DONA TERESA HARTNELL + Don David Spence enlarged the Hartnell home in Monterey ‘to accommodate an increasing family and a succession of visitors’

+++  Many British captains had him to thank for supplying their needs in a courteous and effective manner.  It was his pleasure, as an Englishman far from home, to serve his countrymen.  ++  FOR RUSSIA  ++  During Hartnell’s absence in South America, a surprise had been prepared for him by a loving wife and a faithful employee.  Without his knowledge, Dona Teresa and David Spence enlarged the Hartnell home to accomodate an increasing family and a succession of visitors.  Hints in Don David’s letters had not prepared Don Guillermo for the imposing edifice to which he was conducted straight from the customhouse.  The site remained the one he had chosen, half a league back from the water’s edge on land rising to the timber line, commanding a beautiful view of the bay to the north and pine-covered hills to the east.  It was on the outer, southern edge of the little community, overlooking every other house.  ++  From the roadway he saw no alteration in his home.  But Don Guillermo, entering the familiar front door, found that he could pass directly across a ’sala’ (living room) into a patio protected from the wind by new inverse wings, and already planted with flowering vines and shrubs.  The new walls were built of adobe-mud bricks, in four-foot thickness like the originals, and the whole roofed with shingles from near-by woods.  The nucleus of the new home was the whole of the old, a low building formerly partitioned, now transformed into the large ’sala,’ freshly whitewashed and decorated with heavy lace curtains, holy pictures from Spain, and furniture of mixed nationalities and periods.  De la Guerra heirlooms associated happily with novelties from company cargoes.  A guitar in a corner gave mute reminder of evening song.  ++  Occupying one of the new wings were comfortably furnished sleeping quarters for the family and guests.  An enormous bed dominated the master bedroom, indeed the whole house.  Rawhide, stretched over a wooden frame, made a not uncomfortable base for an accumulation of bedclothes topped by a lace coverlet.  Henceforth from this vantage ground, during advanced pregnancy and early recovery from childbirth, Dona Teresa would direct the household.   +++