San Francisco's first entertainer, Stephen C. Massett, was the true Bohemian type. He was an artist, with an equal capacity for work and diversion, whose ruling principle was, "If your pocket is light make your heart light to match it; if your coat is torn, laugh while you you patch it."
Massett was a "red-faced little Englishman" with a wealth of copper-colored curls, a heavy mustache and goatee, a face full and mobile, with the nose of the philosopher and the eyes of the dreamer. He was poet-actor, song and dance artist, composer, essayist, lawyer, auctioneer, notary public, and "wandering minstrel in many lands." He was best known to San Francisco as "Jeems Pipes of Pipesville," his nom de plume as a writer of humorous prose. It pleased Mr. Massett, after his characteristic vein of humor, to call Pipesville a "ranch," but in reality it was "a little house not much larger than a full-sized Saratoga trunk" in a bog near the "bridge" on Mission Street.
Massett came to this country by sailing vessel from England in 1837. He articled himself in Buffalo, as a law student, where to "an occasional line of Blackstone, a half-page of Kent, or a speech of Charles Phillips," he devoured Shakespeare, "learning 'Richard III' by heart, a portion of "Othello," and a scene from 'Macbeth'." Finally concluding that his chances of becoming distinguished at the bar were slim, and not being able to penetrate at all into the mysteries of Coke, Kent, or Blackstone, he drifted. He eked out an existence in countinghouse and theater, as clerk, bookkeeper, salesman, wandering minstrels, from New York to Boston, to Charleston, back again to New York, to the Mediterranean, to Malta, Constantinople, and returned once more to New York, there to remain four years as clerk in the law firm of Brady & Maurice.
It was while he was living in Charleston, Massett confesses, that "happening to fall in love with a large pair of dark eyes, I gave vent to my feelings in the words and music of a song—my maiden effort—'When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming'."
A victim of the gold fever, Massett set sail by schooner for San Francisco in January, 1849. He was eight days crossing the Isthmus by muleback, jolt, bump, jolt, across streams and hills, into bogs and holes and out again. Then, for thirty days, he was becalmed on the Pacific, in dreadful heat, and with malignant fever among the passengers. The horror seemed never-ending. The ship was ninety-eight days making its way from Panama to the Golden Gate.
This awful journey, this need for some less perilous mode of travel, later inspired Massett to compose the stirring music of "Clear the Way." More than any other one thing, it is said, "Clear the Way" helped to create public sentiment in favor of a transcontinental railroad.
OR, SONG OF THE WAGON ROAD
Words by Charles Mackay; Music by Stephen C. Massett
(Composed for and dedicated to the Pioneers of the Great Pacific Railroad)
(The first stanza)
Men of thought, be up and stirring, night an day;On the morning of the ninety-ninth day after his departure from Panama, Massett set foot on the shore of San Francisco, then a city of tents and wooden shanties. The first man he met was Colonel J.D. Stevenson, whom he had known slightly in New York. Stevenson, who had been in command of the California regiment of volunteers which left New York for the Mexican war in 1846, had on several occasions visited the law offices of Brady & Maurice, where Massett was employed.
Sow the seed, withdraw the curtain,
Clear the way!
Men of action, aid and cheer, as ye may;
There's a found about to stream,
There's a light about to beam,
There's a warmth about to glow
There's a flower about to blow
There's a midnight blackness changing into gray,
Men of thought, and men of action,
Clear the way!
The Colonel was now a "land commissioner," though he could never quite live down his military past; he still habitually wore a closely buttoned frock coat and military fatigue cap . . . The Colonel, learning that Massett had no definite object in coming to California, but was just drifting about, suggested that he come the next day to his office. "You are just the young man for me," he said. "You of course understand drawing deeds, mortgages, et cetera; in fact the general routine of a lawyer's office. I have just purchased a tract of land—am going to build a new city—a second New York, sir! I call it, sir, 'New York of the Pacific,' sir! I'll make you Alcade, sir! Notary Public, sir! . . . The next day, Massett, after breakfast with the Colonel, went to his office, a wooden shanty, with a door that opened with a rusty old latch, and just behind the door a wooden bunk. Here, at high tide, the water came up to the doorsill, so that, as Massett later used to say, "I had to wade up to my middle to get into my crib." (The office was on Montgomery, between Washington and Jackson streets, with a sign announcing J.D. Stevenson's Land Office and Agency of Lots in New York of the Pacific.) . . .
Massett, however, was not long to be left undisturbed over any "arduous task" in the real estate office on Montgomery Street. It soon became noised about that the red faced little Englishman with the shock of copper-colored curly hair was a whole company in himself . . . a clamor for a show arose that nearly swept Massett off his feet, and soon the announcement of the opening show, on June 22d, set the town agog with excitement.
at the
COURT HOUSE, PORTSMOUTH SQUARE
BY MR. STEPHEN C. MASSETT
Composer of "When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming" and other Popular Ballads
Neither money nor pains were spared to make the evening a success. A piano—the only one in the state—was lent for the occasion by Mr. E. Harrison, Collector of the Port; it was moved from his office to the courthouse across Portsmouth Square, at a cost of sixteen dollars. This act was typical of the generosity of spirit that was to mark all the activities of San Francisco in the years to come. Massett fared not nearly so well in other sections of the country.
"I had a melodeon in those days," relates Massett, "as pianos were difficult to obtain, upon which I accompanied myself in my songs. Now this has not a very lively effect upon the performance, or the audience—the music emitted therefrom being a sort of cross between the accordion and a barrel organ. At the same time I have to keep the wind up by a perpetual movement of the right foot on the pedal. If for a second I miss, the bellows indignantly resigns its office. The machine gives a feeble and dying squeak, and I am left to the tender mercy of my audience.
"It was during a very pathetic rendering of the opening song, 'When the Moon on the Lake is Beaming,' that this fatal casualty happened, and to add to the miserable state of my feelings—which I trust will be fully appreciated by the reader—I was requested to 'dry up' by someone in the pit. "Now, whether this suggestion had anything to do with the hydraulic nature of the ballad in question, I know not, but considering it was only the commencement of a two hours' performance, I think my situation deserved some sympathy."
Massett modestly called his performance a "concert," and conducted the entire evenings' entertainment single-handed with such marked success that the more skeptical among the audience disputed earnestly whether he was in reality, as purported, one man, or a whole troupe.
Varying fortunes and his habit of drifting about found Massett acting as auctioneer at Sacramento, and again, as a "wandering minstrel," touring the mining and agricultural towns of northern California and Oregon. Of that tour, he recounts a pleasant evening spent at Grass Valley with Lola Montez in her "picturesque little villa guarded by a large-sized bear, sundry dogs, parrots, cats, etc."
His permanent abiding place, however, for many years was his beloved so-called ranch of Pipesville. It became famed the country over as the "poet's corner," the rendezvous of Bohemians like himself, whose art was greater than their recompense, yet who never failed to match their light pockets with still lighter hearts."
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