CALIFO^NIACS
BY
INEZ HAYNES IRWIM
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THE CALIFORNIACS
Frim thr Painting hj WILLIAM KEITH
' Yes. California is quite as beautiful as her poets insist
and her painters prove."
THE
CALIFORNIACS
BY
INEZ HAYNES IRWIN
AUTHOR OF
" PHOEBE AND ERNEST "
SAN FRANCISCO
A.M.ROBERTSON
MCMXVI
Copyright, 1916
BY
A. M. Robertson
DONE BY
PHILOPOLIS PRESS
SAN FRANCISCO
TO M. C. AND A. J. G.
WHO SHOWED ME MUCH OF THE
SAN FRANCISCO I LOVE
This essay was published in Sunset, the Pacific
Monthly, for February, 1916. It is reprinted by
the kind permission of the publishers of Sunset,
Woodhead, Field and Company.
THE CALIFORNIACS.
[ALIFORNIA, which pro-
ducesthe maximum of scen-
ery and the minimum of
weather; California, which
grows the biggest men, trees, vegetables
and fleas in the world, and the most
beautiful women, babies, flowers and
fruits; California, which, on the side,
delivers a yearly crop of athletes, boxers,
tennis players, swimmers, runners and
a yearly crop of geniuses, painters,
sculptors, architects, authors, musicians,
adiors, producers and photographers;
California, where every business man
writes novels or plays or poetry or all
three; California, which has spawned
2 THE CALIFORNIACS
the Coppa, Carmel and San Quentin
schools of Hterature; Cahfornia, where
all the ex-pugs become statesmen and
all the ex-cons become literateurs;
California, the home of the movie, the
Spanish mission, the golden poppy, the
militant labor leader, the turkey-trot,
the grizzly bear, the bunny-hug, pro-
gressive politics and most American
slang; California, which can at a mo-
ment's notice produce an earthquake,
a volcano, a geyser; California, where
the spring comes in the fall and the fall
comes in the summer and the summer
comes in the winter and the winter
never comes at all; California, where
everybody is born beautiful and nobody
grows old — that California is populated
mainly with Californiacs.
THE CALIFORNIACS 3
CALIFORNIA, I repeat, is popu-
lated mainly with Californiacs;
but the Californiacs are by no means
confined to California. They have, in-
deed, wandered far afield. New York,
for instance, has a coloay so large that
the average New Yorker is well ac-
quainted with the symptoms of Califor-
noia. The Californiac is unable to talk
about anything but California, except
when he interrupts himself to knock
every other place on the face of the
earth. He looks with pity on anybody
born outside of California and he be-
lieves that no one who has ever seen
California willingly lives elsewhere. He
himself often lives elsewhere, but he
never admits that it is from choice. He
refers to California always as "God's
country", and if you permit him to
4 THE CALIFORNIACS
start his God's country line of talk, it is
all up with intelligent conversation for
the rest of the day. He will discourse
on California scenery, climate, crops,
athletes, women, art-sense, etc., ad libi-
tuniy ad infinitum and ad nausedm. He
is a walking compendium of those
Who's Whosers who were born in
California. He can reel off statistics
which flatter California, not by the
yard, but by the mile. And although
he is proud enough of the ease and
abundance with which things grow in
California, he is even more proud of
the size to which they attain. Gibes
do not stop the Californiac, nor jeers
give him pause. He believes that he
was appointed to talk about California.
And Heaven knows, he does. He has
plenty of sense of humor otherwise,
but mention California and it is as
THE CALIFORNIACS 5
though he were condudting a revival
meeting.
ONCE a party which included a
Californiac were taking an even-
ing stroll. Presently a huge full moon
cut loose from the horizon and began
a tour of the sky. Admiring comments
were made. ** I suppose you have them
bigger in California," a young woman
observed slyly to the Californiac. He
did not smile; he only looked serious.
Again, a Californiac mentioned to me
that he had married an eastern woman.
"Any eastern woman who marries a
Californian," I observed in the spirit
of bandinage, '* really takes a very great
risk. Her husband must always be
comparing her with the beautiful wo-
men of his native state." **Yes," he
answered, **I often say to my wife,
6 THE CALIFORNIACS
'Lucy, you're a very pretty woman,
but you ought to see some of our San
Francisco girls.'" '*I hope," I re-
plied, *'that she boxed your ears." He
did not smile; he only looked pained.
Once only have I seen the Californiac
silenced. A dinner party which in-
cluded a globe-trotter, were listening
to a vid:im of an advanced stage of
Calif ornoia. He had just disposed of
the East, South and Middle West with
a few caustic phrases and had started on
his favorite subject. * * You are certainly
a wonderful people," the globe-trotter
said, when he had finished. ** Every
large city in Europe has a colony of
Californians, all rooting for California
as hard as they can, and all living as far
away as they can possibly get."
THE CALIFORNIACS 7
MYSELF, Californoia did not
bother me for a long time after
I first went to California. I am not
only accustomed to an oflFensive insular
patriotism on the part of my country-
men, but, in addition, all my life I have
had to apologize to them for being a
New Englander. The statement that
I was brought up in Boston always pro-
duces a sad silence in my listeners, and
xt long look of pity. Soft-hearted stran-
gers do their best to conceal their tears,
but they rarely succeed. I have reached
the point now, however, where I no
longer apologize for being a Bostonian ;
I proffer no explanations. I make the
damaging admission the instant I meet
people and leave the matter of further
recognition to them. If they choose
to consider that Boston bringing-up a
8 THE CALIFORNIACS
social bar sinister, so be it. I have dis-
covered recently that the fa<5t that I
happened to be born in Rio Janeiro
offers some amelioration. But nothing
can entirely remove the handicap. So,
I reiterate, indurated as I am to pity,
the contemptuous attitude of the aver-
age Californiac did not at first annoy
me. But after a while even I, calloused
New Englander that I am, began to
resent it.
This, for instance, may happen to
you at any time in California — it is the
Californiac's way of paying the greatest
compliment he knows:
'*1^0 you know," somebody says,
-L/ **I should never guess that you
were an Easterner. You're quite like
one of us — cordial and simple and
natural."
THE CALIFORNIACS 9
**But — but," you say, trying to col-
lect your wits against this left-handed
compHment, "I don't think I differ
from the average Eastener."
**Oh, yes, you do. You don't notice
it yourself, of course. But I give you
my word, nobody will ever suspect that
you are an Easterner unless you tell it
you rself . They rea/fy won' t. "
"But — but," you say, beginning to
come back, **I have no obje<ftion what-
ever to being known as an Easterner."
That holds her for a moment. And
while she is casting about for phrases
with which to meet this extraordinary
condition, you rally gallantly. "In facft,
I am proud of being an Easterner."
That ends the conversation.
Or perhaps somebody in a group asks
you what part of the East you're from.
"New York," perhaps you say.
10 THE CALIFORNIACS
*'New York. My husband was from
New York," she goes on. "He was
brought up there. But he's Hved in
CaHfornia for twenty years. He got
the idea a few years ago that he wanted
to go back East. I said to him, 'All
right, we'll go back and visit for a while
and see how you like it.' One month
was enough for him. The people there
are so cold and formal and conven-
tional, and then, my dear, your
climate /' '
"Yes," another takes it up. "When
I was in the East a friend invited me
out to his place in the country. He
wanted me to see his pine grove. My
dears, if you could have seen those little
sticks of trees."
' * I went to New York once, " a third
chimes in. "I never could get accus-
tomed to carrying an ice umbrella — I
THE CALIFORNIA CS 1 1
couldn't close it when I got home. I'd
come to stay for a month but I left in a
week."
AND so it goes. No feeling on
anybody's part of your sense of
outrage. In fad:, Californiacs always
use the word eastern in your presence
as a synonym for coid^ conventional^ dully
stupid, humorless.
Sometimes it actually casts a blight —
this Californoia — on those who come
to live in California. I remember say-
ing once to a young man — just in
passing and merely to make conversa-
tion; **Are you a native son?'*
His face at once grew very serious.
* ' No, "he admitted reluctantly. ' ' You
see, it was my misfortune to be born in
Iowa, but I came out here to college.
After I'd graduated I made up my mind
12 THE CALIFORNIACS
to go into business here. And now I
feel that all my interests are here. Of
course it isn't quite the same as being
born here. But sometimes I feel as
though I really were a native son.
Everybody is so kind. They do every-
thing in their power to make you for-
get-"
* * Good heavens, " I interrupted, ' ' are
you apologizing to me for being born
in Iowa? I've never been in Iowa, but
nothing could convince me that it isn't
just as good a place as any other place,
including California. The trouble with
you is that you 've let these Californiacs
buffalo you. What you want to do is
to throw out your chest and insist that
God made Iowa first and the rest of the
world out of the leavings."
THE CALIFORNIACS 13
IF you mention the eastern winter to
a Californiac, he tells you with great
particularity of the dreadful storms he
encountered there. Nothing whatever
about the beauty of the snow. To a
Californiac, snow and ice are more to
be dreaded than hell-fire and brimstone.
If you mention the eastern summer, he
refers in scathing terms to the puny
trees we produce, the inadequate fruits
and vegetables. Nothing at all about
their delicious flavor. To a Californiac,
beauty is measured only by size. Noth-
ing that England or France has to offer
makes any impression on the Calif orniac
because it's different from California.
As for the glory that was Greece and
the grandeur that was Rome, he simply
never sees it. The Netherlands are
dismissed with one adjective — flat. For
14 THE CALIFORNIACS
a country to be flat is, in the opinion of
the Californiac, to reUnquish its final
claim to beauty. A Californiac once
made the statement to me that Califor-
nians considered themselves a little bet-
ter than the rest of the country. I
considered that the prize Californiacism
until I heard the following from *a
woman-Calif orniac in Europe : * * / saw
nothing in all Italy y' she said, ''to com-
pare with the Italian quarter of San
Francisco."
NOW I am by no means a rabid
New Englander. I love the New
England scene and I have the feeling
for it that we all have for the place in
which we played as children. Most
New Englanders have a kind of tem-
peramental shyness. They are still like
the English from whom they are de-
THE CALIFORNIACS 15
scended. It is difficult for them to talk
about the things on which they feel
most deeply. The typical New Eng-
lander would discuss his native place
with no more ease than he would dis-
cuss his father and mother. In Cali-
fornia I often had the impulse to break
through thatinhibitingsilence — to talk
about Massachusetts; the lovely, ten-
der, tamed, domesticated country; its
rolling, softly-contoured, maternal-look-
ing hills; its forests like great green
cathedral chapels; its broad, placid riv-
ers, its little turbulent ones; its springs
and runnels and waterfalls and rivulets
all silver-shining and silver-sounding;
the myriads of lakes and countless ponds
that make the world look as though the
blue sky had broken and fallen in pieces
over the landscape; the spring when
first the arbutus comes up pink and
16 THE CALIFORNIACS
delicate through the snow and later the
fields begin to glimmer with the white
of white violets, to flash with the purple
of purple ones, and the children hang
May baskets at your door; the summer
when the fields are buried knee-deep
under a white drift of daisies or sealed
by the gold planes of buttercups, and
the old lichened stone walls are smoth-
ered in blackberry vines ; the autumn
with the goldenrod and blue asters; the
woods like conflagrations burning gold
and orange, flaming crimson and scar-
let; and especially that fifth season, the
Indian summer, when the vistas are
tunnels of blue haze and the air tastes
of honey and wine; then winter and
the first snow (does anybody, brought
up in snow country, ever outgrow
the thrill of the first fluttering
flakes?), the marvel of the fairy frost-
THE CALIFORNIACS 17
world into which the whole country
turns.
Do you suppose I ever talked about
Massachusetts? Not once. And so I
have one criticism to bring against the
Californiac. He is a person to whom
you cannot talk about home. He grows
restive the instant you get off the sub-
ject of California. Praise of any other
place to his mind implies a criticism of
California.
ON the other hand, that frenzied
patriotism has its wonderful and
its beautiful side. It is a result partly
of the startling beauty and fecundity of
California and partly of a geographical
remoteness and sequestration which
turned the Californians in on them-
selves for everything. To it is due
much of the extraordinary development
18 THE CALIFORNIACS
of California. For to the average Cali-
fornian the best is not only none too
good for California, but she can have
nothing else. Californians — even those
not suffering from an offensive case of
Californoia — speak of their state in
reverential terms. To hear Maud
Younger — known everywhere as the
"millionaire waitress" and the most
devoted labor-fan in the country — pro-
nounce the word California, should be
a lesson to any actor in emotional sound
values. The thing that struck me most
on my first visit to California was that
boosting instinct. In store windows
everywhere I saw signs begging the
passer-by to root for this development
project or that. Several years ago,
passing down Market street, I ran into
a huge crowd gathered at the Lotta
Fountain. I stopped to investigate.
THE CALIFORNIACS 19
Moving steadily from a top to a lower
window of one of the newspaper offices,
as though unwound from a reel, ran a
long strip of paper covered with a list
of figures. To this list new figures
were constantly added. They were the
sums of money being subscribed at that
very moment for the Exposition. Ap-
plause and cheers greeted each addi-
tional sum. That was the financial
germ from which grew the wonderful
Arabian Nights city by the bay. It was
typically Calif ornian — that scene — and
typically Californian the spirit back of
it. And four years later, when the
outbreak of the war brought temporary
panic, there was no diminution in that
spirit. Whether it was a **Buying-
Day," a '* Beach Day," an ''Automo-
mobile Parade, " a " Prosperity Din ner, "
San Francisco was always ready to insist
20 THE CALIFORNIACS
that everything was going well. It
was the same spirit which inspired a
whole city the day the Exposition
opened to rise early to walk to the
grounds, and to stand, an avalanche
of humanity, waiting for the gates to
part. It was the same spirit which in-
spired the whole city, the night the
Exposition ended, to stay for the clos-
ing ceremonies until midnight, and
then, without even picking a flower
from the abundance they were aban-
doning, silently and sorrowfully to walk
home.
LET'S look into the claims of these
Californiacs.
I can unfortunately say little about
the State of California. For with the
exception of a few short trips away
from San Francisco, and one meager few
THE CALIFORNIACS 21
days' trip into the South, I have never
explored it. Nobody warned me of the
danger of such a proceeding, and so I
innocently went straight to San Fran-
cisco the first time I visited the coast.
Stranger, let me warn you now. If
ever you start for California with the
intention of seeing anything of the
State, do that before you enter San
Francisco. If you must land in San
Francisco first, jump into a taxi, pull
down the curtains, drive through the
city, breaking every speed law, to
''Third and Townsend," sit in the
station until a train, — some train, any
train — pulls out, and go with it. If in
crossing Market street you raise that taxi-
curtain as much as an inch, believe me,
stranger, you are running a risk. You ' 11
be tempted never to leave San Fran-
cisco. Myself, both times I have gone
22 THE CALIFORNIA'S
to California, I have vowed to sec
Yosemite, the big trees, the string of
beautiful old missions which dot the
state, some of the quaint, languid, semi-
tropical towns of the south, some of the
brisk, brilliant, bustling towns of the
north. But I have never really done it
because I fell in love with San Fran-
cisco.
I treasure my few impressions of the
state, however. Towns and cities, com-
paratively new, might be three centur-
ies old, so beautifully have they sunk
into the colorful, deeply configurated
background that the country provides.
Even a city as thriving and wide-awake
as Stockton has about its plaza an air
so venerable that it is a little like the
ancient hill cities of Italy; more like,
I have no doubt, the ancient plain cities
of Spain. And San Juan Bautista —
THE CALIFORNIACS 23
with its history-haunted old Inn, its
ghost-haunted old Mission and its rose-
filled old Mission garden where every-
thing, even the sun-dial, seems to sleep
— is as old as Babylon or Tyre.
You will be constantly reminded of
Italy, although California is not quite
so vividly colored, and perhaps of Japan,
for you are always coming on places
that are startlingly like scenes in Jap-
anese prints. Certain aspects from the
bay of the town of Sausalito, with
strangely shaped and softly tinted houses
tumbling down the hillside, certain
asped;s of the bay from the heights of
Berkeley, with the expanses of hills and
water and the inevitable fog smudging
a smoky streak here and there, are more
like the pidture country of the Japanese
masters than any American reality.
24 THE CALIFORNIACS
IF I were to pick the time when I
should travel in California, it would
be in the early summer. All the rest
of the world at that moment is
green. California alone is sheer gold.
One composite pid:ure remains in my
memory — the residuum of that single
trip into the south. On one side the
Pacific — tigerish, calm, powerfully pal-
pitant, stretching into eternity in enor-
mous bronze-gold, foam-laced planes.
On the other side, great, bare, volup-
tuously-contoured hills, running parallel
with the train and winding serpentinely
on for hours and hours of express
speed; hills that look, not as though
they were covered with yellow grass
but as though they were carved from
massy gold. At intervals come ravines
filled with a heavy green growth. Oc-
THE CALIFORNIACS 25
casionally on those golden hill-surfaces
appear trees.
Oh, the trees of California!
If they be live-oaks — and on the hills
they are most likely to be live-oaks —
they are semi-globular in shape like our
apple trees, only huge, of a clamant,
virile, poisonous green. They grow
alone, and each one of them seems to
be standing knee-deep in shadow so
thick and moist that it is like a deep
pool of purple paint.
Occasionally, on the flat stretches,
eucalyptus hedges film the distance.
And the eucalyptus — tall, straight, of
a uniform slender size, the baby leaves
of one shape and color, misted with a
strange bluish fog-powder, the mature
leaves of another shape and color, deep-
green on one side, purple on the other,
curved and carved like a scimitar of
26 THE CALIFORNIA'S
Damascus steel, the blossoms hanging
in great soft bunches, white or shell-
pink, delicate as frost-stars — the euca-
lyptus is the most beautiful tree in the
world. Standing in groups, they seem
to color the atmosphere. Under them
the air is like a green bubble. Standing
alone, the long trailing scarfs of bark
blowing away from their bodies — they
are like ragged, tragic gypsy queens.
THEN there is the madrone. The
wonder of the madrone is its bole.
Of a tawny red-gold — glossy — it con-
tributes an arresting coppery note to
green forest vistas. Somebody has said
that in the distance they look like naked
Indians slipping through the woods.
Last, there is the redwood tree ! And
the redwood is more beautiful even
than the stone-pine of Italy. Gray-
THE CALIFORNIACS 27
lavender in color, hard as though cut
from stone, swelling at the base to an
incredible bulk, shooting straight to an
incredible height and tapering exquis-
itely as it soars, it drops not foliage but
plumage. To walk in a redwood for-
est at night and to look up at the stars
tangled in the tree-tops, to watch the
moonlight sift through the masses of
soft black-green feathers, down, down,
until strained to a diaphanous tenuity
it lies a faint silver gossamer at your
feet, is to feel that you are living in one
of the old woodcuts which illustrate
Shakespeare's *' Midsummer Night's
Dream."
Most people in first visiting Califor-
nia are obsessed with the flowers, the
abundant callas, the monstrous roses,
the giant geraniums. But I never ceased
to wonder at the beauty of the trees.
28 THE CALIFORNIACS
And remember, I have not as yet seen
what they call the ''big" trees.
Yes, California is quite as beautiful
<Z as her poets insist and her painters
(^ prove. It turns everybody who goes
there into a poet, at least temporarily.
Babes lisp in numbers and those of the
native population who don't actually
write poetry, talk it — no matter what
the subjed: is. Take the case of Sam
Berger. Sam Berger — I will explain
for the benefit of my women readers —
was first a distinguished amateur heavy-
weight boxer who later became spar-
ring partner for Bob Fitzimmons and
manager to Jim Jeffries. In an inter-
view on the subjedt of boxing, Mr.
Berger said, "Boxing is an art — just as
much so as music. To excel in it,
you must have a conception of time, of
balance, of distance. The man who
THE CALIFORNIACS 29
attempts to box without such a con-
ception is Uke a person who tries to be
a musician without having an ear for
music."
Is it not evident from this that Mr.
Berger would have become a poet if a
more vahant art had not claimed him?
In that ideal future state in which all
the world-parts are assembled and per-
fectly coordinated into one vast self-
governing machine, I hope that Cali-
fornia will be turned into a great
international reservation, given over
entirely to poets, lovers and honeymoon
couples. It is too beautiful to waste
on mere bromidic residential or busi-
ness interests.
30 THE CALIFORNIACS
SO much for the State of California.
I confess with shame that that is all
I know about it, although I reiterate
that that ignorance is not my fault. So
now for San Francisco.
San Francisco!
San Francisco!
Many people do not realize that San
Francisco tips a peninsula projecting
west and north from the coast of Cali-
fornia. Between that peninsula and the
mainland lies a blue arm of the blue San
Francisco bay. So that when you have
bisected the continent and come to
what appears to be the edge of the
western world, you must take a ferry
to get to the city itself.
I hope you will cross that bay first
at night, for there is no more romantic
hour in which to enter San Francisco ;
THE CALIFORNIACS 31
the bay spreading out back of you
a-plash with all kinds of illuminated
water craft and the city lifting up before
you ablaze with thousands of pin point
lights, for San Francisco's site is a hilly
one and the city lies like a jewelled
mantle thrown carelessly over many
peaks. You land at the Ferry build-
ing — surely the most welcoming station
in the world — walk through it, come
out at the other side on a circular place
which is one end of Market street, the
main artery of the city. If this is by
day you can see that the other end of
Market street is Twin Peaks — a pair
of hills that imprint bare, exquisitely
shaped contours of gold on a blue sky
— with the effe(5t somehow of a stage-
drop. If you come by night, you will
find Market street crowded with people,
lighted with a display of eledtric signs
32 THE CALIFORNIACS
second only in size, number, brilliancy
and ingenuitytothoseon Broadway. But
whether you come by day or by night the
instant that you emerge from the Ferry
building, San Francisco gets you. Mar-
ket street is one of the most entertain-
ing main-traveled urban roads in the
world. Newspaper offices in a cluster,
store windows flooded with light, filled
with advertising devices of the most
amusing originality, cars, taxis, crowds,
it has all the ear-marks of the main
street of any big American city, with
the addition, at intervals, of the pretty
** islands" so typical of the boulevards
of Paris and with, last of all, a zip and
a zest, a pep and a punch, a go and a
ginger that is distinctively Calif ornian.
I repeat that California throws her first
tentacle into your heart as you stand
there wondering whether you'll go to
THE CALIFORNIACS 33
your hotel or, plunging headforemost
into the crowds, swim with the cur-
rent.
IMAGINE a city built not on seven
but a hundred hills. I am sure there
are no less than a hundred and proba-
bly there are more. Certainly I climbed
a hundred. On three sides the sea laps
the very hem of this city and on one
side the forest comes down to its very
toes. That is, when all is said, the most
marvelous thing about San Francisco —
that the sea and forest come straight to
its borders. And as, because of its
peninsula situation they form the only
roads out, sea and forest are integral
parts of the city life. It accounts for
the fadt that you see no city pallor in
the faces on the streets and perhaps for
the fad that you see so little unhappi-
34 THE CALIFORNIACS
ness on them. On Sundays and holi-
days crowds pour across the bay all day
long and then, loaded with flowers and
greens, pour back all the evening long.
As for flowers and greens, the hotels,
shops, cafes, the little hole-in-the-wall
restaurants are full of them. They are
so cheap on the streets that everybody
wears them. Everybody seems to play
as much as possible out of doors. Every-
body seems to sleep out of doors. Every-
body has just come from a hike or is
just going off^ on one. Imagine a climate
rainless three-quarters of the year,
which permits the workingman to
tramp all through his vacation with the
impedimenta only of a blanket, money-
less if he will, but with the certainty
always that the orchards and gardens
will provide him with food.
THE CALIFORNIACS 35
THROUGH the city runs one cen-
tral hill-spine. From this crest,
by day, you look on one side across the
bay with its three beautiful islands, bare
Yerba Buena, jeweled Alcatraz and
softly-fluted Angel Island, all seemingly
adrift in the blue waters, to Marin
county. The waters of the bay are as
smooth as satin, as blue as the sky, and
they are slashed in every direction with
the silver wakes left by numberless
ferryboats. Those ferryboats, by the
way, are extremely graceful ; they look
like white peacocks dragging enormous
white-feather tails. By night the bay
view from the central hill-spine shows
the cities of Berkeley and Oakland like
enormous planes of crystal tilted against
the distance, the ferryboats illuminated
but still peacock-shaped, floating on the
36 THE CALIFORNIACS
black waters like monster toys of Ven-
etian glass. In the background, rising
from low hills, peeks the blue triangle
of Mt. Diablo. In the foreground re-
poses Tamalpais — a mountain shaped
in the figure of a woman — lying prone.
The wooded slopes of Tamalpais form
the nearest big playground for San
Franciscans — and Tamalpais is to the
San Franciscan what Fujiyama is to the
Japanese. Would that I had space to
tell here of the time when their moun-
tain caught fire and thousands — men,
women and children — turned out to
save it ! Everybody helped who could.
Even the bakers of San Francisco worked
all night and without pay to make bread
for the fire-fighters.
By day, on the city side of the crest,
you catch glimpses of other hills, cov-
ered for the most part with buildings
THE CALIFORNIACS 37
like lustrous pearl cubes, for San Fran-
cisco is a pearl-gray city. At night you
can look straight down the side streets
to Market street on a series of illumin-
ated restaurant signs which projed: over
the sidewalk at right angles to the build-
ings. It is as though a colossal golden
stairway tempted your foot.
PERHAPS after all the most breath-
taking quality about San Francisco
is these unexped:ed glimpses that you
are always getting of beautiful hill-
heights and beautiful valley-depths.
Sunset skies like aerial banners flare
gold and crimson on the tops of those
hills. City lights, like nests of dia-
monds, glitter and glisten in the depths
of those valleys. Then the fogs! I
have stood at my window at night and
watched the ragged armies of the air
38 THE CALIFORNIACS
drift in from the bay and take possession
of the whole city. Such fogs. Not
distilled from pea soup like the London
fogs; moist air-gauzes rather, pearl-
touched and glimmering; so thick
sometimes that it is as though the world
had veiled herself in mourning, so thin
often that the stars shine through with
a delicate muffled lustre. By day, even
in the full golden sunshine of California,
the view from the hills shows a scene
touched here and there with fog.
As for the hills themselves, steep as
they are, street cars go up and down
them. What is more extraordinary, so
do automobiles. The hill streets are
cobbled commonly; but often, for the
better convenience of vehicles, there is
a central path of asphalt, smoothly fin-
ished. I have seen those asphalt planes
by day when a flood, first of rain and
THE CALIFORNIACS 39
then of sun, turned them to rivers of
molten silver; I have seen them by
night, when an automobile standing at
the hilltop and pouring its light over
them, turned them to rivers of molten
gold.
WITHIN walking distance of the
ferry is the heart of the city.
Here are the newspaper buildings,
many big and little hotels, numberless
restaurants, the theatres and the shop-
ping district. The region about Union
Square, Geary street, Grant Avenue,
Post and Sutter streets, is a busy and
attra(5tive area. You could live in San
Francisco for a month and ask no
greater entertainment than walking
through it. Beyond are various foreign
quarters and distrid:s inevitably growing
colder and more residential in aspect
40 THE CALIFORNIA<:S
as they get farther away from the city
heart. Beyond the heights where one
catches gUmpses of the ocean, the city
slopes to abrupt cHfFs along the outer
harbor, and here are mansions whose
windy gardens overhang the surf. Be-
yond Market street is the area described
in the phrase, "south of the slot".
Superficially drab and gray in aspect,
it has been celebrated again and again
in song and story. From this region
have come the majority of San Fran-
cisco's champion athletes. Here beats
the red heart of the labor world. And
here still stands the exquisite gem of
Spanish Catholicism — Mission Dolores.
THE CALIFORNIACS 41
HERE and there — and it is a little
like meeting a ghost in a crowded
street — through all the beauty and
freshness of the new city, the bones of
the old project: the lofty ruins, ivy-
hung, of a huge Nob Hill Palace here;
the mere foundation, bush-encircled,
of a big old family mansion there;
elaborate rusty fences of Mid- Victorian
iron which enclose nothing; wide low
steps of Mid- Victorian marble which
lead nowhere. The San Franciscan
speaks always with a tender, regretful
affection of that dead city, but, as is
natural, he speaks of it less and less.
For myself, I am glad now that I
never saw the city that was; for I can
love the city that is with no arriere
pensee.
They serve, however — those bones
42 THE CALIFORNIACS
of a dead past — to remind the stranger
of that marvelous rebuilding feat, to
accent the virility and vitality, the cour-
age and enterprise of a people who,
before a half decade had passed had
eliminated almost every trace of the
greatest disaster of modern time.
PERHAPS, after the beauty of its
situation, thestrangeris most struck
with the picturesqueness given to the
city by its cosmopolitan atmosphere.
For San Francisco, serving as one of
the two main great gateways to an
enormous country, a front entrance to
America from the Orient, a back en-
trance from Europe and a side entrance
from South America, standing halfway
between tropics and polar regions, a
great port of the greatest ocean in the
world, becomes naturally one of the
THE CALIFORNIACS 43
world's main caravanseries, a meeting
place of nations.
Chinatown is not far off from the
heart of the city. And Chinatown per-
vades San Francisco. It is as though
it distilled some faint oriental perfume
with which constantly it suffuses the
air. You meet the Chinese everywhere.
The men differ in no wise from the men
with whom the smaller Chinatowns of
the East have acquainted us. The
women make the streets exotic. Little,
slim-limbed creatures, amber-skinned,
jewel-eyed, dressed in silk of black or
pastel colors, loosely coated and com-
fortably trousered, their jet-black shin-
ing hair filled with ornaments, they
go about in groups which include old
women and young matrons, half-grown
girls slender as forsythia branches, babies
arrayed like princes. You are likely to
44 THE CALIFORNIACS
meet groups of Hindus, picturesquely
turbaned, coffee-brown in color, slight-
figured, straight-featured, black-beard-
ed. You see Japanese and Filipinos.
And as for Latins — French, Italians
and Spanish flood the city. There are
eight thousand Montenegrins alone in
California. I never suspected there
were eight thousand in Montenegro.
And our own continent contributes
Canadians, Mexicans, citizens from
every State in the Union. In addition,
you run everywhere into soldiers and
sailors. The bits of talk you overhear
in the street are so exciting that you
become a professional eavesdropper,
strong-languaged, picturesquely slangy,
pungent narrative. Sometimes the
speaker has come up from Arizona,
or New Mexico or Texas, sometimes
down from Alaska, Washington or
THE CALIFORNIACS 45
Oregon, sometimes across from Ne-
vada or Montana or Wyoming. And
with many of them — at least with
those th at live west of the rocky moun-
tains — San Francisco is always (and I
never failed to respond to the thrill of
it) '*the City". Not a city or any
city, but the city — as though there
were no other city on the face of the
earth.
ALL this alien picturesqueness adds
enormously of course to the San
Franciscan's native picturesqueness.
Not that the Californian needs adven-
titious aid in this matter. Indeed this
cosmopolitanism of atmosphere serves
best as a background, these alien types
as a foil, for the native-born. For the
Californians are a comely people. No
traveler has failed — at least no man has
46 THE CALIFORNIACS
failed — to pay tribute in passing to the
Californian women. And they are
beautiful. In that climate which pro-
duces bigness in everything, they grow
to heroic size. And as a result of a
life inevitably open-air in an atmos-
phere always fog-touched, they have
eyes of a notable limpiditv and com-
plexions of a striking vividness. To
walk through that limited area which
is the city's heart — especially when the
theatres are letting out — is to come on
beauty not in one pretty girl at a time,
nor in pairs and trios, nor by scores
and dozens; it is to see it in battalias
and acres, and all of them meeting
your eyes with the frank open gaze of
the West. San Francisco is, I fancy,
the only city on the globe where any
musical comedy audience is always
more beautiful than any musical com-
THE CALIFORNIACS 47
edy chorus. They are not only beau-
tiful — they are magnificent.
Watch in the Admission Day parade
for the Native Daughters of the Golden
West — stalwart, stunning young giant-
esses marching with a splendid carriage
and a superb poise — they seem like a
new race of women.
AND the climate being of such kind
that, for three-quarters of the year
you can count on unvarying sunny
weather, the women dress on the streets
with nothing short of gorgeousness.
All the colors that the rainbow knows
and a few that it has never seen, appear
here. And worn with such cbic, such
verve! Not even in Paris, where may
appear a more conventional smartness,
is sartorial picturesqueness carried off
with such an air of authority. Polaire,
48 THE CALIFORNIACS
who was advertised as the ugliest woman
in the world, should have made a for-
tune in California. For the Californian
does not really know what female ugli-
ness is. I have a theory that the Cali-
fornia men cannot quite appreciate the
beauty of their women. They take
beauty for granted; they have never
seen anything else. Nevertheless, that
beauty and that dash constitute a men-
ace. A city ordinance compels traffic
policemen to wear smoked glasses, and
car conductors and chauffeurs, blinders.
Go West, young man!
THE CALIFORNIACS 49
BUT everybody celebrates the beauty
of the California woman. Pro-
bably that is because heretofore ** every-
body" has been masculine. He has
been so busy looking at the California
woman that he hasn't realized yet that
there's a male of the species. The
California man, I sing.
It is curious what a difference of
opinion there is in regard to him. I
have heard Californiacs say in their one
moment of humility, ' * Why is it, when
we turn out such magnificent women,
that our men are so undersized ?" Now
I know nothing about average male
heights and weights. I have never
seen any comparative statistics. I can
say only that the average Californian
seems bigger than the average man.
And often in walking through the San
50 THE CALIFORNIACS
Francisco streets the eye, ranging along
the crowd of pedestrians of average
California stature, will strike on a man
who bulks a whale, a leviathan, a dread-
naught, beside the others, and rises a
column, a monolith, a tower above
them.
He is certainly upstanding, this aver-
age California male — running to bulk
and a little to flesh. Often the line of
feature is so regular that it suggests the
Greek. He has eyes like mountain
lakes and a smile like a break of sun.
He generally flashes a dimple or two
or three or more ( Calif ornians are
speckled with dimples). He manu-
factures his own slang. And he joshes
and jollies all day long. In fact, he's —
Oh, well, go West, young woman!
THE CALIFORNIACS 51
BEYOND its high average of male
beauty CaHfornia has, in its labor-
man, produced a new physical type.
It is different from the standardized
American type, of which Abraham
Lincoln of a past and the Wright
brothers of a present generation are
perfect specimens — the ugly-beautiful
face, long and lean, with its harshly
contoured strength of feature and its
subtly softening melancholy of expres-
sion. The look of labor in California
is not so much of strength as of force,
an indomitable, unconquerable force.
Melancholy is not there, but spirit;
that fire and light which means hope.
It is as though they were molded of iron
— those faces — but illuminated from
within. And with that strength goes
the California comeliness.
52 THE CALIFORNIACS
Pulchritude begins in childhood with
the Californian, grows and strengthens
through youth to middle age. Even
the old — but there are no old people in
California. Nobody ever gets a chance
to grow old there. The climate won't
let you. The scenery won't let you.
The life won't let you.
All this picturesqueness, beauty and
charm form the raw materials of the
most entertaining city life in the coun-
try. For whatever San Francisco is or
is not, it is fiever dull. Life there is in
a perpetual ferment. It is as though
the city kettle had been set on the stove
to boil half a century ago and had never
been taken off. The steam is pouring
out of the nose. The cover is dancing
up and down. The very kettle is rock-
ing and jumping. But by some miracle
the destructive explosion never happens.
THE CALIFORNIACS 53
The Californian is easy-going in a sense)
and yet he works hard and plays hard.^
Athleticsarefeverish there, suffrage ram-
pant, poUtics frenzied, labor militant.
Would that I had space here to dilate on
the athletic game as it is played in Cali-
fornia — played with the charm and spirit
and humor with which Californians play
every game. Would that I had space to
narrate, as Maud Younger tells it — the
moving story of how the women won
the vote in California. Would that I had
space to describe the whirlwind political
campaigns when there are at least four
candidates in the field for every office,
and when you are besought by postal,
by letter, by dodgers, by advertisements
in the papers and on the billboards to
vote for all of them. Would that I had
space — but here I must take the space
— to tell how the Californian plays.
54 THE CALIFORNIACS
R
EMEMBERalwaysthatCalifornk-
has virtually no weather to con-
tend with. For three months of the
year rain appears; for the remaining
nine months it is eliminated entirely.
And so, with a country of rare picture-
esqueness for a background, a people
of rare beauty for actors, everybody
more or less permeated with the artistic
instinct and everybody more or less
writing poetry — California has a pageant
for breakfast, a fiesta for luncheon and
a carnival for dinner. They are always
electing queens. In fact any girl in
California who hasn't been a queen of
something before she's twenty-one, is
a poor prune.
In the country, especially in the wine
districts where the merrymaking some-
times lasts for days, these festivals are
THE CALIFORNIACS 55
beautiful. In the city it depends large-
ly, of course, on how much the com-
mercial spirit enters into it; but whether
they are beautiful or the reverse, they
are always entertaining. Single streets,
for instance, in San Francisco, are al-
ways having carnivals. The street elects
a king and queen, plasters itself with
bunting, arches itself with electric
lights, lines its curbs with temporary
booths, fills its corners with shows, sells
confetti until the pedestrian swims in it
— and then whoops it up for a week.
All around, north, south, east, west,
every other street is jet-black, sleeping
decorously, ignoring utterly that blare
of color, that blaze of light, that boom
of noise around the corner. They
should worry — they're going to have
a carnival themselves next week. Apro-
pos, a San Francisco paper opened its
56 THE CALIFORNIACS
story of one of these affairs with the
following sentence, **Last night (shall
we call him Hans Schmidt?) was
crowned with great pomp and cere-
mony king of the Street Carnival
and fifteen minutes later, with no pomp
and ceremony whatever, he was arrest-
ed for petty larceny." Billy Jordan
was made king of the Fillmore Street
Carnival. Now Billy Jordan, who was
over eighty years of age, had served as
announcer for every big boxing contest
in San Francisco since — well, let's say,
since San Francisco was born. He
always ends his ring announcement
with the words, ' ' Let her go ! " The
reporters say that in the crown and
sceptre, the velvet and ermine of a
king, he opened the Fillmore Street
Carnival with " Let her go! ". And
for myself, I choose to believe that
THE CALIFORNIACS 57
story. The queen of this carnival — her
first name was Manila, by the way —
a pretty girl of course, was a picturesque
detail in the city life for a week. In
velvet, ermine and brilliant crown, she
was always flashing from place to place
in an automobile, surrounded by a
group, equally pretty, of ladies in wait-
ing. When the deep, cylindrical cis-
tern-like reservoir on Twin Peaks was
finished, they opened it with a dance;
when the Stockton street tunnel was
finished, they opened it with a dance;
when the morgue was completed they
opened that with a reception.
58 THE CALIFORNIACS
THE San Francisco papers reflect
all this activity, and they certainly
make entertaining reading. For one
thing, the annual crop of pretty girls
being ten times as large there as any-
where else, and photography being
universally a fine art, the papers are
filled with pictures of beautiful women.
They are the only papers I have ever
seen in which the faces that appear on
the theatrical page pale beside those
that accompany the news stories. The
last three months of my stay in San
Francisco I cut out all the pictures of
pretty girls from three newspapers.
They included all kinds of women —
society, club, athletic, college, high-
brow, low-brow ; high way-women, bur-
glaresses, forgeresses and murderesses.
I have just counted those pictures —
THE CALIFORNIACS 59
three hundred and fifty-four — and all
beautiful. When I received my paper
in the morning — until the war made
that function, even in California, a
melancholy one — I used to look first
at the pictures of the women. Then
always I turned to the sporting page
to see what record had been broken
since yesterday and, if it were Saturday
morning (I confess it without shame),
to read the joyous account of Friday
night's boxing contest. And, always
before I settled to the important news
of the day, I read the last "stunt".
Picturesque "stunts" are always being
pulled off in San Francisco. Was it
the late lamented Beachey flying with
a pretty girl around the half-completed
Tower of Jewels, was it a pretty actress
selling roses at the Lotta Fountain for
the benefit of the Belgians, it was some-
60 THE CALIFORNIACS
thing amusing, stirring and character-
istic. Always the "stunt" involved a
lot of pretty girls and often it demanded
the services of the mayor. I shall re-
gret to the end of my days that I did
not keep a scrapbook devoted to Mayor
Rolph's activities. For being mayor of
San Francisco is no sinecure. But as
most of his public duties seemed to in-
volve floods of pretty girls — well, if I
were a man it would be my ambition
to be mayor of San Francisco for the
rest of my life.
The year I spent in California they
were building the Exposition. They
made of that task, as they make of every
task, a game and a play and a lark —
a joy and a delight — even though they
were building under the most discour-
aging conditions that an exposition ever
encountered. But nothing daunts the
THE CALIFORNIACS 61
Californian,and so wood and iron, mor-
tar and paint, grew steadily into the
dream city that later fronted the bay.
AS I think it over, I am very glad
that I did not tell the Californiacs
how beautiful Massachusetts is. Because
it would only have bewildered them.
I am glad that I did not mention to
them that I shall always cherish a kind
of feeling for Massachusetts that I can
develop for no other spot. Because it
would only have hurt them. You must
not tell a Californiac that you love any
place but California or that you have
found beauty elsewhere. It ' s like break-
ing an engagement of marriage with a
girl. It 's like telling a child that there 's
no such person as Santa Claus. There 's
no tactful way of wording it. It simply
can't be done. And I am very glad
62 THE CALIFORNIACS
that I told the Californiacs all the time
how much I love California, how much
I love San Francisco. For beauty,
California is like the fresh, glowing,
golden crescent moon; it is waxing
steadily to a noble fullness of develop-
ment; and San Francisco is like the
glittering evening-star ; it fills the Pacific
night with the happy radiance of its light
and life. I think of California always —
with its unabated fighting strength as
a champion among States. It takes the
stranger — that champion State — under
its mighty protection and gives him of
its strength and happiness. It is more
fun to be sick in California than to be
well anywhere else. And I think of
San Francisco always — the spirit of
Tamalpais in the air — as an Amazon
among cities. Its people love *'the
city'* because, within the memory of
THE CALIFORNIACS 63
man it was built, and within the mem-
ory of child, rebuilt. They themselves
helped to build and rebuild. They have
worked and fought for it through every
inch and instance of its history. It
takes the stranger — that Amazon city
— into its great, warm, beating mother-
heart. If you are sick it makes you^
well. If you are sad it makes you glad.^
It infuses you with its working spirit. «
It inspires you with its fighting spirit. 2
It asks you to work and fight with it. }
Massachusetts never permitted me to /
work or fight for it. Woman is as yet,
in no real sense, a citizen there. And
the result is that I love California as I
love no other State, and San Francisco as
I love no other city. I haVe no real criti-
cism to bring against the Californiac.
In fact, reader — ah, I see you've
guessed it. I'm a Californiac myself. *^
d^^
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