The Life of Bret Harte Part 22

Something of this spontaneousness and finality belonged to the character of Bret Harte. If he was weak in conviction and principle, he was strong in instinct. If he yielded easily to certain temptations, he was impregnable to others, because he was protected against them by the whole current of his nature. It would be as impossible to imagine Bret Harte taking sides against the oppressed, as it would be to imagine him performing his literary work in a slovenly manner. Both his good and bad traits were firmly rooted, and, it may be, inextricably mingled. Mr.

Howells said of him that "If his temperament disabled him from certain experiences of life, it was the sure source of what was most delightful in his personality, and perhaps most beautiful in his talent." Bret Harte's stories are sufficient proof that he was at bottom a good man, although he had grave faults.

His faults, moreover, were those commonly found in men of genius, and for that reason they should be treated with some tenderness. When one considers that the whole progress of the human race, mental and spiritual, as well as mechanical, is due to the achievements of a few superior individuals, whom the world has agreed to designate as men of genius,--considering this, one should be slow to p.r.o.nounce with anything like confidence or finality upon the character of one who belongs in that cla.s.s. We know that such men are different from other men intellectually, and we might expect to find, and we do find that they are different from them emotionally, if not morally. A certain egotism, for example, is notoriously a.s.sociated with men of genius; and a kind of egotistic or unconscious selfishness was Bret Harte's great defect.

Popular opinion, a safe guide in such matters, has always recognized the fact that the genius is a species by himself. It is only the clever men of talent who have discovered that there is no essential difference between men of genius and themselves. Writers of this description might be named who have summed up Bret Harte's life and character with amazing condescension and self-a.s.surance. Meagre as are the known facts of his career, especially those relating to his private life, these critics have a.s.signed his motives and judged his conduct with a freedom and a certainty which they would hardly feel in respect to their own intimates.

The very absence of information about Bret Harte makes misconstruction easy. Why he lived apart from his family, why he lived in England, why he continued to draw his subjects from California,--these are matters as to which the inquisitive world would have been glad to be informed, but as to which he thought it more fitting to keep silence; and from that silence no amount of misrepresentation could move him. Mr. Pemberton has recorded the congenial scorn with which Bret Harte used to repeat the motto upon the coat of arms of some Scottish earl. _They say! What say they? Let them say!_

And yet, if a writer has greatly moved or pleased us, we have a natural desire, especially after his death, to know what manner of man he was.

Most of all, we long to ask that familiar question, the only question which, at the close of a career, seems to have any relevance or importance,--Was he a good man? In the present case, such answer as this book can give has already been made; and if any Reader should be inclined to a different conclusion, let him weigh well the peculiar circ.u.mstances of Bret Harte's life, and make due allowance for the obscurity in which his motives are veiled.

Upon one aspect of his career there can be no difference of opinion. His devotion to his art was unwavering and extreme. Pagan though he may have been in some respects, in this matter he was as conscientious a Puritan as Hawthorne himself. Every plot, every character, every sentence, one might almost say, every word in his books, was subjected to his own relentless criticism. The ma.n.u.script that Bret Harte consigned to the waste-basket would have made the reputation of another author. No "pot-boiler" ever came from his hand, and, whatever his pecuniary difficulties, he never dreamed of escaping from them by that das.h.i.+ng-off of salable stories which is a common practice among popular writers of fiction.

Such he was at the beginning, and such he continued to be until the end.

Six months elapsed, after the publication of his first successful story, before Bret Harte made his second appearance in the "Overland Monthly."

His friends in California have given us a picture of him, a youthful author in his narrow office at the Mint, slowly and painfully elaborating those masterpieces that made him famous. It was the same forty years afterward when the fatal illness overtook him at his desk in an English country-house. The pen that dropped from his reluctant fingers had been engaged in writing and re-writing the simple, opening sentences of a story that was never to be finished.

Bret Harte was one of that select band to whom the G.o.ds have vouchsafed a glimpse of perfection. All his life, from mere boyhood, he was inspired by a vision of that ideal beauty which is at once the joy and the despair of the true artist. Whoever realizes that vision, even though in an imperfect manner, has overcome the limitations of time and s.p.a.ce, and has obtained a position among the immortals which may be denied to better and even greater men.

CHAPTER XVIII

BRET HARTE AS A WRITER OF FICTION

Bret Harte's faculty was not so much that of imagining as of apprehending human character. Some writers of fiction, those who have the highest form of creative imagination, are able from their own minds to spin the web and woof of the characters that they describe; and it makes small difference where they live or what literary material lies about them. Even these authors do not create their heroes and heroines quite out of whole cloth,--they have a shred or two to begin with; but their work is mainly the result of creation rather than perception.

The test of creative imagination is that the characters portrayed by it are subjected to various exigencies and influences: they grow, develop, yes, even change, and yet retain their consistency. There is a masterly example of this in Trollope's "Small House at Allington," where he depicts the slow, astounding, and yet perfectly natural disintegration of Crosby's moral character. The aftermath of love-making between Pendennis and Blanche Amory is another instance. This has been called by one critic the cleverest thing in all Thackeray; but still more clever, though clever is too base a word for an episode so beautifully conceived, is that dawning of pa.s.sion, hopeless and quickly quenched, between Laura Pendennis and George Warrington, the two strongest characters in the book. Only the hand of creative genius can guide its characters safely through such labyrinths of feeling, such back-eddies of emotion.

A few great novels have indeed been written by authors who did not possess this faculty, especially by d.i.c.kens, in whom it was conspicuously lacking; but no long story was ever produced without betraying its author's deficiency in this respect if the deficiency existed. _Gabriel Conroy_, Bret Harte's only novel, is so bad as a whole, though abounding in gems, its characters are so inconsistent and confused, its ending so incomprehensible, that it produces upon the reader the effect of a nightmare.

In fact, the nearer Bret Harte's stories approach the character of an episode the better and more dramatic they are. Of the longer stories, the best, as everybody will admit, is _Cressy_, and that is little more than the expansion of a single incident. As a rule, in reading the longer tales, one remembers, as he progresses, that the situations and the events are fict.i.tious; they have not the spontaneous, inevitable aspect which makes the shorter tales impressive. _Tennessee's Partner_ is as historical as Robinson Crusoe. Bret Harte had something of a weakness for elaborate plots, but they were not in his line. Plots and situations can hardly be satisfactory or artistic unless they form the means whereby the characters of the persons in the tale are developed, or, if not developed, at least revealed to the reader. The development or the gradual revelation of character is the _raison d'etre_ for the long story or novel.

But this capacity our author seems to have lacked. It might be said that he did not require it, because his characters appear to us full-fledged from the start. He has, indeed, a wonderful power of setting them before the reader almost immediately, and by virtue of a few masterly strokes.

After an incident or two, we know the character; there is nothing more to be revealed; and a prolongation of the story would be superfluous.

But here we touch upon Bret Harte's weakness as a portrayer of human nature. It surely indicates some deficiency in a writer of fiction if with the additional scope afforded by a long story he can tell us no more about his people than he is able to convey by a short story. The deficiency in Bret Harte was perhaps this, that he lacked a profound knowledge of human nature. A human being regarded as material for a writer of fiction may be divided into two parts. There is that part, the more elemental one, which he shares with other men, and there is, secondly, that part which differentiates him from other men. In other words, he is both a type of human nature, and a particular specimen with individual variations.

The ideal story-writer would be able to master his subject in each aspect, and in describing a single person to depict at once both the nature of all men and also the nature of that particular man. Shakspere, Sterne, Thackeray have this power. Other writers can do the one thing but not the other; and in this respect Hawthorne and Bret Harte stand at opposite extremes. Hawthorne had a profound knowledge of human nature; but he was lacking in the capacity to hit off individual characteristics. Arthur Dimmesdale and Hester, even Miriam and Hilda, are not real to us in the sense in which Colonel Newcome and Becky Sharp are real. Hawthorne's figures are somewhat spectral; they lack flesh and blood. His forte was not observation but reflection. He worked from the inside.

Bret Harte, on the other hand, worked from the outside. He had not that faculty, so strong in Hawthorne, of delving into his own nature by way of getting at the nature of other men; but he had the faculty of sympathetic observation which enabled him to perceive and understand the characteristic traits that distinguish one man from another.

_Barker's Luck_ and _Three Partners_, taken together, ill.u.s.trate Bret Harte's limitations in this respect. Each of these stories has Barker for its central theme, the other personages being little more than foils to him. In the first story, _Barker's Luck_, the plot is very simple, the incidents are few, and yet we have the character of the hero conveyed to us with exquisite effect. In _Three Partners_ the theme is elaborated, a complicated plot is introduced, and Barker appears in new relations and situations. But we know him no better than we did before. _Barker's Luck_ covered the ground; and _Three Partners_, a more ambitious story, is far below it in verisimilitude and in dramatic effect. In the same way, _M'liss_, in its original form, is much superior to the longer and more complex story which its author wrote some years afterward, and which is printed in the collected edition of his works, to the exclusion of the earlier tale.

In one case, however, Bret Harte did succeed in showing the growth and development of a character. The trilogy known as _A Waif of the Plains_, _Susy_, and _Clarence_, is almost the same as one long story; and in it the character of Clarence, from boyhood to maturity, is skilfully and consistently traced. Upon this character Bret Harte evidently bestowed great pains, and there are some notable pa.s.sages in his delineation of it, especially the account of the duel between Clarence and Captain Pinckney.

Not less surprising to Clarence himself than to the reader is the calm ferocity with which he kills his antagonist; and we share the thrill of horror which ran through the little group of spectators when it was whispered about that this gentlemanly young man, so far removed in appearance from a fire-eater, was the son of Hamilton Brant, the noted duellist. The situation had brought to the surface a deep-lying, inherited trait, of which even its possessor had been ignorant. In this character, certainly in this incident, Bret Harte goes somewhat deeper than his wont.

We have his own testimony to the fact that his genius was perceptive rather than creative. In those Scotch stories and sketches in which the Consul appears, very much in the capacity of a Greek chorus, the author lets fall now and then a remark plainly autobiographical in character.

Thus, in _A Rose of Glenbogie_, speaking of Mrs. Deeside, he says, "The Consul, more _perceptive_ than a.n.a.lytical, found her a puzzle."

This confirms Bret Harte's other statement, made elsewhere, that his characters, instead of being imagined, were copied from life. But they were copied with the insight and the emphasis of genius. The ability to read human nature is about the most rare of mental possessions. How little do we know even of those whom we see every day, and whom, perhaps, we have lived with all our lives! Let a man ask himself what his friend or his wife or his son would do in some supposable emergency; how they would take this or that injury or affront, good fortune or bad fortune, great sorrow or great happiness, the defection of a friend, a strong temptation. Let him ask himself any such question, and, in all probability, he will be forced to admit that he does not know what would be the result. Who, remembering his college or schoolboy days, will fail to recognize the truth of Th.o.r.eau's remark, "One may discover a new side to his most intimate friend when for the first time he hears him speak in public"!

These surprises occur not because human nature is inconsistent,--the law of character is as immutable as any other law;--it is because individual character eludes us. But it did not elude Bret Harte. He had a wonderful faculty both for understanding and remembering its outward manifestations.

His genius was akin to that of the actor; and this explains, perhaps, his lifelong desire to write a successful play. Mr. Watts-Dunton has told us with astonishment how Bret Harte, years after a visit to one of the London Music Halls, minutely recounted all that he had heard and seen there, and imitated all the performers. That he would have made a great actor in the style of Joseph Jefferson is the opinion of that accomplished critic.

The surprising quickness with which he seized and a.s.similated any new form of dialect was a kind of dramatic capacity. The Spanish-English, mixed with California slang, which Enriquez Saltello spoke, is as good in its way as the immortal Costigan's Irish-English. "'To confer then as to thees horse, which is not--observe me--a Mexican plug. Ah, no! you can your boots bet on that. She is of Castilian stock--believe me and strike me dead! I will myself at different times overlook and affront her in the stable, examine her as to the a.s.sault, and why she should do thees thing.

When she is of the exercise I will also accost and restrain her. Remain tranquil, my friend! When a few days shall pa.s.s much shall be changed, and she will be as another. Trust your oncle to do thees thing! Comprehend me?

Everything shall be lovely, and the goose hang high.'"

Bret Harte's short stay in Prussia, and later in Scotland, enabled him to grasp the peculiarities of nature and speech belonging to the natives.

Peter Schroeder, the idealist, could have sprung to life nowhere except upon German soil. "Peter pondered long and perplexedly. Gradually an explanation slowly evolved itself from his profundity. He placed his finger beside his nose, and a look of deep cunning shone in his eyes.

'Dot's it,' he said to himself triumphantly, 'dot's shoost it! Der Rebooplicans don't got no memories. Ve don't got nodings else.'"

What character could be more Scotch, and less anything else, than the porter at the railway station where the Consul alighted on his way to visit the MacSpaddens. "'Ye'll no be rememberin' me. I had a machine in St. Kentigern and drove ye to MacSpadden's ferry often. Far, far too often! She's a strange, flagrant.i.tious creature; her husband's but a puir fule, I'm thinkin', and ye did yersel' nae guid gaunin' there.'"

Mr. Callender, again, Ailsa's father, in _Young Robin Gray_, breathes Scotch Calvinism and Scotch thrift and self-respect in every line.

"'Have you had a cruise in the yacht?' asked the Consul.

"'Ay,' said Mr. Callender, 'we have been up and down the loch, and around the far point, but not for boardin' or lodgin' the night, nor otherwise conteenuing or parteec.i.p.ating.... Mr. Gray's a decent enough lad, and not above instruction, but extraordinar' extravagant.'"

Even the mysteries of Franco-English seem to have been fathomed by Bret Harte, possibly by his contact with French people in San Francisco. This is how the innkeeper explained to Alkali d.i.c.k some peculiarities of French custom: "'For you comprehend not the position of _la jeune fille_ in all France! Ah! in America the young lady she go everywhere alone; I have seen her--pretty, charming, fascinating--alone with the young man. But here, no, never! Regard me, my friend. The French mother, she say to her daughter's fiance, "Look! there is my daughter. She has never been alone with a young man for five minutes,--not even with you. Take her for your wife!" It is monstrous! It is impossible! It is so!'"

The moral complement of this rare capacity for reading human nature was the sympathy, the tenderness of feeling which Bret Harte possessed.

Sympathy with human nature, with its weaknesses, with the tragedies which it is perpetually encountering, and above all, with its redeeming virtues,--this is the keynote of Bret Harte's works, the mainspring of his humor and pathos. He had the gift of satire as well, but, fortunately for the world, he made far less use of it. Satire is to humor as corporal punishment is to personal influence. A satire is a jest, but a cutting one,--a jest in which the victim is held up to scorn or contempt.

Humor is a much more subtle quality than satire. Like satire, it is the perception of an incongruity, but it must be a newly discovered or invented incongruity, for an essential element in humor is the pleasurable surprise, the gentle shock which it conveys. A New Jersey farmer was once describing in the presence of a very humane person, the great age and debility of a horse that he had formerly owned and used. "You ought to have killed him!" interrupted the humane person indignantly. "Well,"

drawled the farmer, "we did,--almost." Satire is merely destructive, whereas sentiment is constructive. The most that satire can do is to show how the thing ought _not_ to be done. But sentiment goes much further, for it supplies the dynamic power of affection. Becky Sharp dazzles and amuses; but Colonel Newcome softens and inspires.

There is often in Bret Harte a subtle blending of satire and humor, notably in that masterpiece of satirical humor, the _Heathen Chinee_. The poet beautifully depicts the nave indignation of the American gambler at the duplicity of the Mongolian,--a duplicity exceeding even his own. "'We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor!'"

Another instance is that pa.s.sage in _The Rose of Tuolumne_, where the author, after relating how a stranger was shot and nearly killed in a mining town, records the prevailing impression in the neighborhood "that his misfortune was the result of the defective moral quality of his being a stranger." So, in _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_, when the punishment of Mr. Oakhurst was under consideration, "A few of the Committee had urged hanging him as a possible example and a sure method of reimbursing themselves from his pockets of the money he had won from them. 'It's agin justice,' said Jim Wheeler, 'to let this yer young man from Roaring Camp--an entire stranger--carry away our money.' But a crude sentiment of equity residing in the b.r.e.a.s.t.s of those who had been fortunate enough to win from Mr. Oakhurst overruled this narrower local prejudice."

Even in these pa.s.sages humor predominates over satire. In fact,--and it is a fact characteristic of Bret Harte,--the only satire, pure and simple, in his works is that which he directs against hypocrisy. This was the one fault which he could not forgive; and he especially detested that peculiar form of cold and calculating hypocrisy which occasionally survives as the dregs of Puritanism. Bret Harte was keenly alive to this aspect of New England character; and he has depicted it with almost savage intensity in _The Argonauts of North Liberty_. Ezekiel Corwin, a shrewd, flinty, narrow Yankee, is not a new figure in literature, but an old figure in one or two new situations, notably in his appearance at the mining camps as a vender of patent medicines. "That remarkably unfair and unpleasant-spoken man had actually frozen Hanley's Ford into icy astonishment at his audacity, and he had sold them an invoice of the Panacea before they had recovered; he had insulted Chipitas into giving an extensive order in bitters; he had left Hayward's Creek pledged to Burne's pills--with drawn revolvers still in their hands."

Even here, however, the bitterness of the satire is tempered by the humor of the situation. But in Joan, the heroine of the story, we have a really new figure in literature, and it is drawn with an absence of sympathy, of humor and of mitigating circ.u.mstances which is very rare, if not unique, in Bret Harte.[106]

One other example of pure satire may be found in his works, and that is Parson Wynn, the effusive, boisterous hypocrite who plays a subordinate part in _The Carquinez Woods_.[107] With these few exceptions, however, Bret Harte was a writer of sentiment, and that is the secret of his power.

Sentiment may take the form of humor or of pathos, and, as is often remarked, these two qualities shade off into each other by imperceptible degrees.

Some things are of that nature as to make One's fancy chuckle, while his heart doth ache.

A consummate example of this blending of humor and pathos is found in the story _How Santa Claus Came to Simpson's Bar_. The boy Johnny, after greeting the Christmas guests in his "weak, treble voice, broken by that premature harshness which only vagabondage and the habit of premature self-a.s.sertion can give," and after hospitably setting out the whiskey bottle, with crackers and cheese, creeps back to bed, and is thus accosted by d.i.c.k Bullen, the hero of the story:--

"'h.e.l.lo, Johnny! You ain't goin' to turn in agin, are ye?'

"'Yes, I are,' responded Johnny decidedly.