There is one name that should be the perennial toast of the men of this Presidio. We have just celebrated by a splendid pageant the four-hundredth anniversary of the discovery of the Pacific Ocean by Balboa, and we chose for queen of that ceremony a beautiful girl by the name of Conchita. There was another Conchita once, the daughter of the comandante of this Presidio, the bewitching, the beautiful, the radiant Concha Argüello.
In this old Presidio she was born. In the old Mission Dolores she was christened. Here, it is told, that in the merry exuberance of her innocent babyhood, she danced instead of prayed before the shrine. In the glory of these sunrises and day-vistas and sunsets, she passed her girlhood and bloomed into womanhood. In this old adobe building she queened it supremely. Here she presided at every hospitality; here she was the leader of every fiesta.
To this bay, on the 8th of April, 1806[[11]], in the absence of her stern old father in Monterey, and while the Presidio was under the temporary command of her brother Luis, there came from the north the "Juno," the vessel of the Russian Chamberlain Rezánov, his secret mission an intrigue of some kind concerning this wonderland, for the benefit of the great Czar at St. Petersburg. He found no difficulty in coming ashore. Father was away. Brother was kind. Besides, the Russian marines looked good, and the officers knew how to dance as only military men know how to dance. The hospitality was Castilian, unaffected, intimate, and at the evenings' dances in this old building their barrego was more graceful than any inartistic tango, and in the teaching of the waltz by the Russians—there was no "hesitation."
Then came Love's miracle; and by the time the comandante returned to his post, ten days later, the glances of the bright-flashing eyes of the daughter had more effectively pulverized the original scheme of the chamberlain, than any old guns of her father on this fort could have done. Their troth was plighted, and, as he belonged to the Greek Church, with a lover's abandon, he started home to St. Petersburg, the tremendous journey of that day by way of Russian America and across the plains of Siberia, to obtain his Emperor's consent to his marriage. No knight of chivalry ever pledged more determined devotion. He assured even the Governor that, immediately upon his return to St. Petersburg, he would go to Madrid as ambassador extraordinary from the Czar, to obviate every kind of misunderstanding between the powers. From there he would proceed to Vera Cruz, or some other Spanish harbor in Mexico, and then return to San Francisco, to claim his bride.
On the 21st of May, about four o'clock in the afternoon, the "Juno" weighed anchor for Sitka, and in passing the fort, then called the fort of San Joaquin, she saluted it with seven guns—and received in return a salute of nine. The old chronicler who accompanied the expedition says that the Governor, with the whole Argüello family, and several other friends and acquaintances, collected at the fort and waived an adieu with hats and handkerchiefs[[12]]. And one loyal soul stood looking seaward, till a vessel's hull sank below the horizon.
How many fair women, through the pitiless years, have thus stood—looking seaward! Once more the envious Fates prevailed. Unknown to his sweetheart, Rezánov died on the overland journey from Okhotsk to St. Petersburg, in a little town in the snows of central Siberia. With a woman's instinctive and unyielding faith, the beautiful girl waited and watched for his return, waited the long and dreary years till the roses of youth faded from her cheeks. True heart, no other voice could reach her ear! Dead to all allurement, she first joined a secular order, "dedicating her life to the instructions of the young and the consolation of the sick," and finally entered the Dominican sisterhood, where she gave the remainder of her life to the heroic and self-effacing service of her order. Not until late in life did she have the consolation of learning—and then quite by accident—that her lover had not been false to her, but had died of a fall from his horse on his mission to win her. Long years afterward she died, in 1857, at the convent of St. Catherine; and today, while he sleeps beneath a Greek cross in the wilds of Siberia, she is at rest beneath a Roman cross in the little Dominican cemetery at Benicia, across the Bay[[13]].
This history is true. These old walls were witnesses to part of it. These hills and dales were part of the setting for their love-drama. One picnic was taken by boat to what is now called the Island of Belvedere yonder. One horseback outing was taken to the picturesque cañon of San Andrés, so named by Captain Rivera and Father Palou in 1774. Gertrude Atherton has given us the novel, and Bret Harte has sung the poem, founded upon it[[14]].
When we think of the love stories that have survived the ages, Alexander and Thais, Pericles and Aspasia, Antony and Cleopatra, and all the rest of them—some of them a narrative unfit to handle with tongs—shall we let this local story die? Shall not America furnish a newer and purer standard? If to such a standard Massachusetts is to contribute the Courtship of Miles Standish, may not California contribute the Courtship of Rezánov? You men of this army post have a peculiar right to proclaim this sentiment; in such an enlistment you, of all men, would have the right to unsheathe a flaming sword. For this memory of the comandante's daughter is yours—yours to cherish, yours to protect. In the barracks and on parade, at the dance and in the field, this "one sweet human fancy" belongs to this Presidio; and no court-martial nor departmental order can ever take it from you.
[Translation of Baptismal Record.]
931. Maria Concepción Marcela Argüello, Female Spanish Infant 65.