Born at Albany, New York, 25th August 1839. His father, a professor, dying early, Bret Harte was left to make his own way in life. He began his experiences in the rough romance of the Californian gold mines; later he took part in the Indian wars, turned to newspaper writing, shouldered his gun in the Civil War, and in 1864 became secretary of a branch of the U. S. Mint at San Francisco. In 1868 the “Overland Monthly” was started, and Bret Harte was given the editorship. In the second number of this appeared the short story that made Harte’s name known the world over. “The Luck of Roaring Camp” was too human a narrative for many minds, but the stronger natures turned to the writer as to a kinsman. After this his work was looked for everywhere. He was working in New York from 1870 to 1878; was U. S. Consul at Crefeld, Germany, from 1878 to 1880, then at Glasgow, Scotland, in the same capacity till 1885, when he definitely took to residence in London. As a whole his work is strong within certain limits, which, laid down in his first two or three tales, he never broke through. He lacked in too great a measure “general ideas;” his imagination could never get far from reality, so that the greater powers of the creative artist were to him impossible of achievement, yet this does not depreciate his great attainments. “The Outcast of Poker Flat,” “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” and many of his poems are hewed out of the very living heart of humanity, and will live while romance lives. Of his later prose works the more important are as follows: “Echoes of the Foothills” (1874); “Tales of the Argonauts” (1875); “Thankful Blossom” (1877); “The Twins of Table Mountain” (1879); “Maruja” (1885); “Snowbound at Eagle’s” (1886); “A Phyllis of the Sierras” (1888); “Mr. Jack Hamlin’s Mediation” (1899); “Under the Redwoods” (1901).

Personal

  A great reception—about 100 New York notables. I think I was most interested in Bret Harte. Tell Baynes I met him, and had a long talk with him,—a very gentlemanly quiet fellow.

  At the desk, surrounded by an incalculable visitation of Christmas cards, sits Bret Harte, the Bret Harte of actuality, a gentleman as far removed from the Bret Harte of popular fancy as is the St. James Club from Mount Shasta, or a Savoy Hotel supper from the cinder cuisine of a mining camp in the glorious days of ’49. Instead of being, as the reader usually conceives, one of the long-bearded, loose-jointed heroes of his Western Walhalla, he is a polished gentleman of medium height, with a curling gray mustache. In lieu of the recklessness of Western methods in dress, his attire exhibits a nicety of detail which, in a man whose dignity and sincerity were less impressive, would seem foppish. This quality, like his handwriting and other characteristic trifles, perceptibly assists one in grasping the main elements of a personality which is as harmonious as it is peculiar, and as unconventional as it is sensitive to fine shades, of whatever kind they may be. Over his cigar, with a gentle play of humor and a variety of unconscious gestures which are always graceful and never twice the same, he touches upon this very subject—the impressions made upon him by his first sight of gold-hunting in California, and the eye and mind which he brought to bear upon the novel scene.

  He was a slender, rather handsome young man with very black hair, and looked as Dickens did at his age. He was pathetically pleased to get rid of California, which he hated. He admired some wild daisies which decorated Mrs. Peterson’s always beautiful table, and showed them to his wife. He gave me such an idea of the dreariness, absence of color, and degradation of a mining camp that I never read one of his immortal stories that I do not seem to taste that dust-laden air. I had the pleasure during ten years to assist at lionizing this great genius, and he was so natural, simple, and charming that he became a familiar figure in my family. I met him in London at the height of his foreign fame, in 1884. White-haired and ruddy-faced, he had become a typical John Bull.

  Harte always manifested in his work that fastidiousness in choice of words which has characterized him ever since. It was humorously complained of him that he filled the newspaper-office waste-baskets with his rejected manuscripts and produced next to nothing for the printer. Once, assigned to the task of writing an obituary article that was not to exceed “two stickfuls” in length, he actually filled a wastebasket with fragments of “copy” which he tore up before he produced the requisite amount of matter…. In conversation among his fellows, Bret Harte was always one of the most delightful of talkers. I use here the past tense, for I do not know what a long residence in foreign parts may have done for our old friend. But with us in California he was a charming companion, with a perpetual flow of gentle humor and good spirits that fascinated his associates. Conversation in which he had part was never dull, and many a sparkling “feast of reason and flow of soul” can they recall who were comrades of the poet and story-teller in those far-off days.

  One feature that could not fail to strike Bret Harte’s associates was his strong attachment to the land of his birth. Throughout his long exile his love for and loyalty towards his fatherland never wavered. America was always “my country” with him; and I remember how he flushed with almost boyish pleasure when, in driving through some casual rural festivities, his quick eye noted a stray American flag among the display of bunting. At the time when there was some foolish talk of war between Britain and America, he, while deploring even the suggestion of such a catastrophe, earnestly avowed his intention of instantly returning to his own country should hostilities break out.

General

  Bret Harte’s genius is not unlike Rembrandt’s, so far as it is a matter of art. Take Miggles—Miggles telling her story at the feet of the paralytic Jim—take the description of his old face, with its solemn eyes; take the alternate gloom and light that hides or illuminates the group in Miggles’ cabin; and then consider the gleam and grace with which the portrait of that racy and heroic boy-woman is placed before you. Does it not touch your sense of the picturesque and is it not unexpected, and startling, and admirable, like a sketch of Rembrandt? But for the pathos, but for the “tears that rise in the heart and gather to the eyes,” where shall we find any homely art to be compared with that? Beauty in painting or sculpture may so touch a man. It did so touch Heine, at the feet of the Venus of Milo. It may be pathetic to us, as in Da Vinci’s wonderful heads. But no great plastic artist, no mere pictorial talent, is potent over the sources of our tears, as is the unheralded story-writer from the Western shores. In this he employs a means beyond the reach of Holbein or Hogarth…. Bret Harte has deepened and broadened our literary and moral sympathies; he has broken the sway of the artificial and conventional; he has substituted actualities for idealities—but actualities that manifest the grandeur of self-sacrifice, the beauty of love, the power of childhood, and the ascendancy of nature.

  In the region of pure poetry, he has given us some things we would not willingly part with; two or three clearly-outlined, fresh-tinted descriptive pieces,—such as “Madroño,” and “Grizzly;” and a few poems of tender sentiment,—“Dickens in Camp,” “The Pen of Starr King,” and the pensive, charming little reverie “To a Sea-bird.” But his best success as a poet has been, thus far, in that borderland between prose and poetry which combines the choicest features of both kingdoms…. Although by no means destitute of imagination, Mr. Harte belongs to the realistic rather than the ideal school of writers; his greatest success has been in describing whet he sees and knows, and his most striking characters are evidently drawn from life: “Oakhurst,” “Jack Hamlin,” “Tennessee’s Partner,” “Miggles,” “Mliss,” are all as clear and finished as photographs; and even many of his minor characters, such as “Yuba Bill,” “Sandy Morton,” “David Fagg,” and “McSnagley,” have all the faithfulness of portraits.

  Where our author really deserves hearty praise is in his “Poems in Dialect.” They are less often poems, strictly so-called, than humorous character-pieces illustrative of the wild life and the strange personages of the early Californian days. In some of these pieces—as in that which treats of the “heathen Chinee;” and of the sudden revulsion of feeling in the breast of Mr. Nye when he finds that the Chinee who was to be cheated is not altogether guileless, but can himself violate the moral law with a skill, effect, and sinfulness sickening to Mr. Nye’s Caucasian moral sense; and of the instant discovery and assertion by Mr. Nye of the politico-economical truth that “we are ruined by Chinee cheap labor;” and of the promptness and thoroughness with which he vindicates the moral and the economical law—in this and some of the other pieces, Mr. Harte not only jumps luckily with the popular thought and feeling of the moment, but proves himself a satirist with a keen eye, and a humorist with a light and sure hand, and a fine power of expression.

  Nevertheless he remains what he is—the Californian and the gold-digger. But the gold for which he has dug, and which he found, is not the gold in the bed of rivers,—not the gold in the veins of mountains; it is the gold of love, of goodness, of fidelity, of humanity, which even in rude and wild hearts,—even under the rubbish of vices and sins,—remains forever uneradicated from the human heart. That he there searched for this gold,—that he found it there and triumphantly exhibited it to the world,—that is his greatness and his merit. That it is which drew hearts to him wherever the language of Shakespeare, of Milton and Byron is spoken. And that it is which has made me, the old German poet, the translator of the young American colleague; and which has led me to-day to reach to him warmly and cordially my hand across the sea. Good luck, Bret Harte! Good luck, my gold-digger!

  What Harte’s repute and standing are in his own land need not now be told. Few writers of modern times have been more discussed; it were better if his critics had always been generous as well as just. But it would not be fair to close this little sketch without noting the fact that most of his works have found eager readers in other lands. English editions of his stories are popular and widely circulated. In Germany, the genial old poet, Ferdinand Freiligrath, has translated a volume of Harte’s prose tales, to which is prefixed a charming preface by the translator…. Th. Bentzon has charmingly introduced some of Harte’s California sketches to the French world of readers, and, in an article in the Revue des Deux Mondes, she has given at great length a critical analysis of the powers and genius of our favorite story-teller. Our French and German friends alike wrestle with the difficulties of the untranslatable; but, malgré their failure to master the dialect of the gold-digger, they reproduce admirably the delicate finish and felicitous manipulation of the author. Thus his genius has found expression in many languages, and the gentle, loving spirit which animates his works lives and walks in other lands beyond the sea.

  This is only equalled by the “Heathen Chinee.” This poet humorist of the Sierras, producing the Patois of the miner and the hunter of the Pacific slope, and drawing an economical lesson out of the game of euchre by the aid of Ah Sin, the pensive and child-like Celestial, has in it all the facetiousness of Dickens and of his Sairy Gamp in Truthful James, all the mischievous deviltry which Bill Nye could furnish, and all the roistering rowdyism of a scene in “Harry Lorrequer.” Besides, it has in it a moral which an Oriental story-teller would envy. It brings together the Orient and Occident of cunning fun. Withal, it has the element of exaggeration, without which no American humor seems to be possible.

  His subtility of ethical insight, his depth of sentiment, his power of solid characterization, and his pathetic and tragic force are as evident as his broad perception of the ludicrous side of things. In his California stories, as in some of his poems, he detects “the soul of goodness in things evil,” and represents the exact circumstances in which ruffians and profligates are compelled to feel that they have human hearts and spiritual natures. He is original not only in the ordinary sense of the word, but in the sense of discovering a new domain of literature, and of colonizing it by the creations of his own brain. Perhaps the immense popularity of some of his humorous poems, such as “The Heathen Chinee,” has not been favorable to a full recognition of his graver qualities of heart and imagination.

  The scene and society of this continent have found perhaps in the works of no writer of the land such graphic expression as in those of Bret Harte. It is true that Mr. Harte’s books describe the life of a remote region and of a rude frontier people. But that life was an extravaganza of the traits of our whole democratic society. It is the scenery and the society of the country, then, which are expressed in Mr. Harte’s books. Mr. Harte is a bad critic of his own writings; his humor is often feeble; he is very melodramatic; he writes an ill-conditioned style; he applies the phrases of the magazine to thoughts good enough to be well expressed. But he is a writer of marked genius, and has produced works which are as certain as any of his time and country to be read in the future. The only parts of Mr. Harte’s poetry which are of value are the dialect poems, and those other poems, not in dialect, which yet preserve the spirit of the dialect poems. The rest of his verse has not much merit…. The gifts of Bret Harte are vivid imagination, color, dramatic dialogue, power to attract and power to entertain, a good sense of nature, a lively and daring humor, and considerable keenness of perception. His power of dialogue is surpassed by no living writer. The similitude of the talk of his characters to real speech is apparent in all his books. A few words sketch for us Miggles as his vivid fancy sees her, and then she sits down and talks exactly as such a woman would talk.

  Mr. Harte’s fame in this quarter rests chiefly upon his California poems. They make but a small volume, covering about one-third of the complete edition of his poetical works. They are notably narrow in scope, but they bear witness beyond all question to the originality of his powers. They are the unique product on which his genius has stamped the spirit of the period and place that gave them birth. Their power lies in qualities which, as here grouped, were entirely new with him. They echo the opinions of an acute—and in some cases slightly snobbish—thinker with regard to social solecisms; they are satires that cut at the way in which public opinion was molded by the ignorant, the vulgar, and the shoddy. The criticism was just, but often—as on the Chinese question—it was not the popular view, and required some decision to advance it. Again, these dialect poems are the best metrical exposition of western character in its actions, speech, deportment, and odd mingling of crudeness and wickedness, with the real virtues of delicacy and honor. Never was there a more unpromising poetical field; but these pastorals are as true to California as the “Biglow Papers” are to Yankee life and manners…. His American poetry will always be overshadowed by his Californian verse; but he has shown himself quite equal to delighting us all in English of perfect saneness and sobriety. His earlier work—the Spanish legends and the war lyrics—are noticeable for their taste and vigor. He has a free hand as a poet. Satire, dialect verse and humor, seem to flow from him as naturally as his most delicate fancies. He seldom becomes subjective; it is not consistent with his mental equipment; and he does not always make truth the object of his serious verse.

  It will be remembered how like a conquering hero Bret Harte came from California in the summer of 1871. An enterprising firm in Boston had caught the gleam of a new light, a new Dickens in verse and story, and with the most magnificent offers they tempted him East. His coming was like a royal progress. Almost without a hint from these enterprising wise men of the East, all flocked to welcome the new star. And the star was wonderfully luminous, equally brilliant in prose and verse. It flashed from a region little known, and yet peculiarly fascinating to the sober people of the eastern sea-board.

  That the public is always on the alert for what is both good and novel was illustrated by Bret Harte’s leap into favor with his portraitures of a new and scenic world. His prose idyls of the camp and coast, even more than his ballads, were the vouchers of a poet; familiar as the verse at once became, it is far less creative than the stories. The serious portion of it, excepting a few dialect pieces,—“Jim,” “In the Tunnel,” etc.,—is much like the verse of Longfellow, Whittier, and Taylor; the humorous poems, though never wanting in some touch of nature, are apt to be what we do not recognize as American. But of either class it may be said that it is, like the rhyming of his master, Thackeray, the overflow of a rare genius, whose work must be counted among the treasures of the language. Mr. Harte may be termed the founder, and thus far has been the most brilliant exemplar, of our transcontinental school.

  Of contemporary Americans, if I may be frank, I prefer the verse of Mr. Bret Harte, verse with so many tunes and turns, as comic as the “Heathen Chinee,” as tender as the lay of the ship with its crew of children that slipped its moorings in the fog. To me it seems that Mr. Bret Harte’s poems have never (at least in this country) been sufficiently esteemed.

  Bret Harte plays always one tune, although he pitches it in many keys, and good as it is, it is perhaps becoming a little wearisome. He expounds an important half-truth which has been too much neglected: that as being is greater than seeming, appearances are often deceitful; under the most repellent exterior a soul of goodness may exist. But if we study him over much, we may become victims of the delusion that any person whose dress and manners are respectable, is, to say the least, a suspicious character, while drunken and profane ruffians are the saints of the earth.

  His own style, as finally formed, leaves little to be desired; it is clear, flexible, virile, laconic and withal graceful. Its full meaning is given to every word, and occasionally, like all original masters of prose, he imparts into a familiar word a racier significance than it had possessed before. His genius is nowhere more unmistakable than in the handling of his stories, which is terse to the point of severity, yet wholly adequate; everything necessary to the matter in hand is told, but with an economy of word and phrase that betokens a powerful and radical conception. Nothing in his plots or characters is conventional; they are aspects of genuine life, selected and seen with surpassing skill and insight.

  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.”… 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…. Of American authors, Bret Harte and Mark Twain have traveled farthest, and are likely to tarry longest. Whom would you substitute for these?

  During the earlier period of his literary career, when his message to the world was as yet untold and burning within him, Harte as often expressed himself in poetry as in prose, and indeed his first prose sketches in their intensity, their conception, and workmanship are very near to poetry. His poems were innovations as truly original in conception and execution as they were in subject and theme. They are mostly monologues written in the dialect of the mines, full of slang and exclamation. There is little variety. A few stock characters and a few incidents are used over and over again. The wit is sometimes forced and the humor overdrawn. But nevertheless there is in them the indefinable charm of genius. Here and there are lyrics that, judged by any standard, are faultless gems.

  Bret Harte got his California and his Californians by unconscious absorption, and put both of them into his tales alive. But when he came from the Pacific to the Atlantic and tried to do Newport life from study—conscious observation—his failure was absolutely monumental.

  Much objection has been raised to some of Bret Harte’s stories on the ground of their supposed immoral tendency. It must be admitted by his most ardent admirers that he decidedly prefers as heroes and heroines of his tales people of shady antecedents,—social outcasts preferred, but anybody who is in the habit of daily shattering a few of the commandments will answer his purpose…. The real objection to Bret Harte’s stories does not rest on moral, but on artistic grounds. The trouble with his villains is not that they are too bad, but that they are not bad enough,—that is to say, they are not real. Such villains never were on sea or land outside of his stories, unless we except the Bowery stage in the melodrama of “ye olden time.” There is a glare of the footlights, an atmosphere of the theatre, about too many of these tales,—not the best of them, for the best work of Mr. Harte is free from this defect, and ranks among the choicest in recent American literature.

  In the case of the more objective heroines of such a writer as Bret Harte, one recalls out of the whole number of his more conventionalized types, his Miggles, who belongs rather with the edifying Magdalenes of the mining communities than with the sinuous and ophidian group of his politer ladies, too recognizably descended from the heroines of Charles Reade. Neither sort forms the forte of a writer who stamped his peculiar literary personality upon the fancy of his generation so vigorously, and who still keeps so large a public faithful to him. He is at his strongest with his men.

  Over thirty years ago Bret Harte’s “Luck of Roaring Camp,” and other sketches of California miners, gamblers, stage robbers, of the motley, lawless life generally in the gulches and gold fields, were welcomed with general delight, very like the later reception of Kipling’s first stories. While his years have more than doubled, Mr. Harte, through one decade spent in the Eastern states and more than one in England, has worked the same vein. Readers he must still find, in other lands at least; but his very name is now hardly familiar to our boys’ ears. His verse, serious or comic, is still less remembered to-day, and yet “Ah Sin” is probably the last example of a poem that set our whole people laughing. It perceptibly affected public opinion on a burning question, that of the Chinese Exclusion Bill. There is no dangerous immorality in Mr. Harte’s stories. But they pall upon us at last, because, after the novelty wears off, their melodramatic unreality forces itself even upon the most boyish mind.

  There are more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons which we could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte. But one supreme reason stands out in a certain general superiority to them all—a reason which may be stated in three propositions, united in a common conclusion: first, that he was a genuine American; second, that he was a genuine humorist; and, third, that he was not an American humorist. Bret Harte had his own peculiar humor, but it had nothing in particular to do with American humor. American humor has its own peculiar excellence, but it has nothing in particular to do with Bret Harte. American humor is purely exaggerated; Bret Harte’s humor was sympathetic and analytical.