Bret Harte’s California ed. by Gary Scharnhorst (review)

Reviews 251 “mythic MaryAustin”from the Carmel treehouse where many imagine her. But Austin the writer still stops somewhere, waiting for her true biographer. MICHAEL KOWALEWSKI Carleton College Bret Harte’s California. Edited by Gary Scharnhorst. (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1990. 170 pages, $22.50.) BretHarte’s California, edited and with an introduction by Gary Scharnhorst, is a collection of thirty-seven letters (essays) published in Boston’s Christian Registerand the Springfield Republicanfrom February 17, 1866, to December 28, 1867, when Harte was serving as the California correspondent to these two Massachusetts newspapers. Eighteen are from the Register, nineteen from the Republican, and twenty-six of the thirty-seven are reprinted for the first time since the originals were published in 1866-1867. The letters vary in length from 534 words to 1390. Gathering many of his subjects from newspapers, topical interest, and local history, Harte adopts the tone of an expatriate and both praises and criticizes the California paradise mythology. He skeptically com­ ments throughout on the California weather, politics, religion, culture, race relations, materialism, and natural disasters. Harte mentions fervently and frequently Thomas Starr King, minister of the First Unitarian Church of San Francisco and a strong Harte literary supporter. He also laments the restraints on intellectual activity in the West, saying in Letter 31 that “the climate is fatal to abstract speculation.”Harte also states in Letter 35 that California has too many “pursuits and pleasures” and is not well adapted to encourage literature. He adds that more writers live in California than readers and that there are more contributors to the literary papers than subscribers. Harte uses four of his letters (23-26) to discuss the ten-day 1866 visit of Queen Emma, the dowager queen of Hawaii, to San Francisco. Four letters seem a bit much to discuss the reception of the queen, but Harte delights in expansively telling his readers that the people of San Francisco are either courteous, respectful, and gracious, or boorish, unmannered, and uncon­ cerned and do not seem to care that royalty is visiting the city. Queen Emma’s visit, however, Harte points out, was an advantageous one for Mark Twain since he used the occasion to deliver his famous lecture on the Sandwich Islands to “a crowded house” at Maguire’s Opera House in San Francisco on October 2, 1866. The lecture, says Harte, “established his [Twain’s] reputation at once as an eccentric lecturer whose humor surpassed Artemus Ward’s.” Harte also mentions Twain in Letters 18 and 35, and it is Harte in commenting on Twain’s lecture who offers one of the first notices of Twain in a national publication. 252 WesternAmerican Literature The letters brought Harte the attention he needed to attract eastern readers. Before these letters were published, only one of his stories— “The Legend of Monte del Diablo”—was published outside of California, appearing in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862. If one is interested in certain aspects of San Francisco in the 1860s, the letters should be of some interest. They are not memorable pieces and they are not a boon to Harte scholarship. Scholars should note, however, Letters 6, 10, 15, 22, 24, 27, 28, and 29 enumerate the sources of eight of Harte’s stories and poems. Scharnhorst, noted scholar ofwestern American literature, does more than compile the thirty-seven letters. He carefully indexes Harte’s offerings and writes an informative introduction. His notes for each of the letters are knowl­ edgeable and supply explanations for 1866-1867 happenings, allusions, and obscurities. VIRGIL ALBERTINI Northwest Missouri State University Living in Words: Interviewsfrom The Bloomsbury Review, 1981-1988. Edited by Gregory McNamee. (Portland, Oregon: Breitenbush Books, 1988. 188 pages, $15.95/$8.95.) Published interviews with authors of the American West have contributed useful—sometimes vital—information that has enriched western literary stud­ ies. John R. Milton’s series and Richard W. Etulain’s Conversations with Wallace Stegner on Western History and Literature stand out as the best of the genre. Although Living in Words does not match the achievement of the Milton and Etulain interviews, Gregory McNamee has compiled a collection of atleast some use to students of western...