MAIN STREET, NEVADA CITY, 1852
From a photograph in the possession of Colonel Thomas L. Livermore
This statement has been questioned, but it is borne out by the contemporary records and publications. The “Atlantic Monthly,” for example, was regularly advertised in the California papers, and the “Atlantic” at that time was essentially a literary magazine. In the list of its contributors published in the “California Farmer” are the names of Emerson, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, Parsons, Whittier, Prescott, Mrs. Stowe, Motley, Herman Melville, C. C. Felton, F. J. Child, Edmund Quincy, J. T. Trowbridge, and G. W. Curtis. The London “Illustrated News” had a particularly large sale among the Pioneers, although the California price was a dollar a copy.
The shifting character of the population, and the fact, already mentioned, that, almost to a man, the Pioneers expected to return to the East within a few months, or, at the latest, within a year or two,—these reasons discouraged the founding of permanent institutions such as libraries and colleges; but even in this direction something was done at an early date. The rush of immigration began in the Spring of 1849, and within less than a year a meeting had been held at San Francisco to establish a State college; a State library had been founded at San José; mercantile library associations had been started both in San Francisco and Sacramento, and an auction sale of books had been held in the latter city.
In September, 1850, an audience gathered at Stockton to hear a lecture upon so recondite a subject as the “State of Learning from the Fall of Rome to the Fall of Constantinople.” In June, 1851, a San Francisco firm advertised the receipt by the latest steamer of ten thousand new books, including the complete works of Dickens and Washington Irving. In November, 1851, a literary society called The California Institute was organized in San Francisco, and in April, 1856, some one entertained a hall full of people by giving an account of a lecture which Cardinal Wiseman had delivered in London upon the Perception of Natural Beauty by the Ancients and Moderns.
Before the close of 1856 numerous boarding-schools had been established, such as the Alameda Collegiate Institute for Young Ladies and Gentlemen, the Stockton Female Seminary, the Female Institute at Santa Clara, the Collegiate Institute at Benicia, the Academy of Notre Dame at San José.
The “legitimate drama,” and even Shakspere, flourished in California. In the Summer of 1850 Charles R. Thorne was playing at Sacramento, and in the Autumn “Richard III” and “Macbeth” were on the boards there. In the Fall of 1851 two theatres were open in San Francisco, “Othello” being the play at one, “Ernest Maltravers” at the other. In 1852 “The Hunchback” was performed in the same city with Miss Baker, the once-famous Philadelphia actress, in the leading part. There was no exaggeration in the remark made by the “Sacramento Transcript” in May, 1850: “Nowhere have we seen more critical theatrical audiences than those which meet nightly in Sacramento.... Every mind is wide awake, and the discriminating eye of an impartial public easily selects pure worth from its counterfeit.”
An amusing incident, which would have delighted Charles Lamb, and which shows the youthfulness, the humor, and, equally, the decorum of the California audience, is thus related by an eye-witness: “One night at the theatre a countryman from Pike, sitting in the ‘orchestra’ near the stage, and becoming uncomfortably warm, took off his coat. Thereupon the gallery-gods roared and hissed,—stopping the play until the garment should be resumed. Some one touched the man on the shoulder and explained the situation. The hydra watched and waited. Shirt-sleeves appeared to be refractory, and a terrific roar came from the hydra. Shirt-sleeves, quailing at the sound, and at the angry looks and gestures of those who sat near him, started up with an air of coerced innocence, and resumed his toga virilis. The yell of triumph that arose from the ‘gods’ in their joyful sense of victory was beyond the description of tongue or pen.”[79]
It was remarked at an early date that nothing really satisfied the Pioneers unless it was the best of its kind that could be obtained, whether that kind were good or bad. Thus San Francisco, as many travellers observed, had the prettiest courtesans, the truest guns and pistols, the purest cigars and the finest wines and brandies to be found in the United States. The neatness and good style which marked the best hotels and restaurants prove the natural refinement of the people. Bret Harte has spoken of the old family silver which figured at a certain coffeehouse in San Francisco; and the Rev. Dr. Bushnell, who, being a minister, may perhaps be cited as an expert on this subject, was impressed by the good food and the excellent service which the traveller in California enjoyed:—
“Passing hither and thither on the little steamers to Marysville, to Stockton, to the towns north of the Bay, where often the number of passengers did not exceed thirty, we have seen again and again a table most neatly set, the silver bright and clean, the meals well prepared and good, without any nonsense of show dishes, the servants tidy, quiet and respectful,—the whole entertainment more rational and better than we have ever seen on Mississippi steamboats, or on those of the Atlantic Coast.”[80]