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

W . C. Fields abstracting a hen here, rejecting a partridge there — making, all in all, a pleasant and profitable holiday. It was a kind of processed poaching, and done at a time when the British poaching laws were quite severe. Fields himself said he sat in a courtroom where a woman was given a stiffish sentence for poaching eggs. Fields had no particular need for the fowls ; stealing them merely represented, in his mind, another foolproof method of staying ahead. He had graduated from larceny several years before, but he did not consider lifting poultry from Englishmen stealing. The fowls were obviously hung outdoors to be removed, he said. Ignoring them would have been an implied criticism of British advertising methods, and he did not wish to offend. Out of sentiment, Fields kept the knapsack all his life; it was made the subject of a Paramount publicity release in 1933. The lopsided romance between Fields and the English continued, off and on, for years. On subsequent tours, at each unusual expression of their good manners, he worked out some compensating mischief. Notably, he devised a complicated scheme to beat stationmasters out of the fee for excess luggage. Fields was traveling with two wardrobe trunks at the time, and it irked him to cough up funds outside of his fare. In America one could occasionally check any amount of impedimenta on a single ticket. He always enjoyed bragging about tricking the stationmasters, explaining, somewhat unclearly, that the economy had involved his buying the official a glass of beer while some confederate shoved the cases into a baggage car. "It saved me many a pretty penny," Fields used to say. In reminiscent humors he related that he had made a profound study of English psychology. While on the tours he had often demonstrated his knowledge to some unbelieving companion. Once, preparing to board a train with another American, he discoursed at length on the Englishman's courteous inadequacy 88