Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard (11 page)

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Authors: Roger Austen

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #General, #Literary Criticism, #Gay & Lesbian, #test

BOOK: Genteel Pagan: The Double Life of Charles Warren Stoddard
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Page 7
Equally fascinating was the "picturesque nudeness" of the people along the shore. The natives were not completely naked; they wore necklaces of shells and wreaths of blossoms, thus making themselves all the more beguiling to the rapt child
(IFP
21). By the time the Stoddards reached the Pacific shore, Charles's latent voluptuousness had asserted itself; on the outside he might still be a Presbyterian, but he sensed that he was a pagan at heart.
Several weeks later the Stoddard family sailed through the Golden Gate, and Charles began living a life that was, especially compared with his memories of Rochester, exciting and romantic. Gold-seekers, adventurers, and desperate characters were everywhere; frame houses, tents, and a few brick buildings were springing up at every turn; and Market Street was sprawling westward toward the dunes of drifting sand. Most of the fifty thousand residents were fairly young men who had chosen to come west unencumbered by family, and merely his being a child made Charles something of an anomaly. Growing up in this rowdy frontier town must have been a particularly unusual experience for a soft, dreamy child like Charles Warren Stoddard. On the one hand there were the civilizing influences of church and school, but on the otherindeed, almost next doorthere was the barely fathomable but irresistible allure of the Barbary Coast.
The Stoddards were, of course, a perfectly respectable family, and the children were expected to grow up as well-behaved Christians even in an outpost of civilization full of sin and shamelessness. At their first home near the eastern end of Union Street near Kearny, Charles's parents continued the traditions of family prayers and grace at table. Every Sunday found them in the First Presbyterian Church on Stockton near Broadway, where Mr. Stoddard taught a Sunday-school class.
The schools were modeled on the example of New England, and at the Union Street Public School Charles used readers and spellers that came highly recommended from the East. A major civilizing force in Charles's life at this time was his composition teacher, Mrs. Amelia Clappe, who was a graduate of Amherst Academy, a "relative of Julia Ward Howe, a friend of Emily Dickinson, and an admirer of Margaret Fuller."
8
Stoddard recalled that his "very first literary effort" had been an essay about a butterfly written for Mrs. Clappe.
9
Consistent with prevailing cultural standards, the fireside poets of New England and the sentimental English poets were upheld for San Francisco's schoolchildren to emulate, and in a few years Charles began to do just that.
 
Page 8
At the same time, beyond the protective limits of the family home and the school across the street, Charles was gaining quite another kind of education. Just a few blocks south of Union Street, at the bottom of Telegraph Hill and overflowing as far south as Portsmouth Square, lay a notorious area called "Sydney-Town," later to be known as the Barbary Coast. For decades it inspired fulminations from preachers, reformers, and editors alike. The following tirade is representative:
The petty thief, the house burglar, the tramp, the whore-monger, lewd women, cut-throats, murderers, all are found here. Dance-halls and concert-saloons, where blear-eyed men and faded women drink vile liquor, smoke offensive tobacco, engage in vulgar conduct, sing obscene songs and say and do everything to heap upon themselves more degradation, are numerous. Low gambling houses, thronged with riot-loving rowdies, in all stages of intoxication, are there. Opium dens, where heathen Chinese and God-forsaken men and women are sprawled in miscellaneous confusion, disgustingly drowsy or completely overcome, are there. Licentiousness, debauchery, pollution, loathsome disease, insanity from dissipation, misery, poverty, wealth, profanity, blasphemy, and death, are there.
10
And there also was young Charles Stoddard, drawn to the hurdy-gurdy attractions of the "El Dorado," the "Arcade," and the "Polka.'' The doors of such dives were, after all, open to the public, and there
did
seem to be "a vast deal of jollity within." So Charles, either by himself or with a neighborhood chum, ventured inside to get his eyes' fill. At the faro tables the dealers were "beautiful women in bewildering attire," plying their trade with devil-may-care "greasers" and thrill-seeking sailors, their eyes glazed with lust and liquor. On the walls were hung lewd pictures that "young and innocent eyes ought never to have been laid on"
(IFP
64).
11
But young Charles took in everything and everyone and, in doing so, became less and less innocent, although he was unable then to grasp the significance of it all.
Charles had his share of conventional and wholesome boyhood experiences as well. There were family outings to "The Willows," a popular oasis offering animals in cages and an open-air theater, and to "Russ's Gardens," another resort out in the Mission District, which featured a German beer garden and acrobatic acts on Sundays. (Charles was especially struck by a muscular, near-naked tightrope walker named Blondin, who was later to become a partner of his friend Adah Isaacs Menken.) There were also jaunts with his neighborhood friends to the "Cobweb Palace" on Meigg's wharf, picnics at Fort Point and the Cliff
 
Page 9
House on the ocean, and visits to the comparatively respectable "foreign quarters"Chinatown, which always fascinated Charles, and the Spanish Quarter, where everyone seemed dressed "as if they were about to appear in . . 'The Barber of Seville'
"(IFP
59).
One thing was certain: compared to Rochester, San Francisco was colorfully cosmopolitan, even if it lacked as yet the patina of urbane sophistication. At school Charles could find himself sitting next to pupils who had been born in Europe, Australia, Russia, "Chili," or the Sandwich Islandsto say nothing of nearly every state and territory in the Union. In retrospect, Stoddard observed that there had been something "singularly bracing" about the climate of San Francisco: "the middle-aged renewed their youth, and youth was wild with an exuberance of health and hope and happiness that seemed to give promise of immortality"
(IFP 101
). In this regard, however, he was not speaking for himself. In his boyhood, as in later life, he had always been more of an observer than a participant in exuberance, and in spite of the general holiday spirit in San Francisco, still he was not happy. Beginning in January 1857, and for the next two years, Charles was to be even less happy.
III
On 4 January 1857, Charles and his seventeen-year-old brother Ned boarded the
Flying Cloud,
a clipper ship that would take them around Cape Horn to New York City.
12
At family prayers that morning, their father had read aloud from the Bible: "Then they cry unto the Lord in their trouble, and He bringeth them out of their distresses . . .  Oh, that men would praise the Lord for His goodness and His wonderful works to the children of men."
13
Goodness? Wonderful works? Charles had some reason to doubt; for it was thought that Ned was dying of a chronic alimentary disease, and this sea voyage had been prescribed in the hope of prolonging his life.
On the voyage Charles read his Bible faithfully, as his mother had bidden him do, although every day this reading made him "more and more perplexed." During the ninety-two days at sea, he also read
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
kept a journal, spied some more "pretty" islands, and noticed that Ned was not getting very much better. Charles was especially taken with the worldly-wise cabin boy from Paris who, when they arrived in New York, was even more impressive as a "perfumed exquisite" seen dining across the room at the Hotel Astor.
14
 
Page 10
After a night in Manhattan, the Stoddard boys journeyed to Little Valley, a village in western New York, where their Grandpa Freeman had a farm. Ned and Charles shared a room in the farmhouse attic, and Charles soon found himself dreadfully bored after the excitements of San Francisco. "What was there," Stoddard asked years later, "beyond brook trout and maple sugar in their season for the refreshment of farmers' sons?" Alas, he added, even "the sons were scarce."
15
Charles kept himself busy decorating the attic with bric-a-brac from San Franciscoa Chinese kite adorned with a bird of paradise, little figurines in satin and silk with ivory faces, and other Oriental mementosall of which soon became a "scandal in a house that was famed for simplicity and prayer."
16
The clicking of chopsticks and the clangor of gongs created consternation downstairs, where the Freemans were muttering that these heathen trappings had turned their attic into a cross between a junk shop and a joss house.
When Ned returned alone to California, Charles was left with only the nearby frogs and cows for company. He soon read through the Freemans' few books, which were along the line of
Fern Leaves from Fanny's Portfolio.
He killed some time by writing letters to his family on stationery that was most extraordinary for a little boy to use: "lavender or rose or orange or pea-green; gilt-edged of course, and perfumed"redolent of the wintergreen he always carried in a phial, "because I was a child of Nature."
17
When spring came, it was pleasant to sit outdoors beneath the lilacs. But in general Charles found the atmosphere "blighting," and he dreaded Sundays, when he often had to sit through a morning and an afternoon and an evening service. He soon ''took to sighinga habit that has become second natureand I must have been something of a burden to the old folks,a kind of mild reproach, as if they were somehow responsible for my want of interest in life."
18
Then, suddenly, Charles was sublimely happy. He had found a chum named Fred, a "mezzo-tinted" and "picturesque Spanish type that appealed to me," full of "quasi-Andulsian"
[sic]
charm.
19
Fred was to be his classmate and roommate when the fall term started at Randolph Academy, ten miles from Little Valley, where Grandpa Freeman had enrolled him.
For a fictional account of young Charles in those days, we can turn to "Hearts of Oak," a semiautobiographical novella that Stoddard wrote for the
Overland Monthly
some fifteen years later. In this work Stoddard
 
Page 11
casts himself as Paul Rookh, in his twelfth year and just on the verge of entering boarding school: "Some children are impressive at this period. Paul was not. He was too thin and too long for beauty; he was decidedly uninteresting, and remained so for two years or more. . . . His prospects were certainly dubious enough; so many things happened to him, and he himself was so spiritless and indifferent. . .  How he longed for someone to fly to in his loneliness and sorrow!"
20
In "Hearts of Oak," this role is filled by a boy named Rivers, who was probably modeled on Fred (and also Richard Waite and Edgar Montgomery, who were to become his chums the following year). Rivers embodies all the virtues to which, lacking them himself, Stoddard would be attracted for the rest of his life:
They were nearly of an age, but of very different temperaments. Paul's mind veered with the wind, and quartered with the moon: he was passive, joyous, and downcast in turn; usually longing for something out of reach, and wondering why he could not obtain it. Rivers was evenly cheerful; not easily persuaded nor dissuaded, but having a mind of his own that spoke for itself. He had, moreover, the great and almost godlike gift of self-control, and that is equal to the control of others. Paul felt the power of his will, and submitted to it as patiently as the lamb to the shepherd. In fact, he would rather obey Rivers than be his own master.(361)
Physically they were opposites as well, as may be seen in this description of Rivers, stripped for swimming with some other boys from the academy:
But there was one youngster in the group, whose
poses
were a study and a satisfaction to the observers. Modesty, without shame, was the characteristic that seemed to clothe him like a mantle. His chest was full and well cushioned with muscle; thighs, plump and sinewy: hips, not too broad nor too narrow; knees, small, and of that fine mechanism so different from the clumsy joints of many imperfect creatures born into the world denuded of the grace and strength which should be their birthright . . . It was he who was the living light in Paul's world of school, and all that Paul could find to love and respect in the motley crowd surrounding him. Of course it was young Rivers; and Paul was absorbed in watching him, as he stood there like a youthful Hercules.(361)
As a result of these differences, the boys to whom Stoddard was drawn were rarely attracted to him. Indeed, as Stoddard imagined, they were actually repelled. Rivers thinks of Paul: "It was a pity that boy was so stupid, when he seemed to be pleasant enough in other ways . . . He wished he wasn't so sickly-looking, and that he was a little bit wickeder

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