The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, May 25, 1902, Page 6

JHE SUNDAY CALL within whom down to “Harte If. Noboea: & we can only guess. ionely men are happy. Perhaps he wanted to break down the wall. But he never will be given credit for wanting too. Instead, he will go down in history recorded by the generous as a cold man, recorded by the less kindly a snob. If he was a snob he was an intellectual one. Money and what it buys were never & source of vanity with him. In fact, he never was known to have any of either. Bret Harte's life in San Francisco was a bard luck story. Not that he didn There was a time Few make money. He ai€. n he was drawing ies at once: One from the Mint, ce as much from the a good round sum urch on the Plaza, In merly Miss Griswold, three comfortable hundred and fif ean average of tw Overland Monthly from old Trinity C! ar wife And Harte has been known to borrow mone: for new hat He made the most of the hat. He was alws fond of dress. This never showed ticularly until he went to England, —— CRevex: = B - PO W - \ W, L0 '\ b 0 \ AERTAMEN 7 OFPofiTe THE adopted London ways and went the Eng- lish one better from the turn of his trou- sers to the cut of his hair. He was too poor here to dress smartly, but when he managed to raise enough to invest in enything new and swell he would put it on with careful elegance, and start down the Montgomery street parade in it A huge overcoat with a great as- trakhan collar that lay high against the neck and turned over with a great show- ing of fur was one of his sources of pride. Montgomery street, the then fashionable line of march, the Kearny street of yes- terday, saw him wear this. He seemed to delight in being observed, but he scarcely ever stopped for a friendly word S WD T I AR & (DI - L} WA AL ) MHARYTE EDITED THE OverLann %, ~ with any of those whose admiration he coveted. He managed to get a peep at their eyes out of the corners of his, enough to let him see if they were look- ing. But there was a large part of the time when he was lucky if he could keep from being actually shabby. He never was sloppy, like his friend, Mark Twaln, be- cause he hated untidiness, but he was often threadbare. He lived with nothing less than frugality, and the wonder of the thing is what he did with his money. His homes—the man moved at least ance a year—were always simple In the extreme. He didn’t spend his money in their adornment. His wife and children lived and dressed simply. His money didn’t go in that way. He had no dissipations, so say both his friends and énemles. He did not drink, he did not gamble, he did not care for women. His money did not go in those ways. Most certain of all, he never saved. That was the thing most remote from his mind. If he made out to live from day to day he was doing very well—for Bret Harte. And yet he always lived in a scrap of & house, had no more furniture than was absolutely necessary, and was in need of borrowing from one week’'s end to the other. ‘When he first came to California in 1854 he brought his mother, and they went to living in a mite of a house in Oakland. It was near the water front, almost fac- ing the Alameda marshes. His room was a little box at the top of the stairs, lighted only by a sky window. It was hardly big efiough for a bird cage. He used to get into that bird cage and bury his nose in a book for hours at a time. He could not then afford to buy books outright; he used to get them on the installment plan from a bookseller who took an interest in him. He bought several volumes of Dickens in this way, paying 10 cents a week. The.bookseller grew so interested in him and his love for literature that at last he advanced him the remainder of the set, some half dozen volumes and let Harte pay for them at his leisure. Harte had something of a knack for carpentry, and he built himself a shelf in his sky parlor and thereon ranged his library. He used the volumes until the leaves were loose. His mother used to sew in fluttering pages for him when he would be away. She never did this with- out bringing down a storm upon her own devoted head, for it was a law which ha tried to enforce that no one should ever enter his sky parlor but himself, not even for the purpose of cleaning. He never thought of such a thing as sweeping there himself, so in sheer desperation at the drifts of dust that would emerge from his door when the wind blew, she occa- slonally took a broom and entered. - She always found so many things in need of her good care that when he returned he was bound to detect her. Later on the two of them moved to an- otker house in Oakland, what Charles Warren Stoddard—Charlie, as hé always was to Bret Harte—called a bungalow. It was built by Stoddard’s father. Harte took an interest in the place and tried to improve it. bullding a fence around it with his own hands. His later dwelling places in San Fran- cisco were scattered from one end of the city to the other—those ends being nearer together than they are now. He lived on Folsom : street and on Silver street, both in the southern part of town. At another time he lived over toward the North Beach. on Greenwich street. After he was married he occupled a house long. since torn down at the corner of Bush and Hyde streets. Hyde street was pretty remote in those days, being decidedly western—about what. the Western Addition is to us now. It Wwas 80 far out as to be of the distant res- idence district. The funerals going to the western cemetery used to pass that way as a regular thing, and Harte's children took to playing funeral. This amused him' immensely, and at times’ he played with them. “I'll be the hearse,” he used to say, and down he would go on his hands and knees and march at the head of the impromptu fureral procession, with a feather dus- ter fastened upright on his back to rep- resent the plume of a “hearse. But only a very few intimates ever knew that Bret Harte unbent, even in the bosom of his own family. His real friends might’ have been counted upon his two hands, and almost if not quite ten sub- tracted from that number after he left here. For those few who had belleved in his friendship when he went East had to grow skeptical of it when time went by and none of the promised letters from him arrived. Harte forgot Californians. Those rare ones who did know him in & more or less informal way never found him a great talker. He was a listener. He liked to hear miners talk, and those who knew the mines, for from such peo- ple he drew the sources of his stories. He knew little enough of the mines at first hand. He was not gifted as a conversational- ist. "He never attempted to be witty. Joe Srear remembers him as he, along with “Old Zander,” used to come into Spear’s store on Califgrnia street and sit there, afternoon in and afternoon out, joining little in the talk that went on about him. He sat back and watched people and lis- tened to them, studying character in his own quiet way. He never joined men in their ordinary amusements. In the old Occidental, which was frequented in those days as the clubs are now, he used to stand back from the table and watch from a distance while others played billiards. He never seemed particularly interested in the game. Mark Twain, ready to mix in any- thing there was going, played a great deal and well, and Harte would accom- pany him to the billiard-room, then—he would make a wall-flower of himself. That was whdt Bret Harte was in all S ARLY IS " AN LKANC Ico HH == lines flower. He never liked sports; he never liked roughing it. He did not hunt, nor fish, nor ride. When he went to the country he stayed indoors and read and wrote. He and Anton Roman built a cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains one summer— somewhere near the spot that is now Wrights, It was a rough and picturesque place, lonely and romantic. The Harte and the Roman familles used to join forces and go to this mountain spot every week, to get away from the world for a Saturday to Monday. The place would tempt a man to be out of doors if any- thing would; but Harte spent most of his' time = inside the rude walls poring over books and manuscripts. On Monday morning he could be seen returning to town, his arms full of copy ready for pub- lication. Afterward he moved to San Rafael, for the sake, so he said, of living nearer na- ture; and he still carried his copy back and forth and wrote like a clerk while he was over there. He carried his proofs and manuscripts in a mail bag, and ev- erybody knew him by that bag. There was one short period when he was able to live in fairly smart style— for then. That was when Swain made him his secretary at the Mint. The Mint was on Commercial street, where the Treas- Save professional ones—a wall- ury is to-day, and he was given apart- ments across the street from his place of business. It happened in this way: covered him, took an interest in I said: “You ought to have some kind of a snap (that is if they called-it snap then) which would provide for you while you write according So he got him t a salary of $150 the apartments near by his precious tim and com Swain dis- 1im and per po he got $150 a month for nis name once a day. At any r: place was easy. He wrote poenis a Mint and he wrote p fortable apartments across he wrote poems all the time His rooms were well furnish. but he soon made them look as disreputable as the true genius is supposed to do. He lit- tered them with scra written and rewritten literature. were ays when he did noth te and de- t get prom- but still Swain had stroy, when hi ised copy from him, faith in him and furnished him with the needed wherewithal One day Harte received a visit from some swell Eng acquaintances. He went to Swain and asked for money to entertain them with. Already he had a touch of the A ped tly later in life. 1l my salary,” Harte sald. “Can’t you advance me enough with which to entertain these people?” “How much do you need?’ Swain asked. “Five hundred will do.” “Five hundred is yours.” Harte took the amount and sallied forth to attempt sociability. He was nothing of a good fellow, but he was determined to make a bluff at being one for the once. The next day Swain met him making the rounds with his smart Englishmen. Harte cut Swain’ dead. It was such things as this that caused him to be remembered as “not one of the “He was always so_terriply sober,” one of the old-timers said. “In those days you had to go into a saloon now and then {o be popular.” Harte was not a teetotaler, though. If he was asked to have a drink he would not refuse. He simply was not the kind to treat or be treated as a common thing. Occasionally to be seen usually he was drinking alone at Barry & Patton’s, the popu »n - Montgomery street, W ty-five cents and the liking of a_prince. But no- knew of Bret Harte's drinking happy.: “Héi was always with strangers and scarcely more acquaintance restaurant was Suy‘man’s, the old place on ria street Sept by August h to. be with His favorite Saulman Fred La n. Many of the good fellows of old San Francisco used to gather there at meal famous for its m and Harte For or breakfa: i come away only 25 cents the poorer. Savlman, rosy and an, stood at coonier in front.! Harte had a system: he would go to the counter. “‘good merning’’. in' 1 grudging wzy to Saulmr an, take two big German roils from the basket on the un help himself to a big piece £ W halia take a seat at the most re T the room. The waiter weuld add a cup of coffee to this and Harte would eat alone and silent while others in groups ar him 1 rolls, West- was ady habit for a long time. Nobody 1 whether he got Westphalia ham at home after N§ married, but he must have missel it if he did not. However, he pever left home for the sake of it. George Merrill, one of the few men in town who has a truly friendly word for the lonely genius, says that he was a domestic man, : keeping closely at home, where he read and wrote persistently. Harte was by no means a religious man in the usual sense of the word. | Hs was a thinker and a philosopher, but he had no use for churches. What his real creed was nobody seems to know. He was far from orthodox, at any rate., Even his old friend of Cailfornia, Mark Twain, was estranged from him. Mark and he had shared a pipeful of tobacco when they could not raise the price of two; they had dined together over one loaf of bread when the price of it was all they could afford; and after that they learned to forget each other. The differ- ence was finally adjusted when Fred Stocking, a mutual friend, went East, met Twain ‘and brought the two together. But taken throughout his life, Harte had little ability for making friends, and still less for keeping them. He was alone even to the last. In his English country home he lived in seclu- sion. The best known of all California’s Mt terateurs was her least known man.