Journal Notes

The Gilded Age was embodied in the private railroad car-a baroque equipage of millionaires that today may be found in museums. But there is little trace of the carriages in which the masses were transported, only the memories of those who rode them. To Robert Louis Stevenson, the emigrant train on which he traveled West in 1879 resembled a series of long wooden boxes-a “Noah’s Ark on wheels.” Wooden benches were their only furniture, “far too short for anyone but a child,” and the atmosphere was stagnant with the smells of food and tobacco. Families and single men and women shared these rolling slums, cooking, washing perfunctorily, and at night sleeping on wooden boards stretched across benches. The rate for these “beds,” which included three straw- (and bug-) filled cushions, was $2.50. Except for rare acts of kindness, the poor emigrants met nothing but rudeness from train functionaries, who even refused to answer their anxious inquiries. “Civility is the main comfort you miss,” Stevenson remarked. “Equality, though very largely conceived in America, does not extend so low down as the emigrant.” I prefer the image of the emigrant as portrayed by William Holden in the movie Arizona. The movie centers around Phoebe Titus a tough, swaggering pioneer woman played by Jean Arthur, but her ways become decidedly more feminine when she falls for California bound Peter Muncie played by William Holden. But Peter won’t be distracted from his journey and Phoebe is left alone and plenty busy with villains Jefferson Carteret and Lazarus Ward plotting at every turn to destroy her freighting company. You just know William Holden will be changing his plans to stay and help Jean out of a jam. The bug Holden describes in the film is decidedly different from the ones emigrants had to sleep with on the way West. One of my favorite lines from the movie are as follows-Holden to Arthur: “I figure it sounds crazy to most people… going to California just to see it. But there’s a gallivanted bug in my blood and that’s the way I am.”

Captain John Augustus Sutter (1803-1880) was a German Swiss who had been a shopkeeper in his native country. In 1834, beleaguered by debt and an unhappy marriage, he took off for five years of travel, looking to start fresh in a new locale. He visited New York and Honolulu and finally arrived in California in July 1839. There, the Mexican government awarded him a land grant of about 50,000 acres. At his colony of New Helvetia, he built Sutter’s Fort on the present site of Sacramento. When the Russians left Fort Ross, Sutter bought all their supplies and livestock. Sutter’s fort then became the principal supplier for the trappers, farmers, and ranchers of the whole are. He employed gunsmiths and amassed 12,000 cattle, 2,000 horses and mules, 10,000 sheep, and 1,000 hogs. Business was so good that he had over 1,000 people on his payroll. If you had told him he was sitting on a proverbial gold mine, he would have agreed with you. In September 1847, Sutter sent James Marshall with a work crew of 10 Americans and 10 Cullumah Indians to start construction on a mill. By December, it was almost ready for operation, but for a small problem. The river had been dammed to divert part of the stream into a channel, called a millrace, that would carry water through the mill. Below that, another diversion of the river, called the tailrace, carried water away from the mill and back into the American River. The tailrace was not deep enough, so the water was backing up, and the big mill wheel wouldn’t turn. To solve the problem, the builders decided to deepen the tailrace channel down to the bedrock. Every day, they removed more boulders and dirt; every night, water ran through the channel, washing away more of the loose debris. James Marshall had been a New Jersey carriage-maker. In 1844, he had headed west, traveling the Oregon Trail to Puget Sound. By the time of the Bear Flag Revolt he was already working for John Sutter. But his true mark on history would be made on January 24, 1848. On that morning, while working to clear the tailrace of Sutter’s new sawmill, something shining in the mud caught his eye. “Boys,” the 36-year-old carpenter said to his crew, “by God I believe I found a gold mine. He then showed them the flakes. The men laughed it off. Later that night at chow, Marshall again showed his find to his co-workers, and then tossed the nuggets into a boiling pot. They didn’t melt or reshape. Marshall went out again the next morning and found a few more samples. He’d done a little reading in the night and was beginning to think it was a bonehead thing to have told his cohorts about his discovery. With even more glistening pebbles, he left on January 28 to tell his boss at Sutter’s Fort, about fifty miles away. See where James Marshall stated it all at the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park off Highway 49 in Coloma, California. It features period exhibits of mining equipment, horse-drawn vehicles, household implements, and other memorabilia, as well as films on the gold discovery and early mining techniques. Some of the nicest people in the world work at the part too. You’ll learn a lot and have a ball doing it. If you’d like to know more about James Marshall and Captain John Sutter, email me at www.chrisenss.com and I’ll send you a copy of the book Tales Behind the Tombstones.

Once upon a time in the West, there flourished, according to one frontier editor, “the nearest thing to a universal service company ever invented.” The biggest business in the Old West was so good at what it did that when people swore, they often did so “by God and Wells Fargo.” Seasoned East Coast express men Henry Wells and William G. Fargo began American Express with John Butterfield in 1850. Two years later, they wanted a link with the California gold fields. On March 18, 1852, paper were drawn up organizing Wells, Fargo & Company with initial capital of $300,000 (The comma between the two names was eventually dropped.) Two company representatives opened the first office on San Francisco’s Montgomery Street that July. From the red brick building, a network of routes connected the company with exotic markets such as Hangtown, Yankee Jim, and Poker Flat. The company kept letters flowing between the gold seekers and the folks back home, and it shipped gold back east safely and cheaply. You could even ship people by Wells Fargo. To accomplish these Herculean tasks, Wells Fargo applied cutting-edge 1850s technology. Some shipments, such as the fire engine ordered by the city of Sacramento from a Baltimore manufacturer, were shipped around Cape Horn. But what made Wells Fargo great was its massive fleet of Concord stagecoaches, hand-crafted in New Hampshire, that crisscrossed the Old West with such regularity that their roads often had to be watered to keep down the dust. Cargo was protected by armed guards riding shotgun.

A few years ago I agreed to be a part of a local mentor program for disadvantaged young women. I was to help a thirteen-year-old girl with a short story she wanted to write. I drove to her home, picked her up, and we headed off to the library to start work. Midway through one of our first extended conversation she shared with me that her science teacher was “making her life miserable” by giving the class a lot of pop quizzes. She told me that if he didn’t stop giving everyone such a hard time she was going to go to the principal and tell her that the science teacher was sexually molesting her. She admitted the accusation was a lie, but knew it was the only way to get rid of him. I promptly returned the teenager to her home and ended my involvement with the mentor program. Given what happened to my brother I’m wasn’t surprised to learn that people make up awful lies, but I didn’t want to find myself at the end of such an accusation. The teenager I was to mentor possessed no remorse about spreading a lie only pride in being able to come up with a way to eliminate a problem in her life. I had a chance to share this story, as well as the tragic events that happened to my brother Rick, at a book signing event yesterday. I was pleased to see how receptive the audience was about the topic. The problem, which many people know, but few talk about, is that far too many people use accusations of sexual assault for their own gain. In other words, many people have been known to fling false accusations of sexual assault at someone to “get even” for some wrong they feel they have been done. The person who is falsely accused of sexual assault and the family of the person falsely accused may well never recover from the serious damage that is done to their reputation. Even when the accusations are proven false, people often have the thought of the accusation in the back of their minds. That means that the falsely accused person will have lifetime repercussions because of a lie. No matter what a person has done in their lives, they should never have to deal with being falsely accused of sexual assault. You take away everything a person is and everything they are ever going to be. I appreciate the readers who attended the signings this weekend and am grateful for the testimonies others in similar circumstances shared. It’s surprising how many have gone through the nightmare. Wednesday’s journal notes will be back on the Gold Rush.

Of all the people who traveled West to see the wild frontier playwright Oscar Wilde was one of the most unique. “To the world I seem, by intention on my part, a dilettante and dandy merely-it is not wise to show one’s heart to the world-and as seriousness of manner is the disguise of the fool, folly in its exquisite modes of triviality and indifference and lack of care is the robe of the wise man. In so vulgar an age as this we all need masks.” So wrote Oscar Wilde in 1894, the year before his crowning achievement, The Importance of Being Earnest, opened in London. And for most of his life the Irish born playwright’s cheerful, witty façade held up quite well. It has held up even better since he died, which probably is why Wilde still regularly shows up on lists of favorite historical dinner guests. But in his last years Wilde was welcome at no tables in England. Though married and the father or two children, Wilde was for years involved with a younger man, Lord Alfred Douglas, called “Bosie,” and he engaged in many anonymous scenes with male prostitutes and pickups. His double life proceeded without incident until soon after Earnest opened, when he received a calling card from Bosie’s eccentric father, the Marquess of Queensbury. It read “To Oscar Wilde, posing as somdominte [sic].” The maintain his mask Wilde felt he had to charge the Maquess with libel. And when the trial began in April 1895, Wilde charmed the jury with punchy testimony. But the Marquess had hired private detectives, and when that evidence began to be presented Wilde abruptly dropped his suit. Later the same day he and Bosie were arrested for immorality. Wilde’s new play continued its successful run, but his name was removed from the program. At his own trial Wilde again maintained his witty upper lip. The first jury could not reach a verdict. But the second jury convicted him, and Wilde was sentenced to two years’ hard labor. He spent the time in solitary confinement, where he was poorly fed and slept on a wooden plank bed. He was put to work sewing mailbags. When he was released in May 1897, Wilde was bankrupt, his manuscripts had either been auctioned or stolen. Friends paid his way to France, where he finally settled in Paris. He wrote a little about prison life, including his famous Ballad of Reading Gaol, and continued to whisk his way through dinner engagements. But he confessed, “I don’t think I shall ever really write again. Something is killed in me.” He picked up boys more frequently than before and began drinking large amounts of absinthe, though doctors had told him it would kill him. Wilde laughed off the warnings, as he did his constant worry about money, quipping, “I am dying beyond my means.” In October 1900, Wilde developed a painful ear infection from an injury he had suffered in prison when he fainted one morning in chapel and perforated an eardrum. Doctors performed surgery, but the infection spread and caused him to develop encephalitis, swelling of the brain. He was taken back to his hotel room, the last in a series of cheaper and cheaper rooms that he could barely afford. The legend is that his last words were “It’s the wallpaper or me-one of us has to go.” But Wilde did not depart with a clever remark. He grew delirious through the month of November. On the thirtieth two close friends near his bed could hear only a painful grinding sound from his throat. A nurse regularly had to dab blood that was drooling from his mount. Slowly his breathing and his pulse weakened until he died at about 2 p.m. that afternoon.

Forty-niners who trekked across the frontier during the Gold Rush often sang songs written by composer Stephen Foster as they traveled. Foster had a way with sentimental words and catchy melodies that has kept his songs popular for more than a century. There’s something pleasantly wholesome and irresistibly old-fashioned about songs like “Jeannie with the Light Brown Hair” and “Oh! Suzanna.” Two have been adopted by states, “My Old Kentucky Home” and Florida’s “Old Folks at Home” (“Swanee River”). What is ironic is that the composer of such unabashed sentimentality-born on the fiftieth birthday of the nation-ended up so miserably. Foster, who grew up singing but had very little musical training near Pittsburg, was successful almost from his first published songs in 1848. He earned more than $1,000 a year in royalties and married in 1850. But he always spent more than he made and the marriage was unhappy. He wrote fewer songs each year until he left his wife and daughter in 1860 and moved to New York City. There, desperate for cash, he churned out 105 songs-more than half of his entire work-in the last three and a half years of his life. Most were soon forgotten, and his previously lucrative publishing arrangement deteriorated to the point that Foster was selling songs outright for a quick $25. The composer, who drank heavily and suffered symptoms of tuberculosis, grew bitter and lonely as he lived in a series of rooming houses. On January 10, 1864, bedridden with fever, Foster got up to wash himself. Apparently as he stood over the washbasin he fell, shattering the porcelain bowl, which cut his neck deeply. He was found by a chambermaid delivering towels later that day. George Cooper, one of his few friends, was summoned to hear Foster whisper, “I’m done for,” and plead for a drink. Foster was taken to the city-run Bellevue Hospital, where he died, alone and unrecognized, three days later. The hospital, which had registered the 37-year-old composer as Stephen Forster, put his body in the morgue for unknown corpses until Cooper retrieved it. Unlike nearly all that he wrote in his final years, Foster’s last song, which he penned just a few days before he died, joined his earlier classics: Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me. Starlight and dew-drops are waiting for thee. Sounds of the rude world heard in the day, Lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away.

The early morning sun gleamed like a bright golden coin above the California foothills. It was January 24, 1848. In all the green wilderness world there was no sign of life except a wisp of smoke from a breakfast fire, and the figure of a man walking beside a ditch that led from a nearly finished sawmill to a river. Suddenly he stopped and stared intently down. James Marshall was a surly man, without friends, and he was a long way from his old him in New Jersey. The other men at Sutter’s Fort thought him a little odd, and stupid. But he was the only millwright in all the California country, and he knew that he was a good mechanic. He looked up at the mill he was building for John Sutter, the German-Swiss owner of this big landed estate, and felt satisfied. The mill was coming along well, the dam was finished and the tail race, or ditch, to let water back into the American River, was dug out. Each night Marshall opened the gate to allow the water to wash as much gravel and sand down the tail race as possible. Then in the early morning he went there to see how it looked. It would not be long before his mill, the first in the new territory, would be sawing lumber to ship down the Sacramento River to the village of San Francisco. James Marshall glanced down again. Something had caught his eye. What was it? He leaned forward. Something glittered a little in the gravel against a stone. “What’s that?” he muttered to himself. He sat on one heel, and picked up the little glittering lump that felt strangely heavy. “Gold! Could it be gold?” The small piece looked more like brass. It was no larger than a tiny dried pea. He rubbed it. It still looked golden. James Marshall stood up and saw his laborers sitting around their fire drinking coffee and eating flapjacks. Beyond them the Indian workers moved quietly, preparing their breakfast of dried deer meat. Marshall walked slowly to the fire where his sober Mormon workers ate silently, and opened his hand. “I found it in the tail race.” The men stopped chewing and one exclaimed, “Fool’s gold,” and laughed. Another spit carefully into a bush several yards away. “ ‘Tain’t nothing but iron pyrite.” he said. “Fool’s gold, that’s all.” James Marshall scowled and clenched his fist over the little pebble. He turned on his heel, and strode up the slope to a small log cabin where smoke was lazily riding from a chimney. As he approached he saw Elizabeth Wimmer, wife of a foreman, standing with a long stick in hand over a big, black soap kettle. Elizabeth Wimmer was one of the few American women in the land so taken from Mexico. She had refused to be left at Sutter’s Fort when Peter, her husband, went to take charge of the Indian laborers building the sawmill. As Marshall came up to her he growled, “Look here, Mrs. Wimmer! This looks like gold. The men say it’s iron pyrite.” He unclenched his fist. Mrs. Wimmer leaned forward curiously. Then, before he could stop her, she picked up the little piece and dropped it into the bubbling soap kettle. “We’ll soon find out, Mr. Marshall. If it isn’t gold the lye in this kettle will eat it up quick. James Marshal said nothing, but turned and went back to the breakfast he had not yet eaten. That night as he went to the cabin where he lived with the Wimmers he felt confident again. The mill would work well with the tail race deepened. He was thinking of the lumber they would soon be sawing and of the money they could get from it in the sleepy village of San Francisco. As he sat and smoked his pipe he was startled by Mrs. Wimmer. Through the door she marched, and up to the scrubbed pine table. “There!” she cried triumphantly. “It’s gold, all right, Mr. Marshall!” Mrs. Wimmer’s cry of gold is said to have been heard around the world. It was a cry that started the great California Gold Rush.

This weekend let your troubles “Go West” with the Marx Brothers. Groucho, Chico and Harpo make even “Dead Man’s Gulch” come to life in this film released in 1940. The movie begins with Groucho attempting to fleece Chico and Harpo of the ten dollars he needs to make up the price of a railway ticket and being completely outsmarted. It’s hilarious. The movie contains a Keystone Cops-like chase in which the boys demolish a train in pursuit of the villains. Also funny. Go West features some of Groucho’s best lines. As he’s romancing a saloon girl he says, “Why don’t you let me go? But no, let’s keep this a perfect memory, and someday this bitter ache shall pass, my sweet. Time wounds all heals. You know, there’s a drunk sitting at the first table who looks exactly like you-and one who looks exactly like me. Dull, isn’t it? He’s so full of alcohol, if you put a lighted wick in his mouth, he’d burn for three days. So, let’s go somewhere where we can be alone. Ah, there doesn’t seem to be anyone on this couch.” This was one of the Marx Brothers last films and they only agreed to do Go West because Chico was in trouble. He gambled a lot and needed financial help. Go West helped him get out of debt, but in a short time he was back in the same situation and the brothers had to go to work again. There wasn’t anything the Marx Brothers wouldn’t do for one another.

There’s nothing more satisfying for me than watching a great western. More often than not criminals in a good western do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the hands of other men. The men they wronged. The outlaws in a great many westerns I watch know they won’t get away. They know they ultimately can’t get away. I once knew a man who committed no crime, but was sentenced to prison because he was persuaded to take a plea. He’d been severely beaten and raped at a penitentiary transfer station. So they put him in a hospital to make him better so that they could make him worse. He was destined to be beaten and raped again. During the eight years he was gone, he collapsed a number of times as a result of Parkinson’s disease, and the doctors put him in the hospital again. He became friends with the nurses and the doctors, and after a while they helped him to get well enough to go back and take more punishment. I saw him after the brutal attacks and he was a broken man. The spirit of the man was gone. The person sitting next to me during the visit with the man said, “This country’s law and their stinking judges! Isn’t anyone going to do something about them?” Staring into the hollow face of the beaten man I once knew as my brother I said, “I don’t want the people who made the law, and I don’t want the people who passed the sentence. The only ones I want to see get theirs are those that falsely accused and caused this pain.” I am convinced that will never really happen. A good western soothes my soul in the midst of the conflict raging in my mind. Last night I enjoyed watching Arizona. Released in 1940, Arizona is more memorable for the thousands of feet of stock footage it provided for other films. For this tale of the development of Arizona, Columbia reconstructed Tucson as the mud-adobe town it had been while the movie’s director, Wesley Ruggles, created set-pieces in the style of De Mille. In one of the movie’s best scenes, the town’s inhabitants watch the Union troops setting light to everything in their wake, as they withdraw. Gary Cooper and Jean Arthur starred in the picture.

American’s oldest diversion deteriorated into a vice. In the turn of a card or the roll of a dice for all or nothing, there was a kind of daring that touched the American spirit. “The lust for work is matched…by the lust to gamble.” The affluent risked thousands of comforts; the poor risked bread money on gaming tables in slum taverns. The gambling fever produced two opposing species. First were the predatory card sharps and confidence men who understood human weakness and how to exploit it; second were the masses, eternally gullible to the lure of something for nothing. Throughout the nation these adversaries met-in lotteries, over tables, at racetracks, in casinos, cockpits-and the result was nearly always the same. The suckers lost. In 1890, San Francisco had an estimated 2500 illegal gambling houses, which produced, as they did elsewhere, crime and degeneracy. And while these are hardly the by-products one would expect of a leisure activity, it should be remembered that vice can become a pastime for people who had little alternative resource. Starting with the Gold Rush era, the West from the Rio Grande to Canadian border knew no way to spend free hours except gambling. Judge or laborer, clergyman or clerk, all elbowed their way into the gambling tents.