JOAQUIN MILLER, SHRINE BUILDER Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California)16 Nov 1919, Sun Page 59 & 60

Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) 16 Nov 1919, Sun Page 59 & 60

I am no fan of Joaquin Miller. He apparently was a poseur, a faker, but probably very interesting in person. His poetry has not stood the test of time, but as a neighbor of his property, I find the park, trails, canyons and creeks fascinating, and he is connected to the idea of this place. I had been curious where the name of the trail "Bishop's Walk" came from. I found it, and much more. Here's the article I found, and the research I did on its content. There's a lot in here. I'm going to learn more about Fremont road... - MF

JOAQUIN MILLER, SHRINE BUILDER

JOAQUIN MILLER SHRINE BUILDER (part 1) Sun, Nov 16, 1919 – Page 59 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

JOAQUIN MILLER, SHRINE BUILDER (part 2) Sun, Nov 16, 1919 – Page 60 · Oakland Tribune (Oakland, California) · Newspapers.com

Path of Pilgrims Leads to Hights, Now Oakland Park

By Henry Meade Bland

(Head of the Department of English Literature, the State Normal School, San Jose Cal. Author of "A Song of Autumn," "In Yosemite" and other poems)

November 10, the severity-sixth birthday of Joaquin Miller, saw the full acquirement by the city of Oakland of the poet's home as a park, as romantic and as esthetic as any in America and as full of immemorial associations. The paths in the ancient Athenian Academe had nothing in beauty over the poet's trails, even as they are today, leading deep into the clusters of friendly cypress and acacia, through which yellow noonday sunlight filter like a fragrant aerial nectar. One can lose himself a whole afternoon among those towering eucalyptus groves, exult in the aroma of the true delectable mountains, and rest and be as tranquil as a South Sea Island afternoon. Were the poet alive today, he could not dream a fairer dream than is shaped by these heaven-kissing tree branches once started as mere slips by his own hand.

It was in 1857 that the poet, a tall, slim boy of 14 or 15, first looked from the Hights on Oakland and the bay. He was then a cowboy, and had come with Mountain Joe up from Arizona and Old Mexico with a band of wild mules and horses to be sold later in the mines. The trip brought the two over the Fremont road, then only a trail, down into Oakland. He paused on his way at the first panorama of Oakland levels and the bay, to impress upon his mind a view he was never to forget. But it was to be thirty years before he was to actually home on the Hights. In truth during those thirty years he lived in many parts of the world; and he doubtless is to be counted among the most famous American travelers.

When, after years of wandering, he determined to make a lodge and settle down, it was near Naples, Italy, in sight of the renowned Naples bay, that he chose his acres. Italy, as the land of wandering poets, had caught his fancy. He had a partner in this home-building scheme. The enterprise was, however, unfortunate. The place was malarial. The partner grew sick and died. Miller deserted this place, and the next location in his travels that allured him as an abode suited to Poesy, was Old Mexico, near the capital of that primitive land, at the foot of Mount Popocatepetel.

HIS HUNT FOR A HOME.

But the home he yearned for did not yet materialize here and he was off again.

Washington, the capital of the United States, saw his next attempt at a home. He chose Meridian Hill as the site of sites, bought it, and built him a cabin. He wanted this place because he was in search of splendid associations, and because here President Thomas Jefferson had planted a stone monument from which he had decreed that the American sailor should count his longitude at sea. The Greenwich standard of measurement was to be dis-used. Jefferson's place was found finally to be impracticable, on the sea and was abandoned.

Joaquin hunted up the stone monument which had been removed when he purchased the hill, and asked the Washington board of aldermen to replace it, for it had been utilized as a piece of curbing. The aldermen could not see their way clear to comply with the poet's wish and so, in a huff, Joaquin shook from his cowboy boots the Washington dust and came to sunny California.

THE GOAT ISLAND PROJECT.

Here he soon interested himself in an Arbor day movement, the aim of which was to cover Yerba Buena (otherwise the euphonious Goat Island), with forest trees. The United States war department, then under command of General O. O. Howaard, [sic] took up Joaquin's plan. Adolph Sutro presented young trees by the thousand, and United states soldiers did the work. The trees were planted November 27, 1886, which was the first Arbor day celebration in California. The work was futile, however, for fire swept the island several times, leaving it bald and barren as ever.

Then Joaquin bought the Hights in the hills back of Fruitvale, Oakland, of which he still, from pioneer days, carried a vivid memory In truth, he had already celebrated in song such an ideal home location as he now found the Hights to be.

"I know а grassy slope above the seа. 
The utmost limit of the westmost land.
In savage, gnarl'd, and antique majesty
The great trees belt about the place, and stand
On guard, with mailed limb and lifted hand,
Against the cold approaching civic pride
The foamy brooklets seaward leap; the bland
Still air is fresh with touch of wood and tide,
And peace, eternal peace, possesses wild and wide.

"Here I return, here I abide and rest;
Some flocks and herds shall feed along the stream
Some corn and climbing vines shall make us blest
With bread and luscious fruit
The sunny dream
Of wampum men in moccasins that seem
To come and go in silence, girt in shell,
Before a sun-clad cabin-door, I deem
The harbinger of peace. Hope weaves her spell
Again about the wearied heart, and all is well.

"Here I shall sit in sunlit life's decline,
Beneath my vine and somber verdant tree.
Some tawny maids in other tongues than mine
Shall minister. Some memories shall be
Before me. I shall sit and I shall see,
That last vast day that dawn shall reinspire,
The sun fall down upon the father sea.
Fall wearied down to rest, and so retire,
A splendid sinking isle of far-off fading fire.

BUILDS ON THE HIGHTS.

Found on Newspapers.com
["John Spring was born in San Francisco Dec. 13, 1862. His father, Francisco Samuel Spring, and his uncle, John Spring, came to California about 1852. Capt. John Hopkins Spring, old New England sea captain, brought his two sons to California on his own boat. They went into the real estate business and John Spring followed in their footsteps." Also 'As stated in my previous article, Francis S. Spring executed a deed on May 13, 1887, to Joaquin as "Cincinnatus Heine Miller," covering the land where Joaquin established "The Hights."' -MF]

JOAQUIN MILLER Rriding "Chief" on "The Hights," 1889 (looked like this before he started to build, et at the Oakland Height's.)

Real home-building was begun. Sixty-nine acres were his. He saw at once it was suited as his home, the home of a poet. He was enchanted with the deep canyon on the north of his possession, lit, as it were, with eternal twilight; he was fascinated with the singing little canyon stream, he worshiped the golden prospect down over the live oak hills to tranquil bay. At sunrise, at noon, at evening, he worshipped the shining stretches of America's most wonderful western harbor; where the navies of the world were already beginning to ride at safe anchorage. But back of him the hills of his new rancho were bare, brown, treeless. What could he make grow on them?



The memories of his recent journey to the Holy Land were fresh upon him. Those ancient olives that girt the hills round about Jerusalem! - could he make the olive grow upon his own hills? He found his gorges and smaller canyons were rich in springs; and the water of these he began to conserve. A miniature lake was built, and its clear waters filled with goldfish and planted with water lilies. Big French frogs nodded and blinked on the new miniature shores.

WROTE IN THE ABBEY.

His house, in the meantime, he had built where it would command the bewitching view of the romantic bay. He had planned his house with a suggestion of Newstead Abbey where Byron lived - Byron who was his poetic hero, and with a religious spirit he made his study the middle room or chapel of the Abbey, while on either side were the guest or living rooms; and in the Abbey he lived his literary life. Here he awoke at dawn and to the music of quail-song and lark, still lying in bed, he was busy with his pen.

JOAQUIN MILLER, "At Home" after the Klondyke

The olives he planted grew, and the visitor can still find some of these struggling with the acacias which have now nearly crowded them out. And other trees grew, cypress and pine; and the great cross outlined of evergreens on the face of his highest hill, looking to the bay and San Francisco grew; and then the acres of eucalyptus grew. Joaquin used to say he had planted and grown successfully one hundred thousand trees.

Found on Newspapers.com
THE POET'S DREAM.

His conception of what his home should stand for now began to broaden. First he would be a farmer, he would build roads and trails and improve his farm, and make his fields yield their abundance; second he would found a school of poetry, of which he would become the inspiration; third, he would specialize as a tree planter, the Hights should become forests as wonderful as the cedars of Lebanon.

There was much work to be done and the problem of labor was difficult. He tried bringing men on parole from the state penitentiary, but the plan did not work well; he opened up the place as a rendezvous for tramps, but many of the tramps took advantage of him, not understanding his aims or methods, and thus satisfactory improvements were necessarily slow.

EMPLOYS HIS NEIGHBORS.

Then there came a very dry year and he noticed with regret that his neighbors, their crops having failed, needed some means of employment that they might eat, be warm and live. Now, as his hills were covered with a multitude of rocks, large and small, he determined to relieve the distress in the homes about him by employing all who wished to work, in one big attempt to clear his fields. Rocks were garnered by the ton and put in several huge piles at various places. But these rock piles were not sightly and neighbors still needed work, while Joaquin had an attractive income from books and poems. Why not shape these useless piles of stone into monuments having real significance? And so he undertook the building of the well-known monuments: the funeral pyre, the pyramid to Moses, the Browning tower and the Fremont citadel. Gradually this work was satisfactorily completed.

It is very satisfying to know that these simple memorial piles had their origin in the honest and successful attempt of the power to do good to those around him.

JOAQUIN MILLER HAS BUILT HIS OWN FUNERAL PYRE - San Francisco Call 10/9/1898

There are no legend on these monuments to tell you what they mean; the poet intended tradition to do the work of actual text in handing down the story of their significance. Fremont he honored because from the point on which the monument stands the industrious pathfinder took his first look on San Francisco bay, and named the strait, which connects bay and ocean, Golden Gate. Then, too, it was the reading Fremont's Book of Travels in 1852 which set the face of Hulings Miller, Joaquin's father, toward the west, where his poet son became famous. For this reason Fremont was honored.

Robert Browning he honored with a stone tower; [note that it appears to have been replaced by a different design, see photo in previous link - MF] because of the genuine personal friendship of the two poets formed in England in the early seventies.

Moses he thought of as the supreme law-giver of the early Hebrews, hence the solid pyramid, the largest of these simple piles, was dedicated to him of whom it was said:

"No man shall know his place of sepulcher."

HIS FUNERAL PYRE.

Then he built a solid block for his funeral pyre, around which he intended his friends some time to gather and with fagots made from his own balmy pines and cypress to burn his out-worn body to smoke and ashes and allow it to mingle with the joyous elements.

From Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights

It was no small matter to make the steep hills of Joaquin's "Olympus" of fairly access to the poet and his assistants, for many roads, paths and trails had to be carved from the hillsides and graded and built up with rock to resist winter rains. Even in this the poet was thorough; and in naming the highways and byways the spirit of poesy was ever at hand. That broad pathway running in front of the Abbey was the Trail of Roses; Joaquin grew a multitude of rose vines along it to make it true to its name. The main highway leading up the first hill slope to the Pyre and to the little cypress-shaded cemetery where his beloved rested in their last rest was named the "Last Trail." Half way up the hillside was the "Bishop's Gate," named from his friend, William Taylor of Alameda, the Missionary Bishop of Africa under the auspices of the Methodist Church, and street preacher in San Francisco in the days of '49.

[See also the article Joaquin Miller and the Social Circle at the Hights, "Halfway up the hill on the trail that led to his private cemetery, he erected the Bishop’s Gate, honoring William Taylor, Methodist bishop, powerful gold rush preacher, and heroic missionary to Africa. What would have further attracted Miller, Taylor enjoyed a reputation as one of the first, if not the first, importer of eucalyptus to California." -MF]

I think that this is what is now Butters Drive.

A TOUCH OF SENTIMENT

Whoever went the Last Trail, according to the custom, after he had passed through the Bishop's Gate, "went alone." Hence parties to the pyre walked over the way in single file.

Found on Newspapers.com See also this image

Joaquin at first aimed to build not one single large dwelling on the Hights but rather a series of lodges. Hence he erected a single small cottage for his mother, Margaret Witt Miller, when she came to reside at the Hights. This he covered with running roses. It is now occupied by Mrs. Joaquin Miller, who is the guardian of the hundreds of pictures and literary relics left by the poet. Another lodge higher up and back of Grandma Miller's cottage was occupied for years by Takeshi Kanno and his wife, Gertrude Boyle Kanno. This house was Gertrude Boyle's studio of sculpture, in which she did notable work in shaping the busts of famous Californians; Joseph Le Conte, John Muir, John Swett, Margaret Miller, ["...a venerable bishop followed the path to the hilltop and to this day it is called the bishop's walk..." -MF] Mrs. Mills, founder of Mills' College, and perhaps the most noted of all the bust of Joaquin for the Fremont High School. Takeshi Kanno was dreaming a dream of poetry - of being a second Yone Noguchi, a dream later rudely shattered.

JOAQUIN FINDS QUIET

So in this City of the Beautiful, touched by its builder with an imagination born of the clash, excitement, glory and romance of elder California mining days, Joaquin began to realize his vision of a haven of quiet on earth. The poet's love of quiet forest depths began in shady Now-ow-wa Valley on the south slope of Mount Shasta, where he homed with the Indians in their deep-hidden forest camps, in which the life of the Redmen ran so quiet and unobtrusive that the timid deer or the curious bear sauntered through the camp trails so unafraid that he seemed a friendly companion of man.

This spirit of Arcadian quiet he desired to instill into the shady glades of his own hills; all of the wild things, the shy quail, the rabbit, the song-bird, the great-horned owl - all the folks of feather and fur, he wanted to be at home in and about the Hights. But most of all he wanted the human beings about him who loved these things he loved; and out of this desire grew his School of Art and Poetry. His teachings were never formal - always suggestive and inspirational. "One touch and enough" he would say to the writer who overcrowded his theme. To another who was guilty of imitation "The world has no use for two Homers, or even a second Shakespeare; be yourself."

HOW TO WRITE POETRY.

For another sincere and admiring group who came for a message, he would shape a line or two to show how the poetic effect was produced:

"And San Francisco Bay is white

With sail and cloud and summer light."

He urged the nurturing of spontaneity. Yone Noguchi's poetry written while he was a learner at the Hights, derived half its charm from its delightful freedom.

Takeshi Kanno was under the spell of Walt Whitman more than of Miller and lost himself in oriental mysticism. Another western poet, Madge Morris Wagner, who belonged to the Miller school, received a strong impetus from Miller's influence. She writes at times with a masculine strength, not found in a woman since the days of Felicia Hemans, as seen in her "Colorado Desert:" though she moves into the sphere purely womanly in her "Rocking the Baby." Her artistic lodge on the Hights where she and her esthetic husband lived for years, passed into the hands of another of the Miller literary set, A. J. Waterhouse, who drew much inspiration from this environment: here too came Lowell Otis Reese [Probably Lowell Otus Reese - MF], whose stories have brightened the pages of the Saturday Evening Post.

JUANITA MILLER'S COTTAGE.

At the present moment the Madge Morris Cottage is doing worthy service as a woodsy outing-place for the Oakland Young Women's Christian Association.

The last of the lodges built by the poet was named by him "Juanita Cottage." Here, today, Juanita, talented, with a personality poetic in every phase, practices the twin arts of verse and song, and sells the art-souvenirs shaped by her deft hands. With powers of high vocalization suggesting those of Madame Yaw, or Charles Kellogg, she sings her own "Linnet Song," in a way to make it worth while for anyone to visit the Hights for that alone.

Joaquin's mind from the time he awoke in the morning at dawn, and began to write, was busy. His work-hours were of constant thought, not upon light themes, not always on the beautiful, the love of which was to him a passion; but upon deep and sublime problems. He was fascinated always with great engineering schemes, such as Captain Eads' work in constructing the Mississippi jetties, the building of a canal across the isthmus. (He favored, when the canal was a mere project along the Nicaragua route). Long before efforts were made to conserve the river floods from the Sierras. He suggested great dams to impound snow waters of the Sierra Nevada. He told me in 1904 that he believed by damming up a multitude of the Sierra canyons and holding back enough of the water to give the congested valley rivers time to carry off the surplus the Sacramento river overflow problems could be solved. He realized that the construction of these dams would be a tremendous work.

A LOVER OF THE SEA

The desert, the great mountain, "the multitudinous sea" alike charmed him. He believed himself a master at detailing the softness and the sublimity of the sea and spoke of his "Song of Creation" as an illustration. I once stood by him at the Hights, and he improved for me a couplet of verse:

"White as the far-off sea-born light

Of oriental islands."

San Francisco Bay from the Hights was a source of perpetual contemplation. Wearied with the heavy strain of a morning with his pen, late in the afternoon he would sit on the front porch of the Willow Cottage and watch the ever-varying moods of hill, sea, city and sky, as the night approached; and far into the night sometimes he sat in silence watching the multitude of city lights. The electric displays on the battleships when the fleet massed in the harbor were his intensest delight. Alameda City lay just below him beyond Fruitvale. The string of electric lights which followed the Southern Pacific local railway which skirts the island on which Alameda is built he called "The Rosarie."

Next in importance to the extensive forest-planting on the Hights was his plan to develop a liberal water supply from the springs and stream in the romantic redwood canyon bordering the Hights on the north, to lead this water over the hill to "The Chapel", and the surrounding buildings. To successfully carry out his plan it was necessary to make a cut through the ridge lying between the canyon and the houses. Many months of labor were spent on this. The formation seemed to be solid rock - solid enough to stand without timbering, but alas! a heavy winter soaked the crumbling walls of the cut and the disastrous cave-in, before heavier and large piping was put through, resulted. This was the poets greatest disappointment in developing the Hights and he silently grieved whenever he thought of the failure or went near the work. He expected the water source to be a protection against the forest fire which might at any time in dry summer destroy the whole romance of his sylvan hills. He truly already had made his walks blossom with roses; but, with the adequate water supply, the Hights were to be transformed into a vision of the Celestial Country. The failure of his water scheme bore heavily on his declining years. 

[I tried, but failed to find out more about this "cut" that failed. I imagine it was a tunnel, from somewhere on Palo Seco Creek through the hill south-bound to his place. Do you know more about it? -MF]

A SHRINE OF CANTERBURY.

From nineteen hundred to the end of his days the poet's home was truly a "Shrine of Canterbury" to which the most famous literary pilgrim as well as the lowly aspirant took the trail to the poets' doorstep. Some, as Elbert Hubbard, came away with inspiration for a book, and Miller became a theme of one of the "Little Journeys." Others, as Henry Irving, the English Shakespearean actor, came to pay tribute to the American poet who had found his fame in London. Others, as Charles Warren Stoddard, tarried on the Hights because of old associations, for Miller and Stoddard chummed together in Rome when both had become famous. They had been fellow writers for the Overland Monthly, the first successful California magazine. Still others, as Dr. Jordan, Colonel John P. Irish, Wells Drury, Herbert Bashford, Edwin Markham, Herman Whitaker, George Wharton James and many another went again, and again to the Poet's Forest to breathe its tranquility and to get a touch of the poet's warm-hearted soul.

OBLIGES REPORTERS.

Miller was always friendly to the newspaper man who came for a story; and the reporter always got his story, and a good one, though Miller's eyes many time were full of sly twinkles in his answers:

"Yes sir," he said one day to a young man from San Francisco, "I am dieting on hominy and honey, and I find it is good for me."

The poet had been ill and it was news that he was recovering and odd news that he was on this queer diet. The truth was an interested friend had just sent in a pint of honey and some hominy and Miller was, just as the scribe entered, tasting of his gift.

"Diet of honey and hominy," though, made a good head-line for the forthcoming story.

Being asked by another news purveyor as to his philosophy of life, the poet replied:

"One foot up, and one foot down,

And that's the way to Boston Town,"

adding a word or two of interpretation.

Asked as to the biggest element of success in literary work by a company of students, he said:

"A man on a horse came riding by,

Said I, 'Old man, your horse will die!'

Said he, 'If he dies I'll tan his skin,

If he doesn't die I'll ride him agin.'"

"Make the most of your horse," he added enigmatically.

Joaquin Miller builded in a simple way, but he builded well; and he touched all he builded with the glow of delicious memories. "It is up to" the City of Oakland now that the Hights make one of her parks to preserve for all time these memories; and to be at work at once before these memories are forgotten.

URGES RESTORATION.

I spent a couple of hours a few days ago rewinding the poet's trails and recalling associations. The Abbey and Chapel as well as the Willow Cottage in front of which Joaquin planted the first tree on his property are falling to ruin. These houses should at once be restored to the condition the poet kept them in. The willow before the Willow Cottage where Mrs. Grace Fountain once had her studio, is dead. It should be replanted, for this willow was the first tree planted on the Hights. The miniature lake is dry and its live tenants gone. A water supply should be found at once and the lake restored. The trails in many places need repair. The iron chain which hung across the entrance has fallen prey to some hungry junk dealer. It should be replaced. The rose-arbor under which the poet always entertained his friends is down and the vines untrimmed and uncared for.

Now is the time to restore the Hights to their pristine beauty; and bounteous-hearted, art-loving, nature-worshipping Oakland, in her strife for learning, poetry, and high ideals, will not forget.