The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 | Page 5

Shakespeare, and Lowell's 'Fable for the

Critics,' with two or three other books." Shirley (p. 100, post) says she
had a--
Bible and prayer-book, Shakespeare, Spenser, Coleridge, Shelley,
Keats, Lowell's Fable for Critics, Walton's Complete Angler, and some
Spanish books.
The poet Spenser's name was spelled with a c in the Pioneer, but the
article "the" was not used before "Critics," as in the extract from
Royce,--an unpardonable error in a book printed in Cambridge, and at
the Riverside Press too.
The Spanish books mentioned by Shirley were evidently not neglected
by her, and her acquaintance with and friendship for the
Spanish-speaking population scattered along the banks of the Río de las
Plumas must have made her very familiar with their tongue. In reading
these Letters one cannot fail to perceive how fittingly Spanish words
and phrases are interwoven with her own English. At the time these
Letters were written, many Spanish words were a part of the California
vernacular, but to Shirley belongs the honor of introducing them into
the literature of California; hence, in printing the Letters, such words
are not italicized, as they usually are, by printers who should know
better.
Dr. Royce also says on page 350, "Prominent in the society of the Bar
was a trapper, of the old Frémont party, who told blood-curdling tales
of Indian fights." (See post, p. 111.) It is singular that the Doctor has
failed to identify this trapper with the well-known James P.
Beckwourth, whose Life and Adventures (Harpers, New York, 1856)
was written from his own dictation by Thomas D. Bonner, a justice of
the peace in Butte County in 1852. His name is preserved in
"Beckwourth Pass." He first entered this pass probably in the spring of
the year 1851, although 1850 is the year given in his Life. The Western
Pacific Railroad utilizes the pass for its tracks entering California, and
through it came the pioneers of whom Shirley has much to say in Letter
the Twenty-second.
Among punishments for thefts, the Doctor, on page 351, speaks of a

"decidedly barbarous case of hanging" for that offense. It is referred to
here for the reason that in the sequel of the hanging Bret Harte found
more than a suggestion for his finale of The Outcasts of Poker Flat.
Both are reprinted here for the purpose of comparison. Shirley says
(post, p. 157),--
The body of the criminal was allowed to hang for some hours after the
execution. It had commenced storming in the earlier part of the evening,
and when those whose business it was to inter the remains arrived at
the spot, they found them enwrapped in a soft white shroud of feathery
snowflakes, as if pitying nature had tried to hide from the offended face
of Heaven the cruel deed which her mountain-children had committed.
The finale of The Outcasts of Poker Flat follows, in part, with no other
changes than those of punctuation and capitalization.
They slept all that day and the next, nor did they waken when voices
and footsteps broke the silence of the camp. And when pitying fingers
brushed the snow from their wan faces, you could scarcely have told,
from the equal peace that dwelt upon them, which was she that had
sinned. Even the law of Poker Flat recognized this, and turned away,
leaving them still locked in each other's arms. But at the head of the
gulch, on one of the largest pine-trees, they found the deuce of clubs
pinned to the bark with a bowie-knife.... And pulseless and cold, with a
derringer by his side and a bullet in his heart, though still calm as in life,
beneath the snow lay he who was at once the strongest and yet the
weakest of the outcasts of Poker Flat.
The phrase, "though still calm as in life," in the last sentence of the
extract immediately preceding, is one that would seem to invite the
challenge of a proof-reader. It is passed without further notice.
Dr. Royce is not at his best in reviewing Letter the Nineteenth. The
suggestion for The Outcasts of Poker Flat was found therein by Bret
Harte, as previously noted. On page 354 the Doctor says,--
A "majestic-looking Spaniard" had quarreled with an Irishman about a
Mexican girl ("Shirley" for the first time, I think, thus showing a

knowledge of the presence at Indian Bar of those women who seem, in
the bright and orderly days of her first arrival, to have been actually
unknown in the camp). The Mexican, having at last stabbed and killed
the other, fled to the hills.
It does not appear from the letter that a girl of any kind was involved in
this stabbing and death. Shirley distinguishes between the Spaniard and
the Mexican; the Doctor does not. As to the