Part 15 (1/2)
The first newspaper published in California was a small sheet called ”The Californian,” started at Monterey in the Fall of 1846, and printed half in English, half in Spanish. Needless to say, its conductors were Americans.[78] They had discovered in the ruins of the Mission, and used for this purpose, an old press which the Spaniards had imported in the day of their rule for printing the edicts of the Governor. In the following year ”The Californian” was removed to San Francisco. Many other newspapers sprang into existence after the discovery of gold, especially the ”Alta California,” which became the leading journal on the Pacific Slope. By the end of 1850 there were fifteen newspapers in the State, including six daily papers in San Francisco, and that excellent home and farm weekly, the ”California Farmer.”
As for the buoyant, confident tone of these Pioneer papers, exaggerated though it was, it only reflected the general feeling. So early as November, 1851, a meeting was held in San Francisco to advocate the building of a railroad which should connect the Atlantic with the Pacific.
In June, 1850, the ”Sacramento Transcript” warned Europe as follows: ”The present is the most remarkable period the world has ever been called upon to pa.s.s through.... The nations are centering hitherward. Europe is poor, California is rich, and equilibrium is inevitable. Four years will pa.s.s, and ours will be the most popular State in the Union. She is putting in the Keystone of Commerce, and concentrating the trade of the world.”
Moreover, busy as the Pioneers were, their reading was not confined to newspapers. Bret Harte said of them: ”Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed their literary recreation, and the sale of the better cla.s.s of periodicals was singularly great. Nor was their taste confined to American literature. The ill.u.s.trated and satirical English journals were as frequently seen in California as in Ma.s.sachusetts; and the author records that he has experienced more difficulty in procuring a copy of 'Punch' in an English provincial town than was his fortune at 'Red Dog' or 'One-Horse Gulch.'”
[Ill.u.s.tration: MAIN STREET, NEVADA CITY, 1852
From a photograph in the possession of Colonel Thomas L. Livermore]
This statement has been questioned, but it is borne out by the contemporary records and publications. The ”Atlantic Monthly,” for example, was regularly advertised in the California papers, and the ”Atlantic” at that time was essentially a literary magazine. In the list of its contributors published in the ”California Farmer” are the names of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Parsons, Whittier, Prescott, Mrs.
Stowe, Motley, Herman Melville, C. C. Felton, F. J. Child, Edmund Quincy, J. T. Trowbridge, and G. W. Curtis. The London ”Ill.u.s.trated News” had a particularly large sale among the Pioneers, although the California price was a dollar a copy.
The s.h.i.+fting character of the population, and the fact, already mentioned, that, almost to a man, the Pioneers expected to return to the East within a few months, or, at the latest, within a year or two,--these reasons discouraged the founding of permanent inst.i.tutions such as libraries and colleges; but even in this direction something was done at an early date.
The rush of immigration began in the Spring of 1849, and within less than a year a meeting had been held at San Francisco to establish a State college; a State library had been founded at San Jose; mercantile library a.s.sociations had been started both in San Francisco and Sacramento, and an auction sale of books had been held in the latter city.
In September, 1850, an audience gathered at Stockton to hear a lecture upon so recondite a subject as the ”State of Learning from the Fall of Rome to the Fall of Constantinople.” In June, 1851, a San Francisco firm advertised the receipt by the latest steamer of ten thousand new books, including the complete works of d.i.c.kens and Was.h.i.+ngton Irving. In November, 1851, a literary society called The California Inst.i.tute was organized in San Francisco, and in April, 1856, some one entertained a hall full of people by giving an account of a lecture which Cardinal Wiseman had delivered in London upon the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients and Moderns.
Before the close of 1856 numerous boarding-schools had been established, such as the Alameda Collegiate Inst.i.tute for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, the Stockton Female Seminary, the Female Inst.i.tute at Santa Clara, the Collegiate Inst.i.tute at Benicia, the Academy of Notre Dame at San Jose.
The ”legitimate drama,” and even Shakspere, flourished in California. In the Summer of 1850 Charles R. Thorne was playing at Sacramento, and in the Autumn ”Richard III” and ”Macbeth” were on the boards there. In the Fall of 1851 two theatres were open in San Francisco, ”Oth.e.l.lo” being the play at one, ”Ernest Maltravers” at the other. In 1852 ”The Hunchback” was performed in the same city with Miss Baker, the once-famous Philadelphia actress, in the leading part. There was no exaggeration in the remark made by the ”Sacramento Transcript” in May, 1850: ”Nowhere have we seen more critical theatrical audiences than those which meet nightly in Sacramento.... Every mind is wide awake, and the discriminating eye of an impartial public easily selects pure worth from its counterfeit.”
An amusing incident, which would have delighted Charles Lamb, and which shows the youthfulness, the humor, and, equally, the decorum of the California audience, is thus related by an eye-witness: ”One night at the theatre a countryman from Pike, sitting in the 'orchestra' near the stage, and becoming uncomfortably warm, took off his coat. Thereupon the gallery-G.o.ds roared and hissed,--stopping the play until the garment should be resumed. Some one touched the man on the shoulder and explained the situation. The hydra watched and waited. s.h.i.+rt-sleeves appeared to be refractory, and a terrific roar came from the hydra. s.h.i.+rt-sleeves, quailing at the sound, and at the angry looks and gestures of those who sat near him, started up with an air of coerced innocence, and resumed his _toga virilis_. The yell of triumph that arose from the 'G.o.ds' in their joyful sense of victory was beyond the description of tongue or pen.”[79]
It was remarked at an early date that nothing really satisfied the Pioneers unless it was the best of its kind that could be obtained, whether that kind were good or bad. Thus San Francisco, as many travellers observed, had the prettiest courtesans, the truest guns and pistols, the purest cigars and the finest wines and brandies to be found in the United States. The neatness and good style which marked the best hotels and restaurants prove the natural refinement of the people. Bret Harte has spoken of the old family silver which figured at a certain coffeehouse in San Francisco; and the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, who, being a minister, may perhaps be cited as an expert on this subject, was impressed by the good food and the excellent service which the traveller in California enjoyed:--
”Pa.s.sing hither and thither on the little steamers to Marysville, to Stockton, to the towns north of the Bay, where often the number of pa.s.sengers did not exceed thirty, we have seen again and again a table most neatly set, the silver bright and clean, the meals well prepared and good, without any nonsense of show dishes, the servants tidy, quiet and respectful,--the whole entertainment more rational and better than we have ever seen on Mississippi steamboats, or on those of the Atlantic Coast.”[80]
The steamers that plied up and down the Sacramento were ”fast, elegant, commodious.” In July, 1851, some one gave an aristocratic evening party in the heart of the mountains, fifty miles from Marysville. A long artificial bower had been constructed under which were spread tables ornamented with flowers, and loaded with delicious viands, turkeys at twenty dollars apiece, pigs as costly, jellies, East India preserves, and ice cream. Some of the guests came from a great distance, ten, twenty, and even thirty miles. ”No gamblers were present,” said the local paper which gave an account of the affair, thus showing how quickly the social line was drawn.
But even if we regard the beginnings of education and literature in California as somewhat meagre, it is otherwise with religion. Those who have looked upon the early California society as essentially lawless and immoral will be surprised to find how large and how potent was the religious element. Churches sprang up almost as quickly as gambling houses. The Baptists have the credit of erecting, in the Summer of '49, the first church building; but Father William Taylor, the Methodist, was a close second. Father Taylor set out to build a church with his own hands.
Every morning he crossed the Bay from San Francisco to San Antonio Creek and toiled with his axe in a grove of redwoods until he had cut down and hewn into shape the needed timber. This he transported in a sloop to the city, and then, with the aid of his congregation, constructed the church which was finished in October, '49. By September, 1850, the following congregations had been formed in San Francisco: one Catholic, four Methodist (one being for negroes), one Presbyterian, one Congregational, one Baptist, one Episcopal, one Union Church. Three separate services were held at the Catholic Church, which was the largest, one in English, one in Spanish, one in French. Two years later a Jewish synagogue was established.
In July, 1850, five Episcopal clergymen met at San Francisco to create the diocese of California, and in the following month Dr. Horatio Southgate was elected Bishop. In the same year the San Francis...o...b..ble Society was formed, and the next year, the ”California Christian Advocate,” a Methodist paper, began publication.
At Sacramento, in the Spring of 1850, the Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, Congregationalists and Presbyterians were holding regular services, and church building had begun. In July, 1851, a Methodist College at San Jose was incorporated; and in the same month the San Francisco papers have a long and enthusiastic account of a concert given by the children of the Baptist church there. ”It was like an oasis in the desert for weary travellers,” remarked one of them. A Sacramento paper speaking of a school festival in that city said: ”No bull-fight, horse-race or card-table ever gave so much pleasure to the spectators.”
A miner, writing from Stockton on a Sunday morning in October, 1851, says, ”The church bell is tolling, and gayly-dressed ladies are pa.s.sing by the window.”
The congregations at the early religious meetings were extremely impressive, being composed almost wholly of men, and of men young, vigorous and sincere. As Professor Royce remarks: ”n.o.body gained anything by hypocrisy in California, and consequently there were few hypocrites.
The religious coldness of a larger number who at home would have seemed to be devout did not make the progress of the churches in California less sure.” And he speaks of the impression which these early congregations of men made upon his mother. ”She saw in their countenances an intensity of earnestness that made her involuntarily thank G.o.d for making so grand a being as man.”
It has often been remarked that in times of unbelief and lax morality there is always found a small element in the community which maintains the standard of faith and conduct with a strictness wholly alien to the period. Such was the case in the Roman Empire just before and just after the advent of the Christian religion. So, in the English Church, in its most idle, most worldly, most unspiritual days, as before the Evangelical movement, and again before the Tractarian movement, there was a small body of priests and laymen, chiefly, as in the Roman Empire, isolated persons living in the country, who preserved the torch of faith, humility and self-denial, and served as a nucleus for the new party which was to revive and reform the Church. Extremes can be met only by extremes. Intense worldliness can be vanquished only by intense unworldliness; unbelief fosters faith among a few; and the more loose the habits of the majority, the more severe will be the practice of the minority.
This was abundantly seen in California. As Bret Harte himself said: ”Strangely enough, this grave materialism flourished side by side with--and was even sustained by--a narrow religious strictness more characteristic of the Pilgrim Fathers of a past century than the Western Pioneers of the present. San Francisco was early a city of churches and church organizations to which the leading men and merchants belonged. The lax Sundays of the dying Spanish race seemed only to provoke a revival of the rigors of the Puritan Sabbath. With the Spaniard and his Sunday afternoon bull-fight scarcely an hour distant, the San Francisco pulpit thundered against Sunday picnics. One of the popular preachers, declaiming upon the practice of Sunday dinner-giving, averred that when he saw a guest in his best Sunday clothes standing shamelessly upon the doorstep of his host, he felt like seizing him by the shoulder and dragging him from that threshold of perdition.”
An example of this narrow, not to say Pharisaic point of view was commented upon as follows by the ”San Francisco Daily Herald” of February 3, 1852: ”Of all countries in the world California is the least favorable to cant and bigotry.... It is not surprising that a general feeling of loathing should have been created by an article which recently appeared in a so-called religious newspaper having the t.i.tle of the 'Christian Advocate,' commenting in terms of invidious and slanderous malignity on the fact of Miss Coad, recently attached to the American Theatre, being engaged to sing in the choir of the Pacific Church.”
This is well enough, though put in an extravagant and rather boyish way; but the writer then goes on in the true Colonel Starbottle manner as follows: ”With the conductors of a clerical press it is difficult to deal.
Under the cloak of piety they do not hesitate to libel and malign, and at the same time not recognizing the responsibility of gentlemen [Colonel Starbottle's phrase], and being therefore not fit subjects of attack in retort, one feels almost ashamed in checking their stupidity or reproving their falsehood.” And so on at great length.