August 1851
My Dearest Friend Louisa May,
I write once again, begging you, please don’t be sore at my contrary opinions about your father. I only meant to say I admired his efforts at experimental thinking, even as I understand his meager financial contributions cause you great discomfort. Perhaps I find myself jealous, as you enjoy a family, whole and together and in one place, even as the proximity strangles your sensibilities. Please forgive me and write to me soon, as I am in great need of your friendship, evermore now, as our little family on the Goodwin river claim has broken up. Álvaro has moved back to Spain, bestowing riches upon his family, with pride. His leaving feels as if the hardened scab of pain over losing Lucy has been ripped open, my insides oozing out messy. I miss the sound of beauty coming from his guitar, my world now filled with bleak silence in its place, deafening me in the void of his favor. I’ve no choice but to bind myself back up, wrap the festering loss under a bandage of courageous living. After all, it’s not as if he’s dead.
I value the importance of your friendship immeasurably, and am eternally grateful for the letters you have written, especially the last one with your Flower Fables, written as Flora Fairfield. You must know the ending poem from your Frost King fable lifts me up, with two lines in particular enlightening my spirit beyond measure. “Thus by Violet’s magic power, All dark shadows passed away . . .” If only I possessed half the magic of Violet, or had help from those clever little fairies. Although I do appreciate your faith in me, and am bathed in the wonder of the glorious world you’ve created with trees and flowers and birds and joy. It reminds me to love my haven here, in all its wild unpredictability. No doubt, Flower Fables gives little Ellen Emerson a great joy knowing you wrote them specifically for her. Surely, the sweet girl is yet of an age to understand the true importance of literature in a woman’s life. Dare I say, it is the life force that keeps us moving forward, blotting out our troubles with soothing words of imagination.
I think often of your troubles going out to service. It must’ve been simply dreadful, and paid only four dollars working yourself to the quick for the hardly honorable James Richardson! Obviously, the promise of employment as his poor sister’s companion showed itself as a terrible ruse to harass your womanliness. Count yourself fortunate you had the wherewithal to escape without blackening the man’s boots. I fear what might’ve befallen you succumbing to such humiliation. You must now reflect upon the whole horrible experience as a trove of material from which to write. Fodder for Flora, as one might say.
As for our situation, we’ve built a bookshop up in Coyoteville, named Split Rock Books and Prints, after my favorite spot along the American River. It will soon yield a tidy profit, as Split Rock Books is the only place to acquire literature in all of the placers. I plan to sell my engravings too, after improving my printing technique with diligent practice. It may seem as if I’m building a business at the ends of the earth, but Coyoteville is becoming the center of the universe with a tremendous amount of gold fueling a progressive society built on the merits of equality, effort, and ingenuity. The town draws in a spectacular collection of the most ambitious folks around America and the world looking to improve their fortunes. Despite the hordes of miners burrowing like coyotes into the banks of Deer Creek, it’s the prettiest little place in the placers, with water sauntering through the town slow and predictable like a proper lady walking to church on a Sunday, and nothing at all like the wild tempest of the American down in the ravine. Perhaps by Boston standards it’s not quite as sophisticated, but it vibrates with an energy I can’t quite describe. Buzzing, but more. Ambitious and urgent. There are now 150 homes and businesses in the two-mile radius surrounding the town. The streets are situated like spokes of a wheel with mule trails leading up to miners’ tents and cabins on seven surrounding hills, like in Rome, with aspiring names—Piety, Prospect, Boulder, Aristocracy, Lost, American, and Wet Hill. Lost Hill isn’t meant to be negative, like being lost physically, but meant to imply being lost in pursuit of a new sort of living with delight. At the center of town is Luenza’s El Dorado Hotel, and Split Rock Books and Prints lies up the road with a dozen other businesses: an assay office, a post office, two general stores, three blacksmiths, a wagon wheeler, two liveries, a barber, two bathhouses, a bakery, one shoemaker, two churches, eleven saloons and gambling houses, and four hotels. So you see, I’m not stuck out in the wilderness but am living in the center of new society full of possibility and potential.
Nate continues to manage our affairs down on the river claim, with Nemacio at his side as his partner. I’ve come to understand Nate holds a great affection for the man, which I find charming in its brotherly fraternity. Our triangle is not at all like that tragic tale of yours, The Rival Painters. Two in love with one. I am not at all the self-denying Madeline in your story, banishing my heart in work, “with a woman’s strength, all thoughts of love were banished.” Rest assured, with Split Rock Books and Prints, I now live with purpose.
Please post me in Coyoteville, as I’ve planted myself and intend to grow even stronger roots as I await your next letter with great expectation.
Your friend pursuing possibility in California,
EP