LITMIR.BIZ

      “I think that was nothing less than inspiration itself.”

      In the same letter Mark Twain pays the following magnanimous tribute to his old friend: “Bret Harte trimmed and trained and schooled me patiently until he changed me from an awkward utterer of coarse grotesqueness to a writer of paragraphs and chapters that have found a certain favor in the eyes of even some of the very decentest people in the land—and this grateful remembrance of mine ought to be worth its face, seeing that Bret broke our long friendship a year ago without any cause or provocation that I am aware of.”

      The Editor had no prose article of his own in the first number of the “Overland,” but he contributed two poems, the noble lines about San Francisco, which, with characteristic modesty he placed in the middle of the number, and the poem entitled Returned[9] in the “Etc.” column at the end.

      And now we come to the publication which first made Bret Harte known upon the Atlantic as well as upon the Pacific coast. The opening number of the “Overland” had contained no “distinctive Californian romance,” as Bret Harte expressed it, and none such being offered for the second number, the Editor supplied the omission with The Luck of Roaring Camp. But the printer, instead of sending the proof-sheets to the writer of the story, as would have been the ordinary course, submitted them to the publisher, with a statement that the matter was so “indecent, irreligious and improper” that his proofreader, a young lady, had with difficulty been induced to read it. Then followed many consultations between author, publisher, and various high literary authorities whose judgment had been invoked. Opinions differed, but the weight of opinion was against the tale, and the expediency of printing it. Nevertheless, the author—conceiving that his fitness as Editor was now in question—stood to his guns; the publisher, though fearful of the result, stood by him; and the tale was published without the alteration of a word. It was received very coldly by the secular press in California, its “singularity” being especially pointed out; and it was bitterly denounced by the religious press as being immoral and unchristian. But there was a wider public to hear from. The return mail from the East brought newspapers and reviews “welcoming the little foundling of Californian literature with an enthusiasm that half frightened its author.”[10] The mail brought also a letter from the Editor of the “Atlantic Monthly” with a request “upon the most flattering terms” that he would write a story for the “Atlantic,” similar to the Luck.

      It should be recorded, as an interesting contrast to the impression made by the Luck upon the San Francisco young woman, that it was also a girl, Miss Susan M. Francis, a literary assistant with the publishers of the “Atlantic Monthly,” who, struck by the freshness and beauty of the tale, brought it to the attention of Mr. James T. Fields, then the Editor of the magazine, with the result which Bret Harte has described.

      Nor should the attitude of the California young person, and of San Francisco in general, excite surprise. The Pioneers could not be expected to see the moral beauty that lay beneath the rough outward aspect of affairs on the Pacific Slope. The poetry of their own existence was hidden from them. But California, though crude, was self-distrustful, and it bowed to the decision of the East. Bret Harte was honored, even if not understood or appreciated.

      The “Overland” was well received, and the high character of the first two numbers was long maintained. Aside from Bret Harte’s work, many volumes of prose and verse have been republished from the magazine, and most of them deserved the honor. In the early Fifties the proportion of really educated men to the whole population was greater in California than in any other State, and probably this was true even of the period when the “Overland” was founded. Scholarship and cultivation were concealed in rough mining towns, in lumber camps, and on remote ranches. Among the women, especially, were many who, like the Sappho of Green Springs, gathered from their lonely, primitive lives a freshness and originality which perhaps they never would have shown in more conventional surroundings. This class furnished numerous readers and a few writers. Officers of the Army and Navy stationed in California contributed some interesting scientific and literary articles to the early numbers of the “Overland.”

      Notwithstanding the success of his first story, Bret Harte was in no haste to rush into print with another. He had none of that disposition to make hay while the sun shines which has spoiled many a story-writer. Six months elapsed before the Luck was followed by The Outcasts of Poker Flat. Meanwhile he was carefully and patiently discharging his duties as Editor. Mr. Stoddard has thus described him in that capacity: “Fortunately for me he took an interest in me at a time when I was most in need of advice, and to his criticism and his encouragement I feel that I owe all that is best in my literary efforts. He was not afraid to speak his mind, and I know well enough what occasion I gave him: yet he did not judge me more severely than I judged myself. … I am sure that the majority of the contributors to the ‘Overland Monthly’ profited as I did by his careful and judicious criticism. Fastidious to a degree, he could not overlook a lack of finish in the manuscript offered to him. He had a special taste in the choice of titles, and I have known him to alter the name of an article two or three times in order that the table of contents might read handsomely and harmoniously.”

      One of the most frequent contributors to the “Overland” was Miss Ina B. Coolbrith, author of many polished and imaginative poems and stories. In a recent letter Miss Coolbrith thus speaks of Bret Harte as an Editor: “To me he was unfailingly kind and generous, looking out for my interests as one of his contributors with as much care as he accorded to his own. I can only speak of him in terms of unqualified praise as author, friend and man.”

      The poem entitled Plain Language from Truthful James, or the Heathen Chinee, as it is popularly known, and as Bret Harte himself afterward called it, first appeared in the “Overland” for September, 1870. Within a few weeks it had spread over the English-speaking world. The Luck of Roaring Camp gave Bret Harte a literary reputation, but this poem made him famous. It was copied by the newspapers almost universally, both here and in England; and it increased the circulation of the “Overland” so much that, two months after its appearance, a single news company in New York was selling twelve hundred copies of the magazine. Almost everybody had a clipping of these verses tucked into his waistcoat pocket or carried in his purse. Quotations from it were on every lip, and some of its most significant lines were recited with applause in the National House of Representatives.

      It came at a fortunate moment when the people of this country were just awaking to the fact that there was a “Chinese problem,” and when interest in the race was becoming universal in the East as well as in the West. Says that acute critic, Mr. James Douglas: “There is an element of chance in the fabrication of great poems. The concatenation comes, the artist puts the pieces into their places, and the result is permanent wonder. The Heathen Chinee in its happy felicity is quite as unique as ‘The Blessed Damozel.’ ”

      The Heathen Chinee is remarkable for the absolutely impartial attitude of the writer. He observes the Chinaman neither from the locally prejudiced, California point of view, nor from

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