A LUCKY WOMAN

CHAPTER IX
1906–1924:

DATELINE: LOTTA’S FOUNTAIN
John Oliver Simon

Dateline: Lotta’s Fountain, Market and Kearny Streets, 5:13 a.m., April 18, 1998.
In the darkness before dawn, a crowd of several hundred people has gathered by the Baroque pillar of a fountain presented to the city of San Francisco by Gold Rush chanteuse Lotta Crabtree. Many are dressed in the strict blacks of an earlier era, in bustles and cravats that seem to bring the mute photographs of our ancestors’ days to life. They are members of the antiquarian Corinthian Society, just one more dress–up way of finding fellowship off–line in an increasingly virtual age. But up on the dias, among the supervisors and dignitaries, a row of brilliantly white heads testifies to a spry, authentic invulnerability. They are the Survivors, count them: this year, there are eleven, aged 92 to 101. Winners, for the moment, of the long lethal lottery which winnowed the ranks of their families and contemporaries, they were wee, but they were there, 92 years ago this morning, when the earth shook, and then the city burned.

We bow our heads in a moment of silence, and then the fire engines, lineal descendants of the hook–and–ladder crews that made a gallant but futile effort to fight the firestorm that ancient April, ring their bells and sound their sirens. Then, in pompous red–and–blue uniforms, the Gay and Lesbian Marching Band—only in San Francisco—leads us in one rousing chorus: San Francisco, open your Golden Gate…

We like to make a brave and cheery noise, but we know we stand on unsteady ground here. The San Andreas Fault is not done with its long tectonic task of hauling Baja California up to the Aleutians, and it will patiently shake our cities to “the damned finest ruins” as fast as we can build them. Nor, if we think about it, do we have the hour of this commemoration quite right. Our convention of Daylight Savings Time has plunged this five–in–the–morning into darkness, but back then, before we semi–annually sprang forward and fell back, a pale light already suffused the sky at 5:13 a.m. on April 18, 1906, though the sun had not yet risen, and the many birds were voluble in the dark leaves of plum and pyracantha and live oak in Bay Area backyards, when:

… we were awakened by a tremendous noise. Our beds were moving violently about. Nelly held frantically onto mine, as together we crashed back and forth against the walls. Our west window gave way in a shower of glass, and the handsome brick chimney passed by the north window, slicing through the greenhouse my father had just completed. The roaring, swaying, moving and grinding continued for what seemed like a long time; it actually took less than a minute. Then, there was an eerie silence with only the surf sounds coming through the shattered window and an occasional crash of plaster and tinkle of glass from downstairs.

That’s how cousin Ansel Adams, four years old that morning, remembers the earthquake. Safe to say that moment of sudden waking into chaos, followed by days of fire, and in many cases, weeks or months of homelessness and tent–camps and refugee cabins and rebuilding, remained—remains, as long as the Survivors live to tell—absolutely engraved in the memories of all Northern Californians living at the time, until their dying day.

Frances Coon Kehrlein envisioned her wedding as a day of perfect sunlight, though already the guests were aware that the earth beneath their feet was not to be trusted, and any structures human ingenuity could build upon it were infinitely perishable. But then, she wrote, “the clouds gathered down… and fast.” Less than two months after the wedding, on August 7, 1907, her beloved grandfather, William James Adams, the benevolent old lumber king, died at the age of seventy–eight. In the fall came the Panic of 1907, a mere hiccup on a long–term swell of steady economic growth across two decades, but for a fearful moment, until J. P. Morgan rallied the troops, it looked as if the American banking system were about to crash, and the effect on consumer confidence, home–building, and therefore on Oliver’s nascent contracting business was deadly.

But the most traumatic blow of all came when Frances Coon Kehrlein was nine months pregnant, on the morning of April 8, 1908, when “Unadilla,” the Adams family residence in Menlo, the immemorial site of her dearest childhood memories, suddenly burned to the ground. Here’s how the Call told the story:

RESIDENCE BURNED AT MENLO PARK
Defective Wires Cause Loss of the Old W. J. Adams Home

The W. J. Adams place at Menlo Park was totally destroyed by fire this forenoon. The blaze was discovered at 9 o’clock, but with the high wind that prevailed nothing could be done to save the property, and two hours later the handsome home was but a pile of ashes. The Menlo Park firemen were soon on the scene, but there was no water available and their efforts were futile. It is supposed that the fire was caused by crossed electric wires.
So fiercely did the fire burn that it was impossible to save any of the contents of the building, save a few pieces of furniture and a small amount of clothing.

The home was occupied by Mrs. W. J. Adams and the family of her daughter, Mrs. Dudley. Mrs. Adams and Miss Dudley, her granddaughter, were the only ones at home when the fire occurred.

The Adams home is located on the Middlefield road, just north of the Flood place. The residence was built by the late W. J. Adams in 1865 and was one of the first homes to be established there by the millionaire colony. It was a good type of the California mansions of that date, with high ceilings, large rooms and wide porches. This place had long been considered one of the handsomest of the many handsome homes of the Menlo Park region.

The loss on the building alone is probably $15,000 [sic!] and the loss on the contents must be much greater. The house was finely furnished and contained many valuable curios and rare works of art.

The Call doesn’t specify which Miss Dudley was at home when the fire broke out, but my hunch is that shy, girlish Grace was likely to be staying with Grandma Adams while bold Janey went up to the City with her mother for an afternoon of shopping, let’s say, including a whirlwind visit, with chocolates and flowers, to her hugely expectant half–sister Frances at the apartment on Nob Hill. In any event, the girl and the old woman, plus unmentioned servants, were helpless to halt the furious electrical fire, lucky to escape with their lives and a few pitiful possessions. Their hopes soared when the firemen came roaring up, their gleaming red machine drawn by panting, sweating horses, only to fall again when it was discovered that there was no water in the hose. One wonders if those responsible for the estate of W. J. Adams had finally contradicted the old man’s stubborn precepts and insured the house and belongings.

Just one week later, then, heralded by fire and conflagration, on Wednesday, April 15, 1908, at 7:40 in the evening, with a full moon rising, Frances Cassandra Kehrlein, later Simon, later Adler, came wiggling and squealing into this world, all seven pounds of her. So little Frances arrives just two years too young to take her seat among the venerable Survivors, and does not participate in the grand collective memory of the earthquake.

It was a jolly family party that took the good ferryboat Tamalpais across to Marin County for baby Frances’s christening on Sunday, May 17, 1908. Oliver Kehrlein is quite the dandy, glimpsed in a top hat on deck, but he is missing from the group picture outside the Star of the Sea Church in Sausalito—obviously he was the photographer. There are nine in the group standing outside the white wooden chapel. The two priests in long black robes fade anonymously from our story. Grandmother Adams was evidently not up for the journey, only a month after her house burned down. Cheery Irish nurse Martha (“Sure, ‘n’ why in God’s name”) holds up tiny Frances Cassandra Kehrlein wrapped in swaddling clothes. Little Grace Dudley, in her virginal pinafore and plaid skirts, is almost squeezed from view by the older women. Stage right, sister Janey, proudly erect, already metamorphizing into a superb iconoclastic beauty, bears a whole meadow of flowers on her hat.

Behind her, Emil Kehrlein Junior, newly an uncle, looks wasted, although elegant in his dark three–piece suit and gay white button–flower; his cheeks are hollow alongside the rakish moustache. Emil very well may have needed a bit of the hair of the dog to lift his spirits sufficiently for this early Sunday expedition. Stage center, holding this group together, Cassie Adams Coon Dudley, now dubbed “the Duchess,” a grandmother for the first time, belies her mourning black with the natural serenity of her expression.

And stage left, Frances Coon Kehrlein, magnified by her status as mother, gazes with a propietary air on her new daughter, and by extension, on all that she surveys. Perhaps it is a trick of perspective, but she seems twice the size of anyone else in the scene. Her skirts sweep everything before her, the massive cottons and wools of her sweaters and bolsters extend the grandiosity of her bosom and shoulders like a frigate, while her hat soars another six to eight inches into the air above her head, its massive silk protuberance breaking the line of an elevated walkway in the background.

We see very little of Emil after this time. Despite the fact that Frances Coon Kehrlein systematically discouraged contact with the vulgar Kehrlein crew, it’s interesting that after the contracting business failed, Oliver went into the movie theatre racket in partnership with his father and brother, with his mother arranging scores for the organist; show–biz was in the Kehrlein blood, and although the movies weren’t exactly the Barbary Coast, neither did his daughter feel comfortable reporting her father’s occupation to the nuns.

It is tempting, but perhaps simplistic, to separate the darkness and light of the Kehrlein heritage, and see Oliver unshadowed in his righteousness, while Emil sinks into a haze of alcoholic shame. One story has it that Emil defaulted on some loans from Oliver, but another says that Oliver invested Emil’s funds badly at the time of the stock market crash. Both stories may be true. The Blue Book of the San Francisco Social Register reports that Emil married Mary Osburn, and that he was living in Hermosa Beach in 1947. So far as anyone knows, he never had children, so there are no collateral Kehrlein descendants from his side of the ledger.
It is interesting that Frances’s mother would chide her for snobbishness in relation to the nuns asking about Daddy’s occupation. The Blue Book for 1907 lists Mr. and Mrs. William J. Adams in Menlo Park, at home on Fridays, as well as references for Coon and McNutt. The Kehrleins appear as if by magic in 1908, not only Mr. and Mrs. Oliver, Hillcrest Apts., California and Jones, but also Mr. and Mrs. Emil and Emil Jr., living at the St. Francis Hotel, with a summer residence in Belvedere, at home on Sundays. It is wonderful how respectability, as well as disgrace, can be contagious.

In “A Catholic Girlhood,” Frances Adler conveys both the difficulties of her childhood and how difficult she was as a child. She came out fighting, with her back against the wall and her teeth clenched, and in one way or another she went on fighting for over eighty years. Looking back on those early Kehrlein family years, as the growing brood moved from house to house, as grandiose projects of work kept falling through, I see how unsure they were, those newly grownup parents, Oliver twenty–six and Frances twenty–two when their brilliant argumentative first daughter was born. The autocratic routine, the outbursts, the arguments and blame, were a well–meaning attempt to do things right on the part of two young people who had been parented in a somewhat sketchy manner themselves.

It was instant family: Oliver came along when Frances was thirteen months old, and she was not yet two and a half when Karl was born. It is in the light of this marathon of birthing that we ought to read Frances senior’s little parable about her parents’ abstinence after her own birth: “‘Birth Control’ was an unknown term at that period, but self–control was not.” Who, I wonder, was supposed to take a lesson from that remark?

What Oliver senior wanted was a fearless troop of outdoor–minded tykes to lead over hill and dale, to share not only the adventure but the exaltation of the mountains. What he frustratingly got was Frances, incurably femme in her white peplum dress, refusing to cross the log over the stream; neurasthenic Oliver, stammering and vomiting down the sides of the steamroller; and phlegmatic Karl, who was physically eager but somehow spiritually recalcitrant. Oliver, very probably gay, only redeemed himself in his mother’s eyes by becoming a Jesuit priest; Karl and Frances, each of them feeling like they were the only black sheep, were in one way or another forever estranged.

Frances mère’s opinions on how each of her six children turned out, as set forth in “A Short Sketch of the California Pioneers In Our Family,” were never a secret to anyone within earshot. If Jeanne was neither the cleverest nor the prettiest of her three girls, but the most saintly, then surely Frances fille was the cleverest, while Therese, who kept her naturally curly golden locks into adulthood, must have won the golden apple for the prettiest. Shift that competition back one generation: Janey Dudley was beyond the shadow of a doubt the prettiest of Cassie Adams’ three daughters, while Frances Coon must have considered herself both clever and saintly. Not much, as usual, was left over for Grace.

Meanwhile, Frances, Oliver and Karl Kehrlein were a litter unto themselves, a private world like all bunched siblings. There would be three more children, but they came along much later, after their exasperated mother had a chance to catch her breath—Jeanne was five years younger than Karl—and they would not have much influence on this primal sibling constellation. In the crucifixion incident, as well as in the casting of the plays they produced in the attic of the house on Lee Street, we can read between the lines to discern Frances’s strategy: Karl got the short end of the stick, or maybe sometimes it would be Oliver, but as long as she was on the winning side of a two–against–one, she would be all right. Her nightmare was the scene chronicled in “A Sense of Balance,” when both of the boys—this time with Daddy behind them—ganged up on her. Past her eightieth year, Frances would maneuver almost reflexively to place one family member or another at a disadvantage; it baffled me until I saw through it to a continuation of this ceaseless sibling struggle.

Family photos record the atmosphere of that long–ago childhood. New Year’s Day 1909, baby Frances in a horsey rocker, surrounded by the bounty of her first Christmas: teddy bear, alphabet blocks, wooden ball, rattle–ring, wooden doll, music box. Daddy lifts her out of the rocker, very neat in his white shirt, white tie, creased pants, an outfit that has definitely not done yeoman duty changing diapers. At thirteen months, Frances is standing erect with a helping grown–up hand, while ursine Teddy guards the door. Her first word is “Bye–Bye,” followed shortly by “Bow–wow” and “Daddy.” As a toddler, in the role of Pandora, Frances peers into the darkness of an empty box. At five, she is dressed up as Martha Washington, all in white lace. At seven, shyly, she is an Indian maiden. And there is a gift from the oldest California tradition: at the University of California Museum of Anthropology on Parnassus Heights, Frances, Oliver and Karl open their hands to reveal arrowheads flaked for them by Ishi.

Here, too, the foundation was being laid for Frances’s life–long love–hate relationship with writing. What I wouldn’t give to have a copy of one of the mythological plays in rhyme—Oliver as Knight Errant, Frances as Princess with the Long Golden Hair, and Karl as Chimney–Sweep, Toad, and Third Woodsman—that she was turning out from ages nine to twelve! And then there was the after–school writing club at Sacred Heart, suddenly forbidden, and with Frances left blameful, in the other girls’ eyes, for it being shut down. And identifying herself with Becky Sharp, Thackeray’s self–willed anti–heroine. And the highest score in California on the first edition of the Stanford–Binet. And the theory of evolution promptly shut down by Mother’s higher authority. And the brief vista of a world of conflicting ideas opened by the visiting Shakespeare scholar from Stanford.

We have Frances Cassandra Kehrlein’s transcript from her first year of college, at the San Francisco College for Women, later Lone Mountain College, later incorporated into USF. This was no Mickey Mouse curriculum. Frances was taking six and seven courses a quarter: a couple of history courses, Latin, French, English and public speaking. Probably Religion was something of a gut, as she got an A+ in Commandments in the Spring Quarter, while her mind was on anything but. Decades before grade inflation, Frances pulled a 3.87 GPA for the year. Her only grades below A- were a B in a course on Molière and B+ in each of the two quarters of Shakespeare—the only course she remembered five decades later as intellectually exciting.

With generous encouragement at the crucial moment, might Frances have dedicated herself seriously as a writer, done great things? As it was, she came out uneasy in her writing, wanting to express herself but feeling that no one would really be interested in anything she had to say, a syndrome that was reinforced years later by an unfortunate union–busting experience at Look magazine, so that as an older woman she entered writing workshops with an attitude. “Frances was a pretty prolific writer for someone who complained as much about a writing block as she did,” recalls Mary Webb, one of her writing teachers in the 1980’s. But we are getting decades ahead of our story.

Someone, probably Daddy, was busy with a camera around the swimming pool at the Kehrlein residence at 304 Hillside in Piedmont one warm afternoon in the early spring of 1924. Grecian colonnades surround the water, echoing a balustrade of stairs down from the impressive house. This is the Mediterranean version of California as a civilization oriented to the sun, John Muir’s Range of Light translated into showy domestic architecture. Oliver junior is nowhere to be seen. Karl climbs out of the pool puffing and blowing, muscular and proud of his prowess. There is a new blonde–curled toddler, Therese. She will have five children, abandon them to be raised by her aged parents, then move to Los Angeles and have three more. Mrs. K crosses her legs in a wicker chair, matriarch of all she surveys. Now the teenagers gather on the lawn for a group photo, the boys as awkward as teenage boys will ever be, blond Pinky holding a towel in front of one of the girls as if it were a curtain, and Dusty, who’s already changed out of his black one–piece bathing suit into obligatory suit and tie, picking his ear with the opposite hand.

From the center of the group, Maggie McCormick, another fierce Irish beauty, stares balefully at the photographer, giving absolutely nothing away to his disapproving lens. And advancing from stage right, daringly demonstrating the dance moves of the latest craze, snapping her fingers, her hair trimmed flapper–short (an earlier sequence of photos reveals the shearing of the long anterior golden locks), making eye contact only with her fantasies, it’s Frances Kehrlein, not quite sixteen, so cool, so suave, moving to the music in her mind, hoping to escape from the hallowed constrictions of this family background the first chance she gets.

1998