A Study in Heredity and Contradictions. Slason Thompson
homestead at Newfane. The word edifice might fittingly be applied to this building which, though only one room square and one story high, has a front on the public square, with miniature Greek columns to distinguish it from the ordinary outbuildings that are such characteristic appendages of New England houses. The troubles of General Field with his two sons were not to end when he got them away from the temptations of college life, for they were prone to mischief, "and that continually," even under his severe and watchful eye. This took one particular form which is the talk of Windham County even yet. By reason of their presence in General Field's office they were early apprised of actions at law which he was retained to institute; whereupon they sought out the defendant and offered their services to represent him gratis. Thus the elder counsellor frequently found himself pitted in the justice's courts against his keen-witted and graceless sons, who availed themselves of every obsolete technicality, quirk, and precedent of the law to obstruct justice and worry their dignified parent, whom they addressed as "our learned but erring brother in the law." Not infrequently these youthful practitioners triumphed in these legal tilts, to the mortification of their father, who, in his indignation, could not conceal his admiration for the ingenuity of their misdirected professional zeal.
Two years after his graduation, and when only seventeen years of age, Eugene Field's father was sufficiently learned in the law to be admitted to the bar of Vermont. They wasted no time in those good old days. Before he was thirty, Roswell M. Field had represented his native town in the General Assembly, had been elected several times State's Attorney, and in every way seemed destined to play a notable part in the affairs of Vermont, if not on a broader field. He was not only a lawyer of full and exact learning, an ingenious pleader, and a powerful advocate, but an exceptionally accomplished scholar. His knowledge of Greek, Latin, French, and German rendered their literature a perennial source upon which to draw for the illumination and embellishment of the pure and virile English of which he was master. It was from him that Eugene inherited his delight in queer and rare objects of vertu and that "rich, strong, musical and sympathetic voice" which would have been invaluable on the stage, and of which he made such captivating use among his friends. Would that he had also inherited that "strong and athletic" frame which, according to his aged preceptor, enabled Roswell M. Field to graduate at the age of fifteen. It is not, however, for his learning and accomplishments of mind and person that we are interested in Roswell Martin Field, but for the strange incident in his life that uprooted him from the congenial environments of New England and the career opening so temptingly before him, to transplant him to Missouri, there to become the father of a youth, who, by all laws of heredity and by the peculiar tang of his genius, should have been born and nurtured amid the stern scenes and fixed customs of Puritan New England. That story must be told in another chapter.
CHAPTER II
HIS FATHER'S FIRST LOVE-AFFAIR
Many a time and oft in our walks and talks has Eugene Field told me the story I am about to relate, but never with the particularity of detail and the authority of absolute data with which I have "comprehended it," as he would say, in the following pages. It was his wish that it should be told, and I follow his injunction the more readily, as in its relation I am able to demonstrate how clearly the son inherited his peculiar literary mode from the father.
It may be said further that, had the remarkable situation which grew out of Roswell M. Field's first marriage occurred one hundred years earlier, or had it occurred in our own day in a state like Kentucky, it would have provoked a feud that could only have been settled by blood, while it might readily have imbrued whole counties. Even in Vermont it stirred up animosities which occupied the attention of the courts for years, and which the lapse of nearly two generations has not wholly eradicated from the memory of old inhabitants. In the opening remarks of the opinion of the Supreme Court, in one of several cases growing out of it, I find the following statement: "It would be inexpedient to recapitulate the testimony in a transaction which was calculated to call up exasperated feelings, which has apparently taxed ingenuity and genius to criminate and recriminate, where a deep sense of injury is evidently felt and expressed by the parties to the controversy, and where this state of feeling has extended, as it was to be expected, to all the immediate friends of the parties, who from their situation were necessarily compelled to become witnesses and to testify in the case."
In the relation of this story I shall substitute Christian names for the surnames of the parties outside of the Field family, although all have become public property and the principals are dead. The scene is laid in the adjoining counties of Windham and Windsor in the Green Mountain State, and this is how it happened:
There lived at Windsor, in the county of the same name, a widow named Susanna, and she was well-to-do according to the modest standard of the times. She was blest with a goodly family of sons and daughters, among whom was Mary Almira, a maiden fair to look upon and impressionable withal. Now it befell that Mary Almira, while still very young, was sent to school at the Academy in Leicester, Mass., where she met, and, in the language of the law, formed "a natural and virtuous attachment" with a student named Jeremiah, sent thither by his guardian from Oxbridge in the state last before mentioned. They met, vowed eternal devotion and parted, as many school-children have done before and will do again.
After her return to Windsor, Jeremiah seemingly faded from the thoughts of Mary Almira, so that when she subsequently accompanied her mother on a visit to Montreal, she felt free to experience "a sincere and lively affection" for a Canadian youth named Elder. So lively was this affection that when Jeremiah next saw Mary Almira it had completely effaced him from her memory. Nothing daunted, however, being then of the mature age of eighteen years and eight months, and two years Mary's senior, he resumed the siege of her heart, and in short order their engagement was duly "promulgated and even notorious."
Before Mary succumbed to the second suit of Jeremiah, she waited for a pledge of affection from young Mister Elder in the shape of an album in which he was to have forwarded a communication, and it was "in the bitterness of her disappointment at not receiving a letter, message, or remembrance from Mister Elder that she formed the engagement with Jeremiah, in order that she might gratify her resentment by sending the news of the same to Mister Elder." This she did with a peremptory request for the return of her album without the leaves on which he had written. What was her chagrin and unavailing remorse on receiving the album to find that every leaf was cut out but one, a mute witness to her "infidelity to her early lover." Small wonder that "her tenderness revived," and "she cursed the hour in which she had formed the precipitate engagement with Jeremiah, and oftentimes she shed over that album tears of heartfelt sorrow and regret." At least so we are told in the pleadings, from which authentic source I draw my quotations.
Now Mary was nothing if not precipitate, for all this came to pass in the spring or summer of 1831, when she was not quite sweet seventeen. It also happened without the knowledge or concern of Roswell Martin Field, who was a young and handsome bachelor of quick wit and engaging manners, living at Fayetteville in the neighboring county, "knowing nothing at that time of the said Mary Almira, her lovers, suitors, promises, engagements, intimacies, visits or movements whatsoever." He was soon to know.
In the summer of 1832 it happened that Mary Almira was on a visit to Mrs. Jonathan, her cousin german, the wife of Justice Jonathan of Brattleboro, Vt. And now fate began to take a swift and inexplicable interest in the affairs of Mary and Roswell. On August 30th, 1832, in company with Mrs. Jonathan and Mrs. French (the Mary Field of the first chapter of this book), Miss Mary Almira visited Fayetteville, and, we are told, "when the chaise containing the said ladies arrived Roswell advanced to hand them out, and then for the first time saw and was introduced to said Mary Almira, who received him with a nod and a broad good-humored laugh." She remained over night, the guest of Mrs. French, and Roswell saw her only for a few moments in his sister's sitting-room. What occurred is naïvely told under oath in the following extract from the pleadings:
"Some conversation of a general nature passed between