ALAS, POOR YORICK!
In paying a tribute to the mingled mirth and tenderness
of Eugene
Field-the poet of whose going the West
may say, “He took our daylight
with him”-one of his fellow journalists
has written that he was a
jester, but not of the kind that Shakespeare drew
in Yorick. He was
not only,-so the writer implied,-the
maker of jibes and fantastic
devices, but the bard of friendship and affection,
of melodious lyrical
conceits; he was the laureate of children-dear
for his “Wynken,
Blynken and Nod” and “Little Boy Blue”;
the scholarly book-lover,
withal, who relished and paraphrased his Horace, who
wrote with delight
a quaint archaic English of his special devising;
who collected rare
books, and brought out his own “Little Books”
of “Western Verse” and
“Profitable Tales” in high-priced limited
editions, with broad margins
of paper that moths and rust do not corrupt, but which
tempts
bibliomaniacs to break through and steal.
For my own part, I would select Yorick as the very
forecast, in
imaginative literature, of our various Eugene.
Surely Shakespeare
conceived the “mad rogue” of Elsinore
as made up of grave and gay, of
wit and gentleness, and not as a mere clown or “jig
maker.” It is true
that when Field put on his cap and bells, he too was
“wont to set the
table on a roar,” as the feasters at a hundred
tables, from “Casey’s
Table d’Hote” to the banquets of the opulent
East, now rise to testify.
But Shakespeare plainly reveals, concerning Yorick,
that mirth was not
his sole attribute,-that his motley covered
the sweetest nature and
the tenderest heart. It could be no otherwise
with one who loved and
comprehended childhood and whom the children loved.
And what does
Hamlet say?-“He hath borne me upon
his back a thousand times . . .
Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know not
how oft!” Of what
is he thinking but of his boyhood, before doubts and
contemplation
wrapped him in the shadow, and when in his young grief
or frolic the
gentle Yorick, with his jest, his “excellent
fancy,” and his songs and
gambols, was his comrade?
Of all moderns, then, here or in the old world, Eugene
Field seems to
be most like the survival, or revival, of the ideal
jester of knightly
times; as if Yorick himself were incarnated, or as
if a superior bearer
of the bauble at the court of Italy, or of France,
or of English King
Hal, had come to life again-as much out
of time as Twain’s Yankee at
the Court of Arthur; but not out of place,-for
he fitted himself as
aptly to his folk and region as Puck to the fays and
mortals of a wood
near Athens. In the days of divine sovereignty,
the jester, we see,
was by all odds the wise man of the palace; the real
fools were those
he made his butt-the foppish pages, the
obsequious courtiers, the
swaggering guardsmen, the insolent nobles, and not
seldom majesty
itself. And thus it is that painters and romancers
have loved to draw
him. Who would not rather be Yorick than Osric,
or Touchstone than Le
Beau, or even poor Bertuccio than one of his brutal
mockers? Was not
the redoubtable Chicot, with his sword and brains,
the true ruler of
France? To come to the jesters of history-which
is so much less real
than fiction-what laurels are greener than
those of Triboulet, and
Will Somers, and John Heywood-dramatist
and master of the king’s merry
Interludes? Their shafts were feathered with
mirth and song, but
pointed with wisdom, and well might old John Trussell
say “That it
often happens that wise counsel is more sweetly followed
when it is
tempered with folly, and earnest is the less offensive
if it be
delivered in jest.”
Yes, Field “caught on” to his time-a
complex American, with the
obstreperous bizarrerie of the frontier and
the artistic delicacy of
our oldest culture always at odds within him-but
he was, above all, a
child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he
would have been in
any time or country. Fortune had given him that
unforgettable mummer’s
face,-that clean-cut, mobile visage,-that
animated natural mask! No
one else had so deep and rich a voice for the rendering
of the music
and pathos of a poet’s lines, and no actor ever
managed both face and
voice better than he in delivering his own verses
merry or sad. One
night, he was seen among the audience at “Uncut
Leaves,” and was
instantly requested to do something towards the evening’s
entertainment. As he was not in evening dress,
he refused to take the
platform, but stood up in the lank length of an ulster,
from his corner
seat, and recited “Dibdin’s Ghost”
and “Two Opinions” in a manner which
blighted the chances of the readers that came after
him. It is true
that no clown ever equalled the number and lawlessness
of his practical
jokes. Above all, every friend that he had-except
the Dean of his
profession, for whom he did exhibit unbounded and
filial reverence-was
soon or late a victim of his whimsicality, or else
justly distrusted
the measure of Field’s regard for him.
Nor was the friendship
perfected until one bestirred himself to pay Eugene
back in kind. As
to this, I am only one of scores now speaking from
personal experience.
There seemed to be no doubt in his mind that the victim
of his fun,
even when it outraged common sensibilities, must
enjoy it as much as
he. Who but Eugene, after being the welcome
guest, at a European
capital, of one of our most ambitious and refined
ambassadors, would
have written a lyric, sounding the praises of a German
“onion pie,”
ending each stanza with
Ach, Liebe! Ach, mein Gott!
and would have printed it in America, with his host’s
initials affixed?
My own matriculation at Eugene’s College of
Unreason was in this wise.
In 1887, Mr. Ben Ticknor, the Boston publisher, was
complaining that he
needed some new and promising authors to enlarge his
book-list. The
New York “Sun” and “Tribune”
had been copying Field’s rhymes and prose
extravaganzas-the former often very charming,
the latter the broadest
satire of Chicago life and people. I suggested
to Mr. Ticknor that he
should ask the poet-humorist to collect, for publication
in book-form,
the choicest of his writings thus far. To make
the story brief, Mr.
Field did so, and the outcome-at which
I was somewhat taken aback-was
the remarkable book, “Culture’s Garland,”
with its title imitated from
the sentimental “Annuals” of long ago,
and its cover ornamented with
sausages linked together as a coronal wreath!
The symbol certainly
fitted the greater part of the contents, which ludicrously
scored the
Chicago “culture” of that time, and made
Pullman, Armour, and other
commercial magnates of the Lakeside City special types
in illustration.
All this had its use, and many of the sufferers long
since became the
farceur’s devoted friends. The
Fair showed the country what Chicago
really was and is. Certainly there is no other
American city where the
richest class appear so enthusiastic with respect
to art and
literature. “The practice of virtue makes
men virtuous,” and even if
there was some pretence and affectation in the culture
of ten years
ago, it has resulted in as high standards of taste
as can elsewhere be
found. Moreover, if our own “four hundred”
had even affected, or made
it the fashion to be interested in, whatever makes
for real culture,
the intellectual life of this metropolis would not
now be so far apart
from the “social swim.” There were
scattered through “Culture’s
Garland” not a few of Field’s delicate
bits of verse. In some way he
found that I had instigated Mr. Ticknor’s request,
and, although I was
thinking solely of the publisher’s interests,
he expressed unstinted
gratitude. Soon afterwards I was delighted to
receive from him a
quarto parchment “breviary,” containing
a dozen ballads, long and
short, engrossed in his exquisitely fine handwriting,
and illuminated
with colored borders and drawings by the poet himself.
It must have
required days for the mechanical execution, and certainly
I would not
now exchange it for its weight in diamonds.
This was the way our
friendship began. It was soon strengthened by
meetings and
correspondence, and never afterwards broken.
Some years ago, however, I visited Chicago, to lecture,
at the
invitation of its famous social and literary “Twentieth
Century Club.”
This was Eugene’s opportunity, and I ought not
to have been as
dumfounded as I was, one day, when our evening papers
copied from the
“Chicago Record” a “very pleasant
joke” at the expense of his town and
myself! It was headed: “Chicago Excited!
Tremendous Preparations for
His Reception,” and went on to give the order
and route of a procession
that was to be formed at the Chicago station and escort
me to my
quarters-stopping at Armour’s packing-yards
and the art-galleries on
the way. It included the “Twentieth Century
Club” in carriages, the
“Browning Club” in busses, and the “Homer
Club” in drays; ten
millionnaire publishers, and as many pork-packers,
in a chariot drawn
by white horses, followed by not less than two hundred
Chicago poets
afoot! I have no doubt that Eugene thought I
would enjoy this kind of
advertisement as heartily as he did. If so,
he lacked the gift of
putting himself in the other man’s place.
But his sardonic face,
a-grin like a school-boy’s, was one with two
others which shone upon me
when I did reach Chicago, and my pride was not wounded
sufficiently to
prevent me from enjoying the restaurant luncheon to
which he bore me
off in triumph. I did promise to square accounts
with him, in time,
and this is how I fulfilled my word. The next
year, at a meeting of a
suburban “Society of Authors,” a certain
lady-journalist was chaffed as
to her acquaintanceship with Field, and accused of
addressing him as
“Gene.” At this she took umbrage,
saying: “It’s true we worked
together on the same paper for five years, but he
was always a perfect
gentleman. I never called him ‘Gene.’”
This was reported by the
press, and gave me the refrain for a skit entitled
“Katharine and
Eugenio:”
Five years she sate a-near him
Within that type-strewn loft;
She handed him the paste-pot,
He passed the scissors oft;
They dipped in the same inkstand
That crowned their desk between,
Yet-he never called her Katie,
She never called him “Gene.”
Though close-ah! close-the
droplight
That classic head revealed,
She was to him Miss Katharine,
He-naught but Mister
Field;
Decorum graced his upright brow
And thinned his lips serene,
And, though he wrote a poem each hour,
Why should she call him “Gene?”
She gazed at his sporadic hair-
She knew his hymns by rote;
They longed to dine together
At Casey’s table d’hote;
Alas, that Fortune’s “hostages”-
But let us draw a screen!
He dared not call her Katie;
How could she call
him “Gene?”
I signed my verses “By one of Gene’s Victims”;
they appeared in The
Tribune, and soon were copied by papers in every
part of the country.
Other stanzas, with the same refrain, were added by
the funny men of
the southern and western press, and it was months
before ‘Gene’ saw the
last of them. The word “Eugenio,”
which was the name by which I always
addressed him in our correspondence, left him in no
doubt as to the
initiator of the series, and so our “Merry War”
ended, I think, with a
fair quittance to either side.
Grieving, with so many others, over Yorick’s
premature death, it is a
solace for me to remember how pleasant was our last
interchange of
written words. Not long ago, he was laid very
low by pneumonia, but
recovered, and before leaving his sickroom wrote me
a sweetly serious
letter-with here and there a sparkle in
it-but in a tone sobered by
illness, and full of yearning for a closer companionship
with his
friends. At the same time he sent me the first
editions, long ago
picked up, of all my earlier books, and begged me
to write on their
fly-leaves. This I did; with pains to gratify
him as much as possible,
and in one of the volumes wrote this little quatrain:
TO EUGENE FIELD
Death thought to claim you in this year
of years,
But Fancy cried-and
raised her shield between-
“Still let men weep, and smile amid
their tears;
Take any two beside, but spare
Eugene!”
In view of his near escape, the hyperbole, if such
there was, might
well be pardoned, and it touched Eugene so manifestly
that-now that
the eddy indeed has swept him away, and the Sabine
Farm mourns for its
new-world Horace-I cannot be too thankful
that such was my last
message to him.
Eugene Field was so mixed a compound that it will
always be impossible
quite to decide whether he was wont to judge critically
of either his
own conduct or his literary creations. As to
the latter, he put the
worst and the best side by side, and apparently cared
alike for both.
That he did much beneath his standard, fine and true
at times,-is
unquestionable, and many a set of verses went the
rounds that harmed
his reputation. On the whole, I think this was
due to the fact that he
got his stated income as a newspaper poet and jester,
and had to
furnish his score of “Sharps and Flats”
with more or less regularity.
For all this, he certainly has left pieces, compact
of the rarer
elements, sufficient in number to preserve for him
a unique place among
America’s most original characters, scholarly
wits, and poets of
brightest fancy. Yorick is no more! But
his genius will need no
chance upturning of his grave-turf for its remembrance.
When all is
sifted, its fame is more likely to strengthen than
to decline.
EDMUND CLARENCE STEDMAN.