Unlike Sierra Madre, so long retarded for want of railway facilities, Monrovia—founded in May, 1886, by William N. Monroe, at an altitude of twelve hundred feet, and favored by both the Santa Fé and the Southern Pacific systems—rapidly developed, although it did not attain its present importance as a foothill town until it had passed through the usual depression of the late eighties, due to the collapse of the Boom, of which I am about to speak.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
THE GREAT BOOM
1887
Not as impulsively perhaps as on previous occasions, I left Los Angeles for Europe on April 30th, 1887, accompanied by my wife and our two children, Marco and Rose. Mrs. Eugene Meyer, my wife's youngest sister, and her daughter joined us at San Francisco and traveled with us as far as Paris. We took passage on the French ship Normandie, departing from the Morton Street Pier in New York on May 14th, and nine days later we landed at Havre, from which port we proceeded to the French capital.
On this trip we visited France, England, Scotland, Ireland, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Germany, Austria—including Bohemia—and Italy. We also touched at points in Sweden, although we did not "do" that country thoroughly until a later voyage. While in Germany, where I met my nephew Leo—son of J. P. Newmark—then a student in Strassburg, I was impressed with the splendid hotels and State highways, and the advantage taken of natural resources; and from Ems on July 22d, I wrote a letter on the subject to Kaspare Cohn, which I later found had been published by one of the Los Angeles dailies. During this journey we traveled with M. J. Newmark and his family. It was also on this tour, on June 10th, that I returned to my native town of Loebau, both to visit the graves of my parents and once more to see some relatives and a few old friends.
In Paris we had an exciting experience as observers of a conflagration that might have terminated seriously for us. We had been thinking of going to the Opéra Comique in the evening, but instead had accepted an invitation to dinner at the residence of Alexander Weil, the well-known international banker, formerly of San Francisco; and only on our return to the Hôtel du Helder, a comfortable family hostelry in the Rue du Helder (within a couple of blocks of the theater), did we learn of a disastrous fire in the opera house which caused the loss of many lives. For blocks around, streets and sidewalks were roped in and great was the confusion everywhere. The following day a number of solicitous inquiries arrived from friends in America.
In connection with our departure for this tour of Europe, I am reminded of a unique gift to my wife of a diary in eight volumes, tastefully bound in Russian leather—the whole neatly encased for traveling. With almost painful regularity my wife entered there her impressions and recollections of all she saw, refusing to retire at night, as a rule, until she had posted up her book for the day. Glancing over these pages written in her distinct, characteristically feminine hand, I note once more the intellectual vigor and perspicuity displayed by my companion in this, her first contact with European life and customs.
It was during my absence, on May 2d, that Erskine Mayo Ross was appointed, by President Cleveland, Judge of the new United States District Court just established. He was then in partnership with Stephen M. White. A native of Belpré, Virginia, he had come to Los Angeles in 1868 to study law with his uncle, Cameron E. Thom. Soon admitted to the Bar, he was elected in 1879, at the age of thirty-four, to the Supreme Bench of the State. The Judge, with whom I have been on friendly terms since his arrival, is still living in Los Angeles, a familiar and welcome figure in club circles.
Speaking of this esteemed Judge, I am reminded of a visit here, in 1887, of Justice Stephen J. Field, when he sat with Judge Ross in the United States Circuit Court, the sessions of which were then held over the Farmers & Merchants National Bank at the corner of Main and Commercial streets. On that occasion the members of the Bar, irrespective of party, united to do him honor; and Justice Field, in turn, paid a warm tribute to Los Angeles and her hospitality.
D. W. Hanna, a Michigan pedagogue who had come to Los Angeles in 1884 to open Ellis College on Fort Street near Temple—burned in 1888—established on September 2d, 1885, the Los Angeles College, a boarding school for girls, in a couple of buildings at the corner of Fifth and Olive streets. In 1887 Hanna, having formed a stock company, erected a new school structure at the southwest corner of Eighth and Hope streets, where eighteen teachers soon instructed some two hundred and fifty students. But the institution failed, and the building, still standing, was finally bought by Abbot Kinney and named the Abbotsford Inn.
In a note regarding the life and accomplishments of Mme. Severance, I have referred to the distinguished rôle played by this Angeleña in the early advocacy of the kindergarten for America. It took three years, however, for the educational authorities here to awake to the significance of the departure, for it was not until 1887 that Froebel's plan was admitted for experiment into the Los Angeles schools.