Books: The Native Son

I >> Inez Haynes Irwin >> The Native Son

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3

This etext was produced by David A. Schwan

The Native Son

By Inez Haynes Irwin

To Those Proud Native Sons

James W. Coffroth
Meyer Cohn
Porter Garnett
John Crowley
Willie Ritchie
J. Cal Ewing
James Wilson
Andrew J. Gallagher

And To Those Apologetic Adopted Sons

Albert M. Bender
Austin Lewis
Sam Berger
Xavier Martinez
Gelett Burgess
Perry Newberry
Michael Casey
Patrick O'Brien
Perry Newberry
Patrick Flynn
Fremont Older
Will Irwin
Lemuel Parton
Anton Johansen
Paul Scharrenberg
Waldemar Young

All of Whom Have Played
Some Graceful Part In Translating
California To Me

This Appreciation is Dedicated

The Native Son

The only drawback to writing about California is that scenery and
climate - and weather even - will creep in. Inevitably anything you
produce sounds like a cross between a railroad folder and a circus
program. You can't discuss the people without describing their
background; for they reflect it perfectly; or their climate, because it
has helped to make them the superb beings they are. A tendency manifests
itself in you to revel in superlatives and to wallow in italics. You
find yourself comparing adjectives that cannot be compared - unique for
instance. Unique is a persistent temptation. For, the rules of grammar
not-withstanding, California is really the most unique spot on the
earth's surface. As for adjectives like enormous, colossal, surpassing,
overpowering and nouns like marvel, wonder, grandeur, vastness, they are
as common in your copy as commas.

Another difficulty is that nobody outside California ever believes you.
I don't blame them. Once I didn't believe it myself. If there was
anything that formerly bored me to the marrow of my soul, it was talk
about California by a regular dyed-in-the-wool Californiac. But I got
mine ultimately. Even as I was irritated, I now irritate. Even as I was
bored, I now bore. Ever since I first saw California, and became,
inevitably, a Californiac, I have been talking about it, irritating and
boring uncounted thousands. I begin placatingly enough, "Yes, I know you
aren't going to believe this," I say. "Once I didn't believe it myself.
I realize that it all sounds impossible. But after you've once been
there - " Then I'm off. When I've finished, there isn't an hysterical
superlative adjective or a complimentary abstract noun unused in my
vocabulary. I've told all the East about California. I've told many of
the countries of Europe about California. I even tell Californians about
California. I will say to the credit of Californians though that they
listen. Listen! did I say listen? They drink it down like a child
absorbing its first fairy tale.

In another little volume devoted to the praise of California, Willie
Britt is on record as saying that he'd rather be a busted lamp-post on
Battery Street than the Waldorf-Astoria. I said once that I'd rather be
sick in California than well anywhere else. I'm prepared to go further.
I'd rather be in prison in California than free anywhere else. San
Quentin is without doubt the most delightfully situated prison in the
whole world. Besides I have a lot of friends - but I won't go into that
now. Anyway if I ever do get that severe jail-sentence which a
long-suffering family has always prophesied for me, I'm going to
petition for San Quentin. Moreover, I would rather talk about California
than any other spot on earth. I'd rather write about California than any
other spot on earth. Is it possible that any Californian Chamber of
Commerce has to pay a press agent? Incredible! Inexplicable! I wonder
that local millionaires don't bid their entire fortune for the
privilege. Now what has Willie Britt to say?

Yes, my idea of a pleasant occupation would be listing, cataloguing,
inventorying, describing and - oh joy! - visiting the wonders of
California. But that would be impossible for any one enthusiast to
accomplish in the mere three-score-and-ten of Scriptural allotment.
Methusalah might have attempted it. But in these short-lived days,
ridiculous to make a start. And so, perforce, I must share this joyous
task with other and more able chroniclers. I am willing to leave the
beauty of the scenery to Mary Austin, the wonder of the weather to Jesse
Williams, the frenzy of its politics to Sam Blythe, the beauty of its
women to Julian Street, the glory of the old San Francisco to Will
Irwin, the splendor of the new San Francisco to Rufas Steele, its
care-free atmosphere to Allan Dunn, if I may place my laurel wreath at
the foot of the Native Son. Indeed, when it comes to the Native Son, I
yield the privilege of praise to no one.

For the Native Son is an unique product, as distinctively and
characteristically Californian as the gigantic redwood, the flower
festival, the ferocious flea, the moving-picture film, the annual boxing
and tennis champion, the golden poppy or the purple prune. There is only
one other Californian product that can compare with him and that's the
Native Daughter. And as for the Native Daughter - - But if I start up
that squirrel track I'll never get back to the trail. Nevertheless some
day I'm going to pick out a diamond-pointed pen, dip it in wine and on
paper made from orange-tawny POPPY petals, try to do justice to the
Native Daughter. For this inflexible moment, however, my subject is the
Native Son. But if scenery and climate - and weather even - do creep in,
don't blame me. Remember I warned you. Besides sooner or later I shall
be sure to get back to the main theme.

In the January of 1917 I made my annual pilgrimage to California. On the
train was a Native Son who was the hero of the following astonishing
tale. He was one of a large family, of which the only girl had married a
German, a professor in an American university. Shortly before the Great
War, the German brother-in-law went back to the Fatherland to spend his
sabbatical year in study at a German university. Letters came regularly
for a while after the war began; then they stopped. His wife was very
much worried. Our hero decided in his simple western fashion to go to
Germany and find his brother-in-law. He traveled across the country,
cajoled the authorities in Washington into giving him a passport,
crossed the ocean, ran the British blockade and entered the forbidden
land. Straight as an arrow he went to the last address in his
brother-in-law's letters. That gentleman, coming home to his lunch,
tired, worried and almost penniless, found his Californian kinsman
smoking calmly in his room. The Native Son left money enough to pay for
the rest of the year of study and the journey home. Then he started on
the long trip back.

In the English port at which his ship touched, he was mistaken for a
disloyal newspaper man for whom the British Secret Service had long been
seeking. He was arrested, searched and submitted to a very disquieting
third degree. When they asked him in violent explosive tones what he
went into Germany for, he replied in his mild, unexcited Western voice -
to give his brother-in-law some money. All Europe is accustomed to crazy
Americans of course, but this strained credulity to the breaking point;
for nobody who has not tried to travel in the war countries can realize
the sheer unbelievability of such guilelessness. The British laughed
loud and long. His papers were taken away and sent to London but in a
few days everything was returned. A mistake had been made, the
authorities admitted, and proper apologies were tendered. But they
released him with looks and gestures in which an abashed bewilderment
struggled with a growing irritation.

That is a typical Native Son story.

If you are an Easterner and meet the Native Son first in New York (and
the only criticism to be brought against him is that he sometimes
chooses - think of that - chooses to live outside his native State!) you
wonder at the clear-eyed composure, the calm-visioned unexcitability
with which he views the metropolis. There is a story of a San Francisco
newspaper man who landed for the first time in New York early in the
morning. Before night he had explored the city, written a scathing
philippic on it and sold it to a leading newspaper. New York had not
daunted him. It had only annoyed him. He was quite impervious to its
hydra-headed appeal. But you don't get the answer to that imperviousness
until you visit the California which has produced the Native Son. Then
you understand.

Yes, Reader, your worst fears are justified; I'm going to talk about
scenery. But don't say that I didn't warn you! However, as it's got to
be done sometime, why not now? I'll be perfectly fair, though; so -

For the Native Son has come from a State whose back yard is two hundred
thousand square miles (more or less) of American continent and whose
front yard is five hundred thousand square miles (less or more) or
Pacific Ocean, whose back fence is ten thousand miles (or thereabouts)
of bristling snow-capped mountains and whose front hedge is ten thousand
miles (or approximately) of golden foam-topped combers; a State that
looks up one clear and unimpeded waterway to the evasive North Pole, and
down another clear and unimpeded waterway to the elusive South Pole and
across a third clear and unimpeded water way straight to the magical,
mystical, mysterious Orient. This sense of amplitude gives the Native
Son an air of superiority . . . Yes, you're quite right, it has a touch
of superciliousness - very difficult to understand and much more
difficult to endure when you haven't seen California; but completely
understandable and endurable when you have.

- Californiacs read every word, Easterners skip this paragraph -

Man helped nature to place Italy, Spain, Japan among the wonder regions
of the world; but nature placed California there without assistance from
anybody. I do not refer alone to the scenery of California which is
duplicated in no other spot of the sidereal system; nor to the climate
which matches it; nor to its super-mundane fertility, nor to its
super-solar fecundity. The railroad folder with its voluble vocabulary
has already beaten me to it. I do not refer solely to that rich
yellow-and-violet, springtime bourgeoning which turns California into
one huge Botticelli background of flower colors and sheens. I do not
refer to that heavy purple-and-gold, autumn fruitage, which changes it
to a theme for Titian and Veronese. I am thinking particularly of those
surprising phenomena left over from pre-historic eras; the "big" trees -
the sequoia gigantea, which really belong to the early fairy-tales of
H. G. Wells, and to those other trees, not so big but still giants - the
sequoia sempivirens or redwoods, which make of California forests
black-and-silver compositions of filmy fluttering light and solid bedded
shade. I am thinking also of that patch of pre-historic cypresses in
Monterey. These differ from the straight, symmetrical classic redwoods
as Rodin's "Thinker" differs from the Apollo. Monstrous, contorted
shapes - those Monterey cypresses look like creatures born underground,
who, at the price of almost unbearable torture, have torn through the
earth's crust, thrusting and twisting themselves airward. I refer even
to that astonishing detail in the general Californian sulphitism, the
seals which frequent beach rocks close to the shore, a short car ride
from the heart of a city as big as San Francisco.

- and this -

California, because of rich gold deposits, and a richer golden,
sunshine, its golden spring poppy and its golden summer verdure, seems
both literally and figuratively, a golden land golden and gay. It is a
land full of contradictions however. For those amazing memorials from a
prehistoric past give it in places a strange air of tragedy. I challenge
this grey old earth to produce a strip of country more beautiful, also
more poignant and catastrophic in natural connotation, than the one
which includes these cypresses of Monterey. Yet this same mordant area
holds Point Lobos, a headland which displays in moss and lichens all the
minute delicacy of a gleeful, elfin world. I challenge the earth to
produce a region more beautiful, yet also more gay and debonair in
natural connotation, than the one which enfolds San Francisco. For here
the water presents gorgeous, plastic color, alternating blue and gold.
Here Mount Tamalpais lifts its long straight slopes out of the sea and
thrusts them high in the sky. Here Marin County offers contours of
dimpled velvet bursting with a gay irridescence of wildflowers. Yet that
same gracious area frames the grim cliff-cup which holds San Francisco
bay - a spot of Dantesque sheerness and bareness.

- and this.

This is what nature has done. But man has added his deepening touch in
one direction and his enlivening touch in another. The early fathers -
Spanish - erected Missions from one end of the State to the other. These
are time-mellowed, mediaeval structures with bell-towers, cloisters and
gardens, sunbaked, shadow-colored; and in spots they make California as
old and sad as Spain. Later emigrants - French - have built in the
vicinity of San Francisco many tiny roadside inns where one can drink
the soft wines of the country. Framed in hills that are garlanded with
vineyards, these inns are often mere rose-hidden bowers. They make
California seem as gay as France. I can best put it by saying that I
know of no place so "haunted" in every poetic and plaintive sense as
California; yet I know of no place so perfectly suited to carnival and
festival.

All of this is part of the reason why you can't surprise a Californian.

This looks like respite, but there's no real relief in sight Easterners.
Keep right on reading, Californiacs!

Yes, California is beautiful.

Once upon a time, a Native Son lay dying. He did not know that he was
going to die. His physician had to break the news to him. He told the
Californian that the process would not be long or painful. He would go
to sleep presently and when he woke up, the great journey would have
been accomplished. His words fulfilled themselves. Soon the Native Son
fell into a coma. When he opened his eyes he was in Paradise. He raised
himself up, gave one look about and exclaimed, "What a boob that doctor
was! Whad'da he mean - Paradise! Here I am still in California."

Man has of course, here as elsewhere, chained nature; set her to toil
for him. She is a willing worker everywhere, but in California she puts
no stay nor stint on her productive efforts. California produces - Now
up to this moment I have held myself in. Looking back on my copy I see
only such meager words as "beauty", "glory", "splendor", such pale,
inadequate phrases as "super-mundane fertility" and "super-solar
fecundity". What use are words and phrases when one speaks of
California. It is time for us to abandon them both and resort to some
bright, snappy sparkling statistics.

Reader, I had to soft-pedal here. If I gave you the correct statistics,
You wouldn't believe me.

So here goes!

California produces forty per cent of the gold, fifty per cent of the
wheat, sixty per cent of the oranges, seventy per cent of the prunes,
eighty per cent of the asparagus and (including the Native Daughters)
ninety-nine and ninety-nine one-hundredths per cent of the peaches of
the world. I pause to say here that none of these figures is true. They
are all made up for the occasion. But don't despair! I am sure that they
don't do California justice by half. Any other Californiac - with the
mathematical memory which I unfortunately lack - will provide the
correct data. Somebody told me once, I seem to recall, that the Santa
Clara valley produces sixty per cent of the worlds prunes. But I may be
mistaken. What I prefer to remember is one day's trip in that springtide
of prune bloom. For hours and hours of motor speed, we glided through a
snowy world that showed no speck of black bark or fleck of green leaf; a
world in which the sole relief from a silent white blizzard of blossom
was the blue of the sky arch, the purple of distant lupines alternating
with the gold of blood-centered poppies, pouring like avalanches down
hills of emerald green.

Getting out of the scenery zone only to fall into the climate zone.
Reader, it's just the same with the climate as the scenery. It's got to
be done some time, so why not now?

That's what California produces in the way of scenery and fodder. So
now, let's consider the climate, even if I am invading Jesse Williams's
territory. For it has magical properties - that climate of California.
It makes people grow big and beautiful and strenuous; it makes flowers
grow big and beautiful; it makes fleas grow big and - strenuous. It
offers, except in the most southern or the most mountainous regions, no
such extremes of heat or cold as are found elsewhere in the country. Its
marvel is of course the season which corresponds to our winter. The
visitor coming, let us say in February, from the ice-bound and
frost-locked East through the flat, dreary Middle West, and stalled
possibly on the way, remains glued in stupefaction to the car window. In
a very few hours he slides from the white, glittering snow-covered
heights of the evergreen-packed Sierras through their purple, hazy,
snow-filled depths into the sudden warmth of California.

It is like waking suddenly from a nightmare of winter to a poets or a
painter's vision of spring.

Who, having seen this picture in January, could resist describing it?
Easterners, I appeal to your sense of justice.

At one side, perhaps close to the train, near hills, on which the live
oaks spread big, ebon-emerald umbrellas, serpentine endlessly into the
distance. On the other side, far hills, bathed in an amethystine mist,
invade the horizon. Between stretches the flat green field of the
valley, gashed with tawny streaks that are roads and dotted with soft,
silvery bunches that are frisking new-born lambs. Little white houses,
with a coquettish air of perpetual summer, flaunt long windows and
wooden-lace balconies, Early roses flask pink flames here and there. The
green-black meshes of the eucalyptus hedges film the distance. The
madrone, richly leaved like the laurel, reflects the sunlight from a
bole glistening as though freshly carved from wet gold.

Cheer up! We're getting out of scenery and climate into

The race - a blend of many rich bloods - that California has evolved
with the help of this scenery and climate is a rare brew. The physical
background is Anglo-Saxon of course; and it still breaks through in the
prevailing Anglo-Saxon type. To this, the Celt has brought his poetry
and mysticism. To it, the Latin has contributed his art instinct; and
not art instinct alone but in an infinity of combinations, the dignity
of the Spaniard, the spirit of the French, the passion of the Italian.

- into -

All the foregoing is put in, not to make it harder, but because - as a
Californiac - I couldn't help it, and to show you what, in the way of a
State, the Native Son is accustomed to. You will have to admit that it
is some State. The emblem on the California flag is singularly apposite
- it's a bear.

- oh boy! - San Francisco!

And if, in addition to being a Californian, this Native Son visiting the
East for the first time, is also a San Franciscan, he has come from a
city which is, with the exception of peacetime Paris, the gayest and
with the exception of none, the happiest city in the world; a city of
extraordinary picturesqueness of situation and an equally notable
cosmopolitanism of atmosphere; a city which is, above all cities, a
paradise for men.

San Francisco, which invents much American slang, must have provided
that phrase - "this man's town." For that is what San Francisco is - a
mans town.

I dare not appeal to Easterners; but Californiacs, I ask you how could I
forbear to say something about "the city"?

San Francisco, or "the city"', as Californians so proudly and lovingly
term her, is peculiarly fortunate in her situation and her weather.
Riding a series of hills as lightly as a ship the waves, she makes real
exercise of any walking within her limits. Moreover the streets are tied
so intimately and inextricably to seashore and country that San
Francisco's life is, in one sense, less like city life than that of any
other city in the United States. Yet by the curious paradox of her
climate, which compels much indoor night entertainment, reinforced by
that cosmopolitanism of atmosphere, life there is city life raised to
the highest limit. Last of all, its size - and personally I think there
should be a federal law forbidding cities to grow any bigger than San
Francisco - makes it an engaging combination of provincialism and
cosmopolitanism.

Not scenery this time, Reader, nor climate, but weather. Like scenery
and climate, it must be done. Hurdle this paragraph, Easterners! Keep on
reading, Californiacs!

The "city" does its best to put the San Franciscan in good condition.
And the weather reinforces this effort by keeping him out of doors.
Because of a happy collaboration of land with sea, the region about San
Francisco, the "bay" region - individual in this as in everything else -
has a climate of its own. It is, notwithstanding its brief rainy season,
a singularly pleasant climate. It cannot be described as "temperate" in
the sense, for instance, that New England's climate is temperate. That
is too harsh. Neither can it be described as "semi-tropical" in the way
that Hawaii, for example, is semi-tropical. That is too soft. It combines
the advantages of both with the disabilities of neither.

You may begin to read again, Easterners; for at last I've returned to
the Native Son.

That sparkling briskness - the tang - which is the best the temperate
climate has to offer, gives the Native Son his high powered strenuosity.
That developing softness - lush - (every Native Son will admit the lush)
which is the best the semi-tropical element has to contribute, gives him
his size and comeliness. The weather of San Francisco keeps the Native
Son out of doors whenever it is possible through the day time. To take
care of this flight into the open are seashore and mountain, city parks
and country roads. That same weather drives him indoors during the
evenings. And to meet this demand are hotels, restaurants, theatres,
moving-picture houses, in numbers out of all proportion to the
population. Again, the weather permits him to play baseball and football
for unusual periods with ease, to play tennis and golf three-quarters of
the year with comfort, to walk and swim all the year with joy.
Notwithstanding the combination of heavy rains with startling hill
heights, he never ceases to motor day or night, winter or summer. The
weather not only allows this, but the climate drives him to it.

These are the reasons why there is nothing hectic about the hordes of
Native Sons who nightly motor about San Francisco, who fill its theatres
and restaurants. An after-theatre group in San Francisco is as different
from the tallowy, gas-bred, after-theatre groups on Broadway as it is
possible to imagine. In San Francisco, many of them look as though they
had just come from State-long motor trips; from camping expeditions on
the beach, among the redwoods, or in the desert; from long, cold Arctic
cruises, or long, hot Pacific ones. Moreover the Native Son's club
encourages all this athletic instinct by offering spacious and beautiful
gymnasium quarters in which to develop it. Lacking a club, he can turn
to the public baths, surely the biggest and most beautiful in the world.

Just as there is a different physical aspect to the Native Son, there
is, compared to the rest of the country, a different social aspect to
him. California is still young, still pioneer in outlook. Society has
not yet shaken down into those tightly stratified layers, typical of the
East. There is a real spirit of democracy in the air.

The first time I visited San Francisco I was impressed with the remarks
of a Native son of moderate salary who had traveled much in the East.

"This here and now San Francisco is a real man's town", he said. "I
don't know so much about the women, but the men certainly can have a
better time here than in any other city in the country. And then again,
a poor man can live in a way and do things in a style that would be
impossible in New York. At my club I meet all kinds of men. Many of them
are prominent citizens and many of them have large fortunes. I mix with
them all. I don't mean to say I run constantly with the prom. cits. and
the millionaires. I don't. I cant afford that. But they occasionally
entertain me. And I as often entertain them. So many restaurants here
are both inexpensive and good that I can return their hospitality
self-respectingly and without undue expense. In New York I would not
only never meet that type of man, but I could not afford to entertain
him if I did."

Allied to this, perhaps, is a quality, typical of San Francisco, which I
can describe only as promiscuity. That promiscuity is in its best phase
a frankness; a fearlessness; a gorgeous candor which made possible the
epigram that San Francisco has every vice but hypocrisy. Civically, two
cross currents cut through the city's life; one of, a high visioned
enlightenment which astounds the visiting stranger by its force, its
white-fire enthusiasm; the other a black sordidness and soddenness which
displays but one redeeming quality - the characteristic San Franciscan
candor. That openness is physical as well as spiritual. The city,
dropped over its many hills like a great loose cobweb weighted thickly
with the pearl cubes of buildings, with its wide streets; its frequent
parks; its broad-spaced residential areas; its gardened houses in which
high windows crystallize every view and sun parlors or sleeping porches
catch both the first and last hint of daylight - the city itself has the
effect of living in the open. Everybody is frankly interested in
everybody else and in what is going on. Of all the cities the country,
San Francisco is by weather and temperament, most adapted to the
pleasant French habit of open-air eating. The clients in the barber
shops, lathered like clowns and trussed up in what is perhaps the least
heroic posture and costume possible for man, are seated at the windows,
where they may enjoy the outside procession during the boresome
processes of the shave and the hair-cut. In the windows of the downtown
shops, with no pretence whatever of the curtains customary in the East,
men clerks disrobe and re-robe life-sized female models of an appalling
nude flesh-likeness. They dress these helpless ladies in all the
fripperies of femininity from the wax out, oblivious to the flippant
comments of gathering crowds. It's all a part of that civic candor
somehow. Nowhere I think are eyes so clear, glances so direct and
expressions so frank as in California. Nowhere is conversation and
discussion more straightforward and courageous.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3