CHAPTER XXVIIISAN FRANCISCO

Just as it is often for their little tricks or failings that we love people best, so it is with San Francisco. You may find her beautiful as she rises tier on tier on her many hills above the dazzling waters of the bay, you must admire the resolution and courage with which, out of her annihilation, she has risen more beautiful than before; but you love her for a lot of human, foolish, adorable personalities of her own, such as the guileless way she stuccoes the front of her houses, leaving their wooden backs perfectly visible from behind or at the side—a pretense deliciously naïve, as though she said: “I am putting a lovely front of concrete where you will see it first, because I think it will please you!” And it does.

Her insistence upon loading your pockets with pounds of silver cartwheels, instead of few dollar bills, is not quite so enchanting—but maybe when your muscles and pocket linings become used to the strain, you learn to like her silver habits too.

And in her methods of building she has no “fashionable section,” but mixes smart andsqualid with a method of strange confusion peculiar to herself. The value and desirability of the land is entirely proportionate to the altitude or view, and not to convenience of location or neighborhood. On the top of each and every hill, on the “view side,” perches Mr. Millionaire. If the hill slopes down gently, the wealth of his neighbors decreases gently also, but as the descent is likely to be almost a cliff, Mr. Poorman’s shanty, often as not, clings to Mr. Richman’s cellar door.

And then there are her queer-looking cable-cars—with “outside” seats facing the sidewalk, as in an Irish jaunting car—pulled up and let down the terrific hills on their wire ropes. The cable-car was, in fact, originated on the hills of San Francisco.

Many streets are so steep that they have a stairway cut in the sidewalk, and in the center, the crevices between the cobblestones are green with grass. The streets are divided into those you can drive up and those you can’t. In motoring to an address ten blocks away, instead of driving there directly as in any other city in the world, you have to take a route not unlike the pattern of a wall of Troy.

Also, as there are scarcely any names posted up on any corners, and the traffic policemen order you about for no seeming reason but their own sweet will, it is just as well for a stranger to allow twice as much time to get anywhere as would ordinarily be necessary. We were trying to go to the HotelSt. Francis for lunch. “You turn down Post Street,” said one policeman. We certainly made no mistake in the name of that street. When we got to it and tried to go down, another shouted at us, “What’s the matter with you! Don’t youknowyou can’t go down Post Street!” I don’t yet know the solution unless there is one section of Post Street you can go down, and another section that you can’t. But I do know, however, that at the end of a little while you get so confused turning around three times for every block that you go forward, that your sense of direction seems very like that of a waltzing mouse in a glass bowl.

One thing, though, delays are not as annoying as they would seem. Californians take life too tranquilly to begrudge you a little while spent in trying to solve the hill and traffic mysteries. In fact, nothing could harass or annoy anyone long in a land where the spirit of gladness is the first and only thing that counts.

Where giantism, self-inflation, or personal ambition plays a prominent part in the characteristics of other states, the Californians are merely happy—happy about everything, happy all the time. Their optimism is as unfailingly golden as their metal, their fruits, their grain, their poppies.

In a corner of the orange country, lava poured over the soil. Were they down-hearted? Not a bit.

“For all we know,” said they, “we may find wecan grow something new in it that we’ve never tried before.”

In Pasadena the heat was stifling. It required all the breath I could muster to ask weakly of a land owner:

“Do you think there is any likelihood ofmoreof this weather?”

“Yes. Oh, yes, indeed,” he beamed. “It is generally cool until the first of May, and then it gets pleasant just like this.”

In San Francisco it rained all through May without ceasing. “Too wonderful!” they said. “The Eastern tourists will see the country so beautifully washed.”

But we have heard that their gladness had one vulnerability, they could not bear to speak of earthquakes. Therefore, curious as I was to hear something about them, I did not dare to ask. Drinking my coffee one morning in San Mateo where we were stopping with the B.’s my bed suddenly shook so that my coffee spilled. In a moment Mrs. B. rushed into my room in joyful excitement:

“Did you feel the earthquake? Wasn’t it a wonderful one! I was afraid you would go back to New York and never know what they are like!”

All that day everyone we saw spoke of the earthquake in much the same way, as though some delightful happening had occurred for our special benefit. Instead of shying away from the subject they reveled in it; advised us if ever we felt asevere one to run and stand in the doorframe. Even if the whole house comes down the doorways, it seems, are perfectly safe. Then they drove us to a beautiful estate that was directly over a fault and to prove what arealearthquake could do, they showed us a stone wall that had been shifted four feet, and an orchard of trees that had been picked up bodily and planted elsewhere. They added casually that the house, of course, was new, the other having been quaked to the ground.

But “Howterrible,” exclaimed nearly everyone to us, “to live as you do in a country where they havethunderstorms!”

There is, however, one small matter that upsets them curiously. To us, it was a phenomenon not unlike the elephant’s terror of a mouse. Never call Californians Westerners. They get really excited and indignant if you do. They live on the Pacific Coast—not in the West. For my own part they are children of the golden sun; call them what you please!

I think it is a rather universal habit to dismiss any unusual features in the lives of others by saying: “Oh, but they are a different sort of people from us!”

When we first crossed the Rio Grande and heard of two women who had gone out camping in the Rocky Mountains alone, and when later we saw a group of unmistakably well-bred people—each riding astride of a little burro and each leading asecond burro laden with camping things, we thought, “What an extraordinary people Westerners are! We are brothers and yet it is impossible to believe that we spring from the same stock.” Later on, however, we learned the difference was geographical and not ethnological. And the realization came this way:

A Mrs. R. used to be the most nervous and timid woman I ever knew. Six years ago, living on Long Island with twelve servants in her house, she used to lock herself in her bedroom immediately after dinner if her husband was out, because she was too nervous to sit in the front part of the ground floor alone. I remember distinctly that she once left a dinner party at about half-past nine because, with her own coachman driving, she was afraid to go late at night through the woods. About four years ago her husband and she moved to California. Last year she bought a ranch ten miles from the nearest station, and seven miles from the nearest neighbor. And this same woman who used to be scared to death in a house full of people, with neighbors all around, now sleeps tranquilly in a ground-floor bungalow with every door unlocked, every window open, and her servants’ quarters half a mile away. She drives her own motor everywhere, and thinks nothing of dining with a neighbor fifteen or twenty miles distant, and coming home at midnight through Mexican settlements alone!

On a Beautiful Ocean Road of California

Another New York girl, Pauline M., who certainlywas as spoiled as pampering could make her, went once long ago to a Maine hotel and never stopped talking about how awful the rooms were and how starved she was because of the horrible food. Twenty years ago she married a Californian and her house in San Francisco is as luxurious as a house can well be, but when we arrived she had gone into the mountains to camp, and telegraphed us to join her. We did not do that, but we motored out to lunch. Having always associated her with Callot dresses and marble balustrades, I expected the make-believe “roughing it” of the big camps in the Adirondacks. As we arrived at a small collection of portable houses dumped in a clearing we saw our fastidious friend in heavy solid boots, a drill skirt, flannel shirt, kneeling beside a campfire cooking flapjacks. She used to be beautiful but rather anemic; her sauntering, languid walk seemed always to be dragging a five-yard train, and her face was set with a bored expression. The metamorphosis was startling. She looked younger than she had at twenty and she put more life and energy in her waving of her frying-pan in greeting than she would have put in a whole New York season of how-do-you-do’s.

Even the Orientals seem affected by the spirit of this land’s gladness. The Chinaman of San Francisco is a big, smiling and apparently gay-hearted individual—none the less complex and mysterious for all that.

Frankly, the people out here who fascinate memost of all are the Chinese. From the two or three that we have seen in friends’ houses, a Chinese servant must be about as easy to manage as the wind of heaven; you might as well try to dig a hole in the surface of the sea as to make any impression on him. He is going to do exactly what he pleases and in the way he pleases. Of course, his way may be your way, in which case you are lucky. Also it must not be forgotten that his faithfulness and devotion, when he is devoted, is quite as unalterable as his way. Of the two or three individual ones that we have seen in friends’ houses, one at least will never be forgotten by any of us. His serene round face was the personification of docility, and he moved about in his costume of dull green brocade like some lovely animate figure of purely decorative value. Why have we nothing in our houses that are such a delight to the eye?

I have forgotten what we had for luncheon—caviare canapé, I think, and with it finger bowls.

“No, Chang, not finger bowls yet,” I heard Mr. K. say. So Chang removed them, only to bring them back again with the next course.

“There is no use,” laughed Mr. K. to me, “he will keep bringing them back no matter how often I tell him to take them away. He always does, and we just have to have them from the beginning through.”

Mr. K. carved on the table—Chang probably insisted on that too—and asking me whether I preferred dark or white, put the breast of a broiledchicken on a plate. The Celestial one in green brocade instead of passing it to me, deftly picked up a fork, placed the chicken breast back on the platter, took a second joint instead, and saying severely:

“Himlikee leg pliece!” carried the plate to Mr. K.’s mother. Company or no company, Chang served her always first.

Also the K.’s told me that Mrs. K., senior, was the only member of the family whose personal wishes he invariably respected. He is also the slave of the K. baby, but to the rest of the family he behaves exactly as a chow, or a Persian cat, or any other purely decorative independent household belonging.

China is the place for old women to live in! They receive all the attention and consideration that is shown in our own country only to the most young and beautiful.

Mrs. S., whose husband was for many years chargé d’affaires in the American legation in Pekin, is the most enthusiastic champion of everything Chinese. “If a Chinaman is staying under your roof, you need have no uneasiness on the subject of his good intentions,” she said this morning. “No Chinaman will stay in your employ if he does not like you.” As an example, she told us that while she was in Pekin the head boy of another legation was taken to task about something in front of some of the under servants—a situation of great indignity. The occurrence happened in the midstof the serving of a meal. The Chinaman quietly laid down the dish he was holding and left the room and the house. In less than ten minutes he presented himself before Mrs. S. and announced that he had come to live with them. For nothing would he go back to the other legation, and having elected Mrs. S. as histai tai(lady) in her particular service he stayed. One New Year’s he presented her with a miniature pig, stunted in the way that the Japanese stunt trees or else just a little freak. It was only a foot long, but full grown, and as black as though it had been dipped in shoe polish.

One day in San Francisco, I went out shopping in the Chinese quarter with Mrs. S. The sensation may be imagined of an American lady suddenly speaking perfectly fluent Manchu Chinese. Such a grinning and gesticulating and smiling as went on! And the whole neighborhood gathered suddenly into the discourse.

Understanding not a single syllable, I could only watch the others, but even more than ever, they fascinated me.

In San Francisco we rushed early each morning to the Exposition and spent no time anywhere else. Every now and then someone said to Pauline, with whom we were stopping, the mysterious sentence: “Have you taken them to Gump’s?” And her answer: “Why no, I haven’t!” was always uttered in that abashed apologetic tone that acknowledges a culpable forgetfulness. Finally one dayinstead of driving out towards the Exposition grounds we turned towards the heart of the city.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To Gump’s!” triumphantly.

“To Gump’s? Of all the queer sounding things, what is to Gump’s?”

“Our most celebrated shop. You really must not leave San Francisco without seeing their Japanese and Chinese things.”

Shades of dullness, thought I, as if there were not shops enough in New York! As for Oriental treasures, I was sure there were more on Fifth Avenue at home than there are left in Asia. But Pauline being determined, there was nothing for us to do but, as E.M. said, “to Gump it!”

Feeling very much bored at being kept away from the Exposition, I entered a store reminiscent of a dozen in New York, walked down an aisle lined on either side with commonplace chinaware. My first sensation of boredom was changing to irritability. Then we entered an elevator and in the next instant I took back everything I had been thinking. It was as though we had been transported, not only across the Pacific, but across centuries of time. Through the apartments of an ancient Chinese palace, we walked into a Japanese temple, and again into a room in a modern Japanese house. You do not need more than a first glance to appreciate why they lead visitors to a shop with the unpromising name of Gump. I am not sure that the name does not heighten the effect.If it were called the Chinese Palace, or the Temple of Japan, or something like that, it would be like telling the answer before asking the conundrum. As in calling at a palace, too, strangers, distinguished ones only, are asked to write their names in the visitor’s book.

In this museum-shop each room has been assembled as a setting for the things that are shown in it. Old Chinese porcelains, blue and white, sang de bœuf, white, apple-green, cucumber-green and peacock-blue, are shown in a room of the Ming Period in ebony and gold lacquer.

The windows of all the rooms, whether in the walls or ceiling, are of translucent porcelain in the Chinese, or paper in the Japanese; which produces an indescribable illusion of having left the streets of San Francisco thousands of miles, instead of merely a few feet, behind you.

The room devoted to jades and primitives has night-blue walls overlaid with gold lacquer lattices and brass carvings and in it the most wonderful treasures of all. They are kept hidden away in silk-lined boxes, and are brought out and shown to you, Chinese fashion, one at a time, so that none shall detract from the other. We wanted to steal a small white marble statuette of a boy on a horse. A thing of beauty and spirit very Greek, yet pure Chinese that dated back to the oldest Tang Dynasty! There was also a silver, that was originally green, luster bronze of the Ham Period, two thousand years old, and a sacrificialbronze pot belonging to the Chow Dynasty, B.C. 1125. The patina, or green rust of age, on these two pieces was especially beautiful. I also much admired a carved rhinoceros horn, but found it was merely Chien Lung, one hundred and fifty years old, which inthatroom was much too modern to be important.

In one of the Japanese rooms there were decorated paper walls held up by light bamboo frames, amber papershojiinstead of windows, and the floors covered withtatami, the Japanese floor mats, two inches thick. You sit on the floor as in Japan and drink tea, while silks of every variety are brought to you.

We saw three rugs of the Ming Dynasty that are probably the oldest rugs extant. The most lovely one was of yellow ground, with Ho birds in blue. And there was anice-coolerof cloisonné, Ming Period. They brought the ice from the mountains and cooled the imperial palace—years ago. Yet to hear Europeans talk, you’d almost be led to believe that ice is an American invention.

We were shown old Chinese velvet wedding-skirts and a tapestry of blues, with silver storks and clouds of an embroidery so fine that its stitches could be seen only through a magnifying glass, and poison plates belonging to the Emperor Ming that were supposed to change color if any food injurious to His Majesty were served on them.

One of the most beautiful things was a Caramandelscreen of the Kang Hai Period, in a corridor that it shared only with an enormous lacquer image of the Buddha.

We were told that a rather famous collector went out to see the Fair. On his first day in San Francisco—he was stopping at the St. Francis Hotel which is only a stone’s throw across the square—he went idly into this most alluring of shops and became so interested he stayed all day. The next day he did the same, and the third morning found him there again. Finally he said with a sigh: “Having come to see the Exposition, Imustgo out there this afternoon and look at it, as I have to go back to New York tomorrow.”

I don’t know that this is an average point of view, but it is a fact that was vouched for, and also that his check to the detaining shop ran into very high figures.

Of the suburbs of San Francisco, Burlingame, I suppose, compares most nearly to Newport, of our Eastern coast, Sewickley of Pittsburgh or Broadmoore of Colorado Springs. It is a community of big handsome places occupied by the rich and fashionable. It strikes you, though, how much simpler people are in habits, in taste, in attitude, than in the East. Suggest anything on a house-party in Burlingame or San Mateo, or Ross, and instead of being answered: “What for?” or “Oh, not just now!” the response is a prompt and enthusiastic, “Fine! Come on!”

Young women and men in San Francisco, though many have more money to spend than they know what to do with, demand less in the way of provided entertainment than New York children in their earliest teens. A dozen of San Francisco’s most gilded youths stood around a piano and sang nearly all one evening. After a while someone played, and the rest danced. At Newport they would have danced, more likely than anything else, but the music, even if thought of at the last moment, would probably have been by an orchestra. One afternoon they pulled candy, and every day they swim in someone’s pool. Today at the J.’s, tomorrow at the H.’s. The girls play polo as well as the men and all of them, of course, drive their own cars.

In the J.’s garden, they have ladders against the cherry trees, and everyone wanders out there and eats and eats cherries—and such cherries! In the first place we haven’t any such cherries, and in the second, can you imagine a group of Newport women climbing up ladders and clinging to branches rather than let the gardeners gather them?

But it isn’t the standing on cherry-tree ladders, or the doing of any actual thing, that makes the essential difference between the people of the Atlantic and the Pacific Coast. It is the land itself, perhaps—the sunshine, the climate, that pours a rejuvenating radiance upon the spirit of resident and visitor alike.

Even at the end of a little while you find yourself beginning to understand something of the oppressive grayness that settles upon the spirit of every Californian when away from home. Which reminds me of a young Italian girl whom I found one day crying her heart out on a bench in the Public Gardens in Boston. To me Beacon Street is one of the most beautiful streets I have ever seen, especially where the old and most lovely houses face the green of the Public Gardens, and the figure of this sobbing girl was doubly woeful. To every question I could think of she shook her head and sobbed, “No.” She had not lost anyone, no one had deserted her, and she was not hungry, or cold, or houseless, or penniless. “But, my dear, whatisthe matter?” I implored. Finally, almost strangling with tears, she stammered: “B-boston is sou-ugly!”

Mrs. M., a Californian married to a New Yorker, had seemed to us rather negative, a listless silent figure who trailed through New York drawing-rooms more like a wraith than a live woman. We happened to be at her mother’s when this pale, frail, young person returned home for a visit and came very much to life! She hung cherries on her ears, covered her hat, and filled her belt with poppies, and came running up the terraces of their very wonderful gardens, her arms outstretched and shouting at the top of her voice:

“California,myCalifornia! I’m home, home,home!”

The Portico of a California House

Does anyone ever feel like that about New York? I wonder! Does anyone really love its millionaires’ palaces, its flashing Broadway, its canyon streets, its teeming thoroughfares, its subway holes-in-the-ground into which men dive like moles, emerging at the other end in an office burrow—sometimes without coming up into the outdoors at all? Or are the sentiments composed more truly of pride that has much egotism in the consciousness of more square feet of masonry crowded into fewer square feet of ground; more well-dressed women, more automobiles; bigger crowds—sprucer-looking crowds; more electric signs; more things going on; more business; more amusements; more making and spending; more losing and breaking, than, one might almost say, all the other cities of the world together?

All of which makes typical New Yorkers contemptuous of and dissatisfied with every other city. But as to whether theyloveit, as the people of Chicago or San Francisco do—do they? Do we?

For anyone to look out upon New York’s immensity and spread out his arms and say: “My city! My home!” would be almost like looking overhead and saying, “My sky, my stars!”Almost, wouldn’t it?

I wanted to lead up to the story of a California bride’s impression of New York. Instead of which I seem to have arrived in New York, but left the bride at home!

The story was told me by Mr. B., himself a New Yorker, but whose wife and stepson were Californians. Last winter the stepson brought his wife to New York on their wedding-trip. This is what Mr. B. told me:

“She had everything we could give her, but spent the afternoon at matinées and galleries and shopping; her evenings at the play or the opera and a cabaret afterward, and her mornings in bed. Finally I said: ‘Why don’t you want us to have some dinners for you, so that you can meet some people? You can’t know much about a city if you meet no one.’

“‘Oh,’ she said,’the people look so queer.’

“‘How, queer?’

“‘Why, so—so well-dressed and so horrid—their faces aren’t kind, and they don’t seem to smile at all.’

“But I insisted on taking her up Fifth Avenue to see the fine houses. No enthusiasm. Finally I said:

“‘But surely, the V. house is wonderful!’

“‘I suppose so,’ she said,’but like all the rest, it is just stone and mortar stuck up in a crowded, noisy street, and the newspapers blow up around the door.’

“Then she stopped, and seeing how disappointed I was, patted me on the arm: ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I was born and grew up in an orange grove, and you people stifle me. I want to go home.’”

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