Ways that are dark: Appropriations of Bret Harte's "plain language from truthful James"

Nineteenth-Century Literature

Volumn 51, Issue 3, 1996, Pages

  Scharnhorst, Gary ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60949663301     PISSN: 08919356     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/ncl.1996.51.3.99p02436     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. "The Pike Poetry," Galaxy, 12 (November 1871), 635
2. See also "Bret Harte," Baltimore Sun, 7 May 1902, 4:4: "It was read by everybody and quoted by everybody until it became as trite as the most familiar quotation from Shakespeare."
3. and "Bret Harte," New York Times Saturday Review of Books, 10 May 1902, p. 308)
4. See Henry C. Merwin, The Life of Bret Harte, with Some Account of the California Pioneers (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), p. 51
5. and Carey McWilliams, Ambrose Bierce: A Biography (New York: Albert and Charles Boni, 1929), pp. 87-89
6. See Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore: A History of Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brora, 1989), p. 105: "By the end of 1870, there were three workers- two white and one Chinese - for every job in San Francisco."
7. Henry J. W. Dam, "A Morning with Bret Harte," McClure's, 4 (December 1894), 43
8. See also Charles A. Murdock, A Backward Glance at Eighty: Recollections and Comment (San Francisco: Paul Elder, 1921), p. 86
9. Margaret Duckett, "Plain Language from Bret Harte," Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 11 (1957), 242
10. Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978), p. 206
11. J. Torrey Connor, "An Ode to John," Overland, n.s. 33 (1899), 433
12. "The Chinese in California," Boston Advertiser, 14 March 1871, 1:7
13. Milton Meltzer, The Chinese Americans (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1980), p. 148
14. Jeffrey D. Mason, Melodrama and the Myth of America (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1993), p. 150
15. The Heathen Chinee (Chicago: Western News Co., 1870)
16. London Daily News, 21 March 1871, 5:1-2
17. Supplement to Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, 21 January 1871, p. 324
18. The Heathen Chinee Musical Album (New York: DeWitt, 1871). This illustration is reproduced by permission of The Huntington Library, San Marino, California
19. Scharnhorst, The Bret Harte-Mark Twain Feud: An Inside Narrative," Mark Twain Journal, 31 (1993), 29-32
20. and Gladden's "The Murderer of the Period," Independent, 16 January 1873, p. 1
21. I have located the following parodies of the poem: 1) "Ah Sin's Reply to Truthful James," Chicago Tribune, 22 January 1871, 5:7
22. 3 "Plain Language from Truthful Jane," Woodhull & Chaflin's Weekly, 13 May 1871, p. 16
23. 4) "Against the Heathen 'Chinee,' " Prairie Farmer, 3 June 1871, p. 175
24. 5) "A Protest," San Francisco Chronicle, 4 June 1871,6:1
25. 7) Bayard Taylor, "Truthful James's Song of the Shirt," in The Echo Club (Boston: Osgood, 1872), pp. 158-60
26. 8) "Plain Language to Untruthful Bull," Atchison Daily Champion, 7 April 1872, 2:5
27. 9) Sam Eytinge, "The 'Heathen' Japs," Frank Leslies Illustrated Newspaper, 4 May 1872, p. 122
28. 10) "The Heathen Passee," Spectator, 18 January 1873, p. 86
29. 11) "Back Pay/After Bret Harte," Davenport Daily Democrat, 10 August 1873, 3:1
30. 12) "Mr. Tilden's Acceptance/Further Language from Truthful James," Atchison Daily Champion & Press, 20 August 1876, 2:6
31. 13) "Truthful James on the Princeton College Difficulty," Boston Globe, 23 October 1876, 3:1
32. 14) "The Game Hi-bernee," Forneys Sunday Chronicle, 2 September 1877, 1:5
33. Charles S. Greene, "Plain Language to Bret Harte with apologies to Truthful James," Overland, n.s. 32 (1898), 93
34. "D. T. Fabula; or, Plain Language from Truthful James," Bookman, 7 (August 1898), 478
35. St. Louis Daily Globe Democrat, 5 September 1877, 7:1
36. and Louisville Courier-Journal, 17 March 1889, 17:6
37. "Ruined by Chinese Cheap Labor," New York Tribune, 1 October 1870, 6:3
38. "The Heathen Chinee" in New York Tribune, 3 October 1870, 4:5
39. Boston Commonwealth, 19 November 1870, 4:2
40. New York World, 19 January 1871, 5:3
41. Christian Union, 22 February 1871, pp. 120-22
42. "For Ways That Are Dark," Cincinnati Commercial, 21 March 1871,4:4
43. "Ways That Are Dark" in San Francisco Chronicle, 26 March 1871, 1:1
44. Boston Transcript, 24 December 1874, 315
45. The first question had been voiced, in fact, by Nye in an early version of stanza 7 of "Plain Language." Harte replaced it with Nye's line "We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor" (see Francis E. Sheldon, "The College Town of California," Overland, n.s. 7 [1886], 587-88
46. See Congressional Globe, 7 January 1871, p. 354
47. The 'Heathen Chinee' Planks," Boston Globe, 6 July 1876, 4:3-4
48. See Scharnhorst, Bret Harte (New York: Twayne, 1992)
49. Howells, Literary Friends and Acquaintance: A Personal Retrospect of American Authorship (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1910), p. 290
50. Chicago Republican, 14 March 1871, 2:2
51. Harte tried to tap the same wellsprings of popularity in several subsequent Truthful James" poems, albeit with little success: 1) "Further Language from Truthful James," Overland, 6 (1871), 104
52. 2) "Truthful James to the Editor," New York Tribune, 10 June 1873, 4:4
53. 3) The Spelling Bee at Angel's," Scribner's, 17 (November 1878), 38-40
54. 4) The Thought-Reader of Angel's," Illustrated London News, 25 December 1886, p. 696
55. 5) "A Question of Privilege," Scribner's, 17 (February 1895), 154-55
56. 6) "Free Silver at Angel's," first published ca. 1896
57. See Baltimore Sun, 14 October 1876, 1:2
58. G. A. Cevasco and Richard Harmond, "Bret Harte to Robert Roosevelt on Two Men of Sandy Bar. A Newly Discovered Letter," American Literary Realism, 21, no. 1 (1988), 58-62
59. Mark Twain in Eruption, ed. Bernard DeVoto (New York and London: Harper, 1940), p. 275
60. DeLancey Ferguson, "Mark Twain's Lost Curtain Speeches," South Atlantic Quarterly, 42 (July 1943), 269
61. James S. Moy, Marginal Sights: Staging the Chinese in America (Iowa City: Univ. of Iowa Press, 1993), p. 29
62. Ah Sin: A Dramatic Work, ed. Frederick Anderson (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1961), p. 11
63. Mark Twain and Bret Harte (Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press, 1964), p. 151
64. Alger, The Young Miner; or, Tom Nelson in California (Boston: Loring, 1879), pp. 65-75
65. See Tien-Lu Li, Congressional Policy of Chinese Immigration, or Legislation Relating to Chinese Immigration to the United States (Nashville, Tenn.: Methodist Episcopal Church, 1916), p. 124
66. See Scharnhorst, Brel Harte: A Bibliography (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 1995), pp. 42-43
67. Overland Monthly, n.s. 40 (1902), 237
68. See Eleanor M. Davenport, "Some Younger California Writers," University of California Magazine, 3 (November 1897), pp. 80-82
69. Comstock, "Ways That Are Dark," Overland Monthly, n.s. 32 (1898), 500-501
70. Adeline Knapp, The Ways That Are Dark," San Francisco Sunday Call, 18 August 1895, 16:1-3
71. See Charles R. Shepherd, The Ways of Ah Sin: A Composite Narrative of Things as They Are (New York: F. H. Revel), 1923)
72. Mary E. Young, Mules and Dragons: Popular Culture Images in the Selected Writings of African-American and Chinese-American Women Writers (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1993). PP. 87-88