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Old Posted Jan 27, 2013, 1:38 AM
fhammon fhammon is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2011
Location: Los Angeles, Ca.
Posts: 269
Quote:
Originally Posted by MichaelRyerson View Post

Salon Francais, North Broadway, Los Angeles, William H. Fletcher, 1890

The California History Room, California State Library

Looks like a rougher crowd than over at the Parisian bakery.
From Horace Bell's book "REMINISCENCES OF A RANGER":

http://archive.org/stream/reminiscen...lrich_djvu.txt
Quote:
Of all that Frankish immigration I believe there are only two
survivors in our city, and one is Madame Begon, who is the
owner of a very pretty property on Castelar street, in the upper
part of the city, and the other is one of the prominent vignerons
of the Vineyard city. At the coining of the French Filibus-
ters the Madame was in the very prime of buxom womanhood,
and started a small restaurant at the place where the Ferguson
A; Rose stable now stands, and for a reasonable compensation
would give you, in addition to a well cooked dinner and bottle
of wine, a vigorous lesson in rapier exercise, for which purpose
she kept on hand a pair of gloves, foils and masks. The
Madame was a master in the use of the foil, and my ideal
hero, Bill, was the only one I knew who could stand up to her.
The Madame was emphatically a militaire, had served twenty
years in Algiers as a vivandiere, and as a natural consequence
took easily to filibustering. How the Madame came to Cali-
fornia I am unable to say, but should the reader be curious
to know, let him call on the fat old gray-haired dame who
reclines in her easy chair and lives easily off her rents, at her
residence on Castelar street. As far as the French Sonora
filibustering emigration to Los Angeles is concerned, Madame
Begon stands high.
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