GLR May-June 2023

the public’s mind with Harte’s fictional couple, and the men took their place alongside Mark Twain’s celebrated jumping frog of Calaveras County as literary nostalgia for a California that was rapidly disappearing. In 1874, stagecoach service to Yosemite was inaugurated, and the road through Second Garrote to the valley was rerouted to pass directly in front of the men’s cabin. Particularly after 1890, when Yosemite was designated a national park, visitors by stagecoach, carriage, and horseback became so numerous that Chamberlain and Chaffee decided to turn their place into a way station where travelers could stretch their legs and purchase re freshments, or stock up on homegrown fruits and vegetables for their camping trip. And, of course, visitors could also meet the famous originals of Tennessee and his partner. The wedded bachelors became another roadside attraction. The men kept a guestbook for visitors’ comments (now pre served in the Bancroft Library at Berkeley). The entries in the book are unfailingly warm and appreciative, with only a few sly references to the nature of the couple’s relationship. “The artistic inclination of these gentlemen is quite apparent,” wrote one visitor, “tho which one is the ‘ladies man’ we could not dis cover, each modestly declining the honor.” Others entries were more explicit. One praised the wild scenery of the area, but felt that the most impressive feature created “by the convulsions of nature” was not the mountainous terrain but the affinity between “the wedded batchelors [ sic ].” Another wished the couple many years of happiness together: “On Our Trip to the Yosemite Prov idence directed us to the Cheerful Cabin of Messrs Chamberlain

and Chaffee Two Characteristic ‘49ers’ whose attachment to each other has the true ‘Damon and Pythias’ ring, that touches sentiments so welcome. May their ‘Golden Wedding’ to be cel ebrated in 1899 be the crowning event to their long history of Hospitality.” As the couple approached their eighties, decades of living in what was in many ways still a rough frontier environment began to take their toll. Chaffee was diagnosed with “a skin disease” (unspecified) which in time became debilitating. The disease was probably lupus, as he was admitted to the East Bay Sana torium, a private clinic in Oakland where Dr. Clark R. Krone was conducting experimental treatments for lupus using X-rays. The treatments were unsuccessful; Chaffee died on January 31, 1903, and was buried in Oakland. Unable to afford a long stay away from their cabin and their one source of income, Cham berlain had returned to the mountains. He learned of his part ner’s death in a letter. A pall settled over Second Garrote. The town mourned with Jason Chamberlain and couldn’t imagine how the old man would adjust to life without his partner of over fifty years. They were right to worry. Neighbor Fred Schmidt spoke of a scene from his childhood that was seared into his memory: “My brother Charlie had gone hunting and it was late in the after noon. I walked onto Chamberlain’s porch and there he sat with his head about shot off. The muzzle of the gun rested against his chin and stood between his legs. He had tied a string from the trigger to his toe and that’s the way he shot himself. God, how I ran home!” Jason and John had selected a spot in the mountains where they wanted to be buried so they would always lie side-by-side, the way they had their very first night together in New England when their bodies were young and strong. But it was not to be. Chamberlain was buried alone in the nearby town of Groveland, a pleasant little community of trees and families and automo biles that no longer wanted to be called by its Gold Rush name of First Garrote. The short story “Tennessee’s Partner” ends with the un named partner mourning Tennessee’s death. “But from that day,” Harte writes, “his rude health and great strength seemed visibly to decline; and when the rainy season fairly set in, and the tiny grass-blades were beginning to peep from the rocky mound above Tennessee’s grave, he took to his bed.” In a fevered delirium, the grieving partner imagines that Tennessee is wandering alone among the hills, and insists he must hitch up the buckboard to go find him. “Sometimes, you know,” he explains as in his hallucination he searches for his lost mate, “when he’s blind-drunk, he drops down right in the trail. Keep on straight up to the pine on the top of the hill. Thar—I told you so!—coming this way, too—all by himself, sober, and his face a-shining. Tennessee! Pardner!” Harte’s story ends with a sim ple sentence: “And so they met.” R EFERENCES Chamberlain, Jason. “Day Before Yesterday: The Search for Gold Be ginning 1849” (manuscript), Huntington Library, 1901. Johnson, Susan Lee. Roaring Camp: The Social World of the Califor nia Gold Rush , W.W. Norton, 2000. Paden, Irene and Margaret Schlichtmann. The Big Oak Flat Road: An Account of Freighting from Stockton to Yosemite Valley .Yosemite Natural History Association, 1959.

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