Eugene Field, a Study in Heredity and Contradictions — Volume 1

by Slason Thompson

"Just my luck, Fred," Field replied. "As I was leaving the office whom should I meet but one of my old printer boys, dead broke. The X was all I had, and he told me he had to have it, and he had to." It is needless to say that Field got the second advance and succeeded in dodging all impecunious "old boys" on the way home.

I have said that Denver at that time was the centre of all the railway interests of Colorado and the far West. Being also the capital, it was the place where legislators and railway agents wrestled with problems of regulating tariffs and granting privileges to what may be called their mutual benefit. It was from his experience in Denver that Field learned that two-thirds of the business of a western legislature consisted in causing legislative hold-ups, of which the transportation companies were the victims, and the most vociferously impeccable statesmen the chief beneficiaries. The secret service funds of the railway companies doing business in Colorado paid out a hundred dollars for protection from notorious sandbagging bills and resolutions to every dollar they spent for special favors in grants and franchises.

This by way of preface to a story in which Eugene Field and a railway official, who, as I write, holds a high position in the transportation world, figure. This official was at that time the superintendent of the Southwestern Division of the Pullman system, with head-quarters at St. Louis. In those days every session of the Colorado legislature saw its anti-Pullman rate reduction bill, which Wickersham, as I shall call him, because that is not his name, was commissioned to checkmate, strangle, or make away with in committee by the aid of annual passes, champagne, and the mysterious potency of the national bank-note. As was remarked by E.D. Cowen, to whose notes I am indebted for refreshing my memory of Field's tales, Wickersham never failed in generalship, principally because he was bold in his methods and picturesquely lavish with his munitions of war. The Pullman Company did not then enjoy the royalty and defensive alliance which now protects it against rate legislation throughout the West, and so Wickersham was kept continually on the go, making alliances and friendships among legislators and journalists against the days of reckoning.

Field, as the managing editor of the Tribune, was a special favorite with Wickersham, as he was of every professional and commercial visitor having an axe to grind at the capital of the state. Pullman's representative had the wit to appreciate Field, both for his personal qualities and the assistance he could render through the columns of the newspaper. Field reciprocated the personal friendship, but, so far as the Tribune was concerned, took a grim satisfaction in giving Wickersham to understand that though he could use its freedom he could not abuse it or count upon its aid beyond what was strictly legitimate. Field's stereotyped introduction of Wickersham—one calculated to put him on a pleasant business footing with every practical politician, was "He's a good fellow and a thoroughbred." So his coming was invariably celebrated by a general round-up of all the good fellows in Denver, and his departure left the aching heads and parched recollections that from the days of Noah have distinguished the morning after.

After one of Wickersham's calls, Field determined that the sobriety and severe morality of Denver were being scandalized by these periodical visitations, and he issued orders to the Tribune staff that when next the "good fellow and thoroughbred" appeared on the scene he should be given a wide berth, or, as Field put it, should be left to "play a lone hand in his game." So when Wickersham next swung around the legislative circle to Denver, not a man about the editorial rooms would go out with him, listen to his stories, accept a cigar at his hands, or associate with him in any of the ways that had been their cheerful wont. The coldness and loneliness of the situation excited Wickersham's thirst for revenge and also for what is known as the wine of Kentucky. Having succeeded in getting up a full head of steam, he started out for an explanation or a counter demonstration. Arriving at the Tribune office, when the desks were vacated at the evening dinner-hour, he interpreted it as a further affront and challenge, which he proceeded to answer by destroying every last scrap of copy in sight for the morrow's paper. He then converted himself into a small cyclone, and went through every desk, strewed their litter on the floor, broke all the pens and pencils, and, in the language of an eye-witness, "ended by toning the picture of editorial desolation with the violet contents of all the ink bottles he could find."

Then he retired in hilarious satisfaction from the scene of devastation he had made. Consternation reigned in that office until Field returned, when he quickly dispelled the gloom with a promise of revenge, and set the staff at work to patch up the ruin the envious Wickersham had made. But they were not permitted to do this in peace, for their enemy, returning in the dark of night, bombarded the windows of the editorial rooms with the staves of old ash-barrels he had found conveniently by.

While Wickersham was engaged in this second assault, with windows smashing to right of them and to left of them, with glass falling all around them, and the staves of old ash-barrels playing a devil's tattoo about them, the devoted band of editors, reporters, and copy-readers worked nobly on. They had confidence in their leader that their hour would come. Their first duty was to get out the paper. After that they looked for the deluge.

When Wickersham had expended his last stave and fiercest epithet on the shattered windows he retired in bad order to his apartments at the St. James Hotel.

Now began Field's revenge, planned with due deliberation and executed with malicious thoroughness. He first sent for "'Possum Jim," an aged and very serious colored man, who worshipped "Mistah Fiel'" because of the sympathy Eugene never withheld from the dark-skinned children of the race. "'Possum Jim" spent most of his existence on the same street corner, waiting for a job, which invariably had to come to him. His outfit consisted of an express wagon strung together with telegraph wire, and a nondescript four-footed creature that once bore the similitude of a horse. Whenever Field had an odd job to be done about his household he would go out of his way to let "old 'Possum Jim" earn the quarter—partly to do an act of kindness to "Jim," but chiefly to tease Mrs. Field by the appearance of the broken-down equipage lingering in front of their dwelling.

Just before the Tribune went to press, a sergeant of police called on Field in response to a summons by telephone. After a whispered conference he left, with a broad smile struggling under his curling mustache. In company with a number of his staff Field next made the round of the all-night haunts and gathered to his aid as fine a collection of bohemian "thoroughbreds" as ever made the revels of Mardi Gras look like a Sunday-school convention. He installed them at the resort of a Kentucky gentleman named Jones, opposite the St. James. As one who was there reports, "The amber milk of the Blue-grass cow flowed in plenty." Bidding his associates await his return, Field, armed with a single bottle, crossed the street to the hotel in search of the enemy.