ORAL HISTORY PROJECT OF THE MARIN COUNTY FREE LIBRARY Anne T. Kent California Room Original recording available at the Anne T. Kent California Room © All materials copyright Marin County Free Library. Transcript made available for research purposes only. All rights are reserved to the Marin County Free Library. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the: Anne T. Kent California Room Marin County Free Library 3501 Civic Center Dr. #427 San Rafael, California, 94903

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INTERVIEW WITH MIRIAM GERSTLE WORNUM
by Carla Ehat & Anne Kent
January 17, 1979

INTERVIEWEE: Miriam Gerstle Wornum (MW)
INTERVIEWERS: Carla Ehat (CE) and Anne Kent (AK)
DATE OF INTERVIEW: January 17, 1979


CE: Today is Wednesday, January 17, 1979 and we will be having the pleasure this afternoon of talking with Miriam Gerstle Wornum. She resides at 1020 Green Street in San Francisco in a beautiful home. We are sitting in her living room overlooking the view towards Marin, sprinkling a bit, but the home has a warm ambience, and we feel very fortunate in talking with her today. The name Gerstle is a prominent name in Marin County. Gerstle Park, named for the largess of this family, and today Miriam has agreed to share with us a few of her reminiscences about her family. It is a pleasure to be here today and thank you very much for letting us come.

MW: It is a pleasure to talk to you.

CE: Now, Miriam, I understand you were born in San Francisco as were your parents before you. Tell us the date and year.

MW: It was a very stormy night, like the beginning of any Gothic romance, and the wind was howling and my father was downtown and obviously my mother was uptown, in the house of my grandparents.

CE: And where was that located?

MW: That was 2200 Washington near Laguna. In those days you had your babies at home. I might add that it followed out as far as I was concerned; in England I had all my babies at home. But this was rather unfortunate because there were things going very, very wrong. My father was notified downtown that he should come back immediately. In those days there were no automobiles and to saddle up a horse and get it ready was a rather long process, so he jumped aboard a cable car and told the cable conductor what the trouble was, and the cable car went straight up to my grandfather’s house without stopping anywhere so my father could get there quickly, which happened in those days; the cable car would stop for various men who were going anywhere. They would just stand there and wave and it would stop and that was a very nice, personal convenience. Well anyway, this dark and stormy night, my mother became desperately ill and in saving her I was cast aside with no particular interest because I was very small, just barely four pounds, and premature. And obviously there was no future there until a nurse passed and said, “I believe she’s breathing.” Then a little attention was paid me. I have here in my house a wooden cradle that my grandfather made, or my great-grandfather, I don’t know, so I was pushed in there with a few hot water bottles – nothing like going to a hospital was thought of – and I was given the first formula that they happened to know about. They had to feed me with an eye dropper, and go to the store where they got doll’s clothes for me because there was nothing else that would fit. But that was the start, and my mother was so ill that it was two or three days before she became conscious, and then I was brought to her, all wrapped up in fleecy blankets, and the usual beaming nurse said, “Mrs. Gerstle, you have a beautiful little daughter,” and mother looked at me coldly and said, “Didn’t I tell you I wanted a boy?” I mean, I wasn’t hurt because I didn’t appreciate the remark afterwards and mother said I was an acquired taste, so everything went quite nicely, but they didn’t pay much attention.

CE: Were you, at that point, the first child?

MW: I was the first and only. I frightened her so much that she never had another. They couldn’t dream of having another. So this was that. And she kept telling me of all the horrors, you see, of having a baby and everything, and I was never too eager to get married or to have a baby and I knew darn well that nothing would give her more pleasure than grandchildren, which was the truth. So that was the start. You’ll have to pick and ask me various questions along the lines that you usually pursue, so it’ll have some connection with all the things you ask, otherwise I’ll leap about –

CE: All right. Your father, William Gerstle, was he in the employ of your grandfather’s business?

MW: No, he was, when I knew him, he was very much one of the officers but in the beginning he was the only one in the family who went out to Alaska and into that kind of gold rush, rather difficult times. In fact, he came back with a member of the family-to-be, which was a wonderful kind of a dog who was a lovely mixture, more perhaps bull terrier than anything else, who rejoiced in the name of Booze. Father said he followed him, but people who saw this animal get on board one of the ships said that there was a piece of rope around his neck. But anyway, I grew up everybody saying Booze the dog was my brother and I believed it up until the age of four or five. I mean, what else did I have to see in the way of brothers but this animal? And Father became the president of the company and was very much interested in it. I remember –

CE: Interrupting you a moment, Miriam, your grandfather at one time was Vice President of the Alaska Commercial Company.

MW: Yes.

CE: Are we talking about that company now?

MW: Yes, Alaska Commercial Company and Northern Commercial Company.

CE: All right. Originally, the Alaska Commercial Company, as I understand it, was involved in the fur business.

MW: Everything –

CE: At large part, shortly after Alaska became a state of the United States in 1867 – There were these Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, and is it not true that the Alaska Commercial Company was given a leasehold from the United States Government, the exclusive rights, to take seals from these islands?

MW: Oh, but they had everything, twenty years of every exploitation. They had gold mines; they had sharks.

CE: Well, that’s when the Yukon Gold Rush came. That’s how your father happened to be up there.

MW: Yes. I remember always seeing my father playing with a gold nugget in his pocket, you know, fingering it and playing with it. It was part of my childhood seeing that gold nugget. I thought all fathers had gold nuggets in their pockets, you know. It just seemed to me a natural thing. But they had the store. They had the mail. They had everything, everything that happened in Alaska in those days. My grandfather had the vision to know that the folk art was important at a time when a time when nobody knew about it and gave orders to everybody in the business to collect and buy any of the work of the Eskimos and the collection at the University of California is given by them. It’s very fine. I have a beautiful mask here, outside to show you; it should be in a museum.

CE: We’ll take a photograph of it later. I think the vision of your grandfather is extraordinary when you look upon businessmen today. In a book, I’d like to read into the record the title of it, Ernest Reuben Lilienthal and his Family which was printed in 1949, there is a discussion of the Alaska Commercial Company and the Yukon gold rush and the part that Dave Schloss, Lilienthal, Gerstle families played in these events. Under the terms of that first lease, it’s fascinating to me that the Alaska Commercial Company paid the United States Government for this privilege to catch seals alone, over nine million dollars, which is two million dollars more than we paid the Russians for the state of Alaska. Fascinating.

MW: I know. Well, it went up a little bit, inflation.

CE: But you see, the thing that’s interesting today with Greenpeace and various organizations fighting against the killing of seals, the slaughtering of them, today, in your grandfather’s time they put specific limitations on it.

MW: And they made more. They insisted upon the mothers not being slaughtered. Up to then there was hardly anything, but they made some laws. They really did.

CE: Yes. But they talk about hundreds of thousands of them being caught today, and in your grandfather’s day they had specific restrictions. You could only kill 75,000 fur seals on St. Paul, one of the Pribilof Islands, and another 25,000 on St. George, so you’re talking about a very controlled thing. And then only certain months could you do this. And you couldn’t use a weapon because you might frighten the seals, and it was just during this breeding period where it seems to be true that eighty percent of the fur seal is gathered. It’s a phenomenon of nature isn’t it, that that location was there?

MW: It’s amazing. And there were salmon, too

CE: Salmon, yes.

MW: Very much so.

CE: Well, tell me, going back a little bit now to your grandfather’s age and his generation. Your mother was Sarah Heft Gerstle and your father was William Gerstle.

MW: Yes. Right.

CE: Do you know how they met, or anything about – Let’s work backward a little bit if we can.

MW: I don’t know, but I do know that the Heft girls, there were four of them, were very attractive, very lively, just about as exuberant as the Gerstles were quiet. And my father and my uncle were the catches of the season, you see, when they came out, and I guess the Heft girls decided to collect them, because that’s what happened. The oldest son was collected by the oldest daughter and the next one by the next daughter and that was it. I don’t know any other motive exactly because that was a perfectly understood thing in those days. My mother was a beautiful woman an absolutely raving beauty. We never paid much attention to it, but she was very beautiful and father always loved beautiful things; a very sensitive man who had great talent for painting, but had to suppress it until such time as he was able to retire and then that was his whole life. He spent a great deal of time in his studio then and was an angel to all of the artists and the sculptors, he helped them out.

CE: Around the turn of the century?

MW: Oh, yes, oh, no, that was later, when he retired. Oh, I should say about the ‘30s and ‘40s he was really then in his studio, and he helped them.

CE: Tell us a little bit about that. His studio was in the Montgomery Block, you mentioned earlier.

MW: Yes, it was. And Timothy Wolf and Ralph Stacko had the other two studios in that particular part of it. They were very big rooms with fireplaces and a balcony around where you could sleep if you wanted to, and a lot of these people did, a minute kitchen, and I think there was certain plumbing facilities, I seem to remember, but nothing very much. And they had the most wonderful series of parties, not only there but in all the studios. Everybody would give a party at the drop of a hat, and they mixed the models and the painters and the sculptors and a few people that were interested. Matisse came out two or three times and was entertained there. I remember a wonderful moment when they, thinking they were doing exactly the right thing for Matisse, they showed a movie that was full of abstract shapes and blobs and drips and things and at the end I said to Mr. Matisse, “What did you think of this movie?” and he looked at me and said, shaking his head, “Too many angles, too many angles.” So I don’t think it was really appreciated, but he liked it out here. Any visiting artist of any kind from any part of the world would come in the studios and they would adjourn to the country if they felt like it, because in those days it was so pleasant to go on the ferries over to Marin which was so beautifully unspoiled. The little train that would go by, what between the ferry and the trains and that you could – The roads were unclogged. It was a very easy way to get to Marin.

CE: Well, in the book on the Lilienthal family, chapter thirteen is a delightful chapter describing summer days in San Rafael. And according to the writer, it was your grandfather, Louis Gerstle, that first bought some land and built a house there.

MW: Oh, he did it before Uncle Tom –

CE: And before your Uncle Schloss and then I think there was another family. Was it Greenwalt?

MW: Yes.

CE: And the three families were very close there. Do you remember your grandfather?

MW: Yes, I can remember him, but in a vague way. Black broadcloth, gold chain across the middle, and the cleanest and fluffiest white side whiskers I’ve ever seen. But he inspired me with awe and reverence, and I didn’t know him very well. He was a kind of figure in the background, whereas my other grandfather was my dearest confidant and absolutely my very first friend. I know that telling him all my hopes and fears and telling him one day – He died when I was nine, so obviously we started very early. I said, “Grandfather, when my first book is published I will dedicate it to you.” And he took that very serious. And I did. My first book that was published was dedicated to him because there was no other thing you could do. But he was a darling.

CE: Now this would be grandfather Heft?

MW: Yes.

CE: What was your first book, might I ask?

MW: Oh, it was something I thought I was going to do for the rest life, and never did another one. It was a book of fairy stories that I wrote and illustrated called Stardust. A generation of San Francisco people, children, were kind of brought up on that one. But I think there are two copies left now.

CE: Do you have one in your library?

MW: Oh, yes.

CE: Would you show us it later?

MW: Oh, sure.

CE: Had you ever visited your Grandfather Gerstle in San Rafael?

MW: Oh, every year.

CE: Could you try to retrieve your memories of that property?

MW: I can remember grandmother very well, but grandfather, I just have that vague feeling.

CE: Could you describe to us the trip over there? How and when would you go? In the summer?

MW: Oh, yes. We went in the summer for about two or three weeks. The family all took turns. Later on when I lived in England and I asked my husband, “Surely somebody in your family lives in the country so we could go over in the summer,” and he said no, they were all Londoners. I realized how lucky we were and yet everybody in the family grumbled. “Well, I suppose it’s our turn to go over.” You know, there were three houses on the grounds and I think it’s too bad that when Gerstle Park finally had its – the way it was going to be, its final shape, that they tore down all the houses. On the hill was the Levenson House which was probably as ugly and plain a place as you could think of, then down almost on the level of the road was, I think, was recorded the Lilienthal House. It was quite a sprawling brown shingled – No, that was the main house, and the main house was where grandmother lived and it has, as you see, gables and porch and –

CE: This is a photograph of the Gerstle House?

MW: I think that is the main house yes. And it had – Also those days, later on, it was the thing to have sleeping porches. You’re probably too young to know about them. Everybody slept out. Now, of course, the night air is not supposed to be so good. If you live long enough, everything gets reversed. But it smelled so good, grandmother’s house. I don’t know, it always had spicy clean, beautiful smell. Nothing else has ever smelled the same except occasionally somebody goes in somebody’s house and says it smells like the house in San Rafael. And the linens were something that I’m – I inherited, oh, I think a pair of sheets from there. It was real linen, and it felt like silk and it always smelled of lavender, too. We would always go for the two weeks. There was plenty of room there. Everybody had a room to himself.

CE: How would you get there?

MW: We left – I don’t know how we got down to the ferry, it might have been by cab.

CE: From your Washington Street?

MW: From Washington Street house. I don’t think we – because we had luggage. It must have been some sort of horse-drawn vehicle. Then, later on, we went by car on the ferry and we got off in Sausalito which, of course, was nothing. It was a terminal. There was nothing there at all. In fact it was a rather little sordid place. Then right by the ferry was the train which we would take into San Rafael, and then grandmother would – She always had some kind of horse-drawn vehicle, and then later on cars would meet us and we’d go up to the house. The house, the grounds, had a very steep hill. It was almost dangerous to go up that hill. And everybody was saying, “Why on earth did they choose a ground that they didn’t have any level place, except the part that was leveled off especially?” And around the house they had this high porch, and they grew great big flowers and all kinds of wonderful things that hid us children. There was a trellis on which these vines and things were attached, and we could climb up and listen to the conversations, because we were always told, “Now go away. Don’t disturb the grown-up people. Go away and play,” and all we wanted to hear was this conversation which was so innocuous. And I think now, why we wanted to hear it, I can’t, except it was forbidden. And we had blue hydrangeas there that I’ve never seen such blueness and all the aunts and the cousins and Grandmother would sit out on the porch and have ice tea in the afternoon and they were all doing the same kind of needlework, each year; different kind but they all did the same. Sometimes they crocheted things, sometimes they embroidered things, sometimes they did something else, but they were all so easily integrated into one big family. You never heard a voice raised, and they might have had differences of opinion, but you couldn’t tell from the tone of the voice. It used to drive my mother mad because she was a very volatile person. In her family, everybody fought over subjects they were deeply concerned about and cared about, and she could not ever understand this sort of quiet, placid ease that went on.

CE: Well did often, after supper, the men adjourn and leave the women to do their thing – brandy and cigars or something?

MW: I believe they did. I believe they would go out on the porch and smoke and things. I don’t think they stayed at the table so much as wandered out and we’d go into the drawing room and sit there. It was a big lot of people who would gather always.

CE: Who were some of your aunts and cousins?

MW: Well, let’s start at the beginning. There was Aunt Clara who married a man called Mack, and Charlotte Mack was his second wife. You know, she had a lot to do with art in San Francisco and all that. But Aunt Clara was the oldest, and she had quite a big family, and all my cousins, naturally. She had a very bad birth mark, poor darling, all over her face.

CE: Was she a Gerstle?

MW: She was a Gerstle.

CE: Your father’s sister.

MW: Older sister. Then I’m a little confused whether Sophie or Bertha came next. I really don’t know which was the older, but both of those married Lilienthals.

CE: I see, there’s the connection.

MW: There’s the connection. And they had children. Then came Alice. No, wait a minute, I think then came my uncle. I think they had about three girls before they had a boy. And then came my Uncle Mark. Then whether Aunt Alice is older than my father or my father came, I don’t know, and then Bella. Alice married Jacob Levinson who was they head of Firemen’s Fund and then Aunt Bella married Mortimer Fleishhacker. She was called Aunt Baby in those days but she changed to Bella. That was a big family: five girls and two boys and very prolific. They all married, they all had young.

CE: And as you said, you all took turns. It would be your two weeks and there would be a circulatory –

MW: Yes. The Levinsons were ensconced there, and down below in the other house; sometimes it was empty, but that house became very well known to us because after the earthquake and fire, my aunt and my mother and all of us children went over and lived there a year, right in that house.

CE: One of the houses on what is known now as the Gerstle property? The Levinson?

MW: No, it was the Lilienthal house, the lowest one.

CE: Well, you keep talking about the Gerstle property and the three establishments of the Schlosses, the Gerstles, and the Greenwalts, but they don’t talk about the Lilienthal House.

MW: Well, we called it the Lilienthal House because I don’t know whether they built it or they lived there. I’m really vague about it. But the Schloss place and the Gerstles were adjacent with no walls or anything between them. However, one knew exactly when you made one inch step over either property. There was a different ambiance about the place. And the thing that was fascinating about it was there was a mass of us children, you see, and we chose to be enemies. It was a great fun thing. And also, the Schlosses and the Gerstles has the vilest tempered Prussian gardeners you ever met, perfectly horrible men, and our joy was to do anything to drive them mad. If we could go over at Gerstle’s to the Schloss property and destroy something, that was being tenderly grown and then rush back before we were caught and it they could do the same thing to us. There was sort of a no man’s land between, which was a bamboo grove which we used to lurk in and watch our moment for going out. It added a great deal because everything was so placid and so quiet that you had to do something, you see. Then behind the tennis court – Well, I don’t know why we had this. There was no reason. We should have gotten on splendidly but we didn’t. We enjoyed the other much more. Behind the tennis court in the Gerstle property was a big, big orchard of apricots. And I must say I’ve never tasted apricots like those since, all warmed by the sun. I don’t quite understand why because it was very steep. Cows wandered about there, and I remember being chased up those trees frequently by the cows. I have never seen anybody climb so fast as I managed to get to the top of those trees. I didn’t know how it happened. We also used to have games. And I think I told you that I was the only girl in my generation. There were about four or five boy cousins, most of whom were older than I was and certainly bigger, but I was allowed, very graciously, to play with them.

CE: Would you give us some of those names of those boy cousins?

MW: There was John and Bob Levinson. There was Gerstle Mack. There was Mark Gerstle, the junior. Oh dear, I think that was it mostly. Of course, we were influenced by the west. I remember reading so many stories of western cowboys and things, and being totally enthralled and saying to Mother once, “Do you think someday we can go out west, Mommy?” And she said, “If you do, dear, you’ll get your feet wet.” I didn’t realize I was living out west at all. But anyway, we played western games. Mother came out one day seeing me looking a little agitated but rather pleased, being strung up by the boys because it was part of the game and I was the outlaw. She managed to cut me down in plenty of time but I wasn’t going to complain because it was such an honor that they let me play with them.

CE: It was really a privilege to have that many young boys around.

MW: Well, I didn’t think so. They teased. You know, when you’re a certain age, “boy” is not a very precious thing, it’s a monster who teases you. But then I was going to tell you also about coming over with the earthquake.

CE: Oh, yes. Now, you must have been about eight years old.

MW: I was eight years old, just; I was eight in March and this was April.

CE: And you were in your little bed that morning –

MW: I was in my little bed that morning and had been very frightened of earthquakes for a long while because I’d never seen this mentioned before, but for a number of years before the big quake there were a great many other quakes that came all the time. There were constant earthquakes, little ones, not so little but they were there.

CE: Had you sensed those? Had you felt those early ones?

MW: Oh, boy. I had a psychic feeling. I would say, “We’re going to have an earthquake today.” In those days, very unscientifically, there was a thing called earthquake weather. Do you remember?

CE: Yes.

MW: Do you remember, Mrs. Kent? There was a certain thing they called earthquake weather. But anyway, this particular time in our house I had the back room and there was a very long corridor because the houses in those days had corridors because space was no great object, a very long corridor that went to my parents’ room in the front and in the middle of the corridor was steps that led downstairs to the front porch and the hall. When the earthquake began, Mother said, “Get the kitty, get the kitty,” and Father walked down that corridor being thrown from side to side, came into my room, picked me up, carried me half way down the corridor again to the steps, walked down the steps and across the hall before the earthquake stopped, which kind of shows you how long it lasted. Then we just sat around the house.

CE: Were you terribly frightened, or were you secure in your father’s arms?

MW: I was so panicky that if I had any reputation for keeping cool in any emergencies afterwards, because I was so ashamed for the way I behaved for that whole day, I was quite hysterical, and I’ve always been ashamed of it. But anyway, after a little while we decided to go up to my grandfather’s house on the top, where I was born, on the top opposite the Alta Plaza.

CE: Where are we now?

MW: We are now in 1906.

CE: No, but is this 2360 Washington?

MW: 2360 Washington between Buchanan and Webster, quite a distance down. And the whole of my grandfather’s family all gathered there. We all slept on mattresses on the floor and that sort of thing and every time there’d be one of the subsequent earthquakes I know I used to fly out and hold onto the coping of Alta Plaza around somehow or other feeling it was safer than in the house. I don’t know why. But anyway, after we’d spent a night there and the next day somebody in the family had hired a little sailboat and we all embarked on the sailboat and went over to San Rafael. We took the lower house. I don’t think anybody else was in the others. Not that I remember. We stayed there for a year. It was a big house.

CE: Does the lower house have a connotation? Is that where the Lilienthals often –

MW: I think that’s where – I think they were there more often.

CE: And then you remained a year?

MW: A whole year, before we returned to San Francisco to live, although our house wasn’t damaged at all except for the chimney falling down.

CE: Well tell me, going back to this Gerstle property, this compound where you all played as children and were so sweet to the gardeners, what are we talking about, five, ten acres? Have you any idea the size of this compound?

MW: I should think it was five of six acres easily, both of them.

CE: All right, now, as children, were you permitted to go away from the property or were you more or less restricted?

MW: Oh, we were restricted.

CE: You couldn’t go to downtown San Rafael?

MW: Well, with people.

CE: With people.

MW: With people and there was a quarry quite nearby, up the street, where we weren’t supposed to go, but I think we sneaked off, and they had the smallest, brightest green frogs I’ve ever seen. Tiny little things about so big and at that quarry. There was also a haunted house on the hill which we used to look at with great interest. But we stayed out.

CE: Well how – What do you remember of that year? How did your schooling continue, or did it begin again, or were you tutored at home?

MW: No, my mother for some reason known to herself, didn’t think that children should be taught to read or write too soon. I don’t know what her “too soon” was because I was naturally always interested in books and stories and everything of that sort; a very vivid imagination. But let us face it, when they tried to teach me to read there was nobody who could. There was no way of teaching me to read. They had the method of sound in those days. I think maybe if they had shown me a word, “catastrophe,” and said, “This is catastrophe,” I’d have recognized it. But it was sound. So I can remember to this day my puzzlement when a perfectly normal ordinary person would point to a little black mark on the paper and look me in the eye and say, “p, p, p,” and, “t, t, t,” or, “sss.” I didn’t know what was the matter with them! I made no connection with the silly sounds they were making and the signs on the paper, none.

CE: How did you overcome this mystery?

MW: Well, after we were at grandmother’s place for a year my parents decided I’d better go to school. They looked around and right down, oh, I should say about four or five blocks – I believe it’s still there looking almost the same – was a little public school. I can even remember the name of the principal, Miss Saunders. I don’t know why, but I do. And so they probably did some interviewing or anything and they decided it was all right and not only that but it was all right for me to walk down to it, so that was great. So I would go to this school. So the first day I went I was delighted; none of the children could read. I was among my peers. There were a lot of Portuguese children and other children unknown to me. There was quite a lot of blue collar workers around there. So that was all right. After being there for about three days my mother said to me, “Now listen, darling, tell me how is it going. How do you feel? Do you like the children? Are you enjoying it?” “They are fascinating, Mummy. They are wonderful children.” Mother looked a little bit surprised but happy and she said, “Oh?” And I said, “Yes, do you know, Mummy, there are two little girls and they have little gray things running around their hair?” I had never seen lice before and I thought they were a great addition and they were wonderful. Well, Mother just screamed and took me by the hand down to sawdust and suggested a little bit of hair washing might be a good idea. But it spoiled the whole thing for me. I just thought that was beautiful, I remember.

CE: Well, you had led, to a degree, a rather sheltered life.

MW: A very sheltered life.

CE: Now you were out in the real world of San Rafael.

MW: And I liked it. Well, as I say, nobody read, and one day, I don’t know, maybe a week or two afterwards, I came down, walked down from Violet Terrace, which was the name of the place, into the classroom and read exactly as I do now. Overnight. I don’t know how or why but that was the way it happened.

AK: Isn’t that something?

MW: Well, it was kind of silly. And my parents were very good. They had a beautiful library, and once I could read I had the run of it. Except once, I got The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, you see, and Mother found I had it and she said, “No. You are too young to read that book,” and confiscated it. And I said, “When can I be able to read that book?” Well, we were off to Europe because we were always going off to Europe or someplace, and she said “When we come back.” And I remember to this day as we entered the house about a year later, before I took off my hat or coat I went to the bookcase and picked up the book and brought it upstairs with me. I was determined to read that. But the school was fun. I don’t know what I learned, but it was my first experience with public school.

CE: When you returned after that years sojourn in San Rafael, did you attend school in San Francisco?

MW: I’ve been to so many different schools that I really am confused about it because I would be at a school, and my parents were very fond of traveling and obviously very fond of me, would pick me up right like that, in the middle of a term or any old how, and go off with me, and it would be about five, six, or seven months of traveling of which there was not one lesson. Mother, I think she tried to teach me a little something and lost patience, and never went back to it. So all that time I had no lessons at all and then I would be brought back and thrust into a school or as happened when I was about – It must have been just after the earthquake. No, about – I must have been nine or ten or something like that, I was put in this school in Burbay which was a French School; they never heard of English. So, of course, I had to learn French. And it was drastic, but I learned it. After three months we had to come back, then because the Schlosses had financial troubles, and we had to come back, and my mother saw me after three months and found that I could prattle in French; she couldn’t believe it. And my cousin, Louise, who was Mark’s daughter, was there and she had her governess and I had my governess and we lived in a pension and twice a week we went to the baths. And having a bath was considered so dangerous that when we came back we were promptly put to bed so we wouldn’t get pneumonia. I remember we always had boiled eggs which was delicious but it was not advanced in those days. But anyway, I went to Burke’s School and I went to a school down in San Mateo for some reason or other. I think we lived down San Mateo at some point. I don’t know why. I went to a school in Paris. Oh, I can’t keep track of all of them. And I practically learned nothing at most of them.

CE: Well, once you learned to read you were on your own then.

MW: Once I learned to read I was on my own, that’s true.

CE: Well tell me, in retrospect, what prompted your family to travel so? They had the means and the leisure?

MW: Mother was restless and Father was agreeable and I was available. I mean there you are.

CE: I think that is a wonderful combination. What was your first trip? When was your first trip, when you were about ten?

MW: I was four.

CE: Four!

MW: Went to New York. I remember so well. It was the first time I had ever seen snow or ice and at the station –

CE: Went by train, I presume?

MW: Oh, train, of course. And then we sat on the outside and you got all covered with smut and it was all very exciting. But when we arrived there was snow and there were these icicles. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I thought the icicles were absolutely gorgeous. So, I think I had a little fur coat on or a very wooly coat and I surreptitiously managed to break off an icicle and put it under my coat, and we sat in a hansom cab, my nurse and I facing my parents, and as we clop-clopped towards the hotel a little pool was slowly forming of the floor, you see. And my nurse and my parents were furious at me and scolded me. I was a big girl and I wasn’t to do things like that. And, you know, it took me a little while to realize that my beautiful icicle was melting and my heart was so broken at losing my icicle I never even explained to them about it. I remember that was my first contact with the snowy conditions.

CE: A lasting impression.

MW: I couldn’t forget it.

CE: Do you remember your first trip abroad?

MW: I’m just trying to see if I can remember because we were always going. I had almost all my clothes made in Paris. We were always going to Switzerland because it was such a healthy place for children; very boring, too. I really don’t – We did all these other things. We went to the orient. We went to China and Japan.

CE: Were any of these trips related to your father’s business?

MW: No, except this one time my father was the President of the Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco. It was just before the revolution in China and the Chinese government invited the Chambers of Commerce to come over as their guests. And they mistook what this was. They thought it was government, you see. So we were treated – You know, it was probably desperation. There was southern California and – We were treated like royalty. We had hotels emptied for us, special trains, decorations at all the stations. Everybody in the party had two horses and a big, big carriage, open carriage, and two men on the front seat and banquets and a chance to see elections that nobody had ever seen it. I was the only little girl in the party, so I’d go behind the scenes and see the women who never came out, you see, and they were still wearing pigtails because of the Manchu Dynasty, and Peking had still a Forbidden City.

End, Tape 1, Side A

MW: I was fifteen and my parents took me to a boarding school in Paris and the reason they thought it was such a good boarding school was because my mother’s sisters in their generation had gone to this same school, except that it was run by the mother of the woman who was running this one. So it was a two generation, and was there a difference in the generation! Oh, this was a perfectly abominable woman. It was really almost like Dickens, what she did to her poor pathetic little charges. Also, mother made a big mistake. It was a finishing school and all the other girls were 18 and I was fifteen, you see, and I knew from nothing. When mother came and found I had the same towel for a month she said, “Didn’t you notice that?” and I said, “Well, it did look a bit gray, Mummy, but – ” I didn’t know. Your towels were changed automatically. Beds were made automatically. Floors were clean. I never noticed that, and when they weren’t, I didn’t notice that either. But anyway, I went to – You know, this is the most disgraceful thing in my life, and I will tell you in full confidence for public use which is that I never dressed myself completely until I was fifteen. There was always somebody to do something for me.

CE: Well, let’s talk about that for a moment. In your staff, in your family home on Washington Street, what would the staff consist of?

MW: We had a Chinese cook who lived in a basement room where we had laundry and who often went off to his family in Chinatown without our knowing it and he would never allow anybody in the kitchen. So I never learned anything about cooking, obviously, growing up.

CE: Do you remember his name?

MW: Oh, they’re all the same, either Wong or Chang or Tong or – I don’t know. But I know one day they found him – one of them was dead in his bed and they had the most terrible time locating his family. But they wouldn’t start fixing an elaborate meal until about forty minutes before time of serving. And they would chase you with a carving knife if you went in.

CE: All right, what other –

MW: That was the Chinese cook. Then Mother, of course, she wanted me to have the two languages; always tried to get a French-speaking maid and a German-speaking maid. Then there were those two maids and the cook.

CE: You mean like an upstairs maid and a downstairs maid?

MW: Upstairs and a downstairs, yes.

CE: Did they reside on the property also?

MW: Yes, they lived in the place, upstairs in the attic which was bigger than most of our houses these days. It had a walk-in cedar room and all that sort of thing. And Mother always said she wanted a very small house. She didn’t like big houses. Well, now it’s been let off into various apartments but I don’t go and look at it. I don’t go back. I don’t believe in that. We had a chauffeur and then there always was a mademoiselle and a fräulein who would give me lessons. I did riding, horseback riding, which totally severed me from my friends because Mother insisted on the English saddle and the right stock and the right –

CE: Where was this done, in Golden Gate Park?

MW: In Golden Gate Park. There was a Monsieur – I’m getting mixed up with the name, but he taught everybody.

CE: And you keep your horse out there?

MW: Oh, he had the horse. I hated it. It was awful. All my friends used to leap on the back of horses without even a saddle and had a gorgeous time. Here I was riding correctly, holding all the four reins and doing the right things and sedately up and down Golden Gate Park and hating every moment of it. In San Rafael once, I did – When I was about sixteen I had a horse come in the evenings sometimes and would go off by myself up Wolfe Grade where there was nothing else and that was nice. But I hated this. And I had dancing. I had swimming. I had gymnasium.

CE: Where would you do the swimming, might I ask? Did you go the ocean or a pool?

MW: No, I think there were private pools and then later on the Women’s Athletic Club came along. I was a child member. And then Mr. Winniopsky had the gymnasium and he would teach us self defense jujitsu, and I would be the person he would practice on. I remember being flung through the air on mattresses over and over again. I never could do one thing in the gymnasium. I couldn’t climb anything. I couldn’t straddle anything. I couldn’t jump over anything. I used to kind of sit in the corner and look at all these wonderful athletic friends of mine and then in the end of having all this self defense, you see, he gave us a little quiz, and finally he came to me and he said, “And what would you do if this great big man came up and started reaching for you? I said, “I’d scream, Mr. Winniopsky.” I didn’t pass. You know, it was no good.

CE: When, tell me, when you would go over, especially that year after the earthquake, did all this entourage come with you?

MW: No, because my grandmother had all her maids and you couldn’t possibly have brought anybody into that. It would have been real trouble. They stayed in the house.

CE: I see. So I imagine, though, there was a comparable staff over in San Rafael?

MW: Oh, yes, yes. Much more, there were lots more. But she always had a woman cook. No, she didn’t. She had a woman cook and she had a Chinese one and a Chinese man used to come out with a pole across his shoulders and two vegetable things and we used to buy from him. I remember his coming out there. And they had the main house and then there was a big paved courtyard and the servants’ cottages, houses, were out there. And I think I told you when Grandmother used to take me with her, she would do some marketing or shopping. She’d go down to Victoria and stop outside of a house. I mean shop. And they would come out and bring their wares and she would decide whether she would take them or not.

CE: Sounds like Mrs. Kittle.

MW: And it was the same thing with dry goods or anything else. And those days you bought your linens by their coming to your house and showing to you. I actually got – My house here, I did that because those days there were people called Scheuer, you know, they’ve got this lovely place in Union Square. Well, they came out here as refugees, and they had brought Mother and Father and the son would bring their suitcases here, and you’d do that. That was in the 1940s. So it’s been so great to see them make good. I’m so pleased with that. So now we’ve finished with fifteen.

CE: Before we finish I want you to tell, if you would, what young people, as a girl, what would you wear in the summer over there. Now we’re talking about an age before the jeans were ever thought of as the dress.

MW: Oh, my goodness, yes.

CE: What would you wear to play in, cotton?

MW: Cotton dresses, yes.

CE: Short? Long socks or what?

MW: I have a volume here, volumes of photographs of me from the first moment and you can tell – Well, it varied. It varied a lot. When you went to Burke’s you wore middies. You weren’t allowed to wear anything else. I wore a lot of middy blouses. In fact, I think I was the first person to wear a middy blouse in Paris. I used to be followed and pointed at. You know, this was quite remarkable. Well, it was the first time they had ever seen such a thing.

CE: Well tell me, what interested you as a fun thing when you were growing up? You didn’t care for horseback riding. You were no good in the gym. In the pool you could swim.

MW: I learned to swim at Coronado and it was interesting because at the same time at the hotel was L. Frank Baum who wrote the Wizard of Oz and we got to be very good friends. In fact, in front of one of his books he’s written a little poem for me and a photograph that he took of himself and of me. I swam so well when I finally learned that people used to come and watch it. I had my – No, I won’t say my first boyfriend because, after all, I was rather older then, but a real boyfriend of about 19 used to go in swimming with me and we used to go down slides together and he used to try to get me off his back and do all kinds of stunts together.

CE: What were you doing in Coronado? Family vacation?

MW: Just a holiday. You see, nobody stayed in San Francisco in the summer in those days, nobody. We always went out of San Francisco. Just didn’t stay. It just wasn’t done.

CE: Well, there’s a whole area we’ve missed about – I mean, you touched briefly on art when you talked about your father and the Montgomery Block. What about music? Was there music in your –

MW: No, music was very lacking in our family, literature and painting. Of course, I never wanted to do anything else but paint. I never had any doubt in the whole of my life what I wanted to do, and thank goodness my parents were agreeable.

CE: Well, when did you start this interest? When you were a child?

MW: I don’t know that the play nurse gave me a pencil and I started drawing when I was first born, but I wouldn’t be surprised, because I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw. I kept badgering them to let me go to art school.

CE: Were you pretty healthy though you were premature?

MW: Oh, I was very healthy, yes. But I wanted to go to art school more than anything else and finally they let me go to the Saturday class. Mrs. Chittenden had it.

CE: Florence Chittenden?

MW: Alice. And it was from morning 'til the afternoon, and Mother said, “Remember, Saturday’s the day they have parties for children.” You know, I looked at her as if she was talking a foreign language. How could parties for children possibly be next to painting? So I started in and I started at the beginning. I had a cast that was a round ball and then a cube and then a triangle and then we went on to various ears and noses and things.

CE: Where were these studios, was this at the Mark Hopkins?

ME: The Mark Hopkins, which was destroyed, as you know, in the earthquake and so they put skylights over the basement and that was the art school, and it was absolutely great. We had the most exciting class.

CE: Was Virgil Williams connected with it at that time?

MW: I don’t know. I don’t know. But a lot of us went on and became very definitely professionals afterwards, and it was really very exciting. I used to insist that the car drop me three blocks from the art school and I would no more have gone up being driven in a car. That would have killed me. And do you remember Ruth Armor? Ruth Branson Armor as a painter was quite well known here and I met her there. And she said, “You know, when I first met you I was absolutely certain that I would never have you for a friend or talk to you because of the way you acted the first day you came.” I said, “What did I do?” and she said, and afterward, she said, “Afterwards, when I knew you I knew it was just a normal way for you to act, but you came in and you had a white fur coat on and you went straight up to your easel and you just shrugged it off and dropped it on the dirty floor and sat down and started drawing.” And Ruth said, “I thought to myself, ‘Anyone who would show off like that I don’t ever want to meet.’” I hadn’t even thought of it. But that’s the way she reacted. We became very, very good friends, I might add.

CE: What is your favorite medium to use?

MW: Oh, I love everything. I probably use more oils than anything else but I love experimenting.

CE: Does painting take precedence over sculpture?

MW: Oh, yes, I only do – No, it is painting.

CE: Painting.

MW: And writing, also. I’ve always kind of see-sawed between the two of them.

CE: Well, you mentioned your first book.

MW: That was when I was quite young. I was in my teens.

CE: Did you write other books?

MW: Oh, yes. I’m always writing books. I don’t always get them published, but alas and alack and well a day, and all that sort of thing. A second book I wrote was – I always made up my mind, you see, naïve work in painting is interesting, quite interesting, but naïve work for a writer is not interesting. And surrounded as I was with cotton wool and care and things, how was I ever going to learn about life till I lived a certain length of time? So I always say I write my first novel when I was forty and I go on painting and studying painting up to then. I practically did it. The war came in and kind of interfered a little bit, but – The next thing I did was just an exercise. It was a whodunit. It had five murders in it. It was one of the early ones based in San Francisco, San Francisco background, which was unheard of in those days. And just to encourage other people who want to write and feel that it is too discouraging, fifteen years it was rejected both in England and in America. Sent back with horrid remarks and after fifteen years it was taken and published in England. It’s about the only thing I ever made any money on. Then I wrote a novel called Porter in the Dark. It was published in America by McGraw Hill. It was an attempt at making a – And then my last book was published was a book of poems. But I wouldn’t –

CE: By what name are you published?

MW: Well, everything under – Miriam Gerstle for the first book, and then after that I put Eve Dennis for the whodunit, and then after that it’s been Miriam Wornum. And all kinds of articles have been – But that is little to do with early days of California.

CE: Well, I think we should get to Grey Wornum, don’t you?

MW: Well, I left home at twenty-two.

CE: You wanted to find out more about –

MW: At twenty-two I said I’ll never be a writer. I’ll never learn anything about it, so I’m leaving. It gave one of my grandmothers, I’ve forgotten which, a heart attack but she got over it and the family objected a little bit, but I went.

CE: Where did you think you wanted to go?

MW: England. Ever since I was eight years old and read the story of The Amulet by Nesbit, I knew I was going to live in England. I just knew I was.

CE: Talk about the power of writing.

MW: Yeah, I know. But I just knew it. So, I had a cousin – See I have a cousin in everything, doing everything. She was Adele Mack who married her cousin Jim Gerstley, which makes things very confusing, and she lived in London. I asked her if I could stay with her until I could find a place of my own, and she said yes. So I left San Francisco.

CE: Now how old were you?

MW: I was twenty-two. This is a strange saga, this trip, which is also rather typical of what happened in those days to girls of my kind. There was another family in San Francisco who had an equally rebellious daughter who painted and somehow or other the family got together and decided it would be better for the two girls to go off together, than one each, you see. I don’t know –

CE: Did you know this other girl?

MW: I think I met her. I think it would be better if I’m going to tell you the real story of this not to mention the name because I think this story is more interesting than the name. So this girl – and I, I’ll call her Louise – started off feeling so free, so wonderfully advanced, you know, and we were leaving all this kind of restraint. So we get on the train. We have a drawing room together, and we were hardly away for half an hour when there was a knock at the drawing room door, and we opened it and there was a beaming porter with a beaming conductor standing there with a huge basket of fruit and flowers from the president of the railroad. His compliments, and, “Anything we can do. Anything we can do, we are here. We have been given orders to look after you.” Well, we were barely able to say thank you and shut the door and we were so angry at this, that they dared, our parents, to reach out, so to speak, and produce privilege when we were here free souls and off on our own. We were very, very annoyed. So, Louise was a character. She did her hair in about sixteen different loops, each one being anchored by a hairpin and the hairpins were always dropping, the loops were falling down and she was always hunting for these hairpins. Also, she had brought with her a lot of very valuable drawings and etchings and things of that which always were going to be crumpled or lost or something. Anyway, she took about an hour and a half to get dressed, which did not include much washing, I may say, but there was a lot of other things. But anyway, when we got into the dining car I suddenly found that Louise was the tightest creature that ever was. She wasn’t going to even pay for a glass of water. And rather than see her die of malnutrition on the trip, I would pay for all the meals. And coming back, we passed a couple of young men who had drunk a little bit and they started beaming at us and saying that they’d like to see us, and could we get together? Louise went on, stone faced, and I went on, too. And knocking at the door again, you see, one of these young men came along and said, the same one, “I would like to see you. Now come on, open the door. We can all get together. It will be fun,” and we said, “No.” And he said, “I have a very good family from Louisiana,” and we still said, “No,” and then he said, “Oh, come on,” and shoved a five dollar bill under the door. Which I thought was rather a good gesture. So we rang for the conductor or the porter and said, “Give this young man not only the five dollars but tell him to keep off of us.” So finally we got to Chicago, still Louise not paying for anything, and we got off the train and we were passing the barrier and she said, “My etchings, my etchings, I’ve left them behind,” so we had to go back and find them and then I found she wasn’t going to tip the Porter anything, you see. So at the barrier there were some more officials to greet us, which we got rid of, and we got on the train and got to New York. It was rather wet and snowy and Louise, thank goodness, went off on her own and I was sailing two days. Then after that on a ship and I was at this hotel. That evening I went to a studio party and had a perfectly lovely time. I met a young doctor, thank goodness, because when I got back to the hotel there was Louise looking pale green having slipped on the ice and broken her leg and been carried into my room, you see. So all my nice freedom. She had the bed and I slept on the sofa and I got hold of the young doctor I’d met and he came and he set the leg.

CE: Now you’re in the real world.

MW: I was. I was looking after Louise like nothing on earth and finally having been up with her most of the night, the next morning I had lots of things to do and lots of people to see and I was leaning over her and saying, “Well I’m sorry, Louise,” and she reached up and grabbed me and it was obvious what she was – You know, I never knew much about lesbianism, at that moment. So I reared away and said, “Louise,” and she said, “You hypocrite,” so I decided –

CE: You learned a great deal in a short time.

MW: I couldn’t keep Louise with me any longer. Besides I was leaving the next day and she was really – what with not spending any money. She wouldn’t spend for that hotel room, and she was sick, she really was. She had broken her leg. So I said to her, “Louise, isn’t there anybody in this whole town that you know?” And she said, “Yes, Mrs. Sharon,” – you know, the great Mrs. Sharon – “is my godmother.” “But,” she said, “she’s so fierce and she’s so difficult, I wouldn’t dream of going near her.” And I said, “I would.” So rang up, and I said, “Mrs. Sharon, I’m coming right over,” – I think she was at the Plaza – “because I have something I want to talk to you about.” And I came bustling in that room and there she was, you know, six pearls around here and dripping, and lace and chiffon, looking exactly the way a grand dame should. And I was absolutely furious and I said, “Your goddaughter,” and I explained exactly how I felt except for a little slip of the other – I didn’t say it, and I said, “She needs looking after. She needs care, and you should do it because you’re the only person – ”

CE: “And I’m on my way to Europe.”

MW: “And I’m on my way – ” And she was absolutely a charmer. She couldn’t have been nicer. She couldn’t have been better. She was just perfect and she took over Louise, and from that day to this I have never seen Louise again. I don’t know whether she’s alive or dead, but that was the beginning of my great adventure. Then, when I got over to England I stayed with my cousin for a while and then finally I found a little apartment of my own. At one point I was invited to a thés dansants. Do you know what that is?

CE: Yes.

MW: At a place where he was there to –

CE: He who?

MW: My husband to be. My hostess had some Chinese objects. I had met her before. So I thought it would be nice to bring her something which they didn’t have in England which was all these beautiful Chinese papers that we have here. So I made a bundle, and I’m not very good at making bundles and half way across the floor it opened, and there I was surrounded with orange and red and gold and purple papers, and this young man jumped up and started picking them up and he said, “I’m doing a big mural with a collage and I’m using all sorts of papers, but I’ve never seen any like these.” And I said, “Oh, they come from San Francisco, and they’re Chinese” And that’s how we got talking. And then he asked me to dance, and he was such a bad dancer that I said, “Let’s talk.” And so from that moment on I got to know him. But my mother, with her usual restlessness, and she didn’t like her daughter being all by herself, bribed me with a trip around the world, to go with her.

CE: Was it about six months later, something like that?

MW: Three months.

CE; Three months. She gave you three months, that’s all.

MW: Three months. Well, people didn’t go around the world so often in those days, so I said I’d do it, but I’ll come back here, you see.

CE: You did make the trip.

MW: Yes, and it was quite an interesting trip because we did a little bit of Italy and we got caught by the fascists in Rome and was told, rung up, and said don’t even try to get to the railroad station because you’ll be stopped, and if you want to get out of Rome, get out now. So we hired a car and drove to Naples. And then on the trip from Naples – I think we first went to Ceylon – I got engaged. Which lasted – Came back to San Francisco and then went back to England to marry him, and it was obviously wrong and –

CE: What do you mean?

MW: Well, it didn’t work out.

CE: Are we talking about Mr. Wornum?

MW: No, we’re talking about the fiancé, the one I got engaged to on the trip.

CE: Oh, was he an Italian?

MW: A tea planter in Ceylon, English, six feet four. He became an editor of the London Times later, I found out. But anyway, it didn’t work out in London; it just didn’t. And Mother said, “Isn’t there a nice young architect you met before?” and by that time, you know, men were out of my life. So she got him in, and he broke up the rest of it. So I married in June to an Englishman but it wasn’t the Englishman my friends thought I was marrying. So that was that trip.

AK: What year?

MW: That was 1923.

CE: 1923. Were you going to art school at that time?

MW: I went to art school. No, I went to art school in New York, and –

CE: No, but when you got to London?

MW: No, I never went to art school. I went to art school in New York and Paris, but never went to art school in London.

CE: You went to thés dansants?

MW: I went to thés dansants, and I think I’ve forgotten something which is at the end of World War I. Two years before, Mother and I were in New York and Father was with the Red Cross overseas and I had a studio in New York and that’s when I started doing professional work, working for magazines, drawing for them and writing. We left America against all the rules. We weren’t supposed to, in time to get over to France before the Armistice. Wasn’t that exciting? And we saw that Défilé De, the Victory Parade, down the Champs Elysee with everybody I’d been reading about, you know, for years here in San Francisco, walking there. And did you know that it was led by the three very badly wounded soldiers? That was the way they led that victory parade; not the generals, not the conquering people, but the wounded soldiers, which is very French in their more beautiful, sensitive moments. But it was – I met a friend in art school there who lived just right on the – and that’s how we saw it. I was – well, ‘14 to ‘18, I was just twenty then. Then we went around and saw the battlefields before they were cleaned up. It was really a very exciting time. Now, there must be intervals between California bits that you –

CE: Well, you were married. Let’s get you married.

MW: Yes, but that has nothing to do with California.

CE; But we must know in your picture here, you married, and then did you live a great many years in England?

MW: Thirty years.

CE: Thirty years, in London?

MW: We lived in London about fifteen years and then we lived in a little place called Bosham.

CE: What was Mr. Wornum’s occupation?

MW: He was an architect.

CE: An architect. Residential, commercial, industrial?

MW: Well, he was one of these universal people. He did some beautiful things. He was really very well-known over there. His first big job was to do the – He won a competition for the Royal Institute of British Architects, which is their own building, and he said to have 350 architects for clients is not easy, but he won that. Then he did the Queen Elizabeth I, all the main rooms, the ship, which was very exciting. And I was liaison between all the artists we used, and I did all the fabrics, and I did the swimming pool and that sort of thing with him, carpeting. We worked together a lot.

CE: Now you have one son I know of, Michael.

MW: I have a son who is – Yes, you know, he was Assemblyman for Marin County, but he lost this time.

CE: Was he born in London?

MW: I’m afraid so. He can never be president. He was born in London.

CE: Well, you have to take these disappointments.

MW: Ah, yes, if you could but see, but he was born there.

CE: Do you have other children?

MW: Yes I had a beautiful girl who I lost by a very tragic young accident when she was barely 23, and then I have a younger daughter, Biddie, who stayed completely English, married over in England, has a family, and I go visit most years.

CE: Grandchildren?

MW: I have eight grandchildren and as of this moment of going to press I have one great-grandchild and another one in the offing; any moment the phone might ring. And that I think is exciting because you can’t prophesy much in your life, but I don’t thing there’s anybody that ever expects to be a great-grandparent. I don’t think so. I think it’s just something that happens to you.

CE: Well, what brought you back to the United States, then?

MW: I lost my husband.

CE: What year would that be?

MW: Oh, dear, it’s so difficult to remember. In the ‘50s.

CE: Twenty years ago or more.

MW: And we lived four years in Bermuda before that, and we lived in the south of France.

CE: And how did you decide to come here, to this lovely home?

MW: Well, I had to make up my mind whether I’d stay on in England or come here because my son by then had become an American citizen and married an American woman, and I had four American grandchildren and I thought, climatically speaking, to spend the winters in California and then go over in the summer and visit the other family would be a rather sensible thing to do. And I must say it has worked out very well.

CE: Well, when we first met earlier this afternoon you were talking about this property. Would you tell us about that again?

MW: Oh, yes, it is kind of fascinating. At one point there is a little house across the way that used to belong to Mrs. Huntington who was a sculptress, and she had converted the lower floor into a lovely little apartment and then fell in love with it and would not let it, would not let it at all. When I was out here, my mother became very, very ill and I came out to be with her and I stayed with other people and Grey said he could come out for a month and I just wanted a place of our own, so we managed to get that lower apartment. This was – Grey would walk across and lean against that brick wall and this was like the garden of the Sleeping Beauty, all tangled briars and trees and rose bushes and –

CE: Like a secret garden –

MW: Yes. It was a real sort of a knotted thing, and there was a little wooden house at this end and a big, big brick house.

CE: “This end,” you mean towards the bay?

MW: Yes, and then on that side where 1000 Green was, there was a big red mansion that belonged to Lucky Baldwin. The story they tell about the big red mansion is his son was in it during the earthquake and his son had celebrated the night before and was totally drunk and he woke up in the morning not having felt any of the earthquake and he looked out the window and there was all of the fire, you see, going and shining and he just said blearily, “Oh, must be Fourth of July.” So, he went in and hung out a flag, and if you remember, the houses that were not to be dynamited had flags on them, so that house never got touched. This house burned down. And in the basement of this house I found a very distorted but a champagne bottle and a lovely bouillon cup, very fine China, and two handles, unbroken, but by the fire turned absolutely almost black gray. And so when we – Grey would say, leaning over the fence, “If we ever owned any property in San Francisco, this is what I want.” So when my lawyer said the estate needs something like property, I’ll buy you a warehouse or something, and I said no. I know what I want. The day that I had this friend of mine go in and ask about the property was the day they divided it in two. Up to then you had to buy the whole property. So I had my choice of the corner or this and I’m very glad I chose this because that’s noisy. But we tore it down and we found one of those big cisterns, you know for water, right in the garden.

LE: What year was this that you bought it?

MW: It was in the ‘40s. I didn’t live in it in the beginning because my son did, and it was only after – Well, I tried it one time with my mother and my husband and then he was getting so ill. And then he won the gold medal, which is the highest thing you can possibly get in England, and I knew he wouldn’t live if he stayed here; he was so homesick for his England. So all the doctors said if we move him an inch it would kill him. And my mother – I also moved to New York at the same time, also by train. Anyway, that’s when we went back to England and I came back and I’m very glad I did because now I’m very fond of the house, although I thought I would never get over leaving the Manor House. By the way, they just sent me a most marvelous article about the Manor House which appeared in the local paper which I’ll show you afterwards.

CE: Well, you mentioned earlier, and I wish you’d repeat it for the tape, that you asked your husband in London, “When are we ever going to the country,” having had as a child your experiences of the property in San Rafael.

MW: Oh, yes. We had to rent our own houses. There was nobody in the family who lived in the country. So I not only rented places but I rented in the winter because the weather in the country is always better than any city, and I would get the most beautiful houses for nothing. They were so happy to have someone keeping it warm and looking after it. And then about every three years I couldn’t stand England anymore in the summer and we’d go abroad. We went to Zoot in Belgium and we’d go a lot down to the Basque Coast, the – which is right near St. Jean de Luz and Biarritz, and we love that coast. I can’t believe the Basques are acting that way, because they were just such calm, mild people when we knew them. It’s just amazing. So we did quite a lot. I took the children traveling, but they did have decent schools. I didn’t take them out every second the way I was –You know, I’ve done quite a lot of lecturing, here too, and every now and then they want you to fill out what your degrees are, and this sort of thing, and I said, “I haven’t any. I haven’t any education at all.” Well, what’s the equivalent you have? I say, “There isn’t any. You just have to take me for what I am.” You know, one of the things I was very interested in San Francisco is the International Child Art Center which now is taken over by the beautiful people and totally killed, ruined. And I’ve done a lot of work up at the Youth Guidance with art therapy with the girls there, and I did a lot of that during the war with the wounded and the shell shock. I just got kicked out of that one, too. It’s no good. Institutions can’t take me after a while.

AK: You’re too good for them.

MW: Well, I’m not institutionally-minded, you know. I think of the girls or whoever I’m working with as people.

CE: And the artists’ apprenticeship has changed so much, too. I was thinking, like you mentioned earlier, the Montgomery Block, to permit the destruction of that building, it’s so sad, to make it into a parking lot initially and then of course a base for Transamerica. But if there had been the consciousness then, that exists today in landmark preservation; that is one of the extraordinary buildings in San Francisco.

MW: Oh, it has so much history.

CE: Not only artists; famous lawyers have been housed there.

MW: Yes, it was really a shame. Well, I could have photographs taken of the walls that my father painted, and you could put it in your record if you would like.

CE: Could you? We would very much like it. I wonder if we might just adjourn for a moment into your studio and with the time left, tell us a little bit about it, would you?

CE: Through the hall or gallery that contains a lot of Miriam Wornum’s art, we notice a sketch of her son as a young baby. Oh, that’s adorable.

MW: There’s a Goya. Every fifty years they print from his original plate. And this is an original Fujita, and this is a couple of Rembrandts, and that’s a Rodin. He used to do his models, three or four walking around; he would never have them pose and obviously that girl was a bit cold. And then I have a couple of Whistlers. They’re rather lovely, which I bought in the middle of the Red Sea, which my father thought was a rather off thing to do. He said, “Nobody but my daughter would find Whistlers in the middle of the Red Sea.” He talked to me about it, and I thought my allowance could be better used for buying a Whistler than anything else I could think of, so – Oh, and you remember Van Loon?

CE: Yes.

MW: I met him on the island of Terra and I saw that a dirty mind is a perpetual solace, and I said, “Oh, Mr. Van Loon, I love it,” and he said, “All right I’ll draw you one.” And this is my touchstone. Anybody I know, or rather I’m getting to know, who smiles at it is going to be a friend, and the people who look a little bit shocked I don’t want to see them again.

CE: Now we’re going to turn into your studio.

MW: These are original chinoiserie.

CE: This is a tremendously large room.

MW: It’s a nice room. It was originally up to here, and my son, who’s also an architect, enlarged it and put the deck outside to the swimming pool. And this is – I’m sorry it looks like that, but it always looks like that.

CE: “Bless this mess,” the sign says.

MW: Yes it does. This was Father Christmas’ place for a while, so that’s why this end up a little bit like that.

CE: From a carousel?

MW: From a carousel in France. I had it shipped out here.

CE: Beautiful horse.

MW: And it took three years to scrape all the different layers off and then we added the gold leaf and the jewels and his name is Sayzar.

CE: And you have a library in this room also, I notice.

MW: This belonged to my husband. This whole bookcase was sent out. It wasn’t supposed to come out, but it did. Oh, I have a very, very interesting library because we all buy books in this family, madly. And here’s a picture of my husband, and that’s my daddy.

CE: Is that your father?

MW: That’s my father, and this is Grey and myself when we were more or less first married.

CE: Beautiful.

MW: He had an eye shot out in for First World War and wore a black monocle which was very distinguished.

CE: Let me see your father.

MW: This is daddy and this is also my father, also.

CE: Wonderful looking.

MW: He had a wonderful face as he grew older it got even better.

CE: Walking towards your pool and your little inner garden which is such a lovely retreat –

MW: Well, you know the early days in San Francisco, nobody ever went into a garden because they didn’t enclose them. Of course, look at it. It’s storming madly now, but it’s still, I sit out here some days by the hour; it’s heavenly. And the pool is nice and warm, and it has a solar heating, too, on the roof that I installed. I tried to do a windmill but it wasn’t – didn’t work out, but then solar heating does work out.

CE: You spend, still, some time in here?

MW: Oh, frequently, yes. I’ve just been working on a series of paintings and I hope to get a shelf. I have about seventeen of those –

CE: What’s the subject? Is there a theme?

MW: Yes. You know the beautiful names they give in, usually in French to the Chinese porcelain? You know, famille rose and bleu and that sort of thing? Well I’ve done a little fantasy on each one of these colors.

CE: Would you explain what you mean?

MW: Well, this is – You know what chinoiserie is, was the first wave of Chinese art struck Europe and when the first European art struck China and each tried to paint the way they thought the other did the result was absolutely charming and irresponsible and delightful, so I said why shouldn’t I make my own chinoiserie. And so I take the famille rose and I did a lot of studies about two years ago in the Victoria and Albert Museum and the – And read a lot and the British Museum and then I put together bits and made up bits and then make a little picture.

End, Tape 1, Side B

MW: And there was a color called violets-in-milk. They never explained what it was, so I did a little painting suggestion of violets-in-milk.

CE: Oh, charming.

MW: And this is called gilt brocade, and this was “Song de Birth, Ox Blood” and this is “Chinese White” and “Snow Scene” and thus it goes. There’s the Dowager Empress being dressed in imperial yellow, and there aubergine Claire de Lune with the moon shining. So each one is a little fantasy that I did and I want to have a –

CE: You’ve got a collection here of almost a dozen, haven’t you?

MW: I have seventeen.

CE: Are you going to show it this year?

MW: I’m going to show it when I can show it the right place.

CE: What is your idea of the right place?

MW: A museum. I don’t like the galleries here in San Francisco.

CE: How about – the museum, well – a museum in San Francisco?

MW: Or Oakland, or England, or New York.

CE: Have you approached Mr. Ian White in this area?

MW: Oh, yes, but they have a policy, I’m told: two exhibitions a year of non-living painters. That’s a great help for art, isn’t it? So I won’t get in there, but I’m trying.

CE: Well they’re getting ready for the big Dresden exhibit, of course, this year.

MW: Oh, yes, that’s the Legion of Honor, but I’ve had a one-man show at the Legion of Honor, but this year is not going to be. I’m willing to wait a couple of years. First you paint your pictures, then when you’ve got your pictures then you try to find a place to show them.

CE: Well, the Mildred Anna Williams collection is a permanent collection of the Legion of Honor, is it not? But they only take, what did you say again, only two exhibits?

MW: Well, that’s the de Young, two exhibits. But I’ll get it. I have great faith. If you do something that has any merit, it’ll find a way out; it’ll be seen or heard or touched or cherished.

CE: You would prepare the write up and the background and –

MW: I am now writing a catalog to try to convey some of the enthusiasm I feel about doing the pictures, and also what I read about the knowledge about them. Because, they need a little explaining and I’m writing a catalog and I have some line drawings that I’ve made that could be in the catalog.

CE: Where is some of your art other that this exhibit you’re working on?

MW: Well, you saw some as you went through. There’s a Dell there, and then the outside I’ll show you.

CE: Does much of it belong in your children’s, grandchildren’s family? Have you shared it with your family?

MW: Oh, every now and then they like one of Mother’s paintings and then they get it.

AK: You didn’t tell about the horse. He didn’t come on here, did he?

MW: Oh, the horse Sayzar, yes, the horse is in there. He came from a wonderful place between Grasse and Nice where they had wonderful animals from the carousels, all made of wood. And last time I went there they said, “Ah, Madame, mauvaise chance, there are no more.” So I was very glad to get that. But I have a lot of paintings here, but I think the ones outside would be more interesting to you.

CE: What does that cabinet contain, your papers? Your colors, your supplies?

MW: Everything. This is a thing I’m playing with, very tricky. I’ve invented, on clear plastic, both sides, you etch and you paint and you paste. I don’t know, it’s kind of interesting but very difficult.

CE: Is it a black Madonna, might I ask?

MW: No, you can’t see it if you don’t put a velvet –

CE: Oh, I see. You have the black velvet behind it.

MW: It’s very tricky. I’m still doing it and still don’t know what I’m doing.

CE: What do you call this?

MW: I don’t know; it hasn’t a name. And there’s a picture of the little girl, my darling I lost. I came back from Sweden and brought them all costumes and I did that little drawing of her.

CE: Do you do any charcoal work?

MW: Not if I can avoid it.

CE: Little sketches, pen and ink?

MW: I do a lot of pen and ink. We have a model come.

CE: What’s this little nest here?

MW: Oh, just a little thing. This is my hand when I was a little one. We do a lot of sketches. We have a bottle here. This was a quick sketch, you know. It’s kind of a fun thing. I have lots of those sketches.

CE: You mentioned earlier you knew Mrs. Kent’s – Adeline Kent?

MW: Oh, yes. This was a drawing of me, too. And then I did a lot of painting on mirrors. I had a show. This is called “African Night.” I had a whole show in Richmond Art Gallery of these paintings.

CE: Isn’t that interesting, on mirrors.

MW: On mirrors. I thought it was kind of a fun thing to do. I collected mirrors for about two years.

CE: What are some of the surfaces you have painted on other than canvas?

MW: You name it, I’ve painted on it. You see, I worked with my husband and did a lot of decorative things, in all media, for his various jobs.

CE: Architectural field.

MW: There would always be some thing that he wanted to do and there wasn’t any money for it, so I’d come in, you know, and do it for him and all very sub rosa because it didn’t sound so good that the wife of an architect should be doing that, but I enjoyed it.

CE: Did you do any murals?

MW: Oh, yes.

CE: On the Queen Mary, for example?

MW: Well, I did the – a mosaic mural around the pool.

CE: Did you ever know the Bruton sisters?

MW: I think so. Yes, they did beautiful things.

CE: They did the Cirque Room, and they used to call them the Bar Room Brutons.

MW: There were some very talented people as I was growing up as an art student. Oh, yes, there were great people in those days.

LE: Before we leave the studio will you explain this handsome desk to us?

MW: Isn’t that lovely? Well, I think it’s a Dutch one and it’s produced a very old coin. I think it’s way back in 1400. I just saw it and fell in love with it. And it came from England. I had a few things sent over.

CE: You mentioned the house in England. You were going to show us some photographs. Are they in this room?

MW: No, no.

CE: We are in Mrs. Wornum’s bedroom and she had a lot of art scattered throughout here. What is this?

MW: This is my first mirror picture called “Lust for Gold.” Remember they had the gold of the Andes or something out here, and I thought of what gold does to people and I wanted to make it so like jewels that it would – And I thought everything is to cost, so I thought I would do it on mirror.

CE: Lucille, did you hear, this is called “Lust for Gold.”

MW: I used gesso, gold leaf, oils. And this quilt, my father bought when he was over in, during the War I. It’s a French one. I always have it behind my bed, wherever I am.

CE: Is that your security blanket, in a sense?

MW: No, I just love it. And this is my eighteenth-century English apprentice pieces; they’re made into a little room. This is authentic. These are – That is –

CE: Are these made in England, these little miniatures?

MW: Well, you know they – An apprentice piece to prove that you are a master craftsman. When you did one of those, then you passed. They had no roads. They had no stores. They would put these little pieces in a saddle bag and go to the great houses of England and they would choose from them to order their full size things. So they’re almost impossible to get anymore. I did the screens and a friend of mine did the real upholstery, and you see, it had everything. It even has a secret drawer.

LE: Doll house size.

MW: Aren’t they fascinating? But all these apprentice pieces have really served a very definite purpose.

CE: And what is this collection on this shelf?

MW: Oh, just boxes. I like boxes, but I think I have enough boxes now.

CE: And you like otters. I’ve noticed a few around.

MW: Oh, I’m mad keen about otters. I think they are wonderful, wonderful things, otters are.

CE: Now we were walking here to see the picture of, I think, of the Manor.

MW: Oh, yes, so we were. I have other ones but this is the thing that was just sent me.

CE: This is just recently out of the London paper?

MW: No, it’s the West Sussex Gazette.

CE: West Sussex Gazette, South of England, Thursday, December 14th. And it’s called Bosham Manor House?

MW: Yes.

LE: A complex history, and even a ghost.

MW: Oh, yes, in fact I could tell them more about the ghost.

CE: Well, now what is this house?

MW: It’s just a house. It has four acres of ground. I lived there fifteen years; loved it with a passion. When I first stepped over its threshold I looked at my husband and I said, “I’ve come home.” And I’ve never had a feeling like that about any other place.

CE: I thought you didn’t live in the country.

MW: Well, I did, after we lived in London, when the war came. We lived in the country. I did most of my war work in the country. I’d go to London for a little change occasionally.

CE: Look at this.

MW: It’s very old and it’s very –

CE: And you have photographs of this, no doubt, in your own collection, the family album.

MW: Oh, yes, I have. In fact here I have a nice little drawing somebody did –

CE: Was it always called Bosham Manor?

MW: Yes

CE: That’s a charming painting.

MW: And then my husband did a memorial for my daughter of the gates for the church and this was the gates. It’s a very, very old church. It has a Saxon spire and it has a Roman crypt and King Canute’s daughter is supposed to be buried there. In fact, the marches; we have a twelve to fourteen-foot tidal rise there and that’s where he tried to hold back the sea, King Canute. Well, nobody’s ever been able to do that at Bosham. I can promise you that.

CE: Where do you keep the family album?

MW: Oh, it’s in the other room.

CE: This is beautiful.

MW: They took pictures from the time, first beginnings, and I’ve got them for the children, too. Oh, and I have my – it’ll interest you – detective story bought by a book club in Holland, and translated into Dutch. Only I can’t read Dutch, but every now and then I see a name I know and that’s all. I’ve been trying to find somebody who can speak Dutch.

CE: And that’s when you wrote under the name of Eve Dennis?

MW: Yes, that’s it. And this is, you know, I was telling you about L. Frank Baum.

CE: Yes. Mother Goose in Prose.

MW: People don’t know that book he wrote. See, there I am and that’s the little poem he wrote to me, and that’s himself. The poem is very simple. He said:

Now here’s my love to Miriam, the Coronado Fairy.

Whether far or near I am in my heart I’ll carry

Memories of happy days when we both snapshotted

And beneath the sun’s bright rays each other pictures gotted.

Isn’t that cute?

CE: And there you are.

MW: Very dressy child. Isn’t it amazing? You don’t even remember those dresses that people wore.

CE: And this is the house.

MW: From Alaska, it looks so very African but it isn’t. It’s from Alaska.

CE: Tell us about this mask. Your father got this up in the Yukon?

MW: He must have collected it, yes, and brought it back. He had it for ages and it is a beauty.

CE: Probably Alute.

MW: It could be.

CE: What is this interesting chest in your foyer?

MW: That’s Goa. You know Goa, the Portuguese colony in India. It has now been given back to the Indians. And it’s typical; you’ll find it in Lisbon. There’s a whole room of this kind of furniture. Isn’t it extraordinary? I love it because it’s very simple in silhouette, but very rich in texture.

CE: And very serviceable.

MW: I was going into a place to buy something like a kitchen table or something and I saw this and couldn’t resist it. That’s one of my paintings.

CE: This is interesting. Describe this if you would.

MW: It’s spring, and I wanted to get that overwhelming feeling of blossom coming out at that time. Every one of those flowers have done three times until I could get the right white. I just enjoyed painting that. I want to do the other seasons at some point.

CE: Why did you have your subject a beautiful black?

MW: I always liked painting black people, for years. There’s a portrait there of a woman that I did.

CE: Yes, I noticed that.

MW: Well, that’s a portrait of Martha.

CE: Is it the contrast? Is it –

MW: I don’t know. I just like them. I thought they were beautiful. But that, of course, is totally imaginary person. I always do a nude figure first. Whenever I draw a clothes thing I always draw it nude first and then put the clothes on. And this is from Mexico.

CE: And that’s some of their lovely tin work.

MW: Yes, she’s a party girl and always gets decorated for different times of the year.

CE: Now we’re walking back into the living room.

MW: This is mine. It’s a little dream. I used to paint dreams of – It’s collage and paint.

CE: The lion and the two Balinese angels, are they?

MW: I don’t know what they are. They’re spirits.

CE: It’s a dream.

MW: And then there’s this one.

CE: The one over your mantle, is that one of your works?

MW: That’s mine. I do jungle pictures because whenever I go into a museum I draw all the funny animals on textiles and on pottery and in sculpture and then when I get a collection I do a jungle picture. Most of them have been sold, so that’s the last one. And those two etchings belonged to Gertrude Stein, who, by the way, is a kind of member of the family. I didn’t mention my youngest aunt, Aunt Rosellen, went and lived in Baltimore. And her second husband was Gertrude Stein’s nephew. So whenever we went over to Paris, we’d all say rather laughingly, and again, like we have to go over to San Rafael for two weeks, we’d say, “We should call on Gertrude. I think we should call on Gertrude.” So we’d call on Gertrude and now, of course it seems as you are calling on a goddess, but we just thought it was a little bit of a nuisance when we did. But she was marvelous, and Alice Toklas. I finally solved why they looked so strange. They wore about six clothes, one on top of the other, series of things. And she said a wonderful thing, Gertrude, to me.

CE: And what was that?

MW: We said, “Why do you write in a way that no one can understand? Why are your words so difficult to understand?” She said, “Because I do my own meaning.” she said. “If I say the word ‘banana,’ that means a very hot stuffy room with hardly any breathing space.” Well –

CE: Are you aware, Miriam, that the Bancroft Library oral history started in 1952 with Professor Hart going to Paris to interview Alice B. Toklas to get her reminiscences on Gertrude Stein?

MW: No, I didn’t know.

CE: That’s how the – It all started at the University of California, and about four years prior to that what we know as oral history today, using the tape recorder, started at Columbia with Allan Nevins, a great historian.

MW: I have an original poem Gertrude Stein wrote for me in my album, which I always feel I ought to perhaps give to one of those societies. I mean, not the original, but if they’re keeping all sorts of trivia.

CE: Well, you could. They call all of that material “ephemera” and you could have certainly a copy made to put in her file. Was she a large woman?

MW: Very large, very noble and very – As I say, we could hardly get at Gertrude because she usually had a cap on her head and all these different, series of –

CE: Was that to keep her warm in Paris, or –

MW: It probably was to keep her warm and it also probably to, a way of dressing. And then Mike Stein, you know, he had one of the first houses that Le Corbusier made in Garches, and we used to see a lot of him. And then Leo Stein, for some reason while he was in New York, would come and sit in my studio for hours. I think he treated me like a pet kitten or puppy. He would come and he would sit there and he would disconnect his hearing apparatus so he could not be got at, and he would just sit there perfectly silent. We would give him a cup or tea or coffee and after about three hours of this, we were going around paying no attention, and he’d leave. And he did that all the time. I never have figured that one out. Because I couldn’t have meant anything, at nineteen or twenty, couldn’t have meant anything to Leo.

AK: I don’t know.

MW: Oh, if you’d seen him!

CE: Is it a fair question to ask you, when you decided you wanted to become a liberated woman, did you accept an allowance from your family?

MW: Yes, I did.

CE: In retrospect, looking back today –

MW: No, because it gave me a chance to – I had already demonstrated in New York that I could earn money by selling my things and as soon as I got settled I was going to start in on my own. Definitely, I was going to start in on my own, but until then I didn’t mind a bit getting started. I really was very vague about money and its connotations or it didn’t enter into my life very much one way or another. I could do without it or I could do with it.

CE: Did you consider yourself as being rather privileged to not have to worry about these things?

MW: Oh, I have always thought that if there’s anything I can return to society from being totally unmerited – The only thing is being born to the right family. I’ve always felt that I don’t deserve any of it, absolutely. I just – But I think that if you have got some money you should show a little imagination in spending it. I get very bored with people who do the same things, to be at the same restaurant, wear the same clothes and do that, there’s very little imagination shown. And I think a great deal of some of the finest architecture and the best of all the art have been done by eccentric, very rich people who bought the things or erected the things. Eventually it gets back to people.

CE: Or saved them, at least preserved them.

MW: And without that kind of eccentric spending of money an individual could do you would never get some of these things. I resent a dull person spending dull money, but if you’re doing something exciting I see no reason against it.

CE: Did your father live long enough to see some of your art work?

MW: Oh, yes.

CE: And be enthused?

MW: He saw a lot of my work and he was delighted that I was working with my husband and – Oh, yes, he thoroughly approved of that side of my life. They couldn’t have been more supportive or more helpful. They didn’t quite know what I was doing, but then you never expect that your family – And I give my advice to all young people who are starting out, both writing and painting, and I always say, “Never show anything to your family. It’s fatal; it’s the kiss of death. Get somebody outside whose opinion you value and show one person, and that’s all.”

CE; Well, you’ve always had, from the beginning, this inner drive about art.

MW: Oh, always. It wouldn’t have mattered if I had to climb up from the gutter for it.

CE: How much do you attribute your talent to schooling and how much to your own initiative?

MW: Only to my own initiative. The schooling I had at Burke’s, for instance –

CE: I mean art schooling, I was referring to.

MW: Art school, well you go to art school because you want to learn, and I believe in it. I think you should go through this. I think you should be trained and I think disciplined.

CE: Well, isn’t that rather a departure from the young artists’ concept today? They want to be intuitively into everything, and do their thing. And what do you get out of it, in your judgment?

MW: Yes, and look at the work. You get designs on paper or you get designs on canvas and they can only go so far. If you look at God’s hand work, the shapes that are put into this world and you as a – I’m talking about the visual arts now, use an interpreter of the shapes and what they mean to you – you never run out of subjects. But if you’re working with triangles, sooner or later you’ve drawn every kind of a triangle there is. There isn’t another kind of triangle that anybody could think of. You’re limiting yourself. Have you ever thought of the word “abstract”? You can abstract from a whole and you get a part. I knew a painter, a sculptor, who had a class and he showed them a wonderful abstract painting and they loved it; they thought it was great. And then he showed from where he got it which was a Bouguereau old-fashioned painting. But he’d taken the actual bones of that painting and put it down, and it was a fine abstract, and every good painting has an abstract base for it.

CE: Would you dare to make a comparison or comment on the distinction between writing and painting? Are the same disciplines required?

MW: No.

CE: No. Different.

MW: But discipline, discipline.

CE: Well, when you apply discipline to writing, are you talking about having somewhat of a regular routine about when you do it, or going over and over?

MW: I’m the over and over person, not the regular-time person.

CE: Over and over. Do you feel that you are your worst and best critic yourself now?

MW: I’m a pretty mean critic to myself.

CE: Are you hard on yourself?

MW: Very hard. In fact, sometimes I totally discourage myself. But the thing is that I believe that you start off by pouring everything you know on that particular subject, whether it’s a chapter or whether it’s notes, everything you’ve got right out any old how. Then when you’ve got the actual bulk of something, then you work on it, and then you try to make the perfect sentences. Beginning you’re going to stymie yourself. You see it is the most abstract of all the arts. You haven’t got a thing. You say, “I’ve got an idea for a book,” and there’s nothing there, nothing there at all.

CE: Do you write by pen and paper or typewriter?

MW: Oh, I hate the typewriter.

CE: You do it with pen.

MW: It goes “click, click, click” and I can’t spell anyway. So, no, I write and then I get somebody to type and then I look at it abstractly. And it’s a very good thing to be able to look at the thing abstractly.

CE: Is it fair to ask if you’re involved in some writing right now?

MW: Not really. I am just working on the catalog and I did finish off an autobiography that my husband had written and I want to work at that a little bit.

CE: Are you going to publish that for, maybe for the family?

MW: Oh, never, never would do that. It has to be published properly, as far as I’m concerned.

CE: Mrs. Kent has a question.

AK: I wonder if you have these illustrations. Did you keep them?

MW: I have a few of them, and my son has some of them, and some of them are lost.

CE: What are you looking at, Mrs. Kent? The first book, Stardust?

AK: Stardust, wonderful.

MW: Well, it was a fun thing to do. The stories are not too good. But I used to tell stories to children by the hour. That’s how I kind of judged whether they were interested in it or not.

CE: Tell me, Mrs. Wornum, what is this exquisite screen on the wall?

MW: That’s a Coromandel screen. It’s rather old, and at the time I got it the City of Paris had an Oriental Department which was very good, and they were closing the Oriental Department and I saw this screen and it was in lamentable condition. It was falling to pieces and it was half on the floor and half on the wall and I bargained with them for about a year and a half. I kept saying, “You know you’re absolutely disgraceful. You’ve let this go to pieces. Who on earth would want that? You can’t put it up, it won’t be a screen,” and finally of course they came down to a price I wanted and I put it on the wall and I love it. Look at it. It looks ostensibly like a hunt, doesn’t it?

AK: Yes, it does.

MW: But look at it closer and you’ll find there’s not one animal being hurt or pierced. In fact, a few of them are being caressed, and I have a theory that the emperor said, “Let us have a hunt,” so all the keepers who adored the animals let them out and go through the motions of apparently going at them, but they don’t. And as soon as the emperor said, “Let the hunt be finished,” they take them back and feed them and they’re pets again. You see, no animal is being touched, nowhere, and here he’s holding the little creature, forgotten that it’s supposed to be a wild animal, just holding it. And this one is holding the rabbit and pretending to dag it, and he’s not going to dag it at all. Nowhere is there an animal being hurt.

CE: I love the way the –

MW: My son did that.

CE: The toile work in black comes around and frames this screen, and then turns into the foyer and continues out.

MW: It’s done that way very deliberately. Then outside in the foyer I have these two little chairs. I designed the tapestry, and a friend made them and that picks that color up. And these are Victorian papier-mâché chairs, rather early, near the Regency period, and I had a whole collection of them.

CE: Was this house designed by your husband?

MW: By my husband, and my son did a lot. For instance, when my husband did the house with a basement – I mean, the floor below was a dining room and kitchen, and when I came here to live alone my son said, “You’ll never go up and down stairs,” so he made this into a kitchen. He cut off an edge of the drawing room and made it into a kitchen, and then we made this into a dining room.

End, Tape 2, Side A

CE: The three rooms were made into –

MW: The one room was made into three rooms.

CE: I see, dear, I see.

MW: And my son designed the kitchen. He designed the cover for the walk. He did the carport, and he did the new studio, and he did the pool.

CE: Well, is that other entrance an entrance into your studio, in the carport?

MW: No. In the carport it goes upstairs to an apartment I have upstairs. This house, it wasn’t meant to have it, but it has four separate apartments with four separate entrances.

CE: This house does?

MW: Yes.

CE: Where are the other apartments? Below us?

MW: One upstairs and two downstairs.

CE: Very good.

MW: So, that it’s rather kind of strange the way it worked out, but the one upstairs now, I had it rented for about eight or ten years to somebody, and now he isn’t here anymore and I just keep it for the family. And my little driver, chauffeur, and his wife have another one downstairs.

CE: Do you not drive anymore?

MW: Oh, my reflexes are much too slow. I would be a menace on the road. I drove since I was eighteen, all over, and in England and in France and places like that, and then I came to a point where I said, “Now I get off the road.”

CE: Well, the reason I ask, Mrs. Kent still drives and –

MW: Well, bless her heart. Maybe her reflexes are quicker.

CE: She’s a wonderful driver.

MW: Well, good for her.

CE: Can I change the subject just a moment? Now, next June we’re going to be celebrating on June 17th the quadricentennial of Drake’s arriving and careening the Golden Hinde somewhere in Marin County. There will be a lot of British people here. Are you involved in any of that entertainment?

MW: I will be in England. I am leaving in May as usual. You see, the Balclutha, that belonged to the family, the Northern Commercial Company, the sailing vessel the Balclutha. That has a very sad –

CE: When it was the Star of Alaska or something?

MW: I don’t know what it was called. But it belonged to the family at one time. It’s three owners. But this is a very sad story. I have so many sad stories against myself, but they’re mostly very funny. This was – They had a new ship for Alaska, and they named it after my mother, the Sarah, and she christened it. And on the ship – They thought it was a very cute idea. They had a new lifeboat. A new, unsinkable lifeboat and they called it the Miriam, you see. And so, after they christened the Sarah, they took the lifeboat with much fanfare and all this and put it into the water and it instantly sank, without a trace, gone. The only boat I’ve ever had named after me. Isn’t that kind of sad?

CE: Yes. Well, you’ve been aboard the Balclutha many times I’m sure.

MW: Oh, several times and I think they’ve done a beautiful job.

CE: And seen the display of photographs and memorabilia regarding its early days.

MW: I think they’ve done a beautiful job. I tell everybody to go and see it. I think it’s very important, very good.

AK: May I ask one more thing? This seems to be a hanging balcony instead of a –

MW: Yes they’ve hung it. And you know this little Macondray Lane goes one block here and one block there, and when I first came it was just a muddy little road and we paved it a little bit. Below it there is kind of a wild jungle and that belongs to the city; it’s a park. So they can never build on it, and we wake up to the sounds of singing birds, and actually we have other interesting nature notes. You see, my hummingbird feeder –

AK: Yes, yes.

MW: Well, for a long while I had hummingbirds, and the other night I looked out and there was a rat climbing up and with his two paws holding the spout and drinking. And I said, “No, I don’t think I like this.” And so for the moment I haven’t filled it. I have to find some way, some metal protection or something to put at the bottom to keep it from coming. It also at one time ran down the tree and another time – Did you know they were tightrope walkers? You know, ran on the telephone wires.

LE: Oh, yes, that’s how they get aboard ship.

CE: Yes, and they have the big circular disks.

MW: It’s a nice rat. It’s a clean rat. and it’s a smart rat and I have nothing against it, but I don’t like it to eat my hummingbird food.

AK: No, you don’t.

CE: When you were in London, were you near the Thames?

MW: No, we were in St. John’s Wood near Regent’s Park and Lord’s Cricket Ground. A nice big street, very wide, with trees and every house had gardens. I was there for about fifteen years, and then we moved to Bosham during the war. But we’ve had a little cottage in Bosham for about five years before.

CE: Was Bosham far enough away to take some of the children who were sent out of London?

MW: Oh, my dear. We had 400 evacuees.

CE: On your estate?

MW: Oh, no, in the village. When I first came down, you see, from America, I said, “Well, what are you doing about these children?” “Oh, nothing. They’re a nuisance and they don’t know how to behave, and we don’t like them one thing.” So I started two or three evening classes in which they did woodwork and carpentry and sewing and various things like that. Of course, when I first came to the Manor I felt sure that the whole village would reject me as being American. And what did I have to do? But when I started these classes for the children I had a choice whether I should include village children with it or not, and I decided to include them. After a little while I knew all the children in the village and through the children, of course, the parents got to know me and I was totally accepted and I became part of the village. In fact, when I go there now, despite the other people who live at the Manor, they say to me, “When you coming back? We miss you. When are you coming back?”

CE: Well, when you go in May, where will you be going?

MW: Well, I go always by ship. I don’t like flights, and unfortunately Amtrak is not very good at the moment. And usually I take one of the Vikings and go straight – well not straight, but I get to Southampton and this time they’re being very mean. It’s going from New York.

CE: You mean you would leave here, San Francisco, normally?

MW: Normally on the ship and go arrive in Southampton. So I’m taking just the car and motoring to New York and pick it up there.

CE: And will you go to London?

MW: No, I’ll go straight down to Sussex where my daughter lives. I’ll go up for the day or so to London. I don’t think I’ll stay there, though, and then we have a villa in the South of France and we’ll go down there for a month.

CE: Where about is that?

MW: A little place called Gulfe Juan, which is near Antibes and Cannes. Nobody knows about it. It’s a little village that has no hotel; it has no casino. You go through it, but the villa is just about like this, looking over the Mediterranean, and it takes about five minutes to get down to the village, and you know everybody in the village, you know. It’s still a tiny little place where – the way it used to be.

AK: Write another story about that.

CE: You know, you’ve lived an extraordinary life and you have sort of come full circle, back to the water, haven’t you?

MW: I can never be far from water. I get very unhappy. I’ve never had a holiday that I’ve chosen that wasn’t on a lake or a river or an ocean.

CE: Well, looking right now from your living room view, north, and seeing the water traffic and the color in the sky after the rain, it is a beautiful sight, and the sun on the Balclutha.

MW: And the clouds, don’t forget, dearly beloved, the clouds. We don’t usually have clouds in San Francisco, and this is so exciting. Well, it’s never, never the same. It changes and it’s always beautiful and, you see, it takes the sting out of living in a city. You open a door and you come in, and you don’t look at bricks and mortar. It’s sky and sea. It just opens up.

AK: Different from morning 'til night.

MW: It is beautiful.

CE: There have been many changes you’ve seen, even though you’ve lived abroad for so many years.

MW: Oh, yes.

CE: How do you counter people who criticize the changes in California and the changes in San Francisco, that it’s such a horrible place, that all these horrible things happen. How do you answer people?

MW: Well, I just think life is like that, and you get out of life what you want. I mean, if you want to go with a lot of drug addicts, you want to get drunk, and if you want to, even if you want to get murdered, I do believe that the person who gets murdered has something to do with it. You know, in The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran, he says that the murdered person is also guilty. No, I don’t know, I think – I love San Francisco. It does change, but it’s much more open. When I grew up here, you see, there were little cliques. San Franciscans knew other San Franciscans and the only people you met were a few people from abroad, maybe from Boston and New York. And the whole of the middle west, the whole that was unknown, you didn’t know anything about those people and you never saw them. It was very tight.

CE: Well, when you consider your grandfather’s time here in the 1860s before the railroad was finished in 1869 and the telegraph was completed, the only communication was by shipment, wasn’t it?

MW: I think it was, yes.

CE: And that’s the exciting part of this whole Pacific Coast.

MW: And that’s a shame. It’s just a shame that the ships are gone.

AK: Yes, isn’t it? Dreadful.

MW: That’s terrible. Oh, it’s an awful thing. But I don’t know, you know, so much has happened in life and it happens so quickly that you’ve got to be very adaptable. You see, lucky thing is, at my age and with my background, in a position which practically no human being gets to, which is I’m completely capable of choosing the way I want to live and how I want to live. I’ve absolute freedom. I have nothing that stops me except a conscience and a sense of decorum, a word which is rarely heard, I may add, anymore. But I can choose and I can live anywhere. I can do what I’m capable of doing. When you get a certain age, physically you can’t do a lot of things and you have to give up a lot of things, but I can choose. Therefore, my philosophy is much more choosing out of life what you like and what’s good and what’s pleasant. I know a lot of people are tied down and can’t choose, but I still think San Francisco is a very pleasant place in which to live and very beautiful.

CE: Well, you can be selective. You have been selective, and you’ve contributed and given back to the city of your birth a great deal, and I want you to know what a pleasure it has been this afternoon to talk with you and share some of your extraordinary reminiscences. Would you agree, Mrs. Kent?

AK: Oh, indeed, it’s wonderful. It’s been a wonderful day.

MW: That’s very kind of you.

MW: You know, I’ve been praised for having a piece of cake and having been able to eat it. It’s not fair.

CE: Thank you, dear lady.