Victorian Ladies

Another prime winter day in Pacific Grove:  64 degrees, very slight breeze, mild swell from the west-northwest licking the rocks at the shoreline. Walk along the more historic of many historic lanes, you'll see tidy narrow Victorians shoulder to shoulder, sitting like old-fashioned ladies on a park bench, clutching their purses and looking straight ahead.  Each of the historic buildings sports a small wooden plank, dark green, painted in careful, sensible lettering. They declare their builder's names with an economy of style:  JR Rousch 1898, Robert Jameson 1904, Pearl Addler 1899.  The signs insist that the creator of the building is the most important person to have been associated with the property.  Dwellers therein since then are consequently lesser residents.  These are the folk who converted tent cabin spaces to permanent homes, the town's founders.  Annabelle Jones 1907, TR Kimble 1887, Bertha Quayle, 1902. Careful, just so, no more than that.

The homes have a look of a certain no-nonsense declarativeness; the colors are generally modest, the proportions correct and the materials sensible for the day.  There is, however, evidence of a little derring-do, Pacific Grove style, as evidenced by the occasional run of decorative "gingerbread" above the odd window here and there.  You can almost hear the original primly frocked ladies tittering quietly behind their fans as they considered the frivolity this decorative silliness represented. 

This town was populated by a wholly unsegregated community of Methodists for the longest time.  Their sedate and careful comportment is still reflected in the gridlines of the parallel streets, the many tall narrow steeples along Central Avenue that cap the churches and the original name of what is now called Lovers Point; it had originally been named Lovers of Jesus Point.  The ladies then would surely shudder at the sight of modern living practices now.  In spite of the obvious and permanent changes, gazing at the "ladies" of olden-times Pacific Grove  reaffirms their never-wavering influence on our lives now.