University of California Berkeley ^ . ../r. /- >y x*i Regional Oral History Office University of California The Bancroft Library Berkeley, California Lurline Matson Roth MATSON AND ROTH FAMILY HISTORY: A LOVE OF SHIPS, HORSES, AND GARDENS An Interview Conducted by Suzanne B. Riess in 1980, 1981 Copyright (c\ 1982 by the Regents of the University of California All uses of this manuscript are covered by a legal agreement between the Regents of the University of California and Lurline Matson Roth dated October 28, 1981. The manuscript is thereby made available 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 Berkeley. No partof 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 addressed to the Regional Oral History Office, 486 Library, and should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the agreement with Lurline Matson Roth requires that she be notified of the request and allowed thirty days in which to respond. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows : Lurline Matson Roth, "Matson and Roth Family History: A Love of Ships, Horses, and Gardens," an oral history conducted 1980, 1981 by Suzanne B. Riess, Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, 1982. Mrs. William P. Roth TABLE OF CONTENTS Lurline Matson Roth INTERVIEW HISTORY I FAMILY 1 Father, William Matson 1 Mother, Lillie Low 8 The Trips Down to the Islands 11 Lurline and Her Parents 14 Mother: Leeside, Lessons 14 Father: The Business 17 The Character of Captain Matson 19 Growing Up 23 Country, Vacations, Houses 23 Horses 26 Consular Responsibilities 27 Education, Study in Paris 27 II MARRIAGE 30 William P. Roth 30 Courtship and Job 30 The Roth Family 32 The Fair, The Honeymoon 33 The Airplane Business: Amelia Earhart 34 The Twins 36 Woodside 37 "Why Worry" 37 Buying Flloli 38 III HORSES 42 IV AN INTERVIEW ON MATSON HISTORY, WITH KARL KORTUM PRESENT 61 V RED CROSS WORK, AND OTHER INTERESTS 91 Red Cross Volunteer Chairman 91 War and Postwar: Stables, Servants 99 Other Shipping Families 102 Other Volunteer Activities 103 William Matson Roth 107 VI FILOLI S GARDENS 112 The Gardeners 112 Miss Isabella Worn 114 Toichi Domoto 119 Leslie Thiringer 121 Fruit, Flowers, Vegetables, Picnics 122 Other Gardens 124 . v ; -: !.; . ; VII A TRIP TO FILOLI 126 The Garden Design 128 In the Gardens 132 In the House 138 The Parties: Tony Duquette 140 United Nations Site Consideration 142 Concluding Remarks 144 > . i TAPE GUIDE 146 A TALK TO THE DOCENTS by Lurline Roth Coonan 147 APPENDICES 162 AN INTERVIEW WITH TOICHI DOMOTO 223 INDEX 267 i INTERVIEW HISTORY This oral history with Mrs. William P. Roth was conceived as a series of interviews on the history of Filoli, the Roths home in Woodside, California; on shipping, from the Matson Navigation Company point of view; and on horse shows. One or all of these aspects of Mrs. Roth s life the house and garden, now in the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the heritage of shipping, through her father, William Matson, and her husband, William Roth, and the activities on the horse show/horse breeding circuits are what the name Lurline Matson Roth means to many. Beyond these major subjects, the interviews are about a girl growing up on both sides of the San Francisco Bay, and in Hilo, and on shipboard, about her education and career interests, about being wife and mother and volunteer, and about taking further community leadership roles, especially with the Red Cross in wartime. - - Mrs. Roth was extremely modest in the face of the ego-stretching possi bilities of being an oral-history interviewee. She did not easily say "I did..." this or that. For a wider view of her life at Filoli the reader will want especially to read her daughter Lurline Roth Coonan s talk to the docents appended, and the interview with horticulturist Toichi Domoto, and the notes sent by designer Tony Duquette. The shipping interview with Mrs. Roth and maritime historian Karl Kortum is supplemented by appended reprints on shipping history, and biographical material on Captain Matson. The interviews took place September 22, 30, and October 6, 20, 1980, on November 13, with Mr. Kortum, and on December 17, and then after time out for the holidays, a cruise and a trip to her home in Hilo, the interviewing resumed with two meetings, May 4 and 11, 1981. The attached interview with Mr. Domoto was done on May 26, 1981. The setting for the interviews was Mrs. Roth s study, a bright, pretty room with beautiful, fragrant bowls of flowers, a fireplace, books, horse portraits, and two walls of windows with views of the Thomas Church-designed garden that came with the Hillsborough house that Mrs. Roth moved to when she left Woodside in 1975. In October, when I arrived, Mrs. Roth was making her social plans for the horse show, in December she was writing her Christmas cards, in May putting together the Red Cross s part in the benefit opening of Maxwell s Plum in Ghirardelli Square an historically and architecturally significant and beautiful property saved and developed by the Roths. The November meeting where we talked Ilatson history with Karl Kortum in the Roth offices in Ghirardelli Square was followed by an excellent Chinese lunch at Kan s. Mrs. Roth knows good food my arrival sometimes interrupted menu- planning, and the opened cookbooks were inspiring. Once, as the result of a misunderstanding at the fish market, Mrs. Roth was having to face a lot of caviar for lunch, and leftovers for dinner. ii Successors to the birds that Lurline Coonan mentions in her story of growing up at Filoli were singing through the interviews in Hillsborough, a hallway away, but in good voice. The poodles were right there, small anc fiercely fond of their owner, and a lot less so of the interviewer. For the final interview, Mrs . Roth and I took a day to go down to Filoli. We drove on familiar roads, home to a beloved place. We walked Ir the gardens, saw and met docents and volunteers preparing for the spring visits, and talked with Hadley Osborn, the executive director. Somehow we managed to get locked in (we thought) the library at Filoli where we were interviewing, and after a lot of banging and bemusement, our hard push opened the heavy doors. It was the only time that Filoli seemed perhaps too large. Otherwise, it is very personal and accessible for all its and glorious scale. The interviews, after being transcribed, were edited in the Regional Oral History Office, and checked by Mrs. Roth in. the fall of 1981. Attenti was given to finding good illustrations, pictures and appendices, and the family scrapbook, from which most of the pictures were reproduced, yielded a great number of negatives valued by The Bancroft Library for their artis merit Arnold Genthe studio portraits and their historic merit interiors clothing, people. But the picture and the sound I most wish to have reproduced for pos-; terity was the night of October 29, 1980, at the Grand National Horse Sho^ when Mrs. Roth s four-year-old, Mountain Storm, showed splendidly, and he owner stepped out in the light of that vast and exciting place to present a cup, and was introduced, to standing ovation, as the champion horsewom and person she is . In preparing for these interviews I have had the help of Karl Kortum Chief Curator, Maritime Museum, San Francisco; Mai Arbegast, landscape architect and horticultural consultant, on the Filoli Board of Trustees; Suzanne Caster, San Francisco Examiner and Chronicle Librarian; Mr. Charl Regal; Mr. Robert Richardson; Mrs. Ted Robbins; and the Filoli Center staf and the librarians of the Strybing Arboretum. I am grateful to all of th The Regional Oral History Office, established to tape record autobic graphical interviews with persons prominent in recent California history, is under the administrative supervision of the director of The Bancroft Library, James D. Hart. Willa K. Baum is the department head. Suzanne B. Riess Senior Editor February 1982 Regional Oral History Office 486 The Bancroft Library University of California at Berkeley MRS. WILLIAM P. ROTH I FAMILY [Interview 1: September 22, 1980] ## Father, William Matson Riess: When were you born, 1890 or 1891? Roth: Eighteen-ninety is on my passport, so that is when I was born September 3rd. Riess: It appears as 1891 occasionally. Roth: Yes, it does and the reason is because during the fire we all lost our papers. I always thought that Mother made a mistake. But in any case, I m 90 and that makes it 1890. Riess : Where were you born? Roth: In San Francisco on Broadway Street. Riess: At home? Roth: At home; no doubt at home in those days. Riess: Was life comfortable for your family at that point? Roth: Life was always comfortable for my father. He made life comfortable. If he was short of money, he found it somehow. He was always comfortable. It was really something in his character. He would go into the office, when the office first started, and say, "I want $200 for the week-end." ##This symbol indicates that a tape or a segment of a tape has begun or ended. For a guide to the tapes see page 146.