THE REAL BRET HARTE
Before taking up the events related to my residence in San Francisco I
wish to give my testimony concerning Bret Harte, perhaps the most
interesting character associated with my sojourn in Humboldt. It was
before he was known to fame that I knew him; but I am able to correct
some errors that have been made and I believe can contribute to a more
just estimate of him as a literary artist and a man.
He has been misjudged as to character. He was a remarkable personality,
who interpreted an era of unusual interest, vital and picturesque, with
a result unparalleled in literary annals. When he died in England in
1902 the English papers paid him very high tribute. The _London
Spectator_ said of him: "No writer of the present day has struck so
powerful and original a note as he has sounded." This is a very unusual
acknowledgment from a source not given to the superlative, and fills us
with wonder as to what manner of man and what sort of training had led
to it.
Causes are not easily determined, but they exist and function. Accidents
rarely if ever happen. Heredity and experience very largely account for
results. What is their testimony in this particular case?
Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, February 25, 1836. His
father was a highly educated instructor in Greek, of English-Jewish
descent. His mother was an Ostrander, a cultivated and fine character of
Dutch descent. His grandmother on his father's side was Catherine Brett.
He had an elder brother and two younger sisters. The boys were voracious
readers and began Shakespeare when six, adding Dickens at seven. Frank
developed an early sense of humor, burlesquing the baldness of his
primer and mimicking the recitations of some of his fellow pupils when
he entered school. He was studious and very soon began to write. At
eleven he sent a poem to a weekly paper and was a little proud when he
showed it to the family in print. When they heartlessly pointed out its
flaws he was less hilarious.
His father died when he was very young and he owed his training to his
mother. He left school at thirteen and was first a lawyer's clerk and
later found work in a counting-room. He was self-supporting at sixteen.
In 1853 his mother married Colonel Andrew Williams, an early mayor of
Oakland, and removed to California. The following year Bret and his
younger sister, Margaret, followed her, arriving in Oakland in March,
1854.
He found the new home pleasant. The relations with his cultivated
stepfather were congenial and cordial, but he suffered the fate of most
untrained boys. He was fairly well educated, but he had no trade or
profession. He was bright and quick, but remunerative employment was not
readily found, and he did not relish a clerkship. For a time he was
given a place in a drugstore. Some of his early experiences are embalmed
in "How Reuben Allen Saw Life" and in "Bohemian Days." In the latter he
says: "I had been there a week,--an idle week, spent in listless outlook
for employment, a full week, in my eager absorption of the strange life
around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes and
incidents of those days, which stand out in my memory today as freshly
as on the day they impressed me."
It was a satisfaction that he found some congenial work. He wrote for
_Putnam's_ and the _Knickerbocker_.
In 1856, when he was twenty, he went to Alamo, in the San Ramon Valley,
as tutor in an interesting family. He found the experience agreeable and
valuable.
A letter to his sister Margaret, written soon after his arrival, shows a
delightful relation between them and warm affection on his part. It
tells in a felicitous manner of the place, the people, and his
experiences. He had been to a camp-meeting and was struck with the
quaint, old-fashioned garb of the girls, seeming to make the ugly ones
uglier and the pretty ones prettier. It was raining when he wrote and he
felt depressed, but he sent his love in the form of a charming bit of
verse wherein a tear was borne with the flowing water to testify to his
tender regard for his "peerless sister." This letter, too personal for
publication, his sister lately read to me, and it was a revelation of
the matchless style so early acquired. In form it seemed perfect--not a
superfluous or an ill-chosen word. Every sentence showed rhythm and
balance, flowing easily and pleasantly from beginning to end, leaving an
impression of beauty and harmony, and testifying to a kindly, gentle
nature, with an admiring regard for his seventeen-year-old sister.
From Alamo he seems to have gone directly to Tuolumne County, and it
must have been late in 1856. His delightful sketch "How I Went to the
Mines" is surely autobiographical. He says: "I had been two years in
California before I ever thought of going to the mines, and my
initiation into the vocation of gold-digging was partly compulsory." He
refers to "the little pioneer settlement school, of which I was the
somewhat youthful, and, I fear, not over-competent master." What he did
after the school-teaching episode he does not record. He was a stage
messenger at one time. How long he remained in and around the mines is
not definitely known, but it seems clear that in less than a year of
experience and observation he absorbed the life and local color so
thoroughly that he was able to use it with almost undiminished freshness
for forty years.
It was early in 1857 that Bret Harte came to Humboldt County to visit
his sister Margaret, and for a brief time and to a limited extent our
lives touched. He was twenty-one and I was sixteen, so there was little
intimacy, but he interested and attracted me as a new type of manhood.
He bore the marks of good breeding, education, and refinement. He was
quiet of manner, kindly but not demonstrative, with a certain reserve
and aloofness. He was of medium height, rather slight of figure, with
strongly marked features and an aquiline nose. He seemed clever rather
than forcible, and presented a pathetic figure as of one who had gained
no foothold on success. He had a very pleasant voice and a modest
manner, and never talked of himself. He was always the gentleman,
exemplary as to habits, courteous and good-natured, but a trifle
aristocratic in bearing. He was dressed in good taste, but was evidently
in need of income. He was willing to do anything, but with little
ability to help himself. He was simply untrained for doing anything that
needed doing in that community.
He found occasional work in the drugstore, and for a time he had a small
private school. His surviving pupils speak warmly of his sympathy and
kindness. He had little mechanical ability. I recall seeing him try to
build a fence one morning. He bravely dug postholes, but they were
pretty poor, and the completed fence was not so very straight. He was
genial and uncomplaining, and he made a few good friends. He was an
agreeable guest, and at our house was fond of a game of whist. He was
often facetious, with a neatness that was characteristic. One day, on a
stroll, we passed a very primitive new house that was wholly destitute
of all ornaments or trimming, even without eaves. It seemed modeled
after a packing-box. "That," he remarked, "must be of the _Iowan_ order
of architecture."
He was given to teasing, and could be a little malicious. A proud and
ambitious schoolteacher had married a well-off but decidedly Cockney
Englishman, whose aspirates could be relied upon to do the expected.
Soon after the wedding, Harte called and cleverly steered the
conversation on to music and songs, finally expressing great fondness
for "Kathleen Mavourneen," but professing to have forgotten the words.
The bridegroom swallowed the bait with avidity. "Why," said he, "they
begin with 'The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill.'" F.B.
stroked his Dundrearies while his dark eyes twinkled. The bride's eyes
flashed ominously, but there seemed to be nothing she felt like saying.
In October, 1857, he removed to the Liscom ranch in the suburbs at the
head of the bay and became the tutor of two boys, fourteen and thirteen
years of age. He had a forenoon session of school and in the afternoon
enjoyed hunting on the adjacent marshes. For his convenience in keeping
run of the lessons given, he kept a brief diary, and it has lately been
found. It is of interest both in the little he records and from the
significant omissions. It reveals a very simple life of a clever,
kindly, clean young man who did his work, enjoyed his outdoor
recreation, read a few good books, and generally "retired at 9 1/2 P.M."
He records sending letters to various publications. On a certain day he
wrote the first lines of "Dolores." A few days later he finished it, and
mailed it to the _Knickerbocker_.
He wrote and rewrote a story, "What Happened at Mendocino." What
happened to the story does not appear. He went to church generally, and
some of the sermons were good and others "vapid and trite." Once in a
while he goes to a dance, but not to his great satisfaction. He didn't
dance particularly well. He tells of a Christmas dinner that he helped
his sister to prepare. Something made him dissatisfied with himself and
he bewails his melancholy and gloomy forebodings that unfit him for
rational enjoyment and cause him to be a spectacle for "gods and men."
He adds: "Thermometer of my spirit on Christmas day, 1857, 9 A.M., 40°;
temperature, 12 A.M., 60°; 3 P.M., 80°; 6 P.M., 20° and falling
rapidly; 9 P.M., at zero; 1 A.M., 20° below."
His entries were brief and practical. He did not write to express his
feelings.
At the close of 1857 he indulged in a brief retrospect, and an emphatic
statement of his determination for the future.
After referring to the fact that he was a tutor at a salary of
twenty-five dollars a month and board, and that a year before he was
unemployed, at the close he writes: "In these three hundred and
sixty-five days I have again put forth a feeble essay toward fame and
perhaps fortune. I have tried literature, albeit in a humble way. I have
written some passable prose and it has been successfully published. The
conviction is forced on me by observation, and not by vain enthusiasm,
that I am fit for nothing else. Perhaps I may succeed; if not, I can at
least make the trial. Therefore I consecrate this year, or as much as
God may grant for my services, to honest, heartfelt, sincere labor and
devotion to this occupation. God help me! May I succeed!"
Harte profited by his experience in tutoring my two boy friends, gaining
local color quite unlike that of the Sierra foothills. Humboldt is also
on the grand scale and its physical characteristics and its type of
manhood were fresh and inspiring.
His familiarity with the marsh and the sloughs is shown in "The Man on
the Beach" and the "Dedlow Marsh Stories," and this affords fine
opportunity for judging of the part played by knowledge and by
imagination in his literary work. His descriptions are photographic in
their accuracy. The flight of a flock of sandpipers, the flowing tides,
the white line of the bar at the mouth of the bay--all are exact. But
the locations and relations irrelevant to the story are wholly ignored.
The characters and happenings are purely imaginary. He is the artist
using his experiences and his fancy as his colors, and the minimum of
experience and small observation suffice. His perception of character is
marvelous. He pictures the colonel, his daughters, the spruce
lieutenant, and the Irish deserter with such familiarity that the reader
would think that he had spent most of his life in a garrison, and his
ability to portray vividly life in the mines, where his actual
experience was so very slight, is far better understood.
Many of the occurrences of those far-away days have faded from my mind,
but one of them, of considerable significance to two lives, is quite
clear. Uniontown had been the county-seat, and there the _Humboldt
Times_ was published; but Eureka, across the bay, had outgrown her older
sister and captured both the county-seat and the only paper in the
county. In frantic effort to sustain her failing prestige Uniontown
projected a rival paper and the _Northern Californian_ was spoken into
being. My father was a half owner, and I coveted the humble position of
printer's devil. One journeyman could set the type, and on Wednesday and
Saturday, respectively, run off on a hand-press the outside and the
inside of the paper, but a boy or a low-priced man was needed to roll
the forms and likewise to distribute the type. I looked upon it as the
first rung on the ladder of journalism, and I was about to put my foot
thereon when the pathetic figure of Bret Harte presented itself applying
for the job, causing me to put my foot on my hopes instead. He seemed to
want it and need it so much more than I did that I turned my hand to
other pursuits, while he mounted the ladder with cheerful alacrity and
skipped up several rungs, very promptly learning to set type and
becoming a very acceptable assistant editor.
In a community where popular heroes are apt to be loud and aggressive,
the quiet man who thinks more than he talks is adjudged effeminate.
Harte was always modest, and boasting was foreign to his nature; so he
was thought devoid of spirit and strength. But occasion brought out the
unsuspected. There had been a long and trying Indian war in and around
Humboldt. The feeling against the red men was very bitter. It culminated
in a wanton and cowardly attack on a tribe of peaceful Indians encamped
on an island opposite Eureka, and men, women, and children were
ruthlessly killed. Harte was temporarily in charge of the paper and he
denounced the outrage in unmeasured terms. The better part of the
community sustained him, but a violent minority resented his strictures
and he was seriously threatened and in no little danger. Happily he
escaped, but the incident resulted in his return to San Francisco. The
massacre occurred on February 5, 1860, which fixes the approximate time
of Harte's becoming identified with San Francisco.
His experience was of great advantage to him in that he had learned to
do something for which there was a demand. He could not earn much as a
compositor, but his wants were simple and he could earn something. He
soon secured a place on the _Golden Era_, and it became the doorway to
his career. He was soon transferred to the editorial department and
contributed freely.
For four years he continued on the _Golden Era_. These were years of
growth and increasing accomplishment. He did good work and made good
friends. Among those whose interest he awakened were Mrs. Jessie Benton
Frémont and Thomas Starr King. Both befriended and encouraged him. In
the critical days when California hung in the balance between the North
and the South, and Starr King, by his eloquence, fervor, and magnetism,
seemed to turn the scale, Bret Harte did his part in support of the
friend he loved. Lincoln had called for a hundred thousand volunteers,
and at a mass meeting Harte contributed a noble poem, "The Reveille,"
which thrillingly read by Starr King brought the mighty audience to its
feet with cheers for the Union. He wrote many virile patriotic poems at
this period.
In March, 1864, Starr King, of the glowing heart and golden tongue,
preacher, patriot, and hero, fell at his post, and San Francisco mourned
him and honored him as seldom falls to the lot of man. At his funeral
the Federal authorities ordered the firing of a salute from the forts in
the harbor, an honor, so far as I know, never before accorded a private
citizen.
Bret Harte wrote a poem of rare beauty in expression of his profound
grief and his heartfelt appreciation:
RELIEVING GUARD.
Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho!
How passed the night through thy long waking?"
"Cold, cheerless, dark--as may befit
The hour before the dawn is breaking."
"No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save
The plover from the marshes calling,
And in yon western sky, about
An hour ago, a star was falling."
"A star? There's nothing strange in that."
"No, nothing; but, above the thicket,
Somehow it seemed to me that God
Somewhere had just relieved a picket."
This is not only good poetry; it reveals deep and fine feeling.
[Illustration: FRANCIS BRET HARTE]
Through Starr King's interest, his parishioner Robert B. Swain,
Superintendent of the Mint, had early in 1864 appointed Harte as his
private secretary, at a salary of two hundred dollars a month, with
duties that allowed considerable leisure. This was especially
convenient, as a year or so before he had married, and additional income
was indispensable.
In May, 1864, Harte left the _Golden Era_, joining Charles Henry Webb
and others in a new literary venture, the _Californian_. It was a
brilliant weekly. Among the contributors were Mark Twain, Charles Warren
Stoddard, and Prentice Mulford. Harte continued his delightful
"Condensed Novels" and contributed poems, stories, sketches, and book
reviews. "The Society on the Stanislaus," "John Brown of Gettysburg,"
and "The Pliocene Skull" belong to this period.
In the "Condensed Novels" Harte surpassed all parodists. With clever
burlesque, there was both appreciation and subtle criticism. As
Chesterton says, "Bret Harte's humor was sympathetic and analytical. The
wild, sky-breaking humor of America has its fine qualities, but it must
in the nature of things be deficient in two qualities--reverence and
sympathy--and these two qualities were knit into the closest texture of
Bret Harte's humor."
At this time Harte lived a quiet domestic life. He wrote steadily. He
loved to write, but he was also obliged to. Literature is not an
overgenerous paymaster, and with a growing family expenses tend to
increase in a larger ratio than income.
Harte's sketches based on early experiences are interesting and
amusing. His life in Oakland was in many ways pleasant, but he evidently
retained some memories that made him enjoy indulging in a sly dig many
years after. He gives the pretended result of scientific investigation
made in the far-off future as to the great earthquake that totally
engulfed San Francisco. The escape of Oakland seemed inexplicable, but a
celebrated German geologist ventured to explain the phenomenon by
suggesting that "there are some things that the earth cannot swallow."
My last recollection of Harte, of a purely personal nature, was of an
occurrence in 1866, when he was dramatic critic of the _Morning Call_ at
the time I was doing a little reporting on the same paper. It happened
that a benefit was arranged for some charity. "Nan, the
Good-for-Nothing," was to be given by a number of amateurs. The _Nan_
asked me to play _Tom_, and I had insufficient firmness to decline.
After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the
_Call_ office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte. I thought
he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the
satisfaction of referring to it. Finally I mentioned, casually like,
that I was _Tom_, whereat he feigned surprise, and remarked in his
pleasant voice, "Was that you? I thought they had sent to some theater
and hired a supe."
In July, 1868, A. Roman & Co. launched the _Overland Monthly_, with
Harte as editor. He took up the work with eager interest. He named the
child, planned its every feature, and chose his contributors. It was a
handsome publication, modeled, in a way, on the _Atlantic Monthly,_ but
with a flavor and a character all its own. The first number was
attractive and readable, with articles of varied interest by Mark Twain,
Noah Brooks, Charles Warren Stoddard, William C. Bartlett, T.H. Rearden,
Ina Coolbrith, and others--a brilliant galaxy for any period. Harte
contributed "San Francisco from the Sea."
Mark Twain, long after, alluding to this period in his life, pays this
characteristic acknowledgment: "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 favor in the eyes of even some of the decentest people in the
land."
The first issue of the _Overland_ was well received, but the second
sounded a note heard round the world. The editor contributed a
story--"The Luck of Roaring Camp"--that was hailed as a new venture in
literature. It was so revolutionary that it shocked an estimable
proofreader, and she sounded the alarm. The publishers were timid, but
the gentle editor was firm. When it was found that it must go in or he
would go out, it went--and he stayed. When the conservative and
dignified _Atlantic_ wrote to the author soliciting something like it,
the publishers were reassured.
Harte had struck ore. Up to this time he had been prospecting. He had
early found color and followed promising stringers. He had opened some
fair pockets, but with the explosion of this blast he had laid bare the
true vein, and the ore assayed well. It was high grade, and the fissure
was broad.
"The Luck of Roaring Camp" was the first of a series of stories
depicting the picturesque life of the early days which made California
known the world over and gave it a romantic interest enjoyed by no other
community. They were fresh and virile, original in treatment, with real
men and women using a new vocabulary, with humor and pathos delightfully
blended. They moved on a stage beautifully set, with a background of
heroic grandeur. No wonder that California and Bret Harte became
familiar household words. When one reflects on the fact that the
exposure to the life depicted had occurred more than ten years before,
from very brief experience, the wonder is incomprehensibly great.
Nothing less than genius can account for such a result. "Tennessee's
Partner," "M'liss," "The Outcasts of Poker Flat," and dozens more of
these stories that became classics followed. The supply seemed
exhaustless, and fresh welcome awaited every one.
It was in September, 1870, that Harte in the make-up of the _Overland_
found an awkward space too much for an ordinary poem. An associate
suggested that he write something to fit the gap; but Harte was not
given to dashing off to order, nor to writing a given number of inches
of poetry. He was not a literary mechanic, nor could he command his
moods. However, he handed his friend a bundle of manuscript to see if
there was anything that he thought would do, and very soon a neat draft
was found bearing the title "On the Sinfulness of Ah Sin as Reported by
Truthful James." It was read with avidity and pronounced "the very
thing." Harte demurred. He didn't think very well of it. He was
generally modest about his work and never quite satisfied. But he
finally accepted the judgment of his friend and consented to run it. He
changed the title to "Later Words from Truthful James," but when the
proof came substituted "Plain Language from Truthful James."
He made a number of other changes, as was his wont, for he was always
painstaking and given to critical polishing. In some instances he
changed an entire line or a phrase of two lines. The copy read:
"Till at last he led off the right bower,
That Nye had just hid on his knee."
As changed on the proof it read:
"Till at last he put down a right bower,
Which the same Nye had dealt unto me."
It was a happy second thought that suggested the most quoted line in
this famous poem. The fifth line of the seventh verse originally read:
"Or is civilization a failure?"
On the margin of the proof-sheet he substituted the ringing line:
"We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor,"
--an immense improvement--the verse reading:
"Then I looked up at Nye,
And he gazed unto me,
And he rose with a sigh,
And said, 'Can this be?
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor!'
And he went for that heathen Chinee."
The corrected proof, one of the treasures of the University of
California, with which Harte was for a time nominally connected, bears
convincing testimony to the painstaking methods by which he sought the
highest degree of literary perfection. This poem was not intended as a
serious addition to contemporary verse. Harte disclaimed any purpose
whatever; but there seems just a touch of political satire. "The Chinese
must go" was becoming the popular political slogan, and he always
enjoyed rowing against the tide. The poem greatly extended his name and
fame. It was reprinted in _Punch_, it was liberally quoted on the floors
of Congress, and it "caught on" everywhere. Perhaps it is today the one
thing by which Harte is best known.
One of the most amusing typographical errors on record occurred in the
printing of this poem. In explanation of the manner of the duplicity of
_Ah Sin, Truthful James_ was made to say:
"In his sleeves, which were long,
He had twenty-one packs:"
and that was the accepted reading for many years, in spite of the
physical impossibility of concealing six hundred and ninety-three cards
and one arm in even a Chinaman's sleeve. The game they played was
euchre, where bowers are supreme, and what Harte wrote was "jacks," not
"packs." Probably the same pious proofreader who was shocked at the
"Luck" did not know the game, and, as the rhyme was perfect, let it
slip. Later editions corrected the error, though it is still often seen.
Harte gave nearly three years to the _Overland_. His success had
naturally brought him flattering offers, and the temptation to realize
on his reputation seems to have been more than he could withstand. The
_Overland_ had become a valuable property, eventually passing into
control of another publisher. The new owners were unable or unwilling to
pay what he thought he must earn, and somewhat reluctantly he resigned
the editorship and left the state of his adoption.
Harte, with his family, left San Francisco in February, 1871. They went
first to Chicago, where he confidently expected to be editor of a
magazine to be called the _Lakeside Monthly_. He was invited to a
dinner given by the projectors of the enterprise, at which a large-sized
check was said to have been concealed beneath his plate; but for some
unexplained reason he failed to attend the dinner and the magazine was
given up. Those who know the facts acquit him of all blame in the
matter; but, in any event, his hopes were dashed, and he proceeded to
the East disappointed and unsettled.
Soon after arriving at New York he visited Boston, dining with the
Saturday Club and visiting Howells, then editor of the _Atlantic_, at
Cambridge. He spent a pleasant week, meeting Lowell, Longfellow, and
Emerson. Mrs. Aldrich, in "Crowding Memories," gives a vivid picture of
his charm and high spirits at this meeting of friends and celebrities.
The Boston atmosphere as a whole was not altogether delightful. He
seemed constrained, but he did a fine stroke of business. James R.
Osgood & Co. offered him ten thousand dollars for whatever he might
write in a year, and he accepted the handsome retainer. It did not
stimulate him to remarkable output. He wrote four stories, including
"How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar," and five poems, including
"Concepcion de Arguello." The offer was not renewed the following year.
For seven years New York City was generally his winter home. Some of his
summers were spent in Newport, and some in New Jersey. In the former he
wrote "A Newport Romance" and in the latter "Thankful Blossom." One
summer he spent at Cohasset, where he met Lawrence Barrett and Stuart
Robson, writing "Two Men of Sandy Bar," produced in 1876. "Sue," his
most successful play, was produced in New York and in London in 1896.
To earn money sorely needed he took the distasteful lecture field. His
two subjects were "The Argonauts" and "American Humor." His letters to
his wife at this time tell the pathetic tale of a sensitive, troubled
soul struggling to earn money to pay debts. He writes with brave humor,
but the work was uncongenial and the returns disappointing.
From Ottawa he writes: "Do not let this worry you, but kiss the children
for me, and hope for the best. I should send you some money, but there
_isn't any to send_, and maybe I shall only bring back myself." The next
day he added a postscript: "Dear Nan--I did not send this yesterday,
waiting to find the results of last night's lecture. It was a fair
house, and this morning--paid me $150, of which I send you the greater
part."
A few days later he wrote from Lawrence, the morning after an
unexpectedly good audience: "I made a hundred dollars by the lecture,
and it is yours for yourself, Nan, to buy minxes with, if you want to."
From Washington he writes: "Thank you, dear Nan, for your kind, hopeful
letter. I have been very sick, very much disappointed; but I am better
now and am only waiting for money to return. Can you wonder that I have
kept this from you? You have so hard a time of it there, that I cannot
bear to have you worried if there is the least hope of a change in my
affairs. God bless you and keep you and the children safe, for the sake
of Frank."
No one can read these letters without feeling that they mirror the real
man, refined of feeling, kindly and humorous, but not strong of courage,
oppressed by obligations, and burdened by doubts of how he was to care
for those he loved. With all his talent he could not command
independence, and the lot of the man who earns less than it costs to
live is hard to bear.
Harte had the faculty of making friends, even if by neglect he sometimes
lost them, and they came to his rescue in this trying time. Charles A.
Dana and others secured for him an appointment by President Hayes as
Commercial Agent at Crefeld, Prussia. In June, 1878, he sailed for
England, leaving his family at Sea Cliff, Long Island, little supposing
that he would never see them or America again.
On the day he reached Crefeld he wrote his wife in a homesick and almost
despondent strain: "I am to all appearance utterly friendless; I have
not received the first act of kindness or courtesy from anyone. I think
things must be better soon. I shall, please God, make some good friends
in good time, and will try and be patient. But I shall not think of
sending for you until I see clearly that I can stay myself. If worst
comes to worst I shall try to stand it for a year, and save enough to
come home and begin anew there. But I could not stand it to see you
break your heart here through disappointment as I mayhap may do."
Here is the artistic, impressionable temperament, easily disheartened,
with little self-reliant courage or grit. But he seems to have felt a
little ashamed of his plaint, for at midnight of the same day he wrote a
second letter, half apologetic and much more hopeful, just because one
or two people had been a little kind and he had been taken out to a
_fest_.
Soon after, he wrote a letter to his younger son, then a small boy. It
told of a pleasant drive to the Rhine, a few miles away. He concludes:
"It was all very wonderful, but Papa thought after all he was glad his
boys live in a country that is as yet _pure_ and _sweet_ and _good_--not
in one where every field seems to cry out with the remembrance of
bloodshed and wrong, and where so many people have lived and suffered
that tonight, under this clear moon, their very ghosts seemed to throng
the road and dispute our right of way. Be thankful, my dear boy, that
you are an American. Papa was never so fond of his country before as in
this land that has been so great, powerful, and so very hard and
wicked."
In May, 1880, he was made Consul at Glasgow, a position that he filled
for five years. During this period he spent a considerable part of his
time in London and in visiting at country homes. He lectured and wrote
and made many friends, among the most valued of whom were William Black
and Walter Besant.
A new administration came in with 1885 and Harte was superseded. He went
to London and settled down to a simple and regular life. For ten years
he lived with the Van de Veldes, friends of long standing. He wrote with
regularity and published several volumes of stories and sketches. In
1885 Harte visited Switzerland. Of the Alps he wrote: "In spite of their
pictorial composition I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras,
with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness, for a
hundred thousand kilometers of the picturesque Vaud."
Of Geneva he wrote: "I thought I should not like it, fancying it a kind
of continental Boston, and that the shadow of John Calvin and the old
reformers, or still worse the sentimental idiocy of Rousseau and the De
Staels, still lingered." But he did like it, and wrote brilliantly of
Lake Leman and Mont Blanc.
Returning to his home in Aldershot he resumed work, giving some time to
a libretto for a musical comedy, but his health was failing and he
accomplished little. A surgical operation for cancer of the throat in
March, 1902, afforded a little relief, but he worked with difficulty.
On April 17th he began a new story, "A Friend of Colonel Starbottle." He
wrote one sentence and began another; but the second sentence was his
last work, though a few letters to friends bear a later date. On May
5th, sitting at his desk, there came a hemorrhage of the throat,
followed later in the day by a second, which left him unconscious.
Before the end of the day he peacefully breathed his last.
Pathetic and inexplicable were the closing days of this gifted man. An
exile from his native land, unattended by family or kin, sustaining his
lonely life by wringing the dregs of memory, and clasping in farewell
the hands of a fancied friend of his dear old reprobate Colonel, he,
like Kentuck, "drifted away into the shadowy river that flows forever to
the unknown sea."
In his more than forty years of authorship he was both industrious and
prolific. In the nineteen volumes of his published work there must be
more than two hundred titles of stories and sketches, and many of them
are little known. Some of them are disappointing in comparison with his
earlier and perhaps best work, but many of them are charming and all are
in his delightful style, with its undertone of humor that becomes
dominant at unexpected intervals. His literary form was distinctive,
with a manner not derived from the schools or copied from any of his
predecessors, but developed from his own personality. He seems to have
founded a modern school, with a lightness of touch and a felicity of
expression unparalleled. He was vividly imaginative, and also had the
faculty of giving dramatic form and consistency to an incident or story
told by another. He was a story-teller, equally dexterous in prose or
verse. His taste was unerring and he sought for perfect form. His
atmosphere was breezy and healthful--out of doors with the fragrance of
the pine-clad Sierras. He was never morbid and introspective. His
characters are virile and natural men and women who act from simple
motives, who live and love, or hate and fight, without regard to
problems and with small concern for conventionalities. Harte had
sentiment, but was realistic and fearless. He felt under no obligation
to make all gamblers villains or all preachers heroes. He dealt with
human nature in the large and he made it real.
His greatest achievement was in faithfully mirroring the life of a new
and striking epoch. He seems to have discovered that it was picturesque
and to have been almost alone in impressing this fact on the world. He
sketched pictures of pioneer life as he saw or imagined it with
matchless beauty and compelled the interest and enjoyment of all
mankind.
His chief medium was the short story, to which he gave a new vogue.
Translated into many tongues, his tales became the source of knowledge
to a large part of the people of Europe as to California and the
Pacific. He associated the Far West with romance, and we have never
fully outlived it.
That he was gifted as a poet no one can deny. Perhaps his most striking
use of his power as a versifier was in connection with the romantic
Spanish background of California history. Such work as "Concepcion de
Arguello" is well worth while. In his "Spanish Idylls and Legends" he
catches the fine spirit of the period and connects California with a
past of charm and beauty. His patriotic verse has both strength and
loveliness and reflects a depth of feeling that his lighter work does
not lead us to expect. In his dialect verse he revels in fun and shows
himself a genuine and cleanly humorist.
If we search for the source of his great power we may not expect to find
it; yet we may decide that among his endowments his extraordinary power
of absorption contributes very largely. His early reference to "eager
absorption" and "photographic sensitiveness" are singularly significant
expressions. Experience teaches the plodder, but the man of genius,
supremely typified by Shakespeare, needs not to acquire knowledge slowly
and painfully. Sympathy, imagination, and insight reveal truth, and as a
plate, sensitized, holds indefinitely the records of the exposure, so
Harte, forty years after in London, holds in consciousness the
impressions of the days he spent in Tuolumne County. It is a great gift,
a manifestation of genius. He had a fine background of inheritance and a
lifetime of good training.
Bret Harte was also gifted with an agreeable personality. He was
even-tempered and good-natured. He was an ideal guest and enjoyed his
friends. Whatever his shortcomings and whatever his personal
responsibility for them, he deserves to be treated with the
consideration and generosity he extended to others. He was never
censorious, and instances of his magnanimity are many. Severity of
judgment is a custom that few of us can afford, and to be generous is
never a mistake. Harte was extremely sensitive, and he deplored
controversy. He was quite capable of suffering in silence if defense of
self might reflect on others. His deficiencies were trivial but
damaging, and their heavy retribution he bore with dignity, retaining
the respect of those who knew him.
As to what he was, as man and author, he is entitled to be judged by a
jury of his peers. I could quote at length from a long list of
associates of high repute, but they all concur fully with the
comprehensive judgment of Ina Coolbrith, who knew him intimately. She
says, "I can only speak of him in terms of unqualified praise as author,
friend, and man."
In the general introduction that Harte wrote for the first volume of his
collected stories he refers to the charge that he "confused recognized
standards of morality by extenuating lives of recklessness and often
criminality with a single solitary virtue" as "the cant of too much
mercy." He then adds: "Without claiming to be a religious man or a
moralist, but simply as an artist, he shall reverently and humbly
conform to the rules laid down by a great poet who created the parables
of the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, whose works have lasted
eighteen hundred years, and will remain when the present writer and his
generations are forgotten. And he is conscious of uttering no original
doctrine in this, but only of voicing the beliefs of a few of his
literary brethren happily living, and one gloriously dead, [Footnote:
Evidently Dickens.] who never made proclamation of this from the
housetops."
Bret Harte had a very unusual combination of sympathetic insight,
emotional feeling, and keen sense of the dramatic. In the expression of
the result of these powers he commanded a literary style individually
developed, expressive of a rare personality. He was vividly imaginative,
and he had exacting ideals of precision in expression. His taste was
unerring. The depth and power of the great soul were not his. He was the
artist, not the prophet. He was a delightful painter of the life he saw,
an interpreter of the romance of his day, a keen but merciful satirist,
a humorist without reproach, a patriot, a critic, and a kindly, modest
gentleman. He was versatile, doing many things exceedingly well, and
some things supremely well. He discerned the significance of the
remarkable social conditions of early days in California and developed a
marvelous power of presenting them in vivid and attractive form. His
humor is unsurpassed. It is pervasive, like the perfume of the rose,
never offending by violence. His style is a constant surprise and a
never-ending delight. His spirit is kindly and generous. He finds good
in unsuspected places, and he leaves hope for all mankind. He was
sensitive, peace-loving, and indignant at wrong, a scorner of pretense,
independent in thought, just in judgment. He surmounted many
difficulties, bore suffering without complaint, and left with those who
really knew him a pleasant memory. It would seem that he was a greater
artist and a better man than is commonly conceded.
In failing to honor him California suffers. He should be cherished as
her early interpreter, if not as her spirit's discoverer, and ranked
high among those who have contributed to her fame. He is the
representative literary figure of the state. In her imaginary Temple of
Fame or Hall of Heroes he deserves a prominent, if not the foremost,
niche. As the generations move forward he must not be forgotten. Bret
Harte at our hands needs not to be idealized, but he does deserve to be
justly, gratefully, and fittingly realized.