Garland in His Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of His Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, Friends, and Associates

From “I State My Views on Taxation” (1896)

[66] X From “I State My Views on Taxation” (1896) Eugene Field In June 1893, just before the World’s Columbian Exposition, Garland interviewed Field for the inaugural issue of McClure’s Magazine. In a dialogue between interviewer and subject in which Garland himself becomes a character in the interview being recorded by an “objective” observer, Garland used the occasion to reinforce the themes of his polemical writing on behalf of local color writing, putting words in Field’s mouth to have him exclaim, “I tell you, brother Garland, the West is the coming country. We ought to have a big magazine to develop the West. It’s absurd to suppose we’re going on always being a tributary to the East!” (“Real Conversations.—II. A Dialogue between Eugene Field and Hamlin Garland,” McClure’s Magazine 1 [August 1893]: 204). Elsewhere in the interview, Garland took pains to describe Field’s appearance and habits of speech—characteristics at odds with Field’s actual demeanor and vocal habits. The interview was published in August, but Field took his revenge in his semifictional autobiography The House, in which he poked fun at Garland’s single-tax advocacy and his recent novel Rose of Dutcher’s Coolly (1895), in which Rose (the “blackberry”) moves from an idyllic farm to the city, as well as Garland’s celebration of rural life. of the many friends who hastened to congratulate us when they heard that we had acquired a home, none was more delighted than Gamlin Harland. I take it for granted that you have read Mr. Harland’s numerous books, and that you know all about Mr. Harland himself. Not to know of him is to argue one’s self unknown. My first meeting with Mr. Harland was at a single-tax convention six years ago; he was a delegate to that convention from Wisconsin, and I was a delegate from Illinois. I was a delegate because the manager of the party, who lives in New York, couldn’t find anybody else to serve as the delegate from the congressional district in which I lived. I thought that rather than have that district unrepresented I ought to serve, and so I did. The acquaintance I then made with Gamlin Harland soon ripened into friendship, and [67] this intimacy has lasted ever since. Mr. Harland insists that I am a singletax man, and it may be that I am in theory, although I certainly am not in practice; for I never have paid any tax of any kind, be it single or double. As soon as he heard of our purchase Mr. Harland came out to inspect the premises, and of course he was delighted. “This will make a new man of you,” said he to me. “It will take your mind off your impracticable star-gazing and moonshining, and divert your attention into the channels of realism. These premises are so spacious as to admit of your engaging to a considerable extent in agriculture; you can now lay aside the telescope and the spectrum for the spade and the hoe; the field of speculation can be abandoned for this noble acre which I hope soon to see smiling into an abundant harvest.” “Yes,” said I, “it is my purpose to engage largely in the cultivation of flowers.” “Pshaw!” cried Mr. Harland, “there you go again! Don’t you know that flowers are wholly worthless except in so far as they pander to the gratification of a sensuous appetite? It would be a crime to surrender these opportunities to ignoble uses. You must raise vegetables here, or perhaps some of the small fruits would thrive better in this rich sandy soil.” Investigation satisfied Mr. Harland that blackberries were the particular kind of small fruit to which the soil seemed adapted. I was not surprised at this, for I knew that the blackberry was a favorite with Mr. Harland—in fact, Mr. Harland is the only author I know of who has written a novel whose plot hinges (so to speak) upon a blackberry. So passionately fond of this fruit is he that he devotes a part of the year to cultivating blackberries on his Wisconsin farm. There are invidious persons who intimate that his only reason for cultivating the blackberry is to be found in the fact that nothing else will grow on his farm, and presumably you have heard the epigram which the romanticists have perpetrated at Mr. Harland’s expense, and which...