Herbert Eugene Bolton by Hurtado Albert L

Author:Hurtado, Albert L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of California Press

E L E V E N · The Grand Patriarch

The 1930s were challenging years for the University of California. In July 1930 Robert Gordon Sproul became president of the university. No one was surprised. As university vice president and secretary of the regents, Sproul was in effect the “operational president” from 1920 on, according to Clark Kerr, Sproul's successor.1 Bolton, of course, knew Sproul well and worked closely with him. Sproul assumed the presidency during the Great Depression, a time when his legendary attention to budgetary detail was most needed.

Hard times for the country meant hard times for the university. Yet there was a glimmer of hope. In the midst of the depression Bolton would have plenty of money to fill two new and much needed senior positions. In 1930 university benefactors provided endowments for two new history professorships, the Margaret Byrne in American history and the Sidney H. Ehrman in European history. The Ehrman endowment grew out of a family tragedy, the untimely death of Sidney Hellman Ehrman, son of Bolton's benefactor. Like his father, young Ehrman had an interest in history. After taking the baccalaureate at Berkeley, he studied European history at Cambridge University, where he contracted a horrible infection in 1929. His parents rushed to Sidney's side, but to no avail. The Ehrmans endowed a chair for European history at Cambridge and another at Berkeley in their son's memory.2 Shortly after his son's death Sidney Ehrman was named a regent of the University of California.3

In 1930 death came to one of Bolton's important friends, Judge John F. Davis.4 The judge, domineering though he was, had been one of Bolton's most important allies among the Native Sons, his colleague on the State Historical Commission, and a savvy navigator on the choppy political waters of state politics. No one could entirely replace him as an effective advocate for the Native Sons’ fellowship program.

Hoping that Davis was a good Catholic, Father Zephyrin Engelhardt said an RIP for him. Alas, he would have done the same for Charles F. Lummis, who had died in 1928, but he was not a Catholic. “He jumped into eternity with both feet without examining whether there is a bottom to it,” so the Franciscan priest would not sing the mass for him. Engelhardt, motivated no doubt by the most kindly intentions for Bolton, went on to explain that it was “stupidity” not to act to save one's soul. “The Lord save us, but we must want to be saved and must save ourselves, too,” he explained.5 Engelhardt's not-so-subtle message was clear: Bolton knew “the Truth” and should act accordingly. The message could not have been lost on Bolton, but he remained silent on his religious beliefs, even to well-meaning priests who were his friends. He continued to believe whatever he believed as quietly as possible.

In 1930 Bolton published one of his major works, Anna's California Expeditions, consisting of four volumes of translated diaries and correspondence, plus a fifth (separately published as Outpost of Empire) containing Bolton's history of events based on the documents.

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