No one is surprised when the Golden State inspires a bit of hyperbole from those who visit here. Even so, the wise traveller does well to check that impulse to exaggerate.
Humorist Kate Sanborn toured California in the 1890s, and even though she posed as a "truthful woman," she still wasn't always as discrete as she claimed.
I hear that at Catalina the goats, deprived of their natural pabulum of hoop-skirts, tomato cans, and old shoes, feed on clover and drink the dew.
That's what this climate does for a goat. I do not dare to make many statements in regard to novelties in natural history since one poor woman poetized upon the coyote "howling" in the desert, and roused hundreds of critics to deny that coyotes ever howled. And a scientific student came to Santa Barbara not so long ago, and found on one of these islands a species of tailless fox, and hastened to communicate the interesting anomaly to the Smithsonian Institute. It seems that the otter hunters trapped these foxes for their tails, then let them go.
If it were not for these blunders I would state that roosters seem to keep awake most of the night in Southern California, and can be heard crowing at most irregular hours. Considering the risks, I refrain.
"Kate Sanborn," frontispiece for My Favorite Lectures of Long Ago…, 1898. Larger.
There's nothing to rival our heavenly constellations seen vividly from a California mountain-top, especially when you look down to see them.
Recalling a trip to the summit of Mount Wilson, humorist Kate Sanborn imagined that from the summit of a "topsy-turvey" southern California mountain, the night sky stretched out below.
An hour after sunset our camp-fire is lighted. As we stand by it, the horizon seems to have retired for the night. There is continuous sky, shading without a break into the shadows below. Gazing dreamily down, I am startled by the flashing forth of a hundred brilliant stars from what was the valley below. They disappear for a moment and then blaze out and become a permanent constellation. These stars are too numerous to resemble any known constellation. I concluded after a little that the mighty Orion had drawn his sword and slain the Great Bear; that the lion had rashly interfered and his carcass had been dragged to that of the bear, and that the exhausted Orion had thrown himself wearily upon them to rest. And there are the Pleiades close by; with feminine curiosity they have come as near as they dared, to see what it is all about.
Those wishing a scientific explanation of these phenomena must consult the Pasadena Electric Lighting Company, except as to the stray Pleiades, which seem to have some connection with the lights of the Raymond Hotel. . . .
You will note that I have abstained from hauling the sun above the eastern Sierras in the morning, and from tucking it under the Pacific at night. This rearrangement of ponderous constellations is all that my strength and my other engagements will permit. Those who want to know the glories of the sunset and moonlight must climb Mt. Wilson themselves.
"Greetings and Welcome to Every Reader," frontispiece from Memories and Anecdotes, 1893. Larger.
Southern California is justly renowned for the warmth of its golden sunshine. But if you stay there long, you'll still want a good pair of long johns.
On an 1890s visit, humorist Kate Sanborn found much to admire in Riverside, though she was a bit unnerved by the climate.
I experienced a very sudden change from a warm delightful morning to an afternoon so penetrating by cold that I really suffered during a drive, although encased in the heaviest of Jaeger flannels, a woolen dress, and a heavy wrap. I thought of the rough buffalo coat my uncle, a doctor, used to put on when called out on a winter night in New Hampshire, and wished I was enveloped in something like it, with a heated freestone for feet and a hot potato for each hand. If I can make my readers understand that these sudden changes make flannels necessary, and that one needs to be as careful here as in Canada as regards catching cold from night air and these unexpected rigors, I shall feel, as the old writers used to say, "that I have not written entirely in vain."
In one day you can sit under the trees in a thin dress and be too warm if the sun is at its best, and then be half frozen two hours later if the wind is in earnest and the sun has retired. In the sun, Paradise; in shade, protect yourself!
California's natural wonders have inspired some of our greatest writers, men and women who often accept that their work will never equal the grandeur of their subject. Less talented wordsmiths, however, sometimes don't quite grasp their limitations.
New England humorist Kate Sanborn published A Truthful Woman in Southern California in 1893. Filled with advice for the tourist, Sanborn also showed how difficult describing California landscape could be—by relating her experience of a lecture she attended.
No one can paint the sky; no one would accept it as true to nature if once caught on the canvas.
I will not attempt to describe the mountains with their many charms. I listened to a lecture lately where a man was struggling to do this, and it was positively painful. The flowery verbiage, the accumulated adjectives, the poetical quotations were overpowering. I seemed actually sinking into luscious mellifluousness. I shook it off my fingers, as if it were maple syrup. Then, as he climbed higher and higher, on and up, never getting away from the richest verdure and the sweetest flowers, scenes for an artist to paint with rapture, and a poet to sing in ecstasy, I found myself pushing up my forehead to improvise a mansard roof for my brain to swell in sympathy. And when he reached the summit and the panorama burst upon his enraptured vision, it was too much for my strained emotions, and I quietly slipped out.
And the strangest part is that every word is true, and, say what one will, one never gets near the reality. In this respect, you see, it differs from a floral catalogue sent out in early spring, or a hotel pamphlet with illustrations.
Sanborn had a special regard for Pasadena, but her book also relates her experiences of other southern California places, including San Bernardino, Riverside, and Santa Barbara.
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