''Tennessee's Partner'' is a short story by
Bret Harte, first published in the ''
Overland Monthly
The ''Overland Monthly'' was a monthly literary magazine, literary and cultural magazine, based in California, United States. It was founded in 1868 and published between the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th centu ...
'' in 1869, which has been described as "one of the earliest 'buddy' stories in American fiction."
It was later loosely adapted into four films.
Background
The characters are reportedly based on the lives of
Jason P. Chamberlain and James A. Chaffee, two inseparable friends, who settled in the California gold rush town
Second Garrotte in 1852, and built a house, later referred to as ''Bret Harte's Cabin''.
Homosexual context
Logan Scherer, writing about late-nineteenth-century literature in the ''
Oxford American
The ''Oxford American'' is a quarterly magazine that focuses on the American South.
First publication
The magazine was founded in late 1989 in Oxford, Mississippi, by Marc Smirnoff (born July 11, 1963).
The name "Oxford American" is a play on ' ...
'', notes that "Novels and stories about men exploring intimacy with each other abounded:
uch as
Uch (;
), frequently referred to as Uch Sharīf (;
; ''"Noble Uch"''), is a historic city in the Pakistan's Punjab, Pakistan, Punjab province. Uch may have been founded as Alexandria on the Indus, a town founded by Alexander the Great during I ...
Bret Harte’s 'Tennessee’s Partner' (1869)." Scherer adds:
Plot
The story is set in Sandy Bar, an
Old West town, and focuses on two men, nicknamed "Tennessee" and "Tennessee's Partner." While Tennessee is a reckless gambler, his partner is humorless and practical. Despite their disparate personalities, they share a strong friendship that did not fail even when Tennessee was responsible for his partner's bride estranging him.
When Tennessee blatantly tries to steal from a stranger, he is arrested and put on trial. Tennessee's Partner tries to stick up for his friend, saying that he might not agree with everything Tennessee does, but he still supports him. Tennessee's Partner then tries to bribe the judge, so as to pay for his partner's crime, but the judge refuses. Tennessee shakes hands with his partner, telling him, "
Euchre
Euchre or eucre ( ) is a trick-taking game, trick-taking card game played in Canada, Great Britain, New Zealand, Upstate New York, and the Midwestern United States. It is played with a deck of 24, 25, 28, or 32 standard playing cards. There are no ...
d, old man!" Tennessee's Partner claims that he was just passing through and decided to check up on Tennessee. Neither speak to each other again and Tennessee is hanged.
Tennessee's Partner asks for the body of his friend and as he takes the donkey-cart away, other people follow out of curiosity or jest. Once Tennessee's Partner reaches his cabin, he makes a grave for his dead partner and declares that he carried Tennessee home, just as he'd done while his friend was alive. Weeks later, after declining in health, Tennessee's Partner lies in his death bed on a stormy night and thinks that he needs to go get Tennessee. After an attempt to rise, he is stopped by his attendant, but believes himself to be braving the storm, looking for Tennessee on the trail. In his final moment, Tennessee's Partner imagines himself finding Tennessee, and the story ends with "And so they met".
Publication history
First printed in California in the ''Overland Monthly'' for October 1869, "Tennessee's Partner" was reprinted the following month in Baltimore, in the ''New Eclectic Magazine''. In 1870 the story was published in a collected volume of Harte's short stories, printed in Boston, ''The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Sketches''. Reviews of the volume appeared in the ''
Lakeside Monthly'', the ''
Atlantic Monthly'' and in ''
Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine
''Blackwood's Magazine'' was a British magazine and miscellany printed between 1817 and 1980. It was founded by publisher William Blackwood and originally called the ''Edinburgh Monthly Magazine'', but quickly relaunched as ''Blackwood's Edinbu ...
'', all giving particular mention to "Tennessee's Partner". In the same year the story was anthologized in London in
George Augustus Sala's ''A 3rd Supply of Yankee Drolleries: The Most Recent Works of the Best American Humourists''. Thereafter it continued to appear in magazines, such as Boston's weekly ''
Every Saturday'' of Jan. 14, 1871,
''Every Saturday'', Volume 2
at Google Books. as well as in other anthologies and in collections of Bret Harte's work.
Literary criticism
* Tara Penry, "'Tennessee's Partner' as Sentimental Western Metanarrative", ''American Literary Realism'', Vol. 36, No. 2 (Winter, 2004), pp. 148–165.
Films
The short story has been filmed as '' Tennessee's Pardner'' (1916), '' The Flaming Forties'' (1924), '' The Golden Princess'' (1925), and '' Tennessee's Partner'' (1955).
References
External links
* Bret Harte
"Tennessee's Partner"
from ''The Short-Story: Specimens Illustrating Its Development'', edited by Brander Matthews
James Brander Matthews (February 21, 1852 – March 31, 1929) was an American academic, writer and literary critic. He was the first full-time professor of dramatic literature at Columbia University in New York and played a significant role in est ...
(New York: American Book Company, 1907). At Bartleby.com.
{{Bret Harte
Short stories by Bret Harte
Western (genre) short stories
Works originally published in Overland Monthly