The Life of Bret Harte Part 2

"They came in their usual desultory fas.h.i.+on--the fas.h.i.+on of country school-children the world over--irregularly, spasmodically, and always as if accidentally; a few hand-in-hand, others driven ahead of or dragged behind their elders; some in straggling groups more or less coherent and at times only connected by far-off intermediate voices scattered over a s.p.a.ce of half a mile, but never quite alone; always preoccupied by something else than the actual business in hand; appearing suddenly from ditches, behind trunks, and between fence-rails; cropping up in unexpected places along the road after vague and purposeless detours--seemingly going anywhere and everywhere but to school!"[5]

Bret Harte realized the essential truth that children are not little, immature men and women, but rather infantile barbarians, creatures of an archaic type, representing a period in the development of the human race which does not survive in adult life. Hence the reserve, the aloofness of children, their remoteness from grown people. There are certain things which the boy most deeply feels that he must not do, and certain other things that he must do; as, for example, to bear without telling any pains that may be inflicted upon him by his mates or by older boys. For a thousand years or more fathers and mothers have held a different code upon these points, but with how little effect upon their children! Johnny Filgee ill.u.s.trated upon a truly Californian scale these boyish qualities of reticence and endurance. When he had accidentally been shot in the duel between the Master and Cressy's father (the child being perched in a tree), he refrained from making the least sound, although a word or an outcry would have brought the men to his a.s.sistance. "A certain respect to himself and his brother kept him from uttering even a whimper of weakness." Left alone in the dark woods, unable to move, Johnny became convinced that his end was near, and he pleased himself by thinking that "they would all feel exceedingly sorry and alarmed, and would regret having made him wash himself on Sat.u.r.day night." And so, having composed himself, "he turned on his side to die, as became the scion of an heroic race!"

Then follows a sentence in which the artist, with one bold sweep of his brush, paints in Nature herself as a witness of the scene; and yet her material immensity does not dwarf or belittle the spiritual superiority of the wounded youngster in the foreground: "The free woods, touched by an upspringing wind, waved their dark arms above him, and higher yet a few patient stars silently ranged themselves around his pillow."

That other Johnny, for whom _Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar_, Richelieu Sharpe in _A Phyllis of the Sierras_, John Milton Harcourt in the _First Family of Tasajara_, Leonidas Boone, the _Mercury of the Foot-Hills_, and John Bunyan Medliker, the _Youngest Prospector in Calaveras_,--all ill.u.s.trate the same type, with many individual variations.

Another phase of the archaic nature of children is their extreme sensitiveness to impressions. Just as a squirrel hears more acutely than a man, and the dog's sense of smell is keener, so a child, within the comparatively small range of his mental activity, is more open to subtle indications. Bret Harte often touches upon this quality of childhood, as in the following pa.s.sage: "It was not strange, therefore, that the little people of the Indian Spring School knew perhaps more of the real relations of Cressy McKinstry to her admirers than the admirers themselves. Not that the knowledge was outspoken--for children rarely gossip in the grown-up sense, or even communicate by words intelligent to the matured intellect. A whisper, a laugh that often seemed vague and unmeaning, conveyed to each other a world of secret significance, and an apparently senseless burst of merriment in which the whole cla.s.s joined--and that the adult critic set down to 'animal spirits'--a quality much more rare with children than is generally supposed--was only a sympathetic expression of some discovery happily oblivious to older perceptions."

This acuteness of perception, seen also in some men of a simple, archaic type, puts children in close relations.h.i.+p with the lower animals, unless, indeed, it is counteracted by that cruelty which is also a quality of childhood. When Richelieu Sharpe retired to rest, it was in company with a whole retinue of dependents. "On the pillow near him an indistinguishable ma.s.s of golden fur--the helpless bulk of a squirrel chained to the leg of his cot; at his feet a wall-eyed cat, who had followed his tyrannous caprices with the long-suffering devotion of her s.e.x; on the shelf above him a loathsome collection of flies and tarantulas in dull green bottles, a slab of gingerbread for light nocturnal refreshment, and his sister's pot of bear's grease.... The sleeper stirred slightly and awoke. At the same moment, by some mysterious sympathy, a pair of beady bright eyes appeared in the bulk of fur near his curls, the cat stretched herself, and even a vague agitation was heard in the bottles on the shelf."[6]

That last touch, intimating some community of feeling between Richelieu and his insects, is, as the Reader will grant, the touch of genius.

Bridging the gulf impa.s.sable for an ordinary mind, it a.s.sumes a fact which, like the shape of Donatello's ears, is true to the imagination, and not so manifestly impossible as to shock the reason.

It is sometimes said that California in the Fifties represented the American character in its most extreme form,--the quintessence, as it were, of energy and democracy. This statement would certainly apply to the California children, in whom the ordinary forwardness of the American child became a sort of elfish precocity. Such a boy was Richelieu Sharpe.

His gallantries, his independence, his self-reliance, his adult ambitions,--these qualities, oddly a.s.sorted with the primeval, imaginative nature of the true child, made Richelieu such a youngster as was never seen outside of the United States, and perhaps never seen outside of California.

The English child of the upper cla.s.ses, as Bret Harte knew him in after years, made a strange contrast to the Richelieu Sharpes and John Bunyan Medlikers that he had learned to love in California. In a letter to his wife written from the house of James Anthony Froude, in 1878, he said: "The eldest girl is not unlike a highly-educated Boston girl, and the conversation sometimes reminds me of Boston. The youngest daughter, only ten years old, told her sister, in reference to some conversation Froude and I had, that 'she feared' (this child) 'that Mr. Bret Harte was inclined to be sceptical!' Doesn't this exceed any English story of the precocity of American children? The boy, scarcely fourteen, acts like a boy of eight (an American boy of eight) and talks like a man of thirty, so far as pure English and facility of expression go. His manners are perfect, yet he is perfectly simple and boy-like. The culture and breeding of some English children are really marvellous. But somehow--and here comes one of my 'buts'--there's always a suggestion of some repression, some discipline that I don't like."[7]

Bret Harte's last employment during this wandering life was that of compositor, printer's devil, and a.s.sistant editor of the "Northern California," published at Eureka, a seacoast town in Humboldt County. Here he met Mr. Charles A. Murdock, who gives this interesting account of him: "He was fond of whist, genial, witty, but quiet and reserved, something of a 'tease'" (the Reader will remember that Mr. Howells speaks of this trait) "and a practical joker; not especially popular, as he was thought to be fastidious, and to hold himself aloof from 'the general'; but he was simply a self-respecting, gentlemanly fellow, with quiet tastes, and a keen insight into character. He was no roisterer, and his habits were clean. He was too independent and indifferent to curry favor, or to counterfeit a liking."

During a temporary absence of the editor Bret Harte was entrusted with the conduct of the paper, and about that time a cowardly ma.s.sacre of Indians was perpetrated by some Americans in the vicinity. This was no uncommon event, and the usual att.i.tude of the Pioneers toward the Indians may be gathered from the following pa.s.sage in a letter written to a newspaper in August, 1851, from Rogue River: "During this period we have been searching about in the mountains, disturbing villages, destroying all the males we could find, and capturing women and children. We have killed about thirty altogether, and have about twenty-eight now in camp." At the Stanislaus Diggings, in 1851, a miner called to an Indian boy to help him catch a loose horse. The boy, not understanding English, and being frightened by the man's gestures, ran away, whereupon the miner raised his gun and shot the boy dead.

n.o.body hated injustice or cruelty more than Bret Harte, and in his editorial capacity he scathingly condemned the murder of Indians which occurred in the neighborhood of Eureka. The article excited the anger of the community, and a mob was collected for the avowed purpose of wrecking the newspaper office and hanging or otherwise maltreating the youthful writer. Bret Harte, armed with two pistols, awaited their coming during an evening which was probably the longest of his life. But the timely arrival of a few United States cavalrymen, sent for by some peace-lovers in the town, averted the danger; and the young journalist suffered no harm beyond an abrupt dismissal upon the hasty return of the editor.

This event ended his life as a wanderer, and he went back to San Francisco. There is not the slightest reason to think that during this period Bret Harte had any notion of describing California life in fiction or otherwise; and yet, if that had been his object, he could not have ordered his movements more wisely. He had lived on the seacoast and in the interior; he had seen cities, ranches, villages, and mines; he had been tutor, school-teacher, drug clerk, express messenger, printer, and editor.

The period was less than two years, and yet he had acc.u.mulated a store of facts, impressions and images sufficient to last him a lifetime. He was of a most receptive nature; he was at a receptive age; the world was new to him, and he lived in it and observed it with all the zest of youth, of inexperience, of health and genius.

CHAPTER IV

BRET HARTE IN SAN FRANCISCO

Bret Harte returned to San Francisco in 1857, and his first occupation was that of setting type in the office of the "Golden Era." To this paper his sister, Mrs. Wyman, had been a contributor for some time, and it was through her that Bret Harte obtained employment on it as a printer.

The "Golden Era" had been established by young men. "It was," writes Mr.

Stoddard, "the cradle and the grave of many a high hope. There was nothing to be compared with it on that side of the Mississippi; and though it could point with pride--it never failed to do so--to a somewhat notable list of contributors, it had always the fine air of the amateur, and was most complacently patronizing. The very pattern of paternal patronage was amiable Joe Lawrence, its Editor. He was an inveterate pipe-smoker, a pillar of cloud, as he sat in his editorial chair, an air of literary mystery enveloping him. He spoke as an oracle, and I remember his calling my attention to a certain anonymous contribution just received, and nodding his head prophetically, for he already had his eye on the fledgling author, a young compositor on the floor above. It was Bret Harte's first appearance in the 'Golden Era,' and doubtless Lawrence encouraged him as he had encouraged me when, out of the mist about him, he handed me secretly, and with a glance of caution--for his business partner, the marble-hearted, sat at his ledger not far away--he handed me a folded paper on which he had written this startling legend! 'Write some prose for the "Golden Era," and I will give you a dollar a column.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: BRET HARTE IN 1861]

It was not long before Bret Harte was promoted from the compositor's stand to the editorial room of the paper, and thus began his literary career.

Among the sketches which he wrote a few years later, and which have been preserved in the complete edition of his works, are _In a Balcony_, _A Boy's Dog_, and _Sidewalkings_. Except for a slight restraint and stiffness of style, as if the author had not quite attained the full use of his wings, they show no indications of youth or crudity. _M'liss_ also appeared in the "Golden Era," ill.u.s.trated by a specially designed woodcut; and some persons think that this, the first, is also the best of Bret Harte's stories. At all events, the early _M'liss_ is far superior to the author's lengthened and rewritten _M'liss_ which was included in the collected edition of his works.

When it is added that the _Condensed Novels_, or at least the first of them, were also published in the "Golden Era," it will be seen with what astonis.h.i.+ng quickness his literary style matured. He wrote at first anonymously; afterward, gaining a little self-confidence, he signed his stories "B," and then "Bret."

It was while engaged in writing for the "Golden Era," namely, on August 11, 1862, that Bret Harte was married to Miss Anna Griswold, daughter of Daniel S. and Mary Dunham Griswold of the city of New York. The marriage took place at San Raphael.

In 1864 he was appointed Secretary of the California Mint, an office which he held for six years and until he left California. For this position he was indebted to Mr. R. B. Swain, Superintendent of the Mint, a friend and paris.h.i.+oner of the Reverend Mr. King, who in that way became a friend of Bret Harte. Mr. Swain had a great liking for the young author, and made the official path easy for him. In fact, the position seems to have been one of those sinecures--or nearly that--which are the traditional reward of men of letters, but which a reforming and materialistic age has diverted to less n.o.ble uses.

In San Francisco, both before and after his marriage, Bret Harte lived a quiet, studious life, going very little into society. Of the time during which he was Secretary of the Mint, Mr. Stoddard writes: "He was now a man with a family; the resources derived from literature were uncertain and unsatisfactory. His influential friends paid him cheering visits in the gloomy office at the Mint where he leavened his daily loaves; and at his desk, between the exacting pages of the too literal ledger, many a couplet cropped out, and the outlines of now famous sketches were faintly limned.

His friends were few, but notable. Society he ignored in those days. He used to accuse me of wasting my substance in riotous visitations, and thought me a spendthrift of time. He had the precious companions.h.i.+p of books, and the lives of those about him were as an open volume wherein he read 'curiously and to his profit.'"

Of the notable friends alluded to by Mr. Stoddard, the most important were the Reverend Thomas Starr King, and Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, daughter of Senator Benton, and wife of that Captain, afterward General Fremont, who became the first United States Senator from California, and Republican candidate for the Presidency in 1856, but who is best known as The Pathfinder. His adventures and narratives form an important part of California history.

Mrs. Fremont was an extremely clever, kind-hearted woman, who a.s.sisted Bret Harte greatly by her advice and criticism, still more by her sympathy and encouragement. Bret Harte was always inclined to underrate his own powers, and to be despondent as to his literary future. On one occasion when, as not seldom happened, he was cast down by his troubles and anxieties, and almost in despair as to his prospects, Mrs. Fremont sent him some cheering news, and he wrote to her: "I shall no longer disquiet myself about changes in residence or anything else, for I believe that if I were cast upon a desolate island, a savage would come to me next morning and hand me a three-cornered note to say that I had been appointed Governor at Mrs. Fremont's request, at a salary of $2400 a year."

How much twenty-four hundred a year seemed to him then, and how little a few years later! A Pioneer who knew them both writes: "Mrs. Fremont helped Bret Harte in many ways. In turn he marvelled at her worldly wisdom,--being able to tell one how to make a living. He named her daughter's pony 'Chiquita,' after the equine heroine of his poem." It was by Mrs. Fremont's intervention that Bret Harte first appeared in the "Atlantic Monthly," for, some years before he achieved fame, namely in 1863, _The Legend of Monte del Diablo_ was published in that magazine. The story was gracefully, even beautifully written, but both in style and treatment it was a reflection of Was.h.i.+ngton Irving, who at that time rivalled d.i.c.kens as a popular author.

Many interesting letters were received by Mrs. Fremont from Bret Harte,--letters, her daughter thinks, almost as entertaining as his published writings; but unfortunately these treasures were destroyed by a fire in the city of New York.

Starr King, Bret Harte's other friend, was by far the most notable of the Protestant ministers in California. The son of a Universalist minister, he was born in the city of New York, but was brought up mainly in Charlestown, now a part of Boston. Upon leaving school he became first a clerk, then a school-teacher, and finally a Unitarian minister, preaching first at his father's old church in Charlestown, and afterward at the Hollis Street Unitarian Church in Boston. He obtained a wide reputation as preacher and lecturer, and as author of "The White Hills," still the best book upon the mountains of New England. In 1860, at the very time when his services were needed there, he became the pastor of a church in San Francisco, and to him is largely ascribed the credit of saving California to the Union. He was a man of deep moral convictions, and his addresses stirred the heart and moved the conscience of California.

The Southern element was very strong on the Pacific Slope, and it made itself felt in politics especially. Nearly one third of the delegates to the Const.i.tutional Convention, held in September, 1849, were Southern men, and they acted as a unit under the leaders.h.i.+p of W. M. Gwinn, afterward a member of the United States Senate. The ultimate design of the Southern delegates was the division of California into two States, the more southern of which should be a slave State. Slavery in California was openly advocated. But the Southern party was a minority, and the State Const.i.tution declared that "neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, unless for the punishment of crime, shall ever be tolerated in this State." The Const.i.tution did, however, exclude the testimony of colored persons from the courts; and when, in 1852, the negroes in San Francisco presented a pet.i.tion to the House of Representatives asking for this right or privilege, the House refused to receive the pet.i.tion, a majority of the members taking it as an insult. One member seriously proposed that it should be thrown out of the window.

In May, 1852, the "San Francisco Daily Herald" declared that the delay in admitting California as a State was due to Northern Abolitionists, of whom it said, with characteristic mildness: "Take the vile crowd of Abolitionists from the Canadian frontier to the banks of the Delaware, and you cannot find one in ten thousand of them who from philanthropy cares the amount of a dollar what becomes of the colored race. What they want is office." It does not seem to have occurred to the writer that in espousing the smallest and most hated political party in the whole country, the Abolitionists had not taken a very promising step in the direction of office-holding.

There was even talk of turning California into a "Pacific Republic," in the event of a dissolution of the Union. And that event was longed for by at least one California paper on the ground that "it would shut down on the immigration of these vermin," _i. e._ the Chinese. How far Southern effrontery went may be gathered from the fact that even the sacred inst.i.tution of Thanksgiving Day was ridiculed by another California paper as an absurd Yankee notion.

From 1851 until the period of the Civil War the Democratic Party ruled the State of California under the leaders.h.i.+p of Gwinn. Northern men const.i.tuted a majority of the party, but they submitted to the dictation of the Southerners, just as the Democratic Party in the North submitted to the dictation of the Southern leaders. The only California politician who could cope with Gwinn was Broderick,--a typical Irishman, trained by Tammany Hall.

Not without difficulty was California saved to the Union; in fact, until the rebels fired upon Fort Sumter, the real sentiment of the State was unknown. Bret Harte has touched upon this episode. In _Mrs. Bunker's Conspiracy_, the attempt of the extreme Southern element to seize and fortify a bluff commanding the city of San Francisco is foiled by a Northern woman; and in _Clarence_ we have a glimpse of the city as it appeared after news came of the first act of open rebellion: "From every public building and hotel, from the roofs of private houses and even the windows of lonely dwellings, flapped and waved the striped and starry banner. The steady breath of the sea carried it out from masts and yards of s.h.i.+ps at their wharves, from the battlements of the forts, Alcatraz and Yerba Buena.... Clarence looked down upon it with haggard, bewildered eyes, and then a strange gasp and fulness of the throat. For afar a solitary bugle had blown the reveille at Fort Alcatraz."

At this critical time, a ma.s.s meeting was held in San Francisco, and, at the suggestion of Starr King, Bret Harte wrote a poem to be read at the meeting. The poem was called _The Reveille_, but is better known as _The Drum_. The first and last stanzas are as follows:--

Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armed men the hum; Lo! a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum,-- Saying, "Come, Freemen, Come!

Ere your heritage be wasted," said the quick alarming drum.

Thus they answered,--hoping, fearing, Some in faith, and doubting some, Till a trumpet-voice, proclaiming, Said, "My chosen people, come!"

Then the drum Lo! was dumb, For the great heart of the nation, throbbing, answered, "Lord, we come!"

As these last words were read, the great audience rose to its feet, and with a mighty shout proclaimed the loyalty of California. Emerson, as Mr.

John Jay Chapman has finely said, sent a thousand sons to the war; and it is not unreasonable to suppose that Bret Harte's n.o.ble poem fired many a manly heart in San Francisco.

When the war began, Starr King was active in establis.h.i.+ng the California branch of the Sanitary Commission. He died of diphtheria in March, 1864, just as the tide of battle was turning in favor of the North. It will thus be seen that his career in California exactly covered, and only just covered, that short period in the history of the State when the services of such a man were, humanly speaking, indispensable.

_The Reveille_ was followed by other patriotic poems, and after Mr. King's death Bret Harte wrote in memory of him the poem called _Relieving Guard_, which indicates, one may safely say, the high-water mark of the author's poetic talent. In the year following Mr. King's death Bret Harte's second son was born, and received the name of Francis King.

On May 25, 1864, the first number of "The Californian" appeared. This was the famous weekly edited and published by the late Charles Henry Webb, and written mainly by Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Webb himself, Prentice Mulford, and Mr. Stoddard. It was of "The Californian" that Mr. Howells wittily said: "These ingenuous young men, with the fatuity of gifted people, had established a literary newspaper in San Francisco, and they brilliantly cooperated to its early extinction."

It is an interesting coincidence that Bret Harte and Mark Twain both began their literary careers in San Francisco, and at almost the same time. Bret Harte was engaged upon "The Californian," and Mark Twain was a reporter for the "Morning Call," when they were introduced to each other by a common friend, Mr. George Barnes. Bret Harte thus describes his first impression of the new acquaintance:--

"His head was striking. He had the curly hair, the aquiline nose, and even the aquiline eye--an eye so eagle-like that a second lid would not have surprised me--of an unusual and dominant nature. His eyebrows were very thick and bushy. His dress was careless, and his general manner one of supreme indifference to surroundings and circ.u.mstances. Barnes introduced him as Mr. Sam Clemens, and remarked that he had shown a very unusual talent in a number of newspaper articles contributed under the signature of 'Mark Twain.' We talked on different topics, and about a month afterward Clemens dropped in upon me again. He had been away in the mining districts on some newspaper a.s.signment in the mean time. In the course of conversation he remarked that the unearthly laziness that prevailed in the town he had been visiting was beyond anything in his previous experience.