III
JOAQUIN MILLER
[Footnote: The quotations from the poems of Joaquin Miller appearing in
this chapter are used by permission of the Harr Wagner Publishing
Company, owners of copyright.]
A STUDY OF HOME, FATHER LOVE, GREAT MOMENTS WITH JESUS CHRIST, HEAVEN, AND GOD
It was a warm, sunny May California day; and the day stands out, even
above California days. A climb up the Piedmont hills back of Oakland,
California, brought us to "The Heights," the unique home of Joaquin
Miller, poet of the West and poet of the world.
A visit to the homes of the New England poets is always interesting because of historic and literary associations, but none of them has the touch of the unique personality of Miller.
Most people interested in things literary know that Miller, with a great desire to emphasize the freedom of the individual, built a half dozen separate houses, one for himself, one for his wife, one for his daughter Juanita, several for guests from all over the world who were always visiting him, and a little chapel. Literary men from every nation on the planet visited Miller at "The Heights." Most people interested knew also that Miller, with his own hands, had built monuments of stone to Fremont, the explorer, to Moses, and to Browning. There was also a granite funeral pyre for himself, within sight of the little "God's Acre," in which he had buried some eighteen or twenty outcasts and derelicts of earth who had no other plot to call their own in which to take their last long sleep.
We expected to find this strange group of buildings deserted, but after inspecting the chapel, which was modeled after Newstead Abbey, and after rambling through the old-fashioned garden that Miller himself had planted—a garden with a perfect riot of colors—suddenly a little woman with a sweet face walked up to us out of the bushes and said, "Are you lovers of the poet?"
I humbly replied that we were. Then she said: "I am Mrs. Miller, and you are welcome. When you have looked around, come into Mr. Miller's own room and be refreshed. After that I will read to you from his writings."
It sounded stagey at first, but the more we knew of this sweet-faced widow of the poet the less we found about her that was not simple and sweet and natural.
After wandering around, through the fascinating paths, under the great cross of a thousand pine trees, among the roses, and flowers that he had planted with his own hands, we came at last to the little house that Mrs. Miller had called "The poet's own room," and there were we refreshed with cool lemonade and cakes. In the littleness of my soul I wondered when we were to pay for these favors, but the longer we remained the more was I shamed as I saw that this hospitality was just the natural expression of a woman, and a beautiful daughter's desire to extend the hospitality of the dead poet himself, to any who loved his writings.
There was the bed on which Miller lay for months writing many of his greatest poems, including the famous "Columbus." There was his picturesque sombrero, still hanging where he had put it last on the post of the great bed. His pen was at hand; his writing pad, his chair, his great fur coat, his handkerchief of many colors which in life he always wore about his neck; his great heavy, high-topped boots. And it was sunset.
Then Mrs. Miller began to read. As the slanting rays of as crimson a sunset as God ever painted were falling through the great cross of pine trees, Mrs. Miller's dramatic, sweet, sympathetic voice interpreted his poems for us. I sat on the bed from which Miller had, just a few months previous to that, heard the great call. The others sat in his great rockers. Mrs. Miller stood as she read. I am sure that "Columbus" will never be lifted into the sublime as it was when she read it that late May afternoon, with its famous, and thrilling phrase "Sail on! Sail on! And on! And on!"