American writer, best know for his accounts of pioneering life in California. Born New York. Came to London in 1885 via Germany and Glasgow. Buried at Frimley, Surrey.
Some sources, contradicting the plaque at Leinster Terrace, say he died in Camberley.
2025: Mike Coleman looked out Harte's burial record and his abode was given as "The Red House Camberley". We found a photo of that house at and . The explains that Harte became great friends with the Van de Veldes whose house it was and that he often stayed there. Nowhere could we find the address of The Red House, until...
2025: We were pleased when John McCawley contacted us. He lives in one of the homes (GU15 1DG) built when the Red House was demolished c. mid 1960s. John provided to the OS 6-inch, 1888-1915 map which shows “Red House”, alongside the current map, which shows Samakand Close in place of the Red House drive. Only the stable block remains, renovated to become a home, Roman House. John has researched the history and wrote: “Griselda Van De Velde's husband was a Belgian diplomat, and it was Griselda that took Bret Harte in at their Red House residence.”
For evidence that Harte died at the Red House, John refers to the biography of Bret Harte by Gary Scharnhorst. On p.229 Scharnhorst quotes Geoffrey Bret Harte, Harte’s grandson: “ ‘He spent most of his final weeks at the Red House with Mme van de Velde…. He visited his son's family in Richmond for a few days and saw a specialist in London on April 26 before returning to Camberley. At about three in the afternoon of May 5 … he suffered a sudden hemorrhage {sic}. He rose and, asking that nobody should assist him, went slowly up the stairs to his room. He refused to [be] put to bed and spent his last moments in prayer. A short time after, there came a second hemorrhage.’ In the ‘very brief moments which elapsed’ between these attacks he was ‘surrounded only by intimate friends (one myself),’ Mme Van de Velde wrote the next day, and he ‘passed away without struggle or pain.’ He died at about six P.M., officially from heart failure caused by exhaustion. “
John also points out that Harte is buried in the churchyard of St Peter's Church, Frimley, just 2 miles from the site of the Red House.
Perhaps there is other, equally convincing, evidence that Harte died at the site of the official blue plaque in Leinster Terrace, but we have not found it.
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