Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

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10 Sully drew this sketch of the Royal Presidio Chapel at Monterey in 1849, around the time that Monterey became a diocese and the chapel became the cathedral of San Carlos Borromeo. Founded in 1770 at a site shared by the Monterey presidio and Mission San Carlos Borromeo, the chapel remained part of the presidio after the mission was relocated to the Carmel River in 1771. Rebuilt in 1794–95, it is the oldest continuously functioning church in California. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley When Angustias befriended Sully, her marriage was strained. (She and Jimeno were at odds over financial and family matters and would separate before he died in 1853.) She found solace in the attention this courtly young American paid her, but she allowed Manuela to enjoy his company as well. On one occasion when Manuela asked to attend a dance with friends, Angustias suggested that Sully serve as her chaperon. “If my son Don Alfredo will take my daughter to the ball,” she declared, “she can go.” 8 Angustias trusted in Sully and must have been shocked when he asked for Manuela’s hand in marriage a short time later, but she and her husband did not rule out the match. Their chief concern was that Sully was not a Catholic, and they told him that they would have to consult relatives, including Manuela’s paternal uncles Antonio and José Joaquín California History • volume 90 number 1 2012 Jimeno, who served as priests to small communities of Christian Indians still living at California’s decaying missions. Unlike Robinson, Hartnell, and other foreign settlers who adopted the customs and creed of their hosts, Sully had no intention of converting to Catholicism. Fearing that he would never gain parental consent and would lose the popular Manuela to another suitor, he took strong measures that he admitted were “not altogether according to Hoyle,” or in keeping with the rules that gentlemen were supposed to observe. He arranged for the wife of a fellow officer, Captain Elias Kane, to invite Manuela to their home, where she arrived in the company of an admirer, a “young gentleman” of Monterey who was favored by Angustias. While another officer distracted that unfortunate suitor, Mrs. Kane escorted Manuela into the kitchen, where she and
Sully were promptly married by the local priest, who was later removed from his post for performing this ceremony without parental consent. Sully appeared unaware that his actions might have compromised the priest and insulted the young admirer who had unwittingly escorted Manuela to her wedding, but he could not ignore the offense he caused her parents. “The old folks are as mad as well can be,” he wrote. “I went to see them & was invited never to show my face again.” 9 a “JudgMent FroM god” Manuela’s parents had reason to feel cheated, but for Angustias the betrayal was deeply personal, coming as it did from someone she had treated as a member of her family. The betrayal was symbolized by the gold ring that Sully had intended to wear in her honor. In June 1850, a month after his furtive wedding, he wrote home to thank his family for sending it: “The steamer of yesterday brought me two letters & the ring, which is pronounced beautiful. Manuela has it.” 10 Angustias was slower than her husband to forgive Sully, but she reconciled with him when she learned that Manuela was pregnant. By imposing on this proud family and violating the code by which they lived, however, Sully had set the stage for tragedy. In late March 1851, less than two weeks after giving birth, Manuela fell violently ill and died after eating what Sully called a “fatal orange” sent to her as a present. It was rumored afterward that the gift came from a disappointed suitor, who had poisoned the fruit. Sully had urged her not to eat the orange, fearing that it might be bad for her, but her mother thought it would do her no harm and consulted the physician (her future husband, James Ord), who gave his consent. “Thus by the ignorance of a doctor I have been robbed of a treasure that can never be replaced,” Sully lamented. His black servant, Sam, who was devoted to Manuela, became so distraught after her death that he killed himself, believing “that in the world to come we would all be united once more together.” The final blow for Sully came a short time later, when Angustias, who had recently given birth, took Manuela’s infant to bed with her to nurse the boy and fell asleep with him in her arms. “When she woke up he was dead,” Sully wrote. “She had strangled it in her sleep. The doctor persuaded her it died of a convulsion, but to me alone he told the true story.” 11 In his shock and grief, Sully may have misinterpreted these terrible events. The “fatal orange” was just one possible cause of the sudden intestinal torments Manuela suffered before she died (she may have contracted cholera). And Sully’s assertion that Angustias “strangled” the infant in her sleep hinted perhaps at an unconscious motive on her part—lingering hostility toward him—that existed only in his imagination. But whether those deaths and Sam’s demise were the result of “ignorance & violence,” as he put it, or random misfortunes beyond anyone’s control, Sully had reason to feel that dreadful punishment had been visited on him and his in-laws. “It appears like a judgment from God for some crime that I or her family have committed,” he wrote. 12 aFter the Fall Sully was surely aware that the act he believed set this tragedy in motion—eating a forbidden fruit—was like the original sin that brought God’s judgment on Adam and Eve. The fact that his new family’s devastating fall from grace occurred in California, a bountiful land likened to Eden, made that biblical precedent hard to ignore. But there were other reasons, rooted not in myth but in history, for Sully to feel that he, as a representative of the expanding American empire, or his in-laws, as heirs to the old Spanish imperial 11
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Page 40 and 41: 38 California fought each other or
Page 42: 40 Joaquin Miller and the social Ci
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Page 47 and 48: By 1900, the crossroads settlement
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