WILLIAM PETTY HARTNELL’S LIVES: From Backbarrow Lancashire country childhood to the College of Commerce in Bremen Germany

+++  …Perhaps in expiation of early sins… ++ (for Hartnell changed from a wild youth into a sincere convert), he labored ceaselessly to create order in the chaotic country of his adoption.  His influence has endured to this day among his descendants, and in the laws that govern California.  ++  During three decades of residence in Monterey, the capital and true center of California life, Hartnell achieved a unique authority.  He never held a spectacular office, seldom made money, never promoted himself or an undeserving friend.  But slowly he acquired wisdom, more from the disappointments of his life than from its sparse moments of success.  And through the years Hartnell dispensed prodigious hospitality, aided by a loving, lively family.  His home became a true International House, an unfailing source of tolerance and good will.  Few visiting foreigners failed to pay their respects to the Hartnells, and an astonishing number became house guests during the decades when no hotel existed in the capital.  ++  Hartnell’s letters to and from a wide acquaintance combine with contemporary Californiana to provide detail about a winning personality whose life impinged on great events.  A unique, a personal impression of the time emerges as clearly as the man.  ++  After a country childhood and conventional schooling in Backbarrow, Lancashire, William was sent, at sixteen, to the well-known College of Commerce in Bremen.  This ancient German port was awakening from the troubled sleep of military occupation.  Opened to world trade while war still lingered in the interior, her streets were thronged with sailors and sea captains from the United States, South and Central America, Sandwich, Sitka, and Far Eastern ports.  ++  Exciting events were being discussed, everywhere and in every language: Napoleon’s sudden astounding escape; his Hundred Days of heroics, which froze Europe into a paralysis of fear; the terminal battle of Waterloo, and recontinued convening of statesmen at the Congress of Vienna.  Such exhilaration was in the air, and so many retainers accompanied accredited envoys there that the occasion seemed social rather than political, more like going to a great gay house party than to solemn council tables. ++  …[Reprinted from tail end of page one and all of page 2 of Susanna Bryant Dakin's 'The Lives of William Hartnell,' published in 1949 by Stanford University Press]…  +++