grace of womanliness,
the presentation of Camille, with all its hectic surroundings, would
have repelled him. He did not care to see Mademoiselle Bernhardt a
second time in the rôle, and he fled from the powerful and fascinating
portrayal of pulmonary emotion which initiated the audiences of Clara
Morris into the terrors of tubercular disease. Night after night, when
Modjeska played Camille, Field would occupy a front seat or a box.
When so seated that his presence could not be overlooked from the
stage, he was wont to divert Camille from her woes with the by-play of
his mobile features. Wherever he sat, his large, white, solemn visage
had a fascination for Madame Modjeska, and from the time she caught
sight of it until Camille settled back lifeless in the final scene, she
played "at him." He repaid this tribute by distorting his face in agony
when Camille was light-hearted, and by breaking into noiseless
merriment as her woes were causing handkerchiefs to flutter throughout
the audience. When we went to visit her next day, as we often did, she
scarcely ever failed to reproach him in some such fashion as: "Ah,
Meester Fielt, why will you seet in the box and talk with your overcoat
on the chair to make Camille laugh who is dying on the stage? Ah,
Meester Fielt, you are a very bad man, but I lof you, don't we,
Charlie?" And the count always stopped rolling a cigarette long enough
to acknowledge that Field was their dearest friend and that they both
loved him, no matter what he did. Next to his wife, the count was
devoted to politics, which he discusses with all the warmth and
gesticulations of a Frenchman and the intelligence of a Polish-American
patriot.
[Illustration: FIELD WITNESSING MODJESKA AS CAMILLE.
_From a drawing by Eugene Field._]
If there were any other visitors present, Modjeska always insisted on
Field's giving his imitation of herself in Camille, in which he
rendered her lines with exaggerated theatrical sentiment and with the
broken-English accent, such as Modjeska permitted herself in the
freedom of private life. She would give him Armand's cues for
particular speeches and his impassioned "Armo, I lof, I lof you!"
never failed to convulse her, while his pulmonary cough was so deep
and sepulchral that it rang through the hotel corridors, making other
guests think that Modjeska herself was in the last stages of a disease
she simulated unto death nightly. After Field had added colored inks
to his stock in trade, these fits of coughing were succeeded by a
handkerchief act, in which the dying Camille appeared to spit blood in
carmine splotches. No burlesque that I have seen of a play frequently
burlesqued ever approached the side-splitting absurdity of these
rehearsals for the benefit of the heroine of "Modjesky as Cameel."
_An', while Modjesky stated we wuz somewhat off our base,
I half opined she liked it by the look upon her face,
I rekollect that Hoover regretted he done wrong
In throwin' that there actor through a vista ten miles long._
When Field went to California in search of health, in the winter of
1893-94, Madame Modjeska placed her ranch, located ten miles from the
railway, half-way between San Diego and Los Angeles, at his disposal.
The ranch contained about a thousand acres, and he was given carte
blanche to treat it as his own during his stay--a privilege he would
have hastened to invite all his friends to share had his health been
equal to the opportunity to indulge in merry-making.
[Illustration: TWO PROFILES OF EUGENE FIELD.
_The upper one drawn in pencil by Field himself; the lower one by
Modjeska. Reproduced from a fly-leaf of Mrs. Thompson's volume of
autograph verse._]
At a breakfast given to Modjeska at Kinsley's, April 22d, 1886, Field
read the following poem in honor of the guest:
_TO HELENA MODJESKA
In thy sweet self, dear lady guest, we find
Juliet's dark face, Viola's gentle mien,
The dignity of Scotland's martyr'd queen--
The beauty and the wit of Rosalind.
What wonder, then, that we who mop our eyes
And sob and gush when we should criticise--
Charmed by the graces of your mien and mind--
What wonder we should hasten to proclaim
The art that has secured thy deathless fame?
And this we swear: We will endorse no name
But thine alone to old Melpomene,
Nor will revolve, since rising sons are we,
Round any orb, save, dear Modjeska, thee
Who art our Pole star, and will ever be._
As originally written by Field, the rhymes in the first four lines of
this tribute fell alternately, the lines being transposed so that they
ran in order first, third, fourth, and second of the poem as it
appears above. For the fifth and sixth lines of his first version
Field wrote:
_What wonder, then, that we who mop our eyes
When we are hired to rail and criticise?_
It is a question the reader can decide for himself whether his second
thought was an improvement. His original intention contemplated a
longer poem, but after he had written a fourteenth line that read:
_The radiant Pole star of the mimic stage--_
Field concluded to wind it up with the fourteenth line, as in the
finished version.
Upon the back of the original manuscript of these lines to Madame
Modjeska I find this Sapphic fragment under the line--suggestive of
its subject, "The Things of Life":
_A little sour, a little sweet,
Fill out our brief and human hour,
meet_
He never filled out the blank or gave a clue as to what further
reflections on the springs of life were in his mind.
I never knew Field to be as infatuated with any stage production as
with the first performance of the pirated edition of "The Mikado" in
Chicago, in the summer of 1885. The cast was indeed a memorable one,
including Roland Reed as Koko, Alice Harrison as Yum-Yum, Belle Archer
as Pitti-Sing, Frederick Archer as Pooh-Bah, George Broderick as the
Mikado, and Mrs. Broderick as Katisha. The Brodericks had rich
church-choir voices, Belle Archer was a beauty of that fresh, innocent
type that did one's eyes good simply to look upon, and she was just
emerging into a career that grew in popularity until her untimely
death. Archer was a stilted English comedian who seemed built to be
"insulted" as Pooh-Bah, while Roland Reed and Miss Harrison were two
comedians of the first rank. As a singing soubrette, daring,
versatile, and popular, Miss Harrison had no superiors in her day. The
entire company was saturated with the spirit and "go" of Gilbert, and
fairly tingled with the joyous music of Sullivan. The fact that the
production was of a pirated version, untrammelled by the oversight of
D'Oyley Carte, added zest to the performance and enlisted Field's
partisan sympathy and co-operation from the start. He enjoyed each
night's performance with all the relish of a boy eating the apples of
pleasure from a forbidden orchard. When the season came to an end, as
all good things must, Field, Ballantyne, and I went to Milwaukee to
see that our friends had a fair start there. We got back to Chicago on
the early morning milk train, and in "Sharps and Flats" the next day
Field recorded the definitive judgment that "Miss Alice Harrison, in
her performance of Yum-Yum in Gilbert and Sullivan's new opera of 'The
Mikado,' has set the standard of that interesting rôle, and it is a
high one. In fact, we doubt whether it will ever be approached by any
other artist on the American stage."
It never has been approached, nor has the opera, so far as my
information goes, ever been given with the same Gilbertian verve and
swing. The subsequent performance of "The Mikado" by the authorized
company, seen throughout the United States, seemed by comparison "like
water after wine."
On the operatic stage Madame Sembrich was by all odds Field's favorite
prima donna. He was one of the earliest writers on the press to
recognize the wonderful beauty of the singer's voice and the
perfection of her method. He easily distinguished between her trained
faculty and the bird-like notes of Patti, but the personality of the
former won him, where he remained unmoved when Patti's wonderful voice
rippled through the most difficult, florid music like crystal running
water over the smooth stones of a mountain brook. Field's admiration
for Sembrich often found expression in more conventional phrases, but
never in a form that better illustrated how she attracted him than in
the following amusing comment on her appearance in Chicago, January
24th, 1884, in Lucia:
It is not at all surprising that Madame Sembrich caught on so grandly
night before last. She is the most comfortable-looking prima donna
that has ever visited Chicago. She is one of your square-built,
stout-rigged little ladies with a bright, honest face and bouncing
manners. Her arms are long but shapely, and in the last act of Lucia
her luxurious black hair tumbles down and envelopes her like a
mosquito net. Her audience night before last was a coldly critical
one, of course, and it sat like a bump on a log until Sembrich made
her appearance in the mad scene, where Lucheer gives her vocal circus
in the presence of twenty-five Scotch ladies in red, white, and green
dresses, and twenty-five supposititious Scotch gentlemen in costumes
of the Court of Louis XIV. Instead of sending for a doctor to assist
Lucheer in her trouble, these fantastically attired ladies and
gentlemen stand around and look dreary while Lucheer does ground and
lofty tumbling, and executes pirouettes and trapeze performances in
the vocal art.
Then the audience began to wake up. The comfortable-looking little
prima donna gathered herself together and let loose the cyclone of
her genius and accomplishments. It was a whirlwind of appoggiaturas,
semi-quavers, accenturas, rinforzandos, moderatos, prestos, trills,
sforzandos, fortes, rallentandos, supertonics, salterellos, sonatas,
ensembles, pianissimos, staccatos, accellerandos, quasi-innocents,
cadenzas, symphones, cavatinas, arias, counter-points, fiorituras,
tonics, sub-medicants, allegrissimos, chromatics, concertos,
andantes, études, larghettos, adagios, and every variety of turilural
and dingus known to the minstrel art. The audience was paralyzed.
When she finally struck up high F sharp in the descending fourth of D
in alt, one gentleman from the South Side who had hired a dress-coat
for the occasion broke forth in a hearty "Brava!" This encouraged a
resident of the North Side to shout "Bravissimo," and then several
dudes from the Blue Island district raised the cry of "Bong," "Tray
beang," and "Brava!"
The applause became universal--it spread like wild-fire. The vast
audience seemed crazed with delight and enthusiasm. And it argues
volumes for the culture of our enterprising and fair city that not
one word of English was heard among the encouraging and approving
shouts that were hurled at the smiling prima donna. Even the pork
merchants and the grain dealers in the family circle vied with each
other in hoarsely wafting Italian words of cheer at the triumphant
Sembrich. French was hardly good enough, although it was utilized by
a few large manufacturers and butterine merchants who sat in the
parquet, and one man was put out by the ushers because he so far
forgot himself and the éclat of the occasion as to shout in vehement
German: "Mein Gott in himmel--das ist ver tampt goot!" It was an
ovation, but it was no more than Sembrich deserved--bless her fat
little buttons!
Remember, this was nearly twenty years ago. It argues much for the
saneness of Field's enthusiasm, as well as for the perfection of
Madame Sembrich's methods, that she is still able to arouse a like
enthusiasm in audiences where true dramatic instinct and high vocal
art are valued as the rarest combination on the operatic stage.
Two manuscript poems in my scrap-book testify that another songster,
early in Field's Chicago life, enjoyed his friendship and inspired his
pen along a line it was to travel many a tuneful metre. The first,
with frequent erasures and interlineations, bears date May 25th, 1894,
and was inscribed, "To Mrs. Will J. Davis." It runs as follows:
_A HUSHABY SONG
The stars are twinkling in the skies,
The earth is lost in slumber deep--
So hush, my sweet, and close your eyes
And let me lull your soul to sleep;
Compose thy dimpled hands to rest,
And like a little birdling lie
Secure within thy cosy nest
Upon my mother breast
And slumber to my lullaby;
So hushaby, oh, hushaby.
The moon is singing to the star
The little song I sing to you,
The father Sun has strayed afar--
As baby's sire is straying, too,
And so the loving mother moon
Sings to the little star on high,
And as she sings, her gentle tune
Is borne to me, and thus I croon
To thee, my sweet, that lullaby
Of hushaby, oh, hushaby.
There is a little one asleep
That does not hear his mother's song,
But angel-watchers as I weep
Surround his grave the night-tide long;
And as I sing, my sweet, to you,
Oh, would the lullaby I sing--
The same sweet lullaby he knew
When slumbering on this bosom, too--
Were borne to him on angel wing!
So hushaby, oh, hushaby._
The second of these songs bears the same title as one of Field's
favorite tales, and is inscribed, "To Jessie Bartlett Davis on the
first anniversary of her little boy's birth, October 6th, 1884":
_THE SINGER MOTHER
A Singer sang a glorious song
So grandly clear and subtly sweet,
That, with huzzas, the listening throng
Cast down their tributes at her feet.
The Singer heard their shouts the while,
But her serene and haughty face
Was lighted by no flattered smile
Provoked by homage in that place.
The Singer sang that night again
In mother tones, tender and deep,
Not to the public ear, but when
She rocked her little one to sleep.
The song we bless through all the years
As memory's holiest, sweetest thing,
Instinct with pathos and with tears--
The song that mothers always sing.
So tuneful was the lullaby
The mother sang, her little child
Cooed, oh! so sweetly in reply,
Stretched forth its dimpled hands and smiled.
The Singer crooning there above
The cradle where her darling lay
Snatched to her breast her smiling love
And sang his soul to dreams away.
Oh, mother-love, that knows no guile,
That's deaf to flatt'ry, blind to art,
A dimpled hand hath wooed thy smile--
A baby's cooing touched thy heart._
[Illustration: JESSIE BARTLETT DAVIS.]
Lest my readers should conclude from these early specimens of Field's
fondness for lilting lullabies that the gentler sex and "mother love"
blinded him to the manly attractions and true worth of his own sex,
let the following never-to-be-forgotten ode to the waistcoat of the
papa of the hero of the two preceding songs bear witness. Mr. Davis
has been a manager of first-class theatres and theatrical companies
for a score of years, and there are thousands to testify that in the
rhymes that follow Field has done no more than justice to the amazing
"confections" in wearing apparel he affected in the days when we were
boys together:
_Of waistcoats there are divers kinds, from those severely chaste
To those with fiery colors dight or with fair figures traced:
Those that high as liver-pads and chest-protectors serve,
While others proudly sweep away in a substomachic curve,
But the grandest thing in waistcoats in the streets in this great
and wondrous west
Is that which folks are wont to call the Will J. Davis vest!
This paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high
But just enough of both to show a bright imported tie:
Bound neatly with the choicest silks its lappets wave-like roll,
While a watch-chain dangles sprucely from the proper buttonhole
And a certain sensuous languor is ineffably expressed
In the contour and the mise en scene of the Will J. Davis vest.
Its texture is of softest silk: Its colors, ah, how vain
The task to name the splendid hues that in that vest obtain!
Go, view the rainbow and recount the glories of the sight
And number all the radiances that in its glow unite,
And then, when they are counted, with pride be it confessed
They're nil beside the splendor of the Will J. Davis vest.
Sometimes the gorgeous pattern is a sportive pumpkin vine,
At other times the lily and the ivy intertwine:
And then again the ground is white with purple polka dots
Or else a dainty lavender with red congestive spots--
In short, there is no color, hue, or shade you could suggest
That doesn't in due time occur in a Will J. Davis vest.
Now William is not handsome--he's told he's just like me.
And in one respect I think he is, for he's as good as good can be!
Yet, while I find my chances with the girls are precious slim,
The women-folks go wildly galivanting after him:
And after serious study of the problem I have guessed
That the secret of this frenzy is the Will J. Davis vest.
I've stood in Colorado and looked on peaks of snow
While prisoned torrents made their moan two thousand feet below:
The Simplon pass and prodigies Vesuvian have I done,
And gazed in rock-bound Norway upon the midnight sun--
Yet at no time such wonderment, such transports filled my breast
As when I fixed my orbs upon a Will J. Davis vest.
All vainly have I hunted this worldly sphere around
For a waistcoat like that waistcoat, but that waistcoat can't be found!
The Frenchman shrugs his shoulders and the German answers "nein,"
When I try the haberdasheries on the Seine and on the Rhine,
And the truckling British tradesman having trotted out his best
Is forced to own he can't compete with the Will J. Davis vest.
But better yet, Dear William, than this garb of which I sing
Is a gift which God has given you, and that's a priceless thing.
What stuff we mortals spin and weave, though pleasing to the eye,
Doth presently corrupt, to be forgotten by and by.
One thing, and one alone, survives old time's remorseless test--
The valor of a heart like that which beats beneath that vest!_
Playgoers of these by-gone days will remember the name of Kate Claxton
with varying degrees of pleasure. She was an actress of what was then
known as the Union Square Theatre type--a type that preceded the
Augustin Daly school and was strong in emotional rôles. With the late
Charles H. Thorne, Jr., at its head, it gave such plays as "The
Banker's Daughter," "The Two Orphans," "The Celebrated Case," and "The
Danicheffs," their great popular vogue. Miss Claxton was what is known
as the leading juvenile lady in the Union Square Company, and her
Louise, the blind sister, to Miss Sara Jewett's Henrietta in "The Two
Orphans," won for her a national reputation. She was endowed by nature
with a superb shock of dark red hair, over which a Titian might have
raved. This was very effective when flowing loose about the bare
shoulders of the blind orphan, but afterward, when Miss Claxton went
starring over the country and had the misfortune to have several
narrow escapes from fire, the newspaper wits of the day could not
resist the inclination to ascribe a certain incendiarism to her hair,
and also to her art. And Field, who was on terms of personal
friendship with Miss Claxton, led the cry with the following:
BIOGRAPHY OF KATE CLAXTON
This famous conflagration broke out on May 3d, 1846, and has been
raging with more or less violence ever since. She comes of a famous
family, being a lineal descendant of the furnace mentioned in
scriptural history as having been heated seven times hotter than it
could be heated, in honor of the tripartite alliance of Shadrach,
Meshach, and Abed-nego. One of her most illustrious ancestors
performed in Rome on the occasion of the Emperor Nero's famous violin
obligato, and subsequently appeared in London when a large part of
that large metropolis succumbed to the fiery element. This artist is
known and respected in every community where there is a fire
department, and the lurid flames of her genius, the burning eloquence
of her elocution, and the calorific glow of her consummate art have
acquired her fame, wherever the enterprising insurance agent has
penetrated. Mrs. O'Leary's cow vainly sought to rob her of much of
her glory, but through the fiery ordeal of jealousy, envy, and
persecution, has our heroine passed, till, from an incipient blaze,
she has swelled into the most magnificent holocaust the world has
ever known. And it is not alone in her profession that this gifted
adustion has amazed and benefited an incinerated public: to her the
world is indebted for the many fire-escapes, life-preservers,
salamander safes, improved pompier ladders, play-house exits,
standpipes, and Babcock extinguishers of modern times. In paying
ardent homage, therefore, to this incandescent crematory this week,
let us recognize her not only as the reigning queen of ignition,
diathermancy, and transcalency, but also as the promoter of many of
the ingenious and philanthropic boons the public now enjoys.
This was written in November, 1883, and is worthy of remark as an
illustration of how in that day Field began deliberately to multiply
words, each having a slight difference of meaning, as an exercise in
the use of English--a practice that eventually gave him a vocabulary
of almost unlimited range and marvellous accuracy.
The patience of the reader forbids that I should attempt an enumeration
of all Field's friendships with stage folk, or of the unending flow of
good-natured raillery and sympathetic comment that kept his favorites
among them ever before the public eye. When it came Field's time, all
untimely, to pay the debt we all must pay, it was left for Sir Henry
Irving, the dean of the English-speaking profession, to acknowledge in
a brief telegram his own and its debt to the departed poet and
paragrapher in these words:
The death of Eugene Field is a loss not only to his many friends, but
to the world at large. He was distinctly a man of genius, and he was
dowered with a nature whose sweetness endeared him to all who knew
him. To me he was a loved and honored friend, and the world seems
vastly the poorer without him.
Of what singular materials and contradictory natures was their
friendship compact. From the day Henry Irving first landed in New York
until Field's pen was laid aside forever the actor's physical
peculiarities and vocal idiosyncrasies were the constant theme of
diverting skits and life-like vocal mimicry. Field, however, always
managed to mingle his references to Mr. Irving's unmatched legs and
eccentric elocution with some genuine and unexpected tribute to his
personal character and histrionic genius. Nat Goodwin and Henry Dixey
were the two comedians whose imitations of Mr. Irving's peculiarities
of voice and manner were most widely accepted as lifelike, while
intensely amusing. But neither of them could approach Field in
catching the subtile inflection of Henry Irving's "Naw! Naw!" and
"Ah-h! Ah-h!" with which the great actor prefixed so many of his
lines. With a daring that would have been impertinent in another,
Field gave imitations of Mr. Irving in Louis XI and Hamlet in his
presence and to his intense enjoyment. It is a pity, however, that Sir
Henry could not have been behind the screen some night at Billy
Boyle's to hear Field and Dixey in a rivalry of imitations of himself
in his favorite rôles. Dixey was the more amusing, because he did and
said things in the Irvingesque manner which the original would not
have dreamed of doing, whereas Field contented himself with mimicking
his voice and gesture to life.
When Irving reached Chicago, Field and I, with the connivance of Mr.
Stone, lured him into a newspaper controversy over his conception and
impersonation of Hamlet, which ended in an exchange of midnight
suppers and won for me the sobriquet of "Slaughter Thompson" from
Mistress Ellen Terry, who enjoyed the splintering of lances where all
acknowledged her the queen of the lists.
I have reserved for latest mention the one actor who throughout
Field's life was always dearest to his heart. Apart, they seemed
singularly alike; together, the similarities of Eugene Field and Sol
Smith Russell were overshadowed by their differences. There was a
certain resemblance of outline in the general lines of their faces and
figures. Both were clean-shaven men, with physiognomies that responded
to the passing thought of each, with this difference--Field's facial
muscles seemed to act in obedience to his will, while Russell's
appeared to break into whimsical lines involuntarily. Russell has a
smile that would win its way around the world. Field could contort his
face into a thunder-cloud which could send children almost into
convulsions of fear. There was one story which they both recited with
invariable success, that gave their friends a great chance to compare
their respective powers of facial expression. It was of a green New
England farmer who visited Boston, and of course climbed up four
flights of stairs to a skylight "studio" to have his "daguerotype
took." After the artist had succeeded in getting his subject in as
stiff and uncomfortable position as possible, after cautioning him not
to move, he disappeared into his ill-smelling cabinet to prepare the
plate. When this was ready he stepped airily out to the camera and
bade his victim "look pleasant." Failing to get the impossible
response the artist bade his sitter to smile. Then the old farmer with
a wrathful and torture-riven contortion of his mouth ejaculated, "I am
smiling!"
In rendering this, "I am smiling!" there was the misery of pent-up
mental woe and physical agony in Russell's voice and face. There was
something ludicrously hopeless about the attempt, as Russell's face
mingled the lines of mirth and despair in a querulous grin that seemed
to say, "For heaven's sake, man, don't you see that I am laughing
myself to death?" Field's "I am smiling!" was almost demoniacal in its
mixture of wrath, vindictiveness, and impatience. There was the snarl
of a big animal about the grin with which he exposed his teeth in the
mockery of mirth. His whole countenance glowered at the invisible
artist in lines of suppressed rage, that seemed to bid him cut short
the exposure or forfeit his life.
All Field's most successful bits of mimicry and stories were learned
from Sol Smith Russell, and very many of the latter's most successful
recitations were written for him by Field. They talked them over
together, compared their versions and methods, and stimulated each
other to fresh feats of mimicry and eccentric character delineation.
Many a night, and oft after midnight, in the rotunda of the Tremont
House, when John A. Rice of bibliomaniac fame, was its lessee, I was
the sole paying auditor of these séances, the balance of the audience
consisting of the head night clerk, night watchman, and "scrub
ladies."
[Illustration: SOL SMITH RUSSELL.]
It may be recalled that Field's "Our Two Opinions" written in imitation
of James Whitcomb Riley's most successful manner, was dedicated to Sol
Smith Russell, and he for his part put into its recitation a subdued
dramatic force and pathos that won from Henry Irving the comment that
it was the greatest piece of American characterization he had ever
witnessed.
Whenever Russell came to town Field spent all the time he could spare,
when Russell was not acting or asleep, in his company. They exchanged
all sorts of stories, but delighted chiefly in relating anecdotes of
New England life and character. As Russell had for years travelled the
circuit of small eastern towns, he had an exhaustless repertory of
these, that smacked of salt codfish and chewing-gum, checkerberry
lozenges, and that shrewd, dry Yankee wit that is equal to any
situation. Between the two of them they perfected two stories that have
been heard in every town in the Union where Russell has played or Field
read, "The Teacher of Ettyket" and "The Old Deacon and the New Skule
House." These were originally Russell's property, and he was inimitable
in telling them. But having once caught Field's fancy, he proceeded to
elaborate them in a way to establish at least a joint ownership in
them.
I wish I could remember the speech against the new school-house. It may
be in print for ought I know, but I have never run across it. He opened
with the declaration, "Fellow Citizens, I'm agin this yer new skule
house." Then he went on to say that "the little old red skule house was
good enuff fur them as cum afore us, it was good enuff fur us, an' I
reckon its good enuff fur them as cum arter us." Before proceeding he
would take a generous mouthful of loose tobacco. Next he told how he
had never been to school more than a few weeks "atween seasons, and yet
I reckon I kin mow my swarth with the best of them that's full of
book-larnin an' all them sort of jim-cracks." Then he proceeded to
illustrate the uselessness of "book-larnin" by referring to "Dan'l
Webster, good likely a boy ez wus raised in these parts, what's bekum
ov him? Got his head full of redin, ritin, cifern, and book-larnin.
What's bekum of him, I say? Went off to Boston and I never hearn tell
of him arterwards."
Russell's version of the story ended here with an emphatic declaration
that the old deacon voted "No!" Field, on the contrary, when the laugh
over Daniel Webster's disappearance subsided, and, seemingly as an
after-thought, before taking his seat mumbled out, "By the way, I did
hear somebody tell Dan'l had written a dictionary on a bridge, huh!"
Field's attentions to Russell did not end with their personal
association. Week after week and month after month he sent apocryphal
stories flying through the newspapers about wonderful things that never
happened to Sol and his family. At one time he had Russell on the high
road to a Presidential nomination on the Prohibition ticket. He
solemnly recorded generous donations that Russell was (not) constantly
making to philanthropic objects, with the result that the gentle
comedian was pestered with applications for money for all sorts of
institutions. In order to provide Russell with the means to bestow
unlimited largess, Field endowed him with the touch of Midas. He would
report that the matchless exponent of "Shabby Genteel" bought lead
mines, to be disappointed by finding tons of virgin gold in the quartz.
Like Bret Harte's hero of Downs Flat, when Russell dug for water his
luck was so contrary that he struck diamonds. When he ordered oysters
each half shell had its bed of pearls. One specimen will do to
illustrate the character of the gifts Field bestowed on Russell "as
from an exhaustless urn":
Sol Smith Russell's luck is almost as great as his art. Last week his
little son Bob was digging in the back yard of the family residence
in Minneapolis, and he developed a vein of coal big enough to supply
the whole state of Minnesota with fuel for the next ten years. Mr.
Russell was away from home at the time, but his wife (who has plenty
of what the Yankees call faculty) had presence of mind not to say
anything about the "Find" until, through her attorney, she had
secured an option on all the real estate in the locality.
They never had any differences of opinion like "me 'nd Jim."
_So after all it's soothin' to know
That here Sol stays 'nd yonder's Jim--
He havin' his opinyin uv Sol,
'Nd Sol havin' his opinyin uv him._