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

CHAPTER SEVEN F JL OR or a couple of years after I made my start, I was dead broke practically all the time," Fields told an interviewer for the American magazine in 1926. He was referring to his middle teens, years that most boys later look back upon as their happiest. It would be hard to exaggerate the wretchedness of Fields' life in this period. He tramped to the booking offices, he starved, he froze, and he became so threadbare he was ashamed to ask for jobs. Having an understandable prejudice against the outfit that had disconnected him in Ohio, he avoided its office for weeks, hoping for something better. Once during this interval he signed on with a cheap circus, but his niche was ignominious. The management had a juggler, a very jealous man, and Fields, the erstwhile darling of Fortescue's, the most prolific drowner in the memory of Atlantic City, and the majority of a road-show cast, took work as a peg boy. His duties consisted mainly of having his fingers crushed by roustabouts swinging mauls. His hands were heavily bandaged; he wore gauze as Eskimos wear gloves — constantly and with resignation. By nagging his bosses, he finally ascended to drum carrier, and his fingers healed. His enjoyment was intense when he wangled this job, but he found that it, like holding pegs, was imperfect. The trouble was that the circus 50