STAND FAST SANTA BARBARA!
by
DR. CHAS. F. LUMMISSTAND FAST SANTA BARBARA!
SAVE THE CENTURIED ROMANCE OF OLD CALIFORNIA IN THIS, ITS LAST AND MOST ROMANTIC STRONGHOLD
SENSE
SENTIMENT
“BUSINESS״
BY
Dr. Cb.as. F. Lummis
Author of “The Land of Poco Tiempo,” “The Spanish
Pioneers,” “Strange Corners of Our Country,” etc.
Member of the Royal Academy of Spain; Knighted by the King of Spain for Historical Research in Spanish-America; Founder The Landmarks Club of California; Founder The Southwest Museum, Etc.
COMMUNITY ARTS ASSOCIATION Santa Barbara, 1923
(Reprinted from The Santa Barbara Morning Press.)Stand Fast—Santa Barbara!
By Chas. F. Lummis.
MAY 6, 1903, a member of the presidential party, I stood beside the Grand Canon of Arizona with Theodore Roosevelt and heard
his impasisoned plea to the hardy Arizonians who had gathered at that incomparable chasm to greet and hear the greatest, American of his time. “Here is your country,” said he. “Do not let anyone take it or its glory away from you! Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the History and the Romance as a sacret heritage, for your children and your children’s children. DO NOT LET SELFISH MEN OR GREEDY INTERESTS SKIN YOUR COUNTRY of its BEAUTY, its RICHES or ITS ROMANCE! The World and the Future and your very Children shall Judge you according as you deal with this Sacred Trust!”
Twenty years later to the day—May 6, 1923— standing under the templed oaks and sycamores af Las Cruces, in the historic Gaviota Pass, I was unexpectedly asked to speak to “The Forty-Niners;” and on the spur of the moment took the liberty to tell those serious, fine responsible men something about their own business. Instead of taking this as an impertinence, they warmly indorsed the sermon, and asked that it be given wider hearing.
It is a sermon for all who love Santa Barbara, for all who love California, for all who love the West, and Beauty, and History, and Romance—which is as much as to say, for all who really have Souls. Not a gospel of Sissies and sentimentalism, but the two-fisted gospel of the men who have made the world nobler by theirwords. And my text may very well be from T. R.— DON’T LET THEM SKIN SANTA BARBARA of its ROMANCE.
As they sure do it, unless you watch and stand fast! This is essentially the Vandal Age—and a thousand times as much damage has been done in the world by the vandalism of ignorance and carelessness and greed as was ever done by the Huns.
The cold “Utilitarian” is not only an enemy of his kind—he is such a poor, blithering booby that Fate sells him gold bricks right along. He does not understand the first fundamental of even Business—which is, of course, Human Nature. And that is neither so mean nor so foolish as some seem to think. Man is an animal, indeed, and shares some admirable qualities with the brutes. But the quality that has developed man from the low-browed Pithecanthropus to Art and Architecture, to Literature and Religion—to Homer and Milton and Shakespeare and Christ—to the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal and St. Peter’s and the Capitol at Washington—it isn’t the quality that gets both feet in the trough! The curious thing is that so many people seem never to realize that precisely the same finer essence of Man’s spirit which has given Beauty to Life is just exactly as necessary to make life Practical.
When I began, 27 years ago, the attempt (later largely successful)’ to save the unoccupied Old Missions of Southern California—San Diego, Paia, San Juan Capistrano and San Fernando—nobody seemed to think it was anybody’s business. It took a long campaign of education. But in 1916, at the Landmarks Club “Candle Day,” at San Fernando Mission (where we had reroofed and saved the enormous
Page four]monastery and church), after a Catholic bishop and a Church of England bishop, and a Methodist bishop and a Jewish rabbi and other men of many creeds, had paid elopuent tribute to Junipero Serra and the Franciscan missionaries, who founded Civilization on the Pacific Coast, and left us these noble monuments of Faith and Architecture—then came the Apostle of Business, John S. Mitchell, President of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, an organization then of 3000 of the leading Business men of the largest city in the West. He said,earnestly and emphatically, to the audience of 7,000 gathered there: “I have a confession to make that should have been made long ago. We business men, who like to think we are shrewd and far-seeing, have long been blind It took us a great while to realize that the Old Missions had anything but a sentimental interest. But if we were slow to learn, we have our lesson at last. We realize today that the Missions have not only a commercial value, but the greatest! WE REALIZE TODAY THAT THE OLD MISSIONS ARE WORTH MORE MONEY, ARE A GREATER ASSET, TO SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA THAN OUR OIL, OUR ORANGES, EVEN OUR CLIMATE!” Which is literally true, and rather vindicated my prophecy of twenty years earlier. It used to be a favorite answer of many bankers and merchants and other “Practical men, when asked to help save these Landmarks: “Yes, that’s all very pretty, but YOU CAN’T DO BUSINESS ON SENTIMENT!” My retort was: “Certainly you can’t—but a man is a POOR FOOL WHO THINKS HE CAN DO BUSINESS WITHOUT SENTIMENT!” Which is a true and as eternal as anything in The Book. In fact, to try to get through any part or phase
[Page fiveor activity of Life whatsoever without Sentiment would be idiotic, even if it were possible—for Love, Friendship, Honor, Honesty, Neighborliness, Faith, Religion, Education—all these are absolutely creatures of Sentiment, and will perish when their mother dies. In a century not a church, a home, a school-house, a college, an orphan asylum, a hospital, would be left in a land from which Sentiment and Romance had been wholly driven out.
Romance is the Greatest Asset of California. It has been for more than 350 years. The very name from the romance of Montalvo, “Las Sergas de Es-plandian,” (the Exploits of Esplandian), which university-bred Cortez read, as did Spanish explorers all over the world a hundred years before Plymouth Rock. Cortez had never heard of the Tenderfoot dub who derived California “from Latin Calida Fornix, Hot Furnace!’’ Else we might not have started so poetically. No, Cortez in 1534, discovered the Peninsula, and named it the mythical island of the romance, “near and on the right hand of the Terrestrial Paradise,” and people with Amazons. And the Romance grew with Alarcon and Cabrillo and Vizcaino, and the climbing centuries, and for 300 years the very word has been a Fairy Story, a name to conjure with, a Lure, a Spell. Its magic grew taller still with the heroic era of the Missions, then the glorious Patriarchal pastoral period—the happiest, the most generous, the most hospitable, the most lovable, life ever lived on this continent.
To all this centuried Romance, Santa Barbara is legitimate and favorite heiress—about the only one left that has not yet traded away her birthright for a “mess of Potash and Perimutter.” Will she follow
Page six]the rest, and cast the rich pearls of her dowry before the swine of blundering materialism—or will she stand erect and queenly and alone in the purple beauty of her Romance?
II.
The Romance of California is Spanish Romance. Everybody knows that who knows anything. But few seem to realize the deep—the literally startling —significance of that fact in history and as an index to the workings of the human mind. Also, as a proof that man’s mind does work, with time—always away from the hard to the ideal! For California has had ANOTHER Romance—the biggest, bravest, wildest Epic the sons of man ever scrawled across a continental wilderness—the most Homeric Adventure that people of English speech ever plunged into—a Quest of the Golden Fleece beside which Jason and his fellow sailors of the Argo were boys—such a migration of such people as was and is without parallel— a wilderness that overturned and remade the money-markets of the world. That was California of the Gold Rush—which then sent back its sons to open the whole West back to Missouri, and made Australia golden too. Up to ’48, the whole United States in all its existance had produced only twenty-five millions in gold and silver.
BUT WHERE ARE THE ARGONAUTS TODAY? What has become of that tremendous, meteoric Romance which set the world afire, but twenty years ago? Where are the pilgrims to its shrines?
Of the half million travelers who visit California every year,how many do you imagine have the curio-
[Page sevensity to go and visit the former old mines and Hang-town, Red Gulch, Poker Flat, Suter’s Mill? Why, NOT SO MANY AS VISIT THE MISSION OF SANTA BARBARA! Hardly so many as make the pilgrimage to the “Home of Ramona.’ And speaking of Romance and Ramona: twenty-odd years ago I was following up some statistics as to the modern migration to Southern California. I came to Los Angeles before the “Boom,’’ and, as a newspaper man studied it at both ends of the railroads. This was a much later study. I asked that wise man and good Californian, Frank Miller, of the Mission Inn, Riverside, who probably knows “Tourist trade’’ better than anyone, “Frank, did you ever figure a fair estimate of what the novel ‘Ramona’ has been worth to Southern California in dollars and cents?’’ He smiled .“Yes,” said he, “I have gone into it prety carefully, and I figure that book has brought at least fifty million dollars into this region.’’
Of our half million tourists, a few thousand visit the mines and scenes immortalized by Bret Harte and Mark Twain, the stage-setting of the gallant and mighty drama to The Gold God; practically EVERY tourist visits at least one of the Old Missions—and over two hundred thousand visit eight or ten Missions. Does this MEAN anything?
Do you dream that anybody will ever build in Santa Barbara another building that will mean so much to Santa Barbara and to the world as the grey Old Mission? No one ever will. Does that also mean anything?
American Enterprise is all but all-powerful. It can tame wildernesses, level mountains, lead rivers by the nose 300 miles, drag heat and light and power from
Page eight]the inwards of the earth. It can turn a hamlet into a Los Angeles in 30 years. It can build a Chicago —it could build a hundred Chicagos. But ALL THE BRAINS, ALL THE BRAWS/ ALL THE MONEY IN AMERICA CANNOT BUILD A VENERABLE FRANCISCAN MISSION. NOR A CENTURY-OLD ADOBE, NOR THE TOMB OF JUNIPERO SERRA. Furthermore, no matter what fine monuments we do build, they will never have the same Romance, even with the coming centuries—for reasons obvious to the historian. There can no more be again a Fray Junipero than there could be a Richard Lion-Heart. The Heroic, the Chivalric, the Apostolic ages are gone forever. There will never be another Parthenon, another Sphinx, another Coliseum—another Santa Barbara Mission. Our Today will sometime be Antiquity—but it will be a machine-made, standardized antiquity, without mystery, atmosphere or Romance. We must lay hold upon the noble Old Romance that is left us, and hold fast to it—for we shall never get anything to take its place. The Romance of New England is bleak and niggard as its stony fiends—I know every township in it—but see how they cherish —and the Nation honors—Plymouth Rock and Fane-uil Hall and Lexington and Bunker Hill! You don’t observe any vandals being allowed to tear those down to make room for “Modern Progress.” And New Englanders, as a rule, are quick to appreciate Romance where they find it.
There are now just two small cities left in the United States which are rich in historic Romance, “Atmosphere,” “Character,”— and the fast-diminishing Chance to make themselves World-famous. These are Santa Fe, N. M., and Santa Barbara, here. The
[Page nine“Ancient City of the Holy Faith of St. Francis” is a hundred and eighty years older than Santa Barbara, somewhat smaller, as picturesque in its different way, and with a far more varied story in war and peace; with a fine, bracing climate at 7000 feet altitude. Fortunately “off the main line,” it did not turn into a corrugated iron and tinhorn town when the railroad came. A few years ago some enterprising architect persuaded some of the “progressive” citizens that “we really ought, you know, to have Better, More Modern buildings.” And they went to it—with results somewhat akin to putting a plug hat on a burro^ Then the Legislature was prevailed upon to give the ancient Palace of the Governors to the Museum of New Mexico, of which I was a founding Regent. We fixed up that historic building with scrupulous historic accuracy. Then, the School of American Research, of whose Managing Committee I am still a member, built across the street from the Palace the “Cathedral of the Desert”—probably the most interesting single edifice in the United States, of modern construction. It looks as old as its venerable neighbor; and while it will never have the same Romance, it helps to enhance and ennoble the storied Past of Santa Fe. If we had built the Woolworth Building in its place it would not have given Santa Fe a half the distinction and interest.
But our School of American Research did not stop there—nor with digging up prehistoric bones in Guatemala and the Chaco. It dug around among the “dead ones” in Santa Fe, and wakened them to Opportunity and Taste. And behold! Today, the Santa Fe Merchants who were dead-set to surround the old Plaza (the end of the historic Santa Fe Trail) with Fine, Tall, Modern, “American” buildings, are
Page tenj.now unanimous and enthusiastic for “The Santa Fe Style”׳—a fine, dignified, characteristic architecture of Spanish-American habit, historically fit, and artistically delightful. They’d come pretty near lynching anyone, now, whoshould try to disfigure Santa Fe with even so much as a peanut stand of the style of Kalamazoo or Hoboken. And the truth is so obvious, that it is a safe bet Santa Fe will never turn back from her resolve to be HERSELF.
What I would like to see—what the world would like to see—what EVERYBODY would like, but some cannot see yet—is a Santa Barbara that shall be not just another yard off tiresome bolt of machine-pattern, stencilled, unimaginative, and rather tawdry American Calico—but SANTA BARBARA, THE ONE AND ONLY. You have the chance!
III.
I know no law of God or man that would forbid an American community to dwell in a town as beautiful, as artistic, as well worth crossing the world to see as are any one of five hundred towns along the Mediterranean. There is no reason to suppose we would sicken and die if set in an environment that was not an insult to the God of Beauty. Of course, the reason we do not spontaneously build such towns is that we haven’t the instinct and sense of Art and Architecture which is an essential quality of the “Dagos” and other Latin races we have been taught to look down on. But this injunction is not made perpetual on us I There is nothing to hinder us from using what brains we have, in trying to learn things worth while. We are doing just that all the time, about all sorts of
[Page eleventhings, little and big—why not try to get a little COMMUNITY INTELLIGENCE, something of CIVIC ART FEELING? Is it too deep for American wit to perceive that as a chain is no stronger than its weakest link, so an eyesore street or one ridiculous building outweighs fifty beauty spots? Unfortunately a town of ours cannot get rid at once of all the warts, pimples, moles, goiters, that may have grown upon its face; but it CAN begin at once to HATE them—and when the community begins to recognize Ugliness, and despise it and laugh at it, the battle is half won. It means that no new disgrace will be permitted ;and that the old ones will be encouraged to disappear.
Santa Barbara should have an Architecture of its own, as Santa Fe is getting. Obviously, for historic climatic and artistic reasons, it should be based on the Spanish. The Spaniard—whether from Andalucía or Aragon or Castilla—was too intelligent an architect, when he came to the New World, to build here precisely as he had built for a thousand years Back Yonder. He adapted his homes and his public buildings to the new environment, the new climate, material, conditions—and the Spanish-American architecture is a class by itself. It has variants—but among them is not that abbreviation of the roofs which distresses me in some otherwise handsome houses in Santa Barbara —which takes away the shadows and half the “picture” of the house. Ever see a man with his eyebrows shaved? That’s the effect. And of course, most of the so-called "Mission Style” now going up all over California, isn’t Mission at all, nor at all architecture, but obvious, awkward and detestable FAKE.
We all know people who think this is Foolishness— this talk of Art and Architecture for a community.
Page twelve]They say: “Oh, we’re just plain, everyday Americans; we don’t care about these flummididles. Give us good American architecture.”
And often they are nice, respectable, well-meaning folks. But what they are really saying is “You Highbrows can have your intelligence and Art and Education to yourselves—we prefer to be ignorant and stupid.” It is not so long ago that this same class of mind was protesting against sanitation!
The only “Ameri&n” architecture in existence is the Tepee of the Plains Indians and the terraced houses of the Pueblos, plus the old log cabin. What they mean, is the architecture of Podunk, of Oshkosh, or Wichita—all borrowed clumisly from poor foreign models—the hideous Queen Anne, the stupid Tudor, the hunchbacked Mansard, and so on down the list. Fitness was as little consulted as beauty—here in Calif-fornia you see many a Scandinavian roof built sharp so the ice cannot crush the roof! And in Los Angeles today they are building thousands of bungalows with thin roofs so low that in summer their owners will have frizzled brains—if any. Whereas the properly built Spanish-American house is cool in summer and warm in winter; it is easily made fireproof and earthquake proof—and of course, should be both.
Now I would like to see Santa Barbara set its mark to be the most Beautiful, the most Artistic, the most Distinguished and Famous little city on the Pacific Coast. It can be, if it will—for it has “the makings.” And those makings are not its landscapes but its Romance, its Past, to build on. Let the people who yearn for an “American” FLIVVER town, a Ford town, all interchangeable parts of ill-taste, unimaginativeness, monotony and saddening Sameness, be encouraged to
[Page thirteengo and seek such towns—and stay there! The country is cootied with them. Even California is full. There are enough clear-seeing, right-thinking people in Santa Barbara to bring this about here, even a such a civic atmosphere was brought about in Santa Fe. Here centered the cream of the old Spanish aristocracy of the beautiful days of the California that Was. The Patriarchial life of the days when Dana and Fremont came, had its highest development in this region. The old spirit, the old Pride, are still here, as nowhere else in the Golden State. Let the Old Families, the Los Alamos Club, the Community Arts, the artists—and you have several very important ones—the hotels, the thoughtful business men, the women’s clubs, all classes and all persons who prefer the artistic and romantic and fine to mediocrity and banality, get together to SAVE SANTA BARBARA! And what are the Sons and Daughters of the Golden West going to do about letting their heritage lapse—the Romance that is theirs become choked and destroyed by the commonplace and dull, their California made an annex to the Sucker State? If they ever had a crusade really worth all their filial devotion, I would say it is precisely this.
The worst curse that could fall on Santa Barbara would be the craze to GET BIG. What’s the great idea? Why big? Run down to Los Angeles and stay a few days. See that madhouse! You’d hate to live there! The selling of real estate is legal; it may even be made respectable. But it is only parasitic. It should never be allowed to dictate the character nor the size of your population nor the style of your buildings. It should thank God you let it live on you —and should not expect to direct you. But it has ruined many a town. Get a City Planning Commission
Page fourteen]of architects, artists and scholars. Get together, for a town that shall be a dream of beauty. Save every Landmark. I do not know that the old Adobe which was torn down for the new City Hall could artistically have been saved there, but I do know—for I examined it last July, and am competent in such work—that it could have been picked up and moved; and I do know that while no one will be proud of the City Hall 25 years from now, that adobe would have been worth more to the city every year than the City Hall cost.
Save the old Spanish songs of Santa Barbara! Save them and sing them! There are none so lovely among the hundred million Americans of the East. They ought to be household words in Santa Barbara. For you to let them die would be
“Like the base Indian,
A jewel threw away, richer than all his tribe.’’
And I thought under the noble groves of the Gav-iota, that day—your grandchildren will have no groves to go to—they will hardly know what an oak or a sycamore looks like—unless you STAND for the TREES, and STAND NOW! Stop the Fool with the Ax,who in an hour of his vain time destroys the noble, sheltering, worshipful thing God’s loving patience took 500 years to create.
FIVE
Suppose the Kohinotyhad come down to you as an heirloom, and someone offered you $4.99 for it, or advised you to have it set in tin for a collar on the garbage-can. Suppose Caruso had bequeathed you his voice, and it was suggested that you employ it as a “barker” for a real estate auction. Suppose your wife
[Page fifteenis beautiful, and someone suggests that she be dressed like a washer-woman in action. Suppose your daughter has already won national fame as a violinist, and a friend offers to stop all this “Highbrow Foolishness” by smashing her violin and getting her a job as janit-ress at the City Hall. Suppose you had acquired an absolute monopoly for 99 years on the grocery, bakery and meat trade of Santa Barbara, and nobody else in all that time could sell a bun, a potato or a wienie; and suppose a newcomer, with a ten by twelve real estate office and a “prospect” or two, offered to trade even with you! You see I am trying to translate it all into language intelligible to the kind of folks that NEED it—for the class that OUGHT to control, and CAN control the destinies of Santa Barbara, understand all this as well as I do. Even The Other Fellow knows what to think of the above “Supposes.”
Crazy? Sure! Rather more obvious, but in sober and ultimate truth, none of these radiculous “Supposes” is a whit crazier, more vulgar, more unpardonable than it would be to yield to the flivver-witted, near-sighted who know no better than to wish to make Santa Barbara BIG, Standardized, Vulgarized, Skyscrapering, Common—robbed of her Romance, her Character, the very Jewel of her Good Name. Nothing that is Ugly is Good. Lack of Sentiment is lack of Sense, and Bad Business.
I am no Visionary, but a hard-headed, hard-fisted graduate of the Frontier. If I have sometimes Dreamed—well, the Southwest Museum stands on its acropolis; the Old Missions of San Diego, Paia, San Juan Capistrano and San Fernando are still mighty monuments instead of mounds of dust; the Warner’s Ranch Indians—the first Indians in our history to have
Page iixteen]that luck—are in a far better home than they were driven from—all because it was dreamed Practically. It took as much Sense as Sentiment, as much Business and bitter Hard Work. This is nothing to boast of— it just happened to be the kind of thing I like to do, just as some like to play golf or run for office. It is simply to indicate that these remarks are not those of a parlor reformer or empty theorist. As explorer, historian, student of architecture, of migrations, of peoples, for forty years, I have become convinced of certain infallible and inflexible laws. Beauty and sane Sentiment are Good Business, as well as good ethics. Carelessness, Ugliness, blind Materialism are Bad Business. The Ideal lasts longer than anything you can buy or sell or build. And Romance is the Greatest Riches of Any People.
By all that is fine and reverent and high—by every sentiment responsive to Beauty, to Faith, to Patriotism, and likewise by every lick of Plain Horse-Sense that is in you, “GET TOGETHER!” The Honor of Santa Barbara is in your hands—and do not fancy for a moment that her Good Name will stand, if you let the materialists strip her of her Romance and leave her nakedly Common. And more than that, the responsibility for all California is pretty much dropped down on your Barbareno shoulders! You hold the Last Trench of THAT California which has shone for centuries in song and story, which has fascinated the world and put a new sentiment and beauty in American life. So it is up to you both to SAVE SANTA BARBARA ROMANTIC, AND SAVE CALIFORNIA’S ROMANCE IN SANTA BARBARA.
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