Today Constance motored me into town, and we fetched up at 12:30 at
the Dolores Mission. It was closed, and a formidable woman who opened
the priest’s house door, refused to let us see a priest. Constance,
undefeated and indignant, retreated to the grocer shop across the
way and telephoned to a Bishop. It was equivalent to “Open, Sesame!”
On second application the female watchdog melted away, and a priest
appeared in her stead. He had an Irish name, and an Irish face, and
he kindly showed us over the mission. This was founded in about 1770
by the Franciscan friars, hence the subsequent name of the town, San
Francisco. The Church was built long after Spain had ceased to erect
those glories of architecture that are conspicuous in Mexico. In the
16th Century labor was cheap, and the Church was rich. In the 18th
Century the glory of God was chanted in a building of adobe (dried
mud-bricks) white-washed. This simple building still stands, with its
little whitewashed columns outside, like the entrance to a simple
Colonial house. Around the Mission sprang up the native grass huts.
Then with the gold-rush evolved the rough mining town, and that was the
beginning of San Francisco. Before the earthquake the town was only 70
years old. But I am not writing a guide book!
From the church we wandered out into the sun bathed cemetery, old
world, deserted and neglected. The first grave that caught my eye
was engraved with the name of Arguello, governor of the County. He
was the brother or the father of the girl Concha whom Bret Harte has
immortalised in his poem called: “Concepcion de Arguello.” Further on,
another grave known as that of “Yankee Sullivan” a prize fighter who
had died at the hands of the Vigilante Society--“a native of Bandon
Co., Cork, Ireland,” so the inscription ran. I repeated to myself
“Bandon ... Bandon” my own little Irish village town--and my childhood
up to seventeen welled up in my heart and memory. The Irish valley,
and the river, woods, and hills ... my friends the poachers, and
the village drunks who used to frighten me so on the lonely road on
Saturday afternoons!
I remember now--that our gardener, and our keeper, and the coachman
whom we children loved, had left us one by one. I used to wonder what
it meant “to emigrate”--I vaguely understood they were leaving for “the
States,” but what sort of state that was I did not know, but I remember
how they said goodbye; big, strong men, with tears in their eyes
impress a child. I stood there before the grave of this inhabitant of
Bandon, and felt absurdly sentimental. It is a long way from Bandon to
San Francisco. We lingered over-long, and had to hurry away, arriving
at the St. Francis Hotel extremely late for lunch. Afterwards Mr. de
Young took me to his museum which he has presented to the town. It has
the most perfect setting, in the middle of the Park. We did a lightning
rush through it for we had less than an hour. Sculptures, paintings,
prints, enamels, ivories, textures, furnitures and minerals, he showed
me a motley collection arranged with care and taste.
From here we rushed back to the Hotel, being arrested on the way for
“speeding,” and Mr. de Young left me in the hands of a detective to see
the town!
We started off first to the city gaol; I suppose a great many people
have seen the inside of a gaol, but I had not. It hit me with the full
force of a first impression. We arrived there in a jocular mood, but
that mood was dispersed the moment we stepped out of the elevator onto
the prison floor.
There they were, humans behind bars. Pacing back and forth in the
narrow caged-in alley-way. Each had his cell, more like a cage it
looked, and their door opened onto this “run.” The warder showed us
how the cell doors worked. One iron lever closed the entire row with
one movement. The sound was exactly like the closing of doors in the
lion house at the Zoo. I did not like to look too hard, I felt a great
embarrassment. Whenever, at the Zoo, I have stared at lions I have
always been conscious of the indignity towards them, and to stare into
the eyes of caged humans is almost more than one dare. In one cell
lying on the bare wood floor, in a contorted position, almost standing
on his head, one man lay half dazed, and seemingly in great distress.
The warder said he was a drug-fiend. “How long have you been taking
the stuff?” the warder asked him--“Twenty-one years ...” the fellow
answered in a strange strained voice, moistening dry lips, and opening
and closing his eyes. Then with a sudden outbreak, and without shifting
his position: “No prison ever stopped a man from taking dope.”
In another section, a nice looking Spanish boy was sitting writing in
his cell. It looked like a cabin on board a ship. He had ornamented
the wall with pictures from the illustrated papers of film-stars and
English peeresses. He looked so young, so cheerful, so frank and
honest. “Why are you here?” I asked. He smiled, and hesitated, and then
looked shyly down: “A girl--eighteen--a minor--”
“American?” I asked.
“No--Italian.”
“In Spain or Italy that wouldn’t put you in prison!” I said, thinking
of the mature Latin girls of fourteen.
“It’s like a home!” he said humorously.
We went to the woman’s section. In one big cage sat three or four, one
was greyhaired, her age was 74. “Smuggling drink” was her trouble. I
began to feel that it is only a crime to be found out. In the next a
woman sat alone. Big, thick, middle aged, with a face grown hard from
suffering--she arose and came to the iron bars to talk with us. She
had at last--she told the warder--slept one hour, and felt a little
better. Her indictment was that she had shot her husband. “I adored
him--” she said, “my daughter didn’t want me to marry him, because of
the way he drank--we married just two years ago. Yes I am American
born--my husband was a Swede. He was a cement-worker. His only fault
was drink.--Last Saturday he bought some moonshine, mixed it up with
beer,--firewater it was, it drove him crazy. He threatened to shoot me
first and then himself. I got the gun off the Captain(?) who was in the
house. I thought it was unloaded, and so I handed it to him as a joke,
and it went off--”
“Lucky it went off on him instead of on you--“I said. She looked at me
wearily through half closed eyes: “It might as well have been me--”
We left the prison.
In the basement of the building the Coroner had his office, and he
invited us to see “the Morgue.” In a big room, a big table with a
lamp and books gave the illusion of a salon. The four corners were
partitioned off, and handsomely draped with velvet curtains. In these
the bodies lie, the first few days, awaiting recognition. There were
but two this day, one was completely covered over; the other partially.
From beneath a sheet two stumps protruded, and a bucket hung to catch
the blood. An Italian boy fishing from a raft, had drowned. His body
had been rescued from man eating sharks. “We have two more in cold
storage, down below,” said the Coroner. We followed him. The place was
built like an aquarium. On either side were great show cases, lit up
with electric light. In each a body was beautifully set, wrapped around
in a sheet so that only the face could show. They can be preserved
here for several months.
One’s first impression was “how life-like”--they seemed to be some
waxen image, in the “Chamber of Horrors” at Madame Tussaud’s.
One, an old man, greyhaired, open mouthed, head thrown back and
dilating nostrils, had committed suicide by gas asphyxiation. The
other a little blood stained smiling boy, red haired looking at us
with such wide open wondering eyes. He had been run over by a train.
The announcement of a red haired boy, had brought about 50 people,
but none so far had claimed him. From fifty families a red-haired boy
had disappeared, it seemed incredible. But, it is midnight--I cannot
go on writing and thinking of this place, with its dead below, and
its dead-alive above. I will recall how I got out into God’s air, and
drank the cool fresh evening in deep breaths. And so, across the square
to Chinatown. Here at a street corner my detective guide hailed two
strange, illdressed, square built stalwart men. These were detectives
in disguise, who mingle with the Chinese crowd, and know the Chinese
haunts. They seemed well-known in Chinatown, disguise is not much use!
One of them joined us and we followed him. He took us into shops and
eating houses, where blank faced Chinamen played their games of cards
and dominos and hardly troubled to look up at us as we passed through.
Into back premises we went, and down black stairs, through secret doors
and passages, where by the light of an electric torch one saw the
hatchet marks where doors and walls had been hacked down when the place
was raided by the police.
However anyone ever discovered the latchless secret doors that seemed
so perfectly a part of the panelled wall or dared to penetrate into the
labyrinths of double walls, trapdoors and secret stairways, Heaven only
knows.
Our stalwart guide, who looked more like an Irish prize fighter than
a shrewd detective, seemed to glory in the game. Every day and every
night must seem to him a great adventure. He led us down a black
unlighted alley, a cul-de-sac between some tenements, where murders are
not infrequent. Suddenly he turned round, on a silent footed follower
whom I had not noticed: “What are you sneaking around here for--get
out!” he said and flashed his torch in the grimly smiling Chinese face.
Just for a second I felt the atmosphere rather tense--the Chinaman
hesitated, and then retreated.
We pushed open a door ajar. A Chinese prostitute stood smoking her
pipe. Soberly dressed, in black silk jacket and trousers, her hair so
neat and shiny, her face almost unpainted, she shyly grinned at us. I
made a comparison in my mind, between this and the half breed Mexicans
at Tampico. In comparison the Chinese was a noblewoman.
The police have their hands full in Chinatown, to prevent gambling,
doping and prostitution. Though why it should be any concern of the
law’s whether a Chinaman, in Chinatown, is solicited by a Chinese
prostitute is more than I can understand. This country moves in a
mysterious way, its wonder to perform, and one can hope that it knows
best.
I motored back to Burlingame and hurriedly dressed and arrived
extremely late at a dinner party. Wine flowed, and restored my jaded
spirits. I looked round the table at the brilliant, cheerful, noisy
company and a new thought came to me. I found myself pondering on the
high moral standard imposed by the United States. Continually I ask
myself this question: “_Is_ the United States more moral than any other
country? Are the men and women human, or has legislation and public
opinion extinguished the devil that lives in human frames?” I find no
answer.