by Ben Tarnoff
Harte had always wanted Harte recalled this story later in life. All quotes: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 42. As Axel Nissen points out in BHAN, p. 273, the journalist interviewing Harte got his birth year wrong, so it’s possible that Harte published the poem at sixteen, in 1852. Background on Harte’s parents: BHGS, pp. 3–4, and BHAN, pp. 16–18. Harte’s father died in 1845; see BHAN, p. 19.
But he did Harte left school at thirteen: BHAN, p. 23, and BHGS, pp. 5–6. “girlish pink-and-whiteness” and “Fanny”: ICHC. “Gilded Vice” and “Gorgeous Villainy”: Harte’s letter to Miss Bessie Ward, September 19, 1874, UVA.
It was a part Harte embarked for California with his sister Maggie on February 20, 1854. See BHAN, p. 24, and BHGS, p. 6. “no better equipment”: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 40. Holing up in his garret: “Bret Harte’s Early Days in San Francisco,” San Francisco Morning Call, May 25, 1902. Harte worshipped Dickens his entire life; see BHAN, pp. 21, 40, and BHGS, p. 48. Twain accused Harte of being a “deliberate imitator of Dickens”; many others, including William Dean Howells, noted the similarities between Harte and Dickens.
He also loved Harte’s love for Don Quixote: Henry J. W. Dam, “A Morning with Bret Harte,” p. 40. Wandering years: BHGS, pp. 6–10, and BHAN, pp. 40–46. Many of Harte’s contemporaries commented on his smallpox. It’s not entirely clear when he contracted it. Henry Kirk Goddard remembered seeing Harte during his time in Oakland, and commented on his smallpox scars: see BHAN, p. 41. “somewhat pathetic figure”: Charles A. Murdock, “Francis Bret Harte,” p. 2. More details of Harte in Humboldt: Charles A. Murdock, “Bret Harte in Humboldt,” Overland Monthly (Sept. 1902), pp. 301–302; Charles A. Murdock, A Backward Glance at Eighty: Recollections & Comment (San Francisco: Paul Elder, 1921), pp. 73–74; BHGS, p. 10. “He was simply untrained . . .”: Charles A. Murdock, A Backward Glance at Eighty, p. 73.
He always felt “seek distinction . . .” and “I am fit . . .”: Harte’s entry for December 31, 1857, in his 1857–1858 diary, BANC.
This declaration would “Perhaps I may . . .”: Harte’s December 31, 1857, diary entry. Harte’s career at the Northern Californian: BHAN, pp. 52–53. For an example of Harte’s writing from this period, see “Wanted—A Printer,” which appeared in the October 19, 1859, issue of the Northern Californian and is reprinted in Bret Harte, The Writings of Bret Harte, vol. 20, pp. 118–119. Issues of the Northern Californian during Harte’s tenure are held by HUNT. “poor boy’s college”: MTAL, p. 47. Harte contributed prose and poetry to the Golden Era during 1857–1858 and published a poem in the New York–based Knickerbocker magazine in January 1858; see BHAN, pp. 49–51.
On the morning Indian Island massacre: Northern Californian, February 29, 1860; Lynwood Carranco, “Bret Harte in Union (1857–1860),” California Historical Society Quarterly 45.2 (June 1966), pp. 99–112; New York Times, April 12, 1860; Les W. Field, Abalone Tales: Collaborative Explorations of Sovereignty and Identity in Native California (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008), p. 51; BHAN, pp. 55–56; BHGS, pp. 13–14.
The massacre shocked Harte’s editorial appeared in the Northern Californian, February 29, 1860.
Here was the nightmarish “Indian Wars”: James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), pp. 161–172. Indian children as indentured servants: ibid., pp. 87–94. “white civilizer” and “barbarity”: Northern Californian, February 29, 1860. Harte’s paternal grandfather, Bernard Hart (the “e” was added to the family name later) was a British-born Jew who emigrated to the United States in 1780; see BHAN, pp. 13–16.
Harte’s impassioned broadside “seriously threatened . . .”: Charles A. Murdock, A Backward Glance at Eighty, p. 79. The notice of Harte’s resignation and departure for SF appeared in the Northern Californian, March 29, 1860, as quoted in BHAN, pp. 55–56. The killers were businessmen and landowners, whose names were widely known to the community: San Francisco Chronicle, February 28, 2004. “too much of a gentleman . . .”: Joaquin Miller, “He Writes for the Saturday Review His Reminiscences of Bret Harte,” New York Times, May 31, 1902.
The Indian Island massacre Harte’s arrival in SF in the spring of 1860: BHGS, p. 14. The city had at least fifty newspapers in 1860, according to the US newspaper directory maintained by the Library of Congress. Golden Era: SFLF, pp. 116–127. Until the passage of international copyright legislation in 1891, European writers were widely pirated by American publishers. “Many times the Era . . .”: Golden Era, December 16, 1860, quoted in SFLF, p. 120.
The Era could count Lawrence’s campaign to urbanize the Era: SFLF, p. 120. Changing face of the city: Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope, p. 126, and Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846–1856, p. xxxvii. The plush hotels: construction on the Lick House began in late 1861, according to James R. Smith, San Francisco’s Lost Landmarks (Sanger, CA: Word Dancer Press, 2005), p. 210. Seventeen-course dinners in South Park: Amelia Ransome Neville, The Fantastic City: Memoirs of the Social and Romantic Life of Old San Francisco (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1932), p. 134. Teakwood tables: ibid., p. 194.
Joe Lawrence hoped Rollin M. Daggett, one of the Era’s cofounders, remembered that Harte “would waste more time over a two stick item than I would take for a column,” as quoted in BHAN, p. 60. Lawrence’s grandfatherly warmth: Joaquin Miller, “Joseph E. Lawrence,” San Francisco Morning Call, September 4, 1892, and Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances: A Book of Essays and Sketches (Boston: Lothrop, 1903), pp. 243–244. Harte’s early pieces for the Era: BHAN, pp. 59–60, and BHGS, pp. 16–17. Harte began writing his “Bohemian” column in May 1860; see “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian at the Fair,” Golden Era, September 23, 1860; “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian on ‘Things,’” Golden Era, September 30, 1860; “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian Does the Cheap Shows,” Golden Era, October 14, 1860; “Town and Table Talk: The Bohemian on Balls,” Golden Era, October 28, 1860. Ocean zephyrs: Bret Harte, “Bohemian Days in San Francisco,” p. 284. The legend of Harte setting his pieces into type directly is discussed in BHAN, p. 60, and repeated in TAMT, p. 163. “a new and fresh . . .”: ibid.
If California were Jessie Benton Frémont’s Black Point home: BHAN, pp. 61–62. Her love of the Bay’s sights and sounds: from her letter to Elizabeth Blair Less, June 14, 1860, in Jessie Benton Frémont, The Letters of Jessie Benton Frémont (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1993), Pamela Herr and Mary Lee Spence, eds., pp. 229–231. Like living in the bow of a ship: ibid., p. 230. “true city,” “very good opera,” “lots of private parties”: ibid. Fog bells: Adam Goodheart, 1861: Civil War Awakening (New York: Vintage, 2012 [2011]), p. 224. Beautiful, brilliant, and tremendously self-confident: Sally Denton, Passion and Principle: John and Jessie Frémont, the Couple Whose Power, Politics, and Love Shaped Nineteenth-Century America (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2009 [2007]), pp. 64–65.
Her father Benton’s career in the Senate: Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, pp. 22–34. “nor even anywhere . . .”: Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Hartford, CT: American Publishing Company, 1881), p. 178. “realize the grand idea . . .”: from a speech Benton gave in 1849, as quoted in Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land, p. 28. “The nations of Europe . . .”: Thomas Hart Benton, Selections of Editorial Articles from the St. Louis Enquirer, on the Subject of Oregon and Texas (St. Louis: Missourian Office, 1844), p. 23.
His daughter would Jessie’s similarities to her father: Sally Denton, Passion and Principle, pp. 45–46. Marriage, reconciliation with Thomas Hart Benton, and John Charles Frémont’s travels: ibid., pp. 65–105. Frémont’s reports: ibid., pp. 84–86, 103–104, and Tom Chaffin, Pathfinder: John Charles Frémont and the Course of American Empire (New York: Hill and Wang, 2002), pp. 136–147, 241–249.
Furnished with thrilling In March 1846, Frémont raised an American flag on Gavilán Peak (now Fremont Peak) near Monterey;
see Sally Denton, Passion and Principle, pp. 120–122. His run for president: ibid., pp. 222–265.
One can imagine Jessie Benton Frémont’s reception of Harte: Jessie Benton Frémont, Souvenirs of My Time (Boston: D. Lothrop, 1887), pp. 203–204. “I have taken a young . . .”: from Jessie Benton Frémont’s letter to Thomas Starr King, January 16, 1861, in Jessie Benton Frémont, The Letters of Jesse Benton Frémont, p. 234.
As 1860 ground “I do not measure . . .”: quoted in Adam Goodheart, 1861, p. 248. King’s campaign: ibid., pp. 242–251, and Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, pp. 97–105.
Harte, too, answered The flag Harte made in 1861 still survives, held by BANC. An accompanying note at the Bancroft by Maud Eberts provides the details of its history. King often read Harte’s poetry at his speeches; see BHAN, pp. 69–70. “patriot pride” and “clashing steel”: from Bret Harte’s 1862 poem “Our Privilege,” included in Bret Harte, The Writings of Bret Harte, vol. 12 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1896), p. 12. King gave his lectures on American poetry in early 1863; he describes them in October 29, 1862, and February 10, 1863, letters to James T. Fields, both held by HUNT. “The state must be Northernized . . .”: letter from Thomas Starr King to James T. Fields, October 29, 1862. King’s sermons and “Yosemites in the soul”: Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, pp. 100–104.
This revelation struck The story and “wonderful and apart”: ECW.
In later life Rhyme came naturally to her: as a child, she once told her schoolteacher that she preferred to write in rhyme because it was “easier,” as she recalled in ECW. “Her whole life has been a poem”: Joaquin Miller, quoted in Kate M. Kennedy, “Ina Coolbrith Day,” Overland Monthly 49.4 (April 1907), p. 341. “half rapture and half pain”: from Coolbrith’s poem “How I Came to Be a Poet,” quoted in ICLL, p. 65.
Her first memories Coolbrith’s early life: ICLL, pp. 3–26; Ina Lillian Cook, “Ina Donna Coolbrith: A Short Account of Her Life,” Westward 1 (May 1928), pp. 3–5; and Mira Maclay, “A Talk with Ina Coolbrith,” Oakland Tribune Magazine, March 2, 1924. “chloroform in print”: MTR, p. 107.
A dark secret Coolbrith’s family on the overland trail: ICLL, pp. 28–39. Her memories of the journey: Marian Taylor, “Ina Coolbrith, California Poet,” Overland Monthly 64.4 (Oct. 1914), pp. 328–329, and George Wharton James, “Ina Donna Coolbrith: An Historical Sketch and Appreciation,” National Magazine 26.3 (June 1907), pp. 316–318. “world-wide carpet”: MTR, p. 29.
At the foot “one of the most beautiful creatures . . .” and “Here is California . . .”: from a speech at a luncheon given in Coolbrith’s honor in San Francisco on April 24, 1927, quoted in Mildred Brooke Hoover et al., eds., Historic Spots in California, 5th ed. (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 282.
Or so Ina remembered Family’s arrival in Los Angeles: ICLL, pp. 51–57. Descriptions of early Los Angeles: John Joseph Stanley, “Vigilance Movements in Early California,” in Gordon Morris Bakken, ed., Law in the Western United States (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), pp. 65–66, and Kevin Starr, Inventing the Dream, pp. 13–14. “[T]his is nominally . . .”: ibid., p. 14.
Yet there was another Ina was said to have opened a ball on the arm of Don Pio Pico, the last governor of the Mexican territory of Alta California before the American conquest; see ICLL, pp. 57–58, and Marian Taylor, “Ina Coolbrith, California Poet,” p. 330. Coolbrith published her first poem, “My Childhood’s Home,” in the Los Angeles Star, August 30, 1856. A selection of her early poetry, and the praise she earned from local editors, can be seen in a scrapbook of her verse held by OAK. “a sorrow dwells in my young heart”: from “To Nelly,” published in the Los Angeles Star, July 11, 1857, quoted in ICLL, p. 59. “warm, rich personality . . .”: quoted ibid., p. 60.
In 1858, a Californian “a young girl of genius” and “an enviable reputation”: scrapbook of Coolbrith’s verse, OAK. Marriage, attempted murder, and divorce: ICLL, pp. 60–72.
Worse, she suffered It’s unclear when the child was born, whether it was a boy or a girl, and how long it lived. ICLL, p. 415, cites three sources: testimony from Coolbrith’s grandniece, cousin, and close friend. All three women waited until the 1950s to make their statements. Coolbrith first published “The Mother’s Grief” in the Californian, March 25, 1865, and included it in two subsequent collections: A Perfect Day and Songs from the Golden Gate. “To-day no shafts . . .”: “The Mother’s Grief,” in Ina Donna Coolbrith, A Perfect Day and Other Poems (San Francisco: John H. Carmany, 1881), p. 33.
Tragedy changed her “Only twenty . . .”: from “Twenty-two,” an unpublished poem written for the twenty-second birthday of her grandniece, quoted in ICLL, p. 77. Coolbrith’s move to San Francisco: ibid., pp. 77–80.
She became Ina Donna Coolbrith Coolbrith’s early days in SF: ibid., pp. 80–83. “Some of the best men . . .”: Bret Harte, “The Argonauts of ’49,” in The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Writings, ed. Gary Scharnhorst, p. 233. Coolbrith’s memory of seeing King for the first time and hearing Harte’s poetry: ECW. An advertisement in the Daily Evening Bulletin, November 3, 1862, provides the details of the event.
That fall Quoted Seneca: Amelia Ransome Neville, The Fantastic City, p. 62. California as the new Canaan: Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, p. 100. John Frémont was appointed the commander of the newly created Department of the West on July 25, 1861. “I have worked . . .”: letter from Thomas Starr King to James T. Fields, October 29, 1862, HUNT. King must have met Stoddard in late 1862, since Stoddard’s first poem in the Golden Era appeared in September 1862 and King began his lectures on New England poets in early January 1863; see CSCWS, p. 52.
Chileon Beach’s shop Experiences as a bookstore clerk: CRP, chap. 2, pp. 1–2. Memories of Nicaragua: Charles Warren Stoddard, In the Footprints of the Padres (San Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1902), pp. 14–22.
One day, California’s All quotes and details: CRP, chap. 2, pp. 7–8.
At first glance The contrast between Harte’s penmanship and Stoddard’s can be seen in written correspondence from their respective collections at BANC and UVA. Stoddard’s poor spelling persisted into his old age, and became a joke among his friends. “It seems rather in his praise than otherwise that he wrote a largely illegible, beautiful-looking hand, and if you had any particular trouble with a given word, you found that it was misspelled,” wrote William Dean Howells in 1917.
What people loved “invincible charm”: ICCWS.
There would always Stoddard’s sexuality and boyhood trials: GP, pp. 4–14, 23–25. “The Love Man”: Charles Phillips, “Charles Warren Stoddard,” Overland Monthly 51.2 (Feb. 1908), p. 135. In 1869, the Austro-Hungarian journalist Karl Maria Kertbeny published two anonymous pamphlets protesting the proposed introduction of Prussia’s anti-sodomy law into the new North German Confederation. These marked the first use of the word “homosexuality”; see Manfred Herzer and Hubert Kennedy, “Kertbeny, Karl Maria,” in Timothy F. Murphy, ed., Reader’s Guide to Lesbian and Gay Studies (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 2000), pp. 325–326. Stoddard’s discovery of Whitman’s “Calamus” poems: GP, pp. 35, 45–46. “the pensive aching to be together”: Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1860: The 150th Anniversary Facsimile Edition, ed. Jason Stacy (Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2009), p. 22.
Stoddard first came Stoddard’s boyhood: GP, pp. 6–15, and CSCWS, pp. 2–41. Stoddard first arrived in San Francisco with his family on January 6, 1855, on the Sierra Nevada from Nicaragua; see “Arrival of the Sierra Nevada,” San Francisco Daily Placer Times and Transcript, January 8, 1855. “a natural tendency . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, In the Footprints of the Padres, p. 101. “enchanting music” and “beautiful women in bewildering attire”: ibid., p. 64. Stoddard’s father belonged to the 1856 Committee of Vigilance, which conducted lynchings and deportations, and ruled San Francisco for three months before relinquishing power. Stodda
rd remembers the executions of Cora and Casey in “Veteran Recalls Vigilante Days,” undated clipping, BANC.
In California Thirteen thousand people: SFLF, pp. 89–90. More discreet gamblers and prostitutes: Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846–1856, pp. 207, 271. Gristmills, breweries, etc.: GP, p. 16, and San Francisco Municipal Reports: 1859–1860 (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon, 1860), p. 155.
The fast-growing city “the cradle and the grave . . .”: Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances: A Book of Essays and Sketches (Boston: Lothrop, 1903), p. 242. The Golden Era first published Stoddard on September 21, 1862; see CSCWS, p. 52. “No member of my family . . .” and story of submitting first poem: CRP, chap. 1, p. 7. Origins of “Pip Pepperpod”: ibid., p. 8.
After this harrowing For the year following Stoddard’s Era debut in September 1862, he would contribute a poem to almost every issue; see CSCWS, p. 53. “It is because . . .”: letter from Thomas Starr King to Charles Warren Stoddard, January 10, 1863, HUNT. King’s constructive criticisms: CRP, chap. 2, p. 8, and CSCWS, pp. 54–55. “city life . . .”: CRP, chap. 2, p. 8.
If Stoddard proved Twain wrote the article on June 19, 1863, and it probably appeared in the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise between June 21 and 24. Three months later, on September 27, 1863, the Golden Era reprinted it as “Mark Twain—More of Him,” the form in which it appears in ET&S, vol. 1, pp. 304–312. All quotes: ibid., p. 311.
Lawrence’s hopes for “simply palatial”: Joaquin Miller, “Joseph E. Lawrence,” San Francisco Morning Call, September 4, 1892. Description of Lawrence: ibid.; Charles Warren Stoddard, Exits and Entrances, p. 243; and SFLF, pp. 119–120, 122.