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Marriage and Family

Marriage to Elsie Whitaker, 1907

Martinez

After three months with us Marty, I think, decided that a poor writer's daughter would make a poor artist's wife and fit nicely into his studio. My father was a little bit disturbed about the age difference. I wasn't a bit, and protested. He said, "Well, if you will wait a year, I'll consider it." He thought I might get over it in a year, but I wasn't going to get over it.

At sixteen I was a blonde beauty, medium height, lithe and slim, with perfect features that our artist friends called classic Greek; and some, inclined to romanticism, declared I resembled the "Blessed Damozel" of Rossetti. But to our Piedmonters and our friends, used to seeing me flitting about the hills with my long golden braids, I was the little Valkyrie. One admirer in whom I was not interested, who had survived a five mile walk with me instead of the tete à tete he hoped to have, called me Artemis and promised to send me a dart as a souvenir of the occasion. When going to the City, I wove my long braids about my head like a crown and with a quiet dignity and gentle detachment, was ready to meet the world. Brought up by an English father, I had a proper respect for age, and having always felt the loss of grandparents, to the elderly I was always smiling and attentive; with youth I was pleasant but indifferent; and with the worldly wise and sophisticated and intellectuals, to them, a good listener and surprisingly intelligent and responsive. At seventeen

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I won the admiration, a difficult feat with our satirist, Ambrose Bierce (which meant more to me than any tribute to my beauty), for having read twice the superb Morley's English Edition of ten volumes of his "master", Voltaire, and was familiar with the Greek, Latin, French and English satirists culled from my histories and European literature! There were none of the distractions of today in my youth—no autos, no TV or radio, none of the many time-consuming, highly organized clubs and associations, so nature and a literary life with my father was my life.

At that time, at sixteen years of age, I promised to marry four of my father's friends. I decided to pick out the one who would give me the most interesting life. So, Marty was the most picturesque, so I picked him. One was a young writer who had published a book that had made a hit at the time and was going to South America. One was an engineer. I liked engineers because I had known so many who used to come from Canada to see my father. The third one was an interesting fellow: he was a painter at the time; his father was the lawyer for the "Six Chinese Companies" in San Francisco and Shanghai. My beau was born and spent his youth in China. He was the interpreter for his father and an artist for pleasure.

Baum

They were all older then, all your father's age.

Martinez

Yes, all his age.

Baum

You didn't like young fellows.

Martinez

Oh no, I wasn't interested in youth in the slightest.

So at the end of about nine months, I was seventeen, I'd had

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enough of my stepmother, so Marty and I went over to Judge Dunn, who was a friend of his, and we were married in the Synagogue — the courts were then in the Synagogue after the San Francisco fire. The ceremony was performed by Judge Dunn. He took it for granted that I had permission (being under eighteen) because Marty was such a figure in San Francisco, that it never occurred to him to inquire whether there was any opposition. Of course my father would not be likely to give too much opposition, because he knew I'd advertise our unpleasant relationship with my stepmother.

So we were married, and we returned to the studio. I soon found, married to Marty, I had taken on a Mexican Revolution. Marty was a Latin lover — a charming book of poetry exquisitely illustrated — hours of drawing me — singing love songs in the rest periods — tempestuous declarations of love — and jealousy well-controlled, but gently demonstrated until after our marriage — then the passion took over!

I forgot to say that during that nine months my father and friends, pioneer-style, built Marty a studio in the woods over by the old reservoir. He loved the life with us in Piedmont — the closeness to nature that stirred his Indian blood. Often, at sunrise he would go with me to the top of the hill on our ridge, enveloped in the warm sun, and caressed by the soft breezes filled with the fragrance of the Yerba Buena, our wild mint, mingled with the pungent odors released at the touch of the sun, of the stands of redwood and tall eucalyptus trees, recall in the sky, meadows and primeval forests our

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great Sierras, dimly glimpsed on a clear day across the wide central valley. As the sunlight flowed in a golden stream over the wild hay on the steep hillsides, the lush green shrubbery in the little hollows and canyons, there emerged out dusty old road weaving through the canyons and meandering along the hillsides of our glorious landscape.

The quiet hours of work during the week, and the gay week-ends with his friends from the City staying with us for an outdoor outing. After the first two months with us, Marty expressed the wish to live near us. Father promptly laid the plans for his studio. Wickam Havens gave him a lot for a picture, just over the knoll from our house. Father gathered together several friends who could be counted on to know how to use tools, and with the necessary lumber donated by friends, the studio was soon up and Marty installed

Marty settled happily into his new surroundings, called the studio his "Hogan" and savored the undisturbed beauty to the full. Opposite was the reservoir, a small lake surrounded by young redwoods and pines from which the raucous blue jays whirling and screeching off any intruders in their preserve, and finally would light on the eucalyptus limb near his door to study this strange addition to their landscape. Below him was a small canyon with its tangle of blackberry vines interlaced with the wild thimble berries, the hazel nut thickets and its babbling brook — a shelter for large flocks of quail and a refuge for the many varieties of small birds in migration. Near the study the pretty trails that wound around the hill with its chattering

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squirrels in the oak trees, and shy little cottontails frisking in and out of the shrubbery, and the tiny lizards stretched on the rocks warmed by the sun all soon became friends of his including the friendly gopher snake who let him stroke it. While sketching, he would pause, luring them in true Indian fashion with a pocket of seeds and bits of bread — a rapport — a gift of his Indian people.

Pioneer style, the only addition that Marty made to his studio, which was one big room with a porch and a little kitchenette off the porch, was a four-cup coffee pot instead of the two-cup pot he had. That was the only thing he added to the studio beside myself. So I moved into the studio and that seemed perfectly natural to me. None of this modern idea of fancy weddings and fancy preparations and fancy honeymoons and fancy everything. It just never occurred to me. I just took my little suitcase and went over there, settled down in Marty's studio as part of it — nothing was changed in it.

We settled down and had a very amusing and pleasant full life. Marty's friends in San Francisco would come over for the weekends, and then we spent much of the time in San Francisco with them. Sometimes three days and nights a week we'd be over in the city for luncheons, teas, dinners. Marty's marriage created quite a sensation so San Francisco wanted to see this picturesque pair we were. Of course, Coppa was wailing that Marty was going across the Bay and deserting San Francisco. So we promised him we'd be at Coppa's two or three nights a week for dinner. We had so many friends in San Francisco it was part of our life, trotting over there.

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Baum

How long did it take you to get there?

Martinez

Well, it was five cents on the streetcar right down here to the Key Route, which is at lower Piedmont, 40th; then it was ten cents on the train and boat to go to San Francisco. We walked down to the streetcar, just like we do now. It would take about an hour to go to San Francisco, but what was an hour in those days? And we loved the boat, so that was pleasant. And if we missed the last Key Route, which was 11:45, something like that, we took the newspaper boat at two in the morning, and we walked from Water Street down at the foot of Broadway in Oakland, now Jack London Square, up here to Piedmont. We thought nothing of that. Many is the time we'd stay to a late party and at two o'clock take the newspaper boat which came to the bottom of the Bay there at Jack London Square.

Life ran along. Marty had one very unfortunate habit, he was exceedingly jealous, so life wasn't all a bed of roses, because he was always getting jealous and he was always being troublesome. Arnold Genthe in his book "As I Remember" tells of one episode. I was talking to an old friend in the studio when Arnold arrived. He found Marty with a target on a tree, blazing away at it. He said, "Martinez, what do you think you're doing?" He replied, "I'm going to shoot that fellow who's talking to my wife." Only the language wasn't quite so polite. Genthe did not finish the episode. He said, "Well, now listen, don't you think that's a bit foolish?" So Marty calmed down a little, went inside, and our friend said, "Listen here, Marty, I'll talk to your wife any time I want to because I can assure

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you that your wife's in no danger of me. I'm one of your oldest friends and I object to that." So ended the episode.

Whenever overcome by one of these fits of jealousy he would burst out in song. When he began to sing Pagliacci, which he did beautifully, I began to study the door because I knew the knives and gun were coming out very shortly. Many a time I lit out the door and into the woods, sat on the hillside until he cooled off. In the summer I took refuge in a sweet smelling haycock and in the winter under the wide-spreading oak tree nearby.

That never bothered me. I grew up among boys and men, my father was a two-gun man in the early days and my brothers all had guns, guns were always going off, so they didn't mean much to me. I was not overly disturbed. I was annoyed because I didn't like it. I was quite dignified and I didn't want to have to run like a rabbit out into the bushes. Then I'd wait till he calmed down and came back in again, very dignified and very annoyed. I had tried to be a Spanish lady, but at the end of the first year I'd had enough. I could box — I'd learned to box with my brothers. My father said only one thing to them, "If you break her nose, I'll kill you. So you'd better be careful of her nose." They were very careful. But I learned a skill that came in handy later.

I had spent a year dodging knives and I got kind of tired of it and changed my tactics. So I told him, "This is the end of this period of being a lady." One day, to his complete surprise, I went up to him, took the gun out of his hand and gave him a wallop on the

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side of his head that knocked him out for two hours. I didn't have to run for quite a while. [Laughter] I also told him the next time I used it it would not be the butt end, but the firing one. I told him, "This is only the beginning. Next time you'll never recover, what you'll get is a bullet from the gun." I think he took it quite seriously for a while. I was beginning to get very tired of the rampages and the roars and the scenes he raised in public. Oh Heavens! They were very often. He'd have a few drinks and he'd raise a scene every time any man paid any attention to me. Anyhow he quieted down. When anyone protested, "How could you let that child marry that old savage?", my father replied, "Don't worry about Elsie, you worry about Marty; she'll tame him".

When Gelett Burgess came up the first time after we were married, he said to me, "I don't approve of this marriage". I wanted to say, "Neither do I", but I wasn't quite so brash in those days. He said, "It's going to ruin Marty as a painter. He's got his mind on you, not on art". I said, "I agree with you." So that sort of startled him.

Anyhow, I had already figured out that marriage was not good for Marty as an artist because he was too obsessed with me and too jealous. It was not good for him. [Laughter] Then my studies irritated him. I was a person full of ideas and was studying madly. He told me I didn't know anything about art. That was a challenge, so I studied all about art and then I'd contradict him with quotations from the greats of the past, and that was worse! After that I was just plain annoying, which

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was too much for him. He wanted a nice Indian squaw sitting by the fireside with her eyes on the floor, but with me it just didn't work out, that's all. But he didn't want me to leave him when I suggested it. It was a very difficult situation for I had a great deal of admiration for Marty as an artist and a picturesque figure; but I knew this friction all the time wasn't good for him.

For instance, he didn't want me to learn Spanish. I had taken Spanish in high school and I got to where I could speak it after a fashion with his friends — but he didn't approve of that. He ridiculed my Spanish and made it rather difficult for me. He never would teach Kai Spanish either, though I used to try to make him speak Spanish to Kai, but he never would. It was something that belonged to him, I suppose, and the Indian in him wanted to keep us out of it.

When we were to be married he promised to take me to Mexico, and then after we were married, decided he wouldn't. I was a brilliant blonde, you know, a glamour girl of a kind — not a glamour girl in the sense of a sex symbol, but I was beautiful and intelligent, and that was dangerous enough for Marty. He wouldn't take me to Mexico because he said either he wouldn't come out of Mexico or I wouldn't. Well, I think it's very likely to have happened. (Laughter) I loved the Latins - and they loved blondes, you know — and Marty was a very romantic Latin during the courtship. So we never went to Mexico, and I dropped Spanish. He had conversations with his Spanish friends and I got a great deal more than he ever knew out of it, but I never let him know.

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Baum

What did you do all day? You didn't do much housework, it doesn't sound like.

Martinez

There was little work to be done in a one-room studio, so now I had the time and opportunity for the studies I longed for. Having been brought up only on the English group singing of folk songs, ballads, carols, madrigals, and hymns, traditionally English, well rendered and touchingly beautiful, my knowledge of music and art was limited. I went in heavily for music — both piano and theory — that is, beginners harmony and counterpoint. For theory I was very fortunate to have an old friend of Marty's in Edward Strickland, professor and later head of the Music Department of the University of California. Strickland often took me to concerts with him. With a score in his lap and a pencil in hand he would guide me through the mysterious intricacies of orchestral technique and several times he had permission to take me to rehearsals of a quartet group — friends of his — working out and analyzing the score with them while they practiced, which greatly enlarged my knowledge of music. To be with them was a sort of musical intimacy in which you followed them, exploring the depths and intensity of the great composers.

For the piano, David Alberto led me patiently through the first steps of piano playing and after he left for Carmel, Robert Tolmis, protégée of Mrs. Hearst. He had just returned from his scholarship in Europe and carried me on to within reach of my goal to play well and with some musicianship.

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Brought up by an English father with emphasis on the classics, especially Greek, for whom the English had an adoration — on our walls at home there were large reproductions of the Elgin Marbles and scattered about in the bookcases plaster casts of Greek sculpture; on occasional cursory flights into philosophy; and with a detailed study of England's conquests, I had already covered much ground, but none of it from the standpoint of art.

So, to fill the gap I was pursuing a cultural background with archaeology, anthropology and art books to study to enlarge my knowledge of art — Marty's field — and about which he felt very possessive. I considered it a challenge. Of course, much time was spent in San Francisco for exhibitions and concerts to give my studies vividness and a grasp of the essentials that makes of a composition a creation.

Baum

And Marty would be off in another part of the room painting?

Martinez

Yes, he'd be at school half a day and the rest working at his desk writing, drawing, or painting.

Marty had wide interests and loved poetry, music and philosophy and the great cultures. To him the struggle for fame was not worth giving up the hours he devoted to them. He was not obsessed with art, but quite satisfied to communicate his love of nature in vivid impressions on canvas. In later years he wrote a column on the arts for the Spanish paper in San Francisco, which was reprinted in several Mexican and South American papers. On his trip to the Navajo Country, he acquired much Indian lore, whose humor and pathos he simplified and made visual for his little daughter — and used for his column.

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Studio in Piedmont

Baum

When did you move into this house?

Martinez

We lived in the first studio in Piedmont one year (1907-08) after we were married. Then Wickham Havens found some wealthy people who bought the whole tract and they wanted the piece on which the studio was built, too. He said he'd give us this lot with the view, which we preferred, and would move the studio for us. It was taken apart and brought over here and Frederick Meyer, who ran the art school, the California School of Arts and Crafts, had really a very charming design for the remodeling.

Baum

You took part of the old studio?

Martinez

Yes, it was taken apart and the material used over again. But we brought with us the original design of Meyer's, which was rather attractive. We were going to put just an underpinning under it and a kitchen and so on. Our carpenter, "Booster" Smith had a yen for art, so he agreed to build the studio for a painting. Naturally, he wanted to finish it as fast as he could, so every time he could make a shortcut to save time he would ignore the design, with Marty's approval, and leave something out or switch a door around. So, Meyer's design suffered considerably.

The lot was on a ridge and the studio was built on the side of the hill. My brothers and I dug, out of the solid rock, fourteen piers, to carry the foundation. This house is on solid rock, that's why it's never shifted in the slightest.

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"Booster" got the lumber down at an Oakland pier, already creosoted. Thirty years later, when a banker came to inspect the studio before granting a loan for repairs, he exclaimed, "Good Heavens, you could almost put the Bank of England on this foundation!" This material was bought by a $300 check sent to Marty by Arthur B. Davies just after the earthquake, to help a fellow artist.

And then the daily routine began. His friends arrived, prepared to work with gloves and a hammer. First, each day, Marty got out his gallon of wine, declared they would have to start correctly, and they would start with a libation — they would all have a glass of wine. Then they'd work briskly for an hour and then stop for another glass of wine. By the end of the day, the gallon jug was empty. Later, an expert who had to work on one of the windows said it was one of the funniest things he'd ever seen — the difference in the dimensions — each one was just out a little — and wondered how they had gotten it in place. Anyhow, it was built that way, and —

Baum

It seems to have stood up for quite a while.

Martinez

Yes, fifty years — more than that — 1908 to 1967 — now almost sixty years old.

Baum

You had this big studio room with a porch —

Martinez

This room is just as it was, except for the addition of a little powder room later when Kai was married. We had a porch across the front of the studio, around one side. Kai had the large windows put in when remodeling it after her marriage to Ralph DuCasse. The remodeling job was a wedding present from her father-in-law, Ralph

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DuCasse Senior.

Baum

Then downstairs, originally, you had a kitchenette and a little dining room and the bedroom....

Martinez

And the bathroom under it and below was Marty's studio, designed and built by Billy Knowles. We really have three stories on this place because it is built on the side of a hill.

Billy Knowles was our prominent Oakland architect. When Kai was one year old, Marty told Knowles he couldn't paint because he was afraid the baby would get into his paint. So, Billy Knowles announced, "I'll fix a studio for you." Billy Knowles sent up the materials and carpenters and built the studio so Marty could paint. This room — the old studio — is the same — the old redwood walls which are so characteristic of California.

Baum

You had this high vault in the middle of the ceiling in the studio, too?

Martinez

No, originally the ceiling was open to the rafters. The studio was so hard to heat that Billy Knowles remarked, "It would be better to fill this space in and it'll be easier for you to heat the studio."

Baum

Well, it certainly is charming now.

Martinez

Well, it was very simple then when we built it. Marty's corner held his desk and his table and his little old Victrola, his big easel and his little Bible with his painting materials.

In another corner stood my grand piano on which I diligently practiced and a small set of drawers which held my music and all the materials for my various studies, including art.

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We had one couch and a couple of chairs, a built-in window seat under the wide window overlooking the Bay. That comprised the furnishing of the studio — no carpets on the floor save an Indian rug before the couch. Marty's art materials and large easel were moved down to the lower studio after Kai was born.

Baum

Did friends come to spend the night with you?

Martinez

Oh yes. We'd go over to San Francisco on the weekends and we always brought back several guests with us. We used to put the men down in the lower studio with Marty, and the girls I put on army cots on the sleeping porch with me. Even after Kai was born we still had friends coming and going.

I didn't get to the city as much for a while. I hardly left the hill until Kai was two years old. She was a very timid child, so I was never going to let her be frightened. I had an enormous number of studies at that time — anthropology, archaeology, and psychology — so that suited me — combining baby sitting and studies. The weekends were as gay as usual.

The first six years of our marriage we had a very active life — so much of it spent in San Francisco. I remember the celebrated bar in the Montgomery Block where Nicols dispenses his famour Pisco Punches. In those days ladies were not allowed at the bar. That was not done, so I'd have to sit in the little ladies' room, sipping my Pisco Punch, and wait for Marty and his friends.

To Marty the Italian quarter had become the "Latin Quarter" of his student days in Paris and much of our time in San Francisco was spent there. The Barbary Coast branched off the Italian quarter and

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when Perry Newberry made his one and only try at a political office, the Italian quarter and Barbary Coast were his beat to drum up votes. So Perry took us to meet his friends in the Barbary Coast.

We went down the life of the dance halls with him and finally settled on Spider Kelly's Thalia as the most interesting dance hall in the Coast, and we spent most of our time at his place. It was a very large, almost barn-like structure (built at the time of the Gold Rush), and still had an atmosphere reminiscent of that period. On both sides of the hall ran a built-up runway with tables and chairs for those who wanted to drink or watch the dancing on the floor below. It was very picturesque and an ideal spot for sketching. The artists became regular customers of Spider Kelly, which pleased him since he considered it added prestige to have his place popular with artists. At the entrance was a tremendous bar — half a block long. Spider Kelly, the boss of the joint, taught me how to wash glasses correctly. He had immense tiers of beautiful shining glasses. When I admired them he demonstrated his technique for me. "You must wash them in very soapy water and then you rinse the inside, but you never rinse the outside because soap polishes them." He was an ex-prize fighter He had a thick squat body and huge long arms, so he had justly earned his title.

Around 1908 some of the best restaurants and even some of the taverns had singers and performers. One night at the Techau Tavern I saw a huge, blonde, gorgeous female in electric blue satin singing Wagnerian arias. During her performance the waiters were busily

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muting the clatter of latecomers and the empty chatter of inattentive females. Then at 12 o'clock she appeared at the Thalia. In tribute to that grand old girl and her magnificent voice, down in the Barbary Coast there was not a sound. It was the greatest respect I've ever witnessed in any place. You could have heard a pin drop. Everyone — sailors, soldiers, roustabouts, drifters — the debris of a port city — was entranced. I remembered the Techau Tavern — the sound of clinking glasses, the shrill voices, that shattered the spell of Wagner's deeply tragic moments.

At that time Paul Whiteman had a small orchestra which was playing at the Bella Union. His violinist, a friend of Marty's who had been first violinist with the Boston Symphony and through alcoholism had dropped down to playing in small orchestras on the Barbary Coast, told us that Whiteman was making some experiments. He said it was no use doing good music down here and he started what he thought would be the type of music that would suit the place, which turned out to the be first jazz in California. He said to Whiteman one time, "What do you think you'll call this?" And he replied, with a grimace, "Well, it's not music, it's `jazz"'. The public liked it. The great emphasis was on trombones and horns — a stumbling effort to reach a style. It was nowhere near the cool jazz that we have now.

Baum

This was before your baby was born?

Martinez

Long before. I had six years of having a very interesting time in San Francisco before I got marooned with a baby on the top of our Piedmont hill.

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Birth of Micaela, 1913

Baum

So your life changed quite a bit when your daughter was born.

Martinez

Yes, our life as I described it — lectures, concerts, exhibitions, meeting and entertaining celebrities who came to San Francisco; teas, luncheons and dinners at the Palace, St. Francis or Fairmont Hotels with our wealthy friends; affairs put on by the famous patrons of art in San Francisco — it was a whirl.

At the end of the sixth year, we had a surprise. Kai was coming. So when she was about to be born I decided I just couldn't have Marty around, he was too hysterical. So Charley Sutro, the broker in San Francisco, who was one of Marty's patrons, said, "Well, Marty, I'll send you and McComas down to the desert on a sketching trip until the great event occurs."

Marie Sutro — Charles Sutro's wife — was looking after me. She wouldn't let me stay in Piedmont alone, although I still had several weeks to wait. She insisted I come to San Francisco and sit in the German Hospital with a nurse to look after me. When I protested about its being so expensive, she said, "Fiddlesticks, that's nothing to us." So I waited in comfort and, to me, luxury until my papoose arrived.

When I first went in so many of the Bohemian Club members sent flowers that my hospital room was a tremendous bower. At the end of three weeks when nothing happened — the baby was delayed — the bouquets got smaller and smaller and smaller, until only one bouquet of sweet peas greeted the little newcomer.

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All was arranged for an Indian runner to carry the momentous news to Marty in the desert and his friends made quite a drama of it in the newspapers. So, thanks to her inherited "manner," the historic announcement was handed to Marty just as he was taking the train for the return journey home. He arrived in San Francisco the day after Kai was born, instead of weeks afterwards as I had planned.

Now, to take up Francis McComas: Just before the trip, McComas got entangled in love with a friend of mine, Jean Baker. She was the daughter of the editor of the Tribune. This romance was budding, and McComas said to Marty, "You start down and I'll meet you there." So Marty spent two weeks waiting for him in a dreary little hotel in Gallup, New Mexico. McComas had written Marty to go on into the desert to Hubble who would take care of him. But Hubble's wife just died before he arrived in Gallup and Marty refused to go on.

By the time McComas arrived Marty was in a towering rage and would not speak to him. McComas said, "Look here, you love the Indians and you're certainly not going to stop now because you're mad at me. Come on, we'll go into the desert." Frank McComas and his friends had been in the desert before, so he knew the ropes of getting settled comfortably. So having made the bargain with Sutro to take Marty with him, he had to get Marty into the desert. So, in they went, though Marty was not an agreeable companion and hot as hell, as Marty wrote to me. Hubble had arranged for a place for them

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to live and they settled down. Frank was away most of the time so Marty was cultivating the Indians and sketching and painting. But Marty never recovered from his annoyance that two weeks were wasted in the town of Gallup, a noisy little frontier town while McComas was running around trying to get this romance to the point of marriage before he left. He married Jean later.

At that time his first wife had just gotten her divorce. She was one of the Parrotts of San Francisco — one of the "Bonanza" families. Their marriage lasted two years. She took him around the world on their honeymoon. She had contacts with the social elite — many of them her relatives in San Francisco. He remained an artist because his wife had her wealthy friends buy his pictures. So he was doing very well. Charles Rollo Peters also had social connections through his family — prominent Philadelphia socialites. Through Marie Louise Parrott, McComas had social connections. She divorced McComas to marry Putnam Weal, the English diplomat in China who wrote Indiscreet Letters from Peking. She had met him on a trip to the Orient. She went back to Peking to live and left McComas in the hands of her relatives to keep him going.

Marty never recovered from his annoyance and considered the friendship ended.

Baum

You can't blame him.

Martinez

To be fair to Frank McComas, he had written Marty to go on to Hubble's at Ganado, who would look after him and added "I've written to Hubble you are coming." Mr. Cotton, who was the business firm in Gallup

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handling Indian affairs, met Marty and told him, "Oh, Mr. Martinez, you can't go in now to Ganado because Hubble has just lost his wife and he's in an awful state. I don't think you'd better go there for a few days." So Marty refused to go and waited for McComas. Frank, not knowing of Hubble's wife's death, took it for granted that Marty was in the desert and painting.

Anyway, Kai made a great change in our lives. Some of his friends called Marty Padonna Martinez, instead of Madonna. Every time the baby cried he'd want to call the doctor. That drove me crazy! Marty would say, "I know Elsie doesn't know what to do for that child." Our doctor was a darling; he'd say, "Now listen, nature gives women instinct. She knows what she is doing for that child and you stop worrying." And in a day or two the baby'd have a little colic or a little fever from overeating — she was overfed most of the time — and he'd call up the doctor. So it was really quite trying. I was thankful when Billy Knowles fixed him the studio downstairs and dumped him down there and kept him away from the crying baby that he was certain was dying on the spot. He had a peculiar sort of possessive feeling about the child. The same with me, too, as far as that goes; we were his possessions and he knew what we ought to do. And of course my interest in studies annoyed him very much. I was an independent Anglo-Saxon and I was used to doing as I pleased and I loved study. I was going right on with what I was accustomed to — books, books, books, and interesting people. The difficulty of the marriage lay in Marty's possessiveness and jealousy, but nothing else bothered me at all.

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I remember Marty had one of the first machines — I'll never forget that talking machine — a Victrola. Then we had records. And also Marty decided his daughter should have nothing but pure music. Of course, those days hardly anybody had machines and it was very simple to bring your daughter up on pure music.

He went to a friend of his from the Bohemian Club who worked in Sherman-Clay to get the machine and his friend said, "Well, Marty, I'm going to give you some records to go with it. What'll you have?" And Marty replied, "Well, I want Beethoven, Bach, and Mozart." He said, "Marty, isn't that a little — how old's the child? Eight months old? Well, that's a bit surprising but if that's what you want you can have it." So he got Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart and she never heard anything but Bach, Beethoven and Mozart until she was ten. I took her to symphonies from the time she was eight, so she had this purist musical beginning.

A Two-House Family

Martinez

Well, after twelve years I left Marty and moved over to Harriet Dean's house which was just down the street from the studio. She moved here to live near us. It had been a little too hard on Kai because Marty was rather tyrannical. He wasn't well and he was getting old — he was then in his late sixties — so I thought it would be better for Kai and me to be away from him.

However, we took care of him — got his meals and looked after him when he was sick. Separation was not too difficult for him. I think teaching exhausted him quite a bit, and I think he'd grown to

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where he wanted silence and quiet again, like the Indian he was. When our separation was decided upon, I think he was rather relieved.

In 1939, when we moved to Carmel, my brother moved into Harriet's house and took care of Marty. Two years later Marty became ill, so we came up to get him and took him to Carmel. He was with us for seven months before he died in 1943. Pal, Kai and I were very devoted to Marty. He always called us "his people".

Baum

You said he drank quite a bit?

Martinez

Yes. It was complicated with that, too. It didn't make any difference if he were up until three in the morning in San Francisco or at home, Marty would be up at five, getting ready for school. He never was late once in the many years he taught there. He loved teaching, therefore it was no difficulty for him at all. He was not yet an alcoholic, but was on the way to alcoholism. The slightest amount of alcohol affected him.

But I think he was much happier with us living nearby. Kai would come every afternoon to be with him after her school hours. And then when tired he'd say, "You go home". So he just went back into the sort of quiet life that he'd had before he married.

Marty never had been able to live with anybody. Several friends tried to live with Marty in San Francisco and it was impossible. Piazzoni was a fellow student of Marty's in Paris — in the same classes. They tried to live together and they separated, too, after the early days in San Francisco.

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Baum

You haven't spoken about the fact that Marty shared a studio with Maynard Dixon in San Francisco before the earthquake.

Martinez

Well, the only thing I knew about that was that Dixon told me Marty was impossible to get along with, and asked me how I managed to survive him. This happened a couple of years before I knew Marty, when they were in the Montgomery Block. I liked Dixon very much, and agreed with him that Marty was an exceedingly difficult person to get along with.

Baum

After Marty left San Francisco, he didn't see Dixon?

Martinez

No, they lost contact. It was just the early years.

Marty was neat to an annoying degree. It was a mania with him, almost. His friends would be there smoking and he'd jerk the ashtrays right out from under them and go clean them and bring them back. If you took a book out of the bookcase and set it down for a moment to talk, he'd grab the book and put it back in its place. He was trying. I can tell the world he was trying to live with. He had fixed habits and it never occurred to him it was ever necessary to change; so he never changed one habit when I moved into the studio. I was just part of Marty's possessions. Of course, I hadn't conventional ideas and had never lived a conventional life.

However, I was offended because the Bohemian Club gave every one of the prominent members, when they married, a chest of silver. They didn't do it for us since they discussed the possibility and finally agreed the marriage could not last, so they dropped the plan. Marty thought that was terribly funny, but I was furious. I asked Porter

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Garnett, "Why didn't they?" He said, "Well, listen Elsie, no one thinks you will ever be able to live with Marty". (Laughter) But I managed to put up with him for twelve years — the last years because of Micaela. She was my little Mexican and she was so cunning and so cute as a baby and so lovely a young girl. Marty had very much to give, too. He was very gentle and sweet to the child and played games with her. He was fanatical about having the bathroom to himself when he shaved and dressed. Every morning, when Kai was a little girl, she'd come down, wait until she heard him talking, and knock on the door. He would say, "Don't come in yet, because the little peanut man is still here and you know he is afraid of children." Then he'd open the door and tell her what the peanut man had related — making up a wonderful story of the life of this little peanut man — a fantasy made up Indian fashion, exceedingly graphic and very interesting about the little peanut man's experiences with nature, with insects, with animals.

Marty was devoted to her and she loved him. He was picturesque and always had the peanut man or the Indian legends to tell her. So I stayed with Marty until Kai was ten years old. In the meantime he had become quite tyrannical and drink was part of it. He never was an alcoholic in the sodden sense, but he did drink too much quite often. So I decided that that wasn't good for the child to know that side of him.

Harriet Dean took us to Europe in 1922 and we spent a year in France. By the time we returned he'd gotten used to living alone

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and liked it. So, there was no problem at all.

Baum

Who lived in this house?

Martinez

He lived here at the studio and we lived with Harriet Dean.

Baum

How had you met Harriet Dean?

Martinez

It was in 1916, I think. She was with the Little Review with Margaret Anderson. They were then in Chicago and New York for a while. Finally they came to San Francisco to get new interest and support to keep the Little Review going.

I was not circulating at that time; I had the baby, three and a half, to care for and I was not going out much. Marty had gone over to some celebration at Coppa's. In came this picturesque girl and sat down beside him. She never said a word, just sat there waiting for some friend to come in. She knew who Marty was, of course. Pretty soon he started to quote something from Nietzsche's Zarathustra, and stopped and paused, and she finished the line. So then he turned to her and said, "Well, who are you?" She said, "I'm Harriet Dean, I'm on the Little Review". "Oh," he said, "then we're going to be good friends."

Baum

Were people out here especially eager to have the Little Review come out?

Martinez

San Francisco was so sophisticated... Well, I think Margaret Anderson was somewhat disappointed. They stayed over the summer months, only then returned to New York. Of course, Harriet was floating around all over, going to everything and getting interest and subscriptions, especially, for their magazine.

So he met her at Coppa's and he came back and said, "I met the most wonderful person and Lucy Pierce promised to bring her up Sunday. You've got to meet Harriet Dean, a really remarkable person." That

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first visit was the beginning of a friendship for life for all of us. When the Little Review decided to return to New York, Harriet stayed three months with us in Piedmont. She had found the kind of life and environment that appealed to her and promised to return and build a home near us.

We entered World War I at that time and Harriet Dean's mother, worried about her daughter's connections with radicals, decided it was an excellent idea to have her tied down with a home near us. So she put up the resources to build. That kept her busy until the war ended. I had met her mother who decided I was a good influence on her, so she came back to Piedmont.

Harriet Dean and Marty were very great friends. Marty was devoted to her and they were very great friends right up until the day he died.

Baum

Did Marty resent the fact that you moved over with her?

Martinez

Not at all. He included her in "his people". From then on things ran along rather smoothly; there were no cataclysms in either of our lives. Then we moved down to Carmel in '39; this old friend of Pal's [Harriet Dean] had this place there and she wanted us to take it over. So we exchanged the two houses. She took our place up here, we took her place down there, and settled down. She was going into a Catholic order at the time so that she wanted us to take the place in Carmel. That's where we've been for 25 years. Marty died in 1943. The doctor had called us up and said, "Marty is really in a quite serious condition, he is getting too frail to go on with his teaching at the college." So we went up to get him and brought him down with us, fixed

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up Kai's studio for him. Kai was in San Francisco and engaged to be married to Ralph DuCasse. He lived for six months. He had a good time in Carmel with his old friends. He was quite happy there the last months.

Baum

You mention Indian culture along with Marty all the time, but did he really have much of an Indian background?

Martinez

No. I suppose he was about one-eighth Indian, but he was so proud of his Indian blood he made the most of it.

Baum

Did he have any Indian cultural background in his family?

Martinez

He always talked about the great culture of the Tarascans and claimed it was as great as the Toltec. His knowledge of them came from seeing them in Guadalajara and from books about their culture. His father was no admirer of Indians. He had the Spaniard's contempt for them, so Marty could not build up his Indian inheritance until after he came to San Francisco.

But Marty did look quite Indian, really and in later years he wore the traditional leather band around his head. Kai told us when she went to Mexico, the Mexicans always recognized her Indian blood by the shape of her head and some of her features, which are like her father's. They always recognized that she was part Mexican, at least. Her skin was too white. When we were down in Taos and I told Tony Luhan that she was part Indian, he looked her over and said, "Ye-es, but too white." (Laughter)

Which reminds me of one of the most delightful stories about Taos. Harriet Dean was there for the summer dances at Taos Pueblo with Ralph

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Pearson and Margaret Hale. They were married but she always went by her maiden name. It was that period, you know, when women were so independent. Ralph was opening his new Taos studio which he'd just built, 1920.

Harriet wanted to know some details of the symbolism of the dance. She went up to a group of handsome young Indians leaning against a wall and said, "Would you please give me some information on the symbolism of your dances?" And they all just stared. "No speak English," muttered one young Indian. So she turned around and said to Margaret, "You know, I have never in my life been among so many handsome men." They burst out laughing for they all spoke English. They they told her everything she wanted to know.