Shoulda Been A Lawyer

Because I like doing research more then most writing and engineering these days.

I have this crazy and detailed plot idea that takes place early in California's history as a state. It's full of characters both historical and imagined and is supposed to have all manner of twists and turns while following my general story arc. Kind of an 1850s thriller. Unfortunately I read so few books of this type my imagination hasn't gone so far in as to generate much in the way of real action. Mostly I go blank on that, and then go do more research.

The research is often just my alphabetical reading of a collection of source material at the Library of Congress. I've learned a shitload reading these, and enjoyed nearly every one. But this week it consists of an actual book: Sacramento's Gold Rush Saloons: El Dorado in a Shot Glass. Reading it I do imagine bits and pieces of person-to-person interaction that could make good fiction. But mostly I just enjoy absorbing all the details. I've grown particularly fond of the city I moved to when I was twenty five, and because of "my book", and more because of all those trips my mother took us on through the Gold Country, I've grown deeply interested in arcane historical detail. This book tells me where certain saloons were, who started the breweries and where they were located, where the grains and hops were grown, what sorts of cocktails were popular at the time, how these places came up with ice in the height of summer, what sorts of deadly arguments people typically had, in short all manner of great info.

Am I milling this grist into stories? No. The following is typical of what I do instead.

After going on about fresh brick buildings built after the 1852 fire, politicking, temperance, gambling, and other saloon activities, the narrative went into prostitution, which was legal at the time. The well-known Palace on 2nd between I and J, now the edge of Old Sacramento and a combination of assorted monuments and I-5's southbound J St off-ramp, had as proprietor for a time young Fanny Seymour (aka Fanny Smith or Fanny Sweet), a "Louisiana native" possessing a "Grecian beauty" and fair complexion, "with ruddy glow of perfect health; her eye is of light gray, strongly marked and expressing in an eminent degree the possession of strong passions and implacable animosities." (Such fine 1850s newspaper prose!) One night in December of 1852, she'd been drinking and insisted a stage driver named Putnam, who was sitting in the "wine chair," buy a bottle of wine. This was a common custom but Putnam loudly refused and told Fanny to sober up. Instead she got her Colt and shot him.

After realizing what she'd done, she ran outside and found a police officer. The marshal was ready for the vigilante mob and promptly put her in the Sacramento River's prison brig for her protection. It's not clear why but the judge offered bail, in sympathy perhaps of her many business partnerships, her gender, her status as a mother, but however it happened, she paid it, lit out, and was never seen in California again.

I found this tale just compelling enough because of the Louisiana connection. I not only love New Orleans nearly as much as San Francisco but expect that it will figure prominently in Book Two of the mostly-unwritten saga that so often inspires my research. So I went online and found that Fanny Smith / Seymour / Sweet was one of the most notorious of old-time New Orleans' brotheliers. She started there after arriving from New York at seventeen, and in short order had been married and widowed and jailed and redeemed, and made a lot of money too. She returned there after her California adventure, suffered Spoons Butler's occupation, studied voodoo with a daughter of Marie Laveau, married once or twice again, traveled widely, and died comfortably in Florida in the 1880s.

But this brief biography was not copied somewhere. It's what I remember from piecing together bits from online tourist blurbs, book summaries, and especially an 1899 volume of the Southern Reporter, a legal history for various courts across the Deep South, detailing the settling of her estate. Digging around for tidbits was a lot of fun. It always is. What can I do with it? Unknown; probably very little. The voodoo connection gives her a compelling link to an historical figure whom I feature prominently in Book One, living in San Francisco but who'd likewise studied voodoo in New Orleans a few years prior. That sort of thing can provide good detail and color, especially given my passion for being as historically accurate as humanly possible (I despise the idea of shifting any historical fact for the sake of a story). What's funny though is that hours of fun or not-fun research will ultimately bear fruit merely as biasing a few sentences and perhaps raising an appreciative eyebrow somewhere that the writer will never know about.

That being the case, the research and interest would more likely pay off in some book presenting interesting biographies. The theme could be Sacramento, or infamous madams, or Gold Rush / New Orleans connections (there are many), or who knows what; and it would be rather more likely to get completed than an actual distribution-worthy novel.

You might think Historian would be a better fit for me than Lawyer. But as I try to reinvent myself a little bit so I can keep being an Engineer, and I run into this love I have for hunting down obscure data with the intent of weaving it together into some compelling narrative or other, Lawyer seems a better fit than Historian because I am accustomed to a salary more typical of engineers than of historians. Also, in the car the other day, we had a similar conclusion from a completely different angle, given some talents I've developed of being impassioned yet very objective when mediating (talents I've never put myself in a position to get paid for). But, eh, never mind. I remain a technologist with liberal arts dreams. There's no changing that.