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

by Henry Childs Merwin

It was not by accident or as the result of mere literary taste that he selected from the chaos of California life the heroic and the pathetic incidents. Those who know California only through his tales and poems naturally think that the aspect of it which Bret Harte presents was the only aspect; that the Pioneer life would have impressed any other observer just as it impressed him, the single difference being that Bret Harte had the ability to report what he saw and heard. But such is not the case. Bret Harte’s representation of California is true; there is no exaggeration in it; but there were other aspects of life there which would have been equally true. If we were to call up in imagination the various story-writers of Bret Harte’s day, it would be easy to guess what features of life on the Golden Slope would have attracted them, had they been there in the days of the Pioneers: how the social peculiarities of San Francisco, with its flamboyant demi-monde and its early appeal to the divorce court, would have interested one; how the adventures of outlaws and robbers would have filled the mind of another; and how a third would have been content to describe the picturesque traits of the Spanish inheritors of the soil.

Bret Harte does indeed touch upon all these points and upon many others,—not a phase of California life escaped him,—but he does not dwell upon them. His main theme is those heroic impulses of loyalty, of chivalry, of love, of pure friendship, which are strong enough to triumph over death and the fear of death, and which, nevertheless, are often found where, except to the discerning eye of sympathy, their existence would be wholly unsuspected.

For this selection the world owes Bret Harte a debt of gratitude; and none the less because it was made instinctively. The actions of a really perfect character would all be instinctive and spontaneous. In such a man conscience and inclination would coincide. His taste and his sense of duty would be one and the same thing. A mean, an unkind, an unjust act would be a solecism as impossible for him as it would be to eat with his knife. The struggle would have been over before he was born, and his ancestors would have bequeathed to him a nature in harmony with itself. The credit for his good deeds would belong, perhaps, rather to his ancestors than to himself, but we should see in him the perfection of human nature, the final product of a thousand imperfect natures.

Something of this spontaneousness and finality belonged to the character of Bret Harte. If he was weak in conviction and principle, he was strong in instinct. If he yielded easily to certain temptations, he was impregnable to others, because he was protected against them by the whole current of his nature. It would be as impossible to imagine Bret Harte taking sides against the oppressed, as it would be to imagine him performing his literary work in a slovenly manner. Both his good and bad traits were firmly rooted, and, it may be, inextricably mingled. Mr. Howells said of him that “If his temperament disabled him from certain experiences of life, it was the sure source of what was most delightful in his personality, and perhaps most beautiful in his talent.” Bret Harte’s stories are sufficient proof that he was at bottom a good man, although he had grave faults.

His faults, moreover, were those commonly found in men of genius, and for that reason they should be treated with some tenderness. When one considers that the whole progress of the human race, mental and spiritual, as well as mechanical, is due to the achievements of a few superior individuals, whom the world has agreed to designate as men of genius,—considering this, one should be slow to pronounce with anything like confidence or finality upon the character of one who belongs in that class. We know that such men are different from other men intellectually, and we might expect to find, and we do find that they are different from them emotionally, if not morally. A certain egotism, for example, is notoriously associated with men of genius; and a kind of egotistic or unconscious selfishness was Bret Harte’s great defect.

Popular opinion, a safe guide in such matters, has always recognized the fact that the genius is a species by himself. It is only the clever men of talent who have discovered that there is no essential difference between men of genius and themselves. Writers of this description might be named who have summed up Bret Harte’s life and character with amazing condescension and self-assurance. Meagre as are the known facts of his career, especially those relating to his private life, these critics have assigned his motives and judged his conduct with a freedom and a certainty which they would hardly feel in respect to their own intimates.

The very absence of information about Bret Harte makes misconstruction easy. Why he lived apart from his family, why he lived in England, why he continued to draw his subjects from California,—these are matters as to which the inquisitive world would have been glad to be informed, but as to which he thought it more fitting to keep silence; and from that silence no amount of misrepresentation could move him. Mr. Pemberton has recorded the congenial scorn with which Bret Harte used to repeat the motto upon the coat of arms of some Scottish earl. They say! What say they? Let them say!

And yet, if a writer has greatly moved or pleased us, we have a natural desire, especially after his death, to know what manner of man he was. Most of all, we long to ask that familiar question, the only question which, at the close of a career, seems to have any relevance or importance,—Was he a good man? In the present case, such answer as this book can give has already been made; and if any Reader should be inclined to a different conclusion, let him weigh well the peculiar circumstances of Bret Harte’s life, and make due allowance for the obscurity in which his motives are veiled.

Upon one aspect of his career there can be no difference of opinion. His devotion to his art was unwavering and extreme. Pagan though he may have been in some respects, in this matter he was as conscientious a Puritan as Hawthorne himself. Every plot, every character, every sentence, one might almost say, every word in his books, was subjected to his own relentless criticism. The manuscript that Bret Harte consigned to the waste-basket would have made the reputation of another author. No “pot-boiler” ever came from his hand, and, whatever his pecuniary difficulties, he never dreamed of escaping from them by that dashing-off of salable stories which is a common practice among popular writers of fiction.

Such he was at the beginning, and such he continued to be until the end. Six months elapsed, after the publication of his first successful story, before Bret Harte made his second appearance in the “Overland Monthly.” His friends in California have given us a picture of him, a youthful author in his narrow office at the Mint, slowly and painfully elaborating those masterpieces that made him famous. It was the same forty years afterward when the fatal illness overtook him at his desk in an English country-house. The pen that dropped from his reluctant fingers had been engaged in writing and re-writing the simple, opening sentences of a story that was never to be finished.