The Heathen Chinee

The narrative of the poem focuses on a Chinese immigrant character named Ah Sin who defeats an Irish immigrant named William Nye in a high-stakes game of euchre. William Nye is a cheater, whom the "childlike" Ah Sin successfully out-cheats. William Nye realizes nothing until it is too late. Upon realizing he was cheated, William Nye attacks Ah Sin. Harte's narrative presented a fictionalized account of anti-Chinese attacks and intended his readers to sympathize with Ah Sin. ==Composition and publication history==

Harte wrote the poem as an afterthought and did not initially intend to publish it. In writing the poem, Harte echoed and, therefore, lampooned Algernon Charles Swinburne's 1865 verse tragedy Atalanta in Calydon. Ambrose Bierce claimed Harte originally sent it to him to include in his San Francisco-based News Letter, but he suggested it was better suited for Harte's own journal, the Overland Monthly. It appeared there under its original title, "Plain Language from Truthful James" The poem was republished several times within a short period, including in New York Evening Post, Prairie Farmer, New York Tribune, Boston Evening Transcript, Providence Journal, Hartford Courant, and Saturday Evening Post (published twice). The poem was also included in a book by Harte titled Poems, released in January 1871. Several periodicals and books would republish the poem with illustrations. The two writers had a rift by February 1877 just before completing a final draft. Twain took over the project and, as he wrote to William Dean Howells, he "left hardly a foot-print of Harte in it". Harte nevertheless attended the play's opening at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C., on May 7, 1877. Near the end of his life, Harte used the characters of both Truthful James and Ah Sin in his poem "Free Silver at Angel's", a satirical response to the silver plank in the 1896 Democratic National Convention platform. Even so, when asked about the original poem in later years, Harte called the poem "trash", and "the worst poem I ever wrote, possibly the worst poem anyone ever wrote." ==Response==

"Plain Language from Truthful James" (or "The Heathen Chinee") was very popular among general readers. One New York newspaper reported on the frenzy over the poem: "Strolling down Broadway... we saw a crowd of men and boys, of high and low degree, swarming about a shop-window, pushing, laughing, and struggling... Elbowing our way through the crowd, we discovered an illustrated copy of Bret Harte's poem 'The Heathen Chinee.'" The poem's popularity came, in part, from the ambiguity over its racial message. The narrator implies that the cheating of the Chinese man was no worse than that of the white man, His 1874 short story Wan Lee, the Pagan attacked stereotypes about Chinese immigrants and sought to portray white Americans as the true savages. They sympathized with Ah Sin's attacker, William Nye. The poem was widely attributed to Mark Twain and labeled a "feeble imitation" of Harte. Twain angrily denied the charge and demanded a retraction, writing to the editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, "I am not in the imitation business". Harte, in turn, targeted Twain years later in his 1893 story "Ingénue of the Sierras" by creating an unsavory character named "Charley Bing", modeled after Twain. The incident was one of several in a long rivalry between the two authors. In 1898, The Overland Monthly ran a poem making fun of Harte himself, who had moved to Europe in 1871 and never returned, for forgetting what life was like in the west. ==Influence==

"The Heathen Chinee", as the poem was most often called, was recited in public among opponents to Chinese immigration, and Eugene Casserly, a Senator from California who was "vehemently opposed to the admission of Chinese labour", apparently thanked Harte in writing for supporting his cause. The confusion was furthered by the altered title, which allowed for a more literal reading, and the illustrations in later republications. In November 1875, Union Porcelain Works in Long Island announced the release of a pitcher decorated with figures from "The Heathen Chinee". The title character was depicted with four aces falling from his sleeve. The influence continued for decades and spread into other authors' writings. In 1895, for example, Adeline Knapp published her short story "The Ways That Are Dark", quoting a line from the poem. In 1931, Earl Derr Biggers considered the same quote from the poem as a title for his sixth Charlie Chan novel, inspired by a movie studio executive's suggestion, "Incidentally, could you use the Bret Harte—heathen Chinee phrase of 'Ways that are dark' as a possible title for some forthcoming exploits?" Ralph Townsend used the same line for his anti-Chinese book Ways That Are Dark. ==References==