Part 21 (1/2)
Bret Harte's habits were regular and simple. He smoked a good deal, drank very little, and took exercise every day. At one time he played golf, and at another he was somewhat interested in amateur photography. But his real recreation, as well as his labor, was found in that imaginary world which sprang to life under his pen. He was often a guest at English country houses, and was familiar with the history of English cathedrals, abbeys, churches, and historical ruins. He made a pilgrimage to Macbeth's country in Scotland and to Charlotte Bronte's home in Yorks.h.i.+re. He loved Byron's poetry, and was once a guest at Newstead Abbey. He frequently visited Lord Compton, later Marquis of Northampton, at Compton Wyngates in Warwicks.h.i.+re near the battleground of Edgehill, and at Castle Ashby at Northampton.
Reminiscences of these visits may be found in _The Desborough Connections_ and _The Ghosts of Stukeley Castle_. He belonged to various clubs, such as The Beefsteak, The Rabelais, The Kinsmen; but during the last few years of his life he frequented only the Royal Thames Yacht Club.
”This selection seemed to me so odd,” writes Mr. Pemberton, ”for he had no love of yachting, that I questioned him concerning it. 'Why, my dear fellow,' he said, 'don't you see? I never use a club until I am tired of my work and want relief from it. If I go to a literary club I am asked all sorts of questions as to what I am doing, and my views on somebody's last book, and to these I am expected to reply at length. Now my good friends in Albemarle Street talk of their yachts, don't want my advice about them, are good enough to let me listen, and I come away refreshed by their conversation.'”[103]
So Hawthorne, it will be remembered, cared little for the meetings of the Sat.u.r.day Club in Boston, and was often an absentee, but he delighted in the company of the Yankee sea-captains at Mrs. Blodgett's boarding-house in Liverpool. ”Captain Johnson,” he wrote, ”a.s.signed as a reason for not boarding at this house that the conversation made him sea-sick; and indeed the smell of tar and bilge-water is somewhat strongly perceptible in it.”
The truth is that an aversion to the society of purely literary men should naturally be looked for in writers of a profound or original stamp of mind. Something may be learned and some refreshment of spirit may be obtained from almost any man who knows almost anything at first hand,--even from a market-gardener or a machinist; and if his subject is what might be called a natural one, such as s.h.i.+ps, horses or cows, it is bound to have a certain intellectual interest. But the ordinary, clever, sophisticated litterateur is mainly occupied neither with things nor with ideas, but with forms of expression, and consequently he is a long way removed from reality. It may be doubted if any society in the world is less profitable than his.
Mr. Moncure Conway, in his autobiography, gives an amusing reminiscence of Bret Harte's p.r.o.neness to escape from what are known as ”social duties.”
Mrs. Conway ”received” on Monday afternoons, and Bret Harte had told her that he would be present on a particular Monday, but he failed to appear,--much to the regret of some persons who had been invited for the occasion. ”When chancing to meet him,” writes Mr. Conway, ”I alluded to the disappointment; he asked forgiveness and said, 'I will come next Monday--_even though I promise_.'”
He had a constant dread that his friends.h.i.+p or acquaintance would be sought on account of his writings, rather than for himself. A lady who sat next to him at dinner without learning his name, afterward remarked, ”I have always longed to meet him, and I would have been so different had I only known who my neighbor was.” This, unfortunately, being repeated to Bret Harte, he exclaimed, ”Now, why can't a woman realize that this sort of thing is insulting?... If Mrs. ---- talked with me, and found me uninteresting as a man, how could she expect to find me interesting because I was an author?”
During the last ten or fifteen years of his life, Bret Harte seldom went far from home. He never visited Switzerland until September, 1895, and even then he carried his ma.n.u.script with him, and devoted to it part of each day. He took great delight in the Swiss mountains, often spoke of his vacation there, and was planning to go again during the summer of his death.
From Lucerne he wrote to a friend[104] as follows: ”Strangest of all, I find my heart going back to the old Sierras whenever I get over three thousand feet of Swiss alt.i.tude, and--dare I whisper it?--in spite of their pictorial composition, I wouldn't give a mile of the dear old Sierras, with their honesty, sincerity, and magnificent uncouthness, for one hundred thousand kilometres of the picturesque Vaud.”
Of Geneva he wrote to the same correspondent: ”I thought I should not like Geneva, fancying it a kind of continental Boston, and that the shadow of John Calvin and the old reformers, or still worse the sentimental idiocy of Rousseau, and the De Staels and Mme. de Warens still lingered there.”
But he did like Geneva; and of the lake, as he viewed it from his hotel window, he wrote, ”Ask him if he ever saw an expanse of thirty miles of water exactly the color of the inner sh.e.l.l of a Mother-of-Pearl oyster.”
Of Geneva itself he wrote again: ”It is gay, brilliant, and even as _pictorial_ as the end of Lake Leman; and as I sit by my hotel window on the border of the lake I can see Mont Blanc--thirty or forty miles away--framing itself a perfect vignette. Of course I know the whole thing was arranged by the Grand Hotel Company that run Switzerland. Last night as I stood on my balcony looking at the great semi-circle of lights framing the quay and harbor of the town, a great fountain sent up a spray from the lake three hundred feet high, illuminated by beautifully shaded 'lime lights,' exactly like a 'transformation scene.' Just then, the new moon--a pale green sickle--swung itself over the Alps! But it was absolutely too much! One felt that the Hotel Company were overdoing it!
And I wanted to order up the hotel proprietor and ask him to take it down.
At least I suggested it to the Colonel,[105] but he thought it would do as well if we refused to pay for it in the bill.”
The same correspondent, by the way, quotes an amusing letter from Bret Harte, written in 1888, from Stoke Pogis, near Windsor Castle: ”I had the honor yesterday of speaking to a man who had been in personal attendance upon the Queen for fifty years. He was naturally very near the point of translation, and gave a vague impression that he did not require to be born again, but remained on earth for the benefit of American tourists.”
Bret Harte's reasons for remaining so long in England have already been explained in part. The chief cause was probably the pecuniary one, for by living in England he was able to obtain more from his writings than he could have obtained as a resident of the United States. He continued to contribute to the support of his wife, although after his departure from this country Mrs. Harte and he did not live together. The cause of their separation was never made known. On this subject both Mr. Harte and his wife maintained an honorable silence, which, it is to be hoped, will always be respected.
A few years before her husband's death, Mrs. Harte came to England to live. The older son, Griswold Harte, died in the city of New York, in December, 1901, leaving a widow and one daughter. The second son, Francis King Harte, was married in England some years ago, and makes his home there. He has two children. Bret Harte was often a visitor at his son's house. The older daughter, Jessamy, married Henry Milford Steele, an American, and lives in the United States. The younger daughter, Ethel, is unmarried, and lives with her mother.
Beyond the pecuniary reason which impelled Bret Harte to live in England were other reasons which every American who has spent some time in that country will understand, and which are especially strong in respect to persons of nervous temperament. The climate is one reason; for the English climate is the natural antidote to the American; and perhaps the residents of each country would be better if they could exchange habitats every other generation.
England has a soothing effect upon the hustling American. He eats more, worries less, and becomes a happier and pleasanter animal. A similar change has been observed in high-strung horses taken from the United States to England. And so of athletes--the English athlete, transported to this country, gains in speed, but loses endurance; whereas our athletes on English soil gain endurance and lose speed. The temperament and manners of the English people have the same pleasant effect as the climate upon the American visitor. Why is John Bull always represented as an irascible animal? Perhaps he is such if his rights, real or a.s.sumed, are invaded, or if his will is thwarted; but as the stranger meets him, he is civil and good-natured. In fact, this is one of the chief surprises which an American experiences on his first visit to England.
More important still, perhaps, is the ease of living in a country which has a fixed social system. The plain line drawn in England between the gentleman and the non-gentleman cla.s.s makes things very pleasant for those who belong to the favored division. It gives the gentleman a vantage ground in dealing with the non-gentleman which proves as convenient, as it is novel, to the American. The fact that it must be inconvenient for the non-gentleman cla.s.s, which outnumbers the other some thousands to one, never seems to trouble the Englishman, although the American may have some qualms.
Furthermore, strange as it may seem, the position of an author, _per se_ is, no doubt, higher in London (though perhaps not elsewhere in England) than it is in the United States. With us, the well-to-do publisher has a better standing in what is called ”society” than the impecunious author.
In London the reverse would be the case. New York and Boston looked askance upon Bret Harte, doubting if he were quite respectable; but London welcomed him. Bret Harte was often asked to lecture in England, and especially to speak or write upon English customs or English society; but he always refused, being unwilling, as Thackeray was in regard to the United States, either to censure a people from whom he had received great hospitality, or to praise them at the expense of truth.
Nor was his belief in America and the American social system weakened in the least by his long residence in England or by his enjoyment of the amenities of English life.
An English author wrote of him, while he was yet living: ”Time has not dulled Bret Harte's instinctive affection for the land of his birth, for its inst.i.tutions, its climate, its natural beauties, and, above all, the character and moral attributes of its inhabitants. Even his a.s.sociation with the most aristocratic representatives of London society has been impotent to modify his views or to win him over to less independent professions. He is as single-minded to-day as he was when he first landed on British soil. A general favorite in the most diverse circles, social, literary, scientific, artistic, or military, his strong primitive nature and his positive individuality have remained intact. Always polite and gentle, neither seeking nor evading controversy, he is steadfastly unchangeable in his political and patriotic beliefs.”
Another English writer relates that ”At the time when there was some talk of war between Britain and America, he, while deploring even the suggestion of such a catastrophe, earnestly avowed his intention of instantly returning to his own country, should hostilities break out.”
No two men could be more opposed in many respects than Hawthorne and Bret Harte. Nevertheless they had some striking points of resemblance. Both were men who united primitive instincts with consummate refinement; and different as is the subject-matter of their stories, the style and att.i.tude are not unlike. They had the same craving for beauty of form, the same self-repression, the same horror of what is prolix or tawdry, the same love of that simplicity which is the perfection of art.
Long residence in England seems to have had much the same effect upon both men. It heightened their feeling for their native country almost in proportion as it pleased their own susceptibilities. Hawthorne's fondness for England was an almost unconscious feeling. When he returned to America, there to live for the remainder of his days, he did not find himself at home in the manner or to the degree which he had expected. ”At Rome,” his son writes, ”an unacknowledged homesickness affected him, an Old-Homesickness, rather than a yearning for America. He may have imagined that it was America that he wanted, but when at last we returned there, he still looked backward toward England.”
That a man should find it more agreeable to live in one country, and yet be firmly convinced that the social system of another country was superior, is nothing remarkable. It is the presence of equality in the United States and its absence in England which make the chief difference between them. Even that imperfect equality to which we have attained has rendered the American people the happiest and the most moral in the world.