No wonder, then, that, with tempting offers from the East, harassed with debts, disputes, cares and anxieties, disgusted with the atmosphere in which he was living,—no wonder Bret Harte felt that the hour for his departure had struck. Had he remained longer, his art would probably have suffered. A nature so impressionable as Bret Harte’s, so responsive, would insensibly have been affected by his surroundings, and the more so because he had in himself no strong, intellectual basis. His life was ruled by taste, rather than by conviction; and taste is a harder matter than conviction to preserve unimpaired. Of all the criticisms passed upon Bret Harte there has been nothing more true than Madame Van de Velde’s observations upon this point: “It was decidedly fortunate that he left California when he did, never to return to it; for his quick instinctive perceptions would have assimilated the new order of things to the detriment of his talent. As it was, his singularly retentive memory remained unbiassed by the transformation of the centres whence he drew his inspiration. California remained to him the Mecca of the Argonauts.”
Bret Harte left many warm friends in California, and they were much hurt, in some cases much angered, because they never had a word from him afterward. And yet it is extremely doubtful if he expected any such result. Certainly it was not intended. Kind and friendly feelings may still exist, although they are not expressed in letters. Bret Harte was indolent and procrastinating about everything except the real business of his life, and into that all his energy was poured. And there was another reason for the failure to communicate with his old friends, which has probably occurred to the Reader, and which is suggested in a private letter from one of the very persons who were aggrieved by his silence. “He went away with a sore heart. He had cares, difficulties, hurts here, many, and they may have embittered him against all thoughts of the past.”
This, no doubt, is true. The California chapter in Bret Harte’s life was closed, and it would have been painful for him to reopen it even by the writing of a letter. To say this, however, is not to acquit him of all blame in the matter.
The night before he left California a few of his more intimate friends gave him a farewell dinner which, in the light of all that followed, now wears an almost tragic aspect. It is thus described by one of the company: “A little party of us, eight, all working writers, met for a last symposium. It was one of the veritable noctes ambrosianae; the talk was intimate, heart-to-heart, and altogether of the shop. Naturally Harte was the centre of the little company, and he was never more fascinating and companionable. Day was breaking when the party dispersed, and the ties that bound our friend to California were sundered forever.”
Bret Harte left San Francisco in February, 1871.
Seventeen years before he had landed there, a mere boy, without money or prospects, without trade or profession. Now he was the most distinguished person in California, and his departure marked the close of an epoch for that State. Who can imagine the mingled feelings, half-triumphant, half-bitter, with which he must have looked back upon the slow-receding, white-capped Sierras that had bounded his horizon for those seventeen eventful years!