California Romantic and Resourceful; : a plea for the collection, preservation and diffusion of information relating to Pacific coast history eBook

John Francis Davis
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 54 pages of information about California Romantic and Resourceful; .

California Romantic and Resourceful; : a plea for the collection, preservation and diffusion of information relating to Pacific coast history eBook

John Francis Davis
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 54 pages of information about California Romantic and Resourceful; .

The body of Sor Dominga Arguello, commonly called Sister Mary Dominica (Concepcion Arguello) after her death, which occurred Dec. 23, 1857, was first interred in the small cemetery in the convent yard, but in the latter part of 1897 (Original Annals, St. Catherine’s, Benicia), when the bodies were removed, it was reinterred in the private cemetery of the Dominican order overlooking Suisun Bay, on the heights back of the old military barracks.  Her grave is the innermost one, in the second row, of the group in the southwesterly corner of the cemetery.  It is marked by a humble white marble slab, on which is graven a little cross with her name and the date of her death.  This grave deserves to be as well known as that of Heloise and Abelard, in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise.

[14] “Rezanov,” by Gertrude Atherton (John Murray, London).  See also Appendix B. The quaint poem of Richard E. White to “The Little Dancing Saint” (Overland, May, 1914) is worthy of mention, though the place of her childhood is mistakenly assumed to be Lower California instead of San Francisco.  It is to be hoped also that the very clever skit of Edward F. O’Day, entitled “The Defeat of Rezanov,” purely imaginative as a historical incident, but with a wealth of local “atmosphere,” written for the Family Club, of San Francisco, and produced at one of its “Farm Plays,” will yet be published, and not buried in the archives of a club.

[15] If the facsimile of the chamberlain’s signature, when written in Roman alphabetical character, is as set forth in part 2 of the Russian publication “Istoritcheskoe Obosrenie Obrasovania Rossiisko-Amerikanskoi Kompanii,” by P. Tikhmenef, published in 1863, by Edward Weimar, in St. Petersburg, then the proper spelling is “Rezanov,” the accent on the penult, and the “v” pronounced like “ff.”

For metrical purposes Bret Harte has here taken the same kind of liberty with “Resanoff,” and in another poem with Portola, as Byron took with Trafalgar, in Childe Harold.

[16] The mention of Monterey is a poetic license.  Sir George Simpson actually met her and acquainted her for the first time with the immediate cause of her lover’s death, at Santa Barbara, where she was living with the De la Guerra family, Jan. 24, 1842, after her return from Lower California, following the death of her parents.  “Though Dona Concepcion,” wrote Sir George Simpson, in 1847, “apparently loved to dwell on the story of her blighted affections, yet, strange to say, she knew not, till we mentioned it to her, the immediate cause of the chancellor’s sudden death.  This circumstance might in some measure be explained by the fact that Langsdorff’s work was not published before 1814; but even then, in any other country than California, a lady who was still young, would surely have seen a book, which, besides detailing the grand incident of her life, presented so gratifying a portrait of her charms.” (An Overland journey Round the World, during the years 1841 and 1842, by Sir George Simpson, Governor-in-chief of the Hudson Bay Company’s Territories, published by Lea and Blanchard, Philadelphia, in 1847, page 207.)

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
California Romantic and Resourceful; : a plea for the collection, preservation and diffusion of information relating to Pacific coast history from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.