But there are thousands who accept the Eugene Field of the "Auto-Analysis" and of the Garland dialogue as the true presentment of the man, when the real man is only laughing in his sleeve at the reader and the interviewer in both of them.
CHAPTER X
LAST YEARS
If this were a record of a life, and not a study of character, with the side-lights bearing upon its development and idiosyncrasies, there would remain much to write of Eugene Field after his return from abroad. Much came to him in fame, in fortune, in his friendships, and in his home. Two more children were born to brighten his hearthstone and refresh his memories of childhood and the enchanting ways of children. The elder of these two, a son, was named Roswell Francis, a combination of the names of Field's father and mother, with the change of a vowel to suit his sex; the younger, his second daughter, was christened Ruth, after Mrs. Gray, in whose home Field had found, more than a score of years before, the disinterested affection of a mother, "a refuge from temptation, care, and vexation."
Although immediately upon getting back Field resumed his daily grind of "Sharps and Flats" for the Chicago Record, his paragraphs showed more and more the effects of his reading and his withdrawal from the activities and associations of men. Mankind continued to interest him as much as ever, but books wearied him less, and in his home were more easily within reach. This home was now at 420 Fullerton Avenue, an old-fashioned house on the northern limit of old Chicago, rather off the beaten track. It was the fifth place the Field household had set up its lares and penates since coming to Chicago. In consequence of his collecting mania, his impedimenta had become a puzzle to house and a domestic cataclysm to move.
By 1891 Field realized, as none of his family or friends did, that his health would never be better, and that it behooved him to put his house in order and make the most of the strength remaining. If he needed the words of a mentor to warn him, he could have found them in the brief memoir his uncle, Charles Kellogg, had written of his father. In that I find this remarkable anticipation of what befell his son, written of Roswell M. Field—who, be it remembered, started in life with a healthy and vigorous body, whereas uncertain health and a rebellious stomach were Eugene Field's portion all the days of his life.
He [Field's father] made the perusal of the Greek and Latin classics his most delightful pastime. In fact, he resorted to this scientific research, particularly in the department of mathematics, for his chief mental recreation. It is greatly to be regretted that he neglected to combine, with his cessation from professional labor, some employment which would have revived and strengthened his physical frame. He was averse to active exercise, and for some years before his death he lived a life of studious seclusion which would have been philosophical had he not violated, in the little care he took of his health, one of the most important lessons which philosophy teaches. At a comparatively early age he died of physical exhaustion, a deterioration of the bodily organs, and an incapacity, on their part, to discharge the vital functions—a wearing out of the machine before the end of the term for which its duration was designed. He was eminently qualified to serve, as well as to adorn, society, and in all likelihood he would have found in a greater variety of occupation some relief from the monotonous strain under which his energies prematurely gave way.
But the conditions that confronted Eugene Field at the age of forty-one were very different from those under which his father succumbed prematurely at sixty-one. He had made a name and fame for himself, but had not stored any of the harvest his writings were beginning to yield. He could write, as he did, that he expected to do his best literary work when a grandfather, but he had no belief that he would live to enjoy that happy Indian summer of paternity. He was tired of being moved from rented flat to rented house with his accumulated belongings, and he yearned with the "sot" New England yearning for a permanent home, a roof-tree that he could call his own, a patch of earth in which he could "slosh around," with no landlord to importune for grudging repairs.
And so Field's life during his last years has to be considered as a struggle with physical exhaustion, fighting off the inevitable reckoning until he could provide himself and his family with a home and leave to his dear ones the means of retaining it, with the opportunities of education for the juniors. And bravely and cheerily he faced the situation. Neither in his social relations nor in his daily task was there observable any trace of the tax he was putting upon his over-strained energy. He could not afford to make the study of classics a delightful pastime, as his father did, but he made it contribute a constant and delightful fund of reference and allusion in his column. His first books were selling steadily, and he worked assiduously to make hay while the sun was still above the horizon. In quick succession, "Echoes from the Sabine Farm," "With Trumpet and Drum," the "Second Book of Verse," "The Holy Cross and Other Tales," and "Love Songs of Childhood," with few exceptions, collected from his daily contributions to the Chicago Record, were issued from the press in both limited and popular editions.