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

by Slason Thompson

And the baby takes

And says, "Now cook the breakfast please."

"The every-day practical joker and entertaining mimic of Denver recoiled in Chicago from the reputation of a Merry Andrew, the prospect of gaining which he disrelished and feared. He preferred to invent paragraphic pleasantries for the world at large and indulge his personal humor in the office, at home, or with personal friends. Gayety was his element. He lived, loved, inspired, and translated it, in the doing which latter he wrote, without strain or embarrassment, reams of prose satire, contes risqués, and Hudibrastic verse."

It is a singular illustration of the irony and mutations of life that one of the early paragraphs Field wrote for the "Sharps and Flats" column was inspired by what was supposed to be a fatal assault on his friend by a notorious political ruffian in Leadville. The paragraph, which appeared on September 12th, 1883, is interesting as a specimen of Field's style at that period, and as showing in what esteem he held Cowen, with whom he had been associated on the Denver Tribune and whose name recurs in these pages from time to time:

Edward D. Cowen, the city editor of the Leadville Herald, who was murderously assaulted night before last by a desperado named Joy, was one of the brightest newspaper men in the West. He came originally from Massachusetts, and has relatives living in the southern part of Illinois. He was about thirty years of age. He went to Leadville about three months ago to work on ex-Senator Tabor's paper, the Herald, and was doing excellently well. He was a protegé, to a certain extent, of Mrs. Tabor No. 2. She admired his brilliancy, and volunteered to help him in any possible way. It was speaking of him that she said: "My life will henceforth be devoted to assisting worthy young men. In life we must prepare for death, and how can we better prepare for death than by helping our fellow-creatures? Alas!" she added with a sad, sad sigh, "alas! death is, after all, what we live for." Young Cowen had all the social graces men and women admire; he was bright in intellect, great in heart, and hearty of manner. The loss of no young man we know of would be more deplored than his demise.

Cowen never wholly recovered from the effects of his encounter with Joy, but he survived to joke with Field over the past tense in which this paragraph is couched, and to afford me valuable assistance in completing this character-study of our friend.

I have already referred to the "box stall" in which Field sawed his daily wood, as he was accustomed to call his work. As the day of thinking that any old pine table, with a candle box for a chair, crowded off in any sort of a dingy garret, was good enough for the writers who contributed "copy" for a newspaper, has been succeeded by an era of quarter-sawed oak desks, swivel chairs, electric light, and soap and water in editorial quarters throughout the country, let me attempt to describe the original editorial rooms of the Daily News less than twenty years ago. The various departments of the paper occupied what had been three four-story, twenty-five-foot buildings. The floors of no two of these buildings above the first story were on the same level. They had evidently been originally built for lodging houses. The presses and storerooms for the rolls of paper filled the cellars. The business office occupied one store, which was flanked on either side by stores that would have been more respectable had they been rented as saloons, which they were not, because of the conscientious scruples of Messrs. Lawson & Stone. Parts of two of the buildings were still rented as lodgings. Up one flight of stairs of the centre building, in the front, Mr. Stone had his office, which was approached through what had been a hall bedroom. His room was furnished with black walnut, and a gloomy and oppressive air of mystery. Mr. Stone had the genius and the appearance of a chief inquisitor. He was as alert, daring, and enterprising an editor as the West has ever produced.

The rear of this twenty-five-foot building was given up to the library and to George E. Plumbe, the editor for many years of the Daily News Almanac and Political Register. The library consisted of files of nearly all the Chicago dailies, of Congressional Records and reports, the leading almanacs, the "Statesman's Year Book," several editions of "Men of the Times," half a dozen encyclopaedias, the Imperial and Webster's dictionaries, a few other text books, and about two inches of genuine Chicago soot which incrusted everything. The theory advanced by Field's friend, William F. Poole, then of the Public Library and later of the Newberry Library, that dust is the best preservative of books, rendered it necessary that the only washstand accessible to the Morning News should be located in the library. None of us ever came out of that library as we went in—the one clean roller a day forbade it. Nothing but the conscientious desire to embellish our "copy" with enough facts and references to make a showing of erudition ever induced Field or any of the active members of the editorial staff to borrow the library key from Ballantyne to break in upon the soporific labors of Mr. Plumbe. Here the editorial conferences, which Field has illustrated, were held.