Last year not more than 2,700 young authors contributed stories to the Christmas number of the Daily News: this year the number of contributors reached 6,125.
Hitherto the rivalry between our trade and our literature has been friendly to a degree. The packer has patronized the poet; metaphorically speaking, the hog and the epic have lain down together and wallowed in the same Parnassan pool. The censers that have swung continually in the temple of the muses have been replenished with lard oil, and to our grateful olfactories has the joyous Lake breezes wafted the refreshing odors of sonnets and of slaughter pens commingled.
But how long is this sort of thing going to last? It surely cannot be the millennium. These twin giants will some day–alas, too soon–learn their powers and be greedy to test them against one another. A fatal jealousy seems to be inevitable; it may be fended off, but how?
The world’s fair will be likely to precipitate a conflict between the interests of which we speak. Each interest is already claiming precedence, and we hear with alarm that less than a week ago one of our most respected packers threatened to withdraw his support of the international copyright bill unless the Chicago Literary Society united in an indorsement of his sugar-cured hams.
When we think of the horrors that will attend and follow a set-to between Chicago trade and Chicago literature, we are prone to cry out, in the words of the immortal Moore–not Tom–but Mrs. Julia A., of Michigan:
_An awful tremor quakes the soul!
And makes the heart to quiver,
While up and down the spine doth roll A melancholy shiver._
In December, 1895, Edmund Clarence Stedman contributed to the “Souvenir Book” of the New York Hebrew Fair a charmingly appreciative, yet justly critical, tribute to Eugene Field, whom he likened to Shakespeare’s Yorick, whose “motley covered the sweetest nature and tenderest heart.” Mr. Stedman there speaks of Field as a “complex American with the obstreperous _bizarrerie_ of the frontier and the artistic delicacy of our oldest culture always at odds within him–but he was above all a child of nature, a frolic incarnate, and just as he would have been in any time or country.” He also tells how Field put their friendship to one of those tests which sooner or later he applied to all–the test of linking their names with something utterly ludicrous and impossible, but published with all the solemn earmarks of verity. It was on the occasion of Mr. Stedman’s visit to Chicago on its invitation to lecture before the Twentieth Century Club. This gave Field the cue to announce the coming event in a way to fill the visitor with consternation. About two weeks before the poet-critic was expected, Field’s column contained the following innocent paragraph:
Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, the poet, and the foremost of American critics, is about to visit Chicago. He comes as the guest of the Twentieth Century Club, and on the evening of Tuesday, the 28th inst., he will deliver before that discriminating body an address upon the subject of “Poetry,” this address being one of the notable series which Mr. Stedman prepared for and read before the undergraduates of Johns Hopkins University last winter. These discourses are, as we judge from epitomes published in the New York Tribune, marvels of scholarship and of criticism.
Twenty years have elapsed, as we understand, since Mr. Stedman last visited Chicago. He will find amazing changes, all in the nature of improvements. He will be delighted with the beauty of our city and with the appreciation, the intelligence, and the culture of our society. But what should and will please him most will be the cordiality of that reception which Chicago will give him, and the enthusiasm with which she will entertain this charming prince of American letters, this eminent poet, this mighty good fellow!
I doubt if Mr. Stedman ever saw this item, which Field merely inserted, as was his wont, as a prelude to the whimsical announcement which followed in two days, and which was eagerly copied in the New York papers in time to make Mr. Stedman cast about for some excuse for being somewhere else than in Chicago on the 29th of April, 1891. This second notice is too good an instance of the liberty Field took with the name of a friend in his delectable vocation of laying “the knotted lash of sarcasm” about the shoulders of wealth and fashion of Chicago, not to be quoted in full. It was given with all the precision of typographical arrangement that is considered proper in printing a veritable programme of some public procession, in the following terms:
Chicago literary circles are all agog over the prospective visit of Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman, the eminent poet-critic. At the regular monthly conclave of the Robert Browning Benevolent and Patriotical Association of Cook County, night before last, it was resolved to invite Mr. Stedman to a grand complimentary banquet at the Kinsley’s on Wednesday evening, the 29th. Prof. William Morton Payne, grand marshal of the parade which is to conduct the famous guest from the railway station the morning he arrives, tells us that the procession will be in this order:
Twenty police officers afoot.
The grand marshal, horseback, accompanied by ten male members of the Twentieth Century Club, also horseback.
Mr. Stedman in a landau drawn by four horses, two black and two white.
The Twentieth Century Club in carriages.
A brass band afoot.
The Robert Browning Club in Frank Parmelee’s ‘buses.
The Homer Clubs afoot, preceded by a fife-and-drum corps and a real Greek philosopher attired in a tunic.
Another brass band.
A beautiful young woman playing the guitar, symbolizing Apollo and his lute in a car drawn by nine milk-white stallions, impersonating the muses.
Two Hundred Chicago poets afoot.
The Chicago Literary Club in carriages.
A splendid gilded chariot bearing Gunther’s Shakespeare autograph and Mr. Ellsworth’s first printed book.
Another brass band.
Magnificent advertising car of Armour and Co., illustrating the progress of civilization.
The Fishbladder Brigade and the Blue Island Avenue Shelley Club.
The fire department.
Another brass band.
Citizens in carriages, afoot and horseback.
Advertising cars and wagons.
The line of march will be an extensive one, taking in the packing-houses and other notable points. At Mr. Armour’s interesting professional establishment the process of slaughtering will be illustrated for the delectation of the honored guest, after which an appropriate poem will be read by Decatur Jones, President of the Lake View Elite Club. Then Mr. Armour will entertain a select few at a champagne luncheon in the scalding-room.
In high literary circles it is rumored that the Rev. F.M. Bristol has got an option on all autographs that Mr. Stedman may write during his stay in Chicago. Much excitement has been caused by this, and there is talk of an indignation meeting in Battery D, to be addressed by the Rev. Flavius Gunsaulus, the Rev. Frank W. Brobst, and other eminent speakers.
Small wonder that Mr. Stedman’s soul was filled with trepidation as his train approached Chicago, and that he was greatly relieved as it rolled into the station to find only a few friends awaiting him; and among them he quickly singled out Eugene Field, “his sardonic face agrin like a school-boy’s.”
Enough has been written and quoted to give the reader a fair idea of the general character of Eugene Field’s daily work and of the spirit that inspired it. As Mr. Stedman has said, the work of the journeyman and the real literary artist appeared cheek by jowl in his column. The best of it has been preserved in his collected works. That given in this chapter is merely intended to show how he illuminated the lightest and most ephemeral topics of the day with a literary touch at once acute and humorous, and certainly unconventional. In the Appendix to these volumes the reader will find a review of the fictitious biography of Miss Emma Abbott, the once noted opera singer. It is an ingenious piece of work and will repay reading as a satire on current reviewing, besides illustrating the daring liberty Field could take with anyone whom he reckoned a friend.
The following paragraph, which will serve as a tail-piece to this chapter, printed May 31st, 1894, shows how the playful raillery which marked his earlier work in and about Chicago survived to the end:
The oldest house in Chicago stands on the West Side, and was built in 1839 A.D. The oldest horse in Chicago works for the Lake View Street-Car Company, and was present at the battle of Marathon 490 B.C.
END OF VOL. I.