The Luck of Roaring Camp, and Other Stories
REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.
By . Boston : Fields, Osgood, & Co.
THE most surprising things in that very surprising publication, “ The Overland Monthly,” have been the stories or studies of early California life, in which Mr. Harte carried us back to the remote epochs of 1849 and 1850, and made us behold men and manners now passing or wholly passed away, as he tells us. Readers who were amazed by the excellent quality of the whole magazine were tempted to cry out most of all over “ The Luck of Roaring Camp,” and the subsequent papers by the same hand, and to triumph in a man who gave them something new in fiction. We had reason indeed to be glad that one capable of seeing the grotesqueness of that strange life, and also of appreciating its finer and softer aspects, had his lot cast in it by the benign destiny that used to make great rivers run by large towns, and that now sends lines of railway upon the same service. But we incline to think that nothing worth keeping is lost, and that the flower born to blush unseen is pretty sure to be botanized from a bud up by zealous observers. These blossoms of the revolver-echoing canon, the embattled diggings, the lawless flat, and the immoral bar might well have been believed secure from notice, and were perhaps the last things we should have expected to unfold themselves under such eyes as Mr. Harte’s. Yet this happened, and here we have them in literature not overpainted, but given with all their natural colors and textures, and all their wildness and strangeness of place.
The finest thing that could be said of an author in times past was that he dealt simply, directly, and briefly with his reader, and we cannot say anything different about Mr Harte, though we are sensible that he is very different from others, and at his best is quite a unique figure in American authorship, not only that he writes of unhackneyed things, but that he looks at the life he treats in uncommon lights. What strikes us most is the entirely masculine temper of his mind, or rather a habit of concerning himself with things that please only men. We suppose women generally would not find his stories amusing or touching, though perhaps some woman with an unusual sense of humor would feel the tenderness, the delicacy, and the wit that so win the hearts of his own sex. This is not because he deals often with various unpresentable people, for the ladies themselves, when they write novels, make us acquainted with persons of very shocking characters and pursuits, but because he does not touch any of the phases of vice or virtue that seem to take the fancy of women. We think it probable that none but a man would care for the portrait of such a gambler as Mr. John Oakhurst, or would discern the cunning touches with which it is done, in its blended shades of good and evil; and a man only could relish the rude pathos of Tennessee’s partner, or of those poor, bewildered, sinful souls, The Duchess and Mother Shipton. To the masculine sense also must chiefly commend itself the ferocious drollery of the local nomenclature, the humor with which the most awful episodes of diggings life are invested by the character of the actors, and the robust vigor and racy savor of the miners’ vernacular ; not that these are very prominent in the stories, but that they are a certain and always noticeable quality in them. Mr. Harte could probably write well about any life he saw; but having happened to see the early Californian life, he gives it with its proper costume and accent. Of course, he does this artistically, as we have hinted, and gets on without a great use of those interconsonantal dashes which take the sinfulness out of printed profanity. You are made somehow to understand that the company swear a good deal, both men and women, and are not examples to their sex in any way ; yet they are not offensive, as they might very well be in other hands, and it is the life beneath their uncouth exteriors that mainly interests. Out of this Mr. Harte has been able to make four or five little romances, which we should call idyls if we did not like them better than most recent poetry, and which please us more and more the oftener we read them. We do not know that they are very strong in plot ; perhaps they are rather weak in that direction ; but the world has outlived the childish age in fiction, and will not value these exquisite pieces the less because they do not deal with the Thrilling and the Hair’sbreadth. People are growing, we hope, — and if they are not, so much the worse for people, — to prefer character to situations, and to enjoy the author’s revelations of the former rather than his invention of the latter. At any rate, this is what is to be liked in Mr. Harte, who has an acuteness and a tenderness in dealing with human nature which are quite his own, and such a firm and clear way of handling his materials as to give a very complete effect to each of his performances.
Amongst these we think “The Outcasts of Poker Flat ” is the best, for the range of character is greater, and the contrasts are all stronger than in the others ; and, in spite of some sentimentalized traits, Mr. John Oakhurst, gambler, is the best figure Mr. Harte has created, if, indeed, he did not copy him from life. The whole conception of the story is excellent; — the banishment of Oakhurst, Uncle Billy, The Duchess, and Mother Shipton from Poker Flat, their sojourn in the cañon, where they are joined by the innocent Tommy Simson, eloping with his innocent betrothed; Uncle Billy’s treacherous defection with the mule; the gathering snows, the long days spent round the camp-fire listening to Tommy’s version of Pope’s Homer ; the approaches of famine, and the self-sacrifice of those three wicked ones for the hapless creatures whose lot had been cast with theirs. As regards theneffort to adapt their conduct to Tommy’s and Piney’s misconception of their characters and relations, the story is a masterpiece of delicate handling, and affecting as it is humorous. Mr. Harte does not attempt to cope with the difficulties of bringing those curiously assorted friends again into contact with the world; and there is no lesson taught, save a little mercifulness of judgment, and a kindly doubt of total depravity. Perhaps Oakhurst would not, in actual life, have shot himself to save provisions for a starving boy and girl; and perhaps that poor ruined Mother Shipton was not really equal to the act ascribed to her : but Mr. Harte contrives to have it touch one like the truth, and that is all we can ask of him. “ It became more and more difficult to replenish their fires, even from the fallen trees beside them, now half hidden in the drifts. And yet no one complained. The lovers turned from the dreary prospect and looked into each other’s eyes, and were happy. Mr. Oakhurst settled himself coolly to the losing game before him. The Duchess, more cheerful than she had been, assumed the care of Piney. Only Mother Shipton — once the strongest of the party—seemed to sicken and fade. At midnight on the tenth day she called Oakhurst to her side. ‘ I’m going,’ she said, in a voice of querulous weakness, ‘but don’t say anything about it. Don’t waken the kids. Take the bundle from under my head and open it.’ Mr. Oakhurst did so. It contained Mother Shipton’s rations for the last week, untouched. ‘ Give ’em to the child,’she said, pointing to the sleeping Piney. ‘ You’ve starved yourself,’ said the gambler. ‘That’s what they call it,’ said the woman, querulously, as she lay down again, and, turning her face to the wall, passed quietly away.”
Even in “ Miggles,” which seems to us the least laudable of these stories, the author, in painting a life of unselfish devotion, succeeds in keeping the reader’s patience and sympathy by the heroine’s unconsciousness of her heroism, and the simple way in which she speaks of it. She has abandoned her old way of life to take care of Jim, a paralytic, who in happier days “ spent all his money on her,” and she is partially hedged in by a pet grizzly bear which goes about the neighborhood of her wild mountain home with her. If you can suppose the situation, the woman’s character is very well done. When the “judge” asks her why she does not marry the man to whom she has devoted her youthful life, “ Well, you see,” says Miggles, “ it would be playing it rather low down on Jim to take advantage of his being so helpless. And then, too, if we were man and wife now, we’d both know that I was bound to do what I now do of my own accord.” Of course all the people are well sketched; in fact, as to manners, Mr. Harte’s touch is quite unfailing. The humor, too, is good, as it is in all these pieces. Miggles’s house is papered with newspapers, and she says of herself and Jim : “ When we are sitting alone, I read him these things on the wall. Why, Lord,” says Miggles, with her frank laugh, “ I’ve read him that whole side of the house this winter.”
The Idyl of Red Gulch suffers from some of the causes that affect the sketch of Miggles unpleasantly, but it is more natural and probable, and the interview between Miss Mary and Tommy’s mother is a skilful little piece of work. But we believe that, after “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” we have the greatest satisfaction in “ Tennessee’s Partner,” though even in this we would fain have stopped short of having the partners meet in Heaven. Tennessee is a gambler, who is also suspected of theft. He has run away with his partner’s wife, and has got himself into trouble by robbing a stranger near the immaculate borders of Red Dog. The citizens rise to take him, and in his flight he is stopped by a small man on a gray horse.
“ The men looked at each other a moment in silence. Both were fearless, both self-possessed and independent ; and both types of a civilization that in the seventeenth century would have been called heroic, but, in the nineteenth, simply 'reckless.’ ' What have you got there ? I call,’ said Tennessee, quietly. ' Two bowers and an ace,’ said the stranger, as quietly, showing two revolvers and a bowie-knife. ‘ That takes me,’ returned Tennessee ; and, with this gamblers’ epigram, he threw away his useless pistol, and rode back with his captor.”
Tennessee refuses to make any defence on his trial before Judge Lynch. “ I don’t take any hand in this yer game,” he says, and his partner appears in court to buy him off, to the great indignation of the tribunal, which sentences Tennessee at once. “ This yer is a lone hand played alone, without my pardner,” remarks the unsuccessful advocate, turning to go, when the judge reminds him that if he has anything to say to Tennessee he had better say it now. “ Tennessee smiled, showed his white teeth, and saying, ‘ Euchred, old man ! ’ held out his hand. Tennessee’s partner took it in his own, and saying, ‘ I just dropped in as I was passing to see how things was getting on,’ let the hand passively fall, and adding that it was ‘ a warm night,’ again mopped his face with his handkerchief, and without another word withdrew.” So Tennessee was hanged, and his body was given to his partner, who invited the citizens of Red Dog to attend the funeral. The body was borne to the grave in a coffin made of a section of sluicing and placed on a cart drawn by Jinny, the partner’s donkey ; and at the grave this pathetic speech was made : —
“ ‘ When a man,’ began Tennessee’s partner, slowly, ‘ has been running free all day, what’s the natural thing for him to do ? Why, to come home. And if he ain’t in a condition to go home, what can his best friend do ? Why, bring him home ! And here’s Tennessee has been running free, and we brings him home from his wandering.’ He paused, and picked up a fragment of quartz, rubbed it thoughtfully on his sleeve, and went on : ‘It ain’t the first time that I ’ve packed him on my back, as you see’d me now. It ain’t the first time that I brought him to this yer cabin when he couldn’t help himself; it ain’t the first time that I and “ Jinny ” have waited for him on yon hill, and picked him up, and so fetched him home, when he could n’t speak, and did n’t know me. And now that it’s the last time, why — ’he paused, and rubbed the quartz gently on his sleeve — ‘ you see it’s sort of rough on his pardner. And now, gentlemen,’ he added, abruptly, picking up his long-handled shovel, ‘the fun’l’s over ; and my thanks, and Tennessee’s thanks, to you for your trouble.’ ”
As to the “ Luck of Roaring Camp,” which was the first and is the best known of these sketches, it is, like “Tennessee’s Partner,” full of the true color of life in the diggings, but strikes us as less perfect and consistent, though the conception is more daring, and effects are achieved beyond the limited reach of the latter. As in “ Miggles,” the strength and freshness are in the manners and character, and the weakness is in the sentimentality which, it must be said in Mr. Harte’s favor, does not seem to be quite his own. His real feeling is always as good as his humor is fresh.
We want to speak also of the author’s sentiment for nature, which is shown in sparing touches, but which is very fine and genuine. Such a picture as this : “ A hare surprised into helpless inactivity sat upright and pulsating in the ferns by the roadside, as the cortége went by,” — is worth, in its wildness and freshness, some acres of word-painting. The same love of nature gives life and interest to “ High-Water Mark, ” “ A Lonely Ride,” “ Mliss,” and some other pieces (evidently written earlier than those we have just been speaking of), with which Mr. Harte has filled out his book. These pieces, too, have the author’s characteristic cleverness; and the people in “ Notes by Flood and Field ” are almost as lifelike as any in his recent work. The dog “ Boonder ” is a figure entirely worthy to appear in the most select circles of Red Dog or Poker Flat.