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Volume III contains the short stories, selected columns and major novel written from 1874 to 1893.
Preface
This volume of the collected works begins in 1874, a pivotal year for Rowena and her family. It started off innocuously enough with adjusting to the removal of the Merced County, California, seat and the home and office of the Steeles and their newspaper, the San Joaquin Valley Argus, from Snelling to Merced town the year before. Throughout 1874, while her husband Robert J. ‘R.J.’ Steele and son Harry Hale Granice were embroiled in a feud with several County officials and their hangers-on (the “County Clique”) and Edward Madden, the editor of the rival newspaper, the Merced Tribune, Rowena busied herself with posting dozens of articles about life in their new home, social activities, balls, church fairs, and personal notes about the citizens.
Rowena had always abhorred politics and political squabbles and had successfully avoided any involvement in the vitriolic feud swirling around her until November when, citing a piece she wrote about a Catholic church fair, Madden responded with a “spiteful article” about her personally in the Tribune. This triggered a facetious, condescending response in the Argus from the much older, maternal Rowena written in a teasing tone: “That last dishwater article must have contained a little mustard or some other ingredient of stinging quality which made the amiable young man of the Tribune out of sorts….” She then made a flippant reference to a girl Madden was “sweet on” or attached to, which apparently further embarrassed and enraged him.
At the same time Rowena was in the process of writing and publishing her third novel, Dell Dart; Or, Within the Meshes, which she said was the true story of a young Boston girl from a good family who is seduced and kidnapped by a gambler and robber and spends her final days in a brothel in California. She left in early December 1874 on a book promotion tour around Northern California. Meanwhile, Madden wrote a notice about the book in the Tribune:
If any family desires to be posted in the life of a female in a house of ill fame they can ascertain all the knowledge in that line they desire by a perusal of the publication referred to. The authoress evidently knows whereof she speaks.
Rowena’s son, Harry, immediately rose up to defend his mother’s honor. Although small, with a frail physique and sickly nature, he confronted the much larger, stronger Madden in public and demanded a retraction and apology. Madden allegedly pulled back his coat, revealing a revolver, and said something to the effect of, “This is all the apology you’ll ever get” and apparently uttered some slander about Harry’s legitimacy.
Harry spent the next two days sick with the “bloody flux” and consumed with anguish and fear of the bully Madden. On Monday morning, December 7, 1874, he armed himself with a gun and went downtown. Spotting Madden and a companion on the street, as he testified later, he thought he saw Madden reaching for his weapon, so he opened fire first, killing Madden instantly.
There followed three years of trauma and heartbreak for Rowena: Trial, conviction, imprisonment, appeals, more trials, financial stress; then the death of Rowena’s second son, George Law Granice, just twenty-four years old; seizure of the Argus in an act of revenge by the County Clique; and the prolonged illness of R.J.
For the next almost twenty years, Rowena would write only one short story and a few small pieces, mostly Christmas themed, until 1894 when she produced her final novel—her grand opus—Weak or Wicked?—A Romance.
As reviewed by the San Francisco Call on March 25, 1894:
Weak or Wicked.—Under this title Mrs. Rowena Granice Steele, authoress of “The Victims of Fate,” the first novel published in San Francisco, way back in 1857 [sic, 1859], has issued her latest production. It is a romance of the East and of California, in which the writer weaves a number of incidents in the life of the heroine, who has gone wrong, for the purpose of demonstrating that wickedness in children, developed in after life, is often the result of an ill-assorted marriage of a brutish man and a gentle but dissatisfied woman. The story is told in an interesting way that carries the reader along from beginning to end. [Published by the Steele Publishing Company, Lodi, Cal.]
The setting in the last half of the book is the family home of Col. Samuel Scott in Merced County, “a large, elegant residence built on the English castle plan, with wings and cupola, standing on a large knoll, about one mile from the town of Snelling,” which was destroyed by fire in 1878. At least some of the storyline of the book is obviously based on Col. Scott and his wife, as Rowena inferred in an article about the “castle”:
The most rare and beautiful shrubbery and flowers were cultivated and bloomed in rich profusion. Fountains threw up their crystal spray, quaint and curious nooks, romantic spots, croquet grounds, crannies, alcoves and all sorts of retreats. The interior could boast of bright velvet carpets, mirror lakes, cabinets of curiosities from all parts of the world. Sweet music swept through the broad halls, in fact, everything that money could purchase or a refined taste desire, was to be found beneath the roof that covered this castle home, save happiness. This last precious gift to humanity seldom smiled within this gigantic structure; grim misery had chosen it for her dwelling. The pauper finds more true happiness in the county poor house than did the inmates of this gorgeous home. The inmates, that is, the owners and heirs, are scattered. And on Monday last the red demon came and, amid the howling storms and the falling rain, took it joint from joint, and left it a heap of ruins. Ah! what a volume could be written which would prove that truth is stranger than fiction. San Joaquin Valley Argus, 19 Oct 1878
I hope you enjoy Rowena’s stories as much as I found delight in transcribing and editing them. One lingering disappointment is that I never was able to find a copy of her first novel, Victims of Fate, written in 1859. Although an estimated 6,000 copies were produced, not one can be found in any public library. I leave you with this offer and challenge: A $1,000 reward for the first person who can find a copy.
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