EUGENE FIELD.
Field did not find in California the "glorious climate" which the well-meant advice of his physicians had led him to expect. His going up to San Francisco in winter to visit his cousin was a mistake, which he quickly regretted, as the following testifies:
DEAR MR. GRAY: I am very tired of freezing to death, and I have made up my mind to get into a country where I can at least keep warm. Ever since I got to California I have shivered, and shivered, and shivered, and there seem to be no facilities for ameliorating this unpleasant condition here. I am told that in six months or a year the new-comer becomes acclimated; I do not regard that as encouraging. So I am heading for New Orleans. But we drop off at Los Angeles to admit of my being with you long enough to write the memoir of dear Mrs. Gray—a duty to which I shall apply myself with melancholy pleasure. I think we shall arrive Thursday morning. I hope you are all well, and that Miss Eva has not yet been carried off by any pirate or Philadelphia brewer. I continue to gain in weight.
Affectionately yours,
EUGENE FIELD.
Alameda, Cal.,
January 6th, 1894, Saturday evening.
Field kept the promise of this letter, and the memoir of Mrs. Gray then written is a genuine work of love, composed amid "environments," as he wrote, "conducive to the sincerity and the enthusiasm which should characterize such a noble task." Here is his picture of the surroundings, redolent of the incense of sunshine and flowers that fills that favored clime:
A glorious panorama is spread before me—such a picture as the latitude of southern California presents at the time when elsewhere upon this continent of ours the resentment of winter is visited. All around me is the mellow grace of sunshine, roses, lilies, heliotropes, carnations, marigolds, nasturtiums, marguerites, and geraniums are a-bloom; and as far as the eye can reach, the green velvet of billowing acres is blended with the passion of wild poppies; the olive, the orange, and the lemon abound; yonder a vineyard lies fast asleep in the glorious noonday; the giant rubber trees in all this remarkable fairy-land are close at hand; and the pepper, the eucalyptus, the live oak, and the palm are here, and there, and everywhere.
A city is in the distance; the smoke that curls up therefrom makes dim fantastic figures against the beautiful blue of the sky. There is toil in that place, and the din of busy humanity; but upon this faraway hillside, with the sweetest gifts of Nature about me, I care not for these things. I am soothed by the melodies of wild birds, and by the music of the gentle winds that come from the great white ocean beyond the valleys and the hills, away off there where the ships go sailing.
Perhaps Ruskin, the great artist-master of word-painting, might have produced as perfect a gem of English description as this. But who besides of our contemporaries has? To my mind, it is the proof of the perfection of the technical skill in expression to which Field arrived through arduous years, softened and refined by the emotions of affection and gratitude which swept over him as he thought of her who had been a mother to him. It has its counterpart in the succeeding description of the Pelham hills, in which "the yonder glimpse of the Pacific becomes the silver thread of the Connecticut," which I have already quoted in a previous chapter.
Evidently, too, the glorious climate of California was a blessing which brightened as Field took his flight toward the East. Early in February he was back in the harness in Chicago, celebrating his return with characteristic gayety in "Lyrics of a Convalescent." But his contributions to the paper through the winter and early spring of 1894 were confined to occasional verse. After a short trip to New Orleans, in April, he resumed active work the first week in May; and for the remainder of the year his column gave daily evidence of his mental activity and cheerfulness.