Sep 30, 2021 - Sale 2580

Sale 2580 - Lot 65

Price Realized: $ 1,500
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 500 - $ 750
(CALIFORNIA.) Diary of a rail trip through dozens of towns in southern California, from Fresno down to San Diego. [84] manuscript pages. Original 8vo illustrated wrappers, bound at top, minimal wear; 7 blank leaves neatly excised at end, minimal wear to contents. Various places, 27 February to 18 April 1898
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This diary records a trip by rail through much of California. The author is a seasoned lone traveler from the northeast on an annual winter trip. He seems to be looking for a Californian paradise with one eye, and looking for an excuse to mock the Californian dream with the other. He is often critical of climate, hotel accommodations, and potential for agriculture, but seems to be enjoying his constant travels despite himself, and offers a high level of descriptive detail. His mode of operation was to stay for several days in a town and make long day trips by rail. The diary starts on the train passing through Ventura. His first base of operations is Santa Barbara, from where he visits the local mission, Montecito, Carpinteria (seeing the world's largest grape vine), and drought-stricken Naples: "at one large ranch near Naples, four men are employed to go about the ranch and skin the cattle as fast as they starve and die." Next was a stop in Fresno: "I took a walk out to the Chinese quarter and found lots of the cusses" and then passed through the red light district: "I got service salutes from the girls, but paid no attention to them" (6 March). From there he headed toward the coast. At a layover in Tracy, "did not get any dinner at all as the place is a small one, and rum is the principal article there for sale. The hotels are no good." (circa 8 March). Pacific Grove was his next base of operations. The hotel in Pacific Grove "is kept by a Dutchman and is very skimpily run. The proprietor is more afraid of serving a sufficiency of grub than an ordinary man is of the smallpox" (13 March). From there he saw Monterey and Point Lobos.

A short stop near Los Angeles yielded descriptions of Pasadena ("do not think I saw any place that would please me as a home . . . a slow sort of place, nothing to do but talk orange") and Santa Monica. San Diego was next, "too new for a desirable place to live . . . It will be many years before San Diego will be a pleasant-looking place" (21 March). From there on 22 March 1898 he visits La Jolla and "Ramona House, an old tumble down adobe," which he mistakenly attributes as "the house of the hero of . . . Helen Hunt Jackson's Indian story" (which is apparently the running theme of our fall Americana auction--see the next two lots), and then Tijuana across the border on the next day, where "the train is met by Reuben the guide (a Cleveland Negro) who runs some four horse stages from the depot to the village." San Bernardino was his next extended stop, where he marveled at the extent of the orange groves but after repeated sampling declared that the product does "not begin to compare in flavor with the Florida oranges" (29 March), reiterating the next day "these California oranges haven't any business with Florida fruit." He visited Highland, Redlands, and Riverside, as well as the famed Squirrel Inn in the mountains, where he got lost in a snowstorm and nearly had to sleep outdoors. Finally he stayed briefly at Pomona and Los Angeles, from where he headed east on 8 April. His only stop on the return journey was in Colorado Springs, and he arrived in New York on 18 April to conclude his diary.

Also included is a second diary of 17 pages, 5-26 October 1898, by the same author, on a camping trip in the north country to hunt partridges. References to Mud Pond and Chamberlain Lake suggest the Allagash Wilderness in northern Maine. 3 unused period postcards from towns described in the California diary are also included.

We've been unable to pin down the authorship of this interesting diary. It concludes with the initials G.G.G. A careful perusal of the hotel register reports in local newspapers on his arrival days shows two promising matches. The San Diego Union and Bee of 22 March 1898 shows a G.G. Gunnell of Denver checking in at the Hotel Brewster, and the Daily Times-Index of San Bernardino of 28 March 1898 shows a G.G. Greenwell of Chicago checking in at the Stewart. Both of these are likely our man. Whether he enjoyed slightly disguising his name, or the newspapers exercised a sloppy transcription of the registers, we can find no appropriate Gunnells or Greenwells in the census records.