The Life of Bret Harte Part 15

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 pa.s.s through.... The nations are centering hitherward. Europe is poor, California is rich, and equilibrium is inevitable. Four years will pa.s.s, 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 cla.s.s of periodicals was singularly great. Nor was their taste confined to American literature. The ill.u.s.trated and satirical English journals were as frequently seen in California as in Ma.s.sachusetts; 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.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 "Ill.u.s.trated News" had a particularly large sale among the Pioneers, although the California price was a dollar a copy.

The s.h.i.+fting 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 inst.i.tutions 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 a.s.sociations 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 d.i.c.kens and Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. In November, 1851, a literary society called The California Inst.i.tute 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 Inst.i.tute for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, the Stockton Female Seminary, the Female Inst.i.tute at Santa Clara, the Collegiate Inst.i.tute 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, "Oth.e.l.lo" 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-G.o.ds 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. s.h.i.+rt-sleeves appeared to be refractory, and a terrific roar came from the hydra. s.h.i.+rt-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 'G.o.ds' 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:--

"Pa.s.sing hither and thither on the little steamers to Marysville, to Stockton, to the towns north of the Bay, where often the number of pa.s.sengers 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 Francis...o...b..ble 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 pa.s.sing 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: "n.o.body 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 G.o.d 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 t.i.tle 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 circ.u.mstances 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, Ma.s.sachusetts, 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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" navely 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 amus.e.m.e.nts 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 a.s.sistant 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 embarra.s.sment 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 gla.s.ses 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 G.o.d 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.