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Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions, Volumes 1 and 2, a non-fiction book by Slason Thompson |
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Volume 1 - Chapter 8. Early Experiences In Journalism |
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_ VOLUME I CHAPTER VIII. 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: We welcome thee, eventful morn Let those who know not wedded joy Then strike, O bards, your tuneful lyres, 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: The turtles drum in the pulseless bay, Two lovers stroll in the glinting gloam-- Down by the little wicket-gate, Let crickets creak and bull-frogs boom, 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. 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: 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 cafe 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 Ambrosianae." 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: 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." (In English Equivalent.) A little pear in a garden grue One da, going that garden thro' Up at the pear a klub tha thrue Tom took a bite and Sue took one too Under the turf fare the daisies grue But as to the pear of emerald 'ue |
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