A Stroll by My Western Bookshelves: A Selection of Books from the Collection of Gordon J. Van De Water

By Gordon J. Van de Water

Much experience and action, much thought and reminiscence, fill the pages of this volume. Here are books about explorers, frontiersmen, mountaineers, hunters, rangers, gold-finders, cowboys, and tenderfeet; novels and narratives by pioneer women; books by friends and also fighters of Native Americans. Often generously quoted, they pulse with the life of the old West. Albert R. Vogeler, Professor Emeritus, California State University, Fullerton

You have the mantle of Henry Wagner, Carl Wheat, and Francis Farquhar on your shoulders. You are to be commended for bringing to life so many of the books that are key to our heritage. Gary F. Kurutz, Curator of Special Collections, California State Library

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 3, 2009
• ISBN: 9781462818679

Gordon J. Van de Water

Gordon J. Van De Water has long collected books dealing with California and the West, including many first editions of the eighty titles known as The Zamorano 80, which were selected in 1945 by the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles. These titles, dating from the late 18th to the early 20th centuries, are distinguished works of exploration and travel, history, politics, fiction, and poetry that are cornerstone volumes for any significant library of Californiana. Van De Water is a member of several book clubs and a Reader at the Huntington Library, San Marino, California. Currently he is serving on a Zamorano Club committee preparing a new list of significant California titles dating from 1870 to the later 20th century. His A Stroll by My Western Bookshelves: A Selection of Books from the Collection of Gordon J. Van De Water was published in 2009.

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Copyright © 2009 by Gordon J. Van De Water.

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☼

Dedicated to

my wife Marianne

who makes

all things possible

Contents

Acknowledgments

To the Reader

Illustrations

A Stroll by My Western Bookshelves

A

B

Bibliography

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

Missions

N

O

Photography

R

S

T

V

W

Z

Author Listing

Acknowledgments

This work took a trip to China as it was in the process of being born. It so happened that William N. Rogers carried the first rough draft along with him and worked on it as we and our wives flew high over the Pacific Ocean headed to a vacation trip beginning in Beijing. I recall getting some needed exercise by walking down the aisle and seeing Bill, pen in hand, marking down his initial suggestions for improvements to the narrative that follows.

It was not the first time he had taken one of my manuscripts in hand to help shape it, dotting the i’s, crossing the t’s, and eliminating my overuse of the comma. I think, though, that this project, which was planned to cover just a few books in my collection, just grew like Topsy. It didn’t stop Bill, now a retired professor of English, from sharpening his pencil a number of times to offer his thoughts in a second, and then a third revision.

He has been most generous with his time and knowledge, this old friend of over fifty years. You, the reader, and I, the writer, are the beneficiaries of his editing skill.

I would also like to sincerely thank Mark M. Cheung, a young man so well-versed in the operation of the many variables of the computer. He has helped make this book a more attractive one with his skillful use of a digital camera and placement of the resulting images.

Thanks, Bill and Mark, and happy trails to you both!

To the Reader

It has taken several months, a fair amount of decision making, and a number of revisions to bring to you the narrative written on the following pages. This process has allowed me to comb through my shelves and select those books that should have interest, not only for those familiar with the subject matter, but also for neophytes learning about this particular territory as they build their own libraries. Though some may find it intrusive, I have included the locations where many of the volumes were purchased. This serves as a reminder for me and allows the reader, if so inclined, to investigate those locations.

I have included a cross-section from the books that form my collection to allow the reader to realize that the West/Southwest is a huge and varied land. The chosen volumes also tell about the many people who inhabited or wrote about the land and events—those who made the history of an immense landscape come alive. Some of the books have had to be reread, and dozens scanned, searching for just the proper excerpt or quotation to provide a representative view of this geographical area. I hope I have succeeded.

For me this has been a beneficial undertaking. I have learned much, and I hope some useful and interesting knowledge will be imparted to you, the reader, as we now start on a fanciful stroll by my Western bookshelves.

Illustrations

Frontispiece — Gordon relaxing with a good read

Gordon and Bill Rogers taking a stroll

Marianne and Gordon

Western Collection—East Wall

Western Collection—West Wall

Bill Rogers as copy-editor

A Stroll by My Western Bookshelves

In the 1940’s when I was a boy growing up in Toronto, Ontario, I often played at being a cowboy, much as a later generation of boys pretended to be men in outer space. I had a cowboy hat, and cloth, not leather chaps with fringe down the side covering my corduroy trousers. My feet, though, were shod in oxfords rather than expensive and probably unavailable cowboy boots. I did have six-shooters, a matched pair in their holsters—peacemakers—that cracked loud and clear as I pulled the trigger, the little red ribbon of used caps trailing from the hammer area of the gun. I still remember the odor of the miniscule amounts of black powder that exploded as I shot at an apparitional enemy, my arm reaching around the tree trunk or house corner I was safely behind. When I ran, and I ran everywhere, I was often on my imaginary horse. His name was Digger, so named because his sharp hooves could strike into the earth for additional traction and greater speed.

My first experience in the real American West came in February 1953 as our family drove from Toronto, across the United States, to the promised land of California. Where does the West begin? What defines a geographical area as being West? For me the Western United States began at the Mississippi River. As a twelve year old I was in the back seat of the car as we crossed over the river at St. Louis. Almost immediately I noticed some sort of magical change in the landscape and architecture. On the eastern side of the river was a familiar green land, the trees plentiful and deciduous, while on the western side the land gradually turned into various shades of brown and green, and the plant growth, due to sparse rainfall, became decidedly spottier. It also struck me that most of the houses and buildings on the land east of the river were constructed of brick—they were built to withstand blizzards, and the weight of snow piled high on rooftops. As we proceeded across the country I noticed that many more of the houses were constructed of wood and stucco, giving the impression of being less substantial than the buildings further east.

Viewing the countryside from the comfort of an automobile was the way I was introduced to this new country. We stopped at a few sweeping vistas and at shops selling genuine Indian artifacts. (Somewhere in a box hidden away I have a tumbler filled with sand from the Painted Desert designed to catch the eye with a desert scene complete with blue sky and white clouds.) We rolled along the endless highway and viewed distant plateaus seemingly out of a John Ford western. I almost expected to see John Wayne gallop toward us at the head of his troops as he did in the 1950 production Rio Grande. Then the Rocky Mountains came into view, looming larger and larger as we approached, and soon gobbled us up as we followed the thread of highway through them. Once over the Sierra we were finally in California, and I drank in vistas where cowboy movies could have been made. With boyish imagination I saw Hopalong Cassidy riding his horse Topper over the rocks and down the trails chasing after elusive bad hombres.

Such was the introduction to my west, all the land west of the Mississippi. As time passed I became more particular as to the landscape that moved me. It was eventually the Southwest that became an integral part of me. Gone were the heavy forests of pine, maple, oak, and birch of my youth, filled with songbirds, monarch butterflies, and cicadas. Replacing them were chaparral, Joshua trees, sagebrush, mustard plant, roadrunners, and cacti—extraordinarily delicate and beautiful when in springtime bloom. Even the thin air had a different odor and sensation to it than that of the distant north. The Southwest I came to know and enjoy encompasses the relatively lightly populated large geographic area that includes the states of New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and West Texas. More properly, Texas is the dividing line between the Eastern and Southern states and the beginning of the West. California, especially Southern California, could be a part of the Southwest, but the reality is that it is a Western state, plain and simple. It is culturally diverse with its many dense population centers and too industrialized to ever again be considered a true part of the Southwest. California also stretches so far north as to almost become a part of the Northwest. The Southwest conjures up, in my mind at least, an openness with largely uninhabited unobstructed vistas, vast Indian lands and pueblos, hidden canyons, deserts teeming with animal life, and a certain way, perhaps romantically conceived, of relaxed living—Indians, Anglos and Spanish dwelling in tune with the land. The Southwest, as mentioned earlier, also has a difference in the air, and a glorious light along with lonely desolation. Reading essays and the New Mexico novels by John Nichols both confirms and destroys these dream vistas I have long held in mind.

There still remain vast tracts of undeveloped land in California much of it protected by government edict, mostly mountainous desert regions, at least in the southern part of the state. Whenever I drive the highways to Las Vegas from the Los Angeles area, I can see what are called the wide open spaces, with many square miles of Joshua trees in view. I never take desert roads without thinking of the pioneers who traversed similar routes without the benefit of air-conditioning or, even more important, well-paved and well-maintained roads. Of the thousands that travel the highways on a daily basis, I wonder how many give thought to the pioneers who bumped or walked along rutted wagon tracks. Indeed I am curious how many today have any sense of the dramatic past of the lands they live in and travel through in comfort.

When we moved to California, my parents allowed me to bring along several books. They became the nucleus of what was to become my library, and were housed in wooden apple crates turned on their side. I am a reader who became a collector. Libraries change in content over the years as interests wax and wane. The only constant seems to be that libraries continue to grow in size. It’s a rare being that can eliminate a book before adding another to the collection—a collector never can!

Over the years I have been able to collect thousands of books on a variety of subjects, almost all as hardbacks. My interests have included English literature—I have a number of Dickens’s firsts and in Parts, Japanese haiku collections (such intriguing little glimpses of life), and books on China, mainly of nineteenth and early twentieth century history and daily life. I assembled a collection of all the works of Pearl S. Buck (The Good Earth), including magazine articles, letters signed by her, and even her final passport, but have since donated all of it to the Denison Library at Scripps College in Claremont. Then there is my William Blake collection, with many valuable and beautiful Trianon editions, and a collection of fine press books from many sources, including a large John Henry Nash collection.

Recently another area of collecting has steadily held my attention, and my library shelves now creak with a heavy load of Western Americana books. Over the past few years I have placed some two thousand volumes on them. About half relate to California with most of the rest being about the Southwest.

Most are historical or biographical documents, works written by those who experienced actual events or by scholars who have studied the past. There are some books about cowboys, and some about lawmen and outlaws. Lawrence Clark Powell once wrote that he did not like books about frontier scum, but they were and are a real component in the life of the West, and so are a part of my collection. Reading about the bad is as important as, and certainly more attention grabbing, than reading only about the good. How many of us would glance at a morning newspaper if only the deeds of Good Samaritans were shown? Fiction is also present in the collection, by recognized Western authors—those deeply imbued with the social and historical happenings of the past two hundred and more years. I also have a large number of bibliographical books, gathered primarily to offer guidance for future purchases, but often utilized to verify points in a first or early edition.

At bookshops it is sometimes sad to see dozens of books on books, many written more than a century ago. Although these are the volumes that list titles and explain books that had importance to those who wrote of them, many of them, and indeed their authors, are moribund and gathering or becoming dust. However, the idea that these titles were of significance to the long-dead bibliographical authors has impelled me to continue the tradition and create yet another listing of titles important to me, and perhaps worthy of consideration by readers of the present as well as by readers not yet born.

How to write in a personal way about a small part of my collection presented a problem. A mere listing, offering only the author, title, publisher and date, and perhaps a short synopsis of each book, would seem flat and dull. After all, I am not a book seller preparing a catalogue, nor am I, in the strictest sense of the word, a researcher preparing a bibliography. So I have decided to take an imaginary stroll by my bookcases, now and then pulling a volume down that has some significance for me (hopefully for the reader too) and explaining a little about it. Now this will undoubtedly lead to a listing, but one with, I think, more entertainment and even educational value than a bookseller’s catalogue. Where a particular volume was purchased and some information on the bookseller is provided for the benefit of interested readers. Prominent booksellers of the past, men such as the Dawsons, Jake Zeitlin, and the Howells deserve to be remembered and even celebrated. Since many of the books I mention are scarce and often unavailable to the general reader, some excerpts are quoted to give the flavor of the work being discussed.

Some years back I became aware of a well-known listing of books called the Zamorano 80, exactly eighty titles, selected in 1945 by members of the Zamorano Club of Los Angeles. Organized in 1928, this is a prestigious organization of bibliophiles, including scholars, fine press printers, and book collectors, who meet monthly to discuss bookish matters. It is a very clubbable group of men and women, and unless one is intent on being a hermit, it is quite impossible at a Zamorano Club meeting to remain on the sidelines without being drawn into conversation.

The eighty titles are considered to be distinguished books—fiction and non-fiction, political and natural histories—that are the cornerstone volumes for any significant library of Californiana. Before being elected as a member I had collected some thirty first edition copies. Since that time I have purchased an additional thirty-five first edition titles for my collection. Incidentally, my collection does include all the titles of the Zamorano 80, the fifteen I lack as first editions being represented either in facsimile or reprint copies. Some of the books mentioned on the following pages are from the Zamorano 80 listing, and when one is cited it will be so identified.

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Gordon and Bill Rogers taking a stroll.

Here is a little story relating to the Zamorano 80 that illustrates how individuals, looking at an identical listing, can perceive its value quite differently. I was at a monthly dinner meeting at the University Club in Pasadena when a prospective member seated to my left at the large circular table asked me just what the Zamorano 80 was all about. He said he had heard the term but had never been able to get a clear understanding of the books from anyone. As I was explaining a little about the titles and how they got on the list, a member sitting to my right interjected vigorously by saying that there wasn’t a worthwhile book on the entire list. Now this fellow is something of a curmudgeon, or would have one believe so, and had his negative remarks been to someone other than an uninformed guest, I would have let them pass without comment. In this case, however, I felt honor bound to defend at least some of the Zamorano titles. Although I would be among the first to agree that some of books do not qualify as memorable literature, or even as engaging history, I would add that they were originally selected to represent the political and cultural history of California from its beginnings and not necessarily for their readability or charm. To paraphrase W. S. Gilbert, there are some on the list that never would be missed. For example, there is Songs From the Golden Gate by Ina Coolbrith, a book of little known and rather conventional nineteenth century poetry by California’s first poet laureate. Or there is Ogden Hoffman’s Reports of Land Cases, important to an early California historian, but mind-numbingly boring and repetitive for most readers. However, books such as Dana’s Two Years Before the Mast, Marryat’s Mountains and