Lady at the O.K. Corral Read Online Free Page A

travelers reached the western coast of Central America, they boarded another overcrowded steamship. Josephine, then about eight years old, remembered almost nothing of the journey. Since she tried to eliminate any impression that her family was ever poor, she would have been silent anyway about an unpleasant three weeks in steerage.
    The San Francisco that greeted the Marcus family was still recovering from the 1868 earthquake, but its economy was robust. The chaotic boomtown atmosphere of the gold rush years was gone; schools, community centers, and restaurants replaced brothels and saloons. The completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869 would soon connect San Francisco even more to the outside world. The city was growing up, but it retained a strong entrepreneurial spirit.
    Although Josephine’s new neighborhood was a step up from Five Points, middle-class stability and status still eluded the Marcus family. Josephine would later claim that her father had a “prosperous mercantile business” that gave her a “comfortable and prosperous” home, but all evidence points to a more precarious existence. Hyman was still a baker. Local directories show that the family moved frequently—at least six times in their first ten years in San Francisco, all within the lower-class sections of Ward 4.
    Not all Jews were so sure that the wealth and influence of San Francisco was a good thing. Among the most fascinating portraits of nineteenth-century San Francisco is that of Israel Joseph Benjamin. Born in 1818 in the province of Moldavia (now Moldava and part of Romania), Benjamin had some commercial failures before seizing on the idea that he might emulate the great medieval traveler Benjamin of Tudela and wander the world as an itinerant preacher and commentator on contemporary Jewish life. Supported by donations and hosted by curious local leaders, he traveled extensively throughout the Near East, North Africa, and Europe before sailing to the United States.
    Benjamin saw much to admire in the thriving cultural and intellectual life of American cities. But he was unsparing in his contempt for their emphasis on commercial success and indifference to high culture and scholarship. Repelled by the materialism he saw, he concluded that neglect of learning was the source of all American misfortunes, not only those of Jews. “Will America be able to become a nation of princes without the education of a prince?” he asked rhetorically. In his view, young people who were brought up to be merchants, bankers, farmers, and mechanics were not destined to become independent, compassionate, or intellectual.
    Benjamin devoted one of his longest stays to San Francisco. He observed that the pinnacle of society belonged to the Germans, and the lowest class rungs were the provinces of Polish Jews. He was amazed to discover that when a major fire destroyed two streets and eight large warehouses in San Francisco, the Eureka Benevolent Association, one of several Jewish social services organizations, turned its back on Polish Jews made homeless by the fire. Benjamin related the sad tale of a religious Polish Jew who applied for help to feed his many children. Refused by the board of directors—which included mostly Germans and Frenchmen—he went to an American Christian and told him the story; according to Benjamin, “that person went to the president of the society and shamed him into giving the Pole money.”
    SOON AFTER THE Marcus family arrived in San Francisco, Josephine’s half sister Rebecca married Aaron Wiener, a clothing salesman who was also from Prussia. Josephine never forgot the sight of her father’s stovepipe hat and long tails, her mother’s wine-colored moiré, the bride’s pale silk lavender dress trimmed with white satin, and her own yellow high-button shoes. She recalled her errand to purchase “diamond dust” to sprinkle over the bride’s elaborate,