The Short-story Part 26

PARTY-COLORED MERRY ANDREW: an old term for a clown dressed in garments having several colors. FALSTAFF: an important character in several of Shakespeare's plays. He is always represented as fat and ridiculous. DON QUIXOTE: the chief character of the celebrated Spanish satire "Don Quixote" (1605) by Cervantes. Don Quixote is a simple-minded man, whose head has been turned by reading the extravagant romances of chivalry then current, in which knights ride forth to redress wrongs. He feels himself called to such a mission and, armed with various ridiculous makeshifts and accompanied by a humorous squire, Sancho Panza, whose sayings have achieved an immortality nearly equal to his master's doings, he sallies out upon a course of adventures, which caused the world to laugh the dying remnants of false chivalry into its grave.

COLONEL JOLIFFE: an imaginary character. WHIG PRINCIPLES: the people belonging to the patriotic party in the colonies were called Whigs.

99. REV. MATHER BYLES: an actual person (1706-1788). He was imprisoned in 1777 as a Tory; that is, as an adherent of the king. WIG AND BAND: Protestant clergymen of that day wore wigs and a strip of linen, called a band, placed about the neck with the ends hanging down in front.

102. REGICIDE JUDGES: in the first part of the seventeenth century the people of England became dissatisfied with their king, Charles I, because of his illegal acts. They revolted, captured the king, put him on trial, and executed him, January 30, 1649. The judges are called regicide, because they tried and condemned a king. The royal party spoke of him as a martyr to the cause.

110. WHEN THE TRUTH-TELLING ACCENTS, etc.: Hawthorne has tried in this last paragraph to emphasize the contrast between the rather sordid real and the imaginary. He is entirely too successful, because he spoils the effect of the story--something for which Poe strove with such singleness of purpose as to permit of no such ending.

NOTES TO "THE BIRTHMARK"

This story was first published in the March, 1843, number of _The Pioneer_, a magazine edited by James Russell Lowell, and was republished in "Mosses from an Old Manse" in 1846. It belongs to the "moral philosophic" group of Hawthorne's writings (see Introduction).

PAGE 112. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY: an old term for physics. SPIRITUAL AFFINITY: in chemistry certain elements show a tendency to combine with others, so an attraction of one human spirit for another, leading generally to marriage, is often called a spiritual affinity.

114. EVE OF POWERS: Hiram Powers (1805-1873). An American sculptor whose statue of Eve is one of his noted works.

118. PYGMALION: in Greek mythology a sculptor who made such a beautiful statue of a woman that he fell in love with it, whereupon in answer to his prayer the G.o.ddess Aphrodite gave it life.

121. OPTICAL PHENOMENA: sights which cheat the eye into believing them real.

122. CORROSIVE ACID: a powerful chemical which eats away substance.

DYNASTY OF THE ALCHEMISTS: the succession of the early investigators of chemistry who spent most of their energy in seeking what was called the "universal solvent" which would turn every substance into gold. These men were sometimes legitimate investigators, but often cheats who made money out of foolish people. At one time they became so numerous in London that laws were pa.s.sed against them, but it took Jonson's play "The Alchemist" to laugh away their hold.

123. ELIXIR VITae: (Arabic, _el iksir_, plus Latin, _vitae_) literally, _the philosopher's stone of life_. Another fad of the alchemists.

125. ALBERTUS MAGNUS: "Albert the Great" (1193-1280), a member of the Dominican order of monks. CORNELIUS AGRIPPA: (1486-1535) a student of magic. PARACELSUS: Philippus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493-1541), a physician and alchemist. FRIAR WHO CREATED THE PROPHETIC BRAZEN HEAD: the legendary "Famous History of Friar Bacon" records the construction of such a thing. TRANSACTIONS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY: the volumes containing the discussions of the Royal Society and also the papers read before it. This a.s.sociation was founded about 1660 for the advancement of science.

BRET HARTE

Francis Bret Harte, or as he later called himself Bret Harte, was born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1836. He came of mixed English, Dutch, and Hebrew stock. The family led a wandering life, full of privations, till the death of the father, a schoolmaster, in 1845. In 1853 the widow moved to California, where she married Colonel Andrew Williams. Thither the son followed her in 1854.

As tutor, express messenger, printer, drug clerk, miner, and editor he spent the three years till 1857, when he settled in San Francisco, where he became a printer in the office of _The Golden Era_. Soon he began to contribute articles to the paper, and was promoted to the editorial room. In 1862 he married Miss Anna Griswold, and in 1864 he was appointed secretary of the California mint. He continued writing, and in the same year was engaged on a weekly, _The Californian_. In 1867 the first collection of his poems was published under the t.i.tle of "The Lost Galleon and Other Tales." When _The Overland Monthly_ was founded in the next year Bret Harte became its first editor. To its second number he contributed "Luck of Roaring Camp." Though received with much question in California, it met a most enthusiastic reception in the East, the columns of _The Atlantic Monthly_ being thrown open to him. This success he followed six months later by another, "The Outcasts of Poker Flat."

His next great success was the poem "Plain Language from Truthful James," which was in the September, 1870, number of the magazine. It made him famous though he attached little importance to it. In this year he was made Professor of Recent Literature in the University of California.

Debt, friction with the new owner of _The Overland_, and a growing lack of sympathy with the late settlers, caused Bret Harte to leave California in 1871. He came East and devoted himself entirely to writing, his work being published for one year altogether in _The Atlantic Monthly_. But his ever recurring financial difficulties becoming acute, he did some lecturing in addition. In 1876 appeared his only novel, "Gabriel Conroy," which was not a success. His money difficulties continuing, his friends came to the rescue and secured his appointment as United States Consul at Crefeld, Germany. Leaving his wife, whom he never saw again, he sailed in 1878. At this post he continued for two years, his life being varied by a lecture tour in England. In 1880 he was transferred to the more lucrative consulship at Glasgow.

In Glasgow he remained for five years, writing, meeting some eminent writers, and visiting different parts of the country. In 1885, a new President having taken office, he was superseded in his consulship. He then settled in London, devoting himself to writing with only an occasional trip away, once as far as Switzerland. In 1901 he died.

REFERENCES

BIOGRAPHY: MERWIN: The Life of Bret Harte.

PEMBERTON: Life of Bret Harte.

CRITICISM: WOODBERRY: America in Literature.

NOTES TO "THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT"

This story was first published in _The Overland Monthly_ of San Francisco in 1869.

PAGE 134. POKER FLAT: an actual place in Sierra County, California. The name is typical of a large cla.s.s of western geographic names bestowed by rough uneducated men when the West was new. MORAL ATMOSPHERE: these western mining towns in 1850 in a region which had just become a part of the United States as a result of the War with Mexico, were largely unorganized and without regularly const.i.tuted government. The bad element did as it pleased until the better people got tired. Then a "vigilance committee" would be organized, which would either drive out the undesirables, as in this story, or would execute the entire lot.

135. SLUICE ROBBER: one way of separating gold from the gravel and sand in which it is found is to put the mixture into a slanting trough, called a sluice, through which water is run. As these sluices were sometimes of considerable length, it was not a difficult matter for a man to rob one.

136. PARTHIAN: the Parthians inhabited a part of ancient Persia. It was their custom when retreating to continue to shoot arrows at their enemy.

142. COVENANTER: one of that body of Scotchmen who had bound themselves by a solemn covenant or agreement in the seventeenth century to uphold the Presbyterian faith. This act required force of character, since it was in defiance of King Charles I, and this force was shown in the vigor of their hymns.

144. ILIAD: the ancient Greek epic poem, ascribed to Homer, which tells the story of the war of the Greeks against Troy. ALEXANDER POPE (1688-1744), an English poet, who rather freely translated the poem.

147. DERRINGER: a pistol, so called from the name of the inventor.

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON

Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson, the son of a man of some means, was born in Edinburgh, November 30, 1850. The _Louis_ form of his second name was merely a caprice in spelling adopted by the boy, and never altered the p.r.o.nunciation of the original by his family. An only child, afflicted with poor health, he was an object of solicitude, notably to his nurse, Alison Cunningham, to whose loving devotion the world owes an unpayable debt. Stevenson's appreciation of her faithful ministrations is beautifully voiced in the dedication of his "A Child's Garden of Verses"

(1885). After some schooling, made more or less desultory by ill-health, he attended Edinburgh University. The family profession was lighthouse engineering, and though he gave it enough attention to receive a medal for a suggested improvement on a lighthouse lamp, his heart was not in engineering, so he compromised with his father on law. He was called to the Scottish bar and rode on circuit with the court, but, becoming master of his destiny, he abandoned law for literature.

Literature was the serious purpose of his life and to it he gave an ardor of industry which is amazing. He worked at the mastery of its technique for years, till he gained that felicity of expression which has made his writings cla.s.sical. His earliest publications were essays, often inspired by his trips abroad in search of health. On one of these in France in 1876 he met his future wife, Mrs. Osbourne, an American.

Other such trips are recorded in "An Inland Voyage" (1878) and in "Travels with a Donkey" (1879). In 1879 he came to America, travelling in a rough way to California, an experience made use of in his book "An Amateur Emigrant." As a consequence of this trip, he fell desperately ill in San Francisco, where he was nursed by Mrs. Osbourne, whom he married in 1880. His convalescence in an abandoned mining camp is recorded in "The Silverado Squatters" (1883). Returning to Scotland, they found the climate impossible for his weak lungs, consequently they tried various places on the Continent. Throughout his ill-health he heroically kept at work, publishing from time to time books of essays and short-stories, such as "Virginibus Puerisque" (1881) and "New Arabian Nights" (1882), parts of which had already appeared in magazines, and in 1883 his first popular success, "Treasure Island."

In 1887 his father died and in the next year he came again to America, sojourning at various places, among them Saranac Lake, and then voyaging in a sailing vessel, _The Casco_, in the Pacific. It was not his ill-health alone that kept him on the move, but an adventurous spirit as well. Finally the family settled at Apia, Samoa, the climate of which he found remarkably salubrious. There he could work even physically without the long spells of illness to which he had been accustomed all his life.

He was able to take an intense interest in the unhappy politics of the islands, endeavoring to alleviate the unfortunate condition of the natives, who pa.s.sionately returned his interest. They built for him to his house a road to which they gave the significant name of "The Road of the Loving Heart," and they celebrated his story-telling gift by the name "Tusitala," the teller of tales. His efforts for Samoa resulted in a book ent.i.tled "A Foot Note to History" (1893), which showed the troubled condition of the islands. In this place, ruling over a large retinue of servants like a Scottish chieftain over his clan, he lived for three years, turning out much work and producing half of that most wonderful novel, "Weir of Hermiston," which bid fair to be his greatest achievement. Death came suddenly in 1894 from the bursting of a blood vessel in the brain, thus cheating his lifelong enemy, tuberculosis.

Besides "Weir," he left almost completed another novel, "St. Ives,"

which was concluded by Quiller-Couch and published in 1898.

On a high peak of Vaea he lies beneath a stone bearing the epitaph written by himself:

"Under the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me lie.

Glad did I live and gladly die, And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me: _Here he lies where he longed to be; Home is the sailor, home from the sea, And the hunter home from the hill_."

REFERENCES

BIOGRAPHY: BALFOUR: Life of Robert Louis Stevenson.

RALEIGH: R. L. Stevenson.

CRITICISM: GENUNG: Stevenson's Att.i.tude toward Life.

PHELPS: Modern Novelists.

NOTES ON "THE SIRE DE MALeTROIT'S DOOR"

This story of dramatic interest, which contains, moreover, much psychologic interest, was first published in _Temple Bar_, January, 1878, and reprinted in the volume "New Arabian Nights" in 1882.