A Backward Glance at Eighty Part 4

He has been misjudged as to character. He was a remarkable personality, who interpreted an era of unusual interest, vital and picturesque, with a result unparalleled in literary annals. When he died in England in 1902 the English papers paid him very high tribute. The _London Spectator_ said of him: "No writer of the present day has struck so powerful and original a note as he has sounded." This is a very unusual acknowledgment from a source not given to the superlative, and fills us with wonder as to what manner of man and what sort of training had led to it.

Causes are not easily determined, but they exist and function. Accidents rarely if ever happen. Heredity and experience very largely account for results. What is their testimony in this particular case?

Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, February 25, 1836. His father was a highly educated instructor in Greek, of English-Jewish descent. His mother was an Ostrander, a cultivated and fine character of Dutch descent. His grandmother on his father's side was Catherine Brett.

He had an elder brother and two younger sisters. The boys were voracious readers and began Shakespeare when six, adding d.i.c.kens at seven. Frank developed an early sense of humor, burlesquing the baldness of his primer and mimicking the recitations of some of his fellow pupils when he entered school. He was studious and very soon began to write. At eleven he sent a poem to a weekly paper and was a little proud when he showed it to the family in print. When they heartlessly pointed out its flaws he was less hilarious.

His father died when he was very young and he owed his training to his mother. He left school at thirteen and was first a lawyer's clerk and later found work in a counting-room. He was self-supporting at sixteen.

In 1853 his mother married Colonel Andrew Williams, an early mayor of Oakland, and removed to California. The following year Bret and his younger sister, Margaret, followed her, arriving in Oakland in March, 1854.

He found the new home pleasant. The relations with his cultivated stepfather were congenial and cordial, but he suffered the fate of most untrained boys. He was fairly well educated, but he had no trade or profession. He was bright and quick, but remunerative employment was not readily found, and he did not relish a clerkship. For a time he was given a place in a drugstore. Some of his early experiences are embalmed in "How Reuben Allen Saw Life" and in "Bohemian Days." In the latter he says: "I had been there a week,--an idle week, spent in listless outlook for employment, a full week, in my eager absorption of the strange life around me and a photographic sensitiveness to certain scenes and incidents of those days, which stand out in my memory today as freshly as on the day they impressed me."

It was a satisfaction that he found some congenial work. He wrote for _Putnam's_ and the _Knickerbocker_.

In 1856, when he was twenty, he went to Alamo, in the San Ramon Valley, as tutor in an interesting family. He found the experience agreeable and valuable.

A letter to his sister Margaret, written soon after his arrival, shows a delightful relation between them and warm affection on his part. It tells in a felicitous manner of the place, the people, and his experiences. He had been to a camp-meeting and was struck with the quaint, old-fashioned garb of the girls, seeming to make the ugly ones uglier and the pretty ones prettier. It was raining when he wrote and he felt depressed, but he sent his love in the form of a charming bit of verse wherein a tear was borne with the flowing water to testify to his tender regard for his "peerless sister." This letter, too personal for publication, his sister lately read to me, and it was a revelation of the matchless style so early acquired. In form it seemed perfect--not a superfluous or an ill-chosen word. Every sentence showed rhythm and balance, flowing easily and pleasantly from beginning to end, leaving an impression of beauty and harmony, and testifying to a kindly, gentle nature, with an admiring regard for his seventeen-year-old sister.

From Alamo he seems to have gone directly to Tuolumne County, and it must have been late in 1856. His delightful sketch "How I Went to the Mines" is surely autobiographical. He says: "I had been two years in California before I ever thought of going to the mines, and my initiation into the vocation of gold-digging was partly compulsory." He refers to "the little pioneer settlement school, of which I was the somewhat youthful, and, I fear, not over-competent master." What he did after the school-teaching episode he does not record. He was a stage messenger at one time. How long he remained in and around the mines is not definitely known, but it seems clear that in less than a year of experience and observation he absorbed the life and local color so thoroughly that he was able to use it with almost undiminished freshness for forty years.

It was early in 1857 that Bret Harte came to Humboldt County to visit his sister Margaret, and for a brief time and to a limited extent our lives touched. He was twenty-one and I was sixteen, so there was little intimacy, but he interested and attracted me as a new type of manhood.

He bore the marks of good breeding, education, and refinement. He was quiet of manner, kindly but not demonstrative, with a certain reserve and aloofness. He was of medium height, rather slight of figure, with strongly marked features and an aquiline nose. He seemed clever rather than forcible, and presented a pathetic figure as of one who had gained no foothold on success. He had a very pleasant voice and a modest manner, and never talked of himself. He was always the gentleman, exemplary as to habits, courteous and good-natured, but a trifle aristocratic in bearing. He was dressed in good taste, but was evidently in need of income. He was willing to do anything, but with little ability to help himself. He was simply untrained for doing anything that needed doing in that community.

He found occasional work in the drugstore, and for a time he had a small private school. His surviving pupils speak warmly of his sympathy and kindness. He had little mechanical ability. I recall seeing him try to build a fence one morning. He bravely dug postholes, but they were pretty poor, and the completed fence was not so very straight. He was genial and uncomplaining, and he made a few good friends. He was an agreeable guest, and at our house was fond of a game of whist. He was often facetious, with a neatness that was characteristic. One day, on a stroll, we pa.s.sed a very primitive new house that was wholly dest.i.tute of all ornaments or tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, even without eaves. It seemed modeled after a packing-box. "That," he remarked, "must be of the _Iowan_ order of architecture."

He was given to teasing, and could be a little malicious. A proud and ambitious schoolteacher had married a well-off but decidedly c.o.c.kney Englishman, whose aspirates could be relied upon to do the expected.

Soon after the wedding, Harte called and cleverly steered the conversation on to music and songs, finally expressing great fondness for "Kathleen Mavourneen," but professing to have forgotten the words.

The bridegroom swallowed the bait with avidity. "Why," said he, "they begin with 'The 'orn of the 'unter is 'eard on the 'ill.'" F.B.

stroked his Dundrearies while his dark eyes twinkled. The bride's eyes flashed ominously, but there seemed to be nothing she felt like saying.

In October, 1857, he removed to the Liscom ranch in the suburbs at the head of the bay and became the tutor of two boys, fourteen and thirteen years of age. He had a forenoon session of school and in the afternoon enjoyed hunting on the adjacent marshes. For his convenience in keeping run of the lessons given, he kept a brief diary, and it has lately been found. It is of interest both in the little he records and from the significant omissions. It reveals a very simple life of a clever, kindly, clean young man who did his work, enjoyed his outdoor recreation, read a few good books, and generally "retired at 9 1/2 P.M."

He records sending letters to various publications. On a certain day he wrote the first lines of "Dolores." A few days later he finished it, and mailed it to the _Knickerbocker_.

He wrote and rewrote a story, "What Happened at Mendocino." What happened to the story does not appear. He went to church generally, and some of the sermons were good and others "vapid and trite." Once in a while he goes to a dance, but not to his great satisfaction. He didn't dance particularly well. He tells of a Christmas dinner that he helped his sister to prepare. Something made him dissatisfied with himself and he bewails his melancholy and gloomy forebodings that unfit him for rational enjoyment and cause him to be a spectacle for "G.o.ds and men."

He adds: "Thermometer of my spirit on Christmas day, 1857, 9 A.M., 40; temperature, 12 A.M., 60; 3 P.M., 80; 6 P.M., 20 and falling rapidly; 9 P.M., at zero; 1 A.M., 20 below."

His entries were brief and practical. He did not write to express his feelings.

At the close of 1857 he indulged in a brief retrospect, and an emphatic statement of his determination for the future.

After referring to the fact that he was a tutor at a salary of twenty-five dollars a month and board, and that a year before he was unemployed, at the close he writes: "In these three hundred and sixty-five days I have again put forth a feeble essay toward fame and perhaps fortune. I have tried literature, albeit in a humble way. I have written some pa.s.sable prose and it has been successfully published. The conviction is forced on me by observation, and not by vain enthusiasm, that I am fit for nothing else. Perhaps I may succeed; if not, I can at least make the trial. Therefore I consecrate this year, or as much as G.o.d may grant for my services, to honest, heartfelt, sincere labor and devotion to this occupation. G.o.d help me! May I succeed!"

Harte profited by his experience in tutoring my two boy friends, gaining local color quite unlike that of the Sierra foothills. Humboldt is also on the grand scale and its physical characteristics and its type of manhood were fresh and inspiring.

His familiarity with the marsh and the sloughs is shown in "The Man on the Beach" and the "Dedlow Marsh Stories," and this affords fine opportunity for judging of the part played by knowledge and by imagination in his literary work. His descriptions are photographic in their accuracy. The flight of a flock of sandpipers, the flowing tides, the white line of the bar at the mouth of the bay--all are exact. But the locations and relations irrelevant to the story are wholly ignored.

The characters and happenings are purely imaginary. He is the artist using his experiences and his fancy as his colors, and the minimum of experience and small observation suffice. His perception of character is marvelous. He pictures the colonel, his daughters, the spruce lieutenant, and the Irish deserter with such familiarity that the reader would think that he had spent most of his life in a garrison, and his ability to portray vividly life in the mines, where his actual experience was so very slight, is far better understood.

Many of the occurrences of those far-away days have faded from my mind, but one of them, of considerable significance to two lives, is quite clear. Uniontown had been the county-seat, and there the _Humboldt Times_ was published; but Eureka, across the bay, had outgrown her older sister and captured both the county-seat and the only paper in the county. In frantic effort to sustain her failing prestige Uniontown projected a rival paper and the _Northern Californian_ was spoken into being. My father was a half owner, and I coveted the humble position of printer's devil. One journeyman could set the type, and on Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day, respectively, run off on a hand-press the outside and the inside of the paper, but a boy or a low-priced man was needed to roll the forms and likewise to distribute the type. I looked upon it as the first rung on the ladder of journalism, and I was about to put my foot thereon when the pathetic figure of Bret Harte presented itself applying for the job, causing me to put my foot on my hopes instead. He seemed to want it and need it so much more than I did that I turned my hand to other pursuits, while he mounted the ladder with cheerful alacrity and skipped up several rungs, very promptly learning to set type and becoming a very acceptable a.s.sistant editor.

In a community where popular heroes are apt to be loud and aggressive, the quiet man who thinks more than he talks is adjudged effeminate.

Harte was always modest, and boasting was foreign to his nature; so he was thought devoid of spirit and strength. But occasion brought out the unsuspected. There had been a long and trying Indian war in and around Humboldt. The feeling against the red men was very bitter. It culminated in a wanton and cowardly attack on a tribe of peaceful Indians encamped on an island opposite Eureka, and men, women, and children were ruthlessly killed. Harte was temporarily in charge of the paper and he denounced the outrage in unmeasured terms. The better part of the community sustained him, but a violent minority resented his strictures and he was seriously threatened and in no little danger. Happily he escaped, but the incident resulted in his return to San Francisco. The ma.s.sacre occurred on February 5, 1860, which fixes the approximate time of Harte's becoming identified with San Francisco.

His experience was of great advantage to him in that he had learned to do something for which there was a demand. He could not earn much as a compositor, but his wants were simple and he could earn something. He soon secured a place on the _Golden Era_, and it became the doorway to his career. He was soon transferred to the editorial department and contributed freely.

For four years he continued on the _Golden Era_. These were years of growth and increasing accomplishment. He did good work and made good friends. Among those whose interest he awakened were Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont and Thomas Starr King. Both befriended and encouraged him. In the critical days when California hung in the balance between the North and the South, and Starr King, by his eloquence, fervor, and magnetism, seemed to turn the scale, Bret Harte did his part in support of the friend he loved. Lincoln had called for a hundred thousand volunteers, and at a ma.s.s meeting Harte contributed a n.o.ble poem, "The Reveille,"

which thrillingly read by Starr King brought the mighty audience to its feet with cheers for the Union. He wrote many virile patriotic poems at this period.

In March, 1864, Starr King, of the glowing heart and golden tongue, preacher, patriot, and hero, fell at his post, and San Francisco mourned him and honored him as seldom falls to the lot of man. At his funeral the Federal authorities ordered the firing of a salute from the forts in the harbor, an honor, so far as I know, never before accorded a private citizen.

Bret Harte wrote a poem of rare beauty in expression of his profound grief and his heartfelt appreciation:

RELIEVING GUARD.

Came the relief. "What, sentry, ho!

How pa.s.sed the night through thy long waking?"

"Cold, cheerless, dark--as may befit The hour before the dawn is breaking."

"No sight? no sound?" "No; nothing save The plover from the marshes calling, And in yon western sky, about An hour ago, a star was falling."

"A star? There's nothing strange in that."

"No, nothing; but, above the thicket, Somehow it seemed to me that G.o.d Somewhere had just relieved a picket."

This is not only good poetry; it reveals deep and fine feeling.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FRANCIS BRET HARTE]

Through Starr King's interest, his parishioner Robert B. Swain, Superintendent of the Mint, had early in 1864 appointed Harte as his private secretary, at a salary of two hundred dollars a month, with duties that allowed considerable leisure. This was especially convenient, as a year or so before he had married, and additional income was indispensable.

In May, 1864, Harte left the _Golden Era_, joining Charles Henry Webb and others in a new literary venture, the _Californian_. It was a brilliant weekly. Among the contributors were Mark Twain, Charles Warren Stoddard, and Prentice Mulford. Harte continued his delightful "Condensed Novels" and contributed poems, stories, sketches, and book reviews. "The Society on the Stanislaus," "John Brown of Gettysburg,"

and "The Pliocene Skull" belong to this period.

In the "Condensed Novels" Harte surpa.s.sed all parodists. With clever burlesque, there was both appreciation and subtle criticism. As Chesterton says, "Bret Harte's humor was sympathetic and a.n.a.lytical. The wild, sky-breaking humor of America has its fine qualities, but it must in the nature of things be deficient in two qualities--reverence and sympathy--and these two qualities were knit into the closest texture of Bret Harte's humor."

At this time Harte lived a quiet domestic life. He wrote steadily. He loved to write, but he was also obliged to. Literature is not an overgenerous paymaster, and with a growing family expenses tend to increase in a larger ratio than income.

Harte's sketches based on early experiences are interesting and amusing. His life in Oakland was in many ways pleasant, but he evidently retained some memories that made him enjoy indulging in a sly dig many years after. He gives the pretended result of scientific investigation made in the far-off future as to the great earthquake that totally engulfed San Francisco. The escape of Oakland seemed inexplicable, but a celebrated German geologist ventured to explain the phenomenon by suggesting that "there are some things that the earth cannot swallow."

My last recollection of Harte, of a purely personal nature, was of an occurrence in 1866, when he was dramatic critic of the _Morning Call_ at the time I was doing a little reporting on the same paper. It happened that a benefit was arranged for some charity. "Nan, the Good-for-Nothing," was to be given by a number of amateurs. The _Nan_ asked me to play _Tom_, and I had insufficient firmness to decline.

After the play, when my face was reasonably clean, I dropped into the _Call_ office, yearning for a word of commendation from Harte. I thought he knew that I had taken the part, but he would not give me the satisfaction of referring to it. Finally I mentioned, casually like, that I was _Tom_, whereat he feigned surprise, and remarked in his pleasant voice, "Was that you? I thought they had sent to some theater and hired a supe."

In July, 1868, A. Roman & Co. launched the _Overland Monthly_, with Harte as editor. He took up the work with eager interest. He named the child, planned its every feature, and chose his contributors. It was a handsome publication, modeled, in a way, on the _Atlantic Monthly,_ but with a flavor and a character all its own. The first number was attractive and readable, with articles of varied interest by Mark Twain, Noah Brooks, Charles Warren Stoddard, William C. Bartlett, T.H. Rearden, Ina Coolbrith, and others--a brilliant galaxy for any period. Harte contributed "San Francisco from the Sea."

Mark Twain, long after, alluding to this period in his life, pays this characteristic acknowledgment: "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 favor in the eyes of even some of the decentest people in the land."

The first issue of the _Overland_ was well received, but the second sounded a note heard round the world. The editor contributed a story--"The Luck of Roaring Camp"--that was hailed as a new venture in literature. It was so revolutionary that it shocked an estimable proofreader, and she sounded the alarm. The publishers were timid, but the gentle editor was firm. When it was found that it must go in or he would go out, it went--and he stayed. When the conservative and dignified _Atlantic_ wrote to the author soliciting something like it, the publishers were rea.s.sured.

Harte had struck ore. Up to this time he had been prospecting. He had early found color and followed promising stringers. He had opened some fair pockets, but with the explosion of this blast he had laid bare the true vein, and the ore a.s.sayed well. It was high grade, and the fissure was broad.

"The Luck of Roaring Camp" was the first of a series of stories depicting the picturesque life of the early days which made California known the world over and gave it a romantic interest enjoyed by no other community. They were fresh and virile, original in treatment, with real men and women using a new vocabulary, with humor and pathos delightfully blended. They moved on a stage beautifully set, with a background of heroic grandeur. No wonder that California and Bret Harte became familiar household words. When one reflects on the fact that the exposure to the life depicted had occurred more than ten years before, from very brief experience, the wonder is incomprehensibly great.