Early Recollections of Bret Harte

SHE came out of the kitchen in starched gingham that shed about her a faint aroma of buckwheat cakes. She showed me the rooms that she had to let: one between the formal parlor and the informal dining-room, with its single window framed in roses, red and white ; and one at the top of the stairs, under the sloping roof, and not bigger than a big box; it had a skylight that lifted like a lid, and there the air and the light and the dust sifted in. It was a cosy nook and well enough lighted, but all that the eye could feast on was the fleckless, fathomless blue of the stark California sky, —and one must needs have lain on one’s back to do that comfortably. I thought of Chatterton, and aspiring song, and hope deferred, and pinching poverty, and other picturesque but depressing things, and I said, “ I ’ll take the room below, with the window under the rosedrift, and the blue-figured wall-paper.”

Then we turned from the skylighted locker, and descended into an atmosphere permeated with the mingled odors of kitchen and parlor.

When I came in, that evening, and met the landlady at dinner, she said, half reproachfully, “ I thought perhaps you ’d like that room upstairs because it used to be Frank Harte’s.”

It must have been in the year 1854 that Francis Bret Harte, at the age of fifteen, went to California with his widowed mother. It was now nine years later, and he had achieved a local reputation as poet and prose writer. He was doubtless turning his couplets when he was an occupant of the sky parlor, tucked under the eaves of this old-fashioned house that stood in the southern part of Oakland, California, not far from the water-front facing the Alameda marshes.

In 1860 my father rented a broad, low-roofed bungalow in another part of Oakland, and, as a family, we rejoiced there for a season. A modest colonnade surrounded this summer home, and it stood beneath a noble tree, the largest live-oak in all Oakland. On two sides of the garden was a whitewashed fence made of laths laid close together in a small diamond - pattern. As young Harte’s fame began to spread and the interest in his personal history became general, we learned that at one time he had lived in that bungalow, and that the fence was the work of his hands. Had relie-hunters been forewarned in season it would have vanished betimes.

Those were the halcyon days before California had become a health resort and been “ railroaded ” to the depths of the commonplace. Oakland was a kind of wildwood or wilderness; there was but a single street in it worthy of the name, — a broad, sandy trail that parted the grove in the middle ; and even in this trail one had to turn out for a tree now and again, or for a deliberate cow with her dolorous bell, or for a recumbent goat. Beyond Oakland the comparatively naked and unexplored lands spread far and wide into the foot-hills ; and there the adventurous were out of.sight of hall and hovel, their feet sheathed in Mexican stirrups, musical but murderous spurs of gigantic circumference at their heels, and their shoulders overshadowed by broad-brimmed sombreros. Usually it was the solitary horseman who went thither, scenting the still, hot air of spicy cañons, toiling over the brazen bills from camp to camp, and finding them as active as if it were flood-tide on market-day. Then, and later, at San Rafael, the bulls fought bravely on its saint ’s day, and the click of the castanet was heard in the land.

San Francisco was unique: all the color-lines were down ; gilded vice, seated upon her tinsel throne, was visible from the pavement, and in some cases infamy might truly have been called splendid ; the drone of the hurdy-gurdy, the gay fandango, the Celestial players of fantan, were heard and seen on every side : and all these, Bret Harte, in the dew of his youth, saw, searched into, and assimilated. Like the Argonaut, the fortyniner, he became a part of the land itself, and a very living part of the life of the land. It is fortunate for us who knew California of old, and love to revive memories of the past, that he came when he came, saw what he saw, and conquered as he unquestionably did conquer, and held fast the very spirit, if not the letter, of that Golden Age. The spirit is the poetry, the letter is the prose of it all. Only a poet can paint the picturesque. California was picturesque once upon a time ; the life there and then was delightful, audacious, perhaps at times devilish ; there was not much repose in camp or town, but there was enough and to spare in the wide verandas of the sunbaked haciendas and in the attenuated vistas of the mission cloisters.

It was a lucky fate that drove Bret Harte afield when he was all eyes, when his wits were wide awake, and he had a healthy, youthful thirst for adventure. Fate made of him for a time a country schoolmaster, and some of the finely finished studies he has given us are the direct results of that experience ; it lured him to learn the printer’s trade ; he sat in the seat of the scornful, — a village editor; he was an express messenger in the mountains when the office was the target of every lawless rifle in the territory ; he was glutted with adventurous experiences ; he bore a charmed life. Probably his youth was his salvation, for he ran a thousand risks, yet seemed only to gain in health and spirits ; and all the while he was unconsciously accumulating the most precious material that could fall to the lot of a writer, — the lights and shadows, the color, the details of a life unique, as brief as it was brilliant, and one never to be lived again under the sun or stars.

Because he saw all there was of poetry and romance in that singular life, and has reproduced it poetically and romantically, he has been accused of exaggeration by some of those who knew the life he pictures. But they did not know it as he knew it; they did not see the same side of it, — the more interesting, the pictorial side. Theirs was quite another point of view : very much that was peculiar to it — that which in many cases made it singular and a law unto itself—was partly or wholly lost to them ; its most attractive elements were unnoted by them. Mr. Harte refers, in one of his prefaces, to an unknown early master who somewhat naively depicted the miner’s life in a series of paintings. I well remember them, although it is an age since they disappeared from the public eye. This artless artist knew that life; he saw its pathetic humor, its humorous pathos, its tragic fun, its comic tragedy, but his earnest and no doubt honest endeavors to reproduce these features were not wholly successful. Nor has any artist or any writer of whom I have knowledge succeeded as Bret Harte has succeeded in revivifying them. If he portrays only their pictorial or poetical or romantic features, all the better; the commonplace we have always with us, and it was no more tolerable then than it is now.

The vicissitudes of Bret Harte were destined to become his stock in trade, and when he returned to San Francisco, and somehow drifted into the composing-room of the then famous paper, The Golden Era, he naturally began to contribute to its columns. The Golden Era was the cradle and the grave of many a high hope, — there was nothing to be compared with it 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, first-floor front, on the south side of Clay Street below Montgomery; an air of literary mystery enveloped 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 its fledgeling 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 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. I had not yet outgrown a bad habit of verse-making, bad never been paid a farthing for anything I had published, and the brightening prospect dazzled and confounded me.

Before Bret Harte ceased to write for The Golden Era he had gained sufficient self-confidence to sign his contributions “ B" or “ Bret. “ M’Liss was first printed in those columns, and Joe Lawrence was filled with Olympian laughter when he exhibited a handsome specially designed woodcut heading which he had ordered for the charming tale. Mark Twain and Prentice Mulford became known through the columns of The Golden Era : Joaquin Miller wrote for it from the backwoods depths of his youthful obscurity.

On May 28, 1864, the first number of Ihe Californian was issued by Charles Henry W ebb, its editor and proprietor. This was the famous weekly of which W. D. Howells, in an article on Mark Twain, has said : —

“ I think Mr. Clemens has not mentioned his association with that extraordinary group of wits and poets, of whom Mr. Bret Harte, Mr. Charles Warren Stoddard, Mr. Charles Henry Webb, and Mr. Prentice Mulford were, with himself, the most conspicuous. These ingenuous young men, with the fatuity of gifted people, had established a literary newspaper in San Francisco, and they brilliantly coöperated to its early extinction.”

The first article that appeared in The Californian was Neighborhoods 1 Have Moved From, By a Hypochondriac. No. One. It was followed by The Ballad of the Emeu. Each is Bret Harte’s, and both are unsigned. The Condensed Novels, which hie began in The Golden Era, were continued in The Californian. To that highly interesting periodical he contributed many poems, grave and gay, sketches, essays, editorials, and book reviews ; some of the latter were clever bits of verse. Occasionally one finds the name “ Francis Bret Harte,” or perhaps “Bret,’ "or only “ H,” attached to a piece of prose or verse; many of his contributions are unsigned, and much of the admirable work be did then is now of no avail on account of its purely local and ephemeral character.

In July, 1868, when The Overland Monthly was founded, Bret Harte became its editor. Mr. Rounsevelle Wildman. the editor of The Overland Monthly, New Series, has recently written: “ When Anton Roman made up his mind to establish a monthly magazine in connection with his publishing and bookselling business, he did so with the advice of Noah Brooks, Charles Warren Stoddard, B. B. Redding, W. C. Bartlett, and others, for most of whom he had already published books. When the question of a suitable editor arose, Stoddard recommended Bret Harte, then an almost unknown writer on The Golden Era, at that time a popular weekly. Bret Harte accepted with some misgivings as to financial matters, but was reassured when Roman showed him pledges of support by advertising patronage up to nine hundred dollars a month, which he had secured in advance.”In the August number of that magazine appeared The Luck of Roaring Camp. if Mr. Harte had been in doubt as to his vocation before, that doubt was now dispelled forever. Never was a more emphatic or unquestionable literary success. That success began in the composingroom, when a female compositor revolted at the unaccustomed combination of mental force, virility, and originality. No doubt it was all very sudden and unexpected ; it shook the editorial and composing rooms, the business office, and a limited number of worthy people who had seen The Luck in manuscript, as they had never been shaken save by the notorious Californian earthquake. The climax was precipitated when the justly indignant editor, whose motives, literary judgment, and good taste had been impeached, declared that The Luck of Roaring Camp should appear in the very next number of The Overland Monthly, or he would resign his office. Wisdom finally prevailed : the article appeared ; The Overland’s success was assured, and its editor was famous.

The rocket reputation is usually as brief as it is brilliant. Count them on your fingers, the successful first books that have attracted notice enough to turn the head of a man of genius. Where are they now, the writers and their books ? The writers have written themselves out, and their books are forgotten. Probably, in spite of the fact that the best books may be neglected, their fate was well deserved.

Perhaps no one knows just why success comes when it comes; yet the question is not so difficult as why it is so long coming, and why in some cases it never comes at all.

That Bret Harte worked for his success there is no doubt. I knew him best when he was editor of The Overland Monthly; I saw much of him then. 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 liis 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 he judged himself. His humor and his fancy were not frightened away even when he was in his severest critical mood. Once, when I had sent him some verses for approval, he wrote: —

“ The Albatross is better, but not best, which is what I wanted. And then you know Coleridge has prior claim on the bird. But I ’ll use him unless you send me something else ; you can, an you like, take this as a threat.

“ In Jason’s Quest you have made a mistake of subject. It is by no means suited to your best thought, and you are quite as much at sea in your mythology as Jason was. You can do, have done, and must do better. Don’t waste your strength in experiments. Give me another South Sea Bubble, a prose tropical picture, with the Cannibal, who is dead, left out.”

I am sure that the majority of the contributors to The Overland Monthly, while it was edited by Bret Harte, profited, as I did, by his careful and judicious criticism. Fastidious to a degree, he could not overlook a lack of finish in the manuscript offered him. He had a special taste in the choice of titles, 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 day I found him pacing the floor of his office in the United States Branch 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 sentance would suffer. Thus he perfected his prose. Once when he had taken me to task for a bit of careless work, then under his critical eye, and complained of a false number, I thought to turn away his wrath by a soft answer : I told him that I had just met a man who had wept over a certain passage in one of his sketches. “ Well,” said Harte, “ I wept when I wrote it! ”

Towards the close of the first year of The Overland Monthly, when I was in the Hawaiian Islands. I received a letter from Bret Harte, in which he said :

“ The Overland marches steadily along to meet its fate, which will be decided in July, but how I know not. Decency requires that you should be present in prose or poetry at these solemn moments, so send along your manuscript.

“ You do not want my advice; I should give you none that I would take myself. But you have my love already ; and whether you stay with the bananas or return to beans, or whatever you do, short of arson or Chinese highway robbery, which are inartistic and ungentlemanly, I am, etc.

“ P. S. Speaking of arson, I had forgotten Nero. Accompanied by a fiddle or a lyre, it might be made poetical.”

For some time after Bret Harte began his editorial work on The Overland Monthly he continued to fulfill the duties of a secretary in the United States Branch Mint at San Francisco. 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 oflice 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 companionship of books, and the lives of those about him were as an open volume, wherein he read curiously and to his profit. Had he not a genuine love of children, he could not have written The Luck of Roaring Camp. His understanding and appreciation of childhood, and all that pertains to its embryo world, he must have developed in his own home. The joys and griefs of infancy illuminate such genre studies as A Venerable Impostor, A Boys’ Dog, Surprising Adventures of Master Charles Summerton, On a Vulgar Little Boy, Melons.

Bret Harte was not yet thirty when The Luck captured and comforted the hungry heart of Roaring Camp, and that Camp the heart of all the world. Yet his success never once agitated him. He did not value The Heathen Chinee, and seemed to deplore the emotional interest it excited ; I believe he sought consolation in the knowledge that rash enthusiasm is necessarily ephemeral. His reputation was founded upon a basis of solid worth ; even the sensational success of The Heathen Chinee could not endanger it. Its establishment was sudden, one might almost say instantaneous ; for parallels, I recall at this moment Waverley and The Pickwick Papers.

That his success was genuine and just has been proved again and again by the repeated successes that have followed and are still following. In the new and complete edition of Bret Harte’s works, now in press, there are fourteen volumes, containing nearly or quite six thousand pages. Apart from the collected poems, grave and gay, filling one of these volumes, there are one hundred and sixty titles of sketches in prose: some of these are the names of novels, or longer tales, that have already appeared in one or two volumes each; the great majority of them are studies of life on the Pacific coast, though New England, Old England, and older Germany have in turn furnished the author with other backgrounds. Of all these studies, it is safe to assert that not one is an acknowledged failure, though they necessarily vary in interest, in artistic merit, and in popularity. The greatest successes have ever been, and most likely will ever be where the scene is laid on California soil, and the characters are Californians of the pioneer and early native types. Inasmuch as Mr. Harte’s greatest achievements are in the portrayal of these types, and Mr. Rudyard Kipling’s in the comparatively untried fields of modern East India’s social or unsocial life and adventure, it is not improbable that but for the bending of youthful and observant eyes on British India, and on the lively or deserted camps where the victims of the California gold fever survived or perished, these admirable artists would not have become in a certain sense monopolists. Great is literary monopoly ! It breeds a thousand imitators, and each one has a following after his kind. Is the world not the richer far these ?

No one who knows Mr. Harte, and knew the California of his day, wonders that he left it as he did. Eastern editors were crying for his work. Cities vied with one another in the offer of tempting bait. When he turned his back on San Francisco and started for Boston, he began a tour that the greatest author of any age might have been proud of. It was a veritable ovation that swelled from sea to sea ; the classic sheep was sacrificed all along the route. I have often thought that if Bret Harte had met with a fatal accident during that transcontinental journey the world would have declared with one voice that the greatest genius of his time was lost to it.

His experience in New England weighs little in the balance with his experience in California ; his experience abroad even less. It was California, and early California, — let me say picturesque California, — that first appealed to him, and through him to all the civilized nations in their several tongues.

Of American authors, Bret Ilarte and Mark Twain have traveled farthest, and are likely to tarry longest. Whom would you substitute for these ? Whom could you ? In print each is as American as America, though the former has not been with us for a score of years and may never again revisit his native land. When he left California in 1871, he left it betimes; he took with him about all that was worth taking, and the California he once knew, and surely must have loved, lives forever in his pages. It no longer exists in fact; but for him, in another generation it would have been forgotten. Because he has penetration such as few possess, and exceptional fancy, imagination, and literary art, he has been thought untrue to nature ; those whom he has pictured would have no difficulty in recognizing themselves could they but see the types he has made his own. It has been said, too, that he repeats himself. He does ; so does spring and so does summer, — each is hut another spring, another summer ; but they are never twice alike, nor would we have them other than they are. Any one can vouch for Bret Harte’s truth to nature who knew San Francisco in the fifties, and is familiar with his civic and character sketches ; what is true of one page is true of all. It is the point of view in every case that determines to whom the page or the picture shall appeal, and whether favorably or unfavorably. The comprehensive edition of his works, prepared while he is yet alive and active, attests the world - wide interest in his work, and foreshadows its permanence.

Charles Warren Stoddard.