“At the very outset of his newspaper career,” says he, “Field’s inclinations led him to the society of the green-room. Of western critics and reviewers he was the first favorite among dramatic people. Helpful, kind, and enthusiastic, he was rarely severe and never captious. Though in no sense an analyst, he was an amusing reviewer and a great advertiser. Once he conceived an attachment for an actor or actress, his generous mind set about bringing such fortunate person more conspicuously into public notice. Emma Abbott’s baby, which she never had, and of whose invented existence he wrote at least a bookful of startling and funny adventures; Francis Wilson’s legs; Sol Smith Russell’s Yankee yarns; Billy Crane’s droll stories; Modjeska’s spicy witticisms—these and other jocular pufferies, quoted and read everywhere with relish for years—were among his hobby-horse performances begun at that time (1881) and continued long after he had settled down in the must and rust of bibliomania.”
For a long time not a week went by that Field did not invent some marvellous tale respecting Emma Abbott, once the most popular light-opera prima donna of the American stage—every yarn calculated to widen the circle of her popularity. Upon an absolutely fictitious autobiography of Miss Abbott he once exhausted the fertility of his fancy in the form of a review,[1] which went the rounds of the press and which, on her death, contributed many a sober paragraph to the newspaper reviews of her life.
[1] Vide Appendix.
To the fame of another opera singer of those days he contributed, by paragraphs of an entirely different flavor from those that extolled the Puritan virtues and domestic felicities of Miss Abbott (Mrs. Wetherell), as may be judged from the following “Love Plaint,” written shortly after he came to Chicago:
The tiny birdlings in the tree
Their tuneful tales of love
relate—
Alas, no lover comes to me—
I flock alone, without a mate.
Mine eyes are hot with bitter tears,
My soul disconsolately yearns—
But, ah, no wooing knight appears—
In vain my quenchless passion
burns.
Unheeded are my glowing charms—
No heroes claim a moonlight
tryst—
All empty are my hungry arms—
My virgin cheeks are all unkissed.
Oh, would some cavalier might haste
To crown me with his manly
love,
And, with his arm about my waist,
Feed on my cherry lips above.
Alas, my blush and bloom will fade,
And I shall lose my dulcet
notes—
Then I shall die an old, old maid,
And none will mourn Miss Alice
Oates._
[Illustration: FRANCIS WILSON.]
Of his friendship with Francis Wilson there is no need to write here, for is it not fully set forth in that charming little brochure, in which Mr. Wilson gives to the world a characteristic sketch of the Eugene Field and bibliomaniac he knew, and in whose work he was so deeply interested? But Mr. Wilson does not tell how he was pursued and plagued with the following genial invention which Field printed in his column in 1884, and which still occasionally turns up in country exchanges: