This use of “Esquire,” by the way, was an English custom imported to California by way of the South, and many humorous examples of it may be found in Bret Harte. Thus, in the “Star’s” account of “Uncle Ben” Dabney’s sudden elevation to wealth and to a more aristocratic name, we read: “Benjamin Daubigny, Esq., who left town for Sacramento on important business, not entirely unconnected with his new interests in Indian Springs, will, it is rumored, be shortly joined by his wife, who has been enabled by his recent good fortune to leave her old home in the States, and take her proper proud position by his side.... Mr. Daubigny was accompanied by his private secretary, Rupert, the eldest son of H. G. Filgee, Esq.,”—“H. G. Filgee, Esq.” being a species of bar-room loafer.
Another indication of the Southern origin of Californian Editors is the Starbottlian lack of humor which they often display. In August, 1850, the junior Editor of the “Alta California” published an extremely long letter in that paper describing his personal difficulties with two acquaintances, and concluding as follows: “I had simply intended in our interview to pronounce Messrs. Crane and Rice poltroons and cowards, and spit in their faces; and had they seen fit to resent it on the spot, I was prepared for them.”—Nothing more. The “Sacramento Transcript” concluded the account of a funeral as follows: “She was buried in a neat mahogany coffin, furnished by Mr. Earle Youmans at one half the established price.” The “San Francisco Daily Herald” of June 21, 1852, contains a very long, minute, and extremely technical account of a prize-fight, written with evident relish, but concluding with a wholly unexpected comment as follows: “Thus ended this brutal exhibition!”
The editorial tone, especially in San Francisco, was distinguished by great solemnity, but it was the assumed solemnity of youth, for the Editors, like everybody else in California, were young. None but a youthful journalist could have written a leading article, published one Monday in a San Francisco paper, describing a sermon which the writer had heard on the preceding Sunday, giving the name of the preacher, and complaining bitterly, not that he was heterodox or bigoted, but that he was stupid and uninteresting!
In fact, the California Editors, despite the solemnity of their tone, showed a decided inclination to deal with the amusing, rather than with the serious, aspects of life. The “Sacramento Transcript” in August, 1850, contained a column letter, in large type, minutely describing “an alleged difficulty” which occurred at the American Fork House, between Mr. Gelston of Sacramento, and Mr. Drake, “who has been stopping at this place for his health,”—with poor results, it is to be feared. In another issue of the same paper two columns are devoted to an account of a practical joke played upon a French barber in San Francisco.
Most of all, however, did the California journalists betray their youth, and their Southern origin as well, by the ornate style and the hyperbole in which the early papers indulged, and which are often satirized by Bret Harte. An editorial article dealing with the prospects of California began as follows: “When the eagle, emblem of model Republican liberty, winged its final flight westward from its home where Atlantic surges chafe our shores, and sought the sunny clime of the mild Pacific Strand, it bore in its strong talons,” and so forth for a sentence of one hundred and twenty words.
But the California newspapers, though often crude and provincial, were almost wholly free from vulgarity. In this respect they far excelled the average newspaper of to-day. There was nothing of the Philistine about them. They give the impression of having been written “by gentlemen and for gentlemen.” These California writers were, indeed, very young gentlemen, as we have seen, and they often lacked breadth of view, self-restraint, and knowledge of the world, but they were essentially men of honor, and in public matters they took high ground. The important part played by the “Bulletin” and its Editor, James King, has already been described. Nor did they lack literary skill, as is sufficiently shown by some of the passages from San Francisco papers already quoted. A correspondent of the “Sacramento Transcript,” writing in July, 1850, from the northern mines, gives an account of the destruction by fire of a store and restaurant owned by a Mr. Cook, concluding as follows: “With the recuperative energy so peculiar to American character, Mr. Cook has already gone down to your city to purchase a new stock, having reëstablished his boarding-house before leaving. The son of Ethiopia who conducts the culinary department is not the darker for ‘the cloud which has lowered o’er our house,’ and deprived him of many of the instruments of his office.”
The delicate humor of the last sentence does not seem out of place in the “Sacramento Transcript” of that date. The same paper published on the fourth of July, 1850, a patriotic leader which closed with these words,—they appear far from extravagant now, but at that time they must have sounded like a rash and audacious prophecy: “‘God Save the Queen’ and ‘Yankee Doodle’ will blend in unison around the world.”
The first newspaper published in California was a small sheet called “The Californian,” started at Monterey in the Fall of 1846, and printed half in English, half in Spanish. Needless to say, its conductors were Americans.[78] They had discovered in the ruins of the Mission, and used for this purpose, an old press which the Spaniards had imported in the day of their rule for printing the edicts of the Governor. In the following year “The Californian” was removed to San Francisco. Many other newspapers sprang into existence after the discovery of gold, especially the “Alta California,” which became the leading journal on the Pacific Slope. By the end of 1850 there were fifteen newspapers in the State, including six daily papers in San Francisco, and that excellent home and farm weekly, the “California Farmer.”
As for the buoyant, confident tone of these Pioneer papers, exaggerated though it was, it only reflected the general feeling. So early as November, 1851, a meeting was held in San Francisco to advocate the building of a railroad which should connect the Atlantic with the Pacific. In June, 1850, the “Sacramento Transcript” warned Europe as follows: “The present is the most remarkable period the world has ever been called upon to pass through.... The nations are centering hitherward. Europe is poor, California is rich, and equilibrium is inevitable. Four years will pass, and ours will be the most popular State in the Union. She is putting in the Keystone of Commerce, and concentrating the trade of the world.”
Moreover, busy as the Pioneers were, their reading was not confined to newspapers. Bret Harte said of them: “Eastern magazines and current Eastern literature formed their literary recreation, and the sale of the better class of periodicals was singularly great. Nor was their taste confined to American literature. The illustrated and satirical English journals were as frequently seen in California as in Massachusetts; and the author records that he has experienced more difficulty in procuring a copy of ‘Punch’ in an English provincial town than was his fortune at ‘Red Dog’ or ‘One-Horse Gulch.’”