Miller: the whole desolate twelve days

He paid $65 for his second-class cabin on board the steamer Europa, which set out from New York towards Europe on August 21, 1870. It was well worth the money: during this trip Cincinnatus Hiner Miller solidified his image as the poet Joaquin Miller, the self-styled Western American that captivated British intellectuals like the Rossetti brothers.

He was armed not only with a pseudonym, but an entirely new persona (encouraged in part by San Francisco writer Ina Coolbrith, who equally re-branded herself). Dressing the part of a rough cowboy, both in manner and speech, Miller had also printed up a few business cards with his self-appointed nickname, "Joaquin Miller: Byron of the Rockies." In California, he had been a charming novelty, increasing his already ballooning self-esteem. His trip to New York, however, burst his bubble a bit: an attempt to use his European trip for financial gain as an overseas correspondent for the New York Tribune was a failure, as editor Horace Greeley had never heard of him and refused to see him.

Instead, Miller started his voyage in sadness. "I don't think I spoke a dozen words in the whole desolate twelve days," he admitted. Later, he would earn a reputation as an avid chatterbox and storyteller. Still, he intended to get himself noticed in England. Stopping at the grave of Lord Byron, his self-styled hero, he began loudly reciting an ode to the poet, attracting a crowd:

O master, here I bow before a shrine;
              Before the lordliest dust that every yet
Moved animate in human form divine.
              Lo! dust indeed to dust. The mould is set
              Above thee, and the ancient walls are wet,
And drip all day in dark and silent gloom;
              As if the cold gray stones could not forget
They great estate shrunk to this sombre room,
But learn to weep perpetual tears above thy tomb.

Sure enough, the American wearing cowboy boots (complete with spurs), often wielding a riding crop or a whip, with a massive cowboy hat atop his long unkempt locks of hair, received ample attention in England, fitting a certain expectation (or stereotype) among British fans.

*For much of this information, I am indebted to the cheeky biography Splendid Poseur: Joaquin Miller - American Poet (1953) by M. Marion Marberry.

Miller goes west: Fierce fashioner of destinies

Joaquin Miller often told the story that he was born in 1841 in a wagon train headed west just outside of Millersville, Indiana, a town named after an ancestor of his. None of this is true. In fact, he was born "Cincinnatus Hiner Miller" in 1837 near Liberty, Indiana. He was right about one point, however, even if his timing was a bit off: the Miller family headed west... eventually.

The father of the soon-to-be poet, novelist, journalist (and chronic liar) — Hulings Miller —had little money to support his wife and five children. He abandoned the idea of being a farmer, had a sojourn as a teacher, and raised sheep. When his stock of sheep were slaughtered by wolves, he blamed local Native Americans and demanded recompense from their chief. Hulings was a Justice of the Peace and had some local renown and, perhaps for that reason, the chief paid him off. It was likely this money that allowed him to purchase several acres of land in Oregon.

Finally, on St. Patrick's Day, March 17, 1852, the Miller family, including a 14-year old Joaquin/Cincinattus (certainly not a newborn) headed west. From Indiana, they went through Illinois and Missouri before joining a caravan on its way to the Oregon Territory. They finally arrived after a harrowing seven months' journey. One of his most memorable experiences was crossing the Missouri River, and that body of water inspired his poem "Missouri" (sometimes listed as "Mad Molder of the Continent"):

Where ranged thy black-maned, woolly bulls
   By millions, fat and unafraid;
Where gold, unclaimed, in cradlefuls,
   Slept 'mid the grass roots, gorge, and glade;
Where peaks companioned with the stars,
   And propt the blue with shining white,
With massive silver beams and bars,
   With copper bastions, height on height—
There wast thou born, O lord of strength!
O yellow lion, leap and length
Of arm from out an Arctic chine
To far, fair Mexic seas are thine!

What colors! Copper, clay, and gold
   In sudden sweep and fury blent,
Enwound, unwound, inrolled, unrolled,
   Mad molder of the continent.
What whirlpools and what choking cries
   From out the concave swirl and sweep,
As when some god cries out and dies
   Ten fathoms down thy tawny deep!
Yet on, right on, no time for death,
No time to gasp a second breath!
We plow a pathway through the main
To Moro's castle, Cuba's plain.

Hoar sire of hot, sweet Cuban seas,
   Gray father of the continent,
Fierce fashioner of destinies,
   Of states thou hast upreared or rent,
Thou know'st no limit: seas turn back
   Bent, broken, from the shaggy shore;
But thou. in thy resistless track,
   Art lord and master evermore.
Missouri, surge and sing and sweep!
Missouri, master of the deep,
From snow-reared Rockies to the sea
Sweep on, sweep on eternally!

Joaquin Miller: This was the new Eden

Ten years had gone by since Joaquin Miller published the British edition of The First Fam'lies of the Sierras. In England, he was an immediate sensation, known for his quirky, eccentric, western American ways and appearance. In the United States, he wrote a new preface to the slightly edited American edition, dated March 1, 1881:

The work was written in Europe in the first twilight of the now famous realistic school. But my maturer judgment, advised by the better sense of my American publishers, disapproves of some of its realistic features and I have here swept them away.

I have changed the name in the revised edition from "The First Fam'lies of the Sierras," to that of "The Danites in the Sierras," because the book treats chiefly of that once dreaded and bloody order. And then it was through this little volume, and what has grown out of it, that this name has become known to the two worlds.

With the new title The Danites of the Sierras, Miller was also associating the book with a stage adaptation that had premiered in the interim between the two additions. At least one critic admitted the stage version was a decent show, if somewhat long, despite his expectations for a disaster. It was wildly popular, at least partly because of Miller's eccentric reputation, and partly due to its anti-Mormon subject matter (the Danites were a murderous secret society of Mormons). The work may have been slightly inspired by Ina Coolbrith, whom Miller had recently met before his European travels. Coolbrith had broken away from the Mormons along with her mother and maintained a strong dislike of their practices.

The book version is written in Miller's usual style — short, choppy sentences with meandering themes that imply a lack of interest in polishing a final draft (which, in fact, Miller rarely did). It also features his stereotypically western interests, as noted by the "Sierras" in the title, by portraying the western United States in a romantic, if melodramatic,way:

This was the new Eden. It was so new, it was still damp. You could smell the paint, as it were. Man [i.e. Adam] had just arrived. He had not yet slept. The rib had not yet been taken from his side. He was alone.

In Miller's fictional California, everyone has extra gold in their gold-pans and men are exceedingly honest (none have a lock on their door). His complete inability to understand the hardships of western life as well as his chronic lying problem has since led to his dismissal by modern literary critics. In fact, Miller's contemporary popularity on the east coast and overseas was because they had no idea that Miller's cowboy style (and antics) were insincere. In The Danites of the Sierras, he predicts why in his own oblivious way:

When the great Californian novel which has been prophesied of, and for which the literary world seems to be waiting, comes to be written, it will not be a bit popular. And that is because every true Californian, no matter how depraved he may be, somehow has somewhat of the hero and the real man in his make-up. And as for the women that are there, they are angels. So you see there is no one to do the business of the heavy villain.

Miller: not fitted to advise

After gold was discovered in Alaska, the "Byron of Oregon" Joaquin Miller announced he was immediately headed north. Several newspapers wooed Miller to serve as a correspondent; he struck a deal with William Randolph Hearst and, on July 26, 1897, he took the steamer to Juneau. The correspondence and the trip both proved disastrous.

Known for his flamboyance and his ability to tell tales (often with very little truth in them), Miller aimed to impress his readers. He began writing his first dispatch before even reaching Alaska. The picture he painted was of an idyllic Eden, only a trifle cold, where anyone could live easily and comfortably with just a little money. Most, he suggested, would eventually strike it rich and earn millions. During his travels, he said, he carried with him a bouquet of newly-picked violets, fresh from the Alaska soil.

Miller himself traveled throughout Alaska, never once finding gold (all while writing back that gold was so plentiful that people stumbled over nuggets whenever they went out). When he heard about a treacherous trail through the Klondike, he set out on the 230-mile journey, fighting temperatures sometimes forty degrees below zero. He had a reputation as an adventurous frontiersman to uphold, after all. At 60 years old, Miller nearly died; luckily, he lost only two toes to frostbite. Of course, Miller never suggested he might have been wrong in his assessment of the Alaska as an easy-going paradise.

A critic of Miller allegedly confronted him for causing "the death of many fine men and the ruin of thousands." One journalist noted that Miller was taking advantage of his reputation as a famous writer but stressed that he "is not fitted to advise" gold-seekers. Miller considered suing for libel (but never did).

Miller: the love of the beautiful

With a few books already under his belt, Joaquin Miller made his way to Europe as a celebrated poet. He was received especially well by the English artist/post Dante Gabriel Rossetti in London. Miller wrote in his diary on May 3, 1871:

I find here among the Pre-Raphaelites one prevailing idea, one delight—the love of the beautiful. It is in the air. At least I find it wherever the atmosphere of the Rossettis penetrates, and that seems to be in every work of art—beautiful art. I am to dine with Dante Rossetti! ...I shall listen well, for this love of the beautiful is my old love—my old lesson. I have read it by the light of the stars, under the pines, or away down by the strange light on the sea, even on the peaks of the Pacific—everywhere. Strange that it should be so in the air here. And they all seem intoxicated with it, as with something new, the fragrance of a new flower that has only now blossomed after years of waiting.

Miller had first met Dante Gabriel Rossetti and his brother William Rossetti a few months earlier, but it was this dinner that he considered the most importance experience he had while overseas. He even wrote about it at length months later once back in the United States. Certainly, Miller attracted their attention, and that of many throughout England: though born in Indiana, he wanted to embody the image of a quintessential Californian. To that end, he crafted a Western look complete with oversized cowboy hat, red flannel shirt, spurred boots, a blue polka-dotted bandanna and, occasionally, chaps over his pants.

Though the Rossettis turned down the opportunity to have Songs of the Sierras dedicated to them, William later called it "a truly remarkable book" with "picturesque things picturesquely put." From that book's poem "The Californian":

Afar the bright Sierras lie
A swaying line of snowy white,
A fringe of heaven hung in sight
Against the blue base of the sky.

I look along each gaping gorge,
I hear a thousand sounding strokes
Like giants rending giant oaks,
Or brawny vulcan at his forge;
I see pick-axes flash and shine
And great wheels whirling in a mine.
Here winds a thick and yellow thread.
A moss'd and silver stream instead;
And trout that leap'd its rippled tide
Have turn'd upon their sides and died.

Miller: loudest when still

They called him "The Poet of the Sierras," but he called himself Joaquin Miller (though he was born in Indiana as Cincinattus Heine Miller). When he died on February 17, 1913, his last words were recorded as, "Take me away. Take me away."

As a boy, he moved with his family to Oregon. As a young man, he wandered and took a variety of jobs — a cook, judge, miner, Pony Express rider, and he was even jailed for stealing a horse in California. He also wrote essays, local color prose, and poetry. On a decade-long trip to London, he wore a comically-exaggerated Western outfit that included cowboy boots and spurs, a cape and sombrero. His appearance was a disgust to other American writers there like Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain. Welcomed as an authentic curiosity nevertheless, Miller earned a greater reputation overseas than at home – the British even gave him the nickname "The Byron of Oregon."

After his death, Miller was cremated and his ashes spread at his California estate, "The Hights," now Joaquin Miller Park. The event was photographed.

From Miller's 1890 collection In Classic Shades and Other Poems, "The True Poet":

O, heard ye the eloquent song of God's silence?
   The vines are His lines; and the emerald sod,
The page of His book, and the green-girdled islands
   Are rocked to their rest in the cradle of God.

God's poet is silence! His song is unspoken
   And yet so profound, and so loud, and so far,
That it thrills you and fills you in measures unbroken —
   The unceasing song of the first morning star.

The shallow seas moan! As a child they have muttered,
   And mourned, and lamented, and wept at their will;
The poems of God are too good to be uttered —
  The dreadful deep seas, they are loudest when still.