20 Friday, August 22, 1975

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

A Bicentennial Feature

The Jewish Background of Western Writer Bret Harte

(Editor's note: The fol-
lowing is a Bicentennial
feature incorporating arti-
cles from the New York

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Jewish Historical Quar-
terly.)
"His stories were the
prototype of all the 'West-
erns,' all the stock charac-
ters that appeared in the
later tales — characters,
fresh with him, that were
`stock' in time — the pretty
New England schoolmis-
tress, the sheriff and his
posse, the had man, the
gambler, the heroic stage-
driver, the harlot with the
heart of gold.
"His holdups, lynchings,
barroom brawls and roman-
tic • idylls on mountain
ranches were the models
that hundreds of writers
followed in the future, few
of whom ever compared
with him in workmanship,
style, or refinement, for
Bret Harte was not only

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original, he was an artist."
This pronouncement was
made by the highly re-
spected literary historian,
Van Wyck Brooks.
Bret Harte, the author
who introduced "local
color" to writing, was
half English, one-quarter
Dutch, and one-quarter
Hebrew.
The Hebrew in the pedi-
gree was his paternal grand-
father, Bernard Hart, a de-
vout Jew whose name
appears on the roll of pi-
oneers of the Spanish and
Portuguese Synagogue in
New York.
In addition to the artistic
influence contributed by his
Hebrew blood, the story-
teller may well have been in-
spired by the many-sided,
active life of Bernard Hart.
In 1818, Bret's grand-
father went into Wall
Street, and as a mark of his
ability and integrity was
elected secretary of the
hoard of brokers, receiving
no salary for his services
and retaining the office un-
til old age prevented further
activity.
Members of Bret
Harte's family remem-
bered Bernard Hart's oc-
casional visits to the fam-
ily of Henry Hart, his son
by Catharine Brett, whom
he assisted with money
and advice so long as he
lived.
Bret Harte himself re-

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SAMUEL BRONFMAN

NEW YORK, (JTA) —
Samuel Bronfman 2nd, the
21-year-old son of world
Jewish leader Edgar M.
Bronfman, was freed Sun-
day, eight days after being
kidnapped. Federal agents
broke into a Brooklyn apart-
ment and rescued the heir to
the Seagram's liquor for-
tune after his abductors
failed to release him on the
payment of a $2.3 million
ransom, an FBI spokesman
told a press conference at
FBI headquarters here.
The abductors had origi-
nally demanded $4.6 mil-
lion. Two men who were
found in the Brooklyn
apartment holding Bronf-
man, a New York City fire-
man who owned the apart-
ment and a naturalized
American citizen born in.
Ireland, were arrested and
charged with extortion.

BRET HARTE

membered being taken to
the New York Stock Ex-
change by his father, who
there pointed out to him his
grandfather. It may be
added that between the des-
cendants of Bernard Harte
and non-Jew Catharine
Brett and those of Bernard
Hart and second wife Re-
becca Seixas there is a
marked resemblance.
Of the short life of Ber-
nard Hart and his Christian
wife little is known, save
that after the separation
Mrs. Hart was supported by
her husband, but had no
other relation with him.
He was always remem-
bered for his generosity to
friends and relatives, a qual-
ity which his granddaughter
related was responsible for
a considerable diminishing
of his worldly goods when,
from time to time, he was
obliged to pay the debts of
those for whose notes he
had generously become a
surety.
Bret went to California
in 1854, five years after the
discovery of gold had at-
tracted the pioneers. He
was 18 years old then and
had had no schooling, to
speak of, for nearly five
years.
He had been a lawyer's of-'
fice boy and a merchant's
clerk, and at least one of his
poems had been printed.
Bernard Hart's second
family never knew of his
existence, and more than
100 years passed between
the marriage in 1799, of
Catherine Brett and Ber-
nard Hart, and the revela-
tion to the world of Bret
Harte's close relationship to
Emanuel B. Hart and other
wealthy and prominent
New Yorkers.
Whether Bret Harte saw
much of the actual gold rush
is doubtful, but in one of his
bread-and-butter jobs he
was express manager of a
stage-coach line in the out-
let town of a mining region.
There he must have met

some of the red-shirted
fortune-seekers, the reck-
less spenders of gold dust,
the hard drinkers, the card
sharps, the desperadoes
and the outcasts of the pe-
riod.
In newspaper shops, too,
where he served about the
time of the Civil War, he
heard tales of the wild and
woolly days in the placer
gulches — days that even
then were nearly over. Some
of these yarns he heard
from a talkative typesetter
known to contemporaries as
"Lying Jim" and to Bret as
"Truthful James."
A printer in San Fran-
cisco, Harte wrote clever
sketches that caught the
fancy of the exuberant town
and made him a reporter, an
editor and a celebrity dear
to local pride.
The Fremonts, in their
fine home at the Golden
Gate, welcomed him.
In 1868, before Harte was
•30, he began to edit the new
Overland Monthly.

There "The Luck of
Roaring Camp" appeared
— the story of a baby boy
born of a dying prostitute,
the only woman in a
rought, tough mining
camp, and how the child's
presence softened the life
of the place.
Other tales of the sort fol-
lowed. One of the best loved,
"The Outcasts of Poker
Flat," told what happened
to a gambler, a sluice-rob-
her and two women of their
class when deadly snows
overwhelmed them on their
way into exile.
Those stories of Harte's
soon had the whole country
cheering. Best of all, here
was the life of the California
frontier as it pleased the
far-away East to think that
frontier life must be.

BRET HARTE

in newspaper caricature

But Harte won his fame
at a too-early age, and ex-
travagance soon led to debt.
His friends had him ap-
pointed U.S. Consul, first in
Germany and then in Glas-
gow, Scotland.
In Europe, he resumed
writing California stories
for British and German au-
diences, and died there in
1902.

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