In California, fashion choices are almost as varied as our menu choices, though a little historical perspective reminds us that fashion freedom takes some getting used to.
Such was the case with that practical innovation in ladies wear known as bloomers, which writer and feminist reformer Eliza Farnham found particularly useful as she was helping to construct her new home near Santa Cruz. She describes the experience in her 1856 memoir, California, In-doors and Out.
. . . . My first participation in the labor of its erection was the tenanting of the joists and studding for the lower story, a work in which I succeeded so well that during its progress I laughed, whenever I paused for a few moments to rest, at the idea of promising to pay a man $14 or $16 per day for doing what I found my own hands so dexterous in. . . . I ought not to omit mentioning that I commenced my new business in the ordinary long dress, but its extreme inconvenience in displacing all the smaller tools, effacing lines, and flying in the teeth of the saw induced me, after the second day, to try the suit I had worn at home in gymnastic exercises. It is the same that has since become famous as the Bloomer, though then the name had not been heard of. When I had once put it on, I could never get back into skirts during working hours.
Though not actually designed by womens' advocate Amelia Bloomer, the innovative ladies garment was eventually given her name, well in time for Eliza Farnham to celebrate its usefulness for hard working pioneer ladies.
Writers as diverse as Mark Twain and Carey McWilliams have claimed a special quality for the people of California. Perhaps, like everything else, virtue grows large here.
Social reformer Eliza Farnham could be just as critical of human fraility as the next person, but even so she saw a special flowering of American virtue when planted in California soil.
In their native states, the Americans are practically a versatile people. There must be some new word found to express how inexhaustible their resources become in California. As counterpoise, however, to these facilities toward descent, which are more the result of external circumstances than of deep interior capacity for wrong, let us strengthen ourselves by remembering the good gifts and powers that are conjoined with them—the unfaltering energy—the self control—the personal courage, untainted except in certain sections by brutality—the quick sympathy that responds to the appeal of suffering—the resolute, steady, pressing forward toward cultivation and development which is a distinguishing purpose of the American and especially of the Yankee character, and the sublime patriotism which makes the American, whether humble or exalted—wise or ignorant—gentle or rude—under whatsoever skies he may sleep or wake—always and inalienably American.
A national character that embodies these vital attributes, is capable of self redemption any day, and California life, bowing under its load of humiliations and sins, may be likened to the bended shrub upon the summer margin of its streams, which we see borne down by their swollen and muddy winter currents. When the floods shall subside, they will recover their erect position and stand fair in the beauty and strength of health. So will our moral life, when these years of wintry disorder and lawless indulgence shall have passed over us, rise in beauty and harmony from their pressure.
Gold Rush pioneers faced daunting physical hardships, so daunting that only the moral strength of a good woman could set things right.
Eliza Farnham set off for California in 1849 to settle her deceased husband's estate. What she found when she got here convinced her of the moral superiority of women.
I have not yet spoken of what has always seemed to me the most shocking feature in this emigration—its effect on women and children. These are questions of far more importance than any influence it could exercise on men. . . .
In all that one sees of this phase of life, in this multifaced land, how clearly is evidenced the superior moral position of woman! Man may be never so coarse, gross, or selfish, yet, if his fireside be presided over by purity, uprightness, and integrity in his wife, there is an everflowing fountain of good to his children. Defile that, and there is no hope for the elevation of those who surround it. In her home, and fitted by virtue, intelligence, and energy, for its presiding spirit, woman has a power far surpassing any which man possesses, and which he cannot divide with her. Why should she seek to divide with him that which is as peculiarly his own?
San Francisco enjoys a reputation as one of the loveliest cities in the world, quite an accomplishment considering that it has, over the years, drawn consistently withering comments about its climate.
Title page from the first edition of California, In-doors and Out,1856. Larger.
After the death of her husband in 1848, Eliza Farnham came to California to settle his estate. She eventually settled in Santa Cruz, "that delightful spot" of which she wrote in her 1856 volume California, In-doors and Out. When it became necessary to travel to "that wretched place San Francisco," however, Farnham was moved to make a significant contribution to that city's climatological literature.
San Francisco, I believe, has the most disagreeable climate and locality of any city on the globe. If the winter be not unusually wet, there is some delightful weather to be enjoyed. If it be, you are flooded, and the rainy season closes to give place to what is miscalled summer—-a season so cold that you require more clothing than you did in January; so damp with fogs and mists that you are penetrated to the very marrow; so windy that if you are abroad in the afternoon it is a continual struggle. Your eyes are blinded, your teeth set on edge, and your whole person made so uncomfortable by the sand that has insinuated itself through your clothing, that you could not conceive it possible to feel a sensation of comfort short of a warm bath and shower. . . . What sort of end the unfortunates, who spend their lives there, can expect under such circumstances, one does not easily foresee.
After six years, Farnham returned to the East, where she continued to write and to help women come west. During the Civil War she also nursed soldiers wounded at Gettysburg.
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