George Sterling | |
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![Sterling shortly before his death in 1926[1]](/en/File:GeorgeSterling.JPG) Sterling shortly before his death in 1926[1] | |
| Born | George Augustine Sterling III December 1, 1869 Sag Harbor, Suffolk County, New York City, U.S. |
| Died | November 17, 1926 (aged 56) San Francisco, California, U.S. |
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| Spouse | Caroline E. Rand |
George Sterling (December 1, 1869 – November 17, 1926) was an American writer based in the San Francisco, California Bay Area and Carmel-by-the-Sea. He was considered a prominent poet and playwright and proponent of Bohemianism during the first quarter of the twentieth century. His work was admired by writers as diverse as Ambrose Bierce, Robinson Jeffers, Jack London, Upton Sinclair, Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, and Clark Ashton Smith.
Sterling was born on December 1, 1869, in Sag Harbor, New York, the eldest of nine children. His father was Dr. George A. Sterling, a physician and Catholic convert, who was determined to make a priest of one of his sons. George was selected to attend, for three years, St. Charles College in Maryland. He was instructed in English by poet Father John B. Tabb.[2] His mother Mary was a member of the Havens family, prominent in Sag Harbor and the Shelter Island area. Her brother, Frank C. Havens, Sterling's uncle, went to San Francisco in the late 19th century and established himself as a prominent lawyer and real estate developer.[3][4] He married Caroline "Carrie" E. Rand (1872-1918) on February 7, 1896 in Oakland. They divorced in 1915.[5]
Sterling eventually followed his uncle to California in 1890 and worked as a real estate broker in Oakland, California. San Francisco publisher A. M. Robertson helped with the publication of his small volume of poetry in 1903, The Testimony of the Sun and Other Poems.[5] He quickly became a hero among the East Bay literati and artists, some of whom included Joaquin Miller, Jack London, Herman Whitaker, Xavier Martinez, Harry Leon Wilson, Perry H. Newberry, Henry Lafler, Gelett Burgess, and James Hopper.[2]
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In July 1905, Sterling moved 120 miles south to Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, an undeveloped coastal paradise, and soon established a settlement for like-minded Bohemian writers and other children of the counterculture.[6][7][8]
Sterling brought two boyhood friends, W.W. Woods and Gene Fenelon, to Carmel to construct an American Craftsman cottage on a one acre hilltop in the Eighty Acres tract, northeast of Ocean Avenue and Junipero Street. Artist Charles Rollo Peters and Robinson Jeffers were influential in Sterling's move to Carmel.[9] The house had a thirty-foot-long by eighteen-foot-wide living room with oiled redwood paneling, a fireplace, and chimney made from Carmel stone. It had views of Carmel Valley, Carmel River, and the Santa Lucia Mountains.[8]
In 1907, Sterling became good friend with James Hopper and his wife when they moved to Carmel. In 1913, Hopper and his wife purchased the cottage, when Sterling returned to San Francisco.[10][7]
In 1924, the house burned down and was rebuilt with thermotite cement blocks, a locally produced fireproof building material. In 1938, Hopper sold the house to John P. Gilbert and his wife, the parents of Mrs. Ungaretti.[11]
A parallel colony of artists and painters were also developing in this enclave. Carmel had been discovered by author Charles Warren Stoddard and others, but Sterling made it world-famous. In addition to the Bay Area residents mentioned above, Sterling managed to attract, as either visitors or semi-permanent residents, the satirical iconoclast Ambrose Bierce, novelist Mary Austin,[12] art photographer Arnold Genthe, and writer Clark Ashton Smith. He introduced Mabel Gray Young (Lachmund) to the artists and writers of the Bohemian Club and encouraged her to move to Carmel. In 1905, M.J. Murphy built a small redwood cottage for her, which became a gathering place for Genthe, Sterling, London, and Austin.[8]: p30
He was one of the founders of the Carmel art colony and the Carmel Arts and Crafts Club. On July 16, 1908, Sterling was toastmaster for thirty-two members of the club for the first annual breakfast held at the clubhouse.[13][5]
When a firestorm of controversy followed Sterling's publication of A Wine of Wizardry in the Cosmopolitan magazine of September 1907, other rebels flocked to Carmel, including Upton Sinclair and the MacGowan sisters.[citation needed]
The death by poison of the young poet Nora May French in Sterling's home drew national press coverage.[14][15][16][17] The suicide of Sterling's wife by cyanide only added fuel to the flames.[18]
Sterling's own diaries and correspondence reveal a more sedate, but still Bohemian community.[19] He often volunteered at Carmel's Forest Theater and once played a starring role in Mary Austin's play The Fire.[6][7]
He is depicted twice in Jack London's novels: as Russ Brissenden in the autobiographical Martin Eden (1909) and as Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon (1913).[citation needed]
Joseph Noel (1940) says that Sterling's poem, A Wine of Wizardry,[20] has "been classed by many authorities as the greatest poem ever written by an American author."
According to Noel, Sterling sent the final draft of A Wine of Wizardry to the normally acerbic and critical Ambrose Bierce. Bierce said "If I could find a flaw in it, I should quickly call your attention to it... It takes the breath away."
Sterling joined the Bohemian Club and acted in their theatrical productions each summer at the Bohemian Grove.[21] For the main Grove play in 1907, the club presented The Triumph of Bohemia, Sterling's verse drama depicting the battle between the "Spirit of Bohemia" and Mammon for the souls of the grove's woodmen.[22] Sterling also supplied lyric for the musical numbers at the 1918 Grove play.[21]
Bierce, who acclaimed Sterling's poem The Testimony of the Suns, in his "Prattle" column in William Randolph Hearst's San Francisco Examiner, arranged for the publication of A Wine of Wizardry in the September 1907 number of Cosmopolitan, which afforded Sterling some national notice. In an introduction to the poem, Bierce wrote "Whatever length of days may be according to this magazine, it is not likely to do anything more notable in literature than it accomplished in this issue by the publication of Mr. George Sterling's poem, 'A Wine of Wizardry.'" Bierce wrote to Sterling, "I hardly know how to speak of it. No poem in English of equal length has so bewildering a wealth of imagination. Not Spencer himself has flung such a profusion of jewels into so small a casket".
Sterling fell into drinking and his wife departed. Noel, a personal acquaintance, says that when he began the poem, Sterling "was persuaded that there was another world than that we know. He repeated this to me so frequently that it became a trifle tiresome. Of the means he employed to get a glimpse of that other world, I am not so sure." He observes that "many before Sterling had used narcotics to this end;" that "George, a doctor's son, had always had access to whatever drugs he fancied;" says that Sterling's wife said "that George had purloined a great quantity of opium from his brother Wickham," and speaks of "internal evidence in the poem" in which "Sterling writes his Fancy awakened with a 'brow caressed by poppybloom.'" Despite all this, Noel makes a point of saying "there is no direct evidence that Sterling used narcotics."[citation needed]
Sterling's sonnet "The Black Vulture" was first printed in March 1910. The poem was cited by Thomas E. Benediktsson in his book George Sterling as “a sonnet which became Sterling’s most consistently praised and most anthologized poem.”[23]
Despite such famous mentors as Bierce and Ina Coolbrith, and his long association with London, Sterling himself never became well known outside California.[citation needed]
Sterling's poetry is both visionary and mystical, but he also wrote ribald quatrains that were often unprintable and left unpublished. His style reflects the Romantic charm of such poets as Shelley, Keats and Poe, and he provided guidance and encouragement to the similarly inclined Clark Ashton Smith at the beginning of Smith's own career.[citation needed]
On November 15, 1926, H.L. Mencken visited Sterling in San Francisco.
"He was in great pain when I called upon him at the Bohemian Club, but his mind was clear, and we had a brief and friendly palaver. I came away convinced that he was desperately ill. He showed every sign of complete exhaustion. That was on Monday. On Tuesday morning I went to see him again, but found him sleeping. On Tuesday night his door was locked, and the transom showed darkness within. I assumed he was still sleeping, and went away. No doubt he was already dead."[24]
Sterling died by suicide in his room at the Bohemian Club; his body was discovered on November 17, 1926.[25] He was 56 years old. Sterling carried a vial of cyanide for many years. When asked about it he said, "A prison becomes a home if you have the key".[citation needed] He was buried in Oakland, California.[5] Mencken wrote: "In the end, with age and illness upon him, he put an end to his life, quietly, simply and decently. It was, I think, a good life—and a good death."[24]
Sterling is acclaimed as one of America's greatest poets. He is best-known for his poem that was delivered to the city of San Francisco, "The Cool, Grey City of Love."[4][5]
There is the Sterling Park dedicated to George Sterling in San Francisco at the corner of Hyde and Greenwich Streets, atop Russian Hill. It was originally named "George Sterling Glade" in 1928. It was rededicated in 2005 as “Sterling Park,” with a plaque donated by the Friends of Sterling Park and Russian Hill neighbors.[26][27]
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![Portrait photograph of George Sterling taken by Arnold Genthe February 9, 1904[28]](/en/File:Portrait_photograph_of_George_Sterling.jpg)
