The Evening News. October 10, 1916.

14. The Daughter Of Don Jose. Part II.

"Did you ever travel?" I asked Don Jose's daughter.

She shook her head no. "Where? My parents sometimes went to Monterey, but I never went anywhere but to church at Santa Clara till after I was married. I was twenty-five when I went to San Francisco."

"Where did you go to school?" I said.

"We had a tutor, usually an officer or scholar with fine Castilian manners. One tutor married my grandmother after she became a widow. Another married one of my aunts. The children studied morning and afternoons just as children do today. Sometimes the neighbors who had no tutors sent their children to study with us."

"What were your amusements?"

Bull fights and balls, birthday celebrations and weddings. Some went to bull fights in the Mission Dolores, some at Santa Clara, but we had them on our own ranch. We built a corral for the fights. All the young men liked to fight the bulls. When we had a ball, people came for miles and stayed. We danced for a week."

"That hall at the old adobe was not very large," I recalled.

"There were five houses in the old times at the ranch, but we never danced in the house. We built a large platform in the garden, enclosed it in canvas. We decorated the canvas with trees, bright ribbons and silks."

"What did you wear at the balls?"

"Mostly white laces, muslin, but not like the shoddy things today. Sometimes we changed our dresses four or five times a night, and we wore out two pairs of silk slippers at a party. Low slippers trimmed with spangles and beads. We made them ourselves. How we danced! Not rough dancing. Smooth, graceful--"

"Who taught you to dance?" I asked.

Even I understood plainly the answer before the interpreter said: "Spanish people don't need to be taught dancing."

"Please show me how you danced?"

"If I had music," she protested faintly as she stood up.

She tied her handkerchief in a knot and showed how in old days they danced to untie the knot. So expressive and light was her step that one forgot that she was almost ready to shake hands with death. She re-created the ball room, the slow, graceful senoritas, the dashing young caballeros, tossing their gay hats on her head and flinging gold at her feet. The caballeros themselves then danced before her, vying with each other for her favor.

"Better than the balls were the wedding parties so gay and happy. Sometimes six women worked for a week preparing the food. The bride and groom came from the church riding side by side. As outriders were the attendants of the groom. Two young gentleman rode on each side of the pair. They held over the head of the bride and groom a gorgeous arch of silk and flowers. The wedding ball was the bravest of all balls. When my sister married we danced four days at our house. Then we all went to the house of her husband's parents and danced four days more. Ah, that was California life, always dancing!"

"Were there many beautiful girls?"

"Oh, yes," she answered indifferently. She could hardly recall. "Josefa Pico, Josefa Alviso. Many girls in San Jose were named Josefa for the patron saint. Several young ladies were not ugly."

"Who was the beauty?" I dully insisted.

Then her amused, coquettish grimace as if I were speaking to a queen incog made me realize that for an hour or more I, unaware, had been talking with THE beauty.

Where there is beauty there is usually romance, and so, I asked after the great disasters of heart and soul in the early days in Santa Clara county. I hoped to unearth a romance such as one hears at San Juan or a romance like that of Concha Arguello and Rezanoff, the Russian statesman.

"No romances," she said. "Everybody was happy. I married."

"But Concha Arguello?" I asked.

"Yes, I know the Arguello family, Don Luis of Santa Clara."

"Concha Arguello became a nun," I explained. "You recall her love for Rezanoff. They were engaged. He died returning to Russia. She went into a convent to forget."

Bewildered, Don Jose's daughter looked at me. Dubiously she shook her head. "It's possible. I never heard of it."

I went away feeling as if John Adams had denied the existence of George Washington's hatchet. The greatest Spanish California romance was annihilated by a contemporary of Concha Arguello.

If the romance had ever had throbbing, living reality, is it possible that Don Jose's daughter, who was one of a few dozen neighbors of the same class in California, would not have known it?

Transcribed by Claire Martin, for the Santa Clara Co. CAGenWeb Project. 2007

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