Read Online for Free Bret Harte the Luck of Roaring Camp

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SELECTED STORIES OF BRET HARTE

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

THE LUCK OF ROARING Camp

THE OUTCASTS OF POKER Apartment

MIGGLES

TENNESSEE'Due south PARTNER

THE IDYL OF Crimson GULCH

Brownish OF CALAVERAS

Loftier-WATER MARK

A Lonely RIDE

THE MAN OF NO Account

MLISS

THE RIGHT Middle OF THE COMMANDER

NOTES Past Flood AND FIELD

AN EPISODE OF FIDDLETOWN

BARKER'South LUCK

A Yellowish Dog

A MOTHER OF V

BULGER'South REPUTATION

IN THE TULES

A CONVERT OF THE MISSION

THE INDISCRETION OF ELSBETH

THE DEVOTION OF ENRIQUEZ

INTRODUCTION

The life of Bret Harte divides itself, without adventitious forcing,into four quite singled-out parts. Beginning, nosotros take the precocious boyhood,with its eager response to the intellectual stimulation of culturedparents; young Bret Harte alloyed Greek with amazing facility;devoured voraciously the works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Irving,Froissart, Cervantes, Fielding; and, with creditable success, attemptedvarious forms of limerick. And so, compelled by economic necessity, heleft school at thirteen, and for 3 years worked first in a lawyer'soffice, and then in a merchant's counting house.

The second flow, that of his migration to California, includes allthat is permanently valuable of Harte's literary output. Arriving inCalifornia in 1854, he was, successively, a schoolhouse-instructor, drug-storeclerk, express messenger, typesetter, and itinerant journalist. Heworked for a while on the NORTHERN CALIFORNIA (from which he wasdismissed for objecting editorially to the contemporary California sportof murdering Indians), then on the Gold ERA, 1857, where he achievedhis first moderate acclaim. In this latter year he married Anne Griswoldof New York. In 1864 he was given the secretaryship of the Californiamint, a virtual sinecure, and he was enabled do a smashing deal of writing.The first volume of his poems, THE LOST GALLEON AND OTHER TALES,CONDENSED NOVELS (much underrated parodies), and THE Bohemian PAPERSwere published in 1867. One year later, THE OVERLAND MONTHLY, whichhad aspirations of condign "the ATLANTIC MONTHLY of the West," wasestablished, and Harte was appointed its first editor. For it, he wrotemost of what still remains valid every bit literature--THE LUCK OF ROARINGCAMP, THE OUTCASTS OF POKER Apartment, Manifestly Language FROM True JAMES,amid others. The combination of Irvingesque romantic glamor andDickensian biting-sweet humour, applied to picturesquely novel material,with the addition of a trick ending, was fantastically popular. Editorsbegan to clamor for his stories; the University of California appointedhim Professor of recent literature; and the ATLANTIC MONTHLY offered himthe practically unprecedented sum of $10,000 for exclusive rights to oneyear'southward literary output. Harte's star was, briefly, in the dominant.

However, Harte had accumulated a number of debts, and his editorialpolicies, excellent in themselves, but undiplomatically executed, werethe crusade of a serial of arguments with the publisher of the OVERLANDMONTHLY. Fairly bodacious of profitable pickings in the Eastward, heleft California (permanently, as it proved). The E, yet, wasfinancially unappreciative. Harte wrote an unsuccessful novel andcollaborated with Marking Twain on an unremunerative play. His attemptsto increase his income by lecturing were even less rewarding. Fromhis divergence from California in 1872 to his expiry thirty years later,Harte's struggles to regain fiscal stability were unremitting: andto these efforts is due the relinquishment of his early ideal of "apeculiarly characteristic Western American literature." Henceforth Harteaccepted, as Prof. Hicks remarks, "the role of entertainer, and every bit anentertainer he survived for thirty years his death as an artist."

The final period extends from 1878, when he managed to go himselfappointed consul to Crefeld in Deutschland, to 1902, when he died of athroat cancer. He left for Crefeld without his married woman or son--perhapsintending, as his messages betoken, to call them to him whencircumstances allowed; but save for a few years prior to his decease, theseparation, for whatever circuitous of reasons, remained permanent. Harte,however, connected to provide for them as liberally as he was able. InCrefeld Harte wrote A LEGEND OF SAMMERSTANDT, VIEWS FROM A GERMAN SPION,and UNSER KARL. In 1880 he transferred to the more than lucrative consulshipof Glasgow, and ROBIN GRAY, a tale of Scottish life, is the product ofhis stay there. In 1885 he was dismissed from his consulship, probablyfor political reasons, though neglect of duty was charged against him.He removed to London where he remained, for almost office, until his death.

Bret Harte never actually knew the life of the mining camp. His miningexperiences were too bitty, and consequently his portraits ofmining life are wholly impressionistic. "No 1," Mark Twain wrote,"tin talk the quartz dialect correctly without learning information technology with pick andshovel and drill and fuse." Yet, Twain added elsewhere, "Bret Harte gothis California and his Californians by unconscious assimilation, and putboth of them into his tales alive." That is, perchance, the final comment.Much could be urged confronting Harte's stories: the glamor they throw overthe life they describe is largely fictitious; their pathetic endingsare plainly stylized; their technique is overwhelmingly derivative.Nevertheless, so excellent a critic equally Chesterton maintained that "Thereare more than nine hundred and ninety-nine excellent reasons whichwe could all have for admiring the work of Bret Harte." The figure isperhaps exaggerated, but there are many reasons for adoration. First,Harte originated a new and incalculably influential type of story: theromantically picturesque "human being-involvement" story. "He created the localcolor story," Prof. Blankenship remarks, "or at to the lowest degree popularizedit, and he gave new form and intent to the short story." Charactermotivating activity is primal to this type of story, rather than mooddominating incident. Again Harte's way is really an eminently skilfulone, admirably suited to his subjects. He tin manage the humorous or thepathetic excellently, and his restraint in each is more remarkable thanhis excesses. His sentences take both forcefulness and flow; his backgroundsare crisply but carefully sketched; his characters and caricatures havetheir own logical consistency. Finally, granted the desirability of thetheatric finale, it is necessary to admit that Harte always rings downhis curtain dramatically and effectively.

ARTHUR ZEIGER, M.A.

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