A Study in Heredity and Contradictions. Slason Thompson
it to its source through persistent letters written to himself in his "Sharps and Flats" column in the Chicago Record.
The glad wild days of which Mr. Buskett testifies were passed in St. Louis after Field's return from a brief experience as city editor of the St. Joseph Gazette in 1875–76. The time is fixed by the presence of "Trotty" in the gypsy circle, who was the best bit of news he "managed to acquire" in the days whereof he wrote:
Oh, many a peck of apples and of peaches did I get
When I helped 'em run the local on the "St. Jo Gazette."
Judge Henry W. Burke, of St. Joseph, is authority for this story of the time when he was associated with Field on the Gazette: Burke had been sent out to report a "swell society event" in the eastern part of the city. Nearly all the prominent people of St. Joseph were present and the names of all were published. Burke's story of the affair was a column long, and after it was written Field got hold of the copy and at the end of the list of those present added, "and last but not least the handsome and talented society editor of the Gazette, H.W. Burke." The feelings of the young reporter and embryo judge may be imagined.
But a few months of "whooping up locals on the St. Jo Gazette" were enough for Eugene, who pined for the broader field and more congenial associations of St. Louis. Thither he returned in the spring of 1876, and the Evening Journal, being by this time consolidated with the Times, he became an editorial writer and paragrapher on the hyphenated publication. He also resumed the eccentric semi-bohemian life which Mr. Buskett has rather suggested than described. He had little or no business ability, had no use for money except to spend it, and therefore early adopted the plan of leaving to Mrs. Field the management of their household expenditures. To her, then, as throughout his life, was paid his weekly stipend—often depleted by the drafts for the "usual V" or the "necessary X" which he was wont to draw in advance from the cashier almost every week.
Before the newspaper cashier had risen as a life-saving station on the horizon of Eugene Field's constant impecuniosity, his father's executor, Mr. Gray, had been the object of his intermittent appeals for funds to meet pressing needs. The means he invented to wheedle the generous, but methodical, executor out of these appropriations afforded Field more genuine pleasure than the success that attended them. The coin they yielded passed through his fingers like water through a sieve, but the enjoyment of his happy schemes abided in his memory and also in that of his constant friend always. One of Field's most effective methods of securing an advance from Mr. Gray was the threat of going on the stage under the assumed name of Melvin L. Gray. On one occasion Field approached him for money for living expenses, and being met with what appeared to be an unrelenting negative, coolly said: "Very well, if you cannot advance it to me out of the estate I shall be compelled to go on the stage. But as I cannot keep my own name I have decided to assume yours, and shall have lithographs struck off at once. They will read, 'To-night, M.L. Gray, Banjo and Specialty Artist.'" It is needless to say that the much-needed funds were found. But whether they went to the payment of living expenses, to the importunity of some threatening creditor, or were divided between the joys of the bibliomaniac and the bon vivant, Field in his most confiding humor never disclosed to me.
But this I know, that one of these always respectful, if apparently threatening, appeals to Mr. Gray, was the basis for one of the few newspaper attacks on Eugene Field that he resented deeply. Some time after he had left St. Louis and was engaged on the Denver Tribune, the Spectator, a weekly paper of the former city, contained the following gossip regarding him which was written in a thoughtless rather than an intentionally inimical spirit:
One of the cleverest young journalists of this city, a few years ago, was Mr. Eugene Field, whose charming short poems and witty paragraphs still occasionally find their way into our paper from Denver, where he is now located. Mr. Field was the happy possessor of one of those sunny dispositions which is thoroughly antagonistic to trouble of every description; he absolutely refused to entertain the black demon under any pretext whatever, and after spending a small fortune with the easy grace of a prince, he settled down to doing without one with equal grace and nonchalance, in a manner more creditable to himself than satisfying to his creditors. Did his hatter or tailor present an untimely bill, the gay debonnaire Eugene would scribble on the back thereof an impromptu rhyme expressive of his deep regret at not being able to offer the cash instead, and return the same with an airy grace that the renowned orator, J. Wilkins Micawber, himself might have envied.
While the intellectual prominences upon the cranium of our friend and fellow-citizen had been well looked to, Dame Nature totally neglected to develop his bump of veneration; age possessed no qualities, wealth and position no prerogatives, which this singularly constituted young man felt bound to respect. When his father's executor, an able and exceedingly dignified member of the St. Louis bar, would refuse to respond to his frequent demands for moneyed advances, the young reprobate would coolly elevate his heels to a point in dangerous proximity to the old gentleman's nose, and threaten to go upon the stage, taking his guardian's honored name as a stage pseudonym and representing himself to be his son. This threat generally sufficed to bring the elder gentleman to terms, as he knew his charge's ability to execute as well as to threaten.
He was an inveterate joker, and his tendency to break out without regard to fitness of time or place into some mad prank made him almost a terror to his friends. On one occasion he informed a young lady friend that he did not think he would be able to come to her wedding because he had such a terrible toothache. "Then why not have your tooth pulled out?" said the young lady. "I never thought of that," quoth Eugene gravely; "I guess I will." When the wedding day arrived, among the other bridal gifts came a small box bearing Mr. Field's card, and reposing on a velvet cushion inside was the identical tooth which the bride had advised him to have extracted, and in the cavity where had once throbbed the agonizing nerve was neatly stuffed a fifty-dollar bill.
The recollection of the many amusing traits and freaks of this versatile genius affords amusement to the innumerable friends of his to this day. But time which sobers us all has doubtless taken some of the foam and sparkle from this rare spirit, although it would be hard to convince his friends that he will ever be anything but the gay and debonnaire Eugene.
Mr. Gray, who vouches for the general accuracy of the story of the strange wedding present, with its costly filling, preserves among his most cherished mementoes of his foster son-in-law, if I may be allowed the expression, Field's prompt repudiation of that paragraph in the above which charged him with lack of respect for one from whom he had received every evidence of affection:
DENVER, June 25, 1883.
DEAR MR. GRAY,
A copy of last Saturday's St. Louis Spectator has just arrived and I am equally surprised, pained and indignant to find in it a personal article about myself which represents me in the untruthful light of having been disrespectful and impudent to you. I believe you will bear me out when I say that my conduct towards you has upon all occasions been respectful and gentlemanly. I may not have been able to repay you the many obligations you have placed me under, but I have always regarded you with feelings of affectionate gratitude and I am deeply distressed lest the article referred to may create a widely different impression. Of course it makes no difference to you, but as gratitude is about all I have in this world to bestow on those who are good and kind to me, it is not right that I should be advertised—even in a joking way—as an ingrate.
Yours sincerely,
EUGENE FIELD.
This letter is valuable in more ways than the one which it was so unnecessarily written to serve. It is a negative admission of the general faithfulness of the impression left by Field upon those familiar with his life in St. Louis, and the reference to gratitude as all he had to bestow upon his true friends will be recognized as genuine by all who ever came near enough to his inner life to appreciate its sweetness as well as its lightness. As for his airy method of disposing of insistent creditors I have no doubt that the rhymes on the backs of their bills more often than not were more to them than the dollars and cents on their faces.
During the second period of his life in St. Louis two sons were born to Field and his wife, Melvin G., named after the "Dear Mr. Gray," of the foregoing letter, and Eugene, Jr., who, being born when the Pinafore craze was at its height,