The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-16
BRET HARTE AND CALIFORNIA

BRET HARTE AND CALIFORNIA
 In the east and in Europe Bret Harte l stands as the distinctively Californian
 writer the delineator of California life
 and character. He obtained that repu-
 tat1on early in his career by his pictur- l esque stories of the mining camps and the adventurous men and women who
 established them in the days of the gold 1 excitement. Those stories and poems. written In a charming style, with graphic clearness and with no little
 force and skill in the delineation of cer- tain types of men, were sufficiently in-
 fused with local color to be recognized as genuine pictures of the mining dis trlcts, and yet at the same time roman
 tic enough to please people who had
 never seen California even more than
 they pleased Californians themselves,
 Thus 1t happened that while in San
 Francisco he was not accounted a man
 of pre-eminent genius, his success in the
 east and in Europe was enormous.
 During the days when 'The Luck of
 Roaring Camp" and "The Heather Chi-
 nee" were new Bret Harte had repl-
 tation in the east not inferior to that
 which Kipling enjoyed in the early days
 of the Kipling craze. There were peo-
 pie who declared him superior to Dick
 ems in his capacity to create character, in his pathos and in his humor It was
 freely predicted that he would write
 "the great American nover' and stand forth as master novelist of his time.
 That there is much in the early wri- tings of Harte to justify the bright ex- pectations of his admirers is not to be denied and many of his short stories will live among the enduring gems of American letters. His more ambitious works, however, were comparative fail- ures. After he left California he did not grow as was expected. While he never at any time sank to mediocrity in his writing, he did not produce any thing after he left the state that was equal to that which he brought forth ! while here Perhaps had he remained | in California and developed with the eI state itself he might have achieved far more than he did
 Harte's relations to California are cu- rious. He did more to make the state | known and to excite popular interest in | it than any other man, or any other | ten men, for that matter. His pictures of California life were universally read | and admred, and it Is not too much to | say that he formed the eastern and Eu- ropean ideals of what Californians are. It happened, however, that the state rapidly changed and developed from a mining camp to great and highly di- verSified community, while HarteS sto- ries presented always the same types of figgures in wool shirts and high boots ready with the pistol and reckless alike of gold and blood. Thus in the end his romances did us perhaps more harm than good, and we can hardly agree that he is so genuinely as the east deems him.
 In the course of time the true Cali fornia will make itself known. Bret Harte's pictures will then cease to be harmful misrepresentations. People will recognize them for what they are, pictures of a vanished and romantic class which did not last long and never realiy was dominant in the state. We have in his death to mourn brilliant promise that was unfulfilled, but none he less to rejoioe that he left us so much that Is tender. beautiful and true ,f the brave days of old.--San Francis 70 Call.