FRANCIS BRET HARTE

The story of California forms one of the most interesting and romantic of all the states in the Union, and the quest of the Argonauts of '49 is by far the most fascinating chapter in California's history. This state was early settled by the Spaniards, but they made slow progress in developing the country. It remained for the discovery of gold in El Dorado County to hasten the development of California and to impart to its history special interest and romance. The revolutionary action of John Charles Fremont, the Pathfinder, which resulted in the cession of this Mexican territory to the Union, had already prepared the way for the rapid tide of immigration which then set in to the Pacific Coast. The discovery of gold of course imparted additional impetus to this tide and brought a vast horde of adventurers to this El Dorado. Cities sprang up by magic, as it were by night, and what but a short while before was a vast primeval forest soon blossomed into a cultivated land of fertile fields waving their golden harvests of grain and of orchards laden with their ripe luscious fruits. Great engineering enterprises were under

taken and streams turned out of their natural courses to do man's bidding; and thus an immense new commonwealth was created out of a vast wilderness.

There were two routes from the East to this wonderful new land of the Golden Fleece, -the one a waterway by Cape Horn and the other the overland trail. But either of these routes entailed severe hardships and untiring endurance on the part of the pioneers, and it was only the fittest that survived the difficulties and hardships of the voyage by sea or of the overland journey. So the pioneers who reached California were a husky and sturdy folk capable of untold endurance and as distinctive as the companions of Jason. Those who made their way to California in '49 were, for the most part, men of education and not a few college graduates. Yet among the men of education and character were some also of the baser sort, some even of the criminal class. All, however, both cultured and degraded, tended toward a lower level of living and thinking under the

primitive conditions of that pioneer life, when freed from the refining influences of the home. The life of the Argonauts, therefore, was less restrained by social conventions and wilder than that of almost any other American pioneers. The mad rush for gold served to intensify their innate vices as well as to develop acquired vices, like gambling, which was rife among them. Yet it must not be inferred that the Argonauts were all human degenerates destitute of virtues, for such an inference would do them unspeakable injustice and be absolutely false.

These new-comers soon after their arrival established certain social and moral standards and even administered their crude forms of justice with a remarkable degree of impartiality and equity. Their improvised laws were executed through their vigilance committees,—an institution serving as a court of justice.

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Now this pioneer life on our Pacific Coast, fortunately, has been raised to the dignity of literature and preserved through the writings of Francis Bret Harte, who knew that life intimately from actual experience and observation and who has written of it as one to the manner born. Bret Harte, as he is generally called, was born in Albany, New York, in 1836. His father, Henry Harte, who died young, was an accomplished scholar and teacher, being an instructor in the Albany Female Academy, then a noted school, and later conducted a private school of his own in that city. But despite his intellectual gifts Henry Harte was not a successful man, and upon his death in 1845 he left his family of a wife and four children unprovided for and they consequently had to undergo many privations.

Young Bret Harte was a precocious and studious child, but did not enjoy robust health. At the tender age of six, his biographers inform us, he read Shakespeare and Froissart and the following year, in the well-selected library his father had accumulated, the lad of seven made the acquaintance of Dickens, reading Dombey and Son. This is significant because he was to be more profoundly influenced by Dickens than by any other author he ever read. After this he came to make the acquaintance of Fielding, Goldsmith, Smollett, Cervantes, and

Washington Irving of his own country. When fourteen years old, the boy began the study of Greek and made rapid progress. In his early youth, even at the age of eleven, Bret Harte gave evidence of his ambition to become an author by writing a poem "Autumnal Musings," which he sent surreptitiously to the New York Sunday Atlas, and he had the gratification and honor of seeing it appear in the next issue. A much longer effusion entitled "The Hudson River," which he wrote when he was sixteen, he never published, though he profited by his mother's criticism of it.

At the age of thirteen Bret Harte was compelled by pecuniary reasons to retire from school and to work for his living. He thereupon entered a lawyer's office where he remained a year and went thence to a counting-room of a merchant. By the time he was sixteen years old, he had become self-supporting. Then it was that his mother, in company with some friends and relatives, decided to move to California to make her home there with her elder son Henry, leaving behind Francis Bret with his younger sister, who was at school. Young Bret and his sister followed a few months later when the session closed, going by way of the Nicaragua route, then a popular though long and tedious journey across the Isthmus of Panama and thence by boat to San Francisco. Accordingly, in March, 1854, this callow youth of eighteen winters arrived, unheralded, in the Golden City. The day after his arrival he made his way with his sister across the Bay to Oakland and joined his mother, who had in the meantime married again,- her second husband being Colonel Andrew Williams. Like Thackeray, Bret Harte was fortunate in his step-father, who was a man of parts and held in high esteem. Bret made his home at his step-father's and soon found employment, first as a tutor and then as a clerk in an apothecary's shop. From this year dates his career as a professional writer, since he now first began to contribute poems and sketches of California life to various periodicals, as a means of support.

Bret Harte's income from his pen, however, was not yet sufficient to insure him a support he could depend upon. As a

less precarious means of existence he served for a while as an

express messenger on a route along the upper coast of California and then entered the office of the Humboldt Times in the town of Union, in the northern part of the state, and learned the printer's trade. After this he taught school and later served as a printer's devil, compositor, and assistant-editor, in succession, in the office of the Northern Californian, published in Eureka. It was while he was acting editor of this paper that he came near being mobbed for an outspoken, courageous editorial he published, scathingly condemning the act of certain citizens in the neighborhood of Eureka for murdering some Indians. The timely arrival of some United States cavalrymen happily averted the threatening danger and Bret Harte was summarily relieved of the duties of his office that had been thrust upon him by the editor's absence. On his return to San Francisco the young journalist's wanderjahr was ended, after he had seen California life in its varied aspects,―on the coast, in the interior, on the ranch, in the mine, and in the city. From this time forth Bret Harte's activities in California were to be circumscribed, being confined to San Francisco and vicinity.

Bret Harte now obtained a position as typesetter in the office of the Golden Era, but in a short while was promoted from the compositor's stand to be the editor of this sheet. During his tenure of this office he published in the columns of the Golden Era some of his early sketches, such as In a Balcony, A Boy's Dog, M'liss and some of his Condensed Novels. It was his practice to publish these sketches at first anonymously, but later gaining confidence he signed his contributions "B" and then "Bret." Emboldened by his success during his connection with the Golden Era he felt that his income justified him in marrying. Accordingly in 1862 he married Miss Anna Griswold, of New York. Two years after his marriage he was appointed Secretary of the California Mint-an office he continued to hold till his departure from the state in 1870. The appointment was fortunate for him, since by it he was enabled to provide for his growing family without depending upon the meagre and uncertain emoluments of literature. At the same time the duties of his office were not exacting, so that he had no inconsiderable time at his disposal for cultivating his gifts as a writer. He did

not go much into society, but he cultivated a few notable friends, such as the Reverend Thomas Starr King and Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont, the wife of the famous Pathfinder. It was this clever and kind-hearted woman who often helped the struggling young author with her frank criticism, sympathy, and encouragement. Through her friendly offices Bret Harte attained the distinction of being counted among the contributors to the Atlantic Monthly as the anthor of The Legend of Monte del Diabolo published in that magazine in 1863.

In 1864 The Californian was established and among its first contributors were Bret Harte and Mark Twain, who was then on the Pacific Coast making a name for himself as a writer. These two coming authors happened to be engaged in journalistic work at the same time in San Francisco,- Bret Harte writing for The Californian and Mark Twain reporting for The Morning Call,when they were first introduced to each other. Mark Twain regaled Harte with his famous story of "The Jumping Frog" and Harte thereupon induced him to publish it in The Californian. This literary sheet, however, was not destined to enjoy a long lease of life. William Dean Howells wittily said of it, apropos of Mark Twain's and Bret Harte's writings for it: "These ingenuous young men, with the fatuity of gifted people had established a literary newspaper in San Francisco, and they brilliantly coöperated to its early extinction." The article Harte contributed to the initial number of The Californian was entitled Neighborhoods I Have Moved From; and this was followed by the Ballad of the Emu, both published anonymously. Subsequently he contributed to this same page, before its early extinction, many essays, poems, and sketches, including some additional Condensed Novels.

A contemporary San Francisco journalist, Noah Brooks, describes Bret Harte's laborious and self-critical manner of composition thus: "Scores of writers have become known to me in the course of my long life, but I have never known another so fastidious and so laborious as Bret Harte. His writing materials, the light and heat, and even the adjustment of the furniture of the writing-room, must be as he desired; otherwise he could not go on with his work. Even when his en