t was a dreary day, but I enjoyed it, cuz the Reb, Red Emma, Limber Lou, some friends (including Red's German cousin w/boyfriend), and I visited "Arden," the seriously cool home of Madame Helena Modjeska, out in lovely Modjeska Canyon (Santiago Canyon).
A pleasant and nervous elderly lady gave us the tour, which started with a goofy video, narrated, it seems, by your Aunt Gerda from Nebraska. At one point, Gerda explained that, at first, Americans didn't know what to make of Modjeska, a serious actress, cuz they were used to "bombast."
That made some of us laugh, but our laughter made some others of us annoyed, but whaddyagonnado.The house is just what you'd expect. Very cool, very dark. Somehow both Wild West and Victorian.
It was designed in 1887 by the great Stanford White. You remember him. He designed one generation of Madison Square Garden plus lots of other familiar stuff. He was murdered in 1906--the subsequent scandal and murder trial involved White's mistress, the lovely Evelyn Nesbit, an artists' model and actress.
Coincidentally, I've got pictures of that gal, cuz she was seriously beautiful.The interior of Arden is all wood--the color of cherry, or darker. Lots of nooks and crannies. In one closet, some of the original insulation is revealed: old newspapers. You can still read some of them.
Turns out Modjeska's husband, "Count" Bozenta, wanted to be a farmer, but he had a dark brown thumb. Black even. Originally, the couple settled in Anaheim in 1876, where they started some kind of Polish utopian farm experiment. The experiment failed. So, in 1877, they moved out to remote Santiago Canyon. There, they tried, but failed, to grow olives for olive oil.
They were broke, so Madame M was forced to return to the stage. She started her American career in San Francisco. Pretty soon, she was the most famous actress of her time. (No doubt, I've left out a chapter or two.)
e toured the grounds, too, and they contain a few surprises. There's an odd and rickety two-story building that served as a wine cellar. The stair to the top floor has rotted away.
Somebody on the tour said that, inside the cellar, "it goes into the hill for over fifty yards."
I thrilled.
Evidently, Modjeska had a bear, and the bear had a bear house, which still exists. Limber Lou stared at it.
They had alligators, too. No alligator house though. Evidently, in the teens or twenties (after the Modjeskas died), these gators washed down the creek during a rain. They gobbled up lots of the neighbors' farm animals.
Cool.
There are some unusual trees on the grounds. I picked up some twiggy things that fell from an especially strange tree. Can't think of the name of it. I'll just say it was a monkey berry tree. Could be.
hen I got home, Sunny, my cat, was all pissed off. She nearly knocked over one of my bowls. It occurred to me that the bowl, which is quite old, was likely used here in California at about the same time that Madame M and her brown-thumbed hubby lived in Modjeska Canyon, about two miles from my house as the crow flies.
Think I'll keep that bowl.
4 comments:
monkey puzzle tree?
Nice touch of whimsey in the writing here, Dear Scholar, as you record some of the many troubles afflicting this district. Some of us feel like Job, afflicted with open sores because of the fall out from lack of district leadership and its downright hostility toward staff, students, and facutly. Add to that the squandering of millions of dollars in mindless, petty projects.
Stanford White also designed Grand Central Station in New York City.
Mr. Doctorow:
Normally I would defer to a personage of your eminence, but, though I have often heard it said that White designed Grand Central Station, I can find no indication of that in his biographies. Further, White died about a decade before GSS opened.
--E.L. Chunky
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