"Bins and Babies," illustration for 920 O'Farrell St, 1937. Larger.
When you think of your family tree, who do you include? Your children? Your spouse? Perhaps a grandparent? For early San Franciscan emigrants, the family tree had branches stretching across oceans.
Every man had foreign relatives grafted upon his family tree. They were an ever-present menace. No man might say, "We are five," confident that his family would be regulated by natural processes. If he believed himself secure, a letter might already be on the way from a village in Germany announcing the departure of a daughter or son with his home as a destination. [...]"You will love our little Huldah who is coming to you, a sweet, amiable girl, but with no suitable prospect for marriage in our town," Aunt Mathilda explained. One was helpless. [...] The amiable girl was already on the ocean, or, worse, on the train and protest would profit nothing. When she arrived, it was unconscious and expectant, as if in answer to urgent invitation. [...] Nobody dreamed of sending a poor relative back to [her] village; each in his heart agreed to his obligation to provide for [her].
By the time Harriet Lane Levy published 920 O'Farrell Street in 1947,she had met Picasso and Matisse, survived the San Francisco earthquake, befriended Alice Toklas and Gertrude Stein and celebrated her eightieth birthday.
"The Bay Window," Illustration for 920 O'Farrell St, 1937. Larger.
No matter how slight our connections to those around us, habit and sentiment often find a way to create unlikely if formal relationships. As California writer Harriet Lane Levy shows us, such relationships often last for decades.
In her memoir, 920 O'Farrell Street, Levy recalls the punctual as clock-work weekly arrival of an organ grinder, a visit that everyone in her family relished, especially her father.
Every Sunday for twenty years the organ-grinder lifted the straps from his shoulders, folded his legs at the edge of the sidewalk between 920 and 922, raised his large brown eyes, emptied of all recognition or petition, and turning the crank of his organ in the same slow circle, released his changeless repertoire. No matter where I was, in the back bedroom or kitchen, no matter what I was doing, the melodies of Il Travatore penetrated the walls, arresting my thoughts and my hands. . . . We never spoke to him, but before the hammer had hit the anvil a dozen strokes, Mother sent Maggie Doyle down to the street with a dime which sentiment never enlarged to fifteen cents nor surfeit ever reduced to five. Father grew into the portliness of the prosperous merchant, and the beard of the organ-grinder grizzled with age, but every Sunday Father opened his window, even when it rained, so as not to miss the "Anvil Chorus."
Harriet Lane Levy worked at The Wave with Jack London and Frank Norris, and she joined American ex-patriots in Paris. She published her memoir of growing up in San Francisco in 1937, when she was 80 years old.
"The four species of common household roaches," drawn by Snodgrass, United States Department of Agriculture, date unknown. Larger. Make cockroaches go away.
Kids see everything differently than adults do, especially when they're looking at creatures from an unknown and mysterious world.
In her memoir of growing up in nineteenth century San Francisco, Harriet Lane Levy fondly recalled strange creatures that arrived for nightly visits.
As if at a preconcerted signal, down from the ceiling, up from the cellar, along spaceless cracks between range and wall, came the caravan of flat black bugs to the evening gathering. Their coming was enveloped in mystery as dark as their black surfaces. Where did they come from? How did they get here? What did they want? How did they know that the guard had been romoved? Why did they come only at night like burglars? Why did they come when, after they were there, they did nothing but move about hither and thither? Mystery upon mystery, and no answer anywhere or at any time. I asked Mother. Her only answer was a kettle full of hot water, which she poured upon them. That was no answer; that only increased the wonder. At the first touch of water they were gone as they had come, by the same invisible avenues, to the same unknown destination. . . . Why did Mother pour hot water on them when she did not even know why they came and what they wanted?
"Why mustn't I tell anybody that we have cockroaches?" I asked Mother.
"Do you think it is something to be proud of, to have cockroaches in your kitchen?" Mother asked.
I did. I liked them, but I was afraid to say so.
Harriet Lane Levy published 920 O'Farrell Street: A Jewish Girlhood in Old San Francisco in 1947, decades after the events she describes.
"Market Street, San Francisco, California," from Robert N. Dennis collection of stereoscopic views, 1860-1907, 1900. Larger.
As San Francisco matured, it took on some of the trappings of an uptight, Victorian age, but despite all that, there was always potential for unexpected romance.
Harriet Lane Levy grew up in San Francisco in the 1880's. One of her fondest memories is of the intrigues of Saturday night promenades.
On Saturday night the city joined in the prommade on Market Street, the broad thoroughfare that begins at the water front and cuts its straight path of miles to Twin Peaks. . . .
Every quarter of the city discharged its residents into the broad procession. Ladies and gentlemen of imposing social repute; their German and Irish servant girls, arms held fast in the arms of their sweethearts; French, Spaniards, gaunt, hard-working Portuguese; Mexicans, the Indian showing in reddened skin and high cheekbone—everybody, anybody, left home and shop, hotel, restaurant, and beer garden to empty into Market Street in a river of color. Sailors of every nation deserted their ships at the water front and, hurrying up Market Street in groups, joined the vibrating mass excited by the lights and stir and the gaiety of the throng. "This is San Francisco," their faces said. It was carnival; no confetti, but the air a criss-cross of a thousand messages; no masks but eyes frankly charged with challenge. Down Market from Powell to Kearny, three long blocks, up Kearny to Bush, three short ones, then back again, over and over for hours, until a glance of curiosity deepened to one of interest; interest expanded into a smile, and a smile into anything.
below to hear radio segment.
