Calico Palace (47 page)

T
HE NEW CALICO PALACE
opened on the evening of Saturday, September first, 1849. The opening was grand and noisy and destructive. Hundreds of men charged through, in joyous but not gentle mood. They cracked the mirrors, they whittled on the card tables, they broke half the glassware at the bar, and they left behind them a trail of gold dust so thick that Marny likened it to that other dust outdoors.

In the morning, looking over the wreckage, Marny and Norman were not dismayed. Most of the havoc had taken place in the big public room on the ground floor. They had equipped this room with furnishings they expected to be destroyed, and had kept better in reserve. By evening they had hung new mirrors, replaced the nicked tables, put more cups and tumblers at the bar, and doubled the price of drinks.

Nobody minded. The men thronged in and brought their gold dust with them. Where would they find a better place to spend it? The Calico Palace was the most sumptuous building in San Francisco. It was not well built, for Dwight Carson had not had enough workmen nor enough time, but it was bright and warm and gaudy, and this was what they wanted.

The Calico Palace was three stories high, with gambling rooms on the two lower floors and living quarters on the third. Here lived Marny, Norman, Rosabel, Duke Blackbeard and Lulu, Troy Blackbeard and Lolo and their baby, Zack. None of them had much space or much comfort, but they were better off than most people and glad of it.

The public room, opening on the street, had tables for monte, faro, twenty-one; a roulette wheel, and a game of chuck-a-luck. At one side was a platform, on which an orchestra blared forth what passed for music on the plaza. Across the back was the bar, where Chad presided, assisted by several other barmen. Ten chandeliers hung from the ceiling beams, and on the walls mirrors threw the light back and forth in an endless glitter. Between the mirrors hung paintings of pretty women in various stages of revealment. None of them was wholly undressed. Marny and Norman had agreed that a little drapery was more interesting to the customers; as Marny said, it gave them something to look forward to.

There were also two pictures of scenery, both by Bruno Gregg. One was his picture of the sawmill; the other showed men panning gold among the rocks in a river. As Kendra had foretold, the men did like these pictures. Those who had not yet been up to the gold country were curious about it, while men who had already been there were glad to show their superior knowledge by explaining details. The men who most enjoyed this were the “old miners”—those who had been here before ’49. Norman said grumpily that the Forty-eighters and the Forty-niners were like the Bourbons and the Bonapartes.

Any man could come into the public room and stay as long as he did not make a nuisance of himself. He could bet any sum he pleased, small or large, buy drinks and cigars at the bar or not buy them. This room was a bright and tempting place, a refuge from the fogs and sea winds, and from the tents and flophouses where most men had to live. They crowded it every evening.

This was as much of the Calico Palace as most of them ever saw. To take part in the upstairs revelry a man had to have abundant gold and he had to be willing to part with it. Marny called the upper rooms the sky parlors, and explained, “We get only the most aristocratic sinners there.”

The main parlor was a room about half the size of the public room. The rest of the second floor was divided into small rooms that men could rent for private games. Like the public room, the main parlor had a bar, and mirrors, and game tables, and pictures of women. But here the bar was less dusty, the barmen more mannerly, and the drinks more expensive. Here the play was quieter and the stakes in general higher. And here a man could be sure of seeing at least one live woman—Marny at her card table, Rosabel playing the piano, Lulu or Lolo helping tend the bar. They never all took a rest at the same time.

The girls did not appear in the public room. They were too precious to be wasted there. The
Alta
had said that during the month of August, the Forty-niners entering by the Golden Gate had shown an imbalance of the sexes even higher than usual—eighty-seven women and nearly four thousand men. Clearly, said Norman, men who wanted to look at women—especially pretty women—ought to pay for it.

They paid, willingly. “Some of them,” Marny told Kendra, “just stand at the bar and buy drinks and
look
at us. They don’t gamble, they don’t talk. They just look, until they’ve bought so many drinks they’re seeing us double and I suppose they figure they’re getting twice their money’s worth.”

“Don’t they ever try to handle you?” Kendra asked.

“Oh yes, but we always have guards on duty and pretty soon they learn it’s not allowed.” Marny added that a guard stood at the door, and a man who had once made trouble in the parlor had a hard time getting in again. “But usually,” she went on, “it’s remarkable how respectful they are. Most of them ask us to marry them. Some men propose marriage every time they come in. Poor fellows, they’re so lonesome for women. I feel sorry for them. But not sorry enough to marry them. We’re doing fine. And my dear,” Marny continued happily, “we’re getting the
best
people. Dwight Carson comes up often, and all the rich traders. Even Mr. Chase has been in once or twice. And you may be surprised, but we also have Mr. Fenway.”

Kendra was surprised, and said so.

“Mr. Fenway likes music,” said Marny. “When Rosabel plays he brings a chair near the piano, and he does enjoy it. When he’s listening to the piano he looks more cheerful than I’ve ever seen him anywhere else.”

“Doesn’t he ever gamble?”

“Yes, sometimes he plays roulette. He doesn’t drink much. Several of our best patrons don’t drink much. I wish we had your cakes and cheese rolls again.”

She said they liked to have such a solid citizen as Mr. Fenway. He gave tone to the parlor. Because of this, one evening when Mr. Fenway did go to the bar for a drink Norman told the bartender to serve it without charge, but Mr. Fenway declined the favor. He was a self-respecting man, he said sternly, and preferred to pay his way. The bartender poured the drink, and Mr. Fenway handed him the price, solemnly saying, “Thank you, steward.”

In San Francisco, bartenders and waiters and doormen were always addressed as “Steward.” They preferred this term, and when you were lucky enough to have a man serve you in any way, you treated him with respect. Besides, back home he might have been a lawyer or a teacher or an architect. San Francisco had a vast over-supply of educated men. California was a long way from every other town in the civilized world. By land or sea this long journey was expensive. A banker was more likely to have the price than a ditch digger. Also, once they got here, men used to hard labor usually went to the mines and stayed there. Men of learning, while they often went to dig gold, were likely to come back soon, full of aches and blisters, to look for a less painful way of getting rich. They learned to drive mules or mix drinks, and made more money than they had ever made at their desks back home. Bookshops flourished, and half the men employed in the Calico Palace were college graduates.

Among her applicants for work Marny had met two or three gentlemen from Philadelphia, who recognized her as the professor’s wayward daughter. Kendra said to her, “They are probably going to spread word of where you came from. Do you mind?”

With a smile, Marny looked at her squarely. “Do you think I should?”

“No,” said Kendra. “I think you have as much right to live your way as other people have to live theirs.”

“Thanks,” said Marny. “I thought you’d say that.” She shrugged. “I don’t think anybody will care anyway.”

Loren confirmed this. He said men who heard of Marny’s background were interested for ten minutes, but few of them for longer than this. Marny was a skillful, straight-playing, and amusing redhead who dealt cards. This was what they cared about.

But while Marny was content, Rosabel was less so. Marny told Kendra that Rosabel was in love with Norman and wanted to marry him; while Norman, fond as he was of Rosabel, did not intend to tie himself down to her or anybody else. “I’ve told her and told her,” said Marny. “Still she keeps hoping.”

Marny herself continued to receive proposals of marriage and continued to shrug them off. Never had Kendra heard her express any interest in getting married.

Marny’s interests centered around the plaza. The plaza was dirty and rowdy and full of smells, but it was one of the most exciting spots in the world and Marny was glad she was here.

The best of the resorts around the plaza were those on the Kearny Street side. Here you would see the Calico Palace and another casino called Denison’s Exchange. Here was the Parker House, which in spite of its cloth walls and all-night racket brought in a monthly rent of a thousand ounces of gold; and the El Dorado, flashy and noisy but kept in order most of the time. On Kearny Street you could dine in the most excellent restaurants in town. In New York you might not have called them excellent. The plates were thick and heavy and usually chipped; instead of damask the tables were covered with oilcloth, which could be wiped off instead of laundered; for a napkin a man used his handkerchief (if he had one) or his shirt-tail.

But the food was good. The stewards offered you beef and ham and venison, veal cutlets, mutton chops, fish from the rivers and birds from the woods across the bay; potatoes and squash from Honolulu, and now in the fall, fresh grapes from the vineyards above the Golden Gate. You paid far more than you would have paid in New York, but on Kearny Street you expected this.

Where Kearny Street met Washington, on the corner opposite the El Dorado you would see another gambling house called the Verandah. If you turned here and climbed the plank sidewalk you would soon pass Blossom’s flower garden. Then you would come to more gambling houses not so well kept as those on Kearny Street—the Aguila del Oro, the St. Charles, and the Bella Union, rowdiest of them all. If a man wanted a really skittish evening (and did not mind the risk of a shooting spree) he could buy a ticket to a “grand fancy ball” at the Bella Union. At the ball he could sample the fanciest drinks and meet the fanciest of the girls who had come across the Isthmus from New York and New Orleans. Next morning his head would be so fuzzy that he could rarely describe just what had happened, but men who had been there always spoke of the goings-on at the Bella Union as “extraordinary.”

But if you walked on, past the Bella Union, before long you would observe that Washington Street was getting quieter, and beginning to behave itself. You might have said the change came at a half-and-half building called Washington Hall. As you would expect, this building had a saloon on the ground floor. But on the second floor was a room that sober citizens rented for sober reasons—to raise funds for sick men, or to discuss the proposed State Constitution, which they hoped would make California a state of the Union.

Above Washington Hall was the office of the
Alta California,
and this building was one of the best structures in town. Beyond this you would pass stores selling clothes and books and musical instruments. Then, as you went on up the hill toward Stockton Street, you would come to the neighborhood of little square white houses. This was where Kendra and Loren lived, and Mr. and Mrs. Chase, and other people who rarely took part in the doings around the plaza.

The plaza itself was a mess. The whole square was cluttered with bricks and lumber, bales of goods, and walls of readymade houses piled up and waiting for workmen to put them together. In the plaza somebody was always shouting. On weekdays the auctioneers offered their goods, on Sundays a preacher mounted a barrel and loudly warned his hearers about their sins.

Early in October, Loren told Kendra that since Pollock would not sell the
Cynthia,
the town council had bought the brig
Euphemia
to be used as a jail. Kendra remembered this brig. Just in from Monterey, the
Euphemia
had been one of the two seagoing vessels she had seen in the bay the day the
Cynthia
brought her to San Francisco. The other had been the
Eagle
from China. Only two of them, and look at the bay now! Less than two years ago, but it felt like a long, long time. In San Francisco things happened so fast, time did not
seem
like time. No more than gold dust seemed like money.

The
Cynthia
was still anchored in the bay, useless. Pollock still walked up and down the waterfront, watching her. She was dying and he was sick with grief, but he would not save her in the only way she could be saved.

While she had small sympathy for Pollock, Kendra was glad to talk about him and take her mind off herself. For the past few days she had been feeling droopy. At first she had thought it was because the baby was getting heavier, but she noticed that other people complained of feeling droopy too. They blamed it on the weather. They said October weather had never been like this.

The afternoon winds had stopped. For days now the fog had lain thick and unrelieved. Even outdoors the air was stuffy like the air in a room long unopened. The morning after Loren brought her the news about the
Euphemia,
the fog was so heavy when they woke up that Kendra exclaimed, “It’s like living in a bowl of milk!”

Loren called to Serena to bring a cup of coffee to warm Kendra before she got out of bed, and he told Ralph to light the brazier in the parlor. By the time he and Ralph left for work Kendra was as comfortable as she could possibly be, on the parlor sofa with several new books at her elbow. Serena came in to say she had meant to do some laundry this morning, but she didn’t think she should because in this heavy gray weather the clothes would never get dry. As she spoke, they heard a splashy noise. Kendra looked around with a start. “Why Serena, is that
rain?”

It certainly was rain. No spatter this, but a roaring storm lashing the house in fury. Kendra was astonished. She had never heard of a storm in San Francisco so early in the fall. As she hurried to close the front windows she saw that already the dust was turning to soft thick mud, creeping downhill toward the plaza.