California's Gold Rush lured huge numbers of emigrants to the mines, more than a few of which let fancy blind them to the "cruel reality" of the trip.
Arriving in California by ship, Louise Amelia Clappe was spared the travails of an overland journey, but that didn't mean that she didn't fully appreciate the hardships, despite her romantic fancy.
Much of the immigration from across the plains, on its way to the cities below, stops here for awhile to recruit. I always had a strange fancy for that Nomadic way of coming to California. To lie down under starry skies, hundreds of miles from any human habitation, and to rise up on dewy mornings, to persue our way through a strange country so wildly beautiful, seeing each day something new and wonderful, seemed to me truly enchanting. But cruel reality strips everything of its rose tints. The poor women arrive, looking as haggard as so many Endorean witches; burnt to the color of a hazel-nut, with their hair cut short and its gloss entirely destroyed by the alkali, whole plains of which they are compelled to cross on the way. You will hardly find a family that has not left some beloved one buried upon the plains. And they are fearful funerals, those. A person dies, and they stop just long enough to dig his grave and lay him in it, as decently as circumstances will permit, and the long train hurries onward, leaving its healthy companion of yesterday, perhaps, in this boundless city of the dead. On this hazardous journey, they dare not linger.
Dame Shirley's letters—written in 1851 and 1852—were published in San Franscisco's Pioneer magazine in 1854.
"Goldrush Entertainment," photographer, date unknown. Larger.
During the Gold Rush, an overland journey to California was a test of courage, optimism, and, it should be said, creativity.
In published letters to her sister, Louise Amelia Clappe—using the pen name Dame Shirley—marveled at the resilience of Gold Rush-era immigrants, folks who knew how to invent a little bit of fun despite harsh local conditions.
I ought to say a word about the dances which we used to have in the bar-room, a place so low that a very tall man could not have stood upright in it. One side was fitted as a store, and another side with bunks for lodgers. These bunks were elegantly draperied with red calico, through which we caught dim glimpses of blue blankets. If they only could have had sheets, they would fairly have been enveloped in the American colors. By the way, I wonder if there is something national in this eternal passion for blue blankets and red calico? On ball nights the bar was closed, and everything was very quiet and respectable. To be sure, there was some danger of being swept away in a flood of tobacco juice; but luckily the floor was uneven, and it lay around in puddles, which with care one could avoid, merely running the minor risk of falling prostrate upon the wet boards, in the midst of a galopade.
Dame Shirley's twenty-second letter from the California mines is dated October 27, 1852.
"The mostly abandoned Rich Bar today," photograph by Devon Blunden, 2008. Larger.
The wild, outdoor life of California's gold camps wasn't for everyone. But to those that appreciated the landscape—as well as the company—it could provide a rich source of contentment.
Sometime "mineress" and full-time letter writer Dame Shirley—nom de plume of Louise Amelia Clappe—grew fond of life in the mines, a fondness underlying this nostalgic letter addressed to sister Molly.
My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret. The solemn fir trees, "whose slender tops are close against the sky" here, the watching hills, and the calmly beautiful river seem to gaze sorrowfully at me. Beloved, unconventional wood-life, divine Nature, into whose benign eyes I never looked, whose many voices, gay and glad, I never heard in the artificial heart of a bury world—I quit your serene teachings for a restless and troubled future. Yes, Molly, smile if you will at my folly; but I go from the mountains with a deep heart sorrow. I look kindly to this existence, which to you seems so sordid and mean. Here, at least, I have been contented.
Dame Shirley's letters—written in 1851 and 1852—were published in San Franscisco's Pioneer magazine in 1854.
"Washing in Rockers," illustration for The Shirley Letters, by T.C. Russel, 1922. Larger.
No matter how bravely intrepid California pioneers endured hardship, they could be especially cheered when finding something familiar in the strange terrain of their new home.
Writing under the pseudonym "Dame Shirley," Louise Amelia Clappe published a series of letters from the California mines which describe for readers the rugged camp life of the forty-niners, including their occasional attempts to recreate something of far-away homes.
"Dame Shirley's" small head swam dizzily as she crept shudderingly by.
As we approached Indian Bar, the path led several times fearfully near deep holes from which the laborers were gathering their yellow harvest; and "Dame Shirley's" small head swam dizzily as she crept shudderingly by.
The first thing which attracted my attention, as my new home came into view, was the blended blue, red, and white of the American banner, undulating like a many-colored snake amid the lofty verdure of the cedars which garland the brown brow of the hill behind our cabin. This flag was suspended on the Fourth of July last, by a patriotic sailor who climbed to the top of the tree to which he attached it, cutting away the branches as he descended, until it stood among its stately brethren, a beautiful moss-wreathed Liberty pole, flinging to the face of Heaven the glad colors of the Free.
After "Dame Shirley" left the mines, she taught school in San Francisco for twenty-four years before retiring and moving to New York.
Our stereotype of the California forty-niner is a bewhiskered old sour-dough with rough manners and and a salty disposition. But what happens if a forty-niner is a woman?
Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe came to the California gold mines with her husband. In one of a number of letters written under the psuedonym "Dame Shirley," Clappe tells her sister Molly how truly melancholy is the trade of a "mineress."
"Gold in pan," photograph by Dennis Garrett, 1999. Larger.
Nothing of importance has happened since I last wrote you, except that I have become a mineress; that is, if the having washed a pan of dirt with my own hands, and procured therefrom $3.25 in gold dust (which I shall inclose in this letter), will entitle me to the name. I can truly say, with the blacksmith's apprentice as the close of his first day's work at the anvil, that "I am sorry I learned the trade"; for I wet my feet, tore my dress, spoilt a pair of new gloves, nearly froze my fingers, got an awful headache, took cold, and lost a valuable breastpin in this my labor of love. After such melancholy self-sacrifice on my part, I trust you will duly prize my gift. I can assure you that it is the last golden handiwork you will ever receive from "Dame Shirley."
Dame Shirley's letters—written in 1851 and 1852—were published in San Franscisco's Pioneer magazine in 1854.
Amputation Surgery Set by H. G. Kern, c. 1850. Courtesy, Dr. Michael Echols, Larger.
Bad enough that most California gold miners never struck it rich. Some died of diseases like cholera or by grisly accidents in the minefields. But once in a while these dreadful injuries could be at least partially healed.
Louise Amelia Clappe, the wife of a physician living near the California goldmines, wrote letters about the mines to her sister under the pseudonym "Dame Shirley." Here, Clappe tells us about her husband saving a nearly fatally wounded young man.
There has been quite an excitement here for the last week, on account of a successful amputation having been performed upon the person of a young man . . . He was thinking seriously of returning to Massachusetts with what he had already gained, when in the early part of last May, a stone unexpectedly rolling from the top of Smith's Hill—on the side of which he was mining—crushed his leg in the most shocking manner. Naturally enough, the poor fellow shrank with horror from the idea of an amputation here in the mountains; it seemed absolutely worse than death. . . . An attack of typhoid fever reduced him to a state of great weakness, which was still further increased by erysipelas—a common complaint in the mountains—in its most virulent form; the latter disease settling in the fractured leg, rendered a cure utterly hopeless. A few weeks since, [my husband] was called in to see him. He decided immediately that nothing but an amputation would save him. . . . Thank God, the result was most triumphant!
Clappe's letters were originally published by the magazine The Pioneer in 1854 and republished in 1922 as The Shirley Letters.
Forty Niners in California included some of the most cultured and civilized of Americans. Local conditions, however, encoraged them to lower their standards.
New Englander Louise Amelia Clappe—known by her pen name of Dame Shirley—arrived at the Sierra mining camp of Rich Bar, she was torn between shock and admiration for local profanity, which she recorded in a letter to her sister.
Only once let me get hold of your beggarly carcase once, and I will use you up so small that God Almighty himself cannot see your ghost!
I think that I have never spoken . . . of the mournful extent to which profanity prevails in California. You know that at home it is considered vulgar for a gentleman to swear; but I am told that here, it is absolutly the fashion, and that people who never uttered an oath in their lives while in the "States," now clothe themselves by saying that it is a careless habit, into which they have glided imperceptibley, from having been compelled to associate so long with the vulgar and the profane; that it is a mere slip of the tongue, which means absolutely nothing, etc. . . .
Some of these expressions, were they not so fearfully blasphemous, would be grotesquely sublime. For instance, not five minutes ago, I heard two men quarrelling in the street, and one said to the other, "Only once let me get hold of your beggarly carcase once, and I will use you up so small that God Almighty himself cannot see your ghost!"
Dame Shirley's "Letter Sixth" is dated September 30, 1851.
Gold Rush life in California often required forty-niners to adjust to some pretty primitive living arrangements. But for Louise Amelia Clappe, who came to the diggings with her husband, conditions were not so bad as they appeared.
An easterner, Clappe wrote a series of letters to her sister, describing life in California's gold country, and they describe, among other things, a life of domestic ingenuity aimed at making life more comfortable on the frontier.
How shall I ever be able to content myself to live in a decent, proper, well-behaved house, where toilet tables are toilet tables and not an ingenious combination of trunk and claret cases, where lanterns are not broken bottles, book cases not candle boxes, and trunks not wash-stands, but every article of furniture, instead of being a make-shift, is its own useful and elegantly finished self, I am sure I do not know. However, when too much appalled at the hum-drumish prospect, I console myself with the beautiful promises, "that sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,and "as thy day is, so shall thy strength be," and trust that when it is again my lot to live amid the refinements and luxuries of civilization, I shall endure them with becoming philosophy and fortitude.
First published in a San Francisco literary magazine under the nom de plume, Dame Shirley, Clappe's letters were eventually gathered into a book in 1922, providing readers with one of our most finely-observed descriptions of gold rush California.
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