Born in Wabash Dist., Ind., Nov. 10, 1841; removed with parents to Ore., 1850; mined in Calif.; returned to Ore., 1860; studied law; express messenger in Idaho, 1861; edited, 1863, the Eugene (Ore.) Democratic Register, a weekly, which was suppressed on charges of disloyalty; practiced law Canon City, Ore., 1863–6; co. judge Grant Co., Ore., 1866–70; went to London and published his first book of poems, which met with a favorable reception; several yrs. in newspaper life at Washington; since 1887 has been resident of Oakland; corr. New York Journal in Klondike, 1897–8. Author: “Songs of the Sierras;” “Pacific Palms;” “Songs of the Sunland;” “The Ship of the Desert;” “Life Among the Modocs;” “First Families of the Sierras;” “The One Fair Woman;” “The Danites in the Sierras;” “Shadows of Shasta;” “Memorie and Rime;” “Baroness of New York;” “Songs of Far-Away Lands;” “The Destruction of Gotham;” “The Building of the City Beautiful, a Poetic Romance;” “’49: or, the Gold-Seekers of the Sierras;” “The Life of Christ;” “Chants for the Boer,” 1900. Plays: “The Danites;” “The Silent Man;” “’49;” “Tally-Ho;” etc.
Personal
The latest chapter in the life of the Poet of the Sierras is only a little less bizarre than those that have preceded it. On his few acres of rough land he has built three small structures of an architectural style that is all their own. One is his bedroom and workshop—the two terms are nearly synonymous, for most of his literary work is done in bed; one is his kitchen and diningroom; and the third is the dwelling of his aged mother. On a tree at the entrance to the eccentric genius’s domain there is posted, or recently was posted, a characteristic notice: “To Gentlemen: These grounds are for my own private use, where I desire absolute quiet and seclusion. (Verbum sap.) To Hoodlums, Thieves, and Housebreakers: I am stocking these grounds with imported birds, I want to preserve the native ones. Now, as you have no business here except to destroy, you will be treated as thieves and burglars if found on these grounds. Any one shooting at this notice or shooting in this direction will be effectually fired at in return.” It is said that the gun which hangs where Mr. Miller can reach it, to enforce the order in case of need, has never been taken down…. As in London, he electrified society in Washington by the eccentric costume he affected—flowing hair beneath a wide brimmed Mexican sombrero, a red bandanna protruding from his vest, and the extremities of his nether integuments tucked inside a pair of cowboy’s boots. Literary genius is appreciated at the national capital, and Miller received a good deal of attention, but his taste in dress is said to have caused some annoying mistakes on the part of footmen who failed to distinguish him from the genus tramp. Miller was christened Cincinnatus Hiner—which latter name has frequently been given, in more poetic form, as Heine. But these baptismal appellations he long ago discarded for the picturesque Spanish “Joaquin” with which all his literary work has been signed.
He is a brilliant conversationalist with a limitless fund of anecdote. His accent is singularly pure, his voice full and pleasant; and as he discusses some congenial theme his thoughts rove from early pioneer days when as a boy in the diggers’ camp he cooked their unvaried fare of salt pork and boiled beans, allotted to each man his share of the gold dust, and in his spare hours wrote and cultivated that divine faculty that later brought him fame. His appearance is striking and his face beams with intelligence. He usually wears long boots into the tops of which his trousers are tucked. His hair, streaked here and there with silver, hangs almost to his shoulders, and is inclined to curl as is also his beard.
General
Excitement and ambition may be called the twin geniuses of Mr. Miller’s poetical character. Everything is to him both vital and suggestive; and some curious specimens might be culled of the fervid interfusion of external nature and the human soul in his descriptive passages. The great factors of the natural world—the sea, the mountains, the sun, moon, and stars—become personalities, animated with an intense life and a dominant possession…. At times he runs riot in overcharged fancies, which, in “Ina” especially, recall something of the manner of Alexander Smith, whether in characterizing the objects of nature, or in the frenzied aspirations of the human spirit. It should be understood, however, that the only poet to whom he bears a considerable or essential analogy is Byron…. He is a poet, and an admirable poet. His first works prove it to demonstration, and superabundantly; and no doubt his future writings will reinforce the proof with some added maturity and charm. He is not the sort of man to be abashed or hurt by criticism…. America may be proud of him.
The poet himself is as typical of our country as are his poems; for from his preface we learn to identify him with the “rough edges of the frontier,” and a region “walled from the world by seas on one hand and the Sierra Nevada Mountains in savage grandeur on the other,” where, as he says, the city of Mexico was his Mecca; while there is something peculiarly characteristic in the audacity that took him to the world’s capital to confront the world’s criticism with his book. We cannot deny that these poems exhibit some crudities. There are repetitions of the same thought and phrase, and those blemishes which proceed from ignorance of the established canons of verse; but less could hardly be expected from a man not yet thirty, whose whole life had been spent among the rude scenes of which he writes, while even these blemishes are gilded by his genius…. There are indications of dramatic force in “Ina;” but it is far less apparent there than in the Arizonian poem, which, in spite of its narrative form and lyric loveliness, gives a projection and an action to its characters as lively as that of a bas-relief.
The best poem in Mr. Miller’s small volume [“Songs of the Sierras”] is the first one, which bears the title of “Arizonian.”… We cannot say as much for the rest of the volume. Bitterly bad, indeed, is what it is necessary to call it if one would be accurately descriptive, for the other poems have all the faults of “Arizonian,” and none, or next to none, of its merits, and have besides abundant faults of their own; and are not only, as poems, sad affairs, but, as giving distinct and strong indications of the moral notions and the taste and the power of thought which Mr. Miller brings to his works—as revealing his admirations and his aspirations, they should be sufficiently discouraging to his friends. Unless, indeed, Mr. Miller is very young; and has a long time to live.
Joaquin Miller has not grown under the influence of culture and civilization and longer practice in writing into the poet it was hoped he would become. The “Songs of Italy” have the same spontaneous vigor, the same vividness and originality of imagery, the same lack of proportion, of taste and thought, the same excellences and defects, as the “Songs of the Sierras,” although their distribution is perhaps more even.
Joaquin Miller is, first of all, a poet, if one may judge from the relative merits of his verse and prose,—the latter of which does not show his spirit and invention at their best. The “Songs of the Sierras,” as a first book, was no ordinary production. Its metrical romances, notwithstanding obvious crudities and affectations, gave a pleasurable thrill to the reader. Here was something like the Byronic imagination, set aglow by the freedom and splendor of the Western ranges, or by turns creating with at least a sensuous vraisemblance an ideal of the tropics which so many Northern minstrels have dreamed of and sung. Miller still has years before him, and often lyrics from his pen suggest that, if he would add a reasonable modicum of purpose to his sense of the beautiful, the world would profit by the result.
The genius of Miller is peculiarly fitted to bring this kind of verse to perfection. By nature, by temperament, he belongs to a self-conscious and long-established society. He is continually analysing himself in others. He is always holding himself sufficiently apart from his surroundings to be able to analyse their savour to the full. At the same time, his intense human sympathy keeps him in touch with the subject of his observation; and a childhood spent in his wild Oregon home, the associations of his youth and early manhood among the turbulent pioneers and miners of the Pacific coast, have so indelibly impressed his genius, that the master-passions alone, and those social problems only that are of universal import, concern him when his singing robes are on. There is thus a primitive sincerity in his expression, and in his situations a perennial interest. His passion is manly, fervent, wholesome; and the frankness of it particularly refreshing in these indifferent days. He is a lover of sonorous rhythms, and betrays here and there in his lines the enthralling cadences of Swinburne. But in spite of such surface resemblances, he is fundamentally as original as fresh inspiration, novel material, and a strongly individualised genius might be expected to make him.
Miller is the Sierra minstrel, who, on the basis of a natural aptitude fortified by an enthusiastic study of Byron and Swinburne, easily sings of the romantic experiences of a rich terra incognita, where the dash and fire of personal life stand forth against the background of snowy mountain,—“lonely as God and white as a winter moon,”—darksome gulch or tropical river. His poems, however, are but essays in song, perishable utterances of a freedom that must more slowly take to itself the lessons of lasting art.
“The City Beautiful” will gain for Mr. Miller a new circle of readers, and it will endear him to many fine souls who are hungering and thirsting for a higher, truer, and more ideal civilization.
One thing should have saved the British critic from this mistake of his,—the lack of artistic merit in this first book [“Songs of the Sierras”] of Mr. Miller’s. Whatever merits it may be allowed to contain, the merit of good workmanship is certainly absent. The instructed reader should have perceived at once that if here was a poet born, here was not a poet made. The critic might have perceived also, what is certainly there,—evidence that this was a poet who had an innate faculty of expression, that might be improved by practice and polished by the learning and following of rules, but not without attractiveness in its natural wildness. What is bad in this book is bad without disguise, so fatuously bad that one never ceases wondering how an author capable of such stuff could ever do anything good. Yet the good, in turn, is so strong and so beautiful as to make the reader temporarily insensible to irregularities and inequalities of style, as well as to gross defects of taste.
Waiving for the moment his claims as a poet, Mr. Miller wins his first claim to our attention by his power to hold it. Most books of poems can be laid aside without any overwhelming reluctance on the part of the reader. But with these poems—especially “The Isles of the Amazons” and “Songs of the Sun Land”—it is not so. Indeed, one old gentleman I know nearly finished the entire volume at one sitting—a feat requiring several hours. What the secret of the poet’s charm is, it would perhaps be hard to say. If we could have but one word to describe it, we should say that freshness defines the alluring quality of his style. Read only a few pages and you will feel assured that Pan sent a wood-nymph to the poet’s christening, presenting him with a secret pass into Nature’s inner council chambers. Few, if any, other writers, make us feel so much out-of-doors. We hear so plainly in all his poems the tidal beat of the ocean, the roar of geysers and rivers and the rustling whispers of forests, with never a suggestion of second-hand messages from Nature.
He is, despite grievous errors as man and author, a real poet, perhaps the boldest, freest voice of the far West. In a severely winnowed yet copious selection he will live as one of our most original singers.
