The Native Son Part 1

The Native Son.

by Inez Haynes Irwin.

The only drawback to writing about California is that scenery and climate--and weather even--will creep in. Inevitably anything you produce sounds like a cross between a railroad folder and a circus program. You can't discuss the people without describing their background; for they reflect it perfectly; or their climate, because it has helped to make them the superb beings they are. A tendency manifests itself in you to revel in superlatives and to wallow in italics. You find yourself comparing adjectives that cannot be compared--unique for instance. Unique is a persistent temptation. For, the rules of grammar not-withstanding, California is really the most unique spot on the earth's surface. As for adjectives like enormous, colossal, surpa.s.sing, overpowering and nouns like marvel, wonder, grandeur, vastness, they are as common in your copy as commas.

Another difficulty is that n.o.body outside California ever believes you. I don't blame them. Once I didn't believe it myself. If there was anything that formerly bored me to the marrow of my soul, it was talk about California by a regular dyed-in-the-wool Californiac. But I got mine ultimately. Even as I was irritated, I now irritate. Even as I was bored, I now bore. Ever since I first saw California, and became, inevitably, a Californiac, I have been talking about it, irritating and boring uncounted thousands. I begin placatingly enough, "Yes, I know you aren't going to believe this," I say. "Once I didn't believe it myself.

I realize that it all sounds impossible. But after you've once been there--" Then I'm off. When I've finished, there isn't an hysterical superlative adjective or a complimentary abstract noun unused in my vocabulary. I've told all the East about California. I've told many of the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they listen. Listen! did I say listen? They drink it down like a child absorbing its first fairy tale.

In another little volume devoted to the praise of California, Willie Britt is on record as saying that he'd rather be a busted lamp-post on Battery Street than the Waldorf-Astoria. I said once that I'd rather be sick in California than well anywhere else. I'm prepared to go further.

I'd rather be in prison in California than free anywhere else. San Quentin is without doubt the most delightfully situated prison in the whole world. Besides I have a lot of friends--but I won't go into that now. Anyway if I ever do get that severe jail-sentence which a long-suffering family has always prophesied for me, I'm going to pet.i.tion for San Quentin. Moreover, I would rather talk about California than any other spot on earth. I'd rather write about California than any other spot on earth. Is it possible that any Californian Chamber of Commerce has to pay a press agent? Incredible! Inexplicable! I wonder that local millionaires don't bid their entire fortune for the privilege. Now what has Willie Britt to say?

Yes, my idea of a pleasant occupation would be listing, cataloguing, inventorying, describing and--oh joy!--visiting the wonders of California. But that would be impossible for any one enthusiast to accomplish in the mere three-score-and-ten of Scriptural allotment.

Methusalah might have attempted it. But in these short-lived days, ridiculous to make a start. And so, perforce, I must share this joyous task with other and more able chroniclers. I am willing to leave the beauty of the scenery to Mary Austin, the wonder of the weather to Jesse Williams, the frenzy of its politics to Sam Blythe, the beauty of its women to Julian Street, the glory of the old San Francisco to Will Irwin, the splendor of the new San Francisco to Rufas Steele, its care-free atmosphere to Allan Dunn, if I may place my laurel wreath at the foot of the Native Son. Indeed, when it comes to the Native Son, I yield the privilege of praise to no one.

For the Native Son is an unique product, as distinctively and characteristically Californian as the gigantic redwood, the flower festival, the ferocious flea, the moving-picture film, the annual boxing and tennis champion, the golden poppy or the purple prune. There is only one other Californian product that can compare with him and that's the Native Daughter. And as for the Native Daughter---- But if I start up that squirrel track I'll never get back to the trail. Nevertheless some day I'm going to pick out a diamond-pointed pen, dip it in wine and on paper made from orange-tawny POPPY petals, try to do justice to the Native Daughter. For this inflexible moment, however, my subject is the Native Son. But if scenery and climate--and weather even--do creep in, don't blame me. Remember I warned you. Besides sooner or later I shall be sure to get back to the main theme.

In the January of 1917 I made my annual pilgrimage to California. On the train was a Native Son who was the hero of the following astonishing tale. He was one of a large family, of which the only girl had married a German, a professor in an American university. Shortly before the Great War, the German brother-in-law went back to the Fatherland to spend his sabbatical year in study at a German university. Letters came regularly for a while after the war began; then they stopped. His wife was very much worried. Our hero decided in his simple western fashion to go to Germany and find his brother-in-law. He traveled across the country, cajoled the authorities in Washington into giving him a pa.s.sport, crossed the ocean, ran the British blockade and entered the forbidden land. Straight as an arrow he went to the last address in his brother-in-law's letters. That gentleman, coming home to his lunch, tired, worried and almost penniless, found his Californian kinsman smoking calmly in his room. The Native Son left money enough to pay for the rest of the year of study and the journey home. Then he started on the long trip back.

In the English port at which his ship touched, he was mistaken for a disloyal newspaper man for whom the British Secret Service had long been seeking. He was arrested, searched and submitted to a very disquieting third degree. When they asked him in violent explosive tones what he went into Germany for, he replied in his mild, unexcited Western voice--to give his brother-in-law some money. All Europe is accustomed to crazy Americans of course, but this strained credulity to the breaking point; for n.o.body who has not tried to travel in the war countries can realize the sheer unbelievability of such guilelessness.

The British laughed loud and long. His papers were taken away and sent to London but in a few days everything was returned. A mistake had been made, the authorities admitted, and proper apologies were tendered.

But they released him with looks and gestures in which an abashed bewilderment struggled with a growing irritation.

That is a typical Native Son story.

If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York (and the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes chooses--think of that--chooses to live outside his native State!) you wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then you understand.

Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so--

For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts) of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand miles (or approximately) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical, mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native Son an air of superiority... Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch of superciliousness--very difficult to understand and much more difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely understandable and endurable when you have.

--Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph--

Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, j.a.pan among the wonder regions of the world; but nature placed California there without a.s.sistance from anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich yellow-and-violet, springtime bourgeoning which turns California into one huge Botticelli background of flower colors and sheens. I do not refer to that heavy purple-and-gold, autumn fruitage, which changes it to a theme for t.i.tian and Veronese. I am thinking particularly of those surprising phenomena left over from pre-historic eras; the "big" trees--the sequoia gigantea, which really belong to the early fairy-tales of H. G. Wells, and to those other trees, not so big but still giants--the sequoia sempivirens or redwoods, which make of California forests black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering light and solid bedded shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical cla.s.sic redwoods as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted shapes--those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground, who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the seals which frequent beach rocks close to the sh.o.r.e, a short car ride from the heart of a city as big as San Francisco.

--and this--

California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden, sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. I challenge this grey old earth to produce a strip of country more beautiful, also more poignant and catastrophic in natural connotation, than the one which includes these cypresses of Monterey. Yet this same mordant area holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold.

Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers contours of dimpled velvet bursting with a gay irridescence of wildflowers. Yet that same gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup which holds San Francis...o...b..y--a spot of Dantesque sheerness and bareness.

--and this.

This is what nature has done. But man has added his deepening touch in one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers--Spanish--erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants--French--have built in the vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can drink the soft wines of the country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as California; yet I know of no place so perfectly suited to carnival and festival.

All of this is part of the reason why you can't surprise a Californian.

This looks like respite, but there's no real relief in sight Easterners.

Keep right on reading, Californiacs!

Yes, California is beautiful.

Once upon a time, a Native Son lay dying. He did not know that he was going to die. His physician had to break the news to him. He told the Californian that the process would not be long or painful. He would go to sleep presently and when he woke up, the great journey would have been accomplished. His words fulfilled themselves. Soon the Native Son fell into a coma. When he opened his eyes he was in Paradise. He raised himself up, gave one look about and exclaimed, "What a b.o.o.b that doctor was! Whad'da he mean--Paradise! Here I am still in California."

Man has of course, here as elsewhere, chained nature; set her to toil for him. She is a willing worker everywhere, but in California she puts no stay nor stint on her productive efforts. California produces--Now up to this moment I have held myself in. Looking back on my copy I see only such meager words as "beauty", "glory", "splendor", such pale, inadequate phrases as "super-mundane fertility" and "super-solar fecundity". What use are words and phrases when one speaks of California. It is time for us to abandon them both and resort to some bright, snappy sparkling statistics.

Reader, I had to soft-pedal here. If I gave you the correct statistics, You wouldn't believe me.

So here goes!

California produces forty per cent of the gold, fifty per cent of the wheat, sixty per cent of the oranges, seventy per cent of the prunes, eighty per cent of the asparagus and (including the Native Daughters) ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths per cent of the peaches of the world. I pause to say here that none of these figures is true. They are all made up for the occasion. But don't despair! I am sure that they don't do California justice by half. Any other Californiac--with the mathematical memory which I unfortunately lack--will provide the correct data. Somebody told me once, I seem to recall, that the Santa Clara valley produces sixty per cent of the worlds prunes. But I may be mistaken. What I prefer to remember is one day's trip in that springtide of prune bloom. For hours and hours of motor speed, we glided through a snowy world that showed no speck of black bark or fleck of green leaf; a world in which the sole relief from a silent white blizzard of blossom was the blue of the sky arch, the purple of distant lupines alternating with the gold of blood-centered poppies, pouring like avalanches down hills of emerald green.

Getting out of the scenery zone only to fall into the climate zone.

Reader, it's just the same with the climate as the scenery. It's got to be done some time, so why not now?

That's what California produces in the way of scenery and fodder. So now, let's consider the climate, even if I am invading Jesse Williams's territory. For it has magical properties--that climate of California. It makes people grow big and beautiful and strenuous; it makes flowers grow big and beautiful; it makes fleas grow big and--strenuous. It offers, except in the most southern or the most mountainous regions, no such extremes of heat or cold as are found elsewhere in the country. Its marvel is of course the season which corresponds to our winter.

The visitor coming, let us say in February, from the ice-bound and frost-locked East through the flat, dreary Middle West, and stalled possibly on the way, remains glued in stupefaction to the car window.

In a very few hours he slides from the white, glittering snow-covered heights of the evergreen-packed Sierras through their purple, hazy, snow-filled depths into the sudden warmth of California.

It is like waking suddenly from a nightmare of winter to a poets or a painter's vision of spring.

Who, having seen this picture in January, could resist describing it?

Easterners, I appeal to your sense of justice.

At one side, perhaps close to the train, near hills, on which the live oaks spread big, ebon-emerald umbrellas, serpentine endlessly into the distance. On the other side, far hills, bathed in an amethystine mist, invade the horizon. Between stretches the flat green field of the valley, gashed with tawny streaks that are roads and dotted with soft, silvery bunches that are frisking new-born lambs. Little white houses, with a coquettish air of perpetual summer, flaunt long windows and wooden-lace balconies, Early roses flask pink flames here and there.

The green-black meshes of the eucalyptus hedges film the distance. The madrone, richly leaved like the laurel, reflects the sunlight from a bole glistening as though freshly carved from wet gold.

Cheer up! We're getting out of scenery and climate into

The race--a blend of many rich bloods--that California has evolved with the help of this scenery and climate is a rare brew. The physical background is Anglo-Saxon of course; and it still breaks through in the prevailing Anglo-Saxon type. To this, the Celt has brought his poetry and mysticism. To it, the Latin has contributed his art instinct; and not art instinct alone but in an infinity of combinations, the dignity of the Spaniard, the spirit of the French, the pa.s.sion of the Italian.

--into--

All the foregoing is put in, not to make it harder, but because--as a Californiac--I couldn't help it, and to show you what, in the way of a State, the Native Son is accustomed to. You will have to admit that it is some State. The emblem on the California flag is singularly apposite--it's a bear.

--oh boy!--San Francisco!

And if, in addition to being a Californian, this Native Son visiting the East for the first time, is also a San Franciscan, he has come from a city which is, with the exception of peacetime Paris, the gayest and with the exception of none, the happiest city in the world; a city of extraordinary picturesqueness of situation and an equally notable cosmopolitanism of atmosphere; a city which is, above all cities, a paradise for men.

San Francisco, which invents much American slang, must have provided that phrase--"this man's town." For that is what San Francisco is--a mans town.

I dare not appeal to Easterners; but Californiacs, I ask you how could I forbear to say something about "the city"?

San Francisco, or "the city"', as Californians so proudly and lovingly term her, is peculiarly fortunate in her situation and her weather.

Riding a series of hills as lightly as a ship the waves, she makes real exercise of any walking within her limits. Moreover the streets are tied so intimately and inextricably to seash.o.r.e and country that San Francisco's life is, in one sense, less like city life than that of any other city in the United States. Yet by the curious paradox of her climate, which compels much indoor night entertainment, reinforced by that cosmopolitanism of atmosphere, life there is city life raised to the highest limit. Last of all, its size--and personally I think there should be a federal law forbidding cities to grow any bigger than San Francisco--makes it an engaging combination of provincialism and cosmopolitanism.

Not scenery this time, Reader, nor climate, but weather. Like scenery and climate, it must be done. Hurdle this paragraph, Easterners! Keep on reading, Californiacs!

The "city" does its best to put the San Franciscan in good condition.

And the weather reinforces this effort by keeping him out of doors.