Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1871-02-13
LITERARY CELEBRITIES.
How Bret Harte and John Hay
Came 20 the Surface.

New York Cor. Cincinnati Times.l e
Bret Harte is expected in town to-day,
having quilted California to take up his
residence in the East. He has not yet
determined, / believe, whether he will
make Boston or New York his home,
though private letter / have seen states
that he has been offered $4,000 a year to
take charge of the Atlantic Monthly,
which must be mistake. Since Harte
made national reputation in the Over
land Monthly his writing has been in
great request. Not only Osgood d Co.,
but the Harpers, Appletons and Sheldon
have made him very liberal offers to de-
vote his services exclusively to them;
1t is also reported he has been engaged
by the Tribune as regular. member OF
its staff at $4,000 per annum, with the
privilege of doing such outside literary
work as he may choose.
The San Franciscans are soindignant
because he has quilted the Pacific slope,
that they now declare they gave him all
the reputation ne has, and that but for
the Overland Monthly he would not have
been known at all. They aver that his
sudden success has turned his head, and
that he will regret going TO such provln-
cial towns as New York and Boston,
when he might have abode in the won
derful city of California.
San Francisco, in spite of its pre-
tended cosmopolitanism, is in many re-
spects thoroughly provincial city. Still
there may be some truth in the state
ment that if Bret Hartes remarkable
stories had been offered to any Of our
Eastern magazines their publication
would have been declined. Harte, who
is a native of Albany, insists that he
tried in vain to get his MSS. printed
Possibly, if he had staid here, he might
have been out of hope and out at elbows
at this time, instead of enjoying the
clamor of publishers at his prosperous
door.
Colonel John Hay, one of the very
cleverest of our rising litterateurs, is, as
you may know, thoroughly Western
man; not only his father, but his grandr
father having been born in the State of
Illinois. 1t is not two months since he
came here and accepted position on
the staff Of the Tribune. He was then
hardly known at all, having spent the
last four or five years abroad; but the
publication of his two poems made and
fixed his reputation, and his pen is now
in such brisk request that he cannot
supply the demand.
Reputation is very convenient for
man doomed to write. Having that, he
has the passport to success, and can
afford to be somewhat careless of his
compositions. AS an instance, Colonel
Hay sent a story to the Harpers just
before he printed Little Breeches, and
they declined it. In less than three
weeks after, the editor of one Of their
publications called upon the Colonel,
and wished to make an engagement with
him to write exclusively for the firm in
Franklin Square. If he had only had
the story they hgd rejected, it would have
been taken then, and handsomely paid
for.
o reputation, how potent thou art,
and credulity, how weak There are
men in New York to-day poor and needy
who have much more literary ability
than men of established reputation, en-
joying ample success-and all because
they cannot get hearing from the pub
lie, from which they are debarred by
publishers. AiRSi nous allons.