Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

56
Of Miller’s Japanese residents, wrote Charles Warren
Stoddard, “Never were gentler souls than these
who have found a welcome and a shelter at The
Heights.” Miller himself confessed enjoying their
“exquisite refinement . . . their willingness and
eagerness to add in some way to your comfort and
pleasure; their delicacy and reserve,” attributes
that “make them a model for every nation under
the sun!” On their part, Miller observed, the “open
little houses here and the meditative life among the
flowers and birds remind them all the time of ‘beautiful,
beautiful Japan.’”
California Historical Society, CHS2010.301.tif
The Japanese poet-philosopher Takeshi Kanno
(1877–n.d.) married Gertrude Boyle (1876–1937),
Miller’s portrait sculptor of choice, in 1907. In
this 1914 photograph, the Kannos are performing
Takeshi’s 1913 “vision drama,” Creation Dawn.
Gertrude described Takeshi’s affinity to the Hights
as “a spot in harmony with the meditative spirit so
strong within him. . . . Here he has remained in the
silence of dream, sunk deep in the ocean-thought
of the universe; anon awakening to whisper his
fancies, his sea-murmurings, to the soft breezes, to
voice his soul-dreams to my ear.”
Library of Congress
California History • volume 90 number 1 2012