The sun., 1908-11-29
Bret Harte's California.

In an address upon "Provincialisn:"
delivered before the Massachusetts civic
conference recently Professor JOSIAH
ROYCE of Harvard University sought
TO dispel the illusion that BRET HARTR
has wrought into his high colored stories
of frontier life in California. Perhaps
not all his readers have accepted BRET
HARTE's realism at its face value, but
the general run OF them may have had
faith in him, supposing that he was a
painstaking scene painter and vera
cious reporter of manners, customs
and dialect.
Professor ROYCE, however. Is mex
orable. He was born in a mining town
Of the Sierra Nevada, lived there for
some time in his youth and has a re-
tentive memory. HARTE, he says, did
not know his mining camps, or knowing
belied them. The social order he de-
picts had no existence and was shrewdly
invented for his purpose. In fact, to
quote Professor ROYCE, it never was
on sea or land" California had not
had time to become provincial. There
could be no types. for types have to
grow before they can be known and
described. The Harte stories Of from
tier life err in this:
They depict the early California mining camp
as II II were more or less an established lnstltu
ton, and portray the miners as u they already
II na1i,,,
For BRET HAErE the early miner is already
dehnabe social type-with dialect and set
characteristic customs and manners with
local consciousness almost such as a peasantry
or a Highland clan might possess"
AS a matter of fact the miners, trad
ers and such women as a rude fate
brought to the camp were transients by
design or misfortune, who looked for
ward to an early return to civilized
community. They spoke in all kinds
of dialect, they had the manners of
score of foreign countries and of many
American localities, and their customs
were representative of as many places
of origin. They were neither more
moral than their previous vicinage nor
more vicious and desperate. AS Pro-
fessor ROYCE says. their memories and
hopes were elsewhere, and being but
just translated they could not be types
of the Sierras. "One needs says the
professor, "a social background for the
characters of story. BRET HARTE
creates this background by conceiving
his mining community in distinctly
provincial terms
So these tense and florid fctions of
clever BRET HARTE have no illusions for
JOSIAH ROYCE, and we fancy that since
he has an analytical and prosaic mind
they may excite his impatience and
positively bore him. We do not know,
and doubt, that BRET HARTE ever
boasted that he held the mirror up to
nature in his California stories (or any
others Of his pen) and derived his color
from a society that actually existed.
And we presume that it will make no
difference to his readers, Their want
is story, and he supplies it. His art
consists in taking them out of them
selves and by turns amusing and terri
flying them, mingling the humorous
with the tragic and sounding the
depths of their sympathies, The Sierras
were his setting and he was his own
prompter and stage carpenter. His
method was thousands Of years old, and
will be practised as long as humanity
wants story. Such is art. 1t cannot be
defined, nor can it be ordered by rule
of thumb.