A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country Part 1

A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country.

by Thomas d.y.k.es Beasley.

Foreword

In California's imaginary Hall of Fame, Bret Harte must be accorded a prominent, if not first place. His short stories and dialect poems published fifty years ago made California well known the world over and gave it a romantic interest conceded no other community. He saw the picturesque and he made the world see it. His power is unaccountable if we deny him genius. He was essentially an artist. His imagination gave him vision, a new life in beautiful setting supplied colors and rare literary skill painted the picture.

His capacity for absorption was marvelous. At the age of about twenty he spent less than a year in the foot-hills of the Sierras, among pioneer miners, and forty-five years of literary output did not exhaust his impressions. He somewhere refers to an "eager absorption of the strange life around me, and a photographic sensitiveness, to certain scenes and incidents." "Eager absorption," "photographic sensitiveness," a rich imagination and a fine literary style, largely due to his mother, enabled him to win at his death this acknowledgment from the "London Spectator:" "No writer of the present day has struck so powerful and original a note as he has sounded."

Francis Bret Harte was born in Albany, New York, August 25, 1836.

His father was a teacher and translator; his mother a woman of high character and cultivated tastes. His father having died, he, when nine, became an office boy and later a clerk. In 1854 he came to California to join his mother who had married again, arriving in Oakland in March of that year. His employment for two years was desultory. He worked in a drug store and also wrote for Eastern magazines. Then he went to Alamo in the San Ramon Valley as tutor--a valued experience. Later in 1856 he went to Tuolumne County where, among other things, he taught school, and may have been an express messenger. At any rate, he stored his memory with material that ten years later made him and the whole region famous.

In 1857 he went to Humboldt County where his sister was living. He was an interesting figure, gentlemanly, fastidious, reserved, sensitive, with a good fund of humor, a pleasant voice and a modest manner. He seemed poorly fitted for anything that needed doing. He was willing, for I saw him digging post holes and building a fence with results somewhat unsatisfactory. He was more successful as tutor for two of my boy friends. He finally became printers' devil in the office of the "Northern Californian," where he learned the case, and incidentally contributed graceful verse and clever prose.

He returned to San Francisco early in 1860 and found work on the "Golden Era," at first as compositor and soon as writer. In May, 1864, he left the "Golden Era" and joined others in starting "The Californian." Two months later he was made editor of the new "Overland Monthly." The second number contained "The Luck of Roaring Camp." It attracted wide attention as a new note. Other stories and poems of merit followed.

Harte's growing reputation burst in full bloom when in 1870 he filled a blank s.p.a.ce in the "Overland" make-up with "The Heathen Chinee." It was quoted on the floor of the Senate and gained world-wide fame. He received flattering offers and felt constrained to accept the best. In February, 1871, he left California. A Boston publisher had offered him $10,000 for whatever he might write in the following year. Harte accepted, but the output was small.

For seven years he wrote spasmodically, eking out his income by lecturing and newspaper work. Life was hard. In 1878 he sailed for Europe, having been appointed consular agent at Crefeld, Prussia, about forty miles north of Cologne. In 1880 he was made Consul at Glasgow, where he remained five years. His home thereafter was London, where he continued his literary work until his death in March, 1902.

His complete works comprise nineteen volumes. His patriotic verse is fervid, his idyls are graceful and his humorous verse delightful. The short story he made anew.

Harte's instincts and habits were good. He had the artistic temperament and some of its incidental weaknesses. He acknowledged himself "const.i.tutionally improvident," and a debt-burdened life is not easy.

His later years were pathetic. Those who knew and appreciated him remember him fondly. California failing to know him, wrongs herself.

Charles A. Murdock.

Preface

A desire to obtain, at first hand, any possible information in regard to reminiscences of Bret Harte, Mark Twain and others of the little coterie of writers, who in the early fifties visited the mining camps of California and through stories that have become cla.s.sics, played a prominent part in making "California" a synonym for romance, led to undertaking the tramp of which this brief narrative is a record. The writer met with unexpected success, having the good fortune to meet men, all over eighty years of age, who had known--in some cases intimately Bret Harte, Mark Twain, "Dan de Quille," Prentice Mulford, Bayard Taylor and Horace Greeley.

It seems imperative that a relation of individual experiences--however devoid of stirring incident and adventure--should be written in the first person. At the same time, the writer of this unpretentious story of a summer's tramp cannot but feel that he owes his readers--should he have any an apology for any avoidable egotism. His excuse is that, no twit notwithstanding ding the glamour attaching to the old mining towns, it is almost incredible how little is known of them by the average Californian; for the Eastern tourist there is more excuse, since the foot-hills of the Sierras lie outside the beaten tracks of travel.

He has, therefore, a.s.sumed that "a plain unvarnished tale" of actual experiences might not be without interest to the casual reader; and possibly might incite in him a desire to see for himself a country not only possessed of rare beauty, but absolutely unique in its a.s.sociations.

But the point to be emphasized is that the glamour is not a thing of the past: it is there now. Nay, to a person possessed of any imagination, the ruins--say, of Coloma--appeal in all probability far stronger than would the actual town itself in the days when it seethed with bustle and excitement. Not to have visited the old mining towns is not to have seen the "heart" of California, or felt its pulsations. It is not to understand why the very name "California" still stirs the blood and excites the imagination throughout the civilized world.

If this brief narrative should induce anyone to "gird up his loins,"

shoulder his pack and essay a similar pilgrimage, the author will feel that he has not been unrewarded. And if a man over threescore years of age can tramp through seven counties and return, in spite of intense heat, feeling better and stronger than when he started, a young fellow in the hey-day of life and sound of wind and limb surely ought not to be discouraged.

Thomas d.y.k.es Beasley.

A Tramp Through the Bret Harte Country

Chapter I

Reminiscences of Bret Harte. "Plain Language From Truthfulful James."

The Glamour of the Old Mining Towns

It is forty-four years since the writer met the author of "The Luck of Roaring Camp"--that wonderful blending within the limits of a short story of humor, pathos and tragedy--which, incredible as it may seem, met with but a cold reception from the local press, and was even branded as "indecent" and "immodest!"

On the occasion referred to, I was strolling on Rincon Hill--at that time the fas.h.i.+onable residence quarter of San Francisco--in company with Mr. J. H. Wildes, whose cousin, the late Admiral Frank Wildes, achieved fame in the battle of Manila Bay. Mr. Wildes called my attention to an approaching figure and said: "Here comes Bret Harte, a man of unusual literary ability. He is having a hard struggle now, but only needs the opportunity, to make a name for himself."

That opportunity arrived almost immediately. In the September number of the Overland Monthly, 1870, of which magazine Mr. Harte was then editor, appeared "Plain Language from Truthful James," or "The Heathen Chinee,"

as the poem was afterwards called. A few weeks later, to my amazement, while turning the pages of Punch in the Mercantile Library, I came across "The Heathen Chinee;" an unique compliment so far as my recollection of Punch serves. To this generous and instantaneous recognition of genius may be attributed in no small measure the rapid distinction won by Bret Harte in the world of letters.

Mr. Harte read his "Heathen Chinee" to Mrs. Wildes, some time before it was published. This lady, a woman of brilliant attainments and one who had a host of friends in old San Francisco, possessed the keenest sense of humor. Mr. Harte greatly valued her critical judgment. He was in the habit of reading his stories and poems to her for her opinion and decision, before publication, and it may well be that her hearty laughter and warm approval helped to strengthen his wavering opinion of the lines which convulsed Anglo-Saxondom; for no one was more surprised than he at the sensation they created. He had even offered the poem for publication to Mr. Ambrose Bierce, then editing the San Francisco News Letter; but Mr. Bierce, recognizing its merit, returned it to Mr. Harte and prevailed upon him to publish it in his own magazine.

Had one at that time encountered Mr. Harte in Piccadilly or Fifth Avenue, he would simply have been aware of a man dressed in perfect taste, but in the height of the prevailing fas.h.i.+on. On the streets of San Francisco, however, Bret Harte was always a notable figure, from the fact that the average man wore "slops," devoid alike of style or cut, and usually of s.h.i.+ny broadcloth. Broad-brimmed black felt hats were the customary headgear, completing a most funereal costume.

Mr. Harte impressed me as being singularly modest and utterly devoid of any form of affectation. To be well dressed in a period when little attention was paid clothes by the San Franciscan, might, it is true, in some men have suggested a.s.sumption of an air of superiority; but with Mr. Harte, to dress well was simply a natural instinct. His long, drooping moustache and the side-whiskers of the time--incongruous as the comparison may seem--called to mind the elder Sothern as "Lord Dundreary." His natural expression was pensive, even sad. When one considers that pathos and tragedy, perhaps even more than humor, pervade his stories, that was not surprising.

I had but recently arrived from England--a mere lad. California was still the land of gold and romance; the glamour with which Bret Harte surrounded both, that bids fair to be immortal, held me enthralled.

Angel's, Rough and Ready, Sandy Bar, Poker Flat, Placerville, Tuolumne and old Sonora represented to me enchanted ground. Fate and life's vicissitudes prevented, except in imagination, a knowledge of the Sierra foot-hill counties; but in the back of my head all these years had persisted a determination to, at some time, visit a region close to the heart of every old Californian, and what better way than on foot?

In spite of Pullman cars and automobiles--or, rather, perhaps on account of them--the only way to see a country, to get into touch with Nature and meet the inhabitants on the dead level of equality and human sympathy, is to use Nature's method of locomotion. Equipped with a stout stick--with a view to dogs--a folding kodak camera, and your "goods and chattels" slung in a haversack across your shoulders, you feel independent of timecards and "routes;" and sally forth into the world with the philosophical determination to take things as they come; keyed to a pleasurable pitch of excitement by the knowledge that "Adventure"

walks with you hand-in-hand, and that the "humors of the road" are yours for the seeing and understanding.

Chapter II

Inception of the Tramp. Stockton to Angel's Camp. Tuttletown and the "Sage of Jacka.s.s Hill"

Following as near as might be the route of the old Argonauts, I avoided trains, and on a warm summer night boarded the Stockton boat. In the early morning you are aware of slowly rounding the curves of the San Joaquin River. Careful steering was most essential, as owing to the dry season the river was unusually low. The vivid greens afforded by the tules and willows that fringe the river banks, and the occasional homestead surrounded by trees, with its little landing on the edge of the levee, should delight the eye of the artist.

I lost no time in Stockton and headed for Milton in the foot-hills, just across the western boundary of Calaveras County. The distance was variously estimated by the natives at from twenty to forty miles--Californians are careless about distances, as in other matters.

Subsequently I entered it in my note book as a long twenty-eight.

Eighteen miles out from Stockton, at a place called Peters, which is little more than a railway junction, you leave the cultivated land and enter practically a desert country, dest.i.tute of water, trees, undergrowth and with but a scanty growth of gra.s.s. I ate my lunch at the little store and noted with apprehension that the thermometer registered 104 degrees in the shaded porch. I am not likely to forget that pull of ten miles and inwardly confessed to a regret that I had not taken the train to Milton. Accustomed on "hikes" to a thirst not surpa.s.sed by anything "east of Suez," I never before appreciated the significance of the word "parched"--the "tongue cleaving to the roof of the mouth."

At Milton one enters the land of romance. What was even more appreciable at the time, it marks the limit of the inhospitable country I had traversed. Mr. Robert Donner, the proprietor of the Milton Hotel, told me he once had "Black Bart" as his guest for over a week, being unaware at the time of his ident.i.ty. This famous bandit in the early eighties "held up" the Yosemite stage time and again. In fact, he terrorized the whole Sierra country from Redding to Sacramento. He was finally captured in San Francisco through a clew obtained from a laundry mark on a pair of white cuffs. For years, Mr. Donner cherished a boot left by the highwayman in the hurry of departure, which, much to his annoyance, was finally abstracted by some person unknown. To dispose of Black Bart; he served his term and was never seen again in the Sierras. There is a rumor that Wells Fargo & Company, the chief sufferers by his activities, made it worth his while to behave himself in the future.

The following day I reached Copperopolis. This place very justly has the reputation of being one of the hottest spots in the foot-hills. Owing to resumed operations on a large scale, of the Calaveras Copper Company, I found the little settlement crowded to its fullest capacity, and was perforce compelled to resort to genuine "hobo" methods--in short, I spent the night under the lee of a haystack. My original intention had been to walk thence to Sonora, twenty-four miles; but finding the road would take me again into the valley, I decided to make for Angel's Camp, only thirteen miles away.

It is uphill nearly all the way from Copperopolis to Angel's Camp, but mostly you are in the pine woods. My spirits rose with the alt.i.tude and delight at the magnificent view when I at last reached the summit.

Toiling up the grade in the dust, I met a good old-fas.h.i.+oned four-horse Concord stage, which from all appearances might have been in action ever since the days of Bret Harte. At last I felt I was in touch with the Sierras. The driver even honored my bow with an abrupt "Howdy!" which from such a magnate, I took to be a good omen.