Jessie

by Judy Alter

  John spent much of his time at Las Mariposas, where Indian troubles threatened constantly. Gold miners had overrun the hills and valleys of northern California, pushing the Indians ever farther from their land, and it seemed there was no way to prevent an uprising. I worried a great deal about John going into the midst of such circumstances, but as if to show me my foolishness, he undertook a contract to supply beef to the Indians.

  I stayed in our house, kept the servants close by and Lily inside, and prayed for the best.

  Word of a major upset in my life made its way to me in December. My father had been defeated in the race for the Senate seat from Missouri, a defeat that he had almost himself predicted, but that I had refused to believe. It only underscored to me the desperate straits into which the slavery issue had thrown our country, and I blamed myself some for not being available to help Father with his campaign.

  "What would you have done?" John demanded on one of his visits. "He's a seasoned campaigner. He surely did what was necessary. The times were just against him."

  "But I could have helped prepare his speeches, found statistics and information for him, all the things I've always done."

  "Jessie, you are my wife now, and that job takes precedence over being your father's assistant." The words were said kindly, not harshly, but I shivered as I heard them.

  "What will he do?" I asked, not really meaning to voice the question.

  "He can always come to California," John said. "He would find plenty of government work out here." And with that he turned and left the room, having done nothing to ease the pain I felt for my father.

  John himself campaigned for the Senate seat off and on all that winter, but the legislature was hopelessly deadlocked. Vote after vote got them nowhere nearer to results, and John, impatiently, announced that he had better things to do with his time. I knew, but didn't say, that the problem was that he represented the initial wave of settlers from the United States, those who had become landowners of some privilege and who were mightily resented by the thugs and their fellows who had come late and landless. And his antislavery declarations, vociferously made, alienated the proslavery and moderate members of his own party. John, never a true politician, had stacked the deck against himself.

  All that winter I worried about the baby I carried, though he seemed active enough to indicate good health. Still, I remembered—who could forget?—little Benton, his health ruined by that court-martial that I'd endured while pregnant. Had this baby been similarly scarred by the last isthmus crossing? I mentioned my fears to no one, but from time to time I would find Lily standing by me, her hand reaching out to hold mine.

  "Mother? Are you all right?"

  "Yes, Lily, I'm fine, thank you."

  "And is our baby all right?"

  I could never resist smiling and giving my voice a strong note of confidence as I told her, "He's just fine." It never occurred to either John or me that the baby would be anything but a boy.

  He was just fine. Born April 19, 1851, he entered the world with a lusty cry and an enormous appetite. He was his father in all things, and I had nothing but joy in him.

  Circumstances, however, did not go as well for the baby's father, and he was not returned to the Senate. His staunch antislavery stand worked against him. "Politics," he told me, "is too costly, anyway. I am glad to be rid of it."

  Now both my husband and my father were out of office, effectively removing me from the Washington political scene. The wheel, I felt, was headed downhill.

  * * *

  But now, with Charley not yet three weeks old, I held him in my arms and faced a holocaust.

  "Lily? Come quickly!"

  "I smell it," she said with her great practicality as she padded into the room, rubbing her eyes after having been awakened from a sound sleep. "The city is on fire, isn't it?" Then her practicality deserted her as she looked out the window. "Mother! My hens! Give me ribbons to tie on their legs so that I can take them with us."

  "Hens?" How could she think of fowl at a moment like this?

  "Let them go, Lily. They'll survive. Go to your father's library and gather the papers from his drawers into one big stack."

  She hurried away to follow my bidding while I sat with my mind whirling. There was silver to be saved, and Oriental rugs that I would not lose if I could possibly avoid it, correspondence of no lasting value but dear to me... and no end of things.

  The servants came at a run. Juan and Gregorio, who had returned to our help, burst into the room, shouting in their half-Spanish, half-English patois that I must leave immediately.

  "Wait!" I held up a hand. "We must plan carefully. We must gather the things to take."

  They nodded solemnly and, under my direction, accumulated a pile of things to be transported. Then they hung wet carpets—not the good Orientals—on the side of the house nearest the fire.

  All night the fire burned, coming ever closer, and I sat, clutching my baby, listening to the roar of the flames, the clanging of the bells, the shouting of the firefighters who from time to time rushed in to reassure me.

  In the end Juan and Gregorio took the legal papers and silver to a safer spot, the home of friends on Russian Hill, but Lily, Charley, and I remained in the house. And it was spared, though the paint blistered and the grass in front of it all withered and died.

  I was so relieved that I was not even angry when it was declared that the fire was of "incendiary" origin—deliberately set. It was the fifth such fire in two months, though none of the others had grown so out of control.

  Not long afterward, standing in the front yard, I bent to pick up a paper that had blown against the fence. Thinking it trash, I was about to crumple it in my hand when my eye caught the headline:

  BEWARE! ALL OF SAN FRANCISCO WILL BURN! The handbill went on to give particulars about revenge for the actions of the Committee of Vigilance—which had recently lynched four persons, to my horror—and to repeat the threat that the entire city would be burned. No one would be spared.

  That literally murdered sleep for me. I sat most nights in the windows facing the city, watching for the first flame, the first slight spark. The papers and silver were still on Russian Hill. All that remained to be rescued were the people, but I felt a desperation to save my house.

  The fire started not at night but on a Sunday morning, when even Juan and Gregorio had gone to church. The flames this time began so close to our home that I grabbed the baby, wet from his bath, and wrapped him in my dressing gown. With Lily following, we hurried to Russian Hill, where we found ourselves not the only refugees. The house was full of women and children, all sobbing and wailing over the loss of their possessions.

  Fanned by summer winds, the flames jumped and leaped from building to building. The woman whose house was next to mine—a Frenchwoman who had been very ill—laughed hysterically as she watched her home disappear into ashes. Then she turned to me with a dramatic, "C'est votre tour!—Your house is next!"

  And it was. As I watched, my home and all my possessions went up in flames.

  A house was found for me the next day—a lonesome, forlorn barracks out in the sand hills. I cannot tell you my feelings as I walked into that barren building, knowing that I had not a possession in the world with which to turn it into a home. All the fine Orientals, the inlaid furniture, the rich damasks John had bought—all were gone.

  Lily had cried silently almost since the first bell clanged, and now I held her close to me, trying to comfort her. She wept, of course, for her hens. As I whispered soothing words to her, she fixed her eyes beyond me, and I feared that she was not hearing a thing I said. Suddenly she stiffened, and I reacted with alarm.

  "Mother? Who are those people?"

  People? What people would be at this godforsaken place? But my eyes followed where her finger pointed, and I saw a strange procession making its way over the rutted sand road to our new home. A string of people pushed along the road, their hands full of parcels and bundles. A few led s
mall carts over the bumps. When I went to the door, my puzzlement no doubt plain on my face, a middle-aged man with large, heavy features and hands bigger than I could imagine stepped forward.

  They were, he said, the English tenants on land that John owned. When the fire started, they hurried to our house to see if they could be of help. Finding me gone, they proceeded to save everything—mirrors, china and glass, hundreds of books, furniture, even kitchen utensils and all our clothing. I had a household again!

  Slowly it came to me—the English tenants. They rented cottages from John and had built a brewery, though many so-called civic leaders had warned John against renting to these people... and while he had no trouble with them, he himself had resisted deeding them their land as they wished.

  "Missus," said the woman who stood next to the spokesman, "I hope you don't mind that I laundered your clothes. I thought you might be so put about with the changing, the clothes would have a long wait."

  Then the man put down a parcel tied in a red handkerchief. "We knew the master was from home, and there was a young baby in the house," he said, "and so we brought a quarter's rent in advance, in case you be needing it." He untied the bundle to reveal heaps of silver and gold. Perhaps best of all, they had caught and crated all but one of Lily's hens, and they returned them, squawking indignantly, to a delighted child.

  I could do nothing but cry. These people had been chilled by public ill will, and yet they had shown true greatness of spirit, goodness of heart. I did not need the money, but I took it lest I insult them, and I was as profuse as I knew how in my thanks, assuring them that as soon as Colonel Frémont returned, he, too, would thank them in person.

  John came days later, striding through the desolation to our house, to find only a chimney standing. "You cannot imagine," he told me, "what horror went through my mind. I was frantic with terror and then to be told only, in the vaguest terms, that you'd taken a home near Grace Church!"

  We were, indeed, within a stone's throw of the small church, and John's method of finding us was to stand on the stoop of the church and survey the houses in sight. "When I found one with muslin curtains in the windows and pink ribbons, I knew I'd found you."

  "Why?" I asked.

  "Because you love the fresh breeze and would have the curtains tied back to allow ventilation." He smiled at me as he said it, as though I were the most transparent, predictable person alive.

  "Father taught me it was healthy!" I said a trifle indignantly.

  He laughed aloud and grabbed me in his arms. "I am so relieved to find you well....What would I have done if..."

  I put a finger to his lips to silence the thought. "The children are fine," I said, though he hadn't yet asked. "Lily has been weeping, but the tenants' arrival with our goods cheered her up, and little Charley has slept through the whole thing."

  "Good," he said, but as he led me toward the bedroom, I knew that his mind was not one bit on the children.

  He went the next day to tell the English tenants that they could purchase their land. "That'll make my wife a happy woman," the spokesman told him.

  * * *

  In spite of the wealth of Las Mariposas, John was always in financial trouble. "The title isn't clear," he told me. "The government, in its infinite wisdom, hasn't decided what it wants to do....Sometimes I think I'll just sell the blasted place and be free of it!"

  I was startled. Las Mariposas meant the wealth of gold, but more than that, it meant ownership to John, a place where he was the master, where he ruled his own kingdom.

  "Would you really want to do that?" I asked, my bewilderment showing in my voice. For some reason it bothered me that he would sell Las Mariposas before I ever saw it, but I didn't say that aloud.

  "No," he said, shaking his head, "I don't really want to do that. But I am fed up with it."

  Father, meanwhile, wrote from Washington that it was his opinion—unasked—that John should sell "that damn mountain place" and return us all to civilization. I was left to reply that John did not want to sell—and to add staunchly that I did not want him to either.

  Meanwhile Indian troubles continued to brew in California. Miners had displaced the Indians from their usual hunting grounds, driving them back into the mountains, where they had no food. To feed themselves, they simply killed horses and cattle belonging to the intruders. The whites soon retaliated, and a full-scale Indian war threatened. John was instrumental in working out a treaty, part of which required that the Indians be given cattle to slaughter. He then contracted to supply the cattle and drove them from northern California himself, with a team of helpers.

  The government, as governments will, dallied and refused to pay the bill because the treaties had not been ratified. Then they refused to ratify the treaties, which meant that all arrangements specified under them fell through, including John's contract to supply beef. He had, it appeared, supplied it at his own cost—and considerable cost it was, at $240,000.

  Disgusted with the government and with the general lawlessness in California, John announced one day that we would leave for England. "There are Mariposas investors there," he said, "and it's the right place to raise more capital."

  "John," I demanded, "do we own Mariposas or not? Are we wealthy, are we poor—what are we?"

  He was offended that I would presume to intrude upon men's business—specifically his men's business—although he had known me long enough and well enough to realize that I was not liable to sit back quietly without questions. Especially not when what I heard seemed contradictory.

  "It's not as simple as you seem to think, Jessie," he said, his stilted tone telling me that he was posturing for my sake.

  Don't, John, I wanted to shout. Tell me the truth! But I saw that would do me no good, and I turned away. In my heart I knew that Las Mariposas was a paper empire. Beneath the ground it may have hidden a fortune in gold, but as it stood now, it was almost a liability. And we were in financial trouble, just as Father had been off and on for years. In too many ways my marriage began to echo my childhood.

  Still, I persisted in hearing firebells clang in my sleep, and I was grateful to be away from San Francisco. I went to England gladly, hiding my doubts.

  * * *

  You'd never have known we were anything but the king and queen of England from the way we traveled. We intended to sail directly from Chagres, taking the eastern route, but our steamer had burned in the Bay of Biscay. Once again it was an isthmus crossing for us. Each time the crossing grew a little better, and this time Charley was old enough that I didn't worry too much—though he was out of my sight for an entire day, carried by Indians.

  Then it was on to New York. When we walked into our hotel room, I got my first real look at myself in months and was appalled at my dowdy appearance. Pale I could understand, but shabby and out of fashion were not beyond my control, and I went on an immediate shopping spree. I would not, I vowed, arrive in London looking like someone's poor relative.

  "Can we not have a visit with Father?" I asked, even though I sensed, through my correspondence, that a rift had grown between them. Father had expected John to be easily guided, and John had proved to be headstrong, not always swayed by the advice of his father-in-law. I was caught in the middle.

  "We cannot wait for him to come to New York," John said impatiently, "and we have no time to go to Washington."

  And so we rushed off to sea, at the worst possible season of the year—March, when the Atlantic was beset with storms. The seas were so rough that two-year-old Charley was firmly tied by a rope to the railing of the mainmast—he had about a four-foot radius of freedom and, as Lily gleefully pointed out, spent more time on his head than his feet because of the vessel's pitching and tossing. Those rough seas had scared most other passengers away, and I was the only woman onboard. That worked to our advantage, because we had the ladies' stateroom to ourselves. The captain took almost every meal with us, and the children were fussed over by the crew until they became quite spoiled. I p
ut all thoughts of paper empires out of my mind and thoroughly enjoyed the luxury.

  In London we had a suite at the Clarendon, made cheerful by fires and lights and plants and flowers. It was a vast leap to go from being burned out of your home and living in makeshift squalor—well, nearly—to a life of luxury at the Clarendon. From time to time I had to pinch myself.

  Shortly after we arrived, there began a social whirl the likes of which I'd never known in my life, not even in the busiest season in Washington. The United States minister to England, Abbott Lawrence of Massachusetts, was indebted to my father in many ways, mostly political, and he and his wife went out of their way to introduce us around. We went to a ball at Buckingham Palace, sat in the Peabody box at the opera, and attended a party at the home of Sir Roderick Murchison of the Royal Geographical Society—John was a medalist of that society. We dined at the home of the lord mayor of London, took tea with the duchess of Bedford, and were invited to the countess of Derby's assembly. We were entertained in buildings with lions over the entrances, and courtyards and gardens that made me catch my breath, and we met all manner of famous and interesting people.

  I was constantly introduced as being from North America, a turn of words that rather made me feel like an Indian squaw newly come from those vast plains that John had explored. The British preconceptions about John, however, were even more distorted.