L2fi an American Medfierranean

storyorr:"*:Tl:1r,ffi'fffi 'S,l,1i:'iiilTi"tl:T"",rij"iilcts of caiifo*:". ?"9l1t, L u,jstrr"ton, Fr6rn.. fr"t blamed him fo

r --r'.or i,nnv- Freflront was from that very

ffi #i$s**[$*il$ulll*:'*'ffi :n*,' ffiil j*te'e rather, Fr6mont wa' lil:::;#; i" the Northern camP'

conviction and the direction of his caree'' l""jo"ro""d associations held

l#;ru:i::il"'# jl:"1^x"'"r5:#?*:?Hi:l'"il:":'iinherited from his father and btYT";;;

i"r.pn Nicolas Nicollet'

;'t'r^nos,tl" by his mentor' the French t, r'r",tttt background.,and

an Epiv

l;.i;{r# r}*; 3t*::;i1il}T# t' :*::[:r **" $']# :;;ttfiil; i*'oa""'a his voung P'ot'8",.'ireJo,'t *a l"::: uJlt*J"i",

*il;"**'uil:#l'^"itt1*',mul*tir::*"r"'":',7J;; -*" Fr6mont ran as the first t"""'"il;;t *"' '""t"tty

a papist'

he had to go out ot hls way to deny Yttt[rh::Jl*ix"m"ll"+*l'"'l*;'J:r.ff ;l"$',l."lliili]frFr6mont, daughter ot

or the most colorrur J;fi; r"''"o' YLiltJJ3IilH1,fi, "was a

her husband''' "Quts"' she remembered ot

#,

166 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

constant changing from an English-Protestant into a French-Catholic

atmosphere."l The lifestyle of St. Louis combined Southern, Yankee, and

creole flavors. |essie spoke French from infancy and was educated by

French nuns at the convent of the Sacred Heart. Among her father's

clients were French planters, "generally educated in Paris," she described

them; "and with the combined resources of climate, taste, and wealth,

their mode of living was beautiful as well as luxurious."2 Senator Benton

and fessie also had many Spanish friends. They spoke Spanish and ad-

mired Spanish literature.Married to such a woman-young, beautiful, highly placed, educated in

an aristocratic tradition-Fr6mont was no ordinary junior officer, no duti-

ful West Pointer, his head filled with regulations and his heart set on

steady advancement to the rank of lieutenant colonel. There was much of

the 6migr6 adventurer to Fr6mont, and something of the headstrong

Southerner. Because of his high connections, he never had to adjust to the

routines of troop duty. On the exploring expeditions which brought him

fame, he took along, not ordinary rankers, but French Canadians, pic-

turesque Creoles, half-breeds, Indians, and free blacks-bound to him by

personal loyalty-at rvhose head he rode like a condottiere of the ltalian

Renaissance.

He rode thus into California for the first time in March 1844, at the

head of his column. "All armed," he described them, "four or five lan-

guages heard at once; above all a hundred horses and mules, half wild;

American, Spanish, and Indian dresses and equipments intermingled'i'3

He stayed only two weeks before recrossing the Sierras, but no previous

American visitor to California had such an impact. Before a nation whose .

acquisitive instincts were at full tide, Fr6mont's widely read Repott of th3 :,

Exploring Expedition to Oregon and Notth California (tB+5), which''.|

fessie heiped him to write, pui forth a California drenched in Mediterp",l

nean beauty . His Report, in fact, and his Geographical Memoir Up"l,!A

tJpper cati.fornfu (r84s) might be considered the founding texts of tMediterranean analogy. Frdmont made extended use of the ltalian pp

parison and was especially sensitive to the Mediterranean productsi

mission gardens. The soft, southern beauty of California entered heli

band's heart, fessie Frdmont later wrote, and never left it' . ;ga6Neither beauty nor the rights of Old Californians prevented F'IJ

from behaving ruthlessly when he returned in 1846' Putting t1

command of the Bear Flaggers, Fr€mont raised a battalion oJri

volunteers and, amidst a clattering of hooves, rode south to

t,

qrK(th,

mirivSPi

OI,

liktiwh

' Pecons

aga

torOI

84+;:i

orr, half ;

rmrno

rtion?poft of ttrr

45), whichtMediterrail

moh Upon:exts of thetalian com-

rroducts ined her hus-

:d Frdmonthimself in

rf mountedist the con-

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN l6t

ilnrrini would have loved the episode' Brigadier-General Stephen

ll#"";A:n"':'ii"-i.T''I"1'::":i1"'i'*;3"i"1*i1:howevcr' rvrL L'e! t*orrt refused to acknowredge Kearny as

naDarte' and when Fr

[t#-"rc^riro,,,ia,"::l-1r::::'i::::*:t"*t}i":ff ::;;'Lil$H;;.#;;'n*;'' *:'" ""T1T:i ,y:T*lll -1"

ii."'t",,*9i'r'"'#-l{i:u:".":J":5iil"it;ff

'*,::T

jl:ffi"#ffi"r' H" was a flamboyant iefe' and they understooc

[[U-nl;il"r than Co-*oaor" ioU.it Stockton, a choleric martinet

iio issoed insulting proclamations and showed no respect for them as a

"inle. Fr6mont, on th"-;;"t h^nd' wore their.costum: "*f""i:.lT:

ffi:ffi#:;;,;;; th"i' r"'d"'s rle remiti:1 :t:"::1th

sentence

g.iffiJ;;; "i

ir,"i" r", 'pvi"g. 1A,nd16s.pico,

who led a last-ditch attempt

oi,,t5 resist the American, ii','tn! south, insisted^u3;1Tj"t:,1ti:#;:J:i;

ffi Hffi:;;Jil:"rpected that Kearny o, Stockto' would have himself

ffij' ;;;';;,rr". r- "irf",ing

the parote they had been given after an ear-

l,, lier defeat. In an agree*t"i k"o*" as tfa ",1::i?1,:1*:t:::?ll:ry: ilj'l *"u'"'iv,r'?lri*^il1hl:.*en lav down their arms and return

ill]home.Fromthenon,theoldCaliforniansreveredFr6mont.Hewaslikerr ffi;ffi ,"*"v-'t*plfico' D'ring nt: o:-]:1t-:,ttlT::"J; []?:fJ:li ffi;ffi;,"""irii""'a-i-inriro*il"s had offered to take to the field in

Fr6mont', a"f."'"' i" '856 they did what they could to back his bid for

the presidencY.

Allowed by President Polk to resign from the. Army after being con-

victed of *tti;;; F;ilont returned to Californ': .T: n"1 :ll*:1-tii ffi;;'#;""";;;;;1;t because it reminded him of South caro'

rr --^Lj-^

lina, but h" ";;;; "t "st"t" at Mariposa' in lhl.foott-rills

approaching

the yosemit". ih"r" the Fremonts brought to california a spacious l'je-

style'which expressed their sense of. theirselves as linked to the spanish

andFrenchcivilizationsoftheCreoleSouth.Dressedinplantationwhiteor as an OId Californian, Colonel Frdmont (he acquired his rank during

the conquest) supervised the Sono-rans who worked his mines and the

staff of Inaia"i-[I""k', "'d miscellaneous Europeans who serviced the

estate'IndianwomenoftheMariposatribe,dressedinbrightlycoloredcalico,workeclaboutthekitchenandthelaundrylikeltalianpeasants.When the Fr6monts rode out in their carriage two mo-unted Delaware

Indians cantered before them, dressed in the ciostumes of old california'

:looking,Mrs.Frdmontsaid,likesupportingplayersinanltalianopera'; colonel Fr6mont wanted his estate'to glo; i" caifornia-as-South, cali-

! fornia-as-Mediterranean. He employed Freierick Law Olmsted to advise

expressed

ihe South.:ed Indianed beIorc

upporting

t', ' - ^ ir rrrnrrrrRn ANEAN Z6g:'. EN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN

*ar""ping' He had his home o"lt l1',Jlt::tif,,',t* lr'::ft"Ti4#,iil1'li;;';,';;;;*hich respected the contours or the hills,

i:ffi #""J *g d"'o'"tiu",":::1,*:ii: 1"j:T ;:*"i,i*,:ff:ft;";til'i oi

"gio"al architecture' For a few glorious

e Frdmonts held the stage"^s the first Tdv.1"d ?""ti"Til:i *l:l:i:

tJffi il; ;*, T*t*,"a .a s.ociety above" soci11'^ )fs

l;"- ,Jitrt"a her role 's

ih" "tk"owledged

patroness of an emergtng

civilization';;;;;;;n'udent, whatever they did niu "1t":ITt-::i:r1;:$ffi:lt:;il;;';"i'uv; ro' at iottom l', y" '"tTt'T:lt'*^T1"1jff?'illi't#';;;";;;;gge'ated sense or his own abilities' He rost

t.;il il. n&", d;';;;i"' th." p *' l1 :i t; *-T-" T?" i: t "o:::li#;;;;i;fi. He was forced to seil his Mariposa estate to pav

iir,:a.tu. His Civil W"'-t"'"t' proved a disapP^ointment;,y*: n#ilt,il:".:;;;*"Jrri- in the ,B8o'r, he was a forgotten old man entan-

ii }:il: il#'*;iJ r.fn,.'1* i l:*,:n':l"l:*"1*il,"# #;iTT;: :f"-:il";;;;;';;"d'gr Rovce's u:t"|j,t: :1:T"?-::T:il:ll ff;ffi:il;,;; with him rike a cat i,itr' " mouse. It would have

''i"t"" n"a the old general turned upon his inquisitor-:i been more apploPnate Ilau Lrrs wru Svrr! - ,,t:^^ ^^111., *orrierli, ffi'#;; ::ffi ;il'ii'",,t,*"i-p,of ",,o, "".'":',_::-*11Y ::'l_',*:ilttttt"ttt;;

";;;t victorv of departmental promotion-and admitted

that, yes, he had ""* f""g

"g" acteiruthle-sslv in the face of opportunity'

But Frdmont *", *."if-?"; ai'u"tted' He iet |essie fend off the more

damaging of RoYce's questions'

"I lived its earliert p"";; t"ta Fremont of his life' "with the trtre Greek

joy in existence-in ,f," gla""tt oI living'"a He was not an overly intelli-

gent man, nor, in the finll sense of the term' historically important' Royce

was correct i., *"tirrg k"o*n h;s faults' And vet one detects an element

of resentment in Royce,s obsession, the page upon prg" in,calif orni'a de'

voted to the destruction of Fr6mont's reputation' Although he was born

in California, S"rrt"y",," later remarketl tf Royce' he never felt at home

inthesunshine'Facingeachotheracrosstheinterview,thePathfinderand the assistant ntJ;"t* k;"* diff"'e"t Californias' Fr6mont knew the

imperatives of style ""Ji}t" South' Royce knew the California of historical

process, the Californi" *ftitf' had emerged into order' Fr6mont knew Cali-

fornia as MediterranJa". n"yt" describ'ed what had been lost through the

overrunning of C"fiio'"ia's Mexican civilization' Frdmont won the re-

spect and friendship "iOfa Californians whom he had met on the field of

battle. "TeIl the gi'ls i *'de Fr6mont's acquaintance on horseback' on a

)7O AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

trail, in the mountains," Richard Henry Dana wrote home to his wife in

rB5g, while visiting california after nearly a quarter-century absence. "He

i, "

h"ro, every inch of him, so quiet and yet so full of will and courage

and conduct!"5Frdmont's response to california and the quality of his preoccupations

there suggest the compelling nature of the Meditelranean analogy. Arising

fro* simil"rities of landscape and climate, this analogy developed into a

metaphor for all that california offered as a regional civilization. Suggest-

irrg ,r"* textures and values of living, California-as-Mediterranean chal-

leiged Americans to embrace beauty and to escape the Puritan past'

Deiending upon the resources brought to the act of perception' the

M"diterr"rr"an arr"logy could be as superficial as a tourist pamphlet or as

profound as Mary A,rstir,'s struggle for religious contemplation. Manifest-

ing itself as Greek to Isadora Duncan, it called to the revival of classical

aJrr"e. It seemed Italian to Ernest Peixotto, who had lived in Italy, and

the analogy eased his homecoming' The comparison helped-P' C' Remon-

dino organ*ize statistics of healthfulness and longevity. For charles Dudley

Warrrei it graced the American table with fruit, wine, and flowers' Its

guise was aiso French, Iberian, North African, and Near Eastern. Each

iefraction suggested an association which clung to the analogy as: whole.

Italy called t:o"tr," ordering of landscape and the enrichment of daily life'

Greece connoted pageantry and art. The desert regions bespoke the mystic.

Spain, the most compelling because it arose from history, asked for large-

ness of purpose, heroism-and romance'

The Mediterranean analogy originated in an interaction of fact and

imagination. Riding horsebaff on the Los Angeles plain through man-high

mustard abloom in vivid yellow under a Levantine sun, travelers recalled

the Holy Land, and perhaps even the parable of the mustard seed' As they

sailed off the coast, theyihought of Morocco, Sicily, or Gre€ce' Silhou-

etted at sunset, " ,o* oi .yp."Ir., outside of Fresno in the San |oaquin

brought to mind a similar iry', "nd

in Lombardy or the Campagna; and'

of course, the vineyards of the Bay counties suggested the south ol T**'At heightened moments, California seemed a land of honey ""1llYll:;

,.i::1-,:ll;::il"#::T#::T:ffi1i]l:*#il;T;-{.1:l*ffithe bees. In forest hives and canyon apiaries, they flourishld on

1 Pt:::#age of buckwheat, clover, sumac' sage, and wild mint' Squattin$ i

hunter's hut in the Coasi n,ngt, feji'-'g himself like a wandererrl

ancient poem, Stephen Powers a'te meat along-with n"l"l:t^"llfrom oak trees. He remembered Virgil's prediction of the L'o

i eN AMERIcAN MEDTTERRANEAN 371

'idur* quercus zudabunt roscida rne.lla" ).; for the ll*t ?:itl*::::Tff'riiui,7",*"at nectar. Living quietly in the foothills, the beekeeper

ffi;ffi trom Hesiod or Viigil, a gatherer::h::? T1j*"",Yt#:;"i;;J;;; another .o*p-or,.r'i of the Mediterranean analogy'

i*I lrv v---f

Iif," C"rir"f Vailey and Southern California, Basque and Mexican shep-

i;;. *ri.rr.a vast flocks made suddenly profitable by the Civil War

ffi{ffiJ f-;;;; coast wool. Armed with a stafi, attired in sheepskin'

ffi*',,r";" rnkles bound in strips of rawhide, the shepherd appeared as wild andsH::-'r' urr s'..----

i+,fu.,,lonely as his preclassicaf Mediterranean prototype' The Basques especially

i-,. ;;ildropped from time' Silent' aloof' they did not come to California

;.', to blend in, but to pursue their solitary calling in the *"lY of the Old

fili"' w;il. Cilt rpok"""n impenetrable language of uncertain lineage' They

lo ;rr* i"*'" i,r,,"r, "r,d garlic in wine ttrey carried in skins; and they

i,, came together to play g"-.-, known to shepherds for thousands of years'

;;;; ffii; *,oi" orin"m in one of the 1".':'.look1"":] li:tl'::,:"fl,,, ;;i";;;;; irrn pto"t (rqo6). To her way of thinking, shepherds lent im-

i' rr.*"rirf dignity to the open ranges of ine land of little rain' She lovedr r^^LL^- --l ^-i^-o o-rl rrrnnl 'When

, il;;il, "iirri, camps, ,*""t "id

leather and onions and wool. When

she saw one guiding his flock across a canyon rim at twilight or heard him

playing the iute tJ sheep settled at midday rest, she knew California to

f. gr"J"a by associations of Mediterranean Europe and ancient Greece'

Thetouchstoneoftheanalogy,itscommondenominatoranditsmostinterpreted element, was the uiie' OUuioosly symbolic of civilization' the

vines planted by Spaniards suggested to those Americans who first saw

themthatCaliforniawasnotanunrelievedwilderness.Likethemissionsthemselves, the vines of california bespoke history, solicitude, and pa-

tience. Frenchmen ioined in the growing of them' and then Americans'

Intheearlyr86o's,sensingCaliforniatobeonthevergeofanexcitingnew industry, the legislatur"e appointed Count Agoston Haraszthy as Com-

missioner on the Irrip,ou"*t"i and Growth of the Grape-vine' A Hungar-

ian nob]ema,, *ho,e family had been connected with viticu]ture for cen-

turies, Hararrthy, " Liberal, had fled to the United States for political

reasons. I{e "rriu"a

overland in rB4B and by the late r85o's was developing

theBuenaVistaVineyardsinSonoma'wherehebuiltan-elegantvillaandlived in the grand style. Under instructions from the legislature, Haraszthy

traveledthroughoutEuropebetween186rand186z'compilinginform-a-tion and s"rrdirrg back about loo'ooo cuttings for experimentation' In

crape culture,fuines andwine-Making (186z) this enterprising Hun-

garian 6migr6 provided California with the contours of a great dream:

)$[

,n.

Lned'

rritan,

:ptioiphletl

ofItalyrr

les

lowers,

tern,lsawi dailylhe mv

I for Ia

f factman-highi

rs recalledii

d. As they:e. Silhou-n Joaquinrgna; and,

of France.rd flowers.

rs broughtr a pastur-.ting in a

:rer of anr gatheredrlden Age

37, AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

hills covered by vineyards, from which went forth to the world wines

which were mellow "";;;;, liL c"tifornia,had a pleasing young strength'

By the late r86o's p"it "i ift" Count's. dream was coming true' Vines

covered the once emPty hills' In the wint-er of 1857-68 over 4oqooo were

planted in Sonoma C;itfi;i"""'ftp1 9:o"tt had over a million vines

planted by the ""a

oitf'"'aecade' fe"aea by Frenchmen' Mexicans' and

varieties of southern Europeans, their ways of tiuitrg easily translatable to

a congenial climate, ;fi;;t conferred.upon coastal California a Medi

terranean texture. "tt t"' the pleasant vintage season at S-an |os6"'wrote

William Henry ni,f'op of ^ "i'i't

tf'"'" in the early rBSo's' "I visited' among

others, the Le no,'t i""y"rd, which dates from r85r' and is the pioneer

in making *in"-g,o*i"g i' '"gul^'industry'

Here are about a hundred and

seventy-five thol_rsana-virres, iet out a thousand, perhaps, to the acre' The

large, cheerful farm buildings are uPon a gentle rise of ground above the

area of vines, which i' "tl'ty level' An Alsacian foreman showed us

through the wine-cell;' A ;;""nt-maid bustling about the yard was a

thorough French p""""i, only lacking the wooden shoes' The long tables'

set for the forty hands employed in the vintage-time, were spread with

viands in the FrenJ fashlo"' Sca'ceiy a word Jf unglish was spoken' At

other places trt",o"oull;;;; "" as exclusively Italian or Portuguese' One

feels very much abroad in sricl-' scenes on American soil'"6

Bestowing hirto'i;;y, ;rt" "i"" also underscored newness' The fact that

Americanspr"f",'"a*t'iskeytowinedramatizedthefrontierbehindvine-yards and villas (althffiit-p""''"" advocates did look to California'

because of its plenitul-Jof inexpensive light wines' t"' h:lq reverse the

American taste for hard liquor)' It had ti b" "d*ltted

that much local

wine was inferior. In 1865 Samue1 Bowles paid no less than count

Haraszthy himself the supieme insult of n"aing his vintages "harsh and

heady,-needi"g 'p;;;;Jy both some improvement in culture and man-

ufacture, and tim; for softening "i T1"' ;it'e of California' asserted

CharlesLoringBracein1869'wasfft"C'iifo"tiaitself:full-ofpotential'but sufiering f,"* ;;;; "ii""ti""

todetail' Robert Louis Stevenson' as

usual, was more generous' "In this-wild tt"t';' 1; Y,T':itr::,"illtlf.l}:,usual, was more generous. Ilr LurJ *"" "t"ly,;i Jia not feel the sacred.r

**r;,ff ::iiil;li:t^*J:li':"T:T;'ii1+i:it**ilgffiilffi !ii*':n"n ; *.y, :l :,:*::ifl J;;ff ilJl" land bottles in the cavern, made a pleasant J:ili:ll*T:::"T[#:llt:::H#ffffi; skimmed and garnered; and the London '

can taste, such as it i', ?;;il "riit" ""'*rt in this green valley'"'

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 373:,

Alrshout the r86o's and r8To's phylloxera (plant lice) ravaged the

#:;fir;;;e. catifornian, ptr'ti'g vines into the millions could

ii;;i;;;"es engaged in anact of preservation and renewal, offer-

;;'il;;; " ,,.*,o"it-""d under anoth:: :o"

to :ht

*1":s"i:1]ll::fffi;;.i;;as a startling, wonderful belief, one that put Californians

if;;;;;." of historv; ""J thev.bol yitnelJ t" ll]: ::y,i::'-:T::lT"'

[";;;;;riiful book ever produced in a city noted for its fine printing,

i;;;;; ";i

Grape Yines of Catifornia, published in San Francisco in

ffi,:#";r.-;;s the ,esult of a three_way collaboration. Hannah Millardii:' Lw l l' '- '

ulr.orirlr.a the grapes ripening on the vine' William Harring then oleo-

;, il;;; Miliard"s ."r,u"*r] *1t':s Po:':bl"i t"]*l"l-1?,':i":::::""ji[rn:l ;;ltttttil;it. Edward Bosqui, deanof san Francisco printers, designed

..'. ;;l;;k and set its gracefuf type. published under_the auspices.of the

iirt. Vini.ultural As-sociation, -Grapes

and Grape Yines of California

euokedthepoetryandromanceofthecomingofthevinetoCalifornia.F.' i;;g the pages of this elegant folio, one noted how beauty of medium

l.l ;;; il of t"h.Ibook's central statement. Here, indeed' was a lovely har-

l' vestirom the sunny hills of California: the |ohannisberg Riesling, from

.' Car*any and, before that, from France and Italy' and' even more re-L -Li--, ;;i;;'fr;* Greece_pale, light, delicate; the Rose Chasselas, tasting

faintlyofmusk;theWhiteMuscatofAlexandria,ofNorthAfrica,andSicily,andtheverySouthofEurope,lightgreenincolor'asturdy'un-pretentious gr"p., io, the table or for a decent everyday wine; the heavy

Black Hamborin, aoorirhing in the fog-cooled coast Range; the Flame

Tokay from Hringary, rank ind robust, orange or ruby or rose in tint' de-

pendent upon diieci sunlight; the Zinfandel, the most planted vine in

California, deep purple, obicore in its origins, perhaps even a totally new

California ,to& lro*. claimed Haraszthy developed it), fragile of skin,

loving the foothilis and the highlands, abounding in malic acid, and in its

wine, without sugary residue,lecalling the raspberry and-the strawberry;

the seedless Sultarra, opulent, from the vineyards of the Near East, run-

ningfrompalegreento,uby,nowandthenamber-tinted,needingheatfor its luxurianc"e, and protection from fog; and of course the dark and

hardy Missio., Gr"pe of ancient california lineage, the Ishmael of vines,

giving a rough eartily wine, the wine of Spanish soldiers, the wine of old

California.--Cro,pns and GrapeYines of Californa celebrated the translation of the

vinetoAmerica,sMediterraneanshores'Atthesametime,somewonderedif perhaps a neo-Mediterranean people might grow up there as well' Diet'

;1

ei

rd

;lg

ead

,oken

lese.

fact thind vialiforni/erse

rch local'',

r Countl'arsh and.nd man-

asserted

rotential,

)nson, as

ntage he

e sacred-

. and nothe vats

3re, also,

rstomers

AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM374

climate, and converging stocks, it was speculated, might create a new lace.

Certainly, observers were pointing out by the r8To's, the American born

and raised in California seemed an improved specimen. Only the strong, it

was believed, had survived the frontier era and reproduced themselves. A

healthy climate and an abundance of good food worked further modifica-

tions upon a stock already improved by elimination of the unfit. As sci-

ence, this notion was at besi dubious; as a self-image, it was undeserved.

As a fantasy, however, it supported from the perspective of eugenics the

aspiration ioward regional identity. "The coast physique will, no doubt,

be merely the American type improved," Charles Loring Brace predicted

in r869 or tn" future californian. "The inhabitant of the Sierras and the

central river bottoms rvill ultimately become more Asiatic or Arab-like in

type-darker, sparer, and, on the whole, with less muscular vigor-for the

.o*-on diet o] the plains will more and more be the delicious fruits and

vegetables of that region; and a fruit or vegetable-eating race is nevel so

viiorous or energetic as a meat-eating. The south of California will tend

toward an Italian or Moorish type, under the enervating influence of cli-

mate and a bountiful fruit-diet. A 'southern' aspect is already very per-

ceptible even in the pure Anglo-saxons of LoiAngeles and its neighbor-

hood."e As suggestedin Brace's prediction (and the later speculations of

Robert Louis Stevenson), the prevalence of Latin blood on the Coast-

Mexican especially, but also Italian and Portuguese-would give the cali-

fornian of the future a Mediterranean cast. He would lose the rugged

heaviness of the Northern European. He would be dark, tall, and lithe,

and have soft, graceful features. "Physiologists," cne observer went so far

as to say, "claiir that the atmosphere of california is tending to a modi-

fication of the vocal organs which will make the native sons and daughters

of California, and those whose youth is spent here, a race of singers."1o

Opinions like this reflected the fact that the ultimate drift of the Medi-

terralnean speculation was not eugenic, but moral and aesthetic. Personali-

ties as diverse as Bayard Taylor, the essayist and poet, Charles Wadsworth,

preacher to san Fra.rcisco's calvary Preibyterian, and Eliza Farnham, the

i"o*en's rights advocate, called upon the Mediterranean analogy as a

metaphorical expression of their hopes for the emergingPaclfrc civiTiza'

tion. Here, they dreamed, might be an American people possessing fire

and repose, amplitude and line, a healthy naturalism and a capacity for

religion. Here might the American-as-Californian, the American-as-neo-

Mediterranean, reach back behind his English-speaking heritage and po-s"'

sess himself of the spurned gifts of the South. "'Whalever Greece, Italy-ji

.ii

t;t.

I: AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 775

ioain were in their noblest days, that we, also, hope to become

iiiji Cnrrt", H. Shinn exhorted. "A cosmopolitan people, not narrow

;r"ioai..a, strong, earnest, truthful, original; state-builders, home-

iJ.,'i"ti.u.* in education, full of nature's naturalness-this is that end

i,'i i.n we of a ruder, more fertile age must toil, setting our faces toward

i,morning."11ir!:a;,t!,f'

iill:.li :

ij,r:::l II#,i1i:jti:;::i, rr

'irl:r:.: il:,j;i; , ,f'or many, that morning had an Italian glow. In his Geogtaph,ical Memoit'"t,,,.',,,',' oponUip* California, Frdmont made Italy the central analogue for hisi,, '. topographical description. California, Frdmont wtote, had the same length

ii' and Lteaatn as ltaly, the same climates and products, and a similar con-

figuration of mountains, plains, and valleys. Like Italy, it was formed for

unity, "its large rivers being concentric, and its large vallies appurtenant

to tire great central bay of San Francisco."12 In the course of two Cali-

fornia sojourns, in rB49 and 1859, Bayard Taylor, the most accomplished

American travel writer of his era, gave aesthetic amplitude to Fr6mont's

topographical model. "The dry soil," Taylor wrote of the mining camp of

Mokelumne Hill in the Sierras (it reminded him of similar sites in the

Apennines), "with its rich tints of orange and burnt sienna-the ever

green oaks, so much resembling the Italian ilex-the broad-leaved fig-

trees in the gardens-the workmen with bare, sunburnt breasts-the dolce

far nierrte of a few loungers in the shade-and the clear, hot, October sky,

in which there was no prophecy of winter, all belonged to the lands of the

Mediterranean."ls It was a moment typical of Taylor's Italianizing re-

sponse, and it continued in other writers down the century. The country

north of San Francisco struck Taylor and later visitors as most noticeably

Italian in texture and situation. The view eastward from the Coast Range

reminded one visitor of the view from the mountaintop monastery of

Camaldoli, near Naples. "The Russian River Valley," he wrote, "took the

place of the solfatara and the region towards Baiae and cumae; a dark

sombre lake supplied the place of Lake Avernus; and Naples, Pozzuoli,

and the Mediterranean had their counterparts in san Francisco, vallejo,

and the Pacific."la when Italian-Swiss from Ticino established the Asti

colony in a wide valley on the upper Russian River, planting vines, build-

ing homes and gardens in the Northern Italian style, associations reported

by earlier visitors took on a reality beyond that of metaphor. "While visit-

ing here," Ernest Peixotto could say of Asti in the early tgoo's, "I veritably

-for:uits ai

never

vill:e of clirerl pe!,:rrl

eighborutions ofr

Coast-',he Cali-

rugged,

rd lithe,rt so fara modi-rughtersrr10

e Medi-,rsonali-

sworth,rm, the

ryasa:iviliza-ing fire:ity for.as-neo-

rd pos-

:, Italy

376 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

passed my time in Italy, for every one I met and everything I saw wasItalian."15

The Italian analogy could be great or smail, an isorated perception oran extended metaphor. The canyons of the coast Rang. -igt t seem likethe wild ravines of Italy; and the isrand of Santa catalina, with its deepblue bay and wild goats, might suggest capri. The trees of california-oak, bay, pine, and cypress-recalled Italian counterparts. ,,It might beLombardy again," noted William Bishop upon seeing the cypress_linedirrigation canals outside Fresno.16 The souther.r .o"rt *r, made Italianthrough architecture and landscaping, as Ernest peixotto discovered in thefirst decade of the twentieth century when he visited the terraced andvilla-dotted slopes facing the santa Barbara channel. ,The soft breeze,fanning the face like a caress," peixotto wrote of this area, ,,the limpid air-the cielo sereno dear to every Italian heart-the scent of the orangeblossoms wafted from the terraces; the shimmering olives backed by daikoaks; the suave lines of the coast reaching from the headlands of Miramarand Montecito down toward the blufis of ventura; the lazy blue sea send-ing its subdued rumble to the ear; the islands floating like a mirage uponits bosom, evoke the noble panoramas of camaldoli, of positano, o.f Nerui,of Bordighera. Even the labourers, ploughing between the lemon trees,chatter the liquid note of Italy's langu"g",

"rrd toward evening, when na-

ture is stilled in the hush which comes with twilight, from ihe cottagebehind our house, come the soft notes of the romanzas of posilippo sungby the gardeners and their families."l?

Roman catholicism was an integral part of the Italian comparison. Inthe early days of the American era, nuns in habit served on the staffs ofpublic hospitals and orphanages; and convents at Marysville, Benicia, andsan Jose provided interdenominational finishing schools for the daughtersof the wealthy. santa clara college, sara Lippincott discovered onedrowsy summer afternoon in r87r, had a charm

"ll it, o*rr, "The innercourt, or garden, with its long piazzas, its aloes, myrtles, roses, and lemon,orange, almond, and olive trees, reminded me of the cloisters and courtin the picturesque old inn of Amalfi, once a convent. The whole scene wasmarvelously like ltaly,-the /esuit priests, with their long black robes; thequaint old church; the older cross before it. Even the picturesque peasantfigures were there, lounging about the church door, and t neeti"g beforethe shrine of the Virgin."ts

The ecclesiastical aspect of california-as-Italy lent itself to such scene I

PtItlSr

NiIt

CmCr

St

;i,8x;Cace'

tl/

"*',o.Ircouldalsohaveamoreprofoundeffect'Inconjunctionwith*liiir".r"a influence of the oxford Movement, it converted to Ca'

ffiil;;",er Burnett, the first American governor of California, and

Hr"* Clinton Hastings of the state supreme court' In 1867, at Saint

1.-.f,"*;" 6"thedral in San Francisco, Burnett served as godfather when an

,ii';i" Jesuit baptized Charles Wa19n Stoddard into the Catholic

$ilt::l..ffi11.1r.'As part of it, drr-" Stoddard's conversion showed a parabolic

l t',. ';;rorrtation between the Calvinism of upstate New York and Catholic

,, Criif"*r. In the narrative of his path to Rome, ATrcubledHeart (fi85),

ai Stoaa".a played off two milieus: the grim household oJ his New York:i,::::i:.:l gr"ndprr"ntr, "in whose veins the blood had flowed coldly from the dark

,' ?"y, or tn" Plymouth Puritans," "19 l= Francisco, citr of p"::ly,',"9

'' ."tholicity of i"*p.r"*"rrt. Talk of hellfire and predestination filled his

grandparents' house, where in early adolescence he had returned from San

Francisco for a visit. Brought to a revival, Stoddard felt shamed by the

shrieking, and even more degraded when he was forced to the front of the

church to repent his sins. He returned to San Francisco and in time de-

veloped into a poet. Despite boyhood indoctrination against the whore

of Babylo.,, he ]ound himself attracted by the Catholic liturgy. Kneeling

in the congregation of saint Mary's as Archbishop Alemany celebrated

High Mass, Sioddard realized that long ago, perhaps in the course of a

grll New York Sabbath, he had dreamed of an altar before which he

could prostrate himself in adoration. Like San Francisco, Catholicism was

"n ".rih.ti" premise. Its symbols met the needs of his imagination and the

hungers of his heart. Rornanism was Part of a total mise en scdne''fhe

Latin liturgy, the Italian |esuits of Saint Ignatius Church where he went

for instructions, his developing interest in the civilizations of Southern

Europe, the very Mediterranean metaphor of California itself, all massed

themselves on the borders of his imagination, moving him to an assent

that was an act of religion, the election of a culture-and a vision of

beauty. "And it seemed to me then," wrote Stoddard of walking down the

steps of Saint Mary's after his baptism, "as if my eyes wele just opening

upon another and a better world."1e In Rome, shortiy after, he had an

"odi.rr"" with Pope Pius IX, who presented him with a crucifix.

As much as Stoddard's catholicity was PromPted by the Italian meta-

phor, california was not due to fill up with recusants, converts or crypto-

catholics, but with (and here the reference is especially to southern california) Midwest Protestants of the middle class. california-as-Italy might

i AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN

t

tnl

d

)

)id)ra

frama

uPon,

),lervi,

trees, I

)n na-

rttage

sung

rn. Inffs of', and

;htersone

innermon,

court

I was

; thetsant

efore

cene

.i'ti

iilti

ii

lii.

liLl

i

liir

yB AMERIcANS AND THE cALIFoRNIA DREAM

not call them to Rome, but, as presented by charles Dudrey warner inour ltaly (r89r), it would urge Americans to pay attention to the aes-thetics of living.

Radiating an Indian summer mood of New England in search of theSouth, warner was himself the paradigm of the softened puritan intowhose hands he would commend the American ltaly. Born in rural Mas-sachusetts of Mayflower descendants, raised throughout the rg3o's andr84o's in the old Puritan ways, warner spent a lifetime moving south-ward: to New York and Pennsylvania for an education; to the old south-west frontier to build up his health; to Mexico on horseback; and, mostgloriously, as a traveler-essayist in North Africa, the Near East, SouthernFrance, sicily, Italy, Malta, and Greece. Established in Hartford, con-necticut, as co-editor of the courant, warner worked vigorously after thecivil war for the revival of the American South. Loving the South as aregion, he felt southerners had much to teach the rest of the unitedstates, especially the Northeast of the Gilded Age. warner hated the NewEngland winter, and his boyhood congregationalism gave way to Episco-palianism, but he still had something of the puritan in his temperament.He turned to the south, American and Mediterranean, for morai values aswell as for sunshine. The south, warner asserted, called men to preindus-trial values of living. There a ruthless economy did not drive men to evalu-ate themselves strictly in terms of financial success. other things counted:a community remaining stable and on a human scale; orthodoxies ofbehavior and expectation; an afternoon in a garden: so much, in short, ofwhat America's robber-baron civilization was casting aside.

Perhaps, Warner suggested in Our ltaly, beauty and leisure might beregained in southern california. Although it figured in the title, warnerdid not overuse the Italian metaphor. Southern california, he wrote, wasnot overwhelmingly Italian in appearance, "though now and then somebay with its purple hills running to the blue sea, its surrounding mesas andcaffons blooming in semitropical luxuriance, some conjunction of shoreand mountain, some golden color, some white light and sharply definedshadows, some refinement of lines, some poetic tints in violet and ashyranges, some ultramarine in the sea, or delicate blue in the sky, will remindthe traveller of more than one place of beauty in Southern Italy andSicily."eo What was Italian about Southern California were the impera,. :

tives which arose out of its Mediterranean setting. The beauty and the'climate of the region urged Americans to an Italianlike softening of the;r

asperities of everyday life. Warner knew that Americans would continue

toba

ofpud.lun.

be

abtpol

i., ov€

lnvlifethedes

ll ' f,rFRrcAN M'',DTTERRAN E "r7g:.. ,IN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN :

,{*oru ," Southern california, but he hoped they could also achieve

iffi, ""a

ttegration. "It may be," he pt"di"ttd "j tl" future tti::Y]:

Ii' ,111tffi#' crii?"r"i", ,,that "r,g"g"*"r,t,

will not be kept with desiredi: i '.1vr """---,";r,'i"t.*fity, under the impressiol-that the enioyment of life does not

rfri 'd€Pend upon exact re-sPon:e to the **id-Y-"l "i,i,::t:T::*,:;11ill;:' fiil;"i i" ,*rr. that there is a corner of the union where there will

i': i r be a little more'leisure, a little more of serene waitingon t:"::*:::1ii' 1i"1#"i'"i,rr" l*it", ,urr, and haste of our lual

lifet lT f::,:,::

, il;;?i" ro-.*h"t Jasier there, thar there will be some physical rePose,

fit ::ffi;;;; i"u. t."r, rolling westward for a long time, and now, breaking: r-fi.. over the *ou,,t"i,,s, they flo"w over Pacific slopes and along the warm and

i il;il;;il;;ir"sJ,heran unpleasing thoughttn" :Y:.:,111t::::""^*

ii. ,"." having reached the sunset of the continent' comparable to the

J.ri*Uf. placiiity of life called the sunset of 'old age? This may be alto-

;;r* fanciful, but I have sometimes felt' in the sunny moderation of

i"trr" there, that this land might offer for thousands at least a winter

of content."21

III

For those who saw another Greece, california called to pageantry and to

art. The Greek analogy derived from the landscape in a way the Italian

never could. Italy, afier all, implied an ordering of landscape after long

occupancy, while even in classical times there was something haif-wild

about Greece, something mysterious and semi-divine' mediated through

myth and communicat"l *itt through outdoor rites. Hills, groves, blue

seas, the islands ofi the the southern coast, shepherds' bees'-v1tt:.:'.fig "tdolivetreesservedtheGreekmetaphor_andsodidthelightl..Nowhereelse on earth," wrote Stephe,t Poiers, "have I seen the light of the sun

rest down on this beautiiul world so tender as it streams down through

this whiteJilac autumn haze of california-such a light alone as could

have inspired the passionate laments which Euripides puts- into the

mouths of Alcestis and Iphigenia, as they close their dying eyes'"22

The Greek analogy oit"" ottu"ed in coniunction with predictions re-

garding California art. A Greek situation implied " G:":k relationship to

the outdoors, and an art concerned with and structured by the interaction

of man with nature. At the turn of the century, mythic drama' pageant'

and festival asserted themselves as popular local forms' Pasadena held its

first Tournament of Roses on New Year's Day r89o' and Los Angeles its

Va

)

:h ofr

itanrrall3o's

lg sou

d Soutnd, m

rd,

afteruth as

Unitedthe New ri

Episco-

:rament.'alues as

reindus-

:o evalu-

ounted:rxies ofhort, of

ight beWarnerrte, was

n some

sas andf shore

lefinedd ashy

remind

ly andmpera-

nd theof thentinue

380 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREA]VI

first Fiesta de Los Angeles in r8g4. In the californians' taste for garden

shows, floral pageants, and civic festivals, Mary Austin saw a revival of the

Greek.rp".itylo, dramaturgy, from which, she hoped, the mo-re formal-

ized expression of outdoor theater might emerge, as it had in Greece' In

The Tiiumph of Light, a California Midwinter Sun Mystery (tgo+)

Charles Augustus Keeler tried to fashion a theatrical experience which

combined lyric drama, the allegorical masque, music, and the dance'

Keeler took ior his theme the ancient myth of the sun's disappearance and

return, putting it into a California setting. Although it seems never to

have been periormed, Keeler's play was intended as a ritual celebration of

california's special relationship to the sun, its proposed presentation out-

doors at mid-winter being an essential part of its message'

The dedication of the Greek Theater at Berkeley in r9o3 led Califor-

nians to believe that Keeler's neo-Grecian ambitions were not unwar-

ranted. Modeled upon the theater at Bpidaurus, the Greek Theater was

set in a natural amphitheater on the UC campus, surrounded by eucalyp-

tus. william Randolph Hearst put up the money for its construction. Itseated over eight thousand. Like the Burnham Plan for San Francisco, the

Greek Theater had its naive side. Berkeley, after all, was not Epidaurus.

And yet the impulse toward outdoor theater that the amphitheater

pointed toward was genuine. Three years after its dedication, when San

i'r"rr"isco lay smoldering in ruins, the Greek Theater showed itself capable

of supporting more than naive hellenizing. Before a vast crowd of refu-

g."r, S"r"h dernhardt appeared in an afternoon performance of Racine's

pnaarn. She had toured the smoking rubble that morning in an open

carriage with Arnold Genthe, tears streaming down her cheeks as she saw

the destruction of the city which, next to Paris, she most loved. As she

stepped before her audience, Bernhardt felt overwhelmed by the drama of

the lccasion; the thought of the ruinecl city across the Bay and the sight

of the brave gathering of citizens in the sunlight filled her with an un-

known ardor. She afterward said that it was the greatest performance of

phi:dre in her career. The tragic theater of the Greeks had implied just

such an interaction between a-rt arrd experience, and for a moment cali-

fornians felt themselves in the face of true tragedy' As if by wrath of the

gods, a great city had been shaken to its foundations. Like Racine's hero-

i"rr., S"ri Francisco had met death. For a moment in the afternoon' an

aging but still great actress put the Greek Theater of Berkeley to that use

intenaea in the Grecian variation of the Mediterlanean metaphor.

In the redwoods north of San Francisco, at Bohemian Grove, a truly

indigrcereII

can ktakinlbeforr

the flrits pa

its imto thr

throuin whinvoknto t

rec

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 3Btt-

rious form of outdoor theater arose from the Cremation of Care

;,li;o"i,fr. Bohemian Club. Although it was in the genre of Ameri-

T;;:;ir"r. ihe cremation of care was a ritual of meaning and taste,

;;;;." each August during thernidsum-: .t":"*Pment' flniqitjilr?.lUo"gte beneath the redwoods, Club officiants consigned Care to

iiirn"*"r. The ritual began in the early r88o's, and as the years went onr::- . r

its .pa geantry rncreaseq-' fnos9. r1tr1 wrote of it l-raisef ,th;.",::T1:*::s;lr:1 .ifs DageallLlY rrrlrr'a;'

-i r _-- r e

li+lfr1:lr,ircii,,,Dressrveness. Flickering light from the bonfire added further mystery

," ,f,. redwoods overhead. Watching the robed and mitred offiCials go

:i".r' , ilrourn the ceremony, one felt :1or-"1

to- a d.ayn;world.:f TL.h iig ":l1ll' ;;?.i demon Care might indeed be banished and the gifts of the gods

inuot.a. By the early rgoo's an original play was commissioned to lead

into the Ciemation ceremony. Presented at night against a rising incline

,i of redwoods, the Grove Plays brought to perfection that sort of outdoorl, drr*a which the Mediterranean metaphor urged Californians to make

their own. Taking subjects from history' romance' and myth (sample

productions: "The Man in the Forest," "Montezuma," "Saint PatriCk at

)ara," "The Green Knight," and George Sterling's "The Triumph of

Bohemia"), the Grove Plays used no scenery but the redwoods._staging,

costumes, and pageantry, on the other hand, were elaborate. A full orches-

tra played atr otigin"l score. The lighting efiects were nothing short of

.p".t".ul.t. "Such was the spell cast by the text of the play, the acting,

the lighting and the cathedral forest," recalled Arnold Genthe of the r9o4

production of "Hamadryads" by Will lrwin, "that it was as if a long lost

dream had been given reality."23

Unfortunately, o"ly the privileged few could take part in this distinctly

californian theatrical experience. The exclusiveness of the Grove Plays

was both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, membership in the

assumptions and felowship of the club was necessary to proceed psycho-

logically from the play to the cremation ritual, and only an association of

wealthy, like-minded men could afford to mount such lavish productions

in the first place. On the other hand, something so Californian, so tied

up with the mystery of the redwoods and a communal resPonse to beauty,

cried out to be maie available to a larger audience. Opening in r9ro, the

Forest Theater of carmel was intended to make outdoor drama a little

more democratic. Like the Grove Plays, the productions of the Forest

Theater Society featured original plays on historical or mythological

themes, acted by amateurs in an outdoor setting' A group led by George

sterling favored mythological pageants, while Mary Austin's clique wanted

for r

ivalrre

y(tlcehe

rancei

brationrtion o

I Cali

eater

'eucalyp,rction. It

pidaurus.hitheater

'hen San

I capableof refu-

Racine'san openshe saw

. As she

lrama ofhe sightr an un-rance ofLied justnt Cali-r of the:'s hero-lon, anhat use

a truly

38' AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

Biblical and Indian verse-drama. Like the Carmel colony itself, the presen-tations of the Forest Theater Society were uneven. It went without sayingthat the Society could not match the financial and technical resources ofthe Bohemian club. But it did struggle to make regional theater availableto the public, and as such it represented an advance over the restrictedperformances of Bohemian Grove. Taken at its best-in Mary Austin'sThe Arrow Maker (r9rr), for instance-the Forest Theater stood for a

return to a drama of myth and ritual which was part of california's Medi-terranean metaphor.

The culmination of the Greek impulse came from a young girl andwhat she thought about the dance. Dora Angela Duncan was born in SanFrancisco in 1878, the fourth child of a banker and minor poet. A suavegentleman, accustomed to advise the wealthy regarding purchases of art,

Joseph Duncan once wrote a poem, "Children," praising the joys of par-enthood, but he abandoned his own wife and family shortly before his lastchild was born. Dora, or Isadora as she became known, might have grownup in the prosperous Duncan home at Geary and Taylor, having a definiteplace in the San Francisco scheme of things; instead, divorce and povertythrew her into a childhood of cheap flats, frequent moves, and self-suffi-ciency. Isadora's mother kept her children together, raising them in eccen-tric freedom and passionate love of intellect and art. As a daughter of thebourgeoisie, Isadora might have surrendered her intelligence to the domi-nating proprieties of her father. As it turned out, she developed a mind ofher own. Like another neglected adolescent of the same era, |ack London,she educated herself in the Oakland Public Library under the guidance ofits librarian, the poet Ina Coolbrith.

In the course of her California adolescence Isadora Duncan made a

number of identifications and discoveries. Abandoned by her father, shetook her status and security from her maternal grandparents. ThomasGray, Isadora's grandfather, immigrated to the United States from Irelanclat the age of sixteen. In rB49 he brought his pregnant wife, also Irish-born, across the continent in a covered wagon. Isadora's mother was bornon the journey. During the Civil War, Thomas Gray fought for the Unionin the East, reaching the rank of colonel. From her grandparents Isadora

Duncan acquired a taste for the heroic. The influence of her divorcedmother's resentment intensified her perceptions. She saw her grandparentsas part of the true California epic, in contrast to the minor artiness of her

absent father. An adolescent intoxication with the poetry of Walt Whit-man gave cosmic, mystic sweep to this identification with a heroic West

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN zBlH5!{:ii:i

f;il,- *^ .rn;"t she was bound by birth. She felt an affinity between Whitman's

i ,.itrnr, t*", the zurf+oar of the Pacific, and :h"

*ttt;t9:1:l::::tt?: -1]l,:. "i?ftfr occurred in the subconscious, subeval way of adolescence' It was

' i"a i" with sexual maturation and a growing desire to do something with

|iit,. f,.r fit". Like Gertrude Atherton, she dreamed of the East and of Europe'

i,'. Isadora Duncan's American energies, her identification as a Californian

'," ' with the heroic, was touched by Greek imperatives' As a teenager she

!l l.gr" a experiment with a form of naturalistic dancing which she felt

*ri Uottr Californian and Greek. Taking its principles from nature, she,lr

,,' .l"imed, her dance both recovered the dance of Greece and expressed the

, ,"rponse of the American before the surge of the continent. Like Greece

| ,ni A-"ri." it was democratic, in that it did not depend upon the intri-,, cate patterns beloved by an aristocratic culture, but stressed movements

"..rrribl" to ordinary people. Like Greece and iike the America of walt

Whitman, it asserted the unity of spirit and flesh. "I have discovered the

dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand

years," Isadora Duncan told an astonished Augustin Daly in Chicago. She

had left California with her mother, brother, and sister to pursue a career'

and was now rushing backstage to implore the impresario to put her, a

girl of seventeen, into one of his productions. "I bring you the dance. ILring you the idea that is going to revolutionise our entire epoch. Where

have I discovered it? By the Pacific ocean, by the waving pine-forests of

Sierra Nevada. I have seen the ideal figure of youthful America dancing

over the top of the Rockies. The supreme poet of our country is waltwhitman. I have discovered the dance that is worthy of the poem of

Walt Whitman. I am indeed the spiritual daughter of Walt Whitman'

For the children of America I will create a new dance that will express

America. I bring to your theatre the vital soul that it lacks, the soul of the

dancer."2a

Though it took its origins by the Pacific, Isadora Duncan's career, like

that of Sibyl Sat derson, belonged to Europe. An unconventional love life

and an indifierence to politics made her persorn non grata in the United

States. Returning to San Francisco after world war I, she met with hos-

tility and contempt, And yet as a girl she had danced by the Pacific' She

had dreamed of eftecting an affirmation of the-body-as-art which went

back to Greece and was also an imperative of California. A Californian in

more than her hatred of jewelry and corsets, she brought away the Greek

metaphor. "I am a pilgrim," reads a rgoz entry in her notebook; "a pil-

grim and a mediante from California I came-there as a child I played in

:he

.out)sou

r avar

yAtood foria's

g girlrrn in Sa

t. A suave

ses of art,irys of par-,

rre his last,ave grown ,

a definiterd povertyL self-suffi-

. in eccen-

Lter of thethe domi-a mind of: London,tidance of

r made arther, she

Thomasn IrelanclLlso Irish-was bornhe Union:s Isadora

divorcedrdparents

:ss of herrlt whit-ric West

Isadora Duncan ($78-1927)

As a child she danced by the Pacifrc, al1d she said its rhythms entered her

blood. she devised ^ Ioi* oI natwalistic dancing which she felt was both

Calitomian and Greek. Her cateet as a dancer took her to Europe, where

she remained. Yet she insisted that she came as a californian, to bear

witness in the dance to the soaring Sierras and the surging Pacifrc' She

had talent and love of life. She achieved much, and she sufiered' Always'

in success and" in defeat, she was magnificent in her devotion-and in her

courage.

II AN AMERIcAN MEDITERRANEAN 385.::i

$,b meadows. California is the land of gold-not therefore the gold which

ffii], Coi".a in money but the free glad gold of the orange and the California

iiil,.goppy.""

IV

The desert and semi-arid lands of Southern California prompted compari

sons to North Africa and the Near East, a region which had given birth to

prophets, mystics, and great religions. Like the vine, the desert was in

ir.tf r symbol. It bespoke asceticism and a return to vision. It also sug-

gested death. For those who crossed it in the early years the desert was the

cruel, killing barrier before the garden of the Pacific, the ordeal of Sinai

before the Promised Land. By the end of the century, having settled the

continental edge, Americans started to drift eastward into the desert re-

gions. Some dreamt of conquest by irrigation, projects realized in the

Owens and Imperial valleys. Others sought escape from civilization, new

modes of beauty-and the reality of spirit. A desert literature arose, rePre-

sented in such now-classic accounts as John Charles Van Dyke's Tha

Desert (t9ot), Mary Austin'sThe Land of Little Rain (t9o3), Arthur f.Burdick's The Mystic Mid'Region (t9o4), and George Wharton fames'sThe Wonders of the Colorado Desert (19o6). From these accounts

emerged the Californian-as-desert-dweller, just as |ohn Muir put his Cali-

fornian in the mountains and Robinson |efiers would place his by the sea.

"It is stern, harsh, and at first repellent," wrote |ohn Charles Van Dyke

of the arid regions. "But what tongue shall tell the maiesty of it, the eter-

nal strength of it, the poetry of its widespread chaos, the sublimity of itslonely desolation1"26

As an art critic, Van Dyke described the desert with a schooled sensitiv-

ity to color, form, and light. His book is a drama of vistas and motion.

Dunes shift and color runs through the rarest combinations of the spec-

trum. Across an immensity of space, fantastic mountain forms are visible.

Overhead, cloud formations hourly change their shape and only the flight

of a huniing hawk interrupts the white light of the sun. It all seemed so

eternal, so beyond the touch of time; and yet etched into rock was evi-

dence of ancient convulsions and longJost seas. The still heat of the day

ceded to the paradox of sudden winds and the certainty of night colds.

The silence was deafening, even the mighty colorado flowing noiselessly,

as through a void. Because of the scarcity of vegetation and water, the

struggle for existence took on new savagely. Plant life contorted itself into

lerrh,IC

tar

he

i/S,

CT

)86 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

weird forms, as if caught in some unexplained anguish. The scorpion, the

centipede, the tarantula, and the rattlesnake gave a quality of venom to

the siil itself, and the horned toad and the gila monster seemed cursed

beasts from a mythic past. The heat, the thirst, the loneliness, the fragility

of survival, and the pressing mysteriousness forced men in upon them-

selves. It was, after all, the cl6ssic landscape of mystical adventure. Figures

like the desert recluse Vanamee in Norris' The Octopus dramatized a new

possibility for the American in the west. He might walk with God. "so

must have appeared the half-inspired shepherds of the Hebraic legends,"

wrote Norris of his desert mystic, "the younger prophets of Israel, dwellers

in the wilderness, beholders of visions, having their existence in a contin-

ual dream, talkers with God, gifted with strange powers."2?

Mary Austin wanted such communion with ultimate reality. One sum-

mer morning, as a child in Carlinville, Illinois, she came upon a walnut

tree on the edge of a sloping hill as she walked through an orchard. Silhou-

etted against the blue sky, its branches swayed in the wind. "Quite sud-

denly, after a moment of quietness there," she teils us of the experience,,,earth and sky and tree and wind-blown grass and the child in the midst

of them came alive together with a pulsing light of consciousness. There

was a wild foxglove at the child's feet and a bee dozing about it, and to

this day I can recall the swift inclusive awareness of each for the whole-I in them and they in me and all of us enclosed in a warm lucent bubble

of livingness. I remember the child looking everywhere for the source of

this happy wonder, and at ]ast she questioned-'God?'-because it was the

only awesottre word she knew. Deep inside, like the murmurous swinging

of a bell, she heard the answer, 'God, God . . .' "28

Mary Austin grew into a natural contemplative, a woman who by force

of temperameni and imagination hungered for mystical experience' A

Methodist background and an acutely intuitive intelligence disposed her

to a probing, experimental approach. She sought God not as a theological

for*Ltatior,, bui as "the experienceable quality in the universe." Aesthetic

perception functioned as the premise of Mary Austin's mysticism, and the

iisceirrment of pattern was iis method. Wedded to the materials of the

Southwest, she iensed in them the elusive possibilities of mystical en-

counter.It began in the semiarid regions of Southern California, in the Teion

district of the lower San |oaquin Valley. Arriving there in r8BB from

Illinois, she, her widowed mother, and her brothers took up a homestead'

Between r88B and r9o4, when she moved to Carmel, the important events

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 387

$$:fife took place. She made an unsatisfactory marriage, later dissolved

l#ft ",11"r".""^bt::l:""1,1::il:','Il_"_:"::'f 1'3*::::"1'.:ffiiiy

"aurtrtood. G.ttlrrg to know Mexicans, Indians, and other desert

ttrii'ii1i,._earlyrf 2o's,:Tl._sii,::'l:"_,":f ^":,_i*.":"t1i1""':':h*a11, io, The Land of Sunshine and The Overland Monthly. She became

il,rriir, of place, an indweller. Her revolt against Methodism left her in-

[,t::, natelV religLus temperament restless and without context. The desert;' r"

restored her sense of mystery. She encountered Something which she

fli,i1iii'::'dU"d the Spirit of the Arroyos, "a lurking, evasive Something, wistful,ir:.il.jl..,,, r-..^r ^.Janl. cnmcfhinr' ihal rrrstled end ran^ that huns half-remotelv.F

"ruel, ardeni; something that rustled and ran, that hung half-remotely,

:' insistent on being noticed, fled from pursuit, and when you turned from it,

i.r, leaped suddenly and fastened on your vitals' This is no mere figure ofli speech, but the true movement of experience. Then, and ever afterward,

in the wide, dry washes and along the edge of the chaparral, Mary was

beset with the need of being alone with this insistent experiential pang for

speech, but the true movement of experi

I which the wise Greeks had the clearest name concepts . . fauns, satyrs,

the ultimate Pan. Beauty-in-the-wi1d, yearning to be made human'"2e

The Spirit of the Arroyos quickened her dormant religiosity; once again,

she yearned for mystical experience. And then it happened. Her spiritual

drought came to an end. "It was a dry April," she wrote, "but not entirely

barren; mirages multiplied on every hand, white borage came out and blue

nemophila; where the run-off of the infrequent rains collected in hollows,

blue lupine sprang up as though pieces of the sky had fallen. on a morn-

ing Mary was walking down one of these, leading her horse, and suddenly

she was aware of poppies coming up singly through the tawny, crystal-

sanded soil, thin, piercing orange-colored flames' And then the warm per-

vasive sweetness of ultimate reality, the reality first encountered so long

ago under the walnut tree. Never to go away again; never to be completely

out of call. . . . Only the Christian saints have made the right words for

it, and to them it came after long discipline of renunciation. But to Mary

it just happened. ultimate, immaterial reality. You walk into it the way

one does into those wisps of warm scented air in hollows after the sun

goes down; there you stand motionless, acquiescing, I do not know how

long. It has nothing to do with time nor circumstance; no, nor morals nor

behaviors. It is the only true and absolute'"30

She began casting about for some way of relating through prayer and

asceticism to the ultimate reality she had experienced amidst the lupine

and the poppies. A brief reaffiliation with the Methodist Church left her

dissatisfied; and an experimental Practice of the Presence of God drew her

d

frag)n

:da]od. '1

egends,i

dwellersri

r contin-,

Ine sum.. walnut. Silhou-rite sud-rerience,

re midst;. There, and towhole-bubble

rurce ofwas thewinging

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rlogical:stheticrnd theof the

cal en-

Teioni fromestead.

events

388 AIvrERrcANs AND THE cALIFoRNIA DREAM

further and further away from christian orthodoxy. The God she en-

countered in her meditation was neither triune nor personal, but a princi-

ple in creation itself. The Paiute, she felt, came closest to the truth when

they understood It as Wakonda or The-Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man. As the

efiective principle of creation, Wakonda could be reached through Prayer,

not in uncertain petition as in Protestantism, but with the certainty of a

chemical reaction. Addressed properly, The-Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man al-

ways heard. Prayer as practiced by the Paiute freed Mary Austin from a

Calvinist universe, with its arbitrary, personal God acting out of inscru-

table purposes. To the Indian way of looking at it, men and the principle

behind creation shared a relationship of necessity. Putting oneself in

harmony with creation-through patterns of work, art, the dance-one

prayed, knowing from the start that you were being listened to if you

prayed correctly. "Prayer is the whole Process of becoming," Mary Austin

observed just before her death; "of complete expressiveness of which we

shall never arrive at any given mark. . It ties and unties, patterns and

unravels; the most that we can do is to take it at the flow, going with it,leaning upon it."31

christ inltaty (rgrz) andTheManlesus (tqt5) attest to the spiritual

implications of Mary Austin's desert sojourn. In a way, the two studies

represent a contrasting between California-as-Italy and California-as-Near-

East. Approaching her subject through the Southwest and the Mediter-

ranean, that is, having in mind the settings and implications of Italy,

Palestine, and Southern California, Austin compared the Christ of Ca-

tholicism with the desert fesus. She first encountered the Catholic Christ

through the Mexicans of Southern California. In r9o8, under mysterious

circumstances, she went to ltaly. she embarked upon the Italian iourneyconvinced that she was dying of a malignancy, although she was later very

unclear aborit the facts of the case. She hinted at a miraculous cure but

would commit herself only so far as to say that in ltaly, where she had

come to die, her condition "dwindled into the insignificance of a mis-

taken diagnosis."3z Instead of dying, she plunged herself into a study of

the Roman catholic tradition. she studied religious art. she read learned

treatises in the Vatican Library. She had discussions on the theology of

prayer with no less a personage than the papal secretary of state, Cardinal

ir"i""t Merry Det Val. She lived in a convent. A Roman fesuit instructed

her in the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius. None of this made Mary

Austin a Catholic, nor did she intend it to. Like the California desert'

Rome and Mediterranean Catholicity helped transform a Midwest Metho-

Mary Austin (r868-1934)

In Southern Calitornia she first encountercd the Spirit of the Arroyos.

That, in turn, Ied her to The'Friend'of-the-Soul-of-Man' She went to

Italy for spiritual instruction, but at odd moments, in consultation with

lesuit and cardinal, she remembered Tinnemaha, the Paiute'medicine

man who had first instructed her. After wotld war I she found that

Caktornia, for her at least, no longet held the mystery of things. And

yet in the land of little rain she had learned that men were not alone.

n,t,,F

m,,

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andr it,

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39O AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

dist into a Southwesterner alive to Indian and Mexican traditions. Catho-lic spirituality provided her with a tradition from which she defined a

private ascesis. Catholic liturgical prayer attracted her, its sacramentalismand ritual confirming what she had learned from the Indian: that prayer

was a patterned movement of body and soul by which one put oneself inharmony with the rhythms of creation in order to communicate with itsultimate meaning.

Italy enriched her, but in the long run she found the weight of its his-

tory oppressive. Sitting in.its cathedrals, standing before its paintings, she

thought of the desert. At odd moments, in consultation with |esuit and

cardinal, she remembered Tinnemaha, the Paiute medicine man, tellingher about The-Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man. Christ in Italy, the Christ ofCatholic theology and art, seemed suftocated in human accretion. She

could not imagine as one and the same the Second Person of theology and

the Man of Sorrows of baroque art and popular devotion. She preferred

the desert Jesus, the carpenter and peasant-prophet, the village rabbi whoknew his people and his tradition. After World War I, she found thatCalifornia, for her at least, no longer held the mystery of things. TheSpirit of the Arroyos seemed to depart to New Mexico and she followed itthere, to Santa Fe where the life of the Southwest, first encountered inSouthern California, still lingered on. Southern California's land of littlerain had revitaiized her spirit. In the desert she had learned that men were

not alone. They were linked to each other; and through The-Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man they were linked to ultimate reality itself. "At the core

of our Amerindian Iife," Mary Austin wrote, "we are consummated in the

dash and color of collectivity. It is not that we work upon the Cosmos, butit works in us."33 It was a good lesson for a lonely woman to learn, helped,

as she was, by the arid regions of Southern California, which like the

deserts of North Africa and the Near East drove men to dream of God.

V

The Spanish analogy had behind it the force of history, in that Califoiniabegan as part of the Spanish Empire. Travelers also discerned similaritiesof landscape betrveen Old Spain and its New World outpost, especially

the region along El Camino Real between Monterey and San Francisco,

which prompted comparison to the plateaus of Castile and the northern

coast of Asturias. For Forty-niners coming by sea, the encounter with His-

panic civilizations began on the voyage out. While anchored in the bay

of Rio de laneiro, they visited the city's magnificent Public Gardens, saw

:::lrl

;':rr.' AN AMERICAN MEDTTERRaNEAN 39Lli ::. '

ffif l'

nr,o EmDeror in his box at the opera, and-invariably-made much of the

lii' ,*iJ *i"tute of the population. Valparaiso was the next port of call' "Ii f*t ,fr" morals of Valparaiso are not of the highest older," observed one

i$;1,t,''' A-.ri.rr,; "yet a more social, hospitable and polite people I have never

ti;iil met."M Other responses, especially in matters of race and religion' were

ii' more hostile. Bayard Taylor reported seeing Americans light their cigars

', from the devotional tapers before the alter of the cathedral at Panama

' "t,r.

The democracy of Latin American worship, however, managed to

imptess some Yankees. "No pews invited the worshiper," said a Californian

of iis vlsit to the cathedral of Rio de )aneiro in 1849, "but princess and

beggar knelt side by side under the swelling dome and worshiped at a

.o-rnon altar without distinction of person or purpose'"35

Once in California, the American could not remain aloof from Mexican

culture. Spanish phrases filled his conversation. Many Americans dressed

Mexican style-sombrero, short iacket, selaPe, sash, bell-bottomed pants-

and used the Mexican saddle. Most women in the state were Spanish-

speaking. In Southern California, where the Mexican culture of Old Cali-

fornia lasted until the r87o's, its influence upon Americans became even

more noticeable. Throughout the rB5o's and r86o's, Los Angeles remained

a cluster of lowJying adobes grouped around a plaza, its American popu-

lation (the better sort) locally married; speaking Spanish, using Mexican

money, drinking mescal and aguardiente, and eating Mexican food. On

the great ranchos of Central and Southern California, life went on as be-

fore the conquest, save that rancheros now bore non-Spanish names.

Fr6mont's cordial relations with Old Californians suggested that dia-

logue with Hispanic California was the fundamental imperative of the

Ibirian analogy. Ironically, dialogue began as an intention to despoil Mex-

icans of their claim to the land. Litigation drove Americans to the ar-

chives, and out of this early legal research originated the first understand-

ing of the structure and aims of old california. william carey ]ones, a

lawyer and the brother-in-law of Frdmont, was sent in rB49 to California

as confidential agent of the Secretary of the Interior, to investigate the

status of Mexican land titles. Jones researched the archives of San Diego,

Los Angeles, Monterey, san fose, and San Francisco. He was probably the

first American to use such sources for historical enquiry. lones' Repofi on

the subiect of Land Titles in california (r85o), published upon his re-

turn to washington, provided a broad social survey of Hispanic califor-

nia, and as such it must be considered the founding text of post-conquest

dialogue between American and old californian. Mften |ohn w. Dwi-

InS.

de

mental:hat

oneself

te with

of its his-,intings, she

|esuit andan, tellingChrist of

etion. She

:ology and: preferredrabbi whoound thatrings. Theollowed itrntered ind of littlemen were

Friend-of-t the core

ted in the,smos, butn, helped,

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laliforniaimilaritiesespeciallyFrancisco,

northernwith His-

r the baydens, saw

392 AMERICANS AND TIIE CALIFORNIA DREAMnelle took to court San Francisco's craim of rand owed the city underMexican law, he backed his argument with an extensive invesiigation rntothe ancient, colonial, and mo?er' Iaws of Spain and Mexico, and SanFrancisco's deveropment in that context. Dwirierle,s rnn cioriol Historyof the city of sanFlanliso 1tso3j ,.t rorttr an eregant legar brief-andanchored San Francirco,, corr""p#r, oi irr.f deeply, irretiievably, ontothe Hispanic past..In later years, i*"gi"rtio., built upon legal continuity.Much of carifornia's history *rr rri,i"r, by

'awyers directry concernedwith problems of land. titre, the subjecl providing ready-made training inhistoriography. Frederic Hall, for

"*"*pt", grew wealthy as a land lawspeciatist in Santa C]iri..C9y.ry. He briifly """t.d ",

f.gai;;o, to Em-peror Maxim'ian I. Ha, s Hrsfo ry of san iosn and s"ri"""args reflectedhis knowledge of, and sympathy r"., nn.-r-.i" society, ptu, ii"iir.ipriningefi_ect oJ a large collection of Spn.rirt ,nl-M.*i"r., documents.Land titles implied a continlity, whereas the basic situation was viorentand disruptive' /ohn-_Rollin Ridie, a San Francir"o ,ou.r,"iirt and poet,himself a Georgian cherokee *rrJr.""r rrrat it was to lose

"rrc"rtr"t hnas,put forth the Mexican case in The Life ora d,iiriuir""t loaquinMurieta, the celebrated california nana-u (rgq). The fact ,r,1, Riag",,hero had little in common with various U"1i"il, a*p.rJ"* plaguingcalifornia under the-name /oaquin did not imply that Ridge was unin-terested in history. Ridge ciaimed thai he was setting down Murieta,smurderous career not to minister to depraved taste, but 7,o .orrtriuut" *ymite to those materials out of which t'h" e"rty history of carifornia sha'

::" 9ry be composed." A burden of injustice was california,s because ofthe American treatment of Mexicans, ,J niag" intended to see that itwas not lost to memory. /oaquin was an upp"r-"'-"r, Mexican y;;;, driveninto banditry by Americans after they ha'i raped his fianc6e, Iynched hishalf-brother, and given him a humiri#rrg puuri" whipping. He representedthe displaced and viorentry abused M";;"" cariforniais of the rg5o,s,many of whom, Iike Murieta, took to the h'ts as outraws. tvturi.L, niag"insisted' was no criminar, but the Rinaldo Rinardini of carifornia-..a herowho has revenged his country's wrongs and washed out her disgrace in theblood of her enemies." Bacied uy pio-i*"t Mexican carifoinians, Joa-quin,organizes a brigade to sweep s'outt"* california free of Americans.The lesson of Murieta's career, riiag" rrrir,"d, was ,,that there is nothingso dangerous in its consequences as injustice to individuars-whether itarise from prejudice of coror. or from

"ny oil., source; that a wrong doneto one man is a wrong to society and to the world.,,ro

o

s

u

I

re(

Adr

ifrA:

S€,

CI

'ofwi:

\M

red the city'e investigation1 Mexico, and\e Colonial Hirnt legal brief

irretrievably, olrn legal continuidirectly concerly-made training,Ithy as a land la$:gal advisor toroundings reflectedlus the discipliningments.

luation was violentrurnalist and poet,ose ancestral lands,ntures of loaquine fact that Ridge'speradoes plaguingt Ridge was unin-g down Murieta's"to contribute mycf California shall

'ornia's because ofded to see that itican youth, drivenrnc6e, lynched hisrg. He representedrns of the r85o's,

's. Murieta, Ridgelalifornia-"a herorer disgrace in theCalifornians, Joa-ree of Americans.t there is nothingIuals-whether itrat a wrong done

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 393

rneral Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo ofiered Americans a figure of rec-

;""". Born in Monterey in r8o8, the son of a soldier who broke off

i-H'i*l;; * fri.stt ood to ioin the army, Valleio received a californian

*;;ti"t ani at sixteen was made ".

t'dll; Co.imisslon;a :::i1 1lTXl-"i" ftted oot the idleness of garrison life with enough reading to

;;,{" r,i* ". anomalv in old c1llforlia,, a :1t:u":-bo-'1,'ll':: - :ttl-i:{'Jiii;fu. In r83o he was elected to the legislature, and in 1836, when

,l':,llunr"ao declared California independent, he named Vallejo comman-

J;"i g""*"f, an office which Mexico confirmed in 1838, when Alta Cal-

ii"rril returned to Federal iurisdiction. Valleio adjusted easily to the

A*.ri""., occupation; for the Yankee way of doing things appealed to his

,".ot"r, progrrrriu" instincts. He sent his son Platon to New York to attend

Cofo*fi"'r"College of Physicians and Surgeons. Graduating at the head

of his class, Platon vallejo was the first Spanish-speaking californian to

win the M.D. degree. He later served in the medical corps of the Union

Or*t Vallejo hiirself assured Lincoln of the loyalty of California's Span-

ish-sieaking population. Visiting various Army headquarters' he renewed

".q*in,r"".eships with high'ranking officers he had known as captains and

lieutenants when the Army occupied california. He scandalized Platon

by addressing General Grant as "Grant," and being addressed in return as

,,vailejo." "why not?" vallejo asked his son. "Aren't we both generals?"37

From the tB6o's onward General vallejo assumed a place of importance

in the imagination of American california. He symbolized the hope that

all of Old California had not been lost. The Annals of San Francisco'

which had nothing but contempt for the majority of Mexicans' cited Gen-

eral vallejo as the very model of the old california gentleman. tr'ive years

later, in ,il6o, V"ll.;o occupied with Fr6mont the stage of the New Music

Hall in san Francisco ", Ed*nttd Randolph orated for three hours con-

cerning California's days of Spanish glory' During the conquest, Fr6mont'had tirown Vallejo into the calaboose. Their appearance side by side

signified the rapprochement of Latin and American californians' "In him

w"e ,ecogrrire a'noble type of the generous, hospitable Native californian,"

said an orator of the deneral in rg7o, before the Society of California

Pioneers, "a type of that race among us that is fast passing away' No! not

passing away,'Lut mingling its blood with the Anglo-Saxon hordes' con-

iributing an element oi L"1itt fire and dash to Scandinavian descendants,

which ii and is to be, the perfection of the human family'"38 After the

conquest, Vallejo served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention

at l\.ionterey, and later as state senator and mayor of Sonoma. His presence

bro

ir:'A

Peaonlmidtine:

w.

Mariano Guadalupe Valleio (rgo8_rggo)In.telligent, widely read secular by temoenclination, G"n"r^i vrjp;^ rrr.o r-^r:^- - , .' , ment and progressive by in-"i;:;l::;,"9x":i,J:!lc"i"ii",i'iii"f TJi",3i!o':::::";:;i:;;;united srares, a beriet i;r;;;";;:'i"JJ,',"ii, tavored annexation to thethe mosf powrrti--,,,An ;n ,t_^ ^,^ .

ts in.fhat VaIIeio was perhaps

f;#",,j,0,:I:,::,r1,i::;h;";;:;i;;'i::,,:#yirii,i,*t,i,ilJ?.,#";::;:,';::"j:,i!:r.:.:::J;:;:;:i;:i';i{;f r:::,i;';i::;':"theneworder,varrei",y^ir,,i;;;::::;:",yri,r"7,i;?;::tJ:;::::,.t

!l lN AMERTcAN MEDITERRANEAN 395

5*r rn aura of Old California to official gatherings' As Bancroft put

&..""r the noblest Californian of them all!"3e

n"."-"r*i.iesmultiplied,theimageofoldCaliforniagrewmoreaP.:;';;ilihout distu'rbance, without bloodshed, with scarcely a ripple

Tlffrir""*t* rurr^." of their simple society," wrote Franklin Tuthill in the

..';;;il;", "these occupants of a wild 1{ un}nowl l"*i?"- ol th:,::",

ffit it.rr irtildthrough tio generations."40 In the opinion of fudge Elisha

i,, t

w.^no.xrrtry, adJressing the society of californi"_l1oT"" in r87r,

f,.l'.'.''r;*;;11ng pr"aour had Gen lost in the passing of old California' By

i'; , ""*"rr,

"A,*.ri."r, California seemed opulent, pretentious, and vulgar'

ili ;ir.fr "

generation," Judge McKinstry upbraided silver-rich San Francis-

ii cans, "ca"n hardly co*pre-her,d that elegance and beauty T"I It well be

t ;;;rn.a uy a d'iet of iortiltas and olla podrida asby pdtd de foie gras and

;;;rgognnlin, Attorney William |. Shaw, himself on the verge of leaving

leg"iplactice to enioy a life of learned leisure, made a similar point five

y"l^r, int"r, telling tire Pioneers "that our predecessors here enjoyed more

!"r,uirre human liappirress with their wooden carts and plows of sticks than

has ever been seen in our societies'"42

one of the most interesting examples of the tendency to endow spanish

california with the attributes of a lost utopia aPPeaIs in The cafifotnia of

the Padres; or, Footprints of Ancient Communism (fi75) ' by Elizabeth

Hughes. California's current social troubles, Mrs' Hughes wrote' were but

one instance of the breakdown of human community brought on by nine-

teenth-century industrialism. what had the American transplanted to

California but "a life of fevered ambition for the attainment of an uncer-

tain end"? Look at the vulgarity and materialism of American architec-

ture, Mrs. Hughes urged; then contrast Nob Hill ostentatiousness with the

spiritual digniiy of riission buildings and the simple grace of the adobe.

In each case, the soul of the society shone through its dwellings' She was

no advocate of Romanism, Mrs. Hughes cautioned, but modern califor-

nia, if it ever were to fulfill its promise, had to take the mission system

for its model of industrial organization and social reform. "Nature has

prepared the place," she said o1 california , "fot a laboratory of new ideas,

and a new social order." Let the state get busy with its destiny. As an

imaginative ideal, the vision of an appropriately californian organization

ofcommunitylifelingeredonthroughtheturnofthecentury.AmidsttheAmerican clamor, th"e myth of pre-conquest contentment remained a

haunting alternative'Inmanycases,Iomanticizationofthemissionerahadahollowring.

ebyinn to theperhaps

lilornia.'iving in'tures.

396 AMERIcANS AND THE cALIFoRNIA DREAM

Bancroft's California .p

*?ryt, ry6g- fi 4g ( r gBS ) dramatized the ambiva_Ience behind the myth. packed'*i,' .oto*ur anecdotes oispa'ist a'aMexican days, California Pastoral supposedly ""t.ur"i.! ttJr"ti' prrt.Yet undertones of contempt perv"ded th" book, undertones which brokeout into expressions of hatied for alr that was supposed to be so grorious.There had been so much anti-cathoricism in the first volume of Bancroft,sHistory of centrar America th"t

" .o*-ittee of irate Roman churchmendemanded that it be.rewritten. Henry L. oak, a disciprineJ ilriorirr,, t.ptanticatholic attitudes out of the History o-f carifornio. rn californiaPastoral, however, which Bancroft wrote personally, anti-cathoric tiradesreached heights of intemperate and inarticurate rury Hrtr"J was hardrythe basis for romantic appropriation. Like the starch-colrared fundamen-talists who, to the amusement of Frank Lloyd Wright,l;;;;;," uncom_fortably in neo-mission bungarows, Brrr"roft never fert at home in his His-panic edifice. At its most harmress, the myth he advanced resurted indishonest architecture.. At its worst, its paster nostargia contrasted mock-ingly wirh the lot :f .Cilif-ornj",r'spniirh_speaking people, a despisedminority, deprived of their lands, given their only E,*ir'r" ih" ,"nr*,of gringo fantasy.Idealization of the mission era received its biggest boost from Ramona(ils+), a best-selling nover by Heren Hunt Jackson. A Massachusetts-borny9:*' Mrs' ]ackson dedicated the last six years of her rife to Indianphilanthropy. So widespread was her reputation as an expert in Indian af-fairs that in r8B3 the Department of td" Irrt"rior, in a move unusuar fortfe- limes, appointed heiand Abbot *r,*y to investigate the conditionof Mission Indians in the southern .ourr,t", of carifornia, especia'y inregard to contested land rights. In their Report on the condition ondNeeds of the tufisslo7.!naji2s (rBB3) ;".kron and Kinney protested thesystematic removar of the Indians from'lands they had

"".'"pi"a"ri"ce thedays of the spanish. They called ro,

" ,*u.y of Indian-held lands, the re-moval of white squatters,. and free legar counser for Indian ritigants inland disputes, together with medicar a,ia eauca;;;;i #;".:Lespair_ing that her Report rlour-d have any effect in washington, Mrs. /acksonsat down in her room in the Berkerey Hoter in New v-r. ci[ t" write anIndian uncleTom's cabin.Ramori described how an I"di;" iGherder,Alessandro Assis' and his-harf-breed *if", n"rrrona ortega, had their livesdestroyed by white greed. A mood of ,rosi"tgi" and romance, however,warred agail{ sociar protest. During visits to southern carifornia, Mrs.

fackson had been incensed at the tieatment of the Indians, but she had

ril AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 397

llen in love with the romance of the mission era. As she wrote, sen-

nt overcame outrage. Her novel moved in the direction of a glorifica-

iibf,a Souttrern California suffused with the golden memory of pastoral

iyg,irather than an indictment of present injustices. Aunt Ri, a white

liin-"n won over to the cause of the Indian because of her friendship withh.andro and Ramona, makes a number of trenchant observations; but

iffi:is the ancient Franciscan Padre Salvierderra, with his memories of old

ijl',:i ission days, who has really captured Mrs. Jackson's imagination.

il,;,".;,, Charles Fletcher Lummis made a more informed identification with:ii. ' rtre Spanish associations of Southern California. In various ways-as his'

i',' torian, poet, ethnologist, journalist, and librarian-Lummis spent a life-

l time encouraging Southern Californians to reappropriate their Hispanic

heritage. He was a Massachusetts Yankee and a Harvard man, and his

identification with the frontier, in his case the frontier of the Spanish

Southwest, should be seen in the context of similar turn-of-the-centuryalignments on the part of two other Harvard men, Owen Wister and

Theodore Roosevelt, for whom the vanishing West served as the corrective

symbol for personal and social values under assault. In rB84 Lummiswalked from Ohio to California, as on a pilgrimage. It took him rrz days,

and the eccentricity of it attested to the fact that his would be no routinerelationship to Southern California. As a locale and as an imaginativeideal, the Spanish Southwest provided Lummis with a counter-force tosome very destructive urges.

In the drama of Southern California's self-discovery, Charles FletcherLummis played a leading role. From 1895 to r9o3 he served as editor ofLand of Sunshine (changed in rgoz to OutWest), which he struggled tomake as influential in the South as The Overland Monthly had been dur-ing the coming-of-age of the North a generation previously. Through thevehicle of his column, "The Lion's Den," Lummis did what he could toguide Southern California in the right direction. He wanted more than astage-set of bungalows and orange groves. He wanted a real alternative inthe matter of American lifestyles, a hitherto unachieved blend of physical,moral, and intellectual culture. As librarian of the City of Los Angeles fromr9o5 to r9rr, Lummis made the public library function in its bestAmer-ican manner: the people's free university, active agent in the Americanquest for self-improvement and expanded horizons, not just the passive

repository of books. As founder of the Landmarks Club he led in the fightto restore the missions before they crumbled away completely and to pre-

serve other places of historical interest. Defender of Indian rights as a

the a

Spanis

: Latinwhich,: so glorirf Ba

churcstorian,t Caliholic tiwas ha

fundatso: in his His,,resulted irsted mocka despised

the realms

m Ramonausetts-born

to IndianIndian af-

Lnusual forcondition

pecially inlition andtested theI since theCs, the re-

tigants in. Despair-

s. Jacksonr write an,ePherder,

lheir lives

however,nia, Mrs.t she had

398 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

journalist, Lummis studied Indian cultures as a devoted amateur ethnolo-

gist. He helped found the Southwest Museum to accord preservation and

iribute to the relics and artifacts of the great Indian cultures of the South-

west.But it was as a scholar and defender of the Spanish heritage that Lum-

mis made his most lasting contribution. In his literary work of the r89o's

-most significantly represented in The Spanish Pioneers (r893)-andthroughout thousands of pages of journalism, Lummis struggled to bring

Americans first to acknowledge the Spanish heritage, next to respect it,

and then to make a deeper act of appropriation. Above all, it was the

austerity of spanish frontier civilization, its internalization of complex

ideals and its sparseness of external detail, which most attracted Lummis.

Personally, he could never keep his house in order. Until his fires banked

in later years, a compulsive love life made him notorious. Moderation-in

anything-never came easily. As city editor of the Los Angeles Times he

worked, drank, and dissipated himself into a paralytic stroke. Like Roose-

velt, Lummis plunged himself into the frontier to restore a shattered sys-

tem. From 1BBB to r89z he lived in San Mateo, New Mexico, bringing

himself to health through a regime of enforced outdoor activity. It was

not an uninterrupted recuperation. While in New Mexico he suftered two

more strokes, the last of which left him a speechless invalid. He had to be

lifted onto his horse and he could manage to fish only by lying at the side

of the river in the prone position. By 1892, however, when he left on an

archeological expedition to Bolivia and Peru, Lummis had regained his

health.

The Spanish Southwest served him as the locale and the objective cor-

relative of a desired restoration. For the rest of his life he tried to counter

his disorderly impulses with what he took to be the Spanish imperatives

of restraint and purpose. Out of the confusion of his personal life he had

fled to work as to a narcotic, and it had ieft him a bedridden invalid. Now

he returned to Los Angeles to preach the pace of the ]and of poco tiempo,

where things occurred in stride and where there was a time and a place for

everything. He had suftered a confusion of instincts and goals; now he

.''ouid orjanize his life around the all-compelling task of coaxing the

e-ergirg A*erican Southwest and Southern California toward an organic

integiat[n of Latin values into its way of living. On the historical front, he

*rrr"t.a the epic of the Spanish frontier made part of the colonial heritage

of those states and territories stretching from Texas to the Pacific. The

American of this region, Lummis insisted, was the cultural descendant

rmateuri

Preseres of th

:itage thatrrk of theli,rs (r893)ruggled toxt toe all, it wasr

ion ofracted Luhis fires banModeratigeles Timegke. Likea shattered sv.d

exico, bringiactivity. Ithe suffered twol. He had to bei,

ring at the side,lr he left on

"rrld regained his ,

: obiective cor-ried to countersh imperativesral life he hadr invalid. Now: poco tiempo,.nd a place forgoals; now he: coaxing thetrd an organicrical front, heonial heritagePacific. TheI descendant

400 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

of both Puritan and conquistador. As such, he should live differently,that is, in ways that showed his Spanish heritage. Lummis himself, knownto his friends as Don Carlos, dressed in a corduroy suit, vaguely Spanishin cut, and wore a sash and Spanish hat. Making himself an expert in thelanguage, he collected the folklore and songs of the Spanish borderlandsand of Old California. With the help of Indian artisans he built a stone-and-adobe hacienda, called El Alisal, the Sycamore, from the grove whichsurrounded it. It took him about fifteen years to finish, and, once com-plete, El Alisal stood, as Lummis intended it to, as an architectural enact-ment of Southern California's inner metaphor. Built around a patio, itswalls hung with Indian rugs and California paintings, its ceilings crossed

by beams showing the rough cut of an ancient adze, El Alisal dramatizedperhaps better than anything he had written Lummis' feeling for therugged romance of Southern California as daughter of New Spain. There,gathering the talent and literati of the day, Lummis would urge themalong toward that shimmering Southern California which ever held hisimagination.

He did not intend the theatricality of his own witness as a literal para-

digm. Southern Californians, after all, might well balk at corduroy suits

and sombreros and find themselves unable to build spacious haciendas.They could, however, respond to the Spanish metaphor, making it a partof their self-image as Californians. Proud of the large numbers of educatedmiddle-class Easterners and Midwesterners filling up Southern'California,Lummis wanted them imaginatively integrated into the historical impera-

tives of their new environment. Southern California was not a tabula rasa,

Lummis asserted, despite its vast unsettled spaces. If the new Californianwould only listen, he might catch echoes of an experience which wentback farther than his own colonial legacy. Hearing this, responding to a

new nexus of landscape, climate, and history, the American in Southern

California might set about the realization of a truly authentic American

alternative.Lummis, like Mary Austin, whom he sponsored, despised the sort of

fake mission romance engendered by Ramono. As a journalist, he cam-

paigned for both the preservation and proper interpretation of the mis-

sions. Contrary to what the mission myth would have Americans believe,

Lummis roared from the pages of "The Lion's Den," Southern California

had never supported such a pastel, pseudo-Castilian mise en scdne.Ithadbeen a rugged frontier, true, but one touched by beauty. The Californian

need not turn the mission into something resembling a La Scala produc- '

)REAM

;houldummisy suit, vagueimself anre Spanish botisans he buil, from the gro

finish, and, oian architecturilt around a ri

:, El Alisal drammmis' feeling: of New Spain.mis would urgea which ever

itness as a literal pa

balk at corduroy su-ii

ld spacious haciendaphor, making it a pa

e numbers of edup Southern Californi, the historical impera';was not atabularasa,

[f the new Ca]ifornianxperience which wentthis, responding to a

\merican in Southerny authentic American

, despised the sort ofa journalist, he cam-

rpretation of the mis-.ve Americans believe," Southern Californiamise en scdne.Ithadauty. The Californian.rg a La Scala produc-

li,' AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4ot

IaForza delDestino in order to feel its ideality and charm. These

fida, "t,tt.fres strung up the California coast like so many beads in a

1* stooa for spiritual foundations as impressive as the spires of Mas-

isetts. One need not be a Catholic, Lummis asserted, to feel iheir

Lr as historical monuments or to internalize them as symbolic ele-

ts in a cultural landscape. If Americans were willing to respond to

,dit"rrrrr.rn analogies as diverse and tenuously related as ltaly, Greece,

bi.'.' -d the Near East, then how much more important should be the histori-

il ' cal presence of Spain as represented in the Franciscan cloisters?

: Whatever the unevenness of his talents or the egocentricity of his

methods, Charles Fletcher Lummis, fifty years or so after the conquest,

$i., embarked singlehandedly upon a work of reconciliation between Spain

,1,, t and the United States. The War of 1898, when once again the Yankee

lt, rose up in antispanish jingoism, set back his efiorts, but he persevered. Ai L"tin-Yankee California had existed briefly before the conquest. Lummis

i envisioned its return as an American Southern California alert to the

implications of the Spanish metaphor. Whatever it decided it was, Cali-

fornia could not ignore its Spanish-speaking past.

VI

The Mediterranean analogy was noticeable in Californian architecture

and city planning. In r9o8, John Nolen, city planner and landscape archi-

tect of Cambridge, Massachusetts, came to San Diego at the request of

the Civic Improvement Committee to prepare a comprehensive plan of

urban development. Like Burnham in San Francisco, Nolen found that

San Diego had mismanaged its opportunities. Instead of being a spacious

expression of Southern California, San Diego was just another shabby

provincial town. Taking into account factors of population, topography,

climate, and cultural expectations, Nolen fashioned an ideal San Diego'

It was an open Mediterranean city. Nolen Widened San Diego's streets,

arranging them in harmony wiih landscape. He removed overhead wires

and planted trees along sidewalks. He advocated replacing such dull desig-

nations as D Street and Fifth Street with names taken from California

history and literature or from Spanish topographical terms. He scattered

squares and open places throughout the city, including a magnificent

downtown plaza. He suggested that an esplanade, part rialto, part recrea-

tional center, be built along the harbor. "The vision of this new san Diego

from the Bay," wrote Nolen, "with the mountains of Southern California

4O2 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

and Mexico, noble in outline and rich in color, in the background, isenough to move the most sluggish to action."as rhe idle ,4oo""r. area inthe heart of the city, set aside for public purposes but never utilized,Nolen wanted developed as the matrix of a park network which wouldinclude the Bay Front, Point Loma, La Jolla, Soledad Mountain, Fortstockton, and Torry Pines. As part of the deveropment of Mission clift,san Diego De Alcala, first of the california missions, would be restored.Aposeo (a promenade uninterrupted by crossings) swept through the cityto the Bay Front, where it dramatically opened into a width of rzoo feet.Flower beds, pergolas, terraces, splashing fountains, basins, and cascadeslined its path.

The cities of Southern Europe and Latin America provided Nolen withhis inspiration. Naples suggested how san Diego-which called itself theNaples of America-should develop its waterfront. Nice and the resortcities on the Italian lakes suggested how San Diego might handle its pub-lic gardens. Rio de Janeiro taught how to sweep the harbor with construc-tion, and Buenos Aires how to harmonize bourevards and open spaces.Nolen was impressed with the way sky, sea, mesa, canyon, mountain, andbeach played off one another with Mediterranean clarity. His sketches forsan Diego's proposed civic center demonstrated the ideality of his^ re-sponse: an orchestration of Italian and spanish buildings, palm-lined ave-nues and sunny plazas, all in counterpoint to land, sea, and sky. He wantedhis proposals to evoke "the peculiar opportunity for ioy, for hearth, forprosperity, that life in southern california, more especialry in san Diego,offers to all."aa rhe Burnham Plan set forth san Francisco as a neo-baroque imperial city, mistress of Pacific empire. The Nolen plan set forthanother california alternative, that of a seaside celebration of sun andsky, an urban arena for the Mediterranean encounter of rine, color,warmth, and spaciousness.

As was the case in San Francisco, San Diego's panama-California Ex-position proceeded from the same developmental impulse as its city plan.And as in san Francisco, the Exposition alone achieved concrete expres-sion. Fairs were better business than urban renewal. From a sleepy townof 39,75o in rpo!, when planning for the Panama-California Expositioncommenced, San Diego grew to a population of more than roqooo inr9r5, when the Fair opened. In that growth, the Nolen Plan had onlymild victories, and these were achieved through the agency of the Exposi-tion. Most importantly, San Diego developed, as Nolen had suggested,the r4ooacre tract in the city's center. Its very barrenness had stood as a

syl

co

cal

for

cifiity,

,'i exl

iGt,

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 403

iilf.unfulfilled expectations since that day in 1868 when the frontier'.r - . 1, r^- ^,,Llin -o'L (lhoosing these barrenffi;;Jr;, it

"tia. for use as a public park' Choosing these barren

il';J;;. * it e u*positlon, San Diego voted $,r'85o'ooo tt.' ,o":ut

H;;t;;;ent and named the area after the discoverer of the Pa-

*r*tN"o.z de Balboa' There, on hills overlooking American real-

iB'an Diego built its dream-citY'

i;"t'-'.*ithe Mediter'"'""" ideal of lT ?tt*:l :l-"-11"-"TJ:i_r*,i1""^ir"iit..tur", the city fathers se-lected an Easterner, Bertram

ii;;;t Goodhue of New York City' Then at the peak of his career'

iii$E-;:t'il;'h;;;;""worlingin.spanish"'!-"::tn:':^T:,Y'f :1'i:*:liffi;;;;ma_california Exiosition. Its romance appealed to his dreamy

"..,,;'#g'""ir"f "t*"yt in sear'ch of aesthetic.escip" 9":t:: ]:lti^:n:::,;ffilil";;;"i,* in time. The anti-modernism of Goodhue's aesthetic

lrt.i back tJ the rggo,s, when he was associated with a short-lived pre-

*ilii; -fi"r"^1,

rne Knight Errant. His nostalgia sustained itself

;#"ttgh a variety of architectlural styles' To Goodhue Spanish Colonial

stood for a revisionist, anti-industrial aesthetic' As a Mexican tradition' it

had emerged from a society which was organized around religion and a

f."rrntryiuoth of which Goodhue saw as essential to a thriving art-sense

and which he found lacking in the civilization north of the Rio Grande'

He became a leading exporient of Spanish colonial in the united States,

a revival especially ippropriate, he ihought, in the American Southwest'

where Mexican civilization had once held sway'

There was another movement in Goodhue's thought and taste' however'

a thrust toward modernity. As steel frames and reinforced concrete entered

American building, Gooiho" envisioned a new American architectural

idiom.WhatGoodhuewasprobingisevidentintwodesignscompletedjust before his early death in ,gr4,-thor" for the Nebraska State capitol

andtheLosAngelesPublicLibrary.Inbothbuildings,concretemasseswere brought into calm and ordered harmony with a fnimyl of surface

ornament, arrangements which recalied traditional relationships but were

also startlingly new. Believing that "nothing that apes the past is genuine

art," Goodhue attempted tJpass through traditional modes on the way

to the modern.InthatiourneySpanishColonialprovedanimportantstage.Itsatisfied

two needs in Goodiue: a need for history and a need for suggestions on

how to handle form, mass, texture, and color in that way of the future

hauntinghisimagination.SpanishColonial,notMission'seemedtoGood-hue the best basis for Souihern Californian architecture' Its simplicity'

ba

oGa

never

:whIountaiMissioni

ld be

rrough th of rzoo

, and

ed Nolenalled itseffj:

and therandle itswithI open spacimountain, an1

tis sketches

rlity of his re;

ralm-lined ave,

rky. He wantedifor health, forin San Diego,

isco as a neo-

r plan set forthln of sun and

of line, color,

.California Ex-

Ls its city plan.tncrete expres-

a sleepy townria Expositionran roqooo inPlan had onlyof the Exposi-

had suggested,

had stood as a

4O4 AMERTCANS AND rHE CALTFORNTA DREAM

blank spaces, tile, and masonry possessed more utility and beauty, moremodern resonances, than tortuously derivative adaptations of Mission. ASpanish colonial revival could be both romantic and modern. Goodhuehad first been in southern california in the late r89o's as a consultant toJ. M. Gillespie in the designing of El Fureides, a Mediterranean villa inMontecito, a home judged by contemporaries to be one of california'sgreat regional expressions. That Goodhue was in sympathy with califor-nia's search for a Mediterranean identity was evident in the designs hesubmitted in rgro to the Roman catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles fora cathedral and hospital complex. over tile-roofed villas, spanish or Ital-ian in style, Goodhue's cathedral dominates a Mediterranean city of pastelideality. cypresses line boulevards where neither streetcars, automobiles,nor signs attest to American occupation. It was no surprise that in rgroGoodhue was chosen chief Architect for the Panama-california Exposi-tion. The New York architect and san Diego boosters found their interestsmutual. Each had an ideal city secreted within themselves. Each wantedthe romance of the past and the promise of modernity.

With great relish, Goodhue set out to interpret San Diego and Southerncalifornia. He wanted the Panama-california Exposition to express theideal-mind of the American southwest. This region had a history olderthan the East coast, asserted Goodhue. San Diego should give that heri-tage spatial expression in intimate harmony with "the tenderest of skies,the bluest of seas, mountains of perfect outline, the richest of sub-tropicalfoliage, the soft speech and unfailing courtesy of the half-Spanish, half-Indian peasantry." Goodhue admitted that "exposition architecture difiersfrom that of our everyday world in being essentially the fabric of a dream

-not to endure but to provide, after the fashion that stage scenery pro-vides-illusion rather than reality." He would create "such a city as wouldhave fulfilled the visions of Fray /unipero Serra as he toiled and dreamedwhile he planted missions from San Diego to Monterey."as

In a setting of semitropical vegetation, atop a mesa triangulated bydeep arroyos, Goodhue built a fantastic Spanish city, its white walls andmulticolored tiles glistening in the blue California sky. An arched bridgeof reinforced concrete swept breathtakingly across a deep canyon to jointhe Exposition with San Diego proper. Critics praised the dramatic co-

hesiveness of the arrangement, comparing it to El Greco's painting ofToledo before a storm. Christian Brinton found the whole afiair "a visibleexpression of the collective soul of the Southwest," seeming "to have

sprung spontaneously from the soil and the vivid race consciousness of

tltPgt

L

ility andrtations ofnd modern.

;o's as a consVlediterranean)e one of Cali'mpathy with;:nt in the desi:se of Los,illas, Spanishlrranean city of'eetcars, a

surprise that inna-Californiar found their inrselves. Each

Diego and Southsition to express tlihad a history

hould give thate tenderest of skies.,j

chest of sub-tropical r

: half-Spanish, half- l

r architecture difiers l

re fabric of a dreamt stage scenery pro-;uch a city as wouldtoiled and dreamed

:sa triangulated byits white walls and. An arched bridgeeep canyon to join1 the dramatic co-]reco's painting ofole affair "a visibleseeming "to have: consciousness of

ili.i; illi:jli,. AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4o5

,inhabit this vast and fecund hinterland."a6 It seemed as if San

consciousness had been probed, its inner fantasies revealed. critics

rhe fact that the Exposition was intended as a metaphor for futureidrthe fact that the Exposition was rntended as a metaphor tor tuture

h- No fences or hedges marked oft the fairgrounds from the city.

ic"ping was continuous, weaving its motifs into parts of San Diego

r, Buildings in the California Quadrangle were permanent, intended

1 nucleus of a recreational center which would include a museum'

inry,artgal7ery, and zoological garden. "It is a very pleasing thought of

g San Diego of the future," noted Eugen Neuhaus, "with its ever-grow-

F-;:,i"i"g development entirely encircling this great garden spot we now admire

'" ,s ,n ExPosition."az

i:l.tr: ',.,,,1i1" Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts, Goodhue's California Quadrangle,

il, ,especially the cathedral-like California State Building, conferred romantic' 1 ,,-l r,

,: historicity upon a rather raw American city. It was variously compared to

iir' the Giralda Tower of Seville, the cathedral of Cordova, the Balvanera

'i : Chapel of the Church of San Francisco in Mexico City, the cathedral

at Oaxaca, Mexico, or the church of Montepulciano in Iialy. The very

roll call of these names gave satisfaction. Such were the associations San

Diegans had sought to evoke. Goodhue planned that the Panama-Cali-

fornia Exposition should recapitulate the architectural history of Spain

in America. With rare scholarship, Exposition buildings set forth the

epic of Spanish Colonial, beginning in Renaissance EuroPe, continuingthrough the great monuments of Mexico, spanning the Indian simplicityof puebloJike desert chapels and the Franciscan romance of the Californiamissions.

Thus Goodhue built a dream-city, for himself and for San Diego. Sig-

nificantly, he had been chosen over local architect Irving Gill for thecommission. Aside from political considerations (that is, aside from Good-

hue's more successful lobbying), Gill's geometric use of poured concrete

symbolized a California of full modernity. He and Goodhue both rever-

enced the canon of Spanish Southwestern architecture, but while Good-

hue was content to move toward its imperatives of clean, bold line throughhistoricism, Gill went there directly, ignoring scholarship in favor of a

daring, ahisiorical idiom. Only Goodhue's post-Exposition work, homes

of white-walled, adobeJike simplicity, showed him catching up to what

Gill was practicing in the early rgoo's. In rgro Goodhue was iust at that

stage where he could remarkably fulfill San Diego's needs: poised between

past and present, glimpsing the modern but filled with nostalgia for an

imagined past.

4c,6 AMERICANS AND T}IE CALIFORNIA DREAM

_ The theory and practice of gardening and domestic architecture showedthe effect of the canonization by thJ panama-carifornia Exposition ofspanish Revival as the officiar carifornia style. The quest for the perfectcalifornia garden had arways been an important factor in Iocal design.In san Diego itself, Irving Gil invented a new form of housing, thegarden apartment' city prans commissioned during this period for san

fose, oakland, and santa Barbara stressed the necZssity f;;; distinctrycalifornian answer to the problem of landscaping. pranner c. M. Robin-son suggested that San Jose tear down

"u"ry i.n." within the city limits

and landscape the city as-a rlhole, integrating itserf with surrounding or-chards and flowering fierds. cities and io*r,, rarery achieved such idears,but private builders found the goal of garden livin! more "ttni*bre. rh.california bungalow featured tou.ty g;ra"n efiects. In southern carifor_nia, a critic observed, ,,house and garde'are often designed together sothat the garden wil conform to th*e rines of the house and the pranting

control the view, with the resurt that from within doors interesting per-spectives open, leading perhaps from room to room and finaily throughglass doors down a brick-paveJ pergora overgrown with ruxuriarri vines, or::t: " sunny courtyard, or broad Jady veranda, furnished and used as aliving-room."as

Il r9o4 the Berkeley poet charres Augustus Keerer provided cariforniawith a garden ideorogy. He saw the garde'n as the enactment of the poetryand romance of california ]ife. In Keerer's mind, california offered achance for aesthetic moderation, privacy, health, learning, and domesticleisure. The californian pruned, subduei, and harmoni"""a ni, garden i'order to invoke on a manageable and symboric scale values of ieformingrefinement. "Let us have gardens,', Keeler urged Californians, ,.wherein

wecan assemble for play or where we may sit ln seclusion at work; gardensthat will exhilarate our sours by the harmony and grory of pure and bril-liant color, that will nourish our fancy with suggestions of romance as wesit in the shadow of the palm and listen to the whisper of rustling bam-boo; gardens that will bring nature to our homes and chasten our liveswith the purity of the great Earth Mother."ae

Palm and bamboo-Mediterranean and orientar images: there was theusual california problem of appropriation. Keerer',

".rih.ti" emphasizedordered luxuriance. Gardens grew easily in carifornia-.,rike rank weeds,,,he noted ambiguously. The problem was to cut back, to guide certaingrowth, to have richness within rimits. Bruce porter fert that there was aquality of too-muchness to carifornia gardens. Human care seemed im-

ma

ofofiattz

abu

Inl, 'fereit;tasnfailr

I'lhe sr

.Caliil' Tl

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4O7

il in the face of such fertility. Porter missed "the quality of appeal,

hdrrn.rr, of the hint of a delicate care bestowed, that gardens speak

d-:,*ot" difficult climates, where lavish growth and bloom is a definite

inment on the part of everybody and everything concerned." Rampantnce did not express the balance and serenity of the California ideal.

fijiSouthern California everything seemed to grow; hence the exotic of,eied a special temptation. Frank Lloyd Wright shuddered at the phan-

fiili$smrgoric carnival of Southern Ca]ifornia planting. He condemned the:;,i:,,,ftiftrre to select. to refuse indulsence in the exotic for ifs own sake :ndilii;,giture to select, to refuse indulgence in the exotic for its own sake, and

,il ,he saw this as but one indication of the overly eclectic quality of Southernliil' california life.

i:, The appropriation of Oriental and Mediterranean garden aesthetics

d,i offered an ideological solution. California had historical links with both

i. traditions, with the Oriental garden through its Chinese and ]apanese citi-: zens and its position facing the Far East, with the Mediterranean garden

through Mission planting, which had been in the tradition of SouthernEurope. Both were highly formal traditions, emphasizing control overnature. The Mission garden was considered especially appropriate. It hadbeen exuberant enough, but at the same time it had never lost its linkswith Mediterranean design. As a formal tradition, the Mission or neo-Mediterranean garden ordered vigor and conferred historicity; as a frontiertradition, it justified a taste for experiment, for the hybrid and near cha-otic. Keeler wanted the california garden to be "a compromise betweenthe natural and formal types"-"one that simulates, as nearly as may be,the charm of the wilderness, tamed and diversified for convenience andaccessibility."5o

It was the persistent California quest, defined this time in garden terms:how to maintain both vigor and refinement, a sense of fresh beginningsand fertile possibilities, as well as a sense of order, design, historicity. Onthe one hand, Keeler advocated the planting of bamboo, palm, dracaenas,magnolias, orange, banana, eucalypti, acacias, pittosporums, grevillias, andaraucarias. on the other, he wanted this diverse flora brought into comfort-ing harmony. Such was the thrust of turn-of-the-century garden theory incalifornia: a desire to strike a balance between variety and design, indul-gence and restraint. The Mediterranean analogy helped in the attempt.

Even more than garden theory, architecture turned to the Mediterra-nean. Goodhue's Iberian extravaganza climaxed and consolidated cali-fornia's appropriation of Mediterranean models as the basis of its regionalarchitecture. When the Colonial Revival, set off by the New England

ocal i

iod

e

M.city

rundini;uch idii

nable.

rn Ca:ogetheri

e plantiiesting

ly throt vines, o

used as

California,:he poetry:ofiered a:idomestic

"garden in':eforming

rerein we

; gardens

and bril-lce as weing bam-our lives

was thephasized

weeds,"certain

re was a

ned im-

4OB AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

Exhibit at the Philadelphia Centennial of fi76, reached California in the

r88o's, architects turned to the mission era as California's equivalent

colonial period. The arcades of Stanford University and Arthur Benton's

Mission Inn at Riverside attested to the vitality of Mission Revival in the

late r88o's and early rBgo's. A. Page Brown's California State Building at

the Chicago Exposition of rB93 put Mission before the world as Califor-

nia's official style. Edward R. Swain's 1896 Golden Gate Park Lodge raised

the Mission Revival to its highest level of suitability and taste. It was first

thought that the Panama-California Exposition should be in Mission, but

Goodhue objected. It was obvious to him that the Mission Revival had

passed its peak. Goodhue pushed the architecture of the Fair back in time,

to the style of which Mission had been but a faint recollection, Spanish

Colonial. In a sense, he forced the Mission Revival to its logical concul-

sion. If California were to return to history, argued the scholarship ofGoodhue's buildings, then let that history be accurate and pure.

In another sense, Goodhue consolidated under the banner of Spanish

Colonial the entire Mediterranean advance of California architecture. Ifone includes Classical and Beaux Arts Imperial, most turn-of-the-century

architecture in California was Mediterranean in inspiration. Public build-ings tended to be Classical in the north and Romanesque in the south.

Most of the representative homes discussed by Porter Garnett in Stately

Homes of California (rgt 5 ) were in the Italian style. Spanish architecture

existed on a wide variety of fronts: from Charles Fletcher Lummis' ElAlisal to fames D. Phelan's Montalvo, an elegant Renaissance mansion

overlooking the Santa Clara Valley. Lummis' home looked to the Spain

of the American Southwest; Mrs. Phoebe A. Hearst's Hacienda Del Pozo

de Verona near Pleasanton looked to the Spain of the Moor. The San

Francisco Ferry Building reproduced the Giralda Tower of the cathedral

of Seville. Rebuilt San Francisco featured a rich variety of Spanish

Renaissance homes, a mode which, on a much more elaborate scale,

William Randolph Hearst chose for San Simeon. A subdued, intimate

Spanish Colonial style characterized Santa Barbara.

In all these variations flourished the dream of California as a Mediter-

ranean littoral. Aside from its romantic implications, Mediterranean archi'

tecture made a point about constraint, simplicity, and order, paralleling

what was being said in garden theory. Even in its diffuse and derivative

California representations, the Mediterranean style had within itself a

strong urge toward the control of lushness through'design. At its best, neo'

Mediterranean did not lose elegant ,ir"pri.iif.'wt "i?u.t the abuses of

hed Caaliforniars,l

and Arthlissionnia Statethe worldrte Park Loilrnd taste. Iiid be in MisiMission Revitre Fair back'ecollection,,

:o its logical 'Ci

the scholarnd pure.l banner ofrnia architectuturn-of

ation. Public buiesque in theGarnett in

ipanish architect:tcher Lummis':naissance mansiroked to the SpaiiIacienda Del Pozore Moor. The San

:r of the cathedral'ariety of Spanishre elaborate scale,subdued, intimate

rnia as a Mediter-:diterranean archi-order, paralleling

rse and derivativerd within itself a

r. At its best, neo-ver the abuses of

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4O9

editerranean as practiced on the Pacific Slope, all was simplicity and

h.oo-p"riron to the machine-clt elaboration of the San Francisco

ib-arru" saw the Panama-California Exposition as moving Califor-

iifrer along the path upon which it had already set out through its

of Mediterranean, toward simplicity of line, drama of mass, and

y with landscape. such to him constituted the usable california

ition.Iilot .u.ry California architect wanting these things turned to historical

idar. T"t,. geometric- concrete structures :f.t::ttgiitt in Sa,nllqifr.$,li1rs 5pteading wooden bungalows of Henry Mather Greene and Charles

" t Su*n., Greene in Pasadena, and the shingled homes of Bernard R. May-

;l'.'i r ! - i -^---ri--^ -^-L:^r^-:^^l ^lramnl nl

irlii:i$..f. in Berkeley represented an innovative, non-historical attempt at

i.:'illrrgion.l expression. The name "Bay Region" was first applied by Lewisi,. ' Niumford to a semi-unified style of architecture that flourished in the San

t': Francisco Bay Area at the turn of the century, a style characterized by

simple lines, integration of outdoors and indoors, concern for view, a free

flow of space, and the use of wood and stone and textured materials.

Many Bay Region architects had served an apprenticeship in chicago

during the r8go's, when a new American architecture was in the making;

and in one sense, Bay Region represented Louis Sullivan's taste for the

organic and the functional translated into Bay Area terms. As such, there

was no sustained ideology, but rather a like response to materials and

locale by a group of architects sharing similar aesthetic assumptions.

InThe Simple Home (rgo4), charles Augustus Keeler provided some-

thing of an ideological statement for Bay Region, from the point of view

of the type of person who commissioned and lived in such homes. For

Keeler tn" n"y Region home was a vital and ariistic expression of the

ideal California way of life. It emphasized localism, naturalism, and sim-

plicity. Wood was the true California material, insisted Keeler, and should

be used extensively in the California home: unpainted shingles on the

exterior; exposed structural work on ceilings; redwood paneling; hardwood

floors. Wood should be used honestly and not as a substitute for other

materials. Ornament should exPress construction and not be merely deco-

rative, like the machine-cut moldings of the San Francisco Style. If there

must be decoration, it should imitate animal or vegetable forms and avoid

the historical or the representational. Within, there should be no wall-

paper, but solid colors, mixed in with the plaster. curtaining should con-

sisi of textured fabrics like leather or burlap. Art hung on the wall should

be by californians, simply framed to harmonize with the home itself. The

4LO AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

simple home manifested and reinforced an anti-industrial view of life andsociety. Machinery, Keeler wrote, enabled bad taste to be implementedwholesale, and an industrial economy fostered unselective consumption.Men worked hard so that they could live in over-furnished, vulgarly orna-mentative houses. The simple home defied the consumer economy and itsIack of taste. "Let those who would see a higher culture in california,,'Keeler urged, "a deeper life, a nobler humanity, work for the adoption ofthe simple home among all classes of people, trusting that the inspirationof its mute walls will be a ceaseless challenge to all who dwell withintheir shadow, for beauty and character."El

In Southern california the simple home was being realized as thebungalow. characterized by low horizontal lines, wide eaves, and a ve-randa roof, the bungalow was an achieved architectural genre by the turnof the century. within this genre, the Greene Brothers of pasadena cre-ated masterpieces, bringing the use of wood-Keeler's california material

-to perfection. Although possessing no one ideologue rike Keeler, thebungalow had enormous social implications. It was the architecture ofmiddle class california. "The comfort betokened," wrote Montgomeryschuyler of the bungalows he saw in Los Angeles in 19o6, "is that moder-ate degree to which any American of ordinary education and ordinaryaptitudes may reasonably aspire, when it does not impry that anybody haibeen depressed that a favored few may be exalted, when, in a word, it isa triumph of democracy." As a social symptom, schuyler felt, the bunga-Iow bore witness to the fact that an increasing number of Americans ofmoderate means were able "in their abodes and their surroundings to giveevidence of culture and refinement, to avoid the vulgarity of crudity onthe one hand and the vulgarity of ostentation on the other.i,52

californians thus advanced their search for a regional architecture ontwo fronts, the historical or neo-Mediterranean, and the non-historical orprogressive. The wealthy favored neo-Mediterranean modes: in the penin-sula south of San Francisco, in santa Barbara, and in Montecito. progres-

sive architecture received support from middle class professionals, thebungalow, of course, reaching downward into mass housing. Both stylesshared common assumptions about california: its architecture should beorderly, simple, and possessed of a strong spirit of place. The panama-

california Exposition turned popular support in favor of historicism as

represented by Spanish Colonial. By the early rgzo's most significanti:domestic construction was in neo-Spanish. The whole thing siFrank Lloyd Wright. "The eclectic procession of to and fro in the

timtmq'otherunthe ,

, , III€I€'. Calil;',iooke

,In

ndrtrrl

l;: .

:. AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4L1

i and cast-off of all the ages was never going to stop-so it seemed to

he said of Southern California in the late teens of the century' "An-

rer fair, in San Diego this time, had set up Mexico-spanish for another

iUn fo, another cycle of thirty years."5s Yankees could never get used to

rhe california sunshine, wright believed, and the Spanish Revival was:11-. - Luu

i. .. n,rr.ty a pathetic attempt to overcome their discomfort with Southern:'

California's luxuriance. Sitting in his neo-Spanish home, the Californian:il,.r:!

ii',, ,lookea as incongruous as a Spanish friar in a Medwestern parlor'

, . , . , In so many ways, Wright's judgment was correct. At its least attractive

i' level, the Spanish Revival represented an insincere, sales-oriented pastoral-

i' ir*, a way of dressing up tract housing with pseudo-romance. Even an

'l ardent advocate of the Spanish Revival had to admit a critic's judgment,

made in the late rgzo's, that "much of the work, especially that to be

found in some of the 'developments' and 'sub-divisions,' is little less than

theatrical stage-sets."5a Wright could never get over the humor of such

tract homes: picturesque Spanish romance on the outside, tile bathrooms,

kitchenettes, and sincere Midwest parlors within. Had the battle for a

tasteful and appropriate California architecture been lost? Had the Medi-terranean analogy condemned the state to confusion in the matter of itsdesign?

Those who saw only the debased instances of Spanish Revival-andthere was enough debasement to see-would unhesitatingly say yes. Butthe neo-Spanish homes created by Goodhue, George Washington Smith,Myron Hunt, Elmer Grey, and Reginald |ohnson could not be dismissedin the same category as their mass-produced stucco counterparts. Thebattle for democratic taste, which Schuyler saw the bungalow winning,was lost in the Spanish Revival. Its romanticism, successful when disci-

plined by scholarship, became vulgar theatricality when reproduced on a

mass scale. But other aspects of the Californian architectural ideologycontinued to be developed under the temporarily exclusive banner of neo-

Spanish. Critics of the Revival discerned perennial California concerns atwork. L F. Morrow felt the movement "progress without pedantty"-"notarcheology but a living architecture." When, in r9zz, Morrow surveyed

the work of ]ames Osborne Craig in Santa Barbara, the distance fromKeeler's hopes of twenty years past was not that great, although the pre-

ferred architectural idiom had shifted. Very few great styles developed

unconsciously, Morrow asserted, and so Southern California had the rightto appropriate neo-spanish as its regional expression because neo-Spanish

dramatized distinct California beliefs: "that motion is not necessarily

um

rrlylyaliforpt:Lspi:

l1 v

lasndathe tlena

ma

eler, tcture

- moder-ordlnaryrody has

rrd, it is

: bunga-icans of; to giverdity on

ture on

'rical oripenin-)rogres-

tls, ther styles

ruld be

lnama-:ism as

rificant:kened

re rag-

^1) AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM't'-progress, that not all systems are efficient- ones' and that' after ail' the

most efficient life is hardly worth while if not enioyed'" "Our Spanish

fr"a.".rro* enioyed life. ihe reversion to a Spanish attitude or point of

view is in the nature of a return to first principles'"5

Thus Morrow repeated Keeler's brief for Bay Region: a .California

architecture must be life-serving, must make some sort of an anti-industrial

gesture, and must conserve u"lues of intimacy, harmony' and health' Such'

lf .ourr", had been the ambitions of pre-Exposition progressive architec-

ture, now in eclipse. Today it appears shameful that those like Gill and

the Greene Brothers, better prepared to advance the Californian cause'

should have been shunted asiie. Ideologically, at least, California's search

forregionalva]uesinarchitecturecontinuedalonglinesthatdidamini.mum of violence to progressive hopes'

LikeBungalowand"BayRegio",thebestofspanishRevivalsoughtintimacy, oritdoor-indoo, iiuittg, and harmony with landscape',A passion

for simplicitv remained a funJamental california concern. what Keeler

sought in unpainted shingled exteriors, proiecting eaves and exposed

be"lrs, Spanish Revival made available in massy textured walls, unorna-

mentecl and geometric, low silhouettes, and patio-centered construction'

Much of what Irving Gill pioneered found expression in the-neo-Spanish

preference for bold rinrelieved surfaces, for concrete expressed in terms of

itself. In the early part of the century, Montgomery Schul1el predicted

that the lesson of the missions-simplicity-would be of vital importance

to California in the coming age of pou'ed-concrete construction' Bearing

out the truth of Schuyler's oi"'u"iio", the Spanish Revival purified the

mission tradition of its histrionic vocabulary and showed itself amenable

to the latest building techniques. "Here in california we are tired, very

tired," said fohn G"t?" FIo*"'a in 1916' "not of the Missions' but of the

sort of thing which has so long masqueraded in their name'" california

had purified its appropriation i an Iienan Past' "The new spirit is to do

without non-essentiali," noted Howard of Spanish Reyiva]'. "and give

thought solely to *"f.hg the facts themselves deautiful." In this way only'

and not through the prlviding of literal models, "the work o_f ltre

padres

has set its stamp for good and all upon the architecture of the Ptttfil, ,

ii,!.,

Coast."56

Goodhue's own career dramatized the process' After the gtttiT-|ftfi

Quadrangle, his work moved remorselessly in the direction of simplici

as if he wished himself to become the prime expolen-t "f ll" tT*:t-:;

underlying Spanish Colonial' He pushed trimself back to the adobe

AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 417

lirrn U where American California architecture first began-in r837

mornrt O. Larkin of Monterey upgraded. iaole w1t| American

;"rrt".,i"". Irving Gill had also begun with the adobe' and the

'J" i.r*r", Goodhue's La Cabana, built in Montecito in r9zo, and

t or-cttt'r work is not that great. At the converging point of the

,-it. Hstoti.al and the modern stood reconciled. That an ahistorical

iiir.rut" anticipated and surpassed the historicist's conclusions only

iorced the significance of the whole process: in California, no matter

fiii fr. source,-authentic and honest modes converged in the demands

[,]it" ..gion. Perhaps, then, the victory of the Mediterranean analogy

l]f , *fri.ft thJ Panama-California Exposition brought about had not proved

I ** an architectural disaster after all. Perhaps Californians needed to

i',, .,--rr., ^-o ^f iheir cenfrel mvths before moving into an era that wouldfff nurifv one of their central myths before moving into an era that woulcl

ii Lr it the most exciting architectural region in the United States. Certainly

I ihat which emerged from the Spanish Revival-a reconfirmation of the

i Californian necessity for design to contain and to order luxuriance and

to serye values of better everyday living -proved a useful heritage'

As evident from its scattered manifestations, Mediterraneanism was

, neither a process nor a plogram, although the Spanish Revival did mass

' und., the banner of architecture a variety of South-seeking impulses. Yet

as an analogy and as a metaphor, Mediterraneanism arose from a cluster

of stable influences-landscape, climate, and the Hispanic past being

among the most convincing. surfacing early, the spell of california-as-

South remained a point of reference down through the years of frontier

and transition. By the turn of the century it was a key factor in the re-

gional equation. It challenged californians to achieve something better in

the manner of American living: to design their cities and homes with

reference to the poetry of the past and in harmony with the land and the

smiling sun. It asked them to bring their gardens to ordered luxuriance. Itcelebrated the vine as a symbol of maturity and it introduced to agricul-

ture sun-loving trees which coaxed forth the Mediterranean implications

of the landscape and filled American marketplaces with dates and figs and

olives.

Above all, California-as-South encouraged new attitudes toward work

and leisure ancl what was important to live for. As a metaphor, it stood

for a culture anxious to foster an alternative to the industriai ethic. Here

in California, Mediterraneanism suggested, might emerge a people living

amidst beauty-from household artifact to city scheme-a people ani-

mated by a full play of sense and spirit. In and through the Mediterranean

ilrts

a

Span

erms

ortanBeari

ied therenable

d, veryof the

liforniastodod givey only,padres

Pacific

iforniarlicity,'ations

tradi-

4L4 AMERICANS AND TIIE CAIIFORNIA DREAM

metaphor was felt the strength of a persistent American longing. At the

forward edge of a history that demanded to be gotten on with, the Amer-

ican dreamed of repose. In a civilization whose premises were so uncertain

and whose structures collapsed and combined without warning, the Amer-

ican-not always, but now and then-yearned for stability and a time of

savoring. on Pacific shores, might he not broaden the myth of his iden-

tity? At the nexus of a California of fact and a California of imagination,

might there not occur a meeting of North and South, Europe and Amer-

ica? Might not the Latin past enrich the American present? These

questions gave unity to the California quest. What else but they brought

ttgether such disparate figures in the same symbolic landscape? All of

them-soldier, traveler, dancer, mystic, poet, vineyardist, historian, city

planner, and architect-found a measure of liberation in the contempla-

iion of california as America's Mediterranean littoral. It released energy

and gave them courage to struggle against that restriction of spirit, that

harsh materialism, which continually threatened to make a further mock-

ery of an already embattled American dream.

13ericans and the California Dream

In the years of its emergence as a regional civilization, what California

meant, and what it would continue to mean, was nevel resolvable into a

clear formula. The experience had been so haphazard, so bewildering in

variety, that even its most devoied protagonists could not agree on one

single interpretation.Unlike New Englanders or the citizens of Oregon and Utah, Califor-

nians could not justify themselves on the basis of founding ideals. High

and serious ambitions had animated many during the frontier, especially

men of the cloth, and later (in Royce above all) there had been great

moments of retrospective idealization; but even the most convinced Cali-

fornians had to admit that those who pursued ideals, those who reflected

upon experience from the vantage point of an ennobling ideology, did not

set the tone of society, or, indeed, have much to say about its direction'

They were the prophets and preservers of a better California, and it took

decades for their work to take efiect. Only Thomas Starr King (and he in

special circumstances and for a passing moment) wielded real influence.

Educators and reforming journalists fared better; brrt theirs, too, was a

struggle with visible results few and far between.

Unlike the Confederate South, California could not take its identity

from a tragic past culminating in an ordeal in which it romantically de-

fended a dieply mythic conception of itself. Although iust as violent, cali-fornia's sins were less institutionalized. The Indian was not kept in for-

mal slavery, but he was exterminated at the wish and at the expense of

the legislature; and for years in the southern part of the state, under the

415

ten on with,,nrses wererut warning,stability andthe myth of

ifornia of imth, Europe a

:ncan present?

else but theyrlic landscape?

i

yardist, historiafiion in the conral. It released'itriction of spirit,make a further

416 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

guise of penal labor, Indians were hawked from the auction-block. The

American South paid its price and continued to pay it. complicity and

atonement lay at the core of its experience, darkly tangled and then flower-

ing forth in a literature great because it was earned in guilt and pain. But

California concealed its sins and all but banished the tragic sense. Crimes

remained unacknowledged or were sentimentalized, and, as if by common

consent, responsibility was forgotten in the sunshine. A discernible thin-

ness crept into California literature because of this refusal to come to

terms with the darker elements of identity. There were exceptions, of

course, but local writers too often ignored the enduring dilemmas of hu-

man life in favor of a sentimentally affirmative humor or an optimism

which took an ever-smiling nature as its too easy correlative. Most of

california lay in the same latitudes as the confederate south; many

southerners migrated there; the state articulated itself through a myth of

fertility and sunny luxuriance similar to that of the confederacy. But inthe deeper reaches of cultural consciousness California did not resemble

the South.It resembled the Midwest, in that the central Valley supported vast

plains of wheat. Elsewhere, however, in the mountain orchards of the

north, in the vineyards of the Coast Range, in the irrigated groves south

of the Tehachapis, climate and produce showed a diversity unknown in

America's heartland. The texture of california ranch life differed from

that of life on a Midwest farm. In the central regions it tended to be less

developed domestically, mole on the way toward the impersonal agribusi-

ness of later decades, vast acres being owned by corporations and run

through employees. In the citrus-, date-, and olive-growing south, inten-

sive farming took hold in a way impossible in the wheat-and-corn-growing

Midwest. In Southern California rural life showed a pattern approaching

the bourgeois suburbanism of later days, while the coastal regions resem-

bled the East with its diversity of one-family holdings. There was not, iu

short, the monotony of the Midwest; nor was there the anxiety brought

about by endless empty space. Psychologically, Sierra and seacoast were

never that far away.

There were aspects of Louisiana and the old southwest in california,

in that it blended the American frontier (largely Scots-Irish) with ihe

Franco-Spanish Creole. San Francisco was not New Orleans, but it some-

times tried to be; and certainly the Latin element did much to soften raw

Americanness. In Louisiana, however, the European past was much more

authentically present than in California, where it had its main vitality as

nn.,r. non" on the-part of an intelligentsia' As time went on' of

'r.,the mellowing of the landscape through cultivation by immigrante. the mettowlllB ur LrrL rorrsuvsrv "'""*D-- -'

I:r"r ,.;U.U tJurake it look more European' But California's Euro-

:l_:;;;;i;;ked the density of Louisiana's. Based on fragile premises,

l#;i;;; f"i", in iittle more than the rain-wasnea, owt-tr1:1le!

#t";;;Ji" *irrior,r, it functioned more as a suggestion than a

lJJrorrt.a with the American present' it continually threatened to

'l{-'l it.elf as an illusion'rY!*' ---

dF,By the years whrcn close this "i:l"tiyi l"X:I?*lliT:i:::r'1i::1ffij: i::l ",,iJ"*.a tt* a totality with which californians identified them-

itl.' ;#r. il. ,o,rti,y included ieveral other factors: the Gold Rush, most

llt,i;ri"rrit, r"u its continuing legacy of easy mone1,ald"bt",l1Tltt:.*

it." ;;;;t "oto'o-y which came from an overnight development' years

ji,"'' air-- a of the advancing frontier; the varieties of peoples who arrived,

't ' ,"a-rf,t, they brought a'tong how- cultures,remained,i"*::"i*"1::i::]altered the larger texture of-lite; the cities built, the harvests gathered; in

,rr"rr, ar that -walt

Whitman described in "Song of the Redwood-Tree"

(1874) as:

The flashing and golden pageant of California'.ihe sudden"and g-o.geoui diama, the sunny and ample la,nds'

,

iit" i"rj""a varld"stretch from Puget sound to Colorado south'

Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healtf,ier air, valleys and mountain cliffs'

The fields of Nature long prepared and fallow, the silent' cyclic chemrstry'

The slow and steady ,g;r'ptidd;ng, the unoccupied surface ripening' the rich

ores forming beneath;At last the New irriving, assuming, taking possession,

A swarming and busy rlce settling and organizing everywhere' ,r -

Ships comlng in from irt. *ft"i. 'oundworld] and going out to the whole

world,To India and china and Australia and the thousand island paradises of the

Pacific,populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers, the railroads,

with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,

And wood and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold'

This was the epic of california. These were the public contours of the

California dream.

AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 417

II

At the core of the dream was the hope for a special relationship to nature.

A passion for beautiful california filled the souls of the artists and intel'

o

omplid thenand pa

sense.

if by;cernible,rl to

3mmas oitan optlm

tive. MostSouth;Lghamleracy. Butnot

upported:hards ofgroves southunknown in

diftered from r

led to be less'rr

onal agribusi-ions and runsouth, inten--corn-growing

approaching

egions resem-

e was not, iu<iety brought;eacoast were

n California,;h) with thebut it some-

:o soften raw; much morein vitality as

418 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

lectuals of the rB5o-r9r5 period. Regardless of calling or capabilities, those

who achieved a significant mode of local living invariably put forwardtheir love of the outdoors as the key component in the structure of theirregionalism. King, Muir, fordan, London, Norris, Sterling, Austin, Lum-mis: relationships to environment varied, but they were always important.

Nature, that awesome setting for the California dream! Heroic, eternal,

overwhelming, it proved a glory, and a problem. It promised a profusion ofgifts: beauty, life, health, abundance, and, perhaps most important of all,a challenging correlative to inner aspiration. But it could also intimidate;the challenge could become a mocking measurement of failure. In such agrand setting, the civilization of provincial California seemed trivial. Thiscontrast was the theme of California's earliest county history, the Annnlsof Trinity County (rB5B) by Isaac Cox; and the anxiety continued downthe century. Thoreau,claimed that anger over their diminution led Cali-fornians to deface their environment in envy and revenge. There was evi-

dence that he was right. Even for those who revered their setting it was dis-

couraging to be measured against what one most cherished-and always

to be found wanting. The example of Muir, admirable as it was, did notsolve the problem. Muir's was essentially an eremitical relationship,working toward mystic communion at a point of utterly private transcend-

ence. The Sierra Club incorporated this into its quasi-social ideal, bringingthe community into the wilderness. Yet it left unanswered the problem ofday-to-day living, the problem of giving social extension to the desire (all-compelling in the most devoted) to internalize the grandeur of geography.

On holiday, the Californian might feel himself alive to the fingertips withphysical and spiritual energy. He was the heir of creation, the destinedlover of mountain and seacoast. But what was he in his cities and towns?

Not much, thought Henry fames, who visited the Pacific Coast in

March and April of r9o5, and whose observations showed how sharply

California could be judged. Finding the region breathtakingly beautiful,

James compared it to "a sort of prepared but unconscious and inexperi-

enced ltaly, the primitive plate, in perfect condition, but with the impres-

sion of History all yet to be made."l From the gracious rePose of the

Hotel del Coronado at Coronado Beach, he wrote to his sister-in-law

of his delight in "the charming sweetness and comfort of this spot'"

Southern California, James asserted, "has completely bowled me over+:l

such a delicious difierence from the rest of th; U.S. do I find in it. (I:iispeak of course all of nature and climate, fruits and flowers; for there i

absolutely nothing else, and the sense of the shining social and h

lnane

the ff

with :

live oIisten,

overh:

' FIo'

blives-

SO

inTidr

turt

r!cistc

.. IMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 419

, rrfter.) The days have been mostly here of heavenly beauty, and

vers, the wild flowers just now in particular, wtrich \tlV .rye,t;;;., over the land, are worthy of some purer planet than this. I

r orrng.t and olives, fresh from the tree, and I lie awake nights to!e - ---L:^L

-,, --,:-l^,.,-jton p,itpot", to the languid list of the Pacific, which my windows

,r2

il;#, ragingwith radiance, the languid list of the Pacific, oranges and

;;--rna ,'urotut"ty nothing else. Here was the devastating opinion of

re sophisticated, the irony of regional aspiration! )ames expanded upon

;rinu American Scene (1907). California, he wrote, was not so bad as

lii?'fJtiar, which was completely trivial as a civilization; yet California as a.Ifliii.f lolluat wrrrlrr Yvor

J,li'lot*r" *as a long w11 frol liv_ing up to its,setting. .'t

*": ,: l* h::l'H:' Tr*r, wrote, "especially at the first flush, unlike sweet frustrated Florida,

F: '.u., ,o amiably itro.,g' which came from the art with which she rnakest

th" stoutnesses, as I have called them, of natural beauty stand you in

i. temporary stead of the leannesses of everything else (everything that

, *ight be of an order equally interesting). This she is on a short acquaint-IIllgIrL U(, Ul dll vruvr uYu4g)i rrrlvrvuLrrr6/ ' r rr

anJe quite insolently able to do, thanks to her belonging so completely to

the 'handsome' side of the continent, of which she is the finest expression'

The aspect of natural objects, up and down the Pacific coast, is as 'aristo-

cratic'as the comprehensive American condition permits anything to be:

it indeed appears to the ingenious mind to represent an instinct on the

part of Nature, a sort of shuddering, bristling need, to brace herself in ad-

vance against the assault of a society so much less marked with distinction

than herself."3In the annals of tourist opinion rarely had there been such a crushing

judgr.nent. with a shrug of his shoulders the Master dismissed over fifty

years of American efiort. In its human dimension, California had come to

little.George Santayana was more encouraging. Coming to California in Au-

gust rgir to address the Philosophical Union at Berkeley, Santayana liked

what he saw. He liked the scenery and he liked the peopie. He found them

brave, eager, and full of hope. Berkeley might not have the historical

resonances of Cambridge, Massachusetts; but it struck Santayana as an

alert, progressive university town, robust with the energies of student life

and mellowecl in scholarship. On z5 August rgrl Berkeleyans flocked to

his lecture; and-significantly for the time and the place-Santayana used

the occasion to announce the passing of the genteel.

American thought and culture had long labored under the restrictions

,abili

vrctureAusti'

lys IIeroic,

a profulportantso intirre. InI trivial:y, thertinued:ion ledhere was

ng it was

-and alwas, didrelati:e traeal, bringini: problem: desire (all-f geography.,

gertips withhe destinedand towns?

c Coast inrow sharplyy beautiful,rd inexperi-lhe impres-,ose of theister-in-law

this spot."me over-d in it. (Icr there is

rd human

420 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

of the genteel tradition, Santayana told the Union. An ofishoot of an older

civilization, intellectual America tended to take refuge in what it con-

sidered in its intimidation to be the orthodoxies of the mother-culture,

but which, ironically and more than a little sadly, often turned out to be

the abandoned assumptions of a previous era. Proper culture in America

tended to have a maiden-aunt atmosphere, or, more accurately, to resem-

ble a prematurely aged child. When Calvinism declined, it left certain

needs ingrained in the American psyche: a taste for self-scrutiny and a

relish for the pleasures of an agonized conscience, an obsession with elec-

tion and damnation, a sense of code and final purPose. The genteel ful-filled these hungers. It made possible a universe of stable value, a set ofnorms by which thinking Americans might take their own measure and

judge the worth of others. Like grace, you had culture or you did not. You

were genteel, or you were not. It was all very simple.

A further characteristic, according to Santayana, was a peculiar way ofrelating to landscape, arising out of an enervated transcendentalism. Sub-

consciously aware that iis vigor was on the wane, genteel America tried torestore itself through a devotion to scenery. The luminous heat of the

Romantic response to the wild and the sublime, however, was far beyond

its strength. Genteel Americans thought themselves in ihe throes of some

rapturous interpenetration of mind and nature-when they were doing

little else than taking the air. Like great music (and with little effort on

their part), scenery filled them with a sense of their own worth. Surely

they were as eloquent and enduring as the mountains and the sea toward

which their sympathies surged in yearning benevolence! Certainly Amer-

ica's scenic grandeur was in some sense theirs by right of transcendental

possessionl

Meanwhile, a continent was being explored, cities settled, governments

established; and countless inventions were registered in the Patent Offce.

The American sensibility seemed divided down the middle, venturesome

and capable in action, timid and pedantic in reflection. "The American

Will inhabits the sky-scraper," Santayana told his Berkeley audience; "the

American Intellect inhabits the colonial mansion. The one is the sphere

of the American man; the other, at least predominantly, of the American

woman. The one is all aggressive enteiprise; the other is all genteel

tradition."a

brother, dead now just a year) had dealt the genteel a stunning

AMERICANS AND TIIE CALIFORNIA DREAM 427

.'tl

c'c Pragmatism (a term )ames himself first used when addressing thrs

union in r 8eB ), -"' iJ!io-;I:1":::::::x .il :il"'"T::i:"lT:i,,H;:#.:1?il; *r;' !1u-*'::*:H;il?'::il1

-

ice to an instrument "ffi''d+; ^:::l'::-1:i:t"T:f iffJil:T::'ntt 'o

an'instrumell;;;;harnessed by the logic of any school'"'

Tiili::iJX1il? 1ll'l'';;;i;il ;r'"t i'3a "r*"r: H:l 1""ffi :lj,#"iil.ll;j""1'ffj::';;';;;;;;1'

o"" k""* verv rittre' that the

re and good "t,o ""*i"J ffi;:;::i-:Tj"T::'ff".ffiil?:"1#::

lrue and good "t11,,tilt,n"r, received doctrines, ""d tt'"t certainties lasted

3:'#:IffiT'11ilT?'TJ;' ;' il;'h" ;; ;; thev aided the business or

tnir

$l 't**at

had all this to do with carifornia? euite a bit, Santayana

Ifiil:' ,ttoogrtt' Turning t"lt' ^tj*nce in tr'" i^n mJrents of his lecture' he

ij,,," addressed,0"* *Jit"jt' ffi;il;';;"'' ii*lotions or time had necessi

"' tated an r,,n,t.^ii""Jt"p*'"i "r"r'i'.t1":'j .:.::i"i:i"iJfff;i'l:iJ -"1;3'TJ'JiillT''::"i:i'il;;;

;; ::i "Ytl"l"Jii[-"""#]J i:which Santayana nau lurL J^vrvr^-* -tn,'t-r" had been talking about an

;;;;;;i conclusion' Most Profoundl

America on the verge of laving a"i*'to it'-ot-t:ll'""1;liffi:"1iI iffffil#:J;-"' #iffi:? ";:!"'illg*' Jffi,f:J.i*#!'il;i contemplattve core a rtrvurul'rr enchained by

intellectual, ""a""t"ft"iL possibilities of America had lain

, the intimidatioi, ;;h; genteel. That creative experimentalism' tempera-

mental ""a nni"*pitlt'it'^'abiding oPennes-s to exP;lience' which had

pulsated tn'"'lr'i ii""ffiil;"'; n'""1'*i" l":ltt"' Abraham Lin-

coln,andW"r?#r'it*an'but*rtitrtt"*lrtowhadbeenexchangedforthe |acob's n";';;;.;;;; to"to'*itl and snobbish securitv-would now

assert itself as America's *'io' pt"*i'""T"" f""g had it been sustained

; solely as a capacitv for practic+ :J{it^::s.,:";"i":lJun}':;:"t"t';::T;solelv as a caPaurly .";;;;;; shown. America should mean a massrve

lil:,'lJ,:'""iflttt':il,1"".", not the,"ru,.i,"" "i""'p"'i*ce. through

warmed-over ,r,o*ptil"i''ft" was at th" to" of the genteel: fear of

experience, fear of tf" iJt" of A*"'it"' fear of her diverse lineage; fear'

indeed, of the rivers, ;;;;;"i;" and ceaseless skies of the continent itself '

rh at rear, s a nt avana ;;il;;; ; :tf 11 }i^if":l il1fl:;H:'Jf'"*.

dental appropriation of nature as a rerntorc(

That fear led to " ,"ri-"'*r.."ticating relationship to nature which was

unworthy of America's better instintt'-"td u"*o'ttty of the land itself'

But here in Californla nttst t;";id.be difierent' and perhaps they were'

In a peroration so tigf'tfy iii' that it must be quoted at some length'

Santayana told calif;rnians that they especially should sympathize with

tirwllenle, at

easu

d not

liaralism.

ica trireat offar beyo

les ofwere doinle efiortrrth. Surel

sea towa

rinly Amerlr

rscendental

rvernmentstent Office.

enturesome: Americanlience; "thethe sphere

e Americanall genteel

rilosophicals (Henry'srning blow.

422 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

the repudiation of the genteel. "This revolution, I should think," he toldcalifornians, "might well find an echo among you, who live in a thrivingsociety, and in the presence of a virgin and prodigious worrd. when youtransform nature to your uses, when you experiment with her forces, andreduce them to industrial agents, you cannot feel that nature was made byyou or for you, for then these adjustments would have been pre€stablished.You must feel, rather, that you are an offshoot of her life; one brave 1ittleforce among her immense forces. When you escape, as you love to do, toyour forests and your sierras, I am sure again that you do not feel youmade them, or that they were made for you. They have grown, as youhave grown, only more massively and more slowly. In their non-humanbeauty and peace they stir the sub-human depths and the superhumanpossibilities of your own spirit. It is no transcendental logic that theyteach; and they give no sign of any deliberate morality seated in theworld. It is rather the vanity and superficiality of all logic, the needlessnessof argument, the finitude of morals, the strength of time, the fertilityof matter, the variety, the unspeakable variety, of possible life. Everythingis measurable and conditioned, indefinitely repeated, yet, in repetition,twisted somewhat from its old form. Everywhere is beauty

"rrd no-

where permanence, everywhere an incipient harmony, nowhere an inten,tion, nor a responsibility, nor a plan. It is the irresistible suasion of thisdaily spectacle, it is the daily discipline of contact with things, so differentfrom the verbal discipline of the schools, that wilr, I truit, inspire thephilosophy of your children. A californian whom I had recently the pleas,ure of meeting observed that, if the philosophers liad rived among yourmountains their systems would have been different from what they are.certainly, I should say, very different from what those systems are fromwhich the European genteel tradition has handed down since socrates;for these systems are egotistical; directly or indirectly they are anthropo-centric, and inspired by the conceited notion that man, or human reason,or the human distinction between good and evil, is the center and pivotof the universe. That is what the mountains and the woods should makeyou at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the society ofnature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that youwish to forget your past, or your friends, or that you have any secret con-tempt for your present ambitions. You respect these, you respect them..perhaps too much; you are not suffered by the genteel tradition to criti- ,

cize or to reform them at all radically. No; it is the yoke of this genteel".,ii

tradition itself, your tyrant from the cradle to the grave, that these pri

t::,'

i. AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 427

""" ao avails little materially, and in the end nothing' At the

[.liudes lift from your shoulders' They suspend your forced sensePv""-- nerely as individuals, but even as men' They: own importance not *^t_':'v^:t^:::']l"Iii]:""-,

+^ ,,,nrchin rn rekel;:;;;;. h"pPy moment, at once to play and to worship' to take

j""i rtttpfy, nl*Uty, for what you are' and to salute the wild' in-

iii,"r"r:.;"sorious infinity of -nature-

Yo.u are :d*,?ltltl.Yl; ffi, through wonder and pleasure, you are taught speculation. You

; ffi yoo "L really fitted to do, and where lie foul ytulf dignity

-'j';;;.;;.1v, in representing many things, without being them' and

;[il* you, im"gination, through sympathy, celebrate and echo their

,r6ii$tiir,.r rc;

ftlii;;;.n'*u s,'*il'11:":l:i'ii':::^H,:"-1T:^1li:":".'i*.:',*"-;:t1".';f-

";;;itosp6i."tiv instructed: especially propositions regarding the rela-

i: ii"rirrip oi *ind to external event, to the understanding of which he

i,i i.ughi his own synthesis of Skeptical and Platonic insights. The cultural

li and psychological implications of what he was saying, however, were aP-

i prr.rrt-"nd deeply welcomed. In the matter of- 1"Tt",.:"d civilization''Sa.rtayana

was ofiering Californians a way out of their dilemma. He was,

i 1n faci, suggesting that they were making their own escaPe even before he

arrived on the scene to formulate the problem'

what was needed to break through the genteel (and what the best of

Californians were trying to achieve) was respect for the non-human world

on its non-human terms. This demanded proper distinctions between men

and nature, and proper coniunctions. As geography, California was not a

psychic projection, nor was it available as an easy metaphor of human

intention. Nor should it be used as a crushing judgment against those

who dwelt amidst its grandeur. In that men were part of nature, they

shared in the totality of its mighty process by the mere fact of their ex-

istence. In that men were separated from nature by mind, they stood in

a difierent relationship, an interior one of reflection and imaginative re-

sponse. The two relationships were distinct and should not be used one

against the other. It was wrong to say that Californians were not as im-

posing as the sierras, if one iudged merely by external circumstances; for

one would be mismatching norms of iudgmeni. The true key to the suc-

cess of California as a civilization, Santayana suggested, would be its

interior life in relationship to its environmentl and although he had been

there but a short time, he found much to compliment Californians about

in this regard. Taken for a moment at his best, the californian had dis'

ciplined himself to the objectivity-the otherness-of his superb surround-

thinze inrld.

her'e was

Ine

love tolq

r notgrown,Ir non-: superhugic thatseated in: need

, the fertie. Everythiin repetituty and riere an iasion of thi, so difteren

, inspire therJy the pleas,,

among yourrat they are.

ns are fromce Socrates;

e anthropo-nan reason,

r and pivotrould makesociety of

') that yousecret con-pect themrn to criti-ris genteel

these pri-

42+ AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

ings, and so had received back into interior possession those very gifts of

nature he had refused to appropriate gratuitously.Even in cultural terms, much less in its philosophical significance, it was

a severe scheme, one that anticipated the philosophy of inhumanism ad-

vocated by California's great poet Robinson |efiers. It demanded the sur-

render of easy myths of historical destiny, or at least the instant corrobo-

ration of those myths through reference to landscape. On the other hand,

it warred against such harsh judgments as that made by Henry fames.Few Californians might find their way through to Santayana's philosophi-

cal premises, but many could appreciate the more immediate resonances

of what he was telling them. An outsider had chosen to judge them against

their setting, and he had called them failures. But he was not necessarily

right. They knew their region better than any tourist who appropriated itas a tool of snobbery and who was himself most likely in the grips of

intimidation before the landscape. They, the Californians, the best of

them, were struggling as well perhaps as Americans could with an interiot

landscape (the gift of their environment) which because of its grandeur

might have driven the less courageous into permanent self-hatred. If Californians seemed awkward and silent, it was partly because they lived day

by day in the presence of a mighty, non-human music. Outsiders, hearing

that music for the first time, were liable to make defensive judgments.

And besides-during the Pullman pilgrimage of Henry fames, as he

moved up the Coast from the Del Coronado in San Diego to the Del

Monte in Monterey, lecturing on the way to literary ladies in Los Angeles,

entertained at the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, staying at the St'

Dunstan's-did he really have ample exposure to the human factor? Could

even the Master justify his judgments, capable as he was, in another land-

scape, of using the slightest detail to guide his explorations? He was tired,

bored, preoccupied, and sixty-one when he came, his imagination (even

by the blue Pacific) riveted to the New England scenes of his youth, to

which he had just returned. He seemed to meet only those whom he

could judge by his own standards, Society and the intelligentsia; and, of

course, in comparison to London and Newport, these were bound to prove'

at first glance, disappointing. He did not encounter the sort of Californian

who was trying to ""tti"u"

something better than an imitation of the East;

something appropriate to the environment he so praised. But then agatn'r

if he had met them, would he have understood? (A few years later''i$

London, he met Mary Austin and was bored.) As far as we can teII'

AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 42,

iiq,san Francisco-which he described as having "a poverty of aspect

uality"-did-rreteeranvth*-t:::,*ill:',::::fl:.:t-T*ti^tlt;T;It"lti'ir" J,. tr1*1"1,'Leor,-Edel tells us, insisted that |ames pav

itrse when he chectea o"t' fot the Master had honored his estabiish-

;l'?:t;;;;; there' The generous gesture prompted from.fames i:iTtby stayrng flr€rtr- r:rw 5wrrvrvuv b---- ' ioorrr"rr, ,,brave golden

.ri *ftiA was ruined by its oblique, faceti

i'.r"rr,'r""r" brave and g6ta"n for iuch possibilities surely, than any

illi.lo"uY under the sun!"7

iUnfortunatelY, James *"*"a to miss 'hit yhttl :::1i: i:'"*::f;|,ry:::l:'-i..i"i*at tife of a communitv in contemplative exchange

i,.'1Ps ut""'"' '---

i;r,,ir,iii;ith its environm"";;;;;"; i"l*:P,::-lt#::.:fj:t:?::;T',i".T'ff1: 'il:#J;;;il;;;;" as a regional-culture'.Manr naa d-e-v^o.l.1d their best

fi I I i:';ffi ; ;*h "t,il; -" "r,a ;" g; ::: :l T 1 :" X T ::::Tt:,"J,:Hi :l,,

'llrll'lJ,l,iTril** ;;st influential teacher, ]oseph Le clnte, professor of

g.otogy and natural history at Berkeley' - - t^-Ln,n "^io-rif,n le' In an old-fashioned Victorian way' Le Conte's scientific learning en-

compassed g*iogy, Physics, biologY' bot""y' optics' and anatomy' Born

in Georgia ir, ,a'3, }i" had studieJmedicine in his youth' and later spent

timedoingresearchinnaturalhistoryunclerLouisAgassizatHarvard.Arriving on the p".int Coast in 1869' Le Conte was perhaps the most

eminent ,"pr.r.nt"tiue of that class of displaced Southerners who made

new starts in California after the war' He claimed that his move West had

liberated his best ",'"'gie',

and he' in turn' brought a welcomed prestige to

Berkeley ^,

it, orrffi"".^Jy *.*U".-*ith an iniernational reputation' Be-

fore the arrival oi pavid'Starr |ordan' it was Le Conte who was most

instrumental i' a"n"i"g the Caiifornia academic style as a blend of seri-

ous thinking "r,a-

f""io"ate outdoorsmar-rship' When' as a freshman'

|osiah Royce air.o"'o"a that he was ineligible to take Le conte's geology

course, he would sit outside the classroo* doot to overhear the lectures'

He later .o*prr.J-iis three years of study under Le conte as "something

like the escape of ihe men of the cave, in the story in ?lato's Republic,

from their world of shadows'"8 Even Frank Norris' who felt a gentiemanly

obligation to ,,"gt""i his studies, fell under the spell of the great professor'

"The domains of science and philosophy are not separated by hard and

fast lines," I-" C""t" n'Jy believed; ;tl'ey largely :ve1laPi

and it is in

this border tand that I loveio dwell." In that ,rrid-tlgiott he hoped to find

a synthesis of ,.J"t", religion' and evolutionary thought' He was con'

vinced that the mission of his generation of American scientists was to

hose

ignifica

inh:

:mandedi: instantrtheoby Henry.ana's ph:diatedge them ag

rs not no appropria

' in the srians, thewith an in

e of its gra

f-hatred. If;e thev lived c

,utsiders, hearijudgments.

ry James, as

fiego to the;inLosAaying at the St;

rn factor? Could I

in another land-.s? He was tired,agination (evenof his youth, tothose whom heigentsia; and, ofbound to prove,'t of Californian:ion of the East,

But then again,

{ years later, in

're can tell, only

Joseph Le Conte (r823-r9or)

He came to Calitornia alter the Civil War, one of. many Southerners to

do so. As professor of geology and natwal history at the IJniversity of

California at Berkeley, he encouraged students to take a broad, ph'to'

sophical view of science, and most especially to see the compatibility be'

tween theism and evolution.losiah Roy.. and Frank Norris dated theit'

intellectual awakeningto his iutela ge. On the Calilornian scene, he stood'

tor Yictorian ideals of high thinking, rigorous living, and devotion

locale.

i' AMERT.ANS AND rHE .ALTF.RNIA DREAM 427

i*orld "that a materialistic l*4]::l':: T*:t]ii:?if:fi:;3 world rndL a 'ra*';fu a rational theism and with other

ion is entirely conslsten

alreligiousbeliefs"'e - n ,. t- .^ ,t1L^",a,,+ i "RRR\ Le Conte'#r'o1i'fliiti"iiil'^" to Retisious rhousht (r8BB) Le conte

fiit, n"'nt"n with learning ""i I *Tt:f*T:tt::t:':*,T'*.*

;:T:ffi;;;'"i-i" "*"'"' claimed Le conte' and evolution

lifferentiation ""a up*"'J *i1eme11, or.a'vlTlT"i:::i"*T:?l

l:liffiHfi ;;;;;:';;ti.".T":11 ti:l5:J:if ;;"1:1,""1;:lt anintaor conscious p'inciple of animals' and that this' again' was

inerl out of the lower to'*i "f life-force' i"9 lhi:

* fti:ljii:: :j#anl physic"l forces of Nature; and that at a certain stage tn

ral developm ent, viz',with man' i\*1yi.'?d tn""p]^"ttY:t:l;

;*Jtlffi#;;'"; ;;"*, in the individual history of each man at a

tain stage, acquires tr'" Lf"'itv or afstr1l i::il:: 1i*lil5ll;il fff]:Jltti"Jt""ii. attempio" ir'3 part or men to effect in themselves

l..iir.thet upward r'"*o"| or trtJ*"t"t11t' ttre uiotogical' the intellectual' and

,,, the s piritual * hi.h' i; ;; y'i':"1 " ;

::I"-of: -TJ-, l'"T:'i :f :11; tff :;t , ffitfil't]''i"" *nrn"a, ,,consists, not in the extirpation of the lower,

L bu, in its subjectt";;;;" hrgher. The.stronge' * -lo^f: ::it1l"t"t-T:i |,ffi i;fif i"'rri;".ii""lFor the higher is nourished and strength-

: ened by its connettioo *itf' the.more rlbust l:y":t',i:1,:::1"ffi"1:' ;ffi.J, ,"t'"r"';;J grorined

?v l" ::':::t:i:l:i,::::;",',T' higher'

ffi;;;his;il;iff;ir," *i,or" plane or being is elevated."l'

No wonder |oseph Le Conte hai such influencel The essence of his

thought-physicality t*fti"g a return l" Ll", spirit' witho* P:":|:::t::.

scendence, without r"puai"fro" of physicality's best gifts-was at the tnner

nexus of Californian aspiration' ft accou"ted' in fact' for the region's

finest momerrtr' gu"., tCto'ge

Sterling tried to bear witness to this

ideal. fosiah Royce ","'t"i at sixty that boyhood wonder at the

magnificence of his environment had teen an important element in his

development. Studyinf o,'a"t Le Conte had helped him achieve some

perspective on that wil;;' Charged with the tension of evolutionary

struggle and the horror of evolutionary retrogression' Frank Norris' novels

were soaked through *itft tft" influence of ie Conte' And certainly ]ack

London, although he spent but a semester at Berkel"L""-d .gwed,more

to

Jordan than to "nyonl

else, wrote his most powerful fi:ti:: when he

documented tt "

int""ltJn in io*"" beings of tttt animal'-the spiritual'

and the environmental: how delicate was the evolutionary balance' how

quick to regress in ""-t*i'"*e situation' |ordan' in fact' might be seen

Southerners tot University ota broad, philo-,mpatibility be-ris dated ther;cene, he stoodd devotion to

428 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

as carrying on the Berkeley professor's work (Le Conte retired in 1896),

giving it more social extension, since Jordan was more involved in day-

to-day problems, yet carrying on Le Conte's central message: that the

challenge before California as a civilization was to attain the best possible

ethical and aesthetic relationship to its ecology.

Le Conte died in r9or, while on a trip to the Yosemite with the Sierra

Club; he was not on the scene when Henry fames arrived. Perhaps had

they met and talked, or had James met and talked at length with any

serious Californian, his reaction might have been more positive. As it was,

the Master's judgments arose out of intuitions garnered from a passing

train, society hotels, literary lectures, and an evening at the Bohemian

Club. What else, if anything, characterized Le Conte and Californianslike him, if not the solidity and seriousness James claimed was lacking-and even something of that aristocratic attitude he suggested was called

for by the handsomeness of the setting? To his credit, Santayana under-

stood this, although he also was-by birth as well as by acquisition-theheir of a mellow and complex tradition.

Le Conte embarked upon one of the important California quests, and

it is best to see him and it in retrospect. Le Conte gave guidance and

inspiration to so much of what was achieved culturally throughout the

period rBTo-r9oo. He helped bring into focus a cluster of issues regarding

thought, value, and style whose clarification was crucial to California'smaturity. His A lournal of Ramblings Through the High Sierras of CaIi'

fornia by the Unbersity Excursion Party (1875) reveals his most attrac-

tive side: the good-humored companion of undergraduates, competent in

the details of the trail, halting the horses to give an impromptu lecture on

flora or topography, sharing the bantering conversation around the eve-

ning fire. Students remembered these fine mountain times and they re-

membered Le Conte's superbly structured lectures, the organized detail of

which still shines through Royce's undergraduate notebooks in the Har-

vard Archives. Le Conte taught the young men and women of California

to engage their environment in that manner later praised by Santayana'

with intensity and intelligence, refusing sentimental solace, but sparing no

effort of mind or body to attain those communions born of deep under-

standing which were among the glories of the California dream.

In retrospect one also turns briefly to Luther Burbank of Santa Rosa '

for confirmation of a better California than that encountered by

Master-although it boggles the mind to imagine Henry fames in Santa

Rosa!

-tlt:l l

i:

ii ,. AAIERTcANS AND THE cALTFoRNTA DREAM 429

;.u;;;;i; influence of Darwin's work, Burbank conducted a series

,;r**u in hybridization of the seventeen-acre farm he ran outside

,'o'.1 raised in rural Massachusetts' and' like so many Americansof

#';#;, t",g"lv self-ed-u-cated', l"'bTk, t*"I"i-

^'l',":..:1*'ff ,;;;ii"r.,ii i" r s7 1' He-

frad- alreadv shown,

"9"',:t^:I:i"^"il;; ; nrrrr",y*"n' in 1868, when he *,"t "il:::,tl T:Y,lt^iru;ilter Public Library the two'newly published,volumes of

ii;."Olr*i"', TheVariations'of Animols and Plants (Jnder Domesti'

;ii;nffi;;:ai ir'" ii*" h" left for California, he had alreadv contributed

;;;; *"tid the improved potato which nolbears his name'. , -,, r: lv;;;;;;;.i;i*.d that some obscure evolutionary force had impellec

.iti*f*i" C"liiorni", convincing him subconsciously that his ".::1t::,t:11

,.iit"r,*d talent ,equireJmore psychological freedom and sunny lux-

, , uriance than was available in wintry New England, where sunlight was

'.uncertainandbotanybelongedtotheprofessors...Ihadnochoiceinthe,. ;;;;;r;,, he said, ,,I was nou-rra to got" Arrived in the town of santa Rosa,

i ;n*th;Sonorn" Valley north of the Bay Area, he experienced a conviction

r of liberation and opiortunity. Like Muir entering the Yosemite a few

y.t" .*ii"t, Burb"rri found a setting that was also a life's work and a

consecration. "I firmly believe from what I have seen"' he wrote home'

..that it is the chosen spot of atl this earth as far as natura is concerned,

andthepeoplearefarbetterthantheaverage.Theajrissosweetitisaple"su,etodrinkitin.Thesunshineispureandsoft,themountainswhichgira th" valley are very lovely' The valley is covered with maiestic oaks

placed as no human hand couid arrange them for beauiy. I cannot describe

it. I almost have to cry for joy when I look upon the lovely valley from

the hillsides. The garderr, '"i"

filled .r.vith tropical plants, palms, figs,

oranges, vines, etc. Great rose trees climb over the houses loaded with

euerf colo, of blossoms. Do you suPPose I am no-t pleased to see the

fuchsiasinthegroundrzft.high,thetrunkroinchesincircumference,and loaded with color?"11

Forthenextfiftyyears,Burbankbusiedhimselfinthecreationandim-provementofinnumerablestocksofvegetables,fruits,andflowers.Notaicientist in the speculative sense of the term' he kept but fragmentary

notes regarding his countless experiments' His aim was not systematized

knowledge,butbetterplums,betterapricots,betterraspberries,aspinelesscactus to feed cattle in arid areas. He turned his talent to making life

morebeautifulaswell,ananyoneknewwhothrilledtothesubtlecolorsand fragrances of his lilies, poppies' roses' callas' and daisies'

nvolvrssage

:he be

with:d.

:ngthritive. Aifrom a i

therd CaliI was

;ted was

rtayana

lqulsr

rra quests,

guidancerroughoutsues regardi;

o Californierras of Cds most attrcompetent irtu lecturelund the eve:

and they re-

ized detail of; in the Har-of Californiay Santayana,

rt sparing nodeep under-

l

Santa Rosaered by theres in Santa

430 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

If ever there was a californian liberated from the genteer, it was Bur-bank. He hated dogmatism of any kind. Having thrown off New Englandcalvinism in his youth, he put his adult faith in the variety and pfiatilityof life, to which he sustained something resembring an artistis lovingknowledge. ]ordan appointed him a Lecturer on plant Evolution, sharingwith the santa Rosa savant his own course in Bionomics. Hybrids fromBurbank's nurseries garnished the garden of Xasmin House, fordan's offi-cial Stanford residence. "In his own way," wrote Jordan, "Burbank be-longs in the class of Faraday and the long array of serf-taught great menwho lived while the universities were spending their strength on fine pointsof grammar and hazy conceptions of philosophy." As a curtural symbol,Burbank bespoke to californians the value of individual effort outside thecontext of complex, mediating civilizations. ]ordan deplored the term"wizard" so often applied to Burbank. He was not a magician, argued

Jordan, but an ascetic, a man who brought himself in harmony with na-ture and, in the true spirit of science, learned nature's lessons with a minimum of fanfare. Burbank's simple lifestyle, with its blend of physical andintellectual work, the serenity of his personality, "as sweet, straightforward,and as unspoiled as a child, always interested in the phenomena of Nature,and never seeking fame or money or anything for himself," dramatized oneof California's highest forms of fulfillment.l2

one of the most prominent californians of his generation, the subjectof countless newspaper articles (most misleading; some even suggestinghe was a faker), Burbank was not without aspirations arising out of thecalifornia dream. His T he Training of the Human plant ( t goz ) resonatedwith the california hope that spirit and flesh might know new life. |ustas Isadora Duncan dreamt of children in joyous dance, Burbank, as hebent over his plants, dreamed of children removed from fear, growingstrong in freedom and sunlight. contemporary education, he believed,stifled children. They were herded at a tender age into cramped, unventi-lated classrooms, where their bodies were damaged by confinement and

their imaginations intimidated by the rote learning of inanimate informa- .

tion. Children, he thought, should be kept out of school until the age of '..

ten. They should be raised as much as possible in the country, their early ,'iinfluences (aside from love and trust) being outdoor play and association ,

with nature. When finally sent to school, they should not be regimented,.,libut allowed to develop at their own pace. Their years in thebalanced off by the restraints of a good family life, would constitutesuperb preparation for academic study; from their time of outdoot

ii.

Luther Burbank ( r84919z6)

Coming from Massachusetts in fi75, he settled in Santa Rosa' which he

described as ,,the chosen spot of all this earth as far as Nature is con-

cerned." Over the next fitiy yeats he developed a prodigious-number of

newfruitsandflowersandimprovedcount]essotherstocks.Hewasnotexactly a scientist; he was a silt-taught nurseryman oI genius' a

-patientartist of hybridization As he bent oier his flourishin g plants' he dreamed

that one 'day

the childten of Ameilca might also know such gitts ot

growth and strength and sunlight'

3enteel,ln off Nelrriety a

an arliEvolutio:rics. Hyouse, /olan, "Bur-taught srirgth on fia cultural s

efiort outsieplored thelmaglctan,rarmony wirsons with a

d of physical:, straighlmena of Na" dramatized

tion, the su

even'ising out ofrgoT) reso

w new life. JBurbank, as he:i

n fear, growingrn, he believed,rmped, unventi-rnfinement andrimate informa-rntil the age ofrtry, their earlyand associationbe regimented,the outdoors,

ld constiiute a: outdoor free-

432 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

they learned from nature. Like Le Conte, he dedicated his talents to

upgradirrg of human life. The lives of both men, like the lives of so rr

dom children would have acquired independence, inquisitiveness' and-

most importantly-wonder before the mystery of things'

Burbank's American utopia (fot The Training of the Human Plant is

a utopian tract) welco*ed i**ig,ants' As in botany, grafting improved

the human stock. Concerned about human health, Burbank avoided the

racist overtones which pervaded so much discussion of eugenics during the

period. His was an emphasis, an urge to awareness, not an authoritarian

progr"*. He hoped in all humility ihat in these delicate matters the col-

lective common sense might find a way to improve the race wtrile not for-

getting the sacredne$ oihu*"" life or the preciousness of human free-

io_. wt nt moved Burbank was the vision, not the details of implementa-

tion. He saw a long struggle ahead, and he did not Presume to know all

the answers.

Santa Rosa functioned as the environment and premise of what he had

to say. There, for half a century, Burbank saw plants and children flourish

in the sunlight. childless himself, he adopted the children of the lovely

Californiatownwherehepassedhisserenelifedoingsuchusefulthingswithplants'TherhythmsarrdpossibilitiesofsantaRosawerealsohis.Burbank loved the quiet days

",td dto*ty afternoons; the great oak trees

that gave shade; the farmeri from the countryside who would drop by to

ask aivice, as from one grower to another (|ack London among them'

riding over from the VJiley of the Moon); the cottages smothered in

vines"and roses, banked by hne lawns, watched over by eucalyptus' palm

trees, and cedars of Lebanon like the one protecting his own simple home'

under which he would eventually rest.

only in small towns did Burbank's educational ideas stand the remotest

chance of being put into practice; for they had been inspired by a small-

town New England boyhood and the longer idyll of Santa Rosa. The life

and thought oJ ttttttei Burbank, however, needed no qualifications as a

California testimony. He believed in new beginnings' He believed in free-

dom from the oppression that came from deliberately difficult d::qin:t: 'j

He thirsted for results, for present happiness' He haa a near-religiosity ';

regarding the pliability and inexhaustibility of life. With an artist's lTtgl,l,he attuned himself to living things, arrd iike an artist he coaxed ttlt^jl;

better expressions. He wanted American children io thrive in as mal

ways as possible, to have good food, to move in the open air' to grow

joy and confidence. r,ir." i" Conte, he felt n1t -"" lt::":11-11'-*,

AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM Aaa't))

rlifornians, asserted that a number of Americans were struggling

'.. -"t",ftitg worthy of their surroundings'

III

fuhrt rUout more searching judgmentl' th3se- made after investigation

;il;;;;d";;.i co**it-*.nt to california did not preclude scrutiny,

rit"Jlu*t*.ton always blind one to her faults'

fiiqli *" books appeared, b:oth w.rfttTl ol u:*l'-'l:":.',t!:::::iiiTl"ri,-A Horseiack Ride Ftom Mexico to oregon' by )' Smeaton

1il altd California, AnEnglishman's Impressions of the Golden Sto.te'

iYi'il;;,*rloi,"to,,. Chase"belonged to the genre of Anglo-Californian

t il#il p'i"ru.a the state with some or its most app'::llt'l::lj,||:H:': Xret*#i,i."r, "rruoorsmen

for rhe most part, whose ]ov3

0f the land

i,'., _J"i'nr"Jl" r,""a with a ready pen and a trenchant attitude toward the

f,. ;;;';Sing "spects of American possession' London-born' settling in

'i il,# ;:li-forni" in r8go at the ageof twenty-six, Chase worked vari-

, ffi;-;;r1.".t.r, ",".ii worker,_J'd a retailer; b", ll: t:*^lT:.:::l[ il:;;.ffi;ors, the Sierras and the yosemite especially, about which

i ;; wrote with such feeling and lucidity that Lawrence clark Powell ranks

i il;;ong the best inter"preters of the California landscape' |ohnson' on

t ,h. ;,h"t f;rna, ,.pr.r"r,tid, not the Anglo-califo1i1, !u! ll." tk"Ptttil

Bdtish tourist, a sort who had produced some of the best literature of

pre-statehood days and the Goli Rush, and who in a later era (repre-

sented, say, by Aidous Huxley and Evelyn Waugh) would turn Southern

California to purposes of superb satire'

The two Englishmen wlre reporting upon a similar journey north'

which Chase made by horseback and fohnson by buckboard' Above San

Francisco, Chase continued up the coast to the Oregon line' while north

of Healdsburg |ohnson u..,"d eastward, moving up the Sacramento Val-

ley through Chico, Red Bluff, and Redding, ending his iourney under the

shadow of Mount Shasta. Both writers, in very different ways, were anxi-

ous about California: what had been achieved' what was passing-and

what seemed on the horizon.

Past, present and future converge in Chase's California Coast Trails'

written with an elegance born of restraint, chase's narrative of his prog-

ress up the coast has to it a quality of elegy, of half-acknowledged lament'

Fearful of California-to-corne, Chase, haunted by history, takes .one

last

lyric ride up the shores of memory, in search of California-passing' Not

whlIdreh

oftusetull

vere a

the

:eat oak

ld droprmong

imotheilyptus,simple

dbyasma.osa. The IiEcations as

ieved in free-

:lt doctrines.

ear-religiosityrtist's insightoaxed life toin as many

r, to grow ind best whenalents to thes of so many

434 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

much longer, he felt, would such a journey be possible. On such an excur-

sion one rode with Spanish soldiers and priests. One saw the southern

coast remembering Richard Henry Dana and entered Monterey in the

company of Robert Louis Stevenson. Padre, ranchero, trapper, trader:

one might yet catch glimpses of what they saw. One might still see Cali-

fornia through the eyes of Lap6rouse and Alfred Robinson-but not for

long.And so f. Smeaton Chase chose carefully what he would visit and write

about. On this last ramble he would savor nature and what remained of

the old civilization. Images of modernization mock him as he rides. A

touring car sputters by, causing his horse to shy in fright. He is aware that

air travel up the coast will someday be possible. Paved roads and sub-

divisions will soon destroy much of the landscape through which he is

now riding at a leisurely pace. Traveling through San Francisco, Chase,

defiant in camp clothes, rode his horse down Market Street, past the con-

crete skyscrapers of the rebuilt city, to the Ferry Building. On the whole

he avoided settled areas, preferring to sleep under canvas or to bunk in a

ranch house.

what was he after, this Anglo-californian riding so regretfully ahead of

the twentieth century? Landscape, first of all: classic, unspoiled California

landscape, like the valley near El Toro in the south, through which chase

rode one afternoon along with the artist Carl Eytel, who accompanied him

on the first portion of the journey.

"As soon as we passed the gates of the ranch," Chase wrote' "we en-

tered a leagueJong valley from which rose smooth slopes of pale-golderr

grass. The rounded swells and folds of the land took the light as richly as

a cloth of velvet. In the bottom lay the creek, in isolated pools and

reaches, its course marked sharply by a border of green grass and rushes'

Red cattle grazed everywhere or-stood for coolness in the weed-covered

pools. The hillrid., were terraced by their interlacing trails. F,ldert tnd ,,,

iillo*, grew at wide intervals, a biot of shadow reaching from each' .i

i,' ,

ili rli!.;

Under them the rings of bare gray earth were tramped hard as brick 'where generations of cattle had gathered for shade. In one side reach'of i

the valley was a little bee-ranch of a score or two of hives, with the yP'u.lshanty oi the bee-man closed and apparently deserted. It was an 'ofr-yeat";

for bees near the coast: excess of fog had spoiled the honey-flow' ' ' ' Iwe rode, blue mountains rose on the northern horizon' They were

Santa Ana Mountains, fifteen miles away. That was the only ingredi

in the view that could come under the term 'picturesque': the rest

open, bald, commonplace. European painters-Ame'icans, too' all t

visitLt

as he

elsoads a

h whinclsco,

, PastOn ther to bun

tfully a

iled Cah whichompanied hil

rryrote, "we

of pale-

;ht as richlyted pools a

rss and rushes.

: weed-covered

ils. Elders and r

ng from each.

hard as brick: side reach ofdth the typical'as an 'off-year'

"flow....fufhey were the

rnly ingredient: the rest was

too, all but a

AMERICANS AND TTIE CALIFORNIA DREAM 435

ilaura r, "u"

d e cl a red it crude.an d tT:-:':'lt: T :ll* I Tt"il H:

n th"bru. or the 'ot,;:"';il***;",ntt;;Tilt;iiT"ii:: fi ;; ,u';; f! ; tu"""+"^1

"lllf;"lli "J:f': ffi:'"of in'ky blackness * tn" iJt[ "11^it".

of,;un-bleached grass' There

lways a btzzar do' t*o "ii" gi "; :i::I li.t:;i:l' ;l iffi :il :? :

:1\]"ffi:T:ffi,HHri#ili;t;;J r'i"*r'it on the carcass or a

l :L:i'#;;:' "n' u'i 9 u{;r, ""1

*1'-'1 1: :';.'}:i.-J. l il.::

f ffi ; I mffi ## "il I il."1', :l ":i:::H :,*;T;::i,*l' *

:and,declare,i"tr'"t'o'""Iffi ;"":i::: j::ltT:TtJ*:T:Ht1l;t sgnd, declare, 1:

tl::"" trxPrcJrrvrr "- "t----r"rn of the naiive and original'rir,'*,1!$'"',':iF!it1::1ld:"*,[t'ii:Tti;''E"*;:.*l

i" ,. brtitotnit d:l. Syr'. uatrrouua vr L'v ""-rirn torr" u"lo", and balance of

u:#;iltoPhisticated mind' trained to wt

line, found the "";fti; tu.:a|t, its ma'gnificent Western simplicity'

Prettv? a thousand *ilt' f'o* it' Picturesq"!; tit" '"ttL:"-:1i:unds

puer-

' ile. But simple, n'""#o"i'j ('"t* t'1T t."":"*t5'Tl:]ifi."f"|'j:

h.H;':flI;Tffi#il';;;ffi;'"'", tt'e materials or the rand'

"Tl.i through such landscape restored """ :',11'"^::-H1",::t texture

of geographical Caliiorni"' ""d one's sense of the past' Through caflons

such as this-solitary, ;i;;;;' in sight o-f mountains' buzzards circling

overhead-portor6 "r,a i.rr" p,iri"a ine.spanistr frontier northward' In

thedecadesfollowing,suchplacesknewbutiittledisturbance.Half-wildcattle grazed the'e i" thlft'"" of Hispanic oossession' Now and then a

party of American tJ#l;";il' -;1*:t maki"g camp for the night

under a great oak' m#, *u"i' later' a-few squatters here and there threw

up an unpainted shaci< tr t*o; "ta'" hermii bee-keeper set out' a row of

hives. Sensitiu" to *ili'*"r-i,"pp"r,r-o_g ir Southern california, chase

knew that many of nl'" t"oo"' *otfJ not remain untouched for long'

Bungalows "na

,o'a*"f' *o"fa spread out to engulf them' It was neces-

sary and it was tragic' il";;iof such landscape deserved at least one

i'tilJ""*t"ff#;:h as rar_backbehind the American present (and

the American fut"rei " i" "oota' When weather *:J" ntl-]ndoors' he

stayed as much as n"l,ilti'*iiiM";i;;;;' preferring their gracious hospi-

tality to that of A*;;;" hotels' The southern portion of his journey

is literally " piigri*ngt from mission to mission' "p

EL Camino Real'

Tourists came by J':;;;; '"" tt'ti"ioo San Gabriel Arcdngel in the

village of El Monte i;;;t-allowed by Los Angeles); elsewhere' how-

ever, at San Luis OUfip" "irJ

Santa Ines fo, ir,rtrn"i Indiatts still gathered

for Sunday r"r, ,r",i".ruil;" ligit"."ttt century. Other missions

86 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

were in ruins' as were La Purisima Concepci6n and San Antonio De

Padua, where Chase slept beneath 'o*". "tii"t't olive trees' Perhaps his

most nostalgic stay *;;;i S"" 1u"" Capistrano' approached across "wide

levels of yellow g,",'it';t shone like 'itk i''' the sunlight"' where Chase

passed some very pf""""t J"ys in the mission library browsing amidst

"slender tomes in t"";;';;tdskin' like tall' pale 9l{ sln'tlemen' written

closely in Spanish t"ltTt '"to'd' of christenings ^ttd

burials' each volume

devoutly rounded of *ittt its 'Laus Deo" a tr-iumph of flamboyant callig-

raphy; ancient sets of g;"utt and Massillon; breviaries' missals' what-not;

-all endued with that odor of sanctity which is neither Catholic nor

Protestant, the sanctity of age and bygon-e human usage'"14

At Mission S""," ii;;";pti"t,'i" charge, after putting Chase up for

three days, sent hi* ofi th" *o"'i"g of hji departute with a thunderous

p""" t."af,ion of W"g""''' 'Pilgrim's Chorus'" Chase' of course' was

truly on pilgrimage, ift"?g" *a tftit-"t*11 romance of California his rev-

erent preoccup"tio"' H" ivas thrilled to discover that a few trees planted

by the padres rtiff U"'" p""" ""d-'PPt": A few altars still smelled of

incensel and long "ft"' Si"ut"son thought that he would perhaps be the

last to hear such *;,; ; adobe mlssions yet echoed with Gregorian

chant. A handful of Spaniards' children-at the time of the conquest' had

managed to hoid o"-io 'h"i'

iands i" the area above Point Conception'

Catling on them, Ctt"'" encouraged them to talk about Old California' In

the Nipomo V"ff"y il" ""ff"a

op"ot' fohn Dana' the son of Richard Henry

Dana,s cousin wiiliam Goodwln Dana, who had settled in california be-

fore the conquest, *"ttyt"g a Carrillo' That evening even more Danas

gathered for dinner' S"ti"ittt'"" g""t"tio"' of Yan'kee-Latins gathered

around the huge t"Uf", il'?i"g the"laughter' the talk in Spanish and Eng-

lish,ChasefeltinthepresenceofbygoneYankee-California'theciviliza-tion that Thomas ol;":' Larkin ""d

otht" had long ago hoped would be

the pattern of the future. It had not been thltuiur"", b"ut somehow it had

Iteld on, and Chase enioyed an evening in its companY-" -,-,,rr., .irrrcttlr€d,

a

t:

t"$ffi lj,:"ff fi':lTir,rZi"'i'3"'^i'i,"u,tsnotrigidrystructured,':

but always present. ch;;" fi";' th" hacienda;i'l:1],::*i:5Tl:'r?; ';'.:T::;,"'ifi ;::iliH;::;;;:;i;;a-"'i"""ranch.wireand'+her two unkempt, unrulv sons' rheir **:#il#;f::';*+:1flI'11;H:# i;ffi;'"ii'.r"', a Los Angeles social worker) fl'xr llne att!

Americans had brought their own "ngt orp*ffi,ntJ1t1s; :"T f#

ffi:ffiTifi.",; i;;;;;.; of .oriapse.l boom towns. He notes rt

arl, derighti,'g i,, thj'';;';@ 31, a-;11i,1'lni:r|;iltlJ

h$t "H*r"iil"jl

J^'ions taken ofi the timetables' their hotels

\M

I San

: trees.

ached

ght,"

vgentle

rrials, ea

fla

, missals,

ither Ca,r74

with a thu.se, ofCaliforniafew trees

ld perhaps

:d withthe conquest,)oint Co

of RichardI in Californialven moree-Latins gatSpanish and Engrrnia, the civiliza, hoped would be: somehow it had

igidly structured,rado Rancho, forn ranch-wife ands seemed symbolr) that time andems. He is delib-He notes them

ado brought toeir hotels stand-

. ,*,'NERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 437

lrl:

ihru-like the town ot Fallbrook' California' *h:" .'ll: d^tilllfftg?"rii tt'i t""ru torvey of the main street at midday were two

ins eating ice cream andan eid"'ly man with a faded valise who stood

il:'; ;;? d o w n th e .' ti"et, evi de ntlv

]:,"-1" I 1"i,,::i::"" :":::til,.ffi;.* ;;t " u"a of escape in mind' a.deliveranc:llt':,::::::

H: ;ffi ; # il ;;';*' o i t' i ""*:: :: I 1".'l:^'#: :': i'f.Y" ::"Ti

iiti;;;;o *r"tr' weave together strands of ecologv and bvgone

h^r, or"g". He keeps us continualiy awa'e.of weathel :T tT11":rt:::

il?l;;,ffi:;; "";

i;s' burned off.bv the morning sun' And alwavs

fir;;;;;;'f b,""king i" the coast; foi this-asrp:u I Y:^*:""*'"t'l;ti,.1jj::'#"r;.--J,n" music chase travels to. He hears the Pacific at!.1 grrru

iri r,iawn as he warms cofiee over last night's embers' He hears it as he rides

{i:i'il;;; ir-," ary It keeps him company at night as he lies rolled in blan-

,l''"'kets beneath tfr" Criii-"ia stars: it is the western.t*::,:t::::"-li}ffiffiffi;;; ili;;en! beside which the energies of the twentieth

.rntury "r" ttow reaching a point of critical mass'

Past and present, ""ti'" ""d civilization' receive a partial reconciliation

intheareaofMorrte,"y,t"piofofOldCalifornia'mid-pointofChase'stravels, and symboli. t#"' tf his

"arrative' ]ust below Point "ob:t

Chase

catches an especially l;;;ly "it* of the Pacific' "The sea was a splendor of

a..p fuf"ai "rr"r,".r,

blot,1' he writes' "and broke in such dazzling fresh-

ness of white that orr. *igftt have thought it had been that day created'

How amazing it is, that thi ancient ocean' with its age-long stain of cities

and traffic, toil and blood, can still be so bright' so unlontaminated' so

. heavenly purel It seems an intentional parable of Divinity' knowing and

receiving all, evil as well as good, yet through some deathless principle

itself remaining forever right,"strong, and pure' the Unchanging Good'"16

In Monterey that evenilng, ci,"r" strolled the cypress-lined streets, past

adobes giving ro*r, trre *irigled odors of roses and Spanish cooking. "on

a side street," t" *rii.,,ii""*od""' wooden church with a painful spire

was lighted ,rp, proU"iiy for choir practice' Protestant as I am' I turned

away and walked "gJ;P"* the old Catholic Mission' The last swallows

were wheeling home, ,r,d th. sParrows in the ivy were sleepily qlerulous'

The fading light lingered on th" crumblin-g cornices, -and

the tile-capped

belfry rose peacefully into the clear dusk ofihe sky' After all' age is a kind

of sactament."17

chase is here confronting time and the meaning of history. Perceived as

a burden of sin, history is ivashed clean in the sea' Lending itself to men

as a symbol of " fo,.l subsuming both goocl and evil' the unchanging

Pacific prompts i" Cf,rt" "

tt"p o[ faith that human difficulties might be

$B AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

resolved as well, that the future need not be totally feared. Nature yet

renewed herself in the face of human error. In r9r3 California-as-nature

yet seemed capable of coping with California-as-history. Whatever was

occurring, whatever mistakes men were making, Chase wanted to have

hope. He wanted to believe that in the years ahead creation would con-

tinue to heal.

That, paradoxically, is why he revered the past, why on that evening in

Monterey he strolled back to Mission San Carlos Borromeo for the second

time, passing up the American church. Age, he claimed, was a kind

of sacrament. in this, age resembled nature. Both ofiered atonement.

Throughout California Coast Trails Chase was giving portraits of those

who lived well because they lived simply. This is what Chase experienced

most deeply as he strolled at dusk near the mission, hearing the sleep-song

of sparrows: the simplicity and the peace of the past. Admittedly, this

message was embedded in myth and romance. How else could it survive

the assaults of the present? California had once known simpler ways,

which was important to remember. In the second decade of the twentiethcentury, some still considered simplicity and peace the precious meaning

of the California dream. f. Smeaton Chase was among their number'

Undertaken as a pilgrimage of farewell, his journey up the coast now and

then disclosed vistas of the old hope.

Arthur T. fohnson, on the other hand, saw much that discouraged him.

California, AnEnglishman's Impressions of the Colden Sfafe documented

some stresses the dream had come under. As an Englishman, he admired

the beauty of California-as-garden. Southern California, in fact, impressed

him as a vast conservatory, bungalows smothered in flowers, avenues lined

with exotic trees. Not an outdoorsman by temperament the way Chase

was, fohnson nevertheless managed some fine depictions of the ecologies

through which he drove his wagon-camper. He was primarily interested,

however, in the sociology and the psychology of California; and there he

found a lot that worried him.First of all, Californians seemed tormented by discontent. North and' '

south, nobody seemed satisfied. "On the ranch and in the store," ]ohnson'.:';soutn, noDooy seemeo satlsneo. \Jn tne rancn anq ln frlc slurs' Jt"'-"^i.,,.iclaimed, "on the road, in the streetcar, everywhere, one hears the same*

tale of discontent, sees the same shrug of the shoulders when any questrtj

relating to prosperity is mentioned. There are prevailing symptoms'i--t

uncertainty, instability, unrest on all sides."tt Fo, all theirialk of creati'i

a commonwealth of homes, Californians were quick to drive a For

sign into their front lawns when down the block, in the next town'

-i1., "*"y, something better seemed in the offing. For all the talk of!

." ,-- ^^rra^pNrA DREAM 479I AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DR

n ^*^+i^nol

* t'na' th".1"tl:11"^1s to those flocking to tr"'" Goldett State' but

lj"'"t"*ir.a happiness to 'n:t"-^''''"^"j;;";-.- consideied as a cul-

tlilT:Hl*;f m"1"3"15"'lJ'l'l';'"1;;;compursiverof

r*}iirut*t*|ffd'ffiffitrlt*"lfi-"t',ffi "irJi$tt*i-*1'+'il,'*

fifilit,"{i{*sn$#tfi+r*n;':'*i nu*b."jf.'li1':""t"il11; lil'i#t*.;r'u' tavishly advertised' rhe class

, ;;;t.", chinese doctors,and::J:'r"t"'i*-n"'"t*" dinginess of back' :|,lii:n*lm::":H:'JT'Ti,+:';iiiffi".: .',i:""

vendors

i with all sorts ", ,i',*;;;; ;".#";i;yt to-spot eradicators' spread

their portablt f'y-oi''at every to"'"']V"ant lots were crowded with

spielers or "u 'o'vt'l'a;;";;

; political ;;;j;; """dors 'of cure-alls' of

universal tools, of marvellous.a-l: 't::*^'j"':Ltjr;",?:11,:;"-Trti'J:"::-universal tools, ot.mawelruus d^rv b^-*"-/

r called the passer-by to con-

**l'fiillf m',".ru jfr f i::$'";,H;tr'tl""'-l;#ftStock in these enterPns

booths, like those -a*"'V u'"a "' aopt"o'lt oi ttot- doughnuts and

cofiee, ofiered wild-cai"it'iJt; t;";t' oir ttotrt and real estate in some

iigttyrp".olative,suburb'"1e -. ,^ -^where more yellow than Los

;i:t",:tlu;l'*',Tt^?"'ff rti'"i"+:T,,*"'"'r.'wereoutrageousrvstanted; and editoriaf' '"lig"a

in blatant ttt""tt"'-tttassination' Adver-

tising ran th" g"*oJ 'from";;tt-'-

""a vi

"ores to oriental faith-

healing. At a dinner o;;t" one of the more elegant districts' costumes

;ff ;; e:':k rthli"#it1','J."'ffi *l *ru:':5:Ji::tconvention with Left o*-jl1:::;:;;;;. At the party, orde meets

il:l*:*m:'m*'iq*:',.'iil ji**J"",hTi*;ff ';ing half-submerged tl ",,t":Iil-1i','"""i"tiUe act, assisted by chorus-

l"?,ir, who extracts teeth as part of a vau

rS

ttedllitrpler.l

lslrst now

rraged

.ocu

hea:, imP

enues

way

re ecologies

interested;i

nd there he

North and

e," Iohnsonrs the same

ny question,mptoms of: of creating: a For Sale

t town, 5oo: talk of life

440 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

girls in nurses' outfits; Sonny Larue, a guru at the Colony of UnlimitedLife ("At three we arise and break our fast, quite simply, with three orfour dry prunes, and then, going forth to the high places for one hour, wehold steadfast the thought of Love" ); and an unnamed reformer who re-

fuses to sit in chairs ("When humanity shall come into its own we shallassume the graceful and hygienic postures of the oriental peoples" ). "Theydo it all here," a real estate developer tells Orde, "from going barefoot,eating nuts, swilling olive oil, rolling down hill, adoring the LimitlessWhichness, . . . theworks."2o

As an English visitor, Arthur T. Johnson was amused at the merelyeccentric side of all this: the lady-barbers in evening gowns, the perform-ing saurian at Alligator Ranch, the continuous performances of a reviewentitled "The Garden of Eden," directed by Darwin, |r., in which thesnake gobbled down the apple for comic relief. With droll satisfactionhe clipped the following item from a newspaper. It appeared under thehcad]ine DEAD MAN SINGS ANTHEM wHILE HIS DEATH IS BEING MoURNED:

"Wm. Faxon's voice was heard yesterday at his own funeral here. Whilehis body lay in a casket, those gathered to pay final tribute heard twohymns by him, and also heard him as one of a trio, including his son anddaughter, in sacred song. When the mourners had gathered in the parlorof the Faxon home, in which his open coffin lay, they were surprised tohear his voice pealing an anthem from behind a screen of flowers andpalms. Three years ago, believing his life was nearing its close, Faxon con-

ceived ihe idea of preserving his voice to be a part of the service when he

died. He used a phonograph, and the records were reproduced before he

was buried. Faxon was ninety years old, and was one of the wealihiest menin the county. He was the first Methodist convert in this district, and

built a church for that faith. Almost until the time of his death he par-

ticipated regularly in the song service."21Behind the eccentricity, however, behind the strained flamboyance'

Johnson detected something elusively evil, as if freedom, becoming license'

were about to writhe back and gorge upon itself. Beneath the sense that

all was possible, that anything went, lurked a baffied yearning for limits'

which in its frustration threaterred to turn at any minute into a repressive

counter-force that denied the dream of liberation through which Califor''' ',

nians mythically defined themselves. Johnson laughed ai the naive ftq-dlmentalism of the funeral parlor, but he bristled in anger before the

successful attempts of church-groups to throw a veneer of rectitudeSouthern California. Put into the same context as all the unrestraint-acting-out through costume and architecture, the theosophy, the

. ANIERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 441

anism, the free love-the blue laws of towns like Pasadena tended to

?r, ,'Or"ttrt of schizophrenia, indeed' Manicheanism' upon this civili-

ifion of the South' . .

I,What sort of socrat polity coulcl keeP such contradictions together'

-- L^ --.^^ l-^!,,,aan rl,i-Lino Snrrthern California;#fr rti*, .**nt, "' he was, betweln thinking Southern California

#"r; tearing"it. Had it been pushed ,l".l"l:,Tllf::.::,T:lj::1 ffi.fi;;;"ii.""w"'the eccentricitv the u"* ",t'"i'" 1ll*:::."""'"'i1;"f*i# was some final, inevitable misery lurking at the core of the

il,california dream? . - -- L^i_^ ..-{,,ai .

,"i;;;; of the future |ohnson was not optimistic. Far from being naive

"'l ,Uoui Crlifornia'as-nature (north of Gaviota he almost t::O11l1t""jlt ffi;"*;,"i. il*.n Chase hoped that in the long run it would still

f-

prove an enclurlng and -redemp,tive

me.ta,1h:i, t-:1tt^":i;::t:^tt:ll:i"irr""

-r.rl ]ittle such hope. He was intensely more sensitive to the

lr",t,h.r-rta" of California-aslnature than Chase' His itinerary took him

,*ryfro*thelovelyredwoodcoastalroute'whichChasefolloweduptoOr.gon, and into the si'otto-scorched Sacramento Valley' which the

Ungiirt rrr"" described as the Plains of Desolation' There he seemed more

.awaleoftheinhumanheat,the]ackofsofteningassociations,andthemalariacarriedbymosquitoesbreedinginstagnantirrigationditchesthanhe was of any special californian diaiogue with nature. The only fellow

camPer Johnson seems interested in is one who a week earlier had com-

mitted suicide near his own campsite'

IV

The assessments of Chase and fohnson underscored the ambiguities of

California. In retrospect, the elements of hope were discernible' and so

were the social sources of distress. Because this narrative concerns itself

primarily with imaginative experience, political and socio-economic fac-

iom h*u! been merely suggested. They have not, however' been forgotten'

Monopolies of land "r,d

iiantpottation, the control of politics by corpora-

tions iespecially the Southern Pacific), predatory banking practices' an

unjust tax structure-these and other abuses were the odds against which

Caiifornians struggled in pursuit of their dream. Indeed, the story of Cali-

fornia setting its house in order constitutes the bulk of state history as it

now stands written. It needs no repetition in these pages' Suffice it to say

that, as is usual in human affairs, matters of getting, spending' and gov-

ernance-and certainly not matters of aesthetics-consumed the most

time and energy. Mention might be made also of the thousand natural

iolnthe

at tho;, the:es of a;

in whirll satiredING

rl here.

ute heard,;i

ng his son

I in the o:ire surprisedrf flowers a

se, Faxon:rvice whenrced before

vealthiests district, and,

death he par.

flamboyance,

oming license,

the sense thating for limits,to a repressive

vhich Califor-: naive funda-:ore the ratherrectitude over,restraint-therhy, the neo-

442 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

shocks flesh was heir to, together with the misery men created for them-

selves, except that such documentation would belabor the obvious. To say

that men and women passed their lives in California r85o-r9r5 is to say

that disease struck, children died, and human beings sufiered. There was

the usual harvest of rape, murder, and mayhem. The California dream didnot keep prisons, hospitals, or cemeteries empty; many claimed, in fact,

that it kept them more occupied than was necessary, that symptoms ofsocial stress-alcoholism, insanity, crime-were everywhere.

Be that as it may, what concerns us here is a more subtle stress, arisingfrom the California dream itself, with its constant dialectic of hope against

hope. Even at a continent's distance Walt Whitman could sense it. In"Facing West From California's Shores" (186o), Whitman put his

universalized protagonist on the edge of the Pacific, looking across to Asiafrom which ihe great westward migrations of peoples had begun ages pre-

viously. It is a triumphant, mythic moment. With the settlement of California, the encirclement of the globe is virtually complete. The lyric ends,

however, on a note of sadness and loss. "But where is what I started forso long ago?" Whitman's figure asks himself. "And why is it yet un-

found?"Why indeed? Such was perhaps the central question of the California

experience: what, after all, was human happiness, and-whatever it was-why did it prove so elusive? There were few answers and more than

enough paradox. By the early r8To's, when California had witnessed a

quarter-century of American ambition, a sympathetic visitor found it nec-

essary to say: "Ah! heavy is my heart with sorrow and with pity, when Ilook back and remember the sad, fallen humanity I have encountered inthis sunny clime, and with whom I have sat or wandered, listening to theirbroken stories, and beholding the bitter tears they wept in the anguish of

a wasted and ruined life. O California, the peerless, so young, so beautiful,yet so old in sorrow and remorse!"22 Descriptions of the insane asylums

at Napa and Stockton frequently appeared in tourist literature, accom- '

panied, of course, by moralizings as to how many wretches had been

brought to their present plight by the failure to make immoderate dreams

come true.An obsession with self-fulfillment proved one of the dangers of the Cali' l:r

fornia dream. Local apologists had a special relish for Social Darwinism'gas a public philosophy, feeling that the history of California above any"'

thing else proved that when the strong survived society flourished. At

Panama-Pacific International Exposition of 1915, Louis Christian lvrtl

gardt's Court of Ages gave that cherished belief the testimony of natra

n

oss

n

nt otilyric,istar

it yet ,

Califoi'er it

l

more tvitnessed i

und itity, when

luntered iing to theii'anguish of

o beautiful,.ne asylums

Llre, accom-

s had been

rate dreams

of the CaliDarwinismabove any-

;hed. At the

istian Mull-of narrative

t::.

r.

447AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM +.1)

'; h-, Social Darwinism, stressed,;,: _ ^ rge, structur"l lfi.,,#"il;l\H:lr::,"",i,1tu"ftecrure. 1l: ::"-:of extraordinary op.portTtll.. T"",Il""fi1i.,;fornit as the - scenc '

^,+nn wa S ro nd o r, ^;;,?;;; 4;":liy i,T*l# ::ll1#L",

#'*ji'*""fff:;ilr,;;;'.l;***i;t*.';H#vffi

ilf m,;;,',+it**Lipip**+fu lT;;**r:#

ffi#,:3i;1;;pi*,''t:il;*g$**.,lll1=11:.;il"1li;i{' f o, worse, having '*a" ^i-'d

to* it) ' consideredtheir lives wasted'

i:':'r In Southert ""ii"*t" j;

'il; *ia-'sso" onward the health factor

" contributed to ,0"'n"rrior*ies of self-contemplating discontent' Promo-

tionar books such "^:;;;;;i; ll'!:,?:t f"aaal '

"*'itten bv two phvsi-

' .ians, walter ""ii'I''j"u li Yt':?:"11"::.,:U:*ilillt3"iicians, Walter Lindley ano ,|' r ' Yv !s'vr' I

"irn riches during the Gold

ritt*r**ffi$!I[']'liH]irij':?'""'"l"adea'lhmavbekept at bay," Docto' plC' n"*o"ai"o *'ot" i" the preface lo The Medi'

tu)ranean Shores "t o'l""l"i*t' "and life enioied to the end of the

term of man's natut"i'""i"""i":i d3"trt"1 california filled up with the

dying and the sick *t'o' i"ting death' were yet uncertain of the outcome'

At one time it "t*tJ"' '''"*: A;; *-1"ri become one vast sanitarium'

This Southe"' c"iito'il" i"n'*""'y culturl contradicted Social Darwin-

ism in evervth t g ".""i" 9r r+ i*' *ry1= :

::inl"'li,,1H'i?:::"i^llltifrt", ott"ttio" i"ittt death' the cemetery

War I, and in t'" *"'i**iil G;" *u'ku cast to the California dream'

There were p'"tf"*''*fich 6lifor"ia took into the twentieth century

from the nineteenth; and there *"" ""*-oroblems' Stated baldly' they

do not diner rrom il"'il;;; tq {*tT;lT;ilTli::,il,'l"l:n"lgl*i,?ii;,iff Jlllll^;iilli:iT."','""'nsorconservationand ecology; qu"'ti*"'"oi'rt"^rirt' education' and welfare' These were na-

tional problems-with a local texture; ""j tt'"t coniunction said much

about the C'lifo"'i" e;;;;" as a-whole' It was American and it was

regio'al. tr't " ut'y"'#il;-* califor"ia dream was the American

dream undergoing ;;;t;;;o't 'ig"mt""i u"'i"tio"t' The'hope raised

by promotio""r *'itJtJ";t "' cin'r"' Nordhoft in California' For

Health, Pteaure, ":;";';";;;;"ce ($72)'was the simple vets'ubtle hope

forabetterlifeanimatingAmericasinceitsfoundation.Californiapro.

444 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

vided a special context for the working-out of this aspiration, intensified it,

indeed, gave it a probing, prophetic edge in which the good and evil of

the American dream was sorted out and dramatized. In r9r!, after sixty-

five years of statehood, as, north and south, great expositions opened their

gates, California, like America herself, remained an intriguing, unanswered

question.This narrative has gathered selected acts of definition, moments when

vision and event betrayed their interchange, and the aesthetic pattern and

moril meaning of social experience became clear. History grants few such

occasions. An even smaller number go on record. In the flux and complexity

of its inner life, california rB5o-rgr5 defies our full understanding because

the past (even the recent past) has a way of reserving its most precious

meaning to itself. Unintimidated by this resistance, memory keeps the past

alive, lest the identities of the present crumble away. The work of memory

is only partially that of retrospective analysis.

Analysis, whose goal is conceptual control, defines its terms, focuses its

scrutiny, and seeks the consolations of argument. Memory covets the

present possession of past experience, the recovery of time's burden in all its

fullness and baffiing impenetrability. Abiding in the total self, and not just

in the intellect, it musters conscious and subconscious perceptions into one

knowing moment. Unafraid of mystery and unembarrassed by the poetry of

the past, memory (named Mother of the Muses by the Ancients) is alert

to the echoes of history, its lost gestures and hidden music. Memory passes

judgment. It also preserves and commemorates.

This narrative is an act of memory, a gathering from the california past

of some inner strands, understood and obscure. California rB5o-r9r 5 mocks

the blunders of the present and is partially responsible for them. The dream

lives on, promising so much in the matter of American living' It also

threatens to become an anti-dream, an American nightmare' Memory'

then, must come to our aid; for while the recovery of the past can trauma-

tize, itcan also heal. A culture failing to internalize some understanding of

its past tragedies and past ideals has no focus upon the promise and dangers '-

of the present.

In this regard, the elusiveness (the failure, if you will) of the California"'=j;

dream proves a blessing. Bringing the protagonists of this narrative forw.a$

in memory, we judge tf,"t tf,"/ stood for-"nd such judgments, O*,td,ltj

the consciousness of the present, can perhaps further today's struggle. f1

value and corrective action. Old in error, California remains an Amenc''4;

hope.

i.ii, li.,irt;