The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers

by Henry Childs Merwin

“‘Yes, but the swell Scotch all imitate the English, as everybody else does, for the matter of that, our girls included; and they’re all alike.’”

The shrewd, solid, genial, even religious Sir James MacFen, in The Heir of the McHulishes, and the porter in A Rose of Glenbogie, are native to the soil, and have no counterparts in America, east or west.

These three stories dealing with Scotch scenes and people prove the falsity of the assertion sometimes made that Bret Harte could write only about California:—he could have gone on writing about Scotland all his life, had he continued to live there, and the tales would have been as readable, if not so nearly unique, as those which deal with California. He liked the Scotch people, and was received by them with great kindness and hospitality. “On my birthday,” he wrote, “which became quite accidentally known to a few friends in the hotel, my table was covered with bouquets of flowers and little remembrances from cigar-cases to lockets.”

At this period Bret Harte made the acquaintance of William Black and Walter Besant, and with the former he became very intimate. In the life of William Black by his friend, Sir Wemyss Reid, there are many references to Bret Harte. The two story-writers first met as guests of Sir George Wombwell, who had invited them and a few others, including Mr. Shepard, the American vice-Consul at Bradford, to make a driving trip to the ruined abbeys of Eastern Yorkshire. The party dined together at the Yorkshire Club in York, which was the meeting point. “I remember few more lively evenings than that,” writes Sir Wemyss Reid. “Black and Bret Harte, whose acquaintance he had just made, vied with each other in the good stories they told and the repartees they exchanged.”

Shortly afterward Black wrote to Reid, “Bret Harte went down to us at Brighton, and if we didn’t amuse him he certainly amused us. He is coming again next week.”

Later he wrote again from the Reform Club in London, to Reid: “In a few weeks’ time don’t be surprised if Bret Harte and I come and look in upon you—that is, if he is not compelled for mere shame’s sake to go to his Consular duties ( ! ! ! ) at once. He is the most extraordinary globule of mercury—comet—aerolite gone drunk—flash of lightning doing Catherine wheels—I ever had any experience of. Nobody knows where he is, and the day before yesterday I discovered here a pile of letters that had been slowly accumulating for him since February, 1879. It seems he never reported himself to the all-seeing Escott [the hall porter], and never asked for letters when he got his month’s honorary membership last year. People are now sending letters to him from America addressed to me at Brighton! But he is a mystery and the cause of mystifications.”

In the following July there is another mention of Bret Harte in one of Black’s letters. “Bret Harte was to have been back from Paris last night, but he is a wandering comet. The only place he is sure not to be found in is the Glasgow Consulate.”

But the Consul’s wanderings were not so frequent as Mr. Black supposed. Bret Harte had almost a monomania for not answering letters; and his absence from Glasgow could not safely be inferred from his failure to acknowledge communications addressed to him there. A rumor as to the Consul’s prolonged desertion of his post had reached the State Department at Washington, and in November, 1882, the Department wrote to him requesting a report on the subject. He replied that he had not been away from Glasgow beyond the usual limit of ten days,[102] at any one time, except on holidays and Sundays. This report appears to have been accepted as satisfactory, and the incident was closed.

At one time Bret Harte was to have dined with Sir Wemyss Reid and William Black at the Reform Club; “but in his place,” says the biographer, “came a telegram in which I was invited to ask Black and Lockyer, who had just spent a few days with him in Scotland, their opinion of the game of poker—evidence that they had not spent all their time in Scotland in viewing scenery.”

The damp climate of Glasgow did not agree with Bret Harte, and so early in his residence there as July, 1881, he wrote to the State Department requesting leave of absence for three months, with permission to visit the United States, on the ground that the state of his health was such that he might require a complete change of scene and air. The request was granted, but the Consul did not return to his native country.