It was not that she neglected her children exactly. Like many children of rich parents who were not born wealthy, the Spreckels children were spoiled unmercifully, pampered and fussed over by nurses, governesses and servants. Their mother showered them with costly toys and gifts. She gave her daughter Dorothy a coming-out party unlike anything San Francisco had seen since Flora Sharon’s wedding to Lord Hesketh. “Nubians” in gold turbans and loincloths lined the marble staircase of the Spreckels house. Inside, where the debutante’s mother had kicked off her shoes and curled up on one of her French sofas with her familiar pitcher of martinis to watch the fun, huge mounds of caviar reposed in ice-sculptured bowls and champagne bubbled out of fountains. The party was so splendid that social San Francisco forgot all its newly acquired good manners and reverted to the claim-jumping days. A number of guests were seen leaving the party carrying dripping bowls of caviar. At the time—coming as it did in the darkest days of the Great Depression—Dorothy Spreckels’ coming-out party was sharply criticized in the press (particularly in the ever hostile Chronicle) for its lavishness and ostentation. In reply to the critics Alma Spreckels took the familiar, if somewhat lame, rich person’s line and pointed out that the party provided employment for caterers, waiters, florists, dressmakers, the orchestra, et cetera.
Her one son, Adolph B. Spreckels, Jr.—“Little Adolph,” as he was called—had early displayed certain personality traits that a discerning parent might have found disturbing. He had a sadistic bent and seemed to enjoy torturing small animals and other children. As a young boy he had been given, of all things, a home tattooing kit, and he made a game of chasing his young cousins—particularly timid cousin Wayne—through the house with his ink and needles, trying to pin them down and implant tattoos on their bodies. He had to be carefully watched in the presence of his little nephew John. Adolph had been discovered one day carrying the younger boy by his heels up and down a staircase, pounding little John’s head on the stair treads as he went.
Alma Spreckels’ older daughter, “Little Alma,” would have had an extravagant coming-out party too, but much to her mother’s displeasure, she ran away in her teens and got married. The marriage did not last long. In fact, the three Spreckels children were married a grand total of twelve times and had eleven divorces. (In southern California the John Spreckels line in the same generation was not doing much better, with eight divorces.) Leading the family in the marriage sweepstakes was Little Adolph, who had matured into a not very pleasant young man, whose “mean streak,” as it was called, had grown more pronounced. Adolph had six wives—or, by some counts, seven, although the seventh, with whom he was living at the time of his death, was one he had never bothered to marry. His third wife was his cousin, Geraldine Spreckels. His sixth wife, Kay Williams, was the most famous, because, after divorcing Adolph, she married Clark Gable.
Adolph had become an alcoholic, and at one point during his brief, stormy marriage to Kay he struck her on the head with a Scotch bottle. She charged him with assault, and he was arrested and sent to jail in Los Angeles, where he showed that he could be a gentleman. When he was released, shortly before Christmas, he sent Christmas gifts to all his fellow prisoners.
Little Adolph had a sense of humor—of sorts. During World War II he kept a photograph of Hitler on his desk, which he had inscribed “To Adolph from Adolph.” Following his first marriage, he invited a large group of family and friends to a luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York, where the bride and groom were staying. Guests arrived to find the streets outside the hotel swarming with police cars and fire trucks. Adolph, it seemed, had constructed a lifelike dummy out of pillows and bedclothes, dressed it in a man’s pajamas, and had tossed the “suicide” out the window. On a later occasion Adolph was thrown in jail again, on a disorderly conduct charge, this time in San Francisco. It had something to do with an altercation he had had with a taxicab driver whom Adolph had kept waiting an inordinate amount of time outside a bar and had then refused to pay. At the time, a well known local madam was on trial on prostitution charges. When Adolph was released from jail, reporters asked the scion of the Spreckels fortune what he was doing in town. “I am here to give moral support to my favorite madam,” he replied. When the reporters asked if they could take his picture, Adolph declared, “No photographs until the people from the Daily Worker come.” He was then asked how he would compare the San Francisco jail with that of Los Angeles. “No comparison—San Francisco’s is by far the better jail,” he said.
To be sure, the Spreckels children’s mother may not have set them the most perfect example in regard to marriage. In 1936, twelve years after her husband’s death and while her children were still in their twenties, Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, after an evening of partying, ran off to Reno with a ranch hand named Elmer Awl and married him. She was then fifty-five and he was some ten years younger. San Francisco society was stunned. No one had ever heard of Elmer Awl. “How does he spell his name?” a society editor wanted to know, to which someone is said to have replied, “A-w-1, as in the tool used for punching holes in old leather.” For a while Elmer Awl cut a striking figure in San Francisco society. On opening nights of the opera Mr. Awl appeared in white tie and tails, to which he added white high-heeled boots and a huge white ten-gallon hat. The new Mrs. Awl had meanwhile brought one of her poor relations from Denmark to California, a young niece named Ula. It was not long before it became apparent that Elmer Awl was more interested in Ula than in Alma. Alma and Elmer were divorced, and Elmer married Ula and moved to Santa Barbara. Alma resumed her marriage name of Spreckels.
After divorcing John Rosekrans, the man with whom she eloped, Little Alma Spreckels married James V. Coleman, a descendant of William O’Brien, the silver king. After divorcing Coleman she married Charles Hammel—and this union was to prove even more disastrous than the others. Hammel, a former merchant marine captain, was fond of sailing, and so Little Alma bought him—for $89,000—a forty-foot sloop-rigged motor-sailing yacht called the Berylline. Though Little Alma was a tournament bridge player and an expert horsewoman, she knew nothing at all about boats. Still, saying, “I believe in God and I believe in Charlie,” she set out with her new husband in 1970—with no crew other than themselves—to cruise from San Francisco to Hawaii, with a freezer full of food.
On the second day out the Berylline headed into a storm with twenty-five-foot waves and fifty-mile-an-hour winds. First the freezer snapped a retaining pin and began to crash around alarmingly in the galley. Next, a broken bolt in the generator knocked out the entire electric system, including the motor needed for steering lights, radio communication, the toilets, and, of course, the freezer. The wheel chain broke repeatedly, making steering impossible, and new leaks in the hull appeared daily. The storm was followed by breathless doldrums, which were restful but of little use to a sailboat without a motor. At home in San Francisco it was reported that the Hammels had been lost at sea, but they were merely battling more storms and leaks. At one point Little Alma was thrown from a seat in the galley. She was knocked in the head at least five times. All the spoiled food in the freezer had to be thrown overboard, and eventually the only thing operating aboard the Berylline was a flashlight.
Somehow the pair made it to Hawaii, where they found themselves in Alenuihaha Channel, between the islands of Hawaii and Maui, notorious for treacherous weather and tides. Here the rudder chain broke, and the Berylline drifted inexorably toward the rocks. Finally the boat’s distress flag was spotted and rescue came. The Berylline was towed into the harbor of Kawaihae after twenty-nine days at sea.
The Hammels managed to get home from this excursion, but early in 1972 both Captain Hammel and the Berylline disappeared, leaving Mrs. Hammel quite at a loss for an explanation. At one point Hammel and the yacht were reported to have been seen in Mexico, but then they disappeared again, supposedly for South America. By March, Alma Hammel had engaged a group of international lawyers to issue a barrage of lawsuits, injunctions, and re
straining orders, not only to return Captain Hammel to his wife but also to return her yacht. The yacht had been registered in both their names, but, said Alma in her complaint, “At no time did I in any way indicate other than by joint name registration that the boat was his. At no time did I authorize him to take the boat from the Bay Area.” She also added: “On recent occasions Mr. Hammel exhibited a tendency to violence as well as irrational behavior.” A receiver was authorized by the court to return the sloop to its home port. Alma also sued Captain Hammel for divorce, asking only for the Berylline in settlement. She got the divorce and, eventually, the boat. After playing hide-and-seek with it for five months, Hammel finally surrendered it to her in Ensenada. Alma then asked the court to restore her maiden name of Spreckels.
Little Alma’s sister, Dorothy, married, first, Mr. Jean Dupuy and, second, Mr. Andrew McCarthy. Her third marriage, to Charles Munn—who made millions by inventing the racetrack totalizer (the device that flashes on a board the numbers of the horses, their changing odds before the race, and the results afterward)—is the only one of the twelve marriages of Alma de Bretteville’s children that did not end in divorce, and this must be considered something of an accomplishment. The Munns never set off alone in a yacht, but they did make news of sorts in 1971 when they spent eighteen thousand dollars to charter a Pan Am 707 jetliner to fly them from Paris directly to Palm Beach in order to avoid the “mishmash” of customs and changing planes at Kennedy Airport.
When Pan Am’s publicity people released the news of this record-breaking charter, Mrs. Munn couldn’t understand why so much fuss was being made. “It didn’t cost more than people pay for a Rolls-Royce to charter that plane,” said she. The analogy was a little weak. When one buys a Rolls-Royce, one gets to use it for at least a year or so. When chartering a 707, one does not get to keep the plane. As for Rolls-Royces, it was pointed out that the Munns at the time had four—one in San Francisco, one at their Palm Beach house, and two in Paris, where they maintained an apartment.
When Little Adolph Spreckels died in 1968—he fell in a hotel in Arizona and fractured his skull—his mother took his death very hard. Though all of her children had given her heartaches, and Adolph more than the rest, the death of her only son seemed to devastate her. Her famous energy seemed suddenly to desert her, and she became a virtual recluse in her Washington Street house. Sometimes at night, after the Palace of the Legion of Honor had closed, she would ask her chauffeur to drive her out to it. She would stand in the dark park and look at it for a while, then get back in her car and be driven home. She saw few of her old friends, and when her daughters came to see her, there were inevitably quarrels. From time to time she would try to ease the bitterness between herself and her children—all of whom she felt had led utterly wasted lives—with great conciliatory bursts of generosity. Once, after a visit with her daughter Alma that had gone reasonably well, Mrs. Spreckels called out to Alma, who was going out the door, “Need any furniture, pet?” Alma stepped back into the room and mentioned a commode of her mother’s that she had always admired. “Take it!” cried Mrs. Spreckels. Alma replied that she would see about getting a mover in the morning. “No, take it now!” insisted Mrs. Spreckels. “You can put it in the back of Jimmy Coleman’s car.” Alma replied that this was hardly practical; it was too valuable a piece not to be moved by experts, and besides, they had no movers’ blankets. “Take some blankets off my bed!” said Mrs. Spreckels, and all at once the two women were quarreling again, over a piece of furniture.
Alma and Dorothy Spreckels Munn now own, in joint tenancy, the Washington Street house, that fantastic white-stone sculpture with so many carved garlands and furbelows on its façade that, in the San Francisco sunshine, it glitters like a confection of spun sugar—which, when one remembers where the money to build it came from, perhaps it really is. Was it all worth the candle? It should probably go without saying that the two sisters are now in a bitter legal battle over who will finally possess the house. In the fray for a while was also Kay Spreckels Gable, who claimed a share of the property on behalf of her two children by Little Adolph.
The house is one of the last great turn-of-the-century San Francisco mansions still owned by the family that built it. It is empty much of the year. Little Alma Spreckels has built a large new house for herself in Pacific Heights. The Munns spend their winters in Palm Beach, their springs and autumns in Paris, and visit San Francisco only briefly in between. When they are alone in the house, the watchmen and caretakers report strange night noises and are convinced that there is a ghost. If so, it is doubtless the restless shade of Alma de Bretteville Spreckels, searching for her children.
Her daughter Alma says, “She did a lot of wonderful things for us. But she didn’t really take care of us.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Tempest About a Teapot
After Edward Doheny’s high-handed attempt in 1915 to buy up the Union Oil Company from the Stewarts and the other shareholders had been defeated by the Union’s board, Doheny turned his hand to other matters. Los Angeles was still not quite a place. It was a small town of two hundred thousand souls and consisted mostly of bungalows. No notable public building of any sort would exist until 1925, and it would not be until the decade of the 1920s that the population of Los Angeles would leap to over a million, nearly twice that of San Francisco. When Alma Spreckels was planning the museum that was to become the Palace of the Legion of Honor, she had first considered building it in San Diego and had consulted her brother-in-law John D. Spreckels on the subject. He had advised her that San Diego was “not ready” for such an elaborate cultural center. He would have considered Los Angeles even more unready. One important thing had, however, happened in Los Angeles. In 1914 the city’s harbor had opened at San Pedro. With the Panama Canal open, this created the possibility that Los Angeles might become an important world port.
From California, Ed Doheny turned to Mexico, where he had prospected for gold as a young man, this time in search of more oil. He found a promising site inland from the gulf, in the jungles beyond Tampico, where he leased over a million acres. Doheny’s Mexican Petroleum Company cleared the jungle, built roads and railroads, docks, pipelines, shops, and houses for his native laborers, and as a result of generous bribes to Mexican officials, had the great good favor of the Mexican government. By 1922, Doheny’s accrued income from his Mexican company alone was $31,575,937, and his total worth was reported to be more than a hundred million dollars. By 1925 he was reliably reported to be even richer than “the richest man in America,” John D. Rockefeller.
As a rich man the former southwestern gunman affected a monocle, a walrus mustache, British tailoring, and an autocratic manner. He also became devoted to prodigal spending and bought a large portion of what is now downtown Los Angeles, which he converted into a huge park and estate called Chester Place. His yacht, the Casiana, was one of the most luxurious in the country. He surrounded himself with an entourage of servants and bodyguards, and Chester Place was so heavily protected that once, when a fire broke out in one of the estate’s many outbuildings, the Los Angeles Fire Department had trouble getting through the security at the main gate. His second wife, who had been his secretary, arrayed herself in ropes of sapphires, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, and pearls. Mr. Doheny was not particularly philanthropic, but he did contribute heavily to the Democratic party and the Irish Freedom Movement. In fact, it was probably his wife—or “Ma D.,” as she was called—who was responsible for conserving Ed Doheny’s fortune and for seeing to it that the money was not spent as rapidly as it was made. In later years she enjoyed reminding her family of this fact, and once, at a gathering of her children and stepchildren, she announced, “If it weren’t for me, none of you would have a penny. I’m responsible for everything, right down to that big diamond ring on Lucy’s finger.”
While other California women were marrying titles, Ma D. purchased one of her own. As a result of a large contribution to the Vatican she was made a papal co
untess and enjoyed being introduced as Countess Estelle Doheny. At Chester Place she behaved more like a reigning empress. Physically she resembled Queen Victoria—small, plump, ugly, and imperious—and she had a decidedly Victorian manner. When one entered Chester Place one descended a long, wide marble staircase lined with footmen and maids and was ushered into a kind of throne room, where Her Grace, Ma D., received her guests seated on a throne. Though she became almost totally blind, no one was permitted to comment on or remind her of her affliction. Small carpeted ramps were built across the thresholds of doorways and up steps so that Ma D. could move through her house unaided.
For all her grand ways Ma D. had a middle-class American’s love of showing off her home to visitors, leading her guests along the vast marble corridors, into the Pompeian Room, where she pointed out the vaulted ceiling covered with gold leaf and drew attention to her priceless collection of antique watches, and into the conservatory, which was big enough to contain large trees—including a beaucarnea tree, one of the largest tropical trees that grow, imported from Mexico—as well as her prize-winning collection of rare orchids. For her dining table a long silver centerpiece was designed just to contain the blooms of the specimen orchids, which were changed daily. Before each dinner party Ma D. and her head gardener rehearsed the names of the varieties in the arrangement and their order of position in the centerpiece. With this list memorized, Ma D. could recite the full Latin names of all the blooms that she could not see. Inevitably each tour of Chester Place ended with an elevator ride up two stories to Ma D.’s private chapel, with its magnificent reliquary and where the Eucharist was reserved. Outside the chapel, two tall Spanish armoires contained a variety of hats, scarves, shawls, and mantillas in all styles and colors so that women would have a selection of head coverings to put on in the presence of the Host.
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