CHAPTER 14
Joaquin Miller
Delveth for pretty words
To weave in his languid lays
Of women and streams and birds.
What was my troth to him?
A stepping-stoneat best:
My face was proud and my smiles were sweet,
And his gold could do the rest.
>MINNIE MYRTLE MILLER: Sacrifice Impetro.
Did the darts and barbs aimed at Joaquin Miller from every quarter strike harmlessly against a thick hide such as protects men of grosser occupations? Or did they easily pierce a thin, poetic armor and penetrate to the quick?
Many people called him a liar. Some claimed he stole his best poetry from his wife, the indignant women of Oregon said he deserted her and his children, she described his bad spelling in a public lecture, one of his neglected sons was later sent to prison. The politicians twitted him for his poetry, fellow poets— like the smug Bret Harte—patronized him in his early days, Oregon editors attacked him savagely, his own paper was suppressed because he was a secessionist. An eastern critic hesitated to review Songs of the Sierras because of his personal life. He was a squaw man, he lived in separation from three wives, but he bowed and kissed women's hands, wrote verses to them and scattered flowers in their paths. He drank without refinement by means of a tin cup, and a jug over his shoulder. He displayed huge vanity in his behavior and in the eccentricity of his clothes.
What if some of the poets who are said to have died of broken hearts had faced a medley of charges like that? Of course he was sensitive. How could he have
