We Go to California
The idea of a homestead now became an obsession with me. As a
proletariat I knew the power of the landlord and the value of land. My
love of the wilderness was increasing year by year, but all desire to
plow the wild land was gone. My desire for a home did not involve a
lonely cabin in a far-off valley, on the contrary I wanted roads and
bridges and neighbors. My hope now was to possess a minute isle of
safety in the midst of the streaming currents of western life--a little
solid ground in my native valley on which the surviving members of my
family could catch and cling.
All about me as I travelled, I now perceived the mournful side of
American "enterprise." Sons were deserting their work-worn fathers,
daughters were forgetting their tired mothers. Families were everywhere
breaking up. Ambitious young men and unsuccessful old men were in
restless motion, spreading, swarming, dragging their reluctant women and
their helpless and wondering children into unfamiliar hardships--At
times I visioned the Middle Border as a colony of ants--which was an
injustice to the ants, for ants have a reason for their apparently
futile and aimless striving.
My brother and I discussed my notion in detail as we sat in our
six-by-nine dining room, high in our Harlem flat. "The house must be in
a village. It must be New England in type and stand beneath tall elm
trees," I said. "It must be broad-based and low--you know the kind, we
saw dozens of them on our tramp-trip down the Connecticut Valley and
we'll have a big garden and a tennis court. We'll need a barn, too, for
father will want to keep a driving team. Mother shall have a girl to do
the housework so that we can visit her often,"--and so on and on!
Things were not coming our way very fast but they were coming, and it
really looked as though my dream might become a reality. My brother was
drawing a small but regular salary as a member of Herne's company, my
stories were selling moderately well and as neither of us was given to
drink or cards, whatever we earned we saved. To some minds our lives
seemed stupidly regular, but we were happy in our quiet way.
It was in my brother's little flat on One Hundred and Fifth Street that
Stephen Crane renewed a friendship which had begun a couple of years
before, while I was lecturing in Avon, New Jersey. He was a slim, pale,
hungry looking boy at this time and had just written _The Red Badge of
Courage_, in fact he brought the first half of it in his pocket on his
second visit, and I loaned him fifteen dollars to redeem the other half
from the keep of a cruel typist.
He came again and again to see me, always with a new roll of manuscript
in his ulster. Now it was _The Men in the Storm_, now a bunch of _The
Black Riders_, curious poems, which he afterwards dedicated to me, and
while my brother browned a steak, Steve and I usually sat in council
over his dark future.
"You will laugh over these lean years," I said to him, but he found
small comfort in that prospect.
To him I was a man established, and I took an absurd pleasure in playing
the part of Successful Author. It was all very comical--for my study was
the ratty little parlor of a furnished flat for which we paid thirty
dollars per month. Still to the man at the bottom of a pit the fellow
on top, in the sunlight, is a king, and to Crane my brother and I were
at least dukes.
An expression used by Suderman in his preface to _Dame Care_ had made a
great impression on my mind and in discussing my future with the Hernes
I quoted these lines and said, "I am resolved that _my_ mother shall not
'rise from the feast of life empty.' Think of it! She has never seen a
real play in a real theater in all her life. She has never seen a
painting or heard a piece of fine music. She knows nothing of the
splendors of our civilization except what comes to her in the
newspapers, while here am I in the midst of every intellectual delight.
I take no credit for my desire to comfort her--it's just my way of
having fun. It's a purely selfish enterprise on my part."
Katharine who was familiar with the theory of Egoistic Altruism would
not let my statement go uncontradicted. She tried to make a virtue of my
devotion to my parents.
"No," I insisted,--"if batting around town gave me more real pleasure I
would do it. It don't, in fact I shall never be quite happy till I have
shown mother _Shore Acres_ and given her an opportunity to hear a
symphony concert."
Meanwhile, having no business adviser, I was doing honorable things in a
foolish way. With no knowledge of how to publish my work I was bringing
out a problem novel here, a realistic novelette there and a book of
short stories in a third place, all to the effect of confusing my public
and disgusting the book-seller. But then, no one in those days had any
very clear notion of how to launch a young writer, and so (as I had
entered the literary field by way of a side-gate) I was doing as well as
could have been expected of me. My idea, it appears, was to get as many
books into the same market at the same time as possible. As a matter of
fact none of them paid me any royalty, my subsistence came from the
sale of such short stories as I was able to lodge with _The Century_,
and _Harper's_, _The Youth's Companion_ and _The Arena_.
The "Bacheller Syndicate" took a kindly interest in me, and I came to
like the big, blonde, dreaming youth from The North Country who was the
nominal head of the firm. Irving Bacheller, even at that time struck me
as more of a poet than a business man, though I was always glad to get
his check, for it brought the Garland Homestead just that much nearer.
On the whole it was a prosperous and busy winter for both my brother and
myself.
Chicago was in the early stages of building a World's Fair, and as
spring came on I spent a couple of weeks in the city putting _Prairie
Folks_ into shape for the printer. Kirkland introduced me to the Chicago
Literary Club, and my publisher, Frances Schulte, took me to the Press
Club and I began to understand and like the city.
As May deepened I went on up to Wisconsin, full of my plan for a
homestead, and the green and luscious slopes of the old valley gave me a
new delight, a kind of proprietary delight. I began to think of it as
home. It seemed not only a natural deed but a dutiful deed, this return
to the land of my birth, it was the beginning of a more settled order of
life.
My aunt, Susan Bailey, who was living alone in the old house in Onalaska
made me welcome, and showed grateful interest when I spoke to her of my
ambition. "I'll be glad to help you pay for such a place," she said,
"provided you will set aside a room in it for me. I am lonely now. Your
father is all I have and I'd like to spend my old age with him. But
don't buy a farm. Buy a house and lot here or in LaCrosse."
"Mother wants to be in West Salem," I replied. "All our talk has been of
West Salem, and if you can content yourself to live with us there, I
shall be very glad of your co-operation. Father is still skittish. He
will not come back till he can sell to advantage. However, the season
has started well and I am hoping that he will at least come down with
mother and talk the matter over with us."
To my delight, almost to my surprise, mother came, alone. "Father will
follow in a few days," she said--"if he can find someone to look after
his stock and tools while he is gone."
She was able to walk a little now and together we went about the
village, and visited relatives and neighbors in the country. We ate
"company dinners" of fried chicken and shortcake, and sat out on the
grass beneath the shelter of noble trees during the heat of the day.
There was something profoundly restful and satisfying in this
atmosphere. No one seemed in a hurry and no one seemed to fear either
the wind or the sun.
The talk was largely of the past, of the fine free life of the "early
days" and my mother's eyes often filled with happy tears as she met
friends who remembered her as a girl. There was no doubt in her mind.
"I'd like to live here," she said. "It's more like home than any other
place. But I don't see how your father could stand it on a little piece
of land. He likes his big fields."
One night as we were sitting on William's porch, talking of war times
and of Hugh and Jane and Walter, a sweet and solemn mood came over us.
It seemed as if the spirits of the pioneers, the McClintocks and Dudleys
had been called back and were all about us. It seemed to me (as to my
mother) as if Luke or Leonard might at any moment emerge from the
odorous June dusk and speak to us. We spoke of David, and my mother's
love for him vibrated in her voice as she said, "I don't suppose I'll
ever see him again. He's too poor and too proud to come back here, and
I'm too old and lame and poor to visit him."
This produced in me a sudden and most audacious change of plan. "I'm not
so certain about that," I retorted. "Frank's company is going to play in
California this winter, and I am arranging a lecture tour--I've just
decided that you and father shall go along."
The boldness of my plan startled her. "Oh, we can't do a crazy thing
like that," she declared.
"It's not so crazy. Father has been talking for years of a visit to his
brother in Santa Barbara. Aunt Susan tells me she wants to spend one
more winter in California, and so I see no reason in the world why you
and father should not go. I'll pay for your tickets and Addison will be
glad to house you. We're going!" I asserted firmly. "We'll put off
buying our homestead till next year and make this the grandest trip of
your life."
Aunt Maria here put in a word, "You do just what Hamlin tells you to do.
If he wants to spend his money giving you a good time, you let him."
Mother smiled wistfully but incredulously. To her it all seemed as
remote, as improbable as a trip to Egypt, but I continued to talk of it
as settled and so did William and Maria.
I wrote at once to my father outlining my trip and pleading strongly for
his consent and co-operation. "All your life long you and mother have
toiled with hardly a day off. Your travelling has been mainly in a
covered wagon. You have seen nothing of cities for thirty years. Addison
wants you to spend the winter with him, and mother wants to see David
once more--why not go? Begin to plan right now and as soon as your crops
are harvested, meet me at Omaha or Kansas City and we'll all go along
together."
He replied with unexpected half-promise. "The crops look pretty well.
Unless something very destructive turns up I shall have a few dollars to
spend. I'd like to make that trip. I'd like to see Addison once more."
I replied, "The more I think about it, the more wonderful it all seems.
It will enable you to see the mountains, and the great plains. You can
visit Los Angeles and San Francisco. You can see the ocean. Frank is to
play for a month in Frisco, and we can all meet at Uncle David's for
Christmas."
The remainder of the summer was taken up with the preparations for this
gorgeous excursion. Mother went back to help father through the harvest,
whilst I returned to Boston and completed arrangements for my lecture
tour which was to carry me as far north as Puget Sound.
At last in November, when the grain was all safely marketed, the old
people met me in Kansas City, and from there as if in a dream, started
westward with me in such holiday spirits as mother's health permitted.
Father was like a boy. Having cut loose from the farm--at least for the
winter, he declared his intention to have a good time, "as good as the
law allows," he added with a smile.
Of course they both expected to suffer on the journey, that's what
travel had always meant to them, but I surprised them. I not only took
separate lower berths in the sleeping car, I insisted on regular meals
at the eating houses along the way, and they were amazed to find travel
almost comfortable. The cost of all this disturbed my mother a good deal
till I explained to her that my own expenses were paid by the lecture
committees and that she need not worry about the price of her fare.
Perhaps I even boasted about a recent sale of a story! If I did I hope
it will be forgiven me for I was determined that this should be the
greatest event in her life.
My father's interest in all that came to view was as keen as my own.
During all his years of manhood he had longed to cross the plains and to
see Pike's Peak, and now while his approach was not as he had dreamed
it, he was actually on his way into Colorado. "By the great Horn
Spoons," he exclaimed as we neared the foot hills, "I'd like to have
been here before the railroad."
Here spoke the born explorer. His eyes sparkled, his face flushed. The
farther we got into the houseless cattle range, the better he liked it.
"The best times I've ever had in my life," he remarked as we were
looking away across the plain at the faint shapes of the Spanish Peaks,
"was when I was cruising the prairie in a covered wagon."
Then he told me once again of his long trip into Minnesota before the
war, and of the cavalry lieutenant who rounded the settlers up and sent
them back to St. Paul to escape the Sioux who were on the warpath. "I
never saw such a country for game as Northern Minnesota was in those
days. It swarmed with water-fowl and chicken and deer. If the soldiers
hadn't driven me out I would have had a farm up there. I was just
starting to break a garden when the troops came."
It was all glorious to me as to them. The Spanish life of Las Vegas
where we rested for a day, the Indians of Laguna, the lava beds and
painted buttes of the desert, the beautiful slopes of the San Francisco
Mountains, the herds of cattle, the careering cowboys, the mines and
miners--all came in for study and comment. We resented the nights which
shut us out from so much that was interesting. Then came the hot sand of
the Colorado valley, the swift climb to the bleak heights of the coast
range--and, at last, the swift descent to the orange groves and singing
birds of Riverside. A dozen times father cried out, "This alone is worth
the cost of the trip."
Mother was weary, how weary I did not know till we reached our room in
the hotel. She did not complain but her face was more dejected than I
had ever seen it, and I was greatly disturbed by it. Our grand excursion
had come too late for her.
A good night's sleep and a hearty breakfast restored her to something
like her smiling self and when we took the train for Santa Barbara she
betrayed more excitement than at any time on our trip. "Do we really
_see_ the ocean?" she asked.
"Yes," I explained, "we run close along the shore. You'll see waves and
ships and sharks--may be a whale or two."
Father was even more excited. He spent most of his time on the platform
or hanging from the window. "Well, I never really expected to see the
Pacific," he said as we were nearing the end of our journey. "Now I'm
determined to see Frisco and the Golden Gate."
"Of course--that is a part of our itinerary. You can see Frisco when you
come up to visit David."
My uncle Addison who was living in a plain but roomy house, was
genuinely glad to see us, and his wife made us welcome in the spirit of
the Middle Border for she was one of the early settlers of Green County,
Wisconsin. In an hour we were at home.
Our host was, as I remembered him, a tall thin man of quiet dignity and
notable power of expression. His words were well chosen and his manner
urbane. "I want you people to settle right down here with me for the
winter," he said. "In fact I shall try to persuade Richard to buy a
place here."
This brought out my own plan for a home in West Salem and he agreed
with me that the old people should never again spend a winter in Dakota.
There was no question in my mind about the hospitality of this home and
so with a very comfortable, a delightful sense of peace, of
satisfaction, of security, I set out on my way to San Francisco,
Portland and Olympia, eager to see California--all of it. Its mountains,
its cities and above all its poets had long called to me. It meant the
_Argonauts_ and _The Songs of the Sierras_ to me, and one of my main
objects of destination was Joaquin Miller's home in Oakland Heights.
No one else, so far as I knew, was transmitting this Coast life into
literature. Edwin Markham was an Oakland school teacher, Frank Norris, a
college student, and Jack London a boy in short trousers. Miller
dominated the coast landscape. The mountains, the streams, the pines
were his. A dozen times as I passed some splendid peak I quoted his
lines. "Sierras! Eternal tents of snow that flash o'er battlements of
mountains."
Nevertheless, in all my journeying, throughout all my other interests, I
kept in mind our design for a reunion at my uncle David's home in San
Jose, and I wrote him to tell him when to expect us. Franklin, who was
playing in San Francisco, arranged to meet me, and father and mother
were to come up from Santa Barbara.
It all fell out quite miraculously as we had planned it. On the 24th of
December we all met at my uncle's door.
This reunion, so American in its unexpectedness, deserves closer
analysis. My brother had come from New York City. Father and mother were
from central Dakota. My own home was still in Boston. David and his
family had reached this little tenement by way of a long trail through
Iowa, Dakota, Montana, Oregon and Northern California. We who had all
started, from the same little Wisconsin Valley were here drawn together,
as if by the magic of a conjuror's wand, in a city strange to us all.
Can any other country on earth surpass the United States in the ruthless
broadcast dispersion of its families? Could any other land furnish a
more incredible momentary re-assembling of scattered units?
The reader of this tale will remember that David was my boyish hero, and
as I had not seen him for fifteen years, I had looked forward, with
disquieting question concerning our meeting. Alas! My fears were
justified. There was more of pain than pleasure in the visit, for us
all. Although my brother and I did our best to make it joyous, the
conditions of the reunion were sorrowful, for David, who like my father,
had been following the lure of the sunset all his life, was in deep
discouragement.
From his fruitful farm in Iowa he had sought the free soil of Dakota.
From Dakota he had been lured to Montana. In the forests of Montana he
had been robbed by his partner, reduced in a single day to the rank of a
day laborer, and so in the attempt to retrieve his fortunes, had again
moved westward--ever westward, and here now at last in San Jose, at the
end of his means and almost at the end of his courage, he was working at
whatever he could find to do.
Nevertheless, he was still the borderer, still the man of the open.
Something in his face and voice, something in his glance set him apart
from the ordinary workman. He still carried with him something of the
hunter, something which came from the broad spaces of the Middle Border,
and though his bushy hair and beard were streaked with white, and his
eyes sad and dim, I could still discern in him some part of the physical
strength and beauty which had made his young manhood so glorious to
me--and deeper yet, I perceived in him the dreamer, the Celtic minstrel,
the poet.
His limbs, mighty as of old, were heavy, and his towering frame was
beginning to stoop. His brave heart was beating slow. Fortune had been
harshly inimical to him and his outlook on life was bitter. With all his
tremendous physical power he had not been able to regain his former
footing among men.
In talking of his misfortunes, I asked him why he had not returned to
Wisconsin after his loss in Montana, and he replied, as my father had
done. "How could I do that? How could I sneak back with empty pockets?"
Inevitably, almost at once, father spoke of the violin. "Have you got it
yet?" he asked.
"Yes," David replied. "But I seldom play on it now. In fact, I don't
think there are any strings on it."
I could tell from the tone of his voice that he had no will to play, but
he dug the almost forgotten instrument out of a closet, strung it and
tuned it, and that evening after dinner, when my father called out in
familiar imperious fashion, "Come, come! now for a tune," David was
prepared, reluctantly, to comply.
"My hands are so stiff and clumsy now," he said by way of apology to me.
It was a sad pleasure to me, as to him, this revival of youthful
memories, and I would have spared him if I could, but my father insisted
upon having all of the jocund dances and sweet old songs. Although a man
of deep feeling in many ways, he could not understand the tragedy of my
uncle's failing skill.
But mother did! Her ear was too acute not to detect the difference in
tone between his playing at this time and the power of expression he had
once possessed, and in her shadowy corner she suffered sympathetically
when beneath his work-worn fingers the strings cried out discordantly.
The wrist, once so strong and sure, the hands so supple and swift were
now hooks of horn and bronze. The magic touch of youth had vanished,
and yet as he went on, some little part of his wizardry came back.
At father's request he played once more _Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin'_, and
while the strings wailed beneath his bow I shivered as of old, stirred
by the winds of the past "roaring o'er Moorland craggy." Deep in my
brain the sob of the song sank, filling my inner vision with flitting
shadows of vanished faces, brows untouched of care, and sweet kind eyes
lit by the firelight of a secure abundant hearth. I was lying once more
before the fire in David's little cabin in the deep Wisconsin valley and
Grandfather McClintock, a dreaming giant, was drumming on his chair, his
face flame-lit, his hair a halo of snow and gold.
Tune after tune the old Borderman played, in answer to my father's
insistent demands, until at last the pain of it all became unendurable
and he ended abruptly. "I can't play any more.--I'll never play again,"
he added harshly as he laid the violin away in its box like a child in
its coffin.
We sat in silence, for we all realized that never again would we hear
those wistful, meaningful melodies. Wordless, with aching throats,
resentful of the present, my mother and my aunt dreamed of the bright
and beautiful Neshonoc days when they were young and David was young and
all the west was a land of hope.
My father now joined in urging David to go back to the middle border.
"I'll put you on my farm," he said. "Or if you want to go back to
Neshonoc, we'll help you do that. We are thinking of going back there
ourselves."
David sadly shook his grizzled head. "No, I can't do that," he repeated.
"I haven't money enough to pay my carfare, and besides, Becky and the
children would never consent to it."
I understood. His proud heart rebelled at the thought of the pitying or
contemptuous eyes of his stay-at home neighbors. He who had gone forth
so triumphantly thirty years before could not endure the notion of going
back on borrowed money. Better to die among strangers like a soldier.
Father, stern old pioneer though he was, could not think of leaving his
wife's brother here, working like a Chinaman. "Dave has acted the fool,"
he privately said to me, "but we will help him. If you can spare a
little, we'll lend him enough to buy one of these fruit farms he's
talking about."
To this I agreed. Together we loaned him enough to make the first
payment on a small farm. He was deeply grateful for this and hope again
sprang up in his heart. "You won't regret it," he said brokenly. "This
will put me on my feet, and by and by perhaps we'll meet in the old
valley."--But we never did. I never saw him again.
I shall always insist that a true musician, a superb violinist was lost
to the world in David McClintock--but as he was born on the border and
always remained on the border, how could he find himself? His hungry
heart, his need of change, his search for the pot of gold beyond the
sunset, had carried him from one adventure to another and always farther
and farther from the things he most deeply craved. He might have been a
great singer, for he had a beautiful voice and a keen appreciation of
the finer elements of song.
It was hard for me to adjust myself to his sorrowful decline into old
age. I thought of him as he appeared to me when riding his threshing
machine up the coulee road. I recalled the long rifle with which he used
to carry off the prizes at the turkey shoots, and especially I
remembered him as he looked while playing the violin on that far off
Thanksgiving night in Lewis Valley.
I left California with the feeling that his life was almost ended, and
my heart was heavy with indignant pity for I must now remember him only
as a broken and discouraged man. The David of my idolatry, the laughing
giant of my boyhood world, could be found now, only in the mist which
hung above the hills and valleys of Neshonoc.