Mrs. Leiter and her handsome daughters had already given up Chicago for Washington. They were sometimes at their country place at Geneva Lake, where we spent a pleasant week-end. I studied Mrs. Leiter’s curious use of English with some care and came to the conclusion that she was word blind as some people are color blind.
“Mr. A. is a very deep-seated man,” she once said to me of a common acquaintance, repeating the phrase earnestly, “a very deep-seated man”, shaking her handsome head and dismissing Mr. A. in an imperial manner. I never quite knew what she meant to imply about poor Mr. A.
One evening at the Auditorium Theater a friend brought Eugene Field into our box and introduced him to us. We had a brief chat between the acts. What had struck me first about him was his closely cropped, almost shaven head, so unlike other poets I had known. When he had gone, our host asked:
“What do you think of Eugene Field?”
“Doesn’t he look rather like a convict?” I laughed, meaning to be funny. As we were leaving the theater, Mr. Field came up to me in the lobby and said cheerily:
“I hear you say I look like a convict. Remember I am not a bird of plumage, but a bird of song. As for you,” with a low bow, “you look like the daughter of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic.’”
I almost forgot my mortification in my admiration for that gracious turning of the tables. He bore no malice, and on the too few occasions when we met, I found him companionable and understanding. The last time I saw Eugene Field was at a dinner at Mrs. John Root’s. He was in great vein and kept us in a gale of laughter till past midnight. John Root, of the firm of Burnham and Root, was already at work making the plans for the Dream City of the World’s Fair. He was a gifted man who had made his mark as an architect. He was a Virginian, a full habited rosso, with a magnificent physique, extraordinarily brilliant in his talk as in his profession. He insisted upon putting me in my carriage though it was below zero weather. I can see him now, standing at the carriage door in evening dress, with bare head, while he said some last witty thing.
“Go back! You will catch your death of cold,” I chided.
The words were prophetic; he took a chill from the exposure and died of pneumonia a few days later.
William Pretyman was at this time established in Chicago as an interior decorator; during our stay my husband was associated with him in the decoration of some of the city’s fine houses. The Pretymans built a home at Edgewater, then a suburb of the city. As soon as they had moved into their new home, these generous people invited us to share it with them. I remember the day we took possession. All morning the lake had been veiled by an opal haze. The sun came out just as we arrived and in an instant it was a sheet of palest green, shimmering with blue and violet shadows.