Other Bay Area Figures
Baum
There are still a few people in Piedmont we haven't mentioned. One was Arthur Putnam.
Martinez
Yes, I knew him, too. Arthur Putnam was our famous sculptor - of magnificent animals. He was one of those vital people with
tremendous energy. He looked like a wild puma himself. He loved animals and his work showed a kinship with them. There are
quite a number in San Francisco. I think he came from the South. We saw a lot of him, yes. Then when he was 35 or 36, at the
height of his career, he was found to have a tumor on the brain.
The operation for removal of the tumor was a disaster for him - it had destroyed his genius and left him half paralyzed. He
told me, "You know, Elsie, that brain of mine, the part connected with art is completely gone. I can't draw, even like a child."
He had been a magnificent draftsman. "Everything's gone." Mrs. Spreckles took care
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of him. He had married a Frenchwoman in San Francisco whose life was dedicated to him, so Mrs. Spreckles sent them to Paris,
where he lived for some years in the art students' quarters where he was much admired and loved.
He married a fellow student, a pale, blonde delicate person. Apparently they were very happy together until after the operation
and then they separated, his life ruined. He had two children, a beautiful daughter and a son. They went up to Oregon to live
with relatives; I've tried a number of times to find what became of them. The girl was vivid like her father, and the boy
was gentle like his mother, a quiet person and an artist. I hadn't seen too much of them before the operation, perhaps half
a dozen times, and I was impressed by her gentleness and fragile beauty and his personality. He loved his work so much. He
didn't go out much. He wasn't a bohemian. He'd come to Marty's studio and we saw him then, but he never took part in any of
the bohemian parties the artists used to have. But after the operation, of course, the center of his life was gone — a great
talent was just reaching fulfillment. He lived ten or twelve years after the operation, but the artist was dead. We were all
so thankful when he went to France because he loved France.
Baum
Haig Pattigan?
Martinez
I didn't know him well except generally as a sculptor. I'm afraid I didn't admire his sculpture. He was never connected with
any of the bohemian groups. He was a rather conventional person.
Baum
Roi Partridge?
Martinez
I remember him quite distinctly. We admired his wife and we gave him credit for a certain amount of ability, but somehow or
other our
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sympathy was always with her. He was a disagreeable personality as far as his wife was concerned; we never knew what was back
of it. But we admired her very much — she was Imogen Cunningham, the photographer. He was very antagonistic to her and we
rather resented that. That's about all I remember about him; he wasn't part of our group at all. We knew her quite well for
a little while and had known her before she married him. She wasn't part of the group but she came in and out. It didn't seem
to be a happy marriage; it fell apart shortly afterwards and we saw nothing of him after that.
Baum
Herbert and Kinnie Bashford?
Martinez
Oh, what a pair of characters! He wrote one very bad play which gave him quite a local reputation; he was a rather conventional
little man and ran the literary page on the Bulletin, I remember.
He was a neighbor and once in a while I used to be with Ruth Roberts and I'd see them at her home. He never even came to the
studio. I'd see him and his wife at Ruth Roberts' - who had my father's house next door to them.
Baum
Ralph Stackpole?
Martinez
Oh, I liked Ralph. He almost married my sister. He would say we were almost relatives.
Baum
I thought your sister was not interested in art or literature.
Martinez
No, she wasn't interested in art but she flirted with Ralph a bit and then got interested in another artist. That ended their
short romance. That was here in Piedmont, after I was married, that's when I met Ralph. I used to have my sister here, with
her great brown eyes, very feminine. But it didn't work out. Ralph's an awfully
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fine person, really. A charming personality, but not a vivid one. The vivid one was the famous sculptor Putnam.
And Bufano - we've known him for years. We were very fond of him. We knew him from the earliest days here. He was a combination
of the shrewdest publicity hunting we'd ever known — there was only one person I know that's superior, and that's Henry Cowell,
the musician. He's a master of publicity, and Bufano is too. Everybody thinks he's odd, well, he is odd. But he's clever, and he's a good sculptor.
Baum
I heard that for a long time he didn't tell anyone he had a wife and child.
Martinez
I knew he had a wife. He lived in San Francisco and his wife lived in Marin somewhere. I believe she was Italian, too. Anyway,
she lived with her family. We never saw her. That's all we knew about that part of his life. He was a secretive little fellow.
He told us many interesting stories about his sojourn in China. He went there to explore a cave that was full of beautiful
small Buddhist sculptures. He decided he'd better have a couple so he hid them in his jacket and went home. Then he thought,
"Well, I'd better go get two or three more." So he waited a week and then he went back. He thought, "Well, that's funny, this
door has been changed a little bit." So he put his head round the door and there was an old cannon, one of the earliest-known
cannons, and they had it all full of stuff to shoot him when he arrived and opened the door. [Laughter] He went to the Hankow
pottery works. It's the most famous in the whole Orient, exquisite potteries for royalty. For centuries the trade
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secret has gone down from father to son and never been put on paper. The Japanese bombed the whole works out of existence.
I remember he came up the day word came it was bombed out. Benny cried and said sadly, "They taught me a few little things,
but they said, `You come live with us and we'll teach you our secrets,"' but he couldn't stay. He said the greatest secrets
of the Oriental potteries were lost in that bombardment of Hankow. He was terribly heartbroken about that. And they taught
him quite a bit as it was.
Sometimes he's gay and talkative and other times he's completely silent. If you get him in a silent mood he won't open his
mouth.
Baum
Was he the kind of person who would like you for a while and then change?
Martinez
I don't think he would, no. Some insisted he was a Communist, I don't. He's been among so many kinds of people. Nothing has
any effect on him. He accepts everyone as a person and does not question their beliefs.
I was very lucky — when I was ten years of age Sun Yat-sen was sent to this country to be educated. When he finished college,
he was in San Francisco on his way home to China and the San Francisco Socialist Party had asked him to give a talk on China.
My father showed me this little figure up on the platform and said, "Now, remember that name, because he's going to be a famous
figure some day in China." He was a little fellow and he gave his talk in English.
Baum
Another person everyone knew was Albert Bender.
Martinez
Well, he was the man who supported art in San Francisco. Any artist
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who needed money went to Bender. He was very dear. He bought several of Marty's pictures and I knew of other painters he'd
helped.
Walker
Did he come to Carmel for a while?
Martinez
He used to go back and forth once in a while. His cousin was a very fine painter, Anne Bremer.
Baum
Was he an art connoisseur?
Martinez
I think his cousin was the one who had the knowledge. Anne Bremer was a very brilliant woman. They lived together in a big
home they had; I went to several dinners there. He was interested in helping artists and getting galleries going. It was a
cultural effort with him. He'd put money into cultural activities willingly and generously. Marty was very fond of Bender.
Baum
Did he come up here to the studio, or did you meet them in San Francisco?
Martinez
In San Francisco. He didn't go out very much. He used to entertain at his home.
Orrin Peck was a painter, and a quite good one. He was adopted by Phoebe Hearst to be the brother of William Randolph Hearst.
Marty and he were very good friends and we saw him quite often on his rare visits to San Francisco. He had painted colossal
portraits of the father and mother of William Randolph Hearst and they were exhibited at the Bohemian Club. It was a big affair,
so we went over because Marty was very fond of Orrin Peck. He told us two very interesting things: He said that Willy was
not the son of Mrs. Hearst, not her son at all; and the other thing he said was when he used to go around
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the world he'd come back and Willy loved dirty stories, so he'd collect them for Hearst. Willy used to snap his knuckles (he'd
never say a word while Orrin talked, just those strange eyes fastened on him) - Orrin could tell if it was a good story because
he'd snap his knuckles.
I saw William Randolph Hearst at the exhibition, a strange character. At that time he came over and sat down beside me — he
liked blondes. He stayed with me until Marty hove in sight and he looked him over and then he departed. But we were there
about fifteen or twenty minutes discussing the painters.
Baum
Someone described Hearst as having a very high voice.
Martinez
It was. I was so surprised because he was tall, rather large, with a thin high voice. He didn't say much, though, not much
more than yes or no. "Yes." "No." And once he made a comment about looking like his father. He liked the portrait of his father
the best. I don't believe he ever knew his real mother. Of course, he must have known he wasn't the son of Phoebe.
Orrin Peck told us that before she died, Phoebe begged him to keep the estate, Pleasanton, she loved it so, for a while in
her memory. The breath wasn't out of her body before he had twenty appraisers there and it was sold and gone inside of three
weeks. There was no love lost there. In the book it says that she dominated him. Well, maybe that's why. But he was a strange
character.
Baum
Of course Phoebe is very popular at the University of California.
Martinez
Yes. Well, she's done a great deal for them.
Baum
As a person, people said . . .
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Martinez
Oh, Rollo Peters told me a wonderful story. He knew Mrs. Hearst quite well. He was asked to a luncheon she was giving at Del
Monte for about forty guests. At that time, a cause celebre was about a young Jewish fellow named Frank who had a pencil factory
in Georgia. He took white women to work and the Southerners lynched him. The Hearst papers in California papers stood up for
Frank and the Georgia papers were for killing him. It came out quite a bit about William Randolph Hearst's Georgia paper being
responsible for that murder. Mrs. Hearst said, "Oh, I would appreciate so much if someone would really tell me the truth about that whole thing because it upsets me so to think that Willy was accused like that, and probably
unfairly!" So Rollo Peters said, "Do you want the truth, Mrs. Hearst?" He knew her well. She said, "Yes, I want the truth."
He said, "Your son was responsible for the murder of that man."
She reeled with the shock, then stood up stiffly to her regal height and she said to her guests, "Follow me, please," and
they all obeyed and disappeared and Peters was sitting alone at the banquet. That's how Phoebe felt about the truth. He said
he sat there in solitary splendor at this big banquet table and laughed and left.
Baum
You had mentioned Jimmy Hopper in connection with Nora May French — that she loathed him.
Martinez
There was a malicious streak in Hopper. The only man who really loved him and cared for him was my father. But he was malicious,
especially about women; he hated women. In some ways I couldn't
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blame him, he had a very difficult wife, very demanding and very domineering. But if he got tired of a friendship, poof! He
could say the most bitter and the meanest things about people. Jimmy Hopper was one of the people I just had no use for either,
though my father said he had something really worthwhile to him. I never saw it. Unfortunately, I made one very grave mistake
with him. He was talking about a brilliant idea that he had, and without thinking I said, "Well, you're in the same boat with
Voltaire. He expressed the same thing." And I repeated the astute, witty statement of Voltaire. He gave me one look and he
could have killed me. I knew then that I'd made an enemy.
Baum
He was angry that someone else had had the same idea before him?
Martinez
Not only before him, but his was a stumbling sort of an expression, and I made the mistake of giving the extraordinarily brilliant
thing that Voltaire had said on the same subject. He thought he had something new. I knew then and there I'd made a grave
mistake with Mr. Hopper; he and I were never friendly at all. He and my father remained great friends to the last. He could
be so acrid and so maliciously critical. But everyone felt sorry for him because he had such an unhappy marriage.
Baum
You haven't told us about Frederick Meyer.
Martinez
Well, Meyer was a darling. He had a shop of fine iron work in San Francisco at the time of the earthquake. He was a German.
I believe he had classes on ornamental ironwork or something over at his shop. Oh, by the way, that knocker over there was
on his shop door and
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went through the fire; he designed it. He had a little class over there, and when his shop was burned out he decided to come
to Berkeley and start a little art school. It was in the attic of an old building, and he had only three classes to begin
with. Later his art school expanded into a large school.
Baum
What was his claim to be an art teacher? Had he studied art?
Martinez
Oh, he'd studied art, too, and he was a designer. He put up with Marty, and that was heroic.
Baum
You said that Marty was very faithful to his classes.
Martinez
Oh, yes. He never missed a class and he was never five minutes late. He would stay up all night, but he'd get up and get ready
and he'd be at that class on the dot.
Walker
Was Ralph DuCasse one of his students?
Martinez
No. Ralph did meet him in Carmel six months after Marty died.
All those years after I married Marty I kept notes of the interesting people and the interesting conversations because Marty's
house was an international house then. And when I went to Europe he burned them. He never said a word, I never said a word.
I never let on I knew and he never mentioned them. But the thing that's the real loss are all those photos given to Joaquin
Miller on his trip to London. I had taken down all those dedications to him on the photos. And now all those photos have disappeared,
some say the nephew sold them. I think Miller was the most picturesque of Marty's friends, London was the most lovable, and
Sterling the most difficult.
Walker
Why do you say Sterling was the most difficult?
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Martinez
Well, I didn't understand him until after I became a Catholic. He had these moments of great compassion and tenderness. Yet
when he got angry he would go out of his way to be disagreeable even in a malicious sort of way.
Walker
I've been reading Carrie's letters from the period when they first went to Carmel, and it's pretty obvious that he was constantly
unfaithful to her and she did not realize it.
Martinez
Oh, yes. I'll say this for Carrie, with all her Rabelaisian humor, she was rather naive about his affairs.
Walker
She wasn't naive in her letters. She made it pretty clear she understood what was going on, but did not really believe it.
Martinez
Oh? Well, that was the Vera Connolly affair. You ought to run down the letters Carrie and George wrote to the Bierces. They
wrote to them for thirty or forty years.