The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers

THE TWO OPPONENTS CAME NEARER
From “The Iliad of Sandy Bar”
Frederic Remington, del.

The death of this man was one of the most impressive scenes ever witnessed upon this blood-stained earth. Sentence having been passed upon the prisoner the Committee, numbering one thousand men, came down from the hall where they met and formed in the street, three abreast. They comprised, with some exceptions, the best, the most substantial, the most public-spirited citizens of San Francisco. In the centre was Stuart, handcuffed and pinioned, but perfectly self-possessed and cool. A gallows had been erected some distance off, and the procession moved up Battery Street, followed by a great throng of men. There was no confusion, no outcry, no apparent excitement,—not a sound, indeed, except the tread of many feet upon the planked streets, every footfall sounding the prisoner’s knell.

It was of this event that Bret Harte wrote in his Bohemian Days in San Francisco: “Under the reign of the Committee the lawless and vicious class were more appalled by the moral spectacle of several thousand black-coated, serious-minded business men in embattled procession than by mere force of arms.”

When they reached the gallows, a rope was placed around the prisoner’s neck, and even then, except for a slight paleness, there was no change in his appearance. Amid the breathless silence of the whole assemblage Stuart, standing under the gallows, said, “I die reconciled. My sentence is just.” His crimes had been many, and he seemed to accept his death as the proper and almost welcome result of his deeds. He was a man of intellect, and, hardened criminal though he was, the instinct of expiation asserted itself in his breast.

In July, 1851, a Spanish woman was tried and condemned by an impromptu vigilance committee for killing an American who, she declared, had insulted her. Being sentenced to be hanged forthwith, she carefully arranged her dress, neatly coiled her hair, and walked quietly and firmly to the gallows. There she made a short speech, saying that she would do the same thing again if she were permitted to live, and were insulted in the same way. Then she bade the crowd farewell, adjusted the noose with her own hands, and so passed bravely away.

A few years later at Moquelumne Hill, a young Welshman, scarcely more than a boy, met death in a very similar manner, and for a similar offence. On the scaffold he turned to one of the by-standers, and said, “Did you ever know anything bad of me before this affair occurred?” The answer was, “No, Jack.” “Well,” said the youth, “tell those Camp Saco fellows that I would do the same thing again and be hung rather than put up with an insult.” Men like these died for a point of honor, as much as did Alexander Hamilton.

But far higher was the heroism of those who suffered or died for others, and not for themselves. No event, not even the discovery of gold, stirred California more profoundly than did the death of James King. In 1856, King, the editor of the “Bulletin,” was waging single-handed a vigorous warfare against the political corruption then rife in California, and especially against the supineness of the city officials in respect to gambling and prostitution. He had given out that he would not accept a challenge to a duel, but he was well aware of the risk that he ran. San Francisco, even at that time, indulged in an easy toleration of vice, and only some striking, some terrible event could have aroused the conscience of the public.

Among the city officials whose hatred Mr. King had incurred was James Casey, a typical New York politician, and a former convict, yet not wholly a bad man. The two men, King and Casey, really represented two stages of morality, two kinds of government. Their personal conflict was in a condensed form the clashing of the higher and the lower ideals. Casey, meeting King on the street, called upon him to “draw and defend himself”; but King, being without a weapon, calmly folded his arms and faced his enemy. Casey fired, and King fell to the ground, mortally wounded.

“It was expedient that one man should die for the people”; and the death of King did far more than his life could have done to purify the political and social atmosphere of California. On the day following the murder, a Vigilance Committee was organized, and an Executive Committee, consisting chiefly of those who had managed the first Vigilance Committee in 1851, was chosen as the practical ruler of the city. It was supported by a band of three thousand men, distributed in companies, armed, officered and well drilled. For two months and a half the Executive Committee remained in office, exercising its power with marked judgment and moderation. Four men were hung, many more were banished, and the city was purged. Having accomplished its work the Committee disbanded, but its members and sympathizers secured control of the municipal government through the ordinary legal channels, and for twenty years administered the affairs of the city with honesty and economy.

The task in 1851 had been mainly to rid the city of Australian convicts; in 1856 it was to correct the political abuses introduced by professional politicians from the East, especially from New York; and in each case the task was successfully accomplished, without unnecessary bloodshed, and even with mercy.

Nor was Casey’s end without pathos, and even dignity. On the scaffold he was thinking not of himself, but of the old mother whom he had left in New York. “Gentlemen,” he said, “I stand before you as a man about to come into the presence of God, and I declare before Him that I am no murderer! I have an aged mother whom I wish not to hear that I am guilty of murder. I am not. My early education taught me to repay an injury, and I have done nothing more. The ‘Alta California,’ ‘Chronicle,’ ‘Globe,’ and other papers in the city connect my name with murder and assassination. I am no murderer. Let no newspaper in its weekly or monthly editions dare publish to the world that I am one. Let it not get to the ears of my mother that I am. O God, I appeal for mercy for my past sins, which are many. O Lord Jesus, unto thee I resign my spirit. O mother, mother, mother!”

The sinking of the steamer, “Central America,” off the coast of Georgia, in 1857, is an event now almost forgotten, and yet it deserves to be remembered forever. The steamer was on her way from Aspinwall to New York, with passengers and gold from San Francisco, when she sprang a leak and began to sink. The women and children, fifty-three in all, were taken off to a small brig which happened to come in sight, leaving on board, without boats or rafts, five hundred men, all of whom went down, and of whom all but eighty were drowned. Though many were armed, and nearly all were rough in appearance, they were content that the women and children should be saved first; and if here and there a grumble was heard, it received little encouragement. Never did so many men face death near at hand more quietly or decorously.[45]

And yet the critic tells us about the “perverse romanticism” of Mr. Bret Harte’s California tales!

One incident more, and this brief record of California heroism, which might be extended indefinitely, shall close. Charles Fairfax, the tenth Baron of that name,[46] whose family have lived for many years in Virginia, was attacked without warning by a cowardly assassin, named Lee. This man stabbed Fairfax twice, and he was raising his arm for a third thrust when his victim covered him with a pistol. Lee, seeing the pistol, dropped his knife, stepped back, and threw up his hands, exclaiming, “I am unarmed!”

“Shoot the damned scoundrel!” cried a friend of Fairfax who stood by.

Fairfax, holding the pistol, with the blood streaming from his wounds, said: “You are an assassin! You have murdered me! Your life is in my hands!” And then, after a moment, gazing on him, he added, “But for the sake of your poor sick wife and of your children, I will spare you.” He then uncocked the pistol, and fell fainting in the arms of his friend.

All California rang with the nobility of the deed.

CHAPTER VII

The almost spontaneous manner in which mining laws came into existence, and the ready obedience which the miners yielded to them, show how correct is the view taken by Mr. Watts-Dunton. What constituted ownership of a claim; how it must be proved; how many square feet a claim might include; how long and by what means title to a claim could be preserved without working it; when a “find” should become the property of the individual discoverer, and when it should accrue to the partnership of which he was a member,—all these matters and many more were regulated by a code quickly formed, and universally respected. Thus a lump of gold weighing half an ounce or more, if observed before it was thrown into the cradle, belonged to the finder, and not to the partnership.

SACRAMENTO CITY IN 1852

In the main, mining rules were the same throughout the State, but they varied somewhat according to the peculiar circumstances of each “diggings”; and the custom was for the miners to hold a meeting, when they became sufficiently numerous at any point, and make such laws as they deemed expedient. If any controversy arose under them it was settled by the Alcalde.

In respect to this office, again, the miners showed the same instinct for law and order, and the same practical readiness to make use of such means as were at hand.[47] The Alcalde (Al Cadi) was originally a Spanish official, corresponding in many respects with our Justice of the Peace. But in the mining camps, the Alcalde, usually an American, was often given, by a kind of tacit agreement, very full, almost despotic powers, combining the authority of a Magistrate with that of a Selectman and Chief of Police.

The first Alcalde of Marysville was the young lawyer already mentioned, Stephen J. Field, and he administered affairs with such firmness that the town, although harboring many desperate persons,—this was in 1850,—gamblers, thieves and cut-throats, was as orderly as a New England village. He caused the streets and sidewalks to be kept clean and in repair; he employed men to grade the banks of the river so as to facilitate landing, and he did many other things for the good of the community, but really with no authority except that of common consent. Sitting as a judge, he did not hesitate to sentence some criminals to be flogged. There was no law for it; but it was the only punishment that was both adequate and practicable, for the town contained no prison or “lock-up.”

And yet, so far as was possible, Alcalde Field observed the ancient forms with true Anglo-Saxon scrupulosity. “In civil cases,” he relates, “I always called a jury if the parties desired one; and in criminal cases when the offence was of a high grade I went through the form of calling a grand jury, and having an indictment found; and in all cases I appointed an attorney to represent the people, and also one to represent the accused, when that was necessary.”

Spanish and Mexicans, as well as Americans, reaped the benefit of the change in government. Property, real estate especially, rose in value at once, and justice was administered as it never had been administered before. An entry in the diary of the Reverend Walter Colton, Chaplain in the United States Navy, and Alcalde of Monterey, whose book has already been cited, runs as follows:—

“September 4, 1849. I empanelled to-day the first jury ever summoned in California. One third were Californians, one third Mexicans, one third Americans. The trial was conducted in three languages and lasted six hours. The result was very satisfactory. The inhabitants who witnessed the trial said it was what they liked,—that there could be no bribery in it,—that the opinion of twelve honest men should set the case forever at rest. And so it did.... If there is anything on earth for which I would die, beside religion, it is the right of trial by jury.”

At first no one quite knew what laws were in force in California. The territory became a part of the United States by means of the treaty with Mexico which was proclaimed on July 4, 1848, but California was not admitted as a State until 1850, and in the mean time it was a question whether the laws of Mexico still prevailed, or the common law, or what. In this situation the Alcaldes usually fell back upon common sense and the laws of the State from which they happened to come.

Others had recourse to an older dispensation. Thus, on one occasion the Alcalde of Santa Cruz had before him a man who was found guilty of shaving the hair from the tail of a fine American horse, and the sentence of the court was that the criminal should have his own head shaved. The young attorney who represented the defendant thereupon sprang to his feet, and, with great indignation, demanded to be told what law or authority there was for so unusual a punishment. “I base that judgment,” said the Alcalde with solemnity, “on the oldest law in the world, on the law of Moses. Go home, young man, and read your Bible.”

In another case a Spaniard was suing for a divorce from his wife on the ground of infidelity; but the Alcalde, an American, refused it, inasmuch as the man was unable to swear that he had been faithful himself. “Is that United States law?” asked the suitor in naïve amazement. “I don’t know about that,” replied the Alcalde; “but it is the law by which I am governed,—the law of the Bible, and a good law too.”

The Alcalde of Placerville very properly refused to marry a certain man and woman, because the woman was already married to a man who had been absent for three months. But another Alcalde who happened to be present intervened. “Any man in California,” he declared, “who has a wife, and so fine looking a wife as I see here before me, and who remains absent from her for three months, must be insane, Mr. Alcalde, or dead; and in either case the lady is free to marry again. I am Alcalde of Santa Cruz, and will with great pleasure make you man and wife. Step forward, madam, step forward; I feel sure you will get through this trying occasion without fainting, if you make the effort, and do not give way to your natural shyness. Step forward, my dear sir, by the side of your blushing bride, and I will make you a happy man.”

One other case that was tried in an Alcalde’s court is so illustrative of California life that the Reader will perhaps pardon its insertion at length.

“Bill Liddle, conductor of a mule train of eight large American mules, had just started from Sacramento for a mining camp far in the interior. He was obliged to pass a dangerous trail about two miles long, cut in the side of a steep cliff overhanging the river. The trail was only wide enough for a loaded mule to walk on. In the lead was ‘Old Kate,’ a heavy, square-built, bay mule. Bill always said that she understood English, and he always spoke to her as if that were the fact, and we were often forced to laugh at the wonderful intelligence she showed in understanding and obeying him. Sometimes she broke into the stable, unlatching the door, went to the bin where the barley was kept in sacks, raised the cover, took out a sack, set it up on one end, ripped the sewing as neatly as Bill could, and then helped herself to the contents. On such occasions Bill would shake his head, and exclaim, ‘I wonder who Kate is! Oh, I wish I knew, for of course she is some famous woman condemned to live on earth as a mule!’

“The train had advanced about a quarter of a mile on the trail just described, Bill riding behind, when he was startled by hearing a loud bray from Kate, and all the mules stopped. Ahead was a return train of fifteen Californian mules, approaching on a jog trot. The two trains could not pass, and there was not space for Bill’s large and loaded mules to turn around. Bill raised himself in his saddle and furiously called on the other conductor to stop. He did so, but refused to turn his mules around, although Bill explained to him the necessity. At last, after much talk, the other conductor started up his mules, shouting and cracking his whip and urging them on. Meanwhile Old Kate stood in the centre of the trail, her fore-legs well apart, her nose dropped lower than usual, and her long, heavy ears thrown forward as if aimed at the head mule of the other train, while her large bright eyes were fixed on his motions. Seeing the danger, Bill called out, ‘Kate, old girl, go for them; pitch them all, and the driver with them, to hell!’ Thereupon Kate gave an unearthly bray, dropped on her knees with her head stretched out close along the rocks, her neck and lower jaw rubbing the trail, and received the leading mule across her neck. In a second more that mule was thrown into the air, and fell into the river far below.

“Two or three times the conductor of the other train made a similar attempt, urging his mules forward, and did not stop until five of his mules had gone into the river. Then he said, ‘Well, I will go back, but when we get out of this trail you and I will settle accounts.’ Bill drew his revolver and his knife, made sure that they were all right, and as soon as they emerged from the cliff rode up to the other conductor with his revolver in his hand, and said, ‘Shall we settle this business here, or shall we go before the Alcalde of the next diggings?’ The man looked at him for a moment in silence, and then said, ‘Damn me if you don’t look like that she-devil of a mule of yours that threw my mules down the cliff. Are you and she any blood relation that you know of?’ Not at all offended, Bill answered, ‘I can’t say positively that we are, but one thing I can say: I would rather be full brother to a mule that would act as Kate did to-day, than a forty-second cousin to a man that would act as you did.’ ‘Well,’ said the other, ‘put up your revolver, and let us settle matters before the Alcalde.’

“The mule-drivers found the Alcalde working in the bottom of a shaft which he was sinking. They asked him to come up, but he said that was unnecessary, as he could hear and settle the case where he was. Accordingly, he turned a bucket upside down, sat down on it, and lit a cigar, leaning his back against the wall of the shaft. The two conductors then kissed a Bible which the Alcalde had sent for, and swore to tell the truth; and they gave their testimony from the top of the shaft, the driver of the unloaded mules asking for six hundred dollars damages, five hundred dollars for his mules and one hundred dollars for the pack saddles lost with them. When they had finished, the Alcalde said, ‘I know the trail well, and I find for the defendant, and order the plaintiff to pay the costs of court, which are only one ounce.’ Thereupon the Alcalde arose, turned up his bucket and began to shovel the earth into it. As he worked on, he told the plaintiff to go to the store kept by one Meyer not far off, and weigh out the ounce of dust and leave it there for him. This was done without hesitation. Bill went along, treated the plaintiff to a drink, and paid for a bottle of the best brandy that Meyer had, to be given in the evening to the Alcalde and his partner as they returned from work.”[48]

California magistrates were somewhat informal for several years. On one occasion, during a long argument by counsel, the Alcalde interrupted with the remark that the point in question was a difficult one, and he would like to consult an authority; whereupon, the clerk, understanding what was meant, produced a demijohn and glasses from a receptacle beneath the bench, and judge and counsel refreshed themselves. A characteristic story is told of Judge Searls, a San Francisco magistrate who had several times fined for contempt of court a lawyer named Francis J. Dunn. Dunn was a very able but dissipated and eccentric man, and apt to be late, and on one such occasion the judge fined him fifty dollars. “I did not know that I was late, your Honor,” said Mr. Dunn, with mock contrition; “I have no watch, and I shall never be able to get one if I have to pay the fines which your Honor imposes upon me.” Then, after a pause of reflection, he looked up and said: “Will your Honor lend me fifty dollars so that I can pay this last fine?” “Mr. Clerk,” said the judge, leaning over the bench, “remit that fine: the State can afford to lose the money better than I can.”

But informality is not inconsistent with justice. The Pioneers did not like to have men, though they were judges, take themselves too seriously; but the great majority of them were law-abiding, intelligent, industrious and kind-hearted. It was, as has been said already, a picked and sifted population. The number of professional men and of well-educated men was extraordinary. They were a magnanimous people. As the Reverend Dr. Bushnell remarked, “With all the violence and savage wrongs and dark vices that have heretofore abounded among the Pioneers, they seldom do a mean thing.”

An example of this magnanimity was the action of California in regard to the State debt amounting to five million dollars. It was illegal, having been contracted in violation of the State Constitution, and the money had been spent chiefly in enriching those corrupt politicians and their friends who obtained possession of the California government in the first years. But the Pioneers were too generous and too proud of the good name of their State to stand upon their legal rights. They were as anxious to pay this unjust debt as Pennsylvania and Mississippi had been in former years to repudiate their just debts. The matter was put to popular vote, and the bonds were paid.

Stephen J. Field remarked in his old age, “I shall never forget the noble and generous people that I found in California, in all ranks of life.” Another Pioneer, Dr. J. D. B. Stillman, wrote, “There are more intelligence and generous good feeling here than in any other country that I have ever seen.”[49] “The finest body of men ever gathered together in the world’s history,” is the declaration of another Pioneer,[50] and even this extreme statement is borne out by the contemporary records.

That there was a minority equally remarkable for its bad qualities, is also unquestionable. Moreover, many men who at home would have been classed as good citizens gave way in California to their avarice or other bad passions. Whatever depravity there was in a man’s heart showed itself without fear and without restraint. The very Pioneer, Dr. Stillman, who has just been quoted to the effect that California had, on the whole, the best population in the world, gives us also the other side of the picture: “Last night I saw a man lying on the wet ground, unknown, unconscious, uncared for, and dying. Money is the all-absorbing object. There are men who would hang their heads at home at the mention of their heartless avarice. What can be expected from strangers when a man’s own friends abandon him because he sickens and becomes an encumbrance!”

Mrs. Bates, whose account of California is never exaggerated, tells us of a miner who, night after night, deserted his dying brother for a gambling house, leaving him unattended and piteously crying for water until, at last, he expired alone.

It must be remembered, also, that the moral complexion of California changed greatly from year to year. The first condition was almost an idyllic one. It was a period of honesty and good-will such as never existed before, except in the imagination of Rousseau. There were few doors, and no locks. Gold was left for days at a time unguarded and untouched. “A year ago,” said the “Sacramento Transcript,” in October, 1850, “a miner could have left his bag of dust exhibited to full view, and absent himself a week. His tools might have remained unmolested in any ravine for months, and his goods and chattels, bed and bedding might have remained along the highway for an indefinite period without being stolen.”

There was much drinking, much gambling, and some murders were committed in the heat of passion; but nowhere else in the world, except perhaps in the smaller villages of the United States, was property so safe as it was in California.

“I have not heard,” wrote Dr. Stillman in 1849, “of a theft or crime of any sort. Firearms are thrown aside as useless, and are given away on the road.” Grave disputes involving the title to vast wealth were settled by arbitration without the raising of a voice in anger or controversy. Even in Sacramento and San Francisco, merchants left their goods in their canvas houses and tents, open to any who might choose to enter, while they went to church or walked over the hills on Sundays. Their gold was equally unguarded, and equally safe.

“It was wonderful,” said a Pioneer early in the Fifties, “how well we got on in ’49 without any sort of government beyond the universally sanctioned action of the people, and I have often since questioned in my own mind if we might not have got on just the same ever since, and saved all the money we have paid out for thieving legislation and selfish office-holders.”[51]

The change came in the late Summer and early Autumn of 1850, and was chiefly owing to the influx of convicts from Australia and elsewhere,—“low-browed, heavy-featured men, with cold, steel-gray eyes.” In a less degree the change was also due to the deterioration of a small minority of Americans and Europeans, whose moral stamina was not equal to life in a lawless community, although at first that community was lawless only in the strict sense of the word;—it had no laws and needed none. As one Pioneer wrote, “There is no law regarded here but the natural law of justice.”

Beginning with the Autumn of 1850, things went from bad to worse until February, 1851, when robbery and murder in San Francisco were stopped by the first Vigilance Committee; and in the mines the same drastic remedy was applied, but not always with the same moderation. A Sacramento paper said in December, 1850: “It is an undeniable fact that crime of almost every description is on the increase in California, especially horse-stealing, robbery, arson and murder. In the city of Sacramento alone, since last April, we should judge there have been at least twenty murders committed, and we are not aware that any murderer has suffered capital punishment, or any other kind of punishment. We have got used to these things, and look upon it as a matter of course that somebody will be killed and robbed as often as once a week at least; and yet notwithstanding all this our people generally are composed of the most orderly, respectable citizens of the United States. The laws furnish us no protection because they are not enforced.”

But the Reader may ask, why were the laws not enforced? The answer is that the Pioneers were too busy to concern themselves with their political duties or to provide the necessary machinery for the enforcement of the laws. State officers, municipal officers, sheriffs, constables and even judges were chosen, not because they were fit men, but because they wanted the job, and no better candidates offered themselves. Moreover, the Pioneers did not expect to become permanent residents of California; they expected to get rich, off-hand, and then to go home, and why should they bother themselves about elections or laws? In short, an attempt was made to do without law, and, as we have seen, it succeeded for a year or so, but broke down when criminals became numerous.

A letter from the town of Sonora, written in July, 1850, said: “The people are leaving here fast. This place is much deeper in guilt than Sodom or Gomorrah. We have no society, no harmony. Gambling and drunkenness are the order of the day.”

In four years there were one thousand two hundred homicides in California. Almost every mile of the travelled road from Monterey, in the southern part of the State, to San Francisco, was the scene of some foul murder in those eventful years. There was more crime in the southern mines than in the northern, because the Mexicans were more numerous there.

In Sonora County, in 1850, there were twenty-five murders in a single month, committed mainly by Mexicans, Chilians, and British convicts from the penal colonies. A night patrol was organized. Every American tent had a guard around it, and mining almost ceased. Murder and robbery had reached the stage at which they seriously interfered with business. This was not to be endured; and at a mass meeting held at Sonora on August 3, the following resolution was passed: “Resolved: That for the safety of the lives and property of the citizens of this portion of the country, notice shall be given immediately ordering all Mexicans and South Americans to remove from township No. 2 in one week from this date.”

The consequence was a melancholy exodus of men, women and children, which included the just and the unjust. Many of them were destitute, and, as respects the Mexicans, many were being banished from the place of their birth. “We fear,” remarked a contemporary citizen, “that the money-making, merry old times in Sonora are gone forever.”

This was a characteristic Pioneer remark. The “old times” meant were somewhat less than a year back; and their “merry” quality was, as we have seen, considerably modified by robbery and murder. The point of view is much like that of the landlord of a hotel in Virginia City, where Bret Harte was once a guest. After a night disturbed by sounds of shouting, scuffling and pistol shots, Mr. Harte found his host behind the counter in the bar-room “with a bruised eye, a piece of court-plaster extending from his cheek to his forehead, yet withal a pleasant smile upon his face. Taking my cue from this, I said to him, ‘Well, landlord, you had rather a lively time here last night.’ ‘Yes,’ he replied, pleasantly, ‘it was rather a lively time.’ ‘Do you often have such lively times in Virginia City?’ I added, emboldened by his cheerfulness. ‘Well, no,’ he said reflectively; ‘the fact is we’ve only just opened yer, and last night was about the first time that the boys seemed to be gettin’ really acquainted!’”

The absence of police, and, to a great extent, of law, led to deeds of violence, and to duelling; but it also tended to make men polite. The civility with which cases were conducted in court, and the restraint shown by lawyers in their comments upon one another and upon the witnesses were often spoken of in California. The experience of Alcalde Field in this regard is interesting:—“I came to California with all those notions in respect to acts of violence which are instilled into New England youth; if a man were rude, I would turn away from him. But I soon found that men in California were likely to take very great liberties with a person who acted in such a manner, and that the only way to get along was to hold every man responsible, and resent every trespass upon one’s rights.”[52]

Accordingly, young Field bought a brace of pistols, had a sack-coat made with pockets appropriate to contain them, and practised the useful art of firing the pistols with his hands in his pockets. Subsequently he added a bowie-knife to his private arsenal, and he carried these weapons until the Summer of 1854. “I found,” he says, “that the knowledge that pistols were generally worn created a wholesome courtesy of manner and language.”

Even the members of the State Legislature were armed. It was a thing of every-day occurrence for a member, when he entered the House, to take off his pistols and lay them in the drawer of his desk. Such an act excited neither surprise nor comment.

At one time Mr. Field sent a challenge to a certain Judge Barbour who had grossly insulted him. Barbour accepted the challenge, but demanded that the duel should be fought with Colt’s revolvers and bowie-knives, that it should take place in a room only twenty feet square, and that the fight should continue until at least one of the principals was dead. Mr. Field’s second, horrified by these savage proposals, was for rejecting them; but Field himself insisted that they should be accepted, and the result was what he had anticipated. Judge Barbour, of his own motion, waived, first the knives, then the small room, and finally declined the meeting altogether. But the very next day, when Field had stepped out of his office, and was picking up an armful of wood for his stove, Barbour crept up behind him, and putting a pistol to his head, called upon Field to draw and defend himself. Field did not turn or move, but spoke somewhat as follows: “You infernal scoundrel, you cowardly assassin,—you come behind my back, and put your revolver to my head, and tell me to draw! You haven’t the courage to shoot,—shoot and be damned!” And Barbour slunk away.

Shooting at sight, especially in San Francisco and the larger towns, was as common as it is represented by Bret Harte. For the few years, beginning with and succeeding 1850, the newspapers were full of such events. On November 25, 1851, the “Alta California” said: “Another case of the influenza now in fashion occurred yesterday. We allude to a mere shooting-match in which only one of the near by-standers was shot down in his tracks.”

Even so late as August, 1855, the “San Francisco Call” was able to refer in a modest way to the “two or three shooting encounters per week” which enlivened its columns.[53]

Duels were common, and in most cases very serious affairs, the battle being waged with destructive weapons and at close range. As a rule, they took place in public. Thus, at a meeting between D. C. Broderick, leader of the Democratic Party in the State, and one J. Cabot Smith, seventy or eighty persons were present. Broderick was wounded, and would have been killed had not the bullet first struck and shattered his watch.

These California duels must be ascribed mainly to the Southern element, which was strong numerically, and which, moreover, exerted an influence greater than its numbers warranted. One reason, perhaps the main reason, for this predominance of the Southerners was that the aristocratic, semi-feudal system which they represented had a more dignified, more dashing aspect than the plain democratic views in which the Northern and Western men had been educated. It made the individual of more importance. Upon this point Professor Royce makes an acute remark: “The type of the Northern man who has assumed Southern fashions, and not always the best Southern fashions, has often been observed in California life. The Northern man frequently felt commonplace, simple-minded, undignified, beside his brother from the border or the plantation.... The Northern man admired his fluency, his vigor, his invective, his ostentatious courage, his absolute confidence about all matters of morals, of politics, of propriety, and the inscrutable union in his public discourse of sweet reasonableness with ferocious intolerance.”

The extreme type of Southerner, as he appeared in California, is immortalized in Colonel Starbottle. The moment when this strange planet first swam into Bret Harte’s ken seems to have been seized and recorded with accuracy by his friend, Mr. Noah Brooks. “In Sacramento he and I met Colonel Starbottle, who had, of course, another name. He wore a tall silk hat and loosely-fitting clothes, and he carried on his left arm by its crooked handle a stout walking-stick. The Colonel was a dignified and benignant figure; in politics he was everybody’s friend. A gubernatorial election was pending, and with the friends of Haight he stood at the hotel bar, and as they raised their glasses to their lips he said, ‘Here’s to the Coming Event!’ Nobody asked at that stage of the canvass what the coming event would be, and when the good Colonel stood in the same place with the friends of Gorham, he gave the same toast, ‘The Coming Event!’”

This may have been a certain Dr. Ruskin, a Southern politician, who is described by a Pioneer as wearing “a white fur plug hat, a blue coat with brass buttons, a buff-colored vest, white trousers, varnished boots, a black satin stock, and, on state occasions, a frilled shirt front. He always carried a cane with a curved handle.”[54] This, the Reader need not be reminded, is the exact costume of Colonel Starbottle,—the “low Byronic collar,” which Bret Harte mentions, being the only item omitted.

From this person Bret Harte undoubtedly derived an idea as to the appearance and carriage of Colonel Starbottle, and it is not unlikely that in drawing the character he had also in mind the notorious Judge David S. Terry. Terry, a native of Texas, was a fierce, fighting Southerner, a brave and honest man, but narrow, prejudiced, abusive, and ferocious. He was a leading Democrat, a judge of the Supreme Court of the State, and a bitter opponent of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee. He nearly killed an agent of the Committee who attempted to arrest one of his companions, and was himself in some danger of being hung by the Committee on that account. Later, Terry killed Senator Broderick, of whom mention has just been made, in a duel which seems to have had the essential qualities of a murder, and which was forced upon Broderick in much the same way that the fatal duel was forced upon Alexander Hamilton.

Later still, Terry became involved in the affairs of one of his clients, a somewhat notorious woman, whom he married,—clearly showing that mixture of chivalrous respect for women, combined with a capacity for misunderstanding them, and of being deluded by them, which was so remarkable in Colonel Starbottle. In the course of litigation on behalf of his wife, Terry bitterly resented certain action taken by Mr. Justice Field of the Supreme Court of the United States,—the same Field who began his judicial career as Alcalde of Marysville. Terry’s threats against the Justice, then an old man, were so open and violent, and his character was so well known, that, at the request of the court officials in San Francisco, a deputy marshal was assigned as a guard to the Justice while he should be hearing cases on the California circuit. At a railroad station, one day, Terry and the Justice met; and as Terry was, apparently, in the act of drawing a weapon, the deputy marshal shot and killed him.

It was Judge Terry who remarked of the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, which was mainly composed of business men,—the lawyers holding aloof,—that they were “a set of damned pork-merchants,”—a remark so characteristic of Colonel Starbottle that it is difficult to attribute it to anybody else.

Colonel Starbottle was as much the product of slavery as Uncle Tom himself, and he exemplified both its good and its bad effects. His fat white hand and pudgy fingers indicated the man who despised manual labor and those who performed it. His short, stubby feet, and tight-fitting, high-heeled boots conveyed him sufficiently well from office to bar-room, but were never intended for anything in the nature of a “constitutional.” His own immorality did not prevent him from cherishing a high ideal of feminine purity; but his conversation was gross. He was a purveyor, Bret Harte relates, “of sprightly stories such as Gentlemen of the Old School are in the habit of telling, but which, from deference to the prejudices of gentlemen of a more recent school, I refrain from transcribing here.”

He had that keen sense of honor, and the determination to defend it, even, if need be, at the expense of his life, which the Southern slave-holder possessed, and he had also the ferocity which belonged to the same character. One can hardly recall without a shudder of disgust the “small, beady black eyes” of Colonel Starbottle, especially when they “shone with that fire which a pretty woman or an affair of honor could alone kindle.”

The Reader will remember that the Colonel was always ready to hold himself “personally responsible” for any consequences of a hostile nature, and that by some irreverent persons he was dubbed “Old Personal Responsibility.” The phrase was not invented by Bret Harte. On the contrary, it was almost a catchword in California society; it was a Southern phrase, and indicated the Southerner’s attitude. In a leading article published in the “San Francisco Bulletin” in 1856, it is said, “The basis of many of the outrages which have disgraced our State during the past four years has been the ‘personal responsibility’ system,—a relic of barbarism.”

Colonel Starbottle’s lack of humor was also a Southern characteristic. The only humorists in the South were the slaves; and the reason is not far to seek. The Southerner’s political and social creed was that of an aristocrat; and an aristocrat is too dignified and too self-absorbed to enter curiously into other men’s feelings, and too self-satisfied to question his own. Dandies are notoriously grave men. The aristocratic, non-humorous man always takes himself seriously; and this trait in Colonel Starbottle is what makes him so interesting. “It is my invariable custom to take brandy—a wineglass-full in a cup of strong coffee—immediately on rising. It stimulates the functions, sir, without producing any blank derangement of the nerves.”

There is another trait, exemplified in Colonel Starbottle, which often accompanies want of humor, namely, a tendency to be theatrical. It would seem as if the ordinary course of human events was either too painful or too monotonous to be endured. We find ourselves obliged to throw upon it an aspect of comedy or of tragedy, by way of relief. The man of humor sees the incongruity,—in other words, the jest in human existence; and the non-humorous, having no such perception, represents it to himself and to others in an exaggerated or theatrical form. The one relies upon understatement; the other upon overstatement. Colonel Starbottle was always theatrical; his walk was a strut, and “his colloquial speech was apt to be fragmentary incoherencies of his larger oratorical utterances.”

But we cannot help feeling sorry for the Colonel as his career draws to a close, and especially when, after his discomfiture in the breach of promise case, he returns to his lonely chambers, and the negro servant finds him there silent and unoccupied before his desk. “‘’Fo’ God! Kernel, I hope dey ain’t nuffin de matter, but you’s lookin’ mighty solemn! I ain’t seen you look dat way, Kernel, since de day pooh Massa Stryker was fetched home shot froo de head.’ ‘Hand me down the whiskey, Jim,’ said the Colonel, rising slowly. The negro flew to the closet joyfully, and brought out the bottle. The Colonel poured out a glass of the spirit, and drank it with his old deliberation. ‘You’re quite right, Jim,’ he said, putting down his glass, ‘but I’m—er—getting old—and—somehow—I am missing poor Stryker damnably.’”

This is the last appearance of Colonel Starbottle. He represents that element of the moral picturesque,—that compromise with perfection which, in this imperfect and transitory world, is universally craved. Even Emerson, best and most respectable of men, admitted, in his private diary, that the irregular characters who frequented the rum-selling tavern in his own village were indispensable elements, forming what he called “the fringe to every one’s tapestry of life.”[55] Such men as he had in mind mitigate the solemnity and tragedy of human existence; and in them the virtuous are able to relax, vicariously, the moral tension under which they suffer. This is the part which Colonel Starbottle plays in literature.

CHAPTER VIII

On those rare occasions when children appeared in the streets, they were followed by admiring crowds of bearded men, eager to kiss them, to shake their hands, to hear their voices, and humbly begging permission to make them presents of gold nuggets and miners’ curiosities. In the autumn of 1849 a beautiful flaxen-haired little girl, about three years old, was frequently seen playing upon the veranda of a house near the business centre of San Francisco, and at such times there was always on the opposite side of the street a group of miners gazing reverently at the child, and often with tears running down their bronzed cheeks. The cry of a baby at the theatre brought down a tumultuous encore from the whole house. The chief attraction of every theatrical troupe was a child, usually called the “California Pet,” whose appearance on the stage was always greeted with a shower of coins. Next to the Pet, the most popular part of the entertainment was the singing of ballads and songs relating to domestic subjects.

In ’49 a woman in the streets of San Francisco created more excitement than would have been caused by the appearance of an elephant or a giraffe. Once at a crowded sale in an auction room some one cried out, “Two ladies going along the sidewalk!” and forthwith everybody rushed pell-mell into the street, as if there had been a fire or an earthquake. A young miner, in a remote mountain camp, borrowed a mule and rode forty miles in order to make a call upon a married woman who had recently arrived. He had a few minutes’ conversation with her, and returned the next day well satisfied with his trip. At another diggings, when the first woman resident appeared, she and the mule upon which she rode, were raised from the ground by a group of strong-armed, enthusiastic miners, and carried triumphantly to the house which her husband had prepared for her.

When the town where Stephen J. Field purchased his corner lots was organized, the first necessity was of course a name. Various titles, suggested by the situation, or by the imagination of hopeful miners, were proposed, such as Yubaville and Circumdoro; but finally a substantial, middle-aged man arose and remarked that there was an American lady in the place, the wife of one of the proprietors, that her name was Mary, and that in his opinion, the town should be called Marysville, as a compliment to her. No sooner had he made this suggestion than the meeting broke out in loud huzzahs; every hat made a circle around its owner’s head, and the new town was christened Marysville without a dissenting voice. The lady, Mrs. Coullard, was one of the survivors of the Donner party, and the honor was therefore especially fitting.

Doubts have been cast upon the story of the bar surmounted by a woman’s sunbonnet, to which every customer respectfully lifted his glass before tossing off its contents; but the fact is substantiated by the eminent engraver, Mr. A. V. S. Anthony, who, as a young man, drank a glass of whiskey at that very bar, in the early Fifties, and joined in the homage to the sunbonnet. There is really nothing unnatural in this incident, or in that other story of some youthful miners coming by chance upon a woman’s cast-off skirt or hat, spontaneously forming a ring and dancing around it. In both cases, the motive, no doubt, was partly humorous, partly amorous, and partly a vague but intense longing for the gentle and refining influence of women’s society.

This feeling of the miners, roughly expressed in the incidents of the sunbonnet and skirt, was poetically treated by Bret Harte in the story called The Goddess of Excelsior,—another example of that “perverse romanticism” which has been discovered in his California tales.

Said the “Sacramento Transcript,” in April, 1850, “May we not hope soon to see around us thousands of happy homes whose genial influences will awaken the noble qualities that many a wanderer has allowed to slumber in his heart while absent from the objects of his affection!”

In the same strain, but in the more florid style which was common in the California newspapers, another writer thus anticipated the coming of women and children: “No longer will the desolate heart seek to drown its loneliness in the accursed bowl. But the bright smiles of love will shed sunshine where were dark clouds and fierce tornadoes, and the lofty spire, pointing heavenward, will remind us in our pilgrimage here of the high destiny we were created to fulfil.” This has the ring of sincerity, and yet, as we read it, we cannot help thinking that when the writer laid down his pen, he went out and took one more drink from the “accursed bowl”; and who could blame him!

A loaf of home-made cake sent all the way around Cape Horn from Brooklyn to San José was reverently eaten, a portion being given to the local editor who duly returned thanks for the same.

The arrival of the fortnightly mail steamer was always the most important event of those early years; and Bret Harte thus described it: “Perhaps it is the gilded drinking saloon into which some one rushes with arms extended at right angles, and conveys in that one pantomimic action the signal of the semaphore telegraph on Telegraph Hill that a side-wheel steamer has arrived, and that there are letters from home. Perhaps it is the long queue that afterward winds and stretches from the Post Office half a mile away. Perhaps it is the eager men who, following it rapidly down, bid fifty, a hundred, two hundred, three hundred, and even five hundred dollars for favored places in the line. Perhaps it is the haggard man who nervously tears open his letter, and falls senseless beside his comrade.”[56]

Thus far Bret Harte. In precisely the same vein, and with a literary finish almost equal, is the following paragraph from a contemporary newspaper: “This other face is well known. It is that of one who has always been at his post on the arrival of each steamer for the past six months, certain at each time that he will get a letter. His eye brightens for a moment as the clerk pauses in running over the yellow-covered documents, but the clerk goes on again hastily, and then shakes his head, and says ‘No letter.’ The brightened eye looks sad again, the face pales, and the poor fellow goes off with a feeling in his heart that he is forgotten by those who knew and loved him at home.”[57]

Anxious men sometimes camped out on the steps of the Post Office, the night before a mail steamer was due, in order that they might receive the longed-for letter at the earliest possible moment.

The coming of three women on a steamer from New York in 1850 was mentioned by all the newspapers as a notable event. In May of that year the “Sacramento Transcript” contained an advertisement, novel for California, being that of a “Few fashionably-trimmed, Florence braid velvet and silk bonnets.” A month later a Sydney ship arrived at San Francisco, having on board two hundred and sixty passengers, of whom seventy were women. As soon as this vessel had anchored, there was a rush of bachelors to the Bay, and boat-loads of them climbed the ship’s side, trying to engage housekeepers.

In 1851 women began to arrive in somewhat larger numbers, and the coming of wives from the East gave rise to many amusing, many pathetic and some tragic scenes. “You could always tell a month beforehand,” said a Pioneer, “when a man was expecting the arrival of his real or intended wife. The old slouch hat, checked shirt and coarse outer garments disappeared, and the gentleman could be seen on Sunday going to church, newly rigged from head to foot, with fine beaver hat, white linen, nice and clean, good broadcloth coat, velvet vest, patent-leather boots, his long beard shaven or neatly shorn,—he looked like a new man. As the time drew near many of his hours were spent about the wharves or on Telegraph Hill, and every five minutes he was looking for the signal to announce the coming of the steamer. If, owing to some breakdown or wreck, there was a delay of a week or two, the suspense was awful beyond description.”[58]