A Backward Glance at Eighty Part 5

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 cla.s.sics 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 s.p.a.ce too much for an ordinary poem. An a.s.sociate suggested that he write something to fit the gap; but Harte was not given to das.h.i.+ng 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 ma.n.u.script to see if there was anything that he thought would do, and very soon a neat draft was found bearing the t.i.tle "On the Sinfulness of Ah Sin as Reported by Truthful James." It was read with avidity and p.r.o.nounced "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 t.i.tle to "Later Words from Truthful James," but when the proof came subst.i.tuted "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 polis.h.i.+ng. 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 subst.i.tuted 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 pa.s.sing 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 editors.h.i.+p 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 Sat.u.r.day 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 Coha.s.set, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton 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. G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 authors.h.i.+p he was both industrious and prolific. In the nineteen volumes of his published work there must be more than two hundred t.i.tles 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 a.s.sociated 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 ent.i.tled to be judged by a jury of his peers. I could quote at length from a long list of a.s.sociates 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 d.i.c.kens.] 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 unsurpa.s.sed. 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.

CHAPTER V