  The magnetic field (B-field) of the starless dark cloud L1544 has been
studied using near-infrared (NIR) background starlight polarimetry (BSP) and
archival data in order to characterize the properties of the plane-of-sky
B-field. NIR linear polarization measurements of over 1,700 stars were obtained
in the H-band and 201 of these were also measured in the K-band. The NIR BSP
properties are correlated with reddening, as traced using the RJCE (H-M)
method, and with thermal dust emission from the L1544 cloud and envelope seen
in Herschel maps. The NIR polarization position angles change at the location
of the cloud and exhibit their lowest dispersion of position angles there,
offering strong evidence that NIR polarization traces the plane-of-sky B-field
of L1544. In this paper, the uniformity of the plane-of-sky B-field in the
envelope region of L1544 is quantitatively assessed. This allowed evaluating
the approach of assuming uniform field geometry when measuring relative
mass-to-flux ratios in the cloud envelope and core based on averaging of the
envelope radio Zeeman observations, as in Crutcher et al. (2009). In L1544, the
NIR BSP shows the envelope B-field to be significantly non-uniform and likely
not suitable for averaging Zeeman properties without treating intrinsic
variations. Deeper analyses of the NIR BSP and related data sets, including
estimates of the B-field strength and testing how it varies with position and
gas density, are the subjects of later papers in this series.
