Tuesday, May 17, 2011

It Is a Lonely Life They Lead There

Cahoon Ranch 03
(Apparently) abandoned house on the site of the Finch Ranch, upper Carmel Valley.
We spent an hour in Mr. Finch’s house that evening. Two brothers, Americans, have a ranch, and are raising horses. Mrs. Finch seemed a meek, sad woman, with more culture and sensibility than her husband, and evidently pining for other lands and other scenes here in this lonely place, away from the world, almost away from the “rest of mankind.” The house was of sticks plastered with mud, the floor, the earth. Two pretty little girls were playing upon a grizzly skin before the fire. It is a lonely life they lead there.
--William H. Brewer, June 4, 1861

3 comments:

Generik said...

That's so sad!

ahab said...

Nice place to visit but...

Tom Hilton said...

Yeah, it is. Brewer slips into a very melancholic tone from time to time, and I sometimes wonder how much is empathy and how much is projection of his own unarticulated sorrow (he had lost his wife & infant son less than a year before this).