The Life of Bret Harte Part 3

He said the men did nothing all day long but sit around the bar-room stove, spit, and 'swop lies.' He spoke in a slow, rather satirical drawl, which was in itself irresistible. He went on to tell one of those extravagant stories, and half unconsciously dropped into the lazy tone and manner of the original narrator. I asked him to tell it again to a friend who came in, and then asked him to write it out for 'The Californian.' He did so, and when published it was an emphatic success. It was the first work of his that had attracted general attention, and it crossed the Sierras for an Eastern reading. The story was 'The Jumping Frog of Calaveras.' It is now known and laughed over, I suppose, wherever the English language is spoken; but it will never be as funny to any one in print as it was to me, told for the first time by the unknown Twain himself on that morning in the San Francisco Mint."

The first article that appeared in "The Californian" was Bret Harte's _Neighborhoods I have Moved From_, and next his _Ballad of the Emeu_, but neither was signed. Both of these are in the collected edition of his works. The _Condensed Novels_ were continued in "The Californian," and Bret Harte also contributed to it many poems, sketches, essays, editorial articles and book reviews. Some of these were unsigned; some were signed "B" or "Bret," and occasionally the signature was his full name.

[Ill.u.s.tration: STOREs.h.i.+P APOLLO

Old s.h.i.+p used as a Saloon

Copyright, Century Co.]

No reader who appreciates the finished workmans.h.i.+p of Bret Harte will be surprised to learn that he was a slow and intensely self-critical writer.

There is much interesting testimony on this point. Mr. Howells says: "His talent was not a facile gift; he owned that he often went day after day to his desk, and sat down before that yellow post-office paper on which he liked to write his literature, in that exquisitely refined script of his, without being able to inscribe a line.... When it came to literature, all the gay improvidence of life forsook him, and he became a stern, rigorous, exacting self-master, who spared himself nothing to achieve the perfection at which he aimed. He was of the order of literary men like Goldsmith and De Quincey and Sterne and Steele, in his relations with the outer world, but in his relations with the inner world, he was one of the most duteous and exemplary citizens."

Noah Brooks wrote as follows: "Scores of writers have become known to me in the course of a long life, but I have never known another so fastidious and so laborious as Bret Harte. His writing materials, the light and heat, and even the adjustment of the furniture of the writing-room, must be as he desired; otherwise he could not go on with his work. Even when his environment was all that he could wish, there were times when the divine afflatus would not come and the day's work must be abandoned. My editorial rooms in San Francisco were not far from his secluded den, and often, if he opened my door late in the afternoon, with a peculiar cloud on his face, I knew that he had come to wait for me to go to dinner with him, having given up the impossible task of writing when the mood was not on him. 'It's no use, Brooks,' he would say. 'Everything goes wrong; I cannot write a line. Let's have an early dinner at Martini's.' As soon as I was ready we would go merrily off to dine together, and, having recovered his equanimity, he would stick to his desk through the later hours of the night, slowly forging those masterpieces which cost him so dearly.

"Harte was reticent concerning his work while it was in progress. He never let the air in upon his story or his verses. Once, indeed, he asked me to help him in a calculation to ascertain how long a half-sack of flour and six pounds of side-meat[8] would last a given number of persons. This was the amount of provision he had allowed his outcasts of Poker Flat, and he wanted to know just how long the snow-bound scapegoats could live on that supply. I used to save for him the Eastern and English newspaper notices of his work, and once, when he had looked through a goodly lot of these laudatory notes, he said: 'These fellows see a heap of things in my stories that I never put there.'"

Mr. Stoddard recalls this incident: "One day I found him pacing the floor of his office in the United States Mint; he was knitting his brows and staring at vacancy,--I wondered why. He was watching and waiting for a word, the right word, the one word of all others to fit into a line of recently written prose. I suggested one; it would not answer; it must be a word of two syllables, or the natural rhythm of the sentence would suffer.

Thus he perfected his prose."

In the sketch ent.i.tled _My First Book_, printed in volume ten of his works, Bret Harte has given some amusing reminiscences concerning the volume of California poems edited by him, and published in 1866. His selection as Editor, he says, "was chiefly owing to the circ.u.mstance that I had from the outset, with precocious foresight, confided to the publisher my intention of not putting any of my own verses in the volume.

Publishers are appreciative; and a self-abnegation so sublime, to say nothing of its security, was not without its effect." After narrating his extreme difficulty in reducing the number of his selections from the numerous poets of California, he goes on to describe the reception of the volume. It sold well, the purchasers apparently being amateur poets who were anxious to discover whether they were represented in the book.

"People would lounge into the shop, turn over the leaves of other volumes, say carelessly 'Got a new book of California poetry out, haven't you?'

purchase it, and quietly depart."

"There were as yet," the Editor continues, "no notices from the press; the big dailies were silent; there was something ominous in this calm. Out of it the bolt fell;" and he quotes the following notice from a country paper: "'The Hogwash and "purp" stuff ladled out from the slop-bucket of Messrs. ---- and Co., of 'Frisco, by some lop-eared Eastern apprentice, and called "A Compilation of Californian Verse," might be pa.s.sed over, so far as criticism goes. A club in the hands of any able-bodied citizen of Red Dog, and a steamboat ticket to the Bay, cheerfully contributed from this office, would be all-sufficient. But when an imported greenhorn dares to call his flapdoodle mixture "Californian," it is an insult to the State that has produced the gifted "Yellowhammer," whose lofty flights have from time to time dazzled our readers in the columns of the "Jay Hawk." That this complacent editorial jacka.s.s, browsing among the docks and thistles which he has served up in this volume, should make no allusion to California's greatest bard is rather a confession of his idiocy than a slur upon the genius of our esteemed contributor.'"

Other criticisms, inspired by like omissions, followed, each one rivalling its predecessor in severity. "The big dailies collected the criticisms and published them in their own columns with the grim irony of exaggerated head-lines. The book sold tremendously on account of this abuse, but I am afraid that the public was disappointed. The fun and interest lay in the criticisms, and not in any pointedly ludicrous quality in the rather commonplace collection ... and I have long since been convinced that my most remorseless critics were not in earnest, but were obeying some sudden impulse, started by the first attacking journal.... It was a large, contagious joke, pa.s.sed from journal to journal in a peculiar cyclonic Western fas.h.i.+on."

A year later, not, as Bret Harte himself states, in 1865, but in 1867, the first collection of his own poems was published. The volume was a thin twelvemo, bound in green cloth, with a gilt design of a sail on the cover, the t.i.tle-page reading as follows: "The Lost Galleon and Other Tales. By Fr. Bret Harte, San Francisco. Tame and Bacon, Printers, 1867." Most of these poems are contained in the standard edition of his works.

In the same year were published the _Condensed Novels_ and the _Bohemian Papers_, reprinted from "The Bulletin" and "The Californian," and making, as the author himself said, "a single, not very plethoric volume, the writer's first book of prose." He adds that "during this period," _i. e._ from 1862 to 1867, he produced "_The Society upon the Stanislaus_, and _The Story of M'liss_,--the first a dialectical poem, the second a Californian romance,--his first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly characteristic Western American literature. He would like to offer these facts as evidence of his very early, half-boyish, but very enthusiastic belief in such a possibility,--a belief which never deserted him, and which, a few years later, from the better known pages of the 'Overland Monthly,' he was able to demonstrate to a larger and more cosmopolitan audience in the story of _The Luck of Roaring Camp_, and the poem of the _Heathen Chinee_."

The "Overland Monthly" was founded in July, 1868, by Anton Roman, a bookseller on Montgomery Street, and later on Clay Street. Mr. Roman was possessed of that enthusiasm which every new enterprise demands. "He had thought and talked about the Magazine," he declared, "until it was in his bones." Bret Harte became the first Editor, and it was he who selected the name. The "Overland" was well printed, on good paper, and the cover was adorned by that historic grizzly bear who, standing on the ties of the newly-laid railroad track, with half-turned body and lowered head, seems prepared to dispute the right of way with the locomotive which might shortly be expected to come screaming down the track.

There was originally no railroad track in the picture, simply the bear; and how the deficiency was supplied is thus explained by Mark Twain in a letter to Thomas Bailey Aldrich: "Do you know the prettiest fancy and the neatest that ever shot through Harte's brain? It was this: When they were trying to decide upon a vignette for the cover of the 'Overland,' a grizzly bear (of the arms of the State of California) was chosen. Nahl Bros. carved him and the page was printed, with him in it, looking thus:

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"As a bear, he was a success--he was a good bear.--But then, it was objected, that he was an _objectless_ bear--a bear that _meant_ nothing in particular, signified nothing,--simply stood there snarling over his shoulder at nothing--and was painfully and manifestly a boorish and ill-natured intruder upon the fair page. All hands said that--none were satisfied. They hated badly to give him up, and yet they hated as much to have him there when there was no _point_ to him. But presently Harte took a pencil and drew these two simple lines under his feet and behold he was a magnificent success!--the ancient symbol of Californian savagery snarling at the approaching type of high and progressive Civilization, the first Overland locomotive!

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"I think that was nothing less than inspiration itself."

In the same letter Mark Twain pays the following magnanimous tribute to his old friend: "Bret Harte trimmed and trained and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkward utterer of coa.r.s.e grotesqueness to a writer of paragraphs and chapters that have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the very decentest people in the land,--and this grateful remembrance of mine ought to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friends.h.i.+p a year ago without any cause or provocation that I am aware of."

The Editor had no prose article of his own in the first number of the "Overland," but he contributed two poems, the n.o.ble lines about San Francisco, which, with characteristic modesty he placed in the middle of the number, and the poem ent.i.tled _Returned_[9] in the "Etc." column at the end.

And now we come to the publication which first made Bret Harte known upon the Atlantic as well as upon the Pacific coast. The opening number of the "Overland" had contained no "distinctive Californian romance," as Bret Harte expressed it, and none such being offered for the second number, the Editor supplied the omission with _The Luck of Roaring Camp_. But the printer, instead of sending the proof-sheets to the writer of the story, as would have been the ordinary course, submitted them to the publisher, with a statement that the matter was so "indecent, irreligious and improper" that his proofreader, a young lady, had with difficulty been induced to read it. Then followed many consultations between author, publisher, and various high literary authorities whose judgment had been invoked. Opinions differed, but the weight of opinion was against the tale, and the expediency of printing it. Nevertheless, the author--conceiving that his fitness as Editor was now in question--stood to his guns; the publisher, though fearful of the result, stood by him; and the tale was published without the alteration of a word. It was received very coldly by the secular press in California, its "singularity"

being especially pointed out; and it was bitterly denounced by the religious press as being immoral and unchristian. But there was a wider public to hear from. The return mail from the East brought newspapers and reviews "welcoming the little foundling of Californian literature with an enthusiasm that half frightened its author."[10] The mail brought also a letter from the Editor of the "Atlantic Monthly" with a request "upon the most flattering terms" that he would write a story for the "Atlantic,"

similar to the _Luck_.

It should be recorded, as an interesting contrast to the impression made by the _Luck_ upon the San Francisco young woman, that it was also a girl, Miss Susan M. Francis, a literary a.s.sistant with the publishers of the "Atlantic Monthly," who, struck by the freshness and beauty of the tale, brought it to the attention of Mr. James T. Fields, then the Editor of the magazine, with the result which Bret Harte has described.

Nor should the att.i.tude of the California young person, and of San Francisco in general, excite surprise. The Pioneers could not be expected to see the moral beauty that lay beneath the rough outward aspect of affairs on the Pacific Slope. The poetry of their own existence was hidden from them. But California, though crude, was self-distrustful, and it bowed to the decision of the East. Bret Harte was honored, even if not understood or appreciated.

The "Overland" was well received, and the high character of the first two numbers was long maintained. Aside from Bret Harte's work, many volumes of prose and verse have been republished from the magazine, and most of them deserved the honor. In the early Fifties the proportion of really educated men to the whole population was greater in California than in any other State, and probably this was true even of the period when the "Overland"

was founded. Scholars.h.i.+p and cultivation were concealed in rough mining towns, in lumber camps, and on remote ranches. Among the women, especially, were many who, like the Sappho of Green Springs, gathered from their lonely, primitive lives a freshness and originality which perhaps they never would have shown in more conventional surroundings. This cla.s.s furnished numerous readers and a few writers. Officers of the Army and Navy stationed in California contributed some interesting scientific and literary articles to the early numbers of the "Overland."

Notwithstanding the success of his first story, Bret Harte was in no haste to rush into print with another. He had none of that disposition to make hay while the sun s.h.i.+nes which has spoiled many a story-writer. Six months elapsed before the _Luck_ was followed by _The Outcasts of Poker Flat_.

Meanwhile he was carefully and patiently discharging his duties as Editor.

Mr. Stoddard has thus described him in that capacity: "Fortunately for me he took an interest in me at a time when I was most in need of advice, and to his criticism and his encouragement I feel that I owe all that is best in my literary efforts. He was not afraid to speak his mind, and I know well enough what occasion I gave him: yet he did not judge me more severely than I judged myself.... I am sure that the majority of the contributors to the 'Overland Monthly' profited as I did by his careful and judicious criticism. Fastidious to a degree, he could not overlook a lack of finish in the ma.n.u.script offered to him. He had a special taste in the choice of t.i.tles, and I have known him to alter the name of an article two or three times in order that the table of contents might read handsomely and harmoniously."

One of the most frequent contributors to the "Overland" was Miss Ina B.

Coolbrith, author of many polished and imaginative poems and stories. In a recent letter Miss Coolbrith thus speaks of Bret Harte as an Editor: "To me he was unfailingly kind and generous, looking out for my interests as one of his contributors with as much care as he accorded to his own. I can only speak of him in terms of unqualified praise as author, friend and man."

The poem ent.i.tled _Plain Language from Truthful James_, or the _Heathen Chinee_, as it is popularly known, and as Bret Harte himself afterward called it, first appeared in the "Overland" for September, 1870. Within a few weeks it had spread over the English-speaking world. _The Luck of Roaring Camp_ gave Bret Harte a literary reputation, but this poem made him famous. It was copied by the newspapers almost universally, both here and in England; and it increased the circulation of the "Overland" so much that, two months after its appearance, a single news company in New York was selling twelve hundred copies of the magazine. Almost everybody had a clipping of these verses tucked into his waistcoat pocket or carried in his purse. Quotations from it were on every lip, and some of its most significant lines were recited with applause in the National House of Representatives.

It came at a fortunate moment when the people of this country were just awaking to the fact that there was a "Chinese problem," and when interest in the race was becoming universal in the East as well as in the West.

Says that acute critic, Mr. James Douglas: "There is an element of chance in the fabrication of great poems. The concatenation comes, the artist puts the pieces into their places, and the result is permanent wonder. The _Heathen Chinee_ in its happy felicity is quite as unique as 'The Blessed Damozel.'"

The _Heathen Chinee_ is remarkable for the absolutely impartial att.i.tude of the writer. He observes the Chinaman neither from the locally prejudiced, California point of view, nor from an ethical or reforming point of view. His part is neither to approve nor condemn, but simply to state the fact as it is, not indeed with the coldness of an historian but with the sympathy and insight of a poet. But this is not all, in fact, as need hardly be said, it is not enough to make the poem endure. It endures because it has a beauty of form which approaches perfection. It is hackneyed, and yet as fresh as on the day when it was written.[11]

Truthful James himself who tells the story was a real character,--nay is, for, at the writing of these pages, he still lived in the same little shanty where he was to be found when Bret Harte knew him. At that time, in 1856, or thereabout, Bret Harte was teaching school at Tuttletown, a few miles north of Sonora, and Truthful James, Mr. James W. Gillis, lived over the hill from Tuttletown, at a place called Jacka.s.s Flat. Mr. Gillis was well known and highly respected in all that neighborhood, and he figures not only in Bret Harte's poetry, but also in Mark Twain's works, where he is described as "The Sage of Jacka.s.s Hill."

It is a proof both of Bret Harte's remarkable freedom from vanity, and of the keen criticism which he bestowed upon his own writings, that he never set much value upon the _Heathen Chinee_, even after its immense popularity had been attained. When he wrote it, he thought it unworthy of a place in the "Overland" and handed it over to Mr. Ambrose Bierce, then Editor of the "News Letter,"[12] a weekly paper, for publication there.

Mr. Bierce, however, recognizing its value, unselfishly advised Bret Harte to give it a place in the "Overland," and this was finally done.

"Nevertheless," says Mr. Bierce, "it was several months before he overcame his prejudice against the verses and printed them. Indeed he never cared for the thing, and was greatly amused by the meanings that so many read into it. He said he meant nothing whatever by it."

We have Mark Twain's word to the same effect. "In 1866," he writes, "I went to the Sandwich Islands, and when I returned, after several years, Harte was famous as the author of the _Heathen Chinee_. He said that the _Heathen Chinee_ was an accident, and that he had higher literary ambitions than the fame that could come from an extravaganza of that sort." "_The Luck of Roaring Camp_," Mr. Clemens goes on to say, "was the salvation of his literary career. It placed him securely on a literary road which was more to his taste."

Bret Harte, indeed, frequently held back for weeks poems which he had completed, but with which he was not content. As one of his fellow-workers declared, "He was never fully satisfied with what he finally allowed to go to the printer."

His position in San Francisco was now a.s.sured. He had been made professor of recent literature in the University of California; he retained his place at the Mint, he was the successful Editor of the "Overland," and he was happy in his home life. One who knew him well at this period speaks of him as "always referring to his wife in affectionate terms, and quoting her clever speeches, and relating with fond enjoyment the funny sayings and doings of his children."

Let us, for the moment, leave Bret Harte thus happily situated, and glance at that Pioneer life which he was now engaged in portraying. Said a San Francisco paper in 1851, "The world will never know, and no one could imagine the heart-rending scenes, or the instances of courage and heroic self-sacrifice which have occurred among the California Pioneers during the last three years!"

And yet when these words were penned there was growing up in the East a stripling destined to preserve for posterity some part, at least, of those very occurrences which otherwise would have remained "unrecorded and forgot."

CHAPTER V

THE PIONEER MEN AND WOMEN