The Western was for many years the most popular of Hollywood's products, but Hollywood too often put a gloss on the "Wild West" that robbed it of its gritty reality. In more recent years a few directors, such as Sam Peckinpah and Clint Eastwood, have redressed the balance, perhaps recapturing some of the realism about the West that distinguished the work of the writer Bret Harte and earned him the praise of Charles Dickens.
Francis Brett Harte, who died 100 years ago last Sunday, was born in 1836 in Albany, New York, the son of a schoolmaster. He had a poem published at 11, left school at 13 and was supporting himself by the time he was 16. A voracious reader, he was especially fond of Dickens.
His family moved to California when he was 18 and he earned a living in various ways - he was a prospector, teacher and Wells Fargo Express man among other things. Eventually he found his way into journalism, making friends with Mark Twain along the way.
Wild West
He wrote stories for the San Francisco Golden Era and The Californian, of which he became editor and for which he commissioned weekly articles from Twain. Harte was appointed secretary of the US mint in San Francisco, a position he held for six years, but he also continued to write. In 1867, he published The Lost Galleon, his first book of poems, and also Condensed Novels and Other Papers, containing clever parodies of contemporary writers.
The following year he helped to establish Overland Monthly as an outlet for writers of stories about the Wild West. Westerns. He edited the magazine for two years and some of the best stories he wrote appeared in it. One was The Luck of Roaring Camp, probably his most successful piece of writing, with its authentic depiction of the world of the 1849 gold-rush prospectors.
In the story Cherokee Sal, a prostitute, is the only woman in the gold-mining settlement of Roaring Camp. She gives birth to a boy, who is christened Thomas Luck, but she herself dies. The baby is adopted by the rugged, hardy miners and becomes the focus of their starved affections. Kentuck, the toughest and dirtiest of them all, even takes to washing himself and wearing clean clothes so that he, too, will have the privilege and pleasure of holding the baby boy.
Terrible floods
Roaring Camp prospers and the miners begin to think about trying to attract families to the settlement so that Luck can be brought up in more normal circumstances. But in the winter of 1851, terrible floods sweep over the camp. Kentuck tries desperately to save the baby; they are both recovered by a rescue boat but the little boy, secure in Kentuck's embrace, is already dead and Kentuck follows soon afterwards.
It is a story with a great range of emotions set against a harsh background.
Another fine story that Harte wrote for Overland Monthly was The Outcasts of Poker Flat. The angry people of Poker Flat turn out the gambler John Oakhurst, the thief Uncle Billy, and the prostitutes Mother Shipton and The Duchess. Two young people fall in with them: Tom Simpson and Piney, who are eloping. Tom is happy to be with them because Oakhurst had once been generous to him. But it is winter and they are trapped by heavy snow in a log cabin while crossing the mountains.
The worthless Uncle Billy steals the mules belonging to Tom and Piney and deserts them. Left in the cabin with only a few days' food, the others reveal their true worth. Mother Shipton starves herself to death so that Piney will have more food and Oakhurst kills himself, hoping to give Tom a chance of survival. Tom reaches Poker Flat to get help but when the rescuers reach the log cabin they find the snow has driven into it and The Duchess is lying with her head on Piney's breast. Both are dead.
Returned east
When The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches was published in 1870, the book made Harte famous and an offer from Atlantic Monthly persuaded him to return to the East. But it was an unwise decision. Deprived of the source of his Californian inspiration, his work became tedious and it seemed that he had reached the limit of his talent. But he continued to write and publish collections of stories and sketches and lived on his reputation until 1878, when he was appointed US consul to Germany. He was consul at Glasgow for the first five years of the 1880s and lived the rest of his life in London.
Although he continued to write, his literary output for these years is largely forgotten. But the harsh realism of his best work - and its influence on Hollywood's more realistic Westerns - lives on.