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W. C. Fields
the menu, and the service, and hurt his warders' feelings. They viewed him as a corrupting influence on the other tenants and were glad to get rid of him. During one time of frequent jailings, Fields temporarily gave up stealing and subsisted on the free lunch in saloons. He would swagger in, buy ginger ale with a nickel he'd panhandled, and visit the free-lunch cage. The meal he managed to make in a few minutes' time, from hard-boiled eggs, pickled herring, cheese, bologna, liverwurst, onions and similar staples, was worth several times the price of his drink. Bartenders began to share the official police view of Fields ; he had to distribute his patronage widely to avoid ejections.
The deeper he settled into his vagabondage, the higher he rose socially. Among the members of the Orlando group his prestige was unapproached. This kind of deference would turn the heads of most children, and it turned the head of Fields. He became downright snobbish. Amidst his contemporaries his attitude was lordly, and he was condescending to the blacksmith. His manner suggested that he did not wholly condemn toil but that it placed a barrier between him and Wheeler. His address in the smithy took on overtones of "My man" and "My good fellow." In these years Fields developed a grandiose air, shot through with fraud, that stuck with him like a plaster. He once said that his pre-eminence was gratifying, though it had drawbacks. Boys for miles around, envious of his glitter and easy ways, sought to devaluate him physically. He was beaten up several times a week. Representatives of other districts would waste a day's travel for the privilege of licking him. Nothing altered the fact that he stole for a living and was regularly jailed. Off and on during his life, Fields corresponded with a few of his boyhood friends. One is now a Philadelphia stone mason ; another has succeeded to ownership of the family bakery, from which edibles once found their way into the fugitive's bunk.
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