The Story Tellers of Early Oakland
The power of the quill...
While Carpentier, Merritt and even Durant will be forgotten in history's quagmire, the works of Oakland's most potent artists may grow the wings of immortal fame.
Bret Harte
Among Oakland's earliest residents was one who brought romance to the gold rush with his writing. In 1853, at age seventeen, Bret Harte arrived with his family to begin life with their new step-father, Colonel Andrew Williams, the fourth Mayor of Oakland.
Bret was at an age to pass through the city like most gold-miners. He took to the Sonora hills, but loved the pen more than the pick and soon began to write as an editor up North in Union, now Arcata. But, sign of the times, he got run out of town after condemning the local massacre of a group of Native Americans. They didn't take kindly to activist journalism back then.
Back in San Francisco, Harte's first story, aiming to capture some local flavor, was universally condemned by the Bay Area's civic and religious authorities as terrifically immoral. The east coast loved it though and Bret Harte became a literary success. His imaginative fiction opens a window to the natural beauty of California from the time when the forests were endless, and the flood of Americans was flowing fast. Bret Harte wrote vividly and emotionally and he gave the coarse world a pleasing umbra.
From "The Luck of the roaring Camp," by Bret Harte,
"Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills, -that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating, -he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus." (P 135)
Ina Donna Coolbrith
Ina Donna Coolbrith, the green-eyed poet, was Oakland's librarian for almost twenty years. Ina's library was much like John Davie's Bookstore, a place where she would write with Bret Harte, convince a young poet, Cincinnatus, to take on the pen name Joaquin Miller, and where she would become mentor to a young Jack London.
Here is her sonnet to a man named William Keith, who had also made Oakland his home. Keith was a close friend of John Muir, and was an artist who clothed his canvases with the majesty of California.
William Keith
We read that under the far Indian skies,
The dusk magician with his mystic wand
Calls from the arid and unseeded sand,
Whereon the shadowless sun's white fervor lies,
A perfect tree before our wondering eyes.
First its green shoot uplifts a tender hand;
Then trunk and spreading foliage expand
To flower and fruit; and then it droops and dies.
But he - our wizard of the tinted brush -
In God's diviner necromancy skilled,
Gives to our vision Earth, in grandeur free!
Rose-gold of dawn and evening's purple hush,
The Druid-woods with Nature's worship filled,
The mountains and the everlasting sea.
- Ina Donna Coolbrith
After finishing as Oakland's librarian, Ina, with the help of William Keith, got a part time job as librarian for The Bohemian Club. This club for the extremely rich and powerful owns 634 Taylor, SF, and the Bohemian Grove at 20601 Bohemian Avenue in Monte Rio.
Joaquin Miller
Joaquin Miller called himself the Byron of the Sierras. In London and Paris, dressed in his pioneer leathers, he would work himself into a frenzy reading his poetry on his bearskin rug. He lived a life of saloons, and courthouses--he sat on both sides of the bench. He was even a pony express rider. A true wild west American, he fought against the Native Americans and took an arrow through the face, out the back of his neck. But later, he went to live with them by the Pit River.
In 1886, in his mid forties, he moved back to Oakland where he lived out his life at his home which he called 'The Hights' (his spelling). Oakland was his home.
Joaquin turned his hillside from patchy chaparral into full grown forest, and it is because of his love for the land that 'The Hights' were purchased by Oakland to become the beautiful five hundred acre Joaquin Miller Park. His impression is powerfully felt there by the monuments he built among the trees which he planted.
He wrote a poem about his home.
Oakland.
Thou rose-land! Oakland! thou, mine own!
Thou sun-land! leaf-land! land of seas
Wide crescented in walls of stone!
Thy lion's mane is to the breeze!
Thy tawny, sunlit lion steeps
Leap forward, as the lion leaps!
And thou, the lion's whelp, begot
Of Argonauts, in fearful strength
And supple beauty yieldeth naught!
Thine arm is as a river's lenght.
Thy reach is foremost! Thou shalt be
The throned queen of this vast west sea!
Yet here sits peace; and rest sits here;
These wide-boughed oaks, they house wise men:
The student and the sage austere,
The men of wondrous thought and ken.
Here men of God in holy guise
Invoke the peace of paradise.
Be this my home till some fair star
Stoops earthward and shall beckon me;
For surely Godland lies not far
From these Greek heights and this great sea,
My friend, my lover, trend this way;
Not far along lies Arcady.
- Joaquin Miller
The power of the quill...
While Carpentier, Merritt and even Durant will be forgotten in history's quagmire, the works of Oakland's most potent artists may grow the wings of immortal fame.
Bret Harte
Among Oakland's earliest residents was one who brought romance to the gold rush with his writing. In 1853, at age seventeen, Bret Harte arrived with his family to begin life with their new step-father, Colonel Andrew Williams, the fourth Mayor of Oakland.
Bret was at an age to pass through the city like most gold-miners. He took to the Sonora hills, but loved the pen more than the pick and soon began to write as an editor up North in Union, now Arcata. But, sign of the times, he got run out of town after condemning the local massacre of a group of Native Americans. They didn't take kindly to activist journalism back then.
Back in San Francisco, Harte's first story, aiming to capture some local flavor, was universally condemned by the Bay Area's civic and religious authorities as terrifically immoral. The east coast loved it though and Bret Harte became a literary success. His imaginative fiction opens a window to the natural beauty of California from the time when the forests were endless, and the flood of Americans was flowing fast. Bret Harte wrote vividly and emotionally and he gave the coarse world a pleasing umbra.
From "The Luck of the roaring Camp," by Bret Harte,
"Nature took the foundling to her broader breast. In that rare atmosphere of the Sierra foot-hills, -that air pungent with balsamic odor, that ethereal cordial at once bracing and exhilarating, -he may have found food and nourishment, or a subtle chemistry that transmuted asses' milk to lime and phosphorus." (P 135)
Ina Donna Coolbrith
Ina Donna Coolbrith, the green-eyed poet, was Oakland's librarian for almost twenty years. Ina's library was much like John Davie's Bookstore, a place where she would write with Bret Harte, convince a young poet, Cincinnatus, to take on the pen name Joaquin Miller, and where she would become mentor to a young Jack London.
Here is her sonnet to a man named William Keith, who had also made Oakland his home. Keith was a close friend of John Muir, and was an artist who clothed his canvases with the majesty of California.
William Keith
We read that under the far Indian skies,
The dusk magician with his mystic wand
Calls from the arid and unseeded sand,
Whereon the shadowless sun's white fervor lies,
A perfect tree before our wondering eyes.
First its green shoot uplifts a tender hand;
Then trunk and spreading foliage expand
To flower and fruit; and then it droops and dies.
But he - our wizard of the tinted brush -
In God's diviner necromancy skilled,
Gives to our vision Earth, in grandeur free!
Rose-gold of dawn and evening's purple hush,
The Druid-woods with Nature's worship filled,
The mountains and the everlasting sea.
- Ina Donna Coolbrith
After finishing as Oakland's librarian, Ina, with the help of William Keith, got a part time job as librarian for The Bohemian Club. This club for the extremely rich and powerful owns 634 Taylor, SF, and the Bohemian Grove at 20601 Bohemian Avenue in Monte Rio.
Joaquin Miller
Joaquin Miller called himself the Byron of the Sierras. In London and Paris, dressed in his pioneer leathers, he would work himself into a frenzy reading his poetry on his bearskin rug. He lived a life of saloons, and courthouses--he sat on both sides of the bench. He was even a pony express rider. A true wild west American, he fought against the Native Americans and took an arrow through the face, out the back of his neck. But later, he went to live with them by the Pit River.
In 1886, in his mid forties, he moved back to Oakland where he lived out his life at his home which he called 'The Hights' (his spelling). Oakland was his home.
Joaquin turned his hillside from patchy chaparral into full grown forest, and it is because of his love for the land that 'The Hights' were purchased by Oakland to become the beautiful five hundred acre Joaquin Miller Park. His impression is powerfully felt there by the monuments he built among the trees which he planted.
He wrote a poem about his home.
Oakland.
Thou rose-land! Oakland! thou, mine own!
Thou sun-land! leaf-land! land of seas
Wide crescented in walls of stone!
Thy lion's mane is to the breeze!
Thy tawny, sunlit lion steeps
Leap forward, as the lion leaps!
And thou, the lion's whelp, begot
Of Argonauts, in fearful strength
And supple beauty yieldeth naught!
Thine arm is as a river's lenght.
Thy reach is foremost! Thou shalt be
The throned queen of this vast west sea!
Yet here sits peace; and rest sits here;
These wide-boughed oaks, they house wise men:
The student and the sage austere,
The men of wondrous thought and ken.
Here men of God in holy guise
Invoke the peace of paradise.
Be this my home till some fair star
Stoops earthward and shall beckon me;
For surely Godland lies not far
From these Greek heights and this great sea,
My friend, my lover, trend this way;
Not far along lies Arcady.
- Joaquin Miller