University Missourian

ANOTHER 'GENE FIELD TALE
Robertus Love In St. Louis Republic Tells How Poet Won Bride,
Another Eugene Field tale of how the great Missourian won his wife appeared last week in the St. Louis Republic, told by Roburtus Love, who was a speaker on one of the Journalism Week programs.
"From his birthplace on Collins street, St. Louis," writes Mr. Love, "Field had gone to the University of Missouri as a student, and there met Edgar Comstock of St. Joseph, who became one of his particular chums.
Comstock invited him in 1872 to go up and see the rest of the Comstocks, including five pretty sisters. Three of the girls were old enough to have beaux, and they had them in plenty.
The tall, slim youth from St. Louis hardly got a chance to look at them. But there was Julia, the fourth sister, only 15 at the time and nothing but a child. Field was about 22 years old.
He stayed a long time with the Comstocks and went around considerably with Julia. There were bevies of beauties, sweet-and-twenty or so, in the Comstock set, but Eugene Field didn't see them.
" 'Gene and Julia wandered through Lovers' Lane the same Lovers' Lane which he wrote about in after years.
They plucked the wild flowers and made them into posies. They watched the squirrels leap and frolic in the trees. They were just a couple o' kids, you see, thoroughly enjoying life in the golden summertime and the glad outdoors.
"But that thoroughfare of the rural outskirts was perilously named. Lovers' Lane! Ha! Presently 'Gene Field repaired to Papa Comstock and reported that he and Julia had come to an understanding and he wanted to make her his wife. Papa Comstock and the rest of the Comstocks got almost panicky. What? Marry a child - a little girl like Julia? Why, the very idea!
" 'But,' said 'Gene, 'Julia'll outgrow that, you know.'"
" 'Yes,' said the Comstocks, 'in three or four years. Wait till she's 18, anyway.'"
"The young man promised to wait, in the meantime taking a trip to Europe, where he spent most of the money left him by his father. After one year he returned, Julia was 16--two years from the stipulated age. But Field was determined upon immediate marriage--what's a promise made by a poet, anyhow? And then there was the prior promise he had made to Julia Comstock. So they were married October 18, 1873. The wedding breakfast was eaten the next morning at the Pacific House, the chief hotel in St. Joseph at that period. Field invited the entire wedding party to come to St. Louis with him and his bride. Everybody came, and for 10 days there was a honeymoon celebration assisted by all hands.
"The folks up in St. Jo had a May Day celebration to show that they remember Gene and his tribute to Lovers' Lane, which is now a city street. The Daughters of the American Revolution, the Sons of the Revolution, the Commerce Club, many women's clubs, the city officials, even the city Fire Department--all had a hand in the May-day fete which was essentially a 'Gene Field memory affair, the planting of trees in Lovers' Lane being the chief feature of the exercises."