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.