Musical accompaniment: In the Sweet By and By by Elizabeth Cotten.

In 1936, the great photographer Arnold Genthe wrote his autobiography, As I Remember. I will come back to that in a moment.  First, I want to show you one of his autochromes.

We see the great photographer sitting beside the window of his house at 850 Sutter Street in San Francisco. He moved there in the 1890s and his first studio was at his residence.

Isn’t it strange to look at this halcyon scene knowing that within a year or two of this photograph, the place was destroyed by a dynamite blast?

Arnold Genthe reading by the window of his house in San Francisco

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In his autobiography, Genthe wrote vividly of the great earthquake.

One of the great social events of the opera season in the spring of 1906 was the joint appearance of Enrico Caruso and Olive Fremstad in Carmen. A large and enthusiastic audience filled the house for this gala occasion. It was the night of April 17th. After a quiet supper party with some friends, I walked home and went to bed with the music of Carmen still singing in my ears.

It seemed as if I had scarcely been asleep when I was awakened by a terrifying sound-the Chinese porcelains that I had been collecting in the last years had crashed to the floor. (My interest in Chinese porcelains ever since then has been purely platonic.) The whole house was creaking and shaking, the chandelier was swinging like a pendulum, and I felt as if I were on a ship tossed about by a rough sea. “This can’t go on much longer,” I said to myself. “When a house shakes like this, the ceiling is bound to collapse. As soon as the plaster begins to fall, I’ll cover my head and accept what comes.”

An ominous quiet followed.

Genthe described wandering the streets. His observations were a mixture of sad and funny things, heroism and pettiness.  Not everyone was panicked, despite continuing aftershocks. The photographer himself seemed quite calm. He saw his friends, Milton and Mabel Bremer, and the three of them went to the St. Francis Hotel, which had not been damaged by the earthquake.

“When we arrived we saw that we were not the only ones who had had the brilliant idea of breakfasting there. The lobby and the dining room were crowded.

“Near the entrance we saw Enrico Caruso with a fur coat over his pajamas, smoking a cigarette and muttering, “‘Ell of a place! ‘Ell of a place!” He had been through many earthquakes in his native Italy but this one was too much for him. It appeared that when he was awakened by the shock, he had tried his vocal cords without success.

“‘Ell of a place! I never come back here.” And he never did.

“Inside the hotel, people in all kinds of attire from evening clothes to nightgowns went milling about. There was no gas or electricity, but somehow hot coffee was available which, with bread and butter and fruit, made a satisfying breakfast. When I asked the waiter for a check he announced with a wave of his hand, “No charge today, sir. Everyone is welcome as long as things hold out.”

After breakfast, Genthe was eager to photograph the scenes around him. We’ve examined his pictures from that day in many past posts like this one but here is what he said about the people.

“[M]en and women cooked on improvised stoves on the sidewalks and as the crowds passed they called out invitations to stop for a rest and a cup of coffee. Up on the hill the wealthy were taking strangers into their homes, regardless of any risk they were running…

I have often wondered, thinking back, what it is in the mind of the individual that so often makes him feel himself immune to the disaster that may be going on all around him. So many whom I met during the day seemed completely unconscious that the fire which was spreading through the city was bound to overtake their own homes and possessions. I know that this was so with me. All morning and through the early afternoon I wandered from one end of the city to the other, taking pictures without a thought that my studio was in danger.

Genthe’s Sutter Street home was dynamited as the massive fire spread.

“From a safe distance I watched with others the dynamiting of the block of our homes,” he wrote. “There was no expression of despair. (‘Well, there it goes!’ ‘That’s that!’ being the only comments heard.)” 

Genthe gave us our best glimpse of his character in a brief aside he offered about that day. Some friends invited him into their Van Ness home for a drink. As they raised their glasses another aftershock rattled the house and everyone but the photographer and his hostess fled. He offered a line from Horace as a toast: “And even if the whole world should collapse, he will stand fearless among the falling ruins.”

Arnold Genthe relocated to Carmel-by-the-Sea after the earthquake. A few years after disaster destroyed his studio and his work, we find Mr. Genthe once more taking a rest from his photography by his window.

Arnold Genthe seated by the window in his Carmel, California bungalow

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