As I did not visit Southern California I shall leave the climate of that section to the residents, who are not only willing to describe it, but who, from all accounts, can come as near doing it adequately as anybody can. But in San Francisco and the surrounding country I think I know what climate means.
There are two seasons: spring, beginning about November and running on into April; autumn, beginning in April and filling out the remaining six months. Winter and summer are simply left out. There is no great cold (snow has fallen but six times in the history of the city) and no great heat (84 degrees was the highest temperature registered during an unusual "hot spell" which occurred just before our visit). It is, however, a celebrated peculiarity of the San Francisco climate that between shade and sun there is a difference so great as to make light winter clothing comfortable on one side of the street, and summer clothing on the other. The most convenient clothing, upon the whole, I found to be of medium weight, and as soon as the sun had set I sometimes felt the need of a light overcoat.
One of the finest things about the California weather is its absolute reliability. In the rainy season of spring, rain is expected and people go prepared for it; but with the arrival of the sunny season, the rain is really over, and thereafter you need not fear for your straw hat or your millinery, as the case may be.
Small wonder that the Californian loves to talk about his climate. He loves to discuss it for the same reason the New Yorker loves to discuss money: because, with him, it is the fundamental thing. All through the West, but particularly on the Pacific Coast, men and women alike lead outdoor lives, compared with which the outdoor lives of Easterners are labored and pathetic. The man or woman in California who does not know what it is to ride and camp and shoot is an anomaly. Apropos of this love of outdoors, I am reminded that the head of a large department store informed me that, in San Francisco, rainy days bring out the largest shopping crowds, because people like to spend the sunny ones in the open. Also, I noticed for myself, that small shopkeepers think so much of the climate that in many instances they cannot bear to bar it out, even at night, but have permanent screen fronts in their stores.
All the year round, flowers are for sale at stands on corners, in the San Francisco streets, and if you think we have no genre in America, if you think there is nothing in this country to compare with your memories of picturesque little scenes in Europe—scenes involving such things as the dog-drawn wagons of Belgium; Dutch girls in wooden shoes, bending at the waist to scrub a sidewalk; embroidered peasants at a Breton pardon; proud beggars at an Andalusian railway station; mysterious hooded Arabs at Gibraltar; street singers in Naples; flower girls in the costume of the campagna, at the Spanish Steps in Rome—if you think we cannot match such bits of color, then you should see the flower stands of San Francisco upon some holiday, when Chinese girls are bargaining for blooms.
But I am talking only of this one part of California. When one considers the whole State, one is forced to admit that it is a natural wonder-place. It is everything. In its ore-filled mountains it is Alaska; to the south it is South America; I have looked out of a train window and seen a perfect English park, only to realize suddenly that it had not been made by gardeners, but was the sublimated landscape gardening which Nature gave to this state of states. I have eaten Parisian meals in San Francisco and drunk splendid wines, and afterwards I have been told that our viands and beverages had, without exception, been produced in California—unless one counts the gin in the cocktail which preceded dinner. But that is only part of it. With her hills San Francisco is Rome; with her harbor she is Naples; with her hotels she is New York. But with her clubs and her people she is San Francisco—which, to my mind, comes near being the apotheosis of praise.
So far as I know American cities San Francisco stands out amongst them like some beautiful, fascinating creature who comes suddenly into a roomful of mediocrities. She is radiant, she has charm and allure, those qualities which are gifts of the gods, and which, though we recognize them instantly when we meet them, we are unable to describe.
I have not forgotten the charm of Detroit, nor the stupendousness of Chicago, but—there is only one Paris and only one San Francisco. San Francisco does not look at all like Paris, and while it has a large foreign population the people one meets are, for the most part, pure-blooded Americans, yet all the time I was there, I found myself thinking of the place as a city that was somehow foreign. It is full of that splendid vigor which one learns to expect of young American cities; yet it is full of something else—something Latin. The outlook upon life even of its most American inhabitants is touched with a quality that is different. The climate works its will upon them as climate does on people everywhere. Here it makes them lively and spontaneous. They are able to do more (including more sitting up at night) than people do in New York, and it seems to tell upon them less. They love good times and, again owing to the climate, they are able to have them out of doors.
The story of the Portola fête, as told me by a San Franciscan, nicely illustrates that, and also shows the San Francisco point of view.
"In 1907," he informed me, "we decided to put over a big outdoor New Year's fête, with dancing in the streets, the way they have it in Paris on the Fourteenth of July. But at the last minute it rained and spoiled the outdoor part of the fun. Once in a while, you see, that can happen even in San Francisco.