Romantic Cities of California By HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE Illustrated by E. H. SUYDAM D. APPLETON-CENTURY COMPANY INCORPORATED NEW YORK 1939 LONDON THE ART MUSEUM IN BALBOA PARK., SAN DIEGO To all our California friends, old and new, who have helped us to see the various beauty of their State, and have guided us in discovering something of her splendid story, thanks and appreciation from both illustrator and author. Foreword to Possible Readers O. .. that mine adversary had written a book cried Job, a good long while back in the past. He believed that would have given a marvelous opportunity to make matters uncomfortable for that adversary, and to any one writing the particular type of book contained within these covers, it appears likely that Job was right. In writing a book you lay yourself open to, attack, not so much personal, viii Foreword not even from adversaries, but merely from those who know better than you. What book was ever written that did not contain errors, in especial the book that strives to tell the story, or even the mere aspect of a place, a people, a time The errors creep in to hide from the authors eye, let it be ever so searching, only to spring positively yelling from their concealment when a reader opens the book and turns the pages. Mistakes occur, many inadvertent, others apparently intentional certainly you too often know better, and stare amazed, struck with horror, when the Moving Finger points them out. All I can hope is that whatever faults there be in the fol lowing pages are not vital, will give no trouble to any soul. I have tried hard to avoid them, and yet ... and yet I fear me that all the lurking little devils have not been run to earth. At times I have had to choose what seemed to me the likeliest of several different versions of the same event, and once or twice it has been curious to see how some error has been copied and copied through various publications, only in the end to be exposed for what it was. This is excellent only when you discover the final truth at the bottom of the well, a happy discovery not always sure to come to hand. You cannot count on such good fortune, you can only try your best to deserve it. That, I can truthfully say, I have done, and so leave myself in the hands of my readers, more friends to me, I trust, than adversaries. Writing a book is an adventure, one of the best of ad ventures, and must be undertaken in that spirit. Blows will fall, but the adventurer is not permanently disheartened, nor even frightened by blows. Many will fall on a shield that has considerable stoutness, the shield of endless quest, so that the blow itself is a blessing, should it bring the fact to replace the error, and not merely be a contradiction or Foreword ix complaint. Writing this book has been a superb adventure, which I have greatly enjoyed, though also a long, tough ad venture that has had me gasping a trifle now and then. Some one, not Job, has said that every book is a failure, and in a way this is true, since always it falls short of what you hoped, even of what you expected it to be but it is not wholly true, for besides the book in the hand, the writer also possesses the thrill of the work, that passion which stirs you to undertake and carry through a labor, the sheer delight of finding that here and there you have come fairly close toward accomplishing what you have striven after, the joy of finding now and again a comely bit, a hint of very life. That is a great, if naturally a rare return, and so, if at the end of a piece of work you can feel in spite of all your faults I love you for the delight you have caused me in the striving, you have your reward, and can but regret for your readers that they have only the result, without the fun, the excitement, of the endeavor. HILDEGARDE HAWTHORNE Contents FOREWORD vii 1. SAN DIEGO CALIFORNIAS FIRST PORT OF CALL . i 2. LACUNA AND LONG BEACH WHERE BEAUTY AND THE BEAST GET MIXED 39 3...