“I hope to show the tintype to Captain Pusey, when it comes,” I said.
“Who perhaps will have a photograph of the bravo Klosters in his archive. I wonder if we will not find that Klosters is your menacing Mr. Brown.”
“Amelia Brittain told me that Beau McNair explained to her that redheaded Jewesses were the most popular of the parlorhouse women. I wonder if there is a particular one.”
“I suppose the topics of conversation of the younger generation will always be shocking to the older,” Bierce said. “Yes, that is grounds for investigation.”
“What do you think of Beau’s alibi?”
“The young man’s mother’s pet employee? Young McNair is not out of the forest by any means, but I don’t think he is the Morton Street Slasher.”
I warned myself not to become as obsessed with Beau McNair as Bierce was with the Southern Pacific Railroad.
“Would you like to come to St. Helena for the weekend?” Bierce asked. “Meet Mrs. Bierce and the children?” He looked grim again. “You will have to meet Mrs. Day as well—my Mollie’s mother.”
I said I would be very pleased to come to St. Helena for the weekend.
I did not know much about Bierce’s family, except that they lived across the Bay to the north. Bierce himself rented an apartment on Broadway, near The Hornet. He kept to himself after work, although I knew he belonged to the Bohemian Club, and he often spent evenings at cards with his literary friends Ina Coolbrith and Charles Warren Stoddard, who were the editors of the Overland Monthly. His drinking friends were Arthur McEwen and Petey Bigelow of the Examiner, and there were evenings when those three cut a considerable swath at the Baldwin Theater Bar at Kearny and Bush, and the saloon at the Crystal Palace. And I knew he consorted with women who were not Mollie Bierce, in the French restaurants such as the Terrapin Oyster House, or the Old Poodle Dog, which had elevators to the private rooms upstairs and were open all night. I had in fact met one of his women, a Mrs. Barclay, a willowy, wispy dark lady who sparkled with diamonds and fawned on Bierce as though he was in fact Almighty God.
Bierce had suggested that I try my hand on a side piece on Leland Stanford of the Big Four, who had just been nominated for the senate with more than the usual degree of political shenanigans. I showed him what I had written:
All the surviving Big Four are big men. Collis B. Huntington weighs 240, Stanford upwards of 260, Charles Crocker downwards from 300. The Nob Hill mansions of these former Sacramento storekeepers are big. Their fortunes are big. It is estimated that when Hopkins died he was worth $19,000,000. Crocker’s fortune is larger than that, Stanford’s still larger, Huntington’s the largest of all.
Stanford, who was governor of California during the War, is pleased to be referred to as Governor Stanford. He has been likened to Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Napoleon Bonaparte, John Stuart Mill and Judas Iscariot.
A man of closely considered opinions, he is outspoken against the proposed government regulation of corporations. He considers such regulation contrary to America’s traditional respect for property rights, and against the interests of the small man who needs the cooperation of others of his class, in the form of corporations, to protect him from the greed of the moneyed.
“It is pleasant to be rich,” he told a reporter. “But the advantages of wealth are greatly exaggerated. I do not clearly see that a man who can buy anything he fancies is any better off than the man who can buy what he actually wants.”
And he added: “If it rained twenty-dollar gold pieces until noon every day, at night there would be some men begging for their suppers.”
During the governmental investigations of the profits earned by the transcontinental railroad, the partners announced that the line was “starving.” This was somewhat belied by the wonders of their mansions under construction. In his California Street palace, with its fifty rooms, its seventy-feet-high glass dome and bay windows stacked like poker chips, Stanford likes to show off his orchestrion. This is a complete mechanical orchestra housed in a large cabinet. He also takes pleasure in demonstrating his aviary of mechanical birds. These are perched on the branches of artificial trees in the art gallery and operate by compressed air, opening their metal beaks to sing when the governor presses a button.
Bierce considered my piece much too long. He was not interested in the death of the boy, Leland Stanford, Jr., nor the founding of Leland Stanford Jr. University as a memorial.
He commented that I should leave irony to the ironists and satire to those who possessed a lighter touch.
“Moreover, do not employ ‘moneyed’ for ‘wealthy.’ You might thus say ‘the cattled men of Texas,’ or ‘the lobstered men of the fish market.’ ”
“Yes, sir,” I said.
A messenger delivered to me a scented square envelope addressed in florid feminine handwriting. I admired the look of Mr. Thomas Redmond, Esq. as penned by Amelia Brittain in bold, elaborate copperplate.
Dear Mr. Redmond,
This is to inform you that since I am no longer in a situation of attachment, you are welcome to call on me at 913 Taylor Street if you are so inclined.
Expectantly yours,
Amelia Brittain
PS I look forward to discussing with you my “shadow”! AB
I presented myself at number 913 on a steep block of Taylor Street, a narrow, tall, bay-windowed house with the facade bisected by a porch furnished with a wicker settee, chairs and a table. Bilious stained-glass windows gazed out at me, and the late sun glinted on the cut glass of the door. A butler in a striped waistcoat answered my crank of the bell. He had pale hair combed in a pompadour, and eyes that looked straight through me to see the printer’s devil instead of the journalist. He held out a silver salver, upon which I laid my calling card, and disappeared.
He returned to say that Miss Brittain was not at home and closed the door in my face. I retreated down the steps, and down Taylor Street off Nob Hill.
In the Barnacles’ cellar I whaled the stuffing out of the buggy seat, panting and dusty.
When I quit the Fire Department I had kept my helmet, for I loved it dearly, with the beaked eagle on the crown and its long beavertail; the crown made of gleaming black heavy cowhide, reinforced by strips built up into gothic arches, and the inside padded with felt. I still sometimes admired myself in the mirror, capped by its magnificence. Once I had been ambitious for the white and black of a Chief’s Aide’s hat, and even the white of the Chief himself. I was still stirred when I heard the fire bell of the Engine Company over on Sacramento Street, and often I hastened along to see the action.
Today there was a three-alarmer on Battery Street. Pumpers and hose reels blocked the street, and arcs of shining water flashed against the sun. This was a warehouse fire, bales smoldering and flaming glimpsed through open gates. Next door was a narrow-fronted saloon with the dilapidated sign: WASHOE ANGEL.
The Chief in his white helmet was directing the fight, yelling at firefighters scampering with their hose-laying. Out of the saloon appeared a slouch-hatted young fellow in an overall, struggling with a painting that must have been four feet by six. I had only a glimpse of the naked woman delineated. She was mounted on a magnificent white horse, her long golden hair artfully arranged to advertise as much as conceal her charms, the stallion with one foreleg raised and bent. It was the typical saloon painting, but more magnificent than most. The woman’s flesh, white as gardenia blossoms, seemed to illuminate that chaotic scene. Struggling with the painting, which seemed to be buffeted by winds generated by the flames and the arching sprays, the young man staggered up the street and disappeared into an alleyway. That vision of saloon female nudity moved me to start after him, but my way was blocked by the team of horses maneuvering one of the pumpers. And the Lady Godiva of the Washoe Angel disappeared from my ken.