The Life of Bret Harte Part 10

Mrs. Bates, whose account of California is never exaggerated, tells us of a miner who, night after night, deserted his dying brother for a gambling house, leaving him unattended and piteously crying for water until, at last, he expired alone.

It must be remembered, also, that the moral complexion of California changed greatly from year to year. The first condition was almost an idyllic one. It was a period of honesty and good-will such as never existed before, except in the imagination of Rousseau. There were few doors, and no locks. Gold was left for days at a time unguarded and untouched. "A year ago," said the "Sacramento Transcript," in October, 1850, "a miner could have left his bag of dust exhibited to full view, and absent himself a week. His tools might have remained unmolested in any ravine for months, and his goods and chattels, bed and bedding might have remained along the highway for an indefinite period without being stolen."

There was much drinking, much gambling, and some murders were committed in the heat of pa.s.sion; but nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in the smaller villages of the United States, was property so safe as it was in California.

"I have not heard," wrote Dr. Stillman in 1849, "of a theft or crime of any sort. Firearms are thrown aside as useless, and are given away on the road." Grave disputes involving the t.i.tle to vast wealth were settled by arbitration without the raising of a voice in anger or controversy. Even in Sacramento and San Francisco, merchants left their goods in their canvas houses and tents, open to any who might choose to enter, while they went to church or walked over the hills on Sundays. Their gold was equally unguarded, and equally safe.

"It was wonderful," said a Pioneer early in the Fifties, "how well we got on in '49 without any sort of government beyond the universally sanctioned action of the people, and I have often since questioned in my own mind if we might not have got on just the same ever since, and saved all the money we have paid out for thieving legislation and selfish office-holders."[51]

The change came in the late Summer and early Autumn of 1850, and was chiefly owing to the influx of convicts from Australia and elsewhere,--"low-browed, heavy-featured men, with cold, steel-gray eyes."

In a less degree the change was also due to the deterioration of a small minority of Americans and Europeans, whose moral stamina was not equal to life in a lawless community, although at first that community was lawless only in the strict sense of the word;--it had no laws and needed none. As one Pioneer wrote, "There is no law regarded here but the natural law of justice."

Beginning with the Autumn of 1850, things went from bad to worse until February, 1851, when robbery and murder in San Francisco were stopped by the first Vigilance Committee; and in the mines the same drastic remedy was applied, but not always with the same moderation. A Sacramento paper said in December, 1850: "It is an undeniable fact that crime of almost every description is on the increase in California, especially horse-stealing, robbery, arson and murder. In the city of Sacramento alone, since last April, we should judge there have been at least twenty murders committed, and we are not aware that any murderer has suffered capital punishment, or any other kind of punishment. We have got used to these things, and look upon it as a matter of course that somebody will be killed and robbed as often as once a week at least; and yet notwithstanding all this our people generally are composed of the most orderly, respectable citizens of the United States. The laws furnish us no protection because they are not enforced."

But the Reader may ask, why were the laws not enforced? The answer is that the Pioneers were too busy to concern themselves with their political duties or to provide the necessary machinery for the enforcement of the laws. State officers, munic.i.p.al officers, sheriffs, constables and even judges were chosen, not because they were fit men, but because they wanted the job, and no better candidates offered themselves. Moreover, the Pioneers did not expect to become permanent residents of California; they expected to get rich, off-hand, and then to go home, and why should they bother themselves about elections or laws? In short, an attempt was made to do without law, and, as we have seen, it succeeded for a year or so, but broke down when criminals became numerous.

A letter from the town of Sonora, written in July, 1850, said: "The people are leaving here fast. This place is much deeper in guilt than Sodom or Gomorrah. We have no society, no harmony. Gambling and drunkenness are the order of the day."

In four years there were one thousand two hundred homicides in California.

Almost every mile of the travelled road from Monterey, in the southern part of the State, to San Francisco, was the scene of some foul murder in those eventful years. There was more crime in the southern mines than in the northern, because the Mexicans were more numerous there.

In Sonora County, in 1850, there were twenty-five murders in a single month, committed mainly by Mexicans, Chilians, and British convicts from the penal colonies. A night patrol was organized. Every American tent had a guard around it, and mining almost ceased. Murder and robbery had reached the stage at which they seriously interfered with business. This was not to be endured; and at a ma.s.s meeting held at Sonora on August 3, the following resolution was pa.s.sed: "Resolved: That for the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of this portion of the country, notice shall be given immediately ordering all Mexicans and South Americans to remove from towns.h.i.+p No. 2 in one week from this date."

The consequence was a melancholy exodus of men, women and children, which included the just and the unjust. Many of them were dest.i.tute, and, as respects the Mexicans, many were being banished from the place of their birth. "We fear," remarked a contemporary citizen, "that the money-making, merry old times in Sonora are gone forever."

This was a characteristic Pioneer remark. The "old times" meant were somewhat less than a year back; and their "merry" quality was, as we have seen, considerably modified by robbery and murder. The point of view is much like that of the landlord of a hotel in Virginia City, where Bret Harte was once a guest. After a night disturbed by sounds of shouting, scuffling and pistol shots, Mr. Harte found his host behind the counter in the bar-room "with a bruised eye, a piece of court-plaster extending from his cheek to his forehead, yet withal a pleasant smile upon his face.

Taking my cue from this, I said to him, 'Well, landlord, you had rather a lively time here last night.' 'Yes,' he replied, pleasantly, 'it _was_ rather a lively time.' 'Do you often have such lively times in Virginia City?' I added, emboldened by his cheerfulness. 'Well, no,' he said reflectively; 'the fact is we've only just opened yer, and last night was about the first time that the boys seemed to be gettin' really _acquainted_!'"

The absence of police, and, to a great extent, of law, led to deeds of violence, and to duelling; but it also tended to make men polite. The civility with which cases were conducted in court, and the restraint shown by lawyers in their comments upon one another and upon the witnesses were often spoken of in California. The experience of Alcalde Field in this regard is interesting:--"I came to California with all those notions in respect to acts of violence which are instilled into New England youth; if a man were rude, I would turn away from him. But I soon found that men in California were likely to take very great liberties with a person who acted in such a manner, and that the only way to get along was to hold every man responsible, and resent every trespa.s.s upon one's rights."[52]

Accordingly, young Field bought a brace of pistols, had a sack-coat made with pockets appropriate to contain them, and practised the useful art of firing the pistols with his hands in his pockets. Subsequently he added a bowie-knife to his private a.r.s.enal, and he carried these weapons until the Summer of 1854. "I found," he says, "that the knowledge that pistols were generally worn created a wholesome courtesy of manner and language."

Even the members of the State Legislature were armed. It was a thing of every-day occurrence for a member, when he entered the House, to take off his pistols and lay them in the drawer of his desk. Such an act excited neither surprise nor comment.

At one time Mr. Field sent a challenge to a certain Judge Barbour who had grossly insulted him. Barbour accepted the challenge, but demanded that the duel should be fought with Colt's revolvers and bowie-knives, that it should take place in a room only twenty feet square, and that the fight should continue until at least one of the princ.i.p.als was dead. Mr. Field's second, horrified by these savage proposals, was for rejecting them; but Field himself insisted that they should be accepted, and the result was what he had antic.i.p.ated. Judge Barbour, of his own motion, waived, first the knives, then the small room, and finally declined the meeting altogether. But the very next day, when Field had stepped out of his office, and was picking up an armful of wood for his stove, Barbour crept up behind him, and putting a pistol to his head, called upon Field to draw and defend himself. Field did not turn or move, but spoke somewhat as follows: "You infernal scoundrel, you cowardly a.s.sa.s.sin,--you come behind my back, and put your revolver to my head, and tell me to draw! You haven't the courage to shoot,--shoot and be d.a.m.ned!" And Barbour slunk away.

Shooting at sight, especially in San Francisco and the larger towns, was as common as it is represented by Bret Harte. For the few years, beginning with and succeeding 1850, the newspapers were full of such events. On November 25, 1851, the "Alta California" said: "Another case of the influenza now in fas.h.i.+on occurred yesterday. We allude to a mere shooting-match in which only one of the near by-standers was shot down in his tracks."

Even so late as August, 1855, the "San Francisco Call" was able to refer in a modest way to the "two or three shooting encounters per week" which enlivened its columns.[53]

Duels were common, and in most cases very serious affairs, the battle being waged with destructive weapons and at close range. As a rule, they took place in public. Thus, at a meeting between D. C. Broderick, leader of the Democratic Party in the State, and one J. Cabot Smith, seventy or eighty persons were present. Broderick was wounded, and would have been killed had not the bullet first struck and shattered his watch.

These California duels must be ascribed mainly to the Southern element, which was strong numerically, and which, moreover, exerted an influence greater than its numbers warranted. One reason, perhaps the main reason, for this predominance of the Southerners was that the aristocratic, semi-feudal system which they represented had a more dignified, more das.h.i.+ng aspect than the plain democratic views in which the Northern and Western men had been educated. It made the individual of more importance.

Upon this point Professor Royce makes an acute remark: "The type of the Northern man who has a.s.sumed Southern fas.h.i.+ons, and not always the best Southern fas.h.i.+ons, has often been observed in California life. The Northern man frequently felt commonplace, simple-minded, undignified, beside his brother from the border or the plantation.... The Northern man admired his fluency, his vigor, his invective, his ostentatious courage, his absolute confidence about all matters of morals, of politics, of propriety, and the inscrutable union in his public discourse of sweet reasonableness with ferocious intolerance."

The extreme type of Southerner, as he appeared in California, is immortalized in Colonel Starbottle. The moment when this strange planet first swam into Bret Harte's ken seems to have been seized and recorded with accuracy by his friend, Mr. Noah Brooks. "In Sacramento he and I met Colonel Starbottle, who had, of course, another name. He wore a tall silk hat and loosely-fitting clothes, and he carried on his left arm by its crooked handle a stout walking-stick. The Colonel was a dignified and benignant figure; in politics he was everybody's friend. A gubernatorial election was pending, and with the friends of Haight he stood at the hotel bar, and as they raised their gla.s.ses to their lips he said, 'Here's to the Coming Event!' n.o.body asked at that stage of the canva.s.s what the coming event would be, and when the good Colonel stood in the same place with the friends of Gorham, he gave the same toast, 'The Coming Event!'"

This may have been a certain Dr. Ruskin, a Southern politician, who is described by a Pioneer as wearing "a white fur plug hat, a blue coat with bra.s.s b.u.t.tons, a buff-colored vest, white trousers, varnished boots, a black satin stock, and, on state occasions, a frilled s.h.i.+rt front. He always carried a cane with a curved handle."[54] This, the Reader need not be reminded, is the exact costume of Colonel Starbottle,--the "low Byronic collar," which Bret Harte mentions, being the only item omitted.

From this person Bret Harte undoubtedly derived an idea as to the appearance and carriage of Colonel Starbottle, and it is not unlikely that in drawing the character he had also in mind the notorious Judge David S.

Terry. Terry, a native of Texas, was a fierce, fighting Southerner, a brave and honest man, but narrow, prejudiced, abusive, and ferocious. He was a leading Democrat, a judge of the Supreme Court of the State, and a bitter opponent of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee. He nearly killed an agent of the Committee who attempted to arrest one of his companions, and was himself in some danger of being hung by the Committee on that account. Later, Terry killed Senator Broderick, of whom mention has just been made, in a duel which seems to have had the essential qualities of a murder, and which was forced upon Broderick in much the same way that the fatal duel was forced upon Alexander Hamilton.

Later still, Terry became involved in the affairs of one of his clients, a somewhat notorious woman, whom he married,--clearly showing that mixture of chivalrous respect for women, combined with a capacity for misunderstanding them, and of being deluded by them, which was so remarkable in Colonel Starbottle. In the course of litigation on behalf of his wife, Terry bitterly resented certain action taken by Mr. Justice Field of the Supreme Court of the United States,--the same Field who began his judicial career as Alcalde of Marysville. Terry's threats against the Justice, then an old man, were so open and violent, and his character was so well known, that, at the request of the court officials in San Francisco, a deputy marshal was a.s.signed as a guard to the Justice while he should be hearing cases on the California circuit. At a railroad station, one day, Terry and the Justice met; and as Terry was, apparently, in the act of drawing a weapon, the deputy marshal shot and killed him.

It was Judge Terry who remarked of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, which was mainly composed of business men,--the lawyers holding aloof,--that they were "a set of d.a.m.ned pork-merchants,"--a remark so characteristic of Colonel Starbottle that it is difficult to attribute it to anybody else.

Colonel Starbottle was as much the product of slavery as Uncle Tom himself, and he exemplified both its good and its bad effects. His fat white hand and pudgy fingers indicated the man who despised manual labor and those who performed it. His short, stubby feet, and tight-fitting, high-heeled boots conveyed him sufficiently well from office to bar-room, but were never intended for anything in the nature of a "const.i.tutional."

His own immorality did not prevent him from cheris.h.i.+ng a high ideal of feminine purity; but his conversation was gross. He was a purveyor, Bret Harte relates, "of sprightly stories such as Gentlemen of the Old School are in the habit of telling, but which, from deference to the prejudices of gentlemen of a more recent school, I refrain from transcribing here."

He had that keen sense of honor, and the determination to defend it, even, if need be, at the expense of his life, which the Southern slave-holder possessed, and he had also the ferocity which belonged to the same character. One can hardly recall without a shudder of disgust the "small, beady black eyes" of Colonel Starbottle, especially when they "shone with that fire which a pretty woman or an affair of honor could alone kindle."

The Reader will remember that the Colonel was always ready to hold himself "personally responsible" for any consequences of a hostile nature, and that by some irreverent persons he was dubbed "Old Personal Responsibility." The phrase was not invented by Bret Harte. On the contrary, it was almost a catchword in California society; it was a Southern phrase, and indicated the Southerner's att.i.tude. In a leading article published in the "San Francis...o...b..lletin" in 1856, it is said, "The basis of many of the outrages which have disgraced our State during the past four years has been the 'personal responsibility' system,--a relic of barbarism."

Colonel Starbottle's lack of humor was also a Southern characteristic. The only humorists in the South were the slaves; and the reason is not far to seek. The Southerner's political and social creed was that of an aristocrat; and an aristocrat is too dignified and too self-absorbed to enter curiously into other men's feelings, and too self-satisfied to question his own. Dandies are notoriously grave men. The aristocratic, non-humorous man always takes himself seriously; and this trait in Colonel Starbottle is what makes him so interesting. "It is my invariable custom to take brandy--a winegla.s.s-full in a cup of strong coffee--immediately on rising. It stimulates the functions, sir, without producing any blank derangement of the nerves."

There is another trait, exemplified in Colonel Starbottle, which often accompanies want of humor, namely, a tendency to be theatrical. It would seem as if the ordinary course of human events was either too painful or too monotonous to be endured. We find ourselves obliged to throw upon it an aspect of comedy or of tragedy, by way of relief. The man of humor sees the incongruity,--in other words, the jest in human existence; and the non-humorous, having no such perception, represents it to himself and to others in an exaggerated or theatrical form. The one relies upon understatement; the other upon overstatement. Colonel Starbottle was always theatrical; his walk was a strut, and "his colloquial speech was apt to be fragmentary incoherencies of his larger oratorical utterances."

But we cannot help feeling sorry for the Colonel as his career draws to a close, and especially when, after his discomfiture in the breach of promise case, he returns to his lonely chambers, and the negro servant finds him there silent and unoccupied before his desk. "''Fo' G.o.d! Kernel, I hope dey ain't nuffin de matter, but you's lookin' mighty solemn! I ain't seen you look dat way, Kernel, since de day pooh Ma.s.sa Stryker was fetched home shot froo de head.' 'Hand me down the whiskey, Jim,' said the Colonel, rising slowly. The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle. The Colonel poured out a gla.s.s of the spirit, and drank it with his old deliberation. 'You're quite right, Jim,' he said, putting down his gla.s.s, 'but I'm--er--getting old--and--somehow--I am missing poor Stryker d.a.m.nably.'"

This is the last appearance of Colonel Starbottle. He represents that element of the moral picturesque,--that compromise with perfection which, in this imperfect and transitory world, is universally craved. Even Emerson, best and most respectable of men, admitted, in his private diary, that the irregular characters who frequented the rum-selling tavern in his own village were indispensable elements, forming what he called "the fringe to every one's tapestry of life."[55] Such men as he had in mind mitigate the solemnity and tragedy of human existence; and in them the virtuous are able to relax, vicariously, the moral tension under which they suffer. This is the part which Colonel Starbottle plays in literature.

CHAPTER VIII

WOMEN AND CHILDREN AMONG THE PIONEERS

The chief source of demoralization among the Pioneers was the absence of women and children, and therefore of any real home. "Ours is a bachelor community," remarked the "Alta California," "but nevertheless possessing strong domestic propensities." Most significant and pathetic, indeed, is the strain of homesickness which underlies the wild symphony of Pioneer life. "I well remember," writes a Forty-Niner, "the loneliness and dreariness amid all the excitement of the time." The unsuccessful miner often lost his strength by hard work, exposure, and bad food; and then fell a prey to that disease which has slain so many a wanderer--homesickness. At the San Francisco hospital it was a rule not to give letters from the East to patients, unless they were safely convalescent. More than once the nurses had seen a sick man, after reading a letter from home, turn on his side and die.

In the big gambling saloons of San Francisco, when the band played "Home, Sweet Home," hundreds of homeless wanderers stood still, and listened as if entranced. The newspapers of '49 and '50 are full of lamentations, in prose and in verse, over the absence of women and children. In 1851 the "Alta California" exclaimed, "Who will devise a plan to bring out a few cargoes of respectable women to California?"

On those rare occasions when children appeared in the streets, they were followed by admiring crowds of bearded men, eager to kiss them, to shake their hands, to hear their voices, and humbly begging permission to make them presents of gold nuggets and miners' curiosities. In the autumn of 1849 a beautiful flaxen-haired little girl, about three years old, was frequently seen playing upon the veranda of a house near the business centre of San Francisco, and at such times there was always on the opposite side of the street a group of miners gazing reverently at the child, and often with tears running down their bronzed cheeks. The cry of a baby at the theatre brought down a tumultuous encore from the whole house. The chief attraction of every theatrical troupe was a child, usually called the "California Pet," whose appearance on the stage was always greeted with a shower of coins. Next to the Pet, the most popular part of the entertainment was the singing of ballads and songs relating to domestic subjects.

In '49 a woman in the streets of San Francisco created more excitement than would have been caused by the appearance of an elephant or a giraffe.

Once at a crowded sale in an auction room some one cried out, "Two ladies going along the sidewalk!" and forthwith everybody rushed pell-mell into the street, as if there had been a fire or an earthquake. A young miner, in a remote mountain camp, borrowed a mule and rode forty miles in order to make a call upon a married woman who had recently arrived. He had a few minutes' conversation with her, and returned the next day well satisfied with his trip. At another diggings, when the first woman resident appeared, she and the mule upon which she rode, were raised from the ground by a group of strong-armed, enthusiastic miners, and carried triumphantly to the house which her husband had prepared for her.

When the town where Stephen J. Field purchased his corner lots was organized, the first necessity was of course a name. Various t.i.tles, suggested by the situation, or by the imagination of hopeful miners, were proposed, such as Yubaville and Circ.u.mdoro; but finally a substantial, middle-aged man arose and remarked that there was an American lady in the place, the wife of one of the proprietors, that her name was Mary, and that in his opinion, the town should be called Marysville, as a compliment to her. No sooner had he made this suggestion than the meeting broke out in loud huzzahs; every hat made a circle around its owner's head, and the new town was christened Marysville without a dissenting voice. The lady, Mrs. Coullard, was one of the survivors of the Donner party, and the honor was therefore especially fitting.

Doubts have been cast upon the story of the bar surmounted by a woman's sunbonnet, to which every customer respectfully lifted his gla.s.s before tossing off its contents; but the fact is substantiated by the eminent engraver, Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, who, as a young man, drank a gla.s.s of whiskey at that very bar, in the early Fifties, and joined in the homage to the sunbonnet. There is really nothing unnatural in this incident, or in that other story of some youthful miners coming by chance upon a woman's cast-off skirt or hat, spontaneously forming a ring and dancing around it. In both cases, the motive, no doubt, was partly humorous, partly amorous, and partly a vague but intense longing for the gentle and refining influence of women's society.

This feeling of the miners, roughly expressed in the incidents of the sunbonnet and skirt, was poetically treated by Bret Harte in the story called _The G.o.ddess of Excelsior_,--another example of that "perverse romanticism" which has been discovered in his California tales.

Said the "Sacramento Transcript," in April, 1850, "May we not hope soon to see around us thousands of happy homes whose genial influences will awaken the n.o.ble qualities that many a wanderer has allowed to slumber in his heart while absent from the objects of his affection!"

In the same strain, but in the more florid style which was common in the California newspapers, another writer thus antic.i.p.ated the coming of women and children: "No longer will the desolate heart seek to drown its loneliness in the accursed bowl. But the bright smiles of love will shed suns.h.i.+ne where were dark clouds and fierce tornadoes, and the lofty spire, pointing heavenward, will remind us in our pilgrimage here of the high destiny we were created to fulfil." This has the ring of sincerity, and yet, as we read it, we cannot help thinking that when the writer laid down his pen, he went out and took one more drink from the "accursed bowl"; and who could blame him!

A loaf of home-made cake sent all the way around Cape Horn from Brooklyn to San Jose was reverently eaten, a portion being given to the local editor who duly returned thanks for the same.