by Ben Tarnoff
“The Heathen Chinee” Reception of “The Heathen Chinee”: BHGS, pp. 51–58; BHAN, pp. 111–112; and Richard O’Connor, Bret Harte, pp. 122–123. “an explosion of delight”: TAMT, p. 165. “doubled their orders”: John H. Carmany, “‘The Publishers of the Overland’: Remarks of Hon. J. H. Carmany,” p. 12, in a supplement appended to Overland Monthly 1.2 (Feb. 1883). Harte’s Poems: BHGS, pp. 57–58.
Within months, Harte “Harte does soar . . .”: SLC to Charles Henry Webb, November 26, 1870, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 248. Twain’s struggles with Roughing It: MTAL, pp. 289–290.
Yet he didn’t “was no less . . .” and “finer, higher work”: ICHC. The pirated edition was published in 1870 by the Chicago-based Western News Company, with accompanying illustrations by Joseph Hull; the images are available at the University of Virginia’s website at http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/roughingit/map/chiharte.html.
This was only Impact of “The Heathen Chinee” on “Chinese question”: BHGS, pp. 54–55; Gary Scharnhorst, “‘Ways That Are Dark’: Appropriations of Bret Harte’s ‘Plain Language from Truthful James,’” Nineteenth-Century Literature 51.3 (Dec. 1996), pp. 377–399; and David Scott, China and the International System, 1840–1949: Power, Presence, and Perceptions in a Century of Humiliation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2008), pp. 60–63. Although the Page Act of 1875 specifically prohibited Communists, prostitutes, and people with mental or physical handicaps from entering the United States, the law was used to target Chinese immigrants; see John Seonnichsen, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 (Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood, 2011), pp. 55, 61.
Harte had every Worst poem he ever wrote: MTL, vol. 4, p. 250. Putnam’s offer: BHGS, p. 58. “the lowest and least . . .” and “I have propositions . . .”: BH to F. P. Church, October 18, 1870, BANC. The New York Tribune, Scribner’s, and the Boston Commercial Bulletin all made offers for Harte’s contributions; see BHGS, pp. 58–59.
The most intriguing Fields, Osgood, and Company sent its offer on June 21, 1870; see BHGS, p. 60, and BHAN, p. 112. University appointment and salary: BH to Fields, Osgood, and Company, September 16, 1870, included in Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East: Some Unpublished Letters,” American Literature 19.4 (Jan. 1948), p. 321. “It has long been . . .”: Ambrose Bierce, “Town Crier,” San Francisco News Letter, August 20, 1870, included in Ambrose Bierce, A Sole Survivor: Bits of Autobiography, ed. S. T. Joshi and David E. Schultz, p. 101. Incorporated in 1868, the University of California remained in Oakland until moving to Berkeley in 1873. “Can you do . . .”: Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East,” p. 321.
The timing worked Delay caused by regent: Noah Brooks, “Bret Harte in California,” p. 450. Harte’s decision to decline the UC position: BH to Charles Henry Webb, November 20, 1870, BANC.
By late 1870 It’s unclear when Harte made the decision to leave California. On September 16, 1870, he told Fields, Osgood, and Company that he was “still anxious to make my home in the East.” On November 5, 1870, he wrote William Dean Howells of the “conviction being strong upon me that I should be somewhere near Boston at this date”; see William Dean Howells, Life in Letters of William Dean Howells, vol. 1, ed. Mildred Howells (New York: Russell & Russell, 1968 [1928]), p. 158. Although this letter suggests Harte wanted to be in Boston, he had made no formal arrangement with any periodical by the time he left SF. John H. Carmany, in “‘The Publishers of the Overland’: Remarks of Hon. J. H. Carmany,” p. 13, recalled that he made a last-ditch effort to keep Harte at the Overland by raising his salary to $5,000 a year and giving him a one-quarter stake in the magazine. Harte, however, remembered it differently. According to his March 5, 1871, letter to Ambrose Bierce, Harte was the one who made the offer, and Carmany declined; see Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East: Some Unpublished Letters,” pp. 324–325. “played out” and “The tourists . . .”: from Harte’s response to an 1870 proposal from the New York Tribune to become its San Francisco correspondent, quoted in BHGS, p. 58.
Harte urged his “[H]e was constantly . . .”: ECW. Portfolio of poems: ICLL, pp. 109–110. In an undated letter to Coolbrith held by BANC, Harte writes, “I shall write tonight to Fields, Osgood & Co, and should like to send them your poems.” The Springfield Weekly Republican of February 17, 1871, calls Stoddard “the only notable and original literary genius in California” since “Bret Harte has left,” and mentions his latest South Sea sketch in the Overland. “John D. Coolbrith”: “New Publications,” Cincinnati Daily Gazette, February 4, 1871.
Someday, perhaps, she “that dear old circle”: ECW. “unprecedented sharps . . .” and “sudden soaring . . .”: ICCWS.
Unlike Coolbrith, Stoddard Stoddard’s hope that Harte would help his career in the East: CSCWS, pp. 150–151. “I know there . . .”: CWS to Walt Whitman, April 2, 1870, included ibid., p. 136. On July 7, 1870, Stoddard sailed for Tahiti. Trip: ibid., pp. 138–146, and GP, pp. 48–53. “‘railroaded’ . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 239. “No one who . . .”: ibid., p. 252.
On February 2 Harte’s departure: Alta California, February 2, 1871; BHAN, p. 112; BHGS, p. 63. Telegraph Hill: Bret Harte, “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian Concerning,” Golden Era, November 11, 1860.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Mark Twain felt “Do you know . . .”: SLC to John Henry Riley, March 3, 1871, MTL, vol. 4, p. 338.
He was right Harte’s transcontinental journey: BHGS, pp. 63–64, and BHAN, pp. 113–114. A sampling of press coverage: New York Daily Tribune, February 10, 1871; Leavenworth (KS) Bulletin, February 11, 1871; Quincy (IL) Whig, February 11, 1871; Yankton (SD) Press, February 15, 1871; New York Evening Express, February 21, 1871.
Chicago felt good Chicago poaching SF’s markets: Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California, p. 62. Lakeside Monthly offer: BHGS, p. 64, and Springfield Weekly Republican, February 17, 1871.
Inexplicably, he failed Carriage excuse: Boston Daily Journal, February 20, 1871; Daily State Gazette (Trenton, NJ), February 18, 1871; and Cincinnati Commercial, February 23, 1871. Harte later repeated the carriage story in New York to his friend Noah Brooks; see Noah Brooks, “Harte’s Early Days: Reminiscences by Noah Brooks, Who Knew Him in California,” New York Times, May 24, 1902. The source for the story of Mrs. Harte’s tantrum is Josephine Clifford McCrackin, Harte’s Overland assistant, who learned of it from a friend at the Lakeside Monthly; see Josephine Clifford McCrackin, “A Letter from a Friend,” p. 224. Harte himself never confirmed this account. On March 3, 1871, he wrote McCrackin a letter blaming the incident on “the childishness and provincial character of a few of the principal citizens of Chicago.”
Whether Bret’s ego Chicago departure and visits to Syracuse and New York City: BHGS, p. 65. The Hartes arrived in Boston on February 24, 1871.
The assistant editor Howells at the station: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 154. “a child . . .” and “pressed forward . . .”: ibid.
Over the course Harte’s tour of Boston: BHGS, pp. 65–67. “an English graft”: Bret Harte, “Our Last Offering,” Californian, April 22, 1865. More indigenous fare: Bret Harte, “The Rise of the ‘Short Story,’” pp. 250–257. In 1871, the Howells family lived at 3 Berkeley Street in Cambridge. “Why, you couldn’t . . .”: quoted in William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 154. Pretty girls dawdling outside: ibid., p. 155. Harte’s portrait appeared on the cover of Every Saturday on January 14, 1871, along with a flattering editorial and the full text of his story “Tennessee’s Partner.” Howells arranged this publicity coup, as Every Saturday was owned by James R. Osgood and Company, the successor to Fields, Osgood, and Company after James T. Fields retired from the partnership in December 1870. See BH to WDH, January 24, 1871, included in Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East: Some Unpublished Letters,” pp. 322–323. “a perfect furore . . .” and “All the young . . .”: letter from Elinor Mead Howells to Aurelia
H. Howells, January 29, 1871, quoted in BHAN, p. 5.
Harte induced nearly Harte’s visit to the Saturday Club: BHGS, pp. 65–66, and Anne Fields’s diary, as excerpted in Edward Waldo Emerson, The Early Years of the Saturday Club, 1855–1870 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), pp. 384–385. The Saturday Club met at the Parker House, a hotel on Beacon Hill. “had a spice . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 155.
The main event February 28 dinner: Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, William Dean Howells: A Writer’s Life (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005), p. 136, and BHGS, p. 66. “so many we . . .”: John Fiske to his mother, March 2, 1871, included in John Fiske, The Letters of John Fiske, ed. Ethel F. Fiske (New York: Macmillan, 1940), p. 200. “Everyone wore his best bib and tucker, the house is well arranged for entertaining, and the supper was delicious,” Fiske wrote. “overliterary”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 155. “I was so wined . . .”: BH to Ambrose Bierce, March 5, 1871, included in Bradford A. Booth, “Bret Harte Goes East: Some Unpublished Letters,” p. 324.
The hostess felt “[T]he party! . . .”: Elinor Mead Howells to Victoria and Aurelia H. Howells, March 17, 1871, included in Elinor Mead Howells, If Not Literature: Letters of Elinor Mead Howells, ed. Ginette de B. Merrill and George Arms, p. 138. Details of party: ibid., pp. 137–143, and Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, William Dean Howells, p. 136. Howells assumed the editorship of the Atlantic from James T. Fields in July 1871. Falling circulation and decline in quality of contributors: Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909: Yankee Humanism at High Tide and Ebb (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009 [1994]), pp. 127, 134.
This experimental spirit Howells’s background: Susan Goodman and Carl Dawson, William Dean Howells, pp. 1–138. Howells’s review of Innocents: William Dean Howells, “Reviews and Literary Notices,” Atlantic Monthly 24.146 (Dec. 1869), pp. 764–766. “the earnests . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 153.
What would this “intense ethicism . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Literary Boston as I Knew It,” in Literary Friends and Acquaintance: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship, p. 117. “soil,” “air,” “the newest kind . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 153. “finest poetry . . .”: quoted in Ellery Sedgwick, A History of the Atlantic Monthly, 1857–1909, p. 121. Howells’s realism: ibid., pp. 120–123.
On March 6, 1871 Harte’s agreement with the Atlantic: BH to James R. Osgood, March 6, 1871, BANC. In 1871, a congressman’s salary was $5,000 a year; see John J. Patrick et al., The Oxford Guide to the United States Government (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2001), p. 561. “may still claim . . .” and “He tarried . . .”: Louise Chandler Moulton, quoted in BHGS, p. 68.
Howells welcomed the “witchery of that . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 159. Scene with Harte on the train and “mock heartbreak”: ibid.
Twain had a plan “I must & will keep . . .” and “I will ‘top’ . . .”: SLC to Orion Clemens, March 11 and 13, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, pp. 350–351. Twain bought a one-third stake in the Buffalo Express in August 1869, with a loan from Livy’s father, Jervis, and became its managing editor; see Victor Fischer and Michael B. Frank, introduction to MTL, vol. 3, p. xxvii, and MTAL, pp. 274, 283–284. By late 1870, his involvement in the Express had steadily diminished, and he visited the offices only once a week; see SLC to Charles Henry Webb, November 26, 1870, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 248. Express offices: MTL, vol. 3, p. 306.
How had it Langdon’s birth and Livy’s fever: MCMT, p. 122. Doctors and nurses: SLC to John Henry Riley, March 3, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 338. “You do not know . . .” and “I believe . . .”: SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., March 17, 1871, ibid., pp. 365–366.
Needless to say The July 1870 contract for Roughing It said the manuscript was due on January 1, 1871. Slow progress: MCMT, pp. 121–122. “In three whole . . .”: SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., March 17, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 365. The name of the parody was “The Three Aces.” It appeared in the Buffalo Express on December 3, 1870, under the name Carl Byng. On January 7, 1871, Every Saturday identified Twain as the author; see ibid., p. 303. “I am not . . .”: SLC to the editor of Every Saturday (Thomas Bailey Aldrich), January 15, 1871, ibid., p. 304. A week later, after his temper had cooled, Twain wrote Aldrich a more subdued letter asking him not to publish his earlier message in Every Saturday. By then, however, it was too late; see SLC to Thomas Bailey Aldrich, January 22, 1871, ibid., p. 305.
Anger made him Aside from his stalled progress on Roughing It, Twain had other professional frustrations in this period. In 1870, he had dreamed up a book about a diamond strike in South Africa, and hired a friend, John Henry Riley, to travel to the region and undertake the preliminary research. Riley sailed for South Africa in January 1871, but the project never panned out, and Riley died a year later; see MTAL, p. 292. In March 1871, Twain published a hastily arranged pamphlet called Mark Twain’s (Burlesque) Autobiography. It was a critical and commercial failure; see ibid., pp. 298–299.
One thing was Leaving Buffalo: SLC to John Henry Riley, March 3, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, pp. 337–340; SLC to Orion Clemens, March 4, 1871, ibid., pp. 341–346; SLC to Orion Clemens, March 10, 1871, ibid., pp. 348–349; and SLC to Jane Lampton Clemens and Family, March 15, 1871, ibid., p. 361. Hartford and Nook Farm: MCMT, pp. 139–142.
But first, the Livy’s worsening condition: SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr. and Orion Clemens, March 20, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, pp. 367–369, and SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., March 17, 1871, ibid., pp. 365–367. “I had rather die . . .” and “I want to get clear . . .”: ibid., p. 365.
The farmhouse belonged Twain and his family spent nearly twenty summers at Quarry Farm, from 1871 to 1889. The books he wrote there include Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, and A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court. Quarry Farm: ibid., pp. 366–367, and MTAL, p. 298. Twain walking there several times a week: SLC to Orion Clemens, April 8, 9, and 10, 1871, ibid., p. 376. Majestic setting: SLC to John Brown, April 27, 1874, in MTL, vol. 6, p. 121; and SLC to Joseph H. and Harmony C. Twichell, June 11, 1874, ibid., p. 158. “a foretaste of heaven”: SLC to Joseph Twichell, October 2, 1879, in MTLO. Getting back to work: MTAL, p. 298, and MCMT, pp. 135–136.
He relied on Book’s composition: Franklin R. Rogers, introduction to Roughing It, in The Works of Mark Twain, vol. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press for the Iowa Center for Textual Studies, 1972), pp. 4–21. Goodman’s arrival: MTL, vol. 4, p. 379. “He is going to read my MSS critically,” Twain wrote Orion on April 18, 1871; see ibid., p. 378. Goodman’s visit: MTAL, pp. 298–299. “I knew it! . . .” and “Mark . . .”: MTB, vol. 1, pp. 435–436.
Goodman’s visit lifted “booming along”: SLC to Orion Clemens, April 8, 9, and 10, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, p. 376. Livy’s recovery: SLC to Mary Mason Fairbanks, April 26, 1871, ibid., p. 381. Healthy baby Langdon: SLC to Orion Clemens, April 4, 1871, ibid., p. 372. Superhuman pace and two-thirds done: SLC to Elisha Bliss Jr., May 15, 1871, ibid., pp. 390–393. “a red-hot interest” and “Nothing grieves . . .”: ibid., p. 391.
All this confidence “curious new world”: MTR, p. 1. Passing references to the Golden Era, the Californian, and Bret Harte: ibid., p. 405.
The book’s freewheeling Filler and the exigencies of subscription publishing: MTAL, pp. 302–303. “It was a driving . . .”: MTR, p. 391.
By the fall Departure for Hartford and renting a house: MTAL, p. 304.
It’s unclear who In mid-1871, Twain sent Harte a photograph of baby Langdon at six and a half months. “The most determined singer in America sends his warm regards to the most notorious one,” the inscription read, signed Langdon Clemens. It’s possible that the two men met before this, or that Harte wrote the first letter; see SLC to BH, June 7–September 28, 1871, in MTL, vol. 4, pp. 397–398. The details of the Keeler lunch come from William Dean H
owells, who discussed the event at least three times: in a May 7, 1902, letter to Aldrich, quoted in MTL, vol. 4, pp. 485–486; in “Editor’s Easy Chair,” pp. 156–157; and in William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, pp. 7–8. Twain’s first visit to the Atlantic offices in 1869: ibid., pp. 5–6.
Fortunately, this was “nothing but careless . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 156. “This is the dream . . .”: ibid.
Later, Howells claimed “betrayed his enjoyment . . .”: William Dean Howells, My Mark Twain, p. 8. This was Howells’s final account of the lunch, written in 1910. He made no mention of Twain’s reaction to Harte’s comment in his two earlier accounts.
Only nine months “not quite au fait . . .”: Elinor Mead Howells to Victoria and Aurelia H. Howells, March 17, 1871, in Elinor Mead Howells, If Not Literature: Letters of Elinor Mead Howells, ed. Ginette de B. Merrill and George Arms, p. 137. “was not much of a talker”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 155.
His first test “You could hardly . . .”: quoted in BHGS, pp. 73–74. “dignity and fitness”: ibid., p. 73. Harte’s poem was entitled “The Old Major Explains.” An hour to write and apology to Fields: BH to James T. Fields, May 13, 1871, BANC. Lowell’s invitation: BHGS, p. 74, and BHAN, p. 116.
This time, Harte Phi Beta Kappa gathering: Boston Daily Advertiser, June 30, 1871, and New York Daily Tribune, June 30, 1871. Harte’s clothing: Mrs. Thomas Bailey Aldrich, Crowding Memories (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1922 [1920]), p. 142. Harte’s delivery: Boston Daily Advertiser, June 30, 1871, and Albany Evening Journal, July 11, 1871. The poem was “The Lost Beauty,” first published in 1862; see BHGS, p. 74. “a jingle so trivial . . .”: William Dean Howells, “Editor’s Easy Chair,” p. 158. “The thoughtful portion . . .”: the Washington Capital, as reprinted in the Albany Evening Journal, July 11, 1871. “Bret Harte’s ‘Fizzle’ at Harvard”: ibid. See also New York Daily Tribune, July 7, 1871; Cincinnati Daily Gazette, July 10, 1871; and Columbian Register (New Haven, CT), July 15, 1871.
