San Francisco Social Life and Clara Foltz's Circle

From Woman Lawyer: The Trials of Clara Foltz -- Online Notes For The Book

KEVIN STARR, AMERICANS AND THE CALIFORNIA DREAM 1850-1915 (1981) portrays the social, artistic and literary life of San Francisco mainly through mini-biographies of people such as Jack London, Ambrose Bierce and George Sterling and their circles. See especially, the chapter entitled, Bohemian Shores. [hereafter STARR, DREAM]. BARBARA BERGLUND, MAKING SAN FRANCISCO AMERICAN: CULTURAL FRONTIERS IN THE URBAN WEST, 1846-1906 (2007), describes how San Francisco evolved from a frontier boomtown into “a civilized, conquered, and thus fully American place.” For accounts of the atmosphere and cultural events, see AMELIA RANSOME NEVILLE, THE FANTASTIC CITY: MEMOIRS OF THE SOCIAL AND ROMANTIC LIFE OF OLD SAN FRANCISCO (1932); JULIA ALTROCCHI, THE SPECTACULAR SAN FRANCISCANS (1949); Doris Muscatine, OLD SAN FRANCISCO: THE BIOGRAPHY OF A CITY FROM EARLY DAYS TO THE EARTHQUAKE(1975); Gertrude Atherton, who was a member of the highest circles of society, wrote about San Francisco in novels and memoirs. CALIFORNIA, AN INTIMATE HISTORY (1914); ADVENTURES OF A NOVELIST (1932).

Atherton’s life overlapped with Clara Foltz’s at many points, and they may well have met each other. But neither mentioned the other on the public record. See Chapter 5 for a description of Atherton’s novel PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES, which features a woman accused of murdering her husband. See On-line bibliographic note Women Murder Defendants and Equal Justice; For a fascinating account of Atherton’s life and the circles in which she moved, see EMILY WORTIS LEIDER, CALIFORNIA’S DAUGHTER: GERTRUDE ATHERTON (1991). On Atherton, and other figures in late nineteenth century San Francisco society, see FRANCES MOFFETT, DANCING ON THE BRINK OF THE WORLD: THE RISE AND FALL OF SAN FANCISCO SOCIETY (1977).

These works all discuss the various hotels, restaurants, social activities, plays and performances, publications and famous people of San Francisco. Muscatine is the best indexed and most interested in women’s role. “The early stirring of women’s liberation spreading across the country made possible broader opportunities… increased social flexibility. During the 90’s… women could dine respectably in the French restaurants, could pursue a wider range of education enter previously limited professions and followed their interests, including intellectual in formal groups that managed more than quilting bees and death benefits for members in good standing….” at 344.

Books by Oscar Lewis, the local historian (not to be confused with the anthropologist of the same name) give a good sense of the life of the city. SAN FRANCISCO: MISSION TO METROPOLIS (1966). OSCAR LEWIS AND CARROLL D. HALL, BONANZA INN, AMERICA’S FIRST LUXURY HOTEL (1939) is particularly good on the atmosphere of the 1880s, as seen from the Palace Hotel. Frank Mazzi, Harbingers of the City: Men and Their monuments in Nineteenth Century San Francisco, 55 S. CAL. Q. 141 (1973) is excellent on the civilizing effects of fine hotels and theater buildings early in the city’s history, with many striking pictures and contemporary quotations. WILLIAM ISSEL AND ROBERT W. CHERNY, SAN FRANCISCO, 1865-1932, at 76 (1986) (quoting Samuel Williams in 1875 who wrote that “living at a first-class hotel is a strong presumption of social availability… but living in a boarding house indicates a nobody.”). 344 (1975)

PETER R. DECKER, FORTUNES AND FAILURES, WHITE-COLLAR MOBILITY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SAN FRANCISCO 196-230 (1978) (Chapter eight, entitled “A Social Geography of the Urban Landscape,” describes different neighborhoods and the rise of Van Ness Avenue where Foltz lived after the World’s Fair); CHARLES CALDWELL DOBIE, SAN FRANCISCO: A PAGEANT 278-9 (1934).

Many histories of San Francisco mention the Montgomery block where Foltz had several offices over the years, including her first one in the city. IDWAL JONES, ARK OF EMPIRE, SAN FRANCISCO’S MONTGOMERY BLOCK (1951) is devoted entirely to the building’s history. Built in 1853, its construction on a raft of redwood logs that had been bolted together in a deeply excavated basement, with thick masonry walls, was considered the safest building in the west (and indeed it survived the 1906 earthquake and fire). It attracted lawyers, engineers, judges, scientists, business people plus artists and writers including Jack London, George Sterling, Lola Montez, Lotta Crabtree, Gelett Burgess, Maynard Dixon, Frank Norris, Ambrose Bierce, Bret Harte, and Mark Twain. HARR WAGNER, JOAQUIN MILLER AND HIS OTHER SELF 105 (1929) tells of how Montgomery St. between Jackson and California Streets was “the literary center of SF.” In addition to Joaquin Miller, Wagner mentions many other writers as regulars in a Bohemian group centered in the Golden Era offices: Millicent Shin, Harry McDowall, Arthur McEwen, Ambrose Bierce, Madge Morris, Ella Sterling Cummins (later Mighels), Carrie Stevens Walter and Eliza D. Keith. “Frequently at noon, young law students, poets and artists would meet in the Golden Era office and listen to the reading of good, bad and indifferent ms. We would pool our small change and adjourn to Hjul’s coffee shop… Among the young men who gathered there that achieved more than local fame were James G. Maguire, Judge Gore Cabaniss, Franklin K. Lane, E. E. Cothran and Robert Duncan Milne.”).

In the city, Foltz had a circle of friends who were writers, and in that sense career women, but who were not her political allies. These included especially Frona Wait, Ella Cummins, and Madge Morris. Frona Wait Colburn, 1859-ca. 1946 was a California journalist, the first woman to write for the San Francisco EXAMINER. She also worked for the San Francisco CALL and the San Francisco CHRONICLE. Biographical Introduction, Colburn Manuscript Collection, California State Library. Wait was said to be the model for the heroine (Frona Welse) of Jack London's first novel, A DAUGHTER OF THE SNOWS (1902).

In 1942, Wait wrote in memory of “my old friend Clara Foltz” (outgoing correspondence, found in Box 1066, Folder 30). She told of the friendship of the three young ambitious women, and added “Mrs Foltz was an ardent suffragist. I was not in favor of woman suffrage at all.” Wait remembered their last meeting, probably in the 1930’s when Foltz admitted that she was “ashamed” of the tactics of the suffragists in the final campaign. Earlier, in an obituary of Morris, A California Poetess—As I Knew Her, OVERLAND MONTHLY & OUT WEST MAGAZINE, 204-206 (May 1924), Wait wrote of the life-long trio of Foltz, Morris and herself, relating that Morris reached the peak of her fame when she was celebrated at the World’s Fair as the author of Liberty’s Bell. In the same set of obituaries, Ella Cummins (Mighels), Her Pen is Stilled described the romance of Madge Morris with Harr Wagner when she wrote for his magazine, The Golden Era and became his wife.

In the early nineties, Ella Cummins put together an exhibit of California writers for the World’s Fair, and later published her findings in THE STORY OF THE FILES, A REVIEW OF CALIFORNIA WRITERS AND LITERATURE (1893), a book of 450 pages of pictures, excerpts, and idiosyncratic opinions. Cummins’ thesis was serious--that a true regional literature had been invented in pioneer California. The writer’s exhibit covered the few famous writers, such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain, and the semi-famous, Joaquin Miller and Ina Coolbrith. Cummins persuaded Ambrose Bierce and Gertrude Atherton to contribute to the exhibit, described in EMILY WORTIS LEIDER, CALIFORNIA’S DAUGHTER 131-32 (1993). Cummins also mentioned Wait (spelling it with an “e”) at 316 noting that some of her magazine sketches were “excellent, notably one on Clara Foltz, the lady lawyer.” Her husband Adley Cummins, a lawyer and writer, died, and Cummins later re-married and published LITERARY CALIFORNIA, POETRY, PROSE AND PORTRAITS (1918) under the name Ella Sterling Mighels. Clara Foltz is pictured in the book at page 174, the only woman among “orators, editors and prose writers.” For more on Cummins, see ELLA STERLING CUMMINS MIGHELS, NO ROOMS OF THEIR OWN; WOMEN WRITERS OF EARLY CALIFORNIA 259-92 (Ida Rae Egli ed., 1992). She published her autobiography under the pen name Aurora Esmeralda entitled LITERARY CALIFORNIA, LIFE AND LETTERS OF A FORTY-NINER’S DAUGHTER 184-89 (1934). Though disclaiming feminism, Cummins pursued a journalistic career which featured many forgotten women in her exhibit, and spoke on women’s contributions to California literature. See Cummins, The Women Writers of California, THE CONGRESS OF WOMEN: HELD IN THE WOMAN'S BUILDING, WORLD'S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION, CHICAGO, U. S. A., 1893, (Mary Kavanaugh Oldham Eagle ed. 1894). For a picture of many of the early writers and magazines in San Francisco, which credits Cummins with preserving it, see FRANKLIN WALKER, SAN FRANCISCO’S LITERARY FRONTIER (1930).