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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 13. Relations With Stage Folk |
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_ VOLUME I CHAPTER XIII. 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 role 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: Mine eyes are hot with bitter tears, Unheeded are my glowing charms-- Oh, would some cavalier might haste Alas, my blush and bloom will fade, 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 Pere Hyacinthe, the ancient divine. During his recent sojourn in Paris he was the pere'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 Pere 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 a 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." 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 frapped 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. 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: A woman is a blessing, be she large or be she small, I met this charming lady--never mind how long ago-- We called her Ella in those days, as trim a little minx That Mr. Billy came in smart and handsome, I'll aver, Yet heaven has blessed her all these years--she's just as blithe and gay That she has heaps of faculty her husband can't deny-- Yet O ye gracious actors! with uppers on your feet, Dear little Lady-Ella! (let me call you that once more, You're coming to Chicago in a week or two and then.
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. 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 roles, 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 roles, 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 roles. 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 role, 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. 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."
At a breakfast given to Modjeska at Kinsley's, April 22d, 1886, Field read the following poem in honor of the guest: In thy sweet self, dear lady guest, we find Charmed by the graces of your mien and mind-- 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:
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": 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 role, 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. 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: The stars are twinkling in the skies, The moon is singing to the star There is a little one asleep
A Singer sang a glorious song The Singer heard their shouts the while, The Singer sang that night again The song we bless through all the years So tuneful was the lullaby The Singer crooning there above Oh, mother-love, that knows no guile, 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: This paragon of comeliness is cut nor low nor high Its texture is of softest silk: Its colors, ah, how vain Sometimes the gorgeous pattern is a sportive pumpkin vine, Now William is not handsome--he's told he's just like me. I've stood in Colorado and looked on peaks of snow All vainly have I hunted this worldly sphere around But better yet, Dear William, than this garb of which I sing
BIOGRAPHY OF KATE CLAXTON 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 roles. 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 seances, the balance of the audience consisting of the head night clerk, night watchman, and "scrub ladies." 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." |
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