This sense is almost Latin
in its strength, and the Californian owes it to the leaven of Latin
blood. The true Californian lingers in the north; for southern
California has been built up by "lungers" from the East and middle West
and is Eastern in character and feeling.
Almost has the Californian developed a racial physiology. He tends to
size, to smooth symmetry of limb and trunk, to an erect, free carriage;
and the beauty of his women is not a myth. The pioneers were all men of
good body, they had to be to live and leave descendants. The bones of
the weaklings who started for El Dorado in 1849 lie on the plains or in
the hill-cemeteries of the mining camps. Heredity began it; climate has
carried it on. All things that grow in California tend to become large,
plump, luscious. Fruit trees, grown from cuttings of Eastern stock,
produce fruit larger and finer, if coarser in flavor, than that of the
parent tree. As the fruits grow, so the children grow. A normal,
healthy, Californian woman plays out-of-doors from babyhood to old age.
The mixed stock has given her that regularity of features which goes
with a blend of bloods; the climate has perfected and rounded her
figure; out-of-doors exercise from earliest youth has given her a deep
bosom; the cosmetic mists have made her complexion soft and brilliant.
At the University of California, where the student body is nearly all
native, the gymnasium measurements show that the girls are a little more
than two inches taller than their sisters of Vassar and Michigan.
The greatest beauty-show on the continent was the Saturday afternoon
matinee parade in San Francisco. Women in so-called "society" took no
part in this function. It belonged to the middle class, but the "upper
classes" have no monopoly of beauty anywhere in the world. It had grown
to be independent of the matinees. From two o'clock to half-past five, a
solid procession of Dianas, Hebes and Junos passed and repassed along
the five blocks between Market and Powell and Sutter and Kearney - the
"line" of San Francisco slang. Along the open-front cigar stores,
characteristic of the town, gilded youth of the cocktail route gathered
in knots to watch them. There was something Latin in the spirit of this
ceremony - it resembled church parade in Buenos Ayres. Latin, too, were
the gay costumes of the women, who dressed brightly in accord with the
city and the climate. This gaiety of costume was the first thing which
the Eastern woman noticed - and disapproved. Give her a year, and she,
too, would be caught by the infection of daring dress.
In this parade of tall, deep bosomed, gleaming women, one caught the
type and longed, sometimes for the sight of a more ethereal beauty - for
the suggestion of soul within which belongs to a New England woman on
whom a hard soil has bestowed a grudged beauty - for the mobility, the
fire, which belongs to the Frenchwoman. The second generation of France
was in this crowd, it is true; but climate and exercise had grown above
their spiritual charm a cover of brilliant flesh. It was the beauty of
Greece.
With such a people, life was always gay. If the fairly Parisian gaiety
did not display itself on the streets, except in the matinee parade, it
was because the winds made open-air cafes disagreeable at all seasons of
the year. The life careless went on indoors or in the hundreds of pretty
estates - "ranches" the Californians called them - which fringe the
city.
San Francisco was famous for its restaurants and cafes. Probably they
were lacking at the top; probably the very best, for people who do not
care how they spend their money, was not to be had. But they gave the
best fare on earth, for the price, at a dollar, seventy-five cents, a
half a dollar, or even fifteen cents.
If one should tell exactly what could be had at Coppa's for fifty cents
or at the Fashion for, say thirty-five, no New Yorker who has not been
there would believe it. The San Francisco French dinner and the San
Francisco free lunch were as the Public Library to Boston or the stock
yards to Chicago. A number of causes contributed to this. The country
all about produced everything that a cook needs and that in abundance -
the bay was an almost untapped fishing pound, the fruit farms came up to
the very edge of the town, and the surrounding country produced in
abundance fine meats, game, all cereals and all vegetables.
But the chefs who came from France in the early days and stayed because
they liked this land of plenty were the head and front of it. They
passed on their art to other Frenchmen or to the clever Chinese. Most of
the French chefs at the biggest restaurants were born in Canton, China.
Later the Italians, learning of this country where good food is
appreciated, came and brought their own style. Householders always dined
out one or two nights of the week, and boarding houses were scarce, for
the unattached preferred the restaurants.
The eating was usually better than the surroundings. Meals that were
marvels were served in tumbledown little hotels. Most famous of all the
restaurants was the Poodle Dog. There have been no less than four
establishments of this name, beginning with a frame shanty where, in the
early days, a prince of French cooks used to exchange ragouts for gold
dust. Each succeeding restaurant of the name has moved further downtown;
and the recent Poodle Dog stands - stands or stood; one mixes his tenses
queerly in writing of this city which is and yet is no more - on the
edge of the Tenderloin in a modern five story building.
