The Pride of Palomar

Pride of Palomar, The

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Illustrated by H. R. Ballinger and Dean Cornwell
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Title: The Pride of Palomar
Author: Peter B. Kyne

Release Date: September 8, 2005 [eBook #16674]
Language: English
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THE PRIDE OF PALOMAR
by
PETER B. KYNE
Author of Kindred of the Dust, etc.
Illustrated by H. R. Ballinger and Dean Cornwell
Cosmopolitan Book Corporation New York
MCMXXII

[Frontispiece: The man--Don Miguel Farrel.]

DEDICATION
FRANK L. MULGREW, ESQ. THE BOHEMIAN CLUB SAN
FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
DEAR FRIEND MUL.--
I have at last finished writing "The Pride of Palomar." It isn't at all what
I wanted it to be; it isn't at all what I planned it to be, but it does contain
something of what you and I both feel, something of what you wanted
me to put into it. Indeed, I shall always wish to think that it contains
just a few faint little echoes of the spirit of that old California that was
fast vanishing when I first disturbed the quiet of the Mission Dolores
with infantile shrieks--when you first gazed upon the redwood-studded
hills of Sonoma County.
You adventured with me in my quest for local color for "The Valley of

the Giants," in Northern California; you performed a similar service in
Southern California last summer and unearthed for me more local color,
more touches of tender sentiment than I could use. Therefore, "The
Pride of Palomar" is peculiarly your book.
On a day a year ago, when the story was still so vague I could scarcely
find words in which to sketch for you an outline of the novel I purposed
writing, you said: "It will be a good story. I'm sold on it already!" To
you the hacienda of a Rancho Palomar will always bring delightful
recollections of the gracious hospitality of Señor Cave Coutts, sitting at
the head of that table hewed in the forties. Little did Señor Coutts
realize that he, the last of the dons in San Diego County, was to furnish
copy for my novel; that his pride of ancestry, both American and
Castilian, his love for his ancestral hacienda at the Rancho Guajome,
and his old-fashioned garden with the great Bougainvillea in flower,
were the ingredients necessary to the production of what I trust will be
a book with a mission.
When we call again at the Moreno hacienda on the Rio San Luis Rey,
Carolina will not be there to metamorphose her home into a restaurant
and serve us galina con arroz, tortillas and frijoles refritos. But if she
should be, she will not answer, when asked the amount of the score:
"What you will, _señor_." Ah, no, Mul. Scoundrels devoid of romance
will have discovered her, and she will have opened an inn with a Jap
cook and the tariff will be _dos pesos y media_; there will be a strange
waiter and he will scowl at us and expect a large tip. And Stephen
Crane's brother, the genial judge, will have made his fortune in the
mine on the hill, and there will be no more California wine as a first aid
to digestion.
I had intended to paint the picture that will remain longest in your
memory--the dim candle-light in the white-washed chapel at the Indian
Reservation at Pala, during Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament--the
young Indian Madonna, with her naked baby lying in her lap, while she
sang:
"Come, Holy Ghost, creator blest, And in my heart take up thy rest."

But the picture was crowded out in the make-up. There was too much
to write about, and I was always over-set! I saw and felt, with you, and
regarded it as more poignantly pathetic, the tragedy of that little
handful of San Luisanos, herded away in the heart of those barren hills
to make way for the white man. And now the white man is almost gone
and Father Dominic's Angelus, ringing from Mission San Luis Rey,
falls upon the dull ear of a Japanese farmer, usurping that sweet valley,
hallowed by sentiment, by historical association, by the lives and loves
and ashes of the men and women who carved California from the
wilderness.
I have given to this book the labor