Arrears blogging: November 16 -- Ungovernable

I've remarked before about the similarities between Richard Henry Dana's description of the Mexican-run California of the 1830s and the current version that I live in, and in today's reading, the parallels continue to be downright eerie :

In their domestic relations, these people are no better than in their public. The men are thriftless, proud, and extravagant, and very much given to gaming; and the women have but little education, and a good deal of beauty, and their morality, of course, is none of the best.

I kid; we're no worse here than they are anywhere else (the evidence of this site notwithstanding). In a way, this chapter is but an early example of people from back East disapproving of California for its unmitigated pleasantness. And Dana is from Boston, which makes it a perfect example also:

In the hands of an enterprising people, what a country this might be! we are ready to say. Yet how long would a people remain so, in such a country? The Americans (as those from the United States are called) and Englishmen, who are fast filling up the principal towns, and getting the trade into their hands, are indeed more industrious and effective than the Spaniards; yet their children are brought up Spaniards, in every respect, and if the “California fever” (laziness) spares the first generation, it always attacks the second.

He doesn't like our laid-back ways and our Mexicans, which would actually make him a good caller on KFI talk radio.

But while censorious disapproval is the native song of the Yankee liberal, and so easy to make fun of, it doesn't necessarily mean they're wrong; Dana takes pains to point out how miserable the Indians have it:

When a crime has been committed by Indians, justice, or rather vengeance, is not so tardy. One Sunday afternoon, while I was at San Diego, an Indian was sitting on his horse, when another, with whom he had had some difficulty, came up to him, drew a long knife, and plunged it directly into the horse’s heart. ...The poor fellow was seized at once, clapped into the calabozo, and kept there until an answer could be received from Monterey. A few weeks afterwards, I saw the poor wretch, sitting on the bare ground, in front of the calabozo, with his feet chained to a stake, and handcuffs about his wrists. I knew there was very little hope for him. Although the deed was done in hot blood, the horse on which he was sitting being his own, and a great favorite, yet he was an Indian, and that was enough. In about a week after I saw him, I heard that he had been shot. These few instances will serve to give one a notion of the distribution of justice in California.

Nowadays there would also be a proposition on the ballot about this -- perhaps advocating that the corpse get life imprisonment or something -- misleading ads cluttering your TV and radio and mailbox and answering machine. So you see, there is more industriousness in California than there used to be.

December 30: The More Things Change

The state, the lifestyle, the tablecloth. You spilled gravy on San Diego!

Today Richard Henry Dana's ship is trading in Monterey in 1835, I think it is. While Dana is taking pains to show his East Coast audience how different the place is, the modern California resident can read it looking to see what's the same.

Prejudice against California, first of all: "The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves." It's also, of course, filled with Mexicans, as it is, at this time, actually in Mexico. But there are still plenty of Eurocentric racists around:

Generally speaking, each person’s caste is decided by the quality of the blood, which shows itself, too plainly to be concealed, at first sight. Yet the least drop of Spanish blood, if it be only of quadroon or octoroon, is sufficient to raise them from the rank of slaves, and entitle them to a suit of cloathes...and to call themselves Españolos, and to hold property, if they can get any.

Also, though there are no Beverly Hills as of yet (just "Hills"), we do see this stereotype as well:

The fondness for dress among the women is excessive, and is often the ruin of many of them...Nothing is more common than to see a woman living in a house of only two rooms, and the ground for a floor, dressed in spangled satin shoes, silk gown, high comb, and gilt, if not gold, ear-rings and necklace. If their husbands do not dress them well enough, they will soon receive presents from others.

Mm-mm-mm (shakes head). Of course, the women can scarcely be blamed -- California is a playground even then: "Monterey is also a great place for cock-fighting, gambling of all sorts, fandangos, and every kind of amusement and knavery." Fandangos! Every kind of knavery! Dana might as well call it "the land of fruits and nuts," like some old dude back East.

Another thing that Dana found in Monterey that we still have out here is beefcake. I'm going to quote a lot of it because it also shows that the mid-19th century audience was more open to unashamed descriptions of manly beauty than we are. I know, I know -- Whitman already proves that. But Whitman was...well, artistic, whereas Richard Henry Dana was a respectable U.S. Attorney:

One of them I shall always remember as the best specimen of the thoroughbred English sailor that I ever saw. ..He was tall; but you only perceived it when he was standing by the side of others, for the great breadth of his shoulders and chest made him appear but little above the middle height. His chest was as deep as it was wide; his arm like that of Hercules; and his hand “the fist of a tar—every hair a rope-yarn.” With all this he had one of the pleasantest smiles I ever saw. His cheeks were of a handsome brown; his teeth brilliantly white; and his hair, of a raven black, waved in loose curls all over his head, and fine, open forehead; and his eyes he might have sold to a duchess at the price of diamonds, for their brilliancy. As for their color, they were like the Irishman’s pig, which would not stay to be counted, every change of position and light seemed to give them a new hue; but their prevailing color was black, or nearly so. Take him with his well-varnished black tarpaulin stuck upon the back of his head; his long locks coming down almost into his eyes; his white duck trowsers and shirt; blue jacket; and black kerchief, tied loosely round his neck; and he was a fine specimen of manly beauty ... his captain said he was a perfect seaman, and worth his weight in gold on board a vessel, in fair weather and in foul. His strength must have been great, and he had the sight of a vulture.

It is strange that one should be so minute in the description of an unknown, outcast sailor, whom one may never see again, and whom no one may care to hear about; but so it is. He called himself Bill Jackson; and I know no one of all my accidental acquaintances to whom I would more gladly give a shake of the hand than to him.

And yet Prop 8 passed. Go figure.

September 18: Home is the sailor

Where the whores at?

Richard Henry Dana's two years before the mast come to an end today as his ship comes in to Boston. Shouldn't this reading be a little later in the year? Or is it already late in the year, and I just don't know it because I'm in California and I still don't want to heat up the kitchen at dinnertime?

Anyway, there is, as always, a lot of stuff about spars and studding-sails that will have the Patrick O'Brian reader nodding his (almost certainly "his," I bet) head knowledgeably. And then there's this, to warm the urbanite's heart:

As we drew in toward the mouth of the harbor, as toward a focus, the vessels began to multiply until the bay seemed actually alive with sails gliding about in every direction; some on the wind, and others before it, as they were bound to or from the emporium of trade and centre of the bay. It was a stirring sight for us, who had been months on the ocean without seeing anything but two solitary sails; and over two years without seeing more than the three or four traders on an almost desolate coast. ...We were coming back to our homes; and the signs of civilization, and prosperity, and happiness, from which we had been so long banished, were multiplying about us.

In my mind's eye I have the image of the bay clotted thick with sail; a pre-rail traffic jam. But also -- busy-ness=life=happiness. To me there's something sad and tomblike about gated communities; ditto business districts on weekends. (At least show free movies, like they do at the Hollywood Cemetery; you can see "Rear Window" and on your way out walk past the grave of that other great mid-century artist, Mel Blanc.)

This passage might also be an early recorded instance of someone who went to Harvard casually making sure you know that he went to Harvard:

...a beautiful little pleasure-boat luffed up into the wind, under our quarter, and the junior partner of the firm to which our ship belonged, jumped on board. I saw him from the mizen topsail yard, and knew him well. He shook the captain by the hand, and went down into the cabin, and in a few moments came up and inquired of the mate for me. The last time I had seen him, I was in the uniform of an undergraduate of Harvard College, and now, to his astonishment, there came down from aloft a “rough alley” looking fellow, with duck trowsers and red shirt, long hair, and face burnt as black as an Indian’s.

But don't worry -- all he needs is a haircut and a few days inside at the club and he'll be ready for the ruling class! (Although that's not fair to Dana, who appears to have been one of the good guys.)

Finally, Dana tells me what I will be feeling if I make it through the end of the year with the DRG:

As for myself, by one of those anomalous changes of feeling of which we are all the subjects, I found that I was in a state of indifference, for which I could by no means account. A year before, while carrying hides on the coast, the assurance that in a twelve month we should see Boston, made me half wild; but now that I was actually there, and in sight of home, the emotions which I had so long anticipated feeling, I did not find, and in their place was a state of very nearly entire apathy.

Something of the same experience was related to me by a sailor whose first voyage was one of five years upon the North-west Coast. He had left home, a lad, and after several years of very hard and trying experience, found himself homeward bound; and such was the excitement of his feelings that, during the whole passage, he could talk and think of nothing else but his arrival, and how and when he should jump from the vessel and take his way directly home. Yet when the vessel was made fast to the wharf and the crew dismissed, he seemed suddenly to lose all feeling about the matter. He told me that he went below and changed his dress; took some water from the scuttle-butt and washed himself leisurely; overhauled his chest, and put his clothes all in order; took his pipe from its place, filled it, and sitting down upon his chest, smoked it slowly for the last time.

The days are getting shorter, at that. I better get some pipe tobacco.

August 22: Torture

“Then I’ll make you one,” said the captain; and he came to the hatchway, and sprang on deck, threw off his coat, and rolling up his sleeves, called out to the mate—“Seize that man up, Mr. A——! Seize him up! Make a spread eagle of him! I’ll teach you all who is master aboard!”

The crew and officers followed the captain up the hatchway, and after repeated orders the mate laid hold of Sam, who made no resistance, and carried him to the gangway.

“What are you going to flog that man for, sir?” said John, the Swede, to the captain.

Upon hearing this, the captain turned upon him, but knowing him to be quick and resolute, he ordered the steward to bring the irons, and calling upon Russell to help him, went up to John.

“Let me alone,” said John. “I’m willing to be put in irons. You need not use any force;” and putting out his hands, the captain slipped the irons on, and sent him aft to the quarter-deck.

Sam by this time was seized up, as it is called, that is, placed against the shrouds, with his wrists made fast to the shrouds, his jacket off, and his back exposed. The captain stood on the break of the deck, a few feet from him, and a little raised, so as to have a good swing at him, and held in his hand the bight of a thick, strong rope. The officers stood round, and the crew grouped together in the waist. All these preparations made me feel sick and almost faint, angry and excited as I was. A man—a human being, made in God’s likeness—fastened up and flogged like a beast! A man, too, whom I had lived with and eaten with for months, and knew almost as well as a brother. The first and almost uncontrollable impulse was resistance. But what was to be done? The time for it had gone by.

This is from Two Years Before The Mast. At the start of this project I was skeptical about its inclusion into the Classics, but based on today's reading I see the point -- it has shown us material life, as opposed to abstractions, and here we see a portrait of the sadist given authority, as well as a very modern helplessness in the face of official evil. (It's also interesting, in this chapter, to see how tiny Los Angeles and San Pedro (the port) were in the 1830s, but that's beside the point.)

Then, after that, the Captain proceeds to flog John the Swede:

When he was made fast, he turned to the captain, who stood turning up his sleeves and getting ready for the blow, and asked him what he was to be flogged for. “Have I ever refused my duty, sir? Have you ever known me to hang back, or to be insolent, or not to know my work?”

“No,” said the captain, “it is not that I flog you for; I flog you for your interference—for asking questions.”

“Can’t a man ask a question here without being flogged?”

“No,” shouted the captain; “nobody shall open his mouth aboard this vessel, but myself;” and began laying the blows upon his back, swinging half round between each blow, to give it full effect. As he went on, his passion increased, and he danced about the deck, calling out as he swung the rope;—“If you want to know what I flog you for, I’ll tell you. It’s because I like to do it!—because I like to do it!—It suits me! That’s what I do it for!”

Because I like to do it. The only difference between that captain and our more recent horrors is that the technology is better; progress, of a sort.

August 14: Cruisin'

Not only did Dana's ship only have salt beef, there was no shuffleboard.

We're back on the high seas with Richard Henry Dana, and it is a tale of bone-chilling bravery:

Monday, Nov. 10th. During a part of this day we were hove to, but the rest of the time were driving on, under close-reefed sails, with a heavy sea, a strong gale, and frequent squalls of hail and snow.

Tuesday, Nov. 11th. The same.

Wednesday. The same.

Thursday. The same.

It is exciting, isn't it? Speaking of "the same," I don't have much to add to the last time we sailed with Dana, except for a couple observations -- observation-ettes, really:

1. Our own comfort is based on the (sometimes-compensated) suffering of others.

I remember an English lad who was always the life of the crew, but whom we afterwards lost overboard, standing for nearly ten minutes at the galley, with his pot of tea in his hand, waiting for a chance to get down into the forecastle; and seeing what he thought was a “smooth spell,” started to go forward. He had just got to the end of the windlass, when a great sea broke over the bows, and for a moment I saw nothing of him but his head and shoulders; and at the next instant, being taken off his legs, he was carried aft with the sea, until her stern lifting up and sending the water forward, he was left high and dry at the side of the long-boat, still holding on to his tin pot, which had now nothing in it but salt water.

But the good people of Boston liked their tea just as much as that English lad did, whatever his name was, and so to ships they sailed. (And the other sailors all gave him some from their pot.) This seems like an extremely unremarkable observation, except that I think there's a myth, embedded in those corporate-image ads with wind turbines and stuff, of a kind of clean, freshly-showered future. But somebody always has to be below, heating the water.

2. The "elevating" nature of the Harvard Classics means it's kind of light on the details of daily life. (Fiction, which is good for gleaning details of daily life, is relegated to a separate shelf.) So this excerpt is helpful just because, even though a nineteenth-century sailor's life wasn't for everyone, at least we see people having dinner:

...we were allowed a tin pot full of hot tea, (or, as the sailors significantly call it “water bewitched,”) sweetened with molasses. This, bad as it was, was still warm and comforting, and, together with our sea biscuit and cold salt beef, made quite a meal.

As hellish as I imagine a cruise ship to be, it's better than molasses-sweetened tea.

(Photo by Flickr user mre770, used with a Creative Commons license.)

June 6: Yar

When last we left Richard Henry Dana, he was chillaxing in San Diego. Well, his ship is approaching Cape Horn, and Spring Break is over:

Rain, sleet, snow, and wind, enough to take our breath from us, and make the toughest turn his back to windward! The ship lay nearly over on her beam-ends; the spars and rigging snapped and cracked; and her top-gallant masts bent like whip-sticks. “Clew up the fore and main top-gallant sails!” shouted the captain, and all hands sprang to the clewlines. The decks were standing nearly at an angle of forty-five degrees, and the ship going like a mad steed through the water, the whole forward part of her in a smother of foam.

I hardly need to add that after this, they let go the halyards and clewed down the yards. That's what I'd do -- I'd be clewing down those yards so fast, I wouldn't even have time to ask what yards are, or how you might go about clewing them down.

This is a gripping yarn, if you don't mind reading a lot of technical Yankee Clipper-type sailing terms without ever learning what they mean. (It does help if you know what "masts" are -- they're the long pointy things, I think.) The anonymous person who makes up these readings makes a good call by starting us at the end of the previous chapter, when the sailing is literally smooth, so that,, when the big swell washes up at the start of this chapter, you're in sympathy with the below-decks tongue-wagging:

Old Bill, who was somewhat of a croaker,—having met with a great many accidents at sea—said that if that was the way she was going to act, we might as well make our wills, and balance the books at once, and put on a clean shirt. “’Vast there, you bloody old owl! You’re always hanging out blue lights! You’re frightened by the ducking you got in the scuppers, and can’t take a joke! What’s the use in being always on the look-out for Davy Jones?”

One of the problems you occasionally run into when reading the classics is that it's the victim of the Moore's Law-like explosion in creative output in the last century. First the movies appropriated seagoing tales, and played it straight, and then magpie parodists such as myself appropriated what the movies did. So it's hard to engage it the way it was meant to be engaged (assuming that's a desirable and/or possible goal).

And, of course, voyages like this were a lot more gripping to a 19th-century audience, because that was how they got their coffee. There was a personal stake in it.

What's timeless, of course, is the need to make men out of boys, and Dana throws in an Outward Bound-type example:

My companion on the yard was a lad, who came out in the ship a weak, puny boy, from one of the Boston schools;—“no larger than a spritsail sheet knot,” nor “heavier than a paper of lampblack,” and “not strong enough to haul a shad off a gridiron,” but who was now “as long as a spare topmast, strong enough to knock down an ox, and hearty enough to eat him.”

Which is a much better phrase than "developed leadership skills."

(I like to think that, thanks to this voyage, this anonymous boy developed the courage and fortitude to keep Catholics out of exclusive Boston clubs.)

Mar 2: Sunday in San Diego, 1834-style

My favorite volume of the HC -- because it's so weird -- is Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before The Mast, and that's where we get today's reading. It's such an odd volume to include with Homer, etc. But maybe it's just to make the whole Harvard Classics project seem more manly. (Or maybe it's because the Danas knew the Eliots up in Boston; according to Wikipedia Dana's from good solid Brahmin stock.

The reading couldn't be more perfect on this perfect California Sunday, because it's a perfect California Sunday in 1834, and Dana, who has signed on as an ordinary sailor -- ordinary sailors! imagine! -- gets leave:

I shall never forget the delightful sensation of being in the open air, with the birds singing around me, and escaped from the confinement, labor, and strict rule of a vessel—of being once more in my life, though only for a day, my own master. A sailor’s liberty is but for a day; yet while it lasts it is perfect.... Things looked differently from what they did when we talked them over in the little dark forecastle, the night after the flogging at San Pedro.

I should say so. There follows an amusing incident familiar to many graduates of fancy colleges -- an incident of the "Where did you go to college?" "Um...New England" variety. Dana and his friend S. want to get away from the ordinary people for a day, but they can't until they go out drinking with them:

S—— and myself determined to keep as much together as possible, though we knew that it would not do to cut our shipmates; for, knowing our birth and education, they were a little suspicious that we would try to put on the gentleman when we got ashore, and would be ashamed of their company; and this won’t do with Jack. When the voyage is at an end, you may do as you please, but so long as you belong to the same vessel, you must be a shipmate to him on shore, or he will not be a shipmate to you on board. Being forewarned of this before I went to sea, I took no “long togs” with me, and being dressed like the rest, in white duck trowsers, blue jacket and straw hat, which would prevent my going in better company, and showing no disposition to avoid them, I set all suspicion at rest.

Don't play that goddamn college music on the jukebox, either. Well, they get out and, as many a visitor to San Diego does, head for Old Town -- or as they called it then, "Town." This entails a lot of dealings with Mexicans, who have snuck over the border whose country this is:

....endeavoring to get horses for the day, so that we might ride round and see the country. At first we had but little success, all that we could get out of the lazy fellows, in reply to our questions, being the eternal drawling “Quien sabe?” (“who knows?”) which is an answer to all questions.

San Diego's still like that, really, except people will also say "Dude". Other than that there's not much to tell. They ride horses. They eat at the mission. They avoid Sea World, understandably. And, getting back on the ship, they can rest easy in the knowledge that their trip up the coast will be faster than using the 5.