Mark Twain’s authority on a matter of Western dialect will hardly be questioned, and this same use of “which” is not infrequent in his stories. Here, for instance, is an example from “Tom Sawyer”: “We said it was Parson Silas, and we judged he had found Sam Cooper drunk in the road, which he was always trying to reform him.” Finally, that well-known Pioneer, Mr. Warren Cheney, an early contributor to the “Overland,” testifies that “which” as thus used “is perfectly good Pike.”[115]
The rather astonishing fact is that Bret Harte uses dialect words and phrases to the number, roughly estimated, of three hundred, and a hasty investigation has served to identify all but a few of these as legitimate Pioneer expressions. A more thorough search would no doubt account satisfactorily for every one of them.
However, that dialect should be authentic is not so important as that it should be interesting. Many story-writers report dialect in a correct and conscientious form, but it wearies the reader. Dialect to be interesting must be the vehicle of humor, and the great masters of dialect, such as Thackeray and Sir Walter Scott, are also masters of humor. Bret Harte had the same gift, and he showed it, as we have seen, not only in Pioneer speech, but also in the Spanish-American dialect of Enriquez Saltello and his charming sister, in the Scotch dialect of Mr. Callender, in the French dialect of the innkeeper who entertained Alkali Dick, and in the German dialect of Peter Schroeder. For one thing, a too exact reproduction of dialect almost always has a misleading and awkward effect. The written word is not the same as the spoken word, and the constant repetition of a sound which would hardly be noticed in speech becomes unduly prominent and wearisome if put before our eyes in print. In the following passage it will be seen how Bret Harte avoids the too frequent occurrence of “ye” (which Tinka Gallinger probably used) by alternating it with “you”:—
“‘No! no! ye shan’t go—ye mustn’t go,’ she said, with hysterical intensity. ‘I want to tell ye something! Listen!—you—you—Mr. Fleming! I’ve been a wicked, wicked girl! I’ve told lies to dad—to mammy—to you! I’ve borne false witness—I’m worse than Sapphira—I’ve acted a big lie. Oh, Mr. Fleming, I’ve made you come back here for nothing! Ye didn’t find no gold the other day. There wasn’t any. It was all me! I—I—salted that pan!’”
Bret Harte’s writings offer a wide field for the study of what might be called the psychological aspect of dialect, especially so far as it relates to pronunciation. What governs the dialect of any time and place? Is it purely accidental that the London cockney says “piper” instead of paper, and that the Western Pioneer says “b’ar” for bear,—or does some inner necessity determine, or partly determine, these departures from the standard pronunciation? This, however, is a subject which lies far beyond our present scope. Suffice it to say that it would be difficult to convince the reader of Bret Harte that there is not some inevitable harmony between his characters and the dialect or other language which they employ. Who, for example, would hesitate to assign to Yuba Bill, and to none other, this remark: “I knew the partikler style of damn fool that you was, and expected no better.”
CHAPTER XXI
BRET HARTE’S STYLE
In discussing Bret Harte, it is almost impossible to separate substance from style. The style is so good, so exactly adapted to the ideas which he wishes to convey, that one can hardly imagine it as different. Some thousands of years ago an Eastern sage remarked that he would like to write a book such as everybody would conceive that he might have written himself, and yet so good that nobody else could have written the like. This is the ideal which Bret Harte fulfilled. Almost everything said by any one of his characters is so accurate an expression of that character as to seem inevitable. It is felt at once to be just what such a character must have said. Given the character, the words follow; and anybody could set them down! This is the fallacy underlying that strange feeling, which every reader must have experienced, of the apparent easiness of writing an especially good conversation or soliloquy.