The Saga of the Yankee Blade

The Saga of The Yankee Blade

Mmes. Ganna Walska’s Three Decades at Lotusland A California Idyl The Wedding of Ana Maria De la Guerra Re-enacted 1971

to Alfred Robinson 1836

Vel. XVII, No. 3

FALL, 1971

\

m

The Yankee Blade From an old lithograph.

THE SAGA OF THE YANKEE BLADE

By Isaac Bonilla On October 1, 1854, at 3;30 P.M., the steam packet Yankee Blade struck a reef in a dense fog off Point Arguello. In less than an hour her back was broken and she started down by the stern.

The Yankee Blade, the pride of Cornelius Vanderbilt’s Independent Line, was the fastest and newest of the San Francisco-Panania steamers.

She was a 3-decked wooden side-wheeler, 274 feet long with a beam of 34 feet, carrying three masts and rigging for auxiliary sails. Her stern was round, but she sported

no figurehead. Built by Ferine, Patterson

&

Stack of Williamsburg, New York, in 1853, she displaced 1767 tons and was propelled by an engine whose cylinder measured 6’4” with a stroke of 12’.

After her maiden voyage to Aspinwall (present-day Colon), Panama, in December, she sailed from New York for the Pacific on February 2, 1854, and arrived in San Francisco on May 4th, operating between San Francisco and Panama for the Independent Opposition Line and the Independent Steamship Company until she was wrecked.

COMPETITION AMONG STEAMSHIP LINES KEEN In the 1850’s, at the height of the gold rush, competition among the Pacific Coast lines was very keen, three companies in particular being in volved in a race for both incoming and outgoing passengers. The latter, predominently successful miners loaded with gold or businessmen returning east to purchase goods for sale in the gold rush areas. These three lines were the Pacific Mail, the Nicaragua Steamship Line, and the Independent Op position Line, later called the Independent Line, and sometimes referred to as the Vanderbilt Line. On September 20, 1853, the Independent Line’s Uncle Sam arrived in San Francisco, having sailed from New York on June 22nd with 100 passengers. One steamer, however, does not make a line, and Commodore Vanderbilt proceeded to buy the Yankee Blade while she was still under construction, to serve on the San Francisco-Panama run.

The Independent Opposition Line consisted of all new steamships except the Commodore’s yacht, the North Star, which was converted to passenger service. Although competition between steamship lines was the order of the day, the San Francisco newspaper Alta California commented on July 8, 1854, that “It was pleasant to observe that in the rivalry of opposition be tween the lines of steamships running between Panama and San Francisco, the paramount duties of humanity and courtesy are not forgotten by the agents of the companies,” for when the Yankee Blade arrived at Acapulco on May 6, 1854, with a large number of passengers who had been without

_1_

water for some days, fresh water was obtained from the tanks of the ri\ al Pacific Mail Steamship Company.

From the start the Yankee Blade was a proud ship, very popular with gold seekers bound for San Francisco. Drawings show a clipper-style bow, rakish stacks and a large mainsail supplementing the side wheels. In addition, she was armed with a 4” brass cannon of 700 pounds mounted on a wheeled carriage, since in 1854 the harbor of Acapulco was under seige. Quoting from a memorandum by the ship’s purser, the Alta California of July 2, 1854, published the following: The Independent Opposition steamship “Yankee Blade,” Henry Randall commander, sailed from San Francisco June 1st, at P.M., and passed the “Sierra Nevada” bound for San Juan, the same night at 11 o’clock. The “John L. Stephens starting about 30 minutes after us kept in company nearly 60 hours, when we lost sight of her on the starboard beam. On the 4th, owing to a derangement of the force pump, we ran 14 hours with only one boiler . . . Arrived at Panama 2^^ o’clock the morning of the 14th, enabling our passengers to reach Aspinwall the same day, being but 11 miles mule travel on the Isthmus.

Sailed from Panama on the 17th, at 9^/4 P.M. with 400 passengers and Wells Fargo & Co.’s and Adams & Co.’s express. Encountered severe head winds nearly all the way and arrived San Francisco July 1st at 51/2 P.M. On September 30, 1854, the Alta California listed shipment of treasure on the following steamers: per Sonora, via Panama, SI,249,770; per Cortez, via Nicaragua, $838,968; per Yankee Blade, $213,000. The following day the Alta California commented on the large number of people leaving the state:

2,200 PASSENGERS IN ONE DAY Twenty-two hundred passengers left the city yesterday in the three steamers bound for the Atlantic states. Out of our population this leaves considerable of a vacuum. Most of these are from the mining regions and having made theirs are returning to their families in the east. Due to the rate war on steamship travel, the miners seem to be taking ad vantage of the low fares east. It is rather a difficult matter to talk against low fares, but it does seem as though the present rates are impoverish ing the country, while the steamship companies can make but little by them. We think there should be a difference in fares with the lower rates being westward so as to increase the population of California.

Thus the stage had been set: three steamers sailing at the same hour, all loaded with treasure and returning miners all probably carrying their

2—

personal fortunes in money belts on their persons. The departing scene at the wharves was described as "The usual amount of excitement . . . the usual quantity of champagne was drunk, and the usual number of good-byes given and returned.” During the excitement two Chinese being unloaded from a nearby ship fell overboard and one drowned. In another accident about the time the steamers departed, a hackman driving furiously on Jackson Street wharf struck a pedestrian, breaking both his legs.

News travelled slowly in those days, and though the Yankee Blade had already been wrecked, the news was not received until October 10, and the October 7th issue of the Alta California commented on the rumor that the three steamers were racing for Panama with large bets being placed on the outcome, and that the famous hoodlums of the day, the “Sydney Ducks,” were suspected of hiring another vessel to overtake and board one of the three treasure ships. On October 10 the Alta California carried the story of the wrecked Yankee Blade with a headline reading TOTAL LOSS OF THE ‘YANKEE BLADE’ — THIRTY LIVES LOST — $153,000 IN SPECIE LOST. — TERRIBLE SCENES ABOARD. An editorial column appeared alongside the lead story which reads in part: It is probable that many more lives have been lost than we have any account of. In the confusion which would necessarily exist at the time, many, without doubt, died and left no sign, were tossed, jostled, or jumped overboard, and lie in the unmarked, unknown graves of ocean, with the beating dashing surges for their requiem. The terrible scenes that are detailed equal in horror any description we have ever heard.

During the excitement, the groans, the prayers, the wailings and the curses, the howling of the winds, and the constant dread of immediate, general destruction a gang of howling thieves and villains were ranging over the ship, robbing, assaulting and, it is even said, murdering the frightened, suffering passengers. It is even hinted that the wreck was caused by a premeditated design on the part of this band of worse than murderers, who hoped to make themselves wealthy by the loss of the lives and properties of others. It is said that some of this gang came up in the Goliah and can be identified. If so, it is to be hoped that the law will reach them, and that punishment adequate, if possible, to their crimes may be meted out to them.

We are informed by passengers on whom we can rely that Capt.

Randall acted during the whole disaster with much coolness and bravery.

He went ashore as soon as possible, for the purpose of finding a place where the passengers could be landed, and it is said that he found it impossible to get the crew to row him off again, which accounts for the otherwise singular circumstance that he was absent from the ship during the night. We cannot believe that Capt. Randall is the man to desert his ship in time of danger ....

—3—

S153,000 KNOWN TREASURE ABOARD According to James A. Gibbs in his Shipwrecks of the Pacific Coast, “The Yankee Blade’s cargo of gold has been estimated at anywhere from $153,000 to $7 million; her loss of life from fifteen up into the hundreds.”

He goes on to explain that “Aboard were 819 passengers, 63 women and and children among them, 120 crew members and an unknown number of stowaways. Records say she had aboard $153,000 in treasurer

nuggets and gold dust, all fortunately insured. Just how much uninsured treasure was aboard will never be known.” Gibbs goes on to say that the dead were buried in a mass grave on the cliffs above Point Pedernal, commonly known as Saddle Rocks, but to my knowledge this burial spot has never been located.

Many were the headlines and investigations following the wreck, and much testimony of survivors printed. Much was written about the recovery of various monies and jewelry stolen from the wreck. Walker Tompkins, Santa Barbara News-Press historian, has written articles on the Yankee Blade and in one story he mentions a decoration — a large carved wooden eagle — that had adorned the deck house of the ship, and had been lost when the deck house broke up. Legend has it that this eagle was picked up off Santa Rosa Island by some Santa Barbara fishermen and returned to the mainland where it was traded to a local saloon keeper named Jose Lobero. Lobero at that time was dreaming of building an opera house in Santa Barbara and when it was completed in 1872 he had the eagle placed over the proscenium, where it remained until the old opera house was torn down and the eagle disappeared.

Captain Randall was severely criticized by many as was the Independent Steamship Line which returned survivors to San Francisco and then refunded the monly a quarter of their fares. In a letter to the editor of the Alta Califor nia, a Mr. J. B. Goddard wrote,“I feel that Capt. Randall did all that he could, or that could be expected of him or any man on the occasion, and the calamity is severe enough upon him without the addition of unfounded aspersions from men not accustomed to a ship and the emergencies of a wreck.

The steam tug Caroline returned to San Francisco from the wreck on October 21, 1854, and reported difficulties in reaching the lost treasure.

The wreck had drifted on shore, leaving the engines in about 11 fathoms of water. The rock on which the ship struck is about six feet under water. If the ship had gone twenty feet on either side of the rock, it would have cleared easily. On November 26, the pilot boat Dancing Feather returned to port from the wreck with the following report in part:

_4_

DIVERS FIND BRASS CANON She took down divers, with all the necessary submarine apparatus for the purpose of recovering the lost treasure. The weather, it seems, had been very unfavorable for the undertaking, the divers finding it extremely difficult to carry on their operations on account of the extra ordinary heavy swell injuring the armor very much against the rocks at the bottom. No portion of the hull remains. The machinery is still there. A brass cannon was seen on the bottom, but they were unable to get it. It is a very valuable one, and it is said it was exhibited at the “Great Exhibition” at New York, and cost originally SI,150. It is re ported that the boxes of specie have been recovered, the amount of which could not be ascertained.

The cannon was recovered on September 14, 1969, by a diving team composed of Harvey Clemens and Richard Smith of Santa Maria and H. W. Anderson of Lompoc. Other bits of personal belongings, port hole covers and parts of the driving wheels have been recovered. This again is another story in itself.

On November 28, 1854, the amount of treasure recovered by the Dancing Feather was revised to read S70,000 instead of $68,000, showing— according to newspaper reports—a total of $104,000 recovered of insured specie. There is still $49,000 unrecovered, plus an unknown amount carried in money belts on persons. Legend again has it that many of the ruffians who stowed away were so heavily loaded with stolen loot that when they went overboard to swim ashore, they immediately sank from sight.

So ends the saga of the Yankee Blade. In my opinion, both the owners and the captain were to blame for the disaster. Testimony points out she was racing with a $5,000 bet on the outcome, that she was running full ahead when she struck the rock 300 yards offshore in 9 fathoms and was driven half her length into the reef. As for the ruffians aboard, all departing steamships from the gold fields had to contend with this problem.

—5

1938

Mme. Ganna Walska

—6—

MME. GANNA WALSKA’S THREE DECADES AT LOTUSLAND

By Patrick Mahony Surrounded by high stucco walls in the North-Eastern part of Montecito are twenty-eight acres of cultivated gardens wherein stands the house of the chatalaine, Mme. Ganna Walska, former operatic diva and famed beauty. This will complete her thirtieth summer there, for she purchased the estate from an Englishman named Sir Humphrey Clarke in 1941. It was previously the home of the Gavitt family who bought it from the Stevens family. Mme. Walska first named it Tibetland because she wished to house a collection of Tibetan Esoterica there, but later she rechristened it Lotusland due to its containing the largest lotus pond in Southern California.

However, Cactiland would be more descriptive since the main gardens feature cactus and succulent plants from California deserts, Mexico and Lower California, Peru, Bolivia, North and South Africa and elsewhere.

The stupendous collection proves once again that Santa Barbara offers an hospitable climate to plants from widely differing latitudes and altitudes.

During her first decade here, Mme. Walska entertained socially quite a lot. Lotusland was the scene for gatherings honoring such notables as as H. R. H. Prince Peter of Greece, Mr. and Mrs. Fritz Kreisler, Arturo Toscanani, the ex-Chancellor of Austria Dr. Kurt von Schusnigg, et al. In the second decade her entertaining was restricted to an annual Fiesta recevimerUe or small intimate tea parties.

NOW LIVES MAINLY FOR HER GARDEN In the last decade the local world has seen little of Ganna Walska.

She now lives for her garden within sight of the eternal beauty of the Montecito Valley, delighting in her trees and flowers. She, who had held audiences breathless with her charm and beauty, decided to retire from public life in every way and just relax in the scene she had created for herself after years of hiring and firing gardeners and making her garden into a work of art. Of course one never relaxes if one owns a garden and in this sense Ganna Walska will never retire!

For those who have not had the pleasure of knowing Mme. Walska well, it is easy to see that she possesses that type of beauty which the years most slowly change. One feels that one is meeting with an elected spirit and to represent on paper her vivacity, buoyancy, and the gaiety that belong to her nature is difficult indeed. Hers is a heart which, in spite of all that

— 7—

time and stress can do, keeps young: hers is a gaiety that belongs to youth with its irrepressible humor and unquenchable hope. She simply will not let herself grow old!

Her amazing life and career have been threatened by melodrama and farce now and then, and she has been criticized for having ambitions that seemingly outran her talent as a singer. All the same she did make successful concert appearances. Always she managed to dazzle audiences with her beauty if she did not manage to delight the critics. She sang the lead in Pelleas and Melisande in June of 1933 at the Champs Elysees Theatre in Paris. It’s author, Maurice Maeterlinck, told me that she was one of very few singers who understood his concept of the role — that Melisande is running away from a catastrophe and is in a state of shock.

From being a very worldly woman Mme. Walska has — since settling in Santa Barbara — become the most unworldly woman I have ever known.

She now possesses that interior harmony for which we all strive but which most of us find so difficult to achieve. During our thirty years of friend ship — and Ganna Walska has a genius for friendship and comradeship — she has always responded to my temperamental Irish outbursts with an amused smile, and with everyone a quick riposte is followed by a gesture of good will. She is critical without venom, ardent without sentimentality. I feel she will always retain her hold on life through her cheerfulness, her curiosity, and her sympathy.

So today her life revolves entirely around her collection of Cacti and and water lillies. They are indeed the most diverse of plants and their diversity and surprises are everywhere at Lolusland — exploding in all manner of flowers. Let the unwonted and unexpected varieties pass before your eyes and try to appraise them! Any visitor at once grasps Mme. Walska’s dominant idea to portray the weird riches of the Cactus in her own special way.

Certain months favor a more gorgeous floral feast then others. Each plant is carefully labeled with name and land of origin. See the regiment of Cephalocereus (Mexican Old Men Cacti), the hairy equivalent of hippies among succulents, who vary from the very small to man-size. Towering in other places are the Columnar type, bristling proudly against the house walls, worshipping the sun. There are many species of Century plants (Agave) which are so often confused with Aloes. Shooting like an astro naut is a scape as high as twenty feet in some of them. There are myriads of varieties of Cacti, some easy on the eye and some uncanny, but all show gratitude to their habitat and their owner.

_8 —

Mme. Walska's favorites are tlie Aeoniums and EpiphyUums wlien in bloom, and the night-blooming Cereus, which she sometimes rises at dawn to visit. Then there are the briefly-bursting Stars of Bethlehem with tlieir constellations which correspond, to some extent, to those of the firmament, Flagstones set upon Bermuda grass welcome our steps in this part of the garden.

Sequestered near the so-called Hanging Garden, made up of many sus pended boxes of rare succulents, is the Grecian Theatre adorned with a surround of grotesque statuary. These represent demoniacal and abstract Qll rr<y esting and warning us that images, more posthuman than human — such faces may one day be born. Are they the final fruition of evil with their tightly-closed, implacable mouths and eyes like wells of malediction?

In another sundrenched part is a grove of orange, also lemon trees, are

their sombre beauty laden with fruit; while in a nearby orchard there

to be seen pear, plum, apple, almond and persimmon trees which at the that tree whose blossom time make dazzling efforts to outshine the peach petals smell like the breath of dawn!

Tucked shyly away is the finest scene to woo the eyes — the water lily pond. Hybrids from Africa, India, and Ceylon are rooted in the mud with their showy flowers of many tints ranging from red to yellow and blue — and a species of huge floating leaves on which a child is said to be able to stand. The more tender lillies are sunk in tubs, to be kept in greenhouses during winter.

Last sight should be of the swimming pool guarded by massive maneating clam shells and surrounded by beds of rare exotic plants. And not far away is the cutting garden, each bed with its own distinguishing smile— flowers of every imaginable hue. This part of the garden reminds one that we live in a world which is now more prolific with flowers than formerly, that they are constantly being developed with new methods of floriculture.

Madame Walska is thus passing the evening of her life by broadening the acreage of happiness and natural beauty through making a garden all her own. For in wrapping her interests in plants and flowers she keeps her heart young. This is the way she finds all, or nearly all, the forms which nature lends to the great dream of love, to the yearning for beauty which stirs within every one of us.

9—

F

A Turn-of'the-Century photo of Mill Valley and Mt. Tamalpais showing >5 the line of “the crookedesl railway in the world” and the “Tavern near the summit of the mountain. The original Tavern burned to the ground in 1923, but the railroad was not abamloned tinlill 1930 following a disasterous mountain fire the year before. Carusi’s house is shown in the upper left of picture.

— 10 —

1

i

A CALIFORNIA IDYL The first time I saw Carusi she was standing on the wide uncovered porch of her little redwood mountain cottage, looking down at the approach ing crowd of chattering, merrymaking friends who were slowly plodding their way up the steep hill from the railroad station in Mill Valley.

Carusi’s house was the last but one on the mountain, for after Adeline Knapp’s, came the steep final ascent to the summit.

From the front of the house where the open porch was located, you could look down over the tops of the tall redwood trees to the village below, and beyond the village, half a dozen miles or so, to Sausalito at the end of the Marin peninsula, and beyond that, across the Golden Gate to the terraced hills of San Francisco.

The atmosphere was clear, and except for the chatter and laughter of the nearing crowd, it was still. When you listened you could occasionally hear the far-away whistle of a steam train, or the plaintive notes of a meadow lark across the brown and olive eastern flank of the mountain.

The air was filled with the pungent fragrance of chapporal and eucalyp tus, and the good, sweet smell of damp earth, for the path from the road to the house had been sprinkled down in the morning.

It was Sunday, and all of us had come over from the City aboard the old side wheeler, James M. Donahue, for a day’s outing on Mt. Tamalpais.

A half-hour ride on the narrow-gauge train had brought us from the ferry to this quiet little mountain village, and a forty-five minute hike up the winding arbored roads had finished the two-and-a-half hour journey from our homes in San Francisco.

“Welcome, you Skaliwags!” cried Carusi in her rich contralto voice, as she threw wide her arms in a great gesture of embrace which seemed ample for all of us.

There were a scant fifty yards yet to climb, but the day was already warm, and to city folk used to cable cars, the steep rutted clay roads made going hard. There was much puffing and wheezing, some of it for effect, but the odor of baked beans which wafted our way seemed a tantalizing promise of reward for our climb, and made the last stretch worth the effort.

Everyone was hungry, and it was with shouts of approval and feigned surprise that Arthur, Carusi’s husband, was greeted as he emerged from the kitchen, clad in long white apron, tall chef’s cap, and a kerchief around his neck. He waved a big wooden spoon in one hand and in the other he carried

— 11 —

a mammoth pot of beans which he lost no time in ladeling out onto paper plates.

There was no ceremony in finding places to sit: on the steps, on rocks, stumps, and on the bank in front of the porch.

Soon the aroma of coffee filtered through from the kitchen, and presently came Arthur again, this time with a huge granite coffee pot from which he deftly poured a liberal “dose”, as he called it, of the steaming amber fluid for all who held up their cups.

This picnic was a weekly occurrence in the summer time at Arthur and Carusi’s, and the friends who came were a happy, carefree and motley lot: musicians, poets, painters, newspapermen, novelists, playwrites, and just plain

people.

Each person brought a token of food, which was stored away for another weekend.

Carusi was a musician, a composer, and a genius. She weighed 275 pounds according to the village grocer who claimed to have cast a furtive glance at the scales one day, but Carusi never admitted to more than 200.

She had a heart of gold, as big as herself — for her friends, but for others, she held a cold aloofness tinged with suspicion.

She could be loquatious, even eloquent, when she liked you, and as silent and austere as a sphinx when she didn’t.

She combined the quick wit and good humor but moodiness of her Irish mother and the passionate impulsiveness of her Italian father. Though convent-reared, she was now a Theosophist, with a paradoxical admixture of Christian Science and Spiritualism. She read the books of both sects with equal fervor and enthusiasm — quoting liberally from each, what she ac cepted, condemning what she objected to. She was a numerologist, and never made a decision without first tallying the hours of day, or the days of month, or totaling the digits of a house number or a railway car.

Carusi wore her long hair braided and wound around her head.

Her favorite dresses were long, full-cut maroon or olive velvet, with ample sleeves and a square neck. They had no trimming, but she always wore a great, heavy silver chain girdle which buckled in front with a me dallion as big as your palm; the ends, like tassels hanging to her knees.

Her features were large, round, and full, but there was a humor and kindliness about her mouth and eyes that endeared her to you when you were once accepted” by her as a friend.

— 12 —

She played the harp and the piano with equal skill, feeling and power: this last, a remarkable fact considering her phenomenally small and dainty hands. When she sang in her rich, bell-like and sonorous voice, the rafters of the little cottage trembled.

Carusi was as trusting and naive with her friends as a child, but with strangers she was as wary as a fawn. She was completely dominated by her superstitions, which she seemed to have acquired from the folklore of the nations. She disliked most women, feared cals, tolerated children and loved dogs. But she loved me, a child of nine, with tenderness of a mother, which was an experience that had been denied her.

And it was a blssing that she liked me, for on that Sunday when I first saw her standing there on the porch with outstretched arms, my own mother had been buried but a day. I was to live with her and Arthur indefinitely while my father went off on another journey of exploration in far-away lands.

Arthur, momentarily, and as a matter of fact, perpetually, was the cook of the household. Not because Carusi couldn’t cook, for she w'as a master at the chafing dish, but because Arthur made it his life’s work to save Carusi’s hands for her music, sincerely believing her to be “the world’s greatest harpist”, a phrase which he invariably used in introducing her at recitals.

Arthur was himself a genius, but he had one characteristic that few of those rare humans geniuses, I mean — are blessed with; and that was unselfishness. I never saw him do a selfish thing in all the two years I was with them. He was an historian and a writer, currently editing a magazine called the Pandex of the Press. He presented a strange contrast with his wife, which occasionally elicited trite and obvious remarks, since he tipped the scales at something under 120 pounds and was tall, gaunt and angular. His store clothes hung loosely upon his skinny frame, but you forgot his awk ward appearance when you looked into his large, expressive, blue eyes. They, with a prominent Roman nose, high cheek bones and a broad intelligent forehead, were his dominant features, and you remembered him as a positive and commanding personality. He was, despite his kindliness and gentleness, shrewd and analytical, but witty.

He had a passion for reform, was a socialist by persuasion, but not by affiliation, for politically and socially he steered clear of entangling alliances of all kinds.

J

Arthur and Carusi were perpetually poor — so poor, indeed, that they had acquired certain habits of dress and diet that bordered on eccentricity.

Yet, when analyzed, their habits, born of necessity, were full of common sense. They got the most for their money, wasted nothing, and made every-

— 13 —

ihing go further and last longer than average mortals would dream possible.

But they were neither penurious nor avaricious. On the eonliary. they were often prodigal where friends were concernd: always generous to a fault; becoming the objects of the criticism of friends that they were poor because of their generosity, not in spite of it.

The living room at Carusi’s was the feature of the house. It occupied most of the floor area. At one end w-as a huge brick fireplace. Across the south front was a row of French windows opening out to the valley and the sparkling blue bay beyond. You could see the tiny while specks on the water that you knew were ferry boats or river steamers, or the long ribbon of smoke that you guessed came from some incoming Orient liner.

At night the view was enthralling, with the myriad of tiny sparkling lights of distant cities, the slow, regular flash from the Alcatraz light, as it revolved, casting its powerful beam completely around the bay. Nearby, scattered among the trees, or standing like lonely sentinels on some barren hilltop, were the homes of neighbors, but most of them too far for sound to carry.

By the light of candles and the dancing reflections from the fireplace, Carusi would play on the harp or one the great Knabe concert grand piano, with its specially constructed keyboard, for her power was fatal to an ordi nary instrument. Her agile fingers would run over the strings or the keys in a miracle of melody, hours on end — melody often improvised, but often, too, we would hear the nostaligc strains of some of the old classics I had been brought up on at home.

On such nights I would lie on the big polar bear rug on the floor before the fireplace, my head resting on the hard stuffed head of the bear, my fin gers casually tracing the outlines of its cold teeth and its great open jaws.

Nearby would be dozing Zeeba, Carusi’s collie, and Togo, Arthur’s dachs hund, from whom there eminated a pleasant and familiar animal odor that somehow gave a small boy a wonderful sense of security and companionship.

In an alcove off the big room Arthur would be writing on his battered old Underwood by the light of a green glass student lamp standing on a pile of encyclopedias.

I loved those evenings more than any other adventures of my childhood.

They gave me time to build vast air castles, to plan, to meditate, as a child will, on the joys of today and the mysteries of tomorrow.

I would be awakened from my reveries only when it was time for bed— which might be at any hour, depending upon the mood of Carusi, or when

— 14 —

●*»

f *

,.9<Vvv. ●●

r^e knarled old live oak tree near Carusis house ivhere later the platform was built as a “spare room” for weekend guests.

O' she would bring down both of suddenly, and without a hint of warnin her hands on the piano in a tremendous crescendo.

For long spells, sometimes weeks on end, Carusi would be working on a movement of her symphony, or the score of her opera, and then woe betide anyone who so much as spoke. It was a house of silence, except for the halting, repeated bars of new strains and melodies, as Carusi would write down the notes

play the measure, correct, repeat, listen, transpose, tran-

scribe and play again.

Finally, when the movement or the act was finished there would be a tremendous let-down. Then there was laughter and noise and an exaggerated exuberance that was like nothing so much as boys and girls bursting forth in the pandemonium of recess after a morning of intensive drill and study in a well-disciplined and formal classroom.

There would be a party and friends and neighbors by the score, and everybody entered into the spirit of the occasion, which was marked by abandon and freedom.

These gay times would occur three or four times a year, and when word of them got around Bohemian San Francisco there would flock to Mill — 15 —

Valley such personages as Maren Froelich, Guisseppe Cadenasso, Chris Jorgensen, and William Keith, all prominent artists, and Arnold Genthe, the pictorialist, Ambrose Bierce the critic, Louis Stellman, the hunchback journalist, toast of Chinatown, George Sterling, Oakland poet and almost a double for Arthur, and Robert Cowan, later to become California’s top

bibliophile.

Other visitors from time to time would include Jimmy Swinnerton, creator of the comic strip “Little Jimmy” in the Hearst papers. Will Irwin, newspaperman soon to join the staff of the New York Sun, Chester Bailey Fernald, the author and close neighbor of Arthur and Carusi on the Moun tain, Frank Norris and Jack London.

On the slope of the hill beside the house was a great knarled live oak tree in whose spreading branches Arthur had built a platform some ten or twelve feet above the ground. On this platform the overflow of visitors on a weekend would stretch their sleeping bags.

To the tree house I would always go when it became the guest room, for I loved to lie there under the stars and listen to the fabulous stories that were exchanged, far into the night, with no illumination but the lacy pattern of moonlight filtered through the branches above us.

We had plenty of competition from owls and mocking birds, and occasionally a lonely coyote from across the valley howling at the moon.

Years later, in New York, at the old Waldorf-Astoria, a group of those self-same Bohemians gathered on the top floor of that fabulous old hostelery in the rooms of the Rocky Mountain Club and organized an association we called the “California Exiles”. Who were the founders and leaders of that New York group but Arthur and Carusi, then living in a high stooped brown stone front house on West 59lh Street.

Nearly all of us eventually gravitated back to California and to the Bay area, and Arthur and Carusi moved to the Berkeley hills north of the Uni versity. Then in the early twenties came the disasterous Fire which cut a black path clear across the hillside, leaving in its wake two heartbroken people, for Carusi had lost every piece of music she had ever written or owned, and Arthur had lost the manuscript of his life’s work, the “History of the American Labor Movement.”

Both of them died soon afterward, for though each was an individualist one could not live without the other; but they lived in the hearts of their countless friends who knew and loved them in their gay years around the C.M. — As remembered in 1948 turn of the Century.

— 16 —

THE WEDDING OF ANA MARIA DE LA GUERRA TO ALFRED ROBINSON 1836 — RE-ENACTED 1971 On Sunday, August 1, 1971, members of the Santa Barbara Historical Society responded to an invitation to attend the re-enactment of the wedding of Ana Maria De la Guerra to Alfred Robinson which took place in January, 1836 at the Old Mission. The reception was held at the Casa De la Guerra, a short block from the Museum where the 1971 enactment was held.

The patio of the Museum was gaily decorated with Chinese lanterns and palm fronds and an abundance of flowers to simulate the original affair.

Father Virgil Cordano, narrator for the event, stood beneath a pepper tree in the patio and read a script using the exact words of Richard Henry Dana as he described the wedding 135 years ago in his classic book “Two Years Before the Mast”.

Kendy Malek portrayed the bride and Richard Weiss the groom. A A Mariachi Band provided accompainment for the singing, and a tape recording of the Mission bells simulated the very hells which pealed so long ago.

Mrs. Edwin W. Deuter was chairman of the event with a committee consisting of Mrs. Wilson Forbes, Mrs. Godwin Pelissero, Mrs. William Russell, Mrs. Neal Robinson, Mrs. Henry Griffiths, museum director. Col. Henry deB Forbes, Fred Walther and Courtenay Monsen.

Mr. Walther constructed an exact replica of the Mission entrance door through which the wedding party emerged following the simulated ceremony.

More than 300 members attended the event which was held in the late after noon and early evening. Champagne and hors d’oeuvres brought the pageant to a close.

— 17 —

WELCOME TO NEW MEMBERS FOR JULY, AUGUST, AND SEPTEMBER, 1971

STUDENT Mr. Michael William Heskett

Mr. Anthony Sean Molen Mr. Saxon Tino Molen Mr. Robert Mullins

Miss Kendy Malek

ACTIVE Mr. James M. Evans

Mr. Bard J. Salcido Miss Edith Webster

Mrs. Graham Forsyth

Mr. Richard Weiss

The Holmes Book Company Mr. Newton Kalman

Mrs. Clyde Wullbrandt Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Zeitlin

SUSTAINING Mrs. J. S. Dabbs

Mr. and Mrs. Byron B. Johnson

Dr. Tom C. de Berry

Commander Dudley J. Kierulff Mr. and Mrs. William Olivarius

Mrs. Wendell A. Eardley Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Hefner, III Mr. Harry B. Henderson

Mr. Jack O’Reilly Mrs. James W. Powers Mrs. Sanford Price

CONTRIBUTING Mrs. Jacques Derville

Mr. and Mrs. Frank R. Miller, Jr.

ASSOCIATE Mrs. Robert Strahorn

IN MEMORIAM Mr. John Murra)' Forbes Mr. Robert L. Lewis

Mrs. George McMurray Mr. Ulric Trussell

— 18 —

SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY OFFICERS Francis Price

President First Vice-President ..

Hugh J. Weldon Mrs. Edwin Deuter

Second Vice-President

Miss Lillian Fish

Secretary Treasurer

William K. Serumgard .. Mrs. Henry Griffiths

Museum Director Editor of Noticias

Courtenay Monsen

DIRECTORS Mrs. William B. Azbell

Edward Kemble

Mrs. M. Cameron Conkey

Dr. Edward Lamb

Rev. Virgil Cordano, O.F.M. Mrs. Edwin Deuter Miss Lillian Fish

Patrick Lloyd-Butler Mrs. Charles Piper Francis Price

Col. Henry deB. Forbes, Jr.

Russell A. Ruiz

Whitney T. Genns Mrs. W. Edwin Gledhill

Hugh J. Weldon

W. K. Serumgard

John Jordano, Jr. HONORARY DIRECTORS Thomas More Storke

John Galvin

HISTORICAL SOCIETY MEMBERSHIPS Classes of membership: Benefactor, $5000.00 or more; Life, $1000.00; Palron, $500.00; Fellow, $100.00; Associate, $50.00; Contributing, $25.00; Sustaining, $10.00; Active, $7.50; Student, $5.00. Dues are tax deductible.

Mailing Address: 136 East De la Guerra Street

●

Santa Barbara, California 93101

Contributions to the Society are tax exempt.

— 19 —

Non^Profil Org. QUARTERLY BULLETIN

U. $. Potloge

OF THE

PA I D

SANTA BARBARA HISTORICAL SOCIETY

Santo Borbara, Calif.

Parmit No. 534

136 EAST DE LA GUERRA STREET SANTA BARBARA. CALIFORNIA 93101