Joaquin Miller hosts Sequoia Club for a Mexican Bandit Lunch - Oakland Tribune Oakland, California · Sunday, July 17, 1910
MYSTERIOUS 'BANDIT LUNCH' HELD
POET MILLER SERVES GOOD FARE
SIXTY SEQUOIANS ARE GUESTS OF GRAY BEARD
Club Members Puzzled Before Menu Is Set Before Them.
HOST RECITES STORY OF HILL SETTLEMENT
Then the Visitors Are Taken Out Among the Tombs and Pyramids.
Joaquin Miller, the great gray poet of the Sierras, yesterday entertained at his home on Oakland Heights about sixty members of the Sequoia Club, the leading San Francisco society organization, to which both men and women are admitted in membership, and the chief feature of the reception, aside from the welcome extended by the poet and his address, was the Mexican Bandit lunch.[The Sequoia Club was one of the oldest social clubs in San Francisco, founded in 1892 by seven or eight wives of Bohemian Club members who wanted to meet together with their husbands to appreciate the arts. At that time, only artists and writers were allowed; later, a wider range of associates were permitted to join, opening the Club to men and women with interests and achievements in the creative arts, music, drama, and science." Finding Aid to the Sequoia Club Records]
Nobody had been able to guess in advance what a Mexican Bandit lunch was like. Harr Wagner, president of the Sequoia Club, didn't know, although as editor of the "Western Journal of Education" he was supposed to be well informed on all topics. An attache of the Mexican Consulate thought a Mexican Bandit lunch consisted of cold lead administered in a sort of hypodermical fashion by government soldiers.
GUESTS PUZZLED
Those who thought they new Miller very well believed that the lunch was going to consist of cold water and poetical hot air.
But when lunch time cage, the meal was found to be a truly substantial one.
First, there were cocktails. These were mixed by the poet himself, according to a formula devised by Miller, Walt Whitman, John C. Fremont and Will Sparks. The latter was chairman of the committee.
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Portrait of Joaquin Miller c1900-1910, Will Sparks (Could that be a painting of someone else?) |
Secondly, barbecued beef was served. Miss Elizabeth Holmes, secretary of the club, was the inspiration of this course. Poet Miller directed the cooking, but Miss Holmes attended to the more prosaic work of seeing that all the guests were fed.
Bacon and onions followed the beef; or, more strictly, accompanied it.
AND THERE WAS WINE.
Then, there was bread. And all the time there was wine - good, plain red wine, served in three-gallon deinijohns.
There was a three-gallon demijohn for each two guests, and out of the supply the poet has enough inspiration left to supply next Sunday's visitors.
Among the guests at the Bandit lunch were:
Wagner, Harr
Regensberger, Dr. and Mrs. M.
Moulton,
Mr. and Mrs. Irving
Sexton, Mrs. Ella M.
McKim, Miss
Marta
Harrison, William Greer [see photo in second clipping, below]
Lee, Mr. and Mrs. L. P. [see photo in second clipping, below]
Martin,
Mrs. Norman
Holmes, Miss Elizabeth
Howard, Mrs. J. W.
Howard,
Miss Eula
Coggins, H. L.
Bennett. Mr. and Mrs. Clement
Baker,
Mr. and Mrs. Horatio [see photo in second clipping, below]
Merillion, Mr. and Mrs. R. P.
Haslett, Mr.
and Mrs. S. M.
McElroy, Miss Jane
Dorn, Judge and Mrs. N. A.
Fountain,
Prof C. R.
Blanche, Miss Josephine
McCullum, Mrs.
Munro, Mrs. W. J.
Clisbee,
Miss Belle
Walkington, A. R.
Knapp. Mr. and Mrs. W. B.
Wright.
Mrs. C. W.
Wright, Miss Elvia
Pixley. Mrs. M. F.
Macbeth,
Miss Grace
Shepherd, Miss Fannie
Linz, Mrs. Frederick
Garratt.
Mrs. W. T.
Campbell, Miss F. Soule
Collum, Miss
Sparks,
Will
Corbusier, Frank
Corbusier, C. R.
Sturges, Mr. and Mrs.
H. A.
Hughes, Mrs. Lois
Yount, Miss Myrtle
Fountain, Mrs. G.
R.
Fountain, Miss Lysie
POET MILLER SPEAKS.
After the luncheon Harr Wagner, president of the Sequoia Club, made a brief speech and then asked Poet Miller to address the visitors.
Miller, responding, said he had first climbed to his "heights" in the company of Artemus Ward and Bret Harte. On the occasion of that first visit he saw a bear eating a cow. Immediately he bought two acres and ever since that time he has increased his holdings at every opportunity.
[This is interesting. Charles Farrar Browne, AKA Artemus Ward came to San Francisco in 1863, went to England in 1866, where he died in 1867. Bret Harte was in California 1853 - 1871. It looks like Ward was in San Francisco in 1865. What was Cincinnatus Heine Miller doing in 1865? He published "Joaquin, Et. Al." in 1869. He became Joaquin Miller in 1871. ("This is a ridiculous affectation.") A biography appeared in a Boston paper in 1871. Joaquin was known as a fabulist and a humbug. I wonder if this is a tall tale, or if he really did buy property at what we know call Joaquin Miller Park in the 1860s. His primary holdings were purchased in 1887, then added to them in 1891]
The poet said that after the disaster in 1906 he decided to move the whole city of San Francisco to his hills. "And I'll do it yet, if necessary," he said. "I'm a poor man, a laboring man," said Miller, in his humorous address, "but I'll be rich in about a hundred years when I can begin to get some timber returns for the trees I have planted.
"God made these hills, and man can't change them," was one of the things the poet said.
RECITES A POEM.
Miller recited in highly effective manner his poem, "Come, Listen, My Love, to the Voice of the Dove," which has been set to music by the poet's daughter, Juanita Miller, and also by Leila France. Miss Marta McKim, chairman of the Sequoia Club events committee, made an appreciative address in response.
Personally Miller led the way to the mountain grave of his mother, who died a few years ago.
"The path to the grave," he explained, "is along the last trail of the Indians. We will go in single file, and silently. Of our people the Indians say: "The white man go in bunches; he all nothing. The white man talk all the time. He hear nothing. He say nothing."
ALL VISITED PYRAMID.
Among the places visited were the great tomb at which Miller hopes to be cremated, the graveyard of the poet's relatives and friends, the Pyramid to Moses, the Browning Tower and the Fremont monument. The latter monument rises at the point where the pathfinder stood when he gave its present name to the Golden Gate.
Poet Miller announced at his "bandit lunch" that anybody who had violated any one of the Ten Commandments could not climb with him to the Moses pyramid.
Everybody present went up with him.
Another account, it ran in all the papers across the country:
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