On the very nob of Nob Hill there is the ruin of a mansion which was the
Whittell home. In ruins it still is a mansion. In ruins it is grander
than any place around because it belonged to the grand days.
There is an enclosed garden in the rear after the fashion of old Spanish
gardens in Monterey. And between the boards that cover a door in the
high wall, one may peek and catch a glimpse of hollyhocks in a row and
roses running wild, trellises of green lattice and ghosts of beautiful
ladies having afternoon tea.
To one side of the mansion there is a formal garden that hugs up close
to the ivy-covered walls of the house. It is such a garden as one sees
in elaborately illustrated copies of Mother Goose “with silver bells and
cockle shells.” It’s so beautiful that it doesn’t seem real. California
gardens are like that, and to those of us from bleak countries they look
like pictures out of books. There is this well-groomed garden of the
living present hugging up close to the ruins of yesterday and then, if
you please, Mother Nature, with her penchant for whimsy, has grown right
up against these two a riot of purple and gold lupine, a product of her
own unaided husbandry.
I am not much on allegory nor sermonizing, but I declare San Francisco
gets me started. And when walking along about one’s business, one
sees such a vivid picture, the allegory forces itself. The grandeur of
yesterday, the serious beauty of today, and then the wild flowers that
covered the hills before man interfered and will live on after man has
gone into dust to make new flowers.
Such a contemplation would make some people blue but it gives me a
feeling of something basic and secure and eternal in all this strange
puzzle of life. It was a beautiful day up there on the tip-toe of Nob
Hill. What a beautiful view they must have had from the mansion windows.
The same sky and the same banks of heavy soft white clouds. And Job,
that mysterious man of the Bible, must have looked up at just such a sky
when those stern questions came to him:
“Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if
thou hast understanding.
“Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him
that is perfect in knowledge?”
“Hast thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten
looking glass?”
The nob of Nob Hill, how close it is to the sky.