W. C. Fields : his follies and fortunes (1949)

Fields' family made little more than a token search. His mother felt that, at eleven, he was young to set up on his own, but the problems of four other children diverted her mind. The attitude of Fields' father could perhaps be summed up by the handy phrase "good riddance." He took the stand that a boy careless with small shovels would likely grow up to be careless with large shovels, and that such a person was a menace. He trained another of his offspring to help out on the cart. For years thence neither Dukinfield nor his wife knew where their son had gone. Meanwhile, the boy had begun to enjoy himself. There being no other place available at the moment, he tightened the bunk's defenses against weather, stole a quilt off a neighbor's line, and bought some candles with a dime he had borrowed from an admirer. At the same time, his friends continued to bring food. Adequately housed, well stoked, and having no connection with vegetables and fruit save as consumer, Fields felt at peace for the first time in years. The idyll was short-lived. The day he had fled, in March, was balmy for that season. Less than a week later the weather turned surly, and he found the quilt insufficient. To heat things up, he made a small bonfire in one corner of the bunk, but it caused such a smudge and hurt his eyes so badly that he covered it with mud. He spent one night wrapped in the quilt and huddled over a candle. When he surfaced the next morning it was snowing briskly. About this time, the participants in his food lift gave up, for the most part. The novelty had worn off, and several of them, caught greasy-handed, had been soundly trounced. Their loyalty to Fields was solid, but it fell short of corporal punishment. The time had come, Fields felt, to move into a better neighborhood. He discovered that it was a period in which the kind of housing he sought — free and removed from the scrutiny of police — was extraordinarily scarce. The only possibility, he found as he went 19