In the larger halls the custom was to rent different parts of the room to different proprietors, each of whom carried on his own game independently. Most of the proprietors were foreigners, and many of them were women. These women included some of great beauty, and they were all magnificently attired, their rustling silks, elaborately dressed hair and glittering diamonds contrasting strangely with the hairy faces, slouch hats and flannel shirts of the miners.
That gambling was looked upon at first as a legitimate industry is plain from the surprising fact that the local courts in Sacramento upheld gambling debts as valid, and authorized their collection by process of law. But these decisions—almost sufficient to make Blackstone rise from his grave—were reversed the following year.
Indeed, a healthy public opinion against gambling developed very soon. Even in 1850, the grand jury sitting at San Francisco condemned the practice; and in 1851 gambling on Sunday was forbidden in that city by an ordinance which the authorities enforced in so far that open gambling on that day was no longer permitted. In December, 1850, an ordinance against gaming in the streets was passed by the city council of Sacramento. By the end of 1851 there was a perceptible decrease in both gaming and drinking in all the larger towns of California. “Gambling with all the attractions of fine saloons and tastefully dressed women is on the wane in Marysville,” a local observer reported; and the same thing was noticed in San Francisco. The gambling house, as a general rendez-vous, was succeeded by the saloon, and that, in turn, by the club.
Gambling houses continued to be licensed in San Francisco until 1856, but public opinion against them steadily grew. “They are tolerated,” said the “San Francisco Herald,” “for no other reason that we know of except that they are charged heavily for licenses. Almost all of them are owned by foreigners.” By the end of the year 1855, the “Bulletin” was condemning the gamblers as among the worst elements of society; and the death of the “Bulletin’s” heroic Editor in the following year marked the close of the gambling era in San Francisco. When Bret Harte’s first stories were written the type represented by John Oakhurst and Jack Hamlin had begun to pass away, and those worthies would soon have been forgotten.
But who can forget them now! “Bret Harte,” said the “Academy,” after his death, “was the Homer of Gamblers. Gamblers there had been before, but they were of the old sullen type.” In making his gamblers good-looking, Bret Harte only followed tradition, and the tradition is founded on fact. The one essential trait of the gambler is good nerves. These are largely a matter of good health and physique, and good looks have much the same origin. It follows that gamblers having good nerves should also have good looks. It is natural, too, that they should have excellent manners. The habit of easy shooting and of being shot at is universally recognized as conducive to politeness, and, moreover, a certain persuasiveness of manner, a mingling of suavity and authority, is part of the gambler’s stock-in-trade. An American of wide experience once declared that he had met but one fellow-countryman whose manners could fairly be described as “courtly,” and he was a professional gambler of Irish birth. Good looks and good manners, the former especially, were very common among the California Pioneers, and it is but natural that Oakhurst and Hamlin should have had an unusual share of these attractions.
Mr. Oakhurst appears in only a few of the stories, but there is a certain intensity in the description of him which makes one almost certain that he, like most of Bret Harte’s characters, was drawn from life. “There was something in his carriage, something in the pose of his beautiful head, something in the strong and fine manliness of his presence, something in the perfect and utter control and discipline of his muscles, something in the high repose of his nature—a repose not so much a matter of intellectual ruling as of his very nature,—that go where he would and with whom, he was always a notable man in ten thousand.”
In this description one cannot help perceiving the Author’s effort, not quite successful perhaps, to lay his finger upon the essential trait of a real and striking personality.
In two stories only does he play the part of hero, these being A Passage in the Life of Mr. John Oakhurst, and the immortal Outcasts of Poker Flat. The former story closes with a characteristic remark. Two weeks after the duel in which his right arm was disabled, Mr. Oakhurst “walked into his rooms at Sacramento, and in his old manner took his seat at the faro table. ‘How’s your arm, Jack?’ asked an incautious player. There was a smile following the question, which, however, ceased as Jack looked up quietly at the speaker. ‘It bothers my dealing a little, but I can shoot as well with my left.’ The game was continued in that decorous silence which usually distinguished the table at which Mr. John Oakhurst presided.”
It has been objected by one critic that Oakhurst and Jack Hamlin are too much alike; but if we imagine one of these characters as placed in the situation of the other, we cannot help seeing how very different they are. Jack Hamlin could never have been infatuated, as Oakhurst was, by Mrs. Decker,—or indeed by any woman. Oakhurst was too simple, too solid, too grave a person to understand women. He lacked the humor, the sympathy, the cynicism, and the acute perceptive powers of Hamlin.
One of the best scenes in all Bret Harte is that in which Oakhurst bursts in upon Mrs. Decker, recounts her guilt and treachery, and declares his intention to kill her and then himself. “She did not faint, she did not cry out. She sat quietly down again, folded her hands in her lap, and said calmly,—