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| Introduction to The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales, 1902
by Bret Harte
The opportunity here offered to give some account of the genesis of these Californian
sketches, and the conditions under which they were conceived, is
peculiarly tempting to an author who has been obliged to retain a
decent professional reticence under a cloud of ingenious surmise,
theory, and misinterpretation. He very gladly seizes this opportunity
to establish the chronology of the sketches, and incidentally to show
that what are considered the "happy accidents" of literature are very
apt to be the results of quite logical and often prosaic processes.
The author's first volume was published in 1865 in a thin book
of verse, containing, besides the titular poem, "The Lost Galleon,"
various patriotic contributions to the lyrics of the Civil War, then
raging, and certain better known humorous pieces, which have been
hitherto interspersed with his later poems in separate volumes, but
are now restored to their former companionship. This was followed in
1867 by "The Condensed Novels," originally contributed to the "San
Francisco Californian," a journal then edited by the author, and a
number of local sketches entitled "Bohemian Papers," making a single
not very plethoric volume, the author's first book of prose. But he
deems it worthy of consideration that during this period, i.e. from
1862 to 1866, he produced "The Society upon the Stanislaus" and "The
Story of M'liss,"--the first a dialectical poem, the second a
Californian romance,--his first efforts toward indicating a peculiarly
characteristic Western American literature. He would like to offer
these facts as evidence of his very early, half-boyish but very
enthusiastic belief in such a possibility,--a belief which never
deserted him, and which, a few years later, from the better-known
pages of "The Overland Monthly," he was able to demonstrate to a
larger and more cosmopolitan audience in the story of "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" and the poem of the "Heathen Chinee." But it was one of
the anomalies of the very condition of life that he worked amidst, and
endeavored to portray, that these first efforts were rewarded by very
little success; and, as he will presently show, even "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" depended for its recognition in California upon its
success elsewhere. Hence the critical reader will observe that the
bulk of these earlier efforts, as shown in the first two volumes, were
marked by very little flavor of the soil, but were addressed to an
audience half foreign in their sympathies, and still imbued with
Eastern or New England habits and literary traditions. "Home" was
still potent with these voluntary exiles in their moments of
relaxation. Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed
their literary recreation, and the sale of the better class of
periodicals was singularly great. Nor was the taste confined to
American literature. The illustrated and satirical English journals
were as frequently seen in California as in Massachusetts; and the
author records that he has experienced more difficulty in procuring a
copy of "Punch" in an English provincial town than was his fortune at
"Red Dog" or "One-Horse Gulch." An audience thus liberally equipped
and familiar with the best modern writers was naturally critical and
exacting, and no one appreciates more than he does the salutary
effects of this severe discipline upon his earlier efforts.
When the first number of "The Overland Monthly" appeared, the author,
then its editor, called the publisher's attention to the lack of any
distinctive Californian romance in its pages, and averred that, should
no other contribution come in, he himself would supply the omission in
the next number. No other contribution was offered, and the author,
having the plot and general idea already in his mind, in a few days
sent the manuscript of "The Luck of Roaring Camp" to the printer. He
had not yet received the proof-sheets when he was suddenly summoned to
the office of the publisher, whom he found standing the picture of
dismay and anxiety with the proof before him. The indignation and
stupefaction of the author can be well understood when he was told
that the printer, instead of returning the proofs to him, submitted
them to the publisher, with the emphatic declaration that the matter
thereof was so indecent, irreligious, and improper that his proof-
reader--a young lady--had with difficulty been induced to continue its
perusal, and that he, as a friend of the publisher and a well-wisher
of the magazine, was impelled to present to him personally this
shameless evidence of the manner in which the editor was imperilling
the future of that enterprise. It should be premised that the critic
was a man of character and standing, the head of a large printing
establishment, a church member, and, the author thinks, a deacon. In
which circumstances the publisher frankly admitted to the author that,
while he could not agree with all of the printer's criticisms, he
thought the story open to grave objection, and its publication of
doubtful expediency.
Believing only that he was the victim of some extraordinary
typographical blunder, the author at once sat down and read the proof.
In its new dress, with the metamorphosis of type,--that metamorphosis
which every writer so well knows changes his relations to it and makes
it no longer seem a part of himself,--he was able to read it with
something of the freshness of an untold tale. As he read on he found
himself affected, even as he had been affected in the conception and
writing of it--a feeling so incompatible with the charges against it,
that he could only lay it down and declare emphatically, albeit
hopelessly, that he could really see nothing objectionable in it.
Other opinions were sought and given. To the author's surprise, he
found himself in the minority. Finally, the story was submitted to
three gentlemen of culture and experience, friends of publisher and
author,--who were unable, however, to come to any clear decision. It
was, however, suggested to the author that, assuming the natural
hypothesis that his editorial reasoning might be warped by his
literary predilections in a consideration of one of his own
productions, a personal sacrifice would at this juncture be in the
last degree heroic. This last suggestion had the effect of ending all
further discussion, for he at once informed the publisher that the
question of the propriety of the story was no longer at issue: the
only question was of his capacity to exercise the proper editorial
judgment; and that unless he was permitted to test that capacity by
the publication of the story, and abide squarely by the result, he
must resign his editorial position. The publisher, possibly struck
with the author's confidence, possibly from kindliness of disposition
to a younger man, yielded, and "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was
published in the current number of the magazine for which it was
written, as it was written, without emendation, omission, alteration,
or apology. A not inconsiderable part of the grotesqueness of the
situation was the feeling, which the author retained throughout the
whole affair, of the perfect sincerity, good faith, and seriousness of
his friend's--the printer's--objection, and for many days thereafter
he was haunted by a consideration of the sufferings of this
conscientious man, obliged to assist materially in disseminating the
dangerous and subversive doctrines contained in this baleful fiction.
What solemn protests must have been laid with the ink on the rollers
and impressed upon those wicked sheets! what pious warnings must have
been secretly folded and stitched in that number of "The Overland
Monthly"! Across the chasm of years and distance the author stretches
forth the hand of sympathy and forgiveness, not forgetting the gentle
proof-reader, that chaste and unknown nymph, whose mantling cheeks and
downcast eyes gave the first indications of warning.
But the troubles of the "Luck" were far from ended. It had secured an
entrance into the world, but, like its own hero, it was born with an
evil reputation, and to a community that had yet to learn to love it.
The secular press, with one or two exceptions, received it coolly, and
referred to its "singularity;" the religious press frantically
excommunicated it, and anathematized it as the offspring of evil; the
high promise of "The Overland Monthly" was said to have been ruined by
its birth; Christians were cautioned against pollution by its contact;
practical business men were gravely urged to condemn and frown upon
this picture of Californian society that was not conducive to Eastern
immigration; its hapless author was held up to obloquy as a man who
had abused a sacred trust. If its life and reputation had depended on
its reception in California, this edition and explanation would alike
have been needless. But, fortunately, the young "Overland Monthly" had
in its first number secured a hearing and position throughout the
American Union, and the author waited the larger verdict. The
publisher, albeit his worst fears were confirmed, was not a man to
weakly regret a position he had once taken, and waited also. The
return mail from the East brought a letter addressed to the "Editor of
the 'Overland Monthly,'" enclosing a letter from Fields, Osgood & Co.,
the publishers of "The Atlantic Monthly," addressed to the--to them--
unknown "Author of 'The Luck of Roaring Camp.'" This the author
opened, and found to be a request, upon the most flattering terms, for
a story for the "Atlantic" similar to the "Luck." The same mail
brought newspapers and reviews welcoming the little foundling of
Californian literature with an enthusiasm that half frightened its
author; but with the placing of that letter in the hands of the
publisher, who chanced to be standing by his side, and who during
those dark days had, without the author's faith, sustained the
author's position, he felt that his compensation was full and
complete.
Thus encouraged, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" was followed by "The
Outcasts of Poker Flat," "Miggles," "Tennessee's Partner," and those
various other characters who had impressed the author when, a mere
truant schoolboy, he had lived among them. It is hardly necessary to
say to any observer of human nature that at this time he was advised
by kind and well-meaning friends to content himself with the success
of the "Luck," and not tempt criticism again; or that from that moment
ever after he was in receipt of that equally sincere contemporaneous
criticism which assured him gravely that each successive story was a
falling off from the last. Howbeit, by reinvigorated confidence in
himself and some conscientious industry, he managed to get together in
a year six or eight of these sketches, which, in a volume called "The
Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches," gave him that encouragement
in America and England that has since seemed to justify him in
swelling these records of a picturesque passing civilization into the
compass of the present edition.
A few words regarding the peculiar conditions of life and society that
are here rudely sketched, and often but barely outlined. The author is
aware that, partly from a habit of thought and expression, partly
from the exigencies of brevity in his narratives, and partly from the
habit of addressing an audience familar with the local scenery, he
often assumes, as premises already granted by the reader, the
existence of a peculiar and romantic state of civilization, the like
of which few English readers are inclined to accept without
corroborative facts and figures. These he could only give by referring
to the ephemeral records of Californian journals of that date, and the
testimony of far-scattered witnesses, survivors of the exodus of
1849. He must beg the reader to bear in mind that this emigration was
either across a continent almost unexplored, or by the way of a long
and dangerous voyage around Cape Horn, and that the promised land
itself presented the singular spectacle of a patriarchal Latin race
who had been left to themselves, forgotten by the world, for nearly
three hundred years. The faith, courage, vigor, youth, and capacity
for adventure necessary to this emigration produced a body of men as
strongly distinctive as the companions of Jason. Unlike most pioneers,
the majority were men of profession and education; all were young, and
all had staked their future in the enterprise. Critics who have taken
large and exhaustive views of mankind and society from club windows in
Pall Mall or the Fifth Avenue can only accept for granted the
turbulent chivalry that thronged the streets of San Francisco in the
gala days of her youth, and must read the blazon of their deeds like
the doubtful quarterings of the shield of Amadis de Gaul. The author
has been frequently asked if such and such incidents were real,--if he
had ever met such and such characters. To this he must return the one
answer, that in only a single instance was he conscious of drawing
purely from his imagination and fancy for a character and a logical
succession of incidents drawn therefrom. A few weeks after his story
was published, he received a letter, authentically signed, correcting
some of the minor details of his facts (!), and enclosing as
corroborative evidence a slip from an old newspaper, wherein the main
incident of his supposed fanciful creation was recorded with a
largeness of statement that far transcended his powers of imagination.
He has been repeatedly cautioned, kindly and unkindly, intelligently
and unintelligently, against his alleged tendency to confuse
recognized standards of morality by extenuating lives of recklessness,
and often criminality, with a single solitary virtue. He might easily
show that he has never written a sermon, that he has never moralized
or commented upon the actions of his heroes, that he has never voiced
a creed or obtrusively demonstrated an ethical opinion. He might
easily allege that this merciful effect of his art arose from the
reader's weak human sympathies, and hold himself irresponsible. But
he would be conscious of a more miserable weakness in thus divorcing
himself from his fellow-men who in the domain of art must ever walk
hand in hand with him. So he prefers to say that, of all the various
forms in which Cant presents itself to suffering humanity, he knows of
none so outrageous, so illogical, so undemonstrable, so marvelously
absurd, as the Cant of "Too Much Mercy." When it shall be proven to
him that communities are degraded and brought to guilt and crime,
suffering or destitution, from a predominance of this quality; when he
shall see pardoned ticket-of-leave men elbowing men of austere lives
out of situation and position, and the repentant Magdalen supplanting
the blameless virgin in society,--then he will lay aside his pen and
extend his hand to the new Draconian discipline in fiction. But until
then he will, without claiming to be a religious man or a moralist,
but simply as an artist, reverently and humbly conform to the rules
laid down by a Great Poet who created the parable of the "Prodigal
Son" and the "Good Samaritan," whose works have lasted eighteen
hundred years, and will remain when the present writer and his
generation are forgotten. And he is conscious of uttering no original
doctrine in this, but of only voicing the beliefs of a few of his
literary brethren happily living, and one gloriously dead, who never
made proclamation of this "from the housetops."
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