“I am waiting to hear from Osgood regarding an advance on that wretched story. He writes me he does not quite like it. I shall probably hear from him to-night. When the money comes I shall come with it. God bless you and keep you and the children safe for the sake of
“Frank.”
Bret Harte’s friends, however, were aware of his situation, and they procured for him an appointment by President Hayes as United States Commercial Agent at Crefeld in Prussia. The late Charles A. Dana was especially active in this behalf. Bret Harte, much as he dreaded the sojourn in a strange country, gladly accepted the appointment, and leaving his family for the present at Sea Cliff, Long Island, he sailed for England in June, 1878, little thinking that he was never to return.
Crefeld is near the river Rhine, about thirty miles north of Cologne. Its chief industry is the manufacture of silks and velvets, in respect to which it is the leading city in Germany, and is surpassed by no other place in Europe except Lyons. This industry was introduced in Crefeld by Protestant refugees who fled thither from Cologne in the seventeenth century in order to obtain the protection of the Prince of Orange. A small suburb of Philadelphia was settled mainly by emigrants from Crefeld, and bears the same name.
The Prussian Crefeld is a clean, spacious place, with wide streets, substantial houses, and all the appearance of a Dutch town. At this time it contained about seventy-five thousand inhabitants. Bret Harte arrived at Crefeld on the morning of July 17, 1878, after a sleepless journey of twelve hours from Paris, and on the same day he wrote to his wife a very homesick letter.
“I have audaciously travelled alone nearly four hundred miles through an utterly foreign country on one or two little French and German phrases, and a very small stock of assurance, and have delivered my letters to my predecessor, and shall take possession of the Consulate to-morrow. Mr. ——, the present incumbent, appears to me—I do not know how I shall modify my impression hereafter—as a very narrow, mean, ill-bred, and not over-bright Puritanical German. It was my intention to appoint him my vice-Consul—an act of courtesy suggested both by my own sense of right and Mr. Leonard’s advice, but he does not seem to deserve it, and has even received my suggestion of it with the suspicion of a mean nature. But at present I fear I may have to do it, for I know no one else here. I am to all appearance utterly friendless; I have not received the first act of kindness or courtesy from any one, and I suppose this man sees it. I shall go to Bavaria to-morrow to see the Consul there, who held this place as one of his dependencies, and try to make matters straight.”[94]
This letter shows that the craving for sympathy and companionship, which is associated with artistic natures, was intensely felt by Bret Harte, more so, perhaps, than would have been expected in a man of his self-reliant character. His despondent tone is almost child-like. The letter goes on: “It’s been up-hill work ever since I left New York, but I shall try to see it through, please God! I don’t allow myself to think over it at all, or I should go crazy. I shut my eyes to it, and in doing so perhaps I shut out what is often so pleasant to a traveller’s first impressions; but thus far London has only seemed to me a sluggish nightmare through which I have waked, and Paris a confused sort of hysterical experience. I had hoped for a little kindness and rest here.... At least, Nan, be sure I’ve written now the worst; I think things must be better soon. I shall, please God, make some friends in good time, and will try and be patient. But I shall not think of sending for you until I see clearly that I can stay myself. If the worst comes to the worst I shall try to stand it for a year, and save enough to come home and begin anew there. But I could not stand it to see you break your heart here through disappointment, as I mayhap may do.”
The tone of this letter is so exaggerated that it might seem as if Bret Harte had been a little theatrical and insincere,—that he had endeavored to create an impression which was partly false. But such a conjecture would be erroneous, for under the same date, with the addition of the word “midnight,” we find him writing a second letter to correct the effect of the first, as follows:—
“My dear Nan,—I wrote and mailed you a letter this afternoon that I fear was rather disconsolate, so I sit down to-night to send another, which I hope will take a little of the blues out of the first. Since I wrote I have had some further conversation with my predecessor, Mr. ——, and I think I can manage matters with him. He has hauled in his horns considerably since I told him that the position I offered him—so far as the honor of it went—was better than the one he held. For the one thing pleasant about my office is that the dignity of it has been raised on my account. It was only a dependence—a Consular Agency—before it was offered to me.[95]
“I feel a little more hopeful, too, for I have been taken out to a ‘fest’—or a festival—of one of the vintners, and one or two of the people were a little kind. I forced myself to go; these German festivals are distasteful to me, and I did not care to show my ignorance of their language quite so prominently, but I thought it was the proper thing for me to do. It was a very queer sight. About five hundred people were in an artificial garden beside an artificial lake, looking at artificial fireworks, and yet as thoroughly enjoying it as if they were children. Of course there were beer and wine. Here as in Paris everybody drinks, and all the time, and nobody gets drunk. Beer, beer, beer; and meals, meals, meals. Everywhere the body is worshipped. Beside them we are but unsubstantial spirits. I write this in my hotel, having had to pass through a mysterious gate and so into a side courtyard and up a pair of labyrinthine stairs, to my dim ‘Zimmer’ or chamber. The whole scene, as I returned to-night, looked as it does on the stage,—the lantern over the iron gate, the inn strutting out into the street with a sidewalk not a foot wide. I know now from my own observation, both here and in Paris and London, where the scene-painters at the theatres get their subjects. Those impossible houses—those unreal silent streets all exist in Europe.”