CHAPTER V. SAN FRANCISCO
THE San Francisco of 1866 was a most extraordinary city; nothing quite like it was ever seen on this continent. The gold rush of the early fifties had somewhat subsided, but the city was still in an uproar. It was teeming with life and through the entire fabric of the place ran a thread of gold, the gold of Virginia City and the Comstock. It was the supertype of Western bonanza town, but spiced and scented with the orient; Chinese chattered in the narrow passageways of Chinatown, and Kanakas from the Islands worked in the streets. San Francisco had numbered two thousand in the first of 1849; it passed twenty thousand and the white sails of seven hundred vessels had come to port in its harbor by the end of that year. Bayard Taylor arrived in’49 and left on a hitch hike for Monterey. He returned to the city in four months and could scarcely find his way about. By 1866 some of the early turbulence had subsided. Casey and Cora had blasphemed from the scaffold in front of the Vigilante Committee headquarters as they were precipitated into that hell to which, in their last words, they had so warmly consigned their executioners. James King of William Was already a legend. Fires had ravaged the town several times, but it had always grown back with weed-like rapidity. The first glorious flush had waned and the period of magnificence had arrived. It was the dawn of the era of the “Great Developer” and there was much talk of Teavis, Fair, Mackay, and Flood. The whimsicality of the “Oh Susanna” mood had gone; colts had been replaced by derringers; the sombrero by the black beaver hat. Judge Terry’s famous Texan knife was momentarily sheathed and Leland Stanford was gazing hungrily at the large estate left by his former partner, Colton.
San Francisco was still tumultuous and gay. It had not as yet settled down to the lethargic mood that possessed it in later years: the sordid days of graft, race-horse gambling and Chinatown sporting, under the régime of “Boss” Buckley. There was still a great vibrancy about San Francisco in the sixties. It was impossible to live there and not be excited by its keen music. Bayard Taylor wrote that “The very air is pregnant with the magnetism of bold, spirited, unwearied action, and he who but ventures into the outer circle of the whirlpool, is spinning, ere he has time for thought, in its dizzy vortex.” It was a distinctly masculine community and its atmosphere of uncertainty and transiency provided a tireless spur to rowel men out of established ruts. The early commentators noticed the amazing contrasts and swift movements in its social life. Doctors and ministers forgot their callings and turned speculators; professors drove ox-teams; and army officers took minor government posts and married wealthy girls. Taylor, however, in the midst of his first enthusiasm, observed certain “dissipating and disorganizing” influences at work. By the sixties this whirligig society was coming to a pause and sobering up. The dust clouds stirred by its early rampancy were settling and when they finally disappeared a somber scene was revealed. The big strike was over; hilarity was supplanted by calculation; and the boom was followed by its inevitable aftermath of dark days.
Into this “gray town, prematurely wrinkled, like a woman in whom youth’s excesses too long burned, which huddled on a point of sand, scourged with winds, racked by fogs, scintillant with dusty motes in the cold sunshine,” came Major Bierce. For him the place was full of novelty and charm. Spring, with its gay light warmth, hovered about the streets that ran up hillsides to disappear in unseen hollows beyond. With General Hazen, Bierce visited the Presidio, speculating excitedly as to the rank of the commission which he had no doubt awaited him. There it was, neatly sealed and magnificently embossed, but it was only for a second lieutenancy in the Fifth United States Infantry! Hazen cursed and tried to hit upon an explanation for such stupidity, but his young attaché, with characteristic disdain, announced that he would refuse even to decline such a commission. He had come to the coast with no intention whatever of remaining but now that he was here he might as well stay. It was about all that he could do, under the circumstances, for he would never accept a second lieutenancy and the fact that he had even been tendered such a lowly commission made argument or expostulation unthinkable.
The officers at the post suggested that Bierce try to obtain a government position. This suggestion was agreeable, particularly as he had been a treasury agent for some months. He applied to the Hon. D. H. Cheesman, head of the United States Sub-Treasury, for a position and soon went to work as a night-watchman. It has been stated so many times that computation would be difficult, that Bierce was an employee of the Mint in San Francisco. But the positive recollections of perhaps the only two men who knew him at that time, and who are still alive, Emory M. Long and Elisha Brooks, are to the effect that he worked in the Sub-Treasury. This department was connected, of course, with the Mint but was regarded as separate and distinct, at least by the employees of the two institutions. During these days Bierce roomed with Elisha Brooks, who also worked in the Sub-Treasury, although he was later transferred to the Mint. His fellow employees were impressed with Bierce’s fine military carriage, his dignified manner and his unbending pride. Mr. Brooks had also been in the war, and the two of them spent long hours thrashing out old battles. One trait that Bierce possessed which they all disliked, since to them it was inexplicable, was his irreverence. The man was frostily ironic; he would not tolerate piety and found nothing too sacred for satire. To quote from a recent letter of Mr. Brooks: “Bierce was a very genial and pleasant man to associate with if you could tolerate his denunciation of all religions and his habit of using the most offensive language in speaking of matters that people usually regard as sacred. He would never allow you to differ from him in his views of religious or sacred matters. Otherwise people liked him very much.”
Not long after Bierce began to work for the government, he announced to Mr. Long that he intended to become a writer. He made this statement with his usual assurance. His room was soon piled with books from the library; the “heaviest” books, according to Mr. Long. He cannot recall the titles but he does remember that Bierce read long passages from Gibbon with marked approval. He would permit, so his roommates say, no word to go unnoted; he loved precision and definition became a mania. He read avidly and with great determination. His style was as yet but a “diamond in the rough,” but he was beginning to polish it into form. His first compositions were atheistic tracts. The employees of the Mint had heard of this fellow in the Sub-Treasury who debated about God. Being more reverent than Bierce but no less disputatious, they issued a challenge for an exchange of letters on the subject of atheism. Bierce defended his position with great vigor. The employees of both institutions read the letters aloud and were delighted with the verbal blows that were meted out. One thing they all remembered, however: a cold, sardonic, implacable element about Bierce. It rather startled them. It was not sophomoric irreverence: it was more a passionate protest against ignorance and piety. Death had marked him at Kenesaw Mountain and had left a question in his mind about which he was to puzzle all his life. Just at this time, he expressed himself by mocking idols. But the impetus for his iconoclasm was the thought that people died; always death and death’s hand even in the sunlight of youth.
These fellow employees would have quickly made a devil of Bierce had it not been for his personal charm. They liked him. He drew amusing pictures and cartoons for them, which were posted about the Sub-Treasury and the Mint. They roared with laughter at the sharp, pointed wit that animated these sketches. But, strangely enough, they knew and respected Bierce’s desire that his drawings should not be shown about. The sketches were just for their amusement. He seemed apologetic and diffident. Once, however, a political campaign was raging in the city. Every one was talking about the merits and demerits of the candidates. Bierce wearied of the balderdash and drew a series of cartoons which were posted about the offices. These pictures are remembered with glee by his friends. They satirized and gibed at politics in general, ridiculed both candidates, and reduced the entire campaign to the elements of farce. An ambitious co-employee stole these drawings from the walls and divided them in
to two sets, one of which he sold to each of the respective political parties. The next morning the streets of San Francisco were placarded with these amazing cartoons. Bierce was full of white fury. Who had done this? But the silence was profound. He stormed and raged and cursed, but no confessions were forthcoming. A few days later the culprit went to Bierce and told the story, but he had with him some $800 in cash. A division was made and Bierce felt somewhat mollified. But he ceased drawing pictures.
Bierce was never under any illusions as to the state of his cultural development at the time he arrived in San Francisco. “I came to California in 1866 with a fair knowledge of political economy, and a cast-iron conviction about everything, from the self-evident to the unknowable, both inclusive.” Although he was studying hard, his time was not altogether given over to the reading of Gibbon. He enjoyed the life of the town and no interesting incidents escaped his attention. He was getting the feel of the city; becoming acquainted with its scandals, political and otherwise, and becoming familiar with its chief characters. The very rowdiness of the place seems to have had an attraction for him. Soon after his arrival, he witnessed the hanging of one Juan Salazar in the streets of the town. He told the story in later years and closed the incident with these words: “The sheriff performed his peculiar duties with a skill and dignity that made one rather covet the distinction of being hanged by him. Salazar assisted with intelligent composure, and the spectators, who had repented of his crime, endured his death with Christian fortitude and resignation.”
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BIERCE did not take his duties at the Sub-Treasury office too seriously and devoted all his spare time to writing. He attempted to write ironic pieces much in the manner of his early drawings. He would select some local happening, write of it in an elaborately ornate manner, and then puncture the bubble of his own rhetoric. This was a favorite trick of the early humorists and it was humor that most interested the early San Franciscans. One could not write critical essays or philosophic tracts or rondels for the amusement of gamblers, miners, prostitutes and ladies of fashion. They wanted something amusing and the broader the humor the better. It must not only provoke a smile: it must drum the risibilities of the callous until they burst into guffaws. Bierce began by doing a few sketches in the wildly humorous manner of the times. He had some predecessors in the field, and he did not hesitate to follow their technique. He began to modify it to suit his own needs later, but his first work clearly belonged to the school of Dan DeQuille and Mark Twain. A most interesting chapter in California letters was just coming to a close when Bierce arrived in San Francisco.
The chapter had opened with the publication, in 1852, of the first issue of The Golden Era by J. MacDonough Foard and Rollin M. Daggett. The journalists of that day — bombastic old Stephen Massett, young Bret Harte, the romantic Joe Goodman, moody Prentice Mulford, James Bowman, Mark Twain and Dan DeQuille — were a great lot. They developed a typically Western manner of writing, aptly characterized by Idwal Jones as “whimsical and bombastic.” The style that came into vogue with them was a child of the marriage of the wildly humorous manner of Mark Twain — the literary equivalent of a barroom story — with the plaintive and sentimental whimsicality of Bret Harte — an etherealized banjo tune. It is perhaps true, as Mr. Jones suggests, that the style dated back to pre-Civil War days. It was in this tradition that Bierce was schooled. He came upon the scene in the sixties when times had somewhat changed; but, along with Charles Warren Stoddard, he contributed sketches to the Alta California, and came to know Bret Harte, secretary of the Mint. Up in Portland one C. W. Miller (Joaquin Miller) published his first volume of verse in 1868, “Specimen.” But, although Bierce did adopt something of the riotous, Western manner of Twain, it was tempered with some very scholarly instruction that he received about this time from James Watkins. The result was that Bierce soon abandoned his early models and became a close student of the classics. In later years Bierce remarked that he had read Mark Twain “to sharpen lethiferous wit against bovine humor” and the comparison is most apt.
Prior to the work that he did for the Alta California, Bierce had sent some sketches to “The San Francisco News-Letter and California Advertiser” which were accepted. This interesting publication was founded by F. A. Marriott on July 20, 1858. Marriott was a London journalist, who at one time had edited the London Illustrated, News, and later the Morning Chronicle and Chat. These various publications had all failed and Marriott had come to California to start over again. The News-Letter was modeled after the London weeklies of the day and was a rather sprightly journal. Soon after Bierce’s first sketches were accepted, he received a neatly written, finely phrased note from James Watkins, the managing editor of The News-Letter, asking him to call at the office. Bierce lost no time in accepting the invitation, and met a most charming gentleman. Watkins was a strange, whimsical, scholarly fellow, who had been a journalist in London and New York. His style, rather suggestive of Stevenson’s, was delightful. He was, according to Bierce, “one of the greatest writers of English that ever lived,” and while the statement is hyperbolic it does suggest something of the real value of Watkins’ style. Watkins was a singularly sweet-natured and lovable character, and he wrote a style that, for the period, was indeed remarkable. It had rhythm, variation and was full of charming cadence. Doomed to the life of an unsuccessful journalist, poor Watkins went from paper to paper, writing blurbs for poultry farmers and irrigation projects on the side, in order to earn a livelihood. Years later he worked on the New York Sun.
Bierce and Watkins became the best of friends and, strangely enough for Bierce, the friendship continued. Watkins instructed his young protégé with kindness, intelligence and insight. He was a student of Shakespeare and, judging from the copy of “Othello” which he presented to Bierce, he devoted some time to pointing out the values of dramatic blank verse to his young friend. Then, too, he called Bierce’s attention to Swift, and Voltaire, and advised him to read over the material that William Thackeray had written for Punch, that he might clothe his wit in the silk of a charming style. Watkins’ influence on Bierce cannot be overestimated. He pointed out the vulgar and called attention to the best in style with unimpeachable taste. He was, without doubt, the most cultured and intelligent associate that Bierce knew during this period. And it was a crucial time in Bierce’s life. Watkins was a rare spirit and he seemed to understand Bierce better than any one else ever did.
Surely Bierce never gave to another the respect and admiration that he always accorded Watkins. They spent many delightful hours together in these first years, and the friendship was never broken.
Many of Watkins’ early letters are full of shrewd comment and advice. In one letter, written in 1874, he mentioned La Rochefoucauld, Murger and Balzac, whose works he had praised to Bierce, and then added this comment: “Your method of language is that of these Frenchmen; your method of thought, meanwhile, is essentially different from theirs: it is the real English (or American) thought, and you give us the net result of its processes phrased with the Frenchman’s wit and point and epigram.”
At the time that Bierce began to write for The News-Letter it contained, as a regular feature, a page called “The Town Crier.” Bierce did not start this page, which was as old as the magazine itself, but he did take it over, when, in December of 1868, Watkins resigned as editor and induced Marriott to give the post to Bierce. Bierce was editor from that date until March 9th, 1872. In addition to this work, he also wrote for the Alta California, along with his friend, Charles Warren Stoddard. He had given up his post in the Sub-Treasury when he became editor of The News-Letter.
With Stoddard and “Jimmy” Bowman, and the other young journalists of the time, Bierce kept San Francisco highly entertained. These fellows engaged in some amusing exploits. One night after they had passed beyond the merely facetious state of inebriation, and when their voices were shouting valiantly to be heard above the din and blare of a New Year’s Eve celebration, it was proposed that th
ey strike Christianity a fatal blow. They did not propose to go about this work in the methodical manner of Martin Luther, but with anarchistic means. There was a great wooden cross that stood upon a hillside in the region of Golden Gate Park and it had often annoyed them with its attestation of piety. There they journeyed after midnight with ropes and fagots. They roped the cross and tugged and pulled in a vain effort to tear it down. But the cross was triumphant. They then concluded that if they tied the rope about their bodies, the trick could be turned. But their success was no greater. By this time these “eminent tankard” men were exhausted and, in their struggles around the cross, became entangled in the rope and fell down bound to the cross in a manner that would have inspired the faithful to draw an obvious but ironic moral. This story was first related in the chapter on Ambrose Bierce in Paul Jordan-Smith’s “On Strange Altars,” but its truth has been vouched for to me by a distinguished San Francisco editor whose name would give immediate credence to the story, but unfortunately he was one of the young men at the foot of the cross, and his identity must remain a secret.
Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated) Page 345