She was a dear old stupid town in my day. She boasted but half a dozen
thinly populated streets. One might pass through these streets almost
any day, at almost any hour of the day, footing it all the way from the
dismantled fort on the seaside to the ancient cemetery, grown to seed,
at the other extremity of the settlement, and not meet half a score of
people.
Geese fed in the gutters, and hissed as I passed by; cows grazing by the
wayside eyed me in grave surprise; overhead, the snow-white sea-gulls
wheeled and cried peevishly; and on the heights that shelter the
ex-capital the pine-trees moaned and moaned, and often caught and held
the sea-fog among their branches, when the little town was basking in
the sunshine and dreaming its endless dream.
How did a man kill time in those days? There was a studio on Alvarado
Street; it stood close to the post-office, in what may be generously
denominated as the busiest part of the town. The studio was the focus of
life and hope and love; some work was also supposed to be done there. It
was the headquarters of the idle and the hungry, and the seeker after
consolation in all its varied forms. Choice family groceries were
retailed three times a day in the rear of the establishment; and there
we often gathered about the Bohemian board, to celebrate whatever our
fancy painted. Now it was an imaginary birthday--a movable feast that
came to be very popular in our select artistic circle; again it was the
possible--dare I say probable?--sale of a picture at a quite
inconceivable price. There were always occasions enough. Would it had
been the case with the dinners!
The studio was the thing,--the studio, decked with Indian trophies and
the bleached bones of sea birds and land beasts, and lined with studies
in all colors under heaven. Here was the oft-lighted peace-pipe; and
Orient rugs and wolf-skins for a _siesta_ when the beach yonder was a
blaze of white and blinding light, that made it blessed to close one's
eyes and shut out the glare--and to keep one's ears open to the lulling
song of the sea.
Here we concocted a plan. It was to be kept a profound mystery; even the
butcher was unaware, and the baker in total darkness; as for the
wine-merchant, he was as blind as a bat. We were to give the banquet and
ball of the season. We went to the hall of our sisters,--scarcely kin
were they, but kinder never lived, and their house was at our disposal.
We threw out the furniture; we made a green bower of the adobe chamber.
One window, that bore upon the forlorn vacuum of the main street, was
speedily stained the deepest and most splendid dyes; from without, it
had a pleasing, not to say refining, medieval effect; from within, it
was likened unto the illuminated page of an antique antiphonary--in
flames; yes, positively in flames!
A great board was laid the length of the room, a kind of Round
Table--with some few unavoidable innovations, such as a weak leg or two,
square corners, and an unexpected depression in the centre of it, where
the folding leaves sought in vain to join. From the wall depended the
elaborate _menu_, life-size and larger; and at every course a cartoon in
color more appetizing than the town market. The emblematic owl blinked
upon us from above the door. Invitations were hastily penned and sent
forth to a select few. Forgive us, Dona Jovita, if thy guest card was
redolent of tea or of brown soap; for it was penned in the privacy of
the pantry, and either upon the Scylla of the tea-caddy or the soapy
Charybdis it was sure to be dashed at last.
It was rare fun, if I did say it from the foot of the flower-strewn
table, clad in an improvised toga, while a gentleman in Joss-like
vestments carved and complimented in a single breath at the top of the
Bohemian board. From the adjoining room came the music of hired
minstrels: the guitar, the violin, and blending voices--a piping tenor
and a soft Spanish _falsetto_. They chanted rhythmically to the clatter
of tongues, the ripple of laughter, and the clash of miscellaneous
cutlery.
An unbidden multitude, gathered from the highways, and the byways,
loitered about the vicinity, patiently--O how patiently!--awaiting our
adjournment. The fandango naturally followed; and it enlivened the vast,
bare chambers of an adjoining adobe, whose walls had not echoed such
revelry since the time when Monterey was the chief port of the Northern
Pacific, and basked in the sunshine of a prosperous monopoly. A good
portion of the town was there that evening. Shadowy forms hovered in the
arbors of the rose garden; the city band appeared and rendered much
pleasing music,--though it was rendered somewhat too vigorously. That
band was composed of the bone and sinew of the town. Oft in the daytime
had I not heard the flageolet lifting its bird-like voice over the
counter of the juvenile jeweller, who wrought cunningly in the
shimmering abalone shells during the rests in his music? Did not the
trombone bray from beyond the meadow, where the cooper could not barrel
his aspiring soul? It was the French-horn at the butcher's, the fife at
the grocer's, the cornet in the chief saloon on the main street; while
at the edge of the town, from the soot and grime of the smithy, I heard
at intervals the boom of the explosive drum. It was thus they responded
to one another on that melodious shore, and with an ambitious diligence
worthy of the Royal Conservatory.
There was nothing to disturb one in the land, after the musical mania,
save the clang of the combers on the long, lonely beach; the cry of the
sea-bird wheeling overhead, or the occasional bang of a rifle. Even the
narrow-gauge railway, that stopped discreetly just before reaching the
village, broke the monotony of local life but twice in the twenty-four
hours. The whistle of the arriving and departing train, the signal of
the occasional steamer--ah! but for these, what a sweet, sad, silent
spot were that! I used to believe that possibly some day the unbroken
stillness of the wilderness might again envelop it. The policy of the
people invited it. Anything like energy or progress was discouraged in
that latitude. When it was discovered that the daily mail per Narrow
Gauge was arriving regularly and usually on time, it began to look like
indecent haste on the part of the governmental agents. The beauty and
the chivalry that congregated at the post-office seemed to find too
speedy satisfaction at the general delivery window; and presently the
mail-bag for Monterey was dropped at another village, and later carted
twenty miles into town. The happy uncertainty of the mail's arrival
caused the post-office to become a kind of forum, where all the
grievances of the populace were turned loose and generally discussed.
Then it seemed possible that the Narrow Gauge might be frowned down
altogether, and the locomotive warned to cease trespassing upon the
green pastures of the ex-capital. It even seemed possible that in course
of time all aliens might require a passport and a recommendation from
their last place before being permitted to enter in and enjoy the
society of the authorities brooding over that slumberous village.
I have seen as many as six men and a boy standing upon one of the
half-dozen street corners of the town, watching, with a surprise that
bordered upon impertinence, a white pilgrim from San Francisco in an
ulster, innocently taking his way through the otherwise deserted
streets. The ulster was perhaps the chief object of interest. I have
seen three or four citizens sitting in a row, on a fence, like so many
rooks,--and sitting there for hours, as if waiting for something. For
what, pray? For the demented squaw, who revolved about the place, and
slept out of doors in all weathers, and muttered to herself incessantly
while she went to and fro, day after day, seeking the rest she could not
hope for this side the grave? Or for Murillo, the Indian, impudent
though harmless, full of fancies and fire-water? Or for the return of
the whale-boats, with their beautiful lateen-sails? Or for the gathering
of the Neapolitan fishermen down under the old Custom House, where they
sat at evening looking off upon the Bay, and perchance dreaming of Italy
and all that enchanted coast? Or for the rains that poured their sudden
and swift rivulets down the wooded slopes and filled the gorges that
gutted some of the streets? Was it the love of nature, or a belief in
fatalism, or sheer laziness, I wonder, that preserved to Monterey those
washouts, from two to five feet in depth, that were sometimes in the
very middle of the streets, and impassable save by an improvised
bridge--a single plank?
Ah me! It is an ungracious task to prick the bubble reputation, had I
not been dazzled with dreams of Monterey from my youth up! Was I piqued
when I, then a citizen of San Francisco--one of the three hundred
thousand,--when I read in "The Handbook of Monterey" these lines: "San
Francisco is not too firmly fixed to fear the competition of Monterey"?
Well, I may as well confess myself a false prophet. The town fell into
the hands of Croesus, and straightway lost its identity. It is now a
fashionable resort, and likely to remain one for some years to come.
Where now can one look for the privacy of old? Then, if one wished to
forget the world, he drove through a wilderness to Cypress Point. Now
'tis a perpetual picnic ground, and its fastnesses are threaded by a
drive which is one of the features of Del Monte Hotel life. It was
solemn enough of yore. The gaunt trees were hung with funereal mosses;
they had huge elbows and shoulders, and long, thin arms, with skeleton
fingers at the ends of them, that bore knots that looked like heads and
faces such as Doré portrayed in his fantastic illustrations. They were
like giants transformed,--they are still, no doubt; for the tide of
fashion is not likely to prevail against them.
They stand upon the verge of the sea, where they have stood for ages,
defying the elements. The shadows that gather under their locked
branches are like caverns and dungeons and lairs. The fox steals
stealthily away as you grope among the roots, that writhe out of the
earth and strike into it again, like pythons in a rage. The coyote sits
in the edge of the dusk, and cries with a half-human cry--at least he
did in my dead day. And here are corpse-like trees, that have been naked
for ages; every angle of their lean, gray boughs seems to imply
something. Who will interpret these hieroglyphics? Blood-red sunsets
flood this haunted wood; there is a sound as of a deep-drawn sigh
passing through it at intervals. The moonlight fills it with mystery;
and along its rocky front, where the sea-flowers blossom and the
sea-grass waves its glossy locks, the soul of the poet and of the artist
meet and mingle between shadowless sea and cloudless sky, in the
unsearchable mystery of that cypress solitude.
So have I seen it; so would I see it again. When I think on that beach
at Monterey--the silent streets, the walled, unweeded gardens--a wistful
Saturday-afternoon feeling comes over me. I hear again the incessant
roar of the surf; I see the wheeling gulls, the gray sand; the brown,
bleak meadows; the empty streets; the shops, tenantless sometimes--for
the tenant is at dinner or at dominos; the other shops that are locked
forever and the keys rusted away;--whenever I think of her I am reminded
of that episode in Coulton's diary, where he, as alcalde, was awakened
from a deep sleep at the dead of night by a guard, a novice, and a slave
to duty. With no little consternation, the alcalde hastened to unbar the
door. The guard, with a respectful salute, said: "The town, sir, is
perfectly quiet."