BRET HARTE'S WANDERINGS IN CALIFORNIA
Bret Harte and his sister arrived at San Francisco in March, 1854, stayed
there one night, and went the next morning to Oakland, across the Bay,
where their mother and her second husband, Colonel Andrew Williams, were
living. In this house the boy remained about a year, teaching for a while,
and afterward serving as clerk in an apothecary's shop. During this year
he began his career as a professional writer, contributing some stories
and poems to Eastern magazines.
Bret Harte, like Thackeray, was fortunate in his stepfather, and if,
according to the accepted story, Thackeray's stepfather was the prototype
of Colonel Newcome, the two men must have had much in common. Colonel
Williams was born at Cherry Valley in the State of New York, and was
graduated at Union College with the Class of 1819. Henry Hart's class was
that of 1820, but the two young men were friends in college. Colonel
Williams had seen much of the world, having travelled extensively in
Europe early in the century, and he was a cultivated, well-read man. But
he was chiefly remarkable for his high standard of honor, and his amiable,
chivalrous nature. He was a gentleman of the old school in the best sense,
grave but sympathetic, courtly but kind. His generosity was unbounded.
Such a man might appear to have been somewhat out of place in bustling
California, but his qualities were appreciated there. He was the first
Mayor of Oakland, in the year 1857, and was re-elected the following year.
Colonel Williams built a comfortable house in Oakland, one of the first,
if not the very first in that city in which laths and plaster were used;
but land titles in California were extremely uncertain, and after a long
and stubborn contest in the courts, Colonel Williams was dispossessed, and
lost the house upon which he had expended much time and money. He then
took up his residence in San Francisco, where he lived until his return to
the East in the year 1871. His wife, Bret Harte's mother, died at
Morristown, New Jersey, April 4, 1875, and was buried in the family lot at
Greenwood, New York. The following year he went back to California for a
visit to Bret Harte's sister, Mrs. Wyman, but soon after his arrival died
of pneumonia at the age of seventy-six.
The San Francisco and Oakland papers spoke very highly of Colonel Williams
after his death, and one of them closed an account of his life with the
following words: "Colonel Williams had that indefinable sweetness of
manner which indicates innate refinement and nobility of soul. There was a
touch of the antique about him. He seemed a little out of time and place
in this hurried age of ours. He belonged to and typified the calmer temper
of a former generation. A gentler spirit never walked the earth. He
personified all the sweet charities of life. His heart was great, warm and
tender, and he died leaving no man in the world his enemy. Colonel
Williams was the stepfather of Bret Harte, between whom and himself there
existed the most affectionate relations."
It was during his first year in California that Bret Harte had that
gambling experience which he has related in his _Bohemian Days in San
Francisco_, and which throws so much light on his character that it should
be quoted here in part at least:--
"I was watching roulette one evening, intensely absorbed in the mere
movement of the players. Either they were so preoccupied with the game, or
I was really older looking than my actual years, but a bystander laid his
hand familiarly on my shoulder, and said, as to an ordinary _habitue_, 'Ef
you're not chippin' in yourself, pardner, s'pose you give _me_ a show.'
Now, I honestly believe that up to that moment I had no intention, nor
even a desire, to try my own fortune. But in the embarrassment of the
sudden address I put my hand in my pocket, drew out a coin and laid it,
with an attempt at carelessness, but a vivid consciousness that I was
blushing, upon a vacant number. To my horror I saw that I had put down a
large coin--the bulk of my possessions! I did not flinch, however; I think
any boy who reads this will understand my feeling; it was not only my coin
but my manhood at stake.... I even affected to be listening to the music.
The wheel spun again; the game was declared, the rake was busy, but I did
not move. At last the man I had displaced touched me on the arm and
whispered, 'Better make a straddle and divide your stake this time.' I did
not understand him, but as I saw he was looking at the board, I was
obliged to look, too. I drew back dazed and bewildered! Where my coin had
lain a moment before was a glittering heap of gold.
"... 'Make your game, gentlemen,' said the croupier monotonously. I
thought he looked at me--indeed, everybody seemed to be looking at me--and
my companion repeated his warning. But here I must again appeal to the
boyish reader in defence of my idiotic obstinacy. To have taken advice
would have shown my youth. I shook my head--I could not trust my voice. I
smiled, but with a sinking heart, and let my stake remain. The ball again
sped round the wheel, and stopped. There was a pause. The croupier
indolently advanced his rake and swept my whole pile with others into the
bank! I had lost it all. Perhaps it may be difficult for me to explain why
I actually felt relieved, and even to some extent triumphant, but I seemed
to have asserted my grown-up independence--possibly at the cost of
reducing the number of my meals for days; but what of that!... The man who
had spoken to me, I think, suddenly realized, at the moment of my
disastrous _coup_, the fact of my extreme youth. He moved toward the
banker, and leaning over him whispered a few words. The banker looked up,
half impatiently, half kindly,--his hand straying tentatively toward the
pile of coin. I instinctively knew what he meant, and, summoning my
determination, met his eyes with all the indifference I could assume, and
walked away."
In 1856, being then twenty years old, young Harte left Colonel Williams's
house, and thenceforth shifted for himself. His first engagement was as
tutor in a private family at Alamo in the San Ramon Valley. There were
several sons in the family, and one or two of them were older than their
tutor. The next year he went to Humboldt Bay in Humboldt County, on the
upper coast of California, about two hundred and fifty miles north of San
Francisco. Thence he made numerous trips as express messenger on stages
running eastward to Trinity County, and northward to Del Norte, which, as
the name implies, is the extreme upper county in the State. The experience
was a valuable one, and it was concerning this period of Bret Harte's
career that his friend, Charles Warren Stoddard, wrote: "He bore a charmed
life. Probably his youth was his salvation, for he ran a thousand risks,
yet seemed only to gain in health and spirits."
The post of express messenger was especially dangerous. Bret Harte's
predecessor was shot through the arm by a highwayman; his successor was
killed. The safe containing the treasure carried by Wells, Fargo and
Company, who did practically all the express business in California, was
always heavily chained to the box of the coach, and sometimes, when a
particularly large amount of gold had to be conveyed, armed guards were
carried inside of the coach. For the stage to be "held up" by highwaymen
was a common occurrence, and the danger from breakdowns and floods was not
small. In the course of a few months between the towns of Visalia and Kern
River the overland stage broke the legs of three several drivers. It was a
frequent thing for the stage to cross a stream, suddenly become a river,
with the horses swimming, a strong current running through the coach
itself, and the passengers perched on the seats to escape being swept
away.[4]
With these dangers of flood and field to encounter, with precipices to
skirt, with six half-broken horses to control, and with the ever-present
possibility of serving as a target for "road-agents," it may be imagined
that the California stage-driver was no common man, and the type is
preserved in the character of Yuba Bill. He can be compared only with
Colonel Starbottle and Jack Hamlin, and Jack Hamlin was one of the few men
whom Yuba Bill condescended to treat as an equal. Their meeting in
_Gabriel Convoy_ is historic: "'Barkeep--hist that pizen over to Jack.
Here's to ye agin, ole man. But I'm glad to see ye!' The crowd hung
breathless over the two men--awestruck and respectful. It was a meeting of
the gods. None dared speak."
"Yuba Bill," writes Mr. Chesterton, "is not convivial; it might almost be
said that he is too great even to be sociable. A circle of quiescence and
solitude, such as that which might ring a saint or a hermit, rings this
majestic and profound humorist. His jokes do not flow from him, like those
of Mr. Weller, sparkling and continual like the play of a fountain in a
pleasure garden; they fall suddenly and capriciously, like a crash of
avalanche from a great mountain. Tony Weller has the noisy humor of
London. Yuba Bill has the silent humor of the earth." Then the critic
quotes Yuba Bill's rebuke to the passenger who has expressed a
too-confident opinion as to the absence of the expected highwaymen: "'You
ain't puttin' any price on that opinion, air ye?' inquired Bill politely.
"'No.'
"'Cos thar's a comic paper in 'Frisco pays for them things, and I've seen
worse things in it.'"
Even better, perhaps, is Yuba Bill's reply to Judge Beeswinger, who rashly
betrayed some over-consciousness of his importance as a member of the
State Assembly. "'Any political news from below, Bill?' he asked, as the
latter slowly descended from his lofty perch, without, however, any
perceptible coming down of mien or manner. 'Not much,' said Bill, with
deliberate gravity. 'The President o' the United States hezn't bin hisself
sens you refoosed that seat in the Cabinet. The gin'ral feelin' in
perlitical circles is one o' regret.'"
"To be rebuked thus," Mr. Chesterton continues, "is like being rebuked by
the pyramids or by the starry heavens. There is about Yuba Bill this air
of a pugnacious calm, a stepping back to get his distance for a shattering
blow, which is like that of Dr. Johnson at his best. And the effect is
inexpressibly increased by the background and the whole picture which Bret
Harte paints so powerfully,--the stormy skies, the sombre gorge, the
rocking and spinning coach, and high above the feverish passengers the
huge, dark form of Yuba Bill, a silent mountain of humor."
After his service as expressman, Bret Harte went to a town called Union,
about three hundred miles north of San Francisco, where he learned the
printer's trade in the office of the "Humboldt Times." He also taught
school again in Union, and for the second time acted as clerk in a drug
store. Speaking of his experience in this capacity, Mr. Pemberton, his
English biographer, gravely says, "I have heard English physicians express
wonder at his grasp of the subject." One wonders, in turn, if Bret Harte
did not do a little hoaxing in this line. "To the end of his days," writes
Mr. Pemberton, "he could speak with authority as to the virtues and
properties of medicines." Young Harte had a wonderful faculty of picking
up information, and no doubt his two short terms of service as a
compounder of medicines were not thrown away upon him. But Bret Harte was
the last person in the world to pose as an expert, and it seems probable
that the extent of his knowledge was fairly described in the story _How
Reuben Allen Saw Life in San Francisco_. That part of this story which
deals with the drug clerk is so plainly autobiographical, and so
characteristic of the author, that a quotation from it will not be out of
place:--
"It was near midnight, the hour of closing, and the junior partner was
alone in the shop. He felt drowsy; the mysterious incense of the shop,
that combined essence of drugs, spice, scented soap, and orris root--which
always reminded him of the Arabian nights--was affecting him. He yawned,
and then, turning away, passed behind the counter, took down a jar
labelled 'Glycyrr. Glabra,' selected a piece of Spanish licorice, and
meditatively sucked it....
"He was just nineteen, he had early joined the emigration to California,
and after one or two previous light-hearted essays at other occupations,
for which he was singularly unfitted, he had saved enough to embark on his
present venture, still less suited to his temperament.... A slight
knowledge of Latin as a written language, an American schoolboy's
acquaintance with chemistry and natural philosophy, were deemed sufficient
by his partner, a regular physician, for practical cooperation in the
vending of drugs and putting up of prescriptions. He knew the difference
between acids and alkalis and the peculiar results which attended their
incautious combination. But he was excessively deliberate, painstaking and
cautious. There was no danger of his poisoning anybody through haste or
carelessness, but it was possible that an urgent 'case' might have
succumbed to the disease while he was putting up the remedy.... In those
days the 'heroic' practice of medicine was in keeping with the abnormal
development of the country; there were 'record' doses of calomel and
quinine, and he had once or twice incurred the fury of local practitioners
by sending back their prescriptions with a modest query."
[Illustration: SAN FRANCISCO, NOVEMBER, 1844
J. C. Ward, del.]
It was doubtless Bret Harte's experience in the drug store which suggested
the story of Liberty Jones, whose discovery of an arsenical spring in the
forest was the means of transforming that well-made, but bony and sallow
Missouri girl into a beautiful woman, with well-rounded limbs, rosy
cheeks, lustrous eyes and glossy hair.
It has been a matter of some discussion whether Bret Harte ever worked as
a miner or not; and the evidence upon the point is not conclusive. But it
is hard to believe that he did not try his luck at gold-seeking, when
everybody else was trying, and his narrative _How I Went to the Mines_
seems to have the ear-marks of an autobiographical sketch. It is regarded
as such by his sisters; and the modest, deprecating manner in which the
storyteller's adventures are related, serves to confirm that impression.
Of all his experiences in California, those which gave him the most
pleasure seem to have been his several short but fruitful terms of
service as schoolmaster and tutor. His knowledge of children, being based
upon sympathy, became both acute and profound. How many thousand million
times have children gone to school of a morning and found the master
awaiting them, and yet who but Bret Harte has ever described the exact
manner of their approach!
"They came in their usual desultory fashion--the fashion of country
school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always as
if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or dragged
behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less coherent and
at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices scattered over a
space of half a mile, but never quite alone; always preoccupied by
something else than the actual business in hand; appearing suddenly from
ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected
places along the road after vague and purposeless detours--seemingly going
anywhere and everywhere but to school!"[5]
Bret Harte realized the essential truth that children are not little,
immature men and women, but rather infantile barbarians, creatures of an
archaic type, representing a period in the development of the human race
which does not survive in adult life. Hence the reserve, the aloofness of
children, their remoteness from grown people. There are certain things
which the boy most deeply feels that he must not do, and certain other
things that he must do; as, for example, to bear without telling any pains
that may be inflicted upon him by his mates or by older boys. For a
thousand years or more fathers and mothers have held a different code upon
these points, but with how little effect upon their children! Johnny
Filgee illustrated upon a truly Californian scale these boyish qualities
of reticence and endurance. When he had accidentally been shot in the
duel between the Master and Cressy's father (the child being perched in a
tree), he refrained from making the least sound, although a word or an
outcry would have brought the men to his assistance. "A certain respect to
himself and his brother kept him from uttering even a whimper of
weakness." Left alone in the dark woods, unable to move, Johnny became
convinced that his end was near, and he pleased himself by thinking that
"they would all feel exceedingly sorry and alarmed, and would regret
having made him wash himself on Saturday night." And so, having composed
himself, "he turned on his side to die, as became the scion of an heroic
race!"
Then follows a sentence in which the artist, with one bold sweep of his
brush, paints in Nature herself as a witness of the scene; and yet her
material immensity does not dwarf or belittle the spiritual superiority of
the wounded youngster in the foreground: "The free woods, touched by an
upspringing wind, waved their dark arms above him, and higher yet a few
patient stars silently ranged themselves around his pillow."
That other Johnny, for whom _Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar_, Richelieu
Sharpe in _A Phyllis of the Sierras_, John Milton Harcourt in the _First
Family of Tasajara_, Leonidas Boone, the _Mercury of the Foot-Hills_, and
John Bunyan Medliker, the _Youngest Prospector in Calaveras_,--all
illustrate the same type, with many individual variations.
Another phase of the archaic nature of children is their extreme
sensitiveness to impressions. Just as a squirrel hears more acutely than a
man, and the dog's sense of smell is keener, so a child, within the
comparatively small range of his mental activity, is more open to subtle
indications. Bret Harte often touches upon this quality of childhood, as
in the following passage: "It was not strange, therefore, that the little
people of the Indian Spring School knew perhaps more of the real
relations of Cressy McKinstry to her admirers than the admirers
themselves. Not that the knowledge was outspoken--for children rarely
gossip in the grown-up sense, or even communicate by words intelligent to
the matured intellect. A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and
unmeaning, conveyed to each other a world of secret significance, and an
apparently senseless burst of merriment in which the whole class
joined--and that the adult critic set down to 'animal spirits'--a quality
much more rare with children than is generally supposed--was only a
sympathetic expression of some discovery happily oblivious to older
perceptions."
This acuteness of perception, seen also in some men of a simple, archaic
type, puts children in close relationship with the lower animals, unless,
indeed, it is counteracted by that cruelty which is also a quality of
childhood. When Richelieu Sharpe retired to rest, it was in company with a
whole retinue of dependents. "On the pillow near him an indistinguishable
mass of golden fur--the helpless bulk of a squirrel chained to the leg of
his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, who had followed his tyrannous
caprices with the long-suffering devotion of her sex; on the shelf above
him a loathsome collection of flies and tarantulas in dull green bottles,
a slab of gingerbread for light nocturnal refreshment, and his sister's
pot of bear's grease.... The sleeper stirred slightly and awoke. At the
same moment, by some mysterious sympathy, a pair of beady bright eyes
appeared in the bulk of fur near his curls, the cat stretched herself, and
even a vague agitation was heard in the bottles on the shelf."[6]
That last touch, intimating some community of feeling between Richelieu
and his insects, is, as the Reader will grant, the touch of genius.
Bridging the gulf impassable for an ordinary mind, it assumes a fact
which, like the shape of Donatello's ears, is true to the imagination, and
not so manifestly impossible as to shock the reason.
It is sometimes said that California in the Fifties represented the
American character in its most extreme form,--the quintessence, as it
were, of energy and democracy. This statement would certainly apply to the
California children, in whom the ordinary forwardness of the American
child became a sort of elfish precocity. Such a boy was Richelieu Sharpe.
His gallantries, his independence, his self-reliance, his adult
ambitions,--these qualities, oddly assorted with the primeval, imaginative
nature of the true child, made Richelieu such a youngster as was never
seen outside of the United States, and perhaps never seen outside of
California.
The English child of the upper classes, as Bret Harte knew him in after
years, made a strange contrast to the Richelieu Sharpes and John Bunyan
Medlikers that he had learned to love in California. In a letter to his
wife written from the house of James Anthony Froude, in 1878, he said:
"The eldest girl is not unlike a highly-educated Boston girl, and the
conversation sometimes reminds me of Boston. The youngest daughter, only
ten years old, told her sister, in reference to some conversation Froude
and I had, that 'she feared' (this child) 'that Mr. Bret Harte was
inclined to be sceptical!' Doesn't this exceed any English story of the
precocity of American children? The boy, scarcely fourteen, acts like a
boy of eight (an American boy of eight) and talks like a man of thirty, so
far as pure English and facility of expression go. His manners are
perfect, yet he is perfectly simple and boy-like. The culture and breeding
of some English children are really marvellous. But somehow--and here
comes one of my 'buts'--there's always a suggestion of some repression,
some discipline that I don't like."[7]
Bret Harte's last employment during this wandering life was that of
compositor, printer's devil, and assistant editor of the "Northern
California," published at Eureka, a seacoast town in Humboldt County. Here
he met Mr. Charles A. Murdock, who gives this interesting account of him:
"He was fond of whist, genial, witty, but quiet and reserved, something of
a 'tease'" (the Reader will remember that Mr. Howells speaks of this
trait) "and a practical joker; not especially popular, as he was thought
to be fastidious, and to hold himself aloof from 'the general'; but he was
simply a self-respecting, gentlemanly fellow, with quiet tastes, and a
keen insight into character. He was no roisterer, and his habits were
clean. He was too independent and indifferent to curry favor, or to
counterfeit a liking."
During a temporary absence of the editor Bret Harte was entrusted with the
conduct of the paper, and about that time a cowardly massacre of Indians
was perpetrated by some Americans in the vicinity. This was no uncommon
event, and the usual attitude of the Pioneers toward the Indians may be
gathered from the following passage in a letter written to a newspaper in
August, 1851, from Rogue River: "During this period we have been searching
about in the mountains, disturbing villages, destroying all the males we
could find, and capturing women and children. We have killed about thirty
altogether, and have about twenty-eight now in camp." At the Stanislaus
Diggings, in 1851, a miner called to an Indian boy to help him catch a
loose horse. The boy, not understanding English, and being frightened by
the man's gestures, ran away, whereupon the miner raised his gun and shot
the boy dead.
Nobody hated injustice or cruelty more than Bret Harte, and in his
editorial capacity he scathingly condemned the murder of Indians which
occurred in the neighborhood of Eureka. The article excited the anger of
the community, and a mob was collected for the avowed purpose of wrecking
the newspaper office and hanging or otherwise maltreating the youthful
writer. Bret Harte, armed with two pistols, awaited their coming during an
evening which was probably the longest of his life. But the timely arrival
of a few United States cavalrymen, sent for by some peace-lovers in the
town, averted the danger; and the young journalist suffered no harm beyond
an abrupt dismissal upon the hasty return of the editor.
This event ended his life as a wanderer, and he went back to San
Francisco. There is not the slightest reason to think that during this
period Bret Harte had any notion of describing California life in fiction
or otherwise; and yet, if that had been his object, he could not have
ordered his movements more wisely. He had lived on the seacoast and in the
interior; he had seen cities, ranches, villages, and mines; he had been
tutor, school-teacher, drug clerk, express messenger, printer, and editor.
The period was less than two years, and yet he had accumulated a store of
facts, impressions and images sufficient to last him a lifetime. He was of
a most receptive nature; he was at a receptive age; the world was new to
him, and he lived in it and observed it with all the zest of youth, of
inexperience, of health and genius.