Hildegard Hawthorne, photograph by Jim Day, date unknown. Larger.
If, as one writer once observed, the Middle West is suspcicious of a Los Angeles that "doesn't always keep itself pure of sin," then how come so many of its sons and daughters were so ready to move there and defend its honor?
Fascinated by Southern California land "hoop-la," New York native Hildegarde Hawthorne singled out the midwesterners who fueled Los Angeles' incendiary real estate markets, especially after 1885 when the Sante Fe Railroad came to town, making a trip to California both cheap and easy.
Santa Fe & Los Angeles Harbor Railway Company stock certificate, 1936. Larger.
The Middle Westerner especially was fascinated, he who had endured the blizzards of winter, the deluges of spring, the burning summers of his own whatever state. If he had money and youth, he came to buy and to grow. If he had money and was old, he came to rest and go right on living. If he were an invalid, he came to be cured—and usually was. He brought his wife and family along if he had them. Often, too, he or she brought some queer religious leaning along, or a whole sect came in a lump. . . . A very large percentage among these people know only two places, the one they came from, and Los Angeles. Like all converts they have a fanatic devotion to their new love. From their throats flow unending songs of praise, and if you do not agree with them that Los Angeles is the greatest, wisest and most beautiful of all cities, their rage can become quite noticeable.
Granddaughter of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Hildegarde Hawthorne was a poet, esssayist, and biographer who settled in California late in life and wrote about her adopted state. Romantic Cities of California appeared in 1939.
below to hear radio segment.
