"Everybody agreed that we ought to have a regular established festival, and as we didn't want to have it spoiled a second time, we hunted up the weather records and found that in the history of the city there had never been rain between October seventeenth and twenty-ninth. That established the time for our fête; the next thing was to discover an excuse for it. That was not so easy. After digging through a lot of history we found that Don Caspar de Portola discovered San Francisco Bay October twenty-second, 1679—or maybe it was 1769—that doesn't matter. Nobody had ever heard of Portola until then, but now we have dragged him out of oblivion and made quite a boy of him, all as an excuse to have a good time."
"Then you don't celebrate New Year's out here?" I asked.
"Don't we though!" he exclaimed. "You ought to be here for our New Year's fête. It is one of the most spontaneous shows of the kind you'll see anywhere. It's not a tough orgy such as you have on Broadway every New Year's Eve, with a lot of drunks sitting around in restaurants under signs saying 'Champagne Only'—I've seen that. We just have a lot of real fun, mostly in the streets.
"One thing you can count on out here. We celebrate everything that can be celebrated, and the beauty of a lot of our good times is that they have a way of just breaking loose instead of being cooked-up in advance. It has often happened that on Christmas Eve some great singer or musician would appear in the streets and sing or play for the crowds. A hundred thousand people heard Tetrazzini when she did that four years ago. Bispham and a lot of other big singers have done the same thing, and three years ago, on Christmas Eve, Kubelik played for the crowds in the streets. Somehow I think that musicians and artists of all kinds have a warm feeling for San Francisco, and want to show us that they have."
There can be no doubt that that is true. Many artists have inhabited San Francisco, and the city has always been beloved by them; especially, it sometimes seems, by the writing group. Mark Twain records that on his arrival he "fell in love with the most cordial and sociable city in the Union," and countless other authors, from Stevenson down, have paid their tribute.
As might be expected of a country so palpitantly beautiful and alive, California has produced many artists in literature and the other branches, and has developed many others who, having had the misfortune to be born elsewhere, possessed, at least, the good judgment to move to California while still in the formative period.
Sitting around a table in a café, one night, with a painter, a novelist and a newspaper man, I set them all to making lists, from memory, of persons following the arts, who may be classified as Californians by birth or long residence.
The four most prominent painters listed were Arthur F. Mathews, Charles Rollo Peters, Charles J. Dickman and Francis McComas, all of them men standing very high in American art. Among sculptors were mentioned Robert Aitken, Arthur Putnam, Haig Patigian and Douglas Tilden. Of writers there is a deluge. Besides Mark Twain and Stevenson, the names of Bret Harte, Frank Norris, and Joaquin Miller are, of course, historic in connection with the State. Among living writers born in California were listed Gertrude Atherton, Jack London, Lloyd Osbourne, Austin Strong, Ernest Peixotto and Kathleen Norris; while among those born elsewhere who have migrated to California, were set down the names of Harry Leon Wilson, Stewart Edward White, James Hopper, Mary Austin, Grace MacGowan Cooke, Alice MacGowan, Rufus Steele and Bertha Runkle. Still another group of writers who do not now reside in California are, nevertheless, associated with the State because of having lived there in the past. Among these are Wallace and Will Irwin, Gelett Burgess, Eleanor Gates, Kate Douglas Wiggin, Edwin Markham, George Sterling, Richard Tully, Jack Hines and Arno Dosch.
At this juncture it occurs to me that, quite regardless of the truth, I had better say that I have not set down these names according to any theories of mine about the order of their importance, but that I have copied them off as they came to me on lists made by other persons, who shall be sheltered to the last by anonymity.
All the names so far mentioned were furnished by the painter and the novelist. The newspaper man kept me waiting a long time for his list. At last he gave it to me, and lo! Harrison Fisher's name led all the rest. Henry Raliegh and Rae Irvin, illustrators, were also listed, but the formidable California showing came with the category of cartoonists and "comic artists" employed on New York newspapers. Of these the following were set down as products of the Golden State: Bud Fisher, Igoe, and James Swinnerton of the "American"; Tom McNamara, Hal Cauffman, George Harriman, Hershfield, and T. A. Dorgan ("Tad") of the "Journal"; Goldberg of the "Evening Mail"; R. E. Edgren of the "World"; Robert Carter of the "Sun"; and Ripley of the "Globe." The late Homer Davenport of the "American" also came to New York from San Francisco. This list, covering as it does all but a handful of the cartoonists and "funny men" of the New York papers, seems to me hardly less remarkable than this further list of "artists" of another variety who trace back to California: James J. Corbett, Jim Jeffries, Joe Choynski, Jimmy Britt, Abe Attell, Willie Ritchie, Eddie Hanlon and Frankie Neil; with Jack Johnson and Stanley Ketchell added for the reason that, although not actual native products, they "developed" in California.