Part 18

In a very short time it became evident to me that Constance had remained true to tradition and the environment from which we both had sprung. A social environment which is much the same in all countries. Meanwhile she realized that I had played truant. We had an amusing time renewing ourselves to each other. We began cautiously, but in the end, admitting totally different tastes and opinions, we have linked up a friendship that is now confirmed.

Meanwhile the social strenuousness of Burlingame cannot kill me physically, because I am a very strong woman, but it has killed me mentally. There is a pain at the back of my forehead and a void where thoughts should be. Burlingame has, collectively, the psychology of a great big girls’ school. The stranger arrives and is looked at, is accepted or ignored, as the case may be. Burlingame is independent of spirit and likes as it pleases. Like children, they seem to be care-free, happy and contented. Yes, surely these are happy people, they represent exclusively the prosperous,--they have no anxieties of life. Contentment is their most conspicuous quality--they would not be here, else.

It is a self-indulgent, happy-go-lucky community, not over-critical, the spirit of “live-and-let-live” which is rather rare in the East, thrives here. They lead an easy life in a kindly climate, they can afford to be generous. They all know each other very well, and they see one another every day. Sometimes three times and sometimes four. Their houses are close together. There are no big properties as in England to rouse one’s sense of inequality. They motor to each other’s houses and to the country club, although they are only a stone’s throw in distance, and every time they meet they are pleased to see each other.

I wonder they have anything left to say, yet they talk all the time. It is true they do not listen much, they all talk at the same time.

On Saturdays and Sundays, and at night, there are men. These love their golf, their tennis and their bridge, and they dress like Englishmen.

In their midst is one strange man who does not belong. I met him, of course, the moment I arrived. My name being somehow associated in people’s minds with Russia, I must surely meet this Russian no matter what kind of Russian he might be.

“They” said he is the Russian consul, representing the Russian government. No one seemed to know that the Russian government is not represented in this country and no one cared.

True to type, I recognized at once that he belonged to the regime that’s gone. With all the charm and arrogance, the old world manners and impenetrable smile, this blasé cosmopolitan, appreciative, yet consciously superior, stood out--a stranger in their midst. No party seemed complete without him. But I too was a stranger and watched him and I watched them, and I saw that he too watched. Sometimes I thought I knew what he was thinking and ofttimes I gave it up.

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 1921. _San Francisco._

I got into San Francisco early, and took Dick to Dr. Abrams where George Sterling was waiting for me. George Sterling, as I understand, is the Swinburne of California. He has an exquisitely refined head, a nose that one sees on a Greek cameo, but a voice that labels him of his country.

Dr. Abrams is a doctor whom a great many doctors call a quack, and some superficial people laugh over. He is the man of whom Upton Sinclair raved to me, declaring that he had made the discovery that was to revolutionize the world. I am far too ignorant and unscientific to attempt an explanation of this theory. Suffice to say that it is entirely based on vibration. Each disease, he claims, has its own vibratory reaction, and it is only necessary to take a blood test to discover what the disease is, and then cure it.

I sat in his laboratory among a dozen doctors and watched and listened for two hours or more. I should have listened and watched for two weeks and then I might have begun to understand.

I have no right to an opinion, but I have a right to an open mind. Those two hours were among the most interesting I have ever spent.

He took a drop of Dick’s blood and tested it. “This is the blood of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,” Dr. Abrams announced to the laboratory! It reacted to the malaria vibration, this he explained, might be due to the amount of quinine Dick was taking. The cure he said, had the same vibratory rate as the disease. He recommended me to stop all further quinine and bring him back in a few days. He tested him for every other kind of disease but Dick had practically a clean slate. This is very rare, for most of us have something congenital, even if we don’t know it.

I came away with one conviction at least, that Dr. Abrams is a type of genius, is perfectly sincere, and is working himself to death. The people who know more than I do can say what they like, but those facts remain. He is undoubtedly living 50 years before his time. As for sceptics, I do not see how anyone dare to be sceptical in these days of wireless telegraphy and wireless telephone, which after all are entirely based on vibratory foundations. I saw Dr. Abrams discover a cancer in one person, tuberculosis with syphilis and malaria in another and a decayed back tooth in a third. These were done from a drop of blood, the patients were not even in the room. They came in afterwards. Nebulously, in my head, I understand the process, but one has to be there to see.

My own experience with the medical profession has made me very open minded. I have received the results I looked for from the one doctor in London that the medical profession declared to be a quack, when they, the so-called best doctors in the profession, had failed to help me.

I sometimes think the medical profession is, of all professions, the slowest to accept new ideas, the most conventional. Their sense of professional etiquette seems to count before all else.

Later in the day we went to the house of a friend of George Sterling’s, a composer, who sets his songs to music. There in a half dark room, full of flowers, and baskets filled to the brim with rose petals, we drank red wine. Curled up on a sofa I listened to the playing and singing of his songs. Now and then George would read out loud some new poem not yet published.

That night we went and sipped absinthe in some low haunt. It is no use, Mr. Prohibition Agent, to come after me and ask me where that was, because I don’t know, and I’m quite sure George doesn’t remember.

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1921.

San Francisco is rather proud of being built like Rome, on seven hills, and it certainly is effective. One street was so steep that a ladder was built onto the side walk to help one up. The cable cars go slipping perilously down, or crawling terrifyingly up. But the towns in this country that I have seen vary little in the way of buildings and streets. Their atmosphere varies.--San Francisco for instance, has that foreign cosmopolitan feeling that characterises New York. But whereas New York gets its atmosphere in ships from Europe, San Francisco brings it in from the Orient, and with it some of the mystery which New York has not.

The temptation to me to board a ship and go to China is heart-breaking, and it seems so easy, so obvious. Only I can’t, because after five months of wandering the funds are low. I must return to New York, and work and work through the winter before me, to store up for the next adventure!

MONDAY, OCTOBER 17, 1921. _Burlingame._

ONE DAY IN SAN FRANCISCO.

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.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20, 1921. _Monterey._

There is a man in Burlingame who is quite different to anyone else. He is a recluse. It is very strange to be a recluse in Burlingame. He has read more books than anyone I have ever met. Not especially modern books, but he will suddenly tell you what Petrarch said to Laura, or recall Dante, and sometimes be as modern as Stevenson. He is difficult to meet, for he will not go out socially.

Yesterday morning he fetched me in his car and motored me to Monterey. I don’t know how far away it is, but we started at 10 A.M. and reached Monterey at sunset. A wonderful road, through miles of orchards and then winding through mountains and forests to the sea.

We lunched at Santa Cruz, and when we left the city, a placard on the boundary said that Santa Cruz bade us farewell, hoped we had had a good time, and that we would some day return.

All along the motor road even in what looked like primitive wilds, one was distracted all the time by placards on the road which hampered one’s conversation. Mostly they were directions for the motor driver who it was taken for granted must be a complete idiot. It left him no choice, no doubt whatever as to the right thing to do. “Blow your horn”--“Dangerous curve ahead” accompanied by a diagram illustrating the kind of curve to expect,--further directions as to what to do with the throttle, etc., etc., and wherever there was a flat wood fence there was inscribed a reminder that Christ loved me, and the option of deciding whether I would sin, or choose the other path. Occasionally we were informed “Picture ahead, Kodak as you go.” Apparently a man may be blind, the state will see for him.

As the day advanced we speeded, so as to catch the sun before it set into the sea. We fetched up eventually at his sister’s house which is above the rocks on the wild seashore, known as Pebble Beach. The house, which has arcades and is Italian in design, reminded me of Shelley’s house at Lerici, the house to which Shelley was sailing back from Sorrento, when the storm overtook him and he was drowned. The peace, the loneliness, and the sea sounds that pervaded this house on the Pacific shore were balm to my socially weary soul. I walked in the dusk among the gnarled and tortuous storm beaten cedars of Lebanon that have their roots among the rocks. These are the only trees that grow, and the only place where they grow. No one can explain how the seeds were brought, whether by hand of human, or by a bird, or with the wind. But here on this coast, with the grip of centuries that no storm can dislodge, and with their heads as bright young green as their stems are old and warped, the cedars of Lebanon reign supreme.

I was sorry that I had only one night to spend, it seemed too beautiful to leave so soon.

I know that some day, when I have seen all I want to see of people, when I have travelled more and allayed some of my curiosity, when I have worked some more and am more tired, then I will go away into a silent and lonely and beautiful place and never more be seen, and my children will say: “We have a funny old mother, who lives way off somewhere, and whom we go and visit now and then.”

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 21. _Monterey._

Next morning we motored along the coast, visited the old mission of San Juan, which is interesting. The guide showing us over the church announced impressively that it was 170 years old. “Is _that_ all?” I exclaimed, looking round at the primitive walls that might have been archaic and pre-historic. My companion in reply commented on “the _arrogance_ of foreigners” and completely shut me up.

We then went and called at the house of Francis McComus, the painter. He and his wife were in. Mrs. McComus is the first human being I have ever seen who looks like a Gauguin, and attractive, which I never thought a Gauguin!

I had never seen the work of McComus before, and I was spellbound. One after another he showed us his Arizona landscapes, with their pure almost irridescent colors. I am aware that I am given to enthusiasm, but here is something to be enthusiastic about. Men who produce work at this level lend to the country they belong to a reflected glory that should arouse much national pride.

Here is a man that Paris or London would acclaim, and who should not be allowed his life of indolent contentment on the wild Pacific Coast. How strange a country this is, how full of surprises and unexpectedness! That one should drop into a house by the wayside, and find so great an artist!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1921. _San Francisco._

Dick Tobin telephoned me to come in early to San Francisco as he had something he thought interesting for me to do. I picked him up at the Hibernian Bank and he took me down to the ferry, gave me a ticket, a bunch of violets and typewritten directions, and sent me off to St. Quentin prison across the bay.