University of California Berkeley Bancroft /Berkeley University of California Library Regional Oral History Office Elsie Whitaker Martinez SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA WRITERS AND ARTISTS With an Introduction by Franklin D. Walker Professor of English, Emeritus An Interview Conducted by Franklin D. Walker and Willa Klug Baum Berkeley 1969 All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Elsie Whitaker Martinez, dated April 10, 1964. The manuscript is thereby made avail able for research purposes. All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. No part of the manuscript may be quoted for publication without the written permission of the Director of The Bancroft Library of the University of California at Berkeley. Requests for permission to quote for publication should be ad dressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, antici pated use of the passages, and identification of the user. The legal agreement with Elsie Whitaker Martinez requires that she be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. INTERVIEWS ON LITERATURE, ART, AND PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA The following interviews have been completed by the Regional Oral History Office, a department of The Bancroft Library. The Regional Oral History Office was established to tape-record autobiographical interviews with persons who have contributed significantly to the development of the West. The Office, headed by Willa Baum, is under the administrative supervision of the director of The Bancroft Library. Interviews are listed in order of completion. Macky, E. Spencer and Constance Reminiscences 1954 Siegriest, Louis B. and Lundy Reminiscences 1954 Hagemeyer, Johan Photographer 1956 Coggins, Herbert L. Herbert Coggins ; From Horatio Alger to Eugene Debs 1956 Norris, Kathleen An Interview with Kathleen Norris 1959 Morley, Grace L. McCann Art, Artists, Museums, and the San Francisco Museum of Art 1960 Cunningham, Imogen Portraits, Ideas, and Design 1961 Neuhaus , Eugen Bay Area Art and the University of California Art Department 1961 Pepper, Stephen C. Art and Philosophy at the University of California, 1919-1962 1963 Graves, Roy D. Photograph Collection 1964 Lewis, Oscar Literary San Francisco 1965 Brother Antoninus Poet, Printer, and Religious 1966 Turner, Ethel Duffy Writers and Revolutionists 1967 Wessels, Glenn Education of an Artist 1967 Lange, Dorothea The Making of a Documentary Photographer 1968 Lehman, Benjamin Recollections and Reminiscences of Life in the Bay Area from 1920 Onward 1969 Martinez, Elsie Whitaker San Francisco Bay Area Writers and Artists 1969 Sara Bard Field Wood Poet and Suffragist in Process Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, University of California, Berkeley, April 1969 INTRODUCTION Some years ago, in search for first-hand reminiscences about Jack London and about early Carmel I was working on Jack London and the Klondike and The Seacoast of Bohemia concurrently -- I went to call on Elsie Martinez and was richly rewarded. In her little house on the corner of 17th and El Carmelo in Carmel she greeted me with enthusiasm. Her blue eyes sparkled and her face lit up with much of the charm that had made her a favorite with the San Francisco and Oakland Bohemians some fifty years before, when she was dubbed"The Blessed Damozel" by one of the early timers, although she had much more fire and spunk than we associate with Rossetti s golden heroine. During my first visit and later, she helped me most generously, never growing tired of my persistent questioning and freely aiding me not only with her memories but her papers and scrapbooks. At one time, I helped interview her for the Regional Oral History Office at her daughter s home in Piedmont during one of the taped sessions which, with her sedulously made manuscript corrections, created the present document. This is a record in which she has at last accomplished the task she had always set herself to write a book about her experiences with California writers and artists. As an accomplished raconteur, Elsie, like Mark Twain, is prone to re member more than what happened. She loves a good story and is fond of giving it color and a dramatic turn; occasionally the story is closer to ii myth than to fact; often it is a story which has reached her second hand; and sometimes it is a yarn which has been told about other characters than the ones she remembers. Part of a large body of legend which often comes closer to truth than the fact, such items as her assertion that she and her brothers and sisters on the farm in Manitoba were so nearly starving that they were fed by passing around a bit of meat tied to a string so th&t it could be savored by all, are indigenous to frontier lore and repeated over and over. But in spite of these reservations, I believe her account to be accurate in most details. As a research worker, I became convinced that she could tell me much that I could not get from newspaper clippings and personal letters. She not only remembered the gossip which did not get written down, but she was re markably adept in giving me a strong sense of personality -- of the warmth of George Sterling s friendship or of the crassness of the behavior of a young Sinclair Lewis. Moreover, she could describe people as they looked and acted, could remember such things as their postures and the timbre of their voices. I was particularly struck with this latter gift; she, unlike many of us, had always noticed voices and could make you hear Jack London pontifi cate and George Sterling sing with his peculiar wail. Elsie Whitaker Martinez came of her knowledge of writers early, as her father, Herman or "Jim" Whitaker, was a journalist and writer who was determined to tell effectively of his experiences as a boxing instructor in the British army, of his troubles while farming with a growing family in Manitoba, and of lii his later wanderings in Mexico during the period when revolt was gathering to overthrow Porfirio Diaz. At the turn of the century, he was barely making a living by running a grocery store in Oakland; as a socialist and soap-box speaker he became acquainted with Jack London at the time the latter was beginning to write about his Klondike experiences. In exchange for boxing lessons, Jack gave over one afternoon a week to helping Whitaker learn to write. Later, when George Sterling replaced Herman Whitaker as London s best friend and Elsie married Xavier Martinez at the age of seventeen, she moved to Piedmont, which had become something of a writers center. Through her San Francisco and Oakland and Piedmont connections she came to know most of the writers of the Bay Area. She also came to know the members of the Carmel colony almost as soon as it was started by Sterling in 1906; after her mar riage to Martinez she would go with him to visit the hospitable Sterlings and still later, when he was teaching summer art courses at the Del Monte Hotel in Monterey and in Carmel, she continued to come in contact with writers like Mary Austin and Harry Leon Wilson. At a still later date she moved to Carmel, where she now lives. Still another contact with the writing world came through her friendship with Harriet Dean, financial manager of the famous Little Review which under Margaret Anderson s leadership in Chicago had been very influential in furthering the renascence of American letters which followed the First World War. iv For a while the Little Review was published in San Francisco; then Margaret Anderson took it to Paris while Harriet Dean remained in the West, living with Elsie in Piedmont and Carmel until her recent death. The other string for Elsie s bow was, of course, her contact with local artists. Through her marriage to Martinez, the flamboyant "Aztec" who loved to capitalize on his Mexican -Indian origins and his experiences in Paris at the Ecole des Beaux -Arts, she came to know most of the aspiring artists of the region, from Maynard Dixon to Arnold Genthe. These not only included the painters who once had had their studios in the old Montgomery Block, but those who exhibited and taught at Del Monte and Carmel, as well as those associated with the California College of Arts and Crafts, where Xavier Martinez spent years as a teacher. The Martinez s daughter, s Micaela or "Kai", is now a well-known painter of religious art; Elsie son-in-law, Ralph Du Casse, is today one of the leading Bay Area painters and head of the Art Department at Mills College. Thus, Elsie Martinez, perennially young, has kept in touch with writers and artists to the present day. In helping to record her memories, the Regional Oral History Office staff has, in my opinion, performed a unique service. Franklin D. Walker Professor of English, Emeritus 17 June 1968 School of Humanities Mills College Oakland, California INTERVIEW HISTORY Elsie Whitaker Martinez was interviewed for the Regional Oral History Office as a part of a series on San Francisco Bay Area artistic and cultural history. The interview was undertaken at the request of James D. Hart, Professor of English, who served as faculty advisor. Interviewers Mrs. Willa Baum, department head, Regional Oral History Office, conducted seven interviews with Mrs. Martinez, with co-interviewer, Franklin D.