Читать книгу History of Fresno County, Vol. 4 - Paul E. Vandor - Страница 9

The life career of Paul E. Vandor, writer of this History of Fresno County, is typical of the varied experiences and activities common to that remarkable product of American institutions, the newspaper writer — that restless, indefatigable worker that is ever in touch with the popular pulse, that aids in directing public opinion and while wielding an invisible but conscious power yet sinks individuality in the impersonality of his work, that contributes to and encourages the development and permanent exploitation of communities, and that, while giving the best years of life and an unimpeachable loyalty to a chosen vocation, seldom reaps personal reward for his unceasing efforts in behalf of the public weal. This newspaper class or body of journalists has humorously perhaps been named the Fourth Estate to distinguish an acknowledged power in the state body politic, distinct from the three recognized political or social orders. The subject of this sketch was born at Milwaukee, Wis., June 13, 1858, and is the eldest son of three living children. His father, who died in San Francisco in the seventies, was Joseph Vandor, a Hungarian nobleman, who was a major in the Austrian army. He cast his lot with Kossuth and the Hungarian revolution of 1848-49, but with its collapse and the loss of ancestral estate, escheated to the Crown, fled proscribed to America, sailing from Glasgow, Scotland, as the last port of embarkation. On December 4, 1849, he arrived in the United States in such an impoverished state that, with ignorance of the English language, life for him in the new land was beset by many vicissitudes, and he was reduced to manual labor for a livelihood. Gaining after a time a working knowledge of the language, the while economizing strictly to meet the demands of his necessities, he gave instruction in German, French and fencing, and also did amanuensis work and so worked his way through Harvard Law School, from which he was graduated. Eventually, he moved to Wisconsin to engage in the practice of law at Milwaukee.

On August 22, 1857, in that comfortable city, Joseph Vandor was married to Miss Pauline Knobelsdorf, who had come to America in childhood, and whose family had settled at Milwaukee. She was of gentle birth, a lineal descendant of the Major von Knobelsdorf who was distinguished as the royal architect of Frederick the Great and who planned and constructed for him the first edifices that marked the Unter den Linden in Berlin. This bit of ancestral history is the more interesting in our story because Mr. Vandor's grandfather on the paternal side was a tutor and mentor of the Duke of Reichstadt — Napoleon II., son of Napoleon Bonaparte. His grandmother was a lady-in-waiting of the duke's mother, Marie Louise of Austria. Mrs. Pauline Vandor was one of the pioneer settlers of West Park Colony in Fresno. She died in Fresno City, May 7, 1907. She was a woman of indomitable energy, and an intensely loyal American of the type so often found among those of favored birth in foreign lands who have chosen the American republic as their home.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Joseph Vandor was commissioned a Colonel by Alexander Williams Randall (the plucky governor of Wisconsin who had called a regiment into existence without authority of the legislature), to organize the Seventh Wisconsin Infantry Regiment, later a unit of the historic Iron Brigade, but as the outgrowth of a cabal in the regiment, nurtured by jealousy of his military proficiency as evidenced by his being called upon to act in the capacity of brigade commander, an attempt was made upon his life. Under cover of night, he was shot in the shoulder by an unknown assassin, who fired at him through his tent and inflicted a wound which developed into a malignant cancer. He resigned his military command, and with the helpful recommendations of such influential men as Governor Randall, Carl Schurz, Governor Salmon Portland Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury, and William H. Seward, Secretary of State, President Lincoln appointed him American Consul at Papeete, chief town of Tahiti, for the French protectorate in the Society Islands, and in those days station of the New England whalers in the Southern Pacific.

Colonel Vandor's loyalty to the country of his adoption was intense, and the American flag such an object of veneration for him that our subject recalls how he quelled a native insurrection on the island of Huaheine by the display of Old Glory from the masthead of the little Tahitian schooner aboard which was the consular party. The flag was run up while the insurgents on the beach fired on the craft and refugees swam out or canoed to the schooner for protection. Speaking of these romantic but exciting days, Mr. Vandor says: "My father knocked me flat upon the deck, to escape the bullets he heard whistling on their flight toward us, but for which and being in the line of range. I might not have survived to tell the tale. I can recall, also, that often he emerged from the consulate at Papeete to liberate American sailors from the custody of Kanaka policemen, indignant at their practice of tying prisoners' wrists behind their backs for want of handcuffs, and then roundly castigating the policemen. At that time, as a small boy. I was familiar with the Kanaka language of the Islands, and could read it as printed in the French Jesuit or English Episcopalian missionary books; and although only a child in years I was the interpreter for the consulate. I accompanied my father on official tours of the islands in the archipelago, and rendered the translations of Kanaka into the German or French, as I had only an indifferent knowledge of English."

The serious nature of the Colonel's wound, and the education of his three children, prompted him to resign the consulship, and the family arrived in San Francisco, in April, 1869. Colonel Vandor took up the practice of law, became prominent in the Grand Army of the Republic, and a leader in the German-speaking colony, still including many of the most loyal and most efficient citizens of the state. Because of the evil effects of the wound upon his health, he declined the political preferments from time to time offered him. Before his death in the middle seventies, and after the Franco-German War, he returned to Europe and journeyed to Paris and Vienna, to consult eminent surgeons; and after submitting to operations, he made a last pathetic visit to the estates at one time his ancestral possessions, and the grave of his mother in a closed Vienna cemetery, and returned home, never again to leave his bed. His remains lie in the family plot in the G. A. R. reservation of the Odd Fellows' Cemetery at San Francisco.

Paul E. Vandor grew and thrived under somewhat disordered educational conditions. He was taught French by the Jesuit Fathers in the South Sea Islands, and, on return to his native land at the age of eleven, was French in spirit and habit, although German was spoken in the home circle. Attending the cosmopolitan public schools and a private collegiate institute in San Francisco, he began the study of English, of which he had only a smattering, gathered from an American school teacher, a protege of the family while in the Islands. Being a voracious reader, he learned of himself to read and to write, delving into classic literature from the time when he read his first English book, Robinson Crusoe.

Newspaper work had for him its fascination even during boyhood, and as a school lad in the late seventies he was a publisher in San Francisco, when amateur journals were a juvenile fad. He once had the questionable credit, while in college, of being held to answer, with two older companions, on two charges of criminal libel lodged by a rival boy editor. The grand jury gave all concerned a lecture on the enormity of their offence, and then, after treating them to a good scare, made heroes of them all by ignoring the accusation. Mr. Vandor studied law in San Francisco, thinking to make that his profession; but with the loss of family fortune following collapse of the mining-stock gamble of the late seventies in San Francisco, abandoned the law to take up newspaper writing. Today, he is the second oldest newspaper writer in point of continuous service in Fresno County. In his career he has been dramatic critic of the old Golden Era, a reporter for the Chronicle, the Evening Post, the Examiner, and the Morning Call, in San Francisco. He has also been a reporter on the Morning Telegram, the Argus and the Encinal of Alameda, and he has served in like capacity in Fresno with the Evening Expositor and the Democrat, the Morning Republican and at present is with the Evening Herald. Alternately, Mr. Vandor has also been assistant city editor of the San Francisco Call and Editor of the Fresno Democrat. He has spent the major part of a busy life in the ever interesting city of San Francisco, of whose marvelous growth he was an eye-witness, and he has wept amid her devastated streets, when he beheld the aftermath of the earthquake and the big fire. While in San Francisco, he was a charter member of the first Press Club of 1880, whose supporters hobnobbed with and welcomed many of the notable literary men of the world as they sojourned in or passed through the Bay Metropolis and sipped of a life now largely a memory.

From January, 1885, until the Spanish-American War, Mr. Vandor was in the California National Guard, having enlisted in Company G, First Infantry, Second Brigade, which with Company C as the mother organization dated from the days of 1856 and the San Francisco Vigilance Committee, and he held transfer memberships in Company G, in Alameda, Fifth Infantry, Second Brigade, and in Company F. in Fresno, of the Sixth Infantry and Third Brigade. Having been color-sergeant in the First Regiment, he was in his own company first sergeant, but he was rejected for service in the Spanish-American War on account of physical disability. A veteran member of the Nationals, Mr. Vandor was a charter member of the Veterans' State Association of the National Guard. In national politics a Republican, Mr. Vandor is locally decidedly non-partisan. A charter member of Pitiaches Tribe. No. 144, I. O. R. M., of Fresno, Mr. Vandor is also a member of Manzanita Camp, No. 160, W. O. W. of Fresno. He also belongs to the Shaver Lake Fishing Club.

A Californian to the backbone, although compelled sincerely to regret that he was not born within the limits of the Golden State, Mr. Vandor has made the study of California history a labor of love, and is recognized as an authority on Fresno County history. He has contributed on historical subjects to local publications, and has the honor of being a charter member of the Fresno County Historical Society. A member of no established church, Mr. Vandor leans to Unitarianism.