The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings

19 cross of Santiago: A red cross in the form of a sword, an emblem on the coat of arms of the Knights of Santiago, founded in the 12th century as a military-religious order. Santiago was the shortened Spanish form of St. James, patron saint of Spain.

20 Castile and Aragon: Regions of Spain united in 1516 during the reign of Charles I of Spain and V of the Holy Roman Empire (1500-1558).

21 thrust the Moor from Granada: Mohammedan Spain consisted of several small Arab states in the early Middle Ages, among them Granada. After a series of military defeats, the Moors were expelled from Spain in the 13th century.

22 Alonzo de Ojeda: (1468?-1515), Spanish explorer who accompanied Columbus on his second voyage (1493) and explored the northern coast of South America in 1499. As Governor of New Andalucía (modern Colombia), he was infamous as an oppressor of natives.

23 Ishmaelites: Outcasts and wanderers.

24 Styx: The river encircling Hell.

27 caballero: Gentleman.

“The Luck of Roaring Camp”

1 ab initio: From the first.

2 “city of refuge”: Such a sanctuary was the subject of a long biblical tradition. See Numbers 35:26-27; Deuteronomy 19:1-12; Joshua 20:2; and Hebrews 11:10-16.

3 Raphael: (1483-1520), Master painter of the Italian Renaissance.

4 Hamlet: The indecisive hero of Shakespeare’s tragedy Hamlet (1602).

5 Romulus and Remus: Twin brothers who founded Rome, according to Roman legend, and who had been raised by wolves.

6 ex officio: By virtue of office.

7 derringer: A short-barreled, high-caliber pistol, one of which was famously used by John Wilkes Booth to assassinate Abraham Lincoln in 1865. Named for its American inventor Henry Derringer (1806- 1868).

8 Arethusa: A Greek nymph.

“The Outcasts of Poker Flat”

1 Mother Shipton: A legendary medieval English prophetess best known in the 1860s for having predicted the Second Coming of Christ and the end of the world in 1881.

2 Parthian volley: The Parthians of first-century Asia pretended flight before turning on their enemies.

3 Piney Woods: Harte invokes the title of Piney Woods Tavern; or, Sam Slick in Texas (1858) by the southwestern humorist Samuel Adams Hammett (1816-1865), aka “Philip Paxton.”

4 sotto voce: Under the voice or in an undertone.

5 cachéd: Stored or hidden in a cache.

6 Covenanter’s swing: The militant 17th-century Scottish Covenanters demanded separation from the Church of England.

7 “I’m proud to live in the service of the Lord,/And I’m bound to die in His army”: The refrain to “Service of the Lord,” an early American spiritual.

8 Pope’s translation of Iliad: The neo-classical translation of Homer’s Iliad by the English poet Alexander Pope (1688-1744) appeared in six installments between 1715 and 1720.

9 Peleus: In Greek myth, the father of Achilles.

10 Achilles: Greek hero of the Trojan War.

“Miggles”

1 Washoe: Silver mining region in western Nevada.

2 “rock of refuge”: Psalm 31:1-16.

3 “sere and yellow leaf”: “My way of life / Is fall’n into the sear, the yellow leaf” (Macbeth V, iii, 22-23).

4 Caliban bearing logs for this Miranda: The deformed slave Caliban is pardoned by the magician Prospero, father of Miranda, at the close of Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611). A more likely source for Harte’s allusion is Robert Browning’s poem “Caliban Upon Setebos” (1864): while “Prosper and Miranda sleep / In confidence he drudges at their task” (lines 20-21).

5 Ursa Minor: The “lesser bear” constellation, also the Little Dipper with the star at the end of the handle marking the north celestial pole.

6 Una and her lion: The heroine and her protector in the first book of the allegorical epic The Faerie Queen (1590) by Edmund Spenser (1552?-1599).

7 Memnon: The king of Ethopia, according to Greek mythology, who though killed by Achilles during the Trojan War, is immortalized by Zeus.

8 “the feet of him she loved”: Mary Magdelene anoints the feet of Jesus (John 12:3).

“Tennessee’s Partner”

1 saleratus: Baking soda.

2 chaparral: A thicket of shrubs.

“The Idyl of Red Gulch”

1 Samson and Delilah: Delilah caused Samson to “shave off the seven locks of his head; and she began to afflict him, and his strength went from him” (Judges 16:19).

2 rescuer Adolphus: Probably Gustavus II Adolphus (1594-1632), king of Sweden who resisted the imperial designs of Germany during the Thirty Years War.

“Brown of Calavaras”

1 “Nelly’s grave”: In George F. Root’s sentimental ballad “The Hazel Dell” (1853), a grieving lover observes that “the silent stars are nightly weeping, / O’er poor Nelly’s grave.”

2 Sister Anne’s “flock of sheep”: In the popular nursery tale “Blue Beard,” the character of Sister Anne mistakenly believes a cloud of dust on the horizon has been raised by a flock of sheep.

“Mr. Thompson’s Prodigal”

1 “Enter ye the narrer gate”: Christ’s words in Matthew 7:13.

2 hic jacets: Hic jacet or “here lies,” an inscription on a tombstone.

3 “eat, drink, and be merry”: In Christ’s parable of the prodigal son, the father orders his servants to “bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry; for this my son was dead, and is alive again, and is found” (Luke 15:2-24).

4 house on the sand-hills: An apparent allusion to Christ’s words in Matthew 7:26-27 about the “foolish man” who “built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon the house; and it fell.”

5 Doxology: A hymn of praise to God.

6 “peace that passeth understanding”: “And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ” (Philippians 4:7).

7 “Knock, and it shall be opened to you”: Christ’s words in Matthew 7:7.

8 “By their works shall ye know them”: Christ’s words in Matthew 7:16.

“The Iliad of Sandy Bar”

1 sabe: Know or understand.

2 Arcadia: A region of rustic simplicity and pastoral ease.

3 Pactolian resources: That is, gold. According to Greek myth, the river Pactolus contained the gold King Midas washed away. The river was also the source of King Croesus’ wealth.

4 fatal quicksands: See note 4 to “Mr. Thompson’s Prodigal.”

5 Hector arose from the ditch: In Homer’s Iliad, the hero of the siege of Troy who, after he is hurled to the ground by Ajax, is revived by Apollo.

“The Poet of Sierra Flat”

1 protégé: Literally, “under the protection,” hence a student or follower.

2 Byron, Moore, Tennyson: George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824), English romantic poet; Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish poet and Byron’s biographer; Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), English poet and poet laureate from 1850 until his death.

3 John Milton: (1608-1674), English Puritan, author of Paradise Lost (1667).

5 Longfellow: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882), American poet. Longfellow was “the man I most revered,” Harte allowed in his memoir of the poet (“Longfellow,” Good Words, 23 [June 1882], 385-387).

6 Browning: Robert Browning (1812-1889), English poet. See also Scharnhorst, “Browning and Bret Harte,” ANQ, ns 12 (Summer 1999), 41-43.

7 gamin: A street urchin.

“How Santa Claus Came to Simpson’s Bar”

1 tules: Large bulrushes found in southwestern lakes and marshes.

2 Jim Smiley: Also the name of the victim whose frog is filled with quailshot in Mark Twain’s “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” (1865).

3 “red herons”: Red herrings.

4 childblains: Chilblains; that is, sores or festers.

5 pasear: Walk or hike.

7 “Excelsior”: In Longfellow’s poem (1841), a young man of genius resists an invitation as he runs through an Alpine village: “Oh, stay,” the maiden said, “and rest / Thy weary head upon this breast!” He is afterwards found dead from an avalanche.

“Wan Lee, the Pagan”

1 devil: Printer’s assistant.

2 Confucius and Mencius: Ancient Chinese teachers. In 1867 Harte had reviewed Confucius and the Chinese Classics, edited by A.W. Loomis and published by Anton Roman of San Francisco, for the Springfield Republican: “Here are the Chinese classics comprising Mencius, Confucius, Buddhist tracts and poetry—the profound wisdom of the ancient East, composed, stereotyped, printed and bound in this modern city of the West” (Bret Harte’s California: Letters to the Springfield Republican and Christian Register, 1866-67, ed. Gary Scharnhorst [Albuquerque: Univ. of New Mexico Press, 1990], p. 141).

3 tour de force: An exceptional feat.

4 “godlike Webster”: Daniel Webster (1782-1852), American politician and statesman.

5 “sad and civil”: Olivia’s description of Malvolio in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (III, iv, 5).

6 “eminent statesmen”: Harte refers ironically to local politicians who advocated restricted Chinese immigration, such as Henry H. Haight (1825-1878), who was elected California governor in 1867; and Eu gene Casserly (1820-1883), U.S. senator from California between 1869 and 1873. See also Bret Harte’s California, pp. 122, 126, 128- 129, 137.

7 “stoned to death”: In a letter to the Springfield Republican in February 1867, Harte reported in detail on the “late riots and outrages on the Chinese. . . . To throw stones at a Chinaman was a youthful pastime of great popularity, and was to a certain extent recognized and encouraged by parents and guardians, as long as the stones went to their mark with accuracy, and did not come in contact with a superior civilization” (Bret Harte’s California, p. 113). Similarly, Harte wrote over a year later that the “youth of the metropolis, early taught his social status, throw stones at [the Chinese] in the street” (“From California,” Springfield Republican, 8 April 1868, 2:5).

“An Ingénue of the Sierras”

1 “Lethean stream”: In Greek myth, the river of forgetfulness or oblivion that flows through Hades.

2 Pike Country girl: A character-type in American humor, an ignorant Western immigrant from Pike County (wherever that may be) who speaks in dialect and is often the target of jokes.

3 “bucked agin the tiger”: “Gambled at faro” (Harte’s note).

“Three Vagabonds of Trinidad”

1 Elijah: Hebrew prophet who ascends from earth in a chariot of fire (II Kings 2:11).

2 M’Cormick’s reapers: Cyrus H. McCormick (1809-1884) perfected the grain reaper in 1831, patented it in 1834, and moved his company to Chicago in 1847 to manufacture it.

3 manifest destiny: Jingoistic phrase suggesting the U.S. should occupy the whole of the North American continent.

4 “Hebraic face”: Harte, whose paternal grandfather Henry Hart was an orthodox Jew, often associated Indians and Jews in his fiction. See also Margaret Duckett, “Bret Harte’s Portrayal of Half-Breeds,” American Literature, 25 (May 1953), 59-83.

“A Pupil of Chestnut Ridge”

1 Papists and followers of the Scarlet Woman: Roman Catholics and adulterers. According to Revelation 17:4-5, the Scarlet Woman was the “mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.”

2 “a brand from the burnin’”: “ye were as a firebrand plucked out of the burning” (Amos 4:11).

3 “ ‘conviction o’ sin’ and ‘justification by faith’ ”: Cardinal Protestant doctrines.

4 “Dissenters’ camp meeting”: An evangelical Protestant, probably Methodist, revival.

6 “Camara para vestirse”: Dressing room.

8 “Quien sabe”: Who knows.

9 non sequitur: An illogical conclusion.

10 “sincerest form of flattery”: That is, imitation.

11 sembicuaca: An erotic dance.

“Muck-a-Muck”

1 Cooper: James Fenimore Cooper (1789-1851), author of the Leatherstocking Tales featuring the pioneer scout Natty Bumppo.

2 Van Dyke, Rubens, Tintoretto, Michael Angelo, Turner, Kensett, Church, Bierstadt: Sir Anthony Van Dyke (1599-1641), Flemish religious and portrait painter; Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640), the most prominent member of the Flemish school; Tintoretto (1518- 1594), one of the masters of the Venetian Renaissance; Michel angelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), the master of the Italian Renaissance; J.M.W. Turner (1775-1851), English landscape painter; John Frederick Kensett (1818-1872), American landscape painter of the Hudson River School; Frederick Edwin Church (1826-1900), American landscape painter of the Hudson River School; Albert Bierstadt (1830-1902), American landscape painter. Harte had known Bierstadt in California in the 1860s. See Bret Harte’s California, p. 133.

3 écritoire: Writing case or desk.

4 moire antique robe trimmed with tulle: An old-fashioned, patterned robe trimmed with fine netting.

5 Sachem Andy: Andrew Johnson (1808-1875), seventeenth President of the United States (1865-1869).

6 “Westward the Star”: Quotation from the “Oration at Plymouth” (1802), by John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), sixth President of the United States.

“The Haunted Man”

1 title: Both the title of this “condensed novel” and its situation mimic Charles Dickens’s final Christmas tale, “The Haunted Man and the Ghost’s Bargain” (1848). Harte also parodies Dickens’s most popular Christmas story, A Christmas Carol (1843).

2 Ch—r—s D—ck—n—s: Charles Dickens (1812-1870), English novelist. See also Joseph H. Gardner, “Bret Harte and the Dickensian Mode in America,” Canadian Review of American Studies, 2 (Fall 1971), 89-101.

3 “model infant”: Harte alludes to the death of young Paul Dombey in Dickens’s novel Dombey and Son (1846-1848).

4 “good woman, undersized”: Harte alludes to the death of old Betty Higden in Dickens’s novel Our Mutual Friend (1863).

5 Astley’s: Astley’s Royal Amphitheatre, opened as a riding school in 1768.

6 Noble Savage: A tenet of primitivism, which held that human nature is essentially good in a state of nature. During the 18th and early 19th centuries, the American Indian epitomized for many European and American intellectuals all that the “noble savage” ought to be—hon orable, graceful, vigorous, brave, dignified.

7 Catlin: George Catlin (1796-1872) made several excursions to the West between 1830-1836 and executed over a hundred paintings on Indian subjects. He also published Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs, and Conditions of North American Indians (1844).

8 Scarlet Letters: Harte alludes to Mosses from an Old Manse (1846) and The Scarlet Letter (1850) by the American romancer Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), about the consequences of sin in 17th-century Boston.

9 Steele, Addison, and Congreve: Joseph Addison (1672-1719), English essayist, poet, and playwright; Richard Steele (1672-1729), English editor, essayist, and playwright; William Congreve (1670-1729), English playwright. Addison was a frequent contributor to literary journals edited by his friend Steele, including the twice-weekly Tatler (1709-1711) and the daily Spectator (1711-1712, 1714).

10 Vanity Fair: Satirical novel by William Makepeace Thackeray (1811- 1863), English novelist.

11 Tiny Tim: A crippled young boy in Dickens’s A Christmas Carol.

12 David Copperfield: Dickens’s 1850 novel.

13 The Old Curiosity Shop: Dickens’s 1840-1841 novel.

14 “Our Mutual Friend”: See note 4 above.

“The Stolen Cigar Case”

1 Hemlock Jones: A parodic type of Sherlock Holmes, the detective-hero of a series of stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930). After Harte’s death in 1902, Doyle contributed to a fund to support his widow Anna (1832-1920) and younger daughter Ethel (1875- 1964).

2 Paul Ferroll: The Victorian mystery novel Why Paul Ferroll Killed His Wife (1860) by Caroline Wigley Clive (1801-1873).

3 Jones: The Victorian play What Happened to Jones: An Original Farce in Three Acts (1897) by George H. Broadhurst (1866-1952).

“To the Pliocene Skull”

1 “This extraordinary fossil is in the possession of Prof. Josiah D. Whitney, of the State Geological Survey of California. The poem was based on the following paragraph from the daily press of 1866: ‘A human skull has been found in California, in the pliocene formation. This skull is the remnant not only of the earliest pioneer of this State, but the oldest known human being. . . . The skull was found in a shaft 150 feet deep, two miles from Angels in Calaveras County, by a miner named James Watson, who gave it to Mr. Scribner, a merchant, who gave it to Dr. Jones, who sent it to the State Geological Survey. . . . ’ The published volume of the State Survey of the Geology of California states that man existed here contemporaneously with the mastodon, but this fossil proves that he was here before the mastodon was known to exist” (Harte’s note). See also Bret Harte’s California, pp. 62-63.

2 “pieuvre of Victor Hugo”: Pew-oeuvre, a pun on “oeuvre,” or body of work. Harte refers to the ostensible stench of Hugo’s stories.

“The Society Upon the Stanislaus”

1 Harte’s original title for this poem was “Proceedings of the Academy of Natural Sciences at Smith’s Crossing/Tuolumne County.”

“Plain Language from Truthful James”

1 “twenty-four packs”: Sometimes misprinted “twenty-four jacks.”

“Dickens in Camp”

1 “Little Nell”: A young character who dies toward the close of Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1840-1841).

“That Ebrew Jew”

1 “Speech on the Mount”: Christ’s Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

2 “great Luther”: Martin Luther (1483-1546), German leader of the Protestant Reformation.

3 John Morrissey: (1831-1878), prizefighter and popular Irish politician, congressman from New York, and the subject of a satirical essay signed “B.H.” in the San Francisco Alta California, 11 November 1866, 2:2.

4 Madame N.N.: Perhaps the character of Madame Nathan, who appears in at least ten of Balzac’s stories. A promiscuous woman who was nevertheless “respectable.”

5 Miss McFlimsey: The popular poem “Nothing to Wear” (1857) by William Allen Butler (1825-1902) satirized the pretensions of the socialite Flora M’Flimsy.

6 Van Dams: An old Dutch patroon family in New York.

7 Miss Décolleté: Literally, Miss Bare Shoulders. The term refers to a style of gown that leaves the neck and shoulders bare.

8 Disraeli and Rothschild: Prominent Jewish political and financial leaders. Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), novelist and British prime minister. Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild (1808-1879).

9 Meyerbeer and Verdi: Prominent composers. While Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791-1864) was Jewish, Harte errs in implying that Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901) was also Jewish.

10 “foxes had holes”: “And Jesus said to him, ‘Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head’ ” (Matthew 8:20).

“Free Silver at Angel’s”

1 “going soon to par”: Reaching its assigned value.

2 “crucified upon a cross of gold”: In a speech at the Democratic National Convention in 1896, William Jennings Byran appealed for “free silver” or bimetallism, concluding that “You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”

3 sixteen to one: The ratio of silver to gold favored by the advocates of “free silver” or bimetallism.

“The Argonauts of ’49”

1 Rio de Los Reyes: River of the kings.

2 De Fonte: Harte confuses Bartholomew de Fonte with Juan de Fuca (see note 4 below). De Fuca claimed in 1596 that he had sailed up the Pacific coast in 1592 and discovered the Strait of Anian, a passage through North America.

3 Maldonado: In 1609, Lorenzo Maldonado claimed that in 1588 he had entered the strait near Labrador and sailed to Acapulco.

4 Another Spanish discoverer: According to Charles Chapman (A History of California: The Spanish Period [New York: Macmillan, 1925], pp. 75-76), Bartholomew de Fonte “is supposed to have made his voyage in 1640, though both Fonte and the story were invented in 1708. . . . These reputed voyages are entirely discredited now, but they had a tremendous influence on explorations.”

5 Sir Francis Drake: (1540?-1596), English explorer and buccaneer who sailed up the west coast of North America in the Golden Hind in 1579.

6 Sancho Panza: The peasant squire in Cervantes’s satirical romance Don Quixote (1605, 1615).

8 gay Lothario: A rake or seducer of women.

9 Sutter’s Mill: Named for John Sutter (1803-1880), the site of the discovery of gold near Sacramento, California, in 1848.

10 Brigham Young: (1801-1877), Mormon leader who led their migration to Nauvoo, Illinois, and then to the Great Basin of Utah in 1846-47.

11 golden fleece: According to Greek mythology, Jason and the sailors aboard the ship Argo sought the fleece of the ram that carried Phrixus and Helle from Boeotia.

12 Pizarro: Francisco Pizarro (c. 1476-1541), Spanish conquistador, con querer of Peru.

13 foundations: Harte had mentioned this detail twice earlier in his career, first in a letter to the Springfield Republican in August 1866: “I remember, several years ago, to have been shown the foundations of a house near one of the wharves built up on boxes of plug tobacco, which, at the time it was laid, was worth less than the necessary, though scarcer, timber. It had been of course ruined by salt water” (Bret Harte’s California, p. 64). Soon after his arrival in Boston in the spring of 1871, he again told Annie Fields, the wife of his publisher, the story of the block of early San Francisco houses “laid on boxes of tobacco” (M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Memories of a Hostess [Boston: Atlantic Monthly Press, 1922], p. 234).

14 commission for Macbeth in which Banquo was concerned: In Shakespeare’s tragedy Macbeth, witches prophesize that the hero will become King of Scotland but that Banquo’s heirs would eventually hold the throne. In an attempt to prevent the realization of the prophecy, Macbeth commissions two murderers to kill Banquo in Act III, scene 1.

15 semaphore telegraph: The signal-telegraph that utilized flags atop what came to be known as Telegraph Hill in San Francisco.

16 Circean palace: In Greek myth, Circe was an enchantress who turned Odysseus’ men into swine.

17 lovelocks of Charles II: The “Merry Monarch” (1630-1685), King of England after the death of Cromwell and the Restoration of 1660 until his death.

18 Delaroche’s Savior: A painting by the artist Hippolyte Delaroche (1797-1856).

19 Meissonier: Juste Aurèle Meissonier (1695-1750), a French goldsmith and rococo designer.

20 Danaë-like shower of gold: In Greek myth, the imprisoned Danaë, daughter of Acrisius, is visited by Zeus in a shower of gold and impregnated.

21 Sanitary Commission: A forerunner of the American Red Cross. Mark Twain recounts a similar story in chapter XLV of Roughing It (1872).

22 great fire in Sacramento: In fact, there had been two conflagrations. In November 1852 a fire had destroyed two-thirds of the buildings in Sacramento, and in July 1854 a second fire had destroyed some 200 buildings.

23 Damon and Pythias: Two young Syracusan men whose loyalty epitomizes genuine friendship.

24 Blair’s Rhetoric: Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) or Essays on Rhetoric (1784).

25 “took every trick”: Harte’s friend and mentor Thomas Starr King (1824-1864), minister of the First Unitarian Church in San Francisco, arrived in California in April 1860. Harte recounted the same anecdote in a letter to the Boston Christian Register dated 14 July 1866 (Bret Harte’s California, p. 66).

26 Mission Dolores: The first church in San Francisco, founded in June 1776.

27 “Jimtown”: Mary Austin realistically rewrites Harte in her essay “Jimville: A Bret Harte Town,” Atlantic Monthly, 90 (November 1902), 690-694.

28 Charles V of Spain: (1500-1558). Actually king of Spain as Charles I after 1516 and emperor Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire after 1519, who inherited all Spanish lands and all the hereditary lands of the Hapsburgs.

29 diseños: Sketches or designs.

30 fandango: A lively Spanish dance.

31 aguardiente: Liquor.

32 Serra: See note 2 to “The Legend of Monte del Diablo.”

33 Hygeian temple: Hygeia, the Greek goddess of health.

34 Apollo: The Greek god of medicine.

35 Sindbad: The legendary sailor in One Thousand and One Nights or the Arabian Nights’ Entertainments.

“The Rise of the ‘Short Story’ ”

1 Edgar Allan Poe: (1809-1849), American writer.

2 Hawthorne: See note 8 to “The Haunted Man” above.

3 Washington Irving: (1783-1859), American writer, author of The Sketch-Book (1819).

4 Addison, Steele, Lamb: Charles Lamb (1775-1834), English essayist, poet, and critic. See also note 9 to “The Haunted Man.”

5 “Rosamund Gray”: Lamb’s A Tale of Rosamund Gray and Old Blind Margaret (1798).

6 Sam Slick: A comic Yankee peddler, a character created by the Canadian author Thomas Chandler Haliburton (1796-1865).

7 Judd’s Margaret: Margaret: a Tale of the Real and the Ideal (1845) by the Unitarian minister Sylvester Judd (1813-1853).

8 “Who reads an American book?”: The English aphorist Sidney Smith posed the derisive question in 1820: “And who, the wide world over, reads an American book?”

9 Artemus Ward: Pseudonym of the Down East dialect humorist Charles Farrar Browne (1834-1867).

10 Hosea Biglow: The narrator of James Russell Lowell’s satirical verses “The Biglow Papers” (1846, 1867), the first series written to oppose the Mexican War and the second to support the Union during the Civil War.

11 Topsy and Miss Ophelia: Characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1851-52).

12 The Man Without a Country: A patriotic story by Edward Everett Hale published in the Atlantic Monthly in December 1863.

13 Squibob Papers: A collection of Western humor writings (1865) by George H. Derby (1823-1861), aka “John Phoenix.”

14 Mark Twain: Pseudonym of Samuel L. Clemens (1835-1910). Harte and Clemens met in California in 1864. Harte reminisced later that Clemens told him the story of “Jim Smiley and His Jumping Frog” before he submitted it for publication (Henry J.W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” McClure’s, 4 [December 1894], 47-48). After publication of the sketch in the New York Saturday Press, Harte reprinted it in the Californian in December 1865. See especially Margaret Duckett’s Mark Twain and Bret Harte (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1964).

15 Major Bierce: The satirist Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?), a Union officer and occasional contributor to the Overland Monthly during Harte’s editorship. See also Stanley T. Williams, “Ambrose Bierce and Bret Harte,” American Literature, 17 (May 1945), 179-180.

16 “foremost literary weeklies”: Harte first contributed to the Golden Era in 1857 and joined the staff of the paper as a compositor in 1860. With C.H. Webb (1834-1905), he was a founding editor of the weekly Californian in 1864.

17 “The Pioneer”: The first San Francisco literary magazine, established in 1854.

18 “Chandos picture of Shakespeare”: Once owned by the Duke of Chandos, this portrait hangs in the National Portrait Gallery, London.

19 Overland Monthly: Magazine established in San Francisco in 1868 with Harte as founding editor to which he contributed several of his best-known works, including “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” “The Outcasts of Poker Flat,” “Tennessee’s Partner,” and “Plain Language from Truthful James.”

20 “Centrepole Bill”: George F. Emery’s tale “Centrepole Bill” appeared in the Overland Monthly, 4 (January 1870), 83-88.

21 Harris: Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908), author of the “Uncle Remus” stories.

22 Cable: George Washington Cable (1844-1925), author of Old Creole Days (1879).

23 Page: Thomas Nelson Page (1853-1922), author of In Ole Virginia (1887).

24 “Huckleberry Finn”: Mark Twain’s picaresque novel set in the ante bellum South, published in England in 1884.

25 “Prophet of the Great Smoky Mountains”: An 1885 novel by Mary Noailles Murfree (1850-1922), aka “Charles Egbert Craddock.”

26 Miss Wilkins: Mary E. Wilkins (1852-1930), aka Mary E. Wilkins Freeman, author of such New England local color writings as A Humble Romance and Other Stories (1887), A New England Nun and Other Stories (1891), and Pembroke (1894).

“How I Went to the Mines”

1 “the little pioneer settlement school”: Harte opened a “little bark-thatched” school on Dry Creek near the town of Sonora, California, in spring 1857 which he soon closed for lack of students. See “Francis Bret Harte,” Chicago Tribune, 20 November 1870, p. 6.

2 “Jim”: Jim Gillis (1830-1907). His brother Steve Gillis (1838-1918) offered an entirely different perspective on the events described in Harte’s essay. He remembered that Harte appeared on foot one day at the Gillis brothers’ claim on Jackass Hill near Tuttletown in Tuolumne County. “He came upon my brother Jim” just as he was “taking out a rich pocket of gold. Poor little Bret stood in the trail, dusty and tired and hungry and dead broke and looked down into my brother’s pan which contained a good pile of free gold. Well, Jim took him in and kept him for four days” (“Gillis on Bret Harte,” San Francisco Town Talk, 8 January 1915).

“Bohemian Days in San Francisco”

1 “ponderous editorial”: After an earthquake rocked San Francisco on October 21, 1868, the local daily papers minimized the damage lest the news offend business leaders. Harte ridiculed such timidity in the next issue of the Overland Monthly: “Judging from the daily journals, [the earthquake] seems to have been complimentary to San Francisco. In fact, it has been suggested that, with a little more care and preparation on our part, the earthquake would have been very badly damaged in the encounter” (“Etc.,” 1 [November 1868], 480).

2 “popular preachers”: In a letter to the Boston Christian Register in late June 1866, Harte criticized the Reverend Andrew L. Stone (1815-1892) of the First Congregational Church of San Francisco for politicizing the issue of Sunday worship: “the Doctor’s remarks have only provoked raillery and opposition” (Bret Harte’s California, pp. 47-49).

3 “stoned to death”: See note 7 to “Wan Lee, the Pagan.”

4 Niantic: The ship Niantic, after delivering 248 miners to San Francisco in July 1849, was run aground near the foot of Clay Street and converted into a storeship. The San Francisco fire of May 1851 left it little more than a charred hull. The Niantic Hotel was then erected upon its ruins. Harte appropriated such banalities in some of his late fiction. In the first chapter of “Trent’s Trust” (1901), the hero upon his arrival in the city sees “the hull of a stranded ship already built into a block of rude tenements,” and in “A Ship of ’49” (1885) he embellished the legend of a lost treasure secreted somewhere aboard the ship/hotel.

5 boxes of plug tobacco: See note 13 to “The Argonauts of ’49.”

6 language of Cervantes: That is, Spanish. The novelist Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547-1616) was the author of Don Quixote.

7 habitué: A person with a particular habit.

8 secretary of its superintendent: Harte was hired by the superintendent of the U.S. Mint in San Francisco, Robert B. Swain (1822-1872), in summer 1863 to serve as his assistant at a salary of $180 a month. He held the job for six years. In 1868 the sinecure paid him $270 a month and he directed a staff of twelve. The joke went around that he was paid a salary merely to sign his name twice a day.

9 See note 5 to “Wan Lee, the Pagan.”

10 the performance: Harte misremembers a couple of points. In late September 1867, a troupe of Japanese, not Chinese, jugglers performed at the Metropolitan Theatre in San Francisco. As Harte reported at the time to the Springfield Republican, “One of the tricks—and a very ingenious one—was the spinning of two large tops which ascended an inclined plane, and then opened, disclosing, the one, a rabbit . . . and the other—but here I must seek safety in periphrasis. . . . Well, the other top disclosed what a prudish Neapolitan government to-day takes such pains to conceal” in Pompeii (that is, a phallus). “The petrified audience could not dodge the fact. Some few rose to leave the house, some audibly expressed their disgust, but a majority were astonished to silence” (Bret Harte’s California, pp. 146-47). The episode was widely reported in the local press the next day, September 25, 1867: “an unpardonable vulgarity” (Alta California), an “indescribable vulgarity” (Dramatic Chronicle), “an indecency perhaps unparalleled on any stage” (Evening Bulletin).

“The Legend of Monte del Diablo”