And again, in A Secret of Telegraph Hill, where Herbert Bly says to the gambler whom he has surprised in his room, hiding from the Vigilance Committee: “‘Whoever you may be, I am neither the police nor a spy. You have no right to insult me by supposing that I would profit by a mistake that made you my guest, and that I would refuse you the sanctuary of the roof that covers your insult as well as your blunder.’” And yet the speaker is not meant to be a prig.
There is another characteristic of Bret Harte’s style which should perhaps be regarded as a form of subtlety, and that is the surprising resources of his vocabulary. He seems to have gathered all the words and idioms that might become of service to him, and to have stored them in his memory for future use. If a peculiar or technical expression was needed, he always had it at hand. Thus when the remorseful Joe Corbin told Colonel Starbottle about his sending money to the widow of the man whom he had killed in self-defence, the Colonel’s apt comment was, “A kind of expiation or amercement of fine, known to the Mosaic, Roman and old English law.” And yet his reading never took a wide range. His large vocabulary was due partly, no doubt, to an excellent memory, but still more to his keen appreciation of delicate shades in the meaning of words. He had a remarkable gift of choosing the right word. In the following lines, for example, the whole effect depends upon the discriminating selection of the verbs and adjectives:—
Bunny, thrilled by unknown fears,
Raised his soft and pointed ears,
Mumbled his prehensile lip,
Quivered his pulsating hip.
Depth of feeling, subtlety of perception and intellect,—these qualities, supplemented by the sense of form and beauty, go far to account for the charm of Bret Harte’s style. He had an ear for style, just as some persons have an ear for music; and he could extract beauty from language just as the musician can extract it from the strings of a violin. This kind of beauty is, in one sense, a matter of mere sound; and yet it is really much more than that. “Words, even the most perfect, owe very much to the spiritual cadence with which they are imbued.”[118]
A musical sentence, made up of words harmoniously chosen, and of sub-sentences nicely balanced, must necessarily deepen, soften, heighten, or otherwise modify the bare meaning of the words. In fact, it clothes them with that kind and degree of feeling which, as the writer consciously or unconsciously perceives, will best further his intention. Style, in short, is a substitute for speech, the author giving through the medium of his style the same emotional and personal color to his thoughts which the orator conveys by the tone and inflections of his voice. Hence the saying that the style is the man.
If we were looking for an example of mere beauty in style, perhaps we could find nothing better than this description of Maruja, after parting from her lover: “Small wonder that, hidden and silent in her enwrappings, as she lay back in the carriage, with her pale face against the cold, starry sky, two other stars came out and glistened and trembled on her passion-fringed lashes.”
No less beautiful in style are these lines:—
Above the tumult of the cañon lifted,
The gray hawk breathless hung,
Or on the hill a winged shadow drifted
Where furze and thorn-bush clung.[119]
And yet, so exact is the correspondence between thought and word here, that we find ourselves doubting whether the charm of the passage lies in its form, or in the mere idea conveyed to the reader with the least possible interposition of language; and yet, again, to raise that very doubt may be the supreme effect of a consummate style.
Bret Harte was sometimes a little careless in his style, careless, that is, in the way of writing obscurely or ungrammatically, but very seldom so careless as to write in a dull or unmusical fashion. To find a harsh sentence anywhere in his works would be almost, if not quite, impossible. A leading English Review once remarked, “It was never among Mr. Bret Harte’s accomplishments to labor cheerfully with the file”; and again, a few years later, “Mr. Harte can never be accused of carelessness.” Neither statement was quite correct, but the second one comes very much nearer the truth than the first.