By Steve Bergsman
How did Maya Angelou do it? Or Truman Capote? Or Ray Bradbury? Or "Peanuts" cartoonist Charles Schulz? They all stayed at San Diego's great Victorian Hotel del Coronado and managed to balance sun and sand with excellent poetry and prose.
I was hoping some of that productivity would rub off on me during my visit. Instead I succumbed to lazy days of dolce far niente.
Worshippers of great hotels — the people who stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York or the Greenbrier in West Virginia or the Broadmoor in Colorado Springs — also often make a pilgrimage to the famed Hotel del Coronado.
Opened in 1888, the iconic hotel with its red-turreted main building sits on a stretch of sand called Coronado Island. When it was originally built the structure pretty much had Coronado Island to itself, but a picturesque community has grown up around the place - even as the hotel has expanded over the years. The best way to get to Coronado Island is a ferry, but a vertigo-inducing bridge also connects the island to San Diego.
Ironically, for a structure so well known, the hotel's best-kept secret is that it has been a writers' retreat for more than 100 years. Some of the great American writers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, including Frank Norris, Upton Sinclair and the elegant Henry James, stayed at the hotel. During the mid-20th century playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams were guests, as was Theodor Geisel — better known as Dr. Seuss. The hotel has also played host to several diverse writers from the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Guests have included Norman Mailer and John Updike, Western scribe Louis L'Amour, "Bourne" originator Robert Ludlum and novelist/travel writer par excellence Paul Theroux.
While these writers may have come to the Del just for relaxation or to recharge their batteries, it's doubtful they left their craft behind, and that was true for me, too. I arrived at the hotel for a quick getaway and to get started on my eighth book and third novel. After writing historical fiction about R&B singer Johnny Ace and Motown songstress Mary Wells, I committed to writing my next tome about 1970s keyboardist and singer Billy Preston. Just before I left home I did an interview with one of the original member of Sly and the Family Stone, a group Preston helped along the way, and took the recording of it with me to the Del. I figured if nothing was happening creatively, I could at least transcribe the recording and I still would be that much ahead.
As it turned out, I barely touched my laptop other than to check my e-mail. The weather in San Diego was delectable. A cool breeze continuously rolled in from the Pacific, dipping the temperature into the 60s and 70s, perfect for long walks on the beach or strolling through the attractions of San Diego proper.
The Del continually reinvents itself with great new restaurants such as the ENO Pizzeria and Wine Bar, where I spent an evening eating al fresco but huddled under a heater. Coronado itself also maintains some of its traditions. The MooTime Creamery, a great ice cream store on Orange Avenue just a five-minute walk from the Del, is still there, causing me to wonder if science fiction writer Ray Bradbury took his daughters there for ice cream after dreaming up alien adventures.
Bradbury, who wrote "Fahrenheit 451" and "The Martian Chronicles," was here so often that he once told an interviewer he raised his daughters at the Del. The futurist also quipped, "I love the Hotel del Coronado at Christmastime. It's like you're back 100 years, where you should be at Christmastime."
The most famous writer associated with the Del is L. Frank Baum, who created "The Wizard of Oz" series. Some people assumed Emerald City from the Oz story was the Del fictionalized, but the original book was written before Baum's six lengthy sojourns here. He did, however, write three other Oz books while at the hotel: "Dorothy and the Wizard," "The Road to Oz" and "The Emerald City."
The Del was definitely an inspiration to some writers. In 1975, Richard Matheson proudly saw the publication of his novel, "Bid Time Return," with a storyline that goes this way: The protagonist visits the Del and falls in love with a beautiful young woman featured in an old painting. The protagonist gets transported back to 1896, where he meets the beautiful woman, a guest at the hotel. If it sounds familiar, the book was made into a movie called "Somewhere in Time," that starred Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour.
The hotel does, however, have a few detractors. Before "The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald vaulted into the world of the famous with his book "This Side of Paradise" about the decadent 1920s. In the novel, the snarky Fitzgerald wrote this about a character called Amory Blaine: "From his fourth to his tenth year he did the country with his mother in her father's private car, including Coronado, where his mother became so bored that she had a nervous breakdown in a fashionable hotel."
Ambrose Bierce, who visited the Del in 1891, was even more satirical than Fitzgerald, yet in one of his more well-known short stories, "An Heiress From Redhorse," conceived in the form of diary entries from the hotel, he wrote: "I soon established myself under my sunshade and had for some time been gazing dreamily over the sea, when he approached, walking closest to the edge of the water - it was ebb tide. ... As he approached me, he lifted his hat, saying, 'Miss Dement, may I sit with you — or will you walk with me?'"
I wonder whether I can get a line like that into my next book.
WHEN YOU GO
Hotel del Coronado: www.hoteldel.com
For general information: www.coronadovisitorcenter.com
Steve Bergsman is a freelance writer. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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