CHAPTER 18
Frances Fuller Victor
For there is a perennial nobleness, and even sacredness, in Work. . . . Work . . . is in communication with Nature; the real desire to get Work done will itself lead one more and more to truth, to Nature's appointments and regulations, which are truth.
THOMAS CARLYLE.
For all our changing philosophy in regard to work, it will still establish a fellow-feeling more surely than any of the other shining virtues. It is a magnet to sympathy; it is excelled only by death in its power to disarm criticism. By some mysterious, mesmeric kinship, we are drawn towards the toiler.
In Oregon literature the one who worked the hardest, who labored the longest without ease, was a woman. Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor, who has been often quoted in this book, wrote about the Pacific Coast and Oregon for 39 years, from the time she began in San Francisco in 1863 until she died in a Yamhill Street boarding house in Portland in 1902.
Her industry was accompanied by commensurate ability but did not have commensurate rewards. She was poor and widowed and childless and kinless in the state to which she devoted her abundant energy, to which she gave the first rounded consciousness of its own cultural depth and richness. She who has left recollections of Oregon men and women by the hundred, is herself personally recollected hardly at all in Portland today, and remembrances of her are seldom found in the writings of her contemporaries. She who more than any other one person spent an arduous life gathering and recording the history of Oregon, has herself been neglected by history. In the volumes of the Oregon Historical Quarterly there is only one extended article about her, reprinted from the Oregonian soon after her death, and entitled "Historian of the Northwest." Oregon historians for half a century have taken her vast beneficiences to them for granted, and have not turned aside in warmth of gratitude from their own special projects for tribute or biography. In life she gave much and received little. After her death the complacency of acceptance has largely continued.
All this, however, did not affect the amount and quality of her work. She has left no evidence of unhappiness in her own attitude, no expression of complaint. Hers was one of the great motivations, coming wholly from within. She was the perfect observer, living quietly and moving unobtrusively in a colorful and historic land, all of which she saw, all of which she knew.
Although she was one of the ablest and probably the most voluminous of writers on Oregon, she does not now enjoy a popular fame corresponding to her importance. Thousands who have read her histories thought they were reading something by Hubert Howe Bancroft. Her other books, some of which were once widely read, are all now out of print and are sought by collectors, including The Early Indian Wars of Oregon, which the Oregon legislature hired her to write and the supply of which, on sale by the secretary of state's office, was long ago exhausted. The historic facts she so laboriously gathered and preserved are now mostly read in the books of others.
Among her writings is a book of poems and a combined volume of poems and tales, which add to her status as perhaps the leading Oregon historian a definite status as a writer of creative literature.
The latter book, published in 1877, was called The New Penelope and Other Stories and Poems. It contained ten stories, originally contributed to the Overland Monthly and other western magazines: "The New Penelope," with its setting in Northern California; "A Curious Interview," a tale of Nootka Sound; "Mr. Ela's Story," an episode of the Rogue River country ; "On the Sands," about Teresa of Tillamook Head and her four lovers; "An Old Fool," a story of the mouth of the Columbia River; "How Jack Hastings Sold His Mine," "What They Told Me at Wilson's Bar," "Miss Jorgensen," "Sam Rice's Romance," and "El Tesoro," all located in Northern California. They have some ingenuity of plot, and high values of mood, characterization and style, which indicate that she had considerable gift for fiction if she could have had time from history to develop it. In her preface she called the stories "sketches of Pacific Coast life" and said of them: "If they have merit, it is be cause they picture scenes and characters having the charm of newness and originality, such as belong to border life."
The book contained 40 poems, and one feels that she thought better of them than she did the stories, for in 1900 she reprinted about half of them in a separate volume, with additions. In The New Penelope preface she said "they embody feelings and emotions common to all hearts, East or West; and as such, I dedicate them to my friends on the Pacific Coast, but most especially in Oregon;" and she referred to them in a discussion of Oregon literature in Bancroft's History of Oregon:
A few local poems of merit have been written by Mrs. F. F. Victor, who came to Oregon by way of San Francisco in 1865, and published several prose books relating to the country.
Following is a list of her books, which are in addition to many magazine articles, letters of travel, poems and "quite a mass of manuscripts on historical and other subjects" left in her boarding house room at the time of her death:
Poems, 1851
She said of these in Bancroft's History of Oregon: "Most Ohio people of the period of 1851 will remember a volume of poems brought out by Frances and her sister Metta Victoria, about this time, and while the authors were still in their teens."Florence Fane Sketches, 1863-65
This is usually listed in the bibliography of her works, though the author of this history has been unable actually to locate it as a book. The sketches were contributed to the San Francisco Bulletin from 1863 to 1865.The River of the West.
Hartford, 1870.All Over Oregon and Washington. San Francisco, 1872.The Woman's War Against Whisky; or, Crusading in Portland. Portland, George H. Himes, 1874.Eleven Years in the Rocky Mountains. Hartford, 1877.Much the same as The River of the West, with slight changes of content.
Parts of Bancroft's History of the Northwest Coast. 2 vols. San Francisco, 1884.Bancroft's History of Oregon. 2 vols. San Francisco, 1886, 1888.Bancroft's History of California. Vols. 6 and 7. San Francisco, 1890.Bancroft's History of Washington, Idaho and Montana. San Francisco, 1890.Bancroft's History of Nevada, Colorado, and Wyoming. San Francisco, 1890.Numerous biographies throughout the Bancroft series.Atlantis Arisen; or, Talks of a Tourist About Oregon and Washington. Philadelphia, 1891.The Early Indian Wars of Oregon. Salem, 1894.Poems, 1900.
A little green-cloth book of 109 pages, called the "Author's Edition," without place or printer's name but produced for her by Howe, Davis & Kilham in Portland.
Genealogical History of the Walworth Family of New England. Unpublished.
From 1878 to 1890 she was employed by Hubert Howe Bancroft in his great history factory in San Francisco. This man, who exploited her talents and energies for a dozen years, presented a biographical and appreciative account of her along with his other helpers, in the 39th and last volume of his series entitled Literary Industries:
Frances Fuller was born in the township of Rome, New York, May 23, 1826. . . .
Frances was the eldest of the family, and was but thirteen years of age when her father settled in Wooster, Ohio. Her education after that was derived from a course in a young ladies' seminary, no great preparation for literary work. At the age of fourteen she contributed to the county papers; when a little older, to the Cleveland Herald, which paid for her poems, some of which were copied in English journals. Then the New York papers sought her contributions, and finally she went to New York for a year to become acquainted with literary people, and was very kindly treated—too kindly, she tells me, because they persuaded her at an immature age to publish a volume of her own and her sister Metta's poems. But worse things were in store than this mistaken kindness. Just at the time when a plan was on foot too make the tour of Europe with some friends, the ill-health of her mother recalled her to Ohio and the end of all her dreams. What with nursing, household cares, and the lack of stimulating society, life began to look very real. A year or two later her father died, and there was still more real work to do, for now there must be an effort to increase the family income month by month. In this struggle Metta was most successful, having a great facility of invention, and being a rapid writer, and stories being much more in demand than poems brought more money. Frances possessed a wider range of intellectual powers, of the less popular because more solid order. The sisters were twin souls, and very happy together, "making out," as Charlotte Bronte says, the plan of a story or poem by their own bright fireside in winter, or under the delicious moonlight of a summer evening in Ohio. A position was offered them on a periodical in Detroit, and they removed to Michigan. This did not prove remunerative, and was abandoned. By any by came marriage, and the sisters were separated, Metta going to New York, where she led a busy life. Their husbands were brothers. Frances married Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer, who came to California under orders in 1863. Mrs. Victor accompanied him. . . . At San Francisco, she found the government paying in greenbacks. To make up for the loss of income something must be done. So she wrote for the Bulletin city editorials and a series of society articles, under the nom de plume of "Florence Fane", which were continued for nearly two years, and elicited much pleasant comment by their humorous hits, even the revered pioneers not being spared. About the time the war closed, Mr. Victor resigned and went to Oregon, where, early in 1865, Mrs. Victor followed him, and was quickly captivated by the novelty, romance, and grandeur of the wonderful north-west. Her letters in the Bulletin, articles in the Overland Monthly, and her books, All Over Oregon and Washington and The River of the West, with other writings, show how cordially she entered into the exploration of a fresh field. In 1878 she accepted a hint from me, and came readily to my assistance, with greater enthusiasm than one less acquainted with her subject could be expected to feel. In ability, conscientiousness, and never-ceasing interest and faithfulness Mrs. Victor was surpassed by none.
Joseph Gaston, who, as a writer himself of thick books of history, could sympathetically measure her ability and her energy, said of her in The Centennial History of Oregon:
Frances Fuller Victor fills a large page in Oregon history, not only as an historian but also as a poet of great merit. The late Harvey W. Scott being once asked who was the most reliable historian in Oregon, replied: "Oregon has but one historian—Mrs. F. F. Victor." This was high praise from a competent judge. Mrs. Victor's work as a writer of Oregon history is greater than that of all others combined; and as a collector of Oregon history her work is second only to that of Geo. H. Himes. . . .
Mrs. Victor had collected all the material for the Oregon history when the Bancroft Publishing House offered her ten years' work on their histories on condition that she would turn over her collections to Mr. Bancroft—who wrote history by proxy. Mrs. Victor accepted this proposition because she had not the money to bring out her own book. . . . She was married to Henry C. Victor, a naval engineer, who was ordered to the Pacific coast in 1863. Mrs. Victor followed her husband in 1865, and they settled on land in Columbia County and tried to develop a salt spring, and did make some salt. Mr. Victor was drowned in the sinking of an ocean steamship—the Pacific, November 4, 1875, south bound from Victoria, B. C. —and his widow commenced then to write Oregon history.
After the Bancroft series was completed in 1890, she returned to Oregon, living in Salem and Portland. The best years of her life had been given to those 39 volumes that sold up and down the Pacific Coast at from $175 to $390 a set, and she came back to Oregon at the age of 64, so little the recipient of the Bancroft liberality that we get the following recollection of her by Fred Lockley:
When I lived in Salem, I became acquainted with Frances Fuller Victor. She had written for Bancroft, the history of Oregon, also the history of Washington, and was the author of a number of books published under her own name. At the time I knew her, she was boarding at the home of E. M. Waite, the old-time printer of Salem. In spite of her years of literary activity, Mrs. Victor was compelled to earn her living at selling face cream and other toilet articles from door to door.
This was only a dark interlude. Literature had never given her much, but she had served it too long and too well not to be able still to exact a living from it as an old woman from 64 to 76. The next year after her Oregon return Atlantis Arisen was published, not by the Bancroft firm she had so recently quitted and for which she had done so much, but by Lippincott of Philadelphia. Then she secured from the Oregon legislature the $1500 assignment to write the history of the Indian wars. She contributed to the magazines and newspapers, and worked on the Walworth genealogy until her patron died. She had to face her necessity alone and she won. She had no children; her sister, Mrs. S. C. Adams of Salem, had died; the only relative she had left on the Pacific Coast was a cousin in Walla Walla. "She continued her literary labors to the last. . . . The income from her work and a small pension maintained her in modest comfort."
During the last four years of her life she lived in Portland at the boarding house of Mrs. Emma M. Gilmore, for one year at 624 Salmon Street, and for three years at 501 Yamhill Street, where she died on November 14, 1902, at the age of 76. An editorial in the Oregonian two days later said of her:
Frances Fuller Victor, whose death occurred in this city Friday afternoon, was a notable figure in the literary life of Oregon and the Northwest. She was not one of the earliest pioneers of the state, but she was a pioneer in its literatureand one of the earliest compilers of its history. Her style was graceful rather than forceful, and though, from the difficulty experienced in collecting data for her early historical work, this was not always accurate, still it may be truly said that accuracy was Mrs. Victor's aim in her historical work, and if she had been able to revise her books, as she fondly desired to do, many errors that unavoidably crept into them would have been eliminated by her own hand. . . .
Her diligence in historical research, combined with her ability to present facts of history in an attractive way, secured for her employment for a number of years in San Francisco upon the Bancroft historical series. This work ended, she returned to this city, where for several years she has lived in quiet seclusion a life of gentle womanliness and patient endeavor, waiting for the end.
The life of Frances Fuller Victor is in itself a history. It touched at many vital points the life of a wide section still too new to civilization for its full and permanent his tory to be written. Those who knew her in the earlier as well as the later years know that she was always a struggler in the ranks of labor, though never an obtrusive one. Disap pointment rather than success followed many of her endeav ors, but she kept through all a gentle courage, admirable in the days of her effective strength, and became touched with, pathos in the weakness that attended her declining years. Among the wide circle of acquaintances formed by Mrs. Victor during the long years of her active literary labors she left many friends who recognized the value of her work and admired the sterling qualities of her character. The voices of her critics, never harsh, will take on gentler tones or cease to be heard, and Frances Fuller Victor will take her place among those who did what they could for those that are to come after them. A woman so utterly alone in the world as regards kindred as was Mrs. Victor is in her age a pathetic figure on the dial of time. Her passing is in the course of nature, and can only be viewed in the light of a gentle release from untoward conditions.
"By her death," said William A. Morris, "there was removed the most versatile figure in Pacific Coast literature." Brief selections will be given from her history, her poetry and her fiction.
Character of Jason Lee
From Bancroft's History of Oregon, 1886
I would not present Jason Lee as a bad man, or as a good man becoming bad, or as worse now, while tricking his eastern directors and cheating McLoughlin out of his land, than while preaching at Fort Hall or seeking the salvation of the dying Indian children. He was the self-same person throughout, and grew wiser and better if anything as the years added experience to his life. He was endeavoring to make the most of himself, to do his best for his country, whether laboring in the field of piety or patriotism; and if on abandoning the missionary work and in engaging in that of empire-building he fell into ways called devious by business men, it must be attributed to that specious line of education which leads to the appropriation of the Lord’s earth by ministers of the Lord, in so far as the power is given them. In all things he sought to do the best, and he certainly was doing better work, work more beneficial to mankind, and more praiseworthy, as colonizer, than he had formerly achieved as missionary. He had passed through his five years of silence during which time Pythagoras had been washing out his mind and clearing his brain of rubbish, and being now in a position to learn something, he was fast learning it.
Polk County Hills
From The New Penelope, 1877. Renamed "Autumn in the Hills" in Poems, 1900
And all the air was gray
With delicate mists, blown down
From hilltops by the south wind's balmy breath;
And all the oaks were brown
As Egypt's kings in death.
The maple's crown of gold
Laid tarnished on the wold;
The alder, and the ash, the aspen and the willow,
Wore tattered suits of yellow.
Had left some scarlet stains
Of color on the landscape's neutral ground; :Those fine ephemeral things,
The winged notes of sound,
That sing the “Harvest Home”
of ripe Autumn in the gloam
Of the deep and bosky woods, in the field and by the river,
Sang that day their best endeavor.
Shall we meet, face to face,
Her loveliest self to see—
Meet Nature, at her sad autumnal rites,
And learn the mystery
Of her unnamed delights?”
Then you said: “Let us go
Where the late violets blow
In hollows of the hills, under dead oak leaves hiding;
We'll find she's there abiding.”
Has its grace passed away—
Its tenderest, dream-like tone,
Like one of Turner's landscapes limned on air—
Has its fine perfume flown
And left the memory bare?
Not so; its charm is still
Over wood, vale and hill—
The ferny odor sweet, the humming insect chorus,
The spirit that before us
To the blue, breezy heights.
O, beautiful hills that stand
Serene 'twixt earth and heaven, with the grace
Of both to make you grand,—
Your loveliness leaves place
For nothing fairer, fair,
And complete beyond compare,
O, lovely purple hills! O, first day of November,
Be sure that I remember.
He Saw Captain Cook
From "A Curious Interview" in The New Penelope, 1877
"You must be an old man, since these waters are named after you," suggested I. "Who was the first white man you remember seeing?"
"Hyas tyee, Cappen Cook. Big ship—big guns!" answered Nittinat, warming with the recollection.
"This is a good lead," remarked Charlie, sotto voce; "follow it up, Pierre."
"You were a child then? very little," making a movement with my hand to indicate a child's stature.
"Me a chief—many warriors—big chief. Ugh!" said the mummy, with kindling eyes.
At this barefaced story, Charlie made a grimace, while he commented in an undertone: "But it is ninety-six years since Captain Cook visited this coast. How the old humbug lies."
At this whispered imputation upon his honor, the old chief regarded us scornfully; though how such a parchment countenance could be made to express anything excited my wonder.
"Me no lie. Nittinat's heart big. Nittinat's heart good. Close tum-tum, ugh!
"White man's eyes are closed—his heart is darkened," said I, adopting what I considered to be a conciliatory style of speech. "My friend cannot understand how you could have known Captain Cook so long ago. All the white men who knew the great white chief have gone to their fathers."
"Ugh, all same as Cappen Cook. He no believe my cousin Wiccanish see big Spanish ship 'fore he came."
How did he make him see it at last?" asked Charlie, . . .
"Wiccanish showed Cook these," replied Nittinat, drawing from beneath his robe . . .