As a daughter of New Hampshire in this farthest corner of the southwest, my mind crosses the continent to the remote northeast and the great Stone Face of the Franconia Mountains. Chiselled by an Almighty hand, its rugged brow seamed by the centuries, its features scarred by the storms of ages, gazing out over the broad land, where centre the hopes of the human race, who can forget that face, sad with the mysteries of pain and sorrow, yet inspiring with its rugged determination, and at times softened with the touch of sunlit hope?
Point Loma has something of the same sphinx-like grandeur, with its long bold promontory stretching out into the western waters. These two seem to be keeping watch and ward over mountain and sea: each appropriate in its place and equally impressive. There the stern prophet surveying the home of great beginnings, the cradle of creative energy; and here, its counterpart, a mighty recumbent lion, its dreamy, peaceful gaze turned with confidence out over the wide Pacific to the setting sun, with assurance of ultimate success, a pledge of aspirations satisfied, of achievements assured, of–-Whoa there! Hello! This to my runaway steeds, Imagination and Sentiment. Brought back by a passing bell-boy, I shall now keep a tighter rein.
But when one first breathes the air of California, there is a curious exaltation and excitement, which leads on irresistibly. This is often followed by a natural depression, sleepiness, and reaction. But that view never changes, and I know you will say the same. A florid, effervescent, rhapsodical style seems irresistible. One man of uncommon business ability and particularly level head caught the spirit of the place, and wrote that “the most practical and unpoetical minds, too, come here and go away, as they afterward gingerly admit, carrying with them the memory of sunsets emblazoned in gold and crimson upon cloud, sea, and mountain; of violet promontories, sails, and lighthouses etched against the orange of a western sky; of moonlight silvering breeze-rippled breadths of liquid blue; of distant islands shimmering in sun-lit haze; of sunrises with crowns of glory chasing the vapory, fleece-like shadows from the wet, irridescent beach, and silhouetting the fishermen’s sails in the opalescent tints of a glassy sea.”
Some temperaments may not be affected at all. But the first morning I felt like leaping a five-barred fence, and the next like lying down anywhere and sleeping indefinitely. I met a distinguished Boston artist recently, who had just arrived. The day was superb. He seemed in a semi-delirium of ecstasy over everything. His face glowed, his eyes shone, his hands were full of flowers. He said, “My heart jumps so I’m really afraid it will jump out of my body.” The next morning he was wholly subdued. It had poured all night, and the contrast was depressing. A six-footer from Albany was in the sleepy state. “If I don’t pull out soon,” he said, “I shall be bedridden. I want to sleep after breakfast, or bowling, or bath, or my ride or dinner, and really long to go to bed by nine.”
There has probably been more fine writing and florid rhetoric about California than any other State in the Union.
The Hotel del Coronado is a mammoth hostelry, yet homelike in every part, built in a rectangle with inner court, adorned with trees, flowers, vines, and a fountain encircled by callas; color, pure white, roofs and chimneys red; prevailing woods, oak, ash, pine, and redwood.
All around the inner court a series of suites of rooms, each with its own bath and corner sitting-room—literally “a linkèd suiteness long drawn out.” It is one eighth of a mile from my bedroom to my seat in the dining-room, so that lazy people are obliged to take daily constitutionals whether they want to or not, sighing midway for trolley accommodations. The dining-room may safely be called roomy, as it seats a thousand guests, and your dearest friends could not be recognized at the extreme end. Yet there is no dreary stretch or caravansary effect, and to-day every seat is filled, and a dozen tourists waiting at the door.
Every recreation of city or country is found in this little world: thirty billiard-tables, pool, bowling, tennis, polo, bathing (where bucking barrel-horses and toboggan slides, fat men who produce tidal waves, and tiny boys who do the heroic as sliders and divers, make fun for the spectators), hunting, fishing, yachting, rowing, riding to hounds, rabbit hunts, pigeon shoot, shooting-galleries, driving, coaching, cards, theatre, ballroom, lectures, minstrels, exhibitions of the Mammoth and Minute from Yosemite with the stereopticon, to Pacific sea-mosses, the ostrich farm, the museum or maze for a morning hour, dressing or undressing for evening display, watching the collection of human beings who throng everywhere with a critical or humorous eye, finding as much variety as on Broadway or Tremont Street; dancing-classes for children; a chaperon and a master of ceremonies for grown folks; a walk or drive twelve miles long on a smooth beach at low tide, not forgetting the “dark room” for kodak and camera f—amateurs.
You see many athletic, fine-looking men, who ride daringly and ride to kill. Once a week the centre of the office is filled with game: rabbits, quail, snipe, ducks, etc., everything here—but an undertaker. And old Ocean eternally booming (the only permanent boom I know of in Southern California).
And that is what you see and hear at the Hotel del Coronado. The summer climate is better than the winter—never too warm for comfort, the mercury never moving for weeks. I expected constant sunshine, a succession of June’s fairest days, which would have been monotonous, to say nothing of the effect upon crops and orchards. The rainy season is necessary and a blessing to the land-owners, hard as it is for “lungers” and the nervous invalids who only feel well on fine days and complain unreasonably.
Ten inches is the average needed just here. Rain is rainy and wet weather is wet, but the ground dries as soon as the pelting shower is over. I do not find the raw, searching dampness of our Eastern seashore resorts. Here we are said to have “dry fogs” and an ideal marine atmosphere, but it was too cold for comfort during the March rains for those not in robust health.
As I sit in the upper gallery and watch the throng issuing from the dining-room, I make a nice and unerring social distinction between the Toothpick Brigade who leave the table with the final mouthful semi-masticated, and those who have an air of finished contentment.
The orchestra is unusually good, giving choice selections admirably executed. I have not decided whether music at meals is a blessing or otherwise. If sad, it seems a mockery; if gay, an interruption. For one extremely sensitive to time and tune it is difficult to eat to slow measures. And when the steak is tough and a galop is going on above, it is hard to keep up.
Among the many fleeting impressions of faces and friends here, one or two stand out clearly and indelibly—stars of the first magnitude in the nebulæ—as dear Grandma Wade from Chicago, the most attractive old lady I ever met: eighty-three years old, with a firm step, rotund figure, and sweet, unruffled face, crowned with the softest snow-white curls, on which rests an artistic cap trimmed with ribbons of blue or delicate heliotrope, and small artificial flowers to match. I have known several interesting octogenarians, but never one that surpassed her in loveliness, wit, and positive jollity. Her spontaneous fun is better than the labored efforts of many a famous humorist.