AT CORONADO BEACH.
I associate Coronado Beach so closely with Warner (Charles D.), the cultured and cosmopolitan, that every wave seems to murmur his name, and the immense hotel lives and flourishes under the magic of his rhetoric and commendation. Just as Philadelphia is to me Wanamakerville and Terrapin, so Coronado Beach is permeated and lastingly magnetized by Warner's sojourn here and what he "was saying."
But I must venture to find fault with his million-times-quoted adjective "unique" as it is used. It has been stamped on stationery and menu cards, and has gone the world over in his volume "Our Italy," and no one ever visits this spot who has not made the phrase his own. To me it deserves a stronger word, or series of words. We say a pretty girl has a "unique" way of dressing her hair, or an author a "unique" way of putting things.
But as I look out of my window this glorious morning, and watch the triple line of foaming waves breaking on the long beach, a silver sickle in the sunshine; the broad expanse of the Pacific, with distant sails looking like butterflies apoise; Point Loma grandly guarding the right, and farther back the mountain view, where snowy peaks can just be discerned over the nearer ranges; the quiet beauty of the grounds below, where borders and ovals and beds of marguerites contrast prettily with long lines and curves of the brilliant marigolds; grass, trees, and hedges green as June—a view which embraces the palm and the pine, the ocean and lofty mountains, cultivated gardens and rocky wastes, as I see all this, I for one moment forget "unique" and exclaim, "How bold, magnificent, and unrivalled!" Give me a new and fitting adjective to describe what I see. Our best descriptive adjectives are so recklessly used in daily life over minute matters, that absolutely nothing is left for this rare combination.
As a daughter of New Hampshire in this farthest corner of the southwest, my mind crosses the continent to the remote northeast and the great Stone Face of the Franconia Mountains. Chiselled by an Almighty hand, its rugged brow seamed by the centuries, its features scarred by the storms of ages, gazing out over the broad land, where centre the hopes of the human race, who can forget that face, sad with the mysteries of pain and sorrow, yet inspiring with its rugged determination, and at times softened with the touch of sunlit hope?
Point Loma has something of the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its long bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two seem to be keeping watch and ward over mountain and sea: each appropriate in its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet surveying the home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy; and here, its counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful gaze turned with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun, with assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of achievements assured, of——Whoa there! Hello! This to my runaway steeds, Imagination and Sentiment. Brought back by a passing bell-boy, I shall now keep a tighter rein.
But when one first breathes the air of California, there is a curious exaltation and excitement, which leads on irresistibly. This is often followed by a natural depression, sleepiness, and reaction. But that view never changes, and I know you will say the same. A florid, effervescent, rhapsodical style seems irresistible. One man of uncommon business ability and particularly level head caught the spirit of the place, and wrote that "the most practical and unpoetical minds, too, come here and go away, as they afterward gingerly admit, carrying with them the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud, sea, and mountain; of violet promontories, sails, and lighthouses etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering in sun-lit haze; of sunrises with crowns of glory chasing the vapory, fleece-like shadows from the wet, irridescent beach, and silhouetting the fishermen's sails in the opalescent tints of a glassy sea."
Some temperaments may not be affected at all. But the first morning I felt like leaping a five-barred fence, and the next like lying down anywhere and sleeping indefinitely. I met a distinguished Boston artist recently, who had just arrived. The day was superb. He seemed in a semi-delirium of ecstasy over everything. His face glowed, his eyes shone, his hands were full of flowers. He said, "My heart jumps so I'm really afraid it will jump out of my body." The next morning he was wholly subdued. It had poured all night, and the contrast was depressing. A six-footer from Albany was in the sleepy state. "If I don't pull out soon," he said, "I shall be bedridden. I want to sleep after breakfast, or bowling, or bath, or my ride or dinner, and really long to go to bed by nine."
There has probably been more fine writing and florid rhetoric about California than any other State in the Union.
The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry, yet homelike in every part, built in a rectangle with inner court, adorned with trees, flowers, vines, and a fountain encircled by callas; color, pure white, roofs and chimneys red; prevailing woods, oak, ash, pine, and redwood.
All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its own bath and corner sitting-room—literally "a linkèd suiteness long drawn out." It is one eighth of a mile from my bedroom to my seat in the dining-room, so that lazy people are obliged to take daily constitutionals whether they want to or not, sighing midway for trolley accommodations. The dining-room may safely be called roomy, as it seats a thousand guests, and your dearest friends could not be recognized at the extreme end. Yet there is no dreary stretch or caravansary effect, and to-day every seat is filled, and a dozen tourists waiting at the door.
Every recreation of city or country is found in this little world: thirty billiard-tables, pool, bowling, tennis, polo, bathing (where bucking barrel-horses and toboggan slides, fat men who produce tidal waves, and tiny boys who do the heroic as sliders and divers, make fun for the spectators), hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, riding to hounds, rabbit hunts, pigeon shoot, shooting-galleries, driving, coaching, cards, theatre, ballroom, lectures, minstrels, exhibitions of the Mammoth and Minute from Yosemite with the stereopticon, to Pacific sea-mosses, the ostrich farm, the museum or maze for a morning hour, dressing or undressing for evening display, watching the collection of human beings who throng everywhere with a critical or humorous eye, finding as much variety as on Broadway or Tremont Street; dancing-classes for children; a chaperon and a master of ceremonies for grown folks; a walk or drive twelve miles long on a smooth beach at low tide, not forgetting the "dark room" for kodak and camera f—amateurs.
You see many athletic, fine-looking men, who ride daringly and ride to kill. Once a week the centre of the office is filled with game: rabbits, quail, snipe, ducks, etc., everything here—but an undertaker. And old Ocean eternally booming (the only permanent boom I know of in Southern California).
And that is what you see and hear at the Hotel del Coronado. The summer climate is better than the winter—never too warm for comfort, the mercury never moving for weeks. I expected constant sunshine, a succession of June's fairest days, which would have been monotonous, to say nothing of the effect upon crops and orchards. The rainy season is necessary and a blessing to the land-owners, hard as it is for "lungers" and the nervous invalids who only feel well on fine days and complain unreasonably.
Ten inches is the average needed just here. Rain is rainy and wet weather is wet, but the ground dries as soon as the pelting shower is over. I do not find the raw, searching dampness of our Eastern seashore resorts. Here we are said to have "dry fogs" and an ideal marine atmosphere, but it was too cold for comfort during the March rains for those not in robust health.
As I sit in the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment.
The orchestra is unusually good, giving choice selections admirably executed. I have not decided whether music at meals is a blessing or otherwise. If sad, it seems a mockery; if gay, an interruption. For one extremely sensitive to time and tune it is difficult to eat to slow measures. And when the steak is tough and a galop is going on above, it is hard to keep up.
Among the many fleeting impressions of faces and friends here, one or two stand out clearly and indelibly—stars of the first magnitude in the nebulæ—as dear Grandma Wade from Chicago, the most attractive old lady I ever met: eighty-three years old, with a firm step, rotund figure, and sweet, unruffled face, crowned with the softest snow-white curls, on which rests an artistic cap trimmed with ribbons of blue or delicate heliotrope, and small artificial flowers to match. I have known several interesting octogenarians, but never one that surpassed her in loveliness, wit, and positive jollity. Her spontaneous fun is better than the labored efforts of many a famous humorist.
She still has her ardent admirers among men as well as women, and now and then receives an earnest proposal from some lonely old fellow.
The last of these aged lovers, when refused and relegated to the position of a brother, urged her to reconsider this important matter, making it a subject of prayer. But she quietly said, "I'm not going to bother the Lord with questions I can answer myself." When choked by a bread-crumb at table, she said to the frightened waiter, as soon as she had regained her breath, "Never mind, if that did go down the wrong way, a great many good things have gone down the right way this winter."
She is invariably cheerful, and when parting with her son for the winter she said, "Well, John, I want to know before I go just what you have left me in your will!" which little joke changed a tear into a smile.
Even when ill she is still bright and hopeful, so that a friend exclaimed, "Grandma, I do believe you would laugh if you were dying;" and she replied, "Well, so many folks go to the Lord with a long face, I guess He will be glad to see one come in smiling."
Oh, how repulsive the artificial bloom, the cosmetics and hair-dyes which make old age a horror, compared with her natural beauty! God bless and keep dear Grandma Wade!
Little "Ted" is another character and favorite, and his letter to his nurse in New York gives a good idea of how the place affects a bright, impressionable child.
"My dear Julia: It is a dummy near the hotel and it takes five days to come here and there is an island right beyond the boat house and they have a pigeon shoot every week. And there is six hundred people here Julia, one hundred and fifty came yesterday.
"There is a mountin across the river and a house very far away by itself, Julia. I play in the sand every day of my life, and I take swimming lessons and I have two oranges. California is the biggest world in the country and there is a tree very, very far away. Julia it is a puzzle walk near the hotel, Rose and me went all through it and Julia, we got our way out easy."
He has it all. All the trees are cultivated here, so I looked round for the one Ted spoke of, and find it lights up at night and revolves for the aid of the mariners. I think that all Californians echo his sentiment that "California is the biggest world in the country"; and compared with the hard work of the New England farmers, what is the cultivation of orchards but playing in the sand with golden oranges? Some one says that Californians "irrigate, cultivate, and exaggerate."
Charles Nordhoff, the veteran journalist and author, lives within sight of the hotel (which he pronounces the most perfect and charming hotel he knows of in Europe or America), in a rambling bungalow consisting of three small cottages moved from different points and made into one. He believes in California for "health, pleasure, and residence." It is a rare privilege to listen to his conversation, sitting by his open fire or at his library table, or when he is entertaining friends at dinner.
So ends my sketch of Coronado. Coronado! What a perfect word! Musical, euphonious, regal, "the crowned"! The name of the governor of New Galicia, and captain-general of the Spanish army, sent forth in 1540 in search of the seven cities of Cibola. General J. H. Simpson, U. S. A., has written a valuable monograph on "Coronado's March," which can be found in the Smithsonian Report for 1869.
I intend to avoid statistics and history on the one side, and extravagant eulogy on the other.
Now we will say good-by to our new friends, take one more look at Point Loma, and cross the ferry to San Diego.