Francis Bret Harte.
Bret Harte, so far as we can discover, has written the only story of Revolutionary times in Morristown, and the only story of those times in New Jersey except Miss Holdich, who follows, and James Fenimore Cooper, whose "Water Witch" is located about the Highlands of New Jersey. By a passage from his story of "Thankful Blossom" we shall represent him at the close of this sketch.
Between 1873 and 1876 Bret Harte lived in Morristown, in several locations: in the picturesque old Revere place on the Mendham Road, the very home for a Novelist, now owned and occupied by Mr. Charles G. Foster; in the Whatnong House for one summer, near which are located old farms, which seem to us to have many features of the "Blossom Farm" and to which we shall refer; in the Logan Cottage on Western Avenue and in the house on Elm Street now owned and occupied by Mr. Joseph F. Randolph.
The steps by which Bret Harte climbed to the eminence that he now occupies, are full of romantic interest. Left early by his father, who was a Professor in an Albany Seminary and a man of culture, to struggle with little means, the boy, at fifteen, had only an ordinary education and went in 1854, with his mother, to California. He opened a school in Sonora, walking to that place from San Francisco. Fortune did not favor him either in this undertaking or in that of mining, to which, like all young Californians in that day, he resorted as a means to live. He then entered a printing office as compositor and began his literary career by composing his first articles in type while working at the case. Here he had editorial experiences which ended abruptly in consequence of the want of sympathy in the miners with his articles. He returned to San Francisco and became compositor in the office of The Golden Era. His three years experience among the miners served him in good stead and his clever sketches describing those vivid scenes, soon placed him in the regular corps of writers for the paper. The Californian, a literary weekly, then engaged Harte as associate manager and, in this short-lived paper appeared the "Condensed Novels" in which Dickens' "Christmas Stories", Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre", Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables", and other prominent and familiar writings of distinguished authors are most cleverly taken off. These have amused and delighted the reading world since their first appearance. During the next six years, he filled the office of Secretary of the United States Branch Mint, and also wrote for California journals, many of his important poems, among them, "John Burns of Gettysburg", and "The Society upon the Stanislau", which attracted wide attention by their originality and peculiar flavor of the "Wild West". In July, 1868, Harte organized, and became the editor of, what is now a very successful journal, The Overland Monthly.
For this journal he wrote many of his most characteristic stories and poems and introduced into its pages, "The Luck of Roaring Camp"; "The Outcasts of Poker Flat", and others having that peculiar pseudo-dialect of Western mining life of which he was the pioneer writer. He had now taken a great step towards high and artistic work. At this point his reputation was established.
As for Revolutionary New Jersey poems, abundant as the material is for inspiration, Bret Harte's "Caldwell of Springfield" seems to be one of very few. At the luncheon of the Daughters of the American Revolution held in May of 1892, a prominent member of the Association recited "Parson Caldwell" and mentioned, that strange to say, it was as far as she had been able to ascertain, the only poem on Revolutionary times in New Jersey that had ever been written, though she had searched thoroughly. In addition to this, we find only, besides the two poems of Mr. Charles D. Platt, given in this volume, (and others of his referred to) one or two of the sort in a volume published years ago, privately, by Dr. Thomas Ward, of New York (a great uncle of Mrs. Luther Kountze). Very few copies of his poems were printed and all were given to his friends, not sold.
We must not forget the very beautiful poem of "Alice of Monmouth", by Edmund Clarence Stedman, and also, perhaps, might be included his spirited "Aaron Burr's Wooing". There was also an early writer, Philip Freneau, of Monmouth County, who lived in Colonial and Revolutionary times, and wrote some quaint and charming poems of that period.
If there are any others we would be glad to be informed.
In this book, "Plain Language From Truthful James", better known as "The Heathen Chinee", represents Mr. Harte among the poets, in our group of writers, for the reason that it is so widely known as a satire upon the popular prejudices against the Chinese, who were at that time pursued with hue and cry of being shiftless and weak-minded.
From 1868, Harte became a regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly and he also entered the lecture field. It was during this period that he lived in Morristown. In 1878 he went to Crefeld, Germany, as United States Consul, and here began his life abroad. Two years later he went, as Consul, to Glasgow, Scotland, since which time he has remained abroad, engaged in literary pursuits.
The Contributor's Club, of the Atlantic Monthly, gives a curious little paper on "The Value of a Name", in which the writer insists that Bret Harte, Mark Twain, Dante Rossetti and others owe a part of their success, at least, to the phonic value of their names. He says that "much time and thought are spent in selecting a name for a play or novel, for it is known that success is largely dependent on it" and he therefore censures parents who are "so strangely careless and unscientific in giving names to their children."
Bret Harte's publications include besides "Condensed Novels", "Thankful Blossom", and others already mentioned, several volumes of Poems issued at different periods: among them are "Songs of the Sierras" and "Echoes of the Foot Hills". Then there are "Tales of the Argonauts and Other Stories"; "Drift from Two Shores"; "Twins of Table Mountain"; "Flip and Found at Blazing Star"; "On the Frontier"; "Snow Bound at Eagle's"; "Maruja, a Novel"; "The Queen of the Pirate Isle", for children; "A Phyllis of the Sierras"; "A Waif of the Plains" and many others, besides his collected works in five volumes published in 1882.
Writing to Bret Harte in London, for certain information about the story of "Thankful Blossom", the author of this volume received the following reply:
15 Upper Hamilton Terrace, N. W., 31st May, '90.
Dear Madam:
In reply to your favor of the 14th inst., I fear I must begin by saying that the story of "Thankful Blossom", although inspired and suggested by my residence at Morristown at different periods was not written at that place, but in another part of New Jersey. The "Blossom Farm" was a study of two or three old farm houses in the vicinity, but was not an existing fact so far as I know. But the description of Washington's Head-Quarters was a study of the actual house, supplemented by such changes as were necessary for the epoch I described, and which I gathered from the State Records. The portraits of Washington and his military family at the Head-Quarters were drawn from Spark's "Life of Washington" and the best chronicles of the time. The episode of the Spanish Envoy is also historically substantiated, and the same may be said of the incidents of the disaffection of the "Connecticut Contingent."
Although the heroine, "Thankful Blossom", as a character is purely imaginary, the name is an actual one, and was borne by a (chronologically) remote maternal relation of mine, whose Bible with the written legend, "Thankful Blossom, her book", is still in possession of a member of the family.
The contour of scenery and the characteristics of climate have, I believe, changed but little since I knew them between 1873 and 1876 and "Thankful Blossom" gazed at them from the Baskingridge Road in 1779.
I remain, dear madam,
Yours very sincerely,
Bret Harte.
Two of the farms from which Bret Harte may have drawn the inspiration for the surroundings of his story, may be seen on the Washington Valley road as you turn to the right from the road to Mendham. Turning again to the left,—before you come to the junction of the road which crosses at right angles to the Whatnong House, where Mr. Harte passed a summer,—you come upon the Carey Farm, the house built by the grandfather of the present occupants. There you see the stone wall,—crumbling now,—over which the bewitching Mistress Thankful talked and clasped hands with Captain Allen Brewster of the Connecticut Contingent. The elm-tree, upon whose bark was inscribed "the effigy of a heart, divers initials and the legend 'Thine Forever'", has been lately cut down and the trunk decorated with growing plants and flowers.
We see the black range of the Orange Hills over which the moon slowly lifted herself as the Captain waited for his love, "looking at him, blushing a little, as if the appointment were her own". We see also the faintly-lit field beyond,—the same field in which, further on in the story after Brewster's treachery, Major Van Zandt and Mistress Thankful picked the violets together and doing so, revealed their hearts' love to one another on that 3rd of May, 1780.
The orchard is there, still bearing apples, but the "porch" and the "mossy eaves" evidently belong to the next farm house, which we find exactly on the corner at the junction of the two roads. It is the old Beach farm. The original house has a brick addition, with the inscription among the bricks, "1812".
It is on the wooden part built earlier and evidently an ancient structure, that we see the "porch and eaves".
We select from "Thankful Blossom" the very fine pen portrait of Washington and his military family at the Headquarters.
THANKFUL BLOSSOM.
A Romance of the Jerseys, 1779.
CHAPTER III.
The rising wind, which had ridden much faster than Mistress Thankful, had increased to a gale by the time it reached Morristown. It swept through the leafless maples, and rattled the dry bones of the elms. It whistled through the quiet Presbyterian churchyard, as if trying to arouse the sleepers it had known in days gone by. It shook the blank, lustreless windows of the Assembly Rooms over the Freemason's Tavern, and wrought in their gusty curtains moving shadows of those amply petticoated dames and tightly hosed cavaliers who had swung in "Sir Roger," or jigged in "Money Musk," the night before.
But I fancy it was around the isolated "Ford Mansion," better known as the "Headquarters," that the wind wreaked its grotesque rage. It howled under its scant eaves, it sang under its bleak porch, it tweaked the peak of its front gable, it whistled through every chink and cranny of its square, solid, unpicturesque structure. Situated on a hillside that descended rapidly to the Whippany River, every summer zephyr that whispered through the porches of the Morristown farm houses charged as a stiff breeze upon the swinging half doors and windows of the "Ford Mansion"; every wintry wind became a gale that threatened its security. The sentinel who paced before its front porch knew from experience when to linger under its lee, and adjust his threadbare outer coat to the bitter North wind.
Within the house something of this cheerlessness prevailed. It had an ascetic gloom, which the scant fire-light of the reception room, and the dying embers on the dining room hearth, failed to dissipate. The central hall was broad, and furnished plainly with a few rush-bottomed chairs, on one of which half dozed a black body-servant of the commander-in-chief. Two officers in the dining-room, drawn close by the chimney corner, chatted in undertones, as if mindful that the door of the drawing-room was open, and their voices might break in upon its sacred privacy. The swinging light in the hall partly illuminated it, or rather glanced gloomily from the black polished furniture, the lustreless chairs, the quaint cabinet, the silent spinet, the skeleton-legged centre-table, and finally upon the motionless figure of a man seated by the fire.
It was a figure since so well known to the civilized world, since so celebrated in print and painting, as to need no description here. Its rare combination of gentle dignity with profound force, of a set resoluteness of purpose with a philosophical patience, have been so frequently delivered to a people not particularly remarkable for these qualities, that I fear it has too often provoked a spirit of playful aggression, in which the deeper underlying meaning was forgotten. So let me add that in manner, physical equipoise, and even in the mere details of dress, this figure indicated a certain aristocratic exclusiveness. It was the presentment of a king,—a king who by the irony of circumstances was just then waging war against all kingship; a ruler of men, who just then was fighting for the right of these men to govern themselves, but whom by his own inherent right he dominated. From the crown of his powdered head to the silver buckle of his shoe he was so royal that it was not strange his brother George of England and Hanover—ruling by accident, otherwise impiously known as the "grace of God"—could find no better way of resisting his power than by calling him "Mr. Washington."
The sound of horses' hoofs, the formal challenge of sentry, the grave questioning of the officer of the guard, followed by footsteps upon the porch, did not apparently disturb his meditation. Nor did the opening of the outer door and a charge of cold air into the hall that invaded even the privacy of the reception room, and brightened the dying embers on the hearth, stir his calm pre-occupation. But an instant later there was the distinct rustle of a feminine skirt in the hall, a hurried whispering of men's voices, and then the sudden apparition of a smooth, fresh-faced young officer over the shoulder of the unconscious figure.
"I beg your pardon, general," said the officer doubtingly, "but"——
"You are not intruding, Colonel Hamilton," said the general quietly.
"There is a young lady without who wishes an audience of your Excellency. 'Tis Mistress Thankful Blossom,—the daughter of Abner Blossom, charged with treasonous practice and favoring the enemy, now in the guard-house at Morristown."
"Thankful Blossom?" repeated the general interrogatively.
"Your Excellency doubtless remembers a little provincial beauty and a famous toast of the countryside—the Cressida of our Morristown epic, who led our gallant Connecticut Captain astray"——
"You have the advantages, besides the better memory of a younger man, colonel," said Washington, with a playful smile that slightly reddened the cheek of his aide-de-camp. "Yet I think I have heard of this phenomenon. By all means, admit her—and her escort."
"She is alone, general," responded the subordinate.
"Then the more reason why we should be polite," returned Washington, for the first time altering his easy posture, rising to his feet, and lightly clasping his ruffled hands before him. "We must not keep her waiting. Give her access, my dear colonel, at once; and even as she came,—alone."
The aide-de-camp bowed and withdrew. In another moment the half opened door swung wide to Mistress Thankful Blossom.
She was so beautiful in her simple riding-dress, so quaint and original in that very beauty, and, above all, so teeming with a certain vital earnestness of purpose just positive and audacious enough to set off that beauty, that the grave gentleman before her did not content himself with the usual formal inclination of courtesy, but actually advanced, and, taking her cold little hand in his, graciously led her to the chair he had just vacated.
"Even if your name were not known to me, Mistress Thankful," said the commander-in-chief, looking down upon her with grave politeness, "nature has, methinks, spared you the necessity of any introduction to the courtesy of a gentleman. But how can I especially serve you?"