SOMEONE THERE WAS WHO DIDN’T LOVE A WALL

In our December, 1977, issue Roy Bongartz described the splendid hoopla that developed when the revolutionary Mexican muralist Diego Rivera went to work for American capitalists—particularly the bitter run-in with the young Nelson Rockefeller when the painter decided to put the face of Lenin into a mural for Rockefeller Center. Now several readers have reminded us that what came to be known as the “Battle of Rockefeller Center” drove essayist E. B. White to poetry in The New Yorker. The year was 1933, and the poem was entitled “I Paint What I See, a Ballad of Artistic Integrity”:

YES, HE COULD

Those who recall “The Man of a Thousand Faces,” by Oliver Jensen in the February/March, 1978, issue, will remember the panoply of faces which accompanied the article—each belonging to President Calvin Coolidge, and each bearing the same gelid frown, as if in disapproval of the photographer, his fellow subjects, and the whole idea of photography. Looking at the pictures, one was moved to wonder if he ever smiled—if, indeed, he could smile.

Yes, he could—and we can prove it. Consider the photograph of the President above, shown with Elihu Root on the left and Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Coolidge is not merely smiling; he is grinning outright.

THE GUNS OF FEBRUARY/MARCH

John G. Mitchell’s article on the history of the National Rifle Association and its stand on the right to bear arms (“‘God, Guns, and Guts Made America Free,’” February/March, 1978) engendered a respectable amount of mail, some of it quite heated. One reader, for example, maintained that the article was “about as subtle and unbiased as a bullet fired in anger,” and went on to declare that “guns truly represent an American heritage. I get pretty annoyed with these selfappointed do-gooders who want to classify me with crazies, nuts and murderers and take away my heritage.”

A cooler reaction came from Robert B. Meredith of Tiburon, California: “I have a weapon because in my home I want the option of deciding whether to be the victim or defendant.… Contrary to many people … who own weapons, I do support registration for two main reasons: (1) I feel law officers should have the right to know if there are any registered weapons in a house they may be required to approach together with the nature and calibre of those weapons, and (2) knowing [that] a weapon [is] registered is a deterrent to its unlawful use and a spur to the reporting of its theft or loss.”

Other readers, while not taking sides on the issue of gun control, did object to the article on the grounds that it was a piece of contemporary journalism which had no place in a magazine of history. In response, editor-in-chief Alvin M. Josephy, Jr., had this to say: “What has emerged today is a very healthy rebirth of interest in American history, an interest in the various phases of our national life that connect the present to the past and even, sometimes, to the future. The American heritage thus becomes not alone the dictionary definition of history, but something that is ongoing. We today are the inheritors of the past and are building on it and adding to the heritage of the future. Thus, the National Rifle Association and the constitutional right to bear arms is an appropriate subject for us, we think. The question of the right to bear arms goes back to the founding of the Republic, and the role of the NRA yesterday and today is of major historical interest. We were not partisan in the article and hope that all our readers enjoyed it.”

OH, FOR THE DOUGHS OF YESTERYEAR

The frontispiece photograph of a modern chuck wagon in our February/March, 1978, issue brought forth a burst of savory reminiscence from a veteran cowboy, Dan Olney, now residing in Veracruz, Mexico: “In your February issue there is a photo of the back end of a rubber-tired chuck wagon. My God, the food! What you’d find in a supermarket catering to all the fussiest housewife’s tastes. When I rode, ‘Cookie’ had a sack of potatoes, another of beans, maybe onions, a slab of bacon, and he had a Dutch oven, not those silver-shiny pans in the photo. Immediately on making camp, and a fire, the Dutch oven went on the fire to get really hot. Then through a hole punched in the top of the flour sack went salt, baking powder, lard, and enough water to make a sticky dough. The Dutch oven was then taken off the fire by a stick through its top and put on glowing coals raked out of the fire. Lard was put in the bottom, the lumps of biscuit dough passed across it to brown the tops, and the hot lid put on and hot coals shoveled in. This was bread. At the end of the meal a jug of molasses was passed around. You put it in your tin plate after mopping up what was there, and then messed some more biscuits around in the molasses, and that ended every meal. Damn good! It was called ‘lick.’”

A GLIMPSE IN THE MIRROR

This picture is a remarkable document for a couple of reasons. First, it may well be the oldest surviving photograph of San Francisco, as well as the oldest made anywhere in America’s Far West. Second, the historic scene it presents existed for less than three months before it disappeared utterly. The daguerreotype was discovered in November, 1977, among the library possessions of a New Hampshire house, and is now owned by a New York dealer in Americana. After it was called to our attention, our investigation into its antiquity led us to Gladys Hansen, director of special collections at the San Francisco Public Library, and her investigation led her to the following news item in the San Francisco Alta California for March 19,1850:

“Daguerreotyping—One of the prettiest specimens of the Daguerreotypist’s art which we have seen in this country was exhibited to us on Saturday—the product of the skill of Mr. Pierpont, who has a gallery over W. A. Woodruff’s in Clay Street. It was a view of the plaza [now Portsmouth Square] and eastern side of San Francisco, including the bay with all its shipping, the islands in the harbor, and the faroff snow-capped hills. In the square are seen groups of persons conversing, carts and everything which pertains to every-day life in the Plaza of San Francisco.”

It seems very likely that this newly found daguerreotype is thus Mr. Pierpont’s own, which would date the picture sometime before March 19, 1850. How much before also can be determined with some accuracy. The quite typical collection of Gold Rush hotels, restaurants, and bars that are visible (including Delmonico’s Restaurant on the second floor of the Exchange Building, to the right of the columned structure) were erected, Ms. Hansen tells us, after the great fire of December 24, 1849; most were not complete until the middle of January, 1850. Complete, and ephemeral—for on May 4,1850, a second fire swept through the city, burning everything seen here clean to the ground.

San Francisco built itself up again, as it did after each of the six fires that sent it to ruin during the Gold Rush years (a city built on dreams is difficult to kill). Yet each time it did, it changed, and a little bit of history in the making was lost forever. And that is the ultimate value of this picture; whether or not it is the earliest such scene, the photograph freezes a moment in the life of a changeling city busily striving toward the future.