Two or three Summers were spent by Bret Harte and his family in Morristown, New Jersey. Here he wrote Thankful Blossom, a pretty story of Revolutionary times, describing events which occurred at the very spot where he was living, but lacking the strength and originality of his California tales. “Thankful Blossom” was not an imaginary name, but the real name of one of his mother’s ancestors, a member of the Truesdale family; and it should be mentioned that before writing this story Bret Harte, with characteristic thoroughness, made a careful study of the place where Washington had his headquarters at Morristown, and of the surrounding country.
One other Summer the Harte family spent at New London, in Connecticut, and still another at Cohasset, a seashore town about twenty miles south of Boston. Here he became the neighbor and friend of the actors, Lawrence Barrett and Stuart Robson, for the latter of whom he wrote the play called Two Men of Sandy Bar. This was produced in September, 1876, at the Union Square Theatre in New York, but, although not a failure, it did not attain permanent success. The principal characters were Sandy Morton, played by Charles R. Thorne, and Colonel Starbottle, taken by Stuart Robson. John Oakhurst, the Yankee Schoolmistress (from The Idyl of Red Gulch), a Chinaman, an Australian convict, and other figures taken from Bret Harte’s stories, also appeared in the piece. The part of Hop Sing, the Chinaman, was played by Mr. C. T. Parsloe, and with so much success that afterward, in collaboration with Mark Twain, Bret Harte wrote a melodrama for Mr. Parsloe called Ah Sin; but this, too, failed to keep the boards for long.
Mr. Pemberton speaks of another play in respect to which Bret Harte sought the advice of Dion Boucicault; but this appears never to have been finished. It was a cause of annoyance and disgust to Bret Harte after he had left this country, that a version of M’liss converting that beautiful story into a vulgar “song and dance” entertainment was produced on the stage and in its way became a great success. Bret Harte was unable to prevent these performances in the United States, but he did succeed, by means of a suit, threatened if not actually begun, in preventing their repetition in England. A very inferior theatrical version of Gabriel Conroy, also, was brought out in New York without the author’s consent, and much against his will.
Bret Harte had a lifelong desire to write a notable play, and made many attempts in that direction. One of them succeeded. With the help of his friend and biographer, Mr. Pemberton, he dramatized his story, The Judgment of Bolinas Plain; and the result, a melodrama in three acts, called Sue, was produced in New York in 1896, and was well received both by the critics and the audience. Afterward the play was successfully performed on a tour of the United States; and in 1898 it was brought out in London, and was equally successful there. The heroine’s part was taken by Miss Annie Russell, of whom Mr. Pemberton gracefully says, “How much the writers owed to her charming personality and her deft handling of a difficult part they freely and gratefully acknowledged.” But even this play has not become a classic.
Of his experience as a fellow-worker with Bret Harte, Mr. Pemberton gives this interesting account. “Infinite painstaking, I soon learned, was the essence of his system. Of altering and re-altering he was never tired, and though it was sometimes a little disappointing to find that what we had considered as finished over-night, had, at his desire, to be reconsidered in the morning, the humorous way in which he would point out how serious situations might, by a twist of the pen, or by incompetent acting, create derisive laughter, compensated for double or even treble work. No one realized more keenly than he did that to most things there is a comic as well as a serious side, and it seemed to make him vastly happy to put his finger on his own vulnerable spots.”
Mr. Pemberton speaks of several other plays written by Bret Harte and himself, and of one written by Bret Harte alone for Mr. J. L. Toole. But none of these was ever acted. It is needless to say that Bret Harte loved the theatre and had a keen appreciation of good acting. In a letter to Mr. Pemberton, he spoke of John Hare’s “wonderful portrayal of the Duke of St. Olpherts in ‘The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith.’ He is gallantly attempting to relieve Mrs. Thorpe of the tray she is carrying, but of course lacks the quickness, the alertness, and even the actual energy to do it, and so follows her with delightful simulation of assistance all over the stage, while she carries it herself, he pursuing the form and ignoring the performance. It is a wonderful study.”
Bret Harte had not been long in the East, probably he had not been there a month, before he began to feel the pressure of those money difficulties from which neither he, nor his father before him, was ever free. Doubtless he would often have been at a loss for ready money, even if he had possessed the wealth of all the Indies. He left debts in California, and very soon had acquired others in New York and Boston.
Mr. Noah Brooks, who was intimate with Bret Harte in New York as well as in San Francisco, wrote, after his death: “I had not been long in the city before I found that Harte had already incurred many debts, chiefly for money borrowed. When I said to Bowles[88] that I was anxious on Harte’s account that a scandal should not come from this condition of things, Bowles said, with his good-natured cynicism, ‘Well, it does seem to me that there ought to be enough rich men in New York to keep Harte a-going.’
“One rich man, a banker and broker, with an ambition to be considered a patron of the arts and literature, made much of the new literary lion, and from him Harte obtained a considerable sum, $500 perhaps, in small amounts varying from $5 to $50 at a time. One New Year’s day Harte, in as much wrath as he was ever capable of showing, spread before me a note from our friend Dives in which the writer, who, by the way, was not reckoned a generous giver, reminded Harte that this was the season of the year when business men endeavored to enter a new era with a clean page in the ledger; and, in order to enable his friend H. to do that, he took the liberty of returning to him sundry I. O. U.’s which his friend H. had given him from time to time. ‘Damn his impudence!’ exclaimed the angry artist.
“‘What are you going to do about it?’ I asked, with some amusement. ‘Going to do about it!’ he answered with much emphasis on the first word. ‘Going! I have made a new note for the full amount of these and have sent it to him with an intimation that I never allow pecuniary matters to trespass on the sacred domain of friendship.’ Poor Dives was denied the satisfaction of giving away a bad debt.”