All that I have written thus far is only by way of preliminary to showing you what the background of the Native Son has been and to explaining why Europe does not dazzle him much and the East not at all. Remember that he is instinctively an athlete and that he has never dissipated his magnificent strength in fighting weather. If he is a little—mind you, I say only a little—inclined to use that strength on more entertaining dissipation, he is as likely to restore the balance by much physical exercise.
There I go again! Enormous! Superb! Splendid! Spacious! You see how impossible it is to keep your vocabulary down when California is your subject. Another moment and I shall be saying more unique.
Remember that all his life he has gazed on beauty—beauty tragic and haunting, beauty gorgeous and gay. Remember he is accustomed to enormous sizes; superb heights; splendid distances; spacious vistas. That California does not produce an annual crop of megalo-maniacs is the best argument I know for the superiority of heredity over environment.
Remember, too, that all his life the Native Son has soaked in an art atmosphere potentially as strong and individual as ancient Greece or renaissance Italy. The dazzling country side, the sulphitic brew of races, the cosmopolitan "city" have taken care of that. That art-spirit accounts for such minor California phenomena as photography raised to unequalled art levels and shops whose simple beautiful interiors resemble the private galleries of art collectors; it accounts for such major phenomena as the Stevenson monument, the "Lark", the annual Grove Play of the Bohemian Club, and the Exposition of 1915.
The tiny monument to Stevenson, tucked away in a corner soaked with romantic memories—Portsmouth Square—compares favorably with the charming memorials to the French dead. It is a thing of beautiful proportions. A little stone column supports a bronze ship, its sails bellying robustly to the whip of the Pacific winds. The inscription—a well known quotation from the author—is topped simply by "To remember Robert Louis Stevenson."
Perhaps you will object that some of these are not Native Sons. But hush! Californians consider anybody who has stayed five minutes in the State—a real Californian. And believe us, Reader, by that time most of them have become not Californians but Californiacs.
The "Lark" is perhaps the most delicious bit of literary fooling that this country has ever produced. It raised its blythe song at the Golden Gate, but it was heard across a whole continent. For two years, Gelett Burgess, Bruce Porter, Porter Garnett, Willis Polk, Ernest Peixotto, and Florence Lundborg performed in it all the artistic antics that their youth, their originality, their high spirits suggested. Professor Norton, speaking to a class at Harvard University, and that the two literary events of the decade between 1890 and 1900 were the fiction of the young Kipling and the verse that appeared in the "Lark."
The Grove-Play is an annual incident of which I fancy only California could be capable. Of course the calculable quality of the weather helps in this possibility. But the art-spirit, born and bred in the Californian, is the driving force. Every year the Bohemian Club produces in its summer annex—a beautiful grove of redwoods beside the Russian river—a play in praise of the forest. The stage is a natural one, a cleared hill slope with redwoods for wings. The play is written, staged, produced and acted by members of the club. The incidental music is also written by them. Scarcely has one year's play been produced before the rehearsals for the next begin. The result is a performance of a finished beauty which not only astounds Easterners, but surprises Europeans. Although undoubtedly it is the best, it is only one of numberless out-of-door masques, plays and pageants produced all over California.
As for the Exposition of 1915, when I say that for many Californians, it will take the edge off some of the beauty of Europe, I am quite serious. For it was colored in the gorgeous gamut of the Orient, clamant yellows, oranges, golds, combined with mysterious blues, muted scarlets. And it was illuminated as no Exposition has ever before been illuminated; with lights that dripped down from the cornices of the buildings; or shot up from their foundations; or gleamed through transparent pillars; or glistened behind tumbling waters; or sparkled within leaping fountains. Some of this light even floated from enormous braziers, thereby filling the night with clouds of mist-flame; or flooded across the bay from reservoirs of tinted glass, thereby sluicing the whole dream-world with fluid color. All this was reflected in still lakes and quiet pools. The procession of one year's seasons gradually subdued its gorgeousness to an effect of antiquity, toned but still colorful. The quick-growing California vines covered it with an age-old luxuriance of green. As for the architecture—I repeat that the Californian, seeing for the first time the square of St. Peter's in Rome and of St. Mark's in Venice, is likely to suffer a transitory but definite sense of disappointment. For the big central court of the Exposition held suggestions of both these squares. It seemed quite as old and permanent. And it was much more striking in situation, with the bay offering an immense, flat blue extension at one side and the city hills, pricked with lights, slanting up and away from the other. By day, the joyous, whimsical fantasy of the colossal Tower of Jewels, which caught the light in millions of rainbow sparkles, must, for children at least, have made of its entrance the door to fairyland. At night, there was the tragedy of old history about those faintly fiery facades... those enormous shadow-haunted hulks. ..
Remember, last of all, as naturally as from infancy the Native Son has breathed the tonic and toxic air of California, he has breathed the spirit of democracy. That spirit of democracy is so strong, indeed, that the enfranchised women of California give intelligent guidance to the feminists of a whole nation; public opinion is so enlightened that it sets a pace for the rest of the country and labor is so progressive that it is a revelation to the visiting sociologist.