Born on the long trail to Oregon, Joaquin (Cincinnatus Hiner) Miller spent his childhood and youth in the Pacific Northwest, one of the wildest remaining parts of the country at that time. Like Bret Harte and Mark Twain, he briefly tried a number of different jobs, including a stint riding the pony express, an interval as a teacher, some time with the Indians of the Pitt River tribe (during which time he was rumored to have married a Native American woman and fathered a daughter). Finally, he spent a short period of time studying law before settling temporarily in Eugene, Oregon where he took up the editorship of a local paper and devoted himself to writing poetry--his first love throughout life.
   In 1863, he and his new wife, the poet Minnie Myrtle (Theresa Dyer), honeymooned in San Francisco, hoping to break into the literary scene and remain permanently. They both were successful at placing some of their verse in the teaming journals of the Bay Area, but it is not likely that they were paid for any of their efforts. In fact, Col. Joseph Lawrence, owner-editor of the Golden Era, far from encouraging Miller, actively discouraged any further attempts; of Miller's poem "Oregon," he said that its rhymes were "as suggestively simple as a schoolboy's," and recommended that their author "cease wooing the muses and return to Oregon to grow 'taters.'"1 After about six months, Miller and Myrtle temporarily gave up on San Francisco and each other. She returned home to Port Orford (a fishing village on the shores of southern Oregon) and he to the wilderness in the eastern part of the state. While Miller published poems in the local papers and collected several into a pamphlet entitled Specimens (1868), regional audiences in the less economically-developed Northwest could not do for him what San Francisco readers had done for Harte, Twain, Bierce, and company--that is, provide him with a stable income and a steady market for his writing. Miller had his second collection of poems, Joaquin Et. Al., produced at his own expense by a Portland printer in 1869.2 He sent copies to Harte at the new editor's chair of the Overland Monthly, but this earned him yet another snubbing. Harte replied curtly by mail that the author should not embarrass himself by trying to distribute the volume publicly, and suggested that he "check his 'theatrical tendency' and 'feverish exaltation' and cultivate a measure of restraint." 3
   In fact, Harte often complained that California literary culture was too democratic for his taste, that no California writer was ever willing to believe that he or she did not have a talent that warranted publication. If the East frequently saw Harte and Twain as invading Vandals, the California Bohemians just as surely defined figures like Miller as peripheral in their turn. In one of his essays in a Massachusetts paper in 1867, Harte grumbled that "the climate [was] fatal to abstract speculation," and that its literature would never come of age so long as the state had "more writers than readers" and "more contributors than subscribers."4 Nor was Harte alone in his annoyed sense that the literary scene was a trifle too participatory. The Galaxy critic who had disparaged "the mushroom growth which [had] sprung up" overnight in the wake of Harte's and John Hay's enormously popular dialect poems went on to complain about this current democratizing trend:

it indicates singularly morbid or apathetic public taste, that these crude maunderings should gain access to respectable journals. The most prominent literary weekly of this city [New York] prints in conspicuous type, and illustrates with careful engravings, a seemingly endless series of rustic rhymes, bathetic beyond expression, of the sort that any farmer-boy might write all day after his chores were done. . . . Every village of the West has what it calls its local "dialectician." Bad grammar and slang seem the only unfailing passports to the editorial favor. (November 1871) 5

This new literary development represented, to the critic's mind, an overdependence on novelty and sentiment, and a lack of refined taste and craft. However, at least as disturbing, was the fact that "the world" was apparently all too willing to embrace these shabby undersides and rough edges as realistic representations of true American types.
   Apparently, the California press was not inclusive enough to welcome Miller's second attempt at a San Francisco-based literary career, so in August of 1870 he packed his manuscripts, moccasins, and a laurel wreath to place on Byron's grave, and set out to seek his fortune. He arrived in London with a small sum of money, no reputation, and an agreement to write travel letters for the Bulletin (provided that they could read his handwriting). After making a pilgrimage to Hucknall Church to visit Bryon's grave, he installed himself in a cheap flat in London and began a series of disheartening visits to British publishers. He was rejected all around. In desperation, having used up most of his savings, he pawned his watch and had 100 copies of Pacific Poems printed. The humorist Tom Hood Jr.--who was rumored to receive all Americans warmly, just on principle--gave Miller letters of introduction to some of London's literary figures. Soon he was handed along to the Pre-Raphaelites, who became the unlikely recipients of Miller's humble verses. His wild tales, bizarre clothing, uncouth manners, rhapsodic love of poetry, and deferential attitude towards things British seem to have won him their friendship almost instantly; they now "had an eccentric frontiersman to add to their collection of monkeys, wombats, and exotic women."6 They took him in hand, helped him edit and polish, convinced a reputable publisher to issue his work, and then wrote the first of the celebratory reviews that were to follow like a spreading brushfire.
   Songs of the Sierras, as it was called, burst onto the British literary scene in June of 1871. Following publication of Songs of the Sierras, the British press showered lavish praises on the slender volume, hailing Miller as "the Oregon Byron" (much to his delight) and unanimously lauding its virtues--qualities which their American counterparts did not view in such a glowing light. "Byron was a great poet, but Byron is dead," growled one American critic, and "Mr. Miller is not a great poet, and his spurious Byronism will not live."7 Ultimately, the difference between the two critical opinions, of course, had everything to do with Britain's willingness to embrace the most exotic writers and texts as truly American, frequently satisfying its appetite for the grotesque and unusual through its former colonies (and current ones: e.g. Kipling in the 1890s). The glowing British reception of Mary Wilkins Freeman's dark portraits of New England (yet another sort of exoticism) would soon bring another American writer to the attention of critics and readers back home.
   Sauntering around London in a red shirt, tall cowhide boots, a wide Mexican sombrero, and linen duster or huge sealskin coat, Miller cut quite a figure. He frequently demonstrated so-called "Western manners" in Mayfair drawing rooms by smoking three cigars at a time, bursting unexpectedly into war-whoops, sucking loudly on a toothpick (in any company), getting down on all fours, barking at or biting the ankles of startled young debutantes, throwing flower petals, attempting to swallow fish whole, and telling wild stories about himself. Presenting himself as something of a cross between Davy Crockett and Mike Fink, he bragged that he was "a crack pistol-shot, a daring horseman, even an expert with the tomahawk; he had fought desperate battles against the Indians" and then had changed sides, outwitting "the whites as a renegade."8 In short, where Miller ended and dime novel characters began was never quite clear. Dime novels, whose popularity in Britain he served to embody, played a major role in the development of Miller's literary career by providing a ready-made niche for the kinds of themes and images he expressed through his art.
   First and last, Miller wanted to belong to the California circle. Had he found the San Francisco literati more receptive, chances are he would never have been parading around the streets of Piccadilly. He is an example of a dialect writer who used the British literary scene to strategically create a place for himself in the United States literary marketplace. But as fortune would have it, his flush of success in Britain was cut short when he got word three months later that one of his sisters had died and his brother was seriously ill. He returned to the Gold Coast, where Californians were openly skeptical of his purported "genius." He was asked pointed questions about the verity of the experiences underlying his allegedly autobiographic poetic exploits. For example, Edward Beale, who had ridden with Kit Carson, "charged that Miller not only had shown hopeless ignorance of Western fauna and flora, customs and characters, but had so maligned Carson's character that he ought to be lynched."9 Miller, deferential and still hoping for a positive American reputation, quickly revised the poem.
   His reception was not uniformly hostile, however; the Overland Monthly now offered liberal sums to print his verses, and he gave several lectures which were well-attended and generally well-received. Astutely judging his audience, Miller now wore discreet evening clothes, stood demurely, and delivered his talk in an even tone without attempting any theatrical stunts. While Miller's performance capital in Britain centered on his ability to personify the "Wild West," his American audiences expressed ambivalence and suspicion about his western "self" but eagerly flocked to his lectures about his experiences in Britain. The elements of authenticity called into question by American audiences did not include his overall personal integrity (as he was now accepted as an expert on British topics), but rather reflected the tensions around the forms and "packaging" of his materials in culturally relevant ways. Ultimately, the gradual disappearance of the dialect poets from modern assessments of local color has also contributed to the rarefied image of regional writing as a predominantly high-brow phenomenon supported primarily by genteel monthlies in the United States.10 Joaquin Miller's epic verses, Will Carleton's highly sentimental ballads, and Celia Thaxter's classically patterned verses had lost their hold on the literary marketplace of the period. In the 1890s, for example, James Whitcomb Riley, the popular newspaper poet from Indiana, gradually developed a grassroots following through endless lecture tours in which he performed home-spun bits like "The Old Swimmin'-Hole" and "When the Frost is on the Punkin'" (first collected in book form in 1883). Eventually, he attracted a popular following so large, and was so persistent in his pursuit of the national monthlies, that they somewhat reluctantly began accepting his works in the late 1890s. Forgotten poets such as Miller and Riley point very clearly to the existence a number of different audiences--popular as well as elite, domestic as well as foreign--and have much to tell us about the ways these various sites could be successfully played off against each other.

For more on Joaquin Miller, and other early Oregon writers visit Curtis Walter's entertaining site.

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