L2

Medfierranean
fi an American

storyorr:"*:Tl:1r,ffi'fffi 'S,l,1i:'iiilTi"tl:T"",rij"iil
cts of caiifo*:". ?"9l1t,
him fo L u,jstrr"ton,
Fr6rn
.. fr"t from that very
blamed r --r'.or i,nnv- Freflront was

ffi :n*,
#i$s**[$*il$ulll*:'*'ffi
ffiil j*te'e lil:::;#;
rather, Fr6mont
i"
wa'
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:":'i
his father and
btYT";;; Nicolas Nicollet'
inherited from t, i"r.pn
his mentor' the French an Epiv
;'t'r^nos,tl" by r'r",tttt background.,and
l;.i;{r#
r}*; 3t*::;i1il}T# t' :*::[:r **" $']# :;
i*'oa""'a P'ot'8",.'ireJo,'t *a l"::: uJlt*J"i",
his voung
;ttfiil;
*il;"**'uil:#l'^"itt1*',mul*tir::*"r"'":',7
Fr6mont ran
the first t"""'"il;;t
as
*"' a papist'
J;; -*" ot hls way to deny '""t"tty
he had to go out Yttt
[rh::Jl*ix"m"ll"+*l'"'l*;'J:r.ff ;l"$',l."lliili]fr
ot
Fr6mont, daughter
or the most colorrur
J;fi; r"''"o'
ot YLiltJJ3IilH1,fi, "was a

her husband'''
"Quts"' she remembered
#,
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
166
constant changing from an English-Protestant into a French-Catholic qr
atmosphere."l The lifestyle of St. Louis combined Southern, Yankee, and K(
creole flavors. |essie spoke French from infancy and was educated by th,
French nuns at the convent of the Sacred Heart. Among her father's mi
clients were French planters, "generally educated in Paris," she described riv
them; "and with the combined resources of climate, taste, and wealth, SPi
their mode of living was beautiful as well as luxurious."2 Senator Benton OI,
and fessie also had many Spanish friends. They spoke Spanish and ad- likt
mired Spanish literature. iwh
Married to such a woman-young, beautiful, highly placed, educated in Pec
an aristocratic tradition-Fr6mont was no ordinary junior officer, no duti- ' ons
ful West Pointer, his head filled with regulations and his heart set on aga
steady advancement to the rank of lieutenant colonel. There was much of tor
the 6migr6 adventurer to Fr6mont, and something of the headstrong OI

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''.|
in Mediterp",l
fessie heiped him to write, pui forth a California drenched
nean beauty . His Report, in fact, and his Geographical Memoir Up"l,!A
tJpper cati.fornfu (r84s) might be considered the founding texts of t
Mediterranean 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' . ;ga6
Neither 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,
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN
l6t
the episode' Brigadier-General Stephen
ilnrrini would have loved
howevcr' rvrL L'e!
ll#"";A:n"':'ii"-i.T''I"1'::":i1"'i'*;3"i"1*i1:
and when Frt*orrt refused
to acknowredge Kearny as
naDarte'

'Lil$H;;.#;;'n*;'' *:'" ""T1T:i ,y:T*lll::;;

[t#-"rc^riro,,,ia,"::l-1r::::'i::::*:t"*t}i":ff
-1"
ii."'t",,*9i'r'"'#-l{i:u:".":J":5iil"it;ff
and they understooc
jl:
H" was a flamboyant iefe'
ffi"#ffi"r' than martinet
[[U-nl;il"r Co-*oaor" ioU.it Stockton, a choleric
and showed no respect for them as a
'*,::T
iio issoed insulting proclamations
wore their.costum:
Fr6mont, on th"-;;"t h^nd' "*f""i:.lT:
ffi:ffi#:;;,;;;
"inle. th"i' r"'d"'s rle remiti:1 :t:"::1th sentence

g.iffiJ;;; ir,"i" r", 'pvi"g. 1A,nd16s.pico, who led a last-ditch attempt

"i ii','tn! south, insisted^u3;1Tj"t:,1ti:#;:J:i;
oi,,t5 resist the American,
o, Stockto' would have himself
ffi Hffi:;;Jil:"rpected that Kearny they had been given after an ear-
ffij' ;;;';;,rr". r- "irf",ing the parote as tfa
l,, lier defeat. In an agree*t"i k"o*"
ry: ilj'l ",1::i?1,:1*:t:::?ll:
*"u'"'iv,r'?lri*^il1hl:.*en lav down their arms
and return

rr ffi;ffi
ill]home.Fromthenon,theoldCaliforniansreveredFr6mont.Hewaslike
,"*"v-'t*plfico' D'ring nt: o:-]:1t-:,ttlT::"J;
i offered to take to []?:fJ:l
the field in
ffi;ffi;,"""irii""'a-i-inriro*il"s hadthey could to back his bid for
84+;:i Fr6mont', a"f."'"' i" did what
'856
they
or the presidencY.
the. Army after being con-
r, half Allowed by President Polk to resign from
F;ilont returned to Californ': .T: n"1 South caro'
*tti;;; :ll*:1-ti
;

rmr victed of
no
i ffi;;'#;""";;;;;1;t because it reminded him of rr --^Lj-^
lina, but h" at Mariposa' in lhl.foott-rills approaching
rtion
";;;; "t "st"t"
the yosemit". ih"r" the Fremonts brought
to california a spacious l'je-
?poft of ttrr
as linked to the spanish
45), whicht style'which expressed their sense of. theirselves
Mediterrail andFrenchcivilizationsoftheCreoleSouth.Dressedinplantationwhite
(he acquired his rank during
moh Upon or as an OId Californian, Colonel Frdmont
worked his mines and the
:exts of the the conquest) supervised the Sono-rans who the
staff of Inaia"i-[I""k', miscellaneous Europeans who serviced
talian com- "'d
rroducts in estate'IndianwomenoftheMariposatribe,dressedinbrightlycolored
ed her hus- calico,workeclaboutthekitchenandthelaundrylikeltalianpeasants.
two mo-unted Delaware
When the Fr6monts rode out in their carriage
the ciostumes of old california'
:d Frdmont Indians cantered before them, dressed in
himself in :looking,Mrs.Frdmontsaid,likesupportingplayersinanltalianopera'
colonel Fr6mont wanted his estate'to glo;
i" caifornia-as-South, cali-
rf mounted ; Freierick Law Olmsted to advise
ist the con- ! fornia-as-Mediterranean. He employed
 t',
:'.' - ^ ir rrrnrrrrRn ANEAN
MEDITERRANEAN Z6g
EN AMERICAN

had his home o"lt

*ar""ping' He l1',Jlt::tif,,',t* lr'::ft"T
respected the contours or the
hills,
i4#,iil1'li;;';,';;;;*hich
i:ffi #""J *g d"'o'"tiu",":::1,*:ii:
oi For a ;:*"i,i*,
architecture' 1"j:T few glorious
:ff:ft;";til'i the stage"^s
"gio"al
the first
tJffi held
e Frdmonts Tdv.1"d ?""ti"Til:i *l:
l:i: il; ;*,ih"T*t*,"a s.ociety above" soci11'^
.a
patroness
)fs
of an emergtng
l;"- ,Jitrt"a her role
's "tk"owledged
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"1
or his own abilities' He rost
jff?'illi't#';;;";;;;gge'ated sense

t.;il il. n&", d;';;;i"' th." to*'seill1 :ihist;Mariposa

p
*-T-" T?" i: tto"o:::
estate pav
was forced
li#;;;;i;fi. W"'-t"'"t' proved a disapP^ointment;,y*:
He
iir,:a.tu. His Civil 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,"#
: :f"-:il";;;;;';;"d'gr u:t"|j,t:
Rovce's
#;iTT;
:1:T"?-::T:il:
rike a cat i,itr' mouse. It would
have
ll ff;ffi:il;,;; with him "
turned upon his inquisitor-
i,:i been more apploPnate
''i"t""
Ilau the
n"a
ffi'#;; ::ffi ;il'ii'",,t,*"i-p,of
old general
Lrrs wru Svrr!
-
",,o,
,,t:^^ ^^111., *orrierl
"".'":',_::-*11Y ::'l_',*
:ilttttt"ttt;; of departmental promotion-and admitted
victorv
";;;t f""g acteiruthle-sslv in the face of opportunity'
that, yes, he had
""* "g"
But Frdmont *", *."if-?"; ai'u"tted'
He iet |essie fend off the more
damaging of RoYce's questions'
"with the trtre Greek
"I lived its earliert p"";; t"ta Fremont of his life'
was not an overly intelli-
joy in existence-in ,f," gla""tt oI living'"a He
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
in Royce,s obsession, the page upon
prg" in,calif orni'a de'
of resentment
voted to the destruction of Fr6mont's
reputation' Although he was born
he never felt at home
in California, S"rrt"y",," later remarketl tf Royce'
inthesunshine'Facingeachotheracrosstheinterview,thePathfinder
Californias' Fr6mont knew the
and the assistant ntJ;"t* k;"* diff"'e"t
of historical
imperatives of style South' Royce knew the California
expressed ""Ji}t" into order' Fr6mont knew Cali-
ihe South. process, the Californi" *ftitf' had emerged the
what had been lost through
:edIndian fornia as MediterranJa". n"yt" describ'ed the
Frdmont won re-
ed beIorc overrunning of C"fiio'"ia's Mexican civilization'
on the field of
spect and friendship Californians whom he had met
upporting "iOfa acquaintance on horseback' on
a
battle. "TeIl the gi'ls i *'de Fr6mont's
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
)7O
wife in
trail, in the mountains," Richard Henry Dana wrote home to his
a quarter-century absence. "He
rB5g, while visiting california after nearly
i, h"ro, every inch of him, so quiet and yet so full of will and courage
"
and conduct!"5
Frdmont's response to california and the quality of his preoccupations
analogy. Arising
there suggest the compelling nature of the Meditelranean
fro* simil"rities of landscape and climate, this analogy developed into a
metaphor for all that california offered as a regional civilization.
Suggest-
chal-
irrg textures and values of living, California-as-Mediterranean
,r"*
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-
Dudley
dino organ*ize statistics of healthfulness and longevity. For charles
Its
Warrrei it graced the American table with fruit, wine, and flowers'
and Near Eastern. Each
guise was aiso French, Iberian, North African,
iefraction suggested an association which clung to the analogy as:
whole.
life'
Italy called t:o"tr," ordering of landscape and the enrichment of daily
the mystic.
Greece connoted pageantry and art. The desert regions bespoke
for large-
Spain, the most compelling because it arose history,
from asked
ness of purpose, heroism-and romance'
The Mediterranean analogy originated in an interaction of fact
and
man-high
imagination. Riding horsebaff on the Los Angeles plain through
sun, travelers recalled
mustard abloom in vivid yellow under a Levantine
seed' As they
the Holy Land, and perhaps even the parable of the mustard
Gre€ce' Silhou-
sailed off the coast, theyihought of Morocco, Sicily, or
etted at sunset, ,o* oi .yp."Ir., outside of Fresno in
the San |oaquin
" the Campagna; and'
brought to mind a similar iry', in Lombardy or
"ndcounties suggested the south ol
of course, the vineyards of the Bay T**'
honey
At heightened moments, California seemed a land of ""1llYll:;
,.i::1-,:ll;::il"#::T#::T:ffi1i]l:*#il;T;-{.1:l*ffi
they flourishld on Pt:::#
the bees. In forest hives and canyon apiaries, 1
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^"ll
from oak trees. He remembered Virgil's prediction
of the L'o
 i eN AMERIcAN MEDTTERRANEAN 371

'idur* for the

quercus zudabunt roscida rne.lla" ).; ll*t ?:itl*::::
nectar. Living quietly in the foothills, the
beekeeper
Tff'riiui,7",*"at
ffi;ffi trom Hesiod or Viigil, a gatherer::h::? T1j*"",Y
t#:;"i;;J;;; another .o*p-or,.r'i of the Mediterranean analogy'
lrv v---f
i*I
California, Basque and Mexican shep-
Iif," C"rir"f Vailey and Southern
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'
shepherd appeared as wild and
,n. ffi*',,r";" rnkles bound in strips of rawhide, the
s'..----
sH::-'r' urr
Lned' i+,fu.,,lonely as his preclassicaf
Mediterranean prototype' The Basques especially
they did not come to California
rritan, i-,. ;;ildropped from time' Silent' aloof'calling in the *"lY of the Old
:ptioi ;.', to blend in, but to pursue their solitary lineage' They
phletl fili"' w;il. Cilt rpok"""n impenetrable language of uncertain
ttrey carried in skins; and they
lo ;rr* i"*'" i,r,,"r, "r,d garlic in wine
of i,, came together to play g"-.-, known to shepherds for thousands of years'
Italyrr ;;;; ffii; *,oi" orin"m in one of the 1".':'.look1"":] li:tl'::,:"
her way of thinking, shepherds lent im-
fl,,, ;;i";;;;; irrn pto"t (rqo6). To loved
of ine land of little rain' She'When
les i' rr.*"rirf dignity to the open ranges r r^^LL^- o-rl rrrnnl
^-i^-o and wool. When
--l onions
lowers, , il;;il, "iirri, camps, ,*""t "id leather and
tern, she saw one guiding his flock across
a canyon rim at twilight or heard him
California to
lsaw playing the iute tJ sheep settled at midday rest, she knew
ancient Greece'
i daily f. gr"J"a by associations of Mediterranean Europe and
lhe mv Thetouchstoneoftheanalogy,itscommondenominatoranditsmost
interpreted element, was the uiie' OUuioosly symbolic
of civilization' the
I for Ia
Americans who first saw
vines planted by Spaniards suggested to those
f fact themthatCaliforniawasnotanunrelievedwilderness.Likethemissions
solicitude, and pa-
man-highi themselves, the vines of california bespoke history,
rs recalledii tience. Frenchmen in the growing of them' and then Americans'
ioined
d. As they Intheearlyr86o's,sensingCaliforniatobeonthevergeofanexciting
Haraszthy as Com-
:e. Silhou- new industry, the legislatur"e appointed Count Agoston
the Grape-vine' A Hungar-
n Joaquin missioner on the Irrip,ou"*t"i and Growth of
ian nob]ema,, *ho,e family had been connected with
viticu]ture for cen-
rgna; and,
States for political
of France. turies, Hararrthy, Liberal, had fled to the United
reasons. I{e
"overland in rB4B and by the late r85o's was developing
rd flowers.
"rriu"a
rs brought theBuenaVistaVineyardsinSonoma'wherehebuiltan-elegantvillaand
legislature, Haraszthy
r a pastur- lived in the grand style. Under instructions from the
.ting in a traveledthroughoutEuropebetween186rand186z'compilinginform-a-
experimentation' In
:rer of
an tion and s"rrdirrg back about loo'ooo cuttings for
enterprising Hun-
r gathered crape culture,fuines andwine-Making (186z) this
of a great dream:
rlden Age garian 6migr6 provided California with the contours
 DREAM
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
37,
went forth to the world wines
hills covered by vineyards, from which
which were mellow liL c"tifornia,had a pleasing young strength'
"";;;;, dream was coming true' Vines
By the late r86o's p"it "i ift" Count's. were
covered the once emPty hills' In
the wint-er of 1857-68 over 4oqooo
had over a million vines
planted in Sonoma C;itfi;i"""'ftp1 9:o"tt Mexicans' and
oitf'"'aecade' fe"aea by Frenchmen'
planted by the to
""a their ways of tiuitrg easily translatable
varieties of southern Europeans, a Medi
conferred.upon coastal California
a congenial climate, ;fi;;t
vintage season at S-an |os6"'wrote
terranean texture. "tt t"' the pleasant
in the early rBSo's' "I visited' among
William Henry ni,f'op of ^ "i'i't tf'"'"
which dates from r85r' and is the
pioneer
others, the Le no,'t i""y"rd, hundred and
Here are about a
in making *in"-g,o*i"g i' '"gul^'industry' The
seventy-five thol_rsana-virres, iet
out a thousand, perhaps, to the acre'
the
uPon a gentle rise of ground above
large, cheerful farm buildings are showed us
area of vines, which i' "tl'ty
level' An Alsacian foreman
bustling about the yard was a
through the wine-cell;' A ;;""nt-maid
the wooden shoes' The long tables'
thorough French p""""i, only lacking
set for the forty hands employed
in the vintage-time, were spread with
spoken' At
Sca'ceiy a word Jf unglish was
viands in the FrenJ fashlo"' One
as exclusively Italian or Portuguese'
other places trt",o"oull;;;; ""
scenes on American soil'"6
feels very much abroad in sricl-' fact that
underscored newness' The
Bestowing hirto'i;;y, ;rt" "i"" also
Americanspr"f",'"a*t'iskeytowinedramatizedthefrontierbehindvine-
advocates did look to California'
yards and villas (althffiit-p""''""
light wines' t"' h:lq reverse the
because of its plenitul-Jof inexpensive
American taste for hard liquor)'
It had ti b" "d*ltted that much local
count
Bowles paid no less than
wine was inferior. In 1865 Samue1 "harsh and
Haraszthy himself the supieme
insult of n"aing his vintages
and man-
heady,-needi"g both some improvement in culture
'p;;;;Jy "i T1"' ;it'e of California' asserted
ufacture, and tim; for softening
CharlesLoringBracein1869'wasfft"C'iifo"tiaitself:full-ofpotential' as
todetail' Robert Louis Stevenson'
but sufiering f,"* ;;;; "ii""ti""
generous' "In LurJ *"" tt"t';'
Ilr this-wild "t"ly,;i
usual, was more generous. 1; Y,T':itr::,"illtlf.l}:,
Jia not feel the sacred.r

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

can taste, such as it i',

"riit" ""'*rt
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 373
:,
(plant lice) ravaged the
Alrshout the r86o's and r8To's phylloxera
ptr'ti'g vines into the millions could
#:;fir;;;e. catifornian, and renewal, offer-
ii;;i;;;"es engaged in anact of preservation *1":s"i:1]ll::
;;'il;;; ,,.*,o"it-""d under anoth:: :o" to :ht
fffi;;.i;;as" a startling, wonderful belief, one that put Californians
if;;;;;." of historv; ""J thev.bol yitnelJ t"
ll]: ::y,i::'-:T::lT"'
in a city noted for its fine printing,
[";;;;;riiful book ever produced in
i;;;;; Grape Yines of Catifornia, published in San Francisco
";i the ,esult of a three_way collaboration. Hannah Millard
ffi,:#";r.-;;s
ii:' Lw l l' '- '

ulr.orirlr.a the grapes ripening on the vine'

William Harring then oleo-
;1

ei ;, il;;; Miliard"s ."r,u"*r] *1t':s Po:':bl"i t"]*l"l-1?,':i":::::""j

rd i[rn:l ;;ltttttil;it.Edward Bosqui, deanof san Francisco printers, designed
..'. ;;l;;k and set its gracefuf type. published under_the auspices.of the
-Grapes
iirt. Vini.ultural As-sociation, and Grape Yines of California
euokedthepoetryandromanceofthecomingofthevinetoCalifornia.
the pages of this elegant folio, one noted how beauty
of medium
F.' i;;g
;lg
l.l ;;; il of t"h.Ibook's central statement. Here, indeed' was a lovely
har-
l' Riesling, from
ead vestirom the sunny hills of California: the |ohannisberg
even more re-
Car*any and, before that, from France and Italy' and'
,oken
,.' L

;;i;;'fr;* Greece_pale, light, delicate; the Rose Chasselas, tasting

-Li--

lese.
faintlyofmusk;theWhiteMuscatofAlexandria,ofNorthAfrica,and
fact th Sicily,andtheverySouthofEurope,lightgreenincolor'asturdy'un-
the heavy
ind vi pretentious gr"p., io, the table or for a decent everyday wine;
Black Hamborin, aoorirhing in the fog-cooled coast Range;
the Flame
aliforni
Tokay from Hringary, rank ind robust, orange or ruby or rose in tint' de-
/erse
pendent upon diieci sunlight; the Zinfandel, the most planted vine in
rch local'',
California, deep purple, obicore in its origins, perhaps even a
totally new
r Countl'
California ,to& lro*. claimed Haraszthy developed it), fragile of
skin,
arsh and
in malic acid, and in its
.nd man- loving the foothilis and the highlands, abounding
strawberry;
asserted wine, without sugary residue,lecalling the raspberry and-the
East, run-
rotential, the seedless Sultarra, opulent, from the vineyards of the Near
)nson, as ningfrompalegreento,uby,nowandthenamber-tinted,needingheat
for its luxurianc"e, and protection from fog; and of course the dark
and
ntage he
hardy Missio., Gr"pe of ancient california lineage, the Ishmael
of vines,
e sacred-
giving a rough eartily wine, the wine of Spanish soldiers, the wine of old
. and no
the vats California.
--Cro,pns
and GrapeYines of Californa celebrated the translation
of the
3re, also,
rstomers vinetoAmerica,sMediterraneanshores'Atthesametime,somewondered
well' Diet'
if perhaps a neo-Mediterranean people might grow up there as
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
374
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,
the
preacher to san Fra.rcisco's calvary Preibyterian, and Eliza Farnham,
analogy as a
i"o*en's rights advocate, called upon the Mediterranean
civiTiza'
metaphorical expression of their hopes for the emergingPaclfrc
fire
tion. Here, they dreamed, might be an American people possessing
for
and repose, amplitude and line, a healthy naturalism and a capacity
religion. Here might the American-as-Californian, the American-as-neo-
and po-s"'
Mediterranean, reach back behind his English-speaking heritage
Greece, Italy-ji
sess himself of the spurned gifts of the South. "'Whalever .ii
 t;
t.
I: AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 775

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

to become
"A cosmopolitan people, not narrow
iiiji Cnrrt", H. Shinn exhorted.
;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."11
ir!:a;
,t!,f'
iill:.li
#,i1i:jti:;::i,
ij,r:::l
:
II
rr

j;i;
'irl:r:.: il:,

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

-for ii' and Lteaatn as ltaly, the same climates and products, and a similar con-
:uits ai figuration of mountains, plains, and valleys. Like Italy, it was formed for
never unity, "its large rivers being concentric, and its large vallies appurtenant
vill to tire great central bay of San Francisco."12 In the course of two Cali-
:e of cli fornia sojourns, in rB49 and 1859, Bayard Taylor, the most accomplished
rerl pe!,:rrl American travel writer of his era, gave aesthetic amplitude to Fr6mont's
eighboru topographical model. "The dry soil," Taylor wrote of the mining camp of
tions ofr Mokelumne Hill in the Sierras (it reminded him of similar sites in the
Coast-', Apennines), "with its rich tints of orange and burnt sienna-the ever
he Cali- green oaks, so much resembling the Italian ilex-the broad-leaved fig-
rugged, trees in the gardens-the workmen with bare, sunburnt breasts-the dolce
rd lithe, far nierrte of a few loungers in the shade-and the clear, hot, October sky,
rt so far in which there was no prophecy of winter, all belonged to the lands of the
a modi- Mediterranean."ls It was a moment typical of Taylor's Italianizing re-
rughters sponse, and it continued in other writers down the century. The country
rr10
north of San Francisco struck Taylor and later visitors as most noticeably
e Medi- Italian in texture and situation. The view eastward from the Coast Range
,rsonali- reminded one visitor of the view from the mountaintop monastery of
sworth, Camaldoli, near Naples. "The Russian River Valley," he wrote, "took the
rm, the place of the solfatara and the region towards Baiae and cumae; a dark
ryasa sombre lake supplied the place of Lake Avernus; and Naples, Pozzuoli,
:iviliza- and the Mediterranean had their counterparts in san Francisco, vallejo,
ing fire and the Pacific."la when Italian-Swiss from Ticino established the Asti
:ity for colony in a wide valley on the upper Russian River, planting vines, build-
.as-neo- ing homes and gardens in the Northern Italian style, associations reported
rd pos- by earlier visitors took on a reality beyond that of metaphor. "While visit-
:, Italy ing here," Ernest Peixotto could say of Asti in the early tgoo's, "I veritably
 376 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

passed my time in Italy, for every one I met and everything I saw was
Italian."15 P
tI
The Italian analogy could be great or smail, an isorated perception or
tl
an extended metaphor. The canyons of the coast Rang.
-igt t seem like Sr
the wild ravines of Italy; and the isrand of Santa catalina, with its deep
N
blue bay and wild goats, might suggest capri. The trees of california-
oak, bay, pine, and cypress-recalled Italian counterparts. ,,It might be
iIt
C
Lombardy again," noted William Bishop upon seeing the cypress_lined
m
irrigation canals outside Fresno.16 The souther.r .o"rt *r, made Italian
Cr
through architecture and landscaping, as Ernest peixotto discovered in
the St
first decade of the twentieth century when he visited the terraced and
villa-dotted slopes facing the santa Barbara channel. ,The soft breeze, ;i,8x
;Ca
fanning the face like a caress," peixotto wrote of this area, ,,the limpid
air ce'
cielo sereno dear to every Italian heart-the scent of the orange
-the
blossoms wafted from the terraces; the shimmering olives backed
by daik
oaks; the suave lines of the coast reaching from the headlands
of Miramar
and 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 upon
its 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", toward evening, when na-
ture is stilled in the hush which comes with "rrd
twilight, from ihe cottage
behind our house, come the soft notes of the romanzas of posilippo sung
by the gardeners and their families."l?
Roman catholicism was an integral part of the Italian comparison. In
the early days of the American era, nuns in habit served on the staffs of
public hospitals and orphanages; and convents at Marysville, Benicia, and
san Jose provided interdenominational finishing schools for the daughters
of the wealthy. santa clara college, sara Lippincott discovered one
drowsy summer afternoon in r87r, had a charm it, o*rr, "The inner
"ll roses, and lemon,
court, or garden, with its long piazzas, its aloes, myrtles,
orange, almond, and olive trees, reminded me of the cloisters and court
in the picturesque old inn of Amalfi, once a convent. The whole scene was
marvelously like ltaly,-the /esuit priests, with their long black robes; the
quaint old church; the older cross before it. Even the picturesque peasant
figures were there, lounging about the church door, and t neeti"g before
the shrine of the Virgin."ts
The ecclesiastical aspect of california-as-Italy lent itself to such scene I
 i AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN tl/

it converted to Ca'
"*',o.Ircouldalsohaveamoreprofoundeffect'Inconjunctionwith
*liiir".r"a influence of the oxford Movement,
American governor of California, and
ffiil;;",er Burnett, theof first
the state supreme court' In 1867, at Saint
Hr"* Clinton Hastings
1.-.f,"*;" 6"thedral in San Francisco, Burnett served as godfather when an
Stoddard into the Catholic
,ii';i" Jesuit baptized Charles Wa19nconversion
$ilt::l..ffi11.1r.'As part
of it, drr-" Stoddard's showed a parabolic
l t',. ';;rorrtation between the Calvinism of upstate New York and Catholic
t ,, Criif"*r. In the narrative of his path to Rome, ATrcubledHeart (fi85),
tnl ai Stoaa".a played off two milieus: the grim household oJ his New York
d :l gr"ndprr"ntr, "in whose veins the blood had flowed coldly from the dark
:i,:
:::

,'
i:.
Francisco, citr of p"::ly,',"9
)
?"y, or tn" Plymouth Puritans," "19 l=
)id '' ."tholicity of i"*p.r"*"rrt. Talk of hellfire and predestination filled his
grandparents' house, where in early adolescence he had returned from
)ra San
f Francisco for a visit. Brought to a revival, Stoddard felt shamed by the
rama 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-
uPon, veloped into a poet. Despite boyhood indoctrination against the
whore
),lervi, of Babylo.,, he ]ound himself attracted by the Catholic liturgy. Kneeling
trees, I
in the congregation of saint Mary's as Archbishop Alemany celebrated
)n na- High Mass, Sioddard realized that long ago, perhaps in the course of a
rttage grll New York Sabbath, he had dreamed of an altar before which he
sung could prostrate himself in adoration. Like San Francisco, Catholicism was
premise. Its symbols met the needs of his imagination and the
"n ".rih.ti"
rn. In hungers of his heart. Rornanism was Part of a total mise en scdne''fhe
ffs of Latin liturgy, the Italian |esuits of Saint Ignatius Church where he went
', and for instructions, his developing interest in the civilizations of Southern
;hters Europe, the very Mediterranean metaphor of California itself, all massed
one themselves on the borders of his imagination, moving him to an assent
inner that was an act of religion, the election of a culture-and a vision of
mon, beauty. "And it seemed to me then," wrote Stoddard of walking down the
court steps of Saint Mary's after his baptism, "as if my eyes wele
just opening
I was upon another and a better world."1e In Rome, shortiy after, he had an
; the with Pope Pius IX, who presented him with a crucifix.
"odi.rr""
tsant As much as Stoddard's catholicity was PromPted by the Italian meta-
efore phor, california was not due to fill up with recusants, converts or crypto-
catholics, but with (and here the reference is especially to southern cali
cene fornia) Midwest Protestants of the middle class. california-as-Italy might
 .i'ti

iil yB AMERIcANS AND THE cALIFoRNIA DREAM

ti
ii
not call them to Rome, but, as presented by charles Dudrey warner in
lii. to
our ltaly (r89r), it would urge Americans to pay attention to the aes-
liLl
ba
i thetics of living.
of
Radiating an Indian summer mood of New England in search of the
liir pu
South, warner was himself the paradigm of the softened puritan into
d.l
whose hands he would commend the American ltaly. Born in rural Mas-
un.
sachusetts of Mayflower descendants, raised throughout the rg3o's and
be
r84o's in the old Puritan ways, warner spent a lifetime moving south-
abt
ward: to New York and Pennsylvania for an education; to the old south-
pol
west frontier to build up his health; to Mexico on horseback; and, most
gloriously, as a traveler-essayist in North Africa, the Near East, Southern i., ov€
lnv
France, sicily, Italy, Malta, and Greece. Established in Hartford, con-
life
necticut,as co-editor of the courant, warner worked vigorously after the
the
civil war for the revival of the American South. Loving the South as a
des
region, he felt southerners had much to teach the rest of the united
states, especially the Northeast of the Gilded Age. warner hated the New
England 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 as
well 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 of
behavior and expectation; an afternoon in a garden: so much, in short, of
what America's robber-baron civilization was casting aside.
Perhaps, Warner suggested in Our ltaly, beauty and leisure might be
regained in southern california. Although it figured in the title, warner
did not overuse the Italian metaphor. Southern california, he wrote, was
not overwhelmingly Italian in appearance, "though now and then some
bay with its purple hills running to the blue sea, its surrounding mesas and
caffons blooming in semitropical luxuriance, some conjunction of shore
and mountain, some golden color, some white light and sharply defined
shadows, some refinement of lines, some poetic tints in violet and ashy
ranges, some ultramarine in the sea, or delicate blue in the sky, will remind
the traveller of more than one place of beauty in Southern Italy and
Sicily."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
 ll '
:.. MEDITERRANEAN
f,rFRrcAN M'',DTTERRAN
,IN AMERICAN E :
"r7g

they could also achieve

Va
,{*oru ," Southern california, but he hoped
ttegration. "It may be," he pt"di"ttd "j tl"
future tti::Y]:
)
iffi, ""a crii?"r"i", ,,that will not be kept with desired
Ii' ,111tffi#'
i: i '.1vr """--- "r,g"g"*"r,t,
:h ofr under the impressiol-that the enioyment of life does not
,";r,'i"t.*fity, **id-Y-"l
itan
rfri 'd€Pend upon exact re-sPon:e to the "i,i,::t:T::*,:;11
rral ill;:'
fiil;"i i" ,*rr. that there is a corner of the union where there will
l3o's i': i r be a little more'leisure, a little more of serene waitingon
t:"::*:::1i
lg sou i' 1i"1#"i'"i,rr" l*it", ,urr, and haste of our
lual
lifet
lT f::,:,::
and now, breaking
d Sout fit
:
::ffi;;;;
r-f
i"u. t."r, rolling westward for a long time,
nd, m i.. 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::::""^*
rd, , there will be some physical rePose,
il;;?i" ro-.*h"t Jasier there, thar continent' comparable to the
after ii. ,"." having reached the sunset of
the
'old age? This may be alto-
uth as J.ri*Uf. placiiity of life called the sunset of
in the sunny moderation of
United
;;r* fanciful, but I have sometimes felt' at least a winter
the New ri
i"trr" there, that this land might offer for thousands
Episco- of content."21
:rament.
'alues as
reindus-
III
:o evalu- For those who saw another Greece, california called
to pageantry and to
ounted: art. The Greek analogy derived from the landscape
in a way the Italian
rxies of never could. Italy, afier all, implied an ordering
of landscape after long
was something haif-wild
hort, of occupancy, while even in classical times there
mediated through
about Greece, something mysterious and semi-divine'
ight be myth and communicat"l *itt through outdoor rites.
Hills, groves, blue
bees'-v1tt:.:'.fig
Warner seas, the islands ofi the the southern coast, shepherds' "td
rte, was olivetreesservedtheGreekmetaphor_andsodidthelightl..Nowhere
n some else on earth," wrote Stephe,t Poiers, "have I seen
the light of the sun
down through
sas and rest down on this beautiiul world so tender as it streams
f a light alone as could
shore this whiteJilac autumn haze of california-such
lefined have inspired the passionate laments which Euripides puts- into the
mouths of Alcestis and Iphigenia, as they close their dying
d ashy eyes'"22
with predictions re-
remind The Greek analogy oit"" ottu"ed in coniunction
ly and G:":k relationship to
garding California art. A Greek situation implied "
by the interaction
mpera- the outdoors, and an art concerned with and structured
the mythic drama' pageant'
nd the of man with nature. At the turn of century,
forms' Pasadena held its
of the and festival asserted themselves as popular local
r89o' and Los Angeles its
ntinue first Tournament of Roses on New Year's Day
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREA]VI
380
first Fiesta de Los Angeles in r8g4. In the californians' taste for garden
indigr
a revival of the cereII
shows, floral pageants, and civic festivals, Mary Austin saw
the mo-re formal- can k
Greek.rp".itylo, dramaturgy, from which, she hoped,
ized expression of outdoor theater might emerge, as it had in Greece'
In takinl
The Tiiumph of Light, a California Midwinter Sun Mystery (tgo+) beforr
which the
Charles Augustus Keeler tried to fashion a theatrical experience
flr

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

dance' its pa
and its im
Keeler took ior his theme the ancient myth of the sun's disappearance
return, putting it into a California setting. Although it seems never to to thr
of
have been periormed, Keeler's play was intended as a ritual celebration
throu
california's special relationship to the sun, its proposed presentation out- in wh
doors at mid-winter being an essential part of its message'
invok
The dedication of the Greek Theater at Berkeley in r9o3 led Califor- nto t
nians to believe that Keeler's neo-Grecian ambitions were not unwar- rec

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.
It
seated 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
as she saw
carriage with Arnold Genthe, tears streaming down her cheeks
most loved. As she
the destruction of the city which, next to Paris, she
drama of
stepped before her audience, Bernhardt felt overwhelmed by
the
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-
of
known ardor. She afterward said that it was the greatest performance
phi:dre in her career. The tragic theater of the Greeks had implied just
cali-
such an interaction between a-rt arrd experience, and for a moment
fornians felt themselves in the face of true tragedy' As if by wrath of the
Like Racine's hero-
gods, a great city had been shaken to its foundations.
an
i"rr., S"ri Francisco had met death. For a moment in the afternoon'
aging but still great actress put the Greek Theater of Berkeley
to that use

intenaea in the Grecian variation of the Mediterlanean metaphor.

truly
In the redwoods north of San Francisco, at Bohemian Grove, a
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 3Bt

arose from the Cremation of Care

t-
for
rious form of outdoor theater
r

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

rre T;;:;ir"r. ihe cremation of care was a ritual of meaning and taste,
;;;;." each August during thernidsum-: .t":"*Pment' flniqitj
y(t ilr?.lUo"gte beneath the redwoods, Club officiants consigned
Care to
lce iiirn"*"r.
r::-
The ritual began in the early r88o's, and as the years went on
.
rncreaseq-' fnos9. r1tr1 wrote of it l-raisef
r
he geantry rrrlrr
-i r.ifs
s;lr:1 DageallLlY
its .pa
_-- r e ,th;.",::T1:*::
mystery
li+lfr1:lr,ircii,,,Dressrveness. Flickering light from the bonfire added further
'a;'
rancei
mitred go
," ,f,. redwoods overhead. Watching the robed and offiCials
bration :i".r' , the ceremony, one felt :1or-"1 to- a d.ayn;world.:f TL.h iig ":l1l
rtion o l' ilrourn ;;?.i demon Care might indeed be banished and the gifts of the gods
commissioned to lead
inuot.a. By the early rgoo's an original play was
I Cali into the Ciemation ceremony. Presented at night against a rising
incline
,i of redwoods, the Grove Plays brought to perfection that sort of outdoor
eater l, drr*a which the Mediterranean metaphor urged Californians to make
'eucalyp, their own. Taking subjects from history' romance' and myth (sample
rction. It productions: "The Man in the Forest," "Montezuma," "Saint PatriCk at
)ara," "The Green Knight," and George Sterling's "The Triumph of
pidaurus. Bohemia"), the Grove Plays used no scenery but the redwoods._staging,
hitheater costumes, and pageantry, on the other hand, were elaborate. A full orches-
'hen San tra played atr otigin"l score. The lighting efiects were nothing short of
I capable .p".t".ul.t. "Such was the spell cast by the text of the play, the acting,
of refu- the lighting and the cathedral forest," recalled Arnold Genthe of the r9o4
Racine's production of "Hamadryads" by Will lrwin, "that it was as if a long lost
an open dream had been given reality."23
she saw Unfortunately, o"ly the privileged few could take part in this distinctly
. As she californian theatrical experience. The exclusiveness of the Grove Plays
lrama of was both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, membership in the
he sight assumptions and felowship of the was necessary to proceed psycho-
club
r an un- logically from the play to the cremation ritual, and only an association of
rance of wealthy, like-minded men could afford to mount such lavish productions
Lied just in the first place. On the other hand, something so Californian, so tied
nt Cali- up with the mystery of the redwoods and a communal resPonse to beauty,
r of the cried out to be maie available to a larger audience. Opening in r9ro, the
:'s hero- Forest Theater of carmel was intended to make outdoor drama a little
lon, an more democratic. Like the Grove Plays, the productions of the Forest
hat use Theater Society featured original plays on historical or mythological
themes, acted by amateurs in an outdoor setting' A group led by George
a truly sterling favored mythological pageants, while Mary Austin's clique wanted
 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 saying
that the Society could not match the financial and technical resources of
the Bohemian club. But it did struggle to make regional theater available
to the public, and as such it represented an advance over the restricted
performances of Bohemian Grove. Taken at its best-in Mary Austin's
The 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 and
what she thought about the dance. Dora Angela Duncan was born in San
Francisco in 1878, the fourth child of a banker and minor poet. A suave
gentleman, 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 last
child was born. Dora, or Isadora as she became known, might have grown
up in the prosperous Duncan home at Geary and Taylor, having a definite
place in the San Francisco scheme of things; instead, divorce and poverty
threw 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 the
bourgeoisie, Isadora might have surrendered her intelligence to the domi-
nating proprieties of her father. As it turned out, she developed a mind of
her own. Like another neglected adolescent of the same era, |ack London,
she educated herself in the Oakland Public Library under the guidance of
its 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, she
took her status and security from her maternal grandparents. Thomas
Gray, Isadora's grandfather, immigrated to the United States from Irelancl
at 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 born
on the journey. During the Civil War, Thomas Gray fought for the Union
in the East, reaching the rank of colonel. From her grandparents Isadora
Duncan acquired a taste for the heroic. The influence of her divorced
mother's resentment intensified her perceptions. She saw her grandparents
as 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 zBl
H5!{:ii:i
:he f;il,- *^ .rn;"t she was bound by birth. She felt an affinity between
Whitman's
.out i ,.itrnr, t*", the zurf+oar of the Pacific,
and *ttt;t9:1:l::::tt?:
:h"way of adolescence' It -1]l
was
)sou ,:. "i?ftfr occurred in the subconscious, subeval
r avar ' i"a i" with sexual maturation and a growing desire to do something with
Atherton, she dreamed of the East and of Europe'
yA |iit,. f,.r fit". Like Gertrude American energies, her identification as a Californian
i,'. Isadora Duncan's
tood fo '," ' with the heroic, was touched by Greek imperatives' As a teenager she
ria's !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
the
g girl .l"imed, her dance both recovered the dance of Greece and expressed
,lr

,,'
rrn in Sa , ,"rponse of the American before the surge of the continent. Like Greece
t. A suave | ,ni A-"ri." it was democratic, in that it did not depend upon the intri-
ses of art,i ,, cate patterns beloved by an aristocratic culture, but stressed movements
rys of par-, to ordinary people. Like Greece and iike the America of walt
rre his last, "..rrribl"
Whitman, it asserted the unity of spirit and flesh. "I have discovered the
ave grown ,
dance. I have discovered the art which has been lost for two thousand
a definite years," Isadora Duncan told an astonished Augustin Daly in Chicago. She
rd poverty had left California with her mother, brother, and sister to pursue a career'
L self-suffi- and was now rushing backstage to implore the impresario to put her, a
.in eccen- girl of seventeen, into one of his productions. "I bring you the dance. I
Lter of the Lring you the idea that is going to revolutionise our entire epoch. Where
the domi- have I discovered it? By the Pacific ocean, by the waving pine-forests of
a mind of Sierra Nevada. I have seen the ideal figure of youthful America dancing
: London, over the top of the Rockies. The supreme poet of our country is walt
tidance of whitman. I have discovered the dance that is worthy of the poem of
Walt Whitman. I am indeed the spiritual daughter of Walt Whitman'
r made a For the children of America I will create a new dance that will express
rther, she America. I bring to your theatre the vital soul that it lacks, the soul of the
Thomas dancer."2a
n Irelancl Though it took its origins by the Pacific, Isadora Duncan's career, like
Llso Irish- that of Sibyl Sat derson, belonged to Europe. An unconventional love life
was born and an indifierence to politics made her persorn non grata in the United
he Union States. Returning to San Francisco after world war I, she met with hos-
:sIsadora tility and contempt, And yet as a girl she had danced by the Pacific' She
divorced had dreamed of eftecting an affirmation of the-body-as-art which went
rdparents back to Greece and was also an imperative of California. A Californian in
:ss of her more than her hatred of jewelry and corsets, she brought away the Greek
rlt whit- metaphor. "I am a pilgrim," reads a rgoz entry in her notebook; "a pil-
ric West grim and a mediante from California I came-there as a child I played in
 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
She
witness in the dance to the soaring Sierras and the surging Pacifrc'
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
and the California
ffii],Coi".a in money but the free glad gold of the orange
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's
The 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 its
lonely 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.
ler Overhead, cloud formations hourly change their shape and only the flight
rh of a huniing hawk interrupts the white light of the sun. It all seemed so
,IC
eternal, so beyond the touch of time; and yet etched into rock was evi-
tar dence of ancient convulsions and longJost seas. The still heat of the day
he ceded to the paradox of sudden winds and the certainty of night colds.
i/S, The silence was deafening, even the mighty colorado flowing noiselessly,
CT
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
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
)86
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 of Southern California, in the Teion
regions
district of the lower San |oaquin Valley. Arriving there in r8BB
from
Illinois, she, her widowed mother, and her brothers took up a homestead'
events
Between r88B and r9o4, when she moved to Carmel, the important
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 387

made an unsatisfactory marriage, later dissolved

$$:fife took place. She
l#ft 1'3*::::"1'.:
d ",11"r".""^bt::l:""1,1::il:','Il_"_:"::'f
G.ttlrrg to know Mexicans, Indians, and other desert
ffiiiy
frag "aurtrtood.
ttrii'ii1i,._earlyrf 2o's,:Tl._sii,::'l:"_,":f
)n
h*a11, io, The Land of Sunshine
and The Overland Monthly.
^":,_i*.":"t1i1""':':
She became

il,rriir, of place, an indweller. Her revolt against Methodism left her in-
:da temperament restless and without context. The desert
;' r" natelV religLus
[,t::,
which she
]od. '1
restored her sense of mystery. She encountered Something
egends,i fli,i1iii'::'dU"d the Spirit of the Arroyos, "a lurking, evasive Something, wistful,
dwellersri F ir:.il.jl..,,, r-..^r cnmcfhinr' ihal
^.Janl. something that
ardeni; rrrstled
rustled end
and ran,
ran^ that huns
hung half-remotelv.
half-remotely,
r contin-, :' "ruel, on being noticed, fled from pursuit, and when you turned from it,
insistent

Ine sum.
i.r, leaped suddenly and fastened on your vitals' This Then,
is no mere figure of
and ever afterward,
li speech, but the true movement of experience.
experi
. walnut in the wide, dry washes and along the edge of the chaparral, Mary was
. Silhou- beset with the need of being alone with this insistent experiential pang for
rite sud- I which the wise Greeks had the clearest name concepts . . fauns, satyrs,
rerience, the ultimate Pan. Beauty-in-the-wi1d, yearning to be made human'"2e
re midst The Spirit of the Arroyos quickened her dormant religiosity; once again,
;. There she yearned for mystical experience. And then it happened. Her spiritual
, and to drought came to an end. "It was a dry April," she wrote, "but not entirely
whole- barren; mirages multiplied on every hand, white borage came out and blue
bubble nemophila; where the run-off of the infrequent rains collected in hollows,
rurce of blue lupine sprang up as though pieces of the sky had fallen. on a morn-
was the ing Mary was walking down one of these, leading her horse, and suddenly
winging she was aware of poppies coming up singly through the tawny, crystal-
sanded soil, thin, piercing orange-colored flames' And then the warm per-
>y force vasive sweetness of ultimate reality, the reality first encountered so long
:nce. A ago under the walnut tree. Never to go away again; never to be completely
sed her out of call. . . . Only the Christian saints have made the right words for
rlogical it, and to them it came after long discipline of renunciation. But to Mary
:sthetic it just happened. ultimate, immaterial reality. You walk into it the way
rnd the one does into those wisps of warm scented air in hollows after the sun
of the goes down; there you stand motionless, acquiescing, I do not know how
cal en- long. It has nothing to do with time nor circumstance; no, nor morals nor
behaviors. It is the only true and absolute'"30
Teion She began casting about for some way of relating through prayer and
i from asceticism to the ultimate reality she had experienced amidst the lupine
estead. and the poppies. A brief reaffiliation with the Methodist Church left her
events dissatisfied; and an experimental Practice of the Presence of God drew her
 AIvrERrcANs AND THE cALIFoRNIA DREAM
388
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 iourney
convinced 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-
n,t,,F

m,,
;c[1
:ip
fi rt
.Oneri

you
stin L

we
and
r it,

.ual
lies
3ar-
ter-
,ly,
t3.'
rist
)us
ley
ery
lut
ad
ris-
Mary Austin (r868-1934)
of
ed In Southern Calitornia she first encountercd the Spirit of the Arroyos.
of That, in turn, Ied her to The'Friend'of-the-Soul-of-Man' She went to
ral Italy for spiritual instruction, but at odd moments, in consultation with
ed lesuit and cardinal, she remembered Tinnemaha, the Paiute'medicine
ry man who had first instructed her. After wotld war I she found that
rt, Caktornia, for her at least, no longet held the mystery of things. And
o- yet in the land of little rain she had learned that men were not alone.
 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 sacramentalism
and ritual confirming what she had learned from the Indian: that prayer
was a patterned movement of body and soul by which one put oneself in
harmony with the rhythms of creation in order to communicate with its
ultimate 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, telling
her about The-Friend-of-the-Soul-of-Man. Christ in Italy, the Christ of
Catholic 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 who
knew his people and his tradition. After World War I, she found that
California, for her at least, no longer held the mystery of things. The
Spirit of the Arroyos seemed to depart to New Mexico and she followed it
there, to Santa Fe where the life of the Southwest, first encountered in
Southern California, still lingered on. Southern California's land of little
rain 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, but
it 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 Califoinia
began as part of the Spanish Empire. Travelers also discerned similarities
of 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.'
::.
li '
AN AMERICAN MEDTTERRaNEAN 39L

InS.
ffif
l' in his box at the opera, and-invariably-made much of the
nr,o EmDeror
de lii' ,*iJ *i"tute of the population. Valparaiso was the next port of call' "I
mental i f*t ,fr" morals of Valparaiso are not of the highest older," observednever
one
:hat i$;1,t,''' A-.ri.rr,; "yet a more social, hospitable and polite people I have
oneself ti;iil met."M Other responses, especially in matters of race and religion' were
te with ii' more hostile. Bayard Taylor reported seeing Americans
light their cigars
', from the devotional tapers before the alter of the cathedral at Panama
of its his-,i ' The democracy of Latin American worship, however, managed to
a Californian
ntings, she imptess some Yankees. "No pews invited the worshiper," said
"t,r.
|esuit and of iis vlsit to the cathedral of Rio de )aneiro in 1849,
"but princess and
an, telling beggar knelt side by side under the swelling dome and worshiped at a
Christ of .o-rnon altar without distinction of person or purpose'"35
etion. She Once in California, the American could not remain aloof from Mexican
:ology and culture. Spanish phrases filled his conversation. Many Americans dressed
: preferred Mexican style-sombrero, short iacket, selaPe, sash, bell-bottomed pants-
rabbi who and used the Mexican saddle. Most women in the state were Spanish-
ound that speaking. In Southern California, where the Mexican culture of Old Cali-
rings. The fornia lasted until the r87o's, its influence upon Americans became even
ollowed it more noticeable. Throughout the rB5o's and r86o's, Los Angeles remained
rntered in a cluster of lowJying adobes grouped around a plaza, its American popu-
d of little lation (the better sort) locally married; speaking Spanish, using Mexican
men were money, drinking mescal and aguardiente, and eating Mexican food. On
Friend-of- the great ranchos of Central and Southern California, life went on as be-
t the core fore the conquest, save that rancheros now bore non-Spanish names.
ted in the Fr6mont's cordial relations with Old Californians suggested that dia-
,smos, but logue with Hispanic California was the fundamental imperative of the
n, helped, Ibirian analogy. Ironically, dialogue began as an intention to despoil Mex-
r like the icans of their claim to the land. Litigation drove Americans to the ar-
r of God. 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
lalifornia as confidential agent of the Secretary of the Interior, to investigate the
imilarities status of Mexican land titles. Jones researched the archives of San Diego,
especially Los Angeles, Monterey, san fose, and San Francisco. He was probably the
Francisco, first American to use such sources for historical enquiry. lones' Repofi on
northern the subiect of Land Titles in california (r85o), published upon his re-
with His- turn to washington, provided a broad social survey of Hispanic califor-
r the bay nia, and as such it must be considered the founding text of post-conquest
dens, saw dialogue between American and old californian. Mften |ohn w. Dwi-
 392 AMERICANS AND TIIE CALIFORNIA
DREAM
nelle took to court San Francisco's craim of rand
owed the city under
Mexican law, he backed his argument
with an extensive invesiigation rnto
the ancient, colonial, and mo?er' o
Iaws of Spain and Mexico, and
Francisco's deveropment in San
that context. Dwirierle,s rnn cioriol s
of the city of sanFlanliso History u
1tso3j ,.t rorttr an eregant legar brief-and
anchored San Francirco,, corr""p#r, I
oi irr.f deeply, irretiievably, onto
the Hispanic past..In later years,
i*"gi"rtio., built upon legal continuity. r
Much of carifornia's history *rr
rri,i"r, by directry concerned
e(
with problems of land. titre, the subjecl A
'awyers
providing ready-made training in
historiography. Frederic Hall, for dr
grew wealthy as a land law
speciatist in Santa C]iri..C9y.ry. "*"*pt", ifr
peror Maxim'ian I. Ha, s Hrsfo
He briifly
"""t.d ",
f.gai;;o, to Em-
ry of san iosn and s"ri"""args reflected A:
his knowledge of, and sympathy
r"., nn.-r-.i" society, ptu, ii"iir.iprining S€,
efi_ect oJ a large collection CI
of Spn.rirt ,nl-M.*i"r., documents.
Land titles implied a continlity, 'of
whereas the basic situation was
and disruptive' /ohn-_Rollin Ridie, viorent
a San Francir"o ,ou.r,"iirt and poet, wi:
himself a Georgian cherokee
*rrJr.""r rrrat
put forth the Mexican case in The Life it was to lose "rrc"rtr"t hnas,
ora d,iiriuir""t loaquin
Murieta, the celebrated california
nana-u (rgq). The fact ,r,1, Riag",,
hero had little in common with
various U"1i"il, a*p.rJ"* plaguing
california under the-name
/oaquin did not imply that Ridge was unin-
terested in history. Ridge ciaimed
thai he was setting down Murieta,s
murderous career not to minister
to depraved taste, but 7,o .orrtriuut"
mite to those materials out of which *y
t'h" e"rty history of carifornia sha'
::" 9ry be composed." A burden of injustice was california,s because of
the American treatment of Mexicans,
was not lost to memory.
,J niag" intended to see that it
/oaquin was an upp"r-"'-"r, Mexican y;;;, driven
into banditry by Americans after they
ha'i raped his fianc6e, Iynched his
half-brother, and given him a humiri#rrg
puuri" whipping. He represented
the displaced and viorentry abused
many of whom, Iike Murieta, took
M";;"" cariforniais of the rg5o,s,
to the h'ts as outraws. tvturi.L, niag"
insisted' was no criminar, but
the Rinaldo Rinardini of carifornia-..a
who has revenged his country's wrongs hero
and washed out her disgrace in the
blood 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 nothing
so dangerous in its consequences
as injustice to individuars-whether it
arise from prejudice of coror.
or from oil., source; that a wrong done
and to"ny
to one man is a wrong to society
the world.,,ro
\M AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 393

red the city Vallejo ofiered Americans a figure of rec-

rneral Mariano Guadalupe
broke off
'e investigation
;""". Born in Monterey in r8o8, the son of a soldier whocalifornian
i-H'i*l;; * fri.stt ood to ioin the army,
1 Mexico, and Valleio received a
\e Colonial Hi
*;;ti"t ani at sixteen was made t'dll; Co.imisslon;a
of
".
life :::i1 1lto
with enough reading
rnt legal brief TXl-"i" ftted oot the idleness garrison
irretrievably, ol
;;,{" r,i* ". anomalv in old c1llforlia,, a :1t:u":-bo-'1,'ll':: :ttl-i:
rn legal continui {'Jiii;fu. In r83o he was elected to the legislature, and in 1836, - when
directly concer ,l':,llunr"ao declared California independent, he named Vallejo comman-
ly-made training,
J;"i g""*"f, an office which Mexico confirmed in 1838, when AltatoCal- the
easily
Ithy as a land la$ ii"rril returned to Federal iurisdiction. Valleio adjustedappealed to his
:gal advisor to
A*.ri""., occupation; for the Yankee way of doing things
York to attend
roundings reflected
,".ot"r, progrrrriu" instincts. He sent his son Platon to New
lus the disciplining Graduating at the head
Cofo*fi"'r"College of Physicians and Surgeons.
ments. of his class, Platon vallejo was the first Spanish-speaking
californian to
corps of the Union
luation was violent win the M.D. degree. He later served in the medical
rurnalist and poet, Or*t Vallejo hiirself assured Lincoln of the loyalty of California's Span-
ose ancestral lands, ish-sieaking population. Visiting various Army headquarters'
he renewed
ntures of loaquin with high'ranking officers he had known as captains and
e fact that Ridge's ".q*in,r"".eships
lieutenants when the Army occupied california. He scandalized
Platon
peradoes plaguing by addressing General Grant as "Grant," and being addressed in return as

t Ridge was unin- ,,vailejo." "why not?" vallejo asked his son. "Aren't we both generals?"37
g down Murieta's From the tB6o's onward General vallejo assumed a place of importance
"to contribute my in the imagination of American california. He symbolized the hope that
cf California shall all of Old California had not been lost. The Annals of San Francisco'
Gen-
'ornia's because of which had nothing but contempt for the majority of Mexicans' cited
ded to see that it tr'ive years
eral vallejo as the very model of the old california gentleman.
ican youth, driven later, in ,il6o, V"ll.;o occupied with Fr6mont the stage of the New Music
rnc6e, lynched his Hall in san Francisco Ed*nttd Randolph orated for three hours con-
rg. He represented ",
cerning California's days of Spanish glory' During the conquest, Fr6mont
rns of the r85o's, 'had tirown Vallejo into the calaboose. Their appearance side by side
's. Murieta, Ridge signified the rapprochement of Latin and American californians'
"In him
lalifornia-"a hero w"e ,ecogrrire a'noble type of the generous, hospitable
Native californian,"
rer disgrace in the said an orator of the deneral in rg7o, before the Society of California
Californians, Joa- Pioneers, "a type of that race among us that is fast passing away' No! not
ree of Americans. passing away,'Lut mingling its blood with the Anglo-Saxon
hordes' con-
t there is nothing iributing an element oi L"1itt fire and dash to Scandinavian descendants,
Iuals-whether it which ii and is to be, the perfection of the human family'"38
After the
Constitutional Convention
rat a wrong done conquest, Vallejo served as a delegate to the
at l\.ionterey, and later as state senator and mayor of Sonoma.
His presence
 bro
ir:'
A

Pea
onl
mid
tine:
w.

Mariano Guadalupe Valleio

(rgo8_rggo)
In.telligent, widely read
secular by temoenment and
clination, G"n"r^i vrjp;^ rrr.o r-^r:^- , .' , progressive by in-
"i;:;l::;,"9x":i,J:!lc"i"ii",i'iii"f
united srares,
-
TJi",3i!o':::::";:;i:;;;
tavored annexation to the
a beriet i;r;;;";;:'i"JJ,',"ii,
the 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
As Bancroft put
5*r rn aura of Old California to official gatherings'
&..""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
of a wild 1{ un}nowl l"*i?"- ol th:,::",
..';;;il;", "these occupantsgenerations."40
ffitt it.rr irtildthrough tio In the opinion of fudge Elisha
in r87r,
i,, w.^no.xrrtry, adJressing the society of californi"_l1oT""
f,.l'.'.''r;*;;11ng pr"aour had Gen lost in the passing of old California' By
i'; , "A,*.ri."r, California seemed opulent, pretentious, and vulgar'
ili ""*"rr,
;ir.fr generation," Judge McKinstry upbraided silver-rich San Francis-
ii "
"ca"n hardly co*pre-her,d that elegance and beauty
T"I It well be
t cans,
and
;;;rn.a uy a d'iet of iortiltas and olla podrida asby pdtd de foieofgras leaving
;;;rgognnlin, Attorney William |. Shaw, himself on the verge
point five
leg"iplactice to enioy a life of learned leisure, made a similar
y"l^r, int"r, telling tire Pioneers "that our predecessors here
enjoyed more
their wooden carts and plows of sticks than
!"r,uirre human liappirress with
has ever been seen in our societies'"42
spanish
one of the most interesting examples of the tendency to endow
of
california with the attributes of a lost utopia aPPeaIs in The cafifotnia
the Padres; or, Footprints of Ancient Communism (fi75) ' by Elizabeth
Hughes. California's current social troubles, Mrs' Hughes wrote' were
but
by nine-
one instance of the breakdown of human community brought on
to
teenth-century industrialism. what had the American transplanted
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
ebyin
n to the imaginative ideal, the vision of an appropriately californian organization
perhaps ofcommunitylifelingeredonthroughtheturnofthecentury.Amidstthe
American clamor, th"e myth of pre-conquest contentment remained
a
lilornia.
'iving in haunting alternative'
'tures.
Inmanycases,Iomanticizationofthemissionerahadahollowring.
 396 AMERIcANS AND THE cALIFoRNIA
DREAM
Bancroft's California *?ryt,
ry6g- fi 4g
.p packed'*i,'
( r gBS ) dramatized the ambiva_
Ience behind the myth.
.oto*ur anecdotes oispa'ist a'a
Mexican days, California Pastoral
supposedly ttJr"ti' prrt.
th" book,""t.ur"i.!
Yet undertones of contempt perv"ded
undertones which broke
out 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,s
History of centrar America th"t
.o*-ittee of irate Roman churchmen
demanded that it be.rewritten. "
Henry L. oak, a disciprineJ ilriorirr,,
anticatholic attitudes out of the History t.pt
o-f carifornio. rn california
Pastoral, however, which Bancroft
wrote personally, anti-cathoric tirades
reached heights of intemperate
and inarticurate rury Hrtr"J was
the basis for romantic appropriation. hardry
Like the starch-colrared fundamen-
talists who, to the amusement of
Frank Lloyd Wright,l;;;;;,"
fortably in neo-mission bungarows, uncom_
Brrr"roft never fert at home in his His-
panic edifice. At its most harmress,
the myth he advanced resurted in
dishonest architecture.. At its worst,
its paster nostargia contrasted mock-
ingly wirh the lot
minority, deprived of :f their
.Cilif-ornj",r'spniirh_speaking people, a despised
lands, given their only E,*ir'r"
of gringo fantasy. ih" ,"nr*,
Idealization of the mission era received
its biggest boost from Ramona
(ils+), a best-selling nover by Heren
Hunt Jackson. A Massachusetts-born
y9:*' Mrs' ]ackson dedicated the last six years of her rife to Indian
philanthropy. 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 for
tfe- appointed heiand Abbot *r,*y to
limes, investigate the condition
of Mission Indians in the southern
.ourr,t", of carifornia, especia'y in
regard to contested land rights.
In their Report on the condition ond
Needs of the tufisslo7.!naji2s
(rBB3) ;".kron and Kinney protested
systematic the
removar of the Indians from'lands
they had the
days of the spanish. They called "".'"pi"a"ri"ce
ro, ,*u.y of Indian-held lands, the re-
moval of white squatters,. and free "
legar counser for Indian ritigants in
land disputes, together with medicar
a,ia eauca;;;;i #;".:Lespair_
ing that her Report rlour-d have any
effect in washington, Mrs.
sat down in her room in the Berkerey /ackson
Hoter in New v-r. ci[ t" write an
Indian uncleTom's cabin.Ramori
Alessandro Assis' and his-harf-breed
described how an I"di;" iGherder,
*if", n"rrrona ortega, had their lives
destroyed 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
the a llen in love with the romance of the mission era. As she wrote, sen-
Spanis
nt overcame outrage. Her novel moved in the direction of a glorifica-
: Latin
iibf,a Souttrern California suffused with
the golden memory of pastoral
which, iyg,irather than an indictment of present injustices. Aunt Ri, a white
: so glori liin-"n won over to the cause of the Indian because of her friendship with
rf Ba h.andro and Ramona, makes a number of trenchant observations; but
churc iffi:is the ancient Franciscan Padre Salvierderra, with his memories of old
storian, ijl',:i ission days, who has really captured Mrs. Jackson's imagination.
t Cali il,;,".;,, Charles Fletcher Lummis made a more informed identification with
holic ti :ii. ' rtre Spanish associations of Southern California. In various ways-as his'
was ha
i',' torian, poet, ethnologist, journalist, and librarian-Lummis spent a life-
funda l time encouraging Southern Californians to reappropriate their Hispanic
tso heritage. He was a Massachusetts Yankee and a Harvard man, and his
: in his His,, identification with the frontier, in his case the frontier of the Spanish
resulted i Southwest, should be seen in the context of similar turn-of-the-century
rsted mock alignments on the part of two other Harvard men, Owen Wister and
a despised Theodore Roosevelt, for whom the vanishing West served as the corrective
the realms symbol for personal and social values under assault. In rB84 Lummis
walked from Ohio to California, as on a pilgrimage. It took him rrz days,
m Ramona and the eccentricity of it attested to the fact that his would be no routine
usetts-born relationship to Southern California. As a locale and as an imaginative
to Indian ideal, the Spanish Southwest provided Lummis with a counter-force to
Indian af- some very destructive urges.
Lnusual for In the drama of Southern California's self-discovery, Charles Fletcher
condition Lummis played a leading role. From 1895 to r9o3 he served as editor of
pecially in Land of Sunshine (changed in rgoz to OutWest), which he struggled to
lition and make as influential in the South as The Overland Monthly had been dur-
tested the ing the coming-of-age of the North a generation previously. Through the
I since the vehicle of his column, "The Lion's Den," Lummis did what he could to
Cs, the re- guide Southern California in the right direction. He wanted more than a
tigants in stage-set of bungalows and orange groves. He wanted a real alternative in
. Despair- the matter of American lifestyles, a hitherto unachieved blend of physical,
s. Jackson moral, and intellectual culture. As librarian of the City of Los Angeles from
r write an r9o5 to r9rr, Lummis made the public library function in its bestAmer-
,ePherder, ican manner: the people's free university, active agent in the American
lheir lives quest for self-improvement and expanded horizons, not just the passive
however, repository of books. As founder of the Landmarks Club he led in the fight
nia, Mrs. to restore the missions before they crumbled away completely and to pre-
t she had serve other places of historical interest. Defender of Indian rights as a
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
in The Spanish Pioneers (r893)-and
-most significantly represented journalism, Lummis struggled to bring
throughout thousands of pages of
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
The
of those states and territories stretching from Texas to the Pacific.
American of this region, Lummis insisted, was the cultural descendant
rmateuri
Prese
res of th

:itage that
rrk of theli
,rs (r893)
ruggled to
xt to
e all, it wasr
ion of
racted Lu
his fires ban
Moderati
geles Timeg
ke. Like
a shattered sv.d
exico, bringi
activity. It
he suffered two
l. He had to bei,
ring at the side,l
r he left on
"rrl
d regained his ,

: obiective cor-
ried to counter
sh imperatives
ral life he had
rinvalid. Now
: poco tiempo,
.nd a place for
goals; now he
: coaxing the
trd an organic
rical front, he
onial heritage
Pacific. The
I 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, known
to his friends as Don Carlos, dressed in a corduroy suit, vaguely Spanish
in cut, and wore a sash and Spanish hat. Making himself an expert in the
language, he collected the folklore and songs of the Spanish borderlands
and of Old California. With the help of Indian artisans he built a stone-
and-adobe hacienda, called El Alisal, the Sycamore, from the grove which
surrounded 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, its
walls hung with Indian rugs and California paintings, its ceilings crossed
by beams showing the rough cut of an ancient adze, El Alisal dramatized
perhaps better than anything he had written Lummis' feeling for the
rugged romance of Southern California as daughter of New Spain. There,
gathering the talent and literati of the day, Lummis would urge them
along toward that shimmering Southern California which ever held his
imagination.
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 part
of their self-image as Californians. Proud of the large numbers of educated
middle-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 Californian
would only listen, he might catch echoes of an experience which went
back 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.Ithad
been a rugged frontier, true, but one touched by beauty. The Californian
need not turn the mission into something resembling a La Scala produc- '
)REAM
li,' AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4ot
;hould
ummis
IaForza delDestino in order to feel its ideality and charm. These
fida, strung up the California coast like so many beads in a
y suit, vague "t,tt.fres
1* stooa for spiritual foundations as impressive as the spires of Mas-
imself an
isetts. One need not be a Catholic, Lummis asserted, to feel iheir
re Spanish bo
tisans he buil
Lr as historical monuments or to internalize them as symbolic ele-
ts in a cultural landscape. If Americans were willing to respond to
, from the gro
,dit"rrrrr.rn analogies as diverse and tenuously related as ltaly, Greece,
finish, and, oi
bi.'.' the Near East, then how much more important should be the histori-
an architectu
il ' -d
cal presence of Spain as represented in the Franciscan cloisters?
rilt around a ri
: Whatever the unevenness of his talents or the egocentricity of his
methods, Charles Fletcher Lummis, fifty years or so after the conquest,
:, El Alisal dram
$i., embarked singlehandedly upon a work of reconciliation between Spain
mmis' feeling
t
,1,, and the United States. The War of 1898, when once again the Yankee
: of New Spain.
lt, rose up in antispanish jingoism, set back his efiorts, but he persevered. A
mis would urge i L"tin-Yankee California had existed briefly before the conquest. Lummis
a which ever
i envisioned its return as an American Southern California alert to the
implications of the Spanish metaphor. Whatever it decided it was, Cali-
itness as a literal pa
fornia could not ignore its Spanish-speaking past.
balk at corduroy su-ii
ld spacious hacienda
phor, making it a pa VI
e numbers of edu
The Mediterranean analogy was noticeable in Californian architecture
p Southern Californi
and city planning. In r9o8, John Nolen, city planner and landscape archi-
, the historical impera';
tect of Cambridge, Massachusetts, came to San Diego at the request of
was not atabularasa,
the Civic Improvement Committee to prepare a comprehensive plan of
[f the new Ca]ifornian
urban development. Like Burnham in San Francisco, Nolen found that
xperience which went
San Diego had mismanaged its opportunities. Instead of being a spacious
this, responding to a expression of Southern California, San Diego was just another shabby
\merican in Southern
provincial town. Taking into account factors of population, topography,
y authentic American
climate, and cultural expectations, Nolen fashioned an ideal San Diego'
It was an open Mediterranean city. Nolen Widened San Diego's streets,
, despised the sort of
arranging them in harmony wiih landscape. He removed overhead wires
a journalist, he cam-
and planted trees along sidewalks. He advocated replacing such dull desig-
rpretation of the mis-
nations as D Street and Fifth Street with names taken from California
.ve Americans believe,
history and literature or from Spanish topographical terms. He scattered
" Southern California
squares and open places throughout the city, including a magnificent
mise en scdne.Ithad
downtown plaza. He suggested that an esplanade, part rialto, part recrea-
auty. The Californian
tional center, be built along the harbor. "The vision of this new san Diego
.rg a La Scala produc-
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, is syl
enough to move the most sluggish to action."as rhe idle ,4oo""r. area in co
the heart of the city, set aside for public purposes but never utilized, cal
Nolen wanted developed as the matrix of a park network which would for
include the Bay Front, Point Loma, La
Jolla, Soledad Mountain, Fort cifi
stockton, and Torry Pines. As part of the deveropment of Mission clift, ity,
san Diego De Alcala, first of the california missions, would be restored.
Aposeo (a promenade uninterrupted by crossings) swept through the city
,'
i exl
to the Bay Front, where it dramatically opened into a width of rzoo feet.
iGt,
Flower beds, pergolas, terraces, splashing fountains, basins, and cascades
lined its path.
The cities of Southern Europe and Latin America provided Nolen with
his inspiration. Naples suggested how san Diego-which called itself the
Naples of America-should develop its waterfront. Nice and the resort
cities 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, and
beach played off one another with Mediterranean clarity. His sketches for
san 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 wanted
his proposals to evoke "the peculiar opportunity for
ioy, for hearth, for
prosperity, 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 forth
another california alternative, that of a seaside celebration of sun and
sky, 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 town
of 39,75o in rpo!, when planning for the Panama-California Exposition
commenced, San Diego grew to a population of more than roqooo in
r9r5, when the Fair opened. In that growth, the Nolen Plan had only
mild 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
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 403

iilf.unfulfilled expectations since that day in 1868 when the frontier

ba
'.r
ffi;;Jr;, - it . 1, r^- -o'L (lhoosing
^,,Llin park'
for use as a public Choosing these barren
barren
oGa "tia.
never il';J;;. * tt.'
it e u*positlon, San Diego voted $,r'85o'ooo ,o":ut
area after the discoverer of the Pa-
:wh H;;t;;;ent and named the on American real-
Iountai *r*tN"o.z de Balboa' There, hills overlooking
Missioni iB'an Diego built its dream-citY'
ld be i;"t'-'.*ithe Mediter'"'""" ideal of lT ?tt*:l :l-"-11"-"TJ:i
an Easterner, Bertram
rrough t _r*,i1""^ir"iit..tur", the city fathers se-lected
at the peak of his career'
h of rzoo ii;;;t Goodhue of New York City' Then
, and iii$E-;:t'il;'h;;;;""worlingin.spanish"'!-"::tn:':^T:,Y'f :1'i:*:
liffi;;;;ma_california Exiosition. Its romance appealed to his dreamy
in of aesthetic.escip"
ed Nolen sear'ch
9":t::
,;ffilil";;;"i,*"t*"yt in time. The anti-modernism of
"..,,;'#g'""ir"f ]:lti^:n:::
Goodhue's aesthetic
alled itseffj: pre-
and the lrt.i back tJ the rggo,s, when he was associated with a short-lived
-fi"r"^1,
randle its *ilii; rne Knight Errant. His nostalgia sustained itself
Spanish Colonial
with ;#"ttgh a variety of architectlural styles' To Goodhue
As a Mexican tradition' it
Iopen spaci stood for a revisionist, anti-industrial aesthetic'
around religion and a
mountain, an1 had emerged from a society which was organized
of which Goodhue saw as essential to a thriving
art-sense
tis sketches f."rrntryiuoth of the Rio Grande'
and which he found lacking in the civilization
north
rlity of his re;
He became a leading exporient of Spanish colonial
in the united States,
ralm-lined ave,
Southwest'
rky. He wantedi a revival especially ippropriate, he ihought, in the American
for health, for where Mexican civilization had once held sway'
and taste' however'
in San Diego, There was another movement in Goodhue's thought
thrust toward modernity. As steel frames and reinforced concrete entered
isco as a neo- a
American building, Gooiho" envisioned a new American architectural
r plan set forth
ln of sun and idiom.WhatGoodhuewasprobingisevidentintwodesignscompleted
just before his early death in ,gr4,-thor" for the Nebraska State
capitol
of line, color,
andtheLosAngelesPublicLibrary.Inbothbuildings,concretemasses
into calm and ordered harmony with a fnimyl of
surface
.California Ex- were brought
but were
Ls its city plan.
ornament, arrangements which recalied traditional relationships
the past is genuine
tncrete expres- also startlingly new. Believing that "nothing that apes
on the way
a sleepy town art," Goodhue attempted tJpass through traditional modes
ria Exposition to the modern.
ran roqooo in InthatiourneySpanishColonialprovedanimportantstage.Itsatisfied
two needs in Goodiue: a need for history and a need
for suggestions on
Plan had only
way of the future
of the Exposi- how to handle form, mass, texture, and color in that
had suggested, hauntinghisimagination.SpanishColonial,notMission'seemedtoGood-
Its simplicity'
had stood as a hue the best basis for Souihern Californian architecture'
 4O4 AMERTCANS AND rHE CALTFORNTA DREAM

blank spaces, tile, and masonry possessed more utility and beauty, more tl
modern resonances, than tortuously derivative adaptations of Mission. A t
Spanish colonial revival could be both romantic and modern. Goodhue
P
had first been in southern california in the late r89o's as a consultant to gt
J. M. Gillespie in the designing of El Fureides, a Mediterranean villa in L
Montecito, a home judged by contemporaries to be one of california's
great regional expressions. That Goodhue was in sympathy with califor-
nia's search for a Mediterranean identity was evident in the designs he
submitted in rgro to the Roman catholic Archdiocese of Los Angeles for
a cathedral and hospital complex. over tile-roofed villas, spanish or Ital-
ian in style, Goodhue's cathedral dominates a Mediterranean city of pastel
ideality. cypresses line boulevards where neither streetcars, automobiles,
nor signs attest to American occupation. It was no surprise that in rgro
Goodhue was chosen chief Architect for the Panama-california Exposi-
tion. The New York architect and san Diego boosters found their interests
mutual. Each had an ideal city secreted within themselves. Each wanted
the romance of the past and the promise of modernity.
With great relish, Goodhue set out to interpret San Diego and Southern
california. He wanted the Panama-california Exposition to express the
ideal-mind of the American southwest. This region had a history older
than 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-tropical
foliage, the soft speech and unfailing courtesy of the half-Spanish, half-
Indian peasantry." Goodhue admitted that "exposition architecture difiers
from 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 would
have fulfilled the visions of Fray /unipero Serra as he toiled and dreamed
while he planted missions from San Diego to Monterey."as
In a setting of semitropical vegetation, atop a mesa triangulated by
deep arroyos, Goodhue built a fantastic Spanish city, its white walls and
multicolored tiles glistening in the blue California sky. An arched bridge
of reinforced concrete swept breathtakingly across a deep canyon to join
the Exposition with San Diego proper. Critics praised the dramatic co-
hesiveness of the arrangement, comparing it to El Greco's painting of
Toledo before a storm. Christian Brinton found the whole afiair "a visible
expression of the collective soul of the Southwest," seeming "to have
sprung spontaneously from the soil and the vivid race consciousness of
 ili.i; ill
i:jl
i,. AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4o5
ility and ,inhabit this vast and fecund hinterland."a6 It seemed as if San
rtations of revealed. critics
consciousness had been probed, its inner fantasies
nd modern. intended as a metaphor tor
rhe fact that the Exposition was rntended for tuture
future
idrthe
;o's as a cons h- No fences or hedges marked oft the fairgrounds from the city.
Vlediterranean its motifs into parts of San Diego
ic"ping was continuous, weaving
)e one of Cali
r, Buildings in the California Quadrangle were permanent, intended
'mpathy with; 1 nucleus of a recreational center which would include a museum'
:nt in the desi
inry,artgal7ery, and zoological garden. "It is a very pleasing thought of
:se of Los g San Diego of the future," noted Eugen Neuhaus, "with its ever-grow-
,illas, Spanish
F-;:,i"i"g development entirely encircling this great garden spot we now admire
lrranean city of
'eetcars,
'" ,s ,n ExPosition."az
a
i:l.tr: ',.,,,1i1" Maybeck's Palace of Fine Arts, Goodhue's California Quadrangle,
surprise that in ,especially the cathedral-like California State Building, conferred romantic
na-California
il, 1 ,,-l r,
historicity upon a rather raw American city. It was variously compared to
'
,:
r found their in
iir' the Giralda Tower of Seville, the cathedral of Cordova, the Balvanera
rselves. Each '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
Diego and South roll call of these names gave satisfaction. Such were the associations San
sition to express tli Diegans had sought to evoke. Goodhue planned that the Panama-Cali-
had a history fornia Exposition should recapitulate the architectural history of Spain
hould give that in America. With rare scholarship, Exposition buildings set forth the
e tenderest of skies.,j epic of Spanish Colonial, beginning in Renaissance EuroPe, continuing
chest of sub-tropical r
through the great monuments of Mexico, spanning the Indian simplicity
: half-Spanish, half- l of puebloJike desert chapels and the Franciscan romance of the California
r architecture difiers l
missions.
re fabric of a dream Thus Goodhue built a dream-city, for himself and for San Diego. Sig-
t stage scenery pro- nificantly, he had been chosen over local architect Irving Gill for the
;uch a city as would commission. Aside from political considerations (that is, aside from Good-
toiled and dreamed hue's more successful lobbying), Gill's geometric use of poured concrete
symbolized a California of full modernity. He and Goodhue both rever-
:sa triangulated by enced the canon of Spanish Southwestern architecture, but while Good-
its white walls and hue was content to move toward its imperatives of clean, bold line through
. An arched bridge historicism, Gill went there directly, ignoring scholarship in favor of a
eep canyon to join daring, ahisiorical idiom. Only Goodhue's post-Exposition work, homes
1 the dramatic co- of white-walled, adobeJike simplicity, showed him catching up to what
]reco's painting of Gill was practicing in the early rgoo's. In rgro Goodhue was iust at that
ole affair "a visible stage where he could remarkably fulfill San Diego's needs: poised between
seeming "to have past and present, glimpsing the modern but filled with nostalgia for an
: consciousness of imagined past.
 4c,6 AMERICANS AND T}IE CALIFORNIA DREAM

The theory and practice of gardening and domestic

_ architecture showed
the effect of the canonization by thJ panama-carifornia ma
Exposition of of
spanish Revival as the officiar carifornia style.
The quest for the perfect
california garden had arways been an important ofi
factor in Iocal design.
In san Diego itself, Irving Gil invented a new form attz
of housing, the abu
garden apartment' city prans commissioned
during this period for san
fose, oakland, and santa Barbara stressed the necZssity f;;; distinctry
Inl
californian answer to the problem of landscaping. pranner ,
'fere
son suggested that San
c. M. Robin- it;tasn
Jose tear down i.n." within the city limits failr
"u"ry
and landscape the city as-a rlhole, integrating
itserf with surrounding or-
chards and flowering fierds. cities and io*r,, I'lhe sr
rarery achieved such idears,
but private builders found the goal of garden livin! .Cali
california bungalow featured tou.ty g;ra"n efiects.
more
"ttni*bre.
rh. il' Tl
In southern carifor_
nia, a critic observed, ,,house and garde'are
often designed together so
that 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 through
glass doors down a brick-paveJ pergora
overgrown with ruxuriarri vines, or
::t: " sunny courtyard, or broad Jady veranda, furnished and used as a
living-room."as
Il r9o4 the Berkeley poet charres Augustus Keerer provided carifornia
with a garden ideorogy. He saw the garde'n as the
enactment of the poetry
and romance of california ]ife. In Keerer's
mind, california offered a
chance for aesthetic moderation, privacy, health,
learning, and domestic
leisure. The californian pruned, subduei,
and harmoni"""a ni, garden i'
order to invoke on a manageable and symboric
scale values of ieforming
refinement. "Let us have gardens,', Keeler
urged Californians, ,.wherein we
can assemble for play or where we may
sit ln seclusion at work; gardens
that 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 we
sit in the shadow of the palm and listen to the
of rustling bam-
whisper
boo; gardens that will bring nature to our homes
and chasten our lives
with the purity of the great Earth Mother."ae
Palm and bamboo-Mediterranean and orientar
images: there was the
usual california problem of appropriation. Keerer',
emphasized
ordered luxuriance. Gardens grew easily in ".rih.ti"rank weeds,,,
carifornia-.,rike
he noted ambiguously. The problem was to cut back,
to guide certain
growth, to have richness within rimits. Bruce porter
fert that there was a
quality of too-muchness to carifornia gardens. Human care
seemed im-
 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
ocal i
inment on the part of everybody and everything concerned." Rampant
nce did not express the balance and serenity of the California ideal.
iod
fijiSouthern California everything seemed to grow; hence the exotic of,
e
eied a special temptation. Frank Lloyd Wright shuddered at the phan-
M.
city fiili$smrgoric carnival of Southern Ca]ifornia planting. He condemned the
select. to refuse indulgence
ilii;,giture to select,
:;,i:,,,ftiftrre indulsence in the exotic for its
ifs own sake, :nd
sake and
rundini this but one indication of the overly
,il ,he saw as eclectic quality of Southern
;uch idii
nable.
liil' california life.
rn Ca
i:, The appropriation of Oriental and Mediterranean garden aesthetics
:ogetheri
d,i offered an ideological solution. California had historical links with both
e plantii
i. traditions, with the Oriental garden through its Chinese and ]apanese citi-
: zens and its position facing the Far East, with the Mediterranean garden
esting through Mission planting, which had been in the tradition of Southern
ly thro Europe. Both were highly formal traditions, emphasizing control over
t vines, o nature. The Mission garden was considered especially appropriate. It had
used as been exuberant enough, but at the same time it had never lost its links
with Mediterranean design. As a formal tradition, the Mission or neo-
California, Mediterranean garden ordered vigor and conferred historicity; as a frontier
:he poetry: tradition, it justified a taste for experiment, for the hybrid and near cha-
ofiered a:i otic. Keeler wanted the california garden to be "a compromise between
domestic the natural and formal types"-"one that simulates, as nearly as may be,
"
garden in' the charm of the wilderness, tamed and diversified for convenience and
:eforming accessibility."5o
rerein we It was the persistent California quest, defined this time in garden terms:
; gardens how to maintain both vigor and refinement, a sense of fresh beginnings
and bril- and fertile possibilities, as well as a sense of order, design, historicity. On
lce as we the one hand, Keeler advocated the planting of bamboo, palm, dracaenas,
ing bam- magnolias, orange, banana, eucalypti, acacias, pittosporums, grevillias, and
our lives araucarias. on the other, he wanted this diverse flora brought into comfort-
ing harmony. Such was the thrust of turn-of-the-century garden theory in
was the california: a desire to strike a balance between variety and design, indul-
phasized gence and restraint. The Mediterranean analogy helped in the attempt.
weeds," Even more than garden theory, architecture turned to the Mediterra-
certain nean. Goodhue's Iberian extravaganza climaxed and consolidated cali-
re was a fornia's appropriation of Mediterranean models as the basis of its regional
ned im- architecture. When the Colonial Revival, set off by the New England
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 of
Goodhue'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. If
one 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' El
Alisal 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 the abuses of
"i?u.t
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 4O9

Slope, all was simplicity and

hed Ca editerranean as practiced on the Pacific
aliforniars,l h.oo-p"riron to the machine-clt elaboration of the San Francisco
and Arth ib-arru" saw the Panama-California Exposition as moving Califor-
iifrer along the path upon which it had already set out
lission through its
nia State of Mediterranean, toward simplicity of line, drama of mass, and
the world y with landscape. such to him constituted the usable california
rte Park Loil ition.
rnd taste. Iii Iilot .u.ry California architect wanting these things turned to historical
d be in Misi idar. T"t,. geometric- concrete structures :f.t::ttgiitt in Sa,nllqi
5pteading wooden bungalows of Henry Mather Greene and
Mission Revit Charles
fr.$,li1rs
t of Bernard R. May-
re Fair back
";l'.'i Su*n., Greene
in Pasadena, and the shingled homes
r ! - i
attempt at
nl
irlii:i$..f. in Berkeley represented an innovative, non-historical
'ecollection,, -^---ri--^ -^-L:^r^-:^^l ^lramnl

:o its logical The name "Bay Region" was first applied by Lewis
'Ci i.:'illrrgion.l expression.
the schola i,. ' Niumford to a semi-unified style of architecture that flourished in the San

rnd pure.
l banner of
rnia architectu
turn-of
ation. Public bui
esque in the
Garnett in
ipanish architect
:tcher Lummis'
:naissance mansi
roked to the Spaii
Iacienda Del Pozo
re Moor. The San
:r of the cathedral
'ariety of Spanish
re elaborate scale,
subdued, intimate
rnia as a Mediter-
:diterranean archi-
order, paralleling
rse and derivative
rd within itself a
r. At its best, neo-
ver the abuses of
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 and

society. Machinery, Keeler wrote, enabled bad taste to be implemented timt
wholesale, and an industrial economy fostered unselective consumption.
mq'
othe
Men worked hard so that they could live in over-furnished, vulgarly orna-
mentative houses. The simple home defied the consumer economy and its run
Iack of taste. "Let those who would see a higher culture in california,,' the ,

,, III€I€
Keeler urged, "a deeper life, a nobler humanity, work for the adoption of
'. Calil
the simple home among all classes of people, trusting that the inspiration
;',iooke
of its mute walls will be a ceaseless challenge to all who dwell within
their shadow, for beauty and character."El ,In
In Southern california the simple home was being realized as the
bungalow. characterized by low horizontal lines, wide eaves, and a ve-
randa roof, the bungalow was an achieved architectural genre by the turn
of the century. within this genre, the Greene Brothers of pasadena cre-
ated masterpieces, bringing the use of wood-Keeler's california material nd
rtr
-to perfection. Although possessing no one ideologue rike Keeler, the rl
bungalow had enormous social implications. It was the architecture of
middle class california. "The comfort betokened," wrote Montgomery
schuyler of the bungalows he saw in Los Angeles in 19o6, "is that moder-
ate degree to which any American of ordinary education and ordinary
aptitudes may reasonably aspire, when it does not impry that anybody hai
been depressed that a favored few may be exalted, when, in a word, it is
a triumph of democracy." As a social symptom, schuyler felt, the bunga-
Iow bore witness to the fact that an increasing number of Americans of
moderate means were able "in their abodes and their surroundings to give
evidence of culture and refinement, to avoid the vulgarity of crudity on
the one hand and the vulgarity of ostentation on the other.i,52
californians thus advanced their search for a regional architecture on
two fronts, the historical or neo-Mediterranean, and the non-historical or
progressive. 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, the
bungalow, of course, reaching downward into mass housing. Both styles
shared common assumptions about california: its architecture should be
orderly, 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 si
Frank Lloyd Wright. "The eclectic procession of to and fro in the
 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-
um time, had set up Mexico-spanish for another
rer fair, in San Diego this
rrly cycle of thirty years."5s Yankees could never get used to
fo, another
iUn
lya
rhe california sunshine, wright believed, and the Spanish Revival was
:11-. - Luu
lifo
i. .. n,rr.ty a pathetic attempt to overcome their discomfort with Southern
rpt: :' California's luxuriance. Sitting in his neo-Spanish home, the Californian
:il,.r:!
Lspi:
ii',, ,lookea as incongruous as a Spanish friar in a Medwestern parlor'
l1 v
, . , . , In so many ways, Wright's judgment was correct. At its least attractive
i' level, the Spanish Revival represented an insincere, sales-oriented pastoral-
las i' ir*, a way of dressing up tract housing with pseudo-romance. Even an
nda
'l ardent advocate of the Spanish Revival had to admit a critic's judgment,
the t
made in the late rgzo's, that "much of the work, especially that to be
lena
found in some of the 'developments' and 'sub-divisions,' is little less than
ma
theatrical stage-sets."5a Wright could never get over the humor of such
eler, t tract homes: picturesque Spanish romance on the outside, tile bathrooms,
cture kitchenettes, and sincere Midwest parlors within. Had the battle for a
tasteful and appropriate California architecture been lost? Had the Medi-
-moder- terranean analogy condemned the state to confusion in the matter of its
ordlnary design?
rody has
Those who saw only the debased instances of Spanish Revival-and
rrd, it is there was enough debasement to see-would unhesitatingly say yes. But
: bunga- the neo-Spanish homes created by Goodhue, George Washington Smith,
icans of Myron Hunt, Elmer Grey, and Reginald |ohnson could not be dismissed
; to give in the same category as their mass-produced stucco counterparts. The
rdity on battle for democratic taste, which Schuyler saw the bungalow winning,
was lost in the Spanish Revival. Its romanticism, successful when disci-
ture on plined by scholarship, became vulgar theatricality when reproduced on a
'rical or mass scale. But other aspects of the Californian architectural ideology
ipenin- continued to be developed under the temporarily exclusive banner of neo-
)rogres-
Spanish. Critics of the Revival discerned perennial California concerns at
tls, the work. L F. Morrow felt the movement "progress without pedantty"-"not
r styles archeology but a living architecture." When, in r9zz, Morrow surveyed
ruld be the work of ]ames Osborne Craig in Santa Barbara, the distance from
lnama- Keeler's hopes of twenty years past was not that great, although the pre-
:ism as ferred architectural idiom had shifted. Very few great styles developed
rificant unconsciously, Morrow asserted, and so Southern California had the right
:kened to appropriate neo-spanish as its regional expression because neo-Spanish
re rag- dramatized distinct California beliefs: "that motion is not necessarily
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM ii,!.,
^1)
't'-
progress, that not all systems are efficient- ones'
and that' after ail' the
efficient life is hardly worth while if not enioyed'"
"Our Spanish
most
enioyed life. ihe reversion to a Spanish attitude
or point of
fr"a.".rro*
view is in the nature of a return to first principles'"5
a
Thus Morrow repeated Keeler's brief for Bay Region: .California
sort of an anti-industrial
architecture must be life-serving, must make some

gesture, and must conserve u"lues of intimacy,

harmony' and health' Such'
architec-
lf .ourr", had been the ambitions of pre-Exposition progressive like Gill and
ture, now in eclipse. Today it appears shameful that those
Californian cause'
the Greene Brothers, better prepared to advance the
at least, California's search
should have been shunted asiie. Ideologically,
forregionalva]uesinarchitecturecontinuedalonglinesthatdidamini.
mum of violence to progressive hopes'
LikeBungalowand"BayRegio",thebestofspanishRevivalsought
landscape',A passion
intimacy, oritdoor-indoo, iiuittg, and harmony with
for simplicitv remained a funJamental california concern.
what Keeler
and exposed
sought in unpainted shingled exteriors, proiecting eaves
walls, unorna-
be"lrs, Spanish Revival made available in massy textured
construction'
mentecl and geometric, low silhouettes, and patio-centered
found expression in the-neo-Spanish
Much of what Irving Gill pioneered
expressed in terms of
preference for bold rinrelieved surfaces, for concrete
Schul1el predicted
itself. In the early part of the century, Montgomery
vital importance
that the lesson of the missions-simplicity-would be of
construction' Bearing
to California in the coming age of pou'ed-concrete
purified the
out the truth of Schuyler's oi"'u"iio", the Spanish Revival
itself amenable
mission tradition of its histrionic vocabulary and showed
"Here in california we are tired, very
to the latest building techniques.
Missions' but of the
tired," said fohn G"t?" FIo*"'a in 1916' "not of the
sort of thing which has so long masqueraded
in their name'" california
"The new spirit is to do
had purified its appropriation i an Iienan Past'
Reyiva]'. "and give
without non-essentiali," noted Howard of Spanish
In this way only'
thought solely to *"f.hg the facts themselves deautiful."
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,
,

Coast."56
Goodhue's own career dramatized the process'
After the gtttiT-|ftfi
moved remorselessly in the direction
of simplici
Quadrangle, his work tT*:t-:;
as if he wished himself to become the
prime expolen-t ll"
"f
to the adobe
back
underlying Spanish Colonial' He pushed trimself
 AN AMERICAN MEDITERRANEAN 417

lirrn U where American California architecture first began-in r837

w1t| American
mornrt O. Larkin of Monterey upgraded. iaole
;"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,of and
t or-cttt'r work is not that great.
At the converging point the
,-it. Hstoti.al and the modern stood reconciled. That an ahistorical
only
iiir.rut" anticipated and surpassed the historicist's conclusions
iorced the significance of the whole process: in California, no matter
in the demands
fiii fr. source,-authentic and honest modes converged
[,]it" ..gion. Perhaps, then, the victory of the Mediterranean
analogy
ilr
ts Exposition brought about had not proved
l]f , *fri.ft thJ Panama-California
Californians needed to
a ** an architectural disaster after all. Perhaps
I .,--rr., that
fffi',, nurifv one ^f iheir
^-o of mvths before moving into an era
cenfrel myths
their central would
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
Span
' und., the banner of architecture a variety of South-seeking impulses. Yet
as an analogy and as a metaphor, Mediterraneanism arose from a
cluster
erms
of stable influences-landscape, climate, and the Hispanic past being

ortan among the most convincing. surfacing early, the spell of california-as-
Beari South remained a point of reference down through the years of frontier
ied the and transition. By the turn of the century it was a key factor in the re-
renable gional equation. It challenged californians to achieve something better in
d, very the manner of American living: to design their cities and homes with
of the reference to the poetry of the past and in harmony with the land and the
lifornia smiling sun. It asked them to bring their gardens to ordered luxuriance. It
stodo celebrated the vine as a symbol of maturity and it introduced to agricul-
d give ture sun-loving trees which coaxed forth the Mediterranean implications
y only, of the landscape and filled American marketplaces with dates and figs and
padres olives.
Pacific Above all, California-as-South encouraged new attitudes toward work
and leisure ancl what was important to live for. As a metaphor, it stood
ifornia for a culture anxious to foster an alternative to the industriai ethic. Here
rlicity, in California, Mediterraneanism suggested, might emerge a people living
'ations amidst beauty-from household artifact to city scheme-a people ani-
tradi- mated by a full play of sense and spirit. In and through the Mediterranean
 AMERICANS AND TIIE CAIIFORNIA DREAM
4L4
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.
ten on with,,
nrses were 13
rut warning,
stability and ericans and the California Dream
the myth of
ifornia of im
th, Europe a
:ncan present?
else but they
rlic landscape? i

yardist, historiafi
ion in the con
ral. It released'i
triction of spirit,
make a further
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
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 in
the 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-
raw
times tried to be; and certainly the Latin element did much to soften
more
Americanness. In Louisiana, however, the European past was much
as
authentically present than in California, where it had its main vitality
 DREAM 417
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
o of an intelligentsia' As time went on' of
ompli nn.,r. non" on the-part by immigrant
ur the
mellowing of
the mettowlllB
LrrL landscape "'""*D-- cultivation
rorrsuvsrv through -'
e.'r.,the
California's Euro-
d then
I:r"r ,.;U.U tJurake it look more European' But
and pa
:l_:;;;;i;;ked the density of Louisiana's. Based on fragile premises,
rain-wasnea, owt-tr1:1le!
sense.
l#;i;;; f"i", in iittle more than the
if by
#t";;;Ji" *irrior,r, it functioned more as a suggestion than a
;cernible, lJJrorrt.a with the American present' it continually threatened to
rl to 'l{-'l an illusion'
rY!*' it.elf
--- as
close this
3mmas oit
ffij:
dF,By the years whrcn
i::l tt* "i:l"tiyi l"X:I?*lliT:i:::r'1i::1
a totality with which californians identified them-
an optlm ",,iJ"*.a most
itl.' ;#r. ,o,rti,y included ieveral other factors: the Gold Rush,
il.
tive. Most
llt,i;ri"rrit, r"u its continuing legacy of easy mone1,ald"bt",l1Tltt:.*
South; which came from an overnight development' years
ji,"'' ;;;;t
it." "oto'o-y who arrived,
a of the advancing frontier; the varieties of peoples
Lgham
air--
leracy. But cultures,remained,i"*::"i*"1::i::]
they brought a'tong how-
not 't ' ,"a-rf,t,
altered the larger texture of-lite; the cities built, the harvests gathered;
in
-walt
,rr"rr, ar that Whitman described in "Song of the Redwood-Tree"
upported
(1874) as:
:hards of
groves south The flashing and golden pageant of California'.
unknown in ihe sudden"and g-o.geoui diama, the sunny and ample la,nds' ,
south'
diftered from
iit" i"rj""a varld"stretch from Puget sound to Coloradomountain cliffs'
r
Lands bathed in sweeter, rarer, healtf,ier air, valleys and
led to be less'rr long prepared and fallow, the silent' cyclic chemrstry'
The fields of Nature
onal agribusi- The slow and steady ,g;r'ptidd;ng, the unoccupied surface
ripening' the rich
ions and run ores forming beneath;
south, inten- At last the New irriving, assuming, taking possession,
A swarming and busy rlce settling and organizing everywhere' ,r -
-corn-growing and going out to the whole
Ships comlng *ft"i.
in from irt.
'oundworld]
approaching world,
egions resem- To India and china and Australia and the thousand island paradises
of the
e was not, iu Pacific,
populous cities, the latest inventions, the steamers on the rivers, the railroads,
<iety brought
with many a thrifty farm, with machinery,
;eacoast were
And wood and wheat and the grape, and diggings of yellow gold'

n California, This was the epic of california. These were the public contours of the
;h) with the California dream.
but it some-
:o soften raw
II
At the core of the dream was the hope for a special relationship to
; much more nature.
in vitality and intel'
as
A passion for beautiful california filled the souls of the artists
418 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

lectuals of the rB5o-r9r5 period. Regardless of calling or capabilities, those lnane

who achieved a significant mode of local living invariably put forward the ff
their love of the outdoors as the key component in the structure of their with :

regionalism. King, Muir, fordan, London, Norris, Sterling, Austin, Lum- live o
mis: relationships to environment varied, but they were always important. Iisten,
Nature, that awesome setting for the California dream! Heroic, eternal, overh:
overwhelming, it proved a glory, and a problem. It promised a profusion of ' FIo'
gifts: beauty, life, health, abundance, and, perhaps most important of all, blives-
a challenging correlative to inner aspiration. But it could also intimidate; SO
the challenge could become a mocking measurement of failure. In such a inT
grand setting, the civilization of provincial California seemed trivial. This idr
contrast was the theme of California's earliest county history, the Annnls turt
of Trinity County (rB5B) by Isaac Cox; and the anxiety continued down
the century. Thoreau,claimed that anger over their diminution led Cali- r!c
fornians to deface their environment in envy and revenge. There was evi- istc
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 not
solve 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, bringing
the community into the wilderness. Yet it left unanswered the problem of
day-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 with
physical and spiritual energy. He was the heir of creation, the destined
lover 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:ii
speak 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
 .. IMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 419
,abili
rrfter.) The days have been mostly here of heavenly
beauty, and
,
v
vers, the wild flowers
just now in particular, wtrich
\tlV .rye,
rcture
t;;;., over the land, are worthy of some purer planet than this. I
and olives, fresh from the tree, and I lie awake nights to
Austi'
lys
r orrng.t !e - ---L:^L
which my --,:-l^,.,-
I jton p,itpot", to the languid list of the Pacific, -,, windows
Ieroic, ,r2

a proful
il;#, ragingwith radiance, the languid list of the Pacific, oranges and
portant
;;--rna ,'urotut"ty nothing else. Here was the devastating opinion of
so inti irony of regional aspiration! )ames expanded upon
re sophisticated, the
rre. In
;rinu American Scene (1907). California, he wrote, was not so bad as
I trivial:
lii?'fJtiar, Yvor completely trivial as a civilization; yet California as a
wrrrlrr was
.Ifliii.f lolluat which
y, the
J,li'lot*r" *as a long w11 frol liv_ing up to its,setting. .'t *": ,: h::l'
rtinued l*
frustrated Florida,
:ion led
H:' Tr*r, wrote, "especially at the first flush, unlike sweet
F: '.u., ,o amiably itro.,g' which came from the art with which she rnakes
here was t
th" stoutnesses, as I have called them, of natural beauty stand you in
ng it was
i. temporary stead of the leannesses of everything else (everything that
-and al interesting).' This she is on a short acquaint-
was, did
, *ight be
IIllgIrL of dll
U(, Ul an vruvr equally rrrlvrvuLrrr6/
order uYu4g)i r rr
to
anJe quite insolently able to do, thanks to her belonging so completely
relati
the 'handsome' side of the continent, of which she is the finest expression'
:e tra
The aspect of natural objects, up and down the Pacific coast, is as 'aristo-
eal, bringini
cratic'as the comprehensive American condition permits anything to be:
: problem
itindeed appears to the ingenious mind to represent an instinct on the
: desire (all- part of Nature, a sort of shuddering, bristling need, to brace herself in ad-
f geography., vance against the assault of a society so much less marked with distinction
gertips with than herself."3
he destined In the annals of tourist opinion rarely had there been such a crushing
and towns? judgr.nent.with a shrug of his shoulders the Master dismissed over fifty
c Coast in years of American efiort. In its human dimension, California had come to
row sharply little.
y beautiful,
George Santayana was more encouraging. Coming to California in Au-
rd inexperi- gust rgir to address the Philosophical Union at Berkeley, Santayana liked
lhe impres- what he saw. He liked the scenery and he liked the peopie. He found them
,ose of the brave, eager, and full of hope. Berkeley might not have the historical
ister-in-law resonances of Cambridge, Massachusetts; but it struck Santayana as an
this spot." alert, progressive university town, robust with the energies of student life
me over- and mellowecl in scholarship. On z5 August rgrl Berkeleyans flocked to
d in it. (I his lecture; and-significantly for the time and the place-Santayana used
cr there is the occasion to announce the passing of the genteel.
rd human American thought and culture had long labored under the restrictions
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 of
norms 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 of
relating to landscape, arising out of an enervated transcendentalism. Sub-
consciously aware that iis vigor was on the wane, genteel America tried to
restore 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
 TIIE CALIFORNIA DREAM
427
AMERICANS AND
thrs
himself first used when addressing
.'tl

(a term )ames
c'c Pragmatism
union in-"' iJ!io-;I:1":::::::x .il :il"'"T::i:"lT:-
r 8eB ),
i,,H;:#.:1?il; *r;' !1u-*'::*:H;il?'::il1
an instrument "ffi''d+; ^:::l'::-1:i:t"T:f
ice to an'instrumell;;;;harnessed iffJil:T::
by the logic of any school'"'
'ntt 'o
Tiili::iJX1il? 1ll'l'';;;i;il ;r'"t i'3a
o"" k""* verv H:l
"r*"r: rittre' 1""ffi
that the:
lj,#"iil.ll;j""1'ffj::';;';;;;;;1'
ffi;:;::i-:Tj"T::'ff".ffiil?:"1#::
ti re and good tt'"t certainties lasted
lrue "t,o ""*i"J received doctrines,
"t11,,tilt,n"r,
rwl ""d aided the business or
len 3:'#:IffiT'11ilT?'TJ;'
;' il;'h"
;; ;; thev
le, at tnir
't**at carifornia? euite a bit,
Santayana
easu $l had all this to do with lecture' he
t"lt' in tr'" i^n mJrents of his
d not Ifiil:' ,ttoogrtt' Turning ^tj*nce or time had necessi
*Jit"jt' ffi;il;';;"''
ii*lotions
liar iJ
"' ij,,," addressed,0"*
tated an r,,n,t.^ii""Jt"p*'"i "r"r'i'.t1":'j
;; .:.::i"i:i"iJfff;i'l:
alism. which Santayana nau lurL
-"1;3'TJ'JiillT''::"i:i'il;;;
Most Profoundl
::ihad
J^vrvr^-* -tn,'t-r" i:
been talking about an
"Ytl"l"Jii[-"""#]J
ica tri ;;;;;;i conclusion'
it'-ot-t:ll'""1;liffi:"1i
reat of
far beyo
les of
I
i
America on the verge
contemplattve core a
intellectual,
of laving a"i*'to
iffffil#:J;-"' #iffi:? ";:!"'illg*' Jffi,f:J.i*#!'il;
rtrvurul'rr
possibilities of America
had lain enchained by
""a""t"ft"iLgenteel. That creative experimentalism' tempera-
were doin , the intimidatioi, ;;h; which had
oPennes-s to exP;lience'
le efiort mental nni"*pitlt'it'^'abiding n'""1'*i" Abraham Lin-
rrth. Surel pulsated
""a
tn'"'lr'i ii""ffiil;"'; l":ltt"'
sea towa coln,andW"r?#r'it*an'but*rtitrtt"*lrtowhadbeenexchangedfor now
rinly Amerlr the |acob's n";';;;.;;;;
to"to'*itl and snobbish securitv-would
*'io' pt"*i'""T"" f""g had it been sustained
rscendental assert itself as America's
; solelv as a caPaurly
solely .";;;;;;
capacitv for practic+
:J{it^::s.,:";"i":lJun}':;:"t"t';::T;
mean a massrve
shown. America should
rvernments through
tent Office. lil:,'lJ,:'""iflttt':il,1"".", not the,"ru,.i,"" "i""'p"'i*ce.
genteel: fear of
was at th" to" of the
enturesome warmed-over ,r,o*ptil"i''ft" fear'
of tf" iJt" of A*"'it"' fear of her diverse lineage;
: American experience, fear itself
continent
and ceaseless skies of the
'
lience; "the indeed, of the rivers, ;;;;;"i;"
the sphere rh at rear, s a nt avana ;;il;;;
:tf 11
;
}i^if":l il1fl:;H:'Jf'"*.
as a rerntorc(
e American dental appropriation of nature
relationship to nature which
was
all genteel That fear led to ,"ri-"'*r.."ticating itself'
"
unworthy of America's better
instintt'-"td u"*o'ttty of the land
they were'
and perhaps
t;";id.be difierent'
rilosophical But here in Californla nttst length'
tigf'tfy iii' that it must be quoted at some
s (Henry's In a peroration so
especially should sympathize
with
rning blow. Santayana told calif;rnians that they
 422 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

the repudiation of the genteel. "This revolution, I should think," he told

californians, "might well find an echo among you, who live in a thriving
society, and in the presence of a virgin and prodigious worrd. when you
transform nature to your uses, when you experiment with her forces, and
reduce them to industrial agents, you cannot feel that nature was made by
you 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 1ittle
force among her immense forces. When you escape, as you love to do, to
your forests and your sierras, I am sure again that you do not feel you
made them, or that they were made for you. They have grown, as you
have grown, only more massively and more slowly. In their non-human
beauty and peace they stir the sub-human depths and the superhuman
possibilities of your own spirit. It is no transcendental logic that they
teach; and they give no sign of any deliberate morality seated in the
world. It is rather the vanity and superficiality of all logic, the needlessness
of argument, the finitude of morals, the strength of time, the fertility
of matter, the variety, the unspeakable variety, of possible life. Everything
is measurable and conditioned, indefinitely repeated, yet, in repetition,
twisted somewhat from its old form. Everywhere is beauty no-
where permanence, everywhere an incipient harmony, nowhere an "rrd
inten,
tion, nor a responsibility, nor a plan. It is the irresistible suasion of this
daily spectacle, it is the daily discipline of contact with things, so different
from the verbal discipline of the schools, that wilr, I truit, inspire the
philosophy of your children. A californian whom I had recently the pleas,
ure of meeting observed that, if the philosophers liad rived among your
mountains their systems would have been different from what they are.
certainly, I should say, very different from what those systems are from
which 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 pivot
of the universe. That is what the mountains and the woods should make
you at last ashamed to assert. From what, indeed, does the society of
nature liberate you, that you find it so sweet? It is hardly (is it?) that you
wish 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::,'

DREAM
i. AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA 427
thin your shoulders' They suspend your forced sense
ze in Pv""-- lift fromnot *^t_':'v^:t^:::']l"Iii]:""-,
[.liudes
nerely as individuals, but even as men' They
: own importance
to ,,,nrchin
and +^ worship' rn
to reke
take
rld.
l;:;;;;. h"pPy moment, at once to play wild'
her j""i rtttpfy, nl*Uty, for what you are' and to salute the in-
'e was are
iii,"r"r:.;"sorious infinity of -nature- Yo.u :d*,?ltltl.Yl
ao avails little materially, and in the end nothing' At the
Ine """
wonder and pleasure, you are taught speculation. You
; ffi, through
love tolq ytulf dignity
; ffi yoo "L really fitted to do, and where lie foulbeing
r not -'j';;;.;;.1v, in representing many things, without them' and
grown,
;[il* you, im"gination, through sympathy, celebrate and echo their
Ir non- ,r6
ii$tiir,.r rc;
: superhu
ftlii;;;.n'*u s,'*il'11:":l:i'ii':::^H,:"-1T:^1li:":".'i*.:',*"-;:t1".';
gic that f- instructed: especially propositions regarding the rela-
seated in
i: ii"rirrip oi *ind to external event, to the understanding of
";;;itosp6i."tiv which he
: need i,i i.ughi his own synthesis of Skeptical and Platonic insights. The cultural
, the ferti li and psychological implications of what he was saying,
however, were aP-
e. Everythi i prr.rrt-"nd deeply welcomed. In the matter of-
1"Tt",.:"d
civilization'
in repetit 'Sa.rtayana
was ofiering Californians a way out of their dilemma. He was,
uty and ri i 1n faci, suggesting that they were making their own escaPe
even before he
ere an i
arrived on the scene to formulate the problem'
asion of thi what was needed to break through the genteel (and what the best of
, so difteren Californians were trying to achieve) was respect for the non-human world
, inspire ther on its non-human terms. This demanded proper distinctions between men
Jy the pleas,, and nature, and proper coniunctions. As geography, California was not a
among your psychic projection, nor was available as an easy metaphor of human
it
rat they are. intention. Nor should it be used as a crushing judgment against those
ns are from who dwelt amidst its grandeur. In that men were part of nature, they
ce Socrates; shared in the totality of its mighty process by the mere fact of their ex-
e anthropo- istence. In that men were separated from nature by mind, they stood in
nan reason, a difierent relationship, an interior one of reflection and imaginative re-
r and pivot sponse. The two relationships were distinct and should not be used one
rould make against the other. It was wrong to say that Californians were not as im-
society of posing as the sierras, if one iudged merely by external circumstances; for
') that you one would be mismatching norms of iudgmeni. The true key to the suc-
secret con- cess of California as a civilization, Santayana suggested, would be its
pect them interior life in relationship to its environmentl and although he had been
rn to criti- there but a short time, he found much to compliment Californians about
ris genteel in this regard. Taken for a moment at his best, the californian had dis'
these pri- ciplined himself to the objectivity-the otherness-of his superb surround-
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 it
as 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 Cali
fornians 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 something better than an imitation of the East;
""tti"u"
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'
 DREAM 42,
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
he described as having "a poverty
of aspect
hose
iiq,san Francisco-which
uality"-did-rreteeranvth*-t:::,*ill:',::::fl:.:t-T*ti^tlt;T;
that
tells us, insisted pav|ames
ignifica
It"lti'ir" J,. tr1*1"1,'Leor,-Edel
fot the Master had honored his estabiish-
inh itrse when he chectea
o"t'
from.fames
b---- prompted
:

:mandedi ;l'?:t;;;;;
tby stayrng flr€rtr-
there' The
r:rw 5wrrvrvuv gesture
generous
'faceti ioorrr"rr, ,,brave i:iT
golden
was ruined by its oblique,
: instant .ri *ftiA for iuch possibilities surely, than
any
rtheo i'.r"rr,'r""r" brave and g6ta"n
by Henry illi.lo"uY under the sun!"7
.ana's ph *"*"a to miss yhttl :::1i: i:'"*::
:diate
iUnfortunatelY, James
f;|,ry:::l:'-i..i"i*at tife of a
'hit
communitv in contemplative exchange
i,.'1Ps ut""'"' '---
dge them its environm"";;;;;";
i"l*:P,::-lt#::.:fj:t:?::;T',i".T'ff1
rs not n
ag
'il:#J;;;il;;;;"
i;r,,ir,iii;ith
:I i:';ffi as a regional-culture'.Manr naa
their best
d-e-v^o.l.1d

o appropria fi
,,
I
; ;*h "t,il; -" "r,a ;" g; teacher, clnte, professor :l
::: :l T 1 :" X TLe::::Tt:,"J,:Hi of
' in the sri ;;st influential ]oseph
ans, the 'llrll'lJ,l,iTril**
g.otogy and natural history at Berkeley'
- - Conte's
t^-Ln,n scientific
with an in 'In an old-fashioned Victorian way' Le
le
"^io-rif,n learning en-
Born
e of its gra compassed g*iogy, Physics,
biologY' bot""y' optics' and anatomy'
f-hatred. If in his youth' and later spent
in Georgia ir, ,a'3, }i" had studieJmedicine
;e thev lived c timedoingresearchinnaturalhistoryunclerLouisAgassizatHarvard.
,utsiders, heari Arriving on the
p".int Coast in 1869' Le Conte was perhaps the most
judgments. eminent ,"pr.r.nt"tiue of that class
of displaced Southerners who made
ry as new starts in California after the war'
He claimed that his move West had
James, prestige to
fiego to the liberated his best and he' in turn' brought a welcomed
",'"'gie', reputation' Be-
;inLosA Berkeley it, orrffi"".^Jy *.*U".-*ith an iniernational
aying at the St;
^,
fore the arrival oi pavid'Starr |ordan'
it was Le Conte who was most
style as a blend of seri-
rn factor? Could instrumental i' a"n"i"g the Caiifornia academic
outdoorsmar-rship' When' as a freshman'
I

in another land- ous thinking f""io"ate geology

.s? He was tired,
"r,a-
air.o"'o"a that he was ineligible to take Le conte's
|osiah Royce
doot to overhear the lectures'
agination (even course, he would sit outside the classroo*
under Le conte as "something
of his youth, to He later .o*prr.J-iis three years of study
story in ?lato's Republic,
those whom he like the escape of ihe men of the cave, in the
who felt a gentiemanly
igentsia; and, of from their world of shadows'"8 Even Frank Norris'
the spell of the great professor'
bound to prove, obligation to ,,"gt""i his studies, fell under
are not separated by hard and
't of Californian "The domains of science and philosophy ;tl'ey largely and it is in
:ion of the East, fast lines," I-" C""t" n'Jy believed; :ve1laPi
But then again, this border tand that I loveio dwell."
In that ,rrid-tlgiott he hoped to find
thought' He was con'
{ years later, in a synthesis of ,.J"t", religion' and evolutionary
scientists was to
're
can tell, only that the mission of his generation of American
vinced
 Joseph Le Conte (r823-r9or)
He came one of. many Southerners to
to Calitornia alter the Civil War,
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.
 rHE .ALTF.RNIA DREAM 427
i' AMERT.ANS AND

3 i*orld rndL a materialistic

world"that 'ra*';fu l*4]::l':: T*:t]ii:?if:fi:;
a rational theism and with
other
ion is entirely conslsten
alreligiousbeliefs"'e n ,. t- .^ ,t1L^",a,,+ i
- Retisious rhousht (r8BB)
"RRR\ Le conte Le Conte
'#r'o1i'fliiti"iiil'^" to
*Tt:f*T:tt::t:':*,T'*.*
fiit, n"'nt"n with learning ""iclaimed
I Le conte' and evolution
;:T:ffi;;;'"i-i"up*"'J"*"'"'
*i1eme11, or.a'vlTlT"i:::i"*T:?l
lifferentiation ""a
l:liffiHfi ;;;;;:';;ti.".T":11 ti:l5:J:if ;;"1:1,""1;:l
again' was
and that this'
conscious p'inciple of animals'
t anintaor
inerl out of the lower to'*i "f
life-force'
i"9 lhi:
* fti:ljii:: :j
at a certain stage tn
#anl physic"l forces of Nature; and that tn""p]^"ttY:t:l;
man'
ral developm ent, viz',with i\*1yi.'?d
;*Jtlffi#;;'"; ;;"*, in the individual history of each man at a
tr'" Lf"'itv or afstr1l
tain stage, acquires i::il:: 1i*lil5ll;
attempio" ir'3 part or men to effect
in themselves
il fff]:Jltti"Jt""ii. and
r'"*o"| or trtJ*"t"t11t' ttre uiotogical' the intellectual'
l..iir.thet upward
s
i; y'i':"1 ; ::I"-of:
, the piritual * hi.h'*nrn"a,;; ,,consists,
t,,, " not in the -TJ-, l'"T:'i :f
extirpation of :11; tff :;
the lower,
ffitfil't]''i""
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-
*itf' the.more rlbust l:y":t',i:1,:::1"ffi"1:
: ened by its connettioogrorined higher'
' ;ffi.J, ,"t'"r"';;J ?v l" ::':::t:i:l:i,::::;",',T'
ffi;;;his;il;iff;ir," *i,or"haiplane or being is elevated."l'
such influencel The essence
of his
No wonder |oseph Le Conte
spirit' witho* P:":|:::t::.
thought-physicality t*fti"g a return l" Ll", the tnner
scendence, without r"puai"fro" of
physicality's best gifts-was at
in fact' for the region's
tCto'ge ft accou"ted'
nexus of Californian aspiration' to this
finest momerrtr' gu"., Sterling tried to bear witness
ideal. fosiah Royce at sixty that boyhood wonder at the
","'t"i
magnificence of his environment had
teen an important element in his
had helped him achieve some
development. Studyinf o,'a"t Le Conte
Southerners to perspective on that wil;;' Charged
with the tension of evolutionary
novels
t University ot retrogression' Frank Norris'
struggle and the horror of evolutionary
a broad, philo- of ie Conte' And certainly ]ack
were soaked through *itft tft" influence to
,mpatibility be- at Berkel"L""-d
London, although he spent but a semester .gwed,more he
ris dated ther else, wrote his most powerful
fi:ti:: when
Jordan than to "nyonl tttt spiritual'
documented tt int""ltJn in io*""
;cene, he stood beings of animal'-the
" balance' how
d devotion to was the evolutionary
and the environmental: how delicate be
situation' |ordan' in fact' might seen
quick to regress in
""-t*i'"*e
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 Californians
like 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-the
heir 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's
maturity. 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!
 l
-tlt:l
i:
AAIERTcANS AND THE cALTFoRNTA
DREAM 429
ii ,.

,'o'.1 raised in rural Massachusetts' and'

like so many Americansof
nvolv
#';#;, t",g"lv self-ed-u-cated', t*"I"i-
l"'bTk, ^'l',":..:1*'
rssage
ff ,;;;ii"r.,ii i" 1' He- frad- alreadv
r s7 shown,
"9"',:t^:I:i"^"
in 1868, when he *,"t "il:::,tl T:Y,lt^i
:he be
il;; ; nrrrr",y*"n'
Public Library the two'newly published,volumes
of
with
ru;ilter Animols and Plants (Jnder Domesti'
ii;."Olr*i"', TheVariations'of
:d.
;.u;;;;i; influence of Darwin's work, Burbank conducted a series
:ngth ,;r**u in hybridization of the seventeen-acre farm he ran outside
alreadv contributed
ritive. Ai ;ii;nffi;;:ai ir'" ii*" h" left for California, he had
his name'.
from a i
;;;; *"tid the improved potato which nolbears , -,, r
the : lv;;;;;;;.i;i*.d that some obscure evolutionary force had impellec
rd Cali .iti*f*i" C"liiorni", convincing him subconsciously that his ".::1t::,t:11
and sunny lux-
I was
,.iit"r,*d talent ,equireJmore psychological freedom
, , uriance than was available in wintry New England,
;ted was where sunlight was
rtayana
,,I was nou-rra to got" Arrived in the town of santa Rosa,
'.uncertainandbotanybelongedtotheprofessors...Ihadnochoiceinthe
lqulsr ,. ;;;;;r;,,
he said,
i experienced a conviction
;n*th;Sonorn" Valley north of the Bay Area, he
the Yosemite a few
rra quests,
r of liberation and opiortunity. Like Muir entering
guidance y.t" .*ii"t, Burb"rri found a setting that was also a life's work home'and a
consecration. "I firmly believe from what I have
rroughout seen"' he wrote
sues regardi; ..that it is the chosen spot of atl this earth as far as natura is concerned,
o Californ andthepeoplearefarbetterthantheaverage.Theajrissosweetitisa
ierras of Cd ple"su,etodrinkitin.Thesunshineispureandsoft,themountainswhich
gira th" valley are very lovely' The valley is covered with
s most attr maiestic oaks
competent i placed as no human hand couid arrange them for beauiy.
I cannot describe
look upon the lovely valley from
rtu lecture
lund the eve:
'"i"when I .r.vith
it. I almost have to cry for joy
tropical plants, palms, figs,
the hillsides. The garderr, filled
loaded with
and they re- oranges, vines, etc. Great rose trees climb over the houses
ized detail of euerf colo, of blossoms. Do you suPPose I am no-t pleased
to see the
; in the Har- fuchsiasinthegroundrzft.high,thetrunkroinchesincircumference,
of California and loaded with color?"11
y Santayana, Forthenextfiftyyears,Burbankbusiedhimselfinthecreationandim-
rt sparing no provementofinnumerablestocksofvegetables,fruits,andflowers.Nota
icientist in the speculative sense of the term' he kept but
deep under- fragmentary
l notes regarding his countless experiments' His aim was
not systematized
Santa Rosa knowledge,butbetterplums,betterapricots,betterraspberries,aspineless
ered by the cactus to feed cattle in arid areas. He turned his
talent to making life
res in Santa morebeautifulaswell,ananyoneknewwhothrilledtothesubtlecolors
daisies'
and fragrances of his lilies, poppies' roses' callas' and
 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 England
calvinism in his youth, he put his adult faith in the variety and pfiatility
of life, to which he sustained something resembring an artistis loving
knowledge. ]ordan appointed him a Lecturer on plant Evolution, sharing
with the santa Rosa savant his own course in Bionomics. Hybrids from
Burbank's nurseries garnished the garden of Xasmin House,
fordan's offi-
cial Stanford residence. "In his own way," wrote "Burbank be-
Jordan,
longs in the class of Faraday and the long array of serf-taught great men
who lived while the universities were spending their strength on fine points
of grammar and hazy conceptions of philosophy." As a curtural symbol,
Burbank bespoke to californians the value of individual effort outside the
context 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 mini
mum of fanfare. Burbank's simple lifestyle, with its blend of physical and
intellectual 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 one
of California's highest forms of fulfillment.l2
one of the most prominent californians of his generation, the subject
of countless newspaper articles (most misleading; some even suggesting
he was a faker), Burbank was not without aspirations arising out of the
california dream. His T he Training of the Human plant ( t goz ) resonated
with the california hope that spirit and flesh might know new life. |ust
as Isadora Duncan dreamt of children in joyous dance, Burbank, as he
bent over his plants, dreamed of children removed from fear, growing
strong 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 ,'i
influences (aside from love and trust) being outdoor play and association ,
with nature. When finally sent to school, they should not be regimented,.,li
but allowed to develop at their own pace. Their years in the
balanced off by the restraints of a good family life, would constitute
superb preparation for academic study; from their time of outdoot
 ii.
3enteel,l
n off Nel
rriety a
an arli
Evolutio:
rics. Hy
ouse, /o
lan, "Bur
-taught sri
rgth on fi
a cultural s
efiort outsi
eplored thel
maglctan,
rarmony wi
rsons with a
d of physical
:, straigh
lmena of Na
" dramatized

tion, the su
even
'ising out of
rgoT) reso
w new life. J
Burbank, as he:i
n fear, growing
rn, he believed,
rmped, unventi-
Luther Burbank ( r84919z6)
rnfinement and
which he
rimate informa- Coming from Massachusetts in fi75, he settled in Santa Rosa'
rntil the age of ,,the chosen spot of all this earth as far as Nature is con-
described as
of
rtry, their early cerned." Over the next fitiy yeats he developed a prodigious-number
and association newfruitsandflowersandimprovedcount]essotherstocks.Hewasnot
be regimented, exactly a scientist; he was a silt-taught nurseryman
oI genius' a -patient
he dreamed
the outdoors, artist of hybridization As he bent oier his flourishin g plants'
'day
the childten of Ameilca might also know such gitts
ld constiiute a ot
that one
: outdoor free- growth and strength and sunlight'
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
432
and-
dom children would have acquired independence, inquisitiveness'
most importantly-wonder before the mystery of things'
Plant is
Burbank's American utopia (fot The Training of the Human
improved
a utopian tract) welco*ed i**ig,ants' As in botany, grafting
Burbank avoided the
the human stock. Concerned about human health,
during the
racist overtones which pervaded so much discussion of eugenics
period. His was an emphasis, an urge to awareness, not an
authoritarian
in delicate matters the col-
progr"*. He hoped in all humility ihat these
wtrile not for-
lective common sense might find a way to improve the
race

getting the sacredne$ oihu*"" life or the preciousness

of human free-
io_. wt nt moved Burbank was the vision, not the details of implementa-
to know all
tion. He saw a long struggle ahead, and he did not Presume
the answers.
of what he had
Santa Rosa functioned as the environment and premise
children flourish
to say. There, for half a century, Burbank saw plants and
in the sunlight. childless himself, he adopted the children of the
lovely

Californiatownwherehepassedhisserenelifedoingsuchusefulthings
withplants'TherhythmsarrdpossibilitiesofsantaRosawerealsohis.
Burbank loved the quiet days dto*ty afternoons; the great oak trees
",td drop by to
that gave shade; the farmeri from the countryside who would
among them'
ask aivice, as from one grower to another (|ack London
the smothered in
riding over from the VJiley of the Moon); cottages
by eucalyptus' palm
vines"and roses, banked by hne lawns, watched over
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

practice; for they had been inspired

put into by a small-
chance of being
The life
town New England boyhood and the longer idyll of Santa Rosa.
as a
and thought oJ ttttttei Burbank, however, needed no qualifications
in free-
California testimony. He believed in new beginnings' He believed
d::qin:t:
dom from the oppression that came from deliberately difficult '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,
ttlt^jl;
he attuned himself to living things, arrd iike an artist he
coaxed
in mal
better expressions. He wanted American children io thrive
as

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'-*,

to
they learned from nature. Like Le Conte, he dedicated his talents
of so rr
the lives
upgradirrg of human life. The lives of both men, like
 Aaa
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
DREAM 't))
that a number of Americans were struggling
rlifornians, asserted
'.. -"t",ftitg worthy of
their surroundings'

III
judgmentl' th3se- made after investigation
fuhrt rUout more searching
to california did not preclude scrutiny,
;il;;;;d";;.i co**it-*.nt one to her faults'
rit"Jlu*t*.ton always blind u:*l'-'l:":.',t!:::::
fiiqli*" books appeared, b:oth w.rfttTl ol
to oregon' by )' Smeaton
iiiTl"ri,-A Horseiack Ride Ftom Mexico of the Golden Sto.te'
1il altd California, AnEnglishman's Impressions of Anglo-Californian
iYi'il;;,*rloi,"to,,. Chase"belonged to the genre app'::llt'l::lj,||:
p'i"ru.a the state with some or its most
whl
il#il
t
for rhe most part, whose ]ov3 0f the land
H:': Xret*#i,i."r, "rruoorsmen toward the
Idreh i,'., _J"i'nr"Jl" r,""a with a ready pen and a trenchant attitude settling in
oft American possession' London-born'
'if,. ;;;';Sing "spectsinofr8go at the ageof twenty-six, Chase worked vari-
usetull il,# ;:li-forni"
vere a , ffi;-;;r1.".t.r, ",".ii worker,_J'd a retailer; b",
yosemite
ll:
especially,
t:*^lT:.:::l
about which
:eat oak [ il:;;.ffi;ors, the Sierras and the
clark Powell ranks
ld drop i ;; wrote with such feeling and lucidity that Lawrence
on
rmong i il;;ong the best inter"preters of the California landscape' |ohnson'
tk"Ptttil
imothe t ,h. ;,h"t f;rna, ,.pr.r"r,tid, not the Anglo-califo1i1, !u! ll."
ilyptus, Bdtish tourist, a sort who had produced some of
the best literature of
simple 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
the California to purposes of superb satire'
journey north'
dbyasma The two Englishmen wlre reporting upon a similar
Above San
.osa. The Ii which Chase made by horseback and fohnson by buckboard'
Ecations as Francisco, Chase continued up the coast to the Oregon
line' while north
Sacramento Val-
ieved in free- of Healdsburg |ohnson u..,"d eastward, moving up the
under the
:lt doctrines. ley through Chico, Red Bluff, and Redding, ending his iourney
ways, were anxi-
ear-religiosity shadow of Mount Shasta. Both writers, in very different
rtist's insight ous about California: what had been achieved' what
was passing-and
oaxed life
to what seemed on the horizon.
in as many Past, present and future converge Chase's California Coast Trails'
in
of his prog-
r, to grow in written with an elegance born of restraint, chase's narrative
lament'
d best when ress up the coast has to it a quality of elegy, of half-acknowledged
history, takes last
alents to the Fearful of California-to-corne, Chase, haunted by .one
Not
s of so many lyric up the shores of memory, in search of California-passing'
ride
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. i,' ,
ili rl
And so f. Smeaton Chase chose carefully what he would visit and write i!.;

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
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.l
shanty 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' ' ' ' I
we rode, blue mountains rose on the northern horizon' They were
ingredi
Santa Ana Mountains, fifteen miles away. That was the only
in the view that could come under the term 'picturesque': the rest
all t
open, bald, commonplace. European painters-Ame'icans, too'
 TTIE CALIFORNIA DREAM
435
AMERICANS AND
tT:-:':'lt:
ilaura r, d e cl
a
:ll* I Tt"il H:
red it crude.an d
T
n th"bru. 'ot,;:"';il***;",ntt;;Tilt;
"u" or the

iiT"ii:: fi ;; ,u';; f! ;
tu"""+"^1
ffi:'"
There
* tn" iJt[ "lllf;"lli "J:f':
of,;un-bleached grass'
of in'ky blackness "11^it".
r'i"*r'it ;lon iffi
do' t*o gi
:il :?or :a
lways a btzzar "ii" "; :i::I li.t:;i:l' the carcass
:1\]"ffi:T:ffi,HHri#ili;t;;J
l :L:i'#;;:' "n'
##
u'i 9 u{;r, ""1 *1'-'1 1: :';.'}:i.-J. l il.::
il."1',
*
f ffi ; mffi "il "- "t----r"rn
:l ":i:::H :,*;T;::i,*l'
I
I
visit
tl::"" trxPrcJrrvrr;"":i::: j::ltT:TtJ*:T:Ht1l;
:and,declare,i"tr'"t'o'""Iffi
t sgnd, declare, of the naiive and original
Lt

as he
'rir,'*,1!$'"',':iF!it1::1ld:"*,[t'ii:Tti;''E"*;:.*l
1:
uatrrouua vr L'v ""-rirn
els i" ,. brtitotnit d:l. Syr'. torr" u"lo", and balance of
mind' trained to wt
u:#;iltoPhisticated simplicity'
oads a
the tu.:a|t, its ma'gnificent Western
h whi line, found "";fti;
a thousand *ilt' f'o*
it' Picturesq"!; tit"
puer-

nclsco,
' Prettv?
ile. But simple, n'""#o"i'j ('"t* t'1T t."":"*t5'Tl:]ifi."f"|'j:
'"ttL:"-:1i:unds
tt'e materials or the rand'
, Past
On the h.H;':flI;Tffi#il';;;ffi;'"'",
texture
r to bun "Tl.i through such landscape
restored
""" :',11'"^::-H1",::t
Through caflons
one's sense of the past'
of geographical Caliiorni"' ""d buzzards circling
tfully a in sight o-f mountains'
;i;;;;'
such as this-solitary, In
iled Ca i.rr" p,iri"a ine.spanistr frontier northward'
overhead-portor6 "r,a
h which
thedecadesfollowing,suchplacesknewbutiittledisturbance.Half-wild and then a
ompanied hil
grazed the'e i" thlft'"" of Hispanic oossession' Now
cattle
tJ#l;";il' -;1*:t maki"g camp for the night
party of American and there threw
rryrote, "we
under a great oak' m#, *u"i'
later' a-few squatters here
a row of
of hermii bee-keeper set out'
up an unpainted shaci< tr t*o; "ta'"
pale-
;ht as richly hives. Sensitiu" to *ili'*"r-i,"pp"r,r-o_g
ir Southern california, chase
*otfJ not remain untouched forneces-
long'
ted pools a
knew that many of nl'" t"oo"' them' It was
rss and rushes.
Bungalows ,o'a*"f' *o"fa spread out to engulfdeserved at least one
: weed-covered "na
sary and it was tragic' il";;iof
such landscape
ils. Elders and
ng from each.
r

i'tilJ""*t"ff#;:h as rar_backbehind the

American present (and
ntl-]ndoors' he
*:J"
hard as brick
the American fut"rei i" When weather
: side reach of " "oota'
stayed as much as n"l,ilti'*iiiM";i;;;;'
preferring their gracious
hospi-
journey
dth the typical The southern portion of his
tality to that of A*;;;" hotels'
'as an 'off-year'
is literally piigri*ngt from mission
to mission' "p EL Camino Real'
" San Gabriel Arcdngel
in the
"flow....fu Tourists came by J':;;;; tt'ti"ioo
fhey were the '"" by Los Angeles); elsewhere'
how-
village of El Monte i;;;t-allowed Indiatts still gathered
rnly ingredient
ever, at San Luis OUfip" Santa Ines fo, ir,rtrn"i
"irJ Other missions
: the rest was
too, all but a
for Sunday r"r, ,r",i".ruil;" ligit"."ttt century.
 DREAM
AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
86 De
Concepci6n and San Antonio
were in ruins' as were La Purisima
slept beneath olive trees' Perhaps his
Padua, where Chase 'o*". "tii"t't "wide
Capistrano' approached across
most nostalgic stay *;;;i S"" 1u"" Chase
like i''' the sunlight"' where
levels of yellow g,",'it';t shone 'itk
passed some very pf""""t J"ys
in the mission library browsing amidst a

"slender tomes in t"";;';;tdskin' like

tall' pale 9l{ sln'tlemen' written
volume
closely in Spanish t"ltTt '"to'd'
of christenings ^ttd burials' each t:

callig-
'Laus Deo" a tr-iumph of flamboyant
devoutly rounded of *ittt its
raphy; ancient sets of
g;"utt and Massillon; breviaries' missals' what-not;
which is neither Catholic nor
endued with that odor of sanctity
-all bygon-e human usage'"14
Protestant, the sanctity of age and Chase up for
ii;;";pti"t,'i" charge, after putting
At Mission S"","
three days, sent hi* *o"'i"g of hji departute with a thunderous
ofi th"
Chase' of course' was
p""" t."af,ion of W"g""''' 'Pilgrim's Chorus'"
romance of California his rev-
truly on pilgrimage, ift"?g" *a tftit-"t*11
to discover that a few trees planted
erent preoccup"tio"' H" ivas thrilled
A few altars still smelled of
by the padres rtiff U"'" p""" ""d-'PPt": perhaps be the
incensel and long Si"ut"son thought that he would
"ft"' ; adobe mlssions yet echoed with Gregorian
last to hear such *;,; had
chant. A handful of Spaniards'
children-at the time of the conquest'
Conception'
managed to hoid o"-io
iands i" the area above Point
In
'h"i' them to talk about Old California'
Catling on them, Ctt"'" encouraged
Dana' the son of Richard Henry
the Nipomo V"ff"y il" ""ff"a op"ot' fohn be-
Dana, who had settled in california
Dana,s cousin wiiliam Goodwln more Danas
That evening even
fore the conquest, *"ttyt"g a Carrillo'
gathered for dinner' S"ti"ittt'""
g""t"tio"' of Yan'kee-Latins gathered
the talk in Spanish and Eng-
around the huge t"Uf", il'?i"g the"laughter'
lish,ChasefeltinthepresenceofbygoneYankee-California'theciviliza- be
tion that Thomas ol;":' Larkin ""d
otht" had long ago hoped would
it had
not been thltuiur"", b"ut somehow
the pattern of the future. It had
t"$ffi
Iteld on, and Chase enioyed an
evening in its companY-"
-,-,,rr., .irrrcttlr€d,
lj,:"ff fi':lTir,rZi"'i'3"'^i'i,"u,tsnotrigidrystructured,':
but always present. ch;;" fi";' th" hacienda;i'l:1],::*i:5Tl:'r?; ';
'.:T::;,"'ifi ;::iliH;::;;;:;i;;a-"'i"""ranch.wireand'+
her two unkempt, unrulv sons' rheir **:#il#;f::';*+:1flI'11;
att! fl'xr llne
a Los Angeles social worker)
H:# i;ffi;'"ii'.r"', own orp*ffi,ntJ1t1s; :"T f#
Americans had brought their "ngt rt
boom towns. He notes
ffi:ffiTifi.",; i;;;;;.; of .oriapse.l
arl, derighti,'g i,, a-;11i,1'lni:r|;iltlJ
thj'';;';@ ofi31,the timetables' their hotels
h$t J^'ions taken
"H*r"iil"jl
\M . CALIFORNIA DREAM 437
,*,'NERICANS AND THE

I California' *h:" .'ll: d^tilll

lrl:
San
ihru-like the town ot Fallbrook' two
torvey of the main street at midday were
fftg?"rii tt'i t""ru
: trees.
faded valise who stood
cream andan eid"'ly man with
ached a
ins eating ice
ght," ti"et, ntlv
il:'; ;;? d o w n th eu"a
evi de
]:,"-1" I 1"i,,::i::"" :":::til,.
of escape in mind' a.deliveranc:llt':,::::::
.'
v ffi;.* ;;t "il ;;';*'
gentle
rrials,
H: ;ffi ; # *r"tr' ""*:: I o i t' i
:: 1".'l:^'#: :': i'f.Y"
weave together strands of ecologv and
bvgone ::
fla
ea
"Ti
iiti;;;;o
keeps us continualiy awa'e.of weathel
tT11":rt:::
h^r, or"g". He :T
burned off.bv the morning sun' And
alwavs
, missals,
il?l;;,ffi:;; i;s'
ither Ca
fir;;;;;;'fb,""king i" the coast; foi this-asrp:u I Y:^*:""*'"t'l;
,r74
ti,.1jj::'#"r;.--J,n" ""; music chase travels to. He hears the Pacific at
!.1 grrru it as he rides
iri r,iawn as he warms
cofiee over last night's embers' He hears
with a thu {i:i'il;;; ir-," ary It keeps him company at night as he lies rolled in blan-
.se, of ,l''"'kets beneath tfr" Criii-"ia stars: it is the western.t*::,:t::::"-li}
California
few trees
ffiffiffi;;; ili;;en! beside which the energies of the twentieth

.rntury ttow reaching a point of critical mass'

"r" present,
Past and
civilization' receive a partial reconciliation
ld perhaps ""ti'" ""d
intheareaofMorrte,"y,t"piofofOldCalifornia'mid-pointofChase's
Point Chase
:d with travels, and symboli. t#"' tf his "arrative' ]ust below "ob:t of
the conquest, catches an especially l;;;ly of the Pacific' "The sea was a splendor
)oint Co "it*
blot,1' he writes' "and broke in such dazzling fresh-
a..p fuf"ai
ness
"rr"r,".r,
of white that orr. *igftt have thought
it had been that day created'
of Richard How amazing it is, that thi ancient ocean'
with its age-long stain of cities
I in California so bright' so unlontaminated' so
and traffic, toil and blood, can still be
lven more . heavenly purel It seems an intentional
parable of Divinity' knowing and
some deathless principle
e-Latins gat receiving all, evil as well as good, yet through
the Unchanging Good'"16
Spanish and Eng itself remaining forever right,"strong, and pure'
streets, past
rrnia, the civiliza In Monterey that evenilng, ci,"r" strolled the cypress-lined
cooking. "on
, hoped would be
adobes giving ro*r, trre *irigled odors of roses and Spanish
: somehow it had a side street," t" *rii.,,ii""*od""' wooden
church with a painful spire
Protestant as I am' I turned
was lighted ,rp, proU"iiy for choir practice'
igidly structured, away and walked the old Catholic Mission' The last swallows
"gJ;P"* the ivy were sleepily qlerulous'
rado Rancho, for were wheeling home, ,r,d th. sParrows in
the tile-capped
n ranch-wife and The fading light lingered on th" crumblin-g cornices, -and
After all' age is a kind
belfry rose peacefully into the clear dusk ofihe
s seemed symbol sky'
r) that time and of sactament."17
meaning of history. Perceived as
ems. He is delib- chase is here confronting time and the
He notes them a burden of sin, history is ivashed clean
in the sea' Lending itself to men
subsuming both goocl and evil' the
unchanging
ado brought to as a symbol of fo,.l
eir hotels stand- 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 twentieth
century, 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' '
soutn, satisfied. "On
seemed satlsneo.
nobody seemeo
south, noDooy the rancn
\Jn tne and ln
ranch anq in frlc slurs' Jt"'-"^i.,,.i
the store," ]ohnson'.:';
claimed, "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., something better seemed in the offing. For all the talk of!
"*"y,
 ." ,-- ^^rra^pNrA DR
DREAM 479
I AND THE CALIFORNIA
AMERICANS n ^*^+i^nol

but
t'na'th".1"tl:11"^1s
*lj"'"t"*ir.a those flocking to tr"'" Goldett State'
happiness to 'n:t"-^''''"^"j;;";-.- consideied as a
cul-

tlilT:Hl*;f m"1"3"15"'lJ'l'l';'"1;;;compursive
rof

r*}iirut*t*|ffd'ffi
ffitrlt*"lfi-"t',ffi "irJi$tt*i-*1'+'il,'*
rS
ttedl
lit
rpler.l i, fifilit,"{i{*sn$#tfi+r*n;':'*
nu*b."jf.'li1':""t"il11; lil'i#t*.;r'u'
doctors,and::J:'r"t"'i*-n"'"t*" tavishly advertised'
rhe class

ls
' ;;;t.", chinese

:|,lii:n*lm::":H:'JT'Ti,+:';iiiffi".:
dinginess of back

.',i:"" spread
to-spot eradicators'
vendors

lr
i ,i',*;;;; ;".#";i;yt
with all sorts ", lots were crowded
with
st now every to"'"']V"ant
their portablt f'y-oi''at ;;;j;; cure-alls' of
spielers or
;
political """dors 'of
rraged "u 'o'vt'l'a;;";;
marvellous.a-l: b^-*"-/
d^rv to con-
universal tools, of
universal ot.mawelruus
r called the passer-by
.ocu 't::*^'j"':Ltjr;",?:11,:;"-Trti'J:"::-
jfr
hea
:, imP **l'fiillf
in
Stock
m',".ru
these enterPns
f aopt"o'lt
i::$'";,H;tr'tl""'-l;#ft
oi ttot- doughnuts and
enues u'"a
booths, like those -a*"'V "' oir ttotrt and real estate in some
way
cofiee, ofiered wild-cai"it'iJt; t;";t'
re ecologies
iigttyrp".olative,suburb'"1e -. ,^ -^where more yellow than Los
interested;i
nd there he
;i:t",:tlu;l'*',Tt^?"'ff rti'"i"+:T,,*"'"'r.'wereoutrageousrv Adver-
in blatant ttt""tt"'-tttassination' faith-
stanted; and editoriaf' 'from";;tt-'- vi "ores to oriental
North and
tising ran th" g"*oJ
'"lig"a ""a districts' costumes
e," Iohnson dinner o;;t" one of the more elegant
At a
rs the same
ny question
;ff ;; e:':k rthli"#it1','J."'ffi
healing.

o*-jl1:::;:;;;;. *l *ru:':5:Ji::t
convention with Left meets
At the party, orde
,mptoms of
: of creating
il:l*:*m:'m*'iq*:',.'iil ji**J"",hTi*;ff ';
: a For Sale
ing half-submerged tl
",,t":Iil-1i','"""i"tiUe act, assisted by chorus-
t town, 5oo teeth as part of a vau
l"?,ir, who extracts
: talk of life
440 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM

girls in nurses' outfits; Sonny Larue, a guru at the Colony of Unlimited

Life ("At three we arise and break our fast, quite simply, with three or
four dry prunes, and then, going forth to the high places for one hour, we
hold steadfast the thought of Love" ); and an unnamed reformer who re-
fuses to sit in chairs ("When humanity shall come into its own we shall
assume the graceful and hygienic postures of the oriental peoples" ). "They
do it all here," a real estate developer tells Orde, "from going barefoot,
eating nuts, swilling olive oil, rolling down hill, adoring the Limitless
Whichness, . . . theworks."2o
As an English visitor, Arthur T. Johnson was amused at the merely
eccentric side of all this: the lady-barbers in evening gowns, the perform-
ing saurian at Alligator Ranch, the continuous performances of a review
entitled "The Garden of Eden," directed by Darwin, |r., in which the
snake gobbled down the apple for comic relief. With droll satisfaction
he clipped the following item from a newspaper. It appeared under the
hcad]ine DEAD MAN SINGS ANTHEM wHILE HIS DEATH IS BEING MoURNED:
"Wm. Faxon's voice was heard yesterday at his own funeral here. While
his body lay in a casket, those gathered to pay final tribute heard two
hymns by him, and also heard him as one of a trio, including his son and
daughter, in sacred song. When the mourners had gathered in the parlor
of the Faxon home, in which his open coffin lay, they were surprised to
hear his voice pealing an anthem from behind a screen of flowers and
palms. 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 men
in 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."21
Behind 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-dl

mentalism of the funeral parlor, but he bristled in anger before the
successful attempts of church-groups to throw a veneer of rectitude
Southern California. Put into the same context as all the unrestraint-
acting-out through costume and architecture, the theosophy, the
 DREAM 441
. ANIERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA
to
anism, the free
love-the blue laws of towns like Pasadena tended
indeed' Manicheanism' upon this civili-
?r, ,'Or"ttrt of schizophrenia,
ifion of the
South'
..
polity coulcl keeP such contradictions together'
I,What sort of socrat -- L^ --.^^ l-^!,,,aan rl,i-Lino Snrrthern
;#fr rti*, .**nt, he was, betweln thinking Southern California
"'
#"r; tearing"it. Had it been pushed ,l".l"l:,Tllf::.::,T:lj::
1 eccentricitv the u"*
ioln ffi.fi;;;"ii.""w"'the ",t'"i'" 1ll*:::."""'"'
of the
inevitable misery lurking at the core
the i1;"f*i# was some final,
il,california dream? . - -- L^i_^
i ,"i;;;; from being ..-{,,a
naive
at tho . of the future |ohnson was not optimistic. Far
;, the (north of Gaviota he almost t::O11l1t""jl
t"'l ,Uoui Crlifornia'as-nature
:es of a; ffi;"*;,"i. il*.n Chase hoped that in the long run it would still
me.ta,1h:i, t-:1tt^":i;::t:^tt:ll:
f-
in whi prove enclurlng and
an-r.rl
]ittle such hope. He was intensely more sensitive to the
-redemp,tive
rllsati i"irr""
His itinerary took him
red lr",t,h.r-rta" of California-aslnature than Chase'
ING
,*ryfro*thelovelyredwoodcoastalroute'whichChasefolloweduptothe
rl Valley' which
here. Or.gon, and into the si'otto-scorched Sacramento
There he seemed more
ute heard,;i Ungiirt rrr"" described as the Plains of Desolation'
ng his son .awaleoftheinhumanheat,the]ackofsofteningassociations,andthe
I in the o:i malariacarriedbymosquitoesbreedinginstagnantirrigationditchesthan
re surprised he was of any special californian diaiogue with
nature. The only fellow
rf flowers a seems interested in is one who a week earlier
had com-
camPer Johnson
se, Faxon mitted suicide near his own campsite'
:rvice when
rced before
vealthiest
IV
of
s district, and, The assessments of Chase and fohnson underscored the ambiguities
discernible' and so
death he par. California. In retrospect, the elements of hope were
concerns itself
were the social sources of distress. Because this narrative
fac-
flamboyance, primarily with imaginative experience, political and socio-economic
oming license, iom h*u! been merely suggested. They have not, however'
been forgotten'
the sense that Monopolies of land iiantpottation, the control of politics by corpora-
"r,d practices' an
ing for limits, tions iespecially the Southern Pacific), predatory banking
which
to a repressive unjust tax structure-these and other abuses were the odds against
Indeed, the story of Cali-
vhich Califor- Caiifornians struggled in pursuit of their dream.
history as it
: naive funda- fornia setting its house in order constitutes the bulk of state
:ore
the rather now stands written. It needs no repetition in these pages' Suffice
it to say
of getting, spending' and gov-
rectitude over that, as is usual in human affairs, matters
,restraint-the ernance-and certainly not matters of aesthetics-consumed the most
natural
rhy, the neo- time and energy. Mention might be made also of the thousand
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 did
not keep prisons, hospitals, or cemeteries empty; many claimed, in fact,
that it kept them more occupied than was necessary, that symptoms of
social stress-alcoholism, insanity, crime-were everywhere.
Be that as it may, what concerns us here is a more subtle stress, arising
from 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 Asia
from which ihe great westward migrations of peoples had begun ages pre-
viously. It is a triumphant, mythic moment. With the settlement of Cali
fornia, 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 for
so 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 itprove 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 I
look back and remember the sad, fallen humanity I have encountered in
this sunny clime, and with whom I have sat or wandered, listening to their
broken 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'g
as 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
 DREAM 447
+.1)
THE CALIFORNIA
AMERICANS AND
t::.

,;,:
r.
_ ^ '; h-, Social Darwinism, stressed
rge, structur"l
lfi.,,#"il;l\H:lr::,"",i,1tu"
ftecrure.
as
1l: ::"-:of
the scenc ' extraordinary op.portTtll.. T"",Il""fi1i.,
;fornit
^;;,?;;; 4;":liy i,T*l# ::ll1#L",
-
wa S ro nd o
r,
^,+nn

#'*ji'*""fff:;ilr,;;;'.l;***i;t*.';H#vffi
ilf m,;;,',+it**Lipip**+fu lT;;**r:#
ffi#,:3i;1;;pi*,''t:il;*g$**.,lll1=11:.;il"1li;
to* it) consideredtheir lives
wasted'
factor
n i{' o, worse,
f
having
'*a" ^i-'dj; '
*ia-'sso" onward the healthPromo-
i:':'r In Southert 'il;self-contemplating"*'itten
discontent'
oss
to ""ii"*t"
,0"'n"rrior*ies of
n " contributed
such
"^:;;;;;i; ll'!:,?:t f"aaal ' bv two phvsi-
nt oti
lyric,i ' tionar books
.ians, walter
cians,
""ii'I''j"u li
r Yv !s'vr'
Walter Lindley ano ,|' ' Yt':?:"11"::.,:U:*ilillt3"ii
I riches during the Gold
"irn
star
it yet ritt*r**ffi$!I[']'liH]irij':?'""'"l"adea'lhmavbe
plC' n"*o"ai"o *'ot" i" the preface lo
The Medi'
kept at bay," Docto' end of the
,

o'l""l"i*t' "and life enioied to the

the
Califoi
tu)ranean Shores "t
d3"trt"1 california filled up with
term of man's natut"i'""i"""i":i uncertain of the outcome'
'er it *t'o' i"ting death' were yet
dying and the sick
more t *-1"ri become one vast sanitarium'
l

At one time it A;; Darwin-

vitnessed i "t*tJ"' '''"*:
c"iito'il" i"n'*""'y culturl contradicted Social
This Southe"'
und it t g ".""i" *ry1=r+ :
ity, when
ism in evervth i*' cemetery ::inl"'li,,1H'i?:::"i^lllti
9r

luntered i
frt", ott"ttio" i"ittt death' the *u'ku cast to the California
dream'
War I, and in t'" *"'i**iil G;" took into the twentieth
century
ing to theii' p'"tf"*''*fich 6lifor"ia
There were Stated baldly' they
anguish of
from the nineteenth; and there *""
o beautiful,
.ne asylums
do not diner rrom il"'il;;; tq {*tT;lT;ilTli::,il,'l"l
""*-oroblems'

Llre, accom-
s had been
:n"lgl*i,?ii;,iff Jlllll^;iilli:iT."','""'nsorconservation
education' and welfare'
These were na-
qu"'ti*"'"oi'rt"^rirt'
rate dreams
and ecology;
texture; tt'"t coniunction said much
tional problems-with a local ""j American and it was
e;;;;" as a-whole' It was
about the C'lifo"'i" American
of the Cali califor"ia dream was the
regio'al. tr't ut'y"'#il;-* The'hope raised
" u"'i"tio"t'
dream undergoing ;;;t;;;o't
Darwinism
'ig"mt""i For
cin'r"' Nordhoft in California'
above any-
by promotio""r *'itJtJ";t "' ($72)'was the simple vets'ubtle hope
;hed. At the
Health, Pteaure, ":;";';";;;;"ce
istian Mull-
forabetterlifeanimatingAmericasinceitsfoundation.Californiapro.
of narrative
 AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM
444
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-
i.i
five years of statehood, as, north and south, great expositions opened their i,
i.,
l

gates, California, like America herself, remained an intriguing, unanswered irt;

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-
of
tize, itcan also heal. A culture failing to internalize some understanding
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
f1
the consciousness of the present, can perhaps further today's struggle.
value and corrective action. Old in error, California remains an Amenc''4;
hope.