My education began the day I was born, for I am told that, after a
somewhat precipitous and unceremonious arrival, my father took me
about the room to see the pictures on the wall--sundry chromos and
steel engravings, which I am said to have observed with intelligence
and pleasure. Having been intimately acquainted with several normal
infants, I doubt, however, both observation and pleasure. Perhaps that
early exposure to art was what determined my life-long interest in
it, and in the joys of seeing. Those old-fashioned pictures may have
presented to my inexperienced eye no more confused an image than do the
latest post-impressionist interpretations of essential form or the soul
of things to my trained sight.
After this introduction to the graphic arts I met poetry--familiar
hymns and Mother Goose. I knew the ten little Indians who by a series
of gruesome accidents were reduced to none, Prudy, Sanford and Merton
whom I loathed, Pocahontas and Robinson Crusoe. I still possess a
number of books that date far back in my life, among them Mary Mapes
Dodge’s _Rhymes and Jingles_ and Whittier’s _Child Life_. The only
things my father ever read aloud to me were poems, usually out of the
big green and gold _Household Book of Poetry_. Aunt Martha read us
_Helen’s Babies_, to my delight.
I was reading at four. I have “Rewards of Merit,” small cards with gay
pictures given me at the end of each week when I had been a good little
girl and made proper progress in my reading lessons. And for my fifth
birthday my father printed in red ink a foolscap sheet of words for me
to learn to spell, five columns beginning with words of two letters and
running up to six letters each. I must have been greatly pleased with
my present for I remember it yet so happily. A letter written by my
mother at this time says that I was insatiable in my demand for stories
to be told to me and for books to be read.
My first school was a private one in First Street between Spring and
Main in Los Angeles after I was seven. I remember very little about
it. My career there was ended by the long sickness when father told me
about his early trips to California. The next school was supposed to be
very select, Miss Carle’s, over on Olive Street near Second in the same
house with Miss Stem, my Adventist music teacher, who used to tell me
the world was about to end, but who could give no satisfactory answer
to my contention that in that case I ought to be having harp lessons
instead of piano. The school numbered ten children and was conducted in
Miss Carle’s bedroom, apparently, for in one corner stood a marvellous,
high feather-bed; once when I carelessly stood on a chair to reach the
top of the black-board, she in anger tossed me across the room to this
bed, where I disappeared in its feathery depths. Having acquired a
little knowledge and considerable whooping-cough, this school was also
consigned to my past.
The Los Angeles Academy on Main Street, between Third and Fourth, was
my next educational resort. This was on the lot adjoining the famous
old round-house, or better, fourteen-sided house,--each of whose sides
was labelled with the name of one of the thirteen original states and
California. It had been for many years a popular resort and beer garden
called “The Garden of Eden.” But its days of glory were past, and the
marble Adam and Eve who had adorned it were gone; no flaming sword was
visible, but there was a formidable cactus hedge on the Spring Street
side which may have deterred them from return. There was vacant land
on the east side of Main Street opposite the school, where one of the
city zanjas ran beside a row of willows at the foot of a little hill.
Playing here one noon I attempted to wade and was unceremoniously swept
from my feet and sent sailing down the flume. I suppose I learned
something at this school, but I know that I have always suffered from
lack of drill in plain addition and subtraction, so I think I shall
have to blame the Los Angeles Academy for hampering me in calculus and
other of the higher reaches of mathematics.
When I was ten I was somewhat desperately and gingerly consigned to the
public schools, where I would much better have been from the beginning.
I started in the fifth grade under Mrs. Ella Enderlein, later a
newspaper woman well known in the city. I had the good fortune to
have both sixth and seventh grade work with Mrs. C. G. Du Bois, a rare
teacher, who remained in the school system for many, many years, and
will be lovingly remembered by numerous men and women of Los Angeles
who were also once the boys and girls of this city. When I knew her
she wore six little grey curls hanging at the back of her head, and
she had the merriest blue eyes,--we learned our lessons well for her.
There was a strange principal who used to walk about the halls arrayed
like Solomon in all his glory. He wore slippers and a dressing gown of
oriental patterns and coloring, trimmed with a sapphire blue. Perhaps
his style of dress had something to do with his disappearance from our
view. His successor was an excellent teacher, I know, for he taught
me in the eighth grade; however he had a bad temper and once threw an
eraser at one of the girls and chased a boy up and down the aisles and
over our desks in a vain attempt to thrash him.
Mrs. Bradfield was art teacher for all the schools in the city and gave
me my first lessons. As I had something of a gift for drawing I was
allowed on all possible public occasions to decorate the blackboards
with colored chalk pictures and designs, often Kate Greenaway children,
or sun-flowers after Oscar Wilde.
My four years of grammar school were passed in the first high school
building, located on Pound Cake Hill, about where the upper story of
the County Court House now is. When the site was wanted by the men-folk
of the town, the school building was moved on a mighty trestle across
Temple Street and over to California Street and the hill itself was
decapitated.
When I was ready for high school I went down to the new grammar school
building at Sixth Street which occupied the Mercantile Place property
between Spring and Broadway. I daily walked along a Broadway of
cottages and gardens and occasional churches. Often I picked a flower
or a Chinese orange from Aunt Margaret’s yard at Second Street; and, as
I passed, I looked down the lovely Third Street, shaded by large pepper
trees, to a cottage covered by an enormous rose bush.
The Los Angeles High School was temporarily accommodated in four rooms
and an office, while the new building up next the old graveyard on
North Hill Street, was being constructed. It is said that for several
years the high school children ate their noon lunches sitting on
tombs and cemetery curbs. In my day there were fewer than two hundred
students. The course was not unlike the simpler ones of today, but
there were not so many electives and none of the manual and technical
classes. In the ninth grade I had Latin, Rhetoric, Algebra, Physical
Geography, and Ancient History; and in the tenth, Latin, Geometry,
English and English History,--not so very different from the present
college preparatory, is it?
Mrs. Bradfield taught drawing in the high school as well as in the
grades. It was under her that Guy Rose got his first art lessons. Music
also had a special teacher and under Prof. Kent we sang lustily--among
other things “We are the gay students of fair Salamanca.” His high silk
hat, his close fitting Prince Albert coat, his waxed moustache, his
smile, and tripping steps were very entertaining to the children.
At this time it was determined to send me north to school for a change
of climate. Oakland at that time was a center of private schools and
academies. I went to Field Seminary, long since extinct. The life
in a well-governed boarding school was something new to me. I, who
had ranged freely, must take my daily exercise in a regulated walk,
the girls going two by two up and down the city streets. It was
surprising how soon this habit affected my point of view. Once, after
due deliberation and considering of my record, recommendations, and
pedigree, I was allowed to walk alone around the corner--no street was
to be crossed--to take dinner with my cousins, the Ben Flint family.
It is a wonder I did not crawl through the paling fence where the back
yards met, for such was the effect of the constant mass movements that
when I stepped alone out of the gate into the peaceful street I felt
as embarrassed as if I had shed my garments, along with the protecting
phalanx of pupils and guarding teacher.
On Thursdays I was excused from exercise to take a bath. The rule of
the clock was rigid, and when it said four o’clock on Thursday I must
be ready to enter and bathe, or go forever unbathed. What a smashing of
precedent! But I suppose one tub could not accommodate over forty girls
on Saturday night, the correct American bath night.
The actual school work was a delight, with glimpses into new fields:
chemistry, where we saw samples of aluminum, a metal which might some
day become very useful; geology, with a long trip on the street car
miles and miles into the country to the State University at Berkeley,
where Professor Le Conte told us most interesting things--geology,
gently tuned by Professor Thomas Heaton to meet the exigencies of
Mosaic “days of creation,” and yet opening the mind to questionings.
There was also Cicero and an introduction into the German language and
English literature. I even read the whole of _Paradise Lost_. Then, bad
eyes, and a verdict of never any more school, not even sight enough for
sewing! But oculists don’t know everything always.
And so I came home. In the house were many books,--always had been
so long as I could remember. The rigid Maine rule of semi-annual
house-cleaning held sway, and it was often my task to take out, beat,
dust and replace all the volumes in the capacious bookcases. There were
essays, histories, biographies: sets of Dickens, Thackeray, George
Eliot, Hawthorne, Scott, besides scattered novels; Shakespeare was
there and a few other dramatists, all the standard poets, Cervantes
and Plutarch. These were not only dusted, but read to a great or less
extent.
_Harper’s Magazine_, with its buff cover adorned with cupids,
cornucopias, fruits and flowers, was a regular visitor, as was the
_Century_ later. I recall the laughter of a family reading of Frank
Stockton’s _The Casting Away of Mrs. Lecks and Mrs. Aleshine_. _The
Congregationalist_ and _The Pacific_ provided Sunday reading for
father, along with his Bagster’s _Bible_. He once pointed out to me
mildly that the varying accounts of the Hebrew historical events did
not “jibe.” Several missionary magazines gave knowledge of life in far
parts of the world. _Littell’s Living Age_ came for several years, and,
being bound, was at least handled semi-annually.
The tri-weekly _New York Tribune_ and _Harper’s Weekly_ (until it
turned mug-wump) brought news out of the East to supplement what two
daily papers afforded. I think father knew where every raw material in
the world was produced and where it was manufactured. He used to “poke
fun” at me as an educated woman, after I returned from college, because
I could not name, characterize and assign to his state every United
States Senator.
I had the advantage of a home where good English was spoken, where one
was expected to know how to spell correctly and write grammatically,
where an interest was taken in large and wide questions, and where
everyone found his chief pleasure and amusement in reading. Rather a
bad environment in which to find oneself condemned to useless eyes!
Los Angeles did not in those days offer, naturally, the same
opportunities in art, theater, and music that the East did, but I saw
Booth and Barrett in _Julius Caesar_ and I heard Adelina Patti.
When my aunt came to our home she brought with her about a hundred
photographic copies of the world’s famous paintings and pictures of
cathedrals and statuary. On many a Sunday afternoon I pored over these
until the names of Ralphael, da Vinci, Murillo, Phidias became as
familiar as Longfellow or Scott.
As was customary, a faithful attempt extending over many years, was
made to make a musician out of me. It failed. I was eye-minded. That
exposure to art on my natal day had determined my tastes.
Vacations, the most welcome part of the school year, were spent, with
the exception of one summer in the East, for the most part at the
Cerritos. As the resort grew at Long Beach and we young folks attained
age we passed many hours on the sand and in the breakers. Then, when I
was eighteen, I had my first experience of camp life at Avalon, just
established at Catalina. I learned to swim and dive, to tramp and sleep
on the ground. For three summers we did this while the island was yet
primitive and uncrowded.