BRET HARTE IN SAN FRANCISCO
Bret Harte returned to San Francisco in 1857, and his first occupation was
that of setting type in the office of the "Golden Era." To this paper his
sister, Mrs. Wyman, had been a contributor for some time, and it was
through her that Bret Harte obtained employment on it as a printer.
The "Golden Era" had been established by young men. "It was," writes Mr.
Stoddard, "the cradle and the grave of many a high hope. There was nothing
to be compared with it on that side of the Mississippi; and though it
could point with pride--it never failed to do so--to a somewhat notable
list of contributors, it had always the fine air of the amateur, and was
most complacently patronizing. The very pattern of paternal patronage was
amiable Joe Lawrence, its Editor. He was an inveterate pipe-smoker, a
pillar of cloud, as he sat in his editorial chair, an air of literary
mystery enveloping him. He spoke as an oracle, and I remember his calling
my attention to a certain anonymous contribution just received, and
nodding his head prophetically, for he already had his eye on the
fledgling author, a young compositor on the floor above. It was Bret
Harte's first appearance in the 'Golden Era,' and doubtless Lawrence
encouraged him as he had encouraged me when, out of the mist about him, he
handed me secretly, and with a glance of caution--for his business
partner, the marble-hearted, sat at his ledger not far away--he handed me
a folded paper on which he had written this startling legend! 'Write some
prose for the "Golden Era," and I will give you a dollar a column.'"
[Illustration: BRET HARTE IN 1861]
It was not long before Bret Harte was promoted from the compositor's stand
to the editorial room of the paper, and thus began his literary career.
Among the sketches which he wrote a few years later, and which have been
preserved in the complete edition of his works, are _In a Balcony_, _A
Boy's Dog_, and _Sidewalkings_. Except for a slight restraint and
stiffness of style, as if the author had not quite attained the full use
of his wings, they show no indications of youth or crudity. _M'liss_ also
appeared in the "Golden Era," illustrated by a specially designed woodcut;
and some persons think that this, the first, is also the best of Bret
Harte's stories. At all events, the early _M'liss_ is far superior to the
author's lengthened and rewritten _M'liss_ which was included in the
collected edition of his works.
When it is added that the _Condensed Novels_, or at least the first of
them, were also published in the "Golden Era," it will be seen with what
astonishing quickness his literary style matured. He wrote at first
anonymously; afterward, gaining a little self-confidence, he signed his
stories "B," and then "Bret."
It was while engaged in writing for the "Golden Era," namely, on August
11, 1862, that Bret Harte was married to Miss Anna Griswold, daughter of
Daniel S. and Mary Dunham Griswold of the city of New York. The marriage
took place at San Raphael.
In 1864 he was appointed Secretary of the California Mint, an office which
he held for six years and until he left California. For this position he
was indebted to Mr. R. B. Swain, Superintendent of the Mint, a friend and
parishioner of the Reverend Mr. King, who in that way became a friend of
Bret Harte. Mr. Swain had a great liking for the young author, and made
the official path easy for him. In fact, the position seems to have been
one of those sinecures--or nearly that--which are the traditional reward
of men of letters, but which a reforming and materialistic age has
diverted to less noble uses.
In San Francisco, both before and after his marriage, Bret Harte lived a
quiet, studious life, going very little into society. Of the time during
which he was Secretary of the Mint, Mr. Stoddard writes: "He was now a man
with a family; the resources derived from literature were uncertain and
unsatisfactory. His influential friends paid him cheering visits in the
gloomy office at the Mint where he leavened his daily loaves; and at his
desk, between the exacting pages of the too literal ledger, many a couplet
cropped out, and the outlines of now famous sketches were faintly limned.
His friends were few, but notable. Society he ignored in those days. He
used to accuse me of wasting my substance in riotous visitations, and
thought me a spendthrift of time. He had the precious companionship of
books, and the lives of those about him were as an open volume wherein he
read 'curiously and to his profit.'"
Of the notable friends alluded to by Mr. Stoddard, the most important were
the Reverend Thomas Starr King, and Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, daughter
of Senator Benton, and wife of that Captain, afterward General Fremont,
who became the first United States Senator from California, and Republican
candidate for the Presidency in 1856, but who is best known as The
Pathfinder. His adventures and narratives form an important part of
California history.
Mrs. Fremont was an extremely clever, kind-hearted woman, who assisted
Bret Harte greatly by her advice and criticism, still more by her sympathy
and encouragement. Bret Harte was always inclined to underrate his own
powers, and to be despondent as to his literary future. On one occasion
when, as not seldom happened, he was cast down by his troubles and
anxieties, and almost in despair as to his prospects, Mrs. Fremont sent
him some cheering news, and he wrote to her: "I shall no longer disquiet
myself about changes in residence or anything else, for I believe that if
I were cast upon a desolate island, a savage would come to me next morning
and hand me a three-cornered note to say that I had been appointed
Governor at Mrs. Fremont's request, at a salary of $2400 a year."
How much twenty-four hundred a year seemed to him then, and how little a
few years later! A Pioneer who knew them both writes: "Mrs. Fremont helped
Bret Harte in many ways. In turn he marvelled at her worldly
wisdom,--being able to tell one how to make a living. He named her
daughter's pony 'Chiquita,' after the equine heroine of his poem." It was
by Mrs. Fremont's intervention that Bret Harte first appeared in the
"Atlantic Monthly," for, some years before he achieved fame, namely in
1863, _The Legend of Monte del Diablo_ was published in that magazine. The
story was gracefully, even beautifully written, but both in style and
treatment it was a reflection of Washington Irving, who at that time
rivalled Dickens as a popular author.
Many interesting letters were received by Mrs. Fremont from Bret
Harte,--letters, her daughter thinks, almost as entertaining as his
published writings; but unfortunately these treasures were destroyed by a
fire in the city of New York.
Starr King, Bret Harte's other friend, was by far the most notable of the
Protestant ministers in California. The son of a Universalist minister, he
was born in the city of New York, but was brought up mainly in
Charlestown, now a part of Boston. Upon leaving school he became first a
clerk, then a school-teacher, and finally a Unitarian minister, preaching
first at his father's old church in Charlestown, and afterward at the
Hollis Street Unitarian Church in Boston. He obtained a wide reputation as
preacher and lecturer, and as author of "The White Hills," still the best
book upon the mountains of New England. In 1860, at the very time when his
services were needed there, he became the pastor of a church in San
Francisco, and to him is largely ascribed the credit of saving California
to the Union. He was a man of deep moral convictions, and his addresses
stirred the heart and moved the conscience of California.
The Southern element was very strong on the Pacific Slope, and it made
itself felt in politics especially. Nearly one third of the delegates to
the Constitutional Convention, held in September, 1849, were Southern men,
and they acted as a unit under the leadership of W. M. Gwinn, afterward a
member of the United States Senate. The ultimate design of the Southern
delegates was the division of California into two States, the more
southern of which should be a slave State. Slavery in California was
openly advocated. But the Southern party was a minority, and the State
Constitution declared that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude,
unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this
State." The Constitution did, however, exclude the testimony of colored
persons from the courts; and when, in 1852, the negroes in San Francisco
presented a petition to the House of Representatives asking for this right
or privilege, the House refused to receive the petition, a majority of the
members taking it as an insult. One member seriously proposed that it
should be thrown out of the window.
In May, 1852, the "San Francisco Daily Herald" declared that the delay in
admitting California as a State was due to Northern Abolitionists, of whom
it said, with characteristic mildness: "Take the vile crowd of
Abolitionists from the Canadian frontier to the banks of the Delaware, and
you cannot find one in ten thousand of them who from philanthropy cares
the amount of a dollar what becomes of the colored race. What they want is
office." It does not seem to have occurred to the writer that in
espousing the smallest and most hated political party in the whole
country, the Abolitionists had not taken a very promising step in the
direction of office-holding.
There was even talk of turning California into a "Pacific Republic," in
the event of a dissolution of the Union. And that event was longed for by
at least one California paper on the ground that "it would shut down on
the immigration of these vermin," _i. e._ the Chinese. How far Southern
effrontery went may be gathered from the fact that even the sacred
institution of Thanksgiving Day was ridiculed by another California paper
as an absurd Yankee notion.
From 1851 until the period of the Civil War the Democratic Party ruled the
State of California under the leadership of Gwinn. Northern men
constituted a majority of the party, but they submitted to the dictation
of the Southerners, just as the Democratic Party in the North submitted to
the dictation of the Southern leaders. The only California politician who
could cope with Gwinn was Broderick,--a typical Irishman, trained by
Tammany Hall.
Not without difficulty was California saved to the Union; in fact, until
the rebels fired upon Fort Sumter, the real sentiment of the State was
unknown. Bret Harte has touched upon this episode. In _Mrs. Bunker's
Conspiracy_, the attempt of the extreme Southern element to seize and
fortify a bluff commanding the city of San Francisco is foiled by a
Northern woman; and in _Clarence_ we have a glimpse of the city as it
appeared after news came of the first act of open rebellion: "From every
public building and hotel, from the roofs of private houses and even the
windows of lonely dwellings, flapped and waved the striped and starry
banner. The steady breath of the sea carried it out from masts and yards
of ships at their wharves, from the battlements of the forts, Alcatraz
and Yerba Buena.... Clarence looked down upon it with haggard, bewildered
eyes, and then a strange gasp and fulness of the throat. For afar a
solitary bugle had blown the reveille at Fort Alcatraz."
At this critical time, a mass meeting was held in San Francisco, and, at
the suggestion of Starr King, Bret Harte wrote a poem to be read at the
meeting. The poem was called _The Reveille_, but is better known as _The
Drum_. The first and last stanzas are as follows:--
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands,
And of armed men the hum;
Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered
Round the quick alarming drum,--
Saying, "Come,
Freemen, Come!
Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum.
* * * * *
Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing,
Some in faith, and doubting some,
Till a trumpet-voice, proclaiming,
Said, "My chosen people, come!"
Then the drum
Lo! was dumb,
For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!"
As these last words were read, the great audience rose to its feet, and
with a mighty shout proclaimed the loyalty of California. Emerson, as Mr.
John Jay Chapman has finely said, sent a thousand sons to the war; and it
is not unreasonable to suppose that Bret Harte's noble poem fired many a
manly heart in San Francisco.
When the war began, Starr King was active in establishing the California
branch of the Sanitary Commission. He died of diphtheria in March, 1864,
just as the tide of battle was turning in favor of the North. It will thus
be seen that his career in California exactly covered, and only just
covered, that short period in the history of the State when the services
of such a man were, humanly speaking, indispensable.
_The Reveille_ was followed by other patriotic poems, and after Mr. King's
death Bret Harte wrote in memory of him the poem called _Relieving Guard_,
which indicates, one may safely say, the high-water mark of the author's
poetic talent. In the year following Mr. King's death Bret Harte's second
son was born, and received the name of Francis King.
On May 25, 1864, the first number of "The Californian" appeared. This was
the famous weekly edited and published by the late Charles Henry Webb, and
written mainly by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Webb himself, Prentice Mulford,
and Mr. Stoddard. It was of "The Californian" that Mr. Howells wittily
said: "These ingenuous young men, with the fatuity of gifted people, had
established a literary newspaper in San Francisco, and they brilliantly
cooeperated to its early extinction."
It is an interesting coincidence that Bret Harte and Mark Twain both began
their literary careers in San Francisco, and at almost the same time. Bret
Harte was engaged upon "The Californian," and Mark Twain was a reporter
for the "Morning Call," when they were introduced to each other by a
common friend, Mr. George Barnes. Bret Harte thus describes his first
impression of the new acquaintance:--
"His head was striking. He had the curly hair, the aquiline nose, and even
the aquiline eye--an eye so eagle-like that a second lid would not have
surprised me--of an unusual and dominant nature. His eyebrows were very
thick and bushy. His dress was careless, and his general manner one of
supreme indifference to surroundings and circumstances. Barnes introduced
him as Mr. Sam Clemens, and remarked that he had shown a very unusual
talent in a number of newspaper articles contributed under the signature
of 'Mark Twain.' We talked on different topics, and about a month
afterward Clemens dropped in upon me again. He had been away in the mining
districts on some newspaper assignment in the mean time. In the course of
conversation he remarked that the unearthly laziness that prevailed in the
town he had been visiting was beyond anything in his previous experience.
He said the men did nothing all day long but sit around the bar-room
stove, spit, and 'swop lies.' He spoke in a slow, rather satirical drawl,
which was in itself irresistible. He went on to tell one of those
extravagant stories, and half unconsciously dropped into the lazy tone and
manner of the original narrator. I asked him to tell it again to a friend
who came in, and then asked him to write it out for 'The Californian.' He
did so, and when published it was an emphatic success. It was the first
work of his that had attracted general attention, and it crossed the
Sierras for an Eastern reading. The story was 'The Jumping Frog of
Calaveras.' It is now known and laughed over, I suppose, wherever the
English language is spoken; but it will never be as funny to any one in
print as it was to me, told for the first time by the unknown Twain
himself on that morning in the San Francisco Mint."
The first article that appeared in "The Californian" was Bret Harte's
_Neighborhoods I have Moved From_, and next his _Ballad of the Emeu_, but
neither was signed. Both of these are in the collected edition of his
works. The _Condensed Novels_ were continued in "The Californian," and
Bret Harte also contributed to it many poems, sketches, essays, editorial
articles and book reviews. Some of these were unsigned; some were signed
"B" or "Bret," and occasionally the signature was his full name.
[Illustration: STORESHIP APOLLO
Old Ship used as a Saloon
Copyright, Century Co.]
No reader who appreciates the finished workmanship of Bret Harte will be
surprised to learn that he was a slow and intensely self-critical writer.
There is much interesting testimony on this point. Mr. Howells says:
"His talent was not a facile gift; he owned that he often went day after
day to his desk, and sat down before that yellow post-office paper on
which he liked to write his literature, in that exquisitely refined script
of his, without being able to inscribe a line.... When it came to
literature, all the gay improvidence of life forsook him, and he became a
stern, rigorous, exacting self-master, who spared himself nothing to
achieve the perfection at which he aimed. He was of the order of literary
men like Goldsmith and De Quincey and Sterne and Steele, in his relations
with the outer world, but in his relations with the inner world, he was
one of the most duteous and exemplary citizens."
Noah Brooks wrote as follows: "Scores of writers have become known to me
in the course of a long life, but I have never known another so fastidious
and so laborious as Bret Harte. His writing materials, the light and heat,
and even the adjustment of the furniture of the writing-room, must be as
he desired; otherwise he could not go on with his work. Even when his
environment was all that he could wish, there were times when the divine
afflatus would not come and the day's work must be abandoned. My editorial
rooms in San Francisco were not far from his secluded den, and often, if
he opened my door late in the afternoon, with a peculiar cloud on his
face, I knew that he had come to wait for me to go to dinner with him,
having given up the impossible task of writing when the mood was not on
him. 'It's no use, Brooks,' he would say. 'Everything goes wrong; I cannot
write a line. Let's have an early dinner at Martini's.' As soon as I was
ready we would go merrily off to dine together, and, having recovered his
equanimity, he would stick to his desk through the later hours of the
night, slowly forging those masterpieces which cost him so dearly.
"Harte was reticent concerning his work while it was in progress. He never
let the air in upon his story or his verses. Once, indeed, he asked me to
help him in a calculation to ascertain how long a half-sack of flour and
six pounds of side-meat[8] would last a given number of persons. This was
the amount of provision he had allowed his outcasts of Poker Flat, and he
wanted to know just how long the snow-bound scapegoats could live on that
supply. I used to save for him the Eastern and English newspaper notices
of his work, and once, when he had looked through a goodly lot of these
laudatory notes, he said: 'These fellows see a heap of things in my
stories that I never put there.'"
Mr. Stoddard recalls this incident: "One day I found him pacing the floor
of his office in the United States Mint; he was knitting his brows and
staring at vacancy,--I wondered why. He was watching and waiting for a
word, the right word, the one word of all others to fit into a line of
recently written prose. I suggested one; it would not answer; it must be a
word of two syllables, or the natural rhythm of the sentence would suffer.
Thus he perfected his prose."
In the sketch entitled _My First Book_, printed in volume ten of his
works, Bret Harte has given some amusing reminiscences concerning the
volume of California poems edited by him, and published in 1866. His
selection as Editor, he says, "was chiefly owing to the circumstance that
I had from the outset, with precocious foresight, confided to the
publisher my intention of not putting any of my own verses in the volume.
Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so sublime, to say
nothing of its security, was not without its effect." After narrating his
extreme difficulty in reducing the number of his selections from the
numerous poets of California, he goes on to describe the reception of the
volume. It sold well, the purchasers apparently being amateur poets who
were anxious to discover whether they were represented in the book.
"People would lounge into the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes,
say carelessly 'Got a new book of California poetry out, haven't you?'
purchase it, and quietly depart."
"There were as yet," the Editor continues, "no notices from the press; the
big dailies were silent; there was something ominous in this calm. Out of
it the bolt fell;" and he quotes the following notice from a country
paper: "'The Hogwash and "purp" stuff ladled out from the slop-bucket of
Messrs. ---- and Co., of 'Frisco, by some lop-eared Eastern apprentice,
and called "A Compilation of Californian Verse," might be passed over, so
far as criticism goes. A club in the hands of any able-bodied citizen of
Red Dog, and a steamboat ticket to the Bay, cheerfully contributed from
this office, would be all-sufficient. But when an imported greenhorn dares
to call his flapdoodle mixture "Californian," it is an insult to the State
that has produced the gifted "Yellowhammer," whose lofty flights have from
time to time dazzled our readers in the columns of the "Jay Hawk." That
this complacent editorial jackass, browsing among the docks and thistles
which he has served up in this volume, should make no allusion to
California's greatest bard is rather a confession of his idiocy than a
slur upon the genius of our esteemed contributor.'"
Other criticisms, inspired by like omissions, followed, each one rivalling
its predecessor in severity. "The big dailies collected the criticisms and
published them in their own columns with the grim irony of exaggerated
head-lines. The book sold tremendously on account of this abuse, but I am
afraid that the public was disappointed. The fun and interest lay in the
criticisms, and not in any pointedly ludicrous quality in the rather
commonplace collection ... and I have long since been convinced that my
most remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some sudden
impulse, started by the first attacking journal.... It was a large,
contagious joke, passed from journal to journal in a peculiar cyclonic
Western fashion."
A year later, not, as Bret Harte himself states, in 1865, but in 1867, the
first collection of his own poems was published. The volume was a thin
twelvemo, bound in green cloth, with a gilt design of a sail on the cover,
the title-page reading as follows: "The Lost Galleon and Other Tales. By
Fr. Bret Harte, San Francisco. Tame and Bacon, Printers, 1867." Most of
these poems are contained in the standard edition of his works.
In the same year were published the _Condensed Novels_ and the _Bohemian
Papers_, reprinted from "The Bulletin" and "The Californian," and making,
as the author himself said, "a single, not very plethoric volume, the
writer's first book of prose." He adds that "during this period," _i. e._
from 1862 to 1867, he produced "_The Society upon the Stanislaus_, and
_The Story of M'liss_,--the first a dialectical poem, the second a
Californian romance,--his first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly
characteristic Western American literature. He would like to offer these
facts as evidence of his very early, half-boyish, but very enthusiastic
belief in such a possibility,--a belief which never deserted him, and
which, a few years later, from the better known pages of the 'Overland
Monthly,' he was able to demonstrate to a larger and more cosmopolitan
audience in the story of _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, and the poem of the
_Heathen Chinee_."
The "Overland Monthly" was founded in July, 1868, by Anton Roman, a
bookseller on Montgomery Street, and later on Clay Street. Mr. Roman was
possessed of that enthusiasm which every new enterprise demands. "He had
thought and talked about the Magazine," he declared, "until it was in his
bones." Bret Harte became the first Editor, and it was he who selected the
name. The "Overland" was well printed, on good paper, and the cover was
adorned by that historic grizzly bear who, standing on the ties of the
newly-laid railroad track, with half-turned body and lowered head, seems
prepared to dispute the right of way with the locomotive which might
shortly be expected to come screaming down the track.
There was originally no railroad track in the picture, simply the bear;
and how the deficiency was supplied is thus explained by Mark Twain in a
letter to Thomas Bailey Aldrich: "Do you know the prettiest fancy and the
neatest that ever shot through Harte's brain? It was this: When they were
trying to decide upon a vignette for the cover of the 'Overland,' a
grizzly bear (of the arms of the State of California) was chosen. Nahl
Bros. carved him and the page was printed, with him in it, looking thus:
[Illustration]
"As a bear, he was a success--he was a good bear.--But then, it was
objected, that he was an _objectless_ bear--a bear that _meant_ nothing in
particular, signified nothing,--simply stood there snarling over his
shoulder at nothing--and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and
ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that--none were
satisfied. They hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much to
have him there when there was no _point_ to him. But presently Harte took
a pencil and drew these two simple lines under his feet and behold he was
a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of Californian savagery
snarling at the approaching type of high and progressive Civilization, the
first Overland locomotive!
[Illustration]
"I think that was nothing less than inspiration itself."
In the same letter Mark Twain pays the following magnanimous tribute to
his old friend: "Bret Harte trimmed and trained and schooled me patiently
until he changed me from an awkward utterer of coarse grotesqueness to a
writer of paragraphs and chapters that have found a certain favor in the
eyes of even some of the very decentest people in the land,--and this
grateful remembrance of mine ought to be worth its face, seeing that Bret
broke our long friendship a year ago without any cause or provocation that
I am aware of."
The Editor had no prose article of his own in the first number of the
"Overland," but he contributed two poems, the noble lines about San
Francisco, which, with characteristic modesty he placed in the middle of
the number, and the poem entitled _Returned_[9] in the "Etc." column at
the end.
And now we come to the publication which first made Bret Harte known upon
the Atlantic as well as upon the Pacific coast. The opening number of the
"Overland" had contained no "distinctive Californian romance," as Bret
Harte expressed it, and none such being offered for the second number, the
Editor supplied the omission with _The Luck of Roaring Camp_. But the
printer, instead of sending the proof-sheets to the writer of the story,
as would have been the ordinary course, submitted them to the publisher,
with a statement that the matter was so "indecent, irreligious and
improper" that his proofreader, a young lady, had with difficulty been
induced to read it. Then followed many consultations between author,
publisher, and various high literary authorities whose judgment had been
invoked. Opinions differed, but the weight of opinion was against the
tale, and the expediency of printing it. Nevertheless, the
author--conceiving that his fitness as Editor was now in question--stood
to his guns; the publisher, though fearful of the result, stood by him;
and the tale was published without the alteration of a word. It was
received very coldly by the secular press in California, its "singularity"
being especially pointed out; and it was bitterly denounced by the
religious press as being immoral and unchristian. But there was a wider
public to hear from. The return mail from the East brought newspapers and
reviews "welcoming the little foundling of Californian literature with an
enthusiasm that half frightened its author."[10] The mail brought also a
letter from the Editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" with a request "upon the
most flattering terms" that he would write a story for the "Atlantic,"
similar to the _Luck_.
It should be recorded, as an interesting contrast to the impression made
by the _Luck_ upon the San Francisco young woman, that it was also a girl,
Miss Susan M. Francis, a literary assistant with the publishers of the
"Atlantic Monthly," who, struck by the freshness and beauty of the tale,
brought it to the attention of Mr. James T. Fields, then the Editor of the
magazine, with the result which Bret Harte has described.
Nor should the attitude of the California young person, and of San
Francisco in general, excite surprise. The Pioneers could not be expected
to see the moral beauty that lay beneath the rough outward aspect of
affairs on the Pacific Slope. The poetry of their own existence was hidden
from them. But California, though crude, was self-distrustful, and it
bowed to the decision of the East. Bret Harte was honored, even if not
understood or appreciated.
The "Overland" was well received, and the high character of the first two
numbers was long maintained. Aside from Bret Harte's work, many volumes of
prose and verse have been republished from the magazine, and most of them
deserved the honor. In the early Fifties the proportion of really educated
men to the whole population was greater in California than in any other
State, and probably this was true even of the period when the "Overland"
was founded. Scholarship and cultivation were concealed in rough mining
towns, in lumber camps, and on remote ranches. Among the women,
especially, were many who, like the Sappho of Green Springs, gathered from
their lonely, primitive lives a freshness and originality which perhaps
they never would have shown in more conventional surroundings. This class
furnished numerous readers and a few writers. Officers of the Army and
Navy stationed in California contributed some interesting scientific and
literary articles to the early numbers of the "Overland."
Notwithstanding the success of his first story, Bret Harte was in no haste
to rush into print with another. He had none of that disposition to make
hay while the sun shines which has spoiled many a story-writer. Six months
elapsed before the _Luck_ was followed by _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_.
Meanwhile he was carefully and patiently discharging his duties as Editor.
Mr. Stoddard has thus described him in that capacity: "Fortunately for me
he took an interest in me at a time when I was most in need of advice, and
to his criticism and his encouragement I feel that I owe all that is best
in my literary efforts. He was not afraid to speak his mind, and I know
well enough what occasion I gave him: yet he did not judge me more
severely than I judged myself.... I am sure that the majority of the
contributors to the 'Overland Monthly' profited as I did by his careful
and judicious criticism. Fastidious to a degree, he could not overlook a
lack of finish in the manuscript offered to him. He had a special taste in
the choice of titles, and I have known him to alter the name of an article
two or three times in order that the table of contents might read
handsomely and harmoniously."
One of the most frequent contributors to the "Overland" was Miss Ina B.
Coolbrith, author of many polished and imaginative poems and stories. In a
recent letter Miss Coolbrith thus speaks of Bret Harte as an Editor: "To
me he was unfailingly kind and generous, looking out for my interests as
one of his contributors with as much care as he accorded to his own. I can
only speak of him in terms of unqualified praise as author, friend and
man."
The poem entitled _Plain Language from Truthful James_, or the _Heathen
Chinee_, as it is popularly known, and as Bret Harte himself afterward
called it, first appeared in the "Overland" for September, 1870. Within a
few weeks it had spread over the English-speaking world. _The Luck of
Roaring Camp_ gave Bret Harte a literary reputation, but this poem made
him famous. It was copied by the newspapers almost universally, both here
and in England; and it increased the circulation of the "Overland" so much
that, two months after its appearance, a single news company in New York
was selling twelve hundred copies of the magazine. Almost everybody had a
clipping of these verses tucked into his waistcoat pocket or carried in
his purse. Quotations from it were on every lip, and some of its most
significant lines were recited with applause in the National House of
Representatives.
It came at a fortunate moment when the people of this country were just
awaking to the fact that there was a "Chinese problem," and when interest
in the race was becoming universal in the East as well as in the West.
Says that acute critic, Mr. James Douglas: "There is an element of chance
in the fabrication of great poems. The concatenation comes, the artist
puts the pieces into their places, and the result is permanent wonder. The
_Heathen Chinee_ in its happy felicity is quite as unique as 'The Blessed
Damozel.'"
The _Heathen Chinee_ is remarkable for the absolutely impartial attitude
of the writer. He observes the Chinaman neither from the locally
prejudiced, California point of view, nor from an ethical or reforming
point of view. His part is neither to approve nor condemn, but simply to
state the fact as it is, not indeed with the coldness of an historian but
with the sympathy and insight of a poet. But this is not all, in fact, as
need hardly be said, it is not enough to make the poem endure. It endures
because it has a beauty of form which approaches perfection. It is
hackneyed, and yet as fresh as on the day when it was written.[11]
Truthful James himself who tells the story was a real character,--nay is,
for, at the writing of these pages, he still lived in the same little
shanty where he was to be found when Bret Harte knew him. At that time, in
1856, or thereabout, Bret Harte was teaching school at Tuttletown, a few
miles north of Sonora, and Truthful James, Mr. James W. Gillis, lived over
the hill from Tuttletown, at a place called Jackass Flat. Mr. Gillis was
well known and highly respected in all that neighborhood, and he figures
not only in Bret Harte's poetry, but also in Mark Twain's works, where he
is described as "The Sage of Jackass Hill."
It is a proof both of Bret Harte's remarkable freedom from vanity, and of
the keen criticism which he bestowed upon his own writings, that he never
set much value upon the _Heathen Chinee_, even after its immense
popularity had been attained. When he wrote it, he thought it unworthy of
a place in the "Overland" and handed it over to Mr. Ambrose Bierce, then
Editor of the "News Letter,"[12] a weekly paper, for publication there.
Mr. Bierce, however, recognizing its value, unselfishly advised Bret Harte
to give it a place in the "Overland," and this was finally done.
"Nevertheless," says Mr. Bierce, "it was several months before he overcame
his prejudice against the verses and printed them. Indeed he never cared
for the thing, and was greatly amused by the meanings that so many read
into it. He said he meant nothing whatever by it."
We have Mark Twain's word to the same effect. "In 1866," he writes, "I
went to the Sandwich Islands, and when I returned, after several years,
Harte was famous as the author of the _Heathen Chinee_. He said that the
_Heathen Chinee_ was an accident, and that he had higher literary
ambitions than the fame that could come from an extravaganza of that
sort." "_The Luck of Roaring Camp_," Mr. Clemens goes on to say, "was the
salvation of his literary career. It placed him securely on a literary
road which was more to his taste."
Bret Harte, indeed, frequently held back for weeks poems which he had
completed, but with which he was not content. As one of his fellow-workers
declared, "He was never fully satisfied with what he finally allowed to go
to the printer."
His position in San Francisco was now assured. He had been made professor
of recent literature in the University of California; he retained his
place at the Mint, he was the successful Editor of the "Overland," and he
was happy in his home life. One who knew him well at this period speaks of
him as "always referring to his wife in affectionate terms, and quoting
her clever speeches, and relating with fond enjoyment the funny sayings
and doings of his children."
Let us, for the moment, leave Bret Harte thus happily situated, and glance
at that Pioneer life which he was now engaged in portraying. Said a San
Francisco paper in 1851, "The world will never know, and no one could
imagine the heart-rending scenes, or the instances of courage and heroic
self-sacrifice which have occurred among the California Pioneers during
the last three years!"
And yet when these words were penned there was growing up in the East a
stripling destined to preserve for posterity some part, at least, of those
very occurrences which otherwise would have remained "unrecorded and
forgot."