Biographies

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

Not as other memoirs are written would Eugene Field, were he alive, have this study of his life. He would think more of making it reflect the odd personality of the man than rehearse the birth, development, daily life, and works of the author. If he had undertaken to write his...

Chapters

15. Chapter 15

Reference has been made to Field's predilection for the theatrical profession and to his fondness for the companionship of those who had attained prominence in it. During his st...

18. Chapter 18

In the last chapter I have told in general terms how Field employed himself day by day, from which the reader may form the impression that between eleven A.M. and midnight not o...

5. Chapter 5

For nine years after moving to St. Louis his profession was the sole mistress of Roswell Field's "laborious days" and bachelor nights. Almost coincident with his becoming intere...

12. Chapter 12

No story of Eugene Field's life would be true, no study of his personality complete, if it ignored or even glossed over "the mad wild ways of his youthful days" in Denver. He ne...

8. Chapter 8

And now I come to that event in the life of Eugene Field which has naturally attracted the widest interest among all who have delighted in his written tributes to womankind and...

3. Chapter 3

Many a time and oft in our walks and talks has Eugene Field told me the story I am about to relate, but never with the particularity of detail and the authority of absolute data...

13. Chapter 13

What I have written thus far of Eugene Field has been based upon what the lawyers call hearsay or documentary evidence. It has for the most part been directly heard or confirmed...

16. Chapter 16

Before he came to Chicago, pretty much all that Eugene Field knew of literature and books had been taken in at the pores, as Joey Laddle would say, through association with lawy...

17. Chapter 17

Although Eugene Field was the most unconventional of writers, there was a method in all his ways that made play of much of his work. No greater mistake was ever made than in att...

14. Chapter 14

It was in the month of September, after Field's coming to the Morning News, that a managerial convulsion in the office of the Chicago Herald threw the majority of its editorial...

6. Chapter 6

There was more truth than epigrammatic novelty in Eugene Field's declaration that his education began when he fancied he had left it off for the serious business of life. Throug...

11. Chapter 11

It was in Denver that Eugene Field entered upon and completed the final stage of what may be called the hobble-de-hoy period in his life and literary career. He went to the capi...

4. Chapter 4

Vermont's loss was Missouri's gain. The young lawyer, who had been admitted to the bar of his native state at the age of eighteen, was fully equipped to match his learning, wit,...

9. Chapter 9

Although Eugene Field made his first essay in journalism as a reporter, there is not the shadow of a tradition that he made any more progress along the line of news-gathering an...

7. Chapter 7

Eugene Field was in his twenty-first year when he turned his back upon the colleges and faced life. Roswell M. Field, Sr., had been dead two years, and the moderate fortune whic...

2. Chapter 2

"Sir John Maundeville, Kt.," was his prototype, and Father Prout was his patron saint. The one introduced him to the study of British balladry, the other led him to the classic...

1. Chapter 1

Not as other memoirs are written would Eugene Field, were he alive, have this study of his life. He would think more of making it reflect the odd personality of the man than reh...

10. Chapter 10

but touching the chords of mirth with certainty and irresistible effect. Field might have added, that none of the comedians he has named ever gave to the experience of "Johnny J...