The Life of Bret Harte Part 16

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 cus.h.i.+oned 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, m.u.f.fled 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 pa.s.sion."

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 succ.u.mbed 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 cla.s.s 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.

CHAPTER XIII

BRET HARTE'S DEPARTURE FROM CALIFORNIA

Bret Harte, as we have seen, was, for a few years at least, well placed in San Francisco, but, as time went on, he had many causes of unhappiness.

There were heavy demands upon his purse from persons not of his immediate family, which he was too generous to refuse, although they distressed, hara.s.sed and discouraged him. His own const.i.tutional improvidence added to the difficulties thus created.

Mr. Noah Brooks, who knew Bret Harte well, has very truly described this aspect of his life: "It would be grossly unjust to say that Harte was a species of Harold Skimpole, deliberately making debts that he did not intend to pay. He sincerely intended and expected to meet every financial obligation that he contracted. But he was utterly dest.i.tute of what is sometimes called the money sense. He could not drive a bargain, and he was an easy mark for any man who could. Consequently he was continually involved in troubles that he might have escaped with a little more financial shrewdness."

The theory, thus stated by Mr. Brooks, is supported by an unsolicited letter, now first published, but written shortly after Mr. Harte's death:--

... After going abroad, Mr. Harte from time to time--whenever able to do so--sent through the business house of my husband and son money in payment of bills he was yet owing,--and this when three thousand miles removed from the pressure of payment,--which too many would have left unpaid. Life was often hard for him, yet he met it uncomplainingly, unflinchingly and bravely. A kindly, sweet soul, one without gall, bitterness or envy, has gone beyond the reach of our finite voices, leaving the world to us who knew and loved him darker and poorer in his absence.

MRS. CHARLES WATROUS Hague, N. Y.

May 26, 1902.

Moreover, there was much friction between Bret Harte and the new publisher of the "Overland," who had succeeded Mr. Roman; and finally, the moral and intellectual atmosphere of San Francisco was uncongenial to him. The early, generous, reckless days of California had pa.s.sed, and now, especially in San Francisco, a commercial type of man was coming to the front. In _The Argonauts of North Liberty_, Bret Harte has depicted "Ezekiel Corwin, ... a shrewd, practical, self-sufficient and self-a.s.serting unit of the more cautious later California emigration."

More than once Bret Harte had run counter to California sentiment. As we have seen already, he was dismissed from his place as a.s.sistant Editor of a country newspaper because he had chivalrously espoused the cause of the friendless Indian. His first contribution to the "Overland," as also we have seen, was that beautiful poem in which he laments the shortcomings of the city. Had the same thing been said in prose, the business community would certainly have resented it.

I know thy cunning and thy greed, Thy hard, high l.u.s.t, and wilful deed,

And all thy Glory loves to tell Of specious gifts material.

Drop down, O Fleecy Fog, and hide Her sceptic sneer and all her pride!

And yet, with characteristic optimism, the poet looks forward to a time--

When Art shall raise and Culture lift The sensual joys and meaner thrift.

Later, but in the same year, Bret Harte incurred the enmity of some leading men in San Francis...o...b.. his gentle ridicule of their attempts to explain away--for the sake of Eastern capitalists--the destructive earthquake which shook the city in October, 1868. An old Californian thus relates the story: "As soon as the first panic at this disturbance had subsided, and while lesser shocks were still shaking the earth, some of the leading business men of San Francisco organized themselves into a sort of vigilance committee, and visited all the newspaper offices. They strictly enjoined that the story of the earthquake be treated with conservatism and understatement;--it would injure California if Eastern people were frightened away by exaggerated reports of _el temblor_; and a similar censors.h.i.+p was exercised over the press despatches sent out from San Francisco at that time.

"This greatly amused Bret Harte, and in his 'Etc.' in the November number of the 'Overland,' he treated the topic jocularly, saying that, according to the daily papers, the earthquake would have suffered serious damage if the people had only known it was coming. Harte's pleasantry excited the wrath of some of the solid men of San Francisco, and when, not long after that, it was proposed to establish a chair of recent literature in the University of California and invite Bret Harte to occupy it, one of the board of regents, whose word was a power in the land, temporarily defeated the scheme by swearing roundly that a man who had derided the dispute between the earthquake and the newspapers should never have his support for a professors.h.i.+p. Subsequently, however, this difficulty was overcome, and Harte received his appointment."

San Francisco was then a crude, commercial, restless town, caring little for art or literature, religious in a narrow way, confident of its own ideals, and as content with the stage through which it was pa.s.sing as if human history had known, and human imagination could conceive, nothing higher or better.

In _A Jack and Jill of the Sierras_ Bret Harte makes the youthful hero reproach himself by saying, or rather thinking, "He had forgotten them for those lazy, sn.o.bbish, purse-proud San Franciscans--for Bray had the miner's supreme contempt for the moneyed trading cla.s.ses."

Bret Harte, whose view of life was mainly derived from eighteenth-century literature, shared that contempt, and expressed his own feeling, no doubt, in the sentiment which he attributes to the two girls in _Devil's Ford_.

"It seemed to them that the five millionaires of Devil's Ford, in their radical simplicity and thoroughness, were perhaps nearer the type of true gentlemanhood than the citizens who imitated a civilization which they were unable yet to reach."

No wonder, then, that, with tempting offers from the East, hara.s.sed with debts, disputes, cares and anxieties, disgusted with the atmosphere in which he was living,--no wonder Bret Harte felt that the hour for his departure had struck. Had he remained longer, his art would probably have suffered. A nature so impressionable as Bret Harte's, so responsive, would insensibly have been affected by his surroundings, and the more so because he had in himself no strong, intellectual basis. His life was ruled by taste, rather than by conviction; and taste is a harder matter than conviction to preserve unimpaired. Of all the criticisms pa.s.sed upon Bret Harte there has been nothing more true than Madame Van de Velde's observations upon this point: "It was decidedly fortunate that he left California when he did, never to return to it; for his quick instinctive perceptions would have a.s.similated the new order of things to the detriment of his talent. As it was, his singularly retentive memory remained unbia.s.sed by the transformation of the centres whence he drew his inspiration. California remained to him the Mecca of the Argonauts."

Bret Harte left many warm friends in California, and they were much hurt, in some cases much angered, because they never had a word from him afterward. And yet it is extremely doubtful if he expected any such result. Certainly it was not intended. Kind and friendly feelings may still exist, although they are not expressed in letters. Bret Harte was indolent and procrastinating about everything except the real business of his life, and into that all his energy was poured. And there was another reason for the failure to communicate with his old friends, which has probably occurred to the Reader, and which is suggested in a private letter from one of the very persons who were aggrieved by his silence. "He went away with a sore heart. He had cares, difficulties, hurts here, _many_, and they may have embittered him against all thoughts of the past."

This, no doubt, is true. The California chapter in Bret Harte's life was closed, and it would have been painful for him to reopen it even by the writing of a letter. To say this, however, is not to acquit him of all blame in the matter.

The night before he left California a few of his more intimate friends gave him a farewell dinner which, in the light of all that followed, now wears an almost tragic aspect. It is thus described by one of the company: "A little party of us, eight, all working writers, met for a last symposium. It was one of the veritable _noctes ambrosianae_; the talk was intimate, heart-to-heart, and altogether of the shop. Naturally Harte was the centre of the little company, and he was never more fascinating and companionable. Day was breaking when the party dispersed, and the ties that bound our friend to California were sundered forever."

Bret Harte left San Francisco in February, 1871.

Seventeen years before he had landed there, a mere boy, without money or prospects, without trade or profession. Now he was the most distinguished person in California, and his departure marked the close of an epoch for that State. Who can imagine the mingled feelings, half-triumphant, half-bitter, with which he must have looked back upon the slow-receding, white-capped Sierras that had bounded his horizon for those seventeen eventful years!

CHAPTER XIV

BRET HARTE IN THE EAST

Before Bret Harte left California he had been in correspondence with some persons in Chicago who proposed to make him Editor and part proprietor of a magazine called the "Lakeside Monthly." A dinner was arranged to take place soon after his arrival in Chicago at which Mr. Harte might meet the men who were to furnish the capital for this purpose. But the guest of the evening did not appear. Many stories were told in explanation of his absence; and Bret Harte's own account is thus stated by Mr. Noah Brooks:--"When I met Harte in New York I asked him about the incident, and he said: 'In Chicago I stayed with relations of my wife's, who lived on the North Side, or the East Side, or the Northeast Side, or the Lord knows where, and when I accepted an invitation to dinner in a hotel in the centre of the city, I expected that a guide would be sent me. I was a stranger in a strange city; a carriage was not easily to be obtained in the neighborhood where I was, and, in utter ignorance of the way I should take to reach the hotel, I waited for a guide until the hour for dinner had pa.s.sed, and then sat down, as your friend S. P. D. said to you in California "_en famille_, with my family." That's all there was to it.'"

Mr. Pemberton, commenting on this explanation says, "I can readily picture Bret Harte, as the unwelcome dinner hour approached, making excuses to himself for himself and conjuring up that hitherto unsuggested 'guide.'"

That Mr. Pemberton was right as to the "guide" being an afterthought, is proved by the following account, for which the author of this book is indebted to Mr. Francis F. Browne, at that time editor of the "Lakeside Monthly": "I remember quite clearly Mr. Harte's visit to my office,--a small,[84] rather youthful looking but alert young man of pleasing manners and conversation. We talked of the literary situation, and he seemed impressed with the opportunity offered by Chicago for a high-cla.s.s literary enterprise. A day or two after his arrival here Mr. Harte was invited to a dinner at the house of a prominent citizen, to meet the gentlemen who were expected to become interested in the magazine project with him. Mr. Harte accepted the invitation. There is no doubt that he intended going, for he was in my office the afternoon of the dinner, and left about five o'clock, saying he was going home to dress for the occasion. But he did not appear at the dinner; nor did he send any explanation whatever. There being then no telephones, no explanation was given until the next day, and it was then to the effect that he had supposed a carriage would be sent for him, and had waited for it until too late to start. A friend of the author tells me that he had previously asked Mr. Harte whether he should call for him and take him to the dinner; but Harte a.s.sured him that this was not at all necessary, that he knew perfectly well how to find the place. The other members of the party, however, were on hand, and after waiting, with no little surprise, for the chief guest to appear, they proceeded to eat their dinner and disperse; but Mr. Harte and the project of a literary connection with him in Chicago no longer interested them."

It is evident that for some reason, unknown outside of his own family, Bret Harte could not or would not attend the dinner, and simply remained away. The result was thus stated by the author himself in a letter to a friend in California: "I presume you have heard through the public press how nearly I became editor and part owner of the 'Lakeside,' and how the childishness and provincial character of a few of the princ.i.p.al citizens of Chicago spoiled the project."

Bret Harte, therefore, continued Eastward, leaving Chicago on February 11, "stopping over" a few days in Syracuse, and reaching New York on February 20. His stories and poems--especially the _Heathen Chinee_--had lifted him to such a pinnacle of renown that his progress from the Pacific to the Atlantic was detailed by the newspapers with almost as much particularity as were the movements of Admiral Dewey upon his return to the United States after the capture of Manilla. The commotion thus caused extended even to England, and a London paper spoke humorously, but kindly, of the "Bret Harte circular," which recorded the daily events of the author's life.