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diff --git a/12337-0.txt b/12337-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..61a0e48 --- /dev/null +++ b/12337-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,243 @@ +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12337 *** + +DICKENS IN CAMP + +_BY BRET HARTE_ + +WITH A FOREWORD BY + +_Frederick S. Myrtle_ + +[Illustration] + +_San Francisco_ + +JOHN HOWELL +1922. + + + +[Illustration] + + + + +FOREWORD + + * * * * * + +"Dickens In Camp" is held by many admirers of Bret Harte to be his +masterpiece of verse. The poem is so held for the evident sincerity and +depth of feeling it displays as well as for the unusual quality of its +poetic expression. + +Bret Hart has been generally accepted as the one American writer who +possessed above all others the faculty of what may be called heart +appeal, the power to give to his work that quality of human interest +which enables the writer and his writings to live in the memory of the +reading public for all time. By reason of that gift of his Bret Harte +has been popularly compared with his great contemporary beyond the +seas, greatest of all sentimentalists among writers of fiction, +Charles Dickens. + +Just how far the younger author selected the elder for his ideal, built +upon him, so to speak, & held his example constantly before his mental +vision, may be always a matter of debate amongst students of literature. +There can be no question of the genuineness of the Californian writer's +admiration of him who made the whole world laugh or weep with him at +will. It is recorded Harte that at seven years of age he had read +"Dombey & Son," and so, as one of his biographers, Henry Childs Merwin, +observes, "began his acquaintance with that author who was to influence +him far more than any other." Merwin further declares that "the reading +of Dickens stimulated his boyish imagination and quickened that sympathy +with the weak and suffering, with the downtrodden, with the waifs and +strays, with the outcasts of society, which is remarkable in both +writers. The spirit of Dickens breathes through the poems and stories of +Bret Harte just as the spirit of Bret Harte breathes through the poems +and stories of Kipling. Bret Harte had a very pretty satirical vein +which might easily have developed, have made him an author of satire +rather than of sentiment. Who can say that the influence of Dickens, +coming at the early, plastic period of his life, may not have turned +the scale?" + +Another of his biographers, T. Edgar Pemberton, says his admiration for +Charles Dickens never waned, but on the contrary, increased as the years +rolled by. Harte himself, referring in later years to his childhood +days, to his father's library and the books to which he had access, +spoke of "the irresistible Dickens." Mr. Pemberton states, also, +that Bret Harte always felt that he owed a deep debt of gratitude to +Charles Dickens. + +Small wonder, then, that, Bret Harte no matter how unconsciously, +should have adopted here and there something of the style and some of +the mannerisms of Dickens. This is directly traceable in his writings, +even to the extent of his resorting, here and there, to oddities of +expression which were peculiarly Dickensian. + +The English writer, on his part, reciprocated in no small degree the +feeling of admiration which his works had aroused in the young American. +His biographer, John Forster, relates that Dickens called his attention +to two sketches by Bret Harte, "The Luck of Roaring Camp" and "The +Outcasts of Poker Flat," in which, writes the biographer, "he had found +such subtle strokes of character as he had not anywhere else in later +years discovered; the manner resembling himself but the matter fresh to +a degree that had surprised him; the painting in all respects masterly +and the wild rude thing painted a quite wonderful reality. I have rarely +known him more honestly moved." + +Dickens gave evidence of this feeling of appreciation in a letter +addressed to Harte in California, commending his literary efforts, +inviting him to write a story for "All the Year Round" and bidding him +sojourn with him at Gad's Hill upon his first visit to England. This +letter was written shortly before Dickens' death and, unfortunately, +did not reach Bret Harte until sometime after that sad event. + +When word of the passing of "The Master," as he reverently styled him, +reached Bret Harte he was in San Rafael. He immediately sent a dispatch +across the bay to San Francisco to hold back the forthcoming publication +of his "Overland Monthly" for twenty-four hours, and ere that time had +elapsed the poetic tribute to which the title was given of "Dickens in +Camp" had been composed and sent on its way to magazine headquarters +in the Western metropolis. That was in July, 1870. + +Late in the '70s, while on his way to a consulship in Germany, Bret +Harte visited London for the first time. There he was taken in charge +by Joaquin Miller, the Poet of the Sierras, who in his reminiscences +relates: "He could not rest until he stood by the grave of Dickens. +At last one twilight I led him by the hand to where some plain letters +in a broad, flat stone just below the bust of Thackeray read 'Charles +Dickens.' Bret Harte is dead now and it will not hurt him in politics, +where they seem to want the hard and heartless for high places, it will +not hurt him in politics nor in anything anywhere to tell the plain +truth, how he tried to speak but choked up, how tears ran down and fell +on the stone as he bowed his bare head very low, how his hand trembled +as I led him away." + +Many years later, in May, 1890, Bret Harte, in response to a request +for a facsimile of the original manuscript of "Dickens in Camp" replied +in part: + +"I hurriedly sent the first and only draft of the verses to the office +at San Francisco, and I suppose after passing the printer's and +proof-reader's hands it lapsed into the usual oblivion of all editorial +'copy'. + +"I remember that it was very hastily but very honestly written, and it +is fair to add that it was not until later that I knew for the first +time that those gentle and wonderful eyes, which I was thinking of as +being closed forever, had ever rested kindly upon a line of mine." + +The poem itself breathes reverence for "The Master" throughout. To +residents of California, who revel in the outdoor life of her mountains +& valleys, the poem has a particular attraction for its camp-fire spirit +which to us seems part and parcel of that outdoor life. It is a far +cry, perhaps, from the camp-fires of 1849 to the camp-fires of 1922, +but surely the camp-fire spirit is the same with us in our Western +wonderland today as it was with those rough old miners who sat around +the logs under the pines after a day of arduous and oft disappointing +toil. Surely the visions we see, the lessons we read in the camp-fire +glow, are much the same as they were then. Surely we build the same +castles in the air, draw the same inspirations from it. Biographer +Forster pays the poem this tribute: + +"It embodies the same kind of incident which had so affected the master +himself in the papers to which I have referred; it shows the gentler +influences which, in even those California wilds, can restore outlawed +'roaring campers' to silence and humanity; and there is hardly any +form of posthumous tribute which I can imagine likely to have better +satisfied his desire of fame than one which should thus connect with the +special favorite among all his heroines the restraints and authority +exerted by his genius over the rudest and least civilized of competitors +in that far, fierce race for wealth." + +In the twining of English holly and Western pine upon the great English +novelist's grave the poet expresses a happy thought. He calls East and +West together in common appreciation of one whose influence was not +merely local but worldwide. He invites the old world and the new to +kneel together at the altar of sentiment, an appeal to the emotions +which never fails to touch a responsive chord in the heart of humanity. + +Frederick S. Myrtle + +San Francisco, California +April, 1922 + + * * * * * + + +[Illustration] + + + + +DICKENS in CAMP + + * * * * * + + +Above the pines the moon was slowly drifting, + The river sang below; +The dim Sierras, far beyond, uplifting + Their minarets of snow. + +The roaring camp-fire, with rude humor, painted + The ruddy tints of health +On haggard face and form that drooped and fainted + In the fierce race for wealth; + +Till one arose, and from his pack's scant treasure + A hoarded volume drew, +And cards were dropped from hands of listless leisure + To hear the tale anew; + +And then, while round them shadows gathered faster, + And as the firelight fell, +He read aloud the book wherein the Master + Had writ of "Little Nell." + +Perhaps 'twas boyish fancy,--for the reader + Was youngest of them all,-- +But, as he read, from clustering pine and cedar + A silence seemed to fall; + +The fir-trees, gathering closer in the shadows, + Listened in every spray, +While the whole camp, with "Nell" on English meadows, + Wandered and lost their way. + +And so in mountain solitudes--o'ertaken + As by some spell divine-- +Their cares dropped from them like the needles shaken + From out the gusty pine. + +Lost is that camp, and wasted all its fire: + And he who wrought that spell?-- +Ah, towering pine and stately Kentish spire, + Ye have one tale to tell! + +Lost is that camp! but let its fragrant story + Blend with the breath that thrills +With hop-vines' incense all the pensive glory + That fills the Kentish hills. + +And on that grave where English oak and holly + And laurel wreaths intwine, +Deem it not all a too presumptuous folly,-- + This spray of Western pine! + + * * * * * + + + THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTY COPIES OF THIS BOOK + PRINTED BY EDWIN GRABHORN FOR JOHN HOWELL. + TITLE PAGE AND DECORATIONS BY JOSEPH SINEL. + THIS IS COPY NO. [Handwritten: 37] + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Dickens in Camp, by Bret Harte + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 12337 *** |