Angle of Repose - Wallace Stegner [95]
“Is that so?” said Mrs. Elliott. “Then it’s worse than I thought.”
5
January 4, 1878
Dearest Augusta–
Christmas was such an utter failure for us that we have not quite recovered our hope for the future, which we planned in the crazy way people do ‘when hope looks true and all the pulses glow.’ Ten years on this coast and then home. Is ten years an eternity? Will you all be changed or dead; will we be ‘Western’ and brag about ’this glorious country’ and the general superiority of half-civilized to civilized societies?
That sounds bitter. There are such good people here, but I simply can’t care for them! I fear I am too old to be transplanted. The part of me which friendship and society claim must wait, or perish in waiting.
This is the way I feel when Oliver is in S.F. When he comes down, it is like high tide along the shore–all the wet muddy places sparkle with life and motion. I have discovered that I am not a serene person at all. I am fearfully down or else soaring. Perhaps I may reach a level resting-place in time. But this little bright town is a desert to me. I go about vacantly smiling upon people and feeling like a ghost. . . .
Good-bye, my darling other woman. It would not be well for one of us to be unmarried. It is better to go hand in hand, babies and all. But oh! it would be lovely to see you!
February 6, 1878
Dearest Augusta -
Miss P. has just brought in little Oliver with his bib on and a chunk of beefsteak in his fat fist-raw steak. Do you approve? I didn’t when Mrs. Elliott first started it, but he seems to enjoy it immensely–any kind of food. His four front teeth are through and two more in the upper jaw are pressing. The gum looks clear over them and they will soon be through. He is so well. What a blessing it is. What should I do–what might I have done –with a sick baby and no doctor I could trust.
It is an awfully hard winter in S.F. and Oliver’s negotiations continue to hang fire. Money is very tight and capitalists are holding on until better times. Oliver thought last week all was settled, but still he is obliged to wait in the most exasperating way. His patience is wonderful, it passeth my understanding. I tell him I am proud of his genius for construction, but he says he has no genius for anything, he just never knows when he is beaten. If he is beaten finally, I have made up my mind that I shall try to come home, for he will almost certainly have to take a place in some remote mine. I try to console myself for the injustice of what may happen with the fact that it may at least return me to where I may see you.
February 15, 1878
Dear Thomas–
I sent you yesterday the large block and the vignette for my Santa Cruz article. Others will come shortly. I am working on them as hard as I can, for the immediate future seems more and more uncertain. Things are so crazy out here–the madman Denis Kearny is shouting that the Chinese must go, and many workingmen are unemployed and surly, so that men with capital, fearing the disaster that may occur to their existing plants if a full-scale anti-Chinese riot breaks out, hesitate to erect anything new. For of course the erection of anything new would involve Chinese labor. It is cheaper.
You should be scolded for working so hard. Augusta writes that between converting old lovely Scribby into the new Century, and sitting on commissions, and fighting Tammany, you are seldom in your bed before two or three. You must stop this, sir. You are too valuable a citizen to be allowed to destroy your health in however good a cause.
March 4, 1878
Darling Augusta–
If nothing happens, I shall spend the apple blossom time in Milton, and the summer around generally, and not rejoin Oliver until at least the fall.
We shall have to postpone cement, and with it our lighthouse on that windy point. It is such a hard year and they all say Oliver looks so young–and when they ask him how much it will cost to make cement he hasn