LITERATURE, JOURNALISM AND RELIGION
Most of the newspaper men in the early days of California were Southerners
or under Southern influence, as is plain from many indications. For
example, duelling and shooting at sight were common editorial
functions.[77]
Bret Harte, in _An Episode of Fiddletown_, gives an instance: "An
unfortunate _rencontre_ took place on Monday last between the Honorable
Jackson Flash, of the 'Dutch Flat Intelligencer,' and the well-known
Colonel Starbottle of this place, in front of the Eureka Saloon. Two shots
were fired by the parties without injury to either, although it is said
that a passing Chinaman received fifteen buckshot in the calves of his
legs from the Colonel's double-barrelled shotgun which were not intended
for him. John will learn to keep out of the way of Melican man's firearms
hereafter."
This fictitious incident can be paralleled almost exactly from the
California papers of the day. In July, 1851, a certain Colonel Johnston
pulled the nose of the Editor of the "Marysville Times," whereupon the
Editor drew a pistol, and the Colonel ran away. In September of the same
year the "Alta California" announced that a duel between one of the
proprietors of that paper and a brother to the Governor of the State had
been prevented by the police. In March, 1851, two Sacramento Editors had a
dispute in the course of which one endeavored to shoot the other. In May
of the same year, the Editor of the "Calaveras Chronicle" fought a duel
with another citizen of that town, and was dangerously wounded. In
November, 1860, the Editor of the "Visalia Delta" was killed in a street
affray. In San Francisco a duel took place between ex-Governor McDougall
and the Editor of "The Picayune," "A. C. Russell, Esq."
This use of "Esquire," by the way, was an English custom imported to
California by way of the South, and many humorous examples of it may be
found in Bret Harte. Thus, in the "Star's" account of "Uncle Ben" Dabney's
sudden elevation to wealth and to a more aristocratic name, we read:
"Benjamin Daubigny, Esq., who left town for Sacramento on important
business, not entirely unconnected with his new interests in Indian
Springs, will, it is rumored, be shortly joined by his wife, who has been
enabled by his recent good fortune to leave her old home in the States,
and take her proper proud position by his side.... Mr. Daubigny was
accompanied by his private secretary, Rupert, the eldest son of H. G.
Filgee, Esq.,"--"H. G. Filgee, Esq." being a species of bar-room loafer.
Another indication of the Southern origin of Californian Editors is the
Starbottlian lack of humor which they often display. In August, 1850, the
junior Editor of the "Alta California" published an extremely long letter
in that paper describing his personal difficulties with two acquaintances,
and concluding as follows: "I had simply intended in our interview to
pronounce Messrs. Crane and Rice poltroons and cowards, and spit in their
faces; and had they seen fit to resent it on the spot, I was prepared for
them."--Nothing more. The "Sacramento Transcript" concluded the account of
a funeral as follows: "She was buried in a neat mahogany coffin, furnished
by Mr. Earle Youmans at one half the established price." The "San
Francisco Daily Herald" of June 21, 1852, contains a very long, minute,
and extremely technical account of a prize-fight, written with evident
relish, but concluding with a wholly unexpected comment as follows: "Thus
ended this brutal exhibition!"
The editorial tone, especially in San Francisco, was distinguished by
great solemnity, but it was the assumed solemnity of youth, for the
Editors, like everybody else in California, were young. None but a
youthful journalist could have written a leading article, published one
Monday in a San Francisco paper, describing a sermon which the writer had
heard on the preceding Sunday, giving the name of the preacher, and
complaining bitterly, not that he was heterodox or bigoted, but that he
was stupid and uninteresting!
In fact, the California Editors, despite the solemnity of their tone,
showed a decided inclination to deal with the amusing, rather than with
the serious, aspects of life. The "Sacramento Transcript" in August, 1850,
contained a column letter, in large type, minutely describing "an alleged
difficulty" which occurred at the American Fork House, between Mr.
Gelston of Sacramento, and Mr. Drake, "who has been stopping at this place
for his health,"--with poor results, it is to be feared. In another issue
of the same paper two columns are devoted to an account of a practical
joke played upon a French barber in San Francisco.
Most of all, however, did the California journalists betray their youth,
and their Southern origin as well, by the ornate style and the hyperbole
in which the early papers indulged, and which are often satirized by Bret
Harte. An editorial article dealing with the prospects of California began
as follows: "When the eagle, emblem of model Republican liberty, winged
its final flight westward from its home where Atlantic surges chafe our
shores, and sought the sunny clime of the mild Pacific Strand, it bore in
its strong talons," and so forth for a sentence of one hundred and twenty
words.
But the California newspapers, though often crude and provincial, were
almost wholly free from vulgarity. In this respect they far excelled the
average newspaper of to-day. There was nothing of the Philistine about
them. They give the impression of having been written "by gentlemen and
for gentlemen." These California writers were, indeed, very young
gentlemen, as we have seen, and they often lacked breadth of view,
self-restraint, and knowledge of the world, but they were essentially men
of honor, and in public matters they took high ground. The important part
played by the "Bulletin" and its Editor, James King, has already been
described. Nor did they lack literary skill, as is sufficiently shown by
some of the passages from San Francisco papers already quoted. A
correspondent of the "Sacramento Transcript," writing in July, 1850, from
the northern mines, gives an account of the destruction by fire of a store
and restaurant owned by a Mr. Cook, concluding as follows: "With the
recuperative energy so peculiar to American character, Mr. Cook has
already gone down to your city to purchase a new stock, having
reestablished his boarding-house before leaving. The son of Ethiopia who
conducts the culinary department is not the darker for 'the cloud which
has lowered o'er our house,' and deprived him of many of the instruments
of his office."
The delicate humor of the last sentence does not seem out of place in the
"Sacramento Transcript" of that date. The same paper published on the
fourth of July, 1850, a patriotic leader which closed with these
words,--they appear far from extravagant now, but at that time they must
have sounded like a rash and audacious prophecy: "'God Save the Queen' and
'Yankee Doodle' will blend in unison around the world."
The first newspaper published in California was a small sheet called "The
Californian," started at Monterey in the Fall of 1846, and printed half
in English, half in Spanish. Needless to say, its conductors were
Americans.[78] They had discovered in the ruins of the Mission, and used
for this purpose, an old press which the Spaniards had imported in the day
of their rule for printing the edicts of the Governor. In the following
year "The Californian" was removed to San Francisco. Many other newspapers
sprang into existence after the discovery of gold, especially the "Alta
California," which became the leading journal on the Pacific Slope. By the
end of 1850 there were fifteen newspapers in the State, including six
daily papers in San Francisco, and that excellent home and farm weekly,
the "California Farmer."
As for the buoyant, confident tone of these Pioneer papers, exaggerated
though it was, it only reflected the general feeling. So early as
November, 1851, a meeting was held in San Francisco to advocate the
building of a railroad which should connect the Atlantic with the Pacific.
In June, 1850, the "Sacramento Transcript" warned Europe as follows: "The
present is the most remarkable period the world has ever been called upon
to pass through.... The nations are centering hitherward. Europe is poor,
California is rich, and equilibrium is inevitable. Four years will pass,
and ours will be the most popular State in the Union. She is putting in
the Keystone of Commerce, and concentrating the trade of the world."
Moreover, busy as the Pioneers were, their reading was not confined to
newspapers. Bret Harte said of them: "Eastern magazines and current
Eastern literature formed their literary recreation, and the sale of the
better class of periodicals was singularly great. Nor was their taste
confined to American literature. The illustrated and satirical English
journals were as frequently seen in California as in Massachusetts; and
the author records that he has experienced more difficulty in procuring a
copy of 'Punch' in an English provincial town than was his fortune at 'Red
Dog' or 'One-Horse Gulch.'"
[Illustration: MAIN STREET, NEVADA CITY, 1852
From a photograph in the possession of Colonel Thomas L. Livermore]
This statement has been questioned, but it is borne out by the
contemporary records and publications. The "Atlantic Monthly," for
example, was regularly advertised in the California papers, and the
"Atlantic" at that time was essentially a literary magazine. In the list
of its contributors published in the "California Farmer" are the names of
Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Parsons, Whittier, Prescott, Mrs.
Stowe, Motley, Herman Melville, C. C. Felton, F. J. Child, Edmund Quincy,
J. T. Trowbridge, and G. W. Curtis. The London "Illustrated News" had a
particularly large sale among the Pioneers, although the California price
was a dollar a copy.
The shifting character of the population, and the fact, already mentioned,
that, almost to a man, the Pioneers expected to return to the East within
a few months, or, at the latest, within a year or two,--these reasons
discouraged the founding of permanent institutions such as libraries and
colleges; but even in this direction something was done at an early date.
The rush of immigration began in the Spring of 1849, and within less than
a year a meeting had been held at San Francisco to establish a State
college; a State library had been founded at San Jose; mercantile library
associations had been started both in San Francisco and Sacramento, and an
auction sale of books had been held in the latter city.
In September, 1850, an audience gathered at Stockton to hear a lecture
upon so recondite a subject as the "State of Learning from the Fall of
Rome to the Fall of Constantinople." In June, 1851, a San Francisco firm
advertised the receipt by the latest steamer of ten thousand new books,
including the complete works of Dickens and Washington Irving. In
November, 1851, a literary society called The California Institute was
organized in San Francisco, and in April, 1856, some one entertained a
hall full of people by giving an account of a lecture which Cardinal
Wiseman had delivered in London upon the Perception of Natural Beauty by
the Ancients and Moderns.
Before the close of 1856 numerous boarding-schools had been established,
such as the Alameda Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies and Gentlemen,
the Stockton Female Seminary, the Female Institute at Santa Clara, the
Collegiate Institute at Benicia, the Academy of Notre Dame at San Jose.
The "legitimate drama," and even Shakspere, flourished in California. In
the Summer of 1850 Charles R. Thorne was playing at Sacramento, and in the
Autumn "Richard III" and "Macbeth" were on the boards there. In the Fall
of 1851 two theatres were open in San Francisco, "Othello" being the play
at one, "Ernest Maltravers" at the other. In 1852 "The Hunchback" was
performed in the same city with Miss Baker, the once-famous Philadelphia
actress, in the leading part. There was no exaggeration in the remark made
by the "Sacramento Transcript" in May, 1850: "Nowhere have we seen more
critical theatrical audiences than those which meet nightly in
Sacramento.... Every mind is wide awake, and the discriminating eye of an
impartial public easily selects pure worth from its counterfeit."
An amusing incident, which would have delighted Charles Lamb, and which
shows the youthfulness, the humor, and, equally, the decorum of the
California audience, is thus related by an eye-witness: "One night at the
theatre a countryman from Pike, sitting in the 'orchestra' near the stage,
and becoming uncomfortably warm, took off his coat. Thereupon the
gallery-gods roared and hissed,--stopping the play until the garment
should be resumed. Some one touched the man on the shoulder and explained
the situation. The hydra watched and waited. Shirt-sleeves appeared to be
refractory, and a terrific roar came from the hydra. Shirt-sleeves,
quailing at the sound, and at the angry looks and gestures of those who
sat near him, started up with an air of coerced innocence, and resumed his
_toga virilis_. The yell of triumph that arose from the 'gods' in their
joyful sense of victory was beyond the description of tongue or pen."[79]
It was remarked at an early date that nothing really satisfied the
Pioneers unless it was the best of its kind that could be obtained,
whether that kind were good or bad. Thus San Francisco, as many travellers
observed, had the prettiest courtesans, the truest guns and pistols, the
purest cigars and the finest wines and brandies to be found in the United
States. The neatness and good style which marked the best hotels and
restaurants prove the natural refinement of the people. Bret Harte has
spoken of the old family silver which figured at a certain coffeehouse in
San Francisco; and the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, who, being a minister, may
perhaps be cited as an expert on this subject, was impressed by the good
food and the excellent service which the traveller in California
enjoyed:--
"Passing hither and thither on the little steamers to Marysville, to
Stockton, to the towns north of the Bay, where often the number of
passengers did not exceed thirty, we have seen again and again a table
most neatly set, the silver bright and clean, the meals well prepared and
good, without any nonsense of show dishes, the servants tidy, quiet and
respectful,--the whole entertainment more rational and better than we have
ever seen on Mississippi steamboats, or on those of the Atlantic
Coast."[80]
The steamers that plied up and down the Sacramento were "fast, elegant,
commodious." In July, 1851, some one gave an aristocratic evening party in
the heart of the mountains, fifty miles from Marysville. A long artificial
bower had been constructed under which were spread tables ornamented with
flowers, and loaded with delicious viands, turkeys at twenty dollars
apiece, pigs as costly, jellies, East India preserves, and ice cream. Some
of the guests came from a great distance, ten, twenty, and even thirty
miles. "No gamblers were present," said the local paper which gave an
account of the affair, thus showing how quickly the social line was drawn.
But even if we regard the beginnings of education and literature in
California as somewhat meagre, it is otherwise with religion. Those who
have looked upon the early California society as essentially lawless and
immoral will be surprised to find how large and how potent was the
religious element. Churches sprang up almost as quickly as gambling
houses. The Baptists have the credit of erecting, in the Summer of '49,
the first church building; but Father William Taylor, the Methodist, was a
close second. Father Taylor set out to build a church with his own hands.
Every morning he crossed the Bay from San Francisco to San Antonio Creek
and toiled with his axe in a grove of redwoods until he had cut down and
hewn into shape the needed timber. This he transported in a sloop to the
city, and then, with the aid of his congregation, constructed the church
which was finished in October, '49. By September, 1850, the following
congregations had been formed in San Francisco: one Catholic, four
Methodist (one being for negroes), one Presbyterian, one Congregational,
one Baptist, one Episcopal, one Union Church. Three separate services
were held at the Catholic Church, which was the largest, one in English,
one in Spanish, one in French. Two years later a Jewish synagogue was
established.
In July, 1850, five Episcopal clergymen met at San Francisco to create the
diocese of California, and in the following month Dr. Horatio Southgate
was elected Bishop. In the same year the San Francisco Bible Society was
formed, and the next year, the "California Christian Advocate," a
Methodist paper, began publication.
At Sacramento, in the Spring of 1850, the Episcopalians, Methodists,
Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians were holding regular
services, and church building had begun. In July, 1851, a Methodist
College at San Jose was incorporated; and in the same month the San
Francisco papers have a long and enthusiastic account of a concert given
by the children of the Baptist church there. "It was like an oasis in the
desert for weary travellers," remarked one of them. A Sacramento paper
speaking of a school festival in that city said: "No bull-fight,
horse-race or card-table ever gave so much pleasure to the spectators."
A miner, writing from Stockton on a Sunday morning in October, 1851, says,
"The church bell is tolling, and gayly-dressed ladies are passing by the
window."
The congregations at the early religious meetings were extremely
impressive, being composed almost wholly of men, and of men young,
vigorous and sincere. As Professor Royce remarks: "Nobody gained anything
by hypocrisy in California, and consequently there were few hypocrites.
The religious coldness of a larger number who at home would have seemed to
be devout did not make the progress of the churches in California less
sure." And he speaks of the impression which these early congregations of
men made upon his mother. "She saw in their countenances an intensity of
earnestness that made her involuntarily thank God for making so grand a
being as man."
It has often been remarked that in times of unbelief and lax morality
there is always found a small element in the community which maintains the
standard of faith and conduct with a strictness wholly alien to the
period. Such was the case in the Roman Empire just before and just after
the advent of the Christian religion. So, in the English Church, in its
most idle, most worldly, most unspiritual days, as before the Evangelical
movement, and again before the Tractarian movement, there was a small body
of priests and laymen, chiefly, as in the Roman Empire, isolated persons
living in the country, who preserved the torch of faith, humility and
self-denial, and served as a nucleus for the new party which was to revive
and reform the Church. Extremes can be met only by extremes. Intense
worldliness can be vanquished only by intense unworldliness; unbelief
fosters faith among a few; and the more loose the habits of the majority,
the more severe will be the practice of the minority.
This was abundantly seen in California. As Bret Harte himself said:
"Strangely enough, this grave materialism flourished side by side
with--and was even sustained by--a narrow religious strictness more
characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers of a past century than the Western
Pioneers of the present. San Francisco was early a city of churches and
church organizations to which the leading men and merchants belonged. The
lax Sundays of the dying Spanish race seemed only to provoke a revival of
the rigors of the Puritan Sabbath. With the Spaniard and his Sunday
afternoon bull-fight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco pulpit
thundered against Sunday picnics. One of the popular preachers, declaiming
upon the practice of Sunday dinner-giving, averred that when he saw a
guest in his best Sunday clothes standing shamelessly upon the doorstep
of his host, he felt like seizing him by the shoulder and dragging him
from that threshold of perdition."
An example of this narrow, not to say Pharisaic point of view was
commented upon as follows by the "San Francisco Daily Herald" of February
3, 1852: "Of all countries in the world California is the least favorable
to cant and bigotry.... It is not surprising that a general feeling of
loathing should have been created by an article which recently appeared in
a so-called religious newspaper having the title of the 'Christian
Advocate,' commenting in terms of invidious and slanderous malignity on
the fact of Miss Coad, recently attached to the American Theatre, being
engaged to sing in the choir of the Pacific Church."
This is well enough, though put in an extravagant and rather boyish way;
but the writer then goes on in the true Colonel Starbottle manner as
follows: "With the conductors of a clerical press it is difficult to deal.
Under the cloak of piety they do not hesitate to libel and malign, and at
the same time not recognizing the responsibility of gentlemen [Colonel
Starbottle's phrase], and being therefore not fit subjects of attack in
retort, one feels almost ashamed in checking their stupidity or reproving
their falsehood." And so on at great length.
Nevertheless, the Puritan minority, reinforced by the good sense of a
majority of the Pioneers, very quickly succeeded in modifying the free and
easy life of San Francisco, and later of the mining regions. Gamblers of
the better sort, and business men in general, welcomed and supported the
churches as tending to the peace and prosperity even of the Pacific Slope.
"I have known five men," wrote the Reverend Mr. Colton, "who never
contributed a dollar in the States for the support of a clergyman,
subscribe here five hundred dollars each per annum, merely to encourage,
as they termed it, 'a good sort of a thing in a community.'"[81]
The steps taken in 1850 and 1851 to prohibit or restrain gambling have
already been noticed. In August, 1850, the Grand Jury condemned
bull-baiting and prize-fighting at any time, and theatrical and like
exhibitions on Sunday. In September of the same year, the "Sacramento
Transcript" said, "The bull-fights we have had in this city have been
barbarous and disgusting in the extreme, and their toleration on any
occasion is disgraceful."
This sentiment prevailed, and shortly afterward bull-fights in Sacramento
were forbidden by city ordinance. A year later gambling houses and
theatres, both in San Francisco and Sacramento, were closed on Sunday, and
we find the "Alta California" remarking on a Monday morning in May,
"Yesterday all was like Sunday in the East, as quiet as the fury of the
winds would allow. Two years ago under similar circumstances many hundreds
of men would have forgotten the day, and the busy hum of business would
have rung throughout the land."
In the mines Sunday, at first, was almost wholly disregarded; but
abstention from work on that day was soon found to be a physical
necessity. Thus an English miner wrote home, "We have all of us given over
working on Sundays, as we found the toil on six successive days quite hard
enough."
Men who stood by their principles in California never lost anything by
that course. A merchant from Salem, Massachusetts, came up the Sacramento
River with a cargo of goods in December, 1848. Early on the morning after
his arrival three men with three mules appeared on the bank of the river
to purchase supplies for the mines. It being Sunday, however, the man from
Salem refused to do business on that day, but, after the New England
fashion, accommodated his intending customers with a little good advice.
This they resented in a really violent manner, and went off in a rage,
swearing that they would never trade with such a Puritanical hypocrite.
Yet they came back the next morning, purchased goods then, and on various
later occasions, and finally made the Sabbath-keeper their banker,
depositing in his safe many thousands of dollars.
Even a matter so unpopular as that of temperance reform was not neglected
by the religious people. A temperance society was organized at Sacramento
in June, 1850, addresses were made in the Methodist chapel, and numerous
persons, including some city officials, signed a total abstinence pledge.
"The subject is an old one," the "Sacramento Transcript" naively remarked;
"but this is a new country. Temperance is rather a new idea here, and its
introduction among us seems almost like a novel movement." In the same
month and year a similar society was formed in San Francisco, and
arrangements were made to celebrate the Fourth of July "on temperance
principles."
The most genuine, the most thorough-going kind of religion found in
California was that of the Western Pioneers, who were mainly Methodists
and Baptists of a rude, primitive sort. Nothing could be further from Bret
Harte's manner of thinking, and yet he has depicted the type with his
usual insight, though perhaps not quite with his usual sympathy. Joshua
Rylands, in _Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation_ (a story already mentioned), is
one example of it, and Madison Wayne, in _The Bell-Ringer of Angel's_, is
another. Of all Bret Harte's stories this is the most tragic, a terrible
fate overtaking every one of the four characters who figure in it. Madison
Wayne is a Calvinistic Puritan,--a New Englander such as has not been seen
in New England for a hundred years, but only in that Far West to which
New England men penetrated, and in which New England ideas and beliefs,
protected by the isolation of prairie and forest, survived the scientific
and religious changes of two centuries.
In _A Night at Hays'_ we have the same character under a more morose
aspect. "Always a severe Presbyterian and an uncompromising deacon, he
grew more rigid, sectarian, and narrow day by day.... A grim landlord,
hard creditor, close-fisted patron, and a smileless neighbor who neither
gambled nor drank, old Hays, as he was called, while yet scarce fifty, had
few acquaintances and fewer friends."
In _An Apostle of the Tules_ Bret Harte has described a camp-meeting of
Calvinistic families whose gloom was heightened by malaria contracted from
the Stockton marshes. "One might have smiled at the idea of the
vendetta-following Ferguses praying for 'justification by faith'; but the
actual spectacle of old Simon Fergus, whose shotgun was still in his
wagon, offering up that appeal with streaming eyes and agonized features,
was painful beyond a doubt."
As for Bret Harte's own religious views, it can scarcely be said that he
had any. He was indeed brought up with some strictness as an Episcopalian,
his mother being of that faith; and when he returned from her funeral with
his sisters, he seemed deeply moved by the beauty of the Episcopal burial
service, and expressed the hope that it would be read at his own grave.
His friends in this country remember that he declined to take part in
certain amusements on Sunday, remarking that, though he saw no harm in
them, he could not shake off the more strict notions of Sunday observance
in which he had been trained as a child. Through life he had a horror of
gambling, and always refused even to play cards for money. In San
Francisco he used to attend the church where his friend Starr King
preached, and in New York he was often present at another Unitarian
church, that of the Reverend O. B. Frothingham; but this seems to have
been the extent of his church-going, and of his connection, external or
internal, with any form of Christianity.
Nor, so far as one can judge from his writings, and from such of his
letters as have been published, was he one who thought much or cared much
about those mysteries of human existence with which religion is supposed
to deal. Even as a child, Bret Harte had no sense of sin,--no sense of
that hideous discrepancy between character and ideals, between conduct and
duty, which ought to oppress all men, and which, at some period of their
lives, does oppress most men. Everybody, from the Digger Indian up, has a
standard of right and wrong; everybody is aware that he continually falls
below that standard; and from these two facts of consciousness arise the
sense of sin, remorse, repentance, and the instinct of expiation. Perhaps
this is religion, or the fundamental feeling upon which religion is based.
To be deficient in this feeling is a great defect in any man, most of all
in a man of powerful intellect. In a letter, Bret Harte, speaking of
"Pilgrim's Progress," says that he read it as a boy, but that the book
made no impression upon him, except that the characters seemed so
ridiculous that he could not help laughing at them. This statement gives a
rather painful shock even to the irreligious reader. The truth is, Bret
Harte had the moral indifference, the spiritual serenity of a Pagan, and,
as a necessary concomitant, that superficial conception of human life and
destiny which belongs to Paganism.
Benjamin Jowett, speaking of the Mediaeval hymns, said, "We seem to catch
from them echoes of deeper feelings than we are capable of." That
Mediaeval, Gothic depth of feeling, that consciousness of sin and mystery
hanging over and enveloping man's career on earth, survives even in some
modern writers, as in Hawthorne, George Eliot, Tolstoi, and, by a kind of
negation, in Thomas Hardy; and it gives to their stories a sombre and
imposing background which is lacking in the tales of Bret Harte and of
Kipling.
It is owing partly to this defect, and partly to the unfortunate character
of most of the ministers who reached California before 1860, that the
clerical element fares but ill in Bret Harte's stories.[82] His most
frequent type is the smooth, oily, self-seeking hypocrite. Such is the
Reverend Joshua McSnagley whose little affair with Deacon Parnell's
"darter" is sarcastically mentioned in _Roger Catron's Friend_, and who
comes to a violent end in _M'liss_. The Reverend Mr. Staples who meanly
persecutes the Youngest Prospector in Calaveras, is McSnagley under
another name; and the same type briefly appears again in the Reverend Mr.
Peasley, who greets the New Assistant at Pine Clearing School "with a
chilling Christian smile"; in the Reverend Mr. Belcher, who attempts the
reform of Johnnyboy; and still again in Parson Greenwood, who profits by
the Convalescence of Jack Hamlin to learn the mysteries of poker, and of
whom the gambler said that, when he had successfully "bluffed" his
fellow-players, "there was a smile of humble self-righteousness on his
face that was worth double the money."
A much less conventional and more interesting type is that of the jovial,
loud-voiced hypocrite who conceals a cold heart and a selfish nature with
an affectation of frankness and geniality. Such are the Reverend Mr.
Windibrook in _A Belle of Canada City_, and Father Wynn, described in _The
Carquinez Woods_. It was Father Wynn who thus addressed the
newly-converted expressman, to the great disgust and embarrassment of that
youth: "'Good-by, good-by, Charley, my boy, and keep in the right path;
not up or down, or round the gulch, you know, ha, ha! but straight across
lots to the shining gate.'
"He had raised his voice under the stimulus of a few admiring spectators,
and backed his convert playfully against the wall. 'You see! We're goin'
in to win, you bet. Good-by! I'd ask you to step in and have a chat, but
I've got my work to do, and so have you. The gospel mustn't keep us from
that, must it, Charley? Ha, ha!'"
James Seabright, the amphibious minister who is responsible for the
Episode of West Woodlands, is rather good than bad, and so is Stephen
Masterton, the ignorant, fanatical, but conscientious Pike County
revivalist who, yielding to the combined charms of a pretty Spanish girl
and the Catholic Church, becomes a Convert of the Mission.[83]
Of another Protestant minister, the Reverend Mr. Daws, it is briefly
mentioned in _The Iliad of Sandy Bar_ that "with quiet fearlessness" he
endeavored to reconcile those bitter enemies, York and Scott. "When he
had concluded, Scott looked at him, not unkindly, over the glasses of his
bar, and said, less irreverently than the words might convey, 'Young man,
I rather like your style; but when you know York and me as well as you do
God Almighty, it'll be time enough to talk.'"
But of all Bret Harte's Protestant ministers the only one who figures in
the least as a hero is Gideon Deane, the Apostle of the Tules. Gideon
Deane, it will be remembered, first ventures his own life in an effort to
save that of a gambler about to be lynched, and then, making perhaps a
still greater sacrifice, declines the church and the parsonage and the
fifteen hundred dollars a year offered to him by Jack Hamlin and his
friends, and returning to the lonely farmhouse and the poverty-stricken,
unattractive widow Hiler, becomes her husband, and a father to her
children.
The story is not altogether satisfactory, for Gideon Deane is in love with
a young girl who loves him, and it is not perfectly clear why her
happiness, as well as that of the preacher himself, should be sacrificed
to the domestic necessities of the widow and her children. Nor is the hero
himself made quite so real as are Bret Harte's characters in general. We
admire and respect him, but he does not excite our enthusiasm, and this is
probably because the author failed to get that imaginative, sympathetic
grasp of his nature which, as a rule, makes Bret Harte's personages seem
like living men and women.
There is a rather striking resemblance in the matter of ministers between
Bret Harte and Rhoda Broughton. Both have the same instinctive antipathy
to a parson that boys have to a policeman; both have the same general
notion that ministers are mainly canting hypocrites; both, being struck
apparently by the idea of doing full justice to the cloth, have set
themselves to describe one really good and even heroic minister, and in
each case the type evolved is the same, and not convincing. Gideon Deane
has the slender physique, the humility, the courage, the self-sacrificing
spirit, the melancholy temperament of the Reverend James Stanley, and, it
may be added, the same unreality, the same inability to stamp his image
upon the mind of the reader.
Bret Harte's treatment of the Spanish priest in California is very
different. He pokes a little fun at his Reverence, now and then. He shows
us Father Felipe entering the _estudio_ of Don Jose Sepulvida "with that
air of furtive and minute inspection common to his order"; and in the
interview with Colonel Parker, Don Jose's lawyer, there is a beautiful
description of what might be called an ecclesiastical wink. "The Padre and
Colonel Parker gazed long and gravely into each other's eyes. It may have
been an innocent touch of the sunlight through the window, but a faint
gleam seemed to steal into the pupil of the affable lawyer at the same
moment that, probably from the like cause, there was a slight nervous
contraction of the left eyelid of the pious father."
Father Sobriente, again, "was a polished, cultivated man; yet in the
characteristic, material criticism of youth, I am afraid that Clarence
chiefly identified him as a priest with large hands whose soft palms
seemed to be cushioned with kindness, and whose equally large feet,
encased in extraordinary shapeless shoes of undyed leather, seemed to
tread down noiselessly--rather than to ostentatiously crush--the obstacles
that beset the path of the young student.... In the midnight silence of
the dormitory, he was often conscious of the soft, browsing tread and
snuffy, muffled breathing of his elephantine-footed mentor."
But the simplicity, the unaffected piety, and the sweet disposition of the
Spanish priest are clearly shown in Bret Harte's stories. The
ecclesiastic with whom he has made us best acquainted is Padre Esteban of
the Mission of Todos Santos, that remote and dreamy port in which the
Crusade of the Excelsior ended. And yet even there the good priest had
learned how to deal with the human heart, as appeared when he became the
confidant of the unfortunate Hurlstone.
"'A woman,' said the priest softly. 'So! We will sit down, my son.' He
lifted his hand with a soothing gesture--the movement of a physician who
has just arrived at an easy diagnosis of certain uneasy symptoms. There
was also a slight suggestion of an habitual toleration, as if even the
seclusion of Todos Santos had not been entirely free from the invasion of
the primal passion."
The Reader need not be reminded how often Bret Harte speaks of Junipero
Serra, the Franciscan Friar who founded the Spanish Missions in
California. Father Junipero was a typical Spaniard of the religious sort,
austere, ascetic,--a Commissioner of the Inquisition. He ate little,
avoiding all meat and wine. He scourged himself in the pulpit with a
chain, after the manner of St. Francis, and he was accustomed, while
reciting the confession, to hold aloft the Crucifix in his left hand, and
to strike his naked breast with a heavy stone held in his right hand. To
this self-punishment, indeed, was attributed the disease of the lungs
which ultimately caused his death.
[Illustration: THE BELLS, SAN GABRIEL MISSION
Copyright, Detroit Photographic Co.]
Each Mission had its garrison, for the intention was to overcome the
natives by arms, if they should offer resistance to Holy Church. But the
California Indians were a mild, inoffensive people, lacking the character
and courage of the Indians who inhabited the Plains, and they quickly
succumbed to that combination of spiritual authority and military force
which the Padres wielded. At the end of the eighteenth century there were
eighteen Missions in California, with forty Padres, and a neophyte
Indian population of about thirteen thousand. But all this melted away
when the Missions were secularized. In 1822 Mexico became independent of
Spain, and thenceforth California was an outlying, neglected Mexican
province. From that time the office-holding class of Mexicans were
intriguing to get possession of the Mission lands, flocks and herds; and
in 1833 they succeeded. The Missions were broken up, the Friars were
deprived of all support; and many of the Christian Indians were reduced to
a cruel slavery in which their labor was recompensed chiefly by
intoxicating liquors. Little better was the fate of the others. Released
from the strict discipline in which they had been held by the priests,
they scattered in all directions, and quickly sank into a state of
barbarism worse than their original state.
But the Missions were not absolutely deserted. In some cases a small
monastic brotherhood still inhabited the buildings once thronged by
soldiers and neophytes; and these men were of great service. They
ministered to the spiritual needs of Spanish and Mexicans; they instructed
the sons and daughters of the ranch-owners; they kept alive religion, and
to some extent learning in the community; and, finally,--if one may say so
without irreverence,--they contributed that Mediaeval element which,
otherwise, would have been the one thing lacking to complete the
picturesque contrasts of Pioneer life. The Missions had been the last
expression of the instinct of conquest upon the part of a decaying nation;
and the Angelus that nightly rang from some fast-crumbling tower sounded
the knell of Spanish rule in America.