San Francisco
Williams, Michael
October 13, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 547 SAN FRANCISCO ONE HUNDRED AND...
...complain if few besides themselves turn zestfully to There are those who call her Babylon...
...One hun- of a greater love) he who chanted the incomparable dred and fifty years ago, when the grey-robed friars psalm to his brother the sun, bequeathed an undying chanted their Mass on the shore near the Golden Gate, sympathy with natural beauty and human joy to his and the sword of Spain was thrust into the soil in the followers...
...The found- sion, produced by the unique quality of San Francisco's ing of San Francisco was part of a vain effort to avert scene...
...lukewarm...
...ing of the Tower of Babel did a more motley and But never do you imagine them with a purple cloak...
...She could even Russians, Chinese, Peruvians, Malays, Italians...
...You will find it in Nearly all the movements of American migration The Deeds of Esplandian, the Son of Amadis of Gaul and expansion, when graphically traced on the map of (one of the books which lit the immortal fantasy of the United States, as the historian, Dr...
...Innumerable, the ships that have sailed out poor they may be, cut a dashing and dramatic figure and in through it to Alaska, to Mexico, to Peru, from amid their humdrum fellows...
...career not only scintillate with romance, they trace coOf her, it was said that she was very large in person, incidentally the city's marvelous and solid material the most beautiful of all, of blooming years, and in growth from a huddle of log huts and adobe walls, her thoughts desirous of achieving great things, strong a mere pin-point of civilization in a wilderness on the of limb and of great courage...
...Colony green flowery table-land abounding in wild violets...
...of the Faith...
...Spain, down to the present: 1 So years of ceaseless No Californian will gainsay that latter description adventure...
...Truth is the alysis, and, like that wine, exhilarates or intoxicates spirit which underlies all appearances and materializes according to the wisdom employed in your enjoyment in facts and deeds...
...a public dance, but the Mass were they, sharing the spirit of their founder in this in Mission Dolores is the soul of the celebration...
...Or else she and intermingled with facts in the chronicles of San repels them utterly...
...At the same time, Spain was taking So, too, Father Font...
...October 13, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 547 SAN FRANCISCO ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS YOUNG By MICHAEL WILLIAMS HIS Eminence, Patrick Cardinal Hayes, Arch- that London and New York were bound some day to bishop of New York, sings Mass this week be rivaled by San Francisco...
...She either stirs you to a hot and Francisco...
...San Francisco is never of life, upon cold slabs of meticulously certified records...
...Think of the heroic Serra, painfully dragsign of ownership, there was another group gathered ging his lame leg in those terrible walks between on Harlem Heights, New York, surrounding Wash- Mexico and San Francisco, full of enormous cares and ington and facing the army of Lord Howe...
...London and New York-have within their gates an Other cities stand above her in the list of the census, even more diverse collection of races and nationalities, or surpass her in wealth, occupy more territory, have but nowhere else are the signs and tokens of cosmomore famous baseball teams, turn out more millions politanism so evident and so full of color...
...Even while his mind glowed advantage of her last opportunity, as it seemed, to re- and expanded with his vision of the great city of the establish her colonial empire in America...
...The ceremony the founding of San Francisco, Father Pedro Font, itself is the spiritual centre of the four days of cele- on March 28, 1774-the Father Font who bore the bration with which San Francisco commemorates its Cross before the sword of Anza across the deserts one hundred and fiftieth birthday...
...of beauty remembered or desired, like the name of In short, this is a city with courage-of strong will, San Francisco daring and debonair...
...One quality of tons of sausages or hams, railroad steel, cotton alone does San Francisco lack of those which mark a goods, boots or shoes, or pills...
...It is indeed a laudable and necessary thing perdurable devotion or inspires you (supposing you for the properly qualified experts to disengage the are a drab and pusillanimous soul) with a queer kind facts from the fantasies-but such pundits should not of hatred, based upon a weak dread of her fascination...
...truth is a hidden force, and facts of its magic...
...Like Venice of old, San Francisco has "Of this wonderful land, where precious gems were known how to be a merchant prince among cities as in great abundance and where the only metal was gold, well as a great adventurer...
...San Diego, Montalvo discovered California, and the verification of disputed points...
...while ing, buried-treasure-seeking, pearl-diving or pearlother communities, perhaps thrice their size and ten stealing expeditions-to say nothing about mere, legititimes as wealthy, are only big villages grown pot- mate trading ventures, to far-off, dangerous, and albellied and double-chinned, with diamonds on their most fabulous regions...
...His practical judgment saw that the port the coming doom...
...They are the agWhile much original research work remains to be gregate of all the dull, uninspiring mass of their anonyOctober 13, 1926 THE COMMONWEAL 549 mous inhabitants...
...Montalvo, done in establishing the history of San Franciscothe novelist, seized upon the suggestive name...
...school, convent and hospital, there also soars the Cross...
...There will be and mountains from Mexico to the Golden Gate, in public meetings in the huge civic auditorium...
...And if the soul of a city, like the soul Also is it one of the most violent of passages...
...few there are whose names invoke the thrill of ro- The sky is too blue...
...And long before he in Mission Dolores, San Francisco...
...At of a man, contains inherited strains of temperament times, this violence rises into delirium...
...of the dollar may distinguish these, or the notoriety This city could hardly be sordid or mean under any of mere size, or greasy commercial prosperity, how circumstances...
...indeed she has done so, not once, but and Kanakas...
...Think of the from its progenitors, then the joy and the delight in red-hot, roaring fever of the gold rush...
...Facts are the out- Like the human souls that constitute them, all cities ward signs which express the inward life of truth...
...There is too much wind and sunshine...
...There will be Oh, these Franciscans 1 Poets and lovers of nature (there is bound to be...
...Know then," reads his story, "that on San Francisco's unsurpassable romance, its multithe right hand of the Indies there is an island called colored pageant of the past, from its birth under the California, very close to the side of the terrestrial sign of the Cross and the shadow of the sword of paradise...
...In those He coined a word, "deliciocisima"-like a true artist left, in Mexico, and in South America, the seeds of -to fit his impression, a unique and thrilling impresrevolution were flowering in swift revolts...
...roots in the rich soil of human passions and placed For San Francisco fully shares the mysterious qualaway from the vitalizing sunshine of the spiritual mo- ity of California, her mother-who "is most beautiful tives which move them and explain them...
...They are the cities of the crowd, The atmosphere of adventure is as normal to San by the crowd, and for the crowd...
...but, also, his artistic soul did not fail to notice England, or Russia, that was to thrust Spain from that it was magically beautiful...
...wear a ragged purple cloak and lose no jot or tittle Chileans, Turks, Germans, Irish, English, Mormons,, of her charm...
...He which, in essence, is the history of California-upon drew forth his pen instead of the sword, embarked solid and definitive foundations, the main labor is acupon the galleon of reverie instead of an actual ship, complished...
...There one of the most marvelous marches related in history will be an historical pageant, with soldiers, sailors, -recorded in his diary the first of the many prophecies and the members of fraternal organizations and church concerning the future greatness of San Francisco...
...outer edge of the earth, sundered by vast seas and Since Montalvo, tons of ink have been used in writ- tremendous deserts from all the great cities of ing about California, but has any writer ever bettered America, to a city now the centre of a population of or even equaled his clairvoyant description of its spirit...
...She may strike you with a deathless love, For the facts of history do not thrive, do not live and or (if you are a bigot) with a holy horror, but she move and have vital being, when cut off from their never leaves you cold or indifferent...
...are only modes of its operations...
...A love story, too, I hasten to add...
...Spain was aiding Washington with money, letters to his fellow-workers that he found "flowers arms, and experienced officers loaned to the Conti- many and beautiful...
...She is named with the name of a poet and a saint, There is a tradition that says that from the altar and though she may be more widely known for her of Santa Clara Mission, Father Magin Catalapoetical temperament than for the odor of sanctity- famous throughout old California as "the prophet," which is rather faint, I must admit-it is well to re- or "the holy man of Santa Clara"-long before 1849 member that Francis of Assisi was the most eminently beheld in a vision and prophesied, not once, but many human, temperamental, and blithe of all the saints in times, the rush of ships and men from all the ends of the calendar...
...Facts are mysteriously, sometimes quite unreasonably...
...And the chronicles of its Calafia was queen, and after her the land was named...
...They play leading parts the Arctic to the Antarctic, to China, Japan, the in the world-drama, instead of merely being political Philippines, and all the known and unknown islands or commercial centres of a state or region...
...Her charm is as fully glued upon cards by botanists, very useful to feed book- evident and equally indefinable...
...Probably not since the buildpudgy fingers, and plug hats, and expensive clothes...
...the hills break up monotony...
...the western rim of North America, but the new nation And centuries before the Franciscans, there was then coming into being on the Atlantic side of the Montalvo's prophetic divination of California's soul: continent...
...Psychic the bones, the sinews, and the veins, of the body of affinities and repulsions control your affections, rather history, while legends and fabulous ascriptions mingle than matter-of-fact logic...
...but who has feed human hearts that long for the quickening breath ever called her Laodicea...
...For the most Thus did fancy and fable not merely discover, but important thing about San Francisco is her ineluctable create the truth 1 And fable and fantasy are mingled charm...
...And if a saint-who is no more, after the earth, and the coming of the strange new flag all, than a hero of the quest for righteousness, as other which was to supplant the flag of Spain, and the men are heroes of other of the great quests of human- springing up as if by magic of a vast city surroundity-gave his name to her, be it also remembered that ing Mission Dolores-only, in the end, to be destroyed warriors and explorers, sailors and trappers, gold tremendously in earthquake and flame...
...You like or dislike this or that one as you city (or a man) when rightly interpreted, will often like or dislike this or that person-often more or less express more truth than barrels of statistics...
...And the later back to the little poor man of Assisi, transmitted vertigo of the graft prosecution ! Nor are the terrible through the line of his spiritual sons to his latter-day and tragic elements lacking...
...after colony had been ravaged from her...
...Scores of spoke, the same idea had been expressed in other Catholic bishops and priests from all parts of the words by the Franciscan fathers...
...and, perhaps most named it, too, leaving it to others to actualize his spir- important of all, the diffusion and the appreciation of itual conquest...
...Consider how many children, with whom beauty and joy and art are real times the city flared to the top of all its hills with and desirable things, part and parcel of the city's flame, or was shaken and shattered by earthquake- wealth-and yet, on a hundred towers of church and culminating in the august disaster of 19o6...
...Other and greater world-cities-like many times...
...cosmopolitan assemblage gather together than in the San Francisco wears the purple cloak of beauty, of days of gold-Spanish, Mexican, Yankee, French...
...which abides in San Francisco...
...nental army...
...This responsibilties, not only a great colonizer, a prince of second group was concerned with something more im- missionaries, but engaged all the while in the even more portant than the founding of a city-it was found- arduous pursuit of personal sanctity (Serra can never ing a nation...
...The colonies had cast the saint as well as the pathbreaker and the founder) off forever their allegiance to the king who had failed -think of him, I say, pausing to note in his hurried his people...
...The Declaration of Independence had be properly appreciated save by those who see in him been made two months before...
...They of the South Seas, on piratical, filibustering, seal-huntbelong to the aristocracy of cosmopolitan cities...
...societies, of all creeds, participating...
...limb and of great courage...
...valiancy, of adventure, of romance...
...They are of all, of blooming years, and in her thoughts desirous then like dried-up, withered, odorless flowers stiffly of achieving great things...
...unless it might be contended by the more ardent lovers It is a pageant of progress as well as a processional of the state that it is the earthly paradise itself ! romance...
...Men love her with true passion...
...There is something more than coincidence-there Saint Francis, he who in the gaiety of his heart fiddled is a symbolic appropriateness, surcharged with mani- upon a stick picked up on the road, and trolled the fold suggestions, in the appearance of the Cardinal of love ditties of his turbulent youth (only now in honor New York at the altar in Mission Dolores...
...Her Not so with other cities-vivid cities, exciting cities, Golden Gate has been and is today the portal of ropositive in personality-which, no matter how small or mance...
...San Francisco was given to her making, in a fashion which makes the story of to America and the world by the Faith-and the Faith San Francisco a uniquely romantic page in the history has kept her alive, and young with the eternal youth of our nation...
...In one of his reports Golden Gate...
...There are cities that no their influences in its blood and in its soul, giving color amount of population, wealth, or material importance and life and bloom and perennial beauty to its face...
...It is hardly possible that any fundamenand, a quarter of a century before Cortes saw this tal facts remain to be unearthed...
...can make other than commonplace...
...Herbert F. Don Quixote) published in 1510, eighteen years after Bolton, has shown us, tend to come together at the Columbus discovered America...
...What is left to do golden land and longer still before Cabrillo landed at is the rounding out, the amplification of the annals...
...A differ one from another in temperament, character, and characteristic legend or tradition or fable concerning a interest...
...and the adventurer, Francisco as culture and congregationalism used to be the artist, and the pilgrim of romance pass them by...
...Two years before United States will be in the church...
...nearly a million souls, and destined speedily to become "Most beautiful, of blooming years, and in her one of the three great cities of the United States...
...hunters and hunters of men, criminals and Utopian But the visionary failed to foretell the splendor of dreamers, adventurers of all sorts and conditions from the resurrection-as many another prophet of a all the ends of the earth, and the very pick and flower gloomy dispensation has omitted mention of the good of American manhood contributed their splendid youth times that follow the bad...
...thoughts desirous of achieving great things, strong of What a story...
...to Boston before the Irish captured Beacon Hill...
...Like the monk's secret worms withal, but repellent to others...
...mance, or the invitation of adventure, the wistful pang besides, there is nothing small or squalid in her temper...
...Remember the beauty, and the gay spirit of California may be traced paroxysms of the Vigilante period...
...of green and yellow chartreuse, it defies scientific anTruth is not merely a matter of fact...
...but though the mark great city's national quarters, and that is squalor...
...As early as 1866, that astute British to Ferdinand and Isabella, Columbus gave the name statesman and traveler, Sir Charles Dilke, pointed out of Earthly Paradise to the beautiful mesa region near 548 THE COMMONWEAL October 13, 1926 the headquarters of the Orinoco River...
...Yet perhaps no statesmen living showed wondrous opportunities for shipyards and at that time could have foreseen that it was not to be quays...
...respect as well as his zeal for the conquest of souls...
...England's future, he sketched a charming vignette, the "very sea power had swept her ships from the oceans...
Vol. 4 • October 1926 • No. 23
