The first shovelful of earth was turned for Wellesley College the day
before I was born, and when I was ready to enter as a student, only
eleven classes had been graduated. Yet to me, coming as I did, from
the embryonic, frontier college, with its single building in a waste
of cactus and sagebrush, Wellesley, with its many dignified buildings
set beside Lake Waban in a campus of sweeping lawns and stately trees,
seemed an institution not only honorable, but ancient. Because of my
three earlier visits in the East, the conditions of climate and of
village life were not unknown to me, but it was the four continuous
college years spent in the environment to which my race was wont, and
to which my instinct responded, that brought me my heritage of joy in
the slipping seasons, and made possible an understanding reading of the
songs of our English tongue from “Sumer is icumen in” to “When lilacs
last in the door yard bloomed.”
Wellesley’s hills and meadows, her trees, her birds, her lake brought
me an ecstasy that lingers; her out-of-doors became an integral part of
me, stored pictures of the wide whiteness of winter, with snow-laden
firs or interlacing crystal branches, or of an autumn sunset sky,
glorious behind a black screen of naked trees; memories of hepaticas
and snowdrops in early spring, of anemones and crow-foot violets; of
a mist of new pale leaves on the elms and red buds on the maples; of
lushness of green June, and waxen lilies on summer streams, a greenness
and wetness unlike my land at home, unlike my California with its wide
skies and open miles, its great mountains, its grays and tans, its far
blues and wistful purples. It is blessed I am to know two homes.
Time in its passing brought me to college, not to the one which I
had been destined from birth, Mt. Holyoke, but to Wellesley. The
former had not then transformed itself from a female seminary into a
woman’s college, so, since the value of a degree for women had become
increasingly apparent, it was deemed wise for the girl going three
thousand miles to school to go to the institution of the higher rank.
Neither Berkeley nor Stanford University, though near home, had been
considered. The State University was of necessity non-religious and
hence somewhat suspect of the orthodox, and Stanford was new and
untried--and besides--didn’t it derive its support from race horses
and a winery? Moreover, New England parentage and tradition sent the
children “home,” if possible, for their education.
With Mt. Holyoke eliminated, the choice lay between Smith and
Wellesley, and fell upon the latter for the following reasons:
In the first place, Wellesley was reputed to be modeled on the beloved
school of Mary Lyon, and to have preserved some of its best features.
In the second place--the location near Boston gave it an advantage
over its sister inland college in the way of music, art, libraries,
museums. It was also, by virtue of its situation, more accessible to
visitors, and many a notable person, drawn by the glamour that still
lingered about a woman’s college, came to inspect the materialization
of Tennyson’s vision of _The Princess_. The inspection of visitors and
girls was mutual, and, we hope, of advantage to both. In the third
place, and this is what finally decided me, I preferred the course of
study.
I entered college on certificate, covering the work I had done in three
schools, the Los Angeles High School, Field Seminary in Oakland, and
Pomona College Preparatory School in Claremont. So far as I can judge,
my western preparation was as effective as that of my classmates who
came from the East and the Middle-West.
College life is broken by vacations. I was fortunate in being able to
return to my home for the long summers, while seeing various parts of
the East during the shorter recesses. With great delight each June I
left Massachusetts, beautiful to look upon, intolerable to live in,
going to California’s comfortable southwest coast. I was always sped
on my way by the pities of my friends who ignorantly supposed that
California climate was so much warmer than the eastern in summer as it
is in winter. I doubt if any of my friends were so cool as I.
The eight trips back and forth across the continent gave opportunity
to see many different places. One journey by the Canadian Pacific gave
glimpses of the old city of Montreal, of the lovely land north of
Lake Superior and of the grandeur of the great northern Rockies. On
another trip a stop-over in Chicago gave me ten days at the Columbian
Exposition, whose chief memory is of the dignified white buildings, the
art collection, and the lighted lagoons at night.
My shorter vacations included one each in Chicago, Boston, New York
City, and Washington, where I had the privilege of seeing how actual
sessions of Congress compared with our college representations.
I discovered that we at college had neglected some of the stage
furniture--the couches upon which exhausted congressmen took their
daily siesta.
Twice I spent Christmas in Skowhegan, Maine, my mother’s old home town
to which she had taken me in my little girl days. Here I found deep
snows and a temperature forty degrees below, and in my hostess the
truest embodiment of the Christmas spirit I have ever met.
A Christmas vacation spent in Boston was one of the most interesting.
A friend and I took a room high up in an old house near Copley
Square--two girls free to enjoy the city. Among other delights we had
a feast of music--the Haydn and Handel Society _Messiah_, a recital
given by Paderewski, the new Polish pianist, two symphony concerts,
heard from the twenty-five cent gallery of the old Symphony Hall, the
Christmas music at the Church of the Ascension, and the memorable
watch-night service, New Year’s Eve, at Trinity Church, when everyone
hoped and no one knew that Phillips Brooks would come. The church was
dim and fragrant with the odor of cedar and pine, and the people were
hushed by the beauty of the ancient ritual. As midnight approached the
great figure of the bishop appeared from among the trees of the choir
and mounted the pulpit. Bishop Brooks spoke simply and solemnly and
as the hour struck made a prayer out of his own deep heart. With his
message for the New Year we went into an unforgettable, marvellous
night, with snowy ground, a dark sky filled with fleecy clouds about a
prismed moon. In three weeks the beloved Bishop was dead--a true bishop
of all the people. The knowing of Phillips Brooks was one of the good
things my years in Wellesley brought me.
College days were over. I was a graduate of Wellesley, with all that
meant of training, of prestige, of obligation.
The four years had been busy and valuable, but they were not the
happiest days of my life, as school days are often said to be. I was
going through a period of re-adjustment and re-valuation that did not
make for peace of mind. I was often lonely, for, although I had a wide
and pleasant acquaintance, I did not make the intimate friends that I
did either before or after college days. I have wondered why. Was I so
unsettled that no one me dominated and attracted its own, or was I, the
western girl, always something of a stranger in a strange land? It may
have been better so, since I was to go so far from college haunts and
friends. The girls at the end sang pensively of Seniors about to be
“lost in the wide, wide world.” I didn’t care or fear. I hastened to be
lost, for the wide, wide world meant California, my homeland, to which
I fled the instant I secured my diploma. The western girl who went East
to college went West to live.
The years at Wellesley soon slipped back into the dim region of memory
and Los Angeles became once more the familiar environment of my life.
It was so good to be at home again--but Time was bringing changes and
new responsibilities. The family was smaller than it had been, for my
sister had followed me to Wellesley, and my aunt was taking a year-long
vacation in the East, thus giving me a chance to learn by experience
how to be a house-keeper. I judge that I, the amateur, did not always
reach the usual standard of good order set for our home, for I have a
picture of my father down on his knees at the parlor fireplace, one
evening before dinner when company was expected, carefully wiping the
blower with an oiled rag, while suggesting to me “I think if your Aunt
Marthy were here she would take those newspapers from the shelf under
the table.” I did not know that he noticed such things. I was a bit
conscience-smitten.
Our life went on serenely and happily. Daily he went down the hill to
the company office on First Street, just above Broadway. We filled our
home time with reading the newspapers, books and magazines especially
_The Forum_, which at that time was very good. I made a final
fruitless attempt to be musical, took a few painting lessons which I
wish had been many, and for a time went to the new Throop Institute in
Pasadena, for dressmaking training. I learned how to bone a basque and
line a skirt, and a few other arts now unnecessary.
On Sunday I undertook to hold the attention of half a dozen lively
small boys. We liked each other and had a very good time together, but
how much we learned I cannot say. Perhaps my own sons have profited by
my acquaintance with those other obstreperous young Americans. I never
wanted to exchange them for the neighboring class of little girls whose
whispers and giggles were less understandable to me than the excess of
energy evidenced by punching, pin-sticking, and the tipping over of
chairs.
Neither father nor I was very demonstrative, but we enjoyed being
together as we always had. We went out seldom in the evening as a
growing deafness made public meetings of little value to him. But we
never missed a Maine Society gathering. He had not lost his interest in
people from the old home state and read the _Great Register_ whenever
it came out, checking off every “Mainiac” and hunting him up when
possible.
One evening when a cousin, Frank Weston from Santa Clara, was visiting
us I heard him and father exchanging news of one and another relative
unknown to me, so I asked how many cousins there were; they did not
know; but father began naming them for me to count. He remembered one
hundred and twenty-five, no seconds being listed. How many first
he may have missed, I do not know. They all seemed to know him and
whenever a new one came to California he made for our house. There
was a certain quality about father that won people. I remember the
testimony to this that I witnessed about this time when he and I
had gone to a church supper together. He soon saw a strange, small
baby whom he borrowed and carried about with him all evening, to the
apparent satisfaction of both. It is a pity that his children came so
late in life that he had no chance to be grandfather to the fifteen
grandchildren that have accrued since his death.
The spring of 1896 brought a sudden dismay into our peaceful family.
A telegram from New York City reported the desperate illness of Nan,
who had gone there for her Easter vacation. Aunt Martha hurried to
her, while we at home for six weeks lived for the daily telegram.
The anxiety told on father, who was then past seventy. Even after my
sister’s safe return he still seemed weary.
That was the summer of the Free Silver campaign, and he was greatly
worried about the outcome and its effect upon his somewhat precarious
business affairs. Even his satisfaction at the defeat of Mr. Bryan was
offset by the strain of an all-night session counting ballots in a cold
polling place, he having been unable to resist the temptation to accept
his customary position as an election officer of his precinct. With
McKinley elected and Nan well the world was saved!
And then, early in December, one Saturday evening, he failed to answer
when called for dinner. I found him sitting at the old table that
had come with us from San Justo, his cards spread before him in his
accustomed solitaire, asleep, not to wake for us again,--a beautiful
way to go, no pain, no days of helplessness.
This meant the breaking up of the home, for we young folk scattered,
Nan to Wellesley to finish her interrupted course, Llewellyn to Pomona
College where he had been during the fall, and I to make a new home in
the East.
Since my marriage I have not lived actually in Los Angeles. For eight
years, divided between Michigan, Chicago, Honolulu and Cambridge,
Massachusetts, my home was outside of California; but even during that
time I made several visits here so that in all my life from the first
trip south from San Justo before I was a year old to the present, I
have never been away from Los Angeles for a period longer than two
years. Since my return to my own state, twenty-one years ago I have
always been within hailing distance. I have seen a city increase
and multiply in an amazing manner, even an hundred fold, a strange
experience for one who has no intention of being old for a long time
yet. Those who realize how this infant prodigy of a town is daily
swamped with hordes of new and unrelated people have patience with
some things for which she can be justly criticised; they take pride in
the vigor of her life and have faith that when she really grows up and
discovers a co-ordinated spirit to direct her overgrown body, she will
earn a right to her queenly name.
It is because these vanished days are so clear to me that I have put
down some of the things I know for those who care to read, among whom
I hope will be found the thirty grand-children of the Hathaway-Bixby
couples who have figured in the narrative.
The older people who have come into my record are all gone except Aunt
Margaret and Aunt Martha, both well beyond their three score years and
ten. They live in Long Beach, the new city on the old ranch barley
fields.
I began my book with a dedication to my father. I close it with a
loving greeting to my two aunts, the remaining “Hathaway girls;” the
one who welcomed me into the world and has been to me always the soul
of generosity and kindness, the other for more than forty years a
devoted mother to me, a woman of culture and character, whose alert
mind still follows the best thought of the day, and whose big heart
spends itself for the welfare of the oppressed.
My aunts, I salute you.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Illustrations have been moved to paragraph breaks near where they are
mentioned, except for the frontispiece.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.