Interviewee: Genevieve Bothin DeLimur (GD) Interviewer: Carla Ehat (CE) Date of Interview: April 24, 1982 For a full transcript of this interview, please click here. Genevieve shares an anecdote about her interaction with opera singer Enrico Caruso in the days following the earthquake. Audio Clip from the Interview (2 minutes 4 seconds)

Transcript of Audio Clip

GD: And we stayed in San Francisco all during that three or four days after the fire came and burnt out house down and everything.

CE: Where’d you stay? GD: Oh, my father had all these flats, and he lost a hundred buildings in the earthquake.

CE: He lost a hundred buildings?

GD: But that doesn’t mean expensive buildings -- what they call lofts. And those were what brought the money in, I mean the one-story buildings. And then he had all these old flats down on Lombard Street, so we just went down there, lie on the floor and sleep and then we’d take the car and we’d go up and watch out how the fire was going. One rather interesting story that you’ve probably been told, but I mean the night before the earthquake was the opera, and if the earthquake had been three or four hours earlier everybody really in San Francisco would have been killed because they were all there at the first night of the opera. And that’s when Caruso sang. And that next morning, I had an aunt who was living at the St. Francis Hotel, and so mother said, “Let’s go down and see how she is.” So we went down there and I sat out in the car with the chauffeur and this man came over and it was Caruso’s valet and he said, “Mr. Caruso will give you a hundred dollars,” and a hundred dollars in those days was really like a million, and said, “If you’ll take Mr. Caruso out to the Cliff House, he’ll give you a hundred dollars.” And fortunately this Fred Wakeman, who was our driver, said, “No, I can’t. I have a little girl here and they’ve gone in the hotel, so I can’t possibly do that.” And then that afternoon, we had a Chinese cook and we were eating out on Jackson Street, because we weren’t allowed to go in our houses except for just a few minutes to grab something, and so we were sitting there and along comes a small express wagon with a horse, and there is Caruso sitting on the front seat with a valet and all his trunks making for the Cliff House. And he never returned to San Francisco, and never sang again in San Francisco.


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