Archibald Clavering Gunter’s life exhibits the marks of a new breed of author – one that in turn exemplifies an emerging species of individual. Homo Economicus, or ‘economic man’: a term coined initially in reaction to John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianist theory and the eminently sensible-sounding principle that “actions are right in the proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness” (qtd. Cohen, p. 330).
Gunter too was a child of his time, and subject to global forces: notably the technologies that powered American growth and integration as a nation. The nineteenth century saw migration from all over Europe to the United States, in a massive wave accelerated by developments in shipping, in terms of steam propulsion and steel manufacture. Gunter’s family set off from England and joined the human tide sailing to the States in quest of the American Dream, which itself assumed imponderable dimensions as the Frontier was overcome.
‘SS Amerika’ (1894), Artist Antonio Jacobsen
The year was 1853, five years after the discovery of gold in California, four years after the completion of the Panama railroad in 1849, seventeen years before the completion of the first transcontinental railroad in 1869. When the Gunters moved to San Francisco after a short while in New York City, they probably travelled via the Panama Railroad – the trip took some forty days. Otherwise, apart from an arduous four to six months on the Oregon Trail (but they were certainly cut from a finer fabric), the only route was by sea right around the Cape of Good Hope, taking up to four times as long as going via the Isthmus.
They went to California not in quest for gold, but for a new life in a city starting to boom. Archie Gunter was afforded an idyllic childhood in the magnificent house on the hill, overlooking “Taylor Street, all of the bay and Marin and Alameda counties for that matter” (The Insider), and attending public school (Kunitz). As a teenager, he worked “in a variety of technical theater positions” (Fisher, p. 201) and studied at university, graduating with a degree in mining engineering, before “eking out a fair subsistence in California doing odd jobs at assaying minerals” (San Jose Daily Mercury, Dec. 11, 1892).
Despite being so emphatically kick-started prosperous aims clearly the focus (he even worked as a minerals stockbroker), his career foundered:
At one time the prime worry of the family of Archibald Clavering Gunter was concerning what would become of the boy. He had attended the University of California, where he had studied in the engineering college, but he didn’t make a go of his profession. He was too restless. What to make of Archie was the Gunter family problem… (The Insider).
We know already what happened: “…Then he wrote a novel and the question was answered. Before long he was driving four-in-hands at Newport” (The Insider). His books made it, bigtime, and he was carousing in grand style with the wealthy.
For he was as gifted an entrepreneur as a writer, these two capacities profoundly infusing each other. His first novel having been roundly rejected, he organizes his own company to publish it, and then establishes Gunter’s Magazine, to meet a rapidly rising popular demand. We might say in business terminology, he engages a strategy of “downstream vertical integration,” expanding through the links down the literary supply chain. Those transatlantic liners had established well-stocked passenger libraries. And far more than that: a flourishing readers’ market founded on the hopes of sixty million European emigres, there for the taking (Frost, p. 3).
Library of the ‘Olympic’, Winter, p. 372
The public, it turns out, especially the seagoing public, overwhelmingly preferred light reading. A group of passengers, members of the literary fraternity, once addressed this very issue, conducting some impromptu research in order to decide it:
…they spent a few hours in wandering up and down the ship and taking sly glimpses of the books actually being read by their fellow-travellers. A rather careful canvass of the entire ship resulted in the discovery that the book which easily carried off the prize was one of those familiar yellow covered novels by Archibald Clavering Gunter, at that time at the height of his popularity.
Winter, p. 373
Library of the ‘George Washington’, Winter, p. 373
And onward, to the sources of migration, where Gunter had his books translated to be sold in numerous European countries. Those teeming masses in quest of dreams, dreams commodified in systems of movement and exchange, actual and symbolic, a veritable “trade in desires” (Frost).
Library of the ‘Kronprinzessin Cecilie’ (Winter, p. 369)
Thus the pieces of the jigsaw ultimately fell into place for Gunter: the fragments of careers, the transatlantic, transcontinental trajectories of his childhood so imaginatively combined. We can see even at this early stage in Baron Montez of Panama and Paris, expressions of overarching themes that, in fact, encompassed Gunter’s being. Montez is like a reverse Yankee, tracing his desire in a reverse direction, from the Isthmus to Europe. Hence, a striking image of commodified desire:
Upon this yellow dross [gold dust], Fernando’s eyes linger lovingly, and from it roam gloatingly to the heavy ironbound trunk of the Californian, and turning from this to the beautiful Americana, who had thrown her pearls in a string of white radiance around her fair white neck, his glance becomes more longing than ever.
Chapter 3, “The Railroad Station at Panama”
Notes and References
SS Amerika: “This steamship was built in 1872 by Harland & Wolff as the Celtic. It served in the White Star Line 1872-1893, and was then sold to the Danish Thingvalla Steamship Company. That employment lasted until the fall of 1897. Broken up in 1898.” Wikimedia Commons.
“organizes his own company to publish it”: Frost has a slightly different account; however, the version cited here is that given in a number of contemporary newspapers.
Cohen, Marshal. The philosophy of John Stuart Mill: ethical, political, and religious (NY: Modern Library, 1961). Available at Internet Archive.
Fisher, J. Historical Dictionary of American Theater (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2015).
Frost, S. “A trade in desires: Emigration, A. C. Gunter and the Home Publishing Company.” Chapter 3 in The Book World, Selling and Distributing British Literature, 1900-1940, edited by Nicola Louise Wilson (Johns Hopkins UP, 2017). I have used the pre-peer-reviewed version of Frost’s paper.
The Insider. San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907.
Kunitz, S. American authors, 1600 – 1900 a biographical dictionary of American literature (NY: Wilson, 1938).
Winter, C. “The Libraries on the Transatlantic Liners”, The Bookman, 33.4, June 1911, 368-76
As we begin this chapter, Fernando Gomez Montez, having tampered with George Ripley’s revolver, has new confidence, and commences putting in place other components in his plan to relieve the American of his gold-filled chest, and fair-skinned wife. Montez arranges boat transport for himself and the Ripleys to Panama where they find it crowded with travellers recently offloaded from steamers awaiting the train across the Isthmus and also those joining vessels to travel up the West Coast of the United States. Panama has become a busy hub for trans-continental travellers.
Even before the railroad was completed, Americanseager to join the gold rush in California were paying to have themselves and their luggage transported across the extent of the completed track. The Californian Goldfields would generate nearly twelve million ounces of gold, most of which would pass through Panama on the way to the Eastern United States. George and Alice can expect to pay a hefty twenty-five dollars each to travel on the recently completed railway to Aspinwall.
Seven years earlier, in 1848, the United States signed the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty, ending the long running Mexican War. The treaty gave the U.S. undisputed control of Texas, established the U.S.-Mexican border of the Rio Grande, and ceded to the United States the present-day states of California, Nevada, and Utah, most of New Mexico, Arizona and Colorado, and parts of Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Wyoming. This expansion completed control of continental United States complementing central lands transferred through the Louisiana Purchase of 1803. The removal of the threat of warring Mexican forces, and mitigation of dangerous Native Indian tribes encouraged settlers like those awaiting the steamships to venture to the Western States.
During the construction of the railroad, the Americans used workers who had come from the United States, Europe, Columbia, China, the Caribbean islands, and also African Slaves, a great many of them who died of Cholera, Malaria and Yellow Fever. Once the Railway was completed the majority of these remaining poorly paid workers were dumped and left to their own devices for survival. The US used troops to suppress separatist uprisings and social disturbances on many occasions. The first time will occur on the fifteenth of April, 1856.
Unlike the narrator, who reminds the reader of the date, Fernando is unaware of any significance attached to it and goes about his connivances, which remarkably are designed to precipitate an historical event.
CHAPTER 3
THE RAILROAD STATION AT PANAMA
On the veranda once more, George Ripley suggests: “Would you mind showing us your pearls? My wife is anxious to see your jewels, and we must be soon getting under way for the mainland.”
“Yes, the Illinois arrived this morning at Aspinwall,” returns Montez. “Her passengers will soon reach Panama. Soon there will be a Pacific Mail steamship in the bay. The Golden Age from San Francisco is one day overdue. When she comes in, her passengers will be moved eastward rapidly. If you are not at the railway station you may be left to spend ten days more with us. That would please me, mi amigo; but you—you are an American, and in a hurry. You do not enjoy life. You fly through it.”
“And you dream through it, I imagine, Señor Montez,” laughs Alice, coming on the veranda to meet the returning bathers. Then she says archly, “Dream no more; show us your pearls, and become a man of business.”
“That I will!” cries Montez, as he displays his jewels, and descants on the beauties of the large pink pearl he has, and the perfection of the white ones he holds caressingly in his hands, with the vehemence and volubility of an Armenian in the bazaar at Constantinople, and the shrewdness of a Hebrew pawnbroker in Seven Dials.
Fernando’s trading powers, however, are thrown away; for the American takes all the pearls at the seller’s own prices, which though exorbitant for Panama, are cheap for New York.
“Come in and get our business over,” says George; and Montez following him and Alice into the bamboo cottage, the affair is completed. Opening a large buckskin bag, that is part of his belt, after the manner of early Californians, Ripley makes payment in gold dust; for at that time gold was plenty, though coin was scarce, in the Western world.
Upon this yellow dross, Fernando’s eyes linger lovingly, and from it roam gloatingly to the heavy ironbound trunk of the Californian, and turning from this to the beautiful Americana, who had thrown her pearls in a string of white radiance around her fair white neck, his glance becomes more longing than ever.
Antique French postcard (n.d.)
Here George laughingly suggests: “Montez, you think jewels become her? Alice should have had these pearls when she stood in Edouart’s gallery in Washington Street, San Francisco, and had this taken,” producing from his pocket a tintype of his wife, a style of picture just come into fashion.
“Yes, I had two of them taken; one for my husband, the other for my daughter; Mary’s was sent to her two months ago. It will remind her of my coming,” replies the lady; then blushes a little, for Montez, in his native way, has cried out: “Ah, Dios! It is celestial—but the sun has not done you justice, Señora Ripley!”
The sun, however, has done very well, and the tintype has the blue eyes and fair hair of this charming American.
So charming, Montez fears to stay; his passion may betray itself. He mutters, “I will go and engage your boat, Señor Ripley.”
“Yes! Get a safe one, I don’t care for speed. Something there is no chance of capsizing,” calls the Californian after him.
“I will be sure of that for my own sake, as well as yours,” cries back the little gentleman, as he glides down the pathway, brushing with a bamboo switch the dust from his patent leather boots.
At the white glistening beach he selects carefully a boat, and is delighted to find among its crew a swarthy boatman, who is called Domingo.
Addressing him familiarly, and slapping him on the back, Montez says in his ear: “Old bravo, are you still up to banditti work as in ’52, on the Cruces roads?”
To this, Domingo, a gentleman with a pirate countenance adorned by two fearful scars, with a stalwart black frame, and a stout black heart beating in his black body, replies: “Si, Señor, mouches dinero, mouches sangui, mouches Domingo.”
So Fernando knows he has at his hand, for this night’s work, a man who will not be turned back for pity, nor blood, nor danger, from doing any wickedness that may come to his hand.
While this has been taking place on the beach, Ripley and his wife, during hurried preparations for their departure, are holding a conversation that makes the Californian open his honest eyes in astonishment.
His wife says to him, under her breath: “Now that Montez is away, I wish to tell you something: I am glad we are going!”
“Of course! Tomorrow we will be one day nearer our daughter.”
“It is not entirely that,” whispers the lady, nervously, “but I fear to stay here.”
“Why?”
“Anita hates me.”
“Impossible! No one could have nursed you more faithfully during the fever, than the bright-eyed Indian girl.”
“It is her bright eyes that make me fear her. Something new has come into them. Besides that, while you were taking your bath she told me that we had better go away as soon as possible. She told me.”
“Well, what?” says the American impatiently.
“Only—that—if the fever returned to me here—I would not throw it off again. Toboga breezes are good for the first attack,—but after that,—like other medicines,—they lose their value.”
While she says this in a hesitating, disjointed manner, a bright red flush has come over the features of the beautiful American lady, for Alice Ripley is telling her husband her first falsehood.
Anita’s words had been to her: “Beware of Montez! Montez loves you!” and suspicion coming to her quick feminine mind at these words, Alice had noted some of the uncanny glances the polyhæma gentleman at times could not restrain himself from indulging in. But at the last moment, even when warning was on her lips, she has hesitated to tell her husband what she has heard and suspects—because the very thought of the thing brings blushing shame upon her.
So the modesty of this beautiful woman takes from her husband one of his ropes of safety this day—his one chance of suspecting the man he thinks his friend, but who is even now bent upon his robbery and ruin.
“Well, let us give Anita her pearl—perhaps that will reconcile her to our going away,” laughs the Californian.
This being done, they leave the palm-thatched bamboo villa, and come down the little rocky pathway to the beach at Toboga, to take departure for Panama.
Three stalwart natives carry the ironbound trunk, and find it all they can handle; another swings easily the lighter one that contains the wardrobe of George Ripley and his wife.
Looking around, Montez is happy; for there is only a steamer of the English Steam Navigation Company in the harbor, one or two trading brigs and schooners, and the Columbus just returned from her voyage to the Islas de las Perles, and no vessels of war of any nation. No blue jackets can be landed to interfere with a plan that he has already set on foot among the desperate native classes of the town of Panama this fifteenth day of April, 1856.
Toboga is slumbering in the midday sun, as they stand upon the sandy beach. A lazy steward from the English steamer is buying fish and fruit from a big Indian bongo that has come from a neighboring island. There is a drowsy hum from a few bamboo huts, and pine board edifices that do duty as shops, and ship chandlers’ stores, for this Island of Toboga is really the port of Panama, as the depth of water permits vessels to lie there at all times; while off the mainland, the tremendous rise and fall of the ocean compels ships of burden to keep three or four miles out in the bay.
“I am glad you got a good, big, safe boat,” remarks the Californian, “and I hope competent boatmen.”
“Yes, that is all arranged. On board, mi amigo,” cries Montez, offering a gallant hand to assist the pretty Americana.
But what the Indian girl has said to her makes this lady blind to his attentions, and she carelessly and lightly steps over the gunwale of the boat, and tripping to its stern, takes seat under its awning of many colors, ignoring the gentleman whose eyes follow her, an unknown suspicion in them.
A moment after, they are under way, black Domingo pulling a strong stroke oar, and three lithe natives keeping time with him, and dashing foam that looks like pearls and diamonds from the water, as they glide over this aquarium, in which Alice looking down sees countless fish.
As they move, she carelessly drops a dainty hand into the cool water, playing with its ripples. The next instant Montez quietly takes it in his and replaces it in the boat.
Perchance, unable to control himself, he has given its delicate fingers a tender pressure, for the lady’s face grows angry.
“Would you like to leave your arm in that fellow’s maw?” is Fernando’s reply to her indignant glance, and he points to a huge white shark that is lazily patrolling the water a cable’s length or so from the English steamer’s stern.
Following his gesture with their eyes, the crew start and Domingo mutters: “Diablo! Toboga Bill!”
“Yes, that is the gentleman!” laughs Montez. “This desperado has just come up after the Peruvian steamer from a trip down the coast to Callao.”
“So that is the terror of Panama Bay?” queries George, turning his eyes upon the great fish, who is as long as a ship’s cutter, and whose dorsal fin makes a big swash of foam with every movement.
“Yes! There will be one or two less native boatmen, perhaps, before he leaves harbor!” returns Montez. Then he suddenly cries: “For your life, No!” and places a deterring hand upon the Californian’s pistol, for Ripley is about to draw it.
“There is no danger in this big boat. Let me have a pop at the desperado,” says George, still fingering his ready revolver.
“No, no! Your wife is here. He might charge the boat. He has upset canoes! Don’t use your pistol!” murmurs the little every-nation rascal, his lips trembling and growing white.
“If he is so awful—don’t shoot at him!” gasps Alice to her husband.
“If you tremble, of course not!” says the American, returning his revolver to his belt. “Though I had imagined Montez had better nerves.”
This idea is that of the boatmen; for one of them says in Spanish to his fellow: “Caramba! I never saw the muchacho diablo tremble before—at a shark, too!”
But Domingo knows his old master better, and chuckles to himself: “What was there about that pistol of the Americano that Fernando did not wish him to use it? Ah! It has been tampered with. This man and this woman are to be our prey.” And from now on, the whites of his eyes grow bloodshot when they look on the Californian and his fair-haired wife.
As they leave “Toboga Bill” behind them, fear seems to depart from Montez; he regains his spirits, but whenever a stray gull offers a tempting shot he looks nervous; perchance Ripley will test his pistol.
Three hours after, they make the landing at Panama, having been assisted by the incoming tide, which has just turned, and is here tremendous.
They come to the end of the long wharf of the railroad, finding there a little light-draft iron steamboat—the Toboga—used in transferring passengers and mail to the great Pacific steamers that cannot come nearer than three miles of the town. Not six inches of water is under the Toboga’s keel. It must wait for the incoming tide to free it, and make it float again, which will be somewhere about ten or eleven o’clock this evening.
Clambering upon this wharf, which rises at this stage of the tide quite high above the boat, Montez and Ripley assist the American lady, who soon stands beside them.
“There will probably be no train for Aspinwall before tomorrow morning. I think we had better go to one of the hotels in the main town. It will be more comfortable,” remarks Ripley.
“Very well,” answers Montez, a shade of disappointment crossing his face, “the Hotel Francais. But what will you do with your trunk—the heavy fellow? It seems all that the three boatmen can manage.”
“Of course, George, they can never carry it into the town in this hot sun,” remarks Alice, who, having hoisted a dainty parasol over her head, stands watching the men.
“Let me suggest the Pacific House,” returns Fernando, pointing to a white board hotel just across the road from the station. “It is but a step for your wife—and your trunk.”
To this proposition George assents, and they walk up the wharf, followed by three of the boatmen, who struggle under the heavy ironbound chest, upon which the Californian, turning ever and anon, casts a wary glance. Behind them tramps old Domingo, slinging easily upon his stalwart shoulder the light trunk containing the wardrobe of the Californian, which does not seem to interest Ripley at all.
Walking along the tracks of the Panama road, which run upon this wharf, they soon come to dusty terra firma, and find themselves in quite a crowd of passengers from the Illinois, which has landed them at Aspinwall, on the Atlantic side of the Isthmus, some few hours before. These are making their preparations for departure, some of them checking their baggage, and others having their tickets examined; a few, even now (fortunately for themselves), are taking their families on board the Toboga, as the Golden Age, the incoming Pacific Mail steamer, has been sighted.
Hearing this, Montez whispers to the Californian: “The train for Aspinwall will be sure to leave early in the morning. The Pacific House is the one for you, it is so near the railroad depot.”
Railroad Station at Panama, antique postcard (n.d.) (panamarailroad.org)
So they pass in, and registering their names with McFarlane, the proprietor, soon find themselves in a little room on the eastern, and now shady, side of the house, for the sun is already declining in the heavens. This chamber is one flight up, retired and quiet as any room can be in a house made of thin boards with partitions of canvas and paper. To this the three natives stagger with the heavy trunk, Domingo accompanying them with the lighter one.
Here Montez says to the American, “Au revoir!” but while doing this, suggests: “Won’t you take a stroll with me into the town? You will find lots of the passengers who are bound for California, seeing the sights. Why not make an evening of it with me? Dinner at the Cafe Victor, and then, I believe, we have a circus in town tonight.”
“That would be delightful!” cries Alice. A moment after, she says thoughtfully, “but I am afraid I am too fatigued for it.”
“No thank you, Montez, old boy,” answers George. “I think I’ll stay here with my baggage and my tired wife.”
“Then au revoir again!” murmurs Fernando, and turns to go, but the Californian comes after him, and seizing his little fingers in his stalwart grip, says gratefully; “This must not be the last we shall see of you! Promise to come back here this evening. My wife and I must thank you again for your hospitality, and what you have done for us. I’ll not forget to express the revolver to you from New York.”
“Oh, do not fear—I’ll return to you!” answers Montez, the Armenian drop in his blood coming to the fore, and giving his eyes a farseeing, peculiar, subtle look. “Until this evening!” and whispering these words, he skips down the steps, giving one last longing parting glance at the fair American lady, who makes a pretty picture, her bright beauty being in strong contrast to the bareness of the room, as she carelessly sits upon the ironbound trunk. Thus grouped these two treasures of the American look very beautiful to Señor Montez—they are now, he thinks, so nearly his.
As he reaches the doorway of the hotel he suddenly starts and says: “But I have much to do!” and so passes rapidly out of the Pacific House, where there is a good deal of drinking going on, and many glasses are being emptied to the first sight of the Pacific, by passengers eager to reach the land of gold.
Left together Ripley turns to Alice, saying: “It looks as if you would have a dull time, little woman, till tomorrow morning when we get upon the railroad for Aspinwall.”
“Oh, I’ll pass a little of it writing to Mary.”
“Why, the child’ll see us as soon as the letter!”
“Not quite. We’ll have to remain a day in New York probably. The letter will go right on. I’ll tell her of our week in Toboga,” returns the lady, taking from her trunk the articles for a hasty epistle. “Had you not better see about our tickets?”
“They’ll do in the morning,” replies the gentleman who is looking out of the hotel window. “Besides, the crowd bound for California are giving the railroad officials all they want to attend to just now.” And George amuses himself inspecting the movements of the throng outside as the sun goes down upon Panama.
After a little, his wife closes an epistle full of a mother’s love to her absent dear one, telling her the day after she receives it she will be in her arms, and says, “George, just step down and put this in the mail at the railroad depot, before you forget as usual.”
“Then the usual bribe,” laughs her husband.
“Two, if you like,” and the lady’s lips receive his kisses, for these two are as much lovers as when they first became man and wife.
“Now hurry. For Mr. McFarlane’s gong is going to sound for dinner soon,” cries Alice.
So George Ripley goes down and posts the letter to Mary, his daughter, putting it in the strong grip of Wells, Fargo & Co., but does not come back to dinner with his wife—for this is the night of the fifteenth day of April, 1856—a night that at Panama severed husbands from wives and parted children from parents’ love.
Notes, References, Further Reading
Aspinwall: City founded in 1850 on the northern shoulder of the Isthmus. Named after co-founder of the Panama Railroad, American businessman William Henry Aspinwall (1807–1875), it was the Atlantic terminal of the railroad. The name was changed to Colón, after Christopher Columbus, whose Spanish name was Cristóbal Colón. See “How Did Colón Become Columbus?: Explorer’s name varies from country to country” (thoughtco.com).
dross: “waste product taken off molten metal during smelting, essentially metallic in character” (wordreference.com).
descants: to comment or discourse at great length.
tintype: Photographic image produced on a thin metal plate. See “Tintype Photographs” at phototree.com.
mouches dinero, mouches sangui: much money, much blood.
set on foot: to initiate, start something.
polyhæma: many bloods.
bongo: “[T]he small schooner-rigged market craft of Panama are […] called bongos.” Man, Vol. 28 (1928), p. 122, at Internet Archive.
Caramba!: good heavens.
Bishop, F., Panama Past and Present (NY: Century, 1916). wikisource.org .
Daley, M.C., “The Watermelon Riot: Cultural Encounters in Panama City, April 15, 1856,” Hispanic American Historical Review 70:1, Feb 1990. Available Duke U Press.
Musicant, I., The Banana Wars (New York: Macmillan, 1990).
Schott, Joseph L., Rails across Panama; the story of the building of the Panama Railroad, 1849-1855 (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1967. Borrow from Internet Archive.
A brief reflection on the theme of eugenics that Brian Armour identifies in Baron Montez, in his preface to Chapter One. Gunter was himself probably of “mixed race” to a modest degree. Legacies of British Slave-ownership, a web site of University College London, reports that his father, Henry Gunter (1813–1856), was born in Jamaica to a one-quarter African woman.
Archibald Clavering Gunter would have been, if their research is correct, at least one-sixteenth African. I venture to suggest that such a “quantum” of blood might tend towards a sense of identification with – indeed, a celebration of – the minority cultural, and racial, heritage.
With this in mind, Gunter’s reference to the polyracial “polyhaema drops” in the blood of Montez becomes a tantalizing issue; as does the nature of his identification with his anti-hero. Gunter is fond of Montez even while the narrator reviles him. Of course, as we know, Lucifer is far more appealing as a character than God in Milton’s Paradise Lost. How fitting Gunter’s phrase, “This little disciple of Satan” in the opening to ChapterTwo, “A TobogaBreakfastin ’56“!
The UCL web-page agrees with the short supply of biographical data in the literary overviews. Using New York and New Orleans passenger lists, it traces Henry Gunter three times across the Atlantic between 1838 and 1844, which evidences his alacrity as a merchant at the time.
Henry Gunter married Elizabeth Agnes Sharples in Liverpool in 1839, and they had two sons, William Henry and Archibald Clavering. The family moved from Liverpool, first to New York in c. 1853, and soon after to San Francisco, where Henry became proprietor-manager of the “first conventional theater” to be built there, called the National. Archibald Clavering Gunter moved back to New York in 1879, after his variegated career (See Gunter Biosnip: Curse of Popularity).
As with J.F. Smith in England, whose father alsoownedatheatrecompany, Gunter first wrote plays. When he was a child, his home in San Francisco boasted “an unusually large living room built expressly for the purpose of giving young Archie a theatre in which to produce his youthful dramas.” It was a stately residence, attesting to the entrepreneurial success his father enjoyed with the National Theater. The house had an entrance on Washington Street and at the back overlooked the lower, adjacent Taylor Street. From the porch of this house, the oldest on the hill, was “one of the finest vistas in San Francisco” (The Insider).
San Francisco harbor c.1851
Ella Sterling Mighels considers the first two of Gunter’s dramatic successes as too high up on the “literary plane” for popular success, though she and her milieu were impressed that a San Franciscan was able to produce writing of such a high tone. He soon realized that the “high plane goes a-begging” and retuned it to appeal for public tastes (p. 338).
The sensation caused by his first novel, Mr Barnes of New York, gave him an inkling he might be able to make a go of it on the printed page. Following the trail of other Californian writers before him, he moved East in 1879 and achieved just that, making enough to set up his own Gunter’s Magazine and The Home Publishing Company. He produced a string of thirty-nine novels and “one of the most remunerative careers ever lived by a man who lived by his typewriter” (The Insider). Gunter’s contemporary, the Californian author Gertrude Atherton (1857–1948) writes in Cosmopolitan that:
His books have been on every stand in three continents where our language is read, and by a large proportion of the reading public abroad he is regarded as the representative American author.
Cited in Mighels, p. 339
… his international popularity being facilitated by a busy industry of book pirating.
Baron Montez (1893) comes at the height of Gunter’s momentum. It is not one of his most cited works, but was decently reviewed when it appeared, with particular reference to Gunter’s skill, and to his polyhaemic anti-hero.
Here are some excerpts:
The work exhibits the wonderful resources of the author’s mind and the richness of his imaginative powers. The characters are forcibly drawn, the details worked up with surprising exactness, and the plot unraveled with scrupulous care…
Although entirely a piece of fiction – good fiction, still under the surface may be found many direct hits at some of the social and political fads of the present day…
His portrayal of the hero, Harry Larchmont, is excellent and will not only win the admiration of the fair sex, but also that of the men who admire a good athletic figure and a will power over which the Anglomaniaccraze has no control.
In the heroine, Miss Louise Ripley Minturn, we have one of those strong, sensitive characters, of the typical American girl – the girl to whom we raise our hat in honor, to her pluck, refinement and modesty; the girl who in the face of poverty and temptation will educate herself to meet the battle of life with a smile, and even though [sic] a typewriter, will assert her independence and uphold the greatest of all characters – the American woman.
The central figure of the novel, however, is the all-nation prince of villains, Fernando Gomez Montez, mule boy of Cruces, self-ennobled to “Baron” Montez. As a villain he will challenge the admiration of all the readers. The conventional smooth, oily villain has been succeeded by an educated one, full of fascination, a good conversationalist, cunning and almost brave, a clear, quick-witted brain, working like fast revolving machinery, accurate in calculation, precise in detail, with a strong will and commanding power which fascinates all weaker natures first, and then causes them to obey…
The scenes are panoramic in their changes, and carry the reader rapidly from the rushing restless, bustling city of New York to the drudgery and turmoil of the miasmic, fever-laden tropic isthmus, and thence to pleasure-loving, scheming Paris, the center of intrigue, gay life, inflated stocks, bonds, and feverish existence. The situations are very sensational and dramatic showing the author’s dramatic vein in the background of the novelistic landscape…
Behymer, “Among the Authors” (1893)
Chapter Three coming next week, edited and introduced by Brian Armour.
Notes and References
Behymer, H. “Among the Authors,” Los Angeles Herald, Volume 40, Number 40, 21 May 1893.
Mighels, Ella Sterling, The Story of the Files: California Writers and Literature (Boston: Harvard U, 1893).
The Insider. San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907.
Our narrator is at it again, delighting us with wonderful descriptions of island scenery and life, while never missing an opportunity to take a swipe at Montez. Fernando is now increasingly referred to as‘little’.When a Narrator becomes a character in a story, as I explored in the previous introduction, expressing opinions, deriding or debasing characters, a question arises: can he be trusted? Were it not for the intimations of the Narrator, the previous chapter would seem idyllic. Hasn’t our kind host, Fernando rescued the ill Alice and her husband George from the pestilence of Panama, for the sweet aromatic breezes of his island retreat, treated them to excellent care and wonderful cuisine, travelled to the Isle of Pearls for them, at all times been a perfect gentleman? Yet our American Narrator’s insights into Montez’s character are ringing true, and his credibility appears intact for the time being.
Village on Taboga Island, Republic of Panama, from postcard c. 1927
While providing an unsympathetic history of young Fernando, at the same time the Narrator covers some of the history of the Isthmus and the crossing before the railway. Prior to this, for three hundred years the Isthmus was a possession of the Spanish. They first sought to improve the way across it for the passage of South American gold and treasure back to Spain.
Through Fernando’s memory, his first engagement with the Americans, George Ripley and his wife, is related. It is clear he holds some disdain for Americanos, apart from their potential as marks in a confidence trick, which is likely shared amongst the local population. American presence and involvement in the Isthmus had been going on for some time. In 1846, the United States and The Republic of New Granada negotiated a treaty of “peace, amity, navigation and commerce” that included a guarantee of the US right of way across the Isthmus of Panama. The country of New Granada consisted mostly of present-day Colombia, and also Panama, Ecuador and Venezuela (Encycl. Britannica).
Background is provided on George Riley, and his wife, Alice’s, contraction of yellow fever. Yellow fever, malaria and other mosquito borne diseases were rife in Panama due to the port being surrounded by swamp. Direct off-loading of passengers by steam ships was not possible which is why they disembarked at TabogaIsland and later transferred to Panama by smaller boat or canoe.
Most infections of yellow fever lead to serious illness. At first the sufferer experiences a high temperature, a slow pulse, muscle pain, nausea, shivers and vomiting. About 15 percent of people progress to a toxic stage, with life threatening symptoms such as bleeding, jaundice and liver and kidney failure. Half of these sufferers die within two weeks of onset. In 1887, the artist Paul Gauguin contracted yellow fever and malaria after working on the Panama Canal and spent time on Taboga Island recovering, as does Alice Ripley.
Fernando‘s aspirations for Alice Ripley have grown, though his vision varies not, and she remains a beautiful object to him, second only to the old chest of George Ripley. In this chapter, Fernando’s disarming ways take on a new definition, and he moves one step closer to achieving his goal.
CHAPTER 2
A TOBOGA BREAKFAST IN ‘56
Then this little disciple of Satan runs over what has brought him this great chance of good luck. He thinks of his earlier days.
He is scarce twenty now, but people develop rapidly under the hot sun of the Equator. He remembers the quiet little town of Cruces, in the mountains—at the head of navigation of the Chagres, where the good priest taught him his Paternosters, and where he chanted them each day in his class, mingling his Latin with howls produced by blows of a cutting rawhide in the hands of the padre’s athletic and vigilant assistant.
This mixture of penance and prayer pleased the young Montez but little. His mother, who lived in a palm hut by the rapids of the Chagres, did the padre’s washing; his father was—Heaven knows where or who. There seemed no way of escape. They were about to make him an altar boy, and rebellious little Fernando cursed as he chanted and saw no prospect save of a life of prayer and penance, and candle carrying behind a decorated image of the Virgin, in its daily religious procession through the lanes of the little town. But just at this moment Cruces—buried from the world in the hills of the Cordilleras in the deadly slumber that had fallen upon the Isthmus when the route to Chili and Peru round Cape Horn succeeded the route via Panama, and the jingling bells of its mule trains were no longer heard crossing the mountain paths between Panama and Porta Bella—awoke and lived again.
The first rush of the gold seekers for California in ’49 crossed the Isthmus.
Flying from church and prayer and penance, young Montez dodged fasting and discipline in the hurly-burly of that early Isthmus excitement.
At thirteen he peddled water, for ten cents a glass, to thirsty Gringos. A year after he did a thriving business in unripe bananas, oranges, and pineapples in the streets of Chagres. Next taking up with a monte shop, became “muchacho diablo” in a gambling establishment at Gargona, where he learned card sharping and thimble rigging. In the years 1851, 1852, and 1853 he was a handler of bad mules, which he leased out at exorbitant prices to the embryo pioneers and argonauts of California to cross worse roads from Gargona in the dry season, and from Cruces in the wet time, to Panama.
Spanish muchacho. Anonymous photo c. 1920
Perchance, he took a flyer or two, with one or two successful bandits, and some looted treasure came to him.
He had a knack of recovering lost children who disappeared together with their native carriers in this rush across the Isthmus, and restoring them to fond parents for large sums of money.
And during this time he learned one great principle that has been of much use to Napoleons of finance both in America and Europe—that is, not to steal often, but to steal much. The first invariably leads to disgrace and a prison—the second often to honor and a palace.
While doing all this, his facile mind became educated. He picked up French, from some Parisians crossing the Isthmus. Spanish was his native tongue. A smattering of Latin he had from the priest. English came to him from his vocation with the Californian adventurers; and by devoting himself to one or two Portuguese, who travelled tremblingly across the Isthmus in those days, he stole from them a smattering of their language and any doubloons and Spanish dollars they might leave within reach of his grasping paws.
At length, the railroad completed in 1855 destroyed young Montez’s means of livelihood; but by this time he had sufficient to engage in other occupations, and turned his attention to dealing in pearls, precious stones, and other valuables he could pick up about the Isthmus, sometimes making trips to the Pearl Islands, and once or twice going as far as Ecuador and Peru, upon the English steamers that were now running down the coast of South America, and to Acapulco to the north, on the Pacific Mail boats, trading always with a rare facility and shrewdness that had come to him in a drop of Yankee blood left by a New Bedford whaler at Darien some hundred years before, and by a globule of the vital fluid of Israel, that had entered his poly-nation veins from an unfortunate Jewish pedler the Inquisition had burned, before the time of Morgan.
He was even now considered well to do, and his orders were good in the Hotel Francais in Panama, or in the restaurant of Monsieur Victor, the IsthmusDelmonicothose days, but still as yet no grand coup had come to him.
Some ten days before the time he sits upon the veranda of the villa on the Island of Toboga, the steamer John L. Stevens, from San Francisco, brought its lot of passengers from California, to take route across the Isthmus by railway to Aspinwall, and so on to New York; among them this American gentleman and his wife, who are occupying the pretty palm cottage this morning—Ripley ruddy in health, Alice beautiful as a pale lily, stricken with the fever picked up during a six hours’ stay in Acapulco, and too ill to proceed on her journey. But for this, the American would have been the happiest of men, for he was a successful pioneer to California.
George Merritt Ripley had left a clerkship in Baltimore, and taken his wife with him, leaving his little daughter of twelve at school in the East, and had gone to California in 1852. He had made his first start in gold mining in Calaveras County, at Mokelumne Hill, and being sensible enough to see that placer digging was uncertain, and that trade in California at that time was a sure road to wealth, had taken his few thousand dollars, and entered into business in the thriving town of Stockton on the San Joaquin. In three years he had accumulated some sixty thousand dollars, which, in those days of cheap prices, large interest, and small capital, was the equivalent to half a million at the present.
Having enough to live upon in the East, his money properly invested in the growing towns of New York or Boston would in time make him even wealthy.
His wife, anxious to see her child (for four years is a long time to a mother’s heart), had implored him to return to the Eastern States, which in those days all Californians called “home.”
So, though his life on the plains of the San Joaquin had been a pleasant one, Ripley was delighted to turn his face from the crudities of the early California, to the more civilized existence of the Eastern world.
He had come on his way rejoicing, until the fever struck the woman he loved, so he had brought her to Panama to rest there—perchance to die there.
His trunks, checked through to the East, had gone on, all save one that contained their immediate necessities of apparel, and the other one; the one that never left his eye—the heavy one—the one that took three natives to handle. These, together with his wife, were in Panama, when he chanced to meet Montez, who, having many arts and graces of a gentleman, had soon made George Ripley think him his friend.
Montez had recommended the change from the pestilent miasma of the mainland to the breezes that came fresh up the Gulf to the Island of Toboga, and in these zephyrs, health had come to George’s wife, and despair had left the heart of the strong man who loved her.
During these days of his wife’s convalescence, in one of his conversations with Montez, Ripley had mentioned a desire to invest a little of the gold he was bringing with him in the pearls of the Isthmus—which were cheap at Panama compared to New York. This treasure was all in his own care, for Wells Fargo’s charges in these days, for the transmission of specie, were very high, and George Ripley thought himself strong enough to take care of his own money, having stood off bandits from his Mokelumne Hill mine and possessing that peculiar self-confidence that seemed to come with the air of the Sierras to all Californians in those early days. Therefore this foolish Ripley had evaded Wells, Fargo & Co.’s charges, and had everything he held valuable in this world with him in Toboga this sunny day—save his daughter in her Eastern school.
Musing over this, Fernando chuckles to himself: “Brave Americano—fool Americano!“
Just here he is awakened from his reverie by the brave Americano’s voice in his ear, and the hearty grasp of the fool Americano’s hand upon his shoulder. The voice says: “Come along, Don Fernando Montez! We are hungry. The odor of the breakfast is delicious—but my wife insists upon our waiting for our kind host.” The hand drags in friendly play the petite carcass of Fernando Gomez Montez to see the prettiest sight his sparkling, all nation eyes have ever gazed upon—the blonde beauty of the temperate zone contrasted with the dark loveliness of the Equator, surrounded by a tropic breakfast al fresco.
It is under the shade of the tamarind trees, the perfume from which is mingled with the odors of a feast for the gods!
The aroma of Costa Rica coffee just burnt and ground comes from a steaming urn that stands on the ground near the fire of perfumed orange wood, upon which turtle steaks are broiling, and luscious plantains and mealy yams are cooking in its ashes. A stew of rice and freshly killed Iguano lizard, made hot with Chili Colorado, and a slight suspicion of garlic—for Anita is an artist in the cooking line—stands ready to their hands; and fruits, gorgeous as the sun that gave them their ripe beauty, lie about them everywhere.
The American lady, lazily seated in a hammock, looks coolly beautiful under the leaves that shade her—the abandon of careless ease shows her still girlish figure in graceful motion. Her blue eyes would be very bright this morning, were they not wistful at times when gazing towards the East. Anita posed like a bronze statue stands near the fire, her orbs sparkling also, save when looking at la Americana they glow with soma unknown passion like those of a Voodoo priestess!
So breakfast passes, Anita the presiding goddess of the feast; for to this Indian girl all the beauty of the tropics has come in the fifteen years of her life. She is robed in white—some soft clinging Isthmus stuff, which drapes her lithe figure, and displays the beauties of her graceful limbs at every motion—and her little feet, bare as when she was born, step so lightly they hardly rustle the leaves under them.
The girl flits about, ministering to the appetites of Señor Montez and his guests, which seem to be very good, Montez apparently being happy, and a great joy beaming in the eyes of the American. His beautiful wife has roses on her fair cheeks, and in ten days they will be in their Eastern home; with them the one child of their love. Health and appetite are theirs, and their breakfast is almost like that of Arcady.
The coffee is of the sweetest aroma, the Iguano is done to a nicety, and the turtle steaks are juicy as those from a two-year old buffalo cow. These being finished, they revel in the fruits of the tropics—oranges green as an olive, thin-skinned as a lady’s glove, with one blood red shot upon each, to prove that it has ripened; melons, sweet limes, Avigado pears, and the mangoes for which Toboga is famous.
As appetite is appeased, conversation becomes easy.
“Why did you not ask Anita to tell me that I was keeping you from breakfast? It is such a good one,” laughs the every-nation gentleman.
“Anita did not seem to care for your coming.” returns the American lady. “Perhaps she did not think her breakfast was as perfect as it is.”
“Ah, Anita was sulky, eh?” says Fernando, a little mocking snarl curling over his white teeth. “Anita has an Indian temper and Indian moods.” He regards the girl with a sneer, and she returns him several flashes from her eyes, that would be reproachful, were they not almost vindictive.
“A little sullen, Anita—eh?” jeers the host.
His tone would drive the girl to frenzy, did not the American lady suddenly say, “Please don’t be cross with her. You do not know how kind she has been to me during your absence and my sickness!” Then she turns to her husband and suggests: “We must not forget Anita’s services when we leave her.”
“No,” cries the jovial Californian. “Anita shall have the biggest pearl that Montez has brought from the Islands.”
At this mention of personal adornment, a smile runs over the volatile features of the Indian girl.
Fernando smiles also. What is Anita’s is his. And everything is fish that comes to his net.
A second after, he gives a start. The American lady is remarking in grateful tones: “And what shall our offering be to you, Señor Montez, whose hospitality has given me health?”
“A present for me? Mia madre! you are too kind.”
“Yes, mention what you like and you have it,” interjects the Californian.
“Oh, if you wish me to say what I should regard with the greatest favor, it would be your—your beautiful revolver. There is none like it on the Isthmus,—none that shoots so truly, for I have seen your skill with it,” answers Fernando, looking with longing eyes upon the fatal weapon of the American.
“My revolver,” echoes the Californian with a start. Then he says, after a pause of consideration: “I will send it to you by express from New York. Until this journey is over, I cannot part with it. It has guarded my life and my property before. I feel safer with it by my side.”
“Yes,” returns Alice, “at his side by day, near his hand at night. George is superstitious, I think, with regard to it.”
This conversation apparently does not please Señor Montez very greatly. The revolver has seemed to fascinate him. All through the meal his glances have sought the long Colt’s pistol that carries six lives in its six loaded chambers as it hangs in the Californian’s belt. A little spheroid of timid Cingales blood, poured into his veins from some East Indian ancestor, now brings a coward faltering into his bright eyes. He does not seem to enjoy the Avigado pear that he was eating with a good appetite a second before. Throwing it away with a “pish” of disgust, he cries: “Anita, quick, a cigar!” for nicotine soothes this gentleman’s excitable nerves.
The Indian girl, at his command, draws out from a bundle of fragrant Toboga tobacco a fresh leaf, and rolling it in her deft and agile fingers, in half a minute it becomes a cigar. Thirty seconds more, a second leaf becomes another cigar. This she offers to the American, who follows his host’s example. So lighting up, the two men puff away contentedly.
A moment after, Alice gives a start of amazement, for a third cigar has been tendered to her. and to her astonished refusal, Anita laughs: “You are not well enough yet to smoke. I had supposed now you are ill no longer you would enjoy it as I do.” Then throwing herself into a hammock, this lazy bird of the tropic surrounds herself with wreaths of smoke, puffing them out between her white teeth, and playing with them as a juggler does with his baubles.
The sensuous scene appeals to even the energetic Californian’s senses. He mutters: “This week at Toboga has seemed like a week of—of—”
“Of paradise! “interjects his wife. “Since I have become well again, we have made a fairy land of it. Daytime in the hammock, sipping coccanut milk and chicha under the tamarind leaves; dinners at Jacques’ petite restaurant in the cocoanut trees, and moonlight in a canoe on the water. George said,” here the lady blushes slightly, gazing at her husband with bride’s eyes, “that it was more romantic than our wedding tour.”
“A-ah, a—new honeymoon!” sighs Montez. Looking at the beauty of this Northern violet, as she sits before him in the ease of this tropic Arcady—for Alice Ripley has imitated Señorita Anita in the hammock business, and sits lazily under the green leaves, one perfect foot and one delicate ankle carelessly swinging from under her white laces and muslin and ribbons—this gentleman’s face suddenly flushes with a great delight, as he thinks: “A new honeymoon!—Yes—for me!” Then visions come to him, entrancing as the dreams of opium sleep, as he gazes at Alice Ripley through the clouds of his cigar smoke.
Woman in white. Anon., antique French postcard (n.d.)
Mingled with the rustling breezes in the tamarind groves, as they sit there, the “silence—of—the—smoker” coming on them, is heard the voice of a rushing stream, which issues gurgling and foaming from the hillside, and splashes into a little basin, a short hundred yards away, suggesting coolness.
The day is already burning, and the noise of this foaming stream apparently puts an idea into the fertile mind of little Montez, as he sits looking with sleepless eyes at the big Californian, through his wreaths of smoke.
He says: “How is a cool plunge this hot morning? Why not a bath, Señor Georgio Ripley?”
“A bath—delicious!” ejaculates the American. Then looking over the green water of the bay, he suggests, “But the sharks!”
“No sharks here,” and Fernando points with a little finger, adorned with some diamonds and a very delicately trimmed almond-shaped nail, to the cool, limpid basin worn in the rock by the unceasing flow of the living stream for centuries. “That is nature’s bathing place.”
So the two go off together, through the thickets to the shady pool, bearing with them handfuls of javoncilla leaves, that will act as vegetable soap and make their skins soft as those of children.
Looking on its limpid waters, dark under the palms and only golden where the sun steals in upon it through little breaks in the leaves, the American mutters: “This is perfection.”
Then Montez cries, “Quick, I’ll beat you into the water. You need not fear to undress here. Toboga has no deadly lance-vipers or coral snakes like the mainland.”
So undressing himself in the little thicket of broad leaved palms and feathery bamboos, George Merritt Ripley, as he takes his plunge into nature’s bathtub, for the first time in his journey really parts himself from his revolver.
It is but for a short fifteen minutes, and Montez bathes with him ten of them, but leaves the water first.
But in that five minutes, that one last plunge for Ripley, something has happened to his weapon of trust that had saved his life and his treasure from the bandits of the Sierras and the highwaymen of the Californian trails.
Not knowing this, George comes laughingly up the bank, crying, “That last plunge was the most refreshing of my life! I hope you enjoyed your bath as well as I did, Señor Montez.”
“Perhaps better,” returns his companion, who has as yet hardly begun to dress. Fernando is apparently a lazy man, and he has had something to occupy him, and a little file that he has brought with him, during the five minutes of Ripley’s last plunge.
From now on, a confident air seems to come over this every nation gentleman; and when his eyes look at the revolver which the American is strapping around him again, they no longer shrink from it, but gaze at it in confident triumph. So, walking up the path to the tamarind grove and bamboo cottage, Fernando chuckles to himself: “I am sure now—treasure and beauty.”
Notes, References, Further Reading
Cover feauture image is a painting by Edward Gennys Fanshawe, ‘From a back window in Panama, March 10th 1850’.
Toboga: Taboga, volcanic island in the Gulf of Panama, known also as ‘the Island of Flowers’. See “Some History of Isla Taboga” at taboga.panamanow.com.
treaty: known as New Granada Treaty, Bidlack Treaty, or Bidlack Mallarino Treaty (see Dennis).
monte shop: monte is a gambling game played with a 40 card deck.
muchacho diablo: Spanish ‘man-devil’
specie: coin, or money in kind.
Paternosters: in the Roman Catholic Church, The Lord’s Prayer usually in Latin.
Padre: Spanish ‘father’, ‘a priest’.
Delmonico: Opened 1837. “New York’s first a la carte restaurant on 2 South William Street, favored French cuisine, cloth-covered tables and a printed menu designed by the first “star chef,” Charles Ranhofer” (A Brief History of Delmonico’s)
Placer digging: “placer derives from the Spanish placer, meaning shoal or alluvial/sand deposit, from Catalan placer (shoal), from plassa (place) from Medieval Latin placea (place) the origin word for “place” and “plaza” in English. The word in Spanish is thus derived from placea and refers directly to an alluvial or glacial deposit of sand or gravel” (“Placer Mining” — Wikipedia).
Darien: Darién, province in eastern Panama. The Scots failed in an attempt to colonize it in the 17th century. (See Ben Johnson, “The Darien Scheme.”)
Arcady: Arcadia, a region of Greece, known through the ages as a beautiful, unspoiled wilderness.
Mia madre: Spanish `my mother’
Isle of Pearls: a group of islands in the Gulf of Panama, Isle del Rey being the largest.
Avigado pear: Avocados are widely cultivated in Panama.
Javoncilla: Luffa operculata.
John L. Stephens: “The [SS John L. Stephens] is 2500 tons register, 280 feet keel, 66-1/2 feet breadth of beam amidships, and 285 feet over all. Her engine was built in the Novelty Works, and is on the oscillating principle. It is suspended from a framing of wood similar to the frames usually employed in the construction of beam-engines, and is the first application of the kind ever introduced. She is built on the clipper model, and is believed to be the sharpest American steamer ever constructed. Her accommodations are for twelve hundred passengers and the ventilation throughout every part is believed to be superior to any steamship ever built. Her buoyancy is also very great, and with 650 tons of coal and 20,000 gallons of water, she draws less than 12 feet of water” (excerpt from March 25, 1853, Sacramento Daily Union, Sacramento, California). See maritimeheritage.org .
lance-viper: Fer-de-lance, venomous pit viper.
Anderson, Charles L.D., Old Panama and Castilla del Oro (np: Sudwarth, 1911 at Smithsonian Institute. “Narrative history of the discovery, conquest and settlement by the Spaniards.”
Dennis, William Cullen. “The Panama Situation in the Light of International Law. The Treaty of 1846 between the United States and New Granada” The American Law Register (1898-1907) , May, 1904, Vol. 52, No. 5, Volume 43 New Series (May, 1904), pp. 265-306. Available at Jstor.
The word “unenthusiastic” well encapsulates Gunter’s critical reception. Observe his appearance in a number of overviews of the history of American letters and theatre. In his Dictionary of American Authors (1899), Adams pronounces Gunter’s “popular sensational romances” as “quite destitute of literary merit” (161). In American Authors, 1600-1900 a Biographical Dictionary of American Literature; complete in one volume with 1300 biographies and 400 portraits (1938) Kunitz grudgingly acknowledges Gunter as the “most widely read American novelist” for a few years, before concluding that “[h]is work had little merit and is almost completely forgotten today” (323).
We find with Gunter the same theme that comes up with J.F. Smith and Sylvanus Cobb, Jr.: how often preeminently successful writers in their own day – when viewed through the lens of their popularity – were pilloried critically. Indeed, specifically for an author to make a considerable income from his or her work, generally attracted derisive opinions about their literary value. In the shorter term, they were prejudged (as Emerson prejudged Cobb, Jr., without having read him.) In the longer, their perceived shortcomings magnified, they were no longer read, for their unjustly disvalued reputations preceded them.
This effect is particularly pronounced in encyclopedic coverages of the kind I mentioned in opening, because the compilers and editors have no opportunity to read the corpora of every single author they cover. Rather, they must distil the critical accounts of popular authors such as Gunter. Even though literally masses of readers celebrated him, what mostly remains is the critical taint.
Hence, far more recently than the overviews I mentioned, in their Oxford Companion to American Theatre (2004), Bordman and Hischak find that
[Gunter‘s] two dozen produced plays were generally perceived as lacking in realmerit, but theatricallyeffective.
p. 280
Traditionally – and to some extent in the present day –theatre was considered a “lower” artistic form than literature. Only by extracting the words from the dramatic context, the theatrical occasion, can they attain to transcendence and timelessness. One truly appreciates Shakespeare, not by seeing a play, but by reading him on the page. Gunter’s play is merely “theatrically effective.” I don’t know quite how, but somehow Gunter must produce his play’s theatrical effectiveness from out of thin air rather than from his writing, which is obviously very poor, according to the remnants of critical account.
Consider Bordman and Hischak’s verdict on Gunter’s early box office success, Fresh, the American (1881): a “loosely contrived farce” that nevertheless “provided [its leading man] with a major hit for two years” (245). And again, their description of another of Gunter’s successful plays, Two Nights in Rome (1872), as “a crude but powerful drama” (280). Note yet again the persistence of the dual description, and how “crude” tends to outweigh “powerful” in the impression it leaves regarding his literary talent — and a reader’s orientation towards his books..
Their ambivalence betrays their instinct to avoid the taint of a literary elitism that bolsters the structures of the traditional canon. One mainstay is a perceived opposition between “merit” and “popularity.” Hence this “crude but powerful” each-way bet. The play lacks some ephemeral quality that marks true literature, despite, or because of its “vulgar” mass appeal. On the other hand, Adams, writing more than a century before them viewed a “popular sensational romance” as crossing a line drawn in filth.
Archibald Clavering Gunter, in King, Notable New Yorkers of 1896–1899
Understandably, canonical-critical preconceptions pervade the institution of publishing. Gunter wrote his first novel, Mr. Barnes of New York (1887), in response to a dare by a friend: “I bet you couldn’t put me into a book and make me interesting” (San Francisco Call, Volume 101, Number 90, 28 February 1907). Hart, in his The Popular Book: a History of America’s Literary Taste (1950), describes the novel as “awkwardly written.” This implies he has read it; but of course, it could only have been awkwardly written to have been so roundly rejected for publication.
I don’t mean to suggest that the book may not in one way or another be considered awkwardly written—many are. Its awkwardness was clearly not, however, a defining characteristic that prevented the novel from providing immense pleasure for millions of people who actually did read it.
According to a celebratory account in the San Franciso Call, written the week after Gunter died in Chicago in 1907:
[Mr. Barnes of New York] was offered to most of the publishers in the country, and not one would consider it, so the author finally decided to publish it himself. It came out in 1886, and was not a best seller at once. Indeed, it fell as flat as the proverbial pancake, but one copy being sold on the first day of publication. Within seven months, however, it was selling at the rate of nearly 3500 a day,
… ultimately to the tune of three million copies (Burt, p. 271).
The astute obituarist views the issue of Gunter’s “literary merit”:
Archibald Clavering Gunter’s works will never be considered literature. He lived a generation too soon; he never became one of the “six best sellers” because his books always sold in greater numbers than the “Six Best” ever dared to.
It would have been laughable for Gunter’s cheap yellowbacks ever to make it into the Bookman’s bestseller list. The “Six Best” would have found it equally ludicrous to leap from literary grace in pursuit of such spectacular popular acclaim, even if they were able to.
“the Six Best”: The Bookman, a New York literary magazine founded by Dodd, Mead and Company in 1895, the same year commenced publishing a monthly list of the top six best selling books, known as the “Six Best.” It was the origin of bestsellers lists. (Sorenson, p. 772).
Adams, Oscar F. A Dictionary of American Authors (Boston: Houghton & MIfflin, 1899).
Burt, Daniel S (ed.) The Chronology of American Literature: America’s Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern Times (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004).
Bordman, G. and Hischak, T.S, Oxford Companion to American Theatre (2004). 3d ed. (NY: OUP, 2004)
Hart, J.D, The Popular Book: a History of America’s Literary Taste (NY: OUP, 1950).
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