LITMIR.BIZ

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was long regarded by most of his readers as an assumed name, happily chosen to indicate the quaint and poetic character of the tales to which it was signed. Bret Harte’s father was Henry Hart;[1] but before we trace his ancestry, let us endeavor to see how he looked. Fanny Kemble met him at Lenox, in the year 1875, and was much impressed by his appearance. In a letter to a relative she wrote: “He reminded me a good deal of our old pirate and bandit friend, Trelawney, though the latter was an almost orientally dark-complexioned man, and Mr. Bret Harte was comparatively fair. They were both tall, well-made men of fine figure; both, too, were handsome, with a peculiar expression of face which suggested small sucsuccess to any one who might engage in personal conflict with them.”

      In reality Bret Harte was not tall, though others beside Mrs. Kemble thought him to be so; his height was five feet, eight and a half inches. His face was smooth and regular, without much color; the chin firm and well rounded; the nose straight and rather large, “the nose of generosity and genius”; the under-lip having what Mr. Howells called a “fascinating, forward thrust.”

      The following description dates from the time when he left California: “He was a handsome, distinguished-looking man, and although his oval face was slightly marred by scars of small-pox, and his abundant dark hair was already streaked with gray, he carried his slight, upright figure with a quiet elegance that would have made an impression, even when the refinement of face, voice and manner had not been recognized.”

      Mr. Howells says of him at the same period: “He was, as one could not help seeing, thickly pitted, but after the first glance one forgot this, so that a lady who met him for the first time could say to him, ‘Mr. Harte, aren’t you afraid to go about in the cars so recklessly when there is this scare about small-pox?’ ‘No! madam!’ he said, in that rich note of his, with an irony touched by pseudo-pathos, ‘I bear a charmèd life.’ ”

      Almost every one who met Bret Harte was struck by his low, rich, well-modulated voice. Mr. Howells speaks of “the mellow cordial of a voice that was like no other.” His handwriting was small, firm and graceful.

      Chance acquaintances made in England were sometimes surprised at Bret Harte’s appearance. They had formed, writes Mme. Van de Velde, “a vague, intangible idea of a wild, reckless Californian, impatient of social trammels, whose life among the Argonauts must have fashioned him after a type differing widely from the reality. These idealists were partly disappointed, partly relieved, when their American writer turned out to be a quiet, low-voiced, easy-mannered, polished gentleman, who smilingly confessed that precisely because he had roughed it a good deal in his youth he was inclined to enjoy the comforts and avail himself of the facilities of an older civilization, when placed within his reach.”

      Bret Harte’s knowledge of these disappointed expectations may have suggested the plot of that amusing story Their Uncle from California, the hero of which presents a similar contrast to the barbaric ideal which had been formed by his Eastern relatives.

      The photographs of Bret Harte, taken at various periods in his life, reveal great changes, apart from those of age. The first one, at seventeen, shows an intellectual youth, very mature for his age, with a fine forehead, the hair parted at one side, and something of a rustic appearance. In the next picture, taken at the age of thirty-five or thereabout, we see a determined-looking man, with slight side-whiskers, a drooping mustache, and clothes a little “loud.” Five years afterward there is another photograph in which the whiskers have disappeared, the hair seems longer and more curly, the clothes are unquestionably “loud,” and the picture, taken altogether, has a slight tinge of Bohemian-like vulgarity. In the later photographs the hair is shorter, and parted in the middle, the mustache subdued, the dress handsome and in perfect taste, and the whole appearance is that of a refined, sophisticated, aristocratic man of the world, dignified, and yet perfectly simple, unaffected and free from self-consciousness.

      In a measure Bret Harte seems to have undergone that process of development which Mr. Henry James has described in “The American.” The Reader may remember how the American (far from a typical one, by the way) began with sky-blue neckties and large plaids, and ended with clothes and adornments of the most chastened, correct and elegant character. Actors are apt to go through a similar process. The first great exponent of the “suppressed emotion” school began, and in California too, as it happened, by splitting the ears of the groundlings and sawing the air with both arms.

      Bret Harte had something of a Hebrew look, and not unnaturally so, for he came of mixed English, Dutch and Hebrew stock. To be exact, he was half English, one quarter Dutch, and one quarter Hebrew. The Hebrew strain also was derived from English soil, so that with the exception of a Dutch great-grandmother, all his ancestors emigrated from England, and not very remotely.

      The Hebrew in the pedigree was his paternal grandfather, Bernard Hart. Mr. Hart was born in London, on Christmas Day, 1763 or 1764, but as a boy of thirteen he went out to Canada, where his relatives were numerous. These Canadian Harts were a marked family, energetic, forceful, strong-willed, prosperous, given to hospitality, warm-hearted, and pleasure-loving. One of Bernard Hart’s Canadian cousins left behind him at his death no less than fourteen families, all established in the world with a good degree of comfort, and with a sufficient degree of respectability. Now the impropriety, to say nothing about the extravagance, of maintaining fourteen separate families is so great that no Reader of this book (the author feels confident) need be warned against it; and yet it indicates a large, free-handed, lordly way of doing things. It was no ordinary man, and no ordinary strain of blood that could produce such a record.

      Bernard Hart remained but three years in Canada, and in 1780 moved to New York where, although scarcely more than a boy, he acted as the business representative of his Canadian kinsfolk. The Canadian Harts had many commercial and social relations with the metropolis, and there was much “cousining,” much going back and forth between the two places. Bernard Hart lived in New York for the rest of his life, and attained a high rank in the community. “Towering aloft among the magnates of the city of the last and present century,” writes a local historian, “is Bernard Hart.” He was successful in business, very active in social and charitable affairs, and prominent in the synagogue. In 1802 he formed a partnership with Leonard Lispenard, under the name of Lispenard and Hart. They were commission merchants and auctioneers, and did a large business. In 1803 the firm was dissolved, and Mr. Hart continued in trade by himself. In 1831 he became Secretary to the New York Stock Exchange Board, and held that office for twenty-two years, resigning at the age of eighty-nine. In 1795, the year of the yellow fever plague, Bernard Hart rendered heroic service, as is testified by a contemporary annalist. “Mr. Hart and Mr. Pell, who kept store at 108 Market Street, a few doors from Mr. Hart, were unceasing in their exertions. Night and day, hardly giving themselves time to sleep or eat, they were among the sick and dying, relieving their wants. They were angels of mercy in those awful days of the first great pestilence.”

Bernard Hart was also a military man, and in 1797 became quartermaster of a militia regiment, composed wholly of citizens of New York. That he was a “clubable” man, too, is very apparent. It was an era of clubs, and Bernard Hart founded the association known as “The Friary.” It met on the first and third Sundays of every month at 56 Pine Street. He was also President of The House of Lords, a merchants’ club, which met at Baker’s City Tavern every week-day night, at 7 o’clock, adjourning at 10 o’clock. Each member was allowed a limited quantity of liquor, business was discussed, contracts were made, and sociability was promoted. He was, too, a member of the St. George Society, and is said, also, to have been a Mason, belonging to Holland Lodge No. 8, of which John Jacob Astor was master in 1798. Bernard Hart was a devout Jew, and his name frequently appears in the records of the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, known as the Congregation Shearith Israel, the first synagogue established in New York. He lived in various houses—at 86 Water Street, at 24 Cedar Street, at 12 Lispenard Street, at 20 Varick Street, and finally at 23 White Street. A picture of him still hangs in the counting-room of Messrs. Arthur Lipper and Co., in Broad Street.

      How came it that this orthodox Jew, this pillar of the synagogue, married a Christian woman? The romance, if there was one, is imperfectly preserved even in the family traditions. It is known only that in 1799 Bernard Hart married Catharine Brett, a woman

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