Kate Field; a record

Front matter

A 1

CORNELL

UNIVERSITY

Chapter I

Childhood and Circumstance. An Interesting Heredity. Family Letters. Mr. and Mrs. Field's Stage Life. Death of Joseph M. F'eld. The Mother and Daughter ^

CHAPTER 11

Early Youth. Aspirations and Studies. Interest in

Art and Literature. Ardent Devotion to Music . 45

Chapter X

In Retrospect. Universal Appreciation and Love. The Strange Ordering of Circumstance. A Sculptured Cross in Mount Auburn. Death only an Event in Life 561

Index 579

ILLUSTRATIONS

Page Portrait, from the original picture painted by Elihu Vedder,

in Florence, 1861 Frontispiece

Portrait, from the original picture painted by Simpson,

1852 47

Portrait, from a photograph taken in 1865 . . 147 Portrait, from a crayon drawing by Vanderweyde, London,

1878 380

Facsimile of Kate Field's handwriting . . . . 456

Portrait, from a photograph taken in 1889 468

A RECORD

T salicte the immortal. Great minds never die. Becoming Invisible in one fo?-m, they become resplendent in another. — Victor Hugo.

" The birds sing like angels, so mystical-fine,

And the cedars are brushing the archangel's feet;

And time is eternity, love is divine. And the world is complete.

May God bless the child, father, mother respond,

O Life, O Beyond, Thou art strange, thou art sweet."

" From wave and star and flower Some effluence rare Was lent thee, a divine, but transient dower."

" I will paint her as I see her."

Chapter I

Childhood and Circumstance. An Interesting Heredity. Family Letters. Mr. and Mrs. Field's Stage Life. Death of Joseph M. Field. The Mother and Daughter.

KATE FIELD'S varied and prismatic life rises before one like a romance of destiny. It was a life strangely rich in a series of brilliant representations and of unique experiences ; and still, if an incantation of prophecy had been invoked over her cradle, voice and vision might well have proclaimed to her : " It will be yours to wrestle, not to reign." She was pre-eminently a woman who impressed the imagination. She abounded in spiritual energy. Delicate in physique, artistic in temperament, exquisite in taste, lofty in all poetic and heroic aspiration, she had in the utmost degree that intense and finely wrought nature that leaves in some form or other its haunting impress. Kate Field was made

" of spirit, and fire, and dew,"

and her tenacity of endurance was a signal illustration of the power of the mind over the body.

Mary Katherine Keemle Field was the stately baptismal name that will hardly be recognized as identical with the brief and familiar one by which she was known, and which seemed to express her personality; but this was the name given to the little girl born in St. Louis, Mo., on Oct. i, 1838, the daughter of Joseph M. and EHza (Riddle) Field. Behind her lay a most interesting heredity. The Field family came originally from Warwickshire, England, and its earliest known representative was Nathaniel Field, one of the Elizabethan dramatists, who wrote several plays, among which there was one called " Woman as a Weathercock." He was a friend of Shakespeare and an actor in his company. Curiously, the first time that Kate Field visited the church at Stratford-on-Avon she found her foot stepping on a grave-slab bearing the name of Field, one of her far-away ancestors. In some revolutionary change the family became located in Ireland, and we find Kate's grandfather, Matthew Field, a leading Catholic in Dublin, and a man so benevolent and beloved that he was commonly known as " the Saint." The rebellion of 1798 came on and all his property was confiscated. Then he came to America with his family, settled in Baltimore where he became a publisher and brought out the first Catholic almanac in this country. He died in early life, leaving a family of young children, of whom his two sons, Joseph and Matthew, were destined to leave more than an ordinary impress on life. The latter was a poet whose work met with considerable recognition from Poe and other of the literary people of his day. His early death cut short what promised to be a literary career of importance. Joseph M. Field was still more brilliantly gifted, — too richly endowed, indeed, in various lines, for that concentration upon any single line which is the condition of special success. He, also, was a poet ; his versatility, one might almost say his fatal versatility, — which his daughter inherited in a marked degree, — was manifested as an actor, a playwright, a journalist, an organizer and theatremanager, and a delightful raconteur of travel and incident. Nothing more conclusively points to the reality of the immortal life than the vision of these rare and richly endowed natures for whom the utmost span of physical existence here is hopelessly inadequate in its time for development and achievement. Joseph M. Field was one of whom it might truly be said : —

" His life was gentle, and the elements So mixed in him that nature might stand up And say to all the world, ' This was a man.' "

He was born in 18 10, in Dubhn, during the brief sojourn of the family in Ireland, and was but two years of age when his father settled in Baltimore. In his earliest youth he went upon the stage and became a great favorite as an actor. He wrote stories and plays, one of which, called " Family Lies," took the prize of $1000 offered by Dan Marble for the best American comedy. Other plays of his were brought out with success; and in a French drama called " Gabrielle," which Mr. Field translated and adapted to the American stage, Charlotte Cushman played the leading r61e, making of it one of her finest successes. It was somewhere about 1836 that Mr. Field, the young actor, excelling in light comedy, first met Miss Riddle, who was engaged in the same company, and had already won recognition for her impersonation of Julia in " The Hunchback."

Eliza Riddle was one of a family somewhat exceptionally gifted. Her mother, Mary (Lapsley) Riddle, was the daughter of an old Philadelphia family of Quakers, and seems to have been an exotic ; for at the age of fifteen she ran away from home to go on the stage. She married an actor, Mr. William Riddle, and with him entered on the dramatic life. Of this marriage there were several children, — Sarah, who became well known to the stage under her married name of Mrs. W. H. Smith ; Edward and William, who both shared in the brilliant gifts of their family, but who died in comparatively early life; Eliza, who became the wife of Joseph M. Field ; and Cordelia, wonderfully gifted in music, who became Mrs. Milton T. Sanford, the wife of a Newport millionaire. The marriage of Kate Field's maternal grandparents — Mr. W. H. Riddle and Miss Mary Lapsley — must have occurred in the very early years of 1800, and Eliza (Mrs. Field) was born about 1 812. In 1823 we find Mrs. Riddle, with her young family about her, playing in and around Cincinnati, sharing the life of the strolling actor of those early years. The stage of those days was no such luxurious temple of the Muses as now meets the exaction of polite life, but was frequently a dark and shabby place, and salaries averaged from eight to fifteen dollars a week. Mrs. Mary Riddle was a strong personality, and to her Edwin Forrest owed the aid which led to his first professional success. Lawrence Barrett, in his biography of Edwin Forrest, speaks of the friendship between him and the Riddles as one which, " beginning under the shadow of a mutual poverty, lasted and grew stronger and more dear under the sun of prosperity. To Mrs. Riddle and her family," continues Mr. Barrett, " Edwin Forrest owed in those dark days much of the hope and encouragement which brighten adversity. Their courtesy and unfaihng friendship were the ties which bound him to duty, and kept in his mind the example and precepts of his beloved mother and sister. The Riddles had passed many years of honorable labor in their profession, and reached respectable positions, and out of their scanty earnings made Edwin feel at home in a circle where happy contentment helped to banish from the hearthstone the pangs of public neglect or private sorrows. To the end of his life, in fame and prosperity, the name of this early benefactress of his was a dear one to his ears, and he never ceased to speak fondly of her and of her memory."

Mrs. Mary Riddle died in Boston on Dec. 2, 1840, when her grand-daughter, Kate Field, was but two years of age. Edwin Forrest came to stand by the grave that winter day when the snow lay deep over Mount Auburn, and as the faint sunshine shone upon his head, reverently bared, the tears fell unchecked from his eyes. " My heart is full of memories," he said to a friend.

The beneficence of character which so distinguished the mother was shared by all her children, and particularly by Eliza, whose patience and sweetness of nature were almost ideal. She was also lovely in person, — a slender, graceful figure, with oval face shaded by rich brown hair, with eyes which matched it to a shade, and rose tints adding brilliancy to a finely expressive countenance.

May»we pause for a moment in contemplation of this prologue of the drama of Kate Field's life? — of these " meeting streams," as George Eliot well calls them. The coming to America of a Catholic publisher from Dublin ; the impetuous impulse of a girl of Quaker parentage to enter on the dramatic life; the years of hardship and privation in her profession and of honorable struggle to rear and educate her family of young children ; and then the meeting of the son of the one and the daughter of the other, each with the best traditions of life behind, — not the traditions of ease and luxury, but of high aspiration and untiring energy. Was not this indeed an heredity whose influence on the young life to come was one of the utmost nobleness?

It was somewhere about 1835 when Joseph M. Field and Eliza Riddle met as members of the same dramatic company, playing an engagement in Mobile, he about twenty-five and she some two years younger. A letter from him to the girl who had become the star of his dreams, bearing no date save that of " Tuesday night," runs thus : —

My dearest, dearest Love, — Let me call you so. I am so happy and yet so miserable. You don't look so discouragingly on me, but I have become a downright coward. In the morning I shall call. When I gave you that little note, you did not reprove me. Oh, I shall hope ! My love, my dear love, do not shut up your heart against me and happiness. I cannot even think what it would be to part with you. They are talking to me of engaging for another year, but I can put my mind on nothing but the hope I hold, — that we may arrange our future together. My love, my soul's love, do not be offended. My own dear Eliza, I love you with a pure and honorable love, whose only object is your happiness, and through yours my own.

You "do not think you will ever marry"! But, my love, if marriage has its cares, what are they but a motive for healthy exertion, a stimulant to employ faculties that otherwise might lapse into inaction. Oh, trust me, Eliza, my sweet friend ! Let me walk by your side all through this life, shielding you from the world's rough ways ; let your heart and hand lie in mine. God bless you, my love, my love !

And again this ardent lover writes to the maiden of his choice : —

My dear Eliza, — You will go away, and what will there be to remind you of me ? . . . I am not happy in what is termed brilliant society ; I am weary of that notoriety and show which is so generally sought by members of our j>rofession. I see the folly of indulging in those dreams and fancies which fill the heads of young men to the exclusion of real happiness. I only long for the companionship of the one I love, — yourself. I want to tell all my thoughts to you ; to study and improve myself in your society ; to know that we may mingle all our joys and cares. You say you fear you do not love me with sufficient devotion. Oh, my dear Eliza (pray pardon me), but may not future regrets make you aware of the true nature of your feelings? I pray to God, my dear Eliza, that regrets may never be yours, whatever becomes of me. ... I have reflected deeply upon the responsibilities. I am even now able to lay by means. I will exert myself, and I feel I could do anything for you, and time must better my fortunes. As for those near claims you have upon you, they shall be to me as my own. I have given my heart to you, Eliza, as a being pure and gentle, with all the qualities that adorn a home. . . . Oh, if you could but love me, all the world lo Kate Field

beside may go ! Might we not be most happy together ? I don't care for the dazzle of the world, nor do you. Think, my dear, beloved Eliza, with the approbation of our own hearts, and the esteem of the few whose friendship we value, could we not be most happy? With youth, health, and industry, too, believe me, my dear, dear Eliza, love and competence would bless our union. God bless you ! Your devoted,

Joe.

Love, that most intense spiritual potency, cuts its own channel, creates its own conditions, and the lofty tenderness of Joseph Field for the woman of his dreams was no exception to this law. Eliza Riddle turned to him with the utmost consecration of devotion, and their marriage being celebrated in St. Louis, Mo., in October of 1837, together the husband and wife entered on that new world which is the old. Eliza Riddle was then in the first flush of her artistic fame. She made constant advances in her art. Of her Isoline, in "John of Procida," a critic of the time records that it was " a beautiful piece of acting; " that her conception of the character was admirable, and that some of her scenes in the most impassioned passages were executed with a fine intensity of feeling and a fidelity to the character portrayed which had seldom been equalled and never surpassed. Previously to her marriage Mrs. Field had supported Sheridan Knowles, and as Mariana to his St. Pierre, in his play of " The Wife," she inspired an enthusiasm seldom known in those days.

Happy months came and went, and the first day of October, 1838, was marked for the Fields by the arrival of the little daughter on the eve of the Feast of the Holy Angels, which the Catholic Church, into which her father was born, celebrates on the second of October. The infant was baptized in the Catholic faith, and received the name of Mary Katherine Keemle, the latter being for Charles Keemle, Mr. Field's nearest friend and business partner in a newspaper that he was about establishing, called " The Reveille." The auspices under which the little maid entered on her terrestrial experiences were full of joyous energy. The union of Mr. and Mrs. Field was indeed a " marriage of true minds." He was full of exhilaration, wit, boundless energy, and versatile genius ; a poet, a journalist, an actor, a playwright. She was gentle, loving, with a grace and sweetness peculiarly her own, and with an undercurrent of serene strength of character which her husband safely trusted. The first record that has been preserved of their little daughter is in a letter from Mrs. Field to her husband, apparently written in June of 1839, in which she says:

" Our dear baby has so improved since you left and is so joyous. It 's as much as I can do to keep her in my arms. If she had wings, I really think she would fly. . . . O my dear love, I cannot express the happiness I feel in hearing of your success. . . . You tell me not to be too economical. I do not think that I am. We have no engagement for next season, dear Joe, so it behooves us to be careful. God bless you, my dear love."

On June 19, 1840, Mr. Field sailed for Europe as correspondent of the New Orleans " Picayune," and also to study the dramatic art of London and Paris. He took with him many important letters of introduction, among which was one from George P. Morris to Theodore Fay of the American Legation at Berlin ; and there opened to the young actor a tide of rich opportunities. Mrs. Field writes to her husband soon after his departure that their Httle Kate is a " perfect chatterbox," and that " she courtesies and kisses her hand on leaving a room in the most graceful manner." That distinction of presence which was always recognized in Kate Field seemed to manifest itself in her infancy. The psychology of childhood is always fascinating in its speculative data, and, remembering Kate Field's ardent interest in politics from the time she was a girl of eighteen, one smiles to read, in the fond mother's nursery chronicles, that at the age of eighteen months the little maid was shouting "Tippecanoe," as she danced and laughed, catching the name from a popular ditty of the hour that ran : —

" Tippecanoe and Tyler too."

Here was shown that same keen perception that always characterized her.

On Oct. I, 1 84 1, Mrs. Field writes to her husband : —

" This is Kate's birthday. She sends an hundred kisses to her dear father, and hopes that he will bring her something pretty from Philadelphia. She says of course that father will remember the first of October, that it is his darling little Katy's birthday, that he will bring her something very, very pretty. I was sitting very quietly the other day sewing and thinking of you ; presently I received a thrust in my side. I started up ; there stood Miss Kate with a wooden dagger, shouting at the top of her little voice, ' Die ! Die ! ' waving it above her head. I am wishing you were here to see her little tricks ; there is no end to them. When I told her that you had sent her a dozen kisses, she looked at the letter and kissed it inside and out.

' Now,' says she, ' you must give that father, that dear father, a dozen kisses from his darling little Kate.' This morning she rather puzzled me with her questions. She looked up into my face and gravely asked how we came to be made. I replied that God made us. 'Why am I your child if God made me ? ' 'He gave you to me, darling, to be a blessing to your father and mother.' ' Well, I '11 be good, my darling little mother,' — and so this interesting conversation ended. What do you think of our little Kate? "

Mr. Field's letter in reply reveals the tenderness of the father : —

..." Your last letter, reminding me that this would be the birthday of our little pet, and containing her little prattle with regard to it, delighted me extremely. Little things become of great consequence sometimes, and Miss Kate being at the distance of a day's journey has wonderfully improved in consequence, bless her little heart ! "

Mr. Field's European visit resulted in a larger outlook for his fortunes, and on his return he and Mrs. Field returned to the St. Charles Theatre in New Orleans at a salary of eighty dollars a week for both, which at that time was considered eminently satisfactory. The autumn of 1843 found Mrs. Field with her mother in Boston, while her husband was still playing in the South. Some business perplexities ensued, and the loving wife writes to him : —

"... You have more resources within yourself than most men, and as long as you are blessed with health I am content. To be sure, I should be much happier if we were together for such loneliness comes over me when you are away. I don't know why, but I never look for consideration or sympathy from any one but yourself. You are the only person in the world with whom I could ever be unconstrained. . . . Our little Katy is so wild I do not know what to do with her. The little witch is perfectly healthy, and growing more intelligent every day. She was very anxious to know last night if the man in the moon would not take cold ; and she says papa is not very polite to stay away so long."

In January of 1843 Mrs. Field again says of their little daughter in a letter to her husband : I asked Katy if she had anything to say to papa? She replies that she will write for herself, but not just what she wrote in her last letter, for she was certainly sure papa would not like it so well twice.

Again, in the little girl who was only three months past her fifth birthday is seen the same dawning independence and self-reliance and a foretaste of the literary discrimination that in later life was so signally her own. One of her own little letters to her father at this time, which his fond love preserved, runs thus : —

My darling Papa, — I send you a lock of your little Katy's hair. You are to make a bracelet of it, and not give it away, but keep it for yourself. I shall expect you home next week and then I shall dance and sing all day. I send a kiss to my darling papa.

In February of 1843 a son was born to Mr. and Mrs. Field, the " Little Joe " whose brief life of six years was a rapture of joy to the young father and mother.

" Little Joe is a true Field and your very image," Mrs. Field writes to the father, who had not yet seen his little son. " He has Katy's eyes and her delicate lands and feet," continues Mrs. Field. " Katy is as independent as ever, and I could not write in all day the funny things the little sprite says."

The beautiful spirit of Eliza Field is reflected in every word she writes. As this : —

My dear Love, — I have received the check for ^60. It came in good time. I look forward to every letter of yours with the greatest happiness. Little Joe will be five weeks old to-morrow. Oh, my dear husband, it is hard for us to be parted at this time, but your little wife tries to be brave and we will be all the happier when we do meet, and you can take Katy and our darling son in your arms. My dear love, as I write this, your letter with check for ^100 comes. How thoughtful you are, and, oh, if you can only keep your health, we shall be so happy with our sweet children. Katy sends a hundred kisses to her darling papa.

This was the sweet atmosphere of refinement and love into which Kate Field was born. Her earliest impressions were those of honorable aspiration, devoted love, and a sweet reasonableness regarding all the vicissitudes of life.

The autumn of 1844 was marked to the Fields by a great sorrow in the death of Mr. Field's brother Matthew, whose gentle and poetic nature endeared him to all whom he met. In those days there was a famous theatrical firm known as Ludlow and Smith, and a daughter of Mr. Ludlow became the wife of Matt Field. The two brothers had been famiharly known to the press as " Straws " and " Phasma," and both had written much verse, some of which is not without genuine poetic quality. Matt Field, as he was always called, was for years in delicate health with bronchial trouble, but his death came with the same startling suddenness that was afterward to be the fate of his brother Joseph, and of Kate, his niece. Leaving his young wife and two little children in St. Louis, he went to New York, hoping that a sea voyage would restore his health. Embarking on Nov. 13, 1844, he died at midnight of the following day and was buried at sea. During his last evening his talk had been full of brightness and repartee. The captain of the steamer came to his stateroom, and sitting just outside the door read to Mr. Field for some time. At last, speaking to him and receiving no reply, he arose and turned to the berth only to find the invalid unconscious, and within an hour his spirit had taken flight. The surviving brother expressed his grief in a poem entitled "A Sigh for Phasma," in which occur such lines as these : —

'' Complainings gentle, musical, and low — Thy mystic harp, November — Here around Mingle the sad vibrations. The dull words Breathe their last dirge for summer, their adieu To all they love of beauty, all their wealth Of vernal shelter, all their tenant throngs. Their hymn of patience, their deep sigh of love."

These lines are a typical illustration of Mr. Field's poetic gift, which was not unlike that of Bryant, save in degree. Mr. Field had, however, another vein of wit and rollicking fun, which was almost equally in evidence, and there were in him, as in his daughter, varying gifts which were at times mutually exclusive.

About this time (1844-45) Mr. Field became associated with Mr. Charles Keemle in the publication of the St. Louis " Reveille." Five years later their office was destroyed in the great fire that swept over St. Louis, even destroying steamboats moored on the river, but the mercurial spirits of Mr. Field rose to new endeavor, and he turned from the very smoke of the ruins to write a comedy which proved successful. He also collected a volume of his sketches with the hope that Messrs. Little, Brown, and Co. of Boston would publish it; but when they declined, as their house was then dealing exclusively in legal works, he applied to a Philadelphia house that ofifered him $250 for the volume outright, which he accepted. Not the least fortunate characteristic of Mr. Field was his power of instantaneous decision, wasting no energy in hesitation and doubt. Mrs. Field accepted an engagement at the St. Charles Theatre in New Orleans, taking her two little children with her. She writes to her husband : —

My dearest Husband, — You would think me childish if I were to tell you how much I love you, how constantly you occupy my thoughts. I have a thousand hopes, — a thousand fears. I fear some accident may have happened to you ; that you may be ill, and I not there to nurse you ; that you may work too hard and so hurt your health ; that you have not those comforts about you that you ought to have. Then, again, I am so happy in your love. I know you love me as dearly as I love you, and 't is so delightful to think that we feel so towards each other. You are my world ; my thoughts, feelings, affections, are all centred in you. I love my children very dearly, but not as I love you. They may leave me by-and-by ; but if you are spared and love me, I can never feel lonely.

A loving mother's details of her children and life and Katy's studies fill every letter.

The parents were even at this time much occupied with thoughts and plans, for their daughter Kate was a brilliant child already, with a kind of inscrutable individuality of her own, with a passionate love of music, and hardly less devotion to literary pursuits. " Katy is very fond of writing," records her mother in a letter when the little girl was some eight years of age. And again in a letter to her sister (Mrs. Sanford), Mrs. Field writes: —

" Katy is getting along finely with her studies. She is as fond of books and study as her father. She is a good, strange child. I think she will make a fine woman. I hope she will not be spoiled ; but it is very difficult in the West to keep girls like Kate away from flattery. I hope she will have the good sense to withstand it. She is very quick, very observing, for one of her age."

The dancing-master from whom Kate had lessons while with her mother in New Orleans wished his pupils to give a dance, and in the winter of 1848-49 Mrs. Field writes to her husband : —

" Katy was so anxious to go that I consented. I had no idea a few days before the ball that the children were to be invited. Katy was dressed simply (in a frock she had last winter), and looked and danced prettily. I think she was the most lady-like of the crowd. She is getting very self-willed, however, and I find it hard to manage her. She says if her father were here she is sure he would not deny her. I may be wrong ; I think I am rightt Tell me in your next what you think of it. Kate values your opinion. The perfect freedom she had last winter was an injury to her. She says ' if I will allow her to go to parties this winter, — that is, children's parties, — she will not ask to go again until she is a young lady.' I fear it would make her a young lady too soon. Katy is rather impatient of control ; I do not like to refuse her ; I know it gives her a great deal of pleasure. ' I must be cruel only to be kind.'