Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

More documents

Recommendations

Info

60 “Some day I shall sit down and not get up any more,” Miller wrote John P. Irish in a “directory letter” in 1889. “I want to leave my ashes on my ‘Hights,’ among the trees I have planted, and I want you to see to it that my body is burned on my tomb here; and quietly, secretly if necessary. Let no one meddle. It should be of far less concern to the world than the planting of one of my thousands of trees.” On May 23, 1913, three months after Miller’s publicly celebrated funeral, members of San Francisco’s Bohemian and Press Clubs gathered to burn the urn containing the poet’s ashes, scattering them about his beloved Hights. The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley California History • volume 90 number 1 2012
The 1920s witnessed the first signs of a reassessment of the poet’s merit. Despite his wife and daughter’s best efforts to fan the altar flame, a University of Illinois professor conducting research during the summer of 1921 for a compendium of Joaquin’s poems could find no copies of any of Miller’s books in a dozen Bay Area bookshops. This neglect presaged an opening fusillade on the frontier bard’s reputation. 64 Concurrently, the Hights was falling into a state of disrepair. A journalist visiting it in 1923 described the Abbey’s broken windows and wideswinging doors, Margaret Miller’s cottage on the verge of collapse, the stone monuments vandalized, great trees felled, and the acacia thickets “ruthlessly cut away.” 65 Resisting this decline of home and reputation, one or two of Miller’s bestknown verses would habitually appear, at least until the 1950s, in American poetry anthologies. While a handful of poems lived on, the prolific writer’s journalism more or less died with him. Yet Miller, more than one biographer acknowledges, regarded his prose more highly than his poetry. Indeed, journalism came easily to him. In Oregon in the early 1860s, he ran two shortlived newspapers. Throughout his career, he was writing constantly about his travels, initially in personal diaries and, later, on assignment for newspapers. His outspoken prose—both frank and moralistic—was spiked with humor and country argot. With the same brio with which he confronted swindlers and marauding indigenous people in the Sierra, he lambasted crooked land speculators and irresponsible politicians. One of his early pet complaints was the deplorable condition of Oakland’s roads. In a characteristically exaggerated account of a real event, he described his attempt to give a lecture in the neighboring settlement of Walnut Creek. Confronting the men who had invited him to speak with the lack of passable roads and his inability to walk due to prior war injuries, Miller was asked if he could swim: “Yes.” “Then swim to Contra Costa,” he was advised. “Splendid good swimming all the way. Take the water at the San Francisco wharf, swim the bay of San Francisco, then the San Pablo Bay, then Suisun Bay, then up the Sacramento river, then up Walnut Creek to the schoolhouse, where the committee will be out on the porch with banners and bands to receive you.” 66 Miller’s blend of candor and the vernacular enjoyed wide appeal. Besides the New York–based Independent, two other journals, the Chicago Times and the San Francisco Call, regularly carried his byline. With the wide proliferation of Miller’s poetry and his prose, the hospitality of his barbecues, and the eccentricity of his ranchero life and appearance, it is not surprising that the Hights and its environs became, by the 1890s, a habitation for area artists and a destination for visiting celebrities and local curiosity seekers. When Elbert Hubbard and Benjamin Fay Mills descended from the tram that terminated in the little settlement of Dimond, the conductor counseled them, “Take that road and sail on.” “He smiled,” Hubbard recalled, “in a way that indicated that he had sprung the allusion before and was pleased with it.” 67 Phoebe Cutler is an independent scholar. Recipient of the Heritage/Preservation Award (National Endowment for the Arts, 2001) and the Rome Prize (American Academy in Rome, 1988–89), she is the author of The Public Landscape of the New Deal (Yale University Press, 1986), “Joaquin Miller’s Trees, Pts. 1 & 2,” Eden: The Journal of the California Garden & Landscape Society 13, nos. 2 and 3 (2010), “Sutro Baths: Caracalla at Lands End,” Eden: The Journal of the California Garden & Landscape Society 12, no. 1 (2009), and “The Rise of the American Municipal Rose Garden, 1927–1937,” Studies in the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes 25, no. 3 (July–Sept. 2005). 61
Page 1 and 2:
california history volume 90 number
Page 3 and 4:
Executive Director anthea hartig Ed
Page 5 and 6:
collections Mexican Californiana Am
Page 7 and 8:
ebellion against imperial rule into
Page 9 and 10:
fate, wealthy Californios fell back
Page 11 and 12: them. In a letter written to his fa
Page 13 and 14: Sully were promptly married by the
Page 15 and 16: Alexander F. Harmer’s nineteenth-
Page 17 and 18: to such evils as placing Indians un
Page 19 and 20: an accomplished one like his father
Page 21 and 22: Franciscan priests and soldiers saw
Page 23 and 24: the Setting If jihad’s purpose se
Page 25 and 26: The model for Mission San Gabriel A
Page 27 and 28: Muhammad’s military campaigns, to
Page 29 and 30: theless, it is baffling that the bo
Page 31 and 32: Below: Following the fall of Consta
Page 33: what would be the First Crusade and
Page 36 and 37: 34 Again, the equation of the Chris
Page 38 and 39: 36 Some priests wanted to experienc
Page 40 and 41: 38 California fought each other or
Page 42: 40 Joaquin Miller and the social Ci
Page 45 and 46: At the Hights, Miller built four ca
Page 47 and 48: By 1900, the crossroads settlement
Page 49 and 50: Miller’s friendship with the jour
Page 51 and 52: Ina Coolbrith (1841-1928), one of t
Page 53 and 54: George Sterling (1869-1926) recalle
Page 55 and 56: Miller’s friendship with George S
Page 57 and 58: Monthly, marveled at the cultural a
Page 59 and 60: Kanno lived at the Hights for over
Page 61: a man as ever lived.” 58 At least
Page 65 and 66: The lines describe Othello’s miss
Page 67 and 68: 91; D. Fairchild Ruggles, “Repres
Page 69 and 70: died of alcoholism at an early age;
Page 71 and 72: 61 Henry Meade Bland to Ina Cook Pe
Page 73 and 74: hoBoes, Bindlestiffs, fruit tramps,
Page 75 and 76: neW england to gold rush california
Page 77 and 78: donors INDIVIDUALS $10,000 and abov
Page 79: CALIFoRNIA LEGACY CIRCLE legacy gif
Page 82 and 83: 80 spotlight Photographer Unidentif
show all

Volume 90, Number 1 - California Historical Society

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?