gence photos on Flickr

A rmainder of the fence that was once here. Today this is a nature reserve, in the early 20th century the land above this fence post was farmed, the fence kept grazing animals off. Below is chalk downland.

Harper's Weekly, May 12, 1906 by dougsf

Photo caption

The "Stew-line"--Making Stew from Wash-boilers for Homeless and Hungry Refugees.

SAN FRANCISCO’S TRAGIC DAWN

By Gertrude Atherton

Author of "Rulers of Kings," "The Splendid Idle Forties," etc., etc.

UNFORTUNATELY for the lovers of sensational personal details, I was not in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake, but across the bay in Berkeley and although the shock was no doubt quite as severe here, it was accompanied by no horrifying details. It hit the house I live in—a well-built frame one—a tremendous thump; then, accompanied by the usual roar, the earth leaped, twisted, seemed to swing in all directions at once. At first I remained in bed, thinking it was merely an unusually severe earthquake, one which would finish as quickly as it came. But when, after a lull of a full fraction of a second, it seemed to have taken breath for a still more violent leaping and twisting and jarring, I began to wonder if it was going to stop at all—I can see no reason why an earthquake should not go on for several days-and got up and stood in the doorway. This, by the way, no matter how hardened one may be in the matter of earthquakes, should always be done, if onlv to protect the eyes from falling plaster. As soon as it was over I looked out in the street, and, as I had imagined, it was suddenly full of men—bachelors in their nightclothes, un-derclothes, bath-gowns. It was several minutes before I saw a woman out. This is a phenomenon I have always noticed in earth-quakes. Once, when I was a child, I was standing on third- story landing of a hotel, watching a couple whose devotion had been a matter of comment for some lime. A hard earthquake came, and the man was down the three flights before it was over. I shall never forget how the woman laughed. I do not pretend to understand the phenomenon. Perhaps it is because men have a greater apprecia-tion of danger, more probably because it takes matrimony to develop their sense of responsibility.

After I dressed l concluded to go over to San Francisco and to the island of Belvedere in the bav to see how my various relatives had fared. I will confess lo un-easiness, for islands have gone down. and earthquakes always assault San Francisco with concentrated viciousness-and this was by alI odds not only the longest, but the most vicious earthquake we have ever experienced. No other word will de-scribe it; there was something so personal and determined in its attack, and in the general exhibition of its powers. It dis-played as many va-rieties of motion as it could ,crowd into twenty eight seconds and the mystery of it is that a shock of such tremendousness should have stopped so abruptly. lf any one thinks twenty- eight seconds is a short time, let hjm hold his breath or his pulse for that space -or experience an earthquake of the same duration. I would have staked my last possession- not knowing at the time how little in the way of personal belongings I had to slake, for my "things" were in town—that it lasted a minute.

On the way to San Francisco I heard talk of the city being on fire, but paid no attention, as there are always wild reports after any catastrophe. But when the boat was well out in the bay, and l had just satisfied myself that Belvedere stood, I saw two great blazes ahead, and for the first lime l ceased to look upon the earthquake with the jocularity which is “de rigueur" with the born-and-bred Californian. My sister and her husband, Ash-ton Stevens, lived on the lop floor of the Occidental Hotel. and I had imagined myself joking the former upon her survival. for I have never met any one that has less liking for earth-quakes.

They let us land. Before the ferry is a wide street. It was

lumpy and sunken. On the other side was a curtain of fire and smoke. As far to the right and the left as I could see there was no egress and no end. But there was no confusion. I went up to a policeman and asked him how l could get up lo the Occidental Hotel-which was perhaps a quarter of a mile from the ferry and directly ahead.

“The Occidental!" he exclaimed, as if lie thought I was mad. "Why, you can’t.”

"But there must be some way,'' l replied. ''And I want to get there."

"Well. you can't," he said. '' For I won't let you. Everybody is out of it and gone before this. Take care of your own life. and get out of this." So I tried lo go to Belvedere. There was no boat running: Nobody knew when one would run, and as it looked as if the blaze across the way would reach the wharves immediate-ly, I concluded to go back to Berkelev. When I bought my ticket I mechanically asked for a re-turn, and the clerk demanded glumly, "Do you think there will be any citv to return to?'' That was onlv an hour and a half after the earthquake, but they knew that there were many fires and that the water-mains had burst.

All that day the news was indefinite and conflicting. At night the sight of the burning city was appalling. Nobody slept. The very few who dozed off were awakened immediately by the explosions. The next day no one was allowed to go to the city, and there is no other regular way of reaching Bel-vedere: but in the afternoon [ managed to hire a launch and reached the island in about three hours. The city, as I passed it, seemed blazing from end to end. Over it hung an im-mense pall of smoke, set with a blood-red ball where the sun looked through. The air was full of cin-ders. Fairmount. the new marble hotel on the highest hill, poured up volumes of white smoke from the top alone. while the hundreds of windows were like plates of bras. As we reached the middle of the bay and faced the northern hills of the city I saw a wave of fire roll down and against the wind. By this time it was dark, and there was no other craft moving on the great bay. The islands looked black. All life and movement seemed to concentrate in the flaming city-and even from that there came no sound. Impersonally, it was a great sight.

On the island I found little damage done, although they had not dared to make fires and were eating out-of-doors. We had news of the fire’s progress and the terrible condition of the people from day to day, but it was three days before I could get any news of the rest of my family and friends. Then I heard that the former had escaped from San Francisco on the third day-in a milk-wagon as far as the ferry—and were in Oakland. They had slept on a hill above the city the first night-four on one mat-tress, which my brother-in-law had dragged and carried, Heaven knows how many blocks. His experience had been a fearful one. The Occidental is on what is known as "made ground "-that part of the city which was filled in many years ago, that the boats might not have to anchor beyond shallow water. This ground always shakes with unusual severity, and the Occidental was an old-fashioned building. Everything in my brother-in-law’s rooms, including the cornices and a part of the roof, came down in a succession of crashes, and a dictionary flew from one room into another. He held my sister in the doorway and saw day-light through the roof. Above the crashing of falling objects in every part of the big hotel, the dropping of skylights and tons of plaster, he could hear the screaming of women. It must have been pandemonium, and the plaster dust got into the eyes and made it almost impossible to see. When it was over he caught up his overcoat and a pair of boots, and my sister her opera-coat. They picked their way through plaster and glass, in some cases a foot deep, out of the hotel into the street. There they were obliged to hug the wall, as the trolley wires were down and sparking. They sat for some time in Portsmouth Square, and then re-turned to the hotel for clothes-the Square, by the way, was crowded with Chinamen, who were much amused at the sight of my sister in a nightgown, pink opera-cloak, and her husband's boots. They found their rooms dark from the smoke of the al-ready burning city, but managed to get some necessary things together before the second shock came and sent them out again. After the first shock there was no screaming and no particular excitement. Everybodv seemed dazed, horror-stricken; their faces, it is said, expressed the belief that the end of the world had come. One woman told me that when she had managed to get her chil-dren to the front door and saw the waves and fissures in Van Ness Avenue she wished that another shock would come and end it all; She had no desire to live with such a memory. Shortly after, the automobiles began to tear by with the ill, and the wounded, and the manacled; and then they were ordered to leave that the house might be dynamited. Nearly every friend I have was burned out. The park and Presidio were full those first nights of women in opera-cloaks-they had been to "Carmen" the night before---and to-day, millionaires are standing in the" bread line" with Chinamen and laborers. There never has been such a level-er. Socialism and anarchy are meaningless words out here. Nobody has any ready money, to speak of, and the banks cannot be opened. I had exactly $4 50 in my purse. Two days later I managed to get $25 from a country bank, and to-day, in despair, I telegraphed to my New York bankers to send me money by registered mail. And I am far better off than many, who are wealthier but have their all out here.

But, in a sense, little money is needed. Organization began almost before the earthquake stopped. Red Cross ambulances and automobiles were flying about, car-loads and ship-loads of food were on the way, and these cities "across the bay" literally opened their arms. Never has there been a finer exhibition of the good in human nature, for it- is one thing to subscribe what you can afford, and another to take strangers into your house for weeks and perhaps months. This, thousands have done and are expressing their desire for more, while the relief work in San Francisco, under Mayor Schmitz and Mr. Phelan, is as systematic as if earthquakes and fires that devoured four square miles of a city were part of the yearly routine. There have been few cases of extortion reported; personally I have only heard of two. One was the case of a leading firm of grocers, who immediately put famine prices on everything. General Funston turned them out, closed them up, and put a sentry before the door'. The other case was a personal experience, but I have been requested to withhold it until the excitement is over lest the man be lynched. But these exceptions dwindle and disappear before the abounding kindness and helpfulness of hundreds of thousands, some homeless. but willing to share an asparagus stalk, others more fortunate and almost ashamed of being so. I have never had much respect for the intelligence of the pessimist, and since this spontaneous exhibition of human nature I have the profoundest contempt for a tribe for whom civilization and all its resources have done so little. I doubt if there is a variety of the Anglo-Saxon race, no matter what its hyper-civilization or frivolity, that would have acted differently under the same terrible strain as this to which the people of California have been so suddenly and so terribly subjected. There is no such thing as absolute selfishness, unless it is a case for the alienist, and although it may take Nature at her worst to surprise the fundamental generosity into visible and unashamed activity, it is a poor analyst--or an affected and meanly ambitious one--who cannot discern it without the aid of an earthquake.

The hope and animation, the eager interest in the future, the delight in the idea of the beautiful San Francisco that shall arise from the ashes, which one finds on every side, are not so surprising, for we are a buoyant race out here, perhaps because of the climate, perhaps because we are born gamblers. There is au old saying that you can knock a Californian down, but that you cannot keep him on his back five seconds. I will confess that on the first day, when there was little hope that any of the city would be saved, and horror was in the very air, I recalled a conversation I had had with Mr. Phelan a few days before. He had sent me a book of the Burnham plans—plans which, if carried out, ·would make San Francisco, a picturesquely ugly and shabby city incomparably situated, as beautiful as Athens in the height of her glory; and I was lamenting that I had not millions enough to do it all myself.

"But," said Mr. Phelan, "how could you wake all these people up? How would you ever get all those signs off Market Street, all those hideous rows of houses out of the way? You couldn't even persuade their owners to put new facades on them. It will take fifty years.”.

And then Nature stepped in. She employed an unpleasant method, but she disposed of the signs and about three-fourths of the buildings. I went over the city to-day. It is the Forum and the Palatine Hill on a colossal scale; miles of walls, arches, solitary columns; hills that look like cemeteries, where a few days ago a people that was learning to be as frivolous as older communities and losing all individuality, was entertaining in some of the most sumptuous houses in the world. There is a touch of romance about those hills and valleys of shattered palaces, for many, when they Raw the hopelessness of fighting the flames, excavated and buried their treasures. How they will find them is another matter, for never was there a city so shorn of its landmarks. Nor is it a pleasant place to search for treasure at present. I was in a semi-demolished corner grocery-store, seated on a counter, very tired from a tramp and waiting for a promised automobile, when two severe shocks came and threw down several tottering walls.

The probabilities are, judging from a pretty full history of earth-quakes, that the worst was over with the first shock; but if it was not, and we are to be an earthquake centre, there is nothing to do but make the best of it and build accordingly. 'The "Class A" buildings, those with inner construction of steel, stood the earth-quake as a ship rides a storm; fire from short circuits can be avoided by enclosing the wires in pipes, and from torn flues by lining all chimneys with tin. Such horrors as the whole front falling out of a building and the upper stories sliding off. of houses dropping into their cellars, or twisting on their foundations, means nothing but criminal economy; and legislation can prevent a recurrence of the double disaster that has put an end to the fourth chapter of San Francisco's history.

But while we are all excited over the prospect of the new and "most beautiful city in America," there are few of us that were born and brought up here that will not regret the old San Fran-cisco, which, if ugly, was the most individual and interesting of cities, full of queer landmarks, traditions, and associations. Quite aside from sentiment, there has never been anything like it, and never will be again. A city constructed all on one plan may be a thing of beauty, but it can never have the richness of interest of a city that has grown from an Indian pueblo, through the days of Spanish dons and "Forty-niners," to a great cosmopolitan city with a bit of Hong-Kong in its middle and of Italy on its skirts; with old. shacks and "mansions" of the "fifties'' crowding the severe structures of stone and marble and brick, as modern as the "hustle" of its people. However, Nature, no doubt, was tired of our everlasting growling and took matters in her own hands with a completeness that leaves nothing to be desired-except that she might as well have taken the rest while she was about it. I have no doubt, though, that the fierce wave of reform will shame into emulation those householders at present congratulating them-selves, and then, five years from now, we will be the great show-place of the continent.

It is not to be denied that under all the buoyancy and activity, the hopefulness and vivid interest in the future, is an abiding sense of horror. Those that were in San Francisco during not only the earthquake, but the subsequent days of flight before fire, and who looked upon such scenes of death and despair and abom-inable desolation as in their well-ordered commonplace lives they had never dreamed of, must carry with them for many years a grim feeling of impotence and philosophy. Rich men must have received a mental shock comparable only to the earthquake itself, and socialists must have observed that Nature accomplished in twenty-eight seconds what they have failed to do in half a cen-tury. I do not see how it can do other than good. Frivolity, the most unpardonable and far-reaching of all vices, is at an end in San Francisco for years to come. Rich women, who have been cooking in the streets in an oven made from their fallen chimneys, and may have to do their own washing until frightened servants can be induced to return to the city, who have been confined with as little ceremony and shelter as the women of wandering tribes, and the men who stand in line for hours for their portion of bread and potatoes, look back upon the ordinary routine of their idle lives with a mixture of wonder and contempt. Old people, who vegetated in corners and feared draughts. are active and interested for the first time in a quarter of a century. Even dyspeptics are cured, for everybody, even the normally fed, is hungry all of the time. Everybody looks back upon the era'" before the earthquake" as a period of insipidity, and wonders how he managed to exist. If they are appalled at the sight of a civilization arrested and millions of property and still more to be lamented treasure gone up in smoke, they are equally aquivir with a renewed sense of individuality, of unsuspected forces they are keen to pit against Nature--that wanton brute in “whose face it is a supreme satis-faction to laugh—they feel all the half-terrified delight of the adventurer stepping upon unknown shores and into a problematical future. I can sug-gest

no better “cure” for those that live where Nature has practically forgotten them

and civilization has become as great a vice as too much virtue, in whom a narrow and prosperous life has bred pessimism and other forms of degeneracy, stunting the intelli-gence as well as atrophying the emotions, than to spend part of every year in an earth-quake country. They will find their chance not only to become completely rounded human beings, but will have a sense of being taken into partnership with Nature-which will enlarge any brain and vision. By and by they will despise all that have never been “up against" the great elementary forces that laugh at civilization and the affections, ambition, and mortal plans. From this extraordinary deindividualizing process man rises refreshed, wider awake, more deter-mined to conquer than ever before, and with a sense that if he has lived through that he is equal to worse in the future. Earth-quakes destroy one sort of conceit, but they give another. The analogy is in what persons that have "lived" feel for those that have merely existed.

Harper's Weekly, May 12, 1906 by dougsf

Photo caption: The Sort of "Shack" which spells "Home" for thousands of San Francisco's Refugees.