Page:Scrapbook of a Historian - Frances Fuller Victor.djvu/5

Rh when she looked back to her long, profitless hitch in the San Francisco history factory.

In general, as a woman historian in a period when woman's sphere was decidedly the home, she had been shoved around a good deal by men historians. Smug masculine attitudes were not lacking in the case of W. L. Adams, Elwood Evans, H. S. Lyman, Judge Deady, and even Jesse Applegate. She had to fight for any chance at all to write history and so, of course, developed away from meekness and silence in the matter of her rights.

Of Jesse Applegate she did not fail to speak in complimentary terms in her published writings, calling him the "Sage of Yoncalla," but in the Deady correspondence there is a letter of hers giving a somewhat different private opinion.

In a scrapbook article from the Salem Statesman in 1895 she says:

"I shall never forget my reception by the "Sage of Yoncalla," Jesse Applegate. He stood at the gate when the stage drove up. His philosophical head, close shaven, with its large ears stand ing almost at right angles to his face, his large mouth stretched wide in a cordial yet half-quizzical smile, together with his gaunt figure and farmer's garb, made altogether a most unexpected picture—for I had heard a great deal about this Oregon statesman, and looked for something different. Ten days were spent at his house, the evenings of which were devoted to historical reminiscences, and of all the minds I have ever come in contact with I think his the most independent; for, though stored with learning, he did not draw his ideas from other men's stock, but thought for himself. As he liked to talk, in his deliberate, reflective way, I only had to listen."

But 12 years before, on August 21, 1883, she had written the following letter to Judge Deady:

. . . Yes, Mr. Applegate is certainly very trying to his friends. I regret his barbarous ways, for I am inclined to like him in spite of them. I should enjoy his friendship if he would give it to me—or perhaps I ought to say if he had it to give. But there is always a difficulty about the friendship of a man for a woman—he wants her love in payment for his friendship, and the bargain is unequal and consequently a failure. I, at all events, do not feel bound to humor all Mr. A's whims because he does me the honor to acknowledge himself pleased with my society. Why should I? Do I not give as good—well, almost as good—as I receive? He writes charming letters when he is in