During our tedious voyage around the Horn, the argonauts explained why they had uprooted themselves from occupations, friends, and family for a dangerous voyage and uncertain future. To a man, and earnestly, they insisted they were not doing it for themselves. No indeed! They were adventuring for those selfiame wives and children they'd left behind.
They'd left their families for the sake of their families! Apparently, American wives and children cannot be satisfied until an argonaut showers them with gold!
This is not Charleston. San Francisco boardwalks flank mud streets, which suck the shoes off my feet. Tents and wooden shacks coexist side by side with brick buildings so new, they glisten.
Three years ago, before gold was discovered San Francisco had eight hundred citizens. Today it boasts thirty-six thousand. From the wharf to the sheltering hills, the city echoes with the banging and clattering of new construction. In this town, Sister, even loafers with nowhere to go hurry to get there.
Chinese, Irish, Italians, Connecticut Yankees, and Mexicans: The new city hums with new people and newfangled notions.
Although I miss you and my Low Country friends, I am no exile. I feel the exultation of a prisoner released into the sunlight of a new morning.
There are cities besides Charleston and they are good places to be!
Please do write me here at the hotel. They will hold my mail for me.
Tell me about Charlotte and Grandmother Fisher and especially about your doings. Of all my old life, Dear Sister, I miss you most.
Your Loving Brother, Rhett
March 12, 1850
Goodyear's Bar, California Territory
Dear Little Sister, Goodyear's Bar is a surpassing ugly gold camp: a high-country mudflat spotted with dugouts, tents, and windowless log huts where lucky miners occasionally earn two thousand dollars from a wheelbarrel of pay dirt.
Even rich argonauts must eat, and their picks and shovels have a way of wearing out, and common decency (and below-zero nights) demand trousers and shoes.
Sister, I have become a merchant — one of those tedious fellows whose efforts underpin every aristocracy. With my grubstake, I purchased a heavy freight wagon and four sturdy mules. I paid twice as much as I would have in Carolina for brined beef, whiskey, flour, shovels, picks, and rolls of canvas.
I loaded my rig and goods on a steamship, which puffed up the river to Sacramento, where I chaffed until the trails into the high gold country were almost passable. Sister, your merchant brother shoveled through three-foot snowdrifts to deliver his goods to Goodyear's Bar.
I have never had such a glorious welcome. No provisions had reached the camp since October; the miners were famished and fell on your brother with hosannas.
They had gold but nothing to spend it on! Within an hour of my arrival, I sold everything except my revolvers and a mule.
I returned through the snowbanks, keeping a wary eye on my back trail. I had much to protect.
When I delivered this booty to Lucas and Turners bank vault, even the impassive Mr. Sherman, the managing partner, raised his eyebrows.
I've had no reply to my letters. I pray you are well and yearn to hear your news.
Now it is time for a warm bath and bed
Your Loving Brother, Rhett
September 17, 1850
St. Francis Hotel San Francisco, California
Dear Little Sister, Don't tell Father that I've become respectable. Butler General Merchandise has a second-floor office on Union Square and warehouses in Stockton and Sacramento.
Would you recognize your brother in his dark business suit, neat gaiters, and inoffensive foulard? I feel like an actor in a very strange play.
I do have a knack for it — making and getting money. Perhaps because I see money as a commodity with no religious significance.
I no longer play cards. Getting wagons to gold camps like Goodyear's Bar, Bogus Thunder, and Mugfuzzle (though no metropolis, Mugfuzzle exists) makes poker seem a puny gamble. Why should I sit, midnight after midnight, in a room rank with tobacco smoke just to separate drunken fools from their money? The argonauts are crazed with greed. No insurance company will insure their lives. Cholera kills them, drink kills them, and accidents kill them. Since there is no law in the camps, disputes are routinely settled with pickaxes, fists, or guns. If all else fails, often they kill themselves.
The argonauts are as ready to fight as our Low Country aristocrats, but their reasons are more transparent. There is no prattle about "honor" here.
We Californians say "back in America" to refer to our farmer home. Mr. Clay's clever compromise and Mr. Calhoun's death were hardly noticed here.
Men move faster out here, but are no wiser.
I have not received one letter from you and no longer expect one. You cannot be deceased — I would feel it if you were. I assume Father has forbidden you to write.
Things may improve, even at Broughton, and writing to you refreshes you in my mind and heart. I feel your love as I write and return it to you tenfold
Your faithful correspondent,
Rhett
June 19, 1851
St. Francis Hotel San Francisco, California
Dearest Rosemary, "The Sydney Ducks are cackling tonight." That's what this city's wits say when some honest man is robbed beaten, or shot. While San Francisco has always had rough elements, a recent immigration of freed Australian convicts has made it far more dangerous.
I am not worried for myself, my business, or my drivers. I have a (entirely undeserved) reputation for ferocity.
As Mr. Newton taught us, for every reaction, there's an equal and opposite reaction, and when I was invited to dine with three upstanding citizens, I suspected their motives.
The banker W T. Sherman is older than I, with the triangular face of a praying mantis, a short beard and phenomenally large eyes. Brown eyes are supposed to be soft and revealing of character. Shermans are as revealing as two lumps of coal. He is asthmatic, one of the palest men I've ever seen. Neither he nor anyone else anticipates a long life for him.
He is a practical man, one who does not flinch at necessity.
Collis Huntington is one of those men who believe their own rectitude gives them the right to make other men cower. He is a competitor of Butler General Merchandise and we've crossed swords a time or two.
Dr. Wright, the least of this triumvirate, is nervous, dressed like Beau Brummell, and claims to have invented the phrase "the Paris of the Pacific”
to describe this city. He has, so far as I can make out, no other accomplishments of which to boast.