PUBLISHED OCCASIONALLY BY THE FRIENDS OF THE BANCROFT LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY 4, CALIFORNIA Number 27 • November 1^61 nent historians, a good friend of the Bancroft Wagner Award to Library, and a key member of the group that revived and reorganized the California His­ Dale Morgan torical Society in 1922. The award, one of the DALE MORGAN'S ACHIEVEMENTS as a scholar important marks of recognition in the field of the American West were honored at a ban­ of American history, is made to the author quet on September 27 when the California Historical Society bestowed on him its Henry R. Wagner Memorial Award. Morgan is well known for his many books, which include The Humboldt, Highroad of the West (1943), The Great Salt Lake (1947), Jedediah Smith and the Opening of the West (1953), fedediah Smith and his Maps of the American West (with Carl I. Wheat, 1954), and Rand McNally's Pioneer Atlas of the American West (1956). The award recog­ nized these achievements but was specifically granted for his notable editions of The Over­ land Diary of fames A. Pritchard (1959) and California as I Saw It by William McCollum (i960), in which his lengthy commentaries, placing these works in their historical con­ texts, represent significant scholarly contri­ President Francis Farquhar of California Historical Society, Dale Morgan, and Acting Director James butions in themselves. D. Hart at Wagner Award Ceremonies Since 1954 Morgan has been a valuable member of the Bancroft Library's staff, pri­ of a major work or works published within marily concerned with the compilation of its the preceding two calendar years in the areas monumental guide to manuscript collections of history, cartography or bibliography which of the Pacific Coast and the Western United Wagner himself pursued with distinction. States. His services go far beyond this project, Dr. James D. Hart, Acting Director of the however, for in many ways he has assisted the Bancroft Library, told the audience at the Library on its program of manuscript and third annual Wagner Memorial Award dinner book collecting. Through his interest, the ac­ in San Francisco: "Dale Morgan has consid­ quisition of Mormon materials by the Ban­ erably enriched our understanding of various croft Library has been greatly increased within facets of the Western United States and of the past seven years. that entire frontier itself through his diverse Henry R. Wagner, in whose honor the kinds of research and publication which in­ award is named, was one of the West's emi­ clude basic bibliographies, scrupulously and intelligently compiled; carefully annotated Norris, Albee has caught and understood the is the first major collection on the Mexican ful life in Nevada County, California, and editions of primary documents; knowing car­ tremendous, undisciplined vitality which Revolution to become available in the United died at French Corral in 1894. tographic studies of important early maps; flows deep in the veins of San Francisco." Mr. States, and it is an important one, indeed. Miller was intelligent and articulate, and and his own firmly based historical studies Albee's most recent work, By the Sea, By the Much more detailed information will be pre­ his letters, written in the years 1849-1862, marked both by breadth of treatment and Sea, was published in i960. sented in Bancroftiana when the collection is cover one of the most important decades of depth of interpretation." Aside from the file of Hemingway corre­ opened for use. California's history. In March of 1852, writ­ spondence, there are letters from John Stein­ ing from Foster's Bar, he told his sister that beck, William Saroyan, Louis Kronenberger, he now planned to settle in California per­ George Sumner Albee Newton C. Miller's Letters and Benjamin H. Lehman, and what may manently, and reassured her: EACH GENERATION, it is agreed, writes its own You write that you had been to a lecture upon Papers well be the last letter written by the novelist Malcolm Lowry before his death in March, history, for to each generation, the people California by a clergyman who had been here and events of the past have a new and differ­ some three years. If the impression conveyed in "SOMEHOW I've never cared about going to 1957. Copies of Albee's letters written during your letter was the same as received from his California — too late. Would have been fine the years 1929-1958 enable the reader to ent significance. Take, for example, the Forty- lecture, I should say that the three years he anytime before the Iowa migration. Maybe "hear" both sides of the frequently fascinat­ niner, who deserves more thoughtful study. spent in the country were to very little purpose. I'm wrong and will have to go sometime to ing dialogues on the role of the "serious" He has been depicted as a wild, red-shirted It is a matter of fact that the restraints of society rowdy, a dedicated tosspot who spent day are not felt at all in the mines, and very slight in see." writer, and on the nature of art itself. the cities. And it is also true that there are many The letter is to George Sumner Albee. The Among Albee's literary manuscripts are after day half-immersed in icy Sierra creeks, persons, not all young and inexperienced, upon date: November 18, 1932. The correspond­ those for two novels, numerous short stories, living on whiskey and sow-belly, and even­ whom California may be said to exert a bad in­ fluence, but they are not even a respectable (in ent: Ernest Hemingway. and the scenario for the film The Next Voice tually losing his gold, if not his life, in the bagnios and deadfalls of San Francisco's point of number) minority. The great mass of A significant addition to Bancroft's grow­ You Hear (1950). the miners with whom I have come in contact ing collection of manuscripts of Western au­ Sydney-Town, the precursor of the Barbary are of good habits and upright and honorable in thors, the George Sumner Albee Papers, was Coast. "Sturdy and sinful" was the phrase their dealings —not only men, but gentlemen. presented to the Library last year by Mr. Judge Goodman used for him by such a dispassionate scholar It would be as unfair to judge of society at home as Josiah Royce, and even the Forty-niners by the character of a dozen unprincipled indi­ Albee, through the good offices of Professor WE NOTE WITH REGRET the sudden passing viduals as it would be to do the same here. Cali­ Benjamin H. Lehman. Consisting of corre­ on September 15 of a revered Friend, Louis E. themselves, in their declining years, looked fornia, as I take it, shows a person in his true spondence to and from Albee, as well as Goodman, Chief Judge of the U. S. District back upon their youth as a time of riot and character, and any one made of the stuff of themselves as inordinately raffish fellows. which men are made will be a man here as well many of Albee's own literary manuscripts, Court in San Francisco. He was a graduate of as elsewhere. the collection offers a revealing picture of the the University of California in 1913, and one Flamboyance was indeed a characteristic of aspirations and problems of an American of the great benefactors of this University, the Gold Rush; there were many who took In the following years, he became a pioneer writer during the late 1920s and 1930s. Stanford, and the University of San Fran­ advantage of their freedom to indulge in fol­ in the development of hydraulic-mining tech­ Mr. Albee was born in Wisconsin in 1905, cisco. We shall long remember and miss him. lies and excesses. Yet the successful Forty- niques, a member of the State Legislature, grew up in Southern California, and attended niner was more often sturdy than sinful. He and later, in 1878, took part in the establish­ the University of California (Class of 1927). worked hard; sometimes he made his "pile." ment of the world's first long-distance tele­ He started writing short stories when he was The Terrazas Collection He returned home with enough to buy the phone line — extending 60 miles from French twelve, and his first novel, Not in a Day, was MR. CORT MAJORS, Chairman of the Coun­ neighborhood butcher shop or to go to col­ Corral to Milton, in Sierra County. His re­ published in 1935. Since that time he has cil of the Friends, announced at the Annual lege; or he stayed in California, perhaps to ports to his family not only tell of life in the written several novels, and his short stories Meeting last April that President Kerr and become one day a United States Senator, or diggings, but also demonstrate that many of have appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, the University's Regents had approved the the owner of a farm, a saloon, a bank. Among the Forty-niners were sensitive and cultured Prairie Schooner, Scribners, and Cosmopoli­purchase of the correspondence, papers and these successful ones was Newton C. Miller, men, who worked in the creeks and tunneled tan. "Fame Takes the J Car" was reprinted by library of Don Silvestre Terrazas, of Chihua­ ninety-two of whose letters to his family re­ in the hillsides by day —but who planned li­ Edward J. O'Brien in The Best Short Stories hua, Mexico. This great collection on the cently came to the Bancroft Library as a gift braries and read poetry at night.