Bret Harte | |
|---|---|
 Bret Harte in 1872 | |
| Born | Francis Brett Hart (1836-08-25)August 25, 1836 Albany, New York |
| Died | May 5, 1902(1902-05-05) (aged 65) Camberley, England |
| Occupation | Author |
| Genre | Fiction, poetry |
| Spouse | Anna Griswold (m. ca. 1862–1902; his death) |
| Children | 4[1] |
| Signature | |
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Bret Harte (/hɑːrt/HART, bornFrancis Brett Hart, August 25, 1836 – May 5, 1902) was an American short story writer and poet best remembered for short fiction featuring miners, gamblers, and other romantic figures of theCalifornia Gold Rush. In a career spanning more than four decades, he also wrote poetry, plays, lectures, book reviews, editorials, and magazine sketches.
Harte moved from California to the eastern U.S. and later to Europe. He incorporated new subjects and characters into his stories, but his Gold Rush tales have been those most often reprinted, adapted, and admired.[2]
Harte was born in 1836[3] in New York's capital city ofAlbany.[4] He was named after his great-grandfather, Francis Brett. When he was young, his father, Henry, changed the spelling of the family name from Hart to Harte. Henry's father was Bernard Hart, anOrthodox Jewish immigrant who flourished as a merchant, becoming one of the founders of theNew York Stock Exchange.[5] Bret's mother, Elizabeth Rebecca Ostrander Hart, was from the English and Dutch culture and raised her child in aDutch Reformed church.[6] Later, Francis preferred to be known by his middle name, but he spelled it with only one "t", becoming Bret Harte.[7] Harte was ofFrench Huguenot and Dutch ancestry and descended from prominent New York landownerFrancis Rombouts.[8]
An avid reader as a boy, Harte published his first work at age 11, a satirical poem titled "Autumn Musings", now lost. Rather than attracting praise, the poem garnered ridicule from his family. As an adult, he recalled to a friend,[who?] "Such a shock was their ridicule to me that I wonder that I ever wrote another line of verse."[9]
Harte's formal schooling[where?] ended when he was 13, in 1849.[10]
Harte moved to California in 1853, later working there in a number of capacities, including miner, teacher, messenger, and journalist; he was also secretary of theSan Francisco Mint.[11] He spent part of his life in the northern California coastal town of Union (nowArcata), a settlement onHumboldt Bay, as a tutor and school teacher, then aprinter's devil onThe Northern Californian,[12] and went on to reporting news, writing poems, and occasionally, acting editor, leaving after three years, from lynching threats for writing an editorial about the26 February 1860 Wiyot massacre.[13]
Union was established as a provisioning center for mining camps in the interior.[citation needed]
TheWells Fargo Messenger of July 1916 relates that after an unsuccessful attempt to make a living in the gold camps, Harte signed on as a messenger withWells Fargo & Co. Express. He guarded treasure boxes onstagecoaches for a few months, then gave it up to become theschoolmaster at a school near the town ofSonora, in theSierra foothills. He created his character Yuba Bill from his memory of an old stagecoach driver.
Among Harte's first literary efforts was a poem published inThe Golden Era in 1857[14] and, in October of that same year, his first prose piece on "A Trip Up the Coast".[15] In the spring of 1860 he was hired as editor ofThe Golden Era, which he attempted to make into a more literary publication.[16]Mark Twain later recalled that, as an editor, Harte struck "a new and fresh and spirited note" which "rose above that orchestra's mumbling confusion and was recognizable as music".[17]
The1860 massacre of between 80 and 200Wiyot Indians at the village of Tuluwat (nearEureka inHumboldt County, California) was reported by Harte in San Francisco and New York. While serving as assistant editor of theNorthern Californian,[18] Harte was left in charge of the paper during the temporary absence of his boss,Stephen G. Whipple. Harte published a detailed account condemning the slayings, writing:
[A] more shocking and revolting spectacle was never exhibited to the eyes of a Christian and civilized people. Old women, wrinkled and decrepit, lay weltering in blood, their brains dashed out and dabbled with their long gray hair. Infants scarce a span long, with their faces cloven with hatchets and their bodies ghastly with wounds.[16]
After he published the editorial, Harte's life was threatened, and he was forced to flee one month later. Harte quit his job and moved to San Francisco, where an anonymous letter published in a city paper describing widespread community approval of the massacre was attributed to him. In addition, no one was ever brought to trial, despite the evidence of a planned attack and of references to specific individuals, including a rancher named Larabee and other members of the unofficial militia called theHumboldt Volunteers.[19]
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Harte married Anna Griswold on August 11, 1862, inSan Rafael, California.[21] From the start, the marriage was rocky. Some suggested that she was consumed by extreme jealousy, while early Harte biographer Henry C. Merwin privately concluded that she was "almost impossible to live with".[10]
The well-known ministerThomas Starr King recommended Harte toJames T. Fields, editor of the prestigious magazineThe Atlantic Monthly, which published Harte's first short story in October 1863.[22] In 1864, Harte joined withCharles Henry Webb in starting a newliterary journal calledThe Californian. He became friends with and mentored poetIna Coolbrith.[16]
In 1865, Harte was asked by bookseller Anton Roman to edit a book of California poetry; it was to be a showcase of the finest California writers.[16] When the book, calledOutcroppings, was published, it contained only 19 poets, many of them Harte's friends (includingIna Coolbrith andCharles Warren Stoddard). The book caused some controversy, as Harte used the preface as a vehicle to attack California's literature, blaming the state's "monotonous climate" for its bad poetry.[16] While the book was widely praised in the East, many newspapers and poets in the West took umbrage at his remarks.[16]
In 1868, Harte became editor ofTheOverland Monthly, another new literary magazine, published by Roman Anton with the intention of highlighting local writings.[23] TheOverland Monthly was more in tune with the pioneering spirit of excitement in California. Harte's short story "The Luck of Roaring Camp" appeared in the magazine's second issue, propelling him to fame nationwide and in Europe.[18][11]
When word ofCharles Dickens's death reached Harte in July 1870, he immediately sent a dispatch across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming issue of theOverland Monthly for 24 hours so that he could compose the poetic tribute "Dickens in Camp".
Harte's fame increased with the publication of his satirical poem "Plain Language from Truthful James" in the September 1870 issue of theOverland Monthly.[24] The poem became better known by its alternate title "The Heathen Chinee" after being republished in a Boston newspaper in 1871.[25] It was also quickly republished in a number of other newspapers and journals, including theNew York Evening Post, theNew York Tribune, theBoston Evening Transcript, theProvidence Journal, theHartford Courant,Prairie Farmer, and theSaturday Evening Post.[26] The poem was a fictional representation ofattacks on Chinese immigrants and Harte intended to the reader to sympathize with the victim, the character Ah Sin.[27]: 23–24 Instead, readers identified with the attacker, the character William Nye.[27]: 24 Harte later referred to the piece as "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote."[27]: 24
LikePlain Language from Truthful James, Harte's 1874 short storyWan Lee, the Pagan also sought to undermine stereotypes about Chinese immigrants and to portray white Americans as the true savages.[27]: 24
Harte was determined to pursue his literary career and traveled back east with his family in 1871 to New York and eventually to Boston, where he contracted with the publisher ofThe Atlantic Monthly for an annual salary of $10,000, "an unprecedented sum at the time".[28] His popularity waned and, by the end of 1872, he was without a publishing contract and increasingly desperate. He spent the next few years struggling to publish new work or republish old and delivering lectures about the gold rush. The winter of 1877–78 was particularly hard for him and his family. He recalled it as a "hand-to-mouth life" and wrote to his wife Anna, "I don't know—looking back—what ever kept me from going down, inevery way, during that awful December and January".[29]
Some time between 1872 and 1881, Harte rentedthe Willows, aMorristown, New Jersey mansion then owned by Union general and authorJoseph Warren Revere.[30] Harte's time in Morristown inspired him to write an 1877 historical romance novel,Thankful Blossom.[31]
After months of soliciting for such a role, Harte accepted the position of United States Consul in the town ofKrefeld, Germany, in May 1878.Mark Twain had been a friend and supporter of Harte's until a substantial falling out, and he had previously tried to block any appointment for Harte. In a letter toWilliam Dean Howells, he complained that Harte would be an embarrassment to the United States because, as he wrote, "Harte is a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward, aJeremy Diddler, he is brim full of treachery... To send this nasty creature to puke upon the American name in a foreign land is too much".[32] Eventually, Harte was given a similar role inGlasgow in 1880. In 1885 he settled in London.[11] Throughout his time in Europe, he regularly wrote to his wife and children and sent monthly financial contributions. He declined to invite them to join him, nor did he return to the United States to visit them. His excuses were usually related to money. During the 24 years that he spent in Europe, he never abandoned writing and maintained a prodigious output of stories that retained the freshness of his earlier work. Among his writings of this time were parodies and satires of other writers, including "The Stolen Cigar-Case" featuring ace detective "Hemlock Jones", whichEllery Queen praised as "probably the best parody ofSherlock Holmes ever written".[33]
He died inCamberley, England, in 1902 ofthroat cancer and is buried atFrimley.[34] His wife Anna (née Griswold) Harte died on August 2, 1920. The couple lived together only 16 of the 40 years that they were married.[35]
In 1878,Andrew Carnegie praised Harte inRound the World as uniquely American, likely alluding to hisregionalism:
"A whispering pine of the Sierras transplanted to Fifth Avenue! How could it grow? Although it shows some faint signs of life, how sickly are the leaves! As for fruit, there is none. America had in Bret Harte its most distinctively national poet."[36]
Rudyard Kipling also showed himself to be an admirer of Harte's writing. InFrom Sea to Sea and Other Sketches, Letters of Travel,[37] while inSan Francisco Kipling wrote:
"A reporter asked me what I thought of the city, and I made answer suavely that it was hallowed ground to me because of Bret Harte. That was true: 'Well,' said the reporter, 'Bret Harte claims California, but California don't claim Bret Harte. ...' He could not understand that to the outside world the city was worth a great deal less than the man."
Mark Twain characterized him and his writing as insincere. Writing in his autobiography four years after Harte's death, Twain criticized the miners' dialect used by Harte, claiming that it never existed outside of his imagination. Additionally, Twain accused Harte of "borrowing" money from his friends with no intention of repaying it and of financially abandoning his wife and children. He referred repeatedly to Harte as "The Immortal Bilk".[38]
Harte's short story collectionsCondensed Novels (1867) andCondensed Novels: Second Series New Burlesques (1902) are parodies of contemporaneous writers and novels.
| Parody | Named author | Parodied author | Parodied novel | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rupert the Resembler | A-th-y H-pe | Anthony Hope | The Prisoner of Zenda andRupert of Hentzau | |
| The Stolen Cigar Case | A. Co—n D—le | Arthur Conan Doyle | Sherlock Holmes stories | |
| Golly and the Christian or The Minx and the Manxman | H-ll C—ne | Hall Caine | The Christian andThe Manxman | |
| Dan'l Borem | E. N-s W-t-t | Edward Noyes Westcott | David Harum | |
| Stories Three | R-dy-d K-pl-g | Rudyard Kipling | Soldiers Three | In the second story, "A Private's Honor", the three characters Mulledwiney, Bleareyed, and Otherwise parodyLearoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris ofSoldiers Three. The story title, "A Private's Honor", references "His Private Honour" ofMany Inventions, another Learoyd, Mulvaney and Ortheris story. |
| "Zut-Ski" The Problem of a Wicked Feme Sole | M-r-e C-r-lli | Marie Corelli | Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul |
The Outcasts of Poker Flat
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